The cities of Initiate of Stone

August 24, 2012 / 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!

What does everyone else in Tellurin believe?

August 10, 2012March 18, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

Last week, I wrote about the two main religions of the Tellurin (humans): The Faithful, and the Holy Mother Church (HMC). But what does everyone else in Tellurin believe?

You didn’t think I was going to stop at two, did you?

Well, I’m not. But I’m not going to go into great gaudy detail about them either. In the process, you’ll learn a little more about the various inhabitants of Tellurin.

Other Tellurin religions/belief systems

While the Parimi, Haldane, Espanic, Island Kingdoms, Saxon, Sami, and Skaldic all believe to a greater or lesser extend in Auraya and espouse The Faithful religion (some distinctively coloured by their own pagan belief systems), and the Caldone alone believe in the HMC, there are still other Tellurin cultures that believe in neither.

The Nubiin espouse a faith based in the divinity of their ruler, or Osire, and resulting cult of death. The Osire (a man or woman) is tied to the land, responsible for the weather and tides that provide for a fruitful growing season in a relatively arid region. Prosperity in the form of abundant crops and livestock result in a long rule, the opposite can result in a short one.

When an Osire ascends, work begins on his or her funerary monument. The relative greatness of that monument and the treasures enclosed with the deceased is tied to the length of their rule. Sound familiar? It should. The Nubiin are based losely on the Egyptian culture.

In the wake of the Cataclysm, and the advent of the devastating storms of Vedranya, the Nubiin faith was shaken. If the Osire held no power over the storms, how could they be considered divine? For nearly a hundred suns, the Nubiin struggled, even adopting a bastardized form of The Faithful religion for a while, but eventually, they returned to their traditions, rationalizing Vedranya as the cost of their prosperity otherwise.

The Hussar of the plains believe that the gods exist, but that they have no interest in what happens in Tellurin. They believe in the power of a good horse, the strength in their limbs, and the pleasures of a life honourably lived. They have an ethical code rather than a religion per se.

The Shooksa-Nai of the north-western region of Tellurin still live in a tribal fashion and have an animistic belief system, that is they believe in the spirits of things. Their shaman are their spiritual leaders, healers, and advisors. The Shanzu of the Deep Forest are similar.

A word about those pagan belief systems I mentioned off the top. They relate to the first gods, the akhis. Most revolve around the lord of the land (Zaidesakhi) and the lady of the waters (Augesahki). Sacred groves were often consecrated to them.

Non-Tellurin religions

The okante (think orcs) territories are just south of the Shooksa-Nai and they too are a tribal, animistic people, and were largely peaceful until Yllel co-opted them into soul-slavery. Now they live in fear of the mad god and do his bidding in the hope of saving their people from his wrath.

The krean (think trolls) are a seafaring people and revere the oceans and weather as their deities. This has its roots in the akhis as well, Augesakhi and Freyesakhi. Like the okante, they have been enslaved by Yllel and live in a similar fear of him.

The grunden (ogres), who live in the mountains, and blinsies (goblins), who live in the Deep Forest and love to harras the Shanzu, have no religion, but are also enslaved to Yllel.

The anogeni, as I’ve written in the past, were once the hands of Zaidesakhi, the fingers of Augesakhi. The hidden people are special. Though they’ve lost both “parents” they live in the belief that they will return to their children. They have no true religion, because they know the true nature of the gods. They do not require a structured religious practice as such.

They not only believe in the spirits of things, they actually study them and know them as friends. There are twelve plants whose spirits have proven especially powerful: the ashkiwine. It is through their relationships with the spirits that the anogeni practice their form of magic.

Because of their relationship to the akhis, they also know the spirit of the world, which they call the anoashki, the great mystery. He is their grandfather, and they serve his purpose, one of the primary goals of which is to resurrect the fallen akhis.

Though the anogeni we meet in Initiate of Stone live in the earth, there are other groups of the anogeni that make their homes in the great trees, and in the oceans. These last are an aquatic form of the anogeni, but they don’t have fish-tails 🙂

Another interesting thing about the anogeni is that they hold the memories of their ancestors, are born with them in fact. As a result, they have a complex system of prophecies based on these memories and the patterns they have seen in them. These prophecies and the anoashki guide them.

The dwergen, similarly, have no structured religion. Dwergesakhi still lives in the heart of the earth, still speaks to them, and they know him well. A self-evident god requires no faith. Dwergesakhi is their creator, though, and as such they offer him respect and will do his bidding unquestioningly, as any good children might.

The eleph, being from Elphindar, are a little different. Elphindar has no gods, but the eleph still revere the kaides esse, or the powers that be. They believe in a kind of clock-maker, something beyond their understanding that created the universe, but then left the experiment to tick itself out in the fullness of time. Like the Hussar, they have an ethical code by which they live.

When the eleph first arrived to Tellurin, Auremon came to them to try to make amends. They were startled that the kaides esse of this new world took corporeal form and that they intervened in the affairs of mortals. Since he confessed his role in their eviction from Elphindar and his inability to restore them, the eleph had no use for Auremon, and rebuffed him.

Not long afterward, the eleph encountered Yllel, when the mad god attempted to enslave them. Yllel could not trick them, however, and this encounter only served to entrench the eleph enmity of the Tellurin gods and the people who worshiped them.

Finally, the favrard espoused an intricate system of ritual and discipline that did not focus on one god, but on all of them, past and present, known and unknown. When Yllel enslaved them, he made them abandon their spirituality. Some attempt to cling to their past, but Yllel punishes them for it. The favrard are Yllel’s special pets, and one of the few peoples that he can possess. The tortures he can inflict from within are fearsome indeed.

With this, we’re almost at the end of my world-building epic. Next week, I’ll talk about some of the other distinctive features of Tellurin, some of the cities, keeps, towns, and villages that figure in Initiate of Stone, as well as a few odds and sods.

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about Tellurin and the characters in my novel.

