Archives

March Is Women’s History Month – day five: Regine

Mar27

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [Bad username: thnidu,]Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

This is a combination of nature and nurture.

To begin with, the Grigori, the bloodline of which Regine is a member, tend to be very analytic. They’re smart, some would say brilliant, and to them was given the guidance of mankind (some say) in matters of the mind.

This scientific bend tends to lead Grigori into ignoring the social and physical aspects of their development – they have the Mara for physical protection, so need no focus there, and since there is an unspoken disdain within the Grigori for the Daeva, who are those who inspire (and thus very social), social skills are seen as secondary.

Regine’s particular family line – her father, her older brother, herself – are very very science-and-math-focused, to the point where they often have difficulty understanding other people’s emotions (or, on the rare occasion that they notice their having them, their own). Regine’s father in particular discouraged all expressions of emotion as unneeded and a waste of time, so that from a very early age, Regine learned not to express feelings, and, after a time, not to acknowledge them even to herself.

In a crew with a Mara and a Daeva, Regine often feels the need to act even more Grigori-stereotypical; to be sure to show not the faintest shred of bias or emotion, to be as scientific and as analytic as possible, to balance out the often-irrational and hair-trigger-seeming emotions of her friends. This leads – along with an inability to cope with failure – to an even more repressed Regine by the time we reach the books.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/698400.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole/Criminal Minds Xover, Part IV

Mar27

This began here with a meme; it takes part after Rix’s guest fic here (and click “next” for the second part.)
It continued here and here.

How can you…?

“Magic,” Derek answered. It was going to change everything, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be honest.

“Magic, Morgan, come on…”

“Look, you said you wouldn’t ask how I knew. So don’t ask.” He gestured at the floor. “The dig teams can get the bodies now. Why don’t you and I work on the book?”

“Derek, what do you know about languages?” Reid frowned. “I mean…”

“Well, genius, what I have is a working vocabulary in this language. Which means I can get the easy words and you can use that to figure out the hard words.”

“But what is it?” Spencer was looking at him sideways. “I mean, really. Magic?”

“Look, you’re going to have to take some of this on faith, at least for now. Once we solve this case, I…” Derek paused. “I promise, when we’re back home and this case is over, I’ll explain everything I can to you.”

He’d always wondered a little bit about Spencer Reid. But that expression, that look – if the kid was fae, he didn’t know it. Spencer couldn’t lie that well.

The promise seemed to settle him down at least. “All right. Do you said it’s called ‘Idu a’IduĂžin?’ ‘To know all there is to know?’ That sounds like a fairly common construction for words about language. For instance…”

“Later. I promise, later. We have a killer to put to rest here.”

“Put to rest? So you think…”

“I think that the male body we found here was the killer, yep. Which means somebody killed him.” Derek frowned. “Which is, of course, its own problem.”

Spencer twitched. “So we might be looking for a serial killer killer, or a victim who somehow got away, after putting the body in bedrock. This case just gets creepier and creepier.”

“The book.” Derek pointed at it. “If we can get through this, we can figure everything else out.”

“I still can’t believe you let me go over this for hours without stopping me.” Reid settled down, still muttering.

“You were having fun. Who am I to stop you when you’re having fun?”

The book was harder than it ought to have been, in part because Dr.-Reid-the-Genius kept taking apart words to understand how they worked, and in part because it had been decades since Derek had actually read Old Tongue. He could talk it with the best of them, of course, but talking a language and reading it were utterly different.

When they were done, the translations and the book itself photographed and sent to Garcia, they both felt a little sick. “Derek, this is – you know this is impossible, right?”

“I know, kid. I know. And I promise you we’ll work it all out.”

“But you know what else, right?”

“Yeah.” The book had detailed every single body down there. Except the male body. “We have a serial-killer killer to go look for.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/718735.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/697664.html. You can comment here or there.

The Answer is No, a vignette

Mar18

This takes place sometime during the “sign-up” phase of the Addergoole project – ~mid-to-late 1970’s. It was written in response to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s comment here.

Addergoole has a landing page here

“Take part in a Grigori breeding project? What are you, nuts?”

Regine had been anticipating responses like that; it was one reason (although not in any way close to her primary reason – they were her crew, and the closest thing to friends she had) that her team consisted of not just a Grigori, but a Mara and a Daeva as well.

She had not truly been anticipating the next rejection she received.

