Author Archives: natechen

Why Systemic Theology?

Posted by natechen on

We’re not going to be addressing systemic theology on a large scale today. It’s a huge topic that people can, and often do, study for their entire lives on a scope ranging from personal reflection to rigorous academic investigation. It’s also important to note that very few people embark on those studies. They’re not topics that interest most people nor is the study of them very accessible to most people, as writings and talks on systemic theology are generally addressed towards those who are already very aware of the questions and contradictions that they attempt to address. That doesn’t change the fact that big, world changing beliefs have days and years of constant, diligent, intelligent thought behind them. The problem this poses to a storyteller is twofold.

First, when dealing with anything as all encompassing as religion, if your story is going to address the topic then if you fail to adequately understand it you will come off as insulting and uninformed. Second, systematic theology is so complex, obscure and full of jargon most people aren’t familiar with it. The observant will notice that these two things are somewhat in tension.

There is no direct contradiction, mind you, but the first thing the average writer must work with is the fact that most people who profess a religion do not know the full intricacies and nuances of hundreds or thousands of years of religious study and meditation. That’s not a judgment, just a fact of life. I drive a car with only a basic understanding of what it is and I go to church with only a marginally greater understanding of God. What writers must understand is that systematic theology does exist. This is something modern Western culture seems to entirely reject, as if acknowledging the fact that people work hard to create coherent, consistent ways of understanding their beliefs is bad.

Modern writing’s approach to belief is the Bajoran approach. To the extent people believe anything, they engage with it as a way to promote a nebulously understood ‘good’ for their community that comes from the solidarity and continuity of religious expression. This approach identifies strengths of religion – solidarity and continuity – and mistakes them for the purpose. However, as stated in my introduction to this topic, we are defining religion as something that connects its adherents to a concept or being that transcends the material. Solidarity and continuity are certainly immaterial concepts. The problem with them is that they do not transcend the material, nor do those religions focused on them ever insist that they do.

Consider the Vulcan belief in logic. Nothing about logic is bound up in the Vulcan people, it is entirely abstract. If there were no Vulcans, logic would still exist. Its basic principles would still be discoverable by anyone with an ordered mind and a desire to systematize the world. In fact, it is the discovery of those principles that drives Vulcan belief. While the methods Vulcans use to discover logic are unique to their people and build a sense of shared community and understanding among them, logic is not dependent on Vulcans. In fact, Vulcans find particular insight from the methods used to uncover logic by other species.

In short, logic is transcendent. Logic is logic regardless of the who, what or where and will continue to be so no matter how much time passes.

The Klingon belief in honor is rooted in courage and conquest, virtues of a warrior who bends the universe to his will. In the far past, the Klingons were attacked by a spacefaring people. Their homeworld was stripped of many vital resources then the invaders departed, leaving the castoffs of their technology on Qo’nos. Impoverished and enraged by this travesty, the Klingons fell into petty infighting. Eventually they would be united by Kahless the Unforgettable, who conquered the planet, taught them the importance of honor then pointed his people towards the stars.

The Klingon understanding of honor is rooted in the example Kahless set. It stands in stark contrast to the Federation’s understanding of honor. Starfleet honor is rooted in loyalty, excellence and the promotion of the common good. And yet from the moment we first see Kirk meet Kor we see that these different senses of honor result in similar actions and attitudes. These similarities and contrasts are part of what make the Klingons such a powerful foil.

Honor is transcendent, it will exist whether or not anyone holds to it. And yet the ways people hold to it create a very rich and nuanced understanding of what exactly honor is and how we can try to reach it. By showing the many different shapes honor can take when it interacts with specific circumstances, personalities and cultures we get a better understanding of those conditions, peoples and cultures.

Neither the Vulcans nor the Klingons have anything approaching a systematic theology. At least not one that we see on camera. Even if creating such a thing was one of the goals the writers had when inventing these cultures they couldn’t have the depth of thought and nuance we see in the real world theologies of long lasting world religions.

Yet we can still see how the core, transcendent pillars of their beliefs function. They inform vast swaths of their cultures and thoughts and no one looks at them quite the same way. If there were a religion like the Klingons’ or the Vulcans’ I can easily believe it would have a systematic theology. By the same token, I don’t think members of those species would be upset with how their religions are presented in Star Trek. It is handled with nuance, depth and empathy, even if the writers are not adherents themselves.

The Bajoran religion isn’t quite so lucky.

The Prophets are so named because they often predict the future to benefit the Bajoran people. These predictions, along with the religious rituals and traditions of the Bajoran people who are waiting for new prophecies, exist mostly to keep the Bajorans alive and give them a sense of community, rather than to give them an understanding of the Prophets. They are mechanisms for survival rather than transcendence. Unlike the Vulcan understanding of logic, the rituals and Prophecies the Bajorans study cannot serve as a bridge to other civilizations. They’re too particular to share.

Even Benjamin Sisko, the Emissary, a human being who is seen as a go-between anointed by the Prophets to prepare the Bajorans for a major crisis, doesn’t deepen this facet of Bajoran spiritual life at all. He occasionally gets cryptic prophecies but the key to unlocking them is the circumstances he’s in, not his understanding of the Prophets or some transcendent virtue they teach.

These survival driven tenants also negate nuance. Because prophecy and ritual are entirely circumstantial none of the different perspectives or cultural approaches to reach the same end can exist. There cannot be a broad examination of what it means to interact with the Prophets in different situations. The Prophets give revelations to relate to single circumstances for a single group of people or a single person.

We never really get a clear idea of why the Prophets behave this way. In the best case, their interest in Bajor seems to be some kind of inter dimensional charity project. Because these transcendent figures are so nebulous I never get the feel that the Bajorans have any kind of systematic understanding of them. (They do have a highly politicized clerical hierarchy, but that’s outside the scope of this post.)

It’s fine for transcendent figures to have specific points of interaction with those who seek them, by the way, and to be incomprehensible to those they interact with. The problem arises when those seeking the transcendent make no attempt to draw lines connecting those points of contact. They don’t have to all agree on how to connect those points or the order to draw the lines. No one ever has, no matter what clerics and priests sometimes tell you.

