According to the Bright Way, there is a symmetry between epistemology and cosmology. The realm of the Known is the set of all things that are known. This epistemological concept corresponds to the noosphere (AKA the mind sea), which is the sum total of a sapient species' thoughts, experiences, ideas, and communications, as well as their effect on the world.

The Realm of the Knowable corresponds to the physical universe. Things and events in this realm can (at least theoretically) be grasped by mortal minds, though certain things may be beyond the ken of a particular species on account of its neurology and sensory system, in the same way you probably couldn't explain nuclear physics to a chimp. The Bright Way seeks out other sophonts in part to fill hitherto unnoticed gaps in the yinrih's knowledge, and for the yinrih to offer the same in kind.

However, there are things that lay outside the Realm of the Knowable, beyond the grasp of any mortal mind, regardless of how it is organized. This is the Realm of the Unknowable, or the Empyrean. This is where the souls of the blessed dwell in the beatific vision of the Uncreated Light. Faith, to trust in the unseen, bridges the Realm of the Knowable and the Realm of the Unknowable. Heaven is thus conceived of as being "outside" and the physical universe as "inside".

Wayfarers refer to the Empyrean as cBqDFp the Great Outside, and to the physical universe as rjGJfdMr sMlr This dear little Creation.

Here is what First Contact looks like from an epistemological perspective, the noospheres of humanity and vulpithecinity uniting as one.

What precisely this union consists in is a matter of debate in Claravian circles. It could be as simple as forming friendships between individuals of either species, or it could be as concrete and straightforward as physically uniting the two species' respective Internets, as is held by the Farspeakers.

Since I don't want to double post, here's a bonus lore dump:

The stargazer's prayer is a simple prayer taught to pups. It is, as you probably guess, said at night while gazing up into the stars. Below is an English translation.

I see the stars in dark of night
shining down with holy light.

keeping sophonts safe and warm
whatever be their shape and form.

When their eyes look to the sky
Do they see my star and I?

Do they chant this little verse,
O Maker of the universe?

One day soon before too long,
may we hear their joyful song.

May all our minds and all our might
reflect the Uncreated Light.

Author: @[email protected]

First, a little background about my world. I like to think of it as an inside-out planet. A vast open space surrounded by earth on all sides, with a sun in the middle and everything interesting in the world on the inner surface. Much like Pryan from the Death Gate Cycle books, which inspired this shape.

The sun, Sore, is a while hole with a gravitational push. It generates light and heat, and stops the planet from collapsing in on itself.

Outside of the world is, as far as anyone knows, a lot of rock and not much else. But some time ago (no idea when, my notes aren't dated) i wondered, if this place is an inside-out planet, could there be other planets? I don't see why there couldn't be.

Means of travel between these planets would have to be pretty different from normal space travel. Basic movement requires that you either break up the ground in front of you and move it behind your ship, or somehow lower the pressure around your ship enough to liquify rock without melting it to (or and) your ship, and let it slide past you (if i'm not totally misunderstanding phase transitions).

You can't see through solid rock like you can through the vacuum of space, so you need snar (sonic navigation and ranging) to make sure you don't hit another ship or something like the bottom of an ocean.

Gravity would grow weaker as you get further from a planet, then stronger from a different direction as you approach another. You need to be able to rotate the ship so the cabin isn't suddenly upside-down, while keeping whatever digging implements are at the font of your ship facing the right way.

Ports for these ships would have to have snar beacons that ships could listen for, but these signals would have to be able to be heard over a long distance and not stop ships from hearing each other.

And of course, ships need to be able to move over land or in water, because the end and beginning of long trips won't be through solid stone.

While writing this, i wondered for the first time why people would bother. I'm sure the planets are quite far apart, and you can only safely move so fast when your awareness of the things around your ship is so limited. Imagine trying to drive around at race car speeds at night with weak headlights. Space stations, underground areas big enough to seem like they're above ground aside from the lack of sunlight, could exist, but you probably wouldn't want people drilling tunnels around such a place. I certainly wouldn't want to spend my life designing a small artificial world only to have the sky collapse on it and ruin everything. Trying to travel to another planet for the sake of finding other life sounds worthwhile to me, but i don't see any way to detect these other planets at great range. You'd have to set off it an arbitrary direction and hope you hit something good soon.

