On November 1, the West & Catholic Church celebrates “All Saints” while in the Eastern Orthodox Church we celebrate Kosmas & Damian, the Holy Unmercenaries.
“Unmercenary” is both a strange-sounding and heavy metal sounding name for a rank of our saints–one of the reasons why I named my novel’s crimefighters after this rank of saint.
In the original Greek, “Unmercenary” is “Anagyroi” which literally means those not of silver, implying those who could not be paid for their service. In English, we dressed up the title using the stem “mercenary” which carries a connotation of paid-soldiers.
However, the rank of Unmerceny saints really have no military implication. Instead, this rank is a medical one, referring to Christian physicians who used both their knowledge of medicine and the fervor of their faith to heal others. However, this rank of saint specifically relates to a Christian tradition of providing medical care without accepting any payment. Just as it is today, doctor appointments weren’t cheap back in the day.
On November 1, we celebrate just two of the many Unmercenaries in the Church: Kosmas & Damian. These two brothers were raised by a single mom who dedicated her life to seeing to the Christian upbringing of her children as well as equipping them to enter into a profession of public service. We owe their mother, St. Theodota, credit for giving the Church two brothers who were extreme in their faith and in their selflesness.
The story goes that these two brothers were so adamant about not receiving payment that it actually led the two to an unfortunate quarrel. Kosmas had gone off to heal a widow who’d been seen by multiple pagan doctors to no avail. Kosmas was able to heal this woman through his prayers, and the woman being so grateful insisted he take three eggs from her as a gift. Kosmas explained his commitment to keeping nothing of his profit for this work, but the woman insisted saying Kosmas couldn’t deny a gift that was made honoring the Trinity (three eggs, three persons of the Trinity).
When Damian found out, he was grievously upset with his brother, and this caused a huge rift because it seemed Kosmas didn’t uphold his end of their fraternal promise to “freely give” to others just as Christ “freely gave” to them the gifts of healing and the gift of salvation. Sad as their rift is, their story serves for us today a kind of testimony to the importance of open dialog and to not allow the letter of rules to get in the way of holy fellowship.
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There are another set of Unmercenary saints who confusingly enough also share the names Kosmas and Damian. They too were Christian physicians who took no pay for their work. They were quite popular in Rome not merely because their service was free, but because it was overwhelmingly successful. This led to a manhunt for the two saints, wherein Roman officers began arresting any Christian they could in the hopes they’d find the two saints who had gone into hiding.
Both Kosmas & Damian eventually make themselves known to spare the local Christians from the collateral arrests, but when they show the power of the gift of healing they received from Christ they are set free–the two saints had healed a man with paralysis in the Roman court and were set free afterwards.
While they were temporarily spared by the state, their teacher who had instructed them in medicine had become jealous of their success and evasion from prosecution. After the trial, Kosmas and Damian’s teacher invites them to join him on an exhibition to collect medical herbs from a nearby mountain. The two oblige–perhaps to resupply for themselves or perhaps to convert their pagan teacher–but are thrown from the mountain by the teacher, killed in envy just as Cain had slain his brother Abel.
Promo art for book, featuring Father, Sheepshead, Red, and Morgenstern
As mentioned before, I use the title of these saints in part because the English translation for this rank has a rather edgy and powerful sound to it. When we think of mercenaries, we think of antihero ronins and black sheep soldiers constrained by no obligation or uniform. “Unmercenary” had always struck me as a kind of soldier that might combat or stand against these lawless sellswords, a kind of anti-antihero, a paladin standing against the rogues.
The Unmercenaries in my fiction series “Masks” are a band of vigilantes who take no pay for their service to their city. But instead of infirmities they are curing, they are surgeons removing cancers of illicit business, antibodies fighting against infections of criminality. They freely give from their own time and well-being to heal their city.
Among Orthodox monasticism and writings of desert fathers, we also see an emphasis on attentiveness or “watchfulness.” It was these holy ascetics–such as the “sleepless ones” and stylites–who kept watch over their soul as though it were a city in need of defense, forcing their bodies to remain strong to stave away from sleep so as to be proactive in spiritual warfare through prayer. The masked crime fighters, the Unmercenaries, subtly fuse these elements of Orthodox “heroism” if we can call it that, of these superhuman qualities achieved by saints who dedicated their lives to Christ, to His Church, to their work for humanity.
