World-building: Kairula

[Ximero]

Huzzah! I got Eosi ^^ Good job on the quiz, Kaylin!

[Kaylin88100]

Funny…your result doesn’t come up. It looks like no-one’s got Eosi yet – you must be unique!

[Kaylin88100]

Kairulan Facts of the…something:
Werecats and Fenris and Genies, oh my!

This time the facts are about creatures I’m in the process of making, or thinking about making, or haven’t quite got right and want to overhaul, or just explain in more detail. I’d really like your feedback on these.

1. Fenris
I’m worried – and I may be wrong – that some of you may have got the wrong idea about the Fenris. On this page it says that “The Fenris are…rogue lupi.” However, the image I used shows a half-man, half-wolf creature that doesn’t look like any image of lupi I’ve used. This is because the Fenris don’t always have enough control over their wolf side to be able to stay completely human-shaped, not because this is what they look like all the time. This generally happens most in the days leading up to a full moon, when the compulsion to change is growing stronger. Does that clear things up?

2. Werecats
I haven’t written anything about werecats yet, and I haven’t thought of a name for them along the lines of the werewolves being called “lupi”, but I’m thinking about including them in Kairula. My idea is that they’re descended from dragons, like lupi. Because dragons can take any animal form, their descendants have a choice, and they’re grouped into tribes and packs based on which animal form they take. This works (mostly) because a newborn lupus or werecat child isn’t actually a lupus/werecat yet – they will take the form of the first animal they see. Because their parents, siblings and packmates will shift in front of them and walk around in animal form, this is generally the same as the form taken by the rest of their group. Unfortunately, there are exceptions – I’ll get to that later. Sound good?

3. Genies, or Djinn
I’ve been thinking that, for balance, I should create another creature for the Fire element. If you look, all the elements have 3 except for Fire, which only has 2. I thought long and hard about this, coming up with and discarding several ideas, and eventually remembered that I was at one stage planning to include Djinn. Then I had the bright idea of making djinn with an affinity for fire. Images are in progress. However, I’m worried that it overlaps too much with the territory already covered by elementals. Do you think I can include them?

4. The Shadow
Someone (I think it was Herr D) commented on the lack of information about the Shadow. I am of the school of thought that the less you know about something, the scarier it is, but I see his point. It doesn’t even have its own section on a page, much less its own page. Who else would like to see more about it?

[Herr D]

? I took the quiz again, and now I’m a vampire. At least this version isn’t undead. Too many of the choices I’m ambivalent about.

1. You may want to add some varying images or add a transparent calendar in the background showing the coming full moon?
2. Werethings, Werefelines, Werecats, etc? You might mention whether surrounding the young one with pictures of desired animals could ‘choose’ the person’s alternate forms?
3. Djinn affinity for fire could be limited if you’re worried about balance? Just invulnerability or some form of dependence . . . lots of ways to go.
4. Was that me? Writing the peripheral effects is sometimes the way to leave enough mystery to induce fear.
a. The RTYU monster is big, with very strong jaws and teeth, and it lives under water.
b. Something under the boat bit the anchor chain in half, lifted the boat six feet, and dropped it. Old Brian said it had to be a RTYU.
Biting anchor chains in half and lifting up boats? Ah, those were the days. I miss being young!
5. Didn’t you post a selkie somewhere? I remember giving you advice about a thumb?

[Kaylin88100]

@Herr D:
Oooh, I might have another look at the quiz. It’s not that great, and I feel like I could add some more questions.

1. Varying images is probably the way to go with this one. Anyone want to help me out? I’m thinking a wolf snarling at some guy in a dark alley, and then I’ve got Zerogarth’s Fenris monk from a while back…

2. I’m not sure if pictures work or not. I’ll have to think about that one.

3. TRIVIA: Dragons are fire-resistant. That’s all I have to say on that. Except, dependence? How would that work?

4. I have no idea if it was you or not, it’s just the sort of thing you would pick up on. Also, I see what you mean about the peripheral effects. I’ve got a bit of that already, but I’m wondering if it needs its own page, or at least its own section.

5. Yes, that advice was very helpful. The selkie picture is now in place, for anyone that’s interested. I’ve also added some extra info and done a few fixes on that page – including adding some links to other pages, which I keep forgetting to do.

[Kaylin88100]

Is Herr D going to be the only one to respond to my request for feedback?

[The Atomic Punk]

Well, it seems most of the descriptions are centered around non-humans interactions with humans. For example, the Selkies seem non-confrontational, even timid as they are simply migrating to avoid humans. What kinds of relationships do non-humans have with each other? Aside from the obvious “bad” and “good” races. Are there any alliances or ancient rivalries?

