The World of Einea

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HopeCPressF
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The World of Einea

Post by HopeCPressF »

Einea is somewhere between fantasy and sci-fi; harder science that Star Wars, but softer than true hard sci-fi. There is genuinely a great deal of speculative evolution involved in the design of the creatures of Einea, particularly those affected by anthropogenic factors and creatures that have evolved to fit different niches than their Terran equivalents.

So, expect updates. I’ll be starting with the planet itself, though I’ll go more into things like climate and biomes than exact measurements of its size and distance from its sun. Then I'll go into countries, animals, cultures, languages - whatever anyone is interested in!

Information here removed due to lore changes.

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Here is a map of Einea with all of its countries, as of the year 1,042 NM, labelled and coloured. The continents are, from left to right: Huzun, Tokarey, and Akkand. Real-life influences on the worldbuilding of these countries vary wildly, so I will be focusing on one of them - the large, orange one known as Dubcloch, separated into provinces below.

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Dubloch is a vast country, diverse biologically, culturally, climatically and geographically. Much of the country's central and north-west area is scorching desert, leading to the sizes of the provinces of Odsil and Tanateum, as inhospitable, sparsely-populated states tend to be larger, becoming a rough, scrubby steppe and then a continental climate with cold, snowy winters and hot summers.

Other notable areas include the country's western extremity, Hetterfield, an ethnic enclave with a mixed steppe and subtropical climate with a society built on goat-riding and non-gendered work roles;

The peninsula of Uglyhill, which has a frigid pine-filled subantarctic climate;

The eastern province of Shwmlyddy, which has a Mediterranean climate perfect for vineyards, filled with stuccos and fountains and carved wooden arches and the contested capital Cu-Afwmthast;

The coastal province of Meirand holds the capital, Canalas City, at its industrialised magical age, with colourful smoke pumping into the air and filling the water, reflecting the sloped rooves and moon-shaped doors of the gardens. Beyond the city lies endless farmland to support this effort.

And the peninsula and province of Narrahan, with a culture built on trade with neighbouring Akkand. It has a humid savannah climate, enough spices to make an elephant sneeze, and its capital, Marasus, is the terminus of a human trafficking problem that spreads down the centre of the continent of Tokarey in a line called the Slaver's Whip.

I hope this was interesting! I have so much to talk about; flora, fauna, languages, cultures - if any of you liked this, let me know what sounds best!
Last edited by HopeCPressF on 08 Oct 2021 04:11, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The World of Einea

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HopeCPressF wrote: 27 Dec 2020 15:53 I hope this was interesting! I have so much to talk about; flora, fauna, languages, cultures - if any of you liked this, let me know what sounds best!
I should say so!

Welcome and please keep telling us anything you'd like to about Einea!
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Re: The World of Einea

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CITY OF CINURA

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Seen here, Cinura is marked as a circle at Roït's (in blue) southern tip, while Adrest is marked far to the north-east north of Fillead. Note also the circle in the orange archipelago - that being Immunen, the capital of the Falaric Isles.

Cinura, Roït, is located near the bottom of the world, the third-most southern city in Einea after Tūle in Olloland in the far east and Immunen in the Falaric Isles to the south. Though the official capital of Roït is Adrest to the country’s north, Cinura is often considered its unofficial or ‘cultural’ capital by the Roïtian population. Roït in its current state, though officially overseen by a prime minister in Adrest, exists as a puppet state of the greater Dubclochian Empire centred in Canalas City..

Cinura lies near the southern Roïtian Peninsula, an area with a climate classified as ‘subtropical ocean-mitigated tundra.’ Most trees here are conifers, strong and stout to withstand harsh winters and heavy snows. The tops of the mountains in the country-spanning Shruden Range shine white throughout the year, and blizzards are not infrequent in winter. Lichen is the most common plant, covering nearly all rock not blasted clean by freezing winds.

