...Yep.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri, commonly known as the chameleon semi-slug, and an unidentified species of semi-slug from the genus Sheldonia

The term "semi-slug" is used to describe an intermediate stage of evolution that occurs as snails evolve into slugs. Nearly 1,000 different species of semi-slug are currently known to exist, and these bizarre little creatures can be found on at least four continents.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri and Varadia amboliensis

Each species of semi-slug is technically still classified as a snail, but its shell is noticeably reduced, becoming smaller and more internalized as the species evolves. A semi-slug officially becomes a regular-slug once its shell is no longer visible at all.

As this article explains:

If life were simple, there would be snails and slugs. Snails carry their homes on their backs; slugs are naked and embarrassed. But life isn’t simple, so of course there’s secret option #3 – the semi-slug, a bizarre creature that sits exactly between the snail and the slug.

Above: genus Satiella and genus Euaustenia

This article describes the distinction between a snail, a slug, and a semi-slug:

In contrast to snails, which have an external shell large enough to accommodate the body, or slugs, in which the shell is completely internal or absent, semi-slugs have an external shell, but the shell is too small to accommodate the animal’s entire body.

Above: Megaustenia siamensis

The evolutionary process that causes the shell to recede is known as limacization, and it's especially common in moist, low-calcium environments where a snail's shell may be more of a burden than a benefit:

Terrestrial slugs are not a monophyletic group, but a case of convergent evolution in which the slug form evolved from different lineages of land snails that gradually lost their shell through a process called limacization. Limacization resulted in adaptive radiation in land snail lineages, as slugs became adapted to diverse moist and protected spaces, such as crevices in rocks and wood debris. The loss of the shell also allowed for more movement and less calcium dependence, making slugs more successful as pests.

Above: Gaeotis nigrolineata, also known as the Puerto Rican semi-slug, has a neon green shell that is almost completely internalized, but the shell is clearly visible through the semi-slug's translucent body

Some semi-slugs have shells that are still opaque and largely visible, with a patch of flesh covering only the outer edges of the shell, while others have shells that are more significantly reduced, transparent, and/or concealed.

Above: Ibycus rachelae, commonly known as the green-shelled semi-slug, and a species of semi-slug from the genus Durgella

This topic was mentioned in my previous post about Ibycus rachelae, but I wanted to write a more detailed post about semi-slugs, because they're just so fascinating and weird.

Above: a black-and-white semi-slug from subfamily Sheldoniinae

Above: Fastosarion brazieri again, but this one is especially spiky for some reason

Sources & More Info:

Australian Geographic: Meet the Semi-Slug, a Snail without a Home

Carnegie Museum of Natural History: What's So Good about Being a Slug?

Frontiers: Terrestrial Slugs in Neotropical Agroecosystems (PDF)

iNaturalist: Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, & 12

The Shell-Makers: Introducing Molluscs: On Becoming Sluggish

Land Snails and Slugs of Sabah and Labuan, Malaysia: Semi-Slugs

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

Actually, to expand on my own tags, there's probably some kind of metaphor there, because the distinguishing feature between different sleeping options in those longhouses would be level of privacy, which directly maps onto how much you're contributing to OTHER peoples' warmth.

Like the lowest-tier sleeping option is just out in the hall itself, where your body heat is going into the... idk, "communal pool". If there's a fire going, you're implicitly expected to be keeping an eye on that, and if the household has decided to let the animals in for the night you have to deal with a sheep or something getting up in your business.

If you have a bedcloset or other enclosed space IN the hall, you benefit from the communal heat but also more of your own body heat is retained in your sleeping area, staying with you rather than going out into the general "pool".

Bowls like this were once produced as magical amulets in parts of Mesopotamia (in what is now Iraq and Iran). As this article explains:

Thousands of similar incantation bowls, also known as magic bowls, were produced in the area of today’s Iraq between the fifth and eighth centuries. Clients used incantation bowls to protect and heal, to frighten off demons and evil spirits, and, in a few cases, to enlist demons to help secure love or money, or to harm adversaries. In addition to the magical texts, scribes sketched drawings of bound and chained demons – pictorial representations of the spells’ desired effect – on the bottom of about a quarter of the bowls.

