#raiproject

[raiain]

my sweet, my baby

i made a poetry generator!

please feel free to try it out, i’ve honestly had so much fun w this project :]

beloved peeps who contributed poems/art: @shooehorn @honestlyprettynotsomuch @ylaeth @elms-art-gallery @yuen0011 piryupipi and aymayx !

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

A1, B4, C3, D2 (oh well, I hope got your instructions right 😅)

Ozhar - culture

Detail (culture): Sending the Zve packing has let his people wear bright colors, hang out outside, and make noise without fear for the first time in living memory. So Ozhar wears bright colors and stuff for their benefit. But, he still secretly prefers dressing traditionally and letting his skin blend and camoflage him into the woods.

Quoye - religion

Detail (religion): Like other night-dwellers, Quoye has believed that there is only one god, but they’ve fled and gone into hiding. The night people just have to find them. She also used to suspect that there was religious significance to the daylit world, until she met Ozhar and came to the conclusion that nah, they’re probably all just nerds after all. Quoye’s people do hold in common with the daylit world a sort of trickster character, but the night-dwellers don’t acknowledge it as a god.

Sivas Gora - politics

Detail (politics): Sivas Gora plans to geographically grow her direct authority slowly, but one of the first towns she asserts control over is the home of a legend of one of the only Zve to have ever been taken down by the people. It wasn’t killed of course, but rather buried deep underground somewhere in the woods near the town. Sivas has declared it a punishable crime to have any contact with a Zve outside of driving it away, and the townspeople immediately get super quiet about all the good fortune they’ve been enjoying for the last couple hundred years or so.

Sechen - magic

Detail (magic): Like all other Zve, Sechen isn’t a living creature, but is a sort of magical machine powered by the living fire. This fire is quite literally the fires of creation, and Sechen has the ability to create most anything with it. However, like all his other impulses, the impulse to use this power comes from a force outside of him and comes pretty much never. Intellectually, he doesn’t know what it’s for or how to use it. If he’s ever killed, he’ll leave only the fire behind.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

D1 and C4

Rival character - culture

Name: He’s forgotten it, but it was Sample Number One-Thousand One-Hundred and Sixteen. Ozhar renames him Sechan, of Manyfalls. 

Background: Sechan is a Zve, which means he can live in both the daylit world and the night world and move between them easily. He’s spent most of his life hunting his prey, then studying and exploring his piece of the continent with his fellows. He learns about Ozhar early on, and hears that he’s the world’s first and only Zve slayer. Throughout Ozhar’s journey, Sechan challenges him many times and is always beaten handily. When Ozhar kills the important Zve leader - who Sechan thinks of as his father, since Sechan is meant to take his place someday - Sechan loses most of his memory, but retains much of what he knows about Ozhar and goes to find him. Ozhar finds him and shelters him on his way to see Sivas Gora, but Ozhar’s only advice to him is to get off the continent with the rest of the Zve before they’re forced out.

Detail (culture): The Zve respect strength and intellect in their ideal forms, and they expect neither out of the prey they hunt. Sechan is an expert on history and a master of a short sword-like weapon common among his people. Whenever he’s defeated by Ozhar, Sechan, like all other Zve, is expected to know when he’s beaten and concede the defeat. Sechan also feels obligated to impart knowledge whenever he’s beaten. This comes in handy when he loses his memory later, and Ozhar is able to remind him of the basics of who he is.

Sivas Gora - religion

Detail (religion): Sivas doesn’t buy much into the religions of her race because it’s said that it’s impossible for her lower caste to make it to Rai, the best possible final life. Instead, her caste believes that there’s purpose and possibly an afterlife to be found in the fringes, the strange warped world where neither day- or night-dwellers dare go. Sivas doesn’t believe that her gods live on the planet that hangs close on the horizon, but instead that they’re probably in disguise and wandering among the people, unable to leave or reveal themselves because the divide between day and night has trapped them. Sivas wishes she didn’t have any beliefs at all, but she feels continually drawn to her caste’s beliefs and customs.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

I hope I’m doing this right but can I ask for A3 for the NaNo 2020?

Protagonist - politics

Name: Ozhar, the Empty Hand

Background: Ozhar had humble beginnings as a daylit shepherd, known in his traditional village for being strong enough to carry pretty much any of his animals on his shoulders. One day a Zve approached the village, scattering its people into the woods. Ozhar confronted it, and since the armored skin of a Zve is impossible to pierce with any known weapon, Ozhar wrestled it with his bare hands like he would an animal. He ended up throwing it, and instead of keeping up the attack, the Zve simply gave up and left. Just like that, Ozhar became one of the only people known to legend to successfully defend himself against a Zve in combat. However, the villagers all think that Ozhar killed it - which would make him the ONLY known person to slay a Zve at all. Word gets around to Sivas Gora the pretender queen, who asks for his help with a great reward on the horizon. Ozhar keeps up the lie that he’s a Zve slayer and goes on a long journey to figure out how to get rid of the Zve forever, getting tricked and then joined by the night-dweller Quoye along the way. He winds up defeating a powerful Zve leader, who becomes the only one that Ozhar actually kills. This turns a great many Zve into pure fire for anyone to use, and the rest of the Zve lose intelligence and leave the entire continent in a mass exodus.

