Finisterre universe
Encyclopedia
The Finisterre universe is a fictional universe
created by American
science fiction
and fantasy
author C. J. Cherryh
. Currently, it comprises a series
of two science fiction / horror
novels written by Cherryh, Rider at the Gate
(1995) and Cloud's Rider
(1996), also known as The Rider Series. They were published by Warner Books in the US
and Hodder & Stoughton
in the UK
. The series is about the descendants of lost colonists stranded many generations ago on the hostile planet of Finisterre. For continuity, the two novels should be read in publication sequence.
-like planet targeted for colonisation
, but the colonists soon discover that what they thought was a hospitable world is not suitable for humans at all because the local fauna is telepathic
. These creatures send and receive images to and from the ambient
, which the unwary humans intercepted, resulting in a mind-clouding "noise" that distressed many of the settlers and even drove some of them mad. To make matters worse, the mothership
that delivered the colonists to the planet never returned. Underscoring the colonists' difficult situation, Cherryh has described Anne McCaffrey
's Pern
and Marion Zimmer Bradley
's Darkover
worlds as having the same underlying characteristic as Finisterre in terms of being "a bad real estate deal."
With nowhere to go, Finisterre's colonists therefore built and retreated into encampments surrounded by wooden palisade
walls, and hid behind religious dogma
based on fear and ignorance. The "beasts" on the planet and the "noise" they made terrified the humans. The preacher
s referred to these beasts as the work of the Devil
and condemned any contact with them. Typical refrains from the church
were:
But a group of men and women known as riders turned their back on the church and partnered up with some of the planet's nighthorses, alien horse-like animals. The riders became a necessary evil to keep the fragile human settlements alive: they supplied and protected the villages and towns. The preachers continued their rhetoric and conveniently forgot that while a rider can survive without a village, a village cannot survive without riders.
themselves in the ambient. Predatory goblin cats can project themselves, for example, as small willy-wisps. Others can hide by sending images of themselves being somewhere else. Spook bears can send out any image they have ever received and make you believe it is real and happening right now. Finisterre was a frightening place for the early settlers.
The colonists encountered many different types of creatures on Finisterre, but the small ones were often too numerous and dangerous to catalogue and were referred to generically as "ghosties" or "spooks".
s, but are omnivorous
, have three-toed hooves, are more intelligent than their Earth counterparts and are telepathic. Nighthorses will eat most things they can catch and kill, but failing that, grass and other vegetation.
When humans first arrived on the planet, the wild nighthorses were immediately drawn to them because of the humans' unconscious sendings that were rich in images and emotion. Once a nighthorse has experienced such sendings, it becomes addicted to them and will not leave humans alone. Sifting through these human emotions, a nighthorse will eventually select the human whose sendings it likes best and will adopt him or her as its companion. It will follow this person around, and if he or she is in a village or town, it will remain close to the walls and "call" by flooding the person with images of itself for days and weeks on end until either that person relents and goes to the horse, or withdraws to the centre of the town (if this is possible) where sendings from the Wild generally do not reach.
Those who answer a nighthorse's "call" become riders. Over a short period of time a relationship is formed that is mutually beneficial to both nighthorse and rider: the rider has transport and protection in the Wild (a nighthorse will protect its rider to the death), and the nighthorse receives the comforts of the rider camps in the villages, food, the rich emotional human sendings it craves, and "memory". On its own, a nighthorse does not have a good memory, but with a rider the ambient is filled with memories and the nighthorse can remember things!
The role of the nighthorse on Finisterre is pivotal: without them there would be no riders and without riders the human settlements would vanish.
The range of a typical Finisterre creature's sending is "a stone's throw", but a "rogue" can send much further. A rogue is an animal that is sick or injured and pollutes the ambient with images of its distress. A nighthorse can also go rogue when it loses its rider and sends out desperate longings for companionship. Rogue nighthorses are a serious problem to humans on Finisterre because they can send their distress over entire valleys and this often spreads to other creatures like a contagion
, making their behaviour unpredictable and dangerous. Humans are not immune to rogue sendings either. Riders and truck drivers have gone over cliff edges because a rogue horse has tricked them into seeing things that are not there. Rogue nighthorses have to be tracked down and destroyed.