“Wait, you’re trying to breed more half-breeds? Why would you do that?”

“The term half-breed is certainly problematic, but it’s the term most commonly in use right now…”

“Forget terminology!” The man talking to her was… scruffy. He was the closest thing to a hobo Regine had ever seen in an Ellehemaei, and he had a body odor that was hard to ignore. “I’m talking about the way these kids’ll be treated!”

“They’ll have a full, extensive education with well-qualified professors and Mentors. They’ll receive every benefit a full-blooded child could hope for…”

“Except that they’ll be half-breeds. You might not know what it’s like, lady, with your perfect Grigori everything, but most of the full-blooded true Ellehemaei out there, they hate my kind.”

He had not dropped his Mask; now he did, revealing what Regine already knew, shaggy doglike ears and a jawline shaped more like a muzzle. “No, thank you. If I’m going to sire any kids, I’ll either do it with humans so human the kid’ll never Change, or if I find a fae that will have me, with purebloods so the kid’ll have a better chance than his dad.”

“But…”

“The answer is no, madam. I’d rather starve.”

Regine was left staring at his tail as he left. She was fairly certain he would not have listened nor consented even if she had managed to get out her last sentence.

But I’m trying to change the view of half-breeds in society.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694764.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day two: Kailani as a Tween

Mar16

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Kailani as a tween.

Kailani is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“His name is Gibbous Moon Over the Lake, but we call him Moonlake.”

The instructor was an earthy woman – brown hair, browned skin, and a smell like loam – a friend of Kailani’s mother who called herself Stormshadow.

That was unimportant. What was important was that she was holding the bridle of a horse. A horse.

“He’s a very calm boy, but watch his ears. They’ll tell you if he’s upset, or interested in something, or spooked.” Stormshadow patted Moonlake’s head. “And his tail – you can hear it flicking back and forth.”

“Like cats.” Kai put her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks heating up already. “I mean…” She released her hand, “with the ears and the tail, not the same language, I mean, obviously, one’s a small carnivore-predator and the other one’s a large herbivore-grazer. But they both move their ears for emotions, and their tails. And here?” She touched the horse’s shoulders gently.

“Very good. Yes, they don’t use the same body language as cats, but if you’ve taught yourself to read feline body language with any rate of success, you should be able to handle horses with little problem. Of course, you’ll be on his back, which is different from cats, I’m sure.”

Kailani giggled. “It’s a little different, yes. But I really get to ride him? He won’t mind?”

“He won’t mind. Moonlake is a nice boy, and he likes being able to spend time with people. Here’s one more trick. You can offer him treats, but you have to be careful to keep your thumbs out of the way. Like this.”

Stormshadow wasn’t watching Moonlake; she was watching the young girl with the frizzy hair who was clearly falling in love. “No charge,” she told Moonchild, Kailani’s mother. “In another year, this girl is going to be working at my stable nonstop just to be around the horses.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694127.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day one: Shahin as a Tween

Mar13

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Shahin as a tween.

Shahin is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“Who are you?”

The new boy, Shahin decided, was rude.

“Shahin Laskaris.” She raised her chin and stared at the stranger. “And who are you?

“Steve Talbot.” He grinned like he was proud of himself for being Steve Talbot. Shahin raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She was still working on the delivery of that line. Teachers chuckled at it, but her fellow classmates –

“What, you had to think about it?”

– were less cultured, she supposed. “Time will tell.”

“Yeah, while I’m getting a pretty firm opinion of you already. Why are you so stuck-up?”

Stuck-up? “I am not!” Whoops. She glared at the new boy, only to find him grinning back at her.

“There you go. Look, it’s fine to be fancy and formal but you have to unwind once in a while too, you know? Come skateboarding with me.”

“Come… what?” She took a step backwards and watched him. She didn’t think he was joking. But nobody had ever offered anything like that. “Not now.”

“No, I don’t think skipping my first day of school is a good idea. But what about after school?”

“Your parental figure won’t mind?”

“Nah, what about yours?”

“Mine won’t notice.” She looked down at her outfit, mostly to point it out to him. She’d spent a lot of time picking it out – little heels, the tallest her aunt would let her buy, and a cute ruffled plaid skirt. She looked like something out of an anime, which was the idea. She didn’t, though, look like she could go skateboarding.

“I can lend you sneakers, I’ve got small feet.” He didn’t seem to ever stop smiling. Shahin found it fascinating. “Say yes?”

