Malak (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
treasureling) wrote2015-01-15 01:59 pm
treasureling) wrote2015-01-15 01:59 pm
(no subject)
Player name: Ryann
Age: 25!
Contact: I’m cornichaun @ gmail, plurk, AIM, etc.
Other characters: None.
Character name: Malak
OC info: There are a lot of legends about the origin of the Spinward Islands. Not the islands themselves; they’ve been around for millions of years, a little volcanic and formerly-volcanic scattering of small, medium and large islands angled between the continents of Ursei and Tesk. (The ‘Spinward’ name comes from when they thought the sun went around the planet; it was the direction the sun set every night. But then they figured out the thing, and realized that the Spinward Islands were actually anti-spinward from the most populated continents, but the name stuck.) The legends are about the culture on the islands. And some of them involve curses, some involve gods, some involve diseases - but the gist of it is: five hundred (or so) years ago, something happened on these islands, and the inhabitants became unable to bear male children.
One would expect the society to die out fairly quickly. That wasn’t what happened. In less than a generation, the formerly peaceful, fishing-and-gathering villages transformed into warriors. There were no men native to the islands, so they found their own, turning pirate and taking a toll on the booming trade between city-nations in Ursei and Tesk. Sometimes they would even raid coastal villages.
Perhaps in compensation for the humiliation of being forced to exist this way, Spinward culture became proud and matriarchal, rooted in a tradition of fierce female warriors. Honestly, no army or alliance on either of the closer continents could manage to get the clout and the sea power sufficient to try attacking the Islands; on top of that, these women were trained from an early age to be strong and to survive and that was exactly what they did. Strength became the root of beauty; skill in combat became necessary for any kind of status in the community.
And the men? They weren’t really highly regarded. They weren’t the ones bearing the children. They weren’t natives to the islands. They were set apart, all of them, even though the majority was kidnapped before they could even remember. Of course there was love, and strong bonds between married men and women, but the culture had a sharp divide, and men were definitely a step down, not allowed to inherit or own land or hold jobs without permission of their adopted clan leader.
Over the course of centuries, the status of men swung back and forth. Sometimes there weren’t enough. Sometimes there were too many. Marriages and the siring of children became ritualized. Things started to fall into a balance. Treating men as commodities worked, and the women in power saw no reason to make any fundamental changes. On top of this, the Spinward Islands have some of the best standard of living anywhere. Everyone is cared for; there’s schooling and medical care and clean streets. It is a sign of strength and power not to be greedy and selfish but to contribute to the common good, and so the rich are expected to do so, and pressured to do so.
Important Cultural Elements:
- Men have to deal with a standard of beauty that’s a little contradictory. Men have strength, but their strength should be the last-ditch strength, and it shouldn’t be warlike, just protective. So men have to be pretty, and they have to be strong, but not too strong.
- The general outlook on child-raising is: listen, I carried it for nine months, I endured a horribly painful birthing process, I get food on the table, it’s your job to take it from there. Fathers are considered the nurturing parent, and mothers the parent in blood and flesh.
- Arranged marriages and sirings are common, done by clan leader. The way they bargain off their adopted men is pretty gross.
- Beyond arranged marriages, the most prestigious way to win a man is via a ritualized contest that takes place once a year. The eligible females of certain ages take on one another in combat; the overall winner gets first pick of the eligible males. The second gets second pick. And so on. Surprisingly, this actually turns out way more romantic and less creepy than the arranged marriages; it’s pretty customary for the female warrior to court the man beforehand, and to gain his acceptance and affection before anything happens. That isn’t necessarily the case, of course.
- Men should be beautiful, but not show off that beauty. They should obey their clan leaders and wives always, but should have enough fire in them to be proper sires for warriors. They shouldn’t spill seed willy-nilly. Men should be graceful, and quick; the best men should learn dance to please their wives. Men shouldn’t attract scandal. Men should be seen, not heard. Men have fragile emotions, and are prone to overreaction.
- Men DO NOT FIGHT.
