European Vacation Part 1: The Email Summaries

In response to a couple emails I sent describing my first half-week of experiences, it was requested —by my parents and Aunt, but a request is a request— that I write more of my experiences in Europe at the end of September/beginning of October. For starters, the two emails that I sent my parents detailing the days when I could reliably go home to the Internet and not be too pass-out drunk to handle a Kindle Fire, slightly edited from their original format to provide additional context/remove irrelevant family bits.

Summary:
Landed on September 19th in Munich. Flew home on October 2nd.
Nailed 6 countries: Germany, Austria (on two separate occasions), Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Italy
Peggy & Phil: My cousin who lives in Munich and her English boyfriend (who let all of us sleep on the floor of their apartment)
Art: My cousin, Peggy's brother, whose birthday we celebrated on this trip. Lives and works in Beaver Creek, CO, and many of our traveling companions were his friends from Colorado.
George: My brother

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To: Mom & Dad
Subject: Munich Days 1 & 2
9/20/2012

Hey. Just thought I'd give you a quick update. Miss you; love Munich so far.

Once we landed in Munich, we met some of the Beaver Creek crew outside the airport, shared a round just outside, and hopped on the bus for Peggy's. After we settled in, we grabbed lunch at Hofbräuhaus. I picked the scweinebraten (a slice of pork with a crispy skin sitting in gravy); Peggy got essentially Mac & Cheese made with spätzle (Käsespätzle), and Art had some of the best sauerbraten I've ever tried. After lunch Peg showed us around Marienplatz, then we picked up sandwich fixings to make dinner at Peggy's while waiting for Phil to get back from Nuremberg.

Today we grabbed döner kebabs from a street vendor while Peg was running an errand. Peg showed us the spot where they had to detonate a WWII bomb in the city (not the one in the potato field; this one was discovered slightly before that one while crews were demolishing an old night club to build something new). Then we took a leisurely walk through the Englischer Garten before making our way to an Irish pub just outside Sendlinger Tor to get drinks and appetizers while waiting for a couple more Beaver Creek-ers who had just landed and checked into their hotel. We stayed there to wait for Phil to meet us as well. Then Art led us to this great Afghan restaurant. It kinda reminded me of the Moroccan restaurant in Porto. We had some great appetizers: little crispy potato wedges and this amazing roast pumpkin. For dinner, I got Mantu, which are these sort of little meat pies made with filo dough and slathered in this spicy red sauce. Art got chicken kabobs with rice that was spiced kinda like pumpkin pie. We were crammed into this great little side room; though we were a party of twelve, and there was probably only room for about seven of us to sit comfortably. After dinner we made our way back to Peggy's just in time to get a text from George letting us know he was boarding and would see us soon. Then we took a couple shots of absinthe and toasted Art since, in Germany at least, his birthday had officially begun.

Also, and it's a good thing I wouldn't actually be able to use it for the next two weeks, but my phone would appear to have jumped out of my bag somewhere between de-planing in Dusseldorf and getting to Peggy's apartment. I've searched through all my bags and the floor around them to no avail, so we may need to hasten the "replace my phone" initiative.
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To: Mom & Dad
Subject: Munich Days 3-5
9/23/2012

On Friday we got up late and had breakfast and lunch at Peggy's. Then Art showed us around Marienplatz while Peg took the girls dirndl-shopping. We grabbed beer and brats at Victualenmart before discovering a place for döner kebabs just up the street. This began the long tradition of me not joining the guys every damn time they needed a döner kebab...

Afterward, we took a long walk to the Augustiner Brauhaus for Art's party. We had about 3 maß each and several rounds of pear schnapps. George finally showed up during the party. He and I both had the Bavarian Sampler platter, and that was my first time learning that bread on the table isn't complementary in Germany. Art got a set of lederhosen for his birthday, which he put on at Augustiner and wore through Oktoberfest yesterday.

