New Worlds: Poison
As the New Worlds Patreon comes to the end of another month, we turn our attention to poison! Both the cause and the cure of suffering, depending on how it’s applied — as Paracelsus very wisely pointed out. Comment over there!
Posts Tagged ‘new worlds’
New Worlds: Other “Medicine”
Warning: this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay includes quite a lot that is squicky or horrifying. Not in a super-graphic way, but simply in the realization that the medical treatments of the past were often howlingly wrong at best — and lethal at worst.
Comment over there!
New Worlds: Herbalism
Before there were synthetic chemicals, there were medicines extracted from leaves, flowers, seeds, nuts, fruit, bark, wood, roots, and every other bit of plant matter you care to name. This week, the New Worlds Patreon discusses the ancient art of herbal medicine! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Elemental Imbalances
For the first month of the New Year, the New Worlds Patreon is turning back to the topic of medicine! Starting with elemental imbalances. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Special Cities
The New Worlds Patreon wraps up December and 2019 with a discussion of special cities: capitals, but also cities whose age and prominence gives them particular privileges among the settlements of the realm. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Cities II – Inside the Walls
More on cities! This time the New Worlds Patreon goes inside the walls (and a little bit outside them) to talk about how cities are laid out and why. Comment over there!
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
I have a new blog crush. And if the phrase A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry makes you perk up, you just might find it interesting, too.
I can’t remember who I saw linking to this guy’s analysis of the Siege of Gondor, but it’s an entertaining read — all six parts of it. And in the course of reading it, I noted that he linked to various other posts he’s written, many of which sounded interesting. But the nail in the coffin of me walking away was realizing he had a link at the top titled Resources for World-Builders.
*_*
Bret Devereaux turns out to be a military historian specializing in the Roman Republic, but with interests ranging around the ancient Mediterranean and into medieval Europe, plus at least some awareness of other parts of the world like India and China. His seven-part takedown of Sparta is gloriously scathing, and has single-handedly ensured that if some unknown force ever tells me I have to choose where and when in history I’m going to be sent back to, Sparta’s going to be at the rock bottom of my list. Or the three essays tearing apart the claim that Game of Thrones is a “realistic” representation of medievalism — with bonus essays like “The Preposterous Logistics of the Loot Train Battle” (tl;dr: Dany could have saved herself the trouble of attacking, because Jaime’s entire force would have starved to death even after eating all the food they were supposedly transporting to King’s Landing). But what really sealed the deal for me was probably the Practical Polytheism series, which digs into how Mediterranean polytheism worked, and how it’s different from the kinds of assumptions we tend to make today.
It’s a new enough blog that if you don’t mind falling down a rabbit hole for a while, it’s not that difficult to read the entirety of the archives. (I know because I’ve, uh, done it.) As the Practical Polytheism essays and the two most recent posts on ancient writers show, the focus is not entirely on military matters — in part because, being an Actual Historian of these things, he’s well aware that you can’t properly discuss armies without paying attention to things like agriculture or religion. The two Lonely Cities essays crossed my screen just in time to influence the current New Worlds Patreon topic, and I’ll definitely be swinging back to some of his military writing when I get around to that subject myself. So I highly recommend the blog to anybody who’s interested in worldbuilding or military history . . . and I know there’s at least a few people around these parts who fit that label. 🙂
New Worlds: Cities I – Where and Why and What
As befits their size, cities are going to require more than one essay to unpack. The first installment looks at them from the outside, considering what makes a city and where it tends to be found. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Demographics
The New Worlds Patreon moves into the final month of the year — the calendar year, that is. Since I began my Patreon in March of 2017, the New Worlds New Year comes at the end of February. 🙂 My lovely patrons have voted, and this month’s subject begins with demographics: the makeup of a given society, and (as part and parcel of that) the idea of “life expectancy at birth,” which is a number many people seem to misunderstand. Comment over there!
And it seems like a good time to mention again that all of this, the weekly essays and the yearly collections, is made possible by the steadfast support of my patrons. I’ve said before that this is a project I’d wanted to tackle for years, only I couldn’t figure out how to break it down into manageable pieces; it took this “one bite per week” approach to make it feasible. So if you’ve been enjoying the essays, please consider either becoming a patron, or promoting New Worlds to your own friends and social circles.
New Worlds Theory Post: Duality
This year has a lot of months with five Fridays! And as long-term readers of the New Worlds Patreon know, the funding of my gracious patrons means that when there’s an extra Friday, there’s a theory post. This time around it’s on duality, and the narrative power that kind of basic opposition can generate. Comment over there!
