Inspiration from the Droughtlands [part two]
Three months ago, I promised I would tell of where all this sand came from. The question I slowly had to answer with it was “why sand?”
The setting of a desert hasn’t always dominated my attention. In my previous writings about what I find in a compelling world, I touched on how ruined relics painted a picture of a past, a deeper story, but why can’t these ruins be invested and overgrown with unrestrained flora? Why must it be a constant wasteland?
When I first began discovering the Droughtlands eight years ago, the answer was mundane. I wanted to tell a story of travel and exploration. One where lone expeditioners could trek to the far corners of the world to confront forgotten mysterious and ominous ruins. However, the logistics of these ventures would constantly have characters contending with the dull requirement of having enough water to drink.
Nothing in science fiction or fantasy disappoints me more that the plot being delayed or dictated by the basic needs of reality. Predictability ensues. A hunger will either be sated or succumbed to. A character who doesn’t have enough water will eventually find it or perish.
So I decided to remove the need for water. (But not entirely.)
To do this, I created the Hytharo people. Extinct for eons and thought to have brought rains to the barren sands, their final sacrifice sealed the surface’s remaining water into the air itself. Thirst is now quenched by the simple act of breathing. The remaining liquid water could only be found deep underground in the ruins of those-of-glass. Because the magic of this world requires water-based inks, anyone looking to utilise their power is forced to brave the dangers that lie below the sands.
With this simple plot device, the Droughtlands were born. Now humanity must constantly contend with the scattered debris of a forgotten civilisation and subsequently endure the consequences these places bring.
Since then, I’ve been enchanted by the visual environment it provides. The flowing dunes of red sand, those technicolour blue skies and those burning cliffs elicit a feeling of mystery and desolation that nothing else can provide. My favourite visuals to illustrate this come from the Vegas scenes of Blade Runner 2049, the recent adaption of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and the entire runtime of Mad Max: Fury Road.
But I eventually found the importance of the desert to go far deeper than a simple plot device or a memorable backdrop. Without spoiling much else, I believe this can be best expressed with the poem of Ozymandias, penned by Percy Shelley in the early 1800s. In short, it portrays that in the end, all monuments sink into the sand to be forgotten.
“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Sand represents a finality. An unbreakable barrier between past and present that is so opaque that only myth and legend can be seen on the other side of it. It preserves the objects which it buries, yet washes away the legacy that created them. It can be plucked up by the wind, rearranged for eons and still remain to be seen as one desert.
It’s with these qualities, this absence of any permanent natural formation, that a desert places a particular emphasis on that which is man-made. So when a character of my books encounters the anomalous ruins left behind by those-of-glass, they face it knowing it is not a product of nature.
It was humanity, just like them, that created these dangers.
But the sand has long buried their origins.