That's All Folks (for Now)

Well, that's it for Rise of Azraea, Book II. The last of the epilogue went up at 7:00 am this morning. Both Books I & II are now available to read for free, in their entirety, on this blog.

I'm glad the timing worked out the way it did; I needed a break so that I can focus on getting my dissertation ready to defend on September 14th. Roughly concurrent with my defense prep, I have another research paper to finish on compersion and jealousy.

After that, I'm not sure. I have a long list of projects at this point:
- Audio record RoA1 and RoA2
- Provide feedback on Pigs of Kaidan, an unpublished novel.
- Heavily revise Wild Justice
- Consider some Wild Justice short stories
- Finish first draft of Nemesis
- Outline sequel to Wild Justice/Nemesis
- Convert RoA2 blog posts into a publishable document, edit it, and put it on Amazon.
- Assemble the hodgepodge of scenes I've written for RoA3 into something resembling an outline, and then actually write RoA3.

Writer's Notes! - Illustrations

Time for more artwork!

First, the big one I obviously HAD to do, one of the scolopendrae!

Yep, it's a giant centipede. Probably not that shocking to anyone who already new that "scolopendra" is the scientific word for centipede. But why a centipede, you ask? There's a few reasons.

Centipedes never sat high on my list of anxiety-inducing creatures, but apparently they do for others. I once had a room full of women grab me from a hallway to dispose of a common house centipede - a creature that not only looks like an animate feather, it has all the ferocity of one as well. Evidently, though, there's something about all those legs that freak people out.

On another occasion, I went to an entomology club social (which was actually really fun) and was fascinated by the fact that almost every creature - spiders, scorpions, etc. - was out of its cage. They were being played with and petted; I even saw a woman get stung by a scorpion and apologize to it. There was one notable exception, though: the "giant" centipede was kept in a sealed case at the back, with a warning sign that depicted several fingers being removed by a circular saw. That impressed upon me, that in the centipede world, size matters, and one does not **** with the big ones.

Finally, the whole passage with the Dark Dweller's forest was written while living with my parents and attempting to landscape part of their property that had been overgrown by ivy and wild vines. The darkness, stillness, and general oppressive feel was inspired by the way the foliage seemed to isolate you, and - of course - all while I was wading in the 8 inches of thick ivy, all I could think about was that centipede with the big warning sign on it.

So, yeah, centipedes were definitely going to be the big boss fight of the book.

Of course, I wanted the creatures to have a little bit of fantasy about them, so I decided the Dark Dwellers should blur the line between living and artificial, with an armored carapace that almost looks forged. In my mind, there was inspiration being drawn from the scorpions in the newer Clash of the Titans movie, Mechanacles' conveyance in Aladdin, and a transforming ear-wig I have tucked away somewhere in my Beast Wars collection. Making the legs actual swords was probably carrying it all a bit too far.

On the subject of villains, I'm also going to hop back a little. In my head, Chieftain Tharkrada's look was inspired by one of Gamesworkshop's Ork warbosses. Of course, those are a bit over the top for the book, so I tried to come up with my own looks. I also started experimenting with a different art style, based on Bruce Timm's cartoons.

This is actually spoofed off of a DC character called Kalibak...

And this one uses the character Lobo as a base.

Of course, from Tharkrada, it's an easy segue to his son, Thrakaduhl.

This was an attempt to create a face that would look orcish, but still be sort of handsome in a prince charming sort of way. Think I definitely overdid it on the eyes though, so here's another, very different, approach:

Either the quiver is on the wrong side, or T.D. is left handed. Not sure.

So, that's right - this version not only has emerald green skin, he has silky black hair, deep eyes, and trim pencil-thin mustache above his little tusks.

Finally, one concept for the dwarven contraptions that chased our heroes out of the abandoned 'mine':

I originally imagined something like the T-1 HK Tank from Terminator but with the general style of the automatons from Bioshock 3. The drones are supposed to be multipurpose, reliable machines, though, so I figured the look needed to be a bit less aggressive. Carrying the weight of built-in weapons would waste energy when the drone spends 99.99999999999999% of its active time doing basic maintenance tasks. The same would be roughly true for armor - the machine would need enough of an outer casing to protect its most fragile parts from the occasional dropped piece of junk or accidental collision, but it doesn't need to be a tank. The interesting part in the book was describing a tractor tread in the context where mechanization is an almost alien concept to most of the characters. Azraea and Kaira would be familiar with tension-based clockwork mechanisms (gears, springs, pulleys, counterweights, etc.) but only Ochsner would have any acquaintance with pressure-based mechanisms like pistons and hydraulics.

Anyway, if you've stuck with us this far, THANK YOU!

We're coming to an end soon, and then before long we'll be starting Book II!

Writer's Notes! Vinny's 1hr Campfire Surprise

In the book, Vinny cooks a dish I experimented with in my high school Latin class. My high school Latin teacher, Stephen Boyd, actually found and sent me the recipe I used. It was from L. Giacozza's A Taste of Ancient Rome, and was titled therein as an "Onion Appetizer," a modern variation on a Roman "Vegetable Appetizer."

The strange dish made it into this book for three reasons: (1) the Gnomans are, as their name suggests, supposed to be analogous to Romans, (2) I actually liked it, though sadly I've not had it since high school, and (3) it fit the demands of the situation.

Contrary to its title, this "appetizer" is a very rich food. Assuming I made it correctly in high school, it is not at all appetizer-like (but then, the Roman cheesecake I made wasn't very dessert-like - even after quadrupling the honey in it). The preparation of the dish is also simple, and the ingredients are relatively cheap or easy to find substitutions for. Given the fresh meat required, it couldn't be cooked after a full day of hiking, but it's feasible for anyone camping within a few miles of a butcher, or anyone willing to make substitutions based on whatever wild game they could take down before dinner.

Main Ingredients:

• 7oz. Liver (Pork) - This was the hard part for me to get past as a teenager, but once it's mixed in with everything else, it's really not identifiable as anything other than meat. For health/safety reasons, we used beef liver. Vinny might have used deer liver given the opportunity, since (supposedly) it's delicious and safe for humans to eat. 
• 2 Thighs and Wings (Chicken) - What's important here isn't the appendages used, it's that you use dark meat; as I recall this dish, it would be pretty weird with white meat in it. That being the case, I imagine this dish could also be made with other forms of poultry more readily obtainable while traveling. Duck, in particular, seems like a good choice.
• 2lbs. Bulbs (Onions) - According to Giacozza, the Romans would have used wild gladiolus or asphodel bulbs, but edible versions of those plants aren't really available in the here and now. A Gnoman traveler would probably use whatever he could scrounge up near his camp site, though, so in that spirit we'll follow Giacozza's interpretation of the recipe and scrounge up some onions - I'd recommend white or yellow, but not red (though it might be interesting to try once).
• 2 Tbs. Olive Oil - Nary a Gnoman steps out the door without his trusty, multipurpose olive oil.
• 2 Tbs. Garum - Another necessity for Gnoman travelers. Garum was a sauce made from fish, which the Romans used a great deal. Know that person in your family who puts ketchup on everything? Two thousand years ago he would have been covering everything in garum.
• 2 Tbs. Wine - We used red wine. I recall the wine had a strong impact on the flavor, despite thorough cooking, so this may be the easiest place to adjust the recipe to fit your tastes. Just make sure whatever type of wine you use, it's going to go with the onions you picked. 

Sauce ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Wine - The sauce is nearly half wine, so like I said, your choice of wine is kind of important.
• 1/2 cup Passum - The other half of the sauce is more wine! Passum was specifically a sweet wine originating in Carthage that tasted like raisins. It was obnoxiously sweet, apparently, but popular with Roman women, since appletinis and birthday cake-flavored vodka hadn't been invented yet. If you can't find raisin wine or straw wine, look for something that's going to be ridiculously sweet. 
• 1 Tbs. Garum - More garum! Seriously, it was pretty typical for it to be in every recipe. Twice.
• 1 Tbs. Lovage - This is an herb that tastes like celery, though much stronger.
• Black pepper - Add as needed.
• 1 tsp. Cornstarch - Add before serving.

