Music: A Family and a Desert

   "Desert Symphony" by the PianoGuys.

 

  

     This song, ever since I listened to it a few weeks ago, has held a lot of meaning for me in the way of story. But, to warn you, it has a lot of backstory before I can get to what it is that I actually enjoy about it (beyond that it's just a pretty song, of course) so I hope you're comfortable.

     A while ago, my best friend, Penny, came up with an alternative storyline for her characters Nuridarr Vhander and Tara Benson. It was just one little tweak, but it was enough to send massive ripples through the entire sequence of events in the original storyline. It was quickly named the Deviant Storyline, and has remained as such since.

    In this Deviant Storyline, Tara Benson gets stuck on this planet called Gogam. (This is a sci-fi setting, just FYI.) In the original, she was soon rescued from this planet by her brother, Luke, but not without the help of a local by the name of Nuridarr. What changed between the original and the deviant was that she didn't get rescued. Luke was unable to locate her and remove her from Gogam.

    To understand why this is such a bad thing, you need to know about Gogam.

    In this galaxy, the Zephron Galaxy, there are quite a few planets, not many of which whose names I recall, but of them all, Gogam is decidedly the worst. It is a desert planet, filled with people who are the living embodiment of survival of the fittest. Another suitable label would be, "kill or be killed". And there is a lot of killing on Gogam. They are a rough, harsh people who have no moral issues with knocking off anyone who keeps them from reaching their goal.

    You see why Tara's being stuck here is such a problem, yes? There aren't a lot of people who weren't born on Gogam that can go to Gogam and remain intact, either physically or psychologically. It gets in your head and tears you apart, whether you try and fight it or not.

   

    Tara could have well and truly been dead within a few months time or less without the intervention of Nuridarr. The best metaphor for them would be that opposites attract, and they took that to the extreme. At least, in the original storyline.

    In the deviant, though, Tara became quite a bit more Gogamian that she otherwise would've been over the following nine years. But that isn't the end of the story. Not yet, anyways.

    Now I have to back it up again to the original storyline and tell you about the Schaefe family, all of whom are my characters. 

  A short explanation for each family member:

  Novarr Schaefe - Bounty hunter, good friend of Luke Benson, and quite the imperturbable fellow.

  Sarris Nadir - Gogamian, originally, but got off the planet and became a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior. She struggles with her heritage a lot and is (unspoken) best friends with Tara Benson, who is much her opposite in many ways. My oldest, most developed character to date.

  Ruusan Dekker - Ruu was adopted into the Schaefe family when she was just a few months old. She has an incredibly long back-and-forward story that we won't get into right now, but she has one of the biggest hearts you can imagine and worked as an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic (ERTP) on Sinjaro Kahn for a handful of years.

  Jaydn Schaefe - Jade is not a birth daughter of Novarr and Sarris either. She is Gogamian and was adopted at the age of five. Originally, I'd been very excited to see what her character would become, but she spiraled downward very quickly in recent months. I finally killed her to end all of our misery, and her unanticipated antagonistic side has been a weight on not only my shoulders, but of my characters, Penny, and her characters.

    Right. Now that you've got all that, let's focus on Jaydn. She is one of my greatest regrets, not just in a character, but in that she revealed a lot of personal details to me about myself while on her path of darkness. Anyways. Penny and I, and both of our characters never liked the way it had ended with her.

    So we decided to give her a second chance in this deviant storyline with Tara and Nuridarr. We figured that being raised in familiar terrain, and being instilled from a younger age with a lot of important, moral qualities would help her turn out for the better in the end.

    And thus far, it has worked. Jaydn has been incredibly happy with Tara and Nur, reaching a degree that I never found within her in the original storyline.

     Now I can explain about this song. "Desert Symphony" by the PianoGuys. The first time I listened to it, I didn't click too much with it. I liked it a lot, yes, but it took hearing the title and connecting that "Desert" with Gogam to see the Vhander family with this song.

The soft beginning is reminiscent of just Nuridarr and Tara, relying on each other for strength and support as they live the life of bandits, constantly running and hiding from Gogamians seeking to kill Nuridarr. (He betrayed his tribe, you see, to protect Tara, and Gogamians never take betrayal well. Stubborn brutes, that lot.)

     As the music grows and swells, Jaydn joins them and, though she is still young, both in body and in heart, she combines her love and her strength with theirs. Their love for each other as a family is steadfast and unyielding, despite the challenges that face them, despite the dangers that chase them.

     And their love remains as it has been from the beginning as they search for a way to leave Gogam, a way to leave the constant wariness and fear to a place that is safer. It may be a place that Nuridarr -- and Jade -- know nothing about, but they went through the hell that is Gogam together, as a family, and survived. What more can the galaxy offer to attempt to tear them apart?

...I apologize. Words run away with me at times, but I had to attempt to capture what comes to mind when I listen to this song. Not so much the struggles they endured, but how their bonds to each other strengthened with every passing day together.

With that, I shall close. Kudos to the Piano Guys for another amazing song and I hoped you enjoyed this brief glimpse at one of the multitude of worlds that I have characters within.

Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.