Riders and nighthorses communicate with each other, consciously or unconsciously, by sending images. In the novels Cherryh depicts such "sendings" as text enclosed in "< >". For example, is an image sent out by Fisher to his nighthorse Cloud persuading him to run. A nighthorse anticipating a snow storm may send to her rider, who in turn will try to calm her horse by sending an image of .
But riders have to be wary of unconscious sendings. Almost all thoughts, emotions and anxieties a rider experiences are translated into images and sent to the ambient. Nighthorses are easily "spooked" and careless human emotion can be destructive. Riders therefore have to control their emotions in the presence of nighthorses. In addition, nighthorses generally cannot distinguish between past, present and future: they interpret and act on whatever they pickup literally. So a rider recalling an accident that happened last week will be seen by his horse as happening right now and will take evasive action. Riders quickly learn to quieten their minds so as to not excite their horses. Riders have to be particularly careful of rogue nighthorses. Wanting something intently, for example, a rider-shelter in a storm, can be picked by a rogue and sent back to you, making you believe, sometimes to your peril, that a shelter is right in front of you.
Riders don't have complete control over their nighthorses and often have to negotiate with them to get them to do what they want. Riders don't saddle or rein their nighthorses (they will not tolerate that). Instead, when riding, they will hold onto the horse's mane and, when necessary, clench their knees against the horse's sides.
In the Wild a rider is totally dependent on his or her nighthorse for protection against predators and scavengers. Riders quickly learn to trust their horse because the horse always knows the Wild better than even the most experienced rider. Very few animals will approach a nighthorse, and if they do it will broadcast as a warning before attacking. A rider's loyalties are therefore always to his horse first, then his partner, and then his partner's horse.
Riders, of course, cannot read each other's thoughts and emotions directly, but they can indirectly if a nighthorse is present. The "mechanics" of sendings to and from the ambient on Finisterre work as follows:
Nighthorses generally relay what they receive from the ambient back to the ambient, giving riders in the vicinity access to what other riders are thinking or feeling. While this is useful as it enables riders to communicate quickly with each other without the need for words, it can be problematic when a rider does not want his feelings to be known to others. Riders quickly learn how to make themselves "invisible" to the ambient by sending images like.
All riders start out as junior riders and their first jobs are often simple tasks like watching over livestock in pastures outside the town walls. Senior riders take on more dangerous assignments in the Wild, such as escorting truck convoys between towns and villages, and protecting road repair crews. Borderers, or border riders, are rider-guides who are born to live in the Wild and only come into the villages and towns during the winter months when the mountain passes are closed.
west of an inland sea and up the east face of the Firgeberg, a steep mountain range. Three large towns were established in the lowlands: Shamesey in east, the largest with over 50,000 people; Anveney in the north, an industrial
town that refines and processes raw materials
; and Malvey in the south, another industrial town that drills for natural gas
and oil
. Smaller villages and settlements in the highlands
, such as Tarmin village, on Tarmin Height, and Evergreen village, halfway up Rogers Peak, were created for mining
and logging
activities. Evergreen sat at the edge of the known world; the other side of the mountain had never been visited.
Every town and village has a rider camp inside its walls for the riders and their nighthorses. Generally the rider camp sits between the outer walls of the town and the inner walls surrounding the town proper. Large towns like Shamesey split the town proper into an outer ring that borders the rider camp for the workers, and an inner ring for the wealthy merchant
s. These merchants are thus shielded not only from sendings from the Wild, but also from sendings from the nighthorses in the rider camps. One notable exception is the industrial town of Anveney. It has no rider camp and no protection from riders. The reason for this is that Anveney and the surrounding areas are so polluted that no local fauna venture near it.
