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He should have fallen on his sword. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
Punched his ticket for Elysium right away, no waiting around.
He thought they'd only kill him.
Why did he think that? How stupid was he? Why in the world did he think that?
And now instead of his next great adventure he's flubbed a save against dominate person.
If you'd like to live where might makes right,
move to Riddleport get mugged in an alley catch the eye of fifth-circle Elias Tammerhawk and serve him as an mindthralled slave for the rest of your natural life.
I'd rather live in Korvosa where when it looks like someone might depose the Evil Queen she can count on Lawful "Good" Cressida Kroft to stop them.
Yeah, you can count on me to defend you.
If you follow the law.
Which,
is why you have,
decided to follow the law.
That is the system working as intended!
This from the woman who paid adventurers to break into my house while I was taking a bath.
But don't feel singled out, I keep a file on literally everyone who I know to have class levels or a noteworthy last name.
Which practice of mine has been vindicated time and time again - remember those Skinsaw Men?
Are you immune to poison, Arkona?
If anything, I should have been more aggressive. That way I could have caught the fiasco with the Breaching Festival before it came to a head.
I can't pretend to comprehend how you choose which potential threats to catch early.
Seems like public opinion is sour on the newest Queen - do you differ?
Not really.
It isn't impossible that she'll grow into the position - heck, maybe I've seen her grow into it a bit already - but if I'm holding out hope I'm not holding in my breath.
Yet you wait in the wings with the executioner's sword, while she entrenches herself.
Why?
She hasn't broken the law, and she's the reigning Queen.
(At least until I have a legal way to get rid of her.)
The state is its legitimacy, that's the only thing that holds this consensual illusion together.
"Consensual."
Look, I'd love to stay and chat, but someone just teleported onto my boat and I need to figure out what's up with that.
Stick to Cressida Kroft, stay on her good side.
Ileosa does has any allies in the Vault, purchased for today; she could leave - or drop - the magnificent mansion and make the discussion more public... that's potentially a good idea, yeah, and she has some ideas for what she could say - "the Great Houses of Korvosa want to keep you down, even if your landlord's dead they think that you only deserve a tenant's life, they'll go against law and tradition and incite civil war just to spite you."
If that's her BATNA, she has something to threaten Kroft with! And anyone else with a moral compass - Lord Bromathan, maybe.
She only needs to split off one of the Great Houses, as they rule by consensus... what does she know about Lord Arkona?
The Arkonas don't really have isn't-secrets. The best I can give you are their open secrets or those secrets poorly held.
I will whisper what I know of sinister House Arkona...
on the strict condition that you never so much as murmer my name in connexion to what I tell you.
Palace Arkona is as black a place as its exterior of Janderhoff black marble. Treble-headed elephants, peacocks with sabers, and tigers with carven eyes graze from the walls of the palace and over the gardens beyond. This massive manor houses Old Korvosa's de facto ruling family, the inscrutable but feared House Arkona. The bizarre architectural embellishments and decorations of the palace come from distant Vudra, whose imports made House Arkona the power it is today.
A massive black-marble and wrought-iron wall surrounds the property, and guards both human and otherwise patrol the yards and ruthlessly eject trespassers.[1]
None know what takes place within those walls, although rumors abound.
Arkonas are born within, and oft as not they die within, long before their time, and are interred beneath, in private funerals unannounced.
What occurs between those first and last days must be terrible indeed, for that family's wrath and cruel appetite breeds truer than the pigment of their eyes.
The Lord Arkona (never a Lady Arkona) continues in some capacity to maintain the reputation for cruelty and coldness earned by Garath [200 years ago], while a close relative of the current lord acts as his right-hand man (or woman) and is the face of the family at gatherings of nobles.[2]
Their business is vice and murder.
Nothing occurs in the back alleys or stinking vaults of Old Korvosa without House Arkona knowing about it.
It is a poorly kept secret that the family controls or has influence over every major (and most minor) criminal enterprise in the city, from watered-down mead to murder.[3]
Rumors abound that House Arkona supports the Cerulean Society in some way, but no investigation has ever found a connection. Any link between the two remains a carefully guarded secret.[4]
-
1. pg. 28.↩
2. pg. 41.↩
3. pg. 41.↩
4. pg. 46.↩
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