(Originally posted on LiveJournal)
Okay. I’ve been piffling my way through revising the early chapters of The Ring of Adonel, I’m also giving some vague consideration to how I shall move forward from where I am stuck. I need to have one of my characters create a new ritual for dealing with a new situation. And I could use having some ideas bounced at me.
So…. I seek your help. Don’t know if anything you suggest will end up in the pot, but anything that makes me define what’s up, will help improve the situation.
Anyway, here are the basics you need to know….
The Fynlaren are immortal in the world. Instead of laws, they govern/shape their lives by using rituals. Oaths can be efficacious, particularly if the angelic powers of the world are invoked as witness to the oath. This means that there actually are consequences for oath-breaking. (Mostly a deterioration of health or internal stability – a spiritual consequence, as it were, but real.)
Because they are immortal in the world, they don’t die. Their physical bodies can be destroyed, and the bond between flesh and spirit/soul (or as I term it in this realm, the anshan) can be broken. When that happens, the anshan seeks out a safe place, usually the company of one of the angelic powers, and gradually regains flesh. The re-fleshed Fynlar body is, however, reproductively sterile. And the process is disquieting to the anshan. The original body basically disintegrates quickly after body & soul have been separated.
The thing is, the Fynlaren have an awareness of each other that is a bit similar to telepathy. So, even though one Fynlar might die, those who know that person will have a peripheral awareness, as it were, of the “dead”, even as they go through the process of re-fleshment.
Now, the Fynlaren also have something of an awareness of the mortals around them. A kind of background noise, unless that person is important to the Fynlar. But when mortals die, their anshans leave the circles of the world entirely. They are gone. The Fynlaren find this vaguely disturbing, and so, usually limit their contacts with mortals.
In the story, one of the Fynlaren leaders has committed a couple of heinous crimes – murder of the mortal wife of another Fynlaren lord, in particular. It turns out that other than a handful of close conspiritors, his people are actually appalled by this, and now refuse to follow him, so he had to continue fleeing (since he knows he’s being pursued). And his people now need a new ritual to deal with this brand-new situation.
Basically, they need a ritual that will help them regard the rejected lord in such a way that he will be as if he were dead like a mortal to them. Something that will help them focus and cut off their “telepathic” awareness of him. A “death” ritual.
I’d reached the point in the story where my bardic character Caoin Il-lyran is asked to create this ritual — and I boggled. What to do? What points should he include in the ritual – other than citing the name of the specific person being rejected/cast out?
I suppose in some ways, it might resemble the ritual of excommunication. Except that I’m not Catholic, and not familiar with that (other than one scene in the movie Beckett).
So…. throw some ideas my way. I could use some nudging, brainstorming, thumping, whatever.
Comments
kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008
You want my opinion? I think your bard is stuck at the ritual because he shouldn’t do it. A people with that kind of mutual awareness should focus on understanding what caused the criminal’s behavior, and dealing with it within their own circles. If the “telepathy” means anything, they’re closer than a human family would be, and a healthy family does not cast out a criminal among them, however much they abhor his crime. (The Unabomber’s family still wants to love him, despite decades of rejection from him and despite the fact that they’re the ones who turned him in.)
When Gandalf cast Saruman from the Order of Wizards, he was cuttin’ of his buttons off and tore his stripes away, but he didn’t hang him in the morning.
scribblerworks – Jan. 17th, 2008
Hmmm. An interesting take on it.
But I’ve been looking at it as … well, allowing a continued contact with the unrepentant criminal (and he is unrepentant) would be toxic to them.
They’re disturbed already that they didn’t perceive his possible intent. It’s shaken their confidence in what they thought they knew of themselves (and they do know less than they think they do – the danger of being unshaken for centuries).
Still… an interesting point. Perhaps the ritual is to protect themselves, rather than merely reject the offender? (They’re not taking the step lightly.)
Oh, and the offender is not present. So this isn’t like an execution or anything involving physical action against him. Just putting him outside the community.
Heh. You have definitely given me something to mull over, to chew on. 🙂 Thanks.
More bouncing! 🙂
kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008
Hmm. If he really did have evil intent, I’d think they’d want to learn as much as possible of why they didn’t detect this. If they can’t learn to do so, it might happen again with equally traumatic results.
On the other hand, he might have reasons not realized.