However, Cinura is shielded from the harshest that the peninsula offers due to its location surrounded by a ‘bowl’ of mountains in the southern Shruden Range; the sarensago, as it is known in Cinuravese. Within the sarensago there is a huge diversification of flora and fauna compared to the rest of the peninsula: unique varieties of berries, fruits and lush broad-leaved trees and bushes grow here, fed on by native tapirs, birds and monkeys. The sarensago supports countless species aside from these, including the elusive bjudeer, puff-thirns (a kind of small theropod dinosaur with thick feathers), and various macropods including the enormous stiltwalker, though biodiversity decreases southwards, as the sarensago no longer offers protection from the elements. The southernmost tip of the peninsula can be accessed through the frozen south of the sarensago, partly through an ancient, narrow passage called Wry Neck, carved from the glacier that formed as the sarensago cirque drained into the sea tens of thousands of years ago.

Though the city known as Cinura is relatively young, being founded as a protective fortress for refugees 203 years before time of writing (1023 NM) during the Royal Reclamations, the area the city was built on has seen human occupation since before recorded history. Archaeological evidence, though quite scant, hints at permanent native settlement as many as 5,000 years before present. Aside from a few fractured ancient stone stelae, which bear similar markings to those left by the Ahienure people of south-west Tokarey, very little remains of whoever came before.

The name of the city may be a harkening to these ancient times, too; The word ‘Cinura’ bears similarities to ‘Ahienure’ and ‘Ahienuric,’ something that has not gone unnoticed, though other theories propose the name originates from the Inivanese kineuro, ‘haven,’ or the T’fonkese sigo meaning ‘bowl,’ as a reference to the city’s location in the sarensago.

Cinura's buildings are also noticeably coloured almost entirely blue - here's a quote from the novel I'm working on that talks about it.

The cold meant that the richer Cinures tended to be, the further north they tended to live. This was exemplified by the far north district of Murkurkil, where the posh, shiny men like the parliamentarians and the elderate lived luxuriously in huge villas with vaulted ceilings and servant-tended gardens. Unlike the rest of the city, these houses were not blue, but a cold grey, all built en masse about ninety years ago with the new wave of Canalasian migrants after the failed rebellion, all ornate and laden with silver and gold. Alrik could see them from his vantage, their grey encircling the blue city like stones around a pond.
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Re: The World of Einea

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Ah, you had. nice

I like the maps! no, for real. they're pragmatic, and I kinda do the same tbh. How's about something on the general way of life of these people? tech level, that kinda thing. preindustrial agriculturalists? star-wars like interstellar empire frontiersmen?
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Re: The World of Einea

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Torco wrote: 29 Dec 2020 06:53 Ah, you had. nice

I like the maps! no, for real. they're pragmatic, and I kinda do the same tbh. How's about something on the general way of life of these people? tech level, that kinda thing. preindustrial agriculturalists? star-wars like interstellar empire frontiersmen?
Hello! Yeah, I don't claim to be a cartographer - visual arts aren't really my strength in general - but they're useful to show what I want to show.

And the way of life for people across the world is an interesting question. Of course, it varies from place to place - even on earth some people still live hunter-gatherer lifestyles while others live in industrialised cities - but Einea, as of the year 1042 NM (the time of the novel I'm writing), is in its equivalent (roughly) of the mid-1800s.

A few things have been created earlier than on earth, like typewriters and electric trams, though the latter are powered by magically-powered electricity stations in Einea, and as magical materials are expensive, trams are incredibly dear to ride on and restricted to the upper eschelon of wealth.

However, this reliance on highly expensive magical fuel has delayed the development of non-magical steam power technologies - non-arcane steam engines were only patented by partners Nammon and Febes in 1037, five years before the time of my novel, and as of the novel's writing, the tracks that will run the first locomotives using Nammon-Febes engines are being built, but are not completed.

The majority of overland travel is performed by juksha-drawn carriage - juksha being a kind of hornless rhinoceros relative coming in two main varieties; gracile juksha are akin to riding horses in our own world, while robust juksha are more similar to oxen. Horses do not exist in Einea.