Preparation: Chop the liver and chicken, and slice the onions. If you haven't tried liver before, I'd recommend chopping it into small pieces, as it can be pretty chewy. Start cooking with onions (2 lbs.), olive oil (2 Tbs.), garum (2 Tbs.), and wine (2 Tbs.) in a sauce pan. Once the onions have cooked, throw in the meat. Cook for 30 min while getting the sauce ready. Throw all of the sauce ingredients except the cornstarch into a separate pan or bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the sauce to the main dish and cook for an additional 30 min. Mix in the cornstarch to make the dish thicker, and serve. If I were to do this again now, I'd probably serve it with white rice or garlic bread.

The old book I got the recipe from doesn't say whether to cook the dish on 'high' or 'low'. The omission of that detail makes sense, given Romans didn't really have those settings on their hearths (and our adventurers wouldn't have them on their campfire). This is definitely a play-it-by-ear (and nose) situation. While overcooked liver is not good, the dish will end up being pretty dark and thick, and given the sweet and savory flavor, and the pungent tastes of the onions, slightly burning it will not ruin the meal.

Writer's Notes! Maps!

Normally I have these posts written up weeks in advance, but this one ended up being a last-minute throw-together, so please forgive me if it's a bit choppy.

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I like drawing maps. I don't know why, but I do. It's not a new thing for me either. I used to really like drawing dinosaur-themed maps:

Sadly, cartography was not a major skill taught in middle school.

I probably ought to draw more maps, actually. Possibly the most persistent problem in successive drafts of Rise of Azraea has been dealing with the elements of time and space - concrete dimensions you'd think were fairly straightforward to manage.

Rise of Azraea was the first large work I wrote which I intended to be large from the beginning, so it was the first time I really needed to think in depth about the geography of my setting. I thought it would be a fairly simple matter of designing the setting at the beginning, and then writing the story on that stage.

That's not impossible to do. When I wrote the first draft of Wild Justices, I scoured the internet for every period map of Boston and Massachusetts I could find, and wrote inside the limits set by a real space at a real point in time.

But I've discovered that if you're writing a pure-fantasy story, it's not sensible to place those sorts of limitations on yourself. Writing is super-fluid - you may be working on chapter 9, think of something great to happen in chapter 11, but realize that it conflicts with something you wrote in chapter 4, and decide to go back and rewrite chapter 4 so that it will be consistent with chapter 11. Whenever you get around to writing chapter 11. With that sort of chaos involved in the creative process, I quickly realized that carefully planning a world's geography was nearly pointless - you end up revising it constantly to match whatever idea you've most recently come up with.

HOWEVER, when you finish your masterpiece, or at least that first draft, and hand it off to a critical reader, certain questions start coming up.

"How many days were they walking?"

"How long would that take?"

"Are you sure?"

"They're next to a river? Again?"

"Did they cross the river? Where did it go?"

"Where DOES the river go?"

When you write the sequel, and have the characters traveling back across the same physical space under different time constraints, the questions mount even further. Canny readers will also wonder how the mountains wound up where they are, and how the river gets to its destination. So, yes, it turns out having maps is kind of important, and nearly as important is thinking about the natural history of the world you're working on, and (seemingly) useless trivia like average human walking speed over long distances, speeds for horses and wagons, etc.

Now, honestly, I still don't have a finalized map for Caelia. I'd like to eventually take the time to learn my way around some actual map-making software, but so far I've been churning out less than professional efforts. Let's call it brain storming.

I started by going back and plotting out a map based (loosely) on directions described in the first draft of the book.

First concept for Caelia's layout, following events in book.

Of course, a lot changed after I plotted out that map, and the world got bigger as some of Caelia's neighbors got fleshed out...

Zoom-in of first map, with important locations noted. 

... especially the Gnoman Empire.

Zoom-out of previous map.

Of course, that map is just the Mediterranean viewed upside down with some higher water levels. That's just lazy.

Though, that's not to say that using existing geography isn't a good place to start. That's how I eventually wound up at this, which is essentially the closest thing to a final map of Kaleida's western hemisphere I have.

Details given in the book describe Caelia as small, but place it just north of the semi-tropical sea controlled by the Gnoman Empire, and just south of the polar ice Azraea's ancestors crossed coming to Caelia. They also put it at a latitude where the summers are as hot as the winters are cold. It's also described as small, but having oceans to the east and west, yet it has a river running southward through it. All of those things are essentially contradictions - with oceans so close on either side, how does the river flow south, rather than east or west?

Honestly, I ran into a situation where I had to choose between the plot points in the book, and faithfulness to climatological and geographical realism, and I chose plot over science. Nevertheless, I tried to narrow the gap between fun and reality as much as possible, and the solution I finally arrived at was making Caelia a land bridge.

That still left the question of how a river flows south through a north-south land bridge?

Basically, I decided Caelia wasn't just a land bridge, it was (implausibly) a giant aqueduct, draining melt waters from the ice cap north of Caelia, to the sea in its east. But how could a land bridge end up with high walls along its coasts?

Close up, unmarked map of Caelia.

... The best thing that occurred to me is that - implausibly - the Caelian land bridge is also a crater. The oceans on either side of Caelia rest on tectonic plates moving towards each other, creating a mountain range between them as a sort of  'crease'.

However, a disastrous event in Kaleida's prehistory hollowed out a deep basin in the mountain range. Ice thawing to the north, and in the surrounding mountain ring, feeds a river that carves its way through the 'crease' to the south, and on down to the Gnoman Sea.

Since then, I haven't drawn up a more detailed map of Caelia, but I did invest considerable time plotting this out for the second book.

So if you're the sort who likes spoilers, there you go - writing the second book required a color-coded map of the capital.

Writer's Notes! - Themes, Tone, and Setting

Come back next Monday for the beginning of chapter 4 - our adventurers' first side quest!

In the mean time, here're some reflections on writing the book.

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In high school (many, many years ago), I read Howard Fast's (1951) Spartacus, in which a gladiator leads a slave rebellion in ancient Rome. The story was very different, definitely much slower, than I expected it to be, partly because it's told in an odd way. 

As I recall, Spartacus's story is actually told as flashbacks, with the main story revolving around a bunch of late adolescent, upper middle class Romans enjoying a summer vacation in the Italian countryside. It actually reminded me a lot of The Great Gatsby. Over the course of the book, their host tells them the story of Spartacus's failed rebellion (which happened before their time). It's an awkward way to tell the story about the evils of slavery, but it almost pays off in the ending.

At the close of the story, their host finally takes the young people to (the Roman equivalent) of a garment factory, where he shows them scores of malnourished, dirty people working around the clock to make his bank account fat and happy. The young Romans, of course, are shocked to learn that not one of the people in the sweatshop is a slave; while Spartacus's attempt to end slavery had failed, the practice was dying nonetheless, as savvy capitalists had realized that minimum wage laborers (many of them freed slaves) cost less and worked harder with fewer complaints than slaves kept in the shops and fields against their will. It was an unusually grim, dystopian ending for a historical fiction novel.

Though I largely hated the book for consuming my winter break, I always found that ending fascinating, and it's helped me understand a lot about modern history - primarily it helped me to understand that oppression doesn't require chains or whips, and that its most subtle forms are often the most enduring.  

