Mediaeval Equestria is in a time of upheaval, when Unicorn magocrats rule Canterlot and Archmage Starswirl has been succeeded by a sinister warlock named Yisrach L’ulaamun, who seeks to consolidate all magical and political power in the Capital.
Amidst it all, a gifted but overlooked young magician named Eventide Coruscate has been assigned his first position out of apprenticeship. Uncannily procuring a high-ranking position as Assistant Royal Astrologer, the stallion has been unwittingly thrust into the center of Canterlot’s darkest plots and intrigue.
In this, his diary, those turbulent episodes of his life are recorded.
Chapters (3)
Nice chapter and if anyone says you need to improve your wording just ignore them and write your story your own way of writing
I am interested in where you'll take this story. Your descriptions of the environments are good and I already like the setting. I will add this one to my favorites and possibly tell some of my friends about it. Good job man
It's really well written, and you handle the journal style writing nicely. It's vague, like you'd expect of a journal entry, but you also managed to balance in some nice character interactions. Though in an authors note it would be nice to explain the meaning behind the sun and moon phases and the lunar manse, etc. to have some understanding of how the calendar works back in this time. I'm guessing you went with a zodiac calendar.
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Thank you, and I'm happy you enjoy it. I considered explaining the astrological mechanisms in the author's notes, like you asked, but I think notes contribute to the atmosphere of a story as much as the words of the story itself, and I'm afraid turning it into a lecture at the end of a chapter might spoil the mystique of the thing.
Since you took the time to ask, though, I'll answer. It is based on the western zodiac, with the MLP planet taking earth's place in a geocentric solar system (and universe, for all it's worth). The 'Sun Phase' is just the sun's location in the sky and the weather, with the moon phase being a more traditional astrological assessment; the reasons for this being that the moon's place and phase has a more immediate and appreciable day-to-day effect to a magician, and that Eventide is supposedly just looking out his window before he writes an entry and not mapping out the entire sky's arrangement. If he wanted to get an exact starmap for a day and hour, and even down to the minute, he could just calculate it later.
The Lunar Mansion is a relatively obscure concept to most modern 'astrologers' but during the middle ages and especially the renaissance it widely known. I believe it originated with the Chaldeans around five-thousand years ago, and was rediscovered by the Arab magicians in the twelfth or thirteenth century. They called them 'manzils'. I think Ahmad al-Buni was the first one to write about it, if you care that much. Anyway, all it amounts to, as far as most people are concerned, is a way to categorize the resting place of the moon on a given day.
The 'planetary day and hour' is just a magician's way of recording what astrological 'rays' or 'energies' are most prevalent at the time, and can be easily calculated with a seven day week, and twenty-four hour clock. There's a handy-dandy chart in S.L. MacGregor Mather's Greater Key of Solomon if you want to see what day and hour corresponds to which planet.
I hope this has answered your questions.
The setting is great, very well described. And you have some writing talent. When I write some stories, I often use https://edubirdie.com/plagiarism-checker to check them. Interested where your story will go.
The brief background of this story in any case sounds quite tempting, I will follow you and this story. Despite all these circumstances like coronavirus symptoms and other crazy things