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Worldbuilding: The Academy

Oct22

The Empress Edalleddallendu Academy of Higher Learning at Ilelteddez

The Edally Academy was begun approximately one thousand years ago, in the time of the Emperor Eleddeltendel, who started four such academies around the country, naming them all after his ancestors. It occupies a place just outside the old walls of Ilelteddez, (ocean-on-land, seaport), a coastal city between the Arran Cities and Lannamer.

When it was first built, it was a single tower with three outbuildings. As the school expanded, three more towers were built around the first tower.

About 500 years ago, the original tower was torn down. Its foundation serves as the basis of a central courtyard now.

Around the courtyard, nine towers reach 6-1/2 stories into the air. These towers were originally both classroom and dormitory; now they serve as dorm space only.

A ring of buildings, connected by archways, circle the towers. The buildings are about 3-1/2 stories tall, and where their roofs touch the towers, a walkway has been built.

Those buildings now serve as primary classroom buildings for the school, however, the first story of each is now given over to teacher & staff apartments.

Outside of those are another ring of buildings, usually about 1 story tall. They serve as adjunct classrooms, outbuildings, and the like.

The towers themselves narrow as they go up, and are constructed of red stone with grey sandstone accents. They are built around a wide, round central chimney, which vents to the sky. Their windows are narrow, and only in recent years have the Art students begun replacing all of the oiled-cloth windows with stained glass to allow some light – and less air – in.

A spiral staircase circles the chimney all the way up; at the landing for each floor there is a small student lounge around a fireplace. The dormitory rooms ring the floor; smaller rooms on the top floor, larger rooms on the bottom. The school has a drop-out/failure rate such that, while it admits 18 students to each House each year, only nine to 12 graduate.

The first-year dorms – at the top – are three to a room, consisting of a fold-up bed, a fold-down desk, a folding chair, and the Calenyena equivalent of a trunk (rather like a garment bag) each. Bedding and upholstery is in House colors.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/587250.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Instructor Getalréta

Oct21

Instructor Getalréta
Female

The Head of the Diplomacy and Law/Counting & Accounting House, Instructor Getalréta is a leonine woman in her late fourties.

She wears her steel-gray hair in a nine-braid strand (http://www.circleworks.org/hairbraiding.htm) with three side braids at each temple; she keeps beads on the side beads which she uses for abaci; the braids reach to mid-back.

She wears the colors of her House (http://artventrix.tumblr.com/post/64238570666/right-so-based-on-this-post-made-a-loose)- purple, teal, and red – prominently in a skirted outfit like thus (http://artventrix.tumblr.com/post/23457416205/i-am-ambivalent-about-these-colors-oh-well-i); generally the overtop and bottom skirt are red and purple, teal, and variations on those three colors feature in the other layers. She is a tall woman by Calenyena standards, at 5’7″, and has long chosen to simply be taller and wears heeled boots.

She’s gone a bit thick in the waist and a bit thick in the face over the years. Her nose is small and upturned, a classic Calenyena nose, and her mouth is wide and generous.

She teaches Accounting, primarily, although she has taken a hand at teaching all of the classes in her House at once time. She makes a point of teaching the Basics class every year, as well as the Graduating class, and writes all of the exams for all of the Accounting classes.

She’s a cheerful woman, often smiling, generally friendly with all of the new students. She’s not motherly, but can often find an anecdote or a little quest to cheer up homesick first-years.

She had two children of her own early on; one she lost to the war, and the other married a princeling. Her husband himself was a princeling, so she is connected to the royal family, albeit a bit distantly. In her youth, she worked as an accountant and business manager after graduating from the Aneskan Academy in Ossulund. She worked her way to the top of the House by, as she has often put it, simple addition and subtraction.

Her husband is currently in ill health, which makes Getalréta a little less pleasant than she normally is.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/586201.html. You can comment here or there.

Learning the Aether, a setting Fic

Oct18

See also Learning the Sira

This story takes place approx 750 years after the time of Rin & Girey, in the era of the Edalley Academy stories (forthcoming), also known as Steam!Goats era.

I am not wed to the terms for the different sorts of aether – feedback?

“There is more that we do not know about the aether than we know.”

Instructor Posvorrem was a tall, lean man, with ice-and-slate braids down to the back of his knees and the tidiest beard his students had ever seen.

“If we were to put all of the knowledge of the aether that scientists currently hold in a goblet.” The instructor picked up the goblet he used for such demonstrations. “Then everything that we still did not know would fill this tower.

“Still.” He had a habit of pacing up and down the rows of tables. It made his students even more nervous than they already were. “We will attempt to cram into your heads all that the goblet holds, and hope there is room enough.”

A nervous titter filled the room. Posvorrem smiled without humor. “Aether is a function of the way parts of the world rub against other parts. For instance, when you have a geological fault line, you will have deposits of the aether that associates itself with stone and earth, mineraloid aether. When you have a deep current in the ocean, the hydrologic aether likewise deposits-“

“How does it deposit in the ocean?”

Instructor Posvorrem coughed. His gaze fixed on the offending student until they blushed and looked away.