That’s who the Unmercenaries of “Masks” attempt to convey. They are not a perfect analogy of any particular or group of saint, but a modern and hopefully palpable allegory of saints, ever vigilant, self-giving “healers”, and usually unseen (much like the intercessions of the saints interceding in our lives today, assisting us without much gratitude or acknowledgment).
With that, I hope we all can set sometime to give some gratitude to God for equipping these saints who pray for us. I also hope that my book–imperfect and sometimes crude–is a refreshing story that encourages each of us to examine our personal calling to become great, to become saints.
In honor of Halloween, and to provide the masses with a taste of this book before doing a deep dive into this novel of crime fighters and villains, I’m releasing Chapter Thirteen of my book for free.
But why throw you into the middle of the book instead of something more introductory?
Chapter Thirteen has a special place in my heart. It’s a “good ole fashion bank heist” with a pair of villains that see the world differently and their actions and goals even in conflict with one another. In this chapter, we see the embodiment of philosophical nihilism pit against common altruism.
This chapter also happens to have not too many outside references that require explaining. That being said, just a tiny bit of context may be helpful: Den refers to the masked criminal syndicate to which our villains belong to, Devil’s Dust refers to a “truth serum” kind of drug that renders its victim totally suspetible to any command, and “Masks” when capitalized refers to any individual (vigilante or criminal) that puts on a mask and a new identity.
With that, I give you…
Masks: The Unmercenaries
Chapter 13: Thief
Overman sat uncomfortably next to Baron in the back of a cramped SUV. His bright blue eyes peered out from behind his birch mask, scanning over their jittery bunch of lackeys stuffed inside the vehicle with them. The lot of them wore grey suits and birch masks similar to Overman’s. Only Baron stood out from them, donning a black tuxedo and top hat that paid homage to his Haitian loa. Though Overman found his matching tuxedo confining and stuffy compared to his breathable fabrics, he happily went along with the attire change given the occasion.
“I hate robbin’ banks,” Baron groaned, chewing nervously on an unlit cigar.
“And I love it,” Overman answered flatly, picking at a loose thread hanging off of Baron’s suit jacket with one of his knives.
“Dey are cliché, and never wort’ de pay when you consider de risks.”
“And selling drugs is so glamorous?”
“It’s crime dat pays well. How can a criminal argue wit dat?”
“Because peddling is for businessmen. Trafficking your product may be illegal, but it’s mere business, and so that makes you a businessman. A true criminal is a thief.”
“You splittin’ hairs. What difference is der between a businessman and a t’ief?”
“A businessman sees the world and wonders what he must offer for it. A thief sees the world and wonders how he might take it.” Overman made the lackey crammed in the seat next to them flinch with a single tap of his blade against his birch mask. “I wonder, how many businessmen you brought today, Baron, and how many thieves?”
“Nei’der. I brought soldiers.”
“They look a little nervous to be called soldiers.”
“It’s not nervousness you see. It’s amphetamines, da drug of war. Increases response time and aggression. Dat’s what helped Silverback’s Sanzaru get de job done at the police headquarters shooting.”
“Sounds like a crutch.”
“I t’ink a better word would be enabler. It takes away der inhibition. Paves a path for dem to der potential.”
Overman rolled his eyes, knowing Baron purposefully used his treasured word to try and convince him otherwise. He didn’t deny that Baron’s drugs brought out something dangerous in his subjects. He simply disagreed with the shortcut taken to access such potential.
“You want to see a city of masked villains, Overman,” Baron continued. “Well, I do you one better and give you a city of supervillains.”
“Super slaves,” Overman corrected. “Your drugs are a mere parlor trick. Show me some free monsters, and then you’ll earn your bragging rights.”
“I’ve already shown dis city monsters. It be your turn to show us a monster, Overman.”
“Gladly.”
