Re: Con-other

Let's see.  Some of my own examples in this broad space...

I created an alphabet before anything else.  Then the currency, I
think.  A very early invention was a calendar where 1-1-1 was the day
I was born; given the provenance of our modern year numbers, this was
regarded as bordering on sacrilege by some. ISTR I simply took the
month lengths from the civil calendar, so the month starting on my
birthday was 31 days, the next 28 or 29, etc.

I wasn't much for drawing maps, but my friends and I did divide up our
local city map into zones centered on our respective houses, with some
controversy over the exact locations of the borders...

I once created a martial arts ranking/belt system, ostensibly for a
Monk in AD&D, though I had more fun devising the background than
playing the game. :). It was based on 1-bit CMY: white, yellow,
purple, red, light blue, green, dark blue, black.

The Earth of the future - I no longer recall what year, but I think it
was the 24th century, chosen because Star Trek and Buck Rogers had the
23rd and 25th respectively - had formed a planetwide gov't, the United
Terran Republics, for which I devised a flag and interstellar Navy
uniforms with rank and rating insignia.  I decided the UTR had
abandoned months for official use in favor of just using year + day of
year, a system I called "contidate" (a horrible portmanteau of
"continuous date").  I even kept a journal using it, with a table
inside the cover for converting between it and the "illogical" system
of months.  (Ah, the arrogance of youth.  Hey, it was an auxcal!)

I've mentioned on here before that Dankaran music was based on
dividing the octave in 20 instead of 12; the only instrument I
designed was the lute, for which I figured out the requisite fret
spacing...

Technology was mostly based on visual effects.  For instance,
starships going into hyperspace would elongate into a streak of energy
whose front maintained the shape of the bow, a process I called
Starfire.  TNG totally stole that visual from me. ;).  Teleportation
involved a starburst effect that actually looked an *awful* lot like
what you would see if you stood in front of a full length mirror, used
it to bounce a flashlight beam from belt-level into your own eyes, and
squinted...



On 5/30/08, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> Den 30. mai. 2008 kl. 01.01 skreiv Mark J. Reed:
>> The subject of con-currencies came up on the other thread, and made me
>> wonder what other concultural artifacts people have created?
>> Orthographies (that might not yet have an associated language),
>> calendars, currencies, games (board and sport); vehicles, weapons;
>> religions....
>
> The Urianians have a set of runelike characters used widely until the
> early medieval, when Roman letters became more common.
>
> The traditional Urianian calendar is a simple lunar calendar with a
> leap month added if the vernal equinox falls outside the 12th month.
> It is still used by adherents of the old religion to find the
> Gregorian dates of the festivals.
>
> I haven't done any work on Urianian currency, but it could be an
> interesting story. I gather they started minting during the last
> couple of centuries BCE and developed a varied selection of coins.
> But when the Scots, later British, took over the south of the island,
> they introduced their own currency there, like the Danes did when
> they took over the northern part. But the northern part wasn't
> completely conquered until the 17th century, and even then there were
> resistance barons who were likely to do some minting of their own.
> Particularly in the case of the 1849 rebellion I think there would be
> some rebel minting. When the southern part gained some independence
> in 1917, they celebrated with special issues, but continued using
> British denominations. The northern part got rid of the Danes in
> 1934, and the island was unified. The unification day on Aug 13 is
> the biggest national holiday. Unification of the currency also
> resulted, eventually, though I'm not exactly sure with what result.
> Maybe they are still using pounds, shillings and pence to this day.
>
> As a kid I had a period when I drew notes and mock coins to play
> trading games with my friends. I called them 'Superman money' and
> they were embellished with Superman symbols, inspired by a
> Schaffenberger story I read at the time.
>
> I've done a bit of work on religions. The Urianians have a
> traditional IE polytheism with some twists. I have written a creation
> myth in Old Urianian, perhaps a little ironic, almost like a parody
> of IE creation myths. Don't know if they actually believe in the
> stuff, but at least it was fun writing. The Suraetuans are animists.
> They don't worship humanoid gods representing the Moon and the Sun
> etc., they worship the objects themselves. I have done a bit of work
> on their creation myth as well, but it's far from finished. At the
> time when they encounter Uttrediay, the hero of the novel I have been
> working on, they have a few sects with more or less quaint ideas to
> market.
>
> I have more than half a dozen books full of maps in quite a bit of
> detail. Would like to make them digital, but it will be a lot of
> work, particularly if done well. I have done quite a bit of work on
> the botany, because I would like to know what diet items they had
> available, and other useful plants as well. Suraetuans are fond of
> colour, and I have tried to design some clothing, based on bronze age
> models, but more elaborate. Most Urianian plants are species found in
> Scotland and/or Scandinavia as well, but there is a small number of
> species peculiar to the country.
>
> There is a modern Urianian flag, and like "Ph. D", I have had a few
> versions that were discarded when I found natworld flags that were
> too similar. Currently I have a simple design of three horizontal
> stripes in blue, white and green with a red emblem in the middle. The
> national emblem should be treefold, but the actual shape is undecided
> as of now. Probably a thistle should be included, and a walking lion.
> I'm not sure yet of a symbol for the Urianian nation itself. These
> things can often be very arbitrary. For some reason I was thinking of
> a rooster just now.
>
> LEF
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>