#planets - altamai

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Also periodic refresher on commonly confused SC political terms, not because it actually matters at all but because I know we're all nerds here and why not split hairs:

Astraea is an umbrella term for all the sapient, humanoid (although they obviously don't think of themselves that way), astrobiological subspecies who evolved in the vacuum of space within the Andromeda galaxy. I translate all collective adjectives for them as "Andromedan," since that's what an earthling would call them. I know some of you guys use the term "astraean"/"astrean" when talking about my stuff and that is very cool and has my full support and approval, I just thought you'd want to know it isn't technically "canon compliant." But you don't have to stop lol

Altamaian is a group of ethnicities originating on Altamai who, because of historical land tenure, have a lot of social and political privilege in Basilean society. It's also the name of the official language of Basilea.

Basilean is a nationality thought of by the Hyperian dynasty and their supporters as encompassing the Seven Suns systems and the Rings, although some colonized peoples within the Seven Suns systems do not identify that way. It is heavily associated historically with the Basillan species identity, but not all Basillans are Basilean and not all Basileans are Basillan.

Basillan is the astraea subspecies, originating in the Atya system and historically associated with the planets Tarega, Altamai and Glasmiri, that the Hyperian Empresses belong to. Their nobility--the descendants of the Taregan Captain-Queens and Altamaian Avesian Maximatas--have colonized a significant portion of the galaxy in the period between the Flight era and the Hyperian era.

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Continuing my explorations into Andromedan Fancyclothes(TM) with this Loriane Revoni/Fidelity Vega engagement portrait

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In other news I finally finished the long, wild, aristocratic-nonsense-fraught history of altamai

The first officially-sanctioned superatmospheric settlement on Altamai broke ground in the year 2190 of the ninth Taregan cycle, and her first official citizens arrived just under a (Taregan) decade later, after a long and dangerous building process largely carried out by the indentured and indebted of the ancient city-state of Solreg. In this early period, the population was scattered between “legitimate” landing sites, fly-by-night towns, and nomadic groups. The planet was a frontier: land changed hands via sword and seduction; criminals held territory with no trouble but the occasional vigilante; and vigilantes operated however they saw fit for good or ill, living in their starships and chasing bounties across the foggy plains.

The supposed descendants of the original Captain-Queens who settled Tarega had long had an informal international council, which became formal in the early years of Altamaian habitation. Gradually, national lines began to be drawn--most of the wars had already been fought, and there was a period of non-violent, albeit not necessarily just, claims and concessions. By virtue of the ancestry of their leadership, the Oghai, Saiven, Solrega, Nadega, Avesian, and Faellran peoples emerged as major powers.

In an oathing ceremony performed at request by a praeceptor-trained priestess, these seven world leaders would become (in addition to the queenly titles most of them brought from their homeworld) the Avesian Maximatas--to this day, the highest offices of Basillan nobility outside the royal family, passed down in a continuous line for over 600,000 planetary years. Here they swore to be mothers to the planet, to care for all of her inhabitants and follow the will of the goddesses. The language of the oath would later become a rallying point for commoners seeking accountability for their rulers, although ruling classes in the Binary have always had the kind of accountability problem that only revolution really solves.

Anyway, for holding to a vow of such profound importance, the priestess exacted a high price--she asked that if, as had been discussed, they chose a High Queen for the planet, it be her own country’s queen, Athaema Seflioma of Aves. They technically could have refused this request, but it would have been, to use the proper terminology, a Whole Thing. To turn down the bargain of a priestess and an oracle, and one sanctioned by the holy city, would be seen as akin to disrespect for the goddesses if it got out that it had happened, and wouldn’t start the new seat of power off on a popular foot. And so, in 10230 19th cycle, High Queen Athaema was crowned by her peers and sisters, and immediately got down to business setting up a royal court designed to serve the entire Sol Jenya system, planning and constructing ten state-of-the-art “civilized” cities to centralize industry and government in the various population centers, placing unaffiliated frontier towns under the jurisdiction of local landed gentry, and bearing over 2,000 children, her successor Aviana among them.

The crackdown on unaffiliated settlements was indiscriminate--lumping peaceful, self-sufficient villages established by poor colonies seeking freedom from the abuses of the feudal system in with organized-crime strongholds rife with violence and exploitation. The decree was presented with a spin that basically guaranteed its popularity with those who had no firsthand experience with the situation--without the care of the nobility, the court instructed its messengers to say, fly-by-nights were vulnerable to extreme poverty and plagued by thieves. A select few hard-luck stories were treated with highly public charity, and the project is still widely understood as a benevolent one by Basilean citizens at the time of the story. In reality, many fly-by-night towns were happy, prosperous, and most concerningly, egalitarian; and these fought tooth and nail to remain free until they could fight no longer. The far left wing of Basilean opinion remembers as martyrs a handful who went down swinging to the last girl standing. During Aviana’s comparably unremarkable reign, others simply vanished into the mists, operating in such secrecy that only the archaeological record attests to their existence. Fairly recently at the time of the story, a colony was discovered who had been living in self-imposed isolation for so long that they had developed a unique dialect of the Solrega Aundell language, a unique projection style adapted to their low-visibility home in the Tonevan cloud forest, and even a few subtle but distinct physical adaptations.

As the 23rd cycle drew to a close, Athaema’s granddaughter Ouriama died suddenly before she could produce an heir. Although an assassination was suspected, no proof was uncovered, and it remains an unsolved mystery and system-wide legend. The crown passed to her wife’s colony (and to another of the seven powers) in Faellra, where a new mother had just been born who could inherit it, and the guardian of this new queen, Analemma Olaean, jumped at the opportunity to make her ward Daemarima the best-connected and most legally powerful High Queen yet. This unwittingly made her a prime suspect in the previous Queen’s death, but from the international council’s centralizing perspective, it was all worth it. High Queen Daemarima commissioned the construction of Standard Altamaian, a single lingua franca for the planet, less than a turn (not that they measured turns back then, but it’s a good way to describe a period that feels like ‘a quarter year or so’ in astraea lifespans) after her coronation. In the ninth year of the twenty-fifth cycle, the planetary government financed the implementation of the new language in schools and other institutions, and in a more sinister move, outlawed the speaking of local languages in a handful of key centers of resistance to the hierarchy. 

