Archive | February 2014

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty-Three: Tír na Cali

Feb23

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-third question comes from cluudle and is for Tir na Cali.

Is there a stereotype for who the slavers take? Is it the young, the handsome, the pretty, or do you have to worry about your children, worry about your grandparents, worry about your spouse and boss and lawyer?

The stereotype from the American point of view, which is generally accurate to the Cali slavers’ point of view, is that the slavers tend to take those who are older than puberty but younger than grey hair – generally between sixteen and thirty years of age. They appear to tend towards the attractive, although that is not always the case (at least not for American standards of beauty), the healthy, and the unwise.

It is common knowledge in America that going out to a bar without a group of people can get you “disappeared;” that taking a drink from a stranger is a good way to wake up somewhere unpleasant, that going home with the wrong person can mean you never actually see home again.

But of course, kids will be kids, and college boys and girls continue to go out to bars and take drinks from strangers and, even in prudish America, sometimes sneak out with a stranger. And if they’re lucky, their parents will get a polite note from the police department that got a polite note from a slave raider.

That’s the American story.

The Californian raiders, if asked, might say things a bit differently: they look for people who are alone, who will be missed but not quickly. They look for the unmarried, and do not take those wearing wedding bands; the Californians hold marriage in very high estimation. They don’t always pick up in bars, not by far – they prefer joggers running alone, shoppers in a dark corner of the mall, smokers out alone in the parking lot – people who aren’t surrounded by other people, people who are a lower risk. They like the young and healthy, of course, but minor ailments can be cured, and attractiveness can be fixed to whatever the buyer finds prettiest.

Very few people in the Tír na Cali-verse America worry about their lawyer or spouse or boss being taken, but every once in a while, the raiders will take some sort of brain trust specialist – scientist, engineer – regardless of other qualifications. And even more rarely, they’ll snatch a politician’s kid for leverage.

This started out as a hostage-taking situation, after all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676883.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month: Need questions for 24-28, please

Feb23

February is World-Building Month!

I have been answering world-building questions all month; you can find the answers at the febcreate tag.

But, after today’s question and yesterday’s, I don’t have any more questions!

I need 5 more questions about any of my universes,here.

Thanks!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676839.html. You can comment there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty One – Vas’ World

Feb22

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-first question comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly and is for Vas’ World

Well, you could tell me more about how the lost colony got there and came to be lost… 😀

Hattip and thanks to [personal profile] thnidu for this comment from which I got much of the answer.

This was first detailed in The Sea And Sky: …when a computer failure (meters and yards were not the same thing, and why had it taken this long for someone to notice the problem?) had sent it off course… Which isn’t so much “detailed” as “handwaved.”

The surviving members of the ship’s crew and colony ship definitely thought that the computer had malfunctioned, and, in the moments between it finding the planet later known as Vas’ World/MacAllister-5 and it crashing, it certainly did.

But why?

It will take longer than the story has reached yet to determine the potential causes of the malfunction, but what Vas’ team can guess at, given the information they have, is something like the following:

There are areas in space which are fairly “clean;” that is, they are safe to use sub-light or FTL travel in with no ill effects; you generally go from point A to point B with no interruptions, as long as your plot doesn’t take you too close to a sun, a planet, an asteroid belt, etc.

And then they are places – the first “discovered” was en route to the planet the team was actually trying to colonize – where naturally occurring “flash warp” nexuses act as pivot points, altering the velocity of a ship in as-of-yet unpredictable ways.

The ship that accidentally colonized MacAllister-5 was not the only ship to go missing; it was simply the first one to be found. Until it was discovered (and until Vas et al realize the MacAliens’ origins), the main population’s assumption is that all those ships lost to the flash warp nodes were destroyed.

It’ll be interesting to find out exactly how wrong they were.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676581.html. You can comment here or there.

A Sea Change, a story of Addergoole Yr43 for @Rix_Scaedu

Feb22

This is a continuation of Planning and
Microbit One, set in Year 43 of the Addergoole School, for [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commission.

