A World Building Process

[Ferret Civilization]

Well time really gets lost on me, was trying to figure out how to once again start things up and without some kind of introduction things looked a lot more bland. Can not even copy past me all that good, a shame that really slowed me down since the first time I tried to write something down it looked all bland and full of numbers. I like numbers and I have already done that but before I tried to give some explanation for what I was going through without writing a bunch of formulas. So with this in mind and getting back into this process with starting at the top of a second page which I liked how that turned out, probably was intentional looking and maybe it was. Rambling aside I figure I should start this by looking back at the original process that I managed to crank out and I should really make an idea of where I want to go and then start to get into it some more. With the first system I made I looked heavily into the VII Yerkes luminosity classes or white dwarfs that would really be classified as DC10 under well Wikipedia only names the authors, D for white dwarf, C since the temperature is below 12,000 K making for a continuous spectrum or no lines, and a 10 since 50,400 divided by 5,000 is close to that. Given the way that I set things up I looked more into VI or subdwarf stars, more particularly the hot ones and I found that the future of the system that I had made would turn these two stars into either an sdB or sdO. Figure with the mass at play unless a lot of it is somehow gained these two stars would become an sdB which would extend the stellar lifetime by quite a while since it would become a white dwarf again. Though when looking into the past of the stars I have I kept it pretty simple with a V, dwarf, or main sequence star that was either an A or an F type.

Reason I bring this up is to set a base of what I have to look through now to get suitable stars to host life and I want the biggest possible star that I can work with. I can pretty much rule out the O-type stars since even at their lowest mass and coolest an O9VI only has around 90 millions years to do its thing before it dies. Also I should mention that when looking up the tables for all these different stars it was kind of frustrating since everyone reports different numbers, while they are not completely different it was just kind of like, well what numbers should I be using here to make it more realistic. So if you are reading and you see some off numbers that is my excuse, totally not my fault deflection for the win. That star type that I mentioned has a mass of 6.7 M☉ and using a stellar lifetime calculator I need the mass to be more around well under 2 in order to even get close to a 2 billion year lifetime. For life to even develop I have already mentioned that I will need more like 3 billion which needs a star with a mass of 1.6 M☉. Crazy how just 0.4 M☉ of a star can reduce its life by a billion years. Going down the list the biggest star that I can work with would be an A5VI which is a subdwarf and I kind of did not want to work with a subdwarf since I have already spent time looking into them and I want to learn some new things while I go through this process. However an A-type star interests me so I will try to stick with it to be the sole star of this second solar system that I am now getting to. Though this is where I hit my problem because if I do not use a subdwarf the lowest mass A-type star that I have to work with is an A9V which has a mass of 1.7 M☉ which knocks the lifetime down to 2.5 billion years. Sheesh that was fast, half a billion years gone just by 0.1 M☉ and if I use an A9 I feel like I am just copping out an F0. I guess I am willing to push things just like I did with my first system so looking higher up the A8-6V all have a rounded mass of 1.8 M☉. That would give me 2.3 billion years which is pretty much a whole billion less than life on Earth had to work with, pretty extreme.

However, I do like it and rule of cool pardon just to see where things can go, so the star in this solar system will be an A6V and I already have the mass of 1.8 M☉ and the lifetime. An A6 has the temperature of 8,400 K and the V gives it 15.1 L☉ and 1.89 R☉ along with an absolute magnitude of 2. Sums things up pretty quickly, a whole lot faster than it took for me to get to all of that with a white dwarf with this stars stats listed being 1.8 M☉, 1.89 R☉, 8400 K, 15.1 L☉, and an absolute magnitude of 2. Not as exciting either looking at how past me went through with it and I still can not figure out how they managed to do that. Though I guess I can figure out how I want the solar system to be set up now and while I have not figured it out yet I do want two planets to be within the habitable zone that will both develop life that I can focus more on to flip the weight of the first process with this one. The bonus of picking a bigger star with more heat being given off is that I figure it will expand the habitable zone allowing me to get that extra planet in there without messing any balancing that needs to happen. Another thing to make things more crazy is that I want the two planets to have a 1:1 eccentric resonance, something that I found in an answer on the Worldbuilding stack exchange along with a link to what that was and I thought that would be something to try and work with since it is apparently very stable. This would allow the planets to aline with the star twice a year and when I find out the sizes it could possibly make for either a nice eclipse or something barely noticeable unless more powerful equipment is used. Though I guess that is getting a little ahead of myself since I do not even know the habitable range yet and using a calculator to find it I get a range from 3.3 to 5.8 AU. A quick look at the temperature calculator and at that far away 5 AU distance there pretty much needs all greenhouse gases which is not for the life as we know it here on Earth. Probably will have to sprinkle in a couple other solar bodies in order to explain why two planets have such a crazy orbit system going on, figure it could have started as one giant planet that once it got captured by the now host star it got hit by another big object causing it to break apart and go in all sorts of different directions while staying within the solar system. That will be the basics for this solar system going into things, though going back to the star itself looking at Wikipedia for this star type apparently they lack a convective zone and thus strong stellar winds which is a good thing for the planets. Remembering back that the atmosphere plays an important role in blocking harmful radiation and looking into it for future reference larger mass stars output more of that unwanted stuff. Also larger mass stars have stronger stellar winds to blow away that atmosphere so reading that they might not be extremely strong blowing away whatever the planet holds onto it nice. Another thing that I know I forgot to get to at the start of talking about the stars last time was their color and peak output which here the star will look white, just like last time, though here the peak output is not in the visible spectrum but in the ultraviolet. Well, what does that mean for plant life, well when it evolves going by the same reasoning I did before they are going to be white which I find to be awesome.

Suppose I should just leave it off there, can not push quality nor quantity trying to compete with what past me was able to pull. Have to start focusing on the stats of the planets next up, or hopefully figure out how to word what I have put here better and cover that some more.

[Ferret Civilization]

Okay was waiting for the wonder to strike back or something but instead the procrastinating just rewarded me with hay fever and followed up with a cold, got lovely fever like dreams out of it though. So now I feel like I got some of that wonder I was looking for back, where did past me leave present me, well I got that nice little A type star going. Realized that I actually cut the total time Earth had to do its thing with the sun by around two billion years and not just one, so things have to happen almost twice as fast here and not even be rewarded with billions of more years to do whatever it is the future has in store for us. I was thinking that maybe I should try to pick another star type, maybe just go with F but I do not want to chicken out of this challenge there must be some way to solve it or to just go with it. Thing is with stars you can not add mass later on since that just shortens the whole remaining life time the star has and trying to take away mass does not yield a lot unless there is a lot of mass which is not good for the stability of the solar system. Though maybe I could start with a smaller binary set of stars that merge together without exploding, or have a singular star get smacked by some rogue other singular star but that would also mess the system up. So we are going all in on this race against the clock, first up is the planets have to form along side the star in the gas cloud or whatever in space and then cool down which already cuts off about a couple million years and then a hundred more million years to get the early atmosphere and possible life and what not leaving me with a solid two billion years out of the two point three billion going by the shortest estimates of Earth.

Now I do have in mind that I want the two habitable planets in the habitable zone and all that I already went over. There are some other ways to get a 1:1 resonance than the one that I picked and that would involve using the lagrange points to have trojans but that is more for smaller bodies following or fleeing from something like Jupiter. The way I have it is that if you look at it from one side the two orbits would either form a plus or a circle with a cross line through some of it, for this to work both planets have to be similar in mass to not mess each other up in this situation which is something that I can do. Another thing to note is that these two planets would probably have nearly identical orbital elements except when it comes to inclination, with that there would pretty much be a 90° difference. So if one planet had a 0° inclination to the star the other planet would have to have a 90° inclination orbiting around the poles of the star which is pretty wild, something that did not form in our solar system from what I know, which is not that much. My understanding is that mass moving around the sun prefers to be pancaked in at a certain range and then that same reasoning can be applied to larger systems of bodies as well. So before I begin trying to make the planets in detail how can I get them into that orbital setup, forming naturally seems like I would be pushing things a lot more than I should be trying to. Another way would be to introduce that mass to mess the whole system up and fling some orbits around while at the same time increasing the mass of the star to where I want it. The problem with that from what I figure is that I am only really saving something like a hundred million years, which is not all that great so I will try to avoid that as well. Though maybe if I want the planets to have almost the same crust or, whatever it was the moon and Earth have in common from Theia smacking into Earth and that theory. Doing that would reduce the total time life has once again by another 300 million years giving me 1.7 billion to work with though it would be an interesting concept to try and work with. And since it was something that struck my fancy I will try and work with that idea. This lead me down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what the two planets would have to be in order to get things perfect and finding a 3D collision equation was hard enough let alone trying to figure in all the little pieces of debris that do not stick together like the 1 and 2D equations like to have. So in this case I might just have to say it was so rather than being able to work out some more nitty gritty details. In the end the outcome is I have the setup I want, along with a couple of other smaller solar bodies floating around.

Getting to the main planets themselves I do what them to be rather Earth like, but instead of going for a small I will do the opposite and say that whatever they were before they are now both big. Suppose I will call this first one here planet A since I already did cardinal numbering and I still have not really named anything yet. Starting off like past me did last time things begin with picking out the most independent mass and radius, let me say something like 3 M⊕ and 1.4 R⊕, oh yeah I found the Earth symbol which I really should have used last time. Charting that and it gets me a terrestrial world with silicate crust and an iron core which is perfect for me. Going over the maths and I find the density of this world would be around 6.02 g/cm^3 which is apparently only 1.1 the density of Earth, figured it would have been slightly more, huh. Finding gravity up next and that turns out to be 15 m/s^2 which is 1.54 the gravity of Earth. Not a nice place but more liveable in a human sense so far. Escape velocity is 16 km/s, 1.47 of Earths, so when it comes to holding onto the actual light elements this planet would be a lot more capable than Earth is but not so much as a mini gas giant, this might actually help me later on from all the thinking that I have been doing when not writing. Though I really have to look at where in the habitable zone I want to place this, and looking at other calculators they seem to push the zone I have a lot closer to the star which I guess makes more sense with the temperature calculator that I am using. I think I will say that the planets will be 3 AU away from the star at their closest and then 3.1 AU at their furthest, giving the planets a 0.1 AU range to go by each other and they would be the furthest apart during their spring or fall times, making a triangle both planets are 3.05 AU away from the star that would place the two planets 4.31 AU away from each other. Oh yeah and the average surface temperature is 284 to 288 K which is just like Earth at the hottest time of the year.

Let me look closer at the atmospheric makeup that I want this planet to have, I will go with the opposite extreme that I did with my last habitable world in that other solar system. So instead of halving it I will say that it is doubled here, giving this planet an atmospheric pressure of 2 atm or 29.39 psi. Higher gravity and, well more atmosphere, I will say that the atmosphere can be more like Earth with a Nitrogen-Oxygen dominated thing going on. Though this planet is capable of retaining Helium as well so that can actually make up a significant small percent piece of the pie. I will go with something like 69% Nitrogen, 25% Oxygen, 5% Helium, 0.9% Argon, and the remaining being a lot of other gases and such. Will do what past me did here as well and try to find some other useless information like how the molecular weight of dry air here is 0.02792 kg/mol compared to Earth’s 0.02896 kg/mol and the boiling point of water would be 120 C°.

With that out of the way I will go over planet B here since both A and B will have rather the same orbital elements that I can talk about together instead of repeating it twice. I will have to go with making another big planet to keep things balanced as I mentioned though it can be a little different if I play with the numbers. This time let me say 3.2 M⊕ and 1.5 R⊕, what happens here on the chart is that I start slipping more into the water worlds though I still have a lot of the silicates and for whatever reason and even smaller iron core, though now I have a noticeable amount of water making up the crust as well which would be something akin to Ganymede. Something like 10% of the crust composition is water here going by just those two factors I stated, not so great for making land masses since with that since everything is under a lot of water. Though it is just another challenge to overcome, perhaps there is more porous silicates in place here that allow for the two to mix more or maybe there are two bands of silicates with a very large body of water separating them instead of just saying that the whole surface is covered in water. Something to get to later along with a lot of other things now, eh something to get excited about future me. Getting on with the other stats that make up a planet the density here would only be 0.95 that of Earth, this is because despite more mass the increase in radius affects the density a lot more so this place has its average density being 5.229 g/cm^3. The gravity is still up there being 1.43 that of Earth which is still lower than my other high mass planet here, with the official number being 13.94 m/s^2 and the escape velocity is not much different ratio wise being 1.47 that of Earth thus being 16 km/s. Actually that escape velocity is the same as my other planet, interesting, well then it can hold onto the same kind of atmospheric stuff as well then. With that out of the way I already did the temperature since both planets orbit the same distance thus this is kind of wrapped up.

When it comes to the atmosphere itself here suppose I should make it a little like the other planet as well just for all the curiosities to be in play, so let me say that this planet also has an atmosphere pressure around 2 atm or 29.39 psi. More specifically for the composition here I will say something like 71% Nitrogen, 23% Oxygen, 5% Helium, and the 1% remaining being a slightly more diverse group of gases. That would give a molecular weight of the air being around 0.02784 kg/mol which is slightly less than the other planet but not by much. Suppose with that I should leave things here, starting to take way too long of a time period to write out simple things and I leave myself an opening to discuss those orbital elements next time, at this rate that will be next week which sucks.

[Ferret Civilization]

Getting into that orbitable stuff both planets should pretty much be the same, like how I know that the apogee will be 3.1 AU and the perigee will be 3 AU which means the semi major axis is 3.05 AU and the minor is 3.04959 because damn it all if it could just be a perfect circle. With that information I can figure out that the eccentricity of these two planets are 0.0164, Earth has one at 0.0167 which I was surprised to find out. Also can find out the orbital velocity of these planets which have an average speed of 22.88 km/s which makes for a year length being pretty much four Earth years, each season is practically a year, yikes. Though that reminds me I should be picking some independent things like axial tilt and figuring out how long a day would be on both planets since now I know their year and season lengths that did not matter much in my last system but matter here. Though for this moment I will stick with the solar system and find out those angular diameters to see if something cool happens or if everything falls flat here. With both the planets at 3.05 AU away the star here would have a diameter in the sky of 0.157°, which is way smaller than what our sun appears to us by like a lot, even Mercury is sometimes bigger. Actually I can find the apparent magnitude here which would be -27.454, more, less, different at least from our sun. Though getting back to finding some of them angular diameters let me say with planet B further and planet A in front of it, that gives me 0.157°, oh damn oh damn that is the same setup for the sun and the moon. Planet B there gets a planet A eclipsing the sun perfectly every 4 Earth years. In the reverse, and I get the same thing rounded to the three figures, the two planets get to eclipse each other in 2 Earth years. I managed to get something that I had only minor hopes for, hurray for me.

Moving back to each planet for a moment and keeping in mind just how extreme the seasons will get I would want to keep my axial tilt pretty low, however I already have gone over a planet that does not have any seasons so picking 0° would be pretty boring. Though doing even something like 20° would place a lot of area under the effects of the midnight sun and polar night for a lot longer than just 6 months at the poles, actually would any tilt would place the poles under those extreme solar cycles for 2 years. Well let me try something like a 13° axial tilt, that would have the tropics extend 13° N and S of the equator for a total tropical area of 26°. But like my last system showed sometimes the biomes can extend way outside their little marked areas. The polar circle would start at 77° N and S, so not as much relative area will have to deal with long periods of daylight and darkness but some will no matter what. So I got my year long seasons, but how fast do I want this planet to end up spinning, suppose I should go with something fast. I will say something like four times the speed of the Earth’s rotational period, because using Artifexian here that should give me 7 circulation cells instead of the 3 Earth has in each hemisphere. Keeping in mind the higher gravity and now the more erosive power the wind will have the higher up one goes this planet would end up being somewhat smoother overall in comparison to Earth from what I have gathered on this subject. 6 hour day night cycles with a year length of 4 Earth years, be quite the interesting calendar to have to be putting together. Thinking about the circulation that reminds me of the fun I had with my insane tides in my other system, though here after calculating them, they are not all that exciting reaching a 2 cm rise only when the other planet and the star align once a year and for the rest of that during the circadian cycle it will be even lower than that. What else did I miss that I can cover, well I know that the average temperature is 286 K, which is pretty much the Earth so these two planets will end up having the same temperature range as it is on Earth. Nothing exciting there, suppose I can go into how I want the geography on this planet to be like. In my last system I had the planet be a 1 tectonic plate kind of world with the tides being the thing that made it all active but here I can have a more normal system in place with many plates interacting to make the geographical features that are present. Here though I want all the land plates to currently be in their merging phase when complex life comes along, kind of replicating Earth’s Pangaea. This would mean that the interior of the continent gets more wild temperature swings and with more land the more wild the swing would be, kind of feeling like I would want it to be wild. Let me say that 45% of this world is land while the other 55% is covered in water. The interior would be pretty wild, during summer things would be boiling away and during winter things would probably be freezing to the ground, I like that setup.

Now planet B here has 10% of its crust makeup being water so things will be a lot different when we get there. But at the moment let me start over here and start with an axial tilt, which is going to be hard to figure out what reference point to use. Circling around the poles of the star this planet would need an axial tilt of 90° in order to not have seasons with all the planet getting equal parts day and night every day of the year. If that is my reference point I will say this planet has an axial tilt of 84°, for marking the lines from the equator that would be a 6° tilt. 12° total for the tropics with the poles starting at 84° N and S. So here not as much of the planet would experience the midnight sun and polar day as on its sibling planet. I will say that this planet has a slower rotational period, only be twice as fast as Earth, which still ends up giving it the normal 3 cells per hemisphere. However the day length is 12 hours instead of 24 here. Tides would be just like how they are on the other planet, not really affected by anything. Though when it comes to getting to that geography if the silicates were heavier than the water and when cooling down it all sunk this planet would have a 100% ocean surface. While that is great, cool, and all that jazz I want there to be some land, so how do I go about making that so without having to redo the entire planet. That is where I toyed with the idea that maybe that the silicates are more of the porous kinds here, allowing for some land to be above the water though being more logged with well, water. It would make for an interesting system with things like the water cycle and how life would evolve with heavy concentrations all over the place. I will try and work with that, along with having more solid silicates makes for a layer the water erodes through to make for underwater rivers and such. So here the planet would be like 90% water covered and 10% almost water covered land, the temperature would be a lot more moderated here in comparison of what I just worked on in that last paragraph.

