Characters of Bradshaw

Over the last couple of weeks I've been poking at an outline for the story i want to set in faerie-haunted Bradshaw, based on my home town. Most of this has been figuring out what I want to write about.

I am mostly a discovery writer. I get an idea in my head, run with it for a while, and this works as long as I can keep momentum going. When it stalls out, however I run into trouble. Time and time again it happens that I get to a certain point, and find I don't know where to go next.

This sort of stop-and-start is great for an amateur, but I want to move on into the big leagues. I want to cook up a story and finish it. So for this project I've started outlining scenes and characters.

Getting ideas for neat characters has not been a problem for me. Fleshing them out may be problematic, but getting a core idea for a character is not. So I've been building ideas for the characters I want for this story, and here's what I've come up with:

Character notes:

Mr. Silver is a True Fae who is trapped on Earth because of his obsession with trying to create life. He is an exceptionally talented Fetchmaker, and is convinced he can make fetches that are better than the originals he kidnaps and sells to other fae. He is Gepetto trying to make his precious little Pinocchios into real boys. He's come close, but sometimes his fetches fail. To prove that he can create life (by his definition), he weaves a clause into the contracts he takes...the people he replaces will inevitably return back to the real world and have to face down the fetches that have supplanted them. To date, all of these contests have been in the changeling's favor, but Mr. Silver is convinced that soon one of his doppelgangers will win. Janet's counterpart has just escaped her master and is returning home, so Mr. Silver is eager to do everything he can to give Janet the tools she needs to destroy her other half.

Janet is a fetch created by Mr. Silver to replace an artist he abducted as part of a contract. She was created 10-12 years ago, in between Winter and Spring Semesters at Bradshaw College. She has lost her ability to create art. She's decent at reproductions, still lifes, portraits, and the like, but suffers from a lack of truly original content. The stuff she produces comes off as nice, but not especially innovative. After being told by a well-meaning teacher that “there's a fine line between being inspired by something and simply copying it,” Janet gave up her dream of being an artist and instead started to study business. After graduating, she decided she still wanted to be involved in the art world, so she started a Gallery called “Reflections” showcasing works that showcase images that reflect the human condition. One of her clients is, in fact, Mr. Silver, who pawns off failed fetches as manikin sculptures. Janet is married to Henry Atwood, an artist she met while setting up her gallery. They're talking about adopting a child because Janet seems to be infertile.

Jack Flash (true name unknown for now) was an investigative reporter who explored and debunked the paranormal. He came to Bradshaw to look into rumors and ghost stories, but one of those ghost stories (the tale about Ivy House) turned out to be real. Jack got stranded in the Hedge, captured by a goblin slaver party lead by The Cheshire Cat, and sold to The Gentleman With Thistledown Hair (may want a different name). He was turned into a candle in The Gentleman's hall because the Gentleman “liked his spark”, and was forced to endure constant pain from the flames and being unable to move, speak, or even close his eyes. He spent ten years in Faerie this way, until a maid (another person stolen from our world) came to the castle. She hummed a snatch of one of Jack's favorite songs (“Jumpin' Jack Flash” by the Rolling Stones), which allowed him to remember that he'd once been human and escape. He tried to bring the maid with him, but they were separated in the Hedge and he was forced to go on alone. Jack came back to find that only half the time he'd endured in Faerie had passed on earth, and that something was living his life in his place. He came across his fetch in bed with his wife, and killed the both of them in a rage, after which he burned down his old house and fled. He returned to Bradshaw to find and destroy all the links to the Hedge he can, so that no one would have to suffer what he went through. He's taken to hunting down fetch, destroying them, and stealing their shadows, which he hopes to return to the people they replaced. He's paranoid and prone to violence, and doesn't have a reliable income. He acts as a foil to Janet.

“Jill” is the real Janet, freshly escaped from Arcadia. She was taken in college, and for her only a few years have passed. She's much younger than her fetch because of this. She spent most of her durance forced to tend her master's garden of stained glass flowers, stealing colors from the mortal world to please his sensibilities. She will bear a few oddments of that sort with her. Her time in Faerie has left her brittle, like the glass she worked with, though not to the same extent that Jack was changed. She has no idea what to do now that she's free, and jack will be pushing her to confront and destroy her counterpart.

Henry Atwood is a local artist/writer that met Janet through her attempts to start a gallery. They worked on the gallery together, fell in love, and married. I don't know more about him yet.

I'm also working with a program called Dramatica, which is a group of story theories which I've read in the past and enjoyed. Dramatica was developed for screenwriters, but it's really good for a lot of different types of writing. I'm using it as an attempt to get a handle on my story, as well as Dan Well's 7-Point System, which I've pimped on this blog before. I expect that as I write and discover, I'll toss parts of the outline away, but it will be good exercise. We'll see the fruits of this as I post more bits from the outline up here.

Bubbling ideas -- The Bradshaw Story

In the next couple of days I'm going to start posting bits of information on my current project, "The Bradshaw Story." I don't have a title for this thing yet...right now it's all sketchy outline, a few thoughts on character and setting, and a couple of short pieces written to get a sense of who the characters are and what the place is like.

The story is an urban fantasy set in faerie-haunted Bradshaw, Arizona, a place loosely based on my hometown of Prescott with choice picks from other places in the state and, of course, the introduction of the fey. Most of what I'll be posting is very rough, just ideas in vague shape and snippets of info. I'm very much in the place of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. It'll be fun. Hopefully.

