(Following to be read with some strange accent in mind - I have no idea why, just cause...)
Please being 'Hello!' to my good friend, the Handsome Grackle.
(Cease with accent, please.)
He is what is called nadderer - a sea-nicker, a water-dwelling monster - with neither head nor tail, but both at once, being able to walk on either end when he/she/it ventures on land. A very very robust creature, it recovers quickly from hurts, so much so that he has been swallowed more than once by much larger sea-beasts, travelled the length of their alimentary canals before being "poo-ed" (if I may use that word...) out again, relatively unharmed to get about his/her/its business. Oh what fun...
There have been many excellent questions put to me here over the last couple of posts. Unfortunately I do not have time right now to address many of them - but I hope a couple of answers might suffice for the mo...?
Portals was wondering, "I have questions about lahzars' weapons. Is a fulgar's fuse used as a kind of spear, or more like a lightsaber from Star Wars? Do wits have any kind of weapon that they use? Thanks"
A fuse is used more as a quarterstaff than anything else, a way to extend reach (though with a the wire wrapped about a pole of cane or wood I am actually not so sure a magnetic field would occur as has been suggested elsewhere - sorry whoever posted, I thought the wire needed to be coiled about metal to achieve this - but please correct me if I am wrong, physics at high school was my weakness).
Wits would generally see it as being beneath them to resort to weapons, the control and manipulation of frission is everything to them. Saying that a pure wit would probably look down on a bane, and in turn a bane would probably see a purist wit as lacking versatility.
Another question was regarding the status of the Gottlands, which are in fact not a part of the Haacobin Empire but an empire to itself - a hegemony of kingdoms, duchies and the like allied and treatied to the Sigismundian dynasty that currently rules the Gottskylds. They are protected from the Haacobins by the great big threwdish swamp of the Ichormeer, though battles have been fought between the two giants, with little gain for either side. The Haacobins regard the Sigismunds with sullen respect.
I shall get to the problem of lamps as soon as I might, honest - time is really crimping me now...
Secondly (and unsurprisingly) is the book plate for Lamplighter, done in the mottle of the Haacobin Empire. The owl is what the lamplighters affectionately refer to as Ol' Barny, the Sagacious Owl that is the sigil of the Haacobins.
The idea is to give to those who are into it a sense of the books actually belonging in the Half-Continent - as coming from there somehow, to add just that little bit more immersion to the experience, to actually make the owning, holding and reading of the book as sensorialy satisfying as possible.