“Oh, you'll like this,” Loses said, dragging in a box with the Office of Disease Management symbol on it, a coiling snake with feathery wings and broad antlers. “You remember the stuff that came out two years ago, the mana ping gizmo that they were using to track people trapped in earthquakes and damaged buildings, right?”
She nodded. He flipped the switches on the box, unlocking it and revealing foam padding holding a set of dark green goggles. There were lenses folder over each other, and her first instinct was to think the device was set up to attach to a helmet. Someone had added a strap to the back.
“They fixed that technology,” he said. “Someone thought to put a string on it and combine it with the features of the Wilson tent. It's got to seal over your eyes, and you shouldn't wear it more than a few hours at most. But it's long enough for surgery, a short operation, or what you need to do. Say hello. Range is terrible. ”
He handed them over; they must have weighed three pounds.
“Hello,” she said, and they warmed in her hands.
She put them to her eyes and pulled the strap over her ears. Feeling Loses tighten it and then flick the switch, she hissed when her eyes screamed in hot pain from the spray of incense.
“It uses these cartridges,” he said, even as the world gone black erupted into a cacophony of hues. She could see him, a swirl of mana in him and his clothes, strong in his fingers where he performed his work, the press of his feet on the floor, and a small battery-shaped cylinder in his fingers that hummed the deep violet color of algonkin incense. The room was a faded grainy circle; her vision felt restricted. She looked at her hands, seeing the dark veins of stolen mana nestled in the earth that made up her fingers and palms, the tiny bits she siphoned off people nearby, and the stains of darkness, like spatters of blood, where she had walked into the room.
“You're seeing the world like an elemental magus. There's even articles in Science and Physics Monthly about the company plans for adding reactive crystal to earmuffs so you can hear like a magus, too.”
She swiveled her head around.
“It seems restricted. I've got no peripheral vision, and I can't see more than maybe twenty feet down the hall. It all turns black,” she said. “Even so. I like it.”
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Aesca, Mana, and Self-Mutilation
I had someone ask me a question in regards to self-mutilation as it pertains to shamanic practices in Aesca, at least in regards to Ten-Ghost. The question was, if I recall it correctly, “How come Ten-Ghost can sew a finger back on, but my character can't make a prosthetic eye for a shaman I know?” The first part of the answer could be summed up as “Your character isn't one of kudjoojoo bird's children,” but there's more to it than that.
Mana is inherent spiritual potential, something like a cross between potential energy, devotion, and honor, memetically speaking. Mana is generated in several ways. One such method is the natural way that it flows from mana realms into three-dimensional space, where it is translated into actions, energy, and objects. Deliberate manipulation of those actions can cause changes in the amount of mana and manifestation of it in the world. One of the ways to dramatically increase one's own mana and the power inherent in it is through acknowledgment of your own suffering by spirits (there are other ways, but most of these are highly ritualized). There are several ways to do this, and one of the fastest and easiest is chopping off parts of yourself or cutting yourself; the more it hurts, the more mana is behind your action or favor (there are even drugs to help enhance the pain and practiced torturers that spellcasters can hire, if they so choose). Normally, when someone cuts off parts of themselves, these things don't grow back, and prosthetic technology is hard to come by (though it is possible). Even so, cutting off a part and replacing it is only liable to get you the mana from just cutting it off, which is less than cutting it off and leaving it that way, causing some spirits to retroactively remove mana, getting you sick, undoing what you had done, or causing some other curse or terrible misfortune to befall the practitioner.
In the case of Ten-Ghost, she doesn't even feel pain the same way as a human does, instead feeling it as a cold pinch. It's mental suffering, in a way, and she performs rather dramatic acts to a human (chopping off a finger for a human would help pour mana into an object or item, or even start a rainstorm or cause a small earthquake, but for Lucy, all it does, with ritual songs and bribes to back it up, is help one person pass on peacefully). The mana she creates in this case isn't a lot from the pain it causes, but a good chunk from the suffering she goes through in putting up a front of socially acceptable action and behavior.
I think that covers the answer.
Mana is inherent spiritual potential, something like a cross between potential energy, devotion, and honor, memetically speaking. Mana is generated in several ways. One such method is the natural way that it flows from mana realms into three-dimensional space, where it is translated into actions, energy, and objects. Deliberate manipulation of those actions can cause changes in the amount of mana and manifestation of it in the world. One of the ways to dramatically increase one's own mana and the power inherent in it is through acknowledgment of your own suffering by spirits (there are other ways, but most of these are highly ritualized). There are several ways to do this, and one of the fastest and easiest is chopping off parts of yourself or cutting yourself; the more it hurts, the more mana is behind your action or favor (there are even drugs to help enhance the pain and practiced torturers that spellcasters can hire, if they so choose). Normally, when someone cuts off parts of themselves, these things don't grow back, and prosthetic technology is hard to come by (though it is possible). Even so, cutting off a part and replacing it is only liable to get you the mana from just cutting it off, which is less than cutting it off and leaving it that way, causing some spirits to retroactively remove mana, getting you sick, undoing what you had done, or causing some other curse or terrible misfortune to befall the practitioner.
