The Multiverse Inn

Discussions about constructed worlds, cultures and any topics related to constructed societies.
Wario Toad 32
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

Post by Wario Toad 32 »

Hi I'm Nöttir Furjauch /nœtir furjaux/ from Frankthorf, Falochland. Frankthorf is the capital city of Falochland with about 9-11 Million People.
Khemehekis
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: "We still use the old Mannish names for the days, but I don't know what they mean. They kind of sound like yours, too: steredaye, sunneday, monesday, twiesdaye, wethandaye, throendaye, freyendaye. I like the sound of Denmark! There is a country of Daine in the hill country to the east called Tanamarch. They are very stout warriors!" Nico purses his lips a moment: "But I doubt your Danamen are related to us Tana kind!"
"Saturday comes from Saturn", says Jim. "The name of a god from Ancient Rome. Also a planet near Earth. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptine. Sunday and Monday come from the words 'sun' and 'moon'. And no, Danes don't have wings. 'Daine' does remind me of 'Dane', though. The Danes of Denmark have tall, narrow heads and straight blonde hair and blue eyes. They're human, look similar to the Swedes and Norwegians. They have casinos and sex clubs in that part of the world, but it's quite cold. Even in the cold weather, people will dress scantily there. Scandinavia -- as those countries collectively are cold -- was one of the first parts of the world to allow women to go topless at the beach. Now women can go topless in public almost everywhere on the planet!"
"Our Buddhists have a prince too", said Jim. "Prince Siddhartha Gautama. He ran away from the palace and 'found himself', as we say. "He's considered a prophet, but not a god. There's no God in the Buddhist religion. Just some universal truths about life being suffering. Not that I agree with all that. The most suffering I did was when I lost my left eye! And our Jews come from a nation called Israel. That's in the Middle East, not the West. The West here refers to countries where White people came from, like England and Scotland and Germany and France and Italy."
"Qotaman..." Nico shrugs his left shoulder: "Could be! I've never heard of Yisiriel or a middle east --- the only place east of the Eastlands is the Ocean of Sunrise! But then, your lands seem to be in the realms of Sunset rather than Sunrise. Is that why for you they arose in the east, and for us they came out of the Great West?"
"Israel existed a long time ago", says Jim. "Then it disappeared from the map for millennia. Then after World War II ended, in the forties, a nation formed in the Middle East that they called Israel. The Jews had an official homeland. But there were also Palestinians, another ethnic group, who were forced to live in that nation. The Palestinians were already there were that chunk of land was crafted into Israel. American presidents would typically strongly support Israel, and there was a lot of fighting between the Israelis, who practiced Judaism, and the Palestinians, who practiced Islam. We had these obnoxious Americans called 'neocons' who were totally fixated on keeping Israel and starting wars in seemingly random choices of country. They sneered at war protestors, and called people 'irrelevant' for caring about issues unrelated to war and foreign policy. Then they had the nerve, the nerve, to claim that their ideology had a monopoly on being in touch with reality. They were like a plague on America, but they were the dominant political force euring the George W. Bush administration. Then, in the twelveties, the Two-state Solution came, and now it is divided into two countries, Israel and Palestine."

"The lands of Sunset?", asks Jim. "You mean the West, where the sun sets? Maybe." The look on Jim's face makes it clear that he is still a little coneused. "But Israel and those other countries are in the Middle East. That's not the true East. For us, the East is countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines! A little more to the West and you get countries like India and Pakistan, and west of that you have the Middle East -- Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc."
Jim thinks for a minute, then figures out how to explain it. "Well . . . I think in your world people actually see the gods. But on Earth, God is a recluse. No one knows for sure what he looks like."
"Perhaps in your world, Heavenly Father is simply staying at home while in ours, he and his folk still walk the green earth at times?" Nico smiles again in wonder: "It still wonders me greatly how many things our worlds share, but they are not identical in their shape or history. Like, I wish your world had Daine living there! And we don't have the black music that turns my mind into mushrooms!"
Jim laughs. "Yes, our world has a lot of crazy music nowadays. But no imps, and no thaumology. The 'E-word' and dwarves are confined to fantasy novels. And fewer kinds of sapient being than yours. We have humans, we have Sasquatch, which are only kinda sapient, and we have extraterrestrial visitors who aren't FROM Earth, despite visiting here, like the Greys and the Kelly-Hopkinsville goblins." Jim pauses and thinks. "Have you ever heard of something called the multiverse? That's the theory that similar but different universes coexist on a greater plane of existence called the 'multiverse'. Each universe is in its own dimension. Maybe we're from two universes in the multiverse that diverged a long time ago. It explains why our Norse gods have similar names to the gods from Gea, and why English sounds similar to some of the human, or 'Mannish' as you say, languages where you live. The neat thing about the multiverse is that once you discover how to visit a different universe, they say you'll be able to time-travel into the past -- or the future -- of your own universe!" And with that, Jim throws his hands out.
"He doesn't show his face to mere mortals like me. Atheists say everything is natural, that there's no God causing it all to happen. For instance, we've all but proven that animals and plants on Earth evolved. No one knows for sure whether there was a God force guiding their evolution, but atheists and agnostics say there doesn't need to be a God for species to evolve like that."
Nico shrugs again, this time with both shoulders, as if to say, 'well, how else could it be!?'
"Those are my thoughts", says Jim. "I believe there was a God who started it all, who breathed something out of nothing. And I believe that one day I'm going to go to Heaven and have eternal life!"
"Your queens sound good and just", says Jim. "But on Earth, many evil people -- real tyrants -- have become king or president or prime minister. There was Adolf Hitler, a German dictator who killed Jewish people with gas. There was Ivan the Terrible, a bloodthirsty czar of Russia -- 'czar' is what the Russians called their kings. There was George W. Bush, a bumbling American president who told a lie about weapons of mass destruction and sent America into war with a Middle Eastern nation called Iraq. There are U.S. presidents like Donald Trump and Rutherford LeGrand. This LeGrand guy, he has a proposal to keep gay and lesbian couples -- two fathers or two mothers -- from adopting children. He takes dirty money. He says autoids will 'make the economy great' -- whatever that means."
Nico almost beams with pride at Jim's compliment: "Oh, yes! The queens of Daine are truly good and just and compassionate. They are, mnm, the best of our girls! How can we not love them? These tyrants of yours sound very bad indeed. How can your councils even choose so unwisely? Or, wait...I don't even know how it is you Meriquun choose your queens! Um. There is for us a Great Council, and it comprises a chosen emissary from each queenhold in the land. Enca was sent to sit in council for a time a couple years back. I'll tell you: those girls really know to talk! I know I talk more than most boys, but these girls' talk was out of the bucket and flowing over the floor! Anyway, it is all these emissaries that will contemplate and choose who the new Greatqueen should be."
"Well," says Jim, "Americans choose their presidents -- and these presidents have always been male -- by elections. Everyone over 16 is eligible to cast one vote for the president of the United States. The presidential candidates have represented different political parties over the years -- Whigs, Federalists, Anti-federalists, Democrats -- but right now the two big parties are the Revolution Party and the Republican Party. Whoever gets the most votes becomes the president for the next four or eight years. When Americans elected Donald Trump in 2016, however, he became president in 2017 and then the Revolution Party came into being and seized the White House -- what we call the place where the president lives. They took over the country without a vote, but that was a good thing, because the Revvies gave us so, so many reforms. They brought America into the twenty-first century. Then in 2024, the Revvie government opened up the doors to voting again, and the Republicans took the White House." Jim looks down and frowns. "Four years with LeGrand hasn't been good. I hope Lyndsay Spelt wins. She's from the Revolution Party. Maybe if all of you have such great queens, a woman will do America some good. I was 13 years old, three years below voting age, when LeGrand won. I never voted for LeGrand, and now I'm GLAD I can say I didn't!"
"Aye," Nico sighs deeply. "His story was very unsettling. Yassun was his name. Yassun Syonico. . . . But Farun got her wish! The sea rushed in from the south and washed away whatever was left, and now a great arm of the Sea of Sandh connects with the Midworld Sea! But then Farun's troubles really started. All the people that had escaped the destruction of their lands north of the Sea were settled in the Plains of Vandashanno and they've been causing trouble there with the Daine of that country. The emperor of Ehrran was very displeased over the destruction of many cities of his lands. Her domains around the Puntish Sea have revolted and even the emperor of Axiom, ever Mesher's rival in the south, is itching to take advantage of Farun's weakness. This Yassun was expelled, and he set out on his great journey into the East, into our lands. He believes that anyone who travels into the West now will find a very different empire there. Only according to Yassun, it won't be him that travels that way again --- too many kings and emperors and faruns have a price on his head!"
"That sounds like a fantastic story!", says Jim. "A seismos . . . you mean what we call an earthquake? We have those in California. Seismologists were talking for years about an earthquake called The Big One, and that one finally hit in 2021. A tragic day for California. But that story . . . I'll have to make that into a song or something."
"Well, the 'Fair Folk' in these movies are portrayed as noble and benevolent", says Jim. "And they're immortal. They're nothing like your Fair Folk. And they speak languages called Quenya and Sindarin!"
Nico's eyes narrow slightly as he looks at Jim. "I wonder... Maybe these Fair Folk in your pictures that move are more like the Teyor, the Elder Kindred. They are certainly nothing like the, the 'E-word', was it? They are wise and dwimcrafty even beyond our kind! I don't know if they are immortal or not, but it is said they live far longer than we do."
"Never heard the name 'Teyor'," says Jim, "But yeah, these 'E-word' live basically forever. They always seem like 'Elders', but they don't age once they've grown up. However, these creatures are pure fiction, so they can't really be the same as the Teyor. The legend goes that they have an affinity with trees."
"Very strange", says Jim. "In fact, some Greys will abduct a human woman, and they'll splice their genes with hers, and impregnate her, and then take their Grey-human splice baby out of her body."
Nico's jaw drops and eyes widen with incredulity. How barbaric! He shudders at the thought. "How can a people so dwimcrafty so abuse others that way! They must be truly evil! I would not want to meet such a traveller in our place, someone who will steal a girl and rape her and then steal the baby!" His face draws into a grimmace and his fist smacks the thick wood of the table. "No, we would fight against such evil people as that!"
"Well," says Jim. "Greys are just like humans or Daine. There are good Greys, and there are evil Greys. The ones who travel in spacecraft seem to be disproportionately evil, though. Those are the ones who abduct and rape humans. But there are some Greys", Jim says in a softer voice, "Who will spread messages of goodwill and peace and tell humans to be kind to all species. These people who listen to Big Messages from Greys and other aliens are called 'contactees'."
"'Kindred' sounds old-fashioned says Jim. We just call them 'species'. One species, two species. Is 'thede' a word from a Daine language, or is it from a human nation like Auntimoany?"
"Aye, it is a Mannish word. Our word for that is drorenno; a clan or house we call wata."
"I like 'drorenno'," says Jim. "And 'wata'. The words just roll off my tongue."
"Oh," says Jim. "Some girls in their twenties and thirties add names like that too. But generally, no matter whether they're living at the husband's house, the wife's house, or a brand-new house, they won't talk about new 'clans'. It's more like forming your own branch." Jim snorts. "I'm sorry, I have no interest in starting a family because of my bisexuality, I don't really get how this family stuff works. I'm never getting married. That's not uncommon in 2028."
"I'm not surprised. Even among us, bards often don't marry. It is said that a bard who is not married to his instrument and her music, then he is no true bard!"
"Really?", asks Jim. "That sounds kind of cool! Yes, musicians seem more likely than average not to marry on Earth. Rock stars in particular are unlikely to have wives and kids. I'm 17, though, and it's rare for a 17-year-old to be married or be a parent. Pregnant teens become less common in America with every passing decade."
Nico smiles at this: "Nicolas is also a nice name!"
"I'll just keep calling you Nico", says Jim.
"Oh, we have lots of pairs of words like that", says Jim. "For instance, 'beach' means land by the side of the ocean, a nice place to surf. But you never want to change the /i/ to /ɪ/!"
Nico takes a moment to work this one out: "I know 'beysh' is a kind of tree --- that we call nelloran --- but you say it is also the strand by the Sea; and 'biysh' is a girl dog --- that we call harcunima." He crinkles his nose, not quite sure where Jim is leading him here: "I'm afraid I can't sort your riddle, Gem!"
"Beysh? Sounds like 'beach'. We have a tree called a beech too, but we spell that B-E-E-C-H, and we spell the 'strand', as you called it, by the sea B-E-A-C-H. We don't have beech trees in California though, far as I know: here 'beach' means what's by the sea, and we have a lot of those in Califonia, so when we say 'beach', we normally mean 'strand' by the sea. As for the other word, yes, it means a girl dog, but it's also used to insult human girls and women. It's like calling a woman a whore. An American girl would not like to be compared to a female dog! Oh, and we also use the word as a verb, meaning to kvetch."
Last edited by Khemehekis on 04 Oct 2017 06:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Khemehekis
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

