I briefly had a goblin named Gorlak appear as a servant to a slaver starting in chapter 25.1 Into Slavery . Although he doesn't have too much of an impact and doesn't stick around for very long. you might want to go into some more details about what you want to do with them. My thoughts about goblins is that they're pretty much another type of humanoid creature which has been stigmatized by the fact that they're strictly carnivores which has pretty much led them to them being unwelcome in major population centers in ages past. Ultimately this led to them falling behind educationally and adding to the idea that they're just cannibalistic monsters and barbarians. Does it make sense? Nah probably not, but I wanted to do something a little bit different than the bluh blah evil orcs and goblins that you tend to see in fantasy stories while still letting the door open to regions that do have goblins like that and goblins like in Undrek where they may be a bit more civilized as they may be a bit more integrated into society. @Ultrasound7 I read through your most recent submissions. A point of suggestion that I have. With all of the names of places and people(some of which are super long). I suggest keeping a notepad or some sort of file with names of importance. You had a bit of an error through that chapter where you referred to "Adorabah" where I assume that you meant to refer to "Amorabah" from earlier. You may also want to consider running your chapters through a spell checker of some kind. There wasn't anything super egregious, but it would make things a bit easier. I'd be able to approve your chapters a bit more quickly. My current headcanon has Al-anashab south of The Frostpeaks and Phebis. Probably taking up most of that "southern sea" area. Still. I don't think its exact location has been elaborated on a whole lot. Although I could be mistaken...I have had a busy month IRL and haven't been keeping up with every update and haven't updated the writer's resource page from anything in this discussion or updates to the story in about that long.
@merkros This better? The frostpeaks are said to border the sea so I tried to still work that into it.
It's a start, @Actiaeon. I took your map, and did my translation of it, based on my stories, and the discussion I had with Mekros over world mapping. I forgot to note it, but that set of pink curves represent the most known land trade route that makes Phebis & Al-Anashab so important for Itheria. I added locations that may come into play in future storylines. Now I know my work with MS Paint seems to suck, but my hand isn't as steady over a mouse, as it used to be.
Thanks, no problem with the quality, its is meant to be changed and redrawn over time you know. mine was terrible too. I hope @Ultrasound7 @fyreant and @Omegah2o contribute since i'm sure we are missing a lot of stuff from their stories.
Hey guys! I've discovered a map maker site at http://fantasynamegenerators.com/map-creator.php which I'm finding to be AWESOME!!! Unfortunately, I'm having some trouble creating the whole of Itheria . I might drop doing the whole country and simply focus on the Duchy of the Frostpeaks. If anyone else wants to try it out I say go for it!
This is a rough draft of the Frostpeaks using the map maker. I tried keeping it as close to Actiaeon's original sketch as I could. For reference points, Riverain is that group of huts in the middle of the map, and then Undrek is between it and Hillgard in the east. The White Spire is all alone out there on the west coast. Now that I'm looking at it, I think that the mountain range should probably extend one more level up but... whatever. Took me about 30 minutes to make, so yeah... a rough draft. What do you guys think?
@Omegah2o cool, so is that lakes or just a lot of marshlands, anyway a map of frostpeaks is perfect considering that is where your stories are primarily set.
Oops. Sorry. My bad. Thank you for the correction @Zingiber. I've now changed the original post. It's supposed to be the marshlands. I'm now considering that perhaps I should have used a color that is more green to reflect that.
Just another concept generated off the map maker web app. The diamonds represent capital cities of important parts of my stories.
wow! Those maps look nice folks. I was working on something in a program called Hexographer...which is what I use for my D&D campaigns, but dearnise's map looks really great! I'm a bit conflicted about how small the Kisten Craigs and Phebis look in the grand scheme. It's probably fine for Phebis, because the fact that it's such a small nation nestled up against a much much larger nation is a political point in Phebis and Itheria, but I do think maybe the Craigs could extend a bit father north.
