#attbtm

[attbtm]

Dire Elk are born small but continue growing throughout their lives. They can get Very Big. The Empire of Trees culls most of them before they get large enough to threaten villages by, say, stepping on them, but some are allowed to continue growing…

This special lady is Veskat. She’s been ridden by the Magistrate of the Serene Republic of Belarion’s heir for the last few thousand years. (The Magistrate himself has an even-bigger elk, Ieskat.) Because the elves often live on mujan at top-of-the-trees level, the chair is usually level with some street or another, but servants can deploy stairs or ladders to facilitate getting up/down.

[smreine]

This is a drawing of the All-Mother, the Antlerdoe, Ashenna, Namya -- whatever you call her, she is the world upon which all life forms. The primal embodiment of Chaos, Lorkullen, nurses upon her teat.

This illustration goes along with my gothic fantasy novel <3

ID: A monochrome black ink digital illustration of a doe with oversized warped wooden antlers. Waterfalls tumble from her shoulders. Trees and roots grow around her head like hair. A small black creature suckles between her legs. She stands upon a ground of swirling lines, before sparsely illustrated mountains, under a sky of black stars that looks much like Lorkullen.

[smreine]

Teaching my conlang to myself conversationally~

I have a conlang called lo:sa’lvaren (wherein the punctuation marks are stand-ins for diacritics not easily typed on a Windows computer). I’ve been working with lo:sa’lvaren for three years now, but most of that has been used for nouns: people, places, and things.

I’ve been learning Spanish in college this semester too, and it occurred to me I don’t know the basics of actually holding a conversation in my own conlang.

Hence recent work on lo:sa’lvaren.

I debated somewhat between using Þ (thorn) and ð (eth) to signify the sound for the d in lo:sa’lvaren, but given that i wanted to use a Cyrillic-like đ for the z sound, it made more sense to use thorn (easier to distinguish in my inconsistent handwriting).

That said, in the book itself, neither thorn nor dyet appear; the conlang is simplified. It’s just a note to me like “Hey pronounce this like that.” I’m on my way to making a visual alphabet for the elves too, so thorn and dyet will disappear completely at some point.

Dez ka’r? How are you? (thayz kar)

A: as (name). My name is (name). (ya ash)

Sirbove:t ba ri. See you later. (Literally, “Upon the next Light.”) (sheerbof yate ba ree)

This isn’t meant to directly reference or imply any language on Earth--no pseudo Middle English, Russian, Latin, or what have you. It’s a unique fantasy construct.

Like everything in the milieu, I hope that it will seem plausible, and similarly evolved, to most equivalent elements of Western civilization. But not a direct commentary.

Di’ kie nu? What’s wrong? (dye kee-ay noo)

Di’ ka:r nu? Are you doing well? (dye kyar noo)

Tes ra mi’en vila modur. I’m going to walk to the library.

Ra staxen viled e-. Pray for me.

Ti’ eden a’r. I love you.

Most of this isn’t seen in the books. Like, obviously I am writing the book in English. Conversations are never portrayed in lo:sa’lvaren.

It’s a lot of fun working through this stuff even if it’s not super useful.

[smreine]

“I’m adjusting to life in Śelasdur marvelously.”

Summoned to work at a distant uberwald, Esor an Amen finds himself at a palace wholly unlike the charming elf town of his childhood. Śelasdur has no forest, stripped away by the Great Wave half a millennium past, which leaves the tower standing alone on a barren coast. The palace seems to scream all Night, every Night, and Esor wanders the halls through sleepless darkness.

How is he doing so far from home for the first time? Awesome. That is how he is doing.

[smreine]

Reproductive themes in my gothic fantasy novel

Again, Lord Mayor Corvin requisitioned a live white Frostenland hare. Again, he observed as a mixture of Àlvar urine and nurse’s brew was piped inside a Frostenland hare’s orifices. Again, he wielded a knife to slice the hare’s belly open. The ovary nestled within its still-pulsing guts swelled with bright-red lumps. Corvin cut it free and closed his fist around it. He closed his eyes to gather himself, turning toward the heat of the blazing fire in his office, away from the lone healer who observed the process. “Leave,” Corvin said. The healer bowed. The door shut behind her. His fist squeezed so hard that his arm shook. The ovary squelched, fluids oozing down his wrist.

~

I haven’t really bothered talking about the reproductive themes of my gothic fantasy book, even though they are hugely central to actual textual events, and the subtextual themes are also about it in large part.

I am sure there are more violent, tragic, traumatic life experiences than insemination, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and biological motherhood in general. But not that I have personally experienced. Creating humans is singularly the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me. I should not have to reassure ANYONE that I still love my kids because that’s stupid; my children have very very little to do with the process it took to make them. You get what I mean? They’re perfect, I hated making them, these are completely separate concepts.

In my book, there is so much childbirth. There is also a lot of death surrounding the process too. And it is about the way that making children takes control people with uteruses, both in a very direct physical sense (you WILL give birth to that child one way or another and have no choice—once it has begun, it MUST come out) and in the sense that suddenly there are a lot of laws and expectations in full control of your life.

Also, I often remember how domestic violence is the main killer of pregnant people.

So much life-creation in this book. All of it deeply political. One of my most sympathetic characters seriously contemplates infanticide because she didn’t choose the child. Another character performs an abortion on herself because she did choose the child, but circumstances changed. Someone else literally has her daughter rip the fetus out of her vagina to ensure an heir is born to inherit before his dad dies. Meanwhile a mother who isn’t anyone’s mother kills herself to keep the enemy’s baby alive. And a nonbinary person gives birth to his trauma in a very metaphor-rendered-literal way.