Importantly, this is not the only time period I plan to set stories in. As well as writing sequels set in the years closely following 1042, I have ideas set in Einea antiquity, its middle ages (with care to avoid any tired worldbuilding tropes there), it's prehistory involving extraterrestrials, its equivalent of the 20th and 21st century, and its far future space age. So I've got a lot of stuff in mind.

EDIT: There's also a whole thing with a magical telegram called the paltwire network but this feels too long already.
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Re: The World of Einea

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HopeCPressF wrote: 29 Dec 2020 13:48 EDIT: There's also a whole thing with a magical telegram called the paltwire network but this feels too long already.
Not too long at all!

Q: why can't the steam driven trains run on the same tracks as the magical ones? Different gauge or some other reason?

Q: also, tell us more about these hornless nosehornbeasts!

I get some similar vibes with my own world, so I'm certain I'm going to enjoy reading about Einea!
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Re: The World of Einea

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seconded, it makes me feel my domestic wildebeest aren't that unusual.
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Re: The World of Einea

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elemtilas wrote: 29 Dec 2020 15:07
HopeCPressF wrote: 29 Dec 2020 13:48 EDIT: There's also a whole thing with a magical telegram called the paltwire network but this feels too long already.
Not too long at all!

Q: why can't the steam driven trains run on the same tracks as the magical ones? Different gauge or some other reason?

Q: also, tell us more about these hornless nosehornbeasts!

I get some similar vibes with my own world, so I'm certain I'm going to enjoy reading about Einea!
Thank you guys! I really appreciate it. As for your questions:

Q1 - There aren't any magically-powered trains - just trams in some of the world's biggest cities. These have much shallower tracks and a more limited distribution than a full train system.

Q2 - My juksha are actually ripped wholeheartedly off of a real extinct genus called Juxia - which I presume is nerdy enough that most people won't notice and those that do will just smile a bit - which is a kind of indricothere. Their general appearance is something like this. Note also that various animals similar to extinct ones on earth still live and interact with humans in Einea.

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Interestingly, also, as the indricothere family has many species on earth, its Einean equivalent does also - including something like the towering Paraceratherium. In Einea, their most common name is the nierhon - this comes from the Old Lefaneie nie rojon, meaning 'little god.'

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See here a nierhon compared to an African Elephant. Nierhons have limited use to humans - they are incredibly hard to kill, and are not as agreeable in temperament as their domesticated juksha cousins or the selectively bred elephant kinds of the continent of Huzun (the far left on my map). If you do manage to kill one, though, the amount of meat and leather you can gain is mind-boggling.
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Re: The World of Einea

Post by k1234567890y »

looks nice (:
In a theoretically infinite universe and/or multiverse, limited elements that can arrange themselves in limited ways are occasionally very likely to arrange these groups of elements in similar way to our own world. On very rare occasions, in identical ways, and somewhere in the middle, ways that are similar to our Earth, but with a certain twist.
This is also the explanations I use for my conworlds - many of them are alt-earths with different arrangement of landmasses.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: The World of Einea

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HopeCPressF wrote: 27 Dec 2020 15:53
Einea is slightly smaller than earth, with a gravity of 0.96G, and a wider equatorial tropical band due to being closer to its sun within the tropical band than Earth. Its location relative to Earth within the universe is unknown, but the planet itself exists in a solar system known as the Tekran System after its central star, Tekran. Other planets that orbit Tekran include the far-out gas giant, Yos.

Einea has an orbital rotation period of roughly 300 23-hour days, and the most common calendar, first posited by the Zhayry Priests of Skander-Sareen, divides that year into ten months of three ten-day weeks. Because the planet's rotation period is not entirely regular, occasionally a 'Vattedi' is performed, wherein an extra day is accepted as a public holiday by mathematicians. This day is frequently turned into an occasion for fetes and fairs.
An update: I've worked with some people much smarter than me and updated some details about Einea. The planet now has a gravity of .75 G, a surface area 64% that of Earth, and a year of 300 38-hour days. It has slightly more oxygen and is a few degrees on average colder than Earth.

I released the novel I was talking about before (here's a link if you like: mybook.to/TheAncientWound) and I'm planning the next one to start writing in November. At the moment, I've been working on more creatures. Wanna see em? Sure ya do.

