A New World: Experimenting With History

Mar8

First: A New World
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Kael cleared her throat.

“Assume for a moment that I am who I am pretending to be.”

They both turned their attention back to her.  It was Caron who spoke first.

“Okay.  So.” He hemmed uncertainly. “You want us to pretend that you’re Kaelingrade Torrent-Step.  And… that you lived for a thousand years?”

“No, no, that would be silly.” She smiled broadly at him.  “Let’s say that a potion went wrong and I suddenly landed here, in this tower, where I was, ah, pretending to be someone pretending to be myself.”

“Okay,” Hallsey leaned forward.  “This is a fun game. So you don’t know anything that happened in the last… oh.   Like the, um, colonization.”

“Conquest,” Caron offered. Continue reading →

Prideworthy – a story for Patreon

Mar7

🏫

Headmaster Baarbaarbaar looked at the Tower.  Barely fifty years old, it had stood with the name of the third Head of School for that entire time.

Next to him, the Head of the Martial school looked on thoughtfully.  “Do you think it’s appropriate?”

“I think…” Baarbaarbaar spoke slowly, letting the thoughts circulate.  “I believe that we have always put the names of our most prideworthy graduates at pertinent places in the school.  And now that we have the Towers for each school, it makes sense to let their names, too, change with the pride of the school.”

“But…”  Allizh was a staid and placid-seeming woman who thought slowly but with great deliberation.  “This is the sort of thing that War house is proud of, yes.  BUt is it the sort of thing that the Academy is proud of?” Continue reading →

Request for Help with an Offer of Bribe

Mar6

I’m starting on Edally Book Three (Working title: The Broken Bargain) and, well.

Edally has a huge cast.

A really, really big cast.

It’s a school, after all.

But I have a hard time remembering them all!

I have the beginning of this: http://www.edallyacademy.com/cast-and-crew/alphabetical-list/  An alphabetical list of the characters in Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 10 of Book One.

What I would like from you:

a list of characters appearing in any given chapter in Books One and Two and, if description, the description given.

If you have it: a house affiliation and the chapter name/number to their first appearance would be awesome.

What I will give you in return: 

a brief fic (100 – 500 words) including from one to all of the characters in that chapter.

What I’m going to do:

Put together a wiki of all the Edally characters ever.  Hopefully.
(More bribes are available if someone wants to help me do all of that, too.)

Thanks!

REQUEST FOR READERS:

If you choose to do this, please check-in here so that we don’t have duplicate content.

Thanks!

Book I

All DONE

Book II

Chapters:

 

(Thanks to Solace and Thnidu for their helpful comments!)

Purchased: Introduction

Mar4

First: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/12/03/negotiation/

Previous: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2018/02/15/negotiation-2/

💰

Six

Oh, good. Leander did everything he could to look relaxed and not like he was bracing himself.

“This is not exactly fair, you realize.”

“No.  But it doesn’t have to be.  Go.  If for no other reason than he has to be uncomfortable out there waiting.”

“Fine.”

Her body language was 100 percent different. She’d gone from acting like a teenager to acting like an adult; she didn’t flounce but stalk; she wasn’t sulking, she was considering.  She walked up to Leander and held out her hand.  “Hi.  I’m Sylvanie.” Continue reading →

In Which We Enter Another Century For a Few Minutes

Mar2

This morning, around 6 a.m., I woke up to a silent house, a blank display on my alarm clock, and a cold nose.

Last night, while we were making dinner, I got the robo-call telling me that my university job (which “never closes” and has closed twice in the two winters I’ve worked there) was closed today.

I got out of bed, encouraged the fire, grabbed my phone, made sure it was on airplane (we don’t get cell service here in the boonies and it just kills the batteries), and went back to bed.

It’s noon now, and the power is still out.  So’s the landline, so I can’t – without walking out into the middle of the street and praying – call NYSEG to find out how long they assume the power will be out.

I made House Thorne oatmeal on the wood stove, and T. made drip?? coffee with a filter stand.  We had toast – I finished a loaf of bread last night – at noon, and we’ve got water for tea heating up on the stove.  It’s 74F in the living room, 69F in the next room over, and probably 65,64F in the kitchen (we don’t have a thermometer in there).  So we’re in pretty good shape.

