“There is more power in blood spilled willingly than unwillingly. The latter is simply a great deal easier to obtain.”
– Dread Emperor Sorcerous
I would have compared it to herding cats, but as far as I knew those didn’t take time in the middle of a rout to backstab allies or enemies, depending on who didn’t watch their back closely enough. Well, maybe Praesi cats. You never knew with Wastelanders. I kept the drow moving even after we’d cleared the area that was being affected by the ‘volcano’ by more or less stomping out any knot of bravery that formed. After the second time Mighty who tried to stand their ground and rally their warriors got a gate opened above their heads the message was received. I was sinking into Winter at a prodigious rate, no to ways around it, but nowadays I had more than just Akua to dump the principle alienation into. Twelve hardened former Mighty on top of Diabolist meant I could keep this up for quite a while without going all monologue-addicted, and if it came down to it I could try to disperse some of it into the drow who’d simply taken oaths. There were shards of Winter in them as well, after all, put there to enforce the terms. It didn’t quite feel like I’d be breaking our bargain if I did that, but somehow I suspected it was close enough I wouldn’t like the ensuing backlash. A desperate measure, if need be, but not to be used before that.
The front we’d named the Pit was effectively finished, the chaos within being poured into the dawning mess at the centre of Great Strycht, but while fighting there I’d taken my eye off the two fronts to the east. There were risks in that, which was I’d put Lord Soln in command of the reserve to hedge my bets. It had authority to intervene as it deemed necessary to keep the wagon on the road. It was about time to see how that’d worked out. I remained with the retreat until we reached the outskirts of the central district before putting Ivah and Archer in charge of the situation and dismissing the glamour and taking flight. The false sky of the cavern was mercifully unburdened by fighting, and the height allowed me to gauge how the situation was unfolding over the entire city. There’d been two battles planned in the east, fronts named Spear and Dice. The former I wasn’t overly worried about, since the Jindrich would be taking the lead there and their sigil-holder was infamously destructive. The latter was a different story, as it involved a cabal of four sigils informally led by the Hushu, which presumably weren’t in on any of the plots coming to a head. If they pushed into the other eastern front, that whole section of the city would become a massive melee I lacked the tools to properly handle.
Considering the ‘plan’ for the Battle of Great Strycht was to drive everyone and their genderless sibling into the centre before the Longstrides arrived, there was a lot riding on Lord Soln’s ability to cope with the situation.
What I took in from above was a mixed bag. The reinforcing Peerage I’d sent to back up the Jindrich had been enough to punch through the delaying force sent by the Rumena on the Spear front, by the looks of it. They were in full retreat, harassed by coalition and Peerage drow as they made for the centre. Considering the amount of Peers I’d sent east I was rather surprised it was harassment and not annihilation I was looking at, but the explanation was not difficult to find. The Hushu and their allies had taken the field and decided to be clever about it. Instead of launching a hard assault that would see my Peerage diverted from the pursuit to deal with the situation, they were marauding around the flanks and striking fast before withdrawing. The Peers and sigil-holders in command were hesitating, reluctant to allow the Rumena to retreat unimpeded when the Hushu attacks were so lukewarm. The three lords I’d assigned to that front had gone with the understanding that containment was their main objective, so they were tacitly allowing it to happen even if it thinned their ranks. Presumably judging that the overall losses would be greater if we fully engaged. The reserve under Lord Soln was closer to the centre, in an incline between two islands-turned-hills, and so hidden from view. There’d been four sigils assigned to the reserve, before hostilities erupted, but only two were still hidden down there: the Soln and the Agus, so at least the overall commander was there to answer my questions.
Instead of staying up there and drawing attention, I landed next to the reserve and dismissed my wings. The drow parted around me, many of them bowing as I passed, and I returned the gesture with a silent nod. The Lord of Shallow Graves awaited me with Lord Agus at its side, gravely listening to dzulu giving reports. The conversation died as I strode in, the two Peers inclining their heads in deference.
“Losara Queen,” Lord Soln said. “I heard word of your success to the north.”
“Drew in everyone I could and sent them running into the central melee,” I agreed. “I’m more interested in the situation around here. Have the Hushu and their cabal declared for a side?”
“Their own, presumably,” Lord Agus sighed.
“They attacked the coalition and the Rumena both,” Soln calmly replied. “Though with the retreat of the Rumena, we are now the only blood left to be shed.”
