danbensen

[danbensen]

Often when I get a comment from a reader about a choice I’ve made, I find out it wasn’t a choice, but a typo.

[danbensen]

The snow flew from my shovel in an all-enveloping mass. My victim ran from me, screaming “chicho Dan!” and laughing. I scooped up another great wad and turned to the next child.

From my December Newsletter

[danbensen]

on the nature of void fluid . . .

We are back with another nerd post this time with speculative planetary science :0

Here, we have a cross section of the planet's crust. Ill go into more detail on each layer below ⬇️

The Surface

The "earth" in rain world was historically an ice world, with a weak sun and sheets of glaciers covering the surface. The only form of heat being from the earth itself. It doesn't take long to find large cave systems eroded by millenia of ice melt.

The erosion of the land from the great ice sheets created a jagged landscape of underground tunnels and pockets, shaped by the flow of the melting ice over time. The planet's crust is very hollow and thin thanks to this.

The Void Sea

As the water tunneled down into the earth, it collected in large underground pockets, kept as liquid by geothermal heat. These formed the planet's first true oceans, with life originating from communities around hydrothermal vents.

The Void Seas [yes, several!] are an ancient chemosynthetic ecosystem of extremophiles. The microbiome here has adapted to metabolize with as many different materials as available in this harsh environment, including inorganic substances, leading to the Void Sea's large appetite for the surface world and anything in it.

Of course, we know that microbes aren't the only denizens of the Void. The Void Worms are filter feeders supported by this microbial ecosystem! It may take tens of thousands of years for a Void Worm to reach the sizes seen—they don't stop growing.

Void Fluid Technology

As the Ancients expanded more and more into biotechnology, they discovered they could utilize many of the microbial cultures native to the Void Sea. Filtration facilities sought to isolate these species from one another, sorting for their individual uses and properties.

For example, iterators are the largest consumers of void fluid, using both domesticated and wild strains of microorganisms. The domesticated strains were repurposed into symbiotes to act as "cells," and so the blood of an iterator, or hemolymph, is a special mixture of these symbiotic void cultures.

And as living things, iterators do need to eat! In this case, nutrition comes from the underground bacterial soup. Yummy.

They have large-scale equivalents for almost every biological process, including digestion. The "stomachs" are vats of unrefined void fluid filled with symbiotic cultures that act as enzymes to prey upon native microbes and organic detritus. Or any unfortunate maintenance worker . . .

"Ascension"

The Void Sea is the origin of life, but also highly toxic to its children on the surface, eager to eat them alive. The activities of the microbiome as well as the output of the hydrothermal vents fill the caverns closest to the Seas with noxious fumes, causing hallucinations, delirium, and eventually death.

But ultimately, the Void Sea leaves no bodies. Whatever delusional creature makes it in, never returns. After all, those microorganisms evolved to consume whatever they could get.

[danbensen]

[danbensen]

The priest of Death gripped a cleverly-shaped ledge of rock and heaved himself out of the Sacred Depths of the Mountain. He stood for a moment, back bent, breath steaming, hating the Moon.

From Wealthgiver chapter 5

[danbensen]

From https://substack.com/@haintshollersheresy/note/c-82719890?

[danbensen]

Look at it this way, Doctor. You saved one life at the cost of a thousand. All you need to do is find nine hundred and ninety-nine more, save them, and your soul will be safe.

Andrei turned angrily onto his other side. "No deal."

Read on

[danbensen]

Bessian from chapter 15

Áida éla.

"Come here" (LET'S COME-imp-sing)

'Sin,' ái vu kálit.

"It's called 'quicklime'." (QUICKLIME 3RD.PRON REFL CALL-part)

Ssádza sin dimín.

"One holds his smoke." (HOLD-3rd REFL-acc SMOKE-def-acc)

Idiomatically, "one's judgement is clouded"

Tamssáta vu kness

"The darkness knows." (DARKNESS-def-fem REFL KNOW-3rd)

Idiomatically, "the walls have ears."

Drokáss ésta maí dibráta vára

"The lie is the deepest truth." (LIE-def BE-3rd MOST DEEP-def-fem TRUTH-fem)

From Wealthgiver chapter 15

[danbensen]

I'm trying a new handwriting style for the chapter headings of Wealthgiver. What do you think?

[danbensen]

December newsletter: Exultation

December newsletter: Exultation

We don’t always get snow for Christmas in Sofia, but this year and this high up the Vitosha mountainside, we had a blanket a good foot thick. Crusty, too, and slightly damp. Once we’d gathered all the kids in my father-in-law’s house and gotten them over the distractions of presents and food, I took them outside for an epic snowball fight.

