Maria Mathis's Blog
July 19, 2019
Post 4 - Belall and Tuyouk
Empress Belall is from the Lauve province, a very beautiful, highly magical, alien with pale lavender skin, big, dark eyes and a long topknot. If she were of our world, she would be considered a serial killer due to her habit of abducting, torturing and killing young men. Ahman-tahk is a very spiritually healthy planet, where a morality enforcement organization hadn’t been necessary for centuries, therefore, there was no one to stop Belall's crimes for many years. Her biggest claim to infamy is the infliction of an ill-considered curse on the women of their planet, which is inadvertently causing the extinction of their race.
As an ultra-magical being, Belall is one of the few women who can transform into a raptor--a giant bird of prey that can spew fire, but her biggest defense is her Well of Souls. With the help of a high-level demon, she created a tiny dimension that is attached to her by a spiritual umbilicus. Whenever she kills someone, she forces their spirit into her Well of Souls to become a source of healing energy for her. Her “Well” keeps her young, heals her injuries, and burns off bacteria, viruses, and poisons.
Belall thinks men are no better than animals, most of them good for nothing but manual labor. Most of her relationships have been with military men and politicians. Except for a few fawning lackeys, Tuyouk would prove to be her longest relationship. She killed every other lover she ever had.
As a child, Tuyouk heard horror stories about Belall. To him, she was the merciless monster who had demolished his town twice in the last hundred years, and was directly, or indirectly, responsible for the deaths of almost everyone he’d ever loved.
Big, strong, confident warrior that he was, at the age of twenty-five, Tuyouk had zero experience with women. He had (and continues to have) an unrealistic expectation of male-female relationships because his foundational beliefs are not built on experience, but on the sentimental stories told by his father, and also, on his own imagination. As a result, he believes there are two types of women: witches and “good women.”
With her penchant for homicide, Belall is definitely not a “good woman.” What made their relationship work for a time was two things. First, Tuyouk’s motivation to stay alive, and second, his penchant to be accepting of other people’s short-comings. Although he despised himself for it, he could see the “humanity” in her--that what she really wanted was love--something he could not give her.
Since Tuyouk was the only man she ever loved, (this was erroneous thinking on her part, by the way, since she didn’t know the difference between “love” and “possession”) Belall was devastated when he betrayed her. Many of her former lovers had tried to kill her, but because of her affection for Tuyouk, she’d never felt so much raw pain as when he joined the Syndicate and fought to capture her.
Murdering his brother gave her a small taste of revenge, but not enough. Three hundred years later, the moment she got word that Tuyouk had returned to the Physical Realm, all her heartbreak and fury came rushing back.
Fortunately, Tuyouk’s natural optimism didn’t allow him to leave this relationship feeling defeated. His prejudice against the witches had deepened, but his romantic idealism is in tact, and he is still determined to find the perfect woman. That is the state of his expectations when he meets Ayana, who I’ll write about next time.
As an ultra-magical being, Belall is one of the few women who can transform into a raptor--a giant bird of prey that can spew fire, but her biggest defense is her Well of Souls. With the help of a high-level demon, she created a tiny dimension that is attached to her by a spiritual umbilicus. Whenever she kills someone, she forces their spirit into her Well of Souls to become a source of healing energy for her. Her “Well” keeps her young, heals her injuries, and burns off bacteria, viruses, and poisons.
Belall thinks men are no better than animals, most of them good for nothing but manual labor. Most of her relationships have been with military men and politicians. Except for a few fawning lackeys, Tuyouk would prove to be her longest relationship. She killed every other lover she ever had.
As a child, Tuyouk heard horror stories about Belall. To him, she was the merciless monster who had demolished his town twice in the last hundred years, and was directly, or indirectly, responsible for the deaths of almost everyone he’d ever loved.
Big, strong, confident warrior that he was, at the age of twenty-five, Tuyouk had zero experience with women. He had (and continues to have) an unrealistic expectation of male-female relationships because his foundational beliefs are not built on experience, but on the sentimental stories told by his father, and also, on his own imagination. As a result, he believes there are two types of women: witches and “good women.”
With her penchant for homicide, Belall is definitely not a “good woman.” What made their relationship work for a time was two things. First, Tuyouk’s motivation to stay alive, and second, his penchant to be accepting of other people’s short-comings. Although he despised himself for it, he could see the “humanity” in her--that what she really wanted was love--something he could not give her.
