Dera Ortoh
The architect of relaxation.
I made my presentation to the council about the establishment of a town along the Cloudbay. Not just any town but one of commerce and relaxation. It worked, they did greenlight the project, but it didn't feel right. I talked about building placements, enticements, costs, and profits. These are all important things of course but they are not the things I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell them about the inspirations for the project, my desire to inspire others, and how I felt my predecessors watching over me as I designed the town. Either way, my dream will soon be a reality. The coming time will be busy and frought with challenges but when it is done, everyone will be able to relax in a beautiful place and return to Breharan with their bodies, minds, and spirits refreshed.
The Foundation of Engineers
The Great Dam of Darapur was designed by one of Dera's ancestors. Every generation of her family has had few children but always at least one engineer. Dera is an only child and willingly took up the mantle of her family's heritage. Born only five years before the launch of the Harani, Dera was only a young girl when the Time of Exploration began. Among the first generation whose earliest memories are from the current era, she was consumed in the feelings, emotions, and inclinations of the time even more than those who were adults at the time did. At the age of seven, Dera had the opportunity to view some of the records returned by the crew of the Harani. Among them, an image of a beautifully round bay of a distant island which contained a mountain of clouds. At that moment it became her lifelong dream to build something that could inspire people the same way her ancestor did when they built the Great Dam. When she was 22, she and her partner - a fisherman who she met on the Dam - had a child. Raising the kid was a test on their relationship, Dera was not often one to dally and always enjoyed cutting to the issue to solve it - which is great for construction but isn't always the best way to help people - while the fisherman knew that when the skyfish don't bite, there is naught to do but wait for the problem to right itself.When Dreams Become Reality
After the completion of the seventh colony, Line's Edge, in 22EX - and twenty years of that image of the Cloudbay in the back of her mind - Dera began to put ink to paper for her new plan for a community on that crescent skyisland. The next fourteen years would see the founding of two additional settlements on the skies and many attempts by Dera to make a plan that she could get the city to sign on to. Working around her other projects left her little time for her passion project and only in 32EX was the plan presented to the powers-that-be. The purpose, design, accessability, economics, and incredibly detailed planning and timeline sold the group on the project and in 34EX, the first materials, supplies, and workers were sent to the island. In 36EX, at the age of 41, Dera would see her dream come true when the first Skyship full of visitors arrived at her meticulously designed town. By this time, her child had become an engineer themselves and left Darapur for Grara to work on a large project there and while her child didn't join her on Cloudhaven, her partner did. Dera traveled between to Breharan and Cloudhaven to work on different projects and design new features on the colony for a couple of decades before finally retiring on Cloudhaven, becoming its first permanent resident - residents with her husband. A person of legendary inheritance and influential designer in her own right, people still travel to see her, to learn, and to bring back home a spark of genius for their own pursuits.Appearance
"Born with deep green eyes and her father's hair, the family said she was a beautiful baby. Every family says that about their babies but it was definitely true, perhaps the cutest little thing I'd ever seen."In her years as an engineer she was known for dressing well - they say her neighbor was a tailor. Her well-made outfits were designed - engineered if you will - to increase her presence and authority, increasing the chances of her proposals being accepted - as if her heritage didn't have enough influence already. Dera is now 71 and has made some changes to how she expresses herself in the past couple of years. Her once long hair worn in a variety of styles has been replaced by a shorter cut that is easier to manage. Well-fitting professional outfits have given way to slightly larger and more comfortable clothes. Shiny shoes fitting of a professional were no more, leaving only sandals in their wake - there is no winter in Cloudhaven afterall.
Stub Article
This article is just a stub for now and will be expanded upon later.Old Article
This article was written in the past and does not meet my current standards for any number of article quality, layout, or content.In-Progress Article
This article is being worked on, perhaps not at this very moment, but it is being worked on.
Learning to Relax
Despite being the designer of Cloudhaven, Dera herself was very bad at relaxing for most of her life and many wondered how such a person was able to make such a place. What they don't know is what was happening in her head. When Dera would - like anyone else - get tired or reach a block in her work she would try to be still and 'just relax' like people said to but it became clear to her that it was not that simple. When she was doing nothing, her mind would start to race even faster and she would get anxious. For almost two decades of her life, this was always the case because no one could teach her to relax the way she needed to. Then she met her partner - and future father of her child - who was a fisherman. He taught her how to fish and fishing was an activity that kept her mind busy and also away from her work. However, Dera realized it wasn't fishing specifically that was relaxing, it was how she was doing something different instead of plowing forward into the same problem over and over. The answer was to relax by doing something different. It turned out that even different engineering projects worked; this led to a large variety of projects started on paper and thrown out after she had recovered enough to get back to her main project. Walking, fishing, brainstorming, learning something new, and checking up on colleagues all worked. A small circle of engineers and architects was formed naturally through this process. This was the path of experiences that led her to be able to create a vacation town - Cloudhaven - that everyone could enjoy. The housing units were all designed in a way to enable solitude but encourage socialization. A theatre was built so that stories could be told, music performed, and - at least in Dera's mind - lectures given. Fishing was made available to all visitors and hiking trails were designed over the hilltops of the crescent-shaped island.
Children
Come visit me on Cloudhaven, bring your apprentices too. They need to know there is more to building than making sure it doesn't fall down.
Comments