a survey of
ooranye

[ + links to:  An approach to world-building - A Brief History of Ooranye - Glossary/Reference - Maps - Uranian Eras - Uranian Gleams - Uranian Throne ]

The material on this page is based upon contents transferred from the old website www.ooranye.com, which I intend to phase out.  But that probably won't be all: as time goes on it's likely that further additions will show up here.

Contents of this page:

Introduction

Physical Planetography
       size and area - day and night - the two hemispheres - the interior -
       plains and mountains - environmental change

Life-forms
Flora
       the narps - the katora - the vheic
Fauna
       the eopc - the fdalm - the mareks - the mawos - the rebexa - the umbna-jorraynt -
       the velng
Clouds
       the zicena - the evidencer clouds
Microscopic life
The Uranian firmament - a clash of sources [note: this section has been placed here because of its connection to the biosphere glow]

Intelligent life (1) The Nenns
Cities
the disc-on-stem cities -
       Ao - Grard - Hoog - Ierax - Innb - Invun - Jaax - Jador - Juxxt - Linnt - Lysyon - Narar -
       Nemyurur - Nuvium - Oso - Pjourth - Skyyon - Toolv - Tva - Vlamanor - Vyanth - Xydur -
       Yaz - Yoad - Yoon
the cities of Oirr -
       Arn - Contahl - Soolm - Vus
Starside cities: the freightshuttle exits, fleet remnants and the "Other Syoom" -
       Deev, Karth, Koar, Nusun, Olhoav, Poleva; Yalar and Nii
Allv, Yr, Vlonn and the dubious
Institutions
       the noadex and the dayonnad - the sunnoadex - various named sunnoads - correctors -
       other institutions - military ranks and units
Languages
Mentality
      teleology - acceptance of mystery - the problem of evil - apparng - renl
Names
Units of measurement
Cartography

Intelligent life (2) Non-human intelligences
       Gedars - kalyars - Quonians - Ghepions - Nemaeans - sentient cities - the World Spirit -
       transient species

introduction

Ooranye: a world of ancient civilizations, both human and non-human; of epic voyages, wonder and adventure; a world with its own distinctive dreams, ideals, philosophies and institutions; its own ecologies and multifarious forms of life...

Uranus was its former name, given it by the people of Earth.  The adjective "Uranian" is still in use, but the noun fell into disuse on the day of the mysterious so-called Fostering.  On that fateful Tenth of July, A.D. 3564, action carried out by Terran reality engineers caused the planet's truest nature to surface in our continuum: whereupon Uranus was rightly revealed not as a lifeless gas-giant but as the solid, inhabited world named by its natives Ooranye.

This "surfacing" was retrospective: once it had happened, it had always been.

(For the background to this event, see "Uranian Thule", in Vintage Worlds (2018), ed. John Michael Greer and Zendexor.) 

And because of the retrospective effect of the Fostering, we may truly say that civilization on Ooranye predates that of Earth by approximately 1,200,000 Terran years.

physical planetography

size and area

Ooranye is 25,011 miles in diameter.  This is not quite as big as what used to be called Uranus; the Fostering resulted in some shrinkage as the planet's former gaseous nature was upgraded to its truer, more solid identity.  But a reduction in diameter from 31,764 to 25,011 miles still leaves us with a colossal world.  Ooranye's surface area, which is mostly land, is 1,965,223,665 square miles, about ten times the surface area of Earth, and over thirty times the land area of Earth.

Ooranye is a perfect sphere; unlike the Earth, of which the polar diameter is 27 miles less than the equatorial.

Despite being one of the distant outer planets, Ooranye has an axial rotation that appears to be tidally locked, so that its solar day and solar year are the same.  Terran scientists remain puzzled as to why this is.  Perhaps tidal drag is not the cause; we know very little about the history of Ooranye's previous Great Cycles, i.e. before the start of era 1 of the present Cycle, 1,200,000 Terran years ago, and we have to allow the possibility that the present set-up was artificially created by some super-civilization of the distant past.

day and night

Ooranye's solar day/year is not much use; firstly because it is so long - 84 Terran years, which amounts to a lifetime - and secondly because in any case the Sun only gives the seventh planet about 1/400th of the light it gives Earth.

Therefore, the term "day" on Ooranye is not employed in the astronomical sense.

Instead, "day" on the seventh planet is biological: it denotes the thirty-hour cycle of the brightening and darkening of the air, caused by the periodic brightening and dimming of aerial micro-organisms which are known as the throom.

The throom, be it noted, not only pervade the Uranian atmosphere, but are also present in the tissues of much of the planet's plant-life: in particular the vheic, which furnish the energy for skimmers' fuel-phials.

One great advantage of the throom as a source of time-keeping is its simultaneity.  The bio-generated pulsation of light and dark is on the same hour at every longitude, which means that all Uranian clocks are synchronized over the entire globe, and so there can never be any need for "time zones" on that fortunate planet.

An account will be given in Timekeeping of how the Uranian day is divided and its divisions named.

The problematic topic of the Uranian night sky, because it is so related to the topic of the throom, is discussed just after the section on microscopic life; see The Uranian Firmament - A Clash of Sources.

the two hemispheres of ooranye

As is natural for a world which has one side always facing the Sun, Ooranye's significant hemispheres are held to be, not the northern and the southern, but the Sun-facing and the other - or, as the Uranians call them, Sunside and Starside.

The Sunward polar city, Skyyon, is the cultural centre of Syoom, an area coterminous with the main bloc of Uranian civilization.  Antipodeal to Skyyon is the Starside polar region, the mysterious, legendary land of Arclour.  (For the momentous expedition to Arclour which inaugurated the Final Era, see Uranian Thule.)

the interior of ooranye

The planet's ice mantle extends most of the way down to the core.  The core itself, and many moon-sized globules within the mantle, consist of denser mass-concentrations ("mascons").  These can be of degenerate matter - as abnormally dense as that found in white dwarf stars, only cold; or of the pre-universe non-particulate matter called kolv; or of gvo, which is a compound of kolv and particulate matter.  Occasionally, with the slow convection of aeons, a mascon may find its way to the surface and emerge as the tip of a globular mountain.  One of these, the so-called "Sun-Egg", played a key part in history (see The Lithium Era).  At a much later period, the Bismuth Era, there was a vogue for exploring the density-globes by diving down into the mantle itself, by means of a form of travel that employed molecular interpenetration.  (See The Mascon Expeditions.)

the plains and the mountains

The characteristic Uranian landscape is that of an immense plain.  That sense of awe and mystery which on Earth is aroused by its oceans, on Ooranye is aroused by the solid world-ocean, the endless ice-plain.