Before I run out of things to think of for the here and now, I could talk about how harsh the UV radiation would be on these planets. With the white dwarf there was not that much extra UV radiation from the star itself but with half the atmosphere scientists found out there would be 10 times the radiation blasting the planet. These planets do not have that problem having twice as thick of an atmosphere instead to absorb all that radiation, but with a bigger star comes more radiation. With this A-type star, the UV output would pretty much be like 12 times more from what I could gather. Assuming that the twice as thick atmosphere would provide 10 times the protection being the reverse of what I had found before and things should not be all that bad. 1.2 times the amount of radiation that Earth receives here on these planets would not end all life before it could begin. With that out of the way perhaps now I can begin to look at trying to make more life forms because I was really not enough of a failure at that last time, maybe I will find some more things to stall my future self in the meantime though.

[Ferret Civilization]

Hey there past me, how has it been going, good I hope. Suppose I should pick things up and see just how much surface area is land and water on this planet A that I have going. Getting the total surface area I find that I have 999,636,699 km^2, that is 549,800,184 km^2 of water and 449,836,514 km^2 of land. Dang despite having less of a land water ratio compared to Earth, this planet still has nearly 200 million km^2 of water covering the surface. All that just by increasing the radius to 1.4 R⊕, that probably tells me the oceans would not be as concentrated as I thought they would be unless somehow the land really manages to dump stuff in it. Though moving onto the start of early life, I have to make this work in pretty much half the time it took for life to get to this point where we are at and do it twice. Those odds are probably so astronomical it would take a telescope to find it. I will not go too crazy with trying to get that speculative biology, play it safe and have it been how Earth did life with Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Phosphorus. Should do the other planet B first before going into the basic stuff that was learned in school with the only derivation being the speed at which things happened. Anyways with a 1.5 R⊕ the surface area of this planet would end up being 1,147,524,974 km^2, and with 90% of that being water that gives me 1,032,772,476 km^2 of ocean. You know with nearly the top 10% of the sphere that this planet is that is a lot of volume, that is 990,572,628,525 km^3 of water. Earth has a water volume of 1,385,920,456 km^3, planet B here has like 714 times more water than Earth which is pretty insane to think about. The deepest part of the ocean on planet B here would be around 955 km down, on Earth the deepest part is around 11 km just for reference, there would be a lot of pitch black water here.

Given that I have like optimistically 2 billion years to work with here the early life would have to get chugging along really quick and stumble into that more advanced stuff by yesterday. By the time sapient life comes along they will probably only have a few million years at best before the star that is giving them life runs out of fuel to keep living itself and goes through the phase of becoming a red giant. So if I cut everything how it happened on Earth in half the oxidation event would have to occur within the first billion years on both planets and then life would have to start taking advantage of that reactive element as soon as it is available. In the next billion years life would have to undergo a series of rapid developments to get to multicellular life and then go through a series of Cambrian explosion like events diversifying life to kick things off. When dealing with planet A life is probably going to shift faster to getting onto land than how things would be going on planet B. Life on planet A would also have to adapt once on land to the greater temperature swings that happen in the interior of the single landmass that I have going on. Tried to figure out what the temperatures would be like in the center of this landmass where things would most likely be the worst but that is rather hard to find. Also have to keep in mind that with the 6 hour days things would probably end up being more moderate over land than I had originally thought with there being 3 hours of things heating up and then 3 hours of things cooling off with a lot more trade winds blowing around as well. Even with that in mind though the seasons would still be extreme since that is a year of winter and a year of summer placing the sun either away or more overhead to directly heat things up. The thicker atmosphere would also retain a lot of heat, something that life would have to deal with on top of the boon the extra Oxygen provides. The extra gravity would also eventually have to play a role in how more advanced life turns out due to evolutionary pressures to thrive.

Moving back onto the early life, when things start to come into existence to set the stage for abiogenesis first thing I note is that with water present here and how I discussed that with my other system life here would have Alpha-peptides that we all know and love here on Earth. Suppose if I wanted to be all like, aliens ooo, I could change the chirality at least since I believe that that is still a random outcome but I will leave it be the same way that it is on Earth for both the planets. So things are pretty much the way that things went on Earth for those single cell organisms that started everything off. Nothing too exciting to deal with, does not end up giving me a lot to discuss. Guess that does not leave me with a lot so this will be cut short until I can find the time to go full headon into discussing making the biosphere which I suck at.

[Ferret Civilization]

Another thing I realized about planet B there is that going around 955 km down would really increase the pressure by a lot. So looking that up I found that the bottom of the ocean would be covered in a thick layer of ice seven and then ice six before finally being able to be a dense liquid. Pretty sure that no matter how hard life tries there will be no way of thriving in a place with pressures in the GPa, so everything on the above freezing ice floor would be just dead matter from all the live floating way above the death pressures below. Though if the temperatures increased by a lot the ice formed here would turn back into a liquid, but the heat would only be able to come from the more mantle core of the planet through underwater volcanoes which is temporary or hydrothermal vents which would make a somewhat more permanent bubble of really high pressure water. Not that life would be able to really do anything with that I suppose, just nice to know that is something that is there. Though life would have to be adapted to living in a high pressure environment than how things are on Earth, something that should not be that much of a problem since it is only double and not something crazy insane like triple or quadruple where the Nitrogen in the atmosphere would start to have negative effects on more advanced life. With the standard elements in use I figure life would start off the same way that it did on Earth making the same kind of compounds and what not. Early single cell life would thrive off of an anaerobic environment until something comes along to start producing Oxygen, killing a lot of life and then providing life with something even better to use.

For the most part things are pretty much just a little bit different Earth, though thinking about all that extra Oxygen that is around much like in my other system would hemoglobin be the most effective thing to use here. Going back to the Worldbuilding stack exchange to find the answer to this and I find that an Iridium based blood with a really fancy name of Chloro-carbonyl-bis(triphenylphosphine)-iridium or as Wikipedia calls it Vaska's complex would be better in the higher Oxygen levels not suffering from the toxicity that hemoglobin does at this level. Something that I guess I will use then with all of its advantages and disadvantages, a neutral thing is that the blood of this species would be yellow and orange. The chemical compound is damaged by light which really is not a great thing to be dealing with, life would have to find a way to deal with either protecting the blood or just making a lot of it and continually flushing the used up stuff away. Though bleeding or just exposed to light in general the colors change to green and then blue/black which I found rather fascinating. The craziest thing that is like according to the one source on this kind of blood since all the research papers sourced from what I have found to be all pay walled is that this compound can also reversibly bind Hydrogen as well. Suppose that maybe there is a more robust Hydrogen cycle going on these planets and that is something that life could possibly take advantage of on top of Oxygen or side by side with it. Kind of lead me down a rabbit hole of looking up the reactions needed for breathing Hydrogen and what the outcome would be, the closest of which was taking Hydrogen along with CO2 and making methane with water. Imagine complex life above bacteria exhaling something like methane in an Oxygen rich environment, hold a match wherever to blow everyone up. Though I suppose in this kind of place fires would not be all that hard to start and get out of control, wildfires would be common and all of that. Kind of sucks that water would be harder to boil even with the more happy to burn fires.

There also is the higher gravity to consider, it is not much but I would want to play with that, maybe have one of the worlds have six limbed creatures instead of four. The other would have four, boxed myself in here which is why I am going with it no second thoughts but writing it down to be thorough. Unlike in my other system with the higher pressure, Oxygen, and such all different kinds of lifeforms could come to be. Insect like creatures would be able to grow really large and flying creatures would have to deal with the increased drag and gravity but otherwise be able to function much like how they do on Earth. Just suppose on planet A the more complex life that came to be would have six limbs instead of four. Life on planet B would be more heavily focused on building up a really diverse ocean biosphere with not all that much going on with the land side of things. Going back to the whole being able to use two different kinds of gas for different reactions to get energy, I suppose that it would be kind of impossible for the O2 - CO2 and H2 - CH4 lifeforms to grow side by side but it is still possible to handwave things. Hand waving and going even more extreme into the impossible suppose complex animal life is able to take both O2 and H2 in, react it against sugars and produce the Carbon addition waste products. Plant life would then have CO2 which is what we have in this reality and then things leave reality when plants have methane to use and make Hydrogen as a waste product instead of Oxygen. Would be quite an interesting world, all of this because I found that apparently Iridium based blood can bind both Oxygen and Hydrogen. Another thing that is kind of unrelated to all of that is with the increased Oxygen in the atmosphere and the increased pressure on top of that the water in the ocean and Oxygen in the air would start to form H2O2, something that is not all that great for life which means that life here would most likely have to be more resistant to that as well on top of all the other crazy stuff.

All of this life getting to an advanced stage, just to say again, has to happen within such a short timeframe as well, so just like last time there would be no room for something to come in and cause an extinction forcing life to start over. Let me just muse that that is possible, on top of having the stuff that I explained above and I have the base to the life that I will be working with. Something that I realized I have to consider is how would sleep work, the day night cycle is way faster than it is on Earth. On planet A there is 3 hours of day and 3 of night, could say that creatures sleep around 3 hours to stay awake 3 but it seems like once things got to that point it would be more of a disadvantage than something that helps. Going for longer periods of time would mean that creatures would have to be able to thrive in both the daylight and night time darkness, making being nocturnal or diurnal moot thus animals would sleep whenever and be awake whenever. The same situation would happen on planet B but just be less extreme, but still extreme I guess compared to how things are on Earth. Kind of lost that wonder spark again it seems, can not think of any other general information that paints a good picture, will get onto the main species in the next post.

[Ferret Civilization]

It is like trying to turn over a car that just does not want to go future me. Oh well, just got to keep pushing through it eh, for past me. So let me just jump into things, starting off with the main species of planet A over there which is for the most part made up of hexapods instead of the tetrapods that make up the biosphere of Earth. Gives a lot more room to be creative, at least it should if I had it any of it left. Think Avatar also had the same kind of setup for all the species shown in it except the sapient ones for reasons. You know what that is a pretty good lazy way to describe what I would be going for more complex species wise, just imagine them six legged creatures from Avatar even though the only thing they really should have in common in the six limbs. Though for this I will be looking more at mythology to inspire me here, with the main sapient species here being largely based off of centaurs. Probably a good thing to start with the musculoskeletal system right off the bat to get that base down. Centaur does describe most of it pretty well, a humanoid form on top of a quadrupedal form. Though to mix things up and fall further into that furry fandom I would have it be an anthropomorphic dog for the top half on top of a large more normal dog body. Pretty much say that imagine a large six legged dog that over time started using the front two limbs more as arms and standing in a more upright position. For a better picture since I am going with a vague large, imagine, or do not I would not blame you, an anthro newfoundland dog the size of a normal human but placed on the lower half of a normal newfoundland dog the size of the largest shire horse. With that out of the way I am of the opinion that the centaur would only have one set of organs, there are some really good artists who have the same opinion but even better could depict it as well. So in the top half would be the brain, sensory, lungs, and heart with the lower half having the rest as a basic idea. There would only be one rib cage as well just to make more clear and the spine would not bend at no crazy 90° at that fused part of the two body types. For better dimensions I would say that the horizontal part of the back would stand 6 to 7 feet above the ground with the vertical part of the body extending up another around 3 feet, making the front part of this creature standing around 9 to 10 feet. The back part of the body would also have to extend around 8 to 9 feet back which would end in a tail and make for a really long spine. This would make for a lot of weight, about 3,500 to 4,000 pounds as an average. Other things to consider is that the arms would be slightly longer in proportion to the humanoid part of the body, and to put it out here as well, I would say that this creature would have four digits with the thumb or dew claw on the hands and feet. Should give the basic idea of all the problems that will be coming up and how to imagine what this thing would look like no, so let me get to at least trying to address some of the problems going down that same Wikipedia list that I went down last time.

Jumping right into that circulatory system, well first thought right off the bat is that in order to get all that blood around there would be a high blood pressure. That is on top of the increased atmospheric pressure pressing down against the body at 1520 hg mm. A human 120/80 hg mm would be no good here, the creature here would pass out for sure at even the slightest exertion. A horse has lower blood pressure so that is probably not a good place to be looking, so let me try to find an extreme and that comes in the form of the giraffe which has mastered getting blood up to high heights. That would place the blood pressure around 280/180 mm hg, fitting that this is double whereas last time I took around half for that other species that I made. The heart would also be pretty cardiomegaly in the humanoid half in order to get all that blood flowing at that pressure but that should be fine, heart is only really sharing room with the lungs which have more leeway to push downwards. Also have to keep looking at the giraffe over the horse for solutions to keep the blood from pooling in the legs, and it is pretty simple, just get stronger muscles it seems to keep that blood moving. Guess that works here, better than trying to go with the solution to horses took. If going by the human lymphatic system then all that extra oxygen in the atmosphere would do wonders in helping the body fight off infections. However things in nature would not work that way, bacteria and viruses, all that lovely stuff would be in that arms race to be able to do what they have to do. Least diseases have a biological barrier cause this place would have some scary resilient stuff floating around. Other than that most of the basic ideas of what organ systems do would fit in here, with the bones having bone marrow to produce the iridium based blood and all that other stuff that happens within the circulatory system. Suppose that means I kind of jumped ahead to the immune system there, with the extra oxygen in theory this system would be able to better fight off infections but with how nature works I figure it would just be comparably average to what we have to deal with on Earth. Guess if I am going to go out of order without much to talk about I can add the respiratory system and tack it on here to this paragraph as well. Now if this creature seemingly has a hard time getting all that blood around it will probably have an even harder time trying to get all the oxygen and hydrogen in for the body to stay functional and alive. The first problem that I got from the one free source on iridium based blood is that it does not bind as well as hemoglobin which means this creature would also need large and convoluted lungs to better get that fuel waste exchange going on. Lung full of O2, CO2, H2, and CH4, how very explosive. Oh thinking about the blood the internal temperature of this species would be 25 C° instead of the 37 C° that humans have, though it is warmer than the 15 C° that I used for the first species that I made. Now back to where I was, the lungs would pretty much take up all the space in the humanoid part of this species and I imagine that would require the bronchus to have a different setup. Probably would have to say that after it splits like how it does in humans that it would go further down to split a second time and end there. And if it was not obvious with the anthro dog thing, the upper part of the respiratory tract is dominated by the snout. There would have to be a proportionally larger nasal cavity in order to get all the air necessary in and out of the body I would think. Other than that everything serves the same function, nothing too crazy. Actually thought about this kind of late but since in my last species I based off of ferrets had no blood types and this species for the most part is looking like a cross between dogs and horses I will say, either 7 or 12, well some of them can mix so I will go with the dog like 12 but a lot of them can mix.

Going back to going down the list and I see the nervous system, and the first thing I have read about this in this kind of species is that more of the brain would be devoted to muscle controlling the six limbs and all those extra nerves that go with that. I do not think that would be much of a problem though at the end of the day myself, but I would probably be proven wrong so what do I know. With the larger nose I would feel safe to say that this species would probably have a really good sense of smell even outside their native environment since they would be more used to smells coming and going fast in the thick air. That thick air would also put pressure to be able to hear better and to rely on that more than vision. Actually thinking about the vision it might be interesting to say that with more of the brain focused on nerves that vision could be the kind of like dump stat and make them color blind. With plants being white it could kind of make sense, black and white vision with a slight more focus on depth perception to see threats or food. Though dang thinking of that spinal cord, biggest weak spot, going to leave it like that though, everything should have a weak spot relatively to other things in nature. Speaking of food I guess without much else to mention here at the moment I could skip down to start talking about the wildly different digestive system. That is kind of the more popular question when it comes to centaurs, how do they get enough food to live. Let me take the basic it takes 10 calories per pound just for maintenance, that is like 40,000 calories needed every 24 hours. Suppose going based off of Earth biology a pound of meat from the animals that we use in agriculture have just going to say 1,000 calories. That means this creature would have to eat 40 pounds of meat every 24 hours. Looking around suppose if the polar bear can do it, it is possible here, though here this species in making would have to be able to do it all the time without resting periods. Though I can add in fruits, seeds, and other plant material as well, so the pressure to have a lot of prey species is somewhat mitigated I would hope. With the snout in mind when I get to language I will have the same restrictions that I mentioned when I first got into that whole rabbit hole, no fine lip control and all of that. The tongue would also be more different, more like a dog’s tongue that is a little large for its mouth that will play some small roles later on when it comes to spoken communication. Other than that the pie hole does the same function as we would expect, and the quadrupedal form would allow for a lot more space when it comes to the stomach, intestines, liver, and all of that other stuff that will be mentioned later. Though the digestive system would have to take more priority to burn through all the needed calories to keep the body alive. Things would for the most part seem pretty normal for the rest of the processes as well.

Probably would have made more sense to discuss the integumentary system before getting to the interior organs, now this is going to look all out of place. Oh well, the skin, I would have said that the skin here would be able to be much lighter and varied in shades since the ultraviolet radiation is not a killer here. But no the blood that I picked just has to be photosensitive and breaks down in light in general. Thinking about it though I will say that the species on this planet and that includes this one would just have a thick layer of white fur to block out the light. That is the alternative that I will go with, makes sense to me to have white fur in an environment filled with white that is not even snow and with probably most creatures being color blind. Would be a disadvantage in the hotter climates but I am sure that there would be solutions to manage that issue just like the stuff that we came up with here on Earth. Typing this from a desert I have that kind of more shoved in my face than most others. Continuing with this system and I reach the second probably most searched question when it comes to centaurs because deep down we are all just a little kid. Where would the breast be for feeding children, I would say that it would be neither on the human or horse part but on the lower front half of the creature. Though it would not have the fanservice that many most likely hope for, but that is just the way I would imagine it. Still would fall to the female to be the one to take care of that role, which means I just put some sexual dimorphism into this species. Continuing with that line of thinking I suppose the females would be slightly smaller than the males and maybe more lean whereas the males have more muscle. Mind as well just throw it away here in this paragraph, when it comes to the reproductive system there are two sexes and they have the birds and the bees. As far as things need to be thought into there. Suppose that it would take an Earth year or season on this planet for the offspring to be born, and that they would probably only have one kid most the time and twins if they are lucky. The spine would probably have to take some time to harden up to make a certain hard part of the process a little easier. Though how long would this species end up living, using the same billion heartbeats in a lifetime I think I will look at the elephant for this one. The elephant has an average heart rate of 30 beats per minute to live 70 years. That is something that I will copy here, meaning that in the terms of this solar system the average creature here would see 17.5 years or full seasonal cycles. Least they would be able to carry the knowledge of how to get through possible brutal winters or summers on to future generations instead of it being Game of Thrones where most people forgot about winter. I think that is how that plot line went with the Black Watch not getting that many recruits and everything falling into disrepair.

What do I have left here, the urinary and endocrine system, hmm. Well I do not have much to add there, besides the change in placement all would be rather normal here. I do not think I have much to add either at the moment as I got all my thoughts that I have right now down. Managed to actually pick things back up again which makes me happy for the time being. Probably get really drab as I will go through this exact same writing process again to discuss the main species on planet B. Hope anyone still reading has been having as much fun as I have been on this ride, and would still love to hear from anyone else about anything worldbuilding.

