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
"If someone will sing me a song to calm down an animal which would work on hostile ones if it were sung fast, I can make sped-up copies of it that sing themselves and attach these copies to objects. Would that be useful to you?"
We don't have such a song, because it wouldn't be useful. I suppose now someone could compose one.
purposeful_glory
"Do you have any other songs which would be useful like that?"
No. We have what we need, and it suits us.
purposeful_glory
"Would you be willing to let me copy some of them anyway?"
No. We do not want outsiders here and we will not aid you.
purposeful_glory
Well, these folks are kind of aggressively unhelpful. "I'm sorry to hear that."
And she walks out of the forest back towards the Men.
And she walks out of the forest back towards the Men.
The Men are a bit astonished to see her walk out of the forest unfrightened and unharmed.
purposeful_glory
"The people in there really don't like visitors," she comments.
"They're demons," someone explains to her once again.
purposeful_glory
"They're actually a species called Quendi or Elves. There's other tribes of them who are friendlier than those ones, but all the ones I've met are far away. These Quendi are really not interested in making friends and you should probably leave them alone. They implied you have trouble scaring off wild animals?"
"And demons."
purposeful_glory
"...Demons besides the Quendi in the trees?" she clarifies. "Are there other kinds who don't live in the forest?"
There are all kinds! The ones that creep across the waters, the ones that scream and sound like people you know, the ones that take human form and then come close and melt into something else.
purposeful_glory
...okay, she cannot quite explain all of that as tree-dwelling Elves. What do the shapeshifting demons turn into once they aren't humans anymore? What do the water-creepers look like?
They turn into wolves, sometimes, and drag you off, or into shining powerful demonforms and drag you off. The water-creepers only come at night and it's easier to hear than see them.
purposeful_glory
Loki did not discover she's an adopted werewolf, but she did hear that those were a thing.
Do the demons come from any direction, or only some directions?
They haven't yet invented directions but they'll tell her where they remember seeing demons. They are mostly pointing towards the same hilly area across the lake.
purposeful_glory
Loki thanks them and wanders somewhere out of sight and then flies invisibly across the lake. She wishes to be cautious here; the illusion notes are underground and she is properly invisible, not just sky-shrouded. She does not play the speed song.
Past the hills there are more Men. These ones are working, building a stone building of some kind. It's not visible from the lakeside.
purposeful_glory
Oh, good for them! They came up with stone buildings already, look at them go! Anything else around here more demonic-looking than that?
Nothing looks demonic. The ground looks like there might have been a wildfire a few weeks ago.
purposeful_glory
Well, that would certainly scare people but it wouldn't explain the observations she heard. It's a little early for Men to have already invented and forgotten that they invented a bunch of mythology that they then report as fact.
She swoops around, sees nothing but clever stone-building Men, and finds a place to land and change hidden and pops out.
She swoops around, sees nothing but clever stone-building Men, and finds a place to land and change hidden and pops out.
They see her and start warily. "Hello."