Ariah Jal: An unwritten biography

Hi.

Yes, it has been a very long time since I last played a character in the Star Army. In fact, I've never made an in-character post since the Old Boards went down. But, due to some retroactive continuity changes I want to make that might have some widespread effects (as well as a way for me to return to RPing here), I have decided to write a biography to set those retroactive changes into cannon history. All with Wes's approval, of course.

Here is the summery of the OOC events leading to this:

I introduced A l e x i s J a r e n (apparently his name has been filtered...o_0) and his race due to a misunderstanding between myself and Wes. Ultimately I decided to kill off Alexis (and the characters I had that were related to him) and left.

However, that still left him in the history, which I didn't want...so I decided to to a bit of retconning to 'fix' it. So, as of now, A l e x i s J a r e n is no longer a part of SARP's IC history. And, since removing him completely would be a crippling blow to certain timelines, I have decided to replace him in the most unintrusive way I know: Replace him with another character of another race that can do exactly what he does.

Everyone, meet Ariah Jal, an exiled (and now deceased) Melumsi scientist. Wes suggested that I write a backstory to make him fit into the story better (and give him enough history to help players recognize him instead of Alexis), and to explain the clearly non-Melumsi traits that he displayed during his tenure with the Star Army.

The format for this is going to be chapters, probably really short ones, depending on how much I can get out of myself at one time. I'll try to post them at least once a week, but the main reason I'm doing it all multi-part style is so that I'll have you guys giving me feedback and keeping me accountable to finishing this. Otherwise it will never see the outside of my hard-drive : p I will set up a comments thread just for that purpose, and to keep the story easy to read without the feedback inturrupting it and stretching the thread.

The first chapter will be posted within twenty-four hours, because it's too late for me to fiddle with it now. Thanks in advance for putting up with this ^_^

Here goes...

Chapter 1: The Bright Child (Part 1)

The young Werashi male was thin and undernurished, with circles around his dark brown eyes from lack of sleep. But those eyes were alert and more alive than his body looked, for the Melumsi mind inhabiting the body was strong. He slipped through the back door of a home and immediately headed for the kitchen, setting up a thin barrier around the house that would alert him when someone passed through it.

He found bread first. Stuffing a slice into his mouth and the rest of the loaf into his bag, he left the house and went to the one next door. A container of juice, a bag of crackers, some fruit, random toppings, and snacks were also added to the stash as he visited the next few houses until he decided that he had enough. The young thief was careful with what he picked, taking things from the back of cupboards and rearranging what was left to hide what was missing. Sure, he didn't want to be caught, but that wasn't the reason he was being so careful. He just didn't like messes. The chaos of rummaging made him uneasy, so he took his time and was careful with what he took. As a result, very few people knew that they had been burgled and instead thought that they had just misplaced the missing items.

He returned to the riverside a few miles away that he called his home. He kept to the rooftops and back roads, even though people wouldn't look twice at him anyway. Once he got home, he washed himself and his clothes in the river, as he did every night, combed his hair with a stolen comb, and dressing in stolen clothes that didn't fit him the way they should. But he looked normal now, so he was contented.

Pulling a rolled up blanket from a storage container hidden in the bushes, the homeless boy that no one knew was homeless laid it out on the ground and went to sleep.


Date: The tenth day of the third month.
The one-hundred-seventeenth year of High Lord Semerkhet.

Jahi Rahlen jogged down the steps of the Great Temple. His aide almost stumbled behind him while trying to keep a telekinetic shield over Jahi's head to block the heavy rain from soaking him, leaving herself at the mercies of the downpour. A light carriage was waiting at the base of the steps. The energetic beasts pulling the carriage were showing their impatience and dislike for the rain by giving the driver a hard time, pulling at their bits and harnesses. Jahi heard the driver curse under his breath as one of them almost pulled the reigns from his hands.

"Thank you," panted the assistant as Jahi held the door for her. As she got into the carriage, the aide molded her barrier against the doorway, keeping the rain from entering the cabin, and let it collapse completely only after Jahi had fastened the door.

The Elder sat down in the seat next to the soaked woman, looking sideways at the rivulets of cold water falling from her wet clothes. Finally, when it was clear that she was too flustered to do anything productive about it, he glared at the water and it evaporated in a giant burst of steam. She squeaked in surprise, but was able to quickly contain the vapor with her telekinesis and directed it out of the carriage throgh the window Jahi had opened just enough to let it out. The assistant started to thank him again, but he held up his hand.

"Don't."

She went silent and her head dipped in an apology.

Jahi's expression relaxed a bit as he bent his head forward a bit to look out of the rain-obscured window at the sky. It was already darker than usually, due to the heavy cloud cover. But the downpour had lessened some, and the orangeish-pink light of sunset was coming down on the Great Temple behind the carriage, shining off of the ivory peaks and marble arches. A smile came to the his face as he saw it. The rain was on schedule today, as the Weather Ministry had predicted. Jahi would have been out of the meeting of the Elders long before it had arrived, but something unexpected had come up in the proposals being presented that day.

A new sentient species had been discovered on one of the colony worlds and the colonists were requesting permission to begin inhabiting the discovered race. What disturbed Jahi was that the colonists were so quick to try inhabiting new races...true, they were taking proper precautions, performing the required tests and making the prescribed first contact, but that they were looking for new races as potential hosts at all made him queasy at best.

