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[sythyry]

In Which Vae is a Worse Monster [24 Lage 2461]

Umtangeia -- or, rather, the city of Bfelmykh on Umtangeia -- isn't a very nice place. First of all, I knew it wasn't a proper city, because a proper city has mighty city walls which nobody can teleport through, and Vae had just teleported us to standing in the middle of a street without even setting off any sort of alarm that I could hear.

A proper city also has streets made out of split boards or something else smooth, not just mud.

The buildings in a proper city are elegant and well-made, and painted and such as that. These weren't.

But most importantly, the people in a proper city are Orren and Rassimel and Cani and Herethry and a few other people. These weren't. They were blee and mherobump and taptet and whatnots.

They stared at us. They stared a great deal. They started talking energetically in a language I didn't catch more than one word in thirty of. Those words being "Zi Ri" and "Orren" of course.

I whined at Vae to take us back 'cause I didn't speak the language.

Never, ever say that to a nendrai. Really. Never. Even more never than the other thing I said never to say to a nendrai.

She turned and said to me, "If you can read this, you're too close" I can't remember what she said -- not even the least little bit of what it might be about.

I quite cogently said, "What do you mean?"

She grinned a grin that would have looked quite nice on a real Orren, and said, "Repeat after me -- If you can read this, you're too close"

So I said, "Um, OK. If you can read this, you're too close"

And she whacked me with her tail, and dumped a big horrible Mutoc Mentador Spiridor spell on me. I tried very hard to resist it, but, well, don't be silly.

And I could understand what the monsters around me were saying.

(No, of course that's impossible. Spells can't manipulate languages -- languages aren't real things, in the same way that a flock of birds or a spoken word is a real thing. Rather later on, with the help of the Eye of Mirizan and Melizan and two magic theory professors, we figured out that she had changed my memory of the phrase "If you can read this, you're too close", which she had just given me, to a copy of her own memory of the local language.)

Mentador magic is unambiguously the wickedest of the 7+12 kinds of magic. Mutoc Mentador is arguably the wickedest kind of Mentador, since it changes your mind and your thoughts, in ways you can't necessarily figure out yourself. Casting a big Mutoc Mentador to rewrite a chunk of someone's mind is ... like doorwaying on a personal scale. It's one of the nastiest, vilest things you can do to someone, even if there aren't any bad effects in the end.

I will admit that I said a few unkind and ungracious things to Vae at that point. Indeed, I will admit to going into a bit of a frantic terrified rage at her, while blee and mherobump and taptet watched me, quite bemused, and a wrapped book of stories hovered patiently behind me, and a truly horrible monster blinked big wide Orren eyes at me and didn't understand at all why I might be upset.

Comments

[redbird]

Oh, dear.

I can only conclude that you're safely back in Vheshrame by now. If there was ever grounds for resigning an ambassadorship, you have them.

It seems possible that there might be situations in which, with the subject's consent, Mutoc Mentador spells might be acceptable: say, if someone badly wanted to get rid of an unpleasant memory, or cure a phobia. (I don't know enough magical theory to know whether this would be worth the risk.) But many risky things that are acceptable with consent are so only because of the consent.

My people have a saying: with friends like these, who needs enemies?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, most people would use Destroc Mentador to get rid of memories, or Healoc Mentador to cure a phobia.

Actually, no, most people would use brandy or lovers or magazines to get rid of memories, and just live with the phobias. And there are some very good reasons for that. Ripping up bits of your own mind, even for your own convenience, is less sane than just about any bad memory or phobia.

You're right about the friends. I don't think I have any enemies, except maybe Milirant Tavanth, and I have never ever felt less safe.

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Our roads are made out of durador. Our whole world is made out of durador. We live on a big rock ball about 8000 miles across, with a core of molten iron a thousand or two miles across at the center. We are positively LOUSY with the stuff. Kind of like you are with wood. So I guess it makes sense to make roads out of what you have a lot of.

I seem to recall that not even your moons are made of durador (even the apparently misnamed Silver Moon). Too bad, but you're still better off than we are. Our single moon is made out of rock, of which we already have an abundance, and there's NOTHING else there. No aquador, airador, corpador, herbador... nothing.

I thought EVERYTHING on the World Tree understood Common. Does that mean that you could speak to the blee and taptet and they could understand you, but you couldn't understand them back because they weren't speaking in Common? How does that work?

Loxley

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on living on such a rich world.

Everything does understand common, or as well as it can at least. Nonsentient animals don't understand much of it of course, otherwise they'd be sentient.

But common is a pretty lousy language. It has two thousand some words, only, and leaves out a whole bunch of really important ones. Like, oh, "road" and "house". And I imagine these people would think that "blee" and "mherobump" and "tapter" were important words too.

Anyways, nobody speaks just common, unless they have no other language in common with the person they're talking to.

The monsters weren't talking to me then, just to each other.

