Are all Job Creators also Dark Lords, or is it just most? 🤔😜

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All hail Gandalf The Green 😜😂

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Hi, I’m new and I’ve been working on a medieval-esque setting inspired by Pokémon. I decided to go into the history of the world before expanding the regions I already have.

I have this section under the Bronze Age,

“The Bronze Age also brought the peak of new weaponry: the crossbow and the sword — two types of swords, actually. The crossbow was invented toward the end of the Bronze Age, at ~3,350 BE, meaning it was in use for about 150 years before the Iron Age. These were not true crossbows, as they required two people to man it, so it was technically a bowgun. The majority of the gun was wooden, with bronze-reinforced limbs. The Bearer would hold up the front of the crossbow and carry bolts, putting them in the barrel. The Gunman would notch the bolt onto the rope, crank to load, turn the stock to aim, and pull the trigger to fire,”

and I was wondering if the bowgun seemed too complicated to understand without visuals or if it was just unrealistic. I know the actual crossbow was invented in the Iron Age.

Btw, “bow” means a handheld projectile weapon, like a bow, sling, crossbow, etc; “gun” means a larger or mechanically powered missile weapon, like the catapult, ballista, cannon, etc.

After Data, Chief O'Brien, Union Man, might be my favourite Star Trek character 😂

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One rule of mine I'm sticking to:

at least to a point, smaller is more realistic, and is thus better.

A fictional country that's, say, over 1 million sq km in size and has over 50 million people will be harder to put into the real world than a country that's 1% of each (i.e. 10 000 sq km and 500 000 people)

​

This country has a unique name (kinda expected).

I don't want it to make people think of countries of a particular language, such as El Salvador (Spanish), Cape Verde (Portuguese), Austria (German), or New Zealand (English), with the attendant "I know [a notable world language] and such a country would stick out." Thus I created the name of a fictional language that they speak. It has fewer than 1 million speakers and is unlike other languages.

The country is not only independent, but almost thumbs its nose at big powers (perhaps if Trump gave its president a call, the latter might reply with a "Not now, I'm busy. I'll call you back when I have time.").

For this reason it probably spends disproportionately more on defense and maybe 10% of the male population is in the country's armed forces.

They are mostly a liberal democracy, and a republic, though can be socially conservative.

While the country can feed itself and has small industries, it's not resource rich, and became prosperous relatively recently— perhaps starting in the 1980s.

​

Getting back to the question: Should it be an island, landlocked, or be on the mainland with a coast?

It seems to me that island nations are more noticeable. Perhaps more English-speakers have heard of Jamaica than Burundi, even though the later has 2.5x the area, 5x the population (though, to be fair, a fraction of Jamaica's GDP).

Also it seems a lot of island nations tended to be former British colonies, and as such are probably beholden a bit to the United Kingdom, and its cousin, the US. If my character ran afoul with the US government (though he's not a terrorist), he might be extradited with relative ease.

If the country was landlocked and either in, or near, the interior of the continent, it could be bigger with less notice, but it would be beholden to the country that surrounds it.

The problem of being sealed off is that when it develops its tertiary sector, the big neighbours might hinder it. One can't have much of a tax haven, secret bank accounts, and/or mixed casinos and brothels where one can smoke marijuana legally, if the countries surrounding it restricts people from accessing the country, or block trade.

A compromise might be a mainline country with a coast, even if it accounted for a fraction of its border. It might have a corridor to the bulk of the country, though I'm not sure if the neighbours would have allowed such during its formation. I've also thought of air corridors, but aside of the wp:West Berlin Air Corridor, I know of no others, and I don't know how such a corridor could be maintained without big power help.

​

Suggestions and thoughts?

Thank you. 🙂

So, here's the thing. I have this setting I've been working on for years now. And the setting ended up with almost 5000 years of extensive lore, and you need to be familiar with several different philosophies and cultures to understand any of it. I was trying to come up with some names for characters in a story I am writing in said setting. And when I was researching how names and languages change I was struck with a thought. Am I overcomplicating this? Do I really need an explanation why there is a guy named "Al Banian" and why the name is actually a remnant from a completely different reality? I'm getting to the point where the lore is so complex it starts to sound stupid if you don't know all the details. Case and point, a guy named "Al Banian".

Another example. There are several creation myths, and three of them are technically correct.

I need some advice. Feel free to ask questions.

Keep Calm and Run Away: The guide to ultimate defense 😜😂

P.S If you know where this is from let me know so I can add credit.

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For instance, cats are known to like the slow blink as it shows a trust that the other person doesn't need to watched constantly.

What does your species do that is the equivalent?

Captain's Log

They say all the stars are gone. All at once, whatever that means. Every star in the galaxy, perhaps in the universe, had disappeared with a barely detectable gravitational blip. Confirmed by multiple sources by now. The ansible networks were all overloaded, as everyone started shouting all at once. It's been eleven days since, and we've only just started to get some usable signal from the ansible. One signal claiming it was an interdimensional theft and that they have proof. I guess we'll see.

