Roger the Wyrd - the Magical System

Roger's quadrate

The primary magical system in my work-in-progress Roger the Wyrd is based on the elements. The Wyrdings are all individuals who are sensitive towards, and have some degree of control over, the four elements. Roger's formidable teacher at Norham Priory School, Miss Smith, explains this best (this is a rather edited snippet).

“In the fifth century BC Empedocles of Acragas formulated the four-part theory of roots. These roots are Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. All of the Universe is made up of these elements. Since then people who are insensitive to the elements and call themselves scientists have identified atoms as the building blocks of nature. But those who are what we call "sensitive" to the four roots, may also be able to manipulate them. As the world around you is made up of more than one of the four elements, it is by working together that you will achieve your greatest power. The word ‘conjure’ comes from this coming together to manipulate matter as a group. The four of you on each table are in what we called a quadrate. At each table there is an Earth sensitive, an Air sensitive, a Water sensitive, and a Fire sensitive."

 

Miss Smith with Felix.

The four members of the same quadrate tend to form friendships that last their entire lives. The eponymous main character, Roger, is primarily an Earth sensitive. As such he is a key member of the quadrate as Earth sustains and supports the other elements. Julia (Jules) is the Fire sensitive, and she relies on the Air sensitive, Felix. The Water sensitive is Irene, a distant relative of Roger's. Apart from directly manipulating the elements, Water also governs the emotions and Air governs the mind, so a trained sensitive in these areas can cause a lot of trouble if you do not know the signs of their manipulations. 

The Temple Church, London

There are two other quadrates in Roger's class, which collectively makes twelve, often called a "shilling", while two shillings made a "florin". Such a powerful conjuration would have a leader, known as the king penny. They would hold hands in a circle, which explains a number of round medieval buildings.

The Round Table, Winchester

A florin of Wyrdings working at Roger's school, with his grandmother as king penny, effected the change of weather conditions that enabled the Normandy Landings in 1944. One of many contributions of the arcane community to that conflict. Miss Smith had actually served in the war, but if she told you what she did, she would have to kill you.

Image of Bretor

In an earlier post I talked about my first attempt at writing fiction over 40 years ago. It was a fantasy story with a main character called Bretor. Yes, that's an anagram of Robert. At about that time I was applying my Art College experience by painting badges (often called "pins" in the Americas). I typically painted them for my friends in return for beer, supplementing my meagre income as a field archaeologist. Generally they were of people doing what they loved. 

After a while I painted one for myself, and it shows Bretor, being me, standing under a tree. In the background is a castle and a troop of lancers. After publishing the earlier post I remembered the badge and got my wife to take a photograph (it's about 2" across). Unfortunately the protective coat I had put on the painting went funny and became sticky some years afterwards, and so things have become stuck to the surface. Nonetheless it is a somewhat recognisable me of 20-odd staring broodily out through the grime of time.

Amylia's Big Plan

In January of 2022 my youngest daughter, a teenager, was being so annoying that I said to her: "Right! I'm going to write a story about an annoying teenager, name her after you, and put her through absolute Hell!" And so the story about Amylia (not actually my daughter's name, but close) was begun.  

Amylia exists in the fantasy multiverse I call the "Twelve Realms", these being separate but intersecting universes. I talk about this more in my first post on my work-in-progress "A Flight of Wyverns" which is set in the same universe as Amylia, only about a thousand years later. 

Amylia is a human but lives in a version of the Earth in which humans are not indigenous. There are, however, quite a lot of them in certain parts of the world. Typically humans crossed over when fissures occurred in the inter-realm fabric, most commonly during storms at sea. So humans tended to be thrown up on certain shores around the world, where they settled and thrived. In the map above most of the coast is dominated by humans, but the indigenous people who the humans call "tree-elves" dominate the interior. 

Amylia starts off living with her mother, a professor at the University of Sinjin, but runs away after getting in trouble at school. As a result, she goes to live with her grandfather (Hero Forge rendition above) who lives in the ruins of an ancient fortress at Greenhall, west of the coastal areas. The fortress is home to a diverse population who are mostly not human, including indigenous races but also races from other Realms, including this angry lady, below, who is Amylia's short-tempered martial arts instructor.

The word-count is presently at over 10,000 words but I have just got going, and I have bits I have put down that will come later. The advantage to this story is that it is in my mind and I can just sit down and write a bit when I want, while of my other works-in-progress "A Squire for Wolf's Keep" needs a solid block of time to change and edit, while "Roger the Wyrd" and "A Flight of Wyverns" will need me to get back into that headspace again. However, if you would like to read about the trials and tribulations of Amylia, I will certainly post some snippets here.

Summer of 1979

In my youth I read a lot of science-fiction, by authors like John Wyndham, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and their ilk. I also read a lot of fantasy, by Tolkien, Mervyn Peake, et al. 

