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It started yesterday over on my Mastodon Account. I was musing on joining in on #WorldbuidingWednesday and not being sure what to do with it I decided to create a whole new world based on prompts from my Mastopeeps. So I tooted and gave people an hour to prompt me. Mastodon didn't let me down and I ended up with six prompts.
  • Sky Islands and airships (@daHob)
  • Fuzzy reptiles (@Katrani)
  • Easy magic cantrips (@LilFluff)
  • Memory Gems that have to be shattered to extract the memories and which a person can only ever have one (@HerraBre)
  • Animal/Human Paired Shapeshifters and Beastfolk (@zatnosk and I recommend reading the thread he linked me to for his prompt)
  • A critter that has two life stages - one as a plant and one as an animal (@Anke).
So I took these prompts and wove them into the start of a setting in a long chain of toots and I intend to develop Afeli further every Wednesday in the same way. But chains of toots aren't the best way to read the backlog so I needed a place to archive it. Then I remembered I have a Dreamwidth account I hardly use, so here we are.

And so without further ado:

Afeli - A Prompt Based ConWorld
Episode One

 

Afeli is a world of bright skies, sparkling seas and verdant islands. While a few of these islands are large enough to classify as continents none of them are especially large – the largest being a little larger than Australia. Afeli however is also a world of magic which probably explains why some of the islands have been torn from their ocean homes and now float in the sky.

Archipelagos of these Sky Islands are found around the world and all except the smallest of them are inhabited. Some of the people are descended from those who lived there when the magical cataclysm that threw them into the sky happened. Others have found their way there from the surface or are descended from people who did.

Of all the people of Afeli the Sky Islanders are the most technologically sophisticated but lag behind the surface dwellers in magical skill because so much of the ambient magic of their home is tied up in keeping them in the sky leaving less free magic for them to work with.

In spite of this the Sky Islanders have learnt to combine magic with technology to create many wonders. The most extraordinary of which may be their Skyships – ethereal airships which carry passengers and cargo between the Sky Islands or, more rarely, between surface and sky.

Returning to the surface world technological solutions are rarer, not because the peoples of the ground are any less intelligent than the Sky Islanders but because of the abundance of free magic. A niche that magical alternatives won't fill more cleanly and easily than technology is rare. Indeed the surface is so rich in magic that children learn the basic housekeeping cantrips to light a fire, crack an egg, purify water or heal a graze just by watching their parents. More complex magics have to be taught but most people learn a magical trade rather than a mundane one.

One such magical trade is unique to the large island of Isildra which sits in isolation in the Southern Tropical Oceans of Afeli. The nearest significant landfall is over five hundred miles away. Here the flows of magic have interacted with a natural seam of diamonds to create a new gemstone with some unusual properties. Raw Isildran diamonds look just like normal diamonds except for a faint violet glow. They also have a tendancy to catch stray thoughts and images. In the hands of a skilled jeweller, however, one of these magical oddities can become a remarkable artifact.

A memory gem is a piece of jewellery that perfectly records everything its bonded owner – the person it was created for – sees or hears. Almost every Isildran owns one. After all who knows when you might be the victim of a crime or need to prove you did not commit one.

However, remarkable as they are the memory gems have two very big drawbacks that limit their utility.

The first is that an individual can only bond to one gem ever, and secondly in order to extract the memories the stone must be shattered by a jeweller.

For this reason stones are usually only shattered after the Owner's death. Sometimes as part of an autopsy to ascertain the cause of death, and sometimes as part of a funeral ritual so the mourners can share the deceased's memories (more than one family has learnt things they didn't want to as a result of this tradition).

The other common reason for a gem to be shattered is if he owner is accused of a capital crime. The gem will be shattered and the memories observed by the Justices. The owner will be condemned or aquitted by his own memories.

If a ship sails south from Isildra it will, after sailing beneath the shadow of Tarika (the largest of the Sky Islands – a little larger than Britain), eventually reach the Southernmost Islands.

