Setting: The Color Question

Yesterday I read this post about people of color in fantasy/sci fi on my friend Aaron's blog. It deals specifically with the case of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea books and how the main characters were changed from people of color to a bunch of white folks in a poorly adapted mini-series.

The names of most of the characters and places in the Green Kingdoms in my Illyria setting were taken from aboriginal or Maori names and words. Some of those names sound Celtic, while others don't. I imagine a number are versions of Anglic names. Whatever the case, I liked them, and it seems fitting to make the residents of Illyria not be white.

As things currently stand, my Trolls are based on Neanderthals, so they're pale-skinned and fair haired (tending to red-heads) according to the latest research on the topic.

My Elves are darker-skinned, like the inhabitants of the southern portions of the Indian sub-continent.

Most of the residents of the Green Kingdoms have light brown, caramel or mocha-latte colored skin like the people of Cortado in the Old World from whom they are descended. They turn darker with more sun exposure.

In the Western Forest of Illyria one finds lighter-skinned humans, descended from their Old World ancestors called the Night Walkers. In the frozen North one finds dark-skinned human colonists from Samar, the Northern Empire of the Old World.

The Great Wolves are gray, while the Hents tend to have deep brown fur and the Selkies range from dark-gray to black.

Now, back in the Old World I have three more cultures whose dominant skin colors I haven't determined. There's an Eastern Empire, there's the Divine Hierarchy folk who worship the so-called Gods Above in the South, and there are the people of the Awakened Cities.

The easy thing to do would be to make the Eastern Empire residents "yellow skinned," the Hierarchicals black-skinned, and the Awakened Cities folk Asiatic as well. But those cultures are not exact cognates for Chinese or African or Arabic societies.

Now that I think about it, there's another option I find interesting, which involves playing with the geography of the Old World and our western European/North American preconceptions about cardinal directions and latitude.

What if the Northern lands lie closer to the equator and the Southern lands are colder? The Western lands could stay pretty much the same. At first blush I like this idea, inverting certain concepts. It's simple but simple often works.

Update:
So in this case, the inhabitants of Samar in the Old World would be dark-skinned. I like that, as I had the Guilds there slotted for wielding sympathetic magic of a very sophisticated nature--some overtones of voodoo but with a more mechanistic/technological feel. So they are similar and different from stereotypes that readers might jump to.

I'd still make the original Night Walker-descended Old World settlers of Illyria and the Green Valley be paler in complexion than the northlanders (in part because they deal with death and night), but now the Frost Land colonists from Samar would be black.

The inhabitants of the southern lands would not be part of the Dragon Realms, but would instead worship the djinn/angel like beings known as the Gods Above. I like that association as well.

Then in the Eastern Empire the inhabitants will be predominantly reddish-brown or coppery in skin tone. So will the rivals who split off from them, the geomancers who created the Awakened Cities.

Sorcery

Sorcerers control spirits (associated with natural places and animals) and ghosts (the souls of dead sapient beings). They are an unusual by product of Illyria's history.

In the Old World, binding souls is strongly discouraged, as it is associated with the dark necromancy of the Night Walkers, a civilization destroyed by the Empire of the North.

(There is a big tradition of binding souls VOLUNTARILY in the Eastern Empire, where revered ancestors may be bound into household shrines and honored as a way of easing their reincarnation into a higher form. In the North, people might talk to the dead by allowing spirits to possess them--but in doing so they would making themselves vulnerable to the dead.)

Because refugee Night Walkers were the first Humans and Goblins to settle Illyria, the tradition of soul-binding came to the New World. There it conflicted with the indigenous Shamanism, which negotiates with spirits and accepts possession by them rather than binding them.

When the Western Empire began to found it's Illyrian colonies, it wiped out the Night Walker pockets that it found, the last being found in what are now the Green Kingdoms. To fight the Night Walkers as well as hostile indigenous cultures (who opposed the new colonizers as they had the old invaders), the Imperials found it necessary to accept sorcerers into their own forces to counteract the spirit magic they encountered.

Once the wars of conquest were over, the Western Empire made sorcery legal under certain limits. Only the Wardens of the Western Forest, the personal Huntsmen of the various Illyrian Kings and High Nobles, and the masters of the Shadow Guild may bind human souls, and only those of convicted criminals and traitors. All other spirits used by sorcerers are to be those of animals or "lesser" species such as Great Wolves, Hents, or on rare occasions Trolls.

