Relance has a life of its own. I've worked on The Curious Tale since 1999, and in that time I've focused heavily on worldbuilding, so by now you can imagine that the lore of Relance is considerably more extensive than would ever fit into the books I plan to write. I anticipated this from the very beginning, and in 2000 conceived of The Relance Project to give Relance a home worthy of its size.
The Relance Project consists of two major parts: an encyclopedia, and a lexicon (i.e., dictionary):
Encyclopedia Reluria
Encyclopedia Reluria catalogues the knowledge of Relance: countries, customs, species—everything you would expect in a full-sized encylopedia. Note that the encyclopedia is quite new and only has a few pages. Your best bet is to use the sitemap to look around. Editing permissions are disabled for the general public, so if you want to request a new article or a change to an existing article, let me know.
Lexicon Reluria
For me, one of the biggest components of worldbuilding is the creation of new vocabulary and linguistic conventions. Now, I'm not talking about conlanging. I think of The Curious Tale as a series of books written in the original Relancii tongues and translated by me into English. Compared to most fantasy stories, the Tale has very little transliteral Relancii language. So most of the new vocabulary I'm talking about is actually going to be in English, with the intent that a lot of it could be absorbed into your day-to-day life, on matters that don't have anything to do with Relance. I consider the creation of new language to be something of a joy and civic pride, and I encourage everyone to take a page from Shakespeare's book and create new vocabulary in your life whenever the muse strikes! Currently the Lexicon has not yet been commissioned.
You'll also see a button on the navigation menu for a Beginner's Guide. I haven't written it yet, but its purpose is to serve as an orientation document for people whom I select to contribute to The Relance Project. I've always considered The Relance Project to be inherently collaborative in nature, and while the encyclopedia and lexicon aren't going to be publicly editable, I eventually hope to hand-pick a number of fans to help me with the project. Of course, the Beginner's Guide will also be there for anyone in the general public who simply enjoys this kind of stuff and wants to understand more about how The Relance Project is structured and what its scope is.
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
