New Tekumel Blog!

Yes, there's a new Tekumel blog in town, and it could be YOUR blog too!

It's all about sharing game logs and battle accounts from Tekumel gamers around the world.

It is linked in my blog roll over on the right, you can check it out here:

http://actualplaysintekumel.blogspot.com

Are you running a Tekumel rpg? Gaming epic battles between the armies of the five empires?

Please get in touch with the blog owner to be added as an author so you can share your own "Dispatches from the Imperium" with other Tekumelophiles!

...And Another Season Ends

Back again, another season of fieldwork complete.

Not just another season though. The fieldwork is finished, so this was the final season for this project. A project I started 19 years ago. Damn. There's still analysis and writing to be done, but after all this time, it's hard to believe it's actually coming to a close.

Another Season Begins

So, lovely evening for grilling. We planked a salmon for dinner. It was nice.

Tomorrow I fly north to begin another field season. I have about a week of office-y prep and mobilization tasks and then its full-time fieldwork. I'll be bringing some Tekumel resources in the hope of doing more on the monasteries piece. Nothing much, just the Sourcebook and Vol 2 of Mitlanyal. But I have to say, I bring Tekumel material with me every year, and yet, I never end up finding time to tinker with Tekumel. If you notice my posting dates you'll see I always go pretty dark between roughly Canada Day (that's July 1) and Hallowe'en. Realistically, I will most likely go dark this summer as well. Field days are long and there's not much left of me between supper and bedtime. Just not as young as I used to be.

Oh well. That said, while my real-world reportage was out for review, I was able to sneak back to Tekumel and almost finish the Vimuhla/Chiteng section. So that's good.

Here's hoping this will be the year I have the energy to visit Tekumel in my evenings. If not, well, I'll see you in the fall!

have a great summer everyone

Monasteries Update and a Language Matter

Since early February I have been face and eyes into real-world report writing, so the monasteries piece has been on hold.

What I was able to do through January was, complete the finished text on Dlamelish/Hrihayal monasticism, and a short, very speculative section on monasticism among the Pariah worshippers. In addition, the section on Vimuhla/Chiteng is blocked out, and about half of it is finished text.

So that's where the piece stands right now. I'll return to it when I can.

An unrelated issue: it has been brought to my attention that over a year ago, when I released Naval Warfare, there was a conversation on a Tekumel Facebook page about the translation of my blog title. I don't do the Facebook thing, so I wasn't aware of it at the time.

Apparently people were able to parse the text pretty well, but there was some head-scratching over the "shuma" part (shuma=holy, shumashuma=most holy), because shuma isn't listed as a General Attitude Suffix (GAS) in the Tsolyani Language book.

Very true! It isn't, so I can understand the puzzlement. But I didn't just make it up. The Professor listed "shuma" as a GAS over in the Tsolyani Language Yahoo Group.

That group was originally set up for the Professor to give language lessons, that's what I joined for way back when. Obviously, with the Professor gone, it no longer serves quite the same purpose. But I recommend the group to anyone with an interest in the Tsolyani language. There's stuff in there you will not find in the Tsolyani Language book.

I have a link to it over on the right.