lenora_rose (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lenora_rose) wrote2009-03-25 07:50 pm
lenora_rose) wrote2009-03-25 07:50 pm
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Overview of my fictional words, part two
Not many people mentioned they cared about the last one, but if I put it all on LJ, I have it all saved in one place, so to speak. So this is for me as much as anyone.
Tuathea is a hard thing to explain. Its creation and its present state are complex. This is strictly the creation side. the various species, countries, and cultures, in extreme brief, are post number three.
Fortunately, in the background for Gods in Flight, I had Tovay, a demi-god, tell the whole story in a huge and unnecessary infodump. Since the infodump is being cut from the story, and the few bits of it that are relevant are going to be inserted more naturally, I figured I could post it instead, and get a looooong post withut having to type much at all. It contradicts parts of the description of my fictional worlds from before, as to how the fey (Tovay spells it fae; not sure why I made that choice) set up their anchors. I'm not actually sure, as it happens, if my prior description is wrong, or his is, or if the truth is in between (I'm pretty sure that the dragons and sashelskovae are actually native to the original planet, not descended from birds, but that just makes taking the planets apart a more impressive task.) But I like the slight tension of the contradictions.
However, he's talking from the perspective of a few hundred years in the future from where most of my stories are set, right after a major disaster befell the gods (And about fifty years *before* the Armageddon mentioned here.) Just to explain his snarky intro.
Now, I'm off to go back to pottery (No dance after all tonight, sorry). So Here's Tovay.
I suppose some attempt on the gods was inevitable. The fae have altogether too many reasons to have taken a dislike to their uppity former servants.
Ooops. That's supposed to be a secret. Sorry, mother. Really I am.
About as much as you'd expect.
The gods aren't gods. That's how the fae see it; and why they call the gods liars when ever they have the chance. I'm not totally sure. What makes a god, after all? They are worshipped, to greater or lesser degrees. They do help guide the dead to the next world. They grant gifts and powers that humans would never otherwise have; there's no human magic that can't be traced back by some route to a deity.
And technically, they did make the world, all but the newest and youngest of them, and the moons. They're not lying about that, and none of them have been crazy enough to claim they made the universe, or even the sun, once humans understood the cosmos well enough to get heliocentric orbit and the actual nature of the stars. But they made the world as servants and tools, at the hands of the fae. And that little detail makes all the difference.
The gods weren't gods then. The closest term for what they were is elementals; powerful in their particular arenas, and most of those areas were places that fae powers couldn't touch. And back then, they had no real personality, not much sense of self, and so they tended to do what they were told, without really thinking it through.
The people who say the fae cannot create are wrong, or were then; they could create anything they could imagine. The thing is, fae are distractible, fiery, inclined to sudden spots in their mind or flare-ups. Literally, as it happens, but I'm trying to explain gods here, and the fae history is a whole other kettle of fish. A much smellier one, and so says someone who's fifty-fifty.
Anyhow, fae are short on imagination. They preferred to watch all kinds of other lesser beasties and steal the useful ideas from them.
So they decided there was a little blue-green planet whose inhabitants looked like they were just evolving into something really interesting. The bipeds and the underwater ones and certain types of birds; don't get too egotistical. The thing was, the little blue-green planet was extremely short on magic. About enough for the fae to have planted an anchor there - long story - but not enough that even if the fae dumped magic on it all, they'd get much of anywhere.
So they had their elementals find another star that was a good match for another “anchor”, except that the twin planets in the right orbit had some other things wrong with them. So they blew them up, and had the elementals put the pieces back together to make a slightly different planet perfect for their chosen life-forms, with a moon that was pretty much a junk rock for the things they didn't need. Then they transplanted a few of those lifeforms to their new rock. ALL the lifeforms. I can't say this was an unimpressive task for the elementals, even if they did it all because the fae told them to. Create a viable planet in considerably less than a geological age, then stock it successfully with copies of every single species, microbe, vegetable, animal, small strange beetle, what have you, from another. Some of them began to specialize, even then. The Narwhale, the Sea King, he got into water right from the start. He knows more about water and water life than anyone else ever will. And he still can't tell me if the universe was created by a yet higher being. Why do we think humans could?
