Verktøyene for å forbanne en trollmann.

Our protagonist has a problem. To solve it, we need to know something about the way curses work, and especially something about what sorcerous types can do about it.

For starters, let's break down what a curse is. A curse is harming someone somewhere with magic. In our case, it's harming someone very far away (probably) with magic. What does that require? Is magic normally limited by line of sight? What would it take to make something which cannot be counter-spelled?

And obviously there's the cosmetic aspect to think about. What does it sound like? Does it leave tracer-effects in the air, so you can see its passage? Can it be sensed, or do even wizards have to rely on mortal senses?

Tough stuff, all of these questions, but let's tackle that last one first.

Magic isn't something wizards, even high wizards, really have. They merely sense it, and can sense the way their mind is manipulating it. Even non-wizards can curse someone -- they just won't know about it, and couldn't repeat it. That's why such curses never gain any particular power -- they're clumsy and accidentally formed.

Think of a blind man who walks into a room filled with various buckets of paint, who opens them up and starts splashing around. He may, by chance, make something that looks aesthetically pleasing -- but he's unlikely to know how, exactly, he did it, or what colors which parts of it are. Contrast him to someone with sight, who has all the same abilities, but can see which colors are which.

Mortal spellcasters exist. They're clumsy, and comparatively weak, and they have to study incredibly hard for what little magic they have. They grope around in the dark until they find something that works, record that, and move on. They never understand why it worked in the first place, and are thus limited.

That being said -- yes, a wizard can sense magic. That means that for curses to be effective, they must take place exceedingly quickly. So they probably do.

What all does this imply? Well, Graham must have exceedingly good reflexes -- I may not have sufficiently explained that one yet. You'll see eventually.

But because it's sensory-based, it's most likely either line-of-sight or local area-limited.

As to the other question: It would need to be something so complicated, or so powerfully charged, that it cannot be safely undone. I had an idea about magic flowing through runes like a sort of selectively-frictionless liquid. Does that make sense? No. Am I going to explain it? Nope. We'll not need to know why it works, I don't think.

It probably only makes physically observable effects when the spell is made to do so -- this implies, by the way, that mortal spellcasters would probably have quite a bit of visual components built into their spells to give them feedback on whether the spell is being cast correctly.

All this is very well and good, but what about those characters? What about that story?

Hvor Du Er

Society can be approximated as the sum of the actions of a large group of individuals -- which are, after all, what composes it. Unfortunately, the individuals work differently, each their own way. A noble, for example, is unlikely to purchase a wheelbarrow. A farmer is unlikely to own a sword. And so on.

The fact that wheelbarrows and swords both have a market doesn't have to tell us much about the society which makes it. Nowadays, for example, the wealthy are unlikely to have swords, and more likely to own a wheelbarrow than the poor are. (Depending on your definition of poor, perhaps. But go with me here.)

Claghen Provence is a coastal region on the extreme east coast of a larger continent, bordered to the west by an unfriendly wilderness. The westernmost point to which it is safe to travel is Cawfur's Peak, named for the explorer who first scaled it. An old forest, (mostly beech trees, lessened ground cover) spreads from the base of Cawfur's Peak to within five miles of the seaside, except where cleared for city-building purposes.

There are six major cities in Claghen Provence. The county seat, where Count Claghen lived a hundred-odd years ago, and where the Vines have recently taken up residence, is Dorkarle, an old word meaning River-bed. This is a city of nearly a million souls, and is the largest city on the continent.

This is also the city closest to the residence of one recently-assaulted wizard.

There are seven rivers, three worthy of note -- two (Brightwater, ) well up near Cawfur's. The third is merely an offshoot of the Brightwater, and was named Corrush, a word meaning "steady", because it never significantly floods downstream (floodwaters instead cause it to flow into its old riverbeds further upstream) and flows by Dorkarle, which is why we care about it at all.