I’m Writerly Goodness, circling three times and settling down for a nice sleep. Until next week!

Speaking of speaking to the spirits

August 3, 2012March 18, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

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.

How the magick works

July 20, 2012July 20, 2012 / Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: I told you how I came up with my idea for Tellurin’s magic system, and the dark history of the craft.

But how does it work, you ask? We all have Robert Heinlein to thank for that.

Ever read Stranger in a Strange Land? Excellent, then you’ll know what I mean when I say “grok.” You might even grok it 🙂

Grokking was what Martians did. They raised Valentine Michael Smith and taught him how to do it. When Val eventually came to earth, he started to teach humans how to do it too.

Grokking, is not just understanding a thing, it is understanding it in every way possible, through all the senses, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and sub-atomically. Val could grok something so completely, it would cease to exist, having achieved its greatest purpose in having been so completely understood. Yes, extreme grokking means understanding something into non-existence.

It’s not exactly the same thing, but sourcery and magick work in a similar way. Sourcerors manipulate a thing by understanding its nature. They understand a thing in its molecular structure, by its DNA, though they don’t call it that, and perhaps even to its atomic structure, but no further, and this understanding works on an instinctual basis. No sourceror ever thinks in terms of modern science. It’s just not a part of their vocabulary.

As I wrote in last week’s post, the source is a special kind of energy, but it’s still energy, and everything in Tellurin possesses its share.

Those born with a talent are also born with the innate understanding of how to use that talent. The Agrothe magi have attempted to subvert those talents to their own ends. They delay the expression of latent talents through their arduous initiation process and indoctrinate their students into thinking that their powers must somehow be “unlocked.” If left to their own devices, anyone with talent could figure out how to use it on their own. The Agrothe just want to ensure that the talent develops in an ethical framework. Theirs.

Georges Merle’s The Sorceress.

As a child, the first creatures Ferathainn understood were the spirits of things: grass, flowers, rocks and trees all “talked” to her. Because of this talent, Ferathainn understands the spirits of things well enough to evoke their qualities. She can summon them too, though Aeldred hasn’t explained that what she’s doing is summoning. He doesn’t want her to run amok.

With people, this understanding takes the form of being able to use thought speech. Though she does not know it, Ferathainn can also read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others. Aeldred, not being a skilled mind-mage, has discouraged this avenue of Ferathainn’s development to the best of his ability.

Ferathainn’s understanding of spirits is also what makes it possible for her to excel at spirit travel.

Ultimately, her understanding of spirits will enable Ferathainn to master all of the elemental powers and talents, beginning with the earth, geomancy. Hence, Initiate of Stone.

A note on source theft, farming, or poaching

As I mentioned last week, a person’s share of source is attached to their spirit or soul. It’s part of what makes each person what he or she is. Because of this, the soul and source may be called at the moment of death and taken by another sourceror. This is usually accomplished by calling the source by its name, which for most people, is their everyday name.

Clever sourcerors have adopted source names, but these can easily be discovered by an adept mind-mage and so are no guarantee of protection.

In taking another person’s source, the sourceror risks taking not only the victim’s power, but also their personality and memories. This can lead to insanity unless the sourceror can figure out a way to filter out the undesirable bits of the victim.

Waterhouse’s The Sorceress.

So … everything Ferathainn does is magic 🙂

Next week: a worldbuilding vacation. I’m going to write about my most recent draft of IoS and what it’s taught me. Stay tuned.

Mage or magus, magi or mages? (melaniemarttila.ca)
What Robert A. Heinlein Taught Me (lindag604.wordpress.com)

Mage or magus, magi or mages?

July 14, 2012February 23, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

Last time on work in progress: The dull detailing of days, weeks, months, and years in Tellurin.

As promised, here is my theory of magic in Tellurin. It actually starts about thirty years ago with me in confirmation class …

You may think confirmation a strange place for this, but I started theorizing things that had nothing to do with Christianity. And you know what? I was indulged, even encouraged by my instructors, two wonderful, open-minded people. Shout of gratitude going out to Rick Shore and Marg Flath! For them, it was healthy to question, explore the questions, and come to your own conclusions.

One of the things I theorized about was the nature of energy, consciousness, the soul, what might be termed miracles, and what might happen after we die … to me it was all connected.

In science (incidentally one of my confirmation instructors was also my grade 9 and 10 science teacher) we were learning that matter and energy were the same thing. We learned about the laws of thermodynamics, including: energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changes form.

So to me, it wasn’t that far a leap to think that if we, humans, were made of matter (therefore energy) that thought, the soul, and all the wonderful things that made each of us uniquely ourselves was a kind of energy. It couldn’t be destroyed when we died, it could only change forms.

So how does this relate to Tellurin magic? Well really this species of thought contributed to both the magic and religious systems of my world, but here’s what I drew from my theorizing about magic: it could exist, just like any other kind of energy. It would all be a matter of trial and error to figure it out. It would be a kind of scientific experiment …

You may remember from my post about the cosmology of Tellurin that my interpretation of the big bang was that something within the homogeneous whatever that existed before the universe (I called it the One) recognized its independence. In that moment, everything else within the One had to become distinct. Boom!

But in my universe, not all kinds of energy are distributed equally. The thing that recognized its independence (what became Auraya) carried more than its fair share of a specific kind of energy, and Tellurin, the planet, bore an equivalent amount. That’s why the world has its own spirit and consciousness.

So Tellurin is a magic-rich world, and potentially any of the beings living on or in Tellurin can access that energy if they have the talent. Talents are another group of senses that allow their possessors to recognise source and influence or manipulate it in specific ways.

Aside from Auraya, Tellurin, and the other gods of the world, everything holds its own share of the source of all things, or, simply the source. In the people of Tellurin, this energy is bound to the spirit or soul. It’s part of what makes them what they are.

When the primitive Tellurin first discovered their talents and their ability to manipulate the source, they called themselves sourcerors. They learned in communities, experimenting with their various talents and expressions of source, categorizing and naming them as they went.