So while my world could have space travel (for the closest thing to outer space it has), i'm not sure it realistically should. Maybe a similarly "inside-out" universe could have travel between worlds, but i don't see it working for me.

The Bright Way is not considered to have a single founder. The faith is said to have been revealed to the entire newly sapient yinrih species in an event called the Theophany. It is here, while the yinrih were still hunting with crudely knapped flint paw axes and storing edible seeds in nothing more than holes in the ground, where they received the Great Commandment to seek out other sophonts among the stars. And it is thanks to their monomaniacal pursuit of this Great Commandment that the yinrih went from the paleolithic to orbital flight in a mere 5 millennia.

Pictured above is a depiction of what was seen during the Theophany. It is an orb of light with a fringe of shifting hues, hanging in a part of the sky where the sun did not travel. Despite occurring at midday, the rest of the sky was dark as night and the stars shone unusually bright.

Over time, depictions of this vision evolved into the star and gear used as the Bright Way's usual symbol. The gear evolving from the chromatic fringe around the orb. There is considerable debate inside and outside the Bright Way as to what this glowing orb was. The majority view in Claravian circles is that it was a breach between the realm of the knowable (the physical universe) and the realm of the unknowable (the Empyrean). While not explicitly endorsed by the magisterium, a common assumption is that the light was in fact the Uncreated Light itself, or more accurately, the closest a mortal mind could get to perceiving the Light's inapproachable glory.

If you ask secular historians, especially within Partisan Territory, it was an instance of mass hysteria, possibly having to do with the yinrih's newly sapient brains. But there are multiple accounts of the Theophany that are reasonably congruent with one another that were penned (clawed?) far away from one another, with no time for one group to have been influenced by another.

Others think it was a hallucination brought on by tainted water or a gas seep that collected along the river valley. A disaster of this magnitude would surely have resulted in other negative effects, like dead animals or sick pups, or at least lingering issues with adults that would have been documented. The fact that this is not the case, especially given the strong taboo against intoxication, makes this idea hard to square with what is known.

Perhaps it was something akin to an aurora, but at that time of year? at that time of day? on that part of Yih? localized entirely within a single discreet orb? Highly unlikely. It also doesn't explain the darkened sky.

In another post I mentioned the Mindseekers, which was a sect that sought to create artificial sophonts rather than seek other minds among the stars. As they began experimenting with electronic computers, they settled on balanced ternary as the number system of choice rather than binary. This choice was based on some vagaries of yinrih neurology they sought to emulate.

Balanced ternary has three digits, -1, 0, and +1. You can represent any signed integer with these three digits alone. The sign of the number is the sign of the highest-order digit. Here are a few examples using T as -1:

TT = -1*3^1-1*3^0 = -3-1 = -4
1T = 1*3^1-1*3^0 = 3-1 = 2
10 = 1*3^1 + 0*3^0 = 3

You can reverse the sign of the number just by flipping +1's to -1's and vice versa.

11 = 1*3^1+1*3^0 = 3+1 = 4
T1 = -1*3^1+1*3^0 = -3+1 = -2
T0 = -1*3^1+0*3^0 = -3

For reasons unknown, perhaps aesthetics, perhaps for some deeper spiritual reason, the Mindseekers often represented balanced ternary numbers using two-dimensional paths. The rules for drawing such a path are simple.

1. Pick a starting point
2. Draw a line in any of the four cardinal directions.
3. You may turn 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise, drawing a dot at each turn.
4. You may also go straight ahead, drawing a dot dividing a line segment.
5. You may not make a 180 degree turn, you must make two consecutive 90 degree turns.

"But how does this represent balanced ternary numbers?" I hear you cry. Well, a counterclockwise turn represents a +1, a clockwise turn -1, and a straight is 0. The number is big endian, meaning the first turn is the highest-order digit, the second is the second-highest, etc. Neither initial starting direction nor line length are significant, so those choices can be left to aesthetics or other constraints.

This method has the pleasantly symmetrical property that mirroring the path horizontally results in an integer of the opposite sign.

Mindseekers would often hide such paths in odd places, like the brickwork on the sides of buildings, embedded in the abstract pattern of a tapestry, and so on. It's thought that certain numbers held symbolic value.