Post by Khemehekis »

Firebird766 wrote:Both Netza and Risatri look very confused about what, exactly, is so wrong with what Jim is describing. Corporal punishment isn't strange to Naqil, and nor is the idea that children should be polite and quiet and pay attention instead of being noisy. "I'm not sure what you're so concerned about with that," Netza ventures. "Children have hardly any sense at all, and are lawless little beasts if you give them a chance. You have to discipline them somehow or they'll just turn into lawless adults."
Jim is taken aback by Netza's description of children as "lawless little beasts". He's also surprised that someone who had struck him as rebellious and resistant to discipline was praising the value of discipline this way, so his left eyebrow goes up, without Jim even noticing. "I've been around children, and most of them are nice people, when they're not talking about Cotton Candy Castle or whatever franchise has caught their fancy", Jim says. "Children would just become alienated when they turned into teen-agers, because of all the hurtful and repressive rules adults were putting onto them. That alienation would lead to them being lawless. The Millennial Generation started off going to school with those repressive rules in the classroom, and they turned into alienated rebels because of the way the faculty that their schools treated them. Then, when Donald Trump won the 2016 election, they lawlessly trashed public places in the streets. I was 5 years olf, and I remember the day! These were people of about 25 who had been raised by strict parents and teachers and principals and got 'triggered' by the thought of another fascist like Donald 'Chump'. But those rebellious attitudes also led them to overthrow Trump in 2017 and install Brandon Zuniga and the Revolution Party's government. So that was a good thing."

"And besides", adds Jim, "You need to foster children's creativity. Children are naturally creative if you give them a chance. I matured into a creative teen-age boy who writes cool songs. Who here wants to hear me sing?", he asks to the whole tavern. "Does anyone hear want me to play and sing a Purple Kohlrabi song for them?"
"Ehhhh," says Risatri, shrugging. "You have to be a noble to do government work, but there's- we have a ruling Council, see. Nine men or women, each in charge of a fundamental aspect of the country. Usually each one is the top of their field or close to it- the most renowned general, the leader of the biggest trading company, the owner of the most fertile farmland. They can come from any noble House, in theory, but when someone becomes a Councilor they renounce their position and House ties and become part of House Naqil. Naqil being the name of our country, so it's basically to make you family of the whole nation."

"Most Councilors come from the Big Nine. The oldest Houses," Netza comments.

"True enough, but Councilor Haratilremi isn't. She's from what, House Esutra? Whichever one was the bear. They took over House Loradi... was it seventy years ago? Eighty? Back when my grandmother was young, anyway." She sighs. "I should have paid more attention when she told me about it. Anyway, they were common, and they got big and rich and managed use a proxy and a very finely-worded contract to essentially take Loradi's assets out from under them."
"Oh", says Jim. "Sounds as if you have a real government. Your country reminds me of the U.K. There, they have royalty who are like your 'nobles', King William and Queen Kate, but they also have a prime minister and a parliament, who are true government, elected based on merit. Of course, the British democratically elect their parliament and prime minister, much as Americans democratically elected that fascist LeGrand. I wonder, though, if democracy is really the best way."
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

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Khemehekis
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote:
"Cilantro", says Jim, "Is a green vegetable. It's related to carrots, parsley, celery and ivy, and especially looks like parsley. It's used in Mexican, Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines. I like it, but a lot of people say it tastes like soap."
"Soap! I don't think I would like to eat anything quite so gritty and bitter as that!"
"Well," says Jim, "It doesn't taste like soap to me. You'd have to try it to know whether it tastes like soap to you." He looks down. "But maybe Daine have different tastebuds from humans. It could taste like . . . a guava, or . . . mammoth meat, or . . . that juice they put in your mouth at the dentist's."
Nico sits thinking about this some time, his breath shallow, almost as if the story pains him. "I think you have more goblins in your world than you realise! I fear this is exactly what would happen if the Hotai ever had their way. They would surely maim and destroy everything, and make wars with everyone and destroy many kinds of animal and beast, to say nothing of people! I hope only that the good among Men in your Meriquun and Ingililand and Afareiqeia can choose wise girls for your queens rather than vandal goblins for your tyrants!"
"Well," says Jim, "People on Earth don't exactly have a good track record of choosing leaders. Maybe if enough Americans choose Lyndsay Spelt instead of Rutherford LeGrand this year, we'll have a president who isn't a 'goblin'. She's a woman, so it might be worth a try."

Jim thinks of how the word "Hotai" sounds a lot like "hentai", and chuckles to himself.
"That's kind of cool! You have a special word for when a boy loves another boy, maybe his brother or his mate; and another word for this boy when he loves his sister or his best friend? So, I am 'gey' because I love my brothers, but 'streyt' because I love Enca and our elder sister?"
"Oh, no", says Jim. "I didn't just say 'love', I said 'fall in love with'. As in, want to marry them."
"I think most Daine, either as they grow up or as they meet other folks, form very close friendships with others. We call that the bonding of two brothers. Or two sisters." Nico's eyes suddenly widen: "Wait. Do you mean, you know, actually mating with another boy!? I have never heard of such a thing, leastways not among Daine. I've heard stories about girls doing that, though, but it's just stories. Anyway, they never talk about that with ùs!"

"The bonding of sisters or brothers is very close, though. I think a lot like finding one's love and marrying with them. Like me and Sharaq. Or like one of our Mother-Sisters. She fell in with a pal of hers when she was very young and they bonded with each other. They married with the same boy, too."

"Is this what you mean?"
"I mean actually mating with another boy", said Jim. "Lots of humans do this. I've dated both boys and girls. I'm single right now, though."

"Yeah", says Jim. "I mean, no gay Daine? An Earth in which everyone was straight seems just . . . unimaginable to me." Jim smiles. "And you seem to be unable to believe that our world doesn't have magic or thaumology, and God doesn't show his face on Earth."
Nico is confused again! Huy! How complicated Men make everything! "So, among Men in your world, 'gey' just means mating with other boys? How...? Nico scratches his head again --- well out of his depth trying to understand Jim's explanation. Apparently, Men are quíte different as regards plumbing...unless "mating" means something other than what Nico thinks it might entail. Or perhaps 'mating' doesn't quite mean the same thing for Men as it does for Daine... "Umm. I think maybe it is more true that we Daine are just neither 'gey' nor 'streyt'. Like with me and Sharaq. Our word for that bond is ahwan; it is the same as for the bond shared by Ma and Da. Of course, we didn't --- couldn't --- make ourselves ahwan to make children or a family. We bonded because of the love that grew between us. If Enca and me ever find twins amenable and love grows between us, well, then the four of us might make ahwan together. We might marry with each other."
"Adelphopoiesis?", asks Jim. "Or just friendship? Here, we have friendship love, and we have romantic love. Romantic love is when people want to marry, and sometimes pop out babies together. I have many friends, but I've always had only one boyfriend or girlfriend at a time. Kate Madison was my last girlfriend. A blonde girl with a ponytail. I don't have any girlfriends or boyfriends at the minute, but I have many friends."
"There are no goblins on Earth", says Jim. "But they seem to be a plague on your planet. How do people on Gea deal with all these goblins running around? Here goblins are only found in fairy tales and legends. Except for Kelly-Hopkinsville goblins, which may be real. They're from another planet, and they have big wrinkly ears, and big glowing eyes on the side of their faces, and tapering noses that end with a circle, and suction cups on their feet, and long arms that reach down to the ground in claws!"
"Now, those sound like some kindred of Fairies!" Nico shakes his head. "No, Hotai are perhaps a little shorter than Men --- they maybe come up to my chest --- but they're very broad of body and thick of limb and very strong. I would not want to wrestle one! Their eyes are very dark, but I couldn't tell you what color they might be. Their teeth and eyes are a lot like a Turghun's: crooked and big, and their eyes are very drawn back, slantwise. Their noses are broad and many can track almost as well as a good hound!"

