The Chronicles of Durnia
Jul. 7th, 2008 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielOddly enough, I haven't felt the urge to blog much in the recent past, but (sparkly Sakura style) I'll do my best!
A good place to start is always my latest haul. The day before yesterday, during this year's obligatory family togetherness time, I discovered the perfect Borders. If Pasadena has the perfect library, Pleasanton has the perfect Borders. The manga section takes up the entire north wall (I remember looking for the manga section where it is in Santa Rosa, not finding it, getting a bit annoyed, and then seeing It. I swear there were little angels with trumpets, like in Spamalot), it’s organized enough like the one in Santa Rosa so that I don’t get lost, and they share space with some sort of café or bakery or something, so there are always people walking around with trays of samples. I had this really yummy berry cobbler. And as far as the books lying therein… WOOOOOHOOOO! Despite the fact that I was shopping with Dad, and that Jeff (my Oklahoman otaku cousin) was browsing five feet away from me, I, in an incredible stroke of luck, managed to pick up another of the yaoi anthologies. This was one that really caught my eye on their site, and that I had almost resolved to buy online, and damn the consequences.
I was reading a thread on aarinfantasy about non-con yaoi, and I kept thinking about that while reading the first story in the anthology. According to this thread, non-con has two main purposes:
1. As a means to get two characters into a serious relationship. The fangirl consensus here was, "NO WAY, JOSE, NO WAY, NO HOW!" I fully agree here. I mean, most yaoi, hell, most manga requires suspension of disbelief to some degree, but "Hey, you just raped me! I think I love you now!"? I don't think so.
2. As a means to get two characters into a serious relationship, the other way. As in, "seme to the rescue!" and stuff like that. While the fangirl consensus is divided here, I'm a fan. As anybody who has read most of my posts knows, I definitely don't mind a little hurt/comfort, and I like my villains as creepy and squickifying as they come.
The first story (back to my point) was definitely of the second variety, but it had just enough of the first to really give it a psychological edge. It was set in a definite fantasy world, but not the Western European version made popular by Tolkien and picked up on by almost every fantasy author since. Neither was it the second most popular, which is pseudo-Arabic, but it was closer to this one than Middle-Earth, Krynn, Tortall, etc. I almost want to say early Hebrew or some other Biblical culture. Argh, now I'm playing the Stuart Hill game of trying to affix each and every fantasy culture to one of actual historical purport.
OK, back now. It's a little later, and I've done some research. I now believe Divided (the name of the story) to be based on Mongolian culture. My mistake was trying to trace them linguistically, which threw me in all sorts of random directions. I mean, look at the names: Sunn and Raffe (I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble with the twisted, psychotic warlord having virtually the same name as the beloved children's singer) of the Eurydis, Ciclo of the Hirohyl. The writer can't decide whether to make them Italian, Greek, pseudo-Japanese, Rastafarian, or just generic random fantasy.
I've already gotten pretty far in this world's mythology, OCs, etc. There was a tiny hint of supernatural activity, but like in FAKE, not enough for me. They make a big point of worshiping the Mother Mountain, Tendur, and she is central to this world's mythology. Her sacred creature is the hare, and to kill a hare or to consume its flesh is taboo. She is worshiped chiefly by the Hirohyl, the light-skinned People of the Mountain. Tendur's brother and rival is Nehir, the river god. He has no sacred creature, but seafood and fish is eaten only at greatest need, or on holy days. He is worshiped mainly by the Eurydis, the dark-skinned People of the River.
The Hirohyl and the Eurydis had existed in friendship and harmony for ages untold. Both of their ruling families lived in the city of Listrik. Scraps of pottery and what folklore remains tells that Listrik was once a purely Hirohyl city, which the Eurydis came upon as a band of refugees fleeing some sort of persecution or warfare in their original homeland. The Hirohyl were a peaceful, largely pastoral people. They were not known for any sort of religious or ethnic cleansing, nor were they given to human sacrifice, as many mountain-worshiping people are. Their valley, Durnia, which literally means "the world" was ringed on all sides by mountains, known as Lengan Tendura, or the Arms of Tendur. The Lengan are broken only by a single pass, through which the Eurydis found their way.
However, that was centuries upon centuries before the story beings. At the point we are concerned with, the Eurydis warlord Raffe has murdered the Hirohyl chief and his wife, blamed it on the Hirohyl's own "savagery," and began a vicious program of genocide. Those Hirohyl that were not immediately slain fled to their Mother Mountain and relied on her to keep them safe in their isolated villages, which until than had served only as trapper's drop points and religious enclaves. One of the few who escaped was Ciriol (often mistranslated as Ciclo), the only surviving member of the royal family, made chief by default at the age of eight. He was now the ruler of a shattered people. Raffe had killed their prophets and shamans, and burned their temples and homes. He turned the Eurydis from worship of Tendur to that of Nehir, who was known as a more cruel, demanding god.
