In like a lion, etc. (Plus, story teaser)

Hello, all—

Welcome to March! I hope you've been having a good one? This has been a slow-ish couple of weeks in terms of uploading content, for... well, various irrelevant reasons, actually, I guess. So, as notes: 

• I fixed a bug that was preventing the Brave New World map from displaying. A few new rivers and islands have been added, for capital-r Reasons.
• I also fixed a bug that was preventing one of the names lists from working. Oops.
• I added a list of Aernian given names to accompany the surname list; this doesn't show up on the front page, but it's there under the Reference Library.
• A few new Star Patrol encyclopedia entries have been added
• The second, revised chapter of An Iron Road Running is up, as is the new Cannon Shoals story. That one has a whole writeup on the stuff that went down with the Union, if it was confusing
• I've updated the word generator (attached) with some new languages 

Anyway. Hey! Hey, y'all. Do you remember I started writing a steampunk fantasy novella about a steamship that gets wrapped up in some magic and then I never finished it after the third chapter? *coughs* I mean, even if you don't remember it, it sounds like something I would do, probably, right?

Anyway, I think that novella will wind up coming in at seven chapters, total, leaving four. Two and a half of those are now written. I will hold off on posting until I am sure I can finish it, but in terms of theme and where it's going, here, have a sample :P And enjoy the weekend!

[The ship has become caught in a severe—and worsening—storm. Mage Irim Kurma, traveling with Pærtha Kittaling and his band of "pilgrims," suggests a way to escape it, making use of the forbidden artifact Sanai, one of the "wailing stones" touched on in later stories in this setting]

Sound and light and motion and sense stopped. Everything ceased. Gethet felt certain he had died, but then his stomach dropped out, and he hit the floor with a painful jolt. And, as he rose to his feet, his vision slowly began to return. “Sheshki? Karn? Pærtha?”

“Alive,” Karn breathed. “We’re… becalmed?”

Now that he could see again: yes. The sea on all sides was flat as glass. Stars twinkled on its surface, and though the constellations unnerved him Gethet saw the moons, too. It was their sky. Their sea. Their ship.

“Kurma…” Pærtha called out, carefully. Gethet and the others followed Pærtha outside, where the badger lay in a heap on the deck. His fur fluttered oddly. “Are you…”

Pærtha reached out to grab him. As soon as he touched the mage, though, a sharper ripple billowed outward from his fingers; Kurma’s body wavered and sank down into a spreading puddle, dissolving even as they watched.

Only Sanai was left behind: cracked in half, glowing pale white under the moonlight. Even that crumbled in Pærtha’s fingers, blowing away in a breeze so gentle only the fine dust seemed affected. “What happened to you, Kurma?”

“What happened to us?” Karn asked. “There’s the real question.”

Gethet ordered Sheshki to do what she could with the stars and went to speak to the engineers. Milus told him the boilers had been abruptly extinguished, but he thought they could be restarted. The hull patch held. The Clarion Adamant remained, as near as anyone could tell, seaworthy.

But, by now, even more utterly lost. Sheshki Anariska had little for them: “That constellation is clearly the Beggar, and over there, setting… that could be the tail of the Lame Horse. But they’re… not right. Tilted. We must be thirty degrees further south, at least.”

“That’s not possible.”

The jackal twisted sharply, glaring at Karn. “I know that, kachka. We’d be at least a week off-course, if it was true. But I have no other explanation, and I imagine you don’t, either. Do you?”

Karn didn’t—nobody did. Gethet Issich decided all that could be done was to stay in place until the dawn. Daylight brought no further clarity, and no greater reassurance; a warm breeze ruffled his fur, and the tiger sighed his irritation at the impossibility of it all.

Their noon sight confirmed Sheshki Anariska’s speculation: somehow the Clarion Adamant was thirty-seven degrees further south than they’d been at the last position fix. None of their maps extended that far south, and without a chronometer they couldn’t even guess how far west they’d traveled.

“We have provisions for a long voyage,” he told Pærtha Kittaling. “But without knowing where we are, I have no way of knowing where to go.”

“Miss Kirayara had an idea. If you’re interested?”

Hannu Kirayara, a white-furred weasel, introduced herself as a meteorologist. She had, she said, noticed the shape of the clouds billowing above them. “They hint at land, not too far to the west.”

They did not hint that way to Gethet, in truth, but Hannu had studied such things and the tiger had not. Without any better clues, he adjusted their course and rigged the sails—there was no sense burning their precious coal when he didn’t know when they might be able to restock the bunkers.

Early the next morning he was on the bridge, lost in contemplation, when the lookout’s voice startled him: “Land, ho!”