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OtherRealms Issue 29 Part 02
Electronic OtherRealms #29
Winter, 1991
Part 2 of 10
Copyright 1991 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
I'm Not A Nice Girl
Commentary by Laurie Sefton
Well, it's been about four months, so it's time to sharpen the claws
and have another go at it.
Lots of responses to my original editorial, and a few requests for
reprints. Typical net.jackal response, but we expected that, didn't
we? The biggest surprise was the gender roles discussion; apparently
there are more people than I thought who have slugged it out with
society's expectation of what they should do with their lives. To
those who have been there and responded in kind -- thanks. And to those
who wrote and said "I wish I could do something like that.", well,
there isn't a magic cookie, piece of armor, or fairy dust that will
get you on your way. You just have to hunker down and decide that it's
your turn to have a life, and if people aren't going to let you,
you'll have to teach them otherwise. Yes, you'll lose some battles,
and yes, your scars will itch for years, but it's a lot better than
wishing and wondering what might have been.
Speaking of battles: I was listening to the local news/talk station on
January 16th, when they broke in to announce that Baghdad was under
attack. Life has definitely not been the same since. I suspect that
most of my friends and acquaintances didn't get much sleep for the
first few days. We all appeared to be glued to the television (CNN and
ABC being my choices) at home, and to the radio at work, (although
some intrepid souls brought the televisions they bought right after
the 89 earthquake in to monitor the television reports) and didn't
bother to get much rest in between. We're 11 hours behind Iraq time
out here on the west coast, so when it was 8 AM here, it was 7PM in
the middle east, and just gearing up for another bombing run. By the
time we left work for the day, it was time to check out the news
briefing from the Pentagon, the analysis of what had happened the "day
before", and speculations on what was going to happen "today". I had
put up my long-wire for my shortwave at work a few days previous to
the start of the war (let's face it -- this is not a police action), and
was monitoring the BBC and KOL Israel during my working day Anything
to get some new or different information.
Information -- that certainly is the crux of the matter, isn't it? I was
rather shocked and amazed at the total lack of knowledge about middle
eastern affairs. Most people were operating on what I call the "first
paragraph" syndrome -- which meant that they were reading the first
paragraph of whatever news story interested them, and took that
information for their total knowledge-base. Very few realized that
they middle east didn't come all nicely and neatly carved, and that
Saddam Hussein's claims that Kuwait was unjustly ripped out from under
Iraq, when it "had always belonged to Iraq" were playing off of the
lack of knowledge of the history of the region. Ever hear of the
Ottoman empire? The parcelling out of the middle east occurred mainly
because the Ottoman Turks backed the wrong side in World War I. That's
what Lawrence of Arabia was all about. So, if you're going to discuss
middle eastern situations properly, get thee down to the library, and
read some books on the topic. [Looks like you will have to go to a
library, as most bookstores are woefully deficient on middle eastern
history. And we're not talking about the franchises here; one well
known local book store has western European history, American history,
and "Middle Eastern studies". That means that someone is telling
middle eastern history to you, but is injecting their own thoughts on
the matter. It's the effective difference between history and
political science. Lucky for me, someone at Stanford is teaching "The
history of the Middle East" this quarter, and I was able to pick up
the texts.] Middle Eastern history, if it's covered at all in world
history (otherwise known as "Let's do the ancient Greeks, the ancient
romans, skip to medieval England, and then pick up on the rest of
Europe as the various countries explore the western hemisphere"),
tends to stall out just about the time that the Roman Empire fell.
That's a pretty sad state of affairs.
As long as we're discussing the sad state of affairs in US education,
it's a good time to relate what happened in my class last semester.
