A Green Sun Illuminates the Void (ZnT/Exalted)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
Firstly, as a broad status update, exams are over, so I actually have time. However, AEE is at the top of the update list right now. However however, I currently have the next six chapters of AGSITV planned out, because they cover the Albion arc, and this is the point where we may quite well go swee~eeeerve away from canon.
Also, please, don't harass Stephenls.
And to prevent Princess Syndrome (that they have to be nice and Disney-Princess-like and can't just go burn cities down if they spite them) from kicking in when thinking about it, I just remind myself that Azula's title was Princess, too. And recolour the resultant flames to green.
Also, please, don't harass Stephenls.
Heh. Although I technically know that, it doesn't feel right to be calling Louise a Prince, and... uh... I really don't like the way that the "-een" sound appears twice in Green Sun Queen, quite apart from the fact that it doesn't have the "inheritor to power, ruler-to-be" feel of Prince/Princess (and, yes, I know that Princes can rule nations). Treat this as an exemption for Louise, who would object to being called a Prince (because that means something else for her), or a Queen (because she wouldn't presume to that authority... yet).Stephenls said:
And to prevent Princess Syndrome (that they have to be nice and Disney-Princess-like and can't just go burn cities down if they spite them) from kicking in when thinking about it, I just remind myself that Azula's title was Princess, too. And recolour the resultant flames to green.
Yes, that was a idea I really rather liked. I have no objection to her killing a Primordial bare-handedly, because... uh, yes? Solar Martial Arts makes that entirely possible. But I'll be damned if she did it on her own, against a full-strength Primordial, rather than being the one who managed to get through against it while massive armies clashed, and then exploit its Imperfection.
Ah, no. It's canon; both Henrietta and Wales are Triangle-level, so together have hexagonal levels of power. I'm tweaking/clarifying it a bit, such that they can't access more than the highest level of each element involved; they can't do what a theoretical hexagonal Wind mage could do. But they can throw Hexagonal levels of power into effects which combine both Triangle Water and Triangle Wind capacities.Happerry said:
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Dour? That's my rpgnet rep? Dour?Stephenls said:
Also, the people here hardly know me since I've only been here a few months.
They're actually pretty damn terrible. Several authors have managed to write good fiction about the universe despite the quality of the original, not because. It's one of those "This could have been such a good series if you just left the fucking harem comedy bullshit behind instead of having it run the story..."
But if you want, you can find them at Baka Tsuki.
--------------
Epsilon
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
Huh. Coulda sworn Henrietta pulled a square class water spell out in the undead Wales bit... probably been reading too much fan-fiction.EarthScorpion said:
Yeah. I mean, yes, the translation can't help the actual prose, but the author could do with some remedial courses in things like pacing, character development, and not-resetting-to-the-status-quo.Aaron Peori said:
Well, that, and the fact that I find the fact that Tabitha is almost exactly Rei-with-Asuka's-backstory to actively be offensive as a writer, because of the lack of effort which has gone into concealing it. I mean, I steal characters all the time, but I at least bludgeon them into a state where they're not blatantly a fusion of two characters from the same series.
Oh, she's done it more times than that, as a close examination shows. In fact, she's just on the edge of relying on it in combat, because she can't fight yet, so has to borrow those kind of memories. If Marisalon was aware of it, she'd be on the edge of staging an intervention.ChaosArmoury said:
Clearly, it'll be fine and the neomah is just worrying too much. I'm sure it won't come back to bite her some time, right?
Hmm... I was pretty sure that it was a hexagonal-class thing she did together with Wardes, with Water-Water-Water-Wind-Wind-Wind. It is true; people tend to power-inflate parts of ZnT in fanfiction. Part of the reason is, I suspect because of the addition of more powerful familiars, to give people a challenge.Happerry said:
But... heh. GSP!Louise has enough challenges being Louise, and having a rather more cynical look at the nature of rulership and governance.
