#fantasy reference

Historical warcraft is not just limited to hand to hand combat. Just like today, most armies would have artillery, machines craft to fire objects at the enemy or a fortress. Here are some of the common artillery used in history before the creation of guns to use in your fantasy works.

Ballista

Ballistae are basically gigantic crossbows. These are probably familiar to most people, since they were used in Game of Thrones season 7 and 8. The ballistae were loaded with massive arrows and spears. However ballistae were not so flexible. Most of them would be fixed to their positions either on castle walls or in front of them. Ballistae were accurate, but not quite as strong as other artillery on the list.

Mangonel/Onagers

The Mangonel or Onagers consisted of a long throwing arm with bucket-like sling set on a wooden frame. It was fired by using levers and ropes and could fling boulders and any other projectile you can think of. Most were built with wheels in order to be more maneuverable

Trebuchet

The most powerful of the non-gunpowder using siege craft machines. The two main kinds of trebuchets ate traction and counterpoise. Traction was manned by people and counterpoise was fired by weights. Trebuchets launch the biggest projectiles, such as large boulders or heavy leaden projectiles. The largest trebuchet belonged to that long-legged dickhead Edward I. It was called War Wolf and the minute the besieged Scottish saw it they tried to surrender. Edward rejected their pleas and fired anyway, causing mass destruction.

Cannon

Fantastic!  Love me some good vampires, time travelers, fay lords, wizards recently recovered from magical trances, weird off-the-grid societies, and mysterious immortals who start slipping into old speech patterns whenever they are emotional or intoxicated!

But if you’re going to do it, DO IT. Commit. (I’m looking at you, Christopher Paolini). Do it right, and it’ll give your character so much more depth.

I - So WHEN exactly am I supposed to use these thee/thou/thy pronouns? 

Not all the time! You look at the person you’re talking to, think about what kind of relationship you have with them, and then decide: thou, or you? 

YOU is the polite, respectful option. It’s for acquaintances and social superiors. 

THOU is the causal, friendly option. It’s for family, close friends and social inferiors.

Which leaves so much room for drama! “Thou” is either the most intimate, kindest thing you can call someone - or the most insulting. Think Jane Austen / Victorian England: when you’re calling someone “Mary,” they’re either your sister, your wife, or your scullery maid. That’s what a “thou” pronoun is. “You” is just sort of polite and neutral, like saying “Miss Jones.” 

You can insult a teacher/parent/king/commander by using “thee/thou” pronouns. You can flatter a servant or an up-and-comer by using “you.” And switching from “you” to “thou” is emotional, like calling someone by their first name when you’ve only ever called them by their last name. (and switching back from “thou” to “you” can be cold as hell.) 

And oh my god, if you’re ever reading Shakespeare and need to understand a relationship, or a power dynamic or whatever, just check if they’re saying “thou” or “you.” That tells you *everything.* 

II - THOU vs THEE

Take a look at these two sentences:

She curses the wizard.

The wizard curses her.

You’re using a different word depending on whether this lady is doing the action herself (cursing), or having the action done to her (being cursed.) 

Thou/thee works exactly the same.

Thou curses* the wizard.

The wizard curses thee.

And this is a little tricky, because “you” just doesn’t have that subject/object distinction. You use the same word both times. 

You curse the wizard.

The wizard curses you. 

Just remember: Use “thou” wherever it would make sense to say “she,” and “thee” wherever it would make sense to say “her.” 

[*I’m gonna come back to the verb thing, i promise]

III - THY vs THINE

This part easy.

THY pairs with YOUR (Is this thy castle? // Is this your castle?) 

THINE pairs with YOURS (Is this castle thine? // Is this castle yours?) 

That’s it. 

IV - THOU + VERB = ?

‘kay. Sorry to get all grammar on you, but here’s a very mini verb conjugation table:

You sing

She sings

Thou sing’st

Notice that “thou” gets it’s own very special verb ending: -’st. (the same way that he/she/it gets -s). Here are some more examples:

Thou come’st (You come) 

Thou know’st (You know)

Thou see’st (You see) 

Thou find’st (You find)

Thou pray’st (You pray)

Thou talk’st (You talk)

Thou answer’st (You answer)

And HERE is a little cheat sheet of all the ‘thou’ verbs that are NOT usually spelled with that handy apostrophe: 

Thou dost (You do)

Thou didst (You did) 

Thou art (You are)

Thou wert (You were)

Thou wilt (You will)

Thou shalt (You shall)

Thou hast (You have)

Thou canst (You can)

Thou wouldst (You would)

Thou darest (You dare)

Thou liest (You lie)

And don’t forget that you can flip the order to ask a question. For example:

Dost thou? (Do you?) 

Art thou? (Are you?)

Wilt thou? (Will you? 

Didst thou? (Did you?) 

Canst thou? (Can you? 

