Sunday 22 June 2014

Nyanza II

Nyanza:

the third planet of a dwarf star;
colonized during the breakup of the Solar Commonwealth, five centuries before Flandry;
incorporated into the Empire a century before Flandry;
a few revolts crushed;
estimated population 10,000,000;
air smells of salt because of the planet-wide ocean and of ozone because of the strongly ultraviolet sun;
an Imperial resident, a Portmaster, a City Warden and sea chiefs;
most planetography is oceanography, e.g., the Zurian Current turns north beyond Iron Shoals and continues past the Reefs of Sorrow;
plankton-like organisms in the Current change the water from blue to deep purple;
decapus eat oilfish which eat quasi-plankton;
Nyanzans use decapus and oilfish;
the Prince of Aquant's fishing boats, and no doubt others, are identified by their distinctive flags;
sailing boats use engines when the wind drops;
because light is more actinic than on Earth and is everywhere reflected from water, natural selection favors the black skin of the African colonists although facial features may vary;
Nyanzans often go naked;
when the original colonists overflowed the single island, Altla, they began to range the sea and found this lifestyle preferable;
thus, positions newly available on Altla were filled by pinkskins, mostly from Deutshwelt;
this second wave of immigrants could not work at sea where they would get skin sicknesses and cannot be allowed to overpopulate Altla so immigration was halted;
the Nyanzan nations own Altla, employ the Technicians/Lubbers and bar them from owning ships;
Jairnovaunt is a submerged city of domes and towers where a cargo submarine discharges kelpite bails, children with aqualungs play in a coraloid park, an old man feeds fish (not birds) and the hall of the hereditary Commander, Inyanduma III, is surrounded by formal gardens and entered by an airlock after which visitors are dried by an airblast;
Tessa Hoorn, Lightmistress of Skua, reports to the Commander on returning from The Kraal;
when the resident is assassinated and an Imperial investigator is expected, the Commander gathers his chiefs of council from the House of Men and the Congress of Women.

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