The Melumsi race should never believe itself reliant on lesser life-forms. Our hosts weaken us, Jahi thought to himself. He tolerated the Werashi body that he currently wore only because the Werashi had undergone centuries, millennia even, of selective breeding by the Melumsi to produce the best host species ever known to their kind. But his toleration was only that, a tolerance. If he ever found a way to live without the use of a host...

"Elder? We are here."

Jahi came out of his reverie and noticed that the carriage had stopped at his house and the aide had already opened the door and exited. He slowly got out of the carriage and brushed his robes before entering the house. The aide spoke to the driver and waited until the carriage had gone from sight before following Jahi inside.

"Elder, supper will be prepared in twenty. Your messages are in your study, and your Chosen has requested to meet with you. Will you be needing me any more today?" The aide bowed her head and waited for his answer.

Jahi shook his head. "Thank you, Ih'uri. You may go." He smiled at her as she left, and walked through the tastefully decorated halls of his house to his study. As he approached the carved double doors, he saw that they were ajar and smiled again in anticipation of seeing his Love. Counsel business had kept him quite busy for too long. Placing one hand on each door, he pushed them open with a flurish...

"Mmph?!" The boy made a muffled noise of surprise through the fruit in his mouth as Jahi stared at him. A jar of fruit preserves clinked against the top of the Elder's table, which Jahi took his meals at when he could not come to the dining room. Apparently his lunch had been waiting for him, sitting there while he was at the meeting all afternoon. Now Jahi could see that the meal had not gone to waste; the homeless one had eaten half of it and was in the process of wrapping the rest in the tablecloth to take with him when the Elder had come into the room.

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Jahi narrowed his eyes. The boy looked at him curiously, then narrowed his eyes too, letting go of the tablecloth.

--To Be Continued.

Chapter 1: The Bright Child (Part 2)

Jahi took three steps into the room. He planned to take more, but wasn't able to.

The boy's left hand shot forward, his palm toward the Elder. Jahi saw the air ripple before he was hurled back through the doors and slammed into a table in the hallway. The back of his head made a sharp noise as it hit the hardwood, and Jahi slumped to the ground. There was another sound behind him, but he couldn't tell what it was. The last thing Jahi saw was the boy standing in the doorway of the office, eyes wide. Panic or surprise, he didn't have time to decide before he slipped into unconsciousness.

-----

The boy slowly walked toward the fallen Elder, then saw the shattered decorative pot that had fallen from the table. He stared at it, his mind racing. He had been caught, but the man couldn't hurt him now. Yet he had made a mess...he couldn't leave it. Order was disturbed, it had to be set right.

Leaving the man where he lay, the boy approached the pottery fragments, studying them. He carefully picked up the pieces and brought them into the study, laying them out on the table. Once he had gathered them all, he returned to the man and dragged him in, sitting him up against a wall. Then the boy closed the door and set up his barrier. He sat down at the table with the pottery in front of him. He picked through it until he found a piece he recognized as being from the bottom of the pot. Then he found the piece connected to the first one, and set them beside each other where they would fit together.

Minutes passed as he continued to recreate the pot as best he could, organizing each piece with its neighbors on the table. As he worked, he began to feel better. Order was being restored. As the boy worked, he thought about what had happened. The man puzzled him. His normal barrier had been set around the room, it should have broken and alerted him to any psionics that passed through it. But this man had gotten through.

A small groan came from the man and the boy popped up out of the chair and was at the man's side in an instant, watching intently as Jahi regained consciousness.

Rubbed his forehead, Jahi tried to ease the dull throb where his head had impacted the hall table. Once he was able to see straight, he noticed the boy standing over him. The boy backed up quickly as the Elder glared at him, bumping into a chair and almost fell over, but instead managed to sit down on the chair. Jahi got up, watching the boy carefully. Then he noticed the mess on the table nearby. Rather, he noticed that it wasn't the mess it had been a while ago. "Were you trying to fix this?" he asked.

The boy slowly nodded. He got up and walked over to the table and continued sliding pieces into place. Jahi watched as the pot was recreated in flat form, each piece fitting where it should. The speed that the boy found each piece's place was amazing...

Jahi found himself staring at the picture that had been painted on the exterior of the pot. The pot itself was a copy of an old relic from Werashi culture, complete with the depiction of an ancient legend. "Osiah sahnAhk...'juhL anArah'," he murmured. Then he grinned. "That's it!"

The boy fell backward in surprise and stared at Jahi in panic. Did he do something wrong? The boy watched Jahi warily as the older Melumsi came around the table while talking to himself in exitement. "We can have better vessels than these for our bodies," Jahi said, helping the boy to his feet and taking him by the shoulders. "And you...you will help me make this possible."

I am mildly disappointed this did not continue. It seems like an interesting concept, however, there were a few issues.

The only one that I feel would be relevant to the ease of overall reading would be to make a new line every time the speaker changes. Don't have multiple people talking in the same paragraph, you don't need it and it looks cleaner.

If you come back to see this, it was interesting. I hope you come back to post more. Unless of course the sudden drop on it is a play to the title, to which I say good show!