Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Index Links
For the up-to-date index to all blog contents on Loria Series and companion blogs - CeptsForm, CeptsForm Library, Concept Reviews, click on CeptsFormIndex.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Seidonese Tale
How the Seidonese Came to Be
This is the story the Seidonese tell one another, the one I now tell to you.
Before the start of time was Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.
Januar-Allbeing made the far-flung, widening reaches of worlds. Amidst surrounding starry cold, Se made our world. ´Era we call her, that is, “the Lady,” a great ship voyaging through dark emptiness. And, as on other worlds, Se made everything on ´Era that we are and see and find.
Januar-Allbeing made the right ways that steer the whole of all. Se made the unstoppable ways that steer ´Era from within unfolding nature. And Se made the choice ways so that people may learn and follow them. We Seidonese know that together we cohabit aged, shaky, drifting ´Era best by sharing what we learn and know.
Januar-Allbeing, wondrous high lord of all circling worlds, for five thousand month cycles shepherded everything Se made. Then Ses sustaining overheadship passed through the co-division. So, after Ses dismemberment, each of the co-deities, risen from the parted, divine being, held sway for 360-month cycles. Mighty Marts, risen from the parental trunk of Januar-Allbeing, followed first, then beauteous Afril, risen from the parted genitals and sea foam, then generous Mai, risen from the embracing heart of January-Allbeing. Then followed bountiful Jun and industrious Juli, twins of the union of Marts and Mai, 360 month cycles each. Then came the age of Ost.
This age, my Seidonese sibs, is the age of Ost Contemplator, risen from the majestic head of Januar-Allbeing.
We remember Ost Contemplator as the maker of the Seidonese. How he became guardian and speaker to the Seidonese people happened in this way.
You know well the pain and separation swollen between the co-deities. Recall how Afril, against all right ways, seduced Marts, wedpartner of Mai. War boiled on ´Era between Ser peoples – the Allahni of Afril, the Romart of Marts, the Mayan of Mai.
This mad rift of war, as hurtful as it has been to the passage of starship ´Era, also shadowed the wrecked family of deities meant to live outside time and grief.
Marts and Mai’s long, fortunate union ended. Marts pursued Afril in unsatisfied lust from age to age. Dais, unwanted child of Marts and Afril, Se abandoned to continuous night. Ost, intended for wedpartnership with Afril, fell into ages-long unrest and deepening sadness. Se wandered throughout ´Era; some say Se wandered throughout all worlds, a dark cloaked stranger wherever Se went. And at the time of this story, Ost hovered over our common sea that we Seidonese now encircle.
Why did ´Era break from its stablished pattern? Some see this savage rip in nature’s well-woven cloth as the threat of future breaks in the first order ways, founded and meant by Januar-Allbeing to sustain all worlds. Certainly, nothing can be so destructive as a tear through the enduring; yet, break it did, thanks to the wrath brewing among the co-deities.
Others see ´Era attacked by its warring peoples with so much molten anger and fiery force that furious armies hurled our captive and wounded world from its usual course. No matter. We Seidonese know that such accounts as these two are both the same.
Who can doubt that the whole circle of worlds lies in peril? Who can doubt that ´Era, so wide and yet so small, might turn dry and lifeless? Can you not see ´Era burned to a crumbling cinder or fired to a hard calcareous stone; or, can you not see ´Era a cold, cold ball, shivering as white as the capped peaks of the far Pamirs, and the far, far ranges beyond?
Seidor comes into this story long after the great slip. Then cold hard seas had drowned every seacoast and great cracks had cut through the bedrock foundation of old ´Era. Sea bottoms heaved themselves into uplands and high, high hills thundered apart and sunk. Settlement-fed fire and air-raged storm ringed our broken world. Smoke and dust shrouded our world.
So great was the destruction, so impossibly unnumbered the mangled dead that what the far parents had built, their afterchildren lost. So barren were those times, the times of Ran the Rescuer (whom I will tell you of another day), that we see them as dark. Those days are almost without story; worse, the people all but lost any language to tell their stories. In such sunless times, people must at last find a way to rebuild. Yet, so vast was the ruin that the rebuilding could not come for 800-month cycles, until, at last, the time of this, our story.
