The Magi: In Depth
Mar. 31st, 2014 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
k_a_webbType: fantasy
I started this collection because I have always loved healers and I wanted to write more about them, but I never expected it to turn out the way it did. The first character I started writing about was Marnie, who I found out was the daughter of the Matriarch and was intensely irritated with her mother for reacting the way she was to the Carne's crisis. She truly believes, unlike the majority of her people, that it's time to let go of the past and move on, because of the choice they made to become healers - but things have changed since the time the Magi first escaped the Carne. Now, instead of healing in return for whatever it was their client could afford, they charge for everything. They don't energy heal any longer, due to the death of Marnie's aunt Lorna, and the loss of the Garcer took with it several of their best healers, including Marnie's younger brother Terrence.
This is a world with a lot of secrets. A lot of the characters are keeping secrets from each other, for reasons that are known to me and reasons that aren't. Lorna's still alive, wandering the world as a travelling healer because she hated the choices that her mother was making, and in the end it was her half-sister, Marnie's mother, who took the job of matriarch. She follows in her mother's footsteps, the way Lorna never would have done, which is why the Magi were told of her death. Otherwise there are people who would go looking for her and make her the matriarch, because she is a true healer. Unlike Marnie's mother who decided it was better for the Matriarch to focus on leading, rather than on healing, which gives her an intense lack of understanding of what it is to be a healer. This was the same choice Lorna's mother made, due to her own mother's choices. It's hard to believe that the woman really was related to Silvana, but then I don't know enough about the history of this collection to be certain of that - the one thing I've learnt is not to believe anything my characters tell me until I have proof.
At the moment I know very little about the Garcer, apart from the fact they're meant to be extinct, but I know, even though I haven't written the story yet, that Terrence is still alive. Writing more about them would help, so if anyone would like to prompt me for more that would be great (I have a permanent prompts page for these sorts of things which can be found here.) Or you can create a character. Not knowing much about them means I don't know if they have any usual abilities or anything, but it's something we could find out together, which, might, make it more interesting. The Carne could once do blood magic, although I don't have a lot of details on that, and as I also take prompts for bonus material this is something else that anyone interested in learning more about this collection could do.
So far I only have those three races, so creating a race is also a possibility with this collection, and I want to get a map drawn as soon as I can, in order to have some idea of distance. I do know that walking from Carne territory to Magi territory takes three days - although if you keep going during the night as well as the day it will take less time. Whether Marnie will actually be able to help or not is something I haven't found out yet, but I do know that Lorna's also planning on heading in that direction, so if Marnie can't I'm sure Lorna will be able to. Of course this does mean that Marnie will find out that her aunt isn't actually dead and that means there will be some interesting stories to write.
I have also gone back in time, to write about what really happened when Silvana escaped the Carne, and even at such an early stage it's looking like she might not have escaped, exactly, but had help from her owner. This is something that wouldn't surprise me, because I get the feeling that a lot of the Carne treated their slaves like people rather than something they owned, so writing more would be good, although that is something I'd like to know there is more interest in before I start, considering how much I still have to work on for other collections that I know have readers.
There are also a couple of AUs to be written and I'd love to see some crossovers, so if anyone has any ideas feel free to post them here or at the permanent prompts page.
I started this collection because I have always loved healers and I wanted to write more about them, but I never expected it to turn out the way it did. The first character I started writing about was Marnie, who I found out was the daughter of the Matriarch and was intensely irritated with her mother for reacting the way she was to the Carne's crisis. She truly believes, unlike the majority of her people, that it's time to let go of the past and move on, because of the choice they made to become healers - but things have changed since the time the Magi first escaped the Carne. Now, instead of healing in return for whatever it was their client could afford, they charge for everything. They don't energy heal any longer, due to the death of Marnie's aunt Lorna, and the loss of the Garcer took with it several of their best healers, including Marnie's younger brother Terrence.
This is a world with a lot of secrets. A lot of the characters are keeping secrets from each other, for reasons that are known to me and reasons that aren't. Lorna's still alive, wandering the world as a travelling healer because she hated the choices that her mother was making, and in the end it was her half-sister, Marnie's mother, who took the job of matriarch. She follows in her mother's footsteps, the way Lorna never would have done, which is why the Magi were told of her death. Otherwise there are people who would go looking for her and make her the matriarch, because she is a true healer. Unlike Marnie's mother who decided it was better for the Matriarch to focus on leading, rather than on healing, which gives her an intense lack of understanding of what it is to be a healer. This was the same choice Lorna's mother made, due to her own mother's choices. It's hard to believe that the woman really was related to Silvana, but then I don't know enough about the history of this collection to be certain of that - the one thing I've learnt is not to believe anything my characters tell me until I have proof.
At the moment I know very little about the Garcer, apart from the fact they're meant to be extinct, but I know, even though I haven't written the story yet, that Terrence is still alive. Writing more about them would help, so if anyone would like to prompt me for more that would be great (I have a permanent prompts page for these sorts of things which can be found here.) Or you can create a character. Not knowing much about them means I don't know if they have any usual abilities or anything, but it's something we could find out together, which, might, make it more interesting. The Carne could once do blood magic, although I don't have a lot of details on that, and as I also take prompts for bonus material this is something else that anyone interested in learning more about this collection could do.
So far I only have those three races, so creating a race is also a possibility with this collection, and I want to get a map drawn as soon as I can, in order to have some idea of distance. I do know that walking from Carne territory to Magi territory takes three days - although if you keep going during the night as well as the day it will take less time. Whether Marnie will actually be able to help or not is something I haven't found out yet, but I do know that Lorna's also planning on heading in that direction, so if Marnie can't I'm sure Lorna will be able to. Of course this does mean that Marnie will find out that her aunt isn't actually dead and that means there will be some interesting stories to write.
I have also gone back in time, to write about what really happened when Silvana escaped the Carne, and even at such an early stage it's looking like she might not have escaped, exactly, but had help from her owner. This is something that wouldn't surprise me, because I get the feeling that a lot of the Carne treated their slaves like people rather than something they owned, so writing more would be good, although that is something I'd like to know there is more interest in before I start, considering how much I still have to work on for other collections that I know have readers.
There are also a couple of AUs to be written and I'd love to see some crossovers, so if anyone has any ideas feel free to post them here or at the permanent prompts page.
by race do you mean /race/ or /species/ - the latter can be a lot of fun to play with
Date: 2014-04-18 03:23 pm (UTC)In terms of races — is there anything particularly noteworthy / unusual about the climate or the geographical history of the part of the world you're exploring currently? Races tend to split apart from each other when there are different ecological niches to fill and/or when two or more populations of a particular race are separated and at least one of those populations has to adapt to a different role than they did before. Alternatively, if two different parts of the world have environments that favor very similar niches, you can have convergent evolution where two species of different evolutionary backgrounds evolve similar approaches to succeeding in their similar niches.
In terms of storybuilding in the present, maybe think about what kind of a niches produced the races you already have, and then what kind of climate history might take species adapted to quite different environments (underwater, underground, highly tropical, mountainous, icy, air, arboreal, desert, etc.) and push them to evolve the degree of sentience to interact with your current races on equal ground. Highly social lizards being out-competed by invading predators that develop ever-more complex methods of group defense and long-distance communication? Plant hive groups that manipulate local weather to distribute their seeds far field and exchange gossip with their neighbors? How about land mammals whose ancestors were whales?
Also fun to consider: if you shift the size scale of a particular race to significantly smaller or larger than human, stuff like their perception of time also shifts — which has all kinds of possibilities when it comes to culture and cultural exchange.