And, anyway, remember, this is Exalted-by-adoption, and so the Exalted attitude to power and status applies. Having more power doesn't make you a good or nice ruler; it just makes you a powerful one, and possibly even actively worse, because a) you had to take time out of learning non-magical things to study magic, and b) your personal power warps your view of things. I mean, the mages here don't even have the excuse of Bureaucracy Excellencies; they're little better at running things than a baseline human. There's no reason that a ruler has to be a powerful mage, apart from social expectations or the ability to force others to comply. Hence, people like Wardes, who can actually devote their time to being combat monsters, are more powerful than Henrietta, who's "merely" excellently bred and educated.
I mean, the Church has probably the highest concentration of powerful mages, and I doubt anyone is going to put the dear pope as a classical example of one who is entitled to rule.
Oh god. M-R-L taking over briefly will be hilarious to watch from a very safe distance.
So what's your estimation of the top end of power a square can put out canonically then? What I've seen is a bit fuzzy on how much can be thrown about as a max output square spell.EarthScorpion said:
From what I understand of the translations of light novels I've read, it's sadly rather lacking in clarity. Part of the problem with this is that the only Square mage we really see any of is Wardes, so a) we only get the Wind PoV, so we can't see what the other elements could do, and b) he never seems to go quite full power. But we know that it takes a Square-class Wind mage to control Lightning (and the lightning would have killed Saito if it hadn't been for Derf), and Wardes could control either 3 or 4 duplicates which had all his skill at fighting, at once.Mashadarof402 said:
I mean, if Foquet could do all that as a Triangle, what could a Square-class Earth mage do? We don't really know. Likewise for Kirche and Fire.
In AGSITV? As a rough guide, a Square class mage can do effects which parallel in destructive capabilities spells of the Sapphire Circle, although they'll be drained by doing that (and Triangle Mages can sort of parallel the Emerald Circle; Line and Dot are lower). Royal joint casting increases the scale of the effects, but not the finesse; as a metaphor, they can cast a larger Death of Obsidian Butterflies, and do it more frequently, but not a Canata of Empty Voices.
Chapter 7: Tales of Halkeginia I
Have some world-building filler, while the next chapter is worked on
A Green Sun Illuminates The Void
Chapter 7: Tales of Halkeginia I
Introduction to 'On the Brimiric Nations and their Origins, Volume I', by Eléonore Albertine Le Blanc De La Blois De La Vallière
Sanctioned by the Holy Church 637 BE, published by the University of Amstelredamme Press, 638 BE
The object of this text is to provide a comprehensive history of the Brimiric peoples, and to dispel many of the less trustworthy or comprehensive mythologies and falsehoods that have grown up around history, bringing a most disreputable air to the entire field. To this end, I have endeavoured to travel widely, and sought out disparate sources, from the libraries of Roma, that holy city on the seven hills, to the palace-observatories of Versailles, to my well-known libraries of Amstelredamme and the ones in the palace at Bruxlles, and even to the less civilised region of Germania, which even now occupies lands that rightfully belong to Tristain.
As a result, to cover such things correctly, I have endeavoured to provide the necessary context and assignations for the following text. This first volume will cover the current status of the Brimiric Nations, holy Romalia, righteous Tristain, wealthy Gallia, now reunited with the breakaway Iberia and esteemed Albion, and the lesser, barbarians nation of Germania and the many and disparate kingdoms and princedoms of the Otmani. The second and later volumes shall cover more detailed histories of each of these places, to the best of my abilities.