Raffe did all this, not only because he wanted to rule all of Durnia, but for complete and utter control of his brother Sunn, whom he brainwashed, using a special herb known only to the highest followers of Nehir. He saw an extremely rare and special bond forming between Sunn, who would one day rule the Eurydis, and Ciriol, who would one day rule the Hirohyl. Wanting neither peace between the two people nor love between their rulers, he did his best to not only kill the Hirohyl that threatened to take Sunn from him, but to erase every trace of their existence.
Time passes. Ten years later, Ciriol undertakes an extremely dangerous mission (Hirohyl are now merely known as "barbarians" or "savages" and killed on sight) back to Listrik to try to make Sunn remember what the world once was, in hopes that the two of them might kill Raffe and return Durnia to peace. Sunn does not regain his memory immediately, helps Raffe to torture Ciriol, and promises to bring him back to the Mother Mountain, where he will kill him. But on the journey up the mountain, a blizzard strikes and Sunn and Ciriol are isolated in a cave long enough for Raffe's drug to wear off and Sunn to regain his memory.
But not long after, they are discovered by Raffe, who, suspecting what might happen, followed them. He brought with him two things: the secret herb, with which he intended to re-stupefy Sunn, and his great halberd Dindarûk Nehira, Punishing Hand of Nehir, to kill Ciriol himself.
Historians differ on what happens after this point. Almost all sources agree that Tendur was angry with Raffe for bringing the sacred weapon of her hated brother onto her mountain, intending to spill the blood of her chosen children, and for all the destruction he had caused, in particular the extermination of her holy men and women. Being so angered, she caused the cave to collapse, killing Raffe but allowing Sunn and Ciriol to escape unharmed. Most sources agree that Raffe was crushed to death, but a few still hold out that he was protected by Nehir, and resurrected as some sort of unholy ghoul who would know no rest until he achieved his goal of killing Ciriol and all that remained of his people.
And that's my history of Durnia. I only have a few OCs so far. Maali, the first, is the half-Hirohyl head of Raffe's household. Her dark coloring allowed her to pass for Eurydis and escape the ethnic cleansing, but she remains in contact with her chief Ciriol, and operates the small but extremely active resistance movement in Listrik, comprised mostly of other "mongrels" like herself. It was she who arranged for Ciriol to be captured by Raffe's royal hunting party, which meant that he would be taken back to the city and not killed on the spot.
Her younger sister, Kieu, is her second-in-command, and Raffe's personal cook. Despite her prime position, she had not poisoned him for one reason: as the self-appointed High Priest of Nehir, Raffe was a master of poisons and potions, and had built up an immunity to almost every toxin known.
Raizen is one of Raffe's top generals. Although a vicious and cold-hearted brute, he often inspires laughter at least as much as terror, if not more, due to his enormously long, droopy, and pampered fu-manchu mustachios. It is rumored that the reason he no longer actively participates in raids and battles is that his mustachios would entangle his sword or spear and trip his horse.
His eldest son Jan was one of Raffe's personal bodyguards. He was killed after Ciriol had been captured and the hunting party was on its way back to Listrik. He attempted to rape their supposedly helpless captive, who bit off Jan's... erm... you-know-what. Jan bled to death shortly after, although barrack-room legend sometimes has him dying of shame instead.
Raizen's second son, Tanulo, was a great disappointment to his father and elder brother, being neither bloodthirsty nor brutish. It is thanks to him that historians know as much as they do, not just about the actual events that took place, but about Eurydis and Hirohyl culture, the latter of which might have disappeared without him. But perhaps most notably, he is also responsible for rescuing the only surviving copy of the Kirja Takdis Tendura, the Holy Book of Tendur. Without this, the Hirohyl's history, system of writing, and religious canon might have been lost forever. When the Hirohyl returned, Tanulo was put in charge of Listrik's first official library, where he worked blissfully and productively until the end of his days.
Last of my current OCs are the Daughters of the Mountain, a little something the other ladies down at Section 4 and I dreamed up. Basically, they're the emissaries and handmaidens of Tendur. While trying to prove to the embattled and extremely suspicious Hirohyl that we weren't Eurydis spies, we, as usual, ran into some resistance. The DMs (the name has become something of an in-joke; references to "god-modding" and other D&D references abound), started out as our way of getting close to the Hirohyl. Once they accepted us as we are, we dropped the DMs from common use, but unusually, they took on personas of their own and became sort of the local metaphysical constabulary. We basically are them, so we can still assume their form at need. We had played around with the idea of making Daughters of the River to infiltrate Raffe's inner council, but given what happened with the Daughters of the Mountain, we decided against it.
