Ajjamah Scratchpad: Kaadhral, Pt. I

[Pedant]

The Salvian, Icemannic, and Ankoseiwas threads all feature languages (and language families) found on this world. Other cultures and languages I shall describe in some level of detail; if anyone's interested in anything in particular I'll see about making them their own threads.

Races: The Ashenacom : The Qumor : The Sealanders : The Berserkers : The Finders : The Human Races
Places: Qar Iq-Qirishid : A New Climate Map (Defunct) : World Map, Mk. III (Defunct) : World Map, Mk. IV
Species: The Yeti
World Elements: The Nine Gifts (Defunct) : Spell Types (Defunct) : The Nature of the Gods : The Sixty-Three Names of God : Birthrite : The Long Count : Tension Points : Climate Map Revised
Stories: A Smile in Your Heart : Short Stories : Bithwealdes : Bithrael the Faith of Irthiron
Histories: The History of Irthiron Geography : Native Cultures & The Tharons
Linguistics: Irthironian Nouns : Quipus of the Qumor : Qoldishtari Grammar Pt. I : Classical Hercuan Morphology
Polls: Irthiron
Tasks: 2021

And, most recently, a new story: Kaadhral, Pt. I

The Three Suns and Seven Worlds
Ajjamah (the Salvian name; it literally means "land-place" or "Earth") is the second planet in orbit around Suran, a yellow-orange K-type star a mere 5 billion years through its projected 18.2 billion-year lifespan. Suran is unique in this galactic neck of the woods on account of not only having a planet capable (and demonstrably so) of supporting life, but also for being in a trinary orbit with two other K-type stars and maintaining a stable planetary system. It has four recognized planets. Kasar, another K-type star, has a thirty-six-year binary orbit around Suran, coming as close as 7AU and moving back as far as 169AU at different parts of the timeline; it has its own planets as well, with moons visible through a telescope, which proved a really important feature of early heliocentric theories. When Kasar is in the daytime sky, it's bright enough to cast shadows; when it's present at "night" it outshines the moon. It has three recognized planets. There is a third star, Maṭā (yet another K-type), which orbits at quite a further distance away, at about 500AU over a period of around 364 years. Any planets that may be in orbit are unfortunately invisible to the people of Salvi through the naked eye (and Finders who've tried to focus their Perception over the area have been...shall we say less than coherent on account of the distance involved).
The four worlds of Suran are:
Toksha (Salvian Tokśah), a small rocky world similar to Mercury, orbiting at a mere 0.3AU.
Ajjamah (same in Salvian), the home planet of the people who call themselves human, orbiting Suran at 0.73AU over a period of 227.81 Terran days (approximately 210 local days; the Ajjaman day is 26 Terran hours long).
Sanavir (same in Salvian), a Mars-like world orbiting at an average of 1.1AU.
Beyond Sonu there is a decently-sized asteroid field.
Vyapa (Salvian Vīpā), a bright blue gas giant orbiting at about 3.5AU.
The three worlds of Kasar are:
Ninaya (Salvian Ninayan), a super-Earth orbiting Kasar at a distance of 0.5AU; from the images present of its surface it appears to have an atmosphere similar to Venus.
Gunavar (Salvian Gunavar), a gas giant four times the size of Jupiter orbiting in the habitable zone of 0.9AU; it has at least two moons capable of supporting life.
Beyond Gunu is an asteroid belt.
Nosti (Salvian Nōstih), a mini-Neptune orbiting at a distance of 3.7AU. Radiant Nosti, with massive rings, is often the brightest of Kasar's worlds seen from Ajjamah when the home-world reaches perihelion.

The Home World

A Map of Ajjamah At Present (in the Year 16 White Chupacabra)
(NOTE: the layers on the relief map are as follows: 0-249m ASL, 250-499m, 500-1,499m, 1,500-2,999m, 3000+m)

On its own, Ajjamah has little to differentiate it from a hundred other worlds. It has three suns, to be sure, but only one is bright enough to provide enough light to keep the planet alive, and is dimmer than our own ever so slightly (although slightly larger). It has one moon--and tides that reach four times the height of those on Earth, with an average of 2.0 metres up and down instead of 0.5--but because of the respective sizes of the moon and sun a total solar eclipse is never possible (the moon, Tana--Salvian Tanā--has an angular diameter of 0.45º compared to Suran's 0.625º). The planet itself is 87% the size of Earth, and has 95% of the radius; objects fall at 9.43 m/s², very close to that of Earth proper. Ajjamah is composed primarily of iron and silicates, like Earth, and has a radioactive core that hopefully won't go out for a good long while yet.
One rather subtle difference is that because of a slightly less stable solar system, Ajjamah's axial tilt varies a great deal more than Earth's. It has ranged from 21º to around 28º over the past 40,000 years (compared to Earth's 22º to 24.5º), leading to some rather exciting changes every so often for the planet; the current axial tilt is 24.5º, still quite a dramatic chance from the 25º it was 500 years ago.
Currently there are five broad landmasses, each bearing its own name:
Pelia, the continent to the left, ranging from the Qutosbegek Mountains in the west to the Salvian Peninsula to the east, and from the Sealander Coast in the north to the Malehi Archipelago to the south. Ethnicities of note: the Sorcerers, the Telepaths, the Swoopers, the Botanists, the Cannibals, the Recollectors, the Divers, the Finders, and the Keepers.
Borealia, the northernmost continent, largely covered by ice and inhabited by an eclectic mix of mammals and birds. Ethnicities of note: the Trancers, the Vampires, and the Statues.
Meniscia: the smallest of the continents out in the Eastern Ocean, with a fairly large desert in the western portion and several smaller islands to the north. Ethnicities of note: the Normal People.
Hemeraea: the largest of the continents (even discounting Akwa), ranging from Hercua in the west to the High Plateau to the Vortex Plains to the Inclement Shores in the far east. Ethnicities of note: the Crusaders, the Berserkers, the Eternals, the Performers, the Size-Changers, the Hunters, the Shifters, and the Sane People.
Akwa: the northwestern portion of the continent shared with Hemeraea, divided by the High Plateau, and largely known for its two river basins: the Omiri to the west (running through the Ochu Desert), and the Acúraçõ to the east (the largest river basin on the planet). Ethnicities of note: the Zombies, the Reincarnators, the Changers, the Shifters, the Impaled People, the Bouncers, and the Pathfinders.