"It's said they're pretty good at making and building --- but what they seem to like to make is weapons and what they like to build is fortified caverns. Everyone knows it is their boys who raid and reave and make war. Never seen a Hotai girl, but by all accounts, they're kept little better than slaves."

"They are certainly a plague! There is little that can be done but fight against them when they're on the move, and track down and hunt those that run from our warriors. They will only come back again to plunder and rape. I do know that Turghun are a syamay-syamay folk --- in their origins, they are the children of Tana that have been captured and raped. But their natures are surely Daine; they are good folk, not evil at all. Some Tana think they are less beautiful than we are; but, well, I bet those are Daine who've never met a Turghun or run with one like I have!"

"And of course, Turghun themselves make brilliant Hotai trackers! They certainly haven't forgotten how they came about, and the pain and humiliation their ancestors suffered. I've never heard of a Turghun that will shrink from a fight with a Hotai warrior!"
"What does 'reave' mean?", asks Jim. "And I'd imagine the Turghun must be cool people if they'd give you a tattoo like that! And the way they can fight those Hotai! I'd hate the Hotai too if we had goblins on Earth. And I can't help but feeling sorry for their girls."
"Ah, here it is! I think you just turn this little red knob here, and"

"Yoy! Wotcha yez great f&##^ b&@@#! feather-brained arse-for-wits! Wez in wir baff yer, yez blind testicle-eyed s&*#$$ Tanno! Oh, brilliant, that's what is is, b&@@#! f&##^ brilliant. Took me a whale f(**) fortnight to sort the cl**#$ mess in yer, wot wiff all yer ox-brained, bowel-loosening hayrowbatics and now yez carnt do but go twisting wir knobs! Hy don't mind telling thee ---" One of the little brass grilles opens up from the inside, and little fellow who looks a little like this, only with less shirt and rather more towel around his waist and a wet long handled brush in one hand peeks out at Nico and Jim. To the side he can just make out Argenzu poring over his strange whirring magic box. His little jaw drops.

"Hoh, b&@@#! boggo's in the shagged up barrel wiff the cat and the b&@@#! badger!" His little eyes widen, at first in wonder, then in terror! "Hyah! The whale spoffo world's done gone disapparated! Hoh, boy me lads! We haint in f^^!@ Kansas no more no more!" The little imp snuffles, clears his throat, hawks a wee ickle bogey onto the table. Then turns on Nico, waving his little bath brush threateningly, tiny drops of scented bath water flying this way and that: "Now tha lissen up, yez gurt boffo balboon! Wez dunno how yez got wez aoutside o Everyfing, but deek yer! We haint none of wez is supposed to be aoutside o Everyfing, savvy cappeesh? Foff-for-wits Tanno chav! Baaachhh! Tha can just snappy giz wir hame to naow! Raoight? Raoight! Cah! And don't yez twa slack-gobbed muck-witted chavvy boffos gawp te me like yez nivver seen a Himp afore! Who the b&@@#! hell yez fink it is wot runs the whale r**$$ place!?"

The grille slams to, the wee little gaily painted sign reading "B%@@$! GOE BOFFING AWAY!" is shaken loose, and now swings free on a single hook. The sound of a bar being thrown to can clearly be heard.

Nico looks up at Jim, his lips forming a perfect "O".

Before anyone can say anything, the bar scrapes across the little brass grille again. The doorway pops open and the little Imp peeks out again, pointing his bath brush straight at Nico's nose. "And dasn't tha fink for one second yez sionnachuighims moght'n't void yer warranty! B&@@! hell! Wez hain't got the mappin of no place aoutside the r&(%_@ universe pal! And tha can just go and complain to Boggleman and Bromford's all tha woffing wants! This clappavarriganting around to all parts incognito haint in wir contract, Hy can tell tha that plain as that frog-butt ugly schnoz on yer wanpimply mug!"

The door slams again, the sign banging up against the brass grillework. Then opens again, just as quickly! A wee, long fingered hand reaches around and snatches the sign from off its one remaining hook, bangs the door closed again and slams the bar across. A whole long string of muffled invective can now be heard from the depths of the box, then several squeaks and the sound of running water. Shortly, some threads of steam begin to puff out of a small round port on the other side of the box. The muffled voices within fall silent.

"....." is all Nico can manage.

"Ehrr..."
"Duuuuuuuuuuude!", says Jim in his most California-ish voice. "I've never heard anyone who could swear like that! I've never even heard a lot of those words! Is that a dialect of English? Or do you not have English on Gea? The F-word, we have that word too."
"Uh, ya! Look like froggy lizards! Just sit around all day long doing nothing, mind. I watched one crawl up out of the water once when I was a kid, when it was very small. It just found a place on a great flat stone with a bunch of other salamanders and plopped itself down. I went back every day for four whole months. The lazy little beastie never moved but once, and that was to lazily scratch his bloated belly! He got real big that summer, but that's about all he did! Our healer keeps them, she was happy I was interested that summer, and was more than pleased to send me down to the riverside to check on them!"
"Awwwww!", says Jim with cuteness aggression. "How cute! Makes me just want to squeeze an adorable salamander! Of course, I'd never do that. I would prob'bly end up killing a salamander if I did that. Even seen a Charmander?" Of course Nico hasn't. "They're REALLY cute."
Jim remembers his German, and thinks of "Nashorn", the German word for rhinoceros. "A nashornbeast? A rhinoceros? By the shaggy kind, you must mean woolly rhinos. Woolly rhinos went extinct on Earth a few thousand years ago, several million years after the brontotheres went extinct.
"Ya, wooly is no lie! Long deep red hairs. Nasty brutes --- only the bravest hunters will ever go after one. They can run fast, and the horns on their snouts can rip a boy in half! If you can get one sleeping long enough to shear him, the wool makes a wonderful cloth!"
"I think I'd like cloth from a living woolly rhino", says Jim, "But I'll prob'bly settle with this earring."
"Um, mam-moth --- you know of the momun? We make a pair of musical instruments to look like their long curving tusks! They are called momundronu and there are always two, one left and one right. They make a warm, low droning sound."
"You call them momun?", asks Jim. "So you have them too! Some tribes on Earth have instruments that make low droning sounds. That's what a charging mammoth sounds like! Sounds like a motorcycle, almost. In Australia, they have an instrument called the didgeridoo that makes a sound like that."
"No, I've not seen a dragonet like that! Wow, a truly chromatic dragon is this chameleon!"
"Yes," says Jim, "There's no animal quite like it. I've had one climbing on my arm before, and they're nice, gentle creatures. But if they see a bug, they'll dart their tongues out at it." And as Jim says the word "dart", he lifts his right arm out, with his fingers streamlined.
"You have Dwarves? And Fair Folk? Sounds like a J. R. R. Tolkien story."
"He was a bard too? Or a sagaweaver? Maybe he was telling tales from my world!"
"Oh, no, Tolkien wasn't a bard", says Jim. "Sagaweaver? Yeah, he wrote stories. Long novels about creatures in a place called 'Middle-Earth'. They made them into movies. He has 'Fair Folk', or 'the E-word', in his novels, though, and they're god and noble and live forever, like your Teyor, not like the E-word on your planet. They have dwarves and orcs and dragons and trolls in Tolkien's stories. Something about rings . . . it's been so long since I saw the movies."
"It is pleasant! Just a little bit gives the air in the smokehouse a delicious odor; and you can have calming dreams of swimming through green oceans of air or lazily floating down a river of milk watching the tsyoqolatal fish playing nearby..."
"Tsyoqolatal?", asks Jim. "Sounds like 'chocolate'. Is this something brown and sweet? I can't say we have chocolate fish on our planet. Or is it all just a creature from a dream world? A hallucination?"
"Well, there's a kind of mint that grows wild. Wherever you see a cat rolling about in an old garden, you can be sure it's the right stuff! We, usually boys, can make that into a tea and drink it, and pretty soon, we'll be arm in arm, running across the meadow and singing silly songs really loudly! But then, we'll get really sleepy, and we'll fall in a heap and dream dizzy dreams. Can't drink it too often, though! It'll make me vomit if I try it too frequently!"
"Oh," says Jim. "Sounds like catnip. One of the leaders of the youth rights movement, Daniel McGuire, was arrested for catnip when he was young. He was doing a presentation on marijuana where he got some catnip to look like fake marijuana. And weed was illegal at the time, so when a cop found it on Daniel, the cop arrested him. They tested it, and it was most definitively not marijuana. The PD said they 'didn't know what it is', although Daniel had been telling them definitively that it was catnip all along. They dropped the case. This is what happens when a country makes drugs illegal!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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elemtilas wrote:
Khemehekis wrote: "But my left eye is blind!", says Jim. "It can't see anything! It's made of glass. How am I supposed to see anything with that?"
Nico narrows his eyes and grins playfully. "Hihi! Like the monks say, the blind eye sees the most. Just means examine things closely before making an assumption! Uu. But I wonder: maybe in Meriquun you do not have ear rings like these? Are they all for pierced ears? We make those too, but also cuffs like these and other kinds that fit around the whole ear and ones that slip on over the wearer's eartips --- I don't think you could wear those because your ears aren't long enough!"
"Yeah", says Jim, "I'm just a human boy, not a Daine, so I don't have ears like that. They sound like an eh-- I mean an E-word's ears. "And we have earrings, nose rings, that kind of stuff, where your ears or nose don't have to be pierced. 'Faux' rings, we call them. I could order some with my fabber if I really wanted them."
Jim takes a closer look at it, and slips it onto his right ear. "This is a beautiful piece of jewelry, Nico!"
"Thank you! I hope it will remind you of the cool woodlands and gentle rivers and rolling meadows of the Westmarche, and maybe even the Daine who live there!"
"You're welcome", says Jim. "I've never been to Westmarche, though; just heard you relating stories about it. And I will remember the Daine, definitely! You and Enca!"
"They kind of look like this. All I know is they live up in the high hill country. I suppose they must terrorise the Hotai living up there too! Us Daine aren't the only folks who fight against them!"
The brown-haired, one-eyed, freckled boy of 17 views the picture. "These look a lot like Sasquatch!", he says. "But even more like the yeti. They live in an Asian country called Tibet. Tibet is full of mountains, and became an independent country not long ago. Unlike Sasquatch, though, science has yet to prove that the yeti exists. It may even be a subspecies of Sasquatch."
"I've never heard of a liggaterz or a shark. Are they some kind of beast or monster? Wolves we know well! Wolves we call horgulu, the swift hunters. Horgul is also a popular face-name among many kindreds of Daine. Our hounds we call hwancu; they resemble wolves but are the best companions among the alman Daine or even Men can hope to find! We sometimes have wars with those wolf folk --- they like to hunt our sheep and sometimes wayward children. We know they have to eat, but we try to turn them from our meadows and holdings before there's any trouble. This is one task the sheriffs find most difficult! We've learned that, when they do come down to hunt, you have to mark their queen --- she's the mother of them all, and their herzog --- he's her champion and lead huntsman. Fight and slay one of them, and the rest will retreat back to their stronghold. There they'll have to elect a new queen or herzog. Maybe the next queen will seek for easier prey elsewhere!"