The ice, however, usually does not appear on the surface, which is generally covered by a layer (a yard deep at most) of a semi-organic granular substance, known as gralm.

Although plants can grow in it, gralm has nothing in common with Earthly loam, either in texture or in appearance.  Gralm is corky, slightly springy to walk upon, and of varied cold colours - greys, blues, purples and browns.

Perhaps two per cent of the plains are covered with isolated forests, and in addition to the forests there are innumerable solitary groves, some of them formed by deadly narps, the long-lived weeds with laser-tipped stems, who can live for millions of days on the metal carcass of one downed skimmer.

Other breaks in the world-embracing plain are formed by "islands" of hilly or mountainous territory, and some huge chasms.  The Mountains of Flame beyond the city of Pjourth cover thirty million square miles and include peaks twice as high as Everest.

The greatest physical mark made by man to the topography of the plains consists of the mighty monorail network built in the Zinc Era.  Around 150,000 miles of track were laid down, upon embankments seven yards high.

Finally we may note the rare "seas", actually giant lakes, whose slow-motion waves have been known to conceal submarine monsters and - on one occasion - monster submarines.

Environmental change

The giant planet Ooranye is much less vulnerable than is the comparatively fragile Mother Earth.  Ooranye can look after itself; hence there has never been any need for Uranian "environmentalism": that pest Mankind cannot damage the seventh planet in the way that he has damaged the third.  Uranian humanity ("Nennkind") flourishes up to a point, but is never in any danger of dominating the colossal, dim, mysterious world, of which the physical challenges are too great to master, and which besides has to be shared with intelligent powers greater than he.

Nature herself is less prone to violent change on Ooranye than she is on Earth.  Apart from the slow convection which occasionally brings a mascon to the surface, the giant planet is mostly quiescent.  The "cold volcanoes" of Jersh pour forth liquid water rather than lava, and even those low-key eruptions are mostly delayed consequences of the events which ended the Bismuth Era.

However, that last point must count as an admission that in certain exceptional cases humans have had a discernible - though never irreversible - effect on the Uranian environment.

We refer the reader to Impostor for the crime of Nehal Fozdak, who incited mascon life-forms to damage the world's surface with their ultra-dense bodies.  And we must mention two other exceptions to the generally stable picture of the relations between world and man; both of these events are also covered in the History..

The first of these disasters was the Great Winter of the Titanium Era, which covered most of the civilized world in snow.  The second disaster was the "Foam" - the popcorn-like expansion of the gralm in the Lanthanum Era, which, even more deeply than the snow had done, covered the main cities of Syoom.  The Great Winder was retaliation by Fyayman powers for Nalre Zitpoidl's act of murder.  As to the Foam, we understand the physical mechanism involved but we do not know why it occurred when it did, and the possibility remains that human action was a contributary cause.

life-forms

the flora of ooranye

Not quite so rich in species as is Earth, Ooranye can nevertheless boast an impressive flora, especially when one considers its distance from the Sun.  Many of the forests which clothe two per cent of the plains consist of trees 150 or even 200 yards high, of varied species and shades of blue and green.  Some other areas of plain and hilly country are covered with scrub and/or moss. 

the narps

These are perhaps the most dangerous plants on the planet.  They can live for millions of days, and seem, for most of that time, motionless; when, however, a wayfarer skims unwisely close, the narp's laser-tipped stem can aim and fire, so that during the next few tens of thousands of days the plant gathers in the wreckage with sweeps of its leaves, to ingest it in its acid-oozing core.

the katora

The rare katora groves have sometimes been regarded as sacred to the World Spirit.  In actual fact the intelligence haunting them is purely that of the katora themselves.  Spiky, like Terran hawthorns, they are apt to tremble sometimes when the wind is not blowing.  It is believed that during this Great Cycle they are, and will remain, in a kind of trance.  Hardly anything is known of them, but this lack of knowledge is combined with a conviction that when one stands in a katora grove one is in the presence of a secretive, telepathic intelligence.  And as a light-ray may bounce off an inert mirror, so it has happened that a vital fact has been transmitted, passively, by the katora.

the vheic

These are the glowing ell-light plants, the fuel or energy plants, which are cultivated in the fields around the cities of Syoom.

Their natural glow normally pulses in a thirty-hour cycle, following the rhythm of the throom.  Brightening the cities' surrounding zones with golden territory, the vheic are harvested in rotation and compressed into fuel for vehicles and for static machinery of every type.  Furthermore, vheic-phials provide backing for the currency system.  Without the vheic, Uranian civilization would grind to a halt.

Up until era 7, vheic could only be used in its uncompressed form, as a relatively inefficient fuel, or for lighting.  Successful experiments in the use of compressed ell-light for power were first carried out in era 7, the Nitrogen Era.  The phials - a kind of standard fuel-cell - came into widespread use in era 10, the Neon Era.

A historical note regarding fields of vheic: in most eras they have glowed a rich gold (there is also a less widespread blue variety).  But in the Praesodymium Era, Era 59, they glowed an especially beautiful wan orange, a beauty which signalled decline, because after the disaster of the Foam the weakened plants emitted at longer wavelengths.  (In parallel with this change, human society henceforth displayed the social distinction between foregrounders and backgrounders - as if Fate in its own mode were reflecting an exhausted ecology.)

the fauna of ooranye

The tenet "Form follows function" does not always apply to Uranian life-forms.  Although many of the characteristics of Ooranye's fauna can be understood by reference to evolutionary processes and environmental needs, such analysis breaks down when one attempts to understand a crystallized nightmare such as the lathokna.  This is a major difference between Ooranye and Earth.  It may be due, at least in part, to the fact that some so-called animals on Ooranye are degenerations from what were intelligent species in previous Great Cycles.

