#know o princess

[know-o-princess]

You may have noticed that I named several of Erud's landmasses after fictional "lost continents"; namely Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu. I partly did this as a nod to Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, which also had them as real (though lost by the time of the setting) places, and partly because I just find the idea of lost continents to be interesting even though all the racist pseudoscience and mysticism that has sprung up around them is total bullshit and will not be making any appearances here. (Well, there might be some supernatural stuff...this is a fantasy setting after all.)

So, because of that, I have decided that Erud's version of Madagascar is called Lemuria. And as Erud's version of Madagascar, it is home to animals that lived on Madagascar in the distant past. Animals like:

Masiakasaurus

Beelzebufo

Simosuchus

Majungasaurus

Rapetosaurus

Elephant birds

...And, of course, lemurs. In fact, the island is home to a species of lemur that has evolved humanlike intelligence and developed a stone age level culture. Though they mostly avoid the human settlers to the island there is some trade between the two groups, with the lemur-people especially keen on getting their hands on the humans' fancy iron tools and weapons. (They're mainly herbivores and not particularly aggressive, but you saw that Majungasaurus up there. They'd still want to defend themselves.)

[that-dinopunk-guy]

Me, fleshing out the setting for a new story: Okay, I'm not falling into the trap I fell into last time, I'm only worldbuilding for stuff relevant to the plot. All the self-indulgent minutiae can come later after the story's written.

Also me: Okay, so this world's version of Scandinavia, which will never appear in the story, is a big island where no human has ever set foot, with tyrannosaur-sized troodontids that are as smart as crows and can mimic (and possibly even understand) speech, crocodile-sized late-surviving temnospondyls, and at least one native species of non-human hominid.

[know-o-princess]

The Sarmani tribes

Kuda, the main protagonist of Know, O Princess grew up among the Staaka, one of a group of nomadic steppe tribes known collectively as the Sarmani. The Sarmani tribes are mainly inspired by real-world central Asian steppe nomads such the Scythians and Sarmatians.

...Only instead of horses they ride domesticated horse-sized alioramin tyrannosaurs.

Mostly known for their ferocity on the battlefield and for the fact that their women routinely fight alongside the men, the Sarmani tribes have spent the last few hundred years sweeping out of the east in waves, with each new tribe displacing the one before it and pushing them further west and into conflict with the people already living there. Able to move quickly and masters of mounted archery, the Sarmani tribes are both feared by the surrounding peoples and prized as mercenaries.

[know-o-princess]

The Empire of Matuwali

One of the major powers of the world at the time of this story is the Empire of Matuwali, the successor state which rose from the ashes of the collapse of the (Hittite-inspired) Neshara Empire several centuries prior.

Matuwali is basically a recycled version of ancient Garacania from my Gondolend setting, and like them a lot of Matuwali's style is inspired by the Turkmen people:

Not really geographically apropriate for an ethnic group indigenous to this world's version of the Anatolian peninsula, but this is fiction so shut up.

Many Matuwali nobles carry yataghan swords:

Many are purely ornamental and would make awful weapons in an actual fight.

Since Matuwali is recycled from a previous setting, its culture isn't really analogous to any real-world Late Bronze Age society. Matuwali enjoys total gender equality, with many women occupying normally traditionally male roles and vice-versa. The people of Matuwali don't have separate words for "husband" and "wife," and which one takes their spouse's name upon marriage is typically decided by financial or social status, or simple personal preference. Matuwali society also doesn't really give a shit about sexual orientation; people just like whoever they like, without anyone making even a small deal out of it.

Yemsher, the narrator of the story, is sent by her father, the king of a relatively minor city-state called Dar-Shelem in the fantasy-Levant, to Matuwali for an arranged political marriage. After the marriage her new royal husband encourages her to write down the stories she'd heard on the journey from one of the mercenaries hired to escort her entourage, which is the in-universe reason the story exists in the first place.

