#🪪 Henryk T. I. Telkes

[novanhistorian]

An Apéritif

Since the thing I’ve been on-and-off teasing is taking a while (optimistic finish time is early November, and I’ve been at it since early August), I’ve decided to release the introduction to an earlier work. The said introduction, intended to provide historical context, covers about 70% of total Scientian history, and thus about 60% of the subject matter of the thing I’ve been teasing.

To quote my past self:

The absolute minimum context you need is that the characters are members of a species called novanity, novans were created by human scientists who then left the planet, and that planet is called Terranovo.

This is one of two things I’m releasing from the project, the other being the Miniature Encyclopedia.

Stuff below the cut is about 1.5k words.

A Short History of the Novan Imperium.

Narrative stops on 12 January 452 (7 September 3435 by a calendar no longer in non-religious use).

First off, humanity managed to survive climate change and reverse its effects to some extent. They still decided to try their hand at terraforming a very promising exoplanet in a nearby (relatively speaking) solar system, and the United Nations put out a call for interested scientists. The “New Eden Project,” as it was colloquially called in English, was very successful in recruiting, and often whole families came along. I would love to give you details of how they got there in the record time they did, but the information seems to have been specifically taken in the Departure a few centuries down the line. After arriving, however they managed it, the humans settled Terra Nova’s moon with the intent to use it as a base of operations for their terraforming efforts. Those got started promptly enough, but they would take several hundred years. In that time humanity found many ways to amuse itself, like creating species for the new world to supplement those they had brought with them. One doctoral student got very carried away and created the first novanoid, which was drafted using a somewhat buggy supercomputer to simulate and predict the result of her design and thus died when she actually attempted to clone it. She gave up, but the Academy (essentially the executive and legislative branches of government, formed of illustrious scientists) found out and took over. After several decades they had success and the first novan was born. From that point forward creation of novans became more and more frequent until following the instructions to build and customize one’s own became a common capstone project for those pursuing doctorates in genetic engineering (and those poor souls who made a new kind of conifer or whatnot were considered to be hopelessly outclassed). This continued even after Terra Nova was fully terraformed and settlement started, though primarily on the Moon because that was where the obscenely complicated infrastructure it took to make a person was.

The novans as of our story do not have many records of this period, since much of it was destroyed in the Departure, the Moon—where most of the surviving records were—was rendered uninhabitable in the Devastation, and society went to the dogs for two hundred years after that.

Speaking of, the Departure happened. No one left behind knows why, but over the course of a week the Academy, still a dictatorial government even after all these centuries, shut down all nonessential systems and copied and destroyed as much information deemed important as it could. Most humans and tapped novans do not seem to have been aware beforehand of the purpose of the summons they received. It is unclear whether it was made known to them that refusal meant their summary execution or if they were just shot. Nevertheless, at the end of that week every human on the moon, on the planet, and (formerly) in the various mining fleets of the asteroid belt set off in the same direction. Only five ships were ever seen again, and that was as wreckage, clearly destroyed by the others for turning back.

A society with only thirty-seven percent of its population remaining (on average; the Moon was hit much harder than Terra Nova and the Belt) will either band together or collapse, and the novans proved the latter kind. The planet, still mostly a frontier with few established cities, broke apart into warring states with obscure and ever-changing borders. The Moon had two terrifying years of anarchy and mob rule before turning things around, semi-democratically electing a government, and becoming one of the most stable non-theocracies in the solar system. (The theocracies were outwardly “stable” due primarily to internal repression, or else due to being very lucky in who fell into their leadership roles early on.) It was seen as a leader by the rest of the survivors, both for its status as the center of pre-Departure society and government and for its togetherness in the aftermath.

The asteroid belt imploded. There is no other word for it. They lived on spaceships, under no real regulations even before the Departure took seventy percent of their population and a hundred percent of their government. The mining companies that survived with most of their boards intact became unstable pseudo-states, dependent on trade with the Moon (and through them Terra Nova) for the goods they needed to survive, which they never got enough of. As companies do, they wanted product and cared zero whits about what that meant for their employee-citizens. As dictators do, they wanted the good life and extracted it from their subjects brutally. Eight hundred years later, at the time of another major project in the Imperium Novel, they still occasionally find ghost ships from this period, their crews dead of overwork, system failures, simple starvation, or—most commonly—a combination of the three.

