Surgo's NaNoWriMo world and story

Surgo

Surgo

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Hi. As some of you may know from my thread on Congregation of the Masses, I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year. If you don't know what that is, please click here.

For this post and probably the next several posts in this thread, I am going to detail the fantasy world that I have been attempting to create (but not the plot). One part that is noticably lacking is a map...this is not a coincidence. My drawing skills are more than a little poor. Also, I may have missed changing some HTML tags into vbulletin tags...sorry. Also, none of this is actually proofread...only story bits get proofread.

Oh, yeah. This has been heavily influenced by The Dungeonomicon, which is a great read for anyone who writes fantasy that involves D&D-style magic and wants to keep their world consistent and sensible. Any resemblence to anything at all is probably coincidental, unless it was something that influenced me, but then I've tried to keep the visible influence to a minimum. If you think I've plagiarized something, well, fuck you, because I haven't.

I try to be witty in my writing about the world, to make things pleasant to read. But if you have no desire to read an amateur's attempts at worldbuilding and then, in a few days, his attempt at a good story, please just leave this thread.

First up: magic and magical law enforcement.
 
One problem in a world that contains both mages and powerful magic is that they can do some pretty ridiculous stuff and some of that ridiculous stuff would be considered, well, illegal. "Why should I listen to him? I'm a wizard. I can set his house on fire with my mind!" would be a pretty common sentiment.

Magic users generally come in one shape and size in Anh and the world surrounding it: magewrights. Magewrights are something like chemical engineers. They make stuff work. By stuff, I mean most technology, because in Anh and the world around it, technology is built on magic. The magewrights designed the streetlights. The magewrights designed the elevators and updrafts and downdrafts to take you to the various levels in Anh (it's a vertical city as much as a horizontal one). Magewrights have a rather rudimentary grasp of magic and how to make it work. They are educated in places like the Magic University of Anh. They generally show decent intelligence and an understanding of how all that magic stuff works at a younger age, at which point they're snapped up and shipped off to specialized magic education high schools where they go on to places like the Magic University of Anh. Magewrights are part and parcel of Anh, and the world would generally ground to a halt without them. And for most people, that's where magic stops.

There exist rare people, though, who show a little more intelligence and aptitude for magic than the regular magewright. They are the strong mages, the real magic users of the world. If you play Dungeons & Dragons, the mage is that 5th-level wizard who is capable of casting fireball. In rare cases, you might have a mage strong enough to (shudder) bind demons or something and really do something bad. Even though these sorts of mages are pretty rare, there are also a lot of people so there are going to be some mages. Not to mention that Calling a demon is really bad for everybody else. But really, you don't even need to be a mage capable of Calling some powerful extraplanar creature to do some really bad things -- the magewrights wield a power beyond the ken of most anyway, and they aren't even that strong!

Then there are the rarest magic users yet: the true sorcerers of the world. These sort of people have an instinctual talent for magic, like that of dragons. Where those stuffy old mages and magewrights pore over spellbooks with magical diagrams, carefully burning incantations into their minds to get this mystical force to do exactly what they need it to do, these sorcerers can see and feel the flow of magic around the world. They can reach out and grab it, and force it to do what they want. Needless to say, these guys can be extremely dangerous. Fortunately, they are as rare as they are dangerous. But they are dangerous. This is where sociey and magical law enforcement steps in! But not in the way you would expect.

Throughout fantasy that uses magical law enforcement, there are generally two different classes: the Jedi and the Aurors. The Jedi's main job is to stop their evil counterparts in the Sith from taking over everything (a job they completely failed at, but that's beside the point). The Jedi are snapped up at a very young age and completely and thoroughly indoctrinated in their ideals. The Aurors, on the other hand, are supposed to hunt down fairly common criminals. They generally join the force after they graduate from their schools and go through some rigorous training (they are like the Army Rangers of magical law enforcement). Anh and the world at large has a bit of a mixture, and has an ingenius method to prevent the rare sorcerer from ever causing a problem.

