Paksworld

In case you ever wanted to see a writer doing the Dance of Nerves…well, no, it’s not on YouTube, and won’t be, but I remember thinking it would be forever until the new book came out (and some of you thought the same thing) and here it is…almost.   For me, part of what made it seem so long was not having a book out in 2009.    Read the rest of this entry »

Book three is being a bit slow to start, due to all the other stuff going on and also some deep thinking.

But it’s at 5600 words (roughly–not exact count) as of this morning, with over 1000 words added today.

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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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