Quote from: BedrockBrendan;918926It is a fantasy setting inspired by the Song Dynasty period. So there isn't a specific year.

Well the Song is a golden opportunity to play up one of the most important "cultural tragedies," the Fall of the Northern Song (and the migration of that nobility to the Southern Song, who would later end up becoming identified as the Hakka people (or at least their largest refugee migration)). Lots of Chinese literature love to play up their stories at the advent of that "known tragedy," a foreshadowing technique to add looming pathos to the atmosphere.

Then we can bust out our roasted watermelon seeds and weep into our silk sleeves during glorious skirmishes, for it would be understood it shall all eventually be for naught. (But that might also be a touch self indulgent. )

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;920225That looks really cool (and not terribly difficult). Is cork board something you can cut with an exacto knife?

The first picture seems to show an exacto knife or something like, and its slightly larger cousin, I think called a utility knife, which can be found very inexpensively in any Walmart's or D-I-Y store.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920318Well the Song is a golden opportunity to play up one of the most important "cultural tragedies," the Fall of the Northern Song (and the migration of that nobility to the Southern Song, who would later end up becoming identified as the Hakka people (or at least their largest refugee migration)). Lots of Chinese literature love to play up their stories at the advent of that "known tragedy," a foreshadowing technique to add looming pathos to the atmosphere.

Then we can bust out our roasted watermelon seeds and weep into our silk sleeves during glorious skirmishes, for it would be understood it shall all eventually be for naught. (But that might also be a touch self indulgent. )

The collapse of the Song dynasty (first in the north, and then when the Mongols came along and rounded it off by taking the whole fucking empire for themselves) was really the most culturally devastating event of Chinese history. It was a turning point, and I feel quite sure that it was the point at which China basically lost its real dynamism as a civilization.