Regine had practice remaining calm in the face of volatile personalities. She had plenty of practice, in fact, with this particular volatile personality; she and Luca had been working together, alongside Michael, for centuries.

It did not, thus, particularly faze her when Luke glared at her with another wide flap of his wings, although she did note that he must be particularly upset, as he normally was more mindful of her paperwork.

“We are doing good here, Luca,” she repeated, “both for our students and for the world.”

“Tell that to the ones that we don’t catch in time.” It came out as a snarl; that was a little excessive even for Luca. Regine allowed her eyes to drift down to the papers for a brief moment. “No, wait, don’t. I don’t think I could stand to watch you preach that sanctimonious bullshit to someone who’s stuck in a bad Keeping.”

“Luca.” Regine coughed, an altogether unnecessary affectation, but, then, she was not a robot, no matter what some people would suggest. “When we started this project, you understood the difficulties, and you agreed with its necessity.” She pushed a pile of papers forward. “The statistics suggest that sixty-three percent of these students would not be alive if it were not for our school.”

“Try telling that to one of your children after they’ve been raped, why don’t you?” Luke’s snarl had gone to a growl. “Oh, wait.” He wasn’t flapping anymore. For some reason, Regine found that worrisome. “Your kids somehow never end up with that sort of problem.”

Ah.

“Luca, just because a child is of our bloodline is no reason to let ourselves become distractible. It is important to remain unbiased…”

“FUCK unbiased!”

And yet, his wings did not flare. His feet were spread a little bit apart, his hands were easy at his sides, and his wings were staying folded against his back.

That, Regine realized, with something of chill in her heart, was battle stance. And despite the shout of his profanity, his voice was otherwise quiet: conserving energy.

She didn’t think he would continue, but once again, he surprised her.

“It isn’t our job to remain unbiased, Regine. It isn’t our job to treat these children as subjects, separated by their Changes and genealogy and nothing else. If we’d wanted to do that – if you’d wanted to do that – you shouldn’t have sold it as a school.”

He took a step forward. It took every ounce of Regine’s not-inconsiderable self-control to not back up. “But we did. And we have been selling it as a school for generations now. As such.” He rolled his shoulders and his head before continuing. “As such, Regine, it is our responsibility to treat these students as people.

“As Students.” He continued, with another step forward. “Not just because they are our children – because you made damn sure each and every one of us contributed to the project so that we’d stay emotionally invested, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” There was no shame in that.

“Yes.” His mimic sounded angry, for all of that. “Not just because these children are our family, Regine, but because we are their teachers and Mentors.”

His voice dropped into something low and smokey. Regine could not, for a moment, remember where she had heard it before.

“This is what we’re going to do, Regine.” He’d taken another step forward. If he had a weapon, he could be skewering her with it about now. “You are going to take Students. A full cy’ree, every year. Starting now; I’m sure we can rearrange things.”

Ah, yes. That’s where she’d heard the voice. Regine swallowed.

“Students.” She tried not to sound nervous; she failed. That was interesting.

“And you are going to teach a class. A full rotation class, every day. Don’t give me shit about your responsibilities, Regine; the world is over. There’s a lot fewer people to manipulate than there used to be.”

Regine nodded. “As you wish it.” The last time she’d heard Luke talk like that, people had died.

A large number of people.

“If you feel that will help.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676168.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty (Yesterday): Dragons Next Door

Feb21

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twentieth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Dragons Next Door

How did a magic-ignorant to magic-averse race of technology users wind up the clueless dominant race in a world full of magic, some of it not at all subtle?

Nobody is quite sure! This goes well with How do dweomers originate?.

The problem is, humans showed up. As far as anyone can tell, they showed up already knowing how to hurt dragons and ogres and centaurs, how to fight against spellcasters, how to do more damage than anything that small and seemingly-helpless ought to be able to manage. They showed up already deadly.

Well, that’s one theory.