Of course, my own daughters love to throw snowballs at me. So does my father-in-law’s son by his second wife, whom I’ll call Anton. Anton is just a few months older than Maggie, and his and my relationship has been strained since I grabbed him when he was running around in a restaurant and told him to stop.

Today, I could have ignored him and told myself I was being gentle. Or, I could have been punctilious about distributing my snowballs equally across all the children. Instead, I let him have it. Anton would run, I would chase him. He would turn to fire a snowball at me, I’d aim for his center of mass. Several times I cocked my arm and he looked up at me, eyes wide, and said “uh oh!”

That’s not a Bulgarian phrase.1 He was repeating a line from an American movie, something he was replaying in his mind, in which I was the antagonist: mean old Uncle Dan. Anton hit me in the ear with a snowball, achieving catharsis, and that was the end of Act I.

In Act II, I was back with fearsome new threats. Two snowballs at once! And I lured the children under snow-laden trees before knocking the branches so they’d get showered. I pushed Ellie onto the ground and rolled her around. But another snowball in the ear! Curse those wretched children! It was time to unleash my most terrible weapon, yet.

When I reached for the shovel, I thought, This is the way I feel before things spin out of control and someone gets hurt. That is, I felt fun. Wild fun.

read on

[danbensen]

Only once they’re drawn in will my readers bother to decipher the made-up words in italics, and very, very few will ever examine the suffixes.

From my November newsletter. For more, search for "Daniel M. Bensen" + "The Dragon's Back"

[danbensen]

Ha! I didn't know about this when I wrote my story about Thracians digging suggestively-shaped caves in the Rhodopes. Wild.

Reading the wikipedia article, Ovcharov says this cave was made by the Thracians. Maybe he's right, but I wonder whether the cave was actually carved by Early European Farmers and was used by the Thracians later. I'm not sure how you'd test that.

Utroba Cave in the Rhodope mountains, Bulgaria. Carved by hand more than 3000 years ago (?), it was rediscovered in 2001.

Archeologists hypothesize that an altar built at the end of the cave, which is about 22 m deep, represents either the cervix or the uterus.

At midday, light seeps into the temple through an opening in the ceiling, projecting an image of a phallus on to the floor.

When the sun is at the right angle, in late February or early March, the phallus grows longer and reaches the alter, symbolically fertilizing the womb before the sowing of the spring crops.

[danbensen]

After the Rhodopes, he would keep going west, through what was still nominally Ottoman Territory to Durres. From there, a ship out of Montenegro? North into Austria-Hungary?

"Or across the Ocean to Batavia, where I can learn to sleep with a pistol under my pillow for the pirates and tropical mosquitoes," he said. "God, let this be the most exciting part of my journey."

[Author's note: it wasn't]

[danbensen]

https://www.danielmbensen.com/blog/the-andrean-prophesy

My alternate history novel Wealthgiver features two constructed languages. One (Bessian) is for daily use and will not concern us here, but the other is Ancient Thracian, used ritual purposes such as giving prophesies. One such prophesy sets the story going in chapter three.

One reader was curious about how Ancient Thracian1 is pronounced. He also asked for asked for a more accurate, less rhyming, English translation. ​ First, The Prophesy of Andrei in the original Ancient Thracian:

Kōgaió ió Pódes xénai. Dymó Dóubous tous me Iérous phlēsté. Porostreiýn iáes 5 Ápaes tḗs rhódaes Pephlón iēn tóus Sélkanthas se strátous. Xēthópeti pós iá, Stas zýn Xēthópaniâ. 10 Zēltón ze gríssma tón No êan désyme xinón. Pleistorós êrgetar. Sarḗ ton désaitar!

The lines are each seven syllables long, with a beat of pause between each line and the next (except line 5, which has eight syllables long and has no pause). For example, the first line is chanted “ko-o-ga-i-O i-O (pause).”

Long vowels (for example ē) are always chanted as two syllables. Diphthongs (for example ai) are usually two syllables as well, but sometimes they are a single syllable. See the difference between iáes (i-A-es) and Xēthópaniâ (“kse-THO-pan-ya”). A circumflex over a vowel indicates an on-glide, such as â (“ya”) or ê (“ye”), but there is no spelling to differentiate an off-glide from a diphthong. Xénai is pronounced “KSE-na-i) but désaitar is “DE-sai-tar.” The reader is expected to know the difference. Accented vowels are stressed.

