Questions!

[sythyry]

I have to write an essay, and rather quickly. Therefore, I beg and intreat [sic] you, please ask me questions or leave me notes -- about anything -- anything, that is, except for padded armchairs. I have absolutely nothing to say about padded armchairs, not to you, nor to the other yous, nor yet to Prof. Yrrkyrr.

Comments

[galis.livejournal.com]

The padding on my armchair is tearing off.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Thank You For Your Helpful Note.

I shall send a nendrai over straightaway to rip it off completely, transform it into a large frozen crocodile, and insert it in your cloaca.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Why are unpadded stools so popular?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because they are of a size and shape convenient for thumping the askers of unwelcome questions about the head?

Um ... I suppose that your question is, technically, one that I asked for. So, instead, I answer it: Because Herethroy have highly armored rumps and do not mind the lack of padding, and, furthermore, because Herethroy have four legs and thus regard three-legged stools as their social inferiors and deserving of being sat upon.

[paka.livejournal.com]

How does the Tree itself work as a plant? As in, how does it transpire, that stuff?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I don't know!

[krasota.livejournal.com]

My large black poodle keeps trying to steal my adorable knitted hedghog. I bet Jericho is just doing this so I'll buy him a leather couch of his own.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Sythyry turns a perturbed blue-pink.]

[redbird]

I would be interested in hearing more about styles of bread in your city. In particular, do bakers include meat or cheese in their loaves?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Breads are often small, so that a large person can eat several with a meal, and even I eat two. Cheese is often mixed in with the dough. Meat isn't so common to mix in 'cause it can make Herethroy sick. Yistreian breads are pointy if they contain meat, square or triangular, and round if they don't. We are not so careful to mark them here.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Are there any actual weather patterns around the World Tree? Every time I try to visualize things, I keep running into problems with trying to figure out what the cloud patterns/density have to be like.

My best concept at the moment is that the clouds tend to swirl around the tree in a roughly circular pattern and remain more or less at the same altitude. I am also assuming that the cloud density decreases the farther out from a trunk one is.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

And are there issues with spellcasters messing around with weather patterns? (re: butterfly causing hurricane on other side of the world)

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Why aren't Taptet's a prime species, and what is there place in the world besides unlucky upsurpers of despot rulers?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Taptet aren't a prime species because their creator god picked a different species to be their prime. I don't know any more, I'm afraid; I don't know who their creatory god might be.

(OOC: a more dramatic deer-based species is in the works.)

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

If you had enough destroc Magidor, could you theoretically destroy any matter, given that all matter is magic in a sense?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Theoretically, yes, but it'd be a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very hard way of doing it.

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Have you ever met a Cyarr?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I hope not!

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

What is The Cheeses of Oorah Thrassen about? Could provide a short synopsis, or perhaps some critical commentary?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The overbearing Vompadro, petty tyrant of the cheesemaker's guild of Oorah Thrassen, meets his doom!

WHy does this feel like a game of Truth or Dare?

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

Have you ever played Truth or Dare? What was the most annoying question? What did you answer that you wish you hadn't? What was the most embarrassing dare?

Re: WHy does this feel like a game of Truth or Dare?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I haven't, really. There's occasionally a game in back of Across Saga ... but ... I'm not that brave. Not yet.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Could Virid (IIRC, that's the creoc god) create something so large that even zie couldn't lift it?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Could Virid create something so large that... er... that ruloc god... Reluu? Couldn't lift it?

I read somewhere that things can't be sustained beyond the ability of destroc to destroy, or destroyed beyond the ability of healoc to restore...

Can things be sustained beyond the ability of mutoc to alter or ruloc to control? Can they be changed beyond the ability of healoc to restore? Can you create something too heavy to move, too solid to change, or too fragile to preserve?

[kistaro]

What are the practical disadvantages of wings, no matter what size you happen to be?

[zeeth_kyrah]

They can catch on nearly anything if you're not careful.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I was also wondering how hard it would be to preserve a dead person's memories in some form... say, copy them into an exhaustive biography, that their reincarnation could read to re-learn their past life.