Since Tuyouk was the only man she ever loved, (this was erroneous thinking on her part, by the way, since she didn’t know the difference between “love” and “possession”) Belall was devastated when he betrayed her. Many of her former lovers had tried to kill her, but because of her affection for Tuyouk, she’d never felt so much raw pain as when he joined the Syndicate and fought to capture her.
Murdering his brother gave her a small taste of revenge, but not enough. Three hundred years later, the moment she got word that Tuyouk had returned to the Physical Realm, all her heartbreak and fury came rushing back.
Fortunately, Tuyouk’s natural optimism didn’t allow him to leave this relationship feeling defeated. His prejudice against the witches had deepened, but his romantic idealism is in tact, and he is still determined to find the perfect woman. That is the state of his expectations when he meets Ayana, who I’ll write about next time.
June 30, 2019
Post 3 - Tuyouk's Early Life
These blog posts end up being longer than I expect them to be, while covering less than I think they will! This post talks about Tuyouk’s life from birth to the age of twenty-five, when he met Belall. It describes how his earliest experiences in life set him up with his many strengths, and a couple of weaknesses that can actually bring him to his knees.
Tuyouk started life in a farming community in a small village in the Cerule Province. His village was one of several clustered around an important crossroads used by two warring factions--that of the evil empress, Belall, and that of the Northern Provinces Syndicate (the military organization that opposed her).
Tuyouk’s parents were Percumas, a professor of literature, and Ru’Nedeh, a famous actress, known for her on-stage portrayals of the ancient queens of Ahman-tahk. Percumas was in his seventies, and Saqui fifty-two, when they returned to their birth province of Cerule to make a living on Ru’Nedeh’s family farm. At that time the region had been under Belall’s rule for a hundred years. The population, like the population in the north, had considerably diminished because of the curse Belall had put on the women. Almost all of the women who had not succumbed, pledged loyalty to Belall and joined her army to save their own lives. Most of the men had been wiped out during Belall’s frequent “tax collection events.” What was left were a handful of demoralized men, and dozens of orphaned boys.
Tuyouk’s mother, Ru’Nedeh, was one of the last women in the village. She did what she could to help the orphans who would show up daily at their farm looking for food. She fed them, and had plans to start a school for them, but, when Tuyouk was two, she died of the women’s curse, shortly after giving birth to her second son, Ongtavo. After Ru’Nedeh died, Percumas cared for his children the way he knew she would have wanted, but he never found true happiness again. He only lived five more years before dying in a farming accident.
The strengths Tuyouk gained from his parents were many. He’s always had a good, compassionate heart, always valued learning, and always put other people’s needs before his own. But on the negative side, because he had a brother to care for, he followed his father’s example of hiding his grief, which, as he approached adulthood, turned into an avoidance of sharing any emotions at all. Inwardly, he developed a near-phobia of reflecting on situations that might provoke the grief he carried inside him. Instead of confronting the mountains of painful experiences that continued to occur in his life, he counted on his determination and positive outlook to carry him over them.
From the time he was born, Tuyouk’s best friend was a boy his age called Wahya-Ganeha. Wahya’s family lived down the road, and was one of the few families in the village that still had older relatives in the house--a father and a great, great-grandfather--neither of whom had time to take an interest in what the boys were up to. Every evening, Tuyouk, Ongtavo, and a constantly changing group of other orphaned boys would go to Wahya’s farmhouse to get a meager meal and watch the household’s public access scrying pane. The Ahman-tahki information ministry would broadcast news reports over the scryer, highlighting stories of Syndicate raptors and dragon warriors--heroes who wore bio-armor, and fought to defeat Belall’s evil forces. The hope-starved boys devoured these stories as if they were manna from Heaven. They would cheer, jumping up and down on their knees at every report of a Syndicate victory.
Eventually, Wahya’s three older brothers started organizing the orphan boys into a gang--one of several in the area. Their aim, at first, was simply to supplement their food-intake by scrounging through the refuse at produce warehouses, but it soon turned into stealing. Tuyouk was eager to develop his stealth skills, and would later credit Wahya’s brothers for being his first teachers in things like thievery, sabotage, and hand-to-hand combat. Throughout his childhood, Tuyouk learned how to plan, how to lead, how to conserve and divvy up resources, how to talk peace with rival gangs when he could, and to fight when he couldn’t.
