#🔸 novanity

[novanhistorian]

The Fundamentals

Finally, I get around to introing the blog. If you like this, there’s more: I posted two of five(?) parts of a summary of history today.

I am here to talk about the Imperium Novel, which I must immediately clarify is not a novel. What it actually is is a rather massive and intricate worldbuilding project. Now, I could tell you that its name is a relic of the earliest days of its development, when it was really to be one novel with an increasingly cartoonish amount of backstory, and that would be true enough; but the heart of the matter is that I am a painfully pretentious artiste in this specific way. I could have changed the name; I didn’t.

(As for why it is no longer a single novel: As I write this, the [pseudo]historical period I concern myself with covers almost fifteen centuries, most of them quite complicated. Any attempt to cover the whole in one novel would wind up a gargantuan, winding, likely quite boring mess possessing more pages than a medical textbook and less plot than a wet blanket.)

Anyhow, hard segue.

The other basics you need to know are the following:

We are not in our solar system. References to the sun are to the star Scientia (to us, Era Cassiopeiae A), and references to Forsuno or the Far Sun refer to, well, Forsuno (Eta Cassiopeiae B).

The main planet, Terranovo,* has twenty-six-hour days and slightly stronger gravity than Earth. Its days are the standard in most other regions; we are ignoring Ilajn for now because I haven’t formally named their planet. (It has 21.5-ish-hour days and markedly weaker gravity. Let’s hear it for large, fast-rotating terrestrial planets.)

All the planets we care about after 2300 orbit Scientia, and—at the risk of misrepresenting the gravitational dance—the orange dwarf Forsuno basically does too. Scientia’s stellar classification is G0 V, which is to say that it is more or less like our sun, though slightly brighter. Forsuno’s is K7 V, which makes it either an orange or a red dwarf, depending on which classification system one follows. Basically, it’s small, it’s dim (only 6% of the Sun’s luminosity, still far brighter than a full moon), and it will live a very long time after Scientia is dead. Although their orbit is very eccentric (that is to say very elliptical rather than circular), the closest approach between the stars is 36 AU, or just this side of the Kuiper Belt; this allows for stable, although compact, planetary systems around both stars safe from the worst of the gravitational interference of the other star.

Novanity (non-collective singular novan and plural novans) is the sapient species the Novel follows for most of its history. They are, as many of them will bitterly tell you, the products of genetic engineering and a whole lot of moral stupidity on the parts of various humans—but we shall get to that in the history.

* At other points in its history, Terranovo was also known as Terra Nova, Terranova, Tero Nova, and Nova Tero. By the current working date, 745, variation is only historical.

The gender trinary is probably the most relevant thing in here besides the location, but thanks to narrative flow I have to put it down here. The three novan genders occupy roughly the same position as the human two, which is to say that the majority of the population falls into one or another, but there are a large number of outliers besides.

Two of the dominant genders are descendants of our concepts of male and female, and they remain mostly similar and are called by their names. The third is called sendua (an adjective), and people who have it are called senduoj. Its name derives from a shortening of senduuma, a rather nonstandard way of saying “nonbinary;”* it somewhat evolved from the use of the word as an overcategory for a variety of genders,

* It literally means “without a binary;” the human standard, neduuma, is a calque from English.

If you encounter something like Ĉlr or Nŝx/n, that’s reference shorthand, a standardized system used in the Imperium (with War-Era predecessors); it tells you a person’s gender and pronouns, and sometimes their preferred grammatical gender and physical sex.

The capital letters stand for gender and are derived from the gendering suffixes in the Imperium’s dominant language: Ĉ stands for male, N for female, S for sendua, and X (from crossing out the category on a form) for anything else. The lowercase letters, of which there are often more than one, stands for pronouns: l for li, the equivalent of “he;” ŝ for ŝi, “she;” r for ri, “re;” and x for anything else (which is quite rare, but in practice means “ask”).