These paths became popular as a way to hide messages in plain sight even long after the Mindseekers faded into obscurity.

This is a sketch of a typical vulpithecine public restroom.

1. The doorway is blocked by a curtain. Yinrih enter by pushing the cloth aside with the muzzle. Most rooms that don't need strict access control or environmental protection use such curtains.
2. A washing pool is accessible near the entrance. It's a shallow basin a few inches deep. The water is vigorously circulated and filtered. Yinrih wash all four paws as well as the tail after using the restroom. There is a coarse bristly floor mat used to scrape dirt from under the claws and from between the paw pads.
3. The washing pool sits in the "clean" area of the restroom. The "dirty" area where the toilets are is usually set off by a lip in the floor or a change in tile texture. Hygiene dictates that you enter the washing pool directly from the dirty area before setting paw in the clean area again.
4. The floor is often tiled. How something feels under paw is just as important to a room's style as how it looks. Tiles often alternate between different textures or even different thermal conductivities to achieve a particular tactile aesthetic.
5. There are almost always perches in the clean area of the restroom. Yinrih tend to be chatty while doing their business, and in some cultures it's considered polite to accompany a friend or coworker to the restroom even if you don't have to go yourself.
6. The toilets proper are flush with the surrounding floor. The user backs into the stall. There is a ring of rough tile around the rim to help people from stepping in the toilet[^1]. Both male and female yinrih eliminate via a cloaca and stand with the rear paws on either side of the bowl with the tail resting across the back. Toilet paper, usually soaked in a mild disinfectant like wet wipes, is available in dispensers above the toilet. The paper is manipulated by the tail.
7. There are still partitions affording a modicum of privacy. Just because bathrooms are more social than on Earth doesn't mean people appreciate watching others doing their business, just like many human cultures regard yawning or chewing with the mouth open to be rude or gross. So you can't drop a deuce in the middle of the street and not expect to get a citation. The partitions are low enough to reveal a yinrih's head.
8. The entire stall is flushed after use. The stall floor slopes into the latrine. There is a grate across the entrance that releases a mild mix of water and bleach to both flush the toilet and sanitize the floor.

Needless to say, this is not conducive to human use. If human-specific facilities are not available, the polite thing to do is yield the entire bathroom to a human in need to use privately.

[^1]: The Commonthroat expression P rlpqN sMp, to step in the toilet means to make a stupid mistake, especially despite being warned beforehand. The more vulgar expression bc g rnqg rp qcf to piss on one's own [rear] paws carries a similar meaning.

Posting this here since the conlanging comms seem pretty inactive. I FINALLY solved a problem with my Commonthroat lexicon. I was using a verbose pronunciation scheme describing consonants and vowels one by one with whole words. This caused false positives in search results when searching for terms containing the words used in this verbose pronunciation scheme like "weak" or "low".

In the old system, the vowel b would be given a pronunciation of "short low weak whine". This made it impossible to find words meaning "short" or "low" etc, since they appeared in so many entries.

When I started working on Outlander, another yinrih language, I came up with a universal phonetic notation that would cover the whole gamut of vulpithecine speech sounds that I call the YPA (Yinrih Phonetic Alphabet). It's a bit of a misnomer since it's not really an alphabet, just a more compact way of describing pronunciations.

In YPA, b is rendered "1111", which won't conflict with any definitions.

While the Outlander lexicon has used YPA from the outset, I wasn't sure whether I could update the pronunciations in my Commonthroat lexicon to the new system. But I unexpectedly had a large amount of free time today, so I spent 5 hours straight cobbling together a Python script to replace the old pronunciations with new ones.

So here is the fruit of my labor: https://lonelygalaxy.neocities.org/commonthroat

Original question by: @[email protected]

If a conworlding project persists long enough, I'm sure we've all second-guessed some aspect of our worlds.

I've learned to incorporate my own second thoughts into the universe itself. Don't like how I translated something into English? OK, it was a mistranslation that has now become too ingrained to change. Not sure how to portray a particular religious sect? Now there are two different denominations of that sect. Uncomfortable with how I characterized a controversial historical figure? OK, now there's a historical revisionist movement that seeks to paint him in a different light. Have some idea I like that really doesn’t fit the lore? Now it’s an in-universe urban legend/TV show.

How do you document your worldbuilding? What tools do you use? How do you organize your ideas?

