Well, it has been a very intensive field season this year, and a rather long one too.
Progress on the Tsolyanu monasteries piece has been limited as a result, but not non-existent.
There is precisely zero final text at this point. But what I do have so far, in addition to a document template, is a is a Word file of notes (with citations) that is complete to my satisfaction. This includes everything I could find on monasteries and monasticism from the major "official" sources (Sourcebook, Mitlanyal, Blue Room, Man of Gold etc. - special thanks to Howard Fielding for his advice and information re the monastery adventure in Adventures on Tekumel!). I also have some notes on monastic traditions of Earth for comparative purposes. Finally, this also includes notes on "unofficial" monasteries from fan materials like the Butrus Gazetteer, articles in the Book of Visitations of Glory etc. There isn't really a lot of unofficial material on this subject, but I am a firm believer in building other people's great unofficial material into my own (equally unofficial) Tekumel whenever I possibly can.
I mean, just imagine...if we shared and built together, we could create an unofficial Tekumel that was larger and more detailed than the original!
However, moving right along, my own Tekumel ambitions are, well, less ambitious than that. So getting back to monasteries, my notes add up to about 34 pages, plus a four-tab excel file. A lot of this is recursive, there are probably about 10 pages of "meat" in there. But there is also a lot of non-Canon material to add, to flesh out the bones. So this is looking at the moment like a 30-40 page document. Can I finish it before the new year, when fieldwork reporting will take over my life? Probably not. But I am ready to start, so I will get as far as I can.
I'll keep you posted.
