#solarpunk fantasy

[upongoblinhill]

And there's the dawn, poured out like wine

Along the dim horizon-line.

And from the city comes the chimes --

We have our heaven on earth -- sometimes!

–Stephen St. Vincent Benet

View of Arm 02 "Abundance." Platform 01, Elysium.

[blogfanreborn777]

Zaun by Patrick Faulwetter

[tamarasharker]

Interview: Adam Bassett / Blog / About Tamara | Tamara S. Harker

An interview with indie author Adam Bassett, including an exploration of his latest fantasy novel, "Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs".

In case you missed it – whaddya mean you're not signed up for my newsletter yet! – I had the pleasure of talking with the multitalented Adam Bassett for the second in my series of indie interviews hosted on the Harken! section of my website's blog. We discuss his short novel, Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs, maps, indie publishing, and the balancing act of being both an author and a reviewer. 📚

[octopocalyptic]

Petromages

More of my solarpunk magic nonsense, this time about petroleum-based magic.

I’m going to tag these as “island herbal,” because that’s the name of the doodlebook/zine that prompted all of this.

Petromagick is one of the newest disciplines of magical praxis. Really coming into coherence in the first half of the 20th century, petromages work primarily with synthetic channelers—usually plastic wands or staves. Historically, petromages worked to locate and exploit petroleum deposits, an extremely technical (and often dangerous) form of magical engineering.

 More recently, petromages have split into two camps and the more traditional magical engineers working (employed, as a rule, by oil companies) are countered by mages specializing in protest or performance magicks. Protest mages use petromagicks to draw attention to destructive aspects of the fossil fuel economy.

 Most petromagic is said to have an indescribably iridescent quality. Some mages have said it’s like a synethetic taste, a sort of “rainbow adrenaline” in the back of their throat. Petromages use this tendency toward iridescence to perform searingly vivid visual magic, often used to draw attention to protest demonstrations. One of the earliest and most memorable visual protests took place in Edmonton, Alberta, in April of 1993, when a group of unidentified petromages halted late evening traffic along Whyte Ave with a display that stretched for about a kilometer. It was an arcing, shifting light show visible even from the north side of the city, and although no damage or injuries were reported conservative politicians played on the sensational quality of the protest to pass legislation criminalizing unlicensed petromagic by the end of 1994.

 As might be expected, petroleum and synthetic channelers lend themselves best to powerful flame channeling. Petromagical flame channeling draws energy from the caster quickly and, if not performed carefully, it can overwhelm a caster to potentially fatal effect. However, petromages can actually perform very delicate transformation magic as well as long-term and temporally complex enchantment. This is because petroleum is produced by a complex and eons-long interaction of various entities, and petrol-based materials hold the memory of patient, slow transformations. This slower, more delicate magic is more difficult to work, but petromages who have developed the skill swear by it. For varying reasons, many “divested” petromages—those who have refused or left the employ of oil companies— see their work as being ideological in nature, whether because it is explicitly protesting petrocultures or because their methods draw attention to the volatile and transformative nature of petroleum.

[octopocalyptic]

Climate magic

Some more worldbuilding for my directionless SP magic daydreams, this time about how mages are thinking about global warming.

Climate magic is the holy grail of contemporary magical research. No magical climatic alteration or stabilization efforts have succeeded to date because the climate as a magical subject simply possesses too many variables. It’s stochastic, resisting predictable analysis even without magical interference. 

Magicians can shape local conditions with area effect spells (i.e., spells that affect everything within a specified range), but these spells don’t play very nicely and they aren’t modular or scaleable-- i.e., you can’t simply cast a series of area effect spells until the entire globe has been covered.  Additionally, area effect spells tend to weaken the ecological health of the affected area; whether this is due to as yet undetected magical drain or simply the result of isolating a place from its biosphere is an object of debate and study.

Still, there are a few “biobubbles” in operation, experimental pockets in which magicians work full time to maintain a meticulously renewed and regulated area effect spell. Localized climatic control is energy intensive, and most “magiclimatological” research is done on how to make CAEs (climatic area effects) more magically efficient. Even if climate magicks aren’t the answer to global warming, CAEs have potential application in ecosystem restoration,  biobubble agriculture, or even terraforming other planets. 

[octopocalyptic]

 Still thinking about that SP-influenced magical worldbuilding thing. Because I am a nerd I like making glossaries when I worldbuild, so... find some nerdery below the cut!

Terms

Affordances-- the capabilities, preferences, and eccentricities of a channeler

Botanical-- any species of plant or fungus used as a channeler

Casting-- a specific channeling or shaping of magic; usu. synonymous with spell

Channel, v.-- to call upon, direct, or shape magic

Channeler-- an implement used to channel magic (wands/staves, amulets, etc.)

Deadfall-- refers to a botanical channeler gathered from fallen wood

Greencut— refers to a botanical channeler used while the botanical is still fresh or “green”

Magic—the activity, flow, or movement of metaphysical energy channeled during a casting

Magick—a theory, form, discipline, or school of magical praxis.

Spell-- see casting

Staff-- any channeler longer than three feet 

Trimmed—a wand or staff that has been altered or treated for long-term use.

Untrimmed—mostly unaltered; refers to deadfall or green wood used as a channeler.

Wand—any channeler less than three feet in length

Wood—refers to the material/substance of a botanical channeler; e.g, “because Garry Oak savannas were traditionally maintained by controlled burns, the wood is capable of very precise flame channeling.”

Magicks

Biothaumaturgy—magic worked on a living body; common applications include mood alteration, gardening/agriculture, magical prosthetics, death, birth control/fertility.