[Ferret Civilization]

Repetition time, though I did figure I could add more to the directly above species. Not that it matters much but I skipped over talking about the eyes in more space wasting detail, just the rather poor vision they have. Thinking about how this species would combat photosensitive issues by reflecting a lot of it away with white fur how would the eyes accomplish that. Using melanin and the other factors that dominate eye color in humans brown eyes might not be that great of an idea since that absorbs light. Trying to go for more of a reflect the light strategy and even blue eyes barely cut it as that puts to much light in than what would be comfortable. Though I would have this problem with any eye color if going for the eye that is mammal like, suppose I could go with adding something into the eyes that is kind of like the collagen in the stroma. Going with that would mean for more grey eyes to be dominate which while it does not solve this problem at all works well to symbolize the color blindness this species has. I will go wit that actually and just handwave the actual problem away for now, gray eyed and white furred is cool enough to me. Another thing that I thought about is with the quadrupedal form how fast would this species be able to run on average, it would not be human like or racehorse like. Though I imagine that the biology would be so bulky that this species would only be able to run like an elephant or other really large creatures, something tells be this species would be more akin to large cats when it comes to running. So something like 30 to 40 mph at the fastest would do. Other than that, for today I am not too sure what as to add so I will leave things there and jump into making a third species, woo.

I was thinking more about how the top 10% of this planet B is covered in water and would having land piled all that distance up to the surface really make sense. And my answer to that was no, so where does the 10% of the landmass come from then if not the silicate part of the planet. Figure things could be slightly more fantastical with the land masses being made out of clumped together biomass that is both dead and alive. There would still be things making up the islands that are not and have never been alive like a couple of stray rocks and dust but for the overwhelming majority it is biomass. They would be free floating but I imagine some plants would work their way downward to get resources as well as going upward into the open air to get other resources. Over time the clumps would grow larger as new plants grow over the dead ones until large islands form providing life some sort of land to take advantage of. Figure the plants would have to be free floating anyways since it is not exactly feasible to be attached to the ocean floor that compresses water so much that it turns to ice without freezing. With enough time some of these clumps could get large enough that plants start to fully take advantage of growing roots into the old dead biomass and just using photosynthesis, thinking that they would look like trees and other stuff with hard exteriors that do not need to work submerged in water. Working to make it look like land in a pseudo sort of way, digging into the ground would reveal that there are no rocks or anything of was never alive nature. So with this in mind, pretty much all animals are going to be either aquatic or semi aquatic. Seemed like a good opportunity to make a more reptilian creature but I suppose I just have a really strong bias to making things more mammalian like. With all the water life does have the ability to grow to larger sizes just like how we see on Earth with whales, and looking at whales I realized that there is almost endless room for things like krill and zooplankton to just really thrive and explode in population to make up the base of the food chain.

So this is kind of my chance to make an even larger creature which is just crazy to me but it gives me a lot of new avenues to look into stuff. To get a basic picture of what I want to go for here it is time to imagine a bunch more Earth like animals mashed together eh, take something like the megalania which is not a mammal but cover it in fur and make it a mammal. Figure the mammal part being crossed over would be something like the hog nosed skunk. However that probably will not go much beyond just fur coloration and some defense mechanisms, will have to look at more aquatic mammals to get a real sense of what this species would take from or not. For the most part though I will have this be a quadrupedal species to yet again have something different from the previous two now that I have. Another thing I suppose I should add while getting into that musculoskeletal systems is that to really get a large creature double the size of that megalania. I am doubling the larger proportions listed on Wikipedia as well, so this creature would be about a little over 2 meters tall but a more crazy 14 meters long even though something like half of it would be the tail. Doing this would invoke that square cube law, so taking that estimated weight of 4,300 pounds I would have this species weighing around 34,400 pounds which is larger than the living land animals on Earth, though weighs less than some of the dinosaurs did. Going to need a lot of calories to keep that body going, yikes. Though I will come to that later, when it comes to the muscles and the skeleton there would be a lot of focus biology wise to keep the creature standing out of the water, but for the most part with the creature hunting in the water hopefully that would help with fine control in swimming. The tail would also have to be used for propulsion and control. Suppose this creature would also have to have large digging claws to tear away at all the plant matter that makes up the land to hunt as well as make a home for itself, was thinking that since this species would being a meat eater have to have more hunter like claws but some animals get away with it so I feel safe using it as well. I will say that this creature would have the same five digits at the end of the limbs just like in the last species. Other than that the body would be that of a typical quadruped I suppose, not going to be a lot to add for a lot of these systems thinking about it at the moment.

Since I skipped order last time for the most part I will get the integumentary system out of the way so I can work more outside in without having this be out of place even more. Starting off with fur, with the same problems that hinder life on planet A I figure this species would also have to have dense fur. The dense fur here would play another role in helping the creature keep insulated when doing stuff in the water or underwater. Though instead of saying all white I would say that the top half and tail would be white with the underside being black just like the skunk that I named is. This would give an advantage when working in the dark places underwater, probably within the crevesses made inbetween plants under the biomass islands since the plants will still be white here. Thus having light and dark fur would probably be more beneficial when having to hunt stuff that can swim away if not relying on plankton and other rather defenseless animals that go for outbreeding the predators. Adding this in late but I realized that the anal glands go here which would work just like how they would in a skunk, being used for defense when out in the dry air since the creature does not hav great senses there which I cover coming up. Think that about covers that system, and thinking about the exterior skin and muscles this might be a better segway into the nervous system. The brain and the nerves would all be rather normal, but when it comes to the senses part things have to be adapted for both use in dry air and underwater. When dealing with the underwater part of life this creature would have valvular nostrils and be able to close its ear holes as well. Here being able to hear and smell would be less important and most the efforts evolution would give would most likely go into making for a strong vision. With that advantage this creature would hopefully be able to see just as good in the dark underwater environment and the relatively bright dry air surface. Though while on the surface this creature would not be able to really smell or hear all that greatly, not to the point where it is nonexistent just relative to other animals it would be on the lacking side of things. Not skipping the eyes this time, with the two extreme environments this organ would have to work in I imagine that the adaptation of being able to dilate the pupils kind of like what a cat does would be really beneficial here. For this species I would also say that the iris would not be a clearly defined thing, being nearly as dark as the iris itself to give this creature what would pretty much appear to be all black eyes.

With that out of the way suppose now I can talk about the circulatory system which there really is not much to add since the same thing that I applied to the planet A species is in effect here as well. Though maybe being in the water the blood pressure would not need to be so high here, but I think I will keep it rather high since there is a large body to consider. The other thing I guess I can consider here is how many blood types this species would have, and here I will say none for now and get back to why later on down the road. Without much to add I will also put the immune system here since I also have nothing to really add for that either that has not already been covered so sorry for that. Tacking on a third system here just to beef of this paragraph the respiratory system since that is something I can kind of talk about. Using the same iridium blood both Hydrogen and Oxygen are important, though life here would have to take more advantage of getting that out of the water than the air. That would mean that the water would have a somewhat high level of dissolved Hydrogen gas on top of the O2, CO2, and methane that works its way up to the surface to be used by the plants and turned back into either the H2 gas or back into the liquid water. Not that this species is going to be breathing underwater, just thought that would be something nice to add to think about the rest of the biosphere going on around the creatures. For this species they would have to be able to hold their breath for a long time, figure I would say something like a couple of hours and then they have to surface to catch another breath. Another thing that I have to consider here is that the larynx would not be as low as it is in humans, being more located in the intranasal area to block water rather than be lower in the glottis region which is going to play an even larger handicap on spoken language than having just a snout does. In fact that is something that I am really going to have to look into more in the future.

For now however I will split off and get into the digestive system, starting off by saying that this species would be omnivores just like the species I made on A were. This would help open up using the island itself as a food source and typing that out, dang, the whole island is a giant food source all by itself, not even including all the other species that would evolve to use the place as shelter or a breeding ground and stuff. Though this species weighs like let me just round up to 35,000 pounds, using the same logic as I did before that means I need 350,000 calories which is now like 350 pounds of meat. Suppose here that it would have to do what the blue whale does and eat a lot of things that would be analogous to krill while taking whatever pot shot it can at other larger creatures for food. There is also the plants to consider, being able to eat pounds of calorie dense seeds on top of the less calorie providing other plant matter would also be rather helpful in times when moving around would not be helpful. Being underwater I would imagine that this creature would not have salivary glands and just eat pretty much all of its food either whole or in large chunks, putting all the stress onto the stomach itself. Thinking about this and the respiratory tract I will actually say that these two systems are fully independent of each other, with this creature only breathing through its nose and anything that goes into the mouth will end up in the stomach no matter what. Hopefully this would enable the species to eat as much as possible underwater without having to risk choking and swallow all the water. Probably would not be as harmful here since the water would probably be pretty fresh with only organic matter mixing with it. Spoken language is going to be really interesting to deal with in this case since the vocal cords do not have any mouth to work with. Though with that out of the way, the only thing that I can think of is that this species would probably have a really large cecum much like a herbivore in order to deal with all that plant matter going through that the stomach would probably not be equipped to handle. Everything else is kind of normal and what would be expected. Will put the urinary system here to the end of this paragraph, the only thing that I have to say about it is that it would have to be more robust in order to flush out all the not so good dead organic matter that filters in with the water. That is on top of their normal filtering the blood and all that good stuff. Just like last time nothing much to add with the endocrine system so skipping that again.

This just leaves me with the reproductive system, which I should be able to actually go into this time without having to touch on the birds and the bees going out of bounds with the site rules. Already did the two sex species twice now and I have been doing this to test out and learn new things so I figure here what if this species did all this stuff asexually. Not something that mammals do but some other animals can do it, though they also have the ability to work with a mate to produce offspring. What if this species was just full on did everything by themselves, while not really seen on Earth this can be hand waved by saying that it is an alien species after all and weird things like this are possible but just did not happen. The major downside to having this kind of reproduction system in place is that there would not be a lot of genetic variation which with an internet search shows that that would not be a good thing when it comes to dealing with diseases. Though suppose there is some way to get that variation in there, something akin to cancer but somehow managing to adapt it to slightly shuffling the genetics of the offspring made by one creature. With the end being that this species has no sexes or gender, just being able to produce offspring whenever the time would be right which has the bonus of being able to keep the population going without needing others. Also why I think that there would be no blood types since each family line would kind of have their own unique one even if they could be shared through blood transfusions. Though they would have to produce more than one child in order to have the population grow and take care of them so they do not die early on and benefiting nothing. Pretty much means each individual has all the parts needed alone and that really should cover it up nicely. Would make for an interesting society, since there really would be no need for there to be a communal setting. Every individual would be fully capable of being solitary and thriving all by themselves.

And that covers going over this process twice in a row, luckily for future me this is what I really needed to do in order to get my brain running and looking forward to all the Google searches. Will see where things go from here and add anymore things that I have found I missed next time.

[Ferret Civilization]

And I forgot to even mention the lifespan of species B, yikes. Suppose when thinking about this, this is a large creature with a probably slower metabolism even though it needs a lot of calories to live. Figure I will say an even slower heartbeat around 20 beats a minute and with a little over a billion heartbeats in a lifetime standard that I am using this species would live on average to see 100 years, or 25 years in this solar system. Would say that that would safely allow for there to be three generations alive at around the same time period and if reproducing as soon as possible there could even be four generations alive at the same time. Going back a little bit to refocus on planet B at the moment I realized that this entire planet is effectively an ocean world since the islands, taking up all the space that they do, would really have no effect on the weather as they just go with the flow. The ocean also goes down deep enough that things like ridges or shelves would not be a thing to mess with the flow of the ocean currents. One thing that I found off of Reddit when it comes to dealing with this is that there is nothing to mess up the jet streams or circulation cells in general. This might allow the ice caps to extend down further than they should since the jet streams block off the warm air and the ocean currents might not be as an effective means of redistributing heat. So as the islands float around they would be affected entirely by the latitudes being more stratified and consistent in their weather and temperature. Going with this I guess I will get species B history and such out of the way here since I plan on it being less developed and thus a more open plate to work with through roleplaying, least that is the plan, doubt it will ever get far at this rate.

Getting to the basic building blocks I suppose, figure at some time the early form of this species would come into being on the floating islands and probably manage to spread around by leapfrogging to other islands that happen to be close by until they practically are all over the place. Over time this species would probably break apart into many different subgroups that specialize in whatever place they happen to end up in but that would end up taking until after the solar system is long dead and gone. Though there would probably be some notable differences if one looked hard enough in place to start becoming something unique. Suppose with the asexual reproduction and solitary nature that that might bring this species would be highly territorial thus once one family gets too big and broken apart into their own lineage lines they would have to split their lands. The only focus would be to take care of oneself and to take care of the direct generation that comes from the individual. Though I imagine that there would be some leeway in things with something like the dear enemy effect taking place amongst newly made neighbors that would most likely be as close as family as one can get in this kind of environment. There would probably be a whole set of ritualized aggression to go along with it to defend the territory from neighbors without actually having to bring physical harm to each other. Of course this territories would be marked by scent and could range from taking up a whole small island or just a chunk of a really large island. Burrows would be the main home of the species in the larger islands, and if going deep enough down they could be used as entrances and exits to the ocean itself. On smaller islands where digging a deep enough hole to house a creature of this size would go straight into the water the home would probably be more of a makeshift cave out of the vegetation.

I imagine over time things would go from just teaching their offspring how to survive to eventually learning how to make some rudimentary tools to past on. Kind of like the game One Hour One Life to give a better explanation, though it would never really get far given the environmental restraints of not having rocks or metal to make better tools or weapons. So over time as this species got more and more closer to widespread sapience they really would not be able to go very far with it technologically and that would be quite a limiting factor. Though I think that it would slowly open the doors for some of the species to start working together a little bit more than just being completely solitary, even though that would probably be the most prevalent issue holding everything back socially since I doubt there would be enough resources to sustain a really large group close together. At best, things start to cluster around the family and bands, and rather than having a territory per individual it would become a collective territory of individuals. Being so spread out there would not be a strong need for any kind of hierarchy or rules outside the strongest wins in a territorial dispute. Things would just go along and react to whatever issue presents itself for everything, pretty much saying that there really would be no government since the individuals govern themselves entirely. Hopefully that starts to paint a picture as things really do not advance past this stage.

Suppose that gives me enough to skip over to just go right into communication which for this species would be mostly nonverbal. Though I figured that they would be able to make some kind of sounds even if they were not on the IPA chart, and looking into it further, it turns out they could technically make some sounds on it, just differently than what a human would be used to. In order to have it be that way the nose would have to be more finely controllable and would probably lack a rhinarium, instead being two slits in the skin that do not protrude out like how the nose does in humans or other primates. Treating the nose as a mouth then the only thing that they would have to work with is lips and nothing else, only leaving the sounds that could be made that are on the IPA chart to be under the bi­labial and glottal places of articulation. I figure that they should be able to pull off the manners of articulation somewhat finely here. They would not be able to produce any of the vowels however since that requires more control over being able to block air beyond just needing lips from what I can gather, be safe to avoid the non-pulmonic sounds as well. That would leave me with just 16 sounds to work with if I was to make a spoken language for this species. Side note here, was thinking about what purpose the tongue had and if it would come to be here. Interestingly enough I can say no here and it would not really hamper anything at all, so the mouth where all the food goes down would pretty much just be an empty cavity with teeth. Actually thinking about how there is only one pipe for air to go down would that end up meaning that where the bilateral and glottal share a sound through manner of articulation that they would kind of end up sounding like a mix of the two. If that is the case then I really only have 12 unique sounds to work with and they would all be made up by the same place of articulation. That has me thinking of words that are made up of that kind of thing, which for English that would be words that only use p, b, and m. None that I know of and trying to force something like and I am not sure where to begin going through that. Suppose this creature uses all or some of the 12 sounds, each family line and cluster of territories would be completely different when it comes to this so any combination is possible, there would still be a strong need to focus on nonverbal aspects like body language and smells to really flesh out the language. Some groups or areas might fully go with nonverbal making no sounds at all as something else to consider.

Writing is something that could develop still, though it would not be able to correlate to a grapheme being a phoneme or any other symbol in a lot of cases. If that was able to arise it would be extremely isolated only having a localized meaning that would really not be that much better off than the asemic writing that everywhere else would probably take on. Communication on the written front would mostly have to be through clawing tree bark to either make a word or a picture, mostly just ideas from what I am thinking. With many meanings being able to be inferred from whatever is scratched into the bark though it would probably have a clearer meaning to those generations that the individual teaches what it means to oneself. Pretty much be stuck with ideograms and pictograms to relay information beyond direct communication. Smells could also be included with the writing though that would not last as long as the writing itself, though it could be something extra to add for territory marking or to alert everything that can smell of something important at the moment.

Not much else to add to that area of world building at the moment suppose I can move on to discuss the third part of things I missed last time with the economy. Here everything would largely focus on the collection of food since there is nothing usable to make that process much easier to the point where few individuals can feed many more. There could be some room to learn herding other animals or using the natural environment fishery like places to their advantage but that barely gives enough free time. Going more advanced things like trade would probably amount to a barter here or there exchanging one kind of food for another, though without taste or chewing that would not really be a big deal. At best some groups on large islands can take up small scale pastoralism with other land animals or solely focus on trying to protect a base source of food like krill from other predators which would be difficult to pull off so that they would get a larger share of that food from them. Otherwise things would be stuck in a kind of hunter gatherer society with territories set up so that they are as large as needed to be to feed one individual. That would be pretty much enforced by nature, since having more than the environment can provide leads to starvation being population control. For the most part things are just waiting for some outside force to push things forward to allow the crown jewel of this planet evolution to become even more advanced.

Suppose another topic that I can add into this would be one about religion which would be an interesting case here. With a somewhat basic understanding of the world around oneself this would be quite an interesting place, the base of the food chain in the ocean allowing for everything else to be in existance and alive. The islands themselves providing refuge for so many species out of the open waters that are all around and never ending. Something as simple as having just one parent and knowing that one will have offspring all on their own and that is how it would seem like it always was and how it always will be would offer some probably profound effects that I can not really bring justice. There would be quite a few things that a sapient being could place so much importance into that it would be enough to warrant some kind of worship through some ritual that if things worked on the regular would seem like the rituals are what either gets things to work or keeps them working. Then just like with communication things would be vastly different island to island, and on large enough islands territory from territory. Overall pretty simple to explain as a basic concept and allow everybody to at least understand the gist of what I am going for.

Like I think I said earlier in this post, this species really is not suppose to be the fleshed out one until later on. Species A is where I am going to be spending a lot of time going through all the different society pieces and such, B here was just supposed to be the opposite extreme of things with the other solar system being kind of in the middle when it comes to this stuff. However if I think of something more to add that would better clarify things I will be sure to interrupt the program that I got going on.

