Teyr'loch Delter Pach
- The Archivist
- Jan 15
- 7 min read
Literal "translation" of the idiom: "A naked man stands shivering before his audience."
Metaphorical "translation": "I undress myself to show you we are the same."
Meaning: Vulnerability is one of the scariest ways we can express ourselves, but through vulnerability we reach a true connection with other people.
Spoilers ahead for some Skies Over Aefala related story; skip to below if you'd like to avoid them.
When I was working on Cael's first ever performance, I needed a theme. They were still going by the name Efiál and had difficulty opening up about their past to other people, but the month of downtime they spent in Shipton brought about some major changes that impacted their character far sooner than I anticipated, especially thanks to one person in particular: Kosris, who quickly became their best friend by the end of the month. What can I say? They fall hard and fast for people.
Efiál and Kosris share a similar tragedy in that both of their partners have, in some way, shape, or form, been taken in by Maryn, Efiál's main antagonist within the story. Efiál's partner, Valen, was kidnapped. Kosris' partner, Thane, made a business deal with Maryn that resulted in them sampling the product and becoming a different person as well as Maryn's pawn.
Thane was the leader of the Lurros Family, a wealthy street gang and one of the three wealthiest merchant Families that controlled Shipton. Kosris, as the second, was the only one who knew that Thane was sampling the product. The rest of the Family just knew that Thane was changing, becoming harsher, more violent and unpredictable. The other Families and the city guard took notice of this as well, since Thane was the main instigator of the recent tensions between the Families.
Efiál, upon learning all of this during their stay, was inspired to get everyone within the Lurros Family on the same page, which is what led to the creation of the above idiom and their first performance, "Who We Are."
They were terrified. Never before have they shared the influence Maryn has had on their life, not even with their adopted family of Willowdale. It was something they always kept close to the chest, a secret I expected them to keep until we returned to Willowdale, but characters have a funny way of taking the reins from their creators sometimes. Yet they also knew that this was a gamble: this performance could either earn them a tightly knit group of allies in their pursuit to tear Maryn out of power, or it could give the Family enough fodder to sell them out to their worst enemy in exchange for getting their leader back. We still have yet to see the full consequences of it play out, though the outcome seems promising.
Now, however, Cael is facing a similar sense of inner turmoil, this time much closer to home: their father. Or, more specifically, their father's envoy, who they only just met.
Cael hails from Shadow Ezada, accessible via a Plane shifting teleportation circle located in Ezada. As you may have surmised, Shadow Ezada exists on the Plane of Shadow; much of its cultural and architectural design comes from feudal Japan. Maryn is seen as an extremely trusted shaman in Shadow Ezada and thus has many allies and connections, whereas Cael has...one: again, their father. Their mother is currently indisposed for various reasons, but she's not dead!
Cael hinted to their father in a Dream Message that they were going to be at a church near the mountains about a day's travel from Ezada. Their father has always been warm toward them, and so the longing to see him again--the first time as themselves--got the better of their judgment.
Their father arrived at the church with his entourage, and it was a heartwarming reunion that led to Cael asking their father if he trusted the members of his envoy. Come to discover, they've been friends most of their lives, leaving Cael with the choice to share the truth with them or to err on the side of caution. With how desperately they need allies, they leaned into the former, which is how the performance titled "Teyr'loch Delter Pach" came into existence.
End spoilers; moving on to talk about the construction of the performance itself.
"Teyr'loch Delter Pach," is the performance I've been working on since I caught up on all of Cael's journals and my other obligations such as transcribing and writing correspondence and compiling session summaries for our returning player.
I've been collecting music since mid-December, pieces that spark certain scenes or interactions within my imagination that I may or may not end up using within the performance itself, but it wasn't until this past week I was really able to sink my teeth into constructing the layout.
"Teyr'loch Delter Pach," presents some unique challenges that other performances haven't, but working within the framework of a specific set of guidelines has always been what makes this whole process enjoyable for me. For this one, Cael only has ~2 in-game hours to plan it. They weren't even going to have that much time, but Kosris sort of forced them into solitary confinement to work on it. (Trust me, it was for their own good.) Therefore, I need to:
Pull material from previous performances to limit what mistakes they would make while also presenting it in a new way so as not to be repetitive and boring;
Keep it simple by chunking out the major arcs and the most important scenes from said arcs. No skipping around chronologically to make for an overall more interesting narrative.
