Sharrukin's Palace

Review: The Crimson Throne, by Gordon Doherty

June 30, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The Crimson Throne (Book Four of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Crimson Throne is the most recent volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s ongoing historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. In this volume, Mr. Doherty continues to weave a superb action-adventure story out of the scraps and tatters of documentary evidence from the period.

The Crimson Throne continues to follow Prince Hattu, a member of the Hittite royal house. After his victories over the Egyptians during the Kadesh campaign, Hattu returned to his homeland to find that his brother had died under mysterious circumstances, and his brother’s son had taken the throne. He soon learned that the new king, called here by his original name of Urhi-Teshub, was responsible for his own father’s death.

Prince Hattu despises his nephew for his treachery, but the young king has many allies, and he holds Hattu’s beloved wife and son as hostages. Hattu therefore tries to remain a loyal servant of the Hittite throne. At the beginning of The Crimson Throne, he has been sent as a diplomatic envoy to the court of King Priam of Troy. Later, he returns to the Hittite capital, only to be confronted with his nephew’s corruption and misrule. Soon enough, he begins to consider rebellion – but the path to the Hittite throne will not be an easy one for the war-weary prince.

Mr. Doherty continues to do a fine job of working with the original sources. Students of Hittite history will recognize many of the references here. Prince Hattu, his wife Puduhepa, Urhi-Teshub, a renegade named Piya-maradu, all of these are well-known in what few documents we have from the time. Troy is also becoming central to the plot of the series, and here the story draws from the familiar Greek myths. I can attest that pulling all of these disparate threads of history and myth together into a coherent narrative is a challenge, one that Mr. Doherty meets with aplomb.

In this volume, the plot continues to be tight and plausible – the minor stumbles in the plot of the first two volumes of the series are no longer visible here. There’s not a lot of moral ambiguity in this blood-and-guts story. I found myself rooting for Prince Hattu as he struggled his way through danger and hardship, and hissing at the malevolence of the villains. As I’ve come to expect from this series, the prose style is clean, with very few copy-editing errors.

Readers should be aware, of course, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time. Descriptions of human cruelty and violence are common and very explicit.

I very much enjoyed The Crimson Thone and am looking forward to the next books in the series – especially now that the Greek heroic age is being woven into the plot in some detail! Strongly recommended, as an action-packed story of treachery and rebellion set in ancient times.

Status Report (20 June 2021)

June 20, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

A quick note for my patrons and other readers, at the two-thirds point for this month. Things are going reasonably well, and I’m making good progress on this month’s projects.

As I mentioned at the beginning of June, this was likely to be a month for writing fiction rather than working on non-fiction or world-building projects. At this point that certainly seems to have been the case.

Later today, I believe I’ll reach my objective for getting started on the first “Scorpius Reach” novel – six complete chapters, setting up the main story with some action, a bunch of character introductions, and some world-building.

Rather than spend the rest of June working on The Sunlit Lands, I think I’m going to write the first of several short stories set in the same Iron Age fantasy world. The idea is to write incidents pulled from the back story of my main characters. When I’ve got five or six of those, I’ll pull them together into a “reader magnet” collection that I can use to help promote the series. I’ll also make use of that collection to practice some of the improvements I’m making to my publication process. The idea is that it should be easier for me to share the collection, and future work, more widely.

The first story, I think, will be “Derga’s Tale” – the story of how Krava’s parents met and became lovers. Krava’s father-to-be, Derga, is an ordinary mortal man in love with Tivetha, the daughter of a god. What’s more, Tivetha has sworn a Red-Sonja-like oath, never to become involved with any man who can’t defeat her in a fair contest. Derga knows that several men have tried to meet her condition and failed, and he also knows that he has no chance to defeat her in any fair contest of strength or armed skill. So how does he proceed?

So by the end of June I should have about 16,000 words of new fiction. My patrons will get that as their charged release for June. I’ll also release a free minor-version update to the Scorpius Reach setting bible, and I may release a free minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. That last item is looking kind of iffy right now – it may be next month before I have enough new work done to justify that release, but we’ll see.

