Uranium Phoenix's Projects

Chapter 259 - Alternate Paths

Mirian was examining the effect different glyphs had on air currents and considering how that translated into mathematics when Zhuan reentered the chamber.

“You’re a fool. They’re all busy maneuvering. You must know that the most important conversations within a governing body aren’t the official meetings, but what’s done in the backrooms and pleasant conversations, right?”

Mirian snorted. “My first lesson in government was that none of it worked like it was supposed...

Chapter 258 - The Council of Dead Futures

Mirian established the Gates as she had the last cycle, then went through the Jiandzhi Gate and flew south to retrieve Zhuan. Their contact in the Ominian’s Dream was periodic, but enough for them to coordinate. Since her visit to Baracuel, Zhuan had begun to ask her endless questions about the political dynamics, official organizations, positions of factions, and class dynamics. More than anything, she seemed obsessed with economics and trade, things Mirian had mostly been ignoring since s...

Weekly roundup 10/19

Sorry for the later-than-usual chapter. Managed to get sick from something, not too bad, but enough to slow things down. Fortunately, I think I'm already on the mend.

Fun Tangent:
People are clever, and well before the scientific method and development of modern medicine, plenty of them were trying to figure out how to cure various ailments. 2025-10-20 00:44:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 257 - Shooting for the Moon

Late in the month of Merisheth, Mirian finished her calculations. She double checked her numbers, comparing them to Sio Jherica’s, then against Song Jei’s calculations.

She frowned. Even with all the extra time they would be getting from the Jidanzhi Gate being open, it seemed unlikely they would be able to construct something of the scale they needed.

Jei looked over her shoulder. “This is significantly larger than those other designs you showed me.”

“Yes. I hadn�...

Chapter 256 - Inhuman Dreams

“You’ve been gone a wh—” Gaius froze mid-sentence. His jaw dropped, but he straightened himself and checked if Zhuan had noticed the changes to Mirian’s soul.

Zhuan was busy examining an object that looked like a poorly made mirror, and the back had erupted with some sort of chemical ichor.

“This is the Viaterrian ship,” Mirian proclaimed as she walked in the room. “I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

The other Prophet looked up. “This? Even intact, it would ...

Map of Enteria

This is the current version of the map of Enteria. Akana Praediar still needs a bunch of trees added to the northern and western portions of the continent. Other places need some detailing. Most small towns and villages aren't shown, except for plot-important ones.

Weekly roundup 10/12

Fun Tangents:

At one of the Worldcon talks, Martha Wells, Paolo Bacigalupi, and several other authors discussed worldbuilding tips. A few I noted:
- Societies leave layers behind. Wells gave the example of Native American sites still visible in Texas. In Spain, I visited a ruin that archeologists hadn't gotten around to excavating, and there were just ancient pottery shards mixed in with the gravel and dirt everywhere. Sediment, however, had buried most of the city r...

Chapter 255 - A Cosmic Soul

The expedition spent two full days in its new camp around the Gate while Mirian worked on getting new leyline data and organizing supplies. The Torrviol Gate could indeed be lifted up into the courtyard, which simplified moving supplies immensely—but also created a hazard that had to be guarded. Several Academy arcanists raised low stone walls around the courtyard so that students wouldn’t be able to sneak in.

Zhuan spent most of those days in silent contemplation. Mirian saw her of...

Chapter 254 - The Ruined City

The usual practice for an expedition into the jungle was to be as stealthy as possible. There was, however, an alternate approach for when that was impossible: sound like a Godsdamned thunderstorm.

As the thousands of people made their way into the Jiandzhi, they brought out drums, gongs, and a brass instrument that looked a lot like a trumpet, but was different. Together, they made a cacophony that sent almost every creature in the jungle running.

There were, of course, the kinds...

Weekly roundup 10/5

Fun fact I learned from a panelist at Worldcon: Shakespeare was very worried about disinformation.

In Shakespeare's time, a new technology had just become popular: pamphlets. And, as people quickly figured out, you could say anything you wanted on them. People could write out lies, then easily make hundreds of copies of them to sell. And of course, many unscrupulous people were eager to buy this premodern version of clickbait!

