Allatwan Sehltahn
From MYSTlore
Allatwan Sehltahn is an Uru explorer, member of the Guild of Greeters, and Guildmaster of the Guild of United Nations and Uru Cultures from France. She has created a site and blog on Uru and the D'ni culture. So far, she has explored Riven and Uru with her brother Garoth, sister Ahnotahm, and cousins Prad and Areeutahn.
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[edit] Backstory
[edit] Life
Allatwan was born on July the 18th in Paris, France. She spent her early life in France until her 8th birthday, where she moved to India for four years, and later still, Canada. She has been to India, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Canada and the United States. She speaks two languages fluently (French and English) and is learning German. She has two younger siblings and four younger cousins, all of which are boys, who live in France, like most of her family. She now lives in France, but will be moving again soon.
[edit] Uru
When Allatwan was 14, her parents met a member from the DRC who, after talking to them for a while about Uru, D'ni and it's reconstruction, and how their daughter wanted to become an archaeologist, gave them the opportunity to send her to the cleft for the summer holidays as a training. At first, she didn't exactly feel "called" like most of Uru's explorers, but as soon as she arrived at the Cleft and listened to Yeesha's message, Allatwan knew that she had been called there for a mission.
But the training lasted longer than planned. After three months of exploring ages all by herself, she decided to call on her siblings and cousins to come and visit her there, so she'd feel less alone. Her brother, sister, and cousin Areeutahn felt called as soon as they had set foot in Ae'gura, Relto and Kadish Tolesa. However, this was not the case for Prad: he never felt "called" to finish the journey, but stayed there all the same. When their journey was over, they finally found a completely restored D'ni and celebrated with people from Uru Live in the cavern. Their parents have moved to the cavern since then, and the whole family has been living in Bevin, children going to the DRC's schools and trying to study "the art" with the guild of writers.
[edit] Guilds
While Allatwan is part of the Guild of Greeters, Guild of Writers and Guild of Archivers, her brother, sister and cousins are not part of any guilds yet. She also plans to create guilds with the help of other Uruites, like the Guild of United Nations and Uru Cultures (GOUNAUC), the Guild of United Artists, Guild of Tailors, and Guild of Book-makers. But so far, only the GOUNAUC has really been planned out carefully: the others are still blurry ideas.
The GOUNAUC will open as soon as possible, which means by July 2009, or January 2010.
Allatwan and her brother Garoth were also planning to create a site and guild for all those interested in Riven and the Moiety, creating a new group called "the Red Moiety", which would just be a group for fun, sharing information, media and opinions concerning Riven and Tay in a "peaceful and politically-correct" manner, Allatwan emphasised to all. However, both of them are not sure that this might please the DRC.
Allatwan might also join or create a D'ni choir and sing with her sister Ahnotahm. They have planned several things about that for the future, but are unsure as to "when" it will all happen.
[edit] Riven and the Moiety
After spending a year in D'ni City, Allatwan returned to the cleft to see Jeff Zandi and the desert she liked so much, where she was given a book near the Riven remnants and told to go there. There, she was urged to help Atrus retrieve Katran (also called Catherine) from Gehn. There, she met the Black Moiety with her brother.
While she, like Katran, found them to be "nice" and right about kicking out Gehn, she did not approve of their violent ways towards the Rivenese and often tried to turn them towards a "non-violent rebellion". However, her brother Garoth was deeply moved by their ways and decided to join them, calling themselves "Atrus' army", something his sister strongly disapproved. But Garoth did change a few things about his way of dressing, wearing different weapons and less colourful clothing, refusing to braid his hair and changing the moeity men's head band a bit so it looked more like a turban. He was the youngest Moiety member (only 13 years old) and nicknamed "the great stranger from the surface" or "Tahleeots Garoth", since his name "Garoth" meant "Great One" in Dn'i. Allatwan also got her name from the Moiety, since both her and her brother's French names seemed to hard to pronounce for the Moiety, making them translate their names. They then asked Allatwan, who didn't know how to translate hers, where she came from. She pointed to the star fissure and tried to explain their story. A few Moiety members then decided to call her "Allatwan", meaning "pool of stars", since that was where she had come from, and had "both hair and eyes dark like the night". Since her original name also started with "Al-", Allatwan kept it, and used it later on whenever she spoke D'ni or Rivenese, or went back to Uru or Tay. It has also become sort of a nickname with her friends.
They managed to trap Gehn in Atrus' prison age and save Katran. Then, after bidding farewell to Atrus, Katran and their Moiety friends, they went back home through the star fissure... Allatwan.
[edit] Five explorers on their way to D'ni
After her complete journey, Allatwan decided to create a blog for her Uru journal and media sharing as well as a site to help all new comers to the Cleft who might want to learn more about the D'ni, their culture, the DRC and so on. It also includes pictures and blog entries on her own journey with Garoth, Ahnotahm, Prad and Areeutahn, just "to remember all the good times". The site is in English, and still under construction, but according to her, it should have a maximum of 30 pages when fully completed, and might have a "French twin" for those who spoke French only (her cousins, for one).
[edit] Family Heritage and background
[edit] D'ni
After her tough journey through D'ni, Allatwan discovered that several people there claimed to be of "old D'ni descent". This made her do a bit of research, and after the 14th issue of "The Archiver", which stated that most explorers felt called because they seemed to have D'ni ancestry, she decided to try and find out whether this was true with her family too.
It ended up showing her very old ancestors of D'ni descent from her mother's mother's family and her grandfather's, which dated from the 16th century, in Eastern France. Other research, before and after Riven, also pointed out a long-forgotten Rivenese family member on her mother's side. This only made Garoth prouder to be from the Moiety, and pleased them all when they came back to D'ni. "It feels like we're reconstructing something we were... "meant" to find... something part of our family created centuries ago", Allatwan said.
[edit] France
But those are only minorities: Allatwan's family is mostly from Brittany, a Celtic region in northwest France; Gascony, in southwest France; and a bit from the Jura, a very mountainous region in Eastern France, and one of the coldest all-year-round. "I'm French, period," she often answered.
A proud Celt and Gasconian, Allatwan often adds Celtic influence to her "D'ni and Uru related" artwork, sites, etc. Her "signature symbols" are the Breton Triskel and three intertwined red moons of Bordeaux. Her favorite Myst symbols are the Bahro hand, D'ni tree, Kerath's Arch, and the Rivenese, or Moiety dagger.[edit] Links
You may contact Allatwan through her site (see hyperlink) and leave a message on one of her many shout boxes:
