Yucopia Project (Massive, Collaborative, and Recruiting New)

[Lukas Kelly]

Merry Christmas! Don't expect much from me until about monday or tuesday.

[Cockroach]

I get to try out my scanner

A Tll-Ikish nomad with one of his kids, on a small, treeless hill.

[Torco]

the guy looks pretty angry

[rickardspaghetti]

No, he looks like the guitarist of a neoclassical metal band.

[Torco]

No, he looks like the guitarist of a neoclassical metal band.

well played, sir, I stand corrected

[Torco]

Okay, here's the first proposal for notable characters in Yucopia, complete with the movement she instigated in East Sbakaz.

*Djamele and the rise of Equalism

Note: everything that has an asterisk preceding it must be adjusted to fit Sbakaz phonotactics.
Early Years

*Djamele was born in the small fishing village of *Sinan to a family of poor goat herders, but quickly moved into [name of big city in the ESK or eastern sbakaz kingdom], married a wealthy man at a young age against her will on her family's command, became a widow shortly after and, having taken over her husband's business, came to be a wealthy merchant in a society where merchants were a very small class. During her travels she came in contact with different ideas and perspectives, and became dissilusioned with the way things were in her world. She eventually saw the ESK as corrupt and misleaded, full of mindless feuds and vendettas, and with strict social mores that suffocated life and joy out of people. She started spending as much time abroad as she could. One day, while on a merchant venture into southern Namjog her caravan was attacked by raiders, and she, as the sole survivor, spent 6 years in captivity. The first years she loathed her captors, but in time their motives became clear: their town had suffered a severe drought and famine and poverty had struck their families so hard that they had decided to risk life and liberty and honor to provide for their families. She could understand their reasons and at the same time see how much harm they were doing, which would shape her later teachings about the ideal of self-sacrifice, perhaps best summarized in her famous adage "in sacrificing yourself a man abandons those who love him". She would posit the idea of self-sacrifice as selfish and egotistical, and re-signify level-headededness and self-interest as altruistic and noble, in that it doesn't seek attention or honor, but simply good.

Eventually, after six years of captivity, she escaped and lived as a merchant in the streets of her home city. However her mind drifted more into the realms of mathematics, ethics and philosophy, although she didn't make her teachings public out of fear of what she saw as an extremely repressive Sbakaz society. During these years she came up with ideas like the number zero, the positional system, which she envisioned as base six in order to fit the human hand, and advanced euclidean geometry, discovering what we on earth call the Pythagorean theorem and triangle theory [internal angles add up 180, etcetera]. She assigned to the straight angle the number 1 and to a full circle the number 2, and expressed numbers as fractions

Later Years

She started teaching at age 40, and gathered a significant following amongst artisans and the small trader proto-class. After some years she had founded a hermetic school of philosophy, hidden from the authorities by secret passwords and complex initiatic rituals, where she and her closest students taught ethics, philosophy, mathematics, medicine and perhaps more importantly, finance.
Her concepts of interest rate and proportions were of much use to the trader and artisan classes, and empowered them to develop small yet healthy market economy, trading goods for other goods and services, lending money at fixed, transparent interest rates and computing prices much more easily than before.
Philosophically, her interest on mathematics stemmed from her concern about equity, fairness and transparency in human relations. She never taught to the masses, but to a small economic elite of initiates that, during the day, worked as government officials, moneylenders, merchants and artisans. Sociologically speaking, while a virtue-based ethics of self sacrifice, honor and loyalty was very functional to the peasant, religious and warrior castes, who required for their operation the strong social bonds and well defined obligations that such a system promotes, those classes engaged in frequent commercial exchange greatly benefitted from a more flexible, fluid, fairness-based system which enabled them to conduct business and to seek out their own interest within a regulated moral framework. Commercial endeavors benefit because the merchantile mode of production requires a reciprocity-based fluid alterity with less constraints. Djamele passed at age 63, leaving behind a small but militant following of bourgoise made rich by her teachings that would continue the hermetic practices of the movement, seeking out individuals, initiating them, and passing on the teachings of Djamele and the rest of the wise men and women of the Equalist tradition.

