I do not intend to write chapters for every day forever. In fact I did not intend to do it at all. At some point recently I just started working on too many simultaneous storylines, and that was my mistake. I keep saying I don't want to start any new ones until I have finished off the current ones... and then I bring in Shirtless... and I am just about to launch into another big crazy mess on the scale of the NKM catastrophe...

Seriously, my goal for the end of December and definitely 1086 is to space out chapters as much as I possibly can. I too am dying to see these kids grow up. And I want to see Yware again, and Brit's baby, and I want to get to this war, and so on.

Lately I am deliberately and somewhat ruthlessly organizing a few of these storylines so that they will be unable to advance for a while. I am also seriously considering putting off the whole deal with Tashnu until a later time, since that is separate enough from everything else that it could wait. That should hopefully clear the air a bit and get us going again. But as I said, there are big happenings ahead among the humans... Thursday alone will probably take me at least a month to write!

I would do a poll, but I am pretty sure everyone would be in the "all things being equal, let time move faster" camp. I want to tell the story the way it wants to be told, and I think most readers ultimately support that, but I don't see how you can love these characters and not want to see what happens with their LIVES and not just their Saturday afternoon on one given Saturday in one given year.

I think we are tripping all over each other trying not to offend/appear offended. Rest assured I was IN NO WAY offended by what you asked, and you really needn't apologize for offering any kind of criticism of my story. I LOVE criticism since I learn a lot more from people telling me what is not working for them than from generic compliments.

Especially when I AGREE with the criticism! As in this case.

I am really quite difficult to offend in that way, seriously. I welcome good criticism and ignore the meaningless jabs.

And I have never met a Frenchman so worried about appearing aggressive or offending someone. *hugs*

I'm super-glad you all are so polite when it comes to each other. It seems so rare in online communities -- there's always someone badmouthing someone else in semi-public. Maybe we just aren't big enough yet, but I hope we're simply a better breed than that.

Or maybe the dancing hypnotize everyone into cuddly sweetness? (except for Tiana) (who is sweet and cuddly the rest of the time)

I know I was pretty relieved to get Flann out of the way too. If anything it may be one of the causes why Flann's problems seemed to have disappeared so suddenly. I can use the excuse of the "honeymoon phase" of her marriage (and upcoming ladyship) where everything is still so new and exciting, but it has to be partly just because I wanted her off my back.

I am not sure the increased level of character detail you are sensing is not simply due to my having improved as a writer. It seems to me that I could have done the same level of detail spread out over a longer period of time... there would have been just as many chapters coming just as frequently in our time, so the cumulative character-building effect would have seemed the same.

On the other hand, some events just wouldn't have been possible to do any other way. The whole sequence at the Old Man's birthday party with Leof meeting Hetty and Alred's suicide attempt... that was how many chapters? I would have totally spoiled that event if I had limited it to a chapter or two, and then nothing for another few weeks.

Obviously, I will never avoid writing a storyline just because it would require a bunch of chapters in a short time frame. I am just hoping to get some kind of discipline where I won't smash together chapters that don't have to be -- Flann's whole dramatic plunge is a good example of this actually: she could have fallen apart MUCH more slowly -- and also hopefully not have so many such elaborate storylines running simultaneously. If I can do that, I hope I will be able to continue telling the story I want to tell, and sacrifice neither any good plots nor any good character development......... and get to see these kids grow up and fall in love with each other!

I'm also looking forward to the crusades, but at the same time I'm scared for them since I'm sure not everyone will survive them

I can't wait to see these characters grow up. I'm interested to see how the next generation's marriages will turn out, and let's face it, "Grandpa Alred" has a nice ring to it

Seeing the next batch of babies will definitely be exciting. It's just sad to think there won't always be an Egelric, or an Alred, or a Lar...

I'm just glad the Black Death didn't happen until the 14th century

And there also will be Wulf. I also can't wait for 1086 we get to see Yware and Brit and Caedwulf's babies..

Thank the lord Wulf is nothing like his father. It would be wonderful if Wulf was like his beautiful mama Sela.

Lothere I'm sorry I haven't been commenting lately but I've been so busy at my college studying and rehearsing for a play that I will be performing over the weekend. But next week my scehduale will not be as hectic as this week's.

I wondered. What kind of statistics do you use to roll your female character pregnancies ?

