Lore/Story The Fiosians Want Their Castle Back: A New Sellan History of Gavel

Ne Fios il an ti Éllan d'Aensaure Sento:
N'ITAESSÉLL IXRE LUDIEHI

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It has been a hot minute since I gave my last update, a minute so hot that few likely remember my name, face, or what I was even working on.

Hi! I'm hmtn. I make conlangs, and quite a few of them have been fanwork for this server. I've previously made a version of Ancient Wynnic and Orcish, both of which are linked in my description. Several years ago, at this point, I decided to sit down and take a crack at High Gavellian.

Now, this was High Gavellian. I wanted it to be good. I had a couple of projects under my belt, but I really wanted it to be my magnum opus. So I went and tinkered at it, more and more and more, and I got caught in a death-loop of ever-increasing skill and standards.

I finally finished High Gavellian.... sometime last year, I'd say? Except not quite. The project has grown like a weed, and it turns out that "High Gavellian" is more of a guideline than the name of a specific language. I've got a High Gavellian, and it is indeed my magnum opus, but I've also got quite a bit of other work I'd love to share!

I also have a concerning amount of private worldbuilding going on. I've fallen for the Tolkien trap. Turns out that, if you want to make a language (family), you've gotta have a timeline. You've gotta know who all your speaker populations are, where they are, where they're going, and why they're going there if you want to know what words they're telling one another.

And so my Gavellian timeline has become a monster. I tried to keep it canon-compliant, but at this point the label "canon-compliant" has so many asterisks attached to it that it's completely meaningless.

This is a fan-timeline, not of an objective Gavellian history, but instead of the history of Gavel as seen through its dominant culture - the Sellans.

One might recognize this alternate name for the Villagers from the wonderful work of @Trashiejunkyard whence I borrowed it. But beyond that our two worldbuilding projects aren't connected to one another or anything. I just thought that the name was nice. You might see other nods to Wartorn in this timeline, on occasion, but again they're just nods.

This timeline is a compilation of several different texts written by Corkian scholars, for typically human audiences. Most of the source materials were originally written in Modern Standard Sellan (Si'é Sélliesen), a common lingua-franca in Human-Sellan relations, but whenever possible I instead used Corkish Fruman editions, as they often contained more explanations for various bits of jargon.

Also, this whole project started because of my conlanging, so I'll occasionally interrupt the timeline to talk about the languages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What can I say, I've got an interest.

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Table of Contents​

5: Age of the League
These are only predictions. The list below is subject to change as new chapters are posted.

1. The Gylian Anarchy (Below)
2. The First Republic
3. The One Where The Fiosians Lose Their Castle
4. The First Breath of Gavel
5. Jēsen and its Dialects
6. Warring States Period
7. Seven Princes to Midnight
8. War of the Two Gylias
9. And Then There Were Three
10. The Gathering of the Sellans

6-1: Dynasty of the Mace and Crown
[TBA]

6-2: Seven Principalities Period
[TBA]

6-3: Dynasty of the Eastern Wind
[TBA]

6-4: Blueflower Period
[TBA]

6-5: Dynasty of the Great Forge
[TBA]

6-6: Dynasty of the Endless Lake
[TBA]

7: The Gavellian Revolution
[TBA]

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A Gal Liassin Siosfios
THE GYLIAN ANARCHY​

I. In Medias Res (In the Middle of Things)
And the Elders were cast down, and so it was that, in their dying wrath, the splendors of the 4th Age would follow them. The Heart of the World would be forever lost, hidden and broken, remembered only in the hearts of Sellans and in scant drops of holy blood.

Regardless of the historicity of Sellan myth, it is undeniable that a great disaster befell the land, and that it was put to waste. In the heart of the Séll, what is now the lake-lands of Gylia (though it is said that the lakes had not been there before), the former slaves of the Elves descended into madness and barbarism. They were the best of Gavel.

The 5th Age would struggle to be born through centuries of such blood and strife. The exact length of this dark age is unknown, for all manner of writing and knowledge would disappear during the Gylian Anarchy. Traditionally, Sellan historians claim that all bonds of friend and family were shattered in an epoch of suffering.

However, it's important to remember that much of the historical record of the 5th Age was written and maintained by Comécivaen. The throne and its servants had great incentive to embellish the horrors of the time before imperial rule. "The empire may be harsh, and sometimes cruel," one could imagine a cleric saying, "but it is better than the alternative."

