"Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be." -George R.R. Martin

Names have always fascinated me. The name of a foreign country can inspire awe or curiosity. A person's name can determine how they are percieved by the world. Or, if they're a character in a book, how the reader reacts to the person. Names can provide inspiration or inspire fear. The mere mention of Dracula or Frankenstein conjures an immediate image for most people.
Often times, when I need a bit of inspiration, I look to names. The name of a character might inspire a story. The title of a visting dignitary or scholar might suggest a plot or setting. But, where to come up with such ideas? Well, the encylopedia is a good place to start. I remember as a kid all the articles there that fueled so many flights of fancy and journeys of the imagination. But, that limits us to the real world. What if we'd like to go way beyond the known or ordinary? Well, there's always fantasy literature and science-fiction encylopedias. But, for something newer and more original, try <a target="_blank" href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/gens/index.html">The Page of Name Generators</a>. Here you'll find a name generator for every occasion. And, it's also the inspiration for my own <a href="http://www.fantasist.net/sstarter.shtml">Story Generator</a>. Enjoy it! And let your creative mind run wild!!

Be your own dictator!

Or, whatever kind of ruler you might want to be. Someone on a ConCulture list I belong to posted a link to a site called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nationstates.net">NationStates</a&gt;, a new, interactive game of political experimentation. It's by an author of a book called Jennifer Government and it's his spin on viral marketing. But, really, it's just a cool little game. The only problem you'll have is the pace, which is slow, and getting signed in to the game! There are so many people playing that the server is constantly overloaded.
So far, my little nation has only dealt with one small issue, but I hope for more opportunities to show the benefits of a militaristic meritocracy in action. Only time will tell. The site has been active since November 2002, but there are over 9,000 nations going. Pretty crazy. Of course, I have no idea how many of them are active at all. For all I know 8,500 of them have been abandoned. And, there might only be 12 players running hundreds of nations each. There's really not any way to tell. In any case, it seemed like a cool experiment. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.
If you'd like to visit my little slice of the NationStates world, the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nat… Empire of Megaria</a> is up and running!

What am I reading this week?

This week it's <A target="_blank" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060925795/fantasistnet"&gt;
Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages</a>by Norman F. Cantor. I've read the first section and so far, it's pretty good.
Obviously, it's a study of several people from the Middle Ages. Generally, they're famous people, but "famous" is a relative term. If one is a scholar of Medieval history, they're well known. If you are new to the subject, this is a fairly easy introduction to some of the movers and shakers of the Middle Ages Europe. Each chapter focuses on a different personality, showing how they might have acted and what their lives might have been like in a fictionalized way. Some liberties have been taken with the fine details of speech and mannerisms to make the subject more accessible to the modern reader, but I don't think anything really suffers in the translation.
Again, I haven't finished this book yet, but, so far, it's pretty good. Easy to read for a book on such a heavy, and occasionally dusty, subject. I wouldn't rely on this book for a scholarly study or paper, but it's a breezy introduction for the lay person.

At most, that's all I can give the new Legend of the Five Rings series.

And, honestly, that makes me a little sad. I wanted to love these books. I really did, but it wasn't until the<b> third </b>book in the series that a plot started to really develop.
<a target="_blank" href="http://l5r.alderac.com/">The Legend of the Five Rings </a>was a collectable card game, then a fantasy role-playing game before it was a fiction series. I fell in love with the <a target="_blank" href="http://l5r.alderac.com/rpg/">FRPG</a&gt; because it was based in a mythical Japan that never was called Rokugan and featured wonderful art. In fact, before the latest rules revision, I collected just about all the books just for the art and the ideas they sparked. Then, something wonderful happened. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/l5r">Wizards of the Coast </a>had the folks who wrote the fiction that was sprinkled throughout the game books whip up some novels with the further adventures of some of our favorite characters. And the Clan War novels were really good. There were seven, one for each of the Great Clans featured in Rokugan. Each book focused on one Clan but really move the plot along. The plot line was based on tournament play of the card game, so it got a little strange a couple of times, but it was pretty good over all.
Then, much to my delight, a new series of Legend of the Five Rings books came out. So, I bought the first three without even reading the back cover. Man, that was a mistake. The first book, <u>The Steel Throne</u>, was so scarce on plot that I couldn't find it! I had <b>no idea </b>what this book was supposed to be about when I was done with it. But, I'd already bought the first three, so I pressed on with the next one. <u>The Wind of Honor </u> is by, in my opinion, the best author in the series, but even that didn't save this book. Again, a meandering review of characters, but not much on plot. Then, finally, the third book, <u>The Wind of War</u>, started to actually show some signs of a plot. And, it even explained what was supposed to be happening in the first two. Apparently, the whole series is about a struggle to find a new Emporer for Rokugan. The "Four Winds" are the dead Emporer's children, but there's no explanation of how they got their nick-names or what they mean. This second series is sadly lacking in some of the basics of good fiction which the first series had. In fact, I bought the second series books based solely on how good the first series was!
Ah, well, at least it was a quick read and was a nice asian setting. It was a decent counter-point to the non-fiction I was reading at the time, too, which was also about Japan.