The vehicle lurched to a stop once they’d finally reached their destination in front of a slow ascent of marble steps. The bank’s tinted windows served as a double-edged sword, blocking out whatever defense waited for them inside while also providing concealment once they made it inside. Baron craned his head out the window, curiously cocking his head at the narrow alley leading to the bank’s side exit.
“We really gonna squeeze de SWAT van in dat tiny alley?” Baron asked doubtfully.
“It’ll work,” Overman reassured. “And once it backs in, nobody will have visibility of our exit. They’ll just assume the specialists are stacking up. You and your men just need to work fast enough before the real SWAT team arrives.”
“I take da money, and I set da distraction, but what does da t’ief do in dis one?”
“Run security and take credit for organizing another successful heist. Any other questions?”
“Yeah. You ready?”
“More importantly, are your men ready?”
Baron reached over his seat, threw open the SUV’s side door, and Overman marveled seeing the men pour out like a pack of greyhounds coming out of the gate. Overman watched as they pulled their sub-machine guns from their suit jackets once they reached the bank doors, and smiled hearing muffled gunfire last for but a few seconds before complete silence followed.
“Let’s see how your upper did,” Overman said.
Overman and Baron casually strolled into the bank together, and the two snickered in tandem seeing the bank’s lobby herded into a neat circle as four of their five lackeys circled the patrons and clerks threateningly like a kettle of vultures. Puddles of blood pooled on the shimmering, marble floor around four dead security guards while one lackey stood holding his abdomen from a gunshot wound, his gun still poised at the herd of civilians.
“Four out of five, and all theirs dead,” Overman remarked. “Not bad.”
“Two of them tried surrendering,” the injured lackey reported proudly.
Overman turned toward the injured lackey, stepped slowly in his direction, and cocked his head.
“And you shot them?”
“Yes, Overman.”
“Jitters? Out of rage? Any particular reason?”
“I wanted to show no mercy, Overman,” the lackey said with forced conviction, though Overman could pick out the shiver in his words.
“No mercy?”
“We all wear your mask, sir. The resistance should expect no mercy from the Overman.”
Overman nodded.
“No mercy.”
Overman looked back at the cowering, rounded-up herd. Few dared to look up at Overman, and those that did quickly craned their heads back into their submissive position. Overman shook his head. He wanted an audience.
“We require access to the vault, and we are asking for a volunteer.”
Overman waited briefly and grumbled, seeing all curious looks quickly averted at his behest.
“Your attention, please,” he started over, pulling a knife from his jacket.
The corralled herd sheepishly looked up, and Overman swiftly inserted the blade into the lackey’s sternum. The herd gasped, the lackey’s comrades froze in terror, and Overman drank in his prey’s look of shock. As the injured lackey staggered, Overman took hold of his gun and effortlessly peeled it from his hand. Overman rescinded his knife from the dead man’s chest, let the body fall at his feet, rested the gun ceremoniously upon its chest, and cleared his throat.
“I said: we need a volunteer from the crowd to access the vault. Are there any volunteers? Any heroes?”
Overman searched their cowering faces, unable to discern among their scared, tearful eyes one hopeful gaze, one resolute stare that would give away an individual of principle for him to play with.
“Anyone!?”
The crowd only clung to one another tighter at Overman’s bark, bowing their heads even lower.
Overman sighed impatiently, knowing he had little time to savor any further theatrics, and forfeit the hope of finding any boldness among them. Arbitrarily, he plucked out a young, blonde clerk by her arm from the herd and placed his blade against the knuckle of her index finger.
“Would you be so kind as to point to whoever has access to the vault while you have the fingers to do so?”
The clerk pointed almost immediately to a portly man at the center of the herd. Although the man kept his head down, he slowly rose to his feet in a slowly as though instinctively knowing he’d been ratted out. The man wore a seething look upon his face, though it was unclear to Overman if it was for Overman’s presence or the blonde’s betrayal.
“Oh, now we have a hero, do we?”
“No,” the man responded curtly, “just the manager.”
“That’ll do. Care to escort my friends to the vault?”
“You know who you’re robbing from?”
“The Spades, a remarkably dated syndicate, bank here, don’t they?” Overman asked knowingly.
“They do. So, I think I’d much rather die protecting their money than give it to scum like the Den.”
