I intentionally hit the setting very hard in this chapter. People bring a lot of preconceived notions to fantasy, and sometimes it’s difficult to shake them free. With this book, I don’t want people to assume an immediate time period or culture for this world. In realty, I’ve stolen from all over the place. My hope is that I’ll be able to destroy people’s conceptions quickly, then instead build my own world in their mind.
So, here we have a land where the sun is red, ash falls from the sky, mists come upon the land at night, and plants are brown rather than green. In addition, we have a slave population who live like very rural peasants—but, at the same time, Lord Tresting checks his pocket watch in the first scene. Later on, you’ll see gothic cathedrals mixing with people in near-modern clothing. It’s all just part of the image I’m trying to create—a place that isn’t set in any particular time. In fact, it’s a little bit frozen in time, as you’ll find in later books.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.