The Space Opera Working Thread

reply to post by silo13


Holy cow, silo!

Ugghh....I can relate. My father died in August 2010, and two weeks later my husband wound up in ER with a collapsed lung, broken rib, pneumonia in critical condition. I had just been immersed in my dad having the very same breathing issues. It was like an obscene nightmare. And the day that they told me hubby was in critical, my mom told me my brother had a brain tumor.

It was just one thing after another, for months and months...the absolute worst 18 months of my life. Things have stabilized for now, but it's utterly exhausting plowing through those waters. And the scariest thing is that I realize things could have been worse...

I will pray for your friend, dear, and for you and all touched by this awful set of circumstances.
Hug.

Originally posted by A boy in a dress
reply to post by wildtimes

 

Sure, I was going to have BIAD meet these beings and obtain information
about Death and Pandora's devious plans.

Uktena -the Horned Snake (I had to include him as we name a town
after him on Carbiox!)
Nun 'Yuni' Wi -There are several versions of this deity on the internet,
but I went with the being that always carried a cane that a Medicine Man
could lead into the campsite and deal with pregnant women.
The Raven Mocker -A deity that visits a dying person and removes their lifeforce,
he shows up in a cloud of sparks and a sound of wind.
Tsul 'Kalu - A shaggy being that carries a 'slanted back' I presume it's connected
to the Sasquatch lore.

Hope it helps.

Edit: Heh Neno... this is your area of expertise, nuh?

edit on 21-1-2012 by A boy in a dress because: (no reason given)

I know a bit about some of them, but there were so many differing cosmologies among so many different tribes that it's nearly impossible to have a comprehensive understanding of them all.

Tsul 'Kalu reminds me more of a description of a buffalo - shaggy with a "slanted" or sloping back. Missiengw is more to be identified with Bigfoot. He is an Algonquian spirit (the name is Lenape, but the Shawnees had a similar concept, probably 'borrowed' from the Grandfathers) and was a "Keeper of the Woods" or "keeper of the Game" - he protected the forests from over-hunting, among other things. The Lenape still have a Missisngw mask and costume for the dances, and it looks to me for all the world like the descriptions of Bigfoot. The Missisngw dancer carries a turtle shell rattle.

The Uktena is a Cherokee legend, but the concept was near universal east of the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Even going all the way back to the Adena and Hopewell cultures, there can be found representations of a horned serpent. The ones I've seen (engravings) look like a horned rattlesnake, usually having deer antlers, less often buffalo horns. I saw a couple of engravings of the Horned Serpents that had wings, and which reminded me of Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan.

Giant Horned Snakes and the related Giant Horse Headed Snakes are water-dwellers. There are reports from the Great lakes in antiquity of Giant Horse Headed Snakes living in the lakes. Giant Horned Snakes are generally associated with smaller bodies of water - from rivers right on down to puddles collected in tree stumps. I've heard two reports from relatively modern times of them. One, a Shawnee in Oklahoma, claims that he and his two sons encountered one in the woods there years ago, and my dad told a tale of having seen the track of one in a dusty road in West Virginia when he was about 12 years old (early 1940's), and swore it for truth to the day he died. He said that it looked like someone had dragged a 12 inch stove pipe in a serpentine track down a dirt road through the woods on the family farm, and that other people had seen the same thing in various close by places over the course of that summer.

The Giant Snakes are always at war with the Thunderbirds. They are mortal enemies. The Mexican flag, depicting a symbol of the foundation legend of Tenochtitlan, is a study of that fight in miniature.

The Cherokee legend of the Uktena states that it could only be killed by an arrow in the seventh segment of it's body down from it's head - that, evidently, was where it's heart was. A Shawnee warrior was captured by the Cherokee long ago. The Shawnees were feared as magicians by the Cherokee, and they promised the warrior his freedom if he could defeat the Uktena, which was terrorizing local Cherokee villages.

The story is fairly long, and involves a ring of fire created by the Uktena, but in the end the Shawnee killed it and removed the jewel from it's forehead, which gave him great power. The catch was that the jewel has to be fed once a year with human blood, or it will destroy the keeper, so each year the keeper cuts himself and feeds the jewel on a few drops of his own blood. The Shawnee who killed that Uktena stayed among the Cherokee rather than returning home, and died there. The Cherokees have been the Keepers of the Crystal ever since.

