Search Results for: Morgentus

What’s Reality – Open Book Blog Hop #228

June 15, 2020 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #228
What’s the most unusual experience you’ve ever had?
Have you included it in one of your books?

Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop! The authors included in this ongoing series wish to thank you for your reads. We appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Prepare to become a regular reader.

Oh, boy. I’ve talked about this in smaller circles. I’ve let it out a bit in large groups, but I’ve been reluctant to share too much. The reason is how crazy it all sounds, and wondering if the receiver of what I tell will misinterpret my words–twist them in a way to make me look a little off. I guess I just feel that way because a lot survivors of adversity are faced with such shutdowns. So, in that light, how much is too much to share? What’s reality? Do interconnected dreams create a real experience?

The Trailokya Trilogy, Book One: The Shadow Soul

The way I see it, my dark paranormal series is an adapted reality. The things in the story happened to greater or lesser extents, but how it happened is the adaptation. The worlds you see there, the incidences, and creatures are all taken directly from years of dreams I have had. Those dreams felt so real when I was in the middle of them, even when I was totally aware I was dreaming. This didn’t dissolve them away, which usually happens when you become lucid. They continued on. It was powerful. For years, I struggled with what to do with all this stuff.

Looking back over the dreams through the years, I began to see a greater narrative sometime in my 20’s. At that time, I was resistant to writing a novel or even several, but I did manage to write a script to get it all down on paper. I needed the practice with the format, and a means to learn the craft as I couldn’t afford to go to film school (I was already paying student loans for my undergrad English Degree).

There are some events that happened in my waking life, too, but they are altered for fiction and my own comfort in sharing them with the public. There just are things you don’t readily share far and wide. Too many in the public like to use your adverse experiences and words about them to build a house in which to entrap you and hold you hostage. Those close to me, whom I love and care about are the people that know my stories. Even among them, there are those I don’t share details with as a matter of self-preservation. I hope they won’t feel left out, but will understand my reluctance in the face of a culture that is so abusive toward survivors. After all, my life moves forward on my terms.

So, you might wonder what I will tell you about the books that happened. To this day, I can still feel the water rushing into my nasal passage and down my throat to my lungs as I breathed it in. The dismay I felt, lying there on the bottom of a pool, held by the hand of a man I had trusted. I cannot exactly explain why he was the embodiment of that lesson, other than the suffocation I had felt in relation to him, but perhaps that experience taught me to live despite those things that tried to stop my breath–those emotions and feelings being processed at the time. Water is a symbol for emotion and thought.

From The Trailokya Trilogy, Photo by Ramdan Authentic on Unsplash, person on a dark and foggy forest path — Photo by Ramdan Authentic on Unsplash

So many of the dreams show up in the books, it would take a long time to unpack them all for you. The wolves, the Math Teacher, The Three Doors…

The incident above is a passing mention in the books; one of Holly’s many dreams. Is there something more? Sure thing, there is. The vistas I describe, the peoples of all those various races, Zaajah, Zacharius, Joel, Mikhael, The King, Gediel, Morgentus, and even the children are all entities I have seen on repeat in my dreams, whether together or separately (very much separately in the case of the King). That’s what made them so easy to describe and write and capture for fiction. The dreams, as I said before, felt uncannily real. This made those characters quite real, as if I were describing friends from school.

Rani, from the second installment, is a direct draw from my closest friend, but she was modified beyond the reality of my friend has played in my life. For the narrative to work, it required focusing more on negative aspects of friendships. Yes, she is aware of this. Although Rani occupies her space in the story, she is not the woman I know in real life, who has had my back. We are still friends, unlike Holly and Rani. So, although Rani occupies that space, she better represents a conglomerate of all those disappointing friends long gone.

There are smaller aspects of the books that hint at realities, such as Maiel’s hair color, where Holly comes from, that I have a dog and so does the Captain (well, okay, he’s a wolf, but still). There’s so much to explore that I’ve even created an online companion to assist readers, and give them even more depth. Holly also has a family that somewhat resembles my own, but like Rani, they occupy the space without being entirely true to their reality.