V - BUT WHAT ABOUT THE -TH VERBS? 

-th / -eth is the slightly older ending for he/she/it nouns. (it eventually got replaced with -s).

If you wanted to, you could re-write my mini conjugation table as

You sing

She singeth

Thou sing’st

But that’s extra credit, as far as I’m concerned. 

VI - THAT’S QUITE A LOT TO REMEMBER

If you can remember the first stanza of “Greensleeves,” then you’ve got this. It’s a perfect perfect little reminder

Alas, my love, thou dost me wrong, To treat me so discourteously, For I have loved thee well and long, Delighting in thy company.

You’ve got thou, thee, and thy all used properly. 

You have ‘thou dost’ in there, which reminds you to stick a -st on whatever verb you’re using with ‘thou.’ 

And also, it’s a love song, but also kind of a diss track. THAT is a good reminder of WHEN you are supposed to used thee/thou pronouns. 

And that’s it! I recommend grabbing yourself a nice Reader x Character fic, and switching out all the “you” pronouns as practice.  ;)

[NOTE: King James Bible  + Quakers have entirely different way of using thee/thou pronouns. DO NOT USE AS REFERENCE.) 

[This post is direct translation from this post I wrote on my main blog @hojasdeoctubre. If you are interested in writeblr and can understand spanish you can go check it out if you want. Also, thanks to @cawolters for showing the original post some love and requesting this translation]

I know there are some softwares and web pages out there that can draw fantasy maps, but I’m an analogic person and pen and paper are easier for me, so I’m gonna show you guys how I make my maps. We’re going to make this map of a city I called Odenwood (name of a city from a fanfic I wrote when I was 13 featuring a mercenary and a noble girl who was the biggest Mary Sue that ever lived and whose name was slightly similar to mine, but she was defenitely not me).

Warning: This post is reeeaaallyy long. Maybe you think that I’m overexplaining. I’d rather go slow and make myself clear.

1. Materials

2 sheets of paper

Pencil

Rubber

Black sharpie

Black pen

2. Land

Well, I like cliffs and coast towns, so that’s what I’ll draw. If you guys prefer mountains and rivers that’s fine too.

We start by drawing the land:

I first used a pencil and, when I was happy with it, I used the black pen. Don’t go thinking that I can draw perfectly on the first try.

3. Main points

Now is when we use the second sheet of paper. We place it on top of the first one so we can see through. We don’t need to redraw the land on the second sheet of paper but we have to see the beach, the cliff...

And now we place the main infraestructure of our city. I have placed a merchant harbour on the East because in my imagination the world expands on that side and merchant vesels will come from there. However, I’ve placed a fishing harbour down in the Suth because the waters are calmer there and the fishing is better.

The castle will always be in the most hard to access part of the city cause that’s the most protected. The cliff is the perfect place for that.

4. Paths

Now we start tracing the paths between our three main points and another path that comes from the mainland. People in the castle will need fish, goods and travel to the rest of the continent.

Long paths wil have curves as people always take the way of least resistance. Steeps, rocks and stuff like that will make them have to go around and create curves.

Then we draw shortcuts. People walking down the upper road (from now on we’ll call it the King’s Road, which is what people from the city will call it if the one living in the castle is a king) will want to get to the fishing harbour (Fish Street) and the merchant harbour (Merchant Street) [Note: As you can see, naming streets is a no-brainer]. They are not going to get to the castle every time they want to get there. That’s why we draw secondary paths (purple).

Then we draw paths that lead to other zones, like forests (that we still don’t have) and farming (blue).

And last, shortcuts between those cause humans are just lazy (green).

And now we have a web of streets and paths that will allow us to work.

Other common names for streets are: (this are common names for streets in Spain)

Main Street

New Street

North/South/East/West Street

Great Street

Sun Street (streets called Sun are usually the ones that go from East to West, for obvious reasons)

Church Street

School Street

(Name of the job: Smith / Librarian / Tanner...) Street

High / Low Street

We are not exactly original when it comes to naming streets.

Now we mark spots where several streets meet. Those are going to be plazas and rotundas:

5. Start Drawing

We go back to the first piece of paper and draw our castle and harbours:

(you can see the web of paths underneath)

6. Walls and neighbourhoods

Having the piece of paper with the streets underneath is going to be useful now because we are going to draw the walls of the city. We need to see where the paths are so we can place the gates:

Once we have the limits of the city, we can start drawing blocks (neighbourhoods) respecting the streets and leaving blank spaces for the plazas.

If you see, the gate of King’s Road is bigger. That will be the main gate, used by dignataries coming from the continent. We’ll call it King’s Gate, although probably the citizens will call it “the big / great gate” when they are not being formal.

The other gates will have names too: West Gate, South Gate, Merchant’s Gate and Coast Gate. I guess...

