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Fallen Gods - upcoming Norse saga-inspired roguelite from Wormwood Studios

V_K

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Tbh my original post was intended as a joke. It's your justifications that are starting to rub me the wrong way though. Having the companion sexed doesn't preclude from choosing their sex at creation. And "the Norse mythology is like this" doesn't justify anything at all - you're not writing a game adaptation of a specific myth. It would only make sense if there's some significant narrative or mechanical pay-off coming from this duality, but seeing as you haven't brought it up yet, I'm assuming that's not the case.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Hugin and Munin
Fly every day
Over all the world;
I worry for Hugin
That he might not return,
But I worry more for Munin.[

I thought that Loki was the gender-bending god in Norse mythology, not Odin.
Though this whole thing is pretty irrelevant.
 

Darth Roxor

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Tbh my original post was intended as a joke. It's your justifications that are starting to rub me the wrong way though. Having the companion sexed doesn't preclude from choosing their sex at creation. And "the Norse mythology is like this" doesn't justify anything at all - you're not writing a game adaptation of a specific myth. It would only make sense if there's some significant narrative or mechanical pay-off coming from this duality, but seeing as you haven't brought it up yet, I'm assuming that's not the case.

wtf am i even reading

And "the Norse mythology is like this" doesn't justify anything at all

no seriously wat

'fallen gods is a game heavily based on a specific mythology; in said mythology x is x so we roll with that too'

'BUT BUT BUT DIS IS NO JUSTIFICASHUN'
 

Zombra

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This kind of crap puts developers in the unpleasant position of either derailing discussion of their own games or appearing tacitly to condone such ugliness by saying nothing.
While I'm impressed by your sense of responsibility, no one expects you to write a position statement whenever a homophobic (racist, sexist, helicopterist) joke is made on the Codex, even in a thread about your own game. Everything was fine and trolls gonna troll. Don't wrestle the tar baby!
 

V_K

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'fallen gods is a game heavily based on a specific mythology; in said mythology x is x so we roll with that too'
It's not a 1:1 adaptation - the game's lore is already differnt from Norse mythology in more than one way (and some of these alterations are really big). And once you start introducing changes, "it's there because it's authentic" just doesn't cut it anymore - because your game already isn't authentic in much more significant aspects.
Authenticity would be a justification in two cases:
1) This specific point holds a particular importance to the source material. Like, having a Ragnarok in the game wouldn't require a particular justification because it's a cornerstone of the mythology. Apparently, this isn't the case here, rather the companion's sex is a minor and largely decorative detail.
2) This specific point is important for the game's mechanics/narrative. I don't see that either.
 

MRY

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V_K You're right, of course, that many details of the lore diverge considerably from the source materials. FG isn't close to a 1:1 retelling and isn't intended to be one. However, if, "It's a detail from the source material that I am drawing upon, a detail I find interesting, one that provides an interesting option in an event and a convenience in the writing" isn't an acceptable justification for you, I'm not sure what justification I can offer.

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko In the Lokasenna, Loki actually attacks Odin as having a female soul, as indicated by Odin's having worn the likeness of a (seeress/witch) in his travels. It's not clear whether that's just Loki making stuff up, but Odin's close association with magic has always struck me as raising some questions along these lines, as (it appears from the sources on Norse culture I've reviewed) the practice of magic by men was viewed as a gender transgression. I assume that is what Loki is riffing on in the Lokasenna. That said, I'm not sure that the fylgjas were universally contrasexual (I think not), and I'm not sure that their contrasexuality had anything to do with a person's own sex or orientation -- that's a leap that V_K took, but it is not self-evident from the stories I've read.

Zombra I think you're wrong to say "no one." I assure that it is way easier to infer bad-faith from my sitting silent while people make such comments in this thread than it is infer bad faith from the decision to have fetches contrasexual, and yet here we are. :) I certainly don't view it as my job to police the Codex, which is a place that thrives on underpolicing even if I had time/authority/interest to do so (none of which I have), but I'd rather not have a thread I'm posting on be a place for such comments, joking or ironical as they may be. From a time-management standpoint, it would be easier to say nothing, but for other reasons I think the only two practical options are to say something or not to post at all.
 
Last edited:

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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MRY don't mind me. My main source of information about Aesir is Peter Madsen's Valhalla comics.
And some less wholesome sources.
And though the Executioner stands alone, and the warriors of Hel seem numberless, not one sets foot upon the bridge across the river Gjoll. They sing no songs in Hel... nor do they celebrate heroes... for silent is that dismal realm and cheerless... but the story of the Gjallerbru and the god who defended it is whispered across the Nine Worlds. And when a new arrival asks about the one to whom even Hela bows her head... the answer is always the same... he stood alone at Gjallerbru... and that answer is enough.
 