That is the environment that spawned the perpetrators of the Devastation. I have covered this in more detail elsewhere, but in short the Devastation was the destruction of every dome-city on the Moon by a combination of nuclear bombing and suicide-bomber-induced reactor failures.

Then there were about two hundred more years of the War Era as defined by historians. (Some argue that what is termed the Wars of Tidying Up is indistinguishable from what is termed the War Era save by its position on one side or the other of the official establishment of the Novan Imperium.) Forty or so years out from its end, several of the states came together in a coalition, with the goal of conquering or recruiting the others and creating the first unified government since the human days. It took them a few decades, but they slowly assimilated the whole of the main continent (omitting Lazer’ and Nowhere, nations on the smaller outlying continents). This accomplished, they declared the Year of Fortifying the Peace—later designated the year zero of a new dating system—and at the end officially established the Novan Imperium. There then followed another forty years of trying to get Nowhere and Lazer’ to crumble, which they eventually did.

Then there were three or four hundred years, depending on which historian one asks, of relative stability. These saw the government transition into a more democratic one less overwhelmingly controlled by the twenty-five states who either were cofounders of the coalition or had joined up voluntarily and the cadet program—initially planned to run for twenty years as a way of raising the last generation of war orphans, but far outlasting that time—come to increasing societal prominence. (This has its payoff in the Second Civil War of 744 to 750 or thenabouts.) The Imperium had been divided shortly after its creation into three main administrative regions (with later-added auxiliaries for Nowhere and Lazer’) which answered to a central government. The tensions that led to the First Civil War were just as much within the divisions as they were between them—no allowance had been made for cultural differences and ancient enmities in the north-to-south-divided regions, so Vesica Montium was expected to come to concord on every itty-bitty decision with its ancient enemies Putiya Nakaram and Shattered Rock, so long as that decision passed through the parliament. (Each region had a parliament; the country as a whole had a senate, which was basically the same thing under a different name.) When they had managed to quell their internal disputes, the regions turned to their neighbors for a fight—and more often than not they got it. This is why Mr. Sen. Telkes (Heleno being a state in the Western Administrative Region) insults Sabro (Central Administrative Region) so much and seems surprised to find someone he thinks is another Helenan there.

The Imperium also expanded off-planet and subjugated the warring companies of the asteroid belt, which by this time had become the Mining Belt in common parlance. They were not granted statehood—statehood meaning, here, what California has within the United States—but were instead made into tributary states with the Imperium as suzerain. This meant regulations, however spottily enforced, and a diminution if not an end in the continuous feuds and more importantly shortages that had plagued Belter life for generations, but was seen as a grave insult by many. The Imperium’s rather chauvinistic attitude toward the Belt and its inhabitants contributed to this, as did their perceived hypocrisy in critiquing the Belter company-state structure while their own corporations ran wild with their private armies and created a full-bore aristocracy (this being the riĉuloj).

Before the civil war officially broke out, there was a decade in which tensions became so thick they could be and were cut by a stray dueling-sword. [Here I started talking about the actual project.]

[novanhistorian]

Miniature Encyclopedia

Since the thing I’ve been on-and-off teasing is taking a while (optimistic finish time is early November, and I’ve been at it since early August), I’ve decided to release a short set of definitions I wrote for an earlier work. It’s rather sparse and oddly-assorted without context, given that I wrote it to explain only the context necessary for the piece, but it should give its reader a flavor for the sort of thing the Imperium Novel is.

To quote my past self:

The absolute minimum context you need is that the characters are members of a species called novanity, novans were created by human scientists who then left the planet, and that planet is called Terranovo.

This is one of two things I’m releasing from the project, the other being its introduction and historical context (highly condensed and only covering up to 452, just before the First Imperial Civil War).

Stuff below the cut is about 1.8k words.

A Miniature Encyclopedia.

Cosmopole, the. The capital of the Central Administrative Region of the Imperium. In Sabro. Like the other administrative capitals (Ĉefurbo and Frukto de Paco), it was founded after the establishment of the Imperium and is quite proud of it. Even Ĉefurbo, founded just before the Cosmopole and with the same intention, grew up around human ruins; but the Cosmopole is truly and purely novan. It prides itself, even more than the rest of its cultural region does, on its modernity and efficiency.