During the winter months contact between the towns and villages is limited. The winters on Finisterre are severe with heavy snow falls making the mountain passes impassable. Telephone
lines do link the towns and villages, but they are often down due to storm damage. Radio
communication is not used except in extreme emergencies as it attracts predators and scavengers.
Fictional universe
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
created by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
author C. J. Cherryh
C. J. Cherryh
Carolyn Janice Cherry , better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is a United States science fiction and fantasy author...
. Currently, it comprises a series
Book series
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher....
of two science fiction / horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
novels written by Cherryh, Rider at the Gate
Rider at the Gate
Rider at the Gate is a science fiction novel written by United States science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh, and was first published by Warner Books in August 1995. It is the first of a series of two novels written by Cherryh and is set in the author's Finisterre universe. The second...
(1995) and Cloud's Rider
Cloud's Rider
Cloud's Rider is a science fiction novel written by United States science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh, and was first published by Warner Books in September 1996. It is the second of a series of two novels written by Cherryh and is set in the author's Finisterre universe. The first book...
(1996), also known as The Rider Series. They were published by Warner Books in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...
in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The series is about the descendants of lost colonists stranded many generations ago on the hostile planet of Finisterre. For continuity, the two novels should be read in publication sequence.
Background
Finisterre ("End of the Earth") is an EarthEarth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
-like planet targeted for colonisation
Colonisation
Colonization occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect", originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the...
, but the colonists soon discover that what they thought was a hospitable world is not suitable for humans at all because the local fauna is telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
. These creatures send and receive images to and from the ambient
Surroundings
Surroundings are the area around a given physical or geographical point or place. The exact definition depends on the field. Surroundings can also be used in geography and mathematics, as well as philosophy, with the literal or metaphorically extended definition.In thermodynamics, the term is used...
, which the unwary humans intercepted, resulting in a mind-clouding "noise" that distressed many of the settlers and even drove some of them mad. To make matters worse, the mothership
Mother ship
A mother ship is a vessel or aircraft that carries a smaller vessel or aircraft that operates independently from it. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research , or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be...
that delivered the colonists to the planet never returned. Underscoring the colonists' difficult situation, Cherryh has described Anne McCaffrey
Anne McCaffrey
Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American-born Irish writer, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. Over the course of her 46 year career she won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award...
's Pern
Pern
Pern is a fictional planet created by Anne McCaffrey for the Dragonriders of Pern series of fantasy and science fiction books. It is said to be "Rukbat 3", the third planet in orbit around the star Rukbat, counting outward....
and Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R...
's Darkover
Darkover
Darkover is the focus of the Darkover series of science fiction novels and short stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley and others published since 1958. According to the novels, Darkover is the only human-habitable of seven planets orbiting a fictional red giant star called Cottman...
worlds as having the same underlying characteristic as Finisterre in terms of being "a bad real estate deal."
With nowhere to go, Finisterre's colonists therefore built and retreated into encampments surrounded by wooden palisade
Palisade
A palisade is a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.- Typical construction :Typical construction consisted of small or mid sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no spacing in between. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at the top, and were...
walls, and hid behind religious dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
based on fear and ignorance. The "beasts" on the planet and the "noise" they made terrified the humans. The preacher
Preacher
Preacher is a term for someone who preaches sermons or gives homilies. A preacher is distinct from a theologian by focusing on the communication rather than the development of doctrine. Others see preaching and theology as being intertwined...
s referred to these beasts as the work of the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
and condemned any contact with them. Typical refrains from the church
Church Body
A local church is a Christian religious organization that meets in a particular location. Many are formally organized, with constitutions and by-laws, maintain offices, are served by pastors or lay leaders, and, in nations where this is permissible, often seek seek non-profit corporate status...
were:
- Harken not to the beasts.
- Death and damnation to the followers of the beasts!