They look far and wide for any hint of a budding sorcerer and, when they find one, snap him up. This young child becomes the upper class of the upper class, and they command absolutely anything they could ask for. This is the "Jedi" class of law enforcement, though they really don't do much law enforcing. They only really do anything when there's a really big threat, like someone Called a vrock and it's wreaking havoc everywhere and killing a lot of people. And, being the upper class of the upper class, they generally end up being the decision makers and the real 'power behind the throne'. But they are very, very rare. There are few of them in the entire world, and no one new has been found in longer than anyone can remember. If that keeps up, that whole tier is going to die out very soon. And that is really okay with everyone, as long as there's still a few mages that the Watch of Anh can call upon to stop other mages from binding demons and going on a fireball rampage when they get pissed off.

The second part of magical law enforcement involves the common cop and various magewrights (with the occasional more powerful mage). Magical law enforcement doesn't just track magical criminals, in fact, that's pretty rare. Magic is just awesome in general when it comes to dealing with crime, and essentially provides the Watch of Anh with the same forensic abilities that we have in the modern law enforcement world. Which means that there's still a lot of crime, but the Watch actually stands a fighting chance against some of it.

Next: more magic.
 
Sages and scholars tend to classify magic into a bunch of different, occasionally-overlapping categories kind of like the biological classification of life in our world. Never forget that King Phillip came over for grape soda! He didn't find any grape soda, though, so he called a few demons to destroy everybody. This act would go down in history as the "little ice age". But I'm getting off-topic. Anyway, we've got some occasionally-overlapping magical kingdoms:

Conjuration
This one is fairly self-explanatory. You are usually making something from nothing. Or you're pulling something that already exists to you. These would be different Phillips, err, Phylums. So what can you do with conjuration? What sort of limits are there?

Conjuration tends to be both the easiest and toughest magic to pull off at the same time. Making a ball of fire explode in the middle of a crowd of people falls under King Conjuration, and that's mid-level magic. Making my hot drink icy-cold is the same sort of conjuration, and it's pretty easy. They are both the same idea, working with energy. It's easy to work with energy, especially if you're a sorcerer (sorcerers find it really easy). Some scholars theorize that this is because there are infinite planes filled with energy out there, and every time you use energy you're just pulling it from them. Of course, some scholars also theorize that the second moon is made of blue cheese, so that's about as much stock as you should put in their opinion.

Conjuration also includes such stuff as summoning and calling various creatures, including demons*. For whatever reason, powerful mages tend to have an easier time with this than sorcerers. Maybe that's because doing so involves very exact formulas of magic, kind of like how mages cast spells in general. At least, that's what the scholars say.

There is also the standard "making something from nothing" thing, like conjuring great towering walls of iron. Or stone. Or invisible-but-still-existing-and-impassable force. Or sheep. Or eyeballs. This is actually fairly difficult, and almost always temporary. A really powerful mage would be able to make their iron or stone stay there permanently, but never their sheep or their eyeballs (it has something to do with the organic vs. inorganic nature, apparently). See: calling demons.

Necromancy
Well, everyone tends to know the basics of this one. You uh, make zombies. And wraiths, and specters, and vampires, and nightshades, and, well, if you can think of any sort of undead, you can probably make it. Depending on how strong you are. While zombies are generally pretty mindless, the intelligent undead basically only exist to do things like kill people and feed on their corpses, so necromancy gets a pretty bad rap and nobody really practices it.

Necromancy is more than making undead, though. Anything that involves draining somebody's life-force is necromancy. Presumably, restoring somebody's life-force would also be necromancy. I say "presumably" because while there are healers, healing tends to work in such a way as that the body rapidly speeds up its recovery to close-to-instantaneous rates and, while that is necromancy, nobody's ever figured out a way to use magic to, say, make someone who is tired not-tired.

So basically, anything that directly involves life/death belongs to necromancy.