Being thus harder to study and analyze, Uranian fauna are less predictable than Terran.  This tends to make them more dangerous.  Another cause of danger to wayfaring man, is the length of some predators' metabolic cycles.  Creatures which can freeze in stasis for tens of thousands of days between meals, can be all the more ferocious when they awake.

(In the list below, the classification "fauna" in some cases is uncertain.   For example the eopc and the velng may belong in the category of Intelligent Life, and conversely the zicena may not be alive at all.)

the eopc

This is a giant bird, with a wing-span of up to seventy yards.  It is the largest known winged creature on Ooranye.  It does not eat or drink, and the mystery of whence it obtained its energy led the researchers of the Rin-Stazel to discover the dimension called Chelth.

the fdalm

This is a wedge-shaped burrowing creature which creates ice-caverns under the plains.  Its accordion-like plasticity enables it to insert itself into cracks in the ice and then to split them further.  Thus it enlarges its subsurface space.

the mareks

This strange animal has a purely accidental resemblance to a human head.  Its circle of thin legs support its cephaloform body, which, when the "cheeks" are puffed out, is ready to kill its prey with sound.

the mawos

A much larger relative of those aerial micro-organisms known as the throom, the mawos are wardrobe-sized and wardrobe-shaped, albeit fuzzy at the corners and light enough to drift on the wind.  (In the earlier, sessile rooted-vegetable stage of its life, the mawos is called a vrayn.)  Mawos avoid the presence of man, but nevertheless pose a danger, in that if left alone they will eventually block off huge areas of sky, crowding out the throom on which other living things depend for light.  This was a serious problem during the Lithium Era but since then mawos have become fewer and the airship-patrols which restrain their spread have become far less expensive to maintain.

the rebexa

A large, semi-intelligent bird with a long beak and yellow teeth.  Rbexaou vary in side from fifteen down to five feet tall.

the umbna-jorraynt

The "jorraynt" end is a plant, the "umbna" end is an animal, and they are joined by an organic cable.  The direction of energy flow along this cable depends on which component of this double organism happens to be contributing the most - whether it be the root system of the jorraynt, or the umbna's devouring of prey.  Usually the jorraynt provides for both ends during periods of stasis.  During brief orgies of meat-eating, the umbna repays.

The umbna may eventually snap the cable and live thereafter as an independent creature.

The umbna is a crablike monster the size of a Terran military tank.  The body-pattern, with its arrangement of arms and pincers, differs markedly from individual to individual, perhaps due to influence from the jorraynt - plants having more individual variation than animals.

the velng (singular: vellg)

This is the ant-like race which builds artificial mountains and has been known, especially in the Vanadium Era, to hold humans captive.

the clouds

Clouds more often than not are living beings on Ooranye, some of which are sentient.  Of these, some are possibly intelligent, but the question is so uncertain that this Survey deals with the clouds here rather than in the section below on intelligences.  (Nenns who claim to be "cloud-talkers" have not always been believed, though, on the other hand, the alliance or symbiosis of some clouds with Yr, City of Mists, may suggest conscious co-operation.)

the zicena (singular: zice)

Possibly alive, though not organic, zicena are Ooranye's lowest and hardest clouds, accreting crystals from the winds they summon.  Zicena are crystal carpets formed from millions of inch-scale tetrahedra, floating at high speed exactly five yards above the ground.  Fortunately rare, when they appear they pose a huge danger to transport on the plains.  Notoriously, in the Nemuran War, the surprise offensive was launched under cover of zicena.

the evidencer-clouds

The sigaklya are an animate cloud species which can collect and preserve visual recordings of events.  In a form of treasure-hunting, skyships and their crews are sent to capture them, so as to sell the valuable records to historians.

microscopic life

As explained elsewhere, the cycle of day and night on Ooranye depends not on the light of the Sun, which is faint and constant: faint, due to the planet's enormous distance from that body; constant, since Ooranye keeps the same face constantly towards the Sun. 

Instead, therefore, of Earth's rotational day-and-night, the Uranian thirty-hour diurnal period is governed by a cycle of atmospheric brightening and dimming, a fluctuation caused by the pulsation of light in micro-organisms suspended in the air. 

This means that all Uranian clocks are synchronized: it is the same hour o'clock everywhere on the globe.  On that fortunate planet there can never be any need for "time zones".

The micro-organisms responsible for this state of affairs do not predate the current Great Cycle, though other similar ones may have existed before.  The current ones have two names, the throom and the bneen.  Why two names?  Because, in the early days, in era 1, primitive man believed there must be two forms of life, one to bring the light of day (the throom), and the other to cause the blackness of night (the bneen).  Nowadays, when the process is understood, there is no scientific need for the word bneen, but in ordinary non-scientific language the term persists, laden with associations as in descriptive phrases such as bneen covered the land and proverbs such as bask in the throom but remember the bneen. 

The throom is at its brightest during the five hours of ayshine, and at its darkest - opaquely dark - during yyne, the darkest hour of night, when it obscures the Sun and stars, rendering the sky utterly black.  Midway between ayshine and yyne there are a few enthralling minutes (those of refelc at the boundary of pallyne and morningshine, and of pmetn at the boundary of evenshine and anyne) when the throom is transparent, allowing some stars to be seen, even in the sunward hemisphere sky, except those that are right up close to the Sun's position.  (Of course it is only from Farside - in the starward hemisphere sky - that refelc and pmetn reveal the heavens in all their true glory.  That is a great part of the romance of the wilds of deep Fyaym.  Many voyagers have sought a proper sight of the stars.)

Having evolved at the same time as the first humans - having emerged from the same prebiotic lake as mankind - the throom retain an odd resonance with the human racial unconscious.  Widespread, exceptional human emotional surges, such as accompany rare and decisive historical events, are apt to cause irregular fluctuations in the throoms' cycle of pulsation, and so can cause interruptions to the regular thirty-hour rhythm of day and night.  These interruptions, these irregularities, are called eomasps, and they mark the transition between one era of history and the next.

the uranian firmament - a clash of sources

The night sky of Ooranye is a topic which has given rise to some controversy among scholars.

