NaNoWriMo 2012, Day 28

[kaasirpent]

Lucy Disdains the Need to Write for NaNoWriMo

I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)

NaNoWriMo Progress: Magic, Psi, and Necromancy for Normals
	Actual	Required
Progress
New Words Today	992	1667
Daily Average	1898	1667
Remaining Req’d Daily Avg	0	1667
Expected Total	50000	50000

Notes:

• I didn’t get a lot written, today. Just kind of pushed words across my screen at lunch, like a kid with English peas. Then got involved in something social after work. Then, during prime writing time . . .
• Well, look at the picture that accompanies this post. That is my twenty-year-old cat, Lucy, deciding for the very first time that she needed to lie on me, cuddle, and put her chin on the back of my hand and grab my thumb with her paw. Very cute; very inconvenient for writing. I had left her, you see, at the vet, for five whole days over Thanksgiving. It was the very first time in her entire twenty years that she had been boarded for that long, and she didn’t like it. AT. ALL. No, sir. Not. At. All. And so for the last couple of days she’s found new and exciting ways to explain to me (quite vocally, I might add) just how this is never to happen again, if I know what’s good for me.
• That being said, today I looked up insurance. I was trying to decide how the insurance industry would react to magical healing. Would they cover it or not? I’m still not sure. That, and trying to come up with a story for batteries, and a better name for the opposite of a vampire (they create magic energy, but can’t use it; vampires use it, but can’t create it).

Originally published at WriteWright. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

Are you trying to create a name, or figure out the word that best describes it?

[kaasirpent]

Yes. :)

If there is a word for it, I'd like to find it. If there's not, I'll need to invent it.

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

Do your antivampires create out of nothing, or do they draw their power from other things and recycle it?

Just trying to get a feel for what you might be wanting.

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

first thing that stuck with me is a resourcerer playing on resource and sorcerer. I am still thinking though.

[kaasirpent]

The gist of it is this: One needs "magical energy" to perform magic. To get it, it either has to come from within the body or from outside the body. What differentiates the different types of thaumaturges (the generic term I'm using for any type of magic-enabled person) are where they get the energy and how quickly.

From Within: Psions, Mages, and 'Batteries.'

From Without: Mages, Vampires, and Necromancers

Psions generate energy from within and use it themselves. It's finite and fairly slow, but that varies from person to person.

Batteries generate the energy, but then can't USE it (think of Typhoid Mary, who CARRIED typhus, but didn't HAVE it). They generate it pretty fast, but it can only build up to a point. (Varies from person to person.)

Mages generate their own but can also supplement by absorbing energy from their environment, like heat energy or that kind of thing. They thus can generally gather more & more quickly, but it's still a slow absorption process (varies from person to person).

Vampires are the opposites of batteries. A perfect couple would be a vampire and a battery. Vampires don't generate any energy, and can only absorb it from other humans. It's slow and steady, but CAN kill if left unchecked, but they can control it, and as usual, it varies from person to person. They use the power like a psion or a mage.

Finally, necromancers are like super-vampires. They also do not self-generate and must absorb from other people, but unlike vampires, they absorb ALL of a person's potential energy at the moment of the person's death. So it's a great deal of power instantaneously. It's always fatal, because only at the moment of another person's (or animal's, actually) death can they get power. So...not pleasant to be around. Use power like mages or psions, but a good deal more of it, and once it's gone, they have to find another person who's about to die. (Or, you know . . . kill one.)

I'm not using the words in anything like a "standard" way. Necromancy is "technically" the foretelling of the future by speaking with the spirits of the dead. But it sounds cooler than "death-mage." I like "Mage" more than "wizard" because I want to avoid that whole Dresden Files / Harry Potter thing. Vampire seemed obvious. But then "Battery" just . . . kinda lies there. I don't like it, but I'm stuck on it.

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

When I was researching for it (I was using a latin translator), I was using Mage as well. Seemed to get the point across that magic was involved, but stayed away from wizard.