Two Starships

June 12, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

I’ve been playing with the current (Mongoose Publishing) edition of Traveller, specifically their version of the High Guard starship design rules. Here are a couple of ship designs that might possibly be relevant to another project I’m working on. Also, hopefully, of interest to Traveller fans . . .

Niarchos-class Far Trader (Modified)

These small merchant vessels are based on the TL12 Niarchos-class far trader, but have been specifically modified to support covert operations. They may (appear to) make a profit through normal free-trade operations, but are also likely to be covertly subsidized by an interstellar state.

Tech Level: 12
Hull: 200 tons, streamlined (80 Hull points, MCr12)
Armor: Crystaliron, 2 points (5 tons, MCr1.2)
M-Drive: Thrust 2 (4 tons, MCr8)
J-Drive: Jump 2 (15 tons, MCr22.5)
Power Plant: TL12 Fusion, Power 105 (7 tons, MCr7)
Fuel Tanks: Jump 2, 4 weeks operation (41 tons)
Bridge: Standard (10 tons, MCr1)
Computer: Computer/20 (MCr5)
Sensors: Improved (Power 4, 3 tons, MCr4.3)
Weapons: Double turret with pop-up mounting, Pulse Laser x2 (Power 9, 2 tons, MCr3.5)
Systems:
- Fuel Scoop
- Fuel Processor – 40 tons/day (Power 2, 2 tons, MCr0.1)
- Cargo Crane (3 tons, MCr3)
- Advanced Probe Drones – 5 TL12 drones (1 ton, MCr0.8)
- Library (4 tons, MCr4)
Staterooms:
- High Staterooms x1 (6 tons, MCr0.8)
- Standard Staterooms x8 (32 tons, MCr4)
- Low Berths x6 (Power 1, 3 tons, MCr0.3)
Software:
- Electronic Warfare/1 (Bandwidth 10, MCr15)
- Maneuver/0 (Bandwidth 0)
- Jump Control/2 (Bandwidth 10, MCr0.2)
- Library (Bandwidth 0)
Common Areas: 10 tons (MCr1)
Cargo: 52 tons
Standard Crew: Pilot, Astrogator, Engineer, Gunner, Medic, Steward. Usual crew roster combines Pilot and Astrogator, Engineer and Gunner, and Medic and Steward.
Cost: MCr93.7, monthly maintenance cost Cr7810.

Chen Zuyi-class Corsair

These ships were designed for long-term operation and small-scale commerce raiding in hostile space. Most of them have been sold to pirates, mercenaries, planetary governments seeking to maintain their independence, and other “troublemakers.”

Tech Level: 11
Hull: 400 tons, streamlined (160 Hull points, MCr24)
Armor: Crystaliron, 4 points (20 tons, MCr4.8)
M-Drive: Thrust 3 (12 tons, MCr24)
J-Drive: Jump 2 (25 tons, MCr37.5)
Power Plant: TL8 Fusion, Power 250 (25 tons, MCr12.5)
Fuel Tanks: Jump 2, 4 weeks operation (83 tons)
Bridge: Standard (20 tons, MCr2)
Computer: Computer/15 (MCr2)
Sensors: Military Grade (Power 2, 2 tons, MCr4.1)
Weapons:
- Triple turret, Pulse Laser x3 (Power 13, 1 ton, MCr4)
- Triple turret, Pulse Laser x3 (Power 13, 1 ton, MCr4)
- Triple turret, Missile Rack x3 (Power 1, 1 ton, MCr3.25)
Systems:
- Fuel Scoop
- Fuel Processor – 80 tons/day (Power 4, 4 tons, MCr0.2)
- Cargo Crane (3 tons, MCr3)
- Breaching Tube (3 tons, MCr3)
- Forced Linkage Apparatus (2 tons, MCr0.075)
- Armory x2 (2 tons, MCr0.5)
- Medical Bay (4 tons, MCr2)
- Training Facilities x12 (Power 24, 24 tons, MCr4.8)
- Workshop x2 (12 tons, MCr1.8)
Staterooms:
- High Staterooms x1 (6 tons, MCr0.8)
- Standard Staterooms x4 (16 tons, MCr2, set up for double occupancy)
- Barracks x12 (24 tons, MCr1.2)
- Brig x1 (4 tons, MCr0.25)
- Low Berths x6 (Power 1, 3 tons, MCr0.3)
Software:
- Fire Control/1 (Bandwidth 5, MCr2)
- Maneuver/0 (Bandwidth 0)
- Jump Control/2 (Bandwidth 10, MCr0.2)
- Library (Bandwidth 0)
Common Areas: 13 tons (MCr1.3)
Cargo: 90 tons
Standard Crew: Pilot, Astrogator, 2 Engineers, 3 Gunners, Medic, 12 Marines.
Cost: MCr145.575, monthly maintenance cost Cr12200.

