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Explore Yssaia
The North
"Smoke still poured out of the tall, arched buildings of Nouveau Thuille but I doubted weapons still poured from those forges. It was dusted in snow and the dimly lit city had an air of surreal stillness to it. It was uncanny... But it was home." -Arlasaire, the Burned Maiden of Nouveau Thuille
The Demonlands
Demons are the strangest creatures of the North — shapeshifters whose innate blood magic lets them shapeshift and gain psychic powers over those with weaker blood magic. In order to live, Demons must drink blood though they can eat other foods. Demons do not have a true hive-mind but can generally sense the emotions and intentions of those around them due to their shared blood. Demons can interbreed with every other creature, but this spreads their blood magic and makes it weaker — as such, they really only can occupy their home island. Many suspect Demons are beasts from the Abyss, but the Demons believe they were made from the body of a slain God and now live to repay their debt to Them.
The Demonlands are the one refuge in the North from the Aftokratoria, but the current royals disagree on how to keep the Demonlands safe… and strange, unrelated Demons keep mysteriously appearing throughout the world...
Ecology of the North
The North is cold and damp, known for its year-round snows and short summers. Despite being beneath the Upper Continent, weather systems are capable of forming beneath the underside of the Upper Continent due to its height - though the primary source of water in the North comes from rivers and waterfalls flowing down the pillars of the Upper Continent, not precipitation. The earth itself consists of often dark, volcanic soils, rich with metals and minerals in the mountains. The ecology of the North - especially as you go higher into the mountains - is also largely shaped by how close it is to the Abyss: Ysse springs (icy-bursts of crystal-lined holes in the ground) dot the landscape rather than being rare occurrences and many creatures and plants have evolved to live on the edge of or even alongside the Ysse of the Abyss - soaked in magic and constantly on the verge of madness.
The mountains, pillars supporting the Upper Continent, mountain-sized stalactites, and stalagmites make navigation by foot quite difficult. As such, Northerners cannot easily exchange information and, due to magic distortions caused by the Ysse, each individual valley can be quite different from the next so farming technologies in one valley may simply be unviable even one valley over. Many historians continue to believe that this what has historically caused Northern-wide empires, such as Old Thuille, to collapse - but others says the activity levels and presence of the Gods has risen and fallen over the years, and Imperial Northern success can be attributed directly to that.
The East
The Demons and the Selkies live far from the lands of humans and empires - but that doesn't mean they don't face problems of their own...
The Selkies are some of the world's only shapeshifters - half-human and half-seal. Born from ambush predators and magic, the Selkies of today still live amongst humans - some hidden, some not-so-much.
The Sealfolk
Selkies are a race of half-seal, half-human shapeshifters who live throughout the world - typically as completely normal members of society. Selkies are born in their seal skins, but can emerge from them as they become toddlers. Selkies in their human forms have long "hair" behind their shoulder blades and along their thighs. But all "hair", including the hair on their head, is not actually hair, but thin fibers with nerve signals which connect to fibers on the inside of their seal skin. Their seal skin grows on its own, even when separated from the Selkie, but it will typically fit better if the Selkie wears it regularly. Selkies cannot use any seal skin that is not their own and there are numerous unfortunate tales of humans taking the coats of Selkies to coerce them into staying on land.
While more widespread in the North, Selkies had colonies of their own on the Selkie Isles just to the northeast of the Isle of Telethens. These were conquered in the last three years by the Aftokratoria. Selkies on the Selkie Isles do not have the resources or military power to rebel against the Aftokratoria, but Selkies are generally seen as ordinary citizens and accepted in most smaller communities along the coast where they appear.
The West
The band of desert between the North and South is colder than most of the South, but lives in the rainshadow of the Upper Continent. Getting nearly no water from rain, there is some mist that rolls off the ocean along the coast along with rivers which shift irregularly with rain in the Upper Continent. Giant sandworms, spiders, and hydrophobic extremophiles categorize the desert biosphere — with the Sha Hirza Ni (“Spiderfolk” or “the Spidren”, as the humans call them) forming an intricate wandering society based around the wealth in their stock-market like web. The Spidren are universally seers and can see the possible futures, as such many conversations and conflicts only happen “hypothetically”.
