Nemnu Ula
Nemnu Ula is known by many names: in life, as Nemnu Jibirgelti, poetically as The Alabaster Lady, The Wellspring, or The Grey Carver, and disparagingly as The Crone. Nemnu is a saint who awakened almost five hundred years ago and holds enormous political and religious power over much of southern Khutu and, indeed, is well-known throughout the Omban successor states. Her home has been at Nemnosti for nearly as long, where She is served by a variety of mystics, priests, and other attendants. She runs a school for Acolytes (alelu) who are instructed in Her Courses (lelutte) for a year or more, usually as youth, some of whom remain at Nemnosti, but many others of whom go on to live elsewhere. Along with Her wife Elujen (an Ancestor) and various descendants, She continues to play a powerful role in the lives of thousands.
Contents
Character
Our Lady is known for Her fierce loyalty and firmness of opinion, to the point of intransigence. This is not to say that She is conservative - quite the opposite, considering Her age, She is open-minded and thoughtful. But once She has decided on a course of action, or an opinion of a person, it can be hard to shake Her from it. And that is much to the good for Her many acolytes, for having been trusted with Her grace, she is staunch in support of them. Great losses or disappointments may cause Her to go silent for some period, reflecting on life and its vagaries.
Nemnu is a scholar and intellectual first, given to philosophical, mystical, and theological musings (which have been compiled in Her Courses). She is deeply curious and asks many questions of those around Her, even if these are seen as awkward, gruff, or abrasive sometimes. She enjoys teaching and sharing Her knowledge, but is unfond of large crowds and groups of adherents, preferring simpler and smaller groups. Like many saints, but perhaps more than most, She is given to talking about the past without much regard to the fact that most today have not shared Her experiences.
History
Much of the material on Nemnu's life, Awakening, and first centuries of sainthood is excerpted from the Life of Nemnu Ula, Grey Carver of Nemnosti, written by Muduga Nemni in 531 IE, supplemented by other sources. For more recent material, the Biography of Ajemika Osper Nemni, compiled in 739 IE, among other texts, has been very useful. As with all biographical material on Nemnu Ula, it is filtered through the perceptions of Nemnu Herself as well as various Ancestors.
Personhood (205 - 278)
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Nemnu of the Jibirgelti was born to an impoverished branch of a common lineage of stonecutters in the village of Piltur what is now the northern part of Khutu in or around 205 I.E, to Garang of the Jibirgelti and his second wife Gukra Sopori. Around 212 she was apprenticed as a stonecutter to her older brother Husuf, who was from her father's first marriage. Around 219 her father died, and her brother, along with the lineage elders, sent Nemnu to the northern city of Ardukh to serve as a fomba corvee labourer for a year building new walls for the Academy that had recently been founded there.
At this period, the mystics had relatively strong control over the use of fos - there were manifests, of course, but they were seen as deviant, outside the social order, and dangerous if uncontrolled. The Academy at Ardukh was at that time very much a junior academy to the great Academy at Dundures and indeed, that at Omba. The fomba were not really permitted to learn magic, but Nemnu immediately saw a different path forward for herself. She began to get herself assigned to tasks where she knew classes would be taking place nearby, and began to learn alongside the actual students. Eventually, matters came to a head, near the end of her period of servitude. She was discovered, but was able to demonstrate a high level of proficiency in tapping Source before the headmistress at the time, Aifir Fovramna, who immediately took Nemnu on as her personal apprentice.
That situation remained for three more years, during which time Nemnu distinguished herself as one of the best pupils of the Academy while working with Aifir. But the Jibirgelti lineage elders were not altogether happy that Nemnu, as opposed to one of the family's more esteemed children, was the chosen apprentice. Eventually, they arranged a marriage for her, and in 223 I.E. she was brought home to Piltur to be married to Visku Sopori, a nephew of her mother (and thus, her cousin). Her husband was not unkind, but also did not see much point in her continuing her education. As Nemnu would later learn, part of the condition of her dowry was that she not continue her training.