Overman blinked at the response. He had hoped for resistance, though he did not expect it to come in the form of criminal loyalty.
“Are you sure you can’t be persuaded?” Overman asked, drawing with his knife a long but superficial line down the blonde’s arm, drawing out from the crowd a faint-hearted gasp.
Only the manager furrowed his brow as he stared resolutely at Overman.
“You showed little mercy to your own man. Why should I have any assurance that any of us will make it out alive if we oblige the Den’s demands?”
Overman watched the herd shuffle uneasily at the manager’s astute argument. Overman held his breath, hoping to find one among the herd to be provoked at the thought of certain death, a candidate for heroism or monsterhood. And yet not a single soul stirred.
Overman sighed disappointedly.
“Baron. Nothing but rabbits here. Do your work.”
Baron strode up to the manager eagerly, dug his spindly hand into his pocket, brought his fist up to the manager’s face, and blew a breath of white powder into his face. The manager coughed irritably and stumbled back, blindly tripping over the herd. For a moment, he rubbed anxiously at his nose and eyes, frantically coughing as though to rid himself of Baron’s poison. Though within seconds, the manager calmed, his furrowed expression abnormally placid, his resolute glare docile and catatonic.
“You gonna cooperate now?” Baron asked.
The manager nodded obediently, his neck moving rigidly like a robot.
“How do we open your vault?”
“An 8-digit passcode and my key.”
“Da passcode is?”
“103–120–11.”
The Devil’s Dust really does work, Overman thought to himself.
Baron took the key from the manager, motioned for two lackeys to follow him off to the vault, and shot Overman a devious smile.
“Don’t have too much fun wit’ out us. Remember, we need some of dem alive.”
The heels of Overman’s dress shoes echoed ominously through the lobby while the herd whimpered in his presence. Even the blonde that he dragged around in his arms stepped lightly, stifling her own sobs while her tears wet Overman’s arms. He searched the faces of the clerks and patrons, hungry for a look of opposition, a trace glint of angst or heroism. After a few rotations around the crowd, he stopped in front of the manager who continued to stare silently, in an unfocused manner, his mouth slightly agape.
“No heroes in this lot?” Overman asked, pulling from his suit jacket a pistol and dropping it at the manager’s feet. “Or perhaps a villain? I leave you all an option. Anyone can pick up the gun and shoot me now and free the world of one less menace. The other option is to shoot this unconscious buffoon and join us. After all, this man has none of your interests in mind. Either way, you fare better making a choice instead of cowering with your peers.”
Overman stepped back from the pistol and waited, and waited, tapping his foot impatiently on the marble floor.
“It’s not true what he said,” Overman attempted to reassure his audience, gesturing his knife at the manager. “I do not decide which of you live and which of you die. But if I may offer some unsolicited advice: a butcher always fares better than a calf.”
His eyes hovered around the crowd again. Few peered up at the gun with curiosity, though each set of eyes that dared to cast a glance at it immediately returned their gaze toward the floor once Overman’s own stare spotted them.
Overman repositioned the woman in his arms and forced their fingers to interlock together around the knife. The blonde hung her head toward the floor, allowing her hair to conceal her terror, her arms and body hanging weightlessly in his embrace. He cocked his head at her and began to sway, forcing her to move to a rhythm playing in his own head.
“It’s not so hard, becoming someone like me,” Overman said, beginning to waltz his hostage around the circle of captives. She complied weakly, sobbing as Overman hummed and continued, “It’s a lot like dancing. Clumsy at first, compelled to watch your partner’s feet to learn the moves. But all dance begins with a tune, a melody that moves mind, heart, and feet together. It’s only natural to resist swaying at first, afraid you might step out of beat, conscious that someone else might watch you acting like a fool.”
Overman gave the blonde a twirl, and she let out a shriek as she spun away and then back, her head resting helplessly against his chest, her neck even closer to the blade.
“It’s supposed to feel disorienting; it is only natural to feel wrong at first,” he hissed into her ear, “But once you learn to let loose, allow your heart to sync up to the song that your soul has forever been silencing, you will find your liberating ecstasy.”
“Freeze!”