My parents are very supportive and have always been there for me. Holly’s parents are largely absent until a crisis. I’m not sure if that’s her view of the matter, that she created that reality for herself, or if they really weren’t there for her. If you’ve read the books, you’ll see her mother dismiss Holly’s concerns and start talking about her own. Although my mother may misinterpret what I am saying, she has never dismissed me. Exploring that was uncomfortable. It dragged me into the realm of fear and loneliness. That’s something I’m not unfamiliar with, but it’s not my family.

There’s so much more reality versus fantasy. I could literally talk all day about it. But, since I only have your attention for a few minutes, I’ll say check out the books and also check out the other responses from our Open Book Blog Hop Authors.

Real and Imagined Places – Open Book Blog Hop #220

April 20, 2020 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #220
Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely
imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop! The authors included in this ongoing series wish to thank you for your reads. We appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Prepare to become a regular reader.

The settings of my first two books are real places, even if places lost to time. The Vermont countryside north of Montpelier is a short car ride from where I live. Just so, one may visit the sites of World War II, including Boston or New York. So when it came time to write The Trailokya Trilogy, all of that mostly became history too. If you refer to a post written at this blog’s inception, you’ll start to notice something quite different from my historical fiction roots.

The divergence was actually a return to the unknown roots in my pre-published history, when I was trying to figure out what kind of writer I would become. Back then, I wrote very long winded high-fantasies. The practice was a lot of fun. The historical and the fantasy were always intertwined for me. That is something true from my childhood reading to today’s writing.

What I really loved about settings in The Trailokya Trilogy was that I could do both. This privilege has allowed me to create some really stunning artwork to go along with my writing. You’ll find characters as well as landscapes, and those can be viewed here.

The first book begins in the alternate reality of Zion, which is known as the homeworld of our true selves. It’s a rich world, forever stretching onward to accommodate the myriad souls and duta living there. To build is to use one’s mind, so the creation of things come from one’s ability to be creative and focused, a land of mental projection. Of course, to accomplish this, there is consensus among the inhabitants about the appearance of common grounds, such as the White City. Those with the strongest mental abilities, those who are older–it is their city as they saw it created. The inhabitants since, create within and extend it if they are strong enough to do so. One may think that this a formula for chaos, but when beings are in harmony, there is a gentle give and take of respect. And only those in harmony can exist within Zion.

From the trailokya trilogy companion — The Shadow Soul, Book One of The Trailokya Trilogy.

There are 7 landscapes, so to speak, included within the book: Nirvana, Zion, Avernus, Astral, Samsara, Jahannam, and Oblivion. Nirvana is the creation point, and no one in the books knows it except the King of Zion. Avernus is a gate plane. It exists to protect the other planes from one another. It is the space in between, where nothing and everything exists. Avernus is not the opposite of Oblivion, as Nirvana is. Instead, the realm is what I term a chaos realm, where things are broken into basic parts, striped away, mixed, and jumbled. Nothing, however, is destroyed. Matter and energy are simply in utter chaos. Thus, when a gate opens on that realm, it will overtake everything and scatter it. This prevents the danava and marditavya of Jahannam from attacking Zion directly. They simply cannot reach it, and that is likely because the greatest amount of order is nearest to Zion, so the chaos is stronger at that border, whereas it is much weaker at the fringe of Samsara and Jahannam. The gate is still strong, however. Danava expend a great deal of energy an ingenuity to break through to the lower realms and have so far reached as far as Astral.

Astral is uniquely positioned in close proximity to the Samsaran plane. Its landscape is also one of mental acuity, but it is so tightly wrapped with Avernus that the chaos seeps through, and without that sharpness, one could be lost forever wandering the interminable breadth of that world. It is what you dream it to be. Astral can also be manipulated into telling historical details, or opening gates into other realms below it. It is also very easily accessible from Zion.