Along came a man named Halthyon Morrhynd. He was actually an eleph from Elphindar, crossed over into Tellurin through one of the Ways Between the Worlds. Incidentally, these Ways are just another expression of the source in Tellurin, a natural phenomenon. If worm-holes could exist and function in a stable manner without affecting the matter and energy around them, that’s what the Ways would be.

Halthyon, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, is a bit of a megalomaniac. In Elphindar, he’d tried to stage a coup against the anathas, or council of elders, and institute a kind of magocracy. The eleph called source in their world the kaides esse, or the powers that be. Sourcerors were called kaidin.

The result of Halthyon’s attempt to wrest power from the anathas was that he failed and was ostracized, or made shuriah. The eleph were the only people in Elphindar. Ostracism was generally a death-sentence. Elphindar has no gods either, only the kaides esse, and those in significantly lower amounts than source in Tellurin.

Elphindar would not satisfy Halthyon’s ambitions, but once he found the Way and made it through to Tellurin, Halthyon saw this new world as a paradise. He instantly made the connection between the source of all things, the kaides esse, and the gods of the new world. He understood that if he could find a way to contain enough source within him, that he could transcend mortality and become a god himself.

The source existing in the things around him wouldn’t do. He’d have to expend nearly as much source in the destruction of inanimate objects as he would receive from said destruction. The gain would be negligible. The people though, them he could use.

So he found the fledgling sourcerors of Tellurin and taught them. In time, they “grew ripe” and he was able to “harvest” them by killing them and stealing the source carried with their souls. The way to do this, was to call the deceased sourceror by name, and thus summon his soul.

Sourcerors began to take source-names, secret names to prevent Halthyon from learning the name that could call their soul and source to him, but Halthyon was skilled at telepathy, and could discover their secrets.

As he waited for some of them to ripen, other sourcerors grew powerful in their own rights, learned what he was doing to their fellows, and mimicked the practice to accrue their own stores of source.

The brothers Kane and Jareth were two of these surprising sourcerors. Kane was as obsessed with gaining power as Halthyon, but he was also concerned that Halthyon would murder him before he could get very far, so he started to develop defences, the chief of them being binding.

His early experiments were with animals. He bound his soul and source to a creature, and if he was killed, so the theory went, his soul and source would remain safe in the beast. These he called familiars. Kane was a good scientist, and decided to test his theory after sharing it with some of his fellow sourcerors.

Unfortunately, the consciousness of the animal interfered with that of the bound sourceror, and the animal hadn’t the capacity to use source, and so quickly fell prey to the predatory sourceror.

His next experiments involved people who had no noticeable talent. These he referred to as homunculi. Sadly the same thing happened with them as did with the animals, and these too, he discarded as a failed experiment.

Then he started playing with constructs, which he called golems. These experiments were never wholly successful.

In the meantime, Kane’s brother Jareth, whose primary talent was geomancy, or manipulating the earth element, conducted experiments of his own. He decided that inanimate objects would make better subjects for binding. There would be no consciousness to interfere with the bound sourceror’s, but this would necessitate having a partner who would be able to release and restore the sourceror after the death of his or her body.

Jareth’s experiment was much more successful than Kane’s and was widely adopted, even by Kane himself, but no solution was perfect.

Sourcerors like Halthyon and Kane, after killing another sourceror, would search out the partner, and torture them until they revealed the secret of unbinding their victim. If the partner was stubborn enough, or faithful enough, to keep the secret, then they could simply be killed. Although the murderer would never benefit from the source of their victims this way, their victim would forever remain trapped in whatever object they’d bound themselves to.

This is eventually what happened to Jareth. Halthyon slew him in sourcerous combat and went in search of his partner. Kane got to her first. Laleina was not only Jareth’s binding partner, but they were also lovers, a relationship that Kane always envied.

Laleina wasn’t cooperative and would not divulge Jareth’s secrets. Kane knew, to his regret, that he could not keep her alive. Halthyon would eventually come calling and Kane wasn’t ready to face the eleph. In a twisted bit of experimentation, Kane bound Laleina’s soul and source to one of his failed golems. He’d noticed that metal tended to dampen the effect of source.

And so Laleina was trapped in the thing that would eventually become the Machine.

The sourcerous world continued along the same violent lines for centuries, but Auremon eventually decided that he couldn’t let things go on this way.

His idea was to voluntarily surrender his godhood, and his god’s share of source, to Tellurin, hoping that more source in the world would allow Tellurin to even the playing field among the sourcerors, and keep the power-hungry ones from victimizing the rest.

It didn’t work out as well as he thought. Too close to one of the Ways Between the Worlds, he tore it open and half the population of Elphindar was sucked into Tellurin before the Way could be repaired by Auraya. The sourcerors didn’t behave any differently, and Auremon had to concede his failure.

The only thing he could think to do, was to teach young sourcerors how to use their powers responsibly. So he set himself up as a sage in a mountainous island off the western coast of the main continent. Auraya created a great castle for him there, and eventually all sourcerors found their way to Auremsart.

Auremon taught ethics more than anything else. It was the sourcerors themselves who thought that if they changed the names of things, that they could change the way people behaved more effectively. So source became magick, sourcerors became magi, and they instituted a rigorous initiation process that would so instil Auremon’s ethical code into their students that there would be no risk of any of them becoming monsters. They called their new discipline Agrothe, the followers of the code, in the old language of the land.

They policed themselves too, and started setting up schools of magick in other cities. Business was booming. And then Yllel came in disguise and killed his father. Auremsart crumbled, became the Spire, and two kindly elementals from Elphindar resurrected Auremon and bound his spirit to the stone that was all that remained of his earthly home.