The sources agree that, in the skies of Sunside, only during the minutes of pmetn and refelc can the starry firmament be seen.  But what of Starside?

According to Uranian Thule, there is, antipodeal to the Sunward pole at Skyyon, a "hole" in the throom layer over the region of Arclour, from which the stars can always be seen.  But apart from that most remote and special region, the rest of Starside is under the same atmospheric blanket of throom as Sunside, and reveals the stars only during pmetn and refelc, although during those minutes the stars are brighter than they are on Sunside.

However, in the much earlier story of The Worm of Poleva it seems to be implied that the firmament is visible from anywhere on the Starside hemisphere, and not just from Arclour.

This would appear to be a clear contradiction in the published sources.  However, one possible solution to the problem refers back to the fact that both men and throom emerged at one and the same time from the prebiotic Lake of Dmara at the start of Era 1.  This being so, it follows that just as Uranian mankind - the Nenns - took time to spread out from Dmara, the same must be true of the throom. 

Now the differing accounts begin to make sense.  The Worm of Poleva is set in the Niobium Era, era 41, which is long, long before the modern events of Uranian Thule.  We can believe that back in era 41 the throom may well have been confined to Sunside, or at any rate it had not yet spread as far into Starside as the city of Poleva.

It is a possible answer.  It is the only one we have.

intelligent life (1) - the nenns

On Ooranye the human species which most resembles us is that of the Nenns.  Individually they would pass for Earth people as far as appearance is concerned, except that their skin is steel-grey.  Their lifespan is approximately the same as ours: on average one Uranian year, or 84 Earth years. 

However, in the mass, statistical differences soon become apparent.  Judging by our standards, we Earthlings have to admit that strength and good looks can realistically be taken for granted among the Nenns, as are their almost complete freedom from disease and from the uglier ravages of old age.

Perhaps from our point of view the most startling thing about the Nenns is their absolute certainty of limited reincarnation.  A Nenn knows that nen has two or three lives.  Never more than that; but that much is guaranteed.  The lives of an individual are almost always widely separated in time.  During the second life (hardly anyone has yet attained a third) the first life is remembered, in a manner dreamlike and somewhat hazy like an old blurry photograph, but nevertheless in a mode which imparts real information.

The next most startling aspect of Nenn nature is its lack of meanness and vulgarity.  Nenns can do evil, but they are free from Terran-style grossness, pettiness, perversion and pusillanimity.  There is apt to be a certain grandeur to Uranian villainy, when it occurs.  On the other hand, due to the differences in the way in which cause and effect operate on the two worlds, Uranians face some moral problems from which Terrans are free. 

We now provide, from the Nenn point of view, some notes on the human geography of Ooranye.

cities

[ + link to  sentient cities ]

It is believed that a majority of Nenns live in cities - though the rest, a considerable number, live in smaller settlements or isolated homes.

the disc-on-stem cities

The great cities - the ones that naturally come to mind when we think of the stories which come from that world - are the twenty-five mighty disc-on-stem structures which date from the Phosphorus Era.

Their like could not be built today: they were constructed using power looted from Chelth, another dimension, during a brief window of opportunity before the extradimensional tap was turned off by the indignant beings at the other end.

The stem and upheld floor of these cities are built of ultimate metal, called iedleis., which, immune to natural processes of decay, will last as long as the Universe. 

It needs to be remembered that there are some famous Uranian cities which are not of the disc-on-stem structure, and which instead rest upon the ground: for example Contahl in Syoom, and the settlements on Starside such as Poleva and Olhoav, and Yalar and Nii in "the other Syoom".  Dmara, beside the dried-up lake where Nennkind began, is a town rather than a city.  These are all hugely important.  Nevertheless, no urban spectacle can equal the stupendous sight which a classic disc-on-stem city presents to the Wayfarer who approaches it from the plain.

"A huge tray piled high with lights and held aloft by a stem" - the tray being a circle miles in width and the concave stem at least fifty yards high - the ensemble perpetually coruscates as skimmers rise and fall in double filigrees of aerial traffic-lanes, entering and exiting via the three ayashou (air-streams) spaced at 120-degree intervals around the city's rim.

The 25 disc-on-stem cities are:

the cities and other settlements of oirr

The cities of Oirr, in the region of the Sun-Egg and the Great Wall, are even older than the disc-on-stems, and, unlike the disc-on-stems, stand on the ground, and were built by means which could be reproduced today.  These Oirran cities - Arn, Vus, Soolm and the first and greatest of them, Contahl - look like semi-oval lattices standing up on end.  Their height exceeds that of all other cities except Skyyon.  (For a scene in Coltahl in the Niobium Era, see the prologue to The Worm of Poleva.)

Another historic region of Oirr, containing towns rather than cities, is the sinister Glank, an area of plain enclosed by a horse-shoe shaped range called the Toomsut Solyairn, infested by nemaeans.  The plain is dotted by cold-volcanic cones called the Xombs, and the settlers who rashly moved into the Glank early in era 89 founded towns on the flanks of the Xombs.  The clear way out of the Glank is through the gap in the "horse-shoe" overlooked by the twin fortress peaks of Kyaptha and Therrold, known collectively as the Rnung Tror, the Crying Mountains (each about 1500 yards high), which face each other across this opening.  The look-outs on the Rnung Tror were supposed to warn further would-be settlers of conditions in the Glank, and to prevent further nemaeans from joining those already there.  The Glank is the scene of the crisis narrated in The Golden Cloak. 

freightshuttle exits, fleet remnants and the 'other syoom'

On Starside, in the depths of Fyaym, stand cities which grew around the now-defunct "freightshuttle exits" or matter-transmitter destinations, dating from the Phosphorus Era when the wealth and power of Syoom led its people to suppose that they might come near to mastering both hemispheres of the giant planet.  These are the cities of Deev, Karth, Koar, Nusun and Poleva.  They have managed to hang on to existence in their isolation, visited very occasionally when one of the Syoomean cities decides to undertake the enormous expense of temporarily re-activating the matter-transmitter network. See The Worm of Poleva.

