(no subject)

[sythyry]

Seducing the Orren [15 Hispis 4385]

I didn't get to talk very much with Bazamvey and Hark! (the exclamation point is part of her name, so don't blame me, please). The Rassimel were doing most of the talking. I had been eyeing them whenever I could, and they were quite pretty Orren indeed, all lovely sleek brown fur and quick eyes. And, after all the Rassimel were healed and sent to bed, they went sliding around on Doöaru's scales. They stayed in water-form all the time. This is odd, because they weren't generally in the water, but (a) some Orren can do it; (b) some Orren like to do it; and (c) it wasn't even close to the strangest thing going on on Doöaru's back.

So I invited them to breakfast aboard Strayway.

Which is not as inconvenient as it might seem at first. We had parked Strayway on Doöaru's back -- Strayway has a flat bottom, after all, and the antelopes don't mind being on the ground. (My not-good-friend Urgentia has made the last seven of his skyboats unable to land, despite having shapes that could reasonably be seen on the ground -- two of them were drawn by glass and ivory swans, but, for reasons best known to himself, Urgentia decided that they would be legless glass and ivory swans.)

I didn't have great actual hopes. Really, I didn't. They looked like husband and wife, though that's not always a limitation for Orren. We're not planning to stay on Doöaru very long: a day or two more at most. I've barely flirted with anyone in decades -- not a lot since Mynthë died, come to think of it, and that was about sixty years ago.

But that last is the reason. I need practice in flirting. Reading books and looking at pictures is only so helpful. Admittedly, some of the books and pictures may be interpreted as case studies and practica in flirting and related relationship issues ... though, in some cases, the flirting is cursory and the related activies are extensive and detailed and very, very enthusiastic. Pity real life isn't quite like that, or mine isn't, anyways. Umbers' used to be, until she escaped.

So, breakfast, with a bowl of scallops poached in shrieking wine (now soundproofed), a tray of egg and eel and elk and elm custard cut into little polygonal shapes (I'd asked for triangles, but got squares and hexagons too), and chalices of kathia with a few drops of perfume and brandy. Arfaen did quite a nice job. We were in a private parlor, with a low round teak table, no chairs, and three thin feather pillows on the table next to the plates. This is a comfortable luxury for small people.

Bazamvey:"This is quite pleasant!"

Hark!:"It's nice to get fresh fish! There's a pond or two on Doöaru!'s back! But we can't eat them all! Or we wouldn't have any left! "

Me:"Well, what do you eat there, ordinarily?"

Bazamvey:"Snails!"

Hark!:"We eat lots and lots of snails! They slither up and down Doöaru's scales!"

Me:"Scale snails!"

Bazamvey:"I like scale snail tails!"

Hark!:"I don't! Scale snail tail fail!"

So that was all very fine and giggly, and very Orren.

Me:(somewhat later) "Where are you from?"

Bazamvey:"We're from out along the branch!"

Hark!:"We're wandering wizards!"

Bazamvey:"We're sauntering sorcerers."

Hark!:"We're meandering mages!"

Bazamvey:"We're thravelling thaumaturges!"

Hark!:"We're eloping enchanters!"

Me:"Are you actually eloping?" Which was a question I had generally been wondering.

Hark!:"I think we're married!"

Bazamvey:"And I don't. Hark! didn't register the wedding properly."

Hark!:"I tried! I don't know how to write!"

Me:"You don't? You must have grown up in a riverbum village!" Which is a perfectly ordinary thing for Orren to do, and riverbums aren't always as determined to give their children a rigorous education.

Hark!:"I did! Sort of! Three of them!"

Me:"Oh? Why three of them?"

Hark!:"My parents kept getting kicked out! They used too much Mentador!"

Well, that's an unusual and a distressing thing to admit in public. I didn't really know how to respond, so I responded badly:

Me:"Oh, my! Bazamvey, what is your background?"

Bazamvey:"Much the same. Five villages."

Me:"Heavens."

Bazamvey:"Mentador isn't that popular."

Me:"So you're both the children of riverbum Mentador mages?" Which sounds quite odd to me. Riverbums aren't the sort of people that you'd really expect to learn enough Mentador to bother people -- much less to have enough money to by the requisite spells.