So apparently, the 'magazine' was a reaction to this p...

Chapter 253 - Discussing Dreams

“That was you watching me outside the Mausoleum,” Mirian stated. She turned from gazing out at the city far below to the other Prophet.

“Yes,” Zhuan admitted.

“Why?”

“You know the answer. Let’s skip that part.”

Mirian raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough. You know I can open the doors of the Mausoleum. Now, with the Yiaverunan focus, I can shift between the visions the Ominian has been showing us. The implication—”

“—is that we are connecte...

Chapter 252 - Contrasting Philosophy

Mirian had gotten used to using the titan-catalyst for both arcane and celestial spells. It made it easier to be flexible. A Tlaxhuacan focus was better at manipulating plants; a Luminate focus, better at manipulating animals—ironically, including necromancy. However, as her lessons with her father were proving, having a specializing focus would enhance certain runic spells.

The translated scroll she’d been left on the violet crystal focus only emphasized her need to practice with t...

Weekly roundup 9/28

More cool facts, remembered as best I could from my notes:
In places in Renaissance Italy, businesses would only accept payments in gold coins because they were the most difficult to counterfeit. However, a single gold coin was a huge amount of money for most people (like, 2 would be a year's salary iirc), so this led to merchants doing a bunch of complex math to track debt. Generally, a person would rack up months worth of debt across multiple businesses, then pay someone--say, the baker-...

Chapter 251 - Muddling Through the Tangle

The next morning, Gabriel had already found a bottle of rice wine by the time Mirian stumbled on him in the archives. He was lounging in a large chair behind a counter that was supposed to have a worker behind it.

“What are you doing?” Mirian asked.

“Searching the archives,” Gabriel said, kicking his feet up onto the desk and taking a swig.

Mirian looked at him skeptically.

“This is your problem; you want to do everything yourself. Sure, you could spend a few...

Chapter 250 - Benansuo

They waited in a restaurant for Gabriel to return from his task in the city. Jei continued to order new dishes for them to try, while Mirian and Ibrahim continued to stack bowls of finished food. Ibrahim’s stack of bowls was, Mirian was disappointed to see, higher than hers.

The air smelled like crispy pork, boiled fish, unfamiliar spices, and black tea.

Feng shook his head at the two. “So you really were restraining yourselves from eating during the trip.”

Ibrahim fin...

Weekly Roundup 9/21

Morrowind was one of my favorite games growing up, and to this day, it has my favorite worldbuilding. However, it also has an absolutely baffling error: the weapons are absurdly heavy. In it, a steel short sword weighs 8 pounds, and a Daedric battleaxe, 90. As a kid, I wondered how anyone dealt with weapons that heavy. Turns out? They didn't. So, some more facts from con panels:
- Every weapon is light. Usually 2-4 pounds. Because you have to swing this thing around a lot. A reall...

Chapter 249 - The Last Leg

“Move back,” Feng shouted, terrified, and Jei moved back along with the carvaneers. She was also terrified, but she was better at not showing it. Mirian and the strange Persaman necromancer she’d found stood before the emperor tree. Were they fools? Or did they simply not know what kind of myrvite they were facing?

She still couldn’t believe this was Mirian. Mirian, who she’d known for four years. The shy girl who was always doubting herself. The one who had only been...

Chapter 248 - Battle Through the Jungle

Feng continued to lead the way, looking grim. Another oniwyrm howl echoed through the jungle. When Mirian glanced back at the lesser titan corpse, it was shrouded in abnormally dark patches. Light eaters. At least they’d be too busy scavenging the corpse to bother with them.

Her father had told her about what would happen next. For far too many creatures in the Jiandzhi, two things meant food: loud noise and strong magic. The creatures needed a lot of food, but as she’d see...

