"Soft Canon" is Something More Writers Should Consider

There are a lot of writers out there who try to nail down every corner of their setting so that it's as solid and immovable as possible. There will be hard rules about what is and isn't possible, timelines of events and developments going back ages (and in some cases to the dawn of time itself), and everything from the level of technological development, to the specific customs of particular households will be drawn out in exhaustive detail.

Generally speaking, you can never know too much about your own world, and the stories you're telling in it. However, I think that a lot of us really underestimate the benefit of what I'm going to call the "soft canon" approach.

Because seriously, it can make your life a lot easier.

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Leave Yourself Some Wiggle Room

We're all familiar with settings and worlds that have hard canons... but what does a soft canon setting look like? Well, two of the most prominent examples I can think of are the grim darkness of the far future in Warhammer 40,000, and the sprawling public domain horror project that is the SCP Foundation.

You'd think for settings so focused on paperwork there would be harder edges.

For readers who aren't familiar with these two settings, I'll break them down for you, explain the nature of their soft canons, and talk about why you might want to consider this kind of approach.

Warhammer 40,000, as a setting, is a sprawling galaxy of a million inhabited worlds. There is no single protagonist, and the works range from the grand, sweeping scale of things like the galactic war that was the Horus Heresy, down to small-scale investigations from inquisitors just trying to get to the truth, or fire teams of soldiers attempting to survive an impossible situation. Not only that, but we see so little of the galaxy that there could be a thousand and one astonishing things that we never even hear about; especially since major themes of the setting is ignorance, the loss of past, fact becoming myth, superstition, and secrecy.

The SCP Foundation universe is set in the modern day, and it deals with anomalous creatures, entities, objects, and events. The conceit is that the Foundation, along with dozens of other organizations, movements, and factions pursue things that cannot be explained. Monsters, ghosts, magic, and worse all exist in this setting, but these incidents are experienced piecemeal through the reports and files recorded by researchers. And given that this setting covers multiple universes, and that anomalies are by their nature inexplicable, things may often seem contradictory. Themes of secrecy, hidden worlds, and things which simply cannot be understood run rife through this setting as well, making it difficult (at best) to establish any kind of complete view of events.

Both of these settings are expressly designed to allow for multiple creators to tell a wide variety of stories, and having a softer canon makes that significantly easier to do without every contributor needing to be intimately familiar with every other creator's work to make their own stories fit. Not only that, but leaving things more malleable gives you more freedom as a creator. It also stops you from writing yourself into a corner by putting too many details too firmly in place.

Mechanisms For Soft Canon

Okay, so we've established what soft canon is (a setting where there aren't as many hard details of what's possible, and what history is and isn't fact), and talked about a couple of settings that use it. But what methods can you use to embrace soft canon in your own work?

Well, there are two major methods it seems to boil down to.

Let's begin at the beginning.

First, and arguably the easiest, simply don't mention too many details on the page. This is not to say you shouldn't be descriptive, but rather that you should strive to have a small-picture view of your setting and story. So whether your protagonist is a fighter in the astro marines, a noble born knight on a quest, or a young priest on a journey to combat evil, try not to include things they shouldn't (or wouldn't) know. This can be a big ask for fantasy writers, who are prone to the, "let me tell you about my world," condition, but if you just don't tell your readers everything there are plenty of mysteries left for them to seek out and experience, in addition to extra blank space you can fill in later.

The second method is to use rumor, belief, and conjecture to tell a history that may or may not be accurate. Instead of an unreliable narrator, we have an unreliable setting where much of what was once known is lost, and much of what is known now may not be as accurate as people believe. Lord of The Rings, Dark Souls, and other settings use this method to let the reader know that while some things are still known, there are huge gaps in history that have been lost due to death, destruction of empires, etc. This is also more accurate to our own history, where commonly believed things are actually falsehoods that have just been accepted over the years, and things that were once common knowledge are mysteries lost to time.

