A Guide to Lorria

The Map of Lorria

Since most of my recent stories have been set on the world of Cassa 3, specifically on the continent named Lorria and most of those in its capital city of Celora I thought I would collect all my relevant notes and illustrations for those stories into one place. This place.

Above is the map of Lorria, along with the Isle of Camrey. It shows only the cities and locales I've invented for the stories so far. I invent them on a need to basis. In reality, there are, of course, thousand of cities, towns, lakes, and rivers not shown because I haven't needed to invent them, yet. The world's second continent, Eastorria lies, as the name suggests to the east (right) off the edge of  this map. It is connected to Lorria by the polar mountains (grey areas), which are largely impassable, so it is reached by airplanes (in the First Founding Era, AKA The Age of Sorcery) and exclusively by boat in the Second Founding Era. Since no stories to date have taken place there, I've not had to draw a map for Eastorria. The Isle of Camrey is only mentioned in the text as well, but it fits in this map.

Below is my latest generic map of the heart of the city of Celora. It includes only the names of the boroughs mentioned in the stories. All of them have names, I've just not needed to invent all the names, yet. I may have mentioned some, and some suburbs off the map. I've removed the names of the various locales mentioned in the books from this version for clarity, and because each story adds a few more, listing all of them would make the map a mess. Those locales can be found on the map related to the book, in the blog entry for that book in the right column of this page.

The elevated tram lines which provide the mass transport for the city run down the center of all of the indicated grand avenues and boulevards, with multi-level  stations located within the large traffic circles where the avenues and boulevards cross. There is also a stop halfway between the stations. 

Settlement & Founding

Next I need to mention time. In the big picture human culture on Cassa 3 can be divided into three periods. The First is the terraforming era that lasted, perhaps 10,000 years after the arrival of the large two slower than light space ships, New Hope and New Home. The third ship, New Era has so far failed to arrive. Cassa 3 was very Earth-like but devoid of multi-cell life, so the world was developed entirely using a special collection of flora and fauna brought from Earth. After consulting the expedition's human crew, awakened from their quantum state for that purpose, the terraforming was done entirely by machines while all the human crew and humans returned/remained in their quantum suspension chambers. Only after the planet had been rendered Earth-like and safe for humans where the human settlers revived and the human phase of settlement began, with landing in year 0.

Government

The inhabitants consider themselves Lorrians, as the Earth name for the planet is not commonly used. There is only one nation-state on the world, The Commonwealth of Lorria since both Lorria and Eastorria are governed by the central governmental institutions located Celora. The land is  governed by a non-political bureaucracy, much like that of the Solar System wide Government, the remnant of which I write about in The Girl on the Kerb. In the case of the Commonwealth of Lorria, the administration consists of a set of laws informed by the Founding Principles of the expedition which had been agreed to by all the settlers prior to the sailing of the three settlement ships. The day-to-day administration of the commonwealth is done by bureaucrats chosen, in theory, by merit, but in practice, key officials are chosen by intrigues within the families of the leading members of the initial settlement, the so-called "Great Houses" or "Founding Houses." Because of the universally accepted basis of society, and the lack of outside nations/societies to provide conflict, politics is unknown, as such. Contending policies and such largely handled within the administration and between the Great Houses, with the population, largely indifferent, due to the mostly fair and efficiently way society is governed and the equality of life it offers the inhabitants of Lorria and Eastorria, in light of the Founding Principles. 

In the both the First and Second Founding periods everyone is considered a skilled Craftsman or Craftswoman, at whatever skill level/job they can obtain. The Second Founding and the Humanist Manifesto became necessary when the advanced technology brought from Earth could not be produced locally, so that people had to replace machines in manufacturing, but not as flesh and blood machines. For example, assembly line work is not allowed. Everything is assembled by teams in pods. Workers are trained to know all aspects of the product they are producing, and while some specialization is allowed, rote assembly work is not allowed.

Wages levels are assigned by the government to each type of job in 12 levels, level 1 to a level 12. Level 1 full time wages are set at 5,000 centi a year, a very modest, but living wage, up to 60.000 centi in 5,000 centi steps. Time in job incentives increase these standard wages gradually, up to the next step after many decades.

Examples; a maid is a level 1 position, a novelist is a level 2 position along with 25% royalties on the cover price of all books printed, an assistant art director is a level 6 position.

The humans in all these stories are artificially engineered Homo-Stellar, with a designed lifespan of around 200 years, largely disease free, and adopted for many environments, including space travel. 200 years is considered a "generation" and so even 1400 years after the Founding, it was only the seventh generation of the settlement that initiated the "Second Founding." As in all my stories, you can imagine whatever skin color you care to, and sexual orientation is not an issue tens of thousands of years in the future and so is rarely a feature of my characters worth mentioning. 

