I'm writing a fantasy/alternate world novel. For some of the cultures in that world I have drawn inspiration from Ancient Rome. But they don't speak Latin or anything similar to that. Upper class women wear a garment that's basically a stola. Is there another word for that garment in English? Or is that Latin word what English uses, too. My question is because I'm wondering if that's the word I should use even though they don't speak Latin.
You can make the point about the Romans or Franks in Europe.
Exactly. They didn't "fade away", they were the ancestors of numerous empires.
Okay. So that should be the reason why this guy is different. The great sex is because he's different, and she feels different, rather than it being she's into him differently from guys before because sex with him was better.
Right. My point is that you have subsequent dynasties trying to claim lineage from the Mongols (Timur was not Chinggisid, and was self-conscious about that and married a Chinggisid to boost his legitimacy. He also had to rule via a puppet ruler who actually was Chinggisid, because, while yes, they had become Persianized and Turkicised, lineage from Chinggis Khan was effectively a requirement). So clearly the Mongols were still so much part of cultural memory.
just to vanish back into the backwaters of history again.
I'm not sure that's correct. They fractured into different empires that gradually culturally drifted apart. The Mughals, for example.
The rise of Chinggis Khan. Or of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
The Yi Soon-sin, the Korean general, successfully reversing Hideyoshi's invasion. Never lost a battle, and in the case of defeating Japan was ridiculously outnumbered and was effectively running an insurgency.
Dragons. Not so much as mythically depicted, but that there were large reptiles like Komodo dragons from which the myths draw inspiration.
I'm writing some stories like that!
Right. So that has problems with the connotations. Either way, I'd describe the garment, anyway.
Oh, yes, that would work great!
In Elenon, about 200-250 years prior to the story, the Salvin Empire fell into civil war and broke apart. What was he core population area is now mostly nomadic and semi-nomadic, and the formerly great city of Salvi is a smaller city called Kanhule.
Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett
Monster Blood Tattoo series by DM Cornish
In Man of the Dinosaurs, the titular character, Malcolo.
In Elenon, idk. My favorite character keeps changing.
That sounds like she had a strong intimate connection with him at the start, including, but not only, sexually. She doesn't have feelings for this guy because he gave her multiple orgasms. Rather, she had multiple orgasms because she's bonding with this guy in a way that she hasn't before.
That's entirely your choice as an author. If it's not a romance or erotica work, you don't want to get it super explicit with the detail. But you can describe what a couple is doing without getting into very specific anatomical description. E.g., what garments come off or are disheveled, what position they are in, vocal reactions.
Run the scenes by someone who is married. It's okay if what you wrote was a bit silly or unrealistic, this is why you want their feedback.
In Elenon, it's wyverns. They don't breathe fire, and are just really big reptiles. Some people figured out how to tame them, and now there's far more domesticated versions of them than wild, as the wild ones are a threat to humans.
I do have another novel idea that I've barely developed at all, but in that one the dragons are sapient, and cruel. They'll focus that cruelty on whomever they're human masters order them to. They're faithful to their human masters and have no desire to betray them
In Elenon, the Salvin Empire is looked back on with nostalgia and most of the current countries of Elenon are descended from it and thus look back on it with reverence. That said, given the technological advancements and new social and philosophical ideas circulating at the time of the story, that current time could be argued to be a golden age, and might be looked back at as such.
As others have said, either use "they/them", or have the pronouns refer to something other than gender.
Elenon has numerous cults in the old fashioned sense of devotion to particular deities. I haven't developed these yet but that's the plan. There's also something more along the lines of what we would think of as a cult in popular parlance where this one quasi-state is fanatical (in devotion to which deity, I haven't worked out yet) and militant. Psychological warfare as a major, it's not primary, component to their militarism. There's a particular rank/class that paints their faces with a chemical that glows in the dark and causes their skin to weather. So it looks like a glowing half skeletal face peering at you in the dark. They also use smokes and vapors to obscure their movements and create a sense of dread. They tend to annihilate most of the population of cities, as well as taking prisoner and kidnapping people to try, often successfully, at converting them to their fanaticism.
Are you able to put yourself into the mind of your male character? If so, forget that your character is male. Just put your self into the mind of your character. There you go.
I started with creating the character, the world is just to carry the story. Malcolo. I invented him when I was 13.
Not at all. The Timurids, the Mughals, and others were descended from the Mongols.
Very gradually. Over the course of centuries. Some descendent arms became more and more Persianate or else Turkicised, others gradually became conquered by Russia as well as were Turkicised. But we're talking the span of centuries here. It wasn't like suddenly they became irrelevant, it was a very gradual transformation into descendant cultures. This kind of trajectory happened with the Romans, it happened with the Franks, with the Bulgurs, etc. It's very common.
What is a real historical event that appears to have been more like from a world-built universe?
worldbuilding