Archive | October 2013

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Iesovyenyie

Iesovyenyie
Age 15
Taikie’s roommate

Iesovyenyie is a tall girl, 5’5″, with solid black hair and golden eyes. Her skin is likewise golden, and her chin pointed and stubborn; she’s a bit broader in the hip and shoulder than is common, and a bit more voluptuous than many of the girls her age. She has very full lips.

Her parents named her with an initial vowel, as her mother’s parents had done for her, and the palace office stamped approval of the royal lineage, but she is one of those who has so little royal blood, so diluted, that the initial vowel is a little silly, and seen as putting on airs. Many people where she grew up called her Sovnyie; the less kind called her almost-royal Ienyie.

She can get in quite a snit over that on occasion, and when she does, she’s no fun at all to be around. She is royal, damnit, even if her distance from the throne is measured in hundreds or thousands.

She prefers non-conventional shortenings of her name – Iesovya is her favorite – in part because of the stigma of “almost-royal Ienyie,” and in part because a tyienyie is a noxious lizard.

Iesovyenyie grew up in Lanamer, the capital city, and received her schooling not in a royal-household school but in that of affluent merchants’ children. When you come down to it, airs or not, her father is an artisan crafter of wool goods and her mother a beader and dyer. If they could avoid putting on airs, they could gain much renown in their own fields.

Iesovyenyie has quite a bit of skill in the fiber arts, but went into Mechanics and Engineering to learn how to work with the new mechanical looms, among other reasons (for one, Art House was full but Mech/E had two slots open when she applied).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591701.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Gaikvya

Gaikvya
Age 15
Taikie’s roommate

Gaikvya comes from the east coast, an area which, even in 1750 R, is fairly isolated from the rest of Calenta. The spine of mountains on the east of the continent serves as a difficult-to-pass barrier most of the time, impossible in the wintertime; the boat travel down around the southern tip of the continent is prohibitively long and the icebergs make travel around the northern end impossible.

The people on the east coast have ended up generally shorter than the rest of the country, with chestnut-brown hair that has a tendency to wave and sometimes even curl, skin darker brown than even most of the ‘pure Calenyena,’ and copper-hued eyed.

Gaikya has that look, as well as a more slender build than most of the rest of the continent, almost boyish; her people mature late and slow. They are sometimes called “sira-touched” by the superstitious.

She stands just under 5′ tall, and wears her hair in thin complicated braids. Her hair is curly, although she almost never lets it out of the braids. She speaks with a lilt to her voice, has a very hard time with s and v sounds, and clips her k sounds harder than is now the fashion.

She is uncertain about coming to school and will spend much of the year homesick; her people are fishers, have been fishers for centuries, and she is very much a fish out of water on the other coast, with no fishing nets to knot and no lobster cages to repair.

She will lose herself in her mechanics classes – the reason she, alone of her entire settlement, was chosen for the Academy – spending time trying to invent a better lobster trap, a better boat.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591445.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano Resources?

I’d like to do a comprehensive (or as close to as possible) post of nano resources.

What are your favorite links that everyone should know when attempting to write a novel in 50 days?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591129.html. You can comment here or there.

A week of Settings – Day Seven: Sideshow and Addergoole East

Faerie Apocalypse
The origins of the fae are lost to history. What we know is that the ones who would be called gods came to our world a few centuries BC, and left sometime about two millenia ago.

They left behind their halfblood bastards, fae who were almost as powerful as they had been, the children of the so-called gods and the humans around them. In time, those fae bred with other humans, the lines diluting with generations.

Then, in 2011, the gods came back, claiming their rightful place. Neither humanity nor the relatives that had been left behind were willing to allow this; the war that follow destroyed nine-tenths of the human population (see: Deaths in the Faerie Apoc) and most of the infrastructure of the world. Thus: faerie apocalypse, the gods war.

Addergoole East is one of the adjunct schools to the original Addergoole project.

Run by an Addergoole West (the original school) graduate, who also happens to be a niece of the original Director, Addergoole East is an integrated school, combining human education in a post-apocalyptic time with the education of fae. This balance, in a time when fae are nearly-universally disliked, is maintained carefully by Dean Storm and her staff.

SideShow shows us another corner of the post-apocalyptic world.

The Two by Two Zoo travels from town to town, settlement to settlement, much in the way that travelling sideshows have for centuries. This one, however, has a purpose beyond simply entertaining: propaganda.

In the Zoo’s moving cages are lions, tigers, bears… and a fae, cute and furry and helpless looking. Sideshow is her story.

That’s seven settings. What would you like to learn about my writing next “week?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591065.html. You can comment here or there.

