Alternatively, read a book. Maybe some fantasy. Maybe sci-fi as a palate cleanser. Maybe some historiographies about the interplay between the pharaoh and the nomarchs during the early dynastic period, including how the latter ultimately ended that period and caused the first intermediate period.
Lor Three Fingers was not a faithful man, which made the place he found himself in and the company he kept all the stranger. The turret was large enough to fit him and the fire-haired priest, his head flickering like a candle in a high wind as he prayed, eyes closed and lips set to some maybe magical chant. Scuttlebutt was that they were supposed to deliver some kind of magic weapon to the heart of the Fire Bitch's domain, something so nasty that only one of the priests could have hoped to use it, and even for her it would've likely been death.
So instead the thing was in here with old Lor, looking like nothing so much as a small golden reliquary, the sort the priests back home took out for feast days, obsidian and gold.
The Dauntless will get it through. It was only when the priest's white-flame eyes snapped open that he realized he had mumbled under his breath.
"You have faith in this ship, in this artifice you do not understand," the strange fire-kin priest said. "Why?"
"Is this about converting me again?" the gunner asked suspiciously. "'Cause I've had a belly-full of gods as a boy and don't need more of 'em." He had been a temple attendant at one of the lesser known Tyroshi shrines, thrown out as soon as his chin was no longer smooth and his voice too thick for his part in the chorus. The realization that gods were real did little to endear them to him.
"I am trying," the priest said, "to understand the limits of your rationale. You said you would serve no god because they are too distant and care little for the troubles and tragedies of men, that you do not see their design and cannot trust it. Yet you trust the artificers who made this ship, though their arts are beyond you, you trust Him who sent you here even though his purpose is great and terrible..."
At that Lor shifted slightly against the hard steel wall. He did not like to think that maybe King, now Emperor Viserys, was Azor Ahai, that he had come to god-bothering by the back door as it was. Still, if it did turn out that way, it would still be worth it as far as the gunner was concerned. The king was the reason he was no longer in chains and why he had coin in his pocket, and even a small house to come back to in Tyrosh where the slums had stood but were now neat rows of apartments with water on tap, like a great noble of all bloody things.
"I don't fight for fire, priest, I fight for water," he proclaimed mysteriously, a bit of payback for all the times he had been given the runaround about what was in the damn box. If he was going to stick something in his launcher, then he damn well needed to know what it was...
"Attention, attention, this is the captain speaking, batteries eleven and twenty prepare to fire!" the voice blared out over the speakers, made sharp-edged and metallic by the spell, though Lor could still hear his care for the crew in it.
The priest chanted a short line and the box clicked open like some sort of odd flower to reveal a shard of black ice, covered in gold filligre. Water with specks of snow in it seems to flow from the ice, but it disappears once it hits the ground. "Whatever you do, do not touch the crystal..." the priest began, his voice strained and soon covered entirely by the wail of the alarm.
Incoming fire.
***
On the ground far, far below Carston watched as a titanic wave of fire, more like a burning tide flowed from the caldera, from the palace of Ymeri to engulf the Dauntless. For a moment the ship's projectors held, a shell of golden light defiant against the tide of crimson, but then all was fire, flowing over the ship and falling back down upon the blasted planes with such a fury that the angels of the Lord of Light changed their chant from one of battle to one of warding, struggling against even the backlash of the blow.
OOC: Cliffhanger Ahoy. I try not to make a habit of these but it's all I can manage for today. There are some vocabulary choices in here tending towards the mundane for the sake of the text to speech that I'm not entirely happy with, but better than no second update. Not yet edited.
Here's an edited version of the chapter, @DragonParadox. The POV character's name was spelled differently in a few spots, so I changed it to Lor to match the first couple mentions.
Thanks a bunch, dude. The recent interludes have all been top notch stuff, but you need to take care of yourself. If you've gotta write, commit to using the speech to text software until your are back to 100%. If that means fewer updates, then so be it.
@DragonParadox, you are being an idiot.
Please don't force-write, unless you want to lose the ability permanently.
Dictate some notes if you can't help it - and don't edit those, you'll have the opportunity to do that once you're better.
We ffffffucking told you.
It really is not cathartic to be able to tell you that, when you are hurting all of us, your friends, with your shit decisions (by hurting yourself).
We ffffffucking told you.
It really is not cathartic to be able to tell you that, when you are hurting all of us, your friends, with your shit decisions (by hurting yourself).
Well this seems like an amazing interlude series. Though we can wait on it, so take care of you self man. I'd rather you not get a constant pain in your hands.
@DragonParadox is the Gunner's point that Viserys has humanized himself and his actions has caused him to trust him, regardless of all the religious histrionics and rhetoric, at the end of the day Viserys has been acting in good faith and he has implicit trust in his designs because he can't understand or trust a god from on high who says "you my faithful must do this for it is necessary", whereas, however incongruent it may seem for this Priest, the Gunner trusts secular authority saying the same thing, with a similar disconnect between understanding why it is necessary or why something will work, but taking it as a matter of faith.