Transmutation
You change one thing into something else. Yaaaawn. Or, you bend existence or reality. Anything that involves teleportation would fall under this. The thing is, nobody can really teleport. Well, people are pretty sure that dragons can do it. And if dragons can do it, then sorcerers probably can too, because sorcerers seem to be pretty good at the things dragons are usually pretty goo at. Sages theorize that that means that they access magic in pretty much the same way.


Some scholars have argued for the inclusion of fortune-telling or divination as a magical kingdom, but most of them think that that's just Conjuration or Transmutation.

So what is most magic, then? Well, most magic is something making street-lamps that pour light out continuously in the city. That's conjuration, and fairly easy conjuration at that because it's working with energy. It actually involves transmutation too, though, because a magewright making a streetlamp is picking up a rock or a piece of glass or something, and modifying it to be something magical: he or she is modifying the structure of the item to continually pull energy from whatever magical source it comes from and emit it. This is why it's difficult to cut off established magical effects like streetlamps: whatever they are coming from has been modified to make it constantly work that way. So you can't just form a knife out of magic and slash the threads (standard dueling practice to keep you from being hit with something that will kill you), they'll just be renewed after a little while when the rock or the piece of glass emitting the light pulls energy out of the stream and emits it again. Of course, you could just hit the rock with a sledgehammer. It's just a rock, after all.

* Being able to call demons is generally the cut-off point between weak mages and strong mages. If you're able to call demons, you're a pretty hardcore guy or girl.


Next: A sorcerer's view of magic.
 
My last post talked about how mages in general classify magic based on its effect. Here I want to talk about how a sorcerer might classify magic. I say 'might' because sorcerers are so rare and every one of them is somewhat different in nature, so there would be no common classification scheme. But this is how I imagine a sorcerer would classify it: by how it's built, instead of its end effect.

A sorcerer would see a bunch of different threads of magic, forming a great river. When she wanted to do something, she'd grab a bunch and twine them together in such a way to create the effect she wanted. What are these threads? Base stuff like "fire". There's a lot of them, though. Hundreds? Maybe thousands. It's all very complex, so it takes someone pretty quick to be a sorcerer.


Now, limits. I feel like this is best done by example. There's "easy stuff", "moderate stuff" "hard stuff", and "impossible stuff".
Easy stuff:
* Radiating light.
* Setting something small and flammable on fire.

Moderate stuff:
* Conjuring a lot of energy, as in, enough to hurt a bunch of people at the same time. Like a fireball.
* Creating zombies.
* Healing.
* Somewhat accurate divinations (ie, is this action going to bring great harm to me).

Hard stuff:
* Really accurate divinations (ie, get an exact answer to your question).
* Binding demons
* Creating more awesome types of undead.
* Instantaneous Teleportation.

Impossible stuff:
* As far as anyone knows, you can't bring someone back from the dead with magic.

There are a fair number of mages who can accomplish the moderately hard stuff. The hard stuff is the province of the really hardcore guys and girls, the type of people who are usually great heroes (or villains). Note, however, that when a lot of people work together, they can accomplish more than they could alone. This is why magewrights can be so important; even if they can't magically heal people on their own, when they get together, they can accomplish a lot more. By virtue of their profession, this usually translates into more awesome technology like the fantasy equivalent of a train (the creation of a portals would, I imagine, ease transportation). Generally this magical technology created by several magewrights working together requires a lot of upkeep too, what with several less powerful people working on it to accomplish it, which keeps them in high demand.


Next: The gnomes!
 
Imagine a group that, as a collective whole, is very intelligent, very devious, and very inventive. Not only that, but they've found a way to integrate themself into your society. And even more worrying, they've already made themselves pivotal pieces and important players in that society. And they want your money!

Welcome to the world of the gnomes. As a race, gnomes tend toward intelligence, magitechnological genius, and a great desire to "get the stupid machine to do that kind of unskilled labor." That's gnomes in a nutshell. But how did they get that way? Let's check out where they came from, what they did, and how they came to be.

