fanc: (pron. “fansh”) a flaw or defect; an imperfection
from which
talifanc: (from talis “truth” + fanc) an imperfection whose presence indicates authenticity; examples would include inclusions in natural gemstones, grain in natural wood, and unintentional variations in hand-crafted objects; compare Jp. wabi.
and also
lin-fanc: the Flaw; entropy.
So, I have received some questions and noticed some little curiosity recently about what the process of gender transition/sex reassignment looks like in the ‘verse, or since that is highly variable, in the Empire.
Well, it goes something like this – and this is the procedure and the whole of the procedure, which requires no permissions or approvals from anyone:
You pay a visit to the local branch of Novacorpora. (This will not be difficult. They’re everywhere – basically the Starbucks of bodysculpt parlors.)
You say, “I can haz new [appropriate-sex] body?”
They say, “We can haz deposit?”
You give them the 12%. (It is slightly higher in some cases – such as female-to-male, for humans – because you don’t have the relevant chromosome and they have to synthesize a compatible one. But that’s just an implementation detail.)
You stick your hand in the fancy laser-genetic-sequencing-machine when they ask you to. It goes beep, and then there’s a brief discussion (and possibly some holography) of any non-genetic features you have that you want preserved in your new body.
They ask you to come back in a week. (Unless you feel like paying over the odds for even-faster-than-regular-forced-growth cloning rates and went to a different store in the first place, but we’re assuming the default consumer version here.)
You come back a week later. They usher you into the changing room at the back, where you get to stare at an [appropriate-sex] version of you in a forced-growth tube. They cough to get your attention. You stop ogling yourself. (They laugh, and say that everyone does it the first time.)
They set up the cerebral bridge to put you into your new body. (There is a brief discussion of animus/anima/animua/animin remapping, but as you are what Earth would call a trans person, you don’t need that particular service.) You change into a medical coverall and sit down in the chair.
>DISCONTINUITY<
You wake up. By the clock on the wall, a couple of hours have passed, but right now you’re busy coughing growth-tank fluid out of your lungs. They hand you a towel. Your eyes ache in the peculiar way of eyes that have never been used before, but it soon passes. You look over at your old body, now running the Minimal Maintenance Architecture. It’s breathing, but it looks comatose.
They help you over to a chair and help you dress – well, unless you were good at guessing your new sizes and brought your own, help you dress in a fresh new set of GenericWear™. You’re hungry. Food is provided, all food you can eat with a rubber spoon, but in fairness you have to learn how to use a brand-new nervous system. There’s not enough of it, either, but they gently remind you that your digestive tract is new to all this, too.
Part of the forced-growth process involves teaching your new cerebellum how to operate, so it’s not as bad as it could be, and an hour or so of practice has you able to manipulate objects and walk around without falling over. They suggest that you wait a few days before operating heavy machinery anyway, just in case, as recommended in the pamphlet they hand you, Care and Feeding of Your New Body.
There’s a little legal paperwork to read through, details of the Identity Tribunal confirming that you are, in fact, still you and updating all the relevant records with your shiny new Body Identification Number so that all the biometric stuff in the world still works. That uses up another few minutes; the Imperial Service is efficient.
You pay at the desk. They ask you what you want done with your old body – they can ship it to cold storage for you, or put it up for resale, or arrange for biowaste disposal (i.e., euthanasia and incineration). It’s up to you – it’s still your property, even if you’re not living there any more. You ask them to keep it on site for a couple of days while you think about it. It’s not a problem.
You’re done here, so you go about your day. You catch sight of yourself in the store window as you leave. Damn, you look good.
Hello, and welcome once again to Truly Awful Whiteboard Pictures season, as I present to you the basic workings of a nuclear-pulse Orion drive, Empire-style. Or at least Empire-of-the-Spaceflight-Initiative-Era style. Mostly so that I can refer to it later and y’all’ll know what I’m talking about.
Behold ye first (and note that I’m not really getting into explaining the Orion drive itself at this point: for that see here, which should give you an idea of what I’m riffing on) an exceptionally crude and simplified illustration of the mechanics of the drive itself:
The way this works as part of each firing cycle is approximately this:
As for the pulse units themselves, they look like this. Very roughly, as I’m eliminating all the complexity that goes into making them Happy Fun Shaped Charges as well as streamlined, spin-stabilized projectiles. Conceptual only:
The upper one is the old-style fission-based unit. Basically, it’s a laser-triggered fission bomb. The firing laser hits the beamcatcher lens, which splits the laser impulse into many beamlets proceeding along optical fibers, which are set up so that the laser impulselets reach the various explosive lenses surrounding the pit at the same moment. Implosion, prompt criticality, and fission pulse proceed to happen.
The lower one is the new hotness fusion-based unit. It’s a laser-triggered pure fusion bomb. In this case, the beamcatcher lens focuses the considerably more powerful laser impulse onto a parabolic mirror and needed secondary mirrors (not shown), for the purpose of delivering the laser impulse to all sides of a fusible pellet at the same time, even as the mirrors themselves are busy vaporizing. Fusible pellet hits inertially-confined criticality, and fusion pulse proceeds to happen.
The important thing to note here is that as much of the complexity as possible has been offloaded from the pulse units to the drive, inasmuch as you might want to knock a quick thousand pulse units out in the field with a relatively crude shipboard machine shop, which is not something you would expect to be able to build the drive.
GERRAWAY-BY-CLASS ORBITAL SERVICE VEHICLE
Operated by: The canine orbital mechanics of regular orbital mechanics.
Type: Orbital transfer/service vehicle.
Construction: Horizon Cageworks, ICC
Length: 2.2 m
Beam: 1.7 m
Dry mass: 784 kg
Gravity-well capable: No.
Atmosphere capable: No.
