Ajjamah Scratchpad: Kaadhral, Pt. I

[Ares Land]

Very nice. I'm happy to see quipus used in conworlding

[Pedant]

Very nice. I'm happy to see quipus used in conworlding

They are truly marvellous, aren’t they...

[Pedant]

THE LONG COUNT
Of Salvi, Quiram, & Akotoya

The planet Toksha (Salvian Tokṣah, Irthironian Syke, Hercuan Zella, Zanguenese Se5-Go5, Qoldishtari Ojashym) is the second-closest planet to Suri, orbiting at around 0.3AU over 55.4 local days. There is another planet sitting between Toksha and Ajjamah--the almost-imperceptible Ḍaruga--and one even closer to the sun that hasn't even been discovered yet, but Toksha far outshines its sisters, the swirling colours of its atmosphere giving it a greenish glow that looks quite unique in the sky. And, just as Vaapu with its fourteen-year cycle is the basis for the Mujaran Zodiac, and Vrani at eight years is used for the Irthironian calendar, so Toksha with its 55-day cycle has been mapped and measured and used by the Empaths to act as a marker for their calendars.
The Long Count (Salvian yaltikam, Quiramic ioroa) may be as old as Pelian civilization, going back to the fired-brick bathhouses of the Dapka Plateau. Certainly every contemporary culture--Salvians, Akotoyans, Quiramis--have all maintained it, although naturally with some variation between them. The system is, broadly, as follows:

1. There are two simultaneous cycles: the regular year cycle (240.2 days) and the cycle of Toksha (55.4 days). Although there was a tendency to realign occasionally so that the system could catch itself up, for the most part the modern calendars have stabilized at 240 days in one and 55 in the other.
2. Leap years, at least initially, were not counted; Salvians add five days every 25 years (the "end days", a part of marking a new generation's adulthood, the system having been reset a thousand-odd years ago and kept up from that time), Quiramis prefer two days every four then three then four then four years (4-3-4, as it were--marking median points in the long cycle), Akotoyans don't much bother.
3. Toksha-cycles run [number]-[elemental substance]; the number is 1-11 (or, as is the case in Salvi and Akotoya, 0-10). The elements in this case are the Eastern Pelian classical elements: ether (or heaven), water (often including air), fire, earth, and wood (or living matter). There is a double hierarchy to this--heaven comes out on top every time, but sometimes wood is listed last (as the innermost element, dependent on everything else to work) and sometimes earth is (as the heaviest and logically bottommost substance). Akotoya and Quiram prefer wood last, while Salvi sticks earth in fifth place.
4. The year-cycles run [adjective]-[animal]. There are fifteen adjectives in all, and sixteen animals, but fundamentally each is linked into the five elements again. Salvi may prefer a hawk where Akotoya uses the phaethon, or the river dolphin where Quiram quietly insists on the sea bear, but all agree that the animals in question best represent heaven and water respectively. Likewise, that a day is "obsidian" marks it down as a fire-day, while a "black" day is merely one dedicated to water (as it tends to get fairly dark around the cenotes or near deep rivers).
5. It is noticeable that the order of the five elements can coincide nicely with the ordering of the fifteen-day adjective cycles. The Salvians and Quiramis don't even bother to hide this, and the Quiramis have actually dropped the elemental markers point-blank, but some of the Akotoyan kingdoms have mixed up the adjectives somewhat so it's rarer to find a day that matches exactly.

Sample: Salvian Calendar
The full document is a bit hefty, so I'm not going to actually record all of the days in the Salvian Calendar, but here's a brief overview of the potential forms:

• Numbers: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
• Elements: Cloud Fire Tree Lake Earth
• Adjectives: Bright Obsidian White Swift Golden Jade Deadly Silver Black Noble Copper Red Honourable Stone Green
• Zodiac: Hawk Serpent Mongoose Monkey Rabbit Turtle Caiman Deer Vulture Salamander Phoenix Hound Bat Dolphin Axolotl Tapir

(Why stone for water? Again, it's the cenotes--as well as the deep canyons in the Colonnade.)
(There are Salvian equivalents for the names, I'll write them in later.)

How can one use this? Well, bluntly speaking, the numbers are only useful for determining where along the eleven-year cycle one is. The adjective-zodiac combination is more than enough for day-to-day matters--June 1st, the 151st day of the year, is (usually) going to be a "bright caiman" day no matter what. (It could also be a "bright caiman" day anywhere from May 27th to May 30th, but never mind that.) The five-day element cycle, however, serves as quite a handy weekday marker--some towns only have market-days when a specific element is dominant, for example, and people born under certain elements are allowed to have those days off from work.
At the beginning of the TV show I'm trying to complete the date is May 3rd, 5457 LC (by the Universal Calendar derived from the Irthironian and Salvian models). The leap year cycle is such that the date will be moved forward by one in correspondence with the standard procedure, so keep that in mind for later. In the meantime:

• 5457 divided by eleven gives us 496 as a whole number, the number of times the cycle has repeated since the beginning of the Salvian calendar. Because their system starts with zero, however, it's marked as 495.
• The remainder (multiplied by 11) gives us 1, so any date we need we add 240 days to.
• May 3rd is the 123rd day of the day, so 240+123 gives us 363.
• Applying the same process as before--dividing the main number by 11 for the day, 5 for the element, 15 for the adjective, and 16 for the animal, then subtracting the whole number and re-multiplying the remainder--gives us 0, 3, 3, and 11, or 10 Tree White Phoenix (no remainder equalling the end tally).
• Adding the leap-day ups the numbers again, to 1, 4, 4, and 12, or else 0 Lake Swift Hound.

Altogether, the day in terms of the Long Count is Zero Lake Swift Hound 495.

[Ares Land]

Nice. I like the vaguely Mesoamerican (or is it Pratchettian?) feel.

Is there any reason why Toksha's atmosphere is green?

Oh, by the way, I'm not sure what you mean by that:

(Why stone for water? Again, it's the cenotes--as well as the deep canyons in the Colonnade.)

[bradrn]

Is there any reason why Toksha's atmosphere is green?

Perhaps it has quite a bit of nitrosyl cyanide in it?

[Pedant]

Nice. I like the vaguely Mesoamerican (or is it Pratchettian?) feel.

...

Oh, by the way, I'm not sure what you mean by that:

(Why stone for water? Again, it's the cenotes--as well as the deep canyons in the Colonnade.)

Glad you liked it! More Mesoamerican than Pratchettian though, at least this time...
By that I meant “why is the adjective ‘stone’ used under the aegis of the element “water”, the answer being that the Salvians associate water with erosion of rock as much as anything else--the cenotes under the eastern side of the country, the deep canyons to the west.

[quote="Ares Land" post_id=37297 time=<a href="tel:1606811213">1606811213</a> user_id=54]
Is there any reason why Toksha's atmosphere is green?