Another theory is that the humans, by their sheer mundanity, seemed to hold off the other races, who didn’t know what to do with something that small and that helpless and still determined to push on.

Another theory is that they’re the pet project of some ancient spellcaster of one form or another, and that they are protected from being overrun by said spellcaster’s, well, spells.

What is true is that humans aren’t entirely clueless. They’re just used to living in their areas, while the magic things live in theirs. They’re used to thinking of many of the magic races as lesser, smaller – in terms of, ah, enlightenment, they’re back at least fifty years from IRL, possibly closer to a hundred and fifty. Dweomers, of course, and in other ways tinies and pixies, have always existed alongside humans when they chose to – and, indeed, dweomers don’t even have their own cities (Unless you count the region in which the Black Tower resides, but that’s a story for another day). But most of the strangest races have lived in their own places and only within the last fifty years begun co-existing with humans in the same cities.

After all, the tiny fragile things have such interesting toys.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675937.html. You can comment here or there.

A Phenomenal Description of Addergoole and a lovely post by @KOrionFray

Feb21

(Okay, I’m biased, the post talks about me)

Then there is the apocalyptic world of Addergoole and the faerie, as written by Lyn Thorne-Alder. Here are a race called the Ellehemaei, fae of old kept on Earth after their gods departed and closed the gates to Ellehem. This is magic at its core, borne of three main lines: the Mara, protectors and strong; the Daeva, inspirers and muses, the incubi and succubi of legend; and the Grigori, sharp and beautiful, the pinnacle of perfection and teachers of their own ways. Faced with the prediction of seers that the end was nigh, a lone Grigori by the name of Regine Avonmorea gathered who she could and arranged that a school be made—one to both teach fae children how to survive in the oncoming storm…and to ensure that said children would come to bear more children, in hopes that the fae would survive. It was not a perfect system, and came with its flaws—which the now-professors would learn all too soon—but it was something, which was more than the void they feared.

From The Ones We Love & the Worlds They Live In, by K Orion Fray.

I’ve been waiting since last night for Ri to be able to post this so I could quote and link it!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675743.html. You can comment here or there.

Tower, a story of post-apoc Ag for the OrigFic Bingo

Feb21

This is to @inventrix and Sky’s twitter prompts to my December OrigFic card; this fills the “Tower” square.

It is set in post-apoc Addergoole-world, not in the school, sometime around year 50 of the school, with new characters.

“What do I do, what do I do?”

Leontyne was in the habit of talking to herself. It wasn’t a particularly good habit, but it wasn’t her worst habit by far, and her children were fond of it, as, they said, it telegraphed her pretty darn well.

Her children. Addergoole had gotten the first two, because that’s what happened. And it wasn’t as if Leontyne’s experiences there had been horrible. But now her third child was coming of age, the first two still in Addergoole – and her third, Jerome, had been born outside of the auspices and breeding programs of her alma mater.

“What to do, what to do?” She had very little faith in the Tarot, not like the woman who’d raised her had; she wasn’t a precog, as far as she could tell, wasn’t a seer of any sort. But she used it the way she used the dice and sometimes even the Bible, as a randomizer for decision-making. She tapped the edge of the deck on her small table. “Where to go. Where to go.”

“Mom, you’re doing it again.” Jerome poured her a cup of tea. He was a good boy, when he wasn’t getting into trouble – so, for about fifteen minutes awake, and then when he was asleep, much like her older two. He’d be a hell-raiser in Addergoole or anywhere else. “What to do about what?” He lifted the Tarot deck from her unresisting hand and pushed a scone in front of her.

“You.” She sipped the tea; once they’d got the hang of growing it, they’d been in business. “This is the new – what?”

“Me?” He had the lost-kitten look all of her sons learned from birth (no surprise there). “What did I… hunh.” A card had fallen from his hand onto the table: the Tower.

It wasn’t a card Leontyne could remember seeing before; it wasn’t one from her deck. A tall edifice twisted into the sky, three-sided, surrounded by interlocking circles of walls.