Yesterday we went to Hauptbahnhof to get train tickets and döner. Then we went to Oktoberfest. We had a couple maß outside the Löwenbräu tent. Then Peggy took us to a show in which they challenge volunteers to sit on a spinning disc in the middle of a tent. After a couple seconds of letting centrifugal force eliminate people, they start throwing ropes and a big foam ball at the survivors to dislodge them. I volunteered (the first person Peggy brought to Oktoberfest to do more than just watch); I didn't last very long becausesome jerk used his foot to prevent me from sitting down all the way for more surface area. We left early to pick up some groceries before the stores closed for Sunday. We ate homemade piazza and a pot of pasta for dinner.

Today we went to Salzburg. We took a two-hour train ride through gorgeous countryside before arriving at the most beautiful city I've ever seen. We wandered through a little craft fair along the river, headed into a dozy little biergarten for lunch, walked through a crowded street festival and arrived at the funicular to go up to the castle. We spent a long time exploring the castle-turned-museum, then went back down. We ate dinner at a different Augustiner brewery, which had sort of a food court attached. Then we took a liesurely walk back to the train station through the royal gardens. Once back in Munich, Peggy had pizza and the Broncos game waiting for us.

Tomorrow, we return to Oktoberfest, then come home to pack for Prague while watching the Packer game at 2 AM local time and hopping on the earliest train we can muster to Prague via Pilsen.
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After these two points, we began traveling more, and, though I was still taking notes on everything that happened, I wasn't emailing at all, and was, in fact, barely on the Internet at all.

Continued in Part 2 and Part 3.

More Misc.

I've been getting back into 3D pretty seriously lately, and thus, my writing has been rather scattershot as of late. As such, here's another wander through my notebook, little bits of things that I's started scribbling down.

 As I've struggled with figuring out what I want to do with my post-college life and repeatedly gotten frustrated by my situation. My monitor is surrounded by Post-It Notes with motivational quotes, such as the Litany Against Fear, and somewhere in there, one of my favorite sentences in all of fiction, from Terry Pratchett's short story "Troll Bridge": "'Yeah,' Cohen wheezed a stream of smoke at the sunset." I've often joked to myself that, if nothing else, by the time I finally get out of this detestable situation, I'll at least have the makings of a great motivational book. One night, I decided to scribble down one of the revelations that would go into this hypothetical book.
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It's a bit of a paradox that "hard work" often sounds like one of the easiest things in the world. It's a key component of so many platitudes. "All you have to do is work hard..." "It's simple, really; just work hard every day, and..." You see what happened there? Juxtaposing hard work and simplicity sends the wrong message, at least to me.

Now, I can understand playing up the rewards of hard work and downplaying the pain and suffering that goes into whatever you want to accomplish. Makes perfect sense to me.

What gets me, what it pisses me off to no end that I took almost 25 years of my life to figure out, what, I think, a lot of people take just as long or longer to figure out, is that hard work isn't just something you decide to do one day. It's a decision you make a million times a day. You don't just go into work mode, or, if you do, I'm insanely jealous of you, because in my experience, it's a constant battle. You have to just sit at your desk, or lie on that little rolling bed under your car on its jackstands or stand at your easel or whatever it is you do, and convince yourself over and over again that what you're working on is more important than whatever the lazy part of your brain would rather be doing. Hard work and determination are constant, bitter struggles against a chunk of your psyche that wants nothing more than simple pleasure —a more comfortable chair, a quick stretch, another cup of coffee, a short Minecraft break— and it's clever enough and amoral enough that it will do anything to get that pleasure. The toughest part, though, is that you've only got a few strategies available in this fight. Sure, you can barter, or bargain, but I find that making any deal with yourself is just a gateway for the lazy lobe to wring further concessions out of you. In my experience —a term I hesitate to use considering how little of it I have— you have to be firm. Don't surrender; give no ground. Grit your teeth and work until you can't anymore.

There's a flip side to this, though, a silver lining. Surrender is just as much a decision as hard work. You can, at any moment, make the right choice instead. Even if you gave in and took a longer coffee break than you should have or, against your better judgement, decided to check Facebook again, you never have to let the slip-up define you. You're only a hard worker if you're working hard at any given moment, but you're also only a failure if you're failing at any given moment. You can always turn it around!