The key with soft canon is that you leave a lot of things in the background, or up to conjecture. Did the myths of the gods really happen the way the priests say they did, or are those stories made up? Has the great war that happened several thousand years ago become a story told around modern campfires, the fact faded into fiction and belief? Do the practitioners of the arcane arts know where magic draws its power from, or are they merely content to wield it even if they don't understand it? Or was that knowledge known once, and has been lost after the witch purges, and the destruction of the great libraries?

While you should have some ideas as to the true timelines of your setting, what really goes on in the corners of the galaxy, etc., your readers don't need to know those things. Especially if they are outside the scope of the story you're currently telling. And a little uncertainty can go a long way in driving reader speculation, encouraging fan theories, and giving you as much latitude as possible when telling future tales.

And if you are designing an RPG setting, I would highly recommend taking this method under considerations. It's what I've been using for Sundara, and it's been a godsend. More on that in What is "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age"? for those who are curious, or check out the AMA I did a little while back instead!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Everything Old is New Again (Take Your Story Back to Basics)

An obsession among writers is that many of them feel their work has to be new, different, or unique in some way. They are always striving to re-invent, to re-imagine, or to alter the perception of an idea, a genre, or a story. And sometimes that genuinely leads to fresh perspectives and fun concepts that hadn't been explored on the page before... other times, though, it just leads to contorting something to try to make it look different without asking if it's actually more interesting to see it from that perspective.

So I wanted to take this week to suggest a trick I've been using a lot, and which I've had pretty good results with. In short, take whatever genre, tropes, story, world building, etc., you're using, and examine what it was before its latest incarnation. Because sometimes going all the way back to basics can really make you stand out.

You want vampires in your book, you say?

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Elves, Vampires, Magic, and More!

Practically everything we use to tell our stories is built off of things established by earlier creators. Whether you're taking inspiration from the works of Tolkien, Howard, or Burroughs to write fantasy, you're drawing on folklore to populate your stories with monsters, or you're looking at folk heroes and ancient propaganda to form your semi-historical narratives, all of us are getting our ideas (if not our understanding of the raw elements of story) from somewhere.

However, as time has gone on, the ideas present in a lot of these stories have grown and changed, becoming different from what they originally were. And though it seems paradoxical, you can actually make a story feel more unique and different from its contemporaries by using something old in a new way.

Because I took my own advice on this one.

Folks who've read my novel Crier's Knife have said it has a distinct feeling of the bastard child of a pulp fantasy novel combined with a Western, which was very much what I was going for. However, in order to give it that old-time, sword and sorcery feeling I rewound the clock on how magic has often been depicted in fantasy novels. Rather than using Vancian magic (which became extremely common thanks to its prevalence in fantasy RPGs), or more modern "spell point" magic (where wizards, sorcerers, etc. have a certain pool of power they can draw on to achieve whatever effects they need), I used more ritual magic that was far more common to stories in the 1940s and before. Where the method of the magic isn't explained at all, and where the ingredients, actions, and sacrifices demanded are meant to give the audience the feeling of the spell rather than walking them through the internal logic of what it is supposed to do.

Aesthetic magic, if you will.

This is far from the only example of me using this method in my own work. It's also showing up a lot in my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age setting for Pathfinder and DND, and you can clearly see it in the elves and orcs books I've released where I've attempted to take some elements of Tolkien's original creation and show them in a different light. However, you've also seen this strategy at work if you've read Salem's Lot by Stephen King, where the celebrated author eschews the evolution of the sexy, tortured vampire and gets back to basics with a riff that's much closer Bram Stoker's original novel. You see this in more modern werewolf stories that reach back to the idea of a curse where the host has no control over what happens, and you could even see it in romance novels where the Norseman is the love interest because of his grooming and personal care just as much as because of his sword arm or linguistic skills.

There's two reasons this strategy works.

