#postmasterwip

[elkieselkiewrites]

Magic System Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @pizzamanstan!!

Explain the magic system of your current WIP as poorly as possible. Bonus points if you use bullet points

I'm going to do this for Postmaster WIP!

All magic comes from space!

Magic is made of ~ waves ~ from the impact of a falling star

Soundwaves? Electromagnetic waves? Yes.

Magic waves resonate endlessly out from the point of impact

Magic waves woke up lots of stuff and made it sentient

Walking talking rock? Yes. Walking talking trees? Yes. Walking talking lizards with wings now? I guess so.

Too much magic = radiation sickness

Too much magic but not quite that much magic = mutations

Vibrations in the opposite direction can cancel out the magic

Anti-magic vibrations make people sick

So yeah, good vibrations make you sick and bad vibrations also make you sick

Nice, great design 10/10

People use magic by listening to "the song", only some people are in tune with "the song" and can channel vibrations through their bones

How does that work? I dunno...

Magic waves aren't super useful on their own, but people sure can create contraptions to make them useful, huh

Some scholars try to create artificial magic waves, with mixed results ("mixed results" here is code for "aberrations hitherto unknown to man")

Prolonged use of magic by people who aren't naturally "resonant" can lead to damage to bones, muscles and nerves, causing permanent physical and neurological disabilities

Again, great design 10/10

TLDR: space sound radiation magic is probably bad for your health

Tagging (only if you fancy it) @aether-wasteland-s, @ace-malarky, @i-can-even-burn-salad and @dragonfelling

Also open tag if you see this and want to give it a go!

[elkieselkiewrites]

Hey! I love the sound of your goose fantasy! The premise feels really fun and fresh! More fantasy should have geese in it tbh.

My main WIP The Postmaster's Apprentice is about a postal worker who is tasked to deliver a letter across the continent in the hope that she will get the position of Apprentice to the Postmaster upon her return home.

Unfortunately, things do not go to plan. Her horse is stolen, she gets poisoned and lost and cursed and arrested and shipwrecked, and that's all just in the first half of the story!

Through her misadventures she meets a cast of colourful characters who join her on her journey for varying reasons, ranging from "you saved my life and now I owe you a life debt" to "I'm bored at home and mum says I should get out and see the world" to "we're trying to save our failing marriage and a quest will totally help that"

The setting is high fantasy, with elves that are more like dryads, dwarves carved of real stone, riverfolk halflings look somewhere between moomins and squirrels, morally neutral magic with its morally dubious users, and lots and lots of obscure European folklore, myths and monsters.

There is no romance at all for our protagonist, her sole focus is getting the job done (and eventually helping her friends too), though some of the side characters are in established relationships and/or fall in love over the course of the story. So if you don't really fancy romance featuring too heavily in your fantasy, this might be a story for you!

If you'd like to know more about it, read snippets, see maps, and learn about the main cast, you can take a look at my Postmaster WIP tag here!

Looking for new writing friends!

I'm active again! Wahoo and everything! I'm looking for people who are also actively talking about their own stories on their blogs. Preferably fantasy with no romance, but if you think your story is fun/angsty and unique, please reblog this and talk about your story. Even if it is a romance thing you can use this post to talk about it! I'll start.

My story is about a prince who gets turned into a goose and his friend, the leader of a seaside clan who gets turned in a duck and the two have to try and stop a combined coup from happening. It's very silly and maybe inspired by the untitled goose game.

[elkieselkiewrites]

Last Line Tag

📝 Share the last line you added to a WIP (or a last chapter line, or the last line you edited, or the last whatever works for you)

Thank you to @rookitowrites for tagging me!

I'm afraid it's not a very exciting line, so I added the last 3 to give it some context:

~*~

There were clocks so small that several could fit on a table at once, each one crafted out of fine metal filigree so one could see the equally as fine mechanisms tick and turn within them. There were some in burnished bronze, some in blackened iron, and others in brilliant verdigris patina, but all were beautifully formed, their glass faces and precise hands all somehow moving as one, as if they were attuned to the same cosmic timepiece. Ida hadn't even known clocks could be made so small nor so accurate.

~*~

I'll tag @writingamongther0ses, @ace-malarky, @indigowriting and @bloodmoodtrash but there's no pressure to take part! Also open tag if you'd like to take part too!

