sythyry | Crew of the Strayway

Name	Species, Sex, Age	Partners, etc.	Job on the Ship	Wrongness	Notes
Arfaen	Cani woman, 40's	Mellilot; mother of Quendry	Chief day chef	Traff
Blenny	Orren woman, 30's	single	Assorted; mainly cleaning	Hideous and maimed. She is always partly in water-form and partly in land-form. Not our usual sort, I think -- I don't know who, if anyone, she would like to love.
Calla	Herethroy co-lover, 30's	single	Chief evening and night chef	Traff.
Este	Rassimel man, 60's	Phaniet	Supreme Repairiste Of That Which Is Splintered Assunder. Or, carpenter and handyman.	Traff.
Feralan	Rassimel boy, age 10; son of Zascalle and Thiane, with technical help from Este.	too young by far!	Grand Assistant	Traff parents
Grinwipey	Khtsoyis man, 40's	single	Armed Guard and Chief Couturier	Khtsoyis (which is not technically 'wrong' but not very far off)
Hops	Herethroy both-female, 30's	Tingula	Steward	Both-female, traff	Being both-female and traff would be bad enough, but Hops is very political about it. I did not dare leave her behind in Vheshrame.
Inconnu	Orren youth, 28	none just now	As needed, but trying to work in the kitchen on Calla's shift.	Traff.	Blatantly unabashedly traff. Traff is his life. For most of us, our consorts are our life, but traff itself is not.
Jyondre	Orren man, 30's	Yerenthax	Native Guide to Srineia; Teacher of the Strange Tongue of Srineian; General Factotum	Traff. In Vheshrame, he was foreign, too, but not so on Srineia.	I no longer have a crush on Jyondre. I never did anything about it, even when I had one.
Kantele	Rassimel woman, 90's	none	My secretary, as she has been for some fifty years.	Libertine, and/or traff.	I am still not sure whether she was in love with her late consort or not, but they were together for some forty years, which has to count for something. A person of some stature; if she had not been traff, she surely would have been an esquire by now.
Lithia	Rassimel / Orren shifter hybrid girl, 30	none	passenger	shifter hybrid. A fortiori traff.	My ward; my responsibility.
Mellilot	Herethroy woman, 40's	Arfaen; quasi-mother of Quendry	Kitchen staff; factotum	Traff
Ochirion	Rassimel boy, age 7; son of Zascalle and Thiane	none! Heavens!	Extreme Assistant	Traff parents
Phaniet	Cani woman, 60's	Este	Wizard's Assistant	Traff	My assistant in matters magical and mundane. I scooped her out of the on-again off-again Vheshrame Academy Traff Student Association. She knows most of my secrets, especially technical ones. A person of fairly high status; her father is a baron, though even if she was cisaffectionate she would not be likely to inherit the title herself.
Quendry	Cani boy, age 7, child of Arfaen and, maybe sometime, Mellilot	none!	Supreme Assistant	traff mother; arguably abusive father
Rheng	Sleeth man, 40's	none?	Guard	Sleeth, which is not technically wrong. Libertine.	I would not call Rheng traff; I would not call Rheng exactly capable of love for anyone but himself. But he will couple with whoever amuses him.
Sythyry	Zi Ri, 160	none, alas.	Chief Tourist. Refiller of the Great Vat of Money. Owner of the Strayway. Auxiliary Pilot. Auxiliary Couturier. Chief Smith. Chief Healer. Wizard. Gatherer of The Doom.	traff. Gathers The Doom.
Thiane	Cani woman, 40's	Zascalle	Teacher of the Bouncing Youngsters	traff	A fair hand at sorcery, but she doesn't do it very much anymore.
Tingula	Orren woman, 30's	Hops	~~Keeping Hops out of trouble~~ Assorted Arrangements and Productions. Queen of Entertainments.	traff; performer	A juggler and songwriter.
Umbers	Herethroy girl, 30	none (?)	Assistant to the Assistants	both-female-chaser and alarmingly sophisticated pervert	I am not entirely sure where she learned all of that ... I don't know half of it, and I've had well more than a century of reasonably exotic experience.
Vae (Vaisessasilmin)	she-nendrai, 140's	Oixe, but they can't see each other for a century or so	Lieutenant Tourist. Terrifying Ophidian Defense Grid.	Monster. One of the scariest of monsters, in fact.
Windigar	Orren man, 50's	none just now	Pilot	not wrong
Yerenthax	Gormoror woman, 30's	Jyondre	Stereotypical Guard	traff	Yerenthax is an Academy-trained magic student with specialities in Destroc and Ruloc (naturally), as well as a reasonably skilled wielder of the battle-axe. Her love for Jyondre has been underlined in blood more than once.
Zascalle	Rassimel woman, 40's	Thiane	Accountant. Chief Buyer of the Multitude of Necessities and Necessary Luxuries.	traff