By the time he was eleven, everyone could see that Tuyouk was different than the other boys. He was as tall as the fourteen-and-fifteen-year olds, and excelled at any physical contest, and--thanks to his father’s early influence--he was a voracious reader. At about that age, he started working on developing his cha-weh, aka his spirit energy, or magic. As was common on their planet, he, Wahya, and the other magical boys practiced drawing cha-weh into their hands, and manipulating it into projectiles or fireballs. As to be expected, their first efforts were weak, but quickly improved, especially for Tuyouk, who became the group’s leader in all things explosive. By the time he was sixteen, he loved to entertain the other boys by blowing up old tractors, or making fireworks in the night sky.
As the boys began to look up to Tuyouk, the gang’s leader, Ko (Wahya’s eldest brother), began to look on him with jealousy. Even though Tuyouk was much younger, the two slowly became rivals. Tuyouk was unafraid of Ko’s aggressive posturing, and often spoke up with new ideas--good ideas--to improve the gang’s activities. Ko did not appreciate this constant critique of his leadership, but the rivalry didn’t become real until the day Ko assigned ten-year-old Ongtavo to participate in a dangerous job without his big brother.
Instead of allowing Ongtavo to take on the mission like any other boy in the gang, Tuyouk physically held him back from going. This was the last straw for Ko, and he challenged Tuyouk to a proving match. Tuyouk was twelve--Ko was twenty-two. Ko won the fight, but it took all his strength and tricks, as well as most of the day. When it was done, instead of coming to pat his shoulders, the boys swarmed to congratulate Tuyouk. Ko considered this, and then made the purely political decision to give Tuyouk the rank of squad leader. Five years later, when Ko was killed by the witches, Tuyouk would be chosen over the older boys to be the new “susaya,” or leader.
Throughout his life, Tuyouk admired the Syndicate’s armor-wearing dragon warriors, and wanted to be like them. If he and the other magical boys had armor, they could attack the frequent convoys of trucks that passed through the crossroads on their way to Belall’s compound. He’d already learned to transform into a dragon, but being able to get close to the wand-wielding witches while two-legged would allow him to finesse his attacks in a way four-legged creatures could not. There was, however, no way for him and the other magical boys to get bio-armor, which needed to be created by magical professionals and cost a great deal.
Then when he was sixteen, he saw a Public Access piece that would change his future. It was about a Cerule scientist/shaman team--the only Cerule scientist/shaman team--that crafted armor for Syndicate warriors in Cerule’s capitol city. Tuyouk and the other magical boys, (and Ongtavo--he never went anywhere without Ongtavo) went on an adventure to commission four suits of bio-armor. Since they had no money, but were very good at obtaining things, their intentions were to trade for them.
When they met the team, the shaman immediately sensed Tuyouk’s potential. She realized that, had he been a city boy, he would have been identified as being gifted, and would have been given a scholarship to the Syndicate Academy. Being Cerule themselves, she and her scientist partner knew about the poverty in the non-urban areas, and, instead of bringing Tuyouk to the attention of the Syndicate, decided that he could do more good by staying where he was.
It took a few years, but when Tuyouk was nineteen, he finally got his armor. He was a full-fledged dragon warrior--just like the Syndicate warriors that people admired and watched on the scrying pane each week. This couldn't help but give him a new boost of confidence.
For the next six years, he instigated and maintained the merging of all the gangs in the area into one rag-tag guerrilla army called the Crossroads Cadre. He used his new numbers to start attacking Belall’s convoys and stealing her food and supplies, which he distributed to the local villages--a move that quickly put him on her radar, although she was unable to catch him for several years.
The one challenge that Tuyouk was unable to overcome was the availability of females for bonding. A favorite pastime for him and his warriors was to sneak through the hills to admire the witches that lived in Belall’s compound from afar. As he grew, his dreams started to include finding a wife--a woman who would bond with him physically and spiritually. Unfortunately, the only women he ever saw looked at him as a common criminal. Obviously, this didn’t put an end to his dreams.
Next time, I’ll talk about the two romantic relationships in Tuyouk’s life--that with Belall, and that with Ayana.