[elkieselkiewrites]

Snippet Sunday 19/01

Have something ✨new✨ from early in Postmaster WIP!

~*~

Stood at the desk were two postal workers in matching livery, the same blue and yellow as Ida, albeit clean and pressed rather than grubby and rumpled from several days' travel. The man on the right looked to be just a little older than Ida, eyes trained on a logbook in front of him, while the girl on the left looked fifteen at most, flitting around her colleague like a finch around a seedbag.

"Welcome to the Sudstowe office of the Imperial Mail Service, my name is Sidor, how may I assist you today?" Said the man as Ida approached the desk, in so deadpan a tone it must have been a rote phrase long-since drained of any authenticity. When he looked up, however, his demeanour blossomed into something more genuine. "It must have been a long journey for you, s'hon."

Ida paused. "The journey from Wariford isn't so long as all that, and it's one I do regularly enough."

"You're from Eathel?" Sidor blinked, his cheeks flushing dark. "Sorry, you just have a Tarvish look about you."

Ida smiled. "My mother's family is from Tarvos, just across the water from Tynesh."

The man beamed, embarrassment forgotten. "That will be it! My father is from Tynesh. Offri den, s'hon."

"And to you, s'hon." Ida replied amiably as she unloaded the parcels and letters from her satchel. "How fares Sudstowe?"

Sidor's smile thinned a little as he sorted the letters, passing the parcels wordlessly to his young colleague. "Mostly well, though there have been more reports of Wyrm Fire in the Old Town."

"Wyrm Fire? In the city?"

Sidor nodded solemnly. "There had been whispers of wyrm sightings a few years back, but it seemed ridiculous, so nothing came of it. Then there was a report of Wyrm Fire down The Scratch, but no one cared all that much about those kind of folk getting sick, so no one followed it up. Then it spread to Fishmarket Street and up Hawkers Lane and, now it's so close to the Ducal Way, people are finally starting to pay attention."

"They want to catch the beast," Chimed in the girl as she balanced a third weight on the scales in front of her, the parcel being checked bobbing up and down as she did. "But none of the traps set seem to be making a difference at all."

Ida turned to the girl. "You think it's a longwyrm then?"

"It has to be, there's no way a pack of rudelwyrm could hide so well in a city like this." She replied, matter-of-factly.

"You're a country girl." Ida deduced with a small smile, and the girl blushed.

"I grew up on the Eathel border, closer to Kingshurst than Sudstowe, really. My Uncle kept sheep, and he always had trouble with rudelwyrm in the spring."

"Then you know better than most here how rare it is to see a longwyrm hunt in a city. There isn't a lake less than a day's ride away, where could it possibly have come from?"

The girl shrugged. "I have no idea, and neither do the City Guard. Perhaps you could offer them some advice? There are plenty of longwyrm down near Wariford, from what I hear."

Ida replied that there were. "That doesn't mean I'd be any help here, though. All the children in Wariford know not to venture out to the lakes on their own in the springtime, but unless you live by the water, there's no danger of encountering any longwyrm in your own home."

The girl sighed. "You're right enough there, I suppose."

"Well, thank you for taking these off my hands." Ida said finally, fastening her satchel once more. "I'm going north from here, so please keep any further Wariford post for my colleague. He'll probably be here in another week. Offri den, Sidor and-"

"Loysia!" Chirped the girl.

"Loysia." Ida replied with a small wave. "I'll be seeing you."

[elkieselkiewrites]

Snippet Sunday 26/01

Have a little exposition for today.

~*~

In the light of day, Ida could see their Wodefolk companions a little better, and was somewhat taken aback by their appearances. In the gloam of the night before they had seen little more than tall Thedenfolk, and true enough Fannan was tall, with elegant boughs of dun grey limbs, smattered with patches of pale stars like the splitting of bark to reveal the woodgrain underneath. This was where all likeness ended. His eyes were large, wide-set as a mantis, and the colour of autumnal gold, while his long hair was not hair at all, but hundred of shivering, round leaves so deep a russet to almost be black, like the last left clinging to the branches come winter.

