Your gateway to endless inspiration
Some say magic died when a hail of shellfire tore an ancient god asunder. Others say it died when the whistle of engines dragged an old world kicking and screaming into a new one. Yet more say it died when the wheels of progress ground the very building blocks of the universe apart into ordered lists and categories. It has been said it died when some long lost soul first harnessed the all consuming light of fire to keep away greater evils that haunted the shadows.
But magic is not dead.
If you venture long enough into the wild lands you can find it, scorched and scarred, battered but not broken. Ancient beings who’s rattling voices sing ballads of fall and fallow; Good People who ask for your name and offer you a deal; silent colossi passing beneath trees that reach to the heavens; beasts that stalked the flickering borders of ancient campfires, and kind travellers who no longer know how long they have wandered these lands.
If you follow the coast you can find it, hear it in faint songs barely distinguishable above the breaking of the waves; see it in the dark shapes that glide over the reefs and shoals; be told of it in epic tales as sailors boast of their victories, and if you stay you might overhear whispers of awe and dread of the rage and might of what dwells within pelagic storms, those spirits who never returned from the sea, and the unfathomable might of leviathans known only to the cachalot and those rare few glimpsing a shadow in the depths.
If you travel through the country you can find it, temples of corrugated metal and bricks; archaic machines held together with welds, duct tape and dimly glowing runes; laughing farmhands heaving clods of soil from the earth to lob at eachother; faerie rocks jeering from the centre of a plowed field; forgotten gods standing motionless amongst the wheat; long abandoned churches that never fall into disrepair; half forgotten sigils carved into fence posts to ward off the Things in the night, and the eyes that yet still burn like red moons between the stalks of corn.
In the cities you can find it, in the prophecies etched and sprayed upon the subway walls by robed sages and masked youths; in the pig iron shrines to gods of the forge tucked in every nook and cranny of a foundry; in the clubs and bars that you can only find when you are shown them or when a full moon looms above; in the figures kneeled in the light of the street lamps and the shapes that lurk beyond their reach; in the graffiti that can race and dance or slowly shift upon the faces of buildings older than countries and refuse to be removed; in the timeworn temples that had the city built around them; in the druids of lawns and weeds; in the mages that carve their baseball bats with symbols of power and fill their trench coat pockets with glador brewed in basements and lifted from stores; in the bards that busk at the city crossroads and send ballads streaking across the globe in a crackle of sparks and binary; and in the warlocks both of new gods with bones of steel, veins of fire and skin a tough as concrete, and of the old gods that seep out like moss from the pavement as they refuse to be forgotten.
So as you go about your busy days, give a swift greeting to the magpies that watch and wait from the roofs and branches; pass a murmur of respect to the faerie oak that stands like an island in a sea of concrete; ignore the shapes glimpsed from the windows at night but draw the blinds and lock the doors. And always remember. That magic is not dead.
Probably a good idea to make something vaguely resembling a pinned post, so here we go.
Hey, I’m Molly, I like yapping about palaeontology and spec evo, and I’ve got a bunch of projects I’m working on across a few different universes (aka my brain can never focus on getting one thing done so it bounces around like a cricket on caffeine)
A not so empty universe: After a world war, a plague, and general societal collapse, humanity has made it to the stars, and realised that they’re not as alone as they had thought
-Funny space thing (name still a WIP): a slice of life thing about a bunch of university students on mars trying to survive their studies and each other
-Chimera: set at around the same time as FST, a new life-bearing world has been discovered. What’s unusual about it is that the life forms appear to originate from other worlds, including earth and the home worlds some of other sophonts
-Pasodau: set in the far future of this universe, a moon of a gas giant has been terraformed to house a species of lizards and 3 species of birds alongside various amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants
A world without us: set after the extinction of humanity and the onset of a new glacial period, a community of sophont ravens have settled in the rusted hulk of a battleship on the plains of Doggerland. One of them named Graucraa has a great interest in the history of not on his own species, but the disappeared beings that came before them
Feorrlund: in a distant solar system, and old god known as The Architect brings life from Earth to populate a planet it has terraformed to live alongside life from its own home world. This planet is now home to the forgotten life of earth, magic, and far too many sophonts
Appalachi fae: fresh out of university, Dan Baker-Hewig makes the regrettable choice to sign up as a park ranger in a world where magic is very real and the forests are home to monsters, fae, and old gods, whilst also having to survive the other rangers.
Also the setting for a few short story things I’ve written and might post at some point.
So ye, feel free to ask about any of the projects, and hope y’all enjoy.