The Kalieda Encyclopaedia

A great woman - a queen, they say, who ruled in a land whose name is dust in our heads - once said: "We have been given the keys to paradise, yet we are too small to venture beyond the compost heap."

This is our planet, our home. This world of ours has many names, just as the people who live here have many languages. My name for this ball of mud and rock and salty water spinning through space and time is 'Kalieda'.

Who am I? Just a man, one among many living in the city of Emadiyase, on the eastern coast of the continent I know as Ewlah. There are, for the record, around 32 million men and women alive today on Kalieda, three quarters of them here in Ewlah. The historians tell me that seven centuries ago there were ten times that number of people alive, but only a handful lived on this continent. That was before the Disaster, when the oceans forgot their place in the scheme of things and decided to retreat from the land. Some religious folk believe that the oceans were so disgusted by mankind's behaviour to their kin, and to the planet, that they could not stand to be so close to people anymore and fell away from the land, while ice came to freeze the northern continent of Cheidrah, and drought and dust and disease stole across the great southern continent of Falah where most people had lived.

And yet despite all of the disasters and hardships that have befallen us, we are still here. Ewlah is our main centre now: the Continent of Tears and Hunger has become our shelter, and over the past few hundred orbits we have slowly turned it into our home.

This website is a work-in-progress. It is an attempt to collect knowledge together about our planet, our civilisations, our Lands and Societies, our beliefs, and the environments in which we live.

Welcome to the paradise beyond the compost heap!

Encyclopaedia sections

• The introduction and contents page for the Encyclopaedia is this page. All sections of the encyclopaedia are listed on the left side of each web page, with the current section and its sub-sections at the top of the list.
• The section called physical Kalieda offers some basic information on our solar system and planet, and includes further information and maps for each of Kalieda's continents.
• The living Kalieda section provides details on the two lifeform types on our planet (each in their own sub-section), highlighting their similarities and differences and exploring life on the planet through a series of species descriptions. This section also includes information on how we humans cultivate the land.
• The Lands of Ewlah section is a gateway to information on the Lands that make up the continent of Ewlah. This section is sub-divided into sections covering the seven Societies of Ewlah, and provides geographical, ecological, historical, social, cultural, economic and political information on each of the Lands within these Societies.
• The encyclopaedia includes a section on the Gevey language, which includes a lexicon and some stories from the largest group of people within the Balhe Society.
• The Ákat language is the language of the Nakap philosophers. This section investigates the language and the philosophies behind it as an introduction to the Telik Society.
• The final miscellany section includes details on languages and language families, calendars, and other information of interest such as the the game of Gvekuu - a professional sport played in the Land of Cantage.