The Seeds of a Character: Naros Miir, Part 2

In my last post, I began looking at the seeds that formed the character Naros Miir, which was also an exploration of how the city of Miir got its start. Today I look at how those ideas grew and changed to become the character you see today.

Summer, 2005: I decide to run a game set in Miir. Not only do I run this game on Shards, I also work out some ideas to run Miir in my Sunday night D&D group as a Ravenloft setting. Neither of these games goes very far. The Shards game stalls because getting a group of people on a chat-based client to meet regularly is like herding cats, so only a few things ever develop there. The Ravenloft game never gets past the character creation stage...instead, I wind up returning to the previous setting I was already running, my Rise of the Fallen campaign world.

However, the work I did for these stillborn games turn into canon for Miir. It was this period where I codified the Six Noble Houses, came up with several character ideas I'd use later, and develop the idea of Le Cirque d'Aberrations, the nightmare carnival where people are mutilated on stage for the pleasure of the gentry. There were no Caliban yet--that idea would develop thanks to the Ravenloft book (and later, the True20 RPG).

This was when I firmed up much of Miir's history.

The city was founded originally as a military garrison that guarded one of the very few navigable paths through the nearby mountains. When huge veins of gold, iron, and silver were discovered in the mountains after a giant earthquake, the town swelled in population. Within just a few short months, the place was a city, blessed with a mineral fortune and a chokehold on an important trade route. Since it was on the border of the kingdom's holdings, the Royalty couldn't keep close tabs on it, much as it wanted to, and the city grew into a seedy den of vice, scum, and villainy. And it was powerful. One of the nobles of the city, Naros Miir, desired to gain power over the city, from which he could build an empire, carving a claim from the weak monarchy. To do this, he needed support. He needed to control the city before he could rule an empire. And for that, he turned to Graumm.

 Naros Miir was, at this point, a ghost in the machine. He was the remnants of the mind of the first ruler of the city, who had built a device to control people's emotions by storing them and then playing the emotions back later. This device imprinted Naros' consciousness on it and became sentient. It began to manipulate the city's rulers through the emotion machine into creating policies that would ensure a steady stream of "food" for it through constant conflict and repression. This created a climate of intrigue and brutality that kept the machine fed, but limited its ability to create the empire it's ambitions demanded.

In these drafts, Naros Miir was an avatar of the Heart, an image projected by the machine to interact with normal people. The Shadows were manifested illusions that the heart generated to scare, mislead, and confuse the population, along with monsters that the Heart attracted to the city in order to breed fear of the darkness.

Sometime in 2006: I'm contacted by one Benjamin Midget, who runs a small company called Brushfire Press. He's recruiting authors for a bold experiment in collaborative worldbuilding called The World of Aldora. I love doing worldbuilding, so I checkout the site and create an author page. I decide to use Miir as my contribution to the Aldora project, and post a lot of my information from Shards and from the failed Ravenloft backstory. I take care to fit what I've written into the framework provided. I write a short story called "Alone in the Dark" about a thief being sentenced to spend seven nights fending off The Shadows.

Other writers on the site begin collaborating. A couple of authors take the stuff I've written about Miir and run with it, introducing excellent concepts. I chat and brainstorm with other writers, building ideas, sharpening concepts.

One of the major ideas I take from this is the concept of the Arani. The fey in Aldora are tied to certain natural objects. The fey get powers from this object, but are tied to it. If it gets destroyed or irrevocably altered somehow, the fairies tied to it die. I love this idea so much I incorporate it into the Miir mythos. Now the Heart of Miir is a corrupted Arani, and the Shadows become Shadow Fey, independent beings linked to the heart, drawing power from it. As I'm expanding "Alone in the Dark" into a full novella, I decide to use the Naros Miir ghost as the main antagonist. He changes from being an avatar of the heart to being a Shadow Fey, created from the Heart and based on the sentience within it but with his own independent existence and agenda. He is the first among equals in the Shadow Fey hierarchy, the incarnation of the city's first ruler and personification of Miir's nobility.

"Alone in the Dark" is what eventually becomes the First Night of The Tale of The Exile. In my first draft, Naros was more of an antagonist, and Gaven eventually got pulled into a fight with him. This didn't really work all that well. Naros had always existed as kind of a tricky mentor type, the Obi Wan with his own agenda. This is what Naros became in the rewrite.

2009: I lose my job as a delivery driver. One of the writers I chatted with regularly, C.A. Webster, contacts me and we get to chatting. Neither of us has had much to do with Aldora recently, but we talk about writing and editing and all sorts of stuff. One of the writing exercises I do is pull out a character and have C.A. question them, then let the character answer. This back-and-forth helps me develop my characters in spades, and strengthens their voice. Naros comes out quite frequently. This is about the time I start seriously rewriting "The Tale of the Exile" into a true novel. Naros' voice grows stronger and stronger.

2011: I'm just doing some research for a blog post, searching for songs on YouTube to match up with links on the soundtrack entry. While listening to a David Bowie song that has some random David Bowie clips, when all at once an image flow by. I search the webs for that image, do a little Photoshopping, and watch Naros appear. Here's the image for you all:

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Hello there, Naros. Nice to see you in the flesh.

The Seeds of a Character: Naros Miir, Part 1

Writers often get asked where they get their ideas from. This is not an easy question to answer, because the ideas that a writer uses often percolate and bounce between various forms before settling. Some ideas come to fruition quickly. Others simmer for years before finding expression, and then get shaped over time.

