Maps & Reference Images

There's not necessarily a neat place to put all of these in the actual story pages so this is the repository where you (or most likely me, checking I'm placing things right) can find all the reference material in one place.

Maps & Images:

That last image is a vision of what the same cottage, complete with modern internal bathroom rather than outhouse and keeping the veranda to suit its location in an overgrown jungle, would look like if it were built along more traditional lines. A very simple farm cottage would probably constitute 3 'bays' with each bay being about 3.6m wide and 4.8m deep for a northern, cooler climate property. Meishen's cottage is about 1 bay in size total, in either layout, but I've sub-divided into 3 bays regardless for the historical design just to show how it would look. 

I'll add more to this as it gets made, most likely further updates to the whole-empire map (definitely still in progress) and another map equivalent to the Sect map but for the later part of the story. I'll probably also add more building views or floorplans as well, if they're needed. (I've been reading up on the relevant architectures so look forward to it™️.)

Please forgive the use of generative AI for the character images, I can't get the right look in something like the Sims/Campaign Cartographer as I can with the buildings and maps but wanted a visual depiction of the two lead characters.

Other Details:

 

Days of the week: Heavensun, Riversun, Forestsun, Candlesun, Fieldsun, Ironsun, Crownsun, Spiritsun.

Calendar: Each year is split into five phases, each phase is preceded by a single interstitial day. Each phase has three months of three weeks, each week being eight days. The phases are Woodspan, Firespan, Earthspan, Goldspan, Waterspan. There is the Lower month, Middle month and Upper month, so a date may be given as the third Fieldsun of Upper Woodspan, meaning the 5th day of the third week of the third month of the first phase of the year. The interstitial days are simply named Heavenly -sun, where - is the element to follow. The day before Woodspan is therefore Heavenly Woodsun. This gives a total of 365 days a year, and is never altered, the Empire has no leap years as their calendar does not suffer drift the way the real-world calendar would without our leap years and their extra days.

The first Crownsun of every month in the Inner and Outer Sect is the Moonrise Market where all disciples in either half part of the Sect can sell approved items (with their tutor's permission) or trade in raw materials and simple crafts freely with peers in their Sect half. Every second and third week there is a smaller market on the Spiritsun just for approved sellers - usually older disciples given dispensation to trade regularly and traveling peddlers etc.

The Empire has its annual events and anniversaries and so do individual duchies, even clan territories and single towns or cities. But for now these aren't needed: the sects are generally quite insular - especially for outer disciples struggling to prove themselves as quickly or drastically as possible and this means that sects often forgo many days of significance marked by other people/places in favour of only observing their own notable events. Those days that are observed as calendar events in a sect, be they the marking of the year-end or solstice, a noted anniversary or some other commemoration, are often the same times when disciples may earn promotions into the Inner Sect or other major accolades, which are both periods of great stress and of great revelry for the sects.

The Sect of the Deepest Earth lives according to a calendar where the year begins on Heavenly Earthsun, the most earth-aspected day of the year and the day when new disciples are accepted. This is their major annual event when they gain new blood and shed the weight and wear of the year gone to refresh and reinvigorate the sect before a new year's efforts and growth. There are plenty of other days of note, of course, but Heavenly Earthsun and the other ones marked on the calendar above are the big ones that even a first-realm outer disciple would be affected by.

Measures: The hundredweight is an imperial standard, and tightly enforced. A hundred hundredweight is a grandweight, then ten grandweight is a crownweight - a crown's ransom if it were a crownweight in grand spirit cores or so the saying goes. Hundredweights are often just referred to as say, fifteen weight, or 75 weight. A half hundredweight would be fifty weight not half of one weight. A fractional weight would be counted in shardweights, eight to one weight.

(A hundredweight is equivalent to roughly 50 kilos of weight, so a single weight is roughly half a kilo or a pound, with a shard weight being around 60 grams.)

Please don't go back and check I'm consistent with this equivalence throughout the story, just think 'hey, Meishen is doing a lot of cooking! That definitely explains the very substantial amount of material she needs. And all these people have magic tools and stuff so no wonder that thingymajig needs a fraction of the real-world amount of materials to make.' and then, like, stop thinking any more about weights and masses, please.

Lengths are measured in thumbspans of which there are five to a handspan, and four handspans to a halfspan, so eight handspans to a fullspan (about a meter or yard).

(A full span being about a meter makes a halfspan 50cm, and a handspan approx. 12cm, with the small length of the thumbspan being 2.5cm or so.)

