hunters_forest | Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising

Thank you everybody for such a fantastic start on Monday!

Today it's chapter 1, where we meet a certain traveler called Damien, an adept called Ciani, and we hear rumours about a certain someone called the Hunter.

Plot summary

After dust, danger, and crossing mountain ranges where the paths go uphill both ways, Damien Kilcannon Vryce arrives in Jaggonath, on a mission from God. Or at least, on a mission from his superiors in Ganji.

After marvelling that people in Jaggonath are not nearly as afraid of the dark as everyone else he knows, his curiosity takes him to the local Fae Shoppe. In the shop, he encounters far more Worked objects than he ever thought possible, as well as a shop assistant who gets very little attention once the shop owner, certified adept and local Lore-Master enters the stage. Damien, despite his instant attraction to her, does the sensible thing and takes her out to dinner so he can get a competent introduction to this place that is so different from what he is used to. The matters first and foremost on his mind are Forest and rakh, and Ciani chooses to speak of the former.

She explains about the Forest's nature as a focal point of the dark fae, and about the creature called the Hunter, who dominates the Forest and uses it to snare his victims. She offers some insights on him - that he must be an adept, that she thinks the Hunter is a man, and that she believes him strong enough to rule the Forest rather than be ruled by it.

Damien takes Ciani home - road dust thwarts any progress beyond that - then returns to the destination of his journey: the Cathedral of Jaggonath. There he gets mistaken for someone unimportant, drops his name, and immediately is ushered in for a midnight chat with His Holiness.

Quotes

The sensible thing to do would be to find an inn and drop off his things, get his mount under guard, and affix a few wards to his luggage . . . but when had he ever done the sensible thing, when curiosity was driving him?
Be honest, Damien. You’ve always been attracted to things faewise, and here’s a true adept; would her looks have made much of a difference?
Set against the dark evening sky, the building glowed as though fae-lit, and drew worshipers to it like moths to a flame. On its broad steps milled dozens - no, hundreds of worshipers, and their faith tamed the wild fae that flowed about their feet, sending it out again laden with calmness, serenity, and hope. Damien stared at it, awed and amazed, and thought, Here, in this wild place, the Dream is alive. A core of order, making civilization possible. If only it could have been managed on a broader scale . . .
It was a focal point of the wildest fae, which in an earlier, less sophisticated age had been called evil. Now they knew better. Now they understood that the forces which swept across this planet’s surface were neither good nor evil in and of themselves, but simply responsive. To hopes and fears, wards and spells and all the patterns of a Working, dreams and nightmares and repressed desires. When tamed, it was useful. When responding to man’s darker urges, to the hungers and compulsions which he repressed in the light of day, it could be deadly. Witness the Landing, and the gruesome deaths of the first few colonists. Witness the monsters that Damien had fought in the Dividers, shards of man’s darkest imaginings given fresh life and solid bodies, laying traps for the unwary in the icy wilderness.
Witness the Forest.
“There’s a creature that lives within the Forest - maybe a demon, maybe a man - which has forced a dark sort of order upon the wild fae there. Legend has it that he sits at the heart of the whirlpool like a spider in its web, waiting for victims to become trapped in its power. His minions can leave the Forest and do, in a constant search for victims to feed to him.”
“You’re talking about the Hunter.”
In a whisper that was nine parts awe, and one part fear: "Father Vryce is a sorceror..."

Thoughts

Damien's intro always makes me imagine the new sheriff riding along the deserted, dusty main street in a Western, just as all of Jaggonath has a touch of the Wild West. An obvious and intentional image, I'm sure, but it never fails to amuse me.
Even with this first introduction of the fae, the rules are laid down. It responds to hopes, dreams, but also fears and nightmares - essentially, thoughts can become reality. It's quite a twisted concept of magic, and unlike how this is usually handled in fantasy. What do you think about it?
To Damien, a Westerner, it is startling to see the differences between Jaggonath and the West. A Fae Shoppe with so many Worked items, people who stay out when they should be protecting themselves from the threats of the night, different customs... And yet he adapts almost immediately to the situation. Before, I've never noticed that his curiosity is one of the first things we learn about him. What about you?
We see the first description of the Hunter in this chapter - the resident evil demon, or maybe a human adept who dominates the concentration of dark fae that is the Forest. To the people in the East, he is an omnipresent evil that cannot be eradicated, but very little concrete information is available. People seem to have arranged their lives around him, but they know nothing beyond speculation. Thoughts?
What do you think about the differences between East and West? There is very little we learn about the West throughout the books (actually this chapter might be the most informative one), but the East seems very strange in some aspects to a Westerner like Damien. Here, sorcery is thriving, while it is not welcomed at all by the Church at the same time.

Like before, feel free to start your own comment threads, join others, and generally post to your heart's content. :-)

On Monday, we'll continue with chapters 2, 3 and 4 - three chapters at once, since they are very short ones. You can find the schedule here.