The point is they have to try. That’s the key to writing a belief system that implies a systematic theology without actually trying to create one. As a bonus, you’ll unlock all the nuance and depth of character we see in the Klingons and the Vulcans free of charge! Try it some time. The effort won’t be wasted.

The Bajoran Problem

Posted by natechen on

Let me start by making myself clear. I do not now nor have I ever had any problem with the people of Bajor. I just think their religion is rubbish.

This is not because, like Starfleet, I think atheism is some kind of highly enlightened religion killing silver bullet. I find atheists as childish and silly as they find religion so there’s that. Instead my problem with the Bajoran religion is that it has very little of meaningful religion about it. The average person might conclude that is because the writers of the Star Trek franchise, being largely of an atheistic and secular bent, were incapable of creating meaningful religions but that actually isn’t true. Both the Klingons and the Vulcans possess identifiable beliefs of a religious nature.

Since the definition of religion is nebulous and difficult to pin down for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to define religion as a set of beliefs and practices intended to put adherents in contact with something beyond the material, something transcendent, be it a concept or an actual entity that transcends what we can see or touch. This is not quite the normative or philosophical definition. It’s just mine.

Klingons venerate a great teacher known as Kahless the Unforgettable who set out the Klingon code of honor while uniting much of the planet via conquest. Then he set out on a long journey and promised he’d return and they could find him if they waited at a star in the sky. (Klingons of the time were aware of space travel although were not spacefaring themselves.) They also have underworld myths, rituals that govern the coming of age and something like an ecclesiastical calendar. There are even gods in their stories, although apparently they’re all dead now. In short, Klingons have a code of conduct and a clear metaphysical structure it interacts with.

Vulcans have a strict regimen of meditation and logic they use to control their emotions. While there’s little in the way of the supernatural in their religion they do have many tenants similar to Buddhism, which in many forms is an atheistic way of viewing the world. Some might characterize it as pantheistic but that is a distinction without a difference in my book. What’s important is that Vulcans have distinct moral tenants, rituals, meditations and behaviors their beliefs demand of them. Because of volatile nature of their emotions, they must exercise self control at all times. Logic is their key to this.

The Vulcan philosophy is also key to participation in Vulcan society – Vulcans who ignore the strictures of the logical life are ostracized, to the point where there’s a whole splinter race of them called Romulans. The Vulcan philosophy doesn’t meet the modern conception of a supernatural belief system. But that conception is just that – modern. In its function and way of looking at the world logic takes the place of traditional deific authority and the system is, in all other ways, religious.

Many stories about Klingons and Vulcans have nothing to do with these beliefs but many others put their beliefs, rituals and behaviors at the center of the story. While several major stories about Bajorans put Bajoran myth in the center we rarely get an idea of what kinds of behaviors or moral foundations underpin their religion. At most it seems to involve community bonding and ritual to give a structure to life and create disciplined thinking. That’s all well and good but organized sports can do the same.

We’re not going to dig too deep into how organized sports might serve as a religion for the modern era right now. Maybe in the future.

The problem with this approach to religion in stories is that it just becomes a placeholder for community cohesion. When the Prophets (the venerated figures in Bajoran religion) are invoked they don’t symbolize or stand for anything. It just refers to the things the Bajorans hold in common. By the same token, the Pah Wraiths, the evil counterpart to the Prophets, are just a group of snidely whiplash villains, snickering in the shadows as they plan to overthrow Bajor and destroy the universe as we know it.

Unlike Klingons and Vulcans, there is no clear pattern of behavior we can measure Bajorans by. Klingons and Vulcans exist in a constant state of tension between their culture, their beliefs and the wants and needs of their immediate concerns and circumstances. We see this more in stories about Klingons. They grapple with the meeting between their sense of honor, particularly honor through conquest and victory, and the contrary standards of other civilizations in the galaxy. Klingons often compromise their lust for battle in order to uphold their loyalty, or vice versa. Who makes what compromises and when helps us understand the essentials of their characters, what they prioritize and what their goals are.

Unlike the Klingons, the Vulcans have a pretty easy time integrating with the desires and methods of other groups of people. It’s not that Vulcans don’t understand hypocrisy and emotional behavior, they just suppress it. So they are quite capable of adapting to the behaviors of other species. The problem is one of attitude. Vulcans are dispassionate and detached as a matter of course, subordinating all their behaviors to the all encompassing power of logic and that can rub people the wrong way. Especially when the logical solution to a problem is unethical by some standards.

Bajorans don’t have these kinds of easily understood points of tension built into their culture and that is exactly because their religion is devoid of meaning or substance. Instead religion is presented as the point of tension. The writers of Star Trek are entirely blind to the fact that any philosophy that encompasses understanding the nature of life, the universe, good and evil, and how we should live as a result of these things is religious in nature. We can’t compare or contrast a religion without some of those tenants to work from.

Unfortunately religion in media is presented more and more through a Bajoran lens. It’s just a totem we hold up to try and bind a community together and unite them, not a series of principles that inform everything else in life. In fairness, that’s also how people have come to view religion in modern, Western society. The problem is that view of religion is so shallow it may as well not exist. Indeed, we see that culture largely ignores religion now, at least the things it calls religion. But, as I’ve just discussed with the philosophies of the Klingons and Vulcans, I don’t think that leaves us with no religions. We’re just blind to religion now.

That has impacts on both storytelling and living and a good writer has to be aware of both. I’m going to discuss both in the next couple of weeks and I’ll be referring back to this post frequently so stay tuned. In the mean time, I hope I’ve clearly articulated how I think our three big examples show the strengths and shortcomings of different aspects of religion in storytelling. Let me know if I can clarify anything or if you’d like to see more in the future.

Writing Vlog – 10-11-2023

Posted by natechen on

A brief look at where we stand on various projects now that I’m back from vacation.

A Candle in the Wind – Afterwords

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Well, it’s done. For some reason, whenever I finish a major project that’s the prevailing sentiment I have and A Candle in the Wind is no exception. It’s been an interesting project, to be sure. A major thread of Roy’s character is a sense of guilt that attached to him in a variety of ways. While I don’t think guilt will ever not be a part of his character it’s not something I want to explore in every story yet three of the four novellas I’ve written about him had that part of his character play a major role. I wanted to explore other things.

