#Eftgan

[dduane]

...So I was noodling around with the above image as preliminary work for a piece of Middle Kingdoms concept art that's going to illustrate a chapter-heading rubric from The Door Into Sunset. And while working on it, I belatedly realized that to correctly set up that scene, I was first going to have to tear up the entire left-hand side of the image (and the space beyond it), because the new covered fish market I had in mind wasn't going to fit in the space.

So I rolled my eyes at myself (I should have seen this coming...), got busy tearing it up, and then built the fish market. It's very loosely based, as I think I mentioned somewhere here earlier, on the famous Vismarkt, the covered fishmarket in the center of Brugge in Belgium (a.k.a. Bruges). (Image via Carto.net.)

Back in medieval times, right through to the Renaissance and beyond, fish was originally sold in Bruges in the open, from wooden pallets. But other stallholders in the main market complained about the smell, and the fish-sellers themselves weren't happy with the venue: selling such perishable goods out in the broad (and often hot) daylight was suboptimal. A permanent, covered place for the fishmongers' stalls makes more sense. Yet at the same time, you want decent light on what you're selling or buying... just not direct sun.

Choosing the architecture for a market like this in Darthis city was also going to be an issue. The Vismarkt was installed in a new dedicated market square in 1821, with the architect opting for a Victorian-cum-Classical look: not something that would make sense in this alternate Earth—if I was seriously considering a straightforward copy, which I wasn't. However, the Darthene architectural aesthetic does contain both building styles very like our Romanesque style, and elements similarly reminiscent of Gothic. (Though in the Middle Kingdoms the AU-Romanesque wasn't abandoned when the kinda-Gothic came in, but coexists with it).

After I'd given the situation some thought, I found myself wanting something that drew on those two traditions... or would maybe kind of split the difference between them: a building open on all sides that would be relatively light and airy, recalling a tent or canopy. This kind of design's unquestionably made a lot easier in that universe by the availability of magic-workers able to pull stone out of the ground without excavation, and also able to fashion it into the desired shapes without the use of physical tools. So finally I settled on a broad, vaguely Gothic-styled cross or groined vault as the preferred shape for the roofs: then rummaged around to see what I could find in the local toolkit that would enable me to build it.

Semi-plan view:

Diagonal side view:

(Please note that all of these images are the result of the digital version of kitbashing, as I don’t currently have anything like the skills to create shapes like these in Blender.)

Better lighting in this case is fortunately a materials-technology issue, long since solved on our own Earth. The stone of the roof segments is what architects now would refer to as an "alabastrite marble", about an inch thick—light enough to need relatively little in the way of external supports, and thin enough to transmit light readily. This marble's name comes (probably obviously enough) from alabaster, which has been used on and off in European church windows since medieval times as an affordable alternative to glass, in times and places where that’s been expensive.

This approach has had occasional revivals in modern our-Earth architecture. However, since alabaster is only useful in relatively small pieces, and is vulnerable to heat and moisture, it's often replaced by thin-cut marble set in metal frameworks. One good example of this would be the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. (image via Amusing Planet)

The thin-cut Vermont marble transmits light safely without endangering the documents. But sometimes genuine alabaster has been used, too: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles features tens of thousands of panes of it. (image via Expedia)

The equivalent use of marble in the royal Arlene library rr'Virendir, in Prydon city—replacing much ancient glass destroyed during the earthquakes accompanying the last battle of the Great War—is probably where the Darthene authorities got the idea for this implementation. And since the marble used in this construction would almost certainly have come from Arlen, light-colored marble being the country’s “vernacular" stone due to it being quarried all over the place there, it makes perfect sense for this marble to have been a gift of the Arlene Throne to the city of Darthis. And would also account for the presence of his grace the King over there by the market stall up against the wall, pretending to check out the produce while he also checks out the nearly-finished construction (and, idly, two of his spouses).

The Queen is after all very picky about making sure her contractors are getting things right. Yes, she jokes a lot about having lots of room in the dungeons if things go wrong... but sometimes, if you don't know her, it's hard to be sure she's joking.

Meanwhile, so far, it doesn't look too bad.

Things learned over the past couple of weeks, in between also doing other work:

Translucence is a bitch to master in Daz Studio

Certain aspects of Blender are conspiring with one another to make me scream

My rendering computer is displaying a tendency toward quirkiness in the memory department that would register as nearly endearing if I could figure out what was causing it

...But at least now that the set I need is pretty much done (except for some minor tightening, straightening, and tweaking of materials and color temperatures), I can turn my attention to the question of how to produce the rather specialized VFX required for the two shot I'm setting up. ...Yeah, all this work has been for a two shot. But that shot needs people in the background, and the right street furniture. And nature abhors an undressed set. ...See also: "the backs of the melons."

