Tag: worldbuilding

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2. Worldbuilding Authoring hIstorical notes nuts & bolts

Superpowers: A Rough Passages Q&A #2

Second in a so-far 2-part series. An intrepid reader sent me some excellent  questions about the alternate history setting for my Rough Passages stories. This is my way of providing answers. You can read Part #1 here, or read on for the second set of questions.

Do sports exist?  Are there professional leagues?  Have new powered sports been invented?  Telekinetic soccer for example?  Are there Null-only leagues?

Sports definitely exist, amateur and professional. I’m sure there are many hybrid sports whose details I haven’t thought through yet.  A critical point to remember here is age. Most professional sports are hard on the body. Even the super-powered are aging.  They can be super-fast but still have arthritis, super-strong but have bad knees.

Yes, there are non-powered-only leagues (can’t discriminate on R-positive status directly, that’s illegal!) ) and open leagues. Most NPO leagues keep things simple by implementing upper age limits, setting strict regulations on allowed weight/height etc, and allowing legal blood-test challenges after results much like our world does blood-testing for drugs.

I assume there are Nulls resentful of powered individuals entering the work force.  Say a crane operator being upset a telekinetic is moving steel beams on a construction site.

Yes and no. One particular super-powered telekinetic might get a good job moving steel beams, but they’re never going to put crane operators out of work — there just aren’t enough telekinetics out there total compared to the market, plus individual idiosyncrasies mean there’s no economy of scale. Six workers can all use one crane on six shifts. One TK is still only one TK. And hiring six with the same power ranking…not nearly as easy or cheap as training crane operators.  (What Mercury Battalion does with the recruits coming in and rotating out only works because they drill constantly toards the goal of adaptive improvisation. )

Plus there’s no guarantee that any given TK has the other job skills & licensing that would make them employable in construction (or wherever.)  Or that they have any interest in doing the work that would best fit their new power. If they’re a banker making $100k+ a year, f’rex, or already in retirement, or are a sole caregiver with a working spouse…yeah.

Of course there is resentment and discrimination, but most of it is more “freaks hogging all our public services, getting preferential treatment, living high off the guvmint hog while I have to work harder” than about stealing jobs. There would be more resentment & economic disruption if powers could be scaled predictably or appeared in younger people, but they don’t.

Do monkeys exist?

If you mean primates like capuchin monkeys/chimpanzees/gorillas. yes.

How good are air elementals at purifying air? Can they release air from rock or water? Can water elementals purify as well?  Can they break the bonds of oxygen and hydrogen?

The catch-all “It depends on the individual” again comes into play with elementals. (What can I say? It’s a theme.)

The Department of Public Safety officially refers to elemental talents as “materials affinities.” “Callers” or “movers” are more common than “makers.” They all have an ability linked to a certain material. How much and how far they can call or create, what they need to create it, The mechanism of how they handle their focus material (for example by purifying it) and how well they handle it– all these factor into the power ranking assignment.

There are minimum thresholds for every ranking. The top power ranking has no upper limit.  Some of the strongest 1A air elementals have been observed creating gasses in airless vacuum chambers. (Creating it from what? See the earlier question about physics and defying the laws thereof.)  Breaking the bonds of oxygen & hydrogen…well, yes. That is one thing a prime water elemental might be able to do, but it also isn’t how they would think of what they were doing.

Can Earth elementals strengthen rock?  Are differing rock types easier to work with, say granite versus sandstone?  Can they do delicate work?  Are there elemental sculptors?  Can they shape glass?  Or is that the purview of pyrotechnic artists and glassblowers?

I bet you know the answer to these at this point. In order:

  • Yes, some can.
  • Different people have affinities for certain stone types. Others have affinity for all things sandy. Or soil. Or “stone” as a concept. Or magma…
  • Some can do very delicate sculpting. Some can only do delicate work. Some can call gem stones from the depths of the earth’s crust and facet them without tools…
  • Aaaahh, glass. Beloved of air, fire and earth elementals. Workable by all…those of suffiient power ranking, of course.

Television, and satellite communication exists.   Is this just being handled in the background in your stories?

So far, yes. Radio, television broadcasts, cable, computer & network development  have all proceeded along timelines similar those in our world. The main differences come in control & distribution. Cable & bandwidth communications of all kinds are considered nationally-critical utilities and are regulated & controlled as such.

 

That’s it for now. I hope you all have enjoyed the information as much as I enjoy sharing it.