Above: this incantation bowl was commissioned by someone named Gia Bar Imma nearly 1,700 years ago, and it features a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic inscription along with a drawing of two demons wrapped in chains

These bowls were created and used by people of many different faiths. They were typically inscribed with Aramaic text, which appeared in one of three different dialects: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Mandaic, or Syriac. Incantations that were written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic are, of course, attributed to Jewish communities, but the ones in Mandaic are associated with Gnostic Mandaeans, and the ones in Syriac are typically associated with Christians, Manichaeans, or followers of the ancient Babylonian religion.

Above: this bowl is lined with an Aramaic inscription that invokes "the powers of Enoch, the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac" to protect the home of a man named Pabak bar Kufithai

There are a few incantation bowls that feature Arabic or Persian inscriptions instead, and those examples tend to have Islamic or Zoroastrian motifs. Some bowls are simply inscribed with gibberish:

The largest number of known incantation bowls are written not in Syriac, but in Jewish Aramaic by Jewish scribes (though not necessarily for Jewish clients). Mandaean bowls are the second most numerous, only then followed by bowls in Syriac. A handful of bowls in Arabic and Persian are also known, in addition to bowls – perhaps 10 per cent – that can only be called ancient forgeries. These latter are filled with scribbles that mimic cursive writing but are not, in fact, in any language at all; perhaps they were made by illiterate scribes preying on equally illiterate clients.

Above: this bowl features a Mandaic inscription

Incantation bowls provide valuable information about Jewish history, in particular:

The prevalence of Jewish Aramaic bowls are what makes these artefacts so important for Jewish history. They provide the sole piece of epigraphic evidence documenting Jewish language and religion at one of the most important times in Jewish history: the period of the composition of the Babylonian Talmud.

Above: researchers believe that the figure in the center of this bowl is a representation of the demon Lilith, whose likeness and/or name appears on many other incantation bowls

This article also notes:

Generally speaking, the incantations could do a number of things: healing fevers and diseases; guarding from sudden death, injustice, and treachery; and exorcising evil spirits. Similar metal talismans were made around the same time and filled largely the same role. Where they differ is that in many instances the bowls called upon deities or angels to ensnare demons. It is believed from drawings on incantation bowls depicting ensnared creatures that the reason that so many have been found upside-down is that they were intended to be traps for careless or curious demons.

Above: this bowl has a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic inscription that includes the phrase "this cat is bound," and it features a drawing of a demonic cat being restrained

More than 2,000 of these bowls are known to exist, but only a fraction of them have been thoroughly studied.

Above: an illustration from another bowl

Above: two incantation bowls with Jewish Babylonian Aramaic text and drawings that show demons being restrained

Sources & More Info:

Aeon: Magic Bowls of Antiquity

Penn Today: The Stories the Bowls Tell

Bowers Museum: To Catch a Demon: Mesopotamian Incantation Bowls

Jewish Quarterly Review: Magic Formulae and Women's History: Authorship, Agency, and Gender in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

My Jewish Learning: Magic Bowls

The Librarians: Who Wrote these Ancient Jewish Incantation Bowls?

Penn Museum: Hebrew Bowl

Decorated initial D with interlace and a mermaid, from Psalm 14 (folio 13v) 8th century. The Psalter of Charlemagne (shelfmark BN lat. 13159) She pulls her hair, and has a very long body that ends in two tails.

I found her when I was looking for the book La sirène dans la pensée et dans l'art de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge by Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, which I’m still looking for. She’s interesting, as she’s a very early mermaid in a religious manuscript. Another early example of a two-tailed mermaid in a religious manuscript is from the Book of Kells:

How to spring-load your bow!

Archery x flower arranging

This was actually really fun!

Anyway, don’t forget I’m still raising money to test a bunch of things in a suit of armour: