The mother Lannapôrho had scarcely greeted her when she walked into the room.

"Ebejebhōrho," she said, calling her by her full name. The woman was all high and imperious, toying with the jade bead on her impressively long necklace, "I will talk with your mother in the stool room. I am very much looking forward to seeing the results of your training." Then, the slightly pudgy, very short and altogether terrifying Lannapôrho walked to the low table next to the door and lit a scented candle. The young one knew exctly what that candle meant: the time she was allotted to produce a suitable proof of her penmanship to her elders. It was a very small candle – she had little time.

The girl's weak "Yes, great mother..." went uheard and Lannapôrho left the room. Ebejebhōrho smoothed her dress, took two deep breaths and sat down on the cushion laid out for her. The writing board was at her feet – she picked it up, unfurled the birchbark on top of it and started working with her stylus.

She had prepared what she would write beforehand, of course – vague platitudes and flatteries. Lannapôrho would like that.

​

My name is Ebejebhōrho, daughter of Ladapono by Cebejâda.

​

She didn't like her name very much – all her friends, her family and her peers called her Bebeje. But her mother had chosen it for a reason: Ebejebhōrho, "she who paints her face". Her mother had been born common and had arrived at the palace as a favourite: she had forged her life through dedication and talent, ensuring that her only daughter, born of the blood of Burning Clan could claim that name at her birth.

​

The great mother Lannapôrho has offered me the honour of writing this message for her...

​

She stopped writing. The two voices came from the room beside hers.

"Mother Lannapôrho..." It was Bebeje's mother, no doubt kissing the matriarch's palm and then touching her brow in respect. "Thank you for receiving me and my daughter."

"You are very welcome, Ladapono. Please take a seat."

​

...Offered me the honour of writing this message for her...

​

Bebeje couldn't possibly concentrate. She put her pen down and kept on listening as the muffled voice of matriarch in the other room cut directly to the chase.

"So, Ebejebhōrho?" she said, with a hint of hilarity that the eavesdropper didn't particularly appreciate,

"Yes, mother, she is a very talented girl. I think... I think she deserves a husband of the blood."

"Well, I think it shall be my assessment that decides that, don't you think?"

A pause.

"Yes, mother."

The old woman spoke again. "She was born of famous blood herself, that much is true. It's a point in her favour, surely – but when I advise matches, I usually like for both sides of the bride-to-be to be of the palace."

Her mother spoke back – Lannapôrho wouldn't like that. "I have resided at the palace for the past ten turns, mother."

"Surely." She replied, dry. Bebeje's palms started sweating. "So, as I was saying... you were a favourite of the Mother Jababosso of Burning clan, am I correct?"

"Yes."

"So much so that she let you marry her son."

"Yes. I was – I am – a skilled weaver."

"Surely. The shawl you have gifted me was exceptionally well crafted." Her words were kind, but her tone was cold, "Tell me, Ladapono, what about your family?"

A pause.

"My father came from the city of Amadahai." She began, "He had a dying workshop there, with his clan – but he did not stand to inherit. He would visit Kamābarha often, to sell his family's dyed cloth..."

Bebeje knew the story already. Her grandfather traveled often to Kamābarha, where he found a girl, married into her modest family and founded a common clan from nothing with the wealth of his ibosso, his acumen and his talent. He came from outside – that's why the noble Lannapôrho, who otherwise knew everything about the bloodlines of the city, had found a blind spot in the woman she was interviewing. She was obviously irritated by that. The girl tried, once again, to concentrate on her writing.

​

...Offered me the honour of writing this message for her, on this lovely spring day. I pray the spirits keep her in health and provide her clan with...

​

Once again, she was distracted.

"I have heard enough, thank you, let us return to Ebejebhōrho. A very graceful name, I must say."

"Thank you mother."

"She is eighteen years of age?"

"Yes, great mother, she has had her ibosso dedicated when she was twelve."

"A good age."

"Yes. And as it is said: 'A sapling of jaba tree and a young girl with her ibosso – one must wait six turns before they can be fruitful.'"

"Well said. I have heard the details of her ibosso's endowment. I trust you are ready to add more to that, if the match is good?"

"Yes, mother."

"Very good... Now tell me of her skill."

"Well – she has learned to write under the tutelage of mother Jababosso..."

"Ah yes, she was a very good pen, Jababosso."

"Yes – and I have personally taught her the art of painting proverbs... aside of course, for my own specialties – spinning and working the loom."

"Blood and the arts of a woman–"

"-Some things only pass from mother to daughter."

