I have two British gentlemen who find themselves with time to kill in Colombo in the early-to-mid 1930s. One of them has been to Sri Lanka* before, the other hasn't. Gentleman A decides to show Gentleman B "the sights". What are "the sights ( Read more... )

The scenario: Escaping from the threat of the Mongols' increasingly frequent raids, Maria Thorpe - now pushing ninety and hence accompanied by a group of six elite Assassins - departs east across Syria. I'd like to know what would be the best methods of travel over that kind of terrain, and about where she and her group would reasonably end up ( Read more... )

This question is party preemptive, as this is an item that is highly likely to arise many times over the course of this book. Recently I have been banging my head against Google trying to find a map of Qufu (Lu state, future China) in the 6th century BCE. What I need is the inside of the city: its layout, internal roads, etc., and what I am ( Read more... )

Hi!

I desperately need figures on female POWs in Japanese captivity in World War II. I've been scouring the net but not even on Wikipedia I seem to be able to find a site the lists figures for how many female POWs there were and which nationalities they were of, maybe even broken down to the individual camps (but just numbers and nationalities would ( Read more... )

In an original story of mine, I have a character who uses a Mongolian bow (aka composite or recurved bow), and I've gotten almost everything I need to know about them; how they're made, how long it takes to make them, how they look unstrung, the thumb draw, thumb rings, all that good stuff ( Read more... )

I have two European travellers over-wintering in Samarkand in the 1420's.

Where could they go to socialise, get news, tell stories, play chess? Would it be a coffee-house, a tea-house, a caravanserai, an inn?
Did street life go on into the evening, or was there a curfew?

How about established Christianity in the city? I've found out a little bit about ( Read more... )