WorldEmber 2023

Welcome to the "home page" for my WorldEmber 2023 challenge content, with cross links to any new articles I manage to write deeper within the site this month. This page exists to pull all the qualifying articles together in one place, at least as much for me to see how I'm progressing thoughout the month, as for anyone else to read, but I am always happy to have readers and comments.
This link is my official WorldEmber 2023 progress
Because this article wasn't started under December, it actually counts itself towards the required word total, which you can see from the progress link above, but I consider this cheating a little, so I will endeavor to have 10,000 words of world building without including the waffle on this page. The process of writing new articles often involves enriching existing ones with complementary additional material and I am probably writing as many words in those updates as I am in the new articles. Sadly however, none of these count towards my WorldEmber word total (which has to be in brand new articles only), so it's just bonus work, even if it is useful for my overall creative efforts.
This is looking like a busy December for me, with a whole heap of reading I need to finish by the middle of January for my book group and I'm also helping a friend with some editing suggestions for a book she's written and is now polishing. What with that and a lot happening at work, I think I might struggle this time around to finish the challenge.
That said, I have lots of ideas I want to include in my world and I'd love to add another 10,000 words towards my goals, so we'll see how close I can get. WorldEmber has been a lot of fun in the previous years when I've done it!
2023 has been quite a productive year in terms of world building for me, even if it hasn't exactly gone to the plan I had in January. At that time, I was intending to spend time on writing more of A Gift from the Sea : Story Home, my long running and eternally starved of attention, attempt at a novel which needs some serious effort putting in to it. Unfortunately, it didn't get much. Instead I began with art work and world building in Earth Baroque, then enriched The Lost Retreat with a lot of detail about the Cavern City of Carafon, the Pantheon of the Hidden Radiance and an account of the ancient disputes between the gods of the city called The Words From The Dark which I really enjoyed putting together. I then moved on to Magicians' End, where I began construction of what has turned out to be an enormous timeline, and that's where I've been working ever since. The parent article for the timeline can be found in the linked Historical Overview and I am slowly and steadily moving forward through 18,000 years. At the time of writing I have started working on the Time of Terrors which begins in the year 3004 APC. I need to reach about 6900 APC to complete the whole timeline, so there is a little less than 4000 years to go, but I want to put more detail into the more recent years.
It's been fun, and along the way, I've also created a roughly 17,000 word short story, Hella and the Widow, which I had no idea for, or intent to write at the start of the year, but which arose organically from the previous world building in Magicians' End.
My plan for this year's competition is to use WorldEmber to push on with the Magicians' End timeline and pick and choose the articles that fit with the existing themes I want to develop. At the same time, if the competition prompts suggest fresh ideas I'm open to that as well.
Happy reading if you decide to have a look at any of this new content, or the slightly older context in which it will be embedded.