bunn

Twenty thousand words of careful knitting to make the Dumnonian bits of Eagle of the Ninth add up neatly to the existing proven archaeology, but they had to keep digging.

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Incredible-Roman-army-base-Exeter-crem-works/story-29186345-detail/story.html

But at least this is first century.  As long as they don't find anything second century, I can assume it was all abandoned.  *crosses fingers* 

Clearly the original residents did not call it that.   I'm guessing it doesn't have a documented original name, or at least I can't find one from hasty rummaging.

If you think it has a Latin name that I've missed, what's it called?   If you think it doesn't have a (known) Latin name, what might be a good name for someone in 197AD to use for it?

(The word Fishbourne sounds and looks Saxon. So It Will Not Do. It is Just Wrong. I know that Chichester is the rather magnificent Noviomagus Regnensium, but I need a separate name for the Palace.)

« Back to Part 1

Esca shook his head, as if coming out of deep water. “You served in Isca Dumnoniorum yourself,” he said. “Don’t you remember hearing anything about hares while you were here?”

“Well, I was not there for very long,” said Marcus, “and I don’t think that the people I knew in Isca – the people who might have known about the sacred things – I don’t think they would have talked to me about something like that. Even the people I thought I knew...well, I was very young, and very new to the country.”
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Notes Here

I have been sent a Christmas card by motetus.  And what a card it is!

( Click, only if you are truly ready to see the Tribune Placidus about to go undercover as a British Tribesman... )

Title: Different for Boys
warnings: late pregnancy is not much fun.
Word Count: 1500

Summary:   A very pregnant Cottia realises that marriage to Marcus may not be the escape she had hoped, but talking to Esca helps.

I really should have got this beta'd before posting it, but I wrote it for the ninth-eagle fanmedia challenge, and ended up posting it well after the official deadline and only about 40 minutes before the really really mean it deadline, so there was So Much No Time.  Apparently I still have Lots of Thoughts about this book!

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( Notes, in which I witter on about Cottia and Esca a bit )

I am at a loss to explain this really. I have been practicing drawing human faces for some time now and it... really isn't working.   I look at pictures I have drawn of faces, and they really are pretty terrible.  One day, I was looking at a post by jabberworks where she had drawn all the people as rabbits,   and I thought - actually, rather than trying to draw things I cannot draw, maybe I should just make them all be things I can draw?   Or, you know, more or less draw, anyway.

I'm not sure if that actually helps with the explaining.
Please don't expect
a) sense
or
b) much of a plot.

and if you start thinking about this as a real slave-holding society, the whole thing quickly becomes somewhat disturbing, but let us ignore that.


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I have not achieved much today - too hot! I tried to finish my story about Druim and the Arcani, and again failed dismally.  I just can't decide where it should be going: it has a setup and a plot, but I can't get my head around characters, somehow.  This is the reverse of my usual situation of having characters and setting, but no plot.  Perhaps I should give up on it and write something for the Eagle fanmedia challenge instead.  I'm tempted by the idea of Old Tradui, (played by an aging Tom Baker, of course) telling a series of increasingly improbable and wild tales about the adventures of his youth.

 I thought about painting, but didn't.  I considered working on one of the websites I volunteer to help out with, and - didn't.  I drank an enormous quantity of iced coffee and lolled about the house, watered the greenhouse and mowed a lawn.

I have just realised I haven't written any fiction since October! Did I run out of things to write, going on and on about Roman Egypt in Splendid Things Gleam in the Dust...?  It was a bit long, I hope I haven't run out of words! 
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Rashly, I signed up to the eagle_rbb as both an artist and a writer, and made a painting in acrylics that I hoped would inspire someone to write something interesting.  jain took my prompt and wrote this story, all filled with atmospheric mists.
I wish I'd had a bit more time to make pictures for it, but I did manage...


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About : When Marcus and Esca have to make a trip to Egypt, they find the ancient land hides dangers they had not expected.
Words : 16669 excluding notes, wtf brain?
Written for: eagle-rbb 2012

This is the longest thing I have written in one go, and to be honest, it could, with terrifying ease, have been much longer.  It kept growing more plot in a thoroughly alarming way.  There are so many lovely original sources for Egypt, all full of ideas!  The source that I started with was either a prayer, or a sort of spell:

"A Plea to a Local God for a Husband's Attentions.
It is Esrmpe, the [daughter] of Kllaouc, who is complaining about Hor, the [son] of Tanesneou.

“My lord Osiris, lord of Hasro! I complain to you, do justice to me and Hor, the son of Tanesneou, concerning what I have done to him and what he has done to me. Namely, he does not make love with me, I having no power, I having no protector-son. I am unable to help myself, I am childless. There is no one who could complain concerning me before you because of Hor … I complain to you … Osiris, listen to my call! Look how he has treated me! Open the way for your messengers … Osiris, lord of Abydos, Osiris … Isis … Ophois, Hathor, nurse of Anubis the Osiride, the cowherd of … do justice to me!”

Frankly, it only got odder from that point in...

Lovely images supplied by ningloreth, who also beta'd and supplied many helpful thoughts on things like mudbrick building techniques and whether one can really write a whole fiction all about the issues around dutiful and legally-correct incest without it becoming a bit ... icky, and has generally been a lot of fun to collaborate with!
Thanks also to seascribe for betaing and helping me work out how to get to the end (which at one point I feared I would never reach...)

Although this is an Eagle of the Ninth story, it also owes a lot to Gillian Bradshaw's Roman Egypt novel, Cleopatra's Heir, which I love, and is set about a hundred and sixty years earlier.  If anyone has read that, yes, it IS no coincidence that Claudius Hieronimianus says he has a Friend of the King, Egyptian traders and Roman citizens among his ancestors.  He doesn't know the whole story, of course.
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