The Wrack

by John Bierce

  The process of becoming a seer involves blinding oneself in one or both eyes, then replacing the eye with polished spherical gems. Different types of gems allow users to interpret different types of information about the material world carried through the Iopan aether, often allowing them to look inside physical objects. It generally takes several years to be trained, depending on one’s chosen discipline. The overwhelming majority of seers stick to one eye— normal sight is still far more versatile than any single seer’s gem, and better at avoiding bruising one’s shin. There are rare seers who choose to remove both eyes, and there are, apparently, some interesting advantages that come from using two different gems at once, or being able to see with parallax based depth perception in the aether using two of the same stone.

  The difference between the stones doesn’t seem to be a matter of what aether signals they perceive better, but rather what aether signals they filter out, and how. Nephrite, for instance, filters out almost everything but water.

  Interestingly, the process of developing Iopan scrying seems to develop an aetheric extension of the brain’s visual centers into the aether itself, which is an unusually complex aetheric structure for a mage, but as usual, the trend of low-aether density worlds having such complex structures in their magics holds true.

  Political Overview:

  Iopan politics are nothing particularly unusual for a human world with low aether density. The usual standard array of empires and kingdoms dominate the two primary continents, Teringia and Oyansur.

  When it comes to multiversal politics, Iopis is of far greater interest. The Radhan are present in large numbers, and are definitely aware of their larger multiversal presence, unlike the Radhan on many other worlds. They actually control one of the major labyrinths granting access to Iopis, in the heart of a major archipelago a good chunk of the world away from the continents.

  [Redacted’s Note: There’s no keeping the Radhan out of a world if they want to be there, and they can be useful allies, so we continue to seek good relations with the Radhan, despite their weak position in the multiverse.]

  The [redacted] appear to be present in large numbers as well, but as usual, they bear little interest in surface dwellers, save avoiding them. There is some speculation that the northernmost human civilization of Iopis, the warrior culture known as the Singers, may have had some contact with the [redacted]. The irony of this should be obvious.

  [Redacted’s Note: As usual, attempts to communicate with the [redacted] are exercises in frustration. They’re always preferable to their more aggressive rivals who take interest in the surface, however.]

  Most important to multiversal politics is the presence of the [redacted], who have built numerous [redacted] on Iopis. Iopis appears to number among their most important stronghold worlds.

  [Redacted’s Note: Galvachren is even more incomprehensible at times than the [redacted]. He’ll claim we’re not on Anastis, a world we quite openly act on, but then outs our operations on Iopis? It’s hardly the greatest secret ever, but still, it’s why we make sure to be cautious with the access we allow him to our [redacted]. We certainly don’t want to risk directly challenging him, and he has been useful often in the past, so we won’t take any action in response to this intelligence leak.]

  Appendix B: Excerpt from [Redacted] Assessment of the Wrack Crisis

  If this had been an actual [redacted] incursion, with active [redacted] infections, Iopis would have fallen swiftly. The plan to feed medical knowledge to the Moonsworn, resulting in the rise of the sect known as the Dedicated, was not nearly as effective as hoped. It nearly led to a civil war among the healers, which would have been disastrous. In addition, religious tensions on Teringia weakened Moonsworn efforts to combat disease.

  The overconfidence with which we held our plan could have been our downfall. We kept too few agents in the Sunsworn Empire and almost entirely ignored Teringia, instead focusing all our attention on the great empires in the south of Oyansur. Just because we consider a part of the world a cultural backwater, it doesn’t mean we can get away with making excuses not to have agents there. At the very least, we should have planted observers in the Radhan fleets to keep an eye on Iopis’ north.

  Fortunately, the Wrack crisis seems to have played out largely in our favor. True peace reigns for the first time in centuries between the Eidola ancestor worshipers of Teringia and the new Moonsworn Empire— and the Moonsworn are more widely accepted than ever across Teringia. It’s not entirely a rosy picture, of course— the new Fervent theocracy is dangerously unstable and controls the Krannenberg mistform labyrinth still. A final decision whether to help prop them up or destabilize them needs to be made. I recommend the latter, since if they fully consolidate their lands, a war intended to wipe out the Galicantan nobility is next, and that’s hardly likely to go well for anyone involved.

  The new Moonsworn Emperor is already facing challenge after challenge at home, but we’ve been covertly heading off as many of them as we can. Amazahd also takes after the rest of Moonsworn in his response to threats— he’s responded to all assassination attempts with ruthless mass poisonings of the perpetrators and their families. It is an uncomfortable facet of the Moonsworn that their religious dedication to healing by no means makes them a gentle or merciful people. Regardless, the ascent of Amazahd to the throne atop their holy mountain can be seen as nothing but a net benefit for us.

  As an interesting side-effect of the Wrack crisis, consumption of beef has effectively ended on Iopis, and there’s a major leather supply crisis at the moment.

  -[Redacted]’s commentary, written twenty-five years before the first battles of the [Redacted].