Even today, some Cherokees can point to the exact spot in the river where the Uketna used to live in a pool at the base of a cliff (the spot is not far from Fontana Dam), at a bend in the river that wraps around that cliff. If you look up towards the top of the cliff, there is a cave in it that is inaccessible. There are to this day white streaks running down the cliff from the cave, and it is claimed that a Thunderbird used to live there, always at war with the Uktena living in the pool at the bottom of the cliff. The white streaks are supposed to be Thunderbird droppings.

The word in Shawnee for "snake" is the same as the word for "spirit" - "moneto" (manitou in some other algonquian tribes). "God" (i.e. THE God) is "weshe-monito" meaning "the good spirit", often called "The Great Spirit". Satan is "matshi-moneto", the "bad spirit". There was a Shawnee chief that the whites called "Black Snake" whose name in Shawnee was " 'shi-moneto", which really means "big snake", but that could also mean "black snake", since black snakes can get pretty big. I've seen them 8 feet long in the wild. A literal translation of "black snake" into Shawnee would be "makate'wa moneto".

This is long. More in a bit.

Originally posted by silo13
Do ya'll ever get the feeling you just want to 'duck and run for cover'?
My friend in the hospital is going back in for his third surgery - lungs keep filling with blood (what little lung he has left from what I understand) and he's god kidney failure (as I've said before).

So what happens now? His mother has a stroke and dies last night. Holy moly!

I'll be posting today though - woopie woopie - but it's got to get done.

Looking forward to reading about the 'deities' BIAD!

Happy Sunday All!

I know this may seem the darkest hour, your friend will be thinking this
righ now, I guess. But humans have great capacity to change and adapt.
'Have a little faith' -as BIAD would say and we'll hopefully see a better time
at the end f this.

My thoughts are with you and your friend.

reply to post by nenothtu


Cheers Neno, I read somewhere that the deity called Tabaldak is also known as
'The Owner' and he created everything except one... someone called Odzihodo.

The legends of water-horses and lake dwellers falls in nicely with the legend that
when Odzihodo ... piled dirt to make mountains, and dug lines for rivers.
He took great care in forming Lake Champlain, and happy with his work, turned
into a stone.

Rivers hold power-along with stones and animals.... in fact all around us should
be respected... wait a mo...? if we followed this idea, then wouldn't the world be a
better place?
I know our species would be.

The area of "Vandalia" was controlled for the most part by the Cherokees and the Shawnees. They fought over the area quite a bit, with the last battle between them ocurring around 1761 at Paint Lick Mountain in Tazewell County, Va. Nowadays, white people attribute the entire area to the Cherokee, but that wasn't strictly so - it was a "legal fiction" so that they could justify buying Shawnee land from Cherokee "owners", and from Iroquis "owners". In reality the Five Nations had not much influence over the area, other than making the claim to the territory so they could "sell" it to the English, so both the English and the other tribes smiled and nodded over meaningless treaties.

When the Cherokee "sold" Kentucky to Richard Henderson, an old Cherokee chief was heard to say "We've sold it to you - now your problem is going to be keeping it".

It appears that the Clinch River was the real boundary between Cherokee and Shawnee territories. I have an old map of the area from before the massive migration of whites into it on which the Clinch River is labeled as the "Pelicippi River". Pelicippi is not a Cherokee word, it's Shawnee. It's the Angicization of "Pelee(wa) - theepi", which means "Turkey River" in Shawnee. I know more about Shawnee cosmology than I do Cherokee.

The Shawnee believed in an "over-god", Weshe-moneto. He was THE god, the big guy, the main one, but had a general hands-off policy, and didn't take much interest in human affairs. Kokomthena, The Grandmother, was a subordinate diety, but of more immediate interest to the Shawnees, since she took great interest in their affairs. She gave the Shawnee the Twelve Laws, and in at least one story taught the First Man and the First Woman how sex worked. She weaves a net, called the Skeemotah, which is the fabric of time. If she ever finishes it, the world will end at that point. Luckily for us, she has a little pet dog, who every night after she goes to sleep unravels the work she did that day on the net, so that she has to start over again.

Kokumthena has two Rowdy Boys, who are tricksters. They go around wreaking havoc and causing trouble.

There are four Thunderbirds (one for each of the Four Winds), who are among the Truth Givers. The Corn Spirit is another of the Truth Givers, as is Tobacco. About 7 years ago, in Rockingham County, NC, I saw a big bird that fit the modern conception of a "Thunderbird". It was some sort of bird of prey, like an eagle, but was solid black (including the beak, which was hevier that an Eagle's beak) Isaw it twice, and once it's wings brushed the top tips of two pine trees at the same time as it was flying over the woods. The bases of those two trees were 12 feet apart (I measured it). Not as big as a number of reports, but pretty darned big. I was told that it was "probbly" a golden eagle, but the golde eagle tops out at about a 7 foot wing span, so I'm not convinced.