Perhaps it has quite a bit of nitrosyl cyanide in it?
[/quote]

Honestly I think it was meant to be “cream”. (Colours still get me confused sometimes.) But as I’ve made my bed I’m going to lie in it: the atmosphere’s primary components are carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and (surprisingly) oxygen, largely bound in the form of nitrous and nitric oxides. While still uninhabitable (and with a very thick cloud layer), the sky appears a dusty brown from up close, closer to green when viewed from Ajjamah.
(Thought about nitrosyl cyanide, but how would the temperatures work? Chlorine gas would be grand, but there’s too little of it around to make much of an impact and I don’t want there to be too many exceptions in my system.)

[bradrn]

Is there any reason why Toksha's atmosphere is green?

Perhaps it has quite a bit of nitrosyl cyanide in it?

Honestly I think it was meant to be “cream”. (Colours still get me confused sometimes.) But as I’ve made my bed I’m going to lie in it: the atmosphere’s primary components are carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and (surprisingly) oxygen, largely bound in the form of nitrous and nitric oxides. While still uninhabitable (and with a very thick cloud layer), the sky appears a dusty brown from up close, closer to green when viewed from Ajjamah.
(Thought about nitrosyl cyanide, but how would the temperatures work? Chlorine gas would be grand, but there’s too little of it around to make much of an impact and I don’t want there to be too many exceptions in my system.)

Oh, there’s more than enough chlorine around to make up an atmosphere. It’s just that on Earth, most of it is bound up in the form of table salt and similar minerals, so we don’t notice it. Perhaps a bigger concern would be the biochemistry of a chlorine-breathing creature (necessary to keep the chlorine around in the atmosphere), but I’m sure there’s some way to get around that.

As for nitrosyl cyanide, I’m fairly sure the temperatures would work fine. Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t find an experimental or theoretical IR spectrum of nitrosyl cyanide, but based on its structure it looks like it would absorb in the thermal energy range hence acting as a greenhouse gas.

(I did try to calculate the spectrum myself, but gave up after the program took half an hour to give me a compilation error. Ah, where would we be without technology?)

[Pedant]

Oh, there’s more than enough chlorine around to make up an atmosphere. It’s just that on Earth, most of it is bound up in the form of table salt and similar minerals, so we don’t notice it. Perhaps a bigger concern would be the biochemistry of a chlorine-breathing creature (necessary to keep the chlorine around in the atmosphere), but I’m sure there’s some way to get around that.

As for nitrosyl cyanide, I’m fairly sure the temperatures would work fine. Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t find an experimental or theoretical IR spectrum of nitrosyl cyanide, but based on its structure it looks like it would absorb in the thermal energy range hence acting as a greenhouse gas.

(I did try to calculate the spectrum myself, but gave up after the program took half an hour to give me a compilation error. Ah, where would we be without technology?)

Now that would be easy enough to counter under Earth-like conditions--I can just use a variation of Steven L. Gillett’s model to create a sort of extremophile bacterium that uses chlorine gas as a defence mechanism--but the trick is going to be whether they can survive the temperatures at the surface level or even in layers of the atmosphere that actually has sufficient oxygen to breathe. On the other hand, if I use Asimov’s suggestion and have clumps of sulphur-living fluorocarbon-based microorganisms (or perhaps fluorosilicones?) but don’t let them get too complex, perhaps that could create enough biomass to keep the chlorine gas at a stable level...
(I have no idea, but I’m incredibly grateful to have it. Also, seriously, you know how to calculate the spectrum of a molecule? That is utterly amazing.)

[bradrn]

Oh, there’s more than enough chlorine around to make up an atmosphere. It’s just that on Earth, most of it is bound up in the form of table salt and similar minerals, so we don’t notice it. Perhaps a bigger concern would be the biochemistry of a chlorine-breathing creature (necessary to keep the chlorine around in the atmosphere), but I’m sure there’s some way to get around that.

As for nitrosyl cyanide, I’m fairly sure the temperatures would work fine. Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t find an experimental or theoretical IR spectrum of nitrosyl cyanide, but based on its structure it looks like it would absorb in the thermal energy range hence acting as a greenhouse gas.

(I did try to calculate the spectrum myself, but gave up after the program took half an hour to give me a compilation error. Ah, where would we be without technology?)

Now that would be easy enough to counter under Earth-like conditions--I can just use a variation of Steven L. Gillett’s model to create a sort of extremophile bacterium that uses chlorine gas as a defence mechanism--but the trick is going to be whether they can survive the temperatures at the surface level or even in layers of the atmosphere that actually has sufficient oxygen to breathe. On the other hand, if I use Asimov’s suggestion and have clumps of sulphur-living fluorocarbon-based microorganisms (or perhaps fluorosilicones?) but don’t let them get too complex, perhaps that could create enough biomass to keep the chlorine gas at a stable level...

Can’t comment on this; biochemistry is a bit too far out of my comfort zone. (I don’t even know what a fluorocarbon-based microorganism would look like, let alone how its chemistry would work!)

(Also, for some reason I had assumed that Toksha was Earth-like, hence misinterpreting your comment about ‘how would the temperatures work’ as wondering if it would be enough of a greenhouse gas to sustain Earthlike temperatures. Given your comments now, it seems like you would want it to be some sort of an anti-greenhouse gas! Not that those exist, anyway.)

(I have no idea, but I’m incredibly grateful to have it. Also, seriously, you know how to calculate the spectrum of a molecule? That is utterly amazing.)

Hah, my last semester of chemistry has already started to pay off! With IR spectra, the basic idea is actually surprisingly simple, and can be visualised quite nicely e.g. here. Basically, each molecule has a number of vibrational modes; if a photon in IR range arrives with energy corresponding to one of said modes, it gets absorbed, forming a peak on the spectrum. On the site I linked, you can select ‘Molecular vibrations ⇒ IR spectrum’ to see how it works (and then you can click on each peak to see the corresponding vibration, or just select one of the vibrations from the list). Sadly, that website doesn’t seem to have nitrosyl cyanide, else I would have used the spectrum from there.

Of course, this approach doesn’t make very realistic spectra; you have to muck around with stuff like Density Functional Theory to get better predictions. Which is exactly what I foolishly tried to do for nitrosyl cyanide once I found it missing from that website. Searching for something along the lines of ‘calculate theoretical IR spectrum’ led me to http://hjkgrp.mit.edu/content/theoretic ... ectroscopy and hence Quantum-ESPRESSO… which it turned out I needed to compile from source, giving me a wait of half an hour followed by the aforementioned compiler error and associated frustration. Eventually I decided that even for me, this was too much effort for a simple ZBB post. (But as it happens, I’m doing some work on DFT this summer vacation; perhaps I’ll ask my supervisor if she knows of a good IR spectrum calculator.)

[Pedant]

Can’t comment on this; biochemistry is a bit too far out of my comfort zone. (I don’t even know what a fluorocarbon-based microorganism would look like, let alone how its chemistry would work!)