The others, too, looked more like insects feigning to be trees than any Theden. They were ethereal, all different shades of white, brown, grey and black bark, some pitted, some smooth, as though an entire woodland glen had just decided to uproot themselves, their strange language like the creaking of boughs in a high wind. All of the stories Ida had heard of Wodefolk blossomed in her mind, tricksters and seducers, leading good people astray if caught trespassing in their woods. But then Fannan let out a laugh like the bursting of a mountain spring and the spell was broken, they were all but men again, strange and unnervingly elfin, but just men all the same.

The depth of the forest was a strange, timeless place. Every step taken passed one tree just the same as the other, but all at once entirely different. It felt like a wild place, wild in a way that Ida had never truly experienced before. True enough she had travelled the length and breadth of Eathel, but nowhere was very far from civilisation there. One field would lead to another, which led to another, each with a farmstead or cottage to oversee it. Even in the foothills there were shepherds and goatherds who knew the lay of the land, and the telltale smoke of a village in the distance that one could follow should they wish to find shelter. The wild places of Eathel had long been lost to toil and progress, but this, this place had no paths for people who did not already know where to look. She had seen Fannan absently trace the shape of a marker here and there that Ida was certain made sense to him and his companions, but if she were left to her own devices she would likely lose her way within moments.

That thought stirred another, buried deep in the recesses of her childhood memories. Since joining the Imperial Mail Service she had forgotten the feeling of being lost, always travelling with a map and a purpose, but once, when she was very small, her mother had taken her south, beyond Eathel, to visit her grandmother's family in Tarvos. Tarvos had once been a great Empire too, but The Wasting had ravaged the population and the country splintered long ago, the ancient cities falling to ruin, all but the greenest pastures abandoned. They had stopped to make camp for the night on the edge of a woodland that looked as though it had once been planted for some purpose beyond Ida's young mind, but had grown wild with centuries of untamed growth, creeping out from the confines of the neatly planted coppices to become acres and acres of uncharted wilderness. It was into this forest that her little legs had carried her, hoping for some peace to relieve herself away from her snickering siblings. Instead she pulled her skirts back down to find she had come further from their camp than she'd first thought, and could not see her way back through the undergrowth. Until the resurfacing of that memory in that very moment, Ida hadn't realised how much she craved that feeling. Not the initial cold, sick realisation that she was lost, but rather the wide, yawning opportunity of forging her own path, and discovering things that she had likely never encountered before.

[elkieselkiewrites]

I was tagged by the lovely @indigowriting to post the first three paragraphs of my WIP, and since I'm knee deep in Postmaster WIP that's what you'll be getting! It does feel a little like cheating because my paragraphs are always so long...

Check out jiayi's post!

~*~

The road out of Wariford was straight, wide and well paved. As small a town as it appeared to be on any map, it was the gateway to the Empire from the South and the East, and in Wariford that badge was worn with pride. It was the reason the Wariford Postal Service was so in demand. Of course, they were proud to be part of the larger Imperial Mail Service, but all of the old WPS buildings still had the original crest carved above the door, and the Postmaster still referred to it as the WPS despite the twenty years of Imperial service since it was taken over.

Ida tugged a little at her postal jerkin, which had ridden up somewhat with the journey on horseback thus far. She always wore her uniform meticulously; the brass buttons gleamed against the brilliant blue jerkin, her marigold stockings were never stained or rumpled, and her cap was never askew. However, in the heat of the Eathel summer, she loathed the way the cape made half of her torso sweat more than the other, and the boots, while perfect for travelling in rain and mud, stifled her feet and made them swell. If she had been making a short journey she might have opted for something lighter, might have forgone the boothose and spurs entirely, but this was not a few days to the Western counties and back. This was a veritable quest.

The Postmaster, a wizened, elderly gentleman with an old-fashioned swallow-tail beard and eyes like small beetle carapaces comically enlarged by his thick eyeglasses, had taken her aside not a week before and directed her to the back of the sorting room conspiratorially. He had handed her a small, oiled-leather pouch containing folded parchment sealed with green wax.

~*~

I'm zero pressure tagging @bloodmoodtrash, @zonnemaagd, and @rookitowrites, plus an open tag if you wanna hop in!

[elkieselkiewrites]

Bullet Point Tag Game

Hopping on to this via @aalinaaaaaa's open tag!