Thanks again for the authorship! I'll be sure to contribute as often as I can until I have a decent-sized Arc put together. Also all of this geographical stuff being put together is very nice as well. It doesn't matter how much the actual land and politics matters are emphasized in any particular story thread, there will always be continuity problems unless some basics are laid down. Speaking of which. I was thinking we could maybe lay down some guidelines related to magic. I've pretty much been treating the setting as Dragon Age with the serial numbers filed off, tents the ample supply of rightly maligned magic users appearing in my story. But in both that and demographics in general, I'd like to be sure that I'm not off by several orders of magnitude in terms of the assumptions that more established threads have been making. I pegged the population of Undrek as over 6000 and with 44 confirmed witches and a dozen or so necromancers. I wrote all those chapters before looking closely at this thread and seeing how small Itheria is supposed to be. If that makes it feel too much like a high fantasy setting I can specify that many of these people are not actually magic users, but rather experts in creepy but none magical disciplines like poisons instead. Or maybe a lot of the witches were just falsely accused. I just wanted to establish that the population of such sinister spellcasters is relatively high in this County compared to whatever the average is. Anyway I'll try more to shy away from hard numbers in future chapters.
I'll be honest, I haven't really thought of numbers for demographics such as "How many people live in Itheria?" and "How many of them can do magic?" Overall, your population numbers seem fine, but I don't really have too much knowledge of Fantasy demographics to pull from. As for guidelines to magic...Yet another thing I haven't though too much about. I know in Dragon Age(At least DA:O the only one i played), magic can be used due to a connection to The Fade; which is also where demons come from. One could do something similar with The Abyss... There hasn't been too much in-depth discussion about magic so far and examples of protagonists using magic has been few and far between. So far @Omegah2o 's Duke Magnus is the only one that has magic from the get go. Although Princess Anna has a rage-induced awakening of her magical powers in one branch of her story. Negative emotions do seem to make magic easier to use, but harder to control.
If I may throw in my two cents on the demographic issue... In regards to the population of Itheria as a whole, I'm not sure about it, and I'd much rather leave it to @merkros or any of the other writers to establish. The Frostpeaks however, I've thought about for quite some time, and while I've never come up with a concrete answer, I can certainly estimate based upon historical facts. (Fair warning: what follows could be very uninteresting to some people...) According to history, a Roman Legion was roughly 5000 men strong at the turn of the first century. Using this as a basis, I've tried to estimate the Frostpeaks' military might and come to the conclusion that Duke Magus has a standing force of around three legions under his command (possibly four and at the absolute most five). Honestly, my thoughts on the subject fluctuate between them based upon my feelings at the time. The argument for three legions is fairly strong however; one legion would be stationed at The White Spire, a second at Castle Hillgard, and a third could be split up patrolling the Frostpeaks (and the rest of Itheria at the King's command). This keeps the total number of Frost Knights relatively low at 15,000 ( but possibly as high as 25,000). Assuming compulsory military service in the south (something I'm not completely sold on but is probable) every man between the ages of ? and 25 would be in the army (this could help explain the relatively low numbers of men in Undrek). Doubling that 15,000 to account for the women in the south of that age range I get an estimated 30,000 (50,000 for five legions) people between the ages of ? and 25. Again, assuming a rather wide-base population pyramid, 30,000 people could represent anywhere between 20 - 45% of the population in the Frostpeaks. This would put the grand total of people anywhere between 66,000 @ 45% and 150,000 @ 20%. This jumps massively to 116,000 and 250,000 respectively for 50,000 people between the age range. Personally, I tend to think it's closer to the lower number, but these are very much soft numbers and nowhere near set in stone. Although 150,000 people in the Frostpeaks seems a bit much to me, 116,000 is not unimaginable. As for what percentage of Itheria's population the Duchy of the Frostpeaks makes up, I'd rather leave that up to @merkros to decide. I'd hazard a guess of no more than 10%, but that's just me and other people are certainly free to weigh in on the subject. I've read online that England's population in the 5th century was around 1 - 1.5 million people, but I'm not sure how accurate those reports are. Still, Itheria could be similar, England wasn't very big at the time. Magic use is a separate matter altogether. I myself was heavily influenced by Dragon Age when I introduced the Coven of Magi (the Circle of Magi) and the restrictions on nobles with magical talent, as well as the general fear/distrust of mages by everyone. As for actual numbers of mages? I've had the idea in my head that a child born to parents who have no magical talent whatsoever, and no history of it in either family, only has about 1/1000 chance of being a mage. When one family does have a history of it, that number jumps to 1/100, and when both have a history is creeps up to 1/25 (the latter number can also be applied to children born of incest). When one parent is a mage the number jumps dramatically to 50/50; and when both parents are mages the child has around an 85% chance of being one too (again, incest can boost these numbers substantially). Taking into account the previously established numbers and assuming an Itherian population of 1,000,000, this would put the base number of mages in the kingdom at around 1,000; the vast majority of which would belong to the Coven of Magi. But again, these are soft numbers, and certainly open to debate. Anyway, these are my thoughts on the subject thank you for bringing the issue up @fyreant! Everyone please let me know what you think, questions, comments and concerns are absolutely welcome. And if anyone thinks I'm overstepping myself please feel free to post that too!