Honestly, me neither…this is really not my field. But I'll see what I can find--someone beyond Asimov must have written about this stuff, surely! (I hope…)

(Also, for some reason I had assumed that Toksha was Earth-like, hence misinterpreting your comment about ‘how would the temperatures work’ as wondering if it would be enough of a greenhouse gas to sustain Earthlike temperatures. Given your comments now, it seems like you would want it to be some sort of an anti-greenhouse gas! Not that those exist, anyway.)

Ah, no worries. And, yeah…for some reason I'm having difficulty getting Toksha even down to Venusian temperatures, which is a bit annoying because a Venusian world is precisely what I wanted, but there's bound to be a way. Just have to modulate the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and crank up the bond albedo!

Hah, my last semester of chemistry has already started to pay off! With IR spectra, the basic idea is actually surprisingly simple, and can be visualised quite nicely e.g. here. Basically, each molecule has a number of vibrational modes; if a photon in IR range arrives with energy corresponding to one of said modes, it gets absorbed, forming a peak on the spectrum. On the site I linked, you can select ‘Molecular vibrations ⇒ IR spectrum’ to see how it works (and then you can click on each peak to see the corresponding vibration, or just select one of the vibrations from the list). Sadly, that website doesn’t seem to have nitrosyl cyanide, else I would have used the spectrum from there.

Of course, this approach doesn’t make very realistic spectra; you have to muck around with stuff like Density Functional Theory to get better predictions. Which is exactly what I foolishly tried to do for nitrosyl cyanide once I found it missing from that website. Searching for something along the lines of ‘calculate theoretical IR spectrum’ led me to http://hjkgrp.mit.edu/content/theoretic ... ectroscopy and hence Quantum-ESPRESSO… which it turned out I needed to compile from source, giving me a wait of half an hour followed by the aforementioned compiler error and associated frustration. Eventually I decided that even for me, this was too much effort for a simple ZBB post. (But as it happens, I’m doing some work on DFT this summer vacation; perhaps I’ll ask my supervisor if she knows of a good IR spectrum calculator.)

…okay, you have a ridiculously cool career path. Just saying.

Source doesn't quite work for me either, but bound to be something. If your supervisor does suggest something that would be fantastic, but in the meantime I've got to try and find a method to dump nitrosyl cyanide into the Tokshan atmosphere.

[bradrn]

(Also, for some reason I had assumed that Toksha was Earth-like, hence misinterpreting your comment about ‘how would the temperatures work’ as wondering if it would be enough of a greenhouse gas to sustain Earthlike temperatures. Given your comments now, it seems like you would want it to be some sort of an anti-greenhouse gas! Not that those exist, anyway.)

Ah, no worries. And, yeah…for some reason I'm having difficulty getting Toksha even down to Venusian temperatures, which is a bit annoying because a Venusian world is precisely what I wanted, but there's bound to be a way. Just have to modulate the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and crank up the bond albedo!

… and you say I know a lot about this stuff! Personally, I’d be absolutely fascinated to know how one calculates the temperature of a planet. (I struggle a lot with climate stuff, so anything you can tell me would help.)

Hah, my last semester of chemistry has already started to pay off! With IR spectra, the basic idea is actually surprisingly simple, and can be visualised quite nicely e.g. here. Basically, each molecule has a number of vibrational modes; if a photon in IR range arrives with energy corresponding to one of said modes, it gets absorbed, forming a peak on the spectrum. On the site I linked, you can select ‘Molecular vibrations ⇒ IR spectrum’ to see how it works (and then you can click on each peak to see the corresponding vibration, or just select one of the vibrations from the list). Sadly, that website doesn’t seem to have nitrosyl cyanide, else I would have used the spectrum from there.

Of course, this approach doesn’t make very realistic spectra; you have to muck around with stuff like Density Functional Theory to get better predictions. Which is exactly what I foolishly tried to do for nitrosyl cyanide once I found it missing from that website. Searching for something along the lines of ‘calculate theoretical IR spectrum’ led me to http://hjkgrp.mit.edu/content/theoretic ... ectroscopy and hence Quantum-ESPRESSO… which it turned out I needed to compile from source, giving me a wait of half an hour followed by the aforementioned compiler error and associated frustration. Eventually I decided that even for me, this was too much effort for a simple ZBB post. (But as it happens, I’m doing some work on DFT this summer vacation; perhaps I’ll ask my supervisor if she knows of a good IR spectrum calculator.)

…okay, you have a ridiculously cool career path. Just saying.

If you’re already calling this a ‘career path’, you know more than me about my career! As far as I can tell this is just normal second-year undergraduate chemistry (except for the fact that I’m volunteering to help with some research)… I have no idea whether I’ll actually end up doing this stuff later on in life.

Source doesn't quite work for me either, but bound to be something. If your supervisor does suggest something that would be fantastic, but in the meantime I've got to try and find a method to dump nitrosyl cyanide into the Tokshan atmosphere.

Well, good news is, I finally got university permission to download the VPN to access the intranet to login to the server to run the software to make theoretical chemistry predictions, so once I actually get the program working, there’s a chance it might have an option to produce IR spectra. So I’ll report back if that works.

As for producing nitrosyl cyanide: from what I can see, known routes to make it start from various molecules including nitrosyl chloride, silver cyanide, ethanedinitrile, (1Z,2Z)-N1,N2-Dihydroxyethanediimidoyl dichloride, or 9,10-Dihydro-9,10-dimethyl-10,9-(epoxyimino)anthracene-12-carbonitrile. (No, I don’t know what those are either.) None of those look at all likely to be present naturally. Then again, various other molecules with a cyanide group are known in interstellar space, so it doesn’t seem completely impossible to have a bit on Toksha.

[Pedant]

Y Fithwealdes: literally “the five powers”, an Irthironian geopolitical term for the major empires (include hiding themselves) during the 55th Century LC.