When I finished Night Train to Hardwick part of my goal was to tell stories less rooted in Roy’s past. I think I succeeded in that. What I hadn’t fully realized at the time was that I also wanted to look at Roy’s goals and motivations beyond his admittedly strong sense of guilt. But before that I was interested in how Roy contained his sense of guilt.

At its core guilt is a sense of failure mixed with regret for the consequences of that failure, both of which are useful things to have a sense for. Then again, all human emotions have their place. I’ve already created a set of supernatural entities that represent emotions running amok and, like many of these universal supernatural entities, I consider them fair game for use in any fictional project I’m working on. So when I sat down to sketch out A Candle in the Wind I already had the monster part of the story worked out. Likewise, the climax where we see each of the seven Voices of T’aun make a play to crush the heroes’ minds was the second part of the story that I had in mind.

The first was the setting. Avery Warwick and Riker’s Cove were the first part of the story that fell in place because I have an odd obsession with lighthouses, probably left over from the years I lived near Lake Michigan, and I’ve wanted to tie a lighthouse to a candle druid for a while now. Once I had the place and the monster I needed a human face for the danger. While you can get away with not having one in a story like Firespinner, where the inhuman nature of the threat is part of what makes it dangerous, losing that human threat makes setting the stakes harder. Heinrich von Nighburg was the natural outcome of that. Unlike most of the ideas in A Candle in the Wind he didn’t exist in any shape or form before I outlined the story.

With all the major parts in place I just had to add the protagonist and work out the details. It wound up being a lot more complicated than I expected and when I pull everything together I’ll probably tweak some details to make some of the through lines work a bit better. But hopefully the general sense that people like Roy and Avery keep their demons at bay by hewing to their responsibilities and enjoying the small improvements in other’s lives that dutiful behavior brings comes through.

At this point I’m ready for a different kind of a story, so we’ll be leaving the Columbian West for a bit. When Roy comes back his past and sense of guilt won’t be gone but they will be played down in favor of different threads that I look forward to exploring. In the mean time, as I do after I finish every fiction project, I’ll be taking a break. No post next week and for the following several weeks I’ll be running a series of essays talking about writing in various forms and aspects. Hopefully you’ll find those interesting!

Before my break a reminder – I have a Substack now. You can find it here:

https://horizontalker.substack.com/

At the end of October all Roy Harper stories on this blog will migrate there and only be available to paying subscribers there! That said, by the end of this year or perhaps early next year I hope to have an anthology put together and available on Kindle and Print on Demand so stay tuned for updates on that. As for what’s coming next… stay tuned.

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Twenty

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Roy lowered himself down onto a blanket spread on the sandy beach just south of Riker’s Cove. The sun was setting but he felt wide awake. After spending an entire night in Heinrich von Nighburg’s shallowing that felt like only two or three hours the people who entered the lighthouse took some time to sleep and recover from their exertions. The next day Roy and Johan went back up to retrieve the steel frame of the wizard’s mirror.

They offered part of it to the Fairchilds but, as Cassie candidly told them, her quest was to find a way to make steel not just grab some of the metal for themselves. Other than that, the first half of that day was spent pursuing their own ends. Roy sent to Oakheart Manor to see if there was any new business he’d have to attend to before they left. The Fairchilds found The Strongest Man and followed him about for a change. Proud Elk and Johan spent time making their own arrangements to leave town and Samson Riker enjoyed seeing his daughter for the first time in months.

They all came together again for the funeral. Hank and Chester Tanner had both died in the last few days and after some deliberation the Hearth Keepers had decided to give them a dual funeral on the beach rather than separate funerals in the town Hearthfire’s cramped crematorium. Roy did his duty and placed timber for Chester. He hadn’t known the boy at all so he refrained from visiting that funeral at all. Sooner of later he’d have to tell Chester’s sister his last words but the moment didn’t seem right.

Now it felt like all his responsibilities were in hand for the moment. He just had to wait for the sky train the next day and he could be on his way. There was just one problem and his name was Nighburg.

“He’s not dead,” Roy said.

“No, he’s not.” The Strongest Man in the World sat down next to him, legs crossed in the Sanna style, adjusting his tachi higher so it would not get in his way. “That’s his way, I’m afraid. He’s very good at last minute escapes and planning for his own failures. I prefer it that way, actually.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve seen what he accomplished here. Do you really want to see what he’s like when his back is against the wall and he has no way out? I don’t.”

“I thought you were the strongest in the world.”

He chuckled. “The Sanna call me that and maybe, in the past, I would have agreed with them.”

“How about now?”

“The only thing more foolish than thinking you can recognize the strongest in the world is thinking you are him. Far be it from me to try and dissuade a fool from his folly.”

Roy watched the waves for a moment in silence. “Why are you here?”

“Longstanding grudge with the man in question. Interested in the story?”

“Not what I mean, browncoat.” Roy leaned back against a chunk of worn stone half buried in the sand. “How did you know von Nighburg was here? I didn’t look for you and I’m pretty sure Samson didn’t go looking either.”

“Does it matter?”

“No.” He rolled the word around in his mouth like it had a sour taste. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“Well as it would happen I was in Hexwood for the funeral of Sam Jenkins a few weeks ago. Saw Tad Heller there. He was about as happy to see me as you were so I told him what brought me to the West and he passed me your message when he got it.”

“Now you’re my problem, eh? So what do I owe you this time?”

“What did you charge the town?”

“I didn’t. I’m here because I owe Jonathan Riker and taking from his town while paying him back doesn’t sit right.”

For the first time since he sat down the Hodekki man turned to look directly at Roy. “What makes you think I’m different?”

“What do you owe Jonathan?”

“The same thing I owe everyone who’s suffered at Heinrich’s hands since he got away from me the first time.” He reached into an inner pocket on his worn coat and removed a bronze plate a few inches square with a strange symbol stamped on it. “Speaking of, if you hear tell of him again I’d appreciate it if you let me know.”

Roy made no move to take the piece of metal. “What was that thing he was tampering with out there?”

“That I don’t know.”

“You got rid of it easily enough.”

“Luck is a part of strength. That said, I have an deep bench of knowledgeable minds I can draw on to figure that out and I’d be happy to share anything I learn with you when next we meet.” He put the plate down between them. “If it makes you feel better you can consider it repayment for informing me of Heinrich’s whereabouts if you meet him again.”

