The Essence Of The Fantastic

 Welcome back, or welcome to the blog if you're new. 

It's a day for the World-Building series of blog posts, where we talk about making settings for writing, roleplaying games and for fun. Apologies for not posting this earlier this week, it's been a bit fraught!

Today we'll be talking about the Essence of the Fantastic and how you can use magic, superpowers, science fiction technology and the like to reflect your creation's essence. I want to stress this isn't an easy thing to work out. While it's worthwhile, like all these elements it's entirely optional. 

Whether you’re designing a fantasy epic, a sci-fi dystopia, or a superhero setting, these questions will help you align the Fantastic with the heart of your world.

1) What Is Your Creation's Core? Let's start with a difficult one, working out what lies at the heart of your world. Start by defining this and then work out what role the Fantastic plays in the world, how it can be used to illustrate the world. As I said, it's a difficult thing to do, because it takes a lot of digging to work out what's at the core. Doing it allows you to adapt the Fantastic to serve as a metaphor to develop this theme further. 

The way I'd work this out is through writing about your creation, really digging deep into it and exploring the roots and themes present in what you've made. Looking for patterns and common elements you're using can also help. While analysing your work can sometimes sap the fun, doing it early and keeping a list of inspirations will help you stay motivated. The more you practice, the easier it gets to spot patterns and refine your themes.

For example, going back to Solomon's Shadow, which is a noir horror setting, the Fantastic is presented through demonic activity and the presence of demons, often used by powerful figures. This reflects the noir theme, with the idea of power being corrupting and powerful people not being ethical. The other main theme is confusion and living in a broken world, which is reflected in the way the characters are largely lost and struggling with the changes from the First World War. 

2) How Does The Fantastic Interact With Your World's History? For many worlds, the Fantastic will be a deep element, possibly even present at the world's very inception. Like Middle Earth, where the roots of discord are woven into the very creation of the world. Without Melkor's actions, Tolkien's world would have been very different. In a similar fashion, your creation can have a similar deep seated seed. Fortunately, this is often easier to acheive because you're doing work you're already doing in crafting the world. I'm sure you're already fleshing out partial histories for the places and people to add more depth, so adding to that is a relatively simple activity. You may have to create some links between elements you thought weren't connected, but which will be stronger if you do tie them together, but this is simple matter of further developing what you've got. 

For example, I started typing up a fantasy novel I'd been handwriting recently, and which has an "army of ghosts" as the villains of the piece. These beings entered the world when the sorcerers of the world attempted to build a tower to reach the heavens, and effectively broke the world. The backlash was so great that their lands largely sank beneath the ocean. Several other islands and even parts of the nearest continent also drowned as a result. So far, so Tower of Babel meets Atlantis.

The consequences of this act are where things become interesting. Firstly, it led to a ban on magic and led sorcerers being hunted down by people who will simply never trust magic again. People with "The Old Blood" learn to hide their talents early in life, though they're often picked out as being strange. Many of them sport physical abnormalities - white hair, eyes of different colours and so on - and so they're no stranger to ostracism anyway. 

Those sorcerers who did survive, and who managed to shore up enough power to re-establish their domain, have spent thousands of years walking softly and not mentioning their metaphorical big stick. They know that the kingdoms of Taranillia resent and fear them, and that the Isle of the Magi is always one wrong move away from destruction. People with sorcerous power will forever be held up as an example of evil to the extent that the Church of the Holy Family considers even being able to perform magic a form of blasphemy. 

As a consequence, the sorcerers desperately seek out lost families with sorcery in their blood (as the talent is passed down generations) to try and rekindle their power. They fear a day when the Church or the nearby kingdoms decide the right thing to do is wipe the "stain" of magic from the world.   

Think about the origins of the Fantastic in your setting—was it always there, or did something awaken it? How do people remember its arrival?"

