Glossary • Worlds and Geographies • Aa ~ Az
Alcá {al-KAH}
coastal region of Oraea
Alcá’s coast absorbed much of the harsh ocean winds that howled in from the north seas, winds which shaped the basalt and pumice into a strangescape of smoothed stone that expresses in swirls, arches, rounded edges, and a sense of frozen motion.
The shapes of this shore in turn drew shelled creatures of all kinds, and we might picture primordial scenes where the rising sun illuminates fields of shellfish and shell-other, heads raising if they have them, soaking in the warmth, bathing in the light amplified by the alabaster shore. What phosphenes did they see? What pleasures moved them? What ecstatic experiences took hold? What dances of revelation will we never see or know?
Whether they came here to die, or died as a result of coming here, or came for whatever reasons inscrutable even to reputed experts, the millions upon millions of shells left behind have become layers upon layers of tintless dusts that coat the coast.
A less forgiving place, where humes visit or pass through rather than stay or settle.
Near to: Aliat Erren, Gewareh Glent, Sevransalise, Siumonaxholo, AnreoraAnraeora.
almun-kho {AHL-moon KHOE}
Region of the planet khoyyohk
A desertified quarter of the planet khoyyohk speckled by ruins and remembrances.
The region called almun-kho is only a piece (and one of the only pieces we have, at that) of a broken puzzle whose pieces are majoritively lost to sands, wind, and time. These pieces, scattered across a continent, together compose the tragic remnants of a most ancient community now long-covered by a less ancient cataclysm. At the heart of this place was a metropolis named Nulahm, famous most in its day for the library that - at the time of its destruction - had proudly stood there for a millenia.
Amongst other heartbreaks, we don't even know what all was lost.
Even the name is just a contemporary creation to refer to the area.
We know only what has been found, and barely that at that.
AlmiriondeNaeim {all-mir-ih-OHN-deh-NEYE-ihm}
forest on the planet Oraea
A name which means something to the effect of ‘the invisible forest’, or more specifically ‘the forest which is not here but remains present with us’.
The humes who live in this span of land between The MevSenna and Oraea’s northwestern ocean know no trees of their own, but are altogether unbothered by this as they feel the strong presence of the trees that once grew there. An ancient forest, the ancestor of The MevSenna itself, covered this continent's northern coasts in its early days - the humes here simply treat the trees as present and the forest as still alive. This does not mean they are running around dodging trees that aren’t there or the like; rather, many who enter here feel an irrepressible sense of constant, ghostly energy. They may well even feel, see, dream, speak of scenes and times which came before.
Humes remain unclear how or why this is, but can generally agree that - whatever it is - it is. Effects of this include areas of diverse sizes where nothing is built. While travel through these is allowed it is also discouraged, and the humes of AlmiriondeNaeim have oft been found gazing, meditating, even commenting, all as if the trees were right there. And, to these humes: in every way but body, those trees are.
Using fallen trunks of The MevSenna they build their homes and boats in the the shallows of the shore with thick, carved, curved stilts (not all boats are homes, and not all homes are boats). Paints made with ancient recipes, shaped over time, have preserved the woods far longer than ever previously imaginable. Protected by a natural reef to their north, the waters that lap back and forth beneath their houses are calm, the stones faintly sparkling.
Near to: The MevSenna, Sahm Hje, Gehj Astraeleq, XiTrysiah.
Amenden Muun {ah-MEN-den mün}
forest of the planet Oraea
Flowering forest that fills most of the southern half of Oraea’s smaller southern sub-continent (with Esmariliah, forest of many colors, filling the northern half).
The elevation of the northern land declines in a gradual series of thin, rugged plateaus that work very much like landscape-size steps. These have ruptured and reformed over time, so that the experience is still overall one of going downhill, but the land itself is rolling and knotted, covered by moss and beautiful soil fed by the fall of leaves and flowers.
Topheavy-thick as the trees and their flowerfoliage can be, the wind finds its way to twist and laugh through the forest, just below that upper canopy, giving the whole forest the quality of floating and an appearance of dancing.
Flowers here take cornucopic forms but few colors; most are some shade of green. It is unclear which evolved which way first - the flowers to appear green, or the local insects to only see shades of that color. Swirls of forest are marked by yellow flowers where the trees grow taller, more apart from each other. The small hume metropolis called Caelos can be found around where the trees begin to thin and stretch high to the far sky, flowers white, the silver tree bark more like a skin marked by what look like brushstrokes of faded green.
As one moves southwards through the forest, there is a distinct and somewhat sudden dropoff of crumbling cliffs leading to a rocky coastal plain where a tradeport called Onaerosan - the southernmost major metropolis to be found on Oraea - awaits.
Near to: Esmariliah, Quv Qirom, The Broadroot Straits, Avclere, Clavec.
Arcad {ARE-cad}
moon of the planet Loalo
A place of power, wonder, whimsy, and communication. This moon is composed of several fragmented continents, some large islands, a few smaller ones, and many ones smaller still, with a wild rough and beautiful ocean between.
Civilisation here is ancient and has always moved fast, its residents having long-since come to see themselves as a global civilisation - a great connection spanning the whole moon, one dedicated to the arts of Ambassadorship in all its forms. They cultivate the collective curiosity to communicate with anything, and indeed the collective curiosity to communicate with everything. Indeed their work indicates that life is, in its way, composed of nothing but languages. All speaking to all and everything, in every way creation can. So they go, out there into the wide everywhere, as ambassadors and allies.
Each rock, each current, each kind of being out there in the Pleiades has its entries in Arcad's diverse multimedial catalogues - or will - and the whole moon is peppered with places and possibilities allowing for researches for all kinds. It abounds with laboratories and gardens, research institutes and interactive museums, agricultural wonders and technological impossibilities. Technology of a wild future is present, with the sciences ever discovering new ways to bring life together - including that famous art seen the cosmos over called Bioanthropy; that is to say, the integration of one or more forms of life with the body of another. These integrations can range from the innocuous to the useful to the truly wild, matching and even transcending those stranger visions of the dreaming civilisation on the planet Avay.
Arcad's Ambassadorial Arts emerged at least in part from this moon's early history, separated as the landmasses were by waters cornucopic with life. At first the humes here all developed apart, growing their own ways and languages - which meant that by the time they began to discover each other, they had to learn not only to communicate across distance but across language. So they did, feedings all arts into this and then expanding their capacities just about as fast as they could imagine melting their limits. They coupled this with developing their capacities of translation across distance - in the sense of travel too, as in how to translate their bodies to other places across the cosmos; leading to them moving first with ever more and varied ease between islands, then cosmic bodies, then even galaxies.
Life and travel here are infused with both comfort and play; full of slides and bubbles, rides and bouncepoints, and all kinds more of creative fun as part of everyone's everyday.
The moon's population is, by collective reasoned choice, kept on the smaller side.
• Birth is a deliberate, considered, and careful process.
• Many members of the Arcadian community live and practice their Ambassadorial Arts in other places - those near, far, and far-flung indeed - as bridges are built between Arcad and everywhere/everything.
• And for those who don't resonate with living the high-paced eco-metro life, certain Arcadians ventured forth from their moon to the planet they orbited; the planet, called Loalo, where Space Grandma would later be born. There they discovered new arts and sciences, as well as new synergetic capacities, as they worked together on an ecotechnic project larger than any they had attempted up til then: the terraforming of an entire planet from a desolate and primal place to a richly diverse one of life, beauty, nourishment, and language.
Avay {ah-VAY}
planet, one of the core Hume Seven