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
Lie detector song.
"Are you being coerced or are you just suicidal?"
"I don't know what you mean. I don't even really know who you are. Please just kill me."
purposeful_glory
There but for the grace of Maitimo's extremely dysfunctional familial relationships -
She makes it fast.
She makes it fast.
Nice weather again. Maybe he'll only send her presents when it's nice weather. Maybe she can relax whenever it's raining.
They're teaching Men how to plant crops.
They're teaching Men how to plant crops.
And the werewolves start having nightmares.
purposeful_glory
...Well, that's not good. If it were Thauron doing his creepy long distance osanwë thing she'd have expected it to start up earlier. Is it all of them or just the ones he knew personally?
It's all of them, though all of them are absolutely terrified to admit it to her.
purposeful_glory
Okay. No more turning people into werewolves, otherwise wait-and-see.
Everyone agrees that this is reasonable. The werewolves start avoiding her as much as they can.
purposeful_glory
Would a nice nonthreatening Elf please find out what the deal with that is.
A nice nonthreatening Elf reports a little while later that all of the werewolves are having the same vivid dream in which they cower before Loki and she explains that she is going to kill them and that she feels sorry about it. Sometimes the dream takes place at the edge of the desert, sometimes in the snow; sometimes she burns the bodies, sometimes just turns them invisible. The dreams have told the werewolves where to go to look for bones.
purposeful_glory
Would this nice nonthreatening Elf please go find that werewolf who met the orcs, and explain how oaths work.
That werewolf is nowhere to be found.
No one can think of anyone else who's missing.
purposeful_glory
How long has he been gone and why didn't anyone notice before? Any Elves know him well enough to osanwë him from however far he's got to?
No one has any comment on why they didn't notice he was missing. A few Elves try, without results.
purposeful_glory
Okay. Will the Elf please explain to some other levelheaded representative how oaths work and in particular how orc oaths work?
So it is explained. This doesn't really serve to calm everyone down much, but Loki hasn't executed any of them yet, except possible one missing werewolf, and gradually they relax a bit.
purposeful_glory
She has no idea where the missing werewolf is, suspects Thauron or possibly him just running off because the nightmares scared him, and definitely did not kill him.
Spring turns into summer. There's organized wrestling contests now. If Men have children on the same schedule as Midgardians a few of them are going to be due soon.
purposeful_glory
Everybody pregnant had better be carrying their healing songs.
Loki is mostly just working and not mingling, though. Why aren't there more Maiar around who want to be somebody's dog, she could use one to tell when she's being spied on.
Loki is mostly just working and not mingling, though. Why aren't there more Maiar around who want to be somebody's dog, she could use one to tell when she's being spied on.
The next time he sends orcs he sends a hundred of them, unarmed, with orders to walk up to the Men and introduce themselves. He's taught them the language the Men speak. Some of them are, in fact, carrying their young children. They get stopped by the guards and assure the guards that, yes, the thing about the oaths is true, but their orders are to meet the Men and say hello, they swear they don't mean any Men or any werewolves any harm, and have you met a baby? This is what a baby looks like. Yours might be a little different.
purposeful_glory
Well.
Would one of the orcs like to come talk to her? Pick one at random, please, some Elf she can osanwë from here.
Would one of the orcs like to come talk to her? Pick one at random, please, some Elf she can osanwë from here.