Dispatch #17: A Story Selected
Plus Various Ephemera To Share
[Estimated reading time: about 8-9 minutes]
Greetings!
Welcome to The Known World, where I post about my forthcoming book, The Other Side Of The Sun, amongst other things.
Topic #1: The Story To Be Told First
As noted previously in Dispatch #16, I have been struggling with figuring out which story to tell first. I’ve now resolved that quandary, and I have decided to start things off by first telling the origin story of Rêvin, because his story connects to nearly every other character, sort of like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
After going back through my copious notes and scribblings, I found that by telling you about Rêvin’s story, I can automatically connect the Esteemed Reader to most of the other characters I’ve shared with you here, here, and here. (The Royal Family will come into play later.)
Thus I have started to write about two moments from Rêvin’s life:
His birth circumstances, which will be something between a short story and a novella and will involve several of the older introduced characters, including a young, precocious runaway lass named Navi Atma, and the introduction of the first of the cloud ships; and
A vignette to short story length telling of how a 10 year old Rêvin and the Band of Five first discovered the Other Sight, a form of supernatural power that proliferates on the planet Vadu if you know how to find it… just ask Kryd! (A bit more about the Other Sight will be covered in the Shareable Ephemera section below.)
About Story #1
Story #1 will be a bit sad, as it will tell the story about Rêvin being born. To summarize, Rêvin is an orphan, the product of a torrid affair between the scion of a powerful baronial clan and a young barmaid whose own lineage is a lot more than meets the eye. Rêvin will in time come to find out the people he thought were his parents aren’t really his parents.
The story will not feature the torrid affair itself - I’m not a romance novelist, sorry - but it does involve a degree of violence and a fair amount of intrigue, and an escape to the Meldûn Borderlands. The Esteemed Reader will get a glimpse into these matters through this particular story, though Rêvin won’t know anything about it until he is older.
It’s the beginning of the long run story, basically.
About Story #2
On the other hand, the 2nd story is a more humorous one, wherein an innocent 10 year old Rêvin will make first contact with his extraordinary abilities by accident one day, while working as a stableboy for his adoptive father at a place called the Inn By The River.
Rêvin will introduce this new found discovery to the Band of Five, at which point things will sort of get out of hand pretty quickly. Young Brin Angbroda, up until then merely the son of an unfree farming family, finds his true calling in the Other Sight and that will later take him to some potential dark and conflicting places.
Young Lysela Angbroda, whose life up until then you might say was centered around the Renaissance version of the dairy industry, will suddenly want to become more than a mere motivator of lactating bovines.
Young Prya Atma, who was born into a family of accomplished artisans and expected to be one as well, will suddenly find her place in things lies in the same direction as her grandmother… who is an artisan, a healer AND a mage.
And then there’s Modo Rostar, Rêvin’s bestie, who will be a bit unsure about all this weird Other Sight crap.
You will find in this story that Rêvin’s adoptive parents are quite normal, while it will come out that his real parents have deep historical roots in magic and power.
Ah, to live in the Known World during the late 5th century JE. <sigh>
What’s Next
I’ve already sketched out both stories in summary form. I will publish both stories here as soon as they are at least past the first draft, because first drafts of anything usually suck, right?
I hope to have Story #2 posted in a few weeks, preferably by mid Decemberish. Story #1 will likely take a bit longer, but it will follow along afterwards.
Both of these stories will be published free to subscribed readers.
Topic #2: A Spelling and Pronunciation Note
You might have noticed that on occasion I insert a funny little roof-like symbol (a type of diacritical mark) above some letters in people and place names, such as: Rêvin… Ĵorma… Meldûn… Sî… Ŝard.
The funny little roof symbol is known as a Circumflex.
It is not used in English of course, except in a few fancy loanwords like crème brûlée, which you must admit looks cooler than creme brulee. French is such a cool language because it gives so much “snap” to even the most boring statements, like “it is life” versus c’est la vie!
Readers familiar with foreign languages will be familiar with the circumflex where it comes up occasionally in other languages. Examples: Portuguese (você/you and avô/grandfather), French (hôpital/hospital and forêt/forest), Italian (principî/principle), Romanian (România, also urî/to hate), Turkish (gâvur/cruel or stubborn).
Interestingly enough, in Vietnamese the single letter ê means Hey, or as some folks in Texas might say, Howdy. (BTW, the Vietnamese word Pho - the Vietnamese soup dish - is actually spelled Phở, which is pronounced “fuh” not “foh”. That diacritic is there for a reason.)
Fear Not The Circumflex!
Dearest monolingual English speakers, I implore you to fear not these strange circumflexes one bit! You, the Esteemed Reader, are free to pronounce any of these names in whatever way you like, in your head or whatever.
But having said that, please also know that the circumflexes aren’t just there because they look cool. They indicate how to pronounce certain sounds in words.
