Paksworld

A very productive morning, in which I’ve learned things about Andressat I didn’t know before (can the proud,  stuffy little man really be so sneaky?  Well…there’s a reason Andressat is still independent after all these centuries) and also had the crisis/climax of Arvid’s situation with the rockfolk.   It gets rather Poe-ish.   And Simyits, god of chance and luck, is perhaps not the god you want to call on, when what you need is real help, right here, right now.  The two-faced trickster has a very unhelpful sense of humor.

About 2300 words so far today, which pushes me well over 123,000.   Since I want to know what the kteknik will do next, I intend to push on a bit, sore hands or no.

LATE ADDENDUM:  busy day at the computer, even with nap: the total count is now 125,368.  Couldn’t stop until I found out if Arvid made it out alive or not.

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Those of you reading my LJ last year (before this blog existed) may remember the series of plot bombs that landed on me in the last third of the book.

Plot bombs are events/characters/situations that I didn’t anticipate and that propagate new plot and lots of words all of a sudden.  They disrupt my train of thought and break things open.   But, being creative and not truly destructive, plot bombs are always–well, almost nearly always completely–right.

The first true plot bomb of the second volume exploded in my head this morning.

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Over on the website,  part one of the People section is now up and live.  It covers the basic groups, some of which–elves, dwarves, and gnomes– have been discussed on this blog.   I took out some bits of the blog info as not really necessary, and added some.

Additional groups discussed include the kuaknom/iynisin/dark cousins–those “fallen” elves the others don’t like to mention–and four basic, distinct human lineages: the Old Humans of the north, the magelords who came over the sea from Old Aare to Aarenis (and later, the north), the horse nomads,  and the Seafolk.    The people in the far west, beyond Kolobia, are peripheral enough (so far!) that they’re not being included.

Eventually (but not immediately–need to spend more time on the books proper) there’ll be more background information on specific people–both “current” (in book terms) and historical (ditto), myths and legends, religions, etc.

I’ve mentioned before a book by one of my college professors, F.S. Lear’s Treason in Roman and Germanic Law. In the course of studying ancient and medieval history, I was dragged (willingly, most of the time, but sometimes dragged) through a lot of legal systems. Lear discusses the contrasting bases for a concept of treason, ultimate disloyalty, under the two systems: one tribal, where loyalty is to a person or tribe and treason is a personal betrayal. The tribal leader in that case cannot be guilty of treason because he (it was always he, then) is the one to whom loyalty is due. The other is formally legal, where loyalty is to a code of law, and anyone–including those at the top–can be guilty of treason if they have transgressed that part of the code.

Relevance to current politics is obvious, but not a topic for this blog, except to show that the same conflicts of concepts exists today, as it did 2000 years ago….and undoubtedly longer ago than that. I grew up on the Border, in an area where a culture that claimed to believe in a rule of law was in daily contact with a culture for whom personal relationships were obviously more important.

All of the history sources I used are relevant to the Paksenarrion universe, but this one, in particular, set the tone for the two types of Earthfolk–dwaves and gnomes– in the books.

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