Chapter IV: Language, Semiotics, and Lore#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval: Everything in this chapter is a proposal built on the spine. The only canon here is the approved names (Selenne/Kethra, Theia/Sól, Hyperion/Surtr, Pandia/Máni, Ersa/Hati, Earth-of-the-songs), and the rule that the songs hold no history of Earth.

For the book and for AI actors: Kethrans speak Landspeech. In the book it is rendered as English, and that convention holds throughout. Dialect is shown through word choice and idiom, not through phonetic spelling.

4.1 Linguistic Dialects & Structural Grammar#

One language, many voices#

The Founders arrived speaking a shared common tongue, which the songs simply call "the common tongue", along with many home languages. The Silence narrowed this to the common tongue. Over 2,300 years it has become Landspeech, the language of all Kethra.

Grammar notes#

• Formal and informal "you". Landspeech has two:

  • ye is formal, used to strangers, superiors and in the courts.
  • thou is intimate, used to family, lovers and close comrades. It is also used as an insult to strangers, which makes it a challenge.
  • Crossing from ye to thou is a moment in a relationship. Frontier speech uses thou far more freely, and capital people hear that as presumption.

• Evidential marking in formal speech. Hallspeech marks how the speaker knows something, using fixed phrases:

  • "by song" means it is known from the Canon or tradition;
  • "by eye" means the speaker witnessed it;
  • "by word" means it is hearsay.

  A witness in court must choose. "He crossed the Line, by eye" is testimony. "By word" is rumour.

• Time words. People reckon time by days, moons (Pandia's months, even in the capital's daily speech), red seasons and years. "Three red seasons ago" means about three years.

Hand gestures#

4.2 Orthography & Written Scripts#

The Founders' Letters#

Landspeech is written in the Founders' Letters: a 26-letter alphabet, directly descended from the script of the Founders' records. It is written left to right, in upper and lower case. Spelling was standardised by the Royal Academy in AL 1712. Southspeech spellings ("Surtr" rather than a heartland spelling, for example) are officially tolerated.

Choir-notation#

The Cantorate's choir-notation is a system of neumes (small marks written over or beside text to show pitch and rhythm) that records how a verse is sung. It is written above the lines of Letters.

• A song text without its notation is considered incomplete, because the tune carries meaning.
• The songs preserve stress and melody, so choir-notation also preserves pronunciation. This is how Archival survives.
• Family songs in the Great Register are written in Letters with choir-notation.

Ilyr's archive marks#

Ilyr uses a set of access marks, one to five stylised keys, stamped on every document, door and data-store. To most people these are the most recognisable symbols of the Sanctum. The Sanctum also holds Founder data in Founder formats that very few can read. (Open: what the unread stores contain.)

Digital text#

• The Weave, Kethra's network, uses the Founders' Letters with standard extensions.
• Display convention: screens switch to red-night mode in the red season, with amber text on black, which is easier on the eyes under Hyperion.
• Public signage in the Crown is bilingual only in names. Official Crown signs say "Selenne". Frontier signs say "Kethra". Line ports print both, Selenne / Kethra, and the order depends on who paid for the sign.

Historical symbols and iconography#

4.3 Idioms, Sayings, and Cultural Slang#

Everyday idioms#

Words without an easy translation#

Insults#

Greetings and politeness#

4.4 Historiography & Core Eras#

How Kethrans know their past#

1. The Canon of the Songs: fragments of Earth-of-the-songs, the Leaving, the Crossing and the Founding. The songs hold no history of Earth: no nations, wars or dates, only images, names and grief. Everything before Landfall is known only through song. The Founding years (AL 0–41) survive in song plus a handful of objects and records (below). Those objects prove that a crossing happened; that it came from Earth is known only by song. Nobody can check the songs against Earth records, and the Oath forbids looking.
2. The Great Register: the Cantorate's archive of family songs and civil records. It is continuous from about AL 380.
3. The Ilyr Archive: Founder data-stores, many unreadable or sealed. Ilyr historians release findings slowly and selectively. Everyone suspects that Ilyr knows more than it says.
4. Archaeology, at the Seven Terraces, the Silence ruins, and the wrecks of the three ships' landers.

