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<H2>The Secret History of Verduria</H2>
<i>Several people have asked how I came to create Verduria, Verdurian, and the rest of
Almea. I started writing this on the (currently broken) Virtual Verduria Bulletin Board,
and now you can read the whole story in all its geeky splendor.
<p>The title, by the way, refers to </i>The Secret History of the Mongolians<i>, a title
I've always loved.
<br>--Mark Rosenfelder
</i>
<hr>
<h3>Prehistory</h3>
<img src="jeerio.gif" alt="Jeerio sets out" title="Jeerio sets out" align=right>
I've been inventing fantasy (and s.f.) lands and languages almost as long as I can
remember. Flora and the flaids go back to a story I wrote in sixth grade,
<i>Jeerio tries to find a job</i>.
(It won a prize-- whee!) Here's a sample:
<blockquote><font color="#0050E0">
In the land of Flaids, there lived a promising young man, Jeerio by name,
who was interested in Alchemy and Logarithms, and Kerguelen Island and Piggy
Banks, and about every other thing a Flaid was interested in, and a couple
other things, and some more. He lived at his Mom's house, in lower Flaid
Land, and when his mother told him she was fed up with his sleeping all day,
and napping all night, and said he was getting too big for his Desk,
and Really ought to go and seek a Living; why then Jeerio was terribly
sorry, for you see, he liked sleeping.
</font></blockquote>
The picture-- Plate 1-- is labelled, "On the evening of the anniversary of
the birth of Shakespeare, Jeerio and Twain set out." (It's not that I
couldn't draw heads and feet... well, it's not <i>just</i> that; flaids
are supposed to <a href="verbio.htm#flaid">look like that</a>.)
<p>I've always had a soft spot for the flaids and their country, Flora, which has ended up in several fantasy worlds before settling down on Almea, due north of Verduria.
<h3>College Hijinx</h3>
Verduria itself dates to my first year in college, when I lived next door to a D&Der, Chris Vargas.
<p>He'd been working on a dungeon; I started supplying the wilderness. I created a map, and started making up names for geographical terms... e.g. <i>mazhtana</i> 'city', <i>säte</i> 'hall'. (I thought I had a copy of that map, but it's either gone or hiding.)
<p>The dungeon was Erruk, which you can locate on
<a href="drill5.htm">the Verduria-province map</a>.
We played throughout college; the group explored the province a bit, went out west to
Pérecaln (which you can see, barely, in the upper left corner of the map on
<a href="drill4.htm">the kingdom map</a>),
and took a year-long voyage north, past the Zone of Fire,
to K'aitan, where one of the players had inherited a duchy.
(I have detailed maps from that, but so far you can only see the place
on <a href="drill1.htm">the map of Ereláe</a>;
it's on the island to the right of the word Bekkai.)
<p>During all this time I was elaborating Verdurian and making preliminary
wordlists for Cadhinor, Cuêzi, Barakhinei, and Ismaîn. That didn't affect the
players much, except that they all had to have <a href="names.htm">Verdurian names</a>.
<p>If all this sounds unutterably geeky, I should note that I got my first girlfriend
by inviting her to play in the group. :)
<p>Some Verdurian words are invented from scratch
(e.g. <i>mazhtana</i> or <i>elir</i> 'life'); others I stole mostly from French and
Russian. This was even more evident in the earliest versions of the language. It was
also rather harder to pronounce, since I tended to import the Russian consonant clusters
and palatals unmodified.
<p>I didn't consciously base the grammar on anything, but it's heavily influenced by
French (articles, preverbal object pronouns, similar verbal inflections), with the
major addition of cases (largely based on Esperanto, German, Latin, and Russian).
<h3>The Map</h3>
<img align=left src="illo/wall.jpg">
For some reason I decided to paint a huge map of the Plain on my dorm room wall.
There was some idea of using it during the D&D sessions, but it took two years to finish... and then I lost the room in the room lottery.
<i>Note to self: Next time, think portability.</i>
<p>This map-- or rather a blown-up photo of it-- is the basis for the fancy maps of <a href="drill3.htm">the
Plain </a> and of <a href="drill4.htm">Verduria</a>.
I have a series of pictures of the map in progress. It started out
as blank white; then I painted the mountains in dark grey.
The terrain colors were then painted over them, in a transparent wash.
