Character Spotlight - Ungol and Dupec Safar

A Wave Builds In the Halls of Time

Quick Facts	...	Quick Facts	...
Character Name	Dupec Safar	Character Name	Ungol Safar
Place of Origin	Gil Garo	Place of Origin	Tao Shein Steppe
Race	Katcyakin	Race	Human
Ethnicity	Gil Garo	Ethnicity-	Gil Garo
Magic Type	Spirit Calling/Soulbinding	Magic Type	Spirit Calling
Mentor Spirit/God	Duijus Kanh / God of Ways, Uldal	Mentor Spirit/God	Gandes Fae
First Appearance [Book/Chapter]	Tears for the Moon God / God Uldal	First Appearance [Book/Chapter]	Tears for the Moon God / Cloud Man

I thought of what it must be like to lose a child to factors out of your control when I was writing Dupec's story. The sense for what this must be like was rooted in three concepts which are largely independent from each other, but nonetheless informed the story of Dupec Safar in significant ways. In the nature of this family's early life and the echoes the choices Ungol and his wife, Shaelein, make on the day their son is born, I found myself thinking about the narratives surrounding abortion and adoption, and how similar dynamics might come into play when a child is born to these characters with a curse that threatens the health and safety of their people.

When a Cloud Man is born to a Gil Garo couple, the midwife sets a knife on the table. The parents are given the room to make their choice, but it is left to them to decide how they will proceed. Will they kill the newborn child, or will they abandon it on the hope that someone more qualified to look after it comes along.

Ungol and Shaelein choose what they view as a mercy, and leave their hours old infant at the side of a horse track where he might be found. The North Wind sometimes takes orphaned children in as his acolytes, and there are those gods whose acolytes travel far in the world. Their great hope is that he will be discovered by one of them before he dies of exposure, as the winters on Tao Shein Steppe are harsh, and they cannot provide him shelter. As a parting gift, and with the hope that he will one day return to them, Ungol uses his magical abilities to preserve a memory and a message within their son's mind, so that he will never forget their faces, nor question whether they loved him.

Strength Derived from Adversity

More than anything, what Dupec represents to me is taking unfortunate circumstances and turning them into a source of personal strength. As a Cloud Man, he is born with the power to alter probabilities to the detriment of those around him, an ability he does not have conscious control over when he is a child, which ultimately serves as the reason for his abandonment. A childhood illness of sorts, which defines him as his parents choose to give him away as opposed to kill him, while also leaving a memory of them for him to call back to, which eventually informs his return to them. These choices and afflictions fall outside of their control, and ultimately inform who Dupec becomes as a man. That is someone with an immense capacity for compassion, an inner strength which is informed by his condition as opposed to being developed in spite of it, and a desire to do the most good he can for the greatest number of people.

Gandes Fae

Belying that, however, are the external needs of those surrounding him. Choices that he is robbed of which nonetheless force him onto a path he does not want. He is, for better or worse, faced with the choice to become a conqueror to save himself, and at the same time serve someone else's agenda; or flinch away from his fate, but doom his people because he does. Given those options, it only makes sense that he might choose the former over the latter, but in this play of the Greatest Game, an elaborate game of strategy the gods play with mortal lives, he is not given any choice at all. If abstaining means death, then the only option remaining is to play the game and hope he succeeds. The question is, then, does he have the power, the intellect, and the skill to survive this game? And then, who is holding the chips?

A Guide Post for Morality

As the story takes him away from his son, Ungol's struggles become more complex than the simple story of a family reunited. Rather, he has had a taste of what life could be like with his son, but by the midpoint of the story, he has had it ripped away from him, and only the promise of being reunited once more remains. This means he must survive long enough to have his son returned to him, but he does not know what he will look like, what their relationship to each other will be like, in the end. These personal struggles are balanced against the needs of his people. Ungol Safar is the chief of his sect, the Dumas Gil Garo, and must need put his people's greater interests over his personal desires.

What is more, as acolyte to a spirit of memory and history, he serves as a critical tool in the arsenal of the Gil Garo for fact finding and laying out strategy. In order to see their ends met with as little loss of life among their people as possible, he is faced with finding a cure for a curse unlike what his son endures, and becomes a kind of pillar of morality for his people as they inform their own decisions against what he did to his son for his people--with some rejecting his way and others embracing it, either to the detriment of their people or to their benefit. Ungol as a kind of lynch pin and guide for his people's actions sets them on a path through war he is largely losing faith in, as it seems the gods see fit to plague him with tragedy after tragedy, and he believes he is personally responsible for these acts.

Dupec Safar

Tears for the Moon God is available now on Amazon.com. Read for free with a Kindle Unlimited Subscription. Click the image above to be redirected to the sales page.

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