Personnel: 1 smart dog (prosophont bandal partial uplift)
Drives:
Propellant: Liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mix.
Cruising (sustainable) thrust: 0.25 g
Δv reserve: 1,350 m/s
Sensors:
Other Systems:
DESCRIPTION
The Gerraway-By-class of “micro” orbital service vehicle was a unique oddity brought to life by the circumstances of the early space era, and a chance meeting at the Look Out Below Café and Bar. Specifically, a wide-ranging discussion over several beers between some of the celestime architects from Horizon Cageworks, a number of gentlesophs working in various orbital industries, and a trainer of working bandal – and more specifically their “smart dog” variants who had undergone stage one uplift – who happened to be visiting the platform at the time. The topic was the increasing amount of grunt work – refueling satellites, performing basic maintenance, debris collection – that maintaining orbital industry required, and how inefficient it was to continue carrying this out by hand.
The result, a design outline found scribbled on a pile of napkins delivered to the Horizon offices the next morning, was the Gerraway-By.
In its essentials a shrunk-down version of the Minnal-class workpod – refactored so that one or two Gerraway-Bys could be carried by a Minnal, or several by an OTV – the Gerraway-By was intended as a means to bring our old friends with us into the space age. While AI was not quite ready for independent use performing the necessary tasks, it was more than capable of operating in conjunction with a well-trained working bandal, and their eldrae supervisor, to command a small service vehicle operating from a larger ship.
Combined with the work into uplift carried out by Family of Species and Cognitech’s beginning research into merkwelt translation easing interface difficulties, the timing was perfect for an entirely new kind of spacedog to take their place shepherding Eliéra’s increasingly crowded low orbitals, and a new era of partnership was born.
In today’s episode of Speak Eldraeic Like A Semi-Literate Barbarian, we cover descriptive metaphors. These are the least accurate and thus, inevitably, the most common type of modified word, a phrase that can take the place of an análar in any part of a sentence where one may be used, including both the anesprel and the rélar.
The descriptive metaphor (or the atratanálar, “typed-concept-word”, to give it its native name), is the least accurate type of modified word because it avoids the complexity of precisely defining the nature of the relationship with sub-clauses and cases by relying on metaphorical interpretation by the listener. For example, the name for a certain common weapon, tragalrás athánar, “Meat Machine”, or by its extended gloss, meat TYPE-OF machine, actually says very little about the relationship between meat and mechanism.
Is it a machine made out of meat? A meat-covered machine? A machine implant for meat? A machine for growing meat? A machine that serves the function of meat? Or a machine, as it in fact is, for reducing folks to meat?
There’s no way to tell. It depends on interpretation of the metaphor¹, so it is a form best avoided in scientific or technical discussions, unexplored areas of intercultural or interracial exchange, and other precisionist-grade speech. To use them is to assume the risk of being misunderstood in exchange for briefer expression.
That said, atratanálar are the closest equivalent to the adjective-noun² or adverb-verb combinations found in Anglic³, which also blend two concepts in a type-of relationship. It should be noted, however, that while it and other languages have rules concerning which words are allowed to modify and be modified, in Eldraeic, any análar may modify any other; you have complete freedom of metaphor generation, limited only by the comprehension of your listener.
Simple Atratanálar
So, some examples (using a few words that aren’t in articles we’ve reached yet, but not in the vital parts):
pí tramúlet lórravár
This-here is-a apple-type-of-tree.
This is an apple tree.
ádar Méris tradúëlin nissívár
The-person-named Méris is a young type-of female.
Méris is a young woman. or Méris is a girl.
val tralaras hainár
I words-type-of fight.
I argue. (Probably. Heh.)
This is the basic form of the atratanálar. The descriptive análar is placed before the described, and prefixed with tra- to indicate its descriptive function. Within the atratanálar, the first component is referred to as the carylan, the modifier-concept, and the latter as the cadarylan, the modified-concept. The cadarylan carries the primary meaning and the carylan modifies it with secondary overtones to be applied in a manner appropriate to the cadarylan. (For example, in the second example, tradúëlin should be interpreted as “young in the manner in which nissí, i.e., females, are young⁴”.
Complex Atratanálar
Sometimes we need more complex descriptions, either attaching more than one descriptive metaphor to the same cadarylan, or using a descriptive metaphor to describe the carylan of a second descriptive metaphor. To combine this with an example of ambiguity resolution, consider the following Anglic phrase⁵:
That’s a little girl’s school.
If treated as an example of the former, it would be interpreted as
That’s a little school for girls.
And if treated as an example of the latter.
That’s a school for little girls.
Many languages use intonation, stress, or rhythm to show the grouping. Eldraeic does not, by design. Rather, it structures such sayings in the form of a stack of stacks, thus:
pá tracalma tradúënissí alathyravár
That-there is-a small TYPE-OF [and] girls TYPE-OF school.
That’s a little school for girls.
pá tratracalma tradúënissí alathyravár
That-there is-a (small TYPE-OF girls) TYPE-OF school.
That’s a school for little girls.
In constructing these complex atratanálar, the prefix tra- binds the carylan to the next cadarylan to its right on the same level of the stack. In the first example, therefore, both calma and dúënissí modify alathyra. In the second example, the doubled prefix tratra- does so at the next level of the stack; i.e., it binds the carylan “calma” to the cadarylan “dúënissí”, and does so before, interpretatively speaking, the single tra- present there binds the now-complete carylan “tracalma dúënissí” to the cadarylan “alathyra“.
Which is to say, it is simply two nested atratanálar. Various combinations of nested atratanálar form the basis of all the more complex descriptions we will cover below.
It should be clear that this system can recurse through arbitrary depths of modifiers, with increasingly repetitive prefixes of tra-, tratra-, and tratratra- – although as is a common feature of Eldraeic grammar, the language permits syllabic numerals (discussed in a later article) to be used rather than repetition⁶ – and that any construct thus assembled is necessarily unambiguous.