How the Agrothe functions in Tellurin at the time of the novel:

As soon as the prospect’s talent begins to manifest, training begins. This can be anywhere between five and thirteen suns of age. The prospect becomes an aspirant.
This period is one of intense theoretical and ethical training, highly structured, lasting thirteen suns. This phase of training does not guarantee initiation. If evidence of cruelty or insanity is detected by the Master, the aspirant is taken to a mind-mage, and their talent crippled.
The aspirant is initiated. This phase of the training introduces the initiate to their talent(s) in a gradual, disciplined fashion, and also lasts thirteen suns.
The initiate is apprenticed, gains some autonomy and is allowed to experiment in a limited fashion.
After thirteen more years, the apprentice could become a master in his or her own right. If further training is deemed necessary, an interim period of guided practice could be instituted. The mage operated independently, but under the watchful eye of their master. This period could also last thirteen suns.
At any time, if the student decides, they can withdraw from training, once more having their talent crippled so that it cannot be used in an unauthorized or unethical fashion.
This is why most women, wanting a family and life outside of the Agrothe, never make it to initiation.

Aeldred sensed Ferathainn’s potential at the eleph ceremony of Shir’Authe, when she was only a day old and newly abandoned in Hartsgrove. Her talent was prodigious and he began her training when she was four suns old.

Most aspirants only evidence one or two talents, the rest developing with age and experience. Most full-fledged magi might have five talents at their disposal, but it will be the one or two that showed themselves first that will be the mage’s primary talents.

Ferathainn possesses aliopathy, or the ability to speak to the spirits of things, which in turn feeds into her talent at evocation and summoning. She is uncommonly talented in mind magick, able to communicate through thought speech with those who do not share the talent, and can travel in spirit with ease.

Aspirants are not allowed to use their talents prior to initiation, but Aeldred does not want to lose Ferathainn as a student, so he allows the girl latitude. Besides, mind-magick is not one of his stronger talents, and he cannot prevent her from doing what comes naturally to her.

He does not want to call one of his Agrothe brothers in for fear that Fer will be taken away from him. Further, he fears reprimand for his unorthodox training methods. For similar reasons, he has not prevented Ferathainn from becoming betrothed or married. He feels that if anyone can balance a life of magick and domesticity, it will be Ferathiann.

He hasn’t explained much of this to Ferathainn. He hasn’t even explained her talents to her. In truth, he’s a little afraid of what she might become, and that his lenience may lead her to the forbidden ways of sourcery.

She will be the first Agrotha initiated in two hundred suns. That’s too great a prize for Aeldred to resist.

Next week: Everything little thing she does is magick!

Have a great weekend everyone!

World info, or the boring stuff that worldbuilding sometimes entails

July 6, 2012February 23, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

Ok, so now that I’ve announced that I’m going to bore you all to death, you can all run away and do something fun with your Friday nights …

Last time, on WIP (before we were so rudely interrupted by the outage): The history be done! For now. You never know, I may have to go back a write a novel about the past of Tellurin someday …

As I’ve mentioned often, I’m a pantser. I start with an idea, I write though the first draft, then I go back and start playing. I do character sketches first, then history, then I start getting into the systems. This post is about how the world works.

In reality, I know that a world like this probably can’t exist. It’s too convenient. Everything lines up exactly. But this is a fantasy people. And these are the rules as I’ve made them.

Tellurin has:

1 sun, very similar to earth’s sun, a young ‘un.

1 sunspan (or sun) = 364 dayspans, or days (exactly 13 moonspans of 28 days a piece)

A day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is 60 seconds … Gotta have something familiar!

1 moon, large enough to have the thinnest of atmospheres, completely covered in ice. Looks blue because of the reflected light from Tellurin.

1 moonspan (or moon) = 28 days

There are 13 moons in a sun and they are called:

Isto, Sein, Terza, Quade, Cinquo, Sexta, Septo, Octa, Ninte, Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

The seasons are:

Shoudranya, the season of spring forth (most people don’t use the old names—they’re considered “stuffy”) comprised of Isto, Sein, and Terza

Zaidranya, the season of the bright sun comprised of Quade, Cinquo, and Sexta

Mardranya, the season of leaf fall comprised of Septo, Octo, and Ninte

Vedranya, the season of storms comprised of Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

And here’s where my paganish leanings enter the picture.

The sun begins in Shoudranya when the rains stop and the growing things begin to spring forth again.

On the first day of Isto, the festival of Kiestaya the awakening is celebrated. Imbolc-like.

On the first day of Terza, the festival of Anestaya, the engendering or sowing is celebrated. Day and night are equal. Somewhere between the vernal equinox and Beltaine.

On the first day of Cinquo, the festival of Huostaya, the early harvest, is celebrated. The longest day. Summer solstice and Lunassadh-like.

On the first day of Septo, the festival of Uistaya the second harvest is celebrated. Day and night are once again equal. Autumnal equinox and Octoberfest-like.

On the first day of Ninte, the festival of Sestaya the final harvest is celebrated. This is when the final slaughter is accomplished. Samhain-like.

Vestaya or the closing, the only moveable festival, is observed on the first full day of storms. Occasionally it can even occur before the final harvest. Remembrance day-like.

The last festival of the year is celebrated on the first day of Seinen: Reshtaya the turning. The longest night, though no one living can tell with the persistent cloud cover of Vedranya overhead. Winter solstice-like.

Ferathainn is born on Sestaya.

Each moon is comprised of four seven-day weeks:

Selneth, the full week; Gebbeth, the waning week; Kiereth, the dark week; and Ebbeth, the waxing week.

The days of the week:

Sunday, Moonday, Stoneday, Windday, Waterday, Fireday, Spiritday

The older names for the days of the week:

Zaides, Azures, Telles, Zephes, Auges, Flames, Spirites

A date might be read Kiereth Zaides of Cinquo (Sunday of the third week of the fifth moon). This also might be more commonly called Dark Sunday of Cinquo. Most people no longer remember the old names or bother to keep that knowledge alive.

This was one of the things that I had to know about my world. No one ever states or writes a date in the novels. This is just for me to be able to keep things straight. I even have a document in Word that I’ve set up as a calendar, so I can keep track of when things are happening.

