Status Report (25 May 2018)

Status Report (25 May 2018)

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Just a quick report today: progress on my world maps for the Curse of Steel project. After tinkering a bit and learning how to build and use layer masks in Photoshop, I managed to paint mountain belts in their own layer on my map, with the following results:

Here, the deep-red belts are “young” mountains, the result of recent orogeny at the site of plate collisions or subduction. Think the Andes, Rockies, or Himalayas. The narrow, golden-brown belts are “old” mountains, the eroded remains of ranges that formed many millions of years ago in previous orogenic periods. Think the Appalachians or Atlas range.

One thing strikes me: the big continents to the east are going to have really big rain-shadow deserts, since those young, high mountains are going to block any kind of monsoon climate from moving too far inland. I’ll have to figure out the air circulation patterns next to know for sure. It makes sense, though, since large continents tend to have big arid zones anyway.

Next, it will be time to work out those climate patterns. I’ve been reading up on techniques for that all week, and the long weekend coming up should be a good time to work out the details.

Status Report (22 May 2018)

Status Report (22 May 2018)

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Had the day off sick today, so in between bouts of ick I got a bit more work done on the world map for The Curse of Steel. Mostly this involved refining the landforms, using a much finer pencil stroke to create crinkly coastlines and islands. I’m fairly happy with the results. Here’s the equirectangular base map:

Much better continental shapes, not so cartoonish now, and clear island arcs. Another view, in the Mollweide projection for variety:

Next step will be to lay out mountain ranges, in accordance with the underlying map of tectonic plates. Once that’s done, I’ll need to work out air and ocean circulation patterns, and then lay out climate zones. Then it will be time to drill down to the regional scale and build the maps I’ll need to support the story.

(Very) Rough Draft World Maps

(Very) Rough Draft World Maps

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Okay, given my level of frustration over the weekend, I’m rather happy with today’s developments. I’ve managed to produce a very rough draft of my world map, using Photoshop, the GPlates software, and GProjector. By no means is this as detailed as a good map of Earth yet, but I’m reasonably satisfied with the realism of the planetary geology involved.

Here’s a flat map in equirectangular projection:

This planet is in the middle stages of the breakup of a supercontinent. An Atlantic-like ocean has opened up, breaking off the equatorial continent and sending it south and west, creating a nice long chain of island arcs along the edges of two subduction zones as well.

The big continent that covers the north polar region is actually made up of three major continental plates. The piece covering the polar region itself is one plate, then a second is in the process of breaking away and heading southward, with a rift valley and a newly opening ocean basin dividing them. The third piece, down in the southern hemisphere, is actually a separate plate that started out attached to “Equatoria” but found itself divided from it by the new mid-ocean ridge. It’s currently being driven east and north, and is probably forming a blocked-off sea basin or an impressive range of mountains (or both) along the point of contact with the larger land mass.

The blot of land in the middle of the pseudo-Atlantic is my equivalent of Atlantis (or Númenor), the home of the most advanced human culture on the planet, one which is just starting a period of sea-borne exploration. The land-form is basically a super-Iceland, an exposed piece of the mid-ocean ridge that has a magma plume under it. Lots of volcanism and hot springs, and the inhabitants are feeling crowded enough that they’re ready to sail away and find primitive lands to colonize.

For variety, here’s a two-hemisphere orthographic map, produced using GProjector:

I did mention that this is a very rough draft map, right? I think I may produce a somewhat more detailed version of this map with Photoshop first, so I can add mountains and other major land-forms, then work out ocean currents and climate zones. Then it will be time to drill down to the specific region(s) that will appear in the story, and use Photoshop or Campaign Cartographer to put together finely detailed maps for those.

How did I get through this in just a few hours, after struggling all weekend? As often happens in world-building, the secret is finding the right workflow.

For a couple of days, I was using the GPlates software to try to draw features on the sphere. Problem is, although GPlates is perfectly good for that, that’s not what the software is actually designed for: it’s a very sophisticated plate-tectonics simulator. So by using it just to sketch features, I’m ignoring 99% of the thing’s functionality – and some of that functionality very much gets in the way. I was spending most of my time juggling multiple raster files, and fighting the very elaborate system GPlates uses to save projects, and getting frustrated with the results.

So today I switched my workflow around. Rather than do any drawing in GPlates, I did all of it in a Photoshop document with three layers (one each for ocean, tectonic boundaries, and land-masses). I would draw a few features, then save the result as a PNG image and import that into GPlates, purely to see how it looked on the sphere. More often than not, I would spot absurdities on the sphere that weren’t obvious on the flat map – so I would go back to Photoshop, fiddle with a few lines, and then re-import the result back into GPlates. I never tried to save anything in GPlates, so I never had to deal with its weird file-management system. Fifteen or twenty iterations later, I finally had the planet divided into a reasonable set of major tectonic plates, I knew where the major mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones were, and I was ready to finish the sketch map here.