Another influence was historical fiction. I especially liked Sir Walter Scott's mediaeval stories, like Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward. His ability to describe castles possibly gave me an interest in such defensive architecture that has led to a professional involvement, and is with me to this day.

So it is hardly surprising that I started thinking of my own stories, and eventually wanted to write them down. It is also not surprising that the first story that I actually started to type out had men wielding swords on horses, and all the trappings of pseudo-mediaeval fantasy. That story is what I am tapping out in this picture, sitting in my parents' garden. The main character was Bretor, a mighty warrior and leader. If you are that way inclined, you may have noticed that "Bretor" is an anagram of "Robert", so we are clearly looking at some escapist self-insertion here. So hopeful and ambitious was I at that time, I set an entire battle sequence to work synchronously with the "Mars, the Bringer of War" movement from Gustav Holst's The Planets Suite, so as it would work for the movie version.

My last recollection of the manuscript was the cat throwing up on it.

By the way, in reference to the charming photo, I bought the hat at the Glastonbury Rock Festival a couple of years before. It was excellent for working in the sun. I still have it, in fact. I have no idea why I am wearing those boots.

 

A Flight of Wyverns

A Flight of Wyverns is a novel-length work-in-progress that started with a short story which got out of hand. It is based in a multiverse concept that started to develop in this and other short stories I was writing at the time (c.2019). The working title for this concept is The Twelve Realms. Each of the Twelve represent a separate but at times intersecting plane of existence (I should write a blog sometime about how, and why, the numbers 7 and 12 keep cropping up in myth, legend, and the fiction derived from them). Sometimes it is easier to think of them by their number. A Flight of Wyverns and also another work-in-progress, Amylia's Big Plan, both take place on the Earth of the Second Realm (see map above). The Realm in which I presume you are reading this blog is the Tenth Realm (this Realm is where Roger the Wyrd is set, only in 1969).

The story of A Flight of Wyverns involves a young female called Stormraven, who is of a race that refers to themselves as Tree-folk (see Hero Forge image above). These are one of the indigenous races of the Earth of the Second Realm, and humans, interlopers from the Tenth Realm, refer to them and all other of the more attractive "humanoid" races as "elves". This, of course, is a contrivance by which I enable my human readers to know what the Hell I am talking about. Tree-folk are lightly built, rather androgynous, beautiful, and green. They practice a "magic" based on their greater understanding of the spirit of all things. One of the "things" they develop a spiritual awareness of, are wyverns.

This brings up the whole "what is a damned wyvern anyway" issue. Scaly creatures with wings have had various and interchangeable names, the term "dragon" being the most well-known. Heraldry people may have been behind the need to be more precise, and by the 16th century it was decided that a wyvern has two legs and wings, while a dragon has four legs. So the above flag, the emblem of Owain Glyndwr by all accounts, carries a wyvern. It has also been thought to be a symbol of Wessex, which is where I am from, so they crop up a lot.

My wyverns, however, are more sleek, less spiny, very intelligent, and may agree to be ridden. Some say that the wyverns were attracted by the Tree-folk's ability to sense the spirit of prey no matter how well hidden that led them to collaborate, so it is really less like domestication and more like co-evolution. The wyvern-rider selection process is protracted, and involves reading romantic poetry to the wyverns.

A "flight" is a tactical group of wyverns and riders, typically 4-5 wyverns. The main plot is about how the Tree-folk are attacked by a growing human empire, and the flight of wyverns led by Stormraven must fly around the world to gain the allies their people need to defeat the invaders (hence map, top).

A Flight of Wyverns is presently at over 47,000 words, but again as soon as I knew the story would end I stopped writing it. I will return to Stormraven at some time. By the way, I suspect that just about every young heroine of a vampire/werewolf/fae or whatever young adult story is called Raven Storm or something like that, but since I never read that kind of story, I didn't know that. But now that's her name and I'm not changing it.

John Wyndham's "Day of the Triffids"

"It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent & comforting hallucinations to trust that 'it can't happen here' - that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm." John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

Published in 1951 the datedness of this story is not a detraction from the narrative at all. In fact, apart from being a very disturbing read that leaves you looking askance at strange weeds in the garden, it is very timely. As a result of humanity's pollution, tampering with genes, and quest for power and money, the species practically made itself extinct. As such I have never come across a better exploration of "what do you do when your civilisation is collapsing around you?" Do you fight the collapse, trying to save everyone and everything you can, or do you just move on and build something new?

Roger the Wyrd

Roger the Wyrd is a work-in-progress that I started in April 2020. It involves the eponymous hero, Roger, who must go to a new Secondary School, it being September 1969 and him being now 11 years old. He lives in a town in Southern England, and at first assumed the school would be the same one that his friends from Primary School would be going to. Instead he goes to Norham Priory school, which turns out to be a very different kind of school indeed. As a result, Roger finds out that he is a Wyrding, one of a group of people with magical abilities.

