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serpentface · 4 months ago

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FAMILY TITLES AMONG THE HILL TRIBES

(ft. various linguistic notes and tangents)

In-universe Brakul’s self-given title of ‘Red-Dog’ is Brakul 'ne-Dainh' in his native language (Bict-Urbinnas dialect of the Highland language group) and Brakul 'Chin-Reyla' in Wardi. Ne-Dainh/Chin-Reyla is not something he treats as or considers an actual surname or identity, just a self-styled nickname. He already has a title.

Family names/surnames are not a native practice among the Hill Tribes (though some clans or individual families have adopted this practice), and all traditionally use titles that designate immediate ancestry, clan and tribe. These full titles are officially given when one comes of age and are spoken aloud in ceremony (with the entire direct male and female lines listed by name, with most traditions expecting 12 generations of each being named).

The function is to cement one’s sense of place in the world, and their place in a direct ancestral line, which puts the person under the full watch and guidance of their ancestors. It's also a critical method of recording lineage- the long held practice of each person memorizing at least 24 total direct ancestors allows for very long, largely accurate records of family history to be kept, with some people able to trace their ancestry all the way back to initial settlement of the Highlands (or even beyond).

Brakul’s full title is:

“Brakul virsum Kuligan et Borunil an Briyonis ne-Taig an Bict-Urbinnas”

Which dead literally translates to “Brakul son of Kuligan and Borunil of the Foothills (of) Red-Cattle, of the North (Urbin/Erubin) River Valley” but has a much richer meaning in the original language.

"BRAKUL VIRSUM KULIGAN ET BORUNIL"

The actual meaning here is closer to ‘Brakul, son of Kuligan and his father’s fathers, and Borunil and her mother’s mothers��.

“Virsum” means ‘child (son/daughter) of’ (the gender is contextual), but implies the person’s status as a descendant of a full male and female line of ancestors. A different word is used if you’re just saying ‘I’m so and so’s son”. The title describes him as a son of his father Kuligan and of Kuligan’s male line, and of his mother Borunil and Borunil's female line.

All ancestors (within this particular system of kinship, divided into one direct male line from the father and one direct female line from the mother, and not including husbands from the female line or wives from the male line) are invoked and credited with the word ‘virsum’. Speaking it as part of the personal title is part of the routine and necessary honoring of one’s ancestors, who watch over their descendants from the afterlife and can temporarily return to the land to guide and protect (and sometimes punish, or teach sharp lessons to) the living.

"AN BRIYONIS NE-TAIG"

The actual meaning here would be understood as ‘clan/people of the foothills where cattle are lit red by the setting sun'.

‘Briyonis’ is the word for ‘foothill’, citing his clan’s specific location being the foothills that form the slopes of the north Urbin river valley. He is of a lesser clan within the powerful North Urbin River tribe. His clan benefits from close affiliation to their more powerful ruling clans located directly in the river valley, which grants them access to a greater variety of cultivated foods, but their actual position in the foothills still renders them predominantly reliant on cattle for subsistence. Clan names referencing cattle or horses are very common, given their frequent centrality to life.

The ‘ne-Taig’ literally means ‘red cattle’, but the ‘ne’ color word for red specifically invokes shades of red seen in and cast by a rising/setting sun. This red cast is culturally regarded as a unique beauty and evocative (and part of the name) of the solar god Hraighne. The foothills his clan is physically located on are a vantage point from which the western horizon is not fully obscured by mountains, and they experience very striking sunsets and are directly touched by the light. This is fairly unique to this location, and is invoked in the clan name and identity. ‘Ne-Taig’ here suggests a visual of grazing cattle illuminated red by the sun as it crosses the horizon.

‘Ne-Dainh’ carries the same implication, a dog illuminated red by setting sunlight. The Wardi language does not have a comparable word for a sunlit red and ‘Chin-Reyla’ really does just mean ‘(orangeish) red dog’ (‘reyla’ is specific to orangey-red colors, which is the closest match he could get. There’s no way to impart the meaning of ‘sunlit-red dog’ in Wardi that is non-clunky enough to be appropriate for a name).

"AN BICT-URBINNAS"

‘an Bict-Urbinnas’ is fairly simple, Bict means ‘north’, and 'Urbin' is the name of the specific river that stems from a northern and eastern tributary. This river has a very ancient name (or a derivative of one) that predates settlement by the Hill Tribes, and its exact meaning is lost.

The root -(n)nas designates a river valley, but has strong implications of being an esteemed and bountiful place, rather than solely a literal geographical descriptor (as the river valleys are centers of power and trade in the highlands). It may be a loanword from the Wardi language family, as its usage is VERY similar in form and function to the Wardi -(n)nos, which also suggests a place of esteem and bounty (more specifically having connotations of a kingdom).