“No. I don’t want to get sucked into keeping score with you. Something tells me that’s a game you’ll always come out ahead on no matter what I do. I think I’ll just avoid von Nighburg in the future.”

A mischievous smile twisted his lips. “I find that hard to believe. When we parted at Tyson’s Run you said something similar about wendigos but that lasted about two weeks from what I’ve heard.” His good humor vanished. “More than that, you’ve glimpsed something that crossed over the horizon, Roy. Then you fought with it. That kind of thing changes a man on a fundamental level. You’re not as firmly rooted here as you were a day ago and that’s going to have consequences down the line. You’ll see things others can’t. Many of those things will take special note of you as well, so even if you wish to avoid them and their servants you may not be able to.”

“You make it sound like I’ve got a price on my head again.”

“It’s worse, in some ways.”

Roy grunted. Dodging Tetzlani firespinners for three years hadn’t exactly been a picnic. Then again it didn’t hold a candle to the trouble von Nighburg had given them over the past few days. “You tell the others about this?”

“You’re the last. I figured you could fend for yourself for a day or so, given all you’ve been up to since the Summer of Snow.” The Strongest Man in the World got to his feet, leaving the metal plate sitting there. “Take care out there, Harper.”

“Wait.”

The Hodekkian paused, one foot forward, already in the process of walking away. “What?”

“Did the Fairchilds ask you anything about steel?”

He chuckled. “That they did, although I’m afraid I don’t have much I can tell them that’s useful. You’re right. My sword is made of steel, perhaps some of the finest you can find anywhere. Unfortunately I’m not a smith. I didn’t have a hand in making it and the secrets of forging any kind of steel are outside my expertise.”

“Dust and ashes,” Roy muttered. “So much for that lead, I suppose. Did you tell them where they could find the person who made it?”

“I’m not sure where he is now, if he’s even alive. If I ever find him again I’ll mention their names to him but I can’t do much more than that.” That time Roy didn’t see fit to stop him as he left. He left in the direction of the graveyard, disappearing from town as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Roy wasn’t the only one watching him go. The sheriff stood a few paces off, arms folded across his chest. “He doesn’t seem as bad as you made him out.”

“Only because you don’t owe him anything. I have two years of debt outstanding and I’m not looking to rack up any more.”

“Two years of what you make? That’s some serious silver.”

“Not how it works.” Roy gingerly picked up the metal slip and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “You don’t look like you were here to talk to him so what can I do for you?”

Avery dropped a sheaf of paper on the ground in the place the Hodekkian’s plate had been a second ago. “I thought you should have this. About three years before the war broke out, while I was still a squire and not a full knight, I went north and fought a Sanna creature with a very similar mode of attack. Much less power but similar feel. I didn’t make the connection at first because von Nighburg had so many other techniques he used. Blighting the cove. Twisting the flesh of children. All outside the kinds of magic Sanna spirits typically use, very Teutonic stuff, pretty disconnected from the mindscape. Point is, I figured you’d want a copy of my notes from them to give context to what we saw when you write up this incident.”

“What makes you think I’ll be writing it up?”

“I’m not stupid, Harper. I saw you transcribing the Journal while you were in the jail a few days back. Didn’t mean much to me at the time but we saw each other’s memories yesterday and I couldn’t help but notice you’ve met Master Oldfathers. That’s when it clicked.” Avery gestured to his notes. “If you’re going to be keeping the Stone Circle’s oldest record of monster hunting up to date then you should have every scrap of information we have on hand. Just because Morainhenge is gone doesn’t mean we’re absolved of our duties.”

“No, I suppose not.” Roy took the papers and thumbed through them, making sure the sheriff’s handwriting was something he could interpret without help, then folded them once and stuck them in his inside pocket. “Have to say I’m a little surprised. I assumed the typical druid would be upset to hear a Columbian Regular inherited one of your old artifacts.”

Avery shoved his hands into his pockets and stared out at the sea. “I’m not happy about it, if it helps. But the tools and armaments from the old Reliquary choose their own users and complaining about their choices never changed them. I’ve just got to assume the Journal picked you for a reason. If I’m being honest, with your reputation I’d be more surprised if it didn’t stick with you given the chance. I hear you kill a new wild beast every couple of months.”

“Not quite, but I’ve certainly seen my share of strange things.”

“How is the old man, anyway? He keeps pretty much out of sight these days. I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

“He’s passed out all the relics and settled down to start something different, I believe. If you want to get in touch I can see if he’s interested but otherwise it’s not my place to give away his home.”

The sheriff shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last decade, Harper, especially since I got here. Riker’s Cove is normally a pretty quiet place, believe it or not. Anyway, a few years back I realized something important. The Stone Circle never lost a war before Morainhenge fell. Arthur established Stonehenge about the same time he was crowned King of Avalon and since then his Knights have taken the lead in making his nation one of the most powerful on Earth. Losing isn’t something we’re used to. We haven’t figured out how to come back from it yet.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to work it out together instead of spreading yourselves to the four corners of Columbia?”

“I think we’ll hit on the solution faster if we aren’t getting under each other’s feet all the time. Even in the old days we worked best alone or in small groups.” Avery shrugged. “Then again, you’re pretty much an initiate to the Circle yourself with that book you’re carrying, do you want to stay here for a while and work on the problem with me?”

Roy laughed. “Touche. I have my own business to attend to and I’m sure that’s true for all you druids as well.”

“Exactly. We’ll get in touch when our duties demand it or we’re drawn to the same purpose or place but that hasn’t happened yet.”

“If it ever does I’m sure Oldfathers will let you know.” Roy got to his feet and offered Avery his hand. “If we don’t meet before that I’ll be sure to find you and say hello. In the mean time, let me know if Riker’s Cove ever needs my help again. I’ll drop by and do what I can.”

The sheriff accepted the offered handshake. “Thank you, Mr. Harper. Coming from you that means a lot.” For a moment it looked like he was going to leave then he stopped himself. “One last thing. What happened to Brennan?”

Roy pursed his lips. He’d kind of hoped Avery wouldn’t bring that up again. “I can’t tell you, Avery. It’d break a lot of promises I made to him and other people. If you’re wondering whether he’s still alive then the answer is no. He lived through the war but died a few years after. To my knowledge he remained dedicated to upholding the trust placed in him as best he could until the end. That’s about all I can tell you, though.”