X is pronounced “ks.” TH, KH, and PH might once have been pronounced as aspirates (tʰ, kʰ, pʰ) or as fricatives (θ, x, ɸ), but are today pronounced as normal unvoiced stops: t, k, p.

Now, the rhyming translation:

On Holy Mountain foreign Feet. You make Sacred Depths with smoke replete. Rivers ruddy stream around [5] The armies tugging at her gown. With Master at hand, the Mistress will stand. [10] If gold and debt with welcome's met. Comes the Wealthgiver. May you him give her!

And the literal translation:

On the Holy One Foreign Feet. With smoke The Sacred Depths You fill. Stream [5] The red waters Around her peplos (which is) tugged at (by) armies. With the Guest-master behind, Stands the Guest-mistress. [10] If gold and the foreign debt Ever are welcomed. Wealth-giver comes. May (the) Maiden welcome him!

If this translation has tickled your curiosity, why not…Leave a comment…and ask your own question? Read the story for free on Royal Road. Or buy a subscription on substack or patreon and read ten chapters ahead.

1 This is a fictional reconstruction of the real but poorly-attested Thracian language.

[danbensen]

https://www.danielmbensen.com/blog/the-andrean-prophesy

My alternate history novel Wealthgiver features two constructed languages. One (Bessian) is for daily use and will not concern us here, but the other is Ancient Thracian, used ritual purposes such as giving prophesies. One such prophesy sets the story going in chapter three.

One reader was curious about how Ancient Thracian1 is pronounced. He also asked for asked for a more accurate, less rhyming, English translation. ​ First, The Prophesy of Andrei in the original Ancient Thracian:

Kōgaió ió Pódes xénai. Dymó Dóubous tous me Iérous phlēsté. Porostreiýn iáes 5 Ápaes tḗs rhódaes Pephlón iēn tóus Sélkanthas se strátous. Xēthópeti pós iá, Stas zýn Xēthópaniâ. 10 Zēltón ze gríssma tón No êan désyme xinón. Pleistorós êrgetar. Sarḗ ton désaitar!

The lines are each seven syllables long, with a beat of pause between each line and the next (except line 5, which has eight syllables long and has no pause). For example, the first line is chanted “ko-o-ga-i-O i-O (pause).”

Long vowels (for example ē) are always chanted as two syllables. Diphthongs (for example ai) are usually two syllables as well, but sometimes they are a single syllable. See the difference between iáes (i-A-es) and Xēthópaniâ (“kse-THO-pan-ya”). A circumflex over a vowel indicates an on-glide, such as â (“ya”) or ê (“ye”), but there is no spelling to differentiate an off-glide from a diphthong. Xénai is pronounced “KSE-na-i) but désaitar is “DE-sai-tar.” The reader is expected to know the difference. Accented vowels are stressed.

X is pronounced “ks.” TH, KH, and PH might once have been pronounced as aspirates (tʰ, kʰ, pʰ) or as fricatives (θ, x, ɸ), but are today pronounced as normal unvoiced stops: t, k, p.

Now, the rhyming translation:

On Holy Mountain foreign Feet. You make Sacred Depths with smoke replete. Rivers ruddy stream around [5] The armies tugging at her gown. With Master at hand, the Mistress will stand. [10] If gold and debt with welcome's met. Comes the Wealthgiver. May you him give her!

And the literal translation:

On the Holy One Foreign Feet. With smoke The Sacred Depths You fill. Stream [5] The red waters Around her peplos (which is) tugged at (by) armies. With the Guest-master behind, Stands the Guest-mistress. [10] If gold and the foreign debt Ever are welcomed. Wealth-giver comes. May (the) Maiden welcome him!

If this translation has tickled your curiosity, why not…Leave a comment…and ask your own question? Read the story for free on Royal Road. Or buy a subscription on substack or patreon and read ten chapters ahead.

1 This is a fictional reconstruction of the real but poorly-attested Thracian language.

[danbensen]

Undermining the System by Inadvisably Compelled

The previous book in the series ends with Cato freeing one planet from the oppressive artificiality of the System. Now he has to do the same thing on as many planets as possible simultaneously, facing resistance from enemies who take him seriously. The author digs deeper into why someone might support the System, although some of the arguments are better than others.

From my November newsletter

[danbensen]

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Tom Sawyer, except it’s set in turn-of-the-century India with international espionage as the plot. Humor and compassion, with brightly-colored impressions of broad, deep characters.

From my November newsletter.