’An’ literally means ‘of’, but in the specific sense of describing the place and identity of a collection of people. ‘an Bict Urbinnas’ would be understood in speech as ‘of the north Urbin River Valley (people)’. The clans historically settled in and around the valley of the North Urbin River form the totality of the Bict-Urbinnas tribe.

The ‘Urbin’ word predates the contemporary Wardi name ‘Erubin’ for the river, the latter of which invokes the semi-mythological founding figure Erub, who himself was of a Wardi tribe located downriver to the south of the Highlands. The real historically extant ‘Erub’ was most likely named Urub after the river, with his cited name shifting over the centuries in folklore, and the Wardi name for the river shifting with it.

‘Erubin’ as a corruption of ‘Urbin’ functions very well in Wardi language due to ‘-bi/bin’ denoting something as a ‘gift’, usually in a more metaphorical sense. ‘Erubin’ is understood as meaning ‘(The river that is) Erub’s gift’, and the Erubin/Urbin river is a key tributary to the much larger Black river, one of the key rivers that feeds the region's wetter and more fertile west. This 'gift' meaning also occurs in the name of the southeastern Imperial Wardi city-state Erubinnos, which is understood as meaning ’((The kingdom that is) Erub’s gift’. He is considered to have conquered and taken the land (from the core city's actual founders, the Wogan people) and established a kingdom there in the early days of warring Wardi tribal monarchies.

#Just dropping this randomly because it's a pretty complete lore dump in my notes app #Family names are a big fucking deal in the Wardi cultural sphere and not having one is associated with being a bastard or otherwise #displaced or unwanted. If pressed Brakul either fully lies and says 'ne-Dainh' (which will just come off as 'oh it's some foreign name')#Or lists his actual title (not a family name but equally important). Sometimes listing all 24 generations if he's particularly annoyed.#It's only strictly necessary to memorize 12 ancestors in each line but it's considered good practice to be able #to cite associated non-direct ancestor husbands/wives/siblings/etc. That's where the tattoos as a mnemonic device comes in #It's easy to memorize 24 ancestors but very difficult to memorize 24 ancestors and at least some of their family members #And remembering and honoring the dead by name is of great importance- both puts you under the protection of more #ancestors (including non-direct ones) and ensures the dead's status in the afterlife is secure (it's believed that fully forgotten #dead leave the celestial fields and can no longer directly intercede with the living- though with some additional nuances to what #constitutes being fully forgotten)#Venerating and remembering the dead is a huge focus of cultural practice and additional methods are used to safeguard #ancestors (and other honored dead without descendants) whose names have been forgotten. There's one yearly holiday focused entirely on #the nameless dead where they are invoked and honored via little straw dolls that are burnt in bonfires high in the mountains so the #smoke is sent up to the Fields. It takes weeks of preparation and tens (maybe hundreds idk I'm bad with scale) of thousands of #dolls will be made each year across the Highlands for this purpose. Honoring them with effigy even without name is usually #considered enough to safeguard their afterlife for at least another year.#Also yeah kinship systems among the Hill Tribes (and very similarly among the Finns) follow a male line/female line system #Only father's father's fathers (...) and mother's mother's mothers (...) are considered direct ancestors (though all four grandparents #are sometimes honored as ancestors even if only two are considered DIRECT ancestral kin- this tradition varies)#Inheritance systems are somewhat matrilineal given that a wife is considered the owner and arbiter of property and a husband is #its protector and active manager. If a man and woman from different clans (or tribes) marry any children will be considered to be of #the clan/tribe of whichever spouse does NOT relocate in marriage.#Whether the husband moves in with the wife or the wife moves in with the husband is dependent on an arbitration process #and the husband (and his family) being able to provide a bride price (which is somewhat of a payment for the land/property #the wife's mother will be passing down to the new husband's management should he move in- and displays his ability to care #for and provide valued assets. A man who can provide a bride price tends to receive greater respect)#This is most commonly going to be livestock (and almost ubiquitously includes a single cattle to be butchered for the wedding feast)#But can include other valuables or assets like land or grain/seeds or etc. There is no intra-Highlands monetary system and the internal #economy is built on trade. So Imperial Wardi currency is mostly useless but is sometimes given in marriages between clans with strong

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blackjackkent · 8 months ago

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what do you think wouldve happened in an alternate universe where hector let karlach become a mind flayer?