“It leaves small pockets of a semi-solid mass which are carried along, sometimes settling at the bottom of the ocean floor and sometimes being pushed to the surface. A wind current will do something similar, and the push and pull of plants in a forest will create small nodules of biologic aether…”

“What about people?” This was, at least, a different student. Posvorrem didn’t even bother looking at that one.

“There is no such thing as humanic aether. I’d suggest you put it out of your mind.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/584584.html. You can comment here or there.

Learning the Sira, a setting Fic

Oct17

This story takes place some time (generations) before the Rin/Girey tales.

“There is more that we do not know about the sira than we know.”

Instructor Birtelnyū was a short woman, with steel-grey braids longer than her spine. She was also one of the most terrifying instructors in the Edallee Acadamy; she had spent much of her life flinging sira.

“What we can say, definitively, about the sira would fill this cup.” She held up a tin mug. “And what there is left would fill the room. But I will teach you what I know, and that cup should be enough to fill your minds.”

Instructor Birtelnyū was not a kind woman, not by any definition, but the students still leaned forward at their tables.

“The sira,” she began, “is the force that powers all magic, and perhaps all life itself.

“It is found in the rocks of the earth – not in all rocks, but in certain ones – in currents in the ocean and the wind – and in certain living plants. Humans and animals sometimes have a current of sira within them, too, but we do not use that sira.”

She paused. Inevitably, a student raised their fingers. “Why not, Instructor?”

And just as inevitably, another student answered. “Because it’s forbidden.“

“We do not use that sira,” the instructor raised her voice, “because it is as wild as the wildest of the natural sira, and it burns to use it.”

“What about the sira of fire?”

“That one burns a little more literally. And yes, there is sira in many other things I have not named yet today. But you will begin as all students begin, with the sira in rock.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/583838.html. You can comment here or there.

Calenyena language – ack, vowels

Oct17

Okay,

This is what the vowels in Calenyena look like right now:
(Those in green are the most common transcriptions)

    English examples
ī ai "eye," as in light aɪ
i i as in sit, shit, hit ɪ
a ah, aa as in car, lob, off, mosque ɑː
â a as in cat, stab, mask æ
e eh, e as in let, enter, set ɛ
ē ie, ee as in reed, mead, sheet iː
u uh, u as in mud, usher, uncle ʌ
ō o as in note, road, roast oʊ
ū oo as in roost, newt, lute uː

Note: My accent is northeastern US.  These words sound right in my accent; I understand they won’t work for everyone. Recording to follow someone in the next few days.
 

The main problems are twofold:
One: the line-over-the-vowel; I can’t find the high ascii number cheat for these, meaning they’re a pain in the butt to put in any word. 
Two: I have trouble remembering some of them, because my default is to spell things with two vowels in place of one vowel sound, a la english.  Having a long E with one letter on the page is just sort of weird for me. 

Looking for potential other options, pls. 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/583543.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Ahead of Myself: Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Saydri

Oct15

Saydri – (SAY-dree)([personal profile] thnidu?)
15 years old
Male

Saydri is a blonde, as the far South people still tend to be – his hair is sandy blonde, his eyes are blue, and his skin is tanned, but still paler than either of the other two. He’s build tall and broad, but hasn’t really grown into it yet; he has big hands and big feet, but his body doesn’t have the breadth of chest yet that it probably will. He stands almost a head taller than the two girls.

He has the long, almost-pointed-seeming nose that’s common in ethnically Bitrani people, and thin, pale eyebrows that almost vanish into his skin

He grew up in a rather fanatical household, deep in the South, where rebellion is still a whispered idea. His family is very deeply religious, in the old form that is not practiced anywhere else, and they speak Bitrani, which has fallen from use everywhere else on the continent.

He’s quiet, shy-seeming, with a fiery temper that boils just under the surface and will erupt at the oddest provocation.

He was “chosen” for the school by a government project that seeks to make sure Calenyen ideas are percolated through the youth of the whole country, and he does not particularly want to be here.

He needs to learn to control his temper, to find a balancing point between his faith, his nationalism, and the reality of the world he lives in. He will struggle with the education and the language and find his own identity.

Also, there will be clothing shenanigans.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580503.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Ahead of Myself: Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Enarēnarē

Oct11

Enarēnarē
(eh-NAH-ree-NAH-ree)
Still need a better way to indicate sounds.
15 years old.
Female

Enarēnarē wears her hair long, as is common for most Calenyna, even in this day and age. She keeps it, normally, in a series of six braids, although she will go with far more elaborate arrangements in formal situations.

Her skin is a mid-brown, lighter than Tīrrēkkē but a bit browner than (third unnamed character). Her hair is a medium chestnut brown, and her eyes are bright green, a mutation that showed up in the Calenyena royal family four generations back.

Her nose is longer and narrower than the Calenyena norm; she has a nose closer to the Bitrani stereotype (A roman nose). This look – lighter than the Calenyena norm, with mid-brown hair – is becoming more and more common in the Calenyena royal family, to the point where it’s now considered “the royal look.”