Did you ever read an SF novel called The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell? At the beginning we’re introduced to a character who had, some time earlier, committed an act so hideous and foul that for some time the author refrains from telling the reader what it was, although within the story the entire world knows what it was. The bulk of the book is then a flashback to the events leading up to that act, and at the end the (traumatized, so he had an excuse for not speaking earlier) protagonist finally gets around to explaining that part of his act he was forced into against his will, and the other part was an accident. And everybody says, “Oh. Okay.” And that’s the end of the story.
I consider The Sparrow to be one of the great “What the f?” novels in the canon, and the great flaw is that the other characters just assumed the previously impeccable protagonist had gone ee-vil for some unknown reason, and just shut him up without bothering to try to figure out what was going on.
scribblerworks – Jan. 17th, 2008
More thinking.
Ooo! Oo! Oo! (Gosh, this is just the sort of sounding board stuff I’ve needed, THANK YOU!)
They certainly can’t keep him “in”, whatever they do. But their desire for this separation ritual, could – plot/story-wise – be an erroneous choice on their part! That would REALLY work with everything that is going on, both in this story, and what happens after it. A Really Big Mistake.
Because, yes, in point of fact, they won’t actually lose their base-line perception of the criminal. The base-line perception of others actually figures in the story at another point, regarding a totally different character/situation. Something folks have been so taking for granted they never considered really testing it. Until too late.
Hmmmmm. Must think some more. But this is good nudging!
kalimac – Jan. 17th, 2008
Re: More thinking
Yes. That’s kind of what I was nudging you towards. They want to do it, they try to do it, and the bard gets stuck. Now what? Well, they think again, that’s what.
scribblerworks – Jan. 18th, 2008
Re: More thinking
Well, plot-wise, the ritual will happen, though not to the effect the Fynlaren were hoping. For one thing, the Bad Guy senses something is up because they attempt it. (That had always been part of the plotline.)
But this idea-bouncing is helping me figure out the whys of it all. And giving me nudges toward some good character interaction stuff, that will allow me to set up some other things that will be paid off later.
Oh, goody!
I think you’re earning yourself a spot in my acknowledgements, David! 😀
wild_patience – Jan. 18th, 2008
The way I see it, he can’t die, but he must die to the community. Therefore this must be a symbolic death of sorts. What are the rituals surrounding the death of a mortal in this world? Do something like that, but there must be something representational of the person to substitute for the dead body.
The symbol could be something resembling a person — figurine, photograph. Or it could be symbolic of the person’s place in the community. Make a funeral pyre of bury it deep or whatever. There has to be some ritual prayer of casting-out, recited by each member in his/her turn, perhaps accompanied by a turning of one’s back on the symbol of the person.
How would you end such a ceremony? Would everyone walk away, singly, in silence? Would there be some sort of communal gathering to mark the occasion — perhaps the opposite of feast food, a meal of penitential foods. (Bitter herbs and the seder ritual come to mind.)
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
scribblerworks – Jan. 18th, 2008
Photograph? Hee! (It’s a Tolkienesque world, between Classical & Medieval in technology. But you made me laugh!)
I think I’d been considering ending in silence, and with backs turned toward whatever will represent the excluded one. Sort of like the Klingon … what is it? Discommodation from ST:TNG.
translatorius – Feb. 13th, 2008
I got an optical idea for you, and some thought, too!
Hi!
Take a look at this sequence from one of my all time favourite RPG’s, FINAL FANTASY X from developer Square (nowadays Square-Enix):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeSdiOAuoqk
The person you see there is the Summoner and Medium Yuna. In the world of Spira, the Summoners guide the souls of the deceased into the afterlife. It’s a wordless and verty touching and beautiful ritual, as you will see (and the CGI movie is, although made in 2001, great to look at, not to mention the music!).
The bodies are buried in shallow water, but the souls wait fur a Summoner to fulfill the rite that is necessary for them to transcend into what comes after death. A soul that is not transcended this way will become a fiend eventually, a spiteful entity in animal or demonic shape that will turn against humans.
I love the scene since the first time I played the game (in 2002, gosh!), and I loved the peaceful and spiritual idea behind this part of the game’s story.
How about a transcending ritual of a kind similar to the depicted one in the movie that can be altered by some black aspects of religion / shamanism / magic into a ritual that condemns the soul of the person to become some fiend … no, wait, better: … to stay alive, sort of, but become haunted by fiends that may or may not be real? Make him transcend into some kind of pre-limbo, still walking in the real world, but haunted by those who have been tortured and killed by him?
Drop me a line, if you like, to dantalion@freenet.de about what you think of this idea – and how you liked the movie sequence :-)!
