Try reading it this time, bsmknight...
Don't have a lot of time. I've got to start getting sleep, because it's affecting my output and I need energy right now. I've vowed to drop at midnight.
I posted about this already. I don't know how many of you are A) amenable to fantasy. It's a troubled genre, with ample flaws. But I don't love anything that doesn't have them. And it's been a genre into which I've been invested, and I've found it to satisfy both my interests in history and the supernatural. I still have a no-magic, ancient-world, all-human, materialistic universe for my tales of the assassins and a antediluvian Earth, but there's also this. And I don't know how many of you are B) amenable to fantasy as well as fantasy settings aside from entire works. That's niche.
But anyway, I've been on and off TV Tropes for the last couple of months, on the fantasy and other stuff, too. I have the interest in making my own world, and making my own stories in that world. I've peopled it with all these little representatives of myself and it's deeply personal and I care about it more than I've cared about any stories I've ever made. It's infatuation, but right now, this is the way I'm flowing.
And I'm reading about the elves, here and on Wikipedia and in the Norse epics and in Tolkien's footnotes. I'm a dedicated humanist, and I'm skeptical about using non-humans to express extremes of human nature, because though it can be used well, too often it's used to just project some silly generalizations. Dwarves all being the same is the same as having "desert people" and "forest people" or a "planet of capitalist aliens..."
Anyway, I think there's a place for some of it, but other times it's just tiring to see elves or dwarves or halflings just being the same thing. Different types of people made into an entire society. Generalization can be nice, and it's an honored tradition in speculative fiction, but anyway. I'm speaking too long.
This is the start in an ambitious world-building project that will map out an entire subcontinent at first, with multiple human and non-human societies, set in a pre-classical period. I will document faiths, leadership, technology, and relations between these entities.
Any comments would be welcome.
"They are good allies, and thoughtful friends. Yet they are not men, and there is a savagery in them that you only really see when you fight alongside them. Yes, they are wise and they are clever, and the legends of their grace and beauty are all true. But have no doubt: they relish the taste of war as surely as they take pleasure in wine and flesh." ―Martösh the Black, Arpadian fighter
They have never been many, and yet all lands are walked by the elves. Beyond the stone embrace of the Niven and along the waters of every tributary of the Twin Rivers go elven adventurers, wanderers, rogues, and refugees of both recent turmoil and ancient injury. Thousands of years into their civilization, elves are still not entirely a settled race, and no more than half their number dwell in cities.
And what cities! Elves build no empires; dominion is among them held in disdain. Nevertheless, when elves choose to live together in great number, they are magnificent architects and communicators. Elven observatories have long marked the horizon of the southern grasslands, identifying great cities from afar, and now a few have even broken the canopy of the Great Forest. Each elven city is linked to every other by personal and cultural discourse, as well, and the lectures of southern mages are swiftly debated in the northern forests.
Elves value their communion highly. And it is true that they build no empires. And if the elves have a nation, it is a nation of thought rather than territory. Such virtues would make for a sublimely peaceful people. And yet such a people would not be the elves.
The fair folk take themselves and their affairs very seriously. They live and love with great lust and hunger and, when disagreements have led to conflict, the elves have never been hesitant to shed blood. Elves are immortal and preternaturally gifted and, as such, their pride is seldom wounded. They have cultivated a reputation among some for being profoundly humble yet, once their anger is roused, none savor vengeance like the elves. They do not torture, nor do they taunt, yet elves are masters of slaughter.
Their steps well-chosen, their paths nigh impossible to discern along the hilltops and the fallen leaves, the elves are fearsome slayers. The age of war with the dwarves is over at last, and yet this has only swollen the ranks of the rangers, the scouts, and the orchunters. They may no longer breach the fortresses of the mountain dwellers, but such elves have not yet lost the taste for battle. Between the rivers, where wood and valley give way to high plain, wheel the chariots of the southern cities, bearing lithe warriors equally capable of reaching out with a long limb and claiming a head or firing an arrow in a second.
Elves precede the humans and orcs who have, in recent centuries, tried to make their mark upon the world, but they are still a hot-blooded race. Bold explorers, skilled artisans, brilliant philosophers, and cunning warriors, they may embody millennia of accumulated experience and still hunger to prove themselves. They find comfort in the stillness of the wild and the sanctuary, yet few can compete in energy with the elf, who may speak-or listen-for days on end, whose cities hum by night and day with pleasantries, intrigue, and flirtation, for whom indifference is a cardinal sin. This predominant civilization has found itself on the eve of its first collapse....
