Okay, ready for the next installment of O4S trivia? I definitely am, as Carcosa has one of my favorite scenes in the series. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Let’s go.
1. More Stephen King Shout-Outs
The man in black fled
across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
So begins The Dark Tower series,
which are among Coyote’s and my favorite books of all time. In Carcosa, a woman in red flees across the
desert, and the gunslingers follow. Our
version of Carcosa is a place where time and distance is “soft,” and the world
has definitely “moved on,” littered with crumbling relics. The relics, like bombs and Gatling guns, have
disturbing implications for what came before.
It’s implied that Carcosa destroyed itself in a war. What’s left has reverted to a crude Old West
culture with struggling farms, desert and bandits.
No meks in King's story, though.
2. Westerns
The Gunslinger as
a western also ties in with our KC references—as I mentioned in the last trivia
post, KC is a cowtown. We host the
American Royal World Series of Barbecue every year. Kearney, MO is home to the James-Younger
gang, who, as you may also recall, play a big role in Book I.
In Book II, JD really gets to take the lead, as he fits
right in in western-themed Carcosa. As
Murphy will later say, “Guns, dusters, plenty of stuff to shoot.” Yeah, JD’s home. In his backstory, you will see that he met
his wife, a smokin’ hot Latina, in Yuma, AZ.
As JD is driving along that western highway, he’s listening to John Lee
Hooker’s “Bad Like Jesse James” on the radio.
The location is a nod to 3:10 to
Yuma. It’s also just up the road a
piece from Tacna and the Devil’s Highway, where Bill, Emily and Vickers will
enact their own showdown some thirty years later.
Finally, Nathan DePriest is our pale rider, both of the
Clint Eastwood and Biblical variety. There’s
also Nathan’s lair, known as Calvera, Spanish for “skull,” and a reference to
the villain in The Magnificent Seven.
3. More Kansas City Shout-Outs
In Book I, the team sets out from KC. Bill drinks Roasterie coffee. In Book II, we see that Kate works for the
Kansas City Public Library, the Downtown branch, which has been listed in
several places as one of the world’ s most beautiful libraries. It does have the giant chess set on the
roof. Kate also stops by Fervere’s, a KC
bakery, for her cook-out with Bill and Cecil.
We never say it, but it’s implied that Clayton lives in Hyde Park,
a grand and historic KC neighborhood.
The main library building
The library parking garage
4. Languages
The written and spoken language of Carcosa reflects its past
as a place where many worlds once connected, what Coyote and I think of as a “hub”
dimension. The Mayan writings we connect
back to Book I—presumably, Whitefeather’s visions (or, more likely, his
extradimensional excursions) took him to Carcosa. Carcosa’s proximity to Excelsior Springs also
influenced the architect who designed the Hall of Waters.
The names and nationalities of Carcosa’s inhabitants illustrate
the diversity of the place—or the remnants of it, anyway. Old Geb, his granddaughter, and Bran Okafor
are dark-skinned, African-looking people.
Okafor is actually a Nigerian name.
A lot of Carcosans are Latino, like Diego. The Eerin's names are derived from Australian aboriginal words. The Hormiga folk have
Biblical names, mostly from the Apocryphal texts, like Enoch.
A translator amulet was necessary to navigate the linguistic
waters, and what good is magic in a series like this if you can’t talk to your
extradimensional neighbors? Coyote is an
old-school Trekkie, and he always appreciated their universal translator
devices. We’re both Star Wars fans, and one of the things that disappointed most about
the prequels was how everybody suddenly spoke English. We missed the polyglot universe of the
original trilogy.
5. Lovecrafty Goodness
Carcosa is more popular than ever these days thanks to True Detective. (I blogged about that, too.)
As much as we owe to Lovecraft, with our concept of horror
(madness and the terrible beings that lurk outside the known universe), we also
owe much to the older incarnations of Carcosa, from the works of Ambrose Bierce and Robert
Chambers.
In our book, Bill is tormented more than ever by the King in
Yellow—or is he? In his backstory, we
learn that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, the result of a
spectacularly deadly mission in Peru. (BTW,
the Lima beastie came straight out of one of my nightmares. You’re welcome.) Ah, PTSD—the gift that just keeps on
giving. Bill also wrestled with a little
problem with prescription pills. Again, the
concept of mental illness as horror is very Lovecraft. We find the idea of losing one’s mind to be
just as frightening as any Elder God.
In the original Ambrose Bierce story, Carcosa was a ruin—hence,
our Carcosa is a ruin. Of course, our
Carcosa refers to an entire planet, not just a town or city. In Robert Chambers’ work, Carcosa was cursed. (I forgot to mention in the Book I trivia post—we named
the fictional town of Chambers, KS after Robert.)
