#Bookvember 15 Another all-time favourite is The Once And Future King. I could have chosen it for multiple categories! I've always loved the Matter of Britain and this is one of the absolute best versions. It really goes deep into the heads of Arthur and Lancelot. (1/3)

#Bookvember 14 This one has the dubious distinction of not being recommended! But I honour it for being in the right place when I needed it. I'm white, cis, straight, male. Being represented was never a problem for me. So instead I'm choosing something that helped me see myself. (1/2)

#Bookvember 13 Lots! Most of the ones I've already mentioned. I'm going to go for Les Miserables by Victor Hugo for its portrayal of the downtrodden in 19th century France. Especial mention to Val jeans of course, but also poor M. Malbeuf, the first to die on the barricade. He just wanted books!

#Bookvember 12 My unrepresented demographic is 'books in translation.' Then I discovered I haven't read many! I'm going for The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, it deconstructs detective fiction, has gorgeous prose and a fantastic setting!

#Bookvember 11 I didn't know that Agatha Christie may have been neurodiverse! It's hard attributing these things to historical figures, but there seems to be enough evidence that it's probable! As for a book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for completely spoilery reasons. If you know, you know. :)

#Bookvember 10 I love Kazuo Ishiguro for his beautiful books on memory and love. Clara and the Sun was beautiful and profound. The Remains of the Day was a masterclass in telling a story in subtext. Never Let Me Go was poignant and heartbreaking. I need to read more!

#Bookvember 9 Gideon the Ninth and sequels by Tamsyn Muir. It juxtaposes gothic and meme very well, and has lots of fun queer characters (and later, indigenous rep! Yay!) The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, also does something spoilery and extremely clever, I was floored.

#Bookvember 8 Lots and lots, but I'll pick the Didius Falco books by Lindsey Davis. Detective novels with a healthy amount of romance set in ancient Rome. There are LOTS of awesome and distinct female characters. Helena Justina, the secondary protagonist, is the best of course. (1/2)

#Bookvember 7 Absolutely unmonitored. I think my parents felt that if I wanted to read something, I was probably ready for it. So I read Jean Plaidy historical romances, for the history, and ignored the romance, and they happily bought them for me. :p

#Bookvember Day 6 I got into fantasy at a young age, so my iconic artists have always been the great Tolkien artists - John Howe, Alan Lee, Ted Nasmith. For me, John Howe's Lord of the Rings cover has always been the definitive cover, though I never had a copy. Fortunately my wife does!

#Bookvember Day 5 I had to wait on this one to visit my parents. This book was THE poetry book for me and my sisters. Huge, well loved illustrated hardback. Lovely mix of great poems. I liked the limericks, epigrams and other funny ones the most.

#Bookvember 4 Greek/Norse/Arthurian mythology, and English history. I even wrote a book about the kings of England in primary school (the ones I found interesting, anyway.) There was a series of Ladybird books about different kings that I really liked. There were cool Usborne books for the legends.

#Bookvember 3 Was going to say Diana Wynne Jones but @hiriadunning.bsky.social did so I'm going with C. S. Lewis. I love how he blends different genres in the Narnia books - kids' adventure stories, mythology, anthropomorphic animals, chivalric romance. (The Christianity went over my head as a kid!)

#Bookvember 2 My first fandom. There's other things that are still with me more, but this is the one that taught me the love of hunting through bookstores to find all the books in the series. It taught me to love and live in a fantasy world. I remember trying to map all the island. (1/2)

Kia ora everyone! I'm James, a children's librarian in Aotearoa New Zealand. I have three things that made me the reader I am today. Firstly, my mother, who always read to me and took me to the library. We used to go to a music class on a hill, then cross the road to get books. (1/x)

Kiwis! And any interested not-Kiwis: if you pitch in to help Dr Siouxsie at the NZ$30 level "Ornithinimicrobium" (lol what even is that) then you can score my award-winning computer game which was made during the first lockdown in NZ 💖🐇😷

#Septopolis 30! Thanks Khonri for organising this! In retrospect I should have done just one city (Hubris). I got to do a lot of creating for it and I think next month will be taking what I wrote, expanding upon it, and writing it up properly. It got a bit rough when I got busy but I got there!