Since the inception of my current conworld I have been using Obsidian. It's great for non-linear note taking. The downside is that the result is less shareable (unless you pay for sync).

I've always wanted to create a publicly viewable wiki. I LOVE digging through fan wikis, even for franchises I'm otherwise unattached to. All my knowledge of D&D and WH40K comes from walking through various fan wikis.

To that end, I've been exploring other options. Mediawiki seems to be the gold standard since it's what Wikipedia uses. However, its designed with a lot of user management and permissions features that work well for a massive user base, but are less relevant to someone who wants a non-linear read-only browseable repository of info.

Dokuwiki looks like a popular alternative. No database to manage, though the fact that a lot of expected features like tags and moving pages have been relegated to 3rd party plugins isn't great. The more plugins, the harder patch management becomes.

Tiddlywiki so far looks the most promising. It assumes only one user is editing pages, so no user permissions to manage. It also runs as a single monolithic HTML file, which has upsides and downsides, but that means I can upload that single file to a simple free web host like Neocities. If the wiki gets very large I anticipate performance issues, as the entire wiki is sent when the page is requested and everything runs client side, so the more I add the worse it will feel. But it's very stable, has been around almost as long as Wikipedia itself, and unlike Obsidian is open source.

For instance, a species with little to no navigable oceans or a fully aquatic species may find it difficult to develop the cultural skills necessary to run a ship because there isn't a tradition of operating a ship the same way there is for humans.

It's common in fantasy and sci-fi to have multiple distinct sapient species (races). How did all of yours come about and survive to the present day without any one species becoming dominant while the rest went the way of archaic humans?

My world doesn't have any moon or stars, so keeping track of seasons is a lot harder. That makes agriculture really hard, so populations are only as big as can be supported by hunting, fishing, and gathering. This means everyone had more time to evolve and develop sapience and cultures. Still, that's only 5 people species for me, one of which is extinct and another of which is a kind of plant.

The attack started between 05:35 and 05:40 CDT yesterday, when the user count jumped from 387 to 909. The attack lasted until around 16:05 CDT (4 PM), when the user count dropped from 787 to 53. For the duration of the attack the user count hovered around 2000, with a maximum of 2591 users at 08:35.

When the attack concluded, I and others were unable to log in, getting a password incorrect error. I received no email notifications after being PMed, and attempts to create new accounts resulted in a blank screen. Some users were still logged in and able to post, but attempts to change passwords were unsuccessful.

The site is back up, but I'd update your passwords.

Greetings once again friends! This is your mayor, Liam Deamhany, here to talk about the great strides our industrious city made in serving as a shipping partner. Since the early 1900s Diston has had two busting shipping ports on our shores. First was the Coposa Harbor founded at our city’s founding. Coposa Harbor has served as a major shipping and in the 1920s as an immigration channel for our great country. While it started life as a family-owned business it was transfer to the stewardship during WWII to allow for quick and efficient deployment of the war effort. Affectionately known as the “South Docks” by us natives, it still serves as a port for goods coming on shore to this day. Second, Tsuris International Harbor came during WWII and was the go-to port for the citizenry of Diston to send and receive goods in a way that would not choke up the logistical needs of the war effort. In conjunction with Diston’s own Estrie Family (who still manage the harbor to this day) to help continue to allow immigrants and refugees fleeing Europe during the early days of the war. This harbor has become known as the North Dock in reference to Coposa Harbor. And finally, we have our most recent harbor; Lobisomem International Harbor. Finished in 2010, this state-of-the-art harbor has taken the “center stage” for the shipping and logistical needs of Diston and the state overall. This harbor sees billions of dollars of commerce and trade cross into and out of our great city. it is a primary employer of a large portion of your friends and neighbors. Often referred to as the “Central Docks” it sits between or two legacy harbors. I hope you have enjoyed this brief overview of some of the amazing businesses and services that our great city has to offer. We look forward to working with you. And remeber; If you lived here, you'd already be home.

http//;hunter-net.net/htr/diston/this-frecking-city Subject: Docks To:Hunterlist/Diston/All From:KindSoul803 Guys, these docks are a rat's nest. In all meanings of the word. The Lucient Company has their hand in all three. They are either the new parent company for the subcompanies that own and operate these harbors or they are the controlling partner on the board of directors for the Central Docks. Everything comes through these docks. People, drugs, guns, creatures. Heck, I’m sure that whackjob who blew up his trailer trying to take out all of those Wolves imported his Tannerite through one of them. I wish I could give you guys better info. But all of them are dirty, and all of them are compromised.

