Enrie Prologue for Edally Academy

Nov12

“Now, remember, Enrie, you’ve got to get good grades at the Academy, and you can’t goof off the way you did at the provincial schools.”

Enerenarie’s mother fussed with Enrie’s braids, the lay of her vest, the way her shirt sleeves sat, and, finally, with the triple poof of her skirt. Enrie held still for it, because there was only so much you could do when Diplomat Arezhlyiarezha decided she was going to do something.

“Be respectful to your teachers, keep the pranks to a minimum and, by all that the Three oversee, do not light anyone on fire. We had to finesse more than a few things to get you into this school, and you need top marks at Edally to see you through into a Diplomat position.”

“But what if I don’t want to be a Diplomat? What if I want to be a sailor, or an Engineer, or a courtesan?”

She watched her mother’s mouth pinch, her father’s chest rise as he drew in air, the way her mother reached for the long dangles of her sleeves as if getting ready to do something strenuous. She waited until they’d built up a head of steam, and until she could tell they were just about to blow… and then she laughed.

“Relax, relax. I understand my situation; I know I have to do well here and not set anyone on fire.” She imitated her mother’s tone with the ease of practice – and a large number of hearings of that particular phrase to boot. “And I certainly, absolutely, with no doubt know that the choice ahead of me is to be a Diplomat, or some very rich man’s very attractive way to add a vowel to the beginning of his children’s names.” Which did not sound that fun to her – even less fun than the other options. “After all, what else do surplus royal cousins do?”

“Enrie…”

“There’s no use sugar-coating it, Arezha.” Enrie’s father was so much more practical about these things. “Enrie knows what the score is.” Instead of more lectures, he hugged her. “Do well, daughter. I know you can.”

And that struck home more than any lecture. Enrie coughed to hide a sniffle. “Yes, yes, of course.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/599105.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

Oct31

From this link, from the sfwa.org
I. The World
B. Not Earth at All

How does this world differ physically from earth? Is it the same size (same density, same gravity), same ratio of land/water, same atmosphere, etc.? Does it have more than one sun or moon? Rings? Are there spectacular constellations/comets, etc. visible at night or by day?

The world is slightly smaller than Earth (just a few miles in diameter), and a similar density and gravity, and is generally earthlike.

It has two moons, one large and one small. It also has brilliantly stars in a sky full of light.

Are there non-human inhabitants of this planet (elves, dwarves, aliens)? If so, how numerous? How openly present? What areas do they occupy?

Nope, there are only humans.

How are the continents laid out? If there is more than one moon/sun, how does this affect winds, tides, and weather generally?

Reiassan and (Homeland) are both in the Northern/Eastern Hemispheres. Reiassan is to the west of (Homeland) continent by about ¼ of the world; there is another large land mass on the Western hemisphere, and several smaller land masses in the southern hemisphere.

Reiassan is a continent about the size of South America; Homeland is a mass equivalent to Eurasia in size, as is the Western continent.

How much land is there, and how much of it is habitable?

There’s approximately 50,000,000 square miles (129,499,000 sq. km). About 35% of this is habitable (neither mountain nor desert).

Is the axial tilt and orbit the same — i.e., does the world have the same seasons and same length of year as Earth?

Seasons are similar to Earth’s, although they count them differently in Reiassan; they consider the rainy season, the warm season, and the cold season.

II. Physical and Historical Features

A. General

In which geographical areas will the story take place? How much ground will the story cover? What are the most striking features of landscape, climate, animals, etc. in this area? How will these features affect travel time, communication, etc.?

Both extant stories take place on the continent of Reiassan, a sort of comma-shaped continent the size (approx.) of South America.

Reiassan is a continent wrinkled and gouged by glacial activity; it looks like a wrinkled napkin. This makes travel difficult and sometimes prohibitive.

Agriculture tends towards crops which can be grown on slopes – more root crops and less grain crops, for one. There are fewer trees and much of what exist are scrublike and twisted; buildings are mostly stone-created, with wood being rare and generally used for accent, not for construction.

The tip of the continent, the part that was formerly Bitrani, is warmer and flatter, although it has a great deal of swampland. Trees similar to the mangrove are prevalent here, and rice is one of their main crops.

The seas on either side of the continent are very good for fishing.

Into Lanamer crosses most of the continent, heading from near the Bitrani city of Onikanin, less than 1/3 of the tail up from the Southern tip of Reiassan, up to the Calenyena city of Lanamer, at the point where the dot of the comma reaches the tail.

Edally Academy takes place primarily in Edally Academy at Ileltedez, a coastal city South of Lanamer.

If there are non-human inhabitants, are there any areas they particularly claim as their own (e.g., dwarves traditionally live underground, usually in mountains)?