Lots of careless rounding of decimals has happened here, dark sins against mathematics and the history of weights and measures has been blithely ignored. Both weights and lengths are houses of the devil's own playing cards. I won't ask any gods for forgiveness, so please don't think I'll be asking you either, dear reader! Just... avert your eyes from any flagrant bending of these little conversions and these crimes will be mine alone. Seriously. Look away. Don't try and figure out the numbers, roll with the plot and the vibes and pretend it all adds up.

Currency: Mortals use copper and silver coins. Cultivators and officials use spirit stones. These must be carved and marked with their value (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and so on.) to be official tender but bartering is sometimes done with uncarved stones in places where stones are sourced but not processed or in wilder, less settled areas. Shards - fractions of a single stone in value - are not so regulated and are not marked or fully carved but their value is barely enough for a cup of tea so they are largely negligible. More valuable stones tend to be purer and richer in qi, rather than growing larger and larger. Spirit stones are used as catalysts and materials in many, many processes and trades, as well as being used for currency which is how they hold their value, and and do so quite stably too.

Sect membership: Sect disciples join the outer sect at around 16 years of age or thereabouts (14 - 17) unless they are unaffiliated and show great talent or qi. Affiliated talents are of course trained by their clans, families or similar; but unattached prodigies may lose control or go rogue and so gain early entry into a sect to prevent this. Everyone else may apply in their mid-teens. Different sects have their intake on different days, normally a day auspicious to that individual sect so some may in fact attempt to gain entry into multiple sects by attending several intake days before being accepted into a sect or giving up altogether.

All sects support their disciples' growth but also seek to test and challenge them to weed out those without talent, potential or dedication. The window to prove oneself worthy of a place in the inner sect is only 6 years, after which one must remain in the outer sect permanently as a labourer, farmer, crafter etc. working to support the sect. The risk of such an ignominious fate is simply considered part of the cost of the sect's support. 

Disciples who do reach the inner sect have more paths open to them than just staying in the sect, but those who reach the inner sect unusually early, very dramatically, with the most skill or the best connections have the choicest of futures available to choose from and so the task of gaining that promotion is the constant focus of many outer disciples. After all, one's entire life - and cultivators live long indeed - can be affected by the manner and timing of one's promotion to the inner sect.

Promotions aside, those who manage to reach the 3rd Realm by the age of 24 (i.e, within roughly 8 years of joining the sect) are granted a minor title and may claim a military commission or parcel of land to establish a clan.

Personae:

 

Meishen - second-year (18.5), first realm outer disciple from Clan Torrinden in the Duchy of Yoltem

Naruki - Meishen's close friend (17.5), also a 2nd year first realm from Yoltem

Mifi - Meishen's close friend (18), also a 2nd year first realm from Yoltem

Little Verdure - Meishen's spirit beast companion, a young Rootwyrm in the first realm

Layfon - Mutual friend of the three (18), a 2nd year outer disciple (mid 2nd realm, acts as an mid 1st)

Nina - 5th year outer disciple aiming for the inner sect (20), leader of the alliance Layfon and Naruki are in (early 2nd realm but held back by her reputation as an overly dogged idealist)

Felli Loss - 4th year (19), in Nina's alliance, friend to Layfon and Meishen, younger sister of Karian Loss (late 1st realm but only recently focused on her cultivation)

Sharnid - 5th year in Nina's alliance (20)

Dalshena - 5th year recently joined the alliance after hers dissolved due to the leader's failings (20)

Karian Loss - Inner disciple, four years older than Felli (23) and very influential in the Inner Sect (mid 2nd realm)

Vance Hardy - Karian's warrior-bureaucrat friend and right-hand man, a year younger than Karian (22), in a contract to hunt for Meishen because it gets him access to the Leafbone Grove (late 2nd realm)

Formehd Guran - Same age as Karian (23), inner sect and a respected disciple in the Sect Office of Justice.

Luckens - Inner disciple from Grendan who once came looking for Layfon (same age as Nina and Sharnid, 20)

Shante - Luckens' loyal friend/ally (18)

(Elder) Alchemist Nadine - Elder teaching the alchemy classes for outer sect disciples

Elder Tola - Meishen's tutor for herbalism and now plant care and some qi-based skills. Fortnightly tutorials on Candlesun.

Elder Farafiti - Meishen's tutor for cooking and cuisine, a renowned immortal chef. Tutors Meishen every Heavensun.

Elder Mache - Karian Loss's patron in the sect

Elder Kensei - One of Hardy's inner sect tutors (hand to hand combat and tonfas/knuckles etc.)

Elder Manji - One of Hardy's inner sect tutors (most bladed weapons)

Elder Harmut - Scholarly sort, tutors Mifi a little.