Wreoleth is a topos, for one. But also, the Inchoroi, lacking the control mechanism for their biological weapons, were forced to rely on a number of hacks, which the Consult inherited. The Excursi are one such example. As are the Yokes. Whatever it is that happened expresses those parameters.
Sorry for being such a laggard here, boys, but it's a busy time a year and I picked up another nasty bug from my wife to boot. Keep an eye out though. Probably the best thing to do is to flip this into an open thread once the book is released--and I return to a normal work schedule/routine.
The whole blog, you could say, is devoted to finding out what works. So long as you hew to that, so long as you refuse to let the theory drive your interpersonal relationships, then there's really no problem. There's fundamentally nothing wrong with the meaning we use, just the meaning we philosophical wankers like to talk about.
Isolation from external causes is the key to the original Dunyain mission. Allowing Moenghus back in would have been tantamount to allowing every he had experienced back in.
Not much I can add here except, yep, yep, and way way cool.
There is no formalized heraldry across the Three Seas, though there is within various military and caste-noble traditions belonging to individual languages. This has always been something I've daydreamed about, an encyclopedia of political symbology, but I've just never had the time.
I actually have no idea. I'm horrible when it comes to the business side of things. I'm one of those writers they would have found dead in the gutter in the 18th century, penniless and reviled up until the day he died.
In earlier versions of TTCB I actually explain the logistics of Ishual, the division of agricultural labour among the Dunyain, and so on. But once I realized just how big the info mountain the reader need to climb was, I began ripping out all nonessential details. By time Akka and Mimara reach Ishual...
Fate and accident are difficult to distinguish in Earwa, but finding Ishual once isn't at all that strange when you have a whole civilization fleeing Sranc, and then nothing but Sranc afterwards.
Ancient old, that would have to be Heraclitus. Classically ancient, then it would have to be Aristotle. I gravitate toward philosophers who want to make sense of messiness, not kill it, or worse, insist it doesn't really exist.