No one has ever united the tribes for more than a lifetime. But recently, they have been migrating more South into Svanihk lands...
Sha Hirza Ni (Depreciated)
“Sirqa Sirutaq was born.
Woven from the womb of woman of the 13th Tribe, Sirutaq was lowest of the low.
Sirutaq went with the Kamaq'ni, as is the way. She died and Sirutaq was alone.
This is when Sirutaq joins the Sirqa and thus, was so named.”
— The Marbled One, Translation by Heiderlone
The Upper Continent
The Upper Continent, called Chrysig in the North and Chrisigia in the South, is actually a series of continents supported by giant pillars as wide as mountains and miles high. They drift with their lower counterparts. Covered in plains of dandelions, giant flightless terror birds, forests untouched by humans, and dragons — beings made of fire and Ysse which burn the land periodically to replenish it — the Upper Continent is a terrible and wondrous place. Humans have only just begun to develop airships and safety equipment to handle such altitudes, while the Sha Hirza Ni are typically much better prepared to climb to the Upper Continent if they so desire.
Gods & Godlings
"If God is truly omniscent, omnipotent, and infinitely good, then why is there suffering in the world at all? God cannot be all of these things, it would seem to me. But Their Daughter says it is so -- and is She not reborn again and again on the seafoam, as God foretold? Therefore, God must be something beyond our mortal ken. If God as She says, how could we possibly comprehend Them?" - Tarchus Euchirius
Magic & Ysse
"This thesis will demonstrate that the Abyss' power does not come from the Gods - Rather, it comes from the natural phenonenon known as Ysse: the particles of life whose movement governs our magic, physics, and biology."
- Heiderlone's Study of the Abyss
Once you can see magic, it is easy to weave it but you must give up one of your eyes to do it.
Magic is often associated with snow, crystals, and ice -- particularly the Yuletide.
Telethenian Language
Telethenian Language
Telethenian is inspired by certain real-world perceptions of Greek and Latin, but with some Japanese-style ergativity markers thrown in for good measure. In the World, Telethenian originated from older Svanihk after the Telethenians were isolated on their Isle for milennia - during which time it developed its ergativity to allows it free-form sentence structure.
Many other culture find Telethenian to be otherworldly, academic, and beautiful - but to some, this makes it oppressive and cold while others find it comforting and religious. Svanihk who actively worship Dyeus in particular tend to enjoy the sound of the Telethenian language, due to their Seeress, Yeulia, presumably speaking it as her "native" tongue. (Though, amusingly, her "native" tongue is the language of power that the Godlings speak, not Telethenian.) After the recent surrender of the North, there is ongoing debate about whether Telethenian should be declared the official language of the world.
You may notice there are three different symbols (C/Ch/K) that are all pronounced like the C in Cat all the time. This is because I am preserving the Greco-Roman aesthetic of the language when transcribing it, though I recognize that is a bit confusing. In the Telethenian writing system, they only one symbol for all these sounds. But for an English-speaking audience, this Romanization is more flavorful.
Mythologized History of Nouveau Thuille
The proud and elite of Nouveau Thuille pride themselves on these about words. Theirs is a highly individualistic culture - only banding together when their individualism is threatened. They idolize their great Riavh Solais, the last of the Old Thuillean Emperors, and glorify his ability to unify the North through his sheer power and ability. The Noble Houses claim to hold his Throne for him, but these, too, are just an act to claim power.
However, the blindside of these proud people is that Riavh Solais did not unite the North through his own grandeur alone - but with the help of his armies, his people, and the Dragons who fought by his side. Without these things, he would have just been another Emperor of a small collection of warlords. They attribute the movement of history to this one great man rather than his people. They frame his fall as a great tragedy, rather than the inevitability of an idealistic man who lost his greatest weapon.
When you read his tale, which way will you see it?