World-Building Exercise: St. Basil

June 2, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Here’s a bit of additional world-building for the Scorpius Reach setting, mostly done with the current draft of Architect of Worlds.

St. Basil is the fourth planet of the A component of a binary star system. Its primary star is named Emmelia. Emmelia is a typical Population I star, somewhat more massive, hotter, and brighter than Sol. It possesses a substantial family of planets.

Emmelia

Mass: 1.06 Sol
Age: 5.7 billion standard years
Metallicity: 1.0 standard
Luminosity: 1.63 Sol
Effective Temperature: 5940 K
Spectral Classification: G0V

Mazaka (Companion Star)

Mass: 0.55 Sol
Age: 5.7 billion standard years
Metallicity: 1.0 standard
Luminosity: 0.06 Sol
Effective Temperature: 3850 K
Spectral Classification: M0V
Orbital Radius: 96.8 AU
Eccentricity: 0.25 (Forbidden zone at 24.2 AU)
Orbital Period: 750.6 standard years

Planetary System Summary

Planets and other major bodies in the Emmelia star system are named after people associated with St. Basil the Great.

Orbit	Name	UPP	Notes
0.20 AU	Meletius	Y7A0000-0	Tide-locked world with a hot carbon-dioxide atmosphere. No moons.
0.36 AU	Eustathius	Y8A0000-0	Tide-locked world with a hot carbon-dioxide atmosphere. No moons.
0.62 AU	St. Macrina	Y600000-0	Hot airless world. No moons.
1.28 AU	St. Basil	C645456-8	Primary world in the system, with a thin but breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere tainted by biotoxins, a moderate amount of liquid surface water, and a temperate climate. Colony world. No moons.
1.85 AU	St. Gregory	Large GG	Spectacular ring system. One large moon, many moonlets.
3.83 AU	St. Petros	Medium GG	Moderate ring system. Two large moons, several moonlets.
7.17 AU	St. Naucratius	Small GG	Moderate ring system. One large moon, several moonlets.
11.61 AU	Julianos	YAA0000-0	Dense, bitterly cold hydrogen-helium atmosphere. No moons.

St. Basil

St. Basil is a marginally habitable world. It has a pleasant climate in limited regions of the surface, but the local ecology is somewhat incompatible with human biochemistry and airborne toxins are common.

Orbital and Rotational Parameters

Orbital Radius: 1.275 AU
Orbital Eccentricity: 0.08
Orbital Period: 12260 hours
Rotation Period: 21.50 hours
Local Day: 21 hours, 32.5 minutes
Local Year: 569.13 local days
Obliquity: 24° (unstable)
Satellites: None

Mass and Surface Gravity

Mass: 0.47 Earth
Density: 0.92 Earth (5.08 g/cc)
Radius: 5090 km
Surface Gravity: 0.74 standard

Geophysics

Geophysical Parameters: Mature plate lithosphere with mobile plate tectonics
Magnetic Field: Strong
Hydrographic Coverage: 50%

