World Building

World of Wyrmfeld

In pre-Christian Georgian mythology, the universe is perceived as a sphere. It comprises three worlds or levels, known as skneli (სკნელი):

Zeskneli (ზესკნელი) – the highest world, and the home of the gods. White is the color of Zeskneli.
The Earth – the middle world, home of mortals. Its center is divided into two regions, anterior (tsina samkaro, წინა სამყარო; or tsinaskneli, წინასკნელი) and posterior (ukana samkaro, უკანა სამყარო; or ukana skneli, უკანასკნელი); – beyond which the lands of Earth are divided by seven or nine mountains (or seas), which a hero can traverse only by first undergoing a spiritual transformation (known as gardatsvaleba (გარდაცვალება) – which is also the word for “death”) and seeking the help of magical animals, such as the Paskunji, the Rashi and others. Red is the colour of this world.
Kveskneli (ქვესკნელი) – the lowest world or underworld, inhabited by the ogres, serpents, and demons. Black is the colour of Kveskneli.

Men and women are thus only emanations of, or substitutes for, the gods above and the demons below, respectively. The same principle holds true for all created things: the entities and substances of the universe are divided into two antagonistic series, one wild and demonic, the other social and divine.

The only entities or substances that are truly real are those of the upper world of Zeskneli and the lower world of Kveskneli. The middle world inhabited by humans is thus only a place of passage and meeting, and the beings who people it have no essence in themselves, being only emanations of the divine or subterranean worlds, or else their unions.

References to the epic tale of Jason and the golden fleece are interwoven throughout the Wyrmfeld Chronicles.

Inspiration

The world of the Wyrmfeld chronicles is a blending the early history of Britannia with Georgian, Greek, and English mythologies.

An astute reader will recognize the many references from the epic tale The Argonautica. For those unfamiliar with the tale allow me to elaborate.

Jason Westfield gets his name from the titular character of Jason and the Argonauts. In the historical account, the hero Jason and his crew of Argonauts set out on a quest for the fleece by order of King Pelias in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly. Through the help of Medea, they acquire the Golden Fleece. The story is of great antiquity and was current in the time of Homer (eighth century BC). It survives in various forms, among which the details vary.

“I cast into the furrows for seed, not the corn of Demeter, but the teeth of a dread serpent that grow up into the fashion of armed men..”

The creatures in the 1963 film Jason_and_the_Argonauts became the stuff of my childhood nightmares and reappear in my tales as the humanoid “Zombie Knights”. In the Argonautica and the film these creatures appear as one-dimensional monsters, but I find them to be tragic characters that deserver further exploration. If we consider that these creatures were once brave men who were devoured by the ‘dread serpent’, their souls were trapped in some sort of purgatory for hundreds of years and then reanimated as slaves in the service of the one who drew them out of purgatory.

I have never been a fan of zombie movies, which are a subgenre of horror, slasher or gore films. That being said, I’ve watched every episode of the Walking Dead, and enjoyed most of it – except of course when the zombies chomp down on someone. I’m a foodie, don’t hate me. So when it came to the Children of Hydra aka the “Zombie Knights”, I decided to take the defining characteristics of zombies and complete invert them.

When I first hit on the germ of idea that eventually became this tale was when I saw a trailer for the movie: “The Fisher King” where Robin Williams plays a delusional homeless man who claims to have been tasked by cherubs to find the Holy Grail. Which led to the thought – what if knights still existed in the modern world? How would such a a world make logical sense? I loved watching the Dune movies, but intellectually have a problem with such a heavy use of blades to do battle in an age of intergalactic travel. Or worse still, in Rebel Moon, a world where you can traverse star systems but somehow haven’t mastered hydroponics and need to extort grain from a planet? In the world of Wyrmfeld Chronicles, the answer is a simple one – if guns and conventional weapons are useless against certain foes, you need to use something else.