Our Carcosa is decidedly cursed—virtually all of the wildlife is deadly
and/or poisonous. The majority of the
people and animals suffer from what they call “blights,” genetic mutations that
have been handed down over untold generations.
We also reference Lovecraft’s The Doom that Came to Sarnath, about a ruined city that was once a cultural mecca. Religion
was its downfall. Presumably, religion
was also the downfall of the Sarnath in our Carcosa, which is what brought such
devastation to the land and its creatures.
We include the remains of Lake Hali.
In Lovecraft’s work, Carcosa was on the shores of Lake Hali.
6. The Eerin
The Eerin are one of the extreme examples of genetic
mutation, presumably from some sort of horrible nuclear fallout. We couldn’t imagine anything worse than being
an albino mutation in the middle of a desert.
Hence, the Eerin are cave dwellers. They were once gentle, nomadic shepherds. It is also implied that their relatives are
the ones who went and got all citified and founded Sarnath.
A lot of elements went into creating the Eerin. We decided to get a lot of names from Australian
Aboriginal words. The word eerin means “small gray owl,” fitting
for nocturnal, subterranean creatures. Their
home is Canungra, which means, “place
of owls.” They refer to the dead gate as
the Cobar, which means, “burnt earth.”
Their cleansing ritual, Yarrawonga,
means “water running over rocks.”
The Eerin history is gruesome. They hid themselves away in the caves as a
war raged outside hundreds of years ago.
When they ran out of food, they resorted to cannibalism. The current Eerin no longer partake of
meat. It has become a religious and
cultural tenet for them.
We include a creation tale for them, which we based on
Gnostic traditions—the idea that the world had been created by a demiurge rather
than God, hence the world is unclean, material, and separate from the pure
spiritual world. That’s why the Eerin are
so fanatical about cleanliness and purity.
One can also assume that Nathan DePriest was born in
Canungra and, at some point, became an exile.
7. The Mushroom Trip
This. This is, quite possibly, my favorite scene in the whole
series. Obviously, the sequence is rife
with symbolism. Kate eats mushrooms,
like Alice in Wonderland, another
favorite of ours. It starts with her
going down into the stone grotto below Canungra, a reference to the omphalos, the axis mundi, the navel, the
Center of the World. Her Eerin guide is
Kudin, whose name means, “navel.”
From there, she connects to the divine—the spirit of Carcosa
itself, which she discovers is not dead after all. It helps her really tap into her own magical
abilities.
The catfish is a nod to the actress who played Kate West in
the original film, a singer, songwriter and guitarist, who had a catfish tattoo to symbolize the blues.
"Don't you worry. I'll bring you to the other side."
The mushroom trip foreshadows events for the rest of the
series. To prepare ourselves to write
this scene, we spent several days writing out what information we wanted to
hint at and the best way to symbolize it.
We also watched the Buffy the
Vampire Slayer episode, “Restless,” several times. Lots of inspiration there.
Except we inflict ABBA on Kate rather than Grace Slick.
8. Order History
In Book II, in addition to getting some backstory on some of
the characters, we also get more backstory on the Order itself. The Order is, for all intents and purposes, a
borderless nation. It has its own laws,
traditions, and even schools.
Doug gives a pretty extensive history lesson to the team,
and Clayton and Alyssa’s foray onto the Field of St. Matthew, the Order’s
construct (or pocket dimension), also illustrates the organization’s long and storied
past.
The Rosslyn Chapel was built by the Sinclairs—historically true. Obviously, we made up the part where they are
members of the Order. Around that same
time period, Starry Wisdom had thoroughly infiltrated the Catholic Church,
which is why the Templars were persecuted.
The Rosslyn Chapel
For our purposes, the Sinclairs built the Chapel to house
the segments of the Staff of Solomon. All
of the ornate carvings and the unusual architecture of the Chapel itself are
spells to ward off the enemies of the Order.
The Rosslyn Chapel serves as the entryway to the Field of St. Matthew,
the Order’s headquarters. This is where
the Oracles live, where the Council of Names convenes. The Council of Names, like the organization
it serves, is ancient, venerable, and international. (Did you catch that Galileo reference?)
Further glimpse into the Order is offered through Alyssa and
Clayton’s chapters. You see Clayton’s
role as a regional director. You also
see that the Order, being a human institution, is not infallible by how it
treats its Oracles.
9. Five Towns, Five
Moons
In numerology, four is a number of stability and order,
whereas five is a number of chaos and strife.
Hence, Carcosa is a place of five moons and five towns. The Eerin’s myth tells how the Fifth Moon
once gave birth to the demiurge, a being called Yapabat, (from an Aboriginal word
meaning “untamed”).
