Introduction and Backstory Noodle
forrest_m
lurking (with very occasional contributions) for a longish while. But
as I seem to be posting more often lately, I thought an
self-introduction might be in order. A little about me: in my mid-30s,
a project manager at a mid-sized architecture firm, a father of one and
the owner of a beat-up-but-improving old house. I'm a pretty good
source for information about things like city planning, architecture
and art history, as well as mountaineering, wilderness travel and other
woodsy activity. I've been writing off and on since I was a teenager
but have only published non-fiction, and not much of that. I'm making
an effort to step up to the next level, which at the moment is 90%
about increasing butt-in-chair time.
Anyway, enough about me. The WIP is a fantasy in a world where great
works of magic radically transformed the geography in historical (as
opposed to mythic) times, but the mages have disappeared (for now...).
Magic, in this world, means control over large-scale natural phenomena,
i.e. vast accelerations of plate tectonics, tsunamis, that sort of
thing. My goal for this backstory is to allow a non-magic fantasy to
take place in a really fantastical landscape.
I'm stuck getting the backstory straight. I've managed to figure
out how to wipe out all the mages in an orgy of mutually assured
destruction except the water mages. The earth mages die tamping the out
of control volcanism that had already taken care of the overconfident
fire mages who started it. This precipitates a sudden-onset ice age -
caused by a combination of earth mages uplifting large sections of the
main continent, cooling caused by the ash from all the volcanoes, and a
slight drop in the temperature of the sun. This last is the big
unintended consequence of the war -all that energy had to come from
somewhere...
Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
the end of the war... any ideas?
Patricia C. Wrede
news:1145559865.7...@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
Well, your earth mages go out while trying to counter one effect of the war
(the volcanoes); why can't the water mages go out trying to counter the
glaciation?
Failing that, you could have a major change in *how magic works* as a result
of all this loose energy wandering around. (What you've mostly talked about
here is *what magic can do*, which is a little different, to my eyes,
anyway.) This could lead either to any remaining mages inadvertently
burning themselves out because they try to do something before realizing
magic has changed, or to the remaining mages being unable to find anyone
suitable to pass their magic along to.
I notice the air mages are remarkable by their absence -- is this
deliberate, or oversight, or what? How do people decide which branch of
magic they'll follow -- is it a matter of heredity and/or innate and
specific talent, or is it a matter of which mage they talk into taking them
on as an apprentice? And do you want your world to be without any
possibility of magic, or do you want magic to be
lost-but-eventually-replaceable knowledge that someone will eventually
reinvent/rediscover (say, in the world's equivalent of the Renaissance)?
Patricia C. Wrede
Brian M. Scott
<forr...@hotmail.com> wrote in
<news:1145559865.7...@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> Anyway, enough about me. The WIP is a fantasy in a world where great
> works of magic radically transformed the geography in historical (as
> opposed to mythic) times, but the mages have disappeared (for now...).
> Magic, in this world, means control over large-scale natural phenomena,
> i.e. vast accelerations of plate tectonics, tsunamis, that sort of
> thing. My goal for this backstory is to allow a non-magic fantasy to
> take place in a really fantastical landscape.
> I'm stuck getting the backstory straight. I've managed to figure
> out how to wipe out all the mages in an orgy of mutually assured
> destruction except the water mages. The earth mages die tamping the out
> of control volcanism that had already taken care of the overconfident
> fire mages who started it. This precipitates a sudden-onset ice age -
> caused by a combination of earth mages uplifting large sections of the
> main continent, cooling caused by the ash from all the volcanoes, and a
> slight drop in the temperature of the sun. This last is the big
> unintended consequence of the war -all that energy had to come from
> somewhere...
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
If shutting down vulcanism gone mad can do in the earth
mages, why can't shutting down glaciation gone mad do in the
water mages?
My first reaction, though, was to wonder why there don't
seem to be any air mages.
Brian
forrest_m
with my lovely world building.
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> I notice the air mages are remarkable by their absence -- is this
> deliberate, or oversight, or what?
I was really, really planning to stay out of my own thread for a while,
but since both of the first two responses mentioned it, I'll add that
traditionally, only water and earth magic were known (from prehistoric
times) because they are more obviously physical. The theoretical
existence of fire and air magics was long suspected, but it's only the
rise of stable city-states leading to institutionalizaion of magical
learning via academies that allowed fire magic to be developed. It's a
much newer art than the others, that's why it gets out of control. Air,
being by nature more ephemeral, hasn't so far been responsive to
investigation, though presumably if the war hadn't come along, someone
might have figured it out eventually.
>And do you want your world to be without any
> possibility of magic, or do you want magic to be
> lost-but-eventually-replaceable knowledge that someone will eventually
> reinvent/rediscover (say, in the world's equivalent of the Renaissance)?
So far, the actual story is about mundane people among the relics of
great magic past, but I'm leaving my options open. OK, no more
thread-babysitting ;-)
Gerry Quinn
forr...@hotmail.com says...
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
They depend on large global ocean currents which get shut off by
glaciation?
- Gerry Quinn
J.F. Cornwall
Maybe their control over water doesn't include its solid form (that form
belongs to the earth mages perhaps?). So the glacier's formation
depleted their supply of liquid water to draw their power from.