And therefore, to introduce this book, I shall start with perhaps the most appropriate place for any piece of writing, and that is the languages of our blessed lands. The history of Halkeginia is written in words; a base tautology to some, but it is true in a more profound sense. Through the words we use to communicate, that I use to write, we can see the history of these sceptred lands in every piece. That I use the word 'word', rather than the archaic 'nom' for the base part of speech is a legacy of the Yellow Pox. That plague ended the Golden Century of Tristainian supremacy, killed one in every three and left the lands weak to the Germani invaders from the West, and a subsequent mingling between the nobility and the peasantry which is seen in our speech; it is for that reason that the inexprimé houses can even exist. The fact, with effort, we of Tristain, Albion, Romalia and Gallia can communicate is all due to our shared heritage as the people of Brimir, even though only Romalia's tongue remains relatively pure of the baser elements of the peasantry. The similarities between the peasant tongues of the nations likewise speak of contact and trade, however barbarous, between them before the people of Brimir bought civilisation and magic to them. Even the links of the Germanian peoples to other such barbarians can be seen in their language. In words and in speech, this history can be seen everywhere.
I will therefore be clear with the conventions which shall be used in this book. In its entirety, this book will be written in the modern language of Tristain, so-called High Tristainian. Although I did contemplate writing it in Old Tristainian, the limits that would impose upon the audience of this book would be unnecessary and unhelpful. Colloquialisms in Low Tristainian, the language of the peasantry, will be transcribed verbatim in cases where it is needed, and will be translated in all other cases. In truth, the difference is more one of dialect and synonym choices than a true linguistic division, but nonetheless, the separation remains wide enough that, especially in more rural parts, an individual speaking High Tristainian will be incomprehensible to the rusitics, whose language resembles more the pre-Brimiric speech, even after all this time. Certainly, by contrast, in the urban areas there is a noted unification between High and Low, as idioms of the urban poor enter the civilised language via the inexprimé houses, and, likewise, they also covey the more erudite terms down to the lower classes. The similarities to the mixings of the bloodlines of the nobility are left as an exercise to the reader.
To the west of Tristain lies Gallia, our sister nation, to the extent that our royal families have been referred to as 'the twin crowns'. What this eloquent metaphor both conveys, and conceals, is that like all siblings, especially twins, our wars and fights have been long and bitter; not so much now, but certainly prior to the coming of the Germani, Tristain and Gallia warred long and hard. All the land which makes up modern Tristain was once Gallian, taken in glorious battle, and the cultural influence of Old Tristain is almost as strong in Gallia as it is in our own nation. Gallian, as a language, has the same divide between Low and High as Tristainian, and while High Gallian is a civilised Brimiric tongue, heavily influenced by Old Tristainian, Low Gallian is dreadfully uncouth, and almost nasal, its diversity a sign of the lack of travel of its speakers and of their low levels of literacy despite the best efforts of the Church. Gallia is woefully divided, and so the accent of one Gallian peasant might be incomprehensible to one who lives but twenty miles away. Only the presence of the nobility, High Gallian, and the child-like faith of the peasants in the sanctity of Brimir and Saint Orieris, patron saint of Gallia and its first queen, can be said to unify the nation; the royal family is weak and the nobility are strong, compared to historic Tristain, although the last two generations have seen a steady growth in royal power. We will see if the new king, Joseph I, can maintain the hold his father and grandfather have clawed over the nobility, or whether the so-called "Curse of the Twin Staves" will strike him, too, as it did his younger brother.
A note here must be taken for the Gallian province of Iberia, which split from Gallia in 520, under a renegade bastard son of the Gallian royal family, and which was re-conquered in 617 by the now-deceased Duke d'Orléans, who executed the false king, Henry II, in a one-on-one duel, bringing an end to the Ninety-Seven Year Treachery. Ethnically, the Iberians are a separate group to the peasantry of the rest of Gallia and the nobility alike, and these differences are represented in their architecture and their speech. Indeed, noted similarities can be seen between them, and some of the Otmani peoples, and there are intriguing hints that they were once a great peoples, scattered by some ancient disaster, but such is a matter for another time. Let us just say that Iberian has its own, odd, similarities to Romalian, which the more base tongues of other peasantries do not, and move on.
