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DerynifanK

March 17, 2024, 03:48:44 PM
Happy St Patrick's Day. Enjoy the one day of the year when the whole world is Irish.

Pre Camber.

Started by HealingWaters, September 13, 2017, 05:53:13 PM

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Laurna

#15
Welcome to the Forum, Marilyn. Always fun to see new people on-board!

If you are interested in the pre-Camber years, than having the Codex at your fingertips is a must. I admit I had this book  on my shelf for  ten years 2005 before I truly understood how to read the wealth of information that it holds. I had looked at all my favorite people but I had not realized the best way to read it is to start with the early characters and follow the time lines forward. I have now given the book a fairly in depth study and I have concluded that KK has a very substantial pedigree chart with all the families and timelines mapped out including some remarkable events that happened in those peoples times. Events that are not listed or are only hinted at in the Deryni books.

Some of the interesting people are Bearand II Haldane's two sons: Augarin II Haldane first King of Gwynedd and Aurelius Haldane, first Archbishop Primate of all Gwynedd. I love how in the 600's they set the path for the Kingdom that we later see in the books.

If you are interested in the blood thirsty Torenthi side, start with Festil Otto Furstan born in 699. He murdered his older brothers to become king. Eventually a cousin drowned him in a vat of ale. Most of the Furstan linage is not "happy family" times. Although there are a surprising number of "Good" Furstan's, it is just that the bad ones really stand out.

Here is a pre Kelson story of interest. Did you know that Hogan's full name is Hogan Zimri Marek Gwyenach Furstan-Fetil mac Tadhg also known as the Marluk. At the age of 16 he married a common lady named Kethavan out of love. But his mother forbid the marriage and had the marriage annulled. Kethavan and Hogan lived together out on a country estate for ten years having a happy family of many children. But then Hogan's mother put a stop to that and made him legitimately marry Larrissa Furstana de Marluk. Larrissa died giving birth to twin girls. Only one survived Princess Charissa, later known as the Shadowed one. Hogan then remarried his first love, properly, recognizing his many children but they had no dynastic rights. Now, Hogan wanted nothing to do with the crown. He wanted to stay on his small estate and be happy with his large family, but young Prince Wencit was pushing his own agenda to gain power, causing Hogan to assert his claim as the Pretender of Gwynedd. Shows you how bad Furstan's warp the whole family line giving them a bad name.

I am not going to say the Haldanes are all good either. Read about LLarik Haldane from the Mid 600's, who got himself a younger beautiful second wife, Lady Sidonie. Llarik's oldest two sons were older than Sidonie and it became rumored, unproven, that one of the princes had a relation with Sidonie. Look under Dolon Haldane and see where both boys were beheaded by their father in his wraith. Makes you wonder if Sidonie did it so that her own son, Ryons, would become king instead of the first two sons born by another women. However, it was never proven if Sidonie's son Ryons was fathered by King Llarik or one of the Princes.
Hah!  So figh on goodness figh!

There is much more than that in the Codex

Happy Reading,  and good to have you join us.
May your horses have wings and fly!

Marilyn

Thank you!  I have both the Codexes (Codeci?) but haven't really studied them.  That shall be remedied!  Thanks again for the pointers.
Maryse

Laurna

The Codex gives up a little more Pre-Camber story.
Remember we were talking about King Llarik Haldane, who arrested and beheaded his first two sons by his first wife. The two princes were both charged with treason and unnatural acts towards King Llarik's second Wife. Under Jestyn Haldane, the second son, it is said that it was popular belief that the two boys were innocent of any crime. While others believed the boys had seduced the young queen after her marriage.

If we then go to the passage for Jodotha we read an interesting twist. Jadotha was an accomplished Deryni scholar and Healer, She had been a favored student of Orin. "According to legend, she attempted to save the lives of the two sons of King Llarik, in the year 699, and perished with them." If Jodotha thought the brothers were innocent, then they had to be. She was a master at Memory spells and Healing. She would have been able to determine the truth, yet King Llarik did not heed her advice.

What I have yet to discover is how Lady Jodotha's body came to be beside the bier of Master Orin, who had died some twenty-four years before her.
May your horses have wings and fly!

