#uanlikri

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The Setsé Script is the writing system of the Setsé people, who arrived on Uanlikri as colonists and invaders for the powerful Senq Ha Empire overseas. In the centuries that followed, the power or the desire of the Senq Ha waned and the colonies were abandonned, leaving behind splintered nations of conquerors trying to make the best of the strange lands whose peoples they had murdered and displaced.

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When the Setsé landed on Uanlikri more than four centuries ago, they brought with them war, conquest and misery. They also brought the Setsé script, a unique script which is assembled, almost like a puzzle, to describe the phonetical qualities of an utterance.

The Setsé peoples have long ago been cut off from the imperial powers that fed their conquest of the Western Peninsula, Northern Kantishian Moutains, and Spice Islands. Since then, they have splintered. diversified and syncretized into a great many cultures. Despites this, the setsé script endures where litteracy survives. It remains the script of choice for setsé langages, whose tones are hard to transcribe the scripts of Uanlikri's mostly atonal native languages.

The setsé script divides a word into many parts: a central "thought line", read from top to bottom, tone bars traversing the thought line, and symbols indicating consonants on the left and vowels on the right.

Zàtzèpaqóí Glyph shapes are often modified to fit the available space. In this word, the horn of dz is detached to leave more space to the previous consonnant. A linked-style consonnant is always used with a vowel glyph which connects to the thought line. Modifications emphasize this connection: the e's new shape fully attaches to the dz glyph. Conversely, the use of an open-style glyph for q helps identify the associated vowel as a o rather than an e.

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Assuming the Random Worldbuilding Questions is an ask game number 7, if it’s not, please ignore and let me die of embarrassment

I don't know if it was an ask game, but lets make it one!

7: If you pulled a random average Joe off the streets of your world and asked them to draw a house, what would they draw? (Shape, roof style, position and number of windows, etc.)

Obviously, where you are in Uanlikri when you ask average Joe to draw you a house would change the answer quite a bit! There are a great many styles of houses (and homes which are not houses) in Uanlikri, sometimes even more than one to a people!

I've selected three examples for this ask: the Oumdashen, the Obixwø-Øi, and the Ranaite Tahens.

The territories of the Oumdashen Confederacy are where you would have the hardest time predicting what average Joe would draw for you: the Confederacy covers a large area, and is formed by what is essentially half a dozen ethnicities in a trench coat. Nonetheless, the Oumdashen are desert dwelling peoples, and their architecture reflects this combination of heat and aridity. Cave homes are common and highly sought after by both settled and transhumant clans. Adobe homes with flat rooves, used for sleeping in the cool desert night, are the most common. In densely populated areas, these tend to be square to better connect with neighboring buildings, but circular houses are also common in rural areas. In all cases, oumdashen homes always have a flat roof, as their is too little rain over their territory for the need to protect the adobe. But you might still get surprised by your average Joe: if they're part of a nomadic clan, they just might draw a tent.

The Obixwø-Øi dwell in the high plateaus of the Kantishian Mountains. They have a very distinctive style of house, square with a tall tatched roof that almost looks like a pointed hat. If you ask an Obixwø-Øi to draw you a house, you might be surprised at seeing a second building right besides it on the drawing: all Obixwø-Øi houses have a small circular hut on the side for small livestock like kabi.

Finally, a Ranaite Tahen's drawing of a house would reflect the fact that Ranai is the largest city of all Uanlikri, because it would very likely be connected to other houses, have several floors, or at least imply a connection to another building: there are few standalone houses in Ranai. Ranai architecture reflects both the pressing need for light generated by its monumental bureaucracy, and the high costs of materials such as stone and brick. Ranai houses typically have walls consisting of stone or brick arches with walls of waxed paper filling the arch openings. It is common for houses to have "backalleys" or communal living space in what is essentially their attic, a flat, tiled roof which is beneath the raised tatch roof.

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1

For this list of worldbuilding prompts.

Are there any foods with symbolic meanings that are eaten on special occasions (e.g. katsudon for victory, or new years oranges for luck)? How did the tradition get started?

This was a challenging one! Here are two foods with symbolic meaning and / or eaten on special occasions.

Ambertree fruits and the Þuar

Ambertree fruits are the apricot-sized, very fleshy galbulus of the ambertree. They have waxy white skin and pink flesh, with a single large seed. Their flesh buttery, with a peculiar taste that is both cloyingly sweet and very resinous.