The first is that for older readers, they're seeing something familiar in a new light. It can bring back nostalgic feelings, and give them a new twist on an old recipe. The second is that for some readers, either due to their age or experience (or lack thereof) in the genre, your work will be the first time they've seen things written with those older aesthetics, rules, or sensibilities in place, which will make it feel new and unique to them.

In either situation, you come out ahead.

So if you're wracking your brain trying to re-invent the wheel, consider for a moment if you might actually make more progress (and get more interesting results) using an earlier design rather than attempting to build off of the version everyone already knows today.

Looking For Additional Reading?

If you're looking for additional stuff to check out before you go, might I recommend the following?

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities: I've been up to my elbows in professional fantasy world building for most of this year, and these are the tips I've found most useful for making sure places feel organic, no matter how fantastical they are.

- The Silver Raven Chronicles Part One: Devil's Night: A free fantasy short story, this tale begins in the old quarter of the city of Kintargo. A rumor whispers in the corners of a ghost risen from the past to take Cheliax to task for allowing devils into its heart, and its throne room. Most don't believe it... but one of the city's dottari finds this ghost is all too real when it steps out of the shadows with a message for her to spread to her fellow enforcers. They are no longer welcome in his city.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

You're Not Beholden To Other People's Magic Systems in Your Book

Making up worlds is hard. Creating fantasy worlds with a bevy of made-up creatures, magics, legends, and more can be a challenge that will leave your mental muscles shaking from the effort of putting so many bricks in place for it. That's why a lot of us lean on existing tropes; they help us take care of some of the heavy lifting, and they let us put real focus on the areas that are going to be right in front of the audience.

However, there are times that we forget these established elements of storytelling are meant to serve us. Nowhere is this more common than when it comes to magic systems. As such, I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone out there of something very important. It's your story... make the magic do whatever the hell you want it to do!

Abra Cadabra! Now do whatever the hell you want.

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Magic Must Serve The Story (Not The Other Way Around)

To get the obvious disclaimer out of the way, this advice is only applicable if you are creating your own story, and you are not beholden to an existing setting and its canon. Whether it's a book series you're contributing to as a ghostwriter, or an RPG setting your stories are set in, if you want your story to fit the existing rules of that world then you need to make sure you don't defy the already-established physics.

Now, with that out of the way, too many of us will act like our magic has to follow the same rules as other worlds, other books, or even other games, because we never stop to question it. However, if magic is going to be a big part of your story, then it's a good idea to examine the blueprint of the system you're using, and asking if it's the best fit for the story you're trying to tell.

Have we considered just doing away with ritual magic entirely?

For example, if you're used to thinking of magic in tabletop gaming terms, it might not occur to you that a fantasy story is not required to use Vancian Magic. And honestly, unless I were writing a fantasy story set in a place like my fantasy cities of Ironfire: The City of Steel or Moüd: The City of Bones (both of which are part of a gaming setting that runs on Vancian Magic), I would never use that fire-and-forget style of spell.

Because the idea of pre-packaged spells of a certain number, and of a certain power level, that achieve a specific purpose is a great mechanic for maintaining challenge and fairness in a game... but it is awful for smooth and interesting storytelling.

So whether your setting uses ritual magic, in-born magic inherited from supernatural sources, some variant of willpower-made-manifest, an unexplained awakening of the mind more akin to psychic phenomena, or just an ultra-soft, fairy tale style magic system where there's little rhyme or reason about how it works, you can use any (or even all) of these different methods in your story. But you need to actively choose how magic works in your story, and you need to make sure you're doing it as a conscious choice.

And if the magic system you initially went with becomes more of a hindrance than a help? Toss it out, and do something different. It's your story, and everything in it answers to your will. Remember that, and make no assumptions about how things need to be, or should be. Especially when it comes to your hocus pocus.

While we're here, you might also want to check out the following:

- The Pros and Cons of Using Tabletop RPGs as a Writing Tool

- Remember, Fantasy Can Be Anything You Want!