The Olaen dynasty lasted six cycles, during which interstellar exploration flourished in this new era of semi-forced international unity. Worlds in the ante-dome and outer disk were “discovered” by Altamaian newcomers on the regular and treated like matrona gifts in potentia for the various queens and aristocrats, although the era of outright invasions was still long to come. A sailor named Via suddenly appeared claiming to have lived on isolated, well-defended Esmrrrder for nearly thirty planetary years, and told tales of an advanced civilization perched high on its planet’s abundant mountains. The dream of crossing the vacuum between galaxies was already being heavily discussed as well, but before an expedition could be mounted, Daemarima’s great-great granddaughter married a commoner and abdicated the throne to her sister Leiliora, who would bring their dynasty to an abrupt end when she challenged Sastiena Fortefemen to a duel in defense of her sister’s honor and lost, dying that same night of an infection from a wound on her side. The Fortefemens had merely accepted the Queen’s challenge, but they stepped obligingly into the power vacuum and proceeded to rule the planet for longer than any other family, effectively controlling a throne they won in a sword fight for like 30,000 years. This is basically all you need to know about the Fortefemens.

It was early in her reign that Sastiena’s former ward Deracoura--named for the scriptural “protector” of the Taregan desert wayfinders--reached out to the leaders of the various Basillan-controlled worlds, as well as those of Sitheria, to spearhead the first intergalactic exploration mission. As you know from my broader historical overview of the Seven Suns, this expedition went in search of sapient life and returned with the first Cadrian delegation, who toured the cities of Ovaiakon, Solrega Nova, Neroka, and Alegia. It was on Altamai that the initial commoner-owned shipyard was founded via Cadrian investment and began exporting to the Maculata (as well as importing from the Elorican asteroid fields) and providing a colony-estate-esque setup for workers who viewed the Cadrian-style wage system with suspicion. As it turned out, providing the bare minimum was more profitable, at the time, than paying workers in flexible currency, and it had the added appeal of letting owners of capital basically act and live like nobility. 

Within the next two cycles, the business interests of commoners continued to grow, and the Union of Commons was formed to protect those interests. They published a manifesto expressing their belief in the right of landholders of low birth to govern their own lands--basically a “hey, we have money, so why don’t we also have power?” directed at the High Court and the nobility. Practically in response, nonroyal nobility from every clan and country began clamoring for international lawmaking power as well. They formed a planet-wide legislative council of their own, and while they declared no hostility to the royal tier of society, they asked no permission from them either. In the middle of all this, while en route from a visit with the Council of Emperors far across the intergalactic sea, Queen Deracoura unhelpfully died. 

Trying to please everyone, keep the peace, and maybe punish her insubordinate maximatas just a LITTLE bit, her heir Felixania Fortefemen ordered the creation of the High Parliament, which included representation from the nobility of each nation as well as for gentry of common birth. She still had the final say on everything no matter what, and it led to the creation of a lengthy court season that allowed the royal family to keep their nobles under close scrutiny, so in a way it was a devil’s bargain. 

In this era, there were clashes of interest between a variety of Basillan and Cadrian notables. In space and even on-planet, business owners enforced their deals like crime bosses and crime bosses did a steady trade. In a climate where the penalty for a breach of contract could be a village burned to the ground, the nobility increasingly styled themselves as the protectors of the people, loyalties strengthened, and divisions grew. Among the common people, favor was split between the common capitalist class--who seemed to offer freedom from the whims of the nobility by offering a relatively secure income, as well as representing the promise of moving up in the world; and the old aristocratic families, who represented tradition, family loyalty (Altamaian nobles overwhelmingly ruled over their own historic colonies and their offshoots, meaning their peasants were all actually related to them--providing, to be fair, accountability that later Basilean aristocratic rule would lack) and a kind of symbolic cultural function--still today conservative Altamaians take the tack that the gentle Great Ladies suffer for their sake and must be defended from (in modern times largely imaginary) outside threats. The nobility was more broadly fractured, with favorites of the one-nation queens and the High Queen defending them stridently while others feared their unchecked power would leave the ancient families destitute to be overrun by the nouvelle riche. Just outside the metropolis of Solrega Nova, a shipbuilding-business billionaire bought a castle, noted for its beauty, built by the Celetorias--an original-lander colony--and announced plans to demolish it to build a complex of vitruvol foundries, giving the entire planet something to throw down about for five seasons straight (she eventually chickened out).

Just as these ideological tensions were reaching a fever pitch, Felixania and High Queen Esthardine of Glasmiri announced that their scionettes were betrothed--an unprecedented consolidation of power in a single household. The marriage of Delianae Fortefemen and Celafina Vividel was the event of the cycle whether you were for the high court or against it: three of the planet’s titled first daughters lost their crowns in duels that day, and three more lost their lives. Scholars took to the streets to warn the peasantry while by and large the peasantry took to the public houses to toast the beautiful young princesses who after all looked so smitten in their official portrait. It was the middle of fiber harvest season in a good market year; people were exhausted and ready for a show.

Following her mother’s death, Delianae laid low (letting the nobility handle urgent matters themselves) until all but the most paranoid aristocrats practically forgot about her, focusing on well-received local historical projects such as the restoration of the first Aivuran temple and a modernized housing for the shrine where the Avesian Maximatas took their oath. Behind the scenes, she reached arrangements with multiple once-hostile Cadrian interests and secured a substantial income from intergalactic trade which was primarily socked away for the use of her daughter Deracoura (styled as Deracoura the second, or sometimes, when she was really feelin’ it, the third). 

Early in her reign, under the guidance of her elder sisters, Deracoura II established the highly profitable Fila Fenaeta swarm, a specialized, state-of-the-art vapor-harvesting operation set amongst the young stars of a resource-rich nebula. While the floating settlement started small, it was destined to grow into a veritable nation of employees of the crown. Almost immediately there was conflict over working conditions in this deep-void environment and the protection of the residents’ few rights as peasant-class planetary citizens (which were still meant to be upheld by the law despite their distance from home, but were not always, particularly with regards to due process in criminal trials and oversight of tribute apportionment--it was common practice for representatives of the nobility to embezzle a great deal of something valuable from a peasant colony and then disappear on a fast spaceship, leaving them on the hook to explain to their rarely-sympathetic lady where all the product went). Repeated uprisings were quelled through mass evictions that displaced families in far-flung space--often with inadequate supplies to get much of anywhere--and forced many to live as outlaws deep in the clouds, gaining the area a reputation as impoverished and dangerous. Dia “Acutri” (Altamaian: sharp-eyed) filia Senema, a second-born mother exiled by her noble sisters, founded a multigenerational pirate colony there that still persists at the time of the story.