I like what you have so far. However, it appears that the non-humans of Kairula are being pushed to the side by human incursion. Or, is that the direction you’re going?

[Kaylin88100]

Yes! You’ve got it! A lot of the changes happening in Kairula, for example the near-extinction of the dragons, are a direct result of the rapidly growing human presence in the last 1500 years – which isn’t that long in planetary terms, when you consider that the elves have existed since 10 000 BC!

Also, the wiki is kind of meant to be from a human perspective, so it makes sense that it’s all about the humans. I’ve been thinking of “non humans’ interactions with each other” as a possible future subject for Facts of the Week – which I’ve just remembered were due yesterday. Oh well. Maybe I should switch the day to Saturday or Sunday anyway.

Watch this space – the next Facts of the Week will be arriving sometime in the next 32 hours. Beyond that, I make no promises.

[Kaylin88100]

…Okay, so that failed. Sorry.

Kairulan Facts of the Week #4:
Like cats and dogs…or wolves and vampires

Dragons and lupi get on very well, being so closely related, but neither of them get on at all with vampires. This is probably because their blood is much more attractive to vampires than human blood, and also a lot more powerful. Dragon blood, in fact, gives a vampire so much power that drinking it is illegal under vampire law, and is punishable by death – as is turning a lupus or a dragon into a vampire. This is, again, because of the massive amount of power such a being would have. They are also usually mentally unstable, and much more prone to losing control and going on a killing spree than other lupi or vampires. Because of this, a vampire-lupus or vampire-dragon hybrid will be killed as soon as possible by any of the three groups.

However, it’s not all bad: these problems don’t come up very often, mainly because of geography. Kairula has three continents, and the dragons and lupi mainly live on the western continent, with most vampires sticking to the east. As a result, the only interaction between them tends to be through phones and video conferences, which run no risk of anyone getting attacked.

[Kaylin88100]

Wot, no comments? Okay…

Kairulan Facts of the Week #5:
Atlantis: dead or alive?

This is (mostly) idle speculation. I’ve stated on my wiki that the elves come from Atlantis, and they’re descended from the survivors of the flood that caused it to sink. However, not all of them made it, and I’ve been wondering what happened to the ones who were left behind when the portal closed. One idea, which I like a lot, is that the magic crystals changed them somehow so they could survive underwater, turning them into a new species, or possibly the Mer. Your thoughts?

[polldaddy poll=”7298142″]

[Ximero]

Hi, Kaylin Long overdue reply/feedback etc. here – but better late than never, I say

Two points:
1) since you were discussing Djinn (singular: Djinni) in the context of fire elementals, I oughtta possibly direct you towards looking up the Ifrit? Unless memory fails me, they were the ‘rogue’ Djinn, and particularly fiery, even though all Djinn are supposed to have been “sons of fire” (in pre-Islamic Arabian folklore);

2) and I believe it was I previously digging for more info on the Shadow (and on the Eosi, while we were at it ).

Hope ‘real life’ isn’t interfering too much with your world creating Go get’em, K.!

[Kaylin88100]

Kairulan Facts of the Week #6:
Works in progress

This is a progress update and plan of action.

I’m currently partway through an overhaul of the wiki, which involves going through every single page and fixing it so all the links go to the right place. This could take a while, but if I get a solid hour or two to work on it I can get it done.

After that, I plan to finish writing the histories for the Dragons and Elves, draw and scan in a map of Kairula – again, this could take a while – and update all the pictures to have backgrounds and shading. This has also been started, but is likely to take a lot of time.

I’m also making a series of new creatures, including several Djinn. One of them is an Ifrit, so thanks for that suggestion Ximero. I’m still deciding what to do about Atlantis, and I’ve had a lovely and very creative suggestion from someone: that they died, but became ocean spirits. I’d love to know who that was so I can thank them.

Finally, I’m going to be fulfilling all my promises of pictures that are dotted around the wiki (where it says “Picture of this coming soon” and has said it for about a year or so).

[Kaylin88100]

Okay, so I’m going on holiday tomorrow and won’t be back until the 26th. That means there’ll be no Facts of the Week next weekend, or if there are they won’t appear till Tuesday (the 27th). However, I do have something prepared for this week, and I’ll post it tomorrow morning before I leave. I don’t know who suggested this, but I think it might have been Herr D who asked a question about Tris, who’s mentioned on the Sylvans page. I’ve been meaning to write his story for a while, and I finally decided it was time. So, tomorrow you get a story – and a better picture of Tris, who’s actually the one on the left in the Sylvans picture. Also mentioned in the story are the other two: his younger sister Maie, and a village elder, Gern, who isn’t mentioned by name.

But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for all that. Seeya!