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2. Worldbuilding Authoring hIstorical notes nuts & bolts

Superpowers: A Rough Passages Q&A #1

An intrepid reader sent me some excellent  questions about the alternate history setting for my Rough Passages stories.  Being me, I’ll be answering them right out here in public so everyone can see. I don’t consider the background information spoilerish, but I will also grant I’m the world’s worst person to judge that. Nothing here applies to any existing story, for what that’s worth.

There were a lot of questions. Here’s the first set.

For teleporters: how are power levels defined, as say in distance and weight taken along for the ride limits?  Do known (e.g. J) variants differ?

Teleportation does not lend itself to measurement metrics. This is the main reason it falls into the W series designation. “W for weird” began as a kitchen sink category for powers that couldn’t easily be defined or explained. Many powers originally considered W were moved into other designations as time went on — mostly assorted perception or telekinetic groupings. Of all the eclectic talents that remain on the Group W bench, teleportation is the least easily quantified.

A complex matrix of range/weight/precision is used to assign the main power rating, with the higher ranks restricted to those who do not require touch and can either teleport a lot a long way, or small masses very precisely. Variants focus on type of teleport mechanism (as best the teleporter can describe it) and any crossover or secondary rollover changes. (Like having wings, f’rex)

So a W1A teleporter could be one who can teleport your shirt off your back into the next room and have it arrive intact, or one who could teleport your house into the next city…but not to a precision location. Secondary and tertiary variant letters the author hasn’t bothered to hammer down would give interested characters in-world a pretty good at-a-glance idea of exactly what a given teleporter can do.

What about telekinetics? Are telekinetics & teleporters governed by Newton’s Laws of Motion?  Example:  Can Pullers stop inertia and or momentum?  Say pulling a person from a car going 50, or passenger jet going 450mph?

Telekinetics, pyrokinetics, teleporters, and most other people with physically-related rollover powers laugh in the face of principles like inertia and energy/mass conservation.

Well, some of them do. Some of the time. Such is the unpredictable nature of rollover. There are no hard certainties.  Most power designations are made based on observable similarities.  The devil is in the details.  One woman’s telekinesis might defy inertia up to a certain momentum or for a certain time,  while another’s might be totally without inertial limits. Most of the rollover orientation period is spent learning one’s new limits under experienced supervision in a controllable environment–often an internment camp far, far away from defenseless nulls.

Mistakes such as “Oops, I can run fast enough that air friction will burn off my skin” “Gosh my muscles are strong but my bones aren’t!” or “Wow, I can call fire out of thin air but my body isn’t fireproof,” are ones most people don’t want to make even once.

One big reason acceptance of oppressive practices like internment & monitoring remains so high is that everyone knows someone who knows someone who died at the unforgiving intersection between their new powers and Newtonian physics.

Do all, most, or few teleporters have innate spatial awareness?

Some. Not a majority, but it isn’t a rarity either. It’s more common in those who have to touch & carry their payloads than in those who can send/receive things using sensory input or pre-determined coordinates. If you want numbers…I do not crunch numbers.

How rare are double powered individuals?  Say person with both a W and a B series?

Rare. Very rare. Now, that said…

Many powers do commonly appear as sets, but one talent is almost always subordinated/linked to the more powerful one.  F’rex, a portal-caster who can sense magnetic forces wouldn’t be considered a double power.  They would be a W with a B variant. It boils down to perspective: the more powerful/obvious aspect generally gets designated as the series, with the secondary one considered a variant on that series.  Does that make sense?  It did to the frazzled, overworked people who came up with this system under battle conditions.

And unless physical changes could be called a “third” power (which people don’t unless there’s no second one)  no one manifests more than two talents.   Except Gaias. And Gaia rollovers are like unicorns. No one believes they really exist.

Can Doctors repair damage suffered from an injury years after the fact?

Nope. Some can regenerate flesh, but they would require a fresh injury at or larger than the original site…and whether the resulting healing restores the body to its original template or the new “healed” one depends on both the particular talent of the D-series healer and the individual being healed.

As one might imagine, the pain & trauma involved discourages experimentation. Most people would rather not find out the hard way that being re-injured will only get them a fresher scar. (Or worse…)

That’s all for this batch. More later!

I hope someone enjoys reading all the picky details as much as I enjoy sharing them.

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2. Worldbuilding characters nuts & bolts

Making Superpowers Make Sense

Many of the issues with superpowers boil down to one question: are they science or magic?

