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Post by Percyton on Feb 23, 2021 3:41:08 GMT -5
Royal Castle, Peel Godred, Big Island Norman and Sidney
Norman and Sidney listened to the pitter-patter of the rain fall onto the roof of the Royal Castle. The former was fiddling with his jacket, trying to protect himself from the cold, damp air. The latter gazed mindlessly around the room, scanning the faces of the other courtiers as they waited in the grand throne room for Chancellor Cormac to arrive and hold court.
“You know, Norm,” Sidney said after a moment, nudging his companion, “I never noticed until now how nice those banners along the wall are.” Sidney pointed to a row of banners and standards of various colors all along the opposite wall. Some of them were plain and only had geometric designs, while a few featured heraldry of animals like lions or eagles. All were neatly lined up along the wall, evenly spaced and aligned with impeccable precision.
Norman shrugged. “They are quite nice. Though it’s a bit much for one person, if you ask me. Even for a king.”
“I guess,” Sidney plainly replied. Another minute of silence passed, until Sidney spoke up again. “Say, have you seen Bear around? Usually he’d be here waiting with us by now.”
The unibrowed courtier rubbed his chin. He looked to his left, and then to his right. “I haven’t seen him, actually. You’re right, Sid; it’s not like Bear to be late.”
“We should go look for him!”
Norman gave a quick nod, and the two left the throne room. They strolled down the hall and climbed up a spiral staircase to the upper area of the castle’s east side. The long hallway was lined with wooden doors on either side, each one having a brass number attached to the front. Finally, they stopped at one room on their right side, with the number ‘53’ emblazoned on the door.
Norman knocked on the door, first a soft knock, then a hard one. “Bear, are you in there?”
A deep grunt came from the other side of the door. “Go away!”
“We just want to see if you’re alright!” Sidney called. “Plus, the court is going to start soon, and we don’t want you to be late.”
“I’m fine!” Bear said. “Just go on without me.”
Norman shook his head. “Bear, if there’s something on your mind, talk to us about it. We’re your friends, remember.”
A few seconds passed. At last the door opened, and standing on the other side was the burly figure of Bear, still in green night robes and with a sleeping cap of the same color on his head. The former syndicate leader shook his head. “As much as I hate to admit it,” Bear said, “you are my friends. But let’s make it quick.” Bear stood aside and beckoned the two courtiers in.
As the two stepped into Bear’s bed chamber, they looked around at the room’s clutter. Scrolls and small pieces of parchment littered the floor. The bed was unkempt, a wool blanket hanging over the corner.
“Good Myratnis, Bear,” Norman said as he surveyed the room, “I didn’t know such a small room could make such a big mess. It looks like a hurricane passed through here.”
Bear rubbed his shoulder. “Sorry about that. I practically turned this room upside looking for some stuff.”
“Looking for what?” Sidney said innocently.
The former gang leader let out a heavy sigh. “Anything connected to my lost beloved. Her name was Belinda.” Bear reached under his blanket and pulled out a piece of parchment, handing it to Norman. On the parchment was a sketch of what appeared to be of a young human woman, her skin smooth and soft, her hair tied up in a bow, and wearing a puffy gown.
“Wow,” said Sidney, looking at the portrait over his friend’s shoulder. “She looks beautiful.”
Bear gave a slight smile. “Yes, she was. Today is actually the anniversary of our engagement, and I wanted to make sure I still had this sketch along with all the letters she sent me.”
The unibrowed courtier peered up from the parchment to look his new friend in the eyes. “What happened to her?”
Bear sighed. “If I’m going to tell you that, I might as well start at the beginning. Why don’t you two have a seat?” The two courtiers sat down on the bed, as Bear recounted his story. ......
“My headquarters, Lake Percival, Northern Locomati Island. It was a gloomy, rainy day. I was in my office, like I always was. When she came in. Belinda, human, age about 25. Her hair was gorgeously thick, her dress as fine as they come, and she had legs that went on for days. ‘Now what’s a fine human like yourself doing dropping by here?’ I said. ‘It’s not safe for you, toots’.
“'Please,' she said to me pleadingly, clasping her hands together. ‘I need your help.’
“I shook my head and gave her a look of utter disinterest. ‘That’s what they all say,’ I told her. ‘There’s always some dame that needs the help of Bear the gang leader.’ Belinda was far from the first woman to come to me like this, but little did I know she would be the one that was special.” ......
“Hold on, hold on!” Norman interrupted. “No offense Bear, but I don’t think that’s how it happened.”
Sidney nodded. “Yeah, it sounds a bit cliched.”
Norman raised his unibrow as he glanced at his portly companion. “Cliched? Another word I didn’t know you knew, Sid.”
Sidney chuckled. “I didn’t know I knew it either. I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?”
Bear growled and snapped his fingers. “Hey, focus! It’s my story, and I’m telling you that’s what happened.”
Norman rolled his eyes. “Riiiight. And maybe after you’re done I’ll tell you the story about how I used my genius spycraft skills and thorough knowledge of disguises to escape the villainous warlock Diesalion.”
“But you don’t know spycraft,” Sidney said. “And I didn’t know Diesalion was a warlock too! Should I be scared?” The courtier started to shake where he sat.
“Relax, Sid,” Norman replied, putting a hand on his friend’s back. “That’s the joke. I’m exaggerating just like Bear is exaggerating his story.”
Sidney smiled as he let out a big sigh. “That sure is a relief!”
Bear grunted as he sat down next to the duo. “Alright, fine! I’ll tell you what really happened! But I must warn you, it’s not nearly as interesting.”
Lake Percival, Northern Locomati Island Bear
The summer heat beat down on the leader of the Black Bear Syndicate. With his large hands he wiped the sweat from his brow. Though he had now been in Lake Percival for a little under four years, one thing Bear never got used to was the weather this time of year, when the sun’s rays were so strong it felt as if it had double its usual strength. While Bear’s black tunic made from lighter fabrics did help keep him cool, his suit of armor hanging on display next to him seemingly reminded him of the heat, as Bear recalled how he had been sweltering in his black leather armor with black bear fur shoulder pads just hours ago; he was relieved he only wore it on a few ceremonial occasions. The gang leader couldn’t even open a window to let in some fresh air, as that would just invite the swarms of flies who seemed to be all over the resort town this time of year.
To distract himself from the dual oppression of the heat and the flies, Bear tried to focus on work, writing out orders and instructions for his underlings. He had just finished organizing his usually cluttered desk, stacking books and papers into towers on either side of the table. Even the maps all along the wall he took care of, putting on extra glue to make sure they held. The result was a sort of dissonant serenity, the neat and tidy desk and uncluttered large room clashing with the maps and diagrams that resembled that of a war room. Ironic, Bear thought, considering I just ended the last gang war..
A knock came from the large wooden doors. Bear perked up, his trance of work having been broken. “Yes, who is it?”
A gang member in a black tunic peeked into the door. “Sorry to bother you, boss. A woman wants to see you. She said it’s important.”
Bear rolled his eyes, “Guess I’ll have to go back to this later,” he muttered. He looked back up at his henchman. “Alright, bring her in.”
The minion left the room. After a minute, the woman in question stepped in. Her pale face was darkened by dirt, her light brown hair unkempt and frazzled. Her torn brown tunic was also covered in dirt, and she had foregone the traditional dress or gown worn by human women for a black pair of male-style trousers. Despite her disreputable appearance, her face was stoic and calm. From behind the dirt and grime Bear saw the woman had somewhat youthful features, leading him to peg her age around mid-20s.
“Dear Myratnis,” Bear said, getting up from his seat. “You certainly look worse for wear, miss. Is everything alright?”
The woman shook her head. “I’ve been better. My name is Belinda of Kellsthorpe.”
The syndicate leader raised an eyebrow. “Kellsthorpe? A human woman like you is quite far from home.”
“My family moved here in search of new opportunities. And in any case, that’s besides the point. I need your help.”
Bear nodded. He returned to his seat, pulling out a chair for Belinda in front of his desk as he passed by it. “Of course. What can I do for you, madam?”
