[UA] (probably OT, no WW bashing) Small Town Magic

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Greg Stolze <holycrow at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> Actually, one of the ideas I kicked around was for a
> resolutely normal,
> mundane small town (I was going to use my hometown
> -- shouts out to
> Davenport, oh yeah!) that is home to a powerful
> cabal of sorcerers. 

(snip about becoming... attuned. Stop that.)

> If the attuned teens act out their story "properly,"
> nothing much happens.
> But if they're prevented from enacting their
> destiny, weird shit goes down.
> Quite often, unpleasant weird shit.


There's an Alan Dean Foster short story about a guy
who breaks down in a small southern Arizona town and
sees a beautiful, glowing ghost girl.  He can't help
but be entranced by her radiant (literally) beauty as
she flees through the night and he stays in town to
find out where she goes every evening (despite the
fervent attempts of the locals to get this guy to go
away.)

He winds up following the girl anyway and, to his
bewilderment, discovers her dancing with a whole bunch
of other glowing figures atop an old mesa.  Each
figure is more beautiful than the next.  The guy is
overcome with desire and lurches toward the dancers
(only to be cold-cocked by a shovel. The locals have
followed him and are protecting their town's secret.)

Now, this is the bit I liked.  It's humanocentric. 
The glowing people aren't ghosts or faeries or aliens
or anything like that. They produce an unsuaul amount
of luciferite in their skin, like fireflies.  The
townspeople figure its a side effect of all that
nuclear testing a couple decades ago.

So, this small town --G was thinking of, which all the
Avatars and such: they wouldn't be clueless. They
couldn't afford to be.  They'd kind of be the opposite
of clueless.  It would be kind of like running into
the children of the corn when the parents were aware
enough to call in some child psychiatrists.  The kids
still have a lot of power, He Who Walks Behind the
Rows is still appeased and the adults have learned to
cope.

It might even be neat if they were completely open
about it, they just kept quiet about all the magic
because they figured no one would really care much.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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