Climate and Biology

Climates of the World
(NOTE: red for tropical rainy, dark orange for tropical wet-and-dry, light orange for semiarid, pink for arid, light green for dry summer subtropical, vivid pink for humid subtropical, light grey for marine west coast, dark brown for humid continental (warm summer), light pink for humid continental (cool summer), teal for subarctic, purple for tundra, white for icecaps, yellow for mountainous areas)

One feature that might be noticed on this world is a relative lack of desert climates. This is deliberate; increased insolation in some parts of the year have transformed what would be desert lands (such as the long northern coastline on the east side of Pelia) into vast seas of grass and scrubland, perfect for hunting, pastoralism, and maybe a bit of light agriculture on the side. This is likely to change in coming years, however, as the axial tilt slowly shifts back and the planet switches back to something closer to Earth in our time.
There are plants on Ajjamah that would be recognized on Earth (perhaps not all from this era), some others that would be totally alien. Photosynthetic chemicals are slightly altered in this world to better reflect the orangey light of the sun; leaves range from spectral green to spectral yellow, leading to some fairly spectacular golden forests. Plants use spores, seeds, flowers, and the occasional bit of fungus-like parasitism to reproduce. In the Far East of Hemeraea, there are vast labyrinths of trees growing on top of trees, like coral reefs on land and with as much diversity. Along the length of the Omiri River grow cactus-like plants with exploding heads that impale a would-be drinker with spines, leading to blood loss and eventual death (preferably some distance away). All along the Sealander Coast in the Pelian northwest there are immense forests of redwoods and pines, some older than the oldest existing civilizations today. Every so often one finds a plant species that's a little more magical than the rest--these often live in symbiosis with the local sapients.
Animals, too, are similar enough but incredibly divergent. Mammoths still abound in the frozen north, and prehistoric cameloids have recently evolved into the much faster cyphion (cyphion cyphion), which traverses with ease the Quiramic Grasslands and Swooper Desert. Bar a few species--including the swamp lion of Wenglau--the lactile "whales" have gone extinct, being replaced with phallenes--ovoviviparous birds related to the Ajjaman equivalent of the penguin. Monotremes, or their closest equivalents, survive not in the water but among tree branches, with gliding bird-monkeys like the hawkbill tamarin dominating the jungles of Meniscia. On the Vortex Plains great birds of prey have survived, the harbinger (ceryx indomitus) being one of the most populous, travelling in packs to hunt down whatever else may lurk in the long grass of the steppe. Salamanders, not frogs, are the most common amphibian--but they make up for it by having tails built for jumping great distances (the golden dart salamander, toxicus interbidus, can manage twenty feet on a good night)
Vertebrate life evolved 520 million years ago, lactiles (this world's equivalent of mammals) a mere 214 million years ago, and hominids a paltry seventeen million years ago. Humans (species anthropus praeditus "gifted person") share the planet not only with their close relatives (such as the yeti, anthropus villosus, or the Dragon People, anthropus parvus) but with three other sapient species, each capable of magic in their own way. The phoenixes (caladrius ardens), descended from parrots, build great communal nests in the deep forests and carry spells on their wingtips. The leviathans (novocetus allapsus, great whale-like beings, can pass through any plane in any direction, and use their songs to keep aloft as they pass from one portal in the sea to another in the sky. And the behemoths (cornobelua placida), resembling modern-day elephants, carve their own trails into the land through continual migration, and trade memories for motives in the form of little puffs of smoke from their trunks.

Magic
Three is a surprisingly useful number when it comes to magic on Ajjamah. There are three worlds: the physical world, the Dream (where what sapients think comes to life, and the Deep (where everything that has ever happened is recorded). There are three souls: the Acting Soul (controlling one's physical body), the Speaking Soul (one's presence in the Dream), and the Thinking Soul (one's presence in the Deep). There are three sources of magic: the light of Kasar (the second sun), tectonic activity within the bowels of the earth, and the biosphere (past and present). And there are three ways magic may manifest itself: through the Gifts inherent in various peoples, through the land itself, and through communication with the spirits along their bi-planar forms.
The Gifts (Salvian tarih, plural taryā) are abilities that some sapients (including from the other three species) gain through prolonged exposure to the land they live on. These can range from the mundane (which normally occur in the general populace) to the extreme (such as a centuries-long lifespan, detaching one's soul and using it to cast spells, transforming into a giant indestructible Hulk-like being, etc.), and are unique to particular ethnicities. Note that they are not static; they change and evolve over the centuries, depending on necessity, intermixing, and location.
How are the Gifts determined? In part by how close people are to Loci (Salvian ēsṛlah, pl. ēsṛlās), which are in effect waypoints in the world where a particular kind of magic is found, usually dependent on tectonic activity and the local biosphere (or lack thereof). There are Major Loci (which have the most effect on Gifts) and around them several Minor Loci (which generally are not as powerful--although this may change over time). These are normally associated with particularly important landmarks, mountains or rivers or the like. The Major Locus on the Salvian Peninsula, for example, is up in the Northern Highlands, and provides any who stay near it the ability to create structures out of magic, which can then be used to affect the physical world. The Locus in the Ochu Desert, on the other hand, is the Omiri River itself, which grants those along its banks a certain proximity to the dead. Needless to say, people in both locales have taken advantage of this as time goes on.
So what about if you want to try and preserve your Gift, no matter the locale? For this you need a fully-functioning spirit (Salvian kallih, pl. kalliya- "oath-spirit"), who will grant you a connection to a particular Locus. Often these take on the functions of gods and goddesses, as one does not necessarily need to join with them body and soul for the spirits to have an effect on the physical world, merely to pray to them. The Salvians have taken this to one logical extreme and collect as many spirits as they possibly can for their temples; the Hercuans have taken the opposite view, and have seen to it that one deity and one deity alone receives their praise, subsuming all other spirits in the process and taking on their powers. (The Salvians are understandably unhappy about this attitude.)
And of course the world around everyone is useful for controlling the flow of magic as well. The Loci are connected to places in the Dream, where specific powers are imagined and brought forth. The amount of life in an area acts as an anchor (in the Deep) for the magical and physical realms to combine. And of course the whole process is only made possible through the light of Kasar, which waxes and wanes as the years go by...