MRY

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MRY don't mind me. My main source of information about Aesir is Peter Madsen's Valhalla comics.
The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossland-Halley is amazing. And, actually, the author's preface does a nice job of reinforcing V_K's argument against me: "What we write is partly chosen for us, partly our own choosing." In some ways, the start of his retelling of the Aesier-Vanir war is what shaped my mentality on Fallen Gods and the style of the writing:
Odin did not extend a friendly welcome to the witch Gulveig when she came to visit him. In his hall the High One and many other Aesir listened with loathing as she talked of nothing but her love of gold, her lust for gold. They thought that the worlds would be better off without her and angrily seized and tortured her; they riddled her body with spears. Then the Aesir hurled Gullveig on to the fire in the middle of the hall.
I highly recommend the book if you have a chance!
 

baud

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My main source of information about Aesir is Peter Madsen's Valhalla comics.

valhalla-2-4.jpg
 

MRY

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One of the great pleasures of working on this project is that our amazing illustrator runs my emails through Google translate to understand them better, and thus as a preemptive measure against chaos, the project factotum and I do a dry run of translating it back and forth from Ukrainian. But Google translate goes berserk on certain words, "wight" being one of them.

For instance, take: "Once upon a time, in Fallen Gods, wights did look more like humans, but after humans and wights became enemies, the wights became more monstrous." When passed back and forth through Google, "wight" seems to just generate a random noun: "Once upon a time, in Fallen Gods, vampires did look more like humans, but after humans and spells became enemies, the fortunes became more monstrous." Or: "The more hideous, alien aspect of Dan's wights is more tragic." Becomes: "The more hideous, alien aspect of Dan's dance is more tragic."

Truly, we live in an age of wonders.
 

agris

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MRY Does FG have dialogue options that are unlocked by skills or reflect player actions, and thus wouldn't always be present? Do you telegraph to the player that said options are being granted to them via whatever (whether this is [bracketed], (parenthetical), or any other delineation), or are they present organically, without the tags, nods and winks. You can probably tell which side I'm in favor of, but I'm curious to know your rationale for whatever you chose, if the question is relevant.
 

MRY

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Well, this is pretty early, and the presentation could change, but currently:

(1) Early on, I wanted to present unavailable options that were unavailable because of a lack of resources (gold, food, souls, time) rather than because of a lack of a relevant skill, follower, fetch, or item. I'm not actually sure how the game currently handles this, but I sadly think that these unavailable options are not shown. To the extent they are shown, they indicate the associated cost.

(2) For options that employ an item (but I think not with a skill, mostly due to UI happenstance), when you put your mouse over the option, the relevant item gets a little lit-up circle next to it. When you use a follower, the option specifies the follower being used, and if there is more than one option, you can change the follower via a drop down. So "Tell [Hrut] to drink the mead" or whatever, you could change to "Tell [Bjarni] to drink the mead" if you had Bjarni as well as Hrut. For fetches, there is no indicator, but the option clearly references the fetch. "Have your eagle strike him" or whatever. With skills, I think it's usually self-evident, too, especially because a soul cost is indicated in case you were missing the obvious point. For all of these options, if you don't have the prerequisite, the option doesn't appear.

(3) Some options check an attribute. Unlike in most cRPGs these days, these are not "you need to be this tall to go on the ride, then you always reach your destination." They are die rolls. The better your attribute (there are two prime attributes, might and wits, and some derived attributes that are based on these plus items, followers, etc.), the more likely you are to pass. These typically do not indicate what attribute is being checked, and derived attributes are hidden from the player anyway. But a reasonable reader would probably be able to figure out what's going on.

(4) There are a tiny, tiny number of options dependent on something happening in a prior event. These options don't indicate that they are available for that reason, but you should be able to figure it out.

The rationale behind all of this is that FG doesn't really have the kind of nuanced options you see in cRPGs. The other day FG's factotum was sharing a PoE video where the dialogue options were basically: "Yes." "Yes!" "Yes ... ?" "No ... ?" "No!" "Can we talk about something else?" That kind of choice will never be present in FG. Instead, it would be more like: "Fight him." "Burn him." "Pay him." "Intimidate him." "Walk away." Hiding the fact that option #2 comes from the Soulfire skill or that option #3 comes from having sufficient gold is pretty silly. In other instances, the indicators are helpful because the option buttons are pretty small, so explaining that what you're going to do is "Wave the Burning Banner to inspire the fighters." is a little wordy, and might be more easily handled by highlight the banner and saying "Stir them to fight" or whatever.

I think generally we don't really have blue text always-best options like in FTL. I might be wrong, but I tend to think that deciding which option to use is probably more important in FG than figuring out what the options are likely to do.

I think you and I share a concern, which is that if you have:

NPC: Sure I'll help you -- for 100 gold.