To the north, on the isolated, and frequently wet island of the mists, live the Albionese. Ethnically, the peasantry are kin to the native populace across the north of the continent, although it is said that they are more than a little inbred, and their language is both kin to that of the Tristainian rural classes, and notably incestuous, isolated as they are on their floating island. Compared to our own glorious heritage, most so-called noble families on Albion would classify as inexprimé houses, so weak are their bloodlines and infrequent the number of mages they produce. And this poor breeding shows, for there is but one language, spoken by both the nobles and the peasantry. Modern Albionese is a degenerate bastard tongue, largely Brimiric in its grammar, but rife with peasant terms. Only the royal family and the few remaining bloodlines of acceptable purity, without exception closely related to the royals, speak a true Brimiric tongue, and indeed they have done admirably in maintaining its purity, for it is more akin to Brimiric than even modern Romalian.
This is not to downplay Romalia, home of our holy Father Church, sacred to Brimir, Lord and Founder, and southernmost of the Brimiric nations. The priesthood converses in Brimiric, and even the poor there speak a language more pure than High Tristainian or High Gallian, for the priests of the Church are sure to teach them well to maintain their purity. Literacy among the peasantry is high, for the Church makes most elegant work in ensuring that they can read the multitude of tales of the saints and such that come from the new printing presses of Roma and Napoli, and indeed it has already been noted that such revelation is improving their speech, removing the traces that remain from past occupation by Gallia and the barbaric influence of the Germani tribesmen called in as mercenaries by previous popes to ensure the sanctity of their papal states.
The Germani, of course, descend from completely different linguistic and ethnic groups to both the Brimiric nobility and the peasantry. In the aftermath of the Yellow Pox, while corpses still littered the streets and men and women were still dying, the rapacious Germani invaded what is now Germania, but which was once Tristain. While any efforts against them were hampered by the plague which killed in two weeks or less, the invaders were already afflicted by it and had been for generations, and so despite their lack of magic they could fight. The hordes that moved in subjugated the population, and took the children of nobility for their harems to give or sire on them children with magic, hence the barbaric, coarse tongue of the new, self-proclaimed Germanian 'nobility' has been softened by a proper language. Nevertheless, the language of the Germanian rich – who should not truly be called nobility, for they lack the basis in use of magic that civilised people have – is grammatically unrelated to the Brimiric tongues, and their fell influence and that of their hordes has suffused deep into the tongue of the peasantry. Though on the borders with Tristain and Gallia, they can be understood, deeper into the country one can no more talk to a peasant than one can to a dog, unless one speaks their base speech.
To the south and east of Germania lie the many and fragmented kingdoms of the Otmani, called wrongly by some, Otmania. The Otmani are kin to the Germani, dark of skin with hair in auburn and ebony, and indeed the bloodlines have mixed, for some among the Germani did not follow as far as Tristain, but instead took over lands for themselves from their own kin. If only more had done so. The Otmani are, as I have noted, kin to the natives of Iberia, in Gallia, and also to the Germani, and they once had a civilisation which rivalled even the heights of Roma, until the First Crusade, in the second century, broke their armies, and the Second which followed took many of their lands for the glory of Tristain, in a harbinger of the Glorious Century. Treasures from those days still decorate Roma, and lie, unjustly stolen, in the vaults of the Germanian Emperor. As one heads south and further east, the tongues in the broken kingdoms become stranger and lose even their similarity to Germani, and the people poorer, ever-fearing the rapacious nature of the elves who border their lands.
Of Rub-al-Khali, and of the elves, little can be said. The elves speak a language akin to Brimiric, though it is warped and distorted such that even the priesthood can barely understand them, and their script is illegible. I have seen documents taken from them in battle, archived in Roma, and though I could recognise a character or two, in truth I could comprehend not one word, written as it was in enigmatic ideograms, which may well – according to the priest I spoke to – be a battle-tongue unrelated to their main mode of speech. Even less can be said of Rub-al-Khali, for the elves bar the way to their lands, and to Ind and Cathay, even further to the East. The only men who have been there crossed via the blasted, ruined lands which were once the lands of the Germani, and few return, fewer yet with the treasures that those lands are famed for.
