Category Archives: Anhilynya

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Names as a Symbol of Status

In the country outside Nightfall–and to a certain extent inside it as well–the people still follow the older naming customs of the Empire of the Sun.  The starsisters are slowly bleeding this practice out of succeeding generations, but they have not succeeded yet.

The naming practices in the empire were (and are) odd when compared to the rest of the cultures I’ve seen in the world of Khumkato.     Some peoples associate names with family lines, some with places, some with both.  My own nation gives names based on what an individual accomplishes in his or her life, and that leads to some impressive names for the most distinguished among us.  In the empire, it was all based on the length of the actual word–of all things!

Even there, they seemed to just do it differently just because they could:  The shorter the name, the higher the position in society.  That seems to defy all sense.  One would think that the longer, more flowery names would be for the rulers!  I had one of the zhuan of an outlying district controlled by Anhilynya explain it to me once:  The fewer the letters, the fewer possible attractive combinations that can be made of them.  At some point in their history, it became fashionable for the noble classes to reserve these for themselves, with the shortest names being reserved for the emperor himself.

Based on what I have gathered, the emperor usually took a one or two letter name–Li or Zu, for instance.  The higher nobles took three and four letter names (Lya, Maki, or Lian), with the class system unfolding from there.  Some of the peasants have absurdly long names that no one even bothers to try to pronounce completely in normal conversation (though they still have legal uses).  Apparently, there used to be a long and complex process pursued through the empire’s courts in order to shorten an individual’s name.

Of course, the irony is that in practice, the peasants use a shortened form of their name for convenience sake, and those nicknames are almost always three-to-five letters long.  They are careful, however, not to do so in front of the ruling classes.

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The Starsisters

The seven starsisters, under their mother Hai’lyn, are the ruling powers behind the nation of Nightfall and the center of the Cult of the Starsisters to which all are forced to pay homage.  They are incredibly powerful mystical beings that, according to the peasants’ legends, descended to our world of Khumkato from the outer darkness more than seven generations ago. They are said to be the living representations of the stars in the constellation of the serpent, where Hai’lyn allegedly resides.  While no one has ever seen their mother and some doubt her existence, the sisters are clearly very real and their strength grows steadily with the corruption they spread.  They are subduing this entire continent.

While I know that there are seven sisters, I have only been able to identify and locate five of them in the portions of Nightfall that are contained in the former Empire of the Sun.   (I would suggest that your majesty consider further expeditions to locate the remaining two.)  They are   Anhilisha, Anhilynya, Anhilerya, Anhilysha, and Anhilarya.   Apparently Hai’lyn likes to do things in groups and isn’t very creative with her naming.  Each of the starsisters will be treated to a separate entry in this compendium as I compile information on them.

From what I have been able to ascertain, the starsisters are not physical/corporeal in any real sense of the word.  They are very powerful spirits of some kind, and they possess the bodies of mortals to interact with and rule their physical realms here on Khumkato.  Their energies burn through the individual’s body, leaving behind a mindless husk that obeys their commands and seems to be able to manipulate the darkness of the twilight.  Thus the twilight is spread and maintained, even in places where the starsisters are not present.  I have seen one of Anhilisha’s ceremonies of transition.  It was…disturbing.

Each of the starsisters maintains control of a different section of Nightfall, living in a tower that burns with a brilliant white light at it’s peak.  Usually, the tower sits at the center of their ever-expanding district, and they sometimes have constructed newer abodes as the center of their twilight shifts and moves with time.  They are nearly always to be found in the darkest parts where the destruction of the corruption is at its worst.  Their cities all have grandiose, almost ceremonial, names such as the “City of Glorious Twilight,” the seat of Anhilisha’s district.  While marvels of engineering and planning at their center, the cities’ outer regions are dirty and chaotic.  They are universally dangerous places to be no matter where you happen to be inside them, and the mara haunt the grounds surrounding the towers.

The starsisters are very different from one another in terms of personality and style of rule, though they all share a love for cruelty, sadism, and murder.