Graham lives in a small tower built into an exposed hillside (he Stoneshaped himself one -- took almost a month for him to manage, too.) about four miles from the furthest outskirts of Dorkarle. He's well-known to the locals, as he often makes grocery runs (Being a wizard, he does have a cold-room, so he doesn't make the journey every day -- but still. He is a mostly solitary soul, having given up on human society as a whole some years ago in a fit of bad temper.




That he hasn't been terribly involved with the world around him recently tells us something too -- the attacker could be impersonating him because he's sufficiently not-well-known to where nobody remembers what actions would be in character for him. Or to prevent him from reacting to something. Or it could be an old grudge.

I suppose we'll have to keep learning things about this world, huh?

Vi Faen Oss Gjennom Passivitet

Starting out, the villain is very happy. This, of course, implies that Graham is very unhappy.

The wizard's foe begins hostile machinations which require, for maximum effect, Graham's death. We don't know why, but we can assume they're hostile because he/she is trying to kill him. His initial survival is immediately obvious (we can't assume his foe would be foolish enough to use a fire-and-forget attack, so therefore we should assume the foe knows he's survived) which means he has to next dodge contingency plans.

All this effort shows that Graham's death is important, and all this redundancy means his enemy is clever. So we're learning things already.

With all that in mind, I started rolling dice and asking questions, like the witch off "Stardust".

"Is Graham's death meant to mask an impersonation?" -- "Partly."

Interesting.

"Will his continued survival make the impersonation impossible?" -- "No."

"Once the antagonist's plans are in motion, will they require maintenance?" -- "No."

...and suchlike.

I determined that the antagonist has a great Objective of some sort, which requires Graham dead or disabled for maximum effect but is still doable if Graham is otherwise occupied trying to stay alive. The scheme involves a brief impersonation of Graham (which is still possible if he is elsewhere and prevented from contacting whoever it concerns). Additionally, the plot must be worth the risk of antagonizing a powerful wizard.


Additional questions regarding the manner of mischief which would be done to Graham revealed that the baddie is going to make deals with Powers-in-the-world in exchange for favors (which Graham will be liable for). For maximum horribleness, one of these is starting a war.

Additionally I determined that arcane archers, malignant spirits, and remote curses will be the sort of things Graham has to defend himself against.

That seems like progress to me.

Further, I figured out how we're going to handle combat. Some time ago, a friend of mine wrote a combat generator that takes some characters with various stats and pits them against one another randomly, giving detailed results including damage type (for example, did you get pierced in the vitals or pierced through the hand?).

I've also been a DM for several years. So I'm going to make an unholy hybrid and use that when I don't have any idea what to do in terms of interesting combat. (For those of you who are interested, he's a 10th level mixed class Focused Divination 5/ Sorcerer 3/ Wizard 2. I know it's weird, but it's going to be okay.)

And I sketched up a map, which I will recreate digitally and post at a later point, when I know something about the world.

Skriving Av Tomten - Fra Kaos; Også, Den Mektige Darlough

Randomization.

There is a beauty in emergent complexity from simple rules and random inputs that I have always found captivating -- it's bordered upon obsession for years. In counterpoint, there has always been a tedium in the sketching of graphs -- but today I find myself sketching graphs for fun.

The method is imprecise and complicated, and involves graphs I can't currently photograph, so I will pass up that aspect of the process in favor of a less graphical explanation.

Our story opens with our hero in a state of contentment, which rapidly declines to anger, then panic. We're not surprised by this -- it makes perfect sense. The surprising bit is what comes next. Graham begins a rapid up-and-down pattern that lasts for at least the next four scenes, alternating between extreme depression and joy again and again -- four times. He seems to plateau briefly at a state of serene peace for a moment, but then becomes enraged and loses it.

That would be interesting enough, but there's more.

For the sake of convenience  I will break this into twenty-five sections. This is the story arc. (and, apparently, our story ends on a good note, if we limit ourselves to twenty-five sections. We shall see.)

The story starts on a low note, with the speed of the plot rising precipitously. If I had to guess (and I do, because there's nobody who knows the answer) the plot starts with the cursing of Graham.