The class was made up of about 1/2 political science graduate
students, 1/3 engineering economics grad students and the other 1/6
from various engineering disciplines. The course grade was determined
by two papers written during the semester, a 3-5 introduction paper,
and a 15 page position defense paper. Sounds simple, right? Just pick
out a topic from the course syllabus (the course was titled "The Role
of Technology in National Security"), state a position, and defend
that position. This was much harder for most of the students than
anyone thought. My topic for the semester was "The theory and
implementation of a national computer security governmental policy",
and I wrote up my little 3-5 page intro, with the thesis that while
the government had all sorts of good ideas what computer security
policy was, they sure didn't know how to implement it. The class after
I turned it in, the class received a handout from the grading TA and
course professor, saying that there was a problem with the papers
being turned in so far, and that they just seemed to be a
regurgitation of research material. After about a week of worry, I
received my paper back -- with the only "A" given in the course. The TA
noted that I had the only paper turned in which gave a thesis at all,
much less defended it. I expanded on that thesis for the final paper,
and received an "A" on that, too. Bragging aside, I have to wonder
about students who should be some of the best in the country, as
Stanford graduate school isn't that easy to get into, and why they are
stymied at the idea of presenting original thought. Is it that the
undergraduate institutions prefer to get papers without original
thought, as they may be easier to grade? Are students who have no
original thoughts easier to herd through college? And exactly what do
the universities expect to turn out, if original thought is selected
against? Who do they expect to lead, if they weed out the leaders? I
have to wonder.
A side note: One of the lectures was the standard "How are we going to
compete with Japan" monologue, given by local multi-millionaire
Silicon Valley CEO and former congressional representative Ed Zschau.
He ranted a bit on where our future chemists and biologists were going
to come from, as no one was piquing their interest in high school or
college. When Q&A time came at the end of the lecture, I asked him,
given that I used to be a chemist, and that I have a biology degree,
and that I am now in the computer industry because: 1.) It pays about
4X better than the bio/chem industries do; and 2.) I'm not going to
die an early horrible death from working with a Macintosh -- the mean age
of death for a chemist is in her mid to late 50s; how I could, in good
faith, tell future scientists that they ought to go into the
biological or chemical sciences for a living.
He was stunned, and stuttered out that he hadn't had any idea the
conditions were that bad, and then to recover, noted that I seemed to
have done pretty well, given my background. I have done well in spite
of my education and training, not because of it. I didn't appreciate
being thought of as a Reaganomics poster child.
Yet another class department: I've just finished with the Apple
University course "Survival Skills for Managers", and since I'm still
here, so I must have passed. I was hoping for a course that discussed
how to track down the HR rep, which forms need to be filled out, and
when, and how to work that excuse for a Hypercard stack that I'm
supposed to use for reviews. Well, we had two HR people at class, and
since one of them was the manager of my HR representatives, he
received some "constructive input" on his charges.
Other than that, it was a pleasant way to spend three days -- I didn't
have to think much (all those grad classes in
industrial/organizational psych pay off), and it gave me the
opportunity to see how managers at other parts of Apple handled their
work. And you get to do lots of psycho-whatsit fun stuff, like:
1. I took a very short personality inventory and found out that I am a
"driven analytical" (those of you who know me can now say -- "no shit").
Personality inventories are almost as much fun as getting your colors
done, and are allegedly useful, to boot.
2. We played "guess the compensation package". Some people still
don't realize that under-paying an employee is a false economy. In one
of the case studies, some of the colder managers stated that an
employee who moves from a "non-exempt" (hourly) to an exempt position
shouldn't expect a raise (in this case we were arguing about
2,000-3,000/year), as they are now in a state of employment that
offers "more chances for advancement". I called on one of the HR
representatives and asked exactly how much it cost to hire an average
employee at a Silicon Valley company, and more importantly, how much
it cost to replace them. The cost surprised the managers; it costs
about $46,000 to hire and approximately $100,000 to replace (factoring
in lost time, advertisement costs, time spent interviewing, etc) an
employee. Makes $3,000 look rather small, doesn't it?
3. We played motivational psychology games. Those of you who had
children in the 1970s may remember Dr Haim Ginott. Ginott's main
principle was to never put blame on the child, but to give reactions
to the child's behavior. This is where we heard such great statements
as: "Timmy, I become very upset when I find dead and dismembered
bodies in the basement.", with the hopes that little Timmy will decide
that maybe serial murders upset mommy, and that he shouldn't do that
anymore. Well, this has crossed over into the workplace, so now we
have the manager saying to the employee: "I become very upset when
deadlines are missed, and it impacts the rest of the group, too."
