@Moonpie said in Equivalent time period of Bookverse:

@Gamen Yes, definitely hard to draw hard parallels where there is literal magic involved.

One thing I'd observe is that European pagan tradition closely linked the king with responsibility for maintaining the conditions necessary for the land to remain fertile. And that the king's fertility (capacity to have children) was symbolic of his fulfilment of that duty to the land. It's interesting to see this concept picked up - literally, via magic - in the Bookverse.

Ah, the Fisher King.

@jpwong I know, my brain's crazy sometimes :)

@Rahul-Balaggan Thanks for the beta link! I love how it has the Jp releases too!

Also, I have the sneaking suspicion that No matter how much space you have available right now, it won’t be enough. is going to end up being very correct. :/

@skybrian said in Speculative applications of magical technology:

It seems like it’s not a normal market, though, or it’s hidden somehow? We don’t hear about nobles selling their mana to get money, or people who need mana just buying some. There is no mana merchant, apparently? Most mana transfers seem to have something to do with government or politics.

Considering the cost of feystones and magic tools themselves a regular sale wouldn't make sense. It would likely be more a case of paying to have a loaned feystone topped up.

The functional magic tools not being sold easily and information how to top them up being secret would be the reason the Guildmaster couldn't have just have Frieda charging the guilds tools, saving money and keeping her alive without becoming a nobles mistress.

That'd just get the books impounded as containing agricultural "contaminants" based on where they're being shipped.

All hail lord Justusiculus!

@Rahul-Balaggan I've modified the topic name to be "Historical" instead of "Political," since that more accurately reflects what my original post was about and might make it less tempting for people to think it's an opportunity to air their own political philosophies.

@db0ssman , @crowdcontrol Don't forget the gaping wound that is ink development R&D.

In the side story at the end of this volume, and also in the side story at the end of a previous manga volume, it refers to the group of kids going to the temple as the "baptism progression." Shouldn't this be the "baptism procession" instead? In the LN it was called a procession. Or was this a deliberate change?

Also about that story: If you are reading the LN but not the manga, then start reading the manga too. There was some serious world building with hints about inter-duchy politics and the recent political upheaval hidden in that side story. Wow.

@hiroto I see, thanks. That makes a lot more sense than the more vague "have to deal with nobles."

Found more info about Glebes from Life in a Medieval Village. Excerpt below. A rectors was a hired priest for a parish to perform the rights and rituals of a private or community church.

Finally, the rector had the income of his "Glebe." the land pertaining to the church which he held as a free man, owing no labor services or servile dues, and which he cultivated as a husbandman. traditionally, the Glebe was twice the normal holding of a villein, though in practice it varied. In 1279 the rector of the Elton church held a virgate, probably distributed in the fields, and, adjacent to the church, ten more acres and a farmstead. surveys of other Ramsey Abby villages list the rector's ;ands in more detail. At Warboys, he held two virgates of land. a house and a yard, and common pasture "in the wood, the marsh, and otherplaces." The rector of Holywell held a virgate, "half a meadow which is called Preistsholm," three acres of meadow distributed in "many places," a tenth of the villagers, meadow, and shares of a pasture and a marsh. In Abbot's Ripton, the rector had a virgate, a parsonage, three houses with tenants, and a common pasture in Westwood."

I voted dark blue because that's what I think it is based on all the various descriptions - but I would also call the colors used for the LN's covers 'dark blue' (or 'blue' at worst, but definitely not 'really light blue').

So because I have too much free time, I made a (poor) infographic of the layers of her hair shades across the LN (P1V1 cover), manga (P1V1 cover), and anime (S2 wiki sample image), using the top Google Images result of 紺色 as the backdrop color for comparison. It's not a perfect representation, because even just googling a color gives you different shades, and different displays are going to present colors slightly differently, and you could argue about which exact selections to pick from the images as representative colors, but it is what it is.

Myne's Hair Infographic

For the LN and manga, (1) is the darkest shadow, (2) is slight shadow/darker neutral, (3) is lighter neutral and (4) is the highlight. The anime only really used three colors so I just did (1) for shadow, (2) for neutral, and (3) for highlight.

I think this makes it visible that the LN has the darkest hair color on her, with its (2) still being darker than 紺色 unlike the others, and although its (3) is somewhat lighter, it's not by much. The manga and especially the anime creep into lighter tones of blue, but I wouldn't say the LN's covers are too far off the mark for a 'dark blue' shade. It's not the darkest of dark blues or a midnight sky, but I personally would call it acceptably dark.

@petitmelon said in If you could send one book across time and space to Myne, what would you pick?:

How to invent everything-- A guide for the stranded time traveler

That is a good call, though I am thinking "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" just to see Ferdinand's reaction to it's translated version.

@Shiny said in Re Rereading while taking notes:

Fantasy speculation - if weather impacts on the protection shield around the city then this might be detectable by those with low levels of mana who have higher levels of mana sensitivity.

Supporting that is that both Rozemyne and Bezewanst have been mentioned being unable to predict the weather while Rozemyne's commoner circle can predict the weather easily.

@Jon-Mitchell I kinda like the idea of Arno being sold as a worker for a salt mine. (rub salt into the wounds comes to mind)

@Shiny You do see what the writing system looks like in the light novel too (when Myne is sitting on Fernidad's lap reading, it also shows the book). In that case, the writing system actually looks kind of like a mix of Arabic and Hebrew.

As far as the original question goes, I'd assume the language sounds pretty German/Austrian since so many of the words are German-based. I don't think we can really make a good guess as to a time period since there really is no reason why the German language of 1,000 years ago could be the language of today and 1000 years ago German sounded completely different.

Languages tend to change by incorporating exterior languages into their syntax and vocab (one of the reasons English is such a cluster F is because of the long history of various countries and tribes conquering Britain) on top of just slightly changing from generation to generation. So, in that sense, you would probably have to know the geopolitical history of the nation that Efre (whatever the spelling) belongs to as well as what their neighbors' languages were like.

TL;DR - Probably vaguely German, but no real way to compare to RL.

@dawnmm Thank you! in the next parts this "Mynester" will be a bit prominent.

I enjoyed the story. It's fun imagining what other nobles will think of the books. And the cookies. :) Thanks for sharing.