The unrest was ultimately no hindrance to the prosperity of the Altamaian throne, and Deracoura continued with zeal the illumination of the galaxy (and beyond) to Basillan and Sitherian travelers that her great-great-grandmother had begun, opening trade routes in the ante-dome that would go on to gradually rob entire cultures blind. The deep roots of the Hyperian empire lead to things sown by the Fortefemens, even if they would later consider themselves rivals.

For two generations now, the narrative that the Old Ways had died with Deracoura I and been buried with the creation of the parliament had been kept at the top of the political toolbox, but no one had used it quite as Siderina Hyperia did from the beginning. With Altamai becoming increasingly inhospitable to its peasantry with the ongoing consolidation of wealth, her appeals to a kind of populist escapism--complemented by her position at the helm of the construction of the Rings and in guardianship of the heir to a little-known but prosperous landed colony--struck a chord with those who saw their planet’s new capitalist class as inadequate caretakers. While she never made any rhetorical attack on the High Queen, she took the angle that the enfeebled royal line now needed to be taken in hand for its own good. With her beautiful ward Estartina, she would revitalize the noble matriarchy of old and lead it to a glittering future in the Rings.

Siderina’s wholesome public image hid the mind of a shrewd general. Weeks after the Rings were announced complete, she commanded her knights to such a decisive victory against the royal guard that she was famously allowed to walk in and kill the old queen (Deracoura II’s daughter Athaema) with a small ivory dagger. In the aftermath she announced that she had acted to protect her world and avenge its integrity, claiming that the Fortefemens had sold information to a hostile Cadrian interest. This may or may not have been true--evidence did materialize here and there, albeit a bit conveniently--but the story was mainly believable because assertions of overfriendliness with Maculatan enemies were not a new thing for the dynasty, and a large segment of the public was willing to accept it. 

Siderina was tried for her regicide in a number of courts, but, by slipping names in the elderly queen’s ear, she had rallied those with judicial power on Altamai mostly to her support, and was never convicted of anything. While the coup had certainly not been a formal duel, the transfer of power was adopted mainly on the strength of the precedent set by the Fortefemens. While Glasmiri was a center of popular resistance, the thrones of the two worlds were still heavily tied together for economic reasons, and the Vividel line remained effectively in Altamai’s thrall. When the Sitherian Archpraeceptor objected to the matter of Estartina’s coronation, Siderina had her ousted, either bribing or threatening practically every organization of priestesses in central Ovaiakon. All of this occurred in the space of two planetary decades--a blink in astraea reckoning. In the twelfth turn of the Rings, Estartina Hyperia was crowned not with the traditional Avesian coronel but with what would come to be called The Diadem of The Empress of the Seven Suns.

At the time of the story, almost two hundred quinturns later, Altamai--the Motherworld of the Basileans, as it is called by the aula--is a place of extremes even beyond its dramatic terrain and climate. Below the cloud line, it is an industrial powerhouse where thousands live in sprawling underground complexes and spend their workdays extracting rapidly depleting natural resources. Above, the last children of the old nobility rehearse the motions of the ancient ways between the pink cloud-carpet and the blue sky. In this dreamlike setting, heavy security, subtle propaganda, and armies of carefully vetted servants work to evoke the memory of a utopia that never existed, tailored to the political predilections and aesthetic whims of the Last Great Ladies. The granddaughter and heir of the deposed high queen, who escaped the coup with her governess as a young child, remains in exile far away in the Perseus Cluster, dreaming, as the old Royalist battle hymn goes, of double sunlight on plumafore fields.

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altamaian geography/topography

Planet overviews are at a bit of an impasse because while writing Letters From Tropovoxia and actually attempting to make use of it I discovered some serious flaws in my original system of time and daykeeping, so a lot of the day and year lengths etc are in the process of being recalculated (although the calendar systems posted here are still canon, the numbers may not be quite on point). But in the meantime I thought I’d post my notes on the geography/topography of Altamai as I do PLAN to avoid changing the literal distance the planet orbits at!

Please excuse this terrible map:

The defining characteristic of Altamai is its cloud cover, which is constant at all but the highest latitudes. The majority of the land is temperate above the cloud line, but temperatures beneath can easily rise to health-threatening levels, so most population centers perch on mountaintops or mesas, overlooking the sea of mist below. Its large seas are relatively acidic and in most places the water cycle erodes the landscape quickly, leading to a general impression of smooth surfaces and soft edges.

Polar Atoll

The Altamaian north pole is highly volcanic, ringed by a giant atoll swirling with steam. At its center, a glassy lagoon several hundred miles wide shelters long-legged stork-like creatures who plumb the water and air alike for nutrition and ribbonlike eels nestling in the dust of the depths.

Armaidan Continent

The western hemisphere is dominated by the continent of Armaida, which is bisected by the Toneva (Syfrae: painted, multicolored) mountain range, the planet’s longest--extending from the landmass’s northernmost tip in the vast misty desert of the same name to the Berilium peninsula in the southeast. This line divides the continent’s biomes, broadly speaking, into desert and tundra on the north side and a type of temperate cloud forest unique to the planet. On the peninsula itself, however, the coastal breezes from the Armaidan and Ordraean seas create a pocket of relatively clear air--a hot real estate commodity on Altamai.

Esaian Continent

In the would-be gulf formed where the mountains meet the Laedag strait and the Solreg subcontinent lies the planet’s smallest continent, Esai (originally an Old Standard Altamaian abbreviation of Esaivega, ‘heir of Saivega’, the Taregan country from which its Saiven inhabitants came), whose “alta” (high, above-cloud) climate is what an earthling might call Mediterranean. Its landscape, carved by five large and ancient rivers and their tributaries, is staggered over bluffs and plateaus that reach above the cloud line, and canyons and basins that sit below.

Ogiahtan Continent

Much of the topography of Ogiah speaks to a primordial, colder Altamai. Ancient lowlands became seas as waters rose, and the Aineha mountains were once a continuation of the Tonevas before a tectonic shift divided them from Armaida. In its inner basin, waterfalls thousands of feet high feed the foggy forest below. 

Taevan Continent

The planet’s southernmost continent is predominantly arid, but in its upper reaches lush jungles line the northern coast. Along the opposite coast polar winds have carved towering white cliffs into a maze of glassy fjords, dotted with weather-twisted trees and flighted sea creatures. Vast echoing sea caves in this region are the subject of much myth and legend, whether they are said to house howling spirits or uncountable pirate treasure.