<p>If you're wondering: I checked by a year or so later, and the map was still there, but covered with posters for rock stars. It's probably been painted over by now.
<p><img align=right src="illo/rock.jpg">
More painting: it's an NU tradition for various groups to repaint a hunt of rock
mnemonically called <b>The Rock</b>. Our D&D group painted it one year.
(Why deep green? You should know that...)
<p>In the picture you can't quite read
the legend <i>D&D Verdúria</i> on the Rock, and to
the left one of the player names-- Tay Örn.
(I leave you to figure out the meaning of that name.)
The other players wrote their names on the back.
In the foreground you can see the symbol of the Cadhinorian pagan religion.
<h3>More college stuff</h3>
<p>I accumulated a miscellaneous heap of Almean stuff during college:
<p><ul>
<li>A hefty Verdurian grammar and a vocabulary of several thousand words, plus various short documents in Verdurian<br>
<li>Wordlists for Cadhinor, Cuêzi, Barakhinei, with basically zero understanding of linguistics<br>
<li>A bunch of maps and notes covering places the D&D group had visited (including such miscellanea as Verdurian prices, a list of ship types, and character sheets for the demigod Stan Lee, his wife Sara, and son Bruce)<br>
<li>Several off-humorous chapters chronicling the group's adventures, which my girlfriend and I were writing up.<br>
<li>A rough chronology of the history of the Plain<br>
<li>Rough notes on the religions of the Plain<br>
<li>A draft of the <i>Ciröma</i> or Count of Years, the Eledhe myth dealing with creation and the three Ages of Almea<br>
<li>A 60-page history of the Eledhe dynasty<br>
<li>Random drawings, bits of calligraphy, and fragments from future epics.<br>
</ul>
<p>Verduria was full of jokes back then... influenced as much by <i>Bored of the Rings</i>
as by <i>Lord</i> of the same. I've left in some of the jokes in the material I've put online...
sometimes hidden by translation into Verdurian, as for instance <i>Rhuk 17e Cheltei Shrayomei</i> on <a href="drill5.htm">the Verduria province map</a>--
'Castle of the 17th Evil Wizard'.
<p>There's also jokes and tributes in the language itself:
<UL>
<li><i>dení</i> 'homosexual' is a nod to a gay friend whose name in French class was Denys.
<li><i>Chelt</i> for 'evil', <i>cthelt</i> in Cadhinor, is an adaptation of <a href="woob.jpg">Cthulhu</a>.
<li>The words <i>uestu</i> 'man' and <i>rhon</i> 'language' derive from Tolkien's 'Westron', from a time when I was trying to work with the (rather silly) D&D idea of languages for
each intelligent race. (Other Tolkienisms include <i>eglérec</i> 'praise', <i>kud</i> 'hole', and <i>rho</i> 'no', <i>vanan</i> 'align', because for some reason I wanted to derive "Rhovanion" from 'neutral'.)
<li><i>Amrab</i> 'law' refers to Hammurabi.
<li><i>Cishitë</i> 'weak' is a play on 'quiche-eater'.
<li><i>Savakan</i> 'spy' refers to Savak, the Shah of Iran's secret police.
<li><i>Arhafát</i> 'terror' refers to another Middle Eastern leader. This may be a little unfair, but not very, I'm afraid.
<li><i>Zut</i> 'wicked' is a tribute to "bad, wicked, Zoot" from <i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</i>.
</ul>
<h3>Verdurian As She Was</h3>
A single text won't show off the differences too much, but here's a sample of
Verdurian before the Great Revising. It's from a play in alliterative verse
on the subject of the defeat of Zhésifo and its unpleasant little king Ertala, son of Bura,
by Caleon of Verduria.
<p>Here's the original (left) and revised (right) versions:
<blockquote>
<table><tr><td>
<font color="#0050E0">
ERTALA. Valur brak kë
<br>Imrhisne so reih?
<p>MÉLICOM. Pirei tuë.
<p>ERTALA. E orest. Er lelei filio lë im sen.
<br>Rho tene Cadhinas so tor zië Bodhneaii?
