[Dragaera] Origins of Verra

[Maximilian Wilson]

Okay, I've found the interview on Piarra. More precisely, I found the post
where the interview was quoted about a year ago on this list.

-Max

On 8/21/06, Jose Marquez <jhereg69 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Erik Holmes wrote:
> > I've heard on the list before that Vlad started out as an RPG character.
> I
> > had thought that it was D&D but does anyone out there know for sure?
> >
> >
> Since the archives are down, I searched mine (I vaguely remembered a
> conversation about the original RPG, called Piarra, from which Dragaera
> was born). I've quoted a very long message from David Silberstein to the
> list below, where he forwards an e-mail from the GM of the original game
> to the list. I didn't bother editing it for length, so beware; this is
> long:
> > I sometimes have sudden attacks of the curiosity, which impel me to
> > try and search out as much as possible of whatever it was that made me
> > curious.
> >
> > In this case, I wondered if the name "Zivra" meant anything, perhaps
> > as a Hungarian word.  Googling on the word found some Czech & Turkish
> > web pages, but also a few in English.  The ones in English proved to
> > be the most fruitful in furthur research, and I e-mailed the owner of
> > one of them, with the exchange you may read below (with a few lines
> > snipped here and there).
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 02:48:43 -0500
> > From: Robert Sloan
> > To: David Silberstein
> > Subject: Re: Concerning the origins of Piarra
> >
> > Greetings... Reply Inserted...
> >
> >
> >> >From: David Silberstein
> >> >To: "Robert A. Sloan"
> >> >Subject: Concerning the origins of Piarra
> >> >Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 15:58:08 -0800 (PST)
> >> >
> >> >Greetings,
> >>
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >
> >> >I hope I am not imposing too much if I might ask some questions
> >> >regarding Piarra?
> >>
> >
> > Sure, not a problem! If you've been reading my LJ, you know that
> > Chazho is in its penultimate stage of editor requested Substantial
> > Rewrite -- this is final line edits and proofreading. Catching little
> > continuity problems like a character's name spelled sometimes Deka and
> > sometimes Decca (I settled on Decca) and other little tidbits. The
> > fine polish stage, which is going a lot faster than the massive cuts I
> > did to get it to this point. The book's all the better for the massive
> > cuts. I lost no details on it, only a lot of pointless adverbs and
> > some clunky infodumps. Especially when the infodumps weren't all
> > relevant to this volume and are adequately shown, not told in later
> > volumes, it's much more fun to leave oblique little clues that should
> > make the first book far richer on a reread -- yet stand on its own
> > well. (Evil GM Laugh).
> >
> > At the time I did the rough draft of book one, I didn't know all that
> > was behind the onion layer conspiracies of the bad guys. Reworking it
> > after five years of more volumes, I now know everything those poor
> > characters are pulling up and, of course, readers will find out more
> > in every volume. If I really do this well, you could start on any
> > volume and explore the Piarra setting novels holistically. I wrote
> > them chronologically, but they may not be published in that order.
> >
> >
> >> >I have been a fan of Steve Brust's Dragaera stories for a while, and
> >> >he has always been careful to acknowledge yourself as the original
> >> >source for some of those ideas.  I have also seen a few hints that
> >> >indicate that the original role-playing game that became Dragaera was
> >> >called Piarra, but I don't know much more than that.  I tried asking
> >> >Steve for more details about this, but he was unable to explain it in
> >> >other than very vague terms, given that it had been so long ago (and
> >> >it sounds like it wasn't very rigorously defined anyway).
> >>
> >
> > Way back in 1974, I went to the University of Minnesota where I
> > promptly started flunking out on cold weather and large campus. I also
> > discovered Dungeons and Dragons. A few months later, I started my own
> > campaign with a hand-me-down set of brown booklets and discovered all
> > my RPG pals, who usually ran 20th level characters (some evolved in
> > the original playtest group with Dave Arnesen!), knew those booklets
> > by heart. They ate my dungeon. They just chewed through it with their
> > freshly rolled first level characters and then kept on about the great
> > past adventures of their wonderfully developed old characters who were
> > too tough to play any more.
