I participated in every NaNoWriMo since 2004, but I don't think I have any better chances at finishing a novel this time around ;-)

Met the woman who is now my wife at a NaNo get-together in 2004, though, so it was worth it.

Another one:

The pedia links to special pages (Special:all, the tags list) all result in an error about the page being restricted.

The iPad app is there now. It's not really working, but it's there ;-)

Right, everything directly connected to Onghwe is fictional.

I don't know how much of a difference that makes. The circus doesn't really serve a specific purpose yet other than adding variety to the story. It could have been left out. Had it existed in the real world, it wouldn't have changed anything.

Speaking of things we possibly wouldn't even know today, there are some other small bits that are hard to prove, like that the area where Lian is from was indeed already part of the Mongol empire, and so on. Things that aren't necessarily inaccurate but where I wouldn't exactly rely on a novel either.

About the critical turning point that I completely ignored in my last reply: I'm not sure there is one. The Great Khan did indeed die and his death did more or less cause the Khans to return home. The story doesn't really need to change history in a big way to work. As far as I know, there was no hunting party in the real world, but the outcome was the same. :)

Oh and about the names, of course they're there to help us identify locations that would have gone by names nobody knows anymore, but that doesn't make them historically accurate. In particular, when you refer to Beijing, you're talking about a city that was only built in the early 15th century and would eventually serve as a capital for a nation that didn't exist in the 13th century; using the name to refer to the general area where it was eventually built is perfectly fine in a novel, but it's still a significant deviation.

There are some small things like places that are being referred to by a name that was not in use at the time, like Beijing, Czeszow, etc.

Then there's some random other stuff like phobologia being presented as the Spartan science of fear control, while the real world's phobologia is a made up term from a novel.

And then there's Onghwe Khan...