She’d seen that before, in a brochure left by a travelling salesman.

“Doomsday Academy.” The card sat on the table, making change and transformation and chaos. She quirked her lips up and smiled at her most chaotic of sons. “Think they’re ready for you?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675347.html. You can comment here or there.

Unwelcome Guests, Part the Second

Feb21

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned A continuation of Unwelcome Guests.

(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)

Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.

Delaney snaked her way in front of Ardell, grinning, all sweetness-and-light and innocence. Baram didn’t budge, and he didn’t miss the three weapons she was carrying openly. Spear, sword, gun.

“We heard you were running a safe house, Baram. We heard you had some Addergoole girls working for you. We heard you had weapons, had food.”

Ardell slunk to the side of Delaney. No smile, more weapons. He often pretended, but he wasn’t pretending to be sweet, at least. “We heard you were living the sweet life here, surrounded by pretty things. Like the girl who answered the door. And we figured we’d pay an old friend a visit.”

Baram looked at the two of them. He glanced over his shoulder – very briefly – at Alkyone. He looked back at people who had been, if not his friends, his allies.

The next words came easily to him. “Who are you?”

They shared a look. A look, and then Delaney’s shoulders shifted, and Ardell took a step backwards. “We’d heard…” Ardell frowned. He looked actually bothered. “We’d heard you forgot things.”

“Did you really forget us?” Delaney did a believable pout. “After everything we went through together?”

Ardell picked up on the cue. “Yeah, man, all that time together in school, we were like crew. We were solid friends. And you forgot all of that?”

How much of it did they mean? Baram shrugged. “Forgot most things. Jaelie remembers for me.”

“This is Jaelie?” Delaney waved her fingers. “Hi. We’re old friends of Baram’s, like we said.”

“No.” Alkyone’s voice was hard. “I’m Alkyone. Jaelie is elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere.” Delaney sneered the word out. “Aren’t you cute? And I bet you think you’re smart, too. Move over, chica. We’re here to visit our old friend, Baram.”

“Alkyone is a new friend.” Baram spoke slowly, the way he could remember talking, sometimes, when he was having a bad day, “one of those episodes,” Jaelie called them. “Alkyone lives here.”

“Well, of course she does.” Ardell took Delaney by the shoulders and pushed her out of the way – carefully, Baram noted; there was no violence in the way they handled each other. “And you do, too, right, buddy? Remember how we said we’d always open our doors to each other?”

“Don’t remember you.” He remembered the conversation Ardell was talking about. Ardell and Del, Ib and Rozen and Baram. Baram remembered saying nothing, shaking no hands, just sitting back with someone pretty curled on his lap and watching them talk.

Baram wondered how much of the rest of his Addergoole experience he remembered differently, like the spider-girl and her horrified memories of him. But this was different; this was lies.

“Of course you remember us.” Ardell’s voice was getting sharp. “Of course you’re going to let us in. Baram, come on, think of all the things I’ve done for you. How much fun you had with my Kept over the years. How much fun you could have with my Kept now.”

“You have Kept?” That was a different matter.

“Boss. Trouble on the horizon.” Viatrix came up on Baram’s other side. “Looks like bad trouble, too. The alarms caught seven.”

The alarms had been the girls’ idea and mostly their implementation; Baram’s house wasn’t the only group of people still living here, but they were the most combat-ready and, in other ways, the most vulnerable. Kids made you weak, but in weird and strong ways.

“First alarms?” The first alarms were four miles out. Plenty of time.

“Second.”

That was harder; the second were two miles out.

A glance back at their unwelcome guests showed Ardel’s shoulder’s tense and Delaney trying to press herself as close to the threshold as possible. “Come on, Baram, you’ve got to let us in. For old time’s sake. For when we were friends.”

“Boss. They’re trouble.” Alkyone’s voice held warning. “And they’re bringing trouble here.”