Everyone is pretty sure that the gnomes came from an Australia-like continent which we will call Zhalin. Some professors theorize that the same evolutionary group that eventually became humans also evolved into gnomes, and that the continental separation made for the difference. We also know, for certain, is that gnomes weren't always the only dominant racial group on Zhalin. In fact, all the academics are pretty sure that there were several other groups and that gnomes were a minority. So what happened? Some enterprising gnome whose name has been lost to time invented the crossbow. At that point it was basically over for everyone else because gnomes had crossbows while they didn't, and they couldn't figure out who to deal with that fact quickly enough to survive.

So at that point the gnomes had their empire from sea to shining sea, right? Wrong! Turns out that they were all pretty greedy and a lot of people wanted to be on top, so immediately after getting rid of everyone else they started to fight each other too! And that was really deadly, because they all had crossbows. Eventually, though, there was a warlord by the name of Zhalin who had a lot of pride in his race who realized that killing each other all the time really sucked and if they built a cooperative empire, they could start to crank out stuff that was even more awesome than crossbows. Zhalin was a pretty hardcore guy; in fact, he was a mage that was at least strong enough to bind demons. In fact, he was hardcore enough to conquer the entire continent, keep it in line, and then, after that was done, set up a true capitalist economic system and something of a more democratic government so that the two would be self-sustaining and keep each other going. Now the gnomes had their empire from sea to shining sea, and today the gnome continent is named "Zhalin" by the occupents in their ancient ruler's honor.

So what is the place like today, and what does that have to do with anybody else? Well, if you were to look into Zhalin's government and related areas, you would find a massive capitalist and meritocratist system. And it would be very rich. Even the poorest gnome lives like a lower middle class American. Because of this, academics aren't sure what happens to gnomes who are accidentally born lazy or dim-witted or become drunkards or whatever. Maybe they're culled. Maybe they're used for magical experiments or something. Maybe they don't exist. Whatever happens to them, nobody can remember ever seeing one.

Not content to stick to their own continent, gnomes eventually started coming to X. They didn't come to make war though; at this point, no gnome could ever really comprehend another gnome getting killed. And even though the gnomes have crossbows and magical artillery and stuff like that, well, the humans also seem to be pretty good at using this magic thing to make war! So, no, no war for the gnomes. Instead, they come with the intention of spreading their capitalist influence and taking everyone's money. And they've been succeeding. A lot.

That's not to say that the gnomes won't sell war technology to the humans. On the contrary! To a gnome, if there's a war coming, that means P-R-O-F-I-T! Hoo boy! But they've been taking over society in other ways. Many major industries in X are now owned or operated by the gnomes, and many technological inventions have gnomish origins and/or patents belonging to them. Transportation and agriculture are two big examples; the gnomes had plenty of experience with both and were all too happy to share their knowledge with the humans, for a price. Thus the gnomes have slowly been integrating themselves with society and taking it over from within. And some people are smart and have realized this, but with that realization also comes the scary realization that they can't do anything about it. Most of these enlightened souls have realized that, hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! And that's exactly what they've been doing: many intelligent humans, mostly magewrights, have taken on the gnomish values of capitalism and have been working side-by-side their short brothers and sisters to become disgustingly rich and take over the world by means of industry and capitalism.

Coming next: A bit of a rant on warfare in this sort of fantasy.
 
Warfare in fantasy worlds that have powerful magic is generally a subject that has been handled in ways that can only be called "stupid". I am not entirely sure who to blame for this so, in the absence of anyone else, I'm going to blame Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman*, because they seem like good people to blame for anything stupid that happens in fantasy and because they fell into this trap themselves in their Dragonlance books which have become quite popular.

Too many fantasy worlds out there seem to be set in an ill-defined "medieval period". Authors then figure that because we've got a medieval period on our hands, and everything else is medieval (except for the magic) and we really like the idea of castles and such fortifications because, let's face it, castles are cool, we might as well go the whole hog and make our wars medieval too! At this point I want to slap someone, because any world whose magic involves fireballs exploding in peoples' faces is going to have its warcraft and warfare evolve in such a way so that entire armies aren't decimated by having fireballs explode in their face. Seriously, that kind of stuff should only happen in a Robert Jordan novel, and then only because for the past thousands of years of world history, fireballs didn't explode in peoples' faces.

