The Kikxotian Calendar

This goes way back to the beginning of Toúījāb Kīkxot. I one day I was biking and thinking as one does while biking dozens of kilometers a day in roughly memorized routes. A year can easily be divided into 13 months of 28 days, with one day to spare (most years). That day would probably have special meaning. What about a religion that views that as the day that their God takes a rest. You could have one set of believers that take that to mean that he isn't watching over them that day, removing them from his protection and therefore necessitating staying inside and being quiet. But then there could be a schism of people who saw that day as a gift from the God, a chance to let loose and party (even then I was aware that the concept of the calendar wasn't unique, my focus was on the religion elements, specifically the schism). Well that spiraled into what is TbKt today. Anyway, some key terms:

• Mīcorū "day"
• Mcurī "week"
• Qúutī "month"
• Wānay "year"

Days and years are the same length as on Earth. The Kikxotians divide the calendar into 14 solar months (which lines up with the 14 Shīyto; this was a recent change when I realized that 13*28=14*26), each named after common activities in them. I do not know what those are yet. The year begins and ends around the winter solstice. I decided on this (rather than spring) because winter is a dreadful time where people need a lot of help, so people need a lot of protection during it. Thus, he wants to be most rested for it, while people don't actually need that help in the booming times post harvest, near the end of his cycle. As far as what happens on this day, that depends on the sect. See, the original prophet said that Kikxo slept on that day but he didn't say what that meant. There was however, an understanding that you should be careful on that day, which turned into staying inside and not doing much of anything except sleep. The great schism happened a few hundred years later (about 1000 years before the "present"), when a new prophet declared that people had misunderstood Kikxo's will. He intended for people to rest like him, but that includes resting from fastidiously keeping every commandment. Many prophets and schisms later have resulted in the current practice which at the extremes is a day of absolute seclusion or a day of public hedonism. It's also apparently a day for sectarian conflict (in this case usually from the traditionalists who take advantage of Kikxo not looking to scare the reformists straight). Oh and leap years get 2 days of this "festival".

The weeks alternate between having 6 or 7 days, leaving each month with 26 days. The "extra" days are treated as minor festival days, where the devout like making extra sacrifices (and some sects even declare that Kikxo takes a nap on these days and acting accordingly). Market days vary based on location. This is an agricultural society, so people work most days and the length of weeks is less important than knowing when festivals (spread across the year) are.

 There are no fixed hours. Instead days are measured according to the relative position of the sun. They start with the morning (xōwok) at sunrise. From about 3 or so hours after sunrise to 3 or so hours after noon it's kīkobū. The late afternoon is lgīsa, which goes until about an hour before sunset. That time till the sky is completely dark is known as amkōq. Finally there is night (sāmaf) which is undivided until the next morning/day. In general, the Kikxotians are not fond of night or darkness, so there's not much nightlife that goes on. People go to bed (assuming it isn't too early) and wake up in the morning. If they wake up, they pray for protection from omūkaq (demons). Sometimes the early hours of night are known as thāxakh winagat (fire time), since it is customary to have a big fire in your house during that time. By analogy, the wee hours before or around dawn can be called thāxakh āwung (ash time), since the fire has mostly burned down by then (and āwung wīnig "ember" is too long). Note that this is one of the few uses of winag for fire, since it normally is the same as ash but obviously that doesn't work here.

So yeah, that's an overview of the Kikxotian calendar, which has since been adopted by their neighbors. Not too complicated, overall.

Īn Cōroj: A brief description of the World

I've been meaning to work on this for a while but keep getting busy (I started this in August 2020 apparently. But I'm finished with my first year and have a fairly lazy summer coming up, so I ope to do a fair bit of world building these next few months). Anyway, this is a whole bunch of background on the Kikxotian world so that the geography and context makes more sense for other posts. The core of this post was actually outlined in a reddit post I made around the end of September 2020, so I will copy and expand it from there. 

