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
They have free will. He could have been lying about what he wanted from me, but it is not an insane thing to want. And they are three weeks old and have no culture to build from! No one seems smart in that situation! They don't seem inherently less cunning than Midgardians, based on which prior experience I expect them to be impressive - if differently - within a generation or two. And generations can be fast. Midgardians take nine months to go from conception to birth and can function as adults in sixteen years, give or take.
Orcs also have children very quickly; as far as foot soldiers he already has more resources than us. The free will thing is more worrying.
I really don't have any idea what to do.
I really don't have any idea what to do.
purposeful_glory
The orcs aren't being allowed to build a culture of their own except for my batch, which is a little different; Thauron seems to be aiming to warp the Men, not suppress them.
My mother's not going to travel across the continent to start a fight with Gorthaur even if it might actually be worth it. She wouldn't abandon us all, and nearly all her strength is vested in Doriath anyway. If he comes for you here, she will fight him.
It's not fair that it all falls on her and you. There should be others helping.
purposeful_glory
Yes. The newcomers are here to try, but the best chance is that they will invent something; and that takes time.
Well, the Enemy's plan takes time, too.
I'm sorry.
purposeful_glory
It's hardly your fault. You're just a convenient audience for my thoughts running in circles.
If I'd prioritized better I could go help you fight him.
purposeful_glory
You prioritized for the life you had. I did the same thing, remember? If I'd prioritized for effective combat instead of for participating in my culture and various contingencies and wanting to fly maybe I'd have the kind of firepower I'm planning on learning to teleport to fetch, stamped into my brain forever.
Yeah.
Beleriand is lucky to have you, Loki. The Men and the orcs and the Elves and Dwarves alike. It's okay if you can't win this one.
Beleriand is lucky to have you, Loki. The Men and the orcs and the Elves and Dwarves alike. It's okay if you can't win this one.
She lies down in the grass and stares up at the trees overhead and frowns.
Nothing. I can't think of anything. If I did I'd tell you.
And they sit there until the hundred guards Lúthien is required to have whenever she leaves the palace start milling awkwardly around. I should go in, she says, it's late.
purposeful_glory
Yeah.
Loki goes in, does some spellwork while the speedup song loops for her - experiments with song combinations. They're not supposed to work but maybe they can work if the songs can't "hear each other"? She can shape baffles so she can hear one in each ear and the sound doesn't go anywhere else...
Loki goes in, does some spellwork while the speedup song loops for her - experiments with song combinations. They're not supposed to work but maybe they can work if the songs can't "hear each other"? She can shape baffles so she can hear one in each ear and the sound doesn't go anywhere else...
That works! She can get the benefits from two songs simutaneously, that way.
purposeful_glory
And of the spells that can be safely tried in a Doriath guest room one of them is the warmth song and why didn't she fucking think of that now she's blue again -
She concentrates. She breathes into her palms.
Her hands are full of frostflowers.
Ha.
The blue fades and the frost melts, when she puts the song away. She'll try the bigger blasts she knows the giants can do when she's not in Doriath. But this is good.
The night passes uneventfully.
purposeful_glory
And in the morning she bids Lúthien goodbye and tromps out and flies to the Fëanorians, fastfastfast with the zooming song.