Becka's Notes

• Families live in multi-generational extended families in households.
• Each Household is run by the oldest woman supported by the other elders. She has the final say on what males are adopted and how the household's property is used.
• Marriage as we understand it is unknown. Instead all males and females in an household who are of the same generation and who have completed their rite of passage may freely have sex with each other.
• In spite of these the keeping of only one sex partner is encouraged. Not knowing the father of a child is considered a failing – though not a crime or sin.
• Once weaned children are raised in common by all adults in a household though they do know who their parents are (or at least who their mother is).
• Sex before the rite of passage is strongly discouraged and forbidden within the household.
• Sex with an age difference of more than 14 years is strictly forbidden.
• When a female of the family completes her rite of passage a new male in her age group is adopted into the family. When a male completes his rite of passage he must leave the house and either join another house or stay in the unattached males house until he finds one to take him in. The number of males and females over the age of coming of age must always be the same.
• If a woman of childbearing age in the house dies then one of the males in her age group must leave the family. Usually, but not always, the one who was adopted when she came of age. Men who leave a family in these circumstances cannot be adopted into another family and spend the rest of their lives in the unattached males house.
• Unattached males are distrusted and considered expendable and are sent on the most dangerous hunting and fishing missions and are most prone to be chosen for the rare human sacrifices as no one needs them. Tradition forbids unattached males from carrying weapons other than hunting gear and even this is forbidden in the village. They must collect it from the great moon's priestesses before departing on a trip and return it when they return.
• The only way for a male cast out from a household to avoid this is fate to castrate himself and then either rejoin his birth family or become a priest. Many men take this option as it holds no stigma unlike being an unattached male.
• If an adopted male in the current child-bearing age group dies one of the house females - generally, but not always, the one who he was adopted for - is expected to become a resident at one of the village's temples and abstain from sex from then on. If she is pregnant or nursing she will wait until the child is weaned and then depart as sex with pregnant and nursing women is taboo anyway. These women aid the priestesses and are not viewed with the suspicion that unattached males are. They are, however, expected to be celibate since they have no household and hetrosexual sex outside the household is forbidden.
• If an elder (a woman over-childbearing age or a man in that age group) dies no one has to leave since sex between elders is purely recreational.

Thoughts?

1. Gods
2. Persons -  “the elder children” and humans
3. Animals
4. Plants
5. Natural Forces and Features - Sun, Moon, Storm, Mountain, Lake, Sea, Fire etc
6. Natural Objects - stars, body parts, stones, branches etc
7. Artificial Forces and Features - Houses, Enclosures, Fences, Reservoir, man-made Fire.
8. Artificial Objects - tools, ornaments etc
9. Abstract Nouns

• Eights and Threes are important to both the sea and mountain people. Three because of their three major heavenly bodies (Sun, Traveller’s Moon and Great Moon) and eight because of the orbits of the two moons being 8 and 32 days respectively. For this reason their weeks have 8 days and their months 32 days. There are almost exactly 13 lunations of the Great Moon in a year and planetary rotation is 21 Earth hours.
• The Traveller’s Moon and Great Moon’s cycles are so perfectly in synch (there exactly four lunations of the traveller’s moon during one lunation of the great moon) that it seems unlikely to be natural. (This is fantasy - the gods altered their positions to make it so).
• The first day of every month (and especially the new year) must be a: dark moon for both moons and b: the first day of the week.
• To avoid slippage an occasional intercalary day is inserted between years when the double dark moon would shift to the second day of the week. Because the lunar cycle is so well tied to the solar year on this world - there’s about two hours difference between a solar year and the time taken for 13 lunations - this doesn’t happen too often. Intercalary days are considered not to exist in a legal or religious sense. This has social and cultural implications - especially if you happen to be born on one.
• Aside from the lunar calender there are two other systems - 1 solar/seasonal and 1 sidereal - which are combined to give dates (see below).
• The seasonal system is zodiacal has eight signs based on the world’s quarter and cross quarter days and the eight directions. They are named for the 8 day gods who also protect the eight directions and who are believed to be children of the Traveller’s Moon. The seasonal year begins halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox at the cross-quarter day that marks the start of spring
• The sidereal system is based on the time of day “The Gatekeeper” rises. This star is so bright it can be seen even during daylight. The first point of this calender is its acronychal rising. That is the day it rises at sunset. Its midnight, heliacal and zenith risings mark other important days. This Calender has no signs but has 16 houses. The first house is the Gatekeeper’s house. A few of the other houses are named for bright stars within them but most are just numbered. Named houses are considered more important in the astrology of both peoples.
• There is a zodiacal calender which combines the two zodiacs. It begins when the acronychal rising of the Gatekeeper happens on the first day of Spring and proceeds through eight ages of roughly 3000 years apiece (ages change when the acronychal rising of the Gatekeeper is on a quarter or cross-quarter day). These ages are named for the appropriate seasonal sign (see above). In theory anyway, they are still in the first age and 24000 years is a long time.
• Since the zodiacal and lunar years gradually drift the dating system uses both. Since no one will even acknowledge that an intercalary day happened the best way to spot them in records is a jump in the zodiacal date compared to the calendar date.