Child of the Ghosts – the (extremely unofficial) soundtrack
I listen to a lot of music as I write, and as I do, various songs tend to get associated with specific characters. Here, then, are the songs from my collection that I associate with the characters and events of “Child of the Ghosts.”
This song would be Caina Amalas’s first theme – I think of it as “Caina Does Something Clever.” It’s one of the combat themes from “Heroes of Might and Magic IV.” I listened to this over and over while writing the fight scenes for the first Caina story, “Black Ghost, Red Ghost”, back in 2007. It captures Caina’s more violent scenes perfectly – kinetic, yet very precise:
This next song would be Caina Amalas’s second theme. It’s “Damp Barachan Nights”, from the soundtrack for the “Age of Conan” MMORPG. Calm and placid on the outside – but dark things stirring beneath. An excellent description of Caina:
This song represents Caina’s life with her family in Arretia, before she meets Maglarion. It’s the “Human Nobility” theme from “Dragon Age: Origins”:
This next song comes from an old computer game, “Lords of Magic”, (released in 1997), and it is Maglarion’s theme. It is utterly perfect for Maglarion. The driving drumbeat represents Maglarion’s unyielding will and drive, and the cold, groaning melody excellently portrays the all-devouring nihilistic hubris at Maglarion’s core:
This next song represents Theodosia, the prima donna of the Grand Imperial Opera who teaches Caina the arts of disguise. It comes from “Heroes of Might and Magic II”, yet another computer game from the 90s, and rather perfectly captures Theodosia:
This next track comes from another 90s computer game (can you tell what I spend most of the 90s doing?), “Planescape: Torment.” This is the theme for when Caina disguises herself as Countess Marianna Nereide, an ingenuous noblewoman of the Empire:
Caina’s brief affair with Lord Alastair Corus is represented by the “Romance Theme” from “Mass Effect”:
And the song for Caina’s final confrontation with Maglarion, the ghostsilver spear, and the great bloodcrystal is “1000 Ships of the Underworld”, from the “Invincible” album by Two Steps From Hell:
Finally, I think the main theme from “Dragon Age 2” (composed by Inon Zur) would make an excellent overall theme for the book – it’s simultaneously a bit grim and haunting, but with a strong heroic theme to it:
So those are some of the songs I listened to while writing “Child of the Ghosts” – a book that, I should point out, is free if you’re interested in reading it.
-JM
I had written a long response to this, then my computer froze and I lost everything. I HATE COMPUTERS. And yet I love them. Oh the dualism of it all!
This is the summary version:
Very nice collection! Especially Age of Conan, Dragon Age, and Dragon Age 2 ( great soundtracks to great games!). And I have never heard of Two steps from Hell, think I listen to more of them. It is awesome seeing the progression of video game soundtracks from little synchronized bleeps to full scale film quality scores!
One of my all time favorite scores from a video game, came from Final Fantasy X (do you play the Final Fantasy games?). Yet I have such mixed feelings about the game itself. It did so much right, but the story went so horribly wrong in the end, devolving into religion bashing (complete with a religion that looked alot like the Catholic Church, complete with it’s evil/greedy/power hungry clergy, control over the masses, and an unfounded belief system that in fact was founded on an enemy of the world), and it left me cold and dry, not to mention offended, and ticked off too! But I still love the Hymn of the Fayth song! And here it is to prove my point:
Do you have a collection for the Demonsouled series as well?
Two Steps From Hell is amazing – they’ve got a new album out, too, one called “Archangel.”
The generic Evil Church Of Evilness is such an overused (an annoying) fantasy trope that I deliberately wrote the villain of “Ghost in the Flames” to be a raving atheist as a subversion.
There’s a list for Demonsouled as well that I will post, but I wrote “Demonsouled” in 2001, when MP3 music was still rare and somewhat exotic, so I don’t have as many songs for it.
Thanks for the info about Two steps from hell, I think I’ll check their new album out.
As for the “Evil Church Of Evilness”, I could not agree more, to even say overused is an understatement. But make no mistake, this trope is far more than a “fantasy” trope. How about SF, “historical”, thriller, ect all those genres are plagued by it too.
I get you point about MP3s, but only the first was written back then, you have not added any tracks to the list with the sequels?
And one last thing, what did you think of the FFX song I linked too?
“But make no mistake, this trope is far more than a “fantasy” trope. How about SF, “historical”, thriller, ect all those genres are plagued by it too.”
Indeed. If you see a Catholic priest (or a Baptist minster) in a work of contemporary fiction, whatever the genre, he’s probably not a good guy.
I do have a mental playlist for DEMONSOULED – hopefully I will post it soon.
I liked the FFX song – it reminded me (in theme, if not tonally) of this:
http://youtu.be/RDBfJL1DapQ
That was a good song! Was it a real hymm first or just a in-game thing?
It’s funny that I have never heard this song before, even though I own the game it comes from.
And considering our prior comments, don’t let this song fool you, as much as I enjoy the Total War series, it’s history is biased and deeply flawed, especially when the series deals with the Middle Ages, all the tropes come out to play! It’s sad too, but the game is made by Brits, and if one understands modern british (pop) culture, than you kniow there is not much chance for a nice or even accurate view of the medieval era.
I still remember the manual from the first medieval total war telling me how dark the middle ages were, so DARK AND SUPERSTITIOUS!!! (Run for the hills!!!!)
🙁
I don’t believe it was a hymn – it’s the in game credits for the “Kingdoms” expansion pack.
The Total War series is great fun, but it’s not terribly accurate in the historical sense. I think there are any number of mods that try to make the various games more strictly accurate.