Hark!:"Oh, that! Yes! We're Mentador mages ourselves too!"

Which is not something that many people admit in polite company, much less like that. I was doing my best to look like an open-minded and friendly wizard. (Which I am, pretty much. Open-legged, too, though I hope it wasn't that obvious.)

Me:"What is your specialty?"

Hark!:"Mind control!"

I will admit that I checked various protective and investigative devices, as surreptitiously as I could manage. Specialists in mind control had best be specialists in teleporting as well, or something else useful for escapes -- if not actual combat magic -- for there are fewer less popular magical disciplines.

Me:"Really?"

Bazamvey:"Yes. Practical mind control. We help Orren domesticate deer and river-dolphins, by rendering the animals less fearful of people for a while. The Orren would feed the animals, and make friends with them. When the control spells wore off, the animals were still friends with the primes. That sort of thing."

Me:"Oh! Not controlling other primes."

Hark!:"We're not primes!"

Me:"You're not?"

Hark!:"We just look that way!"

Me:"..."

Bazamvey:"But once in a while we'd control primes too. One of our customers had a terrible habit of ripping out her own fur. She hated it, but she couldn't break it. A control spell was good for that."

Hark!:"Or that man by three ponds! He was too fat! He wanted to eat less! We made him eat less! He was happy!"

Me:"Wait ... you're not prime?"

Hark!:"We're norren!"

Me:"... really?"

Bazamvey:"Really!"

Me:"I didn't know there were any norren in Ketheria." By "Ketheria" I mean "Vheshrame Mene" here -- I have no idea about the rest of my native branch, much less the rest of Ketheria. I was a bit rattled though.

Hark!:"There might not be! We're not from Ketheria!"

Oh, right. We're not in Ketheria anymore.

Digression

Norren look like water-form Orren, which is to say, they look like animal otters. They're smart and charming -- by all reports, and all my experience with them too. They're pretty good at magic, especially Mentador and Illusidor. They've got a poison bite, too, and they're very resistant to magic, if I read my reference books a long time later recall correctly.

They are monsters.

They are monsters of the most insidious and insinuative sort.

They're not specifically dangerous. They're not like a nendrai or nycathath, able to be a martial challenge to any prime hero in the world. They're not even like perdithorne, who hate Cani and fight them mercilessly.

They're just ... friendly.

They like Orren.

Orren seem to like norren, too. Except for the Mentador and the being stuck in water-form, norren and Orren are two of a kind: charming, friendly, exciteable, unreasonably attractive to Zi Ri, and all like that. So norren often live in Orren villages -- until they get kicked out for using their best skills and powers, I suppose.

Oh, and norren kind of like sneaking into cities, by reputation at least. I don't know if that's a compulsion, or just a fun thing. I haven't heard that they've done anything worse than, oh, go swimming in the public pond and see a puppet show, or some such -- or, sometimes, to cast Mentador spells on people. Harmless enough spells, but still, they are Mentador. Still, norren in cities is doorwaying. There is no worse crime. And the Mentador just adds unpopularity-or-crime to unpopularity-or-crime.

I think Pararenenzu must have made them -- zie made the Orren, after all. The alternative is too horrible to think about.

Back to Breakfast

I did my very best to radiate aplomb, and, indeed, to appear as if I had always understood that Bazamvey and Hark! were not actually Orren, or might not be. I succeeded brilliantly, of course. I imagine I was able to close my mouth and stop gaping in a matter of mere ninths of an hour.

Me:"Ah! That's why you're travelling on Doöaru, with Kazrie and the other philosophers."

Hark!:"We want to live with primes!"

Bazamvey:"We like primes!"

Hark!:"Primes like us too!"

Bazamvey:"Except for the Mentador!"

Hark!:"We do jobs that real primes don't want to do!"

Bazamvey:"Important jobs!"

Me:"It certainly sounds that way. Mentador is not well-loved, but it is one of our twelve Nouns, and there are things that it can do that cannot be done nearly as well in any other way."

Bazamvey:"I'm glad you approve!"

Hark!:"I'm glad too!"

