Dispatch # 10: Meet Navi Atma
Introducing A Lady Captain of Adventure
A Note To The Reader
Everything pertaining to this story and my forthcoming book, The Other Side Of The Sun, is subject to change to improve the story. Should you, the Informed Reader, identify something you to be inconsistent or reality-impaired, you may write to me directly at me@beturpin.com to share it.
Today’s Topic: Navi Atma
Greetings, Dear Readers!
Today I’ve decided to introduce just one character - Navi Atma, the youngest daughter of the Renaissance Woman Dypa Atma and aunt of the young Mage Apprentice Prya Atma.
I have big plans for Navi, so I felt it was important to introduce you to her today.
Introducing Navi Atma
Thirty years ago, in the year 460 JE, Navi Bona Atma was born onboard a Cloudship called the Lady of Fortune, just after it landed at the Isle of Meldûn in the Kingdom of Bryn.
Navi’s mother, Dypa Atma, and her family were migrating to Kalyba in the Kingdom of Kêdix at the time, when Dypa abruptly entered very painful labor. The ship managed to divert to Meldûn and, luckily, a midwife was found to help bring Navi into the world. The cloudship continued onwards to Kalyba, while the Atma family stayed behind in Meldûn. They ended up settling there and went on to run several profitable businesses there for decades.
The seemingly providential circumstances surrounding Navi’s birth have set her lifepath ever since: She has continued to be a bit of a pain for her parents and family, and cloudships have remained a central future of Navi’s life.
Despite her family’s attempts to raise Navi as a more conventional sort of girl, Navi always seemed to go her own way. Mother Dypa and father Talavar Atma were flummoxed to find that while young Navi had excellent taste in clothing and readily learned how to weave, she never cared to join her mother's business, as was the case with Navi’s older sister, Sana Atma. Instead, Navi seemed far more interested in hanging out in Talavar’s swordsmithy and her uncle Samir Atma’s gunsmith shop, studying how to invent and manufacture things.
Always a precocious and inquisitive sort, Navi soon picked up a variety of skills across her tender years: blacksmithing and swordsmithing from Talavar; healing and herblore from her mother; drawing and mapmaking from the local cartography and lexigraphy shops, and beyond. Whenever a cloudship would set down in Meldûn, Navi was almost always there to greet it, watching the ships come and go, querying the crew about how the ship operated, learning where they had been and where they were going next, and so on.
When she turned 16, Navi’s parents sent her to be educated at the University of Bôlada, where she completed her studies in just under three years. While there, an aging lady merchant magnate, Freja clan Kobar, became her benefactor and helped Navi find work with the College of Heralds in Bôlada, where she learned the trades of typesetting, printing, calligraphy and artwork. Lady Kobar occasionally took Navi along with her aboard her cloudship, the Vojiranto - meaning Wayfarer in the Common Tongue - while Freja would visit and trade with far flung realms. Navi fell in love with the Wayfarer and vowed to buy a cloudship of her own someday.
At age 21, Navi returned to Meldûn and opened a modest printshop. While Navi liked running the business well enough, it simply could not compare to her love for travel and seeing the world. Much to the consternation of her family, Navi would occasionally close up shop and set out to travel about the Known World, usually by hitching rides aboard a passing cloudship. She would disappear for a month or so, then return to excitedly share details about whatever voyage she had just undertaken.
Then one day five years ago, in 485 JE, the cloudship Wayfarer reappeared and pulled up to dock in Meldûn, but this time Freja was not onboard. One of Freja’s trusted factors emerged to deliver sad news: Freja had recently passed away, and Kobar House, Freja’s mercantile enterprise, was being folded. Freja decided to break up the company and scatter its assets, but in her final gesture, Freja decided to bequeath the cloudship Wayfarer to Navi - leaving Navi with a letter that read:
She is all yours. Time for you to set course, Captain.
Safe journeys to you, wherever you may roam… Freja
To the dismay of her family, Navi immediately sold off her printshop, boarded the Wayfarer and so began her journeys out into the Known World…
… Which will be enumerated in future stories!
A Post Script About Navi…
Navi as a character has been sitting around for awhile. Up until this past week, she was just a name, a relative of the Atma family, waiting to be given a purpose in my story. I’ve come to like the Atma family quite a bit - alongside the Royal Family, clan Buja, and the Angbroda family to which young Brin and Lysela belong. I find the stories of families, how they got to be where they are and how they are, to be very interesting. There are always family members who turn a little way different, it seems.
Navi always seemed too extraordinary a character for me to leave her as a mere printer. After all, she was literally born onboard a cloudship, she was the first member of the Atma family to be born in the Meldûn Borderlands, and her birth was the reason the Atmas ended up settling in the mystical Meldûn Borderlands instead of the more gritty urban confines of Kalyba. But I wasn’t sure how exactly to cast Navi within the story, so I set her aside and concentrated on other characters.
Then I had a sort of dream about her the other night - I frequently come up with ideas for characters, places and plot points while asleep for some reason - where Navi was came up as a ship’s captain, not just a printshop owner. So it was that Navi finally got her upgrade. She’s now the captain of her own cloudship, and will sail around the Known World with her own band of friends!
Without a doubt, Navi will get some airtime in The Other Side Of The Sun, wherein she will be a helper character for her niece Prya Atma and her friends in the Band of Five. She will also discover a previously unknown, existential threat to her homeland - but that will have to stay under wraps for now.
What’s more, Navi Atma will get a spinoff book (probably a spinoff book series) in her own right. I’ve been looking for a way to write stories about other parts of the Known World beyond the Meldûn Borderlands. Writing more about Navi Atma and her companions flying around aboard the Wayfarer strikes me as the perfect way to share such stories with my readers.
More to be revealed, as always.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading this week’s Dispatch.
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Until next time, thanks for reading!
— B.E. Turpin
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