(A/N after writing this whole answer: whoops, this got out of hand, hope you're okay with an Unexpected Fic. XD Also maybe a smidge weird/dark at the end, although not a ton I hope? Certainly no more than the whole game is weird/dark. XD Anyway I hope you enjoy. <3 )

Ohhhhhhhhh.

Anon, I love you for asking me this question. <3 A very intriguing one!

And it is because I love you for asking me this question that I have braved looking up a video of Karlach actually becoming a mind flayer, which I had put off doing because I am a softheart and I knew it would hurt and also make Hector yell in my head. XD And when Hector yells in my head it's a whole thing because he does double Flurry of Blows against the inside of my skull for 140damage and it's rough enough in there already.

However! I have now watched it and done some thinks. (Hot damn, Lae'zel is MAD too, at least in the version of the scene I watched. The whole thing is very upsetting.)

Fundamentally it would be a tragedy, and not just for Karlach. Watching the way the scenes play out - there is just enough of Karlach in her speech that Hector would not want to disconnect from her. I think perhaps it touches on the same hope that kept him expecting a miracle for her heart right up until the end of the game - somehow, somehow we can make this work, somehow we will find a way...

But there is no way. This is who she is now, a creature of the Astral Sea with his love's voice and an empty place where her soul should be. And unlike the engine situation he can't even kiss her to make himself feel better because she looks like a squid.

-----

The one saving grace is, I suppose, she does seem happy enough. In the epilogue, she states that she has found a way to get brains to eat by consuming from terminally ill patients at a clinic in Baldur's Gate, people who have volunteered for the process because they are about to die anyway. And she talks about helping all of them live on by absorbing their memories and carrying them with her.

It's... sweet, in a way, Hector supposes.

He tries to keep busy. There's no battle in Avernus to occupy him in this timeline, so he primarily works with Jaheira and her kids on rebuilding. It's hard, physical work; it keeps his mind occupied. At first he sleeps at the Elfsong; later, after some nudging from Rion, Jaheira offers him lodging at her home, where he takes a hand in raising the latest crop of orphan children she is protecting. He sees Baldur's Gate start to bandage its wounds and begins to believe there was some purpose to all his struggle.

But his own wounds do not heal so easily.

He visits the clinic often. He and Karlach talk. Her voice is a slow near-monotone in her accent, unlike anything he ever heard from her before. Sometimes he can hear a twinge of her humor or a turn or phrase, and his heart leaps... but other times she speaks of things like destiny and infinite time in a way that reminds him more of the Emperor than the woman he loves.

She never laughs. She doesn't curse. There is never even the slightest mention of sex; though she still fully understands a double entendre when he makes one experimentally, she seems to take no interest in it. She seems to exist slightly beyond him, with a view of the world that is no longer of the Material Plane.

And yet... she does know him. She remembers everything - stories he told her of his childhood in the monastery, details of Selunite rituals she learned from him, quiet moments in camp he half-forgot himself. She still calls him Soldier, and sometimes Hec. She remembers her own parents; she remembers the city. There is just enough of her still in there... just enough for it to squeeze his heart.

----

One day she walks (well, floats) with him to the Singing Lute; she sits with him while he eats. They talk about the rebuilding; he points out from the balcony some of the new homes he has worked on. She is quiet for a long time. "It is good to see the place begin to live again," she says, in that strange cool slow voice that has replaced the old jocular drawl. "It's what it was all for."

He nods. "Do you regret it? Any of it?" Do you remember what we had? What we've lost?

"How could I, Soldier? The city still lives. You still live." A long pause. The old Karlach might have laughed sardonically, but there is no humor. "Even I still live, and I have grown beyond myself. What is there to regret?"

It sits like a rock in his stomach. If she is content, what more can he ask for? And yet it hurts... it hurts...

-----

Jaheira notices that he begins to withdraw back into himself, that he is quieter and more serious. She mentions it to Gale, on one of his visits to the city from Waterdeep.

"You're not wrong there," Gale agrees. "You weren't around yet, when we knew him fresh off the nautiloid. He was much more careful, then. Very controlled. The very picture of monastic stoicism - in between the panicked realization that we were all undergoing a supreme nightmare that never ended, of course. He lightened up, over the months - certainly by the time you knew him."

Jaheira purses her lips. "And this... he is returning to his old ways, you believe?"

"I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume," Gale says, with a sort of bleak humor, "that Karlach is no longer providing the same amount of compensatory levity that she used to."

-----

In the end, almost two years later, Lae'zel is the only one who speaks to him of it directly, and she is brutal - but effective.

"You have been hollowed out, she'lak," she says bluntly, on one of her rare visits from the Astral Plane. "It is a lessening of you. Do you still trail after your ghaik as if bound to her by a lead?"