Nouveau Thuillean Language
Nouveau Thuillean takes its inspiration from real-world French and German. Historically, the whole of the North spoke Old Thuillean - due to the reign of Riavh Solais. After his fall, those in the Valley of the King were mostly isolationists for quite a long time, and so Nouveau Thuillean differentiated itself as a language. The writing system originated from the Northern interpretation of magic symbols, but has since evolved into a simple alphabet rather than a magical logography. Saegen, the other language differentiated from Old Thuillean, is significantly different from Nouveau Thuillean but there is some overlap in their writing system and words - somewhat equivalent to the differences between English and German.
Most Southerners see Nouveau Thuillean as mysterious and magical-sounding, and the Saegens agree - but they additionally believe it sounds posh and stuck-up.
Saegen Language
Saegen evolved from Old Thuillean with the influence of Seal-tongue (the language of the Selkies) as well as influencing Seal-tongue. Unlike Nouveau Thuillean, it retained all three of Old Thuilleans' grammatical genders - which impacts pluralization and adjectives. It was inspired by real-world Norwegian and German, but was designed to be less rhyme-poor.
Nouveau Thuilleans, being on their high-horses, often believe that Saegen sounds low-class and harsh. To Southerners, it sounds like a "pirate-accent", with all the glamour and "barbarism" that is associated therein.
You may notice that Saegen is aggressively Englishy, even moreso than my other Conlangs - this is due to the fact that, before I developed the Conlangs, I modified Norse as well as threw in Beowulf transcriptions to simulate the experience of "reading old words you could almost identify but not quite" for when people spoke Old Thuillean. I may revise this at some point in the future, but for now, that's the motivation behind Old Thuillean, and subsequently Saegen, being basically English with extra genders.
Demonic Language
Demonic was one of my first successful conlangs (in that you could say things in the language and there was a good chunk of vocab that sounded cohesive) -- but this iteration of the conlang is my 3rd one. Since it was one of my first, there are still some mistakes with letters being in the conlang that should not be in it... So there will likely be a fourth iteration too!
I'm not clear what real life languages Demonic sounds like, but it is whatever sounds "Demonic" to me.
Svanihk Language
Svanihk was intended to sound vaguely like a real-world Slavic language. In distant past, the Svanihk started naming their inscribed witches' circles - fourteen of which have taken a huge place in Svanihk society today, have become correlated with constellations, months, and tools for fortune tellers. For a long time, this witch-led society passed stories down orally by seeresses and illuminators - until they assimilated under Telethenian rule.
Under them, they decided their location-based, East-to-West written logography was too complicated and simplified Svanihk writing to be written topzto-bottom, right-to-left, by taking the most popular fourteen names and making them into letters for an abjad which evolved into an alphabet under Demonic influence.
Svanihk sounds earthy, warm, and old-fashioned to many other cultures. The words in Svanihk are relatively long though, and so Svanihk speakers are also infamous for speaking very quickly.
Seal Tongue
Seal-Tongue is a collection of exactly 111 words that are the building blocks of the language. Seal-Tongue then relies on combinations of these basic building blocks to form more complicated thoughts - but Selkies in different regions in the world have a different standardized combination of these words. It is, regardless, a very high-context language. Seal-Tongue was developed as a pidgin between Selkies in the North and South and has influences from Old Thuillean and Telethenian, but it still sees the traces of the most Ancient Tongue in its veins.
Selkie does not have a standard form of writing - their traditions are carried orally through their songs. Selkie songs are renowned throughout the world for their captivating beauty and uplifting melodies.
The following language was strongly inspired by other Conlangs, particularly Kēlen by Sylvia Sotomayer and Tokipona by Sonja Lang.
Sha Hirza Ni Language
The goal of Shahirzani is to feel like a semitic language, with a proper consonantal root system. Shahirzani needs to sound warm, vaguely Romani, vaguely Arabic, and spiderlike. It is frequently described as "chittering" and "clicking"--kinda like dolphins. It is a very high context culture because everyone can presumably just smell the phermones to get moods and implications.
