Real Life Lore

Where I get some of my ideas for stories, games, and worldbuilding

As opposed to my previous posts on writing advice, this post is more about how I develop ideas for stories or worldbuilding. While it can be seen as advice, I’ll mostly be sticking with my personal thought process and philosophy for plotting and creation.

More than once, we writers get asked how we come up with ideas for stories. Every one of us likely has several different methods of idea generation, some of which we can’t entirely explain. One aspect of my process I can readily identify, and perhaps recommend other writers try, is gathering, recording, and understanding as much “real life lore” as possible.

What do I mean when I say, “real life lore”? Mostly I mean the history, mythology, cultures, and politics of our own world. What’s really inspiring about these, I think, is that most of them are organic developments that came about as a result of years of conflict and exchanges rather than total contrivances like a lot of fiction is admittedly. When a writer is creating his world, he is consciously aware of everything he’s doing to create a setting for his stories to happen, but in the real world things have happened and things still happen due to a myriad of conscious and unconscious decisions it’s impossible to keep track of it all. That being said, certain writers probably have a cut-off period in subjects they are comfortable (or even able to) write about. For example, I cannot imagine myself writing many stories past the early 20^th century, and I would especially be hard pressed to write something that didn’t have elements of Celticism, fantasy, or horror. While there is plenty of fiction written in these genres there’s only so much a writer of fiction can gather from other fiction writers. A writer can get away with—and as a result be more successful—aping real world events, and lore than exclusively drawing inspiration from other writers’ works which may or may not have been inspired by real life.

I came to this realization about “real life lore” when I was undertaking my internship in Washington, D.C. I commuted by metro into the city daily so I had plenty of time to listen to podcasts. I was in the middle of planning a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign for when I returned to college after the summer ended, so I listened to a few episodes about D&D lore. While they gave me a few ideas, I didn’t feel particularly inspired, that was until I listened to an episode on using Irish mythology guest starring the hosts of the podcast Astonishing Legends. From there, I loaded up their episode on Castle Houska and was completely enthralled by the amount of history, myth, and folklore they provided in their deep dive on the topic. Most of all, I was really excited by the comparisons I drew in my head to the 4^th edition Dungeons & Dragons module Keep on the Shadowfell, the first proper adventure I played through when I started playing tabletop roleplaying games. In short, I was hooked by Astonishing Legends’ other episodes on historical events, ghosts, aliens, and everything else they covered. What also helped was that I was in D.C. where I could spend time in museums for hours, gathering even more real life lore. I must have filled out over 20 pages worth of notes for my D&D campaign, stories, and other projects on my phone all during my downtime. I was hooked on learning in ways I hadn’t even imagined I could be years before.

My drive to soak up more only continued during the following semester in college. I took a class on World War One and was surprised to find myself inspired by the intricacies of the conflict and what it meant for establishing a new world order in the aftermath.

When I went on to do my postgraduate degree in Celtic Studies, I also found inspiration for games and stories in my classes on mythology, folklore, and history. One of my stories that features some real life lore is “The Tomb of Tigernmas”, published in DMR Books’ Samhain Sorceries (2022). I based it off information I gathered from several of my postgraduate classes and sprinkled in fantasy elements I made up myself or took from other sources. Now, I’ll use it as an example of how I implemented real life lore and turned it into a story. I’ll be giving brief summaries and excerpts from the story and there will be minor spoilers to follow but if you’d like to read it for yourself you can find a link to purchase it from DMR Books in the “Ethan’s Publications” page on my Substack (or by following this link here).

