paulandnocompany asked

What are the schools like? If there are things that we would know as schools I mean.

The education system the Empire has built needs a lot of work. One can excel if they posess a particular learning style and can adapt to the strict program that rewards physical strength and those who meet their standards for “intelligence”… Eden, having first gained control in an austere part of the world, is in general fixated on survival skills even in the modern age. It shows in everything from academia to fashion, focusing on what is necessary before paying attention to baubles like creativity and what may be aesthetically pleasing. The government tries to spare any expense but is slowly becoming more lenient and willing to give money to music and art programs in the hopes that these programs will appeal to the countries they aim to shake hands with, and to create new forms of theocratic propaganda.

So. If you excel at math and critical reading and public speaking and strategising and sports, you will probably do well. There aren’t toooo many post-secondary options yet aside from the three major law schools, a school for music, two schools of medicine and science, and smaller vocational schools for everyday careers. And of course military school, for whatever branch you hope to serve.

The quality of education really depends on the location of the school. Obviously schools in richer areas will have more qualified staff and better resources than those in the poorer districts, however, the richer districts have a more biased teaching style since they often employ members/former members of the Council, working doctors, sometimes even the angels or military personnel. The purpose of this is to implant successful Empire puppets to have a model for students to work towards, all the while praising faith in the Council to be of the utmost importance for success. People in poorer districts may not have access to these people nor their agenda, which I guess is good in some ways, but they are still aware of what they’re missing out on and those “models of excellence” are strived towards nonetheless even if they’re not being spoon-fed the same information.

There’s little help for people with disabilities/learning disabilities. There’s a very very crude form of sign language which few people choose to learn. Dyslexia is not considered a disability and is looked at as a stupid personal failing/lack of effort. ADD is not over-diagnosed but is over-medicated in the richer districts. Access to medication is sparse in the poorer ones. Eden may be very modern in some ways but for medicine, they are very quick to judge and deal with it in either too simple or too dramatic ways.

So Griffin did very well in school despite sucking at sports, because he was a very quick learner, conformed to expectations, and had no evident learning disabilities. Whereas Dragon sucked amazingly at most things besides his Humanities classes, despite extremely poor reading and writing comprehension (he did better with notetaking in lectures etc., learning by listening) and music, even though he can’t/couldn’t read sheet music.

paulandnocompany asked

You mentioned in answering an earlier question of mine that there was still a lot of unexplored territory. What kind of cool stuff is out there?

Oh, all sorts. There’s a lot of rocky, mountainous terrain that no one has been too motivated to check out. And lots of eerie, flat plains still home to roving beasts that’d appear prehistoric to us. The oceans are especially uncharted, most of the trading relationships between countries are due to them being in close proximity. Lucky for Aterhaelm, it’s an island country so even if it wasn’t rendered Switzerland, there wouldn’t be too big an inclination to re-invade. The armada’s ships can travel short distances over water but were made specifically to handle the polar north, so there’s that.

The southern hemisphere is especially unknown, the south pole has never been explored. Vorlacha is I think the most populated southern country, its terrain very lush and mountainous combined with flat, stretching beaches of black volcanic sand. There are island areas beneath Mhet Va that no one’s claimed yet, probably similar to Mhet Va’s rolling frosted hills and trees that grow right down to the shore, with odd clearings of perfectly clear pools… similar in some ways to Aterhaelm, but Aterhaelm is way flatter and Mhet Va harbours some of the biggest dormant volcanoes and has more erratic weather/seasons… there are places of constant rain, and really desolate, arid areas. Belsene has an island off of it that’s almost all sand and rock, yet somehow has extremely tall trees shooting up from cracks in the earth, and no one has settled there after first documenting its existence due to the weird landscape.

There are tonnes of old drawings and monuments, like I said before, scattered around the world and even in Eden’s empire there are plenty of tundras unexplored and forests left alone out of disinterest. They want to expand to where people already live, and don’t want to waste resources trying to populate mysterious outlands… not yet anyway, but the foreign affairs office is coming up with schemes to make this happen. Even planning schemes to revisit the few lasting remains of Empyreus Corvaxis, but they’re not saying why.

paulandnocompany asked

34 for Dragon!

Ah jeeze, so many things, everything, he is comprised entirely of being embarrassing and embarrassed. Some big ones are… Comments about his appearance even if/especially if they’re neutral or positive, references to romance/intimacy, commenting on his misuse or mispronunciation of a word, his perpetual self-reminding of stupid shit he’s done/being reminded by other people, uh he’s a total klutz so that’s embarrassing… yeah. He’s like a cat, he’ll do all kinds of dumb stuff and be aware of it but as soon as someone points it out he frantically tries to recover, deny it, and eventually spiral into verbose self-deprecation. And then get embarrassed that he said anything.

Very cool guy we have here.

paulandnocompany asked

If you've thought much about the future of your world after your characters have died, are they remembered/have they had a significant impact overall? That sort of stuff. For any of your worlds too I guess! I just wanna know about everything.

WELL NOW, WW (and maybe Sivern and others, idk, those are pretty isolated at the moment) continues long after various main/”important” characters have died, so lots of my thoughts are actually canon haha. It’s a little sad to think about and potentially spoileriffic so I don’t usually expand much on it in public. But yeah, there are some people who remain influential long after their passing. One or two in particular are considered very important and are revered for some time, but whether they’re actually important is up to each individual… some aren’t so keen on these folks.

Our ideas hopefully outlive us as positive and negative examples to learn from, and can be easily tainted and forgotten depending on who’s around to document them. My characters, although important in the context of the story’s spotlights, are really just “normal” people for the most part, not revolutionaries or martyrs (well…… haha) [for any cause greater than themselves] and the people who remember them best are the ones who were close to them. Few manage to touch the world entire simply because they are/were dealing with smaller-scale issues that may have felt immeasurable at the time. Making comments on the world, or what they’re aware of, while struggling in small pockets. Or something. Their battles are significant to them but small to the universe, basically, and some may be revered for their deeds in those times, but maybe to only one or two people. Important, but small.

But yes, some do survive as different kinds of inspirations. And some that people thought were dead and were previously used as inspiration turn out not to be. This goes for a few worlds! I’m just not sure how much I should say about it.

Since this is less spoilery and more fun conjecture… I know Ciaran & Bathory (of Sivern) made a significant impact on their country(ies) for uhhh very different reasons! Ciaran was one of the first vocal enviromentalists/biologists and thankfully for him, he was old enough during their age of enlightenment to have made a difference in how people relate to nature. Sivern the country is in a fitful puberty, very eager to grow up and modernise and in doing so they forgot much of the reverence older generations had for the land. Ciaran sought to compromise. Bathory just sought to destroy ha ha ha, well, sort of… she made many significant impacts as both a “good” and “bad” figure. She also reminded people of how things used to be, for better or for worse, and during her regime she reinstated some old civil rights laws, which was decent of her. She was crazy but she was smart and just because she had flaws does not mean there wasn’t any truth to what she was aiming for! Hoho! Ulysses, too, remains an important figure, though his lasting effect was much quieter.