Terms of Use

Last updated: September 2026

This is kurmatu.com. Using it means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, close the tab and no harm done.

What This Is

Legends of Kurmatu is one person’s world. It is written, built, drawn out and run by F.C. Marrow, and it is a passion project rather than a business. There is no studio behind it and no team. Nobody else is working on it.

Nothing on this site is for sale. There is no membership, no account to make, no newsletter, no commissions, no paid work, and no submissions. If a page here ever starts selling something or asking you to sign in, these terms will say so before it does.

There will be books set in this world eventually. This site is not an advert for them. It is the world itself, written down, and it stands on its own.

Using the Site

You may read this site, link to it, and tell people about it. That is what it is here for. Everything past that is covered under Ownership below, and the short version is that reading a thing is not the same as owning it.

The site is provided as it is, when it is. Pages get added, rewritten, moved and taken down without notice, because a world under construction is exactly what this is. Nothing here is promised to stay where you found it.

Eighteen or Older

You must be at least 18 years old to use this site. Not eighteen where the content gets worse. Eighteen to be here at all.

The age check on the way in is a bar, not a formality. Answering it dishonestly does not make you welcome and does not make the terms on this page stop applying to you. This site is not directed at children, and I do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13. See the Privacy Policy for what the site does and does not collect from anybody, which is close to nothing.

What Is In Here

Kurmatu is a low fantasy world written in the register of the people who live in it, and they live hard. This is not a gentle world and these are not gentle legends.

Written plainly, so that nobody has to find out by accident, the material on this site contains and will continue to contain:

• Violence. Warfare, siege, torture, mutilation, execution, and killing done for money and done for nothing.
• Slavery. It is an economy in this world, not a plot device. It is described the way the people who profit from it would describe it. That is the only way that kind of horror reads as real.
• Sexual content, coercion and sexual violence. Sex is written as part of how power moves through this world, including where it is bought, traded or taken. It is not written to titillate and it is not looked away from either.
• Cruelty done by ordinary people in ordinary work clothes, for ordinary reasons, and recorded in ledgers afterwards.
• Religion, blasphemy, and gods that do not answer. Faith here is transactional and frequently a racket, and the world says so.
• Bigotry, bondage, and the whole apparatus of people owning people. Depicted as it functions, never as it is defended.

Individual pages may carry their own warnings where something specific sits behind a click. The absence of a warning on a page is not a promise that the page is soft.

If It Is Not For You

Depiction Is Not Endorsement

This needs saying once, clearly, and then it is said.

Writing a thing is not approving of it. Kurmatu contains slavery, torture, sexual coercion, and men who do monstrous things and sleep well. None of it is presented as good, none of it is a recommendation, and none of it reflects what I think a person should do to another person.

The horror in this world is economic and it wears work clothes. It is written that way on purpose, because a cruelty that is shown as cartoonish is a cruelty nobody has to think about. If a scene here makes you uncomfortable, it is working.

Everyone In It Is Fictional

Every character, people, realm, city, god, war and event in Kurmatu is invented. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to real organisations or events, is coincidental.

Every character depicted in any sexual or mature situation, anywhere on this site, is a fictional adult of eighteen years or older, regardless of appearance, stature, art style, or anything stated or implied about them. This world does not contain and will never contain any sexual depiction of a minor.

The languages, peoples and places in this world are invented whole. Where a name or a custom rhymes with something in our own history, it is a rhyme and not a portrait, and no real culture, faith or people is being depicted, praised or insulted.

Ownership. All of It.

That covers the parts of this world you have not seen yet. Kurmatu has existed as a written body of work for far longer than this site has, the site shows a fraction of it, and the rest is owned exactly the same way. So is everything that comes out of it later, in any form: books, comics, games, cards, film, audio, or something that does not exist yet.

Nothing you do here grants you any of it. Not reading the site. Not linking to it. Not writing about it. Not making fan work. Not sending me something. Not a conversation with me in a comment section or a message. There is no mechanism on this website by which any part of this world transfers to anybody, and there is no implied licence hiding anywhere in these terms.

If you want to use any of it for anything beyond reading and linking, the answer is that you need written permission from me first, and it has to be actual written permission with my name on it.

What You May Do

• Read it. All of it, as often as you like.
• Link to it. Anywhere, to any page, without asking.
• Quote it, briefly, with credit, to talk about it. A line in a review, a post, a video, a discussion. That is fair use and it is welcome.
• Tell people about it. Enthusiastically. Please.

What You May Not Do

Without written permission, you may not:

• Copy, republish, mirror or re-host any part of this site or its writing, whole or in part.
• Sell, license, or take payment for anything built on this world, including merchandise, prints, art, fiction, games, or anything else.
• Present any of it as your own work, or present your work as mine or as official.
• Make derivative works for commercial use, or works that would compete with or substitute for the real thing.
• Use the name Legends of Kurmatu, the marks, or the names of this world’s characters and places to promote, endorse or brand anything of yours.
• Alter, strip or obscure any credit, mark or copyright notice.

No Scraping, and No Training On This

Normal search engine indexing, so that a person can find a page and come and read it, is fine and is the exception to the above.