Lexicon Sizes
6,015/6,000
Classical Salvian: 1,176
Irthironian: 924
Duales Hercuan: 603
Chomgonese: 510
Icemannic: 309
Kisimbi: 300
Malehinese: 273
Qumor: 252
Motzálac: 246
Qoldishtari: 189
Gykkeni: 165
Qoliyyu: 159
Minoan: 150
Warruka: 120
Yamatsoki: 108
Proto-Vitrean: 87
Truzithan: 93
Lewidzian: 78
Goldlandic: 72
uduBal: 72
Ashenacom: 60
Hysteran: 33
Saporian: 24
Idhvig: 12

Spell Merchant Pilot Script
2,216/6,000

[Pedant]

The Ashenacom are a grasslands people, and have been for many thousands of years. Unlike their Hemeraean counterparts, the Mà Qul and Duun Nam peoples, they do not ride horses. Instead, the animal of choice is the camelopard, cyphion ferus caballus, a relative of the Salvian boskoe, with cloven hooves, good speed across the plains, and (in some breeds) a tendency to spit with extreme accuracy. The Ashenacom themselves have a particularly powerful Gift for the grasslands: the ability to suck an area dry of energy and use it to produce a flaming halo around the body (and objects or animals in direct contact) for protection. (This likely evolved as a reaction to the frequent wildfires on the savanna their ancestors called home, and bears remarkable similarity to the methods used by the dragons in Malehi.) For a time, they ruled an enormous empire across both the savanna and the steppe to the west; one group, the Achoong "strong people", even became the Twelfth Dynasty of the Telepath Empire (with some local dissatisfaction, naturally, but that's bound to happen occasionally). They worshipped the ever-present sky, the earth, the animals that lived upon the grass, the major sun Suran (a rather mercurial deity), and a race of invisible flaming people with metallurgy skills called the Agaderdu. Today, most bow before the Raven Reborn in Minzatu, but there are still a few petty states scattered around what remains of the grasslands and scrublands in the east.
The Ashenacom actually speak a variety of languages by this point in history, the proto-language spoken around 2,500 years ago. The language with the most speakers is that of Kikheymür, just north of the Qutosbegehi Mountains, but the Imperial language, spoken by the Achoong, is the one to be studied here. It is agglutinative, with a number of honorifics based on kinship terms, nominal distinction between animate, inanimate, and flammable nouns (the Ashenacom are categorized as inflammable) as well as between seven basic "shapes", a base twelve numeral system (an Ashenacom crossing their arms may only be representing the number twelve), verbal distinction between indirect and direct agent and patient (four in all) in six different combinations, and 400 words for describing camelopards of different ages, sizes, and colours.

[Pedant]

Next up, the QUMOR:

The World of the Winged People

Gift magic is an instinct on Salvi, and it is born of change in a specific feature of the landscape as much as it is from the movement of the Second Sun, Kasar. For the Salvians, it is the great volcanoes that straddle their peninsula, the erratic flow of magma from below powering their constructions in the Dream. The Zombies’ power comes from the Omiri River; one of the longest rivers on the planet, its life-giving waters restore even the dead. The Divers rely on the hurricanes out at sea; the Icemannic peoples of the north, also called the Trancers, feed on the aurora borealis and the disappearance of the sun itself. It should be no great surprise, then, that the Qutosbegek Mountains, also called the Western Wall, crashing against the Outer Ocean, should be constantly rising and falling and shifting--and that the people who live along its length, the Winged People, have been taught to fly far above the (rather dangerous) peaks.
They’re not actually winged, of course, nor is that their word for themselves. The most common demonym, Qumor, means ‘all those who fly in human manner’, from the root m-, as opposed to those who fly like birds or bats or bugs or ghosts or clouds or stars. (They also have twenty root-words for ‘cloud’, and five for ‘dance’.) They live high in the mountains from the Sealander city-state of Ramvadoi in the north to the furthest outpost of the Malehinese Dragon Empire in the south, and again along the Prong (a far older mountain range, to be sure, and one more thoroughly ground down by time, but one linked to their home peaks and thus connected). There are even colonies in the Drch’agok Desert, roosting among the hoodoos and hunting giant bats and hammerhead sloths. Still, the undisputed capital of the Qumori lands is Manzitu, the Noble Land, atop a mountain near Lake Lisirina (the largest lake on the Western Wall). Here the Raven Reborn, with wings crafted from the feathers of ten thousand birds, receives tribute from raiders and lords and serfs across the empire, and here too are kept the best Travel Carpets. (Not flying carpets, no, that’s a Salvian thing.)
It is, logically, the dialect of this quasi-capital, simply called Qaladnu or ‘we (and not you) speak it’, that shall be discussed here, alongside a brief history of the civilization of the Winged People and all those it has conquered. Qaladanu is heavily, heavily agglutinative, has some fairly frightening consonant clusters (for example in totvdnzdovi ‘being perceived as noble’), and boasts five noun forms based on plurals. There is also Ivikira, a whistling language with a base in Old Qaladnu, used for inter-mountain communication; this shall be covered here as well.
That’s mostly all for now. But there is as of yet one thing left unexplained: why the Winged People? The Qumor do not need wings to fly, it is true; they propel their bodies in whichever direction they so desire, falling up or down or sideways as may be desired. But they also raid, and although raiders from the sky are terrifying enough, the Qumor as a whole have been using the ‘birds-of-prey’ aesthetic for centuries. A wandering foreigner trekking across the mountains will hear the raiders before they see them, a scream that is very definitely not human. When they come into sight, they may notice the claws on the hands and feet, or the streamlined cotton-and-leather armour, or the spears held in un-clawed hands; they may even notice, if they are unlucky enough to get close, the razor-sharp bronze beak attached to the head. But before anything else, they will notice the two long struts branching out from the bodies of the attackers, covered in the feathers of eagles or condors or vultures. Before all else, they will hear and see the wings.

[vegfarandi]

Very cool! Do you have a website that houses all of this as well?

[Pedant]

Very cool! Do you have a website that houses all of this as well?

Many thanks! And indeed I do--or at least I will...it’s the Midnight Sun website, still under construction but increasing every day (I’ll try and finish about a page a day now).