I think the Priest actually realizes more of the gunner's point than they are willing to let on (or accept outright), because it means that R'hllor has failed to follow through on some of the fundamental aspects of what makes slaves faithful. This man is a former slave, had all of the opportunity to place his trust in R'hllor, and given his religious background it definitely failed to have the intended impact the Red Faith is supposed to hold over people from that background.
Viserys is God of a new religion, but it's operating outside the normal rules. Instead of implied reciprocal relationships, the streams aren't "faith for protection / guidance" and then letting a diffused amount of that protection and guidance land on everyone equally, it's more "taxes and service for protection and guidance" and the delivery mechanisms for those two things are all physical, rather than metaphysical, which is something the gunner trusts. There's a name and a face attached to it, and he can even feel the warship under his feet.
Two things:
- It's a cannon, not a launcher. The launchers have a range of only 220 ft. which is much too short for this.
- It should be "turrets eleven to twenty".
Two things:
- It's a cannon, not a launcher. The launchers have a range of only 220 ft. which is much too short for this.
- It should be "turrets eleven to twenty".
Viserys is God of a new religion, but it's operating outside the normal rules. Instead of implied reciprocal relationships, the streams aren't "faith for protection / guidance" and then letting a diffused amount of that protection and guidance land on everyone equally, it's more "taxes and service for protection and guidance" and the delivery mechanisms for those two things are all physical, rather than metaphysical, which is something the gunner trusts. There's a name and a face attached to it, and he can even feel the warship under his feet.
It's a lot easier to not believe in the invisible man in the sky punishing the wicked then it is to disbelieve the 34,000 tons of punishing the wicked you are standing in.
It's a lot easier to not believe in the invisible man in the sky punishing the wicked then it is to disbelieve the 34,000 tons of punishing the wicked you are standing in.
Yeah, I mean even if objectively, R'hllor is real, that's less of a thing to concern yourself with because R'hllor isn't going to manifest for the 30~ million people who believe in him, even if over half are fervently devout.
Whereas Viserys manifests his presence through 34,000 tons of steel and superior firepower and can show it off to millions at a time.
It's a lot easier to not believe in the invisible man in the sky punishing the wicked then it is to disbelieve the 34,000 tons of punishing the wicked you are standing in.
Though in this man's case it's not a point of believing anymore.
He literally sees the armies of Rh'llor, he sees the power of deities struggling with each other here.
It is merely a question of which to trust, not which to believe in.
Two things:
- It's a cannon, not a launcher. The launchers have a range of only 220 ft. which is much too short for this.
- It should be "turrets eleven to twenty".
I'll have a more detailed account on Lor's reasoning when I can type at least semi effectively, though I will say you guys are definitely barking up the right tree when it comes to him. Going to bed after an anti-inflammatory pill to see if things get better.
Though in this man's case it's not a point of believing anymore.
He literally sees the armies of Rh'llor, he sees the power of deities struggling with each other here.
It is merely a question of which to trust, not which to believe in.
He sees them now, but his opinions formed long before that. Rhllor didn't feed him. Didn't break his chains. Didn't give him a home. The Imperium did. And it didn't even demand anything in return.
Thus, what does it matter that Rhllor is real? He wasn't there and helped him.
He sees them now, but his opinions formed long before that. Rhllor didn't feed him. Didn't break his chains. Didn't give him a home. The Imperium did. And it didn't even demand anything in return.
Thus, what does it matter that Rhllor is real? He wasn't there and helped him.
Bystander #1: All right, everyone. Prepare to glare fiercely and to direct your thoughts of outrage and disgust at him, but carefully, just in case you have undiscovered sorcerous talent.
Bystander #1: All right, everyone. Prepare to glare fiercely and to direct your thoughts of outrage and disgust at him, but carefully, just in case you have undiscovered sorcerous talent.
I'm pretty sure if you accidentally curse someone while awakening magic you are reasonably protected from legal consequences simply because you would have no way of knowing it's there.
I'm pretty sure if you accidentally curse someone while awakening magic you are reasonably protected from legal consequences simply because you would have no way of knowing it's there.
I mean he is level 5. If you guys want to make him a character sheet I can start running encounters more complex than 1d100+modifiers to see how he does.
I mean he is level 5. If you guys want to make him a character sheet I can start running encounters more complex than 1d100+modifiers to see how he does.
I'm pretty sure if you accidentally curse someone while awakening magic you are reasonably protected from legal consequences simply because you would have no way of knowing it's there.
The Scholarum has the resources to deal with that shit.
The average household does not.
That's why attendance is encouraged and subsidized by the state. Because having lasers grafted to your head would result in less property damage than a mage who reacts on instinct and uses Burning Hands to set the curtains on fire.
