zompist bboard

In the grammar of Cuêzi, there is the following "no other human nation has been shown greater favor by the ilii than Cuzei". My question is: what made the Cuzeians so special that the ilii favoured them so? The Count of Years and its tale of Lerīmanio's jaunt to discover what a pen is aside, was it just a case of right place, right time? Why weren't the Qaraus similarly favoured? (And why did the ilii pretty much ignore Arcél until the Ktuvoks turned up?) I know highly-advanced beings and all that, but is there more to it than iliu inscrutability going on here?

(Actually, while I'm at it, this has been bugging me since I first read the Cuêzi grammar: the Cuêzi letter transliterated as x, indicating /x/, has a bar over it indicating that it's voiced. Given that the sound derives from Proto-Eastern *ɣ, was it still a voiced /ɣ/ when the alphabet was formulated? Or is it a coincidence on account of the proto-form having an eyebrow? Actually, if both of these propositions are true, it would be an awesome explanation of how the bar representing voicing was extrapolated.)

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