Going to be continuing my break from #AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay. Redistributing the creative pursuits into more enduring projects for the time being. But reserving the right to pick it up again when I dive back deeply into the Appendix N and related fiction!

The other reason is that other fiction has been calling my name. Currently enjoying Clarke's Piranesi and starting up Peter Watts' Starfish. You gotta listen to your paper heart!

pavisse - an oblong shield used during the mid-14th to early 16th centuries. Often large enough to cover the entire body, it was used by archers, crossbowmen, and other infantry soldiers on the battlefield.

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires. Thomas recounts the battle of Crécy. The mercenary crossbowmen were reluctant to fire uphill into the sun at the defending English.

#AppendixN #ChristopherBuehlman #BetweenTwoFires

captious - tending to find fault or raise petty objections

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Jack Vance's short story Guyal of Sfere. The old man chastises the great metallic face for its complaints and strange spectral issuances.

#AppendixN #JackVance #DyingEarth

debouch - emerge from a narrow or confined space into a wide, open area

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Robert E. Howard's short story The Scarlet Citadel. The mailed riders under the Aquilonian banner emerge from the defiles between the hills to the east of the city in pursuit of Strabonus's spahis.

#AppendixN #RobertEHoward #ConanTheBarbarian

wrack - a mass of high, thick, fast-moving clouds

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Gene Wolfe's The Urth of the New Sun. Severian considers the sky above the ship from the topmast.

#AppendixN #GeneWolfe #UrthOfTheNewSun

arsinoitherium - an extinct genus of mammals, related to elephants, sirenians and hyraxes, superficially resembling a two horned rhinoceros

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Gene Wolfe's The Citadel of the Autarch. A varied group of forces aligns to hold the line of battle, and Severian notes the impressive Daughters of War amongst the all-male light cavalry.

#AppendixN #GeneWolfe #BookOfTheNewSun

admixture - a mixture, typically a main ingredient with a second minor ingredient

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Leigh Brackett's The Secret of Sinharat. Kynon sprinkles in Anglo-Saxon profanities in with his Martian swearing as a sandstorm approaches suddenly from the north.

#AppendixN #LeighBrackett #EricJohnStark

kohl - a powder, as finely powdered antimony sulfide, used as a cosmetic to darken the eyelids, eyebrows, etc

cinerary - adj, holding or intended for ashes, especially the ashes of cremated bodies

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Green Lung's "Graveyard Sun" off the album "Black Harvest."

"It was the hour of dusk, in the season of mists
On your pale neck, your fate sealed with a kiss
Kohl rims round your eyes like cinerary ash
In my cold embrace you fell into a trance"

#AppendixN #GreenLung

scarp / escarpment – a long, steep slope, especially one at the edge of a plateau or separating areas of land at different heights

#AppendixNLocutionOfTheDay from Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan. Fuschia stares out her window at the landscape beyond Gormenghast's walls.

#AppendixN #MervynPeake #Gormenghast