early_riser

Who would have thought creating an entire world would be so complicated and interconnected, but here we are. How do you keep track of it all?

I've used Obsidian for the Lonely Galaxy. I try to write up a topic there before posting it here or on the CBB. I also have a wiki that largely consists of polished (or not so polished) versions of those notes as well as forum posts I never bothered to document properly.

For conlanging I've been all over the place and back again. The grammar is easy enough. I just write in markdown. The lexicon is much harder because it needs to be searchable. I've tried Excel, Obsidian, TiddlyWiki, a JSON file, and currently a CSV file. I wish I could commit to one and stick with it but at this point I'm impressed I was able to preserve the lexicon through so many different formats.

Cloud cities. You know them, you love them, and I want them in my conworld. The last story I posted here takes place in one.

Economically, here's how I see this panning out:

1. A gas giant has economically exploitable gases.
2. Floating extraction platforms similar to oil rigs are set up to extract those gases.
3. These platforms develop ancillary economies to support the people mining those gases.
4. These ancillary economies attract more and more people, diversifying the overall economy to the point that the platforms become floating cities.

In terms of physics and chemistry I'm on much shakier ground. This isn't a rock-hard sci-fi setting, so I'm willing to fudge things, but I like learning about the real world through my worldbuilding so it's fun to try and make it work.

The cities are held aloft by Flanar pontoons and stabilized in part by the extraction equipment hanging down from the underside of the city into the layer where the extractible gases can be found.

At first I imagined the cities being sealed from the outside, but that makes them no different than orbital colonies save for the presence of gravity, so I want them open.

Right now I imagine there being a belt of breathable air, encircling the planet, limited to a certain range of heights and possibly combined to certain latitudes, where the cities can be found. They would drift along with the wind currents, so the air speed would be near zero, allowing people to venture outside without being blown away.

One possibility I entertained was that the whole planet is mostly oxygen and argon, but that doesn't seem likely.

On other places where this question has come up people suggested a Venus-like super earth, so a massive rocky planet with a very thick atmosphere. That would still necessitate sealed cities I think.

This is mostly one guy thinking out loud but I thought it fit the spirit of this community.

World shapes are something I like to play around with. I think I mentioned my previous conworld that existed on the inner surface of a sphere, and it would have some similar optical effects, with distant parts of the surface visible in the sky.

I briefly considered making the yinrih's homeworld a toroidal planet but decided to give it a ring instead.

I'm using CloudFlare to hide my home IP and to reduce traffic from clankers. However, I'm using the free tier, so how am I the product? What am I sacrificing? Is there another way to do the above without selling my digital soul?

I've so far seen this exact problem in 4 different apps; Obsidian, Trillium, SilverBullet, and TiddlyWiki.

All of these let you write in some sort of lightweight markup (markdown for most, but TiddlyWiki has its own markup language). All of these also let you add frontmatter or metadata to your notes, and have barrels and barrels of features for querying, parsing, cataloging, and tabulating this frontmatter.

However, markdown is itself structured data. It has headings and tables and lists. That's structure. Why not have similar facilities for querying the markdown itself?

I got into this on the TiddlyWiki forums. A lot of users encouraged me to put everything into metadata fields, practically leaving nothing in the body of notes. Then why have bodies? Why not just have a vault full of YAML files?

Why can't I, for example, get a list of all notes where a certain heading exists, or extract data from a table in a note, or count the number of words in a note, or in a section of a note?

I found this to be tremendously helpful in charting the development of metallurgy for my own conworld. Because it's pretty old there are likely inaccuracies, but for getting worldbuilding ideas it's pretty solid.

In particular, the theory that smelting was discovered accidentally by placing a campfire on top of ore-bearing rocks or native copper deposits is cited as a previously held theory now regarded as incorrect. I however may use this theory to explain how yinrih discovered smelting since fire tending is a big part of the lore already.

I think the theory presented as most plausible in the show is that smelting emerged out of pottery kilns since they would provide a reducing atmosphere.

Ideally it creates a CSV file and stores it on an SD card or something. I'll even use on that requires an app as long as that app doesn't make me create an account.

UPDATE:

I went with a Withings BP cuff. It doesn't meet the above criteria at all, but I already had a Withings account from years ago before I was concerned about privacy so I wasn't giving my info to someone who didn't already have it.

”Where’s your bathroom?”

I think this was the third time any of us had heard him speak since we met. Brightstar and Moonglow had found him on the tram from the city center, his snout buried in a claw-written notebook. We needed a second sire besides myself to equal the two dams, and he smelled of age. Moonglow was never one for subtlety. She came right out and asked if he was looking to join a childermoot. “Yes” was all he said, and “OK” was his answer to her offer to join ours.