I’ll take my progress where I find it.

Status Report (20 May 2018)

Status Report (20 May 2018)

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For the record, trying to develop a fictional planet’s geography from the plate tectonics up is a royal pain in the nether regions. I begin to see why most people just call up a noise-driven fractal map generator and call it a day.

I will persist. At the very least, I’m learning a great deal about how plate tectonics actually work. I think I may cave in and go see if anyone has developed a more detailed work-flow to make sense out of this.

Status Report (16 May 2018)

Status Report (16 May 2018)

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A short note, since it’s been a few days since I last posted anything here. I’ve been up to my eyebrows at the day job, teaching a course on risk management and cybersecurity. After a full day on the platform I’m rarely in good condition to get a lot of creative work done in the evening. Still, my brain has been percolating along on the Curse of Steel project.

I’m currently beginning work on some maps, to give the story some structure. The overall plot of the novel is very much in the “heroic quest” vein, with Kráva and a few companions going on a long journey across unexplored and dangerous countryside to reach an objective. So I need to at least sketch out the geography.

This, as usually happens with me, turns out to be more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Knowing too much about world-building often means you can’t be satisfied with the simple or naïve approach to any problem.

In this case, my brain got stuck on the question of how to draw regional and world maps on a sphere. I keep thinking back to the classic Baynes-Tolkien poster map of Middle-earth, which has been the inspiration for a hundred thousand fantasy-world maps since then. It’s a beautiful map, but the big unspoken problem with it is that it’s flat. The map legend indicates both constant directions and a constant distance scale, and that just cannot be done with any flat projection of a spherical surface. That’s a subtle flaw in the world-building for Middle-earth, especially if (as I suspect) Tolkien did his meticulous measurements of distance and travel times on a similarly flat map.

So, since this piece at least of my world-building is decidedly in the same mold, I want to draw a similar map – but I want to envision my world as a sphere and do my regional map-making on that basis. Which means I need to expand my cartographic tool set.

I usually do map-building with Photoshop, but it’s a challenge to draw on a sphere with that tool, and there’s no way to easily do the standard map projections. However, I’ve recently come across one of the superb world-building YouTube videos produced by Artifexian, in which he discusses a work-flow he’s developed to do just this kind of thing. Here’s a link to the specific video I’m talking about.

So I’ve gotten started on this piece of the project by downloading a couple of freeware tools (GPlates and G.Projector), and will be sketching out global and regional maps over the next few days. I’ll post some of the interim results here.

First Light for a Constructed Language

First Light for a Constructed Language

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One of the occasional pitfalls I see in genre writing is the awkward use of constructed vocabulary, usually in the production of names, sometimes in the development of bits of exotic dialogue. This is usually to suggest the living language of a fantastic culture. Unfortunately, many authors are careless about this and seem to come up with their constructed vocabulary at random, so we end up with “Qadgop the Mercotan” or something equally silly. (Five kudos to anyone who recognizes the source of that name, which did in fact appear in a piece of genre fiction. At least in that case the author was trying to be silly.)

The world-building challenge is to produce an actual constructed language from which names and bits of vocabulary can emerge organically. There’s something aesthetically pleasing about this when it’s well done. The human brain seems to recognize the internal logic of a well-constructed language, even if we’re not fluent in it. J. R. R. Tolkien, of course, was the past master at this, but a lot of other authors (and hobbyists) have had a crack at it over the years.

For The Curse of Steel, I’ve decided to build at least one constructed language, mostly for naming purposes. Since I tend to insist on doing things the hard way, I’m actually building an “ur-language” and producing my primary language by applying a consistent set of sound-changes. In the back of my mind, I have half a thought that I may need a second constructed language, one that feels related to the first, rather as (e.g.) Greek and Latin are both members of the Indo-European language family. If and when I go that far, I can generate words in the second language by applying a different set of sound-changes to the ur-language roots I’ve developed.

The past few days have been fairly productive in this area. I seem to have finally developed a work-flow that actually functions, without getting me snarled up in unnecessary details of semantics, grammar, or phonology. In particular, I decided to write some text in English and “translate” that, developing new vocabulary and bits of grammar as needed. At the moment, I have about sixty words of vocabulary, several rules of inflection and word morphology, and about a page of notes on semantic structure. Enough to produce an actual paragraph of text:

Esi degra tremárakai múr kresdan. Esi kráva degraka bendír. Augrinír tan esa nekám velka devam. Enkorír skátoi taino. Antekrír skátoi tainmuro, dún begrír tan múr bákha. Vóki degra velka kresdani, dún tarthámi da skátoi. Verti kráva ked saka kó márai. Asgáni skátokai kestan, dún verti dó an atrethen degra. Rethi kráva arekhton saka padír, dún verti sa múr skáto. Dághi kráva aspera rethen skátoka klávo; esi dó kresdághen, dún esi dó degraka danpreta.