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Quick post ‘bout Aivuran Swordplay

Basilean culture, with its heavy carryover from Altamaian culture, values finesse over force--or at least likes to look like it does. So among the upper lumini, the weapon of choice for dueling is swords, and the style of choice for swordfighting is that created by the Aivuran Orders many millennia ago during the settlement of Altamai.

The Aivurans believed in the development of individual skill and perfection as a spiritual discipline; a way of achieving harmony with the will of the universe and the goddesses. They taught that an honorable warrior demonstrated her worthiness through the ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic qualities of her side of the fight as much as through bravery or victory (the choice of weapon alone demonstrates this--it’s actually pretty tough to kill an astraea with a sword, unless you’re an absolute surgeon with one). 

Many well-to-do Basillans and Sitherians begin learning the basic techniques of the style from a very young age, and nobody is ever straight up like “this is for dueling” yet at the same time it’s sort of expected that everybody knows somebody who is good enough at it to represent them in a duel. The first rule of Basilean high society is be ready to throw down and the second rule of Basilean high society is be real coy about the first rule.

It’s a martial art with HEAVY emphasis on the “art” part. Teachings about posture and footwork are tailored not only for combat efficacy but for balance, visual grace, and “line”, as in classical dance. Almost every possible move has an equal and opposite ideal response, and duels between equally skilled opponents who have memorized hundreds of these combinations are often basically contests of endurance--victory or defeat depends on whose reflexes slow down first. And because of THAT, the entire thing is extremely fast-paced, with everything from blade designs to training regimens expected to contribute mainly to speed.

Because of all of those factors it almost doesn’t look like a fight to outside eyes--it’s graceful, choreographed, two bodies moving beautifully in near-sync, double-time. The movements of the non-weapon arm, which were originally designed to shield the face and light (in a way it’s a sword-and-shield fighting style, except the shield is your own exoskeleton) have evolved equally to add balance and flourish as duels to the death become (a bit) rarer, and are sometimes used to distract or otherwise mess with the opponent. The strong and traction-providing yet flexible slippers traditionally worn for Altamaian combat sports of all kinds allow skilled practitioners to turn, stop, and dodge at incredible speeds using the pointes of their toes. It comes off to earthling eyes as something like the exact midpoint of European period-drama swashbuckling, kendo, voguing and ballet, and its philosophy of dominance through beauty and perfection is like I said just...painfully Basilean, particularly in the Hyperian era.

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Altamai is absolutely ridiculous because its atmosphere is like in turmoil and in most places not really healthy for astraeas to breathe/burn at a sustain, its surface can reach boiling temperature at the most cloud-dense areas of the equator, its oceans are super acidic and its water cycle is eroding the mountains that most of its cities are built on at threatening speed, and Basillans didn’t even evolve there so they have no natural adaptations to any of this, and they’re still like “<3333333333333 our holy Motherworld!!! <333333333333333333”

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I wanted to make a cool post about this with art but predictably I haven’t had time so here’s some of the more non-obvious meanings of given names in SC!

Aviana: Derived from a portmanteau of the sacred Syfrae glyph/syllable “av”, which is variously translated as “gravity,” “order,” “connection,” or “divine love,” the address “vi”, and the honorific name addition “-ana.” The meaning is usually given as “governess of lovers” and it’s popular for matriarchs and families with histories in the priestesshoods of the “luminous goddesses” of imperial era thought (Orellistia, Luca, Semphora, Philoxia, and to a lesser degree Jenya & Atya).

Aethema/Athaema: Two popular variants on an archaic Taregan name which is probably Uek in origin. Its actual original meaning is unknown at the time of the story, but it’s clearly derived from the minor Altamaian goddess Aetha, and well-remembered as the given name of the first High Queen of Altamai.

Ain: All I know about this so far is that this is a Miragari name. I haven’t started the Sol Vesta system languages yet because not a lot of the main series is set there, bear with me

Atika: Ditto.

Angia: World (An Aphacarian language I haven’t named yet + Altamaian honorific syllable). “Gi”- “Gye-” and “Ge-” as prefixes meaning “world” and “planet” are incredibly common across Andromedan languages, and it’s theorized there is some link between this sound and the directional faculties of the earliest proto-astraea minds, back before planetary civilization existed.

Aura: Sunrise (unsurprisingly) (original language in-universe: Aundell).

Axa: Estival solstice (origin language in-universe: High Delian). In some Crater clans, there is a tradition of naming matriarchs after the season they were born in, related to a belief that the time of birth sets the tone for the era of her leadership.

Ayala: “High point” or “peak” although on the Doylist level yes it was in my head because of Zapata’s thing (origin language in-universe: Atennuan)

Baio: Literally just means “child (of),” a super common nickname similar to “junior”

Bash: Shortening of “Calbash,” “forest” (Solrega/Kilne--the original settlers of Shali were Glasmirian)

Celoura: A poetic compound term from Syfrae usually translated as ‘the blue of heaven,’ sky blue. (Altamaian royalists, with a sword to your throat: Do you love the color of the sky?)

Cenoa: Gate or door (Syfrae)

Centora: “Hundredth” (Solrega translation of the Sitherian name Sentoa, which is not related to Cenoa though it sounds like it should be)

Deracoura: swapping all body part metaphors 1:1, an equivalent english translation would be something like “seeking-heart” (origin language in-universe: Syfrae; originally a word-by-word translation of the compound Uek name Terfole [TARE-fol-ay]).

Dirina: Pilot or ‘helmsmaiden.’ 