Washday, April 27, 1886 AU/5450 LC
Backahayno, Irthiron

It was a few days before midsummer, and a beautiful day on the southern coast. The sun shone against the white cliffs, and an seagull flew overhead, its four wings beating in tune with its cries. And Aragob ar Emwr Baldael was feeling utterly miserable.
His aunt, Moarweald, found him sitting up at his desk in the study, poring over maps. She knocked and came in without waiting for a "Come in". She hadn't waited for his father, she certainly wasn't going to wait for her nephew, government puzzler or no.
"You ought to be getting some sun, you know," she said. "It's the wrong day for sitting inside, looking at maps."
"Auntie Moarweald, I'm thirty-five years old. I've been an adult for eight of those years. It would be nice to think I've earned the right to sit inside on a sunny day."
"Age isn't the currency to use here, lad. It's buying some memories for your future self."
Aragob sighed, his brown face ash-coloured with fatigue. "Won't change the facts on the paper, Auntie. Take a look at this."
He pulled one of the maps towards her. It was a world map, in compass style.
"Well? It's just a map. It's got our empire coloured in white."
"Right. About a quarter of the globe at the moment, directly under Irthiron's control. Learning to step away from magic and into technology, becoming better for it."
"That map's barely changed from when I was a girl, Gobber. It's not growing much anymore, but it's not shrinking. And who knows, there might be more to add. There's a duty we owe the world, after all."
"That much I remember, but look at the rest of it." Aragob waved a hand at other portions, coloured more deeply. "That means there's about eighty percent of the world we don't control. And about fifty percent of it is controlled by, well, other powers."
"Nothing so troubling about that, is there? They'll come around eventually."
"I'm not so sure. The Senate in Hamhyre's getting worried. They say it's likely to lead to another war, sooner or later."
Moarweald wasn't worried. Irthiron had had many wars over the past four hundred years. It tended to win them. Enemies with magic weren't half as effective as soldiers with machine guns, once you took away the magic.
Still, better to reassure her nephew the proper way.
"Oh, very well. Educate me. Who's likely to try first?" She sat down in the armchair across from the desk, and Aragob had to swivel around to see her.
"Well, there's the Salvians," he pointed to a peninsula roughly in the middle of the map, coloured green. "They don't have many colonies per se, but they're rather persistent when it comes to setting up temples. And they use a lot of magic. More than we've ever seen, here or anywhere. Hamhyre's not even certain we can cancel it out, it's too firmly engraved in them. And they seem to have developed missiles that create natural disasters, which might be difficult if we couldn't cancel the effect on time, because the disasters are very real. But they prefer the jungle to our climate, so it's unlikely we'll see them up here."
He pointed to a rounded corner of a southern continent, coloured red. "Then there's the Hercuans. They're much more likely to attack just about anywhere, because they believe they're spreading the word of their God. Of course, their God likes plunder and pillage as much as any of them, it seems."
"Poor fools, thinking there's only one god out there." Moarweald was a priestess of Piggis, the goddess who oversaw industry in this shire.
"I know," said Aragob, raking his hands through curly blond hair. "You have to wonder how they convert people at all. The trouble is, they do convert. And we have to share the continent of Ghellyre with them, which is absurd." A finger over Ghellyre, which was in effect an enormous sweet wrapper, divided into white and red. "And their God apparently works miracles. Walls collapsing, sudden plagues of eclipses, that sort of thing."
"A plague of eclipses?"
"With the moon in exactly the completely wrong position for them to happen. Without stopping for nearly a week, I'm given to understand. Terrified an entire kingdom the size of our island into submitting." His brown eyes squeezed tight in discomfort. "They're developing nearly as quickly as we are, too."
He pointed to another part of the map, just north of where Hercua was to a land that looked roughly like a bundle of sticks. "But not as quickly as these people."
"I know the Zanguenese are decent merchants, but are they actually a threat? It's not as though they even have colonies."
"Well, not colonies exactly, Auntie. But trade? Well, that's the problem. They've already cornered the markets all along the coast. Even Hercua does a lot of their trade through the city-states. And they trade magical items, which is an issue."
Moarweald nodded. "Best not to encourage such folly. Aren't they the ones who can turn into monsters?"
"There's the real problem! Their technology's only about as good as ours was four hundred years ago, but they keep turning into these giant hulking things and it terrifies the daylights out of our merchants, even our soldiers! Doesn't help that they're tall to begin with…"
Moarweald pointed at the last area on the map–an enormous blob on the southern continent, occupying most of it and painted grey. "Surely they don't think the Kroldishtaris are going to be a problem? We barely talk to them, as far as I understand it."
"Yes, that's true, but they want to be prepared. Remember, they've landed on Ghellyre as well, and on Potamia." He gestured at the continent due east of Salvi and Zang Kwen that looked like a thumb pointing up. "They ride horses, of all things, instead of good old-fashioned ostriches. And they've got a genius for war, Auntie, look at it. It's the biggest land empire in the world, almost as big as our own. You know how we have the Foreign Legions? Well, they're all foreign legions in Kroldistar, every unit has a unique battle tactic. The few times we've actually had skirmishes with them"
"And things have been…heating up between us and them, as it were? The local newspapers don't say anything about it. Nor does the Herald."
Aragob rubbed his eyes. Her nephew looked so tired. "The thing is, Auntie, there isn't anything yet. Mainly they squabble amongst each other, Hercua's always at war with Kroldistar and the like over religious territory. But if a real war breaks out…well, we've got a neutrality pact with Hercua, and we get on well enough with the Zanguenese and the Kroldishtaris, but what if they're the aggressors? Would we have to join in if it means defending our colonies? And against magic we haven't been able to crush yet?"
"Dearest, what are the odds of that happening? Actually happening?"
Aragob scrunched up his face to think, and then sighed again. "High enough that the government wants us to prepare for it, Auntie. They've set as many puzzlers as they can on the issue, in secret of course. I don't think we'll go to war, not with Ghellyre basically settled into neutrality and all, but it's better to be safe than sorry. So we have to come up with a way of planning for any situation, with four possible enemies against us and powers we can't automatically beat to combat."
He sighed, and slumped back in the chair, which swivelled around again.
Moarweald thought for a while.
"It's just possible," she said, "that you might see this as a logic game."
Aragob tilted his head to one side. "A logic game? You mean like Kingsmen?"
"In a way. You're getting new information about the other four powers as quickly as can be, I think–if they've got the Puzzlers working on this they must be using the Seekers as well."
"Well, we are supposed to expect weekly updates…"
"Right! And you remember what I've always told you about ideas?"
"They strike finest when your mind is at peace," Aragob recited.
"Wonderful, you did listen all those years! So come on out, and we can talk about this some more in the fresh air."
Aragob let out a chuckle for the first time since she'd come in. "You're not going to let me out of this, are you. And to think I just wanted a little time to contemplate."
"You wanted a bit of time to wallow, my lad, and wallowing is not what the Baldael clan does. We build up our defences, little by little–and that means scouring the shore for shells like you used to as a boy."
"Oh, all right, Auntie. But there's still the other powers to think about."
Moarweald shrugged. "War, religion, trade, magic…they can wait. We have the Truth on our side, and the Truth always comes out atop the heap. Now, let's go walk along the cliffs, and plan out a scenario or two based on what you know. Thank goodness I don't have any consecrations today."
And in fact they did spend a happy hour down by the cliffs, walking and talking as they hadn't done for some time. Aragob stared after one of the local girls when she waved, and Moarweald was teasing him about it as they walked back to the house.
The teleprinter was tapping madly, a line of ticker tape emerging from the depths of the machine.
"Always strikes me as so impersonal, that thing," said Moarweald. "No voice, no handwriting…it could be from anyone and you'd never know."
Aragob rolled his eyes and shook his head with a smile. "It's perfectly safe. Now, let's see–"
He read through the tape, and his eyes went wide.
Aragob looked up.
"It's Hercua. They've unleashed another plague."