So sad that commercialization seems to kill the good things about new settings and ideas. I sure hope I don't let that happen to me.

Does it really exist?

It seems like the wrong category to put with this title, but it really fits. I have several half-baked ideas for stories, but they're all set in fictional worlds filled with people and places that don't have names. Why don't they have names? Because, I want to make their names new, original and not quite like anything that already exists. I want to, at least partially, dislocate the reader from their usual preconceptions about fantasy literature. So, I invented a continent that is in the <b>Southern</b> hemisphere. That inverts the standard Euro-centric notions of hot and cold, not to mention civilization and barbarism. But, that's still not enough. So, names...
I want names that sound like they come from an asiatic land of some kind, but not one that can be easily identified. Not quite China or Japan, or even India, but close to all three. Now, I could just use names from each of those cultures and sort of mash them around to get something "new", but that seems too much like cheating. The alternative I came up with, though, is so much harder: a set of invented languages. In fact, a whole set of interrelated and interdependant created languages. Yes, yes, "just like Tolkien". Except, of course, I'm not a linguist and I don't know Welsh.
And, therein lies the rub, I am, in fact, not a linguist. I don't know hardly a thing about linguistic rules for sound change or grammar or morphology or phonology. Frankly, the whole process is so intimidating that I'm just about at a loss for where to begin. I tried using several different language creation programs, but they never quite produced good enough results. Close, but not quite as good as a natural language. I tried using software that just created words from source data of various kinds, but that fell short, too. The words came out okay, but how should I use them? How should they be related? Eventually, I stopped trying to make a whole language and focused only on enough words to make some meaningfull names. But, even that seemed to get bogged down in the manipulation of the software and data, ultimately producing no results.
So, in a way, I've come full circle. I'm back to simply not knowing how to start. I've been reading the various e-mail lists for ConLanging and come to the conclusion that a hybrid method might suit me. Generating series of words to choose from, but determining my own relationship between them, if any. And, I can use a spreadsheet to track them all. Or, perhaps, a simple database. But, of course, that puts the work back on me.
Now, I have to figure out how to be creative and original. I have to hear the language and the names people call each other in my head. I have to not only see the destinations that my characters are headed toward, but what they're named on a map.
Can it be done? Yes. Can I do it? Maybe.

What is it about dragons?

Last week, I watched a really mediocre movie on the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.scifi.com">SciFi channel </a>called "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.scifi.com/onair/scifipictures/dragonfighter/">Dragon Fighter</a>". It wasn't that the acting was bad because I expected that. I mean, an action adventure movie about dragons being brought back to life? And the dragons breathe fire? No, I wasn't expecting Lawrence Olivier. But, I was hoping that the dragons would be good. Alas, they weren't.

First of all, the dragons were huge. I mean, these things were the size of a Lear jet. Now, that is a really, really big predator. Which means, it needs a lot to eat, right? But, they never really showed how this thing ate. It just kept snacking on scrawny, little humans. Not once did these things go for a nice, juicy cow or even a goat. Nope, ate exculsively humans that were shooting at it, in fact. Go figure. If my lunch were shooting at me, I'd start a new diet!
Then, there was the fact that it breathed actual fire. Okay, that's not so bad, but they never explained it at all! They never even tried!! It was just "Oh, it's a dragon, so it breathes fire. Everyone knows that!" What a joke! At least <a target="_blank" href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0253556">Reign of Fire</a> did better than that!
And, also, there was the way the darn thing looked. The effects were just horrid. It didn't even look like a good rubber suit, much less like a lizard. At least <a target="_blank" href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0197521">Godzilla</a&gt; has some kitsch value! I could have forgiven all the rest if the effects had been any good.