<br>E lacheo reihdalui soa vulula verdúrë
<br>snucan er amoran? Ci-malsfaom, ci-bizhno--
<br>Zhdatane! Nkashane! Ni cishitrî ni cobî
<br>ci-Caleon rho tróume falanho Ertalei,
<br>druk esë dubec. Dobre e krof
<br>Cadhinasei, Burei-- amrë esane
<br>soa chena Caleonei! Soem chegrem mazhtansätei
<br>prosmai, er tékretu im méuin Mishicame.
<br>Esë esmai Arcaln.
</font>
<td>
<td>
<font color="#00A040">
ERTALA. Mizeceo, brak kë
<br>Imrhisne soa scura?
<p>MÉLICOM. So rhavy Bura fue.
<p>ERTALA. E orest. Er lelei medh lië in sen.
<br>Rho tene Cadhinas so tor zië Bodhneaii?
<br>E lacheo elordalui vulea verdúrya
<br>snucan er suvan? Ci-malsfaom, ci-bizhno,
<br>Vizhiene, inkashire! Ni cishitî ni körhî
<br>ci-Caleon rho tróume falata Ertalei,
<br>druk esë dubec. Dobre e so krof
<br>Cadhinasei, Burei, sumerulî soî cardhî.
<br>Ab adhin proetao, mazhtana prozmai
<br>vencec, er terhetu u rhaim Mishicame!
<br>Esë esme Arcaln.
</font></table>
</blockquote>
Here is the passage loosely translated into blank verse:
<blockquote><font color="#0050E0">
ERTALA. Whose then was the arm
<br>That made the Empire new?
<p>MÉLICOM. Great Bura's 'twas.
<p>ERTALA. 'Tis so. And here in me thou seest his son.
<br>Cadhinas hath its share in Bodhneay's glory.
<br>Or must Verdurian whim the Emperor love
<br>And serve? This upstart, this barbarian, this
<br>Caleon: Let him wait and let him fear!
<br>The army of Ertala, doubting friend,
<br>'Tis not so weak nor craven as thou thinkest.
<br>The blood of Bura and Cadhinas runneth true,
<br>Nor are its swords untrained. By all the gods,
<br>I'll walk the streets of that far northern city
<br>A conqueror. By Mishicama I will stand,
<br>And own the halls of Arcaln.
</font></blockquote>
The main differences are lexical; you may note that a few words became a little
more unrecognizable-- e.g. <i>elordalu</i> for <i>reihdalu</i> 'emperor';
<i>medh</i> for <i>filio</i> 'son', <i>falata</i> for <i>falanho</i> 'army'--
think 'phalanx'. Some words are simply easier to pronounce:
<i>vizhien</i> for <i>zhdatan</i> 'wait'; <i>cishitî</i> for <i>cishitrî</i>
'weak', <i>vulea</i> for <i>vulula</i> 'will'.
<p>There's also a few places where
I tried to improve the poetry. I do think <i>sumerulî soî cardhî.
Ab adhin proetao...</i> ("...sharp its swords. By the gods...")
sounds better than <i>amrë esane soa chena Caleonei!</i> ("Bitter be
the meal of Caleon"). The alliteration is better, too (<i>buREI / amRË</I> are
too close; cf. <i>buREI / sumiRUlî</i>).
And Mélicom's old line <i>Pirei tuë</i>
("Your father's") is ugly... <i>pi-REY tu-YEH...</i> I prefer <i>So rhavy Bura fue</i>
("Courageous Bura it was", <i>so RHA-vi BU-ra fweh</i>).
<h3>Fonts and History</h3>
After college, in 1984, I got one of those newfangled Macintosh things, not least
because I could create fonts for the special Verdurian characters.
(This was before TrueType, so these were bitmap fonts, not the ones you may have
downloaded.)
<p>I typed in the dictionary and rewrote the grammar, making use of some of the
transformational grammar and semantics I'd learned in school... this is essentially
(with minor updates) <a href="verdurian.htm">the grammar that's now online</a>.
<p>My next project was the <a href="atlas/"><i>Historical Atlas</i></a>. I had some maps of various points in
the history of the Plain and of Ereláe, but they weren't very satisfying.
Basically I'd just make up names and borders on a map-by-map basis; there was no
coherence to the overall narrative, no reason why such-and-such place had
such-and-such people in it at a particular time, no explanation for why the
Plain was littered with non-Cadhinorian peoples, and no rhyme nor reason to other
regions of the continent.
