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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5646021" data-attributes="member: 54707">Sorry it took me so long to get back on this.  Between my business, and writing (fiction) and my inventing, and some other  things, my free time is limited. So I don't always get back to everything  immediately.   I'll try to answer your questions as best I  can.           The books will be set in the early Middle ages,  sometime between 500 and 600 AD. Maybe as early as 450 AD. I haven't really  decided yet.   At this time (far before the Western European  interest in and persecution against witchcraft) there was still much pagan  influence and mixed Christian and pagan influence. The main character is a  Christian, but a rather unorthodox one from the Western European and later  Medieval viewpoint.   He was born and raised as a young boy in  Constantinople and later moves to Alexandria (until he is a young man of about  20). He has an excellent Greek and Roman-Latin education (for the time) and in  addition to receiving some of his education from Bishops and Christian teachers,  he is also instructed in philosophy, and rhetoric and oratory (which saves his  life on more than one occasion) and geometry and mathematics. In outlook he has  more of a (Pope) Gregory the Great attitude towards the pagans than a later one,  and he is very friendly towards many of the Ancient philosophical ideas of the  Ancient World. (A world which still exists very much around him in the Eastern  Empire.) He also has friends among Christians, pagans, and  philosophers.   So because of the age in which the stories are set  he doesn't face the Western anti-Witchcraft persecutions that he might have had  he lived much later in Western Europe. Though he does arouse suspicion as he  travels into the West.   He arouses session because he is so well educated  and has preserved within himself much of the learning of the ancient World and  also because he is scientifically and technologically minded. He also arouses  suspicion because of his apparent influence with animals (although many Saints  like Saint Francis also were said to have great influence with animals, such as  the Wolf of Saint Francis). He arouses suspicion in the West because he has  capabilities that have either declined or disappeared in the West, and because  he is part Greek and Eastern. And he arouses suspicion in some quarters simply  because of what he can do as a result of his education, upbringing, travels,  scientific capabilities (or in this case Proto-scientific capabilities), and  Mystical, unorthodox faith.   In this sense the character is largely based upon  me. He is (what today would be called Greek Orthodox) a Christian and a Mystic,  and hits is a large part of his personality, the other part is his education,  background, observational training, and philosophical and scientific background.  (Although in his case his scientific background is not what we would call a  modern scientific background, but one more akin to Archimedes and Ancient World  philosophers and proto-scientists.) He is also an inventor and more than one of  his inventions is considered by some to be likely sorcery of some  kind.   Many odd, sometimes even weird and uncanny things  happen around him, some that seem outright miraculous and out of his control  (they often are), and many other things that he seems to cause to happen or that  he creates. These things are all part of the various conflicts of the story, and  whereas they make some suspicious of him, especially in Eastern Europe and the  far West, it also makes him in high demand among many local rulers and  authorities as the Western Empire begins to unravel. Many local rulers,  especially barbarian ones and the remnants of Roman authority relocating to  smaller, easier to defend strongholds, like Ravenna, desire to employ him and  his inventions against encroaching enemies.   One way to think of him is as a much later Rena  Man, like Leonardo Da Vinci, but at the start of the Medieval World, not it's  end. He is also good with languages and although can only read Latin and Greek  he can speak quite a few. He is also a musician but unlike me is he is a very  good musician.   His three companions, the Wyrdpack - dog, fox, and  wolf, are all based on friends of mine. (One an ex-cop, one a former undercover  agent, and one a soldier.)   The character will not however be a D&D type  Wizard, he simply gains that nickname among some people, and later it becomes a  sort of title. But that term is translated into English (my main audience), he  is really more of a Wizard in the old sense of the term, meaning "Old Wise  Man" or "a highly proficient man." By the time of the stories he is an old  man, and his youth and prior life will only be seen in flashbacks, or memories,  or stories other recount.   He is also not a Harry Potter type magic-using  Wizard of spells and potions and wands. Although he does carry a staff. I'm  gonna leave it open to the reader exactly what is going on some times, and if he  is actually causing certain things to happen, if it is some kind of miracle, or  if indeed he can do magical things like some of his enemies  suspect.   But for most every powerful enemy he gains he will  have at leader one defender, often a powerful Churchman or leader he has worked  for (although he will have angered some former employers by refusing their work  or because they didn't think he did what they asked).        He's not really an investigator or detective by  our standards. He is more of an Enquirer (he is very good at discovering things by covert questioning). He is also well trained in ancient  techniques of inquiry and has developed many of his own. He investigates things because he  likes it so much, and in this respect he is also based upon me and my experience  as a detective and investigator. But you're right he is limited by his age in  this regard and often relies upon techniques and methods that no-one would reply  upon today. He also seems to have a sort of mystical ability at detection and  observation (though he is less good as an investigator) and sometimes relies  upon mystical experiences to draw conclusions (sometimes the wrong ones).     He is also not a "solve every mystery kind of  guy," because evidence is limited or he is hampered by others. Investigation is  part of his nature, but not his whole nature and not his whole  interest. He's not Sherlock Holmes.   Each story about him though will usually involve  the following events and/or conflicts: his "employment," his travels to wherever  he takes up his new work, something discovered by the reader about his past  (usually his past experiences, or involving a woman), a conflict with a new  enemy and sometimes between a new enemy and an old friend/defender, a crime or  mystery surrounding his employment or employer, and the thing he is really in  search of... But you're very right. Justice is not a commonly accepted thing,  especially as the Western empire unravels, and he will also often be brought  into conflict with "colloquial Justice."     <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cadfael_Chronicles" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cadfael_Chronicles</a>   I often read Cadfael and have watched the series  that Derek Jacobi does such a fine job in. I don't though want to give the  impression that this character is a Cadfael, a monk or a wizard who spends much  if his time investigating crimes. He investigates crimes usually out of personal  interest, because they involve the work he has been contracted for, and  especially if he feels it connects with what he is really hunting. But he is not  a "detective investigator" and that is not really the main purpose of the  stories, it is an effect of the stories. A method he uses to further his own  search.        It's interesting you should bring this up. He will  not be time traveling but he is the ancestor of another "Wizard character" who  appears in one of my novels about the Basilegate and Prester John. They never  meet for his descendent lives around 800 AD and is from Ravenna (where the  earlier "Wizard" fathers a child) but later moves to Constantinople to work for  the Emperor and the Orthodox Church.    The "wizard" in this series of stories (not the  later descendent) has vivid dreams about his own ancestors and occasionally  falls into trances, and even has visions during mystical religious experiences.  One of the set of visions he has is of his descendant.   He doesn't time travel but he does dream of the  past, and has visions of the future. He is definitely a polymath though, but not  by later Medieval or Renaissance standards. He is more like an Archimedes or  ancient Greek polymath.     I really appreciate the feedback and comments.  They are helping to me to narrow down some of the character  background.   Thanks again.</blockquote>

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