#vwos

Yes! Vikwo is the god that rules over Vwos. He rules over transformation and change, and gives the blessing of energy/lightning to those he likes. He’s fairly liberal with giving it out. Not so much so that it’s common, but enough that it’s not weird to learn that someone you know has been blessed by him.

About forty years ago a woman emerged from the tip of the tallest mountain in Vwos in the village of Lipetov. They clothed her, and for a month, she did not speak. The people there started calling her Snezhana, as she’d emerged from the snow.

She started claiming to be the daughter of Vikwo, saying that her body was nothing but mountain rock and lightning. To prove herself she drew up a diagram and told the people to bring the smartest man in the town to her. She showed him the diagram and he went mad.

She would later use the same diagram as a way to dethrone the former Imperator. He didn’t want his son, Fuzuli Hasavonya, to marry Snezhana because she wasn’t nobility. She and Fuzuli rose to power.

It’s then debated whether Vikwo sent dreams to Kolina Isanov or not. She claims he did, but unlike Snezhana, she has no way to prove it. Kolina claims that Vikwo regretted sending Snezhana. She was meant to bring Vwos into a new technological age with her brilliance, but she was nothing but vain and lazy. He wanted Kolina to dethrone her.

And she did. Fuzuli, too. Kolina and her Echyet Vis toppled the entire system of government in Vwos and implemented their own.

And the devotees pray, pray, pray for Vikwo to tell them if this was his vision for their kingdom turned republic, but all that answers is thunder and wind echo.

In Montana, farming and football are life. But as farms dry up and people disappear, two schools that were once bitter rivals must join forces. Now one team gives hope to two fading towns.

Pretty boys of Vwosi politics

Bonus:

Istayar was fine with most things, and on some level, he understood that the young were the future.

But for some reason, he just couldn’t stand the fact that Chayyal Mayul, more than ten years his junior, who would have been little more than a child before the revolution began, was on the reform committee. She had no right to be there, especially not when held up against himself, Arif, Eyana, and Reyhan. They were the ones who should be reshaping this country, not this thirty year old girl whose northern region had managed to escape most of the bloodshed.

He hated her, he was certain.

“Predstav Zhevon,” Mayul said. She was frowning, as she almost always was. “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

He hadn’t been paying attention. Her ideas were often flights of fancy and he didn’t have the patience for entertaining them. He leaned forward in his seat.

“I think we should seek out other options first, Predstav Mayul.”

Her lips curled, and for a second, he thought he might finally get an outburst from her. Instead, she took a breath and forced a smile onto her face.

“Of course, Predstav Zhevon. You know I always appreciate your council.”

He watched as she collected her things, and bid her a warm farewell as she left his office.

———

Arif didn’t need to look up to know who was standing in his doorway. “Hello, Reyhan.”

“Your candles are low,” Reyhan observed. Arif grunted in appreciation. “Why not use a lamp?”

Arif tilted his head to the empty lamps in the corner. “Out of oil.”

Reyhan strode into the room without invitation, leaving the door cracked open behind him. Arif sighed and set down his ink pen, lowered his glasses from his face and set them on his desk. Reyhan hopped up onto the desk, narrowly avoiding the ink dish, and Arif moved it to the other side of his work.

Reyhan picked a piece of paper up from the tall stack next to him. “What’s got you so couped up in here, anyway?” He skimmed it over, sight reading more than anything. Arif didn’t try to stop him. If he knew anything about Reyhan, he knew that telling him no was about as useful as netting a tortoise.

“Eyana’s got pressure on me. I have to have this motion prepared in three days.”

Reyhan looked sideways at him. “Reform committee?”

Arif nodded, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

His eyes reopened to Reyhan leaping off the desk, leaving the paper discarded in his wake. Arif kept a steadying hand in the ink dish, and with his other hand carefully placed the paper back into its rightful place.

“You let her do this to you, Risha?” Arif rested his head on his hand, watched his old friend stand in the centre of his office. Reyhan shook his head in disbelief. “I swear she forgets who you are.” He swiped a decorative quill from the pen holder, too quick for Arif’s half hearted attempt to stop him.

“You are Arif Irivani,” Reyhan proclaimed, parrying the quill with an imaginary foe. “The book keeper of the revolution, the ideas behind our successes.” He dodged an invisible thrust, lunged forward twice. He turned to Arif, who was beginning to stand, with a smirk. “And you’re pretty good with a sword, too.”

Arif took the quill back from him. “Times change, Hasha.” He looked back to his desk, littered with paper, and did his best to ignore the exhaustion that clouded his mind. Was this the future he’d done so much for? He sighed, slouched into his chair, and picked up his glasses to rest them gingerly on his nose.

He dipped the quill into the ink. “Times change.”

Reyhan lingered a moment longer. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “I’ll go get you some coffee.”