altamai is in crisis as an imagined entity rn because I discovered today that i planned two huge swaths of culture and language with 2 totally different sets of numbers, so now everything is set up as if the lunar year is somehow almost twice as long as the solar year. I’m either going to have to change a lot of stuff that’s already canon, ignore and let it bother me for the rest of my life, or think of a really good in-universe justification so...Pray for the Motherworld
Continuing this week’s theme of actually fully explaining the calendar, here’s a quick writeup on why the Altamaian months have the names they do:
1. Semphora - With Semphora being the Ultimate Midwife, she watches over the pre-spring sleep of the natural world and guides the progression towards the rebirth of things that were dormant in the dry and/or cold season. Semphora was also, in myth, Orellistia’s firstborn--so being the oldest sister, it makes sense that she leads the calendar.
2. Collamara - Collamara rules over logistics and productive labor, and her novilunium is busy with both because it’s the time when those in the agricultural, shipping, and atmosphere harvesting industries prepare for the coming of milder weather.
3. Philoxia - On both Altamai and Glasmiri (at least in the temperate zones), this is planting time for fiber crops, and the blessing of the goddess of fibers (and her sisters, the goddesses of reaping and spinning) on the whole process is thought to be crucial.
4. Femea - As summer moves towards its peak, wild places are at their most alive, and their guardian goddess is thought to be at her most attentive.
5. Thaxia - This is the month of the summer solstice on Altamai. The planet is close to the suns, receiving their rays, and this is thought of as a celestial cue to honor Thaxia, who is believed to be embodied in every rocky planet.
6. Ouria - Ouria is an altamai-specific goddess who rules over the day cycle and is said to bring protection and prosperity to Altamai and her daughters specifically. She is characterized as a Mother, and as the days begin to shorten she’s said to enter symbolic hibernation leading in to the dormancy of winter and rebirth of spring.
7. Sonorura - The air of Altamai, Sonorura’s domain, cools off and gets clearer (as in less “smoggy”). Because of the air clarity thing, cold snaps at the beginning of winter can trigger both animal and astraea babies to hatch from their cocoons. Because of her association with the first breaths of newly born children, Sonorura is further associated with the first frosts of winter.
8. Aetha - Aetha is protectress of the Altamaian planetary throne, and this is the beginning of the court season. New queens are also usually crowned at this time of year.
9. Sonlia - As the days grow shorter and darker, sound becomes more noticeable and meaningful, and traditionally, social life becomes more centered around fireside singing and recitation; all realms protected by Sonlia, the goddess of sound and vibration.
10. Luca - The winter solstice is here, the light is about to return, let's all think of Levinoxia's favorite daughter as the veil of darkness covers us.
Ok I’m still planning to do a more fun illustrated/narrative version of this and plot-essential stuff is in the exposition of the books BUT if you’re a nerd (and I know I am!) here is Everything that led up to the Hyperian dynasty, directly or indirectly, starting from the first astraeas to live in this area
First Permanent Migrations
Cosmonist legend holds that the first astraeas to leave the vacuum and settle on the surfaces of planets did so on the six Holy Worlds that have been populated the longest: Tarega, Sitheria, Thass, Vesta A (the Basilean name for the world of Ami Ge), Esmrrrder and Hirimar. This is arguably true, although making a distinction that doesn’t really matter--worlds in the antedome and the Elorica quadrant were being settled around the same time. There’s more archaeological evidence to support another legend--that a flotilla of debris rafts that had drifted with gravity for generations, carrying the ancient proto-astraeas who had lived on them for generations, counselled in the outer orbits of the Basilean binary. Some continued on to the Sol Minerva system and settled on the Sitherian surface almost immediately upon their arrival. Another group set their course for the inner Sol Atya system, and would live on their rafts in the upper atmosphere of Tarega, gradually evolving as the chemistry of their lights changed from generation to generation in response to its composition, for another several million years. Because astraea genetics are as much a result of environment as they are of heritage, it’s difficult to tell where these proto-Sitherians and Basillans came from originally. What matters is that they came together and were in heavy communication even prior to written history.