She’s a couple inches taller than Tīrrēkkē, 5’9″ tall (or she will be; I think they’re both 2-3 inches shorter than that at this point), although, again, primarily long-torso, not long-legged. She’s a little further into puberty than her friend, and her body is beginning to develop a bit more curve. Still broad-hipped and broad-shouldered. She has, for her family and ethnicity, amazingly full lips.

She spent the first five years of her life down in the far south; her parents were on a mission to deal with some of the rebel elements down by the Southern coast. They were called back to the capital for a few years, and then they moved to the Arran Cities (West Coast). Thus, Enarēnarē has spent much of her life travelling. She thinks she’s more worldly than she is, and has a bad habit of lording it over people. However, her formal schooling has suffered a bit.

She’s cynical, in a way that doesn’t suit her. She’s had to deal with
situations above her age, and it’s colored her views on the world. She’s also something like 79th in line for the throne, and this makes her even more tired/cynical about things. She’s the Bad Kid. She’s going to need to learn the value of formal schooling, and learn not to lord her other knowledge over others.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/578061.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Ahead of Myself: Magic notes for Steam!Reiassan

Oct10

Magic in Steam!Reiassan

In the Steam Era of Reiassan, the sira-flinging of ancient days is long past.

Scientists – really, proto-scientists – study what they often call aether, the flow of power through the world. There is far less wild sira in the steam era; the aether itself is harder to come by in its non-mined form.

However, the students at the school will learn about the manipulation of the aether. They will study old magical artifacts – and that is one thing about Reiassan, it’s lousy with magical items. And the items often know they are Magical Items.

This balance between Old Magic and New Science will be both a character issue and a plot issue as the students work their way through school.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/577863.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Ahead of Myself: Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Tīrrēkkē

Oct10

Note to self: Need a better way of showing long vowels, that can be done with high ascii.

Tīrrēkkē (TyrTire-reek-key)
Age: mid-teens
Female.

Appearance:
Tīrrēkkē has long black hair which she wears, generally, in a relatively simple double-plait. Her skin is a warm olive color, close to this http://humanae.tumblr.com/post/60074057787. Her eyes are so dark a brown as to appear black.

She has a short nose with a bit of an upturn, a very pointed chin, and a high forehead – in short, she looks ethnically like the epitome of the Calenyena. In keeping with that, she’s broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, but not all that tall – five foot 7, most of the length in her torso, not her legs.

History: Her father and mother are high-ranking engineers in His(check) Majesty’s Army; they met while planning out a new road system for Lanamer. She grew up affluent, and took the qualifying tests early for higher education. Her parents assume she, too, will be an engineer; at the moment, so does she.

Personality: Tīrrēkkē is scholarly, not so much shy as uncertain of herself in new social situations. In each new school, she found herself with a couple close friends, but she’s been moved up in level so many times, and many of her friends were scholarship sorts. That makes her a bit uncertain about many things about the world. She’s inquisitive, and likes to know how things work; her adventurousness has always been balanced by her desire to be a good student.

Character Arc notes: Tīrrēkkē needs to find herself. She needs to learn what she’s good at, and where she’s going with it. She also has a lot of understanding about people and the world to go through, and she needs to find an outlset for her uncertain and burgeoning idealism.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/577532.html. You can comment here or there.

Love Meme Answers 3: Porter/Arudnel, Rozen/Kai, Rin/Girey

Apr5

For the meme I posted last night here and here

“I love you, man.”

Porter had been drinking. At least, Arundel hoped he’d been drinking – there’d been a dance. There were lots of things at Addergoole and more things at Addergoole dances that could make someone slur and wobble like that.

“I know you do.” Sylvia was already back in the suite; Arundel had gone looking for his friend.

“That girl, she said I should love her, but I said, don’t be silly. I’m not into… you know.”

“I know, buddy.” Yep, something other than booze. He’d have to tell Sylvia the succubi were trying again.

“But you’re my best friend.”

“Always will be. Here, open a Door?”

Later, he thought perhaps that hadn’t been the best thing to ask a soused and besotted Porter.

“It’s the Bond, you know.”

“I know.” She was humoring him, he was sure of it. He didn’t remember her doing that when they were younger. “The Bond re-writes your brain pathways and rewards and punishes behavior based on a very limited set of parameters. It can imitate love rather effectively.”

“I’m not in love with you. I want to fuck you, always have. I want to see what it takes to make you scream.”

“But you don’t love me.” She shrugged, and turned, finally, from her project to look at him directly. “This information is important to me why?”

Fifty years ago, he would have thought it was an exasperating side effect of her charming naivete. Now… now she was smirking at him. She knew he was full of shit.

“I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up.” He wouldn’t want to get his own hopes up, either, would he?

Girey swung the toddler up in the air and back down to the ground like he’d been handling small children his whole life. “And wheeeeee! There goes the little child-one, there she goes.” He’d thickened his accent to a nearly incomprehensible mix of Bitrani grammar with Callenian vocabulary, and the children loved it, and him.

Rin scooped up one too small to know what was going on, and studied her captive, hiding her smile behind the baby. He was wonderful with children. He was, when he made the effort, generally wonderful with people.

Now if only she could get him to be wonderful with her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/316702.html. You can comment here or there.