Next challenge: track down a source for heaps of digitized prawns. :)

[dduane]

An afternoon in the Middle Kingdoms: Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi (L) and her wife, her royal Grace Eftgan d'Bort tai-Éarnesti, Queen of Darthen (R), out for an afternoon at the beach...

...with their most junior husband. Hasai ehs'Pheress, DragonChief.

(Not included in shot: the picnic lunch, and the three other husbands currently arguing with each other over the best way to get the firepit going without using sorcery, the blue Flame, Dragonfire, or the assistance of the eighth spouse, who's just lying there on the sand smouldering and having way too much fun watching the others struggle.)

[dduane]

Out now at Ebooks Direct: TALES OF THE FIVE #2: THE LANDLADY

In this 75,000-word novel set in the main character through-line of the Door Into... series, sorceress and swordswoman Segnbora tai-Enraesi -- last scion of one of the Forty Noble Houses of Darthen and hero of the great War against the Shadow -- is forced to come to grips with the one part of her life she's successfully avoided for more than a decade: her day job. Segnbora's been preoccupied with the demands of motherhood and the continuing business of supporting her husbands King Freelorn of Arlen and Herewiss Hearn's son in consolidating Freelorn's hold on the Arlene throne. But now her liege-lady and lover Eftgan of Darthen calls on Segnbora to take up her rightful role as Head of House tai-Enraesi and begin restoring her diminished Household to its proper position among the Forty. Reviving the fortunes of a House sunk into decline over two lifetimes will be difficult work, Segnbora knows. But she doesn't suspect how difficult until, while visiting her lands in Darthen's rural north, she discovers that one Holding of House tai-Enraesi conceals a danger unexpected enough to challenge even a companion of Dragons and a wielder of the blue Fire of Power... The Landlady is the second of five novelettes and short novels being published during 2018-2019, spanning the years between Book 3 of the Tale of the Five, The Door Into Sunset, and the forthcoming The Door Into Starlight.

http://bit.ly/TOTF2-LANDLADY

[dduane]

I've already bought, read, and finished The Landlady and enjoyed it very much! It got me thinking once again--perhaps you could speak about how you decided group marriage was pretty much the norm in the Middle Kingdoms?

First of all, I’m delighted you liked Tales of the Five: The Landlady! The length of it kind of caught me by surprise while I was working, but the response has been very positive. (I thought when I started that I was writing a 20K novella. Oh well…)

The “how did you make this up…” of group marriages in the Middle Kingdoms is always going to be a dicey issue, this far along in time. Certainly they start appearing offstage as early as “Parting Gifts” in 1981, only a couple of years after The Door Into Fire was published. I’m tempted to blame Robert Heinlein, as group marriages of various kinds turn up here and there in his work – probably the one that would have made the biggest impression was Mannie’s “line marriage” in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

Anyway, at this end of time it seems likely to me that the Goddess’s general sense of “There’s hardly enough love in the world as it is, why would this be excluded?” is in play – and if it’s okay for a prince to fall in love with and rescue another prince, then one might safely assume there might be wiggle room in other associated areas as well. In particular, in the Middle Kingdoms (or the parts we know about so far), marriage is seen as a way to make life as secure as possible for children: so the more adults are involved in a marriage, the less likely it is for children to be left orphaned or otherwise at risk. Group marriages therefore seem like a logical way of handling this in a world that, though it may in some ways seem idyllic, is hardly safe.

Certainly this issue would have been on the main characters’ minds in the Tale of the Five, as by the time the marriage happens at the end of The Door Into Sunset, there are already a fair number of children in the equation: Herewiss’s two sons with his old flame back in the Brightwood, Freelorn’s daughter with his old flame downcountry in Arlen, and his second daughter-to-be with Segnbora. And Segnbora’s (eventual) child with Hasai, whatever that situation is going to look like. (And then there are Eftgan’s and Wyn’s crowd of kids as well…) The T5 principals will obviously have been concerned for one anothers’ offspring… and one way to make sure they’re all taken care of in the long term is for Everybody To Get Married. :)

(BTW, while looking for something else I suddenly stumbled across this lengthy Tumblr post that deals with some of the logistical challenges of group marriage in the Middle Kingdoms.)

HTH!