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Are we starting our new working year? In general, it’s him, yes, but with another summing up of the previous one.

In short, today is significant because “Islands” finally let me go. For two days (yesterday and today) I edited them, corrected them, revised them; I edited it again - and now, this is a completely finished and finished work that I can sell like all normal authors.

https://www.litres.ru/dmitriy-yakimec/ostrova/

While I was finishing the post, I was already harnessed to write articles - so I’m running away. See you again!

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate today!

This time I’ll do without boring and any posts, but just briefly tell you what we’re going to do next.

The holidays, alas, are ending soon, and next week we will go back to work. Zahar (that same friend of mine) said that he still had some free time and asked to come to us for an excavation. I replied that I didn’t promise anything, but we’ll try to drag him in somehow.

So from Monday, I believe, we will work as usual again. I can’t promise anything about new writing yet; it will most likely happen, at least somehow.

So wait for Monday and new information! See you!

And I, in turn, congratulate you on the holiday you have already celebrated. I won’t be verbose (or rather, I can’t anymore, given my condition), so I’ll just add a huge thank you to all those who supported us, believed in us, helped with advice and deeds.

There were times when we gave up, and there were times when we wanted to give up everything, go somewhere else and forget all our work like a bad dream. But it was largely thanks to you that we managed to overcome these feelings, and each time we gathered our courage and continued on, no matter what.

Happy holiday to you, dear friends and readers. Be healthy!

So, this year is coming to an end.

It was varied: interesting and difficult, full of sudden (no) exams and tasks, Andryusha's war with the moles (Moles: Andryusha - 2:1), elven wine and even crumbling excavation walls.

It's been a busy year and I'm sure we'll all remember it for a long time - but, as they say in my clan, "every beard comes to an end" - which means it's time to take stock, say goodbye to the old days and, shaking off the dust of the exhausted mines from our hands, greet the approaching New Year with pure souls and joyful smiles.

I raise a mug of good ale to you, dear readers, to our team and to everyone who has made it to this day!

Let's drink!

To all followers of Daina - Happy Creation Day!

According to a suddenly established tradition, instead of congratulations there will be another lecture; this time about the origins of the holiday and the daina as such. But since I understand all this disgustingly, my good friend Zear, with whom we are now drinking beer, will tell about it instead of me.

The traditional religion of the Eryakhshar Jearts is Daina (from the Cl.-J. ḑaynā, modern ḑoynā) — a completely stunning synthesis of all those beliefs that the Jeharts learned from neighboring peoples while migrating back and forth across Orova. They almost completely lost their original beliefs (the cult of ancestors/nature spirits with a very complex hierarchy) during this time, replacing them with a peculiar version of Mazdayasna, in an unclear proportion mixed with the beliefs of the Draghars; even the name of the religion — Dayna (from the Khvenvant ḑaenā "custom, order") clearly hints at this.

However, first things first. The main teaching of the Daina is that the world consists of two principles, races (movements) and ours (peace), which are personified by two brothers-Gods, whose names are Azursherkh and Menagrad. When the world did not yet exist, they were united and did not have consciousness in the usual sense of the word; one day, however, they began to separate from each other, each acquiring its own personality and in this process forming the entire Universe. According to legend, the act of creation lasted eight days, on the first of which Darkness and Light were born in the world, where the second was represented by stars and luminaries.

That's why the creation of the world is celebrated on the eighth day after the winter solstice, yes.

Returning to the brothers, we see the following: according to legend, having acquired separate personalities, they ceased to be omniscient, and therefore they had to learn about the created world anew. Azursherh asked more questions about the properties of the world and its structure, and Menagrad - about the origins of the processes occurring in it; Azursherh asked how the world is structured, and Menagrad - why it is structured this way. But if the first was able to find satisfaction in the incomplete answer he found, the second could not - and went mad.

Since then, Menagrad is not revered by the Jearts, because his spirit, filled with malice, fell away from the world. But Azursherh also lost most of his powers because his brother separated from him, and he himself went into exile. But even so, he watches over his lands and loves all who live in them, and tries to help everyone as much as he can.

