James Islington

The whole concept of Will, originally, it was inspired by, there's a book by David Farland called The Sum of All Men.

And I read that 25 years ago now.

And it had this amazing magic system where, sort of similar to Will, where people would give up attributes of themselves to their lords.

And in response, the lords would protect them.

And it was a feudal system, right?

That's feudal.

And I loved that system.

I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the plot was.

But I really loved that system because it wasn't just most –

I think most fantasy books take a magic system and they build society around it.

And it's very logical, but it's a society that doesn't necessarily look like their own because there's magic.

But that system was almost like a manifestation of the power structure of that society, and it was a society that existed in the real world.

And I went, well, that would be really cool if we could do it in a more, you know, hierarchical society.

And so trying to make magic feel like not so much this external force that is just, you know, affecting the world in weird ways, but is more of a representation of actual power that it could be relatable to the real world.

You know, that really excited me.

That sort of was my starting point.

Honestly, it's more of a, that was really cool.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I think it, I think one of the reasons that I enjoy doing something like that is because particularly for an epic fantasy where usually you're talking about a storyline that ultimately affects the whole world.

And so often history is important.

And