Yet even in the modern historical understanding, the devastation of the Gylian Anarchy is a matter of degree, not presence. For one, the concrete historical record of the Sellans only begins in its tail end. For another, these earliest written records from the Séll unanimously bear the perspectives of a people who have known suffering and strife for generations, a people who had known that the world before them was a greater place, a place that they would never see, a place that they pined for nonetheless.

II. Du Sipéte Obíause (The Long Quiet)
The chaos of the transition would leave an unknown span of years between the Twilight of the Elves and a formal declaration of the 5th Age. Traditionally, Sellan historians label this intermezzo as part of the latter, numbering them as negative years of the 5th.

By this count, the oldest verifiable pieces of written Sellan records began to appear in the final century before 5A 1. The ornate alphabetic hand in which they were written was rarely named, but is called "High Elvish" when it was. However, the language that this script was used to write was not the High Elvish claimed by the south. The language, too, was unnamed, with Sellans referring to it at most as Inne Jēsen, "Our Speech."

Its speakers regarded it as a broken, bastardized dialect of the High Elvish spoken by their former masters, a tongue also called Liesyu. Use of "proper" Elvish tongue - though not its writing - seemed considered beyond the pale by this time's residents of Gylia. Its speakers, and these earliest Sellan scribes, used their tongue to record what they regarded as a broken, bastardized imitation of governance in a world without Elvish rule.

III. On the Sogosellans
There was a notable exception to this trend, however. The mountains of Southern Gylia, long a stronghold of the Elders, remained home to a number of Sellans loyal to the Elves, no matter that the Elves had since been scoured from the world.

They maintained High Elvish, apart from their vernacular, and maintained the Elvish faith, which had been scorned by the other Sellans. They did not maintain an exceptional amount of lost knowledge, however, and their earliest records post-date those of their northern and eastern kin. These southern Elf-Friends called themselves the Anis, "Light-Fearers," while the rest would call them Sógosellan, "Mountain Civilized Folk," or Sogósellan, "Southern Civilized Folk," after the land in which they lived, which would be called Sogoséll during the 5th Age.

IV. Nac Neúre Du Póssa (The Mortality of Mortality)
Regardless of tongue, the first records of Gylia, and Sogoséll, and other lands where Sellans dwelt, would reveal lands of petty chiefdoms and clans. The Sellan world, in the tail end of the Gylian Cataclysm, would be dominated by fortified villages and strongholds, where dwelt a Lord and their clan, who commanded warriors and collected tax from the great mass of farmers in their dominion.

It was a quintessentially feudal system, albeit one not yet dominated by any great princes or kings. Instead, these petty fiefs engaged in constant low-level warfare with one another, and there was little difference between a petty lord and a bandit. Even the greatest landlords of this era could, it seemed, not guarantee defence against depredation, and great hosts tied to nothing would periodically ravage the Séll. Any great trade, or collection of wealth and knowledge, was nearly impossible.

For generations, this had been the world. It is no wonder that the Sellans of this time and the times that would follow would consider it a dark age.

But a dark age cannot last forever. These earliest records of the Séll describe conquest and consolidation. Petty chiefs became great chiefs, and then great lords, and then "princely" lords, called Óháriex, or "Prince."

V. On the Oldest Kanderites
During this time, Sellan culture would also spread north and west out of Gylia, into the Lands of the Stone-Folk, the modern regions of Kander and the Gel riverbasin. The land had yet to decay at this time, though it had also yet to see the full splendor of the Younger Elves. The Stone-Folk had not been nearly so ruined by the Twilight of the Elves as the Sellans had been, and it is said that they preferred to live simply, and in peace.

But then came the Sellans. By the end of the 5th Age, the Stone-Folk would be extinct as a culture, though much of their way, habits, and blood would survive in the north, among the Sellans of Kander. There was no single disaster that triggered their decline, and indeed the Kanderites (it is here noted that Kander was a late 5th age term for "stone") regard this substrate as their truest ancestors. They were Sellanized, yes, but they remained, and it would be foolish to say that they would not have their due by the end of the 5th Age.

With the alien faith of the Sogosellans in the south, and the distance of the new Kanderites in the north, the previously compact Séll of Gylia would become more stretched and distant than it had already been.

VI. Nildáxassin (On the Spirits and their Shamans)
The final critical piece of the Sellan world in the wake of the Gylian Anarchy would be its shamans, who at this time called themselves the Nildáxassin Order, though they were certainly not so organized. In later times, the Sellan priesthood would come to be called n'Auré. Though such a title is anachronistic for such an ancient time, it will be used for the remainder of this text for the sake of consistency.