> >
> > Grrrrr. Okay. One embarrassing game session and I was fiddling with my
> > notebooks, going into writer mode. Gone was every encounter on the
> > charts. In went anything I could think of that would confuse and
> > torture them, most of all with plot. I decided one thing early on.
> > Power was meaningless.
> >
> > I had read Conan, all the volumes -- and what they had with old
> > characters was characterization. What those old characters didn't have
> > was anything their own size. Thus grew the previous world,
> > undocumented in anything at all, a Ringworld ala Larry Niven but with
> > magic. On which I built anything and everything as long as it was a)
> > interesting and b) tougher than the PCs. Some of my more original
> > ideas evolved, mutated and came through in the Piarra backstory. I did
> > a successful campaign based on the King Crimson album "Court of the
> > Crimson King" and translated every line of that allegorical song into
> > a series of mythic encounters. I was also reading Zelazny's Amber
> > series where power did become meaningless and localized, but finesse
> > and information was everything.
> >
> > Then I got the idea of doing an Arthurian fantasy set on an original
> > world.  I wanted a world unlike any other. I read Darkover -- and saw
> > how MZB mutated the Lovecraft mythology names of Hastur, Cassilda and
> > all to create a wonderful, immersive setting that was nowhere near as
> > close to medieval Europe as it looked. So I started sketching Piarra
> > and at the time Empress Zivra was the "Arthur" character. I was doing
> > up that version of "Sword and the Stone" much more than looking at the
> > love triangle or its tragic end. I had Nightslayer, which began as my
> > D&D character based on my sword, in someone else's campaign, and so I
> > sent the young Empress into the Paths of the Dead to find the Orb and
> > recreate her magical people's lost Empire.
> >
> > I ran the very first game in a Minicon, might have been 1975 or 1976.
> > Probably 1975. It started in a hallway and I'd been reading a lot of
> > Moorcock. I was fed up with the apocalyptic end of worlds as end of
> > series thing, and thought kicking off at the end of the civilization
> > before Zivra was a great opener. So I stuck the PC's who could be any
> > race they wanted or one of the native races, in the city while Zivra's
> > dad went blooie with the Orb on meltdown mode and they escaped with
> > some assistance from Sethra Lavode through burning rain, streets of
> > blood, many cool encounters and so on. One cat-centaur PC returned the
> > favor by letting Sethra the ancient undead (yes, just as Steve
> > describes her) ride her back.
> >
> > I was throwing together the core mythology at the time and using the
> > game as ways to develop the world, while pounding on the events before
> > the players entered so that I'd get some idea of what went into
> > Zivra's mythic quest. I had the idea that Zivra's reign was a Piarran
> > Camelot and would wind up revered that way long through history. I
> > already knew I was going to do geological time, having played with a
> > calculator and powers of seventeen.
> >
> > The magical system originated on the theory that all the magical
> > systems I knew of on Earth that were real had sacred magical numbers
> > -- and I wanted one that hadn't been used in reality. Most were
> > primes. Wow. 17 is a prime number. A bit big but if it was their
> > zodiac and their moieties and their culture's root they'd have a Mayan
> > view of time. Way cool. I had fun doing the Cycle. What I did not know
> > at the time was that I would do the Cycle, get the whole group
> > brainstorming the Cycle along with Steve, who did name the dzur (This
> > one has to be a good one, Steve, it's the cats. I am into cats. This
> > is the cool house). He sneered and pronounced it. I practiced. I
> > pronounce it correctly. He sneers good.
> >
> > Jhereg is compiled from what was once Vereg. I'd created Piarrans who
> > had a prehensile tentacle, then unnamed, from the base of the skull
> > down to just above the hips that was their psychic organ. Steve's two
> > biggest changes to turn Vereg into Jhereg were that he reduced the
> > psychic powers of the Dragaerans to something reasonable for his world
> > and eliminated their tentacle, which is now called a lirai since
> > they'd have their own word for an organ that important. I had the
> > intent of turning the core mythos into a shared backstory ala
> > Lovecraft -- and retained right of deciding what was canon. When he
> > wrote Vereg and turned his character Vlad's adventures into a cracking
> > good book at a time I was completely blocked (and constantly sick, not
> > that I took that into account), we came to a friendly agreement.
