Secrets of the Abysmali

OK. First thing is first.

How far can we go with technology in a fiction work and still call it 'Fantasy'?

For some people, if it goes beyond swords and crossbows, they aren't happy, but then again those people aren't the kind of people I'm writing for, at least not as a target.
Indeed, I strongly suspect that I'll never write anything that would make a 'purist' happy.

Now, steam works, for the most part. Lighter than Air craft is OK. Electricity is pushing it, but electronics definitely doesn't work. Indeed, pulp lightning guns or even Victorian era tech ('Steam Punk') is barely acceptable on the fringes and should only be rarely seen.

Fortunately, it looks like the Abysmali will not play a huge role in the vague areas of the plot that I have in mind. Still, this month I'm defining the exceptions to reality rather than the aspects of reality itself.

A far better example of what can be cutting edge tech for them would be 'Clock Punk' or the kinds of gizmos that the Leonardo Da Vinci knock off created in 'Alias'. Only the thing is that the Abysmal can create the solution of perfection such as it is possible in the world of Pickle, simply because they know the answer ahead of time. Its really the only form of time travel (via knowledge) that I'm going to allow in the world.

Now having said that, there is another problem. The basic tenet of science is the organization of world based on the idea that its laws are immutable. The problem is that if you examine the mythology I have created, it is apparent that Pickle and the creations of Fa and Sa are a morphological metaphysical situation. That is to say, when things come 'from chaos' to me that means that a mind can shape the reality around them to be anything that they want it to be. Thus it is one of those 'if enough people believe it then it can become real' scenarios.

However, the key to Pickle is that there have been many many minds going in the same direction for quite some time. Thus, the natural physical laws have more or less reached an extremely powerful inertia that isn't going to change short of an act by one of the greater powers (Sa, Fa, Ob, Hila or one of the Seven). And even they would have to fight against thousands and thousands of years of human expectation.

So what sort of a world do people imagine? They might have made the world flat, but Pickle and the other six countered that. Plus don't forget that the Green world itself and just about everything has a mind and spirit of its own. Its a very animistic world. Now having said that, 'clock punk' suddenly makes a lot more sense if only Newtonian physics apply. That also means that certain basic chemical reactions are possible, but things like relativity and advanced electronics are right out. It is too fine an observation for people to make. Of course, one could argue that since that is too small in the world for people to notice, there can't be laws applying to it, and to a certain degree that might be true, but on a larger scale that is not going to be the case.