Markov And The Withered Land

 Hello,

Welcome to the Shores of Night, or welcome back if you are new. My name is Grim, a nonbinary, autistic human, and I talk about too many things here. 

This time, I wanted to write about one of my characters, explaining a bit about his world and his origins in our world. 

His name is Markov, and his world is meant to be a weird mix of Sword and Sorcery, Post-Apocalypse, and the sort of fantasy you find in video games like Skies of Arcadia, Tales of Symphonia, and films like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä Valley of the Wind. 

His story began back when I was trying to commit to writing - which you may have gathered is a recurring activity for me. I'd created the basics of a roleplaying setting called Ironbound, using ideas around states modelled on ancient Greece, Persia, and other things. I'd determined that in the past - I've no idea how far into it - there'd been a magical war which had resulted in all the magic vanishing because the energy that allowed it to be shaped and cast had been obliterated in a final big push between the opposing sides. This not only destroyed magic; it pushed the world into an environmental disaster, as the power that allowed magic was also responsible for crops growing. The world was plunged into famine, as well as unpredictable geological activity. Land vanished beneath the sea, while in other places, new lands formed.

The current version of the world has developed that idea a little more. I added places where this energy has pooled and stagnated, creating places that have become strangely lush or where the creatures twisted by it dwelt. In other areas, the lack of the magical energy has created deserts and scrublands. It's become a darker setting over time, as I've thought through the likely fallout of the disaster. Back in 2009, when I was first thinking about it, I didn't really stop to consider the likely consequences. I was busy daydreaming about cultures and weirdness instead. If anything, the events that led to the world's creation in its current form were a speed bump on the way to roleplaying fun. Only later, when I was treating the world more as a writing and world-building project, did I start thinking about the consequences of societal and technological collapse. 

Markov came into this when I was trying to learn how to write fight scenes. His first story, The Frog God's Chosen appeared in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction 34 and was written under my old name. 

He was an attempt to capture some of that Sword and Sorcery magic - a wandering hero from a "barbaric" culture, whose attitude was in sharp contrast with those of the people around him. I'd taken the idea of God Beasts directly from Princess Mononoke and cast them as sleeping giants in the land, trapped in slumber. The story was set in the city of Miridene, which had a reputation for decadence and permissiveness, as well as for the large frogs with yellow stripes on their backs. The stripes contain a venom that makes humans hallucinate.  The real-world inspiration was Toad, the drug derived from certain toads common to the southwestern United States, particularly the Sonoran Desert. 

I meant to write more, and ideas for stories soon heaped up - as they tend to. I think I hamstrung myself by worrying about the stories I wanted to write being too similar. For example, the story I started on after Frog God was about Markov being shipwrecked and learning about an ancient magical machine that allowed its user to project themselves as animal-themed tulpas - sort of thought forms- with the reveal that the machine's operator was one of the ancient sorcerers who'd been revived for some reason - and who would be killed off by the end of the story. 

I found the character's voice early, though he's very much based on Warren Ellis' characters, grumpy and sarcastic. I wanted to avoid the "all-conquering hero" aspect of characters like Conan, and the "secretly a sorcerer with a worryingly effective sword" aspect of Elric of Melnibone. Instead, I wanted him to be a good fighter but not invincible and much of his restlessness was a tendency to grow bored. In the same way, his people, the Shorr, were famed for troublemaking and adventuring - from the perspective of annoyance and cultural chauvinism more than anything else. 

He needed to be fallible, too. I think that was drawn from the 1990s Starman DC Comics series - bear with me here - where Jack Knight, the Starman, was very much learning to be a superhero and once described himself as "the hero who gets beaten up and knocked out a lot". Perhaps because of that, I took Markov to the brink of death in the first story, and in Six Circlets he gets possessed by the psyche of a long-dead figure whose mind was trapped inside a piece of jewellery. His freedom is won by chance. 

I worry that this reads as me dunking on myself, which I absolutely don't intend. I love the energy and fun stuff that I envisaged initially, but as I've developed the world further, I found the world, and Markov, becoming more rounded. I considered the consequences of his actions and what would have grown out of the world as I was describing it. In other words, I took it a bit more seriously. That did lead to the world darkening, but I've tried to resist the urge to make it Grimdark overall. Admittedly, the story I'm writing now is dark, but I'm taking solace in the fact that I can play with tone in other stories. 

That's the joy of short fiction: it can be pleasingly flexible.

Markov has been the subject of a number of my fiction experiments. As I said, he started off as a way to find out how to write a fight scene. Last year he was where I turned to try and bring my knowledge of cults (it's a special interest) into my fiction. That's a story I need to submit to some magazines, as I don't want to self-publish too much of my stuff. 

So where is Markov now? How has he changed?

What hasn't changed is that he's still grumpy, still wandering, still an accidental hero. He's mellowed, though, forming friendships with people I expected him to despise, and being hurt when people he didn't actually like were killed by unpleasant people. He's gained more depth than I thought he'd have, and though he presents a gruff exterior, he's got a softer side than I ever envisaged. Over the years, he's also become slightly world-weary, craving adventure but also not entirely welcoming it. 

I guess that's why I'm writing about this - aside from the fact that I'm trying to reconnect with my writing and, honestly, Markov is fun to write, and I like his world. It's got a lot of things that are important to me. I see myself in him, and I guess he's always had elements of me in his character. I, too, feel quite world-weary, and I'm hoping that by writing more of his stories I'll encourage a bit more wonder and enjoyment from life.