All Infopages

[JoB]

The other dams have power plants too, but this is the only one where I have find a spot where I can capture the water level on both sides at least somewhat visibly.

"Street"view to the rescue!

... yeeeeeaaaaah that might be a problem. Maybe that's why Minnas map moved Tampere (with these rapids-to-be) from the East to the South of Nokia, so that the (Pori-bound) boat can turn starboard into the Nokianvirta without passing through the Tammerkoski?

... speaking of the relevant deity (the author) reshaping the landscape to facilitate the plot post-Rash Finns ...

[Jitter]

Oh, the street view shows is surprisingly well! This is however the same dam My photo was taken from the red building behind the power plant, which is a nice hotel.

[LooNEY_DAC]

... Minnas map moved Tampere (with these rapids-to-be) from the East to the South of Nokia ...

No, it didn't.

Look at the inset map: it shows that North is almost exactly the upper right corner of the main map, which makes East the lower right corner. Tampere is below and to the right of Nokia on the map, so almost due East.

[JoB]

No, it didn't.

Look at the inset map: it shows that North is almost exactly the upper right corner of the main map, which makes East the lower right corner. Tampere is below and to the right of Nokia on the map, so almost due East.

Hmmmmmmm, granted, but. When you look at an actual North-oriented map, Pori, Nokia, and Tampere are pretty much on the same latitude, and the orientation of the waters between them is identical to the main part of the p 86 map. Yet, p 86 shows Tampere below the still-rather-horizontal line through Pori and Nokia, and the "channel" in it that matches the Nokianvirta - starting out as a pretty straight prolongation of the tip of the Kulovesi - ends North of Tampere, rather than opposite Sankila (which is South off Nokia, actually, much less the longitude of Tampere). And it is marked as the path the boats take, so they get to avoid the Tammerkoski - if that one's still within Tampere, of course.

[Jitter]

Blessed felines! http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=102

I think we just recently wondered how the Shushing Cat and other guardians on the paddlewheeler sniffed danger through the non-opening windows. This infopage (2/2) clearly states that cats can sense grosslings at distance, but that it’s not exactly known how this works. The page just speculates about spiritual ability. In some earlier discussion (probably about the Shushing Cat) Minna mentor that she likes to write animals as a bit more sentient than they perhaps are in reality, but it’s not her intention that all cats have become super smart for some reason.

The first page speculates why cats happen to be immune. Clearly the skald who has written this infopage hasn’t asked the Finns. We know: https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=1262.270

[Jitter]

Join the ranks of the Cleansers! Or at least read about them here: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=118

I had nagging feeling that it’s canon that people (can) get a job when the are 13, and here it is! Surely this is a good age to make decisions about your life (not to mention death). I also notice the poster mentions life insurance - I’m a bit surprised that such exists. The population seem a bit small. But assuming there is insurance available, the terms and exclusions manifest must be quite long indeed

In the comments Minna mentions as a response to a question that “the army may have some bulky, single-purpose computers” but just a few pages later Siv’s work has computers, and hazmat suits and overall high-tech atmosphere. Another comment by her here is that “I never said there are no survivors in North America”. Hmmm…

Also I never noticed the Cleanser logo is also a cat in addition to the flame and the paw!

[thorny]

I don't think anyone can fairly accuse Minna of excessive consistency, or of paying too much attention to whether the parts of her various stories work well with each other.

I suspect that for most of the things we've wanted answers to, Minna never had them worked out, beyond what she wanted to draw at the moment.

It's just that what she wanted to draw at the moment used to be so good --.

[NightMareMage]

Although the books are at the heart of the story, there's a real problem with the world-building around them.  You can handwave that the Icelanders, Norwegians, and Finns went back to magic and therefore burned their books, but the Danes and Swedes didn't.  The best you can do for the Swedes is that they used books as fuel when it was cold and too dangerous to go searching for firewood, but that doesn't seem to apply to the Danes, who were on their island and presumably not infested with trolls (Bornholm is "safe" not "cleansed").  And then, as tehta points out, even if you suppose that Swedes and Danes did burn their books for fuel or in reaction to the Rash, why aren't books now being scavenged, particularly in Sweden?

Books are burned for political reasons, which is not exclusively religious. Any nation could it.