Overman complied, holding the blonde rigidly in his arms as he dipped her, her face pale and her eyes fluttering weakly.
“Let her go!”
Overman turned his head, spotting at the far end of the lobby a security guard training his pistol upon him, stepping out from the safety and cover of the men’s restroom door. Overman’s two remaining lackeys poised their firearms in turn at him, and Overman felt their stares, awaiting his kill command.
“I don’t think her skull would fare well against the floor,” Overman quipped.
“You leave her alone!”
Overman repositioned the blonde against his chest again and moved both their hands around the knife, forcing the blade to rest near her throat.
“Finally, a hero,” Overman hissed.
“I’m just doing my job.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself. You could have stayed in your stall. Instead, you decided to take a stand, and now you’re outgunned and in deep with the rest of us.”
“I’m warning you,” the security guard said, cocking the hammer of his gun back. “I’ll shoot you right now.”
“And risk maiming her beautiful face?”
“I heard what my boss said. You’re with the Den. So we’re all dead anyway. So you better give me a good reason not to do the world a favor right now and end you.”
“Your boss can pretend to know what the Den’s policy is, but neither you, nor your boss, nor my own men,” he said, tilting his head toward the lackey he killed, “know me.”
“So what will it take for them to make it out alive?”
“You assume I own their lives. What a depressing notion. I am not a broker of life.”
“Then take your knife away from her throat.”
“It’s not what it looks like. We were just dancing.”
“You’re a creep and a monster!”
“And you’re a beat security cop!” Overman jeered. “Tell me, did you drop out of police academy in fear of losing your soul to this city’s corrupt nature, or did you give up on your dreams of keeping the peace when we Masks showed you how futile the prospect of peace really is?”
The security guard hesitated to answer as though embarrassed to say. As Overman waited for an answer, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the strobe of red and blue lights just outside the tinted glass of the bank’s front door, accompanied by their blaring sirens.
“I failed police academy,” the guard admitted.
Overman snickered.
“I suppose that makes you brave for admitting so. But, are you sure your police department didn’t fail you?”
“A few bad apples don’t ruin the badge.”
“Perhaps you should consider what kind of tree is producing such fruit.”
“It’s not the precinct that fails the city!” The security guard shouted. “It’s losers, spineless roaches, who hide behind masks like you that do! And that’s the truth!”
“You want to speak about truth?” Overman began excitedly. “The truth is you regurgitate platitudes without giving them a second thought. The truth is you are outgunned, and of everyone in this room, it is you that is in the most amount of jeopardy because of some misplaced sense of onus. The truth is you are far too underpaid for the protection you are attempting to provide and so far out of your own league. But you want to know what the real truth is?”
Overman flung the blonde behind him and opened his arms as though welcoming the crosshairs to rest squarely upon his chest.
“The truth is, you may take your shot, and neither of us will see our own legacy. But I promise you, those unhindered by any sentiment for honor or justice will covet my face, take up my name, and act as a copycat in an attempt to outmatch my infamy, while your legacy will be a nuisance of a bloodstain for a janitor paid just as much as you to mop up!”
Overman’s eyes narrowed gleefully, noticing the security guard’s hold on his firearm begin to shake, as though he strained to keep his aim at Overman, as though he realized how burdensome his conviction was.
“I can make this easy for you,” Overman offered. “You can walk away from this alive, live to see another day, without anyone knowing of your turncoat. I can even pay you for your troubles and give you a cut of our profits.”
“At their cost, right?” The security guard asked, his voice shaking.
“I’ve already assured you that their lives are not mine to broker. I do not decide whether they live or die.”
“You think I’d believe that you’re going to leave them all unharmed? You think I’d join you and leave them at the cruelty of whatever you have planned?”
“I think you would’ve shot me by now if my offer weren’t so simple.”
The security guard stepped forward, outstretched his arm even further, as though bringing the gun a foot closer to Overman’s head were indicative of his intention to kill him. Overman chuckled at the hollow threat as the security guard stammered, his lips batting together wordlessly to try to put together a retort.
