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Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 1:03 pm
by sasasha
I’ve been learning Verdurian, and I thought I would make this blog as a place to offer some reflections ‒ and hopefully to gather some resources for learners (e.g. a deck of flashcards I’m making to get the vocab under my belt). For now there are just these ‘definitions’ type of posts, but I have a few other types planned.

Feel free to check it out! And leave comments if you wish, or make any here.

Zomp has cast an eye over the first few posts and given general approval, saying he doesn’t want to affect the ruminations too much, so I have actually riffed a fair bit after that point ‒ let me know if I do state anything badly, I can still edit everything!

(I might, particularly, clean up the images a bit, and try and tidy up where the menu link sits on the page, etc. And I want to do a sticky intro post.)

https://learningverdurian.wordpress.com/

Enjoy! And let me know if you have any cool ideas for it / interesting bits of Verdurian you think I should highlight!

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:25 am
by hwhatting
I like it!
And is that Zomp's old hand-drawn map of Verduria? I always found that it was a thing of beauty.

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:48 am
by sasasha
hwhatting wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:25 am I like it!
And is that Zomp's old hand-drawn map of Verduria? I always found that it was a thing of beauty.
Thanks hwatting! Glad you like it!

Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).

It’s a great looking glass for imaginitive mapgazing. I often get happily lost in it!

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:11 am
by zompist
sasasha wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:48 am Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).
I think you're right. It's a direct tracing (using a light box) of the blown-up photo I have on my wall.

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:21 am
by sasasha
zompist wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:11 am
sasasha wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:48 am Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).
I think you're right. It's a direct tracing (using a light box) of the blown-up photo I have on my wall.

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.
I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?

That’s also a very lovely map.

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:14 pm
by zompist
sasasha wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:21 am I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?
This was the same group, and I have a whole folder of notes, yes. Most of them are not very useful for worldbuilding: maps of castles, stat sheets, plans for particular campaigns. It's not great literature.

The basic idea was that one of our characters, Bennan Tark, turned out to be the rightful heir to a K'aitani barony. However, the country was wracked by a civil war, which the party had to get involved in.

The civil war is canon, but the intervention is probably not, for the reason you mention— the Zone of Fire. That you could occasionally cross it with magical assistance is one thing, but that a party of adventurers could regularly do so is another. :P

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:09 am
by sasasha
zompist wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:14 pm
sasasha wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:21 am I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?
This was the same group, and I have a whole folder of notes, yes. Most of them are not very useful for worldbuilding: maps of castles, stat sheets, plans for particular campaigns. It's not great literature.

The basic idea was that one of our characters, Bennan Tark, turned out to be the rightful heir to a K'aitani barony. However, the country was wracked by a civil war, which the party had to get involved in.

The civil war is canon, but the intervention is probably not, for the reason you mention— the Zone of Fire. That you could occasionally cross it with magical assistance is one thing, but that a party of adventurers could regularly do so is another. :P
Ah, sounds fun!

Was the Bekkayin history developed the same way that you did the Eretaldan ‒ i.e. the visual time chart approach?