Notice the amalgamation of guilt -- not only is the manager upset, but so
is the rest of the group. Also notice the clever use of impact as a
verb. The trouble with this approach is that as soon as a child
figures out how how to talk, he has usually figured out the fire art
of indirection. If you can't expect a two year old to put up with
this, why should you expect your employees to?
All in all, it was a nice vacation from the desk, and at least I now
know to expect from some of the other managers. I hope I also know how
to counteract it.
So, what have we learned in the last few months? That information is
important, but so is the ability to use it wisely. Think about it.
Behind the Scenes: A Chronicle of Deverry
Katherine Kerr
Copyright 1991 by Katherine Kerr
Anyone who has read my fantasy series, Daggerspell, Darkspell, The
Bristling Wood, and The Dragon Revenant, knows that the history of the
kingdom of Deverry is as important to the over-all story as the
personal dramas of the characters are. In the new set of books I'm
currently working on, the Westlands series, this same history plays a
part as well. Yet, thanks to the needs of good narrative, I can't
always make the historical happenings as clear in the text as I would
like. What you have here is a quick outline of Deverry history,
complete with king lists and dates, to make it easier to follow the
historical sequence of events in the books themselves.
First of all, many readers and reviewers have assumed that the series
is set in some sort of alternate Britain or that the people of Deverry
came originally from Britain. In fact, they emigrated from northern
Gaul, as a couple of obscure clues in the text tell the compulsively
careful reader who also knows an awful lot about Celtic history. Since
only a few of you fall into that category, allow me to explain
further. For one thing, the great heroes often mentioned,
Vercingetorix and Vindex, are real, historical Gauls. For another,
those "vergobretes" who become in Deverry "gwerbrets" are mentioned in
Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars as magistrates among the Gauls, though, he
says, the Britons have no such kind of leaders, relying instead upon
"kings." The Gaulish king, it seems, was more what we'd term a
"warleader," the "cadvridoc" of Deverry, than the ruler of an
organized state. Even in Britain, however, the Celts elected their
kings more often than they accepted them by inheritance, a Celtic
political tradition that lies behind the instability of the Deverry
kingship.
The language of Deverry also derives from that of Gaul, but Gaulish
was not, as far as scholars can tell anyway, very much different from
the Old Brittonic that evolved into the language we know today as
Welsh. Thus the language of Deverry looks and sounds much like Welsh,
but anyone who knows this modern language will see immediately that it
differs in many respects. Now, not a lot of Gaulish survives. The
Gauls had never been big on writing things down, and, when the "cursed
Rhwmanes" conquered the place and imposed Latin as the official
language, the native speech and oral literature died out. What does
survive are personal and place names -- the very thing a fantasy author
needs! As for the Deverrian forms of these names, remember that not
only do all languages change over time, but each family of languages
changes according to its own rules. In our own family, IndoEuropean,
which includes among others the Romance, Germanic, Persian, Hindi, and
Slavic groups as well as the Celtic languages, these changes have been
studied and codified by linguists. For instance, any "g" sound caught
between two vowels tends to first soften, then drop away; "-nt" or
"-nd" at the end of a syllable changes to a simple "n," and so on.
What I have done, then, is taken old Gaulish names and subjected them
to these rules of change to produce the Deverrian names you find in
the books. That some of them have ended up sounding like actual Welsh
names goes to show just how much alike Old British and Gaulish were.
To return to our history, the people of Bel, that is, the Gaulish
tribes who chose the god Belinos to be their special patron deity from
all the wide and rather randomly-organized Celtic pantheon of gods,
lived in a vaguely defined area of Gaul known as Devetia Riga. While
the precise location has been lost, we do know that it was somewhere
on the Atlantic coast, and more north than south. The Devetii, as they
would have been known to the Romans, first came in contact with the
classical Mediterranean cultures around 200 BC or so when Greek
traders came their way, bringing wine, the art of writing, and other
such luxuries. Civilization had little effect on them, however, until
they were conquered by Julius Caesar round about 55 BC just as so many
other Gaulish tribes were. Although the great hero Vercingetorix made
a gallant last stand at Alesia, in the end Roman organization and
Roman stubbornness wore him down the way they wore down the heroes of
so many other peoples of the ancient world. With a great deal of
grumbling, the people of Bel accepted to some extent the Roman yoke.