I posted about this already. I don't know how many of you are A) amenable to fantasy. It's a troubled genre, with ample flaws. But I don't love anything that doesn't have them. And it's been a genre into which I've been invested, and I've found it to satisfy both my interests in history and the supernatural. I still have a no-magic, ancient-world, all-human, materialistic universe for my tales of the assassins and a antediluvian Earth, but there's also this. And I don't know how many of you are B) amenable to fantasy as well as fantasy settings aside from entire works. That's niche.
But anyway, I've been on and off TV Tropes for the last couple of months, on the fantasy and other stuff, too. I have the interest in making my own world, and making my own stories in that world. I've peopled it with all these little representatives of myself and it's deeply personal and I care about it more than I've cared about any stories I've ever made. It's infatuation, but right now, this is the way I'm flowing.
And I'm reading about the elves, here and on Wikipedia and in the Norse epics and in Tolkien's footnotes. I'm a dedicated humanist, and I'm skeptical about using non-humans to express extremes of human nature, because though it can be used well, too often it's used to just project some silly generalizations. Dwarves all being the same is the same as having "desert people" and "forest people" or a "planet of capitalist aliens..."
Anyway, I think there's a place for some of it, but other times it's just tiring to see elves or dwarves or halflings just being the same thing. Different types of people made into an entire society. Generalization can be nice, and it's an honored tradition in speculative fiction, but anyway. I'm speaking too long.
This is the start in an ambitious world-building project that will map out an entire subcontinent at first, with multiple human and non-human societies, set in a pre-classical period. I will document faiths, leadership, technology, and relations between these entities.
Any comments would be welcome.
"They are good allies, and thoughtful friends. Yet they are not men, and there is a savagery in them that you only really see when you fight alongside them. Yes, they are wise and they are clever, and the legends of their grace and beauty are all true. But have no doubt: they relish the taste of war as surely as they take pleasure in wine and flesh." ―Martösh the Black, Arpadian fighter
They have never been many, and yet all lands are walked by the elves. Beyond the stone embrace of the Niven and along the waters of every tributary of the Twin Rivers go elven adventurers, wanderers, rogues, and refugees of both recent turmoil and ancient injury. Thousands of years into their civilization, elves are still not entirely a settled race, and no more than half their number dwell in cities.
And what cities! Elves build no empires; dominion is among them held in disdain. Nevertheless, when elves choose to live together in great number, they are magnificent architects and communicators. Elven observatories have long marked the horizon of the southern grasslands, identifying great cities from afar, and now a few have even broken the canopy of the Great Forest. Each elven city is linked to every other by personal and cultural discourse, as well, and the lectures of southern mages are swiftly debated in the northern forests.
Elves value their communion highly. And it is true that they build no empires. And if the elves have a nation, it is a nation of thought rather than territory. Such virtues would make for a sublimely peaceful people. And yet such a people would not be the elves.
The fair folk take themselves and their affairs very seriously. They live and love with great lust and hunger and, when disagreements have led to conflict, the elves have never been hesitant to shed blood. Elves are immortal and preternaturally gifted and, as such, their pride is seldom wounded. They have cultivated a reputation among some for being profoundly humble yet, once their anger is roused, none savor vengeance like the elves. They do not torture, nor do they taunt, yet elves are masters of slaughter.
Their steps well-chosen, their paths nigh impossible to discern along the hilltops and the fallen leaves, the elves are fearsome slayers. The age of war with the dwarves is over at last, and yet this has only swollen the ranks of the rangers, the scouts, and the orchunters. They may no longer breach the fortresses of the mountain dwellers, but such elves have not yet lost the taste for battle. Between the rivers, where wood and valley give way to high plain, wheel the chariots of the southern cities, bearing lithe warriors equally capable of reaching out with a long limb and claiming a head or firing an arrow in a second.
Elves precede the humans and orcs who have, in recent centuries, tried to make their mark upon the world, but they are still a hot-blooded race. Bold explorers, skilled artisans, brilliant philosophers, and cunning warriors, they may embody millennia of accumulated experience and still hunger to prove themselves. They find comfort in the stillness of the wild and the sanctuary, yet few can compete in energy with the elf, who may speak-or listen-for days on end, whose cities hum by night and day with pleasantries, intrigue, and flirtation, for whom indifference is a cardinal sin. This predominant civilization has found itself on the eve of its first collapse....