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.

Filing my taxes ended up being the main project for the day, and there were some other things that also occupied my time, so it didn’t look like I was going to get any writing done at all, but after passing out for a spell in the evening, I decided that even if it wasn’t much (and it wasn’t), I was going to move ahead in Chapter 3 of CoP. I don’t actually think this is going to be that long of a chapter, so I just need to finish the second scene and I’ll be done. Just got to stick to it. (And getting some lead time would be a nice stretch goal.) Stay tuned.

Although I didn’t make any story progress, I did do some work to further fill out the map of Korush for CoP. I just have a handful of countries left to name and I started naming some of the major bodies of water as well. It may not sound like much, but it’s still part of moving things forward as a whole. Hopefully I can make some actual story progress tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I did some work in the peripheral materials, both for CoP and for the WttW series. For the former, I spent an inordinate amount of time working out the rank structure of the military of the Kiennar Federal Republic, even though I don’t think it’ll end up being all that prominent. Their Army Chief of Staff is at best a second-string character, but I guess we’ll see if something develops. I am thinking about doing a gaiden about the political machinations in that particular country, so it may come in handy for later. As for the WttW stuff, I’m working to codify the Trade Skills, as it’s particularly relevant to Chapter 11 of WttW1. We’ll see what else I can get up to. Stay tuned.