The Great Ruler’s towering, massive fortress complex overlooked a wide plain.  There nobles and others vying for his favor would come with their personal armies to contend with each other.   The Great Ruler himself would sometimes watch them from the walls.  Leaders who succeeded in these battles could gain great favor and even high office in the Great Ruler’s invincible endless hosts or in his magistracy.

The Lord of Yan showed great promise.  He was sure to make it to the plains and do well there, so they said.

But instead he left his home and estates and went wandering alone.

Over time he acquired three followers.  They were cripples.  One was blind.

In the public square of a large market town he proclaimed them his army.  With them, he said, he would prevail.

He and his three-cripple army then marched towards the  fortress complex and the wide plain.

The Lord of  Yan had a reputation, both because of his early promise and because he had gone wandering.  His announcement made a minor sensation.

People came out to see him and his three cripples all along the route.

Many volunteered to join him.  He said no.

Commanders and leaders offered to join him with their skilled, trained bands.  He said no.  The minor sensation became bigger.

Some of the most famous names of the continent sent him letters offering to meet him in battle on the plain.  He did not reply.

Many nobles and their troops gathered there, waiting to see what the Lord of Yan would do.

He and his cripples arrived.  They marched up to the main gate of the fortress complex.  There the Lord of Yan denounced the Great Ruler as a bloody tyrant and declared war.

The Lord of Yan and his three cripples won.

***

This is a dream I had many years ago.

I remembered it again today when I read these two verses.

(more…)

The Dark was rising. It spread its influence over the land. It captured institutions, customs, lands — it put more and more peoples into its thrall.

When this had happened before, each time a Champion had arisen. Blessed with power and light from the Great God of Light and War and Justice, the Champion led the people with his blazing sword in driving back the lords of the Dark.

But this time no Champion came. One by one the peoples fell into the hands of the Dark powers.

Finally, of all the free peoples all that was left was a little band of a few hundred gathered around a hill to where they had been driven, awaiting the final assault of the Dark hordes in the morning.

They would fight and die.

(more…)

There was an ordinary countryside where ordinary people lived. They baked their bread and swatted their flies.  They had their little gossips and they told their little lies.

It was bordered on one side by a mountain range.  The mountains were grim but not magnificently and starkly grim.  Just dusty and rocky.

There was a gap through the range.  Through the gap you could glimpse higher, white peaked mountains, and a valley covered with a deep forest, all vanishing into far blue haze.

No one who went through the gap ever came back.

But the Gap called to you. You longed to walk under those trees. You longed to pass on to what could only be dimly seen in the far blue haze.

And so from time to time when the falsity and the small malices and accumulated desperations got too much a person would walk up to the gap and leave. They would never be seen again.

(more…)

There is a paradise place where the grass is lush and soft; the dew sparkles; the trees whisper in the wind.  There is a farm there.  The farmer and his family have a routine.  Every morning, for example, he or one of his children go to see the ducks to make sure the fencing for their run is still well, to check for predators, and to collect eggs.  The land is beautiful and so is the routine.  But to make sure they avoid stagnation of the mind, each time they go to the ducks they recite a poem or a passage.  They do this for all their many ordered activities.

It is not necessarily a poem about the activity.  It is often just a poem they like.  But it is the same one for each activity.  They find it more beautiful that way.  At the ducks, Dover Beach.  Cutting cabbage for sauerkraut, Out Out Brief Candle.  There are a thousand or more that they recite.

At nights, they play together doing geometry proofs.

If you go past the influence of the farm and its people, past the woods they log, past the hills where they pursue game, past the event horizon of their lives, you find a wasteland.  It is dark and roiling with chaotic forces, with an anarchy of brutal energies.

The farm family doesn’t know it, but that roiling darkness is what underlies their farm also.  Only it is guided and tamed and brought into order by their poetry and their passages and the harmony of their lives.  It is what makes everything so lush and green.  The lush farm is the natural end those forces were meant for.

Here is  a story in which you are the hero.  Well, the sidekick.

There is a hero and his group and the villain and his group.  But you must not imagine that you are in a superhero story.  The hero is a suburban dad.  You are, well, you.  The rest of the hero’s crew are neighborhood people.  The villain is a rangy, rawboned young man in a wifebeater who operates out of a collection of trailers out in the sagebrush.  His crew are trailer park people.  One of his sidekicks is a woman in her 30s who looks like a cafe-waitress: a bit the worse for wear, stringy mouse brown hair, prettyish if not so unkempt, face a bit lined, a little too thin.  There are no superpowers.  Maybe minor powers, the woman can possibly do a few spells or something.  There are devices that work better than they should.  You are definitely a sidekick in a pulpish or cinematic story.  But no superpowers.

There is a backstory by the way.  Act 1, before the story starts, you and the hero tangled with the witchy woman.  You of course prevailed.  Now, in Act 2, she found this villain and helped him put together a group. (more…)

The greatest festival of the kingdom is the releasing of the waters of growth from their reservoir in the mountains every spring.  Each family has their own little gate and their own channels that run to their land and on this special occasion, they release them all together.

The occasion is special for many reasons.  Tradition, the holiday sense of fun and excitement, the feasts, the games.  But most of all, it is the waters themselves.

These waters have strength and power beyond ordinary waters.  They are literally magical.   They carry a fresh scent with them, wiping out the must of winter.  Everywhere they go, the land brightens, the green of the plants deepen, and nature grows.  To drink from these waters is to be renewed.

The time of the waters is a time of joy, of renewal, of happiness, of spiritual peace.

The second greatest festival of the kingdom is releasing the waters at midsummer, when they bring furthered growth, coolness, and happiness and joy.

The third greatest festival of the kingdom is the final release at the end of the summer, when they soften the land, ripen the harvest, and gladden all hearts.

Well, not all hearts. (more…)

This is the story that came to my mind.

The hero is one of us. An American in our world. Probably a teenager or young adult.

Something happens, and he is called out of our world into a land of villages. It is a real world, but it is also something like a game. He is a Level 1 Hero with stats. He gets little notifications and can see popups giving basic information about the people he meets.

He starts doing small favors for the villagers, fights animal pests, and grows in level. He unlocks achievements and new skills. He becomes more capable and faces larger and larger threats. The villagers cooperate with him and eventually he even acquires the ability to recruit them as militia and watchmen. But it bothers him that so much depends on him. Granted, he is a Hero and they are Villagers, but they aren’t just props in a game, they are real people, and it bothers him that they are so oddly unconcerned about their own safety. So willing to just leave it to him.

But one Christmas Eve he is out in the lonely moonlit snow on patrol. And he looks down from the slope he’s on, and through the firs he can see one of his villages, windows lit, the people spilling out into the streets singing and rejoicing together, the little church, post out over fires cooking good things, and he feels that it is all worth it. He feels their happiness, and he wants them just they way they are.

Achievement unlocked: love.

(more…)