Weekly Roundup 9/14

At Worldcon, there was a panel about arms and armor, and I had the opportunity to wear a chain mail shirt. That was really cool. If you're ever writing about chain mail, here are some chain mail facts:
- If you try to put it on like a sweatshirt, you're going to have a bad time. If you're not a big dummy like me, you can get a chain mail shirt on and off very quickly.
- When you're wearing it, it really doesn't feel that heavy. The weight being distributed helps a lot. Easy to jump arou...

Chapter 247 - Predator

The lesser titan looked at them curiously with its dozens of eyes. Then, the mouths on the sides of its body let out high pitched screams. Without hesitating, the beast charged forward. The bone tusks along its front shifted and warped, creating a lethal spear wall.

As Ibrahim entered his dual dervish forms, Mirian opened up with a bombardment of force spells, opting to keep her spells quiet so that thunder didn’t bring more myrvites down on their heads. Branches went flying, and leav...

Chapter 246 - Things Start To Go Wrong

“Green mirage. We go around,” Feng said simply. “Stay close. You know combat spells too?”

Mirian kept a straight face. “I’m passable at them,” she said, glancing at Gabriel.

Feng made a grunting noise, then resumed his place at the head of the column.

“No combat spells yet,” Gabriel whispered to her. “The main route is a lost cause, but Feng’s good. He knows two alternate routes and where the derelict strongholds and caves are too.”

There was an...

Weekly Roundup 9/7

Here's the chapters that got released this week:

Extra-Advanced Tier
Chapter 244
Chapter 245

Advanced Tier
Chapter 234
2025-09-07 16:27:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 245 - The Jiandzhi

Feng was at the head of the caravan, and called a halt as soon as they were out of the cavern. He looked around carefully, keen eyes surveying the endless green of the jungle. Mirian opened up her spellbook.

“No,” one of the other merchants whispered, touching her arm. “Arcane magic will attract beasts.”

Would it? If that was true, she wondered what they would be detecting. A buildup of arcane force, perhaps? But how would they sense it? Smell was possible because...

Chapter 244 - To Zhighua

On the 241st Loop, Ibrahim met Mirian in Mahatan as she finished her routine of opening the gates. By then, both of them had acquired fresh traveling clothes and supplies. There would be no research effort in Torrviol, which simplified matters.

“Let’s go over the rules again,” Mirian said. She started ticking them off on her fingers. “No killing Gabriel.” She ticked off another finger. “Second rule: you aren’t allowed to kill Gabriel.” And a third finger: “Also, don’...

Weekly update 8/31

Hi all! Dragoncon has kept me busy, so while both tier's chapters went out this morning, I couldn't schedule a post with links that didn't exist yet, and Mirian won't give me her temporal anchor, so the weekly update is coming to you now.

It turns out there's a few people who go to this con. I've seen the number 75,000 quoted, which is a lot of humans. There's just a constant flow of people on every sidewalk, huge lines for panels and events, and basically every panel I've seen has fill...

Chapter 243 - A Surprise Visit

It didn’t take long to figure out that one of the relics in the first Vault could be used to shape stone. The device was incredibly mana efficient, allowing an apprentice to move about a ton of stone per hour. Unfortunately, that rate couldn’t be accelerated, but it was still a useful tool. The second crystal growing relic was a real prize. If Mirian could find a third one in the Vaults, her calculations suggested she could bring down the amount of time it would take to create the conduit...

Chapter 242 - Vaults

Opening the entrance door to the Vault took no time at all. Like the Frostland’s Vault, the instructions on how to open it were written in the glyphs. She read them like they were a language now.

Once inside, she took note of the puzzles. Several would require specific myrvite parts to open. She had a good guess as to which ones she’d need; some of them could be procured from the nearby econode. The others came from distant parts of Baracuel, some as far as the far eastern towns, bu...

Weekly Roundup 8/24

Another week, another batch of chapters! Again, I'll be at the upcoming Dragoncon, mostly wandering around and learning since it'll be my first time attending. I'm working madly on the next chapters now so that the posting schedule continues to go uninterrupted while I'm there, plus I'm bringing along a new writing laptop. The words must flow! I haven't missed a chapter in a full year and a half of posting, and don't intend to. Hope everyone's week is going well!

Extra-Advanced ...