Liner Notes for Conventional Appearance
Liner Notes for my story Conventional Appearance
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When I was coming up with Tapping The Admiral, an Age Of Sail fantasy series, I used the Earth as a direct model. Though it was the Earth in the 18th century. Or, perhaps to put a more direct pin in it, the Earth as 18th century Europeans thought about it, filtered through my understanding and imagination.
Maybe with slightly less racist and bigoted opinions.
When they got to the far side of the world, there was a big space where a large, powerful, legendary nation would sit. Not-China, and I wanted to put more emphasis on the not, because otherwise it would default to generalisations and unsavoury historical stereotypes. And so I wrote “Domain Of The Lord Of The World,” on the blank space on the map.
By convention The Lord Of The World is the Lord Of The World, and everything outside his domain is a barbarian-haunted waste. As an elf Cat Step Walker is equal parts amused and admiring of this arrogance. After all, how do Elves think of the mortal realms?
In any case, The Lord Of The World is the fantasy not-emperor of fantasy not-China. I hope that clear that up.
An offshoot of this was writing a story called the 72nd Daughter (forthcoming from Wyngraf) about one of the Lord Of The World’s Hundred daughters. It also starts with the phrase “By convention The Lord Of The World has one hundred daughters,” and continues to list a few until it reaches the 72nd and tells her story.
The phrase “By convention…” before whatever the Lord Of The World is up to is intended to leave doubt. “By convention the Lord Of The World is immortal.” “By convention every living soul has the right of audience with the Lord Of The World.” “By convention all dragons belong to the Lord Of The World.” And so on. Does that mean it’s true, a legal fiction or something honoured in the breach?
After that of course, this is just a classic ghost story. Four people meet around a fire, and some of them are dead. Three of them have questions and the time for answering them is gone.
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