Esvarra and Created Worlds - my own universe (art +)

Started by Hontor, June 24, 2015, 04:11:54 PM

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Hontor

This text reveals a series of articles about Created Worlds and Esvarra.



Esvrarra is a planet where the history of Created Worlds began. It is associated with Earth in a special way. There was a similar evolution and Esvarra's telepathists have an unidirectional mental connection to Earth's inhabitants. This connection isn't completelly investigated, but it had a great impact on the civilizations of Esvarra.


Hontor

About hayns, intelligent species from Esvarra.

And bonus - unfinished figurine.



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Hayns. How to characterize these creatures from a far away world, Esvarra, in just a single word?

Empaths. Yes, this concept is a foundation of their culture, but it only answers "how?" and "why?" questions and not "what are they like?"

What does an empathy mean for a hayn? An ability to read minds of other's, an ability to feel their emotions. Inability to become distant from other creature's pain, great compassion toward other's suffering. A weird combination of collective intellect and individual reason.

Intellect and reason are not synonyms, at least in hayns' case. For example, let's take a computer: intellect is it's capacity, operative memory. Reason is all programs that use an electric "brain" as their main source. Intellect is capacity, reason is an algorithm. First one is impersonal, it's only responsible for complicated processes that a brain is capable of processing. Algorithms can be changed, overwritten and corrected. New programs can be added and old ones can be erased.

Third aspect is self-consciousness. To whom belongs "I am" in hayns' society, who is the self-aware subject? Due to very close interactions between individuals an entity that would be perceived by all hayns, a "community soul" could possibly appear in their society. However, all hayns are unique, they value personal freedom, respect other's choices and have very defined borders of personal identity.

Since early childhood, since the moment a hayn becomes self-aware, it carefully collects algorithms of behaviour on his "I am" thread, in the same way as a human collects programs on a personal computer. There is no need in teaching a hayn to separate his "I want", "I need" and "I must" from each other. It's inborn. Carelessness or seriousness, cruelty or tenderness, fear or reckless bravery- those are all just small bricks in an architect's plan, that every single hayn designs himself. When a hayn 'opens' himself to the world of animals, birds and fish, a temple of his soul gets tested by life experience- his own and other creature's. Hayn happily becomes a part of this vast world and never gets lost in it.

From birth to death they are ever-being kids that are ready to learn from everyone who is willing to share their wisdom. They learn everything that they find interesting. They learn to be careful, delicate, not to harm without a reason even tiny creatures, they learn to be happy without multiplying misfortune around them. They cannot afford not to be learning. A mistake that was made due to carelessness, with eyes closed on the past experience becomes a pain, a shame and a regret for the whole society. It's inevitable as a burn that you get after touching the flames.

Hayns don't like pain, there's more than enough of it in life.

I don't want to say that hayns never make mistakes. Every single being that has a willpower: no matter if it's a human or an animal- is doomed to make mistakes and to learn from them, to constantly change. Hayns are not an exception. Their personalities are also formed by crimes and remorse, mistakes and improvement. However, they react to mistakes in a very fierce, ruthless way: once a hayn notices a flaw in his soul, he squashes himself like clay without any remorse and then starts to form again. Only memories and self-existence sense remain untouched.

I am a human, an invisible witness of life on Esvarra and it seems unfair to me that I will only emphasize lives of few hanys from different time periods, as if those were the brightest individuals in a crowd of "small people", as if they were the enlightened ones, the best ones. And if you just take a closer look- there is no longer a single tree among bushes and grass, there's a whole grove and every single tree is unique in it's own way. Even weak and sick ones deserve respect and live interest in their destinies.

Grow so that you don't loose a sun. Those whose roots are braided into one whole say: grow, we will help you.

There was never a one, about whom they'd say he is wasting his life. There was never a single being that would not give society a unique knowledge or unique experience. Perhaps, during the period of wild packs, while hayns were only digesting life in a heath there were "gray mouses" among then, small souls with petty problems, but nobody looked so far back into the past to confirm of confute this theory.

Therefore it's important to remember that no matter about whom I'm telling the story: about Harro or Hotis, Veeh-Tar or Hontoriel, they all were just ones from many, and that does not derogate their actions. All others, who lived with them left not a smaller mark on the history.

Of course, for me, as a human, it is easier to speak about hayns as single and sometimes even main carriers of reason. However, hayns never divided world into "tribesman" and "others". Herds of herbivores, predatory lionars and even rats in homes are not just a background for great victories and achievements of hayns, but are equally important creators of civilization

Imagine for a moment, that all animals suddenly became human: cows on a farm, pigs in a barn, rats in the basement, moles in the ground, wolves in the forest... And they became not just random people, but very close ones. The are no longer those about whom you'd say "Well, it's not human! He can be eaten or killed for fun. We can keep him as a pet, as a toy or just throw outside". There are no longer bad people, outsiders or enemies. Everyone is connected, everyone is tied together with a single thread.

