I am tired yet I cannot get to sleep. Bah. Therefore, a response!
Tir did sort of get her position via blood inheritance -- their uncle was the previous holder -- but in Zerlon, while a holder can choose his or her favored successor, the people have to approve of the choice; otherwise, no dice. There's a bit of an uneasy back-and-forth over the role of blood inheritance, which is why their uncle felt a need to drum that moral tale into his niece and nephew.
Riam, on the other hand, got his job just by being good at it. Not everyone has the knack to be a binder, much less be good enough to protect as large an area as Zerlon, so anyone who is both willing and able is trained without question. Riam is good enough that his talent was obvious in childhood (there is a relevant backstory incident with him and Zalir, which I hope to show at some point), so though he couldn't be formally trained until he turned 18, he was kind of doomed to be a binder unless he actively resisted... which he didn't because he would have felt terribly guilty. (Also, he does genuinely like his job.)
Zerlon is laxer about training binders than a lot of places, for various reasons, which is why Riam is the binder of Zerlon, rather than one of several co-equal binders or the chief binder of a group (which are patterns prevalent in other regions). I hope to work in more information about that later on, again by way of contrast with how things are done in Morgalen's home.
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Date: 2010-11-07 03:59 am (UTC)Tir did sort of get her position via blood inheritance -- their uncle was the previous holder -- but in Zerlon, while a holder can choose his or her favored successor, the people have to approve of the choice; otherwise, no dice. There's a bit of an uneasy back-and-forth over the role of blood inheritance, which is why their uncle felt a need to drum that moral tale into his niece and nephew.
Riam, on the other hand, got his job just by being good at it. Not everyone has the knack to be a binder, much less be good enough to protect as large an area as Zerlon, so anyone who is both willing and able is trained without question. Riam is good enough that his talent was obvious in childhood (there is a relevant backstory incident with him and Zalir, which I hope to show at some point), so though he couldn't be formally trained until he turned 18, he was kind of doomed to be a binder unless he actively resisted... which he didn't because he would have felt terribly guilty. (Also, he does genuinely like his job.)
Zerlon is laxer about training binders than a lot of places, for various reasons, which is why Riam is the binder of Zerlon, rather than one of several co-equal binders or the chief binder of a group (which are patterns prevalent in other regions). I hope to work in more information about that later on, again by way of contrast with how things are done in Morgalen's home.