[Ferret Civilization]

Moving on to species A, first I should probably take a closer look at just what I am dealing with environmentally and determine just what this species would be able to take comfortably and where settling down would be more of a constant hamper. Things I know already is that the atmosphere is thicker and would hold onto heat a little bit more despite the extremely shorter day night cycle. This planet spins a lot faster making for more dry bands just like what we know happens on Earth, though these desert making regions would be a lot smaller latitude wise compared to what they could be. I also said that nearly half of this planet is land, and that land is all connected together and supposing it takes on a generally circular shape just to have something to go by that would mean the furthest point away from the ocean is about 71,600,000 km. Not that there would be no water all the way, but the more inland one goes the harder it is for meaningful precipitation to happen thus there would still be a pretty large waterless desert deep in the interior of this landmass. Going that far in, even with the short days would still allow for quite a temperature swing to occur as well, overall not all at suitable for life even if inroads could be made. Could offset this by having a divergent boundary set of plates pulling apart and allowing ocean water to come in making something like the Red sea if there was no Mediterranean sea to connect with. Not that this would really provide fresh water as it would actually be salter in this kind of setting, but it does provide something different than endless desert and could support some life at the very least. Actually thinking about divergent boundaries and suppose a small one formed deeper inland away from the oceans creating a very deep valley, setting up a situation that given enough time could set up a Zanclean flood thing which is neat to think about. That is on top of the other boundary types that form mountains making for very cold places to exist without having to be near the poles. Given that this species has an average temperature of 25 C and using the same ratio as I did last time I can find that the room temperature that this species would be comfortable at is 15 to 16 C and the just too hot would be around 40 C. Given that comfortable zone and the body plan that kind of screams wide open plains grasslands would be a perfect environment to really expand from. And unlike the planet in the first system I made temperatures here can vary widely from 80 C to -100 C, though those would be the short extremes and overall things would fit into the biomes that we have here on Earth. Thinking about white foliage rainforests that have to adapt to higher gravity and would probably end up being more squat because of that is an interesting image to me. Last thing to add here is that with all this variation in the environment that should allow once the species spread out to take on a wide range of cultures that we have on Earth and give me more to work with instead of having the species stay bunched up.

Starting off suppose this species came from a six legged persistence hunter that eventually and slowly started using their front two appendages to use things as tools. Say that this species also started out in a grassland area that has very nutrient soil and experiences a lot of rain on average allowing for the grasses to grow very tall, like let me say something like up to 7 feet or so. Being able to see over the grass would be kind of a good advantage to have to see where anything disturbing the environment might be at. The grass would have to be adapted to growing fast to deal with the herbivores eating it all down and if it works out right that would allow for the herbivore creatures to get big themselves, being big is one defense against smaller predators. Of course there would be other means of defense as nature loves that arms race but hopefully with a plentiful base food all species would have plenty to slowly get bigger over time. Being colored white would also be a rather obvious advantage when all the grass around one is also white in color. Eventually with everything going so well and the main species here getting smarter, I guess that is how it would be put, they would slowly start to spread out into other biome areas. Going into other temperate areas would not be much of a problem, think that even some rainforests would be open for exploitation as well as the mountainous areas as long as they do not get too extreme from the average temperatures. Thinking about it now being far away from the ocean where water can not drain effectively and it does not even get that much water there would be a lot of swamp like areas overall of different temperature types, be an interesting place to try and build a society since it would cover a lot of the landmass. Though during this time it would not matter as much, it is just getting there and taking advantage of all the other species that did not have time to adapt to this main species that just has the audacity to be spreading all over the place. Tool use would be pretty much be all primitive stone and communication would only convey basic information to allow for team hunting and gathering, have to remember that this species can handle plant matter. Being able to reach higher up when plants are kind of forced to be more squat would be helpful in getting things like fruits and seeds, other herbivores would also be able to take full advantage of this setup. Or would they, long necks would not be favored here, suppose things would go more for the be able to climb a little bit up the tree to reach the top since it is not that high up to begin with. At least when dealing with the smaller creatures.

Standard setup goes on from here, there would be bands, tribes, and such slowly progressing to advance themselves. Eventually some groups are going to wind up being in more favorable spots than others, least here I do not have to force the one group to be on top of the favorable conditions that would support advanced society. Those groups would be able to make better tools to be able to do all their little functions easier and more effectively to open up more free time and all of that good stuff. Other fronts like dealing with communication, trading, and making rules or laws would improve. Fighting over stuff would of course favor the group that was able to make use of their favorable home conditions that allowed for better technology. Some places would settle down and find agriculture with some animals to be the best thing for them and other groups might find that being nomadic pastoralist getting useful plants wherever would be the best thing. The rather large creatures would more likely overall tend towards being nomadic for a longer period of time but those that settle down would have a bigger advantage when it comes to bringing more calories for less work thus advance quicker towards being the best. I imagine that having pretty good environmental living conditions would allow for groups to be more fair about how they decide what to do with those trying to eke it out like say around the waterless desert would be more authoritarian and rule by might. Though I could probably be a little bias in that thinking, authoritarianism really could and probably would pop up everywhere at some point or another. I do know for sure that being in different biomes would lead to different ways of doing things and in the long run lead to those very different cultures coming into being so going with a single culture planet here is pretty much unacceptable. Course with differences comes reasons to dislike each other and is a pretty cited reason when it comes to fighting. Through time things would continue to advance following along just like how things went for humans and eventually things will reach a modern age. Kind of glossing over it here since this will have to be something I really have to focus on later on and give it closer to the justice that it deserves. Should think about how big a town or city would have to be, agricultural wise each creature would need a lot more land to live. 40,000 calories, then I also have to consider the extra land needed to grow non edible things, last time I used the really high figure of 0.2 km^2 to cover for all the other things that would be grown alongside food. Otherwise I would have used 0.002 km^2 which is just food alone. Here I have to have extra land for food and other grown supplies, food would take up a proportionally larger share of the land however as mass that needs calories increases faster than surface area. Have to consider herbal medicine and plants grown to make more industrialized products as well which medicine wise would increase more with the extra mass. To get on with things suppose I take the male human average of 2,500 calories which can be sustained with 1.5 acres to include rangeland. That factor of 16 leads me to think that 24 acres would be needed to sustain one creature here. That gives me 0.1 km^2, keeping the proportions the same that leads me to needing 3 km^2 for individual, though over time that would lead to an extra supply of non food goods and with time that large amount of land could be cut down some with modern farming techniques. Suppose every little bit of land was perfect farmland growing only food and that leads me to find that the maximum population in this fantasy would be 4,498,365,140. Now Earth has a higher population than that and not every piece of land is farms, that is because farming nowadays is a lot better and capable of feeding multiple people per acre where here I am assuming everyone is doing this on their own. Think in my case that number actually might be a pretty good cap nonetheless since I have to consider most of my world here is unfarmable desert and the habitable parts are further cut down in quality by mountains and areas with poor soil. So despite being a larger planet with more land that does not equal being able to sustainably having a larger population than something like Earth could never see.

Given that mountains would also be settled suppose I can figure out their Oxygen safety limits, which is this case with double the atm and it being 25% Oxygen for a human it pretty much is 50% Oxygen. That is why I did pick out the Iridium based one as it can handle all that extra O2 without being destroyed by all the free radicals and other bad toxicity stuff. Safety limits here would pretty much be 54.5% to 46.5% which is not that bad of a range, 14% would be the death limit which means that this species would be kind of okay breathing on a more Earth like world though probably would not be moving around all that much. Probably pass out actually, but at least it is not instant death after a minute of trying to suffocate. Using an air pressure calculator the safety range would only allow for permanent habitation 450 m above sea level, but humans can live outside their safety zone and become adapted to less Oxygen and be pretty fine. Taking the highest point humans live at year round and I get a really higher elevation of 5,190 m above sea level where the partial pressure of the atmosphere is half as much as it used to be. Of course there would be no issue inhabiting the valleys below sea level since Oxygen increases the lower one gets. Though using the safety limit the lowest area would be around 700 meters below sea level, for reference the Dead sea is 413 m below sea level at its shores. Imagine a valley that goes like a kilometer down before reaching the pooled water at the bottom, at that point I would figure the area would have to be a volcanic hotspot without even needing there to be tectonic plate activity. Will not go that extreme, but just going to use this as reference for the wide range of different settlement areas and the things that would be needed to not just survive but thrive in them as well. Did not go into things much history wise, guess that will be more fleshed out when talking about other things like how the current government types came to be, macro relations politically and economically, and that kind of stuff before slowly working my way back down to the individuals.

[Ferret Civilization]

Suppose I could try and focus more on where the biomes would be on a supercontinent, besides the given that the interior would be dealing with extreme desertification even if there was no mountains to block rainfall. Now I know that the tropics go 13° north and south and that would be the area with the most amount of heat, being hot year round though when dealing with ocean currents that are affected by the wind circulation cells the equatorial cells extend out to 24°. Also since it is one continent the east gets the warm water at the equator and the west gets the cold water, with a large open ocean hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons form in the west and and make an entire unimpeded trip to slam the eastern side of the continent where the rainforests are. So I know that there will be rainforests on both sides of the continent on the equator that slowly becoming seasonal tropical forests, savannahs, and then subtropical deserts before life has its breaking point. An interesting thing to note is that the western side of the continent would be a dry broadleaf rainforest with the east being the wet broadleaf kind that is more familiar when talking about rainforests. Have to keep that in mind even though on a wet equator those settled in the west will have periods of drought where those settled in the east will get a lot of rain and powerful storms regularly. Dry air that causes a different kind of desert will form in more thin bands since there are more circulation cells competing for space and as one goes further north and south the temperate rainforests start to take up the coastlines before going into the seasonal forests, other woodlands and shrubs, and starts to fizzle out with cooler grasslands and then deserts again. More to the north and south the boreal forests start to take over and given that this supercontinent the way I am describing it here is more centered on the equator not getting near the poles the boreal forests will end the northern and southern sides of this continent before going back into the oceans. Both the poles would be like our North pole here on Earth, oceans freezing up during the winter and thawing in the summer periods, that would be the quasi tundra biome right there I suppose. The closer one gets to the interior the more likely it is that water can not make a path to get back to the ocean thus giving rise to all sorts of different swamps from those nearly boiling on the equator to those nearly freezing closer to the poles. This is not even considering how some mountain ranges will form to create rain shadows and push the different biome types in different directions that they normally would not be able to do.

Eventually all these different places would be settled and over time with better technology tamed. But probably have to play it safe and assume the first actual towns doing agriculture would form around rivers and grow from there. Mountainous ranges near the oceans with warm currents bringing in a lot of rain would probably be the best place to look for many rivers forming and becoming larger to bring a lot of fresh water around to settle. Have to consider that the first place that this species would be coming from would be a temperate grassland biome and having mountains blocking in a lot of rain and temperature might not be a good thing for keeping the place a grassland. Suppose I could look at the South American grasslands for an example area if I wanted this species to be located on the coasts. Though going with the tallgrass route, hmm, there is the most familiar to me prairies, still the pampas to look at, and northwestern steppes. Could say that the grasslands that this main species came from are located more into the interior of the continent, a mountain range even further into the interior could block rainfall and create some lakes and rivers that flow towards more temperate rainforests or even go in a more southern direction towards the tropical rainforests. Going over the mountains here would just reward someone with a seemingly never ending desert that crossing would be rather impossible for a long time. So spreading out would involve going all the way around the relative coastline regions. Thought about if the ocean travel would be the same as the desert in terms of being a roadblock and figured that using it to cross over to the other side of the continent faster even with helpful winds and ocean currents that might take too long without a lot of supplies. Brings to mind that those on one side of the continent that have been settled longer would get better technology to cross the ocean and find others just like them that have probably only been settled for a couple generations, something analogous to Europeans finding the Americas. Thinking about the setup if the mountains had workable metals for an early civilization tall grasslands are pretty much the most fertile land one could hope for the birthplace of this species would be the strongest point for early civilization. Following the rivers out to the ocean in, let me say that there are a few and some flow right through temperate rainforests and some flow to the tropics since they are not that far away and a little rise in elevation could lead to multiple river paths from the starting mountains. That would probably be the areas settled next to actually be able to thrive, while others would probably settle down upstream in the mountains they would probably only be able to keep existing due to trade rather than having a place sustainable to a large population. Large here being like anything over 10 at this stage of the game given the amount of land needs the local environment could provide for. As groups continue to move more north and south things really do not get much friendlier but there would be the occasional place that would be able to support a thriving community. Depending on how many generations it took there would probably be no memory passed down about how they had once come from a somewhat tropical area when they find the tropics on the other side of the continent. So instead of coming from a group used to the warmth going into the cold they would be a group used to the cold going into the humid heat. Huh, if groups go both north and south and take the same amount of time they might end up meeting each other on the other side of the continent being the first recontact. Not that I think the struggle there would amount to much if those on the other side of the continent manage to sail across the ocean and land around the same time period as well to most likely wipe both sides out.

Imagine that the birthplace would be more open to communal rule types whether they be oligarchic or democratic and those venturing into more hostile environments would be more single ruler authoritarianism until better methods of survival in the new lands come around to allow for a less strong arm to be needed in making hard decisions. Though suppose there would be areas where the few who control the goods would be able to stay slightly more authoritarian in their rule, and a few places with no goods to work with might become more democratic to deal with the greater threat of some neighbor trying to wipe out their way of life. That is before getting into all the modern day issues that allow for certain government types to exist or to no longer exist. Though looking to when the species started to use tools and tame the environment for their own use in the birthlands that would be where the first government beyond bands and tribes would form, being akin to Egypt or Sumer just in a temperate tallgrass land and not the desert like region surrounding the river regions where they popped up in. Imagine that the people here would probably look towards the elders as the most charismatic, strongest, or most knowledgeable depending on the little groups to be the top of the hierarchical chain. There would probably be a few variations in this starting region before someone rises up and takes claim over the whole area of grasslands. Those downriver and by the coast would probably be more resistant to being taken over by those from the open plains leading to a completely separate government forming there. This second one would probably be more restricted to the coast as the thick forests would be even more resistant to a kind of unification process allowing for different groups to keep small and do their own thing. Desert regions would have the same issue, lots of small groups doing their own thing with primitive technology not being capable of reigning them all in under one kind of rule. For those that settled upstream they would probably find their power through trade once metals start to have some worth, thus probably find it beneficial to just look past their differences and stand more united against those with even more differences that want their goods. As the population grows around this starting area the government would become more complex, writing amongst the elite and common language amongst the rest of the population would probably start to spread around. The society living on the oceanfront would probably start to specialize in doing most things by water, spreading that way and not inland even though there really are no islands to go spreading to. Still be the start of some kind of thalassocracy that would have near complete control of trade using water transport. As time goes on around this area city state like entities would probably realize that they are losing the long term war of keeping their independence and unite militaristically in order to keep their own unique ways of life going without a foreign ruler. Other areas in hostile environments no matter how good the technology gets would be able to hold onto their way of life through knowing the lands and pretty much having nothing a major power would want for themselves that they could not get somewhere else easier. This would leave some seemingly large nations with a lot of potholes of uncontrollable groups which if given enough time would just seem acceptable for things to be that way.

Imagine while things are getting this far in the original area those closer to the poles would still be in bands and tribes making a living off the land in a more, some would call natural state even though they are for all purposes an invasive species. Getting around to the tropics on the other side of the continent would see more advanced governments start to pop up and get technologically developed. Suppose the Red sea setup is located on this side of the continent, and this side could be the side that deals with the droughts. That means the starting area those by the coast deal with hurricanes and the rainforests are constantly wet, would make it harder to tame in my opinion. So the group coming in to settle here would have to be dealing with droughts and roughly a saltier sea, though given enough time a second thalassocracy could form in this region taking up any fertile land on the coasts for outposts and islands made by a divergent tectonic plate zone for settlements. They would have to get most of their food through fishing and would probably be stuck in a pretty feudalistic setup, with those owning the ships bringing in the food having the wealth to own the settlements and such. Using others as extra hands to keep things moving along. The same problem of some areas just being uncontrollable would happen on this side of the continent as well, allowing for all different forms of small societies to keep on being for the most part undisturbed. Eventually the desert region would slowly be settled on all sides with inroads being made, but there would be nothing to really support a large population unless they find themselves sitting on top of a valuable resource like oil or something. In that case they would find themselves under the rule of another nation real quick, but until then the lands would be largely anarchistic with groups taking on whatever form of working together that they would want to. In the original region with better technology coming along all sorts of political theory could come into being, mostly revolving around how a single being could rule over many or how many beings could effective rule themselves. Mostly being the different kinds of monarchy or dictatorship versus democratic means. These groups would probably have a solid history of either hating each other or dealing with each other after all this time and would probably affect how governments function more than the environment at this point. There would be a period of colonization once the technology got good enough to cross the ocean, which would lead to the displacement of what those on the other side of the ocean had going on for systems that the original region are using. Be pretty safe to say that later down the line these colonies would find themselves getting their freedom either through violent or peaceful means and have a blend of east and west world countries. Suppose a different group of people would also be able to break off and gain their own freedom around this time as well and that comes in the form of businesses and churches. They would have to be the most powerful of the organizations of these types, taking advantage of the fact that having some groups within larger nations have their own freedom be acceptable that they too would be better off under their own rule to chart their own political paths or to stay out of them. This would probably be a door opener for diplomatic relations being the in between for nations that do not like each other but like either the business money or share a religion and thus would be more open to communication through those grounds. Once the analogous modern age comes around there probably would be no more groups breaking off for their freedom as technology would become strong enough to tie different cultural people together under one banner being a state. Have already made some base governments for a starting off point and I figure I will get into them specifically next writing period I have along with exploring any other avenues I can go down.

