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edenfallingI am home and bored and "Secrets" is being frustrating, so... meme time!
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askerian: Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.
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askerian: Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:44 am (UTC)The University evolved somewhat organically in my understanding of Firsthome, along with Ekanu. Here's some of what I was thinking back in high school:
---Vinaeo was a great city in Ohiyesa. It never conquered anything, but gained power by marriage, treaty and trade until it dominated its land. The Vinaeans controlled trade routes in their territory, giving rise to their legendary wealth. Their power lasted only 300 years, but their wealth and luxury clung longer. They supported education, and for over two thousand years, Vinaean scholars were the most learned in the world.
---Vinaeo is an ancient city-state in northern Ohiyesa, very close to Arina. For centuries, it was regarded as the center of culture and learning, even after the Estarin Empire spread southward and conquered much of Ohiyesa. Eventually, many Vinaean scholars helped found the University of Estara, which soon surpassed the ancient Academy in Vinaeo.
---Estara is one of the world's first true representative democracies. The city is governed by the Council of Nine, whose members are elected by anyone, male or female, over the age of 21, who has passed the test for citizenship -- this requires a fairly thorough knowledge of the city's constitution, laws, history, and current political situation. Citizens must retake the test every decade, but the city offers free citizenship classes so as not to discriminate too much against the poor; for those who have little time, the public libraries keep books with the latest tests and explanations. Estarans are big believers in education; along with citizenship tests, they maintain public schools through the child's thirteenth year, public libraries in every town and city district, and three universities in addition to the Trinitarian church schools and seminaries.
And Ekanu originally went south to become a bard and possibly learn magic, or maybe to bring magic back to Estara, since it had been lost since the end of Soro Sura's reign and the beginning of the Empire. But I was never very happy with that notion (though I do love the idea of a female ruler being the legendary hero who sleeps and will awaken to defend her people in their hour of direst need, a la King Arthur!), so while the music stayed, bards went out the window, I radically reconceived the nature of magic in this world, and the University gradually wove itself together to give Ekanu a new place to meet Denifar.
Anyway, while a lot of my early exploratory thoughts are now invalid, it's useful to see where ideas come from, and I didn't change the bones of the beast too much. The University was founded in Vinaeo during the height of its power and prosperity. As Vinaeo declined, the University began to establish chapterhouses in other Ohiyesan cities. When the Estarin Empire conquered Vinaeo, the University spread to Estaria, supported by the Church of Three; the Star and the Serpent are, after all, deities of knowledge.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:44 am (UTC)Chapterhouses offer courses to all in their vicinity, for fairly modest fees. They also employ many specialists and scholars whose services are contracted out for high fees. Those who wish to study full-time must either pay high tuition or swear an oath of service for a certain length of time, during which they are contracted to the University as Scholars.
Ekanu comes to Estara at 15, which is no barrier to the University, since most people officially come of age somewhere between 14 and 18 in Firsthome. She swears to the University and studies music and languages, with the goal of seeing the world. While paying off her pledge, she serves as a sort of traveling trouble-shooter during her service contract, which is how she ends up nominally in charge of starting a new chapterhouse in Shimat-Mek. She also gets time to research music and linguistics in many out-of-the-way places.
Ekanu is valuable to the University because they don't have much hard data on the Domaris before her arrival in Estara. Few Scholars or Masters travel as far north as Mohrad, and none have spent much time on the tundra or the Ice. So her language, Arhadikim, is mostly unrecorded, as are the customs and beliefs of her people. Ekanu becomes the University's primary source.
The University has a muddled authority structure. The Motherhouse in Vinaeo is nominally the seat of authority, but each chapterhouse is largely independent. The Motherhouse is responsible for maintaining contact between the chapterhouses and for keeping track of the general resources of the organization. Each chapterhouse is governed individually, usually by a council of Masters in accordance with charters that are negotiated by University diplomats, local scholars, and the local governments.
When Scholars fulfill their pledged contracts, they become Masters or Mistresses of the University. If they choose to leave the organization, they are Outer Masters, whereas those who stay on as instructors, traveling scholars, or administrators, are Inner Masters. A Master associated with a particular chapterhouse is a Master in Residence, while a traveling one is a Master at Large. Ekanu becomes a Mistress at Large, but isn't always in close contact with the organization; she prefers to travel independently, without official funding, since that frees her of various constraints. (Note, 10/11/08: She does write up some of her experiences when she returns to a chapterhouse, though, and she's usually willing to do flying inspections of chapterhouses and paginariums along her way.)
