#thatd

[janetocaledonia]

I was tagged by @aninkwellofnectar and @philocalizt to post penguin classics editions of my WIP!

Wormwood obviously gets a Gentilischi painting, and then the Holy and the Damned has a lot of heart imagery while Sulis Hall is the spider WIP, so…

Bonus for Maternity Colony since it’s a short story but it references Vosper’s Salem by name so had to go with it!

[jordanshenessy]

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[astraldraco]

messing with my pinned post to make myself a tag directory :D along with some other stuff like adding a little bit of 日本語. might change it again later but eh we'll see. idk I'm feeling all over the place and annoyed that I can't find stuff so this is what I'm doin

[the-apollen-echo]

I look left, I look right, I walk into oncoming traffic

[janetocaledonia]

Hi! Happy WBW!

What's a piece of your worldbuilding that you love, but are having a hard time using in the plot of your story?

--Joy (@italiangothicwriteblr)

Thank you Joy! I know I have some more asks from you - I'm not ignoring them, just taking a while to dwell on the answer!

For me, that would be the existence of fantasy creatures in Helst. I know that unicorns can be found in Morais, and absolutely there are gargantuan sea monsters in the ocean, and some kind of beast in the coal mines too - but there's no reason yet to go near any coal mines, and though the characters will travel by sea and go to Morais I'm not sure if there's narrative room to include the Creachures. Also, I want to include more! I'm just unsure what. I think it'll just be animalesque fantasy creatures (no dragons and no pegasuses) rather than human ones, and I want them to be closer to our world cryptids in terms of level of understanding, and I want them to be very fantastical and ideally a bit horrifying. So that's my challenge: make unicorns scary.

[janetocaledonia]

Happy WBW! Is there an aspect or belief about the afterlife in your setting? Alternatively, what do your main characters personally believe about the afterlife?

Thank you!

The Lazarian Church, old and new, has two death gods. Aszazi is closest to the real world idea of a Death personification, a skeletal woman who escorts souls to the afterlife. She decides whether or not you get to to go at all, and those deemed too wicked to be let in to the halls of the Gods (name pending!) are abandoned, stuck disembodied on Earth eternally. Superstition talks of them gathering together in caves or mineshafts or crypts of bodies of water, creating an evil incorporeal presence in these spaces.

Nathos is the king of the dead - the old church depicts him as Aszasi’s husband - and is a humanoid thing save for a lack of a face. The afterlife he rules over is some form of paradise where souls are re-embodied, a society in which there are no Bad People. Some schools of thought argue it’s possible to be cast out of both the afterlife and the body, but it’s a divisive issue. The two gods are also the only gods that are unable to be tricked, deceived or lied to in any way.

Ninon grew up living in fear of being abandoned after death. Even if it’s what some religious leaders have argued, the Miloche hospital tells its children that they do have a chance of getting into the afterlife. It’s partially for practical reasons - if they believe they’re irredeemable, the children have nothing to lose and would be harder to control. Ninon was definitely raised to believe it would be harder for her to get in than most people, and that’s why she’s the way she is. Kreszentia’s thoughts on the matter are…interesting and possibly spoiler territory if I go into it.

[janetocaledonia]

Hi! Happy WBW! What are the politics like in your world? What are some of the major issues and questions it faces?

--Joy (@italiangothicwriteblr)

Thank you!

Politics is difficult to summarise for the Idith Empire. The head of state is the Emperor, but he’s (any gender can take on the role, it is just currently a man) elected and does not inherit - Emperors/Empresses aren’t allowed to have children. The only other members of the clergy are allowed to vote, however, and the position is held until death (abdications are possible but rare), so it’s not really democratic.

Lord/Lady is the title given to the Benandante who’s head of each individual division of magic, and they make up the Emperor privy council. There are still religious leaders for each diocese, with Morais again being the outlier, called Eparchs. Beyond that, all government is secular and wildly varied. No one can call themselves a monarch, but Morais and Denuvia both have Prince Electors, for example. There’s a lot of duchies and countries as well, which make up the bulk of the leaders, but the only centralised government is through the Church.

This therefore has put Morais in a very precarious position. The hope among the Benandante is that the New Church will be introduced to them, over time, but the current Electoral Princess wants to resist that. If they maintain their own faith then they’ll inevitably become independent, so here’s hoping they get to do that.

Bela and Kreszentia’s father is a Duke, with Bela set to inherit - which is a huge difference between the ecclesiastical-but-not (can I use this word? I really like it) and secular worlds. The former, while still having certain roles that are strictly men only or woman only, gives men and women an equal chance to be Emperor or Eparch, but latter favours men as successors (albeit with exceptions to the rule). If the twins had been both boys or both girls, there would have been no apparent heir and would have led to a succession crisis. That’s why Kreszentia is drawn to the Enclave - that way she can have power of her own.

[janetocaledonia]

⅀

Girl ends up being mediocre at death wizardry and it gives her a complex forever.