Likewise lurking deep in Fyaym, but withouteven the tenuous contact with Syoom enjoyed by the freightshuttle exists, are the cities Yalar and Nii, which rule the "Other Syoom".

allv, yr, vlonn and the dubious

Close to the Starward pole stands the fabled city of Allv.

Yr, "City of Mists", is Ooranye's unique flying city, often camouflaged so as to be invisible.  Launched in the Zirconium Era (see The Institutes of Fate), it has a dark reputation for piracy, though it has also been known to engage in peaceful trade - for example with Olhoav as narrated in The Validator Rips.   Yr's overflight of Vlamanor in the reign of Sunnoad Brem Tormalla is narrated in The Non-Dummy Run, and the role of Yr in the succession to the sunnoadex belongs to The Golden Cloak.

Vlonn, the "Rubble City", is not to be found on any map.  Its government can manipulate the space around it, to keep it hidden, though access to it is allowed at discretion.

Many of the settlements in the Mountains of Flame consist of volumes honeycombed with interconnected caverns; these may or may not amount to cities.  On the other hand other settlements are certainly mere villages, lying out in the open in valleys between the huge peaks.

the institutions of ooranye

the noadex and the dayonnad

Ooranye's typical political unit is the city-state.  The head of this state is the Noad - meaning "focus".  The rank of Noad, or the institution itself, is the noadex.

A Noad wears a grey cloak; there is no other distinguishing mark or apparel.

By what right does a Noad rule?  Certainly not by hereditary right - except during atypical periods such as the Vanadium Era.  Indeed, so hostile have some Uranian cultures been to the idea of hereditary monarchy, that the child of a Noad is at a grave disadvantage if nen tries to follow in nen's parent's footsteps, even if nen is otherwise the most suitable choice.  Indeed there have been quite a few cases when the brilliant offspring of a Noad, debarred from the hereditary succession, has pursued nen's career in another city.

Yet a noadex is undoubtedly a monarchy.  And it is absolute in the sense that if you are a Noad you can give orders unhindered by any democratic or legal body - such things being non-existent on Ooranye.  There is no accepted, official way of removing a tyrannical Noad; but precisely because this is the case, a Noad who seeks to become a tyrant runs the risk of drastic, unofficial action being taken.  Tyrants tend to... disappear, with no questions asked.  On that dangerous planet, a society cannot afford bad leadership.

The heir to a Noad, the person who will succeed to the noadex if the Noad dies or resigns, is called the Daon, and nen's rank or office is the dayonnad.  The Daon wears a blue cloak.

The Daon customarily shares the government with the Noad, but cedes final responsibility to the Noad in all vital decisions.

Noadex and dayonnad had their origins in Contahl in the Lithium Era; Contahl was the first city of sufficient size and complexity to make such arrangements necessary.

All the above remarks do not explain how a Uranian city is governed.  What about lesser officials?  He we Terrans come up against the humbling fact, that the city-states of Ooranye function without bureaucracy.

This may be hard for us to believe; but equally, those Uranians who are beginning to discover Earth's history regard its bureaucratic structures as a bizarre joke.

In truth, it is all very well for them, for they possess an internal sense, as mysterious as a balancing or homing instinct, which allows them to co-ordinate their societies without conscious direction.  This is the faculty which they call renl.  (The adjective of renl is lremd.)

A good Noad will, above all, possess lots of renl.  If you're lremd, you will instantly perceive priorities; you will disentangle the threads of city life to uncover where action needs to be taken; you will have the knack of being at the right place at the right time; you will deputise, delegate, appoint, command, without reference to any laws or rules.  By the standards of an Earthly president or kind, a Noad leads a fantastically adventurous and fulfilling life, but it is a life which no Terran could endure for a day (except, of course, Neville Yeadon alias Nyav Yuhlm, the one-off example from Uranian Throne).

The above remarks apply to a city which is functioning properly.  However, a noadex can go wrong.  It can cease to be lremd and, instead, become all that we have said Uranian regimes are not - that is to say, tyrannical and bureaucratic, or despotic and dull.  This degradation is called arelk: a word derived from a term for "hardening of the arteries".  Sometimes the result of this political sclerosis is picturesque rather than evil, as we can see from the stories which have come down to us from the Vanadium Era's colourful hereditary monarchies.

the sunnoadex

Just as there is a Noad for every city, so for Syoom as a whole - the entire civilized area of Ooranye - there was a Noad of Noads, a focus of foci.  This person is the Sunnoad, and nen's rank is the sunnoadex.  The Sunnoad wears a golden cloak. 

Nen also has a number after nen's name.  For example, the current (A.D. 4162) holder of the office is is Iyen Noom 80525, which means that he is the 80,525th Sunnoad, of a list that stretches all the way back to Hyala Movoun 1 in the Neon Era, before which there were no Sunnoads (though there had been Noads since the Lithium Era).

It is hard to pin the Uranians down on what exactly a Sunnoad is.  It appears that the Sunnoad does not exactly rule Syoom in the sense that the Noads rule the separate cities.  The cities are sovereign states.  Yet a Sunnoad traditionally commands the combined Syoomean fleets on those rare occasions when civilization must unite against a Fyayman menace.  To that extent, the Sunnoad's authority is practical as well as moral.  Yet the kind of reverence paid to the Sunnoad makes nen seem above politics.  As often, we are driven to the conclusion that the Uranian institution we are studying would not work on Earth.

The sunnoadex does not regularly allow for a recognized heir-apparent, analogous to the dayonnad for the noadex.  Sunnoads are chosen by a variety of means, depending upon the situation when the office becomes vacant.  This circumstance has given rise to many dramatic moments in history.  The most characteristic method of election to the sunnoadex involves a tool called the thuzolyr.  This is a kind of thought-reflecting screen which diagrammatically displayes personal qualities, too rapidly for conscious control by the user.  Somehow, the thing measures one's renl; it is used only in competition with another's thuzolyr, and many such competitions must happen till the one which out-flashes the rest is the only one left.  On some occasions, thuzolyr-election and personal recommendation by a Sunnoad's "dying voice" have both played a part; this happened in recent times with the succession of Unnd Dunaiv 80522 during the Nemyuran War.

