#there's additional Lore abt her country but i'm going to shut the fuck Up now lmfao

[vaultsixtynine]

zaïre timeline:

age 0: orphaned or abandoned around birth, and taken into a dyers and weavers guild. hospitality and doing good for others is a big thing in her society, and guilds will strategically take in children for both tax breaks and for the future possibility of raising their guild's caste during the once-a-decade appeal process

ugh cut bc i love to Talk sorry - EDIT: THIS GOT SO LONG. SORRY.

age 7ish: already adept at the smaller weaving tasks and skills she's been taught, she finds and is made immensely curious about her creche-mother's hidden trove of books. in her society, literacy was historically restricted to higher castes or the few in a lower caste who had need of the ability to read and write, usually for business purposes, and though moods relax about it during different eras, the most recent ass to sit on the throne is very much in favor of the restriction, so it's much more severe than it was even like 20 years ago. there's also a semi-enforced cultural difference between high and low speech - imagine the vast gulf of difference between the latin of ye olden christianity vs. the vernacular in a given country. low speech is, even when written and used in low-caste business, fairly far removed from high speech. her creche-mother relents and lets her look at the books - first only at the illustrations, but eventually zaïre learns to read and becomes bored with the small stash available to her.

14ish: zaïre, now highly literate and an excellent weaver in her own right, has a secret but steady supply of books to read - her favorites are stories and folklore from her own country, translated books from abroad, and extremely restricted high-caste books on magic. she's not really a mage in her own right, but finds it fascinating. she frequently volunteers to go foraging outside the city for natural dye plants, so that she has somewhere peaceful to read without worrying about who sees.

15 through 16: high-caste policies on literacy become increasingly strict due to generalized unrest in the low castes (which periodically happens, and is dealt with in myriad ways), and zaïre's book stash is found in a surprise search. going to prison for harboring illegal books/literacy materials has become more common and has a similar vibe to punishment for political dissent, but there have also been worrying reports about what your sentence might be - zaïre is terrified of being locked away for (potentially) the rest of her life, and rightfully so, but her creche-mother chooses to take the blame and go in her stead. this is crushing for obvious reasons, as she was a mentor figure and basically a mother to her, but this quietly radicalizes rather than subdues zaïre. she continues to read, but is more paranoid and careful about how she procures materials and how she passes them on to others. she starts sharing stories she's read as oral folk tales and musical pieces, which gains her a small audience both within her caste and a few from other lower castes who value the sharing of information that they themselves cannot glean from the written word. she starts small lessons, dangerous as they are, and begins distributing tiny hand-written pamphlets in both low speak and high speak (mirrored to show people how to read both). she even binds books herself - using fabric scraps from her guild, paper she makes from reeds she gathers, and using other books as binding examples. she makes her own ink from fabric dyes - this is the secret passion that lies under her everyday life. she loves weaving, identifies with it, but making books and writing and sharing knowledge is even more fulfilling.

somewhere around/after turning 16: after a deeply shitty trial, zaïre's creche-mother is found guilty of a larger string of 'crimes' than just a book stash, namely sedition, teaching others to read and write, and a string of thefts - her trial is public, and though her country doesn't believe in the death sentence and won't execute people, her humiliation, proclamation of ill fate, and life sentence is. so, so bleak. in addition, her entire guild is dropped a caste - they were now in the lowest caste, right above ~criminals~ and those who are not considered by the law at all, like foreigners. this is a Huge Thing, as traditional legal code normally indicates that an entire guild or caste should not be punished for the actions of a few or an individual within that caste, but this means that current political leaders and the court system are willing to throw that out to placate the royal Issue with literacy at the moment. this is deeply frightening for anyone below the military caste, because now any slight could destroy your whole family or guild. there is a brief spurt of an uprising in response to this, but it's not well-connected and gets stamped out nearly immediately.

unfortunately for zaïre, before she even gets home from this public sentencing, someone who's presumably put two and two together about where she's been getting her material for her not-book clubs has shared their concerns with the powers that be, in an attempt to save themselves or save the guild - to refocus the ire on someone else. she's at first concerned by what looks like smoke coming from her neighborhood, until she realizes her entire guild hall has been lit on fire - guards found her second and better-hidden stash - this one filled with inks and papers to boot - and what started as setting those on fire has rapidly expanded because. it's a weaver's guildhall filled with flammable shit.