DesertRose

Quote from: Laurna on October 21, 2017, 05:07:19 AM
What I have yet to discover is how Lady Jodotha's body came to be beside the bier of Master Orin, who had died some twenty-four years before her.

Perhaps (this is my personal speculation) she knew that there was at least a good chance of her death before she went to try to save the lives of the princes, and she left instructions with someone (And there's a question.  Who saw to her burial?  Members of the Airsid?  Did she have her own students?) that she wished to be interred beside Orin.

Perhaps, like Evaine, she even sought Extreme Unction (or, given the time period, some pre-Christian or mixed-Christian/pagan end-of-life ceremony) before she left.

There's some food for my brain to nibble. . .
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Evie

As I recall, Jodotha was found beside Orin's bier, not in a proper burial place of her own. I got the impression from where and how she was found that she knew she was mortally wounded, and therefore used the last of her energy to make her way back to Orin so she could die by his side, and then lay there undiscovered for centuries.
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

DesertRose

Quote from: Evie on October 21, 2017, 11:29:57 AM
As I recall, Jodotha was found beside Orin's bier, not in a proper burial place of her own. I got the impression from where and how she was found that she knew she was mortally wounded, and therefore used the last of her energy to make her way back to Orin so she could die by his side, and then lay there undiscovered for centuries.

I don't have my books handy and can't check, but IIRC, Evaine, Joram and Queron found both Orin's and Jodotha's bodies intact under stasis nets made of purple silk thread strung with little shiral beads.  I think his bier was higher than hers, though.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

DesertRose

#21
Quote from: DesertRose on October 21, 2017, 11:52:18 AM
Quote from: Evie on October 21, 2017, 11:29:57 AM
As I recall, Jodotha was found beside Orin's bier, not in a proper burial place of her own. I got the impression from where and how she was found that she knew she was mortally wounded, and therefore used the last of her energy to make her way back to Orin so she could die by his side, and then lay there undiscovered for centuries.

I don't have my books handy and can't check, but IIRC, Evaine, Joram and Queron found both Orin's and Jodotha's bodies intact under stasis nets made of purple silk thread strung with little shiral beads.  I think his bier was higher than hers, though.

Okay, it registered on me that while I don't have my paper copies of the books handy, I do have The Harrowing of Gwynedd on my Kindle app on my phone, so I went and looked up the relevant passage.

Evie is right, in that Jodotha's body was found beside Orin's bier (and not on one of her own, like I thought for whatever odd reason), with evidence of having sustained a mortal wound (bloodstains on her robe/cloak), but both bodies were intact and under a stasis net of purple silk cord strung with shiral beads.  However, in another mystery, the passage doesn't make it particularly clear whether she was under the same net as Orin, or whether someone found her body there fairly soon after her death and made a stasis net for her but left her as she'd died.

I wouldn't think Jodotha herself would have disturbed the stasis net over Orin's body, not even in her dying moments, especially given that he predeceased her by twenty-four years.  But that begs the question, were they both under the same net (and if so, who draped it over her body?), or did someone find her body, perhaps leave her as she was at her time of death (perhaps due to rigor mortis and/or an unwillingness to handle her body overmuch), and make Jodotha her own stasis net?

Both bodies were intact enough when Evaine, Joram, and Queron found them that not only could they see the colors of their clothing and hair, but facial features were still so clear that Evaine recognizes Jodotha from the portrait of her in a locket on Orin's body.  No stasis spell (at least not that we've seen so far in canon) would last several hundred years without the shiral-and-silk net.

So much to ponder. . .

Edited to correct a formatting boo-boo.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Laurna

Thank you for looking it up DR. I hadn't had time to do so yet.

That is very intriguing question, DR. Perhaps someone made Jobotha her own Shiral net, but then why would they not have laid her out on her own bier next to Orin's.

If Jodotha tried to clear the two princes of wrongful charges, then it seems to me that she would have been mortally wounded by the person or the person's conspirator who wanted to see the two young men removed as heirs to the kingdom. The new young wife is therefore highly suspect. The question then remains if Jodotha ever got a chance to make a plea to the king or if she was wounded before she could let out the truth.  She, herself, was a healer, so it had to be a very fatal wound. Yet one she managed to stave off long enough to get to Orin's tomb. But why go to Orin's tomb? Was she looking for solace from Orin's spirit, like that of cambers spirit. or was she looking for the black protocol that she may have guessed, or known, was buried with Orin.