1. [Persuasion] Helping me is the right thing, and you know it.
2. [Intimidation] Gold's not much use to a dead man!
3. [Faction] Surely you wouldn't leave a fellow Guelph hanging...
4. [Mercantile] In the long run, you'll make more money helping me.
5. Fine, I'll pay.
6. I don't have the money.​

You end up having the player just follow whichever checks he thinks he'll pass and not really think about the flow of the conversation. (IMO, this is one of the few significant flaws with AOD.) The player ends up minmaxing his way through dialogue rather than thinking about his larger goals, the NPCs' vulnerabilities, etc., etc.

It's really too early for me to say whether FG is going to suffer from that problem. It might, but I don't think so because often it is not cost efficient to go around soulfiring everyone who insults you, and sometimes using an item is simply stupid (like showing the wolf god idol to one of his whelps) and a player who does it just because he can will suffer the consequences of his stupidity.
 

MRY

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Update #5: Witches and Dwergs
or, "MRY Goes TL;DR Harvesting"
Fallen Gods Update #5: Witches and Dwergs

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The witch gives a low growl and grabs a dwerg by his scruffy beard. “The maid is mine,” she warns, and all four dwergs break down blubbering at her cry. “Mother, mother,” they whine, wheedling for at least a lock of golden hair or a touch of the hag’s hard hand. She swats them away in Karringar’s name, and they flee beneath the earth like worms before a crow. Without waiting, the witch grips the girl’s chin and plants a kiss upon her brow. Lithe limbs twist, smooth skin sags, and gold goes gray, till the young one’s weathered and withered as the crone who claimed her. The witch licks her lips and stands, eyes agleam with stolen dreams. There is no more to be done.


Left unminded for so long since the war of the Overthrow, the land of Fallen Gods is now beset on all sides by foes both worldly and unworldly. While the player’s titular god certainly cannot ignore the danger of outlaws and upstarts, the greatest threat comes from beings worse than men. This update will discuss two categories of such foes: witches and dwergs.

But before diving into the specifics of these two groups, however, I want to step back for a moment to talk about the way that myth and folklore have inspired FG’s fantastical setting. This is a long digression, so if you would like to get back to the point, skip everything between the asterisks.
* * *
Like basically anyone of my generation or later (I was born in 1980)—particularly any English speaker—the fantasy I grew up with was “Tolkienian.” To be sure, there was plenty of other stuff around the margins, particularly in children’s books: King Arthur; Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain; C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia; Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series (though this owes a detectable debt to Tolkien); Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels; Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence. And of course there was distinctive stuff that lingered on from pulp fantasy stories that weren’t “kids’ stuff,” particularly the sword and sorcery legacy of Robert E. Howard. And most fantasy movies of my childhood (like Kull or Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal) weren’t Tolkienian at all, perhaps because of film rights and production costs. But at least for me, this was marginalia, with the main columns of the fantasy “text” being a narrow one penned by Tolkien himself and a wide one penned by his imitators (Brooks, Feist, McKiernan, Williams, etc., etc.).
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Moreover, because Dungeons & Dragons consciously imitated Tolkien’s races of dwarves, elves, halflings, and orcs, RPGs and other games simply reinforced the sense that this was fantasy. Indeed, Tolkien’s success was so overpowering that his dwarves (not dwarfs, as it ought to be) and elves managed to displace (at least for nerds like me) their established antecedents from Disney and Christmas (and Keebler), powerful cultural icons themselves. To be sure, various glosses were added to the Tolkien model—the strongest being the Games Workshop patina of green-skinned orcs and Scotch dwarves and condescending elves, which came to me first by way of Warcraft and Myth. But these modest variations merely served to confirm that fantasy was inherently Tolkienian.

