Ersatz Vilani music

[kk7]

Look, I disbelieve and dislike the "Vilani is Sumerian" rubric, despite having done so much to promote it once. Still, I think Sumerian as well as Akkadian phonology was the inspiration for the aesthetic of the Vilani language as created by GDW.

So, what with the new Gilgamesh text fragment published last year, why not listen to some guy play a Sumerian-ish lute while singing some parts of the story in Sumerian? Video here.

(FTR, the greenscreen may be the least dodgy thing about this. But it sounds cool.)

(Video brought to my attention by the blog Anniceris.)

 

[aramis]

Pretty nifty... but my analytical comments would violate the no religion clause of the rules!

 

[kilemall]

Why wouldn't the Sumerians be culturally affected by Vilani instead? Misjumped stranded Vilani ship crew jumpstarts Terran civilization?

 

[kk7]

Why wouldn't the Sumerians be culturally affected by Vilani instead? Misjumped stranded Vilani ship crew jumpstarts Terran civilization?

That is certainly the in-game explanation; you've hit it right on the head I was thinking more of the approach I had, and a few others had, and which I encouraged more people to have, back around the turn of the millennium, towards how to create a/the Vilani language.

Like I say, I regret it now -- not due to any dislike of Sumerian, mind you. The idea of Vilani I've been kicking around (in my head) for the last couple years has been radically more morphologically simple and less pretentiously exotic.

 

[robject]

So, what with the new Gilgamesh text fragment published last year, why not listen to some guy play a Sumerian-ish lute while singing some parts of the story in Sumerian? Video here.

Beautiful, but... there's far too much pent-up energy there. It's an intro, after which he just gotta start strumming that thing with a driving rhythm. I hear Gypsy Kings. I even hear Stairway to Heaven. Those chord progressions are crying out for drums and a back-beat. They had precursors to goblet-drums back. And sistrums.

Get a percussion section and play something people can dance to, for goodness' sake. Put some life into that thing!

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

Why wouldn't the Sumerians be culturally affected by Vilani instead? Misjumped stranded Vilani ship crew jumpstarts Terran civilization?

Because the Vilani weren't anywhere near Terra/Sol during the period when Sumeria was on the rise -- not even close enough for a misjump.

Vilani explorers, according to Don's Timeline, had only reached as far as Sylea -- which is about 130 parsecs coreward of Terra/Sol -- when the Sumerians were building their cities. And even if some Vilani had decided to go to Terra specifically, like on some monomaniacal, Grandfather-inspired Rim Expedition, they would have had to plow through Geonee space in order to do it. The Geonee at the time, in the form of the highly centralized Meraloo Empire, were probably more technologically advanced than the Vilani at the time, and they controlled a significant portion (if not all) of the only navigable space between the Great Rift and the Delphi Expanse, so there really would be no way for Vilani explorers to avoid this, nor make an easy run of it.

And even then, had they managed to sneak by the Geonee pickets, there would likely be at least 60 parsecs of uncharted space between the rimward frontier of the Meeralo Empire and Terra/Sol, much of which was unnavigable by traditional Jump-1 techniques of the time -- or at least only navigable by complicated workarounds.

That said, I'm sure the Vilani would want to believe this, and I bet there are Vilani versions of Giorgio A. Tsoukalos wandering all over the Third Imperium trying to make the case for this. But that does not make it any less impossible; in fact, you could make a much stronger case (although still a nearly impossible one) for some lost colony of Geonee being the spark of Earth's numerous Dwarf legends.

 

[kilemall]

Because the Vilani weren't anywhere near Terra/Sol during the period when Sumeria was on the rise -- not even close enough for a misjump.

Vilani explorers, according to Don's Timeline, had only reached as far as Sylea -- which is about 130 parsecs coreward of Terra/Sol -- when the Sumerians were building their cities. And even if some Vilani had decided to go to Terra specifically, like on some monomaniacal, Grandfather-inspired Rim Expedition, they would have had to plow through Geonee space in order to do it. The Geonee at the time, in the form of the highly centralized Meraloo Empire, were probably more technologically advanced than the Vilani at the time, and they controlled a significant portion (if not all) of the only navigable space between the Great Rift and the Delphi Expanse, so there really would be no way for Vilani explorers to avoid this, nor make an easy run of it.

And even then, had they managed to sneak by the Geonee pickets, there would likely be at least 60 parsecs of uncharted space between the rimward frontier of the Meeralo Empire and Terra/Sol, much of which was unnavigable by traditional Jump-1 techniques of the time -- or at least only navigable by complicated workarounds.

That said, I'm sure the Vilani would want to believe this, and I bet there are Vilani versions of Giorgio A. Tsoukalos wandering all over the Third Imperium trying to make the case for this. But that does not make it any less impossible; in fact, you could make a much stronger case (although still a nearly impossible one) for some lost colony of Geonee being the spark of Earth's numerous Dwarf legends.

Look, don't bother me with rules- make it happen!

 

[savage]

Without checking the map of that timeline, the Vilani only needed to be working with one experimental J2 Scout ship. One ship making contact would have been enough to spark a following, share music, etc.

So, an experimental jump ship mis-jumps numerous times missing not interacting with the Geonee, by accident. They never make it home, and end up bailing out over Terra. Remnants of a very old ship are found on a deep dig site on the moon, but little material is available for any recognition.

 

[GypsyComet]

Imperial time puts our modern day in the -2500 to -2600 range. Available writing puts the rise of "civilized" Sumer at least 4500 years before that, or around -7000 Imperial. The Vilani don't have J2 until -5400 or so; 1600 years later. They don't make contact with the Vegans for another thousand years after that, or about the time the Romans are really getting into the whole Empire thing.

 

[savage]

Imperial time puts our modern day in the -2500 to -2600 range. Available writing puts the rise of "civilized" Sumer at least 4500 years before that, or around -7000 Imperial. The Vilani don't have J2 until -5400 or so; 1600 years later. They don't make contact with the Vegans for another thousand years after that, or about the time the Romans are really getting into the whole Empire thing.

So, perhaps it came from Vilani versions of Voyager. They sent out hundreds introducing Vilani culture. One soft landed on Terra. Played it's music and art for a few decades and shutdown.

 

[robject]

One spectacular misjump?

 

[kk7]

That said, I'm sure the Vilani would want to believe this, and I bet there are Vilani versions of Giorgio A. Tsoukalos wandering all over the Third Imperium trying to make the case for this.

Indeed. There's no question that Earth was visited by more advanced and powerful beings in the distant past, whose presence profoundly shaped our later development. It certainly wasn't the Vilani, and I'm not naming any names, but...

 

[ovka]

25 years ago I used to follow the TML and XTML mailing lists. I remember a post where someone being interviewed after the JFK assassination claimed to have seen a "weird starfish thing behind the fence."

Cheers,

Baron Ovka