The five towns are:
- Elysium - named for the mythological afterlife; a paradise.
- Siloam - named for the healing spring in the Bible; there is also a Siloam Springs in Missouri.
- Pata Sur – okay, I made this one up as a joke. Literally, “south paw.” My husband is a leftie.
- Hormiga – this came from something my great-grandmother always used to say. She used to say that bad deeds led al ojo de la hormiga, “into an ant’s eye.” Seemed fitting for a Carcosan town.
- Trapiche – the fifth and final town. Trapiche refers to the star-shaped pattern of inclusions in gemstones, like emeralds. A hint of what is to come in Book III.
10. Parallel
Characters
Like many authors, we have several pairs of characters who
mirror each other. JD and Nathan are a
big example—their speech patterns are very similar; they’re both hard-bitten
gunslingers; they both follow a certain ethical code; they’re both kinda insane. Obviously, the crucial difference is JD has
morals. But we think that Nathan is what
JD could have descended into, had his circumstances been different; had JD
lacked the crucial intervention from Clayton.
Katarina and Alyssa is another such pair. They were both abandoned by their parents; both
mages; both abused horribly; both taken in by a loving caregiver; both have a
fondness for knives. Both young women
will do anything for their parental figures, including becoming a bodyguard/human
shield.
Unfortunately, Katarina’s caregiver turned out to be
Bathory, who took the girl’s already damaged psyche and twisted it further for
her own ends. Alyssa, on the other hand,
was rescued by Clayton.
I know who I’d pick to adopt me.
Motifs & Symbolism
The Book Cover – Book I’s element was water. Book II is earth. Carcosa is a place of desert hardpan, sand
and farmers. Hence, the cover is a sandy
color, all greens and brown earth tones.
Bunnies – Alyssa’s Bugs Bunny lighter. The rabbit-like creatures hopping around
Carcosa. We find out that Vickers is
something of a magpie where magical artifacts are concerned, keeping trophies
for himself from Order and Starry Wisdom operatives—among which are rabbit
items.
Water – Book II is notable for the lack of water in Carcosa. Diego’s
fountain is dry, his well is nearly tapped out.
There is the rainstorm where Bill and Emily really start to bond; the
gentle stream lapping its way through the Field of St. Matthew. Kate has to undergo a ritual bath to enter
Canungra, and of course, there’s the empty fountain at the center of the Locus in Trapiche.
Sri Yantra – no Sri Yantra this time around. There is no connection from Carcosa to
heaven. The closest you get in Carcosa
is “Elysium,” where at least you can buy a bath.
Phoenix – not an actual bird this time, but Clayton and
Alyssa find themselves on a layover in Phoenix.
(Yes, that’s Arizona again.)
Minotaur – the minotaur appears to Kate in her mushroom
trip. I don’t know if I’m more disturbed
by the fact that it’s eating a steak, or that it uses A1 Sauce.
It will share its meat with you.
Pomegranates – In Book I, Akhenaton sips his pomegranate
juice in the end. In Book II, Kate is
tempted by the handsome rancher named Diego, whose home is called Granada—Spanish
for pomegranate. Solomon’s pomegranate
scepter is among the Order’s treasures. The pomegranate is an ancient symbol across many cultures. The Egyptians regarded it as a symbol of prosperity. The ancient Greeks called it the "food of the dead," and of course, it's associated with the Persephone myth.
Also, after we finish each book, Coyote and I celebrate-- we toast with pomegranate juice.
Beverage of choice for Elder Beings.
Colors – White – in the O4S verse, white is associated with
madness and disorder. Hence, Nathan is an
albino who favors white garments.
Names – There's the Council of Names who rules the Order-- once again hearkening back to the ancient Egyptian belief in the power of names. The Order arose from learning the name of Atum, the Elder Being, which gave them the power to trap it and learn Its secrets.
Grigori is Hebrew, for “awake,” or “watcher,” and Chaldean, for “guard.” It’s a Biblical term associated with angels. Doug “Doc” Grigori certainly represented all that was good and just in the Order. Watcher is also another reference to Buffy and the Council of Watchers.
Grigori is Hebrew, for “awake,” or “watcher,” and Chaldean, for “guard.” It’s a Biblical term associated with angels. Doug “Doc” Grigori certainly represented all that was good and just in the Order. Watcher is also another reference to Buffy and the Council of Watchers.
We made David “Cecil” Morgan’s middle name Ganesh, because his
mom was a hippie, but also because Ganesh is the elephant-headed Hindu god, a
patron of arts and sciences, which seemed fitting for our techie.
Some religions: no mushrooms required.
If you have questions or comments about the O4S verse, please don't be shy! I'll be posting Book III trivia soon.