So, I wanted to write a story that tackled some of those same ideas through a modern lens, adding in the component of intersectionality. Modern society isn't a simple contest of us vs. them, black vs. white, man vs. woman, but rather a sort of points system, in which you get 'privilege points' for certain luck-of-the-draw attributes. It's a robust system, resistant not simply to change, but even to notice. Someone who's scored, let's say a 5 out of 10 on that points system is playing against the same stacked deck as someone who's scored 1 out of 10, but because they got luckier with the hand they were dealt, they're much less likely to see the house's game. I think that, being neither fortunate nor unfortunate, those people don't really see the role of luck in their lives, and because of that, they struggle to understand the idea of 'privilege.' From their point-of-view, everyone has what they deserve. After all, considering the alternative would raise an uncomfortable question: "Do I deserve what I have?"

I guess I wanted to poke that hornets' nest a little, but I didn't want to write a book actually set in the real world. The way I see it, if someone can't see the problems in the world they live in, they aren't likely to see those problems in a book showing them that same world (or they're going to cross the street to avoid that book). Set those injustices against an incongruous or exaggerated backdrop, however, and the reader might be more open to what you're trying to say, and might think about those ideas a bit more critically than they would otherwise.

Or maybe that book would just provide a cathartic experience for the people who already 'get it' - I decided that would be okay too.

So, I initially chose a fairy tale setting and format, with overt satire, and a dragon serving as a metaphor for those few Americans who make money off of having money. I'm not talking about the millionaire doctors, lawyers, or athletes. I'm talking about the multi-billionaires who make a dramatic show of donating a trivial portion of their wealth to their own charity so that it can buy a private jet for them to use. The people who publicize flashy, grand gestures, rather than actually contribute to society by paying fair taxes or even just spending their money on lots of ridiculous, hedonistic things made by American workers.

I started the book in January of 2013, but dropped it due to an especially rough year of graduate school, and a sense that the satire might not play as well as I hoped - it would just be too thick. Then, in December of 2014, this interview aired, and I decided - you know, maybe that idea could have worked after all. I went back to the book; I scaled back the fairy tale prose and wrote it more as a historical fiction novel, recounting a tale from a world a bit more similar to ours - a world with universities, coffee shops, and massive debts. 

As in the United States, overt slavery and feudal serfdom are non-existent in Caelia. Though there is a nominal monarchy in Caelia, the power of wealth supersedes any notion of divine right by blood. People are educated in schools - at a cost. Effective healthcare is available - at a cost. Law enforcement is divided between noble, under-appreciated protectors and violent bullies, with little oversight to differentiate them. People complain about paying taxes while also complaining about the state of their public roads, and there are a lot of people who will accept someone ****ing on them from above if they feel like they have someone beneath them to **** on themselves. (That's the premise of trickle-down economics, right?)

On the other hand, there are some very important differences from reality. Most significantly, violence is a much more tangible source of problems in Caelia than in the United States, and it's also a much more reasonable response to those problems. Highwaymen are a real threat, and no one thinks too much of it if you kill some bandits or monsters. It is, after all, a fantasy story, and being cavalier with violence is just part of the genre, right? Batman refuses to kill the Joker because it would be crossing a terrible line, but Legolas and Gimli not only kill without remorse or hesitation, they treat killing as a competitive sport; it even becomes part of a beautiful subplot about interracial male bonding.

Fantasy plays by different rules, even compared to other forms of fiction.

Fantasy also gives you a lot of room in your dialogue - after all it's somewhat silly to accept that people in a fantastical realm completely unrelated to ours speak English, but then question how they speak that English.

Given that freedom, and because so many of the themes in the book are drawn from the modern world, I wanted the characters to speak like people their age do now. Their cadence, informality, and even a little bit of their slang is modern. I felt it was an important part of the setting the book's tone. Modern communication is inextricable from the conflicts between the cynical and the hopeful, between the deniers and the 'woke SJWs', and between those who are condescending and those who are... actually, there's no real dichotomy there - communication in our world is basically 50 Shades of Disdain.

Because it was so important to me that the characters speak 'normally,' one of the hardest decisions I made was actually to trim down the four-letter words; I feel like the language in the book now is unrealistically clean for any time period, but I wanted to broaden the accessibility of the book, and 'curse words' are, strangely, a real deal-breaker for some people. Hopefully, that decision didn't significantly undermine my millennial snark.

Of course, there is a downside with the modern language; fiction never provides a complete picture of the world surrounding a story, so we tend to play fill in the blanks by making associations to what is in the story. In order to envision the world a story takes place in, I think a lot of readers look for certain benchmarks to align the setting to a real place and time in world history. I think readers look for thou, thee, verily, and wouldst to help them imagine a world with castles and swordsmen.

But then, Caelia (and the larger world it exists in), doesn't align with any particular time and place. Partly, that's because the amenities that define an era cost money, and Caelia has little. Kingstown bears some similarities to 15th century Europe (e.g., printing presses, plate armor). People from less fortunate areas, though, look at that sort of thing the way I looked at the touch screens in Jurassic Park as a child. Or Crystal Pepsi; I guess you can never really guess what's going to catch on.

But even considering that variation, the presence of magic and alien cultures have given Caelia's world a very different progression. For example:

• Ailments and injuries are treated with foul tasting potions and treatments, but these aren't the primitive hokum of medieval Europe; they work as intended (usually), sometimes better than 21st century medicine. It's like living in a world where a bottle of Pepto can heal a gut wound, but a cancer diagnosis is vague and posthumous.

• While no one is carrying a Glock under his doublet, a highly proficient spell-caster can summon fire or lightning in the palm of her hand. Quite unlike medieval Europe or modern America, Caelia exists in a world in which a post graduate education is required to effectively conceal and carry a deadly weapon. 

• Ochsner's people are incredibly knowledgeable about many of the physical sciences, but do not apply that knowledge in all the ways they could. The dwarves have never achieved an industrial revolution, due to a cultural insistence on everything being artisanal.

Admittedly, even my "immersion-meter" (as MXR might call it) twitched a fair bit when writing the book. Like casual violence, however, anachronism and alien cultures are part of the fantasy genre; shirtless barbarians rub elbows with knights in 15th century plate armor, while 19th century ninjas assassinate 10th century emperors aboard 16th century ships.

If my wife is to be believed, the best example may be T. H. White's (1938) The Sword in the Stone: it doesn't just have anachronisms, the narrator stops to identify them for the reader, and to explain why they're there.

But R. E. Howard's Conan series certainly gives some stern competition: Conan features many civilizations based on real world nations, but with no regard for contemporaneity. That includes two civilizations based on the Roman Empire - one thriving and one long dead. Basically, Conan's world includes Schroedinger's Rome. 

And then there's J. R. R. Tolkien, who turned anachronism into a thing of beauty. Owing to his books' intense level of detail, one barely gives any thought to hobbits wearing 17th century waist coats, keeping time with 18th century French mantel clocks, and smoking tobacco (or something), while their neighbors to the southeast huddle in mead halls and use trebuchets to fight off vat-grown genetically engineered armies armed with black powder explosives. 

I feel like we were really only one, harsh edit away from Return of the King ending this way:

One does not simply walk into Mordor without a cyborg super-soldier.

Writer's Notes! - Language and Pronunciation

Language/Pronunciation

I was asked a long time ago to provide a reference for the pronunciation of names, so here's a brief note in that regard. 

To start with, I should acknowledge that I'm not at all bothering to invent a language for Caelia or any other kingdom in Kaleida. By necessity, the narrative is in English and the dialogue is in English, so having the main characters all conveniently speak English while every other race speaks some completely alien language seems a bit ethnocentric. 

Accordingly, a lot of names will be derivations or outright bastardizations of words and names from other languages in the 'real world.' 

• "Native Caelian" doesn't really exist, given "native Caelians" don't really exist.  There won't be any 'old Caelian' names.

• The ancestral tongue of Gnomans is based on old school Latin, so Gnoman names will tend to sound like Latin words. Although, the founders of the Gnoman empire share a common ancestry with humans and dwarves, their spoken languages are all pretty far removed from "Old Feguncian," so the similarities among them aren't obvious.

• The old languages of elves will be based on Japanese and Greek, but names in Caelia will be heavily anglicized (despite the age of some Elves). 