Belinda straightened her posture and held her head high. “My family had been kidnapped by the Red Lizard Syndicate. They must have thought we were an easy target after my father died not too long ago. They threatened to kill the rest of my family and kidnap me if I don’t pay their ransom of 10,000 gold pieces in three days’ time.”
Bear went wide-eyed. “10,000 gold pieces?! Where do the Red Lizards get these exorbitant demands? Simply outrageous.”
Belinda showed a faint smile, as a look of hopefulness came over face. “So you’ll help me?”
The gang boss sighed and shook his head. “I wish I could, but after the devastation of the last gang war I signed a peace treaty with the Red Lizard Syndicate. I can’t do anything without breaking that peace and plunging the city into another turf war that’ll claim even more lives.”
Belinda squinted at Bear. “I thought you might say that.” She reached into her duffle bag, her hand rummaging through what sounded like parchment. At last she pulled out a scroll. She shuffled across the wood floor up to Bear’s desk and unrolled the document. “This was signed by both my father and your predecessor as Black Bear Syndicate leader. It states that in light of my family’s status and loyal service to the syndicate, we are under Black Bear Syndicate protection.”
Bear held the parchment close to his eyes and scanned its text. Everything seemed to check out. The language and wording matched similar agreements Bear himself had made with other families, and based on other orders from Bear’s predecessor that he looked at, the signature was a match. “It all looks authentic. Still, I don’t know if I want to rock the boat right now, especially for an order that isn’t mine.”
Belinda narrowed her eyes at the gang leader. She stood up straight and slammed her hands down on the desk. “Look, I did not come all this way just for you to say ‘no’ because it’s not your signature. I have been dragged around by thugs, pushed into mud, had my best dress ruined, and now I’m wearing men’s pants to protect myself from any other threatening men.” The human raised her voice and scowled at Bear, getting in his face and leaning in so close he could feel her saliva as she spoke. “I have lost everything, Bear. The very least you can do is help me get my family back, instead of resting on your laurels and letting your loyal supporters be attacked by your rivals! So cut the nonsense and give me a straight answer!”
Bear leaned back. After a moment, a smile came over his face. “Well Belinda, I must say I am impressed. It takes guts indeed to not only confront someone as powerful as me, but to tear him a new one as well.” He slowly clapped and nodded his head.
Belinda darted her eyes as she backed off. “Umm… t-thank you, sir. Does this mean…”
The syndicate boss finished her sentence. “Yes, I will help get your family back. Not only do I feel obligated to honor this deal, whether I personally signed it or not, but I cannot let your bravery go unrewarded. It’s not every day I get scolded by a strong woman like yourself.” Bear stood up and extended his hand. “We shall work together to liberate your family. So what do you say? Partners?”
Belinda smiled. She grabbed Bear’s hand and shook it firmly. “Partners.”
Royal Castle, Peel Godred, Big Island Bear
The two courtiers listened in silence. Sidney wiped a tear from his eye.
“So,” Norman said after a moment, “what happened to her? Did you rescue her family?”
Bear shook his head and turned away. “You two should get going. Court will be starting soon, and you don’t want to be late. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Are… are you sure, Bear?” Norman replied. “We don’t mind sticking around to hear the rest of the story.”
“Yeah,” Sidney added. “It was just getting good too.”
Bear gave a faint chuckle. “Perhaps another time. Just… go on without me.”
Norman glanced at his companion, then back at Bear. “Alright, if you say so. Just know we’re here if you need anything.” The two courtiers then slowly backed out of the room, gently closing the door behind them.
Bear was left alone, with only his thoughts for company. He grabbed Belinda’s sketch and gazed at it, tears forming in his eyes. He ran his hand down her head as he shut his eyes. “I’m sorry, my love.”
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 4, 2023 15:15:52 GMT -5
"A Field Guide" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
I never had the greatest interest in traditional schooling. Although my father took great pains to pay for the proper tutors, I could never wrap my head around maths, science, or the classic literature of the Veritian "Greats" like Aksel, Folke, or Kare. This is made all the more surprising by my profession and, at the time of writing this, my current location a considerable distance from the familiar glow of the Sun. (Is that really how I want to start this?) My name, if you missed the title, is Hans Søndergaard. I am an ethnologist—a scholar of sorts, one who studies foreign peoples (would my audience really not know what an "ethnologist" is other than some stuck-up boffin?)—working from the Malkthe Anthropological Society in Amnest. For the past 15 years I have lived day and night (in neither day nor night?) in the Calverian Deep. That is, I lived among the nation of Kemeht, the nation beneath Asil (central Calveria, that is). I am hoping that by publishing my notes and experiences from those 15 years, I will encourage further contact with these deep folk and mutual understanding between our two peoples. It's difficult to know where to start when it comes to Asil. Veritian's, to the surprise of few, know pitifully little of their cousins to the north. Asil is the sole other nation on the continent to follow the Lord Zypnac in any fashion and yet despite that, contact between the two people's ranges from sparing to strained. The red sands desert surrounding the Magna Tabes has been the talk of conspiracy and discussion for centuries. Tales of "diggers" or pointy-eared gnomes and elves, of citadels entombed in the rock pulling up buckets of gold like fish from a river—the question of how wealth seems to materialize in a region famously devoid of even the words “arable land” has led to a long tradition of Veritian folklore. I was raised on the stories of the brave Præsbyter Jan who ruled a noble Fiefdom in Asil, walled in by savage animists and Rigma-worshipping barbarians meant to defend Veritious from the monsters of the Tabes. The myth of Jan—yes, myth, there are no Præsbyter in the central-continent, let alone one named Jan—was definitely a reason I even travelled to this place at all. Entering the country, I found no Jan. No gnomes or elves, either (not much of a surprise, there…). Instead, I found the fens, the Akips and Trade cities, and under it all, I found the Deep. Asil is divided like this between two separate yet inseparable countries: the surface, the natives call it Asaid, as well as Kemeht, the land underground. Kemeht, otherwise known as the Deep or the Underground, is not a speckling of cities mined out from the rock. It is a whole nation, a nation spread across a maze of interlacing canyon-like caves. They are enormous, decked ceiling-to-floor in shimmering, alien flora and luminescent waters. The Kem themselves are no less unique. I started this work with the hope of bridging a cultural divide between my culture and theirs, to document their closeness to civilization — we are both peoples of Zypnac, after all — and hopefully bring theirs closer to it. That is, to serve my role as ethnographer as a scholar of foreign peoples and an agent in their civilizing. "If I am right and my work bears fruit, I will serve as proof that all peoples, even the furthest afield, can be brought closer to our God." 2 To this extent, I am not quite sure if I failed. My work, then, will be to detail to the best I can the lives of these deep folk and the ways in which they intertwine with the surface. I hope to document everything I can of my time here, noting to the greatest extent the environment, culture, language and peoples of the Deep with the hope that it will be published at a later date. Likewise, I have provided this manuscript of my work, section by section as I write it and in admittedly no systematic order, to be edited by Doctor of the Grand Academy Jakob Schou and published through the Malkthe society. 1 To paraphrase a word of his, if only one soul is informed by this work, even if they be me, I will have done it admirably. Table of Contents: On Language: Phonology and RegisterOn WritingOn TimeOn Time: The Time MakersOn Time: Public TimeOn Time: Duration
1. Søndergaard has included within this manuscript his own personal notes and citations, somewhat haphazardly strewn about, some paranthetically within the piece, others noted within the bottom margin. For the sake of order, I will include my own notes here in the bottom margin to record them prior to the final editing and publishing phase of the work, which may see many of these notes stripped. ~ Schou 2. I had written this in my very first notebook before departing from my home in Amnest and I had written something similar in a letter to my colleague. [~ Søndergaard (S., naturally, did not label his own footnotes, so I will be labelling them with his own last name going forward. ~ Schou]
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 4, 2023 16:38:39 GMT -5
"Notes on Language: Phonology and Register" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