Seidor, the old taletellers liked to say, was the fairest and wisest, the ninth of the twelve children of Gremor and Adlan. Seidor came to these lands in far, far old times. She and her people came from lands beyond the blue-green Caspe Sea. Seidor, a widow, had little but her wisdom and her family of five wedded children and all their households. Perhaps 250 families, hardly a thousand people, account for the Company of Seidor. Their prosperity lay in a few sacks of seeds, hand tools, what else they could carry, and the goats they drove before them.
The wise Seidor led them day by day to a destination they could make their own. They passed through occupied lands, places where they were not welcome, and through barren unredeemable lands. They came at last to these rubble-strewn uplands and high-eroded hills between the outward sea, the Caspe, and the inward sea. They followed the shoreline round, crossing small streams until they reached the tree-lined banks of the quick flowing Hydor. There they settled.
‘First, we will make new soil,’ Seidor said. They emptied upon the black sands two casks of loam, farbrought from the old homelands. And to this plot, they added each day the natural wastes from their fields, kitchen, settlement and animals. Was not Seidor wise to bring the casks of soil, kept alive on their long trek? Was she not wise to grow the old soil into new?
At the wise Seidor’s direction, the settlers turned and spread decaying wastes in with the far homebrought mix. The worms, beetles and other soil-dwellers hungrily turned rotting piles of debris into new soil. Day followed day and cycle followed cycle and generation followed generation. Seidor and her people made new soil, new land where there had been little more than bare sand and weathered stone. Soil-making plots followed the afterchildren of Seidor and their households as they grew and multiplied and moved between the seas.
Seidor at her death, the champion of 100 rotations around Old Sol, looked out over many generations and countless people. We called our land Seidor and named ourselves the Seidonese in praise and memory. And the inland sea, we called the Seidon Sea.
The children of Seidor spread over the land, moved and spread again. Here lived Allonor, the oldest, and there Aral, and Tyror, Garn, Armor, the youngest. Each was a chief or magistrate over many steder and numerous folk. They made the desert bloom. They raised heavy harvests and tended great herds of cattle. Thanks to Seidor’s wisdom and direction, they prospered.
The neighboring peoples saw their fruitful fields and bursting storage ricks. The Allahni wanted what they had and the Arthani wished to take it from them. Therefore, the Seidonese cried among themselves to be united and strong. And the children of Seidor, living distant from one another, longed to have her among them again that she might lead and judge among them. Therefore, they met and called upon the co-divided members of Januar-Allbeing to strengthen and protect them from disunion and the fear of enemies.
And over the misty Seidon Sea dwelt the ancient one. Se was the moody wanderer, Ost Contemplator, long separated from the consort of deity. Ost saw the new comers and came into their midst, a slouched hat half hiding is face.
‘I know you,’ Ost declared. ‘I have seen your people and your beginnings.’ Ost came among them and announced that the wedpartners, Cyor, child of Chief Garn, and Vendar, child of Chief Tyror, become High Chiefs (the Hochrodi) of the Seidonese. And Ost fashioned two circlets of lustrous metal and set them with precious stones to mark their Rodihood. These are become the crowns of the Hochrodi.
‘Remember the many wise words of Seidor,’ Ost advised. ‘And remember first that she always said, “Prepare and pursue.”’ Ost called the first taletellers, the vener of all the steder in Seidonland, and taught them all rightways. And the vener told one another all the tales and all the wise words they knew of Seidor. And so her sayings and the telling of tales continue to this day.
Ost chose the Seidonese as Ses people and initiated with them the age of Ost. The Seidonese grew prosperous and secure in their power as they continued their expansion around the Seidon Sea. Wherever they went, steder and the produce of steder followed. As the Seidonese say, the Allbeing made ´Era, but we made it a garden.
