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For all its unbearableness during the torturous heat of day, Tévopío was beautiful by night. It had been the capital city for most of the twenty-two millennia since the great prophet Oksresko had died, giving the Ksreskézaian Empire his equally great name, and every few generations it would become fashionable in the eyes of the noblefolk to decorate the city yet further with new public works and spectacles, as if to dangle their power in front of rival Wemno, on the Eastern continent. The Wemnians, for their part, were a mighty folk, and what I have been told of their city suggests it was little less heavily-beautified; elsewise, I doubt wemnekía would be our word for audacity.
It was sundown now; we had spent most of the late afternoon helping Dzetzo resolve a paper jam that transpired almost the moment he agreed to assist us. I was unsure at first of why he was so willing to drop his work and go with us, but the presence of both his sons suggested it might have been a matter of ancestral respect. A number of poorer but respectable families kept small reliquaries in tribute to their heritage in alcoves inside the Archive; the wealthier tended to keep such things on their own property if they could afford the necessary rites to consecrate a chamber or garden. In a way, many of them respected the timeless grip of their gardens almost as much as we do.
For all its unbearableness during the torturous heat of day, Tévopío was beautiful by night. It had been the capital city for most of the twenty-two millennia since the great prophet Oksresko had died, giving the Ksreskézaian Empire his equally great name, and every few generations it would become fashionable in the eyes of the noblefolk to decorate the city yet further with new public works and spectacles, as if to dangle their power in front of rival Wemno, on the Eastern continent. The Wemnians, for their part, were a mighty folk, and what I have been told of their city suggests it was little less heavily-beautified; elsewise, I doubt wemnekía would be our word for audacity.
It was sundown now; we had spent most of the late afternoon helping Dzetzo resolve a paper jam that transpired almost the moment he agreed to assist us. I was unsure at first of why he was so willing to drop his work and go with us, but the presence of both his sons suggested it might have been a matter of ancestral respect. A number of poorer but respectable families kept small reliquaries in tribute to their heritage in alcoves inside the Archive; the wealthier tended to keep such things on their own property if they could afford the necessary rites to consecrate a chamber or garden. In a way, many of them respected the timeless grip of their gardens almost as much as we do.
So I was poring over some of the output from NaNoGenMo 2015 and came across the frustrating realization that none of the stories presented (or at least those I read) had much of anything to do with stories of actual substance: the most ambitious aimed to mimic the narrative structure of an adventure without anything in the way of an underlying theme or message being developed. So that sucks. […]
Iain Banks's Culture series has been a persistent influence in many respects, and as one of its defining characteristics is how machine sentience is manifested and explored, it is hard to avoid these topics in the context of Thet, a setting already laden with rebellious exoskeleton suits and various transhumanist notions. So, without ado, a comparison of ship psyches from different civilizations. […]
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I fear I may have given away too much already to those of you who have not heard this story before, but I will be patient about it anyway—and without much regard for Íora's ever-so-subtle disapproval. It is a story you need to hear, sisters, whether or not you can stomach it now. When I am gone and you have only your own memories of this night to pass on to your own grand-daughters, perhaps even after we have found a new home, you will want to be able to tell the tale properly. Gleméa was interrupted similarly by Kona, you see, when telling me her own story of her childhood, and I have but the scantiest detail for some of the most intriguing chapters of it. I have no intention of letting yet another great account of the history of our people become filled with similar lacunae—let the ravages of time do that without my assistance. […]
I fear I may have given away too much already to those of you who have not heard this story before, but I will be patient about it anyway—and without much regard for Íora's ever-so-subtle disapproval. It is a story you need to hear, sisters, whether or not you can stomach it now. When I am gone and you have only your own memories of this night to pass on to your own grand-daughters, perhaps even after we have found a new home, you will want to be able to tell the tale properly. Gleméa was interrupted similarly by Kona, you see, when telling me her own story of her childhood, and I have but the scantiest detail for some of the most intriguing chapters of it. I have no intention of letting yet another great account of the history of our people become filled with similar lacunae—let the ravages of time do that without my assistance. […]
I have been toying around with a theory lately.
It's a wildly unpopular one, so that's fun.
Well. Not so much a theory as it is an excuse.
Calvin and Hobbes is harmful. […]
It's a wildly unpopular one, so that's fun.
Well. Not so much a theory as it is an excuse.
Calvin and Hobbes is harmful. […]
Two related announcements:
1. I now really, really dislike Archaic Lilitic as a family of languages.
2. The script traditionally known as títina (internally, ADX revision 5) has a lot of ductus issues that, as a certain Swiss gentleman has pointed out, liberally violate my own criticisms of many other conscripts.
So! There is going to be some reworking. […]
1. I now really, really dislike Archaic Lilitic as a family of languages.
2. The script traditionally known as títina (internally, ADX revision 5) has a lot of ductus issues that, as a certain Swiss gentleman has pointed out, liberally violate my own criticisms of many other conscripts.
So! There is going to be some reworking. […]
The subject of women in Ksreskézaian society and pre-Ksreskézaian society, other than the Slokdtabasa, is something I've pretty much categorically avoided. If I have written anything, either on Memory or in passing elsewhere, it hasn't been very strong and it certainly hasn't been anything so memorable that I remember what I said, excepting perhaps a remark or two about non-plug-in-socket genitals. I think maybe it's time to set the record straight.
In the time of the Ksreskézai, the naming of houses followed the name of its patriarch—Tévopo, Chúkoto, Gazdatto—but this was not always their way. The true centrepiece of an Oksian household was once the single female, who lived much longer than the males and functioned as a matriarch. This was the way of the Oksasa for countless millennia, and was a pattern that could still be seen in other related species and in the remnants of the other Oksian civilizations on Ksreskézo. Such a household would be like an insect colony, writ small.
Then came Oksresko. […]
In the time of the Ksreskézai, the naming of houses followed the name of its patriarch—Tévopo, Chúkoto, Gazdatto—but this was not always their way. The true centrepiece of an Oksian household was once the single female, who lived much longer than the males and functioned as a matriarch. This was the way of the Oksasa for countless millennia, and was a pattern that could still be seen in other related species and in the remnants of the other Oksian civilizations on Ksreskézo. Such a household would be like an insect colony, writ small.
Then came Oksresko. […]
The Xhomitz Genetic Bottleneck was discovered shortly after their species joined the Cassiopeia Treaty Organisation in 50010 lky. Due to their beliefs around reincarnation—that every birth among their people is the rebirth of whoever has been dead the longest; that the tribe's strength is diluted by large numbers; and that the "slack" of a large generation is cleared every 576 years when their divine calendar rolls over—their ene pool displays an incredible amount of inbreeding and loss-of-function mutations. It is generally thought that that strong selective pressure from the environment is responsible for keeping the whole species from collapsing. Myriad genetic disorders are endemic to the population. This exhibit presents a selection of historic and modern efforts to revitalise the Xhomitzi genome, funded in part by the Department of Biomedical History at the University of Nionosca.
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