Thunder Birds were said to cause thunder by beating their wings, and lightning was the flashes from their eyes.

Tornado Woman is another of the earth spirits. She causes tornados (surprise!), and it is said that she will never destroy a home where a Shawnee is present. In March, 2009, the house I was living in was eaten by a tornado, so I'm not so sure about that. In her defense, i wasn't actually present at the time - I'd gone to West Virginia on a visit, and heard about the storm while I was there, so I wasn't really "present", but there was still havoc wrought to be cleaned up, and I got booted out of the house.

A number of Shawnee spirits revolve around animals, which is a fairly common theme among Indians. Every animal spirit has something different to pass on. Any white (not necessarily albino, but white) animal is considered "the chief of his tribe", which is one of ther reasons the White Buffalo born a few years ago is so important. It's also why I have a white wolf living with me. I figure between the two of us, we have the planet covered.

I've probably posted it before, but here he is again:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/798a9735f2be.jpg[/atsimg]

You can see who owns the sofa! He was around 8 or 9 months old there - he's a lot bigger now.

I don't know as much about the Cherokee cosmology, and nothing at all about the tribes east of Vandalia around Fariy Stone Park. They were Monancans, Tutelo, and Occaneechi, and are nearly extinct now. They were Siouans, and so probably fairly similar to the Cherokees in matters of religion.

Masqua could probably add things in here - I believe he has readier access to tribal elders where he is, and probably a firmer foundation.

Originally posted by A boy in a dress
reply to post by nenothtu

 

Cheers Neno, I read somewhere that the deity called Tabaldak is also known as
'The Owner' and he created everything except one... someone called Odzihodo.

The legends of water-horses and lake dwellers falls in nicely with the legend that
when Odzihodo ... piled dirt to make mountains, and dug lines for rivers.
He took great care in forming Lake Champlain, and happy with his work, turned
into a stone.

That reminds me a little of Grandfather Mountain here in NC. The profile of the mountain looks like an old man's face lying down, and I know it figures into Cherokee religion in some form, but I don't know the exact story. There are also several other "face rocks" around with similar stories - one is at Gravel Lick just a little way south and west of the rock that neno woke up on in Vandalia in this story cycle.

Rivers hold power-along with stones and animals.... in fact all around us should
be respected... wait a mo...? if we followed this idea, then wouldn't the world be a
better place?
I know our species would be.

Stones holding power also figures in to Cherokee religion. I know that a lot of their medicine men focus on stones and especially crystals of various sorts. That's also the idea behind the gem or crystal that was taken from the Uktena's head when it was killed, and yes, the Cherokee still have that stone, and the Keeper still feeds it, every year.

The Shawnees still have at least one of their original Sacred Bundles. These were bundles, rolled in deer hide, which contained various objects of power. One bundle was in the possession of each of the five septs of the tribe, and was specific to that sept. The one they are known to still have is brought out at dance ceremonies, and the contents distributed to the dancers for use in the dance. One object is an eagle feather, one is a tomahawk that it is claimed belonged to Tecumseh, and one is a strip of dried flesh that it is claimed was taken from a Giant Horned Snake. I can't recall off of the top of my head what the other objects it contains are.

reply to post by nenothtu


Hmmm.. I gambled that you may have known a little about the
mythology and past of some tribes... no wait, I say that again.
I gambled that you may have known A LOT !!

"We've sold it to you - now your problem is going to be keeping it".

Words of wisdom... words of wisdom.

Cowboys and Aliens - Truth or Fiction?



Ok ok I'll get back to finishing my post!

Thank you all! I mean that...

peace

reply to post by silo13


Cowboys and aliens...! hahaha.... you couldn't make up such a yarn!

Er, hold on a minute?

reply to post by wildtimes

Hi you -
I want to take a moment and thank you - not only for your enthusiasm and dedication to the Opera (now the SAGA) but - to your 'friends' here. You've done so much for the Saga, the Index Thread, and you're always right there pushing the limits on the story line.

A heartfelt Thank You, a deep curtsey, and a hug for you.

And no I didn't get the post stuck up today. I keep running into a glitch on what's going to happen when Carpet, who loves Silo, is confronted with 'her' Gep and Pip... I want to make it poignant, but not gushy, so, it's taking a bit.