“If you took my offer,” Overman began, raising his palms to the guard, “you’d put on my mask and see the world through my eyes. Yes, you’d fight with your own conscience a little knowing that this herd of cattle would be left in some kind of danger. That would sting you for some time, but eventually, you’ll find it gets easier, even liberating, knowing that there is no other life to save but your own, realizing that your job of protecting the money of dishonest men is not worth its pay. In short, if you take my offer, you’ll come out of this wealthier, freer, alive, and, most importantly, you’ll come out of this a new man … a powerful man you’ll have wished you met a long time ago.”
Overman savored every second of the security guard’s hesitation. His heart warmed with hope, seeing behind his mad stare the cogs of reason wheeling, an invisible abacus weighing each side of the dilemma. It assured him that even if the offer was denied, that deep down, there was another Overman buried inside another human being clawing at the dirt of conventional boundaries and archaic principles, fighting to unearth itself.
Click. Click.
Overman turned and sighed at the interruption. The blonde stood aiming at him the empty pistol Overman had left on the floor. She stared at the gun in horror, bewildered that the weapon did not strike down its target.
“What awful timing,” Overman grumbled at her. “Can you not see that we’re in the middle of …”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Overman spun on his heel and began twitching in a barely contained fury seeing Baron emerge from the hall of the vault, holding a smoking revolver in hand. At the other end of the lobby, the security guard staggered on his feet before falling backward, his body shaking on the floor as a puddle of blood pooled around his torso.
“You’re welcome,” Baron cackled.
Overman resisted the urge to chuck his knife into Baron’s throat and instead flicked his wrist and sent it into the manager’s. As the manager fell like dead weight, Baron shot Overman a betrayed glare.
“Hey! We needed him! You cost me a dose of my good stuff!”
“And you cost me a monster,” Overman hissed, marching down the lobby toward the fallen guard. “Prepare your thralls, Baron, use your Devil’s Dust on the blonde, and set the trap.”
The guard craned his head up and shakily raised his gun at Overman as he approached him, and Overman stepped on the pistol and gently pried it from his cold fingers without resistance.
“No,” Overman said, claiming the weapon and sheathing into his jacket, “you had your chance. You had your chance to be the hero, to be a lot of things, and you hesitated.”
The guard looked up at Overman, the muscles in his face straining to convey something. Overman cocked his head, wondering what the guard struggled to communicate, wondering what words he would offer were it not for Baron’s bullets lodged into his chest. Overman moved behind the guard and hefted him across the hard floor to prop him up against the wall. As the guard sputtered to produce some kind of remark or curse, Overman knelt to his level and met his gaze.
“Entropy,” Overman began. “Absolute futility. You stepped out of the restroom just to be gunned down without changing anyone’s circumstances. You made your life’s work protecting others people’s money, only to make a fraction of what they piss away. And here I am, wasting my breath, lecturing a dead man.” Overman tapped his knife to his own mask, “That’s the reason why I put this thing on. It’s all rather meaningless. Still, we all have to make something of it. Not that it matters if anyone remembers or pretends to be the Overman. But, what else is a man to do with his short time on this decaying rock?”
Overman looked back at the herd as the screams of patrons and clerks devolved from lucid cattle into Baron’s mindless thralls, while each one of them wore a replica of his birch mask. Though Overman looked forward to his plan all coming together, it pained him to see each of the individuals stripped of their agency and reason while donning his mask. The longer he stared at the little Overmen thralls, the more empty he felt seeing a cruel allegory to the image: as long as the masses had their opiate, they would never truly know what it meant to be Overman.
“Maybe they’re all happier than the two of us?” Overman sighed in defeat, rising to his feet and turning away from the security guard.
As he made his way for the side door with the rest of his men, he could not help but stare at the train wreck that began to unfold before him, of the blonde taking orders from Baron to open the bank doors, obediently barking at the drug-induced clerks and patrons.
Overman watched giddily as the herd trampled over the blonde and barreled down the steps toward an onslaught of gunshots from the police brigade.
“Cattle don’t quite understand when something is taken from them.”
The villain teased above is the mad philosopher, Overman, an embodiment of Nietzsche’s tightrope walker who ironically dwells in the abandoned, dilapidated subway of the city of Nymphis. The old rail and bunker, called “The Rabbit Hole,” is key to the story “Masks: The Unmercenaries,” though it took some time to conceive of this dark hutch of villainy.
