A climate-controlled ski resort for global warming. From Central Europe we move to winter sports, specifically, ski resorts. (Of course, snowboarding, ice skating, and cross-country skiiing are offered as well.) These, in Canada and the U.S. at least, tend towards a certain blandness when not named after local mountains or Native American tribes. By mixing …
January 2018 archive
Worldbuilding Wednesday 1/24/18: Useless Magic Items
(Artwork by Dchan) There are those magic items that are very helpful to a character, and those that aren’t. Here are some that did not make the grade into regular adventuring use. Useless Magic Items Ashestes’s Garrulous Ass: Renders an ass or donkey capable of speech. Unfortunately, the animal doesn’t stop talking for the …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 1/17/18: Germanic Names
Returning to Ruritania, Germanic names, and fictional European countries again… There are really a lot of them, evidenced by this list on Wikipedia. I was blown away, actually. Some highlights: Animation has its share, evidenced by the fictional country of Cagliostro, in which Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, Hayao Miyazaki’s debut anime movie is …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 1/10/18: Germanic Towns
Wouldn’t you like to live here? (Art by John Stevenson) Fantasies set in Germanic cultures, like those based on Italian ones, have not been published much in recent years, yet in past decades there were enough of them to have their own subgenre: Ruritanian Romance. These novels were set in imaginary Central or Eastern …
The One Gold Slave
[Reading Challenge 2018]
The One Gold Slave (Atlaind Book 1) by Christian Kennedy Waitingstar Publishing, New York, 2011 [Challenge # 5: A Free book] Ah, my first finished read of 2018, by which things are starting smashingly well. First up: A Freebie, in this case, an Amazon giveaway by the author. I knew full well what kind of …
Worldbuilding Wednesday 1/3/18: Mythic Animals
Kirin-Sleipnir-Dragon-Butterfly thing Mythical animals include the unicorn, jackalope, sea serpent, hydra, sasquatch, and many others… such as these. All randomly generated by me for inspiration and to get your creative furnaces going. Mythic Animals Yauzink: An aquatic lion with webbed paws, fins, a fish’s tail, and a mottled green and brown coloration. It is …
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