[Ares Land]

It's a nice way to present a conworld! (I suppose it's intended as such, or as a recap anyway?)
I'd love to see the accompanying map too.

I like the idea of riding ostriches. I'm fond of weird mounts in general.

Just a bit of awkward phrasing I caught in passing:
"Aragob rubbed his eyes. Her nephew looked so tired." (for a second there you wonder who's thinking)

[Pedant]

Well, here's the map! Altered a little, but…

A NEW MAP OF AJJAMAH

The five main powers, as of the year 5457 LC, each focus on their own strengths. For Irthiron, an island nation that became the republican centre of the biggest empire in the world, this is science, or more precisely driving away magic and replacing it with machines (and indoctrination). For Hercua, a stagnant empire made fresh by religious zealotry, this is faith, in a God (named Hio) who can perform miracles for those strong in faith--including plagues cast on enemies. Qoldishtar prefers integration--their strength lies in being an alloy of ethnicities, drawing the best from each culture while staying true to their nomad heritage. Zang Kwehn, more a collection of city-states than an actual country, prefers business--the Zanguenese banks control much of the world's finance, rivalling Irthiron's in complexity and territory. Finally, Salvi, a tropical peninsula ruled by five High Monarchs at a time, prefers magic--more precisely, the creation of Objects of Power, which allow you to warp reality with ease (and which may or may not eat your soul at the same time, it's difficult to say). Everyone has reason to dislike the other; everyone has reason not to get involved in a war. But the world's getting too small for everyone, and if something, anything goes wrong…

[Pedant]

2021 TASKS

• Salvian to 2,500 words
• Hercuan to 500 words
• Zanguenese to 500 words
• Script for RotD FINISHED
• Return to fluency in Turkish, French, Latin, and Greek; fluency in Japanese, Spanish, Anishinaabemawin
• Articling job

[bradrn]

Well, I finally got that chemistry software I mentioned earlier working, and it can indeed calculate IR spectra. So I figured it would be an interesting challenge to follow up on our earlier discussion and see if I can finally get a spectrum for nitrosyl cyanide. And, voilà, here it is:

ir-spectrum.png (16.72 KiB) Viewed 17335 times

Now, I leave it up to you to figure out what to do with this spectrum… I know a bit of chemistry, but I’m terrible at climatology! But I’m sure there’s at least some way to use this to predict temperatures, given the spectrum of the relevant star(s) and the rest of the atmospheric composition.

Oh, and as a bonus, here’s the vibrational mode corresponding to that big peak at ~1300 cm⁻¹:

(the image is pretty big, and I can’t seem to resize it, so I’ve had to stick it in a [more] block)

More: show

(Gory technical details for the interested: calculations were performed on TURBOMOLE with the TmoleX frontend, using the def2-TZVP basis set. I used def-SV(P) for an initial calculation, which curiously enoigh gave me quite a different spectrum; I’m using the spectrum shown above as def2-TZVP is both newer and more accurate than def-SV(P).)

[Pedant]

QOLDISHTARI SKETCH
PART I: Phonology & Nouns

Introduction
Of the five major empires in the world, the Empire of Qoldishtar (Qoldishtari Charakar-iy Qoldishtar) is the closest to what we might conceive of as the "traditional" model. Founded by nomadic riders given a taste of city-dwellers' life, Qoldishtar stretches across most of southern Hemeraea, and (thanks to new naval services from conquered territories) has even extended into southern Potamia. The emperor (charak, from char "chief") is elected from one of the branches of the family of Qilin Charak, and has been for over six hundred years.
It should be noted that the Qolmur (singular Qolmurith) are not the only group to live upon the plain--not even from their own language family. Four hundred and thirty years prior a large chunk of the central and western portions of the Whirlwind Plains were under the control of the Raqmur tribe, led by Zayas Charak. The empire broke up under Zayas' grandchildren, who debated whether or not the empire should remain true to its nomadic heritage, or else switch to a more bureaucratic model. The eastern territories chose the former, and the western the latter under Tigol Charak. His descendant, Qilin, would eventually use the models of more northerly empires to expand east and conquer his cousins--and spread the name of his people, the Qolmur ("those awakened"), to the entire empire.
Some of the empire is under the direct control of the Charak, particularly the cities in the western regions. Some (the steppe) is given over to the charak's family, effectively in exile unless the charak favours them and brings them to the capital. The easternmost regions, Mujara and Gykken among them, have dual governments at as many levels as possible, the Qolmur occupying higher positions by default and the locals carrying on with secondary positions.
Since Qilin Charak, the empire has focused not only on expansion but on consolidation. There's a lot to be said for their efforts to modernize (that is to say, stocking up on the latest weapons designs) and integrate local governments (i.e., pinch the good staff from various regions and gradually reshape their bureaucracy), even if there hasn't been much focus on representation at above more than the village/town level. Qoldishtar proper is still largely empty grassland and taiga forest, but the Grand Railway has been slowly expanding across the land for a little over a century now, increasing settlement and slowly building up sedentary populations on the steppe. By sheer size and versatility alone, Qoldishtar is a major player on the world stage--and would make a deadly enemy and uncertain ally in wartime.

Phonology

• Consonants: Consonants: m p b f w n t d th [θ] s z l r ç/ch [tʃ] j [dʒ] ś/sh [ʃ] ź/zh [ʒ] ng [ŋ] k g q h [x-χ] ğ [ɣ-ʁ] (ʔ)
• Vowels: i e a o u
• Syllable Structure: (C)V(C)*

Vowel Harmony
-this system was much more pronounced in Old Teshmuri, where to be fair there were four more nouns than the modern standard language (*ä, *ï, *ö, *ü). *ä and *ï fused with *a, *ü with *i, and *ö with either *e or *o depending on the backness of the preceding consonant (labials and dentals turned it to *e, palatals and velars to *o).

	Front Unrounded (*ä, *e, *i)	Front Rounded (*ö, *ü)	Back Unrounded (*a, *ï)	Back Rounded (*o, *u)
[+low]	a (*ä)	a (*ä)	a (*a)	a (*a)
[-high, -low]	e (*e)	e/o (*ö)	o (*o)	o (*o)
[+low]	i (*i)	i (*ü)	a (*ï)	u (*u)

Nominal Plurals
The Teshmuri languages place a great deal of emphasis on replication in their morphology, and in different forms. Roots generally take the form C₁VC₂, and nominal plurals use C₁VC₂C₁V. There are, however, a few exceptions to this:

• The last root in the word is the one that takes the reduplication. The plural of dan “father” is danda, but the plural of zhakish “floor” is zakishki.
• Some reduplications have been hidden by sound change; for example, podar “trail, way” has the plural podarta (but see related tar, tarta “land, region”).
• The suffixes, originally classifiers, count as roots themselves. The word gol “mountain” has the plural form golgoh, but the related word golith “mountain-dweller” pluralizes to golithi (from *ʔiθ-ʔi “persons”). This applies when multiple suffixes are included as well, for example charakar “empire”, plural charakara.