A rough back-translation into English would read something like this:

Lion was a great warrior of the Mighty People. Raven was Lion’s daughter. One night they visited the Wolf-clan. Orcs attacked the hill-fort. The orcs broke into the stockade and threatened to do great harm. Lion summoned the Wolf warriors, and opposed the orcs. Raven slew many with her bow. A chieftain of the orcs came forth, and slew Lion in single combat. Raven fought to avenge her father, and slew the great orc. After the battle, Raven took the orc’s sword, as a spoil of war and as Lion’s weregild.

You’ll recognize that as a one-paragraph summary, in pseudo-epic style, of the first chapter of The Curse of Steel, posted a few days ago here.

A few notes:

The convention in this language is to tell stories in the present tense, which is how the untranslated passage is written. In English, of course, narrative is normally framed in past tense.

The language has a very strict verb-subject-object (VSO) sentence structure. VSO languages are uncommon, although not unheard of; notably, many of the Celtic languages use that structure. It seemed appropriate, since I have a sense that Kráva’s people resemble the ancient Celts in many respects. Using a very strict word order helps with the design, since strongly positional languages don’t need quite as elaborate a system of noun or verb inflections.

I’m using a system of word roots very similar to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, although in most cases I’m deliberately selecting different roots. The result should be a language that sounds as if it would be at home in the Indo-European family, without actually bearing more than a superficial resemblance to any one IE language.

A few pieces of vocabulary I’m rather pleased with:

skáto “orc” is from a word root that means “to hate,” with a noun suffix that implies a “thing” rather than a living creature or human being. Essentially, a skáto is a “thing that hates,” and notably not a person that hates. Yes, Kráva’s people really don’t like orcs.

There’s a whole vocabulary around the word kresa “war,” including kresdan “warrior” (or literally “war-man”) and kresdághen (“plunder, spoils,” literally “war-taking”). Some cultures have a hundred words for snow, but I suspect Kráva’s people may have dozens of words for armed conflict.

arekht- literally means “to set straight,” but it also carries the meanings of “to make right,” “to carry out justice,” and “to avenge.” Which probably is another clue about this culture. Related to that is the word danpreta “man-price,” or more appropriately “weregild.”

Now that I’ve been able to produce one paragraph, I can probably develop more as needed, hanging more bits of vocabulary and syntax onto the partial framework I have. I think the next piece of this project will be to start assembling a map for the story, and coming up with names for terrain features and settlements. Not sure whether I’ll do that immediately, or get back to working on Architect of Worlds again . . .

 

Krava and the Skatoi

Krava and the Skatoi

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One of my great weaknesses as a writer is that my mind has all the discipline of a butterfly. Flit, flit, now here, now there. I can decide to concentrate on Project A for a few days or weeks, until I reach a milestone . . . but then my brain settles on Project B, or Project C, or something else entirely, and refuses to do what I tell it to do. If I want to make progress on anything, it needs to be whatever is currently holding my attention.

I’ve learned to live with this.

At the moment, Project C appears to be a “gritty Iron Age fantasy” story, with a roughly Conanesque feel to it. The working title for the story is The Curse of Steel, and it’s probably going to end up as a novel. I have about 25 kilowords of a rough draft down now, although I didn’t get much work done on it throughout 2017.

The world-building is fairly straightforward. I’m doing some constructed-language work. I’m also running with the conceit that various generic fantasy races (counterparts to elves, dwarves, orcs, and so on) are actually derived from multiple hominid species evolving together on the same planet. For a while I was considering actually setting the story on an early-Holocene Earth (see this link for a map I cobbled together while I was working out the details) but I think I’ve set that idea by the wayside.

At the moment, butterfly-brain seems to be interested in pushing this project forward for a few days. Best to roll with that.

So, to pique your interest, here’s Chapter One of the draft novel.

Deep in the night, Krava sensed a presence. She snapped awake, one hand already gripping the knife beside her on the pallet. Then a familiar shape and scent put her at ease.

“What is it, father?” she murmured.

Degra grunted. “Some trouble outside. Arm yourself, and come.”

He withdrew. Now Krava could hear voices and movement, from elsewhere in the hall. Men and women of the Wolf-clan rose from sleep, seized their own weapons, moved toward the entrance in a confusion of bodies and dim firelight.

Then, from outside: shouts of sudden terror.

Krava rolled off the pallet, convinced now of the need to hurry. She pulled on trousers and jerkin of hardened leather, hung her blade at her side, strung her bow, and caught up her quiver full of arrows. She emerged from the cubicle old Duvelka had assigned her, and crossed to the entrance.

She emerged into firelight and chaos.