The Miragari of the Sol Vesta system have likely lived on their own world even longer than the Sitherians have lived on theirs, but they seem to have migrated from the opposite side of the dome, reaching Basilea’s second-closest unincorporated star via the Carina Alta arm. Like the Basillans, ancient debris in the orbit of their world suggests that they lived in the upper atmosphere for anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand of their planet’s years before beginning to build their civilization on solid ground.
Other species seem to have arrived later in other mass migrations, having already developed inheritable biological features in other atmosphere environments (the fact that the Esmrrrderians and Hirimarians are more physically similar to each other, for example, than they are to the Basillans, Sitherians, Thassians or Miragari would suggest that they were once members of the same clan or group of clans). There is some theorizing that the Thassians may have originally come from Sol Vesta, but if so, their traits diverged from those of the Miragari long ago. They lack the archaeological evidence a “lander culture” that is common to other established species in the area, so their origins remain mysterious.
Development of Planetary Civilizations & First Atya System Explorers
Pre-contact Miragari cultures were sophisticated but tenuous, with populations in some parts of the planet dwindling after rapid agricultural development brought about significant changes to the local atmosphere. Although they developed their own forms of powered spaceflight and traveled widely, organized exploration was sparse--their system’s dense asteroid belt made exit in a large ship of the period difficult, and most of their resources were focused towards on-planet innovation. In this they advanced far beyond their counterparts in other systems, building massive and efficient cities with elaborate codes of law and traversing their abundant seas in ultra-fast and luxurious submarines.
The Basillan colonies that had landed on the surface of Tarega spent some generations growing apart from their Sitherian cohorts, but eventually began communicating, trading, and cooperating. The centralization of the Sitherian settlement in the megametropolis of Ovaiakon, which had by this point grown to cover 20% of the planet’s largest landmass, made travel and trade convenient for Basillan sailors. This partnership gave rise to mergers of cultural institutions all over both worlds--the most significant of which were the adoption of the Sitherian Syfrae logography/syllabography across the Sol Atya system and the compilation of the Writings of the Holy Poets, the document that solidified and spread the Cosmonist religion. With these uniting cultural threads, leaders on Tarega were able to ally with one another and pool resources to begin formal, recorded exploration missions to other planets--leading to the first settlements on Glasmiri, who appointed the first of the area’s planetary High Queen in order to unite politically and win a war of independence against their mother tribe--and to other systems.
Soon after the Glasmirian push for sovereignty, the Sitherian archpraeceptorate was established, and immediately developed a relationship with the planetary royal court, urging the High Queen and her scionettes to enter into honor-bound contract with the goddesses. This began to set the precedent of the perceived relationship between the Basillan planetary nations and the pantheon their people believed in.
Invasion of Sol Vesta System & Planetary Conflicts
Among these was one to Ami Ge (Vesta A), which in the next few centuries the Ixavol clan of Tarega and their wide-reaching allies, seeking conquest of the system of the nearest Holy Sun outside the immediate binary, would invade at multiple surface points--leading to a long and treacherous war, known widely as the Sol Vesta War, which would last for over twenty cycles and whose repercussions are still felt. After a complex series of concessions were negotiated on the planet’s surface, Basillan outposts remained in her orbit, basically maintaining a presence to keep the territory in their sights.
Over the effectively generational time passage that occurred during the war, the political motivations for fighting it shifted. While the original invasion had political and religious impetus, by the time of the final withdrawals the Taregan climate was changing, and holding land in the Sol Vesta system (including the uninhabited Kori Ge) became vital to the importation of particularly water and building materials. For a period of about 6,000 years following the concession talks scarcity on both Ami Ge and Tarega led to infighting among the regional populations of both worlds. Populations were significantly affected, but eventually technological advancement began to resolve things: Sitherian engineers--most notably the priestess and researcher Eiona Vang, who took eldership over the project--were brought to the royal courts of Saivega and Solreg to design large-scale atmosphere regulation systems that allowed for the creation of settlements above the clouds of Altamai, where the Taregan aristocracy fled practically in full in a span of just decades (with a few notable exceptions). Soon after, there was a mass migration of common colonies, who converted industrial spacecraft, hitched rides, or built their own ships in the desert and flew out by night without the behest of any authority.