To the west, there are islands, settled by Gallia and Albion, and beyond that is nothing but ocean, and the tall tales of sailors. Nothing more is known, though astronomy has conclusively proven that our world is a globe, from the shadow it casts upon Taksony and Dorika when it eclipses them. We need not speak of the languages there, for there are none to speak them.
And with this cursory look at the world, and of the lands and languages within, I can conclude this introduction. In passing, I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, who have made me the woman I am today, to my sisters in the hope that they will overcome the troubles that God has seen fit to inflict on them, and to my first tutor, Georges Auguste Couthon, who set me on this path. May God and Founder watch over all of them, and aid them, keeping them from harm.
A Green Sun Illuminates The Void
Chapter 7: Tales of Halkeginia I
{0}
Introduction to 'On the Brimiric Nations and their Origins, Volume I', by Eléonore Albertine Le Blanc De La Blois De La Vallière
Sanctioned by the Holy Church 637 BE, published by the University of Amstelredamme Press, 638 BE
The object of this text is to provide a comprehensive history of the Brimiric peoples, and to dispel many of the less trustworthy or comprehensive mythologies and falsehoods that have grown up around history, bringing a most disreputable air to the entire field. To this end, I have endeavoured to travel widely, and sought out disparate sources, from the libraries of Roma, that holy city on the seven hills, to the palace-observatories of Versailles, to my well-known libraries of Amstelredamme and the ones in the palace at Bruxlles, and even to the less civilised region of Germania, which even now occupies lands that rightfully belong to Tristain.
As a result, to cover such things correctly, I have endeavoured to provide the necessary context and assignations for the following text. This first volume will cover the current status of the Brimiric Nations, holy Romalia, righteous Tristain, wealthy Gallia, now reunited with the breakaway Iberia and esteemed Albion, and the lesser, barbarians nation of Germania and the many and disparate kingdoms and princedoms of the Otmani. The second and later volumes shall cover more detailed histories of each of these places, to the best of my abilities.
And therefore, to introduce this book, I shall start with perhaps the most appropriate place for any piece of writing, and that is the languages of our blessed lands. The history of Halkeginia is written in words; a base tautology to some, but it is true in a more profound sense. Through the words we use to communicate, that I use to write, we can see the history of these sceptred lands in every piece. That I use the word 'word', rather than the archaic 'nom' for the base part of speech is a legacy of the Yellow Pox. That plague ended the Golden Century of Tristainian supremacy, killed one in every three and left the lands weak to the Germani invaders from the West, and a subsequent mingling between the nobility and the peasantry which is seen in our speech; it is for that reason that the inexprimé houses can even exist. The fact, with effort, we of Tristain, Albion, Romalia and Gallia can communicate is all due to our shared heritage as the people of Brimir, even though only Romalia's tongue remains relatively pure of the baser elements of the peasantry. The similarities between the peasant tongues of the nations likewise speak of contact and trade, however barbarous, between them before the people of Brimir bought civilisation and magic to them. Even the links of the Germanian peoples to other such barbarians can be seen in their language. In words and in speech, this history can be seen everywhere.
I will therefore be clear with the conventions which shall be used in this book. In its entirety, this book will be written in the modern language of Tristain, so-called High Tristainian. Although I did contemplate writing it in Old Tristainian, the limits that would impose upon the audience of this book would be unnecessary and unhelpful. Colloquialisms in Low Tristainian, the language of the peasantry, will be transcribed verbatim in cases where it is needed, and will be translated in all other cases. In truth, the difference is more one of dialect and synonym choices than a true linguistic division, but nonetheless, the separation remains wide enough that, especially in more rural parts, an individual speaking High Tristainian will be incomprehensible to the rusitics, whose language resembles more the pre-Brimiric speech, even after all this time. Certainly, by contrast, in the urban areas there is a noted unification between High and Low, as idioms of the urban poor enter the civilised language via the inexprimé houses, and, likewise, they also covey the more erudite terms down to the lower classes. The similarities to the mixings of the bloodlines of the nobility are left as an exercise to the reader.