There was a pause. Bebeje wondered, panicked, if the matriarch was pleased or just... thinking, but when she spoke again, her voice seemed lighter.

"The girl is pretty. Soft skin, not too pale, her hair is shiny."

"Thank you, mother. She is every bit her father."

"Surely. I certainly don't believe it will be too hard to find a willing man from one of the clans..." Bebeje heard a ruffle of paper – the woman was looking through the thick genealogies of the city, looking for something suitable. Bebeje's future was quite literally in the matriarch's hands. "Turtle Clan has an army of impressive young boys – Lobhôn, Kemephemêhe, Sinnepono... all children of Turtle's second mother, all accomplished warriors. Otherwise, The neighbouring village of Cemecedjejen has a famous ruling family..."

"Oh, mother. please save me."

"Oh?"

"I apologise if I speak out of turn, mother. Surely all your suggestions are wise. But Bebe-" She corrected herself, "Ebejebhōrho is my only daughter, mother. Please let me keep her close to me as I grow old."

"Very well, dear. If that is the case, either of those three boys are my suggestion. We must have them meet, to see which one might appreciate her – and, of course, which one she might like herself: A mismatched marriage and a decade of rains..." She did not finish the proverb – apparently she had found a very interesting piece of paper. "...Unless... Oh yes! Phabharadaha, of the Heron Clan would be a good – no excellent – choice. Have a read yourself."

Silence.

That silence immediately sobered Bebeje, who quickly realised where she was and what she was there for. As if waking up from a strange dream, she frantically took the half-empty birchbark sheet sitting in front of her. She had to cut some of her planned prayers.

​

...I pray the spirits keep her in health and provide her clan with happiness. I will finish my writing with these well-wishes, for the wisdoms say: a lengthy text and a length prayer – a mother and a sprit's patience are not endless."

​

She was trying to find a way to transcribe that newly coined proverb with the glyphs that her mother had taught her when the two women entered the room. That very small candle hadn't been consumed yet – apparently, the old woman was eager to see her work.

"Ebejebhōrho", the great mother said again, this time slightly friendlier – would she still be friendly after reading her half-written note? "Your mother speaks highly of your skills. Let us see if she is to be believed."

Bebeje shot a guilty look at her mother and, turning slightly red, handed the scroll to the famous Lannapôrho. The matriarch's eyes turned from sympathy to concern in a second.

"Well... at least the penmanship is very good..." She kept reading in silence until she reached the end.

Lannapôrho's eyes widened and her eyes darted to the girl, her mouth open in stupor. She guffawed as she left the room.

"Come by at the start of the moon, my good-humoured Ebejebhōrho. We shall make sure you meet your future husband."

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Tritonean Lineiform

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https://preview.redd.it/mw7kznb4e26b1.png?width=156&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf7f07c9c362bb842b71b5242a9a9f30a659eee1

The Trinonean Lineiform script, or Tritonean Formative Script, is a logo-syllabic script which developed as a method for the recording of the Arhada language and the dialects of its language continuum. The script was in active use since the late 8th century A.D., gaining popularity and spreading throughout the region around the end of the first millenium. It’s named for its characteristic style, formed by parallel lines impressed on birchbark paper with a sharp stylus or brush. Lineiform is the oldest writing system in Dawn.

Over the course of its history, Lineiform would evolve into various styles and iterations, to be later simplified and re-elaborated, giving us the family of scripts known as Tritonic. The first Arhada texts are attested as early as 750 A.D., in the form of birchbark contracts between client states and their suzerains, which makes the bulk of the early lineiform record. It was later adapted for writing Early Mēnidān, the language of the Kemithātsan, but because of the employ of Arhada scribes, the language itself would be heavily influenced by Arhada proper, evolving in the Tritonean Koiné Language.

History

Arhada Proverb Glyphs

Writing in Tritonea began through the practice of proverb glyphs, pictorial representations of popular wisdoms through the succint use of no more than four images. During the entirety of the Formative Era, they represented the main character of the Southern Pottery school, being later exported to the other schools. These glyphs are not to be considered a writing system per se, but a system of symbolic associations that told a story through pictographic drawings.

Though the vocabulary of symbols this system introduced forms the basis of Lineiform, Proverb Glyphs exist separately from writing, and the evolution and diffusion of writing did not impede the continuation of this tradition in the decoration of prised goods, art and architecture. Both writing and the evolution of this practice ensured the symbols assumed a more abstract, less figurative quality, but in different ways – writing through the applicaton of the symbols in a more practical endeavour, requiring some degree of rapidity and a smaller character size; proverb glyphs in the aesthetisation of the symbol as a decorative sign, as well as a symbolic one.

