Posted by Irgend Jemand on 6:36 7/21/01
In reply to: (none)
It is mentioned once that Tellinor on the west coast of Erelae is one of Verduria's colonies. On the map of Almea, it looks bigger than any state in eastern Erelae, so the people there must be quite behind Verduria if the Verdurians were able to colonize them. What kind of people are they? And how do the Verdurians treat them?
As for the Ilii, do they use the same language in air and under water? I usually can't understand spoken words under water, let alone speak. I guess that the Ilii ears are better suited to this, but their speech apparatus must be kinda strange- after all, they don't breath through their lungs underwater. So, how exactly do they talk under water? And shouldn't that be basically different from how they talk in air?
I'll answer these in reverse order, since the last question is easily disposed of: I don't know. :( I hadn't really thought about this problem! About all I know about the iliu language is that to humans it sounds more like music than speech. I suspect rhythm and changes in pitch communicate better underwater than places of articulation.
As for Téllinor, your guess is correct-- it's comparable to pre-colonial Africa in development. They have agriculture (based on rye, littlewheat, nutgrass, and the groundnut) and iron working, but no writing, and are organized into small kingdoms that are easy to take over or turn against each other. Racially they are kin to the Westerners of the Rau jungle, and so (to Verdurian eyes) have reddish skin and chestnut hair.
They're about the same latitude as Verduria, so Verdurians and their crops thrive there (unlike the colony in Qaraumia, which is tropical). A few Verdurian words (and crops) taken from Téllinor: zhadzho 'groundnut' and kyodo 'clove', from Trêng; and shekshek 'cacao', from Yamda. (You may have guessed that "Téllinor" isn't a native name; it's pseudo-Cadhinor for 'West-land'.)
Colonialism is never pretty; the Verdurians have so far behaved without genocide or atrocities or impositions of religion, but they are of course moving in, taking good land, and in general acting as lords, and someday this will cause trouble. It's not much of a defense to say that if they weren't here, the Kebreni would be.