Nominal Declension

All suffixes follow the earlier vowel harmony system.

• The subjective is the bare noun form, without any major suffixing. It acts as both the nominative and accusative case. Examples: zhakish/zhakishki "floor", qol/qolqo "awakening", podar/podarta "trail", mur/murmu "tribe, people"
• The definitive is effectively a topicalizer, drawing special attention to a particular word (e.g. "The cake ate the snake" vs. "it was the snake the cake ate"), or else marking it with something like the definite article. Examples: zhakishe/zhakishkiye "the floor", qole/qolqoyo "the awakening", podaro/podartayo "the trail", muro/murmuyo "the people"
• The genitive marks possession in nouns. Examples: zhakishal/zhakishkila "of the floor", qolal/qolqola "of the awakening", podaral/podartala "of the trail", mural/murmula "of the tribe"
• The conjunctive is rather unique to the Teshmuri languages, although others have picked it up. Sometimes it acts as a definite article, doing double duty with the definitive. Other times, it is used to join two concepts together, either in to mark possession (X-iy Y "the X of Y") or conjunction (X-iy Y "X & Y"). It largely depends on context. The conjunctive is the one example of a suffix which does not undergo the usual vowel harmony, remaining as -iy/-yi regardless of preceding vowels. Examples: zhakish-iy/zhakishki-yi "the floor &", qol-iy/qolqo "the awakening &", podar-iy/podarta-yi "the trail &", mur-iy/murmu-yi "the people &"
• The dative is used to mark motion towards or into. Examples: zhakishya/zhakishkiya "to the floor", qolya/qolqoya "to the awakening", podarya/podartaya "to the trail", murya/murmuya "to the tribe, people"
• The locative is used to mark position within a place. Examples: zhakizhda/zhakishkida "floor", qolda/qolqoda "awakening", podarda/podartada "trail", murda/murmuda "tribe, people"
• The instrumental is used to indicate means or an instrument. It is also used with causative verb phrases. Examples: zhakishmir/zhakishkimir "with the floor", qolmir/qolqomir "with the awakening", podarmar/podartamar "with the trail", murmur/murmumur "with the tribe, people"; gede dachu mazmur "it is the egg that you have through me=I'm giving you this egg"
• The ablative marks a relatively simple motion away. Examples: zhakishti/zhakishkiti "from/off the floor", qolti/qolqoti "from/off the awakening", podarti/podartati "from/off the trail", murti/murmuti "from the tribe, people"

[Pedant]

TENSION POINTS

The Bithwealdes or Five Powers have been slowly growing in influence for a number of centuries now, and each now controls a sizeable portion of the world. For very different reasons--Irthiron's navy and technology, Qoldishtar's size and army, Hercua's divine intervention, Zahng Kwen's incredible commerce, and Salvi's dark magic--each is in a position to do a great deal of damage to at least one of the others. The issue, as always, is where. Analysts and spies from each of the Powers have gathered information and built up a compendium of what in Irthiron are called the shagges ae ndibb or "tension places". Any one of these could set off the biggest war the world has yet seen--and all of them need to be watched.

The Meotem Sea, formed by the slow approach of the continent of Oria to Eudnophe, is a big one for Hercua, Qoldishtar, and Zahng Kwen, largely through the potential trouble with the Gykkura, who were the previous masters of the region through the Empire Resurgent. Each has some of the most important Gykkura territory under its belt. Hercua holds sway over Betami, the great City of Open Gates at the strait between the Meotem and Chitem Seas, as well as the west coast of the latter (including Symmush). Qoldishtar holds the New Cities, established on the southwestern coast of the Meotem Sea over seventeen hundred years ago, a unique culture but the largest group outside the Chitem Sea. And Zahng Kwen has ties with Mujara, which currently holds most of the rest of the Chitem Sea, including the originally Gykkura homeland.
The city of Suranji is another contestant; between Salvi, Hercua, Zahng Kwen, and Irthiron, despite its small size, it’s a highly volatile settlement. Originally meant as a protective area against zombie attacks and a place for ships rounding Potamia to restock, Suranji has become a vitally important port for global trade–not least because of the gold, iron, and spells available there. The local Salvians have established their own subculture, which while bound to Salvi has more freedom of choice than most of the kingdoms on the subcontinent, and more to the point has no kings. Hercua would prefer the port as a place to convert the locals away from the use of zombies as slave armies. Zahng Kwen just loves mineral wealth. But the thing that’s likely to drive people apart is the use of spells. Salvi is all too happy to keep its magic going; the Zanguenese tend to be more cautious about it; the Hercuans don’t like it at all, and refuse to use the “demon’s words” (which in practice means they need tech, which the Zanguenese are happy to supply). But Irthiron, which has its colony state of Dubal just a little to the north, isn’t very happy about spells either. And that may come down to bite the Salvians in the blubber if they’re not careful, because only Irthiron has the power to dispel magic…
By far the largest potential theatre of war is the continent of Ghellyre, so named for the golden sand found on its shores when the Irthironians first stepped foot on the continent. There are four states, each of which could cause significant trouble to the other three if they decided. Ghellyre and Goashyre in the west are Irthironian; Varemios, in the fertile northeast, is Hercuan, albeit filled with some of the nuttier brotherhoods; and Zhalyah in the frigid southeast is stalwartly Qoldishtari with a high Lewidzian population. The thing about Ghellyre is that, as a whole, it’s rather a silent continent. No humans stepped foot on the place before about 500 years ago, and there are still areas where no map has been drawn, no chart compiled. Fighting a war here would be like fighting on a pristine, alien world–and possibly ruining it irreparably.
If Ghellyre would be the youngest theater of war in the world, the Potamian Highlands would be the oldest. Humans have existed in those hills for hundreds of thousands of years–indeed, they may have become humans there. And the local states are already rather fired up, with the age-old disputes gaining new veils under Hercuan uzerejo and Zanguenese commercialism.
The Cho-Em Mountains are higher still, and once again a point of contention for Hercua, Qoldishtar, and Zahng Kwen. The mountains hold a sacred place in the hearts of the Zanguenese–their ancestors descended from them to wreak havoc and spread bad interest rates across the jungles of their modern home. The Hercuans consider it a vital passage to their colonies around the Meotem and Chitem Seas. And the Qoldishtari are greatly interested by reports of great mineral wealth found in the hills. Above all, however, there is the issue of water. The great rivers for all three empires descend from the Cho-Em Mountains, and while each holds a portion, Hercua’s is growing swiftly larger. If nothing else, the next war may be fought over what to drink.
Salvi and Irthiron have their scuffle-points too, small though they may be. Together with Zahng Kwen, the nature and position of the archipelago of Akotoya causes the three bithwealdes quite a lot of trouble. Salvi has the oldest claim, Zahng Kwen the largest. Irthiron has recently muscled in with free trade ports of their own, along with those of Rumhuwr, one of their allies.

