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threedifferentways:

May you learn from personal experience how well spirits lie.

thesavagedaughter:

Does anyone have any reliable historical references for weapons and armor spanning medieval ages, and possibly references for war tactics throughout these times, as well?

My local library is turning up nada.

http://www.medievalists.net/category/articles/ is a good resource for putting academic articles in hand. A search on war tactics turned up several promising articles from various points in the middle ages. Armor requires a little more specific digging, as I’m sure weapons will.

There are beautiful pieces of armor from the early middle ages included in the Sutton Hoo find, which there’s plenty about online. There are Spanish and Italian guides on rapier fighting from the late middle ages and early Renaissance.

There are a few manuscripts illustrating fighting techniques and technology, but it’s not clear if everything in them is possible, was used, or if these are just ideas. For example, there’s this German manuscript, Feuer Buech, that deals largely with explosive device ideas. And this is an excellent Italian manuscript with lots of line illustrations on siege weapons and tactics.

Finally, you might search The British Library’s manuscript and artifact collections as well as Berkley’s Digital Scriptorium for books on war, battle, knights, soldiers, etc. to view the illuminations in books so you can see the types of armor and weapons being used in specific times and places. Simple terms are best in the manuscript engines because they are exact phrase match - i.e. “knight” may get you different results than “knights” because the curator entered the description of the image as “knight and soldiers before king”.

Being a professional writer is the least romantic, least rewarding job I’ve ever done. It’s mostly having to fix the awful messes of copy clients hand over with all the pride of a new parent, and you have to tell them their baby is ugly without hurting their feelings or jeopardizing the future of them continuing to pay you.

If you’re looking for a career of high drama and tragic romanticism, this is not it. If you’re looking for a career where you would absolutely not ever feel guilty about rocking one of those bras you can fill with secret wine and sip through a cleavage straw, professional writing may be the thing for you. That goes double if you like secretly crying in a server closet because people with atrocious grammar and stupid ideas make more than you ever will.

Stuff this witch has gotten done today:

• Gardening. The sage is really taking off, and I think soon I might be able to harvest that plus oregano and maybe some other things to make homemade cleansing bundles. If we’re counting tomatoes before they hatch, I got ten.
• Organized my bags and envelopes of people’s personal concerns after snagging something I’ve been after for a year.
• Blended essential oils to fragrance a magic oil that I want to be wearable as a gentle perfume.
• Painted with teeny tiny brushes on an art commission.
• Some slow burn spellwork got started.
• Self care and indulgence with a home pedicure and a brunch cocktail with St. Germain elderflower liqueur, vodka, champagne, and smashed strawberries and mint.