And it's not even Christmas ! Thank you so much ! You are brilliant and this page will be my friends for the next days (I have no time to read by now, I will play Wagner at the Opéra Bastille of Paris next monday... but I'll be back soon)

So basically Egelric is the person in charge of the town. Did this happen when he moved into the cottage?

The names of people and villages are so beautiful ! Is that old English or Gaelic ? It's like a fairy thing but I like it !

Update: Bio pages are back, sort of, on the temporary site. (Just in case you were dying to boggle over the number of Leofric's runts again.) There are a few rough edges but the usual info is back up.

Temporary Bio URL

You can search by names now, finally. And include only currently-living people if you like. I will add more search criteria later.

There aren't any more "PRIVATE" people. I got tired of maintaining that list. So the elven family tree is now wide-open. I hope I didn't have any deep dark mysteries left.

I hadn't realized how often I consulted that site until it wasn't available. It's a hell of a lot quicker than firing up my family tree software. Especially if I first have to walk 2 miles to get home to do it.

Well, you've learned that if you have any khírrón blood at all you're related to all of them... and you're likely descended from a king or two.

I might be the only one, but I'm not sure what all the different terms mean - what's a shire, and what does the 'manor' mean?

Could you just explain all of the different terms? >.<

Wow...this is amazing Lothere... you are such a computer scientist!!! But seriously... you have put such a lot of thought into all of this. It was quite helpful for me actually because I have been trying to think about what sort of different skilled people I have on the island and your list of job types was really great. Also thanks for the glossary. I really didn't know what a lot of those terms actually meant. Tithing sounds a bit like a hippy commune I have been trying to work out how many people are actually on Mhalwae. Actually does anybody have any idea how many people a typical medieval long journey ship would carry?

Yeah... just from the look of it I think the closest type of ship I can find that was running in medievalish times was a carrack (although it was like 15th century so a bit out of the time period I was aiming for but it doesn't matter so much since the world I have set my story in is a bit more developed in the shipping stakes to account for the problem . It is so hard to find a site that tells you how much it would actually carry though. Well I can get a tonnage but that isn't really helpful because I can't even begin to equate how many people and provisions that would make. I found somewhere that it could carry 40 people but then somewhere else it says it carried one crew per 5-8 tons of cargo capacity. Meh. I think I am going to go for a number somewhere around 40-60. Seems reasonable with the amount of cargo they would need and the probable size of the ship. But meh... it is so difficult to imagine and of course I don't really have any concept of how big the ship really is. Oh well.

Actually forget what I just said that guy who got hung his daughter is the head of her household she was the first. But still that's great women the head of their own households during this time is cool.

I was just looking at the profile of Old Aed's second wife Órlaith and saw that she's 7 months pregnant again.
And dear Cecily is 5 days pregnant, I can't wait to see her and Caedwulf again. Oh Maud's going to be a grandma, I hope Sigefrith will love his grandchild regarless of it's legetimacy.

Wow, Caedwulf. Seems he forgot Ogive's nose, eh?
I thought Sessot wasn't that type of girl!!??!

Maire, hmm, she'll have fun explaining an untimely pregnancy to Aengus or a strange reintroduction into her bed...

I totally understand your problem Lothere. I have been trying to think about who I need on the island but I can't just make a list of people without building some back story for the characters in my head. And then I want to add it to my story. I had the silly idea of making all the people on the island so they are always there if I need them and because I really like making sims. I made 4 so far and I liked them so much that I want to use them in my story (we will meet 3 of them in the next post). So I am just going to have to stop doing that because I really can't help myself. I am just going to have a nameless set of people who are only assigned jobs. But it is so much fun making new sims! Ach! I guess luckily I have a limited amount of people... it makes it harder when people can migrate to your kingdom

I am so impressed that you pretty much know everyone living in Lothere now. Wow! And I must say I am really interested in catching a glimpse of these two widows sometime but I understand you have a lot of things going on already. They do sound like an interesting pair of people though

I haven't drawn a very detailed map yet. I have drawn a few but I am not super happy with them. I need to sit down and make a really good one. I have drawn a rough map of the entire world as well, so I can picture where people come from (since there are some people from countries other than Branwhuld, such as Madlenka and Nyawe of course). We will also be meeting the first mate of the ship and his sister the Captain of the Fleets wife. They come from a Southern Continent which doesn't usually associate with the North (particularly now for a very good reason that will probably come into the story at some stage). The big problem I have with making maps is that I am really terrible at thinking up names for places. I sit there for ages like... uhmmm and then I just get frustrated. But I have a general idea in my head where things are in Mhalwae. At the moment it is quite unexplored, they have done a general scout but haven't gone to any of the difficult places. At the moment, the buildings that have been built are clustered around the safe cove where they landed. They will spread out later, but at the moment society is sticking pretty close since there is quite a bit of arable land where they landed and there are freaky things going on

There are always random name generators for map-making, but I think you have found a few of those already. I make up my (Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic) names based on knowledge of the languages though. If the elves had place names I could do that too, but first I had to make up their language.

It is cool that you mapped your world though! That is some good planning. I am curious to learn the "very good reason". I wonder if it has anything to do with Lekha's relationship with her husband.

What I would like is a good program for making maps. I am sure dungeon mastery types must have such things in this day and age, but aside from not wanting to spend money on software, I wouldn't know where to look. I will probably do something in Photoshop or Illustrator one of these days, but it never looks how I want it.

I have thought about doing villages (and there is actually a sort-of village around Anna's father's tiler's studio) but outdoor early medieval architecture in the Sims is arguably even less realistic than indoor. That has been what has stopped me so far. That, and the fact that a 20-year-old 11th century village probably doesn't look as village-like as we might think. I suspect that only Cynges-myrt and Heah-duna are developed and "modern" enough to really look like villages with streets and so on.

But I can imagine Matildasweg a bit... so sweet that it's named after her. Maybe I will do something there now that I know who lives there. The life of an illuminator living before the gates of Nothelm keep is probably a rather interesting one.

But I admit, one of the reasons why I did this whole project was just so I could get some lower-class girls around so I could send Conrad, Finn, and company off on Interesting Adventures and not make it seem so hand-wavy and unreal. If the girls start having names and fathers and houses and lives, there will start to be consequences (including of the diapered variety) and that will be more interesting and fun. I wish I had done that with Caedwulf.

It will come into the story in around nine months of story time I think. And it doesn't have anything to do with Lekha and her husband. That will also come into it at some stage but I haven't got a chapter planned with them yet. Too much other stuff about to happen and I still have to look in on Gay steward