Brief explanation
First things first:
Chagur--the bright side is that you don't have to worry about breakfast
At least you bother to clean up afterward; look what happens to me, tracking yolk from topic to topic.
Regarding the
Tiassa: a
tiassa is a mythical cat-like creature. Specifically, it is a large cat with bat's wings and I can't give you much of a physical description since I haven't much more like that. However, a
Tiassa is a Dragaeran (elven) house of society, one of seventeen in the novels of Steven Brust, the most prolific name in my limited fantasy fiction collection.
It would be silly of me to propose that anyone read eleven novels in order to understand the nature of the handle. But there are nine (I think ...
Taltos, Yendi, Jhereg, Teckla, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, Dragon, and
Issola) in the Vlad Taltos cycle, which reads better than you'd imagine for fantasies about a human assassin in an elven world. In these, the central Tiassa is a somewhat shadowy figure; you don't see him until the fourth novel, and you rarely see him at all. Yet there are enough hints to his character that by the time the Khaavren Romances came about, readers pretty much welcomed this exposition. The Romances follow that very Tiassa, named Khaavren of Castlerock, through the Dragaeran empire and document his rise through the imperial Phoenix Guard from landless nobility to, eventually, Brigadier of the Guard. Though I'm not much on military ideas, Khaavren's personality is what makes him such a vital figure; even as a soldier with ambitions, he still follows the underlying notions of what is right and wrong: simply "taking orders" does not suffice. Two thousand pages of serial fantasy and a thousand pages poking Dumas provide remarkable insight into this character and, frankly, I think he's great. While I encourage people to read these books in general (especially the Romances, though the Taltos cycle fosters a sense of narrative familiarity that contributes to the story's attractive force), it's silly to advise that one do so just to understand a handle. However, beyond the briefest sketches, it is impossible to summarize that many pages of exposition in a reasonable post.
Anyway, I've been through this before, and while I'm always happy to put my two cents in about tiassas, I figure those of you who have read this bit before are probably getting sick of it. Suffice to say that the following websites are convenient references:
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http://www.dreamcafe.com Brust's website
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http://www.omnium.com record label of Boiled in Lead, a band with which Brust has associations)
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http://www.google.com/search?q=steven+brust a Google search for Steven Brust ... that should do it
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/107-8037326-0182931 an Amazon search for Steven Brust; there are text samples available for
To Reign in Hell (unrelated to the topic at hand but worth its own discussion someday),
Phoenix Guards (first of the Khaavren Romances),
Dragon (Taltos Cycle),
Five Hundred Years After (second of the Romances),
Orca (Taltos Cycle),
Agyar (vampire novel),
Jhereg (Taltos Cycle),
Freedom & Necessity (Victorian epistemological novel, Hegelian fantasy; written with Emma Bull), and
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (his most orthodox setting, and most personal exposition). Since I've just listed 9 of his 18 novels including those less relevant to the present discussion, let me please plug
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille, a classic sci-fi romp.
But I could literally feed this information all day; it's the most cohesive set of influences in my pop-culture literary streak--sure, Bradbury can bury him, but honestly, what else can make me want to spend vacation time in Minneapolis in winter?
But there's some explanation of the name. Believe me, I love to push this little corner of my Universe; thanx for the nifty topic.
thanx,
Tiassa