English language. English, as you likely know, began as a human language. The rather large population of speakers who came to Terra Nova with the New Eden Project divided it into three rough phases, which they called Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Modern English went extinct before terraforming finished, and by the time of this encounter it has been renamed Classical or Literary English (depending on which part of the country one is in). The most recent variety of the language to be spoken was Scribal English, which was used for some godforsaken reason to keep records during the War Era. After the founding of the Imperium a “scholarly” pronunciation was formulated, which sounds somewhat like General American English with the addition of trilled Rs, French-adjacent vowels, and occasionally incorrect emphasis.

Esperanto. The common language of the New Eden Project and then of the Imperium, Esperanto was taught to the earliest novans and continues to be the most common first language at the time of this encounter.

Hamlet. A famous play by human William Shakespeare, written in Early Classical English.

Headland, the. The geographical feature Heleno is on.

Heleno. In the Western Administrative District, and more importantly one of the founding states. It is in the far northwest and sits right in the confluence of the Headland and Neĝana (snow-dwelling) cultures. In the 400s it still advertises of its well-preserved human structures, including the first courthouse ever erected on the planet. Due to its location on the fringes, its almost frightening religious tendencies, and its founding-member status in the alliance that eventually became the Imperium, most of the frenzy of the War Era passed it by. (Unfortunately, that will not be the case in the first or second civil wars, when it has relaxed from being a terrifying quasi-theocracy.) Its human-era cities bore greater Lunar influence, and for almost a century properly-pronounced Russian could still be heard in its streets.

Humanity. The presumed-extinct species that created the novans. Presumably, the whole of my readership will be composed of humans. Post-human culture, after the initial trauma of the Departure, mainly associates them with the early post-arrival period. Humans are seen as a species of genius scientists, hence my self-insert’s assertion that their ideas would be taken more seriously were they a human. 

Latin. “Latin” usually refers to one of two things: Ecclesiastical Latin and Novan Vulgar Latin, the latter of which is the result of a revival of Classical Latin with early novans. It is one of the more prestigious second languages one can have in the Imperium and is the primary language Teodosio Darwin’s Theatrum Orbis Secundi does productions in.

New Eden Project, the. See the History.

Novanity. Novans are the product of an attempt at creating cat-people via extensively modifying the human genome. As a result, they share many of our features, including an ear canal positioned specifically to disallow properly catlike ears. They come out looking more like bats or jackals, depending on whom one asks. They were designed a few decades after human arrival in the new solar system and with two centuries or more still to go before Terra Nova, as it was called then, would be terraformed and habitable. This was done first for a purpose that does not merit discussion here, and then with the unspoken intent to create a servant species to do the labor inherent in terraforming a planet. I shall not get too far into the development of novans here, as this is not an ethics piece, but more information will be made available upon request. The absolutely necessary portion to know is that neither intent came to fruition because of public outcry, and for about three and a half centuries it was common to create a novan (based on the detailed instructions left by the original designers) as the capstone project of a doctorate of genetic engineering. Each lineage or gento of novans (with novans off the same genetic “pattern” being considered siblings and given the same surname) thus created was given the surname of a scientist or inventor that their creator admired, at first adapted to Esperanto pronunciation and later not so much. The Darwins are part of that first category and the Telkeses the latter.

Please see the History for more on why there are only novans left on Terranovo at the time of this encounter.

Paimon. According to The Lesser Key of Solomon: Goetia, published by L. W. De Laurence in about 1916 and reportedly having something to do with Aleister Crowley, Paimon is “a Great King [of Hell], and very obedient unto Lᴜᴄɪꜰᴇʀ. He appeareth in the form of a Man sitting upon a Dromedary [Camel] with a Crown most glorious upon his head. There goeth before him also an Host of Spirits, like Men with Trumpets and well sounding Cymbals, and all other sorts of Musical Instruments. he hath a great Voice, and roareth at his first coming, and his speech is such that the Magician cannot well understand unless he can compel him. This Spirit can teach all Arts and Sciences, and other secret things. He can discover unto thee what the Earth is, and what holdeth it up in the Waters; and what Mind is, and where it is; or any other thing thou mayest desire to know. He giveth Dignity, and confirmeth the same. He bindeth or maketh any man subject unto the Magician if he so desire it. He giveth good Familiars, and as such can teach all Arts. He is to be observed towards the West. He is of the Order of Dominations. He hath under him 200 Legions of Spirits, and part of them are of the Order of Angels, and the other part of Potentates. Now if thou callest this Spirit Paimon alone, thou must make him some offering; and there will attend him two Kings called LABAL and ABALI, and also other Spirits who be of the Order of Potentates in his Host, and 25 Legions. And those Spirits which be subject unto them are not always with them unless the Magician do compel them.”