In time, Visku and Nemnu had a child, a daughter, Haluma. Nemnu increasingly had come to feel imprisoned by her situation. She was labelled by the Sopori lineage as unfeeling and cold towards both her husband and her daughter. Over time, the new family became increasingly distant, and in 231 IE, when Haluma was just five, Nemnu and Visku divorced. The Sopori lineage would only accept the divorce if Haluma remained with her own lineage. Nemnu would not see her daughter more than once or twice a year throughout her childhood, which was always a matter of great regret.
Nemnu moved to Ardukh, where she took a position at the Academy, which was growing rapidly at the time. Two events were simultaneously feeding demand for mystics at the time: the conquest of Malfan, and the suppression of the Hulti throughout the remainder of the Empire. Nemnu focused her magic during this period on the manipulation of earth and stone for fortifications and defense. She would often hold lectures standing atop walls she herself had built as a labourer decades earlier. In 242, the Battle of Burafa saw the Omban armies victorious over the Hulti noble lineages around the city of Ivos, but with the loss of two of her beloved students in that battle. Additionally, Nemnu had grown tired of lecturing, which she found taxing as she did not greatly enjoy being stared at by large groups of students, and so she left her position. She returned to Piltur to reconcile with her daughter, who was by this point a woman of seventeen, a reconciliation that was only partly successful.
Nemnu spent much of the 240s in the city of Omba, working as the house mystic for an important folk lineage, the Mopisters. She also began writing a book about earth and stone, whose manuscript is now lost. Around this time she also met a woman, Elujen Riponomai, who was an administrator for the Mopister estates and a minor mystic in her own right, and they fell in love. Although Elujen did not always understand Nemnu's obsessions, they came to build a partnership for one another, purchasing a home in Omba, which was unusual at the time for two unmarried women. "Nem and Jen" came to be understood by the Mopisters and their circle as an unbreakable pair, and highly valued members of the estate. Around this time, Nemnu began to supplement their income by taking on occasional apprentices at this time, mostly drawn from the children of the Omban elite, teaching some magic, along with history and languages. While not the best pupils, these students did provide access to a network of some privilege. Nemnu and Elujen also had a child together during this period, Osper (born in 249), whose birth mother was Elujen but whose birth father has never been revealed. Nemnu adopted Osper as her own and they raised him jointly. This situation persisted quite happily for many years.
By 265, with Osper reaching adulthood and Nemnu well into middle age, she sent Osper to study at her old alma mater in Ardukh, and then she and Elujen travelled to Piltur to reestablish ties with the Jibirgelti lineage. By this point, Nemnu was regarded as the strange old auntie who had left years ago for a life in the big city, and the Jibirgelti were welcoming but had little in common. Haluma, by this time almost forty, was married to a hengi, divorced, and had three children of her own. Mother and daughter were simply too different at this point to be anything other than cordial. Nemnu's ex-husband Visku was long since remarried and had abandoned any interest in an ongoing relationship, to everyone's mutual agreement.
In her later years, Nemnu and Elujen travelled to the great Academy at Dundures in Basai, where she found a new focus in magical theory and especially the limits of Source. These studies resulted in a book, Anchors, Eddies, and Lodestones, which she lectured from in 271, and some of which would eventually find its way into her Courses. In 272-3, friends at the Academy encouraged Nemnu to contest the Chancellorship at the time in the magical duel form that is still the means by which leadership is decided in Dundures. In those days, of course, before the end of Empire, the role of Chancellor was not as political as it is now in Basai, but nonetheless, Nemnu had little interest in that role, and declined. She and Elujen left Dundures soon afterwards, returning to their small house in Omba. There, Nemnu had begun work on a final book, on the topic of possession and the self, but this was never completed before she died in 278 at the age of 73. Her awakening as a saint shortly thereafter changed the course of her existence entirely.