The problem with occupying the middle of the mainstream is that the sheer force of its flood scours away the details—sometimes sharp, sometimes coarse, sometimes even ugly—that make a thing itself rather than merely a polished lump that fits comfortably in the hand. I was once told (and have never verified or disproven) that Tolkien conceived Middle Earth in an effort to create an English legendarium, in part out of concern that the chivalric romances of King Arthur were more French than English and were thus not properly English at all. If that was his intention, he did not reckon with the speed and thoroughness with which mass culture could dislodge that legendarium from English soil. What would Tolkien, a man who agonized over his miscoinage of “dwarves” as a “piece of private bad grammar rather shocking in a philologist,” think about Gandalf’s heirs “pre-buffing tanks”? Alas (and hurray!), having founded a genre, Tolkien’s creation became generic.
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Luckily enough, one can still walk the same roads Tolkien took from our modern world, through our mythic past, to a timeless “fairy land.” I had tried, unsuccessfully, wandering that direction as a kid, after being repeatedly informed (always condescendingly by people who had never read Tolkien and often had not sat through Das Rheingold) that Tolkien had “just copied Wagner.” Thus misled, I spent a long rainy childhood day in front of a fuzzy television watching PBS’s airing of the entire Ring Cycle, complete with ridiculous stagecraft for Fafner. Being too young to really appreciate either of the masters or their masterpieces, I saw no connection whatsoever between the decidedly unheroic heavy-set singers groaning out tragic German and the delightful hobbits facing off against trolls, goblins, orcs, wargs, wights, and wraiths in rollicking adventure. This should have come as no surprise since I already knew the story of Andvari’s ring from childhood Norse mythology books and had never linked it with The Hobbit or the The Lord of the Rings. But still, the experience soured me the prospect of looking behind the fantasy novels I was reading.
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It wasn’t until years later, when reading the Poetic Edda’s “Völuspá” that I first realized that Wagner’s and Tolkien’s two magic-ring stories really had sprung from the same Norse tales. For there, in its list of dwarfs, are Durin, Dain, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Thrain, Thorin, Thror, Fili, Kili, Gloin … and Gandalf? (Who knew that “wand-elf” was a dwarf’s name?) And the more I wandered through these myths and stories and sagas, the more familiar elements I found. Here was more than just the earth in which Tolkien had planted the Lord of the Rings; here were the roots from which he had cultivated it.

I learned then the (probably obvious) lesson that however ridiculous fantasy tropes have become, they hold such innate appeal for us because they are a part of us. There is a reason trolls fear fire; there is a reason dwarfs crave gold and gems; there is a reason why dragons are simultaneously noble and loathsome; why witches are warted; why swords have names; why names have power. And these reasons fit together, the way words fit together. You can make a sentence out of any kind of words and convey information, but that information is only part of the sentence’s possible meaning. When the right words are used in the right order, a spell is cast, and there is power because we are not just giving literal information, we are calling upon a wealth of hidden knowledge inside the listener or reader. “The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, while hammers fell like ringing bells.” It is no coincidence that this chain of metrical Anglo-Saxon words swells inside us while no spirit rises up to answer, “In the past, dwarves used magic in their forges.” And even less meaning is found when both language and lore are displaced, as in the Kohan setting in which I had the privilege to work: “In the past, gauri used magic in their forges.”

Tolkien understood the magic in words, and he understood the magic in lore. His novels became so thoroughly enmeshed in culture because they were already enmeshed in culture; Tolkien played old songs on strings that were already inside us, even if they may have needed his tuning and touch.

When I say “us,” it’s not as a man of English stock or Scandinavian heritage; my father’s side came from Belarus, and my mother’s people are Scots Irish and Huguenot French. None of them ever spoke Anglo-Saxon and none of them ever told the Norse myths as their own folk stories. Yet that lore has become part of my story—just as, to my surprise, I found parts of myself in the myths of the Haida people in A Story as Sharp as a Knife. Today’s culture is a rope woven from many strands. In tracing the strand of “Northernness” I am not trying to fray that cultural rope, but to bind it more tightly.

So, to build the world of Fallen Gods, I wanted to walk as far back down the road blazed by Tolkien as I could, and then wander off the trail and try to find my own way back. Tolkien, of course, was a brilliant scholar, a gifted linguist, and a man who had spent his life on serious rather than frivolous pursuits. There is thus exactly no chance that I could achieve anything on an order comparable to his. But it would be an interesting hike all the same, and perhaps might produce a kind of fantasy that is both familiar and disquietingly other.

Whew! Now onto the specifics of how that method yield FG’s witches and dwergs.
* * *
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The witches of European folklore and fairytales are terrifying beings, but most of that terror has been lost over the centuries. Perhaps that’s for the best, given the awful historical consequences of that anti-witch hysteria. But it still seems to me that something has been lost when witches are relegated to buffoonery, as in the children’s books Room on the Broom or The Big Pumpkin.

So thoroughly have witches been defanged that we are comfortable reading stories to children in which they do the most awful things. For instance, in the children’s classic Little Brother and Little Sister, a witch curses all the water in a forest so that if the runaway titular siblings (her step-children), desperately thirsty, drink from them, the brother will turn into a predatory beast and eat his sister. (Note for a moment that the title itself emphasizes that these are not merely children but little children.) The siblings last long enough to reach a stream that merely turns the brother into a stag, at which point he succumbs. Years later, after the king nearly kills the stag, he falls in love with the sister, marries her, and conceives a child with her. The witch then boils the sister alive and disguises her own hideous daughter to take the sister’s place in the royal marital bed. This is not a “children’s classic” in the sense that it’s buried away in the original Grimm Brothers’ collections; it was sold as a standalone read-aloud children’s book well into the 1980s.