[Pedant]

And coming up, THE SEALANDERS:

Sealand, with the most prominent confederacies and city-states in white

Running along the northwestern coast of the continent of Pelia is a long strip of dense forest, some of the most pristine on the planet. From the Bilasáano Peninsula and Amphia Island to the ancient confederacy of Méestok, the climate is Mediterranean and frankly beautiful; the rue-berry orchards of Tsomakáani, smelling of lemon and mint and pine, are a must-see (or rather a must-smell) on any tour of the planet. The interior, not as dry as it would be on Earth thanks to the local climate, is covered in a patchwork of hardy shrubs and lazily-spreading evergreen-plum trees, and fed by great rivers coming up from the south. Further east, from the kingdom of Llimper Broin to the great polis of Ramvadoi, is an unbroken temperate rainforest running along the coast, devolving into just plain massive forested regions as one moves inland. Of all the trees here, just like on earth, the redwoods are the largest; there are mahogany giants deep in the woods as tall as skyscrapers, and older than any human civilization. In these woods, creatures like nothing else on Ajjamah roam--giant sloths, pouch-dogs, flutterbies as large as two human hands together, bird-apes like the condor-mandrill, salamanders-of-paradise. The rivers flow from the southern mountains, and crisscross the landscape. The winds are strong, and blow from the sea; it is a rare day when one cannot smell the waves, mixed with the heady scent of the forest. Small wonder, then, that the word for the region in the Redwood Botanist languages translates as "sea-land"--a name shared and translated by the two colonial powers in the area, under the Icemannic queens and the Irthironian king.
There are two major ethnicities living in these forests, each with their own connection to it. The Dryads are the older race, and perfected the idea of the city-state nearly 2,000 years ago only to mess with it time and again. Their Gift is a psychic bond of sorts with a specific tree, chosen by ritual on cult processions into sacred groves or the wild woods. They merge with the trees; while capable of fashioning human bodies for themselves, as time goes on they will become more and more drawn to their tree, and will eventually become incapable of removing themselves more than about 100 metres from it. (That said, for the most part the cult processions take people in very early around the peak of their lives, so most of them look uniformly young and beautiful.) If their human bodies are hurt or killed, they will need time to rebuild (usually achieved by one of their tree's seeds producing a sapling). If their tree bodies are killed, then they are permanently extinguished, without even an afterlife to go to. Power in the city-states is three-fold: the Grove Cults who tend to the Dryads' verdant forms (usually comprising mainly female dryads), the clan-mothers (sufficiently elderly females who are not bound to trees), and the Armoury (an assembly of every man capable of fighting).
The younger group, known as the Redwood Botanists, are actually part of a much larger ethnic group stretching across the continent. Their more famous cousins, the Highland Botanists, make up the bulk of the non-Winged Person population in the Empire of the Qumor. But it is here, not in the Qutosbegek Mountains, that the Botanists have truly prospered. Like the Dryads, they bond with specific plants from a very young age, but in this instance their Gift is control over those plants, not a full merging with them. Every organism without a mental class of 5 or above has a Form unique to its species, and the Botanists tap into those Forms, doing everything from causing plants to grow more quickly (using sufficient magic of course) to manipulating dead matter (their bentwood boxes are among the wonders of the north, the wood bent perfectly to fit into the seams). They worship the spirits of plants as gods, assigning them specific powers based on the properties of the organism. The Redwood Botanists have four moieties, going by different names across the language areas but usually called after one land animal, one sea animal, and two flying animals; one is not allowed to marry outside of one's opposite moiety, although as these are relatively universal and inter-band marriages are highly encouraged this doesn't do much to limit one's prospective partners. They also have three semi-hereditary castes (worker/farmer, hunter/warrior, and bard/priest), given their own representation at the polis assemblies (with four members, each representing a specific moiety, acting as leaders for the section). There is a vested interest in preserving the forest, not least because the most productive plants can be grown in great quantities but require relatively undisturbed forest cover to do so. This has not stopped them, however, from expanding out into the hinterlands beyond the sea to carve small empires for themselves...
(As a note: there were other Sealander city-states further northeast, but they've been largely consumed by the Icemannish queendoms and as such are not counted here.)

[Pedant]

Next on the list, THE BERSERKERS:

The Subcontinent of Zàhn Kwēn (*dzan k^wheen in Classical Zanguenese)

