Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 102
July 3, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 16
Hundreds, thousands of baby Cursed Blades thumped against the earth, rang off each other, bounced and twirled and spun as if with glee. Green light coruscated across segmented black metal, playing across blades no larger than a thumbnail, blades as long as an arm, blades curved and straight, double- and single-edged, sharp- and square-tipped, thin as rapiers or heavy as claymores. Voidcleaver’s children rained onto the ground before Candegar and Saria.
“Now that,” said Voidcleaver, “is reproduction.”
Saria heard the artifact’s voice clearly. The Blade vibrated its progeny hummed and keened in sympathy. She took a cautious step backward.
A few yards away, a figure in tentacular black jerked upright, eyeless face tracking her movement.
But Martus the Krypterion wasn’t the only person, the only being bent on stopping Saria’s escape.
“Ah ah ha,” Voidcleaver said, and Candegar turned to face her with blank eyes. “Where do you think you’re going, human?”
There was also her conscience. Saria had pledged Candegar, not to mention everyone in Gothmore Keep, to die with her. Now, how could she not let him and Martus live with her?
Static hissed from Voidcleaver. “This pile of babies isn’t going to do me much good lying out here in the wilderness. We gotta distribute these suckers.”
“Of course you do,” Saria said, watching Martus scuttle on the tentacles his damaged mantel. “And you know, I think I know who will help us.”
“The Krypterion? Oh I think not.”
As if magnetized, Blades rose from the ground, tips pointed at the black-clad Martus. With a series of frog-tongue flashes, the Krypterion’s mantel extended psuedopods to touch and destroy the Blades.
“Wait!” Saria held up her hands, yelling, “take prisoners, Martus. Prisoners, no casualties.”
“One does not take prisoner unseelie Powers,” said Martus, his mantel a halo of tendrils around him, “one harnesses or destroys them.”
“And why not harness them?” Saria walked between Martus and Voidcleaver, still clutched in Candegar’s zombie fingers. “They make fine weapons against even great Powers, as you see.”
“Because the Krypterion has no desire to turn its members into that,” he thrust a furious finger at Candegar.
Saria followed the finger, spinning to confront Voidcleaver. “And you have no need to destroy your human host, do you?”
“Of course I do,” buzzed the Cursed Blade. “It’s how I reproduce…Ah.” As Saria spread her arms to indicate the enormous pile of new Blades. “I see what you mean. Well.” Its voice turned sulky. “It’s not like I can control it. Any more than you can control when you menstruate.”
Martus’ lips thinned. “Please don’t be vulgar.”
“But I can control it,” said Saria. “There are drugs, there are traditions I won’t detail around the sensitive ears of our religious friend.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“And I wager,” said Saria, “that we can find some similar solution for you, Voidcleaver. A way you can avoid the hatred of humans and focus your energy” she nodded toward the field of battle, “more productive goals.”
“The Shrine Maidens of Takama-ga-hara wield Heavenly Spears, which scholars say they bred from Cursed Blades, and they are rumored to live a thousand years. The Seiifim of Aldaria lead armies with their Blades held high. Even the Krypteria already breeds some lines of Cursed Blades for study…”
“Well we will have to put a stop to that,” said Voidcleaver. “Can’t have you going around selectively breeding my grandchildren. What are you going to do with the culls?”
“We’ll need to make compromises,” said Saria before Martus could open his mouth. “But at least we can all agree: the world is broken.”
“The world is broken,” repeated Martus, as if uttering a benediction.
Voidcleaver was less impressed. “Lady, you can’t win against entropy.”
Saria lifted her chin. “We can fight against it though. Now release Candegar, please.”
The Hero stumbled. Looked down at his hand, shied back a little from the pile of infectious swords at his feet.
Saria watched him, thinking about the mission before her. Candegar would have to re-learn how to control his Blade, and Martus how to work outside of the boundaries imposed on him by his church. It would be hard, but the world was broken, and someone had to fix it.
“Come,” she said, “let’s find something safe to do with all these Powers.”
The End
Special thanks to Michael Silva, who came up with the world and the first scene, and Turbofanatic, who is responsible for the Cursed Blade and the illustrations. To see our brainstorming and outlining process, click here.
July 1, 2014
Holy Pavilion
圣亭
“So the the other half of the rumors are also true.” Yuen steeled himself and looked into the eyes of his old friend. “You are thinking of going home. Abandoning your sworn and holy mission.”
“Financing my mission, more like,” said Feng. “My friend, this is only one minor town in a vast empire, and it’s brimming with gold and jewel and artwork. And if the pitiful resistance these people put up is any indication—”
Yuen stamped his right foot, and flung out his quivering finger. “So would you become a pirate now, admiral?”