Have a bullet point summary of Postmaster WIP:

Sure, old man, I'll deliver your letter to the other side of the continent, nothing could possibly go wrong with that.

What a delightful city, sure would be a shame if there was a creature...

Time to get my nice horse stolen and hitch a ride with a stranger!

What a lovely old ruin, sure would be a shame if it was cursed...

What a nice wee town, and some new acquaintances too! Sure would be a shame if one of them went missing...

Hope the tree people don't see us killing this tree!

The tree people saw us killing that tree, now we're going to tree prison.

Diplomat joins the party: now we are seven!

Time to traverse some truly terrible terrain

Time to traverse some truly terrible terrain two: now there are giants

Travelling over land has been Too Difficult™ so I'm sure getting a boat to our destination will turn out better

Upsides: met a new friend and her giant dog! Downsides: shipwreck shipwreck shipwreck

Probably a bad idea to follow the sound of that mysterious string instrument...

Rescued! At the Fish Market.

One of us was secretly nobility and on the run. Was it me? No Travis. Was it me? Well, it wasn't Travis...

Terrible Husband! Terrible Husband! Terrible Husband?

Baron joins the party: now we are nine (+ dog)

We're at the Mountain Pass! We're at the Vampire Den! We're at the combination Mountain Pass and Vampire Den!

Another delightful city, sure would be a shame if there was a serial killer on the loose...

Fucked up family dynamics ruining the stability of my major city? It's more likely than you think.

Several people leave the party: now we are six (- dog)

Home stretch! Don't get sidetracked, don't get sidetracked.

Got sidetracked.

Objective "Deliver Letter": Complete!

Was it worth it? Ehh. Are we all forever changed and unable to truly go home after our experiences? Ehhhhh.

The End?

The End.

I'm tagging @ace-malarky @finchmomentwrites @asher-writes @writingamongther0ses and an open tag if you see this and want to participate yourself!

[elkieselkiewrites]

The delightful city on the Postmaster Apprentice's journey has a creature in it, what sort of creature?

The first city? That's a city called Sudstowe, the capital of Rotherel (one of the countries encompassed by the Rappenrath Empire).

Now the creature, you'll be happy to find out, is a wyrm. Wingless with two clawed forelimbs and a great, long serpentine body.

Unlike normal wyrms, it's not a pack animal, is living further north than most of its kind, and has, unusually, made its home in the city rather than the forests or mountains. It slithers into people's houses and breathes clouds of venom into their rooms at night. The people it stalks become sick and weak, and when they are too weak to fight it off, it swallows them whole.

The real problem is that the venom isn't exactly localised, and it spreads like plague, causing entire streets to become sick with Wyrm Fire (fever, convulsions, blistered skin, trouble breathing, weakness, and death) and the city has had no luck in tracking the creature down.

But perhaps our intrepid postie can help, eh?

[elkieselkiewrites]

hap wbw(bwubwub) you know fine well my head is empty <3 are your giant ghosts ghosts that have grown giant or giants that have become ghosts orrr a secret third thing?

Happy W(u)BW(ub)!

Short answer: SECRET THIRD THING (giant skeleton ghost)

Long answer: I've mentioned previously that the magic in Postmaster WIP is called the Resonance, and to wield it someone has to channel the vibrations of the Resonance through their bones? I also think I mentioned that there was research done to find out how to better harness the Resonance, and research into creating artificial Resonance, all with pretty dire results.

Well, in the city of Hibrek, in Imperial occupied Vyskavia (the rules both formally and culturally are different in Goria, and such things wouldn't fly in Gorian occupied Vyskavia) there is a university, and in this university, there were academics who experimented specifically on Resonant bone. To do that they needed test subjects, so they paid handsomely for anyone willing to donate their corpse to their studies. Many who did never got to spend that money as they died in "accidents" soon after signing away the rights to their bodies after death. Now, the experiments didn't yield the results that the academics had hoped, but one of the side effects was that those who met more grisly ends stuck around, like an echo, haunting the university. They never appeared as normal apparitions, though, because the only part of their bodies exposed to these high levels of Resonance were their bones. So, their ghosts are just those of their skeletons, often seen begging for money to buy back the corpses they sold.