> >
> > Dragaera is a genuine parallel alternate world. We agreed that at the
> > time of the separation. Steve would make enough changes to make his
> > world his own but use some shared characters, especially on the mythic
> > level like Nightslayer and Sethra and Zivra. I would consider my
> > versions of same to be another world and probably make some changes
> > along the way in the process. Boy, did I ever do that. I lost the
> > original Cycle and reconstructed a bunch of times. It's only hit final
> > form now. I had to add one last House that took the place of a much
> > weaker House and write a short story about it to get the Piarran Cycle
> > perfect. So in a way, neither of us is writing Version 1.0, because
> > that would have to be compiled out of Steve's notes and mine. I lived
> > an adventurous life and paper didn't last.
> >
> > Sadly, the original map of Piarra that I drew and the gorgeous poster
> > sized map Jim Odbert (illustrator of the Sanctuary map for Thieves'
> > World and many Analog issues at the time) made for me is also long
> > lost, so is his ink drawing of a cat-centaur woman. Jim Odbert is
> > personally responsible for why the cat-centaurs have feline heads
> > instead of humanoid faces with slightly catlike teeth. She was
> > gorgeous, it was priceless, I knocked around too much and had trouble
> > keeping paper.
> >
> >
> >> >In case you ware wondering how I found you, I recently did a web
> >> >search on "Zivra", since that name occurs in "The Paths of the Dead".
> >> >Of the few hits that were in English, your journal came up, in
> >> >conjunction with the term "Piarra".  On seeing your name, I realized
> >> >that you must be the same person whom Steve mentions in his
> >> >acknowledgement ("Robert Sloan aka Adrian Morgan").
> >>
> >
> > Yes, I'm Robert A. Sloan who used to go by Adrian Morgan. That's me
> > all right. I am the one who ran the game and started my book first but
> > took that long to get it right. I had adventures and I was somewhat in
> > denial on why they never led to my managing to get enough time free to
> > sit down and write a book, once I'd managed to break through the
> > terminal writers' block that hobbled me. Recently I've come to
> > recognize that has a whole lot to do with chronic fatigue and the need
> > to have uninterrupted time to sit still if I want to get novels done.
> > During my New Orleans adventures I finished a short comedy novel
> > "Wizard's Whoops" and the now-existing SF novel "Raven Dance" during
> > two brief periods of windfalls that let me drop all the
> > energy-intensive survival occupations I had-- and I wasn't surviving
> > by crashing on couches and running roleplaying games. I lived in quite
> > a few homes essentially serving as traveling storyteller/live gaming
> > is more fun than TV, so I consider that a great apprenticeship in
> > plotting. I sang for my supper well enough to eat and still be around
> > to write!
> >
> >
> >> >Given that you are in fact still working on Piarra (as a universe), I
> >> >was wondering if you could give some more of the details about:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >1) What was Piarra, when it was first created as a game?  From what
> >> >Steve mentioned of it, it sounds as though each player made up their
> >> >parts of it - was it more of a joint collaboration?
> >>
> >
> > It was my world, intended as the setting for the untitled Empress
> > Zivra novel, and I was using the roleplaying game to thrash the
> > details. I got waivers from all the players that I might use their
> > characters in a book, and also explained my Lovecraft-styled series
> > concept: that I would be happy to share the Mythos as I developed it,
> > would credit additions to the Mythos, would keep continuity for the
> > Mythos and not ask money for things other people wrote in it as long
> > as they ran it past me for continuity and I had final say on the
> > Canon. Only one of them was remotely interested in writing in it:
> > Steve Brust.
> >
> > Steve was the only Vereg player. Steve had a lot of influence on House
> > Vereg. All the players contributed alien names, we did some
> > brainstorms of syllable juggling. He also developed the Eastern
> > culture where Vlad's ancestors came from. I'm sure they migrated from
> > Hungary. He did a great job adapting them to a high-magic alien world,
> > and since that Eastern kingdom was his, it kinda dropped off my map at
> > the separation. I'm not sure either of us named it at the time we were
> > playing.