Whoever attacked Duvelka’s hill-fort had gained almost complete surprise. The Wolf-clan streamed out of their round-houses, into the open yard in the center of the enclosure, only to find the enemy already past the rampart and the gates. There had been no time to form a defensive line on the open ground. Already the foe ran as they pleased, cutting down anyone they found alone and unarmed. They hurled torches to set haystacks ablaze, and the thatched roofs of the round-houses.

Krava got a good look at the enemy, and felt a chill of fear in her gut. Not any of the Mighty People, not even any kind of foreigner she could recognize. Not human at all. They stood upright, two arms and two legs, they carried weapons, but their color! Fish-belly pale, corpse-from-the-river pale. They were stocky things, banded with muscle, with heavy jaws full of sharp carnivore teeth.

Almost without thought, she nocked an arrow, took aim, and shot one of the invaders through the throat.

Skatoi, she thought. How are they here? We’re at least a hundred and fifty leagues from the Black River.

A deep shout captured Krava’s attention. Degra stood firm in the center of the yard, bawling orders, gathering what few of the Wolf-clan had their wits about them. A burly young man stepped up beside him, then a tall woman with a spear. Order began to appear out of confusion.

Naturally, this attracted the attention of the skatoi. A hand of the creatures rushed forward, barking a harsh battle-cry in unison.

Krava glanced around, and saw a cart standing beside Duvelka’s hall. Quickly, she took three steps and vaulted up into the cart, to get a better vantage point from which to shoot.

Degra roared in wordless defiance, setting his feet and holding his shield high.

At the last moment, one of Krava’s arrows took one of the skatoi in the left eye, sending it shrieking to the ground. It seemed to blunt the enemy’s momentum. When they crashed into Degra’s position, he and his new shield-companions managed to hold their line.

More of Duvelka’s people entered the open yard, struggling toward the growing defensive line.

Krava aimed and fired, aimed and fired. There is a difference between speed and haste, said a memory, in her father’s voice. Even if you must fire quickly, make sure of every shot.

Degra twisted his iron blade in the guts of one of the enemy, then yanked it back out with a shout of triumph. The skatoi line began to waver.

Then it appeared. Bigger than any of the other foes, it wore a corselet of black iron rings, and a tall helm crowned with black feathers. Krava could see nothing of its face, except the red gleam of eyes, and the wicked points of its fangs. In its weapon-hand it brandished a great sword, unlike any Krava had ever seen, one that shimmered like fine silver in the firelight. It barked orders, and then charged the Wolf-clan line, right where Degra stood trading blows with another enemy.

“Father!”

Krava ignored all the other skatoi, firing three arrows in rapid succession at the massive leader. One missed. The second was deflected by the creature’s helmet. The third struck its shield.

Degra finished his opponent, just a moment too late.

The creature arrived. Like lightning, its sword flickered out, getting past the guard of the spear-maiden to Degra’s left. She went down, clutching at her belly. Like thunder, its shield smashed down at the big man to Degra’s right. He fell, stunned or insensible, and did not move.

Degra stood alone. Krava couldn’t see his face, couldn’t tell how he reacted to the enormous skato looming over him, or the wave of its followers just an instant behind. He braced himself, presenting his shield, as if the line around him hadn’t just been shattered.

The shining sword swept upward, then downward.

Degra shifted his weight, turning his shield to deflect the blade just enough. His own sword slashed at the creature, rebounding from its shield with a hollow boom.

The noise of the battle slowed, as Wolf-clan and skatoi on all sides turned to watch the duel of champions. Krava thought about trying to shoot her father’s opponent, but the two of them were too closely engaged, moving too quickly. She stood with an arrow to the string, ready to fire if any of the other monsters tried to intervene.

Degra and the skato circled slowly, each to the left, no longer pretending to command their shield-walls. They fenced with their shield-edges, their swords lashing out into momentary openings, neither of them making a successful cut for a time. Degra managed to get through once, opening a shallow gash across his opponent’s thigh. The skato responded with a snake’s-tongue cut that nearly took out Degra’s right eye. The next time Krava saw her father’s face, it streamed with blood.

The skato was well-armed, aggressive, big, and terribly strong. Degra was the veteran of a hundred battles, and all the People respected his courage . . . but he also had seen more than forty winters. He would never complain, but Krava knew that he had begun to slow down during regular drill.

Sky Father, be with him now.

Then the chant began. One of the Wolf-clan, then a few more, then all of them. Calling her father’s name. “De-gra, De-gra, De-gra . . .”

The skatoi broke into a frenzy of yelps and barks, brandishing their weapons. Their leader bared its fangs and emitted a long, rasping growl.

“What are you waiting for?” Degra demanded.

The big skato moved, a sudden rush, trying to overwhelm Degra through sheer mass. It launched a flurry of blows. Degra blocked them all with his shield, which was beginning to look rather battered . . . but for a moment, he was off-balance, his shield held too far to his left.