Hopefully nobody minds my spamming. Here's another story. As with the last one, alien speech is indicated with Italian quotes («»).

EDIT: classic typo in the title. Thankfully Lemmy lets you update post titles, unlike Reddit.

I say "flying" instead of "floating" to differentiate what i'm talking about from islands that float on the sea (like Delos).

My world's flying islands are made of a kind of coral that grows up to tens of kilometers in size, usually smooth on the bottoms and with plant life on top, mostly from seeds left there by birds. The polyps excrete a gas lighter than air that keeps the colony afloat.

Islands drift with the wind and bob up and down as the coral gets dehydrated from being above the clouds and some of it dies, reducing lifting gas production and making the island sink until it becomes healthier again.

Today i wondered, what would happen if lightning struck one of these? What little i've read about lightning hitting airplanes and animals leads me to believe it wouldn't be great for the coral, but i'd love to hear what people who might know more about these things think.

Would the strike be less impactful with no ground current? Would the coral have to develop a way to avoid stormy areas? Would these things just being less conductive than air be enough to protect them, or would they need to develop something like a Faraday cage to be safe in a storm?

Some examples are linguistically universal across yinrih languages. All languages colexify various anatomical words related to limbs and extremities thanks to the yinrih being quadrupeds with highly prehensile feet. Their forepaws do just as much walking as their rear paws, and their rear paws do just as much grasping as their forepaws.

Some examples from Commonthroat:

To refer to human body parts, yinrih have to qualify these terms with words like rfbr to walk and CDq to hold, such as rnqCDqg holding paws for hands and rnqrfbrg walking paws for feet.

Yinrih also make distinctions where most human languages do not, such as having distinct words for muzzle (PMqg) and rhinarium, the wet tip of the nose (sPlqg). They also distinguish between the act of lapping (qdBq, meaning to draw liquid into the mouth by submerging the tip of the tongue and drawing it out again in a spoon-shape) and licking (NLr, meaning to drag the body of the tongue across a surface). Since kits lick (NLr) milk from their dams' paws, the word licker (NLrmg) means much the same thing as English sucker, a gullible or unfortunate person.

Like human languages, Commonthroat anatomical terms are used to derive many other words, but they may be used in very different ways thanks to the yinrih's body plan.

Because yinrih rely heavily on pheromones to communicate mood, the word for to smell like (rMP) also means to feel (an emotion).

Yinrih do not have concepts such as marriage or extended family, so they lack words for husband or wife, grandfather or grandmother, and aunt or uncle. A single word (scscg) refers to any adult associated with one's family but isn't one of one's sires or dams. And in yinrih cultures where single parents take charge of specific pups throughout their upbringing, the word scscg can even refer to one's other sires and dams who are not involved directly in one's upbringing. scscg also fills in for most of the human kinship terms mentioned above, and may also refer to older cousins.

As simple as yinrih kinship is, those kin relationships that are recognized are extremely strong. Parent-child and sibling-sibling relationships may require special pronominal forms in some languages. Outlander is the most well-known to use such a system. Second- and third-person pronouns have unique transactional, amicable, and familial forms. Note, however, that these forms indicate reciprocal relationships. Using familial forms with someone doesn't just mean "I think of you as family" but also "I expect you to treat me like family". It is considered rude or even vulgar to address someone with a more familiar pronoun, as it is seen as burdening them with unwelcome obligations or implying a level of closeness that hasn't yet been earned.

Complicating matters are that more pious dialects of Outlander use amicable forms to refer to humans when transactional forms would be used with other yinrih in the same situation.

Micro mechs[^1] started out as medical tools, but their tiny size quickly proved useful in espionage, as they allowed spies to be literal flies on the wall. From there they found their way into the criminal underworld as a favorite tool of pickpockets. Pilots could hop into a victim's wallet[^2] and copy ID or bank card numbers, then slip out undetected, possibly with a valuable trinket or two in paw.

