The Great Curve

The Great Curve is the ninth installment of A Better Place, a series of works inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, taking place years prior to the events of Watercourse Way. As to fulfill his duty as a Giishkaatig, Migizi starts his journeys through every corner of Talamh Dieu, to not only defend the land from any beasts and creatures that threaten others, but to also hopefully find some new techniques to assist his clan in its ultimate goal. Having to take cover from an upcoming sandstorm, however, Migizi encounters a half-elf named Zetian Muhtar also trying to find cover, herself on a quest of her own to learn and train with others. After some disagreements between the two, however, they quickly find themselves in an uneasy alliance against two different foes that threaten each of them in different ways.

The Great Curve can be read here.

The above image was drawn by Hinomaru, whose online portfolio can be found here.

The Great Curve was named after the Talking Heads song of the same name. It was initially named Listening Wind after another song by Talking Heads, but I don't recall the specific reason why I elected to change the work's name.

As of this writing, Zetian is currently my player character for my real-life campaign, as written about many months ago in the notes for Holidays In The Sun. Had I not committed a specific order for the stories prior to her creation, I likely would've released her own story ahead of anybody else's. In any case, she's finally here. The above image was one of two finalists to potentially represent her as a token, with the other image, seen here as drawn by yahiro, being rejected for appearing too young.

Zetian was named after Wu Zetian, one of few female heads of state in China's multi-millennia history, and the only woman to become Emperor in her own right; I had also strongly considered naming her Jingu, after the Japanese empress of the same name, but I eventually decided to make my monk more closely inspired by traditional Chinese and Uyghur culture. Her surname, Muhtar, was taken from a list of common Uyghur surnames as to reflect her spirituality, while her temple, Huaisheng, was named after the Huaisheng Mosque, itself the oldest known mosque in China (and possibly one of the single oldest mosques human history). Zetian's older brother, Taizong, was named after I accidentally misread the name of Wu Zetian's father; while his "proper" name is Li Shimin, with Taizong being a title, I had used "Taizong" several times in the real-life campaign, and I had gotten too used to the name to change it. Internally, I named Zetian's still-living father as Shimin, while her late mother is named Cixi, after another one of few female heads of state in Chinese history. Zetian's own martial art, The Way of the Intercepting Fist, was directly inspired by Bruce Lee's personal martial art, Jeet Kune Do.

As an aside note, while rolling for Zetian's various traits, I accidentally used the values for half-orcs to calculate her height, and as a result, Zetian's final height inadvertently came out to 73 inches (approximately 186 centimetres). Amused by this error, I chose not to re-roll for her height, making Zetian one of the tallest characters in this series (being tied with Migizi in height, with only Saeros and Ravana being taller), alongside the tallest woman. Zetian herself also started off as a run-of-the-mill human, but the prodding of my friends in the real-life campaign, she eventually became a half-elf to differentiate her from Silifrey and to take advantage of D&D's deep lore.