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Author Craft / Re: Making Generic Magic more Appealing
« on: May 19, 2009, 02:33:28 AM »
Crutches and batteries, that is my take on magic.
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Cool. Thanks for the input!
Right now I've worked out that Simon Magus is the first in the bloodline. I've got a pretty detailed bit of background for him that I think fits pretty nicely into his legend.
The 7th and latest incarnation will be an average 17 year old living in modern times.
That leaves five in between them, spaced out about 300 some odd years. Since the modern incarnation is caucasian, I'd like to not use anybody else who is. I've got two other incarnations that I definitely plan to use:
Koschei the Deathless. In my version, he's a Ket shaman with a suit of armor that looks like its made of fused human bones. (One of Koschei's nicknames was "Old Bones" because legends characterize him with a gaunt or skeletal appearance.) In the legends, Koschei got a bad rap for terrorizing virgins and maidens. In my version, they're actually demons in human form. Another possibility is that a scourge of incorporeal demons possessed young women throughout the countryside, as a means to prey on human males, and the only way he could save these girls' souls was to kill them, thereby exorcising the demons within. Obviously this didn't win him any popularity contests, but he decided it was better to save their souls and mourn their deaths.
The other incarnation I had in mind was Fafnir, the dragon. This Norse legend probably has an oral tradition dating back for many centuries, but since it wasn't published till around 700 AD, I have a little leeway to "fudge" and make the actual occurance take place sometime a few centuries before that.
In breif, Fafnir was a revered dwarf who changed himself into a dragon, collected a massive horde of stolen, cursed gold and was slain by the hero Sigurd.
In my version, the "dragon" is actually Fafnir's demon familiar, and she's not a dragon per se, but something big and awful, and able to control fire, so what else would they call her but a dragon? I'm toying with the idea of making Fafnir a human being of different ethnicity than the Norse folk, who has somehow ended up far, far from home. (Orphaned son of an Arab explorer who predated Ahmad ibn Fadlān by a few hundred years?) His dark skin and shorter stature elicit some xenophobic prejudices. This, coupled with some elaboration on the part of story tellers all work to make him the dwarf of legend.
Sigurd won't slay Fafnir or his familiar, but rather they'll work together to face some common foe. However, Sigurd ends up being a braggart who takes all the credit, and adds the bit about slaying Fafnir to boost his own reputation.
Details are still sparse, as this is very early in the developmental stage, but that's the sort of thing I'm leaning towards.
Trouble is, it's been part of the modern vampire lore for so long now, due to that, it's hard to completely tease it out. Although I like how they handled it in the sadly short-lived TV series "Moonlight": vamps there could go out in daylight, but it makes them very uncomfortable, while direct unobstructe sunlight (ie. one episode set in a desert) can make them deathly ill.
I might despise the Twilight series, but I have a feeling a lot of the kids who got hooked on it will go for anything with vampires because of it, so hopefully they'll find the better stuff, like Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy", etc.
Cool. Then yes at some point your skeptic will have to sit her down and (if he were me) ask her to explain her beliefs, and then start pointing out the contractions (much like harry to murphy on the bible in the beginning of wn). Once he has shaken her loose from her adolescent infallibility, she will be much more likely to be receptive to guidance. But I do agree with the others that it will probably take a screw-up on her part to make her willing sit down and really examine things like that. Basically, life shows her that she went wrong, skeptic explains to her where she went wrong, and then they just have to figure out what the right way is.