2nd Year of Study, Day 45 (There has to be a better time management system than this!)1 "Spoken registry of deep folk seems to be dependent on class." Elias Micallef made this observation in her notes shortly (well, shortly is relative, it was three years) after starting their own journeying underground, but Micallef didn't speak the folk language underground, learning only the priestly dialect spoken exclusively among southern priests. 2 She seemed, likewise, to be focusing on whistling — it did not occur to her that peasants, speaking quietly or at normal volume, wouldn't be whistling to one another as loudly as possible. Despite dealing only in partial truths, though, Micallef was correct. There are different "registers" for the Kem language and what register one uses is highly dependent on their caste (future studies could benefit by comprehensively analyzing what registers correspond to what castes, are members of lower caste incapable of registers used by higher?). I'll provide an example: Light is a luxury underground. Or, proper light for seeing at least. The main caverns (vast crevices of rock, towering—cathedral-like—around me) are home to a dazzling array of natural luminescence. The water glows with lamplight, and the 'plants' glitter with specks of blue-green iridescence. Kemeht is a country of starlight. But while these do add color, they provide pitiful actual light. In fact, if one were to try traveling without artificial assistance—an alchemic lamp, or perhaps filling a glass with river-water and squinting with one's nose to the ground—one would be practically blind. Let alone engaging in crafts, farming, sewing, cooking, processing, that is to say: daily life. My first journey underground was a part of a goods-transport. Apart from myself, they were given no lamps. Prior to that moment I had only ever spoken with Priests and Scribes, maybe an Artisan in passing, that is: the upper castes. It had never occured to me that strict ownership rules among Kem didn't afford the lower castes with artificial light! And so I stumbled, on and on through winding caves, eventually consigning myself to meekly sitting on a wagon as it was trained deeper and deeper underground. "The people must have been guiding us by memory!" — I recently found that written in a note of mine from the journey down, desperately scrawled by faint light of of my own personal lamp. Funny, the note right below it was the real reason: "Clicking??" An erratic "ticking" I had been hearing I thought at first to be the wagons turned out to be the people. They "clicked" incessantly. While they spoke, between breaths, randomly while walking: always clicking, clicking like a layman would absent mindedly whistle. What I would later learn to be a form of spoken register, what Micallef wrongly labeled "click-dialects," turned out to stem from something deeper and far more profound: Kem people know the world around them through sound. Micallef could never have known this, and neither could the other famous Veritian Linguists like Cosmin or Theuma. The only two Veritian scholars to note this obvious, everyday fact are Ove Hearana and Jakob Schou, that is, the only other scholars to communicate with Kem outside of the Castes who have regular access to artificial lighting. As my studies led me to interact with the peasant workers of the western "Soarwoa" region, I encountered it daily. Peasant Kem (seemingly from childhood? More research needed…) rely on palatal and alveolar clicking at various tempos, pitches, and strengths to perceive the world around them. They are taught like one would teach babies to speak. (If Jakob Schou's notes are to be believed… 3) This is not a quirk of the Kemeht race but is a learnable skill by anyone. Schou reports Rohzai, Karthagite, and Kyran peoples all learning or growing up clicking — what seems to be required is at least some cultural practices to maintain and transmit the skill, and an environment of limited vision (such as the Calverian Deep). Here's what's so fascinating: this clicking has taken on the form of a mixed register of speaking among the Kem. Similar to the nomadic languages of the central continent (my Veritian audience might be most used to Gogher, spoken by southern Rohzai and other nomadic groups outside of Asil), Kemeht languages place heavy emphasis on prosody, that is, stress and syllable weight. Kem, though, introduce tonal differences, too. The same consonants and vowels spoken at a higher pitch mean something different when spoken at a lower pitch, or when shifting the pitch from low to high, or high to low to high again, and etc. Register here refers to the "mode of spoken communication". A Kem person might say the word "Soarwoa" but they could just as easily replace the spoken consonants and vowels with a string of clicks. In this case, a string of loud alveolar clicks, matching the prosody of the spoken word, serve to replicate it in "clicked" form. Simply enough, it serves to allow a Kem native to "see" and "speak" at the same time. Contextually, Kem peasants will only switch some sounds on a word or sentence with clicks, blending "spoken" and "clicked" registers. (It has made following them in conversation next to impossible.) What's more: registers seem to be something which are dialect-independent. Two people of different origins and language but the same caste will most likely speak using the same register. This fluidity in speaking melts into the spoken register. The number of sounds in Kem languages is difficult for me to track (I hate phonetics. I refused to study it properly at the academy, and Prof. Landauer is laughing at me hopefully from his grave). I believe this is because there is a great degree of slippage between sounds. The "place of articulation" is seen as subordinate to the "manner of articulation" — in any given word, what matters is that a plosive (say, voiced bilabial plosve /b/) stays a plosive, rather than remaining a bilabial plosive (it could just as easily switch to /t/, or /k/). (Transcribing anything from this monstrous language is a nightmare…). 4Slippage is, I think, contextual. The cluster of possible plosive sounds seem to "collapse" into /k/ when screaming, but /p/ and /t/ when singing. People of different castes will likewise prefer particular places of articulation — it is "proper" ("priestly") to use /s/ and "improper" to use /z/. Screaming is "improper" because it most often means using /k/ rather than /g/ or /b/ (and also because it is loud?). This is where we bring back Elias Micallef: it is poor-form to click, but it is proper-form to hum. As far as I can tell, Kem people seem equally capable of replacing the sounds of a word with humming as they can clicking. In fact, the transliteration seems to be near-identical, what is most important is that the clicked or hummed word matches the prosody of the original. It must maintain the same stress, weight, and tone. The difference is because, I believe, the people of upper castes have access to artificial light. I have never once heard a scribe or an artisan actually engage in clicking and neither have I ever seen them without access to some form of light to aid in seeing (apart from when they are asleep!). This notion of "register" serves to explain something else I have encountered here. Scribes I have spoken to continuously refer to non-verbal musical pieces performed during various daily ceremonies as "talking" or "orating", rather than "singing" or "music-making". This then begs the question: if they can talk by humming and by clicking, can Kem performers talk through drumming, whistling, or instrument-playing? I hinted at an answer at the beginning of this piece, Micallef had noted "whistling" as a kind of "register by which Kem people may speak". 5 Further research is needed, however. (One final point, I'd be interested in seeing how this intersects with Kem writing. The Kem written system carries little to no phonetic information of any kind, so how does this interact with Kemeht spoken language?)
1. Keeping a sense of time without a regular day-night-cycle is hard enough as it is. My Academy-timepiece is my only saving grace—lord save those poor souls that graduated lower-honors and received something useless like a pendant or sword. ~ Søndergaard ((Is this directed at me?) This note, like many was included as a small post of paper tacked onto the manuscript, I have chosen to include it here in the margin. ~ Schou) 2. Given the youth of the current regime, it had not filled in its role as the standard language. ~ Søndergaard 3. I would be excited for more fieldwork on the subject from you, Hans. ~ Schou 4. It would interest me to see if we could develop a phonetic system to document these shifts? Perhaps having one "letter" equate a phonetic family ("plosives" for instance) and then add a modification like a strikethrough or breve to denote which specific place of articulation is meant? If we take inspiration from Rohzai syllabic-alphabets rather than our Veritian phoneme-alphabets, we could have one symbol to identify all of the prosodic and phonemic elements of any spoken syllable which could help carry the brunt of lexical information conveyed in Kem spoken language. I'll save this note for later—this should be brought to Dr.g.A. Hearana, she might have more to add. ~ Schou 5. It was actually from Micallef that I adopted the term "register". They had noticed that Kemeht Warrior and Navigator caste regularly use whistling (both literal whistling, with fingers and mouths, and also with what looked like brass whistles with a truly piercing scream) to communicate. Schou and Cosmin, two of the rare Veritian scholars to gain entry into the country in recent decades had also noticed this but attributed it to a kind of code or cipher with each "whistle" denoting a particular letter in the Kem alphabet. But the Kem have no alphabet and seem perfectly capable of transforming their spoken language into a clicked or hummed form, why not a whistled, drummed, or played? I have reason to believe that laborer caste Kem can also accomplish whistling, but I need more hands-on research.
