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beccastareyesI spent last night -- well, Sunday night, now -- thinking about NaNoWriMo, and I don't really remember much, except for some short story ideas, and stuff that I didn't feel competent enough to write.
An idea for ecological magic that was tied to warfare. Basically, that settlement was accomplished by place-mages (witches?) that changed the climate to be one that was friendly to the settlers. (For baseline humans, it would probably be something like a mix of plains and light forests, with mitigation to keep the winters mild, the summers not too hot, the rain enough for crops and livestock, and the weather from being severe.) Moving a mage in could not only change the weather, but the native plants and animals and humans if the mage was strong enough.
So, if you wanted to invade, you kept a place-mage (or many) with you, so you could essentially force 'friendly terrain' around you, make the forage easy, and force the conquered peoples to live on your terms, not their old ones. Besides the obvious uses of weather/climate/ecosystem control of hurricanes/tornados/etc -- while they might bring down cities, they are not so good if you want to use the land afterward. It also means that place-mages are Big Fat Targets.
I'd have to figure how much concentration the magic requires -- if it's not much, these folks would probably collect political power. If it does require a lot of concentration, it would be more of a comfortable ceremonial role with the duties of 'keep the weather nice'. Sort of an Earth-Parent thing.
Trying to think how this would form governments beyond the city-state... you could probably get a larger area, but with more border effects. You'd have to dump the heat or rain or what-have-you somewhere, or get it from somewhere. Either the borders become no-mans-land full of people living on the edge, you save it for your enemies during war, or out to sea/on high mountains. Where things might be living, and now they don't like you.
Now, how to weave this into a story. The short story idea I had was of telling how a special ops sort of person during a standoff at a pass, was ordered in to assassinate the enemy place-mage, and going into the transformation as s/he approached the target, and the effects afterward. And I want an excuse to do some really weird environments, things like the Sea of Corruption from Nausicaä. If you haven't seen that movie, think weird plants and giant insects.
It also would make colonization interesting. Again, there'd probably be the instinct of incapacitating the place-mage of any visitors.
The kinds of stories this suggests are questions about the difference between terraforming a new land, or changing the settlers to work in the new environment. And an issue that the power of this rests in a specialized few who could make the decision without consultation. Or for that matter, the tie between people and place.
I still don't have a plot, even if I have a character and a setting-type thing. The world suggests a story about colonization, but honestly, I'd think that if I saw ships on the horizon, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, since a couple of people could seriously screw up your way of life via magic. There'd be a fine line between settlers and invaders, unless you were certain there were no magic-users among them.
That could work, though. Melisan's folks are already inadveterntly getting shat on via bad weather via border effects and getting their borders nibbled at by an annoying neighbor. They aren't much of a power, and are losing ground, so someone gets the bright idea to try to establish a colony that could preserve Our Sacred Way of Life (tm). Plus, it would be a way to dump mages that can't be trusted around Civilized People but still could be useful. Either they died, were assimilated into the local peoples, or will actually do something useful-to-the-motherland and the motherland can send farmers and craftspeople now.
The trick would be both in writing a survival book and in trying not to fall into traps. Melisan by default falls into Narrator with Biases, so short of giving a second POV, I'm going to have someone who is a bit jingoistic and sexist and trying to come to terms with his own closeted transgender-ness, but who was recovering from essentially being tossed to the dogs by his superiors for not fitting the mold.
So, we'd have a group of mages who are unwanted enough to be exiled but not enough to be killed, caught between the Guys Back Home who are all 'yeah, we're going to deport you to this place far away -- be a dear and kill/assimilate the locals, kay?' and the Locals, who are all 'yeah... how about no?'. There'd be an element of 'want to maintain the familiar', especially since 'normal' entrance to a new ecosystem involves physical change, and varying degrees of loyalty to Back Home versus the Locals. But, I'd be essentially writing a story about people intended to be something between invaders and immigrants, who can't choose to go home, but can choose what to try to make of this.
It also lends a conflict, but not a definite one. I mean, not a situation where I can say 'and they lived happily ever after', or even 'and things were quieter then (until the next problem)'. I mean, I suppose I could have the group travel for a while, dealing with the fact that none of the locals trust them, and eventually find some new volcanic island or isolated valley where they would be the first settlers, so didn't have to choose between maintaining the familiar versus disrupting someone else. In which case, it would be a conflict of person versus nature or person versus self (well, or 'group with itself', kind of a subset of person versus person...).