"I can't imagine why people would just wantonly kill animals or even beasts that way. That's the way Hotai hunt: they will drive a whole herd of animals off a cliff, or kill many of them. Then, they'll gorge themselves on what they want and leave the rest to rot. I guess the vultures and carrion hunters are happy, but it is a terrible waste! They say Men used to hunt that way too, back in the time of their youth. But in their defense, we taught them better and they learned well!"
"Alligators are kind of like crocodiles", says Jim. "You have crocodiles where you live? Sharks are a giant fish. They have sharp scales, and most of their skeleton is made of cartilage. Their teeth are bone, but all the rest is cartilage. There are many species of shark, like great whites, and nurse sharks, and tiger sharks, and mako sharks. And our wolves won't attack humans. They sure love sheep, though. We learned to love the wolves with their sheep-eating ways just as we learned to love the thylacines with their sheep-eating ways. We'll let them have their sheep and chickens. When they're free to live in the wilderness, though, they eat animals like ducks, or even caribou. And yes, too many people in the twentieth century were little better than goblins. Some people would even shoot elephants for sport. Elephants! Can you believe it? Those majestic, cerebral animals. Elephants would mourn when a hunter killed a creature in their pack. And they'd kill rhinos for their horns. What you call nashornbeasts. They said the horns made people fall in love. I remember watching poachers face the death penalty as they were skinned alive on public television for killing endangered species!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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elemtilas wrote: Enca turns her attention back to Risatri's kit; Nico brings his feet up onto the chair and begins touching his fingers and toes together, apparently deep into the calculus of sorting out one's age...

"Ayya! I lost my counting! --- I know we were born in the year of the Woesome Dwarrowring and came of age in White Ships ---" He taps fingers on toes again, a little slower this time: "Oh, I was right! Tis seven and tenty since then, and three and three halfscore between then and then, so, yeah! Yacuevaseryanama shan --- seven score all told!"

Nico pauses to consider what Jim means by his last statement. His eyes seem suddenly sad. "Wait, so the oldest person in Meriquun has but eleventy-eight years? I think Men in the East may live a while longer than that. Gosh --- I guess those kids we used to visit across the river when we were little are now either terribly old or else long sine laid out in the ravenhouse for their last sleep..."

"And you look to me about the same age as us, or maybe a short while younger, but not by much!"
Jim calculates the odd numbering system in his head, and figures out that Nico means 107 + 33 = 140. "So you're 140?", he asks. "And yes, the oldest American is only 118. Not many people over 110. But there are plenty of nonagenarians -- people in their nineties -- and Jimmy Carter, a former American president, is over 100. I like the word 'tenty'. On Earth, we call the years from 2000-2009 the 'tenties', since they came after the nineties, as we call 1990-1999. 2010-2019 were the eleventies, and 2020-2029 are the twelveties. What's a ravenhouse? Does it have something to do with morbid birds?"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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elemtilas wrote:
"Screeve?", asks Jim. He thinks of the German verb "schreiben". "You mean 'write'? We have that alphabet in my time, just in a more modern style. I learned to read German, since German is a living language in the year 2028. Yeah, I can read it!"

Jim continues. "I can write your name, too. Nico. But I'll need a pen or pencil or stylus and some paper to do that. Anyone around here got some spare paper?"
"Yeah, here: take a piece of my paper and screeve for me!"
The freckled boy takes paper and pen in hand, and forms a vertical line, connecting it to a slanted line that goes from top left to bottom right, and then connecting that to another vertical line. "N", he says. He then forms a full-height vertical line with to short horizontal lines on bottom and top. "I", he says. Next, Jim makes a circle but doesn't close the right side. "C", he says. Finally, Jim makes a perfect circle. "O", he speaks.

"This is what your name looks like in all caps. Now, I'm going to write 'Nico' in a mix of capital and lower-case letters. He forms an N again. "N", he says. Next, he draws a vertical line shorter than his capital I and places a dot above it. "I." He forms a shorter version of the circle he drew without the right side closed. "C", he says. Finally, he draws a shorter version of his perfect circle. "O. Nico!"
"How the Avantimen talk? They have a lot of funny sayings. Well, our cousins taught us some! They'll say things like He 't swo drauwestwerthihh swo thon Zganderdagos haufdenbouwlez! And that means someone is reliable as the Skull of Skanderdag! Everyone's heard of Skanderdag, so that one's obvious. Um. And he that oferstandet thon berge he that was at befornes cwemon; and that means whoever stands upon the mountain is he that had earlier come to the mountain. And when they part ways, they say Allwaldand omthiward andlang thi weyam, and that means Heavenly Father watch over you along your way!"
"Hmmmm . . . says Jim. Maybe German, or maybe Anglo-Saxon -- the precursor to English? The word 'Berg' means mountain in the German of 2028. And 'befornes' sounds like the English 'before'. Definitely Germanic, that's for sure."
Last edited by Khemehekis on 27 Nov 2016 10:20, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Wario Toad 32 wrote:Hi I'm Nöttir Furjauch /nœtir furjaux/ from Frankthorf, Falochland. Frankthorf is the capital city of Falochland with about 9-11 Million People.
Nöttir sees a skinny boy of 17 with a brown mop, blue eyes and freckles, wearing a plain white T-shirt and vinyl pants. His left eye is a glass eye. "Hi, I'm Jim Musiclover", he says. "I'm from California. I play in the band Purple Kohlrabi. We're big in 2028. It's nice to meet you, Nöttir."

(OOC: What does Nöttir look like?)
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Khemehekis wrote:"Hmmmm . . . says Jim. Maybe German, or maybe Anglo-Saxon -- the precursor to English? The word "Berg" means mountain in the German of 2028. "And 'befornes' sounds like the English 'before'. Definitely Germanic, that's for sure."
Jim, Argenzu says, stuffing his Maçón laptop and all his other stuff lying around into his bag, I have no idea how far Avantimannish is related to 21st-centiry English, German or even Wínlandisc. And Nico's sayings give me a hard lesson in etymology. Well, I'll have enough time to figure it out at home... He smiles.

Berenice, almost completely ignoring her surroundings as she is drawing the most wonderful pictures she could ever think of, turns around to Argenzu:
Boy, I thought we'd never leave – but now I'm drawing these pictures and don't want to, actually.

Berenice, Argenzu replies, you seemed somewhat uneasy and you didn't talk much, so I thought I'd bring you home – don't worry, you'll get a copy of the footage. And, you know, we can't spend our whole lifetime here. My rhetorics course and the Wínlandisc seminar are waiting for me.

Edelwulf also gets ready to leave. However, they won't leave at once – Argenzu makes some last 360° pictures, patiently waiting for some last questions, Berenice is standing at the exit in awe and Edewulf is reading again, sitting on his luggage.
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Egerius wrote:Berenice, almost completely ignoring her surroundings as she is drawing the most wonderful pictures she could ever think of, turns around to Argenzu:[/i] Boy, I thought we'd never leave – but now I'm drawing these pictures and don't want to, actually.

Berenice, Argenzu replies, you seemed somewhat uneasy and you didn't talk much, so I thought I'd bring you home – don't worry, you'll get a copy of the footage. And, you know, we can't spend our whole lifetime here. My rhetorics course and the Wínlandisc seminar are waiting for me.

Edelwulf also gets ready to leave. However, they won't leave at once – Argenzu makes some last 360° pictures, patiently waiting for some last questions, Berenice is standing at the exit in awe and Edewulf is reading again, sitting on his luggage.
Nico seems surprised at the sudden departure of the Rodentfolk that fly in metal airships. "You're leaving already!? I had hoped you would tell us more about your own country, but you seemed so intent on listening to everyone else! Anyway, if you need to go now, I hope you can come back soon and show us the pictures you made and give us some stories from your place. At the least, I hope Enca and me didn't make you folk feel ill at ease!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Egerius wrote: Jim, Argenzu says, stuffing his Maçón laptop and all his other stuff lying around into his bag, I have no idea how far Avantimannish is related to 21st-centiry English, German or even Wínlandisc. And Nico's sayings give me a hard lesson in etymology. Well, I'll have enough time to figure it out at home... He smiles.

Berenice, almost completely ignoring her surroundings as she is drawing the most wonderful pictures she could ever think of, turns around to Argenzu:
Boy, I thought we'd never leave – but now I'm drawing these pictures and don't want to, actually.

Berenice, Argenzu replies, you seemed somewhat uneasy and you didn't talk much, so I thought I'd bring you home – don't worry, you'll get a copy of the footage. And, you know, we can't spend our whole lifetime here. My rhetorics course and the Wínlandisc seminar are waiting for me.

Edelwulf also gets ready to leave. However, they won't leave at once – Argenzu makes some last 360° pictures, patiently waiting for some last questions, Berenice is standing at the exit in awe and Edewulf is reading again, sitting on his luggage.
"I'm sorry to see you go", says Jim. Tears are visible in his right eye. "Be sure to look up Purple Kohlrabi so you can hear our songs! Just know they're all in English."
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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elemtilas wrote:Nico seems surprised at the sudden departure of the Rodentfolk that fly in metal airships. "You're leaving already!? I had hoped you would tell us more about your own country, but you seemed so intent on listening to everyone else! Anyway, if you need to go now, I hope you can come back soon and show us the pictures you made and give us some stories from your place. At the least, I hope Enca and me didn't make you folk feel ill at ease!"
I'll return sooner than you might think. I just have to continue with my life, and I'll have to bring Berenice back home.
I'll come back, with other people – and then we can talk about Rodentèrra. For now, farwell, everychon for I have don my game (farewell, everyone, for I have done my game).
Khemehekis wrote:"I'm sorry to see you go", says Jim. Tears are visible in his right eye. "Be sure to look up Purple Kohlrabi so you can hear our songs! Just know they're all in English."
Oh, don't cry. I have a space-and-time machine — I could re-appear at the door moments after I left. He smiles.