Eyebrows, a story for the Real World Prompts

To [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt: Look in the mirror and realize you’re losing (or have lost) your eyebrows.

I stole the first half of my story from my husband, with some of the details changed. My immigrant grandfather/g’grandfather were farmers, not steelworkers 😉

I don’t know when my grandfather lost his eyebrows.

I know how, of course. He was a steelworker until his joints failed, until his legs and his hands would no longer let him do the work that had built our family.

But I don’t know when. He had, as far as I’d known, never had eyebrows. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realize that other people’s grandfathers did have eyebrows; my grandfather’s brothers – as well as two of his sons and seven of his nephews – had all been steelworkers as well.

It was that sort of town, where I grew up.

So that is the memory I hold when it comes to eyebrows: looking at my grandfather when I was fifteen, and for the first time seeing that he had no eyebrows.

And then, fifteen years later, I looked in the mirror and realized I had lost my eyebrows.

We’re not a fair family, and we’re not prone to thin eyebrows. I had to have been losing them for months, maybe longer than that. Black eyebrow hair after black eyebrow hair, falling out, never noticed. Until they were all gone, and I stared at my grandfather’s face in the mirror.

Younger, of course; I had never known my grandparents as anything other than people in their sixties, seventies, eighties. But with the eyebrows gone, the chinline was so clearly his, the nose the one he’d brought over on a boat.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” my best drinking buddy confided. “I figured it was like losing your hair, you know?”

“If you hadn’t noticed soon, I was going to say something,” my girlfriend allowed. “Here’s the WebMd page. Unless you’ve been plucking your eyebrows…”

“You look good,” my mother smiled. “Like my father. Have you lost weight?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590787.html. You can comment here or there.

Notes on Sira and Aether for Steam!Calenta/Edaly Academy

On Sira and Aether

Sira is the ancient word for the force that underlies the world. It’s actually a word from the ancient Tabersi (the predecessors of the Bitrani) that was sound-shifted into Calenyen; the Bitrani say shira..

The word sira fell out of favor around 1400 R, or approximately 400 years after the Rin and Girey story; the Academy story takes place in 1750 R (after the discovery of the continent of Reiassan). People didn’t so much stop believing in sira as start feeling that their explanations for it were too credulous, too superstitious, and too rooted in the very-powerful Temples of the Three. They wanted to understand more.

Enter the concept of aether.

This is another Bitrani word. The Calenyena call it aatur, simply using the Bitrani word shifted for a sound they find comfortable. Some scholars call it iezhyetar (from Iezhet, air, and ietar, power), but the term has not gained a great deal of popularity; ancient Bitrani sounds as if it has more gravitas to their ears.

As the scholars in 1750 R understand the aether (whatever they call it), the aether is an underlying force of the universe. It exists wherever two pieces of the world rub together, and can be harvested from these areas with the careful application of mechanical apparati or the very, very careful application of straight concentration and mental fortitude.

Very few scholars approve of the second method, however, because it has a feel very much like that of magic, and everyone knows that magic is bunk.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590530.html. You can comment here or there.

Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Kotnelbyotke and Ledryainryie

Kotnelbyotke (Kotke)
Age: 15
One of Enrie’s two roommates.

Kotke is from the far far North, where a group of Bitrani refugees have been living for hundreds of years. She’s got hair so blonde it’s almost white, ice-blue eyes, and snow-pale skin. The red, teal, and purple of the Diplomacy and Law uniform makes her look even paler.

She wears her hair in the low-on-the-neck looped braids that are as much a mark of her township as the pale coloration is; ribbons of her House colors are woven through the braids.

She is short, barely over 5′ tall, and a little more stocky than Calenyena norm, being built like a small tank, designed to survive the frigid winters and barely-better summers. She’s soft-spoken by native habit, and a little lost here at school.

Homesickness plagues Kotke through her year at school. She perseveres, however; she is attending the Academy and majoring in Diplomacy because she knows the remote townships like her own need representation, and thinks that this is the best way to get it. She is not the most brilliant student, but she may be the most devoted.

Ledryainryie (Ledryie)
Age: 15
The other of Enrie’s two roommates

Like Taikie, Ledryie has the ethnic Calenyena look. She has a short nose with a bit of an upturn, a very pointed chin, and a high forehead ; she wears two narrow braids looped low on her forehead to differentiate herself from dozens of other girls in her home city who looked much the same.

She’s about 5’6 and broad-hipped, broad-shouldered, and slender in between. She has the best-tailored clothes of anyone in her dorm, because she tailors them herself.

Ledryie is a bit vain, in a conscious-about-her-appearance sort of way. She was a scholarship girl from primary into secondary school, and earned money working for the school to pay for clothing to look as nice as the more affluent girls.