Tuyouk started life in a farming community in a small village in the Cerule Province. His village was one of several clustered around an important crossroads used by two warring factions--that of the evil empress, Belall, and that of the Northern Provinces Syndicate (the military organization that opposed her).
Tuyouk’s parents were Percumas, a professor of literature, and Ru’Nedeh, a famous actress, known for her on-stage portrayals of the ancient queens of Ahman-tahk. Percumas was in his seventies, and Saqui fifty-two, when they returned to their birth province of Cerule to make a living on Ru’Nedeh’s family farm. At that time the region had been under Belall’s rule for a hundred years. The population, like the population in the north, had considerably diminished because of the curse Belall had put on the women. Almost all of the women who had not succumbed, pledged loyalty to Belall and joined her army to save their own lives. Most of the men had been wiped out during Belall’s frequent “tax collection events.” What was left were a handful of demoralized men, and dozens of orphaned boys.
Tuyouk’s mother, Ru’Nedeh, was one of the last women in the village. She did what she could to help the orphans who would show up daily at their farm looking for food. She fed them, and had plans to start a school for them, but, when Tuyouk was two, she died of the women’s curse, shortly after giving birth to her second son, Ongtavo. After Ru’Nedeh died, Percumas cared for his children the way he knew she would have wanted, but he never found true happiness again. He only lived five more years before dying in a farming accident.
The strengths Tuyouk gained from his parents were many. He’s always had a good, compassionate heart, always valued learning, and always put other people’s needs before his own. But on the negative side, because he had a brother to care for, he followed his father’s example of hiding his grief, which, as he approached adulthood, turned into an avoidance of sharing any emotions at all. Inwardly, he developed a near-phobia of reflecting on situations that might provoke the grief he carried inside him. Instead of confronting the mountains of painful experiences that continued to occur in his life, he counted on his determination and positive outlook to carry him over them.
From the time he was born, Tuyouk’s best friend was a boy his age called Wahya-Ganeha. Wahya’s family lived down the road, and was one of the few families in the village that still had older relatives in the house--a father and a great, great-grandfather--neither of whom had time to take an interest in what the boys were up to. Every evening, Tuyouk, Ongtavo, and a constantly changing group of other orphaned boys would go to Wahya’s farmhouse to get a meager meal and watch the household’s public access scrying pane. The Ahman-tahki information ministry would broadcast news reports over the scryer, highlighting stories of Syndicate raptors and dragon warriors--heroes who wore bio-armor, and fought to defeat Belall’s evil forces. The hope-starved boys devoured these stories as if they were manna from Heaven. They would cheer, jumping up and down on their knees at every report of a Syndicate victory.
Eventually, Wahya’s three older brothers started organizing the orphan boys into a gang--one of several in the area. Their aim, at first, was simply to supplement their food-intake by scrounging through the refuse at produce warehouses, but it soon turned into stealing. Tuyouk was eager to develop his stealth skills, and would later credit Wahya’s brothers for being his first teachers in things like thievery, sabotage, and hand-to-hand combat. Throughout his childhood, Tuyouk learned how to plan, how to lead, how to conserve and divvy up resources, how to talk peace with rival gangs when he could, and to fight when he couldn’t.
By the time he was eleven, everyone could see that Tuyouk was different than the other boys. He was as tall as the fourteen-and-fifteen-year olds, and excelled at any physical contest, and--thanks to his father’s early influence--he was a voracious reader. At about that age, he started working on developing his cha-weh, aka his spirit energy, or magic. As was common on their planet, he, Wahya, and the other magical boys practiced drawing cha-weh into their hands, and manipulating it into projectiles or fireballs. As to be expected, their first efforts were weak, but quickly improved, especially for Tuyouk, who became the group’s leader in all things explosive. By the time he was sixteen, he loved to entertain the other boys by blowing up old tractors, or making fireworks in the night sky.
As the boys began to look up to Tuyouk, the gang’s leader, Ko (Wahya’s eldest brother), began to look on him with jealousy. Even though Tuyouk was much younger, the two slowly became rivals. Tuyouk was unafraid of Ko’s aggressive posturing, and often spoke up with new ideas--good ideas--to improve the gang’s activities. Ko did not appreciate this constant critique of his leadership, but the rivalry didn’t become real until the day Ko assigned ten-year-old Ongtavo to participate in a dangerous job without his big brother.