Settlement of Altamai & Shali
Once on Altamai, Basillan culture changed and flourished. The international council of leadership that had existed on Tarega, after some centuries of trying, finally managed to appoint a high queen, Athaema Seflioma of Avès, who oversaw the building of ten experimental cities. In order to survive above the cloudline, the citizens of the new cities needed a steady supply of artificial atmosphere. With the same technology that allowed their mountaintop superatmospheric buildings, ships were constructed that could sustain a large crew for a long period of time. After several exploration missions, a fleet of ships were sent to the orbit of Shali, where, expanding upon the models for orbiting settlements that had been used to blockade the Sol Vesta system, they were gradually developed into a permanent orbiting settlement--effectively a company town for the atmosphere harvesters. This building model would later be used in the Fila Fenaeta and Fuscus swarms and, most grandly, in the Rings of Basilea.
In this period the planetary royal court developed rapidly, ennobling hundreds of notable residents from the settlements and making them both distributors of the wealth and enforcers of the royal will. Meanwhile tensions grew between post-war enclaves established on Ami Ge, specifically those that still maintained a relationship with the Taregan-Altamaian aristocracy and those that did not. Although extremely primitive by the standards of the system at the time of the story, this was the first conflict in which the Basillan ruling classes provided arms to their allies, making the conflict much more uneven than it would have been and placing the unallied Maeg people, whose ancestral mountains bisected the zone of the turf war, at an economic and political disadvantage that would take centuries of struggle to overcome.
Trade between the Jenya, Atya and Minerva systems, meanwhile, was busier than ever, with thousands of solar-powered ships passing between the populated worlds every few planetary centuries (most voyages at that time took 4-5 of those, which in the context of an astraea lifespan is sort of like 1-2 years). It’s in this era that the spacefaring subculture--its specific routines, songs, legends, superstitions, and roles which still hold at the time of the story--really began to take root. Basillan, Sitherian, and Miragari voyages to the Ante-dome and the disk also took place in this period, laying the groundwork for sociopolitical situations in the centuries to come.
As the difficult construction of the permanent settlements on Shali was finally completed, the current ruler of the Seflioma dynasty died suddenly on the brink of producing an heir. Astraea Mothers experience a period of basically hibernation before childbirth and health complications are relatively common, but given their honored role in society preventative care is also generally excellent, and a childbearing-related death, particularly of a noble or royal, is almost unheard of, so this was a cause of much anger and suspicion--even at the time of the story, it’s still widely believed that she was poisoned. Her “consort colony”--that of her wife--had recently had a new Mother born, and the court agreed to allow her coronation when she came of age. For the next several hundred cycles, the planet was effectively in the hands of her aunt, a Faellran dowager submaxima who worked tirelessly to set up global interests for her ward. When the Olaean dynasty finally dawned, it was into unprecedented power, and within the first few years of her reign Queen Daemarima commissioned the research and creation of a global language based on the planet’s three most common tongues. The teaching and speaking of Standard Altamaian was theoretically enforced by law all over the planet, although this proved logistically difficult, and all three of the local languages it was meant to replace survive to this day. The Standard, however, did grow in popularity, and became the lingua franca of court life and politics, as well as developing as the common language between new workers on Shali.
The Turn of the Intergalactic Age
On the less permanently-settled worlds of the Sol Garna and Sol Amphira systems, isolated cultures were beginning to make contact with the rest of their own planets as their populations grew. The Esmrrrderians in particular began to connect the peoples of their world through vast networks of trade and communication, which brought about an unprecedented era of global exchange and peace. At several points in the past, Esmrrrderians had intercepted Basillan and Miragari ships attempting to avoid the Sol Vesta blockades, or rescued the survivors of wrecks, and these aliens integrated into their colonies fairly seamlessly. But at this point, they still had no official contact with the Jenya-Atya system or with any other.