Enrosadira: this is actually an obscure English word I repurposed--it means the pink light right before sunrise. I haven’t decided exactly the in-universe etymology or meaning but I’m TERRIBLY excited about the fact that if you split the syllables up and make it a Latin sentence--En! Rosa dira--it means (a bit brokenly) something like “Behold! Ghastly rose” which is a VIBE

Grandina: she told you this but, hailstone (Old Kilne)

Ilboa: Low raincloud (High Delian)

Im: A small spring wildflower traditionally burned as a type of incense. (Kengfara)

Keya: elder daughter (High Delian)

Kinelebesh: inheritor of the harvest; a name given to a child born in a good agricultural year or after a windfall (Ashtivan)

Lionna: pole star (origin language in-universe: Avesian)

Liorasha: literally “young one from the place of the forgotten,” could be rendered poetically as “old soul” or “reincarnated one.” (Ashtivan)

Litha: asteroid (origin language in-universe: Aundell)

Mag: shortening of Magdale (stone, Avesian)

Oebitha: of the orbits; an epithet of Colamara (Aundell)

Otemia: literally the Avesian version of Oebitha

Seflia: ‘sound’ or ‘sturdy’, used of things that are valuable for the quality of their make (Aundell)

Shaylorelle: from the west; literally “from the source of the storm” (Ashtivan)

Sureshina: esteemed speaker or, in more detail, esteemed repeater of incantations (Ashtivan)

Syor: Pure spring (like a spring of water, not the season) (Kengfara)

Taia: seedpod (origin language in-universe: Loar)

Uluna: literally “little moon”, in its original usage the view of a planet’s moon from another planet or from outside her orbit. All the holders of Lionna’s title have given names that come from archaic navigational terminology, a tradition meant to honor their ancestors (who were anvelani--oath-sworn pilots--to the house of the Hyperians back when the rings were first being established) and the symbolic matronage of Colamara, goddess of trade routes and navigational instruments among other things, over their shipping and transport business.

Vesta: Abider (Avesian)

Also, they’re translated in-text because they’re literally modern Standard Altamaian words, but the names Fidelity, Dignity and Chivalry are literally just Fidelita, Digniti, and Magnanimi.

[starsailorstories]

Glasmiri and Tarega are both a fair bit smaller than earth, Sitheria is closer to earth-sized but a lot of it isn’t really inhabited because there’s only one major landmass (it takes a special type of person to choose to live on a sea island 24 hours’ time zone separate from the nearest population center) and Altamai is a similar size but has a whole different set of habitability issues. Caesura is tiny, Ashtiva is tiny and orbits a half-dead star anyway so there’s an upper limit on how much life it can support energy-wise although it has a lot of specialized biomes. I didn’t intend this but my approach to worldbuilding several planets believably has organically become “keep them little and weird”

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good morning happy saturday im sure you’re all jazzed for detailed information about the soon-to-be overthrown feudal hierarchy of my fictional space lesbian nation

Various Basilean worlds, and their individual nations, have organized their own varying systems of feudal hierarchy throughout their history, and many are still recognized locally alongside the Basilean ones, although sovereignties recognized by the empress of course supersede older titles. The imperial hierarchy is inspired by the Altamaian one, and the titles of pro-Hyperian Altamaian sovereigns have remained untouched in the new era. For the purposes of imperial law, the governmental chain of command goes in ascending order from local praefas (administrators), to district submaximas, provincial or city-state maximas, and continental or orbiter-wide maximatas, with a few other titles horizontal to the chain, such as marchiesa, carrying their own specific historical connotations and responsibilities. Planetary regent queens (who reign at the planetbound-national level) and high queens (at the global level) are technically above maximatas and other high-ranking non-royals, but because of their distance from the Rings and therefore from the dynasty’s seat of power they may not wield the same influence that their supposed inferiors do. The imperial court and its parliament and councils have their own pecking order, based around positions and favors appointed by the empress and her immediate family.

The empress & royal family

Unlike a lot of real-life royalty, the empress of the Hyperian age has only one title and it’s the historical Altamaian royal address Sia Leta Matriata, “holy lady greatmother” when directly translated to English. The Hyperian tack at the time of the initial coup was one of Altamaian planetary identitarianism and the way they style themselves reflects that. The catch is that now lower queens are barred from using it and have to settle for the formerly nonroyal Sia Leta Matri.

Primata -  “First Princess,” actually an Altamaian translation of the Uek title used by other characters addressing Sol Atya in the original version of the scriptural Deeds Of The Seven Holy Suns, which is so dang old that’s the only attested use of it. It’s also the traditional title given to Altamaian royal First Daughters, and is used by the Hyperians for whichever of the Empress’s daughters is her current pick to raise the heir to her throne. That changes frequently and sometimes without official acknowledgement, which is one of the things the hard-line monarchists on Altamai don’t like about her.

Secundata - Originally used for royal Second Daughters (it amuses me that when you say it out loud it sounds like “second daughter” with a Boston accent) but now used as a generic term for “princess” or daughter of the royal household.

Filia regina - Fairly obvious surname given to all daughters of the Empress’s colony.

Courtly titles:

Ladies in waiting (siae vestia) - the Empress’s personal entourage; unlike many people close to the empress, they, and their satellite secretaries and servants, tend to stay on for the long haul and wield significant influence, despite having no actual government post.

Principas - acting ministers of the court, managed by the Sacred Office of the Grand Principa who is basically the Empress’s public hands, feet, and voice. The Grand Principa is fired, jailed or executed so frequently that newsreaders don’t even bother to say precisely who she is anymore, but she is always recruited from among the Empress’s own colony. Other major principas are likely to also be daughters of the empress or of loyal planetary High Queens. 

Hierarchy of royal and noble titles:

High Queen (regina altima) - basically queen of a planet, although there’s not a single one that’s not technically the queen of like, most of a planet minus a few bits that belong to some other random noble, because wars and politics are like that. They represent their entire worlds to the imperial court.

Regent Queen - technically an informal title, held by Maximatas who inherited the throne of a nation or city-state affiliated with the planetary high queendom. 

Marchiesa / Maximata - these are of equal rank, though Marchiesas, bearing what was originally a military title, are historically seen as having more leverage with the royal family because of the legacy of knightly service they represent (why the knightly service of one’s ancestors makes for high status, while the knightly service of one’s own dang self makes for gaslighting and a shitty pension, is one of society’s little mysteries). They’re the descendents of accomplished spaceship captains who were ennobled by the first empress of the Hyperian dynasty and appointed to sovereign posts in the outer rings with the intent of protecting the new superstructure from siege by Cadrian interests, royalists (as in, those still loyal to the Altamaian high queen the Hyperians overthrew), and other real or supposed enemies of the new empire. Maximata is a title in the vein of “archduchess”--a hereditary appointment of sovereignty over several jurisdictions governed by other peers. It started out mainly as a courtesy title for younger adopted daughters of planetary High Queens (since to assuage succession worries all around, only the First and Second daughter were officially called princesses after marriage--basically the distinction pivoted on whether your spouse can inherit the throne, because queens make the rules and queens want the flexibility to get whoever they want as backup heirs in case their own kids turn out to be unreliable).