[Pedant]

CLASSICAL HERCUAN MORPHOLOGY

Classical Hercuan (sa pura conaja, "the classical language", in modern Hercuan) was spoken for nearly fifteen hundred years as the primary language of Empire of Hercua, the Holy Land, from the mid-14th Century LC to the early 30th. It's part of the Hefrago branch of the Yavo-Hefrago family. The closest branch in terms of linguistics and proximity is the ill-fated agglutinative Kagamai branch, spoken by the gypsies who wander between settlements and are denied settlement in the Holy Land; the next closest, the isolating, tonal dialects of Zanguenese in the monsoon grasslands to the north. The first Hefragos came down from the eastern foothills of the Cho-Em Mountains into the Drazál Basin, buoyed on, it is whispered in other lands, by an army of demons. Mostly they settled down and became nomadic rulers of sorts, periodically engaging in the locals' habits of annual reconquest of other city-states. By the year 2571 of the Long Count (937 AA), they'd consolidated their territory into a full-fledged empire spanning the whole of the Holy Land. Classical Hercuan would continue to be spoken across the whole length of the Empire, and although out of fashion by the time the Hirago came to spread the word of Hio is still used in literary and political contexts to this day.

Phonology

• Consonants: m n ń /ɲ/ ñ /ŋ/
  p t č /tʃ/ k q ʔ
  b j /dʒ/ g
  s h
  z
  w x /x^w/
  r y /j/ l ł /ɬ/
• Vowels: a /'a,ɐ/ ā /a:/ e /ɛ:/ ē /e:/ i /i/ ī /i:/ o /ɔ:/ ō /o:/ u /u/ ū /u:/
• Syllable Structure: CVC

The Root
The Yavo-Hefrago language family has a habit of coming up with quite distinct derivational morphological conventions. The Kagamai languages, now mostly spoken by the Cancais or in the fortress-city of Reogal, are agglutinative. The Zanguenese languages have somehow developed tone along the way, and are quite isolating. So are the Choman languages, although they're mostly known for a rather complex taboo language depending on whom one speaks to. And the Hefrago languages use triconsonantal root derivation--at least, they all used to. And Classical Hercuan (also called Pura qa-Xerkuwa, the "language of the holy land") is the grandmother of them all, often literally.
Roots comprise two to three consonants, and between one and two vowels. From a single root, such as jerš- (Proto-Yavo-Hefrago *jiraß-), one gets for example:
mujreši "we protect"
wanijreša "they protected me"
tayunijrešay "thou wilt bid him/her to protect me"
tujirašu "thou dost protect again and again"
ījirašiya "fortress, castle"
jijrašu "guardian, champion"
jīraša "spear"
ūjirašu "protection"
jeršiyu "phalanx"

Nouns
Nouns are laughably simple in form; there are two cases (subjective and oblique) and two numbers (singular and plural), applied across all types:

	Subj.Sing.	Subj.Pl.	Obl.Sing.	Obl.Pl.
Feminine	-a -iya -uwa	-an -iyan -uwan	-at -iyat -uwat	-ā -īya -ūwa
Masculine	-u -ō -ayu	-un -ōn -ayun	-ut -ōt -ayut	-ū -āw -āyu
Neuter	-i -ē -awi	-in -ēn -awin	-it -ēt -awit	-ī -āy -āwi

Verbs: Person, Number, Voice, Tense
Classical Hercuan is that rare thing, a tripartite language with separate markers for the agent, experiencer, and patient. (Choman retains this, but the Kagamai languages have switched to agent- or patient-heavy verbs, and Zanguenese syntax and pronoun replacement means the modern dialects are more skewed to the nominative-accusative variation with the topic given its own marker.) As in the Kagamai languages, the experiencer or "middle" form is used in adjectival verbs, as in yupiki "it is sharp". As a further innovation, the experiencer or "middle" form can be pushed into service as a secondary agent in a causative verb, for example in yatujłowē "he/she/it will make you sleep", and antipassives like yayijłowu "he/she/it makes him/her/it be slept upon again and again".
Below is a list of the various pronominal prefixes for verbs:

	1s	2s	3s	1p	2p	3p
Active	na-	ta-	ya-	ma-	sa-	wa-
Middle	nu-	tu-	yu-	mu-	su-	ū/-wu-
Passive	ni-	ti-	ī/-yi-	mi-	si-	wi-

Classical Hercuan retains seven of Proto-Hefrago's eleven tense/aspect/mood forms, with a focus on a future/non-future construction:

• The imperfect (-i) marks events in either the past or present that are ongoing and uninterrupted.
• The perfect (-a) marks events, past or present, that have been completed as of the speaker referring to them.
• The iterative (-u) marks events that repeat themselves, either habitually or cyclically.
• The future (-ē) marks events that have yet to occur, but definitively will.
• The subjunctive (-ō) marks events that may occur, or ought to, or possibly should not.
• The imperative (bare verb stem) is used for commands, as well as jussive and prohibitive constructions.
• The negative (-ū) is used for, well, negative statements, as well as counterfactuals.

Verbs: Additional Forms
The verb forms in Classical Hercuan, mostly not requiring any really complex derivation thanks to the TAM suffixes from Proto-Yavo-Herago, belong to one of three separate groups, easily recognizable.

• The first, the standard form, follows the pattern CCVC (i.e. -jłow-), and is used for most base verbs.
• The second, the extended form, follows the pattern CVCVC (i.e. -juław-). It is used for a great number of derivational forms, as well as for specific iterations of the verb.
• The third and final form, the contracted form, follows the pattern CVCC, as in nouns (i.e. -jołw-). This is used when a descriptive infix is applied to the verb, for example nayičajolwa "I try to sleep on it(/him/her)" or murajolwi "we do not sleep".
  (Why not mujłowū? This is acceptable too, but there is a touch of nuance involved. The infix -ra- refers to a more general denial, as in "we never sleep", while the suffix -ū is more for specific occurrences, i.e. "we do not sleep now".)

[Pedant]

BITHRAEL

The key concept behind Bithrael or “fivefold worship”, the main religion of Irthiron, is quite simple. Wherever one lives, one is tied to the main five deities who have made their home there. One prays to the gods for justice, for success in conflict, for health, for industry–and for respite from the unknown, and these are generally shared one way or another between the gods. If there’s a shrine nearby one goes occasionally to pay one’s respects. If you live near a temple then one does the same, maybe leaving alms for the priests and priestesses (who receive government funding for temple upkeep but are expected to earn their own living). And then one gets on with life.
(It’s not like the gods will be able to help if you don’t give them something to work with.)