The Time Line for the Lorrian Novels;

First Founding Era, later known as the Age of Sorcery

1, AF the first year humans arrived on Lorria, after it had been terraformed.

1395 AF Darval-Mers Dossier takes place in

1395/6 AF The Red Wine Dossier stories takes place in

1398 AF Predora Raid (GS) mentioned in Glencrow Summer

Second Founding Era 

1437 AF/ 1AF the year the Second Founding/Humanist Revolution when 113 Great Houses and wealthy families issue the Humanist Manifesto and declare most of the (dying) technology "instrumentality of sorcery" resetting Lorria to a post technological society.

1-500 A2F Post Second Founding Era

500-1000 A2F Fall of the Great Houses Era

1000 A2F- present Modern Era

787 A2F Clare Trust established by Ivor Clare (CC)

1325 A2F Tarashay Clare's The Great Game of the Great Houses published (CC)

1327 A2F Tarashay Clare's The Duplicity of the Great Houses ms goes missing (CC)

1330 A2F  Tarashay Clare moves to the South Shore (CC)

1378 A2F Chateau Clare (CC) 

1380 A2F Glencrow Summer (GC) 

1381 A2F The next Lorrian Novel (SSD) 

The Lorrian year is divided into 12 months of 30 days each, with a solstice week of varying length between the the first and second month of winter. The months are grouped into sets of 3 corresponding to the season, i.e. First Winter, Second Winter, Third Winter, First Spring... etc. 

The standard month and days look like this. (I've changed the names of the days numerous times in my notes. Hopefully, they are consistent. In any event, these are the final names of the days of the week.) The two non-work days are known collectively as Freedays rather than a weekend. I try to use slightly different names/spellings for common things to suggest that the story is set somewhere and sometime else. It annoys me to capitalize our days of the week, so I, they don't do in Lorria.

monoday Work Day	twosday Work Day	thirday Work Day	fourthday Work Day	fifthday Free Day	sixthday Free Day
1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Other terms used in the text, from my notes:

I don't use the word "car" or "automobile" , see above. Small, 3 wheeled vehicles are called gigs. 4 wheeled ones have various names relating to their size and purpose; a runabout is a general purpose vehicle larger than a gig, a sportier version is a roadster, with a landau as a convertible. A tourer is a lager vehicle than a roadster, with the largest vehicles being coaches and lorries. Taxis are 4 wheeled as well. All vehicles are electric motored with rechargeable power cells.

Remaining technology after the Second Founding include, light-to-electricity panels that provide most of the power for Lorria, power cells to store it, electric motors, lights, heating devices and controls for machinery. Telephone (callers) use wire connections.  However, TV, radio, wireless communications, computers (i.e. "info-systems") are no longer available legally, and most are no longer operational. Though it should be noted, all the advanced tech is still in use in the Red Wine/Hu stories, though many systems are failing.

As mentioned, I try to use different words to describe common elements in order to make the story stand out from our world, as it is not set in it, but does draw from it, since all my stories feature worlds settled from Earth, bringing a lot of Earth things with them. Examples other than the ones cited above include: cafee is coffee, te is tea, a cravat is a tie, red-sauce pie is a pizza, net-ball is tennis, key-writer machine or key-writer is a typewriter, light-to-electricity panels are solar panels, a centi is like a dollar, a vehicle is used for cars or automobiles.

Each book of mine has their own notes document. I start one when I start the novel, and keep it on screen alongside the novel pages as I write, noting all the things I invent as I go along - in theory, anyway. And referring back to it whenever I forget what I invented, which is often. Each of my notes document starts with a "Cast of Characters," divided into main, and supporting listing things like their age, where they work, and things I invent about them etc. Then there's a list of "Places," with names of streets, shops, etc, mentioned in the text, sometimes divided by previous places and new to the story places. And then we have "Things and Such," that includes all the items I invent as I go along, and their usual names. All these list include the things I invented for Chateau Clare, like the names of the remaining Great Houses, the names of the days of the week, and all the data above, and then all the things I invent for each new story. In addition, I have a list of odd words that I use, but can never remember them or how to spell them close enough for the word processor to come up with the word I'm looking for, for example; porte cochere, hors d’Oeuvre, balustrade, and mustache.

For the Lorrian books, I also include a calendar like the sample above, and note on it the chapter number so that I can keep track of just how and how long events take place. I usually don't write a detailed outline, but these days I do write down bullet point descriptions of each chapter on the calendar. Well, each chapter I've thought of before writing it. It is usually not all that complete, but launches the story, anyway. For example, Glencrow Summer's notes run six pages - some of which were just copied from Chateau Clare to keep everything consistent. I will also cut and paste passages from the text that I want to move, before shifting it back, if necessary.

I will link this page in the sidebar of this blog for easy consulting in the future.