Rockshine
A Volcano Language project by Shinali with help from Amaya and others.
Volcanoes are very social creatures, with their ranges forming families. However, they are in a terribly unfortunate situation as all their friends and lovers are very far away. They also have none of the same senses as we do so their language works differently than human languages.
First off they measure time in the following units:
eruptive cycles (vary by volcano and its stage of life)
the age of the north star (e.g we are presently in an age of polaris)
Visits from Halley's comet
Visits from Hale Bopp
Major eruptions in the world
Supernovas
Ice ages
Leonid Peaks
There are two noun classes: inanimate (living things like geological formations and trees and water and cities) and animate (non-living things like humans) It may be strange to think of rivers as inanimate, but the logic is that gravity moves them, they do not move themselves. By that same token, rivers are flighty little creatures akin to hummingbirds. Trees are like beetles or small lizards to the volcanoes. Noun classes are noted by the amplitude-frequency ratio of their seismic waves. The P waves are the subjects and the S waves are the verbs with surface waves as the object. Volcanic sentences do not generally have objects.
Volcanoes talk about one of four things: love, religion, legends, and gastric troubles.
Volcanoes believe that non-volcanic earthquakes are the voice of their god. They believe that the divine nature of things is plate tectonics. They believe that the earth's core is god and that it runs plate tectonics. Some say the quakes are the direct voice of god, others say each fault line is a prophet. The teachings of the Great Faultline San Andeas are renowned among the Cascadians. Trees are occasionally sacrificed to the volcano god.
Young volcanoes are especially flirtatious. Eruptions are when one volcano flashes another and lahars are when they moon each other. The patters made by pyroclastic flows in blown down trees are akin to a person carving a heart in a tree. Cities are viewed as little sluts, erupting in light every night and in vibration every day. The sound vacuum during an eruption preents inbreeding. Volcanoes have no gender per se and they reproduce asexually. Only volcanoes of the same type generally get into a long-term relationship. The word on the Subduction Zone is that St. Helens is currently dating Vesuvius and Rainier has the hots for Fuji, but that changes on occasion. Volcanoes will flirt with anything that holds still long enough and the ocean is popular with coastal volcanoes who love the subtlety and pizzaz of its tsunami replies. Older volcanoes merely dress in fine raiments of ice and plants to attract others. Sometimes they get drunk on rain and moon a city or another volcano, but that is not a habit. To contrast, non-volcanic mountains are celibate monks and nuns. Young volcanoes call Everest "Ice-Maiden" and old volcanoes reverently use a title similar to Reverend Mother. Everest is said to be the head of the Indian Subcontinental Abbey which is a popular religious center. Similar to how in the past many aging Japanese emperors became Buddhist monks, volcanoes who are past their prime generally join an abbey.
These generally tie into love stories, religion, or both. A harmonic tremor is actually a telling of a story. They make it clear that the volcanic language is very concise...after all, telling 2 ice ages of history only takes a couple days.
Famous legends/ponderings:
Who was yellowstone flirting with? Santorini?
The Volcano that erupted upside down (the meteor that is said to have killed the dinos)
Young volcanoes talk about who scorned the cities causing the northeast blackout...older ones never even noticed.
The Great Stripping of San Francisco (i.e. the quake+fire of 1906)
"Back in my day we wiped out entire species"
The creation of the first volcano.
The world beneath.
The Great Monastic Chant of the Olympic Abbey of January 1700
These are the small random comments (quakes) made by volcanoes...and generally are such things as "Boy am I gassy," and "I have terrible indigestion" These are commonly used as greetings, sometimes along with small steam explosions (which are one of the few sounds that have been romanized: BRAP, which basically means either "Hi, how are you doing" or "Boy am I gassy this decade")
Researchers find volcanic language difficult to romanize, but they can somewhat read volcanic writing when it is done with the aid of a seismograph. Seeing as volcanoes see humans as nonliving pebbles, the time reckoning is hard to decipher, and researchers must stay far away during the really exciting conversations, they face an uphill battle in deciphering actual sentences. the basics of Rockshine romanization:
onomotopoeic words have been developed for certain things (e.g. magma hitting steam) and are written in x-sampa in // brackets
--example: /s`_<u:pS:a:/ = tsunami
gasses are denoted by x x brackets and the atomic number used for each element in the compound... this can also be used for specific rock-type emissions
-- example: Sulfuric Acid (H2SO4) is x1_1_16_8_8_8_8x
life... - is animate and + is animate
temperature changes go in { } and ~ denotes heat and ` denotes cold. they range on a scale from ! to ) (shift 1 to 0 on a us-standard qwerty keyboard or !@#$%^&*() if you don't have one)
--example the eruption that spawned the year without a summer would be a {`(}
intensity of action (usually an eruption) is done with using text styles on the other parts. Regular text is level 1 (neutral or no action), italic is level 2, underline is level 3, bold is level 4, strikeout is level 5...bold italic would be 4^2 or 16 and strikeout underline is 5^3 or 125
--example: /br{?/ or a moderate burst of steam
light (popular for skywatchers) is denoted by text color...where possible this is denoted with shades of a single color, but in places like here simply progressing to lighter and lighter colors for brighter light is fine.