Ambertrees are cultivated for their resin, which can be carefully prepared and baked into artificial amber. For the Þuar peoples, who first mastered ambercraft, both the tree and its fruit are sacred. The fruits were traditionally only eaten by ambercrafters in the purification ceremonies undertaken as preparation for the delicate processes of ambercrafting, or harvested for religious offerings.

After the Þuar Wars, the Namitan Empire stole the secrets of ambercrafting and began growing its own ambertree orchards and training its own ambercraft masters, coveting the wealth to be obtained through the trade of the precious material and aiming to weaken the still-free Northern Þuar Queendoms. Ambertree fruit is considered a delicacy in the Namitan Empire.

Roasted meat and nuts and the Ranaite Tahen

For Ranaite Tahens, the inhabitants of the city state of Ranai on the Ojame archipelago, any meat meal is a special meal as the archipelago's high population density leaves very little land available for the raising of livestock (fish, seafood, and insects make up the majority of their protein intake, along with the meat of some small livestock like kabi).

Roasted meat, however, is a truly special thing and reserved for the solstice festivals. Ranaite Tahen have a strong cultural fear of fire, and fire is heavily regulated within the city of Ranai. Solstice festivals are days of exhuberance and nervousness as (heavily watched) open fires are lighted around the city and meats and nuts roasted on open flames to celebrate.

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1 and 10! For the worldbuilding ask :)

Since I've already done numbers 1 and 10 on that worldbuilding prompt list, you'll be getting number 8!

8) Is there a place in your world that nobody has ever been to - the bottom of a cave, the moon, another dimension, etc.? How do people know it exists? Why haven’t they gone there? What do they believe it’s like, and how right/wrong are they?

One place in the world that nobody has ever been to is the Moon - but not for lack of trying.

Uanlikri's world has two moons. One of them, the Mens, is small and yellowish. Most people use the Mens' cycle to tell the months. For many people, the Mens is the only moon they know.

The second moon, the Moon, is a small, barely spherical body in geosynchronous orbit over Uanlikri. It looms large in Uanlikri's sky, 1.5 times as big as our moon and twice as bright, tracing figure-eights (analemmas) in the sky. It goes through its whole cycle everyday, new at noon, full at midnight.

For most of the world's peoples, the Moon is only a legend from faraway lands. But the continent cluster on the moonless side of the world is large, and on its borders, the Moon can just be seen peeking out over the horizon. Over the millennia, many peoples have set out on the long journey, by boat or over the polar ice caps, to reach the Moon. And though none of them ever set foot on the Moon, those who survived did find Uanlikri, the land under the Moon.

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The Qot-Qítiō culture area encompasses the peoples descended from the Qot colony, founded around three centuries ago by the Senq Ha Empire, situated overseas. The Qot colony was one of several colonies founded on Uanlikri with the intention to conquer and settle the famed Land of the Moon. The Senq Ha's colonization efforts resulted in mass death and displacement on the western peninsula and beyond.

The Qot colony was the only colony to successfully rebel and secede while the Senq Ha Empire was still strong. Decades later, the Senq Ha, weakened by prolonged war on the homeland, would abandon all their colonies. This would put a stop to the colonies' expansion, as infighting inside and between the colonies diverted resources from conquest. The Qot, already independent, fared better than the others for a time.

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Qot was one of the colonies founded by the Senq Ha Empire in their effort to conquer Uanlikri. It was settled by voluntary colonists of the majority ethnicity of the Empire, the Setsé, and by forcibly resettled Qítiō, torn from their families on the mainland. Feeling disfavored by the Empire and inspired by the Gichan rebellions in the South, the Setsé allied themselves with the Qítiō and expelled Senq Ha rule. The secession was violent and resulted in loss of crops, livestock and people, loyalists and rebels alike.

In their efforts to rebuild and remain independent from the other colonies, the rebelling Setsé and the displaced Qítiō borrowed many practices and customs from eachother. The Setsé independentists took on the name of their colony and became the Qot. Some Qítiō remained with them, while others returned to the nomadic lifestyle that had been theirs on the mainland.

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Ghøwout, as a word, speaks of both a nation and a culture. Though they are not the same, Ghøwout's culture is molded by its history as a nation and by its nostalgy for the nation's former glory. This, more than anything, brings together the many different traditions that call themselves Ghøwout, even within states that have cesseded from the once-great Empire.