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This is the tree-razer crab, a coconut crab descendant from Einea.

They're the largest land arthropods in the world, and my justification for them getting this large is that their Terran ancestors already have very active terrestrial lifestyles at a significant size and therefore might have more of a head start in evolving to even larger sizes.

They're raised by humans in huge, fortified farms for their meat, roe, and carapace. Still tied to the water, they breed in captivity in broad, shallow wells, and in the wild lay their eggs in dams built into rivers with tree trunks and logs. As their name suggests, their claws are shockingly powerful, able to cut down many trees with ease.

They're tropical savannah omnivores, in the wild. They’ll mostly eat the lusher parts of trees, often by chopping them down, as well as nuts and seeds and fruits, some specifically evolved to be huge in tandem with them, like certain species that relied on giant sloths in South America. Despite this majority plant-based diet, if they come across a dead or dying animal, they won't hesitate to feed.

To support their immense weight, they have some additional internal structural support, mainly in their limbs, via calcium deposit pseudo-bones. They’ve also evolved quadrupedalism as they’ve increased in size, with a reduction of their four hind legs, and are one of the only Einean megarthropds to do so.

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This is the great yawning eft, a speculatively evolved oceanic descendant of something like an Andrias giant salamander, compared to a modern human diver.

They live in cold seas and are dim-witted and slow-moving, gently pushing themselves through the water, namesake mouths agape. Though meaty, they’re generally avoided by human hunters as, when threatened, they secrete a sickening white slime. Most humans that live near their habitats consider them blessings, and believe gently touching one as it surfaces to breathe brings good luck.

They go through a larval stage like other amphibians, but importantly (considering the cold and danger of their habitat), they're birthed live - the mother internalises the egg mass after fertilisation and only releases her young when she feels them begin to move around.

They have large tadpoles, born at about the size of your fist, which inhabit a fish-like niche in shallow, nutrient-rich waters in the early part of their lives. While adults are nearly toothless, tadpoles have small, sharp teeth which they use to feed on sessile or very slow prey, like sponges and corals. They're zippier than adults, but still not the fastest things in the reef.

As they grow, they travel further into the water column. At this juvenile stage, they look something like axolotls, with visible feathery gills. At this time, they often 'tag along' with an adult of their species, picking parasites from their skin, eating the food that falls from their mouths, and using them for protection. It's common to see an adult with many juvenile hangers-on.

Once they're about three metres long, no longer with visible gills, their juvenile teeth fall out and they strike out on their own as individual filter-feeders.

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This is the kneebiter beetle. Central Tokarey, the kneebiter's abode, is an arid desert dotted with spinifex and cacti and occupied mostly by various marsupials. The kneebiter has evolved to hunt these, ranging in size from wallabies to small kangaroos, and it is very fast, as fast as 100km/h in bursts. As its name suggests, it aims for the knees, clamping down with its jaws. This disables the most dangerous part of its marsupial prey. It also feeds on smaller insects, marsupials, and other fauna.

Their reproduction is also tied to marsupials. The desert shunt is a huge, shuffling desert marsupial similar to the extinct Terran Diprotodon, and being such an immense creature, it makes immense turds. These pockets of moisture and nutrients are excellent places for kneebiters to lay their eggs. As such, desert travellers often make a habit of stabbing nearby dung piles with pitchforks or other pointy items to dissuade them from spawning murderous mega-beetles at an inconvenient time.

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This is the pelagic duckmole, an oceanic platypus relative that forages for shellfish in the frigid seas around Tilee and Olloland in Einea. It's about five and a half feet long.

And, to finish, here's a size comparison of all the creatures so far featured, with a six-foot-tall woman (much more common a lower-gravity world) as a reference.

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Re: The World of Einea

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Oo excellent! An update!