Digression
It’s worth saying, of course, that the equivalents of “pretty little girl’s school” in Eldraeic don’t have quite as many variations as those in Anglic. For example, aelva strictly means “beautiful” and does not have the auxiliary “very” sense that “pretty” does. Likewise, calma means only “small in size” and cannot mean “young” (which would be dúëlin). And, of course, alathyra technically doesn’t mean school, inasmuch as the Empire doesn’t use such institutions – it means institute/academy/university.
So we’re still going to use this convenient phrase in our example, but do bear in mind that we’re discussing a Beautiful Academy of Short Young Women.
Complex Examples
There are five ways in which the análar of “pretty little girl’s school” can be grouped using tra- without reordering them:
traäelva tracalma tradúënissí alathyra
pretty TYPE-OF [and] small TYPE-OF [and] girls TYPE-OF school
a school which is beautiful, small, and for girls
traäelva tratracalma tradúënissí alathyra
pretty TYPE-OF [and] (small TYPE-OF girls) TYPE-OF school
a beautiful school for small girls
tratraäelva tracalma tradúënissí alathyra
(pretty TYPE-OF small) TYPE-OF [and] girls TYPE-OF school
a beautifully small school for girls
tratraäelva tratracalma tradúënissí alathyra
(pretty TYPE-OF [and] small TYPE-OF girls) TYPE-OF school
a school for girls who are beautiful and small
tratratraäelva tratracalma tradúënissí alathyra
((pretty TYPE-OF small) TYPE-OF girls) TYPE-OF school
a school for girls who are beautifully small
And that’s all she described!
See also later: inverted descriptive metaphors; logical connection in descriptive metaphors.
And yes, there’s a contemporaneous update of the vocabulary page, too.
(In the course of reading through this, the attentive reader and language hobbyist may note that Eldraeic bears more than a few similarities to Loglan and/or lojban. This similarity is, of course, purely intentional.)
To examine the grammar of a language, one must start by breaking it down into its most basic elements. In Eldraeic, being a language of logical form, the basic compound element is the predication, or esprel, an assertion of something about the world:
sá fidúrár
It is blue.
A predication (esprel) is made up of several components. At its center, you find the anesprel, or predicate, the assertion being made. An anesprel is one of the análar, or concept-words (derived from anála, concept, and laras, word) which make up the majority of the Eldraeic vocabulary, which has been adorned with -ár, the predication suffix, which marks it as the anesprel. (The predication suffix may be lengthened to -vár when the análar ends with a vowel.)
análar, thus, effectively serve as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and many adverbs, all of which are types of assertion.
The esprel also requires arguments (rélar) to fully define the assertion being made by filling in the complete form (see below) of the anesprel. These can appear anywhere around the anesprel, although conventional, non-poetic form places the subject/actor before the anesprel and the remainder of the arguments after it. The precise function of a given argument relative to the predicate is given by a case tag which is prefixed to the argument, although that for the subject/actor is normally omitted when placed alone before the anesprel. Others are mandatory.
While a full list of case tags will be given at a later date, that for subject/actor is a-; that for object/acted-upon is an-. These two are the most commonly used. More details on forming arguments will also be given at a later date. For now we are using mirílar (lit. structure-word, derived from miríë, order, and laras), words with special grammatical functions, specifically some of those which can occupy the role of a pronoun. Strictly called free variables, the special words sá, sé, sí, só, and sú can be bound to any argument, regardless of any other properties it may have, and used later to refer back to that argument.
Thus, we can see that in the phrase
sá fidúrár an-sé
the first rélar, the subject, is sá (A), the anesprel is fidúr (…is bluer than…), and the second rélar, the object, is sé (B). Or, to write it in plain English simply, A is bluer than B.
Comparative? No, Complete Forms
It should be noted that fidúr, when used as an anesprel, means not simply “blue” but “SUBJECT is bluer than OBJECT” (or to give its full complete form “SUBJECT is bluer than OBJECT by STANDARD”). This is the case for most análar which refer to properties; likewise, relational análar, such as aldren (sister), can have a similar complete form, “SUBJECT is the sister of OBJECT [by bond/tie STANDARD | from parents CREATOR <set> ]”.
Every análar has (and is listed thus in an Eldraeic dictionary) a complete form expressing its full meaning when used as an anesprel, defining the entire meaning of the resulting esprel by showing the places in which its expected arguments sit (and the case tags to be attached to them). This complete form is not binding with regard to which arguments you must supply – you may omit arguments and add additional ones via case tags which are not found in the complete form – but it is assumed that the arguments from the complete form are present, even if unspoken. Thus, all blue objects are bluer than something, all sisters have sororal bonds and/or parents, and when you make something:
mahav (make) has the complete form “SUBJECT makes / assembles / builds / manufactures / creates OBJECT out of materials / parts / components COMPONENT using tool INSTRUMENT”
It is implied that you make it out of something and use a tool to do so.
The Omitted Argument
What then does sá fidúrár, which we earlier translated as “it is blue” mean? Well, technically this is an allowed elision of a slightly longer form:
sá fidúrár an-uis
uis is an indefinite argument (of which more later), which serves as a verbal ellipsis, a placeholder for when an argument is omitted; such incomplete esprel always imply uis. Naturally, it can be elided – in normal speech, you never actually need to say uis – but it can be useful if you wish to draw attention to the argument you are omitting.
As an omitted argument, uis means “something which exists but which I am not bothering to define, except as implied by the esprel I am within”. In the case of sá fidúrár an-uis (or simply sá fidúrár), you are simply saying that the subject is bluer than “something”, which is to say, that the subject is blue.
Observatives
Two special types of esprel are the observative and the imperative. Of the imperative we shall speak later.