The lowercase letter after the slash, if it exists, describes grammatical gender—and boy do I wish English had a shorter way to say that. The Imperium’s dominant language is largely non-gendered, and for words which could be gendered—titles, professions, and so on—the default is to use the genderless base word rather than add on one of the gendered suffixes. But some titles are routinely declined by gender, and several minor languages gender their adjectives at a minimum and their verbs at a maximum. As a result, some portion of the population has a preference about which gender is used, and that’s usually denoted like this. (The letters themselves follow the same rule as the actual gender indicator, and good lord have I said “gender” a lot of times in this paragraph.)

Occasionally, an italicized x or y or a centered asterisk, placed after the pronouns, indicates physical sex. The x and y, mean roughly what one would expect—XX or XY chromosomes respectively, without any sort of intersex condition. The asterisk, which in some state governments has subcategories, indicates that the person is intersex. Sex is mostly irrelevant in social life, so its denotation is circumscribed to medical and governmental records.

As you may have guessed by now, the dominant language is Esperanto—or, well, a version of Esperanto that’s evolved like a (fairly regulated) natural language for a millennium and a half. Some people speak one or more of the so-called “minor languages,” usually regional dialects descended from natlangs.

There are two different calendars in use over the course of the Novel, one that continues roughly directly from the Gregorian calendar and is dated relative to the traditional year of birth of Jesus Christ and another dated relative to the Year of Fortifying the Peace (the official end of the War Era, covered in the last two sections of the Sketch of History).

The first or human calendar can be identified because it will almost always have a four-digit year, and in cases where it doesn’t it gets labeled (B.)C.E. The second or novan calendar can usually be identified by having a three-digit year, or else because it uses a minus sign to indicate its negatives. It may also be distinguished by the ᴊ (from jaro, “year”) that precedes single- and double-digit years, as well as any three-digit years that require disambiguation. The novan calendar has a year zero; this is, as can probably be predicted, the Year of Fortifying the Peace.

Technically there are four major dating systems (standard, human, Terranovan orbital, and Ilajnaplaneta orbital). The orbital calendars exist because neither of the inhabited planets have years particularly close to 365 days, so their seasons are wildly out of sync with the administrative calendars. I should probably also note that neither planet has 24-hour days, and that the administrative calendars are standardized on the 26-hour Terranovan day.

I think that’s about it. I’ll write up instructions on how to pronounce all the random Esperanto words soon; for now, the vowels are like Spanish and the J makes a Y sound.

[novanhistorian]

About the Author

Sole historian, cartographer, and occasional elegiast of a nonexistent world. Likely to expand this pinned post, and even more likely to improve my profile picture over time.

Initial context for what I’m on about can be found here.

The main contents of this blog can be found here.

I’m trying to keep this blog laser-focused on the Imperium Novel, so if I reblog something of yours, it’s over on @novanhistorian-commentary.

You're probably here for the:

Tag Index

#📌 major posts (here) #📘 history (here) #🔹 lore (here) #🪪 characters (here) #📮 inquiries (here) #📂 resources (here) #🗃️ short vague sentences (here) #🗃️ administrivia (here)

(below the cut: a list of every last tag.)

Full Tagging System. ↳ Not all of these tags are yet in use.

#📌 major posts ↳ Start here. The point of this blog, and stuff you may actually want to read.

#📘 history ↳ The main thing this blog is concerned with. #📘 visuals ↳ Maybe I'll make them.

#🔹 lore ↳ A more general tag than history. ↳ I seem to have mostly abandoned it in actual practice and may delete it. #🔹Terranovo ↳ The planet where the bulk of the Imperium Novel takes place.

#🪪 characters ↳ Self-explanatory. Will be used for fairly-quality writeups only. #🪪 character vagueposting ↳ Necessitated by a thing that is currently sitting in drafts. See the very end for a list of tagged characters.

#📮 inquiries ↳ Asks.