A few Nuggets of thought. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, massive armies like seen during the Roman Times were few and far between. The general estimate of the participants in the Battle of Tours was 15,000-20,000 on Francia's side and 20,000-25,000 on the Umayyad Caliphate's side. Although less conservative estimates do guess the number of soldiers up to 80,000 on either side. Such large armies weren't really seen in Europe until briefly during Charlemagne's height where he could potentially raise up to 150,000 troops for a major campaign. Although his standing army was probably closer to 30,000 or 40,000. After the collapse of the Carolingian empire, army sizes shrunk again. King Harold levied 8000 troops at Hastings, and French leaders in the 10th and 11th centuries fielded relatively large armies of around 10,000. William the Conqueror invaded England with 14,000 troops, including mercenaries. Even the First Crusade only had about 60,000 troops. Of course, even in its debilitated state the Eastern Roman Empire(Byzantine Empire) had a standing army of something like half a million troops, though its field armies were still about the same size as Charlemagne's. So I guess my general thoughts on the matter is that as long as the numbers seem right. I doubt that it'll be heavily scrutinized. For example, a war between Phebis and Itheria might involve 60,000 Itherians and 25,000 troops from Phebis backed up by 10,000 mercenaries, or 10,000 Itherians against 4,000 troops from Phebis backed up by 1,500 mercenaries. I might concede to my regular stands about inconsistencies between the different story threads and say "As long as you're consistent from the start to the end. It's okay". So if you want to add an extra 0 to the number of soldiers in the army, then you should probably keep an extra 0 in every army numbers. However, I don't know. The number of soldiers available to a certain character might be too significant of a number to just gloss over.
I hear what you're saying @merkros, and I can't really disagree. Originally, I had thought about setting the numbers in a full legion to about 1,000 men which would certainly indicate a lack of compulsory service. I think I could still get away with somewhat larger numbers due to the "warrior mentality" that exists in the Frostpeaks which would cause higher numbers of volunteers. Even by setting a Frost Knight legion at 3,000 men with only volunteer service isn't out of the question, and in fact may be likely; but I'm not sure. What are the forum's thoughts?
Some might say that getting into so much detail on a story that is about sex, romance, and more sex in fantasyland isn't called for... but I for one enjoy considering the worldbuilding aspects, so I'm happy to keep throwing in my two cents willy-nilly! A couple of things. Firstly, if I recall correctly, one of the King Bryce threads introduced a female Frost Knight as one of Bryce's prospective wives. Because of, well, the general 'medieval-ness' of the setting I imagine we aren't supposed to assume it is perfectly equal or has a large percentage of women in the thick of the fighting. The lady-knight in question is noted to be unusually tall and strong, so we can assume she's the exception rather than the rule. But even if, say, one in twenty-five frost knights is female it helps address the issue. This also obviously has relevance in terms of romantic/sex scene potential. All that being said; perhaps compromise and give legions the 3000 figure, but with the understanding that any given legion is a "traveling town" and that number includes a lot of people (half or more) who aren't primarily combatants, even if they can fight in their own defense in dire straits? If the 'Frost Knights' tend to wear heavy armor, well, it is basically required to have at least one support staff per knight since that stuff requires help to even put on. Perhaps a legion contains 500 actual "knights", 1000 archers, scouts, squires, and other lesser combatants, and 1500 peasants, cooks, foragers and other camp followers that aren't really meant to fight but can hold a spear or shoot a sling in an emergency. (Granted, these numbers probably don't need to be made explicit in the actual threads, but perhaps just mention that there are a lot of 'civilians' around whenever a character visits/leads a Frost Knight camp)
I imagine that with their low numbers Frost Knights aren't in a habit of turning away recruits based upon things like gender. I have entertained the idea that women volunteers could make up a 'half-strength' fourth legion. That makes sense...
I dont know if anyone if any one has seen my latest chapter, but the content you may/will recognized to have been in reference to several threads by and Dearnises map I know it has some spelling issues, but thats the problem of writing with a phone with and auto correct I can't just turn off.
