an Animatic setting

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Keenir
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an Animatic setting

Post by Keenir »

This began as part of my attempt to illustrate as many concepts from my religion textbook and my old anthropology textbook as I could...which grew into the idea of trying to flesh out at least a little bit of "what would a society with THIS underlying it, look like?...or at least what sort of myths might they have?"


Suggestions and observations are quite welcome.



I'm using placeholders because, while I do indeed have a script, I don't have a phonology of any kind as of yet.

(placeholder: jha = ___s
Nuum = ;__


ANIMISM,
at its most basic, is usually described as every object in the world having a mind of its own (and-or a spirit of its own), even intangible things like the wind qualifying as such objects alongside rocks and animals and water.

ANIMATISM
was a concept proposed as a precedessor to animism, removing the minds and thoughts (or the souls and spirits) from the objects in animist belief. The most common example offered up, is the lucky rabbit foot being an example of animatism. I would suggest another example: the bone of a saint, or most any other relic which provides healing powers to those it touches, also succeeds at being an example of animatism. (if a king has a finger which doubles the number of coins he touches, that does not apply; but chop off the finger, and if it continues to double the coins, then it does)

What follows is my attempt to make an animatistic nation..piece by piece (ergo all the ...s) :)

...
...
GOVERNANCE:

Monarchy is a late arrival for most of the Jhas, coming to them only late in the course of the Greater Unification (which brought in the monarchist animatists; as distinct from the general Unification, which solidified the non-monarchist animatists)
...

Creation & Monotheist Neighbors

The Jhas, being animatistic, make little mention of a creation account. When they do recount it in passing, one detail differs in what the two communities tell: whether or not the Founding Substance {Prime Mover, frozen Ymir, etc} was a mound or a corpse. The monarchist tribe of the island's northeast traditionally held to the latter view, sharing it with their non-monarchist neighbors who lived in the northwest of the island. The remainder of the island's animatists held to the former view, differing only in what the nature of the mound was - dung or not.

Some may accuse the Ainjhas, native to the mountainous southeast, of corrupting their dominant neighbors with such things as the presence of a god in their creation story -- or corrupting them into even having a creation story -- but prudent and accepted scholarship establishes that both the northeastern and southeastern peoples (if not all of the island's peoples) come from a tradition involving a creator god whose body became the universe...the difference being that the southeast's monotheists allowed for the existance of a successor god to rule the universe.

Various northeastern dynasties have handled/dealt with monotheists in varying ways, from tacit(sp) toleration, to displacing them to mountains further south. This pattern of behavior was little altered by the unification of the various animatic tribes under a single banner, though not initially under a monarch's banner, as some might have thought would've happened. But the very fact that there was such a long period of interacting with the Ainjhas gave the Jhas an insight which would prove incredably crucial when they encountered the Nuum during the Age Of Sail.

A Curiosity In/Of The Faith

One detail which strikes many as jarring, however, is that the Ainjhas' god is credited with the invention of & relating to mankind of writing. This would seemingly suggest that written language began in the southeast under the Ainjhas, and only later spread to the Jhas everywhere else on the island, whereupon it then was distributed to other lands. Yet archaeological evidence argues otherwise, suggesting that the Ainjhas recieved writing from their non-mountain-living neighbors.

But then, why have a god of writing? Scholars such as Gal Ul have suggested that it was the Ainjhas attempt to control the narrative, and to make the best of a bad situation -- taking a visible sign of foreign domination, and making that become proof that your enemies are tools and playthings of your own god who loves you.

PA.SAATZ.TZIIN {Broken Perception} = HETEROHOMODOXY {Different Same } (placeholder name till I find something better)

A post-Contact orthodoxy backed by the Jhas but spread by the Nuums, Pasaatztziin explained that the native monotheists' Gnostic understanding of physical reality {vs winds, waters & energy like lightning} was overstating mis-stating things: matter and non-matter require one another.

It is not a coincidence that this overlaps with a Jhas worldview that, at its starkest, states that were all power and blessing founded in and stemming from unseeable powers, there would be nothing to see; even leaves would not ripple in a breeze, for even leaves would be incorporeal.