• Dwarvish names will primarily be based on German and Hindi.  

• Arbarii names will probably end up a mish-mash of Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek. 

• Orc names are more or less random nonsense accounting for the pronunciation difficulties surrounding their tusks (tip of the hat to Warhammer for mentioning that problem); because some orcs have pronounced lower teeth, you won't see many words that depend on bilabials or otherwise require the meeting of the lips.     

Of course, names are rooted in old languages, but spoken language is very dynamic, evolving into different regional dialects. Even within the same region, spoken language varies as a function of culture, exposure, education, and temperament.

• The Gnomans don't have a unifying accent because their domain is large, with high internal mobility. In other words, if you ask a Gnoman where she's from, she's likely to say something like "all over the place." Though it doesn't necessarily come off in the dialogue (because I didn't want to be super-cartoonish), Vinny has something comparable to a Brooklyn accent. (Though if the My Cousin, Vinny reference didn't communicate that, I don't know what would.) 

• While many elves are just average people working in the fields alongside humans and orcs, there are definitely some 'old money drama queens.' In a world of 'haves' and 'have-nots,' they are the 'had-and-hanging-ons,' who lecture their children about emotional discipline and propriety, but readily express that as frigid passive-aggressiveness with occasional outbursts of melodrama. So, think New England WASP/Southern Belle, without the slang. Kaira actively tries to avoid this, but it's been deeply ingrained in her - her attempts to be 'folksy' and salt of the earth tend to come off as obviously superficial.   

• Dwarves are generally well educated, and as a culture they value both precision and beauty in what they create. Consistent with that, they would tend to enunciate clearly, and speak at a moderate pace and volume. Ochsner, of course, does not always abide by this - she's lived in Kingstown a long time, and is easily excitable by nature. 

• Due to being pushed to the fringes of society, orcs primarily speak with rural or lower class dialects - this is consistent with a tradition started by J.R.R. Tolkien, whose orcs spoke with distinctive cockney accents (albeit, with no rhyming slang). Given that Caelia is supposed to feel a bit more North American and a bit less European, it'll be a bit different in these books; for example, one charming, well educated fellow combines southwestern U.S. and western Canadian, while his brutish father speaks with a combination of British cockney and American 'red neck' that's essentially a crime against grammar.

As to the pronunciation of specific names:

Azraea Michelle Thanel 

• Pronunciation: In "Azraea" emphasize the Z and the second A. The first A is short, like in the word "cat", the second A is long, like in the word "wave", and the third A is short, as in the word "about." "Michelle" Is exactly like the real world, western name. In "Thanel" The "Th" is audible but not emphasized. The "an" sounds like the "an" in "plan", not "plane". The "el" sounds like "L" (like Superman's Kryptonian name, actually).
• TLDR: << ah-ZZ-RAY-uh MEH-shell th-Ah-nell >>
• Origin: "Azraea" is a reference to "Azriel," the biblical angel of death, though the name is pronounced pretty differently. "Michelle" is a reference to the biblical archangel "Michael", though the pronunciation is westernized. "Thanel" references the Greek personification of death, "Thanatos."
• Reasoning: Azraea is the descendant of immigrants; as such, her name would have some old world history behind it, but also some elements of cultural assimilation. Since my readers are going to be mostly, if not exclusively western, I threw a familiar, real world western name into the middle of an otherwise unfamiliar one. Is "Michelle" an immersive name for a fantasy? Given the main character of Star Wars is named "Luke," and his mentor was "Ben," I think I'm okay. As to the meaning behind the name, she is a necromancer, so if anything I probably made it overly obvious. 

Ochsner

• Pronunciation: The "chs" is pronounced as "x", not "sh" - where people get the latter, I have no idea, but it can produce arguments even within the same family.
• TLDR:  << OX-nuhr >>
• Origin: This is a real world, German name that means "Ox herder". 
• Reasoning: None, really, except that it's a sort of 'humble' name like 'Smith' or 'Shepherd,' which fits the character's disposition. 

Kairumina Doro Asterigennithika

• Pronunciation: Please don't make me.
• No, Really: << KAI-roo- MEE-nuh DOH-roh ass-TEHR-eh-GEHN-ith-EH-kah >>
• Short: << KAI-rah >> 
• Origin: Mangled Greek: "Charoúmenos Dó̱ro Astéria pou Genní̱thi̱kan"
• Reasoning: Her family name translates to "Star Born", so appropriately pretentious. But her given name translates to "Joyous Gift", which will make more sense when you learn more about her parents.

Vinny, Vidi, and Vicki

• Pronunciation: Exactly what you'd imagine.
• TLDR: Tough.
• Origin: It's a pun on Julius Caesar's famous quote, "veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered. 
• Reasoning: The Gnomans are supposed to bear an unsubtle similarity to the ancient Romans, though even more than the Romans, they value one-sided, crushing victories in everything - essentially, surveillance, sabotage, and espionage should make the outcome of any conflict a foregone conclusion. Caesar's casual assertion expresses the Gnoman attitude concisely, and the specific names for the Gnomans have some individual relevance to their characters.

That's all for this week! See you Monday for the start of chapter 3!

Writer's Notes! - Illustrations

Chapter 2 will begin on February 5th! 

In the mean time, allow me to embarrass myself with my atrocious artwork!

I actually did, at one point, consider trying to illustrate the book. That point in time was... well, brief. This was a sketch I did a very long time ago for the first chapter of Rise of Azraea. The picture doesn't quite line up with the descriptions in the book, because over the course of finishing the book, revising it, writing the sequel, etc., the character's have become more concretely pictured in my mind. It's also helped that I've found better words to describe things I see in my head.

You can't tell it from this picture, but Ochsner's skin tone is supposed to lean more towards tawny than towards the fair skin we generally associate with dwarves in fantasy - if anything, she probably looks a bit like Mindy Kaling.

It's likely a detail you missed reading the first chapter, because I mentioned it only in passing, and never really returned to it. Unlike Azraea's skin tone, Ochsner's skin tone doesn't really come up much in the book because the other characters don't think much of it, certainly not in the context of her dwarven size and build. Azraea's physical appearance marks her as an Arbarii descendant, and Ochsner's physical appearance marks her as a dwarven Caelian. Though both are technically people of color, the way they're treated by other Caelians is very different.

Caelia's dwarves make up a very large percentage of the kingdom's population, easily outnumbering elves and orcs combined, but they tend to be relatively insular, staying in their subterranean metropolises. In the end, most surface-dwelling Caelians feel about their dwarven neighbors the way U.S. Americans feel about Canadians. We have some stereotypes about them, and some prejudices I'm sure, but except for Nickelback, we generally don't have strong opinions about Canadians. Likewise, Caelians don't really have strong opinions about dwarves, and if they feel any mistrust, it's probably because they see them as sketchy 'city-folk'.

Likewise, Kaira's skin tone isn't clear from the picture above, because scanning pictures from my sketchbook makes them darker. She should be - literally - white as a sheet of copy paper. I don't mean Caucasian, I mean white. And I don't mean she's pale - her unfreckled, unblemished skin is actually pigmented white, obscuring the veins and other subcutaneous features that are visible through the skin of white humans. Because the picture was small, I didn't draw-in the elaborate tattoos she's covered that canvas in, though for reference, I tried doing a really basic version later:

Of course, not only is it over-simplified the asymmetrical
tattoos made one eye look smaller than the other. 

Needs work.

Obviously, Azraea's skin tone doesn't come-off well in a gray-scale image either, but I think most people can understand my dilemma, and for those who can't I'll be blunt; a picture of a black person drawn by an amateur artist has a very real chance of coming out look like a racist ad from 1912.

The other thing that's off here is her hair. I originally chose to draw it in tight braids for two reasons. The first reason is that, over the decades, Azraea has been pressured into downplaying her racial attributes, so her style tends to be low key in a don't-scare-the-white-people sort of way (completely the opposite of Kaira's approach to fashion).

