Discover the worlds and characters of The Lost Road Chronicles.
This page under construction — I’ll be adding new content regularly so check back often!
Characters
- Merelin: A 16-year-old with a fiery spirit and a tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. She possesses the ability to call open the portal to Arah Byen. Main protagonist.
- Yatol: An 18-year-old Portal Guardian with a turbulent past, Yatol is much more than he seems. Strong and fiercely devoted to his people, he will stop at nothing to help Merelin achieve her goal.
- Tyhlaur: Yatol’s younger brother, 16-year-old Tyhlaur is a scout for the Arathi army. He is impetuous and cynical, and has forgotten how to trust.
- Enhyla: The Lord Master of the Guardians, Enhyla has taken up an outer watch on the war frontiers to keep track of the Ungulion army’s movements.
- Akhmar: An angelic being who appears in a sphinx-like form, Akhmar has a special bond with Yatol, who is one of the few Arathi who can see him.
- Damian: Merelin’s twin brother. Damian is intelligent, athletic, and somewhat more level-headed than his sister. He has some ability as a portal guardian, like Yatol.
- Kurtis: A young university professor and former student of Merelin’s father. He is fascinated by mythology, and is a devoted follower of his former academic adviser.
- Shan: One of Yatol’s best friends, Shan is a Guardian of Healing. Intense and high-energy, Shan rarely smiles but is almost always happy.
- Aniira: Aniira is a Shadow Guardian, or a spy for the High King of Arah Byen. She is one of Yatol’s oldest friends.
- Davhur: Merelin’s father. His disappearance four years ago is a mystery to everyone, even the people of Arah Byen. Merelin will stop at nothing to find him — and, if she can, to save him.
- Mr. Dansy: The unobtrusive owner of a convenience store in Merelin’s home town, Mr. Dansy is somehow quite familiar with the story of Merelin’s father and his disappearance.
Places in Arah Byen
The Perstaun
- The Perstaun is a desert region, wedged between the forests of the Branhau and the Laumanen. Most of the desert is marked by vast sandy sweeps, but toward the north there are cliffs and ridges of baked clay. Southward are dunes, and sparse vegetation grows at the southernmost point.
- The most prominent feature of the Perstaun is the Gorhiem Bolstoed, an Arathi fortress that was conquered by the Ungulion in the last half-century and is now used as a holding prison and a foothold in the Arathi nation.
The Branhau
- The Branhau is the name generally given to the whole southeastern region of the main Arathi continent, though technically it refers to just the forest that occupies most of the region. Many trees of the Branhau are enormously tall. Toward the north, the trees are vibrant in scent and color, but farther south everything is grey cast. Past the forest is a hilly region flanking high, desolate cliffs at the edge of the Laoth.
- The Branhau is the closest region to K’hama, so it became the focal point of the Ungulion assault, and therefore the Arathi defenses. Many outposts dot the region, creating a network of stations to allow the rapid communication of information from the outer reaches all the way to Alcalon. At one time there were also a series of forts guarding the shores of the Laoth, but they have all been destroyed.
The Laumanen
K’hama (or the Morsta Khay)
Alcalon
The Arathi Language
The Arathi language is — like most con-langs — a work in progress. It is meant to have a sort of phonetic kinship with ancient Hebrew and Arabic. Like Hebrew, Arathi uses the construct form where we would use “of” (as in, “words of doubt” and indefinite possession, like “a son of a man,” not definite or personal possession, like “words of mine” or “a son of mine”). Say you have a phrase like, “the music of the night.” In a Latin-based language, “night” would be put in the genitive. But in a language like Hebrew, you would put “music” into a construct form. It’s basically a grammatical distinction between saying, “(The music of) the night” or “The music (of the night).” In Arathi, personal possession is indicated by a suffixed pronoun — for instance, “my gift” would be nakhe’vi (here using the apostrophe just to mark the pronoun — it would be written simply nakhevi in Arathi). There is no independent pronoun “me” which could be used in forming a construct.
Another characteristic of Arathi is that it doesn’t use just singular and plural, like we do, but singular, plural, and general or collective plural. So, for instance, preve means “word.” The plural, previr, means “words.” But the collective plural, prevahl, means a collection of words, or a language as a whole.
Not that any of this is particularly useful information…but hey. You get what you pay for.