Atmosphere

Surface Atmospheric Pressure: 0.69 atm
Atmospheric Components (by Mass):
- Nitrogen 75.5%
- Oxygen 22.3%
- Carbon Dioxide 0.4%
- Argon 1.0%
- Water Vapor 0.3%
Atmospheric Scale Height: 11.6 km
Atmospheric Classification: Thin, tainted (low oxygen content, seasonal airborne toxins in regions of plentiful native vegetation)

Climate

Blackbody Temperature: 279 K
Bolometric Albedo: 0.27
Total Greenhouse Effect: 31 K
Average Surface Temperature: 289 K

Native Life

Age of Advanced Biosphere: 1.71 billion standard years
Dominant Life Forms: Sophisticated animals, both aquatic and land-based, including several pre-sentient species
Biochemical Compatibility: Poor

Human Habitation

Human Population: 50,000
Founder Groups: Eosi (100%)
Government Type: Feudal Technocracy
Law Level: 6
Starport Class: C (Routine facilities, repair yard for small ships)
Base Facilities: Scout base
Local Tech Level: 18
Trade Classifications: Non-Industrial

Notes

St. Basil is notable for its proximity to the massive gas giant planet St. Gregory. St. Basil and St. Gregory are in a stable 7:4 orbital resonance. While the gas giant’s influence stabilizes St. Basil’s orbit, it also causes the smaller planet’s rotational axis to undergo wild excursions over million-year timescales.

St. Basil is currently recovering from a mass extinction which apparently took place about two million years ago. The largest native land animals are about the size and sophistication of a domestic cat. The history of life on the planet is full of such incidents – the variability of the planet’s rotational axis means that its climate is also extremely unstable over long periods.

Native life on St. Basil is biochemically incompatible with Earth-derived life – the two can usually obtain no nutritional value from one another, and the very attempt is likely to provoke serious allergic or toxic reactions. Even the native plant life is prone to give off airborne toxins that can lead to serious illness or even death in Earth-derived animal life. The St. Basil colony tends to expand its territory by burning the native ecology to the ground, plowing the resulting carbon under, and then introducing Earth- or Eos-derived life forms. Humans venturing away from the protected colony are advised to wear filter masks and carry supplemental oxygen.

St. Basil was originally colonized in 2403, by founder groups of Chinese and Japanese origin. The original name of the colony was Guang. The Guang colony failed slowly after the Silence, with all human inhabitants deceased by 2600. The planet was rediscovered in 2833 and recolonized from Eos in 2840. St. Basil is currently organized as a semi-autonomous province of the Kingdom of Eos, ruled by a consortium of technical and scientific experts, with support from the Kingdom’s interstellar navy and scout service.

The local economy is more or less self-sufficient at a TL8 level. It is centered around scientific study of the native biosphere, which promises to produce a variety of useful pharmaceuticals. Prospectors have also recently discovered prodromoi remnants on the planet.

Planning for June 2021

May 31, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

The last few months have been very productive, and I think this pattern of posting a status report and priority list at the beginning of each month is helping. Not to mention that it’s likely to be useful information for my patrons, and anyone else who’s following my work.

May was a good month overall. I released an update to my Scorpius Reach setting bible, adding a fair amount of material to the initial draft. This gathered some good attention from the Traveller communities on Facebook and Reddit. I also released a minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. Finally, I wrote and released the first draft of a completely new section of Architect of Worlds: the Working with Astronomical Data document.

I did not get any new fiction written, and I think I need to refocus on that in the coming month. Earlier this year I had a potential project to write and sell several stories, and for a while I was holding time and energy aside for that. Unfortunately, that seems to have fallen through, so I’m turning back to writing in my own original universes again for a while.

One very useful milestone happened this month. I’ve been developing my Scorpius Reach setting, not just as a test-bed for the Game of Empire rules, but also possibly as the backdrop for some serialized fiction to bring to market. Although the stories themselves are going to be entirely original to me, and I don’t plan to market them as anything but original fiction, there was still a potential IP problem there. I’ve been using the Traveller game rules to help develop the setting, and the “bible” for it is framed in terms of a Traveller universe. So I decided to approach Marc Miller, the owner and primary publisher of Traveller, and discuss how best to avoid stepping on his intellectual property. Once I described what I was planning to do, he immediately and graciously granted me permission to proceed without any concerns. So that’s a big potential obstacle out of the way. I plan to start writing the first Scorpius Reach serialized novel in June.

