Writing Continues and an Interlude (Patreon)

Hello everybody, patrons, followers, and casual visitors. Writing continues on Update 14 and it is nearly ready. All that is still waiting is a breakdown on the long-distance encounter rules and the points of interest for the Dark Light passage.

Besides the regular writing, I've been modifying some of the text, added an adapted character generator at the beginning of the work, and a section on the quarterlings of the utter west.

But neither here nor there! You'll see it soon, and thank you so much for your support—and if you've just joined, so good to see you here. To say hello, wiggle my toes, and show I'm still kicking: the map above is a blast from the past, a nib test from 2011 when I bought a pile of dip pens (all rusted now). While below is an old text, probably from the same period, for a setting I sketched out and abandoned. Is it terrible? Quite possibly!

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The following document was found unmarked in a pile of vellum scrolls inscribed with the yellow sign. What that might mean is unclear. Apparently it references a map, but the map is missing.

Where the High Place of the New and Old Gods had stood, now are the limpid waters of the Hole. Deep, deeper than memory, than time, than thought. Kraken and lake monsters and vast gibbering things with many eyes and tentacles and grasping mouths fill its unplumbed depths. The surface though betrays nary a thing of the wildness in its profound depths and the Little Water Gypsies, ply their trades and their sailing canoes upon the waters, fishing and harvesting the kelps.

In the mangroves of Machvara the amphibious Fishermen weave their basket-like hovels and dams and weirs and catches, preying on the crabs and fish they can catch, eking their lives out in blubbering mourning of their Fishy God, who speaks no longer from their Great Totem. Their silvery scaled skins glow in the night and often they exchange spears instead of wares with the Little Water Gypsies.

Deeper in the swamps are clans of Frogmen with bright colored skins and poisonous breaths and sly, hooded eyes. They sing buttress trees to make them nests in the high-ups, where the Swamp Dragons reach them not.

Yet deeper the Tam Juh begin to rise from the swamps and ferns and pines and belch-trees begin to take over, in this sulfurous land the Dun Lizardmen replace the frogmen, praying to their Old Stonehead, which would sometimes utter wisdoms, sometimes follies, never even of the first, always too much of the second.

In the Sudbeshk the Red Lizardmen, also called Crestmen for the crests on their heads and backs, make their holes and hidey places and arrows and spears to fight the Duns and each other.

As the Sudbeshk rises into Ta Vest the warbling Diaphanes and their glittery spunsilk villages replace the Lizardmen, flying with their scaly skin and dragonfly wings and sharpish beaks.

To north of the Machvara in the Vratek is a city, called Tradestown, where the industrious Stoney Dwarves build their rock apartments and marketplaces and make stone and bronze and potter wares to trade with the Cyclopes and Pedargyres of Pad Sun Chen, setting one against the other. The Stoneys have rocky outgrowths on their heads instead of hair and beards of bristling, wiry graphite.

In Peru Yaliv, just off Dvojni Yaliv, the Salties, aquatic dwarves with short flippery feet and whiskered faces, are allies of the Stoneys of Tradestown and protect the Tradestown ports from the wanton depradations of the Birdeymen of ta Kanc and the Doggeymen of druj Kanc. The salties breed clams and oysters and kelp and make their houses on rafts of kelp and guarded by dolphins.

The Birdeymen of ta Kanc have the heads of seagulls and smooth feathers all over, their women are prized by many potentates after they remove their tongues, while the Birdeymen often build raiding ships and engage in piracy and plunder against the settled folk of the surrounding lands.

The Doggeymen are Gnolls, some say, werewolves, say others. All are wrong, for the Jackal-heads claim descent from the God of the Dead and build their skull forts of the bones of things they gather and collect. The many neighbors use them instead of gravediggers, and they love to haunt battle sites, collecting bones and dead parts to build their towns. Sometimes, when the dead are in short supply, they make raiding parties to steal corpses, and sometimes also the living.

The Cyclopes of Pad Sun Chen are such by choice, for their eyes are always growing and unless they put their old ones out, their world becomes a morass of painful hallucination and illusion. So they remove each old eye as a new one grows, taking all their old eyes and preserving them in the Pool of Visions, where they say their Spirit of Dreams does live.

Their enemies the Pedargyres have only a single foot each, but can hop and jump with that one foot faster than a horse can run. Unfortunately they are foolish, having only half a brain each, and given to quick rages and sudden outbursts.

In the Pod Norf, beyond the Mokronos swamp, the Dentopudendae live in their gynearchic villages, no-one sees the men of the beautiful Dentopudendae and many say they eat them even as they are babies, with the teeth of their second mouth between their legs, preserving their seed in special sacs for when new offspring are needed. These amazons practice the martial arts more often than the marital, but their power is limited by squabbles and feuding.

In the Mokronos swamp the Webfootes, soft and flabby creatures of a newtish bent with chameleonine skin, plant lily apples among the reeds and fight the Ibecorines, Ibis headed, stork footed folk with foul dispositions and cunning minds.

On the Fatneck the Kaos has wrought the headless Thorocephalics tend their brahmin sheep and cows and plant their cereals when the rains are kind to them. Poor warriors they are, for their faces are on their chests and their armors leave their bodies uncovered and open to arrows and darts.

Just north of the Fatneck begins the Little Steppe, where the little Ponymen ride, their pony bodies supporting human torsos barely the size of children, with heads of curly hair and glittering crystal horns protruding where their eyes should be. Like insect eyes stretched, extended into points. Their eyes are literally sharp, and when it is said they look deep into their enemies, that is no joke. They herd ponies, and it is said they often mount them as well. For food they hunt and sometimes they keep gardens of Screamroot, also called Mandrake and Mandragora.

Some say the Screamroot is actually sentient, a wise and intelligent creature, caught in a root vegetable body, to walk only in the full moon, and even then asleep. Cursed to deep understanding of the world, while unable to express it or spread the knowledge, food for savages and fools who wish to trip the dream world as spelunkers go into the caves of the Whitefaces.

Yet beyond the Ponymen, where the little steppe grows, step by step, into the Big Steppe, the massive Moamen prowl on their three-footed bird feet, razor tipped spears and wicked hooked beaks ready to rend flesh and tear meat. They are hunters and herders, herding the Thorncattle and the Wild Brahmin, while in villages on the fringes and in the gulleys and canyons, the Hobgoblins build their pueblos and forge their bronze spears and heavy shields to wage their wars among themselves and with and against the Moamen.

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There! Anybody who read that gets to decide: is it terrible? Can something be saved? Should it burn in the digital fires?