On Altamai, Daemarima’s great-great-granddaughter said fuck everything, married her lady-in-waiting, and abdicated to her younger sister, who married acceptably but then promptly died in a duel defending her older sister’s choices. Possibly because everyone was fed up with their nonsense, the throne passed peacefully from the Olaeans to the Fortefemens.
Meanwhile in the orbit of Sol Minerva, Ovaiakon was rocked by a series of earthquakes over a period of about three centuries, their intensity increasing over time. Finally--just days before the all-important Avi-fora (festival of the end of the liturgical calendar)--the great city cracked down the middle.
In the coming years residents of this intellectual and religious capital of the binary watched as the two sides of their city rapidly drifted apart and the sea rushed into the fault. The geological schism fueled several political and religious ones, with various sects interpreting the catastrophe as divine retribution for some act they disagreed with. For a few solar years there was absolute chaos. Priestesses and literators were executed by their own followers; still others fled to the wildernesses of the Glasmirian equator or the uncharted solitude of the Sol Amphira system (whose watery worlds and moons are largely absent from this history because their island-dwelling natives are so far-flung they don’t interact much with the outside world or each other). Order returned slowly, but Ovaiakon would now become two cities on two continents under one name, gradually drifting apart; and for many whose religious fervor outweighed their political loyalty, faith in its authority was forever shaken.
Several centuries after, another galaxy-changing event befell the system: a joint coalition involving scholars and politicians from multiple Basillan worlds sent a series of exploration missions to the neighboring Maculata galaxy, which we know as the Milky Way. After several landings on uninhabited worlds (they were looking first for planets that could support their own type of life, not the type they actually found) they finally ran across a Cadrian outpost on a moon of their homeworld.
Initially, the landing party were mistaken for invaders from one of the planets of Alpha Centauri, and might have unintentionally reignited an interstellar war (millennia before they INTENTIONALLY reignited it) if they hadn’t immediately engaged, giving the Cadrians a good look at them to confirm they weren’t Centaurian as well as earning their respect in battle (not every [sub]culture on the Cadrian homeworld would’ve reacted like that, but for better or for worse these did). After spending years as honored, if slightly uncomfortable, diplomatic guests, they returned, introducing Cadrian delegates--and the business interests they represented--to their respective leaders.
The aristocrats, noting the similar life spans and political structures but slightly appalled by what they perceived as a lack of reciprocity in Cadrian culture, jumped to form military alliances and yet weren’t at all interested in doing business. The delegates, however, wanted to get their hands on some of those super-fast, intergalactically-durable spaceships, and they weren’t going to wait around to earn the trust of nobles. The commoners who had gone on the mission had had time to understand the bizarre system of investments and currencies, and fidelity in the most Andromedan sense was all it took to get them building away--they felt they owed the Cadrians for their hospitality, and their colonies and professional networks provided labor out of simple loyalty. When simple loyalty in the labor force wavered, the new common shipyard moguls appealed to their Cadrian backers for resources and began to provide an “arrangement” for their workers--land off the local noble’s estate--that still allowed them a high profit margin. This was the beginning of the astraea-specific version of industrial capitalism, and notably also kicked off the massive Elorica quadrant asteroid-mining industry as foundries struggled to produce enough vitruvol to meet the demand. The descendants of these original shipyard owners remain the wealthiest and most powerful commoners in the Seven Suns at the time of the story.
