Gehn
 | |
| Race | 1/2 human, 1/2 D'ni |
|---|---|
| Name in D'ni | <d'ni>gen</d'ni> |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 9392 DE |
| Father | [[Father::Aitrus]] |
| Mother | [[Mother::Ti'ana]] |
| Spouse | [[Spouse::Keta]] |
| Children | Atrus |
Gehn was an apprentice in the Guild of Books at the time of the D'ni's destruction. He is the only son of Anna and Aitrus, and was the father of Atrus. Being the first half-human, half-D'ni that any of his fellow apprentices had ever seen, and given D'ni considerably xenophobic atmosphere at the time, he was heavily ridiculed and ostracized by his peers. He was 8 when D'ni fell, and Ti'ana took him to the surface to live in the Cleft. He later left the Cleft to live with the Amad, returning only when his wife Keta was ill during the birth of their son, Atrus.
Gehn was devastated by the loss of his wife during childbirth, and abandoned Atrus to be raised by Ti'ana. He returned to D'ni and taught himself regestoy, cobbling information together from as many sources as he could find. 14 years later, he returned to the Cleft to retrieve Atrus, taking him back to D'ni over Ti'ana's objections. His dictatorial approach to parenting and education, as well as his warped view of D'ni culture and his role as its savior, eventually led Atrus to rebel against him. With help from Catherine and Ti'ana, he was imprisoned on one of his own Ages, Riven. He spent 30 years trying to redevelop the formulae for crafting Descriptive Books and Ink that would enable him to escape, but was finally re-imprisoned in a new prison Age by the stranger. He has never escaped.
Early life
As an infant, Gehn suffered from poor health, and nearly died from an unidentified illness, which his doctor dismissed as a side-effect of his mixed-race parentage. When he was four, Gehn was inducted into the Guild of Books against the wishes of Ti'ana, who felt that he wasn't ready to leave home. He suffered considerable physical and verbal abuse from his peers while he lived in the guild's boarding house. It was this ostracization during his early childhood years that instilled his reverence for all things D'ni, for he felt that by embracing his D'ni half he could overcome the outsider stigma of his human side. It was also the catalyst for his distant relationship with his mother, whom he resented for not doing enough to keep him at home instead of being inducted. In spite of his treatment, he excelled in his class, and was chosen to give a speech at the conclusion of his first school term at age 8 – coincidentally on the day that D'ni was attacked by Veovis.
In the aftermath of D'ni's destruction, Gehn watched his father grow ill from the biochemical agent used in the attack. Aitrus and Ti'ana made the decision to escape to the surface, but he and his mother were kidnapped by Veovis' co-conspirator A'gaeris as they traveled through the city, and were taken to K'veer. Aitrus pursued them to the island mansion, and sacrificed himself to stop A'gaeris and free his family. Together, they fled to the surface and settled in the Cleft, but Gehn, who was not privy to the full details of his father's actions, blamed his mother for both his death and the destruction of D'ni, further chilling their already frosty relationship. Some time later, Gehn left to live with the Amad, returning when he was 19 only because his wife Keta had grown ill during pregnancy.
Time in D'ni
Following Keta's death during the birth of his son, he returned to D'ni, making his home on K'veer with a mute servant he called Rijus. There, he developed a rather skewed vision of D'ni culture, viewing them as gods among men, and mistaking regestoy's ability to bridge pre-existing worlds with that of true creation. Over the ensuing 14 years, he became determined to rebuild D'ni single-handedly, and tried to teach himself regestoy so that he could rebuild the catalog of Ages in the D'ni empire, adding new worlds filled with primitive natives whom he subjugated and forced to worship him as a deity.
Gehn also developed a considerable obsession with numerology, especially as it pertained to the D'ni's use of the number five. He was convinced that the number had some deeper, almost cosmic significance, and tried to force everything in D'ni culture into this view of the world. Of the six symbols the D'ni used to depict primary and secondary colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet), he believed that only five were truly important. In his attempts to rebuild the D'ni guild system by conscripting ahrotantee, he abandoned the 18 major D'ni guilds in favor of a five-guild system focused around the manufacturing of Ages.
Fourteen years after moving to K'veer, Gehn returned to the Cleft to retrieve his son Atrus and take him down to D'ni, where Gehn taught him regestoy. Atrus eventually rebelled against his father's authority, finally trapping him on the Age of Riven with the help of a Rivenese native named Catherine.
During the thirty years that he was trapped on Riven, Gehn established near-total dominion over the Age's inhabitants, and even attempted to re-establish several D'ni Guilds – Maintainers, Surveyors, and Bookmakers, along with the Builders and Educators, which seemed to consolidate various tasks from other major and minor Guilds – with the help of the natives. Despite this dependence on them for help and manpower, Gehn never seemed to fully trust his Rivenese Guild members, and often seemed frustrated by their "lesser" intellect.
Eventually, Gehn discovered how to manufacture new Books, and began writing a series of test Ages, finally achieving his first success with Age 233. Knowing that Riven would eventually collapse, as many of Gehn's Ages did, he began Writing another Age—Age 234—where he and the Rivenese villagers would be safe. It is into this sequence of events that the stranger found themselves inserted, having been dispatched to Riven by Atrus to rescue Catherine and imprison Gehn once and for all, to ensure he could no longer threaten other civilizations.
According to a journal left by Yeesha in 9660 DE (2005 CE), Gehn remains locked in his prison to this day. It is unknown whether he is still alive.