Instead of allowing Ongtavo to take on the mission like any other boy in the gang, Tuyouk physically held him back from going. This was the last straw for Ko, and he challenged Tuyouk to a proving match. Tuyouk was twelve--Ko was twenty-two. Ko won the fight, but it took all his strength and tricks, as well as most of the day. When it was done, instead of coming to pat his shoulders, the boys swarmed to congratulate Tuyouk. Ko considered this, and then made the purely political decision to give Tuyouk the rank of squad leader. Five years later, when Ko was killed by the witches, Tuyouk would be chosen over the older boys to be the new “susaya,” or leader.
Throughout his life, Tuyouk admired the Syndicate’s armor-wearing dragon warriors, and wanted to be like them. If he and the other magical boys had armor, they could attack the frequent convoys of trucks that passed through the crossroads on their way to Belall’s compound. He’d already learned to transform into a dragon, but being able to get close to the wand-wielding witches while two-legged would allow him to finesse his attacks in a way four-legged creatures could not. There was, however, no way for him and the other magical boys to get bio-armor, which needed to be created by magical professionals and cost a great deal.
Then when he was sixteen, he saw a Public Access piece that would change his future. It was about a Cerule scientist/shaman team--the only Cerule scientist/shaman team--that crafted armor for Syndicate warriors in Cerule’s capitol city. Tuyouk and the other magical boys, (and Ongtavo--he never went anywhere without Ongtavo) went on an adventure to commission four suits of bio-armor. Since they had no money, but were very good at obtaining things, their intentions were to trade for them.
When they met the team, the shaman immediately sensed Tuyouk’s potential. She realized that, had he been a city boy, he would have been identified as being gifted, and would have been given a scholarship to the Syndicate Academy. Being Cerule themselves, she and her scientist partner knew about the poverty in the non-urban areas, and, instead of bringing Tuyouk to the attention of the Syndicate, decided that he could do more good by staying where he was.
It took a few years, but when Tuyouk was nineteen, he finally got his armor. He was a full-fledged dragon warrior--just like the Syndicate warriors that people admired and watched on the scrying pane each week. This couldn't help but give him a new boost of confidence.
For the next six years, he instigated and maintained the merging of all the gangs in the area into one rag-tag guerrilla army called the Crossroads Cadre. He used his new numbers to start attacking Belall’s convoys and stealing her food and supplies, which he distributed to the local villages--a move that quickly put him on her radar, although she was unable to catch him for several years.
The one challenge that Tuyouk was unable to overcome was the availability of females for bonding. A favorite pastime for him and his warriors was to sneak through the hills to admire the witches that lived in Belall’s compound from afar. As he grew, his dreams started to include finding a wife--a woman who would bond with him physically and spiritually. Unfortunately, the only women he ever saw looked at him as a common criminal. Obviously, this didn’t put an end to his dreams.
Next time, I’ll talk about the two romantic relationships in Tuyouk’s life--that with Belall, and that with Ayana.
June 22, 2019
2nd Post - Ahman-tahk
Post 2: The Planet, Ahman-tahk
In Post 1, I said I was going to do character studies in this second blog, but as I started to write about Tuyouk, I saw that readers wouldn’t understand his motivations very well if they didn’t know the circumstances of his early life--which is also why I wrote, what eventually became “Book 1,” The Prologue. (1) So, this post will be about Ahman-tahk, and the next will be about Tuyouk.
The planet Ahman-tahk (2) is smaller than Earth. I’m not very well versed in planetary science, but I’m guessing it’s about as small as Mars. It has two continents, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern one. All the people live in the northern hemisphere, only going to the southern hemisphere to conduct scientific research or to harvest natural resources. The southern hemisphere is a dangerous jungle, occupied by monsters, demons and trap “doors” that abduct unwary explorers to other dimensions.
The people who inhabit Ahman-tahk, are long-lived, with life spans from two hundred to a thousand years. The more magical a person is, the longer they can expect to live. Ahman-tahkis are distantly related to humans. (3) They are tall--seven to eight-and-a-half feet--with long limbs and necks, large eyes and small ears. The women are willowy, while the men are wiry with extremely broad shoulders. Both genders only grow hair on the crown of their heads. They call this a topknot, and, when unfurled, it looks like a long ponytail. Generally speaking, their hair color matches their skin color.