Eventually, Andromedan spaceships began to be exported to the Maculata in such numbers that some inevitably fell into the wrong hands, and Maculatan pirates--as well as Andromedan pirates, but the nobles didn’t talk about those as much for ~some reason--got pretty bold with it, attacking planetary estates without warning. Between this and the (fallacious, but spoken about) idea that working for one of the common shipyard moguls provided Options, the popularity and clout of nobles began to be much more dependent on their ability to protect their resources and provide for their peasants. In response--and without explicit royal permission--they formed a legislative body which was to become the High Parliament and which actually streamlined (for better AND for worse) the process of enacting international law considerably. In retaliation, the Queen ordered them to hear official delegation from the Union of Commons, a political party of wealthy and powerful non-nobles who effectively bought their way into court (this still exists and has a reputation for being socially liberal and advocating legal reform, though it’s a joke on all surrounding sides of their political spectrum that this has to do with the fact that the Basillan nouvelle riche are so very very commonly in legal trouble).
Around the same time, international councils on Esmrrrder and Hiramar made a joint decision to open their system to trade with the rest of the galaxy. The two worlds had industrialized and begun to advance technologically practically overnight (especially by astraea standards) and with industrialization had come economic disparity between urban and rural communities. The leadership claimed--and perhaps some of them really did intend--that the economic boost would allow local governments to provide necessities like water and medicine for small villages affected by environmental destruction and other modern problems. But the new Basillan and Cadrian capitalists poured their resources into wringing productivity from the cities, worsening conditions for workers there and for the rural villagers alike.
The people of the Sol Garna system were not about to take that shit lying down.
While they couldn’t fight the exoplanetary power completely, labor unions and parties rose to prominence after centuries of a bloody power struggle that made their system infamous among the elite of the Seven Suns for the tenacity of its populace. Traditional Basillan morality taught loyalty to the beneficience of authority, but traditional morality as taught by the Garnaxe lawspeakers taught loyalty to the planet, the self, and the community, and the people returned to it in force. Although not without flaws--the same principles had been used to justify isolationism, and many of the labor activists harbored prejudices understandably towards the Basillans and Cadrians but less rationally towards all outsiders--the movement led to a system of defenses against economic exploitation that served as a model for other worlds taking up their own causes against the Basillan worlds, and later the aula.
Tensions on the Basillan Motherworlds
As trade--and conflict--with the Cadrians and manufacturing in the Sol Garna system settled into steady rhythms of give and take, the ancient aristocracies of Altamai and Glasmiri were restless. One step beneath them, moneyed commoners threatened to lure away the peasantry that had historically supported their lifestyle (many of them sorted this out by marrying daughters into new-money families or going into business themselves). One step above them, the planetary High Queens--legitimized by the praeceptorate and venerated by the people--could still limit the power they held in the courts and the legislature almost with impunity. Noble houses favored by the Queens defended them almost fanatically--most had formal and legal Fidelities and honor bindings to uphold, and some Particular Favorites had even more personal stakes. At the height of the divisions in high society on both worlds, the High Queens of Glasmiri and Altamai announced, together, that their eldest daughters were betrothed. The loyal subjects celebrated; the courtiers drew swords on each other in their castle gardens.
The alliance sealed, the next few heirs to the throne continued to operate over the loud aristocratic paranoia that they would become unassailable tyrants. The mutual economy boomed, with Altamaian interests establishing the free-drifting macroengineered Fila Fenaeta settlement in a resource-rich nebula in the Naulia quadrant and Glasmirian ones building the similar Fuscus Swarm structure in an enclave of the Milky Way sold to them by the government of one of the Cadrian national superpowers. With these outposts driving down the cost of chemical resources for space travel, the age of exploration and imperialism that had begun with the first voyages to the Maculata kicked into a higher gear, laying ground for the occupations later undertaken by the Hyperians in the Ante-dome and in the outer-disk Djickhasa and Sokhash systems.
It also sparked the dream of the Rings--the largest building project Basillan civilization had ever undertaken. It would ease strain on the overcrowded Altamaian cities and fragile Glasmirian wetlands. It would create farmland to grow the raw materials for textiles, which had become a main export to the Cadrian home system. And it would all be directed by one trusted royal advisor: maximata Siderina Hyperia.
