Setting: fictional history, kind of a mashup between the roman empire and early turkic peoples plus lots of made-up stuff.  This particular scene is in a fairly remote desert, in early spring (very warm days, near-freezing nights).  The characters are going to a market town on their own to trade some things, and have no way to contact anyone else ( Read more... )

Setting: fantasy world, I'm cheerfully mixing everything from King Arthur to Girl Genius but for the purposes of this question about early 17th century Europe equivalent
Searched: horse and travel tags here and the linked resources, "alternating horses" (some good hits), "distance riding" (mostly tour advertisements), "extreme riding" (which found ( Read more... )

I'm writing a fantasy story (not Earth, but an Earth-like fantastical world) where it is common practice to "rent" horse carriages for temporary use, with one's own horses. The coachman will come by your stables with the carriage (pulled by a company horse), set it up with your horse(s), ride it up to your home, then drop it off for you to take ( Read more... )

I have a bunch of roughly a dozen horses, each led by one person, going down some steps and into a tunnel. The tunnel is at least wide enough for three horses to walk side by side (but they'll be going single file), easily tall enough for the horses but not enough for them to be ridden. It's pitch black apart from the flame torches the people will ( Read more... )

EDIT: Whoa. let's try that again shall we? Now with proper character aliases. I lost track, sorry. Some writer I'm gonna be ( Read more... )

Okay, this is a difficult question to answer as I'm asking for subjective opinions, but I'm trying to describe the smell of tea. My character has never smelled or tasted it, and I've been sniffing cups of tea for the last few days trying to figure out how to describe the smell as someone who is unfamiliar with it. It's black tea brewed with hot ( Read more... )

Hello detailers!  I need some help figuring out if an idea for a scene is... well, plausible, at least.  If not completely possible.

Setting is a fictional world with approximately classical roman empire level of technology - no magic.  The scene takes place in a remote desert area with no access to doctors, etc.  The characters are a small man in ( Read more... )

Two semi-related questions.

1. ( traveling times question )

Setting: medieval-ish fantasy.
Searched: "divided skirts for riding", "riding astride in a skirt" (which found me this article), "can you ride a horse in a skirt" (found me this Yahoo! Answers question) and similar searches ( Read more... )

The setting is medieval Ireland in an area which is now modern County Galway. We've already researched the two types of Irish bogs: blanket bogs and raised bogs. The bog could conceivably be of either type ( Read more... )