This is approximately the same information Mr. Henryk T. I. Telkes would have had when he gave himself his pseudonym, though perhaps more pretentious in presentation.

Parrus’ or la parolata rusa lingvo, literally “the Spoken Russian.” A mangled descendant of our world’s Russian, generally stereotyped as lower-class and discriminated against. It has no commonly-accepted standards of spelling other than phonetic representation, and all “Russian” literature, of which there is a common canon, is written in Literary Russian (the version spoken from the late nineteenth century until roughly a hundred years after Advent, which is to say after the arrival of humans on Terranovo; it generally follows all human spelling reforms and is written in Cyrillic, which speakers of Parrus’ by and large cannot read).

Saber, the. A geographical feature that, to a viewer willing to put in a little imagination, looks rather like a sword. Due to its position near the equator, the Saber boasts a large percentage of the Imperium’s off-planet commerce, and immigrants from the company-states of the asteroid belt make up about 15% of its population.

Sabro. A state in the dead (vertical) center of the Central Administrative Region of the Imperium. It is on the Saber, naturally. In Esperanto it is only distinguished from the geographical formation by the lack of the definite article.

Terranovo, Terra Nova, etc. The planet that this story takes place on. It is in another solar system.

Titles. Imperial society has a relatively complicated system of titles. I should note that these stack, so someone could be Mister Retired General Senator Professor Zanabazar, though of course few people acquire that many. (For a more relevant example, Mister Senator Telkes has this happen.) Greeting someone with a title rather than the equivalent of “hey you!” connotes respect, so I have “translated” it as calling someone “sir” or “ma’am.”

S-ro. is short for sinjoro, which is the title normal people have (like “Mr.”, “Miss”, “Mx.”, and so on in English). It does not have an inherent gender, but there are gendered variations.

S-ĉo. (sinjoriĉo) is masculine.

S-no. (sinjorino) is feminine.

S-so. (sinjoriso) is sendua (for the novan third gender). (Novan society has a gender trinary where we have a binary, and a rather looser definition of what it means to “be” a gender. They still, of course, have people who fall outside all of it.)

Among most city residents, the gendered versions are only used at the especial request of the person themself. The more traditionalist sectors of society—the upper classes and some rural communities—still use them routinely. Mr. Sen. Telkes does not, since many of his friends are from the normal upper classes and not from the riĉulo culture and he has adopted that from them.

Mr. (rarely M-ro.) is a prestige title given to academics, diplomats, and high-ranking politicians and is also generally used for members of the riĉulo social class. It does not decline by gender and has no masculine connotations, despite its English origin.

It was the title used for English-speaking clerks in the War Era (about five hundred years before this story). A disproportionate number of the states that came together to form the Novan Imperium used English as their record-keeping language, even though it was long dead by that point, so “Mr.” gained a connotation of prestige. When English record-keeping was abolished in the vast sweep of reforms after the Wars of Tidying Up (immediately after the War Era, until about 40–50 years into the new government), “Mr.” jumped to being a title used for scholars in general, and from there to being used for all respected civilians.

By the period of our story, it is the default used for the riĉuloj, and some academics have in response refused to be called by it.

S-do. is short for sinjorido, “child of someone entitled to a variant of S-ro,” and is used for children (up until college age). It does not vary by gender.

M-do. is the “patrician” counterpart of S-do. It is only used by members of the riĉulo class and does not decline by gender.

Riĉuloj. The riĉuloj are a social group, most commonly defined as a subset of the upper and upper middle classes set off by a specific and distinctive culture. They are, generally speaking, atheist, conservative, lavish, and traditionalist. The lower classes see them as out-of-touch, and that is not incorrect. Riĉuloj are in a societal position like that of the Roman patricians, except that their ancestors made their fortunes off of companies rather than being appointed to the first Roman senate by a man who was raised by wolves.

[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. #🪪 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.