This archipelago straddles the border between the Temperate and Antarctic zones, and at its heart lies Hiral, the third largest island on Afeli. (About the size of India and Madagascar combined).

Hiral's people are magical even by the standards of surface dwelling Afeli, and some have learnt the secret of shifting their shape by bonding with a willing animal (most commonly a wolf but others are not uncommon) which also gains the power to shift.

There are limits however, magic demands balance and harmony. So when one partner is an animal the other must be human and vice versa. Cautionary tales of wily animals trapping their partners in animal form for years while they masqueraded as human abound in Hiral's Folklore. In human settlements strangers are eyed with suspicion lest they not be truly human.

However there is something that concerns the Hirali even more. Something they fear, condemn and try to root out. You see Shifters have a half form that both partners can take at the same time. Sometimes animals and humans 'fraternize' in this form, even though it is a capital crime should it be discovered, and sometimes these unions are fertile. The children share the hybrid form their parents mated in and can breed true with others of their kind. In the forests, mountains and seas of Hiral communities of these beast people thrive inspite of the best efforts of the human Hirali to wipe them out.

Other strange creatures haunt the forests of Hiral and perhaps the strangest of these is the Ekal.

An adult Ekal resembles a large geko in both looks and behaviour, the primary notable difference being the fine layer of fuzz covering its hide making it feel like suede to the touch. Indeed Ekal hide makes a fine leather. However, while Adult Ekal are mostly harmless the species does have a dark and dangerous side. It is only when Ekal mate that the truth is revealed.

The female Ekal digs a hole in the best soil she can find and deposits an egg into it, which the male then fertilizes and buries. The parents then go their seperate ways leaving the egg to develop on its own.

Soon afterwards a green shoot appears from the nest and a plant that resembles a pitcher plant grows, and like the pitcher plant it traps prey to nourish itself though it feeds on magic rather than flesh. The infant Ekal remains a plant for months or even years, and sometimes grows large enough to entrap a human or beastperson. Then, once it has absorbed enough magic from its prey, the pitcher withers away leaving only a corm which is actually a chrysalis from which the adult Ekal emerges.

---

Definitely some interesting things to develop further there. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

And if you want to join in next week I'll be taking prompts to develop Afeli further again next Wednesday over on Mastodon. Why not come and join in.

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So I'm not sure how coherent this post will be since it's a slighltly tidied up stream of consciousness from where I was talking to a friend on Twitter about the second Intelligent species on my Sulphuric Acid World.

The second intelligent species I only found about last night when I was wondering why they initially had problems agreeing with humans about what plants and animals are. When I initially realised what I had my first thought was "argh it's a triffid" so I set to work to make sure they actually aren't triffids. So it's fair to say they don't look like this.

Anyway on with the post:

---

I am currently trying to design an ambultory, intelligent carniverous plant that isn't a triffid ripoff

On my sulphuric acid world there's a whole kingdom of mobile plants (as well as animals and more normal plants).

The mobile plants have actually evolved something like a nervous system (unlike earth plants) and this has formed something more like a terrestial cordate CNS (protected by a woody skeleton) than the animal sulphies have. This woody skeleton is made of internal tubes of their equivalent of xylem.

(There's two intelligent species on sulphuric acid world - the plant one and the animal one).

Anyway plant sulphie 'brain' is found in a woody capsule under their digestive organ which is at the top and is like a pitcher (into which they feed their prey directly. I think they are not immediately recognisable as plants to humans and possibly look more humanoid than the animal sulphies (which are four legged, feathered critters with tentacles as manipulatory appendages) though even the plant sulphies don't look at all human but they are bipedal with an obvious "head".

They also photosynthesize (well they are plants) but due to their mobility they can't get enough energy that way.

(The animal ones descend from a cuttlefish like critter so while they do have an internal skeleton it's not like a vertebrate's.)

Plant sulphies can either reproduce by exchange of germ material (which is mediated by a symbiotic species like many plants on Earth) or clone themselves naturally via cuttings.

