Ashewe Azetmir Dragon
Ashewe Azetmir Dragon hails from O’bonne, known as the ‘Planet of Learning’ or ‘Planet of Knowledge’ in the known worlds of The Alnos Chronicles. The O’bonne dedicated their society to scholarship and inquiry several millenia before the Alnese even settled their ice-age planet, and are sought throughout their galaxy for their expertise.
Azetmir was born in 1644 (Alnos calendar) and grew up in a mediterranean region of O’bonne. Born with what the Obonne call ‘Dragon eyes’, or an ability to tune into the emotions of her interlocutors, she became interested in studying other cultures and other planets. After early schooling, she apprenticed with the O’bonne Society of Comparative Cultures (OSCC) and completed her training with an O’bonne team on Danyx, an important member of the Kobran Commonwealth. She then spent four years of fieldwork on a relatively obscure planet peopled with a pre-space sentient species called Earth to complete her doctoral studies. To blend in more easily with humans, Azetmir was advised to spend most of her fieldwork in a southern continent called Africa, and she eventually focused her efforts on the evolution of legal systems in several multilingual countries, particularly South Africa.
After returning to O’bonne for the customary two-year post-doctoral term as a new instructor for the OSCC, she sought a new field studies position in legal cultural studies, and secured an appointment on Alnos through a mentor. Her mentor’s contacts on Alnos included Lady Alnos Ciani, the current regent, who agreed to find a placement for “Dr. Ashewe’s legal studies” with the largest law enforcement unit on Alnos, the Order of Arthmis. Lady Alnos Ciani matched Azetmir with an Arthmis unit headed by newly promoted Justiciar Pallas Thor Eden, whose clan also agreed to become her host for the duration of her studies. In Solstin 1675, Azetmir moved to Alnos for a two-year research study shadowing a Justiciar of Arthmis.
Towards the end of 1675, a member of Azetmir’s host clan, Pallas Nambo Kyet, began to court her. As Kyet was just 17 at the time, Azetmir at first ignored him, but he persisted. Through the months of her first Alnese winter, Azetmir began to warm to him, and after his 18th birthday in Koreh 1676, they became lovers. Azetmir insisted on discretion and Kyet agreed to it. Much to her own surprise, Azetmir not only fell in love with him, but chose to conceive her first child with him, and towards the end of 1676, she agreed to an Alnese alliance with Kyet. With the birth of their son in Koreh 1677, they became husband and wife and Azetmir became a member of the House of Pallas. Having thus ‘gone native’ (much to her consternation), Azetmir accepted the challenge of making her intergalactic family work and raising Alnese-O’bonne children in both of her home planets. Her husband reassures her that the Alnese have been doing that for centuries.
Diaz Ruiz Raymond
Diaz Ruiz Raymond is originally from Earth, born a month before Leila on the Alnese calendar, Jotun 1647. He grew up and lived on Earth until Leila brought him to Alnos in 1676 along with their daughter Socorro, who was suffering life-threatening complications due to genetic incompatibilities between her human and her Alnese parentage.
On Earth, Raymond grew up in a city on the northern continent of what is called the ‘New World’ on Earth, San Antonio, Texas, North America. He became a musician and joined a band successful enough to go on tour in his home country and eventually others, including countries on another continent called Europe. While touring there, he met Pallas Nambo Leila, who had just moved to Earth with her daughter Pallas Thor Goal after her failed relationship with Thor Nambo Eden. They started a relationship in 1668 and he eventually moved in with Leila.
About a year into her Earth residency, Leila purchased a converted farmhouse in a region called Lavaud in west-central Europe. From 1669 to 1675, Leila and Raymond lived in Lavaud as a family, with Goal attending local schools and everyone learning the local French as an additional language. Ray continued to tour for the first four years of their stay in Lavaud, but struggled more and more with an addiction to opioids that went back to his adolescence in his native Texas.