The second reason is that, even if that pressure weren't present, Azraea wouldn't be inclined towards loose or 'big' hair-styles. Azraea is a necromancer, and there's a good reason why someone who cuts open bodies wouldn't necessarily wear her hair loose or have a large bushy beard. Azraea could crop it very short, of course, and not really have to deal with it at all, but she's willing to spend extra time on her appearance. Azraea's not vain, but she feels (more than most of us) the need to be in control of her life, and one thing she can exert control over every day is her own appearance. Every day she dresses nicely, applies make up precisely, and styles her hair, not to grab the attention of others, but as part of a silent mantra that says, 'I control my life.'

I'd originally imagined her having her hair in many small, tight braids, and that's what she has in all of my early artwork for these books. However, one day I encountered a woman whose hair style immediately leaped out as 'that's Azraea!' Her hair was bound tight to the scalp, in several thick french braids. The result was immediately evocative of a European fairy tale princess, while at the same time depending on a volume and texture that few people of European descent could match. It was distinctive and eye-catching, but (hypothetically) it would also be easily protected from flying viscera.

Of course, I tried drawing it.

Obviously I haven't much practice with braids. 

Granted, if we're nitpicking style and fashion, then it should also be pointed out that Azraea's dress shows more cleavage in this picture than it realistically would. That's because I suck at drawing squishy things (I'm much more comfortable with robots).

Of course, come to that, Ochsner is probably showing less cleavage than she should be. Given it's a tightly packed bar at the start of summer, and Ochsner was born and raised in a regular 55 degrees Fahrenheit environment, she'd be sweltering in that layered outfit.

As it seems in poor taste to post a picture of Ochsner's cleavage, I'll leave it at that.

Reference: Caelia - History II

Even after the  Great Orc Rebellion toppled Feguncia's Second Kingdom, the elves in what is now Caelia retained control of the mountain-ringed plateau for quite a long time. However, after the rebellion, there was no shortage of men and orcs who wished to keep fighting. One among them, veteran commander Caelus Ravencroft, took his human and orc warriors from northern Feguncia up the Gygian and laid siege to the last great holdout of the Second Kingdom elves.

Although the elves initially put up a fierce fight, it was no more than a few years into their war with Caelus that the elves' orc soldiers rebelled and toppled the kingdom from within, This resulted in intense internal strife, as orc commanders declared themselves chieftains, carved the realm into holds, and vied for control of the plateau. With their unified defense broken, however, they were unable to resist the conquerors from the south. Caelus's army broke through the southern defenses and quickly laid claim to what has become Kingstown. From there, his forces pushed outward to the coasts, seizing control over what people came to call the Caelian Kingdom, and eventually, Caelia.

Owing to Caelus's intervention, the elves were not slain or driven out of Kingstown as they were elsewhere, and many were able to evade the wrath of the orcs in other portions of the country by cutting deals with their land's new ruler. Caelus's relatively light-handed treatment of the elves sat poorly with the orcs who'd overthrown them, making them even less inclined to sacrifice any measure of their newly won freedom. Having many orcs already within his command, Caelus offered governorships and commissions to any of the self-declared chieftains prepared to swear loyalty to him, but most refused.

There was no formal conclusion to the orc resistance in Caelia, but historians generally agree that after three generations it could no longer be considered as such. The orc military that had served under the elves splintered into warring clans after their masters were overthrown. Never unifying into a true resistance force, the clans turned to guerrilla warfare when they proved unable to face Caelus's armies in open battle. The orc guerrillas were succeeded by orc raiders, who plundered Caelia's countryside while dodging Caelus's armies, and fanatical orc terrorists, who attacked 'soft targets' with no real plan or strategy. Eventually all but the most zealous terror cells sold-out; they initially engaged in mercenary work to finance their aimless rebellion but finally ended up renting themselves out as career thugs and enforcers.

Ironically, many of these profit-minded orcs sold their services to elvish families who had survived the turmoil with their coin-purses largely intact. Three elvish families, the Biahnkarosas in Kingstown, the Cherneshypas on the west coast, and the Shirbaymunzas on the east coast, actually gained influence and power when their brethren were deposed. They sank deep roots through much of Caelia's economy, ensuring that they could never be easily dislodged, even by the considerable efforts of Caelus I's successors.

______________________________________________________________________________

Interested in reading more about Caelia? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

Reference: Caelia - History I

Though overshadowed by the Gnoman Empire to its south, Caelia is a reasonably sized kingdom, hundreds of miles across at its widest point. Of course, Caelia was likely once much larger, but like Fugencia, much of it was claimed by the rising seas that followed the Star Shift. Now the ocean laps at the edges of its most prominent geographic feature - a concave plateau that stretches across nearly the entire kingdom. Dwarven geologists I have studied with suggest that the formation is a blast crater resulting from a massive volcanic eruption; there is considerable volcanic activity in the mountains north of Caelia, and there are some ancient structures in the Gnoma Range which historians believe are evidence that those mountains also hosted volcanic activity at one time,

Due to the encroaching seas, Caelia is now a geographic bottleneck between Fugencia and Quinox, Fugencia's northern neighbor. The entire country is effectively a landbridge between the two continents. Because of its concave topography, the country's most notable river, the Gygian, does not flow to either of Caelia's coastlines; instead, it runs from its headwaters in northern Caelia, through the center of the kingdom to the massive artificial lake formed by the Old Wall in southern Caelia. From there, the Gygian flows through the River Gate, cuts through the northern end of the Gnoma Range, and crosses northern Fugencia, finally emptying into the Facian Sea. In all of the known world, the Gygian is the only river known to have its headwaters and mouth on separate continents.

At some point before the decline of Fugencia's First Kingdom, the dwarven mines in the ring of mountains surrounding the area went rogue, separating from the First Kingdom and becoming small subterranean city-states. The renegade dwarves built a series of massive walls through the plateau's southern mountains, turning the plateau into a single, massive fortress. During that same time, they carved passes through the mountains on the eastern and western edges of the plateau, permitting easy travel from the interior to either coastline.

The city states lacked powerful offensive armies, and most of their inhabitants were leery of the surface world, but the densely populated dwarven cities were dependent on the crops grown in the basin and fish pulled in from the sea. As a result, the greatest power in the region was wielded by the dwarven rulers able and willing to fight for the world above ground. The dwarven history of Caelia is a dynamic and exciting topic in its own right, simply because the dwarves struggled to manage their conflicts with one another, while still contending with assaults from the South.

The last great dwarven power in the region was the Bhatt Dynasty. The Bhatt's emerged not from one of the old mines, but from the massive above ground city in which their First Kingdom masters once dwelt. More accustomed to life above ground, mingling with other peoples, the Bhatt's were eventually able to seize and maintain control over most of the river basin, and all the food grown within it. The Bhatt Dynasty formally began when Irir Bhatt shrewdly negotiated a union between his territory and the surrounding dwarven cities. People often refer to the Bhatt's as kings ruling over vassal cities, but that's inaccurate. The union functioned less as a system of government and more as business arrangement. The consortium that was created ensured that the Bhatt's would be able to trade freely with all of their neighbors, and the consortium controlled prices and capped consumption in order to guarantee that the Bhatts would trade with all of their neighbors fairly.

After the fall of Feguncia's First Kingdom, the consortium prospered. Over time, the Bhatt's gained more power within the consortium but, oddly, the trade between the Bhatts and the dwarven cities became increasingly lop-sided, until the Bhatt's were effectively paying the cities to maintain their alliance. When the elves of Feguncia's Second Kingdom came north with their orc armies, the last ruler of the Bhatt Dynasty, Rheyger Bhatt, was already straining to make payments to all of the allied cities. Because of this, the southern cities eventually abandoned the alliance. They withdrew their support from the consortium and made peace with the elves. Rheyger, of course, was forced to abandon the city which had, for so long, been the seat of power for his family. He retreated north, to the cities which were still loyal, but it was a hopeless endeavor - eventually Rheyger's forces were overrun, and the land fell under the control of the elves.