[Ferret Civilization]

Alright maybe this time I can start getting into more specific details about what the governments are. Starting right in the birthlands I will assume that the tallgrass lands cover a large portion of land, taking into account that there would probably be shortgrass in one direction the total area would be around over a million km^2. Around the center of this region there would not be many resources besides what can be gathered from the cereal like grasses, flowers, and the grazing animals themselves which could be used to make some shelter. Things would take off going either west to a mountain range for stone and metal and over that just for sand, east to the rainforests for wood along with a range of other goods and through that to the ocean itself which is where the hurricanes hit. Coral reefs would also form out in those waters along this coastline. South would be more temperate forests along with going northeast which would be easier to get through and get resources out of. North would shift quickly shrublands and cold deserts, the lines here would be more fuzzy as the boreal forests would be as far north as one could get walking. Open plains are rather hard to defend even with tallgrass, and with a lack of resources there would probably be many tribes going around through the center of the region. Closer to the west stone buildings with hay roofs and that kind of imagery would take hold while those closer to the east would be making buildings out of wood. Eventually groups start fighting over this region, and it would probably be pretty brutal with the strongest coming out on top, weakening themselves in the process allowing for a different tribe to come in and take them over. After some time the whole grasslands would be under one ruler and infrastructure would be key in keeping control over what are three distinct cultural groups, two of which have to play border guard to the other people in different biomes that the one in the middle that took everything over can not handle. They would own the only real means of food production, something that outsiders would want thus having defense on the border would be really important and keeping those different cultures on the border happy would be kind of a key part in that important issue. More time would slowly see things start to have a new routine and be normal, outsiders would probably find it easier to trade what they have for food since this state would need everything other than food. This region would be able to support over 10,000,000 individuals if solely focusing on getting food made without it being burned down in war. A strong leader with slightly devolved individuals below them kind of called out monarchy to me, with things being hereditary within one strong family in the early ages along with a parliament made up of individuals that hold everything together within their groups. When things start to get more modern and the common individual finds themselves with a lot more power in their hands the call to have their own representation would most likely be heard splitting the legislative body into two, one of the upper class and one full of the lower class. Suppose there are succession issues that start to plague the original family and other nations have become more democratic at this point adding more pressure onto the way things are, leading to the monarch being elected rather than passed down. The monarch would have to keep things running smoothly then for everyone otherwise they might not get to rule for life. And that is kind of how I set up the first major nation, since they would have a large population within their lands largely clustered around the eastern mountain border and western forests border.

Backing up in time the people that migrated east through the rainforest or temperate forest depending on which rivers they took would find themselves facing the ocean, opening up shipbuilding as a valuable craft to support a large population. They would also get kind of slammed with hurricanes destroying their wooden structures for a bit in the early days and not be able to support much of anything population wise as food would come from the forests at first which would be rather tricky. Those with the rainforests at their backs would also be hampered with issues like disease that could wipe out whole settled areas or traveling groups. But overtime those issues would be overcome and the bounty of the seas could be effectively harvested leading to quite a few settlements springing up and down the coastlines. Bringing in pounds of fish could replace the need for pounds of meat that come from the plains and reduce coastal settlements land footprint farming wise while still having a large enough population to compete with those in the grasslands. Eventually those with the strongest navies or strong fishing fleets would start to come in and take over other settlements along the coast to extend their own power, though throughout this it would probably be more beneficial for some to willingly submit and join in without fighting. Politically this place would be controlled by those that have the strongest fleet and have many individuals using them to bring in food, having things be rather feudalistic. One individual who landlords a settlement collects a bit of the produce produced by those working their means of production, they then have to pass a bit of that up further to the one who owns everything. Those at the bottom would really only keep a little of what they produce but are guaranteed a place to call home and protection from those within the rainforests. Instead of there being professional soldiers through knights it would be more like ship captains. Rather fuzzy looking I figure but hope the point it there. Looking at the middle area the rainforests would not really get developed at all, the most that could happen would be some trade roads being made along the rivers to trade with those in the plains. Settlements here would stay rather small and not really open to be united under one rule, leading to a more diverse range of cultural groups. Roads between coastal settlements would not be needed as much as everything would go by the water, leaving the settled areas to be able to fort up without needing gates if things were bad enough with getting raided. Government wise everything is controlled by one family, which can delegate some powers down to a more local level, and those local levels can delegate the power they get further down if a settlement is large enough to merit that course of action to keep things running smoothly. Time would see which of the two sides have the most power, but they would probably be able to hold onto this system into the modern age since the state is built around who owns the ships that bring in food rather than the land. Least that is what I would go for even if it is unrealistic.

Going west and one hits a mountain range, figured here I would go more out there and say that there is a microplate being hit from two sides to get two mountain ranges encircling a valley. That valley would be completely within a rain shadow but suppose if snow gathered on the eastern mountain enough to melt water down both sides the valley would be wet enough to grow things within its own little rain feedback loop. Water also has nowhere to flow to since it is at the lowest point it can get already and dead plant matter would build up here as a result. Slowly turning the area from a marsh into more of either a bog or fen types of mire. There would be plenty of carbon dioxide and methane for plants to take in from the decomposition of all the other dead plants providing a lot of breathable gasses for the native life on this planet. Suppose a lot of small settlements would be made along more navigable mountain passes into this valley and some might settle right into the wetlands itself, though it would be those in the mountains pulling out the resources that the plains would want to trade food for. The settlements in the valley would be more like resting areas in between the first mountain range and the second one that is even further west that would pull out even more valuable metals or stone. Living in the valley would be a completely different life than living up in the mountains, which would be quite a dramatic shift from having come from wide open plains. Those in the valley would probably relate more to their kin living on the plains using the goods from those in the mountains than the mountain individuals, thus hearing about them being taken over by the really plains people would be more alarming. Those in the mountains would probably take alarm as well and decide that they would be better off willingly cooperating together with cultural family issues rather than having some far away outsiders telling them what they could and could not do. Uniting themselves and their different ways of doing things they would probably start off more like a confederation or alliance only willing to protect each other through military action. Over time a political body would form and slowly be lead through democratic actions eventually just doing away with all the different settlements way of doing things with a compromised middle ground that no one would be happy with at first. In order to do away with settlement loyalties all members of this government would be forced to be nonpartisan which at first while a law would be unenforceable until enough time had passed for the newer generations to not grow up with a settlement first mentality. This legislative body would elect the leader of the state kind of like a parliamentary system, but in this case the prime minister would be both the head of government and state leading to the legislative and executive powers being one if looking at it through a separation of powers lens. The state would find itself ringing the valley staying within the mountains cutting off those within the valley but not being hostile against them or isolating them. This would be the first real pocket on the map of political borders and those within the valley once communication got good enough would take note of that fact. Over the second mountain range would just be endless desert with a few areas where water could be gathered through the use of wells thus that would be the limiting factor of population size out there.

Looking at those within the valley they would probably unite cooperatively soon after the word that those in the mountains had done just that. Not that they would have been forced to being more on good terms with their newly united neighbors but it would give a false appearance of them being stronger. If any of those in the western side of the grasslands had managed to hold out against being conquered the valley would be in the unique situation of sending aid without getting a direct attack back eventually drawing these holdouts into their fold. While being different compared to their neighbors they would probably be more culturally similar to not have to deal with the frictions that sort of difference causes. This would also see some of the fertile grassland food production taken away from the monarchy and put into the hands of this political entity given them some bargaining power with the mountain people. As communication and infrastructure improved this political entity rather than being a big blob they would enclave themselves with settlements that had managed to holdout against other invasions. Be difficult to control such a thing, especially in early times without the wonders of a modern world, thus things would be decentralized to a point where nearly every settlement is at face value independent. With a direct democracy controlling what laws would affect everybody and the local level doing their own political setup to decide what laws they would need without forcing those that would not need that law to have it. Some settlements could be a direct democracy or a dictatorship and within the larger political entity this would be just fine as long as everyone knows that those within the settlement have it by their own choices rather than an outside force shaping things. Though as the modern age gets closer pretty much all the settlements would be some kind of democracy, republic, or liberal monarchy. Overall there would be one directly elected individual to represent that this political entity exists and be charged with making sure that state wide elections go smoothly, the votes are counted, and the results told to everyone. Clarify that they would be able to appoint individuals to help achieve this not that they have to do it all on their own, bureaucracy has to come in somewhere.

This is a large swath of land covering pretty much the entire center of the east side of the continent with a lot of settlements of varying population. Eventually things political entities want to enforce will be broken by criminals, one such thing being the monopoly on violence. Suppose certain individuals see an opportunity in this, especially in the larger political bodies with different cultural groups, to take on protecting nations that might feel neglected by the ruling nation. The state would know this to be a protection racket, and would not like that of course. With more laws comes more illegal business ventures certain savvy individuals would start to take part in if the money was there, leading to the creation of a mafia like entity working throughout everywhere with no regard for borders. As time goes on this criminal element would grow and split, infight, unite, get caught by the state, and repeat the cycle while learning from the mistakes made leading to a kind of arms race between what the state could crack down on and what illegal activities could flourish. Let me say that the states gets sloppy and messes up at some point through miscommunication or failed operations and one crime family manages to find itself at the top and rather untouchable. Things become just for show in some areas, as breaking the newly put on top family would lead to a lot worse crime wave coming afterwards which would just not be worth dealing with. The state would get wise to things that they could do through this criminal element as well, doing things to other political entities without having their name attached to it causing further problems in relations. Eventually becoming an accepted part of society all over the place, while not being a state itself the crime family would appear to have to power of one with the backing it has and the for show security theatrics of arresting those within that family. It would be something that everyone takes note of since now non political entities are being respected as such along with small holdout areas functioning all on their own outside the major powers. Things within the crime family would be the oldest and most powerful are in charge making all the rules and keeping things at least somewhat under control.

Moving west over the mountains there would be another rather non politically recognized group that comes from all the people making a living out in the deserts. Things out here would be largely anarchistic with life only being sustained where water could be pulled out of the ground and might would make right. The harsh environment would make it nearly impossible for one individual to have all the lands under their control and even if it did happen after they die everything ends up breaking apart back to their natural state of independence. This would be a cycle that goes on and on without any sort of end even as technology gets better, all it does is give certain groups the better ability to try and kill everyone else. Those settled closest to the mountain range democracy would cause the biggest headache for its western people in the early ages being their raiders and what not. As time goes on their technology would outpace the desert dwellers and they would for the most part be able to wipe out those without any sort of peacefulness within them. The one thing that would bring in the major powers to the area though in the modern age would be if oil was discovered in the region, that would either see a lot of groups fighting for their survival from outside invaders or one autocrat finding a lot of advanced weaponry in their grasp to provide cheap oil to the modern world. Going east this same kind of setup would be found within the rainforests, anarchy being the sole government type where might makes right unless they find themselves getting pushed back by those wanting to make farmland. Groups here would cause headaches for those settled on the civilized coasts or plains by the forests. But such is the way things would be until the technology is there to wipe them out, though once things get to that point those hostile groups would more likely keep to themselves and the way things are then would be acceptable status quo.

Dang I am writing a lot of fluff, and I have a lot more left to go but I find myself running out of time and this seems like enough to leave off on. Will keep going on with the few left later and move on to the west side of the continent, but keep in mind that most of the power here will lay in the eastern side since they will be colonizing and leaving their mark. Wrap it up with how things look along the poles which really would not be much I think for right now, could change though.

[Ferret Civilization]

Moving on to cover the other big states that I have somewhat worked out in the central eastern part of this continent. One of the most powerful ones in my mind being based off the rise in status of merchants and traders to eventually become their own state and be sort of like a corporatocracy. Though it would not own a large piece of land with cities providing state services at a price like in most video game dystopias, rather they would be more like an independent bank with branches or offices that like embassies are foreign soil within the state controlled lands. Figure that this would come to start off a little after the species spreads out and starts to cover different biomes that provide different resources, at the start things would be mostly just when anybody has the free time to try and barter some goods from the next town over. Something that really would not happen until some settlements start getting wood, stone, herbs, different kinds of food, or some of the many other things that individuals could want. Eventually the population would get large enough and technologically advanced enough to not require that everyone focuses on getting food and start to focus on other things for the majority of their time. One such profession that would be something that some would want to go into would be to become professional merchants, buying the excess scrapes from one place and selling it where it is more rare and wanted to turn around and buy their scrapes for cheap to go back and sell it where they came from. With enough individuals getting into this field of work that would start the early roads for better infrastructure to take root connecting many different places together and making it easier for conquerors to go around taking other settlements over. Figure poor merchants just starting off would be able to use themselves as a pack animal but a sapient mind would look for ways to make things easier on oneself and probably use other animals if there are any. Suppose if I said that none would be suitable for carrying cargo the way the main species could that would just be the way things are, and partnering with other merchants and traders would be smart to increase the load of goods carried around. As states come and go, eventually getting bigger, all these different merchants would mostly be operating under different laws, taxes, tariffs and what not things overall would not be as efficient as they could be at this time. That along with the lesson that a big enough group could hold onto their independence would start to see more and more merchants working together to make a political mark trying to get things to be more lax. Form a large enough union and force out those that would want nothing to do with sharing trade with others to control enough of a states imports and exports and those in power would start listening. Though in order for things to go better the merchants would have to get the states to work together which would not really happen, thus the solution that they would come up with is just becoming their own state to negotiate with the other polities. Of course the other places would cry foul but with the local economy at stake not many leaders would really be willing to go all in against the threat the traders would be bringing to the table.

With that a new state would be born, one mostly just made up of caravans trading goods between all the states that they can reach being rather ruthless in making sure some state sponsored competition does not try and cut into the good thing that they have starting up. This group would find themselves with a strong voice in international trade and monetary policies, pretty much being the sole party that each state has to deal with to cross the bridge to get into the international marketplace. Eventually this nation would turn to becoming a bank as well, with what they want to be currency being the widely used thing wherever they happen to go to. Another role that they would find themselves in the place to work with is being the official post office either locally or internationally since they would be in the best position to deliver that kind of service to all the known world. In the early times this state would probably be controlled in an authoritarian manner with someone being on top getting most of the benefits this kind of situation would bring with little input from the majority that had originally made the union to have things better for all of them in this field and not just a few at the top. Their democratic shift would not see them change much corporatocracy wise but instead of being a top ruled kind of business things would slowly shift into more of a credit union kind of institution. All the individuals in this union would be able to deposit their earnings for safekeeping without losing a cut of it as well as having a say in where they would want the company to invest. A big market to open up into would be to start providing more bank services to individuals that are not apart of their state, they would not be able to deposit stuff but they would be able to take loans or credit that would have to be repaid to see the union grow. This nation would not replace all other banks though so they would have competition on that front being free only to go about international trade rates with nearly absolute freedom. Members in this state would have to follow whatever state laws that they happen to be within and not really have laws of their own, more like an unwritten code or norms that everyone is expected to follow when dealing with each other. Defense in the early times would be merchants traveling together for security and having armed individuals at places they operate out of, in the modern times not much would change except how travel is conducted and the weapons used for defense. The development of trains would be rather huge for this state and they would probably be the biggest investor into it owning a majority of the tracks to make trading a lot of goods easier. Was also thinking about how they would work with the thalassocracy since the union would not be able to have their own shipping lanes, even a threat of no longer trading with the state would change that. At best they would be able to purchase their own ship and be stuck with paying for docking and using shipping lanes completely gutting any profits to be made traveling by water. So this state would be stuck trying to connect all the coastal settlements either by land or just having one stopping place and having the buyers work out how to get the goods to other settlements which would easily be answerable to them, by water. Should sum up the basic idea of this little bankocracy for now.

The other big breakaway states that are not really states come in through the use of religion, suppose the two biggest religious denominations were able to break their churches out from underneath the state grasp being the furthest separation of church and state as one could get before creating a theocracy. This might actually classify as a theocracy thinking about it, or a hagiocracy if looking up rule by priests since they really would not say that they are ruled by God under some chosen individual. Was thinking about how I wanted to form these religions, first I thought that a monotheistic one would be good but overall when trying to flesh it out it felt like it was going too much into what I have already gone into. Nothing wrong with going for a more polytheistic route and then working my way from there. Given where the species starts out in grasslands the most important God would be one of either creation or life and death, also figured that instead of duality where there would be two Gods for opposite things it would be one God for both sides. For example life and death, light and dark, war and peace, maybe more broad like success and failure, and so on with the main idea being that for one side to exist so does the other. This with what I am trying to go for would represent that the opposite forces are working together to be in existence rather than trying to fight each other out of it. Individuals would probably worship one God more than the others without having to deny their existence, thought there was a name for that, and there is, had to look up henotheism to find the better fitting word monolatry. The big problem that this belief would have is when certain individual rulers would try and say that one of the Gods supports them alone or tries to oust worshippers of other Gods, and while the church would not support that other rulers would easily be able to use that to bash the religious leaders for favoring those individuals. It would be a problem that the church would not want to have on its plate so it would do what it could to separate itself from the issues the mortal plane tries to serve the religion. With an official separation whether it has to happen unilaterally or bilaterally the church finds itself as its own polity, though it would have no members since everyone would still be a citizen of whatever state the churches are located in. Funds would have to be raised through charity means only and the buildings would probably look like modern multifaith areas since multiple Gods being worshipped. Each God would have its own religious practices needed to be performed, though there probably would be some shared ethics that all the followers could agree on. Figure with this setup there would probably be a few monotheistic breakaway religions but in this world they would not rise to prominence to replace their predecessors in most of the world. Keep things vague enough like that for now, will have to come back to the actual religions later. For now the structure of the leadership would probably be pretty basic with someone overseeing the individual building, then someone overseeing an area, and going up until either there is a main figurehead or a group that oversees everything. Rather drab I know, could be a whole lot more exciting but not for now it seems.

The other religion that would manage to breakaway would be one without a God, force of nature, or any of that. Followers here would deny the existence of the deities within the polytheistic belief, instead promoting that they as a species and on an individual level are their own God. Kind of imagine it being like existentialism where the individual has to give meaning to their own life. Though a society would also be able to give meaning to life because as a group they are powerful enough to do that and within this mortal lifetime there could be many changing meanings. One thing that would be sure would be the idea of solipsism with nothing outside one’s own mind being real, but given the situation that one finds oneself in it would be best to conform as if everything outside the mind was also real. The goal of the religion to open the door to show that the illusion that is life can be shaped by the meaning that one gives to it and sometimes the illusion can be against one being. Continuing that the illusion one’s mind makes is trying to teach itself something by giving manifestation to many different contradictions and problems to work through and in the end death is the exit from the illusion. What happens after that point is up to any interpretation though probably would avoid that there is nothing since oneself would make something. Philosophy could branch out on that and have subgroups for all the branches that come from that open ended question. Figuring how they would break away and technically they would not, as they would never really be forced to be apart of the state anyway. Leadership would revolve around philosophers acting as religious leaders to explain this idea to the masses, traveling around with their own little tidbits to add on or take off of the central points. The main ethics being that the illusion for the most part rewards good deeds more than it does bad ones so there is a net positive to oneself to take part in what the group says is good and right. Still trying to flesh out how to word it all properly, it will get there eventually.

