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Other Lands

Started by MerchantDeryni, November 29, 2011, 11:37:52 AM

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MerchantDeryni

Sadly my knowledge of the geography of the world of the Deryni is lacking.  Is there a New World that been, or is yet to be discovered?  I am playing around with a story idea that maks the Deryni out to be like the Quakers and they head to the New World to get away from the persecution.  That way, I can do pretty much whatever I want and not tread on any toes storyline wise.  :)

Also in the vein of if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail,I want to write a story about how using Transfer Portals would make exploring a continent would be much faster and safer for the people involved.

Any Deryni geographers out there?

Elkhound

The new world is yet to be discovered; the Deryniverse's timeline is similar to ours, and they are only up to the 1200s; the Americas were only discovered by Europeans in our primary world--leaving aside the Vikings and Irish monks, whose incursions had little lasting effect--in the 1400s.

That being said, a mass Deryni migration to the Western Hemisphere is an interesting idea--go for it!

Evie

What Elkhound said.  :)  There are some maps in the Codex Derynianus, but only of those lands known to exist up to the year 1130 (which is two years after the events in the last book written in the Deryni series so far), so pretty much anything after that which doesn't directly contradict what has been laid out in the novels already would seem to be fair game for speculative fanfic (or alternate Deryni universe fanfic) along those lines.  Since KK has never come out and said "There is no New World in the Deryni universe and never will be," I'd say just set a story at some plausible period of time after 1130 (possibly a few centuries later, if you want to keep it somewhat consistent with real world history), and go from there.

Even with the maps that do exist, they are similar to their real world medieval counterparts in being really, really vague about some of the details at time, especially the further out you get from Gwynedd and the Eleven Kingdoms.  By the time you get over to the far eastern areas of the Known World, all you've really got at that point are vague areas blocked off as different countries or regions, as if the cartographer wasn't really sure where the exact boundaries lay, but was just marking off "It's around here someplace."   :D  And Great Jumping Jehosephat on a Pogo Stick, do not get me started on the elastic roads needed to make certain canonical plot points work if you go by the mileage gauge on the one decent map  of Gwynedd and the Eleven Kingdoms that actually does exist!   ;D  (That map, in case you're wondering, can be found in the Deryni Adventures roleplaying game sourcebook, which is an excellent resource for fanfic authors even if you don't play roleplaying games.  And probably an even better resource if you do.  There's also a poster-sized version of the Eleven Kingdoms map available online that I just bought myself for an early birthday present...that one also has maps of the City of Rhemuth and the Cathedral of St. George in the corners.  The Cathedral blueprint in particular nearly makes me swoon with joy...so much fanfic potential in that interesting complex of buildings....)
"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!

MerchantDeryni

After the Council of Ramos codified the persecution and reduction of the Deryni, many of that race fled the lands of Gwynnedd for more hospitable locations.  While some lands took them in and allowed the Deryni to live as free citizens, other lands restricted many aspects of thier lives.  There were few places in the 11 Kingdoms where it was truly safe to be a known Deryni, or even a Deryni sympathizer.

To that end a band of Deryni, their families and supporters gathered together and arranged the purchase of a trading ship.  They loaded the ship with trade goods, tools and animals and sailed out of the 11 Kingdoms into the unknown ocean to the West.  They were never seen again in the 11 Kingdoms, and were assumed to have been lost at sea.

The truth is that this band of Deryni mystics, religious brethren, and a few surviviing Michaeline knights managed through determination, luck, and a liberal use of Deryni weather magic managed to sail across the ocean and discover a new land.

They named this new land in honour of the patron saint that had guided them there.

The Deryni Nation of Camberland

Evie

Sounds like an interesting start so far.  I'd make sure not to have them all members of religious orders, if you want the colony to last longer than one generation.   :D  (You did say Quakers, not Shakers!  ;D )   Perhaps they're not entirely going off blindly into the West either.  They may have worked out, like the real world Ancients did (knowledge that wasn't forgotten in the Middle Ages despite the modern-day myth that everyone back then thought the world was flat), that sailing to the far West would eventually lead them back to the Far East, and they just hadn't counted on finding a large land mass in between.  Perhaps someone scried for a glimpse of it....rather difficult at those great distances, I'd assume, but possibly not completely impossible, particularly if it were a group effort, and if something that might provide a focus happened to wash up on an Eleven Kingdoms coastline that had its origins in the as-yet-undiscovered New World.  Ocean currents do move in mysterious ways....