“I take it you’ve something in the works,” I said, glancing around pointedly.
There were, after all, two missing sigils.
“I sent the lords Lovre and Vadimyr to circle around Hushu positions,” Lord Soln agreed.
“That’ll open another front,” I pointed out. “Instead of push them into the centre, which is what we’re actually after.”
“So I said, Losara Queen,” Lord Agus muttered. “So I said.”
“I intend to launch an assault myself as they do, my queen,” Soln explained. “Along the ridges of the southeast.”
I frowned, trying to remember what I’d seen of the battlefield from above. It would make a corner connected to a line that led straight to the centre, more or less, if you counted the forces currently pursuing the Rumena. If I had to guess at the intent, it’d be forcing Hushu and friends to head towards the centre to avoid being assaulted from two sides. If we’d been fielding a disciplined army I would have given it decent odds of working out as Soln wanted, forcing movement through pressure, but as it was we’d be compounding a gamble with another gamble. And even if it works out, we’re wedging the Hushu and their allies in between the Losara Sigil and the rest of our forces, I thought. Considering my sigil had already taken harsh losses at the hands of the Rumena, if the Hushu went all-out against them they might outright collapse. That’d be… bad. Without my own forces out there to stoke the fire, there was a decent chance the ‘neutral’ sigils there would rally and retreat rather than remain participants in the bloody melee. Soln, I thought, had good instincts. But it was trying to fight with an army we didn’t have, and its core mistake was trying to maintain control over a situation that was already too chaotic to handle.
“How long ago did Lovre and Vadimyr set out?” I asked.
“Less than half an hour,” Lord Agus said.
“Right, so we’ve still got time to manoeuvre,” I frowned. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. The entire force holding back the Hushu and their cabal is to collapse immediately and flee towards the centre.”
The two drow stiffened with surprise.
“The casualties-” Lord Soln delicately began.
“Will sting, I know,” I said. “But your way is as likely to lead in a slugging match we can’t afford as it is to drive them to the centre. So instead of forcing them, we’ll bait them. That many sigils in a rout? They’ll come after them with everything they have, eager for the harvest.”
“And we are to simply look upon the situation and wait?” Lord Agus asked, with what I suspected to be a hopeful tone.
Not the fiercest of fighters, this one.
“No,” I said. “You two and the two sigils Lord Soln sent out are to attack them from behind once they’ve committed.”
I paused, meeting the Lord of Shallow Graves’ blue eyes.
“Lord Soln, force them into the centre,” I said. “With everything you have.”
The drow softly laughed.
“And I believed myself to be ruthless,” it said. “It will be as you say, Queen of Lost and Found.”
Lord Agus was a lot less sanguine about essentially throwing both our ‘allies’ and several of our sigils into a boiling broth, but kept its dismay largely off its face.
“Will you be accompanying us in this, Losara Queen?” it asked.
“Sadly, I suspect I’ll be needed elsewhere,” I said.
If only because the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by my own warriors when the Longstride Cabal showed up.
“Do either of you know where Mighty Jindrich is?” I continued.
“The Rumena angered it enough it grew wroth before they were driven back,” Lord Soln said. “It was last seen heading out in their pursuit, its mind lost to rage.”
“Find the largest concentration of wreckage and corpses, it shall not be far,” Lord Agus noted.
“And Mighty Rumena?” I asked.
“Has yet to take the field against us,” Soln said. “Though there is word it might have participated in the taking of the central district. It is largely under that sigil’s control by now.”
“So the dance awaits me in the middle,” I mused. “Fitting. Lord Soln, I trust you’ll be able to carry out your orders here?”
“That much I can promise,” the Lord of Shallow Graves smiled.
“Then wade in their blood, my lord,” I said, and translucent wings burst out of my back.
I was thousands of miles away from any orc, but their traditional farewell had hardly ever been more appropriate. I shot back up into the sky and wasted no time before heading out towards the front we’d named the Woods. That district had been the centre of ancient Great Strycht in senses more numerous than the geographical one, even a swift glance made that clear. It was a labyrinth of temples and great halls, each its own little island surrounded by a deep canal and tied to others structures by curved bridges and arches of stone. The sheer vividness of it startled me, for until now I’d seen drow tastes run towards mostly colours grey and dark. Here though, strange and half-faded patterns of blue, red and white covered every surface. Orange and gold served as the colour of the sky in sprawling mosaics where the moon was depicted as a feathered wheel of white-tipped red, the stylized heads of snakes and drow gazing down at the bloodletting from every corner. The depredations of time and abandonment were easy to find, collapsed roofs not since repaired and broken walls serving as makeshift doors, but I was surprised to see some of the paints had been freshly touched up.