Why is it, I wondered while watching this lackluster film, that dragons are always so huge? I mean, think about it, a 425 pound lion is going to make a mess of the average person. Imagine a 500 pound lizard with acidic, poisonous drool that can fly. Even if it was land-bound, that could tear apart a pre-gunpowder civilization. The <a target="_blank" href="http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/jeffcorwin/carnival/lizard/komodo… dragon </a>is a nasty enough beast, and it's real!
This is what I was talking about in my entries about building a more realistic monster. These dragons weren't even close to real and, frankly, I'm much more frightened by the <b>real</b> komodo dragons!

So, now I guess I'll have to write a story about more realistic dragons. But, I can't duplicate what <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785729194/qid=1041893950/sr=2-3… Mcaffrey</a> did with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345412745/qid=1041893950…;. I'm not sure how I'l do that, yet, but at least I know what <b>not</b> to do now!
Well, off to work!

What goes into making a "realistic" world or game?

That's an age old debate, actually. There are those who critisize <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd">Dungeons and Dragons</a> for not being realistic enough, but, of course, the creators never really <b>intended</b> that it should be too terribly realistic. They were after smooth game play, which is what they got. Now, the current rules (3rd edition, as of this writing) are a better simulation of an imagined reality, but the game play suffers a bit for that realism. But, the more historically "pure" find that anything with that much magic in it can't be very realistic at all.
There are alternatives to the standard Dungeons and Dragons, high-magic worlds, though. For one, there's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.columbiagames.com/Products/Harnworld/index.html">Columbia Games' Hârn</a>. And, the creator of Hârn, N. Robin Crosby, has written a nice introduction to that world. One thing I particularly like about his intro is that he reveals a certain amount of his methodology. (Readers can find that introduction <a target="_blank" href="http://www.columbiagames.com/HarnPage/Generalintroduction/Robinharnintr…;.)

Way back when I first found Hârn, it captured my imagination because it was a fully fleshed-out, authentic, working and coherent world. There really weren't any other fantasy worlds designed for games that could say that. The closest thing would have been D&D's Greyhawk, but even that left significant holes for the gamer to fill in on their own. For one thing, Hârn had a set of detailed, realistic-looking maps. It wasn't done in a "arty" way, but more like a modern map might be drawn. And the "Hârndex" was a sort of Medieval Encyclopedia Brittanica. It had rough drawings that seemed authentically old and simple text. But, it was enough to ignite the imagination.
The other thing that impressed me so with Hârn was that the consequences were all pretty well thought out. In fact, that's one of the reasons the designer gives for keeping magic fairly rare. Lots of magic being thrown around make it hard to work out all the potential consequences a society might experience. And, for me, it really added to the authenticity. The magic described in the text <b>felt</b> like Medieval magic. It was somewhat crude and mysterious and just a little bit random, too. It seemed to draw on ancient powers of the Earth that were frightening and dangerous. And, how else would that kind of culture, with a "realistic" education level, see magic? It would be a horribly frightening thing. Of course, so would a trip to the barber or the apothocary, but that's in there, too.

Perhaps "realism" isn't the right word. "Authenticity" describes it better. Hârn felt like a real place with real people because of the effort that the designer put into authenticity. Not only do the details work independantly, but all the parts fit into a complete, authenic whole. It's that authenticity that made Hârn so interesting to me and keeps it in print and selling today.

In many ways, the details and authenticity of Hârn became the goal which I aspired to reach. Perhaps, one day, I will.

There's more than one way to skin a loup garou.

That's a demonic werewolf that literally sheds its skin to become human. In the last monster building installment, I talked about more or less natural monsters, specifically dragons. But, now, I'll turn my attention to more elusive prey, the supernatural and demonic monster.
The first thing to keep in mind is that these monsters need to follow the Rules, too. But, they tend to have special rules just for them that may, or may not, follow any so-called natural laws. For demons, it may be a series of rituals that will summon and bind them. Or vampires not being able to come out during the day. Whatever the monster, there must be rules to how it lives and acts.
The most well known supernatural monster is probably the demon or devil. And most readers of modern fantasy literature are at least familiar with the story of Faust, even if they know it by another name. Selling one's soul to the devil is quite common in popular literature. In fact, there have been quite a few movies done about it, but serious and comedic. But, those contracts follow rules. For one thing, they're legally binding in a court much, much higher than the Supreme Court of the United States. This is big stuff here. Your soul is a pretty valuable commodity. And, it quite often will buy quite a lot.
Or, at least it will seem to buy a lot at first, but these deals never seem to work out quite they way they're promised. That's, in fact, one of the demonic rules. The person giving up their soul gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. But, somehow, in almost all fiction, the hapless human somehow manages to get their soul back in once piece. That, too, seems to be one of the Rules these supernatural creatures follow.
So, even when we cheat, authors have to follow the rules!