An observative, meanwhile, is simply an esprel in which the subject/actor is omitted. These are referred to as observatives because their common usage is to observe that something is happening without details and to communicate that quickly; for example, should one find oneself in a crowded theater, one may cry:
andravár!
Fire!
without wishing to take time to establish precisely what is burning.
We talk this week about the Eldraeic alphabet, and how it is pronounced.
There are 48 symbols in the Eldraeic alphabet. Leaving aside the twelve numerals (whose pronunciation as words will be addressed later when we get to syllabic numbers), the remaining thirty-six characters are letterals; twelve vowels, and twenty-four consonants.
Note that Eldraeic doesn’t use capitalization; there is only one case. When it is desired to emphasize a word (or a name), traditional means include – depending upon mode – a change of color of ink, a cartouche, or a suitable calligraphic fillip.
The traditional representation of these, as taught to students across the Empire, is in a grid with a few missing cells at the bottom right, like this:
| Short Vowels | Long Vowels | Plosives | Fricatives | Sibilants | Nasals & Rhotics | Exotics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a [æ] | á [a] | b [b] | v [v] | z [z] | m [m] | l [l] |
| e [e] | é [e] | p [p] | f [f] | s [s] | n [n] | h [h] |
| i [I] | í [i] | d [d] | ch [t͡ʃ] | zh [ʒ] | r [ɾ] | ! [ǀ] |
| o [ɒ] | ó [o] | t [t] | th [ð] | c [ʃ] | rr [r] | q [kw] |
| u [ʊ] | ú [u] | g [g] | j [ðʒ] | x [ks’] | ||
| y [ə] | ý [«] | k [k] |
Not here that the two-letter combinations reflect single Eldraeic letterals.
Additional symbols are used in some modes to indicate stresses and tones, but while these provide useful side-channels for communication, they aren’t part of the strict language grammar and won’t be touched on additionally here.
Having now disposed of the orthography, let us move on to the phonology. While the IPA representations of the various letterals have been included above, in the more detailed notes below, I include some examples of equivalent English phonemes for the non-IPA speaker. The trouble, of course, is that these reflect how I pronounce English, so caveat reader. You may also find this page useful.
First, we go through the vowels, of which there are two mirrored sets, short and long. To begin with the short, we have:
And then the long vowels:
Now on we go to the consonants, and we open with the plosives. All very simple:
And then the fricatives:
The sibilants:
The nasals and rhotics:
And finally the exotics, most of which are not particularly exotic but which don’t fit neatly into any of the other categories:
There are also the diphthongs, but while I may get back to them later, I’m going to let you figure them out yourselves from the vowel descriptions for now, mostly because if I have to listen to any more pronunciation examples to figure out the correct IPA, I may just stab myself in the larynx.
But that does bring up one important point. Apart from the acute accent used to indicate long vowels, core Eldraeic does make use of one other accent, represented in the transliteration by the diaeresis. This indicates that the letter it is placed above is pronounced separately from the previous one. So, for example, it indicates that the last part of ashíël is not a diphthong, and would correctly be pronounced ee-el.
While mostly used for diphthongs, the accent can also be used on consonants. For example, the word
kass:endal
which has a diaeresis here represented by a trailing colon over the second s, is properly pronounced kas-sendal.
Other things we will get to later include that letters have both pronunciations (i.e., patterns to turn letterals into words) and names which are used as a phonetic alphabet. But that’s not now, and nor is it next time.
Next week, we’re gonna do some predication.
As people have been requesting more linguistics and vocabulary, welcome to the first article in our new approximately-weekly series, Speak Eldraeic Like a Semi-Literate Barbarian. (From the remarkably unpopular Like a Semi-[whatever] Barbarian series of self-help books.) It will consist of a series of chapters discussing different features of the language from the bottom up, and will (once there is some) also add a vocabulary list page to the site that we’ll expand on as we go.
In this first chapter, the introduction, we talk a little bit about the language and its various forms – most importantly, what the rest of this series won’t contain.
First of all, one should bear in mind that Eldraeic is a constructed language within as well as without the Associated Worlds universe. It was specifically developed to be the official common language of the constituent nations of the Empire of the Star. As part of the Imperial Charter, the various constituent nations and their successors agreed to universal fluency in Eldraeic.
The language was developed, to some extent, before the Imperial period; reifying the original version took nearly a century of scholarly debate (with the odd duel and brawl to break the monotony), combining aspects of the sundered languages of the original nations redesigned for precision and clarity – its exquisitely regular grammar has a strong mathematical basis that makes it ideally suited to express logical and technical concepts. It was eventually released for general use in 8.
However, while Eldraeic became, as intended, the shared language of governance, education, global media, and commerce, it was accepted and encouraged that the constituent nations would keep their original languages for daily use. As a consequence of this, Eldraeic has adopted many loan words and borrowed features as the Empire has expanded – indeed, it has become quite fashionable to lard one’s conversation with words and phrases borrowed from one’s cultural tongue – and many of these have found themselves incorporated into subsequent releases by the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology.
There are two –
(Okay, three, but the third is one people would prefer not to admit to.)
– well-known Eldraeic dialects.
Low Eldraeic is the one we’ll be talking about in this series. It’s the standard version of the language spoken by the entire Empire for day-to-day purposes.
Then there’s High Eldraeic, which we won’t be covering. Unlike such languages as High German, High Eldraeic is an extremely sophisticated prestige dialect, used on the most formal of formal occasions, the highest of official documents, by savants and scholars, poets and artists. As well as the normal alphabets, it can also be written in several dedicated glyphic systems conveying multiple dimensions of meaning.
(We won’t be covering this because it’s every bit as complex and flowery as the most elaborate forms of Heian-period court Japanese on top of that of the language itself.)