I actually enjoy stuff like this. I’m that much of a geek.

More systems next week (I can hear the screams already), but these systems will be more interesting. I’ll get into the magic system, and this will be a little bit more like a story than a list of stuff 🙂 If there’s room, I might even fit in something about the religions of Tellurin.

And if I can get my brilliant man to fix my scanner, I might even share my rudimentary map of Tellurin.

I plan a little worldbuiling holiday too. I have things to share about my current draft and the bizarre way it’s panning out.

So there’s good stuff ahead on WIP. Stay tuned.

Writerly Goodness signing off. Have a fan-tabulous weekend!

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

June 22, 2012February 23, 2014 / 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

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

June 15, 2012February 2, 2014 / 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.

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 2 (melaniemarttila.ca)
The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 1 (melaniemarttila.ca)
The cadre … or should that be the cabal? (melaniemarttila.ca)
The Initiate of Stone rogues gallery (melaniemarttila.ca)

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 2

June 8, 2012February 2, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: Yllel got his narsty on and killed his father!

With the death of Auremon, Yllel fled. Almost at once, Auremon’s school, and indeed the entire island of Aurensart crumbled. Many of the initiates, apprentices, and magi died in the collapse. What was left of Auremon’s school was a single spire of rock that rose from the water to the full height of the island.

Kaaria, an air elemental from Elphindar, and her sister Naia, rescued what was left of Auremon’s spirit and bound him into the spire that was all that remained of Auremsart. Without his god-share of power, though, Auremon was effectively trapped within the stone. He could communicate with no one but Kaaria and Naia.

Yllel returned to his preying on sourcerors and now magi as well. He held the magi in particular contempt for his father’s sake.

Auraya, saddened enough at her mate’s sacrifice of his power, was now left bitter and bereft by his death. She withdrew in earnest from the world, allowing Tryella to serve Tellurin in her stead.

The Kas’Khoudum, or book of light, that was started when Auraya, Auremon, and Tryella mingled freely with the people of Tellurin, was revised and added to. Many of the feats described in its pages were Tryella’s but the goddess was more than happy to let her grieving mother take the credit for her good deeds.

In response, and out of a twisted need to outdo his mother, Yllel began to inspire the creation of his own holy book, the Rada’Khoudum, or book of darkness. In its pages he put hideous secrets in the guise of rituals and ceremonies that seemed as if they honoured Auraya. In truth, the spells he wove into those rituals would drain his mother of her power and bind her will to do terrible things.

When finished, Yllel was careful to see the precious book into the hands of the greatest spiritual leaders of the time. The Kas’Khoudum, which Yllel encouraged to be seen as a pleasant book of fables, was supplanted by his liturgical masterpiece. Unfortunately, neither Auraya nor Tryella were very interested in reading and neither of them discovered what deviousness Yllel had been up to.

Tryella investigated Auremon’s murder intensively, but none of the magi who survived the collapse of Auremon’s school could remember anything useful. The only thing either Tryella or her mother knew for certain was that Auremon’s murderer had been one of his students.

Yllel had visited each of them briefly to offer his condolences, but did not join Tryella in her search. Auraya retreated to the moon, but Tryella, something piqued by her brother’s behaviour, began to suspect Yllel of his treachery.

She had no proof, but it would only be a matter of time before she found it.

While Tryella didn’t find exactly what she sought, she soon learned how her brother spent his leisure time: hunting and killing the very magi their father helped to train. She confronted him and Yllel told her that he was merely exacting revenge. One of these was surely the creature who had killed a god. Why should he not hunt and kill, even torture them?

Tryella went straight to Azuresahki, the blue realm of her mother. Auraya listened with uncertainty to what Tryella told her and together they continued to observe Yllel from near and afar.

There was nothing in his choice of victim to indicate that he suspected any of these poor users of magick of Auremon’s murder. Rather it seemed that he chose them for how much power they had. Some managed to escape him through clever tricks they called binding, but though their power and soul might have been safe within an amulet or object, that often wasn’t enough to prevent Yllel from killing them for spite and trapping them within the object they had bound themselves to.

He didn’t attempt to break or destroy the artefact, but ensured that the object would remain lost to Tellurin forever, thus relegating the magi within to isolation, and eventual insanity.

This wanton killing and cruelty was enough to inspire Auraya to action. Tryella still hadn’t shared her suspicions about Auremon’s murder yet, fearing her mother’s response, but held the secret as a trump card until a critical moment, or until she had proof.

Auraya first tried something like an intervention in the hope that Yllel was not lost to her entirely. Her efforts were rebuffed. She tried again with the same results but was reluctant to give up hope. Auraya couldn’t bear, after losing Auremon and the akhis before him, to lose another member of her family.

Eventually though, even she realized that tough love was more likely to get results. Unfortunately, administering a godly spanking was more difficult than she could have imagined. Tryella at her side, Auraya tried yet again to deliver her son a smack down that would put him in his place.

For his part, Yllel soon grew tired of his mother’s attempts to discipline him. At first they might have been amusing, but now they were simply tedious. Soon he no longer cared to hide his true feelings and motivations from them. Soon he would have enough source that it wouldn’t matter.

Auraya had eventually to concede that Yllel was evil. He killed for the joy of it as much as any other purpose. He tortured her with her inability to discover Auremon’s murderer. His attacks on Tryella were growing positively barbaric.

She had to face the fact that Yllel wanted to kill his sister, and that was something she could not allow. Reluctant as she was to lose a child, even an evil one, Auraya began to up the stakes, pulling out all the tricks she had learned in her exceedingly long life. Still every confrontation ended in defeat. Yllel gloated, but though he seemed eager for the kill, he held back from it, as though he were testing them. Or perhaps himself.

Something else would have to be done.

She got the idea from Auremon’s ill-advised release of power into the world. In the process she knew he had torn open a Way Between the Worlds. Auraya sought that place out and investigated it as a possible means to be rid of Yllel without having to kill her own child.