(I don't actually approve, but I have the diplomacy not to say that.)

I didn't rush the rest of the breakfast, I really didn't. I did my best to be polite and friendly, and, after I recovered from the surprise, I think I sort of managed it and had some more good conversation. But I didn't flirt any more either.

I'm going to count this one as "a narrow escape".

Comments

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Awww, but you had the perfect excuse if you had been caught doing something really socially inappropriate with them!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Hey, what happens off the Branch stays off the Branch, right?

[redbird]

Yes, a narrow escape. Good thing they were honest about that.

Is there any socially acceptable way to ask other Orren you meet to take land form at least briefly, to be sure they are in fact Orren? (Not "hey, prove you're Orren" but something that would be acceptable to ask for that would have that effect.)

[foomf.livejournal.com]

This whole monsters/primes thing seems terribly arbitrary and limiting to me, but then, I suspect that my species would be considered monsters as well.

I'd be nervous about them as well, not because of the mentador, but more because, they're terribly nonchalant about it.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I resolve to be suspicious of Orren who never take land form, in any case!

I must admit that I am unable to see how to segue nicely from "Excuse me, but are you a monster?" into "May I kiss you?" Actually, both halves of that are challenging enough on their own.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It is neither arbitrary nor limiting! It is a fundamental property of my universe! For one example: the prime species names have words in the natural language -- words which predate the species themselves. No other species, no other genus or even order, has single words therein. For one of several examples.

But you show good judgment about the Mentador.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

"Why don't you slip into something a little more upright?", perhaps.

[winterbeast.livejournal.com]

new monster of which Sythyry had to stop flirting. awww. To bad Norren are not considered good like mherobumps and wherewhiffles are...

[psaakyrn.livejournal.com]

Just thinking, considering that they're so similar to orren, and their fundamental difference is their attitude with Mentador, it seems almost likely that somewhere, there has to be some orren who has a more lax attitude with Mentador.

Having said that, I was curious about the reproductive potential between primes and monsters who are built to resemble primes.

On lower curiousity note, how similar are Norren to Orren anyway, other than water form and various Noun-based tendencies? In that do they also go into wild rushes, and are that somewhat hidden from conventional monster/prime detection spells?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

They're not Orren! They're very different! It's like ... a cup made of arken wood compared to a cup made from some tree with a poisonous sap!

I don't imagine they're crossfertile with Orren, but I don't know for sure. Bonstables are somewhat crossfertile with all prime species, after all; but that is unusual.

I don't know about wild rushes. My guests seemed excitable, to be sure. I didn't notice that they weren't prime at a glance, for what that's worth.

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

This reminds me rather of a bawdy joke involving nuns and penguins for some reason...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Not with all that Mentador, they're not going to be!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard whines. Not at the joke, but at the thought of trying to explain it to Sythyry. -bb]

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

"I've done great enchantments in my day. Wonderful ones, grand and practical. Do they remember me as Sythyry the Enchanter? No.

I've done great works as a healer, developing new and more effective ways to treat injuries and spell detangling. Do they remember me as Sythyry the Healer? No.

But it gets out that you've slept with one norren and suddenly everyone knows me as..."

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Mentador must be approved of!

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

you didn't look at their mageriums?

[waywind.livejournal.com]

Oh, right... That's a good idea. That might be a wise thing add to your habits whenever first meeting quirky foreigners. I assume it can be done more tactfully than trying to determine whether they're primes or monsters by asking "It's Pat!" types of questions.

[waywind.livejournal.com]

Oh... I'd wondered why the Rassimel caught the plague and the Orren didn't.

At least they didn't turn out to be Bonstables, right?

It's interesting to hear of positive applications of Mentador. Mentador is abhorred because of its use as a weapon, with destruction and carelessness... but if the Norren are telling the truth, it can be used with trust, gentleness, healing, and wisdom. Maybe it's like one of those plants that everybody shuns because it's poisonous, until they find a medicinal use for it. Even its positive applications have potential for abuse, yes, but it looks like Mentador is not a completely evil art after all. Think of the potential it could have for treating people with PTSD, by helping a specific traumatic memory fade little by little so that flashbacks aren't as vivid.

