# Fantasy

> Fantasy

- Skill: `handsomeboy990/fantasy` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add handsomeboy990/fantasy`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/handsomeboy990/fantasy/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: Handsomeboy990 (https://skillmd.com/u/handsomeboy990)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/handsomeboy990/fantasy

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# Fantasy

Fantasy is not a medieval setting with magic in it. It is a narrative in which
a rule of the world, impossible in ours, produces a social organisation and a
conflict that could not exist otherwise.

## 1. Reading contract

The reader demands: a world that holds, a coherent system of the impossible, a
stake that exceeds the character without crushing them, and wonder founded on
precision rather than grandiloquence.

## 2. Necessity test

The question to ask of the project: if the fantastic element is removed, does
the narrative still stand? If it does, the fantasy is decorative. The
impossible element must be the cause of the conflict, not its ornament.

## 3. System of the impossible

Reuse the five questions from `world-builder` section 3: who can, what cost,
what limit, who controls, why the world was not transformed further.

Three possible regimes:

| Regime | Principle | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Hard magic | rules known to the reader, measurable cost | magic solves problems |
| Soft magic | unknown rules, poetic effect | magic creates problems |
| Mixed | hard for the protagonist, soft for the rest of the world | the most robust balance |

Law: magic may resolve a major problem only if the reader has known its rules
for at least fifty pages.

## 4. Structure

- A quest, but never a quest alone: the outer quest must double an inner one
  and come into contradiction with it.
- Avoid the structure that accumulates companions.
- The journey is narrated only where it transforms a relationship.
- Plan a reversal of the meaning of the quest at the midpoint: what the
  protagonist was seeking is not what they must find.

## 5. Peoples and cultures

- No people defined by a single trait. Invented nations are worked with the
  same care as a real culture, per section 8 of the constitution.
- Invented ethnic conflicts do not recycle displaced real stereotypes.
- Plan internal divergence: dissidents, classes, generations.
- Languages follow `world-builder` section 7: few words, actually used.

## 6. Economy of wonder

- One wonder per part, prepared and paid for.
- The wonder is seen by someone with a reason to look at it.
- Precise detail creates more wonder than excess: the exact height of a wall,
  the price of a mount, the smell of a forge.
- Never two grandiose descriptions in a row.

## 7. Cliches to turn or prohibit

- The chosen one, the recited prophecy, the orphan of royal blood.
- The mentor who dies to free the hero.
- The opening inn, the map at the front, the council of elders.
- The entirely evil people, disposable with no moral problem.
- The weapon that decides the outcome.
- The tyrant with no administration and no logistics.

## 8. Exit checks

- The necessity test passes.
- The system rules are known before any major resolution.
- No monolithic people.
- The journey occupies under thirty percent of the text.
- The cost of magic is paid on the page at least three times.

## 9. Auto-critique

The eleven constitution axes, plus four genre axes: necessity of the
fantastic, coherence of the system, cultural density, economy of wonder.

Threshold: no axis below 3, average at least 4 on coherence of the system.

## 10. Interfaces

- Upstream: `world-builder`, `novel-architect`.
- Neighbours: `genres/dark-fantasy`, `genres/adventure`,
  `genres/magical-realism`.