A Bit About the Author[]
I have an old friend who is a lawyer and specializes in bankruptcy. He likens what he does to magic in that he shows up to a sacred space, recites words according to an ancient formula, may face a test of wits, and then, if the ritual is successful, he has successfully destroyed debt. What once was a burden before the ritual, is no longer so.
I’m a college dropout with a PhD. I was fired from my own company once. I've hung from hooks and jumped out of planes, wrecked motorcycles, got stopped by secret police in Syria, and have had my life threatened a few times, I once owned a small newspaper, and a small rock and roll magazine (or a very big 'zine - we were never quite sure). But I generally think of myself as a working class guy from Boston who got lucky. I keep meeting people that show me parts of the world and life previously unknown to me. Out of enormous respect for those folks, I have tried to become a better human being over the years.
I can trace a long slow political awakening from former DIY punk-rock lower-case 'l' libertarian to ardent supporter of democratic socialism and largely in concert with what I think I understand of Marx’s critiques of Capitalism.
I’m a former rock musician and music journalist, who then spent 20 years stumbling around the world doing archaeology. Before I turned 30, I had only ever left the US to travel to Canada and Bermuda (when I was 3). After heading to Grad School in my 30s I have since been to Italy, France, where, much to my surprise, I lived in Paris for three years Holland, England, Turkey, Syria, and I had a beer in an airport in the Czech Republic (the original Budweiser).
Travelling and studying the social sciences changed me.
Mark Twain was one of my first literary heroes and he nailed it:“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
I had no choice but to become a different person when I finally had the opportunity to study and engage in research that revealed the disastrous effects of Colonialism on so much of the world; the institutional racism Colonialism and Empire is predicated on; the hegemonic efforts of the West through violence, media, and money to develop both new consumers, and expand to new territory for more resources to make the commodities for those new consumers.
Can we do better?
I'd like to share a bit of what I learned. But I have little desire to do so by writing journal articles for other experts in the same discipline. So instead I draw on another adventure of mine: several years at Emerson College in Boston as a Creative Writing major.
The planet of Gaearth where this story takes place is not free from any of the horrific results of competition, hoarding of wealth, forced extraction of rare resources, enslavement of the many by the few, sexism, or racism (and species-ism given there are more than just Humans mucking about).
But it is a place where I can, as an anthropologist, archaeologist, artist, and mortal human being like us all, perhaps explore, 'why?' Why are humans so frequently so terrible to one another? Why, when humans are capable of both incredible cooperation and innovative competition -- both of which are necessary to a functioning society or community -- is zero-sum style competition for the purpose of hoarding wealth the predominant ontological assumption in the West?
Motion: All billionaires are hoarders and so it follows that all billionaires are mentally ill.
In the novel, dragons might be the ultimate capitalists. Eartha, an Elven Paladin and enforcer of kindness so to speak, describes the mythological monsters thus:Suffice to say that the dragons disagree. Like royalty of old and billionaires today, they genuinely believe they are superior to other living beings and have every right to accumulate endless wealth they have not created, even while others in their land have nothing. And of course the dragons also make an appeal to authority in their argument of superiority: they believe they were given their powers by the gods to use as they see fit.“A dragon?” The knight said puzzled; her pupils were a mile-wide. “Terrible affairs. And no more selfish a beast did Gaea ever conceive of to haunt this world than a dragon. Hoarders they are; all of them.” She paused to quickly finish the rest of the Eau de Vie in her glass before continuing. “Dragons take all and produce naught. They possess great powers, strength, intellect, but little wisdom despite their long years. They consume without creating. They care little for making art and they often lay waste to centuries of culture, ingenuity and arduous execution in thoughtless seconds! Why on Gaearth would I want a dragon?” She finished with a hint of irritation.
In the US, we generally don’t use gods to justify the right to the endless accumulation of wealth (Prosperity Gospel scammers aside). We use the Constitution and the courts to justify and enshrine economic disparity. Numerous rights are outlined in our founding documents, but no responsibilities. The limitless acquisition of private property, in both the sense of a home (common usage), and the capital to invest (Marxist usage), is a cornerstone of American ideology.