Still no non-humans.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/594255.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

Oct30

From this link, from the sfwa.org

A. Basics

Nature, physics all work the same as in real life, although use of sira/aether can speed up/slow down/nudge these laws’ effects.

The world in which Reiassan is on is slightly smaller in diameter than Earth. It is a Class M planet, with an Earthlike water-to-land ratio. The flow of sira through the entire planet has led to some differences; i.e., the trench between Reiassan and the homeland continent has what could be called massive fire demons.

In Edaly Academy and Into Lanamer, we are only on one continent. The people there emigrated from another single continent, which originally had three major ethnic groups (often referred to as West Coast People, Blondies, and proto!Calenyena); two of those groups made up the majority of the immigrants.

Thus, the ethnic makeup on Reiassan is determined mostly by settlement patterns in the 1750 years since landfall on this continent. The Calenyena are short, wide-hipped, and dark of hair, skin and eyes; the Bitrani are taller, more squarely built, and pale of hair, skin, and eye. Many regions have mid-range mixes common, and the east coast has a small, genetically isolated population who have curly hair and copper eyes.

Undetermined, but there are at least about 3500 years of human history between homeland continent and Reiassan.

Good question!

o Where does magic power come from: the gods, the “mana” of the world (as in Larry Niven’s “Warlock” stories), the personal willpower or life force of the magician, somewhere else? Is magic an exhaustible resource? If a magician must feed his spells with his own willpower, life-force, or sanity, what long-term effects will this have on the health and/or stability of the magician? Do different races/species have different sources for their magic, or does everybody use the same one?

Magic comes from the sira within the earth, which theory holds it, is formed when two things rub together.

Magic is controlled in Into Lanamer mostly with willpower and stamina, and in Edally Academy with mechanisms and devices.

There are no nonhuman races yet determined.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/593217.html. You can comment here or there.

Pre-story: Tairikie a year earlier

Oct29

From dailyprompt, 2013-10-25: “getting dressed for a special occasion”

This is in the setting of my upcoming nano project, in timeline, the cold-season before school begins.

“Tair-tair, hurry up.”

It wasn’t so much that Tairiekie’s father was rushing her as that he’d called three times in the last half an hour, and that he kept using her baby-name. She was at least a little past being called that.

“Almost ready, father.” She tugged the sleeves of her under-shift straight.

It was new; the whole outfit was new. The festival of Tienaabaa¹ was about new creations. It was also many layers thick, because the festival of Teinaabaa took place on the shortest days of the year.

“Do you think that my project will win an award?” It was her last year competing in the children’s level. She had won an award every year before, but she’d only taken first place twice.

“I am sure you will do us proud. Are you dressed yet, Tair-tair?”

“Almost.” She had done the embroidery herself; she tugged her overvest to fit better over what was supposed to be a chest and wasn’t, quite, yet. The loose vest looked more like a child’s clothing than a grown woman’s, but all the decoration made it look loved and proper, at least.

Four layers of blue swished back at her in the silvered mirror in her parents’ room. Blue, for Tienaabaa. Blue for winter. Blue for the engineers, her mother, her father… and likely her as well.

She clattered down the stairs in her dyed-blue boots. “I’m ready.” Everyone at the festival would know she was loved and cherished. Everyone was going to know how brilliant her festival demonstration was, too.

Her father kissed the top of her head. “You will make your parents proud, Tairiekie.”

. Tienaabaa (TEEN-ah-bah) is the deity of the wind and the water, the mind and creation. Formerly Tienebrah, (Tee-EN-eh-brah), the word was Calenyenized in the mid 1200’s.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592959.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Iesovyenyie

Oct28

Iesovyenyie
Age 15
Taikie’s roommate

Iesovyenyie is a tall girl, 5’5″, with solid black hair and golden eyes. Her skin is likewise golden, and her chin pointed and stubborn; she’s a bit broader in the hip and shoulder than is common, and a bit more voluptuous than many of the girls her age. She has very full lips.

Her parents named her with an initial vowel, as her mother’s parents had done for her, and the palace office stamped approval of the royal lineage, but she is one of those who has so little royal blood, so diluted, that the initial vowel is a little silly, and seen as putting on airs. Many people where she grew up called her Sovnyie; the less kind called her almost-royal Ienyie.

She can get in quite a snit over that on occasion, and when she does, she’s no fun at all to be around. She is royal, damnit, even if her distance from the throne is measured in hundreds or thousands.

She prefers non-conventional shortenings of her name – Iesovya is her favorite – in part because of the stigma of “almost-royal Ienyie,” and in part because a tyienyie is a noxious lizard.

