Learning the Aether, a setting Fic

[aldersprig]

See also Learning the Sira

This story takes place approx 750 years after the time of Rin & Girey, in the era of the Edalley Academy stories (forthcoming), also known as Steam!Goats era.

I am not wed to the terms for the different sorts of aether - feedback?

"There is more that we do not know about the aether than we know."

Instructor Posvorrem was a tall, lean man, with ice-and-slate braids down to the back of his knees and the tidiest beard his students had ever seen.

"If we were to put all of the knowledge of the aether that scientists currently hold in a goblet." The instructor picked up the goblet he used for such demonstrations. "Then everything that we still did not know would fill this tower.

"Still." He had a habit of pacing up and down the rows of tables. It made his students even more nervous than they already were. "We will attempt to cram into your heads all that the goblet holds, and hope there is room enough."

A nervous titter filled the room. Posvorrem smiled without humor. "Aether is a function of the way parts of the world rub against other parts. For instance, when you have a geological fault line, you will have deposits of the aether that associates itself with stone and earth, mineraloid aether. When you have a deep current in the ocean, the hydrologic aether likewise deposits-"

"How does it deposit in the ocean?"

Instructor Posvorrem coughed. His gaze fixed on the offending student until they blushed and looked away.

"It leaves small pockets of a semi-solid mass which are carried along, sometimes settling at the bottom of the ocean floor and sometimes being pushed to the surface. A wind current will do something similar, and the push and pull of plants in a forest will create small nodules of biologic aether..."

"What about people?" This was, at least, a different student. Posvorrem didn't even bother looking at that one.

"There is no such thing as humanic aether. I'd suggest you put it out of your mind."

Comments

How about these?

[thnidu]

ELEMENTAL
terrene
aerial
aqueous
igneous

BIOTIC
vegetal
zoic

---

And now I have to infer that there is such a thing as anthropic aether, and that it's very bad or very dangerous or both.

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

*fingernose*

Also, awesome.

Wait, is terrene sira aether in a bowl?

Re: How about these?

[thnidu]

No, "terrene" is just "of earth". Are you thinking of "terra cotta" (Italian)? That's literally "cooked earth", that is, fired clay.

Glad you like 'em!

PS: Oh, and I was going to add: People rubbing together, HMMMMM!!!!

PPS: No, not "tureen" either. Don't remember if that's connected.

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

No, I was making a pun on tureen. :-P

Oh, there you go, you got it in the post-postscript. :-D

Re: How about these?

[thnidu]

And I just checked. It is, but remotely:

Origin of TUREEN
French terrine, from Middle French, from feminine of terrin 'of earth', from Vulgar Latin *terrinus, from Latin terra 'earth' — more at terrace

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

well, then, see, it IS aether in a bowl!

Re: How about these?

[thnidu]

MNYAAHHHH!  8-þ

And when you mine it from the earth it's æther ore!

PS: "æ" is on that chart I sent you for Calenya.

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

It's Æ 0-1-9-8 when it's a capital. Having it be two letters was a choice in this case. :-)

aether ore, ow, ow.

Re: How about these?

[thnidu]

[evil grin]

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

[groooooan]

[inventrix]

What terms you want to use for the different kind of aethers depends largely on what linguistic roots you prefer, but you can play with aaall kiiiinds of things. 8D

For instance, 'mineraloid aether'. What sort of material interfacing do they believe creates the aether? Is it simply the movement of rock A against rock B? Does it differ depending on what the mineral components of rock A and rock B are? Is it general movement of material against itself, or is it phase dependent: e.g. would aether deposits form due to a lava flow? Would they be a different kind of earth aether? (I have a direction here, I promise.)

If it's not affected, determined or "flavored" by the specific mineral components of the dynamic interface, then the term would likely be based in a more general word for rock or earth: terric, lithic. If it is dependent on the specific mineral components, then they might likely select something along the lines of mineral (which is a noun AND an adjective) or crystalline.

The other types of aether would also be dependent on how they categorize aether, and how the nomenclature functions. Are the different categories and subcategories all independently named (like the scientific names of minerals), or do they have layered taxonomy (like the scientific names for species)? The latter only works with large degrees of subdivision: e.g. if there were different classes of let's-call-it-lithic-for-the-moment aether dependent on either the minerals involved or the quantity of minerals involved, or both, and you had multiple groups and subgroups of rock identifiers.

Going from the story's divisions, it lists four major types of aether: rock, air, water, plant. Rock, I already touched on potential terms. Air: aeric, aerial, celestial, meteoric. Water: hydrolic, fluid, fluidic, aquatic. Plant: floral, phytic.

OR, if you like prefixes: lith(o)aether, aeraether or meteoraether, hydr(o)aether, phyt(o)aether.

A note on the terms used in the story: I would personally do away with -logy endings, as that's specifically rooted in words/writing and is generally attached to words for the context of 'the study of X'. e.g. hydrolic, not hydrologic. Also with mineraloid, the -oid ending means roughly "bears the form of", so it would mean "aether that comes in mineral form" instead of "aether that comes from minerals".

