Summer Reading

Looking for a good genre read for a summer vacation? Since I got a Kindle earlier this year, I’ve been able to buy books on even more of an impulse than before, since now I don’t have to find a place to physically house them. Here are a few, one digital and two physical, I’ve found particularly worthwhile--two just happen to be from the same author:

Fathom by Cherie Priest is the first Kindle formatted novel I purchased, and I was off to auspicious start. This is a modern fantasy, something like some of Neil Gaiman’s work,but who it reminds me of most is Tim Powers. It’s got the usual Powers elements--mythology reinterpreted, a bit of secret history, and obscure tidbits of the real world recast in a clever way. The story stars two young, female cousins on an island off the coast of Florida. They become involved in a battle between two powerful deities/elementals--one of water and one of earth. The water elemental has a plan to awaken the leviathan sleeping in the depths--and destroy the world. The young cousins are transformed into something other than human, and serve as pawns for the dueling supernatural beings.

Boneshaker is my second recommendation from Cherie Priest. This is what the kids are calling “steampunk” these days. Priest calls the planned alternate-history series “The Clockwork Century.” In a world where the Civil War still rages in the 1880s--abetted by superior transportation technology--an arrogant inventor's digging machine has turned Seattle into a no-man’s land, surrounded by 200 foot high walls. These walls are to hold in the blight--a gas, and one of those genre fictions substances that has an amazing variety of effects, all bad. The blight kills many that inhale it, and turns the rest into decaying zombies (“rotters”), and causes corrosion and decay of inanimate objects. Oh, and it can also be used to make a deadly and addictive drug called “lemon sap.”

When Zeke, the teenage son of the inventor responsible, heads into the blight-soaked city in a misguided attempt to clear his father’s name, Briar, his mother, catches a ride on an airship flying over the city to go after him. Yes, there are airships--this is steampunk, remember--so that’s a requirement. It’s also got another evil inventor in a sinister gasmask, an underground squatter society, inscrutable Chinamen, and the aforementioned zombies. What’s not to like?

My last recommendation is a work of nonfiction, but it does deal with magic. Spiritual Merchants by Carolyn Morrow Long takes on a fascinating topic I’ve dealt with here before--so-called spiritual supplies, used predominantly for African American folk magic. It outlines the history and origins of rootwork and related systems, and then details how the spiritual products industry went from local hoodoo drug stores, and small mail order operations, to major manufactures distributing products nationwide, with catalogs and the like. If you like to draw inspiration from real-world belief for your gaming, or just have an interest in real world magical systems, then its worth checking out.

That oughta do it for now.  It's only July, though, and I've still got a stack of books awaiting me.

If You Wanna Get to Heaven...

The dominant faiths of the City and the strange New World came were brought from Ealderde. The Natives had their own religions of course, as did the black folk, but their belief systems have either been persecuted out of existence (like some of the Native tribes) or forced to syncretize with the predominant religion (in the case of the black folk).

The Ealderdish colonists practiced a variety of faiths, but all of them were variations of a monotheistic religion which, like many things on the City’s terra inusitata (if my rusty Latin is still functional), it bears some resemblance to faiths of the world we know. The central holy writ of the religion is known as The Good Book. Many of the stories in it resemble incidents from the Biblical Old Testament or other works of the Abrahamic tradition, but tend to be less specifically placed in time or place and more “fable-like” or "folk-tale-like" in presentation. Likewise the New Testament analog with its “Redeemer,” is more of a series of parables, dialogues, and sayings, and less of a narrative.

There are numerous faiths based on numerous competing interpretations or variations of practice related to The Good Book. There’s the Old-Time Religion with very little church hierarchy, and a strong emphasis on good works, and on personal study the Good Book. Variant Old-Time ecstatics may experience glossolalia or other mystical manifestations. Such practices are seen as unsophisticated and rustic by City folk, but this sort of thing is common in the villages of the Smaragdines.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Oecumenical Hierarchate. This church is older that the so-called Old Time Religion, and has much more elaborate ritual and church structure. Its practitioners venerate a number of saints and keep a full calendar of ritual observances. Being less common among the Ealderdish who came to the new world, Oecumenicals are stereotyped as superstitious and foreign.

The people of the City’s world have a large amount of clear evidence of the existence of God or gods. After all, numerous adventurers have encountered angels from the Armies of Salvation or devils from the Hell Syndicate. A few have actual made physical journeys to Heaven or Hell. Confusingly, the Heavens visited and the monotheistic Gods encountered are not identical. In other words, multiple, competing sole creators seem to exist!

The number of heavens for these alternate Gods is generally given as “seven,” but its likely this is just a poetical convention. Some scholars believe there are as many heavens as there are faiths--each with a God that fits their particular belief. The devout are, of course, skeptical of this idea, and tend to view all Gods but theirs as false.

How this arrangement came into being, and what it says about the nature of the universe is subject of a lot of debate, but no clear answer.

It should be noted that “pagan” gods and goddess are also known to exist, but these beings typically seem weaker and closer to human scale in terms of power--though wielding magics well beyond mortals. They’re sometimes referred to as “small” gods, by thaumaturgical practitioners who are more accepting of their existence than the faithful.

There are also concepts personified (called eikones by scholars), seeming existing on a level equivalent to the greatest small gods, or between the small gods and the singluar [sic] God(s). One theory holds that the eikones are powerful spirits created by God to help in the day to day managment of the world, while another holds they are the product of the human mind and its inherent tendency to anthropomorphization.  Interestingly, the general populace is mostly unaware of their existence, despite the fact their lives are affected by them daily. More on this class of beings in a later post.

Seeds of Revolution

Happy Fourth of July to everybody who celebrates such things.

The holiday has got me thinking about revolutions and how they might be used in gaming. Just a glance at the Wikipedia page listing revolutions and rebellions shows that there are a lot of real world examples to draw inspiration from. If the leap from real to imagined is to great, they’ve also got a page of fictional rebellions and coups to help you out--though they seem to have fairly broad definitions of what constitutes such.

Revolutions/rebellions can provide a lot of material to work with. They can be positive or negative, or both, at different times--the term can encompass everything from the Star Wars trilogy to the Reign of Terror. There are counterrevolutions and competing revolutionary forces (The Mexican Revolution of 1910 being a great model for this--and James Carlos Blake’s The Friends of Pancho Villa being a great fictionalized view of the whole bloody affair). The highest ideals and the basest acts of humanity are on display.

Revolts in fantastic fiction show most of the characteristics of real world ones. Conan takes part in a coup largely free of ideology and gets himself a kingdom. The supposed democratic revolt of John Farson, “The Good Man”, against the feudal rule of the gunslingers in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is a horrible farce, and representative of the greater dissolution of the world. The communist-by-way-of-the-French-Revolution nation of Quatershift in Stephen Hunt’s steampunkish novels has the absolute worst elements of the real revolutions that inspired it--from purges to nonsensical ideologic policies that cause massive death.

Well, you get the idea. Maybe amid the monarchies, magocracies, and decadent republics of the standard fantasy world there's room on the map for a land in the midst of revolution, or recently recovered from one. Maybe PCs are based in such a country. That would be put an interest spin on standard adventuring, and provide potential fodder for a lot nonstandard ones.