Some of those mosaics were splattered with greyish red, though, and that wasn’t paint.
A square tower with colourful turrets on the corners burst open at the base, and just like that I’d found Mighty Jindrich. The drow was massive, the largest of its kind I’d ever seen, and covered from head to toe in a featureless carapace of pure Night. I watched, reluctantly impressed, as its fingers sunk into the sides of the same tower it’d just ripped up and it repeatedly smashed the whole thing down on a pair of Mighty until there was nothing left but bloody paste. Then it tossed the whole thing into a temple and screamed monstrously before leaping into another fight. This was, I thought, my primary ally in this battle. I sure knew how to pick them. I was almost distracted enough that I didn’t see the javelin coming, but not quite. There were fires all over the district and trails of smoke going up into the sky, but as the projectile sailed through a large plume I caught sight of the stir it caused and dipped below with a bat of my wings. I raised a brow when I realized there was no hint of power in the toss, save in how far it’d been thrown, and that even if I’d not moved it would likely have missed me. Had some enterprising dzulu decided to bag queen and glory with the same throw?
I’d be sure to praise their guts, before the messy retaliatory murder.
I flew around the plume of smoke and found where it should have come from, eyes landing on a single drow standing atop one of the tallest towers in the district. That was strike one. Even far as I was I could make out the looks of it. It was, well, old. Its grey skin was deeply creased, its pitch-black veins visible through it and though tall it had grown visibly stooped. It held no weapon, attired in a strange belted tunic of obsidian rings. Almost like mail, I thought. Its hair was long and white, going down almost to its waist. That was strike two. Its dim silver eyes met mine all the way across the distance, as if it could see me just as well, and I could not feel a single speck of power from it. That was strike three, and so the drow might as well have ‘dangerous, take caution’ tattooed glaring red on its forehead. It did not attack a second time, simply waiting. Not an attack, I corrected. A way to grab my attention. My eyes dipped to the large cloth belt it wore, and the Crepuscular I read on that only confirmed what I was already suspecting. Wings narrowing behind me as I dove, I landed smoothly in front of the Mighty Rumena.
Mantle of Woe fluttering as I rose to my full height – which was, rather unfairly I felt, still shorter than the bent old drow – my wings folded behind me. I wasn’t dismissing those before I got a clear idea of what was taking place here. I’d read a lot of faces, in my time. I’d watched humanity slide off my teacher’s true face like water off clay, the utter blankness of fae bereft of stories. Shades of contempt by the dozen, angers both principled and personal, too many flavours of hatred to count. Irritation from creatures considering me an insolent child, pity from the likes of the Grey Pilgrim and even casual dismissal from the Saint of Swords. Mighty Rumena stood out from that multitude, because all there was in its gaze was attention. Pure and unfettered, as if the weight of it left no place for anything else. It was uncomfortable, to have someone take in all of me so deeply. It didn’t feel like scrutiny, and I realized the source of my unease a moment later. I’d seen that look in another pair of eyes: Masego’s, when he’d come into his aspect in Arcadia. When he’d witnessed it all with impossible clarity.
“Mighty Rumena,” I said. “Your invitation was received.”
“Losara Queen,” my foe simply greeted me.
It had a calm voice, I thought. Unruffled, unhurried. Like nothing could really affect it. It was old and powerful enough it might not even be wrong about that. It glanced down at the messy fighting below, the screams and blood and fire swallowing up the district.
“I remember this city,” Rumena said. “From when it was at its height. The jewel of the south, second only to Tvarigu in beauty. It brings me no pleasure to layer ruin over ruin.”
“And yet,” I said, “here we are.”
“There are only a few of us left, Losara,” the Mighty said. “Those who knew this land before Night fell upon it. In Strycht, Jindrich is the only other – and it was young when we lost the wars. Too young to understand the true depth of the loss.”
“But you weren’t,” I said.