Berenice leaves first, followed by Edelwulf. Argenzu steps out of the door, but looks back for one last time, smiling, before leaving the scene. Shortly after, a whizzing noise can be heard, slowly fading as the box outside disappears.

Argenzu will return, this place is just too tempting to miss out.
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Khemehekis wrote:
elemtilas wrote: "We still use the old Mannish names for the days, but I don't know what they mean. They kind of sound like yours, too: steredaye, sunneday, monesday, twiesdaye, wethandaye, throendaye, freyendaye. I like the sound of Denmark! There is a country of Daine in the hill country to the east called Tanamarch. They are very stout warriors!" Nico purses his lips a moment: "But I doubt your Danamen are related to us Tana kind!"
"Saturday comes from Saturn", says Jim. "The name of a god from Ancient Rome. Also a planet near Earth. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptine. Sunday and Monday come from the words 'sun' and 'moon'."
"I have not heard any names like those. Our daystar is called Varen and she is one of the Starfolk. Twenty children she has, three sons and seventeen daughters. I know that all of them gather round their mother, and each night one can mark their courses, some slow and others fast, as they dance about her! I don't know all the names, and I don't know how the monks sorted out which ones are closest or farthest from Varen. I remember that Rencuestero is the quickest dancer and she is closest to Varen. And then Tarianne and then Dirarello the blue and white gem. And then Yeola and her twin sister Camay, and Yeola is the Mother of all of us who live in her world. Then Ashayere, the red and green gem. Those are the only ones I know in order. Oh! There is also Marathandare, and he is most like his mother in nature. He is, in our eyes, blackred and sometimes boys can even see him in the daytime, if only very faintly."

"It takes keen eyes to see much more than a dot in the sky, Camay excepted. Anyone can go with a friend out into the meadows and just lie there all night watching the clouds and storms pass over her face and wonder what kind of folk might live there! But if you've got a longlooker, then you're all set to watch the clouds of Dirarello or the red storms of Ashayere. Do you have longlookers? They look like a long trumpet of bronze but have crystals in them that make far away things come in really close. The monks near us have made several and they'll let anyone interested have a shufty up into the sky!"

"And no, Danes don't have wings. 'Daine' does remind me of 'Dane', though. The Danes of Denmark have tall, narrow heads and straight blonde hair and blue eyes. They're human, look similar to the Swedes and Norwegians. They have casinos and sex clubs in that part of the world, but it's quite cold. Even in the cold weather, people will dress scantily there. Scandinavia -- as those countries collectively are cold -- was one of the first parts of the world to allow women to go topless at the beach. Now women can go topless in public almost everywhere on the planet!"
"You mean, folks in your world make laws about the clothing people must wear? That's very strange sounding to me! I guess maybe it's a good thing there are no Daine in Meriquun or Tannamarq before --- Enca and me would never be able to wear a shirt like you do! But in our place it's different. Ive never seen a Daine wear a lot of clothing, unless it's the deeps of Winter. Then we'll wear a mocca, a kind of heavy cloak and a tiqan, which are a pair of long mittens and rahari which are woolen leggings, but a lot of people wear those even in the Summer! And lastly, pucri which are a pair of long boots that get strapped up on the legs. To top everything off, we have also sombo which is a big furry hat and molanderi and that's a long woolen scarf. When it's not cold, well, then it's just raccas that we wear, and those are just a length of cloth wrapped around the waist or else sullendasi and that's britches."

"Even among Men, they don't make laws about such things other than those dictated by Nature and the weather! It's true that Men wear a lot more clothing than we do, but theirs are much fancier than we wear in Westmarche. I think Men of our world must be more like your Men of Tannamarq! I've seen pictures of the king and queen of Auntimoany. He's wearing a sort of big robe, kind of like our mocca and she's wearing a long racca, only its wrapped around her belly and not her waist like ours. Neither one are wearing a shirt like yours. I do have to say her hair was done up very nicely! I wouldn't be surprised if the style were popular among Daine there."
"Israel existed a long time ago", says Jim. "Then it disappeared from the map for millennia. Then after World War II ended, in the forties, a nation formed in the Middle East that they called Israel. The Jews had an official homeland. But there were also Palestinians, another ethnic group, who were forced to live in that nation. The Palestinians were already there were that chunk of land was crafted into Israel. American presidents would typically strongly support Israel, and there was a lot of fighting between the Israelis, who practiced Judaism, and the Palestinians, who practiced Islam. We had these obnoxious Americans called 'neocons' who were totally fixated on keeping Israel and starting wars in seemingly random choices of country. They sneered at war protestors, and called people 'irrelevant' for caring about issues unrelated to war and foreign policy. Then they had the nerve, the nerve, to claim that their ideology had a monopoly on being in touch with reality. They were like a plague on America, but they were the dominant political force euring the George W. Bush administration. Then, in the twelveties, the Two-state Solution came, and now it is divided into two countries, Israel and Palestine."
"It sounds like your queendoms are much more chaotic than ours! I think it's in our nature to seek what is right and just and for our queens and councils to agree on courses of action that will lead to that being done. I can't imagine our Greatqueen just starting a random war with the Queen of Darirenalliê, or even with a realm of Men!"

"Do the Yehudians in your world live only in Yisiriellê? Though I know many Yehudian folk live in Auntimoany, I think most of their thedes live south and west, beyond the lands of the Warlords. They have many kingdoms there."
"The lands of Sunset?", asks Jim. "You mean the West, where the sun sets? Maybe." The look on Jim's face makes it clear that he is still a little coneused. "But Israel and those other countries are in the Middle East. That's not the true East. For us, the East is countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines! A little more to the West and you get countries like India and Pakistan, and west of that you have the Middle East -- Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc."
"I see! Yes, our queendom is in Narutanea, the Lands of Sunrise. Those are in the east of the landrealm called Eosphora. The landrealm called Hespera is the Great West, the Lands of Sunset. To the east is the Ocean of Sunrise and to the west, the Ocean of Sunset; to the south beyond the Southlands is the Ocean of Burning Waters and to the north beyond the Nameless Lands is the Ocean of Congealed Waters. There are lands beyond the oceans, but I haven't read much about them. Redbritches's book tells a lot about them, though!"
Jim pauses and thinks. "Have you ever heard of something called the multiverse? That's the theory that similar but different universes coexist on a greater plane of existence called the 'multiverse'. Each universe is in its own dimension. Maybe we're from two universes in the multiverse that diverged a long time ago. It explains why our Norse gods have similar names to the gods from Gea, and why English sounds similar to some of the human, or 'Mannish' as you say, languages where you live. The neat thing about the multiverse is that once you discover how to visit a different universe, they say you'll be able to time-travel into the past -- or the future -- of your own universe!" And with that, Jim throws his hands out.
Nico is astonished by this! "No, I have not heard of this, but I think it makes sense. After all, there are portals in our world called Gates, and it's said that if anyone can relearn their secret, they'll be able to jump from one place to another. Well, why not a Gate that can let you jump from one world to another? Maybe that's how we got to this place?"
Nico almost beams with pride at Jim's compliment: "Oh, yes! The queens of Daine are truly good and just and compassionate. They are, mnm, the best of our girls! How can we not love them? These tyrants of yours sound very bad indeed. How can your councils even choose so unwisely? Or, wait...I don't even know how it is you Meriquun choose your queens! Um. There is for us a Great Council, and it comprises a chosen emissary from each queenhold in the land. Enca was sent to sit in council for a time a couple years back. I'll tell you: those girls really know to talk! I know I talk more than most boys, but these girls' talk was out of the bucket and flowing over the floor! Anyway, it is all these emissaries that will contemplate and choose who the new Greatqueen should be."
"Well," says Jim, "Americans choose their presidents -- and these presidents have always been male -- by elections. Everyone over 16 is eligible to cast one vote for the president of the United States. The presidential candidates have represented different political parties over the years -- Whigs, Federalists, Anti-federalists, Democrats -- but right now the two big parties are the Revolution Party and the Republican Party. Whoever gets the most votes becomes the president for the next four or eight years. When Americans elected Donald Trump in 2016, however, he became president in 2017 and then the Revolution Party came into being and seized the White House -- what we call the place where the president lives. They took over the country without a vote, but that was a good thing, because the Revvies gave us so, so many reforms. They brought America into the twenty-first century. Then in 2024, the Revvie government opened up the doors to voting again, and the Republicans took the White House." Jim looks down and frowns. "Four years with LeGrand hasn't been good. I hope Lyndsay Spelt wins. She's from the Revolution Party. Maybe if all of you have such great queens, a woman will do America some good. I was 13 years old, three years below voting age, when LeGrand won. I never voted for LeGrand, and now I'm GLAD I can say I didn't!"
Nico is amazed at how topsy-turvy this Meriquun is, and Jim seems to recount the chaos as if it's no big thing! "At least for us Daine we've learned that girls are much better at it! I can't even really imagine how a boy would stand it --- we don't have the patience for that kind of stuff! I guess our talents lie elsewhere, so I'd say leave the queening to the girls!"

"That sounds like a fantastic story!", says Jim. "A seismos . . . you mean what we call an earthquake? We have those in California. Seismologists were talking for years about an earthquake called The Big One, and that one finally hit in 2021. A tragic day for California. But that story . . . I'll have to make that into a song or something."
Nico smiles at this: surely inspiration springs from any source, and a true bard drinks of any well! "I like that term, 'big one'. I guess if any seismos could be the 'big one' in Gea, that one would be it!"
"Well," says Jim. "Greys are just like humans or Daine. There are good Greys, and there are evil Greys. The ones who travel in spacecraft seem to be disproportionately evil, though. Those are the ones who abduct and rape humans. But there are some Greys", Jim says in a softer voice, "Who will spread messages of goodwill and peace and tell humans to be kind to all species. These people who listen to Big Messages from Greys and other aliens are called 'contactees'."
"You make sense here. The taint of evil may reach out and touch the heart even of a Daine! Happily, our hearts are strong and true and are better able to resist the temptation than many other kindreds."
"I like 'drorenno'," says Jim. "And 'wata'. The words just roll off my tongue."
"Hihi. Is that not what words are supposed to do? Dance in the mouth and roll off the tongue!"
"I'm not surprised. Even among us, bards often don't marry. It is said that a bard who is not married to his instrument and her music, then he is no true bard!"
"Really?", asks Jim. "That sounds kind of cool! Yes, musicians seem more likely than average not to marry on Earth. Rock stars in particular are unlikely to have wives and kids. I'm 17, though, and it's rare for a 17-year-old to be married or be a parent. Pregnant teens become less common in America with every passing decade."
"Um. Among Men, can children so young even mate!? For us, girl & boy children of so few years are up to no more mischief with each other than splashing about in puddles or playing games or learning their glyphs and ciphers! It will be another ten years or more until they start to take anything like an interest in each other. I think a girl with five and thirty years or a little less or a little more might be able to make a baby. Usually it is around one's fortieth year that one's mate will be revealed."