Del’s voice shifted to nasty again. “And do you think they’ll care if you have actually helped us? No, they will take you down one way or the other.”

“You brought enemies to our door?” Baram didn’t need to look to know that Via and Alkyone were now holding their weapons. Via’s voice told him everything he needed. “You brought hunters here, to our safe haven?”

“It’s not yours, bitch.” Ardel had lost the last semblance of courtesy and niceness. “It’s our friend’s. Baram’s.”

“I think you’re under a misapprehension-” Alkyone began, but Baram had had enough of the back-and-forth, especially with potential hunters on the way.

“Their house, my house, our house. Not yours. Get in back. Basement doors by apple tree.” Baram pointed. “Stay there if you want to live.”

“So you remember us, buddy?” Ardel’s smile was back as fast as it had left.

“No.” Best to keep up the lie. “Get in basement. Fast.”

The door by the apple tree didn’t lead to the house basement, but the hidey hole there was safe, protected by Baram’s threshold…

…and a bit of a trap. Another thing Ardel and Delaney didn’t need to know until they were in there.

Luckily, nobody expected that sort of thing of Baram. They moved – fast.

On the horizon, Baram was beginning to be able to make out an oncoming enemy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675139.html. You can comment here or there.

Friday Show-And-Tell: What have you been up to?

Feb21

Shamelessly copied from [personal profile] jjhunter:

Friday, every Friday, I invite you (yes, you!) to share with me key Dreamwidth (or LJ, or Tumblr, or anything else) posts from the last week. They can be one or more of your own posts, posts of others you’d recommend, interesting discussions, linkspams, tiny delights, whatever stands out to you from the last seven days that you’d like to highlight. Assume that I’ve been away and pining too true and catch me up on what matters to you.

In return, I will make a point of commenting on at least one post of those you share, and I encourage others to do the same.

Newcomers, lurkers and long-time commentators equally welcome

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675019.html. You can comment here or there.

How Do We Manage?

Feb21

This is to [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt to this January card for [community profile] origfic_bingo.

It fills the “management” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

Warning: discussion of incest.

“You have it easy.” Aelgifu sighed and flopped against the back of her chair.

“Easy?” Shahin raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow in question. “I’m not arguing that I don’t have a hard life, although I miss Emrys – although I had him here a year longer than you had Io.”

They were sitting in one of the cozy visiting rooms in Lady Maureen’s voluminous creche and child-care center, Ayla’s daughter and Shahin’s three-and-a-stepchild playing around and with them. Shahin managed to look simultaneously matronly and adorable while nursing young Belladona; Ayla had never managed to feel anything but half-naked and frumpy.

“Well, you don’t mind the preliminaries.” How much could you say around two-year-olds? What would babies Niobe and Arturo remember?

“I don’t recall you minding the preliminaries with Ioanna.”

“That’s was different. And the baby-making parts were, ah, separate. Dr. Caitrin helped with those.” Dr. Caitrin had been necessary for the complex Workings that had turned part of Ioanna’s female DNA into sperm and then impregnated Aelgifu with that sperm – Ayla was a bit fuzzy on the details, but the end result had been Niobe.

“Well, it’s not as if Dr. Caitrin couldn’t help you with a nice boy’s consent.”

“Finding someone I can stand enough to bother with is half the problem.”

“I really doubt you want to go the route of magically-and-inexplicably-attracted-to-your-brother.” Shahin seemed to have no problems at all talking about such things in front of her children. Well, with her relationship with Emrys…

“That’s it.” Ayla sat up straight. “Shahin, you’re brilliant.”

“I know, but… how, in this case, exactly?” Her friend was watching Ayla with both eyebrows raised.

“Brothers. I have an inordinate share of brothers, and I know at least two of them have no interest in women.” Their father had said all my kids turn out gay, but nobody was going to take Aelfgar as an expert in anything except fighting. “That’s brilliant.”

Shahin shook her head, but she was smiling, not scoffing. “It is. I’m glad I thought of it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/674807.html. You can comment here or there.