If it wanted to talk while my designs unfolded, I had absolutely no objection to that. If we engaged it was going to be the kind of mess that’d make devils blush, and while my forces below weren’t winning exactly they were carrying out my plan perfectly. It was hard for them not to, when the entire plan was to create chaos and that was the natural state of the Everdark.
“I was a general, honoured twice for victories won in the Burning Lands by the Twilight Sages themselves,” Rumena said. “One of them, I think, against a people whose blood you hold. The look has little changed since those nights.”
My fingers tightened. It was implying it’d fought the Deoraithe, at some point, and there was a little problem with that: neither the Kingdom nor the later Duchy of Daoine had ever come under drow assault in recorded history. There was the Golden Bloom in the way, after all. Which meant I was talking to an entity claiming it’d been alive before the elves arrived on Calernia. Three thousand years old, I thought, at least. Gods. It might be the single oldest thing I’d ever met save for the Dead King.
“And now you’re a sigil-holder in the remnants of the old empire,” I said.
“My army followed me,” the Mighty said. “Already they were rylleh and jawor, though the titles had different meaning then. None of them survived the passing of the years. The Night is not a forgiving sacrament.”
Sacrament, I thought. Not just a domain, some Name’s power manifest. It’d always felt too large, hadn’t it? And I had wondered why no drow seemed to be born a mage. This whole time, had I really been looking at an entire people wielding Below’s equivalent of Light? Miracles of the darkness, purer in nature than even the stuff devils were made of.
“You saw it happen, then,” I said. “What Sve Noc did.”
“I knew one of the sisters,” Rumena said. “And now know her better still. She is in my blood, in my soul.”
Sisters? My eyes narrowed. And it’d called the Sve her. There was something significant about that, I thought. A detail I was missing.
“They broke you,” I said. “Your entire civilization.”
The drow shook its head.
“Not them,” Rumena said. “The Twilight Sages, in their wanton arrogance. How tall stood their pedestal and proud they were of it, until the nerezim cast them down. Only then did they regret the height.”
My blood ran cold. For a creature that old and powerful to call something wanton arrogance, how terrible must it be?
“What did they do?”
“They sought to kill death,” the Mighty said. “But leashed it instead. We were to live forever, you see. As gods. And we did, for a time.”
The old drow’s lips twisted into a bitter smile.
“Then we lost the wars,” Rumena said. “And while we raged and wailed of wealth lost, of glories unmade, the wise Sages knew terror. For the nerezim put entire cities to the sword, and our immortality narrowed. They had borrowed from what would never be. And with every defeat the debt grew closer to that moment where it could no longer be repaid.”
“They didn’t make you immortal,” I spoke slowly, piecing together what’d been laid out for me to find. “Did they? They stole years from children not yet born. That would never be, because their parents were slain by the dwarves.”
It was one of the fundamental laws of sorcery, wasn’t it? That you couldn’t make something out of nothing. I had not forgotten that glimpsed conversation between Neshamah and the Bard, where she’d implied the Twilight Sages had been mages.
“And so our end loomed, Losara Queen,” the Mighty said. “The balance dipped closer to irredeemable disaster with every fallen city. Until the two of them took action.”
“The sisters,” I said. “They made the Gloom. They made the Night. Before the point of no return was reached.”
There was a long moment of silence between us, as the sounds of the slaughter below drifted up to our ears.
“Before?” Mighty Rumena smiled. “O Queen of Lost and Found, did you not come here to rob a corpse?”
I shivered. The old creature laughed.
“Dead, every last one of us,” the drow said. “You thought Sve Noc the cause of our ruin, and you were wrong. You thought them the cure to our disease, and you were wrong again. Our most beloved betrayers did not save a single soul. They… delayed.”
“It makes no sense,” I said. “The Gloom yes, but the Night? It incited slaughter. If instead they’d encouraged childbirth, raised your population, you might have gotten out of it. You’ve had centuries to recover since those wars, you could have evened the scales.”
“You do not understand,” the Mighty said. “It was too late, Losara Queen. We were already dying. But those clever sisters, the wicked and the merciful, they struck a bargain.”
And I grasped it, then, what it was that I was being told.
“The Night is the only thing keeping any of you alive,” I whispered hoarsely. “And the slaughter isn’t a mistake or an unforeseen consequence, it’s the entire point. Every kill is a sacrifice. Willing. Eager, even. Merciless Gods, Archer was right – this entire realm is an altar.”
