What little time I had for any story-related work was devoted to continuing in the peripheral materials from yesterday. You see, with the formula I was using, the religiously unaffiliated are calculated by subtracting the total population from the sum of those with some religious affiliation. The way I had distributed the numbers didn’t quite work out in some places and trying to move stuff around proved to be more of a hassle than it was worth, so I ended up adding to the total population to make the formula work and get the final number to the original figure of 0.32% of the population. Why such a low percentage, you ask? Well, in the Kiennar Federal Republic, the Holy Catholic Church (known elsewhere as the Church of Kien or the Church of St. Crispin) is the state religion and all citizens are registered as members of the Church by default. It’s a bit difficult, but certainly not impossible, to change your registration later in life, but few do because there’s nothing much to gain by it and only the most dedicated atheists bother. You do have some activist groups like the Freethinkers Society that have agitated to eliminate the automatic registration (and more ambitious goals such as the abolition of a state religion and the Cabinet-level Ministry of Religious Affairs basically being the Church’s direct hand in the government), but they haven’t found much success.

While Crispinism is the predominant religion in the KFR at 62.29% of the population, Ahorazedism and Sabaotism have significant shares at 11.57% and 10.43% respectively. Ahorazedism is most represented in the coastal states, where there’s a strong influence from the Midland Magrebi states in northern Kartia, and Sabaotism is strong in the eastern states bordering the Principality of Velian (where Sabaotism is the state religion). The northern state of Elwyn, which was originally part of neighboring Glamwyg, has a plurality of Tairists, and if you combine the Fordists, the “heathens” have a majority. In the case of Elwyn, and also Grenik to the south, maintaining traditional religious affiliation is more a matter of ethnic identity than actual faith for the most part. (Consider it similar to the Quebecois retaining their Catholicism in a mostly Anglican Canada.) Another case worth noting is the agrarian Brodnar with its significant minority classified as “other religions” (28.07%) is mostly traditional Mennonites. (And before you start wondering how so many Mennonites poofed into existence, we’re talking about less than 28K people. Brodnar only has a population of about 98K.)

This may or may not be of particular interest to the average reader, but I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that I love the worldbuilding process and so much story potential comes out of this stuff. However, we’re at the point where I need to switch gears to RttW and actually work on the story and not be figuring out the habitat range of stag beetles (which does need to happen at some point). Stay tuned.

To better put things together for Chapter 5 of CoP, I was working on encyclopedia entries, particularly about the government of the Kiennar Federal Republic, which prompted me to do a more detailed map of the country and a demographic breakdown by its 24 states and the federal district of the capital city of Fedelis. That work is still underway, as I have to take the data I already have for the country and make it fit with the sum total of the aforementioned states. Yes, because I’m just making up numbers, those numbers aren’t set in stone or anything, but I don’t want to throw off the proportions I’ve cited earlier too much.

Once I finish the demographic breakdown, I can figure out the number of congressional representatives each state has to better visualize their relative political sway, the regional power balance, etc. You may wonder how all of this is relevant, but it does play a role in the C Plot. (The A Plot being the Protectors getting Ellis to Ahorazed and the B Plot being Sarek and the Shields’ efforts to stop them.)

As a bit of a side note, as I was going over the manuscript for Chapter 4 before posting it, I was really liking that I gave Ellis a smart aleck side that makes for some fun banter with Rio that will hopefully serve as a counterbalance to his whining. Without that aspect of his personality, even with character development, he might just come across as Aurelius from Tzipi’s Garden. (Aurelius did serve his purpose in that story, but in the back of my head I had been considering having him go on more of an arc in the course of the story and part of me regrets not doing that, but there is a thematic element of having both the protagonist and the reader question the cause being fought for.)

I expect to continue that work on Kiennar, but maybe I can also squeeze in some writing while I’m at it (and dealing with the update). Stay tuned.