I don't know if they have eyes. I think they use photoreceptors all over their body and they communicate via a combination of scent and sound meaning their language is very difficult for other intelligent species to learn.

The animal and plant sulphies did not at first realise the other was intelligent and preyed on each other but seem to have realised about the time both species developed agriculture. Almost all Sulphie religions have myths about this

By the time they contact Earth (to buy Venus for bioforming) they've been living and working together for millenia and the plant sulphies have various sound only creoles they use to talk to the animal ones.

A shared characteristic of both species is that since they have no access to metal they grow a lot of their technology though they also have glass and ceramics. (Yes, this means they have living spaceships – advanced biotech is surprisingly common among aliens in this universe because of the number of worlds where metal is either not extractable (no free oxygen) or impractical due to rapid corrosion (acid worlds).



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A/N: This takes place in the same world and rough geographic area as "The Opal Mask" - my planned NaNoWriMo for this year - but is about a millenium earlier. I hope you enjoy it. Comments welcome as always.

---

Title: Shattering
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 707 words

The air pressed oppressively against Ranet's skin and there was a hollow, metallic feeling in his stomach as he made the month's full moon devotions on the hill above his people's village. The dark sensation had been growing for months and he knew from talking to the village head and hearth keeper that the other magic users sensed it too.

Tonight, however, it was worse than ever. He found himself stammering as he mouthed the ritual phrases and poured out honey wine onto the white rock for his patron deity.

He was just struggling through the last prayer when the gnawing hollowness contracted painfully into a cold lead ball of panic he could not explain. It was replaced a moment later by an equally inexplicable determination.

He shook his head to clear it and looked around, trying to find the source of these emotions since they were clearly not his own. A whispered spell revealed there was no other human in range to affect him, so he turned his eyes unwillingly to the sky. It had to be his patron, but what could discomfort a goddess so?

So he was looking straight at the moon when it shattered.

***

Ranet groaned and tried the push away the hand that was shaking him gently. His head was on fire and he could smell the sharp scent of vomit he was sure was his own.

"Ranet, I'm sorry. I know it hurts, but you have to wake up." Whoever was shaking him it sounded like she was in as much pain as he was. Ranet couldn't place her voice, but it was familiar somehow. "Ranet, wake up, please!"

He opened his eyes hesitantly, then gasped as the sight of the burning sky reminded him of what he'd seen. He tried to sit up but his stomach rebelled at the sudden movement and he retched, depositing what little was left in his stomach into the tattered silver skirts of the one who'd woken him.

Wait? Silver?

Ranet's gasped in a breath as his retching stopped and he regained enough control to look up into the pained eyes of his goddess Enled. He scrambled to his knees, breathing deeply to suppress the nausea, but as he went to prostrate himself she stopped him with a gentle hand a shake of her head. There was blood matted in her silver hair and leaking from cuts in her shimmering skin.

"It wasn't your fault, my priest, and we don't have time for ceremony. I only wish having one of my priests vomiting on me was the worst thing that had happened to me today. You have to get your people to high ground. The sea is coming. Otraya is doing his best to slow it so you have time, but he can't stop it."

The moon had shattered? The sea god couldn't control the sea? He had dozens of questions but what came out of his mouth encompassed them all. "What?"

"The gods can affect the wind but they cannot stop it," Enled said. It was a common saying, a platitude when unfair things happened, but he got the point. He climbed cautiously to his feet, wishing the headache would abate so he could think straight.

"How long?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "We're running right at the edge of our power just to keep this world liveable after this. But it should be enough if you-" She collapsed in a heap at his feet.

Ranet stared at the unconscious goddess. Should he leave her there? Would the other gods come for her if he did, if they were dealing with whatever had happened? Would she recover on her own if they didn't? He hesitated for a long moment, then scooped her into his arms gasping at her unexpected lightness. He doubted the hearth keeper would be able to remedy the ills of an injured goddess but he wouldn't leave a human in that state so he certainly couldn't abandon his goddess. And her presence – even unconscious – was more likely to make people listen to him when he told them to flee.