What if they're not the first Deryni to make it to the New World?  Maybe there were survivors of the Lost Kingdom of Caeriesse who somehow made it that far?  How well (or badly) might the newcomers get along with the descendents of those Deryni?
"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!

Jerusha

Oooh - so many possibilities!  I am already looking forward to the first fanfic!  :)
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night...good Lord deliver us!

 -- Old English Litany

MerchantDeryni

I admit part of it is being lazy.  This way I don't have to juggle all the known history canon and just make stuff up.  :P

Plus I can scribble out the story of the Deryni cartographers and how they travelled across the land in style and comfort.

I had Deryni families and their followers and servants as well as the monastic types.  Throwing in the monastic types allows for some of the knowledge to be saved and apssed down from one generation to the next.  That way healing, transfer portals, weather magic and all the other Deryni advantages are not lost over the years as they are in the high Deryni series.

A couple of Healers head to the New World, they help the people survive, and pass the knowledge on down.  They may lose some material, or perhaps the stresses of the new world force an inventiveness into the training and they discover more about their abilities.

Suppose Camberland, dedicated to Saint Camber thrives, and returns after a couple of hundred years with goods to trade. Or one of the 11 Kingdoms finds them, a nation of Deryni who remember the injustices, and also remember their heritage and powers.  It could make for a rather tricky situation for the 11 Kingdoms. 
Or the new world has to send agents back to get more technology and tools, things they canot make for themselves (yet).  There is a lot of open territory to play around with. (And I just happen to think like that).

Evie

If you are ever looking for people to bounce ideas around with in real-time, there are a few of us who tend to show up in the #Deryni_Destinations chatroom many weekdays around this time of day/evening/night (adjust for your local time zone).  Not so much today, since two of the Circulum Verbi members (inside joke there  ;) ) are away from keyboards this morning/afternoon/evening, and I'm in the middle of some less interesting work in my real-world job, but maybe on some other day.  :)  But I get some of my best--and worst--story ideas from bouncing them around in there and seeing what gets added on to, challenged, shot down with raucous laughter, reworked, etc.  Even if I don't end up using someone else's suggestions, they're often the catalyst to getting my mind to think in some other direction I do end up taking.

(And that's a general announcement, not just to MerchantDeryni.  The Chatroom's not just for Sunday evenings at KK time anymore.  :D )
"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!

Evie

Quote from: MerchantDeryni on November 29, 2011, 03:36:12 PM
Plus I can scribble out the story of the Deryni cartographers and how they travelled across the land in style and comfort.

If you're going to write about Deryni cartographers, you're going to need maps.  Lovely detailed maps with mileage scales and non-elastic roads for the cartographically-obsessed among us. 

OK, maybe you won't.  But that's on my Christmas wish list, and a gal can dream.   ;D
"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!

MerchantDeryni

I like maps.  I ran a D&D game (yes I am a geek) and used google maps and the West coast of Canada as the setting.  So when folks ask where the river runs to, I knew. I just had to add in the castles and dragons :P


Evie

I would so play in (or even run) a Deryni Adventures rpg if I had a) more free time and didn't have to choose between using it to game or to write, and b) some local folks to game with again who have a clue what "Deryni" even are, much less how to play in that universe without trying to turn it into "hack the enemy / get the loot / move to the next level" dice-roll-dependent 'roll playing' rather than the actual story-based, dice-guided but not rules-lawyered, role-playing fun it could turn out to be in the hands of the right group of players.  *sigh*  Of course, in the Internet age there are all sorts of ways to run online games as well--Bynw runs one--but then you run into pesky things like time zone differences and coordinating schedules.  
* Evie adds to Christmas wish list--"More free time"
"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!

Alkari

Member of Circulum Verbi touching base from the peace of her holiday retreat ...:D

Camberland is an interesting premise.  If you set it in the time of the persecutions, then you won't have had the equivalent of Vasco de Gama and the southern explorations, so do you have some sort of legends or tales about lands to the west, perhaps along the lines of the Viking voyages to Greenland?  Or as Evie suggested, takles of the lost kingdom of Caeriesse? 