Samsara is the universe of which we are familiar. This is where Earth rotates about its sun and humans live out their lives. It is the home of the history and reality we know. However, this land is locked into strict parameters woven into its creation. Although strange things can occur in Samsara, they are aberrations of otherworldly influence. In the series, you will find real places–you could visit any one of the places Dominic travels to in The Shadow Soul, within reason (because specific homes and shops don’t actually exist nor do they belong to the individuals occupying them). There are Ferries across the Channel, trains, France, German, Hungary, Budapest, and Esztergom. Ah, Esztergom. That’s a real Basilica! You could go there, and used to be able to go up on the roof where Maiel has her battle against Morgentus. You could look down and see gate of Jahannam opening below you as the skys stormily open to Zion and the second Conflict threatens to destroy everything.

The places you cannot visit in Samsara, however, are the worlds beyond Earth. There are many races out there, so distant. They inspired myths and legends on Earth, as their inhabitants are remembered, despite the masking, by some souls who wrote down fantastic tales. Alien worlds are yet beyond our reach and are of course written in fiction. That said, some of these other worlds reflect things we know or used to believe at one time about non-human intelligent life.

The next setting is the hellscape of Jahannam. Well, it is hell, but in this series it goes by its Islamic name. This is a dark, sunless world, barren but not lifeless. It is a prison, caked with the dust of the burning. When the conflict failed to gain certain factions the power they sought, they were cast out of Zion and denied the perpetual light that sustains all. A very faint glimmer, something on the level of moonlight is all that is spared them from a crack in the rock firmament. In this darkness, the danava partitioned their lands into provinces over which the leaders of the insurrection named themselves princes and bicker among each other, still attempting to fight the war they lost so long ago. They are are culture of utter darkness and evil. Psychopathy is their normal, and thus the terrain and the dwellings all reflect this. Those dwellings being the remnants of their Zionic creations, cast out with them upon sentencing.

Beyond Jahannam is the plane called Oblivion. It is as unknown as Nirvana, if not moreso. Nothing is believed to ever return from Oblivion. It is the undoing realm. This is the place atman (beings) fall to when there is no other recourse as to protecting all other beings from them. When a being is this terrible, and keep in mind that Lucifer is merely encased in an ice prison in the depths of Jahannam with the worst of his legions, it makes a great deal of sense. That particular attman cannot be healed, cannot be turned back to the light, cannot be staved off from wreaking havoc. It is what they are. Thus, they are cast into Oblivion to be unmade.

There is nothing in the realm of Oblivion. It is nothingness itself. Though this may seem quite similar to Avernus, one must keep in mind that in Avernus things are just in chaos but they can be brought back to their whole state prior to entering into the plane. There is no gate into Oblivion, either. It is only accessible by the jñanasattva (those like the king of Zion, who came there from Nirvana).

old man of crete illustration for The Trailokya Trilogy — Old Man of Crete, Sheol, Jahannam, photo manipulation by K. Williams, pixabay stock.

If you want to learn more about these worlds and what real places and fantastical places there are inside them, you will have to check out the series. This tiny blog post can hardly do it justice. There is a richness of detail that only story can impart.

Be sure to check out the places and worlds the other authors have written about for their part of the hop. Click on their links below…

From the Trailokya Trilogy Companion: Something Starting with a “S”

February 28, 2020 By Captain Maiel

The Trailokya Trilogy Companion is a continuing online manuscript that illustrates and explains some of the details of the story, helping readers to keep things straight while they travel through the series. Readers can view this live companion book on Wattpad (either using the website or an app for their phone) absolutely free.

The companion is organized in alphabetical sections for convenience. In each section, the entries are organized like a dictionary along with original artwork and excerpts from the Trailokya Friday blog posts. In the coming weeks and months the blog will feature specific entries, to give you a taste of what is available in the companion.

Sabereh. (n.) A marditavya soul; Morgentus’s stolen human wife; Baroness of Acheron.

a beautiful blond woman in an aged photograph

Image by darksouls1 on Pixabay.com

When a human soul declines, or burns down, it becomes a jiangshi, and the marditavya of a danava. If they’re lucky, they may be raised a danava themselves, but they would need to be superiorly evil, and display worth to their prince. When one comes across such an individual, they should not be taken lightly.

