View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
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.
+ Show First Post
purposeful_glory
"I can do that for you again. No strings attached. It'll just make the rest of this conversation more pleasant for both of us. But first you all need to say you're orcs because sometimes people turn out to be Balrogs and those have a tendency to explode around me."
"I'm an orc," the spokesperson says, and then all the others chime in, nervously.
They are all orcs.
They are all orcs.
purposeful_glory
And her illusion closes its eyes and her real self tromps around in concealed footprints to brush just close enough to each to heal them.
They shudder. They keep standing there.
purposeful_glory
The illusion opens its eyes.
"By any chance," she says, "have you had to swear your loyalty oath more than once in your lives?"
"By any chance," she says, "have you had to swear your loyalty oath more than once in your lives?"
They have. There was a spectacular eight-day festival a few months ago where everyone had delicious food and gifts and weapons and epic songs of battles with Elves were sung and they all reswore the loyalty oaths, with Melkor present so they could direct it personally at him and Elves present so they could direct their hatred personally at them.
purposeful_glory
Of fucking course.
"Well," she says, "that means that my previous way to make it possible for orcs to coexist with anybody else won't work. Any of you good at brainstorming?"
"Well," she says, "that means that my previous way to make it possible for orcs to coexist with anybody else won't work. Any of you good at brainstorming?"
"We just want to go back to Angband," the spokesperson says uncertainly, "we aren't trying to coexist with anybody."
purposeful_glory
"Yes, but if you go back to Angband you'll continue trying to exterminate Elves rather than taking up knitting, I assume, and your boss will draw conclusions I don't want him to draw."
"I did say I knew you were going to kill us."
purposeful_glory
"I'll probably have to. But the last time I caught some orcs I didn't kill any of them. And most of them are, to the best of my knowledge, settled elsewhere on the continent forming a colony. He's cut off the solution I had, but maybe there's more than one."
"We have orders to return to Angband. We'll start doing that, and then you'll kill us. I don't see - I don't see what else there is."
purposeful_glory
"Last time I caught some orcs," Loki says, "it turned out they'd only sworn their oath once, when they were little, when they barely knew what the words meant. They could re-swear with different definitions. And then they made perfectly nice neighbors and they didn't want to go around slaughtering people. I can't do that with you. But I don't object to you being alive. I don't object to you being orcs. I object that you're going to go work for him. I didn't think of the first solution on my own and I don't know if there is another, let alone one I can think up. If you prefer to be alive, though, you could help me think about how to disentangle you being alive from you being his servants."
"He said, if you said that, to say that if you agree to work for him, then all the orcs could work for you."
purposeful_glory
"Oh, I bet he said that. But then you'd still be his servants at one remove. This does not solve my fundamental problem."
She shrugs helplessly.
"Um. If you express any interest in rescuing your friend we're supposed to invite you to make an offer."
"Your magic sword, or a copy of all the notes you take, or kill one person of your choice in Doriath."
purposeful_glory
"Likes the sword, does he. I wonder what Melian would say if I brought one of you there and asked permission to execute you there instead of here. Probably wouldn't go over well and anyway he can't very well swear to follow through operating through messengers like this, can he."
"He said if you questioned whether he'd follow through to point out that he is really being extremely conciliatory towards you and could as easily have sent some people to slit the throats of most of your Men in the night."
purposeful_glory
"That doesn't change the underlying fact that he can't swear under these conditions."
"No. Um. He says that the person who doesn't remember her name thinks very highly of your creativity when you really want something to happen."