A good place to start is always my latest haul. The day before yesterday, during this year's obligatory family togetherness time, I discovered the perfect Borders. If Pasadena has the perfect library, Pleasanton has the perfect Borders. The manga section takes up the entire north wall (I remember looking for the manga section where it is in Santa Rosa, not finding it, getting a bit annoyed, and then seeing It. I swear there were little angels with trumpets, like in Spamalot), it’s organized enough like the one in Santa Rosa so that I don’t get lost, and they share space with some sort of café or bakery or something, so there are always people walking around with trays of samples. I had this really yummy berry cobbler. And as far as the books lying therein… WOOOOOHOOOO! Despite the fact that I was shopping with Dad, and that Jeff (my Oklahoman otaku cousin) was browsing five feet away from me, I, in an incredible stroke of luck, managed to pick up another of the yaoi anthologies. This was one that really caught my eye on their site, and that I had almost resolved to buy online, and damn the consequences.
I was reading a thread on aarinfantasy about non-con yaoi, and I kept thinking about that while reading the first story in the anthology. According to this thread, non-con has two main purposes:
1. As a means to get two characters into a serious relationship. The fangirl consensus here was, "NO WAY, JOSE, NO WAY, NO HOW!" I fully agree here. I mean, most yaoi, hell, most manga requires suspension of disbelief to some degree, but "Hey, you just raped me! I think I love you now!"? I don't think so.
2. As a means to get two characters into a serious relationship, the other way. As in, "seme to the rescue!" and stuff like that. While the fangirl consensus is divided here, I'm a fan. As anybody who has read most of my posts knows, I definitely don't mind a little hurt/comfort, and I like my villains as creepy and squickifying as they come.
The first story (back to my point) was definitely of the second variety, but it had just enough of the first to really give it a psychological edge. It was set in a definite fantasy world, but not the Western European version made popular by Tolkien and picked up on by almost every fantasy author since. Neither was it the second most popular, which is pseudo-Arabic, but it was closer to this one than Middle-Earth, Krynn, Tortall, etc. I almost want to say early Hebrew or some other Biblical culture. Argh, now I'm playing the Stuart Hill game of trying to affix each and every fantasy culture to one of actual historical purport.
OK, back now. It's a little later, and I've done some research. I now believe Divided (the name of the story) to be based on Mongolian culture. My mistake was trying to trace them linguistically, which threw me in all sorts of random directions. I mean, look at the names: Sunn and Raffe (I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble with the twisted, psychotic warlord having virtually the same name as the beloved children's singer) of the Eurydis, Ciclo of the Hirohyl. The writer can't decide whether to make them Italian, Greek, pseudo-Japanese, Rastafarian, or just generic random fantasy.
I've already gotten pretty far in this world's mythology, OCs, etc. There was a tiny hint of supernatural activity, but like in FAKE, not enough for me. They make a big point of worshiping the Mother Mountain, Tendur, and she is central to this world's mythology. Her sacred creature is the hare, and to kill a hare or to consume its flesh is taboo. She is worshiped chiefly by the Hirohyl, the light-skinned People of the Mountain. Tendur's brother and rival is Nehir, the river god. He has no sacred creature, but seafood and fish is eaten only at greatest need, or on holy days. He is worshiped mainly by the Eurydis, the dark-skinned People of the River.
The Hirohyl and the Eurydis had existed in friendship and harmony for ages untold. Both of their ruling families lived in the city of Listrik. Scraps of pottery and what folklore remains tells that Listrik was once a purely Hirohyl city, which the Eurydis came upon as a band of refugees fleeing some sort of persecution or warfare in their original homeland. The Hirohyl were a peaceful, largely pastoral people. They were not known for any sort of religious or ethnic cleansing, nor were they given to human sacrifice, as many mountain-worshiping people are. Their valley, Durnia, which literally means "the world" was ringed on all sides by mountains, known as Lengan Tendura, or the Arms of Tendur. The Lengan are broken only by a single pass, through which the Eurydis found their way.
However, that was centuries upon centuries before the story beings. At the point we are concerned with, the Eurydis warlord Raffe has murdered the Hirohyl chief and his wife, blamed it on the Hirohyl's own "savagery," and began a vicious program of genocide. Those Hirohyl that were not immediately slain fled to their Mother Mountain and relied on her to keep them safe in their isolated villages, which until than had served only as trapper's drop points and religious enclaves. One of the few who escaped was Ciriol (often mistranslated as Ciclo), the only surviving member of the royal family, made chief by default at the age of eight. He was now the ruler of a shattered people. Raffe had killed their prophets and shamans, and burned their temples and homes. He turned the Eurydis from worship of Tendur to that of Nehir, who was known as a more cruel, demanding god.