Then there is Trade. Trade is, from one perspective, the interstellar language of communication, trade, and diplomacy that predated ubiquitous machine language translation. From another perspective, it’s an Eldraeic pidgin hacked for simplicity, which incorporates a significant number of words and grammatical features from other languages of the Worlds, split into many mutually-mostly-comprehensible dialects. From yet another, it’s a painfully grating mutilation of a beautiful language that it would be nice never to have to hear again now that machine translators can render just about anything into minimally competent Eldraeic.
(We won’t be covering that one, either.)
Another aspect of the language is its variations adapted to the different vocal apparatuses (and to an extent, psychology) of the different sophont races of the Empire. While difficult, it has thus far been possible to keep the variations isomorphic.
The version we will deal with here is Eldraeic I, the original varietal of the language released in 8, and thus obviously suited to the eldrae throat and range of hearing. (And thus, additionally, suitable for human speech and hearing.)
Other versions include:
There are three primary written forms for Eldraeic – if we discount the ideographic writing, which is now largely relegated to commonly used store signs, calendars, watch faces, emoji, and other such usages – each of which uses the same 48-character alphabet written in different forms.
The runic alphabet, commonly known as hexrunic, is derived from forms of writing pioneered by the azikeldrae for carving into stone or inscription upon metal. Thus, it largely eschews curves, and avoids ascenders and decenders which interrupt symmetry; hexrunic is compact, making use of modified hexagonal and part-hexagonal shapes which use space efficiently. Combining accents are placed within the letters.
This alphabet was also commonly used on early computer displays, both teletypes and pre-WYSIWYG digraphic displays (being naturally monospaced), and many of the most commonly used technical fonts are designed for it.
There are also two cursive alphabets, one designed for pens and descended from Selenarian originals, a language of graceful, tall curves, with an italic slant and ascenders and descenders offering free scope for calligraphic flourishes and ornamentation. Each character flows freely into the next. Accents are added above the text.
A second cursive variation, designed for brushes, is taken from the writing styles of Ochale and Kanatai, which has also become popular for writing on slates and other pressure-sensitive surfaces. This variation also gave rise to claw-letters, a modification devised by dar-bandal savants for easy inscription by clawed species.
Next time, we’re going to discuss the actual 36 letterals (and 12 numerals) of the Eldraeic alphabet, and the language’s phonology.
oolkor voäin: A gutterspeak corruption of the Low Eldraeic, and Trade, phrase ulquor vohaïnár, literally “no brawl (is present herenow)”. (From ulquor, zero degree quantifier + vo, second size prefix + haïn, battle + ár, predication affix, in this case creating an observative.)
Unlike the original phrase, which is not used in this sense by civilized speakers, the gutter form is often heard grunted as a greeting and farewell by the less reputable sort of mercenary, pirates, slavers, street gangs, and other assorted lowlives and scum of the galaxy, indicating a lack of desire to fight at the present time and place and a hope for its reciprocation.
It reflects a surprisingly sophisticated sense of irony that the traditional response, “ankan voäin”, is a likewise corrupt form of anqan vohaïnár, meaning “just a little brawl”.
– A Star Traveler’s Dictionary
cla-elén bríäz jé elén duenissí: (literally “without blades or maidens¹”) an ancient idiom, this phrase provides a way of discussing dangerous or forbidden topics.
If all parties to a conversation (or other means of communication) agree on discussing a matter “without blades or maidens”, the conversation may proceed without concern that offense will be received (or at least that such will not give rise to a cause of action, although it is courteous to refrain from receiving offense insofar as such discussions are often invoked to cover potentially offensive yet necessary subjects) or that the subject will pass before the ears of those who should be spared its ugliness.
When the conversation is complete (or when a party to it withdraws their agreement), it is not done to resume discussion of the matter at any time not without blades or maidens.
ulargydar: (from ul, negation + argyr, worth + daráv, person or sophont) Usually translated “nithing” or “nihility”, ulargydar literally means “worthless person”, used to describe the worst miscreants. The implication is that Entropy has devoured all the worthy qualities and virtues present in the ulargydar‘s soul, leaving behind only a nothingness in the shape of a man.
kaälath: (from “ka”, present time marker, and “alath”, wisdom) context-uncoupling or dehabituation, that state of mind in which one experiences everything as removed from its context and from the normal state of affairs. In the state of kaälath, one is able to experience all things as fresh and new, despite that one may be accustomed to them by long experience.
Learning to achieve kaälath is not only a core part of objective-perception for rationality training, but is also considered one of the keys to ethical maturity, unlocking the ability to be aware of the unique value of all things, and thus to not take those things one meets and makes use of every day for granted.
anála: (from anás, a monad, and alath, knowledge); a concept.
Specifically, anála refers to an entity of the conceptual plane; for example, a philosophical form, a geometric shape, or mathematical concept, such as the computed value of π. This specifically excludes any knowledge-monads which are contingent upon the material plane, such as physical concepts or laws – including things such as the speed of light, or the measured value of π – which are determined empirically and which may vary between localities or universes.
It’s about divergences in computer technology —
Or in other words, some conversations elsewhere have made it evident that it would be useful to have some of these things out here for discussion, and since this is going to involve comparisons to Earthling ways of doing things, it’s going to be a worldbuilding article rather than an in-universe one.
Some of this has been implied previously – for those of you who remember the little piece I wrote on programming languages in particular, in the opening phrase “The typical computer in use in the modern Empire remains the parallel array of binary-encoded Stannic-complete processors that has been in use since the days of the first settled Stannic cogitator architecture”.
So what does that actually mean?
Well, it means that while the individual elements of computation would be familiar to us – if you are reading this, you are almost certain to be doing so on something describable as a binary-encoded Stannic-complete processor – how they were arranged took a sharp left turn way back in the day.