In the case of Ten-Ghost, she doesn't even feel pain the same way as a human does, instead feeling it as a cold pinch. It's mental suffering, in a way, and she performs rather dramatic acts to a human (chopping off a finger for a human would help pour mana into an object or item, or even start a rainstorm or cause a small earthquake, but for Lucy, all it does, with ritual songs and bribes to back it up, is help one person pass on peacefully). The mana she creates in this case isn't a lot from the pain it causes, but a good chunk from the suffering she goes through in putting up a front of socially acceptable action and behavior.
I think that covers the answer.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Thickets!
The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have a new video for their song Twenty Minutes of Oxygen. It's great that the budget to do these sorts of things exists now.
Love the frog stamps on the astronaut's shoulder.
Love the frog stamps on the astronaut's shoulder.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Folk Devil Prologue Draft
He was digging where he buried the body.
He'd been at the thick, black mud for maybe four hours now, switching from shovel to trowel, chopping away an odd root or two with his axe. He'd wondered for awhile if there had been enough time for roots to grow over it, but he wasn't sure, now. He wasn't sure of much of anything, his eyes clouded as they were by tears and rain. Every hole he dug, every time he got six feet down, every time it wasn't there, he'd panic, the trowel would go into the four inches of water and mud at the bottom, and he'd frantically push around his hands in the soil, finding nothing.
That wasn't to say he hadn't found anything at all. An old necklace, a lost ring, coins, even a maize-cutter's mouth knife. That one had worried him; he hoped that they hadn't come and found the body. He heard they eat corpses, but he'd also heard they could walk through walls and smell hatred. Even so, he'd been on the lookout for them, watching for those distinctive two and a half toed footprints or the cut marks on the trees where they'd been climbing or leaving messages to each other.
Of course, the rain had to kick up then, coming down in horrible, blinding, sideways sheets, kicking off the rainy season. That was a good thing; it meant any investigations in town would be slow, or at least they wouldn't send any teams from the government. There wouldn't be any roads for some time, and they wouldn't risk sending an airship through those winds and these kinds of storms. Even so, he cursed his current near-blindness.
His hands struck something, and he jumped, fishing through the water only to find a curved bit of stone and not the pelvis he thought he'd run across. He took in a sharp breath between his teeth, then spat as bitter water cleared its way across his tongue. Collapsing against the wall, he fished around in the mud again for his trowel and shovel, and threw them over the edge of the pit, using roots and slick handholds to pull himself back out.
He fell into leaves and sticks covered in dirt, and started to crawl halfway again, and a hand gripped his wrist, tightly enough he almost felt bruised, and pulled. Suddenly afraid, but not wanting to draw suspicion, though a man digging what looked like a grave out in the jungle certainly was, he allowed himself to be helped partially up, and he rolled to a position on all fours before looking.
She was crouched like a vulture, smiling gently like a jungle hunter, waiting like cattle on the chopping block, her face wet in the rain, and she had her hair all up in an old chongo hairstyle, with thick feathers now soggy folded down over her forehead, wide rings and necklaces of white bone and gold teeth hanging from her neck and shoulders, and a heavy corn silk cloak over her body, with a white raven sitting on her shoulder, its head and beak pressed up against her ear. He thought for a moment he could hear it yammering on, but in the rain, he couldn't tell much. Her hands couldn't be seen, and for the most part, she was just a cloak in yellow with black diamond sewed into it with a face. She looked left at his pile of findings and the three or four other holes he'd dug, and right at the six over there, and back at him, all very slowly, and the sounds of the rain and even the flashing lightning stopped entirely, as if to allow her to speak clearly.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked.
He'd been at the thick, black mud for maybe four hours now, switching from shovel to trowel, chopping away an odd root or two with his axe. He'd wondered for awhile if there had been enough time for roots to grow over it, but he wasn't sure, now. He wasn't sure of much of anything, his eyes clouded as they were by tears and rain. Every hole he dug, every time he got six feet down, every time it wasn't there, he'd panic, the trowel would go into the four inches of water and mud at the bottom, and he'd frantically push around his hands in the soil, finding nothing.