She was born Lyedra; the Academy allowed her to change her name to reflect the status she is working towards.

She’s a brilliant student, and sometimes forgets to concentrate on her work.


Names in Calenyen culture
(Note to self: cement when Calenyen and when Calenyena. The people are Calenyena. The Language is Calenyen. The country is Calenta. The culture…?

About Lyedra/Ledryainryie – this is mostly a matter of affectation in length. She is doing her best to “pass” as a daughter of affluent parents, merchant princes, if you will, a family of skilled trades. They tend to give their children longer names, where farmers, unskilled laborers, tend to give their children short names. Rin. Noni. Lyedra.

Secondly, nouns with a palatalized first consonant are classified as “not-useful, unskilled, crap.” (Ly vs. L.) (NON palatalized first-consonant nouns are “Useful, skilled.”)

As others have pointed out, an initial vowel is saved for royalty and the children thereof, Enarienarie, Arinyanka, Edaledalendu (and thus the tendancy for going for very long names. The translation of many of these things is lost in an old variant of Calenyen, where the name might mean something like The-stars-shined-down-brightly-shining. (yes, with the redundancy.)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590332.html. You can comment here or there.

The Cup, Part VIII


After The Cup and The Cup, Part II, and The Cup Part III, and The Cup, Part IV, and The Cup, Part V, The Cup, Part VI, and
The Cup, Part VII, in that Order

“This is the way up?”

JohnWayne looked at his Keeper, then back at the road, then back at Cynara, then back at the road. The road bent at a ninety degree angle, straight up into the air. The road they were now standing behind, staring up at.

“No offense, but are your sure your power’s working?”

“You let him talk like that?”

“Oh, thanks.” He glared at his… at Pellinore, who was glaring right back at him.

“Boys.” Cynara sounded mostly amused. Good. JohnWayne wasn’t really fond of her angry. “Yes, Pellinore. He’s never tried to blow up anything of mine.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“Dude.” Was this guy for real? “She kidnaps everyone.

“Not everyone, JohnWayne.”

“Enough people. A guy a year for how long…?”

“And when I accosted your father, the world had not yet ended. I didn’t particularly have a reputation for kidnapping people, outside of my own pack. And he was angry.”

“…I suppose. But why wouldn’t you let me question you?”

“I’m also not in my mid-twenties anymore. We all grow up.” She aimed a pointed look at Pellinore. JohnWayne almost pitied his father. Almost. “Most of us, at least. Now. This way.” She began walking forward, as if she was going to walk herself right into the road/wall.

“Cya…!” JohnWayne reached for her. She caught his hand and kept walking towards the underside of the road. “Cya, this isn’t funny, please don’t hurt your… oh.” Her body leaned backwards, first at a 45-degree angle to the ground, and then, as she stepped onto the road, at a 90-degree angle. “Oh.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/589837.html. You can comment here or there.

Inner Circle (and-a-Gladiator-on-Top) test intro

This is a draft/test/idea that came to me in the shower. There are questionable things in it, but this is how it started so far.

This is the Kink Setting, by the by, not the Steam!Goats setting, this one tentatively called Inner Circle.

“Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

It was not the first thing the man had said to her; it was merely the first important thing.

He had begun, as law and conscience dictated, with the standard disclaimers and explanations. “You understand that once you take a knee, it is not something you can take back? You will be committing to ten years, or to death, or until a member of the first circle calls you to service.”

Taslin had nodded. “I understand.” Other cities had less rings, and thus less years of service. But she had been born in New Indapala, and her family lived here.

“You understand that one out of five who take this route die in service?”

Again, she’d nodded. “I understand.”

“You understand that two out of three who do survive are maimed or crippled?”

“I understand.”

“There are easier routes up the Ladder.”

Taslin had finally looked the man in the eye. “I have a little sister and a little brother.”

“Aah. Then we will continue.” And they had. “Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

She took a knee, her head bowed. The man snipped the cord that had been around her neck since childhood, removing her ID chit. Her neck had felt empty without the light tug there.

That had lasted only a moment. Those who knelt did not wear their ID on a cord, but they wore it nonetheless.

The collar was the thinnest metal she had ever felt, jointed like mail. It moved with her, but at the same time, it pressed against her.

“Rise, Taslin Gladiator.”

Thoughts: I know how the names work, at least. That’s a whole post of its own.
Ten years seems ridiculous, but I wanted New Indapala (which is also a question, I need a name there, but I’m not sure how that one flows off the tongue) to be a large city, and thus a large number of rings.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/589433.html. You can comment here or there.