#weathermaker

what is valuable in the desert that letha and askar are disputing over?

my first instinct jumps to some sort of scarce geological resource- the easiest answer would be something like oil or natural gas and while i'm a fan of anachronistic technology (more on that later) that's not quite the direction i want that to go. so my answer is a variety of mineral deposits! i think it would make sense for there to be a lot of cave pockets with gemstones of various rarities. i think this will probably be a mix of real stones, like emeralds and such, and fantasy rocks that glow because that's cool and i want them. this would also lead to a very strong cultural connection of jewelry making with the indigenous people of the area, who tend to be seasonally nomadic as the waste has several different climate zones. much to ponder here.

what kinds of musical instruments are popular in all three kingdoms?

this is something i've been doing a lot of thinking about lately, and one of the things that actually prompted me to get talking about all this again! i think for each, there is still a solid mix between real world instruments and "pretty much this real thing but not" because i am like that.

letheli traditional music i feel would be very plucked-string and wind heavy, so i'm imagining things like balalaikas, mandolins, sitars, oud, and various types of flute/recorder style instruments. i imagine their percussion is mostly wood-based so things like a marimba would also not be out of the question here. i've always imagined the music (and dance) culture of letha to be very greek-influenced with traditional dance looking a lot like solo syrtaki in a basin of water or sand to kick up debris.

askar is a place that values efficiency, given that they tend to deal with a lot of the harsher climates on the continent and i feel this would translate to their music and instrumentation as well. this is the kinda place where bowed string instruments like the nyckelharpa would come from. they're probably pretty big on the idea of one or two instruments that can do everything, so things like bagpipes and hurdy gurdies with their droning features would also be fairly common. as far as percussion and winds go here, winds would be fairly simple, most likely things like ocarinas made of bone and clay, and handheld stretched hide drums like bodhrans that can keep and embellish a tempo all by themselves.

as for epral, these folks love pageantry. this is a place where religious ceremonies involve a great deal of musical aspects, so first and foremost this is a place that just fucking loves throat singing. percussion ensembles using various materials but especially metals would be fairly common, especially in monastery or noble household settings. each monastery has an courtyard open to the sky (very important) with a gamelan setup where a lot of musical devotions take place. smaller places would likely have gamelans that only require four to six people (plus singers) to man, but i imagine the temple where the weathermaker herself lives has an absolutely fuckoff huge one. something ridiculous like 30 people all clanging their funky metal drums and chimes at once. these people also fucking LOVE windchimes. i can also see taiko ensembles being something of a thing here, though less common. i think this would also be a place where jaw harps and simple stringed instruments like an erhu would be popular. i've been listening to a lot of otyken lately and imagine the track aidym as a pinnacle of non-gamelan-centric eprallan music

what brought together askar's melting pot?

i think there are a lot of factors to this! the nation's history of imperialism absolutely contributes to this, but i think there is also just the factor that geographically, askar contains several very distinct climates and biomes, and before the unification of all these into one cohesive country (for the lack of a better way of putting this) there were simply pockets of completely different cultures that were mostly united by dialects of the same language and that's it. the indigenous people of the disputed lethaskan wastes, for instance, are culturally completely separate from the more agricultural settlements in the southeast, which in turn are once again distinct from the people that live in the mountains around the capital tesketri. i do think that this kind of variety does offer a great deal of opportunity for immigration- it is fairly simple for letheli people who are tired of the heat to move to the mountains and integrate into society there, for instance. historically speaking, there would also be a long-standing practice of migration from one area of the country to another, as the different environments present their own unique challenges and ways of life.

what is the "fuel" that powers magic users' abilities?

it is the weather! i had this whole idea of there being a way, in some form of the intersection between science and magic, to capture the essence of whatever's going on in the air. this kind of looks like people using lightning rods to channel the electricity of a thunder storm into a vessel (i've just been operating on the term that everything goes in a glass bottle for the aesthetic), it can look like rain collection barrels, it can look like tornado chasers bottling the wind and dust, etc. now this is something that anyone can do with the right equipment, training, and some courage, and plenty of people that aren't magic users themselves work to supply the users because there is very good money in acquiring rarer and more dangerous types of weather (tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, etc.) the original idea was that a magic user would be able to channel only one type of weather and turn it into only one kind of output power, though there of course infinite ways to utilize those. i am not too married to that idea because while it's very straightforward it a. is a complete ripoff of how mistborn works and b. weather doesn't work like that. i will likely adapt this and make it into situations where certain people are sensitive to specific climates and can utilize everything that comes with that, but someone that can channel things like heatwaves, sandstorms, and tornadoes wouldn't be able to work with snow. the original plan also involved the once again very mistborn-flavored method of ingesting whatever is in the bottle, but i don't think that makes a lot of sense either, i just thought it would be funny if someone ate a hurricane. there is mostly an absorption process involved in channeling that just requires some kind of skin contact, so there would still be plenty of people that do "drink" whatever they use. it's also important to note that if you have someone that can channel thunder and they are currently outside in a thunderstorm, they can tap into that and essentially have an endless reservoir as long as the storm consists, but it would be incredibly physically taxing. this also means that there are absolutely people that think they can't channel anything when they actually just live in entirely the wrong kind of climate. someone that can channel hurricanes isn't going to know that if they live in a snowy mountain range, etc. this is absolutely a plot point.

and lastly, all of those technology questions!

like i said earlier, i am a huge fan of chronological anachronism in fantasy settings, so this is a really fun one for me.

steel, for instance, is absolutely a thing. i figure it most likely originated in epral but the metallurgical practices and techniques involved in creating it are global. i could also see this originating in the lethaskan wastes, so there is the potential for some convergent evolution there, and multiple original styles of steel tempering (see for instance european bladesmithing vs the process of folding and tempering a katana)

the same thing goes for the printing press, although this one is definitely a single origin and i am going to decide right now that it was a letheli invention- the climate in letha is perfect for growing papyrus and a lot of different vibrantly colored plants to make ink, so i imagine paper as well as ways to treat and process it would also be mostly a letheli-originated thing. askar would probably be the closest relative to this, as their very meat-heavy culture would also pretty easily lead to the invention of vellum, and i imagine they also have some very fun red berry dyes for ink purposes. epral is more about word of mouth and passing information through storytelling, music, and dance, and anything important enough to be written was written in stone. they got books now tho.