Most of our computing is fundamentally serial. We may have fancy multicore processors these days, but we’re still pretty much scratching the surface or real parallelism; most systems are still operating in a serial paradigm in which you work on one task, switch to another, work on that, etc., etc. If you write a complex, multithreaded program, it may look like things are happening in parallel, but most of the time, they won’t be.
For various reasons – which may have something to do with the relative ease of adding power to the old brass-and-steam Stannic cogitators by adding more processor modules vis-à-vis trying to get faster reciprocation and higher steam pressures without exploding; or it may have something to do with older forms of computation involving hiring a bunch of smart lads and lasses from the Guild of Numbers and arranging them in a Chinese room; or… – once they got into the electronic (and spintronic, and optronic) era instead of trying to make faster and faster serial processors¹, designers concentrated on making processors – with onboard fast memory and communications links – that could be stacked up, networked, and parallelized really well, complete with dedicated hardware and microcode to manage interprocessor links.
(You could look at something like Inmos’s Transputer as similar to early examples of this.)
Open up an Imperial computer, you’ll find a neat little stack of processor modules meshed together, working away on things in parallel and passing messages back and forth to stay coordinated. In modern designs, they share access to a big block of “slow memory”, possibly via one or more partially-shared caches, just like here‘s multicore processors do, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals of the parallel design.
And this architecture doesn’t change with scale, either. From the tiniest grain-of-rice picoframe found in any living object (three processing cores for redundancy, maybe even only one in the tiniest disposables) to the somewhere-between-building-and-city-sized megaframes running planetary management applications, they’re all built out of massively parallel networks of simple processing modules.
[Digression: this is also where the gentle art of computational origami comes into play. In the magical world in which the speed of light, bandwidth, and information density are conveniently infinite, you could fully mesh all your processing modules and everything would be wonderful. In the real world in which light is a sluggard and bit must be it, you can only have and handle so many short-range communications links – and so computational origami teaches you how to arrange your processing modules in optimally sized and structured networks, then stack them together in endless fractal layers for best throughput. More importantly, it teaches the processors how to manage this environment.]
[Second digression: having spent a lot of time and effort producing simple, networkable processor cores, this also rewrote a lot of how peripheral devices worked – because why would you waste a lot of time fabbing specialized silicon for disk controllers, or GPUs, or floating-point units, or whatever, when you could simply throw some processing cores in there with some “firmware” – for which read “software flagged as tied to hardware feature flag foo, instance bar” – and get to the same place?
So, for example, when you think “printer”, don’t think “dumb hardware operated by a device driver”. Think “processor that knows how to draw on paper; all I have to do is send it a picture”. Pretty much every peripheral device you can think of is implemented in this way.]
This has also had rather a profound effect on how everything built on top of it works. I spent quite some time discussing how programming languages worked, along with MetaLanguage (the bytecode that these processors have more or less standardized on speaking) in the above-linked post, but you may note:
Polychora: a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language designed to support object-, aspect-, concurrency-, channel-, ‘weave-, contract- and actor-oriented programming across shared-memory, mesh-based, and pervasively networked parallel-processing systems.
…because once you grow to the size – and it doesn’t take much size – at which programming your parallel arrays in relatively low-level languages similar to Occam begins to pall, you start getting very interested in paradigms like object/aspect/actor programming that can handle a lot of the fun of massively parallel systems for you. This has shaped a lot of how environments have developed, and all the above language environments include compilers that are more than happy to distribute your solution for you unless you’ve worked hard to be egregiously out-of-paradigm.
And the whys and hows of WeaveControl, and the Living Object Protocol.
This has also, obviously, made distributed computing a lot more popular a lot more rapidly, because having been built for parallel operation anyway, farming out processing to remote nodes isn’t all that more complicated, be they your remote nodes, or hired remote nodes, or just the cycle spot market. Operating systems for these systems have already developed, to stretch a mite, a certain Kubernetes-like quality of “describe for me the service you want, and I’ll take care of the details of how to spin it up”.
In accordance with configurable policy, of course, but except in special cases, people don’t care much more about which modules are allocated to do the thing any more than they care about which neurons are allocated to catch the ball. In the modern, mature computing environment, it has long since become something safely left to the extremely reliable optronic equivalent of the cerebellum and brainstem.
Now as for how this relates to, going back to some of the original conversations, starships and AI:
Well, obviously for one, there isn’t a single computer core, or even several explicitly-designed-as-redundant-nodes computer cores. There are computers all over the ship, from microcontrollers running individual pieces of equipment up – and while this probably does include a few engineering spaces labeled “data center” and stacked floor to ceiling with nanocircs (and backing store devices), the ship’s intelligence isn’t localized to any one of them, or couple of them. It’s everywhere.
If your plan to disable the ship involves a physical attack on the shipmind, you’ve got a lot of computing hardware to hunt down, including everything from the microcontrollers that water the potted plants on G deck to the chief engineer’s slipstick. You have fun with that. Briefly.
As for AI – well, digisapiences and thinkers operate on the same society-of-mind structure that other minds do, as described here. When this interrelates with the structure of parallel, distributed computing, you can assume that while they are one data-structure identity-wise, the processing of an AI is organized such that every part of the psyche, agent, talent, personality, subpersonality, talent, mental model, daimon, etc., etc., etc., is a process wrapped up in its own little pod, off running… somewhere in what looks like a unified cognitive/computational space, but is actually an arbitrary number of processing cores distributed wherever policy permits them to be put.
(If you choose to look down that far, but outwith special circumstances, this is like a biosapience poking around their brain trying to find out exactly which cells that particular thought is located in.
Said policy usually mandates some degree of locality for core functions, inasmuch as light-lag induced mind-lag is an unpleasant dissociative feeling of stupidity that folk prefer not to experience, but in practice this non-locality manifests itself as things like “Our departure will be delayed for 0.46 seconds while the remainder of my mind boards, Captain.” Not a big deal, especially since even protein intelligences don’t keep their whole minds in the same place these days. They wouldn’t fit, for one thing.)