For a scattering of other information about the universe:
Gods. There are probably about a hundred gods in this world. Some have sired lines of mortals, some have appeared only once or twice, some are major, some are minor, but one thing they all hold in common: to name a god is horrifying blasphemy. Given that what they're the god of tends to vary with human cultural forces, this leads to a lot of confusion. Humans tend to err on the side of caution.
Technology. Think 15-1600s China in level, if not in culture, with enhancements provided by various magics. Bows, swords, horses; complex boats and buildings; lots of writings; gunpowder is definitely a thing.
Climate. The Spinward Islands are temperate and heavily forested, mountainous. There isn't much large flat land for farming, but what there is is heavily utilized. Common domestic animals are goats, horses, and chickens; common wild animals include mountain lions, goats, wild pigs, and lots of small furry burrowing or climbing creatures.
Clothing. Ranges from rough homespun-and-homewoven tunics and pants to beautiful and elaborate jeweled, tailored and gorgeous gowns. Women's dresses are nearly always kept short, so as to allow for freedom of movement, and it's common to wear some kind of legging or pant underneath. Long gowns are worn pretty much exclusively by those in power or the elderly, as a signal that they don't have to fight. Men can also wear these longer gowns on formal occasions, but they're more likely to be pressured to dress simply and elegantly. Silk, cotton and leather are common.
Summary: ( CW: SEXUAL ASSAULT ) Malak doesn’t remember his life before he was kidnapped. He was young, three or four years old, taken in a raid on a temple orphanage - Spinward warriors’ favorite kind of raid, because it means that no one’s going to come looking for the children. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he was an orphan. More likely, he was unwanted, excess, left at a temple because no one else could afford to care for him. By all accounts, he has a better life in the Spinward Islands than he would have at home.
It doesn’t stop him from wondering.
The most important thing to know about Malak is that he should have been a perfect fit for this society. He’s always been calm and sweet, a nurturer at heart, gentle, beautiful. It should have worked, and he believed in the picture painted for him by the women on Poleimachmanei Island. As a child, Malak knew that he was going to grow up, marry a strong woman warrior, and take care of the children, and he was happy with that. He played house, he played with dolls. He did as he was told.
But it didn’t work. Because Malak had a mind of his own - because Malak started to understand and resent the inequalities as he grew up. He stayed “good” and kept to his trapped lifestyle, because he still trusted that things were going to work out. That the elders of his adopted clan (his kidnappers) knew what was best. Unfortunately for him, this wasn’t the case.
Malak was selected for the ritual contest, held once a year, when he was sixteen years old. He was young, but he was already growing into a fine young man, and his elders thought it best that he have the chance to sire a daughter and still be married young enough to be valuable. Malak was courted by several of the women warriors participating in the ritual, but he bonded with none of them, and on the day of the contest, he entered the arena terrified and unsure. It could have been fine, if someone gentle had won him. Instead, Malak was picked third, by a competent and brutal older warrior named Alaina. He wasn’t willing. She wasn’t willing to waste a contest year, and skip out on the chance to have a child. She took his resistance as him protecting his virtue, and praised him for it, even as she forced the issue. In her mind, there was nothing wrong with what she did. But, afterward, Malak’s faith in the world around him was shattered. He was abandoned; there was no one who could truly sympathize with him, or anyone who even understood why he reacted the way he did. The ritual, after all, was supposed to be romantic. If he’d just picked someone beforehand…
Alaina bore a child named Brinn. As was custom, even though Malak wasn’t married to her, he did a great majority of the child-raising for the first several years of her life. (Brinn was like her mother, tough from an early age, blustery, covering up her own personal weakness: that she wanted affection, and love. But she never could get it from Alaina, who simply didn’t function in an affectionate way.)
Malak imposed isolation on himself, and this was only broken by the local blacksmith, a woman named Jend. She was older, the strong and silent type, long past childbearing, and Malak started drifting around her, using the area around her forge as a safe space. Jend, in response, eventually started teaching Malak her techniques. Smith wasn’t an unacceptable job for a man. It was unusual, but allowable, and Malak’s clan leaders thought it might loosen him up and ready him for marriage.