<p><a href="history.htm"><img src="histothumb.gif" align="left" border=0></a>
So, I started over with a single piece of paper and designed the entire
history of the continent. The vertical dimension represented time, the horizontal,
various regions of Ereláe. Now it was possible to see entire nations rise and fall,
or split into pieces. The movements of barbarians could be planned--
one wave of barbarians would trigger more waves later.
People could migrate around in a realistic fashion based on their circumstances.
<p>I could also suggest entire stories-- for instance, the milennial rise of
two ktuvok empires; the several invasions of Skouras;
Gurdago and its three empires in three separate geographical areas.
<p>Once it was done, I could create a map for a given year by reading a
horizontal slice of the map, and seeing who was in the Plain, who was in Xurno, who
was in Dhekhnam and Skouras, and so on. Of course I'd have to come up with particular
borders, but this was not too hard once the overall story was clear.
<p>As each map was done, I wrote a page or two of commentary and explanation.
Again, the idea of a fixed map with commentary-- and even the writing style--
is gratefully borrowed from Colin McEvedy's <i>Penguin Historical Atlases</i>.
I also learned a lot from McEvedy about the likely course of history on an
earthlike planet: the slowly spreading realms of agriculture and writing; why
barbarians start to invade and why they eventually fade away; the reasons for feudalism;
what went wrong in the Western Roman Empire and why the same causes didn't kill the East;
the influence of mountains and terrain types on boundaries.
<p>I did all the maps in pencil first, and then redid them in pen and colored markers.
In between, I decided to change the model for the Lenani-Littoral languages-- they
used to be rather Greek in appearance (e.g. Paphliopagamos, Spe:re:, Guros, Kamau); now they look rather
Indic (Pafliopagimi, Engidori, Gu<b>tl</b>eli, Komand).
<h3>The novels you can't read yet: 1</h3>
I've always intended to write stories set on Almea... though I've come to the conclusion
that I'm better at world creation than at stories. Plots don't come easily to me.
And I can't get very far if I don't know how the story will come out.
<p>Still, I've written two full novels set in Almea. The first is set in modern-day
Verduria, and features Abend Monteneon, in the days before he was prime minister--
instead, he ran the Corona Inn (this is a type of boat, not a crown, in Verdurian,
though I didn't know it at the time).
See if you can <a href="drill7.htm">find the Corona here</a>; and note the
<a href="civ2.htm">reference to Corona Beer</a> in the Civ2 scenario...
and what does the calligraphic example from the grammar, shown below, say?
<p><center><img src="corona.gif"></center>
<p>Anyway, Abend-- whose character is based on that of Figaro, from the
Beaumarchais plays-- ends up fighting a Dhekhnami sorceror. For most writers,
the first thousand pages you write are garbage, and this is no exception.
Here, have a look:
<blockquote><font color="#0050E0">
Durm-- he had no longer name-- sailed into Verduria on the <i>Falcon</i> the
next morning, form Syxesteer. The <i>Falcon</i> passed for a Kebreni merchant
vessel, and with the aid of the rum that made up most of its cargo, the
Royal Navy inspectors were persuaded to ignore the swords and
other contraband in the remaining cargo.
<p>Durm paid the captain in gold, headed down the dock and then along the
Scafi Prospekt. His eyes, deep and sharp, took in all the details of the port:
bustling stevedores and sailors, run-down merchants' warehouses surrounding
the misplaced elegance of the Customs House, armed Naval Guards, the smell of
horses and the creak of cars, the hundreds of ships moored in a maze of docks.
<p>With a knowing eye he noted the ships' flags: the <i>Falcon</i>'s own
spurious colors of Kebri; flags of Erenat, Azgami, Ismahi, Flora; rarer banners
from Uytai, Nan, Moreo Ashcai; and everywhere the crown and swords of Verduria.
The same green and white flag flew on the tower of the Customs House.
<p>He turned down a side street into the Scafiora, negotiating its narrow
and confused streets with familiarity, but yet with such intent observation
that merchants sent their apprentices after him with goods to inspect further.
He left them behind. Finally he walked down and alley and opened a door
invisible from the street.
</font></blockquote>
<p>Gaah! Excruciating. Even worse than the hamhanded clichés is the
<i>unnecessity</i> of most of this. It's a <i>port</i>, right? So who needs
the Catalog of Portly Things? It also shouldn't be such hot news that the Verdurian flag
is flying, not only on the ships (!), but on the customs house (!!).