“The greatest in all of Creation,” Rumena said, ruinously proud. “Witness and weep, Losara, the glory of the Firstborn: we alone, of all peoples in the world, have cheated death twice.”
“But it couldn’t last,” I said. “You had to have known that. The dwarves were going to come sooner or later and it was all going to fall apart the moment they did.”
“The Night was not an answer,” the Mighty said. “But it could be understood as a question.”
And another part of the puzzle fell into place.
“Apotheosis,” I said. “Through brute force. Trying every possible application of power through hundreds of thousands of Mighty so that a path out could be found.”
And I had thought myself inelegant, for merely blundering my way into my mantle. The sisters were trying to force the lock by trying every possible key.
“Was it?” I asked. “Did they find a path?”
Pale silver eyes considered me calmly.
“Come now,” Rumena said. “Why would the Shrouded Gods grant such a boon, when our base terror kept their altars slick with blood?”
“So they failed,” I said. “Rumena, there’s another way. I can help with this. We don’t need to fight. Winter-”
I bit my tongue.
“You knew that already,” I finally said. “And you still struck.”
“You are right, Queen of Lost and Found,” the Mighty said. “You can help with this.”
As a sacrifice, one last to finally even the scales. And I’d been a good sport, hadn’t I? The Everdark entire might be an altar, but I’d consecrated Great Strycht with thousands of dead just so Sve Noc could properly open my throat over its ashes. Even as my alarm mounted, part of me could not help but admire the game of the Gods Below. They’d played their hand flawlessly, hadn’t they? It didn’t matter to them whether the drow rose from the dark as the Winter Court reborn in shadow, or if the Priestesses of Night devoured my mantle whole and unleashed madness on Creation as a two-faced goddess. No matter who won, they won as well. That was their way, I was beginning to understand. They didn’t move like Above, trying to force a victory in every fight. They only ever fought when they couldn’t lose.
“Why tell me any of this, if we’re going to fight?” I asked, warily backing away.
“To give them time to surround us,” Mighty Rumena said.
The roof exploded beneath our feet, and the Longstride Cabal entered the fray.
Go vote!
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“And I had thought myself inelegant, for merely blundering my way into my mantle. The sisters were trying to force the lock by trying every possible key.”
So Cat but worse? Damn.
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I’ve brute forced things in video games before. 4 digit combination locks are the limit though, longer than that I’d probably get bored and give up. And the sisters have been at it for how many centuries? Well, whatever else you can say about them, their not quitters.
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When you’ve got an eternity to make eternity last for an eternity, you tend to have patience.
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Eternity is not so much itself when the dwarves are after you.
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Ye Mighty, we heard you like immortality so we liquified all your experiences, so you can backstab everything while you try to escape enthropy.
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***WORM SPOILERS AHEAD***
Reminds me of the entities in worm, giving powers to humans and encouraging them to fight one another so they can harvest intelligent solutions to poriblems and novel applications of their powers an technology.
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Well the worms had the end goal of reversing entropy, so all their powers still obeyed entropy, even if it stole from another copy universe to give to this universe, since the worms exist across all of time and space and just sorta run all possible copies of a thing til they harvest enough conflict, their main goal is to steal novel tech from species and recreate it themselves.
There’s a reason Ward doesn’t talk about beating the cycle, the worms have to face an unwanted truth, that entropy comes for us all, and humans will never stop fighting.
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Well, they had a couple hundred thousand Mighty helping…
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A 4 digit lock still has 10,000 possible combinations. Your patience is still amazing.
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It seems to me a lot like evolution in its principle
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Character contest continues: White Knight vs Ranger! Link to vote below. (As a side note, I have an internal betting pool with my friends and I’m rather amused by how badly I’m doing in it.)
https://www.strawpoll.me/16898889?fbclid=IwAR0uD9CGOwdL8IGWT30t-A8GRbrq29gZWym1LwzirgdLTWHYL_nR_icoWqA
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So is it canonical that Praesi cats will backstab allies? Cats already act like nobility in our own world…
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I thought that was already proven with the Sentient Tiger Army?
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I thought it was an invisible tiger army?
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No the invisible army was a different one. The sentient Tiger army was the one that backstabbed the current Emperor.
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#7 on Top Ten Sentences no one ever thought would be written
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i thought it was sentient Tapirs
the tiger army was the invisible one
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No, the tapirs ate an Emperor, and the precedent of the tigers committing treason was applied to the tapirs. As such, they could be executed for treason, but they were found ineligible to seek a claim of succession by right of killing the Drad Emperor.