[All ages are in World Tree years. 3 World Tree years = 2 Earth years, so Este, in his 60's, is like a human in his 40's. -bb]

The prime species are:

Cani	Dogfolk; very social; very good at smelling. Cani live in big families of a dozen or so adults, which you can call packs if you like. Status is very important: at any given time, one Cani holds affan in each topic. The affan-cook is in charge of cooking; the affan-singer, in charge of singing. The contest to decide affan is called a choof. I think Cani rule the World Tree.
Gormoror	Bearfolk; big and strong and wild. Sexually dimorphic: men are more ursine, women less so. Stereotypically barbaric and heroic. If they give their Word of Honor, they cannot break it.
Herethroy	Cricketfolk. Two arms, two legs, two limbs that can be either. Three sexes: female (strong and worky); co-lover (attractive and motherly); male (in between). There are more females than co-lovers, and more co-lovers than males. The most populous prime species, so they rule the World Tree. Fairly agrarian. (Both-females are a very rare intersexed condition: part female, part co-lover, and entirely despised.)
Khtsoyis	Aerial seven-limbed octopi. Considered brutal, stupid, and thuggish, not without good reason.
Orren	Otter people; quick and smart and slinky and swimmy. In the water they turn into non-morphic otters. When excited, they can go into a Wild Rush, in which they do whatever seems right at that point very quickly. They are dangerously cute (in my opinion), and thus, they rule the World Tree.
Rassimel	Raccoon people; clever and obsessive. They learn very fast. They are very smart. They rule the World Tree by smartness.
Sleeth	Non-anthropomorphic panthers, generally blue, green, or black. They are vicious and hunty, and they speak funny. They can manipulate animal materials telekinetically in simple ways without paying cley for it, unlike most other people. This does not make up for them not having hands. They are regarded as little better than dangerous monsters.
Zi Ri	Small hermaphroditic dragons. By "small" I mean "about the size of a large housecat" -- much smaller than anyone else. We breathe fire, like overgrown candleflames, and we enjoy resting in fires. We do not age, which is why I often complain that all my college friends are dead of old age and I'm barely more than a child to my family. We are exceedingly rare, in large part because reproduction is very painful -- it hurts to think about it, even. (Nonreproductive body-play, on the other hand, is quite fun.) We do not rule the World Tree, because we are terrible at ruling anything.

"Traff", or "transaffectionate" for formal, refers to people who commit the socially-unforgiveable crime of being capable and indeed eager to love members of all seven prime species, and thus incapable of loving their members of their own. I am traff; my consort of many decades was a Herethroy co-lover, though zie usually lived as an Orren or Rassimel man. As a Zi Ri, the half-sibling of the secret ruler of Vheshrame, and an important civic functionary, I could generally get away with it -- though I was considered to be single for all civic occasions. People with less influence get considerably more trouble. Castle Wrong is my way of protecting and assisting traff people.

"Traff" is a rude word when used by one who is not traff and not known to be quite sympathetic. "Transaffectionate" is clinical but neutral. Oh, and "cisaffectionate" is the opposite of "transaffectionate"; most people are cisaffectionate.

Traff is not to be confused with being a "libertine", which frequently includes carnally amusing onesself with the genitalia of anyone available regardless of species. Traff means love; libertine means body-play. During Vheshrame's heydey, being a libertine was somewhere between acceptable and required for the upper classes; now it is a matter of private interest and public shame only. Castle Wrong has always had a libertine streak, and some of our private parties have been notably libertine, though I have barely attended them.

Neither is traff to be confused with being a "monster-lover", romance or body-play with members of non-prime species. Monster-loving is a crime, and sensibly so. There are frequent whispers that I am Vae's lover. I am not. As proof of this, I note that (a) Vae's jealous and insanely violent mate Oixe knows all about me, and (b) I am still alive.

Monster, of course, means anyone who is not one of one (or more, in Lithia's very unusual case) of the eight prime species. Monsters may be considered people, or not, depending on what they are: Vae is certainly a person. Most World Tree monsters are dangerous to primes in some way or another; Vae more than most. Consequently, the greatest crime on the World Tree is doorwaying, viz., allowing illegal monsters into prime cities. Vae, despite a hundred twenty-five years as a loyal friend to Vheshrame, has never actually been in the city. I would probably be executed a couple times if she ever got in; more if I had actually helped her. She knows this, and does not try.

Off-world monsters, such as many readers of this journal, are generally not designed specifically to be dangerous to primes, as local monsters are. But we know less about them, so we generally don't let them in cities either.