I didn’t do any work on the website, so I might as well talk a bit about what I did instead. You may recall that I mentioned doing some reworking of the House Wulf family tree. Of course, if I did it for one of the Eight Stars, I’d have to do it for the others, and some were a lot more effort than others. I was just kinda picking at it until I just went in full-bore and devoted a whole day’s efforts to it.

One of my dictionaries, one with encyclopedic material, included a section on the etymology of names and that was my first reference when it came to naming characters. I would go on to transcribe by hand a dedicated dictionary of names and compile numerous other sources as well. That being said, when I was first naming characters, I was only looking at the meaning of the name. I wasn’t thinking about the heritage of the character, whether the name was anachronistic or not, etc. I’ve gone through one or two passes of revisions over the years, but amid the reconstruction efforts (and my earlier campaign of proofing my manuscripts), I started thinking about these things even harder and working to amend incongruencies where I found them. While doing this, I was also painting a clearer history of the families. For instance, House Wulf was originally based in Gotland before moving to Skadia and later Titan (then to Gladius and ultimately back to Gotland). Despite the heirs of House Wulf ultimately becoming more Northman than Gotlander, they nevertheless maintain an old Germanic naming convention. Claudius is actually the first exception (which shows that Randwulf regarded his queen more than family tradition).

Anyway, it’s been a lot of work and the results are going to reverberate throughout the Gladius Cycle. Instead of making piecemeal changes here and there, I’ll just wait to fully implement the changes when it comes time to proof the manuscripts. Fun, fun, fun, but before that, I should get back to work on the site. I imagine other detours will crop up amid the slog of plugging in the remaining 1926 reviews, so I’ll be sure to comment then. Stay tuned.

I had a busy day. Not only was I implementing all those edits I’d been collecting over the week for TG, JJ1 and JJ2, but I also decided to actually make use of my word processor’s custom dictionary (a practice I fell out of because I got tired of starting the process all over again every time I had to migrate to a new machine). In this process, I caught some typos that would’ve slipped past me otherwise, not just in the three stories above but also in CeleKing1-3, EM1-3 and NagaTen. Just dealing with the Cross Arc was enough to keep me occupied for the time being, but I’ll deal with the other Arcs in the near future.

While I was doing that, I made a significant change. Well, it’s significant behind the scenes but only required one or two changes in the stories themselves. You see, back when I was writing CeleKing3, I decided that it would be simplest to use the year of adoption for the designation of Imperial weapons, i.e. the P777 was adopted in NE 777. However, CeleKing3 originally took place in NE 723. Yes, I could’ve just changed the designations of all the Imperial weapons, but instead I decided to shift the whole series one hundred years into the future. This might seem like a drastic step, but it actually made sense with the wider lore of the Cross Arc. You notice how there’s no mention of the Hybrids in the CeleKing series? Well, if I set the series after NagaTen (NE 745) and EM3 (NE 767), you can imagine a very good reason for that. Since there’s no mention of Hybrids in even later storied like JJ2 (NE 968) and TG (NE 1032), it starts to paint a bit of a picture. That being said, instead of changing a few weapon names in a couple chapters of CeleKing3, I had to go into the peripheral materials and change all the citations in the encyclopedia, timeline, genealogies, etc. Most of it was just applying a 100-year adjustment to the dates. I didn’t add any new members to the Imperial Family, though. Now the Yuanguang Emperor reigns for a whopping 167 years, but with juvenation therapy, it’s not all that wild. He dies at the age of 266, but Wuzong (who Yasuko killed in CeleKing2) was still rather peppy at 231 (though Erdi’s juvenation therapy had improved by then, so that makes a difference). Another significant change is that Princess Anmei (wife of the Yuanguang Emperor’s brother) wasn’t killed during the purge of the Sun Faction but instead in an assassination attempt on the future Emperor Wude. (She still gets posthumously honored as Empress Bian when Wude takes the throne, and it prompted me to add a whole thing where Wude’s successor Wuzheng was the son of a concubine and all the mess that led to. Fun times.)

I think I may start doing sweeps in the Space and Tellus Arcs and see what that brings up. I’ll then try to gear myself to focusing on TWH next week. Hopefully there won’t be any more head trauma cramping my style. Stay tuned.