But Jasper, you cry, why "giant" skeleton ghosts? Much like vibrations, and ripples on a lake, the Resonance that kept these apparitions around grew weaker and less distinct. The waves of Resonance grew larger but less powerful, and so the ghosts grew and spread over time to match. By the time of our story, nearly 200 years had passed since these experiments created the ghosts, so some of the ghosts faded entirely, while the ones that remained were enormous, shimmering things, passing in and out of existence, not really knowing any more why they beg for coins, only that they do.

TLDR: ghosts of science experiments become echoes of their own skeletons that grow larger as they fade into the aether.

[elkieselkiewrites]

✍🏼 Word find tag (Mature, Natural, Yellow & Genuine)

Thanks to @rookitowrites for the tag!

📝 Search for the given words in your story. If your story doesn't have a word, you can use a variation on it or a word with a similar meaning.

These are all from Postmaster WIP:

Mature(d)

There used to be a time when he had treated her simply as a child who rode in the wagon, tossing her an apple and a wink, but he had matured as much as she had in those ten years and treated her more as an equal nowadays.

(un)Natural(ly)

The man, more tree than man now that Ida could see again, unnaturally tall and lithe, lunged forward.

Yellow

The waypoint she had passed a few hours early had indicated that she should find a Imperial Mail bothy only a few miles further along the road, but she had yet to pass one, the blue and yellow standard usually visible even in twilight.

Genuine

"My dear Baroness!" The Margrave's wife said, a genuine smile lighting up her angular face. "Look at you! I had no idea congratulations were in order!"

I shan't tag anyone in particular, but consider this an open tag in case anyone wants to take part! Your words are: Slip, Worry, Grand & Dark

[elkieselkiewrites]

Worldbuilding Wednesday evening! What are some your-world-specific organizations (or other collective) that your characters interact with?

Hi! Happy WBWTh! This is a great question, thank you!

The most important organisation for Postmaster WIP is, of course, the Imperial Mail Service! The Imperial Mail Service was founded by Emperor Gaspard, and was an initiative by the Rappenrath Empire to unify the countries within the Empire, and make communication and traversal easier and more efficient (also to establish Imperial permanence to make secession or rebellion more difficult). Gaspard built the Postal Roads; long, straight roads that joined all of the main cities in the Empire, and in each of those cities a main Imperial Mail Office was established too. The IMS subsumed the regional postal services, though, so despite it being great infrastructure, there were certainly pockets of postal discontent.

Other collectives/organisations our characters interact with in the story include, but are not limited to:

The Bradness Clothier's Guild (or their full title: The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Honourable Guild or Fraternity of the Clothiers of the City of Bradness) the Weterlands' main trade guild for weavers, haberdashers, drapers, and miscellaneous cloth merchants.

The Bradness Tailor's Guild (or their full title: The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Honourable Guild or Fraternity of the Tailors of the City of Bradness)

The Dead Weald Traversal and Sightseeing Company (DWTSC) - a slightly predatory collection of "guides" who lead people through the dangers of the Dead Weald, for an exorbitant fee.

The Northern Pirate Association - a semi-democratic organisation of pirates who stalk the Everode Sea under the guidance of the self-proclaimed "Pirate Queen" known as The Silver Storm (not to be confused with the Association of Northern Pirates, which is a different thing entirely)

The Rappenrath Imperial University - the main university in Thedenfast; prestigious and well-funded, with a wide variety of fields of study supported so long as the student has the money (or a wealthy enough patron) to pay for it.

The Thedenfast Society for Resonance Study - an academic research body at the Rappenrath Imperial University dedicated to the study of resonant magic, both theoretical and practical.

The Silent Court - an anti-Imperial resistance movement based out of Thedenfast looking to bring down Emperor Ansgar and restore autonomy to the individual Imperial states.

[elkieselkiewrites]

happy wbw! hey it's another day you uhhh want to do that ramble about the dead weald now? 👀

Hoo boy okay yeah absolutely!

So as per this WBW ask we established that the Hollow is a place of anti-magic, where the Resonance is cancelled out. On the edge of that, though is a bit of the world where the Resonance and the anti-Resonance meet. It's a boundary where they don't quite cancel out, but instead cause all kinds of weird stuff to happen.