The skato got the edge of its own shield inside Degra’s, and pushed.

Degra stood exposed, nothing but his sword to protect him for a moment. He saw the next blow coming, and swept his blade up to meet his enemy’s, going for the bind-and-recover that would continue the fight.

The silver blade flashed as it met Degra’s sword, strength to strength.

With a scream of stressed metal, the defending weapon snapped in half. The point of the iron sword spun away, gleaming dully in the firelight.

As the monster followed through, Degra took a vicious cut, with nothing but his corselet to protect him. The iron links held, but the sheer impact of the blow fell across Degra’s shoulder, tearing ligaments and breaking bones. A snarl of pain and rage tore from his throat. He recoiled, staring in disbelief for an instant at the stump of his blade.

The skato stalked forward, grinning, pushing with its shield.

Degra moved stiffly now, in great pain, barely able to hold what remained of his sword. His shield-work somehow kept the enemy at bay for a moment longer. Yet with only a hand-span of edge left on his blade, he could no longer reach his foe.

Krava jumped down from the cart, running toward her father.

He won’t thank me for breaking the single combat, robbing him of his honor. At least he will be alive to disapprove.

Too late. The skato levered Degra’s shield aside once more, a powerful sword-thrust slamming home right behind. Whatever metal made up the blade, it somehow punched through Degra’s corselet. Degra sagged, dropping the remains of his own sword, and fell to his knees.

A twist of the monster’s wrist, a great sweep of the silver blade, and the sword pointed skyward, dripping with blood. The skato loomed over Degra as he slumped to lie on the ground. It roared in triumph.

All around, the Wolf-clan stared, losing heart. They prepared to run, or to exact a final desperate payment for their lives.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Krava’s last three arrows sprouted in the monster’s exposed torso, piercing its mail.

The skato didn’t seem mortally wounded. Perhaps it wore a leather jerkin under its own corselet, or it was protected by thick muscle. Still, its roar of triumph turned into a hiss of sudden, unexpected pain.

Slowly, deliberately, the monster reached to tear arrows out of its flesh. Blood from the wounds ran down its chest and belly, to drip on the ground. The last arrow it brought to its mouth, to lick the gore from the iron point. Then it cast the arrow aside, and brought its weapons back into guard position. It stared at Krava over the rim of its shield.

“A little girl,” it said in the trade-tongue, with an accent so thick Krava could barely understand it. “Tell me your name, little girl.”

“I am Krava,” she told it, proud of the fact that her voice didn’t shake, that it could cut through the crackle of the flames. She raised her own sword, and her archer’s buckler.

It snorted in contempt. “Raven, ah? I catch ravens, eat them, take their feathers for my hrâsk. Think I will eat you. Make a cup out of your skull.”

Krava smiled, concealing that she wanted very badly to flee wailing into the night. “Come and try,” she said.

It did, a howl-and-charge designed to turn a woman’s guts to water and her legs to rotten strings. The shining sword lashed out.

Krava was not there when it arrived.

The skato turned, attacked again.

Krava dodged and deflected the sword-blow to the side with her buckler. For just an instant, she sensed an opening, and lashed out with her own blade. Her edge laid open another shallow cut across her enemy’s thigh.

She twisted away from blows. She spun toward the creature’s shield-side. She made a long leap backward, leaving her foe off-balance. She deflected the silver blade, never taking its full force on her buckler or the strength of her own sword. Every now and then, she lashed out, forcing the skato to use its shield or take another small cut.

Before long, the monster was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds.

Krava was not as big as her father had been, not as strong, not as experienced in a hundred battles and cattle-raids. She preferred the bow to the brutality of the shield-wall.

Still. The People did not call her Krava the Swift for nothing.

There was no chanting, as there had been for her father. The Wolf-clan and the enemy watched in eerie silence. Watched as the big skato paused for a moment, staring at her, its fetid breath like a bellows.

“You dance,” it said. “Don’t win fight by dancing.”

“You bleed,” Krava responded. “That doesn’t win fights either.”

It moved slightly to its left, its feet shifting.

“Getting tired, monster?” Krava inquired. “That sword getting heavy in your hand?”

“Not yet,” it told her, and charged.

Krava had read its foot-work properly, but that charge was so fast, she still didn’t quite evade in time. She felt the creature’s weight slam into her shield-arm, and felt something give in her shoulder. She lost her balance, falling ungracefully on her arse, the skato looming close over her.

For an instant, she saw an opening. She didn’t take the time to think. She stabbed, with every remaining ounce of her strength.

Her sword point found its way under the skirt of the creature’s corselet, and ran up into its body. It screeched, one leg collapsing, and toppled over on top of her.

