It is with great delight that I can announce that there is a street map available of the area around the Britannic Imperium Museum in Bloomsbury, Londinium, showing the exact location of Lancaster’s Luck Coffeehouse, Will Somers’s bakery and such essential local necessities such as the Museum Tavern and The Plough. I am bursting with pride and excitement here.

Whaddya mean, is that it?

But I like street maps. I really like street maps where you can see the modern day city overlaid over one from 120 years ago (hint, it has barely changed). But most of all I love them when they make everything I’ve been writing about and working on for the last few months feel real and substantial. If there’s a street map with Rafe’s coffeehouse shown on it, then it’s there, innit? It’s on the map. It has to be real.

It should come as no surprise that I like detail-y stuff that helps make worldbuilding feel three (and four) dimensional. Hence, street map. With the coffeehouse. And don’t worry. I am very capable of hugging this to me with quiet enjoyment and I do not need you all to share the enthusiasm. Although it would be nice if you tried.

As an alternative, how does a Gilded Scarab glossary grab you? Lots of fun for logophiles there, I promise you. Here’s a selection:

Aether   –  In some versions of alchemy – and for the purposes of the Gilded Scarab – this is the fifth element in addition to air, earth, fire and water. In Gilded Scarab, aether in its lightbearing (luminferous) form, is an inexhaustible power source.

 

Convocation House  –  One of the eight ruling Houses of the oligarchic Britannic Imperium, ruled by the Queen (God bless her). The Convocation Houses hold all political power and divide government departments between them, staffing them with their own House members and those of their allied Minor Houses.

 

Marconi   –  Device for communication through the air, a radio/receiver.

 

Phlogiston   –  A particle that determines the combustibility of materials. According to theory, wood has a good amount, oil is saturated with them, and rocks have none. In the Gilded Scarab, phlogiston particles when combined with luminiferous aether enhance the energy output of an engine or weapon. It’s usually described as a scarlet thread lacing through the aether chamber.

Steampunk is such fun!