Parimi

The cities of Initiate of Stone

/ Melanie Marttila

World building is winding down.  After this post, I’ll probably have one more about the languages of Tellurin, and another to cover some of the odds and sods I haven’t described elsewhere.  Following that, there will be a final post on world-building resources.

Cities, towns, villages, etc.

I’ll start with Hartsgrove, Ferathainn’s village.  Situated west of the mountains, Hartsgrove is one of many free towns, or free holds.  Except for the Parimi, Haldane, and Espanic lands, which are proper provinces, most of the people who live in the west are clustered into such communities.

The village proper contains The Silver Swan, Willow’s public house, which is a structure half built, and half shaped from a massive oak.  In the back rooms, she brews her beer and ferments her wine.  Her distillery is off-site, for safety’s sake.  The Swan is the closest thing Hartsgrove has to a town hall.  It’s where most community business and assemblies are held.

A small stable, blacksmith, and a builder complete the village’s services.  There is a mill down by the Chance River, built to withstand the seasonal floods, and with a mill-wheel that can be raised and lowered given the water level.

The rest of the village, set well back from the river, consists of families that work on the farms in the surrounding countryside to earn their share of the harvest.  Willow’s orchards and fields (behind The Swan) are tended only by her and her brothers, though they recruit assistance for the harvest.  Even Fer does her share during the sowing and reaping periods.

Hartsgrove is just north of the Deep Forest and many of the trees around the village are ancient.  Think about pictures you might have seen of century trees.  The eleph have shaped their homes from these.

North of the village is a sacred grove, planted hundreds of years before.  It’s where the name of the village derives.  That’s where all of the seasonal festivals are held.  They’re mostly communal affairs, as Hartsgrove isn’t big enough to rate a priest.  They have to petition one to be sent from one of the larger centres for important events like marriages.

Selene and Aeldred share the responsibility of the physical health of both animals and people.

Hartsgrove sends annual tributes to Aurayene, Drychtensart, and Gryphonskeep in the form of food and Willow’s excellent brews.  There is a fair demand for The Swan’s beer, wine, and whiskey.  These might be the village’s only export.

There is no wall.  Only ones made of stone can withstand Vedranya, and there is no quarry nearby.  There is rarely any need of defence, and the men of the village, with Aeldred’s magickal support, are more than equal to the few bandits who choose to try their luck.

Aurayene is a sprawling city state founded by the Parimi.  It is the capitol of Parime, and the spiritual centre of Tellurin.  The Archbishop, the highest ranking prelate in the land, makes his home there, and the Monastery of Aurayene is the biggest of its kind, taking up fully one third of the city’s area.

The Archbishop’s compound and tower are palatial.  Not only the compound, but the city as well, are guarded by massive stone walls.

Aurayene is one of the few cities to have survived the Cataclysm, though only barely.  When the western coast sheered away from Tellurin, Aurayene stood on the very brink.  In succeeding generations, they adapted to their inconvenient perch atop a cliff that dropped several hundred feet to the Jagged Sea below. 

Miners and stone masons excavated The Long Stair, which descended through the stone beneath the city to the floating mass of docks that formed the port below.  A lift was also constructed to convey cargo up the cliff face to the city.

The Chance and the Aurayene Rivers flow respectively south and north of the city, cascading in incredible waterfalls to the sea below.  The land around Aurayene is mostly plain, though the coastal mountains, Les Bras d’Auraya, surround it.

Riversway is essentially a mercantile centre on the Aurayene River a day’s ride out of Aurayene.  Because goods coming into Aurayene from the port side have to be hauled up the cliff, and the city is so well developed, there’s not a lot of space, literal or figurative, to bundle things off to specific destinations.

Riversway serves as the place where shipments are sent in bulk, to be divided and repackaged for shipping further up the Aurayene, or by land into the continent.

Gryphonskeep is on the north shore of the Aurayene River.  Originally built by a discontented Alban lord (Murdo Christie)  who’d left the Island Kingdoms before the Cataclysm, the keep earned its name and reputation by virtue of several gryphon fledglings that the lord managed to capture on his journey through the mountains.

The keep was built for defence with thick walls and multiple sets of doors.  Christie was jealous of his new prize and distinction, and unwilling to lose either.

The aerie tower was built to simulate the gryphons’ mountainous home with broad balconies at the half-way mark and the top level allow the gryphons access.  During Vedranya, these are covered with massive wooden “shutters.”  The gryphons would much rather be up in the mountains, safe above the storms, but they like to humour their Tellurin caretakers.

