It is monumentally annoying to find that, even with the autosave feature, I still tend to lose large chunks of my work when my computer mysteriously crashes. *sigh* I've finally gotten back to work on some of the things I started writing months ago- mostly bits and pieces of Silverlock's backstory (and damn, he and Aya were such brats when they were young), and some stuff on Orrin. I keep feeling a vague desire to write Seventh Hour or Song of Shadows things, too, but I should maybe figure out where the hell those things are going first.

let the motherfucker burn (Orrin babble)

(I keep watching Nip/Tuck, waiting for Sean and Christian to kiss- and they never will, but that doesn't keep me from hoping.)

I think, possibly, the real reason I've let the Fifth Era run off with itself so much is because sometimes I really enjoy naming new characters. The core five plus one all have delightful names- Orrin Brannskada, Faraz Aghavni, Ravi Anrai, Lindra Barak-Anrai, Lorreth Hjordiss, Jaden Morehan. I don't know why Blaine insists on ridiculous and vaguely ironic Swedish names (Torkehaav was mispelled Swedish for "dry ocean" and Brannskada means "burn injury") but they seem to suit him well.

Orrin is actually very little like Blaine. He's quite a bit like the person Blaine could have been, had he stayed a thief, however. Very friendly, very high energy, somewhat ADHD, fidgets with his hands constantly. He's easily distracted when he's bored, but if he's interested in something, he'll tune out the rest of the world. He can be very intense when the mood takes him.

He's 5'8" and solidly built, with traditional redhead complexion and six billion freckles. He has hazel eyes, and has never quite managed to grow a beard; after a week or so of not shaving, he gets a little fuzzy around the edges, but that's about it. This is incredibly disappointing to him, because part of him always wanted to be a pirate, and he feels no pirate is complete without facial hair. He and Mordant shop at the same clothing stores- worn out jeans, steel-toed boots, button-down shirts. He wears arm guards; he has several different pairs for different occasions, but mostly he just wears plain leather ones. They keep him from chewing on his wrists (it was a bizarre nervous habit he picked up as a very, very small child) and they hide the scars from the times he bit down to the bone as a kid.

He smokes (Blaine did, too, but Blaine hand rolled his cigarettes after picking up the habit from Maddel- Orrin smokes cheap Dzyrachan imports), but not profusely: after sex, when bar crawling, and occasionally with his morning tea when he's been pulling all nighters during exams.

He's got the equivalent of a master's degree in arcanic engineering; his doctorate thesis is on energy conversion matrices. (What? What. What? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.) All of Orrin's academic advisors love him- he's a brilliant engineer, but he's kind of a spaz. His research fellowship has him TAing a few engineering classes and some arcane theory classes. His students like him as a person, but he's a pretty useless teacher. He's also perpetually late to all of his classes.

He rides a motorcycle that actually starts three times out of five- he keeps trying to take it apart and fix it, but it hates him quite violently, and he's only succeeded in making it worse. It's got a vintage arcanic engine that isn't really compatible with the Fifth Era, but Orrin refuses to upgrade it to something that, y'know, works.

He's got decent hand-to-hand combat skills, but he prefers hitting things with sticks (his prefered weapon is something like escrima sticks, but he's proficient with a quarterstaff and a three section staff as well). Orrin, unlike Blaine, has no problem punching people when he feels it necessary. In fact, he quite enjoys it. He and Faraz occasionally go out late at night on weekends and engage in acts of vigilante justice. (There's a reason people are terrified of Faraz. SHE WILL CRUSH YOUR SOUL BENEATH HER FOOT AND DEVOUR YOUR ENTRAILS.)

He lives in one of SCoAA's graduate housing apartments, down the hall from Faraz. They used to live together, until Faraz qualified for a place of her own and moved out. (She's got a degree in biology, and is getting her doctorate in arcane botany; she's essentially a druid. Talks to plants and everything. Her apartment looks a bit like a jungle.) They still practically live together; Orrin raids her fridge almost constantly, and Faraz usually shows up in his kitchen and makes him cook for her. They make a point to meet for lunch every day, unless they're both terminally busy. They're incredibly close- nothing happens to either of them that the other doesn't know about. (This means that Orrin gets all of the gory details when Faraz randomly hooks up with some guy she met in a bar for the fourth time that week- and that Faraz has a mental catalogue of all of Silverlock's tattoos.) (Also, Orrin is a thirteen year old girl. Dear god, he is such a thirteen year old girl. Or possibly he's just really, really gay; he can't quite decide.)

He and Silverlock are ecstatically happy together, even when Silverlock does kind of get him involved in a plot to overthrow the government. (I'm still not sure what's going on with that, but whatever.) They don't stay together, I don't think. I'm not sure why- I just can't see Orrin as growing old with someone. I can't really see him as growing old, period. And Silverlock, for all that he is perfectly capable of monogamy, doesn't entirely enjoy it. Dunno; if the timeline in my head ever does get to the point where they break up, it'll probably have something to do with Theron. (What? What. What? I STIL HAVE NO IDEA, but Silverlock and Theron aren't allowed to have sex ever again, I don't care what either of them have to say on the matter.)

the naming of cats- i mean, characters

So, in my head, Nick isn't much on speaking terms with anyone after Blue Rose. He's still sulky, particularly since so many of the drabble prompts I'm procrastinating on are about him and Skoros. But I've figured out some of the details of his family/the Ishkhahareni/Akvaria.

Ishkhahar is one of the more popular fertility deities, though she's most popular along the coast and in Akvaria. She's got a decent Rothcaran following, but she is most closely associated with the Akvarian highlands. The Ishkhahareni are her most devoted followers- those who choose to be married in her name. Isshkhaharet Akvaria is a matriarchal, polygamous society that takes all of its traditions- especially the pre-fourth era ones- very seriously.