It didn’t. But five years later, when Malak was getting damn good at the smithing, someone stepped up to court him. He was still unmarried, which virtually guaranteed that he would get picked for the ritual again (something he dreaded and ignored). Stubbornly, he turned his would-be courter away, as he had many others in the past five years. The difference was, Ymani didn’t end it there - but she did respect his wishes. She gave him flowers. She got to know him as a friend. She made it clear that his desires were respected at every turn. So he began to doubt his own resistance, and reach out to her, tentatively. He was chosen for the ritual; she won; she picked him. What followed was a much better experience for Malak, sweet and romantic. A child resulted, a little girl named Viere. Malak expected an offer of marriage.
It didn’t come.
Instead, Ymani offered him a position as a consort - powerless, belonging to her. Stung, he rejected the offer, leaving him, in the eyes of the community, damaged goods: who wants a man who is twice a father and still unmarried?
So, then, this is Malak now: a soothing presence, calm. He seems solemn and serious, only rarely showing happiness, amusement, joy. His body language is close and contained. He doesn’t attract attention to himself; he moves under the radar, lets other people take the spotlight. He is mild by nature and shies away from people who don’t respect boundaries.
But he is not trusting. His trust was broken with Alaina, and then again with Ymani, and now he doesn’t give ground. Ever. He constantly fights against society’s thoughts about who he should be and how he should behave, because he fully believes that his society failed him when he was at his most vulnerable. He’s not naturally a dominant person and would ordinarily like going with the flow or being told what to do, but experience has taught him that he cannot yield his own autonomy and happiness, and this causes him to be brittle and reticent. His innate pride is what holds him together in the face of society’s quiet derision and disregard of his emotions and accomplishments. He doesn’t fight back against rumors. He raises his chin and he keeps on doing what he needs to be doing.
Malak feels everything extremely deeply. He loves his children - and, at the same time, his feelings for them are also profoundly conflicted. Brinn, especially. She will never stop being related to violation, in Malak's mind. He loves her, but he is still so angry about what happened to him and how he never got any true closure. He has never stopped wondering about what his life would be like if that hadn't happened to him. This makes him somewhat stiff in his parenting of her. (Part of Brinn's misbehavior is undoubtedly from this innate stiffness; children are very perceptive, and she especially is extremely reactive to what she feels. She also more outwardly responds with jealousy when Malak shows plain affection for Viere.)
In daily life, Malak capably manages his forge. He is the best blacksmith on Poleimachmanei Island because he is an artist: he doesn’t just work metal, he coaxes it, he shapes it. He makes it something beautiful. The weapons he makes are in high demand, and he also makes jewelry and cold-works silver and other soft metals when necessary, on top of making the usual tools, horseshoes and nails. Essentially: he does what he wants, and the freedom of this career is his only true outlet.
He is a good parent, as much as he can be. He reads bedtime stories to his children, and takes care of them, and teaches them. But he tries to be too much for everyone, and he tends to fall a little short on everything: a little too harsh with Brinn, a little too forgiving with the shy, younger Viere.
What he wants is love. Even after all of this, he longs for happiness, and there is a willingness in him to open his heart to the people who come into his life. He wants to be happy, to be loved for himself and to be secure in that love. He can find a way to be happy with his work and his daughters, but love is what he’s always dreamed of, and he feels the lack of it very keenly. He is lonely, a pariah; he feels the lack of love very keenly, but has no idea how to get it.
Powers:Malak actually has a god in his ancestry - way, way, way back. By this point, the power has been watered down so that it often doesn't manifest at all, and when it does manifest, it's pretty useless. In Malak, the force of his caring for his daughters actually caused it to manifest as a very, very mild healing power. And by mild, I mean almost completely useless. It requires his touch, and there are two parts to it:
Soothing. Malak's touch can soothe pain. It's not going to take it away, it's just going to ease it. Think Advil more than morphine. The only reason he might be more useful than Advil is that he can soothe emotional pain as well as physical, to about the same extent.
Healing. This part... does almost nothing whatsoever. Malak doesn't enhance healing in any way, just nudges it towards healing the best way possible. Like, he can make it less likely to get an infection, less likely to scar. Frankly, this part is somewhat less effective than a tube of antibiotic ointment.
Malak’s power would be a three-a-day.