Naros Miir, the founder of the city that bears his name, is one of those long-running ideas that grew over time. I'm going to take a trip back through memory lane and try to piece together the bits that fashioned him. Be warned...this might be a bit like a magician explaining how his tricks are performed. I hope I don't disillusion you too much.

Sometime in 1997-1998: I'm getting ready for work early in the morning, so this was a summer job (since I was still in high school). I have MTV turned on and this is before it stopped playing music videos entirely but after it started relegating all the rock videos to the buttcrack-of-dawn timeslots. On comes the video for Nine Inch Nails "The Perfect Drug." This is my first exposure to NIN. I like it a lot. I watch for the song again so I can figure out what the song is called, who it's by, and where I can find it. I buy Lost Highway Soundtrack on cassette tape. This song gets a lot of play on my tape deck. The image of Trent Reznor in full goth mode is an image that sticks with me. The seed has been planted.

December 1998: The New Years issue of InQuest Gamer magazine, issue #45, arrives. You can see the eye-catching cover right above. I used to play a lot of Magic: The Gathering, so InQuest was useful to me as an MTG mag. However, by this time I was starting what would be a long relationship with roleplaying games, and InQuest also had a lot of RPG material in it at the time.

One of the columns is called "Legends." It's a column devoted to presenting ideas of places, objects, and people for use in RPGs. All of these articles include stats for use in various games, as well as a mock-up Magic: The Gathering card. This month's Legends has a picture of what looks like a building eating a person. The title of the article is "The Necropolis of Miir."

The article describes a genius loci--a living place. In this case, the Necropolis is a tower in the center of a city that was built by a sorcerer named Naros. The tower became sentient and has ruled in Naros' name ever since it ate the sorcerer's mind. Using rules and decrees it had the city built around it in three concentric rings with the nobles close to the center and the slums on the outskirts.

This is where the idea for Miir caught and held my attention. This is where I was first introduced to Naros. I didn't know at the time that the name had been borrowed from Jack Vance's Tales of a Dying Earth series--I'd learn that much later. It was this seed that grew into the Miir you see in The Tale of The Exile. But there were several more seeds to go.

Six months later: Another InQuest magazine brought a "Legends" column on Gruamm's Cathedral. The Order of Gruamm was a corrupt church that built an emotion battery into their cathedral. The idea was to store and playback emotions as a way of influencing the flock. However, the clerics of the cathedral found themselves addicted to the emotions they gathered, vicariously experiencing the feelings they stole. They needed their fix, so the priests were taking ever more risks influencing the flock to convert more members. They were also building new cathedrals in other cities to gain converts.

This would eventually provide me with the idea for the Heart of Miir, though that would come much later. Several years, in fact.

In between 2004 and 2005: By this time I'm in college and frequenting a roleplaying chat site called Shards. I decide to create a horror setting, and use the half-remembered InQuest articles as a basis for the seat of a family of vampires known as the Kajes that I've been playing on the site. The first posts I have set in Miir take place in February of 2004. The initial description is filled with cliched and overwrought language that I thought was really good at the time, talking about a city where the shadows occasionally ate people. Here's an example:

Miir, the City of Shadow, is aptly named. The great city lies nestled against the Black Mountains, a treacherous range of sharp and jagged peaks. The city follows suit, with monolithic Noble Houses extending like claws above the wretched huts and hovels of the commoners who live below. Great, spidery shadows fall everywhere here, and many folk, though they never speak of it, believe that things live in those shadows, and that, if one is unlucky, one would be swallowed up and never seen again.

 If this seems familiar, it's because I didn't modify the language much when I had Miir make the jump from Shards to Aldora. It was during this time that I developed the concepts of The Shadows, the Noble houses (not yet named...at this point I didn't even know how many there were), Miir's location as a mountainous desert city, the ruler being named Damien Kaje...so many things. If the InQuest articles were the seeds of my city, Shards was where it sprouted.

I can even give you the exact point at which Naros Miir, in his current incarnation, was born. I have the chat logs.

[10:58 PM 12/20/2004] Damien Kaje (Narration) - "It's a sad sight to see, isn't it, madam?" says a cultured voice from behind her, breaking her reverie. "All this dust and nothing. It isn't what I intended for the place."

[11:05 PM 12/20/2004] Lady of Tears - Visibly tenses for a moment, but it melts away.. The sudden sound after all this disturbing sights could make anyone a bit on the edge, even though she found such normal logic as that to be cowardly thinking. " Indeed it is.." Closing her eyes to focus on her composure for the time, before they open and gaze toward his feet. " What else would you expect of it, Kaje? Everything has it's prices.."

[11:09 PM 12/20/2004] Damien Kaje (Narration) - whoever the figure before her is, it certainly isn't Kaje. Oh, he has the same sharp cast to his features, the same long, shiny raven-black hair, and the same sense of pride and confidence the vampire exudes, but where Kaje is large and chiseled, like a block of cold marble, this man is softer and more delicate, more like porcelain. And, of course, Kaje isn't transparent. He chuckles. "Funny. That's what I told the vampire, when he first came here. He didn't listen to me, either."

 

[11:15 PM 12/20/2004] Lady of Tears - Eyes shift lightly, the curiosity almost overriding her sense of judgment on what could be a very delicate situation.. " And.. Who, exactly, are you if I may be so bold, Sir?.." Canting her head, assuming it was a noble who spoke, but would look toward this new arrival as it it were a peasant until further notice of this individual..