Although, I understand that we offworld monsters don't look at it the same way as any of the Primes do on the World Tree. Maybe if we lived there, we would grow to fear Mentador, but it sounds more to-the-point than all the forms of mind-hacking that are so popular here.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

You might want to go back and read the entries right after Sythyry got unintentionally mind-raped by Vae. Even if it's meant well, it's very easy for Mentador to be horribly damaging.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

What's the horrible alternative to Pararenenzu? O.o

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Or at least profitable, like the Wumpus.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Pacommonenzu?

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

There are many positive uses of Mentador! however, there are also a lot of very insidiously evil applications of Mentador, and it is difficult to tell the difference between the two without careful examination that I assure you will most likely never occur to the one insideously affected.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Therein's the rub: you have a "natural language" - a concept which is itself missing from at least my own universe, where understanding and communication and POWER does not innately accompany the ability to abstract and communicate via speech, writing, gesture, or other symbology. As language theory here goes, your universe's natural language is a dead language in that there is no way to extend or modify it for things which are not part of its fixedly defined expression; the language only names the prime species, and if somebeing discovers or creates a new species, that species is innately undefined because the language doesn't permit it, so the species and its members are then categorized under the pejorative category of "monster".

I've made myself curious, now, whether there is any entity which completely knows and understands the natural language of your universe. If so, how do you know that to be the case? When the Prime species were being encountered/discovered, was there a sudden understanding of speakers or a struggle to comprehend one another?
Is there any possibility that there are single-word names for other species which have not yet been found, encountered, created, or instantiated; if there could be such a thing, would you (or anyone) know them when you come across them?

I'm nervous about all uses of nouns and verbs of power that permit an ill-conceived or inconsiderate expression to modify reality directly and significantly. I'm also somewhat nervous about uses of such things even when well-conceived and considerate, but that's because what I've heard of your universe's gods doesn't make me feel confident that their ability to sustain and repair it is entirely what it perhaps should be.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That's not polite at all!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That disease is only for Rassimel. There's a different one for Orren.

I am glad they're not bonstables, though I probably wouldn't have found that out until much later.

Mentador is not completely evil! But the Mentador god is completely evil. (Ditto Locador, Destroc, Mutoc, arguably others; but Birkozon is the most insidious of them.) Also -- perhaps unrelated -- there are historical reasons: people using Mentador for particularly wicked things.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The norren are surely precisely in the style of Pararenenzu. If not zir, though, any of the other six could have made them. But they are second-most in the style of Hren Tzen. [Sythyry's creator god. -bb]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I didn't! I didn't!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, there's no power in it, except for the power to communicate with someone from ten million miles away who doesn't speak any actually useful language. It's a fixed language which every speaking thing -- and many that don't speak -- is born understanding. We're pretty sure the creator gods made it up. Everyone completely knows and understands it.

The magical Nouns and Verbs are called that because the Nouns include all the substances of the world, and the Verbs include all the magical actions. They do have natural names, but they're just mangled formes of the names of the god. [Bard admits that in English translation they're not: 'Birkodor' might be a more accurate translation of Birkozon's Noun Mentador, but Mentador is much easier to keep track of. -bb]

But yes, magical mistakes can be quite troublesome. The children aboard all have three bound spells that will save their lives in various kinds of trouble, which we're mostly expecting to come from casting mistakes.

----------

Anyhow. The natural language matter proves that primes are singled out for special consideration by the gods. For another proof: primes are the only species who routinely get all 7+12 magical arts. Many other species are denied some arts, as Vae can never ever use Healoc. Others, like the norren, can get all 7+12, but have to get priested at to pick up the ones the don't get early on. It is certainly possible that some other species could get all 7+12; but it has never been observed to happen.

For another proof: the magerium of a prime looks like a miniature version of the World Tree itself. The materia of other creatures do not. Again, this is a simply observable physical fact ... and one that is nicely falsifiable. To date it has not been falsified.

There are occasional bits of other evidence: e.g., many monsters (like Vae, and I think like the norren) have particular innate compulsions concerning primes. They rarely have compulsions concerning other nonprimes, and there is no nonprime species which is the object of very many compulsions. The primes are the object of some compulsion of every species that has innate compulsions.