The fact is, any world that has magic capable of being used like artillery is going to evolve its warcraft to be fairly modern. I would argue that most of the time it's going to resemble World War I, where you've got some seriously powerful artillery but no airplanes. Just because your world doesn't have firearms doesn't make its ways of killing people non-modern. The only difference between a M252 mortar and a catapult-like thing that fires a small rock that bursts into a large ball of flames when it hits something solid is its construction and operation. That's it. The end result is going to be pretty much the same! You might not have firearms, but aren't magically-enhanced crossbows going to have pretty much the same effect (though they'll probably be slower to reload)?

This doesn't mean we can't have castles. We like castles. Castles are cool. They'll large and foreboding and rather romantic. So maybe we can work magic into the operation of our castle, so it can deflect lightning bolts and assaults and spells that transmute its granite masonry into fluffy pink clouds, which happen to be a lot worse at keeping unwanted invaders out than granite masonry. The existence of magic probably makes them a nicer place to live too, when you think about it. Castles can get pretty drafty, and that just can't be pleasant in the winter time.

So in conclusion, when I write, you will never see two armies rushing at each other Braveheart-style. And I've never seen Braveheart, but I imagine that's what a battle in that movie looks like.


What's next: no fucking clue.
 
I don't have much to contribute to this thread, but I'll still post to say that I found this to be an awesome read. I feel sorry for this thread getting only ninety-odd views; I feel everyone who's interested in fantasy should read this post. Do update this post with more details when you prepare them!
 
Kinda rushed so expect Synreisms where I lose my train of thought midway through a sentence causing things to make no sense but:

I don't have a whole lot of really intelligent comments to make based on this but 'read', I guess. I don't think I'm going to have the time this month so I'm not participating but I've designed a few worlds under similar circumstances for various reasons (writing, pencil and paper campaigns, etc... the Synre character came from somewhere after all!) so if you get writer's block or generally want someone to talk to about your writing feel free and PM me while I am around

A couple things based on what you've posted

Surgo said:
Impossible stuff:
* As far as anyone knows, you can't bring someone back from the dead with magic.
Click to expand...

I really really really hate games and books that don't follow this rule. It sounds like you are implying it will end up that there actually is a way at some point which is cool but the idea that in things like D&D and most video game RPGs resurrection is fairly commonplace is just incredibly stupid to me. There are so many problems that would create I can't even think of where to start complaining about them but something tells me you've figured this out on your own already anyway.

The lack of resurrection is a nice tool though, meaningful deaths of important characters can do so much for stories.


The other thing I wanted to comment on was the last post because you are completely right about the logistics of it. I think a lot of why writers have such a hardon for castles in addition to the fact that they are cool is that it's something that readers expect. The familiarity is appealing to them - I think that is why some of the current medieval fantasy like Warcraft does well, in that it adds new aspects to things that we've come to expect(IE, the elves and dwarves and gnomes and castles and orcs that we've come to expect are all present, but there's a new twist on them, adding nobility to the Orcs, for instance)... just something to keep in mind while you're writing, I guess. As far as the castle thing I've always found it something I wanted to keep alive in my design process(perhaps to the point I was letting my interests get ahead of logic), which I've normally done by using a lot of magic based defense on the castle. It makes people attempting to siege them a lot more interesting, and if nothing else helps create a situation where it viable that Kings and Queens or their equivalents aren't perpetually being assassinated by rowdy mages(although the lack of teleportation makes it a lot easier for you to justify in your world anyway).

The main thing though is that you are totally right about the combat. I came to a similar conclusion a while ago and I hate it on a level I can't even describe, and it eventually caused me to revamp my magic system pretty severely to make everyone a lot more defensive. I think most mages would absolutely love to see two armies run into each other like that though... time to clean up with some wide radius offensive magic, haha.
 
