writing the universe
Weird writing shit
As these things do.
I was writing a scene over the weekend of the baked banana and it involved a priest. The head of the army had asked to speak to him about evil plotty things and sent his personal slave to send the message. It had been going well. I had some nice times describing the chapel and sanctuary.
When out of nowhere, the priest Jocklin, decided to try and see if the slave was interested in the faith. He wanted to try and convert him.
I totally didn't see that one coming. The best part of this was, this is only the second time we've seen Jocklin and yet he's fairly well formed. At least according to his beliefs and actions. And he did this without me even realizing it.
Funny how that happens sometimes.
Interestingly, as well, this chapter also gave me a brand new race. See the slave, Alex, and the General, Orion, came from across the ocean, the General having been exiled for some reason or another and was looking to start a new life. He managed to get King Phelps to let him join the army as an officer and he rather quickly rocketed up to head. Within about two years.
His slave is spying on various people around in the novel and I noticed that he has this annoying ability to be where he couldn't be. He would just pop up somewhere. After some discussion I realized that some people across the ocean had the ability to teleport short distances, and that's how the slave was following people around.
As things progressed and Orion beat the crap out of Alec, nearly breaking his ribs, I realized that the General was much older than he looked. Which lead to the question of, how much older and how did this happen? Chatting with canadianevil (for the General is based on one of her characters)we decided that, it happened because he wasn't human. Which made Alex not human either. And older than his apparent sixteen year old looks. From there I reasoned that they had been magically modified by by the Fey for some reason, I'm not exactly sure of. But one of the benefits of the modification is a longer life span. This happened with the witches and wizards. My explanation for this is that when the fey bring out the magic in the new race, the magic sustains their lives longer than a normal human life span. This would prevent them from over breeding. The modifications turned out to be wings and the ability to teleport short distances, like dimension step spell in D&D. (No, I'm not a nerd, shut up.)
From there, as they had wings, I decided that they were probably a mountain living people before they got modified by the Fey. The wings just making it easier to live up in the mountains. And allowing them to terrorize the people who lived down in the flatlands. Terrorize and take over.
More chatting led to trying to find a name for this new race. We settled on angels. Why angels? Well they had wings, and the first Orion was originally an angel. But why shouldn't they be called angels. Angels bring up images of holy messengers of God, not mortal and most definitely not good individuals (in the case of Orion at least). But with this entire series I've been playing around with traditional notions of names.
Wizard can apply to both a male or female. It indicates what sort of magic they can use. The same goes for Witch. Traditionally witches are more focused on living magic while wizards on the more blow-ie up magic. The showy not so subtle stuff. (I magic missile the darkness). I decided to subvert this trope and instead use it to indicate the sort of magic they can use as opposed to traditional gender.
*comes back after spending an hour and a half on TVtropes, exploring such things.*
Where was I? OH Yes.
So, having decided that they're called angels I decided that I needed one last bit of info. Who would they worship? I thought about a sun god but that seemed a bit... I dunno. Not right. I have these winged people living in the mountains. Obviously one of the reasons why the Fey would have given them wings because it was part of their culture.
Wings equal birds. Rocs are large god-like birds. A phoenix is an ever more god like bird. So, I decided to have them worshiping mountain phoenixes which were rarely seen huge fiery birds that they called Rocs.
Then I started wondering about their ideas on slavery. After all, Alex is most definitely a slave. I decided that there are two classes. As the society is rather military, there's the army and the supporters. The supporters are like the camp followers. They don't do the actual fighting. And as you go down the supporters, from weapons smiths and cooks, down to tailors, clothes washers, and then the sort of shit shovlers. Generally it would be difficult to move from one class to the other, as certain breeding would allow for better military purposes. Strength, speed, things like that. Some of the lower class people, however, could raise themselves up by taking up positions as servants in the military and allowing themselves to become shock troops if need be. Another way, I figured for a person to move up in the world would be to sell a child to an officer or church. The child would be a slave, but well taken care of and the parents would get enough money to maybe improve their situation for themselves and their children. Dowries and things like that.
This, I believe, is what happened to Alex. His parents sold him to Orion to give him a better life (so they thought) and to help them.