The Wodefolk, who were originally trees brought to life by the Resonance, are particularly affected by this, and the forests at this boundary have become something... other.

In most forests, the Wodefolk come in the shape of whatever tree their parents chose to birth them under. Some Wodefolk are more Theden and reproduce sexually sexually, others are more tree-like and reproduce tree sexually with pollen and seeds, and some even reproduce asexually, as some trees do. The point here is that Wodefolk are inextricably linked to their trees, and consider them family both metaphorically and literally.

So when the anti-Resonance boundary caused a disruption of the magic that brought them to life, many Wodefolk and their trees died. Others changed.

The Dead Weald is a misnomer, really, because though the trees and Wodefolk there did die, the forest isn't dead. Because what happens when trees die? You get decay, and what aids decay? Fungus.

The Dead Weald isn't dead, it's full of mushrooms!

Mushrooms on their birth trees, though, means mushrooms on the Wodefolk. At the start it was just mushrooms growing on the bark, which happens to older Wodefolk from time to time. But this was everyone, young and old. Then, after the trees all died, when it came to creating new Wodefolk, the only option was to leave the forest, or create children from the only living things they could: the mushrooms.

So within a few generations, the Wodefolk children were being born not of trees, but of mushrooms. Postmaster WIP has its own myconids!

These mushroom Wodefolk tend the mushrooms like ordinary Wodefolk tend the trees, and because of that the mushrooms grow larger and larger, fed by Resonance from the Wodefolk and anti-Resonance from the Hollow.

The Dead Weald is still physically and politically close to the Moon Woods and the Golden Forest, two very important Wodefolk micronations, and though travel into and out of the Dead Weald is monitored by both the Moon Woods and the Golden Forest, that travel is frequent and mostly amicable.

By the time Ida and the gang arrive, there have been centuries of mushroom growth, and the air is constantly thick with spores, which makes traversing it hazardous for people with lungs and pores and other moist orifices that spores could nestle in.

There is one path through the Dead Weald for people who aren't Wodefolk, a slatted wooden path that leads in four directions from the Moon Woods and Golden Forest to the border of Staithland to the West and Mossforth Edge in the North East. To traverse the Dead Weald you have to be properly kitted out, you need fantasy PPE: masks soaked in antifungal tinctures, goggles, gloves, ear muffs. You cannot stop to eat or drink or sleep, and the journey across can take days. For this reason, most people don't even try. Those who do run a risk of dying from dehydration, sleep deprivation, or, of course, fungal infection. Along the side of the path, beyond the safety of the rope barriers, you can see the bodies of those unfortunate enough to stray from the path, or succumb to illness along the way. Corpses overtaken by mushrooms of all different sizes and shapes, bursting from mouths and eye sockets, and blooming from their pores.

That being said, Dead Weald tourism is alive and well. Thrill-seekers, artists, lookie-loos, mushroom enthusiasts, scientists... they all choose of their own volition to tempt death in the Dead Weald.

[elkieselkiewrites]

Happy WBW! Ramble about a location you really like or are super proud of.

Thank you! Oh, can I talk about the Hollow Fens from Postmaster WIP?

I've not written a lot of the plot that happens there yet, but the Fens themselves are one of my favourite places in the story because they're kinda creepy and not really like anywhere else on the continent.

So, some background to how the Postmaster WIP world came to be how it is:

Back when the world was in an ice age, a star fell from the sky, a meteor that caused a cataclysmic event that warmed the planet, but that more importantly began The Resonance. All magic comes from the Resonance, the sounwaves that ripple eternally through the earth and air, through the very being of every thing on the planet. The closer to the starfall you are, the stronger the Resonance is. Some Resonant peoples (like the Delvish and Wodefolk) find it easier to live with high Resonance, while others (Theden) can grow sick from too much Resonance, and it can change them into something ... more. Resonance brought the trees to life, it gave the wyrms their sentience, it imbued the world with magic.

However, it was not the only starfall.

A while later, a smaller star fell, one that cracked and burnt up in the atmosphere, but still landed with its own Resonance. This Resonance cancelled out the original Resonance over a small area, and in that area, all magic died out. Thedens, who did not feel the lack of Resonance there, settled on the fallen rock and its surroundings, but this magic black-spot started to change them eventually too.

