'thul's story project...

[fool-ish]

Inbreeding is carefully managed, as the nomad tribes operate with oral history, so they must have excellent memories. Further writing will reveal whether relationships in the tribes are based on monogamy or not, but inbred will not be a common trait. Of course, a possible result of inbreeding in a high-evolutionary world like this one could be new sub-species instead of just a heap of bad traits popping up. But since 'thul know that books do influence readers somewhat, it would not be right to encourage inbreeding.

The tribes have a simple, yet harsh, way of dealing with those that do not follow tribal customs.
Banishment.
It is effectively a death sentence, both in how dangerous it is to move out in the wilds alone and in the loss of a close-knit community. It not only saves the work of dealing with corpses of the lawbreakers, but is often far worse than mere execution, making sure that rules are followed by more out of fear of banishment.

If the threads are thin enough and are perfectly rounded, then it should not be itchy. however, it is not unusual for Metalweave to be lined with regular cloth on the inside.

There's a relief! Promiscuity I can cope with, inbreeding, not so much. Offenders be banished!

Yup, I thought of a lining afterwards, but it was too late and I was too knackered to edit.

['thul]

Interbreeding reeks of wrong in the genetic sense... just look at the horde of problems common in various breeds of dogs... bad hips, shortness of breath, risk of comparison with rats, etc... All because some people long ago had cruel ideas of what would make a beautiful animal, never caring about whether there were unfortunate side effects...

Anyways, not sure if this has been mentioned earlier...
rather than go with the tellus standard, a year in the world built here does not have 365 days, 52 weeks and 12 months...

A year is oddly round.
8 months of five weeks each, with each week lasting ten days, giving a total of 400 days per year. It might not feel natural with such a round calendar, but who says magic didn't enjoy having round year for once?

['thul]

began writing a tad on the story with the settled. Rather than using one of the major cities for the initial story, 'thul went with one of the smaller settlements, known as Emblan Deeps. At merely a century old, it is practically new and has a far smaller population.
Already set up two characters for it, with a half-defined third one who won't be all that relevant later on. the two are a sister-brother twin pair. A mischevious, inquisitive and curious boy with a penchant for getting into trouble and an innocent-looking and utterly lovable sister that follows his every plan, helping them both get out of the trouble he gets them into. The father dotes on them regularly, never quite noticing their flaws.

Not defined all that much more on them yet.

[Farseer]

Sadly I am only able to flit through all of this but it just sounds AMAZING, 'thul beings!

'Emblan Deeps'...ah, I love such names!

['thul]

These beings will have to rename a few of those places... Emblan was one of the better names of the various deeps...

['thul]

'thul have now begun to decide upon a full naming pattern of Settled cities.

Smallest cities will be the deeps, typically anything from freshly built to a few centuries, a thousand years at most.
The next size will be the Holds, of which there in the defined map are four. These can range in age from one to five thousand years or so.
The final size, of which there is only one on the known map, has no title beyond its name, Travial. It is over seven thousand years old.

Of course, city size is not merely judged by age, but also by physical size and by its population. However, expanding a city, especially its surface section, takes decades for even small expansions, centuries for larger ones.

The first chapter of the section about the Emblan Deeps has been written, only took a couple of rewrites. nine pages long. Another 24 pages of half-written stuff has been made, but that requires rewriting, both to make better sense and to be consistent.

['thul]

The first few chapters of the section featuring the settled & the Deep Dwellers have been written now. 5 chapters, 47 pages.
The two main characters of this section will be fairly interesting... a pair of twins. one boy, one girl. One with a tendency to mischievous plans and pranks, the other aiding him both with going through with the plans and with getting away with them.

Its turned out that the Settled not only use men (possibly also women) in their armies, but also Golems. Stone and metals are both available in great quantities, and when that is mixed with magic, you can make fairly good workers/warriors. The magic of the Settled is refined mostly to enchantments, though they also have magics for directing fire and for searching through stone. The first is used for golems, the second for smithing and the last is very useful when mining. A skilled stonecaster can find veins of useful ores deep beneath the ground or even detect fault lines in rock, preventing (or causing) accidents. Stonecasters cannot manipulate, though. Only observe. Rumors have that they can strengthen stone temporarily, allowing a stonecarver to carve out a specific shape, but they can't cause rock to fall apart on its own.
No settled mages can use more than one of these three branches, and (at least for now) the settled are limited to just those three.

[fool-ish]

Beg pardon, but what's a golem?

['thul]

ahh... right... should've added a note about that...

go·lem/ˈgōləm/
Noun:
(in Jewish legend) A clay figure brought to life by magic.
An automaton or robot.

or more precisely, in the world created here, a stone/metal construct brought to life by magic.


Their use of such automatons makes guard duty far simpler. A golem can technically be on duty all hours of the day, so instead of having anything from a few dozen to hundreds of soldiers on duty at a gate, one could have just enough to command the golems (with a bit of redundancy).
You don't break down a golem nearly as easily as you break down a soldier. of course, designing a golem is somewhat more difficult. Sort of like making a good knife. Its not enough to know that it is sharp. You have to make it from the right materials (typically good edge steel), make it curve the right ways towards its point, make it balanced, have the correct angles set up for the edges, and so forth.
In the case of these golems, the design is even more focused on what it is empowered to do, though shape does have importance.

[fool-ish]

ahh... right... should've added a note about that...

go·lem/ˈgōləm/
Noun:
(in Jewish legend) A clay figure brought to life by magic.
An automaton or robot.

or more precisely, in the world created here, a stone/metal construct brought to life by magic.


Their use of such automatons makes guard duty far simpler. A golem can technically be on duty all hours of the day, so instead of having anything from a few dozen to hundreds of soldiers on duty at a gate, one could have just enough to command the golems (with a bit of redundancy).
You don't break down a golem nearly as easily as you break down a soldier. of course, designing a golem is somewhat more difficult. Sort of like making a good knife. Its not enough to know that it is sharp. You have to make it from the right materials (typically good edge steel), make it curve the right ways towards its point, make it balanced, have the correct angles set up for the edges, and so forth.
In the case of these golems, the design is even more focused on what it is empowered to do, though shape does have importance.

And all becomes a little clearer, ta Though now I have an image in my head of something similar to those clay soldiers in China (at least I think it's China) but not as many.