Newbie can't find a Story

[Nezz]

Stop by on Sundays 6:00 CST when Katherine comes around on Discord or IRC. Shiral can whip you up some virtual cookies in nothing flat!

[Evie]

Most Sundays, the chat is at that time, but the first Sunday of most months, we do a Zoom chat three hours earlier so that our UK members are able to participate as well.

[tmcd]

It could have been a fanfic story on Airsid.net but that site is dark.

What does "dark" mean?

The story "Princess of Meara" can be found at http://www.airsid.net/B/4/22/22.htm

[Bynw]

What does "dark" mean?

The story "Princess of Meara" can be found at http://www.airsid.net/B/4/22/22.htm

Interesting. If you just got to the main site of airsid.net you get a dark page.

[Laurna]

The opening the this story Princess of Meara so far, is quite good. Regarding a book in the mail she just received call the Codex Deryniness:

Remarkably well preserved, she thought. Probably a hoax - another scholarly effort to prove that a magical race called the Deryni once existed. Her guess was "Brother Theophilus" was Dr. Kurtz, or Dr. Reginald, two PhDs from Valoret who believed that Deryni nonsense. They probably made up this Codex and are hoping she'll come out in support of their bizarre theories.

That gave me a good chuckle.

Edit this to add, I just finished the story, I thought it was very good. 

[revanne]

Thank you for the link @Bynw. I really enjoyed the story.

[DoctorM]

As the discussion is joggling my memory (an unsettling sensation at best) I recall that the Deryni had had to go into hiding some decades after Kelson's reign.  This time they quite successfully created the understanding that Deryni were mythical, fictional.  But within certain families they had kept their traditions and skills alive.

OTOH it might have been a really good fever dream.

Thanks for the welcomes.  I'll check back later.

I only know of one Deryni story set in "modern" times, and I'll have to look and try to remember where I found it.

I'm always a bit baffled by how to look at comparative dates in the Deryni world. Kelson reigns in the 1120s, but the armor, architecture, fashions, and ideas seem more like mid-1300s for our timeline. So I'm left wondering-- if I wanted to write a "modern" Deryni tale, would our 2024 be about counted as 200 years earlier in-universe?

I'm planning to do a fanfic story that's styled as a magazine interview in a "modern" Deryni world-- fashion and entertainment coverage about a new streaming series or film set in the events of the "Two Kingdoms" AU I've been writing about here at the Castle. I can't decide whether the date on the magazine should be 2024 or 1824 in *that* Deryni timeline. Though I like the idea of journalists and scholars in a "modern" Deryni world trying to interpret the age of Kelson (my AU's age of the Gwynedd Wars).

[Nezz]

I'm planning to do a fanfic story that's styled as a magazine interview in a "modern" Deryni world-- fashion and entertainment coverage about a new streaming series or film set in the events of the "Two Kingdoms" AU I've been writing about here at the Castle. I can't decide whether the date on the magazine should be 2024 or 1824 in *that* Deryni timeline.

Oh my gosh, that sounds like such a delightful idea! I'd keep the modern timeline concurrent with our time since everyone knows what 2024 is like, but only the people who know a lot about history know that Gwynedd 1121 is more like our 1321 (I certainly didn't know).

[Evie]

I only know of one Deryni story set in "modern" times, and I'll have to look and try to remember where I found it.

I'm always a bit baffled by how to look at comparative dates in the Deryni world. Kelson reigns in the 1120s, but the armor, architecture, fashions, and ideas seem more like mid-1300s for our timeline. So I'm left wondering-- if I wanted to write a "modern" Deryni tale, would our 2024 be about counted as 200 years earlier in-universe?

It's not even consistently 200 years ahead. It's more a blend of influences varying from her medieval history studies at university (the more factual bits) to the popular Hollywood movies of the day that featured medieval or Renaissance times (ex. "The Lion in Winter", "Becket", "El Cid", "A Man for All Seasons"), some with more attention to historical accuracy and some with less. Not to mention that even the best scholarship of the time (mid-20th Century) hadn't researched the period(s) Katherine drew from as thoroughly (and newer discoveries are being made all the time), you were somewhat limited in your research by what you could find in your local library system, etc. But most importantly, while Katherine was inspired by her love of medieval history, in the end she was writing a fantasy series, so that allows a lot of leeway in blending various medieval elements from different centuries of the rather expansive period we call the Middle Ages if one is just trying to worldbuild a kingdom with a recognizably "Medieval/ Early Renaissance" feel to it rather than trying to write a history textbook.