That wraps up the main nations and states that I had made that would project the most power in the rest of the world, being the Europe during the colonial times. Moving northward there would probably be a lot more fractured states with governments ranging from dictator or monarchy to all the different kinds of democracy and be the size of a settlement to having a few settlements of varying population spread throughout shrublands and cold woods. Closer to the poles the groups would probably be more tribal since they would have to move around in order to get enough food to survive and dealing with a two year long polar night would not be ideal to stay through. Going southward from the equator and there is more thick rainforests to separate things, though the thalassocracy would be able to bypass that and set up shop down the coastline before stopping where it gets too cold and hard to get to. Be a lot more fractured polities here as well managing to survive but never really getting to the point of taking a lot of land like those slightly north of the equator did with numbers and lack of technology helping pave that way. Figure there would be a southern grassland that could feed a lot of people and settlements would largely ring the plains, though suppose that ring creates chokepoints allowing a few states to have claim to farmlands rather than just one with some enclave issues. Going to the south pole would most likely result in a mirror image of the north pole though, just with a different culture and language to deal with the problems faced on either pole. Scattered throughout the less valuable land would be lands of anarchy where things could either be chaos or ordered. I know with this kind of continent there would be more mountain ranges all over the place that would create those rather unwanted deserts and hardy mountain folk but as of now I am unsure just where they would be, just that they are more spread out. With that out of the way that leaves me with the western side of the continent to deal with which I have not thought about at all besides there is a Red sea like inlet. Probably take either some time to think about it or just go all in typing half arsed ideas, what could go wrong.

[Ferret Civilization]

So past me got all the major governments, but I suppose that it would be a little bit more neat to try and list them by power structure to give a more straightforward premise for what I want to go for. Let me start with the people in the plains, said they have a monarchy which would lean towards being a unitary state and an autocracy. Though over time the monarch position becomes elective, so while the structure would still be unitary the source of power shifts to an oligarchy and then a democracy. Thinking about how there would be two different nations sharing the land under one state things would be to either go a decentralization route, that would require that power at the top either be held by despotic force or instructure support, or go down a route that leads to a federation popping up having two administrative subdivisions having some degree of autonomy to keep the nations happy living together in the same state. Personally seem to prefer to see what a federal elective monarchy would be like. That would take on the role of being the executive branch, and the legislative branch meanwhile would be a bicameral one, the original one being made up of appointed subdivision rulers to represent the upper class in this state and then a newer one made up of all the common citizens. Going a federal route there would be laws that affect everyone and then local laws for local issues, figure that something like a constitution and inseparable rights would not be a thing here with the will of the majority being the power only limited by the representatives in the legislature and executive which over time can be swapped out for more agreeable voices of the masses or money. Judicial matters would probably be split between the executive and legislative and just as open to all the flaws that come with that kind of setup. Something a little more condensed that might give a better view into how things are, I do not really know myself since this has been in a bubble of one so far.

When looking at the thalassocracy on the coast that alone does not tell much on how the way things are done, saying that it is more of a feudal like society gets a little closer. This place would be a stronger unitary state and also autocratic as well being ruled over by the one that owns all the ships and ports. That line is hereditary and could also be called a monarchy, they would probably have a different title than that of the monarchy solely on land but otherwise the power ideology as Wikipedia puts it is still the same. Here things would be kept under a more tight rule being averse to democratizing, not to say that the leader could go about doing whatever they wanted as they please since that leads to coups and revolts. It would be up to the ruler at the top to keep the individuals that prop them up happy and then those individuals would have to keep the masses at least content with their lives. So to get to the point this place would be an absolute monarchy with a unitary state to command, decentralization would be rather on the light end and only for matters that would be better on the local level than the state level. There would be no separation of powers and all that good stuff here, makes things pretty simple when having to deal with them internationally with little wait time on answers.

Moving back to the mountains to keep the same order as the first post into this field I mentioned that they were not forced together under some autocrat and banded together by choice. Starting off here the power structure shifts to the other end of the spectrum and is rather a kind of confederation at the start. With the only thing being delegated to come together would be their military might and everything is handled on a local level otherwise. Each settlement or groups of settlements could have their own structure and source of power politics wise but over time this place would slowly centralize in the opposite manner than the previous two states that I covered a little bit more. Things would slowly shift into a federation, with the source of power being for the most part democratic to oligarchic. Suppose there was a little council like entity made up of spokespeople for each of the confederation members, as the confederation turned into a federation this council would turn into a unicameral legislative body that would elect one of their own out of that bunch to head the central state and government that was getting more power. For the legislative body the source of power is democratic of the representative kind and when electing the executive the source of power is oligarchic of the particracy kind. Particracy assumes there is some kind of party though and I figure to keep things more balanced for the people the legislative body would be forced through an unchangeable constitutional law to be non partisan. Not to say that they could not work together, they just would not be able to create a party that would turn into voting for the party ideas and not the individual ideas if that is the right way to word it. This place would probably have a separate judicial branch that would be appointed by the executive so also inaccessible to the masses. Was not all that sure what to label this one, the place is a federation and has democratic sources of power but that does not really paint the whole picture. Instead of being a monarchy this place would be a republic, would lean towards a parliamentary republic since in that system the legislative elects a head of government but the head of state is separate. But in a presidential republic the head of state and government are the same but elected by the people which is also not what this is. It does exist but Wikipedia does not list a specific name for it, instead calling it a republic with an executive presidency elected by the legislature which is a little on the nose if you ask me. Suppose one could look at Nauru or Micronesia, one could say that I just ripped the politics of those places off since trying to be original is hard.

Moving on to the holdout nations that also decided to band together and things also start of being a confederation with all the different nations having their own little ways of doing things. Unlike the state right above this one I figure that with all the distances and wider range of cultures this state would be more averse to centralizing. That process would be slower and probably never reach a federation status with each nation preferring things be more localized and to stay that way. One thing I want to happen here is that despite whatever political system is in place locally the supranational government would be elected through a direct democracy, every single individual gets a vote on who represents the state and the people abroad. Another adjective to put onto the democracy would be that it is deliberative as well with time being made for more of a consensus decision making rather than one just has to vote and that is it. So the structure is confederation and the power is democratic, what little government that there is on the top level would also be heavily restricted most likely by constitution making for a constitutional republic. Legislative bodies are kept at the local levels alongside the judicial ones, or in some cases both of them being one body but the executive would be split locally and statewide.

Skipping over the largest two autocratic dictatorships since those in my mind should be straightforward enough for people to get by simply saying the place is ruled by a dictator. When getting to the powerful banking entity things become more interesting to me, enough to get me to write more about it at least. Things would be autocratic and be a unitary state, nothing far out there given how the first two major powers were described. As time goes on things become more democratic, but the unique situation here is that the structure stays autocratic and unitary. When things become democratic the masses are allowed to elect the executive, but after that the executive gets pretty much all the power. Wikipedia calls this a totalitarian democracy or electocracy, given the little definition difference I will go with the totalitarian one as the leader has to at least somewhat listen to where the masses want the bank to go. That would kind of sum things up, one individual gets elected to hold all the power and because they are elected and could be removed by the people if pushing things to far things could either pass as being autocratic or democratic. Simple as I can get it it seems, thought I would have more to mention, guess not. Going onto the two churches it really should not be a surprise that they would be oligarchic unitary states, more specifically theocracies or hagiocracy, still unsure which term would describe it better. Suppose the church with multiple deities could pass itself off as the theocracy and the one without deities would be the hagiocracy. Plays up to the one federation limit trope there since I did say the other churches or religions would not be able to break away.

You know I was curious for no real reason other than to keep on procrastinating getting to the west side of the continent just how long it would take to get there. Going by the rather circular shape as just something to get easy numbers the coastline would be 450,000,000 km long, divide that by two and that gives me 225,000,000 km to travel. Let me say that the average walking speed is around 4 mph, that gives me a lot of hours that thanks to Google I was able to find out that it would take 40 centuries to walk halfway around this continent. Well no one is walking around this continent within their lifetime, it would actually take 57 lifetimes for this species to achieve this feat. Now I know that this species is not going to just be walking right there, there will be points of settling down and then the growing population continues forward later on. Suppose I take that it took humans around 1,000 years to go from the top of north america and spread into south america which is 12,982 km. Taking that timeframe that changes the time needed up to 173 centuries or 247 lifetimes for this species. Given that the starting point and ending point for humans took from a general Google consensus longer I suppose it could work out that civilization would be able to develop on the western side of the continent before colonization arrives to mess everything up. Even if I doubled the amount of time it took it seems like things would still be within a safety margin to work out in the same way, any longer and it could be possible that explorers arrive to find undisturbed nature that would still be ripe for the taking. Figure that if the continent was set up just right those near the poles could take advantage of a current that flows east to west on both the northern and southern side of the land world.

Along those northern and southern coasts I figure things would be largely tribal, settled or nomadic are both possible developments and things could either be democratic or autocratic in governmental nature. But overall everything would stay small and away from the coastline be secluded from outside interference. Once the early migrators arrive to where the weather starts to heat back up and it rains more there would be an open plate on how to do things since where they come from would definitely be long forgotten. Some things that would probably be universal on both sides of the ocean is that the population would bloom into large numbers along the coast and where the grasslands would be. One thing that this side might have to their advantage is being used to using boats so instead of going through all the biomes and landscapes they would more likely go around them and then work their way inwards. That would mean the coastal settlements would be the oldest and most developed compared to how in the east the grasslands are the oldest and most developed. Imagine then it would be the coast that centralizes around a few polities and comes around to a kind of democracy before those from the other side of the ocean arrive. Would not call them thalassocracies though since they would probably extend their rule pretty inland before being stopped by other powerful nations. Figure that gives me an open plate to say there are confederations, federations, and unitary states with sources of power being autocratic, oligarchic, or democratic of all different sorts. Might be best to actually leave it like that and let the imagination fly rather than writing it down and seeing how disappointing it looks limited by one mind in this sort of medium.

When explorers arrive it will probably be a stereotypical Europeans meet Americans and one side promptly nearly wiping out the natives. Disease and firearms are a Hell of a thing to have at one team’s disposal, not to say that the colonizers do not get sick from diseases the natives have, it just does not spread back to the home nations to wipe out large portions of the population. Figure it would be the thalassocracy that does practically all the colonizing at first since all the other states do not have much in the way of naval power, and they would stick to conquering the coast and implementing their form of doing things. That would give the more inland native powers a chance to try and work things out, though quite a few would have to deal with slowly being overtaken by more and more people arriving from overseas taking their stuff. Eventually though with how autocracy works the subdivision ruler in the western world would probably want to have things for themselves and break away from the thalassocracy to form their own. Suppose if they break off with a large enough navy of their own and maybe with a little support from eastern powers overseas things could be like an American revolution, but instead of installing a democracy it is just another autocrat, but at least it is a more culturally aligned autocrat given all the mixing that would be going on throughout this period of time. With a western power with eastern technology at their disposal, they would probably have no issue with forcing out the other colonizing powers and installing local rulers. Figure this western thalassocracy would really be no different than the eastern one that I described and would be fierce rivals with their homeland, though who knows they could do a US UK thing here as well and become best buds after enough time has passed. That might require the people in the grasslands to be the Germany of this world if continuing with this analogue. All the other powers in the western world would be the Latin America and bam this really looks unoriginal now eh possible people or bots still reading this far. Sums it up for the most part at least, with this I should move onto a different topic field next time I start writing. Will have to think about it.

[Ferret Civilization]

Figure that getting out of political talks that the next thing up would be trying to discuss the ever so fun military topics. At first things would be rather simple and barbaric with the strongest individuals using their strength to punch, claw, and bite at their opponent until either one of them yields or is dead. Crude weapons that are either sharp or blunt could be used in a wide variety of ways to permanently injure and the better the melee weapons become the worse the outcome is for some poor soul that lost the fight. Armor would come up and start the arms race we all know and love between the offensive and defensive tools. The big points that would need to be protected would be the head and torso using armor that humans would probably find familiar but this species as another weak spot and that is the part of the spine that runs horizontal in the second torso as it is called in centaurs. That answer probably comes in the form of how we bard horses, more specifically the croupiere, flanchard, and peytral. Though here things would probably be one piece that could be put on by individual without the need of others to put parts on. Probably be apart of fashion as well with caparisons being used to identify friend and foe in the middle of combat as well as within civilian use to cover up the private bits. Also have to figure in that sooner or later ranged combat is going to be racing alongside melee combat, going from slings to bow and arrows. Being able to move and fire like how things are in mythology would be kind of important here, and being hit by an arrow would most likely mean death through a vital torso organ not functioning or losing the ability to move and at the mercy of those fighting with melee. Numbers would be the thing that probably most defines who is going to win the fight if both sides are equally armed, especially in the starting place of open plains. Strategy would most likely discourage being clustered together since that makes easy pickings for those using ranged weapons, that is unless the fight is already heavily underway with two sides being so mixed together those using ranged weapons would never get a clear shot.

Since this is rather in the medieval era fortifications would be important, being out in the open making a high ground would be an infinite improval on being able to fight and project force. It would not have to be really tall either, just something to be able to stand over the grassline would extend the line of sight for a long way exposing anyone trying to approach. Those in the mountains would have an easy time controlling the high ground, most likely building fortifications within and along passes to completely control their realm whereas those in the plains would have to be willing to sacrifice land when it comes time to fight. For those on the coast natural defensive areas that make for good ports would be used and then built up further, defending from the sea and from the land entry points. Towers would probably be more important along the coast to not only see far out for ships but over the trees as well that make up the land border of their settlements. When dealing with going up a story ramps would probably be used instead of stairs and would change the layout of where one can go higher up would be, buildings in general would be bigger as well obviously since this is a larger species. It is also quadrupedal which makes it interesting to think about just what furniture would be like but I guess for now that is a topic for a later date. Land wise things are pretty easy to think about, it is when I come to naval craft and later on aircraft things get a little more tricky. Boats would not be able to really start off small since they would have to carry a lot of weight right off the bat, and they would have to be wide so no galley like setups. Rafts would probably make due on the rivers at the start of dealing with water transport but once out in the ocean the need for a sturdy craft would have to be solved. Hopefully the wood provided by the rainforests or seasonal forests would be good enough because a lot of it would be needed, clearing out the woods would also help start farmland and a defensive area that could be defended from towers.

Getting hands on gunpowder and the start of firearms would slowly replace bow and arrows and just like real life slowly start to make the lowly peasant equal to the best armored knight. Slowly the guns would get better and cannons would come along to completely change the fortification scene. Fire would also be a deadly thing to play with as a byproduct, as fire would burn hotter and faster in this atmosphere taking a lot of wood structures with it which means things would favor stone construction. But stone would not be available for everyone and, given how life is adapted for this kind of situation with fire I imagine it would not be hard for the sapient species to find a way to effectively combat flames. Suppose this would slowly lead into the colonial era, where powers find themselves crossing the ocean and having a technological advantage over those that were there first. Have the big colonial era boats that would work, they would just be designed differently to account for the different body this species has but for the most part I am uncreative to say that it would appear functionally different from what we are used to from history. Then the natives with colonists and a technologically even playing field turn against their overseas masters being the thing that brings evolution to the naval game that at first only had one real player. Time goes on and guns get better and more mass produced with armor lagging behind with metal being the strongest thing to protect against getting shot which is slowly losing that ability. For the time being the best thing one could do to protect themselves would be to just not get shot and hit first, though putting metal on boats would start getting implemented. Though some time leaving the colonial era, something that would be kind of short given the prospects, powered airships would start coming into the scene. Being small and rather worthless at first once the amount an airship could carry increase they would start being used for warfare purposes. The story would be pretty much similar to how things went for Earth warfare wise to sum it up, just the end designs would be a little different.

Motorized vehicles would be interesting given that I do not know what one would look like made for a centaur like being that weighs a lot more than most modern civilian vehicles can handle. Imagine that there would be a solution as walking around everywhere would not be something that everyone just agrees with, the solution that I found when it comes to ground transport is to make the vehicles like heavy duty vans that are taller to company the fact that centaurs are horse like and stand for their reasons. Would figure that this species would at least be able to kind of lay down while having their upper body still be upright, not the best way to explain it, vehicle would still have to be tall to walk into though which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to make the vehicle have less of a profile. Could be topless but that would kind of sucks when it rains or snows, maybe something like a convertible would work, having to be open to get into and then closed if needed once settled in. Kind of inconvenient but might work, make for an interesting looking cargo truck I suppose, engine would have to be more powerful to even move everything and the frame would have to be stronger as well. Having this come to tanks and other armored vehicles I feel like the modern design would just not cut it scaled up and thus be too much of a target and too hard to move around to be effective in combat or the overall wars they would have to be involved in. Things would probably be like half tracks and stick there if vehicles were to be used in more modern combat situations, being mostly used to carry supplies and troops around and if needed hunkered down with heavy weapon platforms like anti air or ground stuff. Suppose things like towed artillery would still be just as effectively used here just like how they were and are in real life, be a bonus that if the vehicle breaks down an individual would probably be able to tow it kind of like how horses were used early on before vehicles became better. Those in the mountains would probably really favor having permanent artillery and AA gun emplacements overlooking their biggest rivals in the plains. Actually talking about anti air and I do not even know if aircraft would be feasible to a centaur like being, could not even find anything about that kind of question on Google.

Airships would be feasible I suppose, though once good enough weapons come along to bring them down that is pretty much the end of that story since without weaponized aircraft continuing to improve the AA weapons that bring them down do not need to get better either unless they serve another purpose. Early heavier than air flight would pretty much be only theoretical and pulled off with small craft that could be thrown by hand and propelled for a little bit on their own or with a motor. But lifting a grown member of this species is pretty much not going to be possible until really strong engines come around to lift heavy weight. By that time electronics would probably be starting to take off and aerial warfare would have to be through the use of drones. This would probably mean that drones would be developed quite a bit before manned heavier than air aircraft flight is possible. Though I have to consider that the higher gravity and increased drag caused by the thicker atmosphere is going to be a problem that using what I know of aircraft pretty much means more fuel and some maintenance for everything to go business as usual. If drones did take off then AA weapons have a reason to be apart of the warfare scene being improved to try and have an advantage over whatever the drones could do. Thinking about what heavier than air aircraft would look like designed around a centaur like creature kind of makes my mind go blank. Having bulky aircraft is pretty much a no go, maybe a fighter jet design might be possible though one of this species would take up the entire cockpit area. With drones already taking up the role of combat I doubt the species would want to go backwards risking lives anyways. Should figure that piloting something like cargo planes would be what manned flight would be used for outside of the fighting. If helicopters were to be a thing they would have to be made to look like what the heaviest lifting helicopters we have in reality are and if transporting individuals they would not be able to hold many. Thus here big helicopters would be more of a luxury form of travel to show off the obscene amount of currency one has to throw around.

Figure with this in mind the plains would have the best land equipment followed up by a decent air force, river craft would be the best thing of a navy they could possibly muster. Those in the mountains would have the best fortifications with just decent land and air forces with no navy at all. Of course those on the coast would have the best navy and if able to use that navy to transport aircraft probably the best air force as well but would be hampered by having not much in the way of ground control. The independent cities would probably try to be the average one balancing all that they have out. Other than that the bank would probably have a weak ground force that would be called security and when the colonies break away they would probably squeeze in a merchant marine type of group to protect their assets. Keep things vague enough like that since going into a bunch of different hierarchy branches would kind of take forever and not be much fun. This little ending bit is pretty much showing off how story like the balance of power is amongst the biggest powers. Know that I am missing a lot of things that I could have covered but for now I am kind of getting lost so inspiration will come when it comes.

