Post by account_disabled on Dec 16, 2023 22:47:42 GMT -5
Customs and folklore help create a particular atmosphere in the fantasy genre, because they introduce the reader to a new world and because they slowly reveal its secrets. Just read the incipit of Zeferina to immediately enter the magical Italy described by Coltri. Rows of teeth were tattooed and carved into the skin of both cheeks with meticulous scarifications, becoming simple designs when they joined on the white-colored lips; the eyelids, the bridge of the nose and the nostrils were black to make one believe, in the darkness, that they were cavities.
It was said of them that they spoke to the owls, the birds that became nocturnal after the Crucifixion, and when they returned, beating stones together to create echoes, warnings not to look, they were Phone Number Data shadows in front of the windows, masks of skulls that approached the glass. To pay homage to them, meat was nailed to the stable doors, wine and pieces of bread and biscuits were left. Aren't there customs and traditions in these few lines? Customs perhaps dictated by fear of those strange beings, but they exist. And they introduce the reader into the story, because they let him know the most hidden parts of the narrated world. I remember a disgusting custom in a scene from Harry Harrison's Hammer and the Cross trilogy, a Viking epic: two characters who drank each other's urine to seal I can't remember what thing.
A scene like this certainly isn't very atmospheric, but it helps to make the setting more detailed. Also in the trilogy The Book of the Yilanè, by the same author, an alternative history of prehistoric populations, the author describes some customs of a people, a sort of large banquet that resulted in an orgy. Sometimes it is a matter of a few lines, of hints, others instead of a few pages, obviously depending on the story. But they are elements that can prove fundamental for the setting to be complete and above all suitable for the characters and their lives.
It was said of them that they spoke to the owls, the birds that became nocturnal after the Crucifixion, and when they returned, beating stones together to create echoes, warnings not to look, they were Phone Number Data shadows in front of the windows, masks of skulls that approached the glass. To pay homage to them, meat was nailed to the stable doors, wine and pieces of bread and biscuits were left. Aren't there customs and traditions in these few lines? Customs perhaps dictated by fear of those strange beings, but they exist. And they introduce the reader into the story, because they let him know the most hidden parts of the narrated world. I remember a disgusting custom in a scene from Harry Harrison's Hammer and the Cross trilogy, a Viking epic: two characters who drank each other's urine to seal I can't remember what thing.
A scene like this certainly isn't very atmospheric, but it helps to make the setting more detailed. Also in the trilogy The Book of the Yilanè, by the same author, an alternative history of prehistoric populations, the author describes some customs of a people, a sort of large banquet that resulted in an orgy. Sometimes it is a matter of a few lines, of hints, others instead of a few pages, obviously depending on the story. But they are elements that can prove fundamental for the setting to be complete and above all suitable for the characters and their lives.