When Leila gave birth to their daughter in Ostyx of 1675 and the child eventually came near death because of inter-species incompatibilities, Raymond coped by giving in more and more to his addiction. Angry about his complete uselessness, Leila decided to tell him their daughter died as she prepared to rush home to Alnos to save Socorro. Overwhelmed by grief in his now empty home, Raymond killed himself. His suicide made Leila relent and she had him put in the same stasis as their daughter and brought him along to Alnos.
Raymond arrived on Alnos in early 1676 and is restored to good health in a somewhat genetically altered version of himself. During his long convalescence, he experiences an Alnese vision that brings him to the attention of Alnos Ciani, the planet’s regent. She offers him the job of a Chronicler, her personal historian, and he is swept right into the thick of a conflict between natives and a group of immigrants who have begun to settle on the planet but do not want to assimilate, the Ven. In addition, the Alnese have begun negotiating an agreement to join an interplanetary commonwealth and thus secure their continued autonomy.
Both Alnos’ increased immigration and the need for greater protection stem from the planet’s improved climate, which has made Alnos more desirable to off-worlders.
To guide Ray in his new life on Alnos, the Alnese recruit Dragon Ashewe, a visiting scholar from the planet O’bonne who is studying the Alnese legal system and is hosted by Leila’s clan. Raymond is reunited with his daughter, and meets a few of her Alnese relatives, particularly Pallas Xhania Kyet, a local musician and dancer who has started a secret affair with Dragon. As he himself reflects, he is now a “new Ray for a new world”.
Pallas Xhania Kyet
Pallas Xhania Kyet, born in Koreh of 1658, is the son of Pallas Nambo Vaideh and Xhania Nandez Alexander. Through his father, he is related to the current supreme leader of Alnos, Lady Alnos Ciani, who came from Xhania House and assumed her position in 1661, when Kyet was three years old. Though Alnese customs dictate that a lord or lady of Alnos gives up all family ties, the close blood ties between Lady Alnos Ciani and her former younger brother Alexander dictated that Kyet be assigned a security detail from Alexander’s martial Order of Mythras at all times.
Shortly after Kyet’s birth, his father Alexander was sent to Kobra, home planet of the regional superpower, and particularly the planet Danyx by his Order to hone his mental gifts. His mother Vaideh chose to return to Kobra with Kyet for part of Alexander’s tour of duty. Vaideh is an astrophysicist who had spent several years associated with Kobran astrophysics research before her alliance with Alexander.
The family returned to Alnos in 1665, when Kyet was four years old. By then, another family member, Pallas Leila, had contracted an alliance with Thor House in the Alnese Tropics, and Thor House agreed to a long-term lease of a lakeside estate and helped Pallas House build a ‘Summer Compound’ that became known as Eden Hamlet. Kyet’s mother Vaideh decided to move into the new Pallas Summer Compound on a semi-permanent basis to continue her astrophysics studies in an area with less light pollution than the Alnese capital, Zyss. As a result, Kyet grew up between Pallas House in Zyss, Eden Hamlet in the Alnese Tropics, and his maternal grandfather’s Nambo House across the lake.
Kyet pursued an interest in music and dancing almost as soon as he could walk, and at 16, chose to join the Order of Sufi to pursue his artistic vocations. In 1675, he met Ashewe Azetmir Dragon, a friend of his mother’s who arrived from the well-known ‘planet of learning’ O’bonne for a long-term study of Alnese martial orders. Through Pallas Vaideh, Ashewe Dragon negotiated an arrangement to shadow Pallas Thor Eden, who by then headed a martial troupe from the Order of Arthmis, the local police force. Kyet fell in love with Ashewe Dragon and wooed her for a whole year. In early 1676, she agreed to a ‘private’ relationship. Eventually, she conceived a son with Kyet and agreed to an alliance.