Entry: He’s probably going to freak out and need rescuing from the Skyway.
Age: 25!
Contact: I’m cornichaun @ gmail, plurk, AIM, etc.
Other characters: None.
Character name: Malak
OC info: There are a lot of legends about the origin of the Spinward Islands. Not the islands themselves; they’ve been around for millions of years, a little volcanic and formerly-volcanic scattering of small, medium and large islands angled between the continents of Ursei and Tesk. (The ‘Spinward’ name comes from when they thought the sun went around the planet; it was the direction the sun set every night. But then they figured out the thing, and realized that the Spinward Islands were actually anti-spinward from the most populated continents, but the name stuck.) The legends are about the culture on the islands. And some of them involve curses, some involve gods, some involve diseases - but the gist of it is: five hundred (or so) years ago, something happened on these islands, and the inhabitants became unable to bear male children.
One would expect the society to die out fairly quickly. That wasn’t what happened. In less than a generation, the formerly peaceful, fishing-and-gathering villages transformed into warriors. There were no men native to the islands, so they found their own, turning pirate and taking a toll on the booming trade between city-nations in Ursei and Tesk. Sometimes they would even raid coastal villages.
Perhaps in compensation for the humiliation of being forced to exist this way, Spinward culture became proud and matriarchal, rooted in a tradition of fierce female warriors. Honestly, no army or alliance on either of the closer continents could manage to get the clout and the sea power sufficient to try attacking the Islands; on top of that, these women were trained from an early age to be strong and to survive and that was exactly what they did. Strength became the root of beauty; skill in combat became necessary for any kind of status in the community.
And the men? They weren’t really highly regarded. They weren’t the ones bearing the children. They weren’t natives to the islands. They were set apart, all of them, even though the majority was kidnapped before they could even remember. Of course there was love, and strong bonds between married men and women, but the culture had a sharp divide, and men were definitely a step down, not allowed to inherit or own land or hold jobs without permission of their adopted clan leader.
Over the course of centuries, the status of men swung back and forth. Sometimes there weren’t enough. Sometimes there were too many. Marriages and the siring of children became ritualized. Things started to fall into a balance. Treating men as commodities worked, and the women in power saw no reason to make any fundamental changes. On top of this, the Spinward Islands have some of the best standard of living anywhere. Everyone is cared for; there’s schooling and medical care and clean streets. It is a sign of strength and power not to be greedy and selfish but to contribute to the common good, and so the rich are expected to do so, and pressured to do so.
Important Cultural Elements:
- Men have to deal with a standard of beauty that’s a little contradictory. Men have strength, but their strength should be the last-ditch strength, and it shouldn’t be warlike, just protective. So men have to be pretty, and they have to be strong, but not too strong.
- The general outlook on child-raising is: listen, I carried it for nine months, I endured a horribly painful birthing process, I get food on the table, it’s your job to take it from there. Fathers are considered the nurturing parent, and mothers the parent in blood and flesh.
- Arranged marriages and sirings are common, done by clan leader. The way they bargain off their adopted men is pretty gross.
- Beyond arranged marriages, the most prestigious way to win a man is via a ritualized contest that takes place once a year. The eligible females of certain ages take on one another in combat; the overall winner gets first pick of the eligible males. The second gets second pick. And so on. Surprisingly, this actually turns out way more romantic and less creepy than the arranged marriages; it’s pretty customary for the female warrior to court the man beforehand, and to gain his acceptance and affection before anything happens. That isn’t necessarily the case, of course.
- Men should be beautiful, but not show off that beauty. They should obey their clan leaders and wives always, but should have enough fire in them to be proper sires for warriors. They shouldn’t spill seed willy-nilly. Men should be graceful, and quick; the best men should learn dance to please their wives. Men shouldn’t attract scandal. Men should be seen, not heard. Men have fragile emotions, and are prone to overreaction.
- Men DO NOT FIGHT.
For a scattering of other information about the universe:
Gods. There are probably about a hundred gods in this world. Some have sired lines of mortals, some have appeared only once or twice, some are major, some are minor, but one thing they all hold in common: to name a god is horrifying blasphemy. Given that what they're the god of tends to vary with human cultural forces, this leads to a lot of confusion. Humans tend to err on the side of caution.
