Jerent Mysfeldt
The terraforming scientist human that Sediryl heard a lecture by on Starbase Ana, who later came to Escutcheon to head up Sediryl's projects.
Appearance and Personality
A rumpled young man, with a tendency to pace, jitter, and gesticulate when excited. His voice "dips and soars like a pinwheeling bird" when he's on a topic of interest to himself.[1]
His enthusiasm for his work makes him look like an eternal graduate student, despite the receding "irregular thatch" on his head and the laugh lines around his mouth. [2]
Biography
His area of interest: "The proponents of terraforming, he said, were often too fixated on genetic manipulation of flora when planning for success, ignoring oblique strategies, like targeting the fauna of the destination planet, or the fauna from the originating planet. These helper species, he said, were often ignored, and could be critical to the thriving of transplanted flora."[1]
After hearing his lecture on Starbase Ana, Sediryl composes a letter to (then Queen) Liolesa, saying that he might be of interest to their planet:
As you know, as part of my endeavors in the outworld I am putting myself through an agronomy education, and it was in that process that I came to listen to a lecture I thought would be of use to you. The lecturer in question is named Jerent Mysfeldt, a human with an interest in terraforming. He has specialized in strategies for rescuing failed terraforming attempts by introducing changed animal or insect species. I commend him to your attention, as I believe his ideas would serve us. Indeed, I feel that if you engaged him, he might make our world a project, as it appears we are the exact sort of situation he has been researching. Failed terraforming initiatives are rare in the Alliance; we might be able to secure his expertise for very little effort, given the opportunity it would present someone of his interests.[1]
Liolesa later came to employ him in exactly this capacity after the conclusion of the First Chatcaavan War. He was in his 20s at the point of his lecture on Starbase Ana.[2], and so decades older when he comes to Escutcheon to work on the experimental plots for Sediryl's farming projects:
Her entourage tracked after her, past the grapes and to the delicate greens she’d once despaired of ever seeing take root in Eldritch soil. There were patches of asparagus and green beans, sugar snap peas and lettuce of several kinds, onion bulbs and potatoes and parsnips and carrots… and in a separate field, cordoned off with a fence, heirloom wheat strains, nuevomaize, and barley. There were fruits too, and if it wasn’t in the extravagant health she’d seen on Starbase Ana’s agricultural sphere, everything was growing. Surveying it, she was torn between bittersweet weeping and a victory crow.[2]
Trivia
Quotes
- "Most importantly, these are strategies that can be employed on existing worlds where terraforming has already failed." [1]
- "Mountains on one side, and the sea on the other… I feel like I’m back home."[2]
Story Appearances
- Girl on Fire
- Healer's Wedding
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Girl on Fire, Chapter 21
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Healer's Wedding, Chapter 1