Raffe did all this, not only because he wanted to rule all of Durnia, but for complete and utter control of his brother Sunn, whom he brainwashed, using a special herb known only to the highest followers of Nehir. He saw an extremely rare and special bond forming between Sunn, who would one day rule the Eurydis, and Ciriol, who would one day rule the Hirohyl. Wanting neither peace between the two people nor love between their rulers, he did his best to not only kill the Hirohyl that threatened to take Sunn from him, but to erase every trace of their existence.
Time passes. Ten years later, Ciriol undertakes an extremely dangerous mission (Hirohyl are now merely known as "barbarians" or "savages" and killed on sight) back to Listrik to try to make Sunn remember what the world once was, in hopes that the two of them might kill Raffe and return Durnia to peace. Sunn does not regain his memory immediately, helps Raffe to torture Ciriol, and promises to bring him back to the Mother Mountain, where he will kill him. But on the journey up the mountain, a blizzard strikes and Sunn and Ciriol are isolated in a cave long enough for Raffe's drug to wear off and Sunn to regain his memory.
But not long after, they are discovered by Raffe, who, suspecting what might happen, followed them. He brought with him two things: the secret herb, with which he intended to re-stupefy Sunn, and his great halberd Dindarûk Nehira, Punishing Hand of Nehir, to kill Ciriol himself.
Historians differ on what happens after this point. Almost all sources agree that Tendur was angry with Raffe for bringing the sacred weapon of her hated brother onto her mountain, intending to spill the blood of her chosen children, and for all the destruction he had caused, in particular the extermination of her holy men and women. Being so angered, she caused the cave to collapse, killing Raffe but allowing Sunn and Ciriol to escape unharmed. Most sources agree that Raffe was crushed to death, but a few still hold out that he was protected by Nehir, and resurrected as some sort of unholy ghoul who would know no rest until he achieved his goal of killing Ciriol and all that remained of his people.
And that's my history of Durnia. I only have a few OCs so far. Maali, the first, is the half-Hirohyl head of Raffe's household. Her dark coloring allowed her to pass for Eurydis and escape the ethnic cleansing, but she remains in contact with her chief Ciriol, and operates the small but extremely active resistance movement in Listrik, comprised mostly of other "mongrels" like herself. It was she who arranged for Ciriol to be captured by Raffe's royal hunting party, which meant that he would be taken back to the city and not killed on the spot.
Her younger sister, Kieu, is her second-in-command, and Raffe's personal cook. Despite her prime position, she had not poisoned him for one reason: as the self-appointed High Priest of Nehir, Raffe was a master of poisons and potions, and had built up an immunity to almost every toxin known.
Raizen is one of Raffe's top generals. Although a vicious and cold-hearted brute, he often inspires laughter at least as much as terror, if not more, due to his enormously long, droopy, and pampered fu-manchu mustachios. It is rumored that the reason he no longer actively participates in raids and battles is that his mustachios would entangle his sword or spear and trip his horse.
His eldest son Jan was one of Raffe's personal bodyguards. He was killed after Ciriol had been captured and the hunting party was on its way back to Listrik. He attempted to rape their supposedly helpless captive, who bit off Jan's... erm... you-know-what. Jan bled to death shortly after, although barrack-room legend sometimes has him dying of shame instead.
Raizen's second son, Tanulo, was a great disappointment to his father and elder brother, being neither bloodthirsty nor brutish. It is thanks to him that historians know as much as they do, not just about the actual events that took place, but about Eurydis and Hirohyl culture, the latter of which might have disappeared without him. But perhaps most notably, he is also responsible for rescuing the only surviving copy of the Kirja Takdis Tendura, the Holy Book of Tendur. Without this, the Hirohyl's history, system of writing, and religious canon might have been lost forever. When the Hirohyl returned, Tanulo was put in charge of Listrik's first official library, where he worked blissfully and productively until the end of his days.
Last of my current OCs are the Daughters of the Mountain, a little something the other ladies down at Section 4 and I dreamed up. Basically, they're the emissaries and handmaidens of Tendur. While trying to prove to the embattled and extremely suspicious Hirohyl that we weren't Eurydis spies, we, as usual, ran into some resistance. The DMs (the name has become something of an in-joke; references to "god-modding" and other D&D references abound), started out as our way of getting close to the Hirohyl. Once they accepted us as we are, we dropped the DMs from common use, but unusually, they took on personas of their own and became sort of the local metaphysical constabulary. We basically are them, so we can still assume their form at need. We had played around with the idea of making Daughters of the River to infiltrate Raffe's inner council, but given what happened with the Daughters of the Mountain, we decided against it.