- Authors, Remember, You Don't Have To Reinvent The Wheel

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Fantasy Writers, If You're Just Changing Something's Name, Don't Bother

How many times have you been reading a book, and come across what sounds like a really unique fantasy race? They're mysterious, they seem to be powerful, and there are whispers about fallen empires and hidden civilizations that might provide a clue to the current plot. Maybe you start getting excited, wondering when the big reveal for the Gethredgi is going to happen. Then, when our heroes find themselves in the depths of a darkened forest, they're suddenly surrounded by strange, shadowy shapes. Then one of them steps forward... and it's just an elf.

Ears? Check. Strange instruments? Check. Perfect hair? Big check on that.

It doesn't just look like an elf, though... it's an elf through and through. Nature loving, aloof, unusual but alluring, etc., etc. Basically the only thing different is the name, and it turns out that all the smoke and mirrors about lost empires or shadowy rumors was just a trick to keep them off-screen long enough that the reader didn't realize your big lead up was to a copy-paste of the same creatures we've seen since Tolkien put his stamp on the genre.

This is a problem that a lot of fantasy writers run into. They want their world and setting to feel different and unique, but they don't want to stretch too far outside of the tropes established by Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and other fantasy mainstays. Because yes these short, burly, bearded master craftsmen who live in the depths of the earth and tend to be warriors are still a thing... but we're calling them the Sha'an instead of dwarves. And these big brutes who like to fight, are hard to hurt, and have a lovely combination of green skin and tusks totally aren't orcs... they're, uh, the Miskai.

If you've ever found yourself doing this, I want you to slap yourself in the face. Hard. Now stop doing this, because you're not doing yourself or your work any favors.

The Name Isn't What Makes You Unique

Too often writers confuse changing the traditional name of something with actual innovation (note that this also applies to minor cosmetic changes, like giving your elves silvery hair, or making your dwarves gray-skinned). If you haven't actually gotten down under the skin of a story element and altered the way it works and functions, then you haven't actually made something new or unique. You've just stolen a car, spray-painted it a different color, and are now trying to tell us it's a different car.

What's worse is that nine times out of ten you're just going to piss off readers because you're essentially expecting them to treat these minor alterations as if they somehow get you away from the accepted mythology surrounding these creatures.

Make your orcs rum-running, dirtbike-riding anarchists, and NOW you've got our attention.

Interestingly, though, if you leave the names the same but change everything else, you'll find that you both have a whole new monster on your hands, and that your readers will be excited about it.

As an example, take vampires. There have been a lot of different versions of them over the years, and we've seen them re-invented time and time again. We've seen them portrayed as the undead, the strigoi, as shambling, zombie-like creatures, as carriers of a plague, as immortal beauties, and we've seen them as split-faced, whip-tongued monstrosities.

Any time there was a huge change in these creatures, they were still called vampires. Whether it was moving from a mystical to a biological explanation, taking them from monsters to sex symbols, or making them from beautiful creatures into hideous freaks, there were huge shifts in the mythology, weaknesses, strengths, powers, and even appearance of these creatures. But they were always called vampires as a way to deliberately play on audience expectations, which would then be subverted.

By changing superficial things, though, you're doing the opposite of that. You're promising your audience that your creatures, magic system, wizards, what have you, are totally different, but then giving them the same old same that they're used to.

Don't Be Afraid To Stay The Same (Or To Change)

Too often genre writers are overly concerned with uniqueness and originality in terms of the tropes they're using. While you should definitely think about those things, what's more important is the story you're telling, and the characters whose journey we're following. As I said back in Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, and Professor Awesome's University Explains Why, everything about your setting is the backdrop against which your story is actually happening. So while unique cities, bizarre magic systems, or a ground-up re-imagining of fantasy race mainstays will be unique, they won't be the things that keep your readers reading.

They'll read for your story, and your story is (or at least should be) about characters.

So if you get too bogged-down in worrying that your elves are too Tolkien, or your demons are too Moorcock, and your rebellious princess just feels like punk rock Disney, take a moment, and ask the important question; are your characters compelling? And if you feel the answer is yes, ask if leaning on these other tropes weakens your story.

