I Suppose An Explanation Is In Order · 7:29am Nov 17th, 2018
I haven't posted anything writing related in a bit, so I suppose I should let you know what all is going on.
As mentioned a few blog posts ago, I've decided to take a turn at writing more professionally, rather than just Fanfiction. Now, a word of advice for all of you out there who want to write professionally: Building a fictional world/universe takes a lot of time and effort to put together. To paraphrase someone wise, the biggest difference between fiction and non-fiction writing is that fiction has to make sense. And unlike fanfiction, I have to build this all together from the ground up. The good news is, I've got my setting more or less fully realized, and I'm willing to share with you guys a small sample.
I just want you guys to know that I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. It's been a rough year, so a lot of stuff has gotten in the way. But now that the world-building is finished, I expect to be able to pump out chapters soon.
Glossary
Important Terms
Dungeon: A divine construct that imprisons a powerful demon. When the Unnamed God of Evil was slain by the other gods, he fractured his being into nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine fragments, each of which formed into a powerful demon. To prevent these fiends from ravaging the world and/or attempting to reform back into the God of Evil, the other gods imprisoned the demons inside specially designed constructs. These "Dungeons" confine the demon, until such time as a party of mortals with sufficient strength and valor arrive to slay it. The Dungeons can only be maintained for nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine years, however. After that time passes, the demons will escape. Until their defeat, the demons generate countless monsters that flood the halls of their dungeon. Once a dungeon is full, these monsters will spread out across the countryside, spreading chaos, misery, and destruction wherever they go. Over seven thousand dungeons still remain, and there's still a little over nine thousand years left to clear them all.
Godsend: A term used to refer to treasures and equipment found inside of a Dungeon. The Dungeons were made by the gods, and any time mortals enter a Dungeon, the gods will be watching. Mortals who perform admirably can expect to come across chests filled with powerful gear to help them on their quest. These chests are even known to spontaneously appear in front of an adventurer. However, such treasures have a habit of turning on adventurers who become undeserving of them. Godsends are often stronger than normal magical items, since even the weakest god is much more powerful than any mortal wizard.
The Pact: An agreement struck between mortal and god, limiting divine influence on the planet in exchange for continued belief and worship. Centuries ago, when the world was still becoming used to the existence of magic, the gods made war upon each other, each one trying to claim dominion over all the mortals in the world. Many died, continents were ravaged, and the world was nearly destroyed. Finally, a powerful wizard formed a spell that would make humans briefly unable to believe in or worship any god, and threatened to unleash it if the gods did not accept limits to their power. Since the gods must have worship and belief to exist, this would have meant the end of all the gods. The gods were forced to negotiate with the mortals, ultimately forming The Pact. Barring the rise of the God of Evil, the gods have stuck to this agreement religiously, for fear of annihilation.
The Year of The Dark Divine: A war fought seven centuries ago against a rogue god who abandoned The Pact, and tried to conquer the world. It is unknown which god of evil from which pantheon it was who started the war, and the remaining gods have refused to give him name, for fear that widespread knowledge of it might bring him back. The war culminated with all of the other gods of all the other pantheons joining forces to strike the rogue god down. The resulting blast completely annihilated Tor Peak, the tallest mountain in the world, and devastated the landscape for miles. The physical body of the god was destroyed, but his spirit lives on in the thousands of demons he created in his dying moments.
Pre-Magic/Post-Magic: Before and after magic entered the world. Millennia ago, both the world and the universe beyond were ruled by logic, math, science, and reason. However, entropy began to cause the decay of civilizations, and even entire galaxies began to come apart. While it is unknown exactly how they managed it, the scientists of the Pre-Magic Era prevented this cosmic death by entropy, and the birth of magic was a side effect of this.
The Breaking Point: The furthest a magic user can bend reality before it breaks. Magic is simply the act of bending the laws of the cosmos through sheer willpower. However, there is only so far a person can push before reality pushes back. A well-educated mage can push things incredibly far without straying anywhere near The Breaking Point, so long as he knows what he is doing and keeps a level head. Amateurs or those who are panicking can often reach or exceed the breaking point with even the simplest spells. Any mage who pushes past The Breaking Point momentarily breaks reality, creating a brief, localized event where for ten seconds, all the laws of reality no longer apply. The mortal body cannot function without all of the laws of reality being in full effect, so this is often fatal to the one who "succeeds" in pushing past The Breaking Point and anyone standing too close to him. For those few who survive, death would be a preferable alternative.
The Seven Laws Of Magic
1. While magic can make the improbable probable, it cannot make the impossible possible.
2. Magic can only change what already exists. It cannot create something from nothing, nor can it make something become nothing.