Also, we know that Iceland limits, if not restricts historical knowledge but do we have evidence that suggests the other nations do? Danes are noted for being well read. Norwegians may not often be well educated but that does not in and it of itself imply book burnings. Onni knows at least some history of churches so Finnish likely are not hiding their history like the Icelanders are. And as far as Sweden goes we mostly see Emil who is not well educated.

Oh, I only just noticed the settlement Vädeöarna and the red areas on islands of Læsø and Arnholt between Swedish west coast and Jylland. I wonder which country those belong to? By spelling, Väderöarna is Swedish and Læsø Danish or Norwegian but they are far from any other settlements in any of the countries.

Similarly there is some red in the Åland islands, which nowadays are part of Finland although strictly Swedish-speaking. But those areas are relatively close to Skutskär in Sweden, so it is definitely part of Sweden whether they are descendants of Y0 locals or resettled from Sweden. The islands are very many and there aren’t many cetaceans in the Baltic (there are seals but even those aren’t extremely numerous) so the archipelago would be a good survival area all in all.

There is also discussion about there being red in the Shetland islands, but I’m not sure if that’s actually color or just loss of definition of the graphic. In some comment Minna says any survivors there may have been in the small northern islands that are currently part Scotland have migrated into Scandinavia, so probably it’s just a glitch in the graphic.

Going with the assumption they are not self-governing, wouldn't it be plausible that many of these more isolated and strangely placed (for want of a better term) could be claimed by whatever government said it was theirs or could have even passed hands later? Even changing more than once?

This may not even affect lifes in these areas by much. Hell, depending on their level of access to communication, they may not have even known for sometime.

Join the ranks of the Cleansers! Or at least read about them here: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=118

I had nagging feeling that it’s canon that people (can) get a job when the are 13, and here it is! Surely this is a good age to make decisions about your life (not to mention death). I also notice the poster mentions life insurance - I’m a bit surprised that such exists. The population seem a bit small. But assuming there is insurance available, the terms and exclusions manifest must be quite long indeed

Age 13 could just be for training and not the job itself. Though that’s not much better. IIRC Emil joined when he was 17 so (IRL) minors are accepted. And if 13 is just for training that would not necessarily mean that the age to serve would be much higher. Even with this theory, commonality of child labor can be inferred.

[Suominoita]

Books are burned for political reasons, which is not exclusively religious. Any nation could it.

Also, we know that Iceland limits, if not restricts historical knowledge but do we have evidence that suggests the other nations do? Danes are noted for being well read. Norwegians may not often be well educated but that does not in and it of itself imply book burnings. Onni knows at least some history of churches so Finnish likely are not hiding their history like the Icelanders are. And as far as Sweden goes we mostly see Emil who is not well educated.
Going with the assumption they are not self-governing, wouldn't it be plausible that many of these more isolated and strangely placed (for want of a better term) could be claimed by whatever government said it was theirs or could have even passed hands later? Even changing more than once?

This may not even affect lifes in these areas by much. Hell, depending on their level of access to communication, they may not have even known for sometime.
Age 13 could just be for training and not the job itself. Though that’s not much better. IIRC Emil joined when he was 17 so (IRL) minors are accepted. And if 13 is just for training that would not necessarily mean that the age to serve would be much higher. Even with this theory, commonality of child labor can be inferred.

As far as books go -- well, public libraries and book stores -- they're in cities and as Lalli put it, "Cities are bad". It just depends on what sort of books the ancestors brought with them/ happened to have in their far-away place. As in the society. I can see there being books about fungi and plants, children's books, maybe some school books. Maybe they had some knowledge of things like the old religion in Toivosaari, but only 13 and up ever got told about it, and Keuruu had none of that. (Onni knows, The younger ones of the family don't).

13 year-olds for training-- well, 14 used to be common enough an age to become a squire or an apprentice so this one can begin a year early. Most likely an orphan or otherwise in need. Presumably the age is much higher for non-immunes considering the biggest threat is infection by a troll or a beast. But um -- what did the Cleansers do all winter while waiting for the freezing temperature to deal with trolls and such?

And forget 13, Lalli was 8 when Grandma Ensi took him on for training! She might not have been that early with Onni, but since Lalli is immune, she could start early. It seemed more like camping with grandma and being taught things about spirits and stuff but still...

