#explainingdaiya

[dreamholde]

Daiya Glossary

Daiya - The name of the hour-glass shaped asteroid discovered by two children with godly powers. The children turned the asteroid into their playground, and populated it with creatures of their imagination. These creatures are the race of celestin.

Luminae – The Goddess of the North, responsible for placing the sun in the sky. The Houses of Day worship her still. The Empress of the North claims to be her direct descendant.

Vesper – The God of the South, who settled in the caldera on the dark side of the asteroid. The High Priest of Vesper is the celestin of Underside who most personifies Vesper’s personality and beliefs.

Chaos – The agents of chaos are the enemies of the godly race that Vesper and Luminae belong to. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Vesper and Luminae left Daiya for reasons related to Chaos, allowing the celestin they created to become their own people.

Underside – Slang for all the lands on the bottom side of the asteroid. The territories of Vesper. Also called the Southlands.

The Northlands – Slang for the lands on the top side of the asteroid; the part that faces the sun. Home of the Houses of Light.

Celestin – The race created by the divine imagination of Luminae and Vesper. Because Vesper and Luminae created the celestin to be their playmates, deep in their genetic code is the desire to do as their creators wish. Celestin who are most like their creators in personality thus have the ability to exert their will on celestin of lesser “purity.” The lifespan and durability of a celestin also increases in direct proportion to their purity.

Mortae – The servant race created by the celestin shortly after Vesper and Luminae left Daiya. The mortae are genetically engineered to obey all celestin just as the celestin were engineered to obey their godly creators. Though relatively human shaped, mortae cannot speak, smell, or taste. Celestin treat their mortae servants with slightly more respect than animals.

Lepedus – Halfblood children of mortae and celestin. They are generally shunned by celestin society, and most try to pass as either celestin or mortae.

Naiya – The name of the sword used by celestin duelists, in the tradition of Vesper and Luminae’s godly parents. Infused with part of the soul of the duelist who created it, the naiya was once the only weapon capable of dealing lethal, lasting damage to a pureblooded celestin. While focusing on his naiya, a trained celestin duelist of sufficient purity can enter a trance in which all living things appear as Vesper and Luminae saw them: uncomplicated. Duelists use this extra insight to read the motives and intentions of their foes long before those intentions are realized into action. Today, however, celestin have degraded in purity to the extent that they might be slain with normal weapons, as long as the blow is to a sufficiently vital location.

Celestin Greathorse – Much like mortae, the celestin greathorses were created by the celestin. These exquisite and intelligent creatures bond as foals to one master, and are particularly sensitive to his desires forever after.

The Great Houses of Daiya – All celestin of sufficient purity belong to a House. The members of each house share the personality traits of the imaginary friend created at that hour of the day. Each house “owns” a particular time of day, during which the celestin of that house are at the peak of their strength.

The Houses of Day:

Matine – Sunrise

Lauds – Morning

Pryme – Noon; also the House of Empress of the Lands of Light.

Terce – Afternoon

The Houses of Night:

Sext – Sunset

Silsilent – Evening

Vesper – Midnight; also the House of the High Priest and ruler of Underside

Kochill – The Twilight Before Dawn

The Hand of Vesper - Also known as the Order of the Hand, these celestin are Underside’s spies, ninja, and assassins.

The White Guard - An elite order of duelists who serve the Empress and the House of Pryme.

The Orbs of Luminae - After a terrific tragedy that occurred at the Dawn of the world, celestin of the northlands pray daily at magic artifacts that drain away their emotions, leaving them in a state of focused tranquility. 

The Festivals of Vesper - Every season, the celestin of Underside celebrate their emotions by holding wild city-wide holy festivals. These festivals leave the populace in a state of cheerful productivity.

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Read more about Daiya, and Chain of Fealty, the novel set in this world.

[dreamholde]

Daiya: On Unsustainable Worlds

Paracosm - a detailed fantasy or imaginary world, inhabited by humans and/or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. Often having its own geography, history, or language, it is an experience that is developed in childhood, often over a long period of time—months or years.

When Rodrigo and I were fifteen, we worked assiduously at populating our first shared fantasy world, Aneildan. Aneildan was a happy, stable, Tolkien standard sort of place. The dwarves—gruff, lawful people—lived in the mountains. The elves, happy, flighty and long-lived, filled the ancient forests. The humans, relative newcomers, held down the fertile central valley, and saved the land from overwhelming predictability by being matriarchal. And of course, no Tolkien-verse is complete without a Mordor. Aneildan’s was the Twilnok Badlands, a blighted, ugly gray plain separated from human lands by the wide Evliegle river.

We set multiple stories in Aneildan, years worth, before realizing that we’d never once explained (either to ourselves or anyone else) why the furious hordes of evil-doers didn’t just learn to swim and then take over the rest of the country in the middle of the night.

Time to retcon in a terrible orcish fear of water. Didn’t you know? That’s why they’re always So Dirty. Or... water horses! Of course!

Right.

Speaking of water, our second plane, Baernol, was a giant desert continent. Only one tiny corner of it, where the elves lived, contained any greenery at all. Yet again somehow, years passed before we realized that we had never written the effects of either heat or water scarcity into our stories. Like a Final Fantasy party in the requisite Desert Level, our characters and their civilizations ignored this intrinsic part of their civilization as if it were merely pretty background art.

Our third plane, Corandis, was a reflection of our world, except with magic. We had a great time telling stories in a magically enhanced Renaissance, and then again in a magically enhanced modern era, until we realized that we had no explanation for why magic hadn’t caused technology to develop differently than in our non-magical universe. Hastily, we retconned a giant cataclysm into the history of the world, wiping magic (temporarily) out of the equation, and forcing the development of recognizable technology.

What we’re still learning from this: Worlds are inherently hard to build. It took a planet of people to build ours, and a profession’s worth of experts to even begin to understand it. How can a mere author compete?

To answer that question, we created Daiya, a plane that mindfully explores the repercussions of human imagination. What would happen, we wondered, if a ninja-obsessed teenager created a paracosm with his princess-obsessed little stepsister? What would happen to the world’s inhabitants when their creators were forced by time and changing interests to abandon it?

Daiya is a world of breathless beauty, inhuman cruelty, and machines that can make sheep out of bricks. Its inhabitants struggle to evolve against the seemingly-arbitrary identities their creators printed into their very DNA. It’s a world that celebrates persistence as the best and surest means of guaranteeing an improved tomorrow. 

Daiya is for you, you long unvisited friends and places of our childhood. We remember, even if we can’t return. And we admire how well you’ve all managed without us.

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Read more about Daiya, and Chain of Fealty, the novel set in this world.