Oh, I remember talking about this with you before!
Here’s a question: do countries outside of the aforementioned empire get involved, and how involved are they in the story if ever?
2 Likes
Yep! I think you might know or have guessed the main twist considering the information about this 
Not really. The world is not very globalized, and every country is isolated with their own politics and gods and what not. There are only two major empires in the world - Arya and The Western Isles. The Western Isles acts like a confederation, and is a monarchy with representatives from each island serving in the court as advisors, alongside the king’s relatives.
There are some undisturbed islands and only one big landmass, but the landmass is covered by thorny trees and swamps and forests, and is uninhabited except for the indegenious tribes. The islands are too small to be of any importance to either realm, so those are also ignored, and their inhabitant tribes like to be left alone.
The two empires are in peace most of the time, and ignore each other except for necessary trade, but once in a while there are skirmishes. One particular problem arose a while back when the Isles’ fishermen kept taking Arya’s fish from near Arya’s coastline, and Arya retaliated and it became an almost-war, so Malika was sent to the Isles to broker peace. She came back with a marriage alliance and Sara, who was a prominent merchant / noble’s daughter, and was promised to be wed to the chief priest of Malika’s court. Now, the Isles and Arya are at peace again… for a while.
It’s just that their version of peace means not interfering with each other’s business. Let Arya do what Arya does, and let the Isles do what the Isles do.
2 Likes
Hmm…interesting.
More lore questions:
- How are the vessels chosen?
- How did it come about that the gods came to rule through their vessels? What happened?
- What is the role of the vessel other than being a vessel? Or, what else do vessels do?
Questions about the characters
- Who is the main character(s)?
- Where do they live?
- What is their family life like before the start of the story?
2 Likes
I’ll reply to this tomorrow, it’s late here, but I just wanted to ask if you mind spoilers, because you were interested in reading this and the answer to one of your questions is a major, major spoiler.
2 Likes
I don’t mind spoilers at all. (Also, as long as you don’t tell me it’s a spoiler, I wouldn’t even know that’s what it was. Just sayin’ 
) But if you don’t want to post it here, you can send it to me as a DM if you like 
2 Likes
Cool, makes sense. Not all of the things marked in spoiler are spoilers, just don’t want those who read this to know which exactly is the spoiler
So vessels have to be able to convinvingly pull off miracles, for reasons that I will explain in the next answer, but that basically means that they have to be graced (have a high ability to control the river of life) and have big potential to control grace. This ability is later honed by the current vessels at the capitol. So once a vessel is chosen, they are transported to the capitol and cut off all ties with their birth family. They have a training period that lasts as long as the current vessel is alive, and in their period, they are expected to purge themselves and become a vessel - i.e. give up any meterialistic identities and relations and give themselves to service the gods.
I haven’t yet worked on the details of this, but it is the topic of a potential prequel. Essentialy, society came to a point where Arya had a huge divide between the rich and poor, and some of the poor that suffered the worst through this wanted to change their living conditions. This was a time when relegion was thrown aside in favour of rationality in the world, except for a few extremists, and this group of people took advantage of that. They made a story that the gods would fade away and die if they weren’t remembered, and then started manipulating Grace(river of life) to form miracles, and claimed they were the vessels of the gods, and the gods had come to rule with them. This act then continued throughout the centuries. Back then, they were also able to show that one did not need to be graced to control grace, and anyone could master control over grace, but this finding was lost through the ages, and now people think graced and people who cannot control grace are different.
Literally nothing. Their entire personality and life is supposed to be centered around being the vessel. Nothing more, nothing less. Any vessel who does something for themselves has to hide it.
Their entire job is to be a carrier for the gods, and stand in for the gods whenever the gods themselves are unavailable.
There are two main characters, Sara and Malika. Sara is the gang leader, and Malika is the newly-appointed vessel. We see POVs of both in the book, because each have a unique perspective the other cannot offer, and the story cannot be complete without both perspectives.
Malika lives in the temple, and while in training, she used to live in the temple at the capitol. All temples have vessel residences behind them, and this is an entire building dedicated to the vessel. Sara, when investigating, lives in a room in Malika’s huge suite, as Malika’s personal attendant (also called head apsara)
Before that, Sara lived in the wada in the Mahasabha compound, with the other leaders. There is also a brief period in the story where Sara lives in the refugee areas of the temple.
Sara has a dark past because of which she has been estranged from her husband and in-laws, and she lost connection to her blood family the moment she came to Arya. Sara took a long time to get accustomed to family after that, and her found family is the other Mahasabha leaders. This includes the main leader, his wife, Sara’s lover, Sara herself, and a kid with a very fast brain who they all protect and raise together. Sara and her lover are NOT in love, just like to have trysts together and are very close. They have already agreed that they will stop whenever either of them likes someone else.
2 Likes
So, (trying to be non-spoilery in my questions) do vessels typically want to be vessels? Let’s say, they are able to do vessel things and go to become vessels. Do they ever not want to actually do what they were born to do? Do do do? (If you can’t tell, I started thinking of Baby Shark ).
2 Likes
So being a vessel is a very glamorized profession, and one meant only for the elite. Most parents want their kids to become vessels and have dreamt of it at some point in time, hoping their kid would be picked as a vessel-in-training, even though it is a privledge given only to people with high natural Grace affinity (high bonding with the river of life - something like how we have natural born talent vs hard work) and / or are born to a rich family - because the vessels are more connected to these circles, kids in the richer families get picked more easily. Having your kid be a vessel is a very prestigious position and it elevates temple court ranking for any family, and for those not in the temple court, they get elevated status - either they become permanent temple residents and eventually marry their other kids into royal families, or they get lifetime monetary comepensation. However, they are not allowed to have connections with their kid who is a vessel-in-training, because that kid is now holy and is considered donated to the temple as a child of Janani (the all-mother goddess). Their official custodian, then, is Janani, and all of the vessels-in-training are raised together by Janani and Jagganath (the all-father god), with occasional visits to and from the vessel they are supposed to replace for training specific to their patron deity.
Vessels themselves don’t really know any other life, or even have strong connections to their birth families, since they are taken to the main temple in the capitol at very young ages - it is rare for a kid above 5 to get picked as a vessel-in-training. Vessels are then conditioned to leave the rest of their world behind and they become a very tight-knit group because they are not allowed to form attachments with anyone outside of the vessels, to ensure the vessels maintain that otherworldly, holy, aloof aura.
1 Like
What is the moon like?
1 Like
Oooh.
Um… it’s not really different from our moon. But the sky is much clearer due to lack of smoke. And the calender is lunar.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.