[tehta]

Lalli could have started even earlier! All we know is that he was training by eight, and that he had been taken out of school after two years. No idea when school would have started. And at fourteen, I think he was considered a full scout, not an apprentice.

That said, just because people start working early doesn't mean they need to stop learning. Especially when work is seasonal. I would imagine that, in educated Denmark, kids might help on the farm AND pursue an education in the shower seasons.

I'm very curious about Iceland. We don't know much about how Reynir grew up, but there would not have been the same pressure to work in an army. He could have had a semi-normal education (although he doesn't seem to know much, at all--maybe he's a sheep expert.)

[JoB]

Lalli could have started even earlier! All we know is that he was training by eight, and that he had been taken out of school after two years. No idea when school would have started.

We also know that mages tend to hear the Black Speech, whether they want to or not, and have to learn ways to ignore it, lest their mental health suffers from it. Try to put a minimum age on that.

(Scary thought: How much of your learning your native Finnish language is actually adopted from the grosslings, rather than your family and school, when you're a mage born and growing up in Finland? Can the post-Rash Finns possibly recognize a mage by his "trollified"/of-pre-Rash-times accent/vocabulary when he speaks?)

[tehta]

That's a good point: there is no doubt that mage training needs to start as soon as the powers kick in. I would imagine that happens in parallel with any other learning, though? Many mages have other jobs, and in Lalli's case he is quite specific about being taken out of school to start scout training.

The thing about languages is very interesting. In my experience of living in an expat community in a country full of dialects, children tend not to mash everything together, but to compartmentalize, and pick their style of speech based on people and situations. So maybe 'ancient dialects' would only come out when discussing monster-specific topics with other mages?

(Oh, and I don't actually like the idea of the attack scene being a vision, both because of how mismatched it is with his other pets and because of how it doesn't match the scratches.)

[thorny]

Our society is actually pretty odd in thinking that children shouldn't work at all. Children used to start work with their families as they became old enough to do particular portions of it; whether the work was hunting/gathering or farming or preparing/storing food or making clothes/tools/housing etc.; or in most cases a mix of all of this. --  This probably has a lot to do with our having separated work from home life to such a large extent, and also to do with a backlash from such things as putting small children to work in mines doing hazardous work for long hours. But a society working on an emergency basis and primarily in small groups is probably going to mostly go back to the old style.

[Róisín]

I can vouch for that, having been born and grown up on a couple of very isolated and lowtech subsistence farms, and having joined in the endless work as soon as I possibly could do so with competence and safety. You worked because everybody did. Between work I was homeschooled, with the advantage of an extensive, multilingual and wide-spanning home library and older relatives who believed passionately in the virtues of education. I know that a lot of such arrangements nowadays tend to isolate and exploit the kids, usually because of some odd religious or political bias, but we were just living way out. The end of this was that I grew up knowing both how to work hard and pay attention and how to study in the times when I could. Plus my older brother and I had fun.

And when we came to live nearer to regular schools, I both already knew how to work and had a good enough education that I was able to get through the rest of my secondary education and university, which we could never otherwise have afforded, on Commonwealth scholarships, which were competitive academic scholarships. Working from a young age doesn’t hurt, and providing that the rest of life is balanced, may very well help. When my own children were small we lived in the backbeyond of Far North Queensland, and they also were homeschooled and worked with the adults until we had to move nearer to a city for medical reasons. They turned out okay.

[Jitter]

Oh I have no doubt that children participate in work from a young age in the Known World. With everyone relying on farming with no technology while also needing workforce for defense/ guarding/ scouting they definitely need everyone who can pitch in. Tuuri for example was working on the Sheep and Farming Island prior to the Incident and she was what, 11 years?

But being a Cleanser means leaving home and living with the troops, at least during the field campaign. So it’s a different kind of working than participating in work at and around the home village.

Another bit of information is that Emil was at school until age 17 and at 19 has been in the army for only two years, which Tuuri is amazed about. Particularly because this very long and comprehensive education has left him still without skill in Icelandic. So clearly the expected age for leaving school is well younger than that.

I wonder what age is considered legally adult? Emil was an adult at 17 as he was able to make the decision, but the Cleanser poster doesn’t mention anything about a 13 yo needing a parental consent. The age limit text would be the part to include it. Are they considered independent adults at 13?