#Septopolis 28 I drew a map of Hubris!

For both Fiumenze and Hubris and everything else, it's @hiriadunning.bsky.social! Fiumenze was created over dinner at a nice restaurant with them. Hubris was the result of Hiria showing me Jimmy Barnes in Big Enough. All brainstorming has bounced off them, plus general support and encouragement.

#Septopolis 27 Fiumenze: It's finally time for Zaffiro 'il Magnifico' de' Fisici, the dragon prince of Fiumenze. Zaffiro is a large dragon with blue scales and showy jewelry. In his human form, he's a handsome older man with olive skin and short salt-and-pepper hair and beard, richly attired. (1/8)

#Septopolis 26 So much is going on 'right now' in Fiumenze over multiple TTRPGs played there + ideas for more games in my head + ideas players have that they want to run with. The biggest thing is that Zaffiro 'il Magnifico', the dragon who's the de-facto prince of the city, wants to expand. (1/6)

#Septopolis 25 I think I've talked about a few festivals already. One I haven't mentioned is the Vendemmia in mid-autumn. It's the festival of the wine harvest. The exact date changes year to year. In the countryside, people gather to pick the grapes (1/3)

#Septopolis 24 Fiumenze's rival is Ascia, a nearby city to the south. They've been rivals over trade and control of the local area. No one ever forgets that the outnumbered Ascians famously defeated the Fiumentines in the Battle of Berardenga two hundred years ago. (1/3)

#Septopolis 23 Fiumenze: Each guild is responsible for its internal 'guild law.' Those who infringe a guild's monopoly on services, for example, will learn their lessons quickly and painfully. Intra-guild conflicts will require finesse, diplomac, negotiation and carefully applied violence. (1/x)

#Septopolis 22 Fiumenze calls itself a republic, but it's actually a plutocracy, but it's actually a tyranny. Ever since the expulsion of the aristocracy 400 years ago, the Guilds have shared rulership of the city. This is 'democratic' because in theory anyone can achieve power in the guild. (1/9)

#Septopolis 21 Fiumenze: Lots of reasons. People might come because of trade, as pilgrims passing through, to look for work, to attend the university or one of the gymnasia, or any other reason. (1/3)

#Septopolis 20 Fiumenze: The public spaces are the piazzas, one per neighbourhood. The biggest is the Piazza del Popolo, but there's lots of other ones. They're also used for public events like theatre performances, festival celebrations, sports events, executions and more. (1/x)

I finally started my first playtest for my #ttrpg A Town Called Hubris, which I've been talking about in #Septopolis! Just character creation today. We have a guitar-toting drifter of Apollo, a master thief of Hermes and a gunsmith of Hephaestus!

#septopolis 19 Fiumenze: There's lots of industries, being a city of craft guilds) but the most influential is the wool trade. There are two wool guilds: one for the production of wool, and one for turning the wool into cloth. The trade is dominated by the de' Ranieri family, who are dragons! (1/6)

#Septopolis 18 Fiumenze: I mentioned the churches in an earlier post. The next most important are the three bridges over the Sporco. From north to south they are the Ponte Auromiano (the Auromian Bridge), the Ponte di Pesce (the Fish Bridge) and the Ponte Reale (the Royal Bridge). (1/2)

#Septopolis 17 Fiumenze: It's Renaissance Florence, with beautiful white walls and orange roofs. Hubris: A mix of Ancient Greece and the Wild West. Lots of wooden buildings with nods towards Grecian architecture. The Hubreion is a proper marble temple; who knows where they got the marble from!