Counter intelligence and law enforcement agencies had to develop strategies to detect, chase, and catch these lilliputian saboteurs. These hunting methods soon grew popular as sports, to the point that most micro mechs manufactured at the time of First Contact are built for recreational use rather than as medical tools. Pickpockets now favor sport mechs rather than those built for use by healers because the sport models are both far less expensive and are designed for speed and maneuverability rather than for safe operation in the delicate environment of a patient's body.

Sport micro mechs are built cheaply as they are designed to be disposable. Each manufacturer has their own proprietary control system--paw gauntlets and tail sheath for input, and a HUD visor for output, and each make and model has its ardent defenders and bitter detractors.

The most popular micro mech sport at the time of First Contact is a hunting game where one or more mechs compete to touch the nose of a participant on foot, who in tern is trying to chase down and smash the mechs. From an external perspective it looks like someone trying to chase down and squash a troublesome insect, so most people watch vid feeds from the mechs. From their perspective it's a Dark Souls style giant boss battle. Since the mechs are piloted remotely the only risk is to the "boss", who has to do a lot of leaping and brachiating. Humans refer to the sport as EXTREME snoot booping (caps and bold text mandatory).

Conventional mechs that are piloted internally are also used in fighting competitions similar to the arena from Armored Core.

[^1]: Commonthroat distinguishes between mechs piloted remotely and those piloted internally. The former are rLMg /chuff, long low strengthening grunt, short low weak growl/ literally mimic, shadow, or avatar and the latter are rGHg /chuff, long low strengthening growl, short low weak growl/ meaning heavy armor. Their pilots are in tern referred to as rLMqg /chuff, long low strengthening grunt, huff, short low weak growl/ and rGHqg /chuff, long low strengthening growl, huff, short low weak growl/. [^2]: A pocketed band worn around the right foreleg.

How would a race of quadrupedal sophonts approach the task of keeping their paws clean in places like hospitals and kitchens?

The yinrih use remotely operated micro mechs[^1] or stationary medical robots for most procedures, meaning the healer doesn't have to worry about her[^2] paws touching the patient.

In situations where such equipment is not available, the healer has a few options. The most straightforward is to avoid moving while working on a patient, making sure that any tools are within reach. The healer may stand on a moving platform that can be driven by tail-actuated controls. In want of even this, a healer will employ an assistant to fetch tools for her. The assistant will carry tools in the tail (which is sheathed much like a hand in a glove) or rest the tools on a back-mounted tray.

Paw washing is done in shallow washing pools. Front feet, back feet, and tail are washed. The palms and soles are scraped against a coarse mat to remove dirt from under the claws and from between the paw pads.

While not related directly to their quadrupedal stance, because yinrih have fur, healers take drugs to shed their coat, becoming completely bald save for the whiskers. Baldness is a sign of the medical profession, much like a human lab coat and stethoscope.

[^1]: zoomorphic drones that can range from cell-sized to the size of a small pill. They are swallowed by, or injected into, the patient to perform internal procedures without the use of incisions. The healer pilots the micro mech using a HUD visor, paw gauntlets, and a tail sheath. [^2]: As a rule, yinrih males may not become healers. Females may not become soldiers. "Men break, women fix" is the common saying about such matters.

Earth was blasted. Ruined. The tensions between nations had boiled over and weapons of unprecedented scale had been tossed in swarms of death. People still survived in fashions, some eking out lives on the surface while others survived in cramped shelters. Eventually disparate people became small groups, those groups became regional factions, and those factions became things to rival old nations. One group following an ideology of single world society and a dream of a post-national humanity rose over the others. It was known as the Shared Prosperity Sphere and it ended up fulfilling the goal of becoming the society of all the earth.