If it doesn't, don't give yourself an ulcer over trying to re-invent the wheel.

Because sure, if your orcs look just like the Uruk-hai, and your elves are master archers, some people are probably going to roll their eyes a bit. But if your characters are good, and your story is solid, people are more than happy to walk down a road that has a few familiar sign posts on it.

And if you really want to give them a different experience, don't just throw on a different coat of paint. Dig deep, and go nuts with it!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing installment. If you have examples where a creator tried to seem new and different by just slapping some new labels onto existing tropes, and it really didn't work, leave them in the comments below! For more of my work, go check out my Vocal archive where I write about gaming, sexuality, geeky things, horror, and a ton of other stuff, too. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider either Buying Me A Ko-Fi to leave a one-time tip, or consider joining The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, which is my bread-and-butter for making content just like this. Either way, there's a free book and my gratitude in it for you.

Just Change One Thing (A Simple Formula For Modern Fantasy)

If you're trying to write a modern fantasy story, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. After all, what do you let in, and what do you keep out? Does your world have vampires? And if you do, are there werewolves as well? What about angels and demons? And if you allow them in, do you keep things old testament, or do you let in all the pagan gods along with their hosts of spirits? Does your world have magic, and if so, what kind? Or do you have several different kinds, each with their own history, philosophy, and requirements?

Take a deep breath... You don't have to make this so complicated.

Stop. If you find yourself in this situation, just stop.

Now, put your gears in reverse, and go back to the beginning. Make one change, and see where that gets you.

Avoiding Kitchen Sink Settings

Let's be real, some authors are perfectly comfortable with a kitchen sink setting. They've got everything in their world, and they can explain it effortlessly to the audience in a way that is easy to digest, and which makes everything seem wondrous and vibrant. However, something a lot of us seem to forget is that not all of us can pull that off. So, if you find yourself getting overwhelmed trying to make your modern fantasy setting vibrant and unique, do yourself a favor and keep the floodgates closed.

Instead, change one thing. Flick one element, and see what sort of ricochets it makes throughout the world.

One change is usually enough for most settings.

Take the standard zombie apocalypse scenario. Whether it's what we see in Night of The Living Dead, or the near-future setting of The Newsflesh Trilogy, there was one change made to the world we know and love; the dead get up, and hunger for the living. Everything else in this setting revolves around that singular difference, and the world's response to it.

If you want to make a setting where you can focus on your story, while also making everything feel unique and surreal without feeling crammed, follow that same logic. Change one thing, and then follow the ripples to see where they go.

As a for-instance, let's say there are people who have learned the secrets of ancient magics, and can wield them from the shadows. Their doings are kept private, and secret, known only to a few, and believed by even fewer. So you have a world where strange, inexplicable instances suddenly take on sinister meanings, and where agents of those learned in the secret ways go forth to do their master's bidding. What you have here is Harry Potter, if it had a baby with Jason Bourne. The intrigue and escape of a secret world where magic is real, but where only a privileged few know about it. Thus you can reveal, or not reveal, as much as you want through those who are in-the-know. Same way spy novels work, giving you access to the world beneath the world where only spies and operatives tend to lurk.

You don't have to throw ancient gods, fairy tale monsters, demons, or vampires into that mix... magic and skullduggery creates a unique enough setting on its own that you don't have to hang twelve lampshades on it to stand out. More importantly, though, there's less stuff for you to keep track of, and for your audience to have to learn. Because you're essentially giving your readers a crash course in your world, its language, and the rules it runs on. The fewer things they have to keep track of, the less chance there is they'll get confused, overwhelmed, or find cracks in the foundation.