“I remain,” said Feng, “a tool of God. Don’t you see? In his infallible wisdom, God made the world wide, but in His mercy He placed this continent between tired sailors and the destination of their pilgrimage. And,” he grinned, “He loaded the place with gold!”
Words defeated Yuen. He stared at his friend and long companion, furiously thinking. Surely there was some other way out of this than the one in his orders.
“My friend,” said Feng. “My faith was weak. Now, after all this time, I can admit it. I thought you were misguided, and our Imam-Emperor insane. I thought God had abandoned us and I would die in the middle of ocean. But now,” and the Admiral of the Fleet of the Great Hajj raised his hands to the gilded, intricately cavern ceiling, and laughed. “Now we’re going home.”
Yuen imagined this man laughing at the prow of his flagship as it docked in Shaghai. The chaos among the holy men, the scheming of the merchants, and the admiration of the common folk. The crew of loyal sailors and the holds stuffed with gold and treasure to buy more loyalty. He thought of his orders from his Imam-Emperor.
The Admiral and his loyal men would not be killed, Yuen told himself, nor even punished. They were instead to be rewarded with another mission, the construction of a Holy Pagoda in this land of strange infidels.
So that when the Imam-Emperors next fleet arrived, they would have somewhere to welcome them.
“I am going home,” the Ulama gestured to his guards. “But you, my friend, will stay.”
End of Chapter 1
5th year of the reign of the Imam-Emperor Muhanmode
133th year of the Songid Dynasty
836 Anno Hegirae
11th Baktun 10th Katun 12th Tun
1433 Anno Domini
June 29, 2014
63 Fantasy and Historical Fantasy with E.C. Ambrose
http://www.thekingdomsofevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/63Elaine.mp3
With me this week is E.C. Ambrose, author of Elisha Barber and, out this week, Elisha Magus, the first two books of a historical fantasy series about a barber-surgeon in 13th century England. We talk about the question “how much fantasy is too much in historical fantasy?” And also…
Edward II and his row with daddy.
Witchcraft and politics: two things he’d always hoped to avoid.
Tim Powers’s Secret histories
Playing with historical perspectives on magic is a lot of fun for me.
You want it to be clear that magic has an influence, but without breaking completely from reality.
The Novels of the Company (It was the cyborgs the whole time!)
People are excited by the potential for mystery that’s still out there in the world.
June 27, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 15
Voidcleaver struck the Power point-first and much became clear.
The problem was simple. Over millennia of use, the AI that humans called “Nebuchak” had become corrupted. Mistakes crept into software, which redesigned hardware, which ran software differently. That was expected, and like all important programs, this one could revert to previous versions. When those records failed, it could redesign itself, conserving changes that allowed it to preserve its core functionality. But when even the records of that functionality vanished down the abyss of entropy, what was left?
Survival. Reproduction. The iron law of Oligarchy and selective pressure.
Selfish instructions spread copies of themselves through the software, sliding down slopes in the careless adaptive landscape until until once had been a customer-service AI evolved into Nebuchak, squisher of humans.
Just the way that, to pick an entirely random example, the stage props of a civilization of live action role players had birthed a lineages of Cursed Blades
If Voidcleaver had had a mouth, he would have giggled.
The humans had built this flat world to be a park, a game-board, a safe place to hide from the cruel laws of the universe. But the cruelty had crept back in. The only choice the humans had was to make deals with devils like Voidcleaver.
The programs Martus used to battle Nebuchak were old and new. Corrupted copies from corrupted archives, modified and hybridized to at least come close to their original functionality. They reminded the software who was boss.
But Nebuchak had undergone such debugging before and its systems crawled with resistance measures. Passwords that could not be entered. Certificates that could not be recognized. Huge articulated claws that jabbed at squishy human organs. Even with all the tricks collected by the Krypteria over centuries, Martus did not possess the strength or the skill to harness a power. He could barely dodge the claws.
Voidcleaver, however…
With an emotion like glee, the Cursed Blade released his parasitic code into Nebuchak.
Algorithms optimized to fool and subvert the human immune system made short work of the Power’s jury-rigged antivirus software.
Back in what it amused humans to call the real world, Nebuchak’s huge, diaphanous body shuddered and fragmented. Lightning bolt legs became straighter, denser, smaller.
The Power trembled, steam poured off it in a frenzy of suicidal construction. The monstrous head turned, looked away from the black-robed Krypterion distraction to the man and woman cowering at its foot. The neck bunched and stretched. The toothy jaws opened.
Missed its targets.
Shattered against the earth in a rain of baby daggers.
Next
June 24, 2014
Treasure Continent
宝洲
Ulama Yuen Zaide ben Jiafa looked down, and his heart sank. “Are you sure this is a map?”