One such jiangshi is the Baroness of Acheron. Discovered by the baron of the pit, Sabereh was once a noblewoman of Earth. She lived during a time when the duta freely mingled with their assigns, prior to The Conflict that split the duta into two factions and opened the gates of Jahannam. Duta were then forbidden to reveal themselves to souls in Samsara without direct orders from the King or his regent. The passage of time erased them from everything but legend.

The danava took a similar line, functioning in the shadows. Into the shadows, Sabereh disappeared. Her guardian refused to give up hope, and the leaders of Zion continue the search, believing she was kidnapped against her will. The Baroness of the Pit was targeted by a duta who served as one of her husband’s advisors. Of renown beauty, Morgentus fell to obsession, slowly crossing the line with Sabereh until he raped her in her husband’s home. Fearing danger at the hands of her husband and the duta who had attacked her, she kept silent. Morgentus grew bolder, forcing her ladyship to engage with him at his command. Morgentus impregnated Sabereh and when the child was born, her husband commanded both mother and son be executed. Morgentus was turned over to duta authorities and the matter investigated. However, it was too late for Sabereh and the child.

by darksouls1 on Pixabay.com

Morgentus escaped Zion, and wandered Earth hiding from those seeking to bring him to justice. While there, he discovered the grey of Sabereh. Due to what happened to her, her sattva refused to return to Zion, who she believed knew and should have intervened. The truth was that Morgentus acted without their knowledge, manipulating and planning so that his kingdom was blind to his violence. His willful acts were not isolated incidents. This was the time of The Conflict. Throughout Samsara a dark awakening rippled through duta involved with souls. Zion was not prepared for it, or aware.

In response, Zion cast the duta out who committed crimes against souls of which they were assigned to protect. These individuals became danava and inhabited the dark prison world of Jahannam. Before Sabereh could be found by Zion’s forces, Morgentus carefully manipulated her to his side, and the pair entered Jahannam where they became the lord and lady of the Labyrinth, commanded by Prince Belial.

The child of Morgentus and Sabereh had no atman, and was destroyed for all time by the latter’s husband. Morgentus, however, put the blame wholly on Zion and promised himself revenge for the death.

Long years in Jahannam twisted Sabereh, her powers grew strangely, unlike any Jiangshi yet to come. She was gifted with the dark arts, and thus her form did not become porcine. Her craving for blood did not take control of her mind. Morgentus supplied her with all her needs and their match was peaceful between them until the day, eons later, that the Baron discovered a guardian of the Moon Order named Maiel. The old lusts returned to him, and his need to take ownership of the Moon Captain became his singular focus. Sabereh was cast to an afterthought. Thus, their relationship became bitterly strained.

Sabereh never challenged her husband, carefully choosing her battles in the shadows as their kind were wont to do. Morgentus had proven himself a vile enemy and she feared him. The Moon Guardian, however, raised her attention, clearly threatening Sabereh’s standing in Acheron should her baron win the erela. There was no reason to doubt him.

Find out more about the baroness by reading the series…

Click here to learn more about The Trailokya Trilogy, and let me know what questions you have in the comments. If you loved this article, subscribe to the blog to get more. Donate by buying a book.

From the Trailokya Trilogy Companion: Something Starting with an “A”

January 24, 2020 By Captain Maiel

Acheron, Acherites. (n.) A central province of Acheron ruled by Prince Belial and his nobility; the inhabitants of Acheron. This is where the Pit of Acheron can be found (also called the Labyrinth), and the River of Woe. Baron Morgentus rules the Labyrinth and makes the most use of the souls that fill this province. Belial hides in his broken castle on the outskirts of the ruins of a city he once ruled on Earth.

Acheron is one of the most important locations in the hellscape of Jahannam. It sits central to the rest of that dark world, and its heart serves as a prison for many wayward souls taken by the danava. The care of this facility was given to Prince Belial’s baron, Morgentus, and is called The Pit of Acheron.