LB&LS encapsulates some (but not all) of essential “witchiness.” Witches strike at our most sacred institutions and most powerful taboos: the bonds of family (supplanting the children’s mother; attempting to cause a brother to kill his sister; interfering with the sister’s marriage and maternal relationship—the newborn must suckle from a ghost, presumably since the faux mother has no milk to give); the taboo against cannibalism (it is not enough to cause sororicide, it must be cannibal sororicide); the order of good governance (insinuating her witch-daughter onto the throne); the boundary between man and beast (dehumanizing the brother who not only loses his human shape but also his able to restrain himself by reason). Of course it’s just one story. I could cite Hansel and Gretel (caging children like animals and then eating them; enticing the children to eat sweets that, in at least some tellings such as Humperdinck’s opera, are made from other children) or Macbeth (spoiling Macbeth’s friendships, upending his marriage, and inciting civil war) or any number of other sources. Even the more quotidian crimes of witches (curdling milk in a cow’s udder or afflicting a maiden with acne) have a similar quality of attacking what is good, clean, wholesome, beloved, or holy precisely because it is good, clean, wholesome, beloved, or holy.

As I talked about in a recent interview with Chris Picone, these same qualities in witches give them a kind of countercultural appeal. By defying social norms and by living beyond the margins of society (often in a cave, a forest, a swamp), they can occupy the role of an off-the-grid iconoclast or a gadfly. Whether the ones who first told the tales intended it or not, it’s hard not to read into them the sense that witches exploit our flaws when they strike at our virtues such that they are exposing, and punishing, our hypocrisy. For instance the same king who (1) is too stupid to notice that his beautiful bride (Little Sister) is now an ugly hag-daughter also (2) betrothed that bride at first sight in a hut in a forest knowing nothing about her. Has he not invited the possibility of being wedded to a witch? (In the Saga of the Volsungs, Byrnhild warns Sigurd against exactly such reckless behavior.) Is it not Hansel’s gluttony for sweets (and not just his hunger) that drives him and his sister into the witch’s clutches, and does this piggishness perhaps invite being roasted like a suckling for dinner?

In Fallen Gods, we have tried to capture both halves of the witches. They are physically and magically powerful, vulgar, independent, and rich in hidden lore. They claim to be daughters of a “tenth sister”—the other Nine being the Singers who sang the world into its shape—devoted to thwarting orderly fate to create the chaos in which freedom can exist. (The association of witches with wyrd, fate, is an old one, that shows up not just in the modern usage of weird but in the Weird Sisters of Macbeth. The valkyries delivering the nightmarishly prophetic “Darraðarljóð” in Njal’s Saga (Brennu-Njáls saga) certainly seem like witches, too.) Because witches are defying an order that is very flawed, their defiance has a certain nobility to it. But they are ugly, evil creatures, and their help almost always involves the kind of fundamental wrongs discussed above.
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In appearance and character, our witches draw also from the saga tradition of “troll-women.” In the Icelandic sagas, the word “troll” can encompass both the giant beings that we normally think of as trolls and a more nebulous concept of otherness and magic (take, for instance, the “troll-bull” on Iceland’s coat of arms or the term “troll-drum” used, pejoratively, to describe the Sami shaman’s instrument). Troll-women are vividly described in The Saga of Illugi, Foster-Son of Grid (Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra) and The Saga of Grim Shaggy-Cheek (Gríms saga loðinkinna).

Here is the first saga’s description:

Snot hung above her mouth, she had a beard and she was bald. Her hand was like an eagle’s claw, and her sleeves both burned, and the cape that she wore went no further than her rump, and was scanty all over. Her eyes were green, her forehead straight, and her ears rose like a mast. You could not call her fair.

And here is the second one’s:

But he’d not been lying there long, when he saw a woman coming—if you could call her a woman. She couldn't have been more than a seven-year-old girl, going by her height, but so fat, Grim doubted he could have got his arms around her. She was long-faced, hard-faced, hook-nosed, with hunched up shoulders, black-faced and wobbly-jowled, filthy-faced and bald at the front. Both hair and hide of her were black. She wore a shriveled leather smock. It barely reached down to her buttocks. Hardly kissable, he thought, as she had a big booger dangling down in front of her chops.

This striking language formed the starting point for Dan Miller’s wonderful sprite, shown above.

Whew! Enough about witches, and onto dwergs.
LonYyuKZIjeCAZMdyc5-lq6AvktDt60G22LQdELXppTYjSYY0UsCyY9otFgDzfpjKsOPRhFuW6YuQ_oOtrRK84_FbIrIT7_2TkWqgxsDPdT2o1nStbLfjGXhYnIN_WLxIs7nleUN

Dwergs are our “dwarfs.” Their name is a rare instance in Fallen Gods in which we’ve used an obscure word where colloquial English retains an accurate Anglo-Saxon term. The reason, alluded to in asterisk-bracketed digression above, is that “dwarfs” and “dwarves” simply hold too powerful a connotation of stoic, stubborn, hard-drinking, brogued, axe-wielding, orc-bashing, underground-city-building nobility. English has held onto the old word but its modern meaning is strongly contrary to what I want to convey. “Dwerg” (from the Old English dweorg and Norse dvergr) can be recognized quickly enough and pronounced easily enough, but has just enough distance to let me dress it with different connotations.