Pallas Xhania Leila
Pallas Xhania Leila is the daughter of Pallas Nambo Alinor and Xhania Tsenyx Vrezh. She was born in 1648, a year considered auspicious given its multiples of 8. She grew up in Pallas House in the Alnese capital, Zyss. Through her father, she is related to the current supreme leader of Alnos, Lady Alnos Ciani, who came from Xhania House and is Xhania Vrezh’s niece. Though Alnese customs dictate that a lord or lady of Alnos gives up all family ties, Pallas Leila spent many summers in her father’s native region and in Xhania House, and also grew quite close to Alexander, Lady Ciani’s younger brother.
At the age of fifteen, Leila fell in love with a cousin of her mother’s, Thor Nambo Eden, whom she met while visiting Nambo House in the Alnese tropics. Despite most of her elders’ reservations, she succeeded in having her House negotiate an alliance with his, and they became husband and wife with the conception and birth of their daughter Pallas Thor Goal in 1664, when Leila was sixteen.
Leila moved to Earth following an acrimonious and violent breakup with her husband in 1668, and hooked up with a human, musician Raymond Diaz Ruiz. She met Raymond in Berlin, Europe, and about a year later, she purchased a converted farmhouse in a region called Lavaud in western Switzerland.
From 1669 to 1675, Leila and Raymond lived in Lavaud as a family, with Goal attending local schools and everyone learning the local French as an additional language. In 1675, Leila gave birth to their daughter Socorro. Inter-species incompatibilities surfaced and Socorro nearly died. Raymond coped by giving in to an addiction to heroin, and angry about his complete uselessness, Leila told him their daughter died when she left for Alnos with Socorro. When Raymond killed himself in his grief, Leila relented and had him taken to Alnos as well.
At the beginning of The Alnos Chronicles, in 1676, Leila has just returned from her prolonged stay on Earth to save her second daughter. Much to everyone’s surprise, she acknowledges Eden as Socorro’s alliance father, thereby indicating a willingness to maintain her alliance and mend her Alnese family.
Thor Nambo Eden
Thor Nambo Eden was born to Thor Renan Hanna and Nambo Collet Mikal in Alnos’ tropical “lake region” in Ostyx of 1634. He grew up on the clan estates of his native region, and at 16, he selected an Arthmis apprenticeship to become a law enforcement officer. While on leave to help with summer harvests at Nambo House in 1663, he met then fifteen-year-old Pallas Xhania Leila, a cousin who fell in love with him. She asked her Houses to negotiate an alliance with his, and Eden entered into an alliance contract with Pallas House and had a daughter in 1664. On leave from Arthmis after the birth of daughter Pallas Thor Goal, he visited Earth, the planet of origin of almost half of Thor House.
The relationship between Eden and Leila turned tempestuous, and eventually violent. In 1668, the discord came to a head with a phyical fight that left Leila with several broken bones. Arthmis banished Eden into ‘ice’ for his assault, and forced him to face her father Vrezh, an Ice Mentor and forner warrior. Eden did not expect to survive his penance, but though his father-in-law inflicted some physical atonement, he chose to mentor Eden through his time in ice.
Leila at first wanted to annul their alliance and eliminate Goal’s lineage with Eden. The four Houses allied by the contract intervened and negotiated a compromise. They agreed to a temporary separation and suspension of the alliance, but convinced Leila to wait until Goal was eight years old to come to a final decision. Leila requested a return to Earth with full financial support to further cement her separation.
After four years in ice, in 1672, Vrezh judged Eden to be rehabilitated and sent him back to civilization. Eden resumed his professional path with Arthmis, though busted back down to patrolman. In 1673, Eden was assigned to an ‘ice training’ with Mythras, a sister Order of Arthmis closer to a military force. The Mythran ice training was headed by Pallas Xhania Alexander, the handsome former brother of Alnos’ ruler, Lady Alnos Ciani. The two men fell in love and started a semi-clandestine affair. Alexander asked Eden to become his ‘troth’, a recognized lover, and Eden initially accepted, but Alexander’s continuing cheating wounded Eden deeply. When Eden confronted his lover, they ended up in a physical fight and Eden broke off the affair. Alexander initially accepted Eden’s decision, but after a long trip, he eventually convinced Eden to give him a second chance in 1674.