"Do the Men of your world mate for life? We Daine do not always. Well, it depends on the kind of marriage one decides to make. Some couples will make a marriage for making children --- once the youngest child comes of age, they can choose to remain together or part ways. Some will mate for a year or a long season. A few will indeed mate for life. Turghun always mate for life. But they find their mates very differently from us. In the Westmarche and in Withwandiê to the east, the elders of a family meet with those of other families to make matches between clans. When the time comes, the girl's family will pay a visit to the boy's and they'll be married and she'll take him home with her for the marriage's term. If he's already got himself a girl, well, she'll have to come along too! Occasionally, it'll be the girl that has to remain with the boy's kin. That's pretty unusual."

"Turghun are different. A Turghun boy may live many years without even thinking of settling with a girl, and then as if by chance he'll meet some girl and they look into each others' eyes and it's like they know they're right for each other." Nico pauses to consider this: "I don't think it's really by chance, though."
"Beysh? Sounds like 'beach'. We have a tree called a beech too, but we spell that B-E-E-C-H, and we spell the 'strand', as you called it, by the sea B-E-A-C-H. We don't have beech trees in California though, far as I know: here 'beach' means what's by the sea, and we have a lot of those in Califonia, so when we say 'beach', we normally mean 'strand' by the sea. As for the other word, yes, it means a girl dog, but it's also used to insult human girls and women. It's like calling a woman a whore. An American girl would not like to be compared to a female dog! Oh, and we also use the word as a verb, meaning to kvetch."
"Oh. Really? Among us, it is no great insult to call someone by the name of Hound or Wolf or Fox. They're common enough facenames, and are often used as nicknames by couples. Why should the name of a noble animal like the dog be such a tabu among Men in your country? A whore? Um, I've heard of that! I know that's a thing that Men have, where you have to give a girl some chips of metal and she'll mate with you. I gather it's kind of like how they give metal chips in exchange for other things they want, too. We don't do that, though. Among us Daine, sometimes friends will mate with each other just because they're close friends. They don't have to give metal chips to each other, anyway. And then there are the quarter festivals, where folks come from all over: during those times, even if you're married with a girl, you'll still go off and find some visitor to roll about with!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Khemehekis wrote:
elemtilas wrote:Nico sits thinking about this some time, his breath shallow, almost as if the story pains him. "I think you have more goblins in your world than you realise! I fear this is exactly what would happen if the Hotai ever had their way. They would surely maim and destroy everything, and make wars with everyone and destroy many kinds of animal and beast, to say nothing of people! I hope only that the good among Men in your Meriquun and Ingililand and Afareiqeia can choose wise girls for your queens rather than vandal goblins for your tyrants!"
"Well," says Jim, "People on Earth don't exactly have a good track record of choosing leaders. Maybe if enough Americans choose Lyndsay Spelt instead of Rutherford LeGrand this year, we'll have a president who isn't a 'goblin'. She's a woman, so it might be worth a try."

Jim thinks of how the word "Hotai" sounds a lot like "hentai", and chuckles to himself.
"Ya, I think maybe if you Meriquunish folk choose a wise girl for you queen, you'll be better off! You know what a hentay is? A crooked winding path or twisted branch. I didn't think your Ingilisi tongue would have any of our words in it!" Nico smiles at this, too: "I guess Hotai are kind of hentay-crooked!"
Nico is confused again! Huy! How complicated Men make everything! "So, among Men in your world, 'gey' just means mating with other boys? How...? Nico scratches his head again --- well out of his depth trying to understand Jim's explanation. Apparently, Men are quíte different as regards plumbing...unless "mating" means something other than what Nico thinks it might entail. Or perhaps 'mating' doesn't quite mean the same thing for Men as it does for Daine... "Umm. I think maybe it is more true that we Daine are just neither 'gey' nor 'streyt'. Like with me and Sharaq. Our word for that bond is ahwan; it is the same as for the bond shared by Ma and Da. Of course, we didn't --- couldn't --- make ourselves ahwan to make children or a family. We bonded because of the love that grew between us. If Enca and me ever find twins amenable and love grows between us, well, then the four of us might make ahwan together. We might marry with each other."
"Adelphopoiesis?", asks Jim. "Or just friendship? Here, we have friendship love, and we have romantic love. Romantic love is when people want to marry, and sometimes pop out babies together. I have many friends, but I've always had only one boyfriend or girlfriend at a time. Kate Madison was my last girlfriend. A blonde girl with a ponytail. I don't have any girlfriends or boyfriends at the minute, but I have many friends."
"Well... I think maybe we just have 'love'. I mean, I have friends, too, and I love them; but this is a little deeper that that. Deep like the love of me and Enca, or any siblings, but I think also more like that of a girl and boy who are married. Sometimes it grows between two girls or between two boys, sometimes between a girl & a boy and then sometimes between the two girls and a boy. Maybe it's kind of like that for you?"
"It's said they're pretty good at making and building --- but what they seem to like to make is weapons and what they like to build is fortified caverns. Everyone knows it is their boys who raid and reave and make war. Never seen a Hotai girl, but by all accounts, they're kept little better than slaves."

"They are certainly a plague! There is little that can be done but fight against them when they're on the move, and track down and hunt those that run from our warriors. They will only come back again to plunder and rape. I do know that Turghun are a syamay-syamay folk --- in their origins, they are the children of Tana that have been captured and raped. But their natures are surely Daine; they are good folk, not evil at all. Some Tana think they are less beautiful than we are; but, well, I bet those are Daine who've never met a Turghun or run with one like I have!"

"And of course, Turghun themselves make brilliant Hotai trackers! They certainly haven't forgotten how they came about, and the pain and humiliation their ancestors suffered. I've never heard of a Turghun that will shrink from a fight with a Hotai warrior!"
"What does 'reave' mean?", asks Jim. "And I'd imagine the Turghun must be cool people if they'd give you a tattoo like that! And the way they can fight those Hotai! I'd hate the Hotai too if we had goblins on Earth. And I can't help but feeling sorry for their girls."
"Ya. Knowing that, I'm not sure I could fight or kill a Hotai girl. She might just be trying to escape her clan's delvings. That's how some Turghun come down out of the mountains: they escape their kinfolk's domains and set out in search of others of their kind."
"Duuuuuuuuuuude!", says Jim in his most California-ish voice. "I've never heard anyone who could swear like that! I've never even heard a lot of those words! Is that a dialect of English? Or do you not have English on Gea? The F-word, we have that word too."
"I have to say, I've never heard the box speak before at all! I think the Imp was talking in some kind of Avantimannish, but I'm guessing you must have heard him talk Ingilisi. I think this place must somehow let us hear and understand each other. If you heard Ingilisi cuss words in there, I just heard senseless gibberish!"
"Even seen a Charmander?" Of course Nico hasn't. "They're REALLY cute."
"Sharmander? Is that a kind of salamander, too?"
"Ya, woolly is no lie! Long deep red hairs. Nasty brutes --- only the bravest hunters will ever go after one. They can run fast, and the horns on their snouts can rip a boy in half! If you can get one sleeping long enough to shear him, the wool makes a wonderful cloth!"
"I think I'd like cloth from a living woolly rhino", says Jim, "But I'll prob'bly settle with this earring."
"I've nothing made from nashorn wool; but my racca is woven from warg yarn and Enca's from fox."
"Um, mam-moth --- you know of the momun? We make a pair of musical instruments to look like their long curving tusks! They are called momundronu and there are always two, one left and one right. They make a warm, low droning sound."
"You call them momun?", asks Jim. "So you have them too! Some tribes on Earth have instruments that make low droning sounds. That's what a charging mammoth sounds like! Sounds like a motorcycle, almost. In Australia, they have an instrument called the didgeridoo that makes a sound like that."
"Dizherridu...I like the sound of that! How is it made? It may be we know them under a different name, too!"
"It is pleasant! Just a little bit gives the air in the smokehouse a delicious odor; and you can have calming dreams of swimming through green oceans of air or lazily floating down a river of milk watching the tsyoqolatal fish playing nearby..."
"Tsyoqolatal?", asks Jim. "Sounds like 'chocolate'. Is this something brown and sweet? I can't say we have chocolate fish on our planet. Or is it all just a creature from a dream world? A hallucination?"
"Hihi! Ya, tsyoqolatal fish sometimes swim through one's smokehouse dreams! Um. Tsyoqolatal is brown, like mud. I think it can be made bitter or sweet or salty, depending on what you add to it. Usually it is made into a kind of warm sludgy drink, but I've also seen it in solid cakes. I kind of like it a little salty."
"Well, there's a kind of mint that grows wild. Wherever you see a cat rolling about in an old garden, you can be sure it's the right stuff! We, usually boys, can make that into a tea and drink it, and pretty soon, we'll be arm in arm, running across the meadow and singing silly songs really loudly! But then, we'll get really sleepy, and we'll fall in a heap and dream dizzy dreams. Can't drink it too often, though! It'll make me vomit if I try it too frequently!"
"Oh," says Jim. "Sounds like catnip. One of the leaders of the youth rights movement, Daniel McGuire, was arrested for catnip when he was young. He was doing a presentation on marijuana where he got some catnip to look like fake marijuana. And weed was illegal at the time, so when a cop found it on Daniel, the cop arrested him. They tested it, and it was most definitively not marijuana. The PD said they 'didn't know what it is', although Daniel had been telling them definitively that it was catnip all along. They dropped the case. This is what happens when a country makes drugs illegal!"
"Hmm. These things are not in our laws. I guess if a boy is too stupid to control himself when it comes to seeking dizzy dreams, well, then he'll just end up dead. This can happen if children try these things before they're ready. When the time comes, an older relative --- it my case, twas my elder brother --- will take a kid into the smoke house to teach him what herbs are good for dreams and what herbs can kill and how much to use and what effects they have on our bodies. For a while, I wasn't allowed to go in without my brother and he had to watch over me to make sure I didn't do anything stupid! But even once we learn how to use the herbs in the smokehouse, it's not like we can stay in there all the time! There are times and seasons where certain herbs are appropriate, and other times when we do not go into the smokehouse at all!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Falochland speaks Faloch which is a Conlang that's based off of Old German.
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Khemehekis wrote:"Alligators are kind of like crocodiles", says Jim. "You have crocodiles where you live? Sharks are a giant fish. They have sharp scales, and most of their skeleton is made of cartilage. Their teeth are bone, but all the rest is cartilage. There are many species of shark, like great whites, and nurse sharks, and tiger sharks, and mako sharks. And our wolves won't attack humans. They sure love sheep, though. We learned to love the wolves with their sheep-eating ways just as we learned to love the thylacines with their sheep-eating ways. We'll let them have their sheep and chickens. When they're free to live in the wilderness, though, they eat animals like ducks, or even caribou. And yes, too many people in the twentieth century were little better than goblins. Some people would even shoot elephants for sport. Elephants! Can you believe it? Those majestic, cerebral animals. Elephants would mourn when a hunter killed a creature in their pack. And they'd kill rhinos for their horns. What you call nashornbeasts. They said the horns made people fall in love. I remember watching poachers face the death penalty as they were skinned alive on public television for killing endangered species!"
"No, I don't think we have liggaters or crocodiles living near us. They sound like a kind of dragon. Are they dragons, like your chameleon? Fish we have in the river and in lakes. If a shark is a kind of fish, then maybe we have those, too?"