Are there any monsters that eat minds? If they float about like jellyfish after someone's killed, you'd think they'd be a tasty treat for the would-be well-educated horror.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

At a quick guess, about complexity 80 before death (to do it the fast and super-elegant way, I'm sure you could do it more easily in a more devious way), and maybe 120 after death. Not sure though.

[jfesmire.livejournal.com]

How about methods for classifying animals and magical creatures?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Primes vs non-primes is all I really need to know!

At the moment at least.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Why armchairs? I doubt Orren ever sit so still as to need them, they get in the way of having many, many arms, the back is much better for perching. Really, about the only thing the arms are good for is to give Cani something to sniff.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It's for "Appreciation of Chairs" class.

[draconis.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of traff folk around by the sound of it, but do any primes get the hots for monsters, to your knowledge? Have you met any?

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

I thought zir boyfriend's wife's lover was a monster?

[niss-the-ai.livejournal.com]

How did the Holocaust Wars come about?
I'd like to read The Cheeses of Oorah Thrassen, especially wrapped inside a story of a group of primes trying to perform it.
What's known about how the first Primes were designed, and why a giant tree was chosen for the world's shape instead of, say, a ball of rock floating in space? Why a highly magic-dependant design instead of consistent physical laws; wouldn't the latter have been easier?

And Rassimel speaking style and living arrangements -- just-a-bit-more about that, if-you-don't-mind.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The Holocaust Wars were about our biggest attempt at an all-Ketherian empire falling apart. [For more info, see the World Tree sourcebook.]

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever seen the roots of the World Tree, or been to the highest branches -- and returned to tell of the journey?

[niss-the-ai.livejournal.com]

I think the Primes began in the highest branches.

OOC, I played in an Orren-heavy group of adventurers that tried to reach the bottom, but made it only to a rough landing in a nonprime civilization above even the "gnarled" region described in The Book. We got basically captured by them and persuaded to get home by helping them invent skyboats capable of reaching prime territory -- a scary thing, given how powerful this civilization was already!

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

How are libraries sorted in your part of the World Tree?

Do libraries there tend to have more than books? What other things are generally kept in libraries?

Are there any bibliovoric species around?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The Vheshrame Academy library is sorted by intended species of reader and then by topic. If you're in an Orren mood, you don't want to pick up a Rassimellish book.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I know that your part of the World Tree has dirigibles: lighter-than-air craft. Has anyone tried creating even a glider -- a heavier-than-air craft that rises with the thermals? If so, how well does it work?

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Chip: WHERE did you come across this??? I've been trying to glean all I can about the World Tree skyboats and related technologies. I hate it that i've missed something like that.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

As I understand the matter, all of these are 'no' -- you can't, I think, do anything with magic that a sufficiently skilled person can't override. At some point, though, my grandparent stops being sufficiently skilled, and then you're screwed.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I hope that you can tell the difference between a pocker and a cyarr!

[vik_thor]

We know that down isn't fully known.
How high is up? I seem to remember hearing that primes have visited one of your moons, but has anyone ever reached the sun?

Primes are centered around the trunk. Are there other trunks? How far away are they? How far across is the tree? Has anyone ever reached the end of one of the branches?

Are there primes whose magerium is of the nonprime configuration?

Would the prime species accept a new species as prime if their magerium was of the prime configuration? or would it take a pronouncement from one of the 7+12 gods?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Reliable ways of measuring distances give confusing results, differing by many orders of magnitude. This, Iska tells me, is mathematically impossible.

There are other trunks, tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away. I don't know how far across the tree is, anywhere.

I dunno about primes with funny mageriums.

I think that a monster species with prime-like magerium would be a monster species with a deceptive physical structure, like bonstables. I don't know what it would take to make a new prime species.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Is the World Tree growing?

In our world, as trees grow they develop rings in their heartwood, one ring per year. Does the World Tree have rings?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yes -- all the old Zi Ri say that the bit of trunk above Ketheria wasn't there at all when they were made.

I don't know about rings though. If it has any rings, it's probably only got one. To rule them all, y'know.