  Appendix C: Galvachren’s Guide to Iopan Gem Scrying

  Amethyst: The stone used by semaphore seers. While that is its most common purpose, it remains also a valued tool of researchers into the nature of the Iopan Aether, as it emphasizes turbulence within stronger currents in the aether over lesser ones.

  Citrine: The architect’s left eye, this variant of quartz is perfect for seeing turbulence from metal in the aether, especially iron— though it works quite well for any metal. Works tolerably well for wood, so long as it is dry— wet or green wood can still be seen, but not as well.

  Diamond: The surveyor’s eye. Diamond filters out the majority of the turbulence the physical world forms within the aether, letting the overall pattern and currents within the aether come to the fore. Highly useful to both surveyors for the semaphore network and to researchers of aether. Due to its common nature, lesser beauty, and relatively specialized use, it ears a lower price than most gems.

  Emerald: A healer’s stone like peridot, but far more effective. Emeralds of sufficient size and quality are incredibly rare on Iopis, however.

  Garnet: The architect’s right eye, this gem has a singularly peculiar reaction with aetheric turbulence generated by stone— it renders it nearly opaque, save for flaws and cracks. Does not work on other garnets, spinels, or a few other minerals, curiously.

  Glass: Cannot be used to see the aether in any meaningful way. This applies to obsidian and opal as well. Glass eyes are only used to keep the seer’s empty eye socket from closing up.

  Nephrite: This variety of jade is the true sailor’s eye, allowing impressive perception of rocks and fish beneath the waves, as well as the shapes of sea currents. It should be noted that ship’s seers using nephrite are mostly just seeing holes in the water where fish and rocks are— nephrite is strongly attuned to water, especially salt water. Despite the common belief that only transparent and translucent gemstones may work as eyes, it’s the crystalline structure that channels the seer’s vision into the aether, not the crystal’s transparency, as proven by this opaque stone.

  Peridot: The healer’s eye, finely tuned towards seeing the spirit ripples produced by flesh.

  Quartz: No particular strengths or weaknesses. Largely used as a training aid, and sometimes by especially skilled and focused generalist seers. />
  Ruby: Despite being merely a beryl variant closely related to emeralds, rubies are much better suited towards viewing plant-life, especially living plants. Though nearly so rare as emeralds, they fetch a lower price, as they bear a less useful ability.

  Sapphire: Despite folklore and superstition, these are not the best suited towards seeing through the waves. In fact, among the learned, they’re better known as the brewer’s or dyer’s eye— they have a strong affinity for many thicker liquids and oils, as well as fermentation. They may still be used by ship’s seers, however.

  Spinel: Though commonly called the Weaver’s Eye, spinel is one of the most challenging gem eyes to master. Best attuned towards seeing fibers of any sort, whether cloth, within plants, or the like. Also of use in examining muscles. Interestingly, while all spinels work for fiber, each color of spinel has a secondary use— metal, or vapor, or bone, or something of the sort. A spinel-trained seer with enough colors of spinel is one of the most versatile types of seer. Spinels cannot perceive other spinels or garnets through the aether.

  There are dozens of other crystalline gemstones in use by Iopan seers, ranging from tourmaline to agate to even (oddly) polished fragments of columnar basalt, and many of the gemstones listed here have alternate uses as well. The above are simply the gemstones most widely known on the Teringian continent.

  A few note on Iopan seers in the multiverse:

  Most worlds’ aethers are not nearly so influenced by the physical world as Iopis’, rendering the traditional Iopan scrying more challenging to seers who have traveled off Iopis. Stabilizing wards and spells may still allow them to perform their traditional functions. This, however, is not the primary reason Iopan seers are of interest to multiversal powers— they have an unparalleled ability to perceive the aether among any known mages. They can see spells being constructed within the aether, tell mages from non-mages by observing their aetheric reservoirs and other internal aetheric constructs, tell [redacted] from normal humans by their even more extreme aetheric structures, detect [redacted] incursions (at least from some of the more aggressive hordes and Khanates), and tell [redacted] from normal [redacted] (though they’re surely compromised at a close enough distance to do so, and a simple visual examination from a distance can do the same. They can, however, tell the various [redacted]s apart easily, another unusual ability.) Countless mages of the [redacted], who hold this world as one of their bases, willingly remove their own eyes to become Iopan seers while stationed there.

  There’s a second, rarer type of seer, that may replace other missing senses with Iopan aether scrying. Deaf and anosmic mages have both picked up the magic, as have a few others. This offers some unusual possibilities, but little development of this has occurred, and the lack of a gem equivalent makes things much, much more challenging. (Non-gem Iopan visual scrying is possible, just difficult, rare, and not as effective, and still requires the removal or blinding of at least one eye.)

  While rumors of Iopan seers off of Iopis using obsidian or opal eyes are common, they’re also false. Those rumors spring from [redacted] gem mages, who have only recently begun making their presence known in the multiverse. Their magic is significantly more active than Iopan seers. ([Redacted]’s note: that’s one massive understatement.)

