Gah! I hate research.
Ok, so Gilly has reached the shore of the mirror version of Antarctica. I have decided they take a ship through the Indian Ocean, mainly because my research has uncovered many wonderful things in that ocean that are better than anything I could have come up with on my own, like 155 foot Portuguese man o' war and flying fish.
So, yesterday I spent like five hours on google and bing, looking up things like colossal squid, the Sunda Deep, ocean floor topography, trade winds in the Indian ocean, animals native to Somalia, lost expeditions to the Antarctic and cross sections of sailing ships.
I had a massive headache when I got off and no clarity. G.D. it, you'd think somewhere on the g.d. Internet there would be a diagram of a sailing ship; a usable diagram, so that in describing my ship, I won't make some ridiculous error of judgement that would cause even the most amateur of sailors to cough up their coffee in agonies of hilarity upon reading that chapter.
But that's not the only thing that's driving me crazy at this bloody point in the story. Ok, so daemons live in Touzainanboku. Other things live in Kagamihara, along with corrupt Daemons who have build strongholds down there, little territories, mainly by cities where they can take advantage of all that terrible spiritual energy. (Not that cities are evil by nature, it's just that everything there is so condensed. They're like those underwater gas vents, pouring out heat and chemicals.)
The "other things" that are native to the Kagamihara are like the Kringmerk, native tribes that live in the edges, where it's peaceful.
The Kringmerk are dogs. Are the other tribes going to be animals as well? I sort of figured so. In fact, the main tribe in India is going to be based off the Langur monkey, which are native to India and are marvelous, solemn faced creatures with great dignity (at least in pictures) and a silver fur and wise, black eyes. Maybe their mountain guide will be a Langur monkey whirling dervish.
Anyway, I can't get there, damn it, because what animal is capable to sailing a bloody ship? That's right- none. So who's sailing the bloody ship? I don't want two tribes of monkeys.
So, what other creatures live on the Kagamihara, can tie rope, can and want to sail a ship, have a desire to trade with multiple tribes and would be likely to make port in Antarctica?
...and I have no idea.
I keep thinking, "Who cares? Just come up with something! Make crap up! What does it matter?"
That's the problem with researching. I start to get all stickler about the details. Like, all the fresh water on the real Antarctica is frozen solid; in fact it's a very arid climate. Water has to be thawed. How the hell are dogs going to thaw water? How do they start fires?
So, then I mix fact and fiction. Fact: there are volcanoes and frozen fresh water lakes buried deep under the ice packs on Antarctica. Fiction: one exists near the coast, active enough to keep a fresh water lake thawed and the Kringmerk have their traditional home base there. Naturally. They eat seals and penguins and they have no fire. They don't need it; they have thick coats.
What does it matter, anyway? But it does, somehow. I don't want a reader to have to dumb down in order to follow my story. I want my fantasy to follow certain, guiding rules of logic. I want it to form a pattern.
Basically, I'm going to have to make up a humanoid tribe that sails. That's all there is to it. Nothing else can handle that amount of rope. Which means I'm breaking my rule of animal tribes on Kagamihara.
Unless the sailers are a separate tribe of daemons who love the ocean so much they abandoned the mountains. Which would explain how Tenshio knew it was likely a ship would be at the Kringmerk's bay.
And it has a kind of symmetry: ocean daemons and mountain daemons- kind of like two ends of the spectrum. The ocean daemons keep the waterways clear of the corrupting influence of fallen daemon on the landmasses. (Though there must be coastal fortresses that are largely unassailable, but that's a thought for another day.)
They're going to be like pirate daemons. All fierce and casual and mostly silent, with rings in their ears and turbans... maybe. Maybe turbans. But baggy pants, certainly. And bare, clawed feet. And they will hold a cutlass in their teeth; I don't care it if is overused. Not all the time, though. That would get tiresome. Not to mention, bad for one's teeth.
Damn. That's it.
I spent all yesterday agonizing about this. I gave myself a massive headache and couldn't even enjoy the Elisabeth Olgilvie books that arrived that day by mail.
Ok, I feel better now. Back to writing.