Jim
Michelle Bottorff
> My goal for this backstory is to allow a non-magic fantasy to
> take place in a really fantastical landscape.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for actually having a writing related
problem to discuss.
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
Well, you might get some milage out of the fact that water behaves very
strangely when it freezes. Thus the lowering of temperatures caused by
the glaciers could concievably do very odd, and potentially dangerous
things to water *magic*.
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Patricia C. Wrede
> It's hard to frame these sorts of questions without overloading you
> with my lovely world building.
>>And do you want your world to be without any
>> possibility of magic, or do you want magic to be
>> lost-but-eventually-replaceable knowledge that someone will eventually
>> reinvent/rediscover (say, in the world's equivalent of the Renaissance)?
>
> So far, the actual story is about mundane people among the relics of
> great magic past, but I'm leaving my options open. OK, no more
> thread-babysitting ;-)
If you want useful plot-noodling, you have to answer the questions and/or
talk about which suggestions work and why. Otherwise, you're liable to get
a lovely, logically-worked-out solution that would be absolutely
perfect...for somebody else's story (and no good at all for yours).
Based on what you said in the bit I clipped, I'm assuming that the different
varieties of magic are like different branches of scientific study, rather
than inborn, inherent talents. Getting rid of your mages is therefore more
difficult, because if people learn magic the same way they learn science,
they don't have as much need to be taught *by mages* -- they can learn a
good deal from books and a certain amount of trial and error based on books
and memories.
Actually getting rid of all the mages is fairly simple -- a bunch get killed
in the war, either by hostile magic or by overreaching themselves magically
(the way the fire mages and presumably most of the earth mages died, burning
themselves out trying to fix the volcano problem), and the remaining water
mages burn themselves out fighting off the glaciers. (Or, depending on what
exactly the source of your various magics is, the power available to water
mages diminishes or changes to something they can't use because so much
water is getting locked up in ice, and the water-magic-power is likewise
solidifying into uselessness.) The trick is *keeping* them all gone.
If you're fairly close in time to the catastrophic war, then it's less of a
problem -- with the world in as much of a mess as you've laid on, there's
not likely to be a whole lot of liesure for people to study magic, and magic
is also likely to be...unpopular for quite a while. If the nature of magic
has also changed because of the war -- if the different types of magic have
diminished in power because of the way they were used, or recombined under
pressure (like water and earth making...mud), so that it just doesn't work
the same way any more and your few surviving trained mages can't *do* most
of the spells they used to be able to do -- then magic won't be much help to
the reconstruction, and you'll likely get cultural and psychological
barriers preventing people from training as mages. And with everybody
concentrating on just surviving for a couple of centuries, you just won't
have people available to train, and the knowledge can die out.
(Alternatively, your few remaining mages of *all* sorts can get together to
try to do something about the little ice age, and get swallowed by an
earthquake or a glacier or a last-ditch spell that goes out of control at
the last minute -- this might also allow you to get rid of most of the
surviving books of magic, if such things were rare to begin with and had
been collected in one spot to try to hold back the long winter.)
The longer it's been since the war, though, and the more ecologically and
socially and politically recovered the planet is, the more likely it is that
*somebody* is going to start re-investigating magic. You can do a certain
amount with cultural taboos (which, given the effect of the last mage war,
would be eminently understandable), but even those will wear
thin...especially if you have some ruthless and ambitious rulers who can
look around and think just how cool it would be if *they* could do just a
little of what those old guys could do. And the idea that there *won't* be
*any* ruthless and ambitious rulers is...not going to be plausible, unless
you're writing about aliens.
Which brings us to the story you're wanting to write. What's the focus and
scope? Is it more personal and small-town, or do you have epic battles and
political maneuvering? Just how important is the magical backstory -- is it
mostly color and flavor, a way to justify an interesting setting, or is it
integral to the plot? How and why? Because exactly what you do and how you
do it may very well vary depending on what you *want* to do in this story
(specifically, I mean, more than just "a story about mundane people in the
relics of great magic").
Patricia C. Wrede
Bob Throllop
forrest_m wrote:
> I'm stuck getting the backstory straight. I've managed to figure
> out how to wipe out all the mages in an orgy of mutually assured
> destruction except the water mages... any ideas?
You're leaving something out--why's it so hard to get rid of the mages?
They died of old age and haven't been replaced, or the colleges
stopped training new ones, or they used up all the mana in the world,
or it takes fifty thousand people working together to do magic...what
is the assumption you haven't told us about, that makes the mages so
stubborn about not going away? Why do you think ANY of them are still
alive?
Khiem Tran
forrest_m wrote:
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
"sensawunda").
Khiem.
Michelle Bottorff
Does that work for you?
I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of thing, but usually
*I* have to know the answers or the questions distract me from what I'm
supposed to be writing.
Darth Breather
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
> Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > forrest_m wrote:
> >
> > > Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> > > lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> > > generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> > > the end of the war... any ideas?
> >
> > Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
> > water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
> > to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
> > "sensawunda").
>
> Does that work for you?
>
> I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of thing, but usually
> *I* have to know the answers or the questions distract me from what I'm
> supposed to be writing.