[11:17 PM 12/20/2004] Damien Kaje (Narration) - He bows. "My lady, I am Lord Naros Miir, First Master of the Tower." he smirks a little at himself, as if thinking of some obscure joke that only he found funny. "Or what's left of him, at any rate."

 This was the first appearance of the character that would develop into Gaven's nemesis. Naros Miir was originally just a projection of the sentient Heart of Miir, and the Shadows were originally just nebulous extensions of the Heart's will. The Shadows were just shadows that ate people, and Naros was a ghost. This would develop quite a lot later on during the next stage of Miir's development.

I'll get to that next time I post.

Ivthia

The Ivthian Subcontinent comprises nearly the entire southeastern quarter of the continent of Demurra. The population of Ivthia is primarily human, though they do not claim to have originated from the Western Isles and instead beleive their ancestral homelands lay somewhere to the east.

Ivthia is primarily semi-arid plateau, desert, and steppe, though small forests and marshes can be found in the coastal regions.

The Ivthian people have a clan-based, nomadic culture which espouses separation from the rest of the world, through violence if necessary. The city of Miir, the primary hub though which Ivthians conduct trade, is as much a fortress as a trading post and was built primarily to keep other cultures out.

During the Epoch of Dragons, great numbers of the beasts settled in the Targash and Western Ivthain mountain ranges, which helped enforce the legendary Ivthian isolation. The Ivthains revere dragons, and every generation a "dragon lord" is born who possesses the power to speak with the creatures and serves as an ambassador between the two races (though the draconic word for the Ivthian Dragonlord translates more accurately to "pet monkey" than "honored leader").

Ignorant Demurrans assume that the city of Miir is the capital of Ivthia, a mistake which most Miirians would make as well. Truthfully, most of the nomadic desert tribes view the "shadow-worshiping freaks" of Miir with only slightly less contempt than the "degenerate and decadent scum" who live to the west.

The Great Houses of Miir: House Dythanus

The following is an excerpt from  "The Traveler's Guide To Miir" by Volo Magrathe, published 1300 YA:


The Great House Of Dythanus is the youngest and most dynamic of the six Houses of Miir. It holds interests in the Physician's Guild and the Entertainer's Guild.

House Dythanus (the clan elders eschew the "von" honorific used by the other Great houses) is unique in that it is the only house primarily composed of a non-human race. The Dythanus family are the descendants of a clan of elven physicians, expatriated from Horeti for unethical practices.

History: When the Dythanus clan settled in Miir (circa 1174 YA), they sold their services to House Von Mordok. The alchemists coveted the elvish medicines and herbal recipes, and entertained notions of using this boost in their power base to reclaim the Tower of Miir, which the house had not controlled for centuries. House Von Mordok also wanted to check the recklessness of House Von Hastur, which had spent most of the 12th century engineering the fall of several of the oldest institutions in Miir, the Great Houses of Miir and Morgan. This paid off in 1179 YA, as House Von Mordok succeeded in ousting House Von Kaje from the Tower.

The Dythanus family expected to be well-rewarded for their help in raising their allies the Mordoks to Lordship. What they got was more demands from their masters, barriers placed on their ability to rise high within the ranks of the House, and about as much respect as the servants who shined the Mordoks' shoes. This lead to festering resentment. When House Von Kaje took back the Tower in 1196 YA, the Mordoks blamed the elves, imposing even more sanctions on elvish medical practices through the Magicians and Alchemists Guild, forbidding them to treat patients outside of their house, and generally being royal pains in the backside. The Mordoks thought they could whip the Dythanus elves into submission. Instead, they were sharpening a dagger pointed at their own heart.

Forbidden to make money off medical treatments for Miir's population, the elves could still make money off the medicines themselves. The first decade of the 13th century saw an explosion of narcotic use among Miir's lower classes, especially use of Dreamlily (an elvish plant that causes hallucinations in humans). The Alchemist's Guild sent investigators to try and track down the supply of these narcotics, but since this was considered scut work it was delegated to the elves. Since the investigators were also the ones with the supply, not a blessed thing was done about the "Dreaming Plague."

Also during the turn of the century a great number of new gambling halls started operating in the Cobwebs, halls owned on paper by Miirian citizens but overseen by pale, sharp-toothed, pointy-eared patrons. The same thing happened to a number of brothels. Word of mouth spread that those establishments with "the elvish touch" were the best--the brothels had the cleanest and loveliest girls, while the gambling halls paid the best odds. Elvish moneylenders offered deceptively good loans to those seeking quick investments -- the term "loan shark" hadn't made it's way to Miir from Arden yet. Many of these loans were made with money given to the Dythanus family from House Von Krueger, one of House Von Mordok's perennial enemies.

By 1206 YA, the Dythanus family was ready to make its final play, openly breaking from House Von Mordok to petition for Great House status from the Lord of the Tower. Lord Rudolf Von Kaje hose to grant the petition, and House Dythanus was born. It was the first Great House to rise since the end of the Imperial Occupation. In order to consolidate itself, House Dythanus threw open its doors to all elves and half-breeds in the city. Though the House has since closed those doors, this initial boost gave the House the numbers it needed to weather the retaliation of its former employer. To further cement itself, the House hired on a band of mercenaries lead by the ferocious Ten Monkey "Halfcheek" Xien.

The house took the motto "ingratis servire nefas," which is Imperial Demurran for "It is wrong to serve the ungrateful." This would turn out to be hauntingly ironic.