3. While magic can heal and change the body, it cannot truly bring back the dead nor can it create life where none existed before.
4. Magic requires willpower and focused intent. As such, only thinking creatures can use magic.
5. It is very easy to break something with magic. It is easy to change something with magic. It takes some effort to keep something together with magic. It takes serious effort to build something with magic.
6. Only cast a spell when the mind is clear. Attempting magic while emotional, distracted, or while one's consciousness is altered often ends in disaster.
7. There are no exceptions to the rules. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is either misinformed or attempting a deception.Expressions Common To The City Of Gillertree:
Touching A Tree Is Easier: Another way of saying that there's easier ways of getting yourself killed. In Gillertree, there stands the "Golden Killer Tree" (The source of the city's name, shortened to Gillertree over the years). Centuries ago, before The Pact was forged, a rather cruel and capricious god made a wager with the ruler of the realm, and planted an apple tree made of gold in the city's center. The tree, including its leaves, roots, and apples, are made of purest gold, and anyone who touches it, directly or indirectly, will die. Anyone who forces someone to touch the tree against their will will also die. The power of this curse is such that on one infamous day, over one hundred people from across the nation all suddenly dropped dead at once after one person had touched the tree, instantly destroying one of the most infamous criminal syndicates in the city. The divine wager, according to historians, is that if no one touches the tree for one hundred years, the city will know unending peace and prosperity. However, until the tree has gone untouched for one hundred years, the city will know face repeated calamities. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt twice since then, and the tree has not gone more than a week without some fool deciding that, surely, they can succeed where everyone else has failed. The point of the wager, allegedly, was to demonstrate that no matter how many good, kind, just, and selfless people there may be in the world, it doesn't matter, since there's always going to be one selfish, greedy idiot who will ruin everything for everyone else. The fact that the city faces so many problems, so often, is the main reason why the city holds one of the largest adventurer's guilds on the planet.
The Sewers: The complex network of aqueducts beneath Gillertree. A marvel of engineering; the exact origins of this structure are unknown, but they predate the city, and the previous two cities that stood in its place before Gillertree was built. They send the water from the frequent rains out into the countryside, irrigating farmlands for miles around. However, due to the extremely high monster population within, they are also quite dangerous.
The Throne Of Fools: Toilets. The aqueducts are not actually used for the disposal of nightsoil due to the large population of monsters that make their home there. The last time a noble tried to have a working toilet connected to the aqueducts, a slime found its way into the pipes... while the poor fellow was making use of the facilities. He did not survive the experience, and his screams were heard for miles.
Found The Dungeon: An experienced party of adventurers has gone missing in action. The population of monsters in the aqueducts is clear evidence that a dungeon exists beneath the city. However, the aqueducts have been thoroughly explored, so it has to be located deeper down, either in the subterranean caverns below, or in the ancient ruins of a pre-magic city said to be found further down. Dungeons become larger and more complex the more difficult they are to reach. Thus, parties that "find the dungeon" allegedly got lost within and will wander its depths until the end of time.
Death Walks The Sewers: A troll has been sighted in the aqueducts. Trolls are notoriously hard to kill, even more so when there's a ready supply of water to extinguish fires or wash away corrosives. Well beyond the ability of most rookie adventuring parties, to encounter a troll is practically a death sentence after sunset.
Doing The Sunlight Dash: An adventurer saw a troll in the sewers and ran for the surface. Trolls are known to have a fatal reaction to sunlight, so if an unprepared adventurer encounters a troll during the daytime, his best hope is to run for the surface.
Fool's Bane: A unique sub-type of chest mimicking monster known to wander the aqueducts. Unlike many of their breed, they do little to blend in with their surroundings to look as if they belong, instead taking on an incredibly gaudy appearance in extremely visible locations. Rookies and/or foolish adventurers will ignore all the obvious signs of the chest being fake and attempt to open it, with universally fatal results.
Names: A term used for the highest tier of adventurers within the Adventurer's Guild, so called because each one is granted a nickname. A requirement of becoming guildmaster is that one must be a Name for at least five years, and when a new guildmaster is chosen, he is chosen by vote amongst the Names currently active within the guild.
Faces: Similar to Names, Faces are individuals who are well known within the Guild, and have made several notable accomplishments. Typically, if one wishes to become a Name, they have to be a Face for several years.
