Archive | December 2019

Worldbuilding Wednesday – the Aunt Family

Last week I was taking questions on the Aunt Family and magic!  I got two.

Eseme asked: Much of their magic seems to be craft based, and involves imbuing magic in items. Does this only work on handmade objects?

I imagine if you were sitting at a mechanical knitting loom or fabric loom and putting all of your magic and will into it, you could probably imbue magic into its creation as well, but I think that’s not as easy — it takes more concentration & attention to the magic – than doing it the “old-fashioned” way. 

Imbuing an object that you haven’t made at all with magic – a trinket from the store – would require a lot more power, and thus would usually be part of some sort of ritual, generally involving several casters at once.

🍰 

@SamTTC on Twitter asked:  Is there any relationship between calorie cost to the caster relative to the energy output of a spell?

That’s a good question.  I’ve definitely done that in other settings – Fae Apoc, Tír na Cali for sure.

In Aunt Family, I’d say that there IS a relationship, but the ratio depends on the strength of the caster and the strength of the connections she has to pull on.

That is, the same spell and effect would take much more physical energy for a weak caster with no family (or family land) to draw on, than for one of the Aunts of a Family, especially if she was on family land – running a marathon vs. walking a mile, for a bit of an exaggeration. 

👩‍🌾

 

Meter Maid

This story was written because Anke posted this toot and I had an idea. 

There’d been a time when Pat’s co-workers had snickered “meter maid” when Pat left for work, but that time – that had been before the city had managed to push through a very obscure translation of a caelo usque ad centrum and managed to make it stick by the sheer tenacity of the city’s lawyers.

Now – now Pat suited up, along with a brigade of other meter maids, grey ghosts, and they strapped onto their jet scooters.

Nobody parked illegally in the city anymore.  There’d been one case, a month ago.  The people nearby had physically moved the car out of the illegal spot and into a fountain several blocks away.  Nobody had listened to the illegal-parker’s complaints.

People fed the meters and the city allowed it, because someone was paying for that spot.  People went out of their way to park tidily.

And Pat and the grey ghosts jetted up into the sky, up out of the atmosphere, and into the parking spots around the asteroid belt and the city’s first space station.   It wasn’t a safe job, not with the Ih(oh)ill bombers still swooping down at seemingly random intervals to hit the stations or the miners, not with the Higun being, well, as Higun as possible in an attempt to counter rumors that them not attacking Earth was a sign of cowardice, not with some of the unknown aliens still trying to test out Earth’s strength on occasion instead of just ignoring their laws and, say, their parking regulations.

But when you could slap a parking ticket and a drive inhibitor on a Higun spacehopper and then very politely explain the city laws, when you dodged an Ih(oh)ill bomber and managed to hit it with an illegal-driving outside of accepted lanes ticket which came with not only the drive inhibitor but also an immediate impound order (self-reinforcing, of course, like the drive inhibitor), when you caught some alien equivalent of a teenager trying to park in the park (which would be “it is free space, no? Then free it should be for any activity.”) and slapped them with just a big enough fine to make them think about pranking some other city next time –

It still wasn’t a safe job, not by a very long shot.  But it was a fun job.

And Pat’s fellow officers saluted when the grey ghosts left and cheered when they came home, and that made it even more fun.

 

Want more?

 

Meter maid (and Wiktionary) and Grey Ghost.

Spoils of War 25: Intent

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender

PLEASE NOTE: I WENT BACK TO THE END OF CHAPTER 21 AND AM REWRITING FROM THAT POINT. 

“Okay, this is going to take some Working, but if I’m right about your Words and I can do what I want with my own – the first would be a bomb, but it would have to be really big or really properly targeted – best would be both – to actually take out the Mountain. 

“A missile…”  Nikol shook her head, picturing the entrances into and out of the Mountain’s main complex (also called the Mountain, just to confuse matters).  “No, we have no way of launching a missile and they have Force shields up, and obviously anything that big Long-Tail wouldn’t be able to drag through the vents. Or any other animal.  Sorry, kitty,” she added ruefully. “You’re really cool, but you’re not nearly that cool.” Continue reading

Look a Theme Poll!

Hidden Mall 93: Bookseller

They were facing a bookshop, the blue woman behind the counter looking both surprised and worried. 

“You!” Liv complained.  “You! You took my life in a book!”

“You gave me your life in a book,” the woman countered.  She gestured at the book on the shelf. “And because you did, you can come back here.  Because you have written down your story, you’re anchored to this world.”

“Wait.”  A Vic stepped forward.  “Wait. Wait, you’re saying if we didn’t do the thing with the book-“

“Then it is much harder for you to find home, but much easier for you to step into another home.  Which it seems that you are doing, yes? I would suggest, if you wish to travel without this young lady, that you leave a book here of your life to pin you to this world.  You’re going to want something of the sort, I assure you.”

“So you-” Abseil frowned at her.  “You’re – you were doing us a favor.” Continue reading