And then it gets confusing immediately. Because the next scene (which is the same tone, emotionally) directly influences the outcome of two other scenes (five and eleven). I don't even know. This is like playing Tetris with algebraic expressions.

I've been trying to make sense of this for days, and I think I've got it licked, to some extent. I'll post the twenty-five sections' outline format later, though.

For now, we have a new character to introduce. Darlough.

mannen alene kan gå i dagevis
og trenger ingen mann å følge
inne i hodet hans dusinvis
danse på visjonen sin galge

(The man alone can walk for days
With no-one near to follow
His fellows dear in dozens
In memories dance the gallows)

I wanted to write a poem, but I didn't want to do it in english since I've been doing that quite a bit lately. So, being in love with randomization and liking the look of Norwegian, I decided to try to write a rhyming stanza to see whether I could do it. Eventually, I managed to get something that looked legit enough (and rhymed) -- and the translation made me think of a character concept, which was the whole idea. And almost rhymed.

Forty years ago, a group of robbers were captured, sentenced to death, and hanged. By chance, one of their number was using the restroom when they were set upon, and managed to hide, watching from a distance as they were sent, one by one, to the gallows.

They were his family. Moreover, their posessions were all he had. He was left alone and penniless.

But, frightened and grief-stricken, he was unwilling to turn back to banditry, and instead planned to become a singer, as it was the other travelling profession with which he was familliar and he wasn't sure how to take up a trade.

It turned out he didn't need to -- as he taught himself to sing, he gradually found the world around him changing in response. He was a wizard -- a powerful one. Since, he has ascended to the throne of the northern isles, where his mastery of the wind and waves provides a safe harbor in the formerly-unclaimed (and uninhabitable) crags and fjords.

He has also made something of a name for himself with regards to curses, which he generously bestows on anyone he finds irritating. It is unlikely, though, that he was behind this particular one -- his strengths do not lie in fire.

Den Dødelige Forbannelsen

The question of what the curse, which is the only major plot driver we've yet discovered, does is really a very important thing to address. If the curse makes him physically weak, for example, he may well find himself growing despondent merely as a side-effect of the tie between mood and health. Alternatively, I came up with an interesting idea where the curse is sketching a forbidden rune into his flesh which, when complete, will utterly destroy him (beyond the ability to resurrect, which his friends might otherwise be able to do) -- and he has to cast and maintain a time-stop spell on the curse, crippling his personal magic to only a fraction of his previous power.

I really like that, actually. But in the interests of making it harder on the protagonist, we might decide that maintaining a spell for too long leads to casting fatigue. Alternatively, there's the problem that (assuming the time-stop requires constant attention) sleep is out of the question for as long as it takes to find the malicious individual behind his curse. And possibly the searing pain from having a rune burnt into his flesh would similarly impair sleep.

From this, incidentally, we've discovered that death is only an inconvenience -- to the sufficiently powerful, or wealthy, it is impermanent. This would logically have a host of implications. First, culturally -- death and the afterlife would be of less importance. Wizards might well hold religions in contempt, trusting their own power over that of the gods. This seems silly, but it's something that can be pictured without too much work, and assuming that people would do it requires only that they be blinded by pride, which is a very realistic assumption.

But it also means the more powerful people would reproduce less often, probably. Over-population is much less likely to be a problem in a society which has magic, but if there's a feudal system of some kind there will be some level of poverty, and poverty breeds ignorance and suspicion of anything complicated -- magic would almost certainly fall into the list of things peasants don't trust. Any sort of foothold in the hearts and minds of the ignorant masses would appeal to a certain sort of religious leader, so at least one major religion (to get the peasants on its side) would declare magic to be inherently evil. This would mean that magical food is less likely to be a solution than it otherwise could have been -- ignorant suspicion always gets between people and things that would have made their lives better.

Let's say that resurrection is ridiculously expensive to pull off, but possible -- and that there are perma-death methods available, or war would be even more hideous than it already is, with solders resurrected and throwing themselves at one another again and again endlessly. Which would be horrifying.

