Re: New map

[Dave Fancella <david.fancella@comcast.net>]

On Monday 19 April 2004 12:59 am, Marcus Schreiner wrote:
> One thing I cannot do on this map is the background story. I'm not that
> deep in nexican history.
> There's also another open issue to me: the naming of buildings etc. Is
> there something like a convention? E. g. that names on FNA side have a more
> clacking and fizzling sound (anybody here who played "Master of Orion 2"
> and was at war with "Virzixl"?) and the imperial names have more
> diphthongs? Depends on the history of Nexus.

Well, I'm both happy and unhappy that the history issue keeps coming up, 
because that presents a wonderful opportunity:

Care to draw a world map?  :)

This is also going to get pretty long.  ;)

I figure there are three ways to approach this.  All three ways require you to 
keep in mind two important things.  According to the history as it stands, 
modern Nexians are distanced from their present-day ancestors by about 4 
earth centuries and close to 2500 Nexian years (a conversion is so-far 
undefined, but I'm leaning towards having a Nexian year something like 250 
earth days or something.  Something long enough that we can enjoy a certain 
amount of freedom with naming and stuff, but short enough that we can still 
reasonably draw from existing earth societies).  Second, a person shouldn't 
need to have more than a cursory understanding of the history of any 
geographical area or nation on earth to be able to write Nexian history.  Mm, 
one more thing.  Nexians are currently descended from the People's Republic 
of America, which I figure included all of north America during the New Cold 
War between the PRA and the EU, and the PRA are/were/will be fascist 
government with capitalist economy (it's fiction, we can do that ;)  ).  So 
there should be some elitism and existing racism problems would be suppressed 
in some ways and used as a tool in other ways (similar to Nazi germany and 
fascist Italy in the 30s and 40s).

So, here goes.  These are all possible conditions as I see them at the time of 
Nexus's loss of contact with the terrestrial human race.

1.  The PRA took advantage of the discovery of Nexus to offer one of the 
existing oppressed nations in the US a chance to have their own nation and be 
swindeled into slavery yet again.  I figure you could safely take native 
americans, blacks, and/or mexicans and offer any of the three (or all three) 
a portion (or all) of Nexus as their own (add to it Texans and Quebecois, if 
you'd like ;) , but I'd reserve a different world for both of them to 
annihilate each other on).  There would still be a radical white aristocracy 
put on top of them, making a political situation similar to South Africa's, 
at least at the time of loss of contact with the terrestrial humans.

2.  The PRA settled it as a prison world.  Assuming the current ethnic 
proportions in prisons in the US don't change much that would make for a 
dominant black/mexican culture, also with a white aristocratic minority 
established on top of them.

In either of these cases, the aristocratic minority would be a bunch of 
rednecks, commonly called 'white trash' around most parts in this country, 
seen by the government as different from the settlers only in the fact that 
they're white, but culturally the same.  (yes, this country really is this 
screwed up right now, hence my fascist projections that made it into the 
cursory history I've already written for Nexus along with the racial tension 
that now plagues Nexus, but I think the racial tension is a human problem in 
general that the Nexians have failed to solve)  Also, depending on how 
currently-political you want to get, you could project the PRA actually 
conquering the middle east outright and then giving the islamic groups a 
chance to settle Nexus, but that topic is pretty emotionally charged in the 
world right now and I'd hate to turn off players who thought we were taking a 
stand on it since it's totally outside the scope of the game to take a 
political stand on current politics.  ;)

3.  The PRA settled it as a military installation, which would leave a 
military style hierarchy.  The aristocracy would still be there, but there 
would be more meritocracy going on.

Now pick one and then advance it about 2400 Nexian years or so.  In the case 
of #1 you could pick any ethnic stereotype and build language from there.  
Keeping in mind that English would still be dominant, but any native language 
still known would also be dominant, sorta like Quebec and Texas, both 
bilingual areas of the PRA.  Then figure in mixing and matching during the 
subsequent years, and voila.  Another language that spells one way fairly 
consistently but has very loose phonetics.

As far as existing words, there's the city of Allantha, Vardan, Lankh Valley, 
and a few others.  Right now every name can be safely marked as "European 
descent" and can be ultimately traced (if needed) to some european-descended 
group in the US (yes, there are towns in Texas where signs are printed in 
German and English, and similar situations throughout the country).  I'd try 
to stick with Latin rooted languages just because most languages represented 
in the US right now are latin rooted, and them latin rooted languages tend to 
look nice on paper anyway.

As far as Kand goes, there's still no consensus.  Jens wants them to be human, 
and in that case I figure it'd be cool if they were descended from a 
precursor human race that populated a bunch of earth-type planets in our 
prehistory.  I want them alien, but with a familial structure and a language 
that can't be represented in the latin character set.  In the latter case 
(mine), you could stick with Nexian-style names for Kandelian buildings and 
offer as explanation that since Kandelian language can't be represented in 
the latin character set, we have to use the original Nexian names for the 
buildings and cities and stuff.  Then, later on, someone could draw a 
Kandelian alphabet, give us a font, distribute the font with the game, and 
then we can cop out and let the names just use the same ASCII or UTF codes 
with the Kandelian font.  :)

So, to answer your question you'll probably have to write a little history.  
;)  There's a spot on the wiki for it.  *nudge*

Dave

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