They learned some Latin, adopted a few Roman customs, and studied
Roman herbal medicine. They also sent a few of their wise men to Rome
as ambassadors, where, as so many other Gaulish ambassadors did, they
met Cicero before his untimely end and purchased, upon the ex-consul's
recommendation, learned books to bring back to the tribe. Yet unlike
so many other Gauls, the people of Bel always remembered their days of
freedom. When in AD 69 Julius Vindex, a Gaul who had risen high in the
Roman government, led his rebellion against the corrupt emperor Nero,
the men of Devetia were among the first to support him. When his
rebellion failed, they would have followed him into an honorable
suicide, too, if it weren't for the counsel of that rather mysterious
figure, Cadwallon the Druid [1]. It was Cadwallon who, along with the
cadvridoc, Bran, led the Devetians on the Great Migration which
ultimately, and by means that could only have been magical, took them
to the shores of the continent that would eventually be home to the
new kingdom, Devetia Riga reborn, though over the years its name wore
down to Deverry.
A Brief Chronology
An Extract from an essay by Durryc of Cerrmor
The years 1-254 are known to modern historians as the Dynasty of the
White Mare. Although King Bran himself died soon after the founding of
the Holy City of Dun Deverry, his direct descendants ruled the infant
kingdom as the small colonies around Dun Deverry spread up and down
the Belaver. Cerrmor was founded in 25, Lughcarn in 106, as
exploratory parties searched desperately for a good source of iron.
One was finally found in the mountains of the north, at the source of
the river then named the Caminos Isarnos, the "iron road", which
became the most important waterway in the kingdom. (Eventually, of
course, this name evolved into the Camyn Yraen of today.)
The period of the First Interregnum, lasting until 297, was touched
off by the death of Bran's last lineal descendant. Every powerful clan
in the country joined the fighting to see who would control the
kingship; eventually the Striking Wyvern clan won. In disgust, the
Dragon and the Hippogriff clans migrated to the south-west to found
their own kingdom in the formerly elven province of Elditina. In 301,
after much searching for omens, Cynaeval of the Hippogriff clan
founded a royal city called Abernaudd while in 302, Cadvaenan of the
Dragon, Cynaeval's foster-brother, founded Aberwyn as a princely hold,
the second city in the new kingdom.
In Deverry itself, the years 298-402 saw peace and prosperity.
Expansion continued rapidly. Colonists founded villages and opened up
new farmland in Cantrae and Gwaentaer proper while old villages grew
into cities and towns in Deverry itself. By the 380's the population
spread reached the Eldidd border from the east while of course, the
population of Eldidd reached it from the west. Bitter fighting over
the defining of that border and the subsequent Deverry defeat brought
down Wyvern rule when the great clans rebelled against a king they
considered weak.
The years 403-600 were known as the Age of the Warring Clans. To some
scholars, this was the Second Interregnum rather than a true civil
war, because there was always a titular king in Dun Deverry. The Great
Clans, however, did pretty much as they pleased in defiance of what
central government there was. Thanks to the amount of empty land
available, the constant fighting -- mostly a matter of blood feuds, a
common and well-loved pastime brought over from the Homeland -- could
rage without tearing the society apart, as those who preferred peace
simply moved away from disputed territory. In this period Gwaentaer
was heavily colonized; the population built along the iron routes down
from Cerrgonney; there was even limited settlement in the Auddglyn.
In the Early 400's, over in Eldidd, the first contact with the elves
occured, who withdrew to the west rather than fight over territory
that they had barely settled. Bad feeling between the two races
remained, however, which would explode into war in later years[2]. In
558 came an event with much more immediate consequences when a group
of Deverry merchants, bound for Eldidd, were blown off-course and
carried to the far islands of Bardek. There they discovered a
Roman-style civilization, founded by mysterious and magically
transported refugees from Mauretania. For the first time in Deverry
history, a true middle class emerged, based on the newly-important
merchants and traders.
