Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends is from AC Young: Only the second sons of nobles were considered for the role of battlefield messengers.
This suggested a fantasy setting, and raised the question of why. Protecting the heir? Or a consolation prize for not being the heir?
Those questions really didn't seem to have many answers, so I ended up going with an Ixilon story, set somewhere in the Unto This Last sequence.
===========================================================================================
Second Son
I was still getting used to this notion of being a correspondent for an international news service. Less than a year ago, I'd been the publisher, editor and sole reporter for a tiny small-town newspaper - and then Gorlath had taken advantage of the convenient death of the Archon and his entire cabinet in a riverboat accident, and suddenly I was on the run.
So here I was in the lands of La Serenissima, covering their war with one of their neighbors. I'd thought I was fairly well versed in the geography of Suldrimon, if not of the other worlds of Ixil-sun, but I'd never even known this tiny nation existed, let alone that it would suddenly become so aggressive toward a nation known best for beauty and culture.
But more interesting was the Serinissiman army's structure. I'd asked to be assigned here because I knew they were a republic, so I thought I'd feel more comfortable here than in a monarchy, where there could be tricky bits of protocol a reporter needed to navigate in filing a story.
However, I was discovering that, while La Serenissima was republican in the sense that their leader did not have the absolute authority of the typical monarch, it was still very much an aristocratic republic. The Great Families might not have formal titles such as Baron or Count or Duke, or address them as My Lord or Your Grace, but they very definitely had a position at the top of the social ladder that was pretty much fixed at birth
.
And one of the peculiarity of that system was their rule that only the second son of a noble family could become a battlefield messenger. Not a first son, not a third or later son, and certainly not a commoner, no matter how wealthy or well-educated, unless his father were to be elevated to the ranks of the Great Families. Which could happen, but almost always required extraordinary circumstances.
Which was why I was sitting here in this tent, talking to this young man who was very politely avoiding looking down his nose at me, so obviously that he might as well have just done it and to perdition with appearances. But like all the Italianate people, the folk of La Serenissima put great stock in una bella figura, a good appearance, so he maintained the proprieties and didn't talk down to me too much.
And in return I did not get snippy with him the way I really wanted to. Maroa has its own traditions of maintaining appearance, particularly among the mountain peoples.
Not to mention that I had a professional reputation to maintain.
==========================================================================================
I don't know where it's going yet, only that it might be in a novel (in which it'll be rewritten to third person), or become a side story. The current text probably won't be transferred directly, but it was still fun to play with the idea.
After much travail, Sarah Hoyt finally has this week's vignette challenge up. My effort is from the Grissom timeline, and deals with historical units of surveying.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
This suggested a fantasy setting, and raised the question of why. Protecting the heir? Or a consolation prize for not being the heir?
Those questions really didn't seem to have many answers, so I ended up going with an Ixilon story, set somewhere in the Unto This Last sequence.
===========================================================================================
Second Son
I was still getting used to this notion of being a correspondent for an international news service. Less than a year ago, I'd been the publisher, editor and sole reporter for a tiny small-town newspaper - and then Gorlath had taken advantage of the convenient death of the Archon and his entire cabinet in a riverboat accident, and suddenly I was on the run.
So here I was in the lands of La Serenissima, covering their war with one of their neighbors. I'd thought I was fairly well versed in the geography of Suldrimon, if not of the other worlds of Ixil-sun, but I'd never even known this tiny nation existed, let alone that it would suddenly become so aggressive toward a nation known best for beauty and culture.
But more interesting was the Serinissiman army's structure. I'd asked to be assigned here because I knew they were a republic, so I thought I'd feel more comfortable here than in a monarchy, where there could be tricky bits of protocol a reporter needed to navigate in filing a story.
However, I was discovering that, while La Serenissima was republican in the sense that their leader did not have the absolute authority of the typical monarch, it was still very much an aristocratic republic. The Great Families might not have formal titles such as Baron or Count or Duke, or address them as My Lord or Your Grace, but they very definitely had a position at the top of the social ladder that was pretty much fixed at birth
.
And one of the peculiarity of that system was their rule that only the second son of a noble family could become a battlefield messenger. Not a first son, not a third or later son, and certainly not a commoner, no matter how wealthy or well-educated, unless his father were to be elevated to the ranks of the Great Families. Which could happen, but almost always required extraordinary circumstances.
Which was why I was sitting here in this tent, talking to this young man who was very politely avoiding looking down his nose at me, so obviously that he might as well have just done it and to perdition with appearances. But like all the Italianate people, the folk of La Serenissima put great stock in una bella figura, a good appearance, so he maintained the proprieties and didn't talk down to me too much.
And in return I did not get snippy with him the way I really wanted to. Maroa has its own traditions of maintaining appearance, particularly among the mountain peoples.
Not to mention that I had a professional reputation to maintain.
==========================================================================================
I don't know where it's going yet, only that it might be in a novel (in which it'll be rewritten to third person), or become a side story. The current text probably won't be transferred directly, but it was still fun to play with the idea.
After much travail, Sarah Hoyt finally has this week's vignette challenge up. My effort is from the Grissom timeline, and deals with historical units of surveying.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.