Dwergs were one of the first beings I “defined” for Fallen Gods, and they established my methodology for others. I started by looking for what seemed the essential qualities of mythological and folkloric dwarfs: they are small (though scholars question whether they were viewed as small when the myths were first told); they live underground; they covet gold and beautiful women; they are master craftsmen and cunning cowards. Notably (and lampooned in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptation), they seem to have no women. And, indeed, per the eddas, they were conceived without a woman’s involvement, directly from the dead (male) giant Ymir: either spawning spontaneously from his rotting flesh like maggots (in the Prose Edda) or being made from a mixture of his blood and bones (in the Poetic Edda).
kZD07eTio5UfAxlrJl55wAoYhO6GgSM8vDRMTxpB-Dc8l82JWqFC1fDWKtA64A-fBFQyHZdcsQGprK72D2eHELF9n7G-UJPKhtxuL19BwMT7l62pqcktYTR1P4RHCJ67scRDnaxh

Even if it has become dissociated from dwarfs themselves, our culture routinely invokes the symbol of the ugly, stunted, sexually deprived, technically gifted, darkness dwelling social pariah who is belittled by, and bitterly plots his revenge against, handsome heroes and their beautiful paramours. For instance, how many times have people who enjoy computer games been reviled by their critics as unattractive nerds who live in their parents’ basements, doomed never to have a girlfriend? This is one of the milder examples for how this symbol is used as a weapon.
The sum of these flaws is a being that is rightly unloved. This is vacuum so awful to basic decency that when it appears, we rush to fill it: witness the need to humanize those who seem least worthy of love (tyrants; serial killers; etc.). Norse dwarfs were never nursed by a mother; never kissed by a lover; never admired by a child. They live away from green, blue, and sunlight. The softest thing in their world is gold, and inevitably it is stolen from them. And before it’s stolen, they cut the gold from the earth, burn it in fire, strike it with hammers. They have brothers; their brothers kill them. They foster sons; their foster-sons kill them. And this is their just deserts, the myths and folklore teach us. Alone; unloved; cut off.

So that is where we started with our dwergs: the lonely, bitter yearning of stunted beings beneath the earth. Our dwergs were born when the threefold goddess Karringar was killed and broken open. Inside her was the gold of the Golden Maiden (taken by Orm to make Skyhold); the iron of the Iron Crone (left to rust beneath the sleet and snow); and the quicksilver of the Silver Lord, which spilled to earth and begat the dwergs upon the dirt and rock.
rzN1UJq3g_SnzT8b9Y0-GsZ2rUCFG-tuVtAe4Wt-_9qG4LJSOyZuJvhXEgp3tYXpBEG_jhXWb-czHR_cCShb__moLwvzR6EJoiass0KrVQhE2wQnf5tQthtTl-ze1jNjvImrPHwX

The moment of their birth was thus the moment at which they were separated, forever, from the mother and maiden they loved. They crave what they have lost, and clutch for it in gold (which they eat) and stolen maidens: This girl will never meet the need they feel, the half-crazed craving for their golden third—sister, lover, lost when the quicksilver seed spilled from Karringar’s shattered womb and spawned them in the filth. And when they work in iron and grovel before an iron-willed witch, it the fond approval of maternal love they want and will never get. For they are unloved, rightly, and in all their craft is bent, at bottom, on wrighting (not righting) wrongs: cursed gifts; wicked schemes; cruel traps; kidnappings and killings.

So, at last, we come to the end of this long, long update. Two foes down. The next will, I hope, fall faster.

NEXT UPDATE: To Battle!

* * *
You can read Illugi’s Saga, Grim’s Saga, many other sagas, the Eddas, and more on William P. Reaves’s site Germanic Mythology: http://www.germanicmythology.com/

You can also many sagas, including a rather dated translation of Njal’s Saga at the Icelandic Saga Database: http://sagadb.org/

You can read Chris Picone’s interview of me and Vince Weller, the man behind The Age of Decadence and The New World, here: http://www.cshpicone.com/interview-mark-and-vince

I mentioned A Story as Sharp as a Knife in the update. It is, in my opinion, not merely a fascinating recounting of Haida mythology but a powerful argument for preserving the tales of the past and letting them speak with their own voices. Fallen Gods does not do that; it is not even a retelling of the source material so much as a deconstruction and reconstruction of it. But the game would not be possible without the tireless work undertaken by skalds like Snorri, unknown monks like those who made and preserved the Codex Regius, and scholars like Neil Price, who helped me not only with his books and lectures, but also by taking the time to respond to my email and point me toward helpful first- and second-hand sources. There is a trite expression that “every day is a gift.” That is true not only for the day we enjoy now and the days to come, but also for the long train of days gone by, and we are the fortunate inheritor of those gifts, sometimes worn and sometimes dated though they may be.