[Bard also notes that the reason that Sythyry could understand a few words here and there was that zir language and the monsters' language were both based on common. If you got zapped to a village in 12th century Thailand, you wouldn't get one word in thirty -- you wouldn't get anything. But if you got zapped to a village in 12th century Germany, you'd have a few words here and there, like Sythyry did. Bfelmykh is culturally as far away as 12th century Thailand, but linguistically much closer.]

[waterotter.livejournal.com]

This may not be the time to ask an academic question, so you can come back to it when things are settled down some more.

Words themselves aren't made up of any particular nouns, right? So spoken words, in as far as they have a magical existence at all, fall under airador? What about written words? If I wanted to create a spell that copied the contents of an existing book into a blank book, that would be... what? Herbador or Corpador, depending on the ink?

Meandering back to the topic: On the bright side, after a few dozen more years of this, you should have quite a resistance to Mutoc Mentador worked up!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Spoken words are Airador and Illusidor. Written ones are whatever the ink is. Look for where I talk about my wonderful pen a few weeks ago.

I have, indeed, noticed that I'm getting adventurer-style experience. It's utterly not worth it.

[waterotter.livejournal.com]

Adventurer-style experience and adventurer-style trouble go hand in hand. I would say hold out for adventurer-style loot, but that's such a widely variable thing. Go for extra credit, instead.

Is there such a thing as adventurer-style extra credit, I wonder?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard howls laughing. Sythyry just looks put-upon]

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

We have some primitive translating devices that listen to a word, and then change it to another word in a different language. Couln't a mindful willful enchantment be taught a vocabulary(s) and parrot back whatever it heard into the language of your choice?

We are a very inventive people. :)

Loxley

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Sure -- a mindful one made by someone who knew both languages could translate as well as the person who made it. Among other things. We're pretty inventive too. Just 'cause the gods don't think languages are worth their time doesn't mean we don't.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Y'know, if she pulled that Mutoc Mentador Spiridor spell on you immediately on your arrival, with what appears to be (behind its concealing fog) a stock phrase, it strongly suggests to me that she's done this before, probably more than once. Such confidence and smoothness in one so young suggest practice.

I wonder whom she's done it to. I wonder whether they survived. And most importantly, if they did survive, I wonder how.

[rowyn]

I'm sure the other(s) survived -- Sythyry did, after all.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[There was no record of what she said. I just picked something. -bb]

[niss-the-ai.livejournal.com]

The idea of Common as a minimal language reminds me of "Toki Pona." Very small vocabulary, easy to learn, hard to use to express concepts more complex than "liquid" or "place." That and the scene in "Monty Python and the Life of Brian" in which a Roman soldier sees Brian trying to paint "Romans Go Home" on a wall and spends several minutes correcting his Latin grammar.

I guess that Common probably has a rigid grammar, maybe with Japanese-style markers indicating different purposes or versions of a word, so that it's easy to process.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

Hehe - you know there's an encyclopaedia written in that? Runs on the same site as the Creatures Wiki I contribute to.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

*looks impressed* Packing the memory of an entire language into the memory of having said just a very short phrase is a very impressive bit of spellcrafting indeed.

I wonder if you can convince Vae of the usefulness of courtesy in asking first before performing such a spell? While yes, it's very bad to do so without permission, and is a power that can quite easily be abused, Vae obviously isn't maliciously minded or she would have deleted your memory of the entire incident and pretended that nothing had happened, and we would not be reading this recounting.

You could learn a lot through this sort of thing... And you never know when that might come in handy!

For instance, if you were ever without Vae and you encountered a large number of blee and mherobump and taptet and whatnots that did not clearly have good intentions toward you.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

As Redbird astutely noted, "Oh, dear."

Poor Zi Ri! Does the fact that Vae made it abundantly clear the folks watching in the city couldn't protect you at all give you any traction in your argument that you should be dismissed from this position because you really, truly, emphatically do not want to do it -- or to be accidentally killed while doing it?

[brennabat.livejournal.com]

Yeesh. Mentador! Mutoc mentador at that. I imagine that kind of intrusive magic could wreck horrible nastiness on someone's sanity even if the effect were explained to be "totally harmless."

Such magic has the potential to wreck havoc on a person if even the suggestion it has ravaged their personality was made. How would the victim know. What if they had been changed, and now were afraid of what they were, yet somehow aware of being a perversion. What if nothing "bad" at all was done to them but the wholly mundane use of manipulation made the victim think they had been horribly altered.

Mentador would seem to have power far beyond its actual magic effect. It's a terror. A bit like Vae herself I suppose -- even seemingly harmless, it is held in fear by Primes due to their perception of the spell/monster's potential. It needn't even do anything to be effective in some cases!

(Fun typo of the day: mundance. Mundance, to dance in a manner lacking innovation; unexciting dance. "Gawd, this party is SUCH a mundance.")

[galis.livejournal.com]

I wonder how long Sythyry can resist the big wide Orren eyes though? ;)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm more worried about resisting the tail.