The Shining Wyrm - 12.ii
12.ii
Acknowledgements and Research References:
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
This blog was incredibly valuable for giving me a deeper insight into fleshing out less well documented aspects of medieval and classical era life. I knew some of what was already mentioned but honestly there was so much that was expanded on from my own knowledge this story would have been significantly worse without the insights of this blog.
The Medieval Farming Year
This is an amazing article on the labors of the year for peasants written by Andrew Staples. As an overview of the labors of the year it is unparalleled even now. Large sections of the interludes were directly based on it.
Behind the Name
This is an incredible resource for names. Enough said.
I knew a lot of these from other sources but I was using this to help triple check some of my terminology.
List Price of Medieval Items & Medieval Prices and Wages & Table of Medieval English Wages and Prices
It turns out that it is actually really hard to get a solid read on the valuation of currencies in the past. Most of my sources ended up being English due to my linguistic inflexibility and distrust of machine translation for scholarly research but without resources like this I am almost certain the money in Shining Wyrm would have been less rigorously thought out.
Pliny The Elder’s The Natural History
I originally thought I’d just be cribbing some ignorance/flavor in word use from Pliny, but the man was hilariously applicable to Shining Wyrm and I really must recommend anyone who is doing world building in a vaguely fantasy setting to dig in and take a look at how modern his observations are and how they slide smoothly and with no friction at all into completely insane propositions.
Really it is wild and humbling to read this stuff.
SIMetric.co.uk
This is one of the most useful sites for writing with any rigor in science fiction or fantasy I have ever found. Seriously, being able to answer how heavy something is quickly or finding approximate equivalents of bulk goods in easy tables is invaluable.
Koleda Winter Solstice Festival
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
For giving me some of the foundational inspiration for the winter solstice celebration traditions of Rochford and making me aware that Santa Clause might in fact be a dragon.
Tips on Writing Military Science Fiction
While not holding a foundation in medieval era tactics, doctrine or the rest this is an invaluable site full of very good resources for grappling with the realities of actual war, logistics, tactics and more written by someone who is a passionate nerd about military organization.
It’s what really got me out of the mindset of First Person Shooters and the like when considering military matters way back in college.
French Poems and Prayers from Miron-Wilson Funeral Home
I did in fact use machine translation to convert one of their poems to english and then performed minor edits to fit the context. I am at best an amateur poet and word smith and there are those whose words are far more powerful then mine.
Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light
Stars and fortune damn me I love the rhyming spell songs from this show so much and I think more fantasy settings should bring this shit back. I absolutely stole two of them for a section in shining wyrm and just altered the word choice til it fit the situation.
The Hobbit and The Return Of the King Animated Films
Some of my ideas of what a dragon should be are still defined by Smaug as depicted in this version of the hobbit. And I just love how goofy the orcs were with their songs in Return of the King.
Elizabeth Bathory & György Thurzó
Seriously, the truth/myth is stranger than my own fiction here and the situation with these two and the situation around them is wilder than I can do justice even in a story that effectively hinges around an alternate history fantasy of their entire deal. I waffled back and forth on how I was gonna handle them both and settled on what you got in the story but there is plenty of room for the facts to go any other way given the ambiguity of the situation.
I aimed for upping that ambiguity and playing with and against that legend until the very end for Shining Wyrm but really you could tell a lot of your own stories here and not even stray from the historical record.
Google Maps
This is an amazingly good tool for writers, street view can give you a lot in general but also just the ability to get an idea of how long it takes to walk places for long distances through europe can be a great grounding tool.
Fire Wood Tree Calculator
I actually checked these facts with a few different sites and their own math to get some of my details more grounded on how much burnables certain things take. Foresters take their productivity very seriously friends and they have tons of great tools for it!