What I did when I wrote "Balance of Power" (my novel-length Deryni fanfic set roughly 900 years after Kelson's early reign) was create a Gwynedd that at the time was "near future" (I think I wrote the story somewhere in the 2016 or 2017 time frame, but set it in the year 2021), and then while keeping the world recognizably modern, I had a bit of futuristic tech/medical advancement in it that was beyond what we are actually likely to be capable of for at least a few more decades. And I also tried to imagine how society might have evolved if you had a high tech world that also had magic, and a society divided between people with genetically inherited magical potential and regular humans and how the tensions between them might play out in a more modern century. But my 2020s Gwyneddans don't have 2200s technology (whatever that might end up being). I had enough on my plate trying to plot the dang story without trying to also extrapolate how much our modern tech might evolve in the next two centuries on top of all that, and how that might affect Deryni!

I'm planning to do a fanfic story that's styled as a magazine interview in a "modern" Deryni world-- fashion and entertainment coverage about a new streaming series or film set in the events of the "Two Kingdoms" AU I've been writing about here at the Castle. I can't decide whether the date on the magazine should be 2024 or 1824 in *that* Deryni timeline. Though I like the idea of journalists and scholars in a "modern" Deryni world trying to interpret the age of Kelson (my AU's age of the Gwynedd Wars).

I love this idea! And I'd go with 2024, to avoid confusion on the part of readers trying to logic out how they had films or streaming series in the 1820s, assuming Gwynedd's 1820s were just like ours.

[tmcd]

Or just make it look modern (some more advanced, some less advanced), but not mention the year, leaving it to the reader to infer? The most convincing tale is the one the listener makes up.

[DoctorM]

I love this idea! And I'd go with 2024, to avoid confusion on the part of readers trying to logic out how they had films or streaming series in the 1820s, assuming Gwynedd's 1820s were just like ours.

I agree! I think that using 2024 (2025 by the time I'm finished) makes things a lot simpler and less confusing.

[Laurna]

Another thing to note in modern times with Deryni magic for centuries, is that some things that are loved and admired might be better protected over time. Such has as some buildings could be warded and not fall to ruins. and some stories can be passed down with memory spells and not be lost to time. So your Modern Deryni world just might have more medieval elements in it than our own world does.

[revanne]

Another thing to note in modern times with Deryni magic for centuries, is that some things that are loved and admired might be better protected over time. Such has as some buildings could be warded and not fall to ruins. and some stories can be passed down with memory spells and not be lost to time. So your Modern Deryni world just might have more medieval elements in it than our own world does.

There's a fair bit of medieval stuff hanging around where I live. 

[Laurna]

There's a fair bit of medieval stuff hanging around where I live.

That is exactly what I was thinking, only now make most of the ruins still functional castles and cathedrals. They didn't all fall into nothing but stone works because they had wardings on the walls and rooflines. Especially during times of battle. So aircraft bombs of more recent times do not take out the older, more important buildings. and rooms like chapels and libraries would survive with the items intact, even if flames caught the rest of the building on fire. So I am imagining the influence of history would be even greater than in our world.

[Evie]

There's a fair bit of medieval stuff hanging around where I live.

That is exactly what I was thinking, only now make most of the ruins still functional castles and cathedrals. They didn't all fall into nothing but stone works because they had wardings on the walls and rooflines. Especially during times of battle. So aircraft bombs of more recent times do not take out the older, more important buildings. and rooms like chapels and libraries would survive with the items intact, even if flames caught the rest of the building on fire. So I am imagining the influence of history would be even greater than in our world.

That might be true of places like Coroth Castle or Rhemuth Castle (both inhabited by Deryni), assuming the residents have some way of creating permanent warding and had taken the proper precautions beforehand. Though we know from the Codex that the Great Fire in Rhemuth in the 1300s did a lot of damage to the City and I think even the Basilica, so we have to assume that at least before that time, those buildings were no more protected than our purely human-built ones. Perhaps after that time period, though, some Deryni managed to figure out ways to create a permanent protective ward on at least some of the more important buildings.

I did have Morgan Haldane survive being buried under several floors' worth of rubble in the Rhemuth Castle bombing, but that was because his bed was freshly warded (a precaution he took nightly out of an abundance of caution). The apartment block itself didn't fare all that well. But maybe once it is rebuilt, additional protective measures could be put into place.