Siderina was a leading figure in the aristocracy’s political corner. Coming from a high-ranking family, she styled herself as a Defender of the Old Ways and gained mass support from her peers and from the bootlickers segment of the traditional peasantry who believed that increased autonomy for their Sworn Ladies would lead to prosperity for their own families. As I detailed in this post, she betrayed the Queen and established her building project as the capital of a new empire. Attempts to hold her legally accountable for her breach of a royal Fidelity--normally a capital crime--fell through on the favors of nobles and politicians who owed her for something or other and felt compelled to stay silent. Siderina treated betrayals among her own ranks with infamous volatility, and nobody wanted to be on her bad side, at least not until they knew how this was going to play out.
Siderina’s daughter became the first Empress. A new calendar, based on the rotation of the rings, was begun. Within its first three generations of monarchs, the new government--which subsumed the still-existing High Queendoms by virtue of legally binding vows of familial loyalty--invaded dozens of unaffiliated worlds, including Caesura, Aeverell, and Ashtiva; spearheaded the modern LGA with the help of the Cadrians and started recruiting people to fight all kinds of random wars for them; and developed the cloning technology that would create the labor force for their runaway expansion.
(Took the pic slightly cockeyed but) the dress of the Altamaian Royal Guard! They wear the colors of a sunrise in honor of Ouria, the goddess of the Altamaian day cycle, who they like to depict as attending the Holy Suns in their sky just like the guards attend the High Queen. The Altamaian court originated the rules of Similia modesty, with commoners in the royal presence wearing veils to conceal their faces and lights.
[Image: A tall humanoid with a light on her head, wearing a long dress with armored sections done in gold-tinted metal. She wears a round headdress and her face is covered by a veil. She’s holding an imposingly-sized, ornately-decorated broadsword and standing with her feet spread apart.]
Chivalry’s pretensions of being almost--but not quite--royal don’t come out of nowhere; she is a granddaughter of someone in the line of succession for the Altamaian throne (which is currently under the control of the Hyperians but they are USURPERS and Chivalry’s grown up hearing about it) and has the royal surname as part of her name as a kind of courtesy title because of that.
Now, she shares those circumstances with about 1,200 other living people, because that’s how asexual colony-breeding species Work, BUT her adoptive parents (which for astraeas = the family you are legally in the hereditary lineage of because they’re 95% sterile and EVERYONE is adopted) are a Fortefemen raised in a different noble family AND a second daughter of the Vega clan, which can trace its lineage back to the original landings on Altamai (as can the Revoni clan, who are their historic allies and traditionally marry every subsequent generation of oldest adoptive daughters to each other), so she’s close to the throne by marriage and adoption which are the only ways astraeas get close to anything.
Noble titles get passed back and forth in alternating generations from the colony’s Mother to the First Daughter (as in literally the first child the Mother bears in her life) who then has the duty of raising the colony’s next Mother when she is born. That Mother then inherits the title from her aunt and the cycle repeats.
Being a second daughter generally entails being adopted into the title-bearing household but not inheriting the title or ancestral land. You’re still probably set for life--titles being passed through Mothers theoretically ensures that the property is the recourse of the colony, but as royal favor and nobles being representatives of their colonies at court has become more and more important that’s become much more of a trickle-down effect to the point where you can have a royal name but be living a peasant’s lifestyle on the dregs. Generally the closer you are to the Mother and/or First Daughter the better off you’ll be.
As the youngest adoptive child of a second daughter, Chivalry kind of gets all the perks and none of the responsibility--she’s not expected to marry any particular ally or raise any particular scionette--and she’s secretly pretty down with that, she kind of just thinks her beef with the empire tastes better when it’s personal
Altamai is absolutely ridiculous because its atmosphere is like in turmoil and in most places not really healthy for astraeas to breathe/burn at a sustain, its surface can reach boiling temperature at the most cloud-dense areas of the equator, its oceans are super acidic and its water cycle is eroding the mountains that most of its cities are built on at threatening speed, and Basillans didn’t even evolve there so they have no natural adaptations to any of this, and they’re still like “<3333333333333 our holy Motherworld!!! <333333333333333333”