As always, I can't be bothered to do the audio.
 

Quantomas

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MRY That is a great view of what shaped our perception of fantasy. Back in the days there a was a time when people said Tolkien is out and McKillip is in after she had published the Riddle-Master trilogy. And that was rightly deserved as The Riddle-Master is her greatest work, where every stroke just seems right.

Naturally, what is our identity is the question of our time. Associated with it is the question what is our true heritage. And that goes right back to ancestral lore and lost knowledge that we hardly can fathom. Whether it is indiscernible interactions deep within our gene pool, or wave mechanics of the soul, there is undeniably a desire to touch this hidden source.

As always, great update. I will need a bit of time to think about what it means for FG, the game.
 

agris

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Wonderful update MRY.

Did you read any of Andrew Lang's fairy books in your long walk back? I recall that Tolkien derived a lot of inspiration from these, and I've got the Red and Blue books marked for reading. Lang is Scottish, and some of the stories reflect that cultural heritage, including the cultural intermixing with the Irish that gave rise to the so-called Scots-Irish immigrants that came to the US and brought with them a rich mixture of old-world fairy tales. While not Norse, you might find in his books some of those common strings that you wrote about - perhaps the same chords being plucked but in a different key (to further stretch the metaphor).

There's a wonderful aside in Gaiman's American Gods that recounts the story of a young woman interacting with a fairy, except the fairy is much more like the witches of old, or the fairies out of Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. If you've read it (I believe we talked about this and you have), I believe that comes directly from one of Lang's books.

Anyway, I appreciate that your interests are focused on first and second hand sources, which his books are surely not. They might prove inspiring though.

One other thing, in regards to going back down the road Tolkien walked. Tolkien was also heavily inspired by the majesty of nature, the most famous example being his walking tour of the Swiss Alps in 1911. Do you share an enjoyment of the out of doors, go backpacking or hiking or anything like that? If your goal is to plumb the common depths of our souls, so to speak, I think one must do part of said plumbing in the majesty, awe and terror of nature. It can't all be text.
 

MRY

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Did you read any of Andrew Lang's fairy books in your long walk back?
I believe I read them, but some years before embarking on this project. I agree that it is within the realm of what we're talking about.

There's a wonderful aside in Gaiman's American Gods that recounts the story of a young woman interacting with a fairy, except the fairy is much more like the witches of old, or the fairies out of Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. If you've read it (I believe we talked about this and you have), I believe that comes directly from one of Lang's books.
Both books are great. In my opinion, the single greatest -- and yet, quite awful -- depiction of the now-plastered-over wildness and wickedness of the old fairy tale beings comes in the second book of the Magicians in which a group of dissident, untaught magicians attempt to raise a local deity that turns out to be Reynard the Fox in disguise. It's pretty horrific, but in a way that captures the "it wasn't always fun and games" message well. JS&MN seems to me to have some Mabinogion strains in it as well, incidentally.

One other thing, in regards to going back down the road Tolkien walked. Tolkien was also heavily inspired by the majesty of nature, the most famous example being his walking tour of the Swiss Alps in 1911. Do you share an enjoyment of the out of doors, go backpacking or hiking or anything like that? If your goal is to plumb the common depths of our souls, so to speak, I think one must do part of said plumbing in the majesty, awe and terror of nature. It can't all be text.
It is one of the things I love, and lack, in my life. But, yes, the game does try to convey the awe and pleasure and wistfulness I feel when I get to go out in the wild or to go spelunking. These days I rely on nature documentaries and depressing books about ecological calamity. Here are a couple examples of the more pastoral (?) scenes in the game:

As you work your way up the fell, the weatherworn world grows bare and cold. Ash and spruce give way to hunched birch and bramble, the birdsong yields to keening wind, and life itself at last lets go, leaving only ice and stone. There upon the slope slumps the corpse of Karringar, whose broken breast spilled dwerg-spawning seed, whose wounded womb Orm robbed of Skyhold's doleful gold. ...
You walk in the gloom of old firs, lost in thought, the world still but for your shuffling steps, the low-growing rowan blown by the breeze, the far-off birds softly purling. When at last you shake loose from this wood-spell, you find the path long gone, and the day’s last span is spent in merely getting back.
 

agris

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As you work your way up the fell, the weatherworn world grows bare and cold. Ash and spruce give way to hunched birch and bramble, the birdsong yields to keening wind, and life itself at last lets go, leaving only ice and stone. There upon the slope slumps the corpse of Karringar, whose broken breast spilled dwerg-spawning seed, whose wounded womb Orm robbed of Skyhold's doleful gold. ...
You walk in the gloom of old firs, lost in thought, the world still but for your shuffling steps, the low-growing rowan blown by the breeze, the far-off birds softly purling. When at last you shake loose from this wood-spell, you find the path long gone, and the day’s last span is spent in merely getting back.
I like the alliteration in the text, it gives it a musical cadence like oral history.