The summer of 1673 was also the first time that Eden saw his daughter Goal again, as Leila sent her to Alnos for the first time since moving to Earth. Leila’s decision signalled a decision to keep their alliance and to keep him as Goal’s father. Leila allowed their daughter to spend the next two summers on Alnos, and eventually returned to Alnos in 1676 with a new baby daughter in tow. Leila also brought along the baby’s human father, but declared Socorro an alliance child, thus further bolstering their alliance and Eden’s standing as a father.
In the four years since his return from ice, Eden became a first lieutenant with his order and earned the title of ‘Justiciar’ just before his 41st birthday in 1675. Soon after that, Arthmis matched him with a scholar and researcher from the planet O’bonne, Ashewe Dragon, who joins his unit to study Alnese legal systems. This partnership would continue through the tumultuous years of 1676 and 1677, a time chronicled in the four stories that make up The Alnos Chronicles.
Xhania Nambo Alexander
Xhania Nandez Alexander was born to Xhania House in Solstin 1638. His mother Xhania Tsenyx Brenni is the daughter of Tsenyx Dey, a traveler from a planet of telepaths called Danyx. His father Nandez Eng Fiannoir is an explorer who spent most of his life on other worlds.
Their alliance started nine years earlier (1629) with the birth of a daughter, Ciani, who eventually was chosen as next supreme leader or ‘Lady’ of Alnos. Following Alnese customs, the future Lady Alnos Ciani started an apprenticeship at16 and gave up all family ties at 24, when Alexander was 15. When Alexander apprenticed with the militaristic Order of Mythras one year later in 1654, his mother and father followed Tsenyx Dey back to Danyx, where they continue to reside.
As Alexander continued with his Mythran training, he spent time with his uncle Xhania Tsenyx Vrezh in Pallas House in the capital, Zyss. His uncle suggested that Xhania House negotiate an alliance with Pallas House, and a friend and cousin of Vrezh’s wife, Pallas Nambo Vaideh, agreed to the alliance. They welcomed a son in Koreh 1658, just before Alexander turned 20.
Alexander inherited some of his grandmother’s Danyx telepathic abilities, and during his last year as a journeyman, Mythras negotiated a Danyx training to perfect his mind-joining abilities. From 1661 to 1665, Alexander worked for the Kobran Alien League in exchange for his telepathic training. His wife joined him when he was stationed on Kobra, where she had completed her own astrophysics training a decade earlier.
After their return to Alnos, Alexander spent five years in various Mythran roles, earning the title of ‘Legate’ in 1670 at 32. A year later, Mythras asked him to investigate his cousin and fellow Mythran Nandez Willem, who was suspected of espionage for the Kobran Commonwealth. Alexander ascertained that the suspicion was well-founded, in part by using his Danyx telepathic skills. Despite friendly relations between Mythras and the Kobran government and an ongoing Alnese initiative to join the Kobran Commonwealth, Cousin Willem’s spying amounted to treason, and Mythras had him killed.
The episode turned into a low point for Alexander, who was also dispatched to Kobra to patch things up. Alexander continued to shuttle between Kobra and Alnos for the next year to aid his homeworld’s efforts to negotiate a treaty with the Commonwealth. In 1672, Alnese efforts bore fruit, with treaty negotiations initiated during the summer.
Earlier that year, Alexander met his Pallas kinsman Thor Nambo Eden, the man allied to first cousin Pallas Leila. Eden was assigned by his Order Arthmis to complete a term of Mythran ice training, and just before the end of that training, Alexander has a clandestine fling with him. Alexander falls deeply in love with Eden, and after a year of continuing drama resulting from their different temperaments, convinces him to accept him as his troth or acknowledged lover in 1674.