To the west of Tristain lies Gallia, our sister nation, to the extent that our royal families have been referred to as 'the twin crowns'. What this eloquent metaphor both conveys, and conceals, is that like all siblings, especially twins, our wars and fights have been long and bitter; not so much now, but certainly prior to the coming of the Germani, Tristain and Gallia warred long and hard. All the land which makes up modern Tristain was once Gallian, taken in glorious battle, and the cultural influence of Old Tristain is almost as strong in Gallia as it is in our own nation. Gallian, as a language, has the same divide between Low and High as Tristainian, and while High Gallian is a civilised Brimiric tongue, heavily influenced by Old Tristainian, Low Gallian is dreadfully uncouth, and almost nasal, its diversity a sign of the lack of travel of its speakers and of their low levels of literacy despite the best efforts of the Church. Gallia is woefully divided, and so the accent of one Gallian peasant might be incomprehensible to one who lives but twenty miles away. Only the presence of the nobility, High Gallian, and the child-like faith of the peasants in the sanctity of Brimir and Saint Orieris, patron saint of Gallia and its first queen, can be said to unify the nation; the royal family is weak and the nobility are strong, compared to historic Tristain, although the last two generations have seen a steady growth in royal power. We will see if the new king, Joseph I, can maintain the hold his father and grandfather have clawed over the nobility, or whether the so-called "Curse of the Twin Staves" will strike him, too, as it did his younger brother.
A note here must be taken for the Gallian province of Iberia, which split from Gallia in 520, under a renegade bastard son of the Gallian royal family, and which was re-conquered in 617 by the now-deceased Duke d'Orléans, who executed the false king, Henry II, in a one-on-one duel, bringing an end to the Ninety-Seven Year Treachery. Ethnically, the Iberians are a separate group to the peasantry of the rest of Gallia and the nobility alike, and these differences are represented in their architecture and their speech. Indeed, noted similarities can be seen between them, and some of the Otmani peoples, and there are intriguing hints that they were once a great peoples, scattered by some ancient disaster, but such is a matter for another time. Let us just say that Iberian has its own, odd, similarities to Romalian, which the more base tongues of other peasantries do not, and move on.
To the north, on the isolated, and frequently wet island of the mists, live the Albionese. Ethnically, the peasantry are kin to the native populace across the north of the continent, although it is said that they are more than a little inbred, and their language is both kin to that of the Tristainian rural classes, and notably incestuous, isolated as they are on their floating island. Compared to our own glorious heritage, most so-called noble families on Albion would classify as inexprimé houses, so weak are their bloodlines and infrequent the number of mages they produce. And this poor breeding shows, for there is but one language, spoken by both the nobles and the peasantry. Modern Albionese is a degenerate bastard tongue, largely Brimiric in its grammar, but rife with peasant terms. Only the royal family and the few remaining bloodlines of acceptable purity, without exception closely related to the royals, speak a true Brimiric tongue, and indeed they have done admirably in maintaining its purity, for it is more akin to Brimiric than even modern Romalian.
This is not to downplay Romalia, home of our holy Father Church, sacred to Brimir, Lord and Founder, and southernmost of the Brimiric nations. The priesthood converses in Brimiric, and even the poor there speak a language more pure than High Tristainian or High Gallian, for the priests of the Church are sure to teach them well to maintain their purity. Literacy among the peasantry is high, for the Church makes most elegant work in ensuring that they can read the multitude of tales of the saints and such that come from the new printing presses of Roma and Napoli, and indeed it has already been noted that such revelation is improving their speech, removing the traces that remain from past occupation by Gallia and the barbaric influence of the Germani tribesmen called in as mercenaries by previous popes to ensure the sanctity of their papal states.