>
>
The entwives thing still annoys me.
If I want loose ends, I'll live life. In novels, I want resolution.
Even if it's "They all settled down and turned treeish where men wanted
to build high-rises. You'll find them in the furniture."
DB
Bill Swears
> Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>>forrest_m wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
>>>lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
>>>generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
>>>the end of the war... any ideas?
>>
>>Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
>>water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
>>to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
>>"sensawunda").
>
>
> Does that work for you?
>
> I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of thing, but usually
> *I* have to know the answers or the questions distract me from what I'm
> supposed to be writing.
>
>
uranium has a critical mass above which it emits deadly radioactivity,
ice has a critical mass where the mana transfers from fluid to the
solid. This has a very negative effect on a water mage. Water, in its
fluid state doesn't fully accept the water-mages soul. The soul
impinges on the reservoir, and interacts with it, but in the end is
always expelled back to the mages body.
Ice, on the other hand, has two negatives. It conducts so well that the
soul can enter it almost entirely, and since the ice is not fluid, the
soul becomes trapped in place.
When the glaciers reached a certain size, all the water-mages' souls
were sucked into stasis in the ice. Their bodies wandered around
untenanted until they fell over, dead of starvation, thirst, or mishap.
So, an effect that took centuries to build took place throughout the
land in but a few days.
Will that do?
Bill
--
Bill Swears
Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?
Catja Pafort
> Possibly not the best week to do this, but what the hell... I've been
> lurking (with very occasional contributions) for a longish while. But
> as I seem to be posting more often lately, I thought an
> self-introduction might be in order.
On the contrary, you're acting in an exemplary manner and you're
restoring our faith in the world. Welcome out of lurkdom!
> Anyway, enough about me. The WIP is a fantasy in a world where great
> works of magic radically transformed the geography in historical (as
> opposed to mythic) times, but the mages have disappeared (for now...).
> Magic, in this world, means control over large-scale natural phenomena,
> i.e. vast accelerations of plate tectonics, tsunamis, that sort of
> thing. My goal for this backstory is to allow a non-magic fantasy to
> take place in a really fantastical landscape.
What's *really* fantastical about your landscape, then? So far, it
sounds like pretty ordinary stuff - this planet has some fascinating
corners, you know. (I say only 'wombats' 'armadillos' 'tree frogs'...)
> I'm stuck getting the backstory straight. I've managed to figure
> out how to wipe out all the mages in an orgy of mutually assured
> destruction except the water mages. The earth mages die tamping the out
> of control volcanism that had already taken care of the overconfident
> fire mages who started it. This precipitates a sudden-onset ice age -
> caused by a combination of earth mages uplifting large sections of the
> main continent, cooling caused by the ash from all the volcanoes, and a
> slight drop in the temperature of the sun. This last is the big
> unintended consequence of the war -all that energy had to come from
> somewhere...
>
> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> the end of the war... any ideas?
Water mages depend on having water? If you've got an advancing ice age,
you'll have *a lot* of water bound up in its solid state, and with a
spotof remnant vulcanism and some wind blowing from the right directions
and blowing a lot of ash and loose material about, you might well end up
with glaciers that are not only taking up a lot of water, *but also*
covered by dust or ash, so the water isn't accessible to your mages at
all. What's left should be fairly salty and sluggish.
Would that help?
Catja, looking somewhat dejectedly at her geographer's hat which looks
as if someone has sat on it before chucking it into a corner...
David Friedman
mbot...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
> Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > forrest_m wrote:
> >
> > > Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
> > > lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
> > > generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
> > > the end of the war... any ideas?
> >
> > Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
> > water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
> > to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
> > "sensawunda").
>
> Does that work for you?
>
> I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of thing, but usually
> *I* have to know the answers or the questions distract me from what I'm
> supposed to be writing.
I find that I have a range from "almost no idea" to "I'm pretty sure I
know the answer to that question but I could be wrong."
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
David Friedman
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> My first reaction, though, was to wonder why there don't
> seem to be any air mages.
An excuse to discuss an idea I have played with for the fantasy without
magic (unconnected to _Harald_) that is one of my other projects.
All magic is earth, air, fire and water--or, of course some combination.
Similarly, all light is horizontally plane polarized or vertically plan
polarized--or, of course ... .
All light is also either left handed circularly polarized or right
handed or some combination.
Could something similar be true of magic? Could one have a system where
everything can be resolved in terms of four basis vectors--but
everything can also be resolved in terms of a different four that span
the same space? So you might have one time or place where everyone took
it for granted that a serious mage, or serious spell, was either earth,
air, fire and water. And another time or place where they took it for
granted with a different list? And both were right?
If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
Rob Kerr
news:ddfr-1A6B78.0...@news.isp.giganews.com:
> If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
From martial arts, there are four axes along which most arts lie:
Linear <--> Circular
and
Soft <--> Hard
I've been playing with a magic system that lies along similar axes,
and trying to build a conflict between rival schools who maintain
one is better than the other (similar to the endless speculation
in martial arts circles about whether one particular "linear" art,
e.g. karate, is better than any given circular art, e.g. jujitsu).
