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A big thank you to all of you who read to the end, waiting weeks at a time between chapters, and having the kindness to comment throughout, without you I could not have finished this novella. Readers really can make all the difference, especially when events conspire to prevent completion of a project.
What began in my mind as a murder investigation involving magic that I was struggling to stretch to 10 chapters became something much bigger, and greater for it. This is the risk, and beauty, of serialised fiction that the story can take sudden turns or expand to new horizons while being read and while I am unlikely to read something like One Piece, no matter how good it supposedly is, I can see how authors end up writing 1000s of chapters of a single story. Certain ideas or characters can just go and go and go. Cassida Rane and Athena are two such characters, with ample futures and ample pasts, not to mention the wider world of The Mage Hunter. There is a wealth of story left in this world, a rarity when I reach the end of a novella though one that has become more common the more of them I write. The Mage Hunter which started out as a 5 chapter plan ended with 18 chapters and 43’705 words, that’s a similar word count to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, aka Blade Runner, a novel by 1980s standards. I don’t think of The Mage Hunter as a novel but it could be expanded, edited, and parts added to that with hindsight aren’t as good as they should be. Again the risk of serialised fiction is there is less time for polish or well seeded foreshadowing, nevertheless I am pleased with the final story and am merely dreaming of a possible future.
The influence for this setting, and it did start out as a setting, well it started out as a magic system, one where certain powers had been left behind as residual energy and certain people could tap into them but because humans were never meant to use that energy it caused strife and destruction and chaos, hence the term corruption, because somethings are simply not to meddled with. Anyway the influence was from C. S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man. Lewis writes about the nature of magic and science as having the same aim, the subjugation of reality and that this is a “disgusting and impious” act.
“For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.” C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
From this it flowed that if magic was that sort of power that should not be tampered with there would be people like Lewis against it thus the Castrum was born and the Order of the Mage Hunters with it. The rest flowed like fine wine, the worldbuilding that is, the characters came after as the world required populating but the conflict was inbuilt as it is in the very foundation of the world and can flower in myriad ways. To make sure this conflict would always be present I decided to make this residual energy alluring, drug-like even, to those who could use it and almost impossible for someone to refuse the temptation. The fact that Tiberius did so for so many years is a monument to his fortitude as a person, a virtue, but he was, unfortunately, still a mage and when the opportunity presented itself even he could not deny that primordial power.
Mage Hunters have a different innate skill, a sensitivity to the use of those residual energies. As it lies dormant in the world it is invisible but once used, channeled, focussed, it leaves a trace, one which can be seen, the more that is used the bigger the mark. Cassida Rane has a particularly subtle sensitivity, hence why only he could see Tiberius’s channeling at the vote. This was something I did not want done via technology as that would be akin to science and thus fall into the same subjugation of reality sin that magic is. In fact the whole setting is fairly low tech, probably comparable to late Early Medieval to early High Medieval in Europe/China.
Anyway, I don’t mean to explain plot points so I will leave it here, thank you all again, and wish you well.
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Thanks for reading!