“Well, I suppose knowing that is better than nothing at all. I suppose I should get back to the funerals, then. If I don’t see you before you leave town, may the Lord watch over all your paths and bring you safely back to your hearthfire.” The sheriff touched the brim of his hat and headed back into town.

“The Lady stoke your flame until you face the winds again, Sheriff.” Alone with this thoughts again, Roy looked back out to sea and settled in to enjoy some much needed solitude.

The sun set and rose once more, another iteration of an eternal cycle. The statue of Jonathan Riker greeted the sunrise with its usual aplomb. It watched as the Sanna man Proud Elk rode out of town bright and early, followed a few hours later by Roy and his party headed to catch the skytrain. The last week had been an eventful one for Riker’s Cove. Strange and horrible things had happened as if they were everyday occurrences but now life was returning to normal.

The statue was unimpressed. It had stood through Low Noon and the twisted time that came with it. The town was still there. The statue would watch it until one of them ceased to exist. But there probably wouldn’t be as much to see around the cove for the next few years. So the statue settled in to wait until the next significant moment it would have to bear witness to. In the meantime, if there was nothing else to do, who was it to complain?

Just a statue. And statues don’t complain, they only keep watch. So that was what it did.

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Nineteen

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

As the first rays of dawn hit the head of Jonathan Riker’s statue a cloud of dust swept over it born on a thunderous rush of wind. No change in weather was in the offing. However when the dust settled the only change that spoke to the source of the gust was a lone man picking his way through the graveyard. There was an odd quality to the man. It had little to do with his rumpled brown duster, heavy boots or even the unusual shirt wrapped around his torso. His face was unlined but his eyes were deep and hard. Unnatural streaks of silvery hair shot through his bangs and long ponytail but otherwise there was an unsettling, ageless quality to him.

The man stopped by at the Riker family crypt and nodded in greeting. Then he turned his attention to the unnatural eclipse locked in place over the bay. “My apologies, Jonathan,” the stranger said. “I kept telling myself I’d sort that one out eventually but others kept making demands on my time and I never got to devote my full attention to running him down. This never should’ve landed on your doorstep.”

With a twitch of one hand he moved the edge of his coat back and unlimbered his weapon. It was a long, gently curving sword with minimal hand guard and no mount to hold a sulfurite crystal. To the casual weapon enthusiast it might look like a Hodekkian tachi. Those familiar with such weapons could tell it was no such thing as soon as he drew it. A gleaming pattern like oil ran down the edge of the blade, nothing like a tachi’s hamon, and the hilt wasn’t wrapped in the diamond patter most Hodekki weapons favored. Still it gleamed brightly in the growing light of dawn.

The stranger casually threw the weapon over one shoulder as he studied the lighthouse, the bay, and the magic and crowd surrounding them both. “A fine place you’ve made here. I’ll step lightly. Someone kept old Heinrich from dragging your town off the face of the map and I’ll leave as much of their hard work in place as I can. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll just take him back with me as payment. Unless he runs again. Either way, I guess we can call it even.”

He raised his sword to salute the founder of Riker’s Cove, then walked out of the graveyard at a sedate pace. As soon as the gate to that place was fully behind him he vanished from the human eye with a loud bang. A deep bootprint crushed into the dirt path was all he left behind him. Even if they had been looking that way, no one in the town watching what happened would have understood what they saw. From its vantage on the bluffs the statue of Jonathan Riker was better suited to the task.

Beyond that, its eyes of stone saw many things human eyes could not.

It clearly saw the stranger tear through town, barely more than a blur, once more pulling a wave of dust and debris in his wake. Sunlight glanced of his blade, reflecting in a dozen windows as he passed by. The force of his passage rattled doors in their frames and tore shingles from the roofs but none of the townsfolk at the docks heard him approach. Like the dust, the sound of his footsteps roiled along behind him.

Before he reached the docks the stranger slowed just a hair, leaping up the harbor master’s shack and using it as a platform to leap over the assembled crowds. In spite of his reduced speed the thunder following in his wake leveled the building and scattered the people like leaves. The candles they held were dropped or thrown aside yet didn’t blow out. In spite of the wall between their time and that of their creator the magic of the candles had linked themselves to Avery’s spell and now far more than simple combustion kept them lit.

As he flew through the air the stranger lifted his sword overhead in both hands, blade aglow with the force of daybreak. He landed only two steps from the edge of the lighthouse’s prison. The man rolled his momentum forward one step and struck straight down with his blade.

Heinrich von Nighburg’s bubble of warped time parted before it.

With a single flowing cut the moon prism split asunder and the stranger rolled back, letting the momentum carry him around and back into the wave of dust and thunder following in his wake. Once again he shifted his weight and looped his momentum forward again. The crackling wave of sound and air caught up the candle flames and the magic they contained as if it would drive the stranger’s sword forward again, this time with all the collective power of Riker’s Cove behind it. With a flick of the wrist, as simple yet delicate as skipping a stone, he sent that power upwards towards the malignant sky. The second wave cut away the malignancy there as easily as the first split the prism.

In the space of two, perhaps three heartbeats it was over. The sound and fury was past, the unnaturally long eclipse ended and a single, mangled body fell from the sky into the waves of the Cove once more.

To the people of the town it looked downright miraculous. One moment they were gathered, staring at the twisted sky, then there was a blinding flash and a thunderclap and they found themselves on the ground, looking up at a normal morning horizon, a total stranger standing in their midst with a satisfied look on his face. Satisfaction that quickly turned sour.

“Gotterdammerung,” he said, sheathing his weapon as he waded into the surf. “Why did he have to land in the ocean?”

Roy was just beginning to think he couldn’t hold the flame anymore when a sound like ripping cloth tore through the beacon chamber. The cacophony of voices from the sky paused, as if they all drew a breath at once. In that moment of quiet Roy thought he heard the echoes of Sam Jenkins laughing then dawn broke over the lighthouse in a thunderclap. A surge of power carried quiet thoughts of concern and hope from the shore, quickly overwhelmed by singular purpose.