And unsustainable.
Ironically, the courts are represented by a balance scale, equating justice with a 'fair exchange' of material goods.
But we don't enjoy even that transactional type of justice any longer.
Would a system of fair exchange lead to the wealth disparity we see across the world? Across the US?
How do dragons justify buying billion dollar yachts while union busting? How can four human beings be worth a trillion dollars (US) while there are nations in debt hundreds of billions?
I have an old friend who is a lawyer and specializes in bankruptcy. He likens what he does to magic in that he shows up to a sacred space, recites words according to an ancient formula, may face a test of wits, and then, if the ritual is successful, he has successfully destroyed debt. What once was a burden before the ritual, is no longer so.
The Company, the protagonists of the novel, acquired more wealth than they could ever spend themselves during their adventuring heyday. Enough wealth to break a local economy (a topic mentioned in several editions of core D&D rulebooks regarding, "treasure"). But instead, they build an economy - or help rebuild one: The New Dale, named after the village of Dale from where Rocco and Val hail. Also, yeah, "New Deal".
There is no -pure- egalitarianism because, well, there is no such thing as pure egalitarianism, but the disparity in their corner of Gaearth is dramatically reduced, an enormous amount of the Company's treasure put into the Common Wealth. Then, in acclamation of the 15 years of death-defying deeds that generated all that coin shared with a small, brave, and burgeoning town, the townspeople named leaders of The Company "Lord & Lady".
And this was largely pragmatic.
They live in a land of Civil War. Having a Lord who is an 8ft tall Barbarian, lead the defense of the Keep when abandoned by the 'real' Lord, single handedly slayed ... hundreds, tends to give any greedy princes in the region pause. The Lord of Killington Keep has no throne but does have a reserved seat at the bar his wife owns.
Ancient mines are re-opened with the understanding that the community received and shared the wealth earned from the depths of Mt. Killington.
It is not a perfect place. But it is a healthy and generally happy place.
And yet Killington does have a Thieves' Guild, or more appropriately, a Rogues' Gallery.
Those who practice The Craft in or around Killington answer to the Guild Mistress, Lady Killington, who enforces strictly and painfully the original goals of such Guilds and Galleries: to balance the scale when it is tipped too far in favor of the few over the many.
So, when we speak of a Rogues' Gallery or Thieves’ Guild in the novel, as often as not, we are talking about social banditry. Illegal but not necessarily immoral methods of rebalancing the scales by those who have less.
Social banditry, pirates, dwarven miners fighting for their fair share of the resources extracted from their mountains (are they unionizing or are they rebelling against monarchical rule? Oh, that’s the same thing?), a God of Economic Justice (Kalmax the Equalizer), and so much weed - er, I mean 'olferb'. These are some of the materials, methods, characters and struggles we'll witness in play while we aim for a better world.
Along with asking ‘why’ people are so often so terrible to each other, the novel is also an opportunity to explore solutions both historical and imagined.
A fantasy milieu provides ample room for allegory and exploration as our heroes both try to preserve the safe and sharing society they’ve managed to cut out of the chaotic wars around them, and stop the Big Bad from doing his terrible thing (which involves the commodification of the dead - a near endless resource in a civil war torn continent, but one that only those with very specialized training can exploit -- no, not an MBA, necromancy).
What The Company have established under the shadow of Mt. Killington is a rare thing and while Eartha had nary a kind word for Dragons earlier, she had this to say about Killington Keep after a few hours with its denizens at a tavern:And this is why all of Part One takes place in one evening in a tavern. I believe in the necessity of music, art, drink, smoke, and other forms of disinhibited sociality in order to maintain community and the quality of comradeship found among our heroes and the denizens of the “New Dale”: A place where Sorcerers and seamstresses, fighters and farmers, bards and bartenders, have crafted a community where peace and modest prosperity have survived in a world where such things are very rare.“I’ve never seen magic used for…” The elfkin paused while looking around the tavern from the stage to the lights and back to the glass dragon filled with ice, water and ‘fherb. “For having so much fun.”
