Cygnus: Vega

m'kay, so sometimes you just have to stop trying and move on.... I'm learning to paint in gimp, which is actually a really cool program. I adjusted to the menus and tool settings really easily and it all makes sense and has all the features of the version of Corel Paint I was using. My biggest qualm is I can't figure out how to easily hide and reopen the toolbox, which is quite sizable and eats a lot of screen realestate. I still have a lot to explore though so I might just not know the right button or hotkey for it.

But the crappy paint here isn't gimp's fault. I'm just not the best digi painter yet, obviously. This isn't how i imagine her wing coloring. I want more distinctive (highly contrasty) black with white mottling but as i said, i'm going to call it quits and move on, maybe someday come back to a new drawing of Vega as my skillz improve. Oh, I promised to paste her story, below. Enjoy!~n<3


Vega
(original name: Quila'wegoh)

In the 14th Century a small ancient Peruvian city-state, Unuanqa, was being overshadowed by the up and coming Incan Empire. The Inca ruler began burning Unuanqa land and slaying their villagers, threatening the locals: if they didn't submit to the Emperor Unuanqa would be utterly destroyed. The people wept because they had their own gods and did not want to recognize Cuzco as their capitol or Inti as their god. Seemingly out of hope, with very little food stores remaining after the burning of their fields and the people dying all around the country side, one of the Unuanqa priests commissioned the most skilled stone worker to carve a beautiful winged woman from volcanic black obsidian. The priest sacrificed his own daughter's life that her soul would be contained in a gemstone, and he had the gem fitted in a collar of silver and other polished precious stones with significance each their own. This he asked his gods to bless, and then dressed the statue of the winged woman with the bejeweled collar. It brought the carved stone to life and the old priest commanded her to fly to the palace, proclaiming herself as a gift from the Unuanqa people to the Emperor as his bride in exchange for peace and an end to his pursuit of annexing Unuanqa. But the old priest ordered the winged woman that if the Emperor should reject the offer or should he accept it but change his mind later, she was to wait for or create an opportunity to slay him to preserve their freedom from Incan rule.

Each one of the other stone settings in her necklace provided her with an ability to help her achieve these ends. Because their languages were varied and different, one stone would enable her to learn other tongues quickly. Another stone would give her sharp senses- eyesight, finely tuned hearing, the ability to smell otherwise undetectable poison. Another would allow her body to heal rapidly. Another would quicken her reflexes and coordination. One of the stones provided for her to sense the truth of intentions of a man, that she would always be able to know what her husband, the Emperor, intended towards Unuanqa.

Fascinated by Quila'wegoh, the Emperor accepted the offer and took his bride. For years she lived in the palace, favored by the Emperor but despised by his many wives. She bore him no children and yet she was favored above all. Many years passed and rumors grew that the Emperor's power waned in war and that he could be bought off with concubines. Responding to these rumors, the Emperor steeled his resolve to conquer more peoples by force. The Emperor betrayed his word and decided to make an example of the small nation who had sent him the winged bride. She heard of this war plan to decimate Unuanqa and sacrifice the priests, including her father, to the sun god, Inti. She bided her time quietly, and when she found herself alone with the Emperor in his bedchambers, asked him if the rumor were true. He, at that moment filled with passion and disinclined to discuss his warplans with a woman, denied it, but thanks to her gift Quila'wegoh knew him to be lying. Her directive to stop him from threatening Unuanqa took over and she fought her husband and had almost asphyxiated the Emperor with his own bedclothes knotted around his throat but was overcome by his guards; one man caught Quila'wegoh by the collar and undid its fastening, whereby she grew weak and lost the gifts provided by the necklace. She was apprehended and imprisoned, sentenced to death, but before the execution was carried out, she was discovered to have turned to stone.

The emperor had the glossy black carving put on display in his court at Cuzco and razed Unuanqa to the ground, killing and enslaving and plundering; he poured her fathers blood out as a sacrifice to Inti, after painting the glossy black figurine with some of it. He kept the magic necklace for himself, drawing power from its gifts.

When the Inca Empire fell to Spanish rule, the necklace was plundered and traded around to pay various debts. It's rumored that at one point they tried to break it apart for melting down, but it was found to be impossible to cut through or to melt. It was eventually purchased by a British collector and on his death donated to a Public museum where it was kept in an atmospherically controlled safe with other priceless ancient artifacts from all over the world and all but forgotten save for a photograph in a catalog of collection holdings.

The statue remained on the mountain in Peru for quite sometime, until it was moved out of the elements into storage in Peru by the new Peruvian government, though it was one of the finest examples of workmanship on the site and showed little sign of erosion. The statue traveled the world on loan for various shows of Indigenous South American Art.

Eventually, a curator at the Baltimore Natural History Museum discovered a recorded myth about a winged woman who tried to kill the Incan Emperor and was said to have had special powers granted by a magical necklace. He corroborated the time period of the story with the likely time period of some narrative carvings where there were repeated motifs of a winged woman attending the king and wearing a necklace set with one oblong central stone and flanked with 3 more on either side. He went through catalogs of ancient Peruvian jewelry in the European collections until he found one he believed fit the description and arranged to have it sent for the show he was coordinating. He would be the first to present the myth of Quila'wegoh complete with the winged statue and her legendary jewels.

However, once her body and soul were reunited, Quila'wegoh reanimated and escaped her display case.

While her soul had been parted from her body, she experienced both settings in a dream-like state. She was suspended in the experience of time with a limited amount of consciousness. Neither waking nor dead, but asleep.

Vega (her modern name settled on from a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of her given name) has a phobia of losing her necklace. She doesn't allow anyone to touch the device. She has a phobia of sleep and is claustrophobic (will never take an elevator or sit in a car) and serious dislike of silence. She's displaced in a strange world of technology and culture unlike anything she's known, and yet a seeming ignorance of the supernatural and the fantastic. She has trouble sitting still, and fidgets when she is sitting. She is fairly obedient to those she is loyal to, almost by default. Vega is somewhat shy of sane, if she ever was to begin with, and can do seemingly random things that make sense to her at the time.