bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
After what our brave Lipka sacrificed? Shame on your sir! (
)
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Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest
- Thread starter Rolman
- Start date
- Mature Historic
)
I of course refer to those tartars that serve the reprehensible sultan not those that have become part of our family of liberty as the savage wolf became the trusty dogAfter what our brave Lipka sacrificed? Shame on your sir! (
Sertorius
Rebellious Legate
- Location
- Roma Invicta
I can already tell we will be the best of friends.
XXXVII-III. November 7, 1575. Warszawa, Polish Crownlands
- Location
- United States
"In these heady days of youth, we cannot be overcome with drunkenness at the splendor of the Libertas Aurea, for indeed – and I think we all know this – we indeed tread within choppy waters. We do not struggle to stay afloat, such is our strength, but all matter of sea monsters float about, desirous of our flesh!"
A few opponents of yours have started laughing, cracking jokes. Perhaps you ought to shift into a more serious tone?
"Great Rome found itself assaulted by the Hun," you rumble loudly, "a godless heathen foe of the east, led by a power-hungry maniac named Attila – another story we all know. We are not as weak as the empire in its dying days, but recall well who stood alongside the heirs to the republic as brothers, fighting off the foreign foe: it was the Germans!" Your detractors groan like you just delivered some sort of tasteless punchline. You chuckle a little, feeling colder, trying to make that little laugh quiet enough that people don't catch it, so that they think you're merely smiling at their jests.
"Goth and Frank, Burgundian and Saxon, they stood alongside the august Roman and drove the Hun back into the dark forests, the further plains, that Sarmatia which we now call our beautiful home!" you shout. "But nevermind that mystery of the origin of the Hun – we have found our barbarians to the north and to the east!"
"Recall the savage rapine that the Muscovite armies wrought upon Livionia," you say, "recall their tireless slaving – slaving, for they are but thralls to their dux! – for decades now to overcome fair Lithuania, to drive into beautiful Poland. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers annihilated the Muscovite horde at Orsza sixty-one years ago last month, and still the tide has not yet been stemmed! They are ruled now by a man more fearful, fearsome, and demented than any hitherto produced – the princes and lords of Muscovy, fine men and brothers in nobility, are cowed by the crook-nosed false Caesar, who put entire cities to the sword in his maddened paranoia!"
We know all this! someone yells, getting told to shut up but still pressing onward. What's your point?
Move, move, say something! "That… That we await now our Catalaunian Fields, our Campus Mauriacus, our final battle with the Muscovite! Let us retake Livonia and, if God wills it, drag the false Caesar by his hair out of his fortress at Moskwa – death to tyrants, death to all enemies of the patria!"
That gets some cheering, for certain. "We see His Imperial Majesty the Emperor–" ah, damn it! A fusillade of boos. Press forward. "The armies of Vienna are great, skilled with pike and with gun large and small. Might I remind you all, gentlemen, of the promise offered up by the candidate-Archduke of military aid in our reclamation of Livonia?" you ask, listening to yourself echo, just barely audible above the din of grumbling. "Who may oppose the might of the Empire combined with our own armies, powerful and strong and without fear? Think of it: Empire and Republic, united as one, to lay low the Eastern foeman once and for all! With my own eyes I saw it, and by the Trinity I swear by it, our armies at Zawadówka were outnumbered two to one by Tatars, and still we prevailed!" you shout, to patriotic cheering. "Ask even my good friend – and foe," you chuckle, "the Lord Royal Secretary Jan Zamoyski! We battled as brothers that day," you say, letting your voice rest a little.
Inhale. "Recall, too, my good lords, that that great battle against the Antichrist-like Attila was in the defense of Gaul. Soft, soft Gaul." People laugh, another round of groaning; they already know what you're getting at. "We tried a Gallic man, as we all know, and how did it turn out?" Boos, silence, some of your fellow senators glare – after all, like with the Habsburg candidate you support yourself, the Walezy bid was one spearheaded by the very wealthy, the very powerful. The Crownland magnates, of course, but great lords who you now find on your side, by and large. Let them swallow this bitter medicine, you decide, this little flash of populism. Though you perhaps didn't account for this when you wrote up your notes.
"Although by virtue of his Articles he codified our young freedom, made it inviolable, he was an effete little wretch: fearful of dirt, of chipping his nails, prancing about with his pierced ears, spurning our beloved Infanta to hang about those powder-faced boys he loved ever so much!" you laugh too-loud, a laugh from the theater. Keep it all implicit. "And I have spoken before of his willingness to kill, the role he played in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day," you add, now grim. "An utter blackguard, he was."
You're starting to sense that your fellows from the upper crust are really wishing this all rather went unsaid. The senators closest to the front are shaking their heads, not so much at your words, you feel, but rather at you. They understand the sentiment, the aim, but cannot stand by their own names being dragged through the mud by association. This was all rather recent. Perhaps it's time for a pivot?
[] Begin speaking of the Archduke's merits.
[] Continue on about the reconquest of Livonia.
[] Remind the assembly of the generosity of the Archduke and his attached Pacta.
[] Make implications regarding Infanta Anna's rumored preference.