“The Tomb of Tigernmas” is a story featuring Eachann MacLeod and Connor Ua Sreng while they’re in service to Descertach, the King of the Irish province Ulster. The antagonist of the story, the chieftain Lubras, beseeches help from the god Cromm Crúaich (whose name is familiar to Conan fans as CROM!) by sacrificing his firstborn son:

A damp, dour wind rolled over Mag Slécht…The gust blew onto a large, flat mound ringed with twelve stone menhirs, their faces etched with the weathered faces and signs of old, forgotten gods. In the center of this henge sat a stone the height of a man. Swirling, knotted lines carved into its face stood for one old god known by all Gaels—Cromm Crúaich…“The blood of my firstborn Aron will slake your thirst!” proclaimed Lubras. He raised the ax and swung it down. The edge of the ax screamed as it went through the air, for a diminished demon dwelt in the old stone of the blade. (Sabatella, 2022)

The site I based this scene at is inspired by the place-lore poem “Mag Slécht” in The Metrical Dindshenchas; the details in the poem about the sacrifices to Cromm Crúaich also informed how Lubras would go about getting what he wants. The event of Tigernmas’ death and the death of his host on Samhain Eve (Halloween) at Mag Slécht as described in the poem also informed the entire basis of this story.

The small aside about the demon living in Lubras’ flint ax also comes from a detail in Irish mythological texts that claim some heroes’ weapons and war gear had demons inhabiting them. Their function of inhabiting weapons could be for the purpose of ensuring the wielder is always truthful and just in social situations or else the possessed blade might wound him for lying.¹

Following this comes the summoning of the king Tigernmas and an army of wraiths who were his host (or court) in life. These creatures bear one eye, one arm, and one leg which in Irish mythology is usually indicative of an otherworldly creature or someone who has supernatural insight or powers. Here is how I described them:

The wind itself appeared to take shape; strands of mist gathered in the air and formed a thin, hazy membrane. It shifted and swayed. A black hand pressed against it, pushing on it as if to break free. Above the hand, a single orange eye within a black skull stared at Lubras and his retinue. More hands and more skulls holding lone orange eyes joined the first…The wraiths followed, hopping on single legs but with no less speed than a living person with two legs. (Sabatella, 2022)

Also the crane eye is a specific reference to a stance Irish diviners might have taken to gain otherworldly insight was to stand on one leg, hold one hand behind the back, and close one eye. Doing this mimics a crane, thus “crane eye.”

Originally for the wraiths’ weakness I planned for it to be silver, but in a last minute change I decided to go with a different element that was more fitting to Gaelic views on banishing ghostly creatures—fire. When I was putting the final draft together, I was in a Scottish folklore class and we learnt about how young men would carry torches deosil (sunwise or clockwise) around houses to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. I wasn’t able to incorporate the sunwise part as smoothly as I would’ve liked but I at least made note of the way they moved around fires:

[T]he spirits avoided the small pits of fire and the few frightened torchbearers; they moved counter-sunwise around the flames.

At once, Cimling recalled himself and Cimbe walking sunwise around their father’s house, bearing torches. To ward off the wicked ghosts, his family’s druid had told him. (Sabatella, 2022)

This post would become a bit exhaustive if I listed every single piece of inspiration I somehow managed to include in the story. If you are a Celticist or are in the process of studying Celtic subjects, I’d highly suggest picking up Samhain Sorceries from DMR Books and seeing how many “Celtic Easter Eggs” you can find not only in my story but the other nine stories featured in the anthology.

Overall, I think that leaning into the research of real life lore has helped me understand how the world works and what humans can understand in terms of archetypes and universal themes. That’s not to say other works of fiction haven’t been or can’t be influential, but like I said before, it can be more satisfying to use obscure lore from our real world to inspire your story than copying a famous fantasy author. Nothing can be made in a vacuum and something that isn’t original doesn’t have to be uninteresting—at the very least it may be original to at least one person who’s never seen it before.

Thank you for reading my thoughts on real life lore! If you know someone who’s looking for a way to kickstart their next fiction project, click the button below and refer them to Senchas Claideb to send them this way! Also, referring your friends gives you access to special prizes, including a custom Gaelic phrase and a free original short story!

Spread the lore!

1. J. Borsje has written on this motif of demons inhabiting weapons in Irish literature in “Omens, ordeals and oracles: On demons and weapons in early Irish texts.”