Then along comes someone who says, essentially, "Hey, what if we
could synthesise the best parts of each and create a hybrid that
merged them?" (e.g. Jeet Kune Do, some styles of kung fu)
From IT, there are the rival concepts of RISC and CISC (Reduced
Instruction Set Computer and Complex ISC), which could be applied
to a magic system
Rob Kerr
--
"It's impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making
some other Englishman despise him."
-- G.B.S., "Pygmalion"
Helen Hall
<JCor...@cox.net> writes
>forrest_m wrote:
>>
>> Now I just need some good reasons why the advancing glaciers should
>> lead to the disappearance of the water mages over no more than one
>> generation, even though they are apparently the last men standing at
>> the end of the war... any ideas?
>
>Maybe their control over water doesn't include its solid form (that form
>belongs to the earth mages perhaps?). So the glacier's formation
>depleted their supply of liquid water to draw their power from.
>
results of magery gone mad, they could even be so appalled at what has
happened that they simply resolve that the secrets of their magic will
die with them. They therefore all take a solemn pact never to take on a
pupil as long as they live, they destroy any books they can find and so
their magic dies.
Making sure it *stays* dead -- as Patricia says -- is another matter.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Gerry Quinn
dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com says...
>
> Could something similar be true of magic? Could one have a system where
> everything can be resolved in terms of four basis vectors--but
> everything can also be resolved in terms of a different four that span
> the same space? So you might have one time or place where everyone took
> it for granted that a serious mage, or serious spell, was either earth,
> air, fire and water. And another time or place where they took it for
> granted with a different list? And both were right?
>
> If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
Not really a different basis, but a partial relabelling:
North-South = cold = Water
Down = Earth
East-West = sun's path = Fire
Up = Air
One that concentrates on the non-material:
Light
Heat
Motion
Matter
- Gerry Quinn
forrest_m
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
> >>Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
> >>water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
> >>to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
> >>"sensawunda").
As someone else responded, this is mostly for my benefit. Some of this
info may or may not be available to the characters, but I have always
been a world-building driven writer. If I know how it works beforehand,
it greases the skids for the actual story because I can concentrate on
the characters instead of trying to satisfy my own curiosity about the
world.
Bill Swears wrote
> When the glaciers reached a certain size, all the water-mages' souls
> were sucked into stasis in the ice. Their bodies wandered around
> untenanted until they fell over, dead of starvation, thirst, or mishap.
> So, an effect that took centuries to build took place throughout the
> land in but a few days.
Hey, I like this. It fits with my "magic is not incompatible with
scientific understanding" idea about this world. Riffing on someone
elses suggestion, my other current favorite idea is that the glaciation
disrupts the salinity and thus currents of the oceans. While this
doesn't eliminate water magic, it forces the mages to "recalibrate" -
and while they are temporarily disabled, an angry populace kills them
all with rusty kitchen knives.
Catja wrote:
>What's *really* fantastical about your landscape, then? So far, it
>sounds like pretty ordinary stuff - this planet has some fascinating
>corners, you know. (I say only 'wombats' 'armadillos' 'tree frogs'...)
True 'dat. In this case, fantastical is like: my world's version of
hadrian's wall is yosemite-size cliffs stretching for thousands of
miles; low elevation valleys cut straight through himalayan-size
mountain ranges; an entire ocean bay is roofed over with stone to
create a perfect harbor, with a city built above, allowing cargo to be
loaded onto ships through any street manhole. In the mountains,
shangra-la valleys have been made large enough to support large cities
built like cliff dwellings surrounded by glaciers. Half of a continent
has been tweaked over generations to even out the hydrology, creating
fertile "river deltas" millions of square miles in area. (Of course the
end of magic and the sea level dropping due to the ice age bollocks
this all up). The other half of the continent was sculpted into a vast
interior basin so that all water drains out into a single
Mississipi-sized river. This river has a dam that allows them to cut
off all water connection with the south. The word dam is a little
misleading - it's more like a mountain range with operable doors...
This dam is central to the plot - imagining how it came about is
actually where everything started for me. It was made for defense -
with no continuous water, the water mages couldn't reach into the north
- but incidentally, it now allows the north to hold the south's entire
irrigation hostage. The story revolves around three seperate characters
who are separately uncovering a conspiracy (or competing conspiracies -
I haven't quite got that part straight yet) to change things.
forrest_m
response.
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> If you want useful plot-noodling, you have to answer the questions and/or
> talk about which suggestions work and why. Otherwise, you're liable to get
> a lovely, logically-worked-out solution that would be absolutely
> perfect...for somebody else's story (and no good at all for yours).
This is a bit of a meta- diversion to my own thread, but it seems like
a tough balance. Obviously people need enough info to make useful
suggestions. At the same time, it's probably not appropriate for me to
post my four page (still incomplete) single-spaced history of the
Cataclysm... In this case, I think I did get some great suggestions -
not all useful in context, but even ideas that don't "work" can spur my
thinking.
> Based on what you said in the bit I clipped, I'm assuming that the different
> varieties of magic are like different branches of scientific study, rather
> than inborn, inherent talents. Getting rid of your mages is therefore more
> difficult, because if people learn magic the same way they learn science,
> they don't have as much need to be taught *by mages* -- they can learn a
> good deal from books and a certain amount of trial and error based on books
> and memories.