So here’s the priority list for June 2021. I’m reworking the format a little, to organize by a hierarchy of urgency first, rather than by overall project:

Top Priority, or the “this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful” level:
- Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
- Krava’s Legend: Write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
- Scorpius Reach: Write the first few chapters of a serialized novel to be published via Kindle Vella.
Second Priority, or the “work on this as time permits” level:
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the first short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
- Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules.
Back Burner, or the “work on this only if everything else gets blocked” level:
- Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
- Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will almost certainly include a new minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a block of new fiction from the Krava’s Legend and Scorpius Reach settings. I do hope to produce some new Architect of Worlds material this month, but there probably won’t be enough of that to bundle up as a release for my patrons, so maybe look for that in July.

As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

A small administrative note: I spent some time this morning cleaning up the post tags on this site, merging a few tags and making sure they had consistent format. In particular, I merged all the tags that made any reference to my high-fantasy novel series into the krava’s legend tag. I also merged the tags that referred to the various Bios-series games by Phil Eklund into the bios tag. Might make the site a little easier to navigate.

Review: The Craftsman and the Wizard, by Joel Newlon

May 30, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The Craftsman and the Wizard by Joel Newlon

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Craftsman and the Wizard is a flawed but entertaining story, a high-fantasy novel with the trappings of an old Norse tale, but which is firmly rooted in the present day.

The village of Two Rivers has a terrible problem. Ever since one of the farmers disturbed an ancient runestone in the middle of his fields, the village has been haunted by a draugr, the revenant of an old burial mound. The monster has been taking children from the farms all around, binding them beneath the earth and leaving their families to mourn.

Two unlikely heroes, and later a third, come on quest to help Two Rivers. The dwarven smith Dvalinn is called to answer an ancient debt, bringing all his skills as a warrior and craftsman. The apprentice wizard Asmund is called by a series of terrible dreams. Later, a woodcutter girl named Kolga joins Asmund, at first out of a yearning for adventure, later out of love.

Most of the story follows first Dvalinn, then Asmund and Kolga, as they make their way separately toward the stricken village. The two sets of heroes move independently – they know nothing about each other and don’t interact until the very end of the story.

The two plot threads have very different flavor and feel, almost as if the heroes are moving through two completely separate worlds. Dvalinn’s scenes are more entwined with Norse myth, involving epic battles against supernatural foes. Asmund and Kolga seem to be moving through a more generic fantasy world, facing down human bigotry and corruption. In fact, some of Asmund’s scenes turn into rather unsubtle political satire, of a kind that would only make sense in today’s world.

In fact, this dichotomy is what I had the most trouble with while reading The Craftsman and the Wizard. It was as if the novel didn’t know what it wanted to be. One moment I might be lost in a truly audacious scene built out of deep myth, the next I would find myself plodding through a scene about a cowardly warrior or a pathetic mad king. I kept getting pulled out of the story as a result.

Still, Joel Newlon has done a good job with this story. His prose is clean, with only a few copy-editing errors (and one consistently irritating misspelling). The story has plenty of emotional heft, especially when it focuses on the heroes and their motivations. I found myself caring about the characters and their struggles, turning the pages to see how the plot threads would resolve. The conclusion was entirely satisfying. Recommended.

Status Report (29 May 2021)

May 29, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

A very quick note: I’ve just finished the next section of the Architect of Worlds draft, titled “Working with Astronomical Data.” This is about 13500 words on where to get authoritative scientific data about real-world stars and exoplanets, and how to marry that information with the Architect of Worlds design sequence, so you can build plausible planetary systems.

That section is available for my patrons only at this point. If you’re interested in that material, or in Architect of Worlds in general, please consider signing up for my Patreon at any level: https://www.patreon.com/Sharrukin.