The Germani, of course, descend from completely different linguistic and ethnic groups to both the Brimiric nobility and the peasantry. In the aftermath of the Yellow Pox, while corpses still littered the streets and men and women were still dying, the rapacious Germani invaded what is now Germania, but which was once Tristain. While any efforts against them were hampered by the plague which killed in two weeks or less, the invaders were already afflicted by it and had been for generations, and so despite their lack of magic they could fight. The hordes that moved in subjugated the population, and took the children of nobility for their harems to give or sire on them children with magic, hence the barbaric, coarse tongue of the new, self-proclaimed Germanian 'nobility' has been softened by a proper language. Nevertheless, the language of the Germanian rich – who should not truly be called nobility, for they lack the basis in use of magic that civilised people have – is grammatically unrelated to the Brimiric tongues, and their fell influence and that of their hordes has suffused deep into the tongue of the peasantry. Though on the borders with Tristain and Gallia, they can be understood, deeper into the country one can no more talk to a peasant than one can to a dog, unless one speaks their base speech.
To the south and east of Germania lie the many and fragmented kingdoms of the Otmani, called wrongly by some, Otmania. The Otmani are kin to the Germani, dark of skin with hair in auburn and ebony, and indeed the bloodlines have mixed, for some among the Germani did not follow as far as Tristain, but instead took over lands for themselves from their own kin. If only more had done so. The Otmani are, as I have noted, kin to the natives of Iberia, in Gallia, and also to the Germani, and they once had a civilisation which rivalled even the heights of Roma, until the First Crusade, in the second century, broke their armies, and the Second which followed took many of their lands for the glory of Tristain, in a harbinger of the Glorious Century. Treasures from those days still decorate Roma, and lie, unjustly stolen, in the vaults of the Germanian Emperor. As one heads south and further east, the tongues in the broken kingdoms become stranger and lose even their similarity to Germani, and the people poorer, ever-fearing the rapacious nature of the elves who border their lands.
Of Rub-al-Khali, and of the elves, little can be said. The elves speak a language akin to Brimiric, though it is warped and distorted such that even the priesthood can barely understand them, and their script is illegible. I have seen documents taken from them in battle, archived in Roma, and though I could recognise a character or two, in truth I could comprehend not one word, written as it was in enigmatic ideograms, which may well – according to the priest I spoke to – be a battle-tongue unrelated to their main mode of speech. Even less can be said of Rub-al-Khali, for the elves bar the way to their lands, and to Ind and Cathay, even further to the East. The only men who have been there crossed via the blasted, ruined lands which were once the lands of the Germani, and few return, fewer yet with the treasures that those lands are famed for.
To the west, there are islands, settled by Gallia and Albion, and beyond that is nothing but ocean, and the tall tales of sailors. Nothing more is known, though astronomy has conclusively proven that our world is a globe, from the shadow it casts upon Taksony and Dorika when it eclipses them. We need not speak of the languages there, for there are none to speak them.
And with this cursory look at the world, and of the lands and languages within, I can conclude this introduction. In passing, I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, who have made me the woman I am today, to my sisters in the hope that they will overcome the troubles that God has seen fit to inflict on them, and to my first tutor, Georges Auguste Couthon, who set me on this path. May God and Founder watch over all of them, and aid them, keeping them from harm.
{0}
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Oh linguistics! So, are you actually planning to have this stuff matter to the story? It's an interesting bit of writing, though I think it reveals more about the 'author' than the world.
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Epsilon
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Epsilon
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
The Dreadful Scorpion Who Straddles The Earth is a master of the the horrific Raise Hopes Then Dash Them Utterly Shintai! Fear it, and fear him more!Alectai said:Ohboy ohboy ohboy! A new Green Sun Chapter!
