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Krava in Elven Jacket

Krava in Elven Jacket

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Okay, this is kind of promising even if I still don’t think it quite fits.

The boots and trousers are still working, and the jacket at least seems plausible and looks good on Krava. The ensemble doesn’t exactly suggest “Iron Age barbarian,” though. More like “high fantasy elf.” It might be the kind of outfit Krava wears much later in her story, after she comes into contact with some more civilized folk.

Still, as an experiment, it’s not bad. Still looking for a top that more closely matches what I have in my head – something a bit looser, with much shorter sleeves, and not looking quite so machine-stitched.

Krava in Leather

Krava in Leather

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Okay, now that Krava has some clothes on, I can start posting my experiments here.

For the record, it is a royal pain in the nether regions finding clothing models for pre-modern characters that are at all realistic. Look for “female warrior” outfits and you’re likely to get something that’s all keyholes where it isn’t shiny black leather. With stiletto heels. The above isn’t terrible in comparison to some, but it’s still not very close to what I have in my head. I might end up keeping the trousers, boots, and belt here, but that’s about it.

Honestly, if I’m serious about the Celtic inspiration for Krava’s people, their warriors are more likely to look like this:

Image by Angus McBride

Light woolen tunics and trousers, not a lot of leather, maybe a metal helmet, and lots of bright colors and patterns.

Getting there is probably going to mean a lot more digging through the catalogs, and probably some kit-bashing with texture files and whatnot. More experiments to come.

Status Report (18 July 2020)

Status Report (18 July 2020)

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Just a quick note today. I’ve started work on developing a cover image for The Curse of Steel. The first step was to update my model for Krava, adding muscle mass and definition, and changing her hairstyle to something more characteristic of an Iron Age culture.

To make sure the character herself looked right, I did a nude study: front and back renders of the character model in a neutral pose and without clothing. The results were pretty encouraging.

I won’t post the image here since there’s no way for me to mark it as mature content, but here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for the final image.

Status Report (13 July 2020)

Status Report (13 July 2020)

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Hmm. Small change in plans.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been ripping right through the second draft of The Curse of Steel. My pace has picked up a lot over the past week or so. This is mostly because I’ve reached the later chapters – at this point in the first draft, I had figured out most of the plot, so the second draft has needed a much lighter rewrite.

As of this morning, I’ve reached the major reversal in the plot, about two-thirds of the way through the story. This strikes me as a good place to pause for a bit, while I concentrate on other tasks. In particular, I really need to put some time and effort into a book cover.

As a result, this month’s charged release to my Patreon will take place within the next couple of days, consisting of roughly 18 chapters of the revised draft of The Curse of Steel. All of my patrons, from the $1 level up, will get a copy of the PDF. If you’re interested in signing up as a patron and seeing this draft as it emerges, feel free to click on the Patreon link in the sidebar.

Once that release is out, I’m going to crack open my modeling and photo-manipulation software and see if I can’t put together a decent book cover for The Curse of Steel. That will probably involve a few preliminary renderings as I set things up. I’ll post those here and to my DeviantArt page.

Status Report (12 July 2020)

Status Report (12 July 2020)

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It’s a paradox.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve finally started to feel seriously worn down by months of lockdown amid the pandemic. I spend 95% of my time, day and night, in the same room. My bed and my workstation are less than four yards apart. My whole experience of the world is reduced to what I can see with a few networked devices. I do get to spend a little time each day at the kitchen table with my wife and children, and every day or two I go outdoors to walk for a mile or so in the fresh air. That’s all – and even for me, introverted and reclusive as I normally am, it’s starting to be difficult.

Even so, I’m surprisingly productive right now.

I’m in the process of rewriting one of my courses almost from scratch, with an eye toward being able to deliver it online rather than in the classroom. Very good progress so far, and the project may be done in a couple more weeks. I’m being called upon to consult with colleagues about other items too.

Meanwhile, I’m just tearing through the second draft of The Curse of Steel. There are a few new passages in this draft, and that slows me down a bit, but by and large, it’s just rewriting. I think I’ve averaged a chapter a day for over two weeks now. At this rate, I may have the bulk of the second draft done by the end of July.

I think I may need to start seriously thinking about a book cover. Finish the second draft, make one more edit-and-polish pass for the final draft, and the book will probably be ready to release sometime in September.

Status Report: 26 June 2020

Status Report: 26 June 2020

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The last two weeks have been busy.

After almost three months of lockdown at home, I’m finally starting to do a significant amount of telework for my day job, revising and re-designing one of my more popular courses. We’re hoping to get that online for students by the end of July, so there’s a lot of work to be done there.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten a good start on the second draft of The Curse of Steel. The goal here was to back the beginning of the story up by about two days, giving me a chance to do a lot more character development and exposition before throwing Krava into the middle of the action. I’ve just finished the third chapter of this new material, after which I’m going to be rewriting existing text rather than coming up with new.