On Ahman-tahk, skin color is not inherited. If it were, the people would all be a bland sort of gray-beige, but because of the abundant spirit magic on their planet, their neutral-colored babies become the color of the dominant Ascended Spirit of their province. That is the color they’ll have for life. If they move to another province, their color won’t change, although, if they live in the new place long enough, their fingertips might become tinged with the second color.
Here’s a list of the skin colors and corresponding provinces. (4) There are more than these, but these are the ones I’ve used in the books, so far: Shiny black (Sidi), reddish-brown (Namonci), coffee brown (Feecoppeh), lavender (Lauve), pink (Petalo), green (Greevant), blue (Cerule), gray (Gogg), yellow (Reo) and gold (Auric). Oh, and can’t forget the stunningly handsome, but unquestionably dickish, Hex, who was born on a ship crossing the ocean. His rare, mother-of-pearl color is called Seetus.
Everyone on Ahman-tahk is born telepathic and empathic, but some people have more magical talent than others. The highest level practitioners can manipulate their cha-weh (spirit energy) into all manner of magic: healing energy, shamanic skills, the power of flight or shadow travel. They can also use it to transform their bodies into a different physical form. Ultra-talented males can channel their power into the Ahman-tahki version of a feline, fire-breathing “dragon.” Females channel their power into a bird of prey called a raptor. The more magical the person the larger the spirit animal.
Overall, the Ahman-tahki race is loving and peaceful. Since they’re born feeling the spiritual connection between all living things, it’s ingrained in their collective psyche to live simply and in harmony with nature. Unfortunately, no society is a hundred percent homogeneous, and there is some social stratification. About twenty-five percent of the population embraces wealth, prestige and the acquisition of “things” over spirituality.
Still, everything was going well until a hundred years before this story started, when the Lauve empress, Belall, decided to start conquering and annexing weaker provinces. As a tried and true member of the materialistic class, Belall’s two favorite things are opulence and free labor. She and her followers are called witches because they use their magic for dark purposes. There’s no such thing as a good witch on Ahman-tahk; there are witches, and there are shamans. Belall is both. She has always scorned men, thinking them highly emotional and not as intelligent as women, so, when building the army she would use to conquer the other provinces, she only enlisted women. However, the majority of women knew about her, considered her to be evil, and refused to join her. Vindictively, (and short-sightedly), she cursed them with a fatal disease. The Ahman-tahki race is long lived, but slow to reproduce, and this curse ended up causing the population to plunge into a catastrophic descent.
In an effort to stop Belall from taking over the continent, the warriors of the north banded together into a military syndicate. Tuyouk’s province, Cerule, is in the southern part of the continent, abutting Belall’s territory. It was one of the first provinces she’d conquered when beginning her ambitious campaign. The rest of the world pretty much stood back and watched as she poisoned and scorched Cerule’s farmland, making the soil and water barely useable. Instead of coming to Cerule’s aid, the newly formed Northern Provinces Syndicate remained in the safety of the north, more intent on planning how to defend their own territory instead of going to the aid of their neighbors to the south.
This was the world Tuyouk was born into. He was forced to grow up too quickly, forced to take on a leadership role before he was ready, forced to miss out on key experiences that everyone else takes for granted growing up. On the plus side, he didn’t lose his innate generosity, and learned responsibility. More about him in my next post.
Until then, thanks for reading, and questions or comments are welcome.
Notes:
1. I actually wrote The Witch Boy first then later separated out the material concerning Tuyouk’s early life to make the Prologue.
2. The name Ahman-tahk came from a breed of horses. I’m a horse lover, and as I was looking at breed pictures one day, I noted that a certain breed reminded me of the alien race I was writing about. Long limbs, long, thin neck, strong and wiry. The most dramatic-looking specimens have a metallic sheen to their coats. The name of the breed is Akhal-teke, (ah-kahl-TEK-ee), and from that, I got Ahman-tahki. https://www.thesprucepets.com/meet-th...
3. The Ahman-tahkis are related to humans through a common ancestor called “the Shu.” I like to think of the Shu as explorers, the “ancient aliens” who (according to Ancient Astronaut Theory) came to Earth and interacted and interbred with the Egyptians and other ancient peoples. The name “Shu” came from Egyptian mythology. Shu was the prudish father of Nut and Geb. There’s a great website I use, called www.Godchecker.com where anyone can quickly check facts about gods from around the world.