Hochrodi followed Hochrodi throughout this age until suddenly the crowns were lost and the visible High Chiefs gone. But the age of Ost is not complete, and Ost, who still reigns, will not abandon Ses people. The Hochrodi only sleeps or is in hiding until it is time again to rise, to claim and wear the crowns and to restore the age of Ost among all the people and lead the Seidonfolk to their glorious future.
Ost quickened Ses spirit to see the rightways restored in the strong and prosperous Seidonese people. Se left these shores straightaway to rejoin the co-deities and to stand by Juli. Thus, Juli and Ost joined, making one more reunion toward the deityhead. In time, Juli and Ost gave rise to the twins, Seber and Osober; Seber joined with Jun, another reunion. From this secondary reunion comes Venner the Provident, who wins back from the darkness the abandoned and estranged Dais. And they join, making the tertiary and final complete reunion.
And from Dais and Venner shall rise a new beginning, Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.
_____
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
This story is written as though told to an audience, possibly by Olf (2924-3010?) the last of the Taletellers of the chiefdom of Osor before its destruction by the Gremani Oberlehnsherr Earchsohn in 3002.
This is the story the Seidonese tell one another, the one I now tell to you.
Before the start of time was Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.
Januar-Allbeing made the far-flung, widening reaches of worlds. Amidst surrounding starry cold, Se made our world. ´Era we call her, that is, “the Lady,” a great ship voyaging through dark emptiness. And, as on other worlds, Se made everything on ´Era that we are and see and find.
Januar-Allbeing made the right ways that steer the whole of all. Se made the unstoppable ways that steer ´Era from within unfolding nature. And Se made the choice ways so that people may learn and follow them. We Seidonese know that together we cohabit aged, shaky, drifting ´Era best by sharing what we learn and know.
Januar-Allbeing, wondrous high lord of all circling worlds, for five thousand month cycles shepherded everything Se made. Then Ses sustaining overheadship passed through the co-division. So, after Ses dismemberment, each of the co-deities, risen from the parted, divine being, held sway for 360-month cycles. Mighty Marts, risen from the parental trunk of Januar-Allbeing, followed first, then beauteous Afril, risen from the parted genitals and sea foam, then generous Mai, risen from the embracing heart of January-Allbeing. Then followed bountiful Jun and industrious Juli, twins of the union of Marts and Mai, 360 month cycles each. Then came the age of Ost.
This age, my Seidonese sibs, is the age of Ost Contemplator, risen from the majestic head of Januar-Allbeing.
We remember Ost Contemplator as the maker of the Seidonese. How he became guardian and speaker to the Seidonese people happened in this way.
You know well the pain and separation swollen between the co-deities. Recall how Afril, against all right ways, seduced Marts, wedpartner of Mai. War boiled on ´Era between Ser peoples – the Allahni of Afril, the Romart of Marts, the Mayan of Mai.
This mad rift of war, as hurtful as it has been to the passage of starship ´Era, also shadowed the wrecked family of deities meant to live outside time and grief.
Marts and Mai’s long, fortunate union ended. Marts pursued Afril in unsatisfied lust from age to age. Dais, unwanted child of Marts and Afril, Se abandoned to continuous night. Ost, intended for wedpartnership with Afril, fell into ages-long unrest and deepening sadness. Se wandered throughout ´Era; some say Se wandered throughout all worlds, a dark cloaked stranger wherever Se went. And at the time of this story, Ost hovered over our common sea that we Seidonese now encircle.
Why did ´Era break from its stablished pattern? Some see this savage rip in nature’s well-woven cloth as the threat of future breaks in the first order ways, founded and meant by Januar-Allbeing to sustain all worlds. Certainly, nothing can be so destructive as a tear through the enduring; yet, break it did, thanks to the wrath brewing among the co-deities.
Others see ´Era attacked by its warring peoples with so much molten anger and fiery force that furious armies hurled our captive and wounded world from its usual course. No matter. We Seidonese know that such accounts as these two are both the same.
Who can doubt that the whole circle of worlds lies in peril? Who can doubt that ´Era, so wide and yet so small, might turn dry and lifeless? Can you not see ´Era burned to a crumbling cinder or fired to a hard calcareous stone; or, can you not see ´Era a cold, cold ball, shivering as white as the capped peaks of the far Pamirs, and the far, far ranges beyond?
