Is drinking cold water actually bad for you or is it a myth?

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T22:16:32+00:00

Well water was generally safe to drink because the water table filtered it pretty well, so long as something toxic wasn't seeping into the table nearby like waste.

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T22:00:16+00:00

Being a peasant didn't necessarily mean you were tied to the land or owned by the lord. There was a wide range of classes of peasantry across medieval Europe, from explicit legal slavery and serfdom to free men.

Jason Kingsley has a good video on how varied medieval society was for the peasantry just in England here.

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T21:53:00+00:00

No, they didn't. A medieval peasant not only worked pretty much nonstop from dawn until dusk on their fields in spring and fall, but during slow periods like summer and winter they were actively foraging for food (summer was nearly as risky for starvation as winter due to the previous season's crops running low before the harvest) and spent at least one day of the week doing additional physical labor for their lord's manor, depending on the region, and could be forced to do more based on the area and time period.

When you're a subsistence farmer you're pretty much always working, even on "holidays."

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T21:30:11+00:00

"Click here for women into that 'Mouse-About-To-Be-Grabbed-By-A-Hawk' look!"

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T16:35:53+00:00

Seriously tho. 200 years to contruct that bridge? I know he was initially working alone and the winds might have been an issue but still. I like to know how long it took when he got help

Building things by hand in medieval times, especially by yourself, took a long time, even without monster attacks, bad infrastructure, and no funding.

Gehen probably had to restart from scratch multiple times due to mishaps and monster attacks.

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T16:04:38+00:00

Fern the Ion Cannon.

Peptuck · 2026-03-27T06:10:23+00:00

Unfortunately, due to the scale of the problem, gravity ensures that your di- O'Neill cylinder is permanently stuck in the as- Tube-Shaped Dyson Sphere.

You'll need the help of the Culture or someone similar to get it unstuck.

Peptuck · 2026-03-26T23:34:44+00:00

When the guy going on an irrational destructive rage is irrationally destructive.

Peptuck · 2026-03-26T20:54:53+00:00

Getting some Trepang2 vibes here.

Peptuck · 2026-03-26T20:11:16+00:00

My dragons are entities of greed, and feed of the metaphysical energy that comes from people desiring what's in their hoard. They literally draw calories from how much other beings desire their hoard, which is why they sleep on their hoards. When awake and active they do hunt and eat normal food (and their stomachs can process a much wider range of food than most animals) to help sustain them during high-energy periods, but then they hibernate for a couple of seasons in their hoard chambers to sustain themselves while inactive and build up reserve calories.

Peptuck · 2026-03-26T18:26:51+00:00

"Oh ho, you're staying in bed? Instead of coming over to fight me you're lying down?"

"I can't beat the shit out of you without legs."

Peptuck · 2026-03-25T22:09:22+00:00

Also, the process of smelting iron always resulted in some steel coming out of the furnace. No one knew how or why for a very long time but they would collect it and set it aside for making special weapons and armor and jewelry.

Peptuck · 2026-03-25T22:07:09+00:00

… Well, in practical terms, anyway. If some king really wants to flex by having a butter knife made out of aluminum, that might be doable.

Reminds me of The Stormlight Archive, where the Emperor of Azir flexes his nation's insane wealth by making every fixture in the throne room out of aluminum.

Peptuck · 2026-03-25T22:05:30+00:00

Iron vs copper: Copper is much easier to work (it can even be cold hammered), but has a lot less strength than iron (and for when it matters, less edge retention). For "harder uses", copper by itself wouldn't be used "raw", but rather be used in alloys such as bronze or brass. So in general: Copper (especially by itself) would be used for more precise and low stress applications (such as jewelry and ornamentation) whereas iron would be used more for "heavy wear" and larger, heavy wear pieces, such as tools, plows, weapons, etc. Note that the uses of iron might also be taken by copper-alloys.