Except, of course, this new planet was magic rich. The new transplants weren't, but... well, they breathed it in pretty much continuously. It wasn't instant, but it sure didn't take long for a totally different evolutionary run. For one thing, the first thing the proto-humans did was end up selkies, with human-only humans coming later. (And there was tweaking from the fae, at least aesthetically, to make sure the humans looked roughly the same in both worlds. Different ethnicities, but clearly a like species. I think that if people from the first planet and the elemental-made one tried to breed, they'd end up with mules, but nobody’s tried.)
Anyhow, the fae being fae, they didn't exactly watch this new planet like hawks. They got distracted, bored, and left it to the elementals to keep an eye on things.
The first thing the elementals figured out is that magic somehow interferes with the death process. The animals still died, of course, but their souls tended to get... stuck. Not move on to the other side. I can't even start to go into the ways this could be bad news. So the elementals started to help them out.
For lesser animals, this was no big deal. It was for the proto-humans, humans, selkies, the outbreak of sentient-or-soon-to-be ex-birds - dragons and sashelskovae – and the more significant sea-creatures. (And, eventually, the felian, though they're unholy hybrids of fox and fae, not either naturally or magically evolved.) It made a huge difference when the elementals helped their souls move on. Because these creatures could recognize that there was a being helping them out, and they started to connect them with other natural or not-natural processes. And started to give them names and personalities.
Still not an issue - while they were alive. But it turns out that those beliefs did make a difference once the soul was cut loose. Each time an elemental helped a soul to rest that had ideas about the being helping it, that soul left behind a little of that idea with the elemental.
And the elementals began to develop personalities based on what the people who worshipped them thought they were. This still wasn't autonomy, because at first they couldn't really control who or what they let through.
Then they began to decide they liked certain traits more, and began to focus on looking for souls that had those ideas. They started to specialize. And as bribes - let's call a spade a spade - they started to give the humans and other creatures more magic and more teaching about how to use the magic they had. Some elementals were very picky and very limiting; a worshipper got "priestly gifts" that couldn't get passed on to students or bloodlines. Others of these new gods decided to be more generous, trusting it would give them more support, so they put it into the bloodline; sometimes literally, by breeding with their followers - there's a southern god, Ro, who still does that to this day. Strangely enough, a lot of his kids these days seem to be fascinated by genetics, and how that's even possible (Don't ask me. I haven't made a heavy study of the areas where throwing your hands up and saying, "It's fucking magic." is not only a feasible answer - that would be most of them - but the single most common one.) Eventually, though, the gods collected enough souls to be truly themselves, and to remain that way. Of course, by then, most of them wanted to stand by their people if their people would have them. Or at least cultivate the kinds they thought were cool.
At any rate, personalities, and worship, make bad slaves. And they noticed they were strong enough to keep the fae at a distance, at least on those occasions the fae could be kept distracted. Not that there haven't been problems -- I mean, ask Melek about being locked up for fifty-odd years by a fae, or anyone in Amerce and Cocciro. But overall, the elementals, the Gods, whatever you called them now, pretty much staked out this world as theirs, and told the fae to bug off. Which was better for the sentient mortals, overall, though it still ahs its drawbacks.
Anyhow, as you see, it never really worked the way people assume. Yes, gods need believers - up until the point where they get a personality. After that, a lack of belief won't cause them to dissolve or go away, just get lonely or bored and go looking for more like-minded people. And too many of the wrong believers can make a god get a split personality or worse, like the mad dancer, who decided to specialize in the insane or otherwise deeply weird. Or they can change pretty wildly. Kathaya, with her focus on sex, agriculture, and fertility, has been pretty consistent for centuries, but ask the messenger-gods sometime about the changes in them that the advent of long distance trains, powered flight, radio, and internet have caused. Or the gods who’ve switched from lovers to twins as the myths get revised – I think modern theologians are debating about Sanno and Sinoukya so much that they’re kind of avoiding being in the same place at the same time, even though, lovers or siblings, they’re pretty much as close as you get.