Denifar Rollesdun is the son of former University employees and has sworn service. He's primarily interested in mathematics, but has interests in music and the properties of sound as well. He also likes to fiddle with mechanical gewgaws, and learns to make instruments along with Ekanu. He spends most of his life in Estara, leaving only to take trips to Gwynorae, with and without Ekanu. (Note: I was wrong about Denifar, which I discovered once I actually began to write him in a story. He's an engineer, or, in Firsthome terms, a mechanist. He cares about math only insofar as it helps him build things, and is a dilettante musician at best.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:45 am (UTC)One interesting feature of the University is that different cultures have different attitudes toward research and philosophy; therefore, an exchange of information and beliefs between chapterhouses helps stimulate new ways of thought. Also, people in one area can perform experiments that people in other countries are forbidden to even think of. For example, the circulation of blood has been known for nearly a millennium, since dissection and experimental surgery were perfectly acceptable in Kerabada -- so long as the people in question were criminals of the lower castes -- though the mutilation of corpses or living bodies was abhorrent to Masters in the traditional University centers of Ohiyesa and Arina.
However, this flexibility also causes problems, since many cultures object to anything as opposed to dogmatism as the University. Therefore, though geographic proximity to Vinaeo makes the Kaitaru desert a logical seat for chapterhouses, the University first reached Arina via the much more northern region of Estaria. The Kaitaren peoples are strongly insular and distrust foreign institutions, especially in the highly stratified southern kingdoms.
Furthermore, there is often disagreement within the University itself over the value of particular knowledge, and even whether certain ideas should really be classed as knowledge or mere superstition. There isn't always a universally agreed-upon way to winnow truth from falsehood or coincidence, as the scientific method has not been clearly articulated, nor do all cultures involved in the University agree that reality conforms to such a method. Also, magic does work on Firsthome, which throws a spanner into any strictly scientific attempt to explain the world.
They have a decent grasp of the mechanical portions of medicine -- surgery, blood types, and so on -- but diseases are still a subject of contention, though the value of cleanliness and the existence of microscopic creatures has been proved to most people's satisfaction. Mathematics is advanced through the rough beginnings of calculus, and people have known for millennia that the world is round. They are also reasonably certain it travels around the sun, though some still object to that cosmology. Many mechanical arts are quite advanced, and there's some conception of a theory of elements, though nothing terribly useful.
Gunpowder exists, but is not always used in warfare -- wars tend to be more small-scale than in our world. The Estarin Empire was reasonably effective at imposing the philosophy of limited warfare, along with a worldwide trading language, before its bloody collapse.
Um. I will think out the reasons and implications involved in this some other day, as it's late and my brain has stopped working properly.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:45 am (UTC)I have decided that gunpowder is a fairly recent discovery for much of the world, though it's been known in Yanomy for a long time. However, the Yanomese didn't use it much, for various reasons. First of all, they didn't have the technology to make guns smaller than a mid-size cannon, and cannons aren't particularly maneuverable or useful in non-siege situations. Few of the Yanomese nations were involved in any sort of siege warfare -- the nomadic Sheng were the key enemy of most countries, and they kept no fortresses. The Sea Countries did build fortresses, but they relied more on fast campaigns and assassinations; it was considered a sign of incompetence if a war dragged on long enough to involve sieges. Merin was unified before the discovery of gunpowder.
The main use of gunpowder was, in fact, making explosive shells with a wide dispersal radius, which were then catapulted at low altitude to startle Sheng horses into bolting and breaking formations. Gunpowder was also used extensively in fireworks (which were sometimes repurposed as anti-cavalry weapons), and occasionally in mining operations (both military and civilian). There have been some experiments with shooting small but deadly fireworks at enemies, but the University tends to frown on that sort of research. Since the University controls or heavily influences a significant portion of the intellectual life of the world, this puts a damper on weapons development.
During Ekanu's life, it begins to occur to people that coal isn't the only potential source of steam power. (Steam engines are a fairly new idea, just developed in the last few generations and still quite inefficient.) They're looking into oils -- fossil fuel, vegetable, and animal -- and a few people have also raised the idea of gunpowder engines. Steel-making technology is still limited, however, which makes a lot of these ideas impractical for the time being.
I've decided that Firsthome is a more globalized society than Earth was at a similar stage of history. This is partly because the continents are closer together -- no huge gaps like the Atlantic and the Pacific (except around Yanomy, which is the least assimilated of the continents) -- and partly because the Estarin Empire was more successful than Rome or China at conquering vast territories, and more lasting than the Mongol Empire. This led to a lot of cross-cultural trading, and the trade routes lasted even after the Empire collapsed as a political entity.
