Well, haven’t written much more on the actual novel, but seeing as I was going nowhere fast I decided I need to do a quick check of who everyone was an what they were doing. I must thank Dan for this idea, which he did in preparation of his Nanovel called Otherwood. Unlike me he’s actually brave enough to put the text up as he goes along, so read up, it’s bound to be good. I hear there’s copious amounts of lesbian sex.
Hey, wait, come back and finish reading this!
While Dan’s Dramatis Personae is short and sweet, I decided to do an expanded one, as much for my benefit as you dear reader. So, even if you’ve never read a story in my Savant cycle you can click more and get some idea of the crazy bunch involved. If you have read one then this will serve as a reminder — since I haven’t written one in ages — and as a primer on what’s going on, as I haven’t written much about this period in Savant’s life and it may seem confusing otherwise.
There’s a lot of terms that will not make sense, but please be patient as a glossary of terms explaining everything from Archetype to Vortex Striker is coming soon (again, I’m writing it mostly to remind myself of what everything is!).
Enjoy, and please comment!
Cast of Characters:
Savant, an Innate Traveller and Portal Agent, Savant Archetype. He was the first Savant archetype detected in the Knowledgebase since the so called ‘Last Savant’ many millennia ago. It is the year 501 of his life as Sixteen Permutations begins. It has been one year since he was reintroduced into a physical body and cured of his hundred-year-long insanity.
Xaria, Sorceress Queen of a long-forgotten country, her soul now inabits the hilt of what was once Savant’s sword. The blade has disappeared and now manifests itself when needed as a plume of indigo flame. She’s an expert magician and has decided to travel the Multiverse with him.
Savannah Temple, a young girl who exhibits traits of the Savant Archetype. Is she an Innate Traveller and Portal Agent?
Syrpi Walloner Un Jo (deceased), former wife of Savant during years 357-400 of his life, on a world which contained an artifical ringworld. Born to a farmer and innkeeper, she escaped the male dominated, stifling society of the surface world with Savant and they took up residence on the ring (known as ‘the belt’), where she became a singer of high repute. She died of natural causes at age 65.
(Williamette Hawkins was also on this world at the same time, when her Vortex Striker was damaged.)
Antreau Kinaarovi (the Patriarch), Portal Agent, Wanderer Archetype. The Patriarch is the man responsible for finding Savant and seven other young people who displayed unusually high MAS, and were born at exactly the same moment across dimensions. When Savant was in an airplane crash and manifested his full powers early (at age 18), Kinaarovi accellerated his plans and brought all students to his Island seven years before he intended to. There he personally trained them in Multiverse arts. His students refer to him as ‘Volus’ which means teacher in Xaus Vassan. The origins of his other title, the Patriarch, are something he doesn’t discuss, and his students have respectfully not bothered to look it up in the archives.
Currently he is at the Fallwake Institute in the capacity of Assistant Headmaster, and never misses his morning surfing session by hopping over to his island daily.
Savant (see above)
Sophie Chevalier, Visioner. Savant’s first love (and first wife), Sophie’s skills as a visioner are unequaled in the knowledgebase, and her analytical skills only enhance this. During the latter years of Savant’s insanity she personally spent decades searching the multiverse for him, finally tracking him down in Savant Year 499. It was she who administered the still-secret spell that returned Savant to normal. She is currently at the Fallwake Institute teaching Visionery, and also plays lead guitar with her band (Brain Feud) every evening at the Feldron’s Hammer tavern in nearby Keriol.
Syro Koromandell, Conjurer. One of Savant’s closest friends, Syro travelled with him and Sophie both during their Biblioquester years and later after the death of Lan Taris Nepaari and the fall of Central. He currently lives with his wife of 407 years, Heather-Mae, and together they oversee the Xaus Vassa Manifestations department, also informally known as the Copy Shop.
Suvan jan Molokoi, Dreamwalker. The thinner jan Molokoi twin’s vast dreamwalking powers have earned him a high rank in Xaus Vassa, where he is the invaluable Strantus (chief, though the term literally means, ‘he who walks ahead’) of Dreamwalkers, a community of nearly a hundred people of the archetype who catalog new worlds. Suvan also teaches at the Fallwake Institute, and is currently there on a ‘meditative break’ following Savant’s reappearance.
Muroor jan Molokoi, Suffusionist. Suvan’s larger twin brother maintains his own workshop on an artificial satellite of Xaus Vassa called the Emerald Penguin, where he — as Chief of Multiverse Inventions — oversees a team of people, many Suffusionists themselves, who invent and refine Tickets and other devices, maintain the IDInet infrastructure and generally blow things up (that’s why they were shunted off to a satellite).
Corsair Root, Multipersona. Mr. Root was, until recently, President for Life of seventeen countries until he was exiled by each of his seventeen first ladies on grounds of infidelity. He is currently attempting to sweep back into power, but is taking a ‘study break’ at Xaus Vassa following Savant’s reappearance.