So the gods do feed a little on souls. Not in any way that hurts the soul, though, and none of them "eat" it.
As for the undesirable souls? Well, that's where I come in. There were darn few gods who ever specialized in collecting the ones nobody wanted at all, even within their own countries. Most take them along with the whole mass and just hope there aren't too many to dilute their sense of self. And refuse only the absolute worst of the worst. There’s a reason ghosts have a really bad reputation, even though they’re just souls temporarily stuck, and *should* be the usual mix of good and bad and mediocre.
Except mom started to pretty much assume I'd pick up anyone nobody else wanted. Being half-fae, half my personality is my own, and doesn't change, so helping out a bunch of atheists doesn't put me into a spiral of self-doubt. (That's a joke. Atheism, as such, is pretty uncommon when gods show up and say, "Hi, I exist." Skepticism about the exact claims and natures of gods, sure, but I know too much not to be skeptical all on my own, and the type of atheism which is really anger and dislike, that sure happens. But again, I was resentful before I ever touched a soul myself.)
And Ecora is a pretty knotty tangle for anyone. It really does need a single god, its people tend too much to a specific stoic type to really offer the variety more than one god would want. Or even one god would want, if they want any dimension to their personality. I think it's interesting, if you look closer - the way a really good bread can surprise you by being tasty all alone, without jams or cheeses or condiments - but I also understand why nobody wants a diet of just bread.
Also, it turns out there are some unhealthy ingredients in it, some assumptions and snap judgments that aren't as wholesome as the packaging leads you to think. Especially in the small towns.
So I started to try a little cultivating of my own.
Cue Lilas Meridian. Dia is exactly the kind of person Ecora needs a couple hundred more of. OF course, right now she's also a bundle of teenage resentment, but I can work with that, because, well, pot? Kettle?
Fucking right.
Tuathea is a hard thing to explain. Its creation and its present state are complex. This is strictly the creation side. the various species, countries, and cultures, in extreme brief, are post number three.
Fortunately, in the background for Gods in Flight, I had Tovay, a demi-god, tell the whole story in a huge and unnecessary infodump. Since the infodump is being cut from the story, and the few bits of it that are relevant are going to be inserted more naturally, I figured I could post it instead, and get a looooong post withut having to type much at all. It contradicts parts of the description of my fictional worlds from before, as to how the fey (Tovay spells it fae; not sure why I made that choice) set up their anchors. I'm not actually sure, as it happens, if my prior description is wrong, or his is, or if the truth is in between (I'm pretty sure that the dragons and sashelskovae are actually native to the original planet, not descended from birds, but that just makes taking the planets apart a more impressive task.) But I like the slight tension of the contradictions.
However, he's talking from the perspective of a few hundred years in the future from where most of my stories are set, right after a major disaster befell the gods (And about fifty years *before* the Armageddon mentioned here.) Just to explain his snarky intro.
Now, I'm off to go back to pottery (No dance after all tonight, sorry). So Here's Tovay.
I suppose some attempt on the gods was inevitable. The fae have altogether too many reasons to have taken a dislike to their uppity former servants.
Ooops. That's supposed to be a secret. Sorry, mother. Really I am.
About as much as you'd expect.
The gods aren't gods. That's how the fae see it; and why they call the gods liars when ever they have the chance. I'm not totally sure. What makes a god, after all? They are worshipped, to greater or lesser degrees. They do help guide the dead to the next world. They grant gifts and powers that humans would never otherwise have; there's no human magic that can't be traced back by some route to a deity.