That wasn't to say he hadn't found anything at all. An old necklace, a lost ring, coins, even a maize-cutter's mouth knife. That one had worried him; he hoped that they hadn't come and found the body. He heard they eat corpses, but he'd also heard they could walk through walls and smell hatred. Even so, he'd been on the lookout for them, watching for those distinctive two and a half toed footprints or the cut marks on the trees where they'd been climbing or leaving messages to each other.
Of course, the rain had to kick up then, coming down in horrible, blinding, sideways sheets, kicking off the rainy season. That was a good thing; it meant any investigations in town would be slow, or at least they wouldn't send any teams from the government. There wouldn't be any roads for some time, and they wouldn't risk sending an airship through those winds and these kinds of storms. Even so, he cursed his current near-blindness.
His hands struck something, and he jumped, fishing through the water only to find a curved bit of stone and not the pelvis he thought he'd run across. He took in a sharp breath between his teeth, then spat as bitter water cleared its way across his tongue. Collapsing against the wall, he fished around in the mud again for his trowel and shovel, and threw them over the edge of the pit, using roots and slick handholds to pull himself back out.
He fell into leaves and sticks covered in dirt, and started to crawl halfway again, and a hand gripped his wrist, tightly enough he almost felt bruised, and pulled. Suddenly afraid, but not wanting to draw suspicion, though a man digging what looked like a grave out in the jungle certainly was, he allowed himself to be helped partially up, and he rolled to a position on all fours before looking.
She was crouched like a vulture, smiling gently like a jungle hunter, waiting like cattle on the chopping block, her face wet in the rain, and she had her hair all up in an old chongo hairstyle, with thick feathers now soggy folded down over her forehead, wide rings and necklaces of white bone and gold teeth hanging from her neck and shoulders, and a heavy corn silk cloak over her body, with a white raven sitting on her shoulder, its head and beak pressed up against her ear. He thought for a moment he could hear it yammering on, but in the rain, he couldn't tell much. Her hands couldn't be seen, and for the most part, she was just a cloak in yellow with black diamond sewed into it with a face. She looked left at his pile of findings and the three or four other holes he'd dug, and right at the six over there, and back at him, all very slowly, and the sounds of the rain and even the flashing lightning stopped entirely, as if to allow her to speak clearly.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Bracing for It
I've had a pretty good week, despite the fact that I've had barely any time to do anything, or any time for myself. On the plus side, I have a name for the Ten-Ghost sequel. It's Folk Devil, and I think the name sums up the content quite nicely, or at least, the self-perceived content. I've dug out my draft papers and gone over them with Opabinia, who likes it very much. I also got to meet with the cover artist today, who is agush with how awesome his work looks in print.
Anyway, this decision. It was a painful one to make, and it still is. Continuing, however, was a lot more painful. I reach a point in almost anything I write where I spend months on end antagonizing over every detail to the point where I find myself sobbing in a corner holding shredded pieces of paper. After trying several times to start this next chapter and suffering a complete mental breakdown each time, I'm taking a break. I will be back, probably after the summer, depending on how far I get with the next novel (and whether or not I actually take some art classes in the meantime), and I will still be updating this space with my mental and physical progress.
Anyway, this decision. It was a painful one to make, and it still is. Continuing, however, was a lot more painful. I reach a point in almost anything I write where I spend months on end antagonizing over every detail to the point where I find myself sobbing in a corner holding shredded pieces of paper. After trying several times to start this next chapter and suffering a complete mental breakdown each time, I'm taking a break. I will be back, probably after the summer, depending on how far I get with the next novel (and whether or not I actually take some art classes in the meantime), and I will still be updating this space with my mental and physical progress.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida
I have a friend who stops by on the weekends to hang out with myself and my roommate (also we drive across town and pretend to hate on elves or else run away from cyclopean monstrosities). He's a laser technician, which fits right in with our fantasy writer and helicopter pilot/five star chef/martial artist/son of a Hawaiian stripper ninja princess (I'm not freaking kidding; my roommate is nuts). Anyway, it so happens that said friend sometimes gets a horrible hankering for steak. I am not a steak fan. In fact, I am not a beef fan, but hey, some people like that sort of thing and more power to them. I prefer to keep my Thaxtonian colon as intact as I can in preparation for its eventual attempts to strangulate me with misshapen clumps of cancerous cells.
This particular evening, he wants steak. Not having any, we proceed to hit every steak restaurant in town. We traveled to about four, all of whom were out of steak, before I started to have a panic attack. They're also all full up on a forty minute wait at most, and I can't wait in a restaurant. I've got horrible autism issues in regards to that sort of thing (you should see what happens when I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before). He motions with his hand and says it's find, we'll go out tomorrow, but no. In my autistic brain, I promised steak, and that means a fucking steak place. I run through the roster and suddenly remember one (Do not be fooled by the photography).
