Gala

Gala (pronounced /ˈgɑlə/) is a world in the plane of Lajia in the cosmos of Mogn, notable both for its unusual ring shape and for the effects of its moons, which seem to be associated with rhege that connect Gala to other distant worlds and perhaps even other planes, and that bring creatures and things from these other worlds to Gala. Beings from these "lunar worlds", collectively known as "lunar creatures", have settled into a significant rôle on Gala alongside the humans that still form the majority of its ellogous population.

Etymology

It is generally accepted that the name of Gala comes ultimately from the Namama language, but beyond that the details of its origin are somewhat murky. The most common account is that it is a shortened form of the Namama "Iliwigala", meaning "Great Ring of the World"—and indeed, it's sometimes claimed that "Iliwigala" remains the full real name of the world, though it's not clear who would supposedly have the authority to officialize a name. In any case, there are several reasons to doubt that this is the name's real origin. First of all, it would imply that the early Nama were aware of the world's shape before the name became widespread, which seems unlikely at best. Furthermore, if there was already a Namama morpheme "Gala" that referred to a world as a whole, then it seems unnecessary to assume that the modern name comes from this particular compound, and not from some other compound that includes the same morpheme, or from the bare morpheme itself. (Technically, the "Gala" in "Iliwigala" is a shortened genitive form of the word Egela—a word the original meaning of which linguists still dispute. But that doesn't resolve the problem—if "Egela" referred to the world, then "Gala" could just as easily have come from it, or from its genitive form, rather than from "Iliwigala"; and if "Egela" didn't refer to the world, then "Iliwigala" couldn't mean "Great Ring of the World".)

In any case, Gala's name certainly has no etymological connection to its English homonym, "gala" with the meaning of a party or festivity—nor to its other, rarer English homonym, "gala" referring to a certain type of Sumerian priest.

Geography

The world of Gala is toroidal in shape, a nearly perfect ring torus, except where it connects to other worldstrands. There are three such junctures, connecting to the worlds of Ilī"iē, Kekesa, and Qemesta. (It is in fact from Kekesa that most historians believe Gala's first human inhabitants immigrated.) The circles formed by the intersection of Gala's surface with planes that contain its axis are considered Gala's longitudinal circles, while the circles on its surface centered on the world's axis are the latitudinal circles. Two special latitudinal circles of note are the equator, the smallest latitudinal circle and the one closest to the axis of symmetry; and the antiequator, the circle that is both largest and farthest from the axis.

Latitude and longitude on Gala are typically measured not in degrees, but in nagegs, an angle measurement unique to Gala equal to 5/4 of a degree, such that there are 288 nagegs in a circle. By convention, the equator is taken as the zero of latitude and the antiequator as both 144 nagegs and −144 nagegs. The zero of longitude is defined as the closest longitudinal circle to the center of the orbit of the moon Llā'l where the sun once a year passes directly overhead (which happens to be about 0.238 nagegs east of the actual center of Llā'l's orbit). Galan maps are conventionally drawn with west on top, making them about two and a half times taller than they are wide, but maps with north on top, correspondingly wider than they are tall, are also not uncommon.

Gala is covered mostly by land, with its water primarily collected in two great seas, the Mawale and the Dunsallan. One sine of the Mawale Sea, called the Nenemaw, is connected to the larger body by a narrow enough inlet that many geographers consider it a separate sea, and there is a third (or fourth) body of water, Lake Gamidrion, that some opine qualifies by its size as a proper sea as well.

Many large mountain ranges crisscross Gala's land, and so the conventional pages of the land surface are the so-called vales of which these ranges form the borders. There are either seven or eight vales, depending on who's doing the reckoning: Adantia, Cumbatar, Dunsallo, Erstland, Kanilli, and Salelia are more or less universally numbered among the vales, but the remaining land some count as two vales called Makonumwi and Makobley but most as a single vale called Ipiyak.

Gala's toroidal shape seems physically impossible, or at least highly improbable, given the way that worldthreads form in Lajia. A worldthread is a collection of matter surrounding one of the gravitational strings that permeate the plane, and current theories of gravitational physics place a lower limit on the possible length of loops in these strings—a lower limit of which Gala is in blatant violation. This suggests either that the gravitational string at the center of Gala has been artificially formed or manipulated, or that the present understanding of gravitational physics is incomplete and that such small loops can form naturally under some circumstances. In any case, this conundrum has not attracted as much study as it perhaps merits, partly because, as on many magical worlds, science aside from celemology is in its relative infancy and physicists are few and fledgeless, and partly because the unusual effects of Gala's moons has proved a more exciting field of study.

