Side-Write: Into the Orchard (Patreon)

One aspect of the world of Project Wild One I've been uncertain on for a while is how much magic I want to include, in the sense of "casting spells" and the like. I know the main character will have access to some supernatural abilities, but how common should that be otherwise?

I was reflecting on how and whether to explore that possibility for this side-write, and it got me thinking about a sort of magic system idea I've mulled over in the past. I decided to go ahead and explore that possibility here, to see how it might fit into this world. It's a lot of concepts to go over, so it ended up not having much story to it, and I'm not sure yet how I feel about it, but hopefully it's an interesting read!

As ever, this is not canon so much of an exploration of what may come to be. I hope you enjoy!

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It is a hard life, working at our farm. Of course, you never have to worry about going hungry. That's one of the big things we have going for us, even over other farms. But there are a lot of challenges, some... very strange, to most folks' sensibilities.

It's hard to avoid inbreeding, of course. The longer you work in the orchards, the more that warmth seeps into you, and you start to look at everything around you in a new light. It's a tricky balance to get yourself out of there before you find yourself grinding on the trees or something. We have to either work alone, or else work with people we don't mind stopping to rut with every hour or so. You can't send a boy and a girl that are related down there, you're basically guaranteeing they'll end up with child regardless. Doesn't matter if they hate each other the rest of the time or anything like that, when you're under those branches, the touch of another becomes the most intoxicating drug in the world.

It helps to keep some creatures that can help with the work. Smart enough to do basic labor, but not smart enough to make trouble. As long as they can't breed with anyone in the family, of course, or with each other. The population would go out of control too easily, so every new creature we bring in, we have to test carefully and see. They can be nice for relieving urges down there, too. Outsiders might frown on that behavior, but if you put them down in the orchard, they'd do the same or worse. It's just fact.

And that does mean it's tough managing everyone, too. You want to put young, strong folk down there to get the work done, but they're the most vulnerable to the effects. If anyone's ever in trouble, if they get injured or something, you have to be very careful who you send down to help them. And every couple you have in the family usually ends up with many children, for that matter, so what do you do with the rest? Sometimes it's a matter of just finding work for them elsewhere, to keep their hands busy.

But that's good, because we do have to do a lot of maintaining work in the surrounding area, you know. Watching the paths in, adjusting the flows carefully, waiting and watching to see how it plays out. It's always a delicate balance, and things can shift far away and suddenly change our entire situation. Once, there was a battle at the foot of the mountain, and everything was thrown off so severely the trees nearly died out before we could readjust the flows. We're still easing back into a "normal" configuration after that, and it's been over a decade.

Learning to control the flows, and passing the entirety of the subtleties of that knowledge on to our young, is also a great challenge. Partly it is a matter of instinct, of being able to feel the rise and fall of these energies and the way they move, how they interact with each other and the world. Partly it is a matter of science and arcane knowledge, recognizing the many bizarre little situations that can arise and mislead you into making things worse. Certainly it is not a job for everyone-- sometimes a son can be completely inept at handling the flows where his sister is a genius that seems to guide energy as easily as breathe.

And actually using the magic is another beast entirely. You have to learn how to empty yourself, to align yourself with the element you want to work with, to become part of it. But if you go too far, if you submerge yourself completely in that energy, you can be lost to it. Just... leave your body behind to become part of the flow. We've lost many promising young children to that mistake. So you have to become part of it, while holding on to who you are, to your body, to your desires. You guide the energy, you shape it with your desires, and... if you can do it just right, you can create the effects you want in the world.

I've watched entire fields of crops sprout from seeds and rise to full bloom in a matter of minutes. Trees groan as they're weighed down with rapidly sprouting fruit, bringing the entire orchard to bow. Of course, often that doesn't even take any active magic. We keep so much life energy pooled down there, sometimes it's tough just to keep up with how quickly everything grows. Sometimes you can be planting seeds and look back to see a slope of seedlings rising toward where you started.

But it can also be hard dealing with intruders. We're generally not in danger, but deciding what to do with them is difficult. We have to keep this place secret, you understand. Both to protect our family, and to keep this power secret. It's too dangerous to let just anyone control these flows-- you could kill an entire city's population without breaching the walls, or suck the land dry with foolhardy farming all too easily. The power is difficult to use wisely, and easy to use poorly.

So we can't let anyone that enters leave. Usually, people and beasts are turned away easily enough by our defenses-- the mountains are dense around our valley, the entrances few and difficult, and every pass into our land has a key spot where we keep small pools of death energy. This alone scares off almost all our potential intruders. When you enter such a space, you feel a terrible sense of dread, like something is about to come crashing down upon you, like at any moment you will simply cease to exist. Almost anything living will feel a deep, instinctive need to flee when they enter such a place. And if they manage to push through, we have sentries at most of these passes ready to deal with them. It's a trivial thing, with that much death energy available, to snuff out just about any life we see. And things that die in this way, for whatever reason, don't come back.

So if something manages to slip through, we'll often force it to orgasm itself into a stupor, then cart it to one of those death pools to finish it off. It's sad and ugly work, but necessary. Doing so when we're already in the throes of ecstasy, working in the orchards, is incredibly difficult, but we have to keep our family and our tradition safe.

Of course, we don't always kill them. This is also how we get new blood-- new creatures to help with the work, or new members of the family to keep our line diverse. But making that judgment, whether to kill or conscript, is a fraught choice that never gets any easier. Many times, filled with the passion and zeal of the orchard, our young ones and even many of the older ones bring home people and creatures that they believe might be able to help us. But once you climb the hillside and clear your head, things can seem very different. It's hard on us, especially when we're so young and hopeful, to realize that all our hopes, all the dreams we'd pinned on this new creature, were only drunken imaginings. Often, too often, we have to quell the affections blazing in our hearts for these creatures and accept... that they will serve us best as fertilizer. It's a terrible thing, dragging them to the pass.

I still remember the puppy love I felt for some of them, early on. How certain I was that I'd found my true love, or a life-long companion, and then... The confusion. The terrible clarity. And, after that... I had to end them. I carry that pain with me always.

I cannot say this is an easy life. I cannot say I don't hate it, at times. But it is also a blessed life, and often a joyous one. And every day, we work to improve our understanding of this magic, our family's secret. Perhaps one day, it will be safe to share it with the world. I hope for that, and I work to refine my technique, to discover everything I can about how best to use it and what it is capable of. I hope that my work will one day benefit many people, across the world. Enough that I will be forgiven for those I have had to extinguish. Enough that my love and my pain will be proven right and just.

I hope that mine, and my family's, will be a good and noble legacy, in some distant future age. I hope this dearly.