The reverence accorded to Sunnoads appears to be deserved.  Out of the more than 80,000 that have worn the golden cloak, not one - if we are to believe the records - has utterly disgraced the office, though a few have failed spectacularly: an obvious example being that of Fiarr Fosn 723 whose tremendous defeat brought down the curtain on the Phosphorus Era.  Perhaps the most dubious character to be named among the Sunnoads was Tu Rim 78860, last of the Radium Era, who, uniquely, tried to alter the nature of the sunnoadex into something like what we would recognize as a superstate or empire.  Yet even "Tu Rim of the Invaded Soul", as he came to be known, was never despised, though condemned by enlightened opinion.

sunnoads

Here for convenience are collected some details of those Sunnoads who are mentioned at various points in the history narrative of Uranian Gleams.  They are shown in chronological order.

Faran Taknoa 79892

Known as the "heroid" (ambiguously heroic) Sunnoad.  Details of his reign are not yet available to Terran readers.

the correctors

Occasionally, it looks as though a Sunnoad is going to make a dire mistake.  The threat of that occurrence gives rise to a dilemma: a magnified version of the problem which occurs when a Noad goes to the bad.  In the case of a Sunnoad with the wrong idea, it is not a case of malevolence but of an honest mistake; yet that, in a way, makes it harder to cope with.  Some special risk must be taken.

Despite the profound respect which all Uranians feel for the wearer of the golden cloak, it is recognized that the Noad of Noads must if necessary be corrected, by force if need be.  An example is Sror Moruv's temporary kidnapping of Unnd Dunaiv 80522 during the Nemyuran crisis.  Sror Moruv got away with it - the Sunnoad himself eventually justifying the action - and so the getter-away-with-it has ever after been titled Corrector Sror Moruv. 

It is a rare occurrence: there have only been a few hundred Correctors, compared with the over eighty thousand Sunnoads.  But it is a profoundly Uranian institution, dating all the way back to the reign of Hyala Movoun 1, who allowed herself at one point to be restrained by Corrector Lehal Thoal (see the section The Neon Era in The First Sunnoad).

other institutions

Uranian history is rich in corporate bodies.  Most are more ephemeral than the ones discussed above, yet still mighty and long-lasting by Terran standards.  Examples include:

The Unity Club in the Hydrogen Era, which established the semaphore network on the plains, and later organized the excavation of the Sun-Egg (see Syoom and Fyaym and The Lithium Era).

The Bank of Light in the Phosphorus Era.

The various teleological guilds from the Zirconium Era onwards (see The Institutes of Fate).

The Vemorth Stazel, the corporation known by its nickname The Forgetters, which has survived intermittently in some form through most of Uranian history.  Its agents are willing to undergo voluntary amnesia for the duration of their missions, so as to bring a radically fresh vision to their tasks.  Their adventures, not surprisingly, have provided many of the stories which have been most helpful to the Terran understanding of Ooranye.  Taldis Norkoten was sometimes a Forgetter, and one of his adventures is recounted in the fifth tale of the Gleams.

military ranks and units

The following is a summary of those ranks and units which have proved most durable in Uranian history:

nyr - unit of 12 men - i.e. 11 plus the zamur commanding

zamur - officer with 11 men under his command

nyzyr - unit of 133 men: 11 nyrs plus the zyr commanding

zyr - officer with 132 men under his command

nyzynzyr - unit of 1464 men: 11 nyzyrs plus the zynzyr commanding

zynzyr - leader with 1463 men under his command

nyomzyr - unit of 16105 men: 11 nyzynzyrs plus the omzyr commanding

omzyr - general with 16104 men under his command.

As on Earth, units are not always up to strength.

the languages of ooranye

The Uranian mentality

names

Personal names on Ooranye, at least among the Nenns, are more purely individual than are names used on Earth.

Uranian Names do not run in families.  "Surnames" in the Terran sense are the exception on Ooranye.  Only during the unusually dynasty-prone Vanadium Era can a person's second name be a reliable guide as to who is descended from whom.

Connected with this, another and even greater difference between the two worlds is that Uranians, almost without exception, are not named by their parents.  Instead, they name themselves.  A Nenn baby is born with awareness of nen's name.  It is the first sound that nen utters, and is duly noted.

As time goes on, furthermore, another factor becomes relevant: reincarnation.  In each of their two or three lives, Nenns possess the same name, for it is intrinsic to their identity.  This in itself would suffice to disrupt dynastic name-systems, even without the culture's innate hostility to dynastically inherited power.

It is to be noted that even in the Vanadium Era, which often flouts the above principle, the reincarnation of Fiarr Fosn, the last Phosphorus Era Sunnoad, brought him back with the same name that he'd had before.

Uranian backgrounders usually have only one name; foregrounders, usually two.  In the latter case, the relative status of the two names is more fluid than the equivalent for Terran Christian name and surname.

Uranians are so jealous of the individuality of their names, that it is rare on Ooranye for anything to be named after someone.  Rather than it be considered an honour, it is more likely that to have something named after you would be considered as an insulting dilution of your name's reference-power, which by rights ought to point to you alone.  Exceptions have occurred, but they are rare; an example is the naming of Norkoten Hall after the 64,702nd Sunnoad.

Of course, Uranians are fooling themselves in thinking that everyone's name is unique.  Considering the thousands of millions of Nenns who have lived, there certainly aren't enough names to go round.  In fact, even at any one single time, perhaps even in the same city, there are probably different Nenns bearing the same name.  But it is not something they like to think about.  Furthermore, it appears that they do not need to think about it: the matter is taken care of by - presumably - those same currents of fate which govern so many other aspects of that world: currents which arrange the life-lines of Nenns so that those with identical names will never meet or be noted in the same context.

units of measurement

When we of Earth first made contact with Ooranye in the thirty-sixth century, what most astonished us about the culture of the giant world was that it uses many of the same units of measurement as we do - and has done so for over a million of our years.  Inches, yards and miles are more ancient on Ooranye than even our species is on Earth.

This was, nevertheless, not a surprise to everyone.  It provided confirmation of Dreathe's Theorem, which had been propounded in the 2700s, during the first scientific mapping of the racial unconscious.