A century after humanity had been reunited under the banner of the SPS, and once again took to space. People went to mars to see what had become of the ancient colony there which had been lost to earth during the upheaval. Mars was a tomb, with the explorers from earth finding ruins and people of the old times long dead, but deep inside the old structures there was something else. Something that forever altered humanity's course. The colonists of the past had discovered buried subterranean alien ruins. This monumental find had been partially excavated and researched by the humans of mars and among the many details of importance, there was one relic of singular importance. A never before seen type of crystal, which was named in the colony records as aeternite. It could not be drilled into, chipped, or cracked with any known tool. It was a mystery, but with research of the alien structure that had housed it, the colonists had begun to uncover its power, and the researchers of the SPS continued to learn that the crystal, if subjected to specific energies, would create a field around itself which could be used as the heart of an engine for instantaneous interstellar travel. The peoples of earth found several more aeternite crystals in more alien structures buried under the martian surface, and with them constructed a fleet of ships capable of traveling truly to the stars. The act of traveling was simply called lightjumping by laypeople. The lightjumping was not completely freeform, there was an underlying set of variables which were sometimes esoteric which had to be learned in order to chart paths. Humanity did learn how to traverse space and there was no shortage of people willing to boldly go out into the void. Some people were naturally adventurous while others had secretly chafed under the society of the SPS and were looking for a chance to create what they thought would be a superior path. As the early small fleet of ships spread out, the explorers would occasionally discover more aeternite crystals. Often the crystals were merely small slivers, often appearing to perplexingly be broken shards of a larger whole, yet humanity had yet discovered a way to crack them. That was a mystery for academics though. On the frontier, what mattered was the leverage that having crystals provided. Ambitious leaders on some colonies revived the ancient concept of private companies. They created their own currencies, backed by reserves of aeternite. Eventually the most successful of these companies came to an agreement with each other and created the Uniform Commercial Council as a way of mediating. A single currency was adopted among them, and contract and territory rules were created and even sometimes followed.

Not all colonies went the way of becoming UCC members, and instead retained independence in some form. Some colonies were only merely above being vassals to a UCC members, others had some resource or location near a lightjump location that allowed them some level of leverage, and others simply found ways to become self sufficient and isolated.

Alien races, both sapient and feral were encountered on the frontier. While a new race was always a change to the social landscape, the people of the frontier were not like the shocked early people finding alien ruins on mars, and instead priding themselves on taking new alien contact in stride.

While the frontier of humanity was expanding and much to the dismay of the central academics of the SPS, growing wildly away from the comfortable social structure found on earth and mars, research into aeternite continued and scienticians eventually discovered a way to tap the field created but aeternite for power generation rather than travel. The amount of energy output from the field was massively higher by many orders of magnitude than what the aeternite was subjected to when creating the field. This curious effect, while baffling, was nevertheless something that changed the thinking of people on earth. While the SPS had up to that point created an improved standard of living, the possibility of functional energy post-scarcity was looked at as way to build a true utopia. Using the crystals for power generation meant they would not longer be installed on starships. The SPS was faced with a choice between continuing to explore into the unknown or the changes that such power generation would provide. They chose to stop exploring. To the people who had stayed inside the solar system, the stories of the frontier had scared them greatly. Many people, and the academic thought leaders agreed. The remaining crystals still inside the solar system were repurposed and the SPS turned inward 200 years after it had first traveled to mars.

On the frontier the UCC barely noticed. The member companies, now all megacorporations were more concerned with their own power and influence over the colonies and each other. The colonies spread and eventually the alien species called the arweli were encountered. Arweli were human sized, and though vaguely humanoid had a strong resemblance to earthy amphibians. The members of the race which were encountered were all part of the main interstellar nation which was highly militarized. Although the arweli territory constantly expanded, often bringing other alien races under their rule, they saw themselves as liberators rather than conquerors. The early encounters with humanity were polite but cold as the arweli tried to gauge if human territory would be possible and advantageous to liberate. That contemplation was cut short by the outbreak of all out war between the arweli and an alien cyborg race which became a struggle that devasated both of them, and drew much of humanity into a fight it wasn't prepared for.

UPDATE: I've shuttered the forum for the time being. I don't really have time to manage it, and I have no idea how to promote it. Oh well. I learned a lot about the admin side of forums though, so I don't consider it a waste of time.

If anyone is interested, I have a NodeBB instance at https://constructed.world/. For now email is not required to sign up.

NodeBB seems to be a spiritual successor to phpBB that aims to modernize the traditional forum experience while keeping the community atmosphere. It has many features that phpBB lacks, such as user mentions, a more modern user status indicator system, real-time chat, markdown formatting, and of course, it uses ActivityPub.

I think the more permanent discussion format of forums is a better fit for this hobby, personally.

Hopefully advertising another online conlanging/conworlding community isn't too crass, but I have no idea how else to let people know it's available.