And technically, they did make the world, all but the newest and youngest of them, and the moons. They're not lying about that, and none of them have been crazy enough to claim they made the universe, or even the sun, once humans understood the cosmos well enough to get heliocentric orbit and the actual nature of the stars. But they made the world as servants and tools, at the hands of the fae. And that little detail makes all the difference.
The gods weren't gods then. The closest term for what they were is elementals; powerful in their particular arenas, and most of those areas were places that fae powers couldn't touch. And back then, they had no real personality, not much sense of self, and so they tended to do what they were told, without really thinking it through.
The people who say the fae cannot create are wrong, or were then; they could create anything they could imagine. The thing is, fae are distractible, fiery, inclined to sudden spots in their mind or flare-ups. Literally, as it happens, but I'm trying to explain gods here, and the fae history is a whole other kettle of fish. A much smellier one, and so says someone who's fifty-fifty.
Anyhow, fae are short on imagination. They preferred to watch all kinds of other lesser beasties and steal the useful ideas from them.
So they decided there was a little blue-green planet whose inhabitants looked like they were just evolving into something really interesting. The bipeds and the underwater ones and certain types of birds; don't get too egotistical. The thing was, the little blue-green planet was extremely short on magic. About enough for the fae to have planted an anchor there - long story - but not enough that even if the fae dumped magic on it all, they'd get much of anywhere.
So they had their elementals find another star that was a good match for another “anchor”, except that the twin planets in the right orbit had some other things wrong with them. So they blew them up, and had the elementals put the pieces back together to make a slightly different planet perfect for their chosen life-forms, with a moon that was pretty much a junk rock for the things they didn't need. Then they transplanted a few of those lifeforms to their new rock. ALL the lifeforms. I can't say this was an unimpressive task for the elementals, even if they did it all because the fae told them to. Create a viable planet in considerably less than a geological age, then stock it successfully with copies of every single species, microbe, vegetable, animal, small strange beetle, what have you, from another. Some of them began to specialize, even then. The Narwhale, the Sea King, he got into water right from the start. He knows more about water and water life than anyone else ever will. And he still can't tell me if the universe was created by a yet higher being. Why do we think humans could?
Except, of course, this new planet was magic rich. The new transplants weren't, but... well, they breathed it in pretty much continuously. It wasn't instant, but it sure didn't take long for a totally different evolutionary run. For one thing, the first thing the proto-humans did was end up selkies, with human-only humans coming later. (And there was tweaking from the fae, at least aesthetically, to make sure the humans looked roughly the same in both worlds. Different ethnicities, but clearly a like species. I think that if people from the first planet and the elemental-made one tried to breed, they'd end up with mules, but nobody’s tried.)
Anyhow, the fae being fae, they didn't exactly watch this new planet like hawks. They got distracted, bored, and left it to the elementals to keep an eye on things.
The first thing the elementals figured out is that magic somehow interferes with the death process. The animals still died, of course, but their souls tended to get... stuck. Not move on to the other side. I can't even start to go into the ways this could be bad news. So the elementals started to help them out.
For lesser animals, this was no big deal. It was for the proto-humans, humans, selkies, the outbreak of sentient-or-soon-to-be ex-birds - dragons and sashelskovae – and the more significant sea-creatures. (And, eventually, the felian, though they're unholy hybrids of fox and fae, not either naturally or magically evolved.) It made a huge difference when the elementals helped their souls move on. Because these creatures could recognize that there was a being helping them out, and they started to connect them with other natural or not-natural processes. And started to give them names and personalities.
Still not an issue - while they were alive. But it turns out that those beliefs did make a difference once the soul was cut loose. Each time an elemental helped a soul to rest that had ideas about the being helping it, that soul left behind a little of that idea with the elemental.
And the elementals began to develop personalities based on what the people who worshipped them thought they were. This still wasn't autonomy, because at first they couldn't really control who or what they let through.