I was doing some tweaking to that demographics spreadsheet I was taking about yesterday. No big changes to the numbers, just to the way I had the formulas work. You see, I started with the percentages and used them to calculate the numbers, but with that done, I’ve since reversed it. One reason was that when you had the same percentage (due to rounding as I only went out two decimal places for readability purposes), you’d have the exact same number, which isn’t very natural. It was only an issue in a few spots, but I wanted to fix it all the same. Yay for Excel magic (or LibreOffice Calc magic in my case).

You know, I have population data for Altamira (EM), Miravel (JJ), Bellator (NagaTen), and obviously Korush V (CoP), but I never drew up that information for Erdi (CeleKing) or Merkab (Tzipi’s Garden). I may have to change that. (For CeleKing, more than population data, I was focusing on breaking down all the Imperial fiefdoms, a task that remains incomplete.)

I did a little writing on Chapter 5 of CoP but was spending more time writing encyclopedia entries. There’s a lot of work to be done there, so I may be dividing my time between those two tasks as the weekend commences. Stay tuned.

The main task for the day was finishing that breakdown of the religious demographics of Korush V (where CoP takes place). After the initial rough figures, I went back in to do some fine-tuning. I wanted Ahorazedism and Crispinism to be neck-and-neck in terms of followers, but when I made an adjustment to some of the populations in Iona (the Europe analog), that threw the balance out of whack, so I had to make further adjustments in Kartia (ersatz Africa) and Padash (ersatz Asia) to get things back in line. As it stands now, the Ahorazedi are at 14.39% of the world population and the Crispinians at 13.54%. They actually rank behind assorted local religions (17.74%) and those without religious affiliation (14.90%). Let’s just go ahead and give you the full breakdown as it stands now.

1. Local religions (usually animist) – 39.588,185 (17.74%)
2. No religion (atheist, agnostic or otherwise unaffiliated) – 33,247,965 (14.90%)
3. Ahorazedism (pseudo-Zoroastrianisn) –  32,111,127 (14.39%)
4. Crispinism (pseudo-Christianity) – 30,221,142 (13.54%)
5. Devapatha (pseudo-Hinduism) – 21,414,949 (9.60%)
6. Other (often remnants of more orthodox versions of Earth religions) – 17,267,072 (7.74%)
7. Sabaotism (Gnosticism with Kabbalistic influences) – 13,569,231 (6.08%)
8. Razism (pseudo-Islam) – 10,162,387 (4.55%)
9. Madhyapatha (pesudo-Buddhism) – 8,951,839 (4.01%)
10. Wangmuism (what’s left of Confucianism after Lord Shang is done with it) – 5,104,120 (2.29%)
11. Hsintaoism (vaguely Daoist) – 4,853,538 (2.17%)
12. Tairism (neopagan goddess worship) – 4,150,193 (1.86%)
13. Fordism (neopagan nature worship) – 2,493,292 (1.12%)

Most of these are already syncretic spinoffs of original Earth religions that then go through further syncretism with many people mixing and matching as they go. For simplicity’s sake, I’ve only listed people by their primary affiliation. For instance, there’s enough in common between Tairists and Fordists that they could basically be called a single religion and Crispin-Sabaotists are by no means rare. Why, do you ask, are the old religions not more prominently represented here? Well, first you need to bear in mind that these Cross Arc stories take place hundreds of years in the future. Also, most Lost Worlds were originally Imperial colonies and there was a period in history where the Empire cracked down rather hard on other faiths when it was trying to prop up the cult of the Emperor as the state religion. Toss in the isolation of the Lost Worlds and the devastating effect of the Skyfall Calamity on civilization and society, and things having changed quite a bit, old traditions being copies of copies of copies and such comes as little surprise. That being said, Korush V is an example of a Lost World where the Skyfall Calamity wasn’t quite so much the massive reset button as it was for most of the others.