still roughly 16: zaïre... runs away. she flees the city and heads into the foothills with barely anything, and is deep in the nearby mountains when she finally has to stop and try and figure out shelter and food/water bc she's exhausted. she ducks into a tiny cave high on a cliff face and hopes she'll be hidden enough there, but the cave goes back and back... she's originally just trying to make sure nothing's living in there besides her, but she gets a little lost. she tries not to panic, but eventually sees light and chases it - straight over a ledge into a little old, carved-out room that's lit with carefully placed boreholes, and she's sprained her ankle in the process. it's nearly night and there's both no way out and no critters in there, so she sadly turns into a lump and tries to sleep.

she wakes up in the middle of the night to see that the boreholes are now letting in moon and starlight, and have lit a beautiful pattern on the one wall of the room, which seems to be carved with some depiction of... a war? an event? a natural disaster? her curiosity gets the better of her, and she recognizes the engraved text as an archaic version of low speak, not high speak - it's nearly unreadable, but she picks away at its meaning for awhile and watches as the starlight slowly lines up with recessed areas on this story-carving that she didn't notice before. she cleans the little divots out with a corner of her robe and there's little star-gems/desert glass pieces set in there, which of course Magically Light Up now that the dust is cleaned off of them. nearly invisible seams in the carving open up and there's a small sigh of air as a previously-airtight compartment in the wall opens, and in there is a. book? there's a small, tattered leather book, sitting there on a small, simply carved stand. all the starlight from the boreholes center on the book, and as soon as she tentatively reaches out to grab it, zaïre has an EXTREMELY moses-and-burning-bush moment.

she can't describe it, she can barely remember it, but it felt like the hand of fate directly on her - inside of her, a light filling her to the brim and overflowing, a terrible but not fully cogent understanding of things that happened nearly a thousand years ago. it fills her with a fire that is not entirely her own, but it pairs with her own fear and helplessness and sorrow at what's happening in her home (which is the capital city, so it's really like. the seat of problems for the whole country as well), and her desire to change it. it's So Much that it hurts, sears all her veins and every breath from the inside out, and she fucking passes out and conks her head on the way down.

she wakes up sometime later - possibly days later - and does not necessarily have new wisdom or knowledge that she didn't have before, but she still does have the fire. the wall is closed, the book is in her hands, and she knows beyond all doubt that she was fated to have it, to read it and understand it and act on it, if need be. it's still in that archaic low speak, but somehow her hunger and thirst are gone and her ankle feels better - she stays in that room, slowly reading and teaching herself this more ancient language, for weeks. she doesn't sleep, eat, drink, or relieve herself, and she figures out that the book is an ancient set of stories that chronicles a power struggle and shift from an ancient empire into the proto-country that eventually became her country. a lot of it is written in a nearly fairy-tale like fashion and is intentionally obfuscated on the exact historicity of what's being presented, but there are distinct lessons and exactitudes written into it, and she has NEVER been more fascinated.

she thinks the author was setareh, who is the closest thing her nation's spiritual practice has to a christ figure - the founder of the country, the only woman ever directly in contact with the higher whims of fate, the only saint revered, the only one called on to intercede with fate on the people's behalf. she gets used in as many curses as prayers, but she's like. THE most important historical/spiritual figure, and the only one that's ever been formally recognized by the state. reading her writing is... insane. it's insane, to zaïre, but she's absolutely certain it's hers. the other big thing is that setareh's accounts severely defy the recognized/taught history of her nation, especially where the castes are concerned. they were left over from the old empire, and setareh herself made excruciating pains to get rid of them - they were against fate itself, they boxed people in to narrow roles and mindsets, and they enabled corruption and abuses like no other form of social organization. she engineered the prognosticator and shared her abilities surrounding interpretation of fate to continue to ensure that castes didn't form - the prognosticator is a magical construct that (according to setareh) can be approached by anyone, asked any question, and it will provide that person the barest sliver of a glimpse of Fate in response. these answers are usually extremely cryptic, but it will never answer the same question asked by the same person twice, and it will also not answer someone who Overheard that question and asked it themselves. in the modern day, the prognosticator is kept in a secret wing of the palace and only utilized by high-caste officials in dire matters, but setareh went on to detail how members of a family or social group could ask the same question - "what is my most ideal role in my society" (or something to that effect) and get wildly different answers, supporting her own theory that castes are a waste of potential within a society and to be avoided at all costs. she also goes on about other organizational and social theory, and it's kind of like reading a marx book but separated by hundreds upon hundreds of years and marx is now a saint figure to you.