For now, all I can say is that we'll need a bigger fly swatter!
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Re: The World of Einea

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I like the elephant (niche) crab [:)]
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Re: The World of Einea

Post by Khemehekis »

HopeCPressF, I find your conzoölogy to be magic-al-ly delicious! I’d sure love to order tree-razer crab at a restaurant!
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Re: The World of Einea

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Thank you everybody! I've been doing more art and more worldbuilding to go along with it, so here are two more creatures - both of them are beetles, though 'beetle' is a bit of a rough term - a long time ago, there would have been an ancestor to the major group of Einean megarthropods, establishing their basal features - reinforced legs, active lungs - which would have spread into shapes convergently similar to larger versions of those on Earth and Einea, including beetles. Anyway - here are two. I'm also trying a different art style, so let me know what you think.

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In the southern reaches of the world of Einea, near the icy end of the Iztian Sea in the lands of southern Tileé and Olloland, the thumper beetle roams, alone and in herds, feeding on native grasses, shrubs, and berries. They're so named for the thump thump thump of their wing nubs in their wing casings. Too heavy to fly, their wing muscles are instead used to heat their bodies to an adequate temperature in order to move, tussle, and mate. It's a sort of endothermy achieved via brute force. On cold enough mornings, as seen here, the heat created can steam out from beneath the creature's carapace and into the crisp air.

Thumper beetles, despite their fearsome appearance, are relatively harmless to humans and will only become aggressive if provoked.

Note, also, in the left of the image, Einea's two moons, Middagh (green) and Saddagh (grey) can be seen. Middagh was terraformed several million years ago, and appears green due to aeroplankton. I will not elaborate further.

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In oceans all around the world of Einea, the great diving beetle takes the niche that orcas or, earlier in our Earth's history, early whales like Basilosaurus might have taken. Pursuit predators, their main prey include large fish, seals, oceanic platypuses, and the furthest actual cetaceans have managed to evolve in Einea - semi-aquatic otter-like beasts.

Swimming with powerful strokes of their flattened back four limbs, the beetle will strike with its clawed front pair, bringing their prey to their mouths and disabling it as quickly as possible. The creature's enormous abdomen is a complex network of respiratory systems, circulatory systems, ballast, a pair of tightly folded and colourful wings used for mating display, and a sound system - part of the chamber beneath the elytra is built to make a thunderous mating call that's one of the loudest sounds in the Einean ocean. Females also use the space under the elytra to store their eggs, as the space is frequently refreshed with air from the surface.

Notable also in this image are the multitude of various fish, and the juvenile great yawning efts, that approach similar sizes to great diving beetles in adulthood, but pursue a different niche - filter feeding. These youngsters are active predators, still with frilly gills and teeth that will dissapear with age. They are quite agile, hanging around the macropredator for scraps, and can produce a noxious slime if threatened. It's a risk, but it's a risk they're willing to take.
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Re: The World of Einea

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Today's going to be an introduction to a little critter with an unfortunate reproductive cycle, and then some prose about two of Einea's cities and one of its countries - Canalas City, the heart of the Canalian Empire and the country of Dubcloch, and the strange, stifled country of Melhesta, and its capital of Betholozi.

Also, I've updated my first post!

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If you've ever seen a newborn marsupial, you'll know that they're fleshy, veiny, formless little things. In Terran species, these little crunchy pink jelly babies must undertake a journey from the birthing canal to the pouch to suckle. What would happen if, instead, those juveniles evolved into botfly-like larvae and fed on a host rather than being nursed by a mother? Enter the bloodmouse. Or, more likely, the bloodmouse enters you.

A small species of desert marsupial, bloodmice have adapted to parasitise large creatures in the interior deserts of the continent of Tokarey known as desert shunts, something like huge wombats or the extinct Terran Diprotodon. After mating and gorging herself on food, the female bloodmouse gestates her offspring for a brief period. The young, or larvae, are birthed, and move to the pouch in a swarm. The female does have milk, but it is highly nutrient-rich and in short supply, intended only as a kick-start to the larvae's parasitism.

The mother seeks an eligible host, climbs aboard, and pierces a hole with their specially-adapted teeth and anti-coagulant saliva. Then, squatting over the hole, she releases a hormone that triggers a similar action to her young's initial journey to her pouch - only this exodus is spurred on by the smell of blood. Those larvae strong enough enter the wound. The mother is then free to leave and begin the process anew.

