OC Penpals!
So I got this idea from reading puella_nerdii's advice column thread, and thinking to myself, "Writing to one of Puel's characters as one of my characters? That sounds like fun! --But they don't know each other very well yet! What are they supposed to talk about?"
And then I thought to myself, "PENPAL THREAD," and that brings us up to now.
( Thanks for the recap. So what is it? )
And then I thought to myself, "PENPAL THREAD," and that brings us up to now.
( Thanks for the recap. So what is it? )
Thank you for agreeing to this correspondence. I'll be frank: I'm out of the habit of letter-writing and haven't had cause to do so for quite some time, as most of my associates serve with me on the Maehriya and can shout for me if they wish to talk, so please excuse any errors in form. (The content must stand on its own.)
Your own ship intrigues me. I understand you are not primarily a sailor, and I sympathize, but you still have more experience with it than I. I can guess at some of its workings, but Sassen ships are generally unfamiliar to me, and ships such as yours that bear some Sassen features but have some features I do not recognize are even more so. I also understand you have a talent for finances. Though I have served on merchant vessels, I have been a mercenary, not an accountant. As the Maehriya turns towards more commercial ventures, I would be interested to learn more about what your job entails. I may not be the person who needs to cover such functions (though given our current crew, I suspect I will be), but someone does need to manage our finances. The Council of Elders has been -- reluctant -- to subsidize us since the conclusion of our conflict with Sassen.
I am also intrigued by your style of dress. I rarely have much time these days to attend to my own appearance, but I can appreciate it when people do. Your clothing bears some resemblance to what I've seen in Sassen ports, but there are marked differences -- and differences between your own dress and those of your crewmates. Do all men dress as you do, where you're from, or only men of a certain status, or is it personal affectation?
Thank you again, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Khari du'Arath
Reply
(And please accept my apologies if that is incorrect--but as we've only just met it would amuse me too much to ask already if you are married)
Thank you for your comprehensive and exceedingly polite interest. On the subject of the ship, unfortunately, I must beg you to inquire elsewhere. It floats, on the water; it's made of metal, for the most part, except for where it is made of wood, and it has an engine, which makes a great deal of noise and which I have as little to do with as possible. Generally, as I understand it, one tries not to let it sink. I have expended considerable effort to ensure that my knowledge extends no further.
If the opportunity arises, you may want to bring the subject up with my friend Isaac Grey, who is the captain of the Magog. On the other hand, you may not, since once you start a conversation with Isaac about the Magog you rapidly begin to feel like you will never have the opportunity to talk about anything else for the rest of your life. It takes days of drinking to restore my ignorance and my equinamity to the level at which I prefer it.
As for financial matters:
To say that I have a 'talent' for finance is, unfortunately, to overstate my capacities. But I have an exceptional education in finance, and had actually made a respectable career out of it before my life went in an abruptly nautical direction. My duties aboard the Magog (at least, the ones pertaining to finance; not my duties which pertain to making certain that the captain is sober, not bleeding too much, temper is in reasonable check, etc) are threefold.
First, I inventory. This is exceptionally tedious, but apparently I am the only one aboard the ship who can count, and arrive at the same numbers every time. Oh--the Magog is a pirate vessel: I should most likely mention that. So, we capture ships, and take whatever we can find on them, etc. Sorting out what all of that is is my responsibility.
Second, I track markets. This is not something pirate operations generally bother with, but pirate operations do not often have extremely bored Ca' Foscari-educated financiers who wield sufficient influence with the captain to request sudden detours to Tenochtitlan or wherever, so. Keeping up to date with stock indexes when one is at sea for weeks at a time is, surprisingly, not especially easy to do. I am on very familiar and not always cordial terms with our radio operator. At any rate, once I have identified the best market for our stolen goods, I arrange for the sales.
Third, I manage our investments. I know it is not especially piratical to invest one's lucre in pork futures, or whatever it is at the moment, but I must admit that's part of why I enjoy it.
Needless to say we are extremely rich for such a small operation. Of course Isaac just spends most of it on the ship. Presumably, to some effect. I do my best not to inquire.
And you asked about my clothes! I like you. Well, I suppose it's a personal affectation (but isn't everything?); I appreciate beautiful things, and clothes are no different. I dress thoughtfully, and with taste, and I am willing to set aside money to satisfy my taste. There is not much more to it than that. So far as specific peculiarities of my wardrobe are concerned, you may be noticing what we call 'clockwork detailing.' The clothes of my world always have concealed details. Call it couture's response to the malaise of general society, but our clothes are nearly always more interesting on the inside, or upon very close inspection, than they are at first glance.
