Out of Season 4/4 - for lady_songsmith

[nfe_gremlin]

Title: Out of Season
Author: edenfalling
Recipient lady_songsmith
Rating: PG-13
Possible Spoilers: no plot spoilers, extensive use of background and settings from The Horse and His Boy
Warnings: background presence of slavery, discussion of and planning for something equivalent to human sacrifice
Summary: In the fourteenth year of Rishti Tisroc's reign, a demon in the

Comments

[rthstewart]

So, I'm not even through the first chapter and I am in awe. This is great. The worldbuilding is amazing and I simply love the absolute certainty of the Calormenes that the Beaver is indeed a demon, for why else could beasts speak. She is, she must be a demon. The Pantheon is also great and the politics are superb. The concept of a god out of season responsible for demons is in Bujold's Chalion series and so I love the use of that concept here in the Calormene worship. Alright, back to reading. More later but this is why the NFE is so wonderful.

[edenfalling]

You know, I read and enjoyed the Chalion series but somehow that connection completely escaped me. Huh.

[metonomia]

Mystery writer, I am astonished. I am in so much awe I cannot even contain it. This is FABULOUS; everything about it is amazing and well-written and well-developed, and I am in raptures over it.

Shezan is GLORIOUS, and Marigold, and Ilgamuth, and ALL OF THEM I just love how you've coalesced the small bit of names we get, and rounded it out so thoroughly to give us as full a look at the Calormene court as we could ever wish. Your pantheon of Calormene gods is incredible, and I really meant this comment to be longer and better, but every single word of this was flawless, and you are wonderful.

[edenfalling]

Argh, LJ ate my comment. Trying again:

Thank you very much! I had a ridiculous amount of fun taking the hints Lewis provided and trying to build Calormen into a country and court that worked on its own terms rather than simply being a source of antagonists. The pantheon is something I created a while ago for a still-unfinished story about what Jadis did between MN and taking over Narnia. It's kind of a mish-mash of various myths I read as a child and a teen (Greek and Celtic, mostly), while the temples have a dash of Hindu influence that crept in because I use Mughal India as a template for the general "feel" of Calormen.

[anastigmatfic]

Writer, this is incredible. I'm awed at the intricacy of the political plots, the way the Calormene pantheon fits together, and the way you've given new life to those one-time characters of Calormen.

I also enjoy the POV character being a priestess - she's well poised to see how those two worlds, of gods and men, interact. Fantastic story!

[edenfalling]

Thank you! The political plots gave me a headache, because they ended up at least twice as complicated as I'd initially planned for -- the implications took on a life of their own and the characters kind of ran away with the story.

I had planned to have my POV character be the wife of an ambassador, but it occurred to me that it would cut out a bunch of middle steps to use the POV of a person directly assigned to watch over Marigold Beaver rather than someone who would have to keep coming up with excuses to poke into things she had no real reason to know about. So Shezan is a priestess for narrative convenience... but yeah, once I settled on her, I enjoyed the way she kept religious issues front and center instead of letting the story spin off into nothing BUT politics.

[rthstewart]

I ship Shezan and Ilgamuth. I know what was happening in those final paragraphs, not-so-mystery writer. Queen Susan looms large in this, for all that we do not see her at all and how interesting to see the end with the Calormene plotting regarding Rabadash and what they hope to accomplish in and with Narnia. Rabadash is very much manipulated into his infatuation with Susan, yet he is not a fool either. Shezan is an amazing character and I adore the family politics -- the mother who is the hostess, the grandfather who is the Grand Vizier, the milk brother and so on. The oblique way of speaking -- the flowery language that conceals other things is a very much appreciated nuance to Calormene politics and culture. The pantheon and descriptions of the rituals associated with each of the gods and goddesses was wonderful

[edenfalling]

I ship Shezan and Ilgamuth. I know what was happening in those final paragraphs, not-so-mystery writer.Funny story: that was actually not what I meant when I said this story was hopelessly non-anonymous. I hadn't even created Shezan at that point, let alone her relationships. I was mostly thinking about my pantheon, and maybe about the relationship between two hypothetical characters who never made it past the early brainstorming phase (and ambassador and his wife). Then when I started writing, I didn't know Ilgamuth would turn into a major character. I picked him for the first scene with Rabadash because he's the only companion besides Anradin Tarkaan who gets any physical description, and kept using him because it's easier not to introduce new characters every two pages. I was very surprised when Shezan started thinking about courting him, and had to go back and mention her liking him earlier

[lady_songsmith]

Pardon me, mystery writer, I'm making this sort of high-pitched keening noise and I can't seem to stop... Eeeee!!! This is so marvelous, so real - I love what you've done, populating the Calormene court and making it a real place of complex politics. Shezan is absolutely perfect as a narrator, being both in and outside of the court, and so clever! And the richness of the world you've evoked it marvelous, from the details of the bows to the pantheon to the language of Calormen. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[edenfalling]

Thank YOU for such a wonderful prompt! I'm really glad you liked my take on Calormen, and that Shezan's insider/outsider perspective on the court and its politics worked for you. The flowery language is mostly my attempt to imitate Lewis's Calormene dialogue (without getting too ridiculously far from my own, more plainspoken style), and a lot of the physical details, the style of political maneuvering, and the general "feel" of the culture are loosely inspired by India under the six Great Mughal emperors.

As for some other details: I stole the honeycomb ceilings of Rishti Tisroc's pavilion from the Alhambra in Spain. The architectural technique is called either muqarna or mocárabe; I am not quite sure of the difference between the two terms. The outside of the pavilion is based on the shape of a kind of domed pavilion common in India, the name of which sadly escapes me. Also, the titles of the Tisroc's wives are Mongol in origin; Takhun is a simple anagram of khatun (meaning "steel" and/or a khan's wife) while Tabek is related

[lady_songsmith]

As one geek to another on this score -- Regarding Tarkaan, I came across 'tarkan' as a word in... I can't remember whether I was looking at Turkish or Farsi at the time. I will have to hunt up the link, if I can!

[edenfalling]

Oh, neat!