[know-o-princess]

After writing the main story from Yemsher's perspective, I think I'd then also like to write a separate series of stories from Kuda's point of view, portraying in more detail events that would only be alluded to in Yemsher's account.

One of the things that worries me about writing the story as Yemsher's account of what Kuda told her is that I feel like a lot of details would necessarily be lost in the process of Kuda recounting her travels in a language she isn't necessarily proficient in, and then Yemsher only later writing them down based on her memory of what she was told. So by later going into more depth from Kuda's point of view, I'd not only get to give a better look at what happened, but I could also try my hand at writing some pulpy adventures in the vein of the Conan stories that inspired much of the setting.

Now you may ask, well if you're just going to write more traditional third-person-limited stories from Kuda's perspective anyway, why bother with trying to tell the story from Yemsher's perspective at all?

Because it sounds fun and I want to challenge myself to see if I can do it, that's why.

[know-o-princess]

The Irombe, or whatever the hell I end up calling them

In the course of her adventures, Kuda ends up shipwrecked on Alkebu's Cannibal Coast (so named because a Khimtish sailor encountered a tribe that may or may not have been cannibals one time), where she ends up living among one of the local tribes for a time.

The Irombe are another unused group I'm reusing from my Gondolend setting, though I'll probably end up renaming them. Anyway, their overall vibe is inspired by the Suri/Surma tribes of Ethiopia.

They also incorporate cultural elements from other sub-Saharan tribes, such as the Zulu practice of disemboweling the dead in order to allow the spirit to escape the body and pass on to the afterlife.

During her time among them Kuda proves herself as a warrior and receives some ritual facial scarification marking her as such. Though she does eventually move on in search of adventure and vengeance, if I ever decide to write further stories about Kuda she'd end up coming back to visit every now and then.

Also they're all probably better people than she is, if we're being honest. She's done some awful shit living with the Staaka.

[know-o-princess]

Khimt, the divided kingdom

Though far reduced from its former glory by the time that Know, O Princess is set, Khimt is still a major player in the region surrounding the Inner Sea.

Khimtish culture is mostly inspired by that of ancient Egypt:

...Most of my ancient Egypt inspo material is in print form, so I don't have much to post here.

At the height of its power, the empire of Khimt had spread across much of northern Alkebu and across the sea into the easternmost part of the neighboring continent of Kem. Though once united under one ruler, these two regions fractured into two distinct kingdoms following the series of calamities that befell the region several hundred years ago and led to the collapse and abandonment of many of the local kingdoms, when a plague swept through the land and wiped out all but a few members of the royal line. Following this the surviving nobles in control of each of the two regions both declared themselves the legitimate Perraoh of Khimt, and immediately began exchanging nasty letters with their relative across the sea. Though they've so far managed to avoid open war, both kingdoms have long maintained constant low-level harassment campaigns against each other.

[know-o-princess]

The races of Erud

Not human ethnic groups, because the world isn't nearly fleshed out enough for me to even begin to list all those, but the various sapient creatures besides humans.

I haven't named any of these yet, because for now I'm prioritizing worldbuilding that's relevant to the story of Know, O Princess in order to avoid getting lost in the weeds.

Neanderthals and Denisovans. Haven't nailed down just where they live and how well they get along with us modern humans. (Well enough to interbreed, at least.)

Island "hobbits." Homo floresiensis, basically. Gotta find a new place for them though because most of Indonesia is the continent of Sunda.

"Goblins." Small gray-skinned hominids native to Erud's version of Scandinavia.

Ape-men. Non-hominid apes that convergently evolved a bipedal gait and human levels of intelligence. There's a lot of different species in the world, and some are smarter/more aggressive than others, and some of them are basically gonna be Erud's versions of mythical wild men like the orang pendek, yeren, almas, and yeti.

MAYBE some sort of lizard people. I'm undecided on this. I like the idea of mysterious reptile people living deep in some humid jungle.