He shifted her weight in his arms and raced down towards the village to raise the alarm.


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I've decided to use use these worldbuilding questions as part of my worldbuilding process. Starting today with the first section "The World".

Basics:
  • Are the laws of nature and physics actually different in this world, or are they the same as in real life? How does magic fit in? How do magical beasts fit in?
The laws of nature and physics work roughly the same as on Earth. The elephant in the room is, of course, Magic which is very real and blatently obvious.
  • Is this generally an earth-like world? Is it an “alternate Earth”?
It's a generally Earthlike world but it's not an alternate Earth in the sense of alternate history. More on this in the drill down.
  • Are there different human races, whether or not there are non-humans like elves or dwarves? How does the cultural and ethnic diversity of this world compare to the real world?
There are magical races and creatures who are actually descendants of normal creatures mutated by long term exposure to sources of magical energy. What magical creatures exist and how much relation they bear to our mythical creatures is something I have yet to discover.
  • How long have there been people on this world? Did they evolve, or did they migrate from somewhere/when else?
They evolved. Even the magical creatures are the product of natural selection selecting for those creatures who could tolerate high levels of magical energy.
  • How many people are there in this country? How does this compare with world population? What is considered a small town/large town/city in terms of number of people?
The entire population of the world is about 300 million at this point. The population of the main country at the heart of the empire is about 3 million. The other main country I'm interested in is about the same - maybe slightly lower.
  • Where does magic power come from: the gods, the “mana” of the world (as in Larry Niven’s “Warlock” stories), the personal willpower or life force of the magician, somewhere else? Is magic an exhaustible resource? If a magician must feed his spells with his own willpower, life-force, or sanity, what long-term effects will this have on the health and/or stability of the magician? Do different races/species have different sources for their magic, or does everybody use the same one?
The source of magic is complicated. Magic is an energy that can be found in various sources including the lifeforce of magic users, certain gems and minerals and other things. Some of these sources are renewable and some not. Lifeforce as a source is renewable but drawing too deeply can be detrimental to health so magic users prefer some other source for intense spells. However they believe magic comes from the gods which has important cultural implications.

Not Earth at All: 
  • How does this world differ physically from earth? Is it the same size (same density, same gravity), same ratio of land/water, same atmosphere, etc.? Does it have more than one sun or moon? Rings? Are there spectacular constellations/comets, etc. visible at night or by day?
Since unnamed Fantasy Setting One and Two both have two moons (mainly because they are alternates of the same world which vary based on who won the war of the gods) I suppose I'd better give The Opal Mask setting a different number of moons. I am undecided if to go with a single lunalike moon or multiple smaller moons. Feedback on this would be cool. I'll deal with the skies when I do the drilldown but I know it has a ring. The land/water ratio, gravity, axial tilt are all roughly the same as Earth (because I'm lazy).

Are there non-human inhabitants of this planet (elves, dwarves, aliens)? If so, how numerous? How openly present? What areas do they occupy?Yes, there are non-human intelligences on this planet. I need to define them more but they aren't traditional elves and dwarfs. Apart from the physical ones there are also a great number of spirits and similar.
  • How are the continents laid out? If there is more than one moon/sun, how does this affect winds, tides, and weather generally?
The largest mass of continents are in the northern hemisphere as on Earth (and unlike my other setting where they are in the southern one). The tides depend on what I'm doing with moons but the axial tilt etc is
  • How much land is there, and how much of it is habitable?
Amount of land and habitable land is roughly equivalent to Earth. None of the supercontinents are quite as huge as Eurasia so there's slightly less desert and slightly more maritime climates.

  • Is the axial tilt and orbit the same — i.e., does the world have the same seasons and same length of year as Earth?
As mentioned above orbit and axial tilt are roughly the same as Earth.
---

Next Section Sunday or Monday. Also the first drilldown post.