Of course, we’re in The Rather Rural, so we don’t have running water, which is a bit of a pain.  I “took a bath” by heating water (on the wood stove again) and sitting in front of the stove to shave and such things.  It helped, but it’s no proper shower.  And we might be out of gallons of water sitting around by the time the power comes back on – but that’s what they’re for, so hey.

It’s kind of nice, in a “I miss my internet people and I can’t play with my dragons and what happens when my laptop loses power” sort of way.  It’s quiet – “too quiet” – since there’s no fans, no furnace, no traffic, nothing but the wind and the water heating on the stove, T. talking to himself and reading the book out loud on occasion.

It’s the weird feeling, of “we’ve got this” combined with “but…” Mostly “but” being that “I miss my people and I really want a shower” sort of way.

Also, I’m not 100% sure what we’ll have for dinner, but I have a feeling it will involve rice, be cooked on the wood stove, and hopefully not involve opening the fridge or freezer.

Well, at least work is closed and I don’t have to worry about calling in. 😊

Tootplanet: Explorers’ Logs Planet 7-20-1-β

Feb28

Explorer Log 7-20-1-β

We set down in a large clearing between several tall buildings & ended up making base camp in the tallest still-standing tower.

The buildings are strange to us – everything in hexagons, including the doors and the roofs – and the ceilings either far too low or far too high, but the winters appear to be cold here & we’ll be grateful for the shelter from the winds.

Meilos has started in on the language & Nepsi is working on xenoanthropology while the rest of us see if the place is long-term habitable.

Meanwhile, we hope what got the Hexigonals doesn’t get us.

 

Tootplanet: Captain’s Log Sector 7, Subector 20

Feb28

Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub 20-1

The planet here is not the interesting part.  That is: the planet is a gas giant.  There may be life on it, but nothing that we could detect.

On the other hand, three of the moons showed signs of old, dead civilizations, with one of those showing signs, too, of a newer, more compact society, and a fourth (of eight) moons appeared to have a tidy and thriving society living across three craters.

We sent greeting probes to the active societies and a team to the larger of the ruins.

Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub 20-2

This planet had so little green that at first we passed it by but, thinking of some of the earlier planets which had proven habitable, we searched it a little more deeply.

From space, it looks to be mainly gold and orange and brownish-grey, but the swirls of orange were revealed to be something like a cloud; much of the rest is giant fungi and a sort of water-based fungi island.

We send down several probes, but detected no intelligent life.  Still, we did not send down a team.  It didn’t seem kind.

 

7.20.1

 

 

The Haunted House: The Tour

Feb27

“MDom Not Asshole” continues, now with a name

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Expectations

🌳🏚🌳

“So.”  Jasper considered Melanie as if measuring her for a gown.  “Mask Down?”

He made it a request.  She was so surprised that she dropped her Mask like it had been an order.  It had been so long that she’d almost forgotten what she looked like with her fae side showing.  Namesake skin, dark like the shadows.  Eyes blue like stars, or so one or two suitors had said, back when she was free.  Ears that pointed upwards and hair a shade between midnight and ebony.

Of course, she was clean, but she was still underfed and hawthorn-tainted.  She probably looked more like a dirty chalkboard than a midnight sky right now. Continue reading →

Prodigal Hope, a story for Patreon

Feb27

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There had once been Nine Hopes.

They had been more than people and yet somehow less; they had been above the bustle and yet below it; they had been the absolute core of civilization and that which it aspired to above all else.

The first Hope to be lost had died in a long and ragged storm that ravaged the coast and destroyed cities.  With it went the whisper of the peaceful sea god.  With it went the trade treaties that had nearly been signed.  With it went thousands of lives.

The second died slowly, a wasting disease that took out a third of the country’s old and weak – wise and knowledgeable – skilled and clever.  With it went history and solidity.

The third and fourth Hope to go slipped away in the night.  Nobody was quite sure if they’d died or not.  Nobody really wanted to know.  The sunshine was a little less bright, the spring a little less pleasant, the winter a little more frightening.  There were rats in the grain silos and mice in the attics. Continue reading →