And also, because I’m an old school player and every epic D&D adventure should begin with, “A stranger walks into your local tavern and approaches you at the bar…”
Turn-based Narration[]
One of the cornerstones of Dungeons and Dragons is ‘Combat’. While in the last decade or two D&D players have focused more and more on role-playing, story-telling, and immersive campaigns that rely less on combat and more on creativity and cooperation, still, slaying beasties is a cornerstone of D&D. To that end, the novel is Turn-Based like D&D combat (and other types of encounters). While this is simply “Third Person Limited” rather than omniscient, the ‘limit’ will change from chapter to chapter. And just as in Combat where some characters have longer turns, and some characters’ turns can overlap with other characters’ turns, there is a bit of a Rashomon Effect, particularly in the Prologue. There, the same events (rounds of combat for example) are seen through the eyes of each character. The Prologue, which is somewhere between 20K and 25K words, takes place over the course of perhaps 10-20 minutes*.
Similarly, the events in Book One involve an 'encounter': A mysterious stranger walks into a tavern with life-altering information and opportunities... Here we spend an hour or so with all the main characters (my old Player Characters (PCs) from back in the day) and some Non-player Characters (NPCs) so to speak. Folks who will play roles in the story but will not be going on our heroes' journey.
An unexpected result of this style decision is that the novel has only a few settings and 'scenes' - more like a film or play, or, a gaming session, than a typical narrative in which days, weeks, years, may go by with only a bit of prose advancing the timeline.
Book Two will, if ever written, take a different path. I hope for it to be largely a collection of short stories wrapped around some scaffolding to provide the 'Second Act" for this trilogy.
Like alliteration, the limitation I placed on myself with turn-based narration has, I hope, forced innovation and creativity rather than repetition and redundancy.
*A ‘turn’ in the earliest versions of D&D was 10 minutes, with rounds being 1 minute each back in the day - those readers who are also players of D&D will likely be aware that the terms, "round", "turn", and "level" can be less than consistent (and/or have multiple simultaneous meanings) within and across Editions.
Everyone Talks to Themselves[]
Some of the characters (pretty sure all of the protagonists) are neuro-divergent and talk to -several- selves. The ‘Self’ (or Selves) is a construction, and we will witness that on-going building through the thoughts of characters. Each Chapter is named after the character for whom we will be mind-melding with. Thoughts are in Italics. In the case of multiple internal interlocutors, different fonts and/or ¡FORMATTING CHANGES will also be used to help keep track of the various voices in our heroes’ heads.
An example from one of the more complicated interior dialogues between Val, his not-quite-dead sister, and some sort of villainous psychic intruder is shared below the asterisks.
Narration by the author is in plain text like this.
Val's thoughts are in Italics.
His sister's thoughts are in a different font
and
¡THE VILLAIN IS FORMATTED DIFFERENTLY
* * *
Down below, Val thought he heard the party split up. Billy and Rocco were taking on one beast while the rest - Ar-Raguel, Dudley and Sammy - teamed up on the other. [Narrator]
I bet Rocco and Billy take theirs out first. [Val's sister Tina's thoughts which Val can hear]
No bet. They’re too good together. [Val's inner thoughts]
Right?
Val once again took out the onyx stone from his staff and again darkness momentarily surrounded him.
¡I NEED THE ELFKIN! [The villain]
What?
¡I NEED THE ELFKIN!
Which elfkin? Wait, you’re not one of my voices. You can’t be here.
¡I CAN BE ANYWHERE I NEED TO BE, AND WHILE THE DROW [Billy] WOULD MAKE AN INTERESTING ACQUISITION FOR SO MANY REASONS, SHE UNFORTUNATELY LACKS CERTAIN SKILLS I NEED. YOU’VE VIOLATED MY HOME. I WILL TAKE THE OTHER ELFKIN!
Val, who is this guy?
I have no idea, sis.
¡ALTHOUGH, I MUST ADMIT, YOUR MIND IS UNLIKE ANY I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED, SORCERER. PERHAPS I WILL TAKE YOU TOO?