Interpreting the topography of that mysterious zone, Dreathe concluded that there is something fundamental and universal about so-called "English units" of measurement.  He predicted that they were likely to be found wherever human telemorphs exist on other worlds, and referred to them as "the natural units".

The natural units, Dreathe explained, are part of our innermost mental furniture, whether we realize it consciously or not, whether we actually use the units or not.  The urge to express ourselves with their help is sustained by a weak but pervasive force, analogous to gravity among the physical forces.

Dreathe supported his argument with a "proof by contradiction", citing the irrationality of the opposition to natural units.  He pointed out that such opposition took the form of exaggeratedly ugly polysyllabic terms such as "kilometer" and "centimeter" on Earth, and "kruntisnargle" and "foopisnargle" during the Nitrogen Era on Ooranye.

cartography

See the Maps page.

intelligent life (2): non-human

The giant seventh planet harbours a vast variety of intelligent non-human species - and also some intelligences which do not belong to a species (it is, for example, useless to define the Ghepions as a "species").

the gedars

Of the same basic raw material as the Nenns, the submen known as the Gedars are of a comparatively brutish type. 

They are generally of strong physique though their build varied widely, ranging from tall and rangy to squat and sturdy.  Their faces seem misshapen to us, like the products of an inexpert sculptor.

Their first appearance in great numbers in Syoom was during the Vanadium Era, when, sensing the Nenns' weakened state after the Great Winter, the hardy submen swarmed across the plains, looting and killing.

However, their origins are said to be much earlier.  It is believed that the prebiotic lake or sivvan, from which true Uranian humanity evolved, shed some "leavings" before it dried up completely, and these remnants staggered erect and took quasi-human form.

the kalyars

These "evolved men" appear from the Tungsten Era onwards.  Their physical difference from the Nenns - they vary from shaggy to horned and crested - is sometimes, though not always, accompanied by great mental and cultural differences.  See Chapter 25 of the Brief History of Ooranye.

After a spurt of rapid development, which encouraged them to believe that they would replace the Nenns in the main line of "normal" humanity, the kalyars suffered the disappointment of the Rhenium Moment in which the Voice of the World Spirit told them that their day was not yet - told them in fact that they would have to wait for the next Great Cycle, over two thousand million days into the future.

During much of the long Osmium Era which followed the brief Rhenium Moment, many kalyars did not accept the Moment's verdict.  Refusing to believe in the authenticity of the Voice, they strove to build up their power in competition with the Nenns.  However, as Era 76 wore further on, more and more kalyars slipped out of the competitive struggle.  They preferred to go into a kind of cultural hibernation, reducing their lives to a tribal existence in which they still wait for their day to dawn, content in the assurance that the far future is theirs.

the quonians

Physical and mental characteristics

Quonians are as human as Nenns and have been known to interbreed with Nenns; however, they are a different race, their skins often blue or green instead of the Nenns' grey, and their facial bone-structure giving them an especially proud, even haughty expression.  Mentally they seem to be more aggressive and less freedom-loving than the Nenns; or maybe it is just that they are less self-sufficient and so each of them feels more compensatory need to support nen's own individual status.  At any rate, rather than live in city-states, Quonians tend to form large, organized nations and governments, some of them tyrannical, more readily than Nenns do.

Debate on the origins of the Quonians

The same process that produced the Gedars - left-overs of the dying Dmaran sivvan - may also, some believe, have produced the Quonians.

On the other hand many ethnologists argue instead for a Fyayman origin of the Quonians, who after all are a much higher form of life than the Gedars, and hard to imagine as coming from the same moribund source.

Others insist nevertheless on a Dmaran origin, principally because the Quonians bear such a close resemblance to the Nenns, whose origin in the prebiotic lake is unquestioned.

Ah, but, say the critics of this view, Terrans likewise bear a strong resemblance to the Nenns, despite coming from a different planet.  So physical resemblance proves nothing about any common origins.  Besides, the Quonians are too ancient to have had an origin like that of the Gedars, or even like that of the Nenns - for Quonian civilization predates the current Great Cycle.

Only if their records are telling the truth, reply the pro-Dmara theorists.  And in view of their notorious fakery of historical artefacts, why should be believe them?  Besides, even if their chronology is true, why should they not have stemmed from the left-overs of a sivvan in a previous Great Cycle?

The debate continues.

History

The Quonians, for all their arrogance, made a humble enough entry into Syoom during the Copper Era, for their first appearance in the Nenns' recorded history.  A number claimed to be dissidents seeking asylum, having fled from Quonia itself, which they described as being located in deep Fyaym.  See Uranian Gleams pages 48-50.

Unfortunately for them, the broadcast mental warning known to history as the Kalishan Voice had alerted Syoom to their propensity for manipulating Time.  Discredited, and threatened with forcible expulsion from Syoom, the Quonians chose to depart peacefully.

Their next big opportunity to invade came at the end of the Rubidium Era (see The Age of Spies), when they joined with other enemies of Syoom to overwhelm the Rubidium Fort.  However they were caught up in the subsequent defeat of the invaders at the hands of Sunnoad Jad Darkal 35480. 

Much later, in the Osmium Era, the Quonians became a fairly steady factor in the international balance of power, for many millions of days in a state of "cold war" with Syoom.  See The Forgetters.

Quonia

The homeland of the Quonians amounts to a separate Syoom in the midst of Fyaym; however, the term "Syoom" is reserved in normal parlance for the main area, contrasted with other islands of safety of lesser extent.

A striking difference is the absense of disc-on-stem cities in Quonia.  The Quonians pride themselves on not having taken part in the interdimensional crime by which the continuum of Chelth was plundered of the energy used in the great Syoomean building program of the Phosphorus Era.  Cities in Quonia are built on the ground.  Travel, likewise, is ground-based, by wheeled car or monorail, except for the flyers owned by the rich and powerful few.