Ozhar is the only day-dweller to have discovered that the Zve aren’t living creatures, but rather magical automatons powered by fire. By the end of this journey, Ozhar has become a very different person and is gutted when he thinks Quoye was killed in the final struggle. The story begins shortly thereafter.

Detail (politics): Ozhar’s victory earns him a second name and an offer of marriage from Sivas Gora. But, all Ozhar wants to do is go back home and restart his life. His hero status has made him a feared and loved person all over, giving him a lot of potential sway over the people. When he rejects Sivas Gora, she knows she could one day lose a lot of her power to him, so she feels she has no choice but to contain him some other way. 

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

B 3!

Deuteragonist - politics

Name: Quoye

Background: Quoye is a night-dweller exiled from her world completely for reasons she doesn’t like to go into. In any case, she was given the mark of a traitor and shunned, then hunted, by her own people. She escapes into the daylit world and though the transition nearly kills her, she discovers she can survive if she avoids sunlight and regularly steals fire from day-dwellers. It’s not easy to take though, so she becomes something of a thief and a swindler. One day, she goes to the rescue of a day-dweller she had just swindled, saving him from a Zve by pulling him back into the night world with her. She then accompanies him on the rest of his journey to oust the Zve permanently. They quest together for many months and form a strange, sometimes uneasy, but strong friendship. At the end of their journey though, she leaves her friend behind and lets him think she is dead or lost. Shortly after this, our story begins.

Detail (politics): Quoye was actually raised to be king of a vast night-world empire. The culture of her world values servitude in leaders and kingship isn’t passed down through families. Instead, certain children are brought up with the choice to go through a decade-long gauntlet meant to reveal who among them should be the next king. The chosen king then lives the life of a servant to their people, living off the kindness of strangers while they rule and make decisions. Quoye did this and found that the only way to make it through the gauntlet was to find a strange and sometimes devastating balance between compassion and ferocity. The night before she was crowned, she was forced to kill a group of men to save herself, using only an animal bone. She ruled extremely well, but only briefly before she was exiled. Because she gave in to the exile, she thinks she’s abandoned the people she was supposed to love, so she takes on a made-up name (Quoye) and turns bitter and jaded. No one in the daylit world knows who she really is.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Simple NaNo 2020 Character Asks

Help me start out my NaNo prep!

Pick any letters (characters) and then pick any numbers (detail related to that character) below, and send them to me in an ask. I have to name and give background to the character, and then add a detail for them for each ask.

A. Protagonist

B. Deuteragonist

C. Ruler character (antagonist)

D. Rival character (secondary antagonist)

1. Culture

2. Magic

3. Politics

4. Religion

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

b4

Quoye - religion

Detail (religion): When Quoye leaves Ozhar at the end of his big final battle, she tries to go back to the night world now that the Zve problem has been resolved. She finds that her presence is now tolerated, but that kingship has been usurped by a council of religious leaders, who point out that living in the daylit world has physically changed her. They argue that she’s been tainted, blinded, and isn’t fit to lead, so they’ll be running the empire until they choose a new king. Realizing that the empire ran okay without her, and that she feels tainted on the inside because of all the reprehensible things she did while in exile. So she goes right back to the daylit world. Her rightful kingship hasn’t left her though, and that has physically changed her as well. When she returns to the night world later with Ozhar and stands before her people, she takes on an eerie godlike appearance that awes Ozhar and frightens everyone else.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

C3

Ruler character - politics

Name: Sivas Gora, the Dawnbreaker

Background: Sivas has made herself a sort of de facto queen of the foresty region where she and her people live. However, her people’s culture rejects the very idea of royalty, so her goal to become an actual queen and unite the people faces a lot of opposition. She’s taken a second name, which is normal for any village head, but she’s also given herself a third holy name without permission, which is basically a suggestion that she’s a descended angel or something. So her naysayers are like, big mad.

Sivas is actually telling a whole lot more lies about herself that her people realize. She wasn’t a village head, or even a head’s daughter - she wasn’t even born in any community at all. She’s from the lowest caste of her people and born near the fringes, where it’s not safe for anyone during the day or during the night. She still secretly follows her caste’s customs. Seeing her family and friends be devoured one by one by the Zve, her entire race’s natural predators, has motivated her to unite the people and push them into a more advanced and intellectual era.

Detail (politics): In order to show at least some deference for tradition, Sivas fought through an entire city of the Zve to claim the largest ruin in the region as her own. Now she’s turned this huge bone ruin into her own city and uses the beast’s jaws as her seat. The city is completely safe during the night and was impenetrable by the Zve before they were cast down. However, she picks and chooses the people who she wants to help begin her new era, and some say she will leave the poorest and most needy of her people vulnerable once she’s picked the villages clean of her favorites.