Gryphonskeep has come into the hands of many lords over the years.  It is both a desirable reward—who wouldn’t want to be the Gryphonskeeper?—and a kind of back-handed compliment—who wants to be exiled to the western wilds?

The west of Tellurin is considered a barbarous and lawless land.  Few families have been eager to assume the burden when they could be living a life of relative comfort in the civilized east.

Killian’s father held Gryphonskeep before him, but his disreputable behaviour and abuse of the noble beasts caused him to be stripped of the honour.  Killian had to fight to prove his right and worthiness to hold Gryphonskeep.  Dairragh might be the first third generation Gryphonskeeper, if he can regain the honour.

Aumenburg is a small village nestled in a valley of the Great Ring Mountains southwest of Kriegstaff.  The mountains are Saxon land.  It is ruined by the time Ferathainn and Dairragh reach it, having been ravaged by Kane’s army and then abandoned to the storms.

Like Hartgrove, it has a grove.  Unlike Hartsgrove’s, Aumenburg’s grove has been forgotten and left to the wild things.  It also happens to be the site of a great sourcerous battle and the resting place of Jareth’s amulet.

Finally, there are five mountain keeps that guard the passes through the mountains.  These were built by the Saxon in the days when defence, or at least provision for travelers and protection from Vedranya, were deemed necessary.  All five keeps were constructed in much the same manner; all tall, rectangular, utilitarian structures built out of the mountains themselves.  Each was built on top of caverns which served as storage and dungeons, the foundations of each keep reaching deep into the stone.

Each has an outer baily, or commons area, and an inner fortification.

That’s it for tonight.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Speaking of speaking to the spirits

/ Melanie Marttila
English: Religious symbols from the top nine o...

English: Religious symbols from the top nine organised faiths of the world according to Major world religions From left to right: 1st Row: Christian Cross, Jewish Star of David, Hindu Aumkar 2nd Row: Islamic Star and crescent, Buddhist Wheel of Dharma, Shinto Torii 3rd Row: Sikh Khanda, Bahá’í star, Jain Ahimsa Symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A.K.A. Religion and spirituality in Tellurin, part 1

After last week’s lovely vacation from worldbuilding … it’s ba-ack 🙂  If you recall, last instalment, I talked about the specifics of how the magick works.  Part of that dealt with the nature of Ferathainn’s talent: her ability to communicate with the spirits of things.  We’re going to take that metaphor in a different direction this week.

So I’ve already covered the gods, and given a basic rundown of the history of Tellurin.  What’s left to say about the religions?  A fair amount 🙂

The two main religions in Tellurin, The Faithful and The Holy Mother Church are based on Auraya.

Once upon a time, on the eastern coast of Tellurin, the Parimi, Espanic, and the Haldane peoples lived in harmony with the Caldone.  Though all from tribal origins, all but the Caldone had settled into stable, agrarian territories that grew into allied provinces.

The Haldane were great artists and philosophers.  Their main tenet was to live every day to its fullest, to be joyful in the moment, and to follow their bliss.  This led them to strive for excellence in whatever profession they pursued.

The Parimi were of a similar disposition, but they were epicures verging on hedonism (eat, drink, and make love today, for tomorrow, you may die).

The Espanic expressed their philosophy in a different way.  They were great engineers, navigators, and scientists.

All Tellurin knew of the gods, but there was no codified religion yet.

In those days, Auraya, Auremon, and Tryella were active in the affairs of the Tellurin.  Auremon and Tryella weren’t interested in thanks or recognition, however.  Their efforts were altruistic.  Auraya loved the adoration and her partner and daughter were more than happy to let her take credit for their good deeds.

One of the Haldane began to collect tales of divine providence and intervention, and wrote them down.  He signed each story, The Faithful Scribe.  This collection became the Kas’Khoudum, or book of light.

The Parimi took these writings, and developed the set of practices that became The Faithful religion.  Mostly, they gathered at the full and new moons to share tales of wonder, to sing songs about them and to recite poetry based on the tales.  They shared food and drink.  In short, it was a big party that made everyone in attendance happy.  The Haldane and Espanic took to this form of gathering like bees to pollen.

Word of The Faithful gatherings spread beyond the borders of it home provinces and others began to adopt those practices.