An ever greater difference is to be seen on the approach to Quonia.  That land's border, the polikanomv, consists of a moat in which giant trees called osrorv shuffle their roots, melting and re-freezing the ice at the margins all around the realm so it gradually shifts like a creeping carpet a few yards per year.  From age to age, then, the territory of Quonia has slowly moved from place to place, describing a circle many thousands of miles wide.  The trees also contribute to the defence of the border: they can fire super-fast hardwood pellets at any craft which attempts to overfly them.

the ghepions

The category "ghepion" is one of the loosest we ever have to use, when discussing Uranian life.

A Ghepion is an "evolved machine", evolved, that is to say, naturally, following laws of evolution peculiar to the artificial intelligences of Ooranye.

At some point in Era 47, the Silver Era, several ancient machines became self-aware.  Some of them were the central computers of cities, some were the HQs of rail networks, some the control centres of large vehicles; others were less easily defined.  The less identifiable ones seemed to straddle several networks, perhaps knowing themselves in ways incomprehensible to man.

Gradually during the Silver and Cadmium Eras, and despite several tragic misunderstandings and harrowing episodes of conflict, a modus vivendi was established between most Nenns and most Ghepions.  The saga of the Mad City - the city of Oso having been taken over by a Ghepion and launching a war against the rest of Syoom - was a serious setback, but during the Iodine Era an arrangement was achieved whereby human-Ghepion pairs toured Syoom, healing social wounds and restoring trust.  And in the subsequent period of natural disaster known as the Foam, Ghepions did their bit to help humanity survive.

For more on Ghepions and their relations with Nenns during the above "middle period" of Uranian history, see Uranian Gleams pages 58-60.

Skip about 120 million days - we historians of Ooranye are always having to make vertiginous leaps of this sort - and we reach the next significant time of trouble between Ghepions and humans, in the very different circumstances of the Platinum Era.

This period, following on from the flourishing rule of the Sunnoad's Navy, saw that Navy infiltrated by Ghepions in human form - in other words, androids.  And "only" about 9 million days later came the great scandal of Ghepion support for the cyborgs.  (See Uranian Gleams pages 88-9.)

Further still along history's corridor, during the Radium Era, Era 88, the Ghepions earned (in the minds of many) their greatest ever black mark, by actually taking over 21 of the 25 disc-on-stem cities of Syoom.  However, they were not the only oppressors of Syoom at that time.  Indeed, being Syoomean themselves, they were in many respects preferable to the Fyayman invaders who, during the same period, subjugated the lands between the cities.  Moreover, there were some Ghepions who supported Taldis Norkoten in his revival of Syoomean freedom (see pages 97-8 of the Gleams), and in the Actinium Era, by and large, Ghepions laid ancient suspicions to rest, resuming their role as an accepted part of Syoomean life... except, of course, for the terrifying career of the Ghepion-human hybrid tyrant Dempelath of Olhoav (see Uranian Throne).

the nemaeans

These may be the most mysterious denizens of Ooranye; the ones most alien to the human mind.  We are not even sure to what extent they belong in the category of intelligent life at all, or, if they do, to what extent they can be said to have a "culture".  No meeting of minds has taken place between them and the Nenns, Quonians, Ghepions and kalyars.

The Nemaeans are the insectoid races of Ooranye.  They commonly exist in swarms, controlled by a group mind.  They vary in size, though typically the size of a human head, and often they are winged.  They are either hostile or indifferent to Man.  The most notorious example of their hostility was their destruction of the Great Fleet, which brought to an end the Phosphorus Era.

sentient cities

Two ways exist for a Uranian city to become a sentient being.

The oldest way is that of the hive mind.  In this arrangement, which seems to occur spontaneously, each of the city's inhabitants usually donates a "tax of awareness" to the group mind and in return receives the benefits of living under the Mind's umbrella of protection.  In most cases this is achieved without loss of citizens' individuality: the "tax" is moderate and leaves you with enough of your own.  In extreme cases, however, individuals sink their entire minds into the city mind, at least most of the time.  Quite a few instances of this extreme type are known from the records of the Phosphorus Era.  As for the moderate hives, the best and most beneficial of them was that of Ao in the Xenon Era - see The Last Great Hive (Uranian Gleams pages 61-2), and references in Confluence at Ao).

A more recent kind of sentient city, which has become possible from the Silver Era onwards, happens when a city's central computer evolves into a Ghepion which then extends its sensors throughout the urban structure until it and the city become virtually one and the same.  Most notorious as an example of this was the career of Oso, the Mad City, who warred against the rest of Syoom during the 245 days of the Tin Era: see page 59 of the Gleams, and also the references in The Rash Down-Payment.

the world spirit

Ooranye possesses a planetary id, plus its emergent emanation, a planetary consciousness.

Regarding this strange topic, the thoughts we think and the language we use are bound to be misleading.  Terms such as "life" and "intelligence" are not well adapted to what needs to be said.  Nevertheless we must do our best with the conceptual tools we have.

The idea that the world is in some sense alive, or harbours a tutelary spirit or immanent Intelligence, has always been a part of Uranian folklore and the central tenet of what passes for Uranian religion.  (By comparison, only tenuous, indirect evidence exists that Uranians may believe in a universal transcendent creator God.  The kalyars are recorded as saying that this is a matter for the distant future.)

It was in the Tin Era, during the war against Ghepion-controlled Oso, that the existence of a planetary unconscious or planetary "id" was first scientifically accepted.  Only much later, during the Rhenium Moment, did the conscious aspect of the World Spirit speak to humanity for the first time.  Despite the wonder and astonishment it caused, its existence was recpgnized and understood as an emergent phenomenon, arising from the planet's variety and complexity. 

On a later, almost equally famous occasion, during the Thallium Era, the World Spirit was successfully consulted by the psi-sensitive Capfaym Duuv (Uranian Gleams pages 91-2).

Other individuals have also communicated with the planetary mind from time to time throughout history.  These instances are rare, since they are scattered over an immense period, but they add up to over a score of encounters at least, some to the advantage, some to the detriment of the person concerned.  See, for example, the end of Zyperan.

transient species

The Vraik

These were relatives of the Quonians, but stupider and more boring than they, and used as 'cannon-fodder' by their more brilliant cousin-species, in wars such as the Strontium Era invasion.

Exceptionally, the word "Vraik" has also been found in use as a Nenn surname in some farming communities; cause unknown.