I hope you are answered, or at the very least amused. If you are of a mind to, please write back about your own situation aboard the Maehriya, and how you came to be there. I understand that she is, or was, a warship.
Yours sincerely,
M.de Baschi
Reply
I am answered -- and somewhat amused. (In response to your first question: no, I am not married. I'll remain miss for a while longer yet. Perhaps a long while indeed.)
I will leave the duty of making inquiries about your ship itself to my captain, should he wish to make them. Jho and Mr. Grey would have much to discuss, and after a certain point my knowledge would be of no more consequence than yours. (I should say instead that we would both find ourselves so lacking that it wouldn't matter who lacked more.)
I do thank you for your detailed descriptions of your duties aboard the Magog. And your investments, while not in line with your profession, are sensible. I suspect the systems of investment in our worlds work differently, but I have persuaded Jho to put some of our (and his grandmother's) capital in trade goods rather than -- to be frank, I'm not always certain what Jho wishes to spend money on. Nor is he, I suspect. We may not need a financier aboard of your ability, but we ought to have someone look at our inventory. Presumably the task will fall on me. I may need to request your advice as to how best to sort it out.
What you call clockwork detailing fascinates me. It isn't widely practiced in our world, or not in the parts of it I have seen, but there was something similar where I grew up. There were messages encoded in the patterns of our clothes: signals of status and clan and where we had traveled, primarily. It has been a long time since I have worn them. Your discussion of clothing style as a manifestation of your society's malaise also interests me. A certain ambiguity is valued in Haradh, but it isn't the same as uneasiness.
The Maehriya was indeed a warship, and you'll have to ask her captain what she is now, as he has not yet made up his mind. At present, we are a collection of those men and women who have no better place to go, trading what we can and resorting to the occasional act of piracy when we cannot. The headwoman of Jho's line, Dura, has been kind enough to outfit us with provisions and fill our hold with trading goods, though none of us have her knowledge of the markets to know where best to bring them. Currently, we have a large cargo of cassava and a smaller one of various spices and medicinal plants. Valuable enough, but a number of ports are closed to us due to the Maehriya's former service record, and none of us yet feel ready to attempt the journey to Qing.
I mentioned in my last letter that the Maehriya was not the first vessel I served aboard, and that I had been a mercenary. Specifically, after several years of training in Jasaam and after several years more serving in Malketh to the south, I joined a Jasaamite company contracted to protect what remained of the Ohri mercantile fleet. (The Ohri are Dura's clan. Though I am forbidden to know much of their politics, I know she holds considerable influence in it, and was instrumental in selecting the last man appointed to speak for the Ohri at the Council of Elders.) What remained, I say, because Haradh was under Sassen rule at the time, and Sassen had destroyed or co-opted most of their our commercial interests and capacity for trade. A year or so after our contract began, a sizable contingent of young Haradhi (and young Daivan, like myself -- or like I was) began harassing Sassen forces, and though none of them were able to rally full clan support at first, Sassen took it as an act of war. Dura and her allies swayed the Ohri to support the resistance, and I was left in a difficult position. Jasaam was neutral; we could, if we wished, sign a new contract with the Ohri, or we could leave, as the terms of our old contract no longer applied.
I stayed. I, and half the company. The rest left, including our captain, but he appointed me acting captain in his stead.
Reply
He deserted his post in the Sassen Royal Navy to fight for Haradh, he said; his reasons were, and are, his own. I make no secret of the fact that I did not trust him initially, but his knowledge of the enemy navy proved useful, and he has a peculiar talent for resolving impossible situations in even more impossible ways. It fell to me -- and has fallen ever since -- to keep some of his wilder plans in check, fit them into broader operations, take care of the details he has overlooked, and clean up the fallout.
It may seem as though I resent him for this. I don't. We exasperate each other at times, but I can think of no man more loyal to those he loves, and I cannot count the number of times he has risked his own safety (and life) to preserve mine. He makes me believe the strangest things, but I want to believe them, in a way I rarely have anything else.