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 6, 2023 11:00:56 GMT -5
"Notes on Time" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
Day 15 What is time? This is a question I didn't expect to ask myself. Of all the things to think about, the size of this insect carrying me through the southern Rohzai Fens, the fens themselves and the Rohzai peasants scraping around below me in the muck, the strange Lahab trees, the grasses and flowering plants — all of it seems so trivial. This one question keeps nagging me. I brought a variety of texts with me on this journey to the center of the continent and one of them, by Kaiden Theuma, is certainly supposed to be a book about linguistics. It surveys a sociolect of the elite in a city called "Fulðosaan", at least it does so on the surface. But strewn throughout is an utterly insane narrative of Theuma's experience of Kem religion. Parts reads like he is undergoing an existential crisis. In fact, I would have put it down as the junk of someone too overworked. "Motion around the rings of Fulðosaan is done to the beat of 16 great bells…two tolls announce the 'completion of the great turn' which wakes those sleeping and sets those already awake to sleep. Some part of Fulðosaan is always awake, it is a city without rest, of constant toil and permanent attention to divine necessities. […] it seems most accurate to be the case that the people of the deep lack any conception of a day, week, month, or year." This assertion cannot be true. Can it? A city that never sleeps, with some people waking while others rest, constantly humming like a bee hive? And this notion of "great turns" — Theuma only ever references the motion of pilgrims around the city, as if the bells are tracking them not the passing of the hours. None of this makes sense — God above I am completely lost. Kaiden seems to be demonstrating that the passage of time is not equivalent with what he would consider "linguistic concepts" such as a "day", or the time it takes for the sun to rise, set, and rise again. Time is "a social activity into which one can be thrown and in which one participates." From there he talks about "futurity", the sense of having a future under an existing state of affairs. 1 But for me, Theuma has raised a lot more questions dealing with what I might want instead to call "temporality" (let's have that word mean the sense of location within an existing state of affairs). Temporality is something we take for granted, and I know that's the case because every single one of you reading this has used the term "today" recently. Even in writing this, and in you reading it, we have temporally oriented ourselves by my use of the word "midday" a few paragraphs ago. Time passes, the sun rises and falls, we see time as the landscape shifts into night before dawn breaches the horizon. But what happens to a people who have never experienced any dawn? The Kem have no reason to understand a concept like a 'day'. How are they supposed to orient themselves? Are there cycles in the Deep which they can rely on? People in any kind of solitary confinement, or in various forms of sensory deprivation, or perhaps after a state of inebriation, seem to describe a "loss of time". They are temporally disoriented. It is difficult to track the passing of time without ready access to the sun in the sky — time in a static room with little to no change, or with changes that seem arbitrary, might feel as if time has completely stopped, or seems to speed up without reason. That is, with no way to orient oneself in relation to time (one's temporal location within a state of affairs), But the Kem seem to me to face an even greater challenge: how does one orient a state of affairs with no regular cycles like the sun? The aging of people? Drops of cave moisture dripping down? It makes sense why Theuma describes a variety of Kem religious practices set against time. Think of that! Against time! These are articulated in ideas like " no-future" or "now setting", and embodied in acts of "timelessness" or what he calls a kind of time- revolt where one seems to act deliberately to set, like a clock, their own sense of temporality. We experience this ourselves when time seems to "flow", to be completely transfixed by what you are doing, or when we suddenly "look at the time!" and see that it is far earlier or later than we had realized. But we, living here beneath the sun, take for granted what I think is our ambient sense of time: the changing light throughout the day, the color of the sky, and the transformation of the world around us between day and night. The Kem seem to take part in practices of deliberately disorienting their sense of time, of losing track of when they are or in attempting to completely restart the calendar. Simply put, until I reach that elusive country, these questions will nag at me every waking moment. When do Kem people sleep, for instance? My meager week and a half among the Rohzai has given me no hints. They are a lackadaisical people with little regard for punctuality. Every day at midday, usually 11:30am to 1:30pm, Rohzai engage in a "noon rest." For the two riders of this "Wookeer" —a giant insect whose name allegedly means "stilt-legged", currently carrying myself, my supplies, two riders and a host of other goods for transport— they switch, one taking a "midmorning rest" the other an "afternoon" rest. Then they do the opposite in the evening, waking between the hours of 10:00 and 1:00. Maybe this is why the idea of time keeps nagging at me. Forced to be quiet during the midday I feel like a judged child, and then rudely awoken midnight I feel constantly under-slept.
1. This is a bit of theoretical work on my part. Theuma uses the term "order", by which they mean to compare the "order" among Veritians as opposed to Kem. That is, Theuma confuses "policy", the specific positions a civil society, with "order", the systematization and efficiency within a civilization. Different civilizations have different policies, but are more or less ordered. I'm going to interpret his work through the broader idea of a "state of affairs", though, as it includes many aspects of a civilization beyond just the official policies in place (like one's personal relationships or habits). ~ Søndergaard
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 10, 2023 16:43:55 GMT -5
"Notes on Time; the Time Makers" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
Day 234
I hold in my hand a pocket watch, roughly the size of my palm with three-dials telling me the date and time. 1 The hunter-case is engraved with various symbols of my Academy in Amnest, while the inside has my name engraved, a few religious verses, and the insignia of the Malkthe society. What does any of this matter? Well, every time I wake up, every time I finish a meal, or even throughout the meal, every time I start or finish or proceed with an activity, while I am traveling, in-between bouts of reading I find my gaze falling to my watch. I am constantly reminded of the date, the time to the very second, those verses or my time at the Malkthe society. I'm even aware of when it is day or night on the surface. I feel completely disoriented. The longer I live here, the longer Kaiden Theuma’s theory of language and time pulls at me. It’s difficult to keep track of my own home-time, of sensing when it is light or dark out (it’s always dark outside, here). I keep feeling that I, like the native peasantry here, have started orienting myself around the activities of the people around me. The day to day of life among the northern peasants blurs the line between regimented and anonymous in ways I find extremely surprising. Things I thought were invasive—the ever-presence of religious obligation—seem to coexist with large swaths of time spent completely unobserved by what I perceive as an over-bearing state authority. This, of course, combines with the structuring of my days. I feel as if I am pulled between two entirely different times: Surface time and Deep time. When a Veritian talks about time, is all they’re doing situating themself in a state of affairs, one governed by the position of the sun, moon, and seasons. They have a sense of futurity, a belief that the sun will rise in the morning, and even if they become temporarily disoriented, they have ways to regain their composure, so to speak. Time in the Deep—Kem time—is something that you do. Lacking any sun, seasons, or regular cycles beyond perhaps the cycles of life and death, Kem perceive a sense of location within a shifting state of affairs as something innately tied in with their personal activity. The Kem people practice a deeply personal religion (is this religion? They seem to lack any division between religious and secular, it almost seems more fitting to call this “culture” or “belief”). They engage in the active “precipitation”, a coalescing, of God. Every stone, fish, bug, peasant, aristocrat, carries a certain quantity of “god” within them that they increase throughout their many lives (via reincarnation). That is to say that for the Kem, one’s personal actions have cosmic consequences. This includes time. Among the peasantry of the country's north, time is something you engage in, it is the duration of activities and the way a myriad of activities are “spaced out” between themselves. That is to say, "duration" is measured by the number of activities engaged in. How long a prayer lasted could be understood through a variety of different measures (e.g. the number of bows, kowtows, whoops and yells, verses sung, etc.). One could, for instance, time an activity of lines in a field already plowed, but this is only necessary relative to need. The result is that, from the perspective of the Kem peasant, a planting period occurs whenever it occurs (when each of the components necessary for planting have come together first), rather than according to a seasonal calendar used as an objective reference. Meetings happen when everyone is present or the space between one holiday and the last is filled by human activities which space those holidays out (It isn’t that feasts happen every solstice, but that the harvest causes the feating, the peasants cause the harvest, the peasants thereby cause the feasting, and so on. Feasts happen “when they happen”, or perhaps it might be better to think of it as the time between feasts as being “spaced out” by other activities, those prior activities literally 'moving the time forward' so the next activity can happen. (What's so damn difficult in this study is that all of this seems to be filtered. I have had to extrapolate heavily between my conversations with common peasants and the preaching of their local priests. But unlike Veritian priests, Kem priests simultaenously fulfill the role of aristocrat. There seems to be a split between how time is understood by the common folk, that is, the vast majority of Kem, and more elite Castes, or even more specialized castes.) I experienced this first hand when I gave one such worker, a peasant man by the name of Shaep, my watch. I would almost describe him as confused, essentially asking why I found it necessary to measure the “spacing out” of my activities around the motion of the seconds and minute hand. I don't believe that it occured to him that my watch was measuring a thing called time, rather than creating time, arbitrarily creating a “spacing out” via the motion of hands which other activities could then be situated around. He was also confused by the break-down of the dials, which he found arbitrarily set to 60 seconds, 60 minutes, and 24 hours, 7 days, 12 months, etc. (he asked multiple times why there was not 60 hours in a day, 60 days in a week, etc.). This part in particular caught me off guard, as he seemed familiar with the notion of a "moment" or "while" as well as understanding the idea of measuring "moments" by standardized intervals (even if these intervals were not as exact as a "second"). "Whiles" and "moments", here, he seemed to understand as simply another way of expressing "the completion of many activities, one after the other", or simply "a group of happenings" and while the "happenings" here are inexact, the idea of exactly measuring them was not a foreign concept to him.