Something shifted in the mindscape and the flame Roy was holding flared ten times as bright. Deep inside it, Johan’s sunstone flared up, then burst. The power swept away the candle flame, the sunstone and the last wisps of Avery’s control over the mindscape then shattered all the glass in the lighthouse reflectors for good measure. It would’ve been a scary sight if the six of them weren’t blinded by the sunstone flaring already.

When Roy could see again he looked around and saw nothing. The rest of the roof had been torn away and they had an unobstructed view of the early morning sunrise over Riker’s Cove. The sky over the waters was empty.

“Dust and ashes.” Roy dashed to the edge of the building and looked down but he didn’t see anything disturbing the waters of the bay.

“What happened?” Brandon asked, the bark of his yew retreating back into his body as he shifted back to a more normal appearance. “Did he escape with that thing?”

“I don’t think that was something that would just vanish,” Avery replied, still lying flat on his back. “Felt like the kind of creature that likes to let others know it’s around.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Roy snapped, hustling back to the stairs. “Whether his patron is here or not, I’m not letting that blackguard leave this town alive.”

Proud Elk was only a step behind him. “As always, Bright Coals, when it comes to hunting vile creatures you see the clearest.”

From the clattering on the stairs Roy could tell there were only two people behind him and he didn’t have to stop and look to know who they were. Avery and the Fairchilds were dependable enough souls but they’d never seen something like that before and it was the kind of experience that took some getting over the first time you did it. Besides, it was the three of them who owed Jonathan the most. The three of the them should finish it.

Roy’s first instinct was to head to the mirror and return to the manse, which seemed like the most likely place for von Nighburg to go after… whatever happened up there. But when they reached the bottom of the stairs they found the glass in it shattered just like the reflectors up above. A quick glance to Johan, a shake of the head, and Roy knew there was no way they were going to do anything with the mirror so he continued down to the base of the tower. Maybe the wizard was somewhere in the bay.

However as he reached the stairs to the ground floor Roy was greeted by two familiar voices speaking. One was Samson Riker. The other he hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

“Dangerous in here,” Riker was saying.

“Probably the most dangerous place left in town.” The other was speaking in a cheeky tone. “There’s no sign of Heinrich in the bay so if he’s anywhere it’s going to be in here.”

“Check again.”

Roy cleared this throat and approached the two men, politely declining Jenny’s offer to take her spot next to her father. “Nothing to see in here. Von Nighburg had some kind of a bolthole built on the other side of a mirror. The sheriff called it a shallowing. Problem is the mirror leading to it is shattered and near as we can tell no one’s getting through it.”

The stranger made an irritated noise and shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown duster. “Frustrating. Heinrich is pretty good at contingency plans but he’s never been so gifted at running away.”

Riker glanced at Roy and raised one eyebrow and tilted his head out towards the water. “You gonna check?”

“No. If he says von Nighburg ain’t out there then he’s not there.”

“You seem awfully confident about that,” Avery said, climbing down the stairs with tired, heavy footsteps, the Fairchilds right behind him. “I thought you said everyone else you asked to come was unavailable.”

“They were.” Roy gestured at the stranger. “This is the one we didn’t ask. Sheriff, Fairchilds, Mr. Riker, allow me to introduce you to the one the Sanna call The Strongest Man in the World.”

Writing Vlog – 09-13-2023

Posted by natechen on

I’m wrapping up a project and getting ready for a couple of more, plus talking all about it in today’s writing vlog!

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Eighteen

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

The change to the surface of the water was stomach churning. The reflection of the sky writhed and rippled in the waves left by von Nighburg’s immersion and Roy could swear he saw dim reflections of the strange mouths and twisted limbs that were the hallmark of the wizard’s otherworldly patron. “Dust and ashes,” he muttered, backing away from the edge of the tower. “Must be some trick to killing him dead.”

When he’d fought the wendigos with Proud Elk and the rest they’d quickly discovered the foul flesh of the beasts had to be burnt or they’d just eat it and regrow themselves again. The dark spirits of the Tetzlani blood cults could be trapped in gold. According to Pellinore’s journal, Avalon was once plagued strange creatures called the Seelie that could only be killed by driving rowan wood through their head or heart. Generally when fighting such creatures the goal was to find these killing techniques before facing them on the wild. With von Nighburg they’d never had the chance.

The Tetzlani expedition had been forced to work out their solution while hostilities were ongoing so it was something Roy had done before. On the other hand, the expeditionary force had lost almost half its men, so not the best example to follow. A quick glance about assured him at least he wouldn’t have to handle it all alone. Johan and Riker were slowly pulling themselves back together, shaking their heads and wiping dirt from the ground off, whatever strange force had left them paralyzed now gone. For that matter, Roy felt his own moment of clarity passing.

With it came the sudden realization that he had completely dismissed the safety of Jennifer Riker the moment he’d concluded there was no practical steps he could take to help her. Annoyed with himself for not trying a little harder, he darted around the beacon to check on her. She was still tied up and a nasty bruise was forming on her forehead from her fall when Tanner pushed her but otherwise she looked fine, physically speaking. Roy quickly cut her ropes with his falcata, glad he’d never gotten around to lighting it. She yanked her gag off. “Who are you?”

“Friend of your grandfather’s, came here with your father.” Roy pulled the girl to her feet and she bolted over to her dad, already starting to dissolve into tears.

As Samson Riker wrapped his daughter up in his arms Johan frantically pushed the two of them back towards the center of the lighthouse, his gaze fixed on the skies overhead. “Something’s coming through, Roy. I think von Nighburg got what he wanted.”

Even as he said it the blackguard burst up out of the water, still covered in burning oil in some places, and shot towards the sky. Roy cursed, joining his friend to stare at what was happening in disbelief. The wizard’s whole body writhed and contorted in unnatural ways while unintelligible sounds poured out of his mouth in a constant, wordless expression of emotion. It was hard to tell if he was laughing or crying, wracked by anger or despair.

For a brief moment it looked like the wizard was flying. But as his twisting body climbed higher the eclipsed sky seemed to warp and draw down towards him and that was what made Roy realize he wasn’t flying, he was being pulled. Whatever it was he’d called down was now physically anchored to him.

Proud Elk and the rest he’d been tending to finally emerged from the lighthouse, still ringed by his water ward. Avery took Riker and quickly hustled him and his daughter back towards the stairs. “Get down and out of the building,” he told the father. “We’ll do something here.”