However, there is always talk of rogue sorcerers who disobey these bans. Typically they commit their soul-binding crimes in one locale and flee to another to sell their services to unscrupulous employers.

Whereas the Dragon-Blooded are typically taught by the Human and Dragon tutors of their own Noble Houses, with various manuals of instruction being produced for each House, sorcery is a more mysterious and secretive art. Outside of the Wardens, Huntsmen, and Shadow Guild, it is only taught by one master to one apprentice at a time.

More Magic Modification--Dragon Blooded

I've realized that I can write a more complex nonfiction-style setup than I'm comfortable writing as a narrative.

So I'm trying to nail down a simplified approach to the magic and such. I think I've got the Guilds in a pretty good place. As for the Nobles, I'm streamlining that concept to focus on the Dragon-Blooded aspect, since the relationship with Dragons plays a key role and the idea of ability being passed through bloodlines ties nicely to the conceits of the aristocracy.

These empowered individuals are known as the Dragon-Blooded Elemanteros, or the Dragon-Blooded, or simply the Elemanteros [el-eh-mahn-TEHR-os]. Elemantero is singular.

The ranking members of each major Noble House and their scions can control elemental forces because they have been physically imbued with the enchanted blood of their House Dragon. The abilities associated with being one of the Dragon-Blooded can pass down from the originally imbued generation to the next, but this isn't reliable and such traits attenuate after a few generations. What's typical is for a person of the ranking noble line to receive an infusion of Dragon blood during their coming of age initiation rites. This happens for both young men and women. Bastard offspring with elemental powers are possible, but they'll be wild talents unless they get some sort of training.

Being Dragon-Blooded gives you a stronger constitution than mere mortals, giving you a longer natural lifespan and it also gives you access to whatever elemental forces your Dragon sire has mastered. A Dragon that has mastered a wide range of elements can pass along a much greater variety of ability to its House.

The caveat is that while a Dragon might master conflicting forces, you'll only be able to handle one major element and whatever its secondary related elements may be, as per the Elemental Schema chart. The specific Element(s) you can control depends upon your psychological makeup. This also effects how you control those elements. Those who are not suited to the only elements available will end up controlling them reluctantly or doing so in unusual ways.

Repeated infusions of Dragon Blood can increase your power and heal severe injuries, but every time you accept it you are transformed into a more reptilian form. This is called Embracing the Dragon. And you don't ever want to take blood from two different Dragons into your body, even many years apart. Very Bad Things happen.

Being Dragon-Blooded only gives you the power to manipulate certain elements. The skill to do so comes through training, natural aptitude, imagination, and will.

This creates a form of magic that I think has interesting story implications and possibilities.

Illyria Update

Thanks to some feedback from my buddy Aaron and a lot of thinking while working on a big garden project, putting in two stone-walled terraces on the slop in our backyard, I've really cleaned up and tightened a bunch of the setting concepts for my Illyria fantasy novel, Dahvo's Treasure. I'm almost done compiling these in basic form into a setting document (complete with a map and a diagram) that sets the stage nicely.

I've also written out longhand (thanks to several trips to a library near my kids' school with a notebook, an iPod, and earplugs) a decent outline for the whole plot, which I've translated into a more detailed electronic document for the first ten or so chapters. I've got a decent draft of the first chapter out and made good progress on the next two chapters, which I hope to jump back into soon, as I'm eager to return to the actual writing as opposed to the prep work.

I feel pretty good about the whole thing; new ideas and insights into the characters are popping up again, the setting is feeling pretty fleshed out, complex, and believable, and I think the plot works on a variety of levels. If I can push through with a manuscript I can see taking the story in interesting places for several sequels. Oh, and I also wrote out a chapter by chapter synopsis and a short setting document for another related novel concept, an urban fantasy police procedural I'm tentatively calling Elfshot.

Not much point doing all this if I'm not going to indulge in a few dreams.

Anyway, in the past month this writing process has gotten enjoyable again. I don't pretend that all the elements I've created to this point are perfect; all of them can be improved. But I do feel that they're pretty good at this stage, and that is satisfying.