Despites being a shadow of its former self, Ghøwout's is still the heart of politics south of the Kantishian range. Its historical and cultural weight keep it well centered in the minds of the many nations which surround it. This attention is not all undeserved: although no longer the most prosperous or powerful southern nation, Ghøwout remains the most technologically advanced, be it in terms of military armament, mining technology, or social engineering. In these aspects, Ghøwout still rivals with the rising stars of the Namitan Empire and Oumdashen Confederacy far to the North.

Even there Ghøwout's excellence is waning, as state paranoia mandates extreme secrecy and rejects foreign influences, preserving Ghøwout's technological advances at the cost of its allies' goodwill and knowledge.

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The Ghøwout live in the shadow of their former glory. Under the 4th Dinasty, Ghøwout held in its power all of the Southern Kantishian, and though its power has waxed and waned many times, it has never again reached this peak. In the current day, Ghøwout is much diminished and surrounded by kingdoms born of its losses. Nonetheless, Ghøwout remains a powerful nation, held together by a strong cultural identity. Perhaps as a reaction to its waning power, Ghøwout culture has grown to be insular and xenophobic, regarding strangers with extreme distrust.

Ghøwout is a strongly stratified society, weighted down by a large nobility and a stagnant peasant class. Nonetheless, its numbers and strong logistics allow it to support a large number of specialists, particularly artisans, professional soldiers, and religious specialists. Ghøwout's populace is both pious and prone to superstition. Though Ghøwout's state tends towards totalitarianism, it does not have centralized religion: it is home to many different regional sets of beliefs supported by local shamans and a few specialist clans of spiritualists and healers. These are highly respected by the populace and clad in beautifully dyed and ornamented textiles, precious stones, and bronze jewelry.

Ghøwout's artisans include some of the best chemists and metalworkers of Uanlikri, and the first to master steel. The use of steel weaponry has allowed Ghøwout's military to remain menacing even as Ghøwout's political power waned, brought low by internal power struggles. To counter its downfall, Ghøwout is always pursuing advances in war technology, fielding experimental weapons and financing scientific research, which it treats with utmost secrecy. Ironically, this drive is part of Ghøwout's downfall, as military spending has brought low the nation's coffers and the fear of spies has fostered a general climate of distrust and suspicion.

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The Ghaxgø descend from peoples who were semi-nomadic and hunted and cultivated in the southern river valleys of the Kantishian Mountains. They were conquered, forcibly settled, and partially assimilated by the Ghøwout, but remained problematic provinces of the Empire until the end of 5th dynasty, when the Ghaxgø peoples freed themselves from the Ghøwout. Ghaxgø culture retains a lot from its time in the Empire, from borrowed words to the tailoring of their clothes.

[Text from the image:] They are, according to their neighbors, the least civilized of Ghøwout's children, wearing pelts and hunting like the "barbarian" Am-Wiek tribes and kingdoms to the North. Conquered late in Ghøwout's history and never fully tamed, the Ghaxgø were among the first to free themselves of the failing empire. They have returned to semi-nomadic ways and rely on a mixed economy of summer agriculture and winter hunting and fishing. The Ghaxgø are proficient lumberjacks and trade timber for tin to the Ghøwout Empire to the south and the Oubixwø-Oi living in the mountains and plateaus above the treeline. Although the Ghaxgø lack tin to make their own bronze, they remain expert metalworkers, working iron as well.

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The Ukpik are the southernmost folk of the continent. They trade in furs and bones, but they are best known for their unique breed of oujabe, called samesar in the North. Legends say that Ukpik rescue stranded strangers and feed them to the samesar, painting their heads blood-red. Away from the unforgiving polar regions of Uanlikri, Ukpik have become the stuff of fairytales, bogeyman to scare children on dark winter nights. Of course, the stories are wrong on the people and the oujabe alike, but the people of the North are unlikely to meet an Ukpik to prove them wrong.

North of the Kantishian Mountains, people are unlikely to even know that Ukpik are real, and not simply the stuff of fairytales. However, despites their remote territories, Ukpik are far from isolated. They trade extensively with other peoples south of the Kantishian range through their boreal neighbors the Maa-Ougbig, sending furs, furcrafts, and bone objects north in exchange for wood, metal tools, and beads. Ukpik crafts have a refined simplicity about them which speaks to their sense of beauty as much as to the harshness and scarcity of their homelands. Nevertheless, it is very rare to see Ukpik far from their polar lands.

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The Xigdat are a group of nomad peoples whose ancestral routes travel north and south along the Chiangian and Deka rivers and the steppe lands in between. The Xigdat are renowned for their leather and featherworks, and they are expert in the trapping of small birds for their colourful feathers. Their culture has many commonalities with that of the Maa-Ougbig, but relationships between the two groups are often tense as the similarities between them seem to enhance their differences. The Xigdat also frequently enter into conflict with the nomad peoples of the Changian steppe, especially where migratory routes collide.