Notes from Michael Poore and Lev Grossman Book Reading

August 7, 2012 Michael Poore (author of Up Jumps the Devil) and Lev Grossman (author of The Magicians and The Magician King and Time Magazine's book critic) split a book-reading at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What follows are my notes, or more accurately, paraphrased quotes that sounded more brilliant before I managed to get my pen to cooperate and write down whatever I could still remember of them...

• "Every once in a while, a piece of literature speaks to you so strongly you just have to answer it." —Michael Poore
• Lev Grossman talked a bit about his childhood experiences with the Narnia novels that heavily inspired the Magicians series:
• He talked about 'Becoming lost in another world... a world made of words, but more real than this one."
• He called reading The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe at a very young age 'the most important reading experience of his life'
• And then he brought up that part of the core idea that spawned The Magicians was wondering if it were possible to write a children's story, but for adults and containing all those things that adults like, like sex and alcohol and drugs.
• Lev mentioned that a third Magicians novel, tentatively titled The Magicians' Land is on the way, and he read a first draft of a chapter from a new point of view character, Eliot. He also mentioned that the first two books in the series were exactly two years apart, so we can probably expect the third on about August 8, 2013. Weird...
•  Lev's early drafts are apparently much more littered with profanity than his already rather curse-laden final drafts, a characteristic for which he apologized profusely.
• Lev had a rather interesting explanation when someone asked him about the goal of the magic schools in his world and why none of the magicians ever use their power to cure cancer or anything else altruistic.
• 'The magicians who are altruistic, their stories tend to end fairly quickly. The interesting ones, we tend to focus on the losers, the morally crippled.'
• During Q&A I asked, prompted by Michael mentioning a movie that had served as inspiration for Up Jumps the Devil, about how the pros handle reference, citing the example of watching a bunch of westerns* before I wrote the first draft of "The Preacher and the Parasite", specifically regarding my paranoia that I'm going to blatantly rip something off. The answer essentially boiled down to something along the lines of 'Don't worry about it; absorb everything. Draw inspiration from unexpected sources (Lev drew a lot of inspiration in The Magicians series from the way the Bourne movies handled action),' and I mentally added 'you've got plenty of revisions to make the theft less blatant.'
• I don't remember the context for this quote, but it seemed like a good one from Michael: "I think that's one of the reasons we do write: To figure out what the heck we meant to write about."
• It was also interesting hearing Lev talk about, apparently he's a big story outliner, but there's a few characters that just refuse to be coralled by an outline. He cited Penny as an example of a character you just can't kill. Not for lack of trying, the poor guy, but he won't die; he's "like Rasputin." The character of Julia is also a major wild card for him. Apparently she was supposed to only be in the very beginning of The Magicians, but she's "a rogue agent of some agency in my brain that I don't have good communication with," and she just kept worming her way into greater and greater significance in the story.
• A neat little paraphrased quote from Lev when someone asked if his role as Time's book critic ever played a part in his writing. I wish I had managed to record a bit more of the context for this one; it could use some elaboration, kinda cryptic right now: 'in order to get anything written, you have to convince yourself of this bizarre delusion that this will actually be read by other people.'

*A better example, had I thought of it, might have been my staunch refusal to rewatch Firefly while writing "Waterbug" out of this same fear...

MIscellaneous

We've been in the midst of a horrific heat wave that seems (*knock on wood*) to have finally broken today. During the heat wave, I was all over the place, both physically and mentally. My house is an impossible building to occupy once the heat and humidity get oppressive, so I escaped to libraries, museums, my granparents' cottage up north, and my friend's air conditioned house as frequently as possible the past week. I was also all over the place mentally. Focusing on anything in that weather is just impossible, but heat-induced delirium can occasionally lead to interesting ideas that may grow into bigger things now that it's cool enough to focus on stuff. In no particular order:

• Childhood friends/brothers who had adventures in a fantasy world return to that world as adults and discover that the world has become corrupted and overgown. Their fantasy world is for all intents and purposes conquered, and those forces threaten to spill over into ours.
• I envisioned this world as being united by a magical forest, mainly because I spend so much time wandering around a nearby forest looking for ideas, but also because I could envision lots of cool ways for the forest to 'conquer' the civilized parts of the world. There's also some nifty potential for the transition between our world and the otherworld to not be distinct, like the kids were just wandering through the woods and wound up in the other world without it being immediately clear where one began and the other ended.