This might work -- what do you guys think?
An idea for ecological magic that was tied to warfare. Basically, that settlement was accomplished by place-mages (witches?) that changed the climate to be one that was friendly to the settlers. (For baseline humans, it would probably be something like a mix of plains and light forests, with mitigation to keep the winters mild, the summers not too hot, the rain enough for crops and livestock, and the weather from being severe.) Moving a mage in could not only change the weather, but the native plants and animals and humans if the mage was strong enough.
So, if you wanted to invade, you kept a place-mage (or many) with you, so you could essentially force 'friendly terrain' around you, make the forage easy, and force the conquered peoples to live on your terms, not their old ones. Besides the obvious uses of weather/climate/ecosystem control of hurricanes/tornados/etc -- while they might bring down cities, they are not so good if you want to use the land afterward. It also means that place-mages are Big Fat Targets.
I'd have to figure how much concentration the magic requires -- if it's not much, these folks would probably collect political power. If it does require a lot of concentration, it would be more of a comfortable ceremonial role with the duties of 'keep the weather nice'. Sort of an Earth-Parent thing.
Trying to think how this would form governments beyond the city-state... you could probably get a larger area, but with more border effects. You'd have to dump the heat or rain or what-have-you somewhere, or get it from somewhere. Either the borders become no-mans-land full of people living on the edge, you save it for your enemies during war, or out to sea/on high mountains. Where things might be living, and now they don't like you.
Now, how to weave this into a story. The short story idea I had was of telling how a special ops sort of person during a standoff at a pass, was ordered in to assassinate the enemy place-mage, and going into the transformation as s/he approached the target, and the effects afterward. And I want an excuse to do some really weird environments, things like the Sea of Corruption from Nausicaä. If you haven't seen that movie, think weird plants and giant insects.
It also would make colonization interesting. Again, there'd probably be the instinct of incapacitating the place-mage of any visitors.
The kinds of stories this suggests are questions about the difference between terraforming a new land, or changing the settlers to work in the new environment. And an issue that the power of this rests in a specialized few who could make the decision without consultation. Or for that matter, the tie between people and place.
I still don't have a plot, even if I have a character and a setting-type thing. The world suggests a story about colonization, but honestly, I'd think that if I saw ships on the horizon, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, since a couple of people could seriously screw up your way of life via magic. There'd be a fine line between settlers and invaders, unless you were certain there were no magic-users among them.
That could work, though. Melisan's folks are already inadveterntly getting shat on via bad weather via border effects and getting their borders nibbled at by an annoying neighbor. They aren't much of a power, and are losing ground, so someone gets the bright idea to try to establish a colony that could preserve Our Sacred Way of Life (tm). Plus, it would be a way to dump mages that can't be trusted around Civilized People but still could be useful. Either they died, were assimilated into the local peoples, or will actually do something useful-to-the-motherland and the motherland can send farmers and craftspeople now.
The trick would be both in writing a survival book and in trying not to fall into traps. Melisan by default falls into Narrator with Biases, so short of giving a second POV, I'm going to have someone who is a bit jingoistic and sexist and trying to come to terms with his own closeted transgender-ness, but who was recovering from essentially being tossed to the dogs by his superiors for not fitting the mold.
So, we'd have a group of mages who are unwanted enough to be exiled but not enough to be killed, caught between the Guys Back Home who are all 'yeah, we're going to deport you to this place far away -- be a dear and kill/assimilate the locals, kay?' and the Locals, who are all 'yeah... how about no?'. There'd be an element of 'want to maintain the familiar', especially since 'normal' entrance to a new ecosystem involves physical change, and varying degrees of loyalty to Back Home versus the Locals. But, I'd be essentially writing a story about people intended to be something between invaders and immigrants, who can't choose to go home, but can choose what to try to make of this.
It also lends a conflict, but not a definite one. I mean, not a situation where I can say 'and they lived happily ever after', or even 'and things were quieter then (until the next problem)'. I mean, I suppose I could have the group travel for a while, dealing with the fact that none of the locals trust them, and eventually find some new volcanic island or isolated valley where they would be the first settlers, so didn't have to choose between maintaining the familiar versus disrupting someone else. In which case, it would be a conflict of person versus nature or person versus self (well, or 'group with itself', kind of a subset of person versus person...).
This might work -- what do you guys think?