Since the Rough Passages Tales take place in a modern world built on scientific guiding principles, people attempt to explain superpowers. But I show them failing, over and over. It’s an acknowledged truth in my world that the models are all flawed, and the answers are always changing. (Which, come to think of it, is a fairly accurate portrayal of scientific development. Will my scientists ever resolve the mysteries? I’m not saying.)

The tricky part is how to much to show and tell. The more unreal a power is, the more I will research it and the less I will explain. As a reader I don’t like drowning in hows. They distract me. Plus honestly, when it comes to speculative fiction, less is more. Process is much easier to screw up than basic principles and premises.

I like Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Twelve-foot-tall humanoids with super-strength and nigh-invulnerable bodies (for example)  can’t be explained by current models of physics, biology or anything else, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be.

I put countless hours into conceptual development and reading relevant research. (Ask Spouseman about one hours-long walk and discussion about population-level statistics…) Then I develop plausible mechanisms for unnatural abilities. Plausible means they’re logical, internally consistent and don’t violate known scientific principles, not that they make any sense according to currently-known processes.

And then I find a million little ways to dish out that huge pool of data in tiny spoonfuls.  I might insert a villain using a wind blast to disrupt a winged air elemental who flies by creating her own localized lift. Or a character might tease a giant friend for eating daily briefing papers after reading them.

I want to avoid drowning readers in long treatises on the theory of elemental powers and universal vibration-tuning or other such malarkey. This is how I interpret the hoary old writer’s advice show, not tell. If it isn’t embedded, it doesn’t get shown. The more unreal something is, the more I will think and the less I will show. How does the air elemental control air? Not gonna touch that. They do. Premise accepted or not, reader’s choice.

Think that’s unrealistic?  When was the last time you pondered the miracle of your refrigerator’s inner workings upon grabbing a cold drink?  Or your car. You turn a key or press a button, and engine magic happens. You don’t spend two minutes thinking about internal combustion and fuel injection. Well. I don’t, anyway.

So I don’t bog down my stories writing about processes I would have to break science to explain in detail

True confession rant: I am so TIRED of fiction breaking science. Triple helix DNA. Mutating neutrinos. Reverse-pulse-magnetism. (whut?!)  Diseases “deciding” to evolve. Cauterizing big, bleeding surface wounds. <sound of broken weeping> I’m begging here. Run a quick fact-check before passing on science myths, and if you can’t explain your faux-science premise without putting vocabulary in a blender and making meaningless word porridge,  DON’T TRY!

Keeping it simple is the best way to keep it real.

 

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2. Worldbuilding Authoring characters nuts & bolts

Yes, But What Do They Eat?

Life in a super-powered world gets complicated. Speculation is an entertaining playground. Yes, there are big questions to answer, but I prefer to ponder issues that would affect people’s daily lives.  What kind of house paint would work for people who exhale acid gasses? How would the fashion industry cater to scales and tails?

Then there are the scientific conundrums. Elena is five feet tall.  Jack tops eight feet. Amy stands twelve foot-plus. They’re all humanoid, and that’s a problem. If they’re all built on the same framework of bone & sinew, supplied by the same nerve impulses and fueled by the same basic digestive system, the math doesn’t work. Physics and biology both shake their heads and say NOPE. Human bodies don’t scale up well.

And yet, no one would need proof that it works. They see it. They live it. So there’s no reason to explain in detail how joints have to be designed to support that much weight, how musculature would attach, etc, etc, zzzzzzz.* It isn’t story fodder. Oh, sure. Someone in Rough Passages America studies it. Someone is doing a thesis. But wouldn’t be a daily challenge to life, and I’m not writing about puzzled, frustrated scientists right now.

Other mundane details make fabulous story elements. Here’s one: how does someone as big as Jack or Amy survive in a modern world? What do they eat? That’s a point I addressed because it would be an unavoidable problem and a potentially funny one.

Research proved it wouldn’t be easy. Vegetarian animals have to spend up to 80% of their time fueling their bodies off nutrient-poor, high fiber food. And think of the elimination. Not a fun way for a civilized sentient to live.  Going with the carnivore model, we can look at tigers (which are roughly Jack’s size) and we find they burn through 8,000+ calories a day of nutrient-dense meat. And that’s on a lifestyle that sees them lounging around doing nothing 14-16 hours a day to conserve energy. Again, not a sustainable way of life in the modern human world.