So many questions left unanswered.
May your horses have wings and fly!

DesertRose

Quote from: Laurna on October 22, 2017, 01:04:12 PM
Thank you for looking it up DR. I hadn't had time to do so yet.

That is very intriguing question, DR. Perhaps someone made Jobotha her own Shiral net, but then why would they not have laid her out on her own bier next to Orin's.

If Jodotha tried to clear the two princes of wrongful charges, then it seems to me that she would have been mortally wounded by the person or the person's conspirator who wanted to see the two young men removed as heirs to the kingdom. The new young wife is therefore highly suspect. The question then remains if Jodotha ever got a chance to make a plea to the king or if she was wounded before she could let out the truth.  She, herself, was a healer, so it had to be a very fatal wound. Yet one she managed to stave off long enough to get to Orin's tomb. But why go to Orin's tomb? Was she looking for solace from Orin's spirit, like that of cambers spirit. or was she looking for the black protocol that she may have guessed, or known, was buried with Orin.

So many questions left unanswered.

Well, if Jodotha has her own stasis net, it could be that whoever made it/had it made and placed it there found her body next to Orin's bier long enough after death that rigor mortis had set in (but [TMI re dead bodies ahead] obviously not too long after death, else the body would not be so well preserved by the time Evaine, Joram, and Queron find them), and rigor mortis would make it difficult to maneuver the corpse into a suitable laying-out pose the way Orin's body is situated on his bier.

(Here's where I go off into Speculation Land.  ;D) Perhaps whoever found her and made/commissioned the stasis net was a student of hers (even a fellow Airsid initiate?).  If it was a student/several students, they might not have wanted to handle her body too extensively, even allowing for the limitations imposed by a body too stiff to move too much.  They may also have felt that she died where she wanted to die and/or where she wanted her body to be placed in death.

As to exactly when and how she sustained the wound(s) that took her life, that's a good question.  She could have been in the middle of pleading with Llarik for the lives of the princes when [the second Queen/whoever didn't want Jodotha to succeed or, more likely, minions of the person(s) who wanted Llarik's sons dead] attacked her, or someone who knew she was coming to that end ambushed her before she got there at all. 

(Speculation Land Alert!)  Or, she could have succeeded in getting Llarik to reconsider executing his sons, and someone who didn't want the princes to live set up an attack against her on her way back and then pinned the blame on someone else (the princes themselves don't seem a very likely culprit for fall guys; it just doesn't make sense that they'd kill a powerful, well-trained Deryni Healer who'd just saved their bacon, but it sounds like that court was. . .interesting, and there might have been others on whom to blame Jodotha's death), which might have made Llarik (who seems a bit hot-tempered from what little we know of him) change his mind again, because we do know he did in fact execute his sons/the princes in the end.

And as to why Jodotha dragged herself to Orin's burial place rather than attempting to Heal herself with her dying energy, if she did make it to Llarik but failed to save the princes, perhaps she felt she'd failed in a very important task and didn't have the will to Heal herself even if she technically had the energy and ability to do so.

I would imagine if anyone had known what was in those scrolls that were buried in Orin's arms and/or that they were there at all, it would have been Jodotha, though.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Evie

I think if someone had found Jodotha and covered her with a second net, she would have decomposed more fully before the net was completed, unless someone just happened to have a spiral net premade already. I read the passage as meaning that Jodotha went to Orin's tomb knowing she was mortally wounded and wanting to die beside her beloved teacher, and because she was lying on the ground beside a high bier, it would have been easy enough to pull the trailing edge of Orin's net over herself without having to uncover him (and thereby remove its protection from him) at all. It would be like lying next to a table with a tablecloth on it whose edges touch or even pool on the ground on all sides.  You could easily pull just the hanging edge over yourself without disturbing anything on the table. I think she probably used the portal to get there, and as to why she didn't save that energy to Heal herself instead, it could be that she didn't have anything left to live for at that point. Even if she'd managed to survive, where would she flee to? Court wouldn't be a safe place for her, and any other home she might have would not remain a safe haven for long. Or it could just be that she knew she was bleeding out and getting weak too quickly to retain the necessary focus for such deep Healing on herself, but she had just enough focus left for one remaining Portal jump.
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

revanne

I've always envisaged her as draping the hanging edge of Orin's net over herself just as Evie suggests, both as an act of homage (echoes of touching the hem of his garment) and as a last comfort.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
(Psalm 46 v1)

DesertRose

Good points, both.