The Ethics of Equalism

Equalism puts the act as the object of moral judgement, not the person or the intention of the act, so a person is good or bad according to the net balance of their actions, meaning one is good in the measure one does good acts and avoids bad ones. It's relevant to note here that Equalism doesn't consider actions or people evil but misleaded. The concepts of good and bad are practically equalized with the notions of fair and unfair. Equalism appropriates the traditional concept of Zhaz and re-signifies it around the notion of transcendent honor, as opposed to social honor or prestige. Equalists argue that it is unfair to seek fame and glory because doing so is generally done in order to gain an unfair level of power over one's fellow men, and that Zhaz in fact means the spiritual status of honoring oneself and others by living a level-headed and fair life which, in turn, naturally attracts social honor in a just society because people would naturally recognize an honorable man for what it is. Equalist ethics are deontological and based around the concept of reciprocity, responsibility and the value of the promise, all highly bourgoise values.
One should honor one's agreements always, unless some of the parties entered the agreement under false pretenses. One should pay one's debts on the terms agreed upon, one should not cause harm to others nor to their reputations. Similarly, one should dedicate most of one's time to one's work and provide for one's family, employees, and for the poor of one's community. In this Equalism resignifies the traditional concept of self-sacrifice as well into a kind of semi-mandatory charity. Finally, vengeance is seen as a grave sin in Equalism, as it's seen as multiplying the injustice in the world. As a consequence, equalists don't have many options when cheated, and as so tend to only conduct important business between themselves.

Sociological Notes

Equalism is a bourgoise religion in it's entirety, which means that it will likely be practiced by few rich people instead of by the masses. It is also hermetic, secretive and tends towards endosociality, endogamy and endobusiness or however else you want to call the act of preferently or only doing business with other equalists. As a consequence it tends to recieve a lot of negative attention and discrimination, especially with their holier-than-thou attitude and secretive practices. They, finally, tend to configurate states-within-states, and as so are often opposition to whatever king or prince rules in the region they live in, elaborating complicated schemes in order to, evade taxes, bypass restrictions and otherwise ignore the temporal authorities, which they feel completely inferior to their own internal leadership. They have a persecution epic narrative about themselves, as it validates the culture's self-perception of sole sane men in a world of crazed vendettas, traditional pettyness and codependence. Their cultural paranoia isn't unjustified, however, as many chapters have been completely wiped out in the past.

Institutionality

Equalist have regional chapters of around 0,05%~0,002% of the area's population, of which most are merchants and artisans. They, however, often recruit or infiltrate their young into different sectors of society. While their existence isn't a secret, militancy, membership, and the location and nature of their rites is, even when there is no political reason for them to be secret. Most chapters are led by an Elder and have a very small armed branch called the Judges, who conduct deniable operations in order to further the goals -which they themselves signify as protecting their from persecution and massacre- of the chapter and of the movement in general.

check it out, I thought it was kinda cool... like stereotypes about masons and buddhists and jews all mixed together

[Lukas Kelly]

My honest opinion? That was fucking beautiful, couldn't have imagined it better.

[Lukas Kelly]

I'll work on the Bawam person, since you guys said you were ready.

[Torco]

My honest opinion? That was fucking beautiful, couldn't have imagined it better.

Roger. Glad you liked it.

I'll work on the Bawam person, since you guys said you were ready.

Standing by

[Lukas Kelly]

A little swamped right now, but it's just some initial stuff that'll be gone soon.

[communistplot]

Just letting everyone know that I'm going to be taking a bit of a break, since I have to pack and get settled in my dorm & all. Don't worry though, I'm still in. =D Can't let anyone steal ma land after all.

[Risla]

I am working on this, even though I haven't put any material up lately.

[jseamus]

I know it's horribly late in the game, but I am interested in joining. I would be most interested in working with some land above moko and below finlay, if possible. Anywhere is fine, so long as I am able to participate.

yucopmap.png (17.44 KiB) Viewed 4085 times

[Torco]

Knock yourself out, and don't be afraid to ask questions.

welcome!! nice to have ya

[Cockroach]

More mythological than what you did for Lukas, Torco, but I hope you like it

Cheru the Great

Cheru’s mother, Mahôro, was the Seblécii of her tribe. His father, Chómà, was killed by an evil spirit who took the form of a poisonous snake. Mahôro, grief stricken, abandoned her duties and went out to the forest where her husband died. There, she meditated and chanted and concentrated all her mental energy upon purging the land of evil. After 3 months, she found the evil spirit in the form of a wasp that was just about to sting her. She grabbed it by its wings and drowned it in water. Then she sat down, gave birth to her son, and died.

Cheru was found by a woman from a traveling merchant djóko. However, his mothers battle adversely affected Cheru, as when he grew up, he found that he was constantly tormented by spirits. He had no taste for business, instead spending his time trying to quiet his mind by talking to the animals. He gained a reputation as a strange boy.

One day, while bathing in the river, he was attacked by a river monster. Terrified, he ran and ran and ran, until when he finally stopped, he found he was lost. He had no idea where his djóko’s camp was. At first he screamed and panicked, but after a while he resigned himself to his fate, and found a large hollow log in which to live. There he spent the next 10 years, with the birds and the lizards as his companions.

