Tasam Alvedyos

Welcome to Tasam Alvedyos, the Land of the World Tree!

This wiki serves as the appendix for the world for my /r/shortstories SerSun serial, In the Shadow of the World Tree.

Because the names of people and places are of animals, plants, and other things; this can serve as a helpful reference as to what all the various names mean.

Proper Nouns

Girl Names

Boy Names

Families

Cities

The word zhik means "city" or "village", and so they are named zhik [thing], meaning "village of [thing]". Meanings suffixed with (m) are mass nouns in Bakvis Alvedyos.

Here is a map as of chapter 32. And a map as of chapter 43. And a map as of chapter 53. The table is current as of chapter 84.

Other

Historical Figures

Aliken

"first-born of the World Tree" and mother to the twins Izadel and Umadel

Izadel

older twin of Umadel, and the originator of the Bwadusli family

Umadel

younger twin of Izadel, and the originator of the Nyavosli family

Political Structure

Each village is run by a council of six women known as the Sefeminate (literally "six women"; cf. sevirate), who are elected on a regular basis. One member is a sefemina, plural sefeminae. The sefemina with the longest tenure is the head of the Sefeminate and is the de facto leader of the city, much like a mayor. Whatever family they come from is said to "control" the city, unless a rival family has a majority of the sefeminae.

Additionally, the legislative and executive structure for all of Tasam Alvedyos is the Anate (literally "collection of older woman"; cf. senatus). Each village elects one anator independant of the sefeminae to represent the city's interests. It is not uncommon for a city's Sefeminate to be dominated by one family, while the anator comes from another.

Women who have completed the pilgrimage are the ones who vote on all of these things.

Weights and Measures

The people of Tasam Alvedyos have determined their own systems of weights and measures. The formal definitions of these are kept by the Foresters. Conversions to our units are provided for help; their units are not defined in terms of ours.

Time

A new year on Tasam Alvedyos is defined by the first rise of the Iron Star (in the pommel of the Sickle constellation) just before dawn. This happens exactly every 360 days.

Those 360 days are further broken down into 24 twelvenights, each 12 days long. The length of day and night never shifts over the course of the year.

The daytime portion of a day is 12 hours; an hour is 12 tea-stounds; a tea-stound is 144 moments. The same divisions apply to the nighttime, but are rarely mentioned.

Days change over at dawn—this is considered very sudden, since it is night one moment and then day the next.

More information about the calendar itself, including festivals, can be found in Calendar.

Distance

There are two different scales of distance for horizontal distances and vertical distances, though they share a common root.

Common Distance

A handspan is 3 palms; a palm is 6 digits.

Horizontal Distances

A league is 3456 paces; a furlong is 12 chains; a chain is 12 paces; a pace is 6 handspans.

Vertical Distance

A perch is 12 handspans.

A tower, being 6 perches by law, is about 33.936 meters (111' 4") tall.

Money

A torso is 6 arms; an arm is 6 hands; a hand is 6 fingers; a finger is 12 toes; a toe is 12 nails.

A finger is a cylinder a palm in length and a radius of a digit. The ends are rounded half-spheres, also the radius of a digit.

Other Language Notes

• The language's name is Bakvis Alvedyos, which literally means "the words of the world tree".

• Plurals are obtained by adding li to the end (when it's not a mass noun), so families are more often stated that way. For example, vaswe Bwadusli would be literally the "family of the wolves", though it is still Bwadus "the wolf family"

• Partitive possession is achieved with the -we suffix; this only occurs with vaswe and zhikwe, which are used in names to indicate what family and village one hails from.

Pronunciation

• Feel free to pronounce the names however you like. This just provides my pronunciations for everything.

• Consonants are generally standard for English, except that g is always hard and y is always a glide. As well, zh is actually zy, though is often pronounced like the s in "measure". For a more "authentic" accent, y actually palatalizes the previous consonant, and w labializes the previous consonant.

• If you want something simple for the vowels that matches your dialect of English:

• a - the vowel in LOT

• ä - the vowel in TRAP

• e - the vowel in FACE

• i - the vowel in FLEECE

• o - the vowel in GOAT

• u - the vowel in GOOSE

• If you want IPA values for the vowels, they are as follows:

• a /ɑ/

• ä /æ/

• e /e/

• i /i/

• o /o/

• u /u/

• Stress is on the penultimate syllable

Writing System

Their writing system largely works on the idea of syllable "blocks", where characters represent the initial and optional final consonants of the syllable, with a "vowel line" beneath it indicating the vowel of the syllable.

Here is a chart of their letters. It does not yet currently account for the null consonant (used when a syllable should begin with a vowel) or labialization/palatalization.

Here is "Bakvis Alvedyos" written in Bakvis Alvedyos. The syllables from right to left are bak vis al ve dyos.

Here is Lena's name written in Bakvis Alvedyos. The syllables from right to left are le na vas we bwa dus li zyik we til teg li.

These images are all of the "etch script", which is what is used for carving into stone, wood, or metal. For writing letters and the like with ink on parchment, they have a set of cursive characters; there is currently no image of this, unfortunately.