--example: New York would be in alternating colors (such lighting is used for all cities because they turn on and off a lot)
/tS:/{~@} +/nE.nE/{`!}x6_6_8x +/fwam/ /kra:?/
anger(magma_hits_water-hotter_by_2)-(quite_bright) inanimate-tiny-colder_1-CO2 mild-pyroclastic_flow break/destroy
I was (quite) mad and broke/destroyed the slightly cold tiny carbon and oxygen things [aka trees] with a mild pyroclastic flow
The chronicles of volcanic legend have been uncovered... Some parts are fragmental or missing but we will use trends to fill them in later. Reproduced here is a chronicle of what humans can understand. Concurrances are considered auspicious and are thus common times for volcanic activity.
1698 - Leonid bulk
1699 - Tempel-Tuttle Comet
1700 - Olympics collapse (Great Monastic Chant) due to major quake on Cascadia subduction zone
1707 - Fuji and Vesuvius erupt
Shinali been chatting with a baby volcano who thinks of her as a pet rock; however, a translation of the Sumatra quake is still pending. It does inform her that St. Helens is trying to make new friends at the moment.
The following is mostly by Amaya
Volcanic legend also speaks of the Realm of Untouchable Fires, set apart from the world by the sky and its ever-shifting winds (Shinali's concept).
Though the younger volcanoes saw the recent California wildfires as the equivalent of older people in our society trying to prove they still had it, many volcanic elders read them as messages from the Realm. Some, mostly shield volcanoes, are of a sect called the (jet of smoke and set of quick disturbances which literally translates to Skywatchers), referred to by detractors as (volcanic term involving a few puffs of smoke and a dismissive rumble which literally translates to smokeheads) and refer to themselves in their ceremonial tongue as (high flame fountain which is read as Sages of the Comet). These see the Realm as a keeper of time, who sends the comets and kindles the supernovas to mark the ages; generally they are convinced that the Volcano Who Erupted Upside Down was a divine messenger, and are still holding regular debates over what its patterns were supposed to mean. Some even try to communicate with Realm volcanoes, though none appear to have succeeded as of yet. Current belief among those Skywatchers who have endeavored to study the burn patterns of the wildfires is that a new age is approaching and that the signs for the second coming of the Volcano Who Erupted Upside Down will soon be visible.
The Hawaiian volcanoes in particular sound off on these topics regularly, though they have a hard time getting their neighbors in the Ring of Fire (or any other subduction zone) to listen to them because of the difference in how the earth "talks" to them (hot spots vs. plate activity). Kilauea and Mauna Loa, in particular, have been loudly debating, holding ceremonies, and trying to sway the other volcanoes for years.
Their ceremonies tend to involve a great deal of fire-fountaining, which is another reason why many of the other volcanoes look down upon them somewhat, as they appear to many to be more flashing that talking. Religious texts are written in the stones known as Pele's tears and Pele's hair. Topics for reasonable debate are written in pahoehoe, while volcanic flamewars are done in a'a since it reacts more spectacularly to water--this tends to result in messages which, though they attract a lot of attention, are slightly garbled by having exploded. No Skywatcher is immune to the desire to make a point in such a way, though many try to intersperse this with reasonable comments.
Since the Skywatchers are the most talkative of the volcanoes, it is somewhat easier to decode their messages; however, it must be noted that decoding their dialect, Rockfall, is a lengthy process.