In May of 1980, The Story of Jasmine™ Saga was officially launched within the pages of The Dragon magazine and ran every month for a year.
THE STORY: To embrace her destiny as the Successor of the Great Wizard Erlkyng, the young princess of UR escapes to an ancient temple ruins on the Great White Throne Mountain. Bardulf, a practitioner of the black arts, takes Eiodel, her father’s main castle, using subterfuge, magic, and a small army of men. The usurper searches for the runaway princess seeking to legitimize his tenous claim of UR through marriage. Ahearn, a Dökálfran prince; Thorne, a warrior maiden from Armildia; Rogan, a spy from Roth; and Glynn, a Dwarven mercenary have different reasons to converge at the mountain on an enchanted night of the rising full moon. What does destiny have in store for them?
THE CARD GAME: When DARLENE’s story was not renewed for another year, it morphed into a card game published in 1982. Jasmine: The Battle for the Mind-Realm™ collector card game was recognized by the Strategist’s Club in 1983. The interaction of four factions roughly coincided with the dynamics of the story. Read more about the game.
BOOK ONE: Forty-four years after it appeared, “The Birth of Jasmine,” was published in March of 2024. The original installments were refurbished to enhance its washed-out color and poor printing. Comparison:
New pages were also added to Book One to round out the narrative. Copies of Book One are available here.
THE COLORING BOOK. Borrowing from her medieval fantasy-adventure saga, DARLENE’s Jasmine: Journey into Power coloring book creates a fun way to initiate personal growth. She developed “Coloring with Intent,” which works as a tool to help people resolve personal or relationship issues.
Her innovation is for people to connect with their intuition and communicate with their unconscious using symbols and color. It is possible to awaken, claim, and embody the desirable attributes of the characters. With the insightful and symbolic information offered, this coloring book also provides Jasmine fans a section with a more in-depth look into the personality and motivations of the characters within the story.
TESTIMONIAL: “The process of coloring transformed my emotions and outlook. It opened my eyes to the beauty all around me. My problems didn’t change, but my attitude did. Interacting with Darlene’s artwork proved to be a form of spiritual healing, right when I most needed it.” Demos Sachlas, March, 2020
The Story of Jasmine™ Saga’s Timeline:
1978. Snippets of a story from different characters interacting with each other are “received.”
1979. The non-sequential pile of snippets was arranged into an order and shaped into a narrative.
1980. In May, the first installment was published in The Dragon magazine, Issue #37 to continue until May 1981.
1982. The first role-playing card game in history: Jasmine: The Battle for the Mid-Realm™ collector card game published and offered for sale at Gen Con VIII. The game, Darlene’s signature, and The Story of Jasmine are trademarked.
1983. At GenCon, the card game was awarded by the Strategists Club as the “most outstanding game of 1982.”
1984. Left Wisconsin to pursue an MFA in Design at Indiana University.
2005. Gary Gygax contacted DARLENE and got her back into the gaming world.
2018. In January, a box of snippets lugged around for over 30 years is discovered. Publishing them on FaceBook for 100 days, fans urge her to continue the story.
2018. In May, exactly 36 years after its debut in The Dragon Magazine, a Patreon page was created to serially publish The Story of Jasmine™ Saga, one installment per month. DARLENE designed her JASMINE-type fonts.
2024. After 6 years on Patreon, after 70 installments (& counting), the ongoing story has only been available electronically. After 44 years, it’s physically published in a handheld form.