 The center of the kikxotian world (in a cultural sense, not a physical sense) is a very large bay. I've gone back and forth on it's actual size, but it's a few hundred miles across. A sea really. The Kikxotians live on the western side of this bay, with their core area being the area north of a major river up to the mountain range that separates this part of the continent from the rest of it, with their biggest city (usually the capital) on the coast just north of the delta. This is a region of rolling hills, grasslands and forests, not unlike the Midwest, California or the Western Cape. It's fairly Mediterranean in climate (but I'm not climatologist, so some things are just "a wizard did it"). These conditions prevail across the western subcontinent (since I guess it is that), though the further you get from the core kikxotian area, the more "barbaric" people get (but they're all basically relatives of TbKt), doing barbaric things like farming, being pastorialists and worshiping multiple gods who are suspiciously like the Shīyto. While I won't go into the full history of the Kikxotians here, it's thought that they basically moved into that region from the southwest some 1500-2000 years before.

I mentioned that there is a range of mountains cutting off the western part of the continent from everything else. These are very tall mountains, with a fairly inhospitalable plateau/desert near the top. Thus most travel outside the western subcontinent is done by boat. That being said, there are lots of people who live in the foot hills and lower plateaus of this mountain range. The most famous of these are the Be'oi kau Qqoi. They are shepherds, farmers (terrace and otherwise) and craftsmen. Some of their villages are on solid ground, however others are built directly in/on the cliffs. The most famous of their cities (in fact probably their only real "city") is near the headwaters of the big river, where there's some massive cliffs next to a water fall. Most of the city is on the plain, but some of it extends into the cliffs and up about 100 feet to the plateau above. There's even stairs carved directly into the rock going up to the top. Climatewise, this area is similar to the lowlands, though cooler and drier.

Going east from Kikxoland, you cross over many small to medium size islands. The largest of these is the home of the speakers of Knt, who are coastal fisherman, and their relatives. While in my head they are fairly tropical, really they are just wetter than Kikxotia, despite being at a similar latitude. I assume wind has something to do with this. Many of these islands are quite mountainous, with their own highland agriculturalists or hunter gatherer groups. I think the big island is actually a few thousand square miles, but I'd have to refer to the map again (actually it's not on the to-scale map yet, the scale of which I am still ambivalent about anyway. It's not projected either, though I bet I've made it to be mercantor).

 Keep going east and you'll reach another coast. This coast is littered with trading city states inhabited by the Mesin Uxlotsuz. Their core is centered around a delta which now that I look at it is probably a couple hundred miles further to the north of the Kikxotian capital. Imagine this area is quite a bit wetter an probably cooler than the kikxotian region. Chalk it up to that wizard again. Moving even more to the northeast, you hit a bunch of steppe.

As for all the other parts of that massive continent, I'm not really. I bet as you get north you eventually hit taiga and then tundra. There must be forests all over this continent as well, maybe especially to the southeast? A lot of really undefined things because I really just have this right now. 

There's another semi-defined continent to the south (at the nearest, a couple hundred miles from the northern continent). The northern part of this is home of Amt. They live on the coast, with a vast semi wet savanna to the south of them, ala the African Humid Period. Somewhere in this region is a set of highlands, where the Kélomèlo hail.   

 Head southwest from the main continent, crossing the ocean and you'll eventually reach another very large continent. Not much is known about this one yet, but it's the site of my next big project (an actual language family, among other things). The ocean is a lot easier to cross than the Atlantic, thanks to some nicely place islands.

And so there you have it, a very broad strokes description of the world. It's like the Mediterranean basically, which checks out since the kikxotians are basically space romans. Except not in space. But ancient Rome was defintely an influyence and something I use as a sanity check. As for my next posts, I need to do somethings on religion (Kikxotian or otherwise), put up some more profiles and maybe talk a bit about biology and this place's relationship with Earth. In fact, I can do a quick overview of that last one right now. This isn't Earth. However, it has the same size and location relative to its sun as Earth, which is important for the calendar system. Actually, I did a reddit post about the calendar today, I'll flesh that out tonight for here.