I'm writing a bit of fiction about a French village which has discovered the elixir of life and since then has been living in perpetuity since the 15th century.
The idea is that this village has been living in isolation relatively unchanged, so I need to know as much as there is to know about village life in this era, including clothing, social classes, traditions, habits, superstitions, religious practices, and how they might react to that which they cannot understand.
The supreme Alchemist responsible for the elixir has created a machine to continuously make and pump out into the villages water supply, so as long as the machine continues to run, everyone there will live forever. While the cannot age, a side effect of the potion is infertility, meaning their population can never exceed a couple hundred. Because of this, everyone must continuously work to ensure the machine is properly maintained, supplied with fuel, and the people fed and in high enough spirits to carry out the work required. While they can't die, they can definitely fall sick and become too weak to work.
I'm especially interested in key words for titles, and how others may refer to one another, as well as certain phrases or common expressions which I can use to add as much authenticity to the feel of the writing as possible. I'm going to assume that everything has gone by unchanged and that they have had little to no communication with the rest of France or even the rest of the world.
Anything at all will be helpful, even if it's just a reference to a really good source.
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your novel, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists, based on past experience: some aspiring novelists have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.