The inspiration came originally from a search of “abandoned locations” which yielded a list of beautiful derelict monuments and establishments that had become works of art and even tourism. The throne room of the Rabbit Hole was conceived after watching a documentary on an underground, nuclear-grade estate of vice.
This was just one facet of Nymphis, one facet of imagining and illustrating the world of my book. This process of world-building is enjoyable but is as well laborious in order to paint an immersive world that exists not only in our minds, but in the minds of our readers.
For my fellow world-builders out there, I’d like to share some insight I’ve employed through my own journey of sculpting my book’s world:
Lore & Backstory
“Masks: The Unmercenaries” began as a series of featurette chapters of characters. Before it had a central plot, it was a compilation of vigilantes from different backgrounds, fighting and living in different parts of the cities. Some of the structure and elements of those chapters and characters survived, but many didn’t.
But the exercise helped me craft Nymphis, to explore parts of the city I might not otherwise explore without writing a bit of backstory & lore of characters that wouldn’t even show up.
I think of Skyrim and Ark in this regard, of sprawling worlds that have an impressive collection of literature that lay out backstory of such a fun worlds. The books of Skyrim reference the pantheon of the NPCs, the history of Skyrim’s locations, allude to the dealings of the characters you meet. Ark accomplishes this too, laying out random logs of survivors for the player to collect, each entry expounding on how various perspectives see the island and the dinosaurs upon it.
When one is world building, I think it important to test the boundaries of the world, even if those parts are never directly used or referenced. Unconsciously, as a writer, you’ll be aware of how far your world goes, and invariably parts of that unused expanse will bleed into your novel or serve to be used as material for a later chapter or book.
Good Illustration Can Be Brief
I think of the Harry Potter series when I think of incredible illustration. While we all had the movies to help us in visualizing what J.K. Rowling was putting to paper, the author’s description of Hogwarts incredibly describes what the films set out to do.
For example, see our first view of Hogwarts in the following description provided by owlcation.com:
The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.
“No more ‘n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry and Ron were followed into their boat by Nevlille and Hermione.
“Everyone in?” shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself, “Right then— FORWARD!”
And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.
“Heads down!” yelled Hagrid as the first boat reached the cliff; they all bent their heads and the little boats carried them through a curtain of ivy which hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They were carried along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbour, where they clambered out on to the rocks and pebbles.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
J.K. Rowling doesn’t go overboard with her thesaurus or even set out to describe every inch of Hogwarts. There is instead details that either pair or juxtapose for a really powerful image. She uses the narrow path to blast out the expanse of the castle and it’s large lake, and then pairs the sparkling windows of the towers to the starry sky, as though making the castle heavenly.
In each paragraph, there are no more than two sentences that paint the image of Hogwarts, and most of the exterior castle’s description is accomplished in just a few paragraphs.
This is not to say that all descriptions in world building must be brief or simple, but it does free us from a load of expounding too much, leaving the audience little room to imagine for themselves. We have to realize that the world and characters we imagine in our heads and hearts don’t have to look, sound, or feel absolutely congruent to how our audience imagines them. We want the audience to feel drawn in by the choice details we use, giving them the freedom to almost create for themselves in the story rather than force them into tight parameters of description.
Know Your Tether
A temptation in world building is to blast out your world’s map as wide as you can and create a diverse looking world.
But great fantasy genres such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars (yes, I did just call Star Wars fantasy) have a kind of tether or “home base” that are well developed, sometimes even more illustrated and detailed than the rest of the sprawling out universe. For Lord of the Rings, I argue this is the Shire whereas Star Wars is Tatooine. Both have a “homey” feel, especially given that these are the origins of our protagonist. They are the starting point of our adventures and provide us not entirely with a “neutral” palette, but one digestible enough to get us started before we hop into the wilder parts of the universe.
These tethers are either places our story and its characters return to over and over, or are given a special highlight with the amount of time we spend in them.
