The Path to Narrer's End, Part 2.
Jun. 1st, 2012 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleSo, before I go forward in this explanation, I need to go back. The following is crunchy with worldbuilding, character backstory, and a recap of a few sessions I didn't describe.
One of our party members is Adrastus Brokenhill. His player is very story and character driven, so I made certain to have a framework in place for him. Those of you who read The Hellion Prince may recognize the last name; it's the title Timonus, Damarhis' geeky and ambitious friend, and his sister Ellithene are heir to.
A little about the Brokenhills:
Traditional Ligurian families are patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal groups, called gens-families. In the Allotment, most of these families have intermarried with Turans and culturally assimilated; most culture in the Allotment is a blended compromise between the two (Turan families are matrilineal and have a slight tendency to be matriarchal, but not necessarily matrilocal -- it's more about who has the biggest castle). The most successful gens family is gens Dama, which has held onto the Duchy of Sunfall for 800 years, assimilated on the surface only, never intermarried -- there has never been a Duchess Sunfall, always a Duke. The name of the gens is always passed down within the name of the heirs. Gens Dama and Gens Ima do this obviously, starting their names with it as a point of pride, and we've seen other characters -- Taslin Drakesbury of gens Tas, Pallusine and Pallura, gens Pallu -- but others compromise. The royal lineage comes from the joining of a Turan family to gens Abri. Sabric's name contains his gens, and Embrion's lacks the initial vowel, but comes close.
However, one Ligurian family marked itself out as strange even before the exile to Antarion, and that family eventually became the Brokenhills. Matrilineal, Matrilocal, Matriarchal, the Brokenhill family was a magnet for strong, dissatisfied women. Their matriarchs were powerful mages, often dabbling in blood magic rather than the traditional Ligurian hobby of necromancy. The men in the family were trained to protect their female relatives, a focus much more martial than magical, although ideally it would blend both. Unarmed combat prowess is the mark of a male Brokenhill, and magic based on genealogy and ancestral spirit power is the hallmark of female Brokenhill magi.
Adrastus is the eldest child of Baroness Darista Brokenhill, who also serves as Royal Genealogist, and thus the arbiter of most inheritance disputes in the kingdom. Adrastus, however, was always too slow and clumsy to master the family martial art -- he was a brick wall of a boy, not nimble enough to dodge arrows in flight, not precise enough to strike nerve clusters when he hit. Instead, he had a talent for self-transmutation (minor shapeshifting) that made his mother express, vocally, that she wished he had been born a girl so she could teach him other of the family arts.
His dissatisfaction in the family lead to a private rebellion -- he no longer tried to learn what his teachers offered, instead teaching himself about his own talents, modeling what he knew off of the only shapeshifters he had heard of: the fey. His view of the fey has always been stubbornly optimistic and naive. This combination of dangerous politics and slightly taboo magic is what lead to his being not-quite disinherited and shuffled off into the guard.
Adrastus, more recently, has secretly made a bargain with a fox faerie, and been cursed or gifted with lycanthropy as a result. Since he does not have the arcane education to understand what has happened to him, he assumes this is simply an expansion of his natural talent for transmutation, and has only begun to be alarmed when it became obvious that his mind and body are not his own on overcast nights.
Since the guard patrol has reached the Border and begun its circuit, there was one awkward period of investigation into Adrastus' own family. One of his male cousins, Castarleone, was outed as a blood mage and became a fugitive. Castarleone's father was thought to have committed suicide, but in light of recent events, the guard were asked to re-open the case and investigate it as a possible murder.
Doing so uncovered a large amount of the family's dirty laundry. All the women in the Brokenhill family of sufficient talent practice a form of blood magic, manipulating the genes of their unborn children to produce greater talent in the gender-approved areas of study they practice. Sometimes, these genealogical experiments go awry... as was the case with Castarleone's mother, and by extension, her children, Castarleone and Cassynorie. When her husband discovered this, she killed him to shut him up. Castarleone, witnessing this and understanding that he was a failed eugenics experiment, began to test himself, and unlocked this talent for blood magic in the process, running away to hide his mother's secrets from his sister -- because he wanted to protect her, and because, as he saw it, uncovering the secret or condemning his mother for murder would be a betrayal of his role as a guardian. The cognitive dissonance of this, combined with blood magic, has made him more than a little mentally unstable.
The party knows all of this, save for the part where sorcerous eugenics is actually an approved family hobby that went awry in this instance. Only Adrastus knows that this was not an isolated incident. His aunt declined to be taken alive.
During the course of these events, Adrastus, who has had to cede guardianship of his sister to his younger brother, developed an affection for and attachment to his now-unchampioned cousin Cassynorie. Baroness Darista, having witnessed Adrastus' increased martial talent and accepted him back into the fold, eventually acquiesced to his preference and drew up a betrothal agreement for the two of them. Cousin marriage is not at all rare in the Brokenhill family, and it is her hope that her son's lycanthropy will prove a dominant trait, and erase or correct the errors (the exact nature of which she has kept a secret) in her niece's bloodline.
Adrastus' other cousins, the twins Savtalona and Kidvonay, have always been paragons of the family ideals. However, Savtalona was studying to be a Royal Weatherworker... and was in the Tower when a pyromancer burned it down to kill Princess Majtalona.
