Mundus Obumbrandus

Boy, am I late this week! *cough* Well, I have a life outside of writing, too.

Without further ado, let me ramble a bit about battles on Overshadowed Earth. I will assume that everyone who reads this blog post has been exposed to the concept of magical combat. Whenever there is more than one person with access to special powers, it seems to be inevitable that magical battles will erupt. This as as true in Star Wars as it is in Harry Potter. Magical battles are grand affairs, where the author can allow their imagination to run wild. Fireballs fly across the battlefield, allies from beyond are summoned to fight, walls of ice and stone arise to block enemy moves… You can go buck wild.

It’s not the only way a battle can go, however. One of my favourite authors of all time, Dutch Tais Teng, described a battle between two archmages. They agreed on a location, arrived there, said hello and went into a tent together. They talked a little, and a few minutes later one man came out while the other lay stone dead on the ground. This was still a battle of significant magic, but instead of it being a battle of spells of destruction, it was a battle of names and symbols. Just as deadly, but a lot easier on the real estate.

There are any number of ways that a magical battle can shape up, depending on the tradition used by the combatants. When magical battles erupt on Overshadowed Earth (this does not happen as often as might be hoped by readers, but more often than the natives find desireable), there are certainly mages who follow the philosophy that big explosions make for a great way to determine who was right and who was wrong. But a powerful Mage could just as easily fill his opponent’s mind with illusions, leave them trapped forever in a dream. Or they could try to control their enemy’s mind more directly, attempt to enchant and dominate their foes with spells. There are as many different strategies as there are different people.

Now you may wonder what happens if a magic-user takes the field against someone without magic powers. Is it an instant slamdunk? If the mage is powerful, smart and skilled, it might be. But it doesn’t have to be.

A physical combatant who is quick enough on the uptake could run at a mage and beat them up, dodging spells as best they can. It’s not a perfect method (some spellcasters have the willpower to pull off fairly impressive moves even when being beaten), but it’s better than just standing there while someone fireballs you.

A psychic has the advantage of speed over most mages, who need to chant spells and make gestures. An expert who has gotten to the point that they only need the right thoughtform to activate a spell might approach psychics, who by definition use their abilities at the speed of thought. Not every psychic is going to be powerful enough to hurt, frighten or even kill an opponent, but they can distract people and hide themselves, raise minor obstacles and read their opponent’s mind to anticipate the next attack.

And of course there is the great equalizer: technology. While spells and psychic tricks exist that can protect the user against many weapons, it is difficult to sustain a barrier that is being fired on by a machine gun. Anyone and everyone can pick up a gun, floor the gas pedal to a heavy truck or get on an aeroplane and leave for foreign parts.

Fights can be decided by superior abilities on Overshadowed Earth, but even an archmage is not wholly invulnerable. Preparation, experience and keeping a new trick up your sleeve for every new situation are more likely to yield success to combatants.

In writing terms, this means you need to get creative for every battle. Fortunately, this can be a lot of fun…

It’s been suggested I talk a bit about one of the unusual ‘mundane’ races in our universe. And with my brain unable to give me a better topic to talk about, I shall talk about this instead.

The Dimidians

Perhaps I’ll start with what I mean exactly by “unusual ‘mundane’”. Within the context of the real world, these things would be fairly unusual, though they aren’t too terribly different from humans. Within the context of the World in Shadow, they are a fairly normal thing to see on a day-to-day basis.

Dimidians are an umbrella term for the various sub-species of humanoids found on the Alternate Earth. Essentially, they are humans that have certain animal features. Most often, this means that they have similar ears and a tail like the variety of animal they are kin to. Sometimes it can include eyes and a nose, or more in extreme cases. Their outward appearance reflects some heightened senses, but otherwise they are almost identical to their human cousins. They make up between 5 and 9% of the world’s population and live among humans without trouble, in most areas.

The origin of the Dimidians is murky at best. There are several theories on their origin, but sadly little edivdence of any is available.
One theory states that the Dimidians are not, in fact, humans at all, and all share a common ancestor that ended up following a parallel evolutionary course as humans. The propenents of these claims use them to throw the Dimidian’s status as people into question and is still the most widely accepted theory of their origin.
Another theory states that they are a product of an extra-terrestrial experiment to combine the best parts of the most promising species on the planet into one creature. The main downfall of this theory is that the people who most believe in it also are the ones that are ostracized for their beliefs in aliens capable of performing such experiments.
A third theory, held among the magic users of AltEarth, is that several thousand years ago, shamans attempted to give their peoples a better chance to survive by magically enhancing themselves and their communities with magics. The communities were given some animalistic traits, such as sharper eyesight, hearing and smell in order to make them more efficient at gathering food to survive. Some more recent magic users have attempted to duplicate these rituals, but with limited success.

Dimidians are an unusual part of the world that we have created and will appear in some of the stories that we are writing and will write in the future. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the World in Shadow.

The terrible retcon.

Yup, today’s subject is retconning. When you write a series of stories – or books, even – that feature the same characters, you may well develop new ideas. You may look back and say to yourself: “I can’t believe I ever wrote such schlock. I wish I could go back and get a do-over. I can think of a million ways to make this story better.”

How powerful is the temptation, when writing the next instalment in the series, to do some retconning? To invalidate previous writings and present your bold new vision of your creation? Speaking for myself, I’ve been fortunate in that I tend to still like what I wrote a while ago later. That, and I know that retconning is a very dangerous thing to do.

When you retcon, you are in danger of destroying the whole continuity you spent so much time creating. That, and the enjoyment of your reading audience. Remember them, the audience? I know an author should write for themselves, first. But it behooves us to always remember that you are writing so that other people can read. Tick them off too much, and they’ll stop reading. That kind of takes the point out of the whole activity, unless you have no intention of continuing to be published.

Well. There are techniques that resemble retconning, but are not nearly so destructive. Showing the same events the audience has read about from a different angle can be very effective. An example.

Say that the first story or book tells the tale of a band of heroic adventurers, who fight their way through Goblin-infested land to reach the castle of the Duke of Doom, a man known to associate with monsters.

A later story could tell the story of a land of peaceful Goblin-settlers thrown into chaos and horror when a band of murderers appears out of nowhere and slaughters its way through the countryside in order to reach and assassinate the beloved Duke, founder of the Goblin lands. It’s interesting, it may bring the readers to view the story world in a new way – and if you do it well, you don’t need to contradict your previous work even once.

Don’t retcon. Don’t deconstruct your old work because you have new ideas. That’s what writing new and unrelated stories is for. Shaking things up is fine, breaking them and reassembling the pieces is not. I say this not just as an aspiring author, but as a fervent reader. Don’t. o_o