While desert shunts are the primary host of the bloodmouse, any sufficiently large (and sufficently soft-skinned) animal that roams the desert, including macropods (kangaroos, wallabies), azhdarchid pterosaurs, and unwary humans, can become their hosts. Thankfully, bloodmouse grubs rarely threaten the safety of their hosts if detected early. However, they can reach lengths of up to two inches long before leaving their host's body, and can become very dangerous if left unchecked.

Image
A photo of Andalucía that has some similarities to Melhesta as I imagine it.

On Melhesta and its capital, Betholozi

Betholozi, nestled against the foothills of the Great Divorcing Range, is a metropolitan, stifled city. The entirety of the country of Melhesta stands starkly green, yellow, pink with grass and foliage, to the orange and white sand of the Tokareyan Interior Desert. This is due to a uniquely Melhestan and incredibly efficient moisture recycling system, in which water is extracted from underground in the water table, and even from the nearby mountain range via enormous qanats, and then is never allowed to leave. Great magical collecting towers like metal sea urchins on enormous spear shafts look down on the country. It’s not immediately obvious how they could be built so high. These, using a clever system of charging magical machines at their bases using the latent energy of potted biwids stimulated by sound, allows any water that evaporates up into the atmosphere over Melhesta to be formed into clouds and rained back Einewards. This makes farming much easier, and life, where it is allowed to live by humankind, flourishes here.
However, this centralisation creates a kind of hydraulic empire. Any town, any region, that butts up against the capital of Betholozi in political or social intent can be cut off and quickly returned to the scorching desert.
The city’s old town is sandstone, sand being the most available substance, and centres on the Carmine River, the only area habitable before the invention of the water-recycling technology. Houses here are short, geometric, some built partly or fully into the ground in the style of some indigenous peoples of the Dubclochian province of Tanateum. Here, some ancient pottery shows depictions of the Inivanese¹ small gods – that is, the many gods or spirits worshipped in traditional Inivanese religions – in forms quite similar to those seen in Inivan today. This reflects Melhesta’s cultural origins as a fleeing disgraced Inivanese political faction in the early 300’s NM. In the seven hundred years since, Melhesta’s small gods have changed drastically, taking more influence from the marsupial and megarthropod²-filled deserts of their home than the thirns³ and hooved animals of Inivan. The burgeoning Melhestan belief system has also been influenced by Mondinism⁴ from the east, with some small gods rebranded as messengers, prophets, or spirits in the service of Mond – though there has been a noticeable reluctance to place Mond himself in the same category as a small god.
From the old town, the houses become darker, shinier stone, the kind that requires mining to dig for in the desert. Potted plants are common, and water fountains very rare, but not unseen. The enormous, thin shapes of the water collectors make the city seem almost like a layer of detritus below an alien canopy. Despite the apparent free moisture, water-derived objects are still at a premium. The rugs and bags and clothes and shoes offered in markets are usually made from fur, often from the coats of desert shunts, or the skins of desert crocodiles. Shelves are made of iron. Corrugated iron roofs are common in the slums, which unfortunately exist, in the city’s driest outskirts. The greatest markers of wealth are mammalian livestock, and wood. A house entirely made of wood is a testament to the expenditure of an obscene amount of water. A herd of goats says something similar. If the old town is yellow and the newer town, grey, then the newest, and richest, of all, is brown.
You walk down a street in central Betholozi. Two children, tanned dark and playing a game, jumping and shouting excitedly in their lisping language, look at you curiously. You stand in the shadow of a Mondine cathedral. One is dressed in green, woven shunt hair dyed with the crushed shells of a desert megarthropod beetle. The other is in rags.
You marvel at the difference in the texture of the air here as compared to the desert you were in only days ago. It’s almost cloying, but not quite, with arcane windblowers set throughout the city to move the air and keep it from growing muggy. A desert flower not much bigger than your thumbnail grows out from between four pale grey cobblestones, and you lean down to look at it, wondering how they might grow differently here, a place in the middle of a desert, with moist air and a cool breeze.