The Xigdat live in a world of complex territorial claims, as they share territories with both sedentary and nomadic peoples and conflicts over land are common. Ironically, their most stable arrangements are not with their closest cultural cousins, the Maa-Ougbig: there, the balance lies more in preferences for different types of terrain than in any sort of treaty. The powerful Ghøwout to the north treat the Xigdat and the Maa-Ougbig alike, as a source of commerce but mainly as a nuisance, made hard to control by their seasonal movements. To the northwest, however, Xigdat tribes can depend on treaties with the small kingdoms of the Daghwa-Igdo, who facilitate their routes in exchange for trade.

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The Gichan are the product of a long history of conquest, fueled by their much coveted mountain passes and watersheds. The culture of the Kingdom of Gichan is highly syncretic. It owes its mores and traditions in varying parts to the underlying cultural substrate, to the Ghøwout Empire's centuries of rule, to the practices of their neighbors and to those of the new Gichan regime. To defend its precious lands, Gichan has a well-developped military with a strong core of professional soldiers, Gichan's regime is indissociable from its military: all noble families have a strong military background and it is customary for nobles of all rank to serve as officers for years or even decades.

Gichan was originally the name of a small nation in the mountains up the Cianji River, which became legendary for their unabating resistance in the face of the early Ghøwout Empire. When Ghøwout's northernmost province rebelled and seceded, it took on the name Gichan as a symbol of their resistance against imperial rule.

Gichan society is strongly divided between its military and peasant classes, but its peasants are far from powerless. Peasantry in Gichan is much revered : it is said to carry the nation on its strong back. as it works the fields and crafts the goods that feed and clothe the nation's soldiers. This romanticized potrayal often impedes serious understanding between local leaders and military lords, but fosters an attitude of gratitude towards the peasant's hard toil. In the harsh Gichan lands, a satisfied peasantry is seen as a priority.

Gican society is organized as chains of villages, each with their own village leaders, trading spouses and ressources up and down the mountains. They are ruled in a roughly feudal fashion, paying taxes in labour and goods to local military lords which themselves defer to higher lords up to the Gican royal court. Like in Ghøwout, religious specialists are excluded from this hierarchy: known as chui-chuøn (t. wild men), they are traditional healers and spiritual leaders often living in relative hermitage. In a set of practices long considered uncivilized by the Ghøwout, chui-chuøn wear numerous pelts and animal bones as a symbol of their otherworldly connections and hermitage. Uniquely, chui-chuøn do not wear tail brooches, as a way to signal that they are apart from society and clanship.

The Gichan use a modified Ghøwout script and many ghøwoutish loanwords, but most Gichan do not speak the Ghøwout tongue. They speak a variety of dialects, the most common of which is Tchougougch. Much of the peasantry is multilingual, having learned the language of a neighboring community within Gichan or of the many foreign traders using Gichan's mountain passes.

Gichan's territory has often been coveted and contested, much to the suffering of its locals. The revolution that broke Gichan apart from Ghøwout was strongly backed by the people, who felt Ghøwout had abandoned them in the face of the invading Senq Ha Empire. The Senq Ha had come from overseas and taken the Peninsular lands like a wildfire, and were now at their door, but Ghøwout, weakened by illnesses brought by the conquerors and internal strife, failed to mount a defense for Gichan in time, allowing much of it to be conquered. After this betrayal, the people of the passes, under the rule of two different empires, united and rebelled under the legendary name Gichan. They became the first province to secede from Ghøwout, initiating the Empire's long decline, and one of the first major setbacks of the Senq Ha in their invasion of Uanlikri.

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The Daghwa-Igdø are three closely related groups: the Sun-Daghwa and East-Daghwa on the banks of Lake Tcagu, and the Igdø at the mouth of the Shiangian River. The Daghwa-Igdø are small, but ancient: they have been there long before anyone could write of them, and only their oldest tales hint at their journey to the cold southern lands. Unlike most southern peoples, the Daghwa-Igdø are descended from the first undenau, the first peoples to set foot on Uanlikri. Daghwa-Igdø are mostly sedentary, spread out over the lanscape in small villages where they farm and raise wagwacguk cattle. In the winter, hunting, fishing, and trade with the Maa-Ougbig and Xigdat is essential to their survival.

