Moving Through the Bear Empire

Dec18

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Caught, in the Bear Empire

🐻

Deline slept more soundly than perhaps she should have, with a bounty hunter in bed next to her and, presumably, several more on her tail.

She woke in the early morning to see Carrone pacing back and forth in the small floor space of the inn.  He wasn’t talking, but he was gesturing as if he was having an argument, and every few steps he’d glare at the Bear-stone bracelet and the bloody welts the spell-rope had left.

“Time to get on the road.  We can get a bath at the next inn.”  She was pleased to see that he was startled and more pleased to see that he didn’t jump but just twitched a little.  “I’m going to leave you with your weapons, because your job now is to keep me alive.”

He worked his jaw.  “I’d rather stab you.” Continue reading →

Beepocalypse 2: Up

Dec16

First: The Testers

Written in part to prompts from Wyste and Lilfluff

🐇

The elevator doors opened into a white room with only one door out of it.  Three people in masks and white suits were waiting to greet her.  The air smelled of antiseptic and some floral-like scent Kelly didn’t recognize.

“Come this way.” The voice – from the central of the three people – was muffled but understandable.  The figure pointed. Continue reading →

♪Glee – Recruitment♫

Dec14

Previous: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/11/28/glee/

♫♪♫

“All right.”  Rose looked at their list of potential clubs.  “So Shang first.  And then we’re going to have to start fishing around for people who can sing.  Maybe start singing in the hallways?  That might get some attention.”

“Mmm.”  Zdenka wasn’t sure it would get the right attention. “I’ll ask Shang.  Maybe he knows someone else.”

Asking Shang proved to be a bit of a challenge; he didn’t want to be caught alone.  Once, he went so far as to walk right past Zdenka when she had just managed to get him in his pod common room with nobody else around.

After two days, she finally walked up to him in the lunch room.

“Not interested.”  He put up his hands. “I don’t care about the rules of this school, I do not want a freshman girlfriend.”

“Good.  I don’t want a junior boyfriend.  But you can sing.” Continue reading →

Caught, In the Bear Empire – a continuation

Dec14

First: Running in the Bear Empire

🐻

The bounty hunter took a couple breaths, studying her.  “You know what they say about the Bear-stone bracelet in Halor, right?”

“I can hazard a guess or two.”

“They say it eats your brain.  They say that when you take it off, there’s nothing left of you.  And they say only certain people in the Empire’s hierarchy are allowed to use them.”

“I did say I could kill you without compunction, didn’t I?”

“Who are you?” Continue reading →

The Hidden Mall: Moving On

Dec12

♪ I think this line’s mostly filler ♫— the Buffy Musical

“Um.”  Abigail looked between the three of them and held out the candy in her pocket.  “I took it, but I didn’t- hey!” She closed her hand around it as her Liv grabbed for it.

“Yeah, I’d say throw that out, but you’d have to destroy it utterly.  Okay, you should be fine, but try to get rid of that now that Liv notices you have it. I’m not saying that it’ll get you home, by the way, but there’s something about the -hey!” Continue reading →

Conlang for Lexember!

Dec12

Day 1 & 8

Day 12, oops!

So, I’m doing what, every 4 days?

Before the Curse hit their little corner of the world, the Shou were known as the finest artists in all the land – poetry, painted art, sculpture.   Now they are known as the finest artificers, but they do still hold some vestiges of art.

They live a shorter lifespan then the average human-variant, but they make up for this with a very quick childhood and a very intense apprenticeship/scholarly period.  The apprenticeship is known as “the hard years” and is both headed and followed by  one-year “wander times”

Child: notey (NOTE-ay)

(this is a word that is about as generic as “child,” meaning any non-adult.

Apprentice – Het tppey (HET tp(pop)-hay)

to apprentice – Het tpp o

(Fiassh apprenticed to Eyone on her tenth year, when she stopped being a child).

And from that, to take as an apprentice, Tcho het tpp o, which shortened after some time to Tcho o .  Technically, that just means to take on, but it is always used in meaning to take on as an apprentice.  One who takes on: tchotey.

Sound Inventory 2

I’ve used F, t, pp, S, sh, tch, h, n, kw
ee, e, oou, (a) e, ia (yuh), ey (Fonzie!), o

Running in the Bear Empire – a beginning of a story

Dec12

For Rowyn.

🐻

Someone was on her trail.

Deline knew it.  She could feel it in the prickle on the back of her neck, the way that sometimes it seemed like there was an extra shadow to her shadow, the unsettled feeling that left her leaving her bed in the middle of the night and hitting the road again.

She had been moving for days – no, weeks.  She had left Dekleg behind more than five days ago, and with it the laws that she’d broken.  And Dekleg did not talk to the Elherion Empire, nor the Empire to Dekleg, much less exchange prisoners.  Deline was not even sure if they had any laws in common – which, since she’d spent the last ten years before Dekleg in the Empire, was how she’d gotten in trouble in the first place.

But someone was tracking her, and she didn’t imagine they were doing it to ask her to work for them or to shake her hand for the fine things she’d done in deep Dekleg, where she had dealt with some frankly horrible things. Continue reading →

Conlang for Lexember!!

Dec8

I am going to build a language for one of the Cursteroids races.

Today I am going to decide what I want it to sound like.

Feee-t’tpp?

Okay, it’s a whistley language with some stops and some long vowels.

And since it’s LEX ember…
Feee-t’tpp, which will get a better transcription later, is a semi-onomatopoeic swoop/dive.

Oh, I guess this is a flying race. Good to know! Continue reading →

About the New Patreon Fee Announcement: Options, Questions

Dec8

 crossposted from Patreon.

So, Patreon has, over the last couple days, released first an announcement and then a clarification about its fee structure.  (here: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ )
What this means for patrons is a $0.35 + 2.9% fee added on to every pledge. 
I have been considering my options while flailing about with every other creator who thinks this is a horrible, awful, very bad idea. 
So far, I have come up with broadly three plans:
* try one of the Patreon “alternatives:” Gumroad, librepay, the Kickstarter one that isn’t out yet. (main problems: Librepay does not allow paywalled projects, which I like, and its format isn’t as robust, from quick looks.  Kickstarter isn’t out yet.  Gumroad has slightly higher fees, so that’s out, unless I misread their fee schedule)
* Start a newsletter I send out 2? times a month to subscribers.  Major problems with that: what do I do about different donation tiers?  And I really like the constant feedback and regular posting schedule of doing things every week). 
* Replicate Patreon in subscriber-locked posts, either on my wordpress blog or on a subdomain blog just for that.  (Main problems: the upkeep.  I might have to rely on people to tell me if their donation has expired). 
I really enjoy the format here at Patreon, although there are many options I would like that don’t exist yet (archiving, for one!).  I like being motivated to post every week, I like looking through reposts, and I like the stretch of things like the maps.  (*guilty glance at the map tag*). 
But I don’t think anyone needs to pay that sort of fee, when the whole idea was to encourage microtransactions. 

That’s not as important, however, as what you think, so please tell me: what do you think about my options?

Chasing Myths – a Fae Apoc story for Patreon

Dec8

The Council had Geraldine chasing fairy tales and urban legends.

There were two things Geraldine knew without a doubt about the High Council of the Shenera Endraee.

The first was that they were immensely slow to change, change happening more often because a Council member had been overthrown (which occurred perhaps twice a millennium) than because they’d agreed to it as a group.

The second was that they were very, very attached to their regulations. Continue reading →