"I don't think we love wolves so much as respect them. You see, for us we see them as a kind of people. They have their lore and their ways of hunting and living and we won't attack them unless we're defending ourselves from them. We do know that they are not people like us --- they think differently and not many Daine can easily talk with them or understand them. A skinchanger can. They see us as a kind of guard dog that gets in the way of their hunting sheep and other domestic animals, and they will challenge us at times. I gather that a thylacine is a kind of wolf? Sounds like it might be one!"

"And no, I can't believe anyone apart from a Hotai would hunt for sport! Least of all a mommun or one of the other kindreds of great olifant! They're too useful for other purposes. And anyway, even if one dìd shoot an olifant with an arrow, what good would that do? His hide is too thick! He'll just come bellowing and sweep the foolish hunter away with his tusks!"

"I've heard that Men have some beliefs like that about a nashornbeast's horns. I don't know if it's true or not! I do know that other parts of the body do have such powers. The teeth of a wolf or a bear, and their claws. The heart of any beast or person. And the nuts, of course. It is a common tradition of western Daine to take the fangs and claws of any such beast he tangles with as a trophy. They will instill in him the ferocity of his fallen foe. The hunter whose blade or arrow brings down a stag or boar wins the right to drink his heart's blood and eat the nuts. They are known to instill bravery and strength to a hunter. Blood is also a powerful part of any animal or beast. Hunters will paint designs on their bodies; in the west young children may be bathed in the blood of certain totem animals and these will watch over and lend their strength to them as they grow up. Of course, blood also is a kind of food; it restores strength to the weakened and is often made into broths. I've never heard of any such lore about horns or antlers, though!"

The freckled boy takes paper and pen in hand, and forms a vertical line, connecting it to a slanted line that goes from top left to bottom right, and then connecting that to another vertical line. "N", he says. He then forms a full-height vertical line with to short horizontal lines on bottom and top. "I", he says. Next, Jim makes a circle but doesn't close the right side. "C", he says. Finally, Jim makes a perfect circle. "O", he speaks.

"This is what your name looks like in all caps. Now, I'm going to write 'Nico' in a mix of capital and lower-case letters. He forms an N again. "N", he says. Next, he draws a vertical line shorter than his capital I and places a dot above it. "I." He forms a shorter version of the circle he drew without the right side closed. "C", he says. Finally, he draws a shorter version of his perfect circle. "O. Nico!"
Nico takes the paper and looks at it --- it's upside down! He turns it this way and that, finally getting it around the right way. Pointing to each strange glyph in turn, he tries to make sense of them: "EN-NI-YI-CO, Nico!"

"Alright, my turn..." He takes up the pen in his left hand and, rather shakily, traces out some signs that look a little like leafless trees. The first one looks a little like a coconut tree, with coconuts on either side, but only two long slender V-shaped branches at the top. "Zhye." Then a pine tree leaning to the right eith six branches. "Eh." Then an upright tree with four limbs that look a little like cupped hands. "Ehm. Gem!" He turns the paper back towards Jim. "Sorry I don't screeve half so well as Enca!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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Wario Toad 32 wrote:Falochland speaks Faloch which is a Conlang that's based off of Old German.
(OOC: As I understand it, this exercise works much better if you reply in character! Also, give us some meat to chew on! --- who is Nöttir Furjauch, what kind of person, what does he look like, how did he get here, etc, etc. Something to interact with!)
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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elemtilas wrote:Enca winces slightly as the pressure of the water increases. "But...do not the folk of your house care for one another and ensure the needs of all the house are met? Or do your lands not provide what is needed by your folk? It seems odd to me that you would have to make formal trades every time you wish to drink a cup of tea or take your meals!"
"Sure, my House takes care of its own. But House Aceres isn't a farming House, or a House of craftsmen, or of infrastructure. We don't grow our own food. The farms are all in the hands of House Otla and a few common Houses, so we buy from them. They don't own the ships to trade spices from overseas, or pay the sailors to man them, so they buy from Aceres. Every noble House has its own means of maintaining the city of Aupiani."

"House Xohua maintains the roads, aqueducts, and sewers, and of course manages the court system. For this they receive a portion of government taxes. They also manage, through common House Onati, the educational system. I have heard that Onati is going to try to follow Aceres' example and rise to nobility, but I doubt it will work. Otla is nominally an agriculture and land trade House, but they've fallen on hard times lately so much of their land has gone to the common Houses, and much of their trade has gone to House Aceres."

"It may be in some small rural villages that it is possible for one House to do everything, but for the most part our cities are just too big for it."
elemtilas wrote:"What could be more important than her work among her folk? And anyway, those are good times for talk with other folk or even her counsellors. Time enough is set aside for the more formal aspects of rulership. And don't be silly: it's not like she's got shears in her hands all day and every day! That's only during sheepshearingtide! I guess our queens find it important to remain part of the community rather than become separated from it, the way the kings of Men are. As I understand it, once a king of Men is chosen, his every moment is spent at whatever passes for rulership among them!
"The Councilors are very busy people. They are all day long at meetings and discussions about what to do about whatever is happening in the world, or corresponding with their agents out in the country, or going to public functions to see and be seen. All except for Councilor Teradaremi of Agriculture, who routinely sends his senior assistant as proxy. From what I hear, he has hardly any sense in his head at all so it's a good thing there's someone actually competent working in his stead."
elemtilas wrote:"Of course! What is a pharmacist? Is that a healer that prepares salves and teas and so forth? Our healer prepares his own medicines, I know that much about his craft!" Enca looks down at her side as Risatri finishes with the irrigation, happy that the dull ache is subsiding! "I'm quite looking forward to sporting the scar! And you may ask any questions you like; I'll answer if I can!"
Risatri pries open one of the jars with her knife, then uses one of the smaller spoons to scoop out a glob of thick green paste. It has a very sharp, somewhat unpleasant smell to it, but Risatri doesn't seem to think that's unusual. "Yes, actually. Pharmacists prepare medicine. I don't prepare all of my own, because I need to focus on going on calls instead of grinding stone-plants and making tinctures of sassafras. I dabble on occasion- I've been working on an asthma treatment lately on behalf of my House, because atropine alone isn't working well enough in this case- but usually I buy my medicines."

Using the back of the spoon, she spreads the paste in, on, and around Enca's wound. It shouldn't hurt any more than just the pressure would do, and Risatri is being careful with that. "So, about your wings. Do they ever molt? Are there lice of the feathers, just as we have lice of the hair? How does your culture handle them- I see you don't wear restrictive clothing over them, but surely they must be armored somehow in times of war."
Khemehekis wrote:Jim is... ...also surprised that someone who had struck him as rebellious and resistant to discipline was praising the value of discipline this way, so his left eyebrow goes up, without Jim even noticing. "I've been around children, and...
The difference is that children are children, but Netza is legally and socially an adult capable of making his own decisions, even if he's an indentured servant. He is actively rolling his eyes at the idea that simple discipline turns children into rebels. To him, it seemed more likely that it was a lack of appropriate discipline that let them get it into their heads that rebelling was an appropriate response to anything at all, but he'd already said his part about that.
Khemehekis wrote:... Then, when Donald Trump won the 2016 election, they lawlessly trashed public places in the streets... ...But those rebellious attitudes also led them to overthrow Trump in 2017 and install Brandon Zuniga and the Revolution Party's government. So that was a good thing."
"Well, no. Overthrowing the government? That's treason," Netza says, quite firmly. "You can't tolerate treason. That's what gets you riots, looting, gangs of rebels and escapees roaming the streets looking for a victim to tear apart. I hope they got what they deserved in the end, but I can't imagine that their chosen replacement did that. It's a shame."
"Oh", says Jim. "Sounds as if you have a real government. Your country reminds me of the U.K. There, they have royalty who are like your 'nobles', King William and Queen Kate, but they also have a prime minister and a parliament, who are true government, elected based on merit. Of course, the British democratically elect their parliament and prime minister, much as Americans democratically elected that fascist LeGrand. I wonder, though, if democracy is really the best way."
"Of course it's not the best way. Why would you ever let the people decide who rules the nation? What do you and me know about administration? That's why Nitch is such a mess, you know." Netza has plenty of opinions about countries that are not Naqil. None of them are very complimentary. "They elect their president based on pure flash and dazzle and empty promises, and then in barely a year they grow tired of him and put someone else in his place. And of course the few ones that manage to last more than a few years are all manipulative to the bone."

"And sorry, what was that about a real government? Of course we have a real government! What other kind of government would we have, a lone Jorian shaman in a tent?"

"Netza, what have I said before about exaggerating for the sake of being rude?" interrupts Risatri.