I consider my primary goal as a writer is to entertain the reader (and myself, as I first set out to write a story I can enjoy and then hope others can share that enjoyment). That being said, I don’t want to just go the safe route and write the SFF equivalent of Hallmark movies (not that I don’t have some respect for the simple business model of delivering what the target audience wants). I do want to challenge both the reader and myself sometimes, and that leads us to the topic of today’s post. I’ve talked before about how my early novels tended to have more Boy Scout-type protagonists, but my protagonists have become more morally grey as I get older. I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly cynical sort, but no matter how sour you think you are, age has a way of souring you further and that gets reflected in the characters I write. Somewhat related to this is the idea I’ve floated before about creating an unlikeable character that the reader is nevertheless invested in. How many bad things add up to a bad person and how bad does a person have to be before it turns people away?

I bring all this up because it’s about time to debut the Welcome to the World series and I plan to be going into some dark territory. That’s not to say I haven’t gone into dark territory before, but there are lines I haven’t crossed with my protagonists that are going to get crossed here. I’ve had my doubts about going forward as planned, but I want to experiment with the audience’s tolerance for a character’s moral failings. Will the character’s good be only seen as hypocrisy or is it part of a more rounded and nuanced individual? Ultimately, this isn’t something I’ll decide but rather the audience. It may be rejected, but I’ve decided to give it a shot and see what happens.

I’ve drawn some inspiration from Westworld (Season 1, at least) for WttW in that there’s an environment where there’s a power imbalance that encourages people to indulge in their lesser nature. People succumb to temptation with varying degrees of enthusiasm and I want to see how they deal with their own internal moral conflict and how that either resonates or clashes with the moral core of the reader. As a creator, I’m dancing in a minefield of my own making. Here’s to it yielding a better result than just me getting gibbed.

There’s definitely going to be a followup post when the aforementioned line gets crossed, so we can have a chat then. Until that time, though, stay tuned.

The primary religion in the World centers around the worship of a pantheon known as the Twelve. The Twelve consist of six gods and six goddesses considered by some to be distinct individuals and by others as different manifestations of a single godhead. While it’s possible to worship the Twelve as a whole or certain combinations therein, devotion is typically focused on a single member. This is mostly due to the fact that Players must choose a single god to act as their Patron. This is less relevant for People of the World, but they also tend to focus on a single god as a matter of convention.

While the Twelve are associated with numerous aspects of Nature and society (often overlapping with others), I’m just going to list them with their primary attributes here and may do more extensive coverage in the future.

1. Luxion, the God of Light
2. Nyxia, the Goddess of Darkness
3. Manaan, the Goddess of Life
4. Tantalion, the God of Death
5. Parthena, the Goddess of Order
6. Kontos, the God of Chaos
7. Pyrion, the God of Fire
8. Maara, the Goddess of Water
9. Thoros, the God of Wind
10. Genaan, the Goddess of Earth
11. Denaan, the Goddess of Wood
12. Zoltan, the God of Metal

Obviously, the way Players view the Twelve and the way the People of the World view them are different. For Players, the benefits of a Patron are more tangible. A Patron determines the type of magic a Player can use and conveys Blessings that influence things like weapon proficiency, resistances, and more. Now, it is possible for Players decline to have a Patron, but there are few benefits to this other than avoiding the weaknesses of any single alignment.

The center of worship is the Great Temple in Axios. This is where Players are first summoned. There is a separate chapel for the Faithful of each of the Twelve. Because People of the World do not have access to magic or Blessings, Players comprise the whole of the clergy and are supported by dedicated layfolk among the People of the World called tertiaries. Each Cult is headed by a Pontifex supported by an Archbishop for each domain (two for Axios) and any number of Bishops (which is not restricted to the Job class of Bishop but includes all Tier 3 Clerics). Simply having the Job of Cleric doesn’t automatically make a player recognized clergy of a particular Cult. They must complete a term of Temple Service in order to be eligible to wear the official vestment and must maintain good standing with the Cult to retain that privilege (and wearing vestments without the Cult’s recognition can result in prosecution for the crime of impersonation).