Then they began to decide they liked certain traits more, and began to focus on looking for souls that had those ideas. They started to specialize. And as bribes - let's call a spade a spade - they started to give the humans and other creatures more magic and more teaching about how to use the magic they had. Some elementals were very picky and very limiting; a worshipper got "priestly gifts" that couldn't get passed on to students or bloodlines. Others of these new gods decided to be more generous, trusting it would give them more support, so they put it into the bloodline; sometimes literally, by breeding with their followers - there's a southern god, Ro, who still does that to this day. Strangely enough, a lot of his kids these days seem to be fascinated by genetics, and how that's even possible (Don't ask me. I haven't made a heavy study of the areas where throwing your hands up and saying, "It's fucking magic." is not only a feasible answer - that would be most of them - but the single most common one.) Eventually, though, the gods collected enough souls to be truly themselves, and to remain that way. Of course, by then, most of them wanted to stand by their people if their people would have them. Or at least cultivate the kinds they thought were cool.
At any rate, personalities, and worship, make bad slaves. And they noticed they were strong enough to keep the fae at a distance, at least on those occasions the fae could be kept distracted. Not that there haven't been problems -- I mean, ask Melek about being locked up for fifty-odd years by a fae, or anyone in Amerce and Cocciro. But overall, the elementals, the Gods, whatever you called them now, pretty much staked out this world as theirs, and told the fae to bug off. Which was better for the sentient mortals, overall, though it still ahs its drawbacks.
Anyhow, as you see, it never really worked the way people assume. Yes, gods need believers - up until the point where they get a personality. After that, a lack of belief won't cause them to dissolve or go away, just get lonely or bored and go looking for more like-minded people. And too many of the wrong believers can make a god get a split personality or worse, like the mad dancer, who decided to specialize in the insane or otherwise deeply weird. Or they can change pretty wildly. Kathaya, with her focus on sex, agriculture, and fertility, has been pretty consistent for centuries, but ask the messenger-gods sometime about the changes in them that the advent of long distance trains, powered flight, radio, and internet have caused. Or the gods who’ve switched from lovers to twins as the myths get revised – I think modern theologians are debating about Sanno and Sinoukya so much that they’re kind of avoiding being in the same place at the same time, even though, lovers or siblings, they’re pretty much as close as you get.
So the gods do feed a little on souls. Not in any way that hurts the soul, though, and none of them "eat" it.
As for the undesirable souls? Well, that's where I come in. There were darn few gods who ever specialized in collecting the ones nobody wanted at all, even within their own countries. Most take them along with the whole mass and just hope there aren't too many to dilute their sense of self. And refuse only the absolute worst of the worst. There’s a reason ghosts have a really bad reputation, even though they’re just souls temporarily stuck, and *should* be the usual mix of good and bad and mediocre.
Except mom started to pretty much assume I'd pick up anyone nobody else wanted. Being half-fae, half my personality is my own, and doesn't change, so helping out a bunch of atheists doesn't put me into a spiral of self-doubt. (That's a joke. Atheism, as such, is pretty uncommon when gods show up and say, "Hi, I exist." Skepticism about the exact claims and natures of gods, sure, but I know too much not to be skeptical all on my own, and the type of atheism which is really anger and dislike, that sure happens. But again, I was resentful before I ever touched a soul myself.)
And Ecora is a pretty knotty tangle for anyone. It really does need a single god, its people tend too much to a specific stoic type to really offer the variety more than one god would want. Or even one god would want, if they want any dimension to their personality. I think it's interesting, if you look closer - the way a really good bread can surprise you by being tasty all alone, without jams or cheeses or condiments - but I also understand why nobody wants a diet of just bread.
Also, it turns out there are some unhealthy ingredients in it, some assumptions and snap judgments that aren't as wholesome as the packaging leads you to think. Especially in the small towns.
So I started to try a little cultivating of my own.
Cue Lilas Meridian. Dia is exactly the kind of person Ecora needs a couple hundred more of. OF course, right now she's also a bundle of teenage resentment, but I can work with that, because, well, pot? Kettle?
Fucking right.