Tuesday 20 January 2004

Pic of the day: If this had been in my fictional Silverworld, the magic would come from the metal base rather than the crystal. Then again, things wouldn't have looked nearly that modern, at least not in the first book. (Screenshot from The Sims Makin' Magic.)

Fiction about metals

The Recluce fad lingers on. One thing I noticed even in a book I read earlier (when I bought the books randomly) was the metals. Iron is associated with order, copper with chaos. Well, at least moderately so. The connection is strongest for iron. Evidently there exists a special form of ordered iron, called Black Iron. Common iron is also somewhat friendly to order, and steel even more so, but not as much as Black Iron. I still haven't found out exactly what that is, but I'm still reading. Anyway, copper is not so closely associated with chaos. It is more like, since the chaos mages are "allergic" to iron, they use copper instead. Perhaps it does facilitate chaos magic just a little, but it's not really a source of magic.

In contrast to this, metals have been seen as magic in our world. At least silver has. It was thought that werewolves could not be harmed by normal weapons, but silver would hurt them. Silver was also used for religious rituals, both by witches and established religion.

In the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, white gold has unimaginable power to unleash magic. Although it turns out over time that Covenant himself has much the same effect. But anyway, white gold did not exist in the Land except for the wedding band Covenant brought with him. I loved the books, well at least the magic system, but I found that the whole white gold thing was kinda apart from the rest of the magic there. This was probably intentional, but it made me think up another imaginary world. I even began to write a few chapters. Twice, I think, or perhaps one of the times was just in my head. Anyway, I present ... The Magic of Silverworld! (I made this up years ago, while ceaselessly playing Chris de Burgh's "Snows of New York", not that this has anything to do with it that I know.)

***

Some metals are more "noble" than others, that is to say they don't easily oxidize or otherwise bind themselves to other elements. In our world, this is their main bonus. Oh, and they are wonderful conductors of electricity and heat. Also you can make a simple battery by using an electrolyte, like for instance an orange, and two pieces of metal whereof one is much more noble than the other. Long story there.

But in this imaginary world, noble metals have real power. Well, mostly silver and copper. Iron and lead are mostly inert. There is no gold or platinum, presumably no mercury either. Cadmium and palladium might contribute to the background magic, but they are not known or refined. Nickel and zinc are known but not in pure form, and their power is anyway less than the true noble metals.

At the time of my first story ("Goldwatch") there is a long established civilization, but it is currently in retreat. The society is feudal, but the rule is not tied only to land. The upper class also has objects of silver. There is a cooperation between the priests (wizards) and the keep lords, both of which are interested in keeping the status quo. The lords own the silver but the priests use it for magic. Common people have brass, bronze or at best copper. Copper and its alloys require quite a bit of ritual to get to their magic, typically you have to sing or dance or some such to evoke it. Silver is accessible to the trained mage through words of power, which is quite a bit faster and easier once you get the pronunciation right. But because the upper classes are more interested in living in luxury rather than defending the serfs, society is nibbled at the edges by monsters and marauding bandits. Decade by decade, the outlying farms are left vacant and population shrinks. This has gone on for so long that entire nations are about to break.

Into this sad world comes our unwitting hero, bringing with him a gold watch given him by his late grandfather. The grandfather got it as a reward for long and distinguished service, and uttered the pious hope that it might remind his grandson of the value of patience and loyalty. This has so far seemed unlikely, but then again junior has just barely finished high school yet. Anyway, the gold is an extremely powerful magic force in Silverworld, but nobody knows that since there has been no gold before. People think it's just brass. But weird things continue to happen. The rest is the story of the book, not to be printed here obviously.

Silverworld exists in a different flow of time (again borrowed from the Chronicles, I'm afraid) so that when the Hero returns a few weeks later with his newfound girlfriend, only a very few of his friends are still alive and then quite old. This is quite a surprise to him. And his return is quite a surprise to the Priests of Silver, who have staged a counter-revolution and are ruthlessly eradicating the heretic myth of so- called gold. To add to the confusion, the girlfriend sees the power gold has in the world and decides she prefers it over the Hero. Borrowing his watch, she sets out to become Empress of the World. Good old-fashioned fun all around.

***

It may be just me, but I kinda like the idea of noble metals having real power. No matter the uneven quality of my writing, this particular aspect I am quite satisfied with. An important part of the plot is that the more noble a metal, the more "intelligent" it is. Gold is so smart that it does not even need words of command, but will respond to the owner's will and needs. I did not think about this when I created that world, but this kind of corresponds to different levels of magic practice in our own world. Copper is roughly similar to primitive tribal magic, silver to high magic (OK, higher than most of it), and gold to religious magic (prayer). Nifty. I guess I should research these more if I ever try to write these two books. Not likely for the foreseeable future, as usual. Besides, there is a strong tendency that whenever I think of some good idea, someone else has written about it already. If only there was a way to know who and where and what.