A watchman walks past, and you stiffen slightly. He’s short and broad, moustachioed in the stereotypical Melhestan way, holding a musket not at attention but at the hip like he plans to fire it quite soon, swaggering in his thin, flowing mustard-coloured uniform. He peers at you through sun-blocking glasses, through two tiny dots, and nods before walking away. You wonder how he sees anything through those.
The cathedrals are strange here. Coming from Canalas City, where they’re stately and uniform, majestic and sweeping, here they crouch like hungry iridescent beetles. Instead of polished marble or gold, some towers are decorated with polished, reinforced tree-razer carapace, swirling with brilliant colours. Windows tend more towards rectangular than the usual moon-round shape, and nothing is quite as tall, instead spreading out, taking up space, squat and lounging or hunched by the roads with green life between their cobble cracks and red desert dirt peeking out.
They have a specific look to their juksha here, you notice. Like the people, they’re short and sturdy, but unlike the people, they’re mostly black and white, alternating in blotchy stripes across their flanks, with an orange nose like a wrinkled old fruit. You pass one and reach out to caress it, but it grunts at you and you decide against it.
Parliament House isn’t built from wood, but it is built onto a series of terraces that eventuate in the tallest point of the city, spiralling with wheat and potatoes all the way down to the street level of the rest of the town. Agriculture is power here. Water is power – and power is, thus, so easily taken away by the men and women within those pale stone walls upon that tower.

~~~

On Canalas City

Canalas City has grown like a fungus and hardened like a fossil, uneven and meandering in structure, roads and alleys often stopping dead or suddenly shrinking down in height or width. The difference between the richer and poorer boroughs is strikingly one of auditory volume – the rich boroughs, such as not-a-hair-out-of-place O’dea and solemn holy Vandhilchurch stand as among the quietest of all. The industrial heart of the city, Limewell, and the drowning hanger-on of a borough, Nearphinton, are two of the noisiest. In Limewell, the air is eternally filled with the sounds of men hammering, pistons pushing, gears grinding against each other, the rend of metal, the hiss of steam, and when the Canalas-Laixas line is completed in 1043 NM, the thunder of locomotives. How much more tragic, and how much less productive, is the noise of Nearphinton; worn down for centuries by the Arphi Canal and a too-small industrial sector for the powers that be to care, it’s half-sunken, and travel is easier by canoe than foot in many places. The air is filled with the sounds of people repairing their broken homes with what scraps they can find, and singing and dancing, bone-thin and desperate, in a hope that a visitor from another borough or abroad might take pity and throw a mezzevo.


Footnotes:

¹: Inivan is an island country located east of the continent of Tokarey, known for wine and tea and great palaces.
²: Megarthropods are any of several species of large insects or other arthropod that have, through weight-supporting and breathing adaptations, evolved to reach great sizes.
³: ‘Thirn’ is the common term for a non-avian theropod dinosaur. They are considered a kind of bird.
⁴: Mondinism is the predominant religion of the continent of Tokarey, which involves worship of the god Mond, as well as any number of prophets or demons associated with him, and reverence for Einea’s two moons.
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Re: The World of Einea

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Bloodmice are a crazy idea. I like it [:)]
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Re: The World of Einea

Post by Backstroke_Italics »

singing and dancing, bone-thin and desperate, in a hope that a visitor from another borough or abroad might take pity and throw a mezzevo.
So a southern California tourist trap?
I did it. I made the world's worst book blog.
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Re: The World of Einea

Post by HopeCPressF »

Hello everyone! Here's another post, with some responses first.
Creyeditor wrote: 16 Oct 2021 22:30 Bloodmice are a crazy idea. I like it [:)]
Thank you! They're heavily inspired by the metamorph birds from Sheather888's Serina project, if you're curious.
Backstroke_Italics wrote: 19 Oct 2021 02:47
singing and dancing, bone-thin and desperate, in a hope that a visitor from another borough or abroad might take pity and throw a mezzevo.
So a southern California tourist trap?
I've never been to southern California, but you're probably not far off.

Einean Magic and its Consequences

In Einea, magic is essentially the process of reaching into different layers of reality, where things act differently, to enact change on the usual world.