In other news, I added three more chapters to fill that gap in the timeline and I don’t think I’ll be adding more at this point. With all these additions, this makes CoP my longest book in terms of chapter count. What the wordcount looks like in the end remains to be seen. And with all this done, maybe I can do some actual writing on the story itself before it’s time to switch over. Stay tuned.

I didn’t get any story writing done, nor did I slot in those two or three chapters I was brainstorming, but in the process of the latter, I was thinking about the religious demographics of the world, which prompted me to start working on a census. I’m looking at the map here and if I just counted correctly, there are 74 nations in the world (plus two unincorporated island chains), so I drew up their populations and then started to break down the numbers by religious affiliation. Most of the religions on Korush V are crypto versions of Earth religions that have changed over the centuries of isolation, but there are some newer ones as well (or new takes on old faiths). There are some isolated old holdouts of the old orthodoxy, but they get lumped in the “other” label due to their extreme minority status. I still have a good ways to go. I’m off for the next week, so hopefully I can make some good progress. Once I finish this task, I intend to get those chapters figured out and then get a little more writing done. Stay tuned.

I managed to finish Chapter 4 of CoP and with that in the bag, I went to examining that dry patch in the timeline. I added three more chapters (as of the time of this writing, the new Chapters 17-19), but there’s still a 32-day gap between Chapters 19 and 20, so I may want to add a couple more. I was thinking a nice little breather episode or something, then maybe something to better set up what’s coming later in the story. I may also want to consider more chapters covering other Protectors as I really don’t want us to go from Chapter 2 all the way to Chapter 31 without giving the rest of the crew much screentime. For that matter, I need to think about better fleshing out the baddies as well. I’ve already added several scenes to get them a little more build-up before the final battle. Part of me wants to set up the two teams Basilisk-style, but I’m pretty sure I’ll remain tilted in the Protectors’ favor as there are other actors besides the Shields working against them (though a lot of this is part of Sarek’s machinations).

As I was going through the character database, I started working on filling out the different characters’ power sets. I mostly just used the abilities list from the Tellus Arc (in no small part because they operate on the same system), but I may want to do some work to refine what I have there, as a lot of it is stuff I haven’t touched in over ten years.

And that was enough to keep me occupied for one day. I imagine I’ll be looking to fill in that gap in the timeline and then get some more writing done. If I could build up some lead time, that’d be amazing. Stay tuned.

I started out the day doing some work in the WttW peripheral materials, to no one’s surprise. I have this list of medieval professions, and I was going down the line looking for jobs that weren’t covered by the current Trade Guilds and when I got to the job of bureller, a weaver of burel cloth (also known as bure, bura and a good dozen other variants), I decided to add burel (a kind of cheap, thick, coarse wool) to the list of textiles and made a selection of clothes made from burel, which I dubbed the Peasant’s Winter Line. Like the nettlecloth and hemp stuff I made the other day, it’s easier to craft and cheaper than the regular stuff at the cost of being slightly worse than regular woolen garments (the idea being that the burel isn’t woven as tightly and so it isn’t as efficient at keeping you warm despite its heavier weight). It’s a cheap way to stay warm in the winter, so it’s something for the Adventurer on a budget to consider.

Going back to the original goal, I now have ten so-called limited Guilds. More may get added in the future, but I think that’s enough for now. I still have do that work chronicling all the twists and turns of the Guilds’ history. Right now all I have is the Silversmiths splitting off from the Goldsmiths, taking advantage of gold currency being withdrawn from circulation during the reign of Raibeart I. (Cue conspiracy theories of a golden hand being behind Raibeart’s assassination.)

Before I got to writing on CoP proper, I was going through the timeline of the story and adjusting travel times and distances based on the events that happen in the story. In the course of doing so, I ended up expanding the story quite a bit, adding ten whole chapters as you’ll see reflected on the site. Honestly, there’s a pretty big gap in time between the current Chapters 16 and 17 (58 days) that I’m probably going to want to fill with another two or three chapters, but we’ll let that percolate a bit.