The eschatology is very simple: one day the brothers will have to meet again in battle, and then Azursherh will defeat Menagrad, but will not kill him, but forgive him - and, reunited again, they will restore harmony in the world. Then from all living and lived in the world, according to their merits and exploits, they will gather a flock for themselves and will all live together as one big family.

I won't tell you where certain elements were borrowed from in the daina - a detailed analysis would take up a rather large book, and the post is already too long. Instead - once again, happy holiday to everyone, brothers! Azūr rād!

Merry Christmas to all Catholics and New Sosigen Catholics!

Since writing ordinary banal congratulations is boring, I will explain why the two main branches of Christianity differ in their names by only one letter, how this happened and why this is bad.

One of the central dogmas of Christian theology is conciliarity, universality (el. καθολικότητα, from καθολικός— "universal, complete") of the Church, understood as its spatio-temporal universality. At first, everything seemed to be fine, there was a single Church, possessing the fullness of truth, it decisively destroyed heresies and lived quite well.

But then, alas, a schism occurred. Let's skip the story with mutual anathemas of the patriarchs and all that; what is important is that each of the newly formed Churches (which is quite natural) began to position itself as the true one, decisively declaring its conciliarity (el. already existed, skad. catholicity) and inseparability, presenting the other as unfortunate and lost, having fallen into heresy.

And after that, a whole mess of names began. These two Churches were called Western and Eastern, Catholic and Orthodox Catholic, and whatever else; the situation was further aggravated by the fact that while in Retzin it is possible to make a distinction between Catholics and Katholiks [kafoliki], most other languages do not allow this.

So it turns out that in Rečani they are called “katolična” and “katolička”, in English – Catholic and Orthodox-Catholic, in Hessian – Catholique and Hellenique (!), and there are thousands, thousands of them.

So all we can do is pray for “unification of all” and hope for the best, so that this crazy confusion will finally end on its own.

We haven’t been in touch all this time because, let me remind you, there’s A LOT OF SNOW. We cleaned it, cleaned it, cleaned it - it all ended with me almost ruining my back, and today it... melted. I love the local climate.

But from complaints we move on to more pressing news. The holidays are just around the corner, and therefore our entire friendly team is slowly starting to go home. Berenice returns to Recinia; I’m going to my relatives in Rozhev, the rest are going elsewhere too. Only the vigilant alvas on duty remain here, as well as enthusiasts who are simply crazy about work. Thank God, I don’t consider myself one of those people.

Therefore, news about our excavation will stop for these two weeks, but we will shower you with all sorts of New Year, Christmas and any other things. Stay in touch!

This morning I was pouring water from the tap into a cup, and at exactly the same moment I had an idea for a new post. Now many of us have normal water supply systems, and therefore very convenient and easy access to water. What were people doing, say... in the fourth century?

Wells and walking with buckets on a rocker to the river immediately come to mind; a little later, perhaps Romanesque aqueducts and lead water supply, which did not make things any better - were there other options?

As it turns out, there is. One of the most sophisticated (in the good sense of the word) options was among the elves of Sordava - the same one that is the capital of the Glinnar Dimonarchy. It would seem that a wide and deep river flows through the city (Edevis), take as much water from there as you like, right? It would have been possible, of course, but Sordav was already a very vertical city. The local evalgars calmly reached a height of eighty meters and were completely covered with assorted dwellings, bridges, passages and anything else. It’s as if climbing up the stairs thirty (or even more) meters with buckets in your hands appeals to few people.

As far as we can know, at first the option of buying a number of pumps from the Kharassukhumi doors and making a full-fledged water supply system was seriously considered. He was rejected: almost the entire city is one continuous forest, and servicing underground pumps would be very difficult, if not impossible, due to the abundance of intertwined roots. And in the end they did the following.

Since the city is in a lowland, three aqueducts were built to it: one taking water from the upper sections of Edevais; two more are from lakes in the south. They made something like water tanks, and then it was simply brilliant. The pipes were made from the wood of dead evalgars, which, immersed underground, were magically implanted into the root system of already living ones. Thus, we achieved two things at once:
— there is no need to maintain anything, because the wood is very durable, moisture-resistant, and most importantly, alive and capable of regeneration;
— the roots will not accidentally destroy the pipes, because these pipes are part of the roots.

Of course, this way the Alvas could only use cold water, but that’s still very cool, right?