Ok there ya go!

Neno/Chumley and Neno/Carpet are with a very shocked Margo, Gep, Pip and an incredulous Silo in one of the cabins. Gep is drugged and going to be 'fixed up' to go. Now all we have to do is get all of them out of the compound and back to the Tumblers. Once more we've a victim who needs the Recovery Bay. It's an old worn out theme in the story. I've a feeling Gep isn't going to make it back to Ship.

Taggart is somewhere sleeping off the laudanum Margo gave him. Neno? Last i knew he was scrawling into his boots (after spitting out his own laudanum) and if Neno can move? We know he's going for Taggart. Problem is Margo wants Taggart's blood too. I wonder who'll get to Taggart first?

We'll see.

Have a great day all!

reply to post by silo13


*Blushes*
Please, rise you up.....

I've been kinda lax lately (a couple of threads over in the religion and social issues forums...ughh. what was I thinking?)

Anyway, I have been rolling Dag and Brittle and Adam around in my head...BIAD and they seem to be on an entirely different "wavelength"...if Silo, neno, Chums, and Carpet all get back to the Tumbler, does that leave BIAD virtually out there alone? The Splitter, Death, Pandora, Charon et al are certainly having a filed day with this...

Okay, my hand is working better -- I'm GOING to post today -- on behalf of all three of them...

Dag and Brittle will be met up by Ben, who -- I'm thinking then maybe they have a little fun with these North American deities (need to go back and review the last few here)...they will wind up at Fairy Stone Park. And Adam will wind up in the Naica Cave with Gert and Merlin...

if it's the last thing I do!!
Okay, back to the Saga, enough of the cybersnarking in the other forums... Ghaa...!!

(Hey neno, what do you do when BOTH big toes are stubbed on those goldarned barstools? Oh, you wear BOOTS? Doh. And here I was just in my fleece sock-slippers...)*sighs*

Wow, neno, thanks so much for all that! My head is spinning!!

Okay, the Naica Cave, then, would be a natural meeting place for the detiies of Vandalia...naturally Gert and Merlin are familiar with them.

I'm seeing a melee taking place down there...between Death, Pandora, Gert, Merlin, the Splitter, and all their 'friends' ...in which Dag, Brittle, Adam and BIAD become embroiled. Woo hoo!

I'll go check the story line now -- thanks for the inspiration as always, guys.
PS, i have a volume on the shelf in front of me American Indian Myths and Legends....going to drag that down now too...
please forgive if my captialization is off -- it's that wretched pinky that just won't PRESs --ow!!

reply to post by wildtimes


Okay, post number 1 on page 65
(aherm, BIAD?? You have some indexing to do........ )

Adam realizes a past life that was previously blocked from his memory. When he reaches the end of the vortex, he will be in the Yydryl, all alone (I think?? ).....and have to get himself back to the Naica Cave...

reply to post by wildtimes


I'm lost on the whole Index-posting thing!! Are we still using the Index thread or
just putting them here?
BIAD is running around the room wringing his hair!

reply to post by A boy in a dress


Ask him to sit down and listen calmly.

Dear Boy in a Dress, Yes, I have updated the index thread through my last post before your several (which I loved, by the way)....it helps me to be able to go there quickly to refresh where we were and who posted last, simply because when the muse DOES visit (esp unannounced), I dislike having to read through everything in the story or here to make sure I'm not screwing up anybody else.

Does that make sense??
I get so excited and focused, often by one line in someone's entry, and then I just wanna run with it....but if I have to go back and read all the posts to get to where it's my turn again sometimes i lose the train of thought....

Would you mind terribly?
I can go ahead and make the index entries if you prefer not to.....
just let me know, you weird-haired freak!
Okay, if that doesn't stick the landing, I'm not sure what to do
HUGS! AND WONDERFUL LATEST SEQUENCE!!

Originally posted by wildtimes

(Hey neno, what do you do when BOTH big toes are stubbed on those goldarned barstools? Oh, you wear BOOTS? Doh. And here I was just in my fleece sock-slippers...)*sighs*

It helps to have STEEL TOED fleece sock-slippers!

Oh, and don't kick the bar stools with your toe - use your heel instead! (No, the BOTTOM of your heel, not the Achilles Tendon side!)

High-heeled steel-toed sock slippers are a plus when dealing with recalcitrant bar stool dwellers, but I can't seem to pull that off as well as BIAD does....

reply to post by nenothtu


Yeah, the heels, especially if they are stilettos, are good for tripping, gripping, and jabbing too!
Thanks for the tip.

