Original Ideas for Shoku’s Power

Shoku is the soul of the Dome series. Even though N’Halia undergoes the most growth in terms of Power, Shoku goes through the greatest personal growth. Light Weaving is maybe the most complex Power because of the social ramifications. Read on for more below!

Inspiration

I actually came up with how Shoku got his Mark before I determined most of his other qualities. I knew I wanted him to trick his way into it and the most obvious way to me was that he could make Illusions. Thus, he became a Light Weaver.

As a character arc, he goes from using Light to trick to using Light to Illuminate. This is, of course, the exact opposite of Stapes.

Shadow vs. Light

Shadow and Light are obviously opposites, but many of the ways are only revealed later in The Shadow Spinner. I liked the idea that Shadow magic would be cheerful and entertaining in contrast to how it’s usually portrayed. So Light would be the opposite – feared and discriminated against. It didn’t take much thinking to figure out why that would be. I actually think it’s exactly how it would play out if Light Weaving were a real thing. People would mistrust those wielders due to the inherent suspicion of deception.

The Powers also can cancel each other out. If you’ve read the first book, then you see how this plays out several times with Hermit and Shoku as well as Hermit and Stapes. The second book explores this for even more important reasons…

A finer point on their differences is the area of effect. Hermit, and even other Shadow Spinners like Nightmare, are shown being able to conjure very large Shadows that cover a lot of area. Light Weavers are never shown doing this. For example, Hermit makes a Shadow dragon to tell a story, but a Light Weaver could never do the same. The reason is actually pretty straightforward. Shadow has no color – the amount of detail necessary is much less than Light. Thus, Shadow can be summoned into shapes in much greater quantities and projected further away from the body. Light, at least with realistic Illusions, has to stay close to the Weaver. So a very talented Weaver like Shoku can Disguise themselves, but they’d never to able to Project an Illusion of themselves moving around. Shoku sometimes makes a fake Illusion of himself in combat, but he is hiding within the Illusion (squatting down) and it doesn’t move.

Original Ideas

Like all the Powers, I started with original ideas that were much stronger. In the pre-writing stage, I kicked around the idea that Shoku could make Illusions away from his body. This is the more traditional way of magic creating Illusions.

Another, more complicated, usage was Disguising them. This was through making an Illusion like modern ‘invisibility cloaks’ do. They have many cameras and screens in the fabric that project what is behind the person to give the illusion of seeing through them. He would have to make a flawless Illusion of what was behind him. The difficulty of this came with movement. While moving, the Illusion would have to change constantly which would be incredibly difficult.

As I said earlier, I ultimately nerfed everyone’s Power to be more reasonable. On a writing note, giving him the Power of Invisibility would have made many scenes less thrilling or funny. In the second book, they do have to sneak through the Church of Blood’s fortress. Instead of a fancy Illusion, they disguise themselves as priests and are horrible at it, of course.

The Flow

This was interesting since Shadow and Light are opposites. Hermit almost constantly lets Shadow Flow through him because it allows him to Fade from the physical influence of the world, rendering him almost unkillable. Light, on the other hand, increases influence on the world. This is a problem when fighting, because you don’t want things to hurt you more. True, you could do more damage but it would come at great risk.

While Hermit is largely unnoticed most of the time because of Shadow, Stapes, who lets Light Flow through her, is very noticeable. She uses it to exert massive Influence on the world which is why she’s so powerful and wealthy. The second book delves into this further as Shoku learns to Enlighten himself. In the first book, you can notice that Stapes almost always talks in truisms – statements that are general enough to be almost universally true.

Truisms are how fortune tellers talk. You can say something like, “You’ve been hurt before in your life.” The person you’re talking to will agree with the statement and, as you pile these on and narrow them down, they’ll feel like you know them really well. The usage of exerting more Influence is Shoku’s main weapon and also how some of his growth is shown.

Future Power

At one point in The Shadow Spinner, they talk about the Peaks and the Pits. Power is wilder there. It changes how all Powers are wielded, but some more than others…

Next up

Next post will be talking about Fahrad and his Power. He’s the last Champion and isn’t in The Shadow Spinner. However, going to New Port City and meeting Fahrad is basically how the second book begins.

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eric@eric-kao.com

Eric Kao – Fantasy Author