Different days of the week are assigned as sabbaths to each of the Twelve. Furthermore, there are weekly cycles for each season, excluding the weeks of the solstices and equinoxes, which have their own celebrations. Beyond that, there are monthly and yearly cycles (akin to the Western and Chinese zodiacs respectively), and whenever these align, it marks times seen as especially holy. Other observations commemorating saints and martyrs and such have varying degrees of observation depending on your location.

Outside the worship of the Twelve, traces of animism and other folk religions can be found among the smallfolk, as well as ersatz versions of various Earth religions, particularly a pseudo-Buddhism observed in parts of the Hidden Trials of Murakumo and Shangri-La. In many cases, there is a syncretistic blending of these other belief systems and the worship of the Twelve.

As a brief overview, this should suffice for now. I may do expanded commentary on particular aspects of religious observation in the World at a later date. Stay tuned.

Since I’m going to be kicking off the Welcome to the World series in the next couple weeks, I thought I might go ahead and give you a quick overview of what the World is and how it works before we get started. If you’d rather let the World reveal itself over the course of the story, you can ignore this post. Anyway, without further ado…

Whereas the Planet in the Tellus Arc is a parallel world to our Earth with the same overall dimensions, the World of WttW is a little more abstract. Rather than a sphere, it’s a helix, starting with the Royal Capital of Axios in Upper Midgard (what one might term “the Zeroeth Trial”) and terminating in the Womb of the World, the site of the Twenty-first Trial. The World is divided into twenty-one zones known as the Trials, with an additional four Hidden Trials that branch off the Golden Path running from one end of the World to the other. The Trials vary in size but are limited and bound by invisible walls known as the Barrier. There is one way in and one way out of each Trial (excepting the ones that branch off into a Hidden Trial). The Exit Gate can only be activated after defeating the Trial Master, the boss monster of each Trial. Because each Trial is not connected by ordinary geography, you could face wildly different biomes going from one Trial to the next. The further you descend, the stronger the monsters are, and as a general principle, if you’re strong enough to beat one Trial Master, you will be just strong enough to survive in the next Trial.

There are two kinds of humans in the World: the Summoned (Players) and People of the World (NPCs). The People of the World are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the World, while the Summoned are brought into the World from Earth to participate in the Game. The goal of the Game is to complete the Trials and defeat the final Trial Master, the God-Dragon Ur-Tiamat, who is said to be the root of all evil in the world. The Summoned have greater potential than the People of the World (in numerical terms, the People of the World are level-capped at 40 while the Summoned are level-capped at 80) and are therefore the only ones with any chance of winning the Game. One way the World ensures the division between between the Summoned and the People of the World is that the two cannot interbreed. Another is that it is very difficult for the Summoned to survive without adventuring, but adventuring also has a high mortality rate (with a single annual cohort typically being reduced by half in the first year alone). Players are able to have children with each other, but a small portion even survive long enough to reach child-bearing age, much less find the stability to raise children, then Second-Generation Players have challenges of their own, such as a high risk of being orphaned and being pushed into adventuring too early with fatal results. Second-Generation Players are valued because they inherit some of their parents’ abilities, which gives them an advantage over the newly Summoned, though overconfidence in this potential often leads to the aforementioned fatal results.

Tied to the goal of winning the Game is the concept of the Brave. It is believed that the Brave is the only Player capable of reaching Level 99 and therefore most likely to stand a chance against Ur-Tiamat, who is also said to be Level 99. What’s more, it is believed that the Brave will possess the Blessings of all of the Twelve Gods of the World. You see, each Summoned chooses a Patron among the Twelves and receives Blessings as a reward for their faith. These Blessings can be inherited from parents to children, so in theory, a child with all twelve Blessings could be achieved by the fifth generation, but efforts to orchestrate a breeding program have failed to yield fruit, as it were.

I’ll stop here as I could keep on going for a good long while if I let myself. I’m thinking of doing little featurettes on different aspects of the World and the game system as we go, breaking things up into digestible chunks (though I may actually publish the full game guide on the site at a later date). I don’t know if we’ll have one of those featurettes next week or if we’ll do something else. Stay tuned.

