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o:)
The Xperia should definitely increase your reading space vs the iphone.
You now just have to put up with agonizing wait for it to appear!
Definitely not omnipotent!
They wish!
Well…all I can say about those mythologies is this…at one time those stories were part of what people called religion. The stories of Zeus, Heracles, Aphrodite, etc. That was what human beings in ancient Rome and Greece, in all their so-human folly, believed to be ‘gospel’ those stories were their Bible. it was mainly oral, but eventually written down.
If you can question how those people could believe in that non-sense, they you must also see why someone from outside of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim world might say the same about the stories in the books of those religions.
So it’s interesting that you ask if they are omnipotent, the ancient gods were never omnipotent, the JCM G-d is omnipotent, and if you ask me, an omnipotent, omniscient deity brings up even more questions than those posed by the ancient gods…
But then, I am a demon, it is my job to spread heresy in all forms.
But, of course, it’s always better to read non-fiction, like DoA than to read fiction like these other books.
o:)yeah Tizzy, we all appreciate your word as to the story’s veracity.
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Actually as a note on GR ratings…I think that unless one is live rating as they read, everything is going to be biased upwards, because the books we remember the best to rate/review are the ones we liked the best and read the most so those books all are pre-selected/filtered to be ones the reader likes.I think I’d only really trust ratings on recent/new books, and even then…
Well…for me, I don’t have the time anymore to read a bad book. If I don’t like a book, I don’t finish it, if I don’t finish it, I don’t rate/review it. I had to do this because I ended up with a queue that was never getting finished because “I had to finish this other book first.” I finally gave up. Now if a book sucks, I stop reading and move on. So books I don’t like will never get rated on GR. Another pre-filter for ratings.
And oddly, given the modern attention deficit disorder way the modern world works…now days I read more short stories than novels…I used to hate short stories…and most of it is netfiction…
OK,
Back, finally have a bit of time.
@Tizzy, I’m ignoring you.
@Everyone else:
On the book. Actually, you sort of have me on the gold lettering on the book. My vision of what the book looked like has sort of changed over time. For the majority of the time I wrote it I was thinking of it as a soft leather cover, and maybe with some goldish writing on the outside (similar to gold paint/ink) but looking at the actual description you quote…that’s not what I implied. Or I don’t think it was.
That part was written during the first wave of writing (circa 1985-86) which took me up through the caravan attack basically. The second wave of writing was in 94-95 and by that time my thinking on it had changed/gotten more realistic and by the third/final wave 2013-2014 I wasn’t even seeing the error…there were too many other things I wanted to fix/improve.
So inconsistency there is really time. I don’t advise writing books over such a long period of time, although historically I have done exactly that with everything I’ve written. Now that I know I can actually get them read by people, I have an incentive to finish things more timely (like book 2). When I was writing most of the book, I was mainly writing it for myself with a dream of publishing it, but this was pre-ebooks and self-publishing and I knew the chance of actually getting published were slim to nil…so I took my time. (Actually, I just stopped writing on this book for 20 years)
That being said…I will say this, and it’s important to understand: I didn’t start with medieval Europe as a basis for Astlan, I started with a montage of fantasy worlds, largely all based on Tolkein, but expanded by people like Terry Brooks, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Gary Gygax (D&D) and later Robert Jordan.
So my starting point for “reality” was generic fantasy world. And thus…in Astlan, while gold is valuable, it’s not anywhere near as valuable as it really was. This is because it isn’t that valuable in fantasy worlds. The final hobbit movie is coming out this fall/winter. Check out Smaug’s bedroom in the mines. That is a completely ridiculous amount of gold by any economic standard.
All I can think while staring at it is that if all that gold got out into the world…entire economies would collapse under hyper-inflation…
Now, not to use that as an excuse…but that’s the sort of world that’s my starting point, not Europe.
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So…back to the glass.
If we were talking animagic, the stuff that animages do, I would and do agree with you 100% plus in terms of glass and the production of many other things. Animages can’t do this stuff, never could.
That’s the difference with Wizardry and why it was so huge a development. It brought about, is bringing about, a magic-industrial revolution. Wizardry is to animagic “sort of” what engineering is to science. It’s engineering and the production of a technology of magic that makes it safe, predictable and repeatable.