The Cadone, however, were still largely a tribal culture.  Though they had cities, these were military strongholds and training centres.  They raided and attacked their neighbours, taking the conquered people as slaves.  When they observed The Faithful gatherings among their slaves, they thought it was pure debauchery and the Kas’Khoudum, a work of heresy.

Their Auraya was a warrior queen, champion of the bold and fearless.  They had established The Holy Mother Church in her name as an administrative branch of their great armies.  They determined that The Faithful had to be stamped out.

Though they drove the Parimi, Haldane, and Espanic peoples from their homelands and pursued them across the continent, Auraya intervened and chose one of The Faithful, Alain de Corvus, to be her Kas’Hadden, or hammer of light.

He saved the refugee peoples, turned back the Caldone, and the Parimi, Haldane, and Espanic settled peacefully on the western coast of Tellurin.

Over time, the religion of The Faithful became ritualized and the practice less joyful.

Yllel, trying to influence The Faithful for his own nefarious purpose created his own book, the Rada’Khoudum, or book of darkness (misleadingly translated as the book against darkness).  This was a book of ceremony and ritual, including a number of spells that when used, would actually bind and drain Auraya’s power, eventually weakening her.

After the Cataclysm, Yllel directed his soul-slaves to place the Rada’Khoudum into the hands of the surviving Faithful.  The Rada’Khoudum became the basis of modern Faithful practice and the Kas’Khoudum became a pleasant book of incredible tales, eventually laying forgotten and gathering dust on a shelf in the Great Library at Aurayene.

It might be helpful to think of The Faithful in the time of Initiate of Stone as analogous to the High Anglican Church in its early days, when multiple sects of Christianity were emerging and religious persecution was rife.

Think of the Holy Mother Church as Christianity in the time of the crusades, except that their collective target is any religion that is not HMC, magi, and any people not Tellurin.  They’ve been waiting and planning for years to execute their holy war.

Next week: The other religions of Tellurin.  You didn’t think I’d stop with two, did you?

Have a great long weekend!

Writerly Goodness, signing off.

Overview of the geo-political history of Tellurin, part 2

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: The first Kas’Hadden saves the Parimi.

The Parimi now occupied the western coastal mountain region of the continent but they were happy.  Having brought with them the best and brightest of their people, they took root and created a province like no other.

The Haldani and Espanic peoples, also persecuted by the Caldone, settled on the western coast as well, but in smaller settlements, though, these two, became provinces in their own rights. The Haldani and Espanic espoused the Faithful religion.

The Parimi continued in their spiritual belief as well, and when the Caldone finally realized that they could no more eradicate the Parimi Faithful than they could the Haldani and Espanic survivors, they relented and struck a balance.  The Holy Mother Church established its own religious centre and their own archbishop in Impiranze, Caldone’s capitol city on the eastern coast. Still, it was the holy city of Aurayene and the Archbishop there that became the spiritual centre of the continent.

Each area and culture within Tellurin developed its own language and way of life.  Each developed its own economy and its own ruler.  Whether king or osire or emperor, Tigernos, Chieftain, or Horselord, each country had its own leader and its own soldiers.  They fought with each other to a greater or lesser extent.  Those displaced or exiled due to the fighting inevitably found themselves trickling through the mountain passes and establishing towns and villages and small city forts on the western side of the continent.

Each had its own sourcerors, though they may have been called witch doctors, shaman, druids, spirit walkers, or other things.  Tellurin developed and grew.  Its people developed and grew as well.

Eventually, they negotiated truces and trade routes.  Aurayene in the west and Drychtensart in the east became the two largest cities and began to amalgamate power (religious and political respectively) in those two centres.

Auremon’s mistake brought the eleph into Tellurin.  Their bitterness at being “trapped” in Tellurin caused them to turn every help away: Auremon, and delegations from Aurayene (the Parimi), Mersea (the Espanic), and Pax (the Haldani).  Their desire for isolation and distrust of outsiders was spread far and wide and the people of Tellurin decided to let the eleph live as they chose (so long as they didn’t cause trouble).

The Agrothe was established and its adherents prospered.  Soon nearly all developing persons of talent were sent to Auremsart off the western coast to be trained in the official art of magick.

The Saxon began to assert themselves as the new power in Tellurin.  Politically, things were moving slowly but inexorably toward a centralized government and high king in Drychtensart.

When Auremon was killed and Auremsart crumbled into the sea, the Agrothe magi on the mainland consolidated in Dychtensart, another coup for the increasingly powerful king.  King Druckert (later called the wise) established the King’s University in Drychtensart and the Agrothe disciplines survived there.