The first written entries#

The earliest surviving written record is the Landfall Tablet. It is a fused-metal plate from the Covenant's lander, inscribed in AL 0, and it lists the names of 1,106 people who died in the Crossing. It is kept in the Great Choir and is the Cantorate's most sacred object.

The earliest dated civil document is the Terrace Roll of AL 3, a census of the Seven Terraces.

The core eras#

The wars that shaped the world#

Calendars#

Year numbering. Everyone numbers years AL, "After Landfall". The dispute is over the kind of year.

The capital's solar calendar (the Crown Reckoning). 368 days in 12 months: eight months of 31 days and four of 30 (8 × 31 + 4 × 30 = 368). The year begins at the northern winter solstice, deep in the red-night season.

The frontier's moon calendar (the Hold Reckoning). Twelve moons: months of Pandia/Máni, alternating 30 and 31 days, which gives 366 days. That falls about 2 days a year behind the sun.

• When the drift is too great, the Holds Compact votes to insert a 13th month, the Wolfsmonth. It has happened on average every 15–16 years.
• The vote is political, since the timing sets tax dates, charter rents and festivals.
• Frontier moons are named, not numbered. In order through the southern year: the Red Moon (the red summer begins), Ember Moon, Ash Moon (the fires end), Dray Moon (the harvest haul), Frost Moon, Black Moon (the depth of the dark winter), Hunger Moon, Thaw Moon, Seed Moon, Sowing Moon, Green Moon and Hedge Moon (clearing the Hedge before the fires).

Dating letters. Crown letters are dated "14 Bloom 2314". Frontier letters say "the 14th of Sowing Moon, 2314 AL". A letter that uses both forms is usually from the Line.

4.5 Oral Folklore & Cultural Mythology#

Creation stories#

The capital (the Cantorate's teaching). The Mother, Theia, and the Father, Hyperion, made Selenne as a cradle for a people who would come from far away. They set her two daughters, Pandia the bright and Ersa the dark, to watch over her. When the people left Earth-of-the-songs, the Mother guided the three ships home. The Father withdrew so that the new people would not be burned, and he watches from far off. One day he will return in warmth: the Return, a time of plenty.

The frontier (Hold tradition). Sól drives her chariot across the sky, and a wolf is always at her heels. Máni, her brother, rides the night, and Hati the wolf chases him and catches him again and again, but never holds him. Out beyond the edge of the world waits Surtr the fire giant. Every red summer is his breath. One day he will come close, and the world will burn to its roots, as the emberscrub does, and grow again from what the fire leaves. The frontier's myth does not say whether people will be part of that regrowth.

Ilyr. The Sanctum teaches no creation story. Its custodians say, carefully, that Kethra is "a world we were given by chance and kept by care".

Legendary figures#

Campfire stories#

• The Dark That Listens. "Be quiet, or the Dark will hear." A nameless something out between the stars, listening for voices. It is the reason children are hushed on dark nights. It is also the Quiet Sky Accord told as a children's story. (The Dark is deliberately undefined. It must never be given a shape, a name or a link to anything in the saga.)
• The Fourth Ship. One of the four lost ships didn't vanish. It landed somewhere on Kethra, in the Wild, and its people went strange. It is told on the frontier, and hunted by fools.
• The Hedge Walker. A figure seen at the edge of the fields on red nights. Some tellers say it is a person who went into the Wild and came back unable to eat Earth food.
• The Singing Bore. On one night each year, the Thess tidal bore sings the Crossing Song as it travels upriver. Aletheia's children stay up to listen.
• The Unmapped Door. Somewhere in the Ilyr Archive is a door that must never be opened, because the way to Earth is behind it. Whether it exists is open.

Biases in the telling#

Guidance for AI actors#

• Choose ye or thou deliberately. The switch between them is drama.
• The phrases "by song", "by eye" and "by word" give formal speakers a natural way to hedge or to swear.
• "Door-seeker" is the most dangerous accusation you can make. Use it rarely, and only with consequences.
• The two creation stories can't both be comfortable. A capital character and a frontier character hear "the Father's coming" as a promise and a threat.
• Everything before Landfall is song. The Tablet and the landers prove a crossing, not where it came from. Characters may quote the songs of the green world as scripture, as poetry or as unreliable, but none of them can check. The songs contain no Earth history. Don't invent any for a character to recite.

Prepared by Claude.