so basically, as the creation myth in Misendo worship goes, the god Misendo was born from the darkness, and proceeded to make the world and a whole host of spirits. eventually, he grew bored with the rigid approach of the spirits, and made Man. he eventually grew bored with them too, and altered them so they became more flexible, more easily changed (basically explaining magic and accelerated adaptation, as well as dormant/ascended)

after a time, misendo grew lonely, so he sent his spirits down to find him someone to share eternity with. the spirits found a woman, but her name has been lost to the sands. he appeared to her in a human form, but she wasn’t interested. when he showed his true self, she showed interest, and over the course of a year he managed to woo her. they had a daughter together, and her name was Arhyana. 

(at this time, the southern kingdom was under the control of Aalzho–the eastern kingdom–and was just referred to as “southern Aalzho”)

Misendo went back to his home plane to tend to the world, and Arhyana and her mother lived somewhat normal lives. Arhyana began preaching the word of misendo as soon as she could, and as she grew, that message transformed into rebelling against their Aalzhan overlords. As arhyana grew, she became beloved by the people, for they had been under aalzhan control for a long, long time, and wanted their independence. 

one day, when Arhyana and her mother were traveling between towns, they were ambushed by Aalzhan forces trying to put an end to the treasonous and blasphemous messages Arhyana was spreading. Arhyana’s mother was killed, but Arhyana escaped.

The legend goes that as Arhyana was escaping, she was taken to the chaos plane where her father was furious at the Aalzhans for the death of his love. He was ranting and raging, vowing to wash the world clean in lava and blood. Arhyana talked him down, telling him that their people were good people, and that they didn’t deserve to be destroyed along with the rest of the world.

because of Arhyana’s compassion, Misendo gave her divine knowledge that allowed her to write a book that detailed the rules of the chaos religion (which is basically learning to roll with life’s punches and learning to thrive in the uncertainty), and also laid out plans for temples that–if built in a specific way and were never tainted by blood spilt in anger–would serve as refuges for people when the end times came (after the war, arhyana added on to the book, inserting rules about dueling and feast days, and these additions are called The Mortal Additions).

Arhyana returned to the mortal world, and the people rallied to her side, and so the war for Arhyana’s independence began. 

Arhyana served as one of the chief military generals, leading with divine strategy given to her by her father. the war lasted a long time, and they almost lost when Aalzho was planning a surprise attack, but a spy in the aalzhan forces ran three days and three nights across the sands in order to warn Arhyana herself of the attack, and so they were ready for the attack when it came (this gave birth to the festival in Arhyana called “The Running of the Sands” which is basically a race along the route the spy took)

The war ended when Arhyana and the religious leader of Aalzho at the time dueled to the death in front of their forces. Arhyana won the duel and vanquished the Aalzhan leader, but the Aalzhan forces made to attack her anyway. Her soldiers rallied to her defense, and the Aalzhan forces soon retreated. (Arhyana later had the remains of the Aalzhan leader shipped back to Aalzho so they could be interred with the rest of the leaders of Aalzho, as is their custom)

The war was won, the country was free, and the people named the country after Arhyana in her honor.

Arhyana continued preaching the word of misendo until the day she died, when she was ~45. basically, one day she was preaching, and stopped with an odd look on her face. she thanked the gathered crowd, apologized for the inconvenience, and told them she was to rejoin her father. immediately afterwards, she dropped dead.

Her body was set out for the birds to feast on, as is custom, and when her bones were picked clean, they were dipped in gold and are now the most holy relics in Arhyanian culture. 

Arhyana lived about 75-100 years before the story starts, so a lot of her legend has been exaggerated. for example, some versions of the tale say that she had blood red skin and glowing eyes, but most scholars believe that the red skin is from the red clay that some people in Arhyana put on their skin to protect themselves from the sun.

so!! that’s the southern kingdom’s most famous person. 

vhiernish- i haven’t gotten an alphabet drawn out for it, but i want it to be modeled a bit after the arabic language?? just because that’s what language i’ve taken and i really like it ok it’s cool

so written right to left...as far as sentence structure, adjectives before nouns definitely, i’m still working out some other stuff.

the plural marker is changing the last vowel/s to “AE” which might not be practical but it’s stuck so far?? like... they/them when talking about one person is zhii/zhiiz (zh pronounced like the “S” in “treasure”) and they/them when talking about multiple people is zhae/zhaez

(other pronouns)

it’s a very flowery and drawn out, kind of soft language?? there’s not a lot of hard stops. like....here’s the “letters” (some letters are written differently whether they’re singular or with a friend. like “a” is a letter, and “aa” is a completely different letter)

the letters are totally subject to change tbh

the difference between “rh” and “r” is that “rh” designates a rolled “r” sound. 

but as you can see, there’s no “p” or “b” or a few other letters, but they do have a few sounds we don’t have, like “zh” and stuff.

like one thing that arabic had that i liked was different letters for “th” and “dh” which is basically...”th” is like “tooth” and “dh” is like “they.” both technically “th” sound but marked differently because technically it IS a different sound.

and then the vowels are grouped by what sound they actually make, so singular “e” is “eh” but “ii” is “ee” and so on

i think spelling in this language is pretty easy because it’s spelled exactly like it sounds. the only tricky part is distinguishing between the short “a” and the long “aa”

characters:

Emira

Raz

Faera 

Kelren 

Rilari 

Zara 

Reyana

Myna

Sedira

Tisiri

regions:

golden isles

pale island

mezzon

nordiin

lirhenii

arhyana 

aalzho

religions:

The silver book

the chaos god

the astral pantheon

the refracted ones

languages (warning: underdeveloped but there):

palish

vhiernish

magic:

dormant ascended

ascended beings

the nine schools of magic

misc:

heroes

legends

creation myths

the tea game

currency