Edally Academy: The Angry Aetherist Interlude

Interlude

The Dormitories

Each student in the Edally Academy is housed in a dormitory room with other members of their House and their year. In the time of Tairiekie and her friends, those dormitories are the Nine Towers.

The Nine Towers of the Academy surround the central courtyard where once, a thousand years ago and more, the original tower of the original Academy stood. In earlier years, these towers held the entirety of the House for each subject matter, but as the school expanded, the classrooms moved out to exterior buildings, and the towers were remade into dormitory-only buildings.

They stand six stories tall, some of the tallest buildings in the area or, indeed, in all of Ileltedez. Their roofs are a common style for Calenyen architecture: hemispherical domes pierced at the center by a chimney. They taper a bit from the bottom to the top, just enough to give the impression that they are leaning away from each other, avoiding looking each other in the eye.
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Notes from Sandrenno of Ferania (Reiassan Demifiction)

Notes from Sandrenno of Ferania, Bitrani Ambassador to Lannamer in ~725 R - the paper has been chewed at, leaving us only some of his thoughts.

As found in the Lannamer Museum under "Bitrani and Calenyena Relations."

[text obscured]
does not grow here with the ease that it grows at home, and thus they must find substitutes, poor as they are. I recommend any posted here to have a strong stomach and an iron constitution, or one will soon grow sick of parsnips and parsnips.

Their sweets, however - and they love sweets - are a curious and yet delicious [text obscured].

In short, be prepared and bring a supply of edible food with you.

Clothing
These people but an almost-superstitious amount of weight on their clothing, and thus, any ambassador here will have to pay close attention to every piece of garb they wear, no matter how it goes against the grain of our plain Bitrani souls.

And yet, even paying attention, we will stand out - they care which side your tunic is buttoned on, where we wear ours buttoned down the center. They care what colors are showing - or how many, or in what order.

Showing, you ask? Yes. They wear layer after layer after layer here - needed in their winters, but I do not know how they handle it in summer - and the fancier the dress, the more wealthy the person, the more the lower layers show and the more elaborate they are.

In addition to the tunics themselves, the accessories speak their own language. To begin with, there are bracelets that their "Bevvai" wear (nobody will explain to me what a "Bevvai" is), bangles that appear to lock on, patterned in the gods' colors and run through with more sira than any piece of jewelry [text obscured]

Chewing on Character Motivations, Follow-Up

I posted last week about character motivations and asked for character prompts, so that I could think about & discuss their driving forces.

So far I've posted:
* Rozen
* Maureen, Lady Foxglove
* Rin
* Caitrin
* Morrigan

And am certainly open to more.

Boom Town: Center Street

I've been working on the map for Boom Town lately...

Boom Town has three Center Streets, down the center of each circle, wider and with broader sidewalks than the side streets.

Walk down any one of them within the first two years of the city's founding, and it will be strangely Oz-like: here you are, walking down a broad boulevard, waving wheat to one side, then cotton, corn to the other, then hay. Ducks and chickens wander, their coops barely visible as little roofs above the grain.

And straight down the road, you can see the tower, twisting towards the sky, and a tiny cluster of buildings at its feet.


Walk down the roads four or five years after the city's founding, and it will seem a bit more odd, perhaps. The road still goes straight to the tower, and the buildings near the center still rise up against the walls as if trying to reach that edifice. But the closer you get to the center, the more houses you can see, just a block away from Center Street, gathered in blocks amongst the grain.

An inn greets you at the gate and, across the street, a restaurant. Closer to the tower, merchants clamor for your business. It's almost alive.


Six, seven years after the city's founding, it's harder to walk straight down Center Street. Wagons, horses, foot traffic, and the very rare automobile clog the road and the sidewalk.

Both sides of the road are lined with businesses - store fronts, restaurants, markets, and service providers (massage, hairdressing, sex...) - and down the side streets, one can see houses far more frequently, almost every other block.

Down the road towards the tower, the traffic is thicker, the storefronts fuller, and the noises and sounds of production, machines clanking, can be heard over the crowds. It's turning into a city.

How to Quit Your Job and Make Millions as an Indie Author...

...or not.

K Orion Fray takes apart that myth in today's blog post.

The Daily Grind

From dailyprompt, 2014-08-14: "I've never met anyone like you.



She'd sit down. She'd buy a drink and then, after a moment's consideration or an hour's, she'd buy him one too.

She'd slowly lose the tension that held her shoulders stiff, as she even more slowly sipped her second drink, or her third.

And he'd wait until he saw that tilt of her head, and he'd wander over, nursing the drink she'd bought him. He'd slide into a seat, just so, letting her grope him with her eyes until she'd had her fill. He'd sip his drink like he was making love to it, until her eyes filled in the blanks.
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A Week In Alder

The Highlights

A Few Stories
Through the Blank Plains
Robot - both in the Clockwork Apoc.
Bad Reception - in the Faerie Apoc setting.
The Daily Grind - for dailyprompt: Every day, the same 'ol grind.

A Bit of My Life
The Hazards of Being Sick & Grown-Up
Spanish Rice (Recipe Blogpost)

My Webserials
Edally Academy: Interlude - The Dormitories
Jumping Rings: Chapter Four - Duck

Feedback Requested
A Meme! - Give me a line of a story I haven't Written
Character Motivations - Name any character of mine

Other People: Book Launches
Toad Words by ursulav
Vinny the Armadillo Makes a Friend! by haikujaguar
Some Things Transcend and 2nd Edition Even the Wingless by haikujaguar

Other People: Prompt Calls
K Orion Fray has a Prompt Call open for fiction - the theme is revenge.
inventrix is looking for demifiction prompts for her Saeland (Invisible Dragons) setting.

( The Rest of the Week )