Ratters: A term often given to dogs used to hunt normal sized rats in other cities, but in Gillertree is used, sometimes derisively, to describe new adventurers who have been in the Guild less than a year. So called since they spend a great deal of time hunting and killing giant rats. Newcomers must reach a quota of a dozen monster kills per moon for twelve moons in order to prove themselves worthy of venturing further down, or taking missions in the countryside outside of the city. It's not unheard of for a "Ratter" to reach that quota solely through the slaying of giant rats.
Rat S***: A rookie adventurer who is likely to die before the year is out. The remains of any rookie who dies in the aqueducts will often be eaten by giant rats. Even if a slime is responsible for their death, the rats will typically gnaw their bones to get at the marrow, which slimes often leave behind.
Go-Getter: A rookie adventurer who managed to reach his quota earlier than normal. While rare, more dangerous monsters sometimes venture up from the caverns, or the ruins further down, and menace the aqueducts. Likewise, smugglers, bandits, and other criminals will sometimes set up a camp in the sewers to either rob rookie adventurers or avoid the city guard. If a rookie kills a monster above his "weight class", or manages to capture/kill a wanted criminal while in the aqueducts, then he is considered to have cleared his quotas for the entire year.
Scrub: An adventurer who, in spite of being with the Guild for quite some time, cannot reach the quotas needed to go beyond being a Ratter. So called because, if they cannot kill at least a dozen monsters within twenty-eight days, they may as well just stop wasting everyone's time pretending to be an adventurer and scrub the Guild Hall's floors for a living instead.
Black Rain: A common, highly effective tactic used by slimes. Slimes are known to suspend themselves from the ceiling and drop on top of a passing adventurer. This can often be fatal, as slimes are able to flow into an adventurer's open mouth and nostrils with frightening speed, clogging the lungs and rendering their victim unable to breathe or shout a warning to others. More than a few parties have lost their rearguard and not known it until they heard the splash of a corpse hitting the ground. This most often happens to heavily armored adventurers: Slimes hunt by "feeling" the sound of approaching creatures, as they lack any sensory organs.
S*** Can: Similar to Rat S***, a term for a naive adventurer who goes into the aqueducts alone while wearing heavy armor. As mentioned above, heavy armor makes an adventurer a target for slimes. Unlike with Rat S*** adventurers, a S*** Can will leave behind armor clad remains that rats cannot get at, so the waste left behind in a "can" of armor after a slime killed them is all that will be found of their body.
Penworth's Gift: A cache of supplies found in either a crate or an alcove in the aqueducts. No one knows for sure where these come from. Potions, treasures, and the like never spontaneously appear anywhere outside of a dungeon. The popular rumor is that the ghost of the legendary adventurer and former guildmaster of the Helmston Adventurer's Guild, Rutherford Penworth, places these supply caches in the sewers to help rookie adventurers. The fact that the crest of the famed guild is often seen in the vicinity of these "gifts" serves to support this theory. Many adventurers owe their lives to these caches, and encountering more than one in a single day is considered to be a sign that the hero's spirit is watching over you.
Go To Helmston: "Go To H***". Several years ago, the city of Helmston vanished without a trace. All that was left was a massive, smoking hole in the ground that went down an unknown distance. There is currently no way to reach the bottom, and while there were a few survivors of the city's destruction, their reports of what happened are questionable at best. Only the gods know for sure what happened, and they're not volunteering any information. Due to the fact that even after all this time, smoke and intense heat is still coming from the hole, the current theory is that the city fell into a portal to one of the numerous h***s.
Relics: Objects from prior to the birth of magic. The ruins beneath the city are reported to originate from the pre-magic era, and if so, it is one of the few intact or mostly intact sites from that age left in the world. Due to the difficulty in reaching this site, it is also the only one currently not fully explored, and thus filled with undiscovered artifacts from that time period. While most of the "technology" from that era is useless or obsolete due to the existence of magic, White Obelisk Academy, the local university for the study of magic, pays a small fortune for any object recovered from the depths, and considerably more for items like books, artwork, and other objects of scholarly or cultural interest.
Croaked: A person was polymorphed into a frog. A common punishment given out by White Obelisk Academy in response to anyone knowingly trying to pass off a counterfeit relic. While some would question the use of such a harsh punishment for a seemingly minor transgression, it should be said that anyone foolish enough to try and con a group of individuals who treat the laws that govern reality as minor inconveniences at best really should have known better than to try something like that. The Academy does take care of the frogs in question until a year has passed, at which point the victim is returned to their original form. Many report that the urge to jump when startled and to try to catch flies with one's tongue takes considerably longer to pass.