Iesovyenyie grew up in Lanamer, the capital city, and received her schooling not in a royal-household school but in that of affluent merchants’ children. When you come down to it, airs or not, her father is an artisan crafter of wool goods and her mother a beader and dyer. If they could avoid putting on airs, they could gain much renown in their own fields.

Iesovyenyie has quite a bit of skill in the fiber arts, but went into Mechanics and Engineering to learn how to work with the new mechanical looms, among other reasons (for one, Art House was full but Mech/E had two slots open when she applied).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591701.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Gaikvya

Oct28

Gaikvya
Age 15
Taikie’s roommate

Gaikvya comes from the east coast, an area which, even in 1750 R, is fairly isolated from the rest of Calenta. The spine of mountains on the east of the continent serves as a difficult-to-pass barrier most of the time, impossible in the wintertime; the boat travel down around the southern tip of the continent is prohibitively long and the icebergs make travel around the northern end impossible.

The people on the east coast have ended up generally shorter than the rest of the country, with chestnut-brown hair that has a tendency to wave and sometimes even curl, skin darker brown than even most of the ‘pure Calenyena,’ and copper-hued eyed.

Gaikya has that look, as well as a more slender build than most of the rest of the continent, almost boyish; her people mature late and slow. They are sometimes called “sira-touched” by the superstitious.

She stands just under 5′ tall, and wears her hair in thin complicated braids. Her hair is curly, although she almost never lets it out of the braids. She speaks with a lilt to her voice, has a very hard time with s and v sounds, and clips her k sounds harder than is now the fashion.

She is uncertain about coming to school and will spend much of the year homesick; her people are fishers, have been fishers for centuries, and she is very much a fish out of water on the other coast, with no fishing nets to knot and no lobster cages to repair.

She will lose herself in her mechanics classes – the reason she, alone of her entire settlement, was chosen for the Academy – spending time trying to invent a better lobster trap, a better boat.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591445.html. You can comment here or there.

Notes on Sira and Aether for Steam!Calenta/Edaly Academy

Oct26

On Sira and Aether

Sira is the ancient word for the force that underlies the world. It’s actually a word from the ancient Tabersi (the predecessors of the Bitrani) that was sound-shifted into Calenyen; the Bitrani say shira..

The word sira fell out of favor around 1400 R, or approximately 400 years after the Rin and Girey story; the Academy story takes place in 1750 R (after the discovery of the continent of Reiassan). People didn’t so much stop believing in sira as start feeling that their explanations for it were too credulous, too superstitious, and too rooted in the very-powerful Temples of the Three. They wanted to understand more.

Enter the concept of aether.

This is another Bitrani word. The Calenyena call it aatur, simply using the Bitrani word shifted for a sound they find comfortable. Some scholars call it iezhyetar (from Iezhet, air, and ietar, power), but the term has not gained a great deal of popularity; ancient Bitrani sounds as if it has more gravitas to their ears.

As the scholars in 1750 R understand the aether (whatever they call it), the aether is an underlying force of the universe. It exists wherever two pieces of the world rub together, and can be harvested from these areas with the careful application of mechanical apparati or the very, very careful application of straight concentration and mental fortitude.

Very few scholars approve of the second method, however, because it has a feel very much like that of magic, and everyone knows that magic is bunk.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590530.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Kotnelbyotke and Ledryainryie

Oct25

Kotnelbyotke (Kotke)
Age: 15
One of Enrie’s two roommates.

Kotke is from the far far North, where a group of Bitrani refugees have been living for hundreds of years. She’s got hair so blonde it’s almost white, ice-blue eyes, and snow-pale skin. The red, teal, and purple of the Diplomacy and Law uniform makes her look even paler.

She wears her hair in the low-on-the-neck looped braids that are as much a mark of her township as the pale coloration is; ribbons of her House colors are woven through the braids.

She is short, barely over 5′ tall, and a little more stocky than Calenyena norm, being built like a small tank, designed to survive the frigid winters and barely-better summers. She’s soft-spoken by native habit, and a little lost here at school.

Homesickness plagues Kotke through her year at school. She perseveres, however; she is attending the Academy and majoring in Diplomacy because she knows the remote townships like her own need representation, and thinks that this is the best way to get it. She is not the most brilliant student, but she may be the most devoted.

Ledryainryie (Ledryie)
Age: 15
The other of Enrie’s two roommates

Like Taikie, Ledryie has the ethnic Calenyena look. She has a short nose with a bit of an upturn, a very pointed chin, and a high forehead ; she wears two narrow braids looped low on her forehead to differentiate herself from dozens of other girls in her home city who looked much the same.