What a painful and unbearable terror our civilization, born to kill and rule, would have to live through. A father of the family would have to cut little hands of a rabbit, hands that are so similar to his own kid's, only so that his wife could make a soup for the family. Not just for a tasty lunch, but to survive. Hayns can't live completely without meat, they are predators, more precisely, scavengers. It would seem- that's the solution of the problem, but carrion is often not enough...

This analogy can barely communicate the whole deepness and delicacy of relationships of hayns and other species. It can only give a general impression. It will never explain where this feeling of brotherhood that hayns never asked for and would love to forget appeared from. It gives a small idea of the conditions in which hayns were forced to develop and which specific problems they had to solve.

A monkey became human when took a stick into it's hands- that's a very approximate and rough statement, as many animals quite successfully use tools. However, it's human hands that create a harness for a horse, build a barn for a cow, beat a chain for a dog, plant wheat and create bullets. Universal tool, that holds endless possibilities, possibilities that an animal can never even imagine.

Human hand is a main tool of interaction with the world, it's main helper of a human's mind.

Hayns are not bipedals, they are similar to baboons, but their hands are also capable of neat manipulations. Even so a unique structure of their brains, that allowes them to become mentally connected not only with ones of their kind, but with other creatures too, played the most important role and not the hands. First hayns were able to connect to other mammals- empaths and later to their far ancestors- birds, fish, insects.

Hays changed and adapted their life environment not less active or meaningfully than humans. However they did that not by means of destroying other animal's lives, but with a help of them, taking into consideration their interests as well. For a hayn soul comfort is the most important thing: less pain, less suffering, more variety and conscious life around them. Everyday comfort for a hayn is secondary. An animal that has no natural enemies doesn't need much anyway.

Therefore I'd say a main difference between a hayn and human civilization is following:

For a human the main tool of changing the world is hand and in the first place human changes material world, hence their civilization is also material in the first place and only then spiritual. As for a hayn, his main tool is his universal, compatible with other forms of lives mind, therefore hayn civilization in the first place is spiritual and only then material.

And though difference is only in accents (who would agree that in human society mind doesn't mean anything and only hands are important?), those accents played a major role in making a difference between general development of hayns' and human civilization. In some ways we are very similar to them, however, at the same time we are so far away from being like them. Sometimes we wish to be like them and sometimes we are afraid of even small similarities, because we don't want to seem weak and infantile. Just like some hayns that happened to come across cruel outpourings of human nature would get frightened by it, some humans that happened to see the dark sides of hayn Eden got scared away by it. We all- hayns and humans- are in the imprisonment of our nature- good nature and evil. And it's not hayns' achievement, but merely a pure luck that some lessons of kindness and compassion they learned while still being in the crib.   

Hontor

Hayns: attitude to death and to war

Attitude to death.

Hayns have very complex and ambivalent attitude to death. Unlike humans, hayns do not regard death as a mystery- every single hayns knows for sure what a living creature feels when dying. Despite all the advantages, empathy and telepathy have a downside as well- other's sufferings feel like their own, inability to divide anyone into "outsiders" or "their own" groups. It is easy to kill one of their kind by turning him into a rival in their mind, which is a salvatory for the psyche, but completely impossible for an empath action. This conflict is a foundation of hayns' belief system. Their whole culture is a search for a compromise between death and life, between strong empathy towards one's pain and a necessity to kill.
Therefore, everything related to death is strictly ritualized. Hayns' rituals are like the opposite of compassion, from the side they may seem cruel and barbaric and their attitude to those sentenced to death may seem even more cruel than human. That is because humans are inclined to have mercy once taken over sudden emotions, but hayns take those emotions as granted, they cannot silence or put them off. In the very same situation and the very same emotional state a human will be hesitating, but a hayn will not. This is one of of hayn psyche's paradoxes: though they perceive someone else's death painfully, they are not inclined to mercy. As a matter of fact, in their culture there is no such thing as begging for mercy. 

Hayns do not recognize torture, the consider death a satisfactory punishment for all kinds of crimes, no matter how heavy they are. 