Although, there's nary a dell, mere or bough to be seen ;D Yet we have a fell, so my need for British-ish pastoral descriptions is someone placated.
 

MRY

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The Riddle-Master is her greatest work, where every stroke just seems right.
Those are fighting words! I wouldn't put Riddle-Master in her top five, and in my arrogant opinion, it's not in the same league as The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or The Changeling Sea, in which she developed her key themes/tropes. (Those themes and tropes might've been better developed in later books, but the novelty was gone for me.) Beasts of Eld was the book that brought me, tentatively, back to fantasy during law school.

Also, "every stroke just seems right" -- to be honest, my single strongest recollection of the series was the name Ghisteslwchlohm, which primed me to hate PoE from the outset, and the "twist" that the character named Ohm was actually Ghisteslwchlohm. I mean, if I had a cat, I'd let him name my characters with keyboard wanderings too, I guess... :D

Although, there's nary a dell, mere or bough to be seen ;D Yet we have a fell, so my need for British-ish pastoral descriptions is someone placated.
One frustration with the Old English effort is that the word "mountain" is impermissible. Hence, "fell" here, elsewhere "crags" or "high hills." Quite a pain. We use "bough" and "dell" quite a bit. I think I've avoided "mere" in favor of other words. Let I lose your sale, here's a "dell" and "bough" for you!
As the fog unfurls from your ridge and fills the dell below, the raiders’ muffled moans are like those of the already-dead. Whether they grope their way home through the mist or fall from the cliff path in their flight, you will never know, but for now the sheep and shepherds need not fear. You see the men stare from where their herd is grazing at the god who stands above the clouds, and they seem to wave and shout, though they are too far for words.
These well-built halls house a folk rich in health and busy with work. In the woods, the men hack and hew and hunt, and women draw birch sap and gather nuts and bark. At home, they smoke meat with green boughs, and tan skins on willow racks. It is a shadowed, wild land in which they live, but they seem to thrive within it.
 

V_K

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my single strongest recollection of the series was the name Ghisteslwchlohm, which primed me to hate PoE from the outset, and the "twist" that the character named Ohm was actually Ghisteslwchlohm. I mean, if I had a cat, I'd let him name my characters with keyboard wanderings too, I guess.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn :lol:
In seriousness though, given that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a real Welsh (town) name, it's easy to see where she was coming from.
 

Quantomas

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The Riddle-Master is her greatest work, where every stroke just seems right.
Those are fighting words! I wouldn't put Riddle-Master in her top five, and in my arrogant opinion, it's not in the same league as The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or The Changeling Sea, in which she developed her key themes/tropes. (Those themes and tropes might've been better developed in later books, but the novelty was gone for me.) Beasts of Eld was the book that brought me, tentatively, back to fantasy during law school.
It seems the order in which one reads books matters a lot, but then this is only logical. For me it was her first work I read. It is interesting though, that the order in which you read themes and bits of lore impacts the experience thus strongly.
Also, "every stroke just seems right" -- to be honest, my single strongest recollection of the series was the name Ghisteslwchlohm, which primed me to hate PoE from the outset [..]. I mean, if I had a cat, I'd let him name my characters with keyboard wanderings too, I guess... :D
Editors have to bring this up. Normally I always read the original if possible, but in this case I read the German translation, which gathered a ton of praise. It used the name Ghisteslohm.

The worldbuilding and character arcs are fantastic. Although it lacks Tolkien's fantasy races, the different kingdoms are just as diverse as Tolkien's and fulfil their purpose perfectly. What both writers have in common is their great skill to portray nature and the land, which you have rightfully made a central theme in FG, judging from what you quoted above.
 
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MRY

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V_K Just because something can be rationalized, doesn't mean it should be done. :) Also, McKillip is in general a terrible namer, there's typically one ridiculously bad name per book; it's almost like a signature.

Quantomas Totally true about the order you read. Part of what I loved about Forgotten Beasts was that it was almost a "drawing room" fantasy novel -- no cast of thousands, no sweep of nations and millennia, just a story about a person that happens to be a fantasy story. Almost inevitably, the same qualities that you praised about Riddlemaster were thus off-putting rather than endearing for me. But I agree that she, like LeGuin, Tolkien, and other master fantasists was able to great a rich new world without spending the bazillion pages that some fantasy authors churn out in their lesser efforts.
 

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