It’s really funny (to me) putting these birthing themes so prominently in a book that is also a 320,000-word way of nicely telling the word, “By the way, I’m not a woman—I don’t really have a gender—and I don’t really want to discuss it outside of this book.” Lol. As a society, we so closely associate Womanhood and Motherhood with childbirth. But like, people who aren’t women give birth all the time, and we deal with all the exact same stuff, with the added twist of dysphoric confusion when everyone treats us like women just because we took a direct hit from sperm between the legs.

Anyhoo I loved writing all of this in the book. I love writing body horror. I think body horror *is* pretty much the one form of horror in my gothic fantasy novel. I think having a body is pretty horrifying.

(Shout out to the tv show House of the Dragon, which I had mixed feelings about, but featured a nonbinary actor playing Rhaenyra. I found it literally life-altering to watch a nonbinary actor act their way through childbirth and realize how much it screwed me up to deal with gender/motherhood in that way.)

[smreine]

Today I’m working on part of my world building book about The Undying Children, aka the Maiur.

If you’re a fan of Lord of the Rings (esp The Silmarillion), you’ll recognize the similarity between Maia and Maiur, which is no coincidence. Tolkien’s Maia, who are wizards like Gandalf and Saruman, are angel-like divine beings who exist (at least) from the moment that Ainu begins to sing the world. (*I might be getting names/details wrong, I don’t have the Silmarillion on hand atm.)

I adore the vast, pulsing, mythic cosmogony of The Silmarillion, and there was absolutely space in my own cosmogony for that class of divinity. It is typical for religious myth to echo the hierarchies of originating societies. You do not just have God and then People (king and people); you will generally see that there are deities or divinities in myth which serve as the court, advisors, vassals, etc.

In my cosmogony, the creation of the world parallels orgasmic child birth. Maiur came from the initial cries of the All-Mother as she went into labor/cried with pleasure. They were sung into existence, you might say. They have witnessed the All-Mother’s every living moments.

In “modern” day, Maiur are living on sea-towers. Which are like wizard towers from traditional fantasy, but you know, floating on the ocean. Maiur are the only creatures who can traverse the oceans. Chaos has frothed the waters and divided the continents. These sea-towers are immune to such forces. Because of this, and the Maiurs’ unique ability of unlimited transmutation, they are significant political figures who meddle frequently. Aesthetically, you may expect Maiur to look like wealthy pirates. 🙂

Here is some of one page out of my appendix about them~

~~~

The All-Mother sang a wordless song, forming sounds by shaping her mouth and vocalizing. The melodies danced and twirled and grew limbs from the consonants while vowels gave them breath. She sang twelve lines between three verses. It took six thousand vetone to complete the song.

First Verse

Ah-Sa-To: Scetta, the yielding.

Do-Ve-Ra: Osse, the wondering.

Ah-Do-Ra: Haern, the knowing.

Ah-Me-Do: Sturmgar, the grand.

Second Verse

Ah-Do Ah-Do: Agor, the forgotten.

Sa-To-Ra-Ne-Me-Ta: Brynulf, the broken

Do-Ra Do-Me No: Melian, the wistful.

Me-Ra Ra-Do-Ve-Sa-To: Arien, the lustful.

Final Verse

Ah-Ah Do-Ra-Do: Geldur, the wise.

Do-To-Ah-Ra Ne-Me-Ta: Miron, the blessed.

Ah-Me Ah-Do Do-Ve-Ra: Magoth, the cursed.

Ah-Do-Ra-Ah: Krysthon, the end.

[smreine]

Here's a look at my fantasy map wip

The original map has different geography. I made it before I even started writing the draft that I ended up keeping. When I wrote the book, I kinda rearranged things based on narrative convenience, so the old map wasn't quite right.

Also, the old map was made in Inkarnate, which is a really brilliant mapmaking program. I'm not very good with it. Also, everybody and their brother in the fantasy world has a map with Inkarnate's default brushes now, and I just wanted something aesthetically more specific to the project.

This map is distinct but not exactly bespoke because the graphics are from actual historic maps. I drew the landmasses, but the mountains, trees, etc are stamps that I spent an embarrassing number of hours arranging.

Certain regions are different scales on purpose for aesthetic reasons.

I don't think I got the tectonic stuff right but this whole milieu is very speculative so it's ok. I really like how it all comes together.

ID: A light-toned map with blue ocean and a central landmass surrounded by some large islands. Mountains cover the largest islands. Less dramatic bands of mountains stripe the west and east of the central landmass. There are forests in the middle.

[attbtm]

A Magus is a kind of transmuter who started out life as a mortal, but is adopted, raised, and altered by the wizardly Maiur. You can see on this Magus, she has an abdominal scar, where she was once opened to place a cachel-a crystal of Chaos which gives her access to her master's power.

If not killed, a Magus can live theoretically forever like a Maiur, but. that has not happened. Lol. They can cast all kinds of magick and speak Old Nok and are often found in the thick of battle, where they are killable as anyone else.

It's a lot of work to raise a Magus, so a Maiur only raises a few every century or two, depending on how bored they are.

Image description: An illustration of a female elf with blue-green hair wearing a blue silk midriff top with long sleeves and a mid-calf skirt. She has boots and gloves too. It’s painted in gouache with dreamy blues so she seems to glow.