All-Patron Reward: Evolution of Demons of the Past 2: Jearsen and Varan

Diorre Jearsen appears only for the first few chapters of Demons of the Past: Revelation, and has a single viewpoint chapter. Yet it is no exaggeration to say that she casts a longer shadow than any other character of Varan's past, aside from the mythical figure of Torline himself. 

Sasham Varan, the main character, is perhaps most defined by his relationships to those around him. Left to himself, he is an exemplary officer and a loyal citizen of the Empire. Thrust into events that shatter his worldview, he becomes something much greater than he could ever have been otherwise. 

These two characters have a longer history than is evident in the final version of Demons of the Past – specifically in that they had many, many more chapters together than we see in the final version. 

The original, first draft of Demons of the Past was simply titled Psionic!, and while I had even then a general outline of what was to come, many of the pieces had not yet been assembled. The original version of the Reborn Empire was much nastier inherently than the final version – one might imagine something like the Mirror universe from Star Trek and not be far off. Varan was a good officer in that version, but that made him rather less a good man, at least at first. 

That was originally my intent; part of the point of the story arc was to have Varan realize how terrible his own civilization was, and I was torn between having him save it or destroy it in order to rebuild something better. 

I decided, instead, to make the Empire something that was, at least in concept and outward appearance, worthy of officers like Sasham Varan, something worth serving and protecting. Partly this was for the same reason that I, much later, decided to change the secret of Moonshade Hollow in Phoenix in Shadow from being a dark, grim fantasy kingdom reminiscent of AD&D's Ravenloft setting, to being a place of shining perfection with a very hidden secret. It provided more opportunities for characters to be confused and taken aback by the contradictions and mysteries. 

I also decided (at that point) that rather than start with Varan as a commander of a ship, I'd begin when he was much younger. The next few drafts of what became Demons of the Past started with Sasham Varan's entry into the Winter Survival training course on Wyllas, where he would meet up with people who would become friends or rivals and enemies. As a member of the Mada (Navy) on a Guardsman (Marine) base, he was subjected to hazing, the first to do so being Dior(re) Jearsen. 

Jearsen was always the recruiting-poster image: tall, wide-shouldered, handsome, strong. What Jearsen wasn't always was male. Jearsen, like the Eönwyl, changed sex multiple times. He or she was always Varan's roommate, always the more-experienced warrior who taught Varan to open up and take himself just a little less seriously, and the one that protected him when possible. Romance between them switched on and off in my head, and not always parallel to the sex change. There were at least two times I was considering a romance between a male Jearsen and Varan (one of those times, I was considering making Varan a woman). 

The romance, though, was later in the career – that much I was sure of. The two of them just never would NOTICE the attraction during their academy days, and afterwards they spent years seeing each other only infrequently. The important part was to give Varan a few people that solidified his past – Jearsen, Sergeant Helkoth, Canta, Morno, and Taelin (though Taelin didn't come into focus until later – and I'll discuss him in the third entry)

In the final version, of course, we start twenty years down the road, with Varan an established, respected officer happening to be assigned to the same place Jearsen is, and at that point renewing their acquaintance. That was because, after much soul-searching, I realized that it took FAAAAAAR too long for the book to get to the actual point with the background. Background chapters were written that included not just the Winter Survival class, but events in Varan's life that happened later, such as his assignment as liason to Ptial and involvement in both the Uralian Conflict and Ghek'nan Extermination. By the time it was all written, there were probably over 60,000 words of background before we get to the point that Tangia station is attacked. 

I had to face the fact that all of those words simply didn't belong in the main book. It was one of the harder writing decisions that I've ever made; I loved some of those pieces. 

But as I continued the trilogy, I realized that those words still weren't wasted. They gave me some depth to the characters – a real past, one that I could recall and have the other characters recall in ways that would be authentic, because I really did know what happened there. I wasn't inventing some reference; the interactions of those characters in those situations really did happen. 

Of course, that did give me, as an author, an advantage – or perhaps disadvantage – with respect to the readers. I knew Jearsen well. When she dies, the impact was pretty strong for me – because of the weight of history she and Varan shared. In the book as published, I tried to get some of that across in the early chapters, but I'm never sure it succeeded. To me, Jearsen's death is a tragic loss and a wrenching one, of someone that Varan's known for two decades, who's shared laughs and tears with him many, many times. For a reader that doesn't connect, Jearsen may just seem to be a near-faceless plot device, a temporary friend and romance created to die in order to motivate the hero. 

To an extent, of course, that's true; I always knew Jearsen was going to die, and how he or she was going to die – that the Zchorada (originally called Doradans) were going to kill her/him in front of Varan. But by the time I pulled the trigger, so to speak, Diorre was far from faceless to me, and his-later-her death was not an easy one to write. 

That scene – the barricade in the corridor and the battle that gets both Tels and Jearsen killed and almost breaks Varan – is one of the oldest surviving pieces of the story. Some of the lines in that section haven't changed for about 40 years. 

That loss stays with Varan a long time. Jearsen remains one of his touchstones, one of the things that makes Varan who he is; not just a friend or lover, but a symbol, the symbol of both what Varan aspired to be, and also what he aspired to protect. He doesn't really deal fully with her death until around the middle of Revolution, and never forgets what she meant to him. 

But even with Jearsen solidified in my mind, and Varan's course fairly clear with The Eönwyl and his friends Vick and Guvthor, I found that there was something missing… something that came to be named Taelin. And I'll discuss him in the third and last of these columns.