"I have done much in the city since you left," Hector says, somewhat defensively.

"Chk. I do not speak of your body's business, k'chakhi. I speak of your mind. Your heart. You have lost yourself. You live only for others."

"As I was raised to do. As I have always done."

"Hector." She rarely speaks his name directly, but she does now, and it makes him jump. "You know of what I speak, and I will not have you ignore it. Your work in the city is admirable. You have cause for pride and contentment. Yet you pine after Karlach as if you hope to find her in the shell wearing her voice."

"She's still in there, Lae'zel."

"You mislead yourself," she spits. "Was it not you who taught me the strength to look beyond mindless devotion?"

That stings, and unconsciously he stands up a little straighter. "This is not mindless. It has been earned," he objects.

"Tas'ki. She is ghaik," Lae'zel says flatly. "What remains of her will dwindle, day by day. You know this as well as I." A pause. Then her eyes soften, and her voice with it. "You do not honor her sacrifice by this emptiness, Hector. Nor do you honor yourself."

He says nothing. His lips draw into a tight line. He hears her, and he does not want to.

"Think on what I tell you," she says - for all the world, now, as if she is the wise mentor and he the student in need of guidance. "You are no fool. You know I speak truth. Do not discount it."

-----

It takes a long time, but he does eventually start to come back to himself. Ten years. Twenty years. He grows old, though he loses none of his strength, his training too ingrained to allow him to weaken with age. The city reforms, stronger than ever, and he slowly begins to learn what life is, outside of both monastery and war.

He teaches self-defense to the children Jaheira rescues and others in the Lower City. He learns to (very badly) play a lute at Alfira's school. He tries his hand as a woodworker after so much carpentry work in the rebuilding of the Gate; one day, with some pride, he gifts Halsin a raggedly carved owl in return for the duck. He travels with Shadowheart several times to the House of the Moon in Waterdeep, reaffirming his faith in the light that has guided him through so much darkness.

And he reads voraciously. Everything he can get his hands on, from every library in the city. There is far more knowledge in the world, he comes to learn, than the particular cache with which he grew up.

He visits Karlach less, over time. And Lae'zel was right - there is less and less left of her each time he sees her. She is drifting away from him. And slowly he comes to terms with that - that what they had was a wonderful thing and a fleeting thing that will never come back to him. He learns to live for them both, for the life she would have had with him, had there been time.

He does not love again, though. He lived his whole life devoid of romance before he knew her, and he has little interest in trying to find it again in the years that remain to him.

For the most part, he moves on, and eventually finds himself relatively happy. But there is one last concession to sentimentality and to everything he has lost.

-----

On one bright, cold afternoon in mid-autumn, many years after the Netherbrain has faded into a bleak memory, he goes to the clinic. She is there, much as she always is; she has not seemed to age much in all these years, though the tentacles are slightly longer, a bit more nuanced in their movement.

He, though, is old; the grey dappling in his hair and beard has faded to white. His body acts as strong as ever, but time is implacable; he knows, as she once did, that he has very little left. It is a strange thing - a weakness of spirit rather than flesh, old age's deeper destruction that even the most disciplined monk cannot stave off forever. He is not dying, but he would be dead soon, likely within a few tendays.

"Hector," she says, flat and cool and almost unrecognizable, and inclines her head at him slightly. "You have settled everything?"

"Everything," he says quietly.

"You are still certain it is time?"

"Yes."

"Then we will begin." She gestures him to a secluded corner of the clinic, with a comfortable chair set up for the purpose. He settles himself there and looks up at the clinic's cracked stone ceiling and waits.

"It has been a good life," he comments, as much to himself as to her, as he waits for her to approach. "Lae'zel was right, that I had to move on. I have done much, seen much. I am proud of what we achieved - all of us."

There's a long, expectant silence. Then he leans his head back, closes his eyes. "I never stopped loving you, you know," he adds softly.

"I know," she answers, and her jaws sink into his skull.

#hector carlisle #long post #drabble #au: illithid karlach #WELLP I MADE MYSELF SAD AND NEED TO GO REREAD MY POSTS ABOUT THEM SNUGGLING ABOUT 50 TIMES #this answer got very out of hand and rambly and self-indulgent :P #although maybe that's what you were hoping for idk XD #i've mentioned before that hector did not come out of the monastery well-equipped to handle tragedy in a productive way #so this is not a timeline that is ultimately a good one for him i think #even though it ends on a generally positive upturn #i hope the ending is not too out of left field XD but it wouldn't be an illithid ending without just a smidge of KindaFucked Up Shit i thin

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