Atragam FAQ

What is Atragam?

Atragam is a fantasy world created by me, Michael S. Repton. It started, as many fantasy worlds do, just as the setting for a story I was writing, but developed more and more as I became interested in thinking about aspects of the setting that went beyond just the one story. The original story idea has long since been abandoned, but I continue to develop the world for its own sake and in the hope of finding other stories to tell about it one day.

How is “Atragam” pronounced?

Just as it appears: “a-tra-gam”, with the stress on the first syllable.

What about “Arêndron” and all the other names?

The name Arêndron is pronounced “a-rain-dron”, stress on the second syllable. As for the other names, most of them (especially those used in a general context) are in Arêndron and are meant to be pronounced according to the Arêndron phonology. For names from the other languages, see the relevant language page.

Note in particular that the names I use for the languages when talking about them in English are the Arêndron names, not the names for each language in that language.

How long have you been working on Atragam?

Since 1996. At least, it was around then that I drew the first maps and got the idea for the original story. But the world then (which wasn't yet called Atragam) bears very little relation to the world as it is now; only some of the names, a very small number of Arêndron words and the general layout of the geography (although rotated 180 degrees to get the climates in the right places) have survived all that time. Really, Atragam proper dates back only to late 2003.

So.... where are the elves and dwarves?

There aren't any; it's perfectly possible to have a fantasy world without them. Actually, I dislike using the label “fantasy” for Atragam, but it will do, so long as you remember that it simply means “fiction set in a world that isn't Earth”. There are no elves or dwarves, or any other sapient non-humans. (I had them in the 1996 version. Later I decided that there were races called elves, dwarves etc. but that they were just subgroups of humans that happened to possess slightly elvish, dwarfish etc. characteristics. By 2003 I had abandoned that idea too.) And no magic.

What is [name of culture] based on?

I don't do cultures based on particular real-world cultures. Of course, you can find similarities; the Arêndron Empire is a bit like the Roman Empire, for instance, in that it expanded and conquered a large area but eventually fell, and its language gave rise to descendants that are now spoken in the lands that used to be part of the Empire. But then, the idea of having empires rise and fall is a very obvious one and probably occurs in every fantasy world with a detailed history, and the differences are just as clear as the similarities, if you look below the surface.

Does [name of culture] represent your idea of a perfect world?

No. The Arêndron civilisation is the one I'd choose to live in if I had to live in an Atragamian culture, but I deliberately made it with flaws as well as good points. The Vardiscêan period is meant to be a sort of “golden age” that the people of the present look back on with nostalgia; but the truth about what it was like to live in their culture is a lot less idyllic than people remember.

As for the Zaiadrons, I'm aware that they would be some men's idea of a perfect world, being the most sexist of all my cultures, but that's not how I would choose to live. I made them that way because I was interested in exploring a society as different from the Arêndron one as I could make it; and since one of the distinguishing features of Arêndron society is their lack of sexism (relative to my other cultures), going to the opposite extreme was an obvious way to do this.

What are the languages based on? Or the vocabulary?

Like most conlangers (creators of constructed languages), I started by unconsciously imitating the languages I was familiar with, and now I'm trying to move away from that by exploring features found in other languages. (The 1996 draft of Arêndron was almost a perfect clone of German grammar with a new vocabulary, for instance.) This means that you will be able to find features in common and say “this language is like that particular real language”. But my languages still aren't based on real languages in the sense of taking features from a language because I want the result to be like that particular language. (Not that I have anything against conlangers who prefer to work in this way. It just isn't the way I choose to work.)

The vocabulary is entirely invented. Of course there will be accidental “false cognates” with real languages here and there; that is inevitable when developing a language with a vocabulary of any size, unless it has a truly outlandish phonology.

How far will the history and geography stretch?

See the tables of contents on the history and geography pages. The history runs from around 10,000 years before the founding of the Arêndron Empire to around 500 years after. I don't go further back because I'm only interested in human history; the evolution of life on Atragam before humans arrived isn't different from our world in any interesting way. And I don't go further forward because I like having a stopping point; that is “the present”, that is when my stories will take place if I ever get round to writing them. The past will be needed in my stories to give a sense of depth; the characters will know about their world's history and will often refer to it. There isn't any corresponding motivation to work out the details of the world's future.

As for the geography, a similar reason applies; my people haven't explored beyond the bounds of their continent yet, and so I don't have any interest in making decisions about what they would find if they did. It's true that I already know more about the geography of Atragam than the Arêndron people do – the south coast of Engatar, for instance – but that's primarily because it's difficult to talk about geography at all without having a map. But my knowledge of the world's geography stops where the borders of the outermost maps stop.

What's the connection between Atragam / Arêndron and The Adventures of Athribar?

None whatever, besides that they are both creative works of the same author.

This in spite of the fact that The Adventures occasionally refers to the Arêndron gods, particularly Kailya. The explanation for this, if you need one, is that the world of The Adventures has methods of gaining information about other worlds, and Athribar, being a well-read person, is familiar with the Arêndron religion (as well as with certain real-world literature). More about what exactly these methods are will be found in The Librarian and the Spy, the second book in the series.

As for why Athribar adopts Kailya as his personal deity – she fits into the way he likes to think about the world. No deeper reason than that.

Atragam, Arêndron, Athribar, Alexandra … what is it with you and the letter A?

The evidence is pretty damning, isn't it? And yet, it really is a complete coincidence. All those names were chosen independently, and the initial letter was not a factor in my choice (or creation) of any of them. I don't know if it's an unconscious bias; I don't think so. It certainly doesn't mean that I'm still fixated on a childhood sweetheart whose name started with that letter.

(Note: for those who don't know, Alexandra is a minor character in The Adventures of Athribar, who becomes more important – perhaps even the deuteragonist – in the series as a whole.)