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… because, to be precise, they were sentient (like the tigers, and therefore legally capable of treason) but not sapient (and hence not eligible to claim the Tower by right of conquest)
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You know, if you want your character to win, you can place them as the first option. I think there’s a paper somewhere talking about how that’s the more favoured option when people are unsure what to pick.
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That’s only the case when you’re unsure who to pick. There’s basically a single head-to-head so far that wasn’t a landslide victory, so it wouldn’t have made too much of a difference.
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The brackets are at http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=470805.
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Would love to know your bets once the voting is done. I have made several wrong predictions, myself.
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So far, betting based on seed has been a pretty good strategy: only two upsets so far, and both of those were close seeds: 9 beat 8, which barely counts as an upset, and 10 beat 7 (Victory over Foreign Despots!). Looks like it was a well-seeded tournament!
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“Well, maybe Praesi cats.”
Ah yes, Praes, where even the housepets are looking to further their political career and gain an upgrade to sweetened milk for dinner, every dinner.
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Unlike man eating tapirs cats can prove sentience and claim the Tower.
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I feel like we now have a Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu on our hands. The enemy bringing in the group of nameless, faceless ringers who will ambush Cat, who is now taking the place of the hero.
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Oh yeah, definitely. This is not going to end well for the Drow.
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There is only a finite amount of doom after all. 😉
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God I love conversations like this! It shows just how much effort an author puts into their story, by the readers beeing able to make predictions, without the story becoming the least bit boring. There is predictable, or as Black would put it; Uninspiring, and there is predictable, because the author showed the readers so much of the world it becomes alive and understandable to people that did not think it up themselfs.
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Thanks for explaining so well what was, for me, just a half-formed thought.
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Let’s hope that ends up weighing more than the sheer numerical disadvantage. Black did make a career of showing logistics *can* overturn story and sorcery both, in enough quantity.
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And planning. Black was very strong on planning.
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I think it was less that logistics could overcome story and more that if you fulfill the requirements of a story in a way that doesn’t cost you too much good logistics and planning can make up for the loss.
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Even a good story will not let someone beat off a sufficiently more numerous/well armed/well trained army. That’s basically how Black conquered Callow. And part of why, for Cat, fighting Summer in Creation was very different from in Arcadia.
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Ah, but that isn’t what Black showed.
He showed that logistics and a knowledge of the stories can be used to turn the story on its head. The second part of that is a requirement, not a suggestion, in this world. Problem here is if anyone present knows stories, it’s Cat. The drow are in way over their heads. They got to cheat death twice: The first was on their terms. The second was on Below’s. To follow the pattern the third time they will cheat death? That will be on Cat’s (Winter’s) terms. It wouldn’t do for them to cheat death on their own terms for the third time. That would be boring.
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I can’t spare the time to find the quotation right now, but I am pretty sure it was said at some point that Black had demonstrated that stories must bow to sheer logistics, if there is enough of the latter.
Actually, I’m pretty sure Cat said the same about fighting the Fae in Creation (as opposed to in Arcadia): logistics matter on this side.
Also, I don’t think it’s as set in stone as you say. If it were, there’d be no tension to this moment.
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I mean, Cat always has the option of just bailing to Arcadia, and can fly where Longstriders can’t. Logistics kind of favor her here, imho.
…admittedly we don’t have any proof Longstriders can’t fly. Now THAT would be epic
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That, plus bailing to Arcadia assumes they can’t hamper her movement into the portal somehow. Also means she’d need to get Indrani, and give up on her Drow army…
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The sentient tiger army one of the Dread Emperor’s created committed treason, and I suspect they count as Praesi and as cats.
Damn, that’s a long time.
And that suddenly makes things a whole lot clearer about the “Why” behind the current state of the drow.
This is not according to plan. Rumena is working with the Longstriders and Sve.
Fortunately, Cat is very good at improvising her way to victory, usually via murdering the everliving fuck out of her enemies.
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Alright, so the drow need to repay the debt of life. And theoretically Winter is enough.
So we have a rough measuring stick to measure Cat up to. Cats power is worth nearly 3000 years worth of drow lives.