- Pray for your children, that they follow not the beasts.
But a group of men and women known as riders turned their back on the church and partnered up with some of the planet's nighthorses, alien horse-like animals. The riders became a necessary evil to keep the fragile human settlements alive: they supplied and protected the villages and towns. The preachers continued their rhetoric and conveniently forgot that while a rider can survive without a village, a village cannot survive without riders.
Finisterre
Finisterre is Earth-like in many respects with ore-rich mountains, large forests, fertile land and plenty of water. But the comparison ends there: the native fauna, from tiny wally-boos and willy-wisps, to large goblin cats, spook bears and nighthorses are telepathic. The animals project into the surrounding ambient what it is they see and feel. These "sendings" are picked up by other animals in the vicinity, alerting them to the presence of friend or foe before they come into view. The animals "see" around themselves by monitoring the ambient. But some of the creatures are smart and can camouflageCamouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
themselves in the ambient. Predatory goblin cats can project themselves, for example, as small willy-wisps. Others can hide by sending images of themselves being somewhere else. Spook bears can send out any image they have ever received and make you believe it is real and happening right now. Finisterre was a frightening place for the early settlers.
The colonists encountered many different types of creatures on Finisterre, but the small ones were often too numerous and dangerous to catalogue and were referred to generically as "ghosties" or "spooks".
Nighthorses
Nighthorses (so-called because of their jet-black coats) are the largest and most intelligent animals the colonists discovered. They are similar in stature to Earth horseHorse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, but are omnivorous
Omnivore
Omnivores are species that eat both plants and animals as their primary food source...
, have three-toed hooves, are more intelligent than their Earth counterparts and are telepathic. Nighthorses will eat most things they can catch and kill, but failing that, grass and other vegetation.
Those who answer a nighthorse's "call" become riders. Over a short period of time a relationship is formed that is mutually beneficial to both nighthorse and rider: the rider has transport and protection in the Wild (a nighthorse will protect its rider to the death), and the nighthorse receives the comforts of the rider camps in the villages, food, the rich emotional human sendings it craves, and "memory". On its own, a nighthorse does not have a good memory, but with a rider the ambient is filled with memories and the nighthorse can remember things!
The role of the nighthorse on Finisterre is pivotal: without them there would be no riders and without riders the human settlements would vanish.
The range of a typical Finisterre creature's sending is "a stone's throw", but a "rogue" can send much further. A rogue is an animal that is sick or injured and pollutes the ambient with images of its distress. A nighthorse can also go rogue when it loses its rider and sends out desperate longings for companionship. Rogue nighthorses are a serious problem to humans on Finisterre because they can send their distress over entire valleys and this often spreads to other creatures like a contagion
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
, making their behaviour unpredictable and dangerous. Humans are not immune to rogue sendings either. Riders and truck drivers have gone over cliff edges because a rogue horse has tricked them into seeing things that are not there. Rogue nighthorses have to be tracked down and destroyed.
Riders
A rider does not pick a name for the nighthorse that has adopted him. All nighthorses have an image of how they see themselves and that is the image they will respond to. The rider quickly identifies that image and will always use it to communicate with the horse. Danny Fisher referred to his nighthorse as "Cloud" because it saw itself as a cloud drifting peacefully across the sky.Riders and nighthorses communicate with each other, consciously or unconsciously, by sending images. In the novels Cherryh depicts such "sendings" as text enclosed in "< >". For example,
But riders have to be wary of unconscious sendings. Almost all thoughts, emotions and anxieties a rider experiences are translated into images and sent to the ambient. Nighthorses are easily "spooked" and careless human emotion can be destructive. Riders therefore have to control their emotions in the presence of nighthorses. In addition, nighthorses generally cannot distinguish between past, present and future: they interpret and act on whatever they pickup literally. So a rider recalling an accident that happened last week will be seen by his horse as happening right now and will take evasive action. Riders quickly learn to quieten their minds so as to not excite their horses. Riders have to be particularly careful of rogue nighthorses. Wanting something intently, for example, a rider-shelter in a storm, can be picked by a rogue and sent back to you, making you believe, sometimes to your peril, that a shelter is right in front of you.