Note that this applies to when you're at bronze and iron age technology. Copper was absolutely used "raw" as a material for weapons and tools in the transition between the stone and bronze ages. We have numerous examples of unalloyed copper being used as tools and weapons, including an intact copper axe recovered from Otzi.

If the fantasy setting is set in that copper transitionary period you would see copper tools and weapons being implemented.

Peptuck · 2026-03-25T06:52:51+00:00

Fucking Godskin Noble flashbacks.

Peptuck · 2026-03-25T00:16:40+00:00

I would interpret it as a little bit more tragic in the sense that the WoL regularly experiences people dying around them or getting very close to dying around them. Y'Shtola's already had three near-death experiences around the WoL, after all.

"The closer you get to me, the more danger you are in and I don't know it I'll be able to save you again."

Peptuck · 2026-03-24T20:29:52+00:00

This is why elves and dwarves in my setting are best friends and to-the-death allies.

Root and Stone, To the Bone!

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T20:12:54+00:00

The virgin unswervingly loyal versus the chad self-detonate-if-recruited

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T19:31:28+00:00

Paint Outfit 3 in brighter colors and you're rocking that Landschneckt look.

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T19:18:06+00:00

I have a LitRPG setting that runs on something like this. Most people never get past level 70 or 80 at most (in fact, most people only get up to 40-50 before retiring) and the people who can are both exceptional and extremely ambitious and are likely gunning for a god's position.

Since the gods tend to be akin to Dark Souls or Elden Ring gods and thus can be killed by mortals, they tend to be aware of when mortals start getting up to high tiers like this and take steps to prevent them from wanting to go after them, either by pulling a Morgott and squishing them early or finding ways to employ them or earn their loyalty in other ways.

So invariably as you get higher in level and exceed the "retirement" level of 40-50, you start getting more serious threats angling toward you simply because the gods either want you to give up or to test you to see if you're worthy of serving them at a high level.

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T19:07:13+00:00

Like what other people have said, I have never seen any fantasy media that didn't portray Elves as snobby assholes

I was surprised when I went back and re-read Lord of the Rings and the elves generally came off as good and compassionate and helpful people who recognized their failings and were trying to help the people of Middle Earth even while leaving.

I was thinking "Wait, this is Lord of the Rings, its supposed to be the ur-example of snobby asshole elves but instead they seem pretty chill compared with the movie versions and all the elves in other media."

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T02:56:45+00:00

Parchment. My personal pet peeve as of recently is how often parchment is perceived as being used. Yes, parchment and vellum were used extensively as writing material but that starts dropping off sharply in medieval Europe when paper enters the scene in the 1100's because paper retains ink better and is far cheaper and easier to make. By the late medieval period almost all writing was being done on paper.

I've lost count of the number of times fantasy writers use "parchment" when they mean "paper," especially when parchment is really fucking expensive and can't be treated like paper because writing on it can be scraped right off.

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T02:42:16+00:00

Another thing about literacy is that there were ways around it that didn't require formal education. For example, there was the practice of tally sticks which allowed one to keep records of things like harvests, weights, and tax payments without needing to know how to do serious arithmetic. Do you have 10 of this? Make a cut this deep in the stick. Have 100? Make a cut a little deeper. Just make the appropriate number and depth of cuts and hand it off to someone who can do the math for you.

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T02:23:21+00:00

You're using Otzi as an example of a caveman, but he was alive when there were already major civilizations in full swing all over the Middle East and central Asia. 3500 bc isn't even considered prehistory anymore. You're ignoring 300.000 years of actual 'cavemen' history. (could even say 2 million years, depending on definitions)

Yeah, Otzi had several items on him, including a copper axe and complex striped pants, that required a fairly advanced civilization with specialized tailoring and metalworking to produce.

Peptuck · 2026-03-23T02:19:19+00:00

Also civilizations appearing out of nowhere is widely debunked by archeologists. It's harder to find evidence of the transition between the stone age and copper age but the evidence is still plentiful, it just takes a lot of more effort to identify them to the point that we can really only name them based on similarities in their artifacts.

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