4. I named the provinces words that made sense to me, words that I could remember without having to consult a list, so “green” became Greevant, cerulean became Cerule, and so on.
In Post 1, I said I was going to do character studies in this second blog, but as I started to write about Tuyouk, I saw that readers wouldn’t understand his motivations very well if they didn’t know the circumstances of his early life--which is also why I wrote, what eventually became “Book 1,” The Prologue. (1) So, this post will be about Ahman-tahk, and the next will be about Tuyouk.
The planet Ahman-tahk (2) is smaller than Earth. I’m not very well versed in planetary science, but I’m guessing it’s about as small as Mars. It has two continents, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern one. All the people live in the northern hemisphere, only going to the southern hemisphere to conduct scientific research or to harvest natural resources. The southern hemisphere is a dangerous jungle, occupied by monsters, demons and trap “doors” that abduct unwary explorers to other dimensions.
The people who inhabit Ahman-tahk, are long-lived, with life spans from two hundred to a thousand years. The more magical a person is, the longer they can expect to live. Ahman-tahkis are distantly related to humans. (3) They are tall--seven to eight-and-a-half feet--with long limbs and necks, large eyes and small ears. The women are willowy, while the men are wiry with extremely broad shoulders. Both genders only grow hair on the crown of their heads. They call this a topknot, and, when unfurled, it looks like a long ponytail. Generally speaking, their hair color matches their skin color.
On Ahman-tahk, skin color is not inherited. If it were, the people would all be a bland sort of gray-beige, but because of the abundant spirit magic on their planet, their neutral-colored babies become the color of the dominant Ascended Spirit of their province. That is the color they’ll have for life. If they move to another province, their color won’t change, although, if they live in the new place long enough, their fingertips might become tinged with the second color.
Here’s a list of the skin colors and corresponding provinces. (4) There are more than these, but these are the ones I’ve used in the books, so far: Shiny black (Sidi), reddish-brown (Namonci), coffee brown (Feecoppeh), lavender (Lauve), pink (Petalo), green (Greevant), blue (Cerule), gray (Gogg), yellow (Reo) and gold (Auric). Oh, and can’t forget the stunningly handsome, but unquestionably dickish, Hex, who was born on a ship crossing the ocean. His rare, mother-of-pearl color is called Seetus.
Everyone on Ahman-tahk is born telepathic and empathic, but some people have more magical talent than others. The highest level practitioners can manipulate their cha-weh (spirit energy) into all manner of magic: healing energy, shamanic skills, the power of flight or shadow travel. They can also use it to transform their bodies into a different physical form. Ultra-talented males can channel their power into the Ahman-tahki version of a feline, fire-breathing “dragon.” Females channel their power into a bird of prey called a raptor. The more magical the person the larger the spirit animal.
Overall, the Ahman-tahki race is loving and peaceful. Since they’re born feeling the spiritual connection between all living things, it’s ingrained in their collective psyche to live simply and in harmony with nature. Unfortunately, no society is a hundred percent homogeneous, and there is some social stratification. About twenty-five percent of the population embraces wealth, prestige and the acquisition of “things” over spirituality.
Still, everything was going well until a hundred years before this story started, when the Lauve empress, Belall, decided to start conquering and annexing weaker provinces. As a tried and true member of the materialistic class, Belall’s two favorite things are opulence and free labor. She and her followers are called witches because they use their magic for dark purposes. There’s no such thing as a good witch on Ahman-tahk; there are witches, and there are shamans. Belall is both. She has always scorned men, thinking them highly emotional and not as intelligent as women, so, when building the army she would use to conquer the other provinces, she only enlisted women. However, the majority of women knew about her, considered her to be evil, and refused to join her. Vindictively, (and short-sightedly), she cursed them with a fatal disease. The Ahman-tahki race is long lived, but slow to reproduce, and this curse ended up causing the population to plunge into a catastrophic descent.
In an effort to stop Belall from taking over the continent, the warriors of the north banded together into a military syndicate. Tuyouk’s province, Cerule, is in the southern part of the continent, abutting Belall’s territory. It was one of the first provinces she’d conquered when beginning her ambitious campaign. The rest of the world pretty much stood back and watched as she poisoned and scorched Cerule’s farmland, making the soil and water barely useable. Instead of coming to Cerule’s aid, the newly formed Northern Provinces Syndicate remained in the safety of the north, more intent on planning how to defend their own territory instead of going to the aid of their neighbors to the south.
