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Aldermark

A Body Built Differently: Elvish Physiology From the Inside Out

Everyone pictures the ears first. When I started writing elvish biology properly, the ears turned out to be the least interesting thing about them. The real differences sit lower down: in the blood, in the bones, in how many cells…

Aldermark

Oesterheim: Where the Wind Is the Only Netural Party

The wind never stops on Oesterheim. It comes off the North Atlantic with a patience that makes elvish patience look hasty, and it was shaping these islands before the elves came, before the Norse came, before anyone came. It doesn't…

Aldermark

Who Tells the Elvish Story: A Map of the Aldermark Press

The Elvish Wall Movement listed accurate news among its demands. Its activists were tired of reading heavily edited official accounts of their own lives. Fifty years later, Aldermark has one of the busiest presses in Europe: a conservative broadsheet older…

Aldermark

Fifty Minutes from Sylt: Aldø and the Oldest Temple in the Elvish World

The car ferry from the German island of Sylt runs every hour and takes about fifty minutes. The island comes up slowly through the North Sea haze: flat, green and unremarkable. There is no skyline and no harbour crane, nothing…

Empyrea

The Order of the Calling: Crusaders in the Modern Age

The Order of the Calling has the most complicated institutional history in the Empyrea cosmology, and that is saying something given the competition. Founded in 1299 as a standard-issue medieval religious military order (protect pilgrims, defend territory, expel the Moors…

Empyrea

The Aeon of Ignorance: Empyrea’s Founding Trauma

Before the Divine Hierarchy. Before Eo. Before any of the celestial races had settled into the roles they now claim were always theirs, there was a war. The Empyreans call it the Aeon of Ignorance, and the name is doing…