[] Continue with more Roman analogies (Rolman picks).
[] Continue with more Roman analogies (write-in).
[] Try a Biblical analogy (Rolman picks).
[] Try a Biblical analogy (write-in).
[] write-in.
A few opponents of yours have started laughing, cracking jokes. Perhaps you ought to shift into a more serious tone?
"Great Rome found itself assaulted by the Hun," you rumble loudly, "a godless heathen foe of the east, led by a power-hungry maniac named Attila – another story we all know. We are not as weak as the empire in its dying days, but recall well who stood alongside the heirs to the republic as brothers, fighting off the foreign foe: it was the Germans!" Your detractors groan like you just delivered some sort of tasteless punchline. You chuckle a little, feeling colder, trying to make that little laugh quiet enough that people don't catch it, so that they think you're merely smiling at their jests.
"Goth and Frank, Burgundian and Saxon, they stood alongside the august Roman and drove the Hun back into the dark forests, the further plains, that Sarmatia which we now call our beautiful home!" you shout. "But nevermind that mystery of the origin of the Hun – we have found our barbarians to the north and to the east!"
"Recall the savage rapine that the Muscovite armies wrought upon Livionia," you say, "recall their tireless slaving – slaving, for they are but thralls to their dux! – for decades now to overcome fair Lithuania, to drive into beautiful Poland. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers annihilated the Muscovite horde at Orsza sixty-one years ago last month, and still the tide has not yet been stemmed! They are ruled now by a man more fearful, fearsome, and demented than any hitherto produced – the princes and lords of Muscovy, fine men and brothers in nobility, are cowed by the crook-nosed false Caesar, who put entire cities to the sword in his maddened paranoia!"
We know all this! someone yells, getting told to shut up but still pressing onward. What's your point?
Move, move, say something! "That… That we await now our Catalaunian Fields, our Campus Mauriacus, our final battle with the Muscovite! Let us retake Livonia and, if God wills it, drag the false Caesar by his hair out of his fortress at Moskwa – death to tyrants, death to all enemies of the patria!"
That gets some cheering, for certain. "We see His Imperial Majesty the Emperor–" ah, damn it! A fusillade of boos. Press forward. "The armies of Vienna are great, skilled with pike and with gun large and small. Might I remind you all, gentlemen, of the promise offered up by the candidate-Archduke of military aid in our reclamation of Livonia?" you ask, listening to yourself echo, just barely audible above the din of grumbling. "Who may oppose the might of the Empire combined with our own armies, powerful and strong and without fear? Think of it: Empire and Republic, united as one, to lay low the Eastern foeman once and for all! With my own eyes I saw it, and by the Trinity I swear by it, our armies at Zawadówka were outnumbered two to one by Tatars, and still we prevailed!" you shout, to patriotic cheering. "Ask even my good friend – and foe," you chuckle, "the Lord Royal Secretary Jan Zamoyski! We battled as brothers that day," you say, letting your voice rest a little.
Inhale. "Recall, too, my good lords, that that great battle against the Antichrist-like Attila was in the defense of Gaul. Soft, soft Gaul." People laugh, another round of groaning; they already know what you're getting at. "We tried a Gallic man, as we all know, and how did it turn out?" Boos, silence, some of your fellow senators glare – after all, like with the Habsburg candidate you support yourself, the Walezy bid was one spearheaded by the very wealthy, the very powerful. The Crownland magnates, of course, but great lords who you now find on your side, by and large. Let them swallow this bitter medicine, you decide, this little flash of populism. Though you perhaps didn't account for this when you wrote up your notes.
"Although by virtue of his Articles he codified our young freedom, made it inviolable, he was an effete little wretch: fearful of dirt, of chipping his nails, prancing about with his pierced ears, spurning our beloved Infanta to hang about those powder-faced boys he loved ever so much!" you laugh too-loud, a laugh from the theater. Keep it all implicit. "And I have spoken before of his willingness to kill, the role he played in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day," you add, now grim. "An utter blackguard, he was."
You're starting to sense that your fellows from the upper crust are really wishing this all rather went unsaid. The senators closest to the front are shaking their heads, not so much at your words, you feel, but rather at you. They understand the sentiment, the aim, but cannot stand by their own names being dragged through the mud by association. This was all rather recent. Perhaps it's time for a pivot?
[] Begin speaking of the Archduke's merits.
[] Continue on about the reconquest of Livonia.
[] Remind the assembly of the generosity of the Archduke and his attached Pacta.
[] Make implications regarding Infanta Anna's rumored preference.
[] Continue with more Roman analogies (Rolman picks).
[] Continue with more Roman analogies (write-in).
[] Try a Biblical analogy (Rolman picks).
[] Try a Biblical analogy (write-in).
[] write-in.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
honestly i think this actually dovetails nicely with finishing out with the flawed but great and divinely-/electorally- ordained figures of Saul and David, we got the Mazovian lordlings all good and heartily laughing and patriotically yelling, now its time to bring it home?