Now that November has come and I have started writing, I'm gonna start posting chapters as I write them. I figure I'll post the day after I finish one, so I have the chance to go back and read it over and make sure I didn't do anything too boneheaded. I'll probably stagger it a good bit too to make sure I don't want to change anything before I DO post it.

And feel free to reply to my backstory/chapters with "yay this is cool" or "this sucks because X" or whatever!


I'll talk more with you later Synre, but I just wanted to note this:
It sounds like you are implying it will end up that there actually is a way at some point which is cool but
Click to expand...
I wasn't actually implying that there is a way (but I'm speaking carefully to avoid giving any story spoilers here); it's more that the tone of all of my backstory, especially on magic, is written in this fashion. Everything I wrote about magic should be read as "As far as anyone knows..."

edit: Oh yeah, I don't consider making yourself into an intelligent undead creature "bringing yourself back from the dead", or at least, it's not the same. THAT is possible, but pretty damn difficult.
 
Hm...well, I really don't read a lot of fantasy, that which I do read being of a more steampunk nature, but I will try to help in whatever way I can when I finish reading this thing (whips out The Elements of Style).
 
On second thought, I think I will post this when it is mostly done (at the end of the month). Until then, I will have a "chapters I have completed" outline:

Chapter 1: The Box
Chapter 2: The Master
Chapter 3: Stalemates (currently working on this)
 
Really nice Surgo, I don't read much fantasy, but this is a nice way to get into it.

I specially liked the ideas in the "warfare" post (mostly because I have thought about them when watching fantasy movies), its a nice realistic (and a tad militaristic) way of viewing magic in war.

Keep it up man, I can totally see me reading more of this.
 
I just wanted to say that IF someone can be brought back from magic, maybe the uber elite conjurer that does it must sacrifice their life, making the person truely worthwhile to bring back. It keeps the meaningful death angle as well as making a meaningful martyr/sacrifice come up to play, could be at a key moment in a story.

Just a thought in contrast to Teifu a bit.
 
Surgo said:
edit: Oh yeah, I don't consider making yourself into an intelligent undead creature "bringing yourself back from the dead", or at least, it's not the same. THAT is possible, but pretty damn difficult.
Click to expand...

You said I could, so:

You should totally make someone pull a Dracula! Vampires are the best undead, just admit it, and having an evil sorcerer/undead vampire that can't be killed through any means besides some one else gaining his level of mastery of necromany would be pretty awesome. Hm... Starts to think that he could use this as a base for Sci-Fi story for school. Techno-vampire!

Warning:
It's after midnight and I'm not in my right mind, but reading the background was so awesome I had to post.
 
Can I interest anyone in proofreading? I'm about to hit 22k words, and I think it's time for that to start now. None of this is being released to the public without an editing pass.

Also, Vampires aren't the best undead. Nightshades are.

Oh yeah, chapter update!

1: The Box
2: The Master
3: Kings and Queens
4: Kinslayer
5: Daggers and Dragons
6: The Seer
7: The Underworld
8: Song of the Serpent
9: Evil Empire
10: The Planar Nemesis
11: A New Type of Adventure
12: The Demonic Army
13: An Escape and a Bargain
14: The Great Escape
 
I'd be happy to proofread for you; I know you don't really know me, but I can at least give it a try and see if you find my work satisfactory.
 
Nightshades are ??? anyways, the D&D source you linked to was a great inspiration. Now to start to actually write it for school. Won't be a novel or anywhere near what you are doing.

Also, I definitely want to read the finished product (I'm not a good proofreader, sorry.)
 
Just wanted to note that I'm still alive, this novel is getting written on schedule, and it will be posted in its entirety when it is complete.
 
Right now I'm thinking it's going to be about 60k words from start to finish, so it will be done post-November 30th. As far as a page count, I'll get back to you on that.
 
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