Netza looks down, abashed. "You said it's for ignorant highlanders and out-of-touch colonial governors, not craftsmen. And that Jor's more complicated than people give credit for and it's not right to make fun of them when we don't know all the facts."
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

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(OOC: Wow, thanks for questions like this! Gives me a chance to distill & draw together some ideas that have been knocking around for years but have never really been given voice before!)
Firebird766 wrote:
elemtilas wrote:Enca winces slightly as the pressure of the water increases. "But...do not the folk of your house care for one another and ensure the needs of all the house are met? Or do your lands not provide what is needed by your folk? It seems odd to me that you would have to make formal trades every time you wish to drink a cup of tea or take your meals!"
"Sure, my House takes care of its own. But House Aceres isn't a farming House, or a House of craftsmen, or of infrastructure. We don't grow our own food. The farms are all in the hands of House Otla and a few common Houses, so we buy from them. They don't own the ships to trade spices from overseas, or pay the sailors to man them, so they buy from Aceres. Every noble House has its own means of maintaining the city of Aupiani."
"I see. I suppose there must be many of you, then, that never help with food production at all? That is different: for us, we will all take our turns in the gardens & orchards or with the animals. And the same will be true of building needed structures and maintaining them. It sounds to me that among your folk, people are very limited in your roles within society. Like you: you will be a healer, but never help repair a bridge or build a barn or become a jurist! It is different among us. I have mastered four fields: my first was both wings of woodcraft, carpentry and fine-carving & joinery; then hall-craft, um, the art of conceiving and making plans for houses, barns, bridges, halls and any other kind of structure; then gardening, the management of soils and propagation of crops, the observation of moons and stars and the lives of trees and the natures of herbs; and lastly screevecraft, the arts of paper & vellum making and writing & copying. I should like to try and learn tree-dwimmery next. Not many folk in the Westmarche are skilled in that craft, but I've heard about the garden houses in Auntimoany that are woven from growing trees and think such knowledge would serve us well at home, too."
elemtilas wrote:"What could be more important than her work among her folk? And anyway, those are good times for talk with other folk or even her counsellors. Time enough is set aside for the more formal aspects of rulership. And don't be silly: it's not like she's got shears in her hands all day and every day! That's only during sheepshearingtide! I guess our queens find it important to remain part of the community rather than become separated from it, the way the kings of Men are. As I understand it, once a king of Men is chosen, his every moment is spent at whatever passes for rulership among them!
"The Councilors are very busy people. They are all day long at meetings and discussions about what to do about whatever is happening in the world, or corresponding with their agents out in the country, or going to public functions to see and be seen. All except for Councilor Teradaremi of Agriculture, who routinely sends his senior assistant as proxy. From what I hear, he has hardly any sense in his head at all so it's a good thing there's someone actually competent working in his stead."
"Hih! It seems to me your rulers are busy little bees! Our Greatqueen and her councillors certainly meet to talk about what needs discussing, but I gather they make time for their other duties within the queenhold. I wonder though: how can you keep a councilor at duty when once your folk have discovered that he is incompetent for the task?"
Using the back of the spoon, she spreads the paste in, on, and around Enca's wound. It shouldn't hurt any more than just the pressure would do, and Risatri is being careful with that. "So, about your wings. Do they ever molt? Are there lice of the feathers, just as we have lice of the hair? How does your culture handle them- I see you don't wear restrictive clothing over them, but surely they must be armored somehow in times of war."
"The Moult? You are really interested in our wingfeathers? Sure I can tell you!"

"Well, let me start when a child is born. We're born with very small wings, much shorter than our arms, and these are covered with a soft whitish fuzz, more like a rabbit's fur than any kind of Daine hair or feathers. By the time the baby has maybe six months or so, the fuzz becomes tiny downy feathers. These downy feathers will remain on the child's wings for a few years."

"A child's first moult is considered to be something of a rite of passage. This most often happens around the child's seventh year; and the first three moults are likewise about seven years apart, all through her years as a youngling. When at last a youngling comes of age, as our wings grow longer into their final size and shape, the moults become more frequent. Perhaps the fourth moult will be after five years, and then four. A grown Daine above about the fiftieth year will suffer the moult about every three years."

"Nico and me always suffer it at about the same time, and me about a half-fortnight in advance of him. Our recent moult was last year, and of course, it would have to come on to us just at the end of Dogsummer, and last all through Summerhome and into Halfyear! The hottest, stormiest, rainiest fortnights of the year, and we get saddled with the itchiness and discomfort! Sure, it feels nice to cast everything off and cool off in the pouring rain --- but then sure enough, the water gets in and all the fun of dancing in the rain is washed out. Now we're not only wet and miserable, but the itching is back and there's nothing for it but to shake the water out of our wingfeathers and wring our hair out --- well, Nico has to wring his long locks, my short hair dries off in a treat --- and wait for the new feathers to grow in!"

"But it is kind of neat, the way our old feathers fall out and the new ones come in again." Here, Enca stand up and spreads out her left wing so Risatri and Netza can see better. She points out the longer primary feathers out at the distal end of her wing. "Well, you can see that my wings are shorter than Nico's, and also that my quoyac or long feathers are also not quite as long as his. That's the way of it," she says with a rueful smile. "Boys are lucky to have such long feathers and wings! And they take so little notice of them! Anyway," she says as she flexes the tip of her wing a bit, spreading the feathers gracefully. "That part we call our 'wing-hand'. I guess because we have bones in our wings that look like the bones in our fingers & hands & arms. Then, along my wing-arm, I have milyac, and those are the short feathers." She points out the secondary feathers as they run along the posterior aspect of her wing-arm, and turns slightly so the healers can see better where her wing joins her back in a mass of ever smaller feathers and short stiff hair-like feathers. "Those feathers on my back, between my wings, that look kind of like hairs, we call those twatharaw; the smaller feathers of my wings, those are called telyac."

"Our quoyac and milyac always moult according to a pattern, and what's kind of cool, is that we moult symmetrically: both wings begin and end the same way! Our short feathers always begin the moult first, and they always start out the wing-wrist and moult towards our wing-shoulders. About a half-fortnight after the first of the short feathers begins moulting, our long feathers and small feathers will begin their moult. The long feathers always moult starting at the wing-wrist and ending at the very wing-tip! Our small feathers usually begin in the middle of the wing-hand and the moult spreads from there in all directions. It takes about a fortnight for the short feathers to moult and a fortnight for the long feathers and it takes about three half-fortnights for the small feathers to all moult. So, at least a whole month!"

"We do have ways of treating the itch and pain: there are herbs that we can rub into the skin of our wings, much like the ointment you rubbed into my wound, only it treats itching. We also spend much more time preening each others' wings during the moult, and that helps with the itch and pain, too."

"Hmm. Lice!? No, no lice! But it is true that small creatures like to make their nests in our feathers, if we let them! But we like to keep our wings neat and our feathers preened, so they rarely have the chance to become established. Um." Enca turns towards the other table where her own rucksack is, opens it and pulls out a neat leather pouch. She lays out two nicely carved combs. One looks something like this. "This one is called tamac, and it is a comb for the hair." She nods towards Nico's long mane of barely controlled hair. "You can see what a job I have of it trying to comb out that lot!" She points to the other comb, one that looks rather like this. "This one is called carman an tyellow, the comb for the feathers. We use these for ordinary preening and straightening of our feathers. Hih! Obviously, I can't easily preen my own feathers, so I take care of Nico's and he takes care of mine. Every Daine has siblings or cousins or friends and they preen each others' wings and comb and perhaps braid each others' hair."

Enca wonders what Risatri can possibly mean by 'restrictive clothing'...Looking down at her own clothing, rather shabby in comparison to Risatri's beautiful costume, she giggles: "I don't think we wear restrictive clothing of any kind, Risatri! In a war where we'd have to wear armour on other parts of our bodies, we will indeed strap a kind of bracers onto our wings, really a lot like those we'll put on our arms. But there's a difference: our wing bracers are almost always equipped with a long bronze spike or two up here on our wing-wrist." She points up to the apex of her wing: "We can really pack a punch with our wings;" here Enca lowers her left wing, making it roughly parallel with the Inn's floor, and, turning her body slightly, thrusts her wing-wrist forward (but coming nowhere near close enough to Risatri or Netza to cause any harm!). Then she draws back, flutters her wings slightly, settling her feathers, runs her fingers through her hair and neatly folds her wings behind her as she crouches again in the strange chair. "And I'll bet not many warriors would want to find sharpened bronze spikes flying towards their faces! We don't wrap armour around our wing-hands, though. We like to keep that part free, because we'll sometimes use our spread feathers to obstruct an enemy's line of sight and thus confound his attack."

Nico turns from examining Jim's handwriting sample to watch his sister's wing demonstration. When she's all done, he sniffs a little derisively: "Well, I've never had any problem with water in me wings!" He smiles, stretches his own wings out a little. "A boy's wings have a heavier coating of feather-wax than a girl's. Keeps the water our better!"

"Aye, and it gives me gyp, having to push the comb through your wings, too! And my love, I won't have you going about your life looking like an untamed beast, with your feathers all unkempt and timbo-tambo! So don't even think about getting away with me not preening your feathers!"
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Re: The Multiverse Inn

Post by Egerius »

The whizzing sound heard but minutes ago can be heard again. The phone booth slowly fades into reality, and once it becomes opaque, the only sound it makes is a very quiet buzzing sound that seems to come from what's inside.
Lights can be seen shining from inside, and two people are talking: One voice, if listened to carefully, is recognisable as Argenzu, the other, though also male, belongs to another person.

The duo seems to be really excited about something, but neither gets out of the box.
One may be able to hear something being enumerated (cloak, tie, backpack, laptop), things being lifted and some clothing being put on (it's the aforementioned cloak).

The door opens and two Rodentèrrans slowly march into the inn.
They are clothed in long, black cloaks, with the hoods covering most of the faces – except for their noses.
One of them has a beige line of fur on his nasal bridge, the remainder is brown; the other has a thin, white line of fur that slowly broadens, the remainder of fur is black.
With them, the two rodent folk have a large backpack each.
Their cloaks, on closer inspection, have a badge each sown on the left side, at chest height. This badge looks like a coat of arms; and this coat of arms consists of a silver bird in front of a blue escutcheon. At the bottom, the word Earnowe can be seen in (Roman) capital letters.
Languages of Rodentèrra: Buonavallese, Saselvan Argemontese; Wīlandisċ Taulkeisch; More on the road.
Conlang embryo of TELES: Proto-Avesto-Umbric ~> Proto-Umbric
New blog: http://argentiusbonavalensis.tumblr.com
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