In 602, after many years of fighting, Adoryc I founded the dynasty of
the Blue Wyvern[3], the first effectual dynasty in some two hundred
years. His power was based on a coalition of the rising new merchant
class, the priests of Bel and Wmm, and the lesser clans. Concessions
to his allies included royal support of the new Bardek trade and a
royal ban against the head-hunting tht provided so much fuel for the
fires of the blood-feuding. He also divided the estates of some the
conquered Great Clans to reward the lesser, among them the Falcons,
Boars, and Wolves[4]. By 655, the new religious ban had taken effect,
and ritual headhunting had become a crime rather than an obligation.
In general, the years 610-644 were a time of prosperity, relative
peace, and growing trade with Bardek. The kingdom of Eldidd,
meanwhile, continued to spread east rather than north, and border
clashes became common again along the Giryspel range. From 665-76 the
First Eldidd war dragged on rather than raged, resulting in a boundary
compromise that pleased no one. In 72028, the Second Eldidd War began
when Liddmaryc of Eldidd laid claim to Cenerrpaen, the triangle of
coastal plain by the Girysbel. Eldidd won and forced a humiliating
treaty, one provision of which was the betrothal of Covramur of
Deverry's infant daughter to Liddmaryc's grandson, Waryn. This
marriage gave Eldidd a distant claim to the Deverry throne.
Then, in 750, Covramur died without a son, ushering in the Time of
Troubles[5], the long civil war that nearly destroyed our entire
culture. Covramur left three daughters, and their husbands all laid
claim to the throne in the names of their sons, as ancient Celtic law
allowed them to do. There were three claimants, one in Cerrmor, one in
Cantrae, and one in Eldidd. While Cerrmor and Cantrae fought over the
Holy City, Eldidd waged a war of attrition on the western border until
in 773, the capture of Mael, Prince Aberwyn, produced a twenty-year
truce between Cerrmor and Eldidd. Eldidd was forced to make peace by
default with the Cantrae faction as well in 793, when the province of
Pyrdon rebelled from Eldidd and declared itself a kingdom[6]. The wars
dragged on for years of raiding, feints, but no decisive victories for
any one side.
In the late 840's, however, a new claimant, Maryn, appeared from the
obscurity of the kingdom of Pyrdon. In the midst of hysterical talk of
omens and magic[7], the war-weary common people embraced him as the
one true king, and many an exhausted noble lord joined his cause in
the hope of peace as well. In 854, after a long but final war, Maryn
took the Holy City and was acknowledged there as the one true king of
a united Deverry. In Eldidd, however, the pretender refused to
acknowledge Maryn and make peace, forcing the new king to conquer the
kingdom and reduce it to the status of a province[8]. At this point
Casyl, king of Pyrdon and Maryn's father, abdicated in favor of his
son, thus bringing Pyrdon into the new kingdom as well.
Even though the king died fairly young, in 862 to be exact, he set his
new kingdom upon a sound course. In general, the next hundred-odd
years were a time of reconstruction and peace throughout the kingdom.
Population began to rebuild after the long bleeding of the wars, in
Eldidd as well as Deverry. In a dark note for the future, however, the
remnant of the losing Cantrae faction fled north to settle Cerrgonney
province and found a loose coaliton of independent lordships, who then
proceeded to squabble over who among them would be gwerbret. With the
treasury exhausted from the civil wars, the kings were forced to
ignore this constant warfare, except for punishing the occasional raid
down into Gwaentaer. (The name Cerrgonney is an interesting hybrid of
Deverrian and Dwarven, by the way, meaning Gonn's Fortress, Gonn being
a legendary demigod of the dwarven race.)[9]
The early years of the tenth century were marked by two short wars. In
918, there was an abortive rebellion in Eldidd, crushed by Aeryc the
First with the aid of the loyal Pertyc Maelwaedd, Lord Cannobaen, who
was rewarded with the gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn.l! In 921, war flared in
Cerrgonney when the newlydetermined gwerbrets attempted to impose
their own taxes on the towns along the Camyn Yraen. When these towns
appealed to the king, Aeryc marched north and defeated, at least
temporarily, the rebel lords. The year 936 saw a rather more important
development, when the king and the royal council reviewed all trade
treaties with Bardek and transferred them into the direct control of
the king. The council also assimilated all preexisting trade pacts
between Eldidd and Bardek into the Deverry model. The revenue brought
into the royal coffers by this step was enormous, making the king and
his city completely independent, for the first time, of the shifting
good will and treacherous loyalty of the great clans.