When one pictures berserkers, the most likely figures to come to mind are tall, caucasian, often blond, generally male, and with a tendency to be somewhat crazed on account of consuming particularly potent mushrooms, alcohol, or even crushed henbane if you know your botany well enough. There's that wonderful chess piece of a man nibbling on his shield, for example. The Berserkers of Zàhn Kwēn, however, are very much unlike this in general. They may be taller than their mountain cousins, but they lack the thin, lithe bodies of the Illusionists who still live in the undergrowth. Genetically they're more likely to have light brown hair than blond, males and females alike can take the Transformation, and they have light brown skin and epicanthic folds. More to the point when they enter the Berserker State (Changuyan hāu) it's not through the use of any form of intoxicant; it's a natural process, their Gift, and it's brought on by adrenaline. And it's less an "I have no fear of death or maiming" and more a "my body is indestructible and I'm itching for a fight" type of situation. It also glows, usually red with purple splotches upon impact, and looks more like carbon fibre (or the surface of a palantír) than anything else.
That said, it's not as though they don't need it. The Zanguenese Peninsula isn't exactly the most hospitable place in the world. Most of the southwest is given over to an ancient desert, with sparse leaf-grasses becoming more prominent as one works one's way eastward. These steppes stretch into the north--perfect for grazing animals like horses, but a little sparse to do much with. Along the eastern coast, on the other hand, stretches a lush tropical savanna climate, with the occasional monsoon area--but it's still in a bit of a pickle, as it's situated right in the path of the equatorial currents, bringing hurricane after hurricane year after year. On the northernmost tip of the peninsula, as well as on the large island of Nek and in the Tuysan Archipelago to the west, lies a relatively small but substantial tropical rainforest. Rivers crisscross the continent, but until about eight hundred years ago they were some of the most dangerous places on the subcontinent--for they were (and still are) full to the brim with river lions (telmalycus affabilis), which look like predatory tapirs and are distant cousins to the great leviathans out in the oceans. Their neighbours aren't so nice either, to be honest. To the east lies the Whirlwind Empire (named for its heartland, the Whirlwind Plains, an area roughly the size of Kazakhstan with the highest tornado-per-year ratio in the world; the inhabitants either burrow underground a lot or are tough enough to survive potentially being sucked into one of the cyclones, and the natives are of the latter persuasion). To the west lies the near-impenetrable jungle of Akwa, where some of the most fearsome creatures known to humanity still abound. And to the south lies the Collective, where the hives of the Sane People have a tendency to take apart travellers or refugees and incorporate them into their communities one way or another (be that as information, as a power source for their golems, or as dinner).
And yet the people of the peninsula are less warlike than they are mercantile, or at least they see nothing wrong with combining the two pursuits. Attempt after attempt was made over the three millennia of Berserker history to unify the subcontinent through war, and one or two came close, but that was nothing compared to the profits that could be made from trade. The ten nations of Zàhn Kwēn each speak a different "dialect" descended from Classical Zanguenese, and each has carved out its own trading empire somewhere in the world. The largest of these is that of Chān Guy, which has trading colonies all the way across the northern coast of Akwa--as far away as Wān Zàhn on the Omiri River Delta, sharing the space with the Salvians and the Crusaders of Hercua. (The names on the map, as well as the name of the peninsula itself, are all in Changuyan for this reason.) Nowadays the nations still fight, and with the resources from their colonies the fights are getting more and more advanced as time goes on, but it's less for conquest and more for a show of strength. Still, woe betide anyone who doesn't fear a global war with Berserkers on both sides...
Tribes in Zàhn Kwēn are divided by phratries, in effect lines of work that one can choose to go into. Someone from the Zi clan (one of the oldest), for example, would historically have been a teacher for their tribe, gathering knowledge and passing it on. Under the empire they could have chosen that profession, but they would also be allowed to branch into the legal system (an obvious jump), glassblowing (not strictly related, but taken under the wing of the judicial class about fifteen hundred years ago and they haven't let go of them yet), seal-making (essential for business dealings), armour-making (essential for when business breaks down, although it's mainly made for their mounts), or smithing in general (a good way to keep power concentrated). Nowadays, the lines have become somewhat blurred, with the invention of guilds and the slow switch to a neolocal rather than matrilocal family, but for the most part people stay within their phratry, and go to war or trade as they so desire. Traditionally, men have gone to fight while women have protected the home (be that the yurt, caravan, or housing complex); equality of the sexes has gone back and forth quite a bit over the generations, but has trended towards a more even ratio than in most societies, in no small part because women's hāu-forms are just as strong as those of the men (and they hit hard). Lines are matrilineal; a man will pass his wealth not to his own children, but to his sister's children.
Not to be forgotten is the small but substantial population of Illusionists, the original inhabitants of the Peninsula before the Berserkers came rushing in. Their Gift is the ability to reach into the Dream and pull out images as a defence mechanism, and usually occurs in about a third of the population at a time. Those on the island of Nek, and in the country of Deht Dón, worship four gods, keep their women in common-use harems (associated with one deity or another), have compulsory homosexuality, and are some of the most superb sailors on this side of Akwa.

[Pedant]

The Finders (they call themselves many things, but those of their own they deem Nusajúrã, "those who understand speech") are the only people in the world who can die from exposure to starlight.
The Nusajúrã are distant cousins of the Sorcerers of Salvi; their dozen or so languages are mostly understandable to a Salvian after some effort, and to one another with a little less. Living in scattered tribes, of no more than thirty at a time, across the jungle that borders the north of the Ikkan Ocean, the Finders live as foragers, hunting, gathering, and fishing in the many rives that crisscross the rainforest from the north. They practice only limited agriculture; their one concession is a drink called kipúi, brewed from fermented orchids. They worship no true gods, just spirits of the animals and the hunt; shamans calculate a complicated calendar based on the sun, moon, and the inner planet Addhari, and that calendar is always pinpoint accurate. Beyond their general roles of male warriors and female shamans (and if you do shaman's work you're a woman, and if you do warrior's work you're a man), the Finders have a Gift that serves them well in the long-distance tracking of prey. Sometimes called yimnaruhās ("bloodhound ruhas") by the Salvians, a true Finder, one with the Gift, need only focus their energy on a physical manifestation, be it animate or inanimate, and they will be able to find it again, no matter where in the world it may be.This is not by any means everything that happens. They do not only become aware of where something is; they also come to know, most intimately, every element of the object, every dent in the wood, every grain in the rock, every hair on the head. But this is most ignorable, and doesn't allow one to feel much except whether the quarry is alive, dead, or soulless. Worse, they come to feel every millimetre of distance between them and the thing they have reached out to connect to. It can be any distance away when they make contact, so long as it is possible to sense it in some way. It is difficult to sever the connection–it takes a purification ceremony where the shaman of the tribe will literally hack off one of the tendrils of one's soul–but it is possible, and far better in many cases than the alternative.
Today, many of the Nusajúrã leave their homes to act as navigators on distant ships, or as advisors to astronomers and astrologers, or even as detectives. Those captured in the Classical Period by Salvian sorcerer-priests were used in disastrous experiments used to prove, among other things, the diameter of the world (attaching a rock to a leviathan, a flying whale, and tracking its migration), whether the other planets have any moons (Vyapa, the large gas giant at the edge of Suran's system some two-and-three-quarter AU from the home-world of Ajjamah, has twenty-five), how deep krakens live (about three and a half kilometres). But even in their own homes, fifteen hundred years later, the Finders have similar problems.
To look at the sun, Suran, in all its glory is to see a burning ball of gas, with all the distance it takes light to travel six minutes. The size and composition are painful, very painful, for a human mind, but easy enough to brush over (humans are good at compartmentalizing too much detail into just enough); the distance, however, is enough to leave a man or woman seizing and broken for months. And that's achieved in twelve minutes time; it's practically a ritual now, a coming-of-age ceremony in many tribes for children with the Gift. It keeps people humble, they say, reminds them of their place in the universe like nothing else can. (Theirs is a peculiar culture, at once cynical and awed, with a depth of thought that makes them some of the greatest philosophers on the continent.)
A trained adult shaman may look to Kasar, the Midnight Sun, a mere 7 AU away, and despite all her practice still slip into a coma from which she may take years to awaken. And she will be wiser still, humbler still, perhaps more crazed than any normal adult.
But a child gazing up at a distant star, and wondering what it is, will find the answer in as many as sixty years' time–or as few as four. And always, always, it will kill them.

[Bob]

The Salvian, Icemannic, and Ankoseiwas threads all feature languages (and language families) found on this world. Other cultures and languages I shall describe in some level of detail; if anyone's interested in anything in particular I'll see about making them their own threads.