Astral Skylar, Domina Universa. She and her army of familiars perform construction and other heavy duties on Xaus Vassa, such as building new library towns, terraforming land etc. She is at the Fallwake Institute on a ‘vocational training’ break since Savant’s reappearance.
Pyntaillion Sofarallo, Oblivionist. She continues to serve as the Ruler of her world, and is now in Xaus Vassa on a ‘royal break’ following Savant’s reappearance.
Edwin Fallwake, Innate Traveller. Antreau Kinaarovi’s oldest friend (and one of the few still alive after all these millennia), Edwin Fallwake is a renowned figure in the Knowledgebase. Books cataloguing his multiverse adventures (many of which were ghost-written by Rodberry and Antreau Kinaarovi) were some of the first non-scientific volumes in the library. Once regarded as an annoyance, he set up the Fallwake Institute when Lan Taris Nepaari first came to power, as a place of learning for all multiverse travellers to gain skills and practical knowledge about their innate powers. However, he soon left it as it slipped further under Nepaari’s influence. He continued to have many adventures, including a memorable time with William Hawkins and his sister Williamette, during which they invented the Vortex Striker.
Millennia later, Edwin returned to the Institute soon after Antreau Kinaarovi detected his future pupils, and successfully hid their presence from Central and the Seekers at the Institute. He tried his best to reform the place, but was only able to do so after Nepaari’s death. He currently serves as head of the Fallwake Institute and teaches whenever he can, but usually this involves midnight liquor runs with his students in highly dangerous areas of the multiverse.
He is one of the few people who has met the so called ‘Last Savant’ and in his words, “She was a hell of a girl.”
Nisreen Ondowa, Oblivionist. She is Edwin Fallwake’s right-hand person, and has been for a couple of centuries. Her Oblivionation power is not as refined as Pyntaillion Sofarallo, but she is the resident expert on the art at the Institute. Formerly a Seeker at the Institute back when that title still existed, she was one of the few spared by an insane Savant during his destruction of the Seekers. It is unknown why he didn’t kill her, but she did disappear for a few years after. She teaches Oblivionation and General Magic.
Druuden Profenz, Innate Traveller. Another of Fallwake’s most trusted associates at the Institute, Profenz teaches classes in Innate Travel and Survival Skills.
Rodberry Wedys, Librarian. He has been the chief Librarian since Nepaari’s death, and with the increased prominence of the library, is regarded as the overall leader of Xaus Vassa. Despite his public image as a serious scholar, he’s usually knee deep in pulpy adventure novels, and, as mentioned before, has ghostwritten a few of them for Edwin Fallwake, one of his best friends.
Lan Taris Nepaari (deceased). Former chief of Central, the authority that ruled the planet of Xaus Vassa and oversaw its many feudal and commercial interests in other dimensions. He was killed by Savant some years after they first met. After his death, much of the population of the planet left or decamped to the colonies. Intermittently, these groups attempt to either take over or destroy Xaus Vassa, but most of them are horrified to find the place overrun with books and leave. Lucky for the Library, the former natives of the planet are not very sentimental about their birthworld.
Of Savant, Lan Taris Nepaari is said to have remarked, “He’s just like that last bitch.”
Williamette Hawkins, Traveller. A friend of Edwin Fallwake and of Savant and the others. One of the few travellers who still use Vortex Strikers, probably for sentimental reasons (see William Hawkins). Currently on a ‘travel break’ at Xaus Vassa since Savant’s reappearance.
William Hawkins, Suffusionist. Williamette’s elder brother (and whom she was named after), Hawkins is not only a highly skilled Suffusionist, but a gifted inventor as well. He invented the Vortex Striker, the first physical electromechanical device in the Knowledgebase that facilitated Multiverse travel for single persons, thereby opening up the Multiverse to people with non-innate skills as well.
This development was not met favourably by Xaus Vassa Central, and for many years Vortex Strikers were banned and Striker users were even (unofficially) hunted and killed for sport by Himes. Eventually they were adopted as a lowly peasant’s device when Lan Taris Nepaari came to power (aristocracy always had their own personal portal agent on hand), and were widely in use until Savant and the jan Molokoi brothers invented the Ticket.
William Hawkins, sickened by the reaction to his inventions in Xaus Vassa, left for worlds outside the Knowledgebase, and has never returned. Once in a while a story or record of him turns up in a newly catalogued world, but his current wherabouts — if, that is, he is still alive — are unknown.
The ‘Last Savant’ – Little is known about this person, except that she was a woman, belonged to the Savant archetype, and was around at the founding of the Xaus Vassa library. Records of her are scant in the library, and of the few people still alive who knew or met her, nobody’s willing to say much. Is she still around? Who knows…
~~~~~~~~~
© Copyright 2005, Vishal K Bharadwaj, All Rights Reserved