#dumpling lore

Woot! Let’s talk about Rosanna!

She and Warren have known each other since they were both very young. Originally, Rosanna was suppose to marry Thadeus, Warren’s eldest brother. And she genuinely loved him as she grew up dreaming about marrying him. And she was absolutely devastated when he was murdered. She refused all other betrothals for the next ten years and her father was seriously concerned she would become an old maid. 

So when a proposal of marriage came from Warren, Rosanna agreed to at least listen to him. And she was surprised that Warren was very much like his brother. Enough that Rosanna agreed to marry him on that alone.  

Most of her hatred for Silvaarans stemmed from Thadeus’s murder and she bought into the whole “humans are evil” propaganda that’s plagued the continent since the war. She did not know about Jae until a week before the wedding.

And boy, she was not happy. 

But, she was a Princess of a proud kingdom and the soon to be Queen of another. So she gave Jae the barest amount of civility decorum demanded and pretty much ignored him after that. 

But after she found out she was pregnant and Craeg tried to hurt Jae, she saw how outraged everyone was by the act and how much everyone but her seemed to hold deep and real affection for the boy. And she began to have second thoughts. Lolly and the other female servants slowly worked her down over time, trying to convince her that humans were not the little devils she had been lead to believe. 

So she decided she was going to be nicer to Jae. And she started with a bribe of all the servants/staff who were close to Jae. The kitchen staff, Maevis, Barnaby, Hev, and Connar all got raises out of the blue. 

And she started to try and spend more time with Warren when Jae was around and apologizing to him for her behavior. 

And then those mommy hormones starting kicking in and she’s much more amiable to Jae to the point where she’s all but decided she’s going to try and be his new mother. Since his died when he was just a little boy and its obvious he needs a mother’s guidance, she’s decided that she will fill that role. Without having spoken to Jae about any of it.  

But she and Warren talk about it a lot and when he brought up the idea of making Jae his legal son, her immediate thought was not “But he’s human! You can’t.” It was “Oh! Well, we’ll need to find a nice girl for him to marry then! And once the baby is born, we’ll have to commission a family portrait.”

She’s done a complete 180. 

In the current timeline of the story, (ch 42) she is three and a half months pregnant. Yes, the baby is a wedding night baby (go Warren!) and the baby is doing very well. Yaesha’s watching that fetus like a hawk. 

Jae hasn’t really come to terms with what it will really mean for there to be a royal baby. Because he doesn’t know that Warren wants to legally adopt him yet. He and Warren both see their relationship as father and son, but Jae doesn’t expect anyone else to see it that way. So long as Warren knows, he’s fine with the rest of it. 

Warning: If you haven’t caught up to ch 41 in Dumpling or have yet to read Barnaby’s chapter in Dead Walls Rise, there is some spoilery talk below. 

This also kind of turned into a character exploration of Farris and is a bit long, but I hope it’s worth the read.

This took a while for me to answer because I really had to think about it. Which sounds odd because it is such a straight forward question. The answer is yes, but oddly enough Farris did not feel pride during the moments themselves, but rather as he looked back. Especially when he put those moments into perspective with the events happening now. The proudest moment for him was when Nenani survived the red reap. Which seems odd, but allow me to elaborate. 

He lost a very close friend to the reap. And it crushed him. Farris knows better than most how absolutely fragile humans in general are. Vhasshalans have a tendency to infantilize humans, whether consciously or unconsciously. They just tend to see them as helpless and always in needing of help or aide or assistance. And Farris falls into this category. Or rather...he use to. 

Kent was disabled and did need help in many aspects of his life. He was abundantly dependent on Farris and during that time, Farris kind of needed someone to take care of. Kent helped Farris on the road to healing after spending the war being forced to commit murder every day just to ensure that those working under him were not subjected to the wrath of King Nethrin (The Blood King). It’s actually Kent’s fault the kitchen staff jokes about eating humans. It started off as his own joke that everyone else slowly adopted. He effectively gave them permission to laugh again. Joking about your trauma so it doesn’t hurt you!  