“Something’s the word,” Johan muttered, holding his head in one hand. “Question is, what?”

“We’ll take out the anchor,” Roy said, stretching out to the last dregs of burning oil on von Nighburg’s body. He was damp but Roy’s gift could keep the oil going long enough for his clothes to catch.

Or so he thought. When Roy stretched his mind out to touch the flames he ran into greasy, chilling fear instead, a voice screaming in horror and panic that he thought would become the entire world. Blinded by terror he pulled back. His legs gave out and dropped him hard on the ground beneath the lighthouse’s roof.

“Not like that,” Avery said, grabbing him by one arm and pulling him back to his feet. The sheriff held one of his candles out to Roy, who took it in confusion, while digging what looked like his entire supply out of his belt pouches with his other. “Listen, we had a few minutes to work out what those things are doing. We think we found a countermeasure.”

Roy peered out from under the roof of the beacon room, watching the sky warp and change anxiously, the sudden surge of fear still lingering in his mind. “Make it fast, Warwick. We don’t have a lot of time before something goes completely wrong out there.”

In response Avery shoved his stack of candles into Roy’s hands. “Of course. You can make a thing burn faster than normal and you can make a flame burn with nothing to sustain it. Can you also make a thing burn without burning up?”

“For a while.”

“Then burn the wax off the thistledown then let the fire suffuse the wicks without burning them. That will give us enough power we can all enter the mindscape at once.”

“Are you-” Roy stopped short when Brandon stepped past him, fully transformed by the power of his yew, and yanked out one of the metal supports holding up the lighthouse’s tin roof. “Are you crazy? We’ve been totally lost each time we went in there. We only got back out because we had people on this side calling for us, why would we take everyone in?”

“You’ll understand faster if you let the candle’s magic carry the explanation.”

Roy glanced around at Brandon and Proud Elk, who were systematically tearing the roof off of the chamber, then back to Cassie, who was helping Johan get his bearings. He’d hand picked most of this team but that didn’t mean much if he couldn’t trust them. Whatever plan they had would have to be good enough. He took hold of the lit candle flame with his mind and spread it to the other wicks he held, then forced the wax to burn while leaving the threads at their core behind. In less time than it took to tell he was left with a burning ball held together by mind and magic. With the slightest twinge of trepidation he let his focus slip deeper into it and enter into the mindscape once more.

When you look into someone’s mind you see a lot of foolish things. It’s the practicalities of life and the fear of discovery that keeps most people from implementing their wildest ideas and your inner thoughts are free of such confines so the strangest notions run rampant there. Avery Warwick had grown accustomed to the absurd and bizarre a long time ago. He wasn’t sure if that made Heinrich von Nighburg’s decision to try and trap him in a perpetual state of hilarity ingenious or short sighted.

It had worked, true enough, but once Proud Elk came and warded them all Avery recovered quickly. Better yet, he had a unique insight into what had happened. He wasn’t a humorous man by nature and he was trained to recognize when his thoughts changed due to outside influence so when the fears of shame and embarrassment that usually kept him from ignoring his duties vanished he took note of it even if he had no idea how to restore them. Proud Elk’s magic reduced the influence of the wizard’s spell upon them but didn’t negate it entirely.

That was the perfect environment for him to work out a counter. Now, with Harper stoking the magic of thistledown to the strongest Avery had seen it since the war, they were finally in a position to try it out on a large scale. The only question was whether it would be large enough.

Harper was concerned about reentering the mindscape but that was because he didn’t know all the different ways you could use it. What they needed was to enter it just enough to see when von Nighburg’s patrons moved against them. Once the creature’s fell influence was in play he would surge the concentration of the magic to create a counter. Proud Elk’s ward would hopefully slow it down enough they had time to work and Cassandra’s song would allow all of them to work together.

Harper holding the largest concentration of mental magic Avery had ever seen it was child’s play for him to pull the six of them a half step into the mindscape and establish a telepathic connection between them. As soon as it was complete he got a mix of notions from the group. Van der Klein was concerned about letting the Rikers leave before the battle ended but Avery project confidence that they’d be safer on the ground than in the midst of the magics about to take place. Proud Elk added his agreement to that sentiment. Unsurprisingly, Harper continued to insist on knowing how they were going to counter von Nighburg’s monsters.

When he learned Avery planned to starve them he was less than impressed.

There wasn’t any time to debate the wisdom of that plan before the wizard made his first move. In the halfseen shadows of the mindscape the human form of Heinrich von Nighburg merged seamlessly with the braided limbs and gaping mouths of whatever foul thing gripped him and he directed their mental influence towards them as effortlessly as flicking his fingers. With the roof halfway removed Proud Elk was able to draw up more water to slow the questing tendrils of thought. It wasn’t much but it was enough that Avery could identify it and push Brandon to the front of the mindscape.

The voice that pierced the waters screamed in envy, calling out to every petty jealousy and small grievance that existed in life. The time Avery was denied a Seat in the Founder’s Circle because telepathy was suited to logistics and not leadership. The time Johan was voted down as unit lieutenant in favor of a old kid named Roy, four years his younger. The time Brandon was told he could only ever sing harmony for his sister.

Brandon’s roots dug down though the roof of the lighthouse. He’d dug dangerously deep into the yew, layering himself in layers and layers of the tree until his body was as wide as three men and his arms spanned most of the beacon chamber. That kind of physical growth shouldn’t have made a difference in the mindscape. Yet Brandon’s presence there loomed just as large, as if the physical grounding had increased his confidence and determination in the face of the wizard’s influence.

With a faint smile, Brandon waved the voice off and the mindscape twisted. They changed from the ghostly memories of Brandon’s fifteenth birthday to the same place years later, as he prepared to leave for Columbia. “Remember you place, Brandon,” his father said. “This isn’t some simple errantry for you to prove your mettle or advance your career. This is a serious calling. And it’s not yours.”

A sense of purpose and direction came along that brushed aside the envy and hurt those words provoked. “I know, father. Your life has been center stage and Cassandras will be no different. Maybe even more so, with her calling. You understand that all too well, and I’ve learned not to hold that against you, but you’ve never known what it means to be the boards that make up the stage. The beams that hold the ceiling or the shingles that keep the stage dry. There’s more to this world than melody and harmony, father, and if my place in it is just to hold up those on stage for all to see then so be it. But never imply that it’s not my calling.”