Early Birchbark Writing

By the 8th Century, these symbols were such a common occurrence in everyday life, that their usage broke free of the strongly symbolic and suggestive mediums they were utilised in, entering the realms of state administration. The matriarchs of the great cities – Kamābarha, Amadahai and all other rising centres along the lake – began using the symbols that first emerged in "talking objects" and the realm of art as an aid to their everyday tasks. Birchbark contracts are the earliest form of intentional use of proverb glyphs outside that realm: the stories they tell were still rather barebones, and easy to misunderstand: those were symbols that both parties had agreed upon at the time of their writing, which to this day remain difficult to interpret correctly. The loose meaning of these contract must also have been a issue for the matriarchs that redacted them, which is why as the 8th century progressed we see an ever increasing specificity in these texts, the introduction of phonetic disambiguators and the mergers of logographic radicals into more complex characters – characters that tell a deeper story.

In this pre-writing stage, we see writing expand to other functions, while still remaining stably within the sphere of womanly duties – the creation of detailed genealogies within the clans of city, a transcription of the century-old knowledge that the mothers once transmitted orally; the accounting of the stores within the palace grounds and the treasury; the drafting of diplomatic messages from one council of mothers to the other, cutting the need for intermediaries while still allowing matriarchs of the blood to remain in their homelands; eventually, personal texts: a letter, a hymn, a thought, a new proverb that had just been thought up.

Tritonean Lineiform

This slow evolution brings us to the Lineiform script, a progressive simplification of birchbark writing. The name derives from the shape of its glyphs, which are entirely composed of parallel, perpendicular and curved lines. The script is logo-syllabic, which means that two components – a logographic component and a syllabic one – interact to provide meaning.

Logograms

The crux of the script is based on logograms, symbols that indicate a concept with no regard to its phonological shape.

​

mala \"parent\", sêne \"dog\", lono \"comb\"

Each of these symbols conveys an entire word. The most simple ones are easy enough to understand, but the most complex may take a trained eye to see the shape behind them.

​

noloi \"hunt\", mêne \"bite\"

noloi "hunt", is a bow an arrow over a running bison, mêne "to bite", is the dentature of a person: only it has been rotated to fit the vertical proportions of the other symbols. But what does one do when a symbol is not straightforward enough to draw? In those cases, syllable glyphs are used to disambiguate.

Syllable glyphs

There are two kinds of syllable glyphs: root specifiers, which are placed imediately under a root and accompanied with a small mark on their side that indicates their function, and regular syllable glyphs. Both these types use the same group of symbols to indicate the same group of syllable combinations. the difference lies in the fact that root specifiers indicate the ending of a root, giving a clue into the meaning in combination with a logographic base.

​

sêne \"dog\", phonjo \"granary dog\"

In the second symbol, the radical sêne "dog", is used to provide meaning, while the symbol for imônjo "rabbit" provides the necessary phonological context to indicate that we are not talking about any dog, but a phonjo, a granary dog. The vertical mark next to the symbol connects the glyph with the root, rather than giving it independent logographic or phonetical value.

regular syllable glyphs are read as simple consonant-vowel combinations, either the first syllable of the root or the second, depending on its position in the word. The same glyph can give two readings based on where it is positioned:

Modjôdo \"the animal sees\", modjōnomo \"He looks around\"

Note that the second glyph nodo "mother" is used in the first example to express the second half of its phonological value, -do, whereas in the second example, where it is medial, it is read as no-.

Opaqueness and Ambivalence of the script

At this stage, there was still a degree of ambiguity to the script, of course. This would be slowly eradicated through the centuries, as matriarchs, bookkeepers, genealogists and poets made these imperfect rules slightly more consistent. For example, at this stage, many symbols are used to express more than one phonetic value; some consonant-vowel combinations may employ more than one symbol; finally, not every phonological detail of the language is understood by the writers, creating a slightly undespecified script. It remains a fact that writing spread from palace to palace like wildfire, even if slightly imperfect as a system. Though there is some amount of regional variation, because of the fact that writing is taught from scribe to scribe, and because the language of the Arhada of Kamābarha and Amadahai is the only one used to write this script at its inception, these rules solidify and become codified by masters and apprentices alike.

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TL;DR We have writing! I'll finish the actual script sometime this week or next week – I had to put this out so I can focus on war and expansion some other stuff.