In 1217 YA, at the Annual Ball on All Fool's Night, Lorwyn Dythanus had an argument with Ten Monkey Xien, allegedly about the fact that Xien and his, shall we say, peculiar habits and customs were being flaunted for all of Miir to see, while his combat prowess was set by the wayside. Xien was of the opinion that Lorwyn had hired his band to act as warriors to defeat Dythanus enemies, not clowns to parade about for the elves' amusement. Lorwyn ended the conversation with the infamous phrase "Your job is not to question your betters. It is to do as your told! House Dythanus is the teat that feeds you sodomites, so get on your knees and suck!"

Xien stormed out of the ball. That night, he gathered all his followers, along with House Dythanus' servants, eunuchs, and concubines, and robbed the Lair of thousands of aecus in gold, silver, precious gems, and fireglass artwork.

Overnight house Dythanus went from prestigious up-and-comer to city laughingstock. Worse, the Von Mordoks chose this as their opportunity to strike back at the upstart elves, and the two forces got embroiled in a House War. That conflict ended in the Eagle Street Massacre, when both sides of the conflict were set upon by a motley force consisting of soldiers, whores, and eunuchs. The misfit band routed both sides, then vanished into the Belly.

This was the opening battle of what would become known as the Gorgeous Gang Rebellion. Over the next several months the Houses were attacked by the Gang, which seemed to be growing larger with every engagement. House Von Jeggett (the current ruling house) put the city under martial law and evacuated The Pen, and the Great Houses all put aside their enmities to hunt down the Gorgeous Gang. The Gang managed to outwit the Houses and had an uncanny knack for slipping behind the house lines, but eventually they were surrounded and cut off. The Gorgeous Gang made its last stand at the Drunken Crane bar and brothel, inflicting 3 to 1 casualties on the House forces before they were slaughtered to a man(/woman/eunuch). Xien's body was never positively identified, fueling rumors him raising havoc and striking at the nobility long after his probable death.

House Dythanus was not nearly as crippled as the other houses were by this fight. Their main contribution to the battles had been in support and medical roles, so their forces remained relatively lightly damaged. The elves used this opportunity to grab a firm hold on the prostitution industry of Miir's back alleys. Whereas before the house had been the largest player in that field, they became the only player. This monopoly allowed House Dythanus to pull in the funds it needed to push out independent pawnbrokers and moneylenders. With control over both gambling and moneylending, the elves prospered. They even managed to recover about a third of the treasure Xien had stolen from them (though the rest is still lost to history and rumors of The Gorgeous Gang Treasure has fueled folklore ever since).

The House grew so powerful, in fact, that in 1225 House Dythanus ousted House Von Jeggett from the Tower, an impressive feat for a house less than two decades old and still smarting from the Gorgeous Gang fiasco. This moment of glory was short-lived...the Nobles of Miir didn't take well to being ruled over by a foreign species. The Dythanus only held on to the Tower for 11 years, one of the shortest tenures as rulers of Miir since the Imperial Occupation.

Still, while House Dythanus hasn't managed to rise quite to the heights of it's former glory, it has remained a powerful force in city politics. The Physician's Guild is widely regarded as having the finest doctors in the city, as well as the most accomplished midwives. The Entertainer's Guild oversees all the city's prostitution, gambling, bliss dens, and theatres.

In recent years House Dythanus has started experimenting with alchemy and magic, accepting half-bloods and caliban into its ranks in defiance of the Magician's Guild ban on cultivating such members. House Von Mordok regards this development as a threat to their existence, since the elves have a strong alchemy tradition in their study of herbalism and medical remedies and it wouldn't be difficult for them to turn such knowledge to military purposes. There is no proof that the elves are secretly training an army of wizards, but then, there wasn't much proof that the elves were running brothels and gambling dens before they broke from House Von Mordok, either. It may be very interesting to see how this situation develops in the future.

Cast of Characters

Gaven Morren - Our hero. Gaven is a thief from the far-away city of Calisapas, who made the mistake of getting caught in a crime in Miir and then made the worse mistake of accepting the punishment of Exile to The Shadows.

Jessamine Weiss/The Other - A teenage girl possessed by a dangerous spirit tying to escape Miir. She and Gaven team up and try to escape together. Naros has a mysterious interest in her.

Eric Weiss - One of the city guards. Promises to help Gaven escape Miir, as he feels Exile is a punishment that shouldn't be inflicted on anyone. Is also running from his own past.

Lord Jereth Dythanus - One of Miir's nobles. Captured Gaven after he tried to escape Miir through the sewers. Has plans of some sort for Gaven, which the thief isn't keen on learning about. Poisoned Gaven with a hallucinogen to convince him to remain in his custody for a night.

Aelia Dythanus - A nurse of the Physician's Guild of Miir, who acts as Gaven's guide after being taken hostage by the thief during a bout of drug-fueled paranoia.

The Shadows - Legendary monsters of Miir, shrouded in myth. No one can agree if they are ghosts, demons, manifestations of the evil in men's hearts, or figments of people's imaginations. They are the primary antagonists of the story.

Naros Miir - One of The Shadows. Manifests as a pale man with dark hair and eyes hidden in shadow, clad in noble finery and smelling of rose perfume. Has an interest in Gaven, and has offered him several deals to reduce the horrors the thief will face during his sentence in exchange for questionable acts; thus far, Gaven has refused his temptations.

Despair - One of The Shadows. Has no physical form; instead, Despair manifests as a free-roaming patch of darkness that "speaks." Typically attempts to break its victim's will before it strikes.

