All that is The Murk

A new diary entry on hellsborough.com is coming soon:

I watched an interview in the off-world with Kim Stanley Robinson (Hugo, Nebula and Locus award winner for his Red, Green and Blue Mars novels) some time ago (and I can no longer find the video, sorry :(), where the conversation discussed that the landscape of Mars was one the main characters in the novels.

That made an impression on me.

With The Dark Peak, although the environment is incredibly powerful and a major source of inspiration, a much bigger character, and something that gets mentioned far more often, is the murk, so this Postcard from The Dark Peak is dedicated to all that is the murk -- what it is, where it comes from and what it contains (as far as is known)...

The murk is a major feature of life in The Dark Peak. Oily and thick, a dense and perpetual fog, and clammy chill -- a clinging, odourless effluent that sticks to clothing and at best provides visibility no better than ten paces ahead. The murk is the persistent fog and cold dampness that constantly covers Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, blocking out most sun and moonlight.

It is organic in a large part, due to the general foulness of the weather in the area, but it is supplemented by the nascenti constructed humidity plants dotted across The Dark Peak. These humidity plants exist for the benefit of all of The Dark Peak's denizen races including the xin, exacid, clown, dyapnid, mentiloth and cryptobite, who all prefer the additional moisture in the air.

The main humidity plant, which is mentioned in Van Hallam's Chronicles book one, is located somewhere around the vicinity of Hope, Derbyshire, but there are other sub-plants dotted about in the five main areas of The Dark Peak: The clown territories of Glossopia and Hatheran, North and South Xinlandia, and the nascenti controlled Hellsborough.

The murk makes breathing more difficult for humans, hence the use of psycmasks in the valley at Hellsborough (psycmasks also provide Augmented Reality, which is necessary due to the poor visibility, as well as nutrition), but the poor air quality rarely extends into the higher Netherlands on the other side of the great causeway, at places like Southey and Pitsmoor.

The murk maintains a fear, whether or not it is warranted; legend and myth has it that the murk contains "ghosts" -- there are (at least) two types -- syncarid -- variably sized stingray type creatures capable of enveloping and stinging anyone to death, and morivarid -- piranha type fish that suck the eyeballs and tongues from anyone who comes across a shoal of them as they swim through the murky ether. The murk also protects various other cryptids from greater exposure, including the don bog beast, barghests, boggarts and gabbleratchets. And then, of course, there are those other ghosts of the murk -- murk wraiths -- the sight of which is never a good sign.

In the lexicon of The Dark Peak, the murk assumes various guises, echoing the diurnal rhythms of the ethereal murkrise at dawn, to the concealed whispers of murkfall at dusk, and the clandestine murkneet that engulfs the nocturnal hours -- the murk etches its presence into the temporal fabric of The Dark Peak. Weather is a huge feature of life in The Dark Peak, with many names for types of weather than you don't have in the off-world. Naturally, the murk is also therefore, part of the year naming system, more details you can find out about here.

The murk is not just an atmospheric phenomenon but a living, breathing entity, and a true character as important as any other in The Dark Peak.

In other news, and the reason for the hiatus of a couple of weeks of this newsletter, is that Chronicles book one is now published! On Kindle at least, and available from Amazon. At the time of publishing this newsletter, the paperback is still In Review (and has been since last Thursday, I guess they’re busy as the year starts to draw to a close). Once it’s released I’ll order some author copies and get them out into the wild.

Cheers, until next time,

Pip :)