Seidor comes into this story long after the great slip. Then cold hard seas had drowned every seacoast and great cracks had cut through the bedrock foundation of old ´Era. Sea bottoms heaved themselves into uplands and high, high hills thundered apart and sunk. Settlement-fed fire and air-raged storm ringed our broken world. Smoke and dust shrouded our world.
So great was the destruction, so impossibly unnumbered the mangled dead that what the far parents had built, their afterchildren lost. So barren were those times, the times of Ran the Rescuer (whom I will tell you of another day), that we see them as dark. Those days are almost without story; worse, the people all but lost any language to tell their stories. In such sunless times, people must at last find a way to rebuild. Yet, so vast was the ruin that the rebuilding could not come for 800-month cycles, until, at last, the time of this, our story.
Seidor, the old taletellers liked to say, was the fairest and wisest, the ninth of the twelve children of Gremor and Adlan. Seidor came to these lands in far, far old times. She and her people came from lands beyond the blue-green Caspe Sea. Seidor, a widow, had little but her wisdom and her family of five wedded children and all their households. Perhaps 250 families, hardly a thousand people, account for the Company of Seidor. Their prosperity lay in a few sacks of seeds, hand tools, what else they could carry, and the goats they drove before them.
The wise Seidor led them day by day to a destination they could make their own. They passed through occupied lands, places where they were not welcome, and through barren unredeemable lands. They came at last to these rubble-strewn uplands and high-eroded hills between the outward sea, the Caspe, and the inward sea. They followed the shoreline round, crossing small streams until they reached the tree-lined banks of the quick flowing Hydor. There they settled.
‘First, we will make new soil,’ Seidor said. They emptied upon the black sands two casks of loam, farbrought from the old homelands. And to this plot, they added each day the natural wastes from their fields, kitchen, settlement and animals. Was not Seidor wise to bring the casks of soil, kept alive on their long trek? Was she not wise to grow the old soil into new?
At the wise Seidor’s direction, the settlers turned and spread decaying wastes in with the far homebrought mix. The worms, beetles and other soil-dwellers hungrily turned rotting piles of debris into new soil. Day followed day and cycle followed cycle and generation followed generation. Seidor and her people made new soil, new land where there had been little more than bare sand and weathered stone. Soil-making plots followed the afterchildren of Seidor and their households as they grew and multiplied and moved between the seas.
Seidor at her death, the champion of 100 rotations around Old Sol, looked out over many generations and countless people. We called our land Seidor and named ourselves the Seidonese in praise and memory. And the inland sea, we called the Seidon Sea.
The children of Seidor spread over the land, moved and spread again. Here lived Allonor, the oldest, and there Aral, and Tyror, Garn, Armor, the youngest. Each was a chief or magistrate over many steder and numerous folk. They made the desert bloom. They raised heavy harvests and tended great herds of cattle. Thanks to Seidor’s wisdom and direction, they prospered.
The neighboring peoples saw their fruitful fields and bursting storage ricks. The Allahni wanted what they had and the Arthani wished to take it from them. Therefore, the Seidonese cried among themselves to be united and strong. And the children of Seidor, living distant from one another, longed to have her among them again that she might lead and judge among them. Therefore, they met and called upon the co-divided members of Januar-Allbeing to strengthen and protect them from disunion and the fear of enemies.
And over the misty Seidon Sea dwelt the ancient one. Se was the moody wanderer, Ost Contemplator, long separated from the consort of deity. Ost saw the new comers and came into their midst, a slouched hat half hiding is face.
‘I know you,’ Ost declared. ‘I have seen your people and your beginnings.’ Ost came among them and announced that the wedpartners, Cyor, child of Chief Garn, and Vendar, child of Chief Tyror, become High Chiefs (the Hochrodi) of the Seidonese. And Ost fashioned two circlets of lustrous metal and set them with precious stones to mark their Rodihood. These are become the crowns of the Hochrodi.