And it will be interesting to see how you cope with the Deryni map making process and distances, given the many problems experienced in our world as far as accurate measurements of longitude.  (Not to mention that the distances, both by land and sea, in KK's world seem to be extremely, er,  "elastic"!!)   IRL, latitude was relatively easy to measure, but longitude depended on having accurate timepieces, and that problem wasn't really solved in a way that was practical for ships' navigators until the late eighteenth century (see e.g. Captain Cook and his famous chronometers). 

The other interesting aspect is the commercial importance and often extreme secrecy of maps IRL.   As you point out, the issue of contact between Camberland and the 11 Kingdoms could be tricky for both sides, and I could imagine some interesting issues about whether / how to keep Camberland a secret.  And if the secret was released, then on what terms?  The efforts of the Portuguese to keep their trade routes to the east a secret are fascinating, with the map making 'espionage' by the Dutch and then the English as their empires expanded. 

Look forward to reading about the founding of Camberland.  :)

tenworld

I am curious how Deryni people fleeing from persecution deal with the Native Camberlandians.  Hopefully gentler than in our world.

By the way there is a great archeological site in Salem, New Hampshire called America's Stonehenge.  You should visit if you havnt, would be a great place to integrate into your story.  The professionals have never determined exactly who built it (the story has changed over the 4 times I have visited in the last 30 years) so why not an outdoor chamber for Deryni magic?

derynifanatic64

I have seen American's Stonehenge on TV.  A very interesting place.  Hopefully, the reason for its construction will be discovered.
We will never forget the events of 9-11!!  USA!! USA!!

MerchantDeryni

Well I have written a few pages of ideas down for how things could go.  I went for the easiest to begin with and had disease from the colonists wipe out a large fraction in the beginning, and have teh few healers the settlers have help save people.  I just re-read Pillars of the Earth and the Diseases of trade section in my history of trade book (A spledid exchange I think it is called).  So having sickness sweep the land could reduce initial threats to the settlers, while depriving them of help as well.

Most of my current ideas all revolve around the transfer portals, I like the scenarios and possibiliites they can create, and they are (to me) the most blatant 'Deryni' thing.  I just like the idea, so I write about what they could do with them.

In that regard I disagree with KK in her assessment of Portal Use in Deryni Magic.  She wrote that the networks were declining.  My mercenary/greedy nature balks at the thought of something that useful (and profitable!) be declining.  4 people can make a portal if need be (more is better but hey), and only 2 of them have to be Deryni and know what to do, the other two are just batteries.

For Camberland, this means the ability to trek across a continent, find and make friends, and make a portal and boom, instant trade.  I modeled it on fur trade, rather than voyageur, I have trade forts every 200 miles.  Axe heads, adzes, metal pots, glassware, all the 'high tech' items a medieval economy could produce for the furs.  Furs are loaded onto a trade ship rewed by humans and you have the fur craze 300 years early. (Yes, again with the trade.  I use the teleportation to avoid portaging.  I haveonly carried a canoe and all the food I would eat for a week once in my life, and I would gladly teleport every chance I could.

From a new nation diplomacy perspective.  healers come in, cure wounds and illnesses, and they glow with handfire.  Blessed by the Gods. Impressive as all get out.  Sure the argument for possessed by Devils could be raised, but in my imagination the diplomatic relations go well :P.

Could a medieval technology level society conquer the new world? Slowly, standard of living would be easy to copy, a wood hut is easy to build to medieval standards using iron axes.  The lack of firearms is a problem is warfare breaks out, bows and swords and chainmail vs bow and arrow of native american.  this assumes (as I did in my story) that they land on the East coast of the US.  *that way I can use local google maps and Ag data to show me where the coal seams and iron deposits are.

Getting more ships from the Old world with more settlers (Deryni or human), and the craftsman and the tools needed to expand may be difficult, which is why I positied the weather magic,  more Deus machina for the storyline.

I like the ease of Camberland, where the people do not forget their heritage, and focus on the magic.  Magic could/would make things a lot easier for settlers.  Healing for sure, weather magic depending on how controllable it is.  And of course, the Portals.

I think I will go write and post a 1 pager about the exploration of the vast continent, show folks what I am thinking of.