StarFall: Spellbinder #3: "Machine Head"

[William Strickland]

On May 7, 10:23 am, Andrew Perron <pwer... at gmail.com> wrote:


> There seem to be a lot of these!

I'm just trying to keep longwinded exposition to a minimum, is all. At
least, on a per-issue basis - instead of all at once, I'm trying to
spread it around.

Of course, is more explanation is wanted, I'll happily oblige! :D

> ...so why does he have to worry about money? ``

Because he's never had to before. Until very recently, there was
nothing any of the Olympians could conceive of that they would want
and be unable to either conjure, build by hand, or simply take from
someone who had it. But full Olympians cannot set foot on Earth yet -
it's still too unstable after the dimension quake to support them. And
for all Hephaestus' godly skill, he is neither a hardware engineer
(yet) nor a programmer (give it time). For the first time, Zeus is
wanting things he can only acquire through an exchange of goods,
services, or currency. The gods are loathe to give up their goods,
they're not going to be caught dead performing services for MORTALS,
and currency... well, they had some sitting around, but they honestly
don't know how much because they hadn't cared before.
Lucky for them, Athena is in the middle of taking a correspondence
course in finance and will surely figure things out, sooner or later.

> Oh, right, this is a superhero universe, not simply an urban fantasy one.
> I like that you've kept the tone in the latter for this series.

There will, naturally, be some eventual overlap here. Chel will have
to deal with supers because they're a fact of the setting, and they're
a fact that you can't just ignore. Naturally, she'll interact with
them in her own idiom, because she doesn't think of herself as a
superhero, but she's going to have to interact with them nonetheless.
I'm hoping I can manage to use this to only enrich the speculative
fiction kitchen sink that the setting is shaping up to be, rather than
distracting from it in any way, naturally.

> I must wonder how much of this is true, considering.

Awww, c'mon! If you can't trust good ol' Loki, who *can* you trust? ;)


>> I incanted a healing spell - I don't actually
>> know many of these, since I can only use them with pathworking, which
>> normally makes them counter productive

>Wait, what?

Y'know, I could've done that paragraph better.

But, if you mean why she considers healing spells counterproductive...

As expounded on last issue (and briefly mentioned this one), using
pathworking magic - that is, ritualistic spells with incantations and
gestures and so on - is something Chelsea can do, but it damages her.
(There's a reason for this, and it'll be explained, as with so many
things, at a dramatically appropriate moment.) She uses pathworking
anyway because it's the only effective way to accomplish certain
things - for offense, she ususally uses Will-working instead, which
she's a natural at, but can't do as much with. In fact, pretty much
all she can usually do with will-working is buff herself and make
things explode.
Normally, this means a healing spell won't actually help her because
it'll cause as much damage as it fixes, unles she's fixing a pretty
severe injury - like, say, multiple broken ribs. Couple this with
natural regeneration and most times it's just not worth it to use
healing magic on herself. The only real reason she even bothered to
learn such magic in the first place was for use on others.
The reason she used it *here* was that she needed to fix herself up in
a hurry, and the tradeoff - fixing broken bones but getting some
damage in her forearms - was favorable.

Although I still prolly coulda left it out of the paragraph. Ah well.

> ...so much what.

Heeehehehehe.

> After looking at previous issues... I assume this is Realm Nine?

Part of it, yes.

>And a thing that actually happened to Chelsea?

Oh, yes.

>...she seems, ah, oddly well-adjusted. ``

Does she? Huh.

Well. She *has* been running from it for a long time, and doing a very
excellent job. Being the Mystic Defender kept her too busy to think
about her past, and at the end of the day she'd be too tired to worry
about it much. Now that she's her own boss, this will change some, but
she's been looking into other ways to deal with it.

Of course, now that she's stumbled on something that reminded her of
her past, that's all out the window. Well, I'm sure she'll deal with
it somehow. She knows a good therapist now, after all, and one who
isn't adverse to counseling supernatural beings.

On top of this, Chel is narrating all of this in the past tense. As
she speaks to the reader, she's at least far enough into the story's
future to have seen someone become a celebrity and go through a dozen
marriages, and even if that person *is* a celebrity, that's got to be
at least six or seven years. People can change an awful lot in six
years if they really want to.

Of course, I'm sure she's just as well-adjusted as she seems, and not
at all hiding anything. And naturally, I'm sure it's all perfectly
serviceable real-world psychological reasons, such as those I just
listed, that are responsible for her seeming well adjusted. I'm sure
there's nothing involved here that's supernatural, and certainly
nothing that she would need to worry about.

> Anyway, beyond that, more good work!  Coming along well, I must say.

Thanks! Sorry it took so long. Got sidetracked by a craptacular job
and didn't have the energy to write for quite a while.

( Also: Woooo, free comic books! )