Most of Gala's surface is temperate in climate, but there is a broad pageric band covering most of Ipiyak, flanked by a tropical band on each side, the eastern, which encompasses most of the vale of Kanilli and of the Mawale Sea, both broader and more calent than the western.

Astronomy

Gala has a single sun, which pursues a gradually rotating elliptical path through the axial hole of the world. (The formal astronomical name of the sun is Anpewi, but to most Galans of course it is simply "the sun".) Essentially, the sun traces highly eccentric ellipses with the major axis aligned along the axis of Gala, but its path also rotates along Gala's axis so that each time it crosses the medial plane in the same direction, it does so in a slightly different place from the previous time. The degree of rotation in each ellipse is exactly one nageg, or at least the amount is exact to the limits of modern Galan measurement. In fact, it is almost certainly this fact that led to the adoption of the nageg as a standard unit of measurement in the first place.

Unlike most worlds of Lajia, Gala has no circumferent planets—probably because the unusual tight toroidal shape of the world doesn't leave room for them. It does have protensive planets, however, which, in contrast to those of most worlds, pass in fixed and relatively short periods of no more than a few years. There are also circumferent planets that circle the adjoining worldstrands, the nearest of which are visible from parts of Gala. Among the fixed stars visible from Gala, perhaps the most notable is the Blue Star, an unusually bright star which, as the name implies, is a vivid shade of blue.

Other astronomical bodies of note visible from Gala include a prominent nebula called the Claw, a winding galaxy called the Snake, and a wryther called Uanagi. In addition, a comet called Unchegile passes near Gala about every ninety years, and the superstitious associate it with all kinds of calamity.

Moons

Gala has five moons—or perhaps technically four and a half moons—, all of which seem to work some enchantments upon the areas they pass over, not the least notable of which is that they produce portals or crepatures to the lunar worlds. The moon Salele hovers above its namesake vale of Salelia, while the green and blue Bixim is positioned above the Cloud Peaks between Adantia and Dunsallo.

The remaining three moons of Gala all pursue circular orbits around or along the worldstrands. The moon with the longest orbit is Hech, which travels in (or more accurately slightly above) a Villarceau circle traced on the surface of the torus. The path of the pale yellow moon Ist follows very close to the 85th parallel north. Finally, the moon Llā'l orbits the connection of Gala and Ilī"iē, and in fact its orbit (or the intersection of its orbital plane with the worldstrands) is conventionally taken to define the boundary between the two worlds.

There is a single point where the orbits of Hech and Ist cross. Directly below this point, located in the vale of Erstland, is a structure called the Fortress of the Two Moons. No one now remembers who built the Fortress, or when or why, but it has a reputation as a dark and dangerous place—and though no one seems to have any evidence of what lies within, there is no shortage of rumors. There may be no place on Gala more universally dreaded than this mysterious structure.

Time

The standard Galan calendar has as its basis the path of the sun, with one day defined as the time it takes the sun to complete a single ellipse, and one year as the time it takes for its orbit to rotate around until it reaches exactly the same point over the world where it started. A Galan year therefore contains exactly 144 days (within available limits of measurement)—though each Galan day is significantly longer than a Terran day, so a Galan year is only a little shorter than a Terran year.

Each day is further conventionally divided into twelve points, which are in turn subdivided into twelve intervals called ectre. Most Galan cultures have no close equivalent to the Terran hour, which falls in between these two units; a point is a bit under five hours, while an ecter is about two-fifths of an hour. When further precision is needed, the ecter is split into twelve chares, each equal to about two Terran minutes, and each chare into twelve throws, each equal to about ten seconds. When an even shorter period of time is needed, the throw can be divided into twelve rushes—each rush being a little less than a Terran second—; still smaller time units have been proposed, but are rarely used.

A specific time is conventionally named by an ordinal number signifying the point; midday, for instance, falls at the beginning of the seventh point. When there is little danger of ambiguity, the "point" is elided; one might refer simply to "the seventh". When it is necessary to give more precision, another ordinal number may be used for the ecter, and possibly a third for the chare; "the fourth and ninth" would signify the ninth ecter of the fourth point, and "the eighth, first, and eleventh" would mean the eleventh chare of the first ecter of the eighth point. In principle, this system could be extended to include throws, rushes, and beyond, but in practice this is almost never done. Formerly, each of the twelve points had a specific name that referred to it, but the use of these names has fallen into obsolescence, and they are now found only in historical documents and some formalized contexts—though they are still known to the highly educated.