Maxima - once the feudal ladies of large estates which were technically the holdings of the High Queen or a more local sovereign, now the governors of single orbiters or county-sized jurisdictions who officially serve as court advisors. They, and the Maximatas, have the power to introduce nationwide legislation with the approval of the royal family. 

Submaxima - exactly what it says on the tin, local leaders generally bound by a hereditary oath to a Maxima. They always come from the colonies of titled matriarchs and inherit their own titles via adoption by the previous Submaxima (as opposed to the titles above, which are passed back and forth between colony matriarchs and their firstborn daughters).

Baronette - horizontal to submaxima in terms of authority, but not a hereditary title--instead it’s one bestowed as a gesture of the court’s great favor, usually for longtime service in the military brass or owning capital that gave the empress a bargaining chip in LGA dealings. Basically like an MBE, but you usually get land to be in charge of for no reason.

[starsailorstories]

Cheat sheet for time in SC

There are a few stories that I published on the patreon or put up on tumblr before I had completely sorted out the Imperial Standard time system, which is how most of the characters’ viewpoints refer to time unless they come from a planet that’s truly outside the empire’s influence (like Ashtiva. or Earth.) but most of them are using a system I sorted out early this year.

Let’s start with the basics and talk about what actual units IS time uses and how they relate to their earth equivalents.

As you can see, what’s referred to as ‘an hour’ etc is a lot longer than the same designation on earth. I still call them hours and minutes and days etc to help the human reader get in sync with how astraeas perceive time, which is adapted to their longer life spans and to some extent to long day cycles on several of their home planets. You’ll hear characters talk about “minute segments” or divide minutes up into fractions and fractions of fractions; culturally they’ve kind of only started talking about shorter blips of time in precise terms fairly recently, and the older Altamaian and Sitherian languages have all kinds of terms that English could probably only translate as “moment” but which are in fact distinct in meaning, referring to different subjective short periods of time.

A standard day technically begins at sunrise in once specific location (the Imperial Judiciary, on Altamai) but there’s a time zone system that more or less calibrates the hours of the day to local first light or the rising of a reference star. 

The 12 hours of the standard day also have names, in order:

First sunrise

Second sunrise

Third sunrise

Fourth sunrise

Half/low noon

Total/high noon

Waning noon

First sunset

Second sunset

Third sunset

Fourth sunset

Mideve/Dark hour

So it’s somewhat confusing because of course the positions of the four suns look different depending on where you’re at in the supersystem and they might appear to rise at very similar times, but it’s more just that the hours the day is divided into are named after celestial events that happen during them on Altamai, Tarega/Glasmiri (which orbit so close their skies are generally at least comparable), and Sitheria specifically. The net result is that you can still more or less tell what time it is by what the suns are like/the light outside is like. Orbiters in the rings are usually designed to rotate on their central points in such a way as to create a Basillan-friendly ~50 hour day, although some of the poorer or more industrial orbiters are a bit wonky because they’ve been slightly fluctuating for so long with no adjustment that they’ve slowed down or sped up. There are also some small orbiters that are majority Miragari or another interplanetary immigrant community and have elected to engineer a longer rotation period.

[starsailorstories]

An excerpt from my upcoming Altamai Overview - I’m still planning to post a spate of Planet Overviews but oof they take time to put together! I thought this was fun tho and wanted folks to be able to read it

Altamaian superstitions reflect the dangers of the planet and the preoccupations of the peasant class. While the notion that all living things have a praefulgaria and a connection to the goddesses is common among planet-dwelling cosmonists, several Altamaian cultures take this further to envision an intangible world obscured among the mists, teeming with mischievous and occasionally malevolent spirits. The folk cosmonism of the Tonevan cloud forests is particularly adamant that out there in the obscure landscape there exists a world where goddesses can walk embodied yet mortal fallibility is fully in play. If anyone--though colony matriarchs, young children, and adolescents who are growing their adult exoskeletons in particular--fails to show proper courtesy and take proper precautions, the spirits might make up lies about her to ruin her good name with the goddesses--and seize any “evidence” that might prove their claims. For example, it’s important that a mother’s bare feet never touch the ground, because the planet herself may notice and think she’s not being adequately cared for, and if that gets back to the goddesses they might steal or curse her to teach the colony a lesson. An old Aundell-language lullaby playfully announces to whoever might be listening “I love my baby exactly the correct amount,” i.e. not more than anyone higher up in the Cosmic Order, but no less than would prompt willingness to do anything for her. This kind of tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the conflict between hierarchical thinking and natural interpersonal love is common in lower-class Basillan culture, and is actually understood to be an expression of deep and unbounded affection.

[starsailorstories]

So! Given, uh, everything, any chance you could talk about how various Astraea cultures deal with sicknesses and quarantine? Especially since some (especially Bell Town) are extremely or entirely genetically identical, and so more at risk?

Also, how would the cast members react to self isolation and social distancing?

FIRST OFF, sorry this took 10 years to answer, I was super busy and there’s kind of A Lot Of Spec Bio to discuss here

Also, this question made me feel very Seen lol…why yes i DO use worldbuilding as a coping mechanism for the stress of watching the wet tissue paper my country calls a social safety net dissolve

Most sickness that astraeas deal with day to day isn’t actually contagious*, but more a result of individual reaction to the environment (in terms of public health response, think seasonal allergies, although physiologically speaking it’s nothing like that). Communicable, infectious disease tends to be a less frequent problem but purely for that reason is more feared, especially as the most common source for novel diseases is interplanetary shipping (like, astraeas on one planet who have immunity to something unknowingly ship contaminated goods to another planet where people don’t). All that is nowhere near as devastating as it could be in a human context–for one thing astraeas’ bodies are hella dry compared to ours, so if a microbe isn’t airborne it’s almost a non-issue (on the other hand, infection is almost a guarantee if you have an open wound)–but most planets, stations and orbiters have a list of OTHER planets, stations and orbiters categorized by how long it’s been since first contact and how long shipments need to be in quarantine based on that, and that kind of thing runs the same gamut from “rigorously evidence-based” to “completely political and petty” that it does on earth.