Crafting- mage painting, colour-shifts, metal working, carving, the combination of inert substances

Elemental channeling—manipulating or combining fire, water, earth, or air

Harmonic logistics—involves the coordination of entities/objects, living or otherwise, vectors, and time. The most common applications involves cooking and potions. HL is often a concentration within another discipline. Often can be applied to biothuam., crafting, elemental channeling, kinetic schools, or photomanipulation.

Healing/regeneration—sometimes said to be a sub-school of biothaum.; energy restoration/increase, acceleration of healing processes

Kinetic—manipulation of objects/self, production of force

Mending—counter-entropic repair; see also protection/preservation

Phasing—teleportation, incorporeality

Photomanipulation—production/manipulation of light, invisibility, glamours/illusions

Protection/preservation—structural support, long-term preservation of integrity or appearance, wards

Psychic channeling—astral projection, telepathy, mind reading, glamours/illusions

Revelation—includes locating spells, revealing hidden magicks, mind reading, divination, scrying

Transformation- shape shifting, transfiguration, transmutation

[octopocalyptic]

More solarpunk magic

I’ve been casually/on and off developing the ideas of a solarpunk magic fantasy system thingy that I  first mentioned in this post. I’ll probably drop ideas here now and then as I get around to writing them down?  

  Stuff about how the plants’ quirks have affected the history of NA magicks (with a little saltiness for JKR)

Channelers in the History of North American Magicks

So, as I mentioned last time, wands/staves (a.k.a. channelers) made from non-local plants are inefficient and lose a lot of energy in the form of light or heat. If you make a wand from a holly tree growing in your Victoria, BC back yard, it won’t work very well. A holly wand made from a tree grown in its native, Eastern NA range will be noticeably more efficient, even when used in Victoria, BC. Even so, shipping a channeler across a continent decreases its longevity, and most people are wary of ordering a channeler sight-unseen.

 This means that, despite the best of efforts of mainstream (western) magical culture and tradition, magic is difficult to codify and standardize. The most common practice among magical schools outside of Europe is to teach the generalities and theory and rely on a few European distributors who grow the more traditional woods and export trusted, reliable products. 

Criticism of Western magic’s imperial baggage and blind spots has hit the educational institutions hard, and many mages have rejected the accredited training institutions as hidebound and elitist. In the early ‘60s there was a brief flurry (with all the whiteness that word implies) to emulate Indigenous practices. However, magic is culturally contingent, essentially resisting cultural appropriation, because a practitioner’s ontological assumptions & paradigms affect results. At best, attempts by settler society to appropriate and co-opt any of the spiritualities and traditions of Indigenous North American nations resulted in failure; at worst, they ended in accidents of varying severity. 

The most recent trend is to learn how native NA plants perform in and interact with Western magical traditions. Many native NA  plants have been overlooked and ignored by pedagogical texts and institutions, and their magical capabilities (called affordances) are often unknown. Similarly, because local ecology determines the affordances of a channeler, a Garry oak wand harvested and trimmed in Victoria, BC will have different preferences and tendencies than one originating in Southern California. As one magical theorist has put it, “Magic, like wine, has a terroir.”

Learning local magicks involves a great deal of trial and error, and dedicated practitioners become very well acquainted with local ecosystems and the affordances of local species, allowing them to produce magic that is eccentric but extraordinarily intuitive and powerful. 

[octopocalyptic]

worldbuilding: solarpunk magic

In the last two days I’ve been wholly consumed by this idea of magic where the material/tool through which you channel magical energy affects/determines the kinds of magic you can produce. Different plants do different things. Ideas below!

In this system of magic, some wands/staves, especially soft-stemmed plants, are single-use. Wands gathered from deadfall or cut while still green produce the best results when they are subsequently returned to their origin so they can re-enter the ecological processes that make them so good at channeling magical energies.

 Western magic, though, often relies on the same few magical tools (oak staves, holly wands, green willow) and overlooks many plants that are more limited in their distribution. This is in part because those woods are part of western tradition, plentiful, and easy to order/ship if no local plants are available. It’s also because acknowledging that the magical results vary across species (and even individual plants) makes magic really difficult to standardize. It’s easier to limit selection in order to get expected, predictable results.

 Thing is, wands/staves from non-local plants are inefficient and lose a lot of energy in the form of light or heat. (Although invasive species do lend themselves to aggressive or destructive biothaumaturgical/kinetic magicks.) Shipping wood from overseas or even out of state is environmentally unsound in a more mundane way, too.

 Maybe there’s a movement in the magical community to use only wood from local sources. This means more trial and error, a greater willingness to allow a plant its idiosyncrasies, and a more intentional knowledge of the local ecosystem. It’s harder, but it also means stronger, more complex, unique magic.

 A staff of bull kelp gathered from the Salish Sea, for example, results in particularly strong transformation and kinetic magic-- transformation because the kelp grows in a liminal environment (immersed in the sea, nourished by sun) and  remembers combining different elements in order to grow, and kinetic because it remembers living in and moving with the force of the waves. Using bull kelp won’t be possible on the east coast, though, because its effect is contingent on time and proximity to its kelp bed of origin.

 I’ve been doodling some local Vancouver Island plants and thinking of doing a sort of zine-type thing. I don’t have a story to go with the ideas, but I do kind of love the image of some Very Serious Wizard stepping forward, getting ready to do some massive elemental channeling, and holding a droopy, briny, awkwardly trailing staff of bull kelp, trying not to let his Gandalfian beard get tangled in the blades.