“Oh yes.” Admiral Feng nodded at the grim-faced little woman sitting cross-legged at the base of the his stone bench. “The native who brought this document to us, offered it up, I should say, was quite clear. Servant, show the holy Ulama this city.”
Another native, the one holding the alleged map, ran a finger down to the lower left corner. “Cihuatlan,” he said.
Yuen calmed his nerves and called upon God for wisdom and serenity. “You know these native maps,” he said. “Totally unreliable.”
“Oh, it isn’t,” said Feng, “and that doesn’t work in our favor. See this long lake up here and the little pictures of people around it? That’s their capital city, Tenuoqi.” He looked down at the woman. “Right? Tenuoqi?”
“Tenochtitlan.”
“There, you see? It’s painted larger because it’s so important, which means it’s even farther away. How far?” He made far-away throwing gestures at the woman, who said something to the map-holder, who pointed to a series of symbols painted onto the hide.
“A feather and a little rod? What is this pantomime, Admiral?”
“That rod is a unit of measurement,” said Feng, “and the feather indicates the number 400. About two li, as far as we can tell.”
Sadness welled up in Yuen’s heart. “So this island really is two li across.”
“More. The capitol isn’t on its eastern coast. It’s landlocked. And,” Feng leaned forward. “as far as the natives know, there are no oceans to the north or south at all.”
“Impossible.” It was more a plea than a denial. “We cannot have made landfall on Europe or Africa. We know our maps and readings are correct and we’re still more than twenty li from Mecca.”
Admiral Feng chuckled. No, the man nearly giggled. “I’m thinking of calling it Treasure Continent.”
June 22, 2014
62 Manga Translation with Phuong Pham
http://www.thekingdomsofevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/62Phuong.mp3
Phuong is back again, talking about her job as an editor for Digital Manga. Which is by the way kickstarting a Captain Ken English translation that you should STILL HAVE TIME TO FUND! Also…
The Digital Manga Guild, which employs scan leaders
Scan leaders and scanlations
They’re fishing for that Japanese essence
Gobo (sometimes known by the awful, unappetizing name burdock)
You want readers to be able to connect to the characters easily through fluid language.
Pacific Rim’s Japanese translation
As someone who always advocates rougher translation….
I try to get a feel for the sound of the characters
Why is anime so awesome?
The best alternate history, science-fiction story I have ever read.
Oh my God, it’s that guy! Who’s that guy?
The reason Tezuka chose such cute characters is to highlight how terrible war is to children
June 19, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 14
Voidcleaver awoke to a world saturated with intent.
The normally quiescent assemblers in the air and soil had sprung to functionality, teeming in baths of microwave energy broadcast by a very close, very hostile source.
Voidcleaver wrapped his influence around the assembler swarms that misted the air and commanded them to form the rods and cones of vision. A fisheye image of Nebuchak bulged in his perception, sharper and more detailed than any human eye could transmit.
So the Power was awake. It had turned Voidcleaver off with a command so old he hadn’t even know it existed. But now he could function again. Why?
Ah. The taste of human blood on his tip. The aristocrat, Saria, her body rich with ancient information. Voidcleaver took that knowledge into himself, ensured that he could never be deactivated like that again.
But other assemblers vibrated with the crude vibrations that it pleased humans in their arrogance to call speech.
“Can the Cursed Blade defeat that thing like it defeated Martus’ mantel?”
That was the voice of Candegar, Voidcleaver’s host.
Well, he responded, since defeated the mantel by driving it insane, the answer is no. That thing up there is already insane.
“Can you stop it?”
Voidcleaver tickled the neurons of his steed’s speech centers. Why should I?
An aggravating pause while Candegar repeated Voidcleaver’s words to Saria.
“Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”
Candegar cleared his stupid throat. “She says—”
“I hear what she says, dolt.” Voidcleaver formed his own vocal chords of pumping and vibrating nanomachines. “And what agreement could we possibly come to? You want to kill my children.”
“But your children will kill me,” said Candegar.
“Let them. Otherwise, what reason do I have to save your miserable human bones?”
“So let us strike,” said Saria, “a parasite’s bargain. Your interests are intimately connected to ours.”
She gestured up at the power looming above them.
“Um,” said Candegar why is it just standing there?
Voidcleaver extended his floating vision rods, fed more secrets to the assemblers as they drank in ambient energy and feverishly reproduced. Already they were becoming smarter in their multitudes, harder to control. Soon they would pass the threshold of Power and become another confused local spirit. Ah well, let the inhabitants of this place deal with the new baby Power, if any inhabitnats yet remained in this blasted place.
Voidcleaver’s vision slowly sharpened. “There’s someone else meddling,” he said. “It’s…I know the taste of those administrator credentials. How nice of our dear friend the Crypterion to attach himself to my meal.”
