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I'M BACK......
YO~, IT'S UPDATED, BUT NOT DONE!
NOTE: UNFINISHED JOURNAL, CHECK BACK LATER
Like the title suggests, I will be posting in the style of one of my Gaia buddies today; this relates to that plotline-universe-thing in my head that will probably never actually get written out. Maybe parts or concepts relating to it, but from start to finish? Doubtful...
So. One character. This is the guy that I consider to be the "first" character I've made for this particular plotline: Lichan.
I don't consider Vitre/Noth/Whatever to be the "first" character for the tale, since his place in the tale is highly unstable and not of much relevance, particularly due to the fact that the story has evolved so much (in my head) that it's not really the same story anymore. He's no longer the main character.
However, Lichan was the second to be created after Vitre, and he's stuck around, even with the radical changes my story-verse has undergone. However, he too has evolved greatly; he's no longer that shyish, suppressed individual that he was at the onset. Now, he's a pretty dark character; one that's a good deal more formidable in personality, behavior, and past than he was before.
As such, he really deserves a make-over. His physical appearance has changed already, but his name, although fitting for his first incarnation, is insufficient for who he is now. It'll be tough for me to get used to his name change; he's been "Lichan" for a while.
However, unlike with other names which I can just "create", I've got some research to do first.
Why research? Well, some background info is in order.
In my tale, "Lichan" is half-demon, as he is currently. His mother is a succubus and his father a regular human, which means he is a cambion. That hasn't changed.
My definition of a "Succubus" and a "Cambion" differs somewhat (in the case of the latter, greatly) from the traditional sense. I'll try to avoid an overly-long overly-detailed description.
So...
First things first: Incubi and succubi cannot breed with each other, so they have to rely on other species to bear viable offspring. As such, they fit in the category of "parasitic breeders", and also prey on other species as predators.
Next, succubi and cambion operate in a "Hive System", where there's one succubus (the "Mother" or "Queen" wink to thousands of cambion (the "Sons" wink . It works somewhat like an ant colony/bee hive because the Queen is the mother of all of the "workers", except where in nature the entire hive is female, all of a succubus' cambion offspring are male. On the other hand, a male incubus will only father female cambion to human females.
Like with queen bees, a Queen need only to do the deed as few times as once, and be pretty much set forever, at least when it comes to repopulating her "army". You see, although a Queen is quite powerful on her own, she bears sons for the sake of protection. Strength in numbers, yes? Additionally, all of those cambion are also born to protect a Queen's only potential daughter; another succubus.
Interestingly, while Cambion are officially half-demon and half-human, a female child born to a succubus is also a succubus, a full-blooded demon. Same idea for an incubus and his son.
Considering that a succubus is capable of spawning millions of males, the chances that a succubus will be born are quite slim. Since a succubus will only give birth to one daughter in her lifetime, that daughter is extremely precious; if she dies, then the familial line will be lost.
Now, you're probably thinking, "Hey, doesn't the dad determine the gender?" In this case, not at all. As demon-spawn aren't exactly human, human reasoning doesn't factor properly; anyway, it's all up to a predetermined probability, where the chance for a girl is utterly minuscule.
Given that incubi work in pretty much the same way, you can imagine that since human chicks only pop out one at a time, and at great expense, it's a good deal more difficult for an incubus to continue his legacy. There are not many incubi, and most all have been around for a very long time. However, to make up for the lack of numbers he has on his side, his cambion daughters, as few as they are, are exponentially more powerful than their male counterparts.
That's due to something else I'll just call a "blood soul" for the time being.
I'll probably go into that in a later journal; too much complicated info at once will probably over-bamboozle my poor reader.
Besides my rather long, irrelevant digression, I kind of tie in a character's background and appearance to a culture or geographic location that vaguely parallels one of Earth's.
Example: Perrizgn is a Marbled Polecat, which, according to Wikipedia, is "found from south-east Europe to Russia and China. Range includes Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Asia Minor, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Armenia, Iran, Afghanistan, north-western Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan and north to the Altai Steppes in Siberia." On Earth, anyway.
That's a pretty big range; however, the main center of the animal's territory lies in Western Eurasia, or, to the East of Turkey somewhere in the former Soviet territories, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. As such, Perrizgn's human-ish appearance reflects the look of those people living within the range of the Marbled Polecat. So yeah, ethnically, he looks Eurasian.
However, Perri's name is loosely derived from an another language's version of "Marbled Polecat", not based on the cultural names of those Eurasian people, like I'm trying to do with Lichan.
He's not an animal like Perri, but an obscure variant of a demon, which doesn't have a scientific name or any other alternate references from which I could patch a name.
This is where it gets tricky; here, I'll have to delve into the background of Lichan's parents, just so this makes sense.
Gosh, I need to fix his parents' names too, but another time. Anyway, I've decided his mother is (equivalently, not literally) of half/half Russian and French descent; "Russian" from her own succubus mother and "French" from her human father (rough-ish parallels in my-verse are Ruthevakta and Galugne).
Lichan's father, on the other hand, is Western Mongolian, of Khuuten.