Then the Cataclysm happened.  This was the battle between Auraya, Tryella, and Yllel.  As described in a previous post, the world was shaken by natural disaster in every form.  Vedranya in its new and terrible incarnation came to be.  Millions of people died.  Much of the written history and accumulated knowledge of the previous centuries was lost or destroyed.

In the years following the Cataclysm, the world rebuilt.  The Saxon, the strongest nation before the Cataclysm, was the first to recover afterward.  The king in Drychtensart was the de facto king of all Tellurin, though there were kings and lords scattered throughout the lands.

The gods were silent and though the religion of Auraya still existed, in both its liberal (Aurayene) and fundamental (Impiranze) sects, it was a changed religion.  The Kas’Khoudum and the Rada’Khoudum had both been miraculously saved, but much of the scholarship on the ancient texts was lost and many of the elder scholars had not survived the Cataclysm.

New schools and scholars made it the work of their lives to try to find old texts and recover their knowledge.  They spoke to the oldest of the old, the wisest of the elders.  But there were pieces missing and there was no context for the pieces of history that were recovered in later years.

Some ambitious scholars tried to recreate history as they thought it should have occurred.  A new speculative branch of scholarship arose.  Many of them were simple fabulists and their fictions were transparent.  Others were more convincing and only served to confuse things further.

The Agrothe had also survived more or less intact, but they too had been changed by the Cataclysm.  In the same way as history was being reinvented, the Agrothe too experienced a queer kind of renaissance.  The knowledge of the sourcerors that they had so long tried to subsume with their own training and lore was now actively set aside and with the trauma of the Cataclysm so recent, it was a much easier thing to forget about the sourcerors than to try to deal with them.

As for the sourcerors themselves, they survived, but found it far easier to do so without the constant harassment of the Agrothe.  They were happy to be forgotten, and yet, new sourcerors continued to be found, quietly whisked away for training, and then set loose on an unsuspecting world.

At the opening of the novel, the political world is ruled by King Romnir Raethe in Drychtensart, High King in all but name.  Each of the other countries still have their own ruler, but most of these (Nubia, Caldone, Hussar, and the Island Kingdoms) sit on a council that advises King Raethe.  The Parimi are represented by Archbishop Hermann Manse, special advisor to the king.

The Caldone archbishop does not advise.  The Sami and Skaldic rulers sit on the council when they choose to go to Drychtensart, which is rarely.  The Saxon are represented only by King Raethe.

The Shooksa-Nai and the Saanzu never had representatives on the council, though trade envoys appear from time to time.  The eleph of Rosingthiel keep to themselves and by and large, most people are happy with that arrangement.

The dwergen and dwergini likewise have their own self-sufficient kingdom beneath the earth, their own king, and trade envoys. The deep-dwellers are more regular in their attentions, however, and visit Drychtensart twice each sun, once in Shoudranya and once again in Mardranya to trade raw ore and enchanted weapons and armour.

The favrard live scattered throughout Tellurin (though some remain on Tahesakhi), serving their dark lord.

The western lands, bordered by the mountains in the east, the Deep Forest in the south, Parime, Haldane, and Espania on the western coast, and The Wilds in the north, are largely independent settlements and free towns that owe fealty to Drychtensart, but pay annual tributes to the surrounding lords and provinces to ensure their safety.

The king doesn’t bother to enforce this fealty, however, with the exception of the mountain keeps, which were Saxon to begin with, and Gryphonskeep, the sole settlement with ties to the Island Kingdoms in western Tellurin.

The Caldone are secretly plotting to eradicate the Faithful and supplant Archbishop Manse with their own archbishop as the religious leader of Tellurin.  They are also plotting to take the throne from Raethe.  With both religious and scular power secured, they want to cleanse the known world of such blights as magi and eleph, really anyone who doesn’t adhere to the Holy Mother Church.

Everything else is being set in motion by Yllel and Kane.  Yllel directs the drogadi to place source bombs strategically throughout the dwergen empire.  Drogadi sourcerors detonate the bombs remotely and trap the dwergen in their own kingdom.

His people among the Faithful place the Rada’Khoudum firmly in the hands of Archbishop Manse so that he uses its spells to bind Auraya’s source to kill Callum, the rising Kas’Hadden.

The drogadi rise to the surface and foment chaos in the west.  The other enslaved races muster for the coming battle.

