The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Five

Chapter Five has now been posted.

Chapters Six through Eleven are paid for.

I’m halfway through writing Chapter Eight, so I’m maintaining my safety margin. I’d like to increase it, but for some reason this story is slower going than Ethshar usually is.

My best estimate — which could easily be way off — is that this story will run about twelve chapters, and 30,000-35,000 words. Which is technically, by modern standards, a novella, rather than a novel. Sorry about that.

The old pulp magazines used to advertise anything over 20,000 words as “a complete novel in this issue!” though, so there’s precedent. And it may wind up longer than I expect.

24 thoughts on “The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Five

  1. Mostly irrelevant question; what’s Dorna’s cognomen? (if she really is a magistrate it could be “the fair” ha ha… oh.)

  2. A talisman that can fix other talismans seems pretty powerful.

    I wonder if it is heading for the towers :).

  3. Ah… I think I understand now the difference between sorcery and our technology. Sorcery doesn’t need an external energy source. It runs on gaja pulled out of nowhere. So a sorcery-built computer never needs electricity. A sorcery-built gun probably doesn’t use gunpowder but rather a sudden burst of gaja to propel the bullets and so on.

    They could likely build trains in Ethshar using either science or sorcery. You could build a steam train that heats water in a fire-fed boiler and uses steam pressure to drive the wheels. using science… or you could build something that looks the same but uses gaja to drive the wheels.

  4. Obviously sorcery has fallen on hard times since the fall of the Northern Empire. A lot of knowledge has been lost, as this chapter makes clear. But some sorcerors do still seem to understand the basic principles and applications.

    I wonder if the art of sorcery is advancing again. Are sorcerors relearning old patterns or inventing new ones?

    Wizards, it would seem, continue to improve on their craft and invent new spells. Are there crafty Initiates out there inventing (or re-inventing) talismen?

    Bill

  5. > Sorcery doesn’t need an external energy source. It runs on gaja pulled out of nowhere. So a sorcery-built computer never needs electricity. A sorcery-built gun probably doesn’t use gunpowder but rather a sudden burst of gaja to propel the bullets and so on.

    If I’ve put it together right, it seems like Sorcery is (more or less) high end science fiction tech. Specifically high enough tech to run zero-point “free energy” devices. This differentiates it from modern (early 21st century Earth) technology, as we would recognize, which would have been rendered obsolete and replaced… and now seems to be pretty much a big hole that all the branches of magic have grown around, not quite reaching yet or achieving the same ends through radically alternate means.
    Meanwhile the “magic” of “science” that does exist in Ethshar, one presumes from the references as direct examples are as-yet unseen, rather fits the steampunk mold.

  6. I doubt “science” is steampunk, just very low tech.

    If their world has “normal” physics (in addition to magic), then people can still perform experiments and such.

  7. raphfrk; I use the term very loosely to suggest the sorts of technology they work with (gears, external combustion, etc) and their image of where they think they’re going in their work- not to suggest that Ethshar is a burgeoning steampunk world getting ready to fill the sky with airships.

    As for performing experiments and such; they already do, I don’t understand what you expect from that and how you think experimentation would change anything.

  8. Hrm. Like I said, we’ve never seen Ethsharatic scientists, only heard them referred to so I’m guessing wildly. Apparently they have enough “power” to make a living doing something, but no idea doing what.

  9. [If I’ve put it together right, it seems like Sorcery is (more or less) high end science fiction tech. Specifically high enough tech to run zero-point “free energy” devices. ]

    I don’t think so. That would imply that every single sorcerous device has a zero point energy device built in, and to do that using our science would require far too much infrastructure for Ethsharic sorcerers working in the lab behind their house. I think it’s just a property of the world that if you build an electrical circuit, it’ll self-energize without the power coming from anywhere.

  10. [I think it’s just a property of the world that if you build an electrical circuit, it’ll self-energize without the power coming from anywhere.]

    If true, how is that different from a integrated use of zero-point energy?

  11. We don’t really yet have enough information to determine if sorcerous talismans are in fact the artifacts of a “true” scientific technology, or if they are some sort of blend between magic and tech.

    I’ve always liked the “lost science” explanation, because it’s kind of a neat story. But I don’t think it fits in with LWE’s other World-building. We do have a pretty solid history of the World, right? And it doesn’t include a previous hi-tech human civilization.

    Although… what exactly was the Aldagmor Source? And what’s its connection to sorcery?

  12. [I’ve always liked the “lost science” explanation, because it’s kind of a neat story. But I don’t think it fits in with LWE’s other World-building.]

    “The Cyborg and the Sorcerers” and “The Wizard and the War Machine” both argue that the more likely argument against this is that he’s done it elsewhere.

    [We do have a pretty solid history of the World, right?]

    We have a pretty solid history of the world from the latter part of the Great War on. Everything earlier than that is suggestion, inference, myth, and author comment… and suggests any number of things.

    [Although… what exactly was the Aldagmor Source?]

    Intruder from outside the World/universe that crash landed.

    [And what’s its connection to sorcery?]
    Unclear, though the Lumith source is clearly sorcerous. This goes back to a conversation that was had during the Final Calling where questions were raised about warlocks dealing with sorcery or who were previously sorcerers and LWE’s comment was limited to “that’s an interesting idea.”

  13. It seems that talimans can do stuff that cannot be done by “normal” science. For example, in Portrait of a Hero, there was a talisman that was able to predict who could save the village from a dragon.

    That would require something like AI to understand the situation well enough to predict that she would have an advantage. Even scanning for dead dragons and nearby humans would require constant monitoring.

    Ofc, it could have an explanation. For example, maybe it is really a communicator and someone answers the question. However, why would someone keep answering over hundreds of years (maybe they still had call credit 🙂 ).

  14. Huh. As of a few minutes ago, Chapter Twelve is paid for (plus $8.00 toward a theoretical Chapter Thirteen). Didn’t realize we were that close; seems like Eleven was only covered a little while ago.

  15. Fil drepessis is probably a field repair system, as indicated above. A tokka is likely a “talker”, i.e. a communication device or something, but what is “noog” supposed to be? a nuke?

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