Catching The Dragon's Eye/Stepping On The Dragon's Tail: Catching the king's attention, either in a good way or a bad way, respectively. King Draconis The First, the first true dragon to ever be crowned the ruler of a sovereign nation, always has his eye out for individuals of high caliber who might be of service to the kingdom, as well as for those who may endanger the realm either through malice, avarice, or just simple stupidity. The king guards his kingdom the way any dragon will guard its most precious treasures, so individuals who benefit the city can expect to be handsomely rewarded, while those who may threaten it are often reminded as to why dragons are feared, even by all the demons in all the h***s and all the gods in all the heavens.
Now that's some well constructed world building!
It simultaneously feels like the lore for an excellent D&D campaign, the appendix section of a modern isekai light novel, and an excerpt from one of those classic 80's high fantasy books that they just don't make anymore.
Given all this (and, of course, your preceding reputation for skilled writing), I can't wait to see where you take this world.
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Thank you.
Considering how fickle human belief can be, I would suggest belief be more like a supplementary force for them, rather than one they need to exist. Belief is their measure of power. Greater belief equals greater ability to influence the mortal realm.
Of course, having a lack of belief would have to have some negative consequences, so... loss of godly might and forced to exist in the mortal realm? They're still immortal, still gods, but they're effectively forced to live like mortals until they can somehow stir up more belief in them again.
Then, if there is simply no one who believes in them, their immortality would dwindle to the point where they are merely ageless, and can be very easily killed. This also make's that wizard's threat still viable, as living as nothing more than an ageless mortal would be the fastest way to get some very unpopular Gods killed.
Zeus alone would probably drawn and quartered moments after he he descended. ;)
Of course, this is your world, so you really don't need to listen to me at all, but there's my two cents.
Very interesting set-up. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the great work. Deus tecum.
Finally, an actual reason for an adventures guild, that's not just tacked on.
While I like the lingo, the explanations are pretty good, I recommend to not overdo it. Having a lot of lingo, can make reading a story irritating. Not all readers can remember all the lingo and looking it up, can rip them right out of the story.
On the other hand, it's great immersion.
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If any thing just put a Glossary that explains everything. Maybe a map and Character Guide?
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Yeah, that is a pretty good idea.
Alternativly they could be introduced slowly, so that the reader is not overwhelmed and has more time, to memorise them.
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I find a Glossary works better. No matter how a character or lingo is introduced there comes a point in time where you no longer remember who a character is or what the lingo refers to.
I cannot tell you the number of times I had to look something from a book up on the internet because i could no longer remember the character or lingo.
This is especially true in book series.
Sounds like the makings of an interesting story already. I especially like the lore behind the creation of the dungeons. I've read many stories online about dungeons, and they typically just wind up with the explanation of "dungeons make monsters because magic/gods." Imprisoned demons that spawn monsters gives it what I at least consider a fresh, new approach.
Glad to hear a little Nonsense again.
This sounds like it would be a cool rpg or mmorpg
Fascinating concept so far. You planing to put this out later as a professionally done book or post it somewhere as an Original Content story on another site?
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Once I've got enough chapters put together to start, my current plan is to post the story on Royal Road. Several of the popular stories there are now available on Amazon Books, so I figured this is a good place to start.
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Please let me know when you release because this sounds very interesting.
Also rule number 7 is looking mighty suspicious.
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Actually, it's there because a lot of beginners think that they've found an exception, when they honestly just don't know what they are doing. Magic, at least in this setting, will operate solely on those 7 laws: An expert wants to throw fire, he performs a complex set of equations and actions, converting, oh, this much of the air to pure oxygen, and transmuting a small amount of air into two separate substances that instantly ignite on contact to start the fire. An amateur just thinks "I want fire", and there's fire. The expert would be able to tell you that the amateur's mind basically chose the fastest and least efficient way to produce flame, but his actual method was more or less the same as the expert's. The amateur will believe he produced fire from literally nothing, and when told he didn't, he'll try to prove the expert wrong. He'll say, "Watch", snap his fingers and intentionally try to summon fire from nothing, and instantly hit The Breaking Point the way that a bug hits the windshield of a race car going 100 mph. One bit of lore/world building I have is that the academy that teaches magic organizes students according to personality types, and Red Robes, the students who, for various reasons (aristocratic background, demonstrating magical talent or potential at a young age, or just because they have an unearned and undeserved superiority complex, mainly) have to be labeled red the same way that sticks of dynamite and other dangerous explosives are. They tend to die trying to prove their wiser, more experienced teachers wrong, or by trying to do things that, if they'd bothered to ask their teachers first, they would have known have been tried and proven not to work.
Here's an small snippet of something I had in mind for one of the stories taking place here.
So... When will someone eventually makes a movie out of this?