Riders don't have complete control over their nighthorses and often have to negotiate with them to get them to do what they want. Riders don't saddle or rein their nighthorses (they will not tolerate that). Instead, when riding, they will hold onto the horse's mane and, when necessary, clench their knees against the horse's sides.
In the Wild a rider is totally dependent on his or her nighthorse for protection against predators and scavengers. Riders quickly learn to trust their horse because the horse always knows the Wild better than even the most experienced rider. Very few animals will approach a nighthorse, and if they do it will broadcast
Riders, of course, cannot read each other's thoughts and emotions directly, but they can indirectly if a nighthorse is present. The "mechanics" of sendings to and from the ambient on Finisterre work as follows:
- Nighthorses and other local fauna send telepathic images to the ambient.
- Humans send non-telepathic images to the ambient.
- Nighthorses and other local fauna can receive both telepathic and non-telepathic images from the ambient.
- Humans can only receive telepathic images from the ambient.
Nighthorses generally relay what they receive from the ambient back to the ambient, giving riders in the vicinity access to what other riders are thinking or feeling. While this is useful as it enables riders to communicate quickly with each other without the need for words, it can be problematic when a rider does not want his feelings to be known to others. Riders quickly learn how to make themselves "invisible" to the ambient by sending images like
All riders start out as junior riders and their first jobs are often simple tasks like watching over livestock in pastures outside the town walls. Senior riders take on more dangerous assignments in the Wild, such as escorting truck convoys between towns and villages, and protecting road repair crews. Borderers, or border riders, are rider-guides who are born to live in the Wild and only come into the villages and towns during the winter months when the mountain passes are closed.
Settlements
The colonists explored and settled in a tract of lowlandLowland
In physical geography, a lowland is any broad expanse of land with a general low level. The term is thus applied to the landward portion of the upward slope from oceanic depths to continental highlands, to a region of depression in the interior of a mountainous region, to a plain of denudation, or...
west of an inland sea and up the east face of the Firgeberg, a steep mountain range. Three large towns were established in the lowlands: Shamesey in east, the largest with over 50,000 people; Anveney in the north, an industrial
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
town that refines and processes raw materials
Material
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...
; and Malvey in the south, another industrial town that drills for natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
and oil
Oil
An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
. Smaller villages and settlements in the highlands
Highland (geography)
The term highland or upland is used to denote any mountainous region or elevated mountainous plateau. Generally speaking, the term upland tends to be used for ranges of hills, typically up to 500-600m, and highland for ranges of low mountains.The Scottish Highlands refers to the mountainous...
, such as Tarmin village, on Tarmin Height, and Evergreen village, halfway up Rogers Peak, were created for mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
and logging
Logging
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks.In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard...
activities. Evergreen sat at the edge of the known world; the other side of the mountain had never been visited.
Every town and village has a rider camp inside its walls for the riders and their nighthorses. Generally the rider camp sits between the outer walls of the town and the inner walls surrounding the town proper. Large towns like Shamesey split the town proper into an outer ring that borders the rider camp for the workers, and an inner ring for the wealthy merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
s. These merchants are thus shielded not only from sendings from the Wild, but also from sendings from the nighthorses in the rider camps. One notable exception is the industrial town of Anveney. It has no rider camp and no protection from riders. The reason for this is that Anveney and the surrounding areas are so polluted that no local fauna venture near it.
During the winter months contact between the towns and villages is limited. The winters on Finisterre are severe with heavy snow falls making the mountain passes impassable. Telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
lines do link the towns and villages, but they are often down due to storm damage. Radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
communication is not used except in extreme emergencies as it attracts predators and scavengers.