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This is the first of a series of posts in worldbuilding preperation for NaNoWriMo in November (assuming I don't change my mind about what I'm writing). The work is Tentatively titled "The Opal Mask" (and I don't often have a title to start with). I have a few ideas and characters but as yet no plot. I hope I'll find the plot in the Worldbuilding.

I'm going to need to outline two cultures in detail and a handful (their neighbours) in sketch and come up with three naming languages - the magical language and the languages of the two main cultures. These relate to the magical language in much the way Latin and Greek relate to Proto-Indo-European - nightmare, but at least they don't need to be fully defined. Of course this means that any names are subject to change.

I'm currently sorting out the details but will post the first actual entry this weekend.
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I'm trying to get together a global map for unnamed fantasy setting one. I know nothing of map making so I've started with an Isohedral map because it's kind of easy. From here I'll probably make a sinusoidal map once I'm happy with the coastlines. Then I can look at adapting it into one of the unexploded projections (which are distorted but don't confuse people as much). Future maps will also be higher resolution and better colours. This was purely so I could see where things go. And the equatorial continent I was planning turned into three large islands for some reason. I know there's a lot of sea - it's a global map so that's inevitable. Having said that I think there may be too much sea. I'm not good at eyeballing area so I'm not sure I have 30% land. I'd really like to make the southern continent a bit bigger without it getting too close to the northern one.

Any thoughts?

icosahedral map thing
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These critters are nothing like humans. I haven't entirely designed them yet but I've decided they are probably chitinous or otherwise armored by our standards.

However I do have some ideas about their reproductive system.

I wanted something really odd by human standards so I took three ideas from three different types of terrestrial life:

1. From several species of Hymenoptera (wasps, bees etc)  Haplodiploid sex determination.
2. From the deep sea angler fish ... This.
3. From many kinds of flowering plants Self-incompatibility.

(Note: So extreme is sexual dimorphism among the Sulphies that it may actually be better to view them as having only one sex with the 'males' being nothing more than a delivery system in an alien reproductive system and the 'females' being the actual people. So I have tried to avoid using male and female below for that reason. I apologise if that's confusing.)

At the onset of their equivalent of puberty a Sulphy produces two parthenogenic offspring. These offspring are tiny compared to Sulphies, contain half their parent's dna. They lack intelligence but are mobile as soon as they are born/hatched (haven't decided that yet). Their only urge is to follow the pheromone trail of a Sulphy and fuse with them. The self-incompatibilty blinds them to the pheromone trail of any Sulphy who shares certain alleles with them and they can only fuse with one who's pheromones they can detect. This means outbreeding is far more likely than inbreeding. The parthenogenic offspring are born with good food reserves but cannot feed so if it doesn't find a Sulphy in time it dies. Only Sulphies who have already produced their haploid offspring produce these pheromones. I'm undecided if a female can have more than one haploid fused with her or not.

This of course will have a major effect on Sulphy culture. They have to be social and ensure plenty of mixing to avoid loss of fertility. It will have other effects as well but I need to work out all the ramifications.

Thought?










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Originally posted about a year ago on my tumblr.

So, I’ve obtained a copy of this World-Building book and it’s awesome and useful (though it lacks a section on designing biomes *sighs*). It’s going to be useful for the current project, but the book itself is spawning plot-bunnies. Science Fiction plot bunnies. It’s been a long time since I’ve had those.

You see in the book there’s a section called “not as we know it” which has suggestions for life-supporting worlds with some really alien (and by human standards hostile) worlds.