Wow, great job. I like the astronomy parts in particular because I've been studying that sort of thing recently. Then, I also appreciate the anthropology parts because I've read a ton of anthropology in my lifetime.

Oh, and I also liked how one year name that I saw sounded Classical Mesoamerican and also refered to the chupacabra. I study cryptids and animal name etymologies so I got a real kick out of that.

You should also put this on a website.

[Pedant]

Wow, great job. I like the astronomy parts in particular because I've been studying that sort of thing recently. Then, I also appreciate the anthropology parts because I've read a ton of anthropology in my lifetime.

Oh, and I also liked how one year name that I saw sounded Classical Mesoamerican and also refered to the chupacabra. I study cryptids and animal name etymologies so I got a real kick out of that.

You should also put this on a website.

Hah, many thanks!

I actually have put (a fair bit of) it on a website; Midnight Sun. Worth a look?

[Bob]

I actually have put (a fair bit of) it on a website; Midnight Sun. Worth a look?

Sure, just give me a few days or less.

[Bob]

Hah, many thanks!

I actually have put (a fair bit of) it on a website; Midnight Sun. Worth a look?

I've read the list of languages you made. Great job!

I followed most of the links and looked around. Nice work!

This one delighted me:

"KiZuhurago: a Japanese-Swahili Creole spoken on Venus in the 32nd Century. Written using katakana, with kanji for the noun classes."

I wish you could get them all online.

I hope some day to get my conlangs online.

What I have is all accessible, hopefully, from my websites home page. If you search "conlang" on it, you should find some of them, plus my work on famous conlangs like Klingon.

Guide to "Any Language at All" Encyclopedic Website and Other Websites by Me
https://anylanguageatall411.blogspot.co ... w=flipcard

[Pedant]

The Nine Gifts

On the planet Ajjamah, there are nine known types of Gift, or magical ability. The Five Peoples have access to some of each, depending on their respective levels of power. Humans, who have the least access to the Dream of any of the races, have nine Gifts with fairly limited power, while djinn, the only race to live full-time in the Dream, have only one Gift at godlike levels. Phoenixes, leviathans, and behemoths have three, five, and seven Gifts respectively.
Passive skills are generally weaker but more frequent, and often form a fundamental characteristic of a particular race or subspecies. Active skills are not inherent, but may be learned through effort, and may be more potent than the alternative. Some skills may be either active or passive, depending on the race and on the species.
The Gifts, in order of first appearance in the world, are as follows:

1. Spell-Making (Active). Spinning raw aether together to create small, useful creatures is something the djinn learned to do long ago, usually for fun. Usually comprising the cast-off fragments of decomposed souls (the only bodies which can really hold aether together for long enough to form pseudo-molecules), spells tend to be quite short-lived pets–they last on their own for maybe a local century or two, depending on how much power their makers put into them. The more they are used, however, the more new energy flows through them, keeping them “alive” for quite some time. And they, unlike the djinn, don’t need contact with a tethered soul to work on the Physical Plane; they can ground themselves. (It often helps to bind them to an animal or plant spirit, though, for ease of access.) The most powerful spells have lasted for thousands of years; like the djinn, they spin themselves webs of memory, enhancing their richness and complexity. Spell-making is the sole Gift, active and passive both, of the djinn, who use it to interact with the Physical Plane. It is common, however, to all of the Five Peoples. It has been suggested that all other Gifts are in fact incredibly long-lived spells that have bonded with sapient souls.
2. Spirit Sight (Passive). Do not let the wording misguide you; spirit sight is not merely the detection of spirits. Spirit sight is also used to refer to looking out into the Dream, where magic resides, and sometimes even into the Deep, the record of all things that have happened on the Physical Plane. Other senses may be affected as well, such as hearing, smell, heat, and even touch. No djinn possesses it, because no djinn needs to; instead, it is common to all the Peoples who inhabit the Physical Plane, and was first seen among the phoenixes, whose connection to the atmosphere and jungle habitats would make sight over great distances something of a priority. Spirit Sight may work even if one’s Common sensory organs do not.
3. Spirit Blanket (Active). Another phoenix innovation, the Spirit Blanket is the earliest form of channeling specifically from the Dream that is performed from the Physical Plane. It can be used for a great many things, from creating a personal bubble that defies gravity or fluid tension (like the Winged People and Divers), to constructing an entirely new body for oneself in a blaze of light (the phoenixes’ magnum opus), to forming a protective shield around oneself, to acting as a source of power for the local ecosystem. For phoenixes, the Spirit Blanket may be an active or a passive Gift.
4. Spirit Cocoon (Passive). The first specific Gift of the leviathans, among the earliest of the aquatic placentals, the spirit cocoon is a reflexive version of the Spirit Blanket, used to keep the body in stasis while the soul repairs damage done. It can be used to withstand any number of threatening situations, from extreme heat or cold to a lack of oxygen, for up to years or decades (the record goes to a behemoth in the Senok Desert, who fell asleep in a sandstorm and woke up three hundred years later).. It is not uncommon to see leviathans, whose power comes from the hydrosphere, floating peacefully several hundred metres above the sea or snow-capped mountains while their bodies deal with crossbow bolt wounds caused by overenthusiastic hunters.
5. Dream-Walking (Active). The second Gift brought into existence by the leviathans, Dream-Walking is the ability to pass through the Dream. The applications are manifold, from teleportation to spirit quests to cloning (imperfect teleportation, with the soul acting as a hive mind). In leviathans, Dream-Walking May be active or passive.
6. Healing (Passive). The first specific Gift of the behemoths, descendants of the earliest placental mammals to return to the land after their long-gone marsupial ancestors took to the sea. Similar to the Spirit Cocoon, energy from one’s soul-self is drawn into the world to repair physical damage. Unlike the Spirit Cocoon, however, one cannot completely regenerate oneself; one is still susceptible to things that kill one quickly. The tradeoff is the ability to heal oneself while conscious from everything short of dismemberment, as well as the limited ability to heal others around one (in some cases). Behemoths, who draw their power from movement in the geosphere (tectonic plates and the like), often use this Gift to share fragments of their souls with one another–a form of reincarnation, and one that will ensure safe passage to sources of water regardless of whether or not the matriarch is killed along the way.
7. Telepathy (Passive). In a bit of a break from the established order, telepathy was a passive Gift, developed in the gentle and childlike behemoths. Like Dream-Walking, telepathy involves a “wandering mind” across the Dream; like Spell-Making, telepathy involves the connection inherent in minds. Unlike either of these, however, telepathy may be used to gain access to the emotions and basic thoughts of individuals–as well as the sensations felt by the collective souls that make up most unintelligent multicellular species–and even to coax certain reactions out of these "minds", if one is persistent enough. For the behemoths, telepathy is either active or passive; the active variations are used by certain groups to create broadband information connection systems.
8. Spirit Control (Active). The first Gift exclusive to humans, Spirit Control is the unusual ability to actively morph spells or even actual djinn to their bidding. This bending of the literal forces of nature to their will is very much in line with humanity and her cousins, who derive their magical power from the biosphere itself. Mostly this manifests in the form of the capture and enslavement of djinn in some fashion, usually within jars or lamps or rings. But equally as often, among the more devout races, this is used to perform prayers for natural events to occur that actually work, seemingly proving the correctness of one's religion. And in the Far East, centuries of using this Gift in more…extreme ways has led to the near-eradication of the djinn in that part of the world, leaving perhaps the most "normal" area on Ajjamah, physics-wise.
9. Metamorphosis (Active). The second Gift exclusive to humans, metamorphosis manifests in the ability to actively reshape one's own body in a manner similar to a Spirit Blanket. Changing into a convenient but local shape is quite common, such as animal or enhanced human forms. Altering one's features is occasionally found as well, either permanently or nearly so. A small group of people living on the Akotoyan Archipelago have for thousands of years had the ability to change sex every year or so, so long as they are not pregnant or nursing at the time. Mostly the forms are temporary, but a few may be quite permanent. Metamorphosis may be an Active or a Passive Gift.