The movement that would become n'Auré arose, it would seem, as a backlash to the Elvish faith that the lords of the 4th Age had imposed upon the Sellans. It held to many of the same precepts, but seemed to take great glee in tearing down the beloved icons of the fallen slave-masters.

ON, Lord of Light, the Great Influence, and Master of the Solar Vanguard, was cast from His lofty position atop the world. He was reduced to a hound, a beast, a servant of the Sellan powers, and would begin his thousand-year-march towards irrelevance in the mythology of the Séll.

Countless of those Sellan powers would rise to the fore of sacrifice and ritual. Llo Taexaetau, Égion-Ctein, Beloved Úx, the Thunder-Dragon Urssúr, and Drinoqu, and countless more. Many would rise and fall over the centuries, but as ON waned, a god here called Tfaiyl Guardian, or simply Tfaiyl, would gradually establish itself as peak of the Sellan pantheon.

Tfaiyl, who would eventually be declared a sole universal power, would dominate the monotheistic period of the late Imperial n'Auré, but by this early point had yet to even acquire the position of first-among-equals.

In truth, however, the spirits and gods worshiped by early 5th age Sellan shamans were not the main focus and impact of Sellan religion at this time.

Shamans were the closest thing to a universally-recognized and respected institution of the Séll during the Gylian Anarchy. Even in the south, where the Elvish faith lingered, these early priests were understood to command great and terrible power, and to have a destiny not beholden to the material world.

The shaman class of the early 5th Age, like n'Auré in the 6th, would go to great effort to keep all magical knowledge and ability constrained. For good reason, as well - was is not abuse of magic that held the Sellan people in bondage? Was it not the terrible magic of the corrupted Heart that drove the Elves to decay and ruin? Were there not countless tales, in ages even closer to the Dawn, of reckless sorcery bringing great disaster?

For reasons both religious and very practical, Sellans held and would continue to hold a very dim view of magic, the broad populace thinking it good riddance that it was held under strict lock-and-key by the shamans of the Séll. This would eventually come to pierce n'Auré like a the horn of a Toruto, but not for some time.

No, in this time, the shamans were a neutral, powerful, independent, and highly mobile social class of the Séll. It's unclear when merchant caravans first drew close to them for safety, but it's clear that, by the end of the Gylian Anarchy, the lines between cleric, messenger, and merchant had become so thin as to be effectively erased.

VII. A Tiure Aneche (On The Coming Days)
The temporal lords and princes were not idle while n'Auré waxed in strength. They continued to feud, and war, conquer one another, and build the earliest states of recorded Sellan history. The Gylian Anarchy came to an end not with a bang, but with a gradual consolidation of the first two Great Estates of the Séll.

The nobility and clergy would be the only two of the Great Estates to form during the 5th age. Their increasing size, power, and cohesion would eventually begin to raise a thought, here and there: Was one of them to unify the Séll? Which?

 

Woah this is awesome! Do you have a description/write up on the language or it’s grammar?

btw if you weren’t aware, there happens to be a relatively active conlanging community in the wynncraft discord (in large part because of the translation work towards Tahkashtel).

 

Thank you! I'll certainly be going into bits of how the languages function here and there, but they're not intended to be the main attraction. I'll leave the detailed writeups for a separate time/document.

For now, I'll note that, while we're in the 5th age, the language used for titles and such (like the ones in the first chapter) will be in Jēsen, which will gradually become the main prestige tongue of the era. We'll see the exact circumstances of that in the next few chapters. If you know of an Ancient vs. High Gavellian distinction, then Jēsen is on the Ancient side of that, though it's nowhere near the oldest strain of Gavellian. Think of it as a transitional stage, simultaneously an Ancient and High Gavellian.

As we enter the 6th age, we'll be transitioning to d'Inlya. It's a related language, and the dialect of High Gavellian preferred by the Sellan monarchy. The title at the very top of this thread is in d'Inlya; it's the "main" HG of the timeline. Any time I refer to "High Gavellian" without qualification in this thread, I'm probably referring to d'Inlya. Jēsen is solid, but d'Inlya is one of the most detailed languages I've ever made, as well as my favourite, so maybe we'll see more details then.

Oh, I'm aware :-) I've always been kind of tangential to that community (I've been gone too long), but CT's work and the community's effort to translate it is inspiring, and part of what kept me so invested in this project for all this time. We've made it! I'm so very happy.

 

hmtn! i havent even read it yet but im so excited

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I love the interpretation that Qira named the Vanguard specifically to piss off religious folks

LANGUAGES? no wonder this has been in the works for so long, you made a full fledged continent with hundreds of years of history and all that entails
I'm very excited for what's to come, and this section was great.