Oh... It's a worldbuilding chapter focusing on Linguistics that'll almost certainly become painfully relevant when we least expect it, but for now, lacks context.
ES, you wound me with your taunts
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That wouldn't be a Shintai, maybe a prana or technique, but definitely not a shintai.Winged Knight said:
I mean, that would base an entire form around screwing with peoples-
Oh, I think I see where you're coming from.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Has to be, the "Ancient Tongue" is Old Realm, which makes the current languages derivatives similar to how Riverspeak and Low Realm were invented in Creation;Ryune said:
Djibriel
Evil Overlord
- Location
- Invisible, unless I choose to be seen.
... FFFF This is quote-worthy! A pity I have no room left in my sig.Winged Knight said:
As a small note, the mention of the Yellow Pox? That was smallpox. The link to Exalted means that you catch real diseases, not fantasy diseases.
At least until Louise gets Cold Fire Desolation Brand, and introduces Halkeginia to the wonders of magical radiation sickness.
At least until Louise gets Cold Fire Desolation Brand, and introduces Halkeginia to the wonders of magical radiation sickness.
... I don't think I'm Cecelyne. No, of course not. That would be ridiculous. Foolish.GhostStalker said:
Eleonoré is actually hilarious fun to write for. Let's put it this way; if she was a Realm Dragonblood, she'd be at the Heptagram writing treatises on the Shogunate and on the "barbarian cultures" of the rest of the world, sneering at the degeneracy of the "petty military junta of Lookshy which has lost most of the key cultural aspects of this most glorious era of the supremacy of the Dragonblooded". If she was a fair maiden of Victorian Britain, she'd be clambering around Darkest Africa in a starched petticoat with a pack of missionaries at her back, taking notes of their culture even as the priests accompanying her convert people.Starfield said:
She's got this wonderful mix of iron-willed spirit and unthinking patronising cultural assumptions that makes her an excellent biased narrator.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Totally in character for her canon, bitchy self, too.EarthScorpion said:She's got this wonderful mix of iron-willed spirit and unthinking patronising cultural assumptions that makes her an excellent biased narrator.
Yep. Same as how Iberia (which is sort of a mix of Moorish Spain with a newly reinstalled French nobility) is a former name for Spain.Tavar said:
Now, I probably heard them first in Warhammer, but I did go and check that they were valid historical names. One of the wonderful bonuses of Exalted not being classical Western Fantasy (and in fact specifically avoiding it), is that I don't have to explain why there's shared culture between here and Creation. Because there really isn't.
It's weirdly fortunate.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
So, not!Spain, not!Turkey/the Ottoman Empire, and not!the mysterious Middle East are new to this, right?
Cool. It's always nice to see just more Southern European countries in the standard European Fantasy World, much less any Asiatic nations.
Random thing, isn't the North/Western bits of Creation more Generic Fantasy Land in Exalted, even though the mechanics are still wholly rendered in pseudoChino-Japanese?
Cool. It's always nice to see just more Southern European countries in the standard European Fantasy World, much less any Asiatic nations.
Random thing, isn't the North/Western bits of Creation more Generic Fantasy Land in Exalted, even though the mechanics are still wholly rendered in pseudoChino-Japanese?
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
IIRC, the West is Pirates Pirates Everywhere, Except Maybe For Skullstone, and the north is Conan the Bull of the North vs. Skies of Grimdark Arcadia.FourthWall said:
I don't think there's anywhere in Creation (or any of the Celestial Directions) that really has the whole Dung Ages Feudalism setup implicit to most generic fantasy settings.
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Words I never expected to read directed at anything Earth Scorpion wrote.Stephenls said:
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
I doubt that is the entire chapter.Stephenls said:
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Epsilon
Althought when was the last time that criticism was ever leveled at anything in Exalted. Curse you Count of Words!