a collection of worldbuilding tidbits from mos and my (rightly) unpublished project before it
I posted this to threads a while back, but I think most of the MoS folks are on tumblr. I hope that if you liked MoS that you find this information interesting.
I was stilly querying it when MASK OF SHADOWS got me an agent, but it was a YA fantasy in the same world called POX. The first in a series, it was about a young girl working as a thief and half-trained blacksmith to support herself and her younger brother after their mother was taken to work as a blacksmith on a secret project for the king.
In chapter one, her thieving leads her to believe that the king didn't actually murder the gods decades ago and that the god of knowledge, truth, and justice might still be alive. So, when her brother catches the pox, she sets out to find the god and save her brother. If you're familiar with the shadows in MOS, then fun fact: on this part of the continent (Berengard), the shadows are known as whispers and were made by infecting people with a magically-altered version of smallpox.
That's what these bits of history referenced - the Ash Plague is the pox, Meredan is where the shadows/whispers and Erlend people originated, and in Berengard, Serrat would become the god of death, loyalty, and mercy. Immortality was also a gift from magic during the Whispered War in Berengard. (You'll also notice that Berengardians like Serrat Ansleigh follow the same naming conventions as Nacea! The goddess of justice, Yarin of Brineheart, was a judge in Meredan who broke from the country and stole a bunch of evacuation ships from the nobility in order to get more people out of the country. Meredan started the Whispered War partly because of Berengard refusing them but accepting the other Meredan evacuees with Yarin.)
I always loved this book and still dream of publishing it in the future, but because it's about fascism weaponizing healthcare and disease to subdue a country and it's a series, it is difficult to work on much less sell. BUT GOD do I miss my bi blacksmith going on a roadtrip with her new best friend the goddess of justice, reviving the murdered gods, and absolutely wrecking the king, though.
Anyway, if you're a MASK OF SHADOWS fan, the shadows were created hundreds of years before the book in Meredan across the eastern sea, and the Meredan nobility fled their country to escape their creations.
And those assholes gave rise to the Erlend lords and ladies Sal had to deal with.
I spent a year querying it before MoS was picked up, and while I had some fulls out when I signed for MoS, I opted to withdraw those submissions because I knew MoS was the stronger project.