(no subject)

Came back from the grocery store.

I got many veggies (it is nice enough outside to walk over to the fruit market -- I got baclava while I was there, and triple-cream brie-like cheese for $1.99 :-)

Also replenished my supplies of tissues and wacky flours (oat and barley were almost totally gone).

I had a look at the halogen lights and the compact flourescents (sp). They might not be such a bad idea...


I'm going to do a root veggie roast for dinner tonight. I've got mushrooms and *mamoth* red peppers, and lots of roots. :-) It should be good (it always is). :-)

My nasty cold is going away. Hurrah! :-D

Anywhoo. This is my update. :-)


I've got some questions for all of you writers (amateur or otherwise) out there:

See, I've had spiralling in my head for the past couple of years, the threads of a story that started out in two dreams (I think it's kinda neat. Sometimes my dreams are related to each other). Anywhoo, I thought I'd pitch it at you all, and then throw out some questions about some of the holes in this plot.
Help? :-)


Okay, so the setting comes straight out of the dream:
There is a futuristic city, with a large university (where the narator works as a prof -- She is one of Mirien's Daughters -- a sort of nun/priestess combination -- They are wind up in education-type fields). There are flying hover-cars (that are triangular, for some reason... streamlining?), but there are also old ruins around the place. Sort of like if you took Rome, added a bit of Hungary, and then spead up the technology to about the year 3000. :-)


There are three priesthoods -- Mirien's and Niriel's (both Goddesses), and Ureos's (a God). Priestly colours being white, red, and black (charcoal, really), respectively.

Currently, Ureos's people are in charge of the Nation whose capital is this futuristic city.

They've been in charge for a good 100 years or so (possibly more, maybe up to 300). Niriel's Daughters (the Red Sisters) are not getting a lot of work these days, despite being the midwives, etc. Over the past century, Niriel has actually been getting less and less religious press. Part of this is due to the close relationship between what Niriel oversees and what Ureos oversees. They both deal with some fairly day-to-day stuff. Getting food, shelter, babies, rites of passage, etc.
Mirien's people deal with more esoterric stuff like letters, astronomy, poetry, math, Justice, Philosophy, and all that other good stuff that people come up with when the day-to-day stuff is already taken care of. As such, they aren't stuck in a "power struggle" with either of the other two groups.

But the Sons of Ureos and the Daughters of Niriel have almost always been slightly at odds with each other.

These three orders get their members through various means, not the least of which are foundlings and orphans. The children of a fallen soldier are generally taken in by the Sons, and the boys generally (but not always) grow up to be priests. If a woman dies in childbirth, the baby tends to go to Niriel's Daughters, and the girls grow up to be priestesses. The daughters born to Niriel's priestesses also grow up to be priestesses.

I'm not sure how Mirien gets her priestesses beyond calling them Herself. The main character was called when she was six and left her parents' house quite readily (not that it was bad or anything, just -- well, she knew where she belonged).


Anywhoo. So that's the back story, so far.

At this point, the upper eshelons (sp) of the Sons, the guys who are running the country, rather than worrying about ministering to people, are forgetting that the Ureos' job and, thus, their job as well, is to take care of the people, to protect them, to make sure they have food, shelter, and so on.

Effectively, the big dinners that you get at the top of the heap are starting to go to a few heads.

There is a young Son, just ordained, who is posted as a guard inside the Dogal Palace (or whatever the hell the head-honcho place is going to be called), and he tends to get ignored a lot, but he finds out about stuff because he hangs out Below Stairs as well as Above Stairs, and so he winds up finding out about some sort of Coup.

What the hell coup is this??? It doesn't fit. I mean, they're already in charge. You can't have a coup against yourself, can you? (Any ideas here?)


This being said, there is rebellion brewing. (In the first dream, Niriel's Daughters were running messages (through ruins, and probably catacombs) from one rebel cell to another, because no-one pays much attention to a bunch of scurrying midwives who are servants to a Goddess who is not given that much respect anymore).

My main character, Mirieth, the narator mentioned above, winds up being one of the Rebels. She gets sort of sucked into it because of her friendship with her TA. (Eccept that "TA" is the wrong word... It's something like "SWA", or something like that... Sister's Working Assistant, or something...).

The young fellow mentioned above, I think his name might be Jerreth, also winds up getting sucked into this. There may be some sort of a romance going on between the SWA (Samantha?) and Jerreth. I'm not sure yet. Although they're pretty close in age, so I may as well. ;-)

Anywhoo. So. Here are the problems:

1) Why are the Sons in charge at this point?
2) Why are they staging a coup against themselves? (Unless it's a way of maintaining power for the few people at the top, and possibly being able to start some sort of military state in order to keep an eye on the Rebels)
3) Why are there Rebels?
4) What are they doing?
5) How the heck does Mirieth fit into all this? I know she has a larger part to play than just "historian" (she teaches history, by the way).
6) I'm not sure how it ends. I don't actually know if the Rebels are going to Triumph Over the Selfish Few, or what.

Anywhoo. What are your thoughts. :-)

- Nam'ara,
- Amazon. :-)