Fan Work

People who love a thing make things about it, and I am not going to pretend to be unhappy about that. Fan art and fan fiction, made for love and given away free, are welcome here. The terms of it are simple and they are not negotiable:

• Your drawing is yours. I claim no ownership of the thing you made.
• The world it is set in is mine, and making something in it gives you no ownership, no stake, and no say in it. It does not limit what I do with my own characters, including doing something that contradicts you.
• Nothing fan-made is canon. Not a character, not a detail, not a theory. Canon is what is written on this site and in my files, and nowhere else.
• Free, and credited. Fan work must not be sold, monetised, or used to promote anything, and it should say plainly that it is unofficial and whose world it is set in.
• I may ask you to take it down. Rarely, and for a reason, and I would rather never have to. Reserving the right is how the world stays mine to steer.

Unsolicited Ideas and Pitches

Please do not send me story ideas, characters, plots, worldbuilding, or suggestions for where any of this should go. This is the one request on the page that is genuinely for your protection as much as mine.

I am writing this world years ahead of what is published. If you send me an idea and something resembling it shows up later, it will be because it was already in my files, and neither of us has any way to prove that to the other. So: anything sent to me unsolicited is sent on a non-confidential, non-obligation basis, creates no relationship of any kind, entitles you to no credit, no payment and no rights, and I may already be doing it.

Kind words, questions, corrections and typo reports are a different thing entirely, and I would love those.

On the Art, and On AI

Straight, because it matters to me that this is not fudged.

The writing is mine. Every word of it. The world, the characters, the histories, the languages, the cities and what happens in them are written by hand by F.C. Marrow, a published author, and none of it is generated. That is the whole substance of this site and it is entirely human work.

The pictures are placeholders. Where a character or a place needs a face and there is no artist yet, I generate one to hold the space. It shows what the page is meant to be. Every one of them is composed and directed by me from material I already wrote, and every one of them exists to be replaced by a real artist as and when that becomes possible.

Building this website involves AI-assisted programming, through Materia. That is the structure the writing sits in, not the writing.

Where it is never used: no story, no character, no history, no language, no entry, no description. Not one line of the world itself. That will not change.

Placeholder art is still owned the same as everything else here. It was made from my designs, of my characters, and the fact that a tool was involved does not put it up for grabs.

Acceptable Use

When using this site, you agree not to:

• Break any applicable law, or infringe anybody’s rights.
• Attempt to disrupt or damage the site, or gain access to anything not meant to be public.
• Use bots, scrapers or other automated means against it, per the section above.
• Upload or transmit malicious code.
• Impersonate me, or misrepresent yourself as connected to this project.
• Harass or abuse anybody through anything connected to it.

Leaving This Site

Some of what this site links to is also mine. Focal Comics, fcmarrow.com and MarrowMyth are all run by me. Same person, different projects.

That does not mean these terms travel with you. Each of those sites runs on its own terms and its own privacy policy, and they genuinely differ, because the sites do different things. One sells things. One has paid memberships and accounts to log into. One is a blog. What you agreed to by reading this page applies to kurmatu.com, and the moment you land somewhere else you are under that place’s rules instead. They are short. Read them when you get there.

Anything else linked from here belongs to somebody who is not me at all, and their terms and their policies are the ones that apply once you arrive.

Copyright Complaints

I take other people’s work as seriously as I take my own. If you believe something on this site infringes your copyright, use the contact page and pick Copyright, or email hello@kurmatu.com directly. Either way, include a description of the work, the URL where it sits on this site, how to contact you, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised. Valid notices get looked at by a person and material comes down where it should.

No Warranties

This site and everything on it is provided as is and as available, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. It is not warranted to be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, and content and features may be added, changed or removed at any time.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, F.C. Marrow and Legends of Kurmatu are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or any loss of data, profits or goodwill, arising from your use of or inability to use this site or anything on it. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the greatest extent the law allows.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless F.C. Marrow and Legends of Kurmatu from any claims, demands, damages, liabilities or costs, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of your use of this site, your breach of these terms, your violation of any law or the rights of anybody else, or anything you send or post.

Termination

Access to this site may be restricted or removed at any time, for any reason, including protecting the work or responding to a breach of these terms. The sections that should outlive that by their nature, including ownership, the reservation against machine training, the disclaimers, the limitation of liability and indemnification, keep applying afterwards.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Kingdom of Thailand, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and any dispute relating to these terms or this site will be handled in the courts of Thailand.

Privacy

Your use of this site is also covered by the Privacy Policy, which explains what the site collects. The short version is that it collects nothing.

No Waiver

Not enforcing part of these terms immediately is not a waiver of it. It can still be enforced later.

Assignment

I may transfer my rights and obligations under these terms, for example if this project one day sits inside something larger. You may not transfer yours.

Force Majeure

I am not responsible for delays or failures caused by things outside reasonable control, such as host outages, third-party service failures, or other disruption.

Changes

These terms will be updated as the world grows and as the law moves. When they change, the date at the top of this page changes with them. Changes take effect when they are posted, and continuing to use the site after that means you accept the current version.

Severability and Entire Agreement

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stands. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Legends of Kurmatu about your use of this site.

Contact

Questions about these terms go through the contact page, or straight to hello@kurmatu.com if you would rather. Both land in the same inbox and it is mine, not a queue.

Asking permission to use something is an email, not a form. There is no subject for it on the contact page on purpose, because it is a real request that needs a real description of what you want and what for. Write to me.