So there is some self-insertion here, which happens a lot in my stories, but this one is worse than usual. This photo is actually of me, in my new school uniform for my Secondary School in 1969, which unfortunately was not Norham Priory! Writing the story is a lot of fun as I try to immerse the reader in the period as much as possible. Thankfully online resources are such now that I can actually work out what would be on the television on a given night, including who was playing on Top of the Pops, from online resources, plus information like which were the popular songs of the day, the weather, and contemporary events which impact Roger's world.

The story is presently at over 47,000 words and got bogged down because I knew exactly where the rest of the story was going. This has happened to me twice now, as I tend to write for fun, allowing the characters and plot to largely develop as it wills. Once I know what happens, I stop writing.

I do still think of Roger and his world, and think of changes, so once I have the time I will finish the story and be able to share it more widely.

Hero Forge

You may have eventually realised for yourself that I have discovered Hero Forge. The point of the company is actually to make mini figures for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Every figure you design can be created by a 3d-printer in various materials, and can even be provided coloured! 

I have not actually ordered any of the figures, but I have found the application very useful in creating images of the characters in my stories. Here is a Hobbity Halfling called Toby who actually isn't in any of my stories, but maybe he should be as he seems very nice (much nicer than the Everquest II Halfling). 

Sometimes I even just play around with the attributes in the character creation software in order to develop the character for the story. It really is tremendous fun.

I have found it so useful I took out a subscription, which enables me to download a higher-resoultion image with no background (a PNG file). 

This enables me to plonk the character onto backgrounds in a graphics programme. Here's Toby again with no background, ready to be plonked into an adventure!

You will find Hero Forge renditions throughout this blog!

Asimov's Foundation

I bought this book over 40 years ago, and it stayed with me through numerous cleansing moves. Recently I decided to read it again and found that a good narrative never ages!

The basic concept of a mathematician plotting out the probabilities of the future is still an awesome idea, and the unveiling of that history, with the unforeseen twist, is a great yarn. It was first published in 1942 and is also a historical study if you are aware of that, with space battles rather reminiscent of WW2 sea battles, and cigar-chomping heroes leading the narrative.

However, I use the term "hero" advisedly, for there are not a lot of female characters! This aspect of a book written in a 1940's milieu might be irksome to some people, but it is a reminder of how far we have come (which is not to say we do not still have far to go!).

A Squire for Wolf's Keep

A Squire for Wolf's Keep is a novel-length work-in-progress that had its beginnings in about 2006 when I was playing with my daughter, who would have been 11. We were playing with her Playmobil, of which she had an extensive collection of mediaeval figures and a castle which I had built for her out of cardboard tubes. While we were playing, I surreptitiously modified the figure of a squire, to give 'him' the hair of a girl. It was red hair. "This is Jane," I said. "She is coming to be a squire at the castle." My daughter, the princess of the castle, was initially hostile, but I won her over by writing an entire novel about Jane, the princess, and the residents of the castle.

The universe that A Squire for Wolf's Keep is set in is a beautiful otherworld, a place for the magical creatures of the Earth to escape the increasingly human-dominated original Earth. It is called the All-Realm, the land for all creatures, including all the magical creatures and the First Ones, that humans once called gods. Collectively humans call these the Fay, for they are magical and dangerous. Some say it is part way between Earth and Paradise, but others say that are they all the same place, but are just a blink and a turn away. It is the same universe as my published story The Dæmon. 

The main character is Jane Linden, the squire of the title. In this world it is not unheard-of for girls to become squires, but it was unusual for the King of Duveda, the principal resident of Wolf's Keep, to have more children than it already had. But apart from Jane, he soon had a further two squires, and eventually four. The four have many adventures as they train to become knights, generally being a headache for the King, and eventually solve the mystery of the King's locked chamber. 

A Squire for Wolf's Keep is essentially complete, and stands at about 66,000 words. This story would be my priority, but I need to complete a comprehensive edit, make changes suggested by readers, and incorporate more of the mythos of this world that I had worked on after the initial version. All of this needs a block of dedicated time which is difficult for me at the moment. But it will happen...

Summer of 1981

I had always wanted to be an archaeologist for as long as I can remember. I went on my first dig when I was 16, but later a careers adviser told me that there were "no jobs in archaeology". So I went to Art College, hated it, and eventually ran away to become a field archaeologist. I was actually very good at it, with a natural understanding of stratigraphy and dirt, and an inclination to the sometimes hard physical labour. I got a job with the Southampton archaeological unit, and lived a happy albeit underpaid life.

This photograph was captured by a photographer working for the Southern Evening Echo, and was taken at an open-house the unit was holding on the Six-Dials site. By this time, the Summer of 1981, I had been working in field archaeology in England for over three years, all year long. This was actually a lot of experience compared to archaeologists I later worked with in the Middle East who only worked in the field two months in the year. 

Unfortunately for my career in archaeology in the UK, March that year I had married a Canadian. In September I emigrated to Canada because I thought it was what she wanted.