[Pedant]

On a long trek through the mountains of Chü-Ki (and there's very little of Chü-Ki that isn't mountains), taking care as you go to pay homage to the small but colourful shrines of the local gods, it's quite likely you'll catch something out of the corner of your eye. Something white and grey, speckled with brown and red. Or maybe, as you're huddled in your tent for the night, you spot a pair of strange eyes staring out at you from the dark. Slightly glazed, like the eyes of a ruha, and golden besides–but the pupils are almost human.
You ask your guide. He's three hundred and fifty this year, but you couldn't tell it. He looks no older than a middle-aged man, and moves like the Eternals always do–carefully, solemnly, a mixture of caution and dignity befitting many centuries spent in the highlands. He's dressed in red and blue robes, on his way back from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Pún, the righteous plague god called Ovonho in Hercua.
He may not even say much. You're practically a mayfly by comparison, and it's better not to get attached to the fragile beings of the world below. Almost always he will smile mysteriously, and say just one word. "Páak-ku." In modern Chomman, it means yeti.

* * *

The yeti (anthropus villosus) is as close as can be to a living ancestor of humanity, as though a Neanderthal survived to the present day. They can learn human speech, simple though it may be; they can make tools of stone and bone and wood. They even have magic of their own–the Gifts of the world manifest in a genus, not a species, even if not all members of a species can utilize them. Of the four yeti tribes remaining, the most prominent are the lim-gdör, true shape-shifters, who are found all across the mountains and revered by the Chom, whom the Irthironians call the Eternals. And yet most of the time they prefer their regular forms; eight feet tall, white hair covering a jet-black body, a flat face with round golden eyes and thick lips. They are lucky to reach sixty, where even the most primitive humans have a life expectancy of eighty, but then they grow more quickly as well.
Yetis live in small groups, based around mothers (with settled territory in caves) and fathers (who move between them, staying until their child is old enough to fend for itself). They hunt animals large and small, from mountain goats to marsupial hyraxes. They also gather the mushrooms and mosses that grow during the short summers, and store them deep within the caves they call their own. Another tribe, the ad-gbo', has learned to live off single animals for years on end, by carving up enough of them to make meat to store, then healing them to their previous condition.
A yeti mother has perhaps one or two children at a time; they grow quickly, taking ten years at most, a mere seventy months.
It is in fact possible, some suggest, for yetis and humans to interbreed, producing the golden-eyed Snow People who are almost always given over to the gods to incarnate into. But it is rare that these are born, and only ever to human mothers, so perhaps it is something else. Even during times of peace in this part of the world, yetis mostly keep themselves to themselves. Still, that hasn't stopped the Eternals from seeking out their help, leaving talismans and tools in exchange for food, or sometimes exchanging one miracle for another.
Not everyone is in awe of these distant cousins, however. The Crusaders of Hercua took one look at the large white figures, and saw only an abomination, an echo of humanity to be removed. In those parts of Chü-Ki they have claimed for themselves, the Hercuans have given over to killing as many yetis as they can, and chasing out the rest. The fight should have been easy for the yetis, but in recent years the Hercuans have turned to the worship of only one God, and He is vengeful. The yetis who get caught under a prayer from one of the Lesser Prophets sent to these lands lose their magic entirely--lose, in effect, their souls. And then the Crusaders attack with bayonet and cannon, blowing these simple creatures to bits. For those who have fallen under the curse but survive the initial onslaught, some terrible thing will happen, an incurable sickness, or a landslide, or starvation. The Eternals living in the conquered valleys have protested, fasted to starvation, self-immolated; they are ignored. Now the yetis live only in parts of Chü-Ki not yet conquered. But they know the monks and nuns to be safe; no guide who tries to bring a Crusader to them can ever find them again.

* * *

The fire in the camp burns on. It's late June, a good month to visit the mountains, even with the crusades brought to these peaceful valleys from the western forests. Your guide hasn't fallen asleep–the Eternals rarely do–but instead is sitting in meditation, letting his spirit walk in the Dream. He doesn't seem to feel the cold at all, despite being covered in snow. You're lying in your tent, covered in blankets. You envy him.
There is a rumble, like a human's voice but deeper, richer, an odd nasal quality to it. The guide doesn't move.
You peer outside the tent again, and sitting comfortably on the ground in front of the guide is a tall, stocky figure, covered in thick white fur with red and gold specks interwoven in places. It is recognizably female.
The figure tilts its head to one side, watching the man breathe very slowly. There is a popping noise as the figure shrinks, ends up looking very much like the monk. But where your guide wears red and blue robes, the yeti has substituted red and blue fur, in overlapping patterns.
You let out an amused snort. The yeti-monk turns to you, looks at you patiently with the monk's pale blue eyes.
She smiles, mysteriously.
"Pòd." Human.