> >
> > Some of his artistic differences had to do with the over the top magic
> > I used, which was intended to counterbalance hideously powerful MCs
> > and ultimately create a theme that runs through all my novels. Much of
> > what I built wasn't relevant to Steve's plotlines. Everything he
> > wanted to change was integral to mine. Piarrans gesture with their
> > lirais. Piarrans look at lirai, not eye expressions, something a few
> > plot points hung on in a couple of Piarran stories. The race prejudice
> > was there. Jheregs are a lot like veregs, but four legged thanks to a
> > great cover artist Steve got.
> >
> > Everyone always knew I was going to write it. I didn't know how long
> > it would take for me to do it -- but I didn't have Steve's night job,
> > determination and immediate circumstances. I wandered, he wrote, he
> > sold Jhereg and we renewed our agreement after sorting out that yes,
> > Draguera is his and Piarra is mine and they're *similar* due to that
> > parallelism. We just might have created the first Non-Earth Parallel
> > Worlds thingie, though I couldn't say for sure.
> >
> >
> >> >2) How does Piarra differ from Dragaera, as you understand it?  I note
> >> >that at the very least that you make mention of the 17 Houses, at
> >> >least one of them with the same name (Dzur) as in Dragaera.
> >>
> >
> > Okay. He had the original Cycle. He made some changes. I lost the
> > original Cycle. I made a bunch more changes. I dropped some of the
> > Houses entirely but created equally colorful ones and so the
> > underlying structure of a Cycle of 17 is still there with some points
> > congruent and some emphatically NOT. This is going to make it very
> > interesting when worlds collide.
> >
> > Phoenix, Dragon, Dzur, Hawk -- the first four Houses are the same. It
> > goes in and out from there. Vereg and Jhereg are parallels, House
> > Vereg is the House of Corruption and a whole lot like Jhereg, I didn't
> > change it much. However, I have developed many different aspects of
> > it, and on Piarra I've paid a lot of attention to the Left Hand. Also
> > with some more esoteric, mystical aspects of Corruption that Vlad
> > never got into because he was an Easterner and a witch. I've even
> > fiddled with Second Empire flying castles like Castle Black... and
> > Morrolan, who was John Robey's character, had an influence on both
> > worlds. Character on Dragaera, he also had a parallel (reconstructed)
> > on Piarra who will appear more in the Zivra novels -- which begin more
> > at her childhood now. I've got the opener of her novel sketched along
> > with its premise, including of course her quest into the Paths for the
> > Orb. I now *finally* know why she had to go naked carrying the Sword
> > in order to do that without major blasphemy against Cosmic Powers.
> >
> > I developed quite a bit of the backstory long after, but I had it all
> > sketched in during the game. What I've done now is deepened what I had
> > and explored a lot of its more magical corners. And continued to make
> > changes up to the final version of Chazho, since anything unpublished
> > is still mutable and subject to random chaos. :D
> >
> >
> >> >3) How you currently envision the Piarra Multiverse?  How many novels
> >> >do you have planned for it?
> >>
> >
> > I have written 29 novels in the Piarra Multiverse, not all of them on
> > Piarra. Some relevant events took place off Piarra, but Piarrans came
> > into the books when they wound up way outside the known gate realms.
> > I've developed my version of the Tuatha (and apologies to any elf fans
> > who want a united explanation of what Elves and Tuatha are, mine are
> > the ones I wrote just as my vampires are the ones I wrote) and a
> > prehistoric Empire as vast as Piarra that is its mortal enemy -- the
> > culture that the Demon Goddess Vala (Verra is her sister or her
> > daughter or her clone or something)  originally flew from,
> > colloquially termed "Hell" in the Vala scriptures. She has a great
> > mythology worked out in much more depth. Several major deities support
> > her: the Four Pillars are the Orb, the Sword, the Paths and Dzur
> > Mountain. Yep, Sethra's a goddess. However, so is any individual
> > hasatsyi, so it's a matter of how *skilled* a goddess she is too. They
> > were just 'sacred undead' in the game but now I've coined a term.