An “Architect of Worlds” Teaser

May 22, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been working on a new section of the book, with the overall title of “Working with Astronomical Data.” Here’s a list of topic headers for the material I’ve produced over the past week or two, about 7000 words in all:

Star Names and Star Catalogs
- The International Astronomical Union (IAU)
- The VizieR Catalog Reference Service
- Traditional Astronomy
  - The Ptolemaic Constellations
  - Proper Names for the Stars
- Bayer Designation
- Flamsteed Designation
- The Durchmusterung Catalogs
- The Henry Draper Catalog
- The Gliese Catalogs
- The Hipparcos Catalogs
- The Gaia Data Releases
- Other Data Sources
  - SIMBAD
  - NASA Exoplanet Archive
  - Wikipedia
Developing Inputs for Interstellar Maps and the Design Sequence
- Star Positions
  - Equatorial Coordinates
  - Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Equatorial Coordinates
  - Galactic Coordinates
  - Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Galactic Coordinates

Lots more to work on in this section. I’m not at all sure whether I’ll have the whole section finished by the end of this month, but if there’s enough there (say, 15000 words or more) then I’ll make the interim draft a charged release for my patrons, after which they’ll get free updates while I keep working on and adding to the material.

Once this section is finished, there will be only two more chunks of the book that need to be written: the “how to generate random maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that don’t fit neatly into the main design sequence.” I’m beginning to think I’ll have a complete pre-layout draft for Architect of Worlds by the end of summer 2021 . . . which means the first edition of the book may be ready for release late this year or early in 2022.

Status Report (16 May 2021)

May 16, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Since the beginning of this month, I’ve returned to my day-job office on a mixed schedule that allows for a couple of days of telework per week. It’s been an adjustment, but so far the results have been pretty good – I’m continuing to be productive on my creative projects. So here’s the state of things as of mid-month.

Biggest push right now is to write a completely new section of Architect of Worlds. This is a section titled “Working with Astronomical Data,” and it’s intended to document most of the tricks I’ve learned over the years for taking real-world data and turning it into plausible star system designs and maps of interstellar space.

So far I’ve got about 4500 words down on how stars are named, what the best data sources are for information on stars, and where on the Web one might go to lay hands on useful star catalogs. That piece is about finished. Then I’m going to start working on material describing how to read star catalogs and other data sources, and translate those data into inputs for the main Architect of Worlds design sequence. I’m hoping to have this whole section finished in rough draft by the end of May, at which time it will probably be this month’s charged release for my patrons.

This is a big deal! This section is one of the three blocks of material that still needs to be written before I can seriously start thinking about laying out Architect of Worlds and getting it ready for release. (The other two blocks are “how to design maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that aren’t explicitly covered in the main design sequence.”) I still have no clear idea as to when the book will be ready for its first-edition release, but I’m increasingly confident that will be either late this calendar year, or early in 2022.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to investigate improvements to my process for publishing new fiction. Right now I’m focusing on finding a reliable source for book cover designs – the cover I designed for The Curse of Steel was okay, but it didn’t pop, and I suspect it’s one reason why sales have been a bit disappointing.

I’m also continuing to work on development of some serialized fiction to be published through the new Kindle Vella outlet, based on the Scorpius Reach setting. I had a big step forward on that a few days ago – more about that once things come closer to fruition – and I suspect I may be in a good position to have a story in place once the platform is released to readers.

Finally, of course, I’m continuing to work on The Sunlit Lands as time permits. That might be a back-burner project for what’s left of May, since I released a few chapters to my patrons last month and I’m focusing hard on Architect for the moment.

Update: The Scorpius Reach Setting

May 9, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve made a bunch of updates to the “Scorpius Reach” document. It’s up to about 13,000 words now, with extensive revisions to the material I published at the end of March, and a bunch of new material as well. Still a living document, but it’s a lot closer to a final release than before, and it would probably work quite well as the setting bible for a tabletop game campaign. This is a free release for my blog readers and patrons.

Here’s a link to the current draft in PDF form: The Scorpius Reach (version 0.2).