One of these was a world where the thalassogen is Sulphuric Acid rather than water. The author even suggests a mechanism by which Sulphuric Acid seas could form that involves the most original water ocean being lost via photodissociation and then a sulphuric acid one forming (there’s more steps to it than that). Now as he admits Sulphuric Acid reacts with most things which makes it an unlikely seeming solvent for life, unlikely but not impossible. He suggests that since most organic compounds react with Sulphuric Acid this might be where silicon based life develops. But I’m not sure that’s necessary. See this world had a water ocean to start with, so maybe primitive life got going before the water ocean all but vanished. Now the initial dessication and ensuing Sulphuric Acid downpour (is it just me or does this sound like a slightly cooler Venus?) would have killed off most everything in the mother of all mass extinction events but life tends to be tough to eradicate totally and even on Earth we have Extremophiles surviving in some really nasty (in our terms) enviroments including the highly acid. So maybe some of this world’s primative analogs of bacteria and archaea adapted quickly enough and manage to live in the sea. From there things carry on and eventually multicellular organisms, land life and so on develops culminating in an intelligent tool using alien race. Silicon is highly unlikely as replacement for carbon - it doesn’t form complex enough molecules.

So far so good. The problem is that Sulphuric Acid corrodes most metals like crazy so the author reckons an intelligent race on such a planet would be stuck as they wouldn’t be able to break out of the stone age. No bronze, no iron - yes, the noble metals but they aren’t much good for tools and weapons.

My reaction to this is something along the lines of okay, so what might they develop instead that we wouldn’t think of? Metal is easy for us, what might be hard for us but easy for them? I mentioned this on Twitter and @Charnigans suggested glass and ceramics. I’m not sure how they’d work chemically with a Sulphuric Acid environment but that’s worth looking into. Maybe they’d develop a flexible glass like the one Tiberius is supposed to have repressed though that’s probably hyperbole since even today we can’t make glass that ductile. It would be cool if it weren’t though. I think I need to find a list of things that don’t react with Sulphuric Acid so I can work out if a tech tree leading to space travel is even remotely likely without the metal ages. (More about that in this post on my tumblr which I haven't copied here yet).

Wow, that was a ramble…
 



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Brief thoughts on the Mountain People's family structure. There are still some things I need to work out but so far it's verging on a matriarchy. Whether it ends up being a true matriarchy or not depends on what is going on above household level in the society (I think it's likely to be a theocracy in the way that many preindustrial societies were).
  • 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?

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Since I mentioned the elder and younger sibling races people have been asking questions and I got the feeling some people thought these were actual siblings not metaphorical ones. I don't really have them fleshed out beyond a few notes but here's a quick overview on them.

The Elder Siblings


The irony of the fact that the name for the magical races in many human languages in this setting translates as 'the elder siblings' or similar isn't lost on the gods who created them. These races are in fact the descendents of human clans who, thousands of years ago, the gods altered to be their intermediaries. All of these races look mostly human and can make themselves look more so but even then they still look somewhat quirky for humans and without they look truly odd. More importantly the gods lengthened their lives, heightened their intelligence and granted them certain powers (the power of a particular type of elder sibling depends on their patron).

The Younger Siblings

You probably won't be surprised to learn that if the elder siblings are younger than humanity the younger siblings are older.  The younger siblings are the remenants of what on Earth we would call pre-human species in genus homo. They are scattered across the world in surprisingly large numbers. Because these species are clearly some sort of kin to humans and because they seem somewhat less intelligent people decided they must be younger. How these groups are treated varies across the world. For the three groups I'm working The Island People view them as people but still eat them sometimes. Then again the Island People eat humans sometimes. The Sea People have enslaved a small population that lived near them under the guise of protecting them and uses them for manual labour. Their breeding program is having unexpected  (and not entirely welcome) dividends. The Mountain People occassionally have territorial disputes with them and even more occassionally trade with them.




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The conlang has nine (yes nine) Genders none of which is related to sex.

  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
So - for example - lake and reservoir would be the same word but in the 5th and 7th genders respectively.

There's also going to be a lot of cases.

But does anyone know an easy way to work out all possible syllables in a conlang. Trying to list them is driving me loopy.




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For the Mountain/Sea people language in the "Early Period" before it becomes two languages. I'm very much a novice at this.

 CONSONANT CHART (now with added IPA where needed).