I think it’s clear that I was overly optimistic to think that I would be one-third of the way through the draft by now. By the end of June, it’s probably going to be more like 15% or so. Still, I’ll have more than enough material to get past my self-imposed limit of “at least 10,000 words of solid content before I release anything to my patrons.”

All of which is to say, there will be a charged release on my Patreon by the end of June, which will consist of roughly the first 5-6 chapters of the revised draft of The Curse of Steel. All of my patrons, from the $1 level up, will get a copy of the PDF. If you’re interested in signing up as a patron and seeing this draft as it emerges, feel free to click on the Patreon link in the sidebar.

Second Draft of “The Curse of Steel” Under Way

Second Draft of “The Curse of Steel” Under Way

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Just a quick status report today. After a few months of world-building work, I’ve finally gotten started with the second draft of The Curse of Steel.

How quickly this goes depends on a lot of things. Although I’m still not going into the office, and probably won’t be doing that on a regular basis for some time yet, I have started doing some day-job work from home. Work on the novel is going to have to compete for time. Still, I hope to be able to finish this draft by the end of August, then prepare the novel for release in the September-October timeframe.

If things go according to plan, patron rewards for June, July, and August will consist of chunks of the revised draft, about a dozen chapters at a time. As always, if anyone’s interested in seeing that material as I release it, click on the Patreon link in the sidebar. All of my patrons, $1 level and up, will get to see sections of the draft. Patrons at the $2 level and up will get a free copy of the finished e-book when that’s done.

The Great Lands: Revatheni Local Map

The Great Lands: Revatheni Local Map

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. . . and here we have the last of the maps I needed to build before getting started on revisions of The Curse of Steel. Over the past couple of months, I’ve gone from maps covering two whole continents (and their history) to a map covering a major region, and now down to this local map. The entire action of the novel will take place within the territory covered by this map.

This map focuses on the lands held by the Revatheni clan confederation of the Tremara people. The Revatheni (the name means something like “those who dwell by the sacred grove”) occupy most of the land between the Dugava and Kanta Rivers, a territory totaling about 11,500 square miles. The total population of the clan confederation is about 140,000, divided among five major clans and a dozen or so minor ones. The Revatheni are an unusually wealthy tribe, partaking in a lot of the trade coming up the rivers from the south. For the past couple of generations, their leaders have been putting on airs, claiming increased privileges and calling themselves sarai (“kings”).

As with the regional map, this is a fairly finished project – I’ve placed and named all the settlements and terrain features that are likely to play any part in the revised novel. The next step is to get busy with the second draft! I hope to have the novel ready for release sometime this fall.

The Great Lands: Tremara Regional Map

The Great Lands: Tremara Regional Map

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Having finished the “historical atlas” series for the Great Lands, now I’m starting to focus on maps that will help me keep track of the environment in which my characters will be moving around. This is a map of the territory inhabited by Krava’s home culture and the surrounding region.

The Tremara inhabit the region between the Blue Mountains in the west, the Black River valley in the east, the great pine forests of the Northmen, and the Lake Country to the south. It’s an area of roughly 200,000 square miles, supporting a total population of about 2.4 million. The Tremara are at an early Iron Age level of development – mostly peasant villages, ruled by a warrior aristocracy who fight from chariots with bow and spear. They have some contact with Korsanari and Sea Kingdom merchants who bring in luxury goods and new ideas – these mostly come up the rivers from the Lake Country, or across the Blue Mountains at the Trader’s Pass.

This map is a reasonably finished project, although I expect I’ll continue to tweak and add to it in the future as I develop more details of the setting.

Next project will be to focus on a small area of this map, producing a local map that should cover all the territory that plays a part in The Curse of Steel. Once that’s done, I’m probably going to have everything I need to sit down and produce a second draft of the novel.

Technical Notes: My continent-wide map was put in an orthographic projection and narrowed down to this region using GProjector (Windows version 2.1.8). An image from there was imported as a tracing overlay, and the basic map here was produced, using Wonderdraft (version 1.1) with standard symbol libraries. The final Wonderdraft product was imported into Adobe Photoshop CC, where I added the latitude-longitude grid and all the place names. I have another overlay (not visible here) with national and tribal names.

Last Call for the Historical Atlas

Last Call for the Historical Atlas

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I’m making very good progress in compiling the Historical Atlas of the Great Lands.

This document is going to describe some of the basic assumptions of the Great Lands setting, laying out its large-scale history with a series of maps and a timeline. The final draft looks like it’s going to be about forty pages and 12,500 words, with fifteen maps. The finished product will be part of my setting bible, and will probably become an integral part of any RPG sourcebook I publish for the Great Lands in the future.

If you’ve been following my posts here for the past six weeks, you’ve seen at least early drafts of most of this material – but the final version has another coat of polish, and some new content as well.

Best guess is that I’ll be releasing the Historical Atlas sometime on Tuesday, 26 May 2020. It will be available to all of my patrons, from the $1 level up. If you want a copy and you haven’t signed up yet, now’s a good time to head on over to my Patreon page.