"Did you know," Madoc began. "That the Fens were once beautiful, verdant things, fertile and full of life. The sun would rise over the waters and the reeds would glisten and sway, the waterfowl cackling as the dragonflies flitted low like streaks of lightning." His pale eyes looked off into the near distance in fond nostalgia. "It was once called Elbid, but that name is lost to the mists now, and there was a great city, too, in the centre of it all. Kasburg, built into the very rock of the central island, grand and beautiful, spires towering into the sky. They were great scholars, traders, businessmen, rich in coin and knowledge alike. But they were greedy, oh they wanted more, always more. The rock of Kasburg was riddled with tunnels, deeper and deeper they travelled into its depths, and there they found something. Something wonderful. Something terrifying. It granted them the power they sought, but its contagion spread and spread until it engulfed the city. It still spreads today. What you call the Hollow, that is what they found in Kasburg rock."

The Hollow Fens are the Un-Resonance, the dead area where magic is unravelled. The original meteor had been a being, one known as The Traveller, who brought life and magic to a cold, isolated world. There was a being in Kasburg Rock too, but it was a creature that didn't land whole, it landed in pieces, it became something twisted and wrong. It became something without shape or form, and desiring nothing more than to gain shape and form, so it used the people of Elbid, and of Kasburg, to try and reshape and reform itself.

The Hollow Fens are a place, but they are also the creature itself.

The Fens are less true fens now, since there is little of what we'd know as an ecosystem: birds don't fly over it, very little grows there any more, the only permanent residents are the Fog Giants, beings made of mist, that perhaps were once something else...

In terms of size, the Hollow Fens are about 300km (~190miles) from Mossforth Edge to the sea, and are rarely traversed by anyone in less than a caravan, with guides and guards and plentyful supplies. Those travelling who are particularly Resonant often become sick, and some die, but it is the shortest route to Bradness, the capital of the Weterlands, and there are many who would rather take that route than brave the treacherous Everode Sea, or pass through the Dead Weald (another excellent option for a ramble, but that will have to wait for another day!)

Speaking of the Weterlands, the Hollow Fens used to be smaller than they are now, but they have been spreading, encroaching on the waterways to the west, devouring swathes of the Weterlands in a slow, dark creep.

Across those 300km, very few people know where the lost city of Kasburg is, some people say it moves, others say it has long since sunk into the quagmire. People still go looking for it, though, because legend has it that the cure for the Hollowing lies in the heart of Kasburg Rock.

[elkieselkiewrites]

Hello! For the writing ask game :)

2 pick one sight, smell, sound, feel, and taste to describe the aesthetic of your novel.

Oh hey, thank you so much! From this list:

2. pick one sight, smell, sound, feel, and taste to describe the aesthetic of your novel.

I'll answer for Postmaster WIP...

Sight - A dirt road, wide enough to fit two horses, leading through a forest at the border between summer and autumn.

Smell - The musty scent of old houses; a mix of damp wood, lavender and sweet rushes, lignin, and dust.

Sound - The sound a strong wind makes as it pushes against your house after dark, making it creak and groan and sigh when everything else in the world has fallen silent.

Feel - Handwoven wool twill, specifically the rasp of it between a thumb and forefinger, worried at the cuff of a sleeve or hem of a shirt.

Taste - Keeved cider; ripe, fruity and sweet, just fermented enough to effervesce on your tongue; a syrupy summer evening sipped from a clay bolée with a sharp, sour kick that you feel in your cheeks.

[elkieselkiewrites]

Snippet Sunday 12/01

Have an introduction to my four favourite lil' guys for a snippet today!

~*~

"I am Luus, and this is my brother Neer, and my cousin Nol." She began, before sweeping an arm out towards the stall behind them where a fourth Favalan was stood perusing some wares. Her ears twitched at Luus' voice. "And over there is the most beautiful creature ever to grace this good earth, and who I am unendingly fortunate enough to call my wife."

The Favalan turned around then and caught her wife's eye, raising a dark, bushy brow. "Luus, love, you had better not be waxing poetic to strangers again."

"But Til, your ears are so long and elegant, I have to let everyone know that you are not available, otherwise I shall have to fight them all off!"