1. That is, one small dial showing the minutes and hours as well as if it is day or night, another showing the seconds, while the third is C-shaped, showing the month between the ends of the C, the day of the month along its circumference, and day of the week with a hand in the center. Day/Night and before/after Midday is shown with two arrows between the C-dial and the minutes/hours-dial. It is an incredibly complicated piece of mechanical equipment given as part-award for receiving my doctorate of high academia and part-gift meant for continuing my studies underground. ~ Søndergaard
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 11, 2023 12:37:52 GMT -5
"Notes on Time; Public Time" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
Day 241
If my personal notes have been any evidence, tracking the minutes is causing me anxiety. I will go days on end carefully tracking the coming and going of the hours (the motion of the hour hand?) but with everyone around me seemingly indifferent to the regular motion of minutes, hours, and days, I have multiple times looked down to see that a whole day or two has elapsed without my notice. Minutes seem to vanish, and yet no time seems to flow for me. A few moments without my watch is enough to completely disorient me in this dark, unchanging landscape. I wondered if the Kem themselves experience this. On the surface, temporally speaking they are a lackadaisical culture. “Things happen eventually” is their general mentality and in general, the Kem orient themselves via the activities of one another. The Kem orient themselves via the activities of one another. When disoriented, say, while inebriated or hungover, I've most often observed Kem trying to orient themselves by asking for people they know and what they might be doing, or alternatively, what general social activities are going on. Nevertheless, there is a general idea of time understood as "a group of happenings". Importantly, some "happenings" are given more weight than others, to the extent that I believe I can identify a number of what I might call "time setting" activities. Prayer, public ceremony, personal religious obligations, and other activities which seem to have a great deal of weight attributed toward them, so that other activities are set relative to them. This goes on to structure a general notion of "public time" — the Kem have a sense of temporality, that is, a sense of location within a dynamic state of affairs. It's by orienting one another around the regular occurrence of communal activities that the Kem have come to develop a calendar of sorts, marking public ceremonies, harvests, feasts, holidays, etc. That is to say, in the absence of external cycles such as sunrise and sunset, or the changing of the seasons, Kem people have still constructed a calendar reflecting their cultural focuses just like the difference between, say, a lunar and solar calendar reflect differing cultural focuses. From the perspective of a state organizer, maintaining reliable crop production means enforcing a variety of time-setting activities, i.e., establishing public time. This is reflected in Kem records, with scribal writings (the simplest and most straight-to-the-point) being used to keep careful records of each growing period and harvest, each gathering for prayer, public holidays, major events, etc., and then organizing the number of these measures under which Ahnsijn is in power. Recordkeeping is then structured by which Ahnsijn is in power, or who in their administration is filling which role (not unlike dividing the years according to royal lineages). The 82nd Harvest under the 312th Ahnsijn, for instance, had a particularly poor harvest due to what look like administrative mismanagement. Historically, it seems that each locality has kept a record of the number of gatherings for prayer, but recent changes under the Kyasii regime has centralized these various local times into a single, nationwide public time which nationally regulates gatherings to prayer according to the highest Temple located in Volthazaan. The new Kyasii government has literally set out to organize time, as by organizing time, they organize labor. The Ahnsijnate doesn't collect taxes in the form of money, instead, they extract labor directly in a nation-wide corvée system. During planting periods or major public works projects such as canal and irrigation construction, the Kyasii state conscripts individuals in order to accomplish that project. In order to engage in this conscription, as well as to organize the production of necessities on a national scale, the Kyasii bureaucracy has to be able to regularly account for the production and distribution of goods. Orienting this around regularly attended religious festivals, ceremonies, or events allows the bureaucracy to more regularly account for activities taken during or between those events. 1Public Time is connected to recurring civil activities, such as planting and harvesting, feasting, ceremony, etc. Similarly, individuals orient their age around public time. There seem to be a few different methods: Peasants oftentimes relay their age in terms of planting and harvesting cycles; alternatively, individuals most often relay their age in terms of certain recurring ceremonies. This has led to a variety of funny myths of Kem individuals living for hundreds of years. They do not, in fact as far as I can tell, Kem life expectancy among elites is identical to Veritious. Instead, when asked how old one is, a person who I would find to be thirty years old, may call themselves one hundred and twenty, as they underwent one hundred and twenty harvesting cycles (these cycles happen multiple times a year). Rather than these events happening according to time, time happens because of these activities: one engages in prayer in order to begin a bought of agricultural activity as a peasant. From the perspective of the average Kem it seems to be that it is prayer which goes on to cause planting or plowing. I wonder if these are in conflict? I have mentioned already how Kem culture seems split between an over-bearing panopticon of a state, and the strangely high degree of unstructured free time with which the peasants, otherwise busy with corvée work, are afforded. Does this present a tension, a conflict of interest between the state and peasantry? In establishing certain required prayers, the State intrudes on the agricultural activities of their peasant laborers and structures their private time according to its own 'public' interests.
