Hideaway on the Interwebs

pearhaps, pearhaps…..

I appreciate the love! I’m so excited to have people take interest. So I actually just spent a bunch of time developing way the seasons worked before the Endless Winter, and calendar that was based on that. For these purposes, I’ll be speaking as if the Endless Winter hasn’t come yet so I don’t have to keep saying “before the Endless Winter”.

For starters, there is a distinction made between yuni, days, and masida, cycles. yuni refers to the time from one sunrise to the next and is based on the actual solar passage of a day. masida refers to the time from one iterator rain to the next. Outside the retaining walls, there are seasons (Rainy season, monsoon, dry season, and drought). Depending on the season, rain outside the retaining walls is much gentler and starts and stops sometimes independent of nearby iterator activity. Outside of monsoon, the rain isn’t typically strong enough to force slugcats to end the day. It’s much like rain in real life, starting and stopping whenever the weather demands.

Meanwhile, within retaining walls, the influences of the iterators disrupt the seasonal cycles. Plants tend to just grow and animals habits are significantly less regularized. Rains can be harsh and potentially deadly, and less predictable than a day/night cycle, the rains effectively dictate what constitutes a meaningful day within retaining walls. I imagine that at least in Undergrowth, rains within retaining walls can last up to but not more than a full 24 hour day, but that tends to be rare unless the iterator is dabbling in irregular, intensive processes (so make sure you’ve packed enough supplies). Otherwise though, the rains tend to come closer to night and end at some point after the next day comes, as that’s when the air is cooler and more conducive to rain.

Because of this, slugcats outside retaining walls tend to refer to days as yuni while those inside the retaining walls tend to refer to days as masida, because that’s what’s more useful to them. Slugcats otherwise don’t hibernate in Undegrowth, they maintain rather human-like sleep requirements.

Below are the months of the Yongasabi calendar and how the seasons map to them. Note that as mentioned, these seasons only apply outside of retaining walls.

Once the Endless Winter comes, I imagine the day/night cycle largely dictates how most creatures behave both inside and outside retaining walls; the air is warmer and more hospitable in the day, but as night progresses, it becomes colder, the winds become harsher, etc. Shelter by day and shelter at night. Many of the old natural annual events that inspired that months of the calendar are at this point defunct. However, those who historically lived inside retaining walls still refer to days as masida.

Slugcats and Scavengers who live underground are less beholden to the day/night cycle because they can work free of the cold. However, they still keep track of the day for the purposes of scheduling, and they track the dates for the sake of crops, animal rearing, and tracking important events. Some businesses still work by a daytime schedule in order to maintain common business times and accommodate those who have to travel by day, outside in the cold.

Boy howdy. I hope that answers your questions. I have given this stuff a lot of thought just because I like the way these little things help to contextualize the characters and make the world feel more lived it, and it’s nice to be able to answer questions like this.

Yeah, while there are some thing I did to try and form a useful throughline in learning the language, the whole document is definitely more of a grammar than a learning guide. I would say that for the sake of practically forming sentences and understanding its tendencies of the language, I would say to try tackling it in this order first and foremost:

1. Case Marking and Basic Sentence Formation
   This is a must! All the basics and case marking functions are at the start for a reason!
2. Word Order and Dropping Subjects and Objects
   The word order section isn’t strictly necessary but I find it help to know this sort of thing because it helps your brain sort information and makes learning easier. Dropping subjects and objects however is important to know because it’s a huge part of how sentences are formed. If you don’t understand it, you’ll feel like sentences have words missing.
3. -ida / -da [ Past Tense ] and -igo / -go [ Future Tense ]
   You can return to the other verb tenses later but this will give you a little more flexibility and exposure to the way the verbs work. If you want, you can also read on to the next section about habitual actions, but I don’t recommend any further than that.
4. Position Words
   This will let you talk about locations and prepositions like above, below, before, after, etc
5. -ani / -ni [ Adverb Marker ] and Adverbs
   This section will net you an understanding of adverbs, as well as some useful time words like now, soon, later, today, etc.

I feel like those are the most necessary if you just want to get a grasp of the language and its tendencies. If you’ve read through those and want to continue, then I don’t have much more advice than to continue on and read through the document in order. Message me if you have questions or need help or further examples. I am glad to help!

As a bonus, here’s a drawing I made for the document, for sections that are under construction. I made it with a mouse on my work computer.

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