• How come hyper-intelligent, super-advanced civilizations are only ever portrayed as really serious about everything with only one or two exceptions (e.g. Q, the Doctor and the Master). It seems like there would be some trolls (in the internet sense of the word) along the way. Perhaps a little more primitive than the examples above. I mean, if most humans were omnipotent and could run around time and space, I bet they'd fuck around with most of the 'primitive' life they might run across. Maybe it's just a transitional phase or whatever. I'm also thinking about the old mythological gods (through the lens of Clarke's Third Law). They were always sticking their fingers in things (and, in a more literal sense, other appendages...). I want to see more nigh-omnipotent trolls in Sci-Fi and fantasy.
• "Hey! Check it out! The 'intelligent life' on this planet hasn't even calculated the last digit of π yet, and he's one of the 'smart ones'."

• What went wrong with One More Day (the Spiderman arc in which they rewrote history so that he was never married to Mary Jane, never revealed his identity during the Civil War, and Aunt May never took a bullet for him), at a thematic level, was that it took away the notion that being a superhero has consequences, and that you're not the only one that your behavior puts at risk. Could be interesting to play around with heroes who have to live with the consequences of their actions, as well as those who can't handle that responsibility and thus refuse the call.

• Beginning the physical act of drawing, writing etc. reveals details that you can't know until you attempt the actual creation.
• This one occurred to me while at my grandparents' cabin, and I grabbed a stick and started drawing the fire in the dirt.
• I keep coming back to this as an interesting seed for a magic system in a fantasy story, tying magic to artistic expression and figuring out what you learn from different types of creation and how that might affect the magic cast.
• For example, drawing, sculpting anything directly representational requires you to notice and understand and (as a magic spell) alter the physical characteristics of things. Magic based on music or poetry, alternatively, could be something more along the lines of large-scale emotional manipulation.

• "Poetry by Coersion", "Surprised by Lasers"
• Phrases I felt the need to write down in that "Would be a good band name" kinda sense...

• I'm also thinking in the near future (once I stop feeling guilty about how the heat forced me away from 3D work, and/or finish my various personal 3D projects) I'll be taking another stab at a revision of my first posted story The Preacher and the Parasite. I got some partial drafts of a prequel of sorts, describing how the Preacher wound up attached to the Parasite, but I kept hitting various walls, and I've come to the conclusion that part of why so many prequels fall flat is that they're forced to shoehorn in drama that didn't previously exist or being forced to compress a bunch of potentially interesting plot points into a much smaller period of time. I don't think the prequel attempts are a complete waste, however, as they'll work rather well into the various flashback dreams that the Preacher has during the course of the original story.

Waterbug Early Handwritten Drafts

Art school —especially art school with a focus on finding jobs in the entertainment industry— taught me that showing process is extremely important. I don't know if this policy carries over as much to the writing side of things. I doubt you'll sell anywhere near as many of The Chicken-Scratch, Handwritten Rough Drafts of Star Wars as you will The Art of Star Wars. Aborted rough drafts sure aren't as pretty as concept art, but, should anyone want to see my writing process, I'm going to try and document it for the things I post that wind up going through a bunch of revisions.

In the second draft, I was fairly certain that the bedroom scene didn't have any information or great character moments that couldn't be handled later, but I was very interested in including the hallway scene for its world-building details (the signs, Crabby's tubes, zero-G locomotion). I also tried to work a bit more characterization into Robins' political rival and that proved to be a dead-end.

