Oh My Lore

I’ll be honest—I’ve forgotten half of the past decade. But I still remember clearly the day I first read through The Silmarillion. I was fourteen, in possession of an obligation-free Saturday and a new book—a thick, daunting son of a bitch, with cover art drawn by Tolkien himself. I’d read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings already, so I knew what I was in for—or thought I did.

On the inside of the jacket, the flap copy concluded as such:

The Silmarillion is not a romance, not a fairy story, not a fictitious history contrived for its own sake. It is a work of unparalleled and sustained imagination, a sombre vision in the mode of myth and legend of the conflict between the desire to dominate the world and other wills and the creative power that proceeds from the development of inherent inner talents. The corruption of Fëanor, the creator of supreme beauty, by the deceits of Morgoth and by his own possessive passion for the things of his own making, and the fruits of that corruption, is one of its central themes.

This passage alone should have clued me in that what I was about to read wasn’t going to be a story, at least not in the same sense of Frodo’s or Bilbo’s stories—but something entirely else. Something I didn’t understand, because I hadn’t read anything quite like it before. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, that Saturday morning.

The first few chapters, almost biblical in tone, caught me off guard. From breakfast to lunch, I read about the creation of Middle-earth and the Silmarils. I sat on our screened-in porch during the afternoon, reading of the Noldor. After supper, I read about the wars in Beleriand while I lay in bed. I read on through that night, under the dim light of the old blue lamp on my nightstand. At some point, the smell of crisp, musty pages turned to waffles and a voice called for me to come and eat breakfast. Interrupting. I hadn’t finished, but I was done for.

Maybe it was my impressionable age—“formative experiences,” and all that—but something changed. A fiction so detailed it felt real. And the lore, by god. It was as if I were reading from a history book rather than a fantasy. Tolkien’s mythos was as detailed as Greek or Roman pantheons. His battles as tragic as Gettysburg or Stalingrad. The scale of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad comparable to Armageddon itself.

I gained preference that day. Bear in mind, I’d read little fantasy outside Tolkien by this point. I was just a nerdy, teenage boy. But this…this was love at first sight.

Where does a young, Southern boy in rural Alabama direct such an interest? There weren’t any local fan clubs to join. No social media. The internet didn’t exist—not along our dirt road, it didn’t. Sure, there was the strange group of boys at school who played D&D, but none of them actually read anything outside rulebooks and comics.

Most importantly, there were no more books left with which to explore Middle-earth.

So, I pointed my newfound passion the only direction I could—I started my own world, with my own mythos. My own everything. Problem is, I never stopped.

Nor do I have any intention to. I relish the mythopoeic process so much I’ve come to rely on it. Lore is my gateway drug to writing. I need a steady hit to get the creative juices flowing. One peek inside my Scrivener file and you can see the results—an unholy mass of make-believe that befuddles the senses.

I don’t entirely fault Tolkien for my addiction. Many others have contributed to the problem. I’m looking at you, Howard and Herbert. Le Guin and Lucas. Williams and Hobb, Jordan and Martin. And a bunch more, too.

Accusations aside, most fantasy authors (I’d assume) must enjoy world-building to a degree. And even if they don’t, they surely recognize the importance of it. After all, lore is the ship that carries us to other worlds. The more thorough its craftsmanship, the farther that ship can sail. Even fantasy set in the real world requires you get out of the harbor.

Since my main vessels are still under construction, the entries I plan on adding to the “Lore Archive” serve as skiffs for venturing out into the shallows. I may throw a “deep end” entry here and there, just for fun, but I’m starting with a fairly innocuous entry about a chain of mountains—a truly random tidbit that, like a brochure in a rest-stop kiosk, directs us to a place we didn’t know existed and probably haven’t the time visit. But hey—it sounds neat and excites that most important sense—the sense of wonder.

COPING WITH CODING (aka the “Red Text” explanation)

Now before you go clicking that hyperlink I just learned how to make (a pat on my own back), I need to give a disclaimer regarding the red text in my lore entries.

I mentioned in my first post that I am learning WordPress. Well, it turns out there are even more lovely things to learn beyond website building. (Yay…) You see, I had wanted to include a wiki with the website, given the extent of the lore. However, after about six hours of fighting with MediaWiki (which Wikipedia runs on), I surrendered this notion and sought simpler solutions within WordPress itself.

Now, I’m using a plugin called “Yada Wiki” (https://wordpress.org/plugins/yada-wiki/#developers) by David McCan. It is a wonderful little program / software / whatever that does exactly what I need it to do. And it’s easy to learn. So hats off to you, David! 

But back to the red text…

Yes, those are indeed links to future topics I haven’t had time to create. Yada Wiki lets me go ahead and create them now so that when I do get around to creating a lore entry for them, they’ll automatically populate all instances where they are referenced. This will save loads of time in the long run, as I have fairly high ambitions for the wiki.

How ambitious, you ask?

Well, you didn’t ask. Because I’ve already told you about the Scrivener file, and you know better. And if you did click on that hyperlink I’m so proud of, and viewed the first lore entry about the Eanothi, you’ve already seen all the “to be written” red links there are.

Now if I just had few of those childhood Saturdays left over to spend writing them…