3) Is the Fantastic Natural or Disruptive to the World’s Order? This appears to be a relatively simple matter but can have a lot of depth in terms of the way your creation reacts to the presence of magic. I suppose the easiest way to consider it might be in the differing way Marvel and DC Comics treat superhumans in their respective worlds. DC's world is far more harmonious than Marvel's and reflects superpowers as a more natural development of the world (even to the extent that it's been canon that superhumans should be the norm in DC's world). Marvel, by contrast, treats a number of naturally superhuman groups as disruptors and plays into the narrative of them being hated and feared. They even have massive robots to hunt robots (though as I've already said, I don't understand why the Sentinels aren't viewed as a serious threat to humans as well). In a similar way the Seventh Sea Roleplaying Game treats most forms of magic as disruptive to the world - in fact it sometimes damages reality, potentially laying the seeds for the return of races similar to the Cthulhu Mythos' Great Old Ones.

While thinking about this, I often find myself thinking of how the Dark Sun Dungeons and Dragons setting handled this question. Magic in this world draws its power from nature and as a consequence of mishandling, has rendered the world into a desert where only the strongest survive. There are ways to wield arcane power without disrupting the life of the planet, but few choose to do so. Magic exists as a double edged tool, one that can both nurture and destroy. 

4) Who Has Access to the Fantastic, and What Does That Say About Power? The nature of the Fantastic in the world will usually determine how accepted it is and how authority figures react to it. How much will it thwart those in power, and how can they co-opt it? If there's a danger that rebels and revolutionaries might get hold of it, people in power will start to get jumpy and won't support people who can access the Fantastic. They will either attempt to suppress or recruit people with powers (probably using both tactics simultaneously) to make sure they aren't a threat.

For example, in a world where the Age of Aquarius has led to a global psychic awakening, British politicians might offer exclusive training to the psychically gifted, while at the same time making it illegal to use psychic gifts in a number of ways (ruling, for example, that non-consensual mind reading is akin to burglary).

If the Fantastic has had a chance to grow into something which is already established, it might be an accepted part of the establishment, allowing it privileges that something new doesn't have. An example of this is the Order of Dragon Knights in Taranillia which formed after the Arteyan Crusade, which itself happened centuries after the incident in Point 2. Initially formed as a group of young knights who raised dragons to fight against a group of heretics, the Order became a militant group of priests, formally submitting to the Church of the Holy Family.

This, ironically, bought them some protection from the scrutiny of outside forces, and centuries after their creation, it's still not widely known that the dragons have grown to be the ones running the Order simply because they live so much longer than their human "masters". Part of this has led to the creation of a cult within the order that worships the very deity they were initially formed to fight against - the Queen of Dragons herself.

5) What Does the Fantastic Cost — and Why? A last point to consider is cost. Fantastic powers often exact a price on their wielders, so it is important to think about what that looks like in your world. Is there a danger that a wizard might age prematurely if they use their powers too much? Does a psychic need to overeat in order to have calories to burn when they use read minds or move object, or does overusing their powers lead to something similar to dementia?

The cost might be something as simple as a form of quid pro quo. Sure, the faeries will help you, but only if you pay for their aid (up front). In fact this is baked into a lot of genre fiction already - think of the classic demonic bargain where the magus has to sacrifice in order to receive aid.

There could a social cost as well. Just as in Taranillia, those who wield power could be distrusted or hunted, or they could be feted as heroes. The Mecha engineer, building and repairing massive robots to defend the planet from the mysterious "meteors" that carry deadly alien spores could be on the cover of magazines, and almost as idolised as the pilots. Don't forget that fame can be as much of a burden as hatred, not least because there's a danger of attracting obsessive fans who think you owe them something.

The price of powers may be baked into the very forces the characters tap into or an unfortunate side effect. The question you need to answer - and which I hope considering these points will help with - is why that cost exists.

Perhaps magic and psionics draw on your life energy and have to be used wisely because every time a character taps into them, they run the risk of hurting themselves. Or they might run the risk of getting some sort of extra-dimensional infection that will slowly eat away at their brains. These elements are simply built into the way their powers operate, because there's no other way to get them to work.

However you want these extra-normal abilities to operate, please keep in mind there's no such thing as a free lunch - power has consequences and that means someone, somewhere, is paying the price.

The Fantastic can be a source of wonder, a catalyst for change, or a reflection of power and struggle. How you wield it will shape the soul of your world. So, how does the Fantastic shape yours?