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
Would it be useful information to you?
purposeful_glory
Sure. I can fly invisibly as long as I have my visible illusions following me at a considerable distance passing through the ground. If I ought to do this by default rather than just when particularly worried I'd like to know. I can do the spell without you having to borrow Macalaurë or line up a shot from inside a building, if you like.
Sure. And you'd only need to do it by default around people who have that spell.
New river-wheel. You should tell Nelyo that if he wants us on the other side he'd better plan on building his own river wheel, this is a difficult project.
"Hey! Difficult project." he says when she arrives.
purposeful_glory
"I'd apologize but it's not like I made you build one." She de-baffles and concatenates the accelerated perception spell, then produces a swift-in-a-hurry target.
He spends a while watching it without firing. "My reflexes aren't changed, and I'm not sure how they interact. This is an entertaining series of experiments but it goes very much against my instincts to take shots I'm not entirely confident I'll make."
purposeful_glory
"Even shots against nothing in the sky? You're not going to cripple a deer or something if you're off."
"I don't usually take shots against nothing in the sky." Another long minute watching it, and then he fires.
He is not off.
"Sorry. Guess the twenty-bubbles solution still works since by day you'd notice if something was shooting at you."
He is not off.
"Sorry. Guess the twenty-bubbles solution still works since by day you'd notice if something was shooting at you."
purposeful_glory
"Is twenty a random number or does it just strike you as a right inflection point between 'probably won't hit me' and 'less conspicuous than a flock of a thousand'?"
"The latter. If I saw twenty I wouldn't even try, and there aren't five archers that good on any side of this thing so you wouldn't even run a particularly high risk of a bunch of people assembling to give it a try."
purposeful_glory
"Okay. Thanks for the tests and numerical recommendation."
"Any time." He returns to assembling the water wheel.
purposeful_glory
And while plumbing's enticing, she wants to go to the other host to see if they've got any more songs for her and want spell rooms.
Twenty blobs zoom away.
Twenty blobs zoom away.
The other host is having some kind of organized weapons practice in the center of their camp.
They are.
purposeful_glory
Then she can land somewhere and supervise and take note of how good everybody is for a couple minutes, and if nobody breaks off to say hi in that time she can concatenate her accelerator and work. Fast.
No one interrupts her immediately.
After a while Findekáno says Loki. We weren't expecting to see you back.
purposeful_glory
She puts away her spell and symbols. I wasn't expecting to come back either but I found an exciting magical cheat! Which your cousins are already taking advantage of, so I thought I'd come offer it to you too.