The World of Ninichi and Xelafish - a Live Updating Wiktionary!
About
Ninichi and Xelafish is a creative partnership between composer Ninichi and multimedia creative Xelafish to predominantly put fun and mischievious sheet music out into the world that commenced in 2019. A crowdfunder for the first collection ‘The Light And The Dark’ initially focusing on and trialling Solo Piano, Violin and Piano and Violin Duet went live in October 2019 and the set is now currently in development for a late 2020 release. There will also be some recordings of the collection for anyone interested in following this story and journey regardless of interest in playing instruments or those initial instruments. At least this is the 21st Century aim!
We are big believers in the fun and enjoyment of playing music that fires the imagination and has context and purpose to get into so we did not wish to put this out there in a traditional way. We wish for the music to exist and have purpose in its own context and world which we will continue to learn more about with each collection! As a result Ninichi and Xelafish is also the name of a music shop at the centre of its own story in an alternate reality London of 1890. An evolving world where we are trying to learn all we can about our doppelgängers who founded this shop. You can find more about what we know so far about this world in summary on the Ninichi and Xelafish website About N&X 1890 page. We have preserved further detail from what we have learnt from Store Manager Zesper in this Wiktionary and also on the N&X 1890: Chronology Page which charts the chain of events since 1890 first made contact!
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Ninichi And Xelafish - The Wiktionary
Ninichi and Xelafish - The STORE
Ninichi and Xelafish is a printed music publishing house and store in an alternate reality 1890 where magic is cast not through spoken word spells or incantations but through Melodic Enchantments played on musical instruments. Unfortunately for both its founders and staff, six weeks after opening, a binding Continual Confusion Curse was infliction the store so that they are stuck forever in the year 1890 that loops back round every December 31st. Fortunately after getting bored of selling the same books to the same customers on the same day each year on repeat, advanced Melodic Enchantments have allowed them to open up viewing portals into other worlds and timezones. One of these happens to have opened into 2019, London. A further enchantment that hooks an 1890s Typewriter to a laptop viewed through a portal and suddenly Store Manager Zesper has an unintended presence on Twitter and the web in our 21st Century!
Store Founders & Associates of 1890
Ninichi
(Founder and composer)
Composer in residence at Ninichi & Xelafish, Ninichi learnt how to charm Rainwrens and Skysnails with music from a young age on a Picocorder. Further honing of the craft was encouraged by Sorcerer Mervin Telovakern and Ninichi received a fellowship grant as apprentice on his research travels exploring the casting and encapsulating of spells through music. With growing demand in the late 1800s for binding sorcery into melody and being an avid traveller, Ninichi co-founded Ninichi & Xelafish in 1890 to publish and share the fables, spells and experiences of her encounters.
Xelafish
(Founder and archivist)
Specialist in sorcery and communication through the Light Spectrum - Xelafish has researched Enchantments through sound and light over numerous years with some intended, but many unintended results. He first met Ninichi whilst both were in search of a Tower in the Dalmatian woodlands to trace the origins of the fable: The Light and the Dark. Previously a Wordsmith for the Enchantment Archive, Xelafish co-founded Ninichi and Xelafish when the Enchantment Archive got archived.
Zesper
(Store Manager)
Storekeeper at Ninichi & Xelafish, Zesper was also a former employee of the Enchantment Archive as Librarian and Head of Categorisation. With a passion for order, sorting, and tidying he has been known to arrange the books at Ninichi & Xelafish by title, by colour, by publication date and by his own rules and cyphers on alternate days of the week to dutifully ensure no-one but he can find anything. Zesper tried his best to get archived with the archive though after being extracted several times eventually, ground-breakingly, discovered people.
Plunderbadger
(Associate Illustrator)
Associate artist Plunderbadger leaves market stalls emptier than when he found them and much to the exasperation of Zesper has been known to stash: maps, wood, leather, art materials, or even half a loaf for later amongst the shelves of Ninichi & Xelafish. When not tasting, cooking, or losing his quills in his lunchbox Plunderbadger's trail of breadcrumbs lead to the shop to consult on design of Ninichi and Xelafish publications.
THE WORld of N&X 1890
1890
The year Ninichi and Xelafish was founded. It is apparently located on Baalzephon Street, London. Which appears to now be Weston Street from what we can deduce. Digging into this further on the web, depending on how much like our own reality it is, there may well be a ‘Potato Factor’ on the road. Handy. This was also the year the shop got cursed - six weeks after opening. (See Curse of 1890)
2019
The year the Ninichi and Xelafish shop first made contact outside of 1890 to another realm through a Melodic Enchantment which opened up a viewing portal into our 2019 London. You can track this train of events from our first Chronology Blog. Despite our technology and their musical-magical voodoo an 1890 Typewriter able to link into a 2019 Laptop is the best we can somewhat clunkily do!
Bookbats
Creature created in error by Grondolplatt the Misfirer fusing books with the spirit and personality of a mischievous bat. Disguises as a book by day and knocks everything off the shelves at night. Perennial menace at Ninichi & Xelafish. BOOKBATS come in all shapes and sizes and are attracted to ink. They are a bane of Zesper’s day to day life, particularly when most prevalent around Halloween!
