Liner Notes for Sailing The Skyless Realm

 

Liner Notes for Sailing The Skyless Realm

Turning the dial for this story to “Swords And Sorcery” though it may be bumping against the “Heroic Fantasy” stop. Rather than being self-centred and interested in small things, as in classic S&S they’re here to save the world! Enough of small (sub-) genre classifications though.

Chill Decider is back. She’s the elder sibling, and takes charge. Not just from seniority, though that’s part of it. It’s also through inclination. She was given the by-name Decider because…

Okay in my interpretation elves are in tune with natural forces. Because of that they act through inaction, they go with the flow. The bend and shift. Making a decision to go against the course of events, to act strongly, is not something they are accustomed to. Chill Decider isn’t like that. She chooses. She’s respected rather than loved for it. Unlike Cat Step Walker who is not respected, nor much loved.

Their differing methods of discovering the problem, their connection, across the world and also closer, is something I explored a little in other stories in this series. How is it that Walker doesn’t know his sister is missing (The Trial Of Cat Step Walker) or where she is? One answer is that it’s broken (Into The Forest). Another answer is that it depends on the state of the earth and the heavens, and the two of them. And perhaps the most relevant; it is inconsistent because these stories are inconsistent, in tone, style and history. They don’t actively contradict but nailing down a single world-building document would be frustrating.

The idea of Walker waking up, not knowing where he is or what he’s doing, only to be told he’s the navigator was on my list of ideas from the start. Returning to the seas below (On The Sea Of Glass) was also there. A navigator who doesn’t know where he is, and can’t see the stars to navigate, that’s a good start.

Astromancer is a classic elf elder. Secretive, knowledgeable, awesomely powerful. Also arrogant. Sure, maybe they have studied the stars since before the Earth was in its current shape, but that doesn’t mean they know everything, and that others might get there too. They are cautious, not wanting to put things to chance, which puts others at risk. And still, they come through in the end.

As above, so below is a version of an old magical theorem. The large reflects the small. So the celestial bodies effect what happens on the earth. And in turn, what happens here can effect them. This offered me the solution to the problem posed by the story. If the power of the celestial conjunction could be used down here to open a portal, then in turn it could be reflected back to move the celestial bodies and close the portal. As anyone who has worked with high voltages, or seen a river in spate knows, changing how this flows can be dangerous. A small amount extra released unexpectedly can be disastrous.

Dis-aster comes from the Latin, dis, bad and aster, star. An ill-starred event.

The counter-earth is an old idea that comes up sometimes. Old enough that it was Philolaus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, who came up with the concept of the antichthon (opposite-earth). His astronomy wasn’t good. Chill Decider claims that the perturbations in the motion of the stars that seem to indicate a counter-earth are actually faults with the models used to calculate their positions. The equations have been simplified and higher order terms neglected. As the conjunction does not open a portal to a counter-earth then she’s probably right.

The counter-king doesn’t have a lot of depth, but does have a few cool elements. The mask for breathing, the cold that he carries with him. The armour, impenetrable by normal weapons, in part because he is able to avoid hits to the vulnerable parts. He is out of place and out of time. And out of space too, his glaive growing and shrinking, changing where and how it exists.

And they broke the sky. Leading inevitably to another adventure, one we’ve already seen in Drowned. And some adventures yet to come.