Awakening and Early Sainthood (278 - 351)
The Awakening of Nemnu Ula in 278 was a matter of some interest in the Imperial City, because Nemnu (and Elujen) had had so many connections to the Omban elite over their decades of living and teaching among the nobility there. Almost immediately, though, this attention became far too much for Nemnu to bear, causing Her to spend much of 279-80 in near-utter silence, speaking only to Elujen. It soon became clear to Elujen that her wife was not suited for a saintly life surrounded by Imperial politics and urban chaos. Elujen sought out a place for building a true ulajeta (cloister) far enough away from the din, and soon found a site: the Pardopasu, the upper part of the Pasu river valley high in the hills of southwestern Khutu. This site would soon become Nemnosti, founded officially in 284 with the laying of the foundations for the great temple.
The Nemni lineage in its early incarnation in Khutu consisted primarily of Elujen, their son Osper, a couple of former apprentices and students from Omba and Ardukh, and a small cohort of Voices. Osper was the first hengi of the lineage, although this did not mean much initially. When Nemnu arrived, southwestern Khutu was still full of non-Omban country folk, including the ancestors of the Ravre, as well as several lineages of Jegrude conscript labourers brought over a century before to the area. The great Temple of the Hand in Naftusa and the reverent rituals at Degh Ekorre were in place, but the Pasu valley was in large part ungoverned other than by the noble lineages who farmed and mined in the area. This strangeness and isolation were regarded by Nemnu and Elujen as an enormous positive. Nemnu quickly developed good, if sometimes strange, relations with the hill tribes, and always felt warmly towards them. She also learned about the magic of sigillants, which led Her to return to the topic of stone which had motivated Her early work.
Elujen began building a financial and social network using their decades of Omban contacts. Among the early supporters, a saint from Onighus, Borgegus Ula, was among the most valuable allies, cementing a friendship that has lasted for centuries. Borgegus, a much more urbane and well-networked saint, was able to build support for the newcomer, and Nemnosti began to grow. Over several years, Elujen's work established the economic foundation of Nemnosti in its alabaster quarries and its temple income. Her death in 291 IE marked a major transition although Nemnu continued to speak to her daily through Her Voices.
While the final decades of Empire under the Tirumfegla dynasty were chaotic for many, life at Nemnosti was only minimally affected. Osper had died fairly young in 302 IE, but his son Elof ruled as hengi for nearly a half-century thereafter, helping the lineage transition from Omban to Khutuan governance. Significantly, the movement of Eluli Ula from Omba to Onighus in 334 and His establishment as Emperor in 338 solidified the role of saints in Khutuan life, and Nemnu's ally Borgegus played a major role in that. Nemnu came to be seen as an intellectual and philosopher, largely harmless but deserving of deep respect. Her cult came to be sought out by knowledge-seekers and Voices of a more thoughtful bent. However, it also became clear that the end of Empire had been profoundly disruptive to the politics of the region, and conflict with neighbours would come to characterize much of the following century.
The Emperors' Wars (351 - 415)
The Emperors' Wars, as they were called at the time, or simply the Khutu-Taizian wars, brought many changes to Nemnosti. Nemnu, then as now, had little concern for politics, but met with Eluli Ula at the beginning of the war, and He convinced Her that the defense of Khutu was in the best interest of all saints. It was just before or during the first war, from 351-354, that many of the great fortifications of the area were built or rebuilt: Vulusilt, Gil Pirtu, and Gil Hargush, under Nemnu's supervision. Nemnu's expertise in stonework and the prowess of Her apprentices at the time made the expertise of Nemnosti crucial to the success in that war. Because the great mountain Momichas is roughly the border between the two countries, great attention was paid to the borderlands at the west of the province, although no invasion came in that direction. Nemnu's reputation as an expert on fortification was historical (more than a century earlier) but not quite forgotten.
The second war, though much briefer, saw real fighting in The Ghengom and almost to Nemnosti itself, as the Pretender's forces occupied the hill country, coming down through Musune. While the war was started by Eluli Ula and essentially ended in a stalemate, great sorrow came to the region, and both Gil Pirtu and Gil Hargush, the great forts of Naftusa Province, were razed and abandoned. Nemnu's sorrow was immense, and She went silent for three years after the second war at the loss of many friends and allies, reviving only during the Year of the Twin Comets in 418.