My current thinking is that it is an inborn talent that also requires
training - that's why magic was known but very rare until it started
getting institutionalized relatively recently. It's also exhausting to
do individually, so in the old days, moving a mountain was a
once-in-a-lifetime endeavor. But the academies discovered that mages
working in concert multiplied their power instead of just adding, with
the effects on the mage similarly reduced. THus the rapid escalation
and unexpected destructiveness of the Cataclysm.
> Actually getting rid of all the mages is fairly simple -- a bunch get killed
> in the war, either by hostile magic or by overreaching themselves magically
> ... The trick is *keeping* them all gone.
Indeed - but for my purposes, it is enough to keep them from gathering
together. I'm thinking that the special places of power that allow
groups to work were destroyed in the war, and it may take centuries to
disover/fabricate others.
> If you're fairly close in time to the catastrophic war, then it's less of a
> problem -- with the world in as much of a mess as you've laid on, there's
> not likely to be a whole lot of liesure for people to study magic, and magic
> is also likely to be...unpopular for quite a while. ... And with everybody
> concentrating on just surviving for a couple of centuries, you just won't
> have people available to train, and the knowledge can die out.
I think that's it, really - the magic is still in the world, and I
*think* one of my plots will involve someone trying to revive it, but
I'm inclined to make this a red herring rather than a real threat.
> The longer it's been since the war, though, and the more ecologically and
> socially and politically recovered the planet is, the more likely it is that
> *somebody* is going to start re-investigating magic.
I think we're just getting to the stage of recovery where that might be
feasible, but it might be the plot for the sequel...
> Which brings us to the story you're wanting to write. What's the focus and
> scope? Is it more personal and small-town, or do you have epic battles and
> political maneuvering?
Basic plot summary: There's a war brewing because the highly populated
south is tired of essentially paying tribute in order to keep the water
flowing. The city-states of the north are not as unified as they once
were and are looking to their own interests. Three main plot threads:
Hungry is drummed out of the elite guild of messengers for being an
iconoclast and is hired by a mysterious scholar to be a sort of private
investigator (mostly because he can get around from place to place).
The old guy is a conspiracy freak, but Hungry discovers a real plot
among the fake ones and has to decide where his loyalties lie. Denny is
a high-functioning autistic whose peasant family abandons him because
they don't want to be saddled with an idjit. But he turns out to have a
genius for mechanical things and his destiny is to figure out how to
operate the great Dam which no one anymore understands. The third plot
line is a not-yet-named princess in a minor city-state who has to
develop her own intelligence network when she learns her brother is
planning to change sides in the looming war which gets going in earnest
about halfway through the bood. All this ends with the characters
exposing the conspiracies that have manipulated both sides into war and
helping craft a compromise that redressed some of the injustices.
If this sounds vague, that's because it is still - but like I said
elsethread, I have a hard time moving beyond beginnings without having
the backstory straight in my own mind. I've started writing the first
two plotlines, because the characters themselves are very clear to me,
but I keep wandering off into world building which is important to me
but has no place in the actual written story...
forrest_m
Patricia C. Wrede
> Before I say anything else, thanks so much for the long and detailed
> response.
You're welcome.
> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> Based on what you said in the bit I clipped, I'm assuming that the
>> different
>> varieties of magic are like different branches of scientific study,
>> rather
>> than inborn, inherent talents. Getting rid of your mages is therefore
>> more
>> difficult, because if people learn magic the same way they learn science,
>> they don't have as much need to be taught *by mages* -- they can learn a
>> good deal from books and a certain amount of trial and error based on
>> books
>> and memories.
>
> My current thinking is that it is an inborn talent that also requires
> training - that's why magic was known but very rare until it started
> getting institutionalized relatively recently. It's also exhausting to
> do individually, so in the old days, moving a mountain was a
> once-in-a-lifetime endeavor. But the academies discovered that mages
> working in concert multiplied their power instead of just adding, with
> the effects on the mage similarly reduced. THus the rapid escalation
> and unexpected destructiveness of the Cataclysm.
OK, that makes a lot of things easier, because even if you don't actually
kill off enough mages so that the inborn talent part dies out completely,
they won't start popping up again if there's no one left to test them and
figure out what kind they are and how they should train and stuff like that.
>
>> Actually getting rid of all the mages is fairly simple -- a bunch get
>> killed
>> in the war, either by hostile magic or by overreaching themselves
>> magically
>> ... The trick is *keeping* them all gone.
>
> Indeed - but for my purposes, it is enough to keep them from gathering
> together. I'm thinking that the special places of power that allow
> groups to work were destroyed in the war, and it may take centuries to
> disover/fabricate others.
Does this mean that the *only* things magic can do are grandiose large-scale
stuff like moving mountains around, and you need a group of people to do
that, or does it mean that you don't mind having a few folks around who can
still light a fire with a glance or make sure the well-water stays pure, but
not much more than that? If it's the former, how do you justify the
grand-effects-only, and how the heck did they figure out how to use magic at
all in the first place?
