My World: Cosmology - More on Faerie

In my forthcoming novel, I deal with several scenes in Faerie. While you only see a small part of the lands of Winter, ruled by the Unseelie Court, you see a fair amount of the Summer lands, ruled by the Seelie Court. 

Faerie is a region of the spirit world which touches the mortal world in places. It is a realm that embodies broader concepts of nature, of which the fey and sidhe are anthropomorphic exemplars. These lands are wild and primordial, though function according to the qualities and concepts endemic of their elemental associations. 

The Summer lands, for example, are like vast natural wildernesses in high summer. Life is celebrated, including the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Wild animals roam freely through wooded dells, river valleys, and grassy plains. Every tree, flower, and blade of grass is in full bloom, fertile and full of life. Sickness is almost nonexistent. It rains in the mornings and evenings, though never obscuring the beautiful dawns and sunsets or the stars at night. The fey natives are merry. They hunt, make music, craft items of great beauty, and garden. Food is plentiful. 

The lands of Winter, by contrast, are harsh and foreboding. In places there is enough free flowing water, or winter blooming foliage, to support animal life. There are wild packs and herds that cross from Summer into Winter, but packs of wolves roam the colder lands, and all manner of fierce beast preys mercilessly on those who stray too far from the herd. Everything is covered in snow or ice. Mountain ranges dwarfing all but the tallest peaks of the mortal world are frequent in these lands. Their collection of forbidding peaks and impossible cliffs providing ideal cave-dwellings for flying beasts. The fey native to this land are hungry, wicked, and, while they too make merry, it is often cruel and at the expense of others. 

Larger than the Summer and Winter lands combined is that of the Wyld, which encompasses the rest of Faerie. These are the lands of fey not tied to either Court by oath or nature. It is a place both glorious and dangerous. Here the fey hunt to survive. They do so with stealth and without the ceremony or music of Summer, but also without the malice of Winter. It is composed of wilderness in autumn or spring, lands that can be plentiful in places or barren in others. There are giant shadowed forests, as well as cloud-covered plains. 

My World: Cosmology - Regions of The Shadow

Throughout the stories in Three By Moonlight: A collection of werewolf tales, available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and at most retailers nationwide, there are references and explicit statements about The Shadow. I've described it in an earlier posting, but having gone much further into the cosmology of it.

The Shadow is a region of the spirit world, though it is the one most easily accessed from the mortal world. It is coexistent with the mortal world, but there are other "planes," if you will, which are somewhat coexistent, or at least have specific areas tied to the mortal world, possibly acting as either anchors or doorways. These planes often link to parts of the Shadow as well.

Note, though, that these planes aren't just like floating islands adrift on the an ocean that is the spirit world. Although that analogy is somewhat useful, it doesn't describe the otherness, the nature of alternate realities, that are part of it, so fails to grasp their size and scope. Some planes are fairly limited in geography, and especially when they are realms ruled by a single powerful being or group of beings, like the realms of some deities or pantheons. Others are massive, such as Faerie, and seem almost infinite in their size, though, in fact, Faerie is only slightly larger than the combination of the US and Canada. The Shadow, on the other hand, may make up most of the spirit world.

The geography of the Shadow, however, is odd in more ways than just described earlier. Its characteristics, layout, and even physical laws change the further from mortal reality you go. The area generally referred to as the Shadow is, in fact, the Near Shadow. The next region is called the Deep Shadow. This area is far more nebulous and malleable, and is where more powerful demons and creatures of dark power choose to make their lairs. Beyond that is the Dark, sometimes called the Deep Dark or the Nether. This is a place of no light, where terrors live out immortal lives. It is said that there are places in the Deep Dark which connect to the Pit, what we might identify as Hell or the Abyss.

Another area of the spirit world is the Pale. This is, quite literally, the Border. While mortals conceptualize the Border as barrier to pass through, like a thin veneer that can be peeled away, it is actually a whole plane of existence, or, more accurately, a plane of being. The Pale is maybe close to the Christian concept of Limbo, or in D&D terms the Ethereal Plane. It is the place where ghosts exist, though as they are tied to places and events in other worlds often exist on both planes at once. In the Pale they aren't incorporeal, but rather their spiritual energy composes a type of conceptually solid form.  For all intents and purposes, they have a real body in the Pale.

There is, however, another area of the Shadow that is critically important to understand, and that is the Lands Beyond, a seemingly infinite space beyond the borders of our universe, a place of chaos, utter entropy, and nothingness. It is the Void. Yet there are creatures from this place, mostly dangerous and or powerful monstrosities and aberrations, alien intelligences completely devoid of what we might consider reason, or driven by nothing more than their desire to destroy.

One of the forces at work in reality is a kind of natural balance. For whatever reason, there are creatures of exceptional power who cannot reach our world in their true form. That doesn't mean they can't communicate or affect the mortal world, but they couldn't appear in their full strength. The Fallen, the angels who rebelled against heaven, are some of these. Their twisted natures prevent them from reaching beyond the Pit. It is, quite literally, a force like gravity. The Void, though, is like the Pit, in that it is a repository for things that want to destroy our reality. Unlike the Fallen, however, these creatures can cross into the mortal world from time to time, under particular circumstances, or with help. Also unlike the Fallen, they don't seek to re-order reality, they look for it's utter destruction. When they are set loose in the world, terrible things happen.

My World: Character Profile - Doniol Thomas

Occupation: Marshal of the Covenant
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Age: 25
Eyes: Green
Hair: Blond
Weight: 154lbs.

Doniol is a good guy. He's a hard worker, smart, thoughtful in decision making, and decisive in action taking. Unlike some of his peers in Vancouver, Doniol went through several years of a traditional apprenticeship before entering training as one of the battle mages. Because of that he has a bit more versatility than other marshals.

Doniol's family background is Welsh and, though he doesn't have an accent, he speaks some of the language. He also has some fey blood in his background, which gets alluded to on several occasions. The Unseelie Queen comments that his ancestor was one of hers.

He often uses his sword to channel his energy, rather than a staff like Duke does. He also carries a hawk-hilt dagger and various other magickal and mundane weaponry. He is very accomplished with air magick, his default element to use in combat is lightning, and is skilled with both veils and dealing with incorporeal beings. The shield he employs is the more common force-shield many marshals use, though this is in part because of the preferences of Evert Harcourt, the High Marshal in Vancouver where he did all his training.

He is inexperienced when he gets assigned to Minneapolis. He believes Harcourt made the assignment because he was a supporter of Captain Fredrik Thornwell, whose friendship with Duke Soller was the final straw in the strained relationship between the two men. Doniol believes that when Harcourt realized Fredrik was going to get reassigned and promoted, the High Marshal wanted to get rid of as many of Thornwell's supporters as possible. Whether that is true or not, it colors his opinion of the commander of all the marshals in North America.

Still, he tries his best to take control of the situation in Minneapolis after he is assigned. He gradually comes to like Duke, developing a deep respect for the mage's skill and compassion.