A scientist is going to know latin to a good degree but not speak it fluently like a language. Selina will though coming from the age and economic background that she does, it was still commonplace to teach that language as a living spoken language. That's why I made her be the one who would do the translation between them.

I have to leave now, I'll finish up the others tomorrow. Let's decide on a year though as I can't do the monk until I have that.

Well, even in Selina's time, Latin was a written language. Spoken is soemthing else. I took it in high school as well and, while it can be spoken, it is more of a challenge than, say, German which I picked up conversationally in a couple months of immersion in Lindau.

Bumping for you...

I'm thinking 1337 or something near that for our medieval time period. We could go with the start of the hundred years war. Or, perhaps the beginning of the Black death which is also quite near to that. Between 1348 and 1350. Our date really depends on what our monk wants to change, and I'll have to look backwards in the thread, but did we decide on what that was?

Also, one more thing, do we want our monk moving forward in time, or backwards from his standpoint? I'm personally finding my suspension of disbelief threatened by the idea of him jumping forward to fix something that he merely learned about secondhand from time-travelers. Unless of course, he started at the beginning of the 100Y War, and learns of say, Joan of Arc, her heroism, and then burning. Either way, it looks to me like we need our event to be in the near future for our monk, or in the near past. The 1300s give us lots of room to work with, so I await your guys' thoughts.

Warden mentions the Joan of Arc thing and I had mentioned that as a possibility to use. Is that what we have decided to do?

I like it. Set him some 10 to 100 years in the future relative to her execution.

Does anyone actually have a date of her sainthood? I only took a few moments to look, but I only saw the date of her execution. To our monk, that would seem the more significant date to start at, that way her righteousness is foremost in his mind.

I'll look into it tonight if I can get a moment, it's extremely important given the centering of our story around that.

Bump...

Beatification in 1909 and canonization in 1920.

If it helps...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization_of_Joan_of_Arc

Thanks Draugnar - now I'll be able to work on some more of these today since it looks like we are settling into some dates.

I wouldn't be too stuck on the dates of beatification and canonization as her reputation grew and she was recognized long before then by the Catholic church as a martyr for Christ, just not an official saint.

I agree Draugnar, but I want to research in history when someone might have been pushing a cause for her canonization or some other concern about her at some point in history.

Have you made the character profile for the scientist yet? If not, you can model it after someone like Oppenheimer who had a great tenacity for language. I believe he could fluently speak/read/write something like 20 languages, most of which he learned just for fun. This included Latin and Greek.

No, I haven't... that's a good idea EXCEPT that the real scientist is going to be killed shortly after they arrive by the monk. A 'sidekick' apprentice scientist wouldn't be that fluent in all of that.

^Unless he was a "future genius in training" TM.

I guess you guys aren't crazy about the 'spoiled brat' being the one they have to depend on for translation with the roman. Okay, I guess it would be good to have two different people in the group who could communicate on some level with him, ie the scientist fluently and Selina roughly and with mistakes.

Bump - Sorry it's taken a while to finish this part. I'm finishing up that part of my job that is the craziest time of year right now. Soon I'll be going out to a conference in Phoenix though which will leave plenty of time in the evening to be able to get a lot of writing done.

bumping back to page 1.

Shall I bump?

Things that go bump in the night... and who the hell decided we should have Halloween go up the day after labor day?

Halloween, already?

Okay, this is what I think.

I think that the Roman doesn't need to be educated, but shouldn't be a dumb-ass. He would be a good soldier who knows how to do more than kill people. "Street smarts" of the ancient battlefield if you will, esp. since no one else with have that skill. So he will be the one who knows shit like "those archers can't hit us" and so on. I don't like the idea of him being completely brutish.

Also how sure are you that a woman, even aristocratic, would be educated ca 1833, outside of piano lessons? I was taught they got about an elementary level education and then a musical instrument, but I could be wrong.

You could have Danielle speak Latin. That's not all that unbelievable. And the monk would speak Latin too, so there's that to consider.

As far as the monk, forgot his name, you could have him having known Joan of Arc personally and being really depressed she died.

This is my suggestion: try looking to see if there is a time in the hundred years' war after Joan's death where things were looking pretty bad for the French. Set him in that time, he would be desperate to "save France" and would certainly feel God was on his side. He would not know or not believe if told that France would win anyway. And knowing her personally/being a former acolyte would give him a serious personal motivation.

I don't have a lot of time right now so I can;t look it up right away, what do you think of that though.

I'm assuming this means the monk is French, anyway.

Also one thing that I wanted for Byron but you didn't say so much was that he is like really well-read, but on his own. As in, he has read all sorts of history, and so on.

He will be the "factbook" who knows the random things you might need to know.

Danielle the smart girl is very *intelligent* but won't know much outside her specialized field, whatever we decide that is.

You feel me there?

I'm liking it Thucy. It sets up roles for each of the players in our little play.

Oh sure, kill the scientist off first!

I REALLY like that analysis Thucy... that's going to make my job a lot easier once I can get back to setting up the character profile sheets. I promise you guys, this is the last week where I'm just swamped at work, next week I'll be in Phoenix, AZ at a conference so each evening I'm going to have plenty of time to put together a lot of what we've worked out thus far.