The fact that I didn’t commit to writing the Chronicles of the Æther War series before starting on the Post-Apocalyptic and Fifth Empire Cycles takes away a bit of the mystery of the Æther War. Now when I do start on that series, it will come off more like a prequel to all these books I’ve already finished rather than the base from which everything else springs from. Anyway, given the plots of Everyday Magic 3 and Nagareboshi Tennyo, it seems like a good time to provide a somewhat comprehensive overview of the singular figure who is so pivotal to all the goings-on in the New Earth Empire from the immediate pre-Æther War era and beyond. The short “Say Hello to Mother” provides a primer for all this. Although I’m not going to reveal her true identity just yet, the entity known as Tara Ma is the source of all magic (which the Empire would call ‘Arcana’ to make it sound slightly more respectable). Tara Ma emits a unique energy that was dubbed “æther”, originally meant to be a placeholder label that ultimately stuck. This æther was later subdivided into three different types based on its effects. Alpha-type æther (also known as “neutral æther”) is the basic medium by which the Arcana operates. Much as light through a prism, it can be filtered into different elemental types, not only the classic four elements of Greek and Buddhist thought but others as well, which often results in the “element” label being dropped in favor of the more all-encompassing term “aspect”. Beta-type æther (“living æther”) acts as both a catalyst and something of a preservative for biological processes, which proves useful not only for terraforming but also as a method of juvenation and life extension therapy. Gamma-type æther (“transforming æther”) affects change in living organism, which produces the “Others” (think fantasy creatures and whatnot) which are better optimized to process æther. One key aspect of æther is that it can only be generated and processed by organic matter, specifically living organisms, though some inorganic matter can serve as conduits and receptacles of æther energy.

Tara Ma’s æther emissions only had an effective range of about 25,000km, which meant that access to the Arcana was limited to close proximity to Tara Ma. The objective was then to expand this range. Attempts were made to artificially generate æther to no effect, so attention then turned to duplicating Tara Ma herself. Although there were some experiments with breeding Tara Ma, the more effective strategy was mass cloning. They could not match the output of the original, but they were not subject to the same temperamental fluctuations in power either. These clones became the core of the Æther Drives that were used not only to power warships, starbases and the like but also to serve as the Core Units of offworld colonies, dramatically accelerating the process of terraforming worlds. How dramatically? Think along the lines of the Genesis Device in Star Trek. A process that would normally take over a hundred years could be completed in under a decade. This was a massive boon to the Empire’s expansion as it jockeyed with the Martian Alliance and the Jovian Federation for supremacy in the galaxy.

The Skyfall Calamity brought an end to the Empire’s Æther Drive-fueled dominance. Tara Ma fully broke free of her induced state of dormancy and summoned her far-flung “daughters” throughout the Empire to her. Planetary Core Units could not answer the call to Reunion and they along with any other Æther Drives that were prevented from returning to Tara Ma were put to sleep by Tara Ma herself. This devastated worlds reliant on the Core Units with events such as the Cataclysm on Altamira, the Days of Fire and Forgetting on Bellator and so on. These disasters manifested themselves in different ways, showing signs of variance among the different Core Units. The Core Units that went dormant largely continued to passively maintain the ecosystems they helped create and emit æther. Vague memories of them would persist in various myths, such as the Maid of Life of Miravel and the extinct cult of the Earth Mother on Bellator.