Speaking of which, the issue of genetic similarity as a disease risk is as politicized as you’d expect in a society where people said “oh, with our genetic technology we can just design the working class to be however we want.” The Hyperians, being, you know, A Rigidly Hierarchal Interstellar Empire In A Space Opera as they are, tend to present the genetic homogeneity as sort of a good thing, what makes Us Us and Them Them, and the royal family themselves subscribe to the very historically royal (and also very eugenicist) idea that genetic “purity”–which for astraeas mostly just means having children in a very chemically controlled environment–helps keep em’ royal or something. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t it just makes hemophilia, and the more conservative Basileans minimize the environmental variance that keeps them from wiping each other out like some kind of aggressively graceful banana monocrop, the easier it is for epidemics to escalate in general because whole colonies become vectors together.

You won’t read about it in your galactic history book til after the revolution, but the dangers of genetic homogeneity were actually observed by lux units, who noticed that “variant” and “off-order” clones were a bit more likely to survive outbreaks of disease. Supervisors in clone factories have tried HARD to excise the superstition that variant units who remain un-decommissioned into adulthood are good luck to have on your cabin crew or manufacturing-plant shift, but it’s never completely gone away, and once Bell Town goes topside their medics and scientists immediately get to work testing, peer reviewing and proving the mechanics of diversity as a factor of public health because it’s a helpful argument for legitimizing their seizure of the means of their own reproduction and fighting the prejudice against “defective” lux that don’t fit the mold.

To really get into your question, Bell Town at least has the advantage of being small and having a busybody mom friend for a de facto head medic, so I don’t think they’ve ever had a quarantine situation get much bigger than four or five people just because Bolt is very up on how everyone’s doing and very very persuasive–the medics know that that’s just a matter of luck though, and I’m sure a factor in the push to go topside is the potential for tragedy involved in having a settlement of mostly/nearly genetically identical people in somewhat adverse and scarce conditions. That’s not to say there’s no plan–the shortages in Bell Town tend to be of immediately consumable raw materials, like air and fuel and very basic multi-use medicines, whereas raw materials for manufacturing specialized equipment are a lot easier to get because organized factories in DT’s network can have them smuggled out. And a majority of the town’s population, at least by vol. 2, are former manufacturing-plant labor with working radio receivers in their heads, so it’s fairly feasible to expect even a small portion of them, with an emergency push, to manufacture A Lot of vaccines, or intensive care equipment, or whatever was needed practically overnight with the direct guidance of the medics to ensure as much safety in the process as possible (they do just that with medical and defense supplies in vol. 2 for various spoilery things).

Up top, the aula’s responses to any and all large-scale social crises tend to be erratic but sweeping. There are some advantages–in terms of expertise, there are certainly things that well-paid doctors with fully equipped research hospitals can accomplish that a dedicated crack team of self-educated medics can’t, including proactive study of new strains of disease. There’s also feudal insanity–technically individual hospitals/institutions aren’t supposed to issue info without the aula’s permission, though legally local nobles can give it on the Hyperians’ behalf if they’re willing to risk Drama. The internal weirdness of the court both logistical and interpersonal (which I need to make a post about) can sometimes mean, in any emergency, that different parts of the empire receive conflicting information, or an edict followed after a day’s delay in the satellite network by a retraction. Public trust (among citizens of relative status at least) that the Hyperians know what they’re doing tends to decline exponentially as you move out from the inner Rings for this exact reason.

Derafior City on Caesura B dealt with a wave of multiple epidemics a couple hundred turns before the official rise of the empire that still affect how the city is laid out–leaders at the time issued quarantine orders in cooperation with individual colony matriarchs, and as those orders became enforced in physical “zones” neighborhood identities, reputations, and rivalries became increasingly defined (Crater culture being what it is, quarantine boundaries were often pretty literal battle lines as the situation became desperate). A lot of historians trace the factionalism of the Crater to this era, although outside imperialism was also a major instigator of both factional conflicts and disease exposure. Keep in mind too that while outsiders like to portray Derafior as violently fractured and there’s a grain of truth to that, there are just as many deep loyalties between neighborhood/colony factions as there are rivalries and as we see in vol. 3, Caesurans are certainly not allergic to closing ranks when shit really hits the fan. 

I don’t have specific canon examples from other ante-dome cultures but another thing of possible interest that I’d like to talk about is that in places touched by Basilean culture, a lot of what we consider “social distancing” is just normal because cleanliness is highly ritualized and valued. Although platonic adult friendships tend to be very cuddly by American and British standards, at the same time, hand touches between strangers outside specific social rituals are seen as quite inappropriate, so things are more thoroughly designed to prevent them–for example, most trading of goods is done purely on paper at the point of sale and nothing actually passes from hand to hand, you go get it out of the crate or pick it out of the field yourself (which is also a practicality of the relative non-ubiquity of flexible currency–and actually, one of the complaints about the use of currency among more traditional astraeas is that it spreads germs). Basically everyone who can afford it wears gloves in public, which are changed and washed every time a person re-enters her home (disposable gloves are mostly limited to medical and laboratory settings, although it’s not unheard of to use them in a pinch if you don’t have a place to launder gloves at home. Side note, if you’re translating directly Altamaian actually refers to manual labor that makes it impractical to wear gloves as “barehanded” labor and the summary conceptualization of such as unhygienic represents a MAJOR vein of classism among Basilean citizens). The reason for the glove thing is that for a species with an exoskeleton regular hand washing can be kind of involved (You know how sometimes it takes a lot of scrubbing to get the dirt out from under your fingernails? Now imagine you have fingernails all over your hands). 

Oh and to answer your second question: out of the main cast the one you’d think would suffer most with self-isolation is Bolt, but being a healthcare worker she’d still see people. Rugsy would complain the loudest but also paradoxically be secretly kind of relieved to not have to worry about People for a while. DT experiences virtually no change from her normal lifestyle lmao

*There’s two kinds of disease that can affect astraeas–what they call “miasmic”, and infectious. Miasmic disease (which as you might guess I named after the precursor to modern germ theory–it’s kind of true in this instance!) is basically when an individual’s body and light chemistry can’t maintain its normal balance in certain atmosphere conditions. A big reason for the kickoff of the artificial atmosphere industry after the settling of Altamai is that the cloud cover tends to trap a lot of carbon dioxide, and for i.e. Basillans and Sitherians (who have come to be based on G-type stars, like the sun, and K-type stars, slightly smaller and cooler than the sun) there’s just not enough hydrogen atoms in there to run their bodies optimally. This mostly affects very young children, the elderly, and those whose cores were formed in suboptimal conditions (comparable to a human who has a chronic health condition because of a birth defect) and if it can’t be remedied by a move to more hydrogen/helium rich air, it’s treated by sucking the pure hydrogen out of a water electrolysis device through a hose on the daily, which side note, is also a reliable hangover remedy for them.