> >
> > Nightslayer, the Sword, is Vala's First Consort and the first male
> > thing she respected, alternately the first male thing she loved. She
> > was a *little* angry at men when she abandoned Hell for Ascension. She
> > got over it and retained her succubus nature, developing fertility and
> > a passion for creation. She also marries the male gods of any place
> > Piarra conquers, resulting in the "Valakedra" ritual at the big walled
> > city I renamed Jhandavor because it used to be Chandrasekhar and I
> > didn't realize I'd named Jim Odbert's 'Gods, Jim, that's the size of a
> > country!' city after the doctor in 2001: A Space Odyssey. She got
> > bisexual with goddesses. She had affairs with mortals and elevated
> > them to deity. She slept with the animals of the Cycle in a pretty
> > neat little bit of folklore I wrote recently and might post on my
> > website, resulting in at least one sentient race for each House of the
> > Cycle in addition to the Piarrans, whom she created. She brought in
> > humans and settled them in the East with the Spine of the World as a
> > big natural barrier to prevent permanent conquest of either. The idea
> > that her cult was a lot like Hinduism with multifarious deities, yet
> > as absorptive as Roman and holding a bit of Shinto element with the
> > ancestor worship deepened to a well developed religious structure. I
> > still use gods as characters in some novels, just as I did back in the
> > game. I have let people roleplay gods, since most ancient gods can
> > encounter heroes who can whip their butt.
> >
> > Basically, the Piarra Multiverse is my favorite setting. I attach
> > everything to it a lot like a future history. I am now working on some
> > early historical stuff, the Cycle of Darthavan stories and the Zivra
> > novel to finally explore her period, having done most of my books way
> > in the future. Chazho connects Piarra in the reign of Emperor Kynan
> > with Earth in 2001 -- an Earth, there are more than one naturally. I
> > also intend to expand the circle of writers who will either pick up
> > their periods of history or their variations, depending on whether
> > they write with permission within the Canon or just next door to it
> > the way Steve did.
> >
> > Steve and I kicked around the idea of a collaboration establishing how
> > Dragaera and Piarra connect, it does look to me as if his world took
> > more of the blast in the Chaos Spot since Piarra only has Juvonanka
> > Swamp in its place -- of course there's been a lot of time for that
> > bit of meltdown to settle down and be absorbed in the vegetation. The
> > concept will probably involve his assassin-hero Vlad teamed up with a
> > Piarran assassin-hero of House Dzur and a completely different
> > tradition of what assassin means.
> >
> >
> >> >I might want to forward your reply to the Dragaera mailing list.
> >> >Is this something that you would be OK with?
> >>
> >
> > If you don't mind its being this lengthy! I've been keeping it under
> > wraps for a while, and it's fun to think back to what I was doing when
> > I first came up with it. Don't presently have a bibliography of titles
> > I have done in rough, but eventually I'll get that sorted out. Of the
> > 29 existing completed rough drafts, at least one is getting trashed in
> > favor of writing it again from outline to make it congruent with the
> > series it's in, and most are being broken apart from a "series format"
> > to separate stand alone novels, pairs of novels, trilogies and one
> > seven-volume series of fantasy sea stories. Dorayan of House Dzur,
> > hero of Chazho, will have a series -- but most of the books feature
> > other main characters even if they're in the same time frame and many
> > take place mostly on worlds other than Piarra.
> >
> >    http://www.pele.cx/~robertsloan2/
> >
> >  is my authorsite, connecting all three of my Weblogs. I have one on
> > Blogger as well as the LiveJournal and I've started a third,
> > Prolific's Progress, which is mainly a listing of daily progress on
> > writing projects. It became hard to chart the final polishing rewrite
> > of Chazho because I have to do it as one giant Word document, but I'll
> > post it when it's done and sent.
> >
> > Then we all cross our fingers and wait. :D
> >
> > The rest, you can get from my LJ -- I'm doing "2003: Year of the
> > Rewrites"  and the great restructuring will let me send out other
> > Piarra novels and Piarra related novels simultaneously with Chazho and
> > the beginning of Dorayan's saga. He's still my favorite hero. Though
> > that could be simply that I'm working on his first book at the moment.
> >
> > The best thing I've ever written is always the book I'm working on
> > right now. :D
> >
> >
>
> --
> Jose Marquez             | There are 10 types of people in
> jhereg69 at earthlink.net   | the world: those who understand
> http://www.hackwater.com | binary, and those who don't.
>
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