So assuming there are roughly 500,000 Drow alive, across the entire Everdark, and the normal lifespan is about 60 years, that’s 50 generations. So Cat is worth millions of Souls in terms of magical power. Going full tilt, she could recreate Keter several times over and still have some power left over.
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So when dealing with Below you need proficiency with Contract Law, Financial Systems Management and “Creative Accounting”.
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Seems like hell alright
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Ah yes, Creative Accounting, the byproduct of Vague Graphs and Approximate Estimation.
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I never doubted economics classes should feature bloodletting…
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I’d say it’s more along the lines of practically infinite. She is an Immortal, the ruler of half of the prototype of creation. She just doesn’t know how to bring it to bear.
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She knows how to bring it to bear, she just doesn’t want to pay the cost of doing that.
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More like; does not know how to skirt the edge of what she is willing to pay.
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Their normal lifespan is, I’m guessing, more than 60 years. The unnatural precision of their Nightless lives is because any years past 60 were sacrificed in the original ritual.
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This Mighty Rumina person might be an old asshole and a dickish one at that.
But damn it all, you have to admit, the old man had style.
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Wait, old man? Rumena is a female “it”, right?
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One of the dialogue mentioned it was a ‘he’. So I just thing of him as a guy.
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Well Cat does have Akua as a back up plan and she did know that Sve Noc would be making for Winter now
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i cant help but think in the song, the girl who climbed the tower ” to join them and rest in the shadows,” that’s just too fucked
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That song is basically a summary of the whole story of Practical Guide to Evil.
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Indeed.
Another thing that shows how incredible the setting is.
Just needed to be said. 🙂
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Well… Shit.
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Well it looks like Cat’s rolling-over-her-enemies arc is over, and some readers have complained about that being unexciting.
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Time for interludes?
The Drow are going to be very dissatisfied when they find Cat has no power and dumped it already..
Akua Time.
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So Rumena is the one who’s been trying to keep old paints fresh, huh.
I really hope they survive this. Or anyone else from their time who still remembers the old drow culture, so they can rebuild it in the new realm Cat brings them to, whatever that is.
This culture deserves to be reborn, one way or the other.
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Does it? Deserve to be reborn, I mean. Part of the point of a culture is that it is the product of the time and the circumstances that created it. Circumstances which no longer exist. Some things pass, and bringing them back for the sake of nostalgia is pretty senseless.
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Yeah, I picked the wrong word.
It deserves to be rebuilt. To be remembered. To not be forgotten. Drow deserve to have their culture, their history, what they’d lost.
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Also, considering their culture was what birthed this whole mess, I’m not sure there would be any good in bringing any of it back.
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I would not consider blunders of a bunch of demigods to be a culture. Otherwise, Callow needs to add goblinfire to their cooking in the list of their worst cultural achievements.
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It sounded like their culture was already somewhat focused on raiding and sacrifice before the fall, though…
And, well, Cat got the goblinfire thing from Praesi. No fair pinning that on Callow. You can probably say “a sword in eveyy attic” is part of their culture, though.
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Wonder if Cats going to end up the same for the drow as Black is to the orcs?
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At least equivalent, probably more.
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Three times cheat death. Winter.
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Third time’s the charm…
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Fell for the monologue cat.
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A conversation, not a monologue. But yeah, she certainly fell for the trap which was cleverly set with just the right bait. Juicy information that Kat really needed to piece things together.
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This would fall along the lines of “Never give a mage time to cast”.
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Is it still a trap if it doesn’t change anything about her plan?
She wanted to lure every major sigil into the fight in the middle of the city… which she did.
She wanted to start her fight with Rumena away from her own army… which she did.
And she wanted to do all that before the Longstrides showed up… and they just did.
So maybe I’m missing something but I’m not seeing a “OH SHIT” moment here!
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You know, that’s a really good point.
The only ‘oh, shit’ I can think of is that she’s surrounded by the Longstride Cabal. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t expected.
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Do I understand it correctly that the Night is pure power of Below?
Oh boy, Masego’s gonna be pissed that he haven’t come along.
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The Hierophant, vivisector of miracles, missing an entire race wileding Belows equivalent of priestly miracles in order to forge a goddess? Oh he’ll be furiously frustrated.
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Not to mention that this is probably the largest long term Ritual ever performed…
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Cat will have to bring some back for him to examine.
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..”furiously frustrated”..???