My big T-series powerhouses have to be able to act and work with normal human soldier. So what do they  eat? Short answer: nothing and everything.

Under average circumstances their bodies are fueled by the same power that made them roll over in the first place.**  They channel and store that energy at a cellular level on instinct. Ah, but when they need more than they can tap from the environment or pull from their body’s reserves? Then their digestive tracts can break down pretty much anything at the molecular level as effectively as a blast furnace. They convert the resulting energy directly to cellular energy or mass as needed.

How?  Well, they don’t know, so I’m not telling. Ha.***  But think of the entertaining aspects. They don’t have to eat a lot normally. But when they do eat, they’ll eat whatever’s handy. A side of raw beef.  Rocks. Driftwood. Newspaper.

Why do I come up with ideas like this? Blame my analytic background. And the opportunities for humor.

That’s the best part of world-building for me. I hope you enjoy the results as well.

Want to see T-series powers in action? I recommend you read Rough Passages, available on Amazon & elsewhere in print & ebook. https://books2read.com/ap/xqvlwR/K-M-Herkes

There. Mandatory book plug done. Happy reading.

Notes:

*  I can provide examples if challenged. I do the research. Animals as big as Amy have existed throughout history–even bipedal ones.  Cave bears, anyone? So it could work.

**there’s a whole ‘nother post full of authorial hand-waving on that topic.

*** I do have an explanation. It ties into the whole basis for what made the world change back on First Night,  but it gets into the snore-bore explication zone fast. And I steer clear of that quagmire.

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2. Worldbuilding hIstorical notes nuts & bolts

Where do superpowers come from?

Power: personal, unique power. Power is the centerpiece of every Rough Passages Tale. Who has it, what happens when people gain it, how it can and can’t change their lives, how the uncertainties and adverse aspects of power rollovers  make that world different than ours…this can be deep story stuff.*

How do those powers work? The short answer is: no one knows. That’s one of many things that makes writing about it interesting.

Everyone with a rollover powers taps into some kind of energy, but that’s where certainty ends. Some poz can see this energy post-rollover, other feel it, all are affected by it and use it one way or another, but what that energy is, or how it works?

It’s still a mystery.

Why? For one thing, it’s impossible for nulls to detect, so disbelief hampers research funding. For another, the phenomenon is less than a hundred years old. The scientific community is still at the stage of documenting, describing, and postulating mechanisms based on existing established systems.  Think radiation in the early 1900’s, electricity in the 1800’s, or chemistry in the 1700’s.

All the uncertainty results in a constellation of valid ideas, wrongheaded hypotheses, and wild-ass speculation.  It also supplies thesis fodder for doctoral candidates and researchers in every field of study from physics to psychology. Ambitious scientists dream of being the next Curie, Faraday, or Mendeleev.  And lots of them already think they have uncovered Major Truths that are dead wrong but fit the facts.

Want an example? (You’re getting one.) Take an observable fact: T-series trolls can ramp up their own abilities and provoke each other into radical physical changes by tapping into their powers near each other. At its worst, the feedback loop will drive them into a collective, destructive frenzy. They train hard to control this effect, called rampage, because a mindless stampede of berserk armored giants is hard on real estate and anything else that can’t get out of their way.

Let’s look at the current scientific model. Explanations for T-series power use are based on studies of pheromone communication and hormone-driven metamorphosis in other species. The model fits the observed data and is an accurately predictive tool…in most cases. Most importantly it allows for engineering useful tools like rampage detectors and assorted training devices. So everyone accepts it as accurate.

But as the Watchmaker of the world, I’ll let you in on a secret. Rampage and powering up aren’t triggered physically.  The model has cause and effect flipped. It’s a pure energy phenomenon, a matter of resonance and exchange from more powerful individuals to less powerful ones, one that has the effect of triggering hormone releases.

Is any of that information useful to you, dear reader? Probably not. But speculation is fun, and so is trivia collection. So I thought I would share.

The takeaway for today? Power is tricky. People are fallible. And science is a process.

*Paranormal personal powers are not the only kind people deal with every day. Power can come from social status, political position, cultural acceptance, and economic prosperity too. Upending people’s lives after they’ve spent decades establishing their place in the socioeconomic power structure that is modern society? Well. That makes for super-duper drama. And drama makes good fiction.

Oh, and the BOOKS! Here are links to the buyable stories. Because they’re awesome.

https://books2read.com/ap/xqvlwR/K-M-Herkes