Descendants

Descendants

                “No, you can’t be descended from Dytja!” exclaimed Jarrod. He was starting to get really, really frustrated.

                “But we are!” responded Antonia. “The records prove it, all the way down from out founder who was a child of Dytja herself!”

                “Listen carefully: she can’t have been Dytja’s child because Dytja cannot bear children. Not only because she’s not human, but because whatever-you-want-to-call-what-she-is do not breed. She has said as much countless times, and we believe her because she has never bedded or even bloody flirted with anyone. Stories that say otherwise have always combined her with some other figure,” repeated Jarrod.

                Jarrod was a Seeker of Dytja. He was in his mid-thirties, and was a legend collector – intimately familiar with all the stories the western Seekers had discovered. He was also getting very irritated. Those who claimed descent from Dytja were actually surprisingly common, although they regularly got the timeframe wrong or were otherwise easily disproven. Only a couple had been hard to debunk, but the Seekers had done so. Descendants of Dytja would be, well… A great discovery for the Seekers, on par or better than the greatest stories.

                This group, however, were definitely not. Their ‘founder’ came out of nowhere forty years after Dytja had passed through. She had pretended descent to gain social prestige, but had eventually been caught creating fake blue blood for one of her children – and subsequently it was discovered that she had similarly cheated when tested herself.

                After being caught she had fled to relative anonymity, although some still believed her – some even went with her into seclusion. She continued to claim descent and ensured that her children would, and her children’s children… Over several hundred years the constant claims had become accepted despite the blatancy of the initial lies.

                “Then why are we such great warriors?” asked Antonia. The ‘Blood of Dytja’, as they called themselves, was a strange blend of army and religious group which consisted solely of descendants of their founder, and their spouses. She had created the organisation to protect herself and to exert control over the village she had hidden in; with the earliest members being ‘honoured’ with marriages to her many children.

                “We’ve been over this as well. You’re not. None of your champions were descendants of your founder, they just married into your group. Your greatest champion today couldn’t defeat me yesterday, and I’m not even trained for battle,” replied Jarrod. It was a bit of a lie – most of the Seekers knew a lot about fighting, especially those that strayed far from the caravan such as Jarrod. It was important that they be able to defend themselves – some lands in which they travelled were populated by none but monsters.

Antonia winced at the mention of the champion’s defeat. She had been watching the battle herself. Umber the Strong had married into the Blood of Dytja after winning their grand tournament – he had received the honour of marrying the direct eldest descendant. He was an incredible warrior in skill as well as strength, yet Jarrod had won out in what was supposed to be a show fight by using techniques no-one watching had ever seen before.

“You’ll not beat him again!” responded Antonia.

“I don’t intend to fight him again. But I do have one question: why do you refute this?” asked Jarrod, pointing at a series of documents he had brought. They were copies of accounts from the surrounding lands, of a second visit Dytja had paid to the region. The reason she had visited? Because the Blood of Dytja were claiming to be her descendants. She came to refute the claim.

“They are lies!” said Antonia angrily.

“A couple of those are statements from members of the Blood, including the reigning ‘Core Descendant’. Stating that they met with Dytja, and that she told them quite explicitly that she could not have born their founder as she was completely barren. Admittedly the ones from the Blood state that she must have been lying (and one claims that she can’t actually be Dytja, though the rest are a little more wise as she irrefutably proved herself at some point); but it is very definitely an event that happened.

“Yet the current stand of the Blood of Dytja is, for some reason, that this well-documented event never occurred. I really fail to understand why you constantly wish to retcon your own history – I can understand claiming your founder never faked her blood and that it was always red despite the contrary evidence, since you can’t allow her to be a charlatan, but changing stance… and… Argh. Deliberate falsification! Legends I can understand, but this is too much,” rambled Jarrod. He was only trying because he felt somewhat bad about what the Seekers planned to do if the Blood would not retract their claims.

“What does ‘retcon’ mean?” asked Antonia, curious.

“Huh, oh, it’s a Dytja word. It means ‘change’, but only in reference to facts being changed after they have been one particular way, like, say, if I wrote down that my hair is black today, then went back and wrote that it was blue. Except the idea is to make everyone believe the story, so it may as well have been blue and most people think it really was. We’re pretty sure the idea is that in fully made up stories you can ‘retcon’ at will, and that story may as well have always been told that way, or some such,” ranted Jarrod. “I’m also surprised at how… Little you know of Dytja.”

“We’re willing to learn. We’re happy to learn, actually. Any knowledge about our great ancestor is worthwhile knowledge!” said Antonia, eager to move to any other subject.

Jarrod grimaced. “I’ll have a copy of our tales sent here by courier,” Jarrod said. “I’m done here, and I have to catch up to my Seeker group. I’ve spent two years around here getting to the bottom of all this.”

“You should have just gone with what we said! It’s definitely the truth!” said Antonia.

“… I’m getting out of here.”

Jarrod did, however, have one more task to complete before setting off after the caravan he (usually) called home. Firstly, he had to marry the lovely librarian chap he’d met while doing research (he was top bloke and really damn cute).

The second thing he had to do was organise the mass copying and release of all the evidence he had collected – how the founder of the Blood of Dytja had been caught faking blue blood, the differences between versions of the official story put out by the Blood, Dytja’s return visit to the area with the specific aim of squashing the Blood’s claims, and a large number of other minor discrepancies.

It was enough to ruin the name of the Blood for another few hundred years, at least. Although Jarrod was pretty sure that they’d managed to wriggle their way back into respectability again, eventually. Organisations like the Blood were always good at things like that.