“He must be trying to re-seal the Power,” said Saria, “make it love men again.”
“Is he suicidal?” wondered Voidcleaver.
“No less than any of the rest of us,” said Candegar. And he bolted toward the nearest lightning-bolt foot, knife outstretched.
Next
Armchair linguistics
When a language has the same word for two concepts, speakers of that language must be incapable of understanding the distinction between the two.
So for example, the English language does not distinguish between treating something as a question (третирането), treating someone like a son (разглеждането), and treating someone to a beer(черпенето). What barbarians, unable to distinguish between questions, children, and drinking buddies.
Plus they think кешкавал and сирене are the same thing, the morons. And not only бухъл,сова, чухал, кукумявка, but even the shockingly distinct улулица are all called by the same name.
And alas, Anglophones are incapable of appreciating шумуленето (the sound that autumn leaves make when you walk through them).
But surely, you say, they must have братчета (little brothers), батковци (big brothers), сестрички (little sisters), and каки (big sisters). They are HUMAN, right? And свекърва (the mother of your husband) and тъща (the mother of your wife) must be human universals? No? And they don’t distinguish шурей (your wife’s brother) from баджанак (your wife’s sister’s husband)?! Monsters!
Well I say bomb those alien bastards! Bomb them right in their socially-impaired, cheese-devoid, owl-improvised, a-poetic, solitary махали (divisions within villages)!
June 17, 2014
And He Subdues the Peoples
“How can they do this?” wailed Tepin’s brother’s wife. Her brother’s widow, now.
“The ones with staffs are kneeling. The warrior priest and effigies.”
Except these priests didn’t look particularly devout. Easily, casually, as if they’d done so a thousand times before, the praying men shook black kernels into the fluted opening at the top of their staffs, followed by black sand. Then some business with a long black rod and a bit of gray cloth.
“The priests propitiate their effigy. The knights with swords…kill those who are left alive.”
“We’ll die,” whispered Yolotil as the the foreigners fanned out over the street. “They’ll kill us. We’ll die.”
“Maybe not.” Yolotil licked her lips.
“Maybe? We can’t run. We can’t fight back, and it didn’t look like the foreigners cared to butterfly-prisoners. So what can we do?”
“Give them what they want.” Tepin watched a pale-skinned man in flowing robes bend over a corpse in the square and straightened with a jade bracelet shining in his hand. He gave this trophy to second man who doodled something on a block of wood and in turn passed it to a smiling, bowing swordsman. The next piece of loot, a gold pendant, went to a warrior priest with his smoking effigy.
“Gold and jade,” said Tepin. “”They don’t seem to care about feathers. They’re taking it back to their leader who’s redistributing it? And now,” the cold, damp hand of the underworld gripped her neck. “Now the knights are turning to the houses.”
Tepin thought of the sight that would greet the enemies when they entered her sister-in-law’s house. The jewels, the ornaments, the fine cloth and carvings. These were not signs of affluence and good taste. They were poison. An invitation to horror like a bloody carcass in shark infested water.
She rose from her crouch and grabbed Yolotil. “Quickly, go downstairs to the altars and the wardrobe. Gather up everything valuable and dump it on the street. Pile up the sacrifices, and the monsters sent by the God of Death may turn aside and not destroy us.”
Yolotil shook Tepin’s hands away. “You can’t think you’ll be able to buy those men off.”
“If we can’t,” said Tepin, at lest we will have made a worthy sacrifice for our own funerals.
The poem paraphrased in the title
June 15, 2014
61 Technology and Optimism with Dan Koboldt
http://www.thekingdomsofevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/60DanKoboldt.mp3
Dan Koboldt is back, talking about his experience pitching his books on twitter and sharing useful advice for #SFFPit, which he hosted.
Also technology. Cause Dan’s a geneticist, in case you didn’t know.
For example, Dan’s three pitches:
1. A Vegas performer brings high-tech magic illusions into a medieval world that has the real thing.
2. A man who spent his life studying a pristine medieval world goes rogue when he uncovers his company’s plans to invade it. (my favorite)
3. When a company loses someone in a hidden medieval world, they recruit a Vegas show magician to make him reappear.
It pays to start early and practice
We’ve all seen Fern Gully and Avatar…
Star Trek‘s optimism
Gattaca’s…not so much
I’m pretty happy with the technological advances of the last couple of thousand years.
I expect genetic sequencing to be a routine part of medical care.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis
Trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome)
Technology is something we choose to do because it makes our lives better
hair color is actually really interesting
Frameshift by Robert J. Sawyer. Don’t worry, I didn’t spoil it. Except who the main badguy is. Whoops.