There is a section of Dispatch #3 that deals with the Known World Alphabet and how the various letters are pronounced, if you want to delve into that. But to save you the trip there, here is how the five names above are pronounced, using English phonetics:
Rêvin = Raven. The ê is pronounced like the A in April or Acorn.
Ĵorma = Johr-mah. The ĵ is pronounced like the J in Japan or Juice.
Meldûn = Mel-done. The û is pronounced like the U in Bun or Run.
Sî = Sigh. The î is pronounced like the I in Ice or Ivy.
Ŝard = Shard. The ŝ is pronounced like the 2 English letters SH, as seen in the words Ship or Shiny.
There are a couple of non-diacritic English letters - namely the letters X and Y - that are pronounced differently as well.
A Place Called Fyrx
I abducted the letters X and Y and repurposed their pronunciation.
To use one example place name that uses both letters… there will a town that will come up in Story #1 called Fyrx. It will be Rêvin’s birthplace.
The town is not pronounced Firks, although you can feel free to pronounce it that way if you insist.
It is actually pronounced like Fearth.
The Y is pronounced like EE as in Feel or Reel.
The X is pronounced like the combined letters TH as in Think or Thumb.
Again, don’t panic! You can pronounce it as Firks you like.
It’s Teӿas Not Texas
To close out this Topic, a fun fact: If Texas were written using the Known World Alphabet, it would be spelled Teӿas - see the horizontal bar through the X? If not, here it is again written in larger type:
That particular x is a real letter in real life, known as a Kha with Stroke (see this page on Wikipedia). It is an obscure Cyrillic letter that is used in only one language group in the world - the Nivkh languages, which are spoken by about 5,000 members of the Nivkh people, an indigenous ethnic group found in Russian Manchuria. I borrowed that letter to serve as the KS sound, as in the X in Box, Fix, or Lynx.
Feel free to spell Texas like Teӿas if you like! Just don’t do that on any official documents, I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble or anything. :-)
And now, I’d like to wrap things up by sharing some Ephemera with you…
Shareable Ephemera
A list of various and sundry short subjects to touch upon briefly.
I mentioned the Other Sight earlier… The term actually refers to the ability to bend the arc of the universe towards your favor in various ways, mostly with the mind. The Other Sight is more like the Force was in Star Wars and much less like “magic” in say the Harry Potter books/movies. However, it should be said that certain restrictions and limitations do apply to its use and what it can do. Accessing the Other Sight requires an awareness of a deeper sense of spirituality that goes far beyond just the surface world we all look at through jaundiced eyes every day.
Mages and Archmages study and practice the Other Sight, and they love to investigate its many permutations. But the good news is, unlike the magic in the Harry Potter series, even a “muggle” can discover and tap into the Other Sight if they want to try, but some folks are definitely going to be better at it than others. Some metahuman species native to the Known World - I’m looking at you, Manikins - are especially adept at the use of the Other Sight.
Most mages and archmages don’t tend to be elitist snobs like the wizards in Potterworld.
Now that I’ve brought all this up, note that I will of course publish a post about the Other Sight in better detail soon enough.
Kryd and certain other Earthborn mages believe the Other Sight used to exist on Earth once upon a time, but technology apparently diminished it starting from the 19th century onwards. Technology has its price, I guess.
Sî then and now… or should I create a combination of the two? I am thinking about re-rendering Sî the Dandiprat to be less like a fancy Emperor Tamarin (left) and more like a fancy Otter (right). Or perhaps merging the appearance of the two into something more unique. He’s still going to be somewhat scatterbrained, but more like an easily distracted professorial sort of fellow - meaning he’s smart but his curiosity gets him into trouble occasionally. I am trying to go for a being who is different but not too cartoonish. This ain’t Pixar or Dreamworks, ok? Anyway, feel free to provide feedback on this, I’m receptive to ideas.
One thing I want to do with my metahuman characters - that is to say, my human-like nonhuman characters - is make them true individuals. Not every Dandiprat is going to look exactly like or behave exactly like Sî, regardless of whether he looks like a Tamarin, an Otter, or both. They’re not going to dress identical or even share identical habits, any more than humans or their various subgroups thereof are all alike. There is only one Sî, one Nadylo, and one Jorma, but there are other Dandiprats, Manikins and Dwurins traipsing about the Known World.
And as a final note… I should mention that the Archmage Kryd was born in Texas in the real world year 2005 AD. So if he were a real life person amongst us, Kryd would have just graduated high school in Brenham, Texas, and would be about to enter the Marine Corps to pursue his lifelong dream to become a fighter pilot. Needless to say, lots of things will be getting in the way of that dream… which will probably come up in some future book, to be written after I get The Other Side Of The Sun published.
Conclusion
That’s it for today! I hope you have enjoyed reading this Dispatch.
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Until next time, thanks for reading!
— B.E. Turpin
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