Urban Fantasy and the Masquerade

 

Here, as promised, is the post on Urban Fantasy and the Masquerade which is nigh unavoidable in it. What is Urban Fantasy in the first place and what importance does the Masquerade (with the capital ‘M’) have in it?

 

Urban Fantasy is a relatively young part of the Fantasy genre, putting the general tropes and expected parts of fantasy, such as magic or supernatural creatures, in a regular modern setting - in a more or less urban environment, hence the name.

As you might expect, there is one big problem with this genre: the explanation of how a modern setting would have come to pass in a world with magic, elves, dwarves, and orcs (or other regular fantasy races). Magic would certainly have changed the development of technology and interfered with it, the presence of supernatural sapient species would have changed society greatly. This is where the idea of the Masquerade comes in - and not just in settings like White Wolf’s “Vampire: the Masquerade”. The Masquerade is a law which forbids the supernatural creatures to present themselves to the public and mages to show their magical powers. Usually, there is some sort of supernatural law enforcement involved as well, so this law can be enforced in the first place. Why mages shouldn’t flaunt their magic or why supernatural creatures shouldn’t show themselves is usually not explained too well - the in-world reason, that is. The reason for the writer is rather clear - because the world of the Urban Fantasy setting wouldn’t be the way it is without all of the fantastic elements being hidden.

 

There are two types of Urban Fantasy settings - one where magic is relatively new to the world, where it has just started to work, where the creatures have just arrived from somewhere else; and one where magic was always there and has been hidden for many centuries or even millennia, together with the supernatural creatures.

The first setting usually works better and with less world-threatening problems. If magic is relatively new and a higher power is interested in keeping it a secret, that can work for a little while. Not for centuries, probably not even for decades, but certainly for a number of years. If those creatures have just arrived and there’s relatively few of them around, it is understandable that they will be hiding from mankind, as not to be killed immediately.

The second setting is much harder to keep up, because it comes with more story-logic problems. If magic has existed for a long time, it would have influenced technology and we would probably not have the same technology we do have. Either technology would have evolved to keep up with magic (if magic can threaten people and they need protection) or technology would have been kept down, because there’s easier ways of doing things with magic. It’s even more of a problem with dwarves, elves, and suchlike. Keeping hidden from mankind clearly would never have worked too well - there would have been sights of them which would have become myths and legends and, as soon as some kind of photography was around, documented. If there were technology like ours, half of the internet would be filled with accidentally-filmed orcs and elves, which would certainly break the Masquerade.

 

Urban Fantasy often gets a reputation for being the lazy way of making a fantasy setting - just slap elves and orcs and magic on the real world and work from there. It does have the advantage that there’s no need for long expositions about the world - it is, more or less, like ours. The differences can easily be explained in-story, especially as there’s usually one character who is sucked into the world behind the Masquerade and will ask questions and get explanations for the audience (that’s often the job of such a character).

That doesn’t have to be the case, but it’s really important to sit down with such a setting and work out how and why magic and, when applicable, magical races have entered the world. Which changes they will have made to the environment (perhaps nature is more healthy around Elven settlements or orcs under enchantments are doing a lot of the hard physical labour)? What reasons do the Powers That Be have to keep it under wraps?

If magic is, for instance, hard to wield and the talent is very, very rare, then there will be only a few mages to control. If there’s a very small population of supernatural creatures around and they aren’t too powerful, it would be in their best interest not to get into trouble with the admittedly xenophobic humans.

Yet, even those explanations will not hold for long-term Masquerade, for the presence of magic and/or supernatural creatures for a long time. Sooner or later, their presence will lead to some hiccups, to suggestions that there is something the general populace doesn’t know about. Sooner or later, they will influence the world around them and change it from what we know to something different.

It is also a question of scope. For instance, if we only look at “Vampire: the Masquerade” alone, not at the World of Darkness in general, it could work. Vampires are rare and they are apex predators of mankind. They have a vested interest in humans not knowing they exist - especially as most sleep during the day and are vulnerable then. They also often play on the highest levels, influence and control governments, which gives them the chance to suppress news about them, to paint those who know about them as madmen and -women. They can keep hidden and will brutally enforce the Masquerade which protects them and gives them power.

This would never work for a world full of supernatural creatures, because there would be no way to enforce the Masquerade long-term. There would be breaches and humans are often quick on the uptake. The vampires in the last example can very well just kill humans who get too close to them. One human here and one human there are not that hard to make disappear. A hundred humans who saw that unicorn gallop through Central Park and a hundred others who saw that pod of mermaids swim up the Hudson on the same day are much harder to silence.

 

So, on a small scale for magic and/or supernatural creatures, Urban Fantasy and the Masquerade do definitely work. But long-term or on a large scale, the world would change and no longer look and feel like the one we are used to. Keep that in mind when you want to write Urban Fantasy. Otherwise, take our world as a jump-off point and think about how the fantasy tropes you want to bring in might have changed it and what it might be looking like today, if elves, orcs, and magic were a real thing.