Originally posted by wildtimes

please forgive if my captialization is off -- it's that wretched pinky that just won't PRESs --ow!!

Were you getting ticked off enough to hammer the keyboard?

Here's a little known fact - it's not even known by most of the people who live there - Elk Garden, the area just south of the rock where neno awoke, between Beartown Mountain and Brumley Mountain, just north of Hayter's Gap, underwent secretive (I guess, since so few people know about it) excavations in the 1950's, when several ancient burial caves were found there. The burials evidently go back to the days before whites ever walked there. The caves are off limits now, and the specific locations are a closely guarded secret. There was, apparently, a village located in Elk Garden.

In the late 70's a village was excavated in Bland County, I think it was.

"Saltville" was an economic powerhouse back in those days, because of the extensive salt springs. A Spanish expedition went forth from Fort San Juan in what is now North Carolina, with a few Spaniards and their arquebuses accompanying a larger Indian force which raided Saltville and decimated the village that was located there. Fort San Juan was under the command of one Juan Pardo, and was only recently discovered. It was situated at an Indian village named "Joara", which was the same as "Xuala" mentioned in the De Soto expedition.

Until relatively recently, most of the Spanish history of this area was glossed over, in favor of strengthening the English claim to the whole eastern seaboard based upon the 1607 settlement of Jamestown, but the Spaniards were here long before that, and went a good distance inland building forts. Fort San Juan was built around 1562, 45 years before Jamestown was even thought of. Also in the Jamestown area there was a Spanish outpost, a Jesuit mission. It didn't last long - the inhabitants were massacred by the Powhatans (the same tribe that John Smith dealt with a few years later) in a retaliation for kidnapping.

A young Indian boy was kidnapped on a slaving expedition, apparently, and taken to Puerto Rico by the Spanish. He stayed there for a couple of years, always trying to find a way back home. He finally got his chance when he offered to guide the Jesuits in their mission establishment. They established the mission on the York River, but the young Indian disappeared in just a few days, and skyed back home. Not long after that, he and his tribe wiped out the Jesuits. I guess he didn't take captivity kindly.

Pedro Menedez Avilas came to check on the mission, found it in a heap of ruins, and lured several of the local chiefs to his ship for a parlay, where he promptly hanged them from the yardarm and sailed away, with them swinging in the breeze from the yardarm. that was the last Spanish visit to these shore that I know of - they never came back. This was the same Pedro Menendez Avilas who massacred the French Huguenots in Florida. he wasn't a very nice guy.

The young Indian boy captured is believed to have been Opecancanough, the older brother of chief Wahunsonacook, better known as Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. Opecancanough never got along well with the whites, and stayed at war with them. He was shot in captivity at the age of around 80 by an English soldier.

These Indians were Powhatans, and I bring this up because they are some of the few who are recorded before much white influence came inland, in their more or less native state. According to the English, they had a god called "Kiwasa". It appears to me that he was some sort of Keeper of the Dead - there was an idol of him in the Powhatan charnel house where the bones of the chiefs were kept. I won't go into the gross methodology of that storage other than to say that they were "stuffed", like modern trophy critters.

The chroniclers mention "wizards" among the Indians that apparently had some sort of real powers. They also report various odd occurrences, claimed to have been seen with their own eyes, like North American "tigers", which I would guess were probably jaguars with a larger range than they have now. One claimed to have seen with his own eyes, killed, and eaten a large "flying snake" or "serpent", with wings. Just listed it with skunks, rabbits, and marmots, like it was just another thing he'd run across.

Sounds kind of like another Uktena-Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan connection to me.

An old man told me a long time ago that the area between Gert's cabin and Ben's cabin was called "Turkey Flats" by the Indians before whites came, and that it was a transitory village area. There is another area like that in Green Valley where I collected a bunch of arrow heads, some pottery shards, splintered deer bones, and snail and mussel shells which had to have come from elsewhere - there was no stream close by for convenient collection of them.

I'm not sure which tribe lived there then, or what gods they held, but the key to that information is probably written in Spanish.

reply to post by wildtimes


I'm a-shakin' it Boss... I'm a-shakin' it!

Women! If it's not you-two babes here giving me grief... then it's
this eyeless so-and-so wrapping himnself in the drapes and whispering
"well...? how do I look?!"

No wonder I'm a grey-haired nineteen year-old!