In many ways, this blog is for me more than for readers. Right now, my ideas about the story are vague. I had a different conception of the story, previously, but I scrapped it. I was trying to take two different stories and make them the same story, which is sort of like trying to perform surgery to create conjoined twins instead of separate them.
This story began with a single idea, around which everything else is formed. That idea is of a people who live in an isolated woodland who can draw magic from and walk at will in the dream world. Most people cannot do this at all, or they can only do it on occasion. Dreamwalkers can do it whenever they want. This power comes to them from their ancestors, who are neither dead nor alive, but who exist in a terrifying and unique fashion. They are interred before they physically die into the living trunks of a unique species of tree, called Dreamochs, which are a form of giant black -leafed Oak and which grow to enormous size.
An entire family tribe live on or in a tree (yes, I know, inescapable comparisons to Lothlorien, etc., whatever), and all of its ancestors exist within in a peculiar symbiosis with the tree. The sentient minds of the ancestors within the tree are magical power source from which the currently living descendents can draw. The older a family line is, the more ancestors are interred within, the larger its tree grows, and their magic grows stronger.
Now, here’s a crazy thing: a big part of what I just wrote in the previous paragraph is completely new. I had never thought before of all the ancestors being in a single tree, and the descendents actually living on the tree, using it as a structure, bending it by magic into dwelling places and so forth. My previous conception was that each tree would contain exactly one ancestor, and that the trees were a little bigger than normal size (their trunks would have to be large enough to contain a human body within). Each family tribe would tend a grove of these trees, which they would hold as sacred and guard fiercely.
It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that all of the ancestors could be interred within one gargantuan, monolithic tree. So many astounding possibilities now open up with this one new twist, I can hardly contain myself! How would they survive winter? How do they feed and clothe themselves (if they live in a giant tree, how do they grow food or raise animals)? What amazing social mores and traditions would exist because of this?
Man, this is a lot to think about. And I haven’t even told you yet about the necromancers or the race of Bruin.