Life is weird. And so is writing.
As these things do.
I was writing a scene over the weekend of the baked banana and it involved a priest. The head of the army had asked to speak to him about evil plotty things and sent his personal slave to send the message. It had been going well. I had some nice times describing the chapel and sanctuary.
When out of nowhere, the priest Jocklin, decided to try and see if the slave was interested in the faith. He wanted to try and convert him.
I totally didn't see that one coming. The best part of this was, this is only the second time we've seen Jocklin and yet he's fairly well formed. At least according to his beliefs and actions. And he did this without me even realizing it.
Funny how that happens sometimes.
Interestingly, as well, this chapter also gave me a brand new race. See the slave, Alex, and the General, Orion, came from across the ocean, the General having been exiled for some reason or another and was looking to start a new life. He managed to get King Phelps to let him join the army as an officer and he rather quickly rocketed up to head. Within about two years.
His slave is spying on various people around in the novel and I noticed that he has this annoying ability to be where he couldn't be. He would just pop up somewhere. After some discussion I realized that some people across the ocean had the ability to teleport short distances, and that's how the slave was following people around.
As things progressed and Orion beat the crap out of Alec, nearly breaking his ribs, I realized that the General was much older than he looked. Which lead to the question of, how much older and how did this happen? Chatting with canadianevil (for the General is based on one of her characters)we decided that, it happened because he wasn't human. Which made Alex not human either. And older than his apparent sixteen year old looks. From there I reasoned that they had been magically modified by by the Fey for some reason, I'm not exactly sure of. But one of the benefits of the modification is a longer life span. This happened with the witches and wizards. My explanation for this is that when the fey bring out the magic in the new race, the magic sustains their lives longer than a normal human life span. This would prevent them from over breeding. The modifications turned out to be wings and the ability to teleport short distances, like dimension step spell in D&D. (No, I'm not a nerd, shut up.)
From there, as they had wings, I decided that they were probably a mountain living people before they got modified by the Fey. The wings just making it easier to live up in the mountains. And allowing them to terrorize the people who lived down in the flatlands. Terrorize and take over.
More chatting led to trying to find a name for this new race. We settled on angels. Why angels? Well they had wings, and the first Orion was originally an angel. But why shouldn't they be called angels. Angels bring up images of holy messengers of God, not mortal and most definitely not good individuals (in the case of Orion at least). But with this entire series I've been playing around with traditional notions of names.
Wizard can apply to both a male or female. It indicates what sort of magic they can use. The same goes for Witch. Traditionally witches are more focused on living magic while wizards on the more blow-ie up magic. The showy not so subtle stuff. (I magic missile the darkness). I decided to subvert this trope and instead use it to indicate the sort of magic they can use as opposed to traditional gender.
*comes back after spending an hour and a half on TVtropes, exploring such things.*
Where was I? OH Yes.
So, having decided that they're called angels I decided that I needed one last bit of info. Who would they worship? I thought about a sun god but that seemed a bit... I dunno. Not right. I have these winged people living in the mountains. Obviously one of the reasons why the Fey would have given them wings because it was part of their culture.
Wings equal birds. Rocs are large god-like birds. A phoenix is an ever more god like bird. So, I decided to have them worshiping mountain phoenixes which were rarely seen huge fiery birds that they called Rocs.
Then I started wondering about their ideas on slavery. After all, Alex is most definitely a slave. I decided that there are two classes. As the society is rather military, there's the army and the supporters. The supporters are like the camp followers. They don't do the actual fighting. And as you go down the supporters, from weapons smiths and cooks, down to tailors, clothes washers, and then the sort of shit shovlers. Generally it would be difficult to move from one class to the other, as certain breeding would allow for better military purposes. Strength, speed, things like that. Some of the lower class people, however, could raise themselves up by taking up positions as servants in the military and allowing themselves to become shock troops if need be. Another way, I figured for a person to move up in the world would be to sell a child to an officer or church. The child would be a slave, but well taken care of and the parents would get enough money to maybe improve their situation for themselves and their children. Dowries and things like that.
This, I believe, is what happened to Alex. His parents sold him to Orion to give him a better life (so they thought) and to help them.
Life is weird. And so is writing.