And dig those scary details: Durm <i>has no longer name</i>! He <i>ignores
shop boys!</i>
I wrote
better when I was in sixth grade.
<h3>Real linguists follow the regularity principle</h3>
Around 1992, I decided to learn all about historical linguistics and re-do all
the Eastern languages.
<p>I started by reading Theodora Bynon's <i>Historical Linguistics</i>.
I learned a lot, but perhaps the most important thing was to learn what I'd been
doing wrong in previous amateur attempts: I didn't know about the regularity of
sound change. Sound changes don't apply sporadically; they apply across the board,
in every word that has the triggering environment.
<p>(Theoretical note: Well, actually, they start sporadically, affecting certain words.
But the sound change keeps on hitting more and more words, and generally it ends up
getting them all. So if you look at a sound change in progress, you see wide variation
and even confusion; but if you look at a historical sound change, it looks exceptionless.
In any case the regularity principle remains an excellent guideline: it makes you keep looking for subtle regularities that underlie apparent exceptions. You learn more that way.)
<p>The regularity hypothesis simplifies creating multiple daughter languages,
largely reducing it to a problem of finding a nice set of sound changes and
applying them to a lexicon
(I use <a href="sounds.htm">a program to do this</a>).
<p>That's fine for working forward (e.g. Cadhinor to Barakhinei),
but trickier for working backward (e.g. Verdurian to Cadhinor). I worked through
the vocabulary word by word, thinking about the possible parent forms
(with good rules, there's usually a choice). (I don't have a program for this sort
of multiple-outcome reverse engineering, but I knew the rules well enough to
do it by hand.) Sometimes I just didn't like the possible Cadhinor form, or
(worse yet) the Verdurian form was simply impossible to generate given the rules.
In such cases I could tweak the rules, or change the Verdurian form, or borrow
the word from some other source... I figured that would add verisimilitude anyway.
<p>At the same time I revised a good deal of the vocabulary. I had an embarrassing
number of words that were direct steals from English or Russian-- e.g. <i>antelop</i>
for 'antelope', now changed to <i>gudun</i> (also a borrowing, but a lot less obvious one). I also had lots of long unanalyzed words--
a rare unfixed one is <i>lelitsala</i> 'art'. There was some idea of deriving this
from <i>elir-dhalec</i> 'life-enriching', but unmotivated phonetic distortions like
that are no longer allowed! I got rid of many of these forms by using derivations
instead; others were divided properly into morphemes.
(E.g. <i>shrifta</i> 'knowledge', diverging oddly from <i>shrifec</i> 'know', is now
explained as incorporating a Cadhinor collective suffix <i>-ta</i>,
which we also met in <i>falata</i> 'army', above.)
<p>I also complicated the morphology. Probably anyone who's tried learning
Verdurian curses me for this-- or ignores those parts-- but I'm rather proud of
this, since it's a naturalistic feature of real languages. Most of the complications
come from the regular sound changes: e.g. the irregular 1s form <i>lagao</i> 'I get'
preserves
the <b>g</b> that was fricativized in the infinitive <i>lazhec</i>.
(If you think that's bad,
you'll really hate <a href="bara.htm">Barakhinei</a>.)
<p>A particular challenge was to provide some sort of historical justification
for the verbal inflections of Verdurian, which exhibit teasing hints of regularity.
I had no restrictions on the Cadhinor and Proto-Eastern forms, of course,
but I did want the two sets of sound changes to start with something more regular
and end up with the Verdurian forms (perhaps tweaked a little by analogy).
This proved to be surprisingly difficult. The best I could do was to unify
the three conjugations in one (<a href="eastern2.html#cverbs">here</a>),
and that system could hardly be more arcane... though it's not any worse than
many real-world examples.
<p>Much of what I learned during all this ended up distilled into the
<a href="kit.html">Language Construction Kit</a>.
<p>I know nobody will follow this advice :) but I will say that it's easier to
do it right the first time. Writing Verdurian, I still have to check the dictionary
all too often to make sure I'm not remembering the old form rather than the revised one
<p>After Verdurian was in good shape, I wrote grammars of Cadhinor, Cuêzi,
Axunáshin, Xurnásh, and Wede:i, as well as data on proto-Eastern,
and a preliminary version of Obenzayet.
