Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Heavenly Bodies


The World So Far: The world is flat. On one side of disc is the exhaustively explored and urbanized home of humans, where cities, countries and nations vie for too little land to support their expanding populations. On the other side of the disc is an uncharted and largely oceanic world, dotted by islands and coastlines, full of strange wonder, abundant resources and tropical beauty.

An incoming force of humans, from a number of distinctly 15th century-feeling cultures, have sailed over the edge of their world and come to colonize the world below. Some have come to seek asylum, refuge or more converts to their maligned faith. Some have been exiled over, punished for crimes committed in the world above. Still, others come over to set down stakes in a new world, to exploit the natural resources and expand their conquest.

The new world's inhabitants, however, are four powerful undersea kingdoms, full of dynastic struggle, ancient tradition and military might. With cultures far older and far more intricate than those of the human colonists, the undersea kingdoms are as unprepared for this sudden clash of cultures as the unawares humans are.

This, sadly, is really becoming more of a biweekly thing. A shame, I suppose. I need more excuses to blog.

This week we're meant to talk about the Exodus, the possibly exiled, possibly self-exiled, possibly sinister group of religious extremists who came to the Underworld, looking for a new paradise where they could practice their religion uncontested. What, thus far, do we remember about the Exodus?

Primarily, they were the second group to arrive here and they have the closest relationship to the Brethren. Back on the Overworld, the Exodus were the blokes responsible for casting the criminals and heretics who would be the Brethren in barrels over the edge of the world. Probably isn't gonna go a long way towards endearing those two groups any.

Indeed, we even know that, prior to the Exodus' arrival in the Underworld, the castaways and refugees who would later adopt the Brethren mantle weren't even organized. It was the emergence of these, their hated enemies, that made the predatory instincts arise in these dissolute and isolated hermits.

What could be so terrible about the Exodus, besides revenge, that could inspire such vitriol?

I'm not sure if they're going to end up related, but I think I'm about to embark on an astronomy tangent. I've been reading the exceedingly relevant Quintessence by David Walton (overall, a meh book, but has some fascinating pseudo-science packed in there) and it also features, coincidentally, a flat world. The way he goes about handling this flat world is especially fascinating and led me to wonder whether or not the cosmology would work in a similar way.

In Walton's alternate history earth, the world is a flat disc and the sun continues to rotate, but in an ovular orbit. This means, when the sun rises, it's enormous to anyone on the eastern side of the disc and tiny to anyone on the western side. When the sun sets, it's enormous to anyone on the western side of the disc and tiny to anyone on the eastern side. This creates this exceedingly bizarre life cycle for creatures living on the either extreme.

In thinking about this model, I think I too would wanna majorly adapt the cosmology, but in a substantially different direction than Walton's. I think, as opposed to the sun orbiting the earth, I think the sun remains stationary, rotates and possesses a dark side. When the bright side of the sun shines down on the earth, it's daytime. When the sun is waxing, it's morning and when the sun is waning, it's evening. When the dark side faces the earth, it's nighttime.

I enjoy the effect this creates – sorta combining both heavenly bodies – moon and sun – into one celestial entity.

In a setting where the world's flat, however, a stationary sun would basically require a counterpart. I imagine the Underworld probably has it's own sun, following pretty much the same, if perhaps inverse rules. When it's daytime on the Overworld, it's nighttime on the Underworld. That seems to read.

Is there a way this could map to the Exodus faith? Historically speaking, the sun and moon are enormous figures in folklore and would probably factor prominently into whatever religion the Colonist cultures bring with them.

The obvious choice, here, would be to describe a binary religion, similar to Christianity, where the sun's bright side represents good, virtue, honor, righteousness and the sun's dark side represents evil, vice, deceit, corruption. That's definitely too on the nose. One step further would be the sorta Griffindor/Slytherin angle – the bright side represents bravery, passion, anger while the dark side represents cunning, wisdom, wit. Again, maybe closer, but too surface level, not quite interesting enough.

The few choices about the Exodus that I do like are the notion of a self-exile. Similar to the Puritans, where they voluntarily fled the nation of their birth to seek religious freedom elsewhere. I also like the implication they're less than virtuous themselves. There's something about their faith that's even outwardly bizarre or outlandish, something the average Colonist may not accept. Something with maybe even a vaguely cultish vibe.

Hm. This is proving difficult to pin down. My other instincts all run towards the supernatural but, again, we're attempting to avoid magic in this setting. 

I may need to come back to the specifics of the actual religion later. Maybe attempt to paint a surface level on their culture, particularly how they interact with other powers and cultures.

The Brethren, as I said, I think despise them. The Nations, meanwhile, are probably more or less indifferent to them – I feel as though they've adopted a much more mainstream religious view than whatever the Exodus practice. For the most part, I imagine the Kingdoms ignore them too, possibly regarding their beliefs as an academic curiosity, largely depending on which Kingdom we're talking about.

