OOC: Next Novel (with poll)

[sythyry]

So, I'm poking at the next novel. Some particular goals:

1. A small story: about a manageable number of characters, keeping the world-shattering events down to a modest number. (Marriage of Insects and Sythyry's Vacation are small stories.)
2. Something that has some chance of being saleable. Specific desiderata:
   1. Recognizably fantasy instead of the fantasy/sf blend I seem to indulge in usually. At least, as much fantasy as World Tree is.
   2. Not so much emphasis on potentially-disturbing stuff.
   3. Minimal sex. (Yeah, I know that sex sells, but not the way I write it)
   4. Minimal war. (Yeah, I know that war sells too, but war isn't a small story.)
3. Totally in my style, and playing to my strengths.
4. Specific influences currently in mind: Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Man; Roger Zelazny's Amber (first series); Alan Dean Foster's The Tar-Aiym Krang. The first two are among my favorites. Krang is not; I read it once in the mid-70's, and found it adequate.

The backstory of the setting concerns two species from different worlds. The first is the couatl, winged feathered serpents, who learned how to slither delicately between worlds (which few species can do). They were clever and friendly and gentle, and were explorers and traders, and learned much in their travels and became very civilized. In time they came to the world of the lammasu, mighty winged lions. The lammasu were not gentle. They learned the power of throwing open the gates between worlds, and they went forth and conquered a thousand worlds. Including the coatls, of course.

I'm kind of thinking of the coatls as very loosely like classical Greece, and the lammasu as very loosely like classical Rome at its peak -- and like the Instrumentality of Man from Cordwainer Smith. The domain of the lammasu is run with ruthless benevolence. The lammasu try to make it a decent place to live, for nearly everyone. This is a strategic point: it cuts way down on rebellions and other troubles. And the lammasu intend their empire to last forever. (As of the start of the story, it has been around for centuries and is quite robust.)

So here's the fussing of the day: vocabulary.

I am thinking that the vocabulary of inter-world travel will come from the coatls, since they did it first, and the vocabulary of empire will come from the lammasu. I have a modest number of technical terms in mind. I could just use "gate" or "portal" as the way you leave one world and come to the next, but that's so overworked I dunno. Anyways, I am considering trying to abuse the Nahuatl language for couatl words and the Sumerian language for lammasu ones.

I'm making some attempt to pay attention to actual Nahuatl and Sumerian. I'm ultimately more concerned with literary use than linguistic purity.

"š" is pronounced "sh". There are a few other odd letters that scholars use for Sumerian (ģ for an ng sound); I might use some of them too.

So here's my core vocabulary.

Word	Language	Short	Definition
calac	couatl	gate	Portal between tlalli. A calac leads from one tlalli to the next.
coatl	coatl	winged serpent	One of the older, more powerful, and more civilized species
Ensi	lammasu	governor	Nešgeš-appointed governor of a tlalli
gi-nun	lammasu	slave	Subject of Nešgeš, but without the priveleges of a mašda. (About 5%)
lugal	lammasu	lord	One of the most important people of the Nešgeš. (80% of lugals are lammasu)
mašda	lammasu	commoner	Citizen of the Nešgeš. (About 95% of the subjects of the Nešgeš are mašda)
Nešgeš	lammasu	empire; instrumentality	The empire of the lammasu, controlling dozens of ohtli and thousands of tlalli
ohtli	couatl	road	A string of tlalli connected by calacs
tlalli	couatl	land; worldlet	The region readily reachable by a calac. Usually a populated country some 50-100 miles in diameter. Generally much smaller than a whole world.

And here're some specific questions. I'm doing this as a LJ-quiz because it's all scales.

[Poll #1487398]

Comments

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

A null assertion is either 100% true or 100% false; I go with true!

Regarding racial names... couatl seems fine by me(although I do concur with the commentary that maybe basing them off of Mesoamerican civilisation, loosely, may be better than Greek; not least but certainly not only because it would be more different than Roman to Greek - such serpents are more prominent in Mesoamerican than Mediterranean myth from what little I know of both). Lammasu, on the other hand, I'm not as keen on. I can't entirely explain why.

At least they're not being cast (from what I can tell) as definitive bad guys, which would be definite culture clash from anyone who sees the word and takes a peek based on that(IIRC lammasu are definitively Good Guys in D&D setting).

I like foreign vocabulary so far as it connotes particular shades of meaning that English is inadequate for; if it's a foreign word for sake of foreignness, it can feel pretentious. (This is coming from someone whose early writings, which thankfully no longer exist, used invented words all over. I was a pretentious git when I was younger; I'm trying to keep it under control these days.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I don't really do good or bad guys. Everyone in my stories is good, in their own eyes. Couatls and lammasu are both good guys in D&D; I have my own plans for them (or a few individuals anyhow).

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

True, true. And goodness knows one of the things I most dislike about D&D is the very notion of absolute good and evil entities; I've long considered evil for its own sake to be self-defeating, and one of the things that makes comic books so often corny.

In my mind, the things that can make a seemingly rational person do things that would generally be considered abhorrent and still think it's the right thing to do are much more interesting than characters who just go out to do the exact opposite of what they're told is good, for no more reason than that.

That such characters are often tragic doesn't hurt my impression.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Everyone in my stories is good, in their own eyes.

This is an aspect of what I so really, really love about your stories!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

*beam*

(Well, mostly. Sythyry's feeling a bit skeevy just now.)