temporaldecay:
The first of the line is the unnamed seadweller that serves as narrator of the second chapter of Flotsam, and several of his descendants appear throughout Wreckstuck and Distrait.
Their ‘surname’ is Ventor, which… has a rather convoluted meaning. In the constellation Delphinus, Alpha and Beta Delphini are named “Sualocin and Rotanev" in the 1814 Palermo catalogue. Eventually, it was discovered that Niccolò Cacciatore, an Italian astronomer, named the stars after the translated, latinized meaning of his name: “Nicolas Hunter" became “Nicolaus Venator". Ventor is a corruption of Venator. It has to do with their overall hunting theme.
The unnamed troll from Flotsam lacked a surname, but was called Nervik, a corruption of Nerrivik, the Inuit goddess of hunting and the sea. A few of his descendants that sometimes pop up from time to time, are Kimuun, a corruption of Kim-un Kamuy, the Ainu god of bears and mountains, Rehpun, a corruption of Repun Kamuy, the Ainu god of the sea and whales, and lastly Damian, which means "tamer”.
In Wreckstuck: Nervik was the first troll Alilah/Condesce ever met, Kimuun was the seadweller that tricked Psii intro slavery and often deemed eccentric for being one of the few seadwellers that ever established their main hives deep in the continent, away from the sea, Rehpun, like Dualscar, was tasked with pacifying the seas and was murdered by Garfit when he tried courting Dualscar as a kismesis, Damian is tasked with hunting lusus for Gl’bgolyb before Feferi and Eridan take over the job.
In Distrait: Nervik Ventor was a treacherous warlord who tried to betray the First Empress and was murdered by Alston Imoogi, Kimuun Ventor was again Psii’s seadweller master but he wasn’t the one who originally made Psii into a slave (he was murdered on Taniwa Imoogi’s orders, Garfit Imoogi’s direct Ancestor, suspected of conspiring against the Empress), Rehpun Ventor who like Dualscar in this verse was tasked with hunting lusii to feed Gl’bgolyb, was likewise murdered by Garfit Imoogi (not out of misplaced jealousy like in Wreckstuck, however, but because he intended to implicate Dualscar in a ploy, Dualscar never found out about it and no one found any evidence to point at Garfit), Damian Ventor is the current head of the taskforce in charge of feeding Gl’bgolyb, post Feferi’s coronation, and so far his fate is up in the air, though he’s decidedly unhappy with the changes made to the Empire under Feferi’s reign.
The Imoogi, if you haven’t noticed, have a long-standing feud against the Ventor, because the Ventor are fickle, often treacherous, too ambitious for their own good and generally rude and unpleasant. The Ventor have no idea that the Imoogi are out for their blood, because the Imoogi tend to be very good at killing people without leaving pesky trails, and because unlike many other trolls, the Imoogi keep scrupulous records of their enemies and their descendants, since they believe inheritance between Ancestors and Descendants defines a troll’s personality.
Their lusus is a chimera of bear and dolphin, a nod to their names and the relation to dolphins, whales and bears in them.
Their sign is ✣ which I use as a typographic shortcut to these four different signs, since they all relate to them somehow: the Ventor have strong connections to the colors silver and white, their temperaments tend to be quite mercurial and fickle, they are all naturally ambitious and wishing to expand in all directions. The Christianity symbolism was originally tied down to the fact I first envisioned them as deeply religious folk that “evangelized" those under their power, or tried to, but I ended up dropping that idea and assigning it to a different bloodline instead.
I’m doing a Fantroll Meme over at my main blog, I’ll repost the Distrait relevant bits here. Feel free to drop questions over there, if you want. 0w0