[thnidu]

Lithic, that's the word I was trying to think of. Nice work there, inventrix. And Seconded! to your last paragraph. Though if we're working with the Western four elements or the Chinese five – fire, air, water, metal, wood iirc – I wouldn't include "celestial" for air. The heavens are different, in either system of natural philosophy.

If they have a less heavily layered taxonomy than ours for biology, they would probably be more comfortable with a simple structure like the one I suggested, with independent names for the different groupings at each level, but not incorporating higher-order names in the lower ones like our Linnæan species names (example). Or they might have different structures for... oh, forget it, it's twenty to six on Friday. :-)

[inventrix]

I'm personally a growing fan of prefixed aether words with adjectival modifiers: dendric phytoaether, ferric or metallic lithoaether, oceanic hydraether, et alia~

(Wouldn't it be interesting if their natural philosophy doesn't have a divinely distinct branching off of sky-based terminology, though.)

Re: How about these?

[inventrix]

I bet human aether "doesn't exist" like how the sun revolves around the earth.

wink wink nudge nudge saynomore

[aldersprig]

"...divinely distinct branching off of sky-based terminology?"

The rest of that is awesome.

[aldersprig]

Okay, so the first thing I need to figure out is how layered their taxonomy is at this point in time.

Re: How about these?

[aldersprig]

*cough* grin

[inventrix]

Celestial's etymological root is just a word for sky. The attributes of Western religion being what they are, the sky/heavens were associated with deities and so words like celestial or heavenly became associated with the divine. Other words, such as aeros or meteoros (if I got those right) remain divinity-free.

[aldersprig]

Aah, I see! That makes sense!

[thnidu]

Maybe start with a very sketchy outline of how their understanding & research developed over time, analogous (though no need at all to be parallel) to philosophy - alchemy - chemistry ...

[aldersprig]

HRMmmmmmmm.

Okay, so semi-problem one is that they're cultural thieves, bu I thiiiink that's only a semi-problem because most people are.

(i.e., not that their culture promotes stealing but that they steal culture).

Semi-problem two is wow I need to go read a book or three.

Okay, note to self, visit local library. Next.

Nomadic herder days: "Is this going to kill me? No. can I eat it? yes. Good."

...I don't even know how to think about how this developed. I keep getting the feeling of "hey, those guys had a good idea. Does it work if we do it with linen instead of cotton? cool, underpants."

Which is not really a scientific-discovery sort of way to go about things.

Reminds me the the alchemists in Terry Pratchett...

Pardon me while I braindump on you.

(I know, loosely, four-1/2 periods in these people's history:
* Nomadic goat people
* Attempting to coexist with the proto-Bitrani in their cities
(ships to new continent)
(climate shift makes travelling back impossible)
(brief dark age of cold and starving)
* pseudo-dark ages stab-things-with-swords sort of feeling
* Roman-era-technology era. (Rin & Girey novel)
* Steam era... which is where this academy is. )

[aldersprig]

SIRA Their taxonomy would be related to the way the magic flows through/pools in things.

This sort of things has a lot of magic in it and is resistant to being changed by magic.

This sort of thing almost never has any magic in it, but it can be changed really easily.

And so on.

So their understanding o the world - beyond goats, fire, and mountains - is very related to the sira in the first place.

[thnidu]

OK, I'ma print that out and think and scribble on it in unwinding-time tonight & tomorrow. This DOTH NOT seem impossible.

[aldersprig]

*abashed* thanks and sorry.

[thnidu]

Is sira the same as æther?

[aldersprig]

Yes. The sira is what they called it before they found science, not to be tooo twee about it.

[thnidu]

Nah, sorry for what? I've been offering to help and throwing out ideas, as has inventrix. You responded to an idea. Iz no problem. Iz communica-tion. Iz all right.

[aldersprig]

*mumble mumble* kay, thanks.

:-D I do appreciate it.

[inventrix]

"Okay, so semi-problem one is that they're cultural thieves, but I thiiiink that's only a semi-problem because most people are."

Perfect, so are were the English. ;) The most relevant part there would be: how much of the terminology would they simply lift, and how much would they invent to make it sound more like their idea? (Additional important criteria: how many cultures are they thieving from? The more cultures, the more likely they are to make up their own terminologies.)

Further note! The long-term historical development of technology is not that important. Periods of... "paradigm shift" e.g. the Enlightenment, the birth of the Industrial Era, et al. tend to bring with them a complete reworking of philosophies and with it, a revamping of taxonomies and terminology. So really for this sort of a purpose, you only need to go back one technological era.

Also re: "I keep getting the feeling of 'hey, those guys had a good idea. Does it work if we do it with linen instead of cotton? cool, underpants.'"

If you're feeling ambitious, you can take a look at Japanese technological history and development of terminology, as that is basically how Japanese tech/culture/everything developed.

[inventrix]

Anoooother thing to keep in mind, which you probably don't need to be reminded of but I figure it can't hurt, is that the ideas which their understanding and terminology and taxonomies are built around could be flat-out wrong. (And probably are at least substantially wrong at several points of their history, if not all of them! See: all science ever.)

[aldersprig]

Okay! So in the last paradigm shift, they're only stealing from a culture and a subculture, as they can't /reach/ anyone else - the Bitrani and the Arrans. And they do tend to shift things into their own feel/sound.

More reading! Neat. Thank you.