MBT Professions-gluttony Query

Well MooseGuy was wanting to be a scourge-leer-pistoleer-strivener and I said I would come up with a name for such a person/profession. Well... I came up with everything but:

• scourge-pistoleer = flagrant, orspirator/orspiratine
• scourge-wit = severine
• scourge-leer = staide, austerine
• skold-leer = scryer, saltscry, saltstrait
• skold-pistoleer = locksalt (though really, such a person is really a skold with a penchant for delivering potives from a firelock)
• leer-pistoleer = scrylock, lockstrait, straitlock
• wit-leer = looksooth, straitsooth

...and I could go on. Now, it must be said at any such combinations are not as common as you might think, especially as true pistoleers - like sagaars - see themselves as a set apart, with secret knowledge and dedication to a singular expertise in a single skill. Indeed, sagaars are even more rigourous about this; for them it is all about the purity of the Dance with out taints, cheats or augmentations . A person might gain some fundamental moves of the dance (akin to basic and more intermediate martial arts), but if you call yourself a sagaar it is because you have committed to a way off living, to a higher plan of existence. (sorry, giantfan)

As for Mr Guy-of-Moose's combination, well I was thinking, sir, you might want to have a go at coming up with your own name, for such a combination would be most probably unique to you and therefore have no common name in the Half-Continent. FYI - messing about with highly unstable and dangerous potives whilst wrestling with the instability of you mimeotes (foreign organs) you could expect to have a rather short life span, even without the ubiquitous threat of a terrible gashing end.

It is worth noting that these names might change over time and with further thinking and revision; just like most other things H-c, I am constantly reworking and adding and subtracting to ideas - especially as I get deeper and deeper into the world with each novel. It can be a tad disconcerting to discover in writing a story that something I thought pretty well thought out over many years of natural accretion plus solid hours of think-time proves to be just barely enough to start with, that I need to go much further into notions and inventions than I had ever anticipated.

It is a good problem to have, I reckon.

(Oh! I have realised it is April Fools today, but I cannot think of anything funny - though plenty that is foolish)

Folding-money & more

This is a replica of the 10 sou folding-money note (sometimes called a folder) that Rossamünd received from Europe just before he departs for Winstermill - actual size is about A5.

The red stamp in the top left corner is the Imperial Sigil made as deep-dye mark. Pressed into the bottom right corner is the Sovereign Marque - made using a form, a metal rod cast with a state's sigil - or marque - which is placed on the paper and hammered once and firmly with a small mallet to leave an imprint in the paper. Such forms are highly valuable items - I can see certain insalubrious folk plotting how they might steal one to further their own nefarious causes. The sign "A.V" in the marque stands for "Arius Vigilans" - the Vigilant Ram of Hergoatenbosch.

I thought some folks might be interested in knowing what folding-money looks like. I have been spending some of my inbetween-books time (that being Book 2 Lamplighter - now with the printers - and Book 3 - still no official title yet) figuring out the convoluted systems and industries surrounding the production, issuing and redemption of the humble folding bill.

Such periods of pointed and concerted invention are enriching, giving me an continually expanded view of just what makes the Half-Continent work; all those folks bustling about: the printers and their secret-vault presses, the guarded trucks taking the bills to banks and other authorised issuers, the halls of clerks keeping track of the movements and uses of the bills through an unwieldy system of logs and ledgers, the revisionists sent out to investigate frauds and forgeries. Fun, fun, fun.

Also, I have at last coined Half-Continent terms for the words mooseguy kindly challenged me with. So here goes once more, Half-Continent synonyms for real-world terms #011:

mobile phone = in full these would be called eloquiproculogue, sometimes shortened to proculogue, or voxeproculogue, though everyday folks would call them ablongs ("from afar")

internet = technically it would alternatively be known as the astrapemethodologue or fulgurcoetre ("electrical gathering") shortened to the fulgurcot, though once more the vernacular would be the somewhat simpler epistulane, with emails being commonly called epistles (a briefer form of fulgepistulës) or coets.

democracy = well, technically I could simply use the word "democracy" and be done, but where would the fun be in that?! So the Gotts for example, have two terms for it, stimmanteil ("voice-sharing") used in a positive sense, and lumpelämend ("rascal-noise") used pejoratively. Given that the Gottish political system is essentially an imperial dictatorship, lumpelämend is the more common in current times. In the Haacobin capital, Clementine, the term vox paritas ("equal voice") is being thrown about more and more frequently, it detractors deriding it as glaucaloquia ("sweet-talking") - a whole lot of frothy nonsense: the Empire will not stand - and therefore the dominion of men against the monsters - (so they say) if power is shared about to any old person just because they feel they would like to have a go a running things.

Keep the challenges coming, please.

Also, would you keep Jay (I introduced you to him last post) in your thoughts: he is going through very tough times at the moment.

A few of my favourite things.

A new month, a new post - got to give this regularity thing a chance. And to help keep things interesting I am introducing a reader poll (yipee!) - over there on the right, just down a bit, feel free to answer.

On with the show...

Mooseguy asked: "1. What is/are your favourite animal(s)? 2. What sort of music do you like? Do you have any favourite bands? Oooh! And poets? Any favourite poets?"

Animals would definitely have to be the deep-sea viper fish, gulper eel, sperm whales, whale sharks, land crabs, moon jellyfish, pangolins, goats & sheep, the common house fly, any kind of bird, dogs in general - though those small out-of-control yappy ones are hard to appreciate.

With bands I would say go check out my profile for a more comprehensive list, but in direct answer to the question most certainly New Order were my first big love. Right now I am getting into a great debut album by Abby Dobson - sweet gentle Australian sounds, an amazing voice. In fact, I also have made some of my own electronica for many years calling myself Methods of Recorder - no official releases though, just what I call "grey" labels, that is self-made cds for friends. I am no musical genius - that is for sure - but I do (dare I admit it) like my own tunes.

As to poets my clear favourites are Wordsworth, Shel Silverstein (I L-O-V-E Where the Sidewalk Ends), Lewis Carol, Mervyn Peake and Aidan Coleman whose words are a sweet suburban lullaby, the lyric of tiled roofs, treed streets and empty ticking rooms waiting for their owners to return home.

Part of my initial post for the new month it is also going to have a wierd kind of housekepping vibe. I have a request of you all: not sure the blog is looking to some of you as it should, so (and I hope this ain't too tacky) am going to put an image of how it looks to me and would kindly ask you to let me know if that is how it looks to you.


Does it look something like this on you browser? If so tell me, if not tell me even more.

Cheers very muchly.