The two of us were sitting in my den, our womb-nest incubator humming quietly in the middle of the room, occasionally beeping with a routine diagnostic message. Until he spoke he had been staring out the window at the clouds below.

“Bathroom’s over there.” I pointed at the curtain separating the closet-sized restroom from the den. Welkinsteader houses are small by necessity, and the bathrooms smaller still.

He entered the restroom. “What do you do for fun?” he asked from behind the curtain.

“You’ve seen what’s all over my walls; what do you think?”

“Ah, the old guns.” He paused for a moment. “What’s the attraction? Why do you like collecting them, I mean. You don’t look like an ear-notch.”

“Well if you have good firing posture you won’t blow a chunk out of your ear. But no, I’m not a gun nut, well not THAT kind of gun nut. It’s the craftsmanship. I like the leatherwork on the saddles, the paw-forged iron barrels, none of this all-polymerite nonsense. It’s amazing what we were able to make with our own four paws before we invented fabricators.”

He washed up and rejoined me next to our womb-nest.

“What about you?” I asked. “Got any hobbies?”

He looked down at that same claw-written notebook sitting on the desk under his perch. “Oh, just this and that.”

“This and that?” I probed. “You seem awfully attached to that notebook.”

“Oh, that. It’s nothing.”

“Clearly it’s not nothing. You haven’t been without it since my friends met you on the tram.”

He let out a long sigh. “Those are my worldbuilding notes.”

“Ah!” I yipped. “So you’re a writer!”

“No no no.” He began running a rear paw through his tail and I smelled nervousness in his musk. “I’m no writer, amateur or otherwise. It’s just for fun, you know. Pups make up imaginary worlds, and I just started documenting mine as I grew up.”

“Tell me about it.”

He hesitated. “Are you SURE?”

“If I’m going to raise a litter with you I want to know what’s bouncing around between those ears of yours.”

He started wringing his tail like a towel with both rear paws, and his shyness stank up the den. “So it’s about this race of star folk called.. well we can’t pronounce their language, so we call them qMqmg. That’s an onomatopoeia of their name for themselves in one of their languages.”

“What do you mean we can’t pronounce their language?”

“Well, they have a very different vocal tract from us; no muzzle, more muscular lips that can form an airtight seal, flatter more crowded teeth, a smaller and much more nimble tongue. They use their tongue to shape the sounds coming out of their mouth to speak.” He had opened his eyes wide and his ears were pinned back. He was clearly excited to have someone to share all this with. “The tongue is so important that many of their languages use the word for tongue to mean language in the same way we use the word for throat.”

“And you went to all the trouble of designing their...’vocal tract’?”

“Yup. And some of their languages, too”

“You make up languages?”

By now he was holding his tail in a death grip like it owed him money. “Yes. Constructed languages. Honestly the languages are the main thing. The world is just there to give them more life.” He opened his notebook to what looked like a table of different word forms in an alien script written left to write. “This language is called, well, again we can’t pronounce the name. Ultimately the name comes from this tribe who lived on this island in the northern hemisphere.” He turned to a page showing an impressive world map and pointed to a large island to the northwest of a massive continent. “So this tribe invades this island after this other empire fell.” He pointed to a peninsula on the southern edge of the continent. Anyway, this tribe becomes an empire in their own right after a few centuries.”

“Centuries? Seems awfully fast.”

“Oh, yeah, they only live a tenth of our lifespan. Makes things move a bit quicker, gives me an excuse to play around with more languages.” at this point he has started wiggling on his perch.

“Anyway, the tribe becomes an empire and they spread their language as they expand. They found some colonies on this other continent.” He pointed to another landmass across an ocean to the west of the first. “And these colonies rebel and found their own country which eventually spreads all the way to the west coast. The tribe become empire is still expanding despite the loss of some territory to these rebels, but after two massive worldwide wars this empire also falls and the rebels turned country become an empire in their own right, with their own variety of that island tribe’s language spreading across the globe in its turn.

He turns back to the table of words. “So this language is spoken by two different empires and becomes a de facto lingua franca around the world. It’s their version of Commonthroat.”

“Sounds like they haven’t terraformed any other planets,” I say.

“No, they achieve spaceflight right before we find them.”

“And besides this ‘vocal tract’ of theirs, what do they look like?”

“Well, they have no tail, and almost no fur except on top of their head, so they weir cloth coverings like a healer. They used to have fur and live in trees just like we did, but they started living in wide open grasslands. Their rear paws lost the ability to grasp.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of an advantage, not being able to grip things with their rear paws, especially given they don’t have a tail.”

“That’s because they walk exclusively on their rear paws. Their hind legs get much longer and more muscular. It’s all so they can run long distances to catch prey. That’s also why they have no fur, it’s because they excrete saline from pores on their skin that evaporates to cool them down.”