after zaïre gets through the social theory portion of the book, she gets to a section that is missing pages. this is immensely distressing to her, as she has no fucking clue what was removed - by setareh? by someone else? what could be so important (or so dangerous) to remove from literally the most holy artifact to ever exist? and it was right in the middle of the climax of how they rebelled and fought the old order, and - and - and this book is now the most important thing in her life. this book will enable her to teach others that the higher castes have been repressing information for hundreds of years for their own gain, and that they all deserve so much more. this book is EVERYTHING. she has to get it back to her people, to show them and read it to them and spread the truth.

still 16, but now at least a few months after she left the capital: eventually crawling back out of the cave via a set of climbing handholds that she hadn't seen before, she carefully slips back into town (now extremely famished and thirsty, as the strangeness of the Book Room has worn off). her guildhall is destroyed, her former guild-family members scattered to be adopted into other guilds or slide further down the caste ladder - specifically because her guild had not one but two 'dangerous criminals' in it, which made the judicial caste dissolve it as an entity entirely. she's numb to this; it horrifies her, but it can't break the thrill in her veins caused by the little book tucked in her robes. she goes underground, using some contacts that she had dallied with while doing her illegal writing, bookbinding, and occasional teaching, and gets more situated than i think she ever thought she'd be comfortable with.

16 through 17: she hosts illegal book club gatherings, and starts doing everything she was doing Before, but more often and more passionately. she gathers steam as the powers that be continue to crack down - has a few close run-ins, but develops a web of people who are also upset and looking for a way to empower themselves and ~learn the truth~. word of some secret, recently unearthed writings of setareh spreads, and she gets more and more people showing up, to the point where she has to actively Be Careful how much attention she's drawing. some people begin calling her by a new surname - az-setareh (az is a genitive indicator, so she's 'of-setareh'), rather than her former guild-associated surname, and the association with setareh herself thrills her but also makes her worry if she's getting a little Too far ahead of herself. who is she, to let them claim this? who is she, to preach in setareh's stead? but they need to know the truth. they have to. it doesn't matter what the consequences are.

right before she turns 17: one of her book clubs turns into a slaughterhouse. normally she and hte people supporting her were good about knowing when a guard was about, or trying to gain access, but not this time. this one flew under the radar, and it only takes one. people got boxed in and - even though executions are still banned by the judicial caste - there's nothing wrong with defending yourself if you're a guard hunting seditionists, right? that particular book club session was being held in a large backroom of a bathhouse, and as she was pulled away out the back window of the adjoining bathroom, she remembers so clearly the fountains feeding the main bathing area running deep, deep red.

17 and on the run again: she flees again, this time with a back-up plan she'd concocted months ago in case this exact thing happened. she had never been exposed to violence quite like that - it had been ramping up steadily, but she never quite believed that it would actually happen. but. it clearly did, and she's quietly shellshocked and doesn't realize how furious she is until she's already halfway to the high desert and the karstlands. she's alone because she wanted the person who was originally going to go with her to go home to their family and never ever, EVER search for her again - this was her fault, and you don't deserve to get killed for it - so she just breaks down in the shade of a wind-weathered rock and finally actually processes what happened. she can't go back to the city. she has no martial knowledge or capability when it comes to protecting anyone. all she has is words and song and books and weaving, and that is NOT enough, right now. i think she decides that other people who have beef with her current government are probably going to be the best ones to turn to - so she goes for the karstlands, which is where old, old (old as in well-established, not geriatric) nomadic groups still live, away from the cities, the caste system, and royal oversight.

17-18: this part is the least ironed-out. i do know a few things: while with the nomadic groups of the karsts, she makes friends after a period of distrust, she shares the book of setareh openly and learns more about why they live outside of the cities (because they disagree with the caste system and have their own Lore about the country; they fundamentally don't see themselves as setareh's people, but do have respect for her as a historical figure), and also learns their stories and their history. some karst groups are heavily associated with the "original" elven culture/people that live up in the mountains in the east, and they tend to be even less involved or interested in whatever's going on in the lowlands, but more of them are formed from people who Used to be of the same group as setareh's people before the split happened, but literally every nomad group has a different story as to WHY the split happened. she ultimately posts up with the group most amenable to the idea of helping her in Actual Rebellion, and they're also one of the best metallurgists with specific weapon traditions surrounding the weapons they forge.

long story short, she's asked to honor their shared traditions (since some of it is also recorded by setareh in the book) by finding her own starmetal (meteoric in nature), working it into her own swords, and then learning how to utilize those swords capably. she forges 2 khopesh swords (because the empire before her country was very inspired by ancient egypt and setareh directly references having khopesh-equivalents - this is my excuse for thinking khopesh swords are cooler than talwar sorry) and begins training with these two swords (in dnd terminology she becomes a college of swords bard as opposed to just A Bard). during this time she also builds up correspondence - carried by pigeons, who are viewed as sky rats in contemporary culture but used to hold more significance, and also zaïre loves them - with people who still support her and still distribute her work back in the capital.