The Origins of Bithrael
The gods may be totems from the noble clans, or genii loci, or nature spirits, or (rarely) even deified ancestors. Some deities, like Balas the queen of the gods and Dalibythe the rain-star, were once part of the Royal Pantheon, and as such garner a lot of respect if not outright worship across Irthiron. Others were never blessed in this manner, but because of the strength of local clans or cities they've spread far beyond their original location and displaced in primacy one or more of the gods elsewhere. But all are equal, in the eyes of the viewer, and must be given the same respect--others' gods as well as one's own.
Bithrael had its official start at the end of the 42nd Century LC (early 7th Century AU in the Ithironian Calendar), when the queen at the time, Coar, settled the civil war that had been slowly breaking out across the country by placing all priests under the control of the royal government. But the country had had its fair share of religious upheavals in the centuries prior, during the Arrival. Warruka spirits--rainbow serpents, wandjina, and the like--had reacted to the conquest of their friends' lands by morphing into terrible monsters, the dragons and termagants of many a myth. As famous as the knights who fought and vanquished them were the witches who sought to disarm them by less conventional means, including their incorporation into the ceremonies of the local priests. So it came to be that clans might have shrines to two or even three deities, which could be sourced to specific areas (the Warruk were very big on local spirits along the paths across the islands).
Coar really only formalized a system that had been in existence for some time, but with it came the implications of a new theological and philosophical movement starting from Kewez in the southwest. This was φiβám (Irthironian Fhifam), a theory that compartmentalized each aspect of life into a balance of the Five Substances (φirúm). The theory stated that a balance of each was needed--Void for detachment, Heat for bravery, Water for versatility, Wood for kindness, and Bone for industry--in order to create a stable person and a stable society, and if one was out of balance then the rest would fall to corruption and ruin. In the aftermath of the local wars, then, it seemed prudent to introduce the worship of various gods into other households, particularly those of neighbours. One god apiece for justice, war, death and chaos, fertility and health, and industry; it seemed a good way of rounding out the personalities of the locals, getting them more in line. To this end Coar commissioned a massive undertaking, the Bithirc or "Five Songs", five enormous texts gathered from oral histories and shrines around the kingdom--including in the Warruk enclaves--to produce a definitive list of all the deities and categorize them according to function. These functions, the codices went on to say, were only representations of greater embodiments. Five all-powerful elements, of which the cosmos was constructed, gave the deities their power and positions. To this day they are sometimes called the Thircwed i Goar, "Coar's Songs"--appropriate, really, as her name means Dream.
It took some time to get used to, but Coar had fifty years to put her plan into practice. She decreed first that no god or goddess would rank higher than any other; they might hold more power in some places than others, but none were to be deliberately excluded. There was free worship. But people had already been crossing back and forth to seek favours of particular deities other than their own--all Coar did here was extend the bar a little bit, make the festivals public and general instead of private and specific. She also insisted on there being royal representatives (rhayned a yamm, "eyes of the queen") at these festivals, both to remind others of the Queen's power and to ensure orthodox methods were being used. Over time these simply became members of the establishment, an upper class of priests that it would take until the 52nd Century LC to fully dislodge (although their siding with the Ashenacom during the Occupation didn't do them any favours). The thernad, the spirit gates, built all across the island as a boundary for the supernatural, were given consecration and decreed as holy in their own right; Coar used revenue from the recent boom in the wool trade to fund temples across the country. Finally, around the middle of her reign, she insisted that the texts be the definitive source for all the religious rituals in the country. Mostly this was just a confirmation of pre-existing religious practices, but it also brought into the fold new beliefs from across the island, and ritual practices from all walks of life.
The new religion was very much a public affair, and people continued in private to worship single deities. It was only during the reign of Coar's grandson, Hamman IV, that the idea of the thernell or "little spirit gate" began to rise in popularity, giving families a means of worship within their homes. (The necessity of this was brought about by a plague of camel-pox making its way around the Shallow Sea, requiring that families take at least most of their religious practices indoors.)
Under the Ashenacom Occupation in the 50th and 51st Centuries LC the rhayned a yamm still played at being top of the hierarchy, but general public opinion favoured more private worship, not tainted with obsequiousness to the new religion of their conquerers. The last queen of Irthiron, Maerie "the Defiant", organized her rebellion partially on the principle of religious commitment to Bithrael and the practices of fhifam, but mostly she and the other Rebellion leaders sought to emphasize the importance of the individual Irthironian. They had been nobles and peasants, kings and commoners before; under the Ashenacom they were all little more than slaves, she said, except for the cronies in the priesthood. Even her own family was trapped in that world. (Actually her uncle didn't have much choice in the matter, but that's a story for another time.) But the idea of Irthiron--all islanders, all bound together under the power and duty of the monarchy--that they could rally behind. Her death at the climax of the rebellion only made this conviction stronger--the royal family of Irthiron, their living gods, were gone now. All they had were the beliefs they had ushered in, and the power vested in the people of Irthiron to be their own kings, and treat all as they would their rulers and subjects alike.
Under the Empire this was further relaxed. The state, science, the advancement of humanity and the abandonment of magic--all of these were essential, public duties, things all citizens should aspire to. The gods were now little more than markers of origin, important for cultural reasons but only guides. The gods could help you focus, might bend the world your way, but it was up to you to learn how to take advantage of those bends.

Interactions with Other Faiths
One result of this tumultuous history is that Irthironians are both more and less tolerant of outside religions. Their entire religious history has been about a slow but emphatic movement away from zealous belief, and into the realm of more comfortable issues. So while they’re perfectly happy to offer a quick prayer and a coin or two to deities in the colonies, they’re rather less fond of all the associated superiority complexes--and how, quite frequently, worshipping foreign deities is a gateway to magic use, largely discredited thanks to the Ashenacom mind-eaters. It’s also made them rather unpopular, as a whole, with monotheistic religions like Ujerazo, Waqqola, and Quiramic Emperor-Worship, because they don’t understand not being able to hedge your bets. (Besides, Emperor-Worship is an concept they had for quite a while themselves, believing their Monarchs to be divine beings in their own right, and the differences in method make them feel as awkward as the similarities.) They also don’t much like Salvian gods much, not because of the whole pantheism thing they have going on but because the rewards for worship are immediate and come at the cost of one’s own free will.
Actually they don’t mind Zanguenese gods too much, despite their multi-limbed animal-featured fusions, and even the antitheist Łysabyr of the Qolmur is palatable on account of its emphasis on human agency. But Hercuan monotheism they reject for its unscientific approach and quasi-monarchical structure, and Salvian pantheism they see as crippling the spirit.
(To be fair, Salvians view them as a bunch of stuck-up weirdos who make half-hearted attempts at total atheism, and the Hercuans view them as blasphemous hubristic heathens, but then the Hercuans view a lot of people like that.)