Prussiania was an imaginary country that Robert and some of his friends concocted when they were Muser age (decades before Muse, alas). You can read more about it on the previous Time Capsule thread.
Now, rarity of rarities, Prussianian records are starting to come to light. Here are a couple that Robert found in one of his old school notebooks:
Robert writes:
These line drawings illustrate episodes from the epic cycle of Petrogalar the Barbarian. At left, note the Prussianian national instrument, the vanalya, a one-stringed lyre. Prussianian art seems to have borrowed conventions from either ancient Egyptian or Mesoamerican wall painting, possibly both.
I drew a lot of armadillos in those days (Prussiania, you may remember, was swarming with them). I played a lot of chess, too. This doodle combined them both. My World History notebook contained about 50% notes and 50% doodles.
Ooo…armadillos…
Splendiforously flamablamablous, Robert!
Nice–I like the doodles!
The armadillo drawings actually remind me of some of the chess pieces in Alice.
Those were much better than my notebook doodles. And I’m curious, how does one play a one-stringed lyre?
Fantastic!
I guess it just goes to show you can’t teach an armadillo chess.
Hahaha…”Petrogalar leaveth his foster mother”
(6) Can you see the tear falling from the mama armadillo’s eye? I thought that was a touching moment.
(5) Monotonously. Prussianian music was based on a one-note scale. On the plus side, it’s easy to tune.
7- So did I. These are very impressive.
7- Very touching. Poignant.
I love them!
It’s a shame that so much has been lost. Now there’s nothing left but fragments of this — well, I don’t suppose anyone could call it a “great civilization,” but you have to give them credit for making an effort. They did the best they could, the poor things.
Excellent doodles. You and your friends must have spent a ton of time on Prussiania!
Maybe we did; I’m not sure. Our minds worked faster at that age, just as yours do now.
Free Prussiania from the trap of history! Restart Prussiania!
7- Easy to tune, or difficult? It would seem to me that, with no notes with which to compare, tuning the lyre would be nigh impossible, unless perfect pitch was common in Prussianians.
Oh this is fun.
I like your doodles. I recently went through my high school notebooks and I didn’t have nearly as many interesting doodles.
(14) Piggy: That’s assuming you care about pitch. Prussianian musicians weren’t that sophisticated.
Ronilar loseth Maid Micrin via Petrogalar? A tragedy! A cursed tragedy! *weepweepweep*
13: Aye! Revive Prussania from the grave! Bring it to life and enter it into the almost-as-weird world of MuseBlog!!!
Romilar, with an “m.” Most of the characters in Prussianian history and legends were named after products we saw in the local drugstore. I think Micrin was a mouthwash.
17- Definitely thirded. I would love to play an armadillo airship pilot named Nexium.
17-4thed!
A couple more snippets of Prussianian lore:
– I vaguely remember a character named Metamucil — some impressive semi-mythical ancient king along the lines of Ar-Pharazon the Golden, I think.
– At one point when Prussiania drifted into northern latitudes, the inhabitants encountered a tribe of Eskimos who believed that Frosty the Snowman had died for their sins and would return to save and judge them. (“He waved goodbye, saying, ‘Don’t you cry. I’ll be back again someday.'”)
More odds and ends as they occur to me. I’m going to dig through the files again this weekend, too.
21- Ar-Pharazon the Golden was a Numenorean king, wasn’t he?
Yes, the last one before it sank. He captured Sauron and tried to sail to Valinor, with cataclysmic results.
(I’m talking about Ar-Pharazon, not Metamucil. I’m afraid I don’t remember what he did — something silly, no doubt.)
23- Oh, that’s right. I don’t remember Akallabeth that clearly, although I have been re-reading the Silmarillion.
It’s also in the appendices to The Return of the King. I find that the Silmarillion often tells me more than I really want to know.
25- Yes, there’s sometimes a fine line between admirably detailed world-building and ruining all the mystery. I often tend toward the latter in my writing, so I’ve been attempting the former.
(26) The same principle holds for visual arts as well. What to include and what to leave out is one of the hardest things to learn — and one never stops learning. Part of the secret is trusting the neural functions of your audience (who has, incidentally, likely read many of the same books you have).
A turning point for me came from reading about sense perception and how our brains detect patterns. We mentally construct circles from a few dashes, faces or figures from a few dabs of paint; we’re constantly trying to make meaning out of incoming information even when it’s random.
This gave me a nice metaphorical peg on which to hang a principle. I started thinking in terms of what I could erase/delete and still leave a discernible pattern.
This thread is a case in point. Here we see a few tiny fragments of an extinct civilization, yet I would bet that anyone who has perused this thread has a rich and lively vision of Prussiania and the process of its creation.
In the case of Tolkien, I’m glad that he put so much time and effort into Middle-earth and worked out its history so well. I just don’t feel a huge need to read all of his notes.
(28) Yes, agreed on both counts. I’m not suggesting anyone skimp on the background development — unless it becomes an excuse not to create the work itself.
Hm. I have a very very detailed world called cholcis (Or cholkis, I haven’t perused te language much) that lacks a story. I’m not trying to ruin the mystery, its just my hobby. (A day ago, for example, I was at the science museum and saw a revolving chain that went streight to the nation’s playgrounds. Here are some specifics. Skip them if you want.
Geology and geography: The urban part of Cholkis is hacked into the ‘rocky mountains’, and the rural part is wetlands at the foot of the mounts, broken up by rolling hills.
Currency, weights, and measures: A barter system involving mostly seeds. Jars of dye are the most valuble trade item, followed by pumpkin seeds. Haven’t thought about weights and measures. Probally will involve rush mats or tree rings.
Language: Began as a dialect mixing old African and European languages, and proceeded to pick up whatever toungue it came in contact with. (A mary suish people, Cholkins are very lingual people.)
Transportation: A compact country, this isn’t needed. Back in the day, though, it was more spacious and people used Gnuicorns to get around. Legend has it they are still kept by the Kshoran, the elusive warrior class.
History: The legends say that the ‘mother land’ of the Cholkons is Cholka, an idyllic place somewhere in subsaharan africa. However, historians beleive the people have norse roots as well.
Religion: The people worship a holy trinity, the sun, the water, and the lord/lady of the trees. Law is maintained by the preistesses, who badger people bout how many braids they have on their head.
I once invented an instrument called a one-stringed lute, whcih I’ve mentioned in a story(beginning) or two. It’s played by shifting your fingers on the fingerboard to create different pitches.
We had one-stringed lutes in Prussiania. The peasants called them vanalyas.
On the subject of one-stringed instruments, has anyone here heard of “One String Willie?” Search for that name on youtube if you are interested; the first two clips are of him playing a one-stringed guitar (plum pwnage) and there are others of him playing a diddley bow (which has one string). It’s interesting to see how much music one can produce with a single string with some thought and ingenuity!
Uh, you linked to the thread I posted about lutes on… and it said they were lyres, not lutes.
Well, yes. Sometimes they were lyres, sometimes they were lutes. They sounded awful in any case.
would that be similar to the ektara?
*looks up the ektara* Yes, I suppose…
Looks like what might have been in the imagination of C. S. Lewis when he was a kid.
Lewis’s imaginary kingdom was called Boxen, and it was a much nicer place than Prussiania.
Awesome!
Great! I love the armadillos!
Cool!
I want to be a Prussianian when I grow up.
Nobody in ens right mind would choose to be a Prussianian.
Who said MuseBloggers were in their right minds?
Not I.
Nor I.
Or I.
Ou moi.
Non mihi.