One of our party members is Adrastus Brokenhill. His player is very story and character driven, so I made certain to have a framework in place for him. Those of you who read The Hellion Prince may recognize the last name; it's the title Timonus, Damarhis' geeky and ambitious friend, and his sister Ellithene are heir to.
A little about the Brokenhills:
Traditional Ligurian families are patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal groups, called gens-families. In the Allotment, most of these families have intermarried with Turans and culturally assimilated; most culture in the Allotment is a blended compromise between the two (Turan families are matrilineal and have a slight tendency to be matriarchal, but not necessarily matrilocal -- it's more about who has the biggest castle). The most successful gens family is gens Dama, which has held onto the Duchy of Sunfall for 800 years, assimilated on the surface only, never intermarried -- there has never been a Duchess Sunfall, always a Duke. The name of the gens is always passed down within the name of the heirs. Gens Dama and Gens Ima do this obviously, starting their names with it as a point of pride, and we've seen other characters -- Taslin Drakesbury of gens Tas, Pallusine and Pallura, gens Pallu -- but others compromise. The royal lineage comes from the joining of a Turan family to gens Abri. Sabric's name contains his gens, and Embrion's lacks the initial vowel, but comes close.
However, one Ligurian family marked itself out as strange even before the exile to Antarion, and that family eventually became the Brokenhills. Matrilineal, Matrilocal, Matriarchal, the Brokenhill family was a magnet for strong, dissatisfied women. Their matriarchs were powerful mages, often dabbling in blood magic rather than the traditional Ligurian hobby of necromancy. The men in the family were trained to protect their female relatives, a focus much more martial than magical, although ideally it would blend both. Unarmed combat prowess is the mark of a male Brokenhill, and magic based on genealogy and ancestral spirit power is the hallmark of female Brokenhill magi.
Adrastus is the eldest child of Baroness Darista Brokenhill, who also serves as Royal Genealogist, and thus the arbiter of most inheritance disputes in the kingdom. Adrastus, however, was always too slow and clumsy to master the family martial art -- he was a brick wall of a boy, not nimble enough to dodge arrows in flight, not precise enough to strike nerve clusters when he hit. Instead, he had a talent for self-transmutation (minor shapeshifting) that made his mother express, vocally, that she wished he had been born a girl so she could teach him other of the family arts.
His dissatisfaction in the family lead to a private rebellion -- he no longer tried to learn what his teachers offered, instead teaching himself about his own talents, modeling what he knew off of the only shapeshifters he had heard of: the fey. His view of the fey has always been stubbornly optimistic and naive. This combination of dangerous politics and slightly taboo magic is what lead to his being not-quite disinherited and shuffled off into the guard.
Adrastus, more recently, has secretly made a bargain with a fox faerie, and been cursed or gifted with lycanthropy as a result. Since he does not have the arcane education to understand what has happened to him, he assumes this is simply an expansion of his natural talent for transmutation, and has only begun to be alarmed when it became obvious that his mind and body are not his own on overcast nights.
Since the guard patrol has reached the Border and begun its circuit, there was one awkward period of investigation into Adrastus' own family. One of his male cousins, Castarleone, was outed as a blood mage and became a fugitive. Castarleone's father was thought to have committed suicide, but in light of recent events, the guard were asked to re-open the case and investigate it as a possible murder.
Doing so uncovered a large amount of the family's dirty laundry. All the women in the Brokenhill family of sufficient talent practice a form of blood magic, manipulating the genes of their unborn children to produce greater talent in the gender-approved areas of study they practice. Sometimes, these genealogical experiments go awry... as was the case with Castarleone's mother, and by extension, her children, Castarleone and Cassynorie. When her husband discovered this, she killed him to shut him up. Castarleone, witnessing this and understanding that he was a failed eugenics experiment, began to test himself, and unlocked this talent for blood magic in the process, running away to hide his mother's secrets from his sister -- because he wanted to protect her, and because, as he saw it, uncovering the secret or condemning his mother for murder would be a betrayal of his role as a guardian. The cognitive dissonance of this, combined with blood magic, has made him more than a little mentally unstable.
The party knows all of this, save for the part where sorcerous eugenics is actually an approved family hobby that went awry in this instance. Only Adrastus knows that this was not an isolated incident. His aunt declined to be taken alive.
During the course of these events, Adrastus, who has had to cede guardianship of his sister to his younger brother, developed an affection for and attachment to his now-unchampioned cousin Cassynorie. Baroness Darista, having witnessed Adrastus' increased martial talent and accepted him back into the fold, eventually acquiesced to his preference and drew up a betrothal agreement for the two of them. Cousin marriage is not at all rare in the Brokenhill family, and it is her hope that her son's lycanthropy will prove a dominant trait, and erase or correct the errors (the exact nature of which she has kept a secret) in her niece's bloodline.
Adrastus' other cousins, the twins Savtalona and Kidvonay, have always been paragons of the family ideals. However, Savtalona was studying to be a Royal Weatherworker... and was in the Tower when a pyromancer burned it down to kill Princess Majtalona.