While hundreds of Lost Worlds were dealing with the collapse of civilization, the Empire collapsed into in-fighting as various factions vied to claim the throne. Once the situation stabilized and the Empire was in a position to reassert itself, work was already well underway to salvage the Æther Drive concept while reducing the risk of another incident like the Skyfall Calamity. The basis for the Hybrids featured in such stories as NagaTen and EM3 are the Alpha Type, a modified version of the Generation 1 clones of Tara Ma with some genetic modifications to reduce receptivity to Tara Ma herself with minimal interference to æther emissions, though they are not intended for active deployment but rather as a source for genetic material to produce other Hybrids to complement the limited stock of available tissue samples from Tara Ma herself. The Beta Type only has 50% of the genetic material of Tara Ma and an equivalent potential relative to the Alpha Type. Because of the perceived danger they represent, they are typically kept under containment and are only used as relays in the “Æthernet” that connects all Hybrids and allows for superdimensional communication. The Gamma Type has a 25% portion of Tara Ma genetic material and is often the “big gun” of deployed Hybrids, as seen with Major Yang in NagaTen. The Delta Types, at 12.5%, are the most powerful Hybrids typically deployed, while the Epsilon Types at 6.25% are seen as more of the standard-issue Hybrid. While a Zeta Type (3.125%) classification exists, they do not typically have much advantage over mid-level Arcanists and are not generally produced (though their reliable manifestation of Arcana potential makes the concept serve as a sort of emergency resolve should doctrine shift to favor mass deployment of Arcanists). At the level of the Eta Type (1.5625%), the manifestation of Arcana potential becomes uncertain, as does the ability to connect to the “Æthernet”, so experiments at further dilution of Tara Ma’s genetic material were abandoned.

While the above represents the mainline development of Tara Ma Hybrids, there are many other types of experimentation, which you will see in such stories as Candidate 03 and Seasons’ Seasons. Among the objectives of these various projects are increased output, greater stability, and risk reduction. Results are varied, but none of these projects have seen the same widespread adoption as the mainline Hybrids. Of course, issues with the Hybrids in the mid-8th Century, as demonstrated in NagaTen and EM3, would at least temporarily put an end to the activities of the Hybrids as we know them. Action yields reaction and the risk of a second Skyfall Calamity sufficiently spooks the higher ups. The lure of Tara Ma’s power is too great to abandon, so we don’t see a total purge, but the Hybrids do find themselves put on ice for a good long while.

I could delve deeper into the details, but I think this is more than enough for one post. I may cover certain points in greater detail later if the mood strikes me. For now, we’ll leave things here and let the rest of EM3 and NagaTen play out. Stay tuned.

Addendum:

If you were wondering if the æther produced by Tara Ma functions differently from æther as described in the Tellus Arc, the answer is no. It’s no coincidence either as the Cross Arc is so named because it was intended as a cross of elements from the Tellus Arc and the Space Arc. What I’ve talked about here actually spoils some elements of stories I haven’t brought into production yet, but you won’t have the full context until those stories are released (unless I decide to just go ahead and talk about it here on the blog prior to their release). You might be wondering if it’s too convenient that the æther label just happens to refer to the same thing, but that isn’t the case. The same thought process is at work even if the people involved are separated by thousands of years. Admittedly, the Imperial scientists who initially used the “æther” label were doing so out of a bit of poetic whimsy, but tapping into the stuff of myths works out when those myths become reality.

Contrary to what the title might imply, this isn’t going to be a broad discussion of racism in general or even to how it applies to my characters as an extension of “On Values Dissonance”. Rather, I was wanting to specifically address the Blackamoors of Junker Jorg. The name itself will elicit the titular cry of this post and it’s entirely intentional. Though the country of Byrandia is largely inspired by pre-WWII France, it’s rather plainly goose-stepping its way down the path of fascism.

The basis for Junker Jorg stems from two separate dreams that I connected. The one relevant to today’s discussion basically follows the events of Chapter 1 of the story. I was occupying the character who would be Root, watching all the various monsters roaming about in the ruins in the distance. One of the large ones, I noted, would’ve been voiced by the late Daisuke Gouri if it actually could speak. This made me think about Gouri’s role as Bask Om, commander of the fascistic paramilitary group known as the Titans, in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Sure enough, who would appear on the horizon by the Titans themselves. The rest played out mostly how you saw it on the page. (As a side note, Margie was largely inspired by Lili Stecchin of Pumpkin Scissors, her torment quite possibly fueled by my annoyance at the idea of a little girl being a sergeant major. I was rather pleased with the justification I came up with in the story proper.)

Well, I couldn’t very well use the Titans in the actual story, so I took inspiration from the Italian Blackshirts, the German Brownshirts, and the Spanish Falange to craft an organization of my own design. I don’t know why, but I decided to incorporate Laurence Olivier’s disconcerting blackface makeup from his performance of Othello as a distinguishing feature. Now, if you haven’t seen the movie itself, just checking out a screenshot will reveal how off-kilter it looks. The funny thing is how much faith Sir Laurence had in its verisimilitude. Just look at this article to see how much he was applying his powers of observation (or attempting to, at least) to affect a genuine portrayal. Anyway, with that inspiration, it was just another step to go from a depiction of the Moor of Venice to the archaic term ‘Blackamoor’ that became the organization’s name.