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
something like
[] Try a Biblical analogy (write-in): Choose from the stories of Saul and David, highlighting how ultimately, God did not let prosper the attempted tyranny of once-worthy Saul nor any of David, but only that which was needed for the kingdom of Israel and that which made it a covenant between the tribes and a golden age of God's love and holy purpose. How that love of God and the covenants of God at the heart of the kingdom granted Saul the victories Israel needed, and then withdrew them and granted them instead to the obscure youth David, when then at that hour Israel needed fearless and poetic passion more than Saul's stone heart.
maybe?
to a good red-blooded Sarmatian noble, being a vicious effete schemer (Henry) or an old gnarled schemer (Bathory) is completely inferior to having fantasy and elan (Mattheus as David)
[] Try a Biblical analogy (write-in): Choose from the stories of Saul and David, highlighting how ultimately, God did not let prosper the attempted tyranny of once-worthy Saul nor any of David, but only that which was needed for the kingdom of Israel and that which made it a covenant between the tribes and a golden age of God's love and holy purpose. How that love of God and the covenants of God at the heart of the kingdom granted Saul the victories Israel needed, and then withdrew them and granted them instead to the obscure youth David, when then at that hour Israel needed fearless and poetic passion more than Saul's stone heart.
maybe?
to a good red-blooded Sarmatian noble, being a vicious effete schemer (Henry) or an old gnarled schemer (Bathory) is completely inferior to having fantasy and elan (Mattheus as David)
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That went badly. Okay.
We pissed off our own supporters very directly. We need to pivot to a unifying message for our coalition right now. Or at least give them something else to talk about so that all this can be forgotten. Yikes.
Try national defense. National defense always works, and people seemed to react well-enough to it earlier.
[X] Continue on about the reconquest of Livonia.
@Rolman, for future reference, I don't think this plan-as-we-go approach to a prepared public performance worked out well. I'm struggling to discern the beginning, middle and end of our speech, I'm not at all sure what our own thesis is here, and I am not aware of who or what our audience is. It is what it is at this point (that is to say, a failure on our part), but a planning and rehearsal round for a prepared public speech would be best in the future.
Edit: we should have listened to Maryna, y'all, she was setting us up for success.
We pissed off our own supporters very directly. We need to pivot to a unifying message for our coalition right now. Or at least give them something else to talk about so that all this can be forgotten. Yikes.
Try national defense. National defense always works, and people seemed to react well-enough to it earlier.
[X] Continue on about the reconquest of Livonia.
@Rolman, for future reference, I don't think this plan-as-we-go approach to a prepared public performance worked out well. I'm struggling to discern the beginning, middle and end of our speech, I'm not at all sure what our own thesis is here, and I am not aware of who or what our audience is. It is what it is at this point (that is to say, a failure on our part), but a planning and rehearsal round for a prepared public speech would be best in the future.
Edit: we should have listened to Maryna, y'all, she was setting us up for success.
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- Location
- United States
Fair enough fair enough. For future speech scenes I will provide more guidance as to how long it'll be, or just be like "here's four sets of choices for four parts" or what have you. I'm not sold on this system as a writer myself...
The weird thing is is that we did the anti-Henry speech in this style way back when, and all was well. I wonder what's so different. Stakes are higher this time around, but that's all I got.
Sertorius
Rebellious Legate
- Location
- Roma Invicta
You and me both.
- Location
- SF Bay Area
"If Henri has a million haters I'm one of them
If Henri has five haters I'm one of them
If Henri has one hater that one is me
If Henri has no haters I am dead
If the world is for Henri I am against the world"
- Location
- United States
People not feeling it? My bad if so.
Scared to vote? Just do it!!!
In the interest of clarity (as I think Baltika raised some good points regarding this), I'll just say that this will be the second to last speech update -- you should situate it as a wind-down though still a "body paragraph," though also will be on the longer side in terms of word count. The following update will be concluding remarks.
Scared to vote? Just do it!!!
In the interest of clarity (as I think Baltika raised some good points regarding this), I'll just say that this will be the second to last speech update -- you should situate it as a wind-down though still a "body paragraph," though also will be on the longer side in terms of word count. The following update will be concluding remarks.
Sertorius
Rebellious Legate
- Location
- Roma Invicta
[X] Remind the assembly of the generosity of the Archduke and his attached Pacta.
Let's let the Romans rest for now. The assembly had its lesson on classical history.
Time for the main course. The promises, the frontier, the money he will contribute to the treasury, the armies he will pay for and bring with him for the next scrap with the Muscovites and Tatars.
Let's let the Romans rest for now. The assembly had its lesson on classical history.
Time for the main course. The promises, the frontier, the money he will contribute to the treasury, the armies he will pay for and bring with him for the next scrap with the Muscovites and Tatars.
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- Pronouns
- He
[X] Continue on about the reconquest of Livonia.
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[X] Remind the assembly of the generosity of the Archduke and his attached Pacta.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
[X] Begin speaking of the Archduke's merits.
If we can clearly differentiate Mattheus from that Gallic cock of the walk, then I think that's a much better flow for recovering with our supporters and also getting the small lordlings to give a hurrah for the Austrian.
If we can clearly differentiate Mattheus from that Gallic cock of the walk, then I think that's a much better flow for recovering with our supporters and also getting the small lordlings to give a hurrah for the Austrian.