~Your French Friend~

No worries, I'm waiting until I'm married.

And yes, I mean that.

Jeepers, you track everyone's cycles? I have enough trouble just keeping up with my characters' birthdays!

The public service announcement at the end gave me the giggles. I just imagined you sitting in a high-backed leather chair behind an oak desk in a small library, glasses slipping off of your nose.

Gah! I've relapsed into my old habits!

Sorry Francois

It just makes for more realism!

It actually does help, François, (don't make me break out the statistics! ) but you have to be really gung ho about it. Modern day child raising is not always compatible with that. The most important thing is that you have to nurse quite frequently -- so no teaching the baby to sleep through the night, no bottles and pacifiers -- and it's not just the production of milk that does it, it also requires some actual baby-to-breast contact. So If you go back to work, or otherwise end up feeding the baby breast milk from bottles, it isn't as effective as birth control. (And anyway it's never 100% )

Also it may be that in medieval times, the poor nutrition was itself a hindrance to fertility, so further increasing the woman's nutritional needs by adding breast feeding on top of that, it might have lowered it even more. I don't have any stats on that though.

Six months tends to be as far as breast feeding will get you in modern society, if you make a decent effort. But in modern times, it is a lot easier to teach that baby to sleep through the night and get some other kind of birth control. Getting up twice a night to nurse, who has the energy for sex anyways?

(This is definitely one of the weirdest conversations I have ever had regarding this story.)

I'm finally thinking of making my own medieval story (all in english !) and I wondered how did you find the names for your characters ? I think it's one of the most difficult think to do. Naming characters is what I fear the most. Could you help me, Lothere ?

~Your French Friend~

Thanks a lot, Lothere ! Only by thinking about writing a medieval story (without all the CC you have), I just begin to realise how much work it is !

~Your French Friend~

The last picture of each post is usually the best one.

Thanks for spotting that! It should be fixed now.

Since the comments in the "where can I get" section can't appear (and, anyway, this morning, this section is buggy), I ask my question here if you have some time to answer it. Where can I find some monks robes such as the one you are using for your story ? I would be very grateful if you could remember where you did find them. Thanks !

~Your French Friend~

Thanks a lot. I don't understand that I couldn't find them on MTS2 by entering "monk" in the search case... Grrr. Thanks, anyway !

~Your French Friend~

Sounds like you need a laptop!

Ok, here is a stupid question since we were talking about cunt ... How much time did you spent creating Kunt character, both in the CAS and the personality and back-story ?

~Your French Friend~

It's not really a question, but I found some pictures of the Medieval city of Le Mans I was talking to you last day. Here they are : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vieux_Mans

This is where King Henry II of England was born (in Le Mans, yeah !) :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:MaireEtCathedraleduMans1.JPG

Here is a shot of the houses : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Coeur_du_Tunnel_du_Mans.JPG

The Abbaye de l'Epau : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Abbaye_de_l%27Epau_nuit_d%27orage.J...

The Old Gallish Tower : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Le_Mans_tour_gallo-romaine.JPG

Other houses built upon the old walls of the city : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Le_Mans_muraille_nord.JPG

This is the house where Queen Bérengère, wife of Richard Lion's Heart, lived : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Maison_de_la_reine_b%C3%A9reng%C3%A...

And if you want other pictures from the Medieval City, just go there : http://www.grenault.net/photos/vmans.htm

And nothing to do with the rest, but I can't resist to show you my High School (where I slept, since it was a boarding school). It was an old abbay and it just look like Hogwarts : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:PICT0096.JPG

Now, you'll have a lot of new ideas for buildings, though it was in France, not in nothern England, I hope it will be some help, anyhow...

~Your French Friend~

Now that I have no stress of catching up I came to search in the genealogy of your characters (as well as reading once again the whole story). It happens that Finn is the descendant of Lir, one ancient Khor, as well as Vash's father. Is that the reason they took him ? Because they lacked noble elves and wanted to do something with him ? I'm going to look for more answer of all your enigmas thanks to all the story enlightenment I have now.

~Your French Friend~

Finn's ancestry probably played a part -- but remember, the elves themselves didn't have the idea to take him. The Bright Lady told them to. She also helped Druze's sister carry her baby, who became Finn's last full-elven ancestress. So if Finn's bloodline had something to do with the role he was supposed to play, then the Bright Lady had to start working on this future prophecy a hundred years before. (Which she might have done, after all... she and her sisters can see the future. Or at least the future that was supposed to happen.)