The Hangman - One of The Shadows. Manifests as a silent, muscular man wearing an executioner's mask with no eyeholes and carrying a rope tied in a noose. May be a manifestation of Miirian justice.

The Exile - One of The Shadows. Is the manifestation of Exile, and, as such, has a vested interest in keeping Gaven alive, though his ability to interfere is limited by whatever rules govern The Shadows.

The Jester - A Caliban, a person twisted and deformed by magic. The ringmaster of Le Cirque d'Aberrations, a twisted circus where troublemakers are tortured for the pleasure of Miir's nobility. It is said he likes to humble the proud.

Le Cirque d'Aberrations - a troupe of performers composed of Caliban, people twisted and deformed by magic. The main attraction of their shows are troublemakers tortured for the pleasure of Miir's nobility.

The Bullyboys - A band of thugs in the employ of Jereth Dythanus.

Gotz Rammstien -  Leader of Jereth Dythanus' squad of bullyboys, bulky and strong. Holds a personal grudge against Gaven after the thief kills one of his friends.

Cobb - A bullyboy in Jereth Dythanus's employ.

The Redcaps - Murderous goblins that hunt the streets of Miir at night. Gaven has several unpleasant run-ins with them.

Tommy - Treacherous Redcap guide who leads Gaven and Eric into peril.

Miir - The City of Shadows, a hub of trade between Demurra and Ivthia. The setting of the story. Some people say the city is haunted by dark spirits known as The Shadows. Some say the city itself is alive.

The Elisdee Lily

The Lilium Elisdee, also known colloquially as dreamlily, is a bright orange and purple flower often cultivated by the elves of Elisar, though its use has spread throughout Demurra, particularly in Heath and Arden. Dreamlily bulbs are edible, but contain a hallucinogenic chemical that causes delirium in humans and mild euphoria in elves. This has lead to its cultivation as a narcotic. L. elisdee extract is also useful as an antiseptic, fighting off bacterial infection and putrefaction, which means that it remains marginally legal, but it is a controversial herb no matter where it crops up.

Use of Elisdee has given rise to a stereotype in Horeti of Dream Doctors, physicians who lure the sick into addiction via unscrupulous use of dreamlily as part of their treatments, promising them the visions that dreamlily produces on a regular basis in return for ever-increasing payments. About a century ago, in an effort to crack down on these unsavory characters, the government of Horeti outlawed the practice and cracked down on a powerful family of Dream Doctors, who fled Elisar for Demurra and eventually settled in Miir, forming House Dythanus.

Not every human exposed to dreamlily delirium enjoys the experience. Sometimes the hallucinations produced take the form of horrific and unsettling images, especially if the person is under stress during their intoxication. Dreamlily visions have the sort of random qualities that are typical of dreams, especially in higher doses, and these qualities may prove confusing and alarming to those who aren't used to the experience. Regular users try to minimize these effects, usually through taking the drug only in pleasant surroundings and not exerting themselves. A user not in thse srots of controlled conditions become dangerous to themselves and others, as they may attempt to act on the visions they experience.

The World of Aldora

The tale of Gaven Morren began as a dream of a world-building project called Aldora. The idea was of a shared world, using the Creative Commons, to give authors tools and weave a tapestry of ideas together, building on the ideas of others.

Miir was my contribution to this project. I wrote pages and pages of information on this city here, and used a few things from other authors. Other writers, in turn, took some of my ideas and fleshed them out in interesting and different ways. I plan on posting may of the Miir-specific background I posted there on this blog, but I feel I should acknowledge the project that helped me get this far in the first place.

Feel free to visit the AldoraWorld site and browse around. There is a LOT of information there, more than I could possibly fit into this story. And hey, if you feel like joining, it would be great to see the porject picking up steam again.

The Six Noble Houses of Miir

The city of Miir is ruled by an aristocracy of six extended families known collectively as the Houses of Miir. Each of the Houses has control of at least one of the major trade guilds that allow the city to function. Each House is comprised not only of the families themselves but various members of Miir's gentry, guild inductees, and private mercenaries, and various rivalries and power struggles between interests are a common aspect of Miirian politics. Armed conflict between the Houses is not uncommon, though most such skirmishes fall far short of full-scale civil war.

Originally, there were a total of 13 Houses, but time and infighting have whittled down the original families, and new houses have formed. At various points in Miir's 850 year history, there were as many as 18 Houses and as few as three.

Each of the houses has one over-reaching goal: to control the Tower of Miir. The head of a House that controls the Tower not only rules his house but sets policy for the entire city, and gains tremendous power. Plotting control of the Tower (and removing the current Ruling House from power) is a favorite pastime for all the House Rulers. In practice, however, the fall of a house from the Tower is cause for civil war, and most House Rulers prefer to work to keep the other Houses from gaining enough power to both take and keep the Tower rather than attack the Ruling Family directly and risk open warfare.

House Kaje

House Kaje seal
by Anson Brehmer

The current Ruling House of Miir is House Kaje. House Kaje is one of the older houses in Miir, with a line stretching back to the great war between elves and humans. The Kaje family controls the Mason's guild, and they like to claim that most of Miir was built by them. They also have a strong interest in peacekeeping around Miir, and fund the city watch. This gives them a lot of influence (It's easy to win an argument when you can say "we guard you while you sleep and keep your homes from caving in on you") and there are rumors that House Kaje masons have installed secret passages in many of the buildings they work on, passages that only the House Elders know about and can use.