Then, one day, he went to get a drink from the river, when he saw three sisters on the other side of the river bank. Up until this point he had been totally isolated, so these were the first human beings he had seen in 10 years. He hailed them and they hailed him back. They said he looked like a strange man, but he said he meant no harm, and threw his knife in the water to prove it. They said their camp was 5 hú upstream, and so he went with them to their camp, each one walking on separate sides of the river.

When he got to the camp, he found that there were very few people there. The sisters’ father, Lôká, explained that he was once part of a large and prestigious tribe, but he had had terrible dreams of a great fire consuming it, and when he tried to warn the tribe, they thought him mad. Those that were before Cheru right now were the few people who believed him. Cheru, curious, asked where the old tribe was, and Lôká gave him the directions

When he got there, Cheru found only a few survivors. The air around the camp was difficult to breathe, it was so full of evil. Cheru did not despair however, for evil had followed him all his life, and he knew he could and would tiumph over it. He sat down on the ground and chanted

“The water falls from the sky, lands in the river, and is drunk by man
The gecko hatches from its egg, mates on the palm frond, and is eaten by the condor
The man is born from his mother, is hounded by evil, and dies an old wrinkly man
I am surrounded by evil, but I will not despair
For I shall quench fire with water, and quench evil and death with knowledge and love
I surrender my strength to that which is, so that it may do what is right”

The evil of the area tried to kill him, engulfing him in flames, but they left not even a mark on Cheru. Finally, the evil turned itself into a mist of embers and descended into Cheru’s lungs. But Cheru merely said, “let evil go to evil”, and both the evil spirits of the area were destroyed and the curse upon him was lifted. He was hailed as a savior. So as to finally cleanse the area, he founded a city for all living creatures, and named it [Tabêt], and named himself the first great king of [Tabêt], to bring all creation into accordance with divine will.

Part 2 will hopefully be done either later today or tomorrow.

[Cockroach]

BTW me and jseamus are going to have a collab thing on Skype from anywhere around 7:00 GMT onwards (if he doesn't have work). If you're interested, let me know.

[Nannalu]

MY BOTTOM PENINSULA, INHABITED BY THE SATWE IS NOW BELONGING TO BIWAM, OR THE TLL-IKISH.



I'm gonna still work on my top peninsula.

[Nannalu]

Let's add our cities to this:

[jseamus]

@Cockroach: Gotta sleep now, so I won't be able to post my stuff til tomorrow. Made some headway. Decided the lang will be ergative, like its neighbors. Gonna work out the details of morphosyntax tomorrow. Will try to spread weight around between morphology and syntax in an interesting way. Hope that works.

As for the culture, gonna start out as hunter gatherers, develop into pastoralists (I think). They'll start with a rather strong system of kinship and and detailed multi-tiered child-rearing. See what I can do from there. I'll try to do something interesting with trade or production, once I figure out more about the local resources.

Just a very little as of now:

Code: Select all

        Bi-L    Dent    Retro   Pal     Vel     Uvu     Glot
Nasal   m       n̪       ɳ       ɲ       ŋ
Plos.   b       t̪ʰ d̪    ʈ       cʰ ɟ    k kʰ ɡ  q       ʔ
Fric.   ɸʷ  v   s̪                               x       h
LatA.                   ɭ ~ ɻ
Appr.   w                       j               ʁ

This is somewhere between narrowly and broadly phonemic.

The contrast between aspirated and voiced plosives is not always strong, i.e. voiced plosives can sometimes alternate with tenuis plosives. Aspiration is marginally phonemic.

Stress timed, with vowel allophony based on length, stress and nasals. Still working on the vowels. More later.

Gotta catch up!

[Cockroach]

Let's add our cities to this:

I'd love to, but unfortunately I'm retarded and don't know how.

[Nannalu]

Let's add our cities to this:

I'd love to, but unfortunately I'm retarded and don't know how.

Just go to Paint, use the brush tool on a circular setting and the text is Calibri but Consolas is a good substitute.

[*Ceresz]

Looks like I managed to forget this thread once again . But now that I'm out of school I will have lots of free time until I find a job, so today I'll do some work on my wiki pages and try to catch up. I'm glad to see that more people have joined in my absence, and that this project is still alive and kicking.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

planet cities.png (16.72 KiB) Viewed 3990 times

Map has been fixed, with icecaps shown differently so you know just where cities can even be built. (Sea ice is not land!) Plus the islands have been colored to match, and the city blobs have been cleaned up.

The Slavasco, being nomadic, have no notable cities that warrant a placement on the map...

[Lukas Kelly]

Well, it looks like Bawam's was done, I think.

[Torco]

@Roach: Nice, man. Looking forward to more.

Well, it looks like Bawam's was done, I think.

Why? Cheru appears, at this point, to be the founder of Tabêt, a different city.