[Ferret Civilization]

Well I seem to have really stalled out this time around, I guess I was not happy with what I was doing. Though I still want to keep world building and continuing with this process. Suppose that means I should go back and fill out something that I have already gone over. You know, filling out the constructed language thing for my Ferret species would be nice. Actually be able to make up some words with meaning instead of badly using my poor English skills to try and describe or name things that I have already done in past RP works. Might give me a will to try and RP more even though not much is going on that way Nationstates side it seems. So, getting a shovel, I will keep this thread open for anyone who wishes to humor me along this long and slow journey. Going back to my brief language construction part of my ramblings I see that I tried to go for 43 consonants and 25 vowels. I will be solely using Wikipedia and their IPA chart and pages to get a list of the most basic sounds and their IPA symbols to build up a language from there.

Glottal
Glottal plosive/stop ʔ: Interesting can be transcribed as an apostrophe and I think I have seen many jokes on the overuse of this for making words. Another thing that I think I can use is the T-glottalization Wikipedia helpfully links to and discusses, if trying to pronounce as FT Nationstates calls it universal English words this is a possible thing to just, mention or something.

Voiceless glottal affricate ʔ͡h or ʔ͜h

Voiceless glottal fricative/transition/aspirate h: Can be considered a voiceless vowel, I take away it is because of how it is used in real life, here I would try to say that there would be a difference however slight.

Voiced glottal fricative/Breathy-voiced glottal transition ɦ: Interesting that I could try to make this two separate phones depending on if it is fricative or breathy voiced with vowels if I get this one right. Most likely keep it together.

Creaky-voiced glottal approximant ʔ̞ or ʔ̰: It is an intervocalic allophone of a glottal stop in many languages, something I would want to differentiate here hopefully.

Pharyngeal
Epiglottal/Pharyngeal plosive/stop ʡ

Voiced epiglottal affricate ʡ͡ʢ: Continue to overuse interestingly because it is to me but, Wikipedia says that it is not reported in any language but then lists examples of possible use. Starts with the epiglottal stop ʡ and releases with the voiced epiglottal fricative ʢ, will keep it open to possible use here.

Voiceless pharyngeal fricative ħ: Described as a whispered voiceless glottal fricative h.

Voiced pharyngeal fricative/approximant ʕ: The IPA does not really distinguish the difference between the fricative and approximant, for this made up language I could go for it since with the sole place of articulation in this whole language will be the back area of the mouth and throat a difference would be, well, distinguished. The approximant is transcribed as either ʕ̞ or ɑ̯ for it being described as a semivocalic equivalent of a open back unrounded vowel ɑ. A sound that I have also set myself up to be able to use when I get to the vowels. It will also have an interesting near sounding real life phone so, yay?

Voiced epiglottal/pharyngeal tap/flap ʡ̆ or ʢ̆: First case of a phone not having a dedicated IPA symbol for me apparently because it is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language. Close example is an intervocalic voiced allophone of the otherwise voiceless epiglottal stop ʡ in Dahalo.

Voiceless epiglottal/pharyngeal trill/fricative ʜ

Voiced epiglottal/pharyngeal trill/fricative ʢ: Interesting in that there are few that distinguish between the pharyngeal and epiglottal forms. I would want to keep that in the cards here as well.

Uvular
Voiced uvular nasal ɴ and pre-uvular ɴ̟: Wikipedia calls this rare, though it is the first case for me that the examples start having a pre that places the sound between the uvular and velar. Because I am possibly using the velar manners along side the uvular ones I could add these sounds in. Could be hard for an outsider to distinguish between words spoken or something like that.

Voiceless uvular plosive/stop q and pre-uvular q̟

Voiced uvular plosive/stop ɢ and pre-uvular ɢ̟: Wikipedia on this one, unsurprisingly, also interesting. They call it rare, then actually give a reason why this is the case as uvular consonants typically are a retracted tongue root while stops are typically an advanced tongue root which is a physically impossible combination even for this made up species. Real life uses the voiced uvular fricative ʁ as the counterpart instead, here I will try to avoid that. Not sure how to explain this sound but keep it as an option.

Voiceless uvular affricate q͡χ or q͜χ and pre-uvular q̟͡χ̟

Voiced uvular affricate ɢ͡ʁ or ɢ͜ʁ: Wikipedia does not mention a pre-uvular form here, does not mention much of the affricates it seems for this manner and place of articulation.

Voiceless uvular fricative χ and fricative trill χ and voiceless uvular trill ʀ̥ at same time: Apparently a lot of real life examples of the fricative are more like the fricative trill instead. So here just like with the pre-uvular case I have the possibility to have three similar sounding phones that in my language would be considered strongly different if I am doing this right.

Voiced uvular fricative ʁ and unofficial approximant ʁ̞: One of the guttural R sounds, the fricative and approximant are considered interchangeable, again something I could separate here.

Voiced uvular tap/flap ɢ̆ or ʀ̆: Another phone with no IPA symbol with no known phoneme in any language. The ʀ̆ is used if it a single contact trill from the voiced uvular trill ʀ and ɢ̆ for an actual tap and flap if I got Wikipedia right. Another thing to possibly have a distinguishing phone set for.

Voiceless uvular trill ʀ̥

Voiced uvular trill ʀ: Only thing I got is that I learned that in real life varieties have shifted the sound to a voiced uvular fricative ʁ or a voiced uvular approximant ʁ̞.

Voiced uvular lateral approximant ʟ̠: Here Wikipedia mentions that the ʟ̠ can also represent the pharyngeal or epiglottal lateral approximant, something that they say is physically possible but the IPA has judged impossible. This would be the most wild thing to go for as it actually goes out of the bounds of real life but I could go for it.

velar
Voiceless velar nasal ŋ̊

Voiced velar nasal ŋ: Here Wikipedia mentions that there are pre-velar forms of this sound, though that will being going a little too far forward for me, they also have post-velar. Though with that they describe it in the same way as a pre-uvular so I am going to assume that because there is no word for that space in between uvular and velar that the post-velar and pre-uvular are interchangeable and the sound there would be the same.

Voiceless velar plosive/stop k: Here I find that this sound has varieties that can really bump up my number of possibly usable consonants that I did not think I considered in the past. For now I think I will stay with just using the plain version since some varieties involve processes not possible for my species.

Voiced velar plosive/stop ɡ

Voiceless velar affricate k͡x or k͜x

Voiced velar affricate ɡ͡ɣ or ɡ͜ɣ: Wikipedia says that it is not reported in any language but can be considered as an allophone of voiced velar plosive ɡ, like I have said before, here it will be different.

Voiceless velar fricative x: This sound also has a list of varieties associated with it, keeping with the plains for now.

Voiced velar fricative ɣ

Voiced velar approximant ɰ: Another case where this sound can be considered the semivocalic counterpart of the close back unrounded vowel ɯ. So that gives up to two ‘and sometimes y’ situations that I could take advantage of. Though I will also be using that vowel, I might just want to keep it separate.

Voiceless velar lateral affricate k͡ʟ̝̊

Voiced velar lateral affricate ɡʟ̝

Voiceless velar lateral fricative ʟ̝̊

Voiced velar lateral fricative ʟ̝: Wikipedia does not give much besides some interesting facts about how the affricate and fricative sounds are used in real life languages with the caveat that they might be considered more pre-velar than velar. Here of course they would be velar but I did not want to repeat that. This sound also has no dedicated IPA symbol so just going with what Wikipedia gives me to represent it.

Voiced velar lateral approximant ʟ

Voiced velar lateral tap ʟ̆: Another no IPA symbol because the one example real life language is just a short enough voiced velar lateral approximant ʟ to call it a tap. You can guess I will call it more pure here if I can get away with it.

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This far into the list gives me 48 consonants, a lot more than I thought I would have to work with in the past. However this only covers pulmonic consonants and I have an IPA chart that lists the non-pulmonic that I can also possibly use to give me even more consonants. So continuing with a list.

Non-pulmonic consonants
Epiglottal/pharyngeal ejective ʡʼ

Uvular ejective stop qʼ: This sound gives me an interesting case when it comes to the real life example varieties given. While I can not do a labialised or palatalised form there is the option to have a pharyngealized version qˤʼ.

Uvular ejective affricate q͡χʼ: Considered an allophone with qʼ in all real life examples, differences here still matter.

Uvular ejective fricative: χʼ

Voiced uvular implosive ʛ

Voiceless uvular implosive ʠ: Actually had an IPA symbol that was withdrawn.

Velar ejective stop kʼ

Velar ejective affricate kxʼ: Same situation as with the uvular stop and affricate.

Velar ejective fricative xʼ

Velar lateral ejective affricate kʟ̝̊ʼ

Back-released velar click ʞ: Interesting history with this one since it was a click that was considered to be velar before research showed that the researchers were putting the same click into different categories. Given the real life examples of how clicks are used a velar click is impossible as there would be no room for an air pocket to generate an influx of air. Though Wikipedia goes on to say velar clicks are possible in the sense that the release sequence of the tongue closures can be reversed. Thinking about trying to say I could play it straight, I am more likely to just stay with avoiding clicks.

Voiced velar implosive ɠ

Voiceless velar implosive ƙ

Co-articulated consonants
Voiceless uvular–epiglottal plosive q͡ʡ: My one possible coarticulated consonant.

Other consonants
Voiceless nasal glottal approximant h̃: A nasalized approximant, apparently some real life examples deal with rhinoglottophilia. Quite a word for a connection between the glottal and nasal articulations. Interesting Wikipedia says it is rare but some languages distinguish between the oral and nasalized versions of this sound which is what I will do if I end up wanting to use this sound at all.

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So that gives me 16 more consonants to use to add up to a total of 64 consonants in total, way more than I had thought I would have had at my disposal before. Well that leaves me with just getting the vowel sounds which will be a lot shorter of a list since I am sticking with just using the back most of the vowels on the IPA chart that have to be unrounded.

Vowels
Close back unrounded vowel ɯ: While there is no Wikipedia article on it there is also a near-close back unrounded vowel ɯ̽ that I could use.

Close-mid back unrounded vowel ɤ

Mid back unrounded vowel ɤ̞ or ʌ̝: No dedicated IPA symbol for this vowel since it is in between the close-mid back unrounded vowel ɤ and open-mid back unrounded vowel ʌ and no real life language distinguishes between all three sounds. Here I once again will be trying to, especially since I am giving myself less vowels to work with.

Open-mid back unrounded vowel ʌ

Open back unrounded vowel ɑ

---

Here I only find myself with 6 vowels that I can use since I realized I should probably avoid compressed vowels with the restrictions I gave myself. That only gives me 6 monophthongs and 30 diphthongs to use. Seems like this will end up being a lot different than the generalizations that past me were making up. But for now I have a simple list of sounds that can be at my disposal and actual usable symbols to take advantage of for the start of this part of the project. Will try to keep things more compartmental to make things easier for myself to refer back to so this seems like a nice stopping place before I figure out how I want the sounds to become bigger sounds.

[Ferret Civilization]

Already telling past me to hold up there even though I just relatively got started again. I was thinking about my reasoning for only picking the back unrounded vowels, while I was consistent with my not having the ability to effectively pronounce labial or coronal consonants and keeping that in mind with sticking solely to unrounded vowels I did not stay consistent with why I picked only using back vowels and using other manners of articulation that involve the more front parts of the mouth. Something that if I was to make consistent would make a bunch more vowel noises possible for this language to have widespread use of. That did not really appeal to me since thinking about it the inventory I have is rather large already and that is making me kind of indecisive on what sounds I would use for making syllables and words. So I decided it would probably be better to cut down on the number of consonants at my disposal instead and finally get a concrete phonology chart instead.

Phonology

Place / Manner	Velar	Pre-Uvular Post-Velar	Uvular	Pharyn­geal Epi­glottal	Glottal
Nasal	ŋ̊ / ŋ	ɴ̟	ɴ
Plosvie	k / ɡ	q̟̟ / ɢ̟	q / ɢ	ʡ	ʔ
Ejective	kʼ		qʼ	ʡʼ
Implosive	ɠ̊ / ɠ		ʛ̥ / ʛ
Co-Articulated Plosive			q͡ʡ	q͡ʡ
Pharyngealized			qˤʼ		ʔˤ

Vowels	Back Unrounded	Diphthongs
Close	ɯ	ɯɤ / ɯɤ̞ / ɯʌ / ɯɑ
Mid-Close	ɤ	ɤɯ / ɤɤ̞ / ɤʌ / ɤɑ
Mid	ɤ̞ or ʌ̝	ɤ̞ɯ / ɤ̞ɤ / ɤ̞ʌ / ɤ̞ɑ
Mid-Open	ʌ	ʌɯ / ʌɤ / ʌɤ̞ / ʌɑ
Open	ɑ	ɑɯ / ɑɤ / ɑɤ̞ / ɑʌ

Took me a while to figure out how to make a table here but, despite the weird gaps it creates I am actually proud of this after working for an hour to just get this together. I decided to stick the pulmonic, non-pulmonic, and co-articulated consonants along with that pharyngealized sounds together in one chart since it seemed small enough to warrant doing that. Also decided five vowels seemed nice enough and listed out their diphthong combinations. Though one problem I had was trying to combine the two co-articulated cells together, so I just repeated the uvular-epiglottal plosive, it is not two separate sounds here. There, a phonology to actually work with instead of trying to keep everything hypothetical and vague. Only thing I am missing is how to romanize the lettering to have it be more, well, to have it be better understood how it is pronounced in English. But I suppose that can come at another time.

Now that I have the basic sounds the idea is to set up bigger sounds, in this case syllables. Starting off on the syllable structure where typically one has the onset of consonants, the nucleus vowel or syllabic consonant, and the coda consonants at the end. Here I would want to keep things as small and simple as possible just to keep a handle on how things continue to go from here. So a syllable would simply be a consonant and a vowel, with all the consonants I have to use being solely consonants and vowels just sticking to the vowel part. A nice open syllable CV structure, that gives me a possible 550 one syllable words that I can use to start making roots out of. For now I still can not work myself up to trying to definite words yet, especially here since while I did nothing I worked hard on it.

Almost forgot one thing, thinking it over I will keep the velar click ʞ as a sound used by this species. However, this sound will not be used in any syllables or words and if I got it right it would not be apart of the official phonology of the language. Instead it would be a sound made that serves a purpose and has a commonly understood meaning and it is left as that.

[Ferret Civilization]

I have gone and let this sit idle for almost another month, been trying to work on making words, the main problem I have is trying to come up with all the basic words that people come up with to describe everything. That and I am also kind of unsure how to even portray the information once I get it onto here since I do not want it to just be a list that is just as boring as the walls of text that I seem to have been able to put out at one point in time without a whole lot of actual information in them. I do not want to swing in the other direction either and I do not want to let this sit for long periods of time if I do not have to have it be that way.

So thinking of another part of language is what would the written part of it look like and that was something that I was able to work a little bit quicker on. Writing systems are kind of funny in that they can be even more open to a variety of different forms attested to in real life. First off was how were the sounds going to be portrayed in writing, would there be an alphabet that I am used to in English for 22 different consonants and 25 different vowels or go for a syllabary that would require an astounding 550 different symbols for writing. I decided to be a little bit logical in my desire with wanting a more syllabary system and needing an alphabet system and luckly real life has already provided enough examples to get its own name along with a Wikipedia page. The abugida or seemingly less creative alphasyllabary writing system seems like a perfect match for something that I would want to work towards.

With that I would have to make 47 unique symbols for writing that would be combined to make 550 unique symbols for the whole system. Now I just had to come up with those symbols and the arts are not my strong suit. For some reason I recalled that I am using a base 8 counting system for this species and I thought of circles. So the first thing I did was divide a circle into 8 pieces like a pizza pie and figured, you know what, I am actually happy with that. While it did not create any symbols for my consonants or vowels it gave me symbols for numbers. From those symbols I decided to carve the circle in half and rotate it every eights to get eight symbols and repeat that with a third and quarter of a circle. That gave me a total of 24 shapes to use for my writing system. I did not have to use all 24 and was fine with just using 22 of them and having the logical conclusion that two more shapes could be made to fit into the pattern for any possible addition sounds be okay. With that I needed to figure out how to represent the vowels and incorporate them into the consonants. I still stuck with circles. At first I was going to try and align them along the lines of a circle cut into five parts but why would that occur when base 8 is being used and the writing derived from that goes around the circle carved into eighths. So I aligned half sized circles along a circle cut into four with on circle being aligned right in the center. That gave me the 5 needed symbols for my single vowels and I figured I could combine those secondary smaller circles to get the dipthongs.

So now I just needed to figure out what sounds go to what symbols and this stumped me, so I just used a random number generator to do that for me since I do not think there was a need for a logical reason. With that I got a writing system, which I can share, and is better than that attempt in the GE&T subform.

0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
ɢ̟ - ŋ - q̟̟ - q͡ʡ - ʛ - ʔˤ - kʼ - ʛ̥
ŋ̊ - ʡ - ʔ - ɠ̊ - ɴ - ɴ̟ - k - ɠ
qʼ - ʡʼ - ɢ - qˤʼ - ɡ - q - N/A - N/A
ɑ - ʌ - ɯ - ɤ - ɤ̞ - ɢ̟ɤ - qˤʼɯ - ʛ̥ɤ̞ʌ

The bottom three on the right are examples of what a, whatever it would be called that represents a syllable and possibly a word at the same time. One problem that hit me after coming up with all that and starting to write this down was how would one distinguish between which vowel comes first since ʛ̥ɤ̞ʌ and ʛ̥ʌɤ̞ would be written down the same. Real life once again kind of saves me here with abjad even though Wikipedia tells me all real life examples are pretty much impure. Suppose that I center a dot in one of the secondary vowel circles to indicate which one comes first, that would solve the problem outright in my opinion.

With that out of the way I suppose I can reiterate that this writing system like English will be read left to right and top to bottom. And with that I think I have a rather complete writing system, I can always add more if I have to. Hopefully tomorrow I will try to start posting little segments of what I have going on with the lexicon.

[Ferret Civilization]

Before I begin with starting up a lexicon self discussion I realized I kind of missed something big when it came to my writing system. That thing was punctuation and the other miscellaneous symbols that make up a keyboard outside the letters and numbers. Right now I will have to skip over that and come back to it next time as I have to look up how punctuation and those other symbols generally came about so I am just writing this down as a reminder to myself to get on that while getting on with the lexicon as well.