She’s about 5’6 and broad-hipped, broad-shouldered, and slender in between. She has the best-tailored clothes of anyone in her dorm, because she tailors them herself.

Ledryie is a bit vain, in a conscious-about-her-appearance sort of way. She was a scholarship girl from primary into secondary school, and earned money working for the school to pay for clothing to look as nice as the more affluent girls.

She was born Lyedra; the Academy allowed her to change her name to reflect the status she is working towards.

She’s a brilliant student, and sometimes forgets to concentrate on her work.

Names in Calenyen culture
(Note to self: cement when Calenyen and when Calenyena. The people are Calenyena. The Language is Calenyen. The country is Calenta. The culture…?

About Lyedra/Ledryainryie – this is mostly a matter of affectation in length. She is doing her best to “pass” as a daughter of affluent parents, merchant princes, if you will, a family of skilled trades. They tend to give their children longer names, where farmers, unskilled laborers, tend to give their children short names. Rin. Noni. Lyedra.

Secondly, nouns with a palatalized first consonant are classified as “not-useful, unskilled, crap.” (Ly vs. L.) (NON palatalized first-consonant nouns are “Useful, skilled.”)

As others have pointed out, an initial vowel is saved for royalty and the children thereof, Enarienarie, Arinyanka, Edaledalendu (and thus the tendancy for going for very long names. The translation of many of these things is lost in an old variant of Calenyen, where the name might mean something like The-stars-shined-down-brightly-shining. (yes, with the redundancy.)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590332.html. You can comment here or there.

Learning the Blue Sira, a setting Fic

Oct24

See also Learning the Sira and Learning the Aether. Set in the same era (80 years before Rin/Girey) as Learning the Sira

“Close your eyes. Don’t worry about the boat. That is the Captain’s job. Worry about the water beneath the boat.”

Instructor Aarezhnu’s voice was a soothing and melodic chant, one of the reasons Ailetletai considered the ancient woman her favorite Instructor.

Aitai closed her eyes, as she was told to, and thought about the water under the gently bobbing boat. It had a light motion to it; the seas were mostly calm today, but in the Tienbraa sea, nothing was ever truly still.

“Now focus on the blue of the water.” Instructor Aarezhnu shifted her tone, just as the water shifted. Back and forth, back and forth. “Feel the way that Tienebrah flows the the world. Feel the way that the sira shifts, moving with the current.”

The instructor was the only one Aitai had ever heard refer to the Gods in the same breath as the sira. Most people preferred the buffer of philosophy, but Aarezhnu was old, and set in her ways, however fluid those ways seemed.

“Focus on the water, students. The water is where the sira is. The sira is what we are noticing today.”

Aitai didn’t know if the admonishment was meant for her, but she took it as such. Sira. Down into the water. Deeper into the water. There were little currents, like tadpoles playing, up near the surface, but the real sira… that should be further down. Down, down, down.

She found a shining beacon of blue and wrapped her mental hands around it. There, there, the brightest sira she had ever tasted.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/589184.html. You can comment here or there.

Brainstorming help requested: planning auction for upcoming Serial

Oct23

I’m making a new setting! (I’m sure you’ve noticed)
Actually, I’m making two, but Edally Academy (Steam!Goats) is going to be my nano project. So that’s the one I’m thinking about now.

Serials take money to start: ad money, art, domain name, possibly server space. Having a seed account will mean I can start out in January with as pretty a setting as I like.

For the below list, the school has nine Houses, covering fields of study.
All of them are named for former students who had mighty achievements.
Several of them, thus, have had more than one name over the years.
The three main characters are each in a separate House.

I’m thinking of offering the following things for auction:

Naming rights on:
- A Protagonist’s House
- A background Hous
- a former House name
- a Head of a House (cameo)
- a background teacher (cameo)
- a student (cameo)
Create an animal that will appear in the story
Create a dish of food that will appear in the story
Create a ~thing~ or device that will appear in the story

Two questions:
Whoops, three:

Do you think this will garner any interest at all?
Do you have any other ideas for auction items?
Suggested starting bids?
Less is more? Or more is more? (i.e., cut this list down, expand on it, or it’s good)?

Also, I know I was wrong, there’s four.

If you have not yet answered What do YOU want to see in Steam!Calenta? and think you might have interest in the serial, please go put in your feedback. <3

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/587847.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder

Archives

Enrie Prologue for Edally Academy

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

Pre-story: Tairikie a year earlier

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Iesovyenyie

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Gaikvya

Notes on Sira and Aether for Steam!Calenta/Edaly Academy

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Kotnelbyotke and Ledryainryie

Learning the Blue Sira, a setting Fic

Brainstorming help requested: planning auction for upcoming Serial