But suffice it to say, when the avatar interface tells you that she is the ship, she ain’t just being metaphorical.
Herewith some thoughts on thematics, inspired by today’s quest for matcha-flavored Pocky, a fine and delicious product of the Ezaki Glico Company, Limited.
I observe, on their corporate web site, the slogan “Pocky is about sharing happiness and bringing people together.”
And I observe introspectively just how very much I want to believe that in an entirely unironic fashion.
That when you look at the multinational candy industry, and scrape away the layers of issues caused by terrible legal and regulatory environments, and dipshits who practice clichéd dark-side capitalism, and dipshits who accuse everything of being clichéd dark-side capitalism, and get right down to the core of things, the Founder, CEO, and Etc., really did start out as a small boy who grew up with a dream of being Willy Wonka and bringing truly awesome chocolate to the world, and held hard to that.
[And, y’know, apply liberally and literally across all other industries. I’m not just talking about chocolate, obviously.]
How is this about thematics, I hear you cry?
Because this is the universe where – because the people thereabouts take ideas seriously, and thus take ideals seriously – such quaint notions are literally true.
(And where bitter postmodern cynics will be beaten with delicious chocolate-coated biscuit sticks until they give in and acknowledge that actually, they do spread happiness after all.)
méshválar: (from mésh, a tile or plaque, and válaras, name, itself from val, personal pronoun, and laras, word); a name-tile.
The origin of the name-tile is in the simple courtesy of not bringing moisture or road-dust into the home. Imperial houses are normally constructed with a caráhan, an entry room, which serves the purpose of containing outside dirt and providing space for visitors to prepare themselves to enter the house proper, as well as for requesting permission to enter the house proper from its hearthmistress or her proxy. Such a room therefore often contains amenities such as a small fountain for personal refreshment and cupboards or chests for visitors’ shoes, travel clothing, etc., that they do not wish to bring with them into the home, as well as the traditional welcoming display.
The méshválar, a thin porcelain tile bearing its owners name and sigil, serves two purposes connected with this room:
For visitors, the méshválar is placed upon the cupboard or chest in which they have placed their effects, signifying their ownership of the contents. In some caráhan, associated with commercial buildings rather than homes, these containers lock, and once the key has been withdrawn, the méshválar is placed specifically over the lock, but this would not be seen in a private home. The strength of the custom is more than sufficient to guarantee privacy; indeed, should a guest depart without being able to collect their effects, it is usual to ship the entire chest, unopened, to their home.
Meanwhile, when at home, it is customary to place one’s méshválar on a rack located within the caráhan, thus allowing arriving visitors to know who is currently at home before requesting entrance.
I’ve added the Watch Constabulary’s (and OIP’s) special rank titles for the E- and lower O-grades to the Table of Ranks, for those interested in such things. See them here:
(Originally titled Eldraeic Word of the Day: asírdaëlíthal, but come on…)
asíran: power; note: not coercive power, the power of compulsion, which is korás. Rather, the ability and means to act upon the elements of the world towards a defined end. (See also the kinds of power, here.)
daëlin: probability, chance.
asírdaël: (from asíran + daëlin) opportunity; that is to say, a possibility (probability) which exists because of one’s possession of the power (agency) to take advantage of that possibility; that which can be realized through action.
íthal: object, thing.
asírdaëlíthal: (from asírdael + íthal) an opportunity-object; an item created for no reason other than that one possessed the power to create it. The end product of such philosophies as “because it’s there“, “we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard”, and “we do what we can, because we must”. Existence/possibility as imperative.
…are what I have been working on today, so here’s a quick table for those interested:
So, in the past, we discussed the arms and equipment of the Imperial Legions, but we never went into their organization in any particular depth, something this post intends to correct.
Now, if you remember the Table of Ranks post, you’ll note that I have used fairly typical Western-type ranks (albeit in somewhat altered structure) to translate the ranks of the Imperial Military Service, Legions included. This is a convenience for the reader who is familiar with these, although in many ways this paints an inaccurate picture of their actual organization.
One should remember, after all, that the Empire’s history never had the Dark Ages, or the medieval era that followed. The implication being that the Imperial Legions draw their tradition, in unbroken descent generation following generation, from the phalanges of Ancyr and the lockstep legions of ancient Selenaria, themselves born of a time when the hot new military technology was very early steel – and this imprint still lies heavy upon them.
And one of the places that this is visible is in their organization and associated positions.
(These being the titles associated with command or various other positions within a unit, separate from the rank held by whoever occupies it. As I note below, there is a loose association between the one and the other, but the Imperial Military Service has gone all-in on matrix management and does not believe in up-or-out; in a world in which lives are so very, very long, they don’t want to lose talent to such policies over time; or, indeed, by promoting people from positions in which they are exceptionally good into positions in which they are less talented. So while it is by no means usual to find legionaries whose rank is disproportionate to their position, it’s by no means unknown.)
And so, in the absence – ah, time to spend on conlanging, where art thou? – of a full and appropriate set of Eldraeic terminology, pray pardon my shameless appropriation and distortion of a variety of Greek and Roman terms in the below descriptions. (Also the use of the term armiger, “one who bears arms” in its non-heraldic sense, to describe those legionaries one of whose primary functions is fighting personally.)
So, to begin at the beginning, with the smallest of units:
Fist
The smallest, most fundamental division of the legions, the fist is a fireteam of four legionaries (E-3, outside training legions or first-tour replacements), one of whom (the monitor, usually an E-4/Corporal) is in tactical command, and a second of whom carries an additional heavy weapon.