Technology. Think 15-1600s China in level, if not in culture, with enhancements provided by various magics. Bows, swords, horses; complex boats and buildings; lots of writings; gunpowder is definitely a thing.
Climate. The Spinward Islands are temperate and heavily forested, mountainous. There isn't much large flat land for farming, but what there is is heavily utilized. Common domestic animals are goats, horses, and chickens; common wild animals include mountain lions, goats, wild pigs, and lots of small furry burrowing or climbing creatures.
Clothing. Ranges from rough homespun-and-homewoven tunics and pants to beautiful and elaborate jeweled, tailored and gorgeous gowns. Women's dresses are nearly always kept short, so as to allow for freedom of movement, and it's common to wear some kind of legging or pant underneath. Long gowns are worn pretty much exclusively by those in power or the elderly, as a signal that they don't have to fight. Men can also wear these longer gowns on formal occasions, but they're more likely to be pressured to dress simply and elegantly. Silk, cotton and leather are common.
Summary: ( CW: SEXUAL ASSAULT ) Malak doesn’t remember his life before he was kidnapped. He was young, three or four years old, taken in a raid on a temple orphanage - Spinward warriors’ favorite kind of raid, because it means that no one’s going to come looking for the children. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he was an orphan. More likely, he was unwanted, excess, left at a temple because no one else could afford to care for him. By all accounts, he has a better life in the Spinward Islands than he would have at home.
It doesn’t stop him from wondering.
The most important thing to know about Malak is that he should have been a perfect fit for this society. He’s always been calm and sweet, a nurturer at heart, gentle, beautiful. It should have worked, and he believed in the picture painted for him by the women on Poleimachmanei Island. As a child, Malak knew that he was going to grow up, marry a strong woman warrior, and take care of the children, and he was happy with that. He played house, he played with dolls. He did as he was told.
But it didn’t work. Because Malak had a mind of his own - because Malak started to understand and resent the inequalities as he grew up. He stayed “good” and kept to his trapped lifestyle, because he still trusted that things were going to work out. That the elders of his adopted clan (his kidnappers) knew what was best. Unfortunately for him, this wasn’t the case.
Malak was selected for the ritual contest, held once a year, when he was sixteen years old. He was young, but he was already growing into a fine young man, and his elders thought it best that he have the chance to sire a daughter and still be married young enough to be valuable. Malak was courted by several of the women warriors participating in the ritual, but he bonded with none of them, and on the day of the contest, he entered the arena terrified and unsure. It could have been fine, if someone gentle had won him. Instead, Malak was picked third, by a competent and brutal older warrior named Alaina. He wasn’t willing. She wasn’t willing to waste a contest year, and skip out on the chance to have a child. She took his resistance as him protecting his virtue, and praised him for it, even as she forced the issue. In her mind, there was nothing wrong with what she did. But, afterward, Malak’s faith in the world around him was shattered. He was abandoned; there was no one who could truly sympathize with him, or anyone who even understood why he reacted the way he did. The ritual, after all, was supposed to be romantic. If he’d just picked someone beforehand…
Alaina bore a child named Brinn. As was custom, even though Malak wasn’t married to her, he did a great majority of the child-raising for the first several years of her life. (Brinn was like her mother, tough from an early age, blustery, covering up her own personal weakness: that she wanted affection, and love. But she never could get it from Alaina, who simply didn’t function in an affectionate way.)
Malak imposed isolation on himself, and this was only broken by the local blacksmith, a woman named Jend. She was older, the strong and silent type, long past childbearing, and Malak started drifting around her, using the area around her forge as a safe space. Jend, in response, eventually started teaching Malak her techniques. Smith wasn’t an unacceptable job for a man. It was unusual, but allowable, and Malak’s clan leaders thought it might loosen him up and ready him for marriage.