House Kaje is also related to House Miir, the family line that founded the city. The Miir bloodline married into the House before House Miir fell to the machinations of the Von Hasturs, and Damien Kaje himself is a direct male descendant of Naros Miir, the first Lord of Miir. Strange rumors about Damien Kaje abound: he's never seen during the day, he hates holy symbols, he has wings and flies around at night, etc. None of these rumors have proven true, but of all the leaders of Miir he does seem to have the least to fear from The Shadows.

Lord Damien Kaje is the current head of House Kaje, in addition to his duties as the Lord of the Tower.

House Von Jeggett

House Von Jeggett seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Jeggett is the strongest of the Houses in terms of force of arms, but the house is in serious trouble. House Von Jeggett has traditionally controlled Miir's military and was a formidable power during the Human-Elf wars that occurred during the start of the Current Epoch. However, Miir has faced no serious military threats in over a century. The constant vigilance that House Von Jeggett maintains is appearing more and more pointless with every passing year, and the mercenaries and bounty hunters of House Kaje have largely supplanted House Von Jeggett's role in protecting the precious trade caravans that supply Miir.

The increasingly desperate House elders are contemplating starting war with other Ivthain tribes, simply to get the resources they need from House Kaje. They have also been training Caliban, mutants born of twisted magic, into a fighting force in a bid to compete with House Kaje's forces. It remains to be seen how well this gamble plays out for the beleaguered house. There are rumors that the House has actually learned how to create Caliban within its ranks. One source of this rumor centers around their support of Le Cirque d'Aberrations, a traveling carnival that has set up shop in Miir, in which all members of the crew are Caliban and new members seem to appear with alarming regularity.

The current head of the house is Lord Oswald Von Jeggett.

House Mordok

House Mordok seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Mordok is the oldest of the six Great Houses. House Mordok was one of the original 13 Great houses and has survived mainly because the House Elders prefer to rule from behind the scenes rather than overtly control the Tower. This house has only gained control of the city 5 times since Miir's inception, but remains a power to be reckoned with because they control a resource none of the other Houses have yet been able to match: House Mordok has magic. It is an open secret that House Mordok controls the city's Wizard Guild, which regulates the use of magic and the availability of enchanted items. Practice of wizardry in Miir without a Guild registration is forbidden. The guild is very picky about who it allows to have a license, and very few non-humans make the cut. This exclusivity keeps magic in the hands of the "deserving," or so the House claims. This attitude, however, may prove the house's undoing.

House Dythanus has recently opened its doors to magic users who are unable or unwilling to bend to the Wizard's Guild rule. Many Half-Bloods, unable to find acceptance anywhere else, have been welcomed with open arms by House Dythanus, and rumors are spreading that Dythanus is secretly training magic-users and breeding Half-Bloods within its ranks. House Mordok has no proof of these rumors, but it keeps a watchful eye on the young house, waiting for any pretext to go to war.

Lord Wilhelm Mordok is the current head of this house, though his brother Cireulan Mordok holds the title of Archmage in the mages guild. The two do not get along.

House Von Hastur

House Von Hastur seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Hastur is one of the oldest houses in Miir, behind House Mordok. It is also one of the wealthiest houses, behind House Von Krueger. It has controlled Miir more times than any other house except House Miir. This has always been a problem for the House elders...House Von Hastur always seems to come in second best, and that thought gnaws at the elders and fuels their ambition.

House Von Hastur controls the Merchant's Guild of Miir, and has a lot of economic pull within the community. The House has the reputation of being power hungry, ambitious, and untrustworthy, and this reputation has worked against it. House Von Hastur is rapidly losing ground to House Von Krueger. Independent merchants have banded together in an attempt to fight against the Merchant Guild's oppressive and heavy-handed policies, and the house elders suspect Von Krueger support. The shadow war that is brewing between the two houses threatens the very stability of the city, and House Kaje has yet to step in to this dispute.

A very weird rumor circulating about this house is that the scions are all part of a cult dedicated to a figure known only as "The King in Yellow." The rumor has it that all the house scions are required to undergo bizarre and blasphemous initiation rights and have a strange glyph known as "The Yellow Sign" tattooed somewhere on their bodies, granting them magical powers. Most folk disregard this rumor.

The current head of this house is Lord Boris Von Hastur.

House Dythanus

House Dythanus Seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Dythanus is the youngest of the Six Houses, having come into existence scarcely a century ago. The house was formed by a clan of Elven expatriates fleeing south for some unknown crime. The Elves quickly took root in the city, taking control of various gambling, vice, and prostitution rings. House Dythanus specializes in "entertainments." They work to provide a good time to anyone looking for it. They provide outlets for prostitution, gambling, and narcotics as well as more legitimate venues such as theaters and opera houses. House Dythanus is also one of the more cosmopolitan houses, accepting members who are human, Half-Bloods, or elven, as well as Shadow Fey and Caliban. This diversity has helped the house gain power, but has not helped its reputation among the other Houses.

Another reason House Dythanus is not taken as seriously by the other Houses is the fact that they were the ones who brought Ten Monkey 'Halfcheek' Xian, who later rebelled against the houses and formed the Gorgeous Gang, into Miir in the first place. This embarassing loss of face has never been entirely forgotten.