>> If you're fairly close in time to the catastrophic war, then it's less of
>> a
>> problem -- with the world in as much of a mess as you've laid on, there's
>> not likely to be a whole lot of liesure for people to study magic, and
>> magic
>> is also likely to be...unpopular for quite a while. ... And with
>> everybody
>> concentrating on just surviving for a couple of centuries, you just won't
>> have people available to train, and the knowledge can die out.
>
> I think that's it, really - the magic is still in the world, and I
> *think* one of my plots will involve someone trying to revive it, but
> I'm inclined to make this a red herring rather than a real threat.
If you're close in time to the war, then I'd expect that a) mages would be
fairly unpopular, and b) there'd be *lots* of people who did *not* want them
to get together in groups again, at all, ever -- possibly to the point of
witch-hunt behavior if/when some group was suspected of being wizards.
OTOH, if there are any small, useful, domestic-type spells that people can
do (like keeping well-water pure, for instance), *single* mages might be in
demand in some places.
Um. How spread-out was the war? The effects, obviously, are global in
nature, but if your wizards were concentrated in one or two areas, then
(logically) those would be the areas the other wizards attacked, and there
might be places half a continent away that didn't get *directly* messed
with, but only suffered the side-effects. If your groups of wizards
gathered at some sort of nodes of power or something, then you could have
those places toasted in the war along with the wizards -- presumably it is
Not Good for a water-power-node to have a volcano erupt in it, or for an
earth-power one to get sunk underwater. (Which gives you the possibility of
future books where people are trying to repair the power nodes without
having their power to draw on properly, an interestingly tricky
endeavor...but I digress.) Any survivors would likely migrate to the
less-damaged areas, which would also be low-magic areas, making it more
difficult for magic to survive very long.
>> Which brings us to the story you're wanting to write. What's the focus
>> and
>> scope? Is it more personal and small-town, or do you have epic battles
>> and
>> political maneuvering?
>
> Basic plot summary: There's a war brewing because the highly populated
> south is tired of essentially paying tribute in order to keep the water
> flowing. The city-states of the north are not as unified as they once
> were and are looking to their own interests. Three main plot threads:
> Hungry is drummed out of the elite guild of messengers for being an
> iconoclast and is hired by a mysterious scholar to be a sort of private
> investigator (mostly because he can get around from place to place).
> The old guy is a conspiracy freak, but Hungry discovers a real plot
> among the fake ones and has to decide where his loyalties lie. Denny is
> a high-functioning autistic whose peasant family abandons him because
> they don't want to be saddled with an idjit. But he turns out to have a
> genius for mechanical things and his destiny is to figure out how to
> operate the great Dam which no one anymore understands. The third plot
> line is a not-yet-named princess in a minor city-state who has to
> develop her own intelligence network when she learns her brother is
> planning to change sides in the looming war which gets going in earnest
> about halfway through the bood. All this ends with the characters
> exposing the conspiracies that have manipulated both sides into war and
> helping craft a compromise that redressed some of the injustices.
OK, that sounds less than epic but more than small-town-personal, unless
they end up having a war anyway, but we'll assume not. Which means...
> If this sounds vague, that's because it is still - but like I said
> elsethread, I have a hard time moving beyond beginnings without having
> the backstory straight in my own mind. I've started writing the first
> two plotlines, because the characters themselves are very clear to me,
> but I keep wandering off into world building which is important to me
> but has no place in the actual written story...
...that you probably *do* need to know at least some of this stuff, because
the history will affect the politics. Trust your backbrain, at least
unless/until you discover that you've got 800 pages of worldbuilding notes
compared to two chapters of actual story. There *is* a point at which
worldbuilding becomes self-indulgent. (Assuming that one likes
worldbuilding; some people don't.)
However, it seems to me that some of your difficulty may be that you're
concentrating on the back-history of the mages and magic. This says to me
that one of two things is likely true: either 1) magic and the mages are
going to end up being more important to your "mundane" plot than you
currently expect, or 2) you're focusing on the wrong thing. History is
important to politics, but there's a whole lot more to worldbuilding than
the history. You might want to take a look at the Worldbuilding Questions
at www.sfwa.org, if you haven't already checked them out, because for this
kind of story, I suspect that the way your history feeds into the cultural
stuff -- everything from idioms to festivals to customary ways of dressing
and legal systems and so on -- is going to be way more important than
exactly what happened and why.
Anyway, if what you *need* is the everyday-life stuff, and what you're
*working on* is the historical background, you're probably going the long
way 'round, which may be part of what's slowing you down.
Patricia C. Wrede
David Friedman
"forrest_m" <forr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> But the academies discovered that mages
> working in concert multiplied their power instead of just adding, with
> the effects on the mage similarly reduced. THus the rapid escalation
> and unexpected destructiveness of the Cataclysm.
>
> > Actually getting rid of all the mages is fairly simple -- a bunch get killed
> > in the war, either by hostile magic or by overreaching themselves magically
> > ... The trick is *keeping* them all gone.
>
> Indeed - but for my purposes, it is enough to keep them from gathering
> together.
One possibility, related to an idea in the fantasy with magic I have on
my list to write, is that:
1. It's possible for a group of mages to pull in additional mages
without their consent and use their power.
2. The remaining water mages did so, pulled in everyone who was left,
and then something went wrong.
