Tag: worldbuilding

I had to bite my tongue at dinner one night recently when my host started opining about the “feudal” aspects of our economic system —

You can totally have aliens in your fantasy narrative. They don’t even have to come from outer space; they can just be from another country.

What does it mean for a person to live in a particular realm? I’m using the extremely generic term “realm” because the answer to that

I originally thought I could fit all the “common principles that crop up in many, though far from all, magical traditions” into one essay. More

We’re onto our fourth essay about battles, and I’m only just now turning to what most people probably think of first when they hear the

Sieges are terrible, not just for the defenders, but often for the attackers as well. The longer they go on, the worse they get.

From a modern, civilian perspective, sieges may seem kind of stupid. Why park an army outside a fortified castle or city for weeks, months, even

Just as there are different kinds of army, there are also different kinds of battle that army could be fighting — in part because there

So far we’ve been talking largely about slavery in its strictest sense, i.e. legal frameworks that allow for people to be held as property. But

If you manage to get out of slavery — through escape or through emancipation; through the legislative or revolutionary end of the institution itself —