#✒️ making it ↳ Updates and commentary on the creation process(es).

#🗃️ administrivia ↳ Talking about this blog. #🗃️ short vague sentences ↳ Former and current description contents. #🗃️ pinned post ↳ Self-explanatory. #🗃️ NEEDS TAGGING ↳ I need to get back on my administrative game. #🗃️ things posted to the wrong blog ↳ I'm bad at having a sideblog.

#🔄 reblogs ↳ Self-explanatory. #🔄 self-reblogs ↳ Self-explanatory. usually ignored for administrivia.

#🔶 not the Novel ↳ will eventually be hidden on the main page.

#📂 resources ↳ Predominantly for worldbuilding and writing. May contain anything from FOSS to informative articles. #📂 resources: worldbuilding ↳ What it says on the tin. #📂 resources: writing ↳ Resources, but for writing.

Tagged Time Periods. #⌚ human future history ↳ I shall have to change that emoji. #⌚ second imperial civil war ↳ the Imperium Novel started as backstory to this.

Tagged Topics. #🔸 the Armada #🔸 culture #🔸 Forsuno #🔸 gender #🔸 Ilajn #🔸 language #🔸 the Mining Belt ↳ tag also used for periods where it was known as the Asteroid Belt. #🔸 the Moon #🔸 novanity #🔸 the Scientarchy #🔸 Scientia #🔸 Terranovo

Tagged Characters. #🪪 Cassius Banneker #🪪 Teodosio F. G. Darwin #🪪 Alexei Kirilloviĉ Ilyasov ↳ follows his preferred romanization rather than the strict one. ↳ don’t get attached to the patronymic; I'm considering renaming his father. #🪪 (Anahita) Moreau #🪪 Memphis Mylera #🪪 Marina Staravia #🪪 Clarence Staravia #🪪 Darya Staravya #🪪 Sana Staravya #🪪 Henryk T. I. Telkes

Tagged Languages. #🔠 Esperanto ↳ The universal language. #📂 minority languages ↳ Ordered roughly by prevalence. includes the Chinese-descendants. #🔠 Spoken Russian ↳ The butchered Russian-descendant(s) of the Novan Imperium. ↳ Yell at me if I mis-tag this as Parrus’; I'm standardizing on translation. #🔠 Latin ↳ The twice-lived language. #🔠 Vulgar Latin ↳ Latin as a living language. #🔠 Ecclesiastical Latin ↳ Latin as a religious language, usually by Catholics. #🔠 Arabic ↳ Quranic Arabic still exists; I likely won't cover it, as it's not much changed. #🔠 Western Arabic ↳ Before ᴊ -12 or so, more accurately West-Northern Arabic. #🔠 Central Arabic ↳ Really a spectrum of dialects. #📂 Chinese-descendants ↳ Chinese was not one language going into the War Era and it did not fuse. #🔠 West-Southern Chinese ↳ Also known as Western Chinese; the West-North has mainly Central. #🔠 Central Chinese ↳ Language of astronomers and arkwrights; of high literary prestige. ↳ The War-Era version is Mountain Chinese. #🔠 East-Northern Chinese ↳ Usually shows heavy Montian influence. #🔠 Montian Chinese ↳ Really, really not to be confused for Mountain Chinese. ↳ Nominally a dialect of East-Northern Chinese from ᴊ 25 to ᴊ 73. #🔠 East-Southern Chinese ↳ Very very southern; most Chinese in the E-S is Storm Ocean Chinese. #🔠 Storm Ocean Chinese ↳ Includes the Dodossa and Nowhere. #🔠 Mountain Chinese ↳ After the War Era, considered to become Central Chinese. #🔠 other Chinese-descendants ↳ For the more minor dialects. #📂 languages of Earth ↳ Usually dead, sometimes with descendants. #🔠 Literary Russian ↳ The only written Russian, common among scholars. #🔠 English ↳ Dead, dead, dead.