Bill Swears
> Thanks for all the great responses. A lot of ideas I hadn't thought of.
>
>
>>When the glaciers reached a certain size, all the water-mages' souls
>>were sucked into stasis in the ice. Their bodies wandered around
>>untenanted until they fell over, dead of starvation, thirst, or mishap.
>> So, an effect that took centuries to build took place throughout the
>>land in but a few days.
>
>
> Hey, I like this. It fits with my "magic is not incompatible with
> scientific understanding" idea about this world. Riffing on someone
> elses suggestion, my other current favorite idea is that the glaciation
> disrupts the salinity and thus currents of the oceans. While this
> doesn't eliminate water magic, it forces the mages to "recalibrate" -
> and while they are temporarily disabled, an angry populace kills them
> all with rusty kitchen knives.
>
buy it just to run around and show my relatives that I actually helped
somebody.
Bill
David Goldfarb
Dave Duncan, in his "King's Blades" series, added Time, Chance, Love,
and Death. This wasn't a relabelling, though, it was in addition
to the usual four.
--
David Goldfarb |"Ah, Amerikanski humor. Is most funny.
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | We bomb now."
| -- J. Michael Straczynski
Tim S
wrote:
> In article <11sryiz2zoo3z$.1t17npyg...@40tude.net>,
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
>> My first reaction, though, was to wonder why there don't
>> seem to be any air mages.
>
> An excuse to discuss an idea I have played with for the fantasy without
> magic (unconnected to _Harald_) that is one of my other projects.
>
> All magic is earth, air, fire and water--or, of course some combination.
>
> Similarly, all light is horizontally plane polarized or vertically plan
> polarized--or, of course ... .
>
> All light is also either left handed circularly polarized or right
> handed or some combination.
>
> Could something similar be true of magic? Could one have a system where
> everything can be resolved in terms of four basis vectors--but
> everything can also be resolved in terms of a different four that span
> the same space? So you might have one time or place where everyone took
> it for granted that a serious mage, or serious spell, was either earth,
> air, fire and water. And another time or place where they took it for
> granted with a different list? And both were right?
>
> If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
The hot, the cold, the wet and the dry?
Tim
Bill Swears
the horsemen of the apocalypse? That might be an interesting track to take.
Or maybe use the humors that were once significant in the diagnoses and
treatment of disease.
nyra
>
> Tim S wrote:
> > on 21/04/2006 8:58 am, David Friedman at dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com
> > wrote:
> >
> >>An excuse to discuss an idea I have played with for the fantasy without
> >>magic (unconnected to _Harald_) that is one of my other projects.
> >>
> >>All magic is earth, air, fire and water--or, of course some combination.
> >>Could something similar be true of magic? Could one have a system where
> >>everything can be resolved in terms of four basis vectors--but
> >>everything can also be resolved in terms of a different four that span
> >>the same space? So you might have one time or place where everyone took
> >>it for granted that a serious mage, or serious spell, was either earth,
> >>air, fire and water. And another time or place where they took it for
> >>granted with a different list? And both were right?
> >>
> >>If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
> >
> >
> > The hot, the cold, the wet and the dry?
The good, the bad, and the cute furry creatures who tickle you to
death and steal your small change?
Both the humours and the four elements have been mapped to these axes
since days of yore (n.b. i'm not sure i got the humours right) -
hot: Fire, Air, Sanguis, Cholé
cold: Earth, Water, Phlegma, Mela cholé
dry: Fire, Earth, Cholé, Mela cholé
wet: Air, Water, Sanguis, Phlegma
> Second and third four could be polarized. Are there opposite numbers to
> the horsemen of the apocalypse? That might be an interesting track to > take.
Death, War, Plague and Famine... Life-Death is a nice pair, but folks
like Plague i'd boil(hoho) down to something more fundamental, like
Expansion-Contraction (the latter being Famine).
You could do something with colours: brightness, saturation etc. Might
work better when stipulating beings with only two colour receptors.
Also: tastes; we have five 'classical' ones _and_ one that could serve
as quinta essentia. And as a really odd one, we could take the 'taste'
which triggers the heat receptors.
Hm: 'Whoa! Watch out! Bitter-sweet magic!' <scribble>
--
Een koe is een merkwaardig beest; wat er ook in haar geest moge zijn,
haar laatste woord is altijd boe.
Tim S
> Bill Swears schrieb:
>>
>> Tim S wrote:
>>> on 21/04/2006 8:58 am, David Friedman at dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com
>>> wrote:
> [...]
>>>
>>>> An excuse to discuss an idea I have played with for the fantasy without
>>>> magic (unconnected to _Harald_) that is one of my other projects.
>>>>
>>>> All magic is earth, air, fire and water--or, of course some combination.
> [...]
>>>> Could something similar be true of magic? Could one have a system where
>>>> everything can be resolved in terms of four basis vectors--but
>>>> everything can also be resolved in terms of a different four that span
>>>> the same space? So you might have one time or place where everyone took
>>>> it for granted that a serious mage, or serious spell, was either earth,
>>>> air, fire and water. And another time or place where they took it for
>>>> granted with a different list? And both were right?