The years 962-84 tested the new central power with a round of wars in
Cerrgonney. In 962, King Maryn II, infuriated by the continuing
efforts of the northern gwerbrets to control the iron trade to their
own advantage, declared the rank of gwerbret abolished in Cerrgonney.
His son, Casyl II, finally brought this matter to a sucessful
conclusion after twenty-two years of mountain warfare. Hitheron, all
Cerrgonney lords would swear direct loyalty to the king[11].
Thus we bring our brief chronology up to the eleventh century. All
through this hundred-year period, peace reigned, secured by the
continuing expansion and stabilization of royal power. The Gold Wyvern
dynasty, as this set of kings is known to later history, laid the
foundations of our modern nation-state and its parlimentary democracy.
Perhaps the most notable event of this period was, in 1039, the
founding of the province of Cwm Pecl. The king, with a fine historical
touch, awarded this new gwerbretrhyn to the Stallion clan[12], the
descendants of the onetime kings of Pyrdon who had done so much to
ensure peace for the growing kingdom....
Deverry King Lists
(Dates are of reign, not life.)
Blue Wyvern
Adoryc I 602-621
Adoryc II 621-56
Adoryc III 656-69
Gwaddoryc 669-692
Paryc I 692-724
Adoryc IV 724-33
Covramur 733-50
The Time of Troubles:
Claimants to the Deverry Throne
Cerrmor Cantrae Eldidd
Glyn I 751-97 Slwmar I 751-79 Aenecyr 751-815
Camlann 797-822 Dribyn I 779-93 Talyn 815-19
Caturyc 822-36 Alyn 793-818 Ogretoryc 819-38
Glyn II 834-43 Slwmar II 818-34 Cadlew 832-54
Maryn I 843-62 Dribyn II 834-47 Aenecyr II 854-55
The Red Wyvern The Gold Wybern
Maryn I 843-62 Lallyn I 1011-39
Casyl I 862-93 Cynan 1039-57
Gwardyn I 893-913 Lallyn II 1057-92
Aeryc 913-49 Gwindyc 1092-1107
Maryn II 949-66
Casyl II 966-8
Gwardyn II 987-1011
Footnotes
[1] These events may someday be covered, if I live so long, in the
last, as yet untitled, volume of this Celtically convoluted series.
[2] In the 720's, to be exact, an incident that plays a part in A Time
of Exile, first volume of the Westlands series (coming in 1991.)
[3] Nevyn's father was Adoryc II. See Daggerspell for more details.
[4] These are, of course, the three clans who are so important in the
first three books and who appear in scattered references throughout
the entire series.
[5] Events from the Time of Troubles are detailed in Darkspell, The
Bristling Wood, A Time of Omens (forthcoming in 1992), and are touched
upon in A Time of Exile. Eventually I will devote an entire book,
tentatively called The Red Wyvern, to finishing up this on-going story
of the original Silver Daggers, but it's more than a bit premature to
tell you when.
[6] The events surrounding Prince Mael are central to Darkspell.
[7] For the true story, see in particular The Bristling Wood and A
Time of Omens.
[8] There is more information on this in A Time of Exile.
[9] The relationship of the Mountain People to human beings in the
North will get some play in A TIME OF WAR, the third book of the
Westlands series.
[10] Detailed in A Time of Exile.
[11] A circumstance of crucial importance in The Bristling Wood.
[12] Which includes Rhodry's cousin Blaen, so important in Darkspell.
------ End ------
