Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
I recently started an astronomy class and I am so incredibly brainrotted by In Stars And Time it got me thinking about the Island North of Vaugarde. Specifically in regard to constellations and location. This’ll probably be long so more under the cut (and also most likely spoilers).
Okay so astronomers recognize 88 constellations, which are actually areas in the sky, not the star formations (which are asterisms, and can help to signify where constellations are, but do not specifically define them. [As far as I can tell. I’ve only been to three classes so far.] Think the Big Dipper, which is relatively easy to locate and is part of the larger formation of Ursa Major, which is in the constellation of the same name. The Big Dipper is not an actual constellation. But I could also be totally wrong about the specific definitions because as I have said I’ve only been to three classes. Please take what I am saying in this aside with a grain of salt. It’s super interesting imo so doing your own research would probably be fun if you’re into that.).
So connecting that to INOV, I’m thinking they could have… provinces perhaps? Corresponding to the constellations. Though I doubt they would call them “provinces”. And maybe they wouldn’t have all of the constellations, since on the rough map for ISAT it seems like a comparatively small country, but there aren’t really scales to tell. So maybe the names could correspond to the Zodiac or whichever constellations are visible year round. I’m in the northern hemisphere so I’m not familiar with which constellations are always visible from the southern hemisphere.
Additionally, in the headcanon/worldbuilding(?) I’m apparently piecing together here, I think the main city of each province could be named after the brightest or main star of the constellation the area is named for.
(Also I kind of want Siffrin to have been from the Gemini region of the island because. Yknow. Castor and Pollux. The twins. Teehee. [Whole other can of worms here but I think Pollux could be a viable post-loop Loop-travels-with-the-party-and-chooses-a-name-not-directly-related-to-one-of-the-worst-things-to-ever-happen-to-them name because like. Loop -> Loo -> Lu -> Lux -> Pollux. Anyway])
This system could also contribute to how no one remembers any constellations, since although the stars are explicitly incredibly important to the Universe belief and the Island overall, I feel like some other country in the world would have also been researching astronomy mostly independent from the Island, or at the very least in a language they can still read so they’re not starting from nothing. But if the constellations are directly tied to the way INOV is set up and run, it makes a lot of sense to me that they would be completely erased from peoples’ minds because of the Island disappearing.
I’m also thinking that maybe positions of power or leadership on the Island were named after planets because it seemed like everyone was completely unaware of those, but at this point I’m getting into stuff I haven’t fully though out (as opposed to the stuff I’ve been spinning in my head for a grand total of two hours but whatever. I’m being a bit pedantic here).
Anyways if I ever write anything for ISAT this will probably be existing in the background of it as a bit of personal worldbuilding, so I wanted to have it exist somewhere outside of my brain lol