>>>>
>>>> If so, any obvious candidates for the second four? Third four?
>>>
>>>
>>> The hot, the cold, the wet and the dry?
BTW, I suggested these because they are real historical examples and
actually fit David's original question: they are offset by 45 degrees from
the four elements, as you describe below:
>
> The good, the bad, and the cute furry creatures who tickle you to
> death and steal your small change?
>
> Both the humours and the four elements have been mapped to these axes
> since days of yore (n.b. i'm not sure i got the humours right) -
> hot: Fire, Air, Sanguis, Cholé
> cold: Earth, Water, Phlegma, Mela cholé
> dry: Fire, Earth, Cholé, Mela cholé
> wet: Air, Water, Sanguis, Phlegma
Yes, I think that's right.
The English names of the humours are
sanguis = blood
cholé = choler = bile
mela cholé = melancholer = black bile
phlegma = phlegm
and the corresponding personalities are sanguine, choleric, melancholic and
phlegmatic.
The humours come (via Galen) from the Hippocratic authors of the 5th C BC in
Greece/Ionia/Magna Graecia.
The four elements come from Empedocles at about the same time. The hot, the
cold, the wet and the dry I believe also come from (one of?) the Hippocratic
writers, along with various other systems of pairs of opposites which were
popular at the time.
I think Aristotle was the one who matched earth, air, fire and water with
the hot, the cold, the wet and the dry. I don't know who match the humours
with the elements.
>
>> Second and third four could be polarized. Are there opposite numbers to
>> the horsemen of the apocalypse? That might be an interesting track to >
>> take.
>
> Death, War, Plague and Famine... Life-Death is a nice pair, but folks
> like Plague i'd boil(hoho) down to something more fundamental, like
> Expansion-Contraction (the latter being Famine).
>
Life, peace, health and plenty? But that gives us eight altogether with the
corresponding opposites.
> You could do something with colours: brightness, saturation etc. Might
> work better when stipulating beings with only two colour receptors.
I think there were classically four basic colours counted by Greek and Roman
painters: black, white, red and yellow.
The visual system (further upstream than the retina) seems to pick out the
opposing pairs red-green and blue-yellow, with black-white as a separate
system.
Tim
David Friedman
Tim S <T...@timsilverman.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >>> The hot, the cold, the wet and the dry?
>
> BTW, I suggested these because they are real historical examples and
> actually fit David's original question: they are offset by 45 degrees from
> the four elements, as you describe below:
Yes. And thanks. That comes closer than anything else to what I want,
although I'm not sure if close enough.
jam...@echeque.com
Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> > Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what
> > finished off the water mages (or if they're really
> > finished). No one knows what happened to the
> > Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about
> > (c.f. "sensawunda").
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
> I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of
> thing, but usually *I* have to know the answers or the
> questions distract me from what I'm supposed to be
> writing.
Mages are notoriously secretive, hence the standard
fantasy trope of mages discovering ancient notebooks
written in mysterious codes. If they discovered the
magical equivalent of nuclear weapons, they would tend
to be *really* secretive.
Some few water mages are still around, somewhat hidden,
but they would rather not have too many around, for fear
some idiot unleashes apocalypse. They are few and
hidden, for they have discovered secrets frighteningly
powerful.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
TWTNBhLz7IpcjikWyjIx5hy3XuMYf3SIStKCKjaY
4/yYymtby0fN8Ka66VfO84/0SixUoDct4voNtJM4d
Khiem Tran
> > Why do you need an answer? No one knows who or what finished off the
> > water mages (or if they're really finished). No one knows what happened
> > to the Entwives. Sometimes that's what magic is all about (c.f.
> > "sensawunda").
>
> Does that work for you?
>
> I don't need to tell the readers about this kind of thing, but usually
> *I* have to know the answers or the questions distract me from what I'm
> supposed to be writing.
(Sorry for the late reply - I've moved house recently and I haven't got
internet access yet.)
Yes, it works for me. Maybe with the proviso that it's usually for
things that aren't part of the main story. In the story I'm supposed to
be writing now, there are a number of little mysteries sown into the
background, and, while there's clearly a story in each of them, they're
also very clearly different stories.
As an example, in the current story, I'm one lion short. There are two
in the poems and only one in the current age, and not even the
surviving lion knows what happened to the other one. It's fun to
speculate on what might have happened to the missing lion, but it's
only speculation. I don't need to know the answer. In fact, I like the
hole it leaves better than any of the answers that would fill it. Maybe
the lion did survive somewhere. Maybe it simply never woke up. Maybe
it's having adventures of its own. It's a story I might sit down and
write someday, but, in terms of the current story, all I need is the
feel it leaves - things age, things break, things die.
Khiem.
Michelle Bottorff
> As an example, in the current story, I'm one lion short. There are two
> in the poems and only one in the current age, and not even the
> surviving lion knows what happened to the other one.
I wonder if Tolkien knows where the Entwives went.
Khiem Tran
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
> Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > As an example, in the current story, I'm one lion short. There are two
> > in the poems and only one in the current age, and not even the
> > surviving lion knows what happened to the other one.
>
> I wonder if Tolkien knows where the Entwives went.
If he didn't then, he may well do now...
Khiem.