[Kaylin88100]

Kairulan Facts of the Week #7:
The story of Tris

The story, told by Tris
My name is Tris, and I am a lupus. I am also – and this is what makes me unique even among the few Omega lupi in existence – a sylvan. There are no other sylvan lupi on Kairula, for one simple reason: I am the first of my kind in over 100 years to have met a lupus, or even a human. My people – my former people, I should say – keep to themselves in a remote part of the Westerwood, where the only visitors are the occasional moredhel who strays too far south on a hunting trip, or who urgently needs our healing skills for one of their own people. While the eledhel may be skilled workers of green magic, the moredhel have sadly lost this affinity over their centuries of dealing in darker forces, and so they must turn to us for healing.

I say “our” and “us” from habit, but the truth is that the sylvans I grew up with would not now consider me to be one of them, and I am beginning to find that I do not, either. When I lived in the forest enclave that was my childhood home, I felt continually stifled and restricted by the strict rules laid down by the elders – which, I grant, are the reason the sylvan race has survived so long, but it has always seemed to me that mere survival is a poor substitute for truly living.

This attitude, which seemed to my thirteen-year-old self to be unique among my people, is a large part of the reason why on one particular day, in the summer of 1982, I was walking through a part of the forest that was quite near to the eledhel city of Lothiliviel, and had the fortune – or misfortune, as my family would have it – to hear a child screaming for help quite close by. As, I am sure, any rational person would have done in my place, I rushed towards the sound – and saw my first lupus, although I did not recognise him as such at the time. I saw an orange-haired human child, a boy perhaps three years my junior, whose foot had caught in a rabbit hole and caused him to trip, breaking his leg. There were no other people in sight, nor could I hear any coming to his aid.

One of the cardinal rules of our people, which had been instilled into me from a very young age, is that no sylvan may ever show himself to an outsider without permission from the elders. If I wanted to help the child, I would have to approach him, and therefore break that rule. Most of my peers would have dismissed the human and moved on, but there was something about this boy that fascinated me. Perhaps it was simply the allure of the unknown; he was, as I have said, the first person I had seen that was not an elf or another sylvan, and therefore strange and new. Perhaps I was simply looking for an excuse to disobey the elders.

Whatever my reasons, I approached the boy, spoke to him and healed his broken leg. We exchanged names, and I learned that he was Arthur Pendragon, a prince and the son of the King of Theriven. He was in the Westerwood, rather than at home in Camelot, because his father had brought him to Lothiliviel to meet his future bride. I then helped him find his way back to the lupus guards who were looking for him, and went on my way with mixed feelings: I was happy to have helped Arthur, and to have used my powers to do something good for another person, but also felt nervous and guilty because I had broken a rule.

I had originally hoped that I might be able to hide my infraction from the rest of my village, but it was not to be. My younger sister Maie had followed me and seen everything, and naturally she immediately told our mother, who was horrified and dragged me before the village elders. For breaking one of the cardinal rules and potentially endangering the enclave, I was banished and sent out to roam the forest alone, and that might have been my fate for the rest of my life had I not encountered Arthur, for a second time, five weeks later.

During those weeks, while I had been living wild in the forest, he had been in Lothiliviel in the lap of luxury. However, he had grown tired of the strictly vegetarian diet of the eledhel and had persuaded his father that they should take a hunting party into the Westerwood to obtain some meat. In his youthful enthusiasm for the hunt, the boy had been separated from the rest of the party, and subsequently cornered by a large, brown mother bear protecting her cubs.

As I happened upon the scene, a paw the size of a dinner-plate was poised above the young prince’s head, about to deal a crushing blow. Leaping forward, I pushed Arthur out of the way, the bear’s claws leaving three gashes down the side of my face. I carry the scars to this day, but the boy survived unharmed and has now ruled in Camelot these last nineteen years, in his father’s place.

For saving the life of his son and heir, King Uther rewarded me with a place in his court, as assistant to his healer. It was not very many years before I was the royal healer myself, my master having declared that he had no more to teach me; indeed, he had learnt more from me than I ever learnt from him.

I am now forty-four years old, and I have been a lupus for the last nineteen of those. When I was twenty-five, I came before Arthur and his father, having thought about the matter at great length, and petitioned to become a member of their pack. My petition was accepted as a fair reward for my twelve years of service in Camelot, and I was turned at the next full moon. The King and Prince were delighted to find that I was an Omega, the first the pack had seen in nearly half a century, but their feelings could not compare to the joy I felt at finally having a place to belong.

A picture of Tris:
http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h464/Kaylin88100/Sylvan2-Tris11.png

Sylvans:
http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h464/Kaylin88100/Sylvans-1.png

[Lightningsword]

He looks wise. I believe that story.

[Author]

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