Developing my Lore: Acolytes

My fantasy world is one free from what one would typically call magic. Emora - the land mass upon which my story takes place, but not the only one in my world - is a land of many city states loosely held together by uneasy peace. There is not a major religion, only small sects and the remnants of religious buildings; monasteries, chapels. Emora is a land inhabited by humans for a little over a millenia, while elves lived long prior as nomadic tribes.

This is about the limit of what I knew about my world as I embarked writing my first novel "Acolyte," the only other thing I knew was that there were a group of ancient, immortal beings who watched over the people of Emora and were powerful. I even had several of these 'Acolytes' appear in this story (and played an important part, as you could probably tell by the title.) It was interesting working blind, but the beauty of editing is I can still add anything I discover about these beings to my story.

I am writing this post because after two and a half drafts of "Acolyte" and nearly a year of work on my story and lore, I have finally come to a point where I understand my world and I understand my Acolytes.

I came to this understanding when I was trying to justify how there could be no magic and yet some have powers and stumbled upon the fundamental crux of my lore. Emora and the world around it is an offshoot of an ethereal realm. Imagine a ball of energy like the sun, but it is formless, shapeless and immeasurable. This realm is the infinite universe and everything that exists is within it. Emora, and possible innumerable other worlds, are offshoots of this ethereal place where the energy has manifest itself into a physical world. Basically, Emora is the whim of the universe and is nothing more than a tapestry of woven threads of energy.

This helped me understand my Acolytes; they became flares of this energy, imbued with the power to manipulate it at will but only within their own limitations. Through writing I discovered that each Acolyte has their own stone, a piece of ethereal stuff which focuses the Acolyte's energy into their specific field. One Example is the Greenstone, which allows and assists its Acolyte with the manipulation of nature, mainly through basic communication with animals, controlling them or even seeing through their eyes. Another is the Violetstone, the stone of love whose Acolyte has the ability to shape-shift.

It was intensely joyous to give these people the power they now have, and also to give them interesting limitations, while also thinking about how I can shift my next draft to include these abilities. One thing I must still consider, however, is that I do not want my stories to simply be about cool magic and epic stories. I'd certainly like them to be a part of it, but interweaving that with social and political commentary is important to the way I write and the way I want to write. Fantasy is wonderful for its freedom and I want not to abandon one possibility to the other, especially considering the over-saturation of epic fantasy with little commentary on life.