For the third draft, I experimented with writing the scene out in prose, figuring that it would allow me to sprinkle description throughout the scene rather than the huge chunks of scene-setting description that I needed in script form. I also took a stab at present-tense narration inspired by Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

The fourth draft was my attempt at Kurt Vonnegut's fifth rule of short-story writing: "Start as close to the end as possible."

I went back to a script for the fifth draft. I was bouncing back and forth between this draft and the most recent draft on my computer (another good reason for referring to it as "Draft 6-ish"...). When I'd get stuck while typing, I'd switch to handwriting, and that seemed to fairly consistently jostle something so that I could keep pushing forward.

Waterbug (Draft Six-ish)

Most recent draft of Waterbug. (Draft Six-ish because of the four hand-written partial drafts  between the first draft and this one, which I hope to scan and post in the morning)

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Dramatis Personae:

Councilman Robins: Late 30's, prematurely graying. Due to the nature of the politics in Titan City, Robins is a paranoid individual, quick to avoid blame. He angers easily.

Erika Stellane: 13, captain of the Cargo Hauler Waterbug. Feisty, seemingly never serious, manipulative, but in a mostly harmless way. A lack of human contact has left her a bit of an oddball.

Crabby: About 5 Jovian years (late 50's, early 60's, by the Terran Calendar), a Europan, like a large, sapient crab or lobster. Due to his species' inability to handle human language, he mostly stays quiet, but he is fiercely protective of Erika.

Cargo Hauler Waterbug: 27, a Scarab-class light freighter. Scarabs are budget starships that were widely considered flying deathtraps even when new. To accommodate its Europan crew member, large, clear water pipes run throughout the ship with airlocks in the engine room, cockpit, and cargo bay.

INT: Waterbug Engine Room

Councilman Robins climbs down a ladder into the center of the Engine Room. He holds on at the bottom of the ladder to keep himself from floating away in the microgravity. Crabby is clinging to the wall near his airlock, holding a toolbox in one of his seven limbs. The room is dark, except for flashing red warning lights. Alarms are blaring, and the whole ship is shaking. Miscellaneous tools and spare parts float through the room.

Robins: Uhh... Captain? Captain, you down here? (He turns to Crabby) You! Have you seen the captain. Where is that little—

Erika emerges from a hatch in a machine in the aft portion of the engine room and whistles loudly. She is wearing a headlamp which shines a bright white light on Crabby and Robins. Robins turns to face her, shielding his eyes from the bright light with his free hand.

Erika puts seven fingers in front of her mouth, in imitation of Crabby's mouthparts, and flashes a quick series of gestures to him. He opens his toolbox and gently lobs a wrench to her.

Robins pushes off the ladder towards her. She ducks back into the machine and resumes her repairs.

Robins: Captain! Are you sure I can't help—

The ship shudders violently.

            Robins: —help us not die?

Erika pokes her head back out of the machine.

            Erika: Thought I told you to go back to sleep...

She pulls herself back into the machine.

            Robins: (grumbling) I've never been able to sleep through flashing lights and alarms...

Erika: (muttering) A miracle you can sleep at all in Titan City then...

Robins: What was that?

Erika: (shouting) Nothing!

Robins: Look, the ship's clearly falling apart! There's got to be something I can do to make sure—

The ship shudders violently again.

Robins: —I don't have to take an escape pod the rest of the way to Ganymede!

Erika: (muttered) First we'd need escape pods. (She pushes herself out again) 'Sides, everything you're hearing is normal.

Robins: This is normal?

Erika: Yeah... 'cept the alarms... and the warning lights. They're here to tell us that this old air scrubber (she taps the machine with her wrench) may not make the trip, and one person in this little crawlspace is more than enough, so, no, you can't help.

Robins: And if it doesn't make it?

Erika: We inhale all the oxygen in the ship and exhale CO₂ until there's no more oxygen. Then, well, you know... Oh, don't look at me like that. You're some bigshot politician now. You could've flown in style, but you chose the freighter that's almost twice as old as its captain. Was it because you missed me?

Robins: “Missed you?” Letting you get emancipated cost me my legal career!

Erika pulls herself back into the machine.

