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Akibel Mowar is on his way home from the blacksmith's when he spots it. People are shrieking and fleeing from it, which seems reasonable, as it's a fuckoff huge snake with a mirror for a face. A big mirror.
Kib can't so much flee. He can shriek - he can lurch in the direction of the nearest house and try the door - it's locked. He can amble briskly...
He can break into a run when the snake gains on him and fall flat on his face.
And he can get eaten up.
And it's too bright too bright too bright and he flings his arm over his eyes.
secondchance
Great.
If you don't need another set of eyes on that I'm going to try to get my boyfriend to stop sulking, want to help?
secondchance
I think I've pored over this as many times as I can in a row before I wear through my corneas, what's the plan?
So I don't know Maitimo as well as he knows me. But. At a guess. He pulled this off by being good at people, he must have, I cannot conceive of how else so many of them would have followed him. If he can't be sure of his future motives and goals, then accumulating power is a really bad idea. And if he thinks that he'll be in a situation in the future where it's genuinely the right call to lead a massacre, then he is still wronging anyone whose trust he wins today and who he might drag after him. At a guess, the wrong to the people who followed him bothers him as much as the wrong to the people they killed, and it's the people on his side he's seeing every day.
I think the things that will help are things that are definitely worth doing even if he's going to be evil later - so the portal project comes to mind - and - people he need not fear wronging in that way. He is never going to talk either you or I into the things he apparently does. We are in that respect not seduceable.
I think the things that will help are things that are definitely worth doing even if he's going to be evil later - so the portal project comes to mind - and - people he need not fear wronging in that way. He is never going to talk either you or I into the things he apparently does. We are in that respect not seduceable.
I was going to try the opposite, promising Maitimo I'd slaughter cities for him until he gets annoyed enough to shut me up about it, but perhaps there's a way of being unlikely to support massacres that'd get through to him.
'angry' is a good mood on Maitimo, he thinks more strategically and moping and sadness are not strategic. I expect it'd be in a good way.
secondchance
I can suggest it, then. I think I will be very good at atrocious Governor. It's not that horrendous things don't occur to me, I just don't actually do them.
Since in Valinor horrendous things mostly don't actually occur to us, that should be enlightening.
...you're not worried about giving him ideas?
...you're not worried about giving him ideas?
secondchance
No? I am pretty sure that the problem prophesied is definitely not 'unexpected human appeared, deployed imaginary bioweapons'. The problem is that somewhere between now and later a bunch of shit goes down and it results in copious warfare.
I mean, if as prophesied Maitimo ends up running around massacring people, we don't want him to be good at it.
secondchance
...I'm not actually sure of that. If we can't stop him massacring people then by much the same logic he might choose to take over an inevitable war it might be better for him to be efficient at it.
secondchance
The presence of the shiny rocks seems suggestive in retrospect, actually, although I don't know what they're for besides counterfactually restoring light to the world when everything's gone dark.
secondchance
"I," says Kib, "need a break from trying to correlate prophecies, but if you really want me to go away instead of playing Governor-with-atrocities to see what happens I can probably find something else to do with myself."
secondchance
"Well, sometimes we're playing Governor and I think of an atrocity and I can't commit it."
"...I also sometimes have that problem. What, you think suppressing the impulse is what went wrong with me?"
secondchance
"No, I have no idea what happens except that it may centrally feature stupid shiny rocks, but I really don't think you're just going to burst out some long-held repressed desire to actually stab people."