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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
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purposeful_glory
Loki teaches them wrestling. If they're gonna do it anyway...
Wrestling is a popular sport. They're inventing other ones, too - swimming, kicking inflated pig bladders around -
purposeful_glory
Sure, whatever floats their boat. Just no depriving each other of teeth, please, she has other things to do than heal everybody all day every day, if you can't settle it by talking have a nice rules-protected match of somethingorother.
How are the wolves reintegrating whence they came? What can be learned about how the heck they work?
How are the wolves reintegrating whence they came? What can be learned about how the heck they work?
No one can figure out when the werewolves turn into werewolves. Some of them have voluntary control, some don't, some have triggering conditions, Elves reading off the experience of voluntary transformation to other werewolves who can't voluntarily transform helps some but not all of them.
The dominant theories are that it's either expectation-controlled or that Thauron was experimenting.
Werewolves in human form are healthier, faster, and stronger. There aren't any other differences noticeable yet.
The dominant theories are that it's either expectation-controlled or that Thauron was experimenting.
Werewolves in human form are healthier, faster, and stronger. There aren't any other differences noticeable yet.
purposeful_glory
Do there seem to be strains - are werewolves who were bitten by particular progenitors "families"? Did those people who were bitten then healed by her spell that night turn into werewolves?
The people who were bitten and healed by her are not werewolves. No one can keep track of who bit who, though they're happy to go test it for Loki if she'll let them make more werewolves.
purposeful_glory
Do the ones who were made directly by Thauron and not bitten remember anything about the process?
Yes, he came and talked with them and then demons came from over the water and he called on the heavens to send the demons away and they vanished, and then he offered to help them protect themselves from the demons, and brought them away one at a time and had them lie still while he did magic. Not everyone he took away came back, he said the others had been sent east to protect other Men and spread the news.
purposeful_glory
The water demons, Loki increasingly suspects, were illusions of his; she still hasn't spotted any. Okay, what's the distribution of werewolf traits in the original batch?
The ones made by Thauron are most of them; eight who shift voluntarily, three who shift somewhat voluntarily with occasional unwanted shifts, nine who shift at night, seven who shift when they're hungry, two who are wolves most of the time but sometimes wake up as Men.
Most people who they bit got bitten several times by different wolves, is the complication, they were supposed to try to get a couple nips in to make it likelier they'd change without needing Thauron's intervention.
purposeful_glory
Bleah.
Okay. Loki does not know what-all turning into a werewolf does, or how to ensure that one is a convenient and not an inconvenient kind, it might make it impossible to have children or shorten lifespan or give Thauron a backdoor into your brain or something, but if anyone is super-not-risk-averse and wants to give it a try under controlled conditions -
Okay. Loki does not know what-all turning into a werewolf does, or how to ensure that one is a convenient and not an inconvenient kind, it might make it impossible to have children or shorten lifespan or give Thauron a backdoor into your brain or something, but if anyone is super-not-risk-averse and wants to give it a try under controlled conditions -
The werewolves are overjoyed. There are some volunteers.
Being a werewolf is better than being a person, it means you're tough and strong and don't die! And they were supposed to recruit lots of friends, before Thauron went away and Loki came, and it's good that now they can.
purposeful_glory
Before anybody bites anybody there is going to be a lecture about how Thauron was bad and wanted bad things and is guilty of murder/torture/generally being an asshole and if being a werewolf is nice this is pretty much a coincidence and they are not to be sketchy in any way about recruitment just because he encouraged it, especially if there are side effects or no way to control convenience of werewolfhood in new subjects.
Murder they agree is really bad. They don't have much reference for the other things. They want to recruit werewolves because being a werewolf is great, not because he said to. They promise.
purposeful_glory
Okay.
Things she will tentatively accept volunteers for: being bit (once) by convenient werewolves and then healed by either of her available methods, or not; repeated exposure by the same werewolfhood donor under the same conditions if that doesn't take; designing further experiments can wait until results are in on that.
Things she will tentatively accept volunteers for: being bit (once) by convenient werewolves and then healed by either of her available methods, or not; repeated exposure by the same werewolfhood donor under the same conditions if that doesn't take; designing further experiments can wait until results are in on that.
Being bit once and then healed by Loki makes you not a werewolf. Being bit once and then not healed usually makes you not a werewolf. Being repeatedly bitten will eventually make you a werewolf. Werewolves don't seem to have any particular affinity, beyond friendliness, with their werewolfhood donor.
She could ask an Elf to read their minds. Men tend to be demonstrative and childlike in their attachments anyway, it's hard to tell what suspicion would look like.
purposeful_glory
Well, if it's not specific to the individual wolf who bit them - and it mostly doesn't seem to be - and it's not disproportionate to acquiring an ingroup affiliation - then that's not an enormous red flag. She does ask her staff to keep an eye out for any weird osanwë wobbles or changes between being a Man and being a werewolf but nothing intrusive.
She keeps the experimenting slow-paced and heavily disclaimed, because she'll really be quite surprised if werewolves - at least female ones - can reproduce and isn't confident that the Men are making informed choices about that, but every now and then authorizes another chomp arranged in some informative way on an enthusiastic volunteer.
She keeps the experimenting slow-paced and heavily disclaimed, because she'll really be quite surprised if werewolves - at least female ones - can reproduce and isn't confident that the Men are making informed choices about that, but every now and then authorizes another chomp arranged in some informative way on an enthusiastic volunteer.
And shortly after this, the world sees its first snowfall and first winter since the rising of the Sun.
purposeful_glory
Cozy.
Loki builds an igloo.
Hopefully they've got enough food socked away?
Loki builds an igloo.
Hopefully they've got enough food socked away?