“If I must.” And she found she was smiling, too.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/693095.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Thirty-One: Fae Apoc

Mar13

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I answered question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here.

The fourth question comes from an offline friend and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

What does the world look like in the year 2150?

The short answer is: I don’t know yet. I’ve only specced out in any detail at all through about fifty years after the apoc.

What I know:

Starting from a noncimated population of about 31,000,000 at the end of 2012, the American population did not grow for at least a generation (say, until 2035) – disease, starvation, contaminated water and food sources, and a lack of expected medical supplies, as well as remaining returned gods, isolationism, small territory wars, and monsters spawned by the Collapse conspired to keep the population very low, actually trickling down a bit more to around 29 million people.

By 2050, the population was beginning to grow again:
33 million in 2050, 57 million by 2080. By that rate, it’s safe to assume that, by 2150, the population of what had been the United States might get to be around 120,000,000 or a little over 1/3 of what it is IRL today.

140 years is a long time in terms of oral history and predjudice; the first generation of humans after the war almost universally hated fae; even those who had experienced positive relationships with specific fae didn’t like all Ellehemaei. There were maybe “a few good apples” in an otherwise rotten bunch.

And predatory Ellehemaei did not help that impression: especially directly after the war, there were more than a few fae who set up their own little nation-states – some not so little. There were humans who did the same, of course, but the fae “cheated,” using magic and their innate durability and longevity to hold positions of strength over “lesser” humans.

In general, by 2060, there are some humans who believe that fae are all right, maybe less than 25% of the whole population. By 2150, the numbers have shifted in the other direction, and nearly 75% of the population believes, if not that Ellehemaei the equals of humans, at least that they should be allowed to co-exist. And many in both eras know they can be useful (“just get someone who can make the collaring stick and use it!”)

By 2060, Addergoole and Addergoole East were already having a strong influence on the world around them: their graduates became teachers, mayors, despots, doctors, city-builders. By 2150, two creations of Addergoole grads are also shaping the world: a teaching hospital and Doomsday Academy, both formed around 2060.

~

This is a bit all over the place, back to government for a moment. In 2060, the remains of the United States is governed in primarily settlement-based city-states, with as little contact with other settlements as possible, save by those who wander, either to sell goods or offer services. By 2150, many of those settlements have begun to coalesce into small countries; there are 6 major-geographic-area nations and at least 25 smaller ones, many of who battle over land on a semi-regular basis.

The world will never again be what it was before the Collapse, but what it could become is still wide open.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/692874.html. You can comment here or there.

There Are Things You’re Not Noticing

Mar12

[personal profile] librarygeek commissioned this continuation of By the Time Anyone Noticed and They Have to Notice Eventually, a story (in two parts) of a former-Addergoole-student mother from the February Giraffe Call.

The Addergoole setting has a landing page here, although Cleone is a new character.

This is placed somewhere after the apocalypse…

There were things in Cleoneville that people questioned internally but did not ask out loud. There were questions they had all learned not to ask, because asking led to… vanishing, in the worst cases, and things they didn’t want to think about, in better cases. It was Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement, and that’s the way it was.

But there were things that they never questioned at all. They knew them to be true, the way they knew the sky was “blue” that was often grey and white, the way they knew that gravity worked.

One of those things was: There are Fae who are monsters, and they will come and make war; if we are not prepared, they will kill us.

They didn’t need Cleone to tell them that. They didn’t need anyone to tell them that, because they lived in the world where it was a fact.

When the people from Addergoole came, they came Masked. They didn’t come in force, firstly because collecting a child was a relatively routine matter, and secondly because there were, after all, more than a couple children to collect for the school. But they did send Luke, and with him Shira Pelletier – their security and weapons expert, and the sweet, understanding Sciences professor who happened to be an expert hunter. Because Shira Pelletier, who was also their seer, had seen something she couldn’t explain.

They were Masked, every bit of fae-ness covered with impenetrable glamours, but it didn’t matter, because Cleone recognized them before they reached her town.

She sounded the alarm, and her people – all of her people, the former students of Addergoole, the wandering fae, the humans who thought this was a nice and safe place to settle – all of them fought.

Luke was ancient and Shira nearly as so; Luke was a soldier and a warrior and above all a fighter and Shira was a hunter and a survivor; but there were two of them and there were dozens upon dozens of their unexpected enemy, and the enemy was armed with deadly rowan and poisonous hawthorn.