______________________________________________________________________________

Interested in reading more about Caelia? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

Reference: The Gnoman Empire - Religion II

Under the dominant philosophy of Polyaspectism, all deities are assumed to be equally plausible, so the Gnoman Empire documents and formally recognizes many thousands of deities. Obviously, some gather more recognition and investment than others, however.

Theus

Pueraria's move to enforce Polyaspectism as the official religion of the Gnoman Empire resulted in some complications, as it married an innately chaotic philosophy to an incredibly structured legal system. To deal with the resulting disorder, her son and eventual successor, Pragmus I, established the First Church of Gnoman Polyaspectism, a structured institution tasked with officially managing and overseeing the worship and records of the Empire's gods. Pragmus himself was posthumously deified as Theus, the Gnoman god of organized religion, and eternal head of the church he founded. Due to the bureaucratic nature of Gnoman culture, Theus is also sometimes called upon in otherwise secular matters of legislation and organization, especially when ambiguous grammar may be a source of conflict. Biblical texts of any religion are considered holy to him, and to a lesser extent any formal doctrines, edicts, mission statements, and to do lists can fall under the scope of his influence. Theus is a sworn enemy of any gods devoted to anarchy, atheism, sloppiness, or improvisation. He is considered the divine frenemy of Dubia, the Gnoman's chief goddess of uncertainty. Per drawings from Pragmus's childhood, Gnomans generally depict Theus with two pairs of angelic wings, white armor, and a blazing sword of divine energy.

Dubia

In life, Dubia was Serise, Pueraria's daughter and Pragmus's older sister. As princess, Serise used her freedom and influence to become one of the most feared critics in Gnomania, but never herself showed any aptitude for an art - by her own admission, she could never create something that would satisfy her own standards. This likely contributed to her mother's decision to pass her over as successor to the throne, and resulted in a complex dynamic between herself and her younger brother. Serise had an unerring ability to point out weaknesses and faults in any idea or plan, making her feared by both sides of any debate held before her brother. She was posthumously deified as Dubia, a goddess of critical thought and skepticism, and is often called upon by Gnoman judges, scientists, or anyone else who wishes to see the potential faults in their own plans. Most commonly, she is revered by Gnoman agnostics and even moderate atheists, who believe that Dubia (if she exists) will defend their souls (if they exist) against any divine judgment (if it exists) that may be incurred by their skepticism during life. It is generally taboo to speak her name in restaurants, theaters, or during weddings. Dubia's representation is unknown, as Serise was never satisfied with anything she described as a child. As a result, in Gnoman iconography she is generally represented by an imperfect circle.

The Faceless

Secrecy is extremely important to Gnomans, especially to Left-Hands serving in the Sinister Legions of the Gnoman military. The Gnomans believe that there must be a god of secrets, but also believe that the true identity of the ultimate master of secrecy and concealment must be unknowable. Somewhat confusing outsiders, however, it is inappropriate for the followers of the Faceless to acknowledge this in conversation - as his/her devotees, they are expected to aid him/her in maintaining his/her mystery, by spreading misinformation at every turn. There is an annual Festival of the Faceless, but it is not held on a set date - instead, each year the followers of the Faceless interrupt another deity's festival, declaring for the day that that deity is, in fact, the true identity of the Faceless.

Reference: The Gnoman Empire - Religion I

The predominant religious philosophy of the Gnoman Empire is Polyaspectism. Myodes, third king of Gnomania, promoted the religion in order to stabilize his growing kingdom, and Pueraria, first Empress of the Gnoman Empire pressured the Gnoman Senate to recognize the religion as the formal state religion after the conquest of Facia.

Central to Polyaspectism is the idea of uncertainty in supernatural matters. Where most Kaleidan religions promote absolute certainty with respect to spiritual matters - to the point of questioning or even denying the mundane, Polyaspectism takes the opposite approach. To polyaspectists, only the physical, tangible world can be absolutely known - anything in the realm of the spiritual or metaphysical is beyond the capacity of mortal beings to observe and comprehend, and is therefore open to speculation. The traditional metaphor of Gnoman Polyaspectism is that of a wax seal created by a signet ring - the observable world is said to be akin to the impression made in the wax seal, while the 'true' world is comparable to the ring that made the impression. From the wax seal, one can make inferences about one specific aspect of the ring, but can say nothing else about the ring with any certainty. Accordingly, the existence of every deity is considered equally plausible, including those worshiped in other religions. Denying the existence of any deity is taboo and potentially heretical.

In Polyaspectism, everything that is, has been, or will be, exists not only in the observable, natural world but in the unobservable, supernatural world. This includes people, for whom the tangible, physical body and mind are only shallow impressions of a more complex entity. The other dimensions - are collectively known as the anima, or soul, with consciousness and unconsciousness being a bridge between the two. When a person's physical body dies and rots, the soul persists as a spirit, and if the person's legacy is powerful enough, the spirit may be elevated to godhood.

Note: In some particular cases, deities may also be formed from the collective will or consensus of many animae, creating a distinct entity some Gnoman writers refer to as a 'metagod'. 

According to some Gnomans, every anima is a god in itself, albeit one with a very limited domain. Other Gnomans might regard the anima as more comparable to a conscience (consulted when making moral judgments), guardian angel (interceding for its physical counterpart in matters of fate), or imaginary friend. In every case, though, the entity is considered to be both 'them' and separate from 'them'. This divergence between the physical and the spiritual is believed to be least pronounced among the young, and so most Gnomans encourage their children to think about their animae, describe them, and even try to talk to them while they are young, building a relationship between the mortal and spiritual aspects that will last throughout the Gnoman's life.

It's worth noting that, given the Gnoman's belief that the objective truth is unknowable to mortals, it is generally expected that children's descriptions of the anima will be outrageous and inconsistent over time, as the mortal mind struggles to understand its more complex spiritual counterpart. Gnoman philosophers and theologists have produced a large body of literature dedicated to interpreting descriptions of the anima, many of them written for parents as a means for better understanding and communicating with their children.

Note: Although Gnomans have a variety of colorful insults, the most severe are those directed at someone's anima, as making definitive declarations about someone else's anima infringes so severely on an individual's personal identity, that even praise can be considered taboo, if expressed in an inappropriate way. For example, to tell someone their "anima must be beautiful" would be offensive, as it severely oversteps personal boundaries by dictating someone else's anima to them.    

Unlike most other religions, it's well accepted that many Gnoman deities have been, or will eventually be, forgotten. Some may become irrelevant due to social changes, or they may be usurped by other deities. In fact, Polyaspectism lacks a traditional creation myth, partly because whatever entity was responsible for forming Kaleida is assumed to have long since passed from their knowledge.

Note: As an engineered race, the creation of the Gnomans and their close relatives are a matter of record, discussed academically by archaeologists, anthropoligists, and biomancers. The origins of the ancient humans that created them are unknown to the Gnomans, as are the origins of the physical world. However, such events are relative trivialities to Gnomans in the present - they enjoy stories and theories about such matters, but do not take such discussions especially seriously, dismissing any serious disagreements about the matter with the common phrase, "It's ancient history."

Some Polyaspectists fear that those deities, spirits, and even animae which are forgotten are consigned entirely to oblivion, and therefore place great importance on maintaining not only careful records of deities, but of family members and ancestors, to ensure that their spirits do not fade away entirely. They may even offer prayers and request unnecessary guidance from ancestral spirits and deities, simply to help them feel appreciated.

Other Polyaspectists, however, believe that the spirits of those who've passed remain relevant even when they have been forgotten, or are unknown. For example, a Gnoman traveling in a foreign city certainly does not expect to know the name of the local deity who governs pedestrian safety at a particularly busy intersection, but may have faith that such an entity does exist, and may reasonably trust his anima to make an entreaty to the unknown power on his behalf.