Til flushed darkly at this and swatted her wife playfully. "No one here cares for the length of my ears, and you had better stop this before I combust!"

"Master Delfman, do you not agree that my wife has the broadest nose of any you have ever seen?" Luus said, turning to a slightly disgruntled and entirely baffled Aarna.

"Do you hold such things in high regard?" He replied.

Luus looked shocked, but her wife and brother shared looks of exasperated fondness. "Why sir, of course! A broad nose is a broad mind, good senses and a level head! To call anyone narrow nosed is an insult of the highest degree!"

Aarna's frown loosened and he made a small, polite bow. "Then I am certain all of your family, wife included, have broad noses indeed."

Luus' small face burst into a joyous smile. "There then! What did I say, Til!"

[elkieselkiewrites]

Snippet Sunday 22/12

This is my first Snippet Sunday on this blog, so I'm cheating a bit and just choosing a few paragraphs I wrote a while back, but I think they're fun, so I hope you enjoy it anyway!

It's from about two thirds of the way into the story, when the crew have finally made it to Hibrek, the Capital of Vyskavia.

~*~

It was eerily quiet for how bright it was, the star lamps spilling light out onto the streets like liquid silver, flattening the bright colours of the buildings to shades of steel and pitch. There was such a variety of shops and stalls lining the roads and squares as they walked the steepening incline towards the palace. Half a dozen bakeries, their painted wooden signs advertising everything from cream horns to salted knot-bread, then butchers, haberdashers, booksellers and more. They even passed a puppeteer's stall, puppets left hanging for anyone to take. It struck Ida then how dire the situation must be for a craftsman to leave his wares out in the open, certain of the fact that no one would dare brave the streets at night to steal them. The puppets watched her with their exaggerated features, their eyes seeming to follow her as she passed, and she suppressed a shudder.

"A shame, a shame." Aarna rumbled beside her. Ida raised a quizzical brow. "Such a waste of such beautiful craftsmanship. I was here a month before we met in Sudstowe, this time of night was filled with laughter, even children ran about underfoot. Such is the way with star lamps, though I have never seen any as pure or as brilliant as these even in the Delflands."

"How do they work?" Ida said, trying to shake the feeling of being watched.

"I couldn't tell you that." Aarna replied. "Not out of secrecy, mind, but simply because I do not understand it myself. I work with cogs and crystals true enough, but my song is one of time, not of light."

Ida watched their companions move through the artificial twilight, their features cast in dramatic shadows, like charcoal sketches of their true faces. She wasn't sure she could see the beauty in it when there was the possibility that they were being hunted through the streets in this surreal half-light.

"It was a Delfman that designed them, though?" She said at last.

Aarna nodded, a proud smile breaking over his stone features. "It was, one of the best lightsmiths we ever carved. Others have tried to emulate his work, of course, got lamps to throw shades of blue or yellow, but never this pure a white. I can see why that queen of theirs named it starlight. Never seen something so pure that wasn't plucked out of the sky itself."

"It's unnerving though, the way it strips the colour. It is nothing like the torches we burn in Eathel."

"Of course not, do you see the vibrancy of the day by moonlight? That's the fallacy, you see. Star lamps look like stars well enough, but their essence is in the light of the moon. In our tongue we call them kirrpolkuur, Moon Shards."

The word sounded like pebbles rolling down a hill, and Ida could not recreate the sound with her own mouth, but she had to admit, looking at the lamps again with the words tumbling through her mind, she felt perhaps a sliver of the appreciation that Aarna held for them captured in those three murmurous syllables.

"Sorry Mister Aarna, sir." Came Nol's small voice from Ida's left. "I can appreciate clever design as much as the next Journeyman, but I've never warmed to this place. They have some of the finest weaving west of the Isreau, but I try to finish my trade before nightfall for this very reason. Even when there wasn't a mass murderer out for our blood it was like a city of phantoms at every turn."

Til hummed in agreement. "It doesn't help that there are real phantoms in this city, it just makes them more difficult to distinguish."

"What kinds of phantoms?" Ida asked, thinking back to the Ganfer on the fog-drenched shore of Outer Goria with no small amount of trepidation.

"The same phantoms you find in every Theden city. Restless dead, harmless as moths." Aarna said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's the living you have to worry about here, by the sounds of it."