Anyhow, that is the physical evidence that the primes are a distinct category of species. It is hard to argue with this much evidence.

The next step in the argument (and it's an argument that every educated prime is required to have several nights in college, preferably with some good brandy) is interpreting the evidence. It is a very long step from words and magerium shapes to being the dominant civilization, after all.

[OOC: just to be clear]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[OOC, just to be clear: The World Tree is not Bard's utopia; it's not a utopia at all. Nor it is Bard's ideal vision of how society should be structured; somewhat the opposite. Nor is it intended to show how humanity is or should be.

[And, Bard considers Sythyry rather bigoted about prime/nonprime matters -- even if zir compatriots consider zir rather too lax about them.

[The World Tree is intended to be a place with plentiful drama and conflict, including some vast moral dramas and conflicts. This matter of primes/nonprimes is a worldwide and very troublesome one. The World Tree is built for gaming and storytelling, not living in -- and the characters who live in it are somewhat aware of that. Which, too, makes for some good storytelling.

-bb]

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I'm sure if they tried hard enough they could change peoples' minds.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It could be part of your ogling instead of part of your flirting? Maybe you could do it when they weren't paying attention?

[rowyn]

For people so casual about Mentador, it is interesting that they do not! They specifically cited consensual and harmless uses of Mentador, and in a careless manner with no defensiveness to it, as if they couldn't conceive that anyone would take issue with it. Even though Orren obviously have since they've been kicked out multiple times from villages. Fascinating, really.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Monsters are all insane.

Unlike primes, who are also all insane, except for Windigar and perhaps Phaniet.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that all depend on the assumption that the creator gods are in fact the god of the World Tree and not just a group a very powerful monsters? If the later is the case, it's no longer clear that the biases they have inserted into the world tree universe are owed any special moral status.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It is a consistent and well-regarded, though minority, theological tradition that says that they are both, and that the biases they have given us are not owed any special moral status.

Unfortunately, it is hard not to give them a special practical status. Not without moving to an inistella's back, at least.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

That very argument is implicitly required for anyone from my species which actually attends college; on the other hand, some things that call themselves "colleges" have gradually become little more than specialized trade schools with very narrow focus and little providence for things outside that focus.

It's certainly not arguable that the gods of your universe (who are not only present but intrusively so) have set up the primes for some particular end or situation, but it's also not arguable that they created the majority of the non-primes. Is the distinction of a stronger correspondence to the world-tree a justification for the general treatment of non-primes as lesser or undesirable entities? Clearly the disruption introduced by compelled behaviors may justify excluding them from cities of primes. Why is this extended against those who are not compelled to introduce chaos into the possibly-too-ordered prime-lives?

From just the things you've described, it's pretty clear that your gods can be very intrusive when it suits them. Are they also subtle, or can you tell?

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

isn't that what grinwipey is for?

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

Only if you can keep from falling in a pit...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Oh god, he probably *did* know, didn't he. I bet he set Sythyry up on purpose!

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

And will be, given half the chance.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Is the distinction of a stronger correspondence to the world-tree a justification for the general treatment of non-primes as lesser or undesirable entities?

I think it is not sufficient of itself -- the historical and compulsory emnity between us and many species of monsters is sufficient -- but that is a minority opinion.

Why is this extended against those who are not compelled to introduce chaos into the possibly-too-ordered prime-lives?

It's not. Mherobump are allowed in many prime cities; they are useful laborers. Taptet, wherriwheffle, even greft are allowed in, here and there. Never as citizens of course.

Norren will not be: their powers are too wicked to expose our citizens to. Potentially wicked, if not actually wicked. Which is no fault of their own: we treat many prime Mentador mages the same way.

Are they also subtle, or can you tell?

We sometimes catch them at it, so yes, they are. Sometimes we presumably don't catch them.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Or a failed magic resistance roll.

[deor.livejournal.com]

Would that make them cousins of a sort? *innocent blink*

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

A relationship in which I prefer not to indulge!

[rowyn]

Insanity is an intrinsic part of the human sapient condition!

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

That is the same thing!