This doesn't mean that the average person in, say, Kemery, either knows or cares much about the world beyond her village and the immediate area, but she depends on trade from places as far away as Kerabada and Nivenos, uses farming techniques learned from Yanomy, raises cattle imported from Tirith Ansam, etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:45 am (UTC)I've been thinking more about the organizational structure of the University, and it occurred to me that there must be a level below the chapterhouses. See, a chapterhouse is like a university campus of our world, which means it takes a fair sized population to support it. But transportation in Firsthome isn't very fast, so what happens to all the people who don't live in cities or near a regional chapterhouse?
So I think that a lot of towns and larger villages have something called a way-house, or a half-house, staffed by one to ten people, which mostly teaches general knowledge and has a small library of books and scrolls on other subjects. The way-houses also serve as public libraries for their areas, for which they charge a small annual fee. Most people who pledge to the University end up teaching in way-houses for the length of their service.
Way-houses are under the jurisdiction of their regional chapterhouses, and are run by communal consensus. Chapterhouses are run by a council -- elected or appointed from the resident Masters -- and headed by a Speaker. The University as a whole is run by the Great Council of the Motherhouse in Vinaeo, which is composed of representatives from the various chapterhouses. Generally the chapterhouses in each region take turns sending Masters to the Great Council.
There are also regional centers which take some of the responsibility of coordination away from the Motherhouse. The Estara chapterhouse is essentially in charge of central and northwestern Arina, just as the Pythas chapterhouse runs the Yanomese University, the Haoshek chapterhouse in Gush runs the Kerabada University, and the Mornach chapterhouse runs the Gwynorae University. These regional centers are sometimes called Sisterhouses.
The Estara chapterhouse is the oldest Sisterhouse, and is the most respected and widely known chapterhouse after the Motherhouse in Vinaeo. (Several Ohiyesan chapterhouses are older, though; they were founded during Vinaeo's political hegemony over the Glass Sea coast, whereas the Estara chapterhouse wasn't founded until several centuries later, once Vinaeo's power declined and the Empire conquered northern Ohiyesa.) The Estara chapterhouse also gets the least challenge from chapterhouses in its area, probably because of its location in the center of the old Estarin Empire. People are used to looking toward Estara as a source of authority, whereas in other regions, national, linguistic, and ethnic tensions can disrupt the chain of authority. Many chapterhouses ignore orders from a Sisterhouse and insist that they only recognize the authority of the Great Council and the Motherhouse in Vinaeo.
This is one reason why the University employs chapterhouse inspectors. They need to make sure that people are listening to each other and working together. That's also why, after spending three years working her way through the Yanomese chapterhouses, Ekanu was ready to avoid the University for three more years.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:45 am (UTC)While the University attempts to be undogmatic and flexible, and is a great vehicle for cross-cultural fertilization, it's also a powerful agent of stability and a brake on fast social, technological, or political changes. The University controls the education of a significant portion of the world's population. Granted, that education does contain the idea that people should seek knowledge and that change is possible (perhaps even desirable in some cases), but it does tend to instill the belief that people with ideas should develop them within the University. This allows the University to slow and divert unwelcome changes.
Furthermore, because that basic education is very similar worldwide -- allowing for local cultural and linguistic variations -- the University is slowly imposing a monoculture on Firsthome. It's a limited sort of monoculture, restricted to some basic values and technological systems, but it's there, and those values and technologies have been percolating through various cultures and causing interesting ripples and tensions.
Ekanu happens to live during a period when a new technological system -- the steam engine and its related metalworking and mining systems -- is beginning to make its impact felt widely. Here, finally, is a technology that can truly displace a lot of traditional patterns, especially when joined with various mechanical inventions from Yanomy (like water-driven looms) and the factory system pioneered in Kerabada. Naturally this is going to cause a lot of stress.
Saturday, 3/31/07
I don't like the term 'half-house' and 'way-house' is too confusing -- far too easily mistaken for an inn or tavern of sorts -- so I have coined the term 'paginarium' instead. On the rational side, this sounds Latin and scholarly, but the real reason behind the coinage is to let me work around the silliness of saying "Well, if there are chapter-houses, why not page-houses as well? Or even sentence-houses?" while retaining that inspiration in a cockeyed fashion. (The proper plural of paginarium is probably paginaria, but I may use paginariums instead, to avoid the really blatant Latin feel. Estara is not Rome, after all, nor is Vinaeo Venice, though I admit those are significant sources of inspiration!)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:53 am (UTC)