And then there was Jae. The traumatized orphan boy who jumped at every shadow and cried for almost any reason. Jae needed saving, but in a different way to Kent. Jae had been been literally thrust at Farris who was then commanded to do the one thing he would and could never do again. Being able to say no to Baynor and the demand to kill and cook a human was actually a very cathartic moment for Farris. And though he was not his guardian, Farris still played a supporting role in rehabilitating Jae after his parent’s death. As did Kol.   

And then there was Nenani. The hungry little fruit thief with no where to go. Another lost soul. And when she caught the red reap...well, there was one more weak little creature whose life would be snuffed out for no good reason. Like thousands before her. 

When he thought she was going to die, all he could think about was the faces of all those men he’d been forced to kill and then Kent who succumbed so easily to the fever and he just begged her to wake up. 

And she did. She lived through the red reap. 

Farris had seen so many deaths. Been the cause of so much of it. And when he tried to save the life of a little human girl...not only did she live, but she began to thrive. And it made him feel a little less of a monster. 

And then she began to grow and learn and suddenly she wasn’t just a needy little girl. She was a mage. A princess. When the mage’s serpents attacked them, she fought back. Literally. She defended her friends. Her found family. She wasn’t a weak little girl. She was strong. Loyal. A fighter. 

I legit had to sit down and figure this out. lol

Farris and Keral - 6′ 3

Bart - 6′ 2

Yale - 5′ 11

Saen - 5 ‘ 10

Avery - 5′ 8 

Kol - 5′ 7

Quinn - 6′ 2

Gjerk - 5′7

Herit - 5′ 6

Warren - 5′ 11

Maevis  5′ 10

Rheil - 6′

Lolly - 5′ 5

Yaesha - 5′ 7

Not weird at all. I’ve actually had people ask this before so I’ll just go ahead and make a list. In the current Dumpling story:

Nenani is 11 (about to turn 12)

Jae just turned 16.

Farris and Keral are in their early 50′s.

Bart is late 50′s.

Yale is 28.

Saen is 27.

Kol is 27.

Quinn is 30.

Avery is 33.

Gjerk is 17.

Herit is 17. 

Lolly is early 30′s.

Warren is in his mid 30′s.

Maevis is in his late 40′s,

Barnaby is early 70′s. 

Oira is 28.

I do hope to delve more into their relationship more in Dead Walls Rise, but Kol was the second member of the kitchen staff that Jae met and was actually the one to guard him all during the Baynor incident. Kol kept Jae safe and distracted while stuff got scary outside and their friendship grew from that. They have a sort of older brother/little brother relationship. Which is why Kol never passes up a chance to mess with Jae whenever he is around the kitchens.

His favorite thing to do is this:  

After “The Baynor Incident”, Warren CLEANED HOUSE. Anyone who didn’t adhere to his new mandate was replaced. Which meant a lot of people who had been serving his family for a long time were sacked and replaced by whoever was left and qualified. So a lot of powerful positions were suddenly filled by fairly young individuals. That’s how Lolly became Matron as her predecessor was also apart of the Baynor incident. (See Dead Walls Rise ch 2)

FUN FACT: Rheil is actually a distant cousin of Baynor’s, but he doesn’t like to share that information.

Dornby Market is where you go if you’re looking to acquire things that are of an illegal and or immoral nature. On the outside it’s just a normal small town market place without any nefarious dealings. But it’s where people selling through the black market make the deals. The hand offs and actual transactions are done offsite. 

There are still some giants trying to acquire humans for meat, but they are much harder to come by nearly a decade after the war. These days, they’ll see perhaps five or six humans come from the markets for the full year, but soon after the war, it was common to bust an operation selling twenty-something humans in one trip.    

Keral’s been trying for years to track down who it is that’s buying humans, but as of yet he has only arrested a few people for it. The best they’ve been able to do is find out when the transactions are happening and intercept the humans beforehand. Keral and several of his best rangers handle the whole operation and do the hand off to Farris at Dornby Market under the guise of a normal market trip.