Later Years (415 - 612)
One unexpected side effect of the war was that Nemnu and Nemnosti came to much greater prominence, which inspired many to seek out membership in the Nemni lineage and/or Her own special training in magic. Nemnu had always felt a strong pull towards teaching others. But She was always reluctant to teach many students directly Herself - throngs of admirers and adherents in one place always caused Her grief. So in 427, the first class of Acolytes was convened, in place of earlier, much less formal arrangements. Nemnu was more than a figurehead or an invisible master, but most of the teaching of what would become Her Courses took place through Her intermediaries. Shortly after acolytes were admitted came Eluli's Slumber (437-441), and Nemnu, especially through Her early acolytes and allies in Onighus, came to take on a much more significant role in Khutu's politics. The presence of those early acolytes in Khutu's governance gave Nemnu even more visibility.
The Great Purge of 534 affected Nemnu and Nemnosti insofar as it affected all saints to have the threat of Hulti enemies removed from the region. There had always been Hulti in The Ghengom and The Turtu, few in number but present, and the Purge eliminated that threat. Nemnu has never spoken much about Her role in that time but it is clear that She was concerned about the Hulti launching an attack on Nemnosti.
Shortly after the Purge, around 539, the town of Lurusiru and the temple of Lurusiru Osti were both abandoned and the temple destroyed. We know that Lurusiru Ula was a friend of Nemnu, a new saint who had been in the area for some decades since awakening. There are many stories told of that time but She has never spoken much of it. What we know is that after the destruction of Lurusiru Osti, Nemnu entered another great period of grief, this one lasting almost three years.
To the Present (612 - 768)
For centuries since Her Awakening, Nemnu had not paid much attention to Her biological family or Her descendants through Her daughter, Haluma. However, in the mid-seventh century, Sopori lineage members from near Ardukh, knowing their esteemed ancestor's importance, began to assert this connection forcefully, and one of them, Lovos, declared himself the hengi of the Halunemni lineage in 638. This did not bother Nemnu much except to note it, but late in the century, when Lovos' granddaughter Maigharinda "The Huntress" moved the lineage to Naftusa, this sparked Her interest far more vigorously. Despite Her efforts to run them off or dissuade them, Nemnu's efforts hardened the Halunemnis' resolve.
The weakening of the Basaian fos crops in the seventh century, culminating in the great fos blight of 649-651 (and beyond) gave Nemnu cause for concern. What would happen, She reasoned, if fos disappeared entirely? Her research, then centuries-old, on theories of Source, and Her book Anchors, Eddies, and Lodestones, became newly relevant to many mystics. For Nemnu Herself, though, the answer lay in stone - the magic of sigillants, which She believed could be reconciled with fos magic. She took new interest in the Ravre (who had always been akin to Her Heart) and began a research program incorporating their work into Her own. This work is very much ongoing to the present day. However, the fos rush brought on by the discovery of new crops in Ashnabis has mitigated the urgency of this work.
The assassination of Malung Ula in 722 sent ripples through the network of saints of Khutu and truly, in countries beyond that. While Malung was certainly not the first saint to be killed, the manner in which it was done and the lack of any perpetrator to be punished brought Nemnu's attention to the matter. Nemnu had been close to Malung, who was born in southern Khutu and who had died in the Khutu-Taizian wars, and was involved in the investigation of His death. Many names circulated, and still circulate, about that event, which shall not be written here. On the Grey Carver personally, the effect of the assassination was to lead Her to redouble Her support for the stoneguards of Nemnosti, and to become newly vigorous in the activities of saints in Khutu.
A more recent sadness was the Daghuri Plague of 740-1, which turned many of Nemnu's most beloved living allies to revenants or Ancestors, with as many as one in ten at Nemnosti killed by that dire disease. Nemnu turned all Her resources to finding treatments, but ultimately, none was forthcoming until the disease ran its course. This led Her to a final period of stillness, lasting a year or so, to manage the challenge of this modern age.
