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The Lonely Galaxy
Do other minds dwell among the stars? A team of six explorers sets out in a tiny sleeper ship named the Dewfall seeking an answer to that very question. After a two and a half century voyage spent in metabolic suspension, they arrive in orbit around a planet that may harbor intelligent life. Many others have made similar journeys before them only to return home as alone as when they left. But this time is different. They pick up non random radio emissions from the planet's surface. This is it! They've finally found other rational souls after crying out into the blind infinity for so long. Upon landing on the surface and alighting their craft, our brave explorers come face-to-face with… humans.
Light shine upon you, friend! Welcome to the Lonely Galaxy. This is my personal worldbuilding and conlanging project. It's not intended to be part of a book or game. It's just a playground to get lost in while daydreaming.
Latest Blog Entries
The blog exists to catch spontaneous thoughts as they come to me, much like the original CBB thread. These will be later integrated into the wiki proper if I think they're worth keeping.
Elevated Housing and the Underlay
Yinrih prefer to be off the ground, so houses on stilts are the norm, even when the climate or terrain doesn't require it. As population density increased, the houses clustered together and formed an “underlay”, the area under houses and other buildings. As towns grew into cities, and as powered transportation developed, rail lines were built through these underlays, allowing fast travel between parts of a city.
The form of subspace used by ansibles and Mass routers is named after this feature of the urban landscape.
YIP Address Structure
YIP addresses consist of 81 trits (27 BB27 digits). This gives YIP an address space of 3^81 or roughly 4.43*10^38. Since it's Balanced Ternary, half the space is negative and half is positive. This distinction is likely significant but I'm not yet sure how. Perhaps negative addresses cannot cross the borders between autonomous systems, making them similar to IPv6 unique local addresses or RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses.
A YIP address may be written in nine groups of three BB27 digits like this
bcd-fgh-jkl-mnp-qBC-DFG-HJK-LMN-PQb
The address may be further divided into a network prefix, subnet ID, and interface suffix.
Thoughts on Paw Morphology
While Yinrih are arboreal, the proportions of their digits and palms are closer to those of humans rather than arboreal apes like orangutans and gibbons. Those animals have long fingers and toes to wrap around large branches. While they do have thumbs, orangutans can't oppose the thumb to the other fingers because the thumb is much shorter than the fingers.
Because of Yih's lower gravity (about 0.88g), the branches of the trees that yinrih dwelt in are proportionally slimmer, meaning yinrih digits need not be so long. Further, when yinrih did encounter larger bows, their claws could dig into the wood to help stabilize them.
Yinrih can also wrap their rear thumbs behind them when squatting on a branch, like the zygodactyl feet of a bird.
The pads of yinrih paws may be covered in tiny keratinized bosses or even barbs like the tongue of a cat. These would be for grip when climbing.
Number Systems
There are a variety of number systems used throughout Focus. The two widely used in natural language are duodcimal, used in Commonthroat, and quadravigessimal, used in Outlander.
This difference exists due to the cultural divide between surface dwellers and spacers. Yinrih have six digits on each of their four paws, for a total of 24 digits. Yinrih are arboreal quadrupeds, so they have to stop and rear up on their hind feet when on level ground in order to use their forepaws, giving them twelve digits to count with. Spacers live in microgravity, allowing them to use all 24 digits to count. The Allied Worlds, where Commonthroat is spoken, contains a larger population of surface dwellers, while Moonlitter and Partisan Territory contain a large population of spacers, so Outlander, the local language, uses base 24.
Two specialized bases exist that are used in computing. Yinrih computers are based on balanced ternary. Balanced base 27 is used as a convenient shorthand for balanced ternary as hexadecimal is for binary on Earth.