That Way would not be suitable, however. There were still a great many people living in the world on the other side. As Tryella continued her investigations and Yllel continued to test his newfound strength against her, Auraya sought out all the Ways Between the Worlds that existed in Tellurin. One after another, they proved unsuitable. Until she found the one on the plains.

In the middle of the lush, grassy plains of eastern Tellurin. Auraya found a Way that seemed to lead nowhere at all. There was literally nothing on the other side, no light, no sound, no air, and certainly no innocent people or creatures for Yllel to torture. Now that Auraya had found her cage, she would have to figure out how to get the Way open wide enough to admit her son without sucking half of Tellurin in with it, and she would have to figure out how to close the Way afterward and make it impassable to Yllel.

She hadn’t thought so deeply about anything in a very long time. Rarely had she had to think about how to accomplish something she desired at all. Usually her desires simply manifested themselves. This was something different. Auraya was trying to change the very nature of something, a place, a void, into the ideal prison for her son.

Think of the void as a black hole … sort of.

Despite its apparent suitability, the void was its own place with its own purpose. It did not want to be changed. It had its own power and its own desire to use it. In the end though, Auraya had more power and more desire, and a son she desperately did not want to kill.

When the void was subjugated and prepared, Auraya and Tryella found Yllel, engaged him in battle and lured him to the Way that led to the void. The battle lasted sunspans in Tellurin time.

Great earthquakes shook the land. The entire western coast of the world sheered off. The mountains grew. Volcanoes long dormant erupted into life. The plains upon which the three gods fought became a desert. The jungle became infested with random power, investing its creatures with strange abilities. Vedranya changed from a season where few wished to travel to one in which shelter was an inescapable necessity.

This was the Tellurin Cataclysm.

In a few short suns, much of Tellurin civilization fell. Many creatures died before they learned how to survive the newly changed Vedranya.

Finally, on the verge of exhaustion, Tryella and Auraya brought Yllel to the opening of the Way, but now Auraya had to focus her attention in opening the Way without tearing it so that it could be sealed again once Yllel was within. That meant that the task of forcing Yllel into the void fell to Tryella alone.

She was unequal to it. Yllel taunted her, as much as confessed to the murder of Auremon while his mother was otherwise occupied. He was too confident by half and Tryella managed to make him stumble until he was caught in the well of the Way.

He realized his fight against the pull of the void was not going to be successful and relented, but not before reaching inside his sister and tearing her source and immortality from her, in one swift motion, killing her instantly.

Auraya wailed in despair. First she lost the ahkis, then Auremon, now both children at once. As she sealed the way to the void, Auraya heard Yllel say one final thing. “Don’t you want to know what I did to—”

And then he was shut away … Auraya thought forever.

Auraya was so depleted from her long battle and so wounded from her losses that she retreated again at once to the moon for solace. Taking stock, she realized that she was now slowly dying, fading away. She had poured out so much of her power during the battle with Yllel that the world had gotten hold of it and was slowly siphoning it away. She could not stem the flow or find a way to reverse the process. It would take centuries yet, perhaps even millennia for her to die completely, but it was a certainty now.

Kaaria and Naia, as they had with Auremon before, now resurected Tryella in the same manner. The only vessel that could hold the former goddess was that of a giant sea eagle, or yrne.

From within his prison, Yllel discovered that while he could not escape, his thoughts could, and a god’s thoughts are powerful. He found someone willing to help him escape, a sourceror named Kane. Over the next two centuries, Yllel plotted, used his favrard soul-slaves to trick some of the other people of Tellurin, the okante, krean, blinsies, grunden, and bakath into binding their collective souls to him as the favrard had done.

Tryella and Auremon, meanwhile found themselves in a predicament. Due to the nature of their respective deaths and resurrections by Kaaria and Naia, they were invisible to all but each other and their saviours. They couldn’t even tell Auraya they were still alive.

The only talent that Tryella retained was that of prescience. That talent alerted her to Yllel’s scheming and she tried to find some way of stopping him. Even with Kaaria’s help, however, her efforts proved futile, until her visions revealed to her the face of a young girl. She could be the means of defeating Yllel. Together, Tryella and Kaaria set out in search of her.

Auraya, meanwhile, while still hidden on Azuresakhi, nonetheless felt the effects of Yllel’s machinations in the world. She determined to raise a champion of her own, a man who would become the Kas’Hadden, or hammer of light, and her avatar on Tellurin. He would protect the world and end Yllel’s predations once and for all.

Like his sister, Yllel began to be haunted by dreams of a girl. She had power, a mere splinter of a god’s but more than most Tellurin could ever hope for. He knew that she could prove a complication to his plans. She could kill Kane before the sourceror could free Yllel from the void.

She was such a tasty prize, though, that Yllel determined to enslave her to his will instead. Only if that plan failed would he concede and kill her.

He also became aware of what his mother was trying to do to end his hopes of escape. Even as he commanded Kane to set sail for Tellurin and begin the war that would eventually result in his freedom, Yllel began to manipulate his mother’s followers, the Faithful. He’d make sure that the Kas’Hadden would never be made.

And this is the point at which the novel opens.

Next week: We’ll start on the earthly history of Tellurin.

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 1 (melaniemarttila.ca)
The cadre … or should that be the cabal? (melaniemarttila.ca)
The Initiate of Stone rogues gallery (melaniemarttila.ca)
Character sketches part 1: Ferathainn Devlin (melaniemarttila.ca)
Character Sketches Part 2: Eoghan MacDubghall (melaniemarttila.ca)
Character sketches part 3: Dairragh McKillian (melaniemarttila.ca)

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 1

June 1, 2012February 2, 2014 / Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: The supporting cast was introduced.

Once I had all my characters, I needed to think about the world they inhabited. I went back to the beginning. The very beginning of everything …

In the beginning, there was the One. It was everything and everything was in it. The One simply was, and was in perfect harmony, until something within it recognized its independence, and in that moment, the One ceased to be and everything else came into existence (including time, hence the moment, the first).