As for the origins of the elves... I can't fully answer that. To the elves themselves, time and history turn like a wheel, so things were always the way they are now. They would certainly disagree if it was suggested their ancestors had not always lived in the valley. But in "Araphel is warned" I wrote this:

“You did not tell us the elves here had magic,” Baraqiel said angrily. “We thought they were all of Nimea.”

“But I thought – ” Araphel blurted. Fortunately he caught his tongue in time.

He had thought they had simply learned their magic from Dantalion, since he had been trapped among them for centuries. However, Araphel had not mentioned Dantalion to Ezeqael or Baraqiel. He had already become too involved with Dantalion and told him too much....

“ – they didn’t have any,” he concluded feebly.

“Perhaps they hide it, for reasons of their own,” Baraqiel grumbled. “We don’t know what they are doing here. I don’t know how they came to be here at all. So far as we knew, they never left their island during all their time on earth.”

Araphel was not particularly interested in these elves, but he was beginning to feel that their presence was another danger to his happiness.

“There is one other in that house who is not pure,” Baraqiel continued, “so they must be mating with daughters of Nimea. And she has a child who is some sort of chimera,” he grimaced.

So you may ponder that.

Paul, Cat, and Derbail are currently living with Aengus. Nobody knows what will happen with Aengus and his family in the near future, but they will probably be there for a while. Unless he takes Maire back, there's no lady of the house, no mother for his girls, etc. Definitely a case of the family coming together and circling the wagons while Aengus gets his head put back on straight. Paul will probably build another house, but he's not thinking about that yet.

Connie is currently at Aengus's as well -- at least as of dinner time on Dec. 28, 1085.

Benedict will most likely stay with Aengus. (Again, unless Maire comes back, which frankly seems unlikely.)

Osh, Flann, baby Liadan, Edina, and Flann's never-before-seen maid Muirenn are already at Osh's new house. And Frost the wolf, of course.

Did I miss anyone? I don't know what became of the cook... maybe blended into the crowd at Aengus's.

I'm sure the girls (particularly Cat... Flann didn't lose all that much since she was staying at Nothelm) were upset about losing their house and their things, but they're more upset about losing Lena. She was their friend. And they're upset about the situation in general... what happened to Maire, what happened to Egelric, etc. (And when Domnall gets back and they find out he's homeless.)

I think Condal's trials with Lugaid and Ferdie are due in part to a miserable Cat and Flann amusing themselves at this miserable time by flirting with the boys using Condal as a proxy. Even at the best of times they don't seem to realize how excruciating she finds it, but now it's probably worse than ever. She's not like her big sisters at all.

Did you decide to have elves in your story since the very beginning (and was is your first plan for the cursed valley) or did the idea came later ?

I had the idea for the elves quite early (probably within the first 30 chapters or so) due to the fact that I was able to make elves in-game using the pointy-eared Sims. Basically from the moment Elfleda starts getting all weird about wanting a baby, I had already decided that she would eventually get an elven baby. But at that point I was so very far from having any idea of what the civilization or even the biology of elves would be like.

My first plan for the valley is enshrined in the following quote from my original outline, which I have left in for nostalgia's sake:

1086
- Domesday book - William's clerk comes
- William's army comes, and they scare them off by pretending to be vampires

My original plan had no elves at all, but it had Hel. The original Hel (I made a second one that became the Hel we knew) was a Sim I imported from another neighborhood that I used to play. That Sim was a Nightlife vampire. She was the only thing I "brought with me" from my Sims-playing days.

Originally the weird goings-on at the old church were meant to be due to Hel's presence in the catacombs. (Hence the very early chapters of exploring the catacombs.) In fact those events were due to something else that was beneath the church, but I was years away from dreaming up that storyline at that time.

Anyway, Sigefrith & Co. were supposed to discover Hel's presence somehow, and after she wreaked a bit of havoc, they would somehow make a truce with her. And then, in 1086, when the men drawing up the Domesday Book came to the valley and discovered Sigefrith's heretofore unsuspected presence, Sigefrith was going to save his valley from the Norman armies by enlisting the help of Hel, and having all his men powder their faces white and go forth to meet the Normans as an army of undead. Hel would do some honest-to-goodness vampirey stuff to convince them, and the Normans would flee in terror. QUIT LAUGHING, I AM NOT KIDDING.