Clarivva
Clarivva Clarke owns the Bakehouse next to Ninichi and Xelafish and does a roaring trade except when a Bookbat escapes next door and ends up in the bread oven leading to a very sheepish Zesper. Zesper, on noting that she naturally tends to walk-around with a loaf of bread in ‘rest-position’ successfully managed to teach her violin for ‘The Zesper Trio’ performance of Journey Into The Unseen! (See ‘'Zesper Trio’)
Curse of 1890
‘THE CURSE OF 1890’ (with all the capitals) as Zesper refers to it is not something we have been able to extract much information out of Zesper on. He seems reluctant to engage about it. I guess you would if you were cursed. He may even be cursed from talking about it. The effect of the curse seems to be that the shop is stuck in a looping 1890. They can’t get out of that year and he’s dealing with the same customers on the same day every time it loops around. It is as a result of this that considerable effort was put into Melodic Enchantments that could break out of their time loop in some way to reduce repetition.
DENIS
DENIS is a street trader for leather whose favourite spot, much to the annoyance of Zesper, is right outside Ninichi and Xelafish, usually when Zesper is quietly practicing piano. DENIS likes to talk loudly, incessantly, almost entirely about leather, and is always trying to flog Zesper musical instrument covers, shoes, belts and other items Zesper has all too often had to accept just to make him go away! Not being trusted with anything else Zesper found him a drum for playing Journey Into The Unseen as part of the Zesper Trio. DENIS rose to the occasion with full enthusiasm. (See ‘Zesper Trio’)
The Light and the dark
‘The Light And The Dark’ is the first music collection that the store hope to release in the 21st Century and a crowdfunded campaign was run in autumn 2019 to assist. Zesper had stubbed his toe on a bookshelf so was a bit incoherent at the time with sporadic random typewriter characters, but we believe is based on an ancient fable of their world. The founders have set out on an expedition to Dalmatia where they had a lead to track down this long lost Fable of ‘The Light And The Dark’. There is no enchantment encoded into this set, though the founders considered it an important piece of magical history about one of the oldest Objects of Power in their world and their intention is to preserve the fable by setting it to music. Zesper hasn’t heard from them for a bit since they set off on this expedition to Obroazo tower to find this Fable…
Melodic Enchantments
The only form in which magic can be cast by people and become customised to a particular effect in the world of the N&X Store is through Melodic Enchantments. In our world for a music composer to create motifs and melodies - it can connect and engage an audience with a particular ambience or emotion. Here it involves a skilled Composer of Melodic Enchantment to equally sense what pattern of notes and rhythm adjust the fabric of reality to have the desired effect. Not only that, but a skilled Practitioner of Melodic Enchantments has to be able to connect with the hidden purpose on playing a piece for it to have the desired effect. This all sounds very fancy and fantastical as to what might be possible, though Zesper mentioned the reality of it is he has customers requesting custom enchantments to unblock a drain.
Nexus Clef
Each Composer of Melodic Enchantments has their own emblem that when preceding regular clefs such as the Treble or Bass indicates that the piece is not just a pieces of music, but also has enhanced properties. In 1890 skilled Melodic Enchantment Practioners are able to evoke the spells woven into pieces that feature these marks. The Nexus Clef is the mark of Composer Ninichi for enchantments devised by Ninichi and Xelafish and scored by Ninichi and features on pieces published by the store with enhanced properties. It is also the logo and emblem of the shop. With Nexus often indicating the connection or intersection between two fields, the store named it as such to define where Music and Magic collide.
Zesper Trio
The Zesper Trio is / was a hastily formed Trio comprising of Store Manager Zesper, Bakehouse owner Clarivva Clarke, and DENIS Street Leather Trader. An incident involving Bookbats vanishing the shop using a ‘Shop Steal Sonata’ Enchantment required Zesper to look up the counter Enchantment. The only way was to deliver a ‘Trainee Trio’ playing a pieces of significance to the shop. You can watch The Zesper Trio' take on Journey Into The Unseen to save the store!
Zesper’s Typewriter
The current slightly clunky connection point between the two worlds. An enchantment allows text typed on the typewriter to cross through the viewing window onto a laptop screen so long as there is line of sight between the screen and the portal. The whole process is laced with interference and there’s periods where everything hooks up nicely and whole months where we lose contact with 1890. For a mouse there was a communication typo and they use a moose. I don’t know how that works yet. But the cursor can move from their end. Teaching Zesper to engage with this interface is… pro-longed… and ‘computers’ and ‘screens’ to him are as surreal as melodic enchantments are to us!
Zesper sending a message to Twitter via Typewriter when launching the Campaign:
Unfortunately the Typewriter and its Portal into 2019 occasionally suffers from unexplained bouts of interference, possibly due to The Curse of 1890. For significant periods of time Zesper is disconnected from our world and reportedly sees weird things instead of 2019 in the portal. Our last contact was 5th December 2019 and it is believed currently he only is able to view himself being pursued by a Bookbat…
Zesper’s Campaign Instagram Diary
It is now possible to watch an export of the entire sequence of events from Zesper’s Instagram diary of 1890 happenings that occurred during the 2019 crowdfunder campaign to launch N&X in the 21st Century. These circumstances ultimately led to the hastily formed Zesper Trio playing Journey Into The Unseen!