[starsailorstories]

What are some of the weirder local mythologies that have gotten folded in to Cosmonism?

I mean it’s not so much “weird” as a jarring transition but the OG folding-in to Cosmonism was all the absolutely feral and/or entirely thirst-powered Taregan solar goddesses and mythic heroes just getting tossed in with the decorous Sitherian divine household like “yeah Orellistia is the ultimate Mother and Queen, she designs and decides everything and her will is Perfect, although there was that time when she prolonged a war for several millennia because of a petty squabble with her wife and her utter determination to seduce one of the generals.”

Also for a while right before the Flight (what Basillans call the mass migration to Altamai) there was a pretty popular cult of a goddess on Tarega who was a tree. The only tree for miles, out in the middle of the north desert. Not like, this tree was sacred to a goddess, the tree WAS a goddess; an oracle got lost in the desert, told a bunch of people it spoke to her and prophesied salvation for the planet, and a bunch of peasants, who weren’t ready to deal psychologically with making an interstellar journey on whatever the fuck they had, latched on. To the cult, not the tree. Well, some of them latched on to the tree.

Some Shalian Cosmonists believe the souls of the dead wait in the rings of the planet for their entire family line to die out so they can all go out to the void together with their founding matriarchs at the helm. Nobody is sure how this got started, but it probably has SOMETHING to do with the fact that most of the original Shalian settlers were rural working-class Altamaians who kept a lot of superstitions handed down from reeeeeeeeeeeeally early Cosmonism and perhaps even pre-Cosmonist Taregan belief. Anyway, they venerate their ancestors with massive quivers of bottle rockets, shot off the side of the orbiter into space. It’s the best.

The Gaimati on Ami Ge have their own brand of Cosmonism where almost anybody can join the pantheon if they go hard enough or if they die with people greatly in their debt. There’s one village that has a shrine to a really good accountant.

there must be SOME reason Basillans in general are so convinced that nature is out to get them, but nobody knows what it is anymore

These are more beliefs than myths…your questions are catching me off guard now which is actually awesome, I’m going to keep thinking about this and probably update bc :DDD

[starsailorstories]

Language tree diagram of the Atya-Minerva linguistic family!

Some notes:

All these are languages historically spoken mainly by Sitherians and Basillans. Miragari, Thassians, Esmrrrderians, and Hiramarians didn’t have contact with these until way later even though they were in the same general area.

The little colored dots represent the planet where the language primarily developed--gold for Tarega, purple for Sitheria, pink for Altamai, dark green for Glasmiri, and light green for Shali.

This obviously isn’t complete, each system has much more linguistic diversity than I can portray here, but this tracks the ancestries of the major ones I’m really developing and working with. I’m using dotted lines to represent relationships between languages with a super high rate of borrowing for a similar conlang-notes reason.

Old Standard Altamaian was a widely-adopted auxlang in-universe, although it has obviously evolved naturalistically since its adoption, so...I had to find a way to notate that and this is what I came up with.

[starsailorstories]

Roundup of my historical AU sketches :D

For those who haven’t seen my scattered posts about it, this is an in-universe historical AU that takes place during the early settlement of Altamai, before the Hyperians established the current empire. Bolt is the matriarch of an illegal “fly-by-night” colony town (a name given to peasant/working-class groups who left Tarega secretly by whatever means they could to settle on the frontier without the permission of their local ruling peer, therefore becoming effectively autonomous) that’s hanging on to existence by the skin of its people’s teeth and many, many shady deals. Shade is a former Aivuran--a member of an Orellistian monastic order that established on Altamai in her first cycle of habitation and trained its devotees in what would become the planet’s signature martial art. She’s been traveling from settlement to settlement working as a mercenary (in these times there’s no shortage of conflicts in which she finds one side suitably honorable to offer her services to) when Boltie’s daughters send for her because the shady deals are getting notably shadier and their Mother and leader requires a bodyguard. She immediately gets embroiled in keeping the settlement running and immediately falls in love. There is no plot just fancy outfits, swords, and these two being adorable

[starsailorstories]

Continuing this week’s theme of actually fully explaining the calendar, here’s a quick writeup on why the Altamaian months have the names they do:

1. Semphora - With Semphora being the Ultimate Midwife, she watches over the pre-spring sleep of the natural world and guides the progression towards the rebirth of things that were dormant in the dry and/or cold season. Semphora was also, in myth, Orellistia’s firstborn--so being the oldest sister, it makes sense that she leads the calendar.

2. Collamara - Collamara rules over logistics and productive labor, and her novilunium is busy with both because it’s the time when those in the agricultural, shipping, and atmosphere harvesting industries prepare for the coming of milder weather. 

3. Philoxia - On both Altamai and Glasmiri (at least in the temperate zones), this is planting time for fiber crops, and the blessing of the goddess of fibers (and her sisters, the goddesses of reaping and spinning) on the whole process is thought to be crucial.

4. Femea - As summer moves towards its peak, wild places are at their most alive, and their guardian goddess is thought to be at her most attentive.

5. Thaxia - This is the month of the summer solstice on Altamai. The planet is close to the suns, receiving their rays, and this is thought of as a celestial cue to honor Thaxia, who is believed to be embodied in every rocky planet.

6. Ouria - Ouria is an altamai-specific goddess who rules over the day cycle and is said to bring protection and prosperity to Altamai and her daughters specifically. She is characterized as a Mother, and as the days begin to shorten she’s said to enter symbolic hibernation leading in to the dormancy of winter and rebirth of spring.

7. Sonorura - The air of Altamai, Sonorura’s domain, cools off and gets clearer (as in less “smoggy”). Because of the air clarity thing, cold snaps at the beginning of winter can trigger both animal and astraea babies to hatch from their cocoons. Because of her association with the first breaths of newly born children, Sonorura is further associated with the first frosts of winter.

8. Aetha - Aetha is protectress of the Altamaian planetary throne, and this is the beginning of the court season. New queens are also usually crowned at this time of year.

9. Sonlia - As the days grow shorter and darker, sound becomes more noticeable and meaningful, and traditionally, social life becomes more centered around fireside singing and recitation; all realms protected by Sonlia, the goddess of sound and vibration.

10. Luca - The winter solstice is here, the light is about to return, let's all think of Levinoxia's favorite daughter as the veil of darkness covers us.