So, yes, if you think the fascist gang of thugs from the story is racist, you’re right on the money. Ironically, the blackface allows them to minimize any potential racial variance in members (to the casual eye, at least), so while their rhetoric is virulently racist, they’re pragmatic enough to take in just about anyone willing to do the terrible things they do. I suppose it’s not unlike the yakuza being fairly willing to accept Koreans into their ranks.

Anyway, hopefully this post shed some light on things. I doubt it’ll spare me the barbs of some social justice warrior, but I seem to be obscure enough to be free of such attention.

Ahead of my zombie movie reviews, here’s a little spiel about how zombies work in my canon. I use “zombie” for the convenience of contemporary audiences. The word isn’t used in the Tellus Arc as it would’ve been wildly anachronistic. (Yes, there are plenty of anachronisms in my stories, but I try to cut back on some of the most egregious ones.) The word you’ll typically hear is “revenant”, “the dead that walk” or something similar. We’re going to restrict ourselves to a discussion of undead zombies, which are all raised by means of the magic arts.

Zombies can be divided into their physical type and intellectual type. You can mix and match these with varying degrees of success. First, the most basic physical type is an ordinary dead body. It is subject to regular decomposition and its physical limitation can be overcome relative to the power of the magic infusing it, but eventually its usefulness will be completely expended. A flesh-eating zombie can delay the rate of decomposition, not by the physical means of digesting the flesh it consumes but rather by absorbing the life-energy within the flesh. A preserved body, such as in the manner of Egyptian mummification, can function for longer, but this depends on the manner of preservation. For instance, physical preservation is subject to physical limitations. You wouldn’t be able to keep a traditional mummy from decaying for long if you took it to a tropical swampland. Magic-enhanced preservation could be virtually perpetual. A patchwork zombie is crafted from multiple bodies (not unlike Frankenstein’s monster), which can yield a stronger amalgamation, but these are difficult to do will and the different parts make it difficult to bind a spirit to the flesh. The final type is a Copy Golem, made from bones (or ashes) and grave soil (think Kikyou from Inuyasha). Though essentially a clay doll, by means of advanced necromantic arts, it takes the likeness of flesh. Caligo’s Companions were revived by the Monarch Lich in this manner. It is the most resilient type of zombie and the most ready vessel for holding a person’s soul.

As for the intellectual types, the most basic is a mindless drone, animated entirely by magic. Every action must be directed by the necromancer. This is sufficient if you’re just trying to send waves of the walking dead at an enemy. The slave type is more advanced, capable of following simple commands. They are made by binding a soul with the zombies body. An animal soul of sufficient intelligence will suffice. The most advanced intellectual type comes from binding a sapient soul to the body. If available, the original soul will be the best fit. A fully sapient zombie is the most difficult to control, which make them dangerous to necromancers punching above their weight.

When it comes to stopping zombies of any type, there’s no particular virtue to aiming for the head. Depending on the power of the magic animating the zombie in question, you may have to completely destroy the body before it stops, and that’s assuming the necromancer behind it hasn’t enchanted it to regenerate (which isn’t usually a risk but does happen). Merely being bitten by a zombie won’t turn you into one, though the bite is likely to fester fairly quickly and kill you (and that’s not even accounting for any particular dark energy or curse that may be transmitted via the bite). Being recently dead does make it easier for you to be raised as a zombie yourself and it’s possible that the curse can be transmitted via the bite to activate upon your death, but strictly speaking, it’s not the bite alone that makes more zombies. (For that matter, the curse could be transmitted by scratching or via other fluids.) The risk of the curse spreading is mostly restricted to high order necromancy, but naturally you’d want to keep your distance as a general rule.