Most of the time, a magicworker will consume a magical substance, and then use that to act on the usual world, the Eine, through the first magical layer, the Quodrine. Imagine the magical world is a layer of plastic and you're reaching through it, like it's a glove that forms around your hand.

However, large enough expulsions of magical energy can actively break down the barriers between the usual and unusual worlds (see the thin places mentioned later, and this can have disastrous results even near small leaks - a common side-effect of magical radiation is the transmutation of some or all body parts of organic life to stone. But, let's say, and the knowledge of how to do it is tenuous because it's only ever been done once and everyone who was involved died, one manages to discover the magical equivalent to the nuclear option.

The one time this was tried, every single layer of reality (and there are roughly eight) was split down the middle with violent force. The city in which it took place fell in to the layers beyond, and these layers are not designed to hold physical matter, so they were twisted and disintegrated. Parts of the city's ruins rapidly transmuted into water and hair and flesh and other minerals, bending out of shape, and they were transported two hundred kilometres to the east due to a failure of locality. There was a catastrophic physical explosion, too, which sent Einea as a whole into an ashy, irradiated winter for seven years.

This event was known as the Sudden Shock.

Magic in Einea is accessed through the use of multidimensional material, usually in the form of plant matter from plants called biwids. These biwids can be broken down into tinctures called toxauments which are more concentrated. The dimensions that make up mundane and magical Einean reality are known as the Einic Layers. Here they are.
Please note that before the late 1040s, the Quodrine was the only layer formally studied, and the others were purely theoretical. Advancements in magitechnology have changed this, though much is still mysterious. Also keep in mind that this is more of a spectrum than a stepped ladder - theoretically, there are infinite layers in between. Consider these more as landmarks.

Eine: The normal dimension through which matter, time and distance interact in the usual ways.
Quodrine: The dimension most easily accessed and through which magic is performed.
Aiverdine: The most heavily irradiated layer. Deadly, but has interesting properties re: light.
Ivendrine: The layer in which concepts such as locality are especially weakened.
Hechtine: A more stable Quodrine, with a higher fidelity for small particles for study. Very useful for scientists.
Ochtarine: Concerning. Beyond human comprehension.

Finally, an example of how magic interacts with the natural world.

Image
Don't mind the sketch.

In areas of Einea where the layers between the different planes of reality grow thin, such as here in the Tuuril Wood of Tilée, the high degree of latent magical disturbance can cause anomalies. One kind of these are the switchspaces. The switchspaces are areas of land, air, or water (depending on from where they are drawn) that simultaneously exist, in some form, in two locations. They are always perfectly geometric in shape, corners and edges perfect to the nanometre.

For reasons not yet known, switchspaces found in the Tuuril Wood tend towards either a cubic or diamond shape. This one is roughly six metres to a side, and was transferred here from the deep sea. The corpse of a great yawning eft, which in its natural place would provide food for bottom-dwelling sea life, now feeds a host of switchspace-adapted fishes, as well as two niefalars (similar to Terran Anurognathids) on its exposed tail. A robed human watches on.

Important to note is that this prism, being as it is from the bottom of the sea, is still pressurised as such, and anything that enters it from the Wood will be instantly crushed, and (almost) anything that leaves it will instantly disintegrate. The Wood and its creatures have adapted to this exchange, with the biomass that falls from the switchspaces feeding the forest, and the specially adapted fishes within the spaces greedily feeding on whatever stumbles into their bounds - usually insects.
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Re: The World of Einea

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Great post. I like the general feel [:)]
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Re: The World of Einea

Post by dva_arla »

A fine conworld with an intricately-developed lore you've got there; and very intriguingly delivered -- There is much to be learnt presenting a conworld/alt-history from the way you do it.

What tools did you use to make the maps in the first two of your posts?
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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