Cleone’s fighters couldn’t win, of course – the humans had no chance at all and the Addergoole graduate had only a small hope – but they could certainly get the teachers’ attention.

“The oath will not let you keep your children from the school, Cleone.” Luke fended off three farmers with pitchforks and one angry former student.

Cleone, usually the sort to speak first, threw a fireball. While Luke was ducking, she retorted.

“I didn’t swear the oath.”

“Your great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did.” Luke was too strong to be taken out by something as mundane as a fireball. He ducked, letting Shira take out the former student with a quick sleep spell.

“It shouldn’t bind me!”

“But it does. And it binds Dagmar.” Luke caught the farmers in a tangle of pitchforks. “Your people are going to get hurt, Cleone.”

“So will you.”

“I’m a lot more durable than they are.”

“Then concede. Walk away, and they’ll stop fighting you. Fly away, even, and we won’t give chase.” She motioned, and a winged boy dove in to attack. “Stay here and insist on taking my child, and they’ll keep attacking you forever.”

The Mara beat off the attacker with almost no effort – no physical effort; everyone there could see the pain on his face.

“He was one of yours, wasn’t he? Your student, a cy’Luca? This boy.” Cleone gestured at the unconscious would-be-attacker. “And now he’s mine. And he’ll keep attacking you until you concede.”

It was Shira Pelletier who spoke now, possibly because Luke did not look capable of speech. His face was turning an interesting shade of red, and his lips were turning white. “You know that it’s not his to decide. You know the promise was made.”

“I know the promise was made. And I know she can release it. Go back to Addergoole. Go back to your precious Director. Tell her to release me and my children from this oath.” She gestured imperiously, and the attacks stopped. Luke flared his wings, unimpressed.

“The oath will make you give in eventually.”

“And then I will order my people to lock me in a tower and defend me, and then there will be no calling them off. And then what will you do? Slaughter humans? Slaughter dozens of your former students? I don’t think you will.”

Now, Luke spoke, growled from between clenched teeth. “You didn’t have a bad time. I made sure of it.”

“Me?” She sounded innocent. “No. No, none of us did. It was a good four years, a good time. I liked the fathers of my children well enough. I liked the time I spent well enough. But you’re only… inhuman. You’re not infallible. And I’ve heard stories.”

“You’re doing this over a story?“

“I’m doing this for my children.” She stood up a little straighter. “Because it comes in waves. And there’s no promising that this year will be better, that this year will be a good year. So we had four good years. What about the bad ones? What about the years the Nedetakaei attacked?”

“You blame me for that, too?” Luke’s wings flared. “When I nearly lost my own children to it?”

“Yes!” Her voice raised to a shout, and all around her, people who were Cleone’s, whether they knew it or not, took a step back, and another. “Because if your own children were there and you did not stop them, then why would you do anything for my children?”

Luke’s wings snapped open and closed tightly. “You will release these people, Cleone. Now.”

“I will do no such thing. They are my hostages against my children’s fates.”

“Cleone.” Shira spoke over the growing silence that was Luke. “The promise that was made, so many years ago, helped to save the world. And it helped to shape the world that survived.”

“It doesn’t look like much of a saving.” Cleone’s arm jerked out, taking in the town she had built. Once, before the collapse, there had been a city here.

“Then you should have seen what it would have looked like without Addergoole’s intervention.” Now even Pelletier was snappish. “The promise was made for a reason.”

“And the war is over. What reason do we have to continue with this farce? Why should I risk my children?”

“Instead, you would risk all these other mothers’ daughters and sons?” Shira gestured around at Cleone’s people, nearly frozen in place.

“They are not my children.” Cleone stood unmoved. “The war happened, Professor Pelletier. Generations ago. The world ended. The project should be over.”

“I was the one who saw the war ending.” Shira raised her chin and stared her former student down. “And I tell you now, the need for the Addergoole project is still strong.”

Buy an Extension
500 words $5.00 USD
750 words $7.50 USD
1000 words $10.00 USD
1250 words $12.50 USD
1500 words $15.00 USD
1750 words $17.50 USD
2000 words $20.00 USD
100 words $1.00 USD
More of What?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/691993.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty*cough*Nine: Addergoole

Mar11

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here.

The twenty-ninth question comes from [personal profile] librarygeek and is for Addergoole.