They function as reference points for the rest of the book, to show the diversity of our world with their simplicity and perhaps even modesty. They creep us into the universe, beginning to show us what the world we are entering into looks like so we’re not totally surprised when things get bizarre. They are places we may even become fond to, that we are excited to return to in the narrative because they fill us with a sense of nostalgia or “Sehnsucht”–a longing for a place we haven’t been.
Come to My City of Nymphis
And with that, I’d like to invite you all to my city of Nymphis!
My goal is to keep sprawling out this city through short story, and perhaps even one day plugging my audience into the city through photos of them wearing masks or their own contributions to the vigilante-plagued world.
You can dive into this world of masked crime fighters NOW and get yourself ready for a Halloween mood by picking up an Amazon Kindle copy today!
Click the cover below to dive in and become a hero (or villain)!
In Masks: The Unmercenaries, our primary antagonists are a bloodlusting, gorilla-faced kingpin and a theatrical nihilistic philosopher turned assassin.
But how do we come up with our villains? What are our antagonists born out of?
For Silverback (the gorilla), it stemmed primarily from a short lived childhood nightmare. I was inside my dark quiet home when I saw outside our bay window a gorilla face staring at me, motionless, expressionless. It’s eyes were green, piercing through the darkness outside into my unlit home. It did nothing but stare, and I knew the power it possessed without it flaunting, knew the danger in its stare.
Gorillas teeter between the wildness of nature and the familiarity of humanity. They look and emote like us, but they’re physically superior and possess a wild temper that can easily flatten us. Gorillas are perhaps the archetype of primal man, of our most base nature that can unravel so quickly into violence and rage.
The gorilla mask matched with the white tuxedo serves to underscore that paradox. Silverback wears the face of a wild beast while dressing like a gentleman. His mask is a testimony to not merely our capacity for monstrosity when we give to our base emotions and instincts, but it perhaps speaks of the weak veil we all put on to hide this barbarism. So many of us do little to tame these wild passions, but we pretend pretty effectively how to seem humane.
Overman, the theatrical assassin, was conceived from a pure philosophical question: what if nihilism was followed to its true and ultimate conclusion?
Overman is paradoxical in that he loves the theater but hates tradition. He seeks to assist others in tearing down the boundaries of their belief and customs, while building up his own philosophy. His nihilism isn’t pure, but perhaps that is because it’s impossible to truly have a void in our grand narrative of existence, of morality, of meaning.
But Overman is also the voice of a critic, of a deconstuctionist who seeks to test the mettle of other heroes chivalry and sense of duty, and even to test the substance and legitimacy of other villains. Overman wields his knives symbolically, as a kind of razor to the ideas that contest his own.
Some villains come from our nightmares. Some come from mythology. Some come from philosophy. But wherever they come from, they should serve to speak something about human nature, of our universal capacity to fall and descend into monstrosity.
Happy Harrowing, and keep writing excellent villains!
You can read about Silverback, Overman, and the rest of the villains of Masks now on Amazon Kindle!
If your friend, your daughter, your sister went missing…wouldn’t you do anything to find them?
To go to any length to save them?
To put on a mask, become someone new, maybe totally unrecognizable, for their life and soul?
Welcome to Masks…
This novel follows anonymous heroes who have become vigilantes, each doing so for someone they love. In each of their walks, they have become someone new on behalf of the other, have transformed from their mundane–perhaps even fallen–state into something legendary and beyond what they thought was possible of achieving.
They become Masks, deified, intercessory patrons and sleepless heroes unto the city.
Available Now On Amazon Kindle
This novel will make its grand debut available in paperback on November 1, fittingly on the Feast of the Unmercenaries.
Those who want to read something special for Halloween (for which the book begins), it can be purchased on Amazon Kindle for $9.99!
Click the Masks below to pick up your copy today and get into the feast of Halloween, of Nymphis’ Harrowing!
Short Stories Coming Soon!
I’ll also be releasing on hopefully a monthly basis (if not more frequent) short stories related to the Masks series. You’ll be able to get a small taste of what the Mask series is all about while also explore the unfurling background of the city of Nymphis through these stand alone chapters.
Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to the blog to get updates on these stories!
Konstantin Träumer 