1. I have reason to believe that this is a tactic used by many subterranean governments. The phenomenon Søndergaard is describing would go a long way to describe reports and histories of Kem state practices. Positioning the government as a setter of time means understanding the government as that social organ which determines the length of the working day. In fact, this might go so far as to challenge a commonly held belief among Rohzai historians, namely that the Vohknt Ahnsijnate (that order prior to the current Kyasii) had little to no social control over production and that the Kyasii by contrast demonstrate a qualitative change in subterranean governance. This would suggest that the Vohknt and Kyasii instead practiced similar styles of social control, with the latter differing quantitatively. The Former may, for instance, have played a key role in balancing the various intra- and interrelated interests of lower-ranking aristocrats and laborers, extracting tribute by determining the "tribute-bearing" ceremonies (i.e., a form of ceremony whereby local lords would present the central government with tribute; the more ceremonies per year, the more tribute, and so on). The Kyasii would engage in a similar balancing. ~ Schou
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 22, 2023 13:30:37 GMT -5
"Notes on Time; Duration" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
Day 241
The idea of public time would suggest that time becomes more exact for the cultural elite (which is exactly what happens!). When observing timekeeping in a Kem context, there appears a very stark divide between what we might understand as calender-keeping and time-keeping. The Kem have a calendar, definitively, and it is around this calendar that they structure major events and understand the changing of events. But on a microscopic level, this calendar is relatively inexact. At best it might describe what I would call months or weeks, and local timekeeping would manage specific days. Certainly, too, histories and state records can keep a very particular record of time on even an hourly basis. But when most Kem think of time they do not refer to specific record keeping, nor do they seem to largely concern themselves with precision timekeeping. What I personally had to learn the hard way was that I was asking the wrong questions. The Kem differentiate the precise measuring of duration and the general measuring of calendar ('what comes after what') much more strongly than I was expecting. Kem people do seem to have a concept of seconds, if filtered through their cultural mentality. Shaep, for instance, a peasant friend of mine, once mentioned that he had seen another friend of his within "three paces", an expression which seems to reference the amount of time taken to literally walk three paces. Essentially, he said he had seen their acquaintance "recently" or "just a few seconds/moments ago". Or so it would seem. The peasants here understand the idea of "temporality", as I've mentioned, but there's something else going on. While peasants do engage in the occasional use of "paces" to mark short intervals of time, state workers such as boatmen, guards and military men, scribes, and priestly aristocrats much more regularly engage in a more regimented understanding of time. What I realized, talking with members of the upper class rather than lower, is that a "pace" actually denotes a specific interval meant to measure duration. A pace refers to the amount of time it takes a boat to travel around a certain distance. What seems to have occurred here is that, needing a way to measure distance and travel time, various standards have been set throughout Kem history meant to measure the time elapsed on a boats journey between two points. If my research is correct, advances in nautical technology or changes in how paces are measured have won wars underground. Paces are further subdivided into beats, something refering to the beating of a drum played to keep oarsmen in line with one another. Beats are played in a rapid 3/3 time (1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, etc.) which are further standardized by the widespread use of water or quicksilver clocks, which measure time by the controlled outflow of droplets of water or quicksilver. From here, beats form paces, which form a length (or "boatlength"), a league (three "boatlengths"), and so on. (As a quick aside, the actual Kem words for each of these terms are split between "Pace" (distance) and "Pace" (time), so there is actually no confusion as to what is meant when one is used.) But this strict, beat-based measure of time does not seem to represent a universal, but rather another cultural tension. There are a huge number of folk stories and myths which seem to point to a well-rooted cultural distrust of rulers measuring time in beats. Coordinating activities in beats is a common trend throughout Kem culture. Boatsmen, farming peasants, corvée workers during construction, artisans, and even many aristocratic and religious activities all engage in "musically orienting" different individuals to achieve an organized harmony. The aim here is to have many people swinging picks, hammers, or simply moving in-step with one another. So, it makes sense that the idea of thinking of the duration of an activity as being measured by the number of beats that would have elapsed from its start to finish. What Kemeht folklore teaches us is that there are a variety of complicated cultural feelings around "those who count beats". Most often, folk stories describe the inevitable wrath of God, or any other number of maleficent ends that befit those who attempt to count the beats. One example is the story of a northern Priest come to extract grain from a southern farm (see the tension between north and south alive and well even under the Kyasii government, a southern sect!). The details differ from telling to telling, but the general idea is that the Priest demands that a quota of beats be met during each working period of the local peasantry. My favorite ending is that the Priest ends up going mad from the incessant "drip drip drip" of a thousand water clocks he designed to keep the working peasants in-step. (Madness seems to have a unique relationship to sin in Kemeht folklore). But its from stories like this that we learn quite a lot. The temporality of the Kem, the happening of daily activities and so passing (creation, causing) of public time, is not regularly divided into beats. Instead, beats come into play when this generally inexact calendar collapses into strictly measured intervals for specific purposes. During times of political strife, a common rumor seems to be of state authorities attempting to measure the working-day of boatsmen or peasants in quicksilver-measured beats. The fact that this rumor was said at all implies that such a thing has not been done and is a great social fear. 1 What I find the most interesting of this is that this fear isn't that boatsmen's activities will be structured according to an exact measure of time, but that the dropping of quicksilver will cause the motion of the boatsmen, that time will be created by an unfeeling, exacting device. Boatsmen create beats, but in setting a "quota", beats turn around to lash the boatsmen. Peasants, and even many priests, that I've talked too have been disgusted by this idea. Boatsmen, in this case, seem to me to benefit from the inexactness of public time, which allows them wiggle-room or bargaining power in terms of how long any given working-day actually is. If a day is structured according to when prayer is organized, which is itself dependent on when peasants are done with their laboring, that means that boatsmen have a looser definition of when they can start and end working. At first I thought this would represent a competition between elites and poor, but surprisingly, there is an incredible amount of pushback from the time-setting elites. My working theory so far is that public time as it is currently understood (that is: undisturbed by the incessant dropping of quicksilver) is deeply tied into the social and religious practices of the Kem. A change to a more exact measure is disruptive to everyone, not just the expected labor-time of the poor.
1. This makes sense. The structuring of the working day is the base on which the structuring of other social activities stands. Søndergaard does not seem to have encountered the writing of Atiyeh, the Talma scholar from northeastern Asaid. Atiyeh, in his work "The Histories", details the chaotic period in time during and after the assassination of the 311th Ahnsijn, Thadan. It is in this work, collected through the testimonies of fleeing Kem refugees escaping through the Kyran tunnels and exterior cavern passageways, that the reasoning behind the assassination becomes clear: Thadan was killed by a religious minority persecuted by his regime, yes, but this assassin was aided by temple laborers enraged by the establishment of a call to prayer rooted not in the completion of Laborers duties, but activities endogenous to the temples. That is, the call to prayer occurred irrespective of, and interrupting, the day to day activities of the laboring-caste. Thadan's assassination occurred amid intermittent rioting, triggered an insurrection, and while the policy was not repealed immediately, it would be one of the earlier acts taken by the 312th Ahnsijn upon their rise to power. ~Schou
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Post by Andromitus on Oct 29, 2023 14:18:31 GMT -5
"Notes on Writing" by Hans Søndergaard [Manuscript — to be sent to Dr.g.A. Jakob Schou, Amnest]
Year 3, Day 11
Having spent the past several days documenting everything I can on Kemeht agricultural practices and the ecology of the underground, I feel compelled to spend this time on leave from the environment and talk about something perhaps a little more interesting to my audience invested in the ramblings of an amateur linguist. Kem writing, as I understand it, is a system functionally disconnected from the spoken language, serving as a kind of written Brosprog1 between the various languages and dialects underground. The reason for all of this is that unlike every written language I know of on the surface, Kem writing is pasigraphic. From my studies at the academy in Amnesty, pasigraphies are taught to be largely hypothetical writing systems wherein one uses symbols to represent whole concepts as opposed to spoken words or sounds like syllables, consonants, or individual phonemes. At the academy, we are taught that pasigraphies are entirely theoretical. Most often, they have been the subject of haute intelligentsia hoping to design theological, philosophical, or auxiliary writing systems. The idea has been most recently taken up by attempts of constructing an idealized language of pure “logic” or of mastering unambiguous communication. I believe that it’s this bias—understanding pasigraphic writing systems as pure flight of fancy—that has prevented other researchers from identifying Kem writing as matching most descriptions of how a Pasigraphy would theoretically operate. Kem writing, though, is what happens when the theoretical ideal of a pasigraphy slams headfirst into the reality of human existence. Rohzai philologists often teach that Kem writing uses a set inventory of symbols representing very specific or basic concepts, which are then compounded in order to convey various meaning. This would, at first, make Kem writing out to be the reality of Veritian “logical pasigraphies”, rooted around the compounding of “base concepts” into more specific ideas. The problem with this notion is that there is, to my knowledge, no such thing as a “base concept”. So, hypothetically, this is how the system works. There are a series of simple glyphs used to build more complex ideas. But in reality the Kem pasigraphy operates like any language. That is, rather than some idealized “base concept”, each Kem glyph (the simplest characters, conveyed with a single stroke of a reed-pen, although these strokes are not guaranteed to be uniform in length or complexity) represent a broad, inexact cluster of possible meanings through metaphor, broadening, narrowing, assimilation, etc., so that what were once supposedly simple pictographs have become something much more. The meaning of any glyph is then clarified by compounding them together. Kem glyphs are arguably best understood as “webs” or "ladders" of ideas which are then specified in meaning by other glyphs playing a "clarification role". It’s not as simple as saying that there is a symbol for the word “stop”, for instance — “stopping” could be a potential interpretation of a glyph that also encompasses many other meanings. Because of this, Kem writing doesn’t map neatly onto their spoken language. Kem writing does not actually resemble surface "sound writing" very closely and its written compounds do not map neatly onto spoken words. Any given chain can be read out-loud in various ways depending on its descriptive specificity or its conceptual elaboration (there are, so far as I understand, different methods of ‘oration’ which are taught to both scribes and priests specifically for this purpose, with different oratory schools competing for the ‘best method’ of speaking a chain out loud). Glyph compounds (what I call “characters”) are stylized into long cursive garlands or chains. These chains of symbols I can best describe as stylized like knots and loops in a rope, written with an angled reed-pen. The linking strokes within the cursive are stylized and show how each glyph relates to the other such that the system only provides the meaning of an individual symbol based on its usage within an entire “chain”. The style of the chain “unfolds” the meaning seeking to be conveyed as it is read. One result of this is that the glyphs are effectively unreadable outside of their garland, as they take on very different meanings in that usage (i.e., outside the clarifying role that a garland plays).