‘Remember the many wise words of Seidor,’ Ost advised. ‘And remember first that she always said, “Prepare and pursue.”’ Ost called the first taletellers, the vener of all the steder in Seidonland, and taught them all rightways. And the vener told one another all the tales and all the wise words they knew of Seidor. And so her sayings and the telling of tales continue to this day.
Ost chose the Seidonese as Ses people and initiated with them the age of Ost. The Seidonese grew prosperous and secure in their power as they continued their expansion around the Seidon Sea. Wherever they went, steder and the produce of steder followed. As the Seidonese say, the Allbeing made ´Era, but we made it a garden.
Hochrodi followed Hochrodi throughout this age until suddenly the crowns were lost and the visible High Chiefs gone. But the age of Ost is not complete, and Ost, who still reigns, will not abandon Ses people. The Hochrodi only sleeps or is in hiding until it is time again to rise, to claim and wear the crowns and to restore the age of Ost among all the people and lead the Seidonfolk to their glorious future.
Ost quickened Ses spirit to see the rightways restored in the strong and prosperous Seidonese people. Se left these shores straightaway to rejoin the co-deities and to stand by Juli. Thus, Juli and Ost joined, making one more reunion toward the deityhead. In time, Juli and Ost gave rise to the twins, Seber and Osober; Seber joined with Jun, another reunion. From this secondary reunion comes Venner the Provident, who wins back from the darkness the abandoned and estranged Dais. And they join, making the tertiary and final complete reunion.
And from Dais and Venner shall rise a new beginning, Januar-Allbeing, who was and is and is to come.
_____
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
This story is written as though told to an audience, possibly by Olf (2924-3010?) the last of the Taletellers of the chiefdom of Osor before its destruction by the Gremani Oberlehnsherr Earchsohn in 3002.
Origin
Origin of Loria in the Game
When I reached twelve years, our parents thought me old enough to stay alone with my younger brother and two sisters. It fell to me to keep them amused. That was the first time we played the game.
We had few toys and used imagination in our play. Invented games explored their own paths, evolving because they were alive. That night, we took our parents’ books out of the double-wide case of shelves. With them, we built houses, then roads. Because of the roads, people had to travel on them. We chose the face cards of a handy playing deck, and each of us moved along our king, queen and jack. These trios and a joker or two put us into monarchy; we called the game Kingdom.
Our models came from stories Dad read to us, tales told at the kitchen table, and radio shows as varied as Let’s Pretend and Space Patrol. Swashbuckling and adventuresome movies fed our limited knowledge of history. Despite our age range, from seven to twelve years, the game kept us entertained for over an hour. We were still playing when Mom and Dad came home, and we had to put everything away.
Shirley, Susan and I wanted to play Kingdom longer, and continuously. We set up in the uninsulated attic and played there in cooler weather. Each of us took a country with prominent people and population. Shelves, crates, and tables became buildings; shoebox lids were boats. We bought cheap toy horses and farm animals, used some dollhouse furniture, but made much more from construction paper. Spent shotgun shells stood for people. To keep them distinguished from one another, we named each kingdom’s principals with lettered bands around the shells. With the clothes made out of ribbons and the jewelry that we fashioned, they could dress.
Each country had an economy based on a unique business with products. The rule was that you could have any non-competitive business as long as you had a physical base to show its existence. If you had the dairy, you had to have cows and some objects that stood for milk, butter and cheese. We bought and sold with one another using play money. Auctions and trade fairs followed. Cash and treasure went with dowries. The world we created had become a glorified three-dimensional version of Monopoly except that plot substituted for chance and technology remained at the late medieval level.
As we grew older, the game became more sophisticated. Susan started portrait painting with colored pictures cut out of magazines. Shirley began a newspaper, The Kingdom Journal. I ran the notary public since our people had to make wills to dispose of their property. Characters wrote letters to one another and kept diaries. Outside of the game, we projected plan books with future year-by-year events, mostly of a dynastic nature. Shirley’s Roman Rome became Romst; my Lesser Italy became Loria. Susan had started and stayed with Richland.
