Please choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until April 23rd, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time). This month's articles were a bit late, so I'm adding some extra time to the counter.
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting
Wars are not easy to write, wars in which the two central countries involved aren't actually at war, even more so. This type of conflict, sometimes known as a "proxy" war, is one where the two parties directly engaging in combat aren't just themselves fighting each other, but representatives of two or more other parties which are backing one side or the other. Country A supports Country B in fighting Country C, who is supported by Country D and so on. History is full of these conflicts: the R...
2024-04-09 17:04:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Now. as I'm sure you're all aware by now, I've run into some truly messed-up people over the years: bandit kings with daddy issues, torturers who got off on their work, the kinds of petty tyrants who have no joys in life except from making other people miserable, and so on. The sad truth is, the world is fully of those kinds of people, and the stuff they do only makes more of them. It's a depressing cycle, one which adventurers like me aren't really equipped to handle - except maybe through m...
2024-04-09 17:03:47 +0000 UTC View Post
6/1/Annesouais 25
Your Grace,
This message I have dispatched with the courier from your staff, who I had auspiciously encountered the day before. He had not been able to reach me before my departure from Fananne, and as a result he was obliged to follow along my route of travel over land for a considerable period of time, enduring much hardship and deprivation which was not included within the strict confines of his brief.
For this, I would see the man commended and rewarded...
2024-04-09 17:02:04 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until March 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for May.
Please r...
2024-03-07 22:47:18 +0000 UTC View PostA Note on Sources: A lot of the armies on this list have multiple sizes attested to them in various sources. For the purpose of this reference, I'll be leaning towards lower estimates. Ancient sources tend to exaggerate the size of armies for various reasons. Likewise, historians writing from one side of a conflict tend to exaggerate the size of the enemy's forces to make their own side's victory more impressive or defeat more excusable. Naturally, ancient sources writing abo...
2024-03-07 22:34:02 +0000 UTC View Post
To the far north, beyond the peaks of the Barazin Mountains, lie a land of icy hillocks and pastures, split by many fast-moving rivers with steep and rocky banks. This is the land of what the Khazari and the Barazini refer to as the Reach Folk. Very little is known about these people, even less so in the lands which do not directly border such territory. The Barazini, divided from such lands as they are by the mountains, pay them little attention save to guard the passes against the very rare...
2024-03-07 22:32:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Written on the Third Day of the Fourth Month of the Twenty-Fifth Reign of the Annesouais Emperor.
Your Grace,
I have arrived now in the northern anchor fortification of the Outer Outpost Line. The voyage from headquarters passed mostly calmly over open waters. Unfortunately, as we reached the coast, our convoy was attacked by a small squadron of ships belonging to the Great Enemy. Initially, the officers of the ship were hesitant to allow me to observe the action, but they yielded...
2024-03-07 22:31:22 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until February 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for April.
Ple...
2024-02-09 00:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostAmateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics", or so the old saying goes, an admission that victory more often goes to the side which is better organised, better trained, better equipped, and more able to get more troops to the fight faster than to the side led by the supposed tactical geniuses. With few exceptions, battles are ultimately won by numbers, discipline, and morale - and those successful "Great Captains" who have been lauded as reliable battle-winners in history have ofte...
2024-02-08 20:32:46 +0000 UTC View Post
The trip out from Torinhall would have been uneventful if not for one rather inconvenient fact.
You see, when the Duke commissioned us on this quest of his, he made the mistake of announcing it to his entire court, which meant that they announced it to the rest of the city. By the time we finally went out the gate the next day, we were flooded with hangers-on, all from that silly little class of not-quite-children and not-quite-adults who were old enough to leave home, but not quite old...
2024-02-08 20:31:40 +0000 UTC View Post
The Khorobirit Papers
5/11/617
Thus, it appears that I have outlived another Tierran King. This one has departed his kingdom in a state so very different from how he inherited it: divided, paralysed by in-fighting, nearly bankrupt. One could almost mistake it for an Antari principality.
Some would see such a state as a warning, that when one tries to alter the traditions upon which a state is built, one will only serve to shake its structure apart.
Perhaps t...
2024-02-08 20:30:22 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until January 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for March.
Plea...
2024-01-07 18:06:06 +0000 UTC View PostHere's a question for you: why were there only 300 Spartans at Thermopylae? According to popular history, this was supposed to be an all-or-nothing battle for the future of the Classical Greek World, a full-effort attempt to stop an immense Persian army from wiping out the city-states of the entire peninsula (a questionable assertion, but that's a different discussion). Other, much smaller city-states sent more troops. Thespiae sent 700, Phocis sent 1000. Why did Sparta, a much larger Polis w...
2024-01-07 06:45:52 +0000 UTC View Post
REMEMBER THAT TIME WE KILLED A DRAGON?
The strange thing about being on the open road is that you end up thinking about nothing more than the next village or town. You could be the kind of person who falls to sleep in your soft bed dreaming of the open wilds, and you'll find yourself only thinking of that warm soft bed after a few days of hard travel. After a few more days, your standards don't even reach that high. By that point, even a nice bundle of straw in a stable stall will do. A...