Modern science would call this the big bang.

The-thing-that-recognized-its-independence wandered the universe, searching for something like itself. Really, it was searching for the harmony of the One again, but it had destroyed the One, a crime of which it was ignorant, thus authoring its own loneliness and misery.

Having explored about three quarters of everything that existed, it was about to give up, when it finally found something else that felt like “home.” It had discovered the disc of debris of a planet accreting itself into existence.

The two kindred spirits found names for each other: The-thing-that-recognized-its-independence became Auraya, and the planet, Tellurin.

Tellurin is the name of the world and its spirit, but it is also the name for the main continent of the world. Originally, it was nothing but a large landmass, one of five on the planet. Life was limited to plants, protozoa, bacteria, and insects. The world was one rich in power, but it was latent and undirected. When Auraya first chose the planet for her home, she explored it thoroughly.

Eventually, the mere exposure of the world to a sentient and powerful being like the goddess encouraged the development of innate intelligences. The world responded to Auraya’s loneliness and became her first family.

One of the continents took on sentience and personality as brothers: Zaidesahki, Tahesahki, and Nuresahki. The four remaining continents did not fully emerge into sentience, although the achieved consciousness. They are called the watchers, because they did not speak or interact with anyone. They simply bore witness to all that happened. Similarly, the planet’s single blue, moon became conscious, though never sentient. She was nonetheless given a name: Azuresahki and became a haven for Auraya.

The air and the water were their sisters: Freyesahki and Augesahki. The deep fiery core of the earth was another brother, but more distant and less social than the others. He was also more volatile and less kind that the others. His name was Dwergesahki.

When Auraya left them to explore the rest of the universe, they felt abandoned. The first life forms above the level of insect were the elementals. Each of the sentient elements made its own creature, rich in source and of high intelligence: sylphs (air), undine (water), nomi (earth), and efts (fire). Then came the animals, birds, and fish.

These arose due to the combined efforts of Zaidesahki with Freyesahki and Augesahki.

Tahesahki and Nuresahki became jealous and wanted to create something better. Beastly races like blinsies, okante, krean, grunden, bakath, and the like arose from those efforts.

Without jealousy, but merely wishing to make companions for the creations of his brothers, Zaidesahki brought forth humans (Tellurin), and favrard. Dwergesahki, less interested in all this wasteful creating than the others, asked for Zaidesahki’s assistance in creating the dwergen and dwergini. Along the same lines as the subterranean folk, and for purely selfish reasons (much like Auraya), Zaidesahki and Augesahki joined forces again and created the anogeni, the hidden people, as special and secret companions for themselves.

Eventually, Tahesahki and Nuresahki became increasingly jealous of their brother, who seemed so contented with what he’d done. Tahesahki lured the favrard away from Zaidesahki to his deserts. Surprisingly, Zaidesahki let them go and made Tahesahki welcome as the favrard were much more suited to Tahesahki’s deserts than Zaidesahki’s lush forests and mountains.

The bitter brothers ignored and mistreated their own creations, creating miserable children. In the end, they rose up against Zaidesahki, shattering him into seven pieces and killing him. In the process, they sundered the great landmass that had once been their collective “body,” giving themselves wounds as mortal as their brother’s.

Augesahki, devastated by the death of her brother and lover, collected the seven shattered

Susan Boulet’s Isis and Osiris

pieces of Zaidesahki’s soul and encased them in the body of a Tellurin who willingly sacrificed himself for the purpose. She sealed Zaidesahki in a stone sarcophagus at the bottom of a lake in the middle of the continent. She withdrew to the sea and became silent. (Based in part on the myth of Isis and Osiris, and in part on Arthurian Legend.)

Freyesahki and Dwergesahki remained what they always were, flighty and stoic respectively, and nothing more was heard of any of the akhis.

Auraya returned to Tellurin to show off Auremon. Having failed to find anyone else like herself in the entire universe, she clove herself in two, creating Auremon her other half and spouse/consort. (Derived from a tale of how the Celtic goddess Aine fell in love with her reflection in a magic mirror that showed her the masculine part of her, or animus, and subsequently brought him to life.)

She was greeted with the desolation of her first “children” and the chaos of a million different life forms all clamouring for help and guidance. The watchers, as ever, were silent.

Auraya vowed never to leave her beloved Tellurin again.

Auraya and Auremon began immediately to help the denizens of Tellurin, Auraya from her new home in the blue moon and Auremon by walking among the people in their guise. Soon it became a titanic task for even the two celestial beings.

They determined to create two of their own children, helpers in their task. Tryella was much like her father, adventurous, playful, and interested in getting her hands dirty. She too, like Auremon, walked among the people of Tellurin and helped them in the disguise of one of their own.

Yllel was more introverted. He resented the time and attention that the denizens of Tellurin exacted from his family. Attention he thought more befittingly belonged to him. He only helped the people of Tellurin when forced to and while neither Auraya nor Auremon chastised him for his lack, the praise they lavished on Tryella for her efforts made Yllel feel all the more jealous.

He began to sabotage their efforts in subtle ways, but bored of that quickly. His attention was then captured by the sourcerors. These people had recognised in themselves the ability to access and manipulate the innate power in all things. They called it the source and themselves sourcerors. Yllel realized that these sourcerors had much to teach him. After all, what was he but source? How did the gods manipulate the world around them but through the use of source?

When they began to kill one another and steal each others’ source, Yllel learned the art. When they developed binding as a way to protect themselves from one another, Yllel paid careful attention. Soon the god willingly masqueraded as a Tellurin to kill sourcerors and take their source. Then a truly devious idea occurred to him. Soul and source could be bound to other objects and even people. What would happen if he tricked someone, or several someones into binding their source to him while they still lived … And so Yllel created the first and greatest of his soul contracts, that with the favrard.

