The mri are a fictional alien species in the Faded Sun Trilogy of C.J. Cherryh. Their culture appears to be drawn upon those of the Apache, Arabs, and Japanese samurai. Their name means simply "the People," and all other races are called "tsi-mri," literally, not-people. The Three Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. ... Look up alien in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Faded Sun trilogy is a set of science fiction novels set in the Alliance-Union universe of C.J. Cherryh. ... C. J. Cherryh is the slightly modified working name of author Caroline Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), the sister of artist David A.Cherry. ... Jump to: navigation, search Group of Apaches Apache (apparently from the Zuni name, = enemy, given to the Navaho Indians) is the collective name given to several culturally related tribes of Native Americans, aboriginal inhabitants of North America, who speak a Southern Athabaskan language. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ʻarab) are an originally Arabian ethnicity widespread in the Middle East and North Africa. ... Jump to: navigation, search Japanese samurai in armour, 1860 photograph. ...

Physical appearance

The mri are a humanoid species, tall and slender. Their skin is golden in color and their hair is coarse and light brown, generally worn shoulder-length. Their eyes are yellow, with epicanthic folds and a functional nictitating membrane to protect them against wind-blown grit. Their ears are slightly pointed, with a tuft of hair at the tip resembling that of a lynx. Jump to: navigation, search The term humanoid refers to any being whose body structure resembles that of a human. ... Jump to: navigation, search Model of the layers of human skin In zootomy and dermatology, skin is an organ of the integumentary system; which is composed of a layer of tissues that protect underlying muscles and organs. ... Jump to: navigation, search Brown hair is intermediate in thickness between (thinner) blond and (thicker) black or red Hair is the filamentous outgrowth of the epidermis found in mammals. ... An epicanthal fold, epicanthic fold or epicanthus is a skin fold of the upper eyelid (from the nose to the inner side of the eyebrow) covering the inner corner (medial canthus) of the eye. ... Many species of land animals have a nictitating membrane, sometimes (but incorrectly) spelled nicitating membrane, which can move across the eyeball to give the sensitive eye structures additional protection in particular circumstances. ... Jump to: navigation, search Species Lynx lynx Lynx canadensis Lynx pardinus Lynx rufus A Lynx is any of several medium-sized wild cats. ...

Social structure

The mri are divided into a rigid structure of three castes: kel, sen, and kath. These are functional rather than hereditary castes, but each has a clearly-defined role in their society, and regard any change in those traditional functions to be completely unacceptable.

Kel are warriors, and dress in black. Because they interact with outsiders, they veil their faces to preserve the privacy of the People. Furthermore, they are forbidden to read or write, lest they inadvertently betray the ancient secrets of the People. They are masters of both the traditional edged weapons of the People and the modern weapons they use as mercenaries. They play shon'ai, the traditional passing game of the People, with knives.

Sen are scholars, and dress in gold, except for the she'pan or matriarch of the tribe, who dresses in white. They keep the sacred writings of their people, and are celibate. Because they do not interact with outsiders, they do not veil their faces. They play shon'ai with wands. Celibacy may refer either to being unmarried or to sexual abstinence. ...

Kath are the children and those women who do not join either the kel or the sen, and dress in blue. No man past puberty may remain in kath, and those unsuited for kel or sen die. The kath are the lowest caste of the mri, responsible for the upkeep of the tribe's dwellings. Kath play shon'ai with a pair of rounded stones.

Language

The language of the mri appears to be agglutinative, with each element having a single function. The apostrophes that give mri words their distinctive appearance appear to represent a glottal stop when separating two vowels, for instance, in kel'e'en, "a woman of the kel". However, in other words they seem to merely mark the boundaries between morphemes. There are a few words in which the function of the apostrophe is unclear, and it has been suggested that those are purely decorative, to make the words look more alien. An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

A careful reader can assemble a fairly large vocabulary of nouns, and even conjecture additional forms. However, there is little in the way of verbs or grammatical structure, so the novels cannot be used as the basis of a working language, as opposed to the elvish languages of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. J. R. R. Tolkien in 1916. ... ...

History

The mri originated on the world of Kutath, an ancient world which they shared with four other races. As resources grew more scarce, a portion of them left Kutath in slowships, seeking other worlds. They would hire on as mercenaries with a race, but each time the relationship ended badly, and they left a ruined world behind to seek a new start. During each journey, or Dark, everything but the ancient traditions of the mri were forgotten by kel and kath, with only the sen retaining records of the Between they had left between. A hint of this process remained in the Shon'jir or passing song which was sung at births and deaths, but most kel of the Between thought of it only as referring to the individual.

After more than eighty such migrations, the mri settled on Kesrith, a desert planet not dissimilar to their lost home. There they encountered the dusei, bearlike telempaths who had intelligence but not the capacity for speech. The dusei established bonds with warriors of the kel, but were said to find the minds of sen too cold for their tastes. Thus the mri were found by the regul, a race of traders from Nurag, a planet of the Mab system. Various regul clans or docha hired mri as bodyguards, giving the mri the opportunity to hone their skills against one another.

The situation changed when the regul encountered humans and war broke out. Atrocities occurred on both sides, at least in part due to the inability of the regul to imagine the future. After forty years of war, the mri were nearly exterminated. The regul negotiated a peace which involved handing Kesrith over to humanity, then betrayed the mri to prevent the mercenaries from switching sides. All the mri save two were murdered.

After the human protagonist, Sten Duncan, was adopted by the mri, the human command decided to risk an experiment. Using an ancient sacred navigation record, they put Duncan and the two survivng mri, Niun and Melein, aboard a ship and sent them back to the lost homeworld of the mri. On the way, Niun forced Duncan to learn to become a mri, with death the penalty for failure. Jump to: navigation, search The protagonist is the central figure of a story, and is often referred to as a storys main character. ...

As a result, they were reunited with the mri of Kutath, and took command of one tribe. However, humans and regul had followed them on their journey, and the regul were ready to commit genocide again to ensure that the mri did not hire on with the humans. However, their murderous plans were foiled, and humans ultimately established an understanding with the mri when a human scholar learned to play shon'ai.

Books

1. The Faded Sun Trilogy
   1. The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978)
   2. The Faded Sun: Shon'jir (1978)
   3. The Faded Sun: Kutath (1979)

The Faded Sun omnibus (2000) The Faded Sun trilogy is a set of science fiction novels set in the Alliance-Union universe of C.J. Cherryh. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search This page refers to the year 1979. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the year 2000. ...