Our current Maehriya is constructed from the hull of the last one, which is why her name remains the same. She was a gift from Dura; we needed a fast and maneuverable ship with a relatively small crew to perform our sabotages and escape in time, and there is little Dura wouldn't give Jho should he earn the right to ask for it. During the final battle of the conflict with Sassen, at Waeyanle, Jho set her afire and sailed into the flagship of the fleet. It was a near thing. She almost burned before we reached the admiral's ship, but we'd predicted the wind well. He dueled Admiral Hanson in single combat and slew him, and when the rest of us secured the flagship, Hanson's second-in-command negotiated a peace.
The peace left us free but jobless, so we had the Maehriya rebuilt and enlarged her cargo hold. In addition to what I have previously described, we harass Sassen shipping lines. I am her first mate. In addition to overseeing the Maehriya's cargo operations and its crew, I am responsible for the safety and security of the ship. In theory, I also oversee its maintenance, but Aia and Sheval are more knowledgeable of the Maehriya's workings than I. I train the crew and look after their welfare, and inevitably resolve any disputes that arise aboard.
I would be interested to hear how you met your captain if, again, you are of a mind to do so. He sounds a fascinating man.
Sincerely,
Khari du'Arath
Reply
I agree; Isaac is a fascinating man. I am sorry to report that our meeting was less dramatic than yours with your captain. We were twelve years old. I was a new arrival in Boston-in the British territories altogether-and very out of place. Overdressed, oddly mannered, nervy and snappish (I had been recently separated from my family), and it didn't help that I was French. Isaac and I attended neighboring schools which were engaged in a longstanding rivalry. (That same year, his father would receive a promotion, and Isaac would transfer to my school, which was more prestigious.) We first crossed paths in the public garden which lay between our campuses, and for my part I ignored him, since he was (one could tell just by looking at him) an ill-tempered, belligerent hooligan (and I was correct in my assessment).
I should mention that Isaac takes specific offense whenever anyone tries to ignore him, and that he has a remarkable gift for saying precisely whatever it is that will make you want to kill him. I'm fortunate in that I can't remember what it was that he said. I'm sure if I could, I would hit him again.
So, we thrashed each other. It was such a scene that the proctor from Isaac's school was summoned to separate us. As you may know, there is no greater bonding experience for young boys than to come out as equals in a fight and then lie about it together to the authorities. By sundown, we were already something like friends.
Sometimes, when he smiles, you can see where I broke one of his teeth.
It occurs to me that I say a great many unflattering things about Isaac. Please understand that I do this because I love him. Anything I say about him, I say with the deepest affection, but he remains an ill-tempered hooligan and a great many other things besides.
It is interesting to me that Daivan couture affects a mannerism which I think of as so Chinese, where messages in one's clothes--particularly family affiliations, signals of status, and which branch of Confucianism the wearer adheres to-are omnipresent. It is axiomatic that in Chung Kuo there are two written languages (hanzi and embroidery) and outsiders can't make any sense of either. The Aztecs have somewhat adopted this tendency, as have a number of the East Asian kingdoms, of course. The daimyos of Japan actually have two systems of embroidery (neither of them so complicated as the Chinese system, however), which differ in patterns used and in the style of stitching, for clothes that they wear when they are at home and clothes that they wear when they travel.
There are many kinds of clockwork detailing. The Romaioi favor intersticed, nearly identical fabrics, which, upon close inspection, may depict pastoral scenes, or Orthodox iconography. The caliphates of northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula place an emphasis on drapery, concealing bright swaths of color within the natural folds of their clothes. Distinctive to Western Europe and its colonial holdings is a fixation on the interiors of one's clothing, the insides of cuffs and collars and lapels and so on, where metallic thread, cloth of gold, or Kanjeevaram silk may be laid in to catch the light. And so on.
You mentioned a few times a clan headwoman; is Haradhi culture, then, matriarchal? I would be glad to hear it. There are few matriarchal or matrilineal cultures in my own world. (I am ashamed to say that the natural fragility of the female sex is still endlessly forwarded as an explanation as to why). Equality of the sexes is, here, treated as most other forms of social justice: as an enemy of Tradition, which is our only bulwark against chaos. There of course has been (maddeningly gradual) progress, but if your world features in general less ignorance, arrogance, and mean spirit than my own, I have to say that I envy you.
It sounds as if the contour of your life is not so different from mine. I do my best to temper my captain, resolve difficulties among the crew, introduce tact to any situation that seems in need of it, and draw as little attention as possible to my own place of origin. I am still struggling to eradicate my accent. It always comes out when I start drinking.
Yours sincerely,
Michel de Baschi.
Reply
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