To that end, they start with small pieces with specific magical functions and build larger constructs. That’s what spells are. They are channeling animus and mana in verbal, semantic and material “keys”, “tools”, “catalysts”, “batteries”,”frameworks” etc rather than trying to do this by force of will.
As I’ve discussed wizardry makes magic far more widely available to people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten that far with animastery etc.
Everyone talks about “magic items” thinking swords, flying carpets, but my guess is that the largest number of magic items are really magic tools used to make other magic items. They tend to be single purpose, or limited purpose items designed to help the wizard do other things.
So for example, when we talk about using pyromancy with glass making? We are talking about magic furnaces that are temperature regulated and stable.
I am not literally talking about a pyromancer standing there acting as a blow torch. If a blow torch is needed (as it often may be) then it’s a Rod of Fire or some such doodad.Similarly, there will be magic devices that help the flow of the liquid glass into a flat form.
The point is, with wizardry, the wizard isn’t doing most of the work, it’s preconfigured spells, magic tools etc.
Lots of little spell parts add up to something far more complex and stable than any single wizard could control on their own.
In fact, that’s what ultimately makes Wizardry more powerful than Animagic.
Note that a group of human wizards, fewer than a hundred were able to work together and evict a thousand demons, including several archdemons against their will. The archdemon’s didn’t stand a chance. Clearly the arch demons were more powerful than any of the wizards, but the wizards acting together using wizardry (the pentacles and lots of material components) were able to overwhelm and expel all those demons.
Here is a thing I thought a lot about. How do wizards make a living? This was critical for me in writing the book.
Gastrope’ wants to eat, he takes a job as combat wizard working for Exador. Not a really smart idea, but he’s gotta eat.
It’s pretty clear though how one or two wizards in a good sized city could make a living as Magic Consultants, spell casters for hire, in particular Thaumaturges can do quite well.
For my influence on this, see [url=http://www.amazon.com/Master-Five-Magics-Lyndon-Hardy/dp/0345334256/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407196227&sr=1-1&keywords=master+of+five+magics]Master of Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy[/url]
But what about in a city with thousands of wizards? Who needs that many wizards? What’s the economic model for such a city?
It’s basically going to be very similar to the Italian City States…it’s going to be craftsmanship. You will have wizards making stuff to sell.
And you will need other wizards to make the “magic tools” higher up wizards need to make the flashy items.So you are going to have lots of wizard craftsmen in this city building the tools for other wizards to make glass, for other wizard to make magic mirrors etc.
Zilquar makes carpets, yeah, but the real work is making the magic looms that do most of the work. You need to weave the magic spells into the fabric of the rug, thus you need magic looms and other wool (or whatever the rug is made out of) implements.
OK, gotta take a break…
Yes, the fist/nail thing is a problem that I didn’t think of in the first round. I thought about it later, but didn’t actually remember to deal with. In hindsight, him simply noting the issue the first time he tried to do it, and his work around probably would have solved this inconsistency.
His most effective physical strikes are the open hand strikes which are every bit as extra devastating as a not-completely closed fist strike would be.
He can make an approximation of a fist, he just can’t fully close it due to the long nails. Obviously it’s not going to be as solid as a full closed fist, but in my mind, if not clear in explanation, a lot of the power of those fist strikes was from the aura of what he considers is is Qi, Chi, or spirit fist. They later manifest as energy blasts as he learns to project his Chi.
I have to be honest, haven’t tried to work the site in mobile. Will test it. The support framework in theory has mobile friendly versions but I haven’t worked on it much.
The other Sidhe are more “monster manualish” so need to be “cleaned up”
No one ever tried to play a “Ban Sidhe” character so there’s not a lot written about their culture.
Of course, now that Teen Wolf has gone there (a while back even) and actually has a banshee, I suppose if the game were to be published, we’d have to write up a culture for them….
One big problem I have is that there is a big cross-cultural assimilation of “Earth” mythology all piling up in Astlan like a melting pot (or a refugee camp).
From the book’s perspective, there is a very good reason for this which will be come more clear in II and III. But the problem is, integrating it all and describing it all is a huge task….so some of will be on an “as needed” for the story basis.
