Middy and Mjolnir # 2

Middy and Mjolnir #2

Horn of the Kraken, a Norse fantasy Viking adventure.

            www.amazon.com/Horn-Kraken-Stephen-B-Pearl/dp/0994024053/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Middy and Mjolnir cartoon = a twist on Norse myths.

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Could Baths and Privies save your life?

            Two things I have to give the Romans. They were good civil engineers and the baths. In the west, at this time, we take abundant water, and hot water, for granted. This hasn’t been the case throughout most of human history. The Romans, with their heated floors and aqueducts, were a marvel of the ancient world. Admittedly the Romans just soaked and the Norse used soap, so the Norse got clean and the Romans got wet, but even so it was something for its time.

            The Romans also tended to build public baths wherever they went. This opened up some interesting opportunities in Horn of the Kraken, though I will admit that Ragna is annoyed with me. It seemed her head kept finding its way to the privy.  

 

            Ah, the privy. Something so essential but so often overlooked. John Glen, the first American in space, had to ask permission to wet his space suit because the engineers hadn’t thought of this simple, biological function. This blind spot tends to be more pronounced with the wealthy; who can pay someone to deal with their waist. The Romans, with their baths, had a form of public washroom that worked well enough. In medieval castles there was often a hollow wall that would be cut back as the floors went by. These cut backs were used to create shelves that served as drop toilets. The refuse was either collected into a wagon every few days by a scat man and hauled away through a special gate made for that purpose, or a water course was diverted to sweep it downstream. Trust me you didn’t want to swim in a medieval mote.

            In my version of Avaldsnes I included the medieval castle version of refuse removal. I’m not sure if this was done before the twelve hundreds but the fortress of Avaldsnes was supposed to be a magnificent structure advanced and wondrous; possibly made by dwarves, so I exercised some dramatic licence. The important thing is this type of drop hole carries sound from one privy to another offering a perfect opportunity for a Maiden of Ratatosk to snoop on let’s say a Jarl who talks to himself when he gets frustrated.

            I use privies and baths in Horn of the Kraken for several things. No one ever wants to look too closely at a scat cart.

            A final note on the modern world. Have a look at methane composting sewer treatment plants. If we want energy for our grand children we need to start using the resources we have now.

Buy link for Horn of the Kraken: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/151000/Horn-of-the-Kraken

Horn of the Kraken reading Pirate Fest 2015 Saterday

Travel Time in Horn of the Kraken

            Are we there yet? Travel time is always a little hard to estimate in fiction. Yes there are average speeds for ship types and horses, but you also have to account for what I like to call “The Little Deuce Coup” phoneme. Some times a ship, a horse, or what have you, will just be fast. Look at the Blue Nose of Grand Bank’s fame. Other times a vessel is a lemon. There is also terrain, weather, wind in particular for a sailing vessel, the skill of the crew, a host of factors. For Horn of the Kraken I shaved a bit off the average speed of a long ship in the game and used that as an average. Sometime with a ruler and an atlas gave me approximate travel times then I gave myself about ten percent leeway to make the times fit the story line. This gave me a fairly reasonable rate of travel, so long as I remembered to slow them down for every time I sped them up.

            Having been through a north Atlantic storm in a modern vessel I have to say, I wouldn’t want to try it in a long ship. The Norse seamen were tough!

www.drivethrufiction.com/product/151000/Horn-of-the-Kraken  

http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-B.-Pearl/e/B00FEOLLIC 

Artillery in Horn of the Kraken

Artillery bothers me. The idea of an off shore bombardment that can slaughter an entire town where the people shooting don’t even see the people they are killing seems innately wrong. Truth to tell, I feel there would be fewer wars if we didn’t have range weapons. If you had to look into the eyes of the people you were killing. If politicians actually suffered the consequences of their choices we probably wouldn’t have wars at all.

            This sentiment is why I incorporated ballista into Horn of the Kraken. With the survivors of fimbulwinter huddled along the coast, ship born ballista would be deadly, especially if they carried incendiary bolts. Farther south, where stone was used more for construction, they would have been less effective, but against people with primarily wooden structures they would have been devastating.

            The confusion felt by Fjorn and his team when they encounter a village burnt, not even looted, and its populous left to freeze without shelter is a commentary of what warfare has become, a waist where no one gains.

Buy link: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/151000/Horn-of-the-Kraken

Author link: www.stephenpearl.com

FATE OF THE NORNS site: http://www.fateofthenorns.com