1. Bridge-Language (OOC: Lingua Franca)
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Post by Andromitus on Mar 1, 2024 12:42:29 GMT -5
Twelve still figures sat in a semicircle in small, ovoid cuts into the stone wall. Each space was elevated several feet off of the ground, giving them an imposing view over the small room before them.
They didn’t stir as blue-green light flashed solemnly over breadth of the small room, wafting through the ever-present dark that usually blanketed that dark sepulcher. A thirteenth figure, short and dressed in a green robe with white tassels, entered and began walking the circumference of the chamber, reading the ornate text that covered every inch of the floor aloud for them to hear.
“God is.” The man stopped, just for a moment, and light a small stick of incense underneath the first figure. It sat motionless as the man continued walking.
“God is what is and God watches. God is among us and God is through us.” He stopped to light another incense stick.
“I am. I am what is and I watch. I am, among and through all.” The smell of burning incense had begun wafting through the room. The figures remained motionless.
“When I look in a mirror I see myself and not myself. When I bathe in clear pools, when my hands run along my skin and hair, I bath the sides of the cavern walls, the stalks of grain and the wild mosses.”
Every time he stopped speaking, the silence deafened the room around him.
“I am God and God is I, I refuse to be apart any longer.”
The quiet steps of a lone figure walking along the canyon wall tapped one after the other.
Tap tap tap. Each step, contact between a fibrous shoe and stone steps carved from the cliff-face, echoed through the wide western cavern, mixing with the plethora of other sounds that always kept interior countryside loud and vibrant. The churning of the glowing river water below, the calls of wild animals buzzing and crying out in crisp tones, or the sounds of two navigator ships trying to squeeze past one another — Southern design, there were more and more of those nowadays, you could tell from how wide they were, used to the open spaces of the Verdant Corridor not the narrow western swells and channels.
The Thirtheenth Eiensei, Ala Moara Tan, smiled, enjoying the tapping of his feet against the stone pathway leading him higher and higher. Away from the hubbub of the towns and hamlets below. It was quieter up here. Even at this altitude, though, he didn’t quite feel safe removing his veil. Patrols had been getting worse as the Kyasii barbarians broke the north in and began moving more and more of their troops deeper and deeper into the western caverns. He never quite understood it, so far from Kyasii guards why didn’t he feel safe yet? Ten years of occupation does strange things to a man young at the start.
Ten years. Ten years since his dearest Soa was taken. Ten years since the Mazahaei Gate was cracked, since the cruel blue of alchemic fire roasted the two northernmost western cities alive, since their fields were desecrated and the last remnants of Tan power in the west starved.
Faint glitters of light-bugs and glow-hummers flashed and danced around the Eiensei’s eyes. The cavern ceiling was a strange place to be. One could look down at the expanse below, just high enough that you could barely make out the little dots that were people. It was blanketed in hanging, mucous-like vines that fed on flying insects, or the bulbous nests of screaming Za-Zae’s, clustered up against one another like little upside-down towns.
The path he had been walking was one of the many that ran along the scraggly sides of the cavern walls. Ducking in and out of small caves, getting to the height he had was actually rather difficult for someone who didn’t know the way, and not a few number of times he found himself dusting his otherwise clean robes after squeezing through one-too-many out of the way crawlspaces as he made his way higher and higher. He didn’t remember how many times he’d made this trek up and down. He was young when he started; now, after so long his skin clung to him, and his motions were slower and slower.
It had been a rather rich year.1 That is, the air still had the thick smells of soil and planting and mashing2 that seemed to linger long after things were said and done. The Eiensei took one deep breath in, savoring the few for the last time before turning into the final exterior cave before him.
“I am God and separate myself. I am air, then water, then moss and grain; I am insect, and rodent, and finally human.”
The figure, Ala Moara Tan, spoke the words, allowing each to take root in his mind. Two hundred times he had done so, walking in calm, orderly circles before the 12 Old Masters, the Eiensei of the Tan.
“I drink the tea that my mind may sharpen.”
At that, Moara stopped circling and took a stance in the center of the room.
“I eat the sap that my soul may prepare for the last leg of the journey. From gust of wind to human babe I have walked the throngs of the world. Now I prepare take my last step on stone and my first in the swirling maelstrom of spirit.”
He kowtow’d before sitting in a meditative stance.
“I will purify myself and, in continuing my great journey, I will purify the world.”
The Old Masters did not move as he spoke. They had not moved, some for decades. The youngest, the twelfth and last to join them, had remained motionless for nine years at this point. Moara was there when he joined the then eleven Old Masters. He was there for each day spent in the exterior caverns, each hour drifting by in meditation, each sip of bitter tea, each bite of Arat sap; each moment his body weakened and souls strengthened as they prepared for their journey into God. The twelfth’s 3,000 days had passed with such speed that Moara barely registered it was his turn to take on the mantle “Eiensei” and “Young Master”. It struck him, truly only as the first of the last word left the Twelfth Eiensei’s lips when he started to repeat the Death Mantra.
“When the last man sits in contemplation,” Moara continued, his voice echoing in the small room of the sepulcher, “as his muscles stiffen to stone, his skin to flakes of mica, as that last soul wanders into the ever-calming flow of Spirit — O! The stones of the earth will crumble into dust, the water will have dried and air dissipated.” Ala Moara felt the incense as it filled the air around him in the dark room. “God emerges, whole once more.” The air was faint enough as is, after all, this chamber was deep into the rock. But now, as his lungs burned, he felt his eyes grow fuzzy.
Moara let his eyes trace the contours of each of the 12 mummified corpses in front of him. Their skin was grey, like parchment, their faces sunken and eyes closed. By the time a Young Master made his way through the final tunnel into this chamber, no drop of liquid would have touched his lips or mouth for two whole days. Their flesh would be thin, fatless, from their diet of moss and sap. Their bodies were weak, but their souls shone with the radiance of the greatest fires.
It was an arduous journey, winding up and down, coiling over itself. It was said that the final journey represented every step taken in every previous bodily life; one purified themself, step by literal step as they drew deeper and deeper, physically closer and closer to God.
As Moara looked again over the steep, canyon wall overlooking the western interior, he breathed a sigh of relief before sitting to take a final sip of his bitter tea. He had news to bring to the monastery and this would be one of the last remaining moments of calm Then, as quickly as he had stopped, he stood and turned into the cavern behind him. The rest of the journey would be no easier. It was a scramble through the rocks as he made his way deep into the side of the canyon wall. He remained quiet as he passed a pool of clear, ice cold water. There were times where he would stare at that pool for hours in meditation, but such things were beneath him now.
Finally, after another half hour of walking through small passages and an uncomfortably thin tunnel, he came to the end of a cavern chamber. At the base of the stone wall in front of him, a thin, black line stretched from end-to-end. The squeeze.
“Young Master.”