During four years when the game was at its height, we enacted our way through 600 years of inter-relations between our three city-states. I capped the game by a sketchy history of Loria, commissioned by Frivovla VIII, its queen in those days.
By age sixteen, the game occupied much of my thinking, and I had plans outlined 400 years ahead. When we sloughed off Kingdom, I could not give it up and began to review and reconstruct Loria in my mind and then on paper. Between the start of tenth grade and December of my sophomore year in college, I puzzled through and wrote out the life of Frivovla II, the Well-Attended, the fourth monarch and first pre-eminent one in Loria’s long history. That finished, I leapt 700 years ahead to the time of Augustus, who vaulted the kingdom into an empire and lead at the start of the modern age.
At age 23, with a family and career, what I had envisioned as the Empire Series slowed to irregular piecemeal work and the development of background genealogies. But I never quit thinking about it and plumbing for the origins and development of Loria. At age 40, I resurrected the life and background of Vodarodi the Founder in a three-part narrative, The Crowns of Vodarodi. That done, I started rewriting the earlier Frivovla draft. I reworked it about four times, amidst other explorations back and forth on Loria’s timeline, and could never satisfy myself. At age 60, I decided on a new tack and figured out the story of Frivovla’s maternal grandmother, the Lady Frivovla of Allonor. At first all I knew of her was that she was the child of the Chief of Allonor and that she had been wed when very young into the Kingdom of Rheapolis. How did she come to Loria? At Last, I Depart became the result.
Of all the writing in my life, some of it has been professional, some of a civic nature, and some personal. Still, my continual obsession has been to work out stories of individual lives. I believe that my personality, whether innate or nurtured, set me in this direction. Most of the influences in my life have been literary, as a listener, reader, viewer, talker, and scribbler.
But the consistent thread that I find I have pursued over a fifty-seven year period with Vodarodi, his ancestors and descendants, began in the game we four Sween kids started one night when we were left alone to our own devices.
_____
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
I first wrote this piece, here slightly revised, for an essay contest sponsored by Minnesota Literature in 2005. The theme was to tell a nonliterary event that influence one's writing. I was hardpressed because I could not think of a single thing that did not have its connections to some literature. The game, though it had scattered roots in stories and the media, seemed to serve the purpose. My submission was not accepted among the awarded top three.
When I reached twelve years, our parents thought me old enough to stay alone with my younger brother and two sisters. It fell to me to keep them amused. That was the first time we played the game.
We had few toys and used imagination in our play. Invented games explored their own paths, evolving because they were alive. That night, we took our parents’ books out of the double-wide case of shelves. With them, we built houses, then roads. Because of the roads, people had to travel on them. We chose the face cards of a handy playing deck, and each of us moved along our king, queen and jack. These trios and a joker or two put us into monarchy; we called the game Kingdom.
Our models came from stories Dad read to us, tales told at the kitchen table, and radio shows as varied as Let’s Pretend and Space Patrol. Swashbuckling and adventuresome movies fed our limited knowledge of history. Despite our age range, from seven to twelve years, the game kept us entertained for over an hour. We were still playing when Mom and Dad came home, and we had to put everything away.
Shirley, Susan and I wanted to play Kingdom longer, and continuously. We set up in the uninsulated attic and played there in cooler weather. Each of us took a country with prominent people and population. Shelves, crates, and tables became buildings; shoebox lids were boats. We bought cheap toy horses and farm animals, used some dollhouse furniture, but made much more from construction paper. Spent shotgun shells stood for people. To keep them distinguished from one another, we named each kingdom’s principals with lettered bands around the shells. With the clothes made out of ribbons and the jewelry that we fashioned, they could dress.
Each country had an economy based on a unique business with products. The rule was that you could have any non-competitive business as long as you had a physical base to show its existence. If you had the dairy, you had to have cows and some objects that stood for milk, butter and cheese. We bought and sold with one another using play money. Auctions and trade fairs followed. Cash and treasure went with dowries. The world we created had become a glorified three-dimensional version of Monopoly except that plot substituted for chance and technology remained at the late medieval level.