It's Not For Everyone

To reiterate, this is just one way of doing things. It isn't inherently better, or worse, than any others. But if you keep finding the disparate elements of your world rising up to overwhelm you, then maybe you should remove some of those elements entirely. After all, if you've got your audience hooked with, "Club DJ necromancer has to survive death threats from fireball gang to uncover what really happened that night in a Brooks Street alley," then adding in vampires or werewolves won't, necessarily, make that better.

It will, though, make it more complicated. That might not be what your story, or your audience, needs.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post. It's a day late, for which I apologize, but I'm getting prepped for Windy Con. So, if you find yourself attending, feel free to track me down to say hello! Also, if you want to stay up-to-date on my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support me and my work, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to toss a little love in my cup. For as little as $1 a month, I'll even send you some free books as a thank you.

Why Are Technology And Magic So Often Mutually Exclusive?

Normally I'd ramble for a bit and tell people about my latest book releases, maybe plug a tee shirt, or offer a back link to something you might find helpful. This week though I'm talking about something that's very near and dear to my heart, so I'm skipping all the usual fluff. In short I would like to ask my readers a question, and it's a question I want them to take very seriously.

Why are magic and technology so often seen as mutually exclusive in mainstream fantasy and sci-fi?

Except in very rare circumstances.

There are countless examples of this sliding scale in fiction. In stories like A Flight of Dragons the whole premise of the book is that science and technology is actively eradicating most kinds of magic. In the popular series The Dresden Files just being near magic makes technology act up (which requires our lead to avoid things like computers, cinemas, and at times actual electric lights). Even in the classic series Harry Potter there's just something about the presence of magic that renders technology non-functional more often than not.

Why do we do that?

Clarke's Third Law

Even if you have no idea who Arthur C. Clarke is, you've heard his third law. In a nut shell it states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is an oft-quoted rule when it comes to fiction, but according to Esther Ingels-Arkell over at i09 the law doesn't really work the way we think it does.

Accroding to Arkell's argument this law only holds water if the feat being accomplished is something we believe we can't do ourselves with the right time and training. While we might not be able to build a TV or a laptop, much less a car that runs off of solar power or methane gas, most people who know these things exist believe that they could be replicated by anyone. The reason that we freak out about magicians who seem to be able to levitate, people whose brain waves can bend spoons, and those who can be buried for a week before rising unharmed is that we know, deep down, these are not things that anyone can do. These things are well and truly magical.

Is Magic V. Technology Really About Ignorance?

Let's go back to A Flight of Dragons for a moment. The central crux of the story is that mankind is embracing technology and logic, and it is this philosophical decision to give science a big ole' bear hug that is robbing the world's great wizards (well, all but the evil one) of their powers. This is in a very real sense a metaphor for how we as readers and writers often think about magic. Magic is a product of a simpler time, whereas science is a product of enlightenment. Science can be explained, and magic can't be. Even in our fiction magic is something that just can't exist in a world where we've split the atom, have flying cars, or combat capable laser cannons. And if it does exist then technology just closes its eyes and refuses to admit that magic is there.

I see your fireball, and raise.

Well, most of the time anyway.

Breaking The Mold

There are a lot of niches where the sliding scale has been trod underfoot. The roleplaying game Shadowrun and the books set in its world combines the elements of high fantasy with the gritty neo-noir of cyberpunk for a strange, exciting love child. D20 Modern allows mages to store spellbooks on their palm pilots, and in Pathfinder gunslingers might adventure alongside sorcerers to deliver a one-two punch (even in this game though the resistance to guns existing alongside magic is prone to some hardcore resistance).

In the spirit of this co-existence I'll make a suggestion that goes even further; what would magic enhanced by technology look like? Say that ancient covens always had 13 witches because that was the timber the chant required to hit the proper level; what could one witch with a mixer and recording software accomplish? If psychotropic mushrooms altered your brain chemistry and perception so you could see spirits and ghosts, what could modern pharmaceuticals allow you to do? Using enchanted steel to make a sword is one thing, but what about bringing magic and science together to make a rail gun straight from the heavens?

What kind of marriage would you give science and magic if you wanted them to play nice?

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