There was dead silence for a long moment. Then Krava emerged, shoving the creature’s dead weight to the side. She staggered to her feet and stood in the firelight, covered with her enemy’s blood, and stared wildly about her.

“Well, Wolf-clan?” she demanded. “They can be killed. Let’s get to work!”

A shout went up, and then the howling war-cry of Duvelka’s folk. Men and women surged out into the open yard, their courage restored, and fell upon the skatoi.

Krava did not join them. Suddenly she felt terribly weary, as if she had been fighting for hours. She did a quick inventory and found no open wounds, although her shield-arm snarled with pain and hung useless at her side.

Father.

Degra was still alive, barely, lying in a pool of his own blood with one hand pressed to the great rent in his corselet. Krava fell to her knees beside him. His eyes wandered for a moment, and then focused on her. His lips moved, but it was clear he couldn’t get enough breath into his voice.

“Don’t try to speak, Father.” Krava leaned close over him, to press her lips to his cold forehead. “Your enemy is dead.”

He nodded, his eyes sliding closed. His lips moved again, but even with her ear held very close, Krava could not make out the words. Then he breathed no more.

Krava knelt there for a minute, then two, listening to the sounds of battle. The Wolf-clan seemed to be pressing the last of the skatoi out of the open yard, out into the night. Whatever had driven the monsters to come so far and attack Duvelka’s people, they were paying a heavy price for it.

Not heavy enough.

She pushed herself to her feet, and staggered back the way she had come, back to where the big skato lay alone on the bloody ground. Standing over the creature, she picked up its weapon and examined it.

Beautiful. Straight and sharp. It will do.

She stood over the dead skato, raised the bright sword high, and then struck with all her might.

When the Wolf-clan’s warriors returned, they found a spear standing in the earth at Degra’s feet. Impaled on the blade, the skato’s head stared sightlessly into the darkness. A trophy to watch over Degra’s journey to the Otherworld.

Untitled Sonnet

Untitled Sonnet

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Most of the past week, I’ve been spending on fan-fiction. I set myself a bit of a challenge for the next chapter I’ve been working on. I have a scene in mind in which my protagonist (a mage-Warden originally from the Dragon Age: Origins video game) is required to improvise some verse in honor of his beloved wife. So I decided to actually produce some verse.

As a poet, I make a pretty good carpenter, so it took me a surprisingly long time to come up with a sonnet I could live with. Here it is. I find it isn’t actually all that closely tied to the Dragon Age setting, aside from a single reference in the second quatrain. This piece should also appear in the next chapter of The Voice of Silence, as soon as I can get about a thousand more words down.

She walks along the margins of the night,
A creature wrought of secrets and desire,
With hair as dark as raven’s wings in flight,
Her golden eyes alight with reason’s fire.
In truth, she loves bright gold and precious stones,
The better for her beauty to adorn,
Yet Chantry’s power and might of kingly thrones
She never stoops to hold them but in scorn.
Still I know well the passions bright that burn
Within that guarded breast and wounded heart;
I count it all my fortune thus to earn
A husband’s welcome place in her regard.
Tho’ walk I now in winter’s bitter scope,
I trust, in her, to find the summer’s hope.

Status Report (23 April 2018)

Status Report (23 April 2018)

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Okay, having finished a rewrite of the first chunk of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, I’m going to spend a few days working on other items on the to-do list.

In particular, I have one fan-fiction project under way (The Voice of Silence, a Dragon Age piece) that hasn’t been updated in over a month. Once I’ve put down two or three chapters on that, I’ll probably come back to Architect of Worlds and start on the next section of the design sequence.

I also want to get some work done on the “Human Destiny” setting. I have two stories of novelette and novella length in that setting, more or less finished and ready for a final coat of polish and self-publication. I want to flesh out the background for those a bit, and then get them out the door finally. That may generate some new world-building material to be posted here and at the Archive.

Finally, I have an original fantasy setting coalescing in the back of my mind, associated with what’s likely to turn into at least one complete novel. That’s third or fourth on the priority list, though.

Feels good to be writing on a regular basis once more.

Architect of Worlds – Step Eight: Stellar Orbital Parameters

Architect of Worlds – Step Eight: Stellar Orbital Parameters

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This is the last step in the design sequence for star systems – once the user has finished this step, she should know how many stars are in the system, what their current properties are, and how their orbital paths are arranged.

At this point, I’ve finished the current rewrite of the “Designing Star Systems” section of the book. I don’t plan to make any further mechanical changes to that section, except to correct any errors that might pop up. The instructions and other text might get revised again before the project is complete. A PDF of the current version of this section is now available at the Sharrukin’s Archive site under the Architect of Worlds project heading.

Step Eight: Stellar Orbital Parameters

This step determines the orbital parameters of components of a multiple star system. This step may be skipped if the star system is not multiple (i.e., the primary star is the only star in the system).