Early on, I'd had the idea that the Exodus did manage to convert one group – one of the Kingdoms in particular – to their faith and, in some ways, made much more fervent converts from them than they necessarily expected. The idea of the raiding Kingdom D culture absorbing whatever religion the Exodus brings them intrigues me and seems to suggest a few things about the core tenets of that religion – something that could permit the wanton raiding and pillaging Kingdom D's culture revolves around.

Again, all these clues with very little practical solutions. I'll probably have to percolate more on the specifics of the Exodus' actual religion before I can make that many concrete decisions about culture. Damn.


Well, whatever the case may be, next installment (hopefully next Wednesday), I'll be talking about Kingdom B, the mercantile center of the undersea world.

Next Wednesday on Worldblogger: Mermerchants!

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Poetic Translation: The Art Assignment Ep. #4

The most recent episode of The Art Assignment spoke to me.

It said "Why not? You're not releasing your second novel, a short story every month and running a weekly D&D campaign, are you? Good."



Since I'm not really visual artist, I decided to take the assignment in a somewhat more literary direction – in fact, I incorporated it with my weekly Worldblogger!

"Articulate something that you know exists but you've never seen it and you very likely won't see it in your lifetime."
My idea was to take words whose meanings I didn't know  – French words, in this case – and devise new definitions for them. Once I started, I quickly realized how much context these words needed and decided to set them against the backdrop of my Worldblogger world.



But, wait – that's not all! I have a new short story out!

The Colossus in Clay: A Mountebank Mystery

A fiendish terror stalks the streets of Augusta by night, a monster stronger than a dozen men combined, a daemon unpierceable by even the sharpest sword, a horror who pursues its ghastly ends without need of food, drink or respite! While the ordinary townsfolk quail and cower, it is not they who need fear the wrath of...The Colossus In Clay!

The Colossus in Clay is a Victorian-era superhero story about the Mountebank, a masked vigilante prowling the streets of Augusta, a radically alternate history London. Written in the style of a 19th century penny dreadful, the Mountebank combines the tone and aesthetics of Sherlock Holmes with the danger and derring-do of The Shadow.

This one's a little closer to my heart than most, as it's a precursor to a future collaboration with the missus.

Only $1 on Amazon and Smashwords!

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

The First Kingdom


The World So Far: The world is flat. On one side of disc is the exhaustively explored and urbanized home of humans, where cities, countries and nations vie for too little land to support their expanding populations. On the other side of the disc is an uncharted and largely oceanic world, dotted by islands and coastlines, full of strange wonder, abundant resources and tropical beauty.

An incoming force of humans, from a number of distinctly 15th century-feeling cultures, have sailed over the edge of their world and come to colonize the world below. Some have come to seek asylum, refuge or more converts to their maligned faith. Some have been exiled over, punished for crimes committed in the world above. Still, others come over to set down stakes in a new world, to exploit the natural resources and expand their conquest.

The new world's inhabitants, however, are four powerful undersea kingdoms, full of dynastic struggle, ancient tradition and military might. With cultures far older and far more intricate than those of the human colonists, the undersea kingdoms are as unprepared for this sudden clash of cultures as the unawares humans are.

(Housekeeping: I missed last week. This week, let's do a double, fully flesh out the First Kingdom, and that should keep us on track. Apologies, hypothetical readers.)

A little refresher course on our People, the inhabitants of the undersea kingdoms. They're ten feet tall, live on the bottom of the ocean, can spread bioluminescent bacteria with a mere touch and have a bizarre ecology, wherein instead of reproducing, they're simply reborn at the end of their life cycle with a new consciousness.

A little refresher course on the First Kingdom (or Kingdom A). Their rough analog of is the nation of Japan; isolated, self-sustaining, traditionalist, militarist and opposed to the influx of these Colonists. To the eyes of the First Kingdom, the Overworlders are invaders, trespassing on their sovereign territory.

In order to specify how and why the People would have fractured into these diverse ethnicities and political entities, we'll need to know a good deal more about their actual racial history. In keeping with their life cycle, let's assume, at some future point, there was some massive event that all the extant People originated from. Where they came from, I'm not sure, but I even like the idea that there's a nice round number of them. Wanna say a million? Let's say a million.

So, at the beginning of their recorded time, one million People are brought into existence. Well, let's say one million eggs that will eventually hatch into the first generation of People are brought into existence. Eggs are interesting, actually, because it precludes the idea that they're immigrants or something. If the People all began as eggs at the same moment, they couldn't have been responsible for their own creation.

Really actually reminds me of like, fish or sea turtles, that lay dozens or thousands of eggs at once.

Hmm.