18ish: she's slowly building up support, rapport in the karstlands, and building infrastructure back at home. some people who have also been driven out by the government even come to her, and she starts to build up a little bastion. this is insane to her btw. like she's 18. everything in her life for the past two years has been insane. but she knows it's true, she knows it's right, she knows that she can't do anything else but this. this is what she has to do, because fate brought her here. she was never weak growing up, but now she has the dexterity of martial training, the strength of pulling her weight among people who live close to the land, the grace of a now-comfortable performer and storyteller who loves what she does. she even writes songs to send back and popularize in the city - ditties and work songs, tavern songs, lullabies. anything she can. she's gathered more powerful allies as well - if this were a video game, they'd be companions, to codify their importance a bit. she gets a new one! the seven scribes are a group of scholars in the highest caste (magic users & scholars at large) who are The ultimate arbiters (above the royal seat, even) on what gets taught about setareh, fate, and the founding of the country, and their youngest member decided to defect because the paranoia and fear and increasing suspicion about literacy even got up into the highest caste and began to directly affect him. he was originally of a lower caste that was 'adopted' up (this happens with some of the higher castes, as they occasionally lose too many people to age and don't have anyone to flesh the caste out to their comfort levels - so they go and find promising new members, who have to change their entire way of life forever to join the new caste), and he began to dig deeper and deeper into the state of decay in the higher castes, and was immensely troubled by what he found. so he came out here to learn, to hear what the book and zaïre had to say, and ultimately to help her.

18 through late 19: zaïre's rebellion started to actually take off from here, and they began to move people and supplies towards the capital. this is where it began to actually be... kind of a war? it was never a fully-fledged one, but there were battles. there were wins, losses, and mostly her forces engaged in a guerilla fashion. she got a lot of lessons on how to enact violence and command others to enact violence, and disliked it but stayed the course because the red-water bathhouse had never left her mind or her nightmares. people died. she tried to deal with it. she kept going. unrest in the city continued. forces were recalled from elsewhere in the country to deal with her - she pressed on. over the course of the year, she and the scribe began a romance. it was very ummm. young adult novel, in a lot of ways, and he got access to a level of zaïre that no one else had - and she enjoyed it! she enjoyed the private language of lovers in a movement where people treated her So Differently because of what she represented. where she had to commit violence, she had to kill, and somehow cope with it. she had to take her comforts where she could, and he was absolutely that comfort. it also didn't help that they meshed extremely well and she trusted him absolutely - something that some of her other companions/advisors weren't fully comfortable with.

sometime after she turned 20: her rebellion launched a huge operation to take over the prison and free all the prisoners who had been stuffed in there for supporting her or just trying to be literate lol - this was a huge undertaking, and they'd been planning it for well over half a year. controlling the prison - which was a part of the city - would signal the first real portion of the city taken away from the royals, as well, and hopefully would be the death knell and encourage the lower castes to actually rise in armed rebellion. the fact that they'd even gotten this far... it felt right. it felt fated. it felt like they could only succeed from here.

and they did succeed! they took the prison. zaïre got to see her creche-mother again, even - and then everything fell apart. their misdirection backfired, and the military caste swarmed the prison before they'd had a chance to get set up properly and also WAY ahead of schedule, and her people got cut down, backstabbed, chased into corners and slaughtered. she tried to run out and help - she wasn't helpless, anymore, she could fight, she could - only to have scribe bf tell her it was for her own good and put her to sleep. the last thing she saw was her creche-mother flying at the scribe in rage and a soldier step in to run her through.

yaaay, betrayal! or more specifically: the betrayal was supposed to be more violent in zaïre's general direction, but scribe bf had accidentally developed a handful of feelings for her and convinced the crown that killing her wouldn't be a good idea. no idea how he thought that wouldn't backfire on him in terms of zaïre hating him forever, but like. life's rough i guess.

now for the fun part! prisonnnn. the book was stripped from her and she was slammed into the darkest, dankest cell for a few months while the crown finished putting down the rebellion, capturing her companions, etc. etc., all the good stuff. then, because i'm imagining the current king of this country as a man who is perhaps a bit unhinged (and has deteriorated over time from four years ago) but in a way where he keeps it on lock, he decides that zaïre can earn the right for her former companions to not be bloodily and publicly executed if she does just one little thing for him. thus begins a bizarrely scheherazade sequence - she is kept as the nightly entertainment (presumably to thoroughly shame and belittle her, and show her former followers that she has no power and can't do shit, so give up), where she tells tales, sings, dances - general performance stuff, done during/shortly after nightly mealtimes. if he's satisfied with her performance at the end of each month, he'll free one former companion, escort them out of the city, let them go wherever they want. if she's performed badly, given too much attitude, said anything inflammatory... well, you know. there's already so much blood on her hands, why not more?