Procedure

The procedure for determining the orbital parameters of a multiple star system will vary, depending on the multiplicity of the system.

The important quantities for any stellar orbit are the minimum distance, average distance, and maximum distance between the two components, and the eccentricity of their orbital path. Distances will be measured in astronomical units (AU). Eccentricity is a number between 0 and 1, which acts as a measure of how far an orbital path deviates from a perfect circle. Eccentricity of 0 means that the orbital paths follow a perfect circle, while eccentricities increasing toward 1 indicate elliptical orbital paths that are increasingly long and narrow.

Binary Star Systems

To begin, select an average distance between the two stars of the binary pair.

To determine the average distance at random, roll 3d6 on the Stellar Separation Table.

Stellar Separation Table
Roll (3d6) Separation Base Distance
3 or less Extremely Close 0.015 AU
4-5 Very Close 0.15 AU
6-8 Close 1.5 AU
9-12 Moderate 15 AU
13-15 Wide 150 AU
16 or more Very Wide 1,500 AU

To determine the exact average distance, roll d% and treat the result as a number between 0 and 1. Multiply the Base Distance by 10 raised to the power of the d% result. The result will be the average distance of the pair in AU.

Feel free to adjust the result by up to 2% in either direction. You may wish to round the result off to three significant figures.

Next, select an eccentricity for the binary pair’s orbital path. Most binary stars have orbits with moderate eccentricity, averaging around 0.4 to 0.5, but cases with much larger or smaller eccentricities are known.

To determine an eccentricity at random, roll 3d6 on the Stellar Orbital Eccentricity Table. If the binary pair is at Extremely Close separation, modify the roll by -8. If at Very Close separation, modify the roll by -6. If at Close separation, modify the roll by -4. If at Moderate separation, modify the roll by -2. Feel free to adjust the eccentricity by up to 0.05 in either direction, although eccentricity cannot be less than 0.

Stellar Orbital Eccentricity Table
Roll (3d6) Eccentricity
3 or less 0
4 0.1
5-6 0.2
7-8 0.3
9-11 0.4
12-13 0.5
14-15 0.6
16 0.7
17 0.8
18 0.9

 

Once the average distance and eccentricity have been established, the minimum distance and maximum distance can be computed. Let R be the average distance between the two stars in AU, and let E be the eccentricity of their orbital path. Then:

R_{min}=R\times\left(1-E\right)

R_{max}=R\times\left(1+E\right)

Here, Rmin is the minimum distance between the two stars, and Rmax is the maximum distance.

Trinary Star Systems

Whichever arrangement is selected, design the closely bound pair first as if it were a binary star system (see above). This binary pair is unlikely to have Wide separation, and will almost never have Very Wide separation. Select an average distance for the pair accordingly. If selecting an average distance at random, modify the 3d6 roll by -3. Select an orbital eccentricity normally, and compute the minimum and maximum distance for the binary pair.

Once the binary pair has been designed, determine the orbital path for the pair (considered as a unit) and the single component of the star system. The minimum distance for the pair and single components must be at least three times the maximum distance for the binary pair, otherwise the configuration will not be stable over long periods of time.

If selecting an average distance for the pair and single component at random, use the Stellar Separation Table normally. If the result indicates a separation in the same category as the binary pair (or a lower one), then set the separation to the next higher category. For example, if the binary pair is at Close separation, and the random roll produces Extremely Close, Very Close, or Close separation for the pair and single component, then set the separation for the pair and single component at Moderate and proceed.

Select an orbital eccentricity for the pair and single component normally, then compute the minimum distance and maximum distance. If the minimum distance for the pair and single component is not at least three times the maximum distance for the binary pair, increase the average distance for the pair and single component to fit the restriction.

Quaternary Star Systems

As in a trinary star system, design the closely bound pairs first. Each binary pair is unlikely to have Wide separation, and will almost never have Very Wide or Distant separation. Select an average distance for each pair accordingly. If selecting an average distance at random, modify the 3d6 roll by -3. Select an orbital eccentricity, and compute the minimum distance and maximum distance, for each binary pair normally.

Once the binary pairs have been designed, determine the orbital path for the two pairs around each other. The minimum distance for the two pairs must be at least three times the maximum distance for either binary pair, otherwise the configuration will not be stable.

If selecting an average distance for the two pairs at random, use the Stellar Separation Table normally. If either result indicates a separation in the same category as either binary pair (or a lower one), then set the separation to the next higher category. For example, if the two binary pairs are at Close and Moderate separation, and the random roll produces Moderate or lower separation for the two pairs, then set the separation for the two pairs at Wide and proceed.

Select an orbital eccentricity for the two pairs normally, then compute the minimum distance and maximum distance. If the minimum distance for the two pairs is not at least three times the maximum distance for both binary pairs, increase the average distance for the two pairs to fit the restriction.

