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 t...
2024-04-09 17:24:13 +0000 UTC View PostWars 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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 b...
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 co...
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 di...
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...
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 (*) hav...
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, ...
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 n...
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...
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...
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 a...
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 ...
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 ...
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 (*) hav...
2023-12-07 18:10:50 +0000 UTC View PostHow 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 governmen...
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 exc...
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 ...
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 (*) hav...
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 wo...
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 fes...
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 y...
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...
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 be...
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...
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 gr...
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 (*) 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 ...
2023-09-06 15:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