  Afterword

  Thank you so much for reading The Wrack, and I hope you enjoyed it! It’s a weird book, I know, and I really appreciate everyone who stuck it out. (And who survived all that after-material! I might have a bit of an addiction to appendices.) Writing it has been a long, weird process- in great part due to the craziness that is COVID-19. (More on that in a second.)

  As I started writing The Wrack in late summer of 2019, I began traveling the world full time as a digital nomad. And though it’s been incredible to see the world like I have, it’s been pretty rough on my work schedule, to say the least. Over the last few months, however, I’ve gotten fully back into the writing groove, and you can hopefully expect the next book on my docket, Mage Errant 4 (currently titled The Lost City of Ithos), a lot faster than The Wrack.

  I was in Vietnam in December 2019 when I first started hearing reports of a novel strain of coronavirus. I’d been working on The Wrack for a few months, and had been doing heavy research on epidemiology for about a year beforehand. (On top of a lifelong interest in the topic, as well.)

  You might have expected me to immediately get concerned, and peg it as the oncoming pandemic it was.

  You’d be wrong. I wasn’t stressed about it, save as a public policy question. I genuinely thought that China and the rest of the world had taken seriously the lessons of SARS, MERS, Ebola, and swine flu, and that it would be contained before it spread too far.

  I was pretty far off on the mark on that one, to say the least.

  I was in Fiji when I sent The Wrack to my editor, and four days later the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

  As of this writing, I’m currently hunkered down in Vietnam again, thanks to the high quality of their response to COVID-19. I barely made it in before they closed their borders, and I actually ended up having someone with COVID-19 on my flight. Thankfully, I didn’t catch it, but I did have to spend two weeks in official quarantine, which was less than fun.

  I don’t know how the world is going to change after this. For me, personally, it effectively means my time as a digital nomad is over for the near future. It’s simply not a viable lifestyle during a pandemic. I’ve got plans to stay hunkered down in Vietnam for a few more months, but after that, I genuinely don’t know. (Ideally, Vietnam will continue being easy-going about extending visas.) I’m at unknown/moderate risk from COVID-19, as I have congenital heart disease. There’s simply not enough data to know. Sometimes it’s safe to assume that people with congenital heart disease face the same risks as people with congestive heart disease, and people with congestive heart disease have significantly heightened risks with COVID-19. Sometimes, though, it’s wildly off-base to assume that congenital and congestive heart disease patients will face the same health risks. I’m still young- 31 at time of this writing- and in decent physical shape, but I genuinely don’t know how well I’d do if I got infected. It scares the shit out of me.

  Given how badly things are going in the US, I sure can’t risk coming back there anytime soon. My visa in Vietnam won’t last forever, though. I don’t know what I’m going to do then, but I’ll figure it out.

  I think working on The Wrack really helped prepare me emotionally for a lot of what’s happening now, but it’s still really hard. I find myself just staring at the tab in my browser that contains a tracker for global COVID-19 deaths, dreading opening it to look but still feeling compelled to. I’m reading more news articles every day than ever.

  But I’m also doing my best to pitch in however I can. I’m checking up on friends and family as much as I can, which isn’t always as much as I’d like. I’ve been buying gifts for friends and family members to try and keep them entertained and take the edge off the crazy. I’ve been participating in charitable sales and upping my charitable donations from my usual 10% to 15-20% of my income, mostly to Doctors Without Borders. And, well… I wrote this book. Confronting disasters and calamity head on in my reading has always helped me cope with it, and if The Wrack does even a tiny bit to help others in that regard, I’ll count it a wild success.

  I hope that doesn’t come off as bragging or arrogance, because I don’t feel overly proud of it. Mostly, I just desperately feel like there’s more I should be doing, that I’m not doing enough. That I should be donating more money, spend more time checking up on my loved ones, spending more hours a day writing so I can earn more to donate. Something.

  And then I look around, and I see so many amazing people all over the world pitching in, and I see the good in people shining out. I see people stepping up everywhere, doing their best to put a little more kindness in the world, to try and offer what helping hands they can. And maybe I don’t feel especially proud of myself right now, but I’
m sure as hell proud of all of you.

  And that helps me remember that we get to share this burden, that we don’t have to carry it alone. That we can’t carry it alone. We might be separated physically, but we’re still all in this together. And knowing that helps, it really does. It certainly deflates my hubris of thinking I need to shoulder the weight of the world. And more importantly, it gives me hope.

  These are rough times, but we will get through them. And just a heads up, the first friend or family member I see after all this social distancing is over is going to have to put up with an hour-long hug.

  Stay safe, people. We’ll get through this.

  —————————————————————————

  For news about The Wrack, the Mage Errant series, other upcoming works, and random thoughts about fantasy, worldbuilding, and whatever else pops in my mind, check out my blog at www.johnbierce.com. The best way to keep updated on new releases is to sign up for my mailing list, which you can also find on my website. You can also contact me via my website, via email at john.g.bierce@gmail.com, or on Reddit. (u/johnbierce) Some cool folks on Reddit also started a subreddit for my books at r/MageErrant. (I regularly post updates on there as well.)