The favrard still lived on Tahesahki in isolation from the main continent. They were in the midst of a battle against the other denizens of Tahesahki: the krean. The lower race, as even the krean fancied themselves, were numerous in the extreme. Though short-lived, the krean possessed the ability to regenerate, or heal themselves (essentially trolls, but sea-faring as well as desert-dwelling). Sheer numbers were taking their toll on the valiant favrard and they faced extermination. In their darkest hour, Yllel came to them, putting on his most beatific form and manner. He easily tricked the favrard into signing over their source and souls to him while they still lived, to be his slaves in perpetuity.

Binding the living to him taught Yllel much. He did not get to claim the favrard souls and source wholesale until they died, at his hands or at each other’s, but he could use their source to feed himself even while they lived, and their connection allowed him to possess them from time to time at his whim. It was as though a piece of him resided in each of them. He could eavesdrop on any of them, or all of them, at will.

He experimented freely, and sometimes fatally with the first. He learned just how far he could push them, exactly what he could make them do. He wasn’t satisfied though. They were still frail and mortal. To make them immortal, Yllel would have to sacrifice too much of himself in the process. His intent was to gather source, not expend it. So he used his connection with the favrard to alter them. He made them tougher, stronger, and imbued each of them with the incredible healing ability of their enemies, the krean, so that they could heal from all but the most drastic of injuries. They would never grow old or ill, but they could be killed.

Yllel continued to make his study of the sourcerors. One in particular was different. His name was Halthyon, and he wasn’t a Tellurin, dwergen, dwergini, or any other people that walked on or under the earth. Halthyon refused to give up his secrets, however.

It wasn’t long before Auremon, also seeing the sourcerors and what they did, but not understanding it in the same way that Yllel did, sought to bring even more source into the world for the people to benefit from. He believed that if there was more power, more people could learn to use it. Or more people would be born with the innate ability to access and manipulate the power, and he hoped that it would give them the ability to protect themselves from the worst of the sourcerors who only lived to kill each other and subjugate those of lesser talent. So he determined to forfeit his godhood and release his power into the world.

Noble sentiments, but things don’t always go as planned.

When he released his power into the world, Auremon inadvertently tore open a doorway he hadn’t even known existed. Speckled throughout Tellurin, and every world for that matter, are Ways Between the Worlds. Yllel’s mystery sourceror, Halthyon came through one of these from the world of Elphindar.

Now Auremon tore that Way wide open, pulling a good half of the population of eleph, and many of the other animals, elementals, and other denizens of the world in a cataclysmic maelstrom. Many of those so pulled died in transit, but those who survived found themselves stranded in a strange place and inexplicably unable to cross back through the Way to Elphindar.

They established their own settlements and learned of Auremon’s terrible mistake when in the aftermath of the Rending, he came to them and tried to make amends. Their collective fear and anger and shame caused the eleph to reject Auramon’s overtures as well as those of the Tellurin, dwergen, or anyone else who came to trade or make alliances. They became solitary, wounded people, and for a long time, there was no hope in them.

The cataclysm was a blessing in disguise, however, though one they would not understand for many sunspans to come. Elphindar was already a dying world. Auremon’s mistake ushered it on its way more swiftly, but the ultimate decline of Elephinar was inevitable.

Auremon’s mistake did not yield the results he had hoped for either. No more people than before were able to sense and manipulate power. He wanted to discover the reason why, but without his own, he was little more than a Tellurin himself.

He researched for a while, found like-minded sourcerors who thought the cannibalistic ways of their fellows and their experiments a form of heresy. Together these sourcerors, guided by Auremon, devised a new way of viewing the manipulation of power.

By changing the names of all things sourcerous, they hoped to divorce ensuing generations of magi (as they now called themselves) from much of what was evil in their practice. Source became magick and those who manipulated it were called magi. A structured apprenticeship bound in ceremony and ritual and true research grounded the craft and made it “safe.”

A young mage was initiated by one of his elders when his talent was detected. After thirteen sunspans of continuous study, the mage would be made apprentice and his abilities “unlocked.” In truth the ability was never locked to begin with, but the young mage would be so occupied with his training that he wouldn’t have time to realize that small lie.

Auremon set up a school on a small but mountainous island off the coast of the main continent and magi from all over Tellurin would report for training. Yllel, in the meantime, had been working hard to fortify his store of source and became contemptuous of his father’s attempts to “dumb down” the art of sourcery.

There were still sourcerors in the world and more recognized their abilities all the time, but Auremon turned a blind eye to them, hoping, quite naively that if he just ignored them, they would go away.

Yllel disguised himself as a Tellurin again and approached his father’s school as an initiate. He soon became a favoured student, completing all of his tasks competently and without complaint, but Yllel soon began to ask questions about sourcery and the sourcerous arts.

He was trying to expose the dullards his father was producing to the true art of which Agrothe magery was a pale imitation. Eventually, Auremon invited Yllel to a private meeting. As he was trying to enlighten what he thought was a simple student, Yllel took advantage of their seclusion and murdered his father. There was no source left to take, and this left Yllel frustrated and empty.

To be continued …

Always Looking Up

Melanie Marttila, BA, MA, #actuallyautistic SFF author-in-progress.

Tellurin

The cities of Initiate of Stone

Cities, towns, villages, etc.

What does everyone else in Tellurin believe?

You didn’t think I was going to stop at two, did you?

Other Tellurin religions/belief systems

Non-Tellurin religions

Speaking of speaking to the spirits

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

How the magick works

A note on source theft, farming, or poaching

Mage or magus, magi or mages?

World info, or the boring stuff that worldbuilding sometimes entails

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

Back-pedalling and moving forward

A geo-political history of Tellurin, part 1

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 2

The cosmology and divine history of Tellurin, part 1

Cities, towns, villages, etc.

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You didn’t think I was going to stop at two, did you?

Other Tellurin religions/belief systems

Non-Tellurin religions

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

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A note on source theft, farming, or poaching

Related articles

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A geo-political history of Tellurin, part 1

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