Defining the Undefinable

Ghost hunting - did I mention that? My intrepid investigator Portier questions a soldier about the dire events of the past. As the unfortunate fellow spills his guts, he mentions that he sees a dead man's face every hour of every day. "In your dreams?" asks Portier - a rhetorical question. But the answer is unsettling.

Dreaming, I see him. Waking, I see him. I see him in alleys, in courtyards, on the walls, in the trees, inside my eyelids. That bloodless, battered wreck of a face...

Even in a society where people believe their ancestors struggle through seven gates to reach heaven, Portier doesn't believe in ghosts. "Dead is dead," he says several times. But somehow as he is leaving the beleaguered fellow in the dark alley, he gets the creeps and runs back to lights and civilization.

So I write these things, and Portier tells the story to Dante, the mage, and Dante insists that they go back and investigate "what makes Calvino de Santo wail." And now I have to write the scene where they see what Calvino sees...which means I have to figure it out myself.

What is truth in the world I have created? It doesn't matter what I believe about ghosts in my own life, what matters is the truth in Portier's world. There are certain metaphysical boundaries that every fantasy writer must define for a fictional world...


These are the boundaries between

• magic


• myth


• superstition


• religious practice


• science


• divine truth

That is, we have to decide what is the divine truth for our world and what our characters believe. If these are different, as Seyonne discovers in Revelation or Aidan learns in Song of the Beast, it creates tension and story possibilities. Valen does not learn which of his world's great religions holds the truth of the god's/gods' identity, but he learns the truth behind a myth that makes up a part of each god story. In fact, both religions may hold some aspect of divine truth.

When we are designing magic as an integral part of a world, we have to know whether magic can intrude upon or impact divine truth. Is Calvino de Santo's ghost a refugee from beyond the Sabrian Veil, or is the Veil a myth and he but a spirit hanging around where he has no right to be, or is he but some odd refraction of light combined with a guilty conscience? Portier will have his opinion. Dante will have his opinion. But I'd better know the truth or the story falls apart. Work, work, work... Read more of this post!

Lines of Demarcation

In Navronne (re: Lighthouse Duet), pureblood magic is a commodity, used by both of the major religious communities. Danae magic is divine or at least an integral part of nature (however nature might have come into being. ) In Ezzaria (re: The Books of the Rai-kirah), religion is an important component of a seamless social/cultural structure, and the crumbling perception of this religion parallels the crumbling structure of Ezzarian society. No matter how I squirm and wriggle (because religious belief and practice always introduce complications) the lines separating magic/religion/supernatural truth/myth/superstition must be drawn in a fantasy world. Yes, even if religion is not a dynamic thread in the story. Why?

My aim is always to make my worlds real enough that readers can lose themselves in the action and interactions of the plot and characters. And at least so far, I haven't imagined a world where humans did not make some attempt to answer the questions - where did I come from? why am I here? who dun it? - and then codify the answers to those questions. While many humans look no farther than themselves to answer the questions, a goodly number of us do. Which means I need to come up with some answers for what people in my created cultures believe and how it fits with the magical structure I'm developing. Has religion co-opted magic? Has magic co-opted faith? Has the divine been proved human, implying that divine truth is yet unknown? [Mmmm, nope, I've used that one <-g->. ]

My musings on the pervasive nature of magic in Sabria and its historically controlling position have merged with my search for the right name for the local deity, leading me in a direction which leaves me with a somewhat uninvolved deity - at least in an ordinary Sabrian's perception. Of course, the truth of that worldview (or heavenview), as well as how the religious establishment has dealt with the magical (and political) establishment remains to be defined. I probably don't need to know this yet. And I'm left with the question of what ordinary people might fall back on in a personal crisis. I step back and look at my premise - the Veil - the region that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead, and it gives me an idea...[Carol scurries off to write this down.] Read more of this post!