How about none of us?
Val slipped a white stone into his staff and it exploded with the light of a half dozen torches. He closed his eyes and tossed the staff like a spear down into the chamber, his mind's eye guiding it to the sounds of Rocco and Billy battling below.
And now you need to get out of my head. My friends need me.
“Allez-vous en!” Val brought his hands together in a powerful clap in front of him. His body jolted as the intruder was ejected.
Seriously, who was that?
I have no fucking idea.
A Love for Alliteration[]
For reasons I’ve yet to uncover (but suspect involved weed) the creators and authors of so much D&D material appear to have had a fondness for alliteration. Almost all of the original characters I created when I was 10, and who inspired this novel, had alliterative names originally and I often found myself thinking that a D&D module, locale, or character wasn’t truly “in-universe” unless its name was alliterative:
Rocco the Rotten.
Sammy the Short.
Billy the Bad.
Dudley the Dwarf.
(Remember we were 10 years-old.)
And so this passion, this mindset, this madness is displayed throughout this novel where alliteration becomes, I hope, more than just a clever game, and instead a lyrical and rhythmic guide to the prose. My goals are akin to those of a Blues player. Despite the musician limiting his or herself to just five notes with which to weave their works while bending blue notes 'til their bursting point, we are nevertheless often taken and surprised by just how dynamic and expressive the simple slides and shortened scales can be.
"Keep it simple stupid," is an adage that rarely turns out to be wrong. Limitations can often lead to innovations.
Perhaps alliteration fell out of place in a modernizing world of primarily written rather than oral traditions, for which alliteration had offered a mnemonic device to tellers of tall tales. If so, I hope my experimentation with consonantal repetition hearkens back to bedtime stories, spoken words with the slight lilt of song-craft, and admittedly, all perhaps more Seusical than musical.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping...
Language, Race, Species, Magic & Love[]
The novel uses 'language analogs,' the use of specific real-world languages to represent individual languages of Gaearth. These are the various languages in D&D and their real-world counterparts used by characters in the novel so far:
English: Common
French: Draconian; Arcane & Magical texts
Esperanto: Ancient Common
Greek & Latin: Ancient religious texts and names
German: Mountain species including Dwarves, Trolls and Giants but not Orcs. Orcs on Gaearth use an adapted version of Elvish
Elven: Elven (yep, using Tolkien for this and there are online translators of course)
This might be a bit confusing, or amusing, for some readers. But let's not step there. Language and culture are wholly dependent on one another, and a particular use of language in D&D culture requires us to contend with D&D's problematic use of the term 'race' to describe both different species (physical traits) and cultural norms/practices (social constructs). Are languages based on race (whatever that is)? Region? Species? Are there languages exclusive to religious or arcane practitioners? And if races are now 'species' in D&D 5.5, but elves and humans can have kids that can have kids, doesn't that mean they are the same species? Or race? And what languages would they know/learn given a mixed race/species background?
To read more about the conundrums posed by Race, Species, Culture, Language, Love and Magic (what these things all have in common is that everyone needs to contend with them in real life and in the novel AND these things are all difficult to define), click here.
Greymusic, The Blues & Appropriation[]
Appropriation is complicated.
Defining it is problematic, and conceptually it can be blurry or a moving target. In a nutshell, cultural appropriation is the use (and frequently modification) of one culture's practices, arts, and traditions, by another culture, in a manner that is perceived as inappropriate and/or unacknowledged. The latter, 'unacknowledged,' is objectively simpler to avoid and repair, but is not sufficient to wave away the former. As for ‘inappropriate’, it is more subjective and can't be remedied simply by acknowledging/crediting originators of arts and practices. Largely, because almost always, when speaking of appropriation in a critical manner, we are discussing disparity between the two cultures being discussed: one group has more political influence, economic power, military and bureaucratic forces, etc. and therefore only that group has the power to alter, redefine, and otherwise claim (appropriate) said practices as their own -- much like the victors tend to control history, Colonizers tend to control cultural exchange and attribution.
So, in many ways, appropriation in the negative sense is Colonialism by another name. (more)