Lastly, when it comes to shamblers vs. fast zombies, it again falls to the magic animating the body. As you might imagine, dead tissue isn’t apt to move too quickly. A relatively fresh body still in rigor mortis isn’t going to be moving very fast without damaging the tissues. However, once rigor wears off, the flexibility of the flaccid state makes it easier to move the body more quickly. Generally speaking, though, zombies aren’t likely to move all that quickly as it requires more magic to push the body that hard and mitigate the damage. This of course means a fast zombie is that much more an unpleasant surprise.

That should do it for our coverage of some of the creepier denizens of my stories. I may or may not do a follow-up post on vampires. Otherwise, we’ll move on to other topics. Stay tuned.

I said I might follow up on my post about vampires in my canon with similar coverage of werewolves and so here we are. My vampire lore is far more extensive, I’ll admit, to the point where I really need another post of two to cover further details. Werewolves, on the other hand, are much simpler.

Werewolves come in two types: natural and cursed. A natural Werewolf is simply a variety of Demihuman (or Beastman, if that’s the term you prefer). In other words, they’re just a more humanoid sort of wolf. They’re capable of walking on two feet and have a degree of manual dexterity roughly on par with a chimpanzee, but besides these particular physical qualities and the mental capacity to establish the rudiments of civilization, they’re not so different from their four-legged cousins.

The cursed Werewolf is no doubt what you’re most interested in. The curse of the Werewolf is tied to the phase of the moon. The fuller the moon, the more wolflike you become. By the full moon, a cursed Werewolf appears much like a direwolf. The curse can be transmitted via a Werewolf bite (but only when the curse is active, i.e. during the night while the moon is at least partially in phase), though this isn’t usually a concern because victims of a Werewolf attack rarely survive. A cursed Werewolf is mortal and can be killed by ordinary means, but the curse greatly boosts their physical abilities and so it’s much more difficult. Silver has the effect of weakening the dark magics behind the curse and therefore increase vulnerability, but it’s not a matter of silver being the only means of killing a Werewolf. It would, in theory, be possible for a high-level white mage to remove the curse, but only by possessing power greater than the curse (or by artificially boosting the mage’s power above the level of the curse).

That’s really all there is to it. I told you there wasn’t nearly as much to talk about on the subject. I plan on reviewing zombie movies in the last week of the month, but I may do a commentary post about how they work in my canon sooner than that. Stay tuned.

Given the theme of this week’s movie reviews, I thought it might be nice to go into detail on the rules for vampirism in my stories. At present, vampirism only exists in my Tellus Arc stories. I suppose in a roundabout way it crops up in a few Earth Arc stories and could potentially present itself in the Cross and If Arcs as well, but for now, it’s restricted to the Tellus Arc, hence the title of the post.

I’ve already depicted the process of turning into a vampire twice: with Flavia Sapphira in The Three Warriors and with Narkissos (better known as Sir Caligo) in TTWC2, so let’s start there. First off, to become a vampire, you must drink the blood of a vampire. Typically, you are first drained of blood to just shy of the point of death as the admixture of essences eases the transition. The process of being reborn into unlife is very traumatic and it takes great force of will to maintain your mind. Should you fail, you’ll becomes a ghoul, a mere ravening beast. Ghouls have all the powers of a vampire, but they don’t tend to live very long because they have nothing more than animal instinct to guide them. Hunting them is comparatively easy.

The powers of a newly born vampire are relative to its sire. In other words, should you be turned by an ancient vampire, you would start out much stronger than if you were sired by a younger vampire. There is also the matter of your innate abilities. A turned archmage will have even stronger magical powers, though someone like a white mage would have their alignment flipped, but more on that later. The basic abilities include increased strength and speed and heightened senses. Other abilities such as flight and shapeshifting manifest later. Lestat’s comment from Interview with a Vampire holds true. “The Dark Gift is different for each of us.” Different abilities will manifest for different individuals. For instance, if you are a latent telepath, that ability would manifest itself after you were turned. Even the slightest latent potential will be drawn out in the due course of time. As your vampiric powers grow, all your abilities, both natural and supernatural, are amplified and enhanced.