2024-01-07 06:44:03 +0000 UTC View Post
ON THE ADOPTION OF THE NEW RIFLE
To my Esteemed Master Truscott,
I greet the news of your continued advantageous position with the greatest of joys. With the situation as unsettled as it has been of late, a great deal of once-certain realities now seem so easily upended, my own circumstances being so very obvious an example. As you may now know, we have had several most direct shocks here in Aetoria over the course of the past few months, not only with the turmoil in ...
2024-01-07 06:42:07 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until December 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for next February. 2023-12-07 18:10:50 +0000 UTC View Post
How big should your fictional empire be?
That's a question which is actually two questions: a worldbuilding question, and a storytelling question, with the answer to the latter building upon the answer to the former.
So let's start with the worldbuilding half, which is the question of how big an area any government can be in your setting, on a practical level.
Ultimately, any sort of government (be it totalitarian, democratic, of feudal) relies to varying extents on three ne...
2023-12-07 01:50:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Agriculture in the Fledgling Realms
Despite the many varied cultures of the Fledgling Realms, despite the power of magic, the ingenuity of skilled crafters, and the increasing proliferation of wonders both arcane and mechanical, one constant remains: that of the primacy of agriculture. In all societies with only few exceptions, the vast majority of the population are committed to the process of working the land, harvesting its bounties, and raising flocks upon them. In the Concordat, an...
2023-12-07 01:49:20 +0000 UTC View Post
A REGIMENT DIVIDED
or
THE TRUE DISPOSITION OF THOSE BODIES OF FIGHTING MEN PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS THE WHITE ROSE LANCERS,
NOW CALLED "RED" OR "BLUE" LANCERS BY VIRTUE OF THEIR ALLEGIANCES.
THE SITUATION
With our land so divided betwixt personal and politickal loyalties, it seems in these unpleasant days that every body of armed men serves no longer the good of the common wealth and the people of the realm, but their own narrow loyalties - not for the sake of a great...
2023-12-07 01:47:59 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until November 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for next January. 2023-11-08 05:42:01 +0000 UTC View Post
NOTES ON A CRISIS
6/2/617
Awoken early today. Case White.
To say that this was completely unexpected would be to lie. There are contingencies in place. There are preparations left in waiting for a day which I had hoped would not come, but which has presented itself regardless.
My personal sentiments would drive me to suppress the spread of this intelligence, if only to give myself the time to mourn in private. My personal sentiments must make way for the exigencies of ...
2023-11-06 21:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
FESTIVALS OF THE FLEDGLING REALMS
Montfort Day
Most of the festivals celebrated by the various settlements of the Iron Marches are similar to those which are celebrated in the Concordat. With most of the population hailing from that region, it seems almost a matter of course that they would bring many of their festivals days with them. However, the unique circumstances and frontier conditions of the Iron Marches have given rise to a series of new celebrations, chief among them, Mo...
2023-11-06 21:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostSci-Fi and Fantasy writers, quite infamously, have no sense of scale. While the often arbitrary numbers we often throw out to quantify the size of an army, or a city's population may seem like the kind of thing you can simply toss out to make a given subject look impressive, any sort of narrative which relies on its worldbuilding to carry it has to keep a proper sense of scale in...
2023-11-06 21:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until October 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for December.
P...
2023-10-08 05:19:44 +0000 UTC View PostI'm not a fan of the word "subplot". To me, the term has always implied a certain unbridgeable divide between the "main progression" of a narrative and those parts which lay outside of it. With that distinction comes a danger of seeing anything not part of the "critical path" (the one which leads the protagonist from their beginning to their final confrontation) as something to be disconnected from the main themes of the narrative, to be allowed a certain degree of narrative license, or worse...
2023-10-07 06:50:00 +0000 UTC View Post
A LETTER IN DEFENCE OF THE TIERRAN DRAGOON
By a Confidante of the Gonfaloniere
It has become the fashion in recent years, for men of certain martial pretensions to make comment upon the conditions and the conduct of the war so recently concluded in Antar, betwixt the League which rules that country and the Unified Kingdom of Tierra. Although such efforts may have perhaps originated from some enterprise with the laudable object of improving the defenses and the potency of our own l...
2023-10-07 06:50:00 +0000 UTC View Post
CREEDS AND CULTS PT 2
It ought to come as no surprise that the people of the Island-Cities revere the sea. Indeed, the people of Fiore, Mazzare, Arran, and Isonza owe much of their wealth, safety, and prosperity from that great stretch of blue which surrounds the walls of their cities. Through its schools of fish and great water-beasts, the sea nourishes the residents of those cities, and allows them to grow to an extent which the scant farmland available would have never allowed. Witho...
2023-10-07 06:50:00 +0000 UTC View PostPlease choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your two chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until September 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for November. 2023-09-07 17:09:43 +0000 UTC View Post
So far, we've talked about conceptualising our antagonists in a way which would make for a good story, introducing them in a way which hooks your audience, and developing them to fit a broader narrative arc and emotional tone.
Now it's time to kill them.
I'm talking figuratively here. Not every story needs to end with the antagonist lying broken in a pool of their own blood. Not every character introduced as an antagonist needs to end the story dead, but when it comes to most stor...
2023-09-06 15:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post