Keeping: Was it part of the original plan or it something fae? Is there any specific magical binding for Keeper and Kept? I just read a reference to ‘Hell Night’ and wasn’t caught so he should be home free. Is being caught at Hell Night how you get to be Kept?

Keeping is the effect of one of the Laws of Belonging.

The Laws are the rules which bind all Ellehemaei (fae); they fall in a few different categories, but the ones that interest us here are those of Belonging.

These laws state that a fae will first belong to its* Mother, then to its Mentor, and then to itself, but that a fae, once they belong to themselves, may choose to belong to another adult fae.

There are connotations to the word “belong” in the language used for the Laws (commonly called The Old Tongue) which include a sense of responsibility rather than just proprietorship; the word literally means “under another’s name,” and one who Belongs to another, either as their child, their student, or their Kept, is that person’s complete responsibility.

The ritual that makes two fae Keeper and Kept – at its most basic, a repeated statement of “you’re mine;” “Yes, I’m yours” – binds the Kept to the Keeper. Once Kept, a fae cannot disobey direct orders from its Keeper. The Kept feels bad if they disappoints or angers the Keeper, good if they are praised, and will often strive to please their Keeper at all costs.

The binding on Keeper is societal – if the Kept upsets or offends someone, it is the Keeper’s responsibility to ameliorate the problem. If the Kept breaks a law, the Keeper has to deal with the consequences. And the Keeper is responsible for making sure its Kept are fed, housed, clothed (if they so wish), and so on.

All of this covers Keeper and Kept relationships in the greater world outside of Addergoole, as they happen within what passes for fae society in the world.

“Hell Night” is a function of Addergoole.

Originally intended as a gentle hazing ritual to induce stress in new students – because stress is part of what causes juvenile fae to go through the Changes that make them full fae – over the years of the school, it has become a darker, more intense day of pranks, chases, and flat-out bullying, with an underlying secondary cause of enticing students who do not yet know about Keeping to agree to belong to someone for the year. So, in Addergoole, being caught on Hell Night is how you are often Kept, and the day in which the upperclassmen are the most intent on hunting down their new prey.

* Ellehemaei use a gender-neutral pronoun; the closest English has is “it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/689925.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day x: Addergoole/Fae Apoc

Mar6

Physical damage, Ellehemaei, Hawthorn and rowan

I was starting a story and realized I hadn’t determined how Ellehemaei dealt with damage.

So:

A normal Ellehemaei (defined here as a fae who has a Change and the ability to use Words) heals damage the same way as a human and at the same rate; the only difference is that an Ellehemaei can survive damage that would kill a human, and the older the Ellehemaei, the longer they can hold out without healing. (For example, hypothermia, bleeding out, poisoning).

Ellehemaei can, of course, heal themselves, too, with the proper Words (Jasfe (repair) Tlacatl (Flesh of Makers). (And is it not interesting that the same Word covers all fae and all humans?) (And possibly aliens…) They can repair almost any sort of damage, even lost limbs (although something that severe may take Meentik (create) as well as Jasfe.

When hawthorn and rowan get involved, things get complicated. The two woods are poison to all Ellehemaei; hawthorn, in addition to being poison, also inhibits magic use in its presence; it’s hard to Work, hard to Work around, and if it gets into the bloodstream of a fae, it’s almost impossible for them to do any Workings at all while it’s running around in their blood.

A wound made with hawthorn or rowan will act like an acid burn in addition to any stabbing or slicing damage done. The wound will be slow to heal without magic, very slow, and will be difficult to impossible to heal with magic, depending on the power level of the Worker involved. If a limb is amputated with hawthorn or rowan, esp. if the sap is used on the wound, only the most powerful fae in the world can repair it.

On the other hand, they don’t appear to age quickly, and when they do age, they can always use Workings to repair some of the signs of age.

(Thanks to @KissofJudas for help figuring this out)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/688227.html. You can comment here or there.

Last words of Last Night – the Addergoole Re-Write Project

Mar6

I am so close to the end of this I can smell the panic.

Currently working on the Bonus Stories, which in this case are origins of the school’s three founders.

Last line:

He didn’t even know if he could drown.

I have written 4,105 words on Addergoole (and 1,609 words of “other that counts”) so far this month; goals for the end of yesterday were 3,750 and 850 respectively.

Whee!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/687186.html. You can comment here or there.