Their respective names parallel Earth names from the corresponding area, but I've hit a ditch, since succubi/incubi name their children somewhat based on the naming system/style of the non-demonic parent. So, Lichan is supposed to have a vaguely "Khuu" name, but Mongolian names are quite...long and bizzare.
In spite of this, I've consoled myself with the fact that his name is only influenced by his father's people, and that it can have flavors of a Ruthevaktich or a Galunian name, too.
It's just difficult to find the "right" one. Lichan is not particularly happy that none of the preliminary scribbles I have suits his taste and that he doesn't have an official name at this point, but alas. He'll have to wait.
Because this journal has periodic updates the tone might be rather patchy...Anyway, I squished together some names, including new ones for "Linhua", "Latzi", and "Mariellette". ("Lichan's" older brother (one of them), his sister, and his mother. The other names are possible names for other brothers--dead--which have some past significance.)
Here they are:
Laannev Linqukhua ~ Linhua (I wondered why I liked the sound of his original name so much; turns out that in Chinese, a "Lianhua" is a lotus. So I changed it a bit.) Saikkhiive Laiskuren Lirenhrvez ~ Lichan (Thanks, RR. I didn't use the "l", but the "hr" is really quiet; there's a light rasp at the back of the throat for those, but they're more or less silent.) Liallintse ~ Latzi (It's prettier, now. It suits her better.) Marllenerre ~ Mariellette (Spoiler-ish? Not really...) Vasuusange Teaikiryik Luojesoin
Another question that might be posed: If a succubus queen has tens of thousands of sons, how can she name them all, much less remember who each son is?
Answer: She doesn't. The queen names which of her children will be "Division Generals", who in turn through the "blood soul" name the brothers under their jurisdiction. Once named, a cambion can change his name if the occasion merits a change, or the name can be changed by the queen herself. However, through the blood soul, the queen automatically knows what name any of her sons have chosen.
Ok, you should be confused. What the hell is a "blood soul"?
A blood soul is a soul of the body, not of the spirit. It's a shared higher-level sense of self existing separate yet connected to the cambion's personal soul. It's almost comparable to the "twin/triplet/quadruplet/whatever-sense" in that there's information shared, as well as emotion and intuition.
However, it's also similar to the "shared mind" we've seen as the "Twilight Wolf Pack" phenomenon, where each wolf communicates mentally with each other through psi-power.
As a NOTE, though, a blood soul is SIMILAR, not exactly alike.
Metaphor time!
If you think of a soul as floating shadow attached to a person, then a blood soul is the shadow of that shadow, except a lot more dense, almost like a second, incorporeal body opposite of the flesh-and-blood body. Except not visible. By default, they're all attached to each other, but the big shadow (blood soul) covers and protects the floating shadow (personal soul), like an over-sized, caped hood.
Now, here is where it gets tricky. Let's say that that person is standing in one room, and there's another person in the other room, but each room is closed, locked, and warded every way to yesterday, with magic, lasers, zombies, everything. Those two people are brothers.
Ok. You look at the big shadow of person 1, and see a part of it, like someone had grabbed a piece of gum and stretched it, extending to the side and through the lasers and padded walls into the other room to connect with the other person's big shadow. You look at person 2, and see the same thing.
Now add another room, exactly the same, with another brother inside. Person 3 is connected in the same way to both person 1 and person 2. Another room. Same deal, 'cept he's stuck to persons 1, 2, and 3. Stick on 40 more. These rooms are now kinda spaced out; some are close together, some are far apart.
You notice that the connection is thinner the farther away the brothers are from one another, but no matter how far away they are, the connection passes through every obstacle. The shadow exists outside of the normal realm, and cannot be touched by anything other then the owners.
Looking up, you see a staircase, to where there is another person sitting at the very top, higher than everyone else. The personal shadow is of a normal size, but the big shadow is gigantic, since thick ropes of every other shadow of the person in the room extends upwards and fuses into the observer's shadow.
Through the big shadow (blood soul), the queen can give "soul orders" to the closest cambion by rank, through their blood souls. Those closer cambion have larger blood souls, and moving down the ranks, shrink until they hit regular soldier rank size. Each Division leader has watch over a number of cambion, and each one of those has control over more, for about 3 levels, each level increasing in cambion number.
Each rank leader can convey orders to those under his care, downwards. Outside of actual commands, such things as a pain transfer, power transfer, emotional transfer, and even sensory transfer are possible.
Now, as all of the big shadows come from the BIG shadow belonging to the person on the stairs, the BIG shadow has a limited capacity, sort of. Because there's only so much "shadow" to go around, the more people below, the proportionally smaller the big shadows will become.
An earthquake hits and half of the people in the rooms die. Now, there's more BIG shadow for less; each person's blood soul is now larger.
Why is the size important? The blood soul is pretty literally, the "soul of the blood". That is, it specifies not only the cambion's magical power capacity, but also holds his "regenerative battery" and "time meter". It also determines, through his "regenerative battery", how much he's running on empty and needs to replenish it, otherwise he'll draw in the blood soul itself for energy and everything else.
Good gosh, it's so complex...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX~ I'm pressed for time, so I'll come back and edit this at another time, so check back soon!
KaruKyan · Sun Aug 01, 2010 @ 06:34am · 3 Comments |
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