Background ideas and a contest.

First, the contest. It's the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.itsf.org/index.php?PAGE=contest%2Findex.html">Clarke-Bradbury Science Fiction Competition</a>. This is a "hard science" competition in the spirit of Clarke and his invention of the communications satellite years before such a thing was actually created and used. These folks are looking for innovative technology and ways that technology might change the world. Not quite normal fantasist fare, but hey, a writing contest is a writing contest.

Now, to the stuff that intrigues me more. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pepysdiary.com/">The Diary of Samuel Pepys</a>. Pepys was a prolific journaler who not only recorded his own interesting life, but also discussed events of the day. This website, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pepysdiary.com/">http://www.pepysdiary.com/</a&gt;, presents his nine-volume journal in a contemporary format; a blog. This is great inspiration for my own experimental fiction idea of creating a journal of a fiction character via a blog. Way, way, cool.
The creator of the blog, Phil Gyford, was interviewed by the BBC in an article titled "<a target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2621581.stm">Why I turned the Pepys Diary into a Web Log</a>". It's a fairly interesting read and a great introduction to who Pepys was and why he matters. Way, cool, again.
It's nice to know that great minds think alike, but it does kind of stink to realize that my idea isn't quite as original as I had thought.

Build a better monster and the victims will beat a path to your door.

Well, maybe that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea. There was a show on <a target="_blank" href="http://animal.discovery.com/">Animal Planet</a> of all things that really got me thinking about this. It was called <a target="_blank" href="http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/futureiswild/futureiswild.html"… Future is Wild</a> and it was all about ways that present day animals may evolve in the future. Some of them were pretty far out, but still, they were pretty reasonable. The animal world is full of surprises and quirks, so some really odd things are not only possible but already happening! Of course, they were talking about "real" animals and not fantasy creatures, but, still I think it's important to pay pretty close attention to the "little details" when I'm building a fantasy monster. Whether it's a dragon, an ogre, or a demon, they still have to be believable, consistent, and reasonable, after a fashion.
In short, they have to follow the Rules, whatever those rules may be. For something that's more or less natural like an ogre or a dragon, they have to follow certain so-called natural laws. They eat, which means they hunt and/or gather. Because they eat, they excrete as well. They sleep and mate, which means they need a lair of somekind. Sure, dragons may violate what some of us preceive to be laws of aerodynamics if they fly, though there is some debate on that, but otherwise, they need to act like really big animals.
For instance, since they're big, they need to eat a <b>lot</b>. That means that they'll be carnivores. They'll have to get the most "bang for their buck", as it were, so they'll eat meat. Meat provides the most calories for volume. And I figure it takes a lot of calories to fly and breathe fire. But, they may also be omnivores. After all, something that needs that many calories can't be too picky about what it eats! It just has to get fuel any which way it can. So, its eating habits will determine its hunting habits. Or, even if it has hunting habits at all.
But, what an animal eats can also determine what their mating habits are like. How's that, you wonder? Well, if an animal needs a lot of food, it needs a pretty big territory and not much competition. So, members of its own species tend to get run off as unwanted competition, including members of the opposite sex. Unless, of course, it hunts in packs. Let's say our dragon is a loner. What does that mean to its reproductive cycle?
Well, I'd imagine that the poor female gets to lay eggs and possibly tend them. Sort of like what Bakker suspects many species of dinosaur did. But, they could be more like aligators, who lay their eggs and then abandon them to fend for themselves. Aligators mate once a year, according to Jeff Corwin of Animal Planet, and then spend the rest of the year in competition for food. Pretty brutal, but that's perfect for our monster. The more brutal the monster, the more heroic the dragonslayer.
From those little suppositions and speculations, we can really flesh out a pretty good and believable dragon. But, it all comes from following Mother Nature's rules. And, of course, doing our homework. Gotta' know what those rules are if we're going to follow them. So, stop watching the latest Evil Dead movie and flip over to National Geographic or Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel and see what's happening in the animal world. You'll thank yourself in the long run.

Keep a lookout for a follow up article on creating more "realistic" demons.
Until then, keep writing!