The Pit has become a prison for many distinguished duta who have caught the attention of the danava. Certainly it is the goal of any marditavya or danava to control and corrupt a duta, but the efforts are not unfocused. Being at war requires strategy, and the goal is to win. Danava are of the mind that corrupting certain duta will precipitate another mass burn down. Duta, however, who are true to their charge, are quite impossible to sway. The effort takes an incredibly long time and must be accomplished with careful manipulation that reveals the flaws of the atman, which will then be leveraged to ignite the burning.

The effort of burning down duta or souls is best accomplished within the confines of the pit. Here, the imprisoned face untold hardship, caught in a seemingly endless and confusing maze, which is often dark. The calls of the marditavya and danava wandering the passages creates an eerie atmosphere. Being caught by one, the soul or duta become a food source. Repeatedly drained to their crystal, the prisoners can lose their way. The stress preys on the mind. Even the strongest of duta are believed to have their limits. Danava are willing to push until they find them.

The pit changes shape at regular intervals, so that the labyrinth is never the same at any given time. The only fixed points are the entrances/exits, the deep-cloistered cells, and the Baron’s manor at the center. The baron’s seal marks the ruins of an earthly home he stole from an ancient leader, along with that man’s wife, who became his baroness.

The entirety of Acheron is under the rule of Prince Belial. Once a seraph, he betrayed the King of Zion by committing crimes against those of which he was charged to watch over. Belial rebuilt his menagerie of fallen Aghartians, dolls as they are called in Jahannam, after his fall. He and they are housed in the broken castle that was cast into their twilight realm with him.

The landscape of Acheron resembles a dark city. Dust of the conflict lies thick all around. Deviously whimsical buildings line cobble streets. It is a grave for a bygone, decadent era.

Find out more about Acheron by reading the series…

From the Trailokya Trilogy Companion: Something Starting with a “G”

August 23, 2019 By Captain Maiel

Grigori. (n.)

(also, oath breakers.) The duta who become danava after defying their dharma. In the past, these beings committed heinous crimes against the people of Samsara whom they were charged to protect.

Last month we revisited the idea of recidia in The Trailokya Trilogy. It’s only logical that we continue forward by meeting their counterparts: the Grigori. As the definition above suggests, these beings are those who have burned down, willfully choosing to break their oaths to Zion. In all of these cases, the individual has committed serious crimes: ketu violations, rape, incest, murder, child abuse, and the like. These are the worst offenders, who can be found in Jahannam, the prison realm.

In the beginning of human society, for instance, Watchers charged with the protection of humanity chose to claim human women or men as wives and husbands, sometimes in multiple, whether by the person’s consent or otherwise, breaking their own ketus. Some duta killed humans they found fault with, but did not have the backing of the high council to meter out such punishments. Some duta even went so far as to abuse children in their care. Many fathered/mothered children with these souls, which became nephilim. All across Samsara, there were similar incidents, and this resulted in a civil war for Zion, called the Conflict of Hosts.

Until this point, there was no great rift between duta that required a incarceration of mass numbers in order to keep the rest of the duta safe, as well as the multitude of souls in their care. Each had been evolving without such concern. Certainly, there were those who decayed, but posed no real harm to another atman in their midst. They were gently cared for and nurtured until it was evident they could not be redeemed, and were left to Oblivion.

As certain souls became increasingly sentient, and duta resonances rose closer to Nirvana, conflict became inevitable. The discernment of duta was often exasperated by the will of the souls. But then, too, temptations arose to test duta, or with which they had not heretofore dealt. The atman of duta that were without flaw did not struggle to adapt to these evolutions.

In response to this new need, the king believed it far more just to both those on the side of Zion and those on the side of the conflict to have a place that would allow such resonances to freely process, but kept them apart from those they could harm. The creation of Jahannam was meant to provide safety to both, but also a route back to the higher resonances, if the grigori should rise from their trials. Nirvana saw this as another path to higher resonance, despite the massive negativity incurred by it. Some atman required more experiences than others to reach higher planes. Thus, it was deemed that Jahannam would be lesser than Samsara, despite the majority of former duta who populated the expanse. Additionally, these beings became known as danava. The souls who joined them were known as Marditavya.