As we grew older, the game became more sophisticated. Susan started portrait painting with colored pictures cut out of magazines. Shirley began a newspaper, The Kingdom Journal. I ran the notary public since our people had to make wills to dispose of their property. Characters wrote letters to one another and kept diaries. Outside of the game, we projected plan books with future year-by-year events, mostly of a dynastic nature. Shirley’s Roman Rome became Romst; my Lesser Italy became Loria. Susan had started and stayed with Richland.
During four years when the game was at its height, we enacted our way through 600 years of inter-relations between our three city-states. I capped the game by a sketchy history of Loria, commissioned by Frivovla VIII, its queen in those days.
By age sixteen, the game occupied much of my thinking, and I had plans outlined 400 years ahead. When we sloughed off Kingdom, I could not give it up and began to review and reconstruct Loria in my mind and then on paper. Between the start of tenth grade and December of my sophomore year in college, I puzzled through and wrote out the life of Frivovla II, the Well-Attended, the fourth monarch and first pre-eminent one in Loria’s long history. That finished, I leapt 700 years ahead to the time of Augustus, who vaulted the kingdom into an empire and lead at the start of the modern age.
At age 23, with a family and career, what I had envisioned as the Empire Series slowed to irregular piecemeal work and the development of background genealogies. But I never quit thinking about it and plumbing for the origins and development of Loria. At age 40, I resurrected the life and background of Vodarodi the Founder in a three-part narrative, The Crowns of Vodarodi. That done, I started rewriting the earlier Frivovla draft. I reworked it about four times, amidst other explorations back and forth on Loria’s timeline, and could never satisfy myself. At age 60, I decided on a new tack and figured out the story of Frivovla’s maternal grandmother, the Lady Frivovla of Allonor. At first all I knew of her was that she was the child of the Chief of Allonor and that she had been wed when very young into the Kingdom of Rheapolis. How did she come to Loria? At Last, I Depart became the result.
Of all the writing in my life, some of it has been professional, some of a civic nature, and some personal. Still, my continual obsession has been to work out stories of individual lives. I believe that my personality, whether innate or nurtured, set me in this direction. Most of the influences in my life have been literary, as a listener, reader, viewer, talker, and scribbler.
But the consistent thread that I find I have pursued over a fifty-seven year period with Vodarodi, his ancestors and descendants, began in the game we four Sween kids started one night when we were left alone to our own devices.
_____
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
I first wrote this piece, here slightly revised, for an essay contest sponsored by Minnesota Literature in 2005. The theme was to tell a nonliterary event that influence one's writing. I was hardpressed because I could not think of a single thing that did not have its connections to some literature. The game, though it had scattered roots in stories and the media, seemed to serve the purpose. My submission was not accepted among the awarded top three.
Scope Note
Updated 18 November 2009.
Loria is the focal point for a series of novels I have been working on most of my life. Loria Series is the catchall blog for the background relating to Loria, its origin, place in the world, environs, and history. Loria, founded at 3000 CE, as a small city-state, becomes by the latter 3800s a global empire.
The idea of Loria began as a game, only in time to provoke a series of imagined accounts in novel form and in creations of its cultural background, extensive genealogies and prominent characters. See Origin
The founding people of the culture out of which Loria emerged are the Seidonese. For a story of their mytho-historical beginnings, see Seidonese Tale.
Other pieces related to Loria and its lore will follow.
Loria is the focal point for a series of novels I have been working on most of my life. Loria Series is the catchall blog for the background relating to Loria, its origin, place in the world, environs, and history. Loria, founded at 3000 CE, as a small city-state, becomes by the latter 3800s a global empire.
The idea of Loria began as a game, only in time to provoke a series of imagined accounts in novel form and in creations of its cultural background, extensive genealogies and prominent characters. See Origin
The founding people of the culture out of which Loria emerged are the Seidonese. For a story of their mytho-historical beginnings, see Seidonese Tale.
Other pieces related to Loria and its lore will follow.
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