Moara turned with a start to a figure behind him. She was Sarea Tan, one of the few remaining Tan monks under his command as Eiensei. She gave a deep bow and Moara couldn’t help but admire her. Few of the remaining monks treated him as Eiensei. It’s difficult, after all, to venerate someone who joined your order after you. But Sarea was a true believer, an apostle. Her skin was paper and clung to her emaciated face; her lips were stained red from the sap she now ate exclusively. By this point, she rarely travelled beyond this stage of the caverns they now resided in, coming this far out to meditate by the crystal pools. She was taking well to her 3,000 days.
“Sister Sarea. I’m glad to see you, although I will say your presence was a little frightening.”
She laughed in a small ‘hmph’.
“The patrols are becoming more frequent,” he continued, “we all have quite a lot to discuss inside.”
“You really shouldn’t keep traveling into Sorwoh, Eiensei. You carry the knowing.”
“I carry what you already know, you mean?” Both of them grinned.
As an Eiensei, Ala Moara Tan was privy to the secret scriptures, prophecy-songs meant to guide each generation of Eiensei into the Journey Into God and to help them prepare the next Eiensei after them. Officially, though, there were no such prophecy songs but, with an order of only twenty people remaining, there wasn’t really anyone left to keep them secret from.
“Please, sister, leave me here a moment. I’ll join you shortly.”
Sarea nodded wordlessly before walking up to the wall, breathing in and out loudly, and getting onto her stomach until she faced the small gap between the cavern wall and the floor and wriggled underneath. He truly loved Sarea, she was a sister to him and not just in a religious respect. But he could never confide in her. In fact, none of the remaining Tan truly felt willing to let in. Not since the Kyasii took Soa.
Moara stood there for a moment longer, relishing this last moment of tranquility before he too, not without some difficulty on account of his ever-worsening muscles, made his way deeper into the cave.
The squeeze was the final defense these last of the Tan had. So far as they could tell, having scoured every inch of the cavern within, it was the only way in or out. A a thin crack, at its highest only 11 inches in height and 9 inches at the lowest, the squeeze as it had come to be called literally wrapped around ones shoulders at its tightest junctures. The space was so cramped that, theoretically at least, no man with armor could get past it. To enter, one had to get down onto their stomach, with barely room to shimmy or move their arms, relying solely on their feet to kick themself forward in awkward, slapping motions. The space was so tight you had to hold your breath just to press through at times; elsewhere, the ceiling was so jagged, most of one’s effort was put toward blindly following a thin sliver of smooth stone so as to not scrape oneself raw getting through.
Moara huffed as he pushed himself along. One foot after another, slapping them like little paddles, his hands clawing blindly forward. Unlike other members, he was higher born and never learned to click as a child. So when it came to darkness, he was blinder than a man without eyes.
When the Kyasii soldiers burned their temple in Sorwoh, they managed to capture hundreds old masters and countless thousands of apostles — those true believers that follow the old masters into the earth to continue their journey to God. These twelve remaining, a scattered remnant of a once mighty chain, had been scurried away into the exterior caverns. There they were carried, one after another, deep into the tunnels beyond the southerners reach. Moara remembered helping drag the old masters through this nightmare. He remembered the sound their dried skin made against the stone. He remembered struggling to breathe surrounded by corpses in some disorienting part of the exterior caverns. It was a moment that haunted the congregation years after the fact.
One foot. Then the next. He felt the ceiling press down against his back. Deep breaths, he thought, trying to control his breathing. How many times had he made this crawl? It never got any easier. The way from the interior cavern to this place, so deep into the exterior, was a winding, disorienting march. So convoluting that, at this point, Moara didn’t even know where he was in relation to anything else. There was just the squeeze. The loss of air. The stone coffin closing around him.
The next foot. Then the first. His head slid blindly underneath a dip in the ceiling. He exhaled, feeling his body compress a little as his lungs emptied. The ridge ran along his spine as he pushed himself through; the pressure was so tight he felt the last bits of air get forced out of him before finally, finally he could inhale. There he waited, catching his breath.
His neck ached. The space was so tight he had to keep it to one side.
One foot, another foot, then the first again. Pushing himself along like a worm in a hole just barely his size.
There was a flash of light in the distance. The low glimmer of shimmerstone.3 He was almost through.
Moara’s fingers clasped the copper loop of the shimmerstone lamp placed in the middle of the sepulcher. With a light flick he turned the alchemical lamp closed and the whole chamber fell into darkness.
The Young Master, although in reality he was anything but young and verged on fifty, rested there in still silence. He felt his muscles ache from his walking chant, from the two hour journey just to reach this holy place. His lungs burned from the shallow air rich in cleansing incense. The little pricks of red were the only source of light in the darkness. Even in cast in shadow as he was, though, the eyes of the 12 still figures seemed to pierce through him.
The Old Masters were the eternal leaders of the Tan. Their souls having left their bodies to journey onward through the swirls of absolute Spirit and merge with God. Their bodies were holy sites from which wisdom poured. So they were kept here in this sepulcher, deep into the rock. Like other spiritual masters and journeymen of the West, they did not attempt to escape this world for a better one by dissolving their body after death. No, they were braver than that. They stepped themselves into the rock, to feel their bodies stiffen to stone. They refused the guaranteed reincarnation of bodily dissolution and took their journey to God directly.
He steadied his breathing as he meditated. His breath grew even shallower but, with each moment, the muscles in his face relaxed more and more.
Though he was the Eiensei, the Young Master of the Tan, he had not yet started his 3,000 days. Theirs was now a dangerous time. Southern ideas, popular in radical circles during his youth, were now backed up by Southern muscle, southern steel, southern fire and alchemy. Kyasii armies had ransacked the Tan temples. They had made a pile of apostle and old masters, all thrown together into a heap, and set fire to it. Physical fire, made with oil and pitch, not alchemical fire that burned the soul but left the body cold to the touch. The smoke of that horror lingered in the cavern air for months.
Moara breathed in, and out, allowing the incense to ground him again. His breathing was shallow.
How many times had he meditated? How many times had he felt his muscles stiffen and yet his mind and body lighten. How many times was he lifted out of space itself?
When he opened his eyes it was as if the room was brightened again, bathed in golden light. He blinked, not believing it, but as he tried to look around for the light source he could find none. His eyes followed the whole tract of the room and as he tried to turn around, he found that he could not move.
“My body is stone?!” He thought, silently.
It was if the smokey air itself was illuminating in those glorious hues. The twelve figures remained quiet, but all around him the sound of Tan chanting. The stone walls vanished, like dust falling off a smooth surface underneath. Beneath him was a roaring ball of fire. It pulsed and whirled. With every flicker Moara could feel its raw, unfathomable might. The chanting grew to a roar that swallowed the silence around him — he could do nothing as the eyes and mouths of the twelve figures in front of him opened, a shining light pouring out.
With another heave, Moara felt his hands grip just outside the squeeze, helping to drag him into the wider chamber in front of him. One foot after another he pushed and wriggled his way out into a small crawlspace just beyond the squeeze. It was tight, but he could at least journey on his hands and knees. Nestled into a small cavity to his left was a shimmerstone lamp lighting the way forward.
He crawled the winding path for a few more minutes before finally the lumpy stone ground became, quite suddenly, smooth. The kind of smooth one achieve only after hours of deliberate grinding and carving. The cave walls and ceiling transitioned just as suddenly into a carved archway leading into a modest chamber beyond.
Moara stood to meet the entrance of the last Tan Monastery.
Endnotes:
1. A year constitutes a full harvest cycle, the first planting of the main crop through the rejuvenation periods for soil replenishment, at the end of which the initial harvest would have been processed and seeded, providing new black-soil and seed for planting.
2. Kem secondary grains, planted after the main crop, are mashed as a part of their processing. The mashing itself, in the West, is part of a public ceremony that people of many castes take part in. This year, though, local warriors (transplanted from the north of the country) didn’t think to take part in the ceremony, and priests and scribes were forbidden by the Kyasii order.
3. A crystal or crystalline substance that releases a blue-green light.
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