Hey guys! This chapter is a bit of an aside to bookmark the first five chapters of STAGNANTE releasing. This issue/entry of Scabbard Scribbles will also serve as a Q&A for the first week or so of its posting, allowing anyone and everyone who's read the first five chapters to comment below. If you're reading this later, sorry!

Welcome to Scabbard Scribbles! For those of you who read my other work (STEM) or are interested in Stagnante, you might have seen the word "Brogdar" tossed around. Both of these stories share a setting, albeit in two very different parts of the world. STEM starts in a place known as the Great Plains of Kave, located in the northeast of the world.

Although not the setting (at least not primarily) of Stagnante, an important location to it and the established world is the country known as Londelia. Stagnante itself takes place in the Land of Stagnation, but its protagonist Ronin and a few minor/supporting characters hail from it.

Londelia

The flag of Londelia is one of the first things I made originally when designing the setting of Brogdar; a general rule of thumb in the creation of flags is that they should remain simple enough to recognize, so one of the things that I made an effort on was prioritizing this.

Londelia's flag is a simple, two-color banner of gold and black/grey (normally determined by what's available). The image appears to be a triangle of black/grey beneath a chevron/arrow, surrounded by a triangular bend of gold, and finally outline in black.

As far as the northern nations go, Londelia is one of the smallest nations on the main continent. Its flag originally symbolizes an arrowhead, one of Londelia's most well-known symbols via its archers. It's a mountainous nation that thrives on hunting and ridged/terraced farms, with a lot of its aesthetics belonging to Japanese culture. The colors of black and grey are meant to be cheap and effective colors for blending in with the terrain, while gold is the color of House Londer. House Londer's importance in Londelia has changed throughout history, but they are in fact the oldest/founding nobility within the nation.

Londelia itself is formed from an ancient group of humans who came to Brogdar's main continent from abroad. Since its founding it has steadily become more like other nations (such as adapting their armor to supplement their designs) but has retained its independence through trade and alliances. In the world scheme, it isn't a very powerful nation but its location makes attacking it a pyrrhic objective that no nation has attempted after the first failure.

Since its inception and changes to feature swordsmen over archers (most Londelian men, including Ronin, are still adept/trained to use a bow), the one concurrent importance in Londelia is that of its warrior and noble cast. As you can see from the reference I used (found it ages ago, I do not know who created it but I encourage people to reverse-image search it if you're curious), the main aesthetic of these men and women is that of samurai. Londelia's swordsmen are often trained just as long but far more intensely than those in other nations, with some of them beginning training from even younger ages. One such example is Ronin: although his story highlights training more intensely in his teenage years, he himself started training (like most nobles) at the age of six.

Few people in Brogdar are capable of matching a Londelian swordsman in one-on-one combat, but this is also a weakness as their exceptionally high skill-level makes the loss of even one extremely punishing to the nation. Most cases of murder are often duels between others that ended in death, with nearly every case resulting instead in the removal of a hand instead of imprisonment. The yukata style worn by these swordsmen therefore often tells a lot about them; those who wear loose yukata and hide their hands/stumps are often seen as criminals or shady men, while a tighter-worn yukata and letting others see your hands is considered culturally normal.

However, as seen in Stagnante, the punishment of exile or execution is reserved and feasibly issued against those who commit heinous crimes in the setting. Ronin is the traditional case of this: mass murder or heinous enough crimes will often result in the exiling of a criminal unless the entire nation calls for their execution. This means that most of the more brutal Stagnante and tribe members are often of Londelian origin, even to the point of creating a universally known name among the world powers: Cutters. Common nicknames for these criminals are often based on this, with one example being Ronin's nickname as the Londer Butcher, but it ultimately depends on whether or not their crime is that of violence such as murder or something akin to rape.

A final note on the swordsmen of Londelia is that the overwhelming majority of them are male. Unlike most nations, however, Londelia is not opposed to female warriors; a unique corps exists within the military dedicated to the female soldiers of Londelia known as the Golden Arrows. As their name implies, they rely on a mix of swordsmanship and archery in battle; unlike traditional soldiers that wear heavier suits of armor, they train in mobility and precision as a covert force of Londelia. A few men have joined this division but overwhelmingly the women of the Golden Arrows have struck a reputation for their use in subversion and using traditionally less "honorable" tactics from poisoning foes. In the near future, more about them will be revealed as Ronin both recalls his own encounters with them and, perhaps, even meets them.

Finally and most importantly, you have Ronin: the second son of House Londer. Inspired by wuxia and "beggar swordsmen" in his initial aesthetic, Ronin is at his heart a very traditional character. His background is extravagant and he does have some "OP advantages" found in game-like settings, but unlike the protagonist of STEM (Kaden) he primarily relies on his intelligence in utilizing his core set of combat skills. This is a design similar to Kaden who uses his intellect to strategize a battle via mathematics (calculating his MP, deducing efficient ways, path of least resistance) whereas Ronin knows and focuses on things he outclasses an opponent in. This is probably better described as "street smarts" or combat experience, such as using the hilt of his sword as a direct-point bludgeon or using the motion of one swing to achieve multiple goals. Ronin grew up under a steady reinforcement of "fight until you're ragged", resulting in a reliance on risky exchanges even if it may wound him.

The biggest reason for this design change is that while STEM prioritizes stats (it's a LitRPG), Stagnante is meant to showcase the latter end/majority of the world when you're NOT someone reincarnated. To Ronin and most beings, they can't see the numerical value of their HP. Only extremely gifted mages, warriors, and craftsmen are able to see the value of their MP and SP, but everyone is able to see their bars. This is due to how, in this game-like world, it is entirely possible to kill a human through traditional means (destruction of the brain) that don't interact well with game mechanics (instant death can be resisted, for example, so would someone who resists it be able to survive a sword through the brain? No. Not in Brogdar). Unlike the rest of the world, humanoid races start to undergo "rule exceptions" and "fudging" by the system in-place over the world, allowing a human to exhaust themselves and bypass the limitations set into effect to reasonable levels.

While a convenient writing tool, this DOES have an influence. Ronin can suffer wounds that defy the HP system in exchange for this, which is why suffering wounds provide debuffs to stats. Cutting someone's hand off will completely disable two-handed skills, placing importance on using the system to AVOID this scenario. In Stagnante, Brogdar's system ensures Ronin isn't able to min-max despite his advantages. The only way he can survive is relying on his intelligence, determining how certain creatures are "exposed" within the system (see 1st Cut when he cuts monsters down instantly), and rapidly using this weakness to dispatch them.

And for those curious: Stagnante IS a mature story. The blood and gore may not have given it away but I wanted the more recent chapters to hopefully cement that the Land of Stagnation isn't a place you'd want to be. If you're looking to see Ronin have a super happy ending, I'll tell you right now that death in the Land of Stagnation is painfully common, albeit more so in the story for obvious reasons, and friendships are often short. Ronin is the main character and unlike my other work, the other characters inside it will almost always end up dead or departing. Ronin will have brutally close calls but this story IS his tale of the Land. Not his friends or allies or whatever. Hahaha.

Unless...?

Anyway, if you've enjoyed this Scabbard Scribbles, let me know in the comments. I hope you guys are enjoying the story! The next Scabbard Scribbles will probably be after a lot more chapters so no reason to worry about interruptions. None of these will ever be required reading so if you didn't, feel free to avoid these going forward; they'll always be blatantly named/identified so you can skip them as you desire.

o/