Wanted: Topics for February (Patreon)
Content
Please choose one topic from each of the lists below, and reply with the respective letter and number of your chosen topics in the comments below.
Voting will go until January 21st, 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).
Topics marked with the asterisk (*) have been chosen by backers at the $10-a-month tier. They will be available for voting this month only, unless they are suggested again for March.
Please reply with your choices in the comments below.
A Soldier's Guide to the Infinite Sea
A) Garing, Gutierrez, and Truscott - A History: A brief history of GG&T, from its humble beginnings during the Petty Kingdoms era, through its establishment as a major armsmaking firm during the Wars of Unification, to its current status as the Unified Kingdom's largest gunmaker.
B) The Saintly Martyrs: An overview of the worship of the Saints in the Northern Kingdoms, including biographies of selected Sainted Martyrs, iconography, and cosmology.
C) Old Calligia - What We Know: The Kian poet J'eanne Lieux once said that "The only thing we know about Old Calligia are the lies". While not entirely true, very little of the long-gone northern realm has survived. This essay from the University of San'heu attempts to put together the pieces.
D) Warfare Then and Now: A relatively broad overview of the history of war and warfare in the Infinite Sea, taken from a part of a Callindrian children's book.
E) Edmund Garing, In His Own Words: An autobiographical account of the junior partner of GG&T, edited by the Countess of Welles for her report on the War in Antar.
F) Clerks and Commoners: Selections from a children's book written for the scions of the Tierran nobility, meant as their first real education in the classes and dynamics of the Baneless classes.
G) A Report on Tutors and Tutelage: Commissioned by the Royal University of Aetoria, this report investigates the education baneblooded children receive before they are admitted to the University itself.
H) A Call to Arms to the Faithful of the Tree: A religious tract summarising the worship of the Tree of Life, and calling for a renewed age of religious devotion in an age of Takaran secularism.
I) The Compleat Knight: A somewhat tongue-in-cheek guide to the behaviours expected of a Knight of the Red.
J) The Senior Service: A rather self-serving pamphlet extolling the virtues of the Royal Tierran Navy in the context of the army's new prominence following the Dozen Years' War.
L) Notes on a Crisis Pt 2: More collected notes from Queen Isobel's private correspondence, dealing with the fallout of her use of the royal veto.
*M) The Khorobirit Papers Pt 5: Another collection of Prince Khorobirit's letters, regarding the state of affairs in Antar at the time of the outbreak of the Tierran Civil War.
*N) Royal Tierran Intelligence Memoranda – The Great Powers Pt 2: A report on how the Great Powers of the Infinite Sea are reacting to the outbreak of the Tierran Civil War.
*P) On the Cunarian Dragoons: A confidential report on the status of those Dragoon squadrons still stationed in Fernandescourt.
*Q) The Sketches of a Portraitist: A collection of rough sketches of the current leaders and crowned heads of the Infinite Sea.
An Adventurer's Guide to the Fledgling Realms
1) On Creeds and Cults Pt 3: Folk traditions, cults, and other "marginal" belief systems throughout the Concordat.
2) Remember That Time We Killed a Dragon? (Pt 2): Leofric of Kendrickstone and Elaine of Sonnemerci hit the road, on a mission from the Duke of Torinhall to kill (what is probably) a dragon.
*3) An Account of the Reachmen: North of the Concordat, north of the Nizam-i Khazar, live other peoples. This is a telling of their way of life, as written by a Korilandine scholar and adventurer.
A Creator's Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding
A1) Using Genre Conventions: Every genre comes with its own traditions and conventions. Some of them can be helpful, others... less so. How do you tell the former from the latter?
A2) Sizing Up an Army (Pt 2): An army can only be as large as its ability to feed itself. How big is that, exactly?
A3) Scale Modelling a City: The size of population centres are constrained by terrain, technology, societal norms, and the force of history, let me explain how you can use those things to make your fictional cities more realistically sized.