One day I'll catch up with #Septopolis, but in the meantime it'll just have to slip, day after day 🙃

#Septopolis 16 Fiumenze: The city was originally planned in a grid on the west bank of the River Sporco, enclosed by city walls. Since then it's grown enough to have two sets of walls and urban sprawl outside both of them, as well as villas and small villages all around. (1/6)

#Septopolis 15 Fiumenze: I did a lot about Salvationism for MythAugust, so go back through that if you want more details or ask me questions. It's Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off and added reincarnation, with a female central Jesus figure, and lots of modern corruption. (1/x)

#Septopolis 14 Fiumenze: Lots of food idea here! A common street food is ‘little lampreys’ (lampredotto) which are pieces of cow stomach boiled with herbs and wrapped in bread. Through boiling, the stomach pieces resemble the lampreys eaten by the rich, which is where it gets its name from. (1/7)

#Septopolis 13 Fiumenze: Its technology level is is roughly equivalent to late 15th century Italy. Many of the prominent innovations have not arrived yet, because we're waiting on PCs to introduce them! There's no printing press yet - it's only just been invented a few years ago. (1/13)

#Septopolis 12 Fiumentines are very religiously superstitious. That's not very unique in Tirenia though. They think of themselves as very 'working class egalitarian' because of the power of the guilds and the expulsion of the aristocracy. The working poor would disagree! (1/3)

#Septopolis 11 Nice easy one for today! People in Fiumenze speak Fiumentine, a dialect of Tirenian. (Or in our words, Florentine and Italian). Lots of people speak their own dialects instead. People in Hubris speak Greek; some people have other languages, like (Ancient) Egyptian.

#Septopolis 10 Hubris first, because it's easier. It has a small fluctuating population, overwhelmingly adult Greek men since it's a prospecting town. There's an Egyptian quarter, and the odd Mesopotamian. Most people are poor workers, but there's a mercantile class catering to the miners. (1/🧵)

#Septopolis 9 Fiumenze needed to be a name similar, but distinct from, Florence. Smush together Fiume (Italian for river) and Firenze (the Italian name) and you get Fiumenze. (1/4)

#Septopolis 8 Fiumenze was, in legend, founded by Mirabella Orosa, a legendary hero from before recorded history. She was a half-dragon adventuress who could change form. She had many adventures, before joining the great war against the Giants. She survived and lived happily ever after! (1/3)

#Septopolis 7 Fiumenze was founded around an early bridge over the Sporco River, and grew organically. But according to legend, Mirabella Orosa was fording the river here and saw a ewe giving suck to a fledgling griffin. Soothsayers said that from humble beginnings, a great city would arise. (1/2)

#septopolis 6 As rpg settings, it behooves me to have a LOT of answers to this one. Let's see what I've got in my notes, and let's get inventing as well! Pull up a chair, let's go! (1/11)

#Septopolis 5 Fiumenze is built on the road from Medilano to Auromia, on the best place to bridge the Sporco River. So lots of travellers go through there, and it's surrounded by fertile plains with lots of farms. The classic way to get a city! (1/2)

#Septopolis 4 Fiumenze is located in the fertile Tarchanian Plains. It's in a small valley ringed by hills, on the banks of the Sporco River. The Auromian Empire (gold dragons) built a bridge over the river here, so ever since all travel across the subcontinent goes through Fiumenze. (1/5)

#Septopolis 3 Fiumenze is heavily inspired by late 15th Century Florence, the time of Lorenzo il Magnifico, though it draws inspiration from earlier or later times as well, from the populist Revolt of the Ciompi to the ascension of Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici. (1/4)

What are you top 5 #TTRPG settings? (No order) 1. Tirenia (homebrew, originally D&D, Italian Renaissance inspired) 2. Arthur's Britain (Pendragon) 3. The Old World (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) 4. Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings) 5. A galaxy far, far away (Star Wars d6)

#Septopolis 2 Fiumenze and Hubris both have the same goal: to be the home base for players in a TTRPG, with a view to potential indie publication. I always find this an interesting balancing act: you want the setting to be deep enough to inspire the GM, but not so much that it overwhelms them!

#Septopolis Day 1 I have two different settlements I'm going to talk about from TTRPGs I'm working on. I'll do them in separate posts. Fiumenze: Fantasy version of Renaissance Florence. Already well developed. Hubris: A mythic Greece / Wild West mashup town. Barely started working on it. (1/2)

#MythAugust 31 This was my first prompt panel and I loved it! :D Thanks Emily! I've been VERY slowly writing up a guide to Tirenia. When I started doing this I found that the religion section was empty! Everything was just in my head. I now feel like I can copy my answers in and it will be done!