Erika: (Under her breath) Hiring cheap lawyers. Further evidence my parents provided an unstable environment, your honor...

Robins: I wasn't cheap—

Erika: (under her breath) Probably shoulda been...

Robins: Look, that was a technicality, and you know it! You're only free because of a loophole in Titanic law! One that I intend to close once this election is over—

Erika climbs out of the machine again. She points her wrench at him accusingly.

Erika: And you chartered Waterbug so after the big secret trip to Ganymede you can drag me kicking and screaming back to my parents. Is that it? A big happy photo-op: Prodigal daughter, her parents, tears of joy, and you, with a big, happy smile, all sitting right under an optimistic headline where you promise this is “just the start” and you'll be “personally addressing every colossal 'double-you tee eff' that's ever been perpetrated by the government of Titan City”!

Erika pulls herself back into the machine. This time there are no sounds of her working.

Robins: You? You seriously think I chartered this flying deathtrap for your sake? I know, as a teenager, this is a tough concept for you, but you're not the center of the universe. There's no elaborate scheme in my desk on Titan laying out in exquisite detail how I can return to a four-year-old status quo. I picked your ship because I made a judgment call at the docks. That crustacean over there who can't speak any human language gave me the idea that this would be the ship that would ask the fewest questions. An assumption I was sorely mistaken about, I might add.

Erika climbs out of the machine again.

Erika: You're worried about questions? Just wait'll the bodies of a politician in his bathrobe and a thirteen-year-old girl drift into Ganymede's orbit. What d'ya think Missus Robins will tell the press? Is there a Missus Robins? Will she be sobbing about how she had “no idea” or will she just smugly tell the reporters “Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't suffocate on starship with a waaaaaaaaaaaaaay underage prostitute sooner. He had tons of chances. Can I have my e-book deal now?”

Robins: Leave my wife out of your scenarios you deluded little brat!

Robins leaps toward Erika, arms extended, ready to throttle her. She ducks back into the crawlspace and pulls the access panel shut behind her. Robins pounds on it frantically.

Robins: Maybe I oughtta just leave you in there! You've gotta have EV gear, an air tank, somewhere. When I get to Ganymede, it'll be easy enough to add your name to the hit! Those gangsters'll probably give you to me nice and cheap compared with that jackass I'm running against! Just—

The access panel flies open, sending Robins floating through the engine room. Erika emerges holding a small recording device.

Erika: Had a hunch you were flying cheap to do something shady.

She ducks back into the air scrubber. A moment later, the warning lights and alarms stop. She re-emerges.

Erika: If it's any consolation, next time you fly Waterbug, we'll have all the comforts of home: Working air scrubbers, gravity, lights, food that wasn't vaccuum-packed before I was born, all thanks to the generous sums you're going to pay me not to send this confession to the Titan City Times.

Robins smacks into a wall. Still seething with rage, he prepares to launch himself at Erika again.

Erika: And, of course, Crabby's always happy to make sure suffocation remains an option for you, so keep that in mind before you ever threaten me on my ship again.

Fantasy World-Building Outline

I think world-building is probably my favorite way to be creative. To heck with things like "plot" and "character". There's interesting worlds out there to imagine. What happens if I change... this?

This world's been kicking around my head for a while now, and I didn't really know what to do with it, so when Gamasutra's Story Design Challenge #4 came along as a straight-up world-building challenge, I suddenly knew exactly what to do with the world I didn't know what to do with. Still no ideas for an actual story in this world, but it's been fun nonetheless.

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The World

• This is a world in which magic is a powerful, pervasive energy source. The world is steeped in magic, and all but the lowest castes of society have some faculty with magic.
• However, prolonged use of magic causes mutations related to the spells cast. For example, casting fire-related spells all the time would eventually lead to your hands always being on fire.
• Because of this trait of magic, the most powerful sorcerers cease to be even remotely human and become magical creatures, analogous to dragons or elementals. Similar fates await those who live in prolonged service to powerful sorcerers.
• Magic applies to nature in a similar manner. Evolution has favored magical animals. Solitary animals often have one or two magical tricks to aid hunting or protect them from predation. Social creatures often have their own “sorcerers”, the alphas of the packs that can cast 'spells' on the rest of the pack.
• Magic is a 'sticky' energy source. In places where it was used a lot (e.g. big magical battles or sorcerers surrendering the last of their humanity), there tends to be a residual magical energy, making those places into Places of Power, in which there is simply more magic to draw from, making it easier to cast bigger spells there, until the residual magic gets used up.