It didn’t. But five years later, when Malak was getting damn good at the smithing, someone stepped up to court him. He was still unmarried, which virtually guaranteed that he would get picked for the ritual again (something he dreaded and ignored). Stubbornly, he turned his would-be courter away, as he had many others in the past five years. The difference was, Ymani didn’t end it there - but she did respect his wishes. She gave him flowers. She got to know him as a friend. She made it clear that his desires were respected at every turn. So he began to doubt his own resistance, and reach out to her, tentatively. He was chosen for the ritual; she won; she picked him. What followed was a much better experience for Malak, sweet and romantic. A child resulted, a little girl named Viere. Malak expected an offer of marriage.
It didn’t come.
Instead, Ymani offered him a position as a consort - powerless, belonging to her. Stung, he rejected the offer, leaving him, in the eyes of the community, damaged goods: who wants a man who is twice a father and still unmarried?
So, then, this is Malak now: a soothing presence, calm. He seems solemn and serious, only rarely showing happiness, amusement, joy. His body language is close and contained. He doesn’t attract attention to himself; he moves under the radar, lets other people take the spotlight. He is mild by nature and shies away from people who don’t respect boundaries.
But he is not trusting. His trust was broken with Alaina, and then again with Ymani, and now he doesn’t give ground. Ever. He constantly fights against society’s thoughts about who he should be and how he should behave, because he fully believes that his society failed him when he was at his most vulnerable. He’s not naturally a dominant person and would ordinarily like going with the flow or being told what to do, but experience has taught him that he cannot yield his own autonomy and happiness, and this causes him to be brittle and reticent. His innate pride is what holds him together in the face of society’s quiet derision and disregard of his emotions and accomplishments. He doesn’t fight back against rumors. He raises his chin and he keeps on doing what he needs to be doing.
Malak feels everything extremely deeply. He loves his children - and, at the same time, his feelings for them are also profoundly conflicted. Brinn, especially. She will never stop being related to violation, in Malak's mind. He loves her, but he is still so angry about what happened to him and how he never got any true closure. He has never stopped wondering about what his life would be like if that hadn't happened to him. This makes him somewhat stiff in his parenting of her. (Part of Brinn's misbehavior is undoubtedly from this innate stiffness; children are very perceptive, and she especially is extremely reactive to what she feels. She also more outwardly responds with jealousy when Malak shows plain affection for Viere.)
In daily life, Malak capably manages his forge. He is the best blacksmith on Poleimachmanei Island because he is an artist: he doesn’t just work metal, he coaxes it, he shapes it. He makes it something beautiful. The weapons he makes are in high demand, and he also makes jewelry and cold-works silver and other soft metals when necessary, on top of making the usual tools, horseshoes and nails. Essentially: he does what he wants, and the freedom of this career is his only true outlet.
He is a good parent, as much as he can be. He reads bedtime stories to his children, and takes care of them, and teaches them. But he tries to be too much for everyone, and he tends to fall a little short on everything: a little too harsh with Brinn, a little too forgiving with the shy, younger Viere.
What he wants is love. Even after all of this, he longs for happiness, and there is a willingness in him to open his heart to the people who come into his life. He wants to be happy, to be loved for himself and to be secure in that love. He can find a way to be happy with his work and his daughters, but love is what he’s always dreamed of, and he feels the lack of it very keenly. He is lonely, a pariah; he feels the lack of love very keenly, but has no idea how to get it.
Powers:Malak actually has a god in his ancestry - way, way, way back. By this point, the power has been watered down so that it often doesn't manifest at all, and when it does manifest, it's pretty useless. In Malak, the force of his caring for his daughters actually caused it to manifest as a very, very mild healing power. And by mild, I mean almost completely useless. It requires his touch, and there are two parts to it:
Soothing. Malak's touch can soothe pain. It's not going to take it away, it's just going to ease it. Think Advil more than morphine. The only reason he might be more useful than Advil is that he can soothe emotional pain as well as physical, to about the same extent.
Healing. This part... does almost nothing whatsoever. Malak doesn't enhance healing in any way, just nudges it towards healing the best way possible. Like, he can make it less likely to get an infection, less likely to scar. Frankly, this part is somewhat less effective than a tube of antibiotic ointment.
Malak’s power would be a three-a-day.
Entry: He’s probably going to freak out and need rescuing from the Skyway.