We need to talk about magic and dragons...

May 29, 2023

One current project is drawing me back through the past projects in developing dragon history across my world and fantasy series and it’s fun looking at how the concepts have developed. There are plenty of optional dragon histories I could draw upon, some seen as lore by advocates of history or writers or games. I’ve chosen to create my own and this blog is really to show an aspect of the thinking involved behind what is now five fantasy series (17 novels).
 
At the centre of my fantasy works is a magical substance the characters refer to as amber because of its colour. It’s not amber as we traditionally know it, but a highly energised crystal structure capable of transferring thought into energy, matter and action. It’s the ‘wild magic’ of my writing and it originates from extraordinary meteorites that crashed into the planet at the time the Elvenaar were dominant.
 
The Elvenaar discovered one meteorite which became known as the Genesis Stone – gecyndboc stan – because it was the source of powerful Elvenaar magic. Over time, the Elvenaar, among many activities, used the amber to morph small lizards into magical flying pets they called the Alfyn – meredragons. The Alfyn surprised the Elvenaar in that the transformation also gave the little creatures high intelligence and empathy and made them amenable companions. In return, the Elvenaar made the Alfyn the protectors of the Genesis Stone.
 
The Elvenaar then experimented on giant forest lizards until they developed protodragons. Over more time and mutations that involved implanting shards of the amber in the protodragons, the Elvenaar created the first flying, fire-breathing dragons and used them in their wars with humans – Eyano – who were growing in number and aggressively encroaching on Elvenaar land, although it was disease, not war, that eventually led to the demise of the Elvenaar populations. The dying Elvenaar Lorekeepers entrusted the ongoing protection of the Genesis Stone to the Alfyn.
 
As a final and desperate response to the human expansion, five Elvenaar brothers embedded amber shards in themselves to become the Dragonlords – dracabrego – and they used the magic and the brutally powerful dragons to dominate their domains, until humans also learned about the Genesis Stone amber and forged fragments of it into magical weapons that they used against the Dragonlords and their dragons. The death of the final Dragonlord led to the release of the dragons into the wild.
 
No longer controlled by the Elvenaar, the dragons survived by a combination of their wits and terror, hunting and killing animals and humans, making them dangerous to humans for a long period of history. At the same time, the dragons grew in intelligence and understanding as they bred and proliferated, and, with self-actuation, they learned their history and recognised why the Genesis Stone was central to their existence, and why they needed it to expand their population and ensure their descendants were as magically powerful.

Charged with protecting the Genesis Stone, the Alfyn prevented dragon efforts to locate it. One dragon clan eventually entered a pact with humans in order to find the Stone because humans were seeking it as well, and came close to finding the Stone, but the Alfyn collaborated with a human who generated a one-way portal trap through which the dragons were lured, believing they were teleporting to the Stone’s location.
 
The Lore back story makes it clear that more than one Genesis Stone fell in ancient times, but the dragons, Alfyn and humans have yet to locate them all. Readers of the earlier series will discern that one stone lies somewhere in the heart of Andrakian forests, and another was located in the Shess forests.
 
That is a summary of the thinking and planning behind the fantasy stories and one of the unifying world factors that keeps my writing focused. Did I think of the Genesis Stone/amber concept when I first started writing? No. It grew across several novels as I came to understand it. Magic is fantasy and in itself is not true, but I, like many fantasy writers, do apply a form of logic to the source of magic to give it potential substance. Why are amber shards from the Genesis Stone able to foster wild magic? Yeah, I don’t know…it’s magic.