It is also considered acceptable to simply guess the name and nature of an unknown deity or spirit, and expect that - regardless of accuracy - the deity will appreciate the thought.

Reference: The Gnoman Empire - History II

Separated from their 'homeland' in the east for generations, the Facian colonists in Gnomania became "Gnomans" and prospered due to the good farmland of the plains, the rich mineral resources of the mountains, and the abundant lumber from the rain-forests to the the northwest.

Just as Gnomania was beginning to thrive, Facia reached its peak. The Facians had prospered a bit too quickly within the confines of their mountainous island, and after some attempts to colonize lands to the north and south failed catastrophically, and even a failed attempt to cross the Morn, it had become increasingly difficult to convince people to uproot from the overcrowded cities and leave Facia. Besides overpopulating the island, the Facians (who'd had gained little experience with agriculture even while serving the elves) had exhausted their limited farmland and even over-fished the waters off of their shores. They attempted to sustain themselves by pressuring their colonies to provide a greater share of their resources to the Facian homeland, but eventually the colonies rebelled and cut them off. Facia broke down into civil war, and all but destroyed itself.

And then the Gnomans stepped in.

Having followed the decline of Facia from afar, and having made a dedicated effort to learn from their kinsmen's failures, they eventually decided they couldn't stand by while the civilization that birthed them fell apart entirely. With great numbers of healthy and disciplined soldiers, the Gnomans swept across the sea from the west. They forcibly reunited the wayward colonies and eventually seized control over their ancestral homeland outright. This aggressive 'peace-keeping' endeavor marked the formal end of Facia and the beginning of the Gnoman Empire.

The Gnoman's next pushed westward into the mountains. The Gnoma Range was chiefly inhabited by the "dwarves", descendants of Fugencia's stout, powerfully built industrial laborers and miners. The Gnoman's initially clashed with these cousins over water-rights, the inhabitants of the great city of Dwara holding the headwaters of one of Gnomania's major rivers hostage. Eventually the Dwarans faltered, unable to hold their ground against a sustained siege by a civilization cultivating millions of square miles of cropland to feed their armies. Emboldened by their victory, the Gnoman Empire moved to seize control of the entire Gnoma Range, bringing them into conflict with all of Dwara's sister cities.

It was, initially, more than the Empire could handle, and it became their most costly war. The Alpine War finally reached a turning point when one of the cities negotiated its voluntary annexation, joining the Gnoman Empire under a charter which preserved a great deal of its autonomy. Many others followed suit, and the rest ultimately surrendered. As the dwarves bowed out of the war, the Gnomans' chief opposition became an alliance of humans and orcs organized by elves who'd returned to Fugencia's west coast. The elves had persuaded their former servants that they would eventually be annihilated by the Gnomans, and that their only hope was to seize control of a massive subterranean Fugencian fortress that the dwarves had been restoring in an attempt to tip the war in their favor.

The war's final battle lasted a full winter, and was fought at the gates of an ancient Fugencian citadel. The elves had laid claim to the place after forging an alliance with a number of dwarves who rebelled against the treaties their brethren had made with the Gnomans. The Imperials and their new dwarven vassals confronted an army of orcs and humans united by the elves and supplied by the rebel dwarves, but the long battle and freezing conditions eventually broke the alliance of the western kingdoms. The rebelling dwarves eventually surrendered to their kin, and the orcs and humans once again betrayed the elves, this time delivering them to the Gnoman Empire. In exchange, the Gnoman Empire absorbed the kingdoms on the western coast, forging the same agreements they had with the dwarven cities. The former coastal kingdoms and the inhabitants of the Gnoma Range formally entered the Empire as Western Gnomania.

From there, the Gnoman Empire spread along the Gnoma Range to what had been the northern and southern reaches of Fugencia.

The range trailed off into an island chain to the south, which defined the southern edge of the Facian Sea. The Gnomans had initially settled the largest of these islands, Tulusa, which also sat the closest to Gnomania, and had attempted to establish peaceful trade with the inhabitants of the hundreds of smaller islands that spread to its south. Unfortunately, ownership of those islands was contested by three different, powerful kingdoms on the mainland south of the islands. The Gnomans made multiple attempts to negotiate peace with these kingdoms, or at least some sort of treaty that would allow the Empire to trade with the islands unmolested as a neutral party, but after one treaty negotiation ended with Tulusa itself being attacked, the Gnomans' naval forces moved into the islands, formally claiming many of them for the Empire, and committing to an ongoing, four-way war that continues to this day.

In the North, the predominantly human descendants of the Fugencians had survived comfortably on the farmlands surrounding the massive Gygian river that cut through the Gnoma Range and emptied into the Facian Sea. The poor mineral resources had made metal tools and weapons a precious commodity, however, and they'd been unable to reclaim their ancestors' former glory. Many accepted Gnoman rule simply for access to plows and other work implements fashioned from Gnoman steel. This brought the Gnoman Empire's influence to the lands just south of what is now Caelia,


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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

Reference: The Gnoman Empire - History I

On the eastern edge of the shallow sea, the Faci Mountains became known simply as Facia. In this large, mountainous, thickly forested island, the peace established in the wake of the Great Orc Rebellion did not last long.

The smallest of the Fugencian races had been crafted to handle the administration of Fugencia, and they had been among those who'd been most discontent with their roles in Fugencian society before the Star Shift. To add insult to injury, although these small people had comprised an extraordinarily large portion of those living in the cities, they had been among those given the lowest priority when the cities were finally evacuated.

Still, many of these people did escape to the relative safety of the mountains; unfortunately, most of these refugees had never left their city of birth before, let alone spent time in the wilderness. Given this lack of preparation, and their small size and relative physical weakness, it is remarkable that they survived the ensuing chaos at all.

According to Lady Heppa, their attention to detail, their capacity to learn and focus on complex tasks, and their ability to work for long hours with minimal sleep was "beyond human." Being urban dwellers, they were naturally more resistant to the diseases that ravaged the tightly packed refugees, and being exceptionally small, they could survive on less food than their starving kinsmen. Eventually they found comfort and safety in the high trees that covered the mountains, and life in the Facian forests hardened them, honing their innate mental strengths into what Heppa described as "remarkable cunning" and "breathtaking ruthlessness."

When the elves swept in with their orc armies, the former administrators readily turned on their prior masters, happily betraying them to the elves, who accepted their aid and granted them freedom and status second only to their own. They served happily in this capacity until the Great Orc Rebellion came, at which point, most of them stepped out of the line of fire and waited to see which side would come out on top.

Although orcs and elves alike knew that the small Fugencians' neutrality was a matter of self-interest, and denigrated them for their lack of loyalty, they assumed that the small Fugencians' intentions were to dedicate themselves to the survivors once the war was over. Much to the orcs' surprise, however, when the outcome was finally settled, the descendants of the seemingly meek administrative caste turned and struck at the victors. Their small size, quick bodies, and home-field advantage made them dangerous combatants in the thickly forested Faci Mountains, and after generations of war, the Facians ultimately drove the surviving humans, orcs, and elves from the island and declared themselves to be the people of Facia.

The Facians prospered, and after settling into a period of relative peace, they focused on developing maritime skills to match their proficiency in the forests and mountains. They became great shipwrights, fishermen, and traders, as well as explorers. They 'rediscovered' much of their lost country, colonizing scattered islands inhabited by orcs and humans who were too disorganized to fend off the coordinated tactics used by Facian invaders. The Facians eventually claimed dominion over the entire shallow sea to the west of Facia and named it, unsurprisingly, the Facian Sea.