Brandon’s contentment, his pride in his place, came down and quashed the voice of envy and it withdrew outside the chamber, unable to gain a foothold. The creatures were some kind of mental parasites, trying to draw out emotions and feed on them. However, properly amplified through Avery’s magic, Brandon’s own resolve in the face of his personal jealousy was enough to fortify their whole group against the interloper. Roy signaled his understanding of the strategy but Johan took it a step further. He sent Brandon an idea.

A second tendril spun down out of the writhing sky to test their defenses, this one slicing through Proud Elk’s barrier with a wail of grief. This time the Sanna man pushed himself forward to answer. During the Summer of Snow he’d watched many braves die in the clutch of the hungry winters then endured weeks of their voices, stolen by the dark creatures that besieged them, calling to the survivors for help.

In response Proud Elk, Many Herons and the others had devoted themselves to remembering the lives of the fallen. They’d broken ice free from the river in Tyson’s Run, melted it over their watchfires then poured it out one drop at a time, sharing memories of the lost with one another rather than listening to the cries of evil outside. At first only the Sanna had done this. Then, as the numbers dwindled and the Columbians had no bodies to burn on their traditional pyres, all had joined in. Honor and camaraderie joined together and prevailed over sorrow.

As von Nighburg’s second attack recoiled the defenders dug in deeper. Johan and Brandon stripped the beacon’s reflectors from their mounting and quickly turned them into a crude but effective lightbox of gigantic proportions. Then the Son of Harmon threw his sunstone into the roiling mass of power Harper was maintaining. With a few adjustments the light from the firemind’s burning orb focused out and up, and with it went the mental power Avery could project. He’d never heard of such a thing before, but then lightboxes were entirely new to his experience.

The beam of light sent the wizard’s two tendrils of power slinking backwards but, with the light of the candles focused in that way, left plenty of room for others to snake around to the sides. A spear of shame sliced through Proud Elk’s wards next. Cassandra’s voice rose to meet it. Her counter was an oddly mixed thing, old memories of a first performance mixed with the lyrics of Tyson’s Nine, a song she’d only known for a few hours. With it came the understanding that a song wasn’t for the performer or even the music. It was for the listener.

No matter how poor the performance or how exposed you felt, no matter how the words or the sounds made you feel, if the audience was made better for it then the song must be sung. Avery sensed a nudge at Harper, there, but the firespinner seemed to ignore it.

The last attack came fast and harsh so Proud Elk drew more water from the bay, trying to thicken his ward, but they were running into a problem. Harper was struggling to control the flame. There was a side effect of channeling so much mental energy this way Avery hadn’t considered. A firespinner could control and even stoke fire with his mind and with so much mental power running through Harper’s mind the fire tied to it was growing out of control. Already it had gone from an orb the size of two fists together to a globe larger than a man’s head. It showed no signs of stopping and the heat was already evaporating the water ward, slowing down the Sanna man’s efforts to grow it.

Still, it stood stronger than before when fear struck at them. Johan easily drowned the errant emotion with memories of his wedding day and his single minded devotion to a woman more important to him than life itself. That was the ward’s peak strength. When glee struck the water’s power was already waning but thankfully Avery had already perfected his defense. Terrance Harwick had taught him the secrets of the candles but he’d also taught him to value of stewarding even those who seemed most ridiculous. No matter how poorly a person took to magic or how disastrous their efforts proved he never once laughed. Instead, he took joy from their constant efforts to improve.

For a brief moment, as the tendril of hilarity withdrew, Avery thought they had the formula worked out. If they could just outlast von Nighburg’s creature it would starve and return to wherever it came from or, better yet, devour its summoner instead. Then the wizard struck with his last two tendrils at once. Guilt and rage rent the water ward, stripping almost half the defense away as they charged through to batter their mindscape.

Avery thought they would be pulled all the way in. But instead the most potent memory yet surged to the fore, a brief glimpse of a Sanna man and a Columbian boy walking into a house, hand in hand. The image was oddly mirrored, for an identical pair of people walked opposite them. Which didn’t make sense to Avery, the mindscape shouldn’t create illusions like that, especially when exploring memories. He forgot about the contradiction when the next pair of people passed by. One was a tall woman, beautiful but tired, and the other an older man leaning heavily on a cane. As he passed the man paused and looked back at them, hand raised in farewell, and Avery recognized him as Master Oldfathers. He had aged a great deal in the last decade but the sparkle in his eye was clearly recognizable.

After all his failures and burdens, all the loss and disappointments of those children and that lady, in the end they had found something good. Nothing could be done to change the past. Nor would furious purpose or frantic energy carry the future. Not if one couldn’t first acknowledge and celebrate the fact that good things still grew out of the the sins of the past so long as you set your heart on the well being of others.

It was surprising to see Harper turn away the wizard’s attack so easily. Avery had expected anger, especially, to be a weak point for him but perhaps, as the sheriff had long mastered mirth Harper had long experience with rage. What Avery saw at that instant was that it wouldn’t be enough.

Up above them Heinrich von Nighburg was drawing in even more power, his features distorting even further as his binding cinched him tighter and tighter to his patron, and the two together were rallying for another attack. They’d repelled everything he had so far but Proud Elk struggled to refill his ward. After an hour of constant use, Cassie’s voice was sounding hoarse. Brandon could only live in the yew for so long before the wood would claim him, Avery’s concentration could only last so long and who knew what kind of limits there were on Johan’s abilities.

Still, he didn’t think any of those were the limiting factors. Every candle wick drew up melted wax as fuel for its flame but, at the same time, the wick was not immune to the fires that burned on it. Eventually it would be used up. As their combined mental powers battled von Nighburg’s, the flame Roy Harper used to power that battle grew ever larger. Now it was as big as a barrel. Although he had pushed the fire back from them as it grew Avery knew even a firespinner couldn’t withstand that kind of power forever. His hands were blistering. Steam rose from stray drips of water than had fallen on his clothes and wisps of smoke rose from the cuffs of his sleeves. Soon enough, Roy Harper was going to burn away.