/lit/ - Literature

>>22649233
Good stuff.

Solid military history on a very interesting period.

>>22601859
Durant is great. Great prose and great intellectual biographies. The Age of Faith was a bit too wide but the Renaissance was quite good. I liked the Greece one too.

>>22475504
You'll have to wait for it to get published. Working title is: "The Darkness Above the Light," from the mystical writings of Pseudo Dionysus (Saint Denys (Dennis) in medieval Latin mystical theology).

It's sort of inspired by the Reformation and the European Wars of religion, although for the warfare I'm drawing more from the Italian Renaissance because I find the era of the great companies and the advent of bombards, before man portable fire arms were effective, a bit more interesting. Pic related is a classic and sort of my sourcebook, while McCullough's The Reformation and Manschreck's compilation of Reformation era primary sources is my guide of theology. I'm using Dupre's "Light From Light," for direct examples of mysticism to draw from, but I'm fairly familiar with that area.

I decided to set it in a fantasy world though to avoid giving religious offense to audiences. Plus, a core plot hook is that the characters end up moving through timelines, where the last decades of history have been different, and so I couldn't follow history closely anyhow. Sort of a hobby project born of really appreciating Bakker, parts of GRRM, the Black Company, Berserk, real esoterica, and actually, Chrono Cross, which I think was not a great game but had a very inventive story.

The key part of the magic system is to base it on the metaphysics of famous real traditions, but to split it largely into an Inner Realm, Astral magic based on summoning archetypal forces and supernatural beings, and an Upper Realm based on abstraction and philosophy.

This roughly follows the romanticist and rationalist traditions in mysticism and esoterica.