Scholars disagree whether even that would have been acceptible to the Jhas, had their own monotheists been in residence in the southwest rather than the mountainy southeast of their home island -- the argument therein being that, had they lived in the southwest, relations would have been more antagonistic as the Jhas worked to conquer the southeastern coast to facilitate use of the trade winds. (though a few scholars have speculated that something along the lines of Pasaatztziin - or even more ideal - might have been founded sooner had that been the sociopolitical case)

...
At work on Apaan: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4799
Keenir
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Re: an Animatic setting

Post by Keenir »

Keenir wrote: 10 Sep 2019 01:10 This began as part of my attempt to illustrate as many concepts from my religion textbook and my old anthropology textbook as I could...which grew into the idea of trying to flesh out at least a little bit of "what would a society with THIS underlying it, look like?...or at least what sort of myths might they have?"

Suggestions and observations are quite welcome.

ANIMATISM[/b] was a concept proposed as a precedessor to animism, removing the minds and thoughts (or the souls and spirits) from the objects in animist belief. The most common example offered up, is the lucky rabbit foot being an example of animatism. I would suggest another example: the bone of a saint, or most any other relic which provides healing powers to those it touches, also succeeds at being an example of animatism. (if a king has a finger which doubles the number of coins he touches, that does not apply; but chop off the finger, and if it continues to double the coins, then it does)

What follows is my attempt to make an animatistic nation..piece by piece (ergo all the ...s) :)

The Chosen One
Monarchy in an animatist system was tricky for me. After all, all the examples I could think of from IRL were either
* divine right of kings (blessed by god or gods or a heavenly court)
* divine inheritance (descended from a god or gods)

I considered using a system wherein its not a blessing or an inheritance, but more of retrieving something sacred from a god holy site, and thats a justification for the monarchy...but I will probably use that for the neighboring monarchist monotheists' justification for why they are being lorded over by a bunch of animatists.

Legalism has the advantage that its not buttressed up by gods, so I may use that to firm up the presence of whatever family is presently the royal family. (coming up next: the Storm, and how it changed the dynasties)

Finally I came to the idea of The Chosen People, and changed it to Chosen One. Out of the entire royal family, each generation has a Chosen - and that is the one who gets to sit on the Throne. Each of a generation's Chosen is selected because either
* they have the most powerful artifact.
* they have the most artifacts, even if individually each is not a mighty thing.
* they have the most signifigant artifact (if there is a drought, and you have something that finds or makes water, you win)
...and if there is a tie between them, well either the tied individuals have to hash it out between themselves, or the prior Chosen picks between the tied; usually the latter, but sometimes the prior Chosen is busy or is, well, dead.


After the Great Unification, which brought the monarchy-practicing animatist northeast into the picture, then we have the above system of governance for the entire nation. Regional governance continues to be at the city-state--level system described below.

Before the Unification, which brought the monarchy-less animatist towns and cities into a single government, city-states were the largest system of government in existance on the Island. Each of the city-states, as well as the smaller independent communities, were governed by a Chosen (see above for an example of how they were selected)...though not always from a single family; some city-states tried to keep all their Chosens in a single dynastic line, sometimes resorting to forcing prospective Chosens to marry into that dynasty to ensure their system would continue that way.

Between the Unification and the Great Unification, there is little on-site documentation - there is plenty from several generations (or more) later on, but one must be cautious with those tales.


Before the Unification, nearly all coastal settlements had fishing and kelping boats, but never sailed out very far, as they never needed to.

However, following the Great Unification, and while many were dealing with the mountain-dwelling monotheists, the island nation's ships began sailing further and further, finding & then taking full advantage of the Trade Winds.

...and then once they began sailing out under a shared flag, the tech level leaped up as everyone went "holy sh, we need to make sure our boats stop leaking after a day of use!" (it had never been an issue before, because nobody had sailed so far before)

.......and that was when they began discovering other lands and other peoples, and establishing trade ports there.
At work on Apaan: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4799
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