My original idea of Trisanda (trih-SAHN-dah) was that it was a forest planet. Inhabited but not even close to Earth’s population at this time. There’s evidence of civilization, of course: there are buildings, halls, chapels, houses, and so on. Most of them are settlements of maybe no more than ten to twenty thousand people spread out over a good number of miles. You could very well argue that my first thoughts of Trisanda was that it was an entire planet that looked like New England!
It’s more built up than that, of course. There are cities as well as villages, forest lands as well as tropical ones, and so on. In a way, think of it geologically as a possible Earth if we hadn’t evolved into a messy, dirty and somewhat irresponsible Industrial Age. Trisanda is what Earth would be if we’d kept nature quite high up there in importance when it came to our cultural, communal and productive evolution. [Not to say I was going to turn it into a political diatribe on ecology, far from it. I admit to not being entirely well-read on that, and didn’t want to go in that direction anyway.]
We make multiple visits to Trisanda during the Bridgetown Trilogy, but for the most part we stay near a community called Bann Dassah (bahn DAH-sah). That’s an extremely important spiritual center for the Trisandi, including a great meeting hall*, a Landing Field**, a Meeting Table near that***, and a wide path that leads toward the center of the community. Bann Dassah, just like all the other communities, also has a spiritual leader of sorts, who acts both as a seer and as a teacher; her name is sehndayen-ne emha Eprysia Kaalen [ey-PREE-see-ah KAY-lenn], often known to many as Ampryss (a conjunction of ’emha Eprysia’).**** She too pops up from time to time in the trilogy.
As this planet is extremely spiritual in nature, a visitor is able to sense a marked difference in the spiritual energy around them, even if their ability isn’t the strongest. It too works on a similar yin-yang balance; this world is the starting point of the Mendaihu-Shenaihu balance, as well as its imbalance. It too reacts with equal force to whatever might be done to it or is taken away from it. Many consider Trisanda and Gharra (Earth, that is) two planets with a related spiritual balance as well. Therefore it’s considered an extremely holy land and its visitors give it the most utmost respect.
* – The meeting hall is mentioned many times in the books, but I never quite made it there. It may show up in future MU stories, however. We do visit a massive living quarters nearby in The Persistence of Memories, however.
** – Landing Fields are dedicated clearings where Lightwalkers can arrive safely on Trisanda. Each field is partitioned into circular segments with shorter grass, with the sigils of the various Trisandi clans set into them with darker wheat-colored stalks. You’ll see these quite often in the trilogy.
*** – Meeting Tables take various shapes, depending on how each community has them set up. Bann Dassah’s is a long, continuous table that takes up most of the field. Feasts are prepared twice a day, every day, regardless of weather.
**** – Anjshé vocabulary lesson time! Sehndayen-ne (sen-DEY-en-ney) = teacher. Emha (EY-mah) = general feminine title (i.e., Miss, Ms., etc)…the masculine title would be edha (EY-dah).
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