Getting on with actually trying to start a lexicon and my struggle to figure out how to do that. I figure I would have started off building the language from the ground up from when it started being spoken to contemporary times. But how to go about picking those starting words, being an English speaker and looking into etymology of the words that I am using right now brings me to proto Indo-European. Thankfully Wikipedia has a whole page on just the vocabulary alone, but that proto language is not the only one to have come about and I would figure that proto languages would not all have the same words since not everything is located in the same place as the speakers of the individual languages. So while I can have a groundwork it should be up to me to decide what would be culturally important enough to merit words for. That ends up being a lot to be realistic so I suppose I should break it down like I planned and build up haphazardly until it just works from there.

That leads me to how should I try to categorize the words that I want to create and share. Well there are the parts of speech, nouns and verbs seem to be pretty popular, but for whatever reason I decided to start with pronouns thinking that would be a simple thing to talk about and get out in a day. I was wrong about that and ended up coming up with a lot of incoherent babble about pronouns that I would use. I will try to make this a little more coherent and nice for the random reader and bots.

First thing I should note going into picking pronouns is something I, not surprisingly, forgot about just like with my writing system and this time around it was ergativity. See, I only know English, and a lot of constructed language help sites for writers really try to hint at learning another language so one does not end up recreating their own native tongue. I went in thinking about should I try to distinguish when the pronoun is being used as the subject or the object and I did not think about the order since I thought having the word order already planned out was all I needed. However I it hit me thanks to watching Artifexian that I was going to select using a nominative-accusative alignment which using his example is “She likes her” with she being the subject or agent and her being the object or patient. That is with a subject verb object word order that English uses and I picked going in reverse object verb subject word order. That would mean with a nominative-accusative alignment the Artifexian example if I got it right would be “Her likes she” which sticking with the English word order seems like it would be an ergative-absolutive alignment. In my word order an ergative-absolutive alignment with the object verb subject word order would go back to being, “She likes her.” Ended up confusing me but after a day I think I got it right, though thankfully I made this thread to work out my world building thoughts so I could come back later and if someone has not decided to take the time out of their day to help me then I could correct myself for some potential future reader to see and maybe learn from or something. There are other alignments that could help me out like the tripartite where the subject as a subject and agent is marked differently along with the patient or direct where the subject, agent, and patient are all marked the same. When it comes to English we have nominative-accusative cases for our pronouns, however we do not have the accusative case for our nouns. Instead our pronouns get a special word called oblique. As much as I should probably be against it for all the hardcore constructors of language I will have that system be the same for this language with there being pronouns split for the subject and object of a sentence. Keeping the nominative-accusative alignment as well, a direct translation would look ergative-absolutive for the simple example I took but I think it will be fine.

With that out of the way I now have two personal pronoun cases to work with and I can start filling out the rest of the possible personal pronoun divisions. A good starting point being how to divide how the speaker, addressee, and referenced or first, second, and third person for clear communication. For my language in work I will have all three persons be part of this language and avoid homophony so all the persons are different words. However when it comes to the persons part of pronouns that is not as far as I can divide it and I will go further. Starting with separating the third person from a proximate and an obviate to distinguish between two third person pronouns being used in the same sentence or line of communication. Going back to Artifexian to lean on I could possibly go further by including another obviate that would further differentiate if multiple individuals are being referenced in one sentence all with third person pronouns. But I will take his advice and not go that far, English gets by just fine not distinguishing at all so taking it one step further is fine by me.

Moving along from there is how to divide pronouns based of number, I am not going to have number cases for my nouns so I will stick with the basic singular and plural. Seems simple but there is more possible divisions, with clusivity being an example. I will go all out with a minimal-augmented system for dividing up my plural pronouns. Such that first plus first, first plus second, first plus third, and first plus second plus third will all be different words. Oh and to the clever reader who wonders what first plus first person even is, for this language I am going to consider it like the English royal we that only the leader of a group uses that gets incorporated when the species converges together. I thought about dividing further to differentiate which third person is being used which I can not see as many situations that would require words being made for it. Suppose I can get by for the moment and see where I end up. I will however keep going forward with clusivity into the second person to divide a second plus another or more seconds and a second plus third. Of course third person plural can not really be inclusive and exclusive, supposedly if someone was clever enough they could work with the obviation to try something but I am not clever.

What else can be used to divide up pronouns, a lot still, I am intentionally avoiding gender both the popular Europe sex based and the rest of the world examples of non-sex based gender distinctions. One thing that I have used while writing this is impersonal or as the Wikipedia page on English pronouns charts it as generic pronouns. Examples are using the word one as a pronoun or a generic you or they in English. Here I could have a separate word for an impersonal second and third person singular and plural pronouns. Going with that Wikipedia page for a moment there are also interrogative pronouns to consider, English has a personal and non-personal who / whom and what respectively. In my language I could create four separate words using translating to who for the subject and whom for the object with two new words for the non-person subject and object interrogative. Though if I am avoiding gender distinctions why would I have a separate person and non-person interrogative pronouns. The third person pronoun refers both to he and she along with the pronoun it so for this language who and what would be the same word. What as a determiner is a different story for now.

There of course is still a lot of different ways to keep dividing up pronouns to fit all kinds of situations. I feel good with what I have, which cuts off English’s reflexive and genitive cases. I also cut out the reciprocal and relative pronouns since I think I can work without them. Stepping back to the indefinite pronouns besides impersonal I could include a negative modifier that could act like no one and none. Other than that I will see how this works out before I feel like I have to make this made up language more like English. With that I have divided my person and interrogative pronouns into subject and object. First person into a singular and four plurals, second person into a singular, two plurals, and an indefinite, third person into two singulars, one plural, and an indefinite, along with an interrogative that I could try to divide into singular and plural. English gets by without doing that but as of right now English also has way more pronouns than I do at the moment.

I could now try and select the sounds that would be used for these words but I tried to randomly and logically do that, I was not happy with either way so at the moment I will just leave this as a hard draft. That way if something changes I will not have to rework something that I put effort into. While I work on trying to get myself past that roadblock there are plenty of more words out there that need to be made for an effective lexicon. This thread is going to pick up yet another layer of dust in the mean time however.

[Ferret Civilization]

When I moved on to another part of speech to work on I wanted to try and select another one that seemed like it could be small in the amount of possible words so determiners was my next choice. Looking up determiners I realized I forgot to consider demonstratives in my pronouns. Then I realized that when it came to the third person that would mean he, she, and it when referring to people that comes logically enough to me as an English speaker but what about when it comes to it. The third person proximate and obviate can both mean it, English has this and that when it comes to both demonstrative pronouns and determiners. At first I was thinking that my language could completely lack demonstratives but that category of word is too helpful in communication to try and cut out in my opinion. So if I were to use my two third person proximate and obviate to mean this and that as well as he/she/it how do I handle the word it. I could just have it not exist as a concept, with the proximate meaning close he/she/it and the obviate being farther he/she/it. Suppose that could work, thinking of examples using it and replacing them with this or that seems kind of wonky but I only know English so what can I say about wonky language lexicon. Since English had a third further out demonstrative yon I think I can actually go for a three third person singular pronouns so there would be this, that, and yon along with the plural these, those, and yonder. That would mean having three third person plural pronouns as well in this case. I think I will go for it.

One rather wild thought I had is how I would consider the demonstratives when it came to the senses. This, that, and yon are all related to distance and from what I understand relies on visual cues. It is not a hard rule or probably even a rule at all, I am just trying to set something up here to get a point across. This species that I have in their environment would rely more on smell, going by an older post here smells stick around a local area that they are made for long periods of time. So what if this referred to something close as well as to something recent, whereas that could also be something right on top of this but older, and yon being also on top of this and that distance wise but the oldest in relation to smell. Kind of a poor example since I know you can apply that to English with smell this or smell that. What I think would be different with the English smell this/that is the smell usually is not coming from the same place, and here the smell could be coming from the same thing because smell lingers longer so smelling this could possibly give smells that do come from different places. Of course for this language I would probably have it include and when writing it be solely of distance of sight as trying to incorporate how distance of time would convey distance of sight is a little too alien for me.

Moving on for a moment from pronouns let me try to get on with what the determiners would be like. First up I will definitely want a definite and indefinite article that is the English the and a. This is to fit in with the fact that I have indefinite pronouns for the most part. However I would also like to have a separate definite article solely for proper nouns, since I know I am going to end up with proper nouns. I was thinking that it would be used for place names but Wikipedia mentions that Māori uses them for person names as well. Which thinking about it, if I was taking nouns to make names, having the distinction of the articles could be helpful so I might do that. With that going with the Wikipedia page on articles I will still have to think of how I want to handle negatives so I will continue to leave that open for future me to figure out.

With that I go back to the demonstratives, this time for the determiners. English also uses the same words as the pronouns, this and that. This is where I had to really look up what the difference is between demonstrative determiners and pronouns. The pronoun of course replaces the noun while the determiner modifies the noun. Using the same words like English does would be easy but I do not want to do that and instead think about the whole smell thing some more. Maybe the pronouns should be the sight heavy side of the demonstratives while the determiner could be the smell side of it. Still trying to make sense of this concept. Alright let me try and expand upon the idea using apples. If a person goes, “Do you want apples?” and the other person only wanted one apple they could use the person pronoun “I want this/that/yon” picking out an apple. But the person replying could use the determiner “I want this/that/yon apple” which in this case would refer to the smell or age of the apple being picked itself. So one apple could be both ‘this’ as in closest and ‘yon’ as in the oldest at the same time. I could be using all the words wrong but I am liking the concept. I wonder if that means I could use the demonstrative determiner next to the pronoun as in ‘yon this’. With this replacing the word apple I think it would be grammatically correct by English standards.

Now I go to the interrogative which I was sightly more prepared for. With my interrogative pronoun I mashed what and who together to fill in the place of an unknown noun. In this case the rules are the same as the with the demonstratives, the determiner modifies the noun so that there is more clarity when it comes to filling in an unknown part of a sentence. Such as “What is this?” compared to “What movie is this?” I could get away with having these two parts of speech be the same word just like in English or separate, I do not really have a strong reason to go either way like I did with the whole demonstratives above. I think I will go with having them be separate words just because.

With that out of the way I think I covered the determiners I want to have, went much quicker than the pronouns so I will keep the dust at bay for another day. With three articles, three demonstratives, and one interrogative along with adding one more third person singular pronoun and two more plurals I am happy with this limited progress that I have been making.

[Ferret Civilization]

ɢ̟ - ŋ - q̟̟ - q͡ʡ - ʛ - ʔˤ - kʼ - ʛ̥
ŋ̊ - ʡ - ʔ - ɠ̊ - ɴ - ɴ̟ - k - ɠ
qʼ - ʡʼ - ɢ - qˤʼ - ɡ - q - N/A - N/A
ɑ - ʌ - ɯ - ɤ - ɤ̞ - ɤ̞ɤ - ɤɤ̞ - ɤ̞ɤ̞

So I decided to go back over the symbols that would represent the sounds and words of my language. When it comes to letters things will stay the same, I included the smaller circle when it comes to dipthongs to visually show which vowels is pronounced first. And while I do not have length officially part of the phonology of this language when it comes to reduplication I might shorten those possible two syllable words into one syllable words. That will only occur with reduplication and not be for unique words with their own meaning.

0000 - 0001 - 0002 - 0003 - 0004 - 0005 - 0006 - 0007
0000 - 0010 - 0020 - 0030 - 0040 - 0050 - 0060 - 0070
0000 - 0100 - 0200 - 0300 - 0400 - 0500 - 0600 - 0700
7777 - 1000 - 2000 - 3000 - 4000 - 5000 - 6000 - 7000

When it came to my number system I wanted to flesh it out a little more and it turned out I was not so happy with the original that I had when it came to the written numerals. At first I was thinking I would make the shape more like an asterisk with zero being represented by the upper half of the vertical line. But then I thought why would the numbers be angular lines only when the letters have curves. I could come up with a reason for it but I decided I would rather have my numbers involve curved lines as well. So I took the circle and divided it into eighths just like I had done for my original symbols but only keep the outer part of the circle after cutting up the pizza. I ended up liking that more but looking more up on how numbers and math works in written and spoken language when it came to the positional notion that I was going for it left a lot to be desired in terms of blank space. Not that big of a deal but looking at non-positional notion like the Roman numeral system got me thinking what if I incorporated something like that.

With that in mind I kept the positional notion system but each notional space would represent up to four digits as I tried to depict with my Microsoft Paint skills. With the inner most ‘circle’ being the singles to the outer most ‘circle’ being the thousands. Once 7777 is reached and goes over a new overall number symbols comes up so that the first on the left is the 0001 and the one of the right is the 0000 to read 10000. This is in octal, so in decimal that number is 4096.

Well, that is a restart to making symbols. I still have yet to come up with any punctuation or mathematical symbols like for plus, minus, multiply, divide, and such. Or how go about more complex numbers like π. Lookin all that up and there is just so much out there, I am definitely going to have to keep it basic moving along in the future. But for right now I suppose I have one thing I can talk about and that is deciding what numbers get words.

When it comes to American English we have unique words for the digits 0-9 that make up the decimal base 10 system. For this language I would want that the be the bare minimum here as well, with a unique word for the 0-7 digits that make up the octal base 8 system. When going above single digit numbers is where things start to get interesting, like I call the two digits 1 and 0 put together like 10, ten. I do not know about other real languages but I could also see that being said one zero. Or even with the decimal digits spoken those two numbers together could be five times two or six plus four. American English is kind of weird when it comes to the ten position, any digit above the 1 gets a -ty suffix, so ninety, eighty, seventy, and such. But we do not say twoty or threety, those get their own word of twenty and thirty. Of course there are linguistic reasons for this and language is not logical. Going on to the hundreds there are not unique words for those, instead one says the single place digit followed by hundred. One hundred can also be called a hundred to mean the same thing, just like with the next place up a thousand. Not when it comes to the tens place from what I have seen in my rather short life, a ten or a ten thousand, with those there is no a placed in front. Getting with even bigger numeral words I think this is where British English and American English split noticeably when it comes to what a million, a billion, and so on mean written out in digits. There is a limit though, above a trillion, while there are words usage really is not there since there is scientific notation to represent long strings of numbers into smaller numbers. Finally there is how to split up large strings of numbers, what I was taught was that commas separate every three digits. The singles place digit introduces a new word after the tens and the hundreds place with the words for the tens taking the middle digit in every three digit split and hundred being added after the leftmost digit in the three digit split. Of course when it comes to American English I have heard say eleven hundred to represent 1,100 which is another exception to the way numbers are spoken.

Now when it comes to how I want to make my language, how do I want strings of numbers to be spoken. When it comes to the singles place that gives me eight unique words for 0-7. From there I could say that 10 would simply be spoken as one zero, I could for a seven plus one, or I could make a unique word or affix like English does for above ten to be spoken like onety plus one. When it comes to the first option I like it but kind of feel like that would become cumbersome with big words and with the second option I feel like I would be in the same boat because 20 would be seven plus seven plus one which I could shorten by doing seven multiply two plus one or such. I do not really like the last option either since, I really do not know why it just does not sit right with me. I should probably remember that when starting out languages do not really have a need words for big numbers because people rarely count high numbers in day to day activities. Generalizations such as a lot, little, few, all, or much to convey numbers. With that in mind I actually do not feel bad about going with the first option. When it comes to writing out the digits there already is a separation of four going on so translation would be instead of 10,000 or 100,000 it would be 1,0000 or 10,0000 in this language. I could even include a spoken word for if there are two numeral symbols next to each other, kind of like how English uses and except have it used for where the comma separation would be if needed. One comma / and zero zero zero zero for example.

My octal numeral system is a little bit more fleshed out and I am slightly more happy with it, until I can find the time to write some more, thank you for your time with this even possibly more incoherent mess.

[Ferret Civilization]

Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one zero, and so on. When it comes to language those are the cardinal numerals that I focused on in the last post. There is of course, always more to add when it comes to how language communicates, within this vein of thought this would end up being the ordinal, distributive, multiplier numerals. When it comes to English ordinals that are not one, two, or three end in -th, however we also have another set that ends in -nary. Looking up what other people do when it comes to constructed languages it seems like tacking on an affix is the most straightforward thing to do. Interesting thing about the -th ending is that while it is used to represent ‘spatial or chronological’ as Wikipedia puts it, it also gets tacked onto fractions as in three fifths or five eighths. Though it is not universal with fractions either, since ½ can be called half and ¼ can be called a quarter or one fourth. One second, sounds like I am asking for you to wait a moment instead of half of something, and one first, mathematically incorrect when written out 1/1 to me because I was taught to always reduce which leads to just one. One in this example also goes by another name which is whole. With English we also deal with multipliers such as single, double, triple, and so on or we can add the -fold suffix onto the cardinal numeral which is less common in my experience. Official English takes the multipliers and adds the -ly suffix to make distributive numerals though as Wikipedia points out we get around this with cardinal numerals as well.

When it comes to my language my first thought was to just have cardinal numerals, one Redditor was clever to make it so depending on what side the numeral was to a noun would have it be either a cardinal or an ordinal. I thought that would be neat to copy but then I thought I could get away with affixing to make different numeral sets for different needs. In fact I would be quite happy to take all the different ways English splits numerals and do the same for this language, however I will go a step forward with differentiating the ‘spatial or chronological’ and fractions. Without the effects of another language influencing this one that I am making I feel like my rules would be more universal to all the numerals rather than just most of them. So I would have the equivalent of -th for ‘spatial or chronological’, -nary for ‘precedence or effect’, -fold for multipliers, -ly for distributive numerals, and some affix for fractions. Maybe not even an affix, a word in between two cardinal numerals might be just as fine, like one over two for ½. Would that be considered an infix? I guess that depends on how the punctuation of spacing plays out. But for now the numeral system is a little bit more fleshed out than from the last post.

You know when trying to look up all of these bits of information on Wikipedia and Google I did not put together that cardinal numerals were nouns, ordinals were adjectives, and that they used to be grouped together in their own part of speech. And with that I just remembered that once, twice, and thrice exist and had to look up what those were called. They are called multiplicative, which are considered adverbial genitives. With English we only have those three for multiplicatives, after thrice there is nothing more, suppose there really is not a need for it. Suppose I could have an affix for this case as well to further divide usage of my numerals. Seems like numerals are the one place that I do want as many words as possible for, thinking about it I had to look up what dozen referred to when it came to numerals and finally hit that English numerals Wikipedia which would probably have been helpful for past me. Collective numerals, English has pair and dozen when referring to groups. You probably guessed what I am going to do, another affix. That should cover even more of my numeral system, I will admit I also tried looking up other counting systems like uni, bi, tri but when it comes to that those are just taken from other languages translating to English cardinal numerals. My language does not get to take from other languages so rather than taking numerals from other languages to make unique sounding words mine would be straightforward and bland.