Marriage is a huge thing for Ishkhahar's followers, though it's taken to extremes in Akvaria. Rothcar and Ikatia are the only other provinces that really make allowances for extremist Ishkhahareni and other polygamous deities. The practice is largely frowned upon in Dzyrach and Tarmish. (Someday I'll draw a map.) Akvaria is loosely (very loosely) based off of a romanticized version of Muslim Spain (I'm not gonna lie, it's totally Rozarria). This means that the native language is a combination of Toggleverse-Spanish and Toggleverse-Arabic, and that all of the natives have incredibly ridiculous names.

It suits, though, because so many families are polygamous monstrosities, and the easiest way to make sure you're not marrying your sister is to check your last names. Nick's full name (since I now know that "Zanadreth" was just a place holder) is Vanick de Bayez Viudo y Zabalmedina Cruzado. And yes, that's largely just a combination of a bunch of Spanish words whose meanings I found to be hilarious and/or appropriate. And according to proper naming conventions, I'm misusing those conjunctions horribly, but they suit my purposes well enough.

I'll probably have to tweak the naming a bit more, since the Ishkhahareni are equal opportunity polygamists- Nick is the younger son of his father's second wife; his father is the first husband of their clan's matriarch, whose primary surname is Zabalmedina. Because he belongs to a clan- and clan isn't quite the right word for it, but the implications are mostly correct- he gets the "y stuff" tacked on to his name. He isn't one of the matriarch's children, so that denotes him as a secondary member of the family.

Mireia Zabalmedina Cruzado is the matriarch of the family; she inherited a great deal of land from her parent-clan, and she married Nick's father (Dario Viudo Anastasis) despite his unlucky surname, and has three children with him. Dario then married Nick's mother (Zahra Bayez Mendoza) and they have two kids- Nick, and his older brother. Mireia has two other husbands, and five other children (eight total). Dario has three wives, and a total of eight children; Mireia's second husband has a second wife (who happens to be Mireia's sister, actually) and a total of three children, and her third husband, who is something like fifteen years younger than her, is otherwise unmarried and has no children. There are rules as to how many spouses you can have depending on whether or not you're someone's primary and how many children there are and how much anyone stands to inherit.

Thus, the people Nick considers to be his parents are as follows:
Mireia (matriarch), Dario (father), Zahra (mother), Alara (father's second wife), Orsino (Mireia's second husband), Silvalia (Orsino's second wife (and also Mireia's sister, but that's irrelevant), and Stefan (Mireia's third husband). Though only Mireia, Dario, and Zahra are legally responsible for him, and in a less close-knit family, only Dario, Zahra, and Alara would be at all involved in raising him.

He has an older brother, six half-sisters, two matriarchal brothers, and one matriarchal sister. So, eleven children, broken up between seven parents. I'm still working out how the ages fall; some of the children are older than some of the lesser spouses.

Family systems of the size and scale of the Zabalmedina's are rare. Most people just have one spouse, because that's all they can afford. Mireia's mother only had one husband, but her husband had a second wife, and Mireia has several brothers and sisters.

Adultery is a capital crime, and will get you stoned quite thoroughly by anyone in the area. That said, it isn't adultery if your primary spouse has given you permission, or if you intend to marry. Marriage is not an easy way out of an adultery charge, however, since you still need the permission of your other spouses, and you get judged by the priests of Ishkhahar during the ceremony. There's magic involved, and if they decide the marriage isn't a "true" marriage, you get stoned anyway. (A "true" marriage is one in which the involved parties are getting married out of actual affection for one another, and not political or monetary reasons. The magic involved is simple tactile empathy on the part of the priest, who is usually a leechmage.)

Same sex marriages are out of the question in Akvaria, though they do happen occasionally among the Ishkhahareni of Rothcar and Murundcar. (Rothcar, in general, has a much more liberal attitude towards these things, given how many of their important historical figures have been flamingly gay. (Oh, Siegfried. *shakes head* I'M NEVER WRITING THE THIRD ERA.) Murundcar...that's a post all to itself, really. There are lots of elves in Murundcar. It's a weird place.) There's a willingness to look the other way in the case of same sex relationships between married people, particulary women, but among the unwed over the age of twenty, it's considered an ostracizeable offense. (So is divorce- if a couple simply grows apart, they remain married. But if a divorce is necessary, the case goes to an impartial committee to decide where the fault lies, and the person at fault is cast out of the family. It's a messy business, and not one that happens often.)

Nick is a happy hypocrite in that he'll cheerfully fantasize about Liall and Aya, but being within fifty feet of Silverlock makes him want to punch someone in the face. (In Silverlock's case its as much the fact that he was a prostitute for so much of his life as the gender of the people he sleeps with. Though, to be fair, he does sleep with more women, on average, than men.) He's not actually as straight as he'd like to pretend, but he is too closeted to even acknowledge that fact to himself. Liall only teases him in Blue Rose-verse; she's a bit more sensitive in her original incarnation, and he's a bit more inclined to be an asshole when he's provoked.

I've been working on family trees, which means coming up with names for all of the children and parents. Things tend to get a bit...hyphenated. XD

Nick's parents are pretty cool, though- as far as his immediate family members go, he's closest to his half sisters from his father's third wife, and one of his satellite fathers- Mireia's second husband is the one who taught him to ride.

I need to start making little posts again; these long, worldbuilding things are fun and interesting for me, but they take forever to finish, and I'm pretty sure no one else gives a damn.

Ah, well. I'm probably going to focus on Orrin for my next lengthy babble.