7. Small streets

Now that have our neighbourhoods (they will probalby be organized by jobs, although most services like inns, bars and shops will be near King’s Road), we break them into smaller blocks:

And after that, when we see blocks that are still too big, we can draw patios and yards, or small alleys:

(ignore those roofs that are already drawn. I got carried away and forgot to take a picture).

We could leave it like that, if you like the white aesthetic. I wanted to show you how it looks with all the roofs done so I’ve drawn the direction of the waters. I’ve also added monuments in the plazas.

8. Growth

Our city is finished. We coul leave it like that. However, if our city is ancient and thriving, and the peace has lasted long enough, it’s possible that more people have wanted to move to it. The problem was that the city was alreaady full or living inside the walls was too expensive. In those cases, it is possible the new neighbourhoods start to form. You don’t need the protection of the walls during peace times.

These new neighbourhoods wil start around the gates and will expand along the path. Only after a really long time will they start to expand far from the main paths.

We draw those new neighbourhoods and a forest and it’s done. Here you have the beautiful city of Odenwood.

A collection of research links and cool websites I’ve found helpful for medieval fantasy worlds i.e. no electricity, horse and buggy, etc. 

I try to update this post but there will probably be old versions floating around Tumblr. Google Drive is the best place to find the most up-to-date version. 

If you find a cool link you think would help others, just message me!  

Need a name for something/someone? 

Fantasy Name Generator (this website has an awesome repertoire of basically any kind of name you could want - places, real language names, objects, and more!)

Another Fantasy Name Generator

Yet Another Fantasy Name Generator

Existing Fantasy Names (this one is a master-list rather than a generator, but it’s detailed and includes characters, towns and villages) 

Another Resource for Existing Fantasy Names (also includes references for specific fandoms/series) 

Can’t figure out how to describe that thing in a way that makes sense for the time period/cultural background? 

Castles (everything you need to know for that big, beautiful palace) 

Castle Gardening (this has detailed descriptions of classic maintenance of gardens but also gives a good idea of what engineering techniques were available before modern technology) 

Medieval Architecture (the website is also a great resource for any historical culture questions you have)

Japanese Gardens (helpful for constructing/visualizing those beautiful magical japanese gardens in K-dramas - hint: the red bridge is called a guzei bridge! ;)

Medieval Technology (an outline of available technology from agriculture to forgery) 

Another Technology Resource

And Yet Another Technology Resource

One More Medieval Technology Resource

Maps (this is meant to be a drawing reference but it can help you figure out the lay of the land for journeys and descriptions, from how a city or building is organized to what entire continents in your world look like)

Alternatively, A Fantasy Map Generator (for constructing kingdoms and continents)

A List of Ancient Cultures (each culture has more specific reference pages for technology, traditions, and more) 

More History and Ancient Culture Info (well-organized and well-described)

British Nobility (scroll to the bottom for resources on manners, rank, politics and more)

Medieval Clothing by Character Background (how to dress characters based on rank, class, etc. - also a good resource for lots of other things) 

What’s that thing/action/place called? 

Armour and Clothing (this website is actually a store but the sections are well organized and all items are labelled with their real names)

Royal Titles From Around the World (and throughout history - for all your nobility-naming needs) 

Weapons (a really good resource on basically any kind of weapon from any period of history you could think of) 

Another Medieval Weapons Resource

Fantasy Weapons (this one is also a store but is good for weapon inspiration)

More Fantasy Weapons (also has fandom/series’ specific weapons and weapons organized by type - melee, siege, ranged, etc.) 

Sword-fighting terms (for describing that fast-paced, action-sequence in gloriously accurate detail) 

Medieval Buildings Based on Usage

Other useful links 

Choosing a Weapon for Your Character

World-building (questions to answer to help develop your world)

Fantasy Writing Do’s and Don’ts

High Fantasy Tips

Reference Pinterest for my own book (my world is fantasy inspired by real historical cultures like Arabian/Korean/Japanese/Egyptian and African) 

Please feel free to let me know if anything should be added, what sort of castle research you're looking for, etc.

In this post—under the cut—I’m covering the main exterior structures of a castle, with some minor interior inclusions, such as a dungeon, etc. 

I have been offline for a little while visiting family and have not posted anything so today I am back into it. Here is another one from the series of everyday objects, items, and trinkets of a fantasy world I’ve been doing.

Work and Mining Tools

Blacksmith Tools

Perfumes & Colognes

Adventure/Dungeon tools and gear

Merchant tools and gear

Mess Kit and Waterskin

Navigation Tools

Lamp, Light, and Torch

Travel Backpacks

Dice Game Cups and Dice

Monster, Wyvern, and/or Dragon Eggs

Monster Tooth Trophy Necklaces

Luck, Rune, and/or Ward Carvings

Luck, Rune, and/or Ward Stones

Magical and Herbal Potions

Gold and Money Pouches