It also amuses me to think that I am ONLY NOW getting to 1086, which I expected to reach within a month or two of starting my story. Almost as much as it amuses me to think of Sigefrith putting chalk on his face and shambling forth like a zombie to save his kingdom.

Where did the ideas of elven civilization come from (like natures, the Khor, the Shala, the castes...) ?

I talked about the caste system in an an article on Verso. In short, I was inspired by the caste system of 17th century Latin America.

The "natures" are of course based on the old earth, air, water, fire division of the universe made by the ancient Greeks and so on, and also the "four humors". I don't remember why I chose to introduce that aspect -- it seemed like an interesting (though rather unoriginal) basis for a system of magic.

The Khór, the Shalla, and so on aren't particularly original either. They're just the usual sort of leadership that often grows out of a civilization with a tension between an ancient matriarchy and more modern patriarchy. The Shalla supposedly has great power, but in practice of course it's usually limited to female-related things (marriages and babies) and an advisory role. Saralla is a little more powerful than most since the Khora is long-dead, Sorin is something of a flake, and Saralla has had her claws in him for decades.

The details of elven civilization is something that has developed gradually for me, as needed. I don't think I could have sat down and thought up all of this beforehand -- or if I had tried, I would have come up with something different.

What about angels and demons ?

The story of my angels and demons is based on actual literature, both orthodox and apocryphal.

The story of the fall of Araphel and his brothers is based on the Book of Enoch and the Old Testament story of the Flood.

The story of the fall of Dantalion and his brothers is loosely based on the fall of Iblis (Satan) from the Koran:

And We created you (humans), then fashioned you, then told the angels: Fall ye prostrate before Adam! And they fell prostrate, all save Iblis, who was not of those who made prostration.

He said: "What hindered thee that thou didst not fall prostrate when I bade thee?" (Iblis) said: "I am better than him. Thou createdst me of fire while him Thou didst create of clay".

and generally upon the Biblical mythos of Lucifer, the brightest and most beautiful of the angels, who was disgraced.

The nine sisters and some other aspects of the Creation story that Dantalion told Eithne is loosely based on Gnostic teachings. That gives us the "emanations" of the Holy Spirit (i.e. the nine sisters) that Baraqiel mentioned, and also the story of the demiurge who created the world: the Beast that Dante described, and who may possibly be identified with the Yahweh of the Old Testament.

I am also drawing inspiration from the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats ([text of poem]). The "shape with lion body and the head of a man" is brought into Dante's story:

If God is like a man with a face like the face of a lion, so was this Beast a lion with the face of a man.

(And this passage itself ties back into one of Egelric's favorite Bible quotes: "Men of war, fit for battle, whose faces were like the faces of lions.")

When did the idea come ? Do you often "improvise" or change your story with an idea you got or do you have big plans and nearly never change them since the very beginning (or maybe both...) ?

As I mentioned earlier about the elves, most of my ideas have come gradually. The whole angel-related, End Times story began as a flash of inspiration when I was wondering what to do about Flann and the never-mentioned dream of her future husband that she must have had on that ill-fated night. I decided to make Brude be the man, and then I decided to make Brude be not a man. At that point I started reading up on the fallen angels story and found the Book of Enoch, and things built up from there.

It has been the same with elves. Especially after I introduced Lar and his band. I created that group out of whole cloth on the night of Cat's rape, and then that whole aspect of the story started developing like crazy as I fell in love with Lar and Imin and all those twisted fellows.

As I wrote in a different thread today, there was a time when I honestly feared I would run out of ideas some day. Now my problem is that I have far too many ideas, and the story has exploded all out of my ability to control it.

I don't think I would write a book this way though. Because the story has no single story arc, and because there is no perceivable end, I can just do whatever I want provided it keeps my readers engaged.

Now I'm beginning to wonder what a sim version of William would look like...

Hie, Lothere, just a little question I was thinking about while re-reading the story. I wanted to know how do you create your sims appearance ? Is there a part of the face that is more important to you (The Nose, the eyes, the lips ...) ? Do you get inspired by real people in the streets or on the net ?

~The Princess Ogive Get More Chapters Foundation : waiting for more karma~