 LABIALLAB-DENTDENT
ALVPALVELARGLOTTAL
STOPb  d g 
FRICATIVE
f (ɸ)  s   h
AFFRICATE   ts (t͡s)tj (t͡ʃ)  
APPROXIMATE v (ʋ) r, lh (l̥)y (j)  
NASALm  nny (ɲ)  
 
 CO-ARTICULATED CONSONANTS
 
   
 ALV-PALPAL-VEL
FRICATIVEzh (ʑ) 
APPROXIMATEhw (ʍ) 
STOP  

          
Pronunciation:

Vowels:

There are only five vowels in (language name) and they are all very consistent.

a - as in cat
e - as in get
i - as in the the double e in meet
o - as in pot
u - as the Japanese u sound. That is similar to the oo in cool or the ew in dew, but not spoken with rounded lips.

There are no dipthongs, where there are two vowels together they are sounded seperately with a slight hiatus between them.  It always represents the start of a new syllable. The one exception to this is a double vowel where it indicates that the vowel should be held for twice as long as usual.

Consonants:

b      - as in but
d      - as in dog
f       - very soft as in the Japanese pronunciation of Fuji
g      - as in get
h     - as in house
hw - as the wh in whole
lh     - as in Lhasa (unvoiced l)
m   - as in money
n    - as in noon
ny - as in the childish taunt "nyah nyah nyah ne ne"
r     - as in roll
s    - as in sudden
tj - this is the ch sound in church but without the starting t (think the Swedish tj).
ts - the sound at the end of boots. Make a t sound then hiss.
v - very soft.  Try not to obstruct the air as much as in English
w - as in wedding
y - as in ye
zh - as in the soft j sound in the middle of measure

Stress and Tone:

The language places stress on the penultimate syllable of each word - except for the following.

Single syllable words are always unstressed unless they are a question verb or the subject (see below).
All syllables of the object (and the various cases subsumed into the objective in English) of a sentence are unstressed.
The whole of the subject in an sentence recieves prosodic stress as well as normal stress.
If the word a verb in a question in which case the last syllable is stressed.

It is not a tonal language but there is a question pitch on the verb in a question. This, together with the different stress, is what indicates that it is a question.


Phonotactics:

(C)V(C) and VC(V)  Where two vowels or two consonants lie together in a word you know you have a syllable break. Considering a rule to stop a syllable that starts with a Consonant ending with an approximant. What do people think?

--

Feedback Welcome,


becka_sutton: Becka's default icon (Default)
The skies of the world where my mountain and sea people live are bright and well populated and this had led to some very complicated calendars. The mountain and sea people are no exception.

  • 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.

I did warn you it was complicated, but lots of real world cultures had immensely complicated calendars as well.
becka_sutton: Becka's default icon (Default)
I've got loads of worldbuilding notes on tumblr. Though I am expanding them as I go.

Notes: "Sea People" and "Mountain People" are obviously not the names of the two groups - it's just what I call them in my notes until the language is developed enough.

--

Free-form thoughts on this world I’m building.

So there’s mountains and a coastal desert - presumably west of the mountains since that’s how such things usually work (but see below) and a coastal salt marsh/mangrove around the mouths of the rivers which flow down from the mountains (this world has a greater variety of halophytic plants than Earth (due to the higher tidal effects meaning more land is intertidal to some degree) so the habitat is more diverse).

While the Sea People do make use of the rivers for fresh water and some irrigation they cling to the coast because they have a major religious taboo against farming too far inland even though the river fringes could be farmed. Indeed they mostly farm halophytic crops and have learned to farm fish and shellfish in their mangrove orchards as well. Given their lack of mineral resources and the fact that salt is murder on most metal they probably still use stone implements for agriculture.

I’m prevaricating between having the sea people live in an actual coastal desert or it being an inland continental desert with the sea being an inland sea like the Aral Sea and the taboo actually acting as protection by stopping the Sea People drawing too much water and drying it up. Tidal effects tend to be *much* lower in inland and mediterranean seas but with two moons, a large enough sea and gods hanging around (this is a fantasy setting) I might be able to manage something.

Okay, I’m out of thoughts for now. Any thoughts?

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