I head down towards the 417 and past the junk dealer, beyond the warehouse church, and instead of diving towards Oviedo, I veer off the road to a place where street lights do not shine. In the deep shadows I cruise, my car clattering with the sound of insects off the windshield and the roar of loose dirt beneath it. Both of my passengers begin to get worried. It's been ten years, but I still remember the way. We pass by trailers and decaying orange groves, flashing through a tunnel of swirling Spanish moss so thick it resembles bleak polyps in the depths of some ancient terror's digestive tract.
I turn at the airboat ride sign and plunge into a parking lot half buried in swamp. The dim light of the restaurant cuts through the night. We get out, and there is a lake off to the side, and what surrounds us is the very depth of Florida. He's got to get out carefully, but gets pushed out by my roommate. He staggers around for a moment, almost in awe and rage.
“This is it!” he shouts, waving his arms, “This is the end!”
“The end of what?” my roommate asks.
“The end of Florida! You've taken me to the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida,” he screams again, and motions to the lake, “that is the edge of reality, the end of civilization. Over that way, right there, on the map, they'll have written 'Here Be Dragons!'”
I turn my head around. He's pointing at the gator pen, which he can't see from where he's at.
“You're gesturing at the gator pen, you know,” I respond.
“And that's my point!” he shouts again.
I want to tell him that this isn't the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida, since that honor belongs to the Miccosukee restaurant, but we approach the entrance anyway. There's a brief moment of fear, since the glass windows are covered in so many midges it looks like gray carpet curtains from a distance, and the porch functions like an airlock to keep them out. We get inside, sit down, and wait for twenty minutes for the server. They have no steak, either. They ran out five minutes ago, in fact.
He screams. I bought a grill on Sunday.
This particular evening, he wants steak. Not having any, we proceed to hit every steak restaurant in town. We traveled to about four, all of whom were out of steak, before I started to have a panic attack. They're also all full up on a forty minute wait at most, and I can't wait in a restaurant. I've got horrible autism issues in regards to that sort of thing (you should see what happens when I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before). He motions with his hand and says it's find, we'll go out tomorrow, but no. In my autistic brain, I promised steak, and that means a fucking steak place. I run through the roster and suddenly remember one (Do not be fooled by the photography).
I head down towards the 417 and past the junk dealer, beyond the warehouse church, and instead of diving towards Oviedo, I veer off the road to a place where street lights do not shine. In the deep shadows I cruise, my car clattering with the sound of insects off the windshield and the roar of loose dirt beneath it. Both of my passengers begin to get worried. It's been ten years, but I still remember the way. We pass by trailers and decaying orange groves, flashing through a tunnel of swirling Spanish moss so thick it resembles bleak polyps in the depths of some ancient terror's digestive tract.
I turn at the airboat ride sign and plunge into a parking lot half buried in swamp. The dim light of the restaurant cuts through the night. We get out, and there is a lake off to the side, and what surrounds us is the very depth of Florida. He's got to get out carefully, but gets pushed out by my roommate. He staggers around for a moment, almost in awe and rage.
“This is it!” he shouts, waving his arms, “This is the end!”
“The end of what?” my roommate asks.
“The end of Florida! You've taken me to the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida,” he screams again, and motions to the lake, “that is the edge of reality, the end of civilization. Over that way, right there, on the map, they'll have written 'Here Be Dragons!'”
I turn my head around. He's pointing at the gator pen, which he can't see from where he's at.
“You're gesturing at the gator pen, you know,” I respond.
“And that's my point!” he shouts again.
I want to tell him that this isn't the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida, since that honor belongs to the Miccosukee restaurant, but we approach the entrance anyway. There's a brief moment of fear, since the glass windows are covered in so many midges it looks like gray carpet curtains from a distance, and the porch functions like an airlock to keep them out. We get inside, sit down, and wait for twenty minutes for the server. They have no steak, either. They ran out five minutes ago, in fact.
He screams. I bought a grill on Sunday.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Book Status
I have gotten my hands on the final copy of Ten-Ghost. It looks good, I approve, and am going to be getting thirty more copies of my own. This means that in about six weeks, it'll show up on Amazon as available. Everything is awesome, though I've been told my name is suited more for hard SF than fantasy.
I do have a few places I'm going to be sending one of the thirty copies I'm getting; otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with the rest.
Any ideas?
I do have a few places I'm going to be sending one of the thirty copies I'm getting; otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with the rest.
Any ideas?
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