Gome World

More gome Writing from the Twilight Cave trilogy

In the Twilight Cave trilogy (which will be published by Orchard house Press in the spring of 2009) we discover a lot more about gomes and how they communicate.  Gomes use symbols to represent important people and places within the gome world.  There is a symbol for the gome city of Barcelunda that is recognized throughout Europe.  Barrels of apisinthe made in the distilleries of Barcelunda will have the Barcelundan "B" marked on them.  Humans invited into gome society are branded with the same "B."  Throughout the city gateways and doors are marked to show the level (by the number of dots inside the "B") and the location (by marking the compass bearing on the outside of the "B").

Here are some other gome symbols that we have encountered in the Twilight Cave story.  There are several mysterious symbols on the Justice Wall, including one that accompanies the Latin phrase, Lux Celeris Caeli (which roughly translates as "Swift light of the Heavens."  There is a symbol for the Petramax, for Wullie-The-Mahaar-Gome, Bluebeard, and one for Desperandum.  The meaning of this symbol for Desperandum has been argued by scholars for decades.  What do the stars at either end of the "D" mean?  Does the triangular shape beneath the "D" represent a mountain top, or does it indicate that Desperandum thinks of himself as being above (and therefore better) than everyone else?  Or does it represent the power of acid spilling out of his body?

Divining the power of petraglifs

In a previous blogpost I introduced the idea of petraglifs and why gomes seek them out:

http://gomeworld.typepad.com/gome_world/2007/06/petraglifs.html

Petraglifs vary in their strength and in the type of power that they have.  The larger the number of humans that make a connection with a rock and the longer that association lasts the more powerful it becomes as a petraglif.  One child's favorite mug will contain a small amount of happiness and comfort.  But a sculpture that has been admired by thousands of tourists for decades on end will contain a much larger amount of emotions.  The emotional power of this petraglif will also be more complicated.  When a sculpture is first carved it may produce shock and ridicule among some humans but over time more and more may learn to enjoy it, be inspired by it and so it may grow to contain lots of awe, admiration, shock, and even envy.

Some petraglifs contain less happy emotions.  the gravestone of a much-loved relative will become full of sadness and nostalgia as family members visit the grave, touch the stone and think of their loved one.  A chunk of prison wall would be full of anger, fear, and regret.

Certain gomes spend centuries of training to become skilled at identifying the specific power of petraglifs.  These gomes are sometimes thought of as magicians or wizards, but are also called Translatorsbecause they have the skill to translate the particular power that the petraglif contains into useful powders and potions.  In The Twilight Cavetrilogy we meet Catalysmo-The-Great-Translator in Level Four of the great gome city of Barcelunda.  Jade-Tsi-Dong is an even more powerful Translator.  In his secluded workshop in Barcelunda's Chinatown we see him "Divining" the essence of a petraglif.  He grinds it up to gravel and powder and then sprinkles that powder into a dozen other bowls containing mysterious liquids that can identify properties of the petraglif.

The dust and gravel from different petraglifs can be combined, along with spices and herbs.  As Jade-Tsi-Dong explains to Alina:

"Spices help to bind the emotions together; ginger root, lemon grass, cinnamon bark, tea tree oil.  These help to pull the emotions out, and push them forward to a new purpose."

Some petraglifs can be used to help gomes to heal from injuries.  Others are used to make potions to increase their power or to weaken their enemies.

Gomeworld Sourcebooks

In my stories about Wullie-the-Mahaar-Gome and his human and gome friends and enemies I am creating a whole universe of characters and fantastical events.  I hope that you will enjoy reading them and that they may inspire you to write stories of your own.  Perhaps you enjoy one of the characters in the story but would like to hear more about him/her/it.  Maybe you'd like to write a short story or an extra chapter about the world of gomes.  To make that easier my publisher (Orchard House Press) has asked me to write a "Sourcebook" that accompanies each of the new trilogy adventures.  These Sourcebooks give background information on the characters and explain some of the strange things that you read about in the books.  The idea is that these Sourcebooks would give you the information to create additional characters or new story lines using some of my characters while still sticking true to the ideas that are developing in my stories.  The firsts two of these Sourcebooks (one to accompany The Blackhope Scaur story and one to accompany The Twilight Cave story) will be published in the Spring of 2009.

I would NOT recommend that you read any of the Sourcebooks until you have read the actual story otherwise it would spoil the adventure for you.  But once you have read the story and would like to get more background information to be able to write new adventures I think you will find the Sourcebooks to be helpful.

Although I am not the greatest artist in the world I have done a few sketches in the Sourcebooks to give you some idea of what the characters look like in my imagination.  Here is a picture of the mysterious gome Jade-Tsi-Dong working in his magic potion shop trying to divine the value of a particular petraglif.

Gome Writing and Gome Symbols

In The Blackhope Scaur story we have examples of gome writing from Bluebeard's little black book and from the cave writing near Invertoshan that gomes like to communicate by writing things down.  they use symbols as a short hand to communicate some things but can also use human letters if they need to.  some gomes use a lunar calendar and so count time by how many full moons have gone past in a year.  We don't yet know how they keep track of years or whether they even care to do so.

Here are some examples of Gome Writing that were found recently in a cave on the coast of Wigtownshire in Scotland.  Experts at the Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow are not in full agreement about what this document is, or what all of the symbols mean.

Sir Hector McGlumshie believes that this may be a page ripped from one of Bluebeard's note books.  Lord Poncenby Smallpiece disputes this, however, since he believes that one of the symbols is the personal gome symbol for Bluebeard himself and would not therefore be something that Bluebeard would need to write down in his own book.

Gome symbols are often written together in combination to tell stories or record events.  both McGlumshie and Smallpiece agree that there are three such stories on the document found recently in Wigtownshire.

1. On the fourth new moon of the year of the fork and horseshoe a successful shipwreck was carried out with fire and death and three boxes of treasure.

2. A church was burned to the ground with five humans killed.

3. On the eighth three-quarter moon of the year Bluebeard was awarded five units of treasure.