Lore and Progress

As the sun presents an ever looming Countdown to dusk, the crews preparations for the descent grow more and more obvious. White sails replaced with a deep mottled blue, glistening pearlescent ropes Rigged from bow to stern, each ready to conduct condensed moonlight to where it's most needed and Bright copper rods installed on the wings, in lore and practice it's said they distract the Whysps, and no ship wants to be the one to test it.

Write the smallest adventure you can. 3–5 sentences. Max two commas per sentence.

Include:

Hero: a bard who learned music from wolves Item: a cracked silver flute Problem: every wrong note becomes a tiny firework

Choose a fate: A. Bad ending B. Beautiful ending C. Stupid ending D. One sentence does not belong

The silver Flute whistles in discordant tune, the mournful air matching its shattered form.

The bard playing it dances as fireworks erupt at each moment of dissonance, providing a staccato punctuation to the music, kept artfully in time.

The mournful dissonance builds and builds, an evergrowing crescendo that seems to morph and change to the howling of wolves.

A ghosting chase, the stalking of prey, a final victory.

Write the smallest adventure you can. 3–5 sentences. Max two commas per sentence.

Include:

Hero: a sleepy knight who moves mountains in dreams Item: a blanket stitched with tiny roads Problem: you have to to climb the tallest mountain or the knight wont wake up

Choose a fate: A. Bad ending B. Beautiful ending C. Stupid ending D. One sentence does not belong

I stitch tiny roads into my blanket, a map of where I've been.

I walk to the mountain, ever off in the distance.

The sleeping Knight moves mountains in dreams, trapped till my goal is reached.

I walk to the mountain.

Write the smallest adventure you can. 3–5 sentences. Max two commas per sentence.

Include:

Hero: a dreamer who wakes up in maps Item: a moth with a city on its wings Problem: your trying to find another flying city for the moth to mate with

Choose a fate: A. Bad ending B. Beautiful ending C. Stupid ending D. One sentence does not belong

There is a dream, of an unchanging landscape in cartographical form.

Well, almost unchanging.

There is a city upon wings, fluttering around, drawn to the brightest areas of the map.

But it is alone.

Write the smallest adventure you can. 3–5 sentences. Max two commas per sentence.

Include:

Hero: a ghost accountant Item: a lantern full of moths Problem: a bridge guarded by a polite monster

Choose a fate: A. Bad ending B. Beautiful ending C. Stupid ending D. One sentence does not belong

"Apologies, good sir, may I have your name for the book?"

The traveller jumps as the light from the moth-filled lanter on the arch above casts a fluttering glow through the bridge-keepers ethereal hand.

"Nothing to be worried about, just need it for for the records, the toll's three coppers mind, but I'm sure that's no bother to one such as yourself."

There are! Not many, but public facing bodies in Wales have started doing it.

So, for the most part, it is possible to just use any old font designed for English. Welsh has three main differences that pose a greater or lesser amount of difficulty for an English font, to whit:

We do not use the letters K, Q, V, X, or Z. (We didn't used to have J either but we nicked it and we're not giving it back.) Not a problem, those are just extraneous.

We have extra letters, all of which once upon a time had their own glyphs; but, the printing press meant these were lost. Instead, they're now what we call diglyphs - a letter seemingly represented by two letters. These are Ch, Dd, Ff, Ng, Ll, Ph, Rh, and Th. Not a serious problem, but word processors do count these as separate letters rather than diglyphs, so context-sensitive.

The to bach - in English, the circumflex. When Welsh needs to differentiate between long and short vowels, it uses a circumflex over the long ones: â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, and ŷ. This one is frequently a problem, particularly for ŵ and ŷ.

So, for the most part, you can get by with standard fonts, with the caveat that the circumflexes can be tricky. But:

In 2017, the Welsh Government commissioned a Welsh-specific set of typefaces, and the result was a trio of fonts called Cymru Wales Sans, Cymru Wales Serif, and Cymru Wales Transport. They are super cool and they turn the diglyphs into single letters, among other things. Transport for Wales use the latter in all official signage now:

And then as of 2023, Museum of Wales created a font called Amgueddfa Headline Cymru for its new logo that's Welsh only and uses the diglyphs properly:

I was in the Waterfront Museum today, and they've put up some official Nadolig Llawen signs for Christmas. Those are in the same font, and the Ll in llawen has been diglyphed up into a single stacked letter for it too.

"I am the legendary sword of … of …"

"You forgot?"

"I've spent half a millennium stuck in an anvil in a cave."

"Want to come with me while you think?"

"Sure! If you think you- Oh! Nice. Where are we going?"

"I am the legendary commander of Potentate Elinor's Army, Alstor, surrender now and this will end peacefully"

"And I am the Legnedary Sword of Acumen, tremble before my might"

"You sure about that one?"

"No? Didn't you say that was the name of the Long lost empire in this region?"

"Ooh, Acuweth, we really need to work on your entrances"

"Do you think they'll let us retry it?"

"Maybe, but Elinor's going to be insufferable after this"

"I am so sorry, maybe she won't hear of this"

It was a warm summers day, probably, as a sentient pebble I'm not the best gauge of temperature. There was sunlight and I didn't see any frost so I'm probably right. Probably. Anyway whilst I may be your narrator the star of the show is my owner, Sumeni, being as I'm what you'd call a pet rock and not the most interesting of pet rocks at that. I'm grey, shocker I know. Right, the summers day, I've totally practised this narrator thing.