[dewrad]

It's at times like this that I wish the forum had a "like" button. I have nothing to contribute here except admiration!

[Pedant]

It's at times like this that I wish the forum had a "like" button. I have nothing to contribute here except admiration!

Many thanks indeed!

[Pabappa]

I like the Gifts .... I like that telepathy works with animals, and not just the animals we might think of first. My favorite are the last three, and they seem to be the three that are closest to humans. But I also think my favorite creation of yours will always be the Icemannish Queendoms.

[Pedant]

Many thanks, Pabappa!

And now, on to: QAR IQ-QIRISHID

The Lampsellers (they call themselves Ra'ibid Ar-Ulkakhri "children of the Great Fire") are not particularly imposing in and of themselves. Fairly short and stocky, with burnt olive skin and wavy dark brown hair, only their amber eyes have much mark among the dozens of peoples who have lived in and around the Senok Desert in the Southern Hemisphere. They worship a genderless fire-deity, Ishwayaq, who is locked in constant battle with the forces of Night (female) and Flood (male). They have an annoying tendency of burning down temples to other gods, which occupy (or at least used to occupy) the banks of the many rivers flowing north towards the Acúraçõ Jungle through the desert. Their architecture bears mention--the Palace of Irdush is one of the marvels of the region--but their society is practically medieval. Women run the markets; men marry wherever they want to, as many times as they can, although their wives live at home with their mothers and sisters. (The irmuz or sultan is traditionally sent a woman from every major settlement; his sons fight each other to the death when he passes, or else relinquish their claims to the throne forever.)
And yet these people are one of only three races in the world (the Salvians and the Kroldishtani of the Far East are the others) to enslave the djinn on an ongoing basis.
Qar Iq-Qirishid, Rock of the Demon-Doors, is a large exposed granite structure in the western half of the desert. Its sides are covered in strange pictograms, of zebras and behemoths and long-necked rhinos, creatures that haven't lived in the area for millennia. Deeper inside there are some of the oldest human skeletons in existence, perfectly preserved in the dry desert. It's a beautiful, haunting place. The fact that it's also frequented by the djinn is completely unrelated to this.
Djinn cannot anchor themselves to the physical world. They are creatures of magic alone; normally they need animal or plant souls to bond with. But the Qar Iq-Qirishid has been a part of human life for tens of thousands of years, and it pulls at the spirits floating freely in the desert like a magnet. Because the spirits of the world crave an anchoring in reality, to feel with animal senses and make their own energy instead of consuming stray portions in the Dream.
And humanity, craving as it does the powers of the Dream, is all too happy to interact with the djinn. For so very long, Qar Aq-Qirishid was one of the places where the Bouncers went, to receive new gods for their people. Now it's under the control of the Lampsellers, and woe betide the djinni who gets caught.
Because once a djinni is pulled from the doors, they'll be bound not to the willing mind of a new believer on a spirit quest, but to a lump of metal--usually copper or brass, sometimes silver (there's one unusual case where a djinni was bound to a Salvian wooden prayer wheel--the magic in the wheel was enough to stop the djinni from escaping)--with a piece of glass, desert or industrial, embedded. And then, it's a life of servitude, under one owner or another, wishing for the most ridiculous or terrible things. The only consolation the poor djinni has is that the more magic their users command of them, the more likely those masters will become wraiths themselves, bereft of power.
There is yet to be an international convention on the rights of djinn, and it's unlikely that the problem will be addressed any time soon. Why would it be? Some shrewd rulers (with a bit of Salvian guidance) had their djinn place wards on their cities so that no other djinni's magic could be used to harm them or their occupants (including but not limited to the rulers themselves). Another ruler, known to history as Sadwara the Sublime, had his djinni craft him a ring that would control all the djinn within his domain. This is the Seal Ring of Sadwara, worn on the hand of every king of Ammay Uq-Qariyyu for eighteen hundred years. (He got the djinn to put together the Palace of Irdush this way, for example.)
Djinn cannot kill their masters directly; the masters have to welcome death themselves. (Granted, there's a lot you can do with a spiced-up brew of hemlock, but most djinn find that…distasteful.) Djinn can twist the orders of their masters as they choose, if the master does not give them clear instructions. Djinn can be set free--by command of their masters, usually with a small verse about converting to the worship of Ishwayaq and not killing or seriously injuring anyone yada yada yada--but by that same master's stomping boot the glass on their vessel can be destroyed, and with it the djinni. Being scattered across the Dream is not a nice way for anyone to go, especially if you know you're likely to be accidentally eaten by your compatriots at a later date.
Thankfully for the world there are only scores of djinn still active in the area, each one passed from person to person over generations. And as it turns out, enslaved djinn are no match for the power that the Crusaders of Hercua are able to summon up, the power of a free and jealous God--leading to Ammay Uq-Qariyyu, the holy city, being captured by the Hercuans four times in the last 250 years.
But they have never yet found the Seal Ring of Sadwara the Sublime. And the new irmuz in the Palace of Irdush, Rakkhar Ir-Habiz III, has been seen teaching the djinn to make duplicates of cannons from the Kroldishtani Empire…

[Pedant]

Annoyingly, I'm having difficulty with this new climate map. Ah, well, at least I can post it here…
Note the enlarged areas of warmer climes; Ajjamah is about two degrees hotter on average than Earth, and that has an overall effect on the weather.

https://www.deviantart.com/avatarvyakar ... -841461413

[Pabappa]

Annoyingly, I'm having difficulty with this new climate map. Ah, well, at least I can post it here…
Note the enlarged areas of warmer climes; Ajjamah is about two degrees hotter on average than Earth, and that has an overall effect on the weather.

https://www.deviantart.com/avatarvyakar ... -841461413

What do the colors mean over the oceans? Is it depth or something else?

I like the map all in all. It's very detailed and I can tell you put a lot of work into it. Assuming the equator is at the center of the map, Im not sure I understand why the climates are so dry on the west side of the southern continent. Is it a cold current like that of Antarctica? I'd think that given there is no Antarctica, Africa might be a better model to follow .... west coast of Africa is drier than one might expect, but not to the level of S America.