Work mistakes into the performance itself. The most 2 hours would realistically give them is a theme and a skeleton of the overall "story." The rest would be improvised, and without any opportunity to practice, chances are they'll make mistakes, even if they are a skilled performer/improviser.
Whenever I begin working on these, one of the first questions I ask myself is, "What is the theme? What is the story they're trying to tell?" Knowing the theme makes it easier to narrow down what memories they'll share, though sometimes I'll decide on a different theme partway through, especially as the performance comes more into focus. This is just part of the creative process. For "Teyr'loch Delter Pach," the current working theme is, "Hope is something you bloody your nails clawing toward," which encapsulates the journey they've taken thus far to become who they are.
Usually I'll already have the setting decided before I begin work on the performance because of how limited Cael's options used to be. In fact they were originally going to perform it at the church, but with how close in proximity they are to Ezada, they opted for the second option: our party's demi-planar castle that they can alter to have a stage that reflects whatever I can imagine, and hoo-buddy have my options have opened up tremendously. And that's a problem.
Wait, what? A problem? Isn't having more options always a plus?
Sometimes the benefit of limited options is that you have to work with what you have. Oftentimes, this alone can spark creativity and innovation. I certainly work better under such constraints. But with something like the castle, I'm limited by my imagination, and that's far more difficult, since I'm poor at working without a box. "Create what you want!" has never ended well for me. Thankfully, the castle itself provided enough of a foundation for me, since my partner and I had fleshed most of it out just the week prior. I merely needed to think of what structures to use for Cael's shadow puppetry, and I gotta say, this is how I feel about my choice:
I'll be holding onto what that is for now though, since it's a surprise for my partner as well.
Setting? Check. Theme? Check. Next up? The actual planning.
These are the major arcs thus far:
Prologue: Written
Awakening: Written
Time with Valen: Written
College: 50%
Darkest months: 70%
7k words in, and we're only in my pre-campaign sessions. As a comparison, the longest performance was a little under 12k words and took an hour and a half to get through. By the time I finish the initial draft for this one, it's going to be a monster.
Yeeeaaah...my English teachers when I was younger always enjoyed poking fun at how long all of my creative writing assingments were.
Thankfully, while there are still a number of main campaign elements I want to incorporate (Hell in Shipton, for example), the main campaign overall isn't quite as pertinent to the story they want to tell. That said, the campaign is over 100 sessions long, well over that if you take my downtime scenes into account, so even if it's not quite as relevant, there's still a ton to parse. I'm estimating "Teyr'loch Delter Pach," will handily reach the record word count and even surpass t.
That's when I'll edit it into oblivion. I have to fit it to music after all, which means truncating scenes, redacting them altogether, tightening descriptions, etc... etc....
At least this one shouldn't take me 9+ months :')
Other Notable Accomplishments:
Friday
Rewrote/edited the prologue for "Teyr'loch Delter Pach"
Imported the rest of Cael's journals into The Goblin's Notebook
BWS workout C
Saturday
Wrote the "Awakening" arc for "Teyr'loch Delter Pach"
Imported Sendings into The Goblin's Notebook
Sunday
Wrote the "Time with Valen" arc for "Teyr'loch Delter Pach"
Imported Dream Messages into The Goblin's Notebook
BWS workout A
Monday
Puzzled how to go about Cael's "College" arc for "Teyr'loch Delter Pach"
Tuesday
Wrote Cael's positive experiences for the "College" arc for "Teyr'loch Delter Pach"
Currently stuck on how to weave in their negative experiences
Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:
What are some of your favorite idioms, and what's the meaning behind them? Any idiom, any language.
One of mine is, 「井の中の蛙大海を知らず」, which translates to, "The frog in the well does not know the great sea," a cautionary idiom that illustrates the importance of seeing the world beyond your own limited experiences.
This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Salad
Comments