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Thank you for the sneak peek.
I do have some more thoughts on the rules, specifically 3 and 4.
So my first thought depends on how you define life. Because in my mind a firefly is alive, and as a mage you could create something similar to a firefly relatively easily. For example if you were to take some chemical that absorbs light then emits it (glow in the dark), and cover it in a thin nonreactive protective shell, then give it some way to move and detect light, where it takes a portion of the emited light and uses that energy to reproduce and maintain functionality I would call that life.
So I was just wondering what that would be called in your world if it wasn't life?
The reason that I question number 4 is because I see this creature functioning through magic.
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Regarding Rule 4, there's a world of difference between a creature that can use magic, and a creature that is magical in nature. There are creatures that have magical abilities (An supernatural aura of intimidation, a petrifying gaze, etc.) but lack the ability to use magic. Casting spells requires conscious thought and an understanding of how the world works. A cockatrice has the brain of a chicken, so while it can use a petrifying gaze, it lacks intelligence and understanding, so it can no more cast spells than it can talk or read.
As for Rule 3 and"Life", that rule has two purposes: The first is to make it clear that all deaths are final. Not even the gods can break that rule (Barring when it's one of the gods themselves, but that's a more... complicated issue). People attempting to bring the dead back to life often get something back, but there's a world of difference between the person they were, and the undead thing that they become. Consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer's vampires: They look like the person they were, they talk like them, and they have all of their memories. However, the soul of that person is gone, and it has been replaced with something else, something that would gladly drink the blood of anyone, even people that they loved, with little to no hesitation.
The second reason is simpler: You wanted to know what I'd call that construct you described? I'd call it impossible.
In order for it to move and detect light, it would require limbs (or wings), sensory organs, and a brain. To maintain functionality, it would need to be able to consume something to gain energy (The sun is nice, but plants have demonstrated that just sunlight and soil don't provide enough energy for anything other than a permanently stationary, slow-growing lifeform). Energy cannot come from nowhere, and while there is "magic energy" in this story, sooner or later, it runs out if a wizard doesn't "recharge" it. To reproduce, it would either need to perform mitosis, or be capable of sexual reproduction. But to perform mitosis, it would need to be able to consume enough matter and have enough energy to effectively double its mass first. Matter can't come from nowhere, either. And for it to perform sexual reproduction... well, you have the internet, look it up. You could, maybe, build a machine that could do those things, provided you had sufficiently advanced technology, but it would be fairly large and ungainly: If you were to replace a human body with a machine with current technology, you'd actually need to build a massive factory complex about the size of a shopping mall, given just how many things your body does, every second of every day. So, the only way to create a firefly-like construct would be... to build a firefly from cells, tissue, what have you, and that is an insanely complex process that scientists still haven't really worked out yet, even on the level of viruses and bacteria. Now, if you can't hold all of the steps for how to accomplish something in your head, you can't cast a spell that will do it: Thus, given how absurdly complex life is, even if it were technically possible to do so, no human mind, or even an army of human minds, could be expected to actually do it without something going horribly wrong in the attempt.
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What about imbuing a machine, like say a robot with an advanced AI, with a soul? It is intelligent, sapient even, but lacks the stricter criteria of being alive or having a soul. Could magic be used to grant such a robot (if it were say, a relic of some sort) "anima", or artificial life, at least to the point where it can cast magic? Because a robot waifu magical girl ala Fi, sounds exactly like something you could make work. Even if a normal wizard couldn't do it, maybe a god or fragment of a God could. Maybe the demon trapped beneath Gillertree possessed a hyper advanced pre-magic robot, reawakening the AI within (potentially the uploaded mind of a pre magic human or an artificial consciousness based off the mind of such), fusing to become a new entity altogether. Maybe this entity has no interest in being like its predecessors (Rogue God - Gillertree Demon - wAIfu) and makes it up to the surface at around the same time the flow of monsters is suddenly slowing down and causing a financial crisis at the adventurer's guild because the only monsters left are the ones too strong to take on without at least a team of faces or higher. If she realized the divine nature of the Golden Tree, wAIfu might investigate it and that might cause an event that reveals her true nature because the curse fails to affect her, etc...
Anyways, this is pretty cool. God dammit, I already want to write fanfiction about your fictional universe and it isn't even out yet!
That's some hard fantasy there. I prefer writing soft myself.
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And for the love of god a pronunciation guide. If you fail to put one of these in then you basically lose control of how people pronounce the words introduced forever.
Honestly the Breaking Point seems like the ultimate reason to never piss off and get into a fight with a mage, cause even amateurs can take you with them if they lose