Gender
The Borderlands Saga is a series with genderqueer, agender, tri-gender, or otherwise non-binary characters who play roles big enough that they and their pronouns are mentioned often enough that one may need a guide to figure it out. Even for folks familiar with non-binary gender pronouns (binary pronouns are he/she), this can be confusing, so here are a few notes.
Some characters in the first part of the book use non-binary gender (or gender neutral) pronouns. After this I revert to binary pronouns for most of the book.
The characters in this book who have non-binary pronouns come from a planet with five genders. Thoebe's genders are man, woman, agender, tri-gender, and genderqueer. However, man and woman do not use he and she.
The two characters from this planet are male and genderqueer, so I'll give you those two sets of pronouns. The sets are categorized as follows.*
Subject: They looked at the forest.
Object: The forest looked at them.
Possessive Adjective: It was their forest.
Possessive Pronoun: The forest was theirs.
Reflexive: They kept the forest for themselves.
Male pronouns
S: ze (Ze looked at the forest...., etc.)
O: zim
PA: ziis
PP: ziis
R: zimself
Plural: zimin
Genderqueer pronouns
S: jhe
O: jhen
PA: jhes
PP: jhes
R: jhenself
Plural: jhe-en
As well as those different sets of pronouns, they/their/them is a commonly-used set of gender-neutral pronouns. These will be used for characters that don't have a set gender or pronoun.
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Calendrical Notes
The Duchy of Min divides up the 360-day year into 15 months of 24 days each. New Year's Day is celebrated at the beginning of autumn; each season is more-or-less 90 days long. Each day is 14 hours, but one hour on Osecou is about 1.65 hours on Earth; as such the days are about the same length of time. Minae count the years since landing on the island; the story starts on 24th Cufaito in the year 709.
The months are as follows, with any key solar holidays in parentheses.
1. Shyshik (Goavimus/New Year's Day/First of Autumn)
2. Airoreiph (Daer/Autumnal Equinox)
3. Ibog
4. Sephai (Loasil/First of Winter)
5. Cufaito
6. Sur (Toash/Winter Solstice/Shortest Day)
7. Beilok
8. Ishei (Oroaralra/First of Spring)
9. Waiwod
10. Phamei (Thoans/Vernal Equinox)
11. Ashqi
12. Cige (Ininneli/First of Summer)
13. Oidu
14. Rew (Adivus/Summer Solstice/Shortest Night)
15. Nocu (Lenma; End of Year Celebration)
There is also a lunar calendar of holidays; as such they fall in different places each year. The two key ones in this story are Shoron and Saeas Night. Shoron is the closest full moon to the Shortest Day, or Winter Solstice, and Saeas night is the first new moon after Shortest Day.
Chapters done from the point of view of native Minae will have the dates at the beginning. The rest of the chapters will not.
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Stranger Skies (The Borderlands Saga #1)
FantasyDivinity. Mortality. War. Silva, Queen of Wolves, Lady of the True Woods, seeks her only friend Etan, who, along with other deities of the Council of Divinity, has gone missing for reasons unknown. Her search traps her on a world where the wolves ha...