In most cultures, the days are grouped into twelve periods called stevins, more or less analogous to Terran months, and comparable in duration. Like the Terran months, the stevins are called by names which, unlike those of the points, remain in common use, and indeed in most cultures referring to the stevins by number would be seen as rather eccentric. In order, starting from the beginning of the year, the stevins are Zuzzam, Symarm, Jherigam, Gezzem, Nynem, Jhuvam, Azzicam, Yjhem, Vevvam, Dyssicam, Chassam, and Chicham.

The twelve days within each stevin, too, are given names, though these are conventionally prefaced by the definite article. In order, they are the Mold, the Egen, the Nass, the Geagle, the Hawls, the Brist, the Rhiff, the Lend, the Thee, the Caneen, the Scann, and the Fet. So the fourth day of the fifth stevin, for instance, would be referred to as the Geagle of Nynem. Due to a quirk of etymology, the Egen and the last four days all take plural agreement, despite each referring to a single day. (The other seven days take singular agreement.)

It should be noted that the calendar is held to start on the day that the sun is most directly overhead when it crosses the medial plane in a south-to-north direction—which, of course, varies by longitude. This has the interesting consequence that the date is different at different longitudes, and in fact at any given time it is any particular date on some part of the world. This also means, that, for example, if one travels around Gala from east to west at the same rate as the rotation of the sun's orbit, one can always remain in the same date. Some specialists who provide services associated with particular holidays take advantage of this, arranging to make sure to always be at the longitude where that holiday is celebrated.

There is not necessarily any mystical significance to the recurrence of multiples of twelve in Galan time units, any more than there is to the fact that there are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes to an hour on Earth. Most likely this pattern came about simply because of the astronomical fact that there are 144 days in a Galan year, the mathematical coincidence that 144 happens to be the square of twelve, and the resulting convenience of extending this relationship to other units of time.

Life

Gala is noted for the prominent presence of the lunar creatures, life forms that are not native to Gala but have arrived there from one of the lunar worlds. The scolopendroid alabac, the tentacled tatuish, the three-headed dodle, and the invisible yevel are among the lunar creatures that have spread throughout most of Gala. But Gala does also have endemic life forms of its own, including, among many others, the quetchworm, the gare, the somewhat misnamed sea pard, and the venomous-spined tsanja. The colonial halaberzy, found all over Gala but particularly common around the northern corner of the Dunsallan Sea, were long believed to be lunar creatures, but more recent investigations suggest despite their seemingly alien nature they are native to Gala after all. The mountains are particularly noted for dangerous fauna, such as the keener and the bisanticus.

More so than most worlds of Lajia, Gala seems to be home to a profusion of intangible beings that reside within different objects and locales—or in some cases that possess other living things. Though these beings are often referred to as spirits, they are more specifically called nagis, though it's unclear whether all nagis pertain to a single strain or whether they represent several unrelated lineages of beings.

Folks

Though humans make up the most common folk of Gala, they are not the only one. All the other prominent ellogous folks, however, are linked in some way to Gala's moons—with the possible exception of the berns, a folk most common in Jibberland that appear much like humans except for their smaller size. The lunars, for instance, are a type of anek that changes between forms in synchrony with the waxing and waning of a governing moon—though as with many anekani whether lunars really constitute a separate folk or an enchanted subset of their primary race is debatable.

More numerous and more influential than the lunars, however, are the lunar folks, ellogous beings from the lunar worlds. The balbaramba are enormous entities with numerous spindly legs. The c'casth are legless creatures somewhat reminiscent of giant slugs. The mareb are blue bipedal creatures with long trunks and with extendable mouths on their abdomens. The oroba``a appear like little more than collections of floating eyes. Even berns may be lunar creatures, though this has not been definitively verified.

Less prominent folks not connected with Gala's moons include the iktomi, spiderlike beings known for their deviousness and penchant for espièglerie; the mmla, voracious, macrocephalous bipeds that roam western Ipiyak; and the waziya, the reclusive, cold-loving giants after which the Waziata Mountains are named.