I wrinkle my muzzle. “Eww, sounds gross.”

“Oh that’s what the missionaries that find them think at first. It smells really pungent. But eventually they grow to like the odor. They say it smells like a friend.”

“And the wildest thing is they can’t write.”

“What do you mean; you showed me that alien alphabet earlier.”

“Well they can’t write naturally like we can. They don’t evolve it, they have to invent it. So they just speak for tens of thousands of years before finally inventing writing.”

“And how do they preserve information then if they can’t write?”

“Orally at first, passing it down from sires and dams to their pups.”

“Doesn’t sound very reliable.”

“Oh it’s not at all. They spread across the globe long long before inventing writing, and don’t even remember one another until they meet again thousands of years later. At that point the different groups have developed vastly different cultures and languages.”

“More languages to invent?”

“Exactly!” he yipped.

He suddenly smelled embarrassed. “You probably think I’m crazy now.”

“Crazy? No. Maybe just a bit eccentric. But you clearly have a vivid imagination. I’m sure our pups will love hearing your stories.”

I would like as the coolest made up animal ever made up.

A hearthkeeper's duty is to bring physical and spiritual light and warmth to her congregation. This is accomplished through lighthouses, places of worship of the Bright Way. They evolved out of the open bonfires tended by shamans prior to the Theophany. These bonfires grew into sheltered hearths as the yinrih's society advanced. With the discovery of electricity the hearths evolved into small power plants distributing electricity to the homes of the faithful. These plants burned fossil fuels at first, with a ceremonial hearth located in the sanctuary and the loud and smelly power generation equipment located elsewhere on the property.

As research monasteries continued investigating space, the nature of stars as sustained fusion reactions was eventually discovered. Efforts quickly began to replicate these icons of the Light on a smaller scale for liturgical purposes. Thus was born the fusion reactor, or star hearth. These too were at first located away from the worship space, but as miniaturization proceeded, smaller hearths that resembled stars inside a glass cylinder were able to be incorporated directly into the liturgy.

Between the fossil fuel era and the perfection of the star hearth there was a period where fission reactors were used, with the sanctuary and nave built around a small reactor pool.

Whatever the means of power generation, the hearthkeeper takes the lead role in actively maintaining the equipment and transmission lines. This is why hearthkeepers are both priestess and engineer. Claravian seminaries are centers of theological and pastoral training as well as technical colleges. Helping the hearthkeeper in these tasks are several acolytes. Acolytes can be pups of a certain age, though they must be female. Adult laywomen are also frequently seen as acolytes, and seminarians serve as acolytes as part of their training. Males are permitted to assist in a less technical role as pages--essentially gofers.

The most striking feature of the lighthouse from a human perspective is the presence of bones lining the interior, and occasionally exterior, of the building. A lighthouse is not just a church but also a cemetery. A belief common across yinrih cultures, in and out of the Bright Way, is the idea that to properly honor the dead, one should make good use of their remains. This usually takes the form of using their bones as architectural adornment. The fact that the yinrih are canine and they build things out of bones is a frequent source of comment by humans.

Lighthouses are generally dome-shaped or otherwise incorporate domes into the architecture. This is to mimic the vault of the heavens. Ceilings are painted to resemble the sky, with stars or clouds on a blue background. The bones extend from the base of the wall up a certain height, usually low enough for bonekeepers to easily maintain. Floors may be decorated with natural scenes such as rivers and flora, or in the Outlander tradition of sacred architecture, be painted with icons depicting the lives of saints and martyrs. Support pillars are usually designed to resemble trees as a reminder of the yinrih's arboreal origins. In general, the inside of a lighthouse is meant to resemble Creation in miniature.

The nave of the lighthouse is round. Perches are distributed around the area. The sanctuary is either located in the center of the nave or on the eastern wall. The star hearth is concealed by a shear sanctuary vail outside of liturgies and certain feasts.

Back when lighthouses contained actual hearths, there was an oculus open to the sky that served as a flue for escaping smoke. This became a decorative window after the transition to star hearths. On inner planets where Focus is more prominent, this decorative window takes the form of an arch stretching across the domed ceiling of the worship space. The width and angle of this arch are designed such that the sun always shines into the room as long as it is above the horizon. Take every azimuth and elevation where the sun can appear throughout the day and over the course of the year at that particular location, and connect those points into a solid arc. This represents the size and shape of the window.

Further away from Focus the window is a mere circle above or near the sanctuary. The window is usually stained glass, depicting a yinrih missionary greeting a sophont out of frame.

On orbital colonies, the lack of gravity means that instead of perches, tail bars are used for floating worshippers to anchor themselves in place.