We're setting up a makeshift gravitometer, one of the priority broadcasts urged everyone to try to help capture data on the gravity blips, see if we can figure out what happened. They say time is of the essence. I'll say. The crew seemed glad to have something to do. None of us can really build instruments so everyone's best guess is what we'll end up with. Better to keep the mind off things for a bit.

I can see the storm coming, but it won't be here for a while. Right now it's just waiting to get to the planet. We haven't heard much from them since they lost sunlight. We don't really know what to expect, and no one feels the urge to voice their speculation. We're still fourteen days from orbit. Four before we start to resolve radio chatter about the event. Before we hear them start to understand. I don't know what we'll do when we get there. Take refugees?

Take them where?

Eventually humanity discovers a cetacean henge: an arrangement of stones and other objects on the ocean floor that form the written language we'll come to know as Cetacean. Once we identify one, we'll quickly identify others. Papers will be written about how cetaceans make regular journeys across the globe, reading the stones to their young, teaching them to read the stones in turn. Some routes are crowded with pods all making the same circuit, some pods have their own unique route. Some pods only know of one site, or none. Some sites are unique to one species, or even one pod; others are common destinations for multiple species of cetacean.

We'll learn to read them, and learning the written will help us translate spoken Cetacean, and suddenly the music of the whales will have lyrics.

The country is small.

It's between 1000 sq km to 50 000 sq km in size.

It's has between 100 000 and 1 million people.

Its GDP is over US$10 billion (2026).

FWIW, it's multicultural with several official languages (most are officially secondary).

It got its independence between WWI and WWII.

There might have been a "Great Leader" in the past who lead at most a semi-authoritarian government (but little, if any, blood was spilled), but for the past few decades it's been a liberal democracy, though a little socially conservative (e.g. LGBTQ are legal, but can be discriminated against in the private sector; medicinal marijuana is allowed; prostitution is allowed in certain areas; feminism exist, but in the same way it exist in, say, Utah, Texas, Alabama, or (the State of) Mississippi).

​

rules, if you will:

1. The currency was and is completely fiat—never backed by anything, such as gold or silver.

2. Since the country's creation it hasn't excessively inflated the currency.

3. There have been series of currency bills/notes, and I suppose some coins too, that have been de-monetized, though mostly to deal with counterfeiters in the early days.

4. The currency is (I think the term is "free floating"). There is an official government exchange rate in the banks, but you can now, as you could for most, or perhaps all, of the country's history, buy it at free market prices even in the country.

5. As the UK pound (£1), euro (€1), and now the Swiss franc (1 CHF) are each worth more than the USD (in 1971 it was US$1 ≈ 4 CHF, in the 1980s, US$1 ≈ 3 CHF, now it's almost US$1 ≈ 0.8 CHF) so has, in the past few years, this country's currency base unit become greater than US$1.

​

Thank you.

RE: https://mastodon.art/@NickEast/_IndieWriter/117172203765192969

With 40 votes the result of the poll is in:

97% think I should add images to The Last Philosopher ebook.

78% think I should add them as scene/chapter headers.

So, expect Part two to have images, mostly maps...

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If humans one day conquer all of our solar system we might have settlements not just on Mars and Earth, but also in orbit of Venus or Mercury, and on the moons of the gas planets, like Jupiter's Europa. Each of those has a different length of day and year.

How would an interplanetary civilization find a common date and time system?

I assume each planet gets it's own local time, but I think a common date-time system would be usefull.

Also I don't like to just say, earth is human kinds origin, so it's time is the standard. Feels lazy.

That's it, that's the story 🤔
No one can tell me Dune isn't realistic 😂

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I think this is one reason I like writing fantasy, whatever weirdness I come up with it's always correct 🤔😁

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NERVA has about 250 kN of thrust at 841 seconds of specific impulse.
Merlin 1D has about 1000 kN of thrust at 311 seconds of specific impulse.
That suggests NTRs have around 4x less thrust, but around 2.7z more efficiency than chemical rockets. At a large enough scale craft, the weight of the engine could be considered irrelevant. But for smaller crafts, the Merlin has a thrust to weight ratio of 184:1, whereas NTRs only ever achieved 7:1 (they hoped to get up to around 35:1 eventually).

I imagine the thrust to weight could be substantially improved by making lightweight reactors, but I'm wondering if anybody knows anything about concepts for higher thrust NTRs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Merlin

Something is moving far beneath the dead surface.

Veduora is an immersive, dark sci-fi worldbuilding project told through isolated logs, brutalist industrial decay, and suffocating atmospheric ambient soundscapes.

If you love rich, slow-burn narratives and dark subterranean exploration, step into the transmission.

What secrets are hidden in the dark sectors?

https://youtu.be/rqETagwBvyY