The okante, and otherwise peaceful, tribal people, usually live in harmony with the Shooksa-Nai in the Northern Steppes and in the southern part of the wilds, south of the Glass Sea.  The krean are sea-faring folk who still call Tahesakhi home for the most part.  The bakath live in the Southron Spine, and the grunden in the Northron Spine.  The blinsies harass the Saanzu in the Deep Forest, but steer clear of the eleph.

Kane’s sourcerors infiltrate the Agrothe into the very capital and the king’s own university.

Map of Tellurin

Map of Tellurin

This is my cartographically-challenged map of Tellurin. At least you’ll get the general lay of the land.

Next week: What’s a Tellurin year?  A month? The days of the week?  The seasons?  Calendrical mysteries revealed.  This stuff will likely never appear in the novel, so Writerly Goodness will be your only chance to see such arcane material 🙂

Until then, good luck and good writing.

Back-pedalling and moving forward

/ Melanie Marttila

For the last several weeks I’ve been regaling y’all with character sketches, the creation story, and the divine history of Tellurin leading up to the beginning of my novel.  I just wanted to take a few moments to remind everyone of the overarching reason I’m doing this: world building.

As I mentioned long ago at the outset of this long, grand adventure, I’m a pantser.  That means I write by the seat of my pants.  I start with a character in a situation and writer to see how he or she will get her- or himself out of it.

I’ve recently finished Stephen King’s On Writing and was pleased to read about his process, that it too, starts with situation.  I have to have characters first, but it was gratifying to know what kind of company I’m in 🙂

The world evolves out of that process.  It’s not like I finish my first draft and say to myself, “now I must build my world.”  The world emerges from what I write.  I often take notes and research as I go.  I’ve also had wacky ideas and dreams all my life (and a stack of journals to go with them).  Sometimes, as I write, I think, hey, this idea would work perfectly for that aspect of the world.

Once I’ve finished that first draft, I refer to my journals, lists of links from internet research, the non-fiction I’ve read that relates to my setting, and aggregate documents from all of these bits and pieces.  Plotting and structure do inform my writing, they just don’t define it.

Now that I’ve reminded everyone why we’re all here, I’ll get on with the meat of this week’s post:

A geo-political history of Tellurin, part 1

When the Tellurin were first created/evolved, they were very much like innocent children.  The land and the sea and the air spoke to them.  The elemental creatures were their friends, and they could even understand the animals to a limited degree.

It depended on what animals and elements the akhis used to create people as to what the outcome was.  Experiments with boars led to the okante, jackals became the bakath, lizards produced blinsies, basilisks became krean, gorillas became grunden, and chimpanzees became Tellurin (humans).  Monkeys were also the basis for the dwergen, dwergini, the favrard, selkies and merpeople, but they were each combined with other animals.  The dwergen resulted from added badger, dwergini from added mole, the favrard from added cougar, selkies from added seal and merpeople from added dolphin.  The anogeni of Zaidesahki were created from a small nocturnal tree shrew.  Some of the people had elemental affinities too: dwergen to earth and fire, dwergini to earth and air, the favrard to air and fire, the selkies to water and earth, the merpeople to water and air, and the anogeni to earth and water.

On land, civilization began to form around the river valleys and deltas, as it often does.  For the Tellurin, organization was tribal to begin with.  There were tribes all over the main continent, in every region, adapted to every climate.  The greatest concentration of the population was on the south-eastern part of the continent where the weather was temperate and the conditions for growing food were optimal.  Large amounts of natural resources were also readily available in the area.  There the great Nubiin and Haldani civilizations developed.

They grew parallel, but with opposite philosophies.  The Nubiin were by and large a cult of death.  There were many great sourcerors among their people and inevitably their king, or osire was one.  Sourcerous battle often decided a dynasty, a new king taking by force what he wanted from the old.  Poison was a secondary art and assassins became numerous as well.

The poisonous creatures were milked for the venom and then that was in turn placed in the victim’s food or drink.  Disease was also “harvested” in the form of sputum or pus and secretly administered to the victim.

Though the osire often did have the ability to influence the weather, they soon discovered it was far less bothersome to develop a technology to serve the people’s needs rather than to sourcerously supply the solution.  Irrigation and plumbing were their first developments.  Seaworthy ships were their next, and architecture appeared to be their finest endeavour.

They began trade and to a lesser extent conquest with the help of their ships.  They quickly lost interest in defeating other people and chose instead to elevate themselves and ensure their superiority through lasting intellectual accomplishments and grandiose monuments.