..that’s a nice turn of words…Cap’n 🍻
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Oooooh, good point. But I think he’ll be able to catch up because there’s no way Kat’s not coming out of this without Night added to her arsenal. If not personally wielded then certainly via Sve Noc, Akua, or the Lord of Silent Steps.
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That was a great chapter quote. One of the most appropriate yet.
And so the mists part. We see, now, the shape of things – at least in part. The Drow are, in a way, exactly what Below wants – servants so deep in debt they can’t afford to stop paying, even as the interest compounds the amount owed, if anything, faster than they can pay.
As for the end… It seems the Drow knew what Cat was planning and had a counter ready. She didn’t want to fight the Longstrider Cabal but now she has to face them, plus Mighty Rumena, apparently without Archer. Let’s hope she has a plan.
On another note, the true nature of the Night sheds some light on that “offering” Cat was made when she entered the Everdark. Good on her, not acquiring that sort of ugly debt. It’s interesting, how Above gifts miracles to basically all their priests and a lot of heroes, while Below does it only to those they own.
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Above do give their miracles to their priests and heroes, but don’t they own every single one of them, in a sense?
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Not in the literal one that Below owns the Drow. While Above has the Good guys eating straight from its hand ideologically, the Drow literally depend on sacrificing their own to Below to survive.
Although, now that I think about it, the Heroes that get the most Light are the choir-touched. And they have all been essentially hollowed out and filled with Above’s purpose…
Still, Heroes and even angels can fall. The Drow can’t renege on Below. And, actually, the demons can’t either. Don’t know about devils. Interesting thing, that in this way Above is more permissive than Below. Weird inversion.
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Can’t they? Wouldn’t that be Cat’s ideal endgame – to steal the drow from below?
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Considering they owe them more lifespans than they have?
The only reason any Drow lives any length of time is the Night. And since they mostly kill each other, the amount their civilization as a whole pays back each year is most likely inferior to the amount they borrow via births.
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Debts only matter if you have to pay them – and fae trickery with contracts is an old story, as is Cats approach to Gordian knots.
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Fae contract trickery is generally them swindling someone, not them helping someone get out of a Faustian deal.
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Not that the most recent chapter seems to be going that way.
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No one here is an oracle. I hope.
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Next line:
“All according to plan.”
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Remember Cat’s famous words in her first trip to Arcadia:
“We’re going to bullshit so hard it becomes a prophecy.”
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Oh, I hope not. She can’t have prepared for this exact situation. But I’m sure she’s prepared some contingencies that will be useful.
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Exploded into the fray and into Arcadia.
….
At least that was what has been telegraphed.
I’m curious to see what really happens.
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Honestly this is a very annoying move EE. Now that place in me that craves for awesome chapters has stirred and it hungers for what kind of resolution you will give us.
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Given how well this series has unfolded, I’m 95% sure EE will deliver an awesome resolution to this crisis.
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Does anyone know where I can find as much of the song as has been revealed?
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if you are talking about the girl who climbed the tower there
http://abridged-guide-to-evil.wikia.com/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Climbed_The_Tower
if not sorry do not know
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Thanks!
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I suppose this should be a given, but.. the Gods Below are dicks
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Yeah, they are. For the first time, I’m now thinking of them as active agents in all this.
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I like how Cat uses the lowercase possessive ‘my lord’ instead of the honorific ‘my Lord’. It’s a nice touch.
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I am now quite fond of Mighty Rumena.
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I don’t quite understand the nature of the deal with Below and where it went wrong. Further, why Night is holding this at bay. Can someone help explain it to me?
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So the Twilight Sages fucked up. They tried to make drow immortal. That worked for a time, kinda. Then they realized the immortality came from killing a fuck ton of drow.
To stop all drow from dying off, Sve Noc made a deal with Below kinda, and took a massive loan with no intention of ever paying it back. She’s keeping the whole drow population alive with Night, as well as researching how to make them immortal without it.
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Do I regret staying up all night waiting for the chapter to come out? Guess I’ll find out tomorrow at work
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Rumena: “I’m distracting you, you big turd blossom!”
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“I would have compared it to herding cats, but as far as I knew those didn’t take time in the middle of a rout to backstab allies or enemies, depending on who didn’t watch their back closely enough. Well, maybe Praesi cats. You never knew with Wastelanders.”
Cmon Cat, we covered the sentient tiger army. You know the answer to this one!
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