Rainbow’s Point

every fantasy world has its great fantasy weapon.

the wheel of time has callandor, a flawed sa angreal that only a man can wield. the image of rand sword-fighting the dark one in the sky fascinates me.

middle earth has the one ring. the idea of the rings of power, all of them, ruled by the one ring is unique and powerful.

my all-time favorite fantasy weapon, of course, is the star wars light sabre. despite everyone’s dislike of episode i, the end-of-movie light sabre battle between quai-gon jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and darth maul was, in my opinion, a visually stunning display of coreography and design. i thought that lucas had a chance, in episode ii, to put together a light sabre battle of similarly (or more) stunning proportion, with the duel between anakin skywalker and count dooku, especially the segment where anakin fought with two sabres. lucas blew the opportunity, but the fact remains that the weapon is a fantastic piece of work, and can make great theatre.

the tomes of trolomia needs such a weapon. and it needs to be a weapon, not just a spell or a power.

the magical powers are cool, of course, but the weapons rock.

i think i might start my writing seriously if i blog about it. or do it on my blog. or something.

the tomes of trolomia is an epic i’ve been designing off and on for a while now. when i become famous and make my living writing it, you can say you read it here first. influences seem to be tolkien, robert jordan, and piers anthony. perhaps some paranoia, lovecraft (cthulhu for president: why vote for the lesser evil?), stephenson, and gaiman.

i’ve spent some time thinking about the political and natural/supernatural structure of the universe. the magic of the universe seems to be developing as a channeling-based system, except that unlike jordan’s five-power system, it’s a six-power thing (earth, air, fire, water, spirit, and the new one, demon).

one of the major objections i have to harry potter is that, no matter how much magic the characters seem to do in a day, they never get tired. in every other magical universe i’ve run across where magic is prevalent (it’s virtually non-existant in middle earth), there is an upper limit to how much power you can wield over a fixed amount of time. in the wheel of time you get physically tired or burn yourself out; in dungeons and dragons (at least when i played) you could only cast so many spells per day. so there will be some kind of upper limit; magic is powerful, but wielding power is not without cost.