Stellar Orbital Periods

Each binary pair in a multiple star system will circle in its own orbital period. The pair and singleton of a trinary system will also orbit around each other with a specific period (probably much longer). Likewise, the two pairs of a quaternary system will orbit around each other with a specific period.

Let R be the average distance between two components of the system in AU, and let M be the total mass in solar masses of all stars in both components. Then:

P=\sqrt{\frac{R^3}{M}}

Here, P is the orbital period for the components, measured in years. Multiply by 365.26 to get the orbital period in days.

Special Case: Close Binary Pairs

Most binary pairs are detached binaries. In such cases, the two stars orbit at a great enough distance that they do not physically interact with each other, and evolve independently. However, if two stars orbit very closely, it’s possible for one of them to fill its Roche lobe, the region in which its own gravitation dominates. A star which is larger than its own Roche lobe will tend to lose mass to its partner, giving rise to a semi-detached binary. More extreme cases give rise to contact binaries, in which both stars have filled their Roche lobes and are freely exchanging mass in a common gaseous envelope.

This situation is only possible for two main-sequence stars that have Extremely Close separation, or in cases where a subgiant or red giant star has a companion at Very Close or Close separation. If a binary pair being considered does not fit these criteria, there is no need to apply the following test.

For each star in the pair, approximate the radius of its Roche lobe as follows. Let D be the minimum distance between the two stars in AU, let M be the mass of the star being checked in solar masses, and let M´ be the mass of the other star in the pair. Then:

R=D\times(0.38+0.2\log_{10}{\frac{M}{M^\prime}})

Here, R is the radius of the star’s Roche lobe at the point of closest approach to its binary companion, measured in AU. Compare this to the radius of the star itself, as computed earlier. If the star is larger than its Roche lobe, then the pair is at least a semi-detached binary. If both stars in the pair are larger than their Roche lobes, then the pair is a contact binary.

The evolution of such close binary pairs is much more complicated than that of a singleton star or a detached binary. Mass will transfer from one star to the other, altering their orbital path and period, profoundly affecting the evolution of both. Predicting how such a pair will evolve goes well beyond the (relatively simple) models applied throughout this book. We suggest treating such binary pairs as simple astronomical curiosities, special cases on the galactic map that are extremely unlikely to give rise to native life or invite outside settlement. Fortunately, these cases are quite rare except among the very young, hot, massive stars found in OB associations.

One specific case that is of interest involves a semi-detached binary in which one star is a white dwarf. Hydrogen plasma will be stripped away from the other star’s outer layers, falling onto the surface of the white dwarf. Once enough hydrogen accumulates, fusion ignition takes place, triggering a massive explosion and ejecting much of the accumulated material into space. For a brief period, the white dwarf may shine with hundreds or even thousands of times the luminosity of the Sun. This is the famous phenomenon known as a nova.

Most novae are believed to be recurrent, flaring up again and again so long as the white dwarf continues to gather matter from its companion. However, for most novae the period of recurrence is very long – hundreds or thousands of years – so nova events from any given white dwarf in a close binary pair will be very rare. Astronomers estimate that a few dozen novae occur each year in our Galaxy as a whole.

Examples

Arcadia: Alice has already decided that the Arcadia star system has only the primary star, so she skips this step entirely.

Beta Nine: Bob knows that the Beta Nine system is a double star. Proceeding entirely at random, he rolls 3d6 on the Stellar Separation Table and gets a result of 7. The two components of the system are at Close separation. He takes a Base Distance of 1.5 AU and rolls d% for a result of 22. The average distance between the two stars in the system is:

1.5\times{10}^{0.22}\approx2.489

Bob rounds this off a bit and accepts an average distance of exactly 2.50 AU. He rolls 3d6 on the Stellar Orbital Eccentricity Table, subtracts 4 from the result since the stars are at Close separation, and gets a final total of 5. The orbital path of the two stars has a moderate eccentricity of 0.2. Bob computes that the minimum distance between the two stars will be 2.0 AU, and the maximum distance will be 3.0 AU.

Bob can now compute the orbital period of the two stars:

P=\sqrt{\frac{{2.50}^3}{(0.18+0.06)}}\approx8.07

The two stars in the Beta Nine system circle one another with a period of a little more than eight years.

The two components of the Beta Nine system form a binary pair, with a minimum separation of 2.0 AU. There is no possibility of the pair forming anything but a detached binary, so Bob does not bother to estimate the size of either component’s Roche lobe.

Modeling Notes

The paper by Duchêne and Kraus cited earlier describes the best available models for the distribution of separation in binary pairs. The period of a binary star appears to show a log-normal distribution with known mode and standard deviation. Generating a log-normal distribution with dice is a challenge without requiring exponentiation at some point, hence the unusual procedure for estimating separation used here.