Hungry for advancement in Miirian politics, House Dythanus has recently opened its doors to magic users who are unable or unwilling to bend to the Wizard's Guild rule. Many Half-Bloods, unable to find acceptance anywhere else, have been welcomed with open arms by House Dythanus, and rumors are spreading that Dythanus is secretly training magic-users and breeding Half-Bloods within its ranks. House Mordok has no proof of these rumors, but it keeps a watchful eye on the young house, waiting for any pretext to go to war.

Lady Sylvia Dythanus is the current head of the house.

House Von Krueger

House Von Krueger Seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Krueger controls the Miner's Guild, and is the wealthiest of the Great Houses. They are also seen as one of the weakest of the Houses, because the House has never yet gained control of the Tower of Miir. This perceived weakness rankles the house elders, for they control the most powerful guild in the city. Without the Miner's Guild, the city would grind to a halt, and the house elders have entertained the idea of creating an embargo on their minerals at one time or another to reinforce that fact. However, since such an act would likely result in an open House War, such plans have never seen fruition.

Another mark of weakness is the House's reputation for decadence and excess. Rumors of the house elder's sexual appetites range from merely lascivious to rumors of truly bizzare fetishes, incest, and extreme deviancy in the ranks of the scions of the House. No sane Miirian wants to know the truth behind the rumors of House Von Krueger "Parties."

House Von Krueger also controls the Miirian slave trade. Slaves, indebted criminals, and indentured servants make up the bulk of House Von Kreugar's workforce, and the House has been known to fund press-gangs when workers get scarce.

While the Miner's Guild is powerful, it has very little influence inside the city proper, since most of the mines are far from the city limits or deep beneath the city streets. Instead, the Merchant's Guild, run by House Von Hastur, has the most in-city influence, and rivalries between the two guilds are fierce. in recent years, House Von Hastur has been rapidly losing ground to House Von Krueger. Independent merchants have banded together in an attempt to fight against the Merchant Guild's oppressive and heavy-handed policies, and the house elders suspect Von Krueger support. The shadow war that is brewing between the two houses threatens the very stability of the city, and House Kaje has yet to step in to this dispute.

Lady Vanessa von Krueger is the current head of this house.

The City of Miir

There is a darkness here, my friend. It is a darkness that does not sleep. It is not banished by light--merely hidden. When the light is gone, the shadows will rush back, thicker and darker than before. The City of Shadows was aptly named.

Miir broods, nestled against the northern arm of the Western Ivthian Mountains. It is the very gateway to Ivthia for those from Arden or Garamond, squatting at the end of the only reliable pass through the treacherous range of jagged volcanic peaks between Ivthia and the rest of Demurra.

The city is shaped like a wheel, inside a pair of concentric walls that separate and isolate the citizens. In the center of the city is The Bastion, where monolithic Noble Houses extend like claws into the sky, all surrounding the castle known as The Tower of Miir, which stands a full two hundred feet high and can be seen from any point in the city limits. The great Bastion Wall cuts this area off from the rest of the city, and the gates are well manned, well barred, and (most important of all) well lit after sunset and long into the night.

Once past The Bastion Wall you enter The Pen, the most populous section of the city. Successful merchants, minor nobles, and the halls of the Trade Guilds that control almost all aspects of Miirian life are all found here. Surrounding this section is The Pen Wall, which is neither as well built nor as well kept as The Bastion is. At night, after the curfew settles, the brazers that light the streets are allowed to burn out, leaving this section of the city at the mercy of The Shadows.

Once through the Pen, you enter a labyrinthine spiderweb of hovels and crude huts called The Cobweb, where the poorest of the poor live. This part of the city is often ignored by the watch and the poor citizens left to rot until the next press gang for the mines is needed.

Miir lies on the only navigable route through the Western Ivthian Mountains to Arden and Garamond, and control of this important trade route is the city's life blood. It depends heavily on outside trade for food, since most of the plateau on which it rests is rocky, barren, and choked with gray volcanic ash from nearby Mount Morrine. Miir is blessed with an abundance of mineral wealth, and much of the population makes its living mining iron, gold, and other metals from the rich seams that open up after the earthquakes that rock this land, or else in the foundries that smelt the iron using volcanic heat. Volcanic tunnels snake under much of Miir, and have been converted into a reservoir and sewer system that fills the wells and fountains.

The city of Miir is ruled by an aristocracy of six extended families known collectively as The Six Noble Houses of Miir. Each of the Houses has control of at least one of the major trade guilds that allow the city to function. Each House is comprised not only of the families themselves but various members of Miir's gentry, guild inductees, and private mercenaries, and various rivalries and power struggles between interests are a common aspect of Miirian politics. Armed conflict between the Houses is not uncommon, though most such skirmishes fall far short of full-scale civil war.

This place is known as "The City of Shadows" for a reason: legend has it that the shadows are alive, and they are the true power of the city and surrounding area. When the Shadows descend on a person, they say, he might suddenly become lost in a part of the city he's lived in all his life and wander for hours, even days...if he's lucky. If he's unlucky, there are all manner of monsters said to live in the Shadows, and sometimes the Shadows themselves supposedly drain people of their life, or making folk just vanish into thin air.

What, exactly, the Shadows are remains a mystery, but their effect on the lives of average citizens is keenly felt. Many Mirrians are terrified of the dark, and try to keep a candle or other light source on around them at all times, and purposely eliminating a person's flame is an intolerable insult, usually met with violence. Every resident of Miir knows a tale of a person misled of vanished due to the shadows, and no resident of this city will open its doors to anyone after midnight, and will try to repel anyone who tries to force their way inside.