(Well, except in armor legions. There, the fist is generally representative of a single tank crew, etc.)
Lochos (File)
The next division up, the lochos (or file, since the original lochos was based on one file of soldiers in the Ancyran phalanx or the Selenarian legions) consists of three fists, plus a lochagos (file leader; usually an E-6/Master Sergeant) and ouragos (file closer; usually an E-5/Sergeant) as commander and second-in-command, respectively, for a total of fourteen armigers.
In light infantry legions, each lochos is assigned a pair of V40 Ralihú IFVs (accommodate 8 each) as transports, the lochagos commanding one and the ouragos the other.
The lochos can be considered the approximate equivalent of the modern squad. In more classical comparisons, one might analogize the lochos with the Roman contubernium, the tent-group; the lochos is a logistical unit inasmuch as its members are quartered together, eat together1, share various common appurtenances, etc.
Triarchy (informal)
Next up the hierarchy we come to the triarchy – which is not a formally constituted unit but rather one occasionally broken out for convenience – and consists of three lochoi assigned together; 42 armigers. The commander of a triarchy, although sometimes referred to as the triarch, is simply the lochagos with seniority. (On the rare occasions that a triarchy is seen operating independently – see note under century – higher command strata may find an O-2/Ensign from somewhere to give it policy direction.)
It can be considered the approximate equivalent of the modern platoon – in size, at least.
Century
Next in formal units, the century; six lochoi together, commanded by a centurion (O-4/O-3/O-2 Lieutenant/Sublieutenant/Ensign, usually depending on the seniority of the century within its legion) and an optio (E-7/Gunnery Sergeant); 86 armigers total. The century is usually the smallest unit to operate independently (for short periods; any long-term independent operations will be assigned a full cohort). A legion contains 162 centuries (from three alae / nine merarchies / twenty-seven cohorts).
The century is the first of the “bannered units”; these being the century, the cohort, and the legion entire. When colors are carried2, the symbolism for each century and its attached battle-honors are of course unique, but the background pattern and combination of colors is standardized, such that every legion’s, for example, 43rd century will use the same base banner as every other legion’s.
The century also has staff positions (auxiliaries) outside the directly armigerous personnel. In auxiliaries, a typical century will include a signifer (the bearer of the colors and communications specialist), a quartermaster, two forward observer/recon specialists, two armorers, two field medics, and the field kitchen.
In addition, there is a fire-support asset attached to each century; for an infantry legion, this is usually a Saber coilgun-walker or something similar; and it is at the century level that the G5-TT Corveé tactical transports and their crews (one per two lochoi), or equivalent, are attached.
The century can be considered the approximate equivalent of a modern company.
Dicentury (informal)
Back to non-formal units, the dicentury, which is exactly what it says on the tin; a pair of centuries operating together (i.e. 172 armigers), commanded by the senior centurion of the pair.
Cohort
On we go with the cohort; six centuries, for a fighting strength of 516, commanded by a machegos, or “Battlemaster” in the vernacular (O-4/Lieutenant or O-5/Major3). The cohort is the unit most commonly used for independent operations.
As the second of the bannered units, the cohort includes an aquilifer to carry its colors4 (and the golden eagle atop them) as well as serve as a communications specialist among its auxiliaries, which include at this point a full embedded logistics and medical staff, an adjutant for the machegos, the master of the camp, an intelligence staff, and the padre, among others.
(The cohort’s padre is not counted among the armigerous on the technicality that his command structure answers first to his deity, and only afterwards to the machegos5. Regardless, when the cohort meets the enemy, the padre is usually to be found in the van.)
In addition, there’s a heavy fire-support asset attached to each cohort. The type varies by legion, but a light infantry legion might use the HV-12 Stormfall missile tank or the HVC-14h Thunderbolt drone tank, in the role.
The cohort can be considered the approximate equivalent of the modern battalion.
Merarchy
Up to the next level, the merarchy; three cohorts together, for a total fighting strength of 1,548, commanded by a merarch (O-6/Colonel or O-7/Brigadier). It’s primarily a tactical and administrative division rather than one that has a large staff attached to it. What it does have attached to it, though, is the lighter half of the legion’s organic air support, in the form of one wing of G12-BU Falcon tilt-rotors6 attached to each merarchy.
Can be considered the approximate equivalent of the regiment – in size. Where the “regimental system” is concerned, however, that’s the legion.
Ala
Next, the ala, or wing; three merarchies together, for a total fighting strength of 4,664, commanded by an alearch (an O-7/Brigadier or O-8/General of the Wing). Much like the cohort, it has a full attached staff, appropriate to its place in the hierarchy (although it is not a bannered unit).
Also attached to the ala is the legion’s heavy air support; a wing of G7-BU Sunhawk heavy ground-attack aircraft each. Combat support units of various kinds which the legion has permanently acquired over its history and temporarily attached subunits tend to also be glued on here, at the ala level.
It can be considered the approximate equivalent of the modern brigade.
Legion
And finally, the legion itself; three wings together, for a total fighting strength of 13,9327, commanded by a strategos, a post occupied by an O-9/General of the Legion. Also includes the strategos‘s command staff (including the draconifer, who carries the legionary standard, a crystal-and-gold replica of the dragons framing the Dragon Throne, and is in charge of legionary communications) and its support units.
The legion is, of course, the highest of the permanently established units of the Imperial Military service. It can be considered the approximate equivalent of the modern division.
And On…
The legion is, of course, not the largest possible military command; it’s merely the largest formally and permanently organized unit. When needed for a war, legions can be grouped together into field forces, which can be grouped into armies, which in turn are attached to fleets up in the airy heights of the Admiralty where grades O-10 through O-14 (various kinds of Marshal) roam, ultimately under the overall theater command of a Warmain (polemarch) answering to the First Lord of the Admiralty.
But that’s another story…