What about like, a patron animal? What if the People were legitimately spawned from some manner of sea creature, one they now revere as effectively their god? Would answer some religion questions and creates an interesting bond. My brain is imagining some massive leviathan, whale-meets-world-serpent creature. I like this direction.

So, a massive sea creature spawns all the People X number of generations ago. Imagine they begin as one big happy family, all hatching at once, all exploring their environment at once, all children at once. Well, maybe some eggs didn't hatch right away. You wouldn't want everyone to be the same age. if they're all one cluster of eggs they all would have hatched at precisely the same time.

That's exactly it. They're different clusters of eggs.

The four kingdoms were hatched out by different massive sea creatures, different patrons to each nation. Each kingdom reveres a different member of the same god-like species, one that lays these strange eggs that hatch into People. They even potentially all hatched at different times and their corresponding life cycles would be somewhat off-set. Maybe while everyone in the First Kingdom is a teenager, everyone in the Second is a venerable elder. That's interesting to me.

Rolling a d4 (I use dice to randomize worldbuilding details all the goddamn time), I've determined that the First Kingdom were the most recent to hatch. It makes a certain degree of sense – so isolated, maybe their clutch of eggs was hidden or presumed nonexistent by the other Kingdoms. (Side note: The Fourth Kingdom is located deep, deep within a sinkhole, I've just decided.)

How would hatching last, when presumably these other societies have already arisen, have shaped the First Kingdom into the traditionalist, warlike people they would become?

I mean, it still makes sense to me that they'd be extremely isolated anyway. If the three eastern Kingdoms more or less assumed that there was no civilization to the west, they wouldn't go exploring in that direction and both societies could more or less arise without knowledge of each other. (Natural barrier would help that – Mariana Trench, maybe? The same fucking trench the Fourth Kingdom lives at the bottom of? BOOM.)

So separated from the rest of the world, it only makes sense they'd blossom in a different direction. In this case, a more Japanese direction.

Japan classically adopted a feudal caste system and, on the surface, that seems to make sense. I want military authority to be supreme, which would seem to favor the dictatorial approach. The Japanese equivalent would a shogon, the Mongolian equivalent would be the khan.

They'd need a martial tradition, which would seem odd, unless there's an enemy for them to fight against. Isolated as they are, it would seem to suggest inner conflict more than external conflict. The classic example, the Temujin example, is that they were once fractious nobles, fighting against each other for territory, until a great and warlike leader united them. This could easily be repurposed and work for my First Kingdom. 

A powerful military, possibly the most powerful military in the Underworld, led by a strict, authoritarian shogunate who views all outside influences as corrupting and invasive. How come they haven't annihilated in the incoming Colonists by now?

The immediate suggestion seems to be that they lack the technology. Maybe they've enough technology to know of the existence of the Colonists, but actually lack any real means to engage in a "shallow war", where they'd fight a landlocked enemy? Hell, I imagine the other Kingdoms have that technology, but the strictly isolationist First Kingdom, much as they'd like to make war on the Colonists can't bring themselves to trade with the other Kingdoms to achieve that?

I actually like that. The feeling that, right below the Colonists, there's a massive military force, spying on them, unable to strike but swiftly innovating towards the right technology that could bring war upon them. Very ominous.

How's that for a catching up? There's obviously tons more to develop (like a name), but I think that's probably good for now!

Next Wednesday (I Promise) on Worldblogger: The Exodus!


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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Drumroll, Please

I neglected blogging Monday to make way for this all-points bulletin:

GALACTIC MENACE, the second book in the Bad Space Trilogy, is coming out June 1st, 2014!

Here's the cover (designed by Chris Allio of The Hydrilla fame)!


Here's a link to the new website!

Here's the new synopsis:
Their coffers are comparatively full. Their spaceship is actually in one piece for a change. Their bounties, however, remain astronomically high.

During the explosive events of the previous book, the monomaniac Captain Nemo and his crew of spacefaring swashbucklers were plucked from the ranks of criminal obscurity and into the crosshairs of the underworld's high and mighty. Gone from surviving to thriving, the wanted space pirates now hatch a plan to collect one quiet payday, cover their tracks and go to the mattresses until the heat dies down some.

All that changes with the "piracy is pointless" gaffe. Those three little words, when spoken by an official Imperium mouthpiece, threaten to flip Bad Space on its head.

Before they can entirely react, the crew of The Unconstant Lover find themselves unwittingly set back onto a collision course with galactic politics, underworld intrigue and, most surprisingly, interstellar celebrity. Where once they sought a means to slink into the shadows, they're instead thrown quite spectacularly into the limelight. 
Standing at the swirling center of all this danger and destruction is, predictably, Captain Nemo.
Stay tuned until June 1st for tons of cool content! Are you excited yet?