About the Facian Sea: The waters are so shallow and often so peaceful, that it is sometimes possible to study the seafloor below. In fact, Facian mariners began mapping the sea floor as they rolled along the oceans above it, and as others have contributed since, we now have relatively detailed maps of what Fugencia must have looked like before its flooding. Of note, long, wide, deep trenches running along the sea floor have been determined to be ancient rivers. The longest of these, in fact, still connects to the mouth of the Gygian river, carrying cold river water along the sea floor down to the warm, tropical waters of the Facian Sea. Littering the seafloor, and particularly concentrated around these submerged rivers, are numerous ruins which now host massive coral reefs. Most of these ruins are nearly unrecognizable to the untrained eye, but one of these locations must be carefully avoided in rough weathers, as the structures remain tall enough to tear through the bottoms of ships.   

Eventually the spreading Facians reached the large landmass that had once been the expansive, high elevation plains that lay east of Fugencia's western mountains, the Gnoma Range. Shielded by the mountains, these plains had once been relatively dry, even desert-like in places, but thanks to the shifting climate, the rivers running down from the Gnoma Range had swelled and increased in number, turning the dry plains into verdant farmland. The Facians, of course, claimed it as "Gnomania" and took it for their own, gradually displacing or eliminating the disorganized clans of freed orcs and indigenous humans over the centuries that followed.


______________________________________________________________________________

Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

Reference: The Star Shift and the Fall of Feguncia

According to Thinell and other well respected elvish historians, when elves first arrived in Kaleida's western hemisphere, Fugencia was a single contiguous continent controlled entirely by humans.

These humans constructed massive cities using stone, sand, and metal, and created many elaborate contraptions. Most remarkably, however, these humans had used biomancy to reshape their bodies, differentiating themselves into different races specialized to perform certain duties within their societies. I have had the good fortune to meet and interview the Lady Heppa, an elf who was present when her kin crossed the Morn Ocean and first encountered the Fugencians. Heppa described the society as initially giving the appearance of harmony, functioning much like one of their miraculous contraptions, but it didn't take her or her fellows long to discern the discontentment among the various racially defined castes. She commented to me that a catastrophic end for the civilization seemed inevitable.

That said, even the elves were shocked by what eventually happened.

Any casual student of our world's natural history is aware of the dramatic, heavenly event that has been dubbed the Star Shift, and is likely just as aware of the cataclysmic events that the Star Shift heralded. The old saying, 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' proved very true in the case of Fugencian society - intensely dependent on their world's ordered infrastructure, the people could not recover from the disruptions caused by the unexpected changes that followed.

About the Star Shift: Some astrologists believe that Kaleida is not a stationary sphere around which other bodies move, but rather a moving body itself, coordinated with other bodies in a sort of elaborate dance. As proof, they point out that it is highly unlikely that the sun, stars, and all of the other celestial bodies moving around Kaleida would collectively alter their course at the same time and in the same direction. It would be far simpler to assume that something occurred which caused Kaleida itself to alter its movement, and that from our perspective it simply appears as if everything else has moved. Supporters of this theory describe Kaleida as a top spinning around an orcish hearth on a perfectly smooth floor; they believe our top "wobbled" causing both the visible change in the heavens and the catastrophic events which they seemed to foreshadow. Many question the plausibility of this, however, pointing out that when a top "wobbles" it does not simply lean a certain amount and then stop, it either returns to its original orientation or careens across the floor (with disastrous results). Two answers are given by supporters of the top theory: the first is that the critics are taking the metaphor too literally (Kaleida behaves like a spinning top, but clearly it is not a toy), and the second (more nihilistic) response is, "give it time."

The Fugencians were evidently immediately alarmed when the constellations, and even the path of the sun, shifted north permanently and (relatively) quickly. According to Heppa, they attempted to take action at a massive scale, as if they somehow already knew what would ensue. However, although they alone seemed to know what was about to happen, conflict among the castes and among the Fugencians' leaders evidently made deciding what to do about it impossible. Although it took months for Fugencia to feel the consequences of the changing climate, the only large-scale response was a badly organized attempt to evacuate the coastal cities.

Evidently, many of the lower castes never escaped the cities, attempting to 'ride it out' in the larger structures. The rise in sea level was apparently far greater than they expected, however, and what buildings were not completely submerged were eventually undermined by the waves, collapsing into the sea like sand castles. Heppa estimates the death toll at the hundreds of thousands, a shocking number to be certain, but I must note that I had the definite impression she was low-balling her estimate because she believed I would not believe the full story as she remembered it.

In the east, the Morn Ocean not only devoured all of the Fugencians greatest cities, it swept many miles inland, forcing urban and rural dwellers alike to move to the high ground of the Faci Mountains for survival. The refugees packed into the cramped mountain valleys to escape the rising water, but starvation, disease, and violence ultimately claimed most of the initial devastation's survivors.

In the midlands, the great river basin that defined the continent's interior flooded and became a shallow sea, wiping out most of the kingdom's most productive farmland. Although most of the midland people escaped to the west and north, the disruption and upheaval broke the back of their society. The refugees clashed with their own kinsmen as they crowded into their neighbors' lands, pleading and eventually fighting for food and shelter. As the kingdom fractured, reformed, and fractured again, frantic warfare brought it lower still. Small provinces became independent kingdoms, and those kingdoms in turn declined into barbaric feudalism or worse.

According to Lady Heppa, her people quickly determined that there was no real way to 'save' the Fugencians, and sailed back to the Old Kingdoms to carry word of what they'd discovered and seen. Of course, quite to their surprise, the Old Kingdoms were contending with similar problems, and in a desperate attempt to resolve their own developing refugee crisis, the elvish kingdoms committed their armadas to a one way trip across the Morn to claim Fugencia and "put what was left to better use".

The ships were packed to capacity with orcs, who were in that time the elves' servants. They endured extreme hardship - a long voyage through unpredictable weather with minimal supplies. Heppa claimed that the rulers of the Old Kingdoms had not been interested in whether the voyage was successful; faced with a sudden population crisis, they had decided that sacrifices needed to be made, and that those sacrifices should largely come out of the orc population. Organizing a seemingly doomed expedition had been deemed a palatable alternative to mass executions.

A note: As to why any of the elves joined this apparently futile effort, Heppa explained that motivations varied. Some of the elves believed that if they did not go, the orcs would not be convinced to set sail, and so they embarked with the orcs believing that they were sacrificing themselves for the good of their people. Other elves, however, couldn't accept the ruthlessness of the plan, and traveled with the orcs, believing that their leadership would give their servants the best chance of survival. Heppa herself claimed that she was motivated by ambition and a degree of youthful recklessness - on the chance that she survived the journey, she'd be given her own force to command, and would be entitled to whatever she could lay claim to.

Heppa estimated that less than half of their ships survived crossing the Morn, and many of the orcs on the surviving ships had perished from starvation or in accidents. Nevertheless, although the orcs and elves alike were in a pitiful state when they reached what was left of Fugencia, the Fugencians were fairing at least as badly, and were in no way prepared to fight highly motivated elves and orcs. The armies from the east easily seized control of the island that had once been the Faci Mountains, gathered their strength, and then spread across the shallow sea, sweeping across Fugencia and conquering everything out to the far western and northern coasts. The surviving humans were either driven from the continent, or joined the orcs in serving the elves.

However, as Heppa acknowledged, this proved uncharacteristically short-sighted on the part of the elves. Elves, of course, reproduce much more slowly than either orcs or humans, and so as they expanded their influence, they also thinned their numbers, to the point of (in a few places) having to entrust their orc servants to oversee themselves. Mixed with the Fugencian humans, who had not been cowed by generations of subjugation, the orcs grew restless and that eventually set the stage for the Great Orc Rebellion.

Though it was a long war, that the orcs very nearly lost, the elves were eventually defeated, and scattered to the fringes of civilization. With the elves defeated, the orcs and humans carved the remaining land into a number of smaller kingdoms, maintaining varying degrees of segregation and friendliness over the years that followed.

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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.