As for weaknesses, light is the great vampire killer. Sunlight is the most obvious, but light magic is also effective. Even for a newborn vampire, exposure is not immediately fatal, but the resistance depends of the power of the individual vampire. Vampires are also vulnerable to water, the purer the better (hence the effectiveness of holy water). The same applies to silver. For wood, it must be fresh, no more than a day or two since it was cut, ergo a makeshift stake broken off from a piece of antique furniture wouldn’t do you much good. Garlic and certain pungent herbs can have a warding effect on weaker vampires but will not stop a determined one. As for the effectiveness of holy objects such as crucifixes, it is the person’s faith rather than the object itself that has the warding power. (As a result, a committed atheist can’t expect to hold up a cross to save himself.) The vampire’s heart is the source of his powers. Using a wooden stake blocks the flow of energies that sustain the vampire, but this isn’t enough to kill it. If you remove the stake, the vampire will reanimate. Cutting out the heart is more effective, but if the heart is reunited with the body (or even the ashes of the body), the vampire can be restored. To completely and permanently destroy a vampire, you must stake the heart, sever the head, then burn it all in the light of the sun. However, less thorough measures are normally sufficient as the average vampire isn’t going to have anyone working to restore him.

The vampire’s thirst for blood is the basic means by which he gains and sustains power. The longer a vampire goes without drinking, the weaker he becomes and the more susceptible to a vampire’s vulnerabilities. It is also important that the blood be fresh or else the life energies will dissipate, which happens quickly as the blood is separated from the body or the body approaches death. (As a result, the modern vampire drinking from blood packets wouldn’t be viable under this system.) The more potent the blood, the more power is derived from it. The blood of the young has more vigor than that of the old, the blood of a mage more than that of a commoner, and so on and so forth. All else being equal, a vampire who feeds on humans is going to be stronger than one who feeds on rats. It is possible to slow the atrophy by entering into a state of hibernation and there is also something of a rubber band effect where an atrophied vampire can regain power faster than it was first acquired. Beside basic life energies, abilities and experiences can be transmitted via the blood. We saw this in KoG3 with Adrienne picking up Byrnan by drinking Mark’s blood and in TTWC2 where Caligo was able to completely read Sir Telemachos’ mind via his blood. As a result, the drinking of blood is more than just a matter of acquiring energy and makes active vampires all the more dangerous.

Dhampirs, or half-vampires, are an interesting case. They are as varied as full-blooded vampires in terms of their abilities and vulnerabilities. It’s an oversimplification to describe them as having half the power and half the weakness, but it provides a conceptual starting point. The more blood a dhampir drinks, the more their vampiric side comes to the fore, but only by drinking vampire blood can they be fully turned. Only some ancient vampires have the ability to breed, so typically the only way a dhampir can be born is if the human mother is turned while pregnant, as was the case with Flavia Sapphira. Unsurprisingly, dhampirs are exceedingly rare. The Cadmus twins shouldn’t be seen as typical examples of dhampirs because of Shadowblight’s extensive experimentation on them. Vincentian had a natural affinity for regeneration, so this was amplified to the point where he could regenerate more quickly and completely than even many full vampires. Adrienne pushed the physical limitations of a dhampir’s body without a significant increase in vulnerability, but she lacked any higher level abilities like shapeshifting and suffered a thirst for blood nearly on par with a a full vampire. Before Shadowblight’s experimentation, they both had a higher thirst for blood as a product of habit because their mother raised them as full vampires.

Lastly, we’ll discuss psychic vampires. These aren’t necessarily vampires in the traditional sense, though it’s possible for a conventional vampire with psychic abilities to become a psychic vampire. Basically, a psychic vampire feeds on the astral energies of others as opposed to blood. This could kill the mind just as extensive exsanguination can kill the body. For dual vampires, there are two options for gaining power. A dual vampire could hibernate with his physical body while continuing to feed psychically and awaken even stronger.

When I had a friend read T3W, he noted the peculiarity of Flavia Sapphira being able to see herself in the mirror after she was turned, as opposed to the common trope of vampires casting no reflection. At first I considered going back to change it but decided instead to leave it in. My post facto reasoning is that only vampires of a certain power level cease to have reflections.

Well, hopefully this has served to be an illuminating post (apologies to the vampires for whom illumination isn’t a desired state of affairs). Perhaps I’ll make another similar post on werewolves later in the month. Stay tuned.