Review: LA Requiem, The Two Minute Rule

Recently finished LA Requiem and The Two Minute Rule by Robert Crais. One's an interesting modern take on the hard-boiled private eye genre, the other's a fast-paced page turner about a former bank robber who gets out of jail only to find that his estranged police officer son has been murdered.

In Sum: Both novels are well written. The parts that I saw coming felt right, the author developed some of the main characters in surprising ways, and he had some good twists here and there. Nicely crafted stories that were enjoyable reads.

LA Requiem has a character named Joe Pike who is one of those quasi-superhuman ex-military guys who show up all too often in action fiction. He wears sunglasses all the time, he's extremely fit for his age, he's taciturn, he's a killing machine, he's incredibly stealthy, and he has uncanny powers of observation when it comes to tracking and finding clues. He'd be completely unbearable if he was the main character or if Crais didn't go to the trouble of showing us how lonely Pike's life is and how he's alienated so many of the people around him over the years.

The narrator is a guy named Elvis who is more flawed, though still competent, and easier to like. There's a surrounding cast of characters who are generally interesting, including the LA private eye genre staples of incompetent brown nosing police detective, rich guy with political pull who hires the PIs, and the honest cop who helps the PI protagonist even when doing so might amount to career suicide. In this case, the honest cop is an attractive woman. So while it isn't earth-shattering, it reads a lot like a well-done movie.

The Two-Minute Rule is more original. The main character is flawed but not so much that you find him creepy or pathetic, and you sympathize with his desire to learn why his son, who he remembers as a little boy that he let down, was murdered. And it has a great character in a middle-aged former FBI bank crimes investigator who is struggling as a single mom following her retirement and who proves to be all too eager to get back into the thrill of tracking down felons, as the murders are tied to a big bank heist carried out, ironically, not by a brilliant gang but by two steroid-inflated morons. The main characters are honest about their own flaws and not so caught up in their own little worlds that they can't see the strengths and foibles of those around them. A good story with a couple twists and a satisfying yet generally believable resolution.

Harmonious Soul

Last week I went with my son on a field trip with his gifted 1st/2nd grade class to the Discovery Center here in Boise, Idaho. One of my favorite parts of the visit was watching each child, with the help of the teacher, use the Center's harmonograph (which looks a bit like the device seen here) to produce beautiful spiraling designs (sort of like these) on a sheet of paper.

The teacher collected all of the resulting images and posted them on the wall outside the classroom. As I was looking at them this morning I was struck by the fanciful idea that each image represented a EKG of the soul of each child. Some of the patterns turned really chaotic at the core, others were simply complex. My son's was one of the largest patterns and one of the simplest at the core, with a great deal of symmetry.

In a way, that pattern reflects how I perceive him. He has a powerful mind that runs to picking up minor obsessions for months at a time. He has a very literal way of looking at the world as many Asperger's Syndrome children seem to do. He's very trusting and he's trying very hard to understand our world with all its white lies and fables. And though it can be frustrating trying to deal with his frustrations and sorrows and tantrums each day as a parent, there's a beauty and elegance to his joy and his love and his curiosity that makes me take pause on occasion and just watch.

Review: Schismatrix and The Alchemist

Recently finished two books:

Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling. This book is full of science fiction ideas about technology and society that seem believable and fresh today even though it was written nearly 25 years ago (1985). It has the same trouble with fairly flat characters who seem to exist more to show off particular technologies or social ideologies than to undergo actual growth and change that pervades most of Sterling's work. But it is a remarkable book nonetheless, one that I think I struggled to understand when I first read it as a teenager. Reading it now for the first time in over a decade, I have a greater appreciation for the imagination the author displays. At the same time, the clunkiness of the narrative stands out a bit more.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. This is a short novel about a shepherd boy who seeks his destiny, which begins as a journey in search of a hidden treasure amid the Pyramids and ends as a quest to learn the secret Language of the World, which is the key to spiritual and psychological transformation, which in turn is the true goal of alchemy. It has the tone of a fable and presents a lot of interesing insights into the character of human feelings and emotions and how we treat each other, as well as some thoughtful ideas about the nature of fate. All in all, a nice story that makes you think about your own dreams and what you are or aren't doing to achieve them.