This was the world Tuyouk was born into. He was forced to grow up too quickly, forced to take on a leadership role before he was ready, forced to miss out on key experiences that everyone else takes for granted growing up. On the plus side, he didn’t lose his innate generosity, and learned responsibility. More about him in my next post.
Until then, thanks for reading, and questions or comments are welcome.
Notes:
1. I actually wrote The Witch Boy first then later separated out the material concerning Tuyouk’s early life to make the Prologue.
2. The name Ahman-tahk came from a breed of horses. I’m a horse lover, and as I was looking at breed pictures one day, I noted that a certain breed reminded me of the alien race I was writing about. Long limbs, long, thin neck, strong and wiry. The most dramatic-looking specimens have a metallic sheen to their coats. The name of the breed is Akhal-teke, (ah-kahl-TEK-ee), and from that, I got Ahman-tahki. https://www.thesprucepets.com/meet-th...
3. The Ahman-tahkis are related to humans through a common ancestor called “the Shu.” I like to think of the Shu as explorers, the “ancient aliens” who (according to Ancient Astronaut Theory) came to Earth and interacted and interbred with the Egyptians and other ancient peoples. The name “Shu” came from Egyptian mythology. Shu was the prudish father of Nut and Geb. There’s a great website I use, called www.Godchecker.com where anyone can quickly check facts about gods from around the world.
4. I named the provinces words that made sense to me, words that I could remember without having to consult a list, so “green” became Greevant, cerulean became Cerule, and so on.
June 19, 2019
First Post - Welcome!
Hello, and welcome to my new blog!
I've been meaning to get back to Goodreads for months, but I'm a teacher, and had a difficult school year that left me too exhausted to think about anything else. So... Summer's here--yay! It's been three weeks since school got out, and I'm finally starting to feel normal again.
When we go back to school in August, at our first staff meeting, we're always required to report to the group what we did during vacation. The staff at my school are travelers, always going out of the country or into the wilderness. Then it comes my turn to report, and I have to dredge my memory for something good to say, but really, all I did was write. Although I open my latest book project every day of the year and do some tinkering, summer is when I get to sit uninterrupted and write actual paragraphs. For me, it's bliss.
My project this summer: I'm working on the outline for Book 5 of the Gods of Ahman-tahk series. Its working title is "Demon Diego," but since, in this book, Ayana matures and comes into her own, I'm thinking the title should reflect that.
If you haven't checked out my Facebook page, please, do so. It's got some great artwork. I get a real thrill seeing pictures of my characters. It really brings them to life. Just do a search for "The Gods of Ahman-tahk."
I'll do another blog post in a few days. Another reason I didn't start this blog sooner was that I wasn't sure what to write about, but I think I'll start with character studies. Any ideas for other topics will be appreciated.
Once again, welcome, and thanks for reading.
Maria
I've been meaning to get back to Goodreads for months, but I'm a teacher, and had a difficult school year that left me too exhausted to think about anything else. So... Summer's here--yay! It's been three weeks since school got out, and I'm finally starting to feel normal again.
When we go back to school in August, at our first staff meeting, we're always required to report to the group what we did during vacation. The staff at my school are travelers, always going out of the country or into the wilderness. Then it comes my turn to report, and I have to dredge my memory for something good to say, but really, all I did was write. Although I open my latest book project every day of the year and do some tinkering, summer is when I get to sit uninterrupted and write actual paragraphs. For me, it's bliss.
My project this summer: I'm working on the outline for Book 5 of the Gods of Ahman-tahk series. Its working title is "Demon Diego," but since, in this book, Ayana matures and comes into her own, I'm thinking the title should reflect that.
If you haven't checked out my Facebook page, please, do so. It's got some great artwork. I get a real thrill seeing pictures of my characters. It really brings them to life. Just do a search for "The Gods of Ahman-tahk."
I'll do another blog post in a few days. Another reason I didn't start this blog sooner was that I wasn't sure what to write about, but I think I'll start with character studies. Any ideas for other topics will be appreciated.
Once again, welcome, and thanks for reading.
Maria