Of all their ressources, the Daghwa-Igdø are most dependant on their cattle, the wagwacguk. Wagwacguk are bulky, heavily feathered ceratopsians among the most cold hardy of Uanlikri's animals. Domestic wagwacguk are at the center of Daghwa-Igdø subsistance: they provide them with meat, horn, leather, down feathers, feather pelts and most important of all, blood. Wagwacguk are only slaughtered in the fall: the rest of the year, they are bloodlet regularly, and their blood is the cornerstone of Daghwa-Igdø cuisine.

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The Oubixwø-øi trade extensively with their neighbors, especially for lowland goods that are unobtainable at the high altitudes at which they live. Despites this, they are a strange people, with a language and culture which far differ from that of any of their neighbors. It is thought that they may originate from the very first meeting of the continent's mythical First Peoples, the Kpikigd and the Undenau. This is recounted in Oubixwø-øi legends, which also tell of how their kpikigd ancestor, missing the cold and the snow of the South, raised the land into the sky so that the glaciers would grow, just like in the land she'd left.

Text from the image: The Oubixwø-øi are the true highlanders of Uanlikri, dwelling on the highest plateaus and valleys of the Kantishian mountains. Although their lands have often been coveted by other mountainfolk, they have never been fully extirpated from any area owing to their unparalleled ability to survive in high altitude. Today, the Obixwø-øi primarily inhabit the southern cordilleras but remain as isolated pockets and small kingdoms throughout the territories of the Am-Wiek peoples and the Ghaxgø.

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The Cianjian (the c is pronounced sh) are clans of nomadic hunter-pastoralists who follow herds of migratory animals along the arid plains of the Cianji river valley. The cold desert the Cianjian inhabit is a harsh, unforgiving land, and the Cianjian are much like it. Their lands are poor in ores and arable land, and they frequently raid their neighbors for bronze and textiles. The Cianjian's lack of internal cohesion has been their demise against many powers: they have been divided and conquered many times and have only united once, stopping the Apinaat Hordes descending from the North.

Although they lack in many riches, the Cianjian are experts at making the most out of every ressource. They reserve bronze weapons for war and for the biggest, most armored prey: for the rest, they use bone and knapped stone tools. They wear the game trophies as part of their plastrons, headgear and tail ornaments, and craft intricate objects out of horn and leather for daily use and for trade.

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The Abimaat are an offshoot of the basin region Apinaat people: when the southern invasion of the Apinaat Hordes was broken by the allied Gican and Cianjian, they remained trapped in the South and settled there. They live off their caviþ herds in a climate much colder and arid than the one their ancestors were born to. The Abimaat are pygmies: the caviþ (pronounced cha-vith) they raise and ride would be too small for adult antioles of any other nation. They frequently enter in violent conflict with the Cianjian, but have reached fragile accords with the Gichan among which their services as mounted warriors or messengers are highly valued.

Life south of the Kantishian mountains is hard for the Abimaat. Their life's blood, the caviþ, are not adapted to the much colder climate, and they frequently suffer frost injuries to their bare legs and necks. The increased care needs has much reduced the number of animals an Abimaat clan can keep, diminishing their wealth and food security. Where the Apinaat loved their livestock, the Abimaat treasure them, putting the same amount of work into saddle blankets and neck warmers as they do for their own clothes. Abimaat produce beautiful tapestry works, woven in a single piece to their final shape. Their work is not fine, producing heavy fabrics of thick yarns, but the colorwork, dovetailed color joints, and striking abstract shapes gives it a high value nonetheless.

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I did it! One thousand words of worldbuilding notes a day on average for the month of January. whew!

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The Maa-Ougbig inhabit the boreal forests and tundras between the Southern Kantishian foothills and the polar circle. Closely related to the Ukpik and neighbours to the Ghøwout Empire, they maintain tense relations with their cousins, fighting them over riverine and coastal territories but dependent on their trade goods. Maa-Ougbig mostly trade in feathered and furred pelts; many Maa-Ougbig nations excell in trapping small mamalian game. Their fur crafts, especially their children's dolls representing fantastical hybrid animals, are highly valued in Ghøwout.

Maa-Ougbig are far from homogenous, constituting a continuum of related cultures more than a single cultural group. Nonetheless, Maa-Ougbig nations share many characteristic and tend to congregate together in summer, moving southwards to coastal and riverine areas to exchange and celebrate. In the winter, they seperate and travel back North, often moving into Ghøwout and Daghwa-igdo lands for better hunting and trading opportunities, much to the dismay of these settled nations.