<h3>The novels you can't read yet: 2</h3>
<p>The second novel was written not long after this; it's called
<i>In the Land of Babblers</i>. It's set in the year 297, and concerns a young
courtier named Beretos, who is sent to be the Cuzeian Resident in a miserable
little Cadhinorian barony on the edge of the Plain that happens to guard the only
pass through the Ctelm Mountains against the ktuvoks. The Cadhinorians are basically
barbarians at this time, and Beretos finds it hard to be accepted even as a warrior,
much less a help against
the demons.
<p>Personally, I still like this book. I liked trying to get inside the mind of
someone from a very antique culture; and the spiritual desolation that
Beretos feels echoed some parts of my life. (I'm better now, thanks.)
<p>I'm not going to post it online; I still want to be published on dead trees,
and explore this wacky idea of writers getting 'paid' that I hear so much about nowadays.
However, here's a short extract:
<blockquote><font color="#0050E0">
When his friend Oromo was captured by the people of the Cloud Kingdom, the Sojourner
travelled south to the ice kingdom of the Turicali, and began to raise falcons.
<p>It was tedious work. First of all, a pair of falcons had to be captured, young
enough to be trained. It is necessary to capture them in the wild, because the
Turicali do not sell their birds. The training itself requires long hours and
much care. And once he had trained them to trust him and to return to his hand,
it took many months for them to hunt enough airswallows for his purpose.
<p>To rescue Oromo, he needed to rise to the level of the clouds, and for this of
course he needed a vehicle which was lighter than air. Smoke is lighter than air,
but it is too unsubstantial to ride on. It was the Sojourner's idea to build a boat of
the feathers of birds; but most birds do not rise anywhere near to the level of the
Cloud Kingdom, and their feathers were useless to him. Only the airswallows, who
actually build their nests in the clouds, have feathers of
the necessary lightness. They never touch land, and are thus almost as inaccessible
as the Cloud Kingdom; but sometimes they fly low enough that the highest-flying
of falcons, those of the land of the Turicali, can catch them.
<p>If he was fortunate, his falcons could find one airswallow each day; and with
the feathers of the birds they caught he began to build his boat. He tied the boat
to his bed, because otherwise it would slowly rise into the sky. After six months
it was large enough to carry his weight. He piloted the boat into the sky, came to
the Cloud Kingdom, and rescued his friend.
</font></blockquote>
<h3>More world-elaboration</h3>
I had some notes on Almean religions, which I revised into <a href="beliefs.htm">
<i>Almean Belief Systems</i></a>. This is an unfinished work; there are extensive
section on the Xurnese religions I'm still working on, and precious little on
Jippirasti.
<p>If there's any secret to the sort of world-building I do (rich, plausible,
and shudderingly non-profit), it's <i>patience</i> and <i>research.</i>
I think you'll do better fantasy if you don't read much of other people's fantasy,
but rather history, science, and non-Western stories.
It came into my head, for instance, to revise the substance names in
Verdurian. I decided that to do this right I'd have to learn <a href="versci.htm">
something about early chemistry</a>, so that I'd learn what substances the
Verdurians were likely to know, and enough about them to give them good names.
<p>I also like wide-scale anthopological works, to get an idea how cultures work
and develop. My favorite authors here are Marvin Harris and Jared Diamond,
whose <i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i> is fascinating on why some areas of a planet
might develop faster than others, without regard to the cleverness of the inhabitants.
If you're curious, some of the reasons he advances for the preeminence of Eurasia are:
<ul>
<li>It's the largest landmass. More people, more innovation. Also more disease,
which is a not inconsiderable weapon in the Eurasian armory.
<li>It has the most nutritious plants (e.g. wheat, with its high protein content),
and the widest variety of domesticable animals. Africa, by contrast, has plenty
of animals, but they're not easy to tame.
<li>It's a huge east-west swath of territory. Plants and animals diffuse easiest
east/west, because they're already adapted to the ecosystem. The Americas, by contrast,
are north/south, so that Mexico and Peru couldn't share their agronomy.
</ul>
I've been applying this to Almea; in particular, one of my ongoing projects is to
work out the biology of Almean food crops, and how that influenced Almean history.
<p>
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