And yes, I have to imagine that making a silk net beaded with itty-bitty shiral crystals and large enough to cover an adult human on a bier is probably a fairly time-consuming undertaking (having done enough fiber/textile craft myself), but perhaps the Airsid or some allied group makes them just to have handy in the event of the death of somebody important enough to be thus preserved.  After all, a lot of deaths (then and now, reality or fantasy) don't always come with a lot of warning.

It really could go either way; if Orin's net is big enough, it could be that Jodotha pulled the edge over herself as she died, and if not, it could be that someone close to Jodotha (Airsid initiates, students, whatever) made a practice of keeping a few stasis nets on hand and they grabbed one to drape over her when her remains were found with Orin's.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

whitelaughter

If the stasis nets are (i) a considerable effort to make (and in addition to the effort involved, there's also the rarity of shiral to consider) and (ii) are maintaining an ongoing spell, then she probably has her own net. After all, the net is unlikely to be larger than necessary, and removing it will disrupt the spell (otherwise they would make multiples, they'd just reuse one).

Or of course, if the net can strengthen preservation spells, she may have been trying to use his net to strengthen a spell she was using to staunch her injury. She might even have succeeded, but only bought herself some more time, and died some time later.

Is the state of his body described? That would resolve it...unless 14 years was long enough to preserve the body sufficiently that the net was no longer needed.

Any chance she was trying to mindream his body to get knowledge she could use to save herself? I'd assume that at least one reason for the preservation spells was to lengthen the time doing so was practical.

DesertRose

#28
Quote from: whitelaughter on October 23, 2017, 06:03:05 AM
If the stasis nets are (i) a considerable effort to make (and in addition to the effort involved, there's also the rarity of shiral to consider) and (ii) are maintaining an ongoing spell, then she probably has her own net. After all, the net is unlikely to be larger than necessary, and removing it will disrupt the spell (otherwise they would make multiples, they'd just reuse one).

Or of course, if the net can strengthen preservation spells, she may have been trying to use his net to strengthen a spell she was using to staunch her injury. She might even have succeeded, but only bought herself some more time, and died some time later.

Is the state of his body described? That would resolve it...unless 14 years was long enough to preserve the body sufficiently that the net was no longer needed.

Any chance she was trying to mindream his body to get knowledge she could use to save herself? I'd assume that at least one reason for the preservation spells was to lengthen the time doing so was practical.

Orin's body is intact when Evaine, Joram, and Queron find the chamber.  They can still see his facial features.

But I'm not sure where you're getting "fourteen years," unless that's a typo, because Orin predeceased Jodotha by twenty-four years.

When E, J, and Q accidentally disturb the stasis net(s), both bodies disintegrate into dust (Evaine mentions gathering the dust and mixing it, since it would be pretty difficult to discern Orin's remains from Jodotha's at that point, and re-interring the remains, and that, under the circumstances, that would be most respectful to the wishes of Orin and Jodotha).  That leads me to believe that, in order to preserve the body perpetually, the net would need to stay in place forever.

I do agree with you, though, about Jodotha having her own net.  I think that someone (and "Who?" is a good question) found Jodotha's body by Orin's bier and placed a stasis net over her, but it looks like they otherwise left her as she was at the time of death.  And in order to do that, they'd have to have a stasis net or three already made (perhaps in need of charging or some other sort of spell-work before use), in the event of the death of someone whose status was high enough that they merited lying under a stasis net for eternity.

This is a fascinating discussion, y'all.  Just saying.   ;D

Edited to correct a formatting error.  Oops.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)