They built great observatories with which to study the stars.  The temples of kings turned into their tombs as one dynasty succeeded the next.  Their sourcerors were great sophisticates and had developed elaborate rituals and ceremonies even before the Agrothe came into being.  Elaborate but effective.  They used order as a way to exert pressure on source, to make it more powerful.  Through their investigations, they had discovered a Way Between the Worlds but were unable to open it in order to pass through.  It was their theory that when they died, their soul and source passed through the Way and onto another life.

Funerary monuments were begun in the year the osire came into ascension (like a star) and continued as long as he (and sometimes his family) were able to hang onto the throne.  At the osire’s death, ceremonies would ensue for days seeing the soul into the next life.  The whole life of the Nubiin people began to focus on death in one form or another.

The Haldani, on the other hand, were adherents to the cult of life.  Anything that enhanced their experience, food, drink, sex, play, sports, became a way of celebrating life.  They were a society of epicureans and hedonists, and quickly fell in to decadence.  Their leaders were corpulent and corrupt.

The warlike Caldoni tribes that wandered the area saw the decadence and over the course of sunspans developed a plan to conquer the Haldani.  Though each tribe had its leader, all the leaders recognised Alexander as their Tigernos, or chieftain.  It was his ambition that carried the Caldoni into the very heart of the Haldani lands and gave them conquest. Eventually, the Caldoni did the same to the Espanic, but though they tried to conquer the other nations of the region, they were never wholly successful.

The Caldoni kept all the best of the Haldani culture, their art and technology, but brought order to the rest.  Except for the common troops that they were forced to kill, the Caldoni kept their Tellurin destruction to the nobles of their foe.  In the end, many lower and middle class Haldani survived and were allowed to flourish and even keep their own ways if they so chose, under close scrutiny though.

To the north of these two great cultures were the Espanic (until they were conquered), Parimi and Saxon territories.  These retained much of their tribal nature and were considered “primitive” by their neighbours to the south.

Still further to the north were the Hussari, the great horse clans.

The coastal islands to the east were home to the Brythoni, Eiran, Alban, and Cymric people.  These were called the Island Kingdoms. Though closely related, they all had distinct languages and cultures, very rich for the small geographic area they covered.  Sourcery was as varied among these people.

Moving inland, the marshy areas of the northern coast were home to the Sami.  The Sami were fierce warriors and sourcerors owing to the harsh conditions in which they lived.

Next to them were the Skalding who lived among the treacherous fjords that topped the Northern Spine of the mountains.  The Skalding were pirates and highwaymen, taking what they wanted from other people.

The mountains themselves were only sparsely populated by itinerant tribes that overseasoned in the foothills and caves, moving back into the mountains when the weather warmed in Shoudranya.

To the west of the mountains, the population remained sparse.

In the north were the tribes of the Shooksa-Nai and in the Deep Forest of the south were the Saanzu, but both of these groups remain insular and are still not integrated into Tellurin society.

When the religion of Auraya spread through out the land, each country adopted the practice in its own way.  Two of the most reverent cultures were the Caldoni and the Parimi.  Fervour was so great among them that they sought to unify the rest of Tellurin under their own vision of the goddess.

Thus began the religious wars.  There was much burning and heresy and bloodshed and in the end, the Parimi fled the superior forces of the Caldoni who threatened to wipe them out. The Haldani and Espanic remnants, seeking to overthrow their conquerors, sided with the Parimi against them, and were forced to flee along with their allies.

The Caldoni pursued them over the mountains and to the very coast of the continent before they were finally stopped. Auraya was fond of the Parimi and at this time supported them, adopting their religion, the Faithful, as her preferred religion. She raised one of them, Alain de Corvus, as the first Kas’Hadden.

It was the Kas’Hadden who turned the tide of battle against the Caldoni. They were stubborn, however, and when they chose to remain in the area, harassing the Parimi, Haldani, and Espanic, Auraya descended, turned them back to the east, and told them never to return, on pain of death.  To this day, the Caldoni believe that this apparition was not the goddess, but some trick of the Parimi.

Since that time, though they have been friendly to all outward appearances, the Caldoni have been plotting to eradicate the Parimi and the Faithful, which has become the predominant religion of Tellurin in the time of IoS.

I hope to redraw the crappy map I’ve made of Tellurin in the near future to give you a better idea of how I see the world.

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