Of course, we still have to figure out from how great a distance such a curse can be cast. What materials or sacred sites are required for such a ritual. What manner of forbidden knowledge must have been found to make the spell possible -- and what must be done for Graham to discover it, so he can learn to undo it. Whether it can be traced back to its caster (probably not) and if such a trail could be muddied. Are there experts in the anti-curse field? Of course. Where are they, what do they cost, can Graham afford it?

So many questions. Next up, we introduce Darlough, the answer-man.

Forråde Forventning

There's a  lot of comfort to be found in predictability. You can pick up a good book, one you're already familiar with, and know that you're going to enjoy it. I can appreciate that. The typical narrative structure of mundanity to call-to-arms to mentor to acceptance-of-heroic-destiny to independence to victory to the-return -- these are successful story elements that you can find anywhere because they work. Becuase people like them. On the other hand, sometimes you just have to mix things up a bit, do something unexpected.

 Yorlain (Bi'iyolñ) is a street magician. He is one of the have-nots who carries a chip on his shoulder, convinced that anything he doesn't have isn't worth having. He is a normal mortal without any magic to speak of, doing stage magic to prove that the workers-in-the-Power aren't any better than normal folks. He is a revolutionary without a mob, a fanatic without a clearly defined cause, and a very stressed, dissatisfied man. He lives an unfulfilled life, scraping by on a meager wage, and sometimes at night he realizes that he makes a fool out of himself every day, in public, on purpose, so he can have enough money to eat. And when he realizes this, he is ashamed. Sometimes he slacks his shame in liquor. Sometimes he just has bad dreams.

Yorlain doesn't know it, but he has a destiny, and it's tangled up with a wizard. Why did I decide this? I can't recall, but it's tied up with one of the principles of writing that I read once. Apparently, all good writers are thieves. They're supposed to take something they like, figure out why they liked it, and do that from then on. Now, this isn't "steal the setting" as much as it is "oh. That character was flawed, and they didn't arbitrarily ignore the flaw every time it was inconvenient." or "that setting had self-consistency" or something. The basic idea is that good writers are supposed to see when other writers do something right, and revise their behavior.

And I had one of those moments reading "Evil for Evil" -- something about inverting expectations. So Yorlain is a street magician who will have to tag along with a real magician. In a normal person, this would evoke shame -- it'd be like me calling myself a gymnast and teaching children how to do cartwheels (I could) and then hanging out with the guy who invented parkour. I would be so out of my league.

But Yorlain doesn't have that problem, and we're going to exploit that for drama. You see, Yorlain is an envious have-not, so good at self-delusion that he believes his own press -- he thinks the Wizards are faking it. He just isn't sure how. And he's going to undergo character growth, probably. Or die. It's always nice to have a character it's okay to kill, right?

Hastigheten Av Historien

In real life, the interesting bits are far outnumbered by the boring. Intense emotions are less common than their more apathetic cousins. In a good story, though, we aren't looking for boring parts. Because they're boring. If a story can't be told without being boring, tell a different story. The point is entertainment -- for me, writing is to entertain me. If I expect someone to read it, the goal is now to entertain them.

So there must be intensity -- without melodrama. I specify this because melodrama is also boring, because whenever something's so overblown that I can't take it seriously, I don't. Graham is going to be going through a tough time -- we know this because he's cursed, and dying. That's fine. And he's going to have tough moral decisions thrust upon him, and that's fine too. That he'll have the decisions means he'll likely end up with a measure of responsibility. Also great.

But we can't make him whiny, so he's going to have to be very calm. Calm can come from acceptance, emotional distance, or self control, among other things. We can't have acceptance, because he has to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." and fight to survive. We can't have emotional distance because that's inhuman and we couldn't identify with him. So it'll have to be self-control, which makes sense for a wizard anyway. We can't have him be all "The primal forces of the universe are my playthings." and be constantly chasing his every whim. He'd be a monster.

I will get around to religion and society, but it will have to be later, because that's going to require some charts.