she hates this. she does it anyway. she's dressed nightly in the most outlandish garb and makeup to cover up her sunken cheeks, her malnourishment from continuing to live In Fucking Prison, and she submits herself to being a dancing bear for a man she hates in the hopes that it will save someone she loves. the worst nights are the ones where ex-bf scribe shows up to watch, and she has to actively stop herself from sobbing in rage when she sees him. this goes on for most of a year, until most of her companions are freed. there was one or two months where something pissed the king off just a little too much and she had to watch her former companions get executed in absolute silence. then there's just her, and - since the king has gotten bored of this by now and his promise is fulfilled - she gets thrown back in prison, again into the darkest corner. she spends most of her time reciting setareh's book to herself, to make sure she can't forget it - she's had it memorized for years, but she is soooo terrified of losing it now that she no longer has access to it. and besides that, she just goes a tiny bit bonkers from the isolation and the shame and the regret and the rage. it really, really sucks to be the YA novel protagonist who fails and doesn't even die, is the thing.

she turns 21 without realizing it, and is eventually dragged back out of prison - the king has finally given in to his one scribe's insistence that this needs to be finally dealt with, it's been long enough for her movement to be fully crushed, blah blah blah, and now she suffers the final indignity: she has her lips briefly sewn shut (this won't cause permanent scarring as long as they're removed, or so the internet tells me) so that she can't say any final words to the crowd, and then she's subjected to a public 'trial' and a public maiming - her throat is cut, not to kill, but to mute. she receives just enough healing to not bleed out, and then setareh's book is ripped apart in front of her eyes, her screams just coming out as a bloody gurgling noise as she thrashes around in an attempt to stop them. she's pronounced sharnevesht (replaces her surname), exiled, strapped to a beast of burden with her hands and ankles tied, and sent off into the deep desert with three days of water, her swords, and the empty spine of setareh's book.

eventually she gets found by someone (read: probably daja) out in the desert, after she's very nearly dead from exposure and dehydration and generally just from having her entire life crushed and ground into dust. after a period of nursing back to health and trying to find the will to do anything, she departs for another country because she'll be killed on sight if she enters any settled area here ever again. and... she can't go back to anyone. there is no one left. she has failed everyone in every way that matters, and has nothing to show for it - less than nothing. less than she started with. she officially swears off violence, but continues to carry her swords with her because she can't stomach leaving them behind, either. her faith is extremely shaky at this point and tending towards catastrophizing, and she just Leaves even though she's still weak and malnourished. she can't even bear to die in her country, that's how fucking depressed she is. if she has to die, let it be in some cold, foreign place - she doesn't even deserve to have her body decay here.

22, 23: she's left and become a random traveler in neighboring countries. she's more or less completely mute, and now makes money (when she needs it) by playing various instruments, mostly flute. she sometimes fills the role of adventurer, but mostly just tries to avoid getting anyone hurt. she's slowwwwwwly become less depressed and more interested in helping people, and she's gotten several leads on pages of setareh's book - and even has gotten a few of them back. they've seemed to travel weirdly far & wide considering their original context, but. if it takes her her whole life. she will get all the pages back. it's the only repentance that means anything to her, anymore.

she's now mid-23! her life has been a wild ride so far, and she Is Not Done! she doesn't even have answers to a lot of weirdness that cropped up during her rebellion - deeper answers to why certain information was being repressed other than broad 'it's how they maintain power' hand-waving, and what was contained on the missing pages of setareh's book - and also she has so many people left to meet who will be important to her, and whose lives she'll be an important part of. she's still regaining her strength and is somewhat frail after all the prison and abuses and misery, but she's definitely over the worst of it.

anyway there's my mute bard who is a pacifist and nevertheless carries two big ass swords with her. she has settled into her sorrow semi-gracefully, but she still has a lot to learn from other people that she'll meet. her faith in fate's path for her is deeply shaken, and she'll have a difficult time regaining it, but she also still cares about her country so, so much. she still cares about her failed rebellion and still wants a future where it succeeds - or if not hers, someone else's. also she deserves to love and be loved by someone who isn't going to backstab her 😭

sorry for the Fucking novel holy shit. it's time for me to stop now