I closed out the day by writing a bit on Chapter 4 of CoP. I would’ve liked to have done more, but the hour was growing late and beddy-bye time did await. With some concerted effort, I may well finish the chapter tomorrow, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

You know how I said I was going to get Chapter 3 of CoP wrapped in the morning and posted in the evening? Well, it didn’t happen that way. I was working on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials all day and didn’t start on CoP until the evening. I didn’t take a nap in the afternoon like I was intending, so you can imagine how the evening went, yet somehow I managed to make enough progress that I’m just about done, so I’ll just shift the release schedule by a day and we’ll go on from there.

In case you were curious about my work in the peripheral materials, I was primarily focused on the royal family of Titan. You see, it turns out that I hadn’t made a family tree for them yet, so I corrected that oversight. Some changes cropped up along the way because some encyclopedia entries were less detailed than others, causing me to lose the connection. For instance, during the reign of King Halfdan, his first wife was unable to produce an heir for him, so he was pressured by the jarls to divorce her and was given a child bride in the thought that the younger the bride, the more fertile she would be. (No, that isn’t how it works.) However, King Halfdan opted to wait until the girl grew up a bit first, only to die within the year. This little widow was then carted off to the convent to live out her widowhood, only to leave her cloister after some years and find herself a new husband in the form of Sieghardt the Conqueror, only this time the age gap went the other way, with her being 22 years his senior. This was Asta Ingisdottir, only I never mentioned her by name in King Halfdan’s encyclopedia entry, so I ended up making an entirely different character to serve the role of his second queen (now an age allowable by canon law), who ends up murdered after the King’s funeral. I stumbled on Asta’s entry later and realized my error. Rather than delete the new storyline, I simply changed Asta’s story so that she was betrothed to the infant son of King Halfdan by this new Queen and then was sent off to the convent for her protection, lest she end up like her little fiancé. (Yes, the baby was murdered along with the mother, because succession disputes are brutal.) This managed to tie up things nicely, but there’s bound to be more instances of me coming up with new stories and having to either retcon the old ones or rework the new ones. However, I really like it when I have a good idea, only to find out that I already had that good idea years before and made provisions for it.

I intend to switch over to RttW next week. We’ll see how much time I spend working on the chapter that needs to go out and how much time I spent detailing which insects are native to each of the Trials. I’m sure it’ll be all sorts of fun. Stay tuned.

I said I was just going to do a little bit of work on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and then focus on finishing Chapter 3 of CoP, but it was the opposite. I spent most of the day on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and only got a sentence done in CoP before I entered my phase of variable consciousness in the evening. That doesn’t bode well for my deadline, but I think I’ll try to get the chapter finished in the morning and get it posted by evening.

Besides adding more regnal years, one thing I was doing to improve the encyclopedia was adding labels for kings and such, something I’ve done in other, more recent encyclopedia files. For example:

Rudolf V (III 3653 – 3718)

53rd King of Bergeny

However, in the course of doing this, I was thinking about additional titles and such. For instance, one of the honors bestowed on the Elemental Knights was a global peerage, the equivalent of a count, but some would go on to gain other titles as well (or they already had titles beforehand). I wanted to account for that and just House Aran alone kept me busy for a couple hours, as I was accounting for lines of succession and stories would spring up as I worked. Fun, fun, fun, but it doesn’t get me any closer to meeting my deadline. I’ll see what I can get done and then go from there. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on Chapter 3 of CoP, which was good, but rather than stick to this, I ended up going down a rabbit hole in the peripheral materials. I believe I was checking out the conversion of dates in the different calendars in the Tellus Arc the other day and ended up making some adjustments, which then spun into a whole things where I was adding regnal years for different dynasties and such, and as stories were developing from this, I had to dig into the timeline and the encyclopedia, and I’ve only managed to scratch the surface. I do need to go back to writing on CoP, but I’m definitely going to spend more time on this. Stay tuned.