Verse:Mwail/Ròdh Xa̱y

This concerns one of many timelines for Angai. The Thean names are in this timeline's Modern Standard Thean.

This is a Thean name; the surname is Xay¹¹.

Rodh⁵³ Xay¹¹ /ɻoːð̞ˤ˥˧ xaj˩˩/, known by her artist name ???, nicknames ???, and reverentially referred to as Noble Lady Xay¹¹ (Nar¹³ Xay¹¹ /naɻ˩˧ xaj˩˩/) or Empress/Divine Ruler Xay¹¹ (Dlen³³ Xay¹¹ /tˡɛn˧˧ xaj˩˩/) by her worshippers, was an Old Thean xenharmonicist composer and entrepreneur. She was deified posthumously and is worshipped by many ethnic Theans to this day.

Life

Xay¹¹ was born into a technological world much like early 21st-century Earth. She gained wide appeal within the Angaian pre-apocalyptic xenharmonic community for her compositions, approach to xenharmony, and various other accomplishments. Xay¹¹ was murdered at the age of 30 at the height of the Late Old Thean political turmoil.

Complete or partial printed transcriptions of a number of her pieces survive (that can be attributed to her with some confidence by later historians). However, there are also many pieces that were spuriously attributed to her.

Growth of the Lady Xay¹¹ cult

Todo: read more of Guan Yu: The Religious Afterlife of a Failed Hero

After Xay¹¹'s death, climate change caused most of the existing Internet infrastructure to submerge underwater, causing most data online to be lost. Thus historical sources from her lifetime are scant, and most available sources are by her acquaintances relying on their memory (they agree that she was extraordinarily creative and funny). Many of these people apparently had supernatural experiences involving her; she appeared to them as a vengeful ghost.

In the first few centuries after Xay¹¹'s death, oral tradition played a major role in developing and maintaining folk religious material about Xay¹¹. Later embellishments also claim that she excelled in combat when she was alive.

Divine attributes

Lady Xay¹¹ is a goddess of creativity, wisdom, and craftiness. Her allegedly unjust death led to her being regarded as a deity of retributive violence able to avenge other victims of injustices (according to post-apocalyptic Thean beliefs, such a death in addition to being a great figure during one's lifetime boosts one's spirit's power posthumously). In fact, she is worshipped by both powers that be (such as police and entrepreneurs) and dissidents in Thean society.

In Thean "Buddhism", Lady Xay¹¹ is a "bodhisattva".

In-universe critical scholarship

The only scholarly consensus about the historical Xay¹¹ is that a woman named Rodh⁵³ Xay¹¹ existed, that she was a composer and entrepreneur active in the Old Thean xenharmonic movement, and that she was murdered or executed. Detailed reconstructions of her life and work are under debate. Due to the dearth of sources from her life, a minority of Angaian historians posit that Xay¹¹ is a purely mythical figure.