Society

• Magic use is common, and a powerful command of it is necessary for any sort of leadership role. Attempting to rule a city-state or lead an army without being a powerful magician is a good way to quickly get deposed by someone more powerful.
• The fact that powerful magic is a necessity to rule and that powerful magic tends to remove a person from human cares like power means that attempts to build empires usually fall apart when their leadership transcends humanity. Thus, city-states and small principalities are usually the largest political units.
• There is little standardization. Non-magical science, social progress and education advance with glacial slowness.
• Each city-state has its own religion, centered around their lead sorcerer as either a god or high priest to a previous leader who is no longer human (and thus, divine).
• The technological stagnation does not, however, prevent monumental architecture. As long as even small city-states are ruled by sorcerers with god complexes, elaborate palaces, fortresses, and wonders are common sights, even in relatively small city-states.
• Division of magic ability has led to a rigid caste system. Though distributions of the castes and mobility from caste-to-caste vary from city to city, the basic hierarchy looks something like this:

• At the top are Sorcerers. These are the aristocracy of the world. They have the raw magical potential and the resources required to learn a wide variety of spells. These are the type most likely to eventually become magic creatures.
• The next level down are Casters. They are less powerful than sorcerers and are unlikely to master more than a handful of spells. They often serve as officers in Sorcerers' armies or bureaucrats.
• Glamours are the artisans. They have one spell they are able to use, or a narrow family of spells. Because this one spell tends to be their livelihood, Glamours tend to become permanently enchanted. For example, many professional thieves and assassins are Glamours, and it is not uncommon to run into a thief who is stuck completely invisible.
• Receivers are the peasants. They are unable to cast magic of their own, but they are highly susceptible to it. This makes them useful as grunt infantry when city-states go to war, as the officers can easily enchant whole platoons.

Sample City-States

• The Tower: Named for the magic academy at its center, the Tower is a very populous city. It is a hub of trade, with merchants bringing magical artifacts from all over the world across the relatively safe lands around the Tower and selling these artifacts for high prices to the scholars of the city-state. Due to the academic nature of the Tower, the city-state's High Sorcerers tend to transcend humanity very quickly, leading to a perpetually unstable political landscape.
• At the heart of the Blacktree Forest sits The Clearing, ruled by the powerful Sorceress known as “The Mother of Trees” or “The Dryad”. She views her subjects with a highly protective, maternal hand, and has been steadily enchanting the surrounding forests to serve as an impenetrable wall full of murderous plants and deadly predators, keeping out invaders from the outside world, but also trade. The forest is ever-so-slowly expanding towards a neighboring city-state. The magic to keep the forest under such tight control is slowly turning the Mother of Trees wooden, like an Ent or Dryad.
• The Giant's Spine is built on the back of a humongous, human-shaped peninsula. Some say an ancient band of sorcerers bound a giant with spells that turned him to stone to found the city; others say a bookish geomancer coerced the earth into this shape so he could say he built the city upon a giant he slew. The Sorcerer Kings of the Giant's Spine have traditionally been savage warriors who used their magic to enhance their abilities to fight up close and personal rather than avoid it. The Arena is central to life on the Spine, and no day of bloodshed is complete without a display of the High Sorcerer's ferocity. When he finishes his slaughter, the whole mountain quakes, as though the king's magic causes the giant himself pain.

Gameplay Idea:

• I picture a game in this world casting the player as an up-and-coming sorcerer attempting to make his or her mark on the world. Perhaps they will attempt to take over one of the city-states. Perhaps they will try to build an empire, or rush to become a powerful magical creature and simply do whatever they want without caring about humanity at all anymore.