Hayns do not accept idea "if one has to die, then one will take life of as many enemies as possible". On the contrary, if the situation feels hopeless they would prefer to give up or let others kill them. It's neither cowardice nor mercifulness, it's a conscious refusal to senselessly kill ones of their kind. Hayns can fight for their lives violently and rapidly, but only while there is a chance to survive. However, if saving a single life would mean taking many other lives, hayn may consider a price too high and stop opposition. It is considered as a great and honourable act, not every one is capable of doing it. This act brings no profit and does not prevent from death sentence, but is mentioned before the execution. It is also enacted that an enemy side should express public gratitude for spared lives. Those, who took part in a prosecution must remember the name and have a possession from an executed (as a sign of memory, gratitude).
Their unwillingness to kill unjustly can be so strong that soldiers, who were wounded in battle get well literally on their pure desire to survive for those who they used to kill, so that their blood wasn't shed in vain.
During a war if enemy squad is fighting to the last soldier standing, priests, who are able to suppress the will, are called. That way the enemy is helped to save honour.


Attitude to war.

Few words about the reasons of wars. It would seem what can make hayns, who have great respect for the lives of other, fight between themselves for no matter how great treasures?
First sanguinary war in hayns' history happened because of other predators - raptors. The fact is that hayns find it difficult to understand the value of a kind or a species, they only value life of a specific individual. For humans, however, kind or nation has a greater value than a single life. For example, humans can kill certain wolves, but if their species is in danger of extinction a human will take all possible measures to prevent that. Hayns don't see anything bad in an extinction of a species, but they overcome one's death very badly.
Raptors were not empaths, their behaviour seemed unreasonably cruel to hayns and their trivial particularities seemed like an incurable and inborn disease.
In hayn's society (very primitive at that state) rose up strong arguments- what to do with raptors? Wouldn't it be better to extinguish the whole kind so that nobody got born inferior? Most agreed to wipe out the raptors, however some hayns fought for them and made their brothers fall back (with a price of huge losses from both sides).
This war the first and the only  "real" war, actual conflict. All other wars were either ritual or bloodless, or for the members of society with a special mentality- aggressive by their nature, capable of killing, those who got pleasure from risk and deadly fights. Hayns never suppressed needs of their kinsmen.  Instead they tried to find ways of addressing needs of each specific individual.

Creating a military cast for 'aggressors' was one of the ways. Military casts are relatively closed societies that appeared not in all the time, but only when there was need for them. With a help of wars that were organised by mutual agreements of both sides were solved several political problems. This kind of wars had a very little influence on the social life of hayns. They existed mostly for 'aggressors'. Soldiers dictated the rules, made guns and everything else necessary for the wars themselves. 
Despite the aggression, soldiers remained hayns. That is why their wars are so different from human wars.
Hayns don't have feeling of 'enemy' or 'outsider', they don't have hatred towards ones of their kind, they equally feel the death of 'theirs' and 'outsiders'. They do not kill without necessity and never attack peaceful habitats. If for some reason (that rarely happens in fallen aroses, but it's a different topic) the whole population of a state that is currently defending, only those who pose a threat and attack are killed.

However professional soldiers, unlike civilians, are usually killed all- from simple soldiers up to commanders in Chief. The side that lost is left completely without an army. Sometimes death is substituted with captivity, prisoners in the end blend into the aroses and become 'ones of theirs'

Often soldier of the defeated side search for protection from neutral states and if they manage to get to the borders of the land are no longer chased and considered citizens of a new land.

Continuous wars happen very rarely. Hayns prefer to solve conflicts fast and brutally. If war keeps on gong, troops are called off and negotiations take place.

Patriotism towards the country is almost not developed. A country has all chances to occupy other aroses without any opposition as long as they will stay out of their internal matters and as long as state's attitude towards new inhabitants will not bring the fall of the quality of life. At the same time if current leader is widely respected by aggressors, hayns are ready to fight and die for him, even civilian hayns. Here's another special quality of wars- while in the country is a strong and loved by everyone leader- it's almost invulnerable, no matter the size of the army and the quantity of armature. Political enemies would rather wait for a change of government.

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And just some illustration for my worlds, not related to this theme.



Varhals and varhalions (solar and twilight side of the demiurge) are Asanta clans, and the highest stage of spiritual evolution in Luarill. They have the power to create worlds.










Toliman

Very nice illustration  :)
Especially second and third picture is amazing for me.
Second pictures reminds me representation of Dragon (Draco constellation, origin in Greek mythology) on old figural star charts.

Hontor

Quote from: Toliman on July 06, 2015, 06:16:04 PM
Second pictures reminds me representation of Dragon (Draco constellation, origin in Greek mythology)
I immediately think of the old movie "Dragon Heart" :)
Varhals and varhalions (all creatures like this) definitely had wings and arms. Not just the snake) But there is something in common in a style that is true.