Exchange of Realities

Yesterday, I brought up the concept of settings as characters in the way that most writers see it. We speculative fiction writers and game masters can take it one step further, though; we can actually make our setting, or part of our setting, intelligent in its own right, and give it as much agency and personality as any of the living characters. In short, we can make a literal character out of one of our locations.

Photo courtesy of patkisha from stock.xchng

First, though, you need to figure out why it works for you to have a location as a character. For some people, a living setting allows the introduction of an older perspective without the power and breadth of knowledge that a motile character of the same age might have—or the ability and penchant for interference of such characters. The land can’t rise up and save the world, but it’s not unreasonable for it to have a good idea how the world is to be saved; what else would it do but advise the protagonists? For others, a living location is an unknowable antagonist, hard to defeat and harder to understand, and if it’s clever it can take ages for its targets to realize what’s targeting them (who’s going to suspect the earth below unless they already know the place can think?). Still others just enjoy the alien mindset that comes from being a hill or a castle. A warning for writers, though: be very careful using a living location as a narrator. If it’s too inactive, it’ll sound more like stream of consciousness writing, and there are a lot of people who are turned off by that style.

Know what the living location is doing in your plot? Excellent. Now it’s time to figure out why this place can think for itself. This step is technically optional; if you’re just exploring the question of “what if x were a living entity”, you can get away with not having an explanation. But for other settings, it’s a very good idea. In some worlds, massive amounts of ambient magic can bring forth sentience in the land itself. Others are awakened by huge events, like divine visitations or enormous massacres. A forest might be the combined feelings of its trees, or of its creatures (or both). In science fiction, one sometimes sees planets gaining thought, usually through a combination of ambient temperature and an overwhelming quantity of silicon in its composition. And of course, there are those buildings that are created or enchanted to be intelligent (by accident or by design), or people who by whatever means were fused with the world around them. There’s a lot of potential out there.

How much control does it have of what’s in, on and around it? Some sentient settings, usually tracts of land, have only limited control of themselves; they might be able to adjust their elevations a bit, shift a few rocks, maybe raise a tree root to trip someone or make trail markers disappear or point in the wrong direction. Similarly, some buildings might have minor control of what’s in the walls, but none of what’s outside or in the rooms themselves. Some, on the other hand, are highly powerful. A natural area with a great enough concentration of magic might be able to affect everything short of the laws of physics, doing everything from carefully targeted fires and windstorms to opening pits under those that displease it. Or one might be able to create constructs of its own substance (or outside materials if it can get them) to enforce its will in the world. An intelligent building might be created with mechanisms with which it can act on its needs, or supernatural control of aspects of its composition, interiors or grounds. And that’s just the standard ways in which an intelligent location can act!

Consider also communication, particularly if you’re planning the sentient location as an ally of the primary characters. In some cases, the intelligent location might be able to speak into the mind of someone on the premises. Others may be able to furnish information through dreams or visions, or “talk” through their control of their environs, leaving messages for those who know how to read them. Some might even be able to manifest in a smaller, living form, with which they might communicate. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be easy to make contact with them. Manifestation might only be possible on certain occasions, or the form manifested might not be able to speak the language of its visitors. Perhaps being able to engage with a visitor requires that the visitor perform a special ceremony. Places exist for a long time, and think in unique ways; are the messages a location with little control leaves in its features even legible to those with whom it wishes to communicate? Do they depend on a dead language, or require concepts that make perfect sense to a landmass but not to a person? Buildings have it easier, in that their communication is specifically designed, but what’s to say the builder wanted to make such communication straightforward?

These are just the basics. Tomorrow: How do these and other aspects (including history and population) of the location affect its personality?