(no subject)

[sythyry]

Exceedingly Dangerous Trowel

I went to talk to Kaim-Su about the trowel. I left it at home because it's metal and my love-destroying carrying talisman won't carry it, and I didn't really want to get a favor from Dustweed (who is home) or from Jarmiet (who is going home soon and deserves to). So of course Kaim-Su got on Shadowfrog and we galloped through the city, leaping over occasional pedestrians who didn't get out of the way in time, back to Quelldrie House, and didn't stop galloping 'til he was in my bedroom.

(Well, no, he didn't bring Shadowfrog into the house. It felt that way.)

Whereupon he inspected the trowel very closely, including with the Eye of Mimizan and Mirizan, and agreed that he couldn't see any threats.

"Then I should keep it?" I asked.

"Absolutely not. You need to have it cleaned, and by some very ferocious means or other," he said.

"It's a bit soiled, yes... It looks well-used."

"We don't want horrible offworld plants growing sprouting from seeds in it. We don't want horrible offworld insects growing from eggs in it. We don't want horrible offworld mystery creatures doing whatever horrible offworld creatures do from it," said Kaim-Su.

"From dirt?"

"From dirt, precisely. It's happened before. The Eater of Cities might have done."

So we had the seven-winged flaming thing curl around it for half an hour. I don't know if that destroyed any Eater of Cities eggs lurking in it, but it certainly destroyed the tired old wood of the handle. For all I know, an Eater of Cities can only be spawned when a special sorcerous slug lays an egg in the tired old wood handle of an offworld trowel that is then incubated by a seven-winged burning thing. Or something.

Then we collected all the ashes into a glass jar, and added spirits of vitriol, and gave it to one of the guard sorcerers to turn into a cork, which we then burned again, and had the sorcerer turn into a spiky bone thing with the word "DANGER" written on it. Then we wrote an explanation of what it was and tucked it in a back cabinet at the guard offices. The cabinet was half-full of similarly-treated objects.

"What about the legendary and dreadful offworld giant alien city-squishing iron slugs?" I asked.

"Don't be silly, Sythyry," said the sorcerer.

[Poll #680833]

Comments

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if one of the world tree cities was suddenly inundated by some very large metal object... If a city managed to kill this iron slug... then what?

That city has a monopoly on iron-production for centuries to come? I wonder how that would change the dynamics of the World Tree... it would certainly devalue the cost of metal for a long period of time to come...

Has any wizard tried to make trading inroads to another world that has, say, large amounts of iron available to them? When you are in a world thats not made of wood, iron often is easier to come by...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Iron isn't THAT hard to come by for them -- any wizard that was interested in metal and could travel to other worlds could probably conjure metal out of thin air, too.

It's only a little more difficult than turning into an Orren-or-whatever.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

What about other metals, better ones than iron? Its usually societies that have lots of metals to work with that know a lot about alloys and such...

And I do not doubt that it would be *easier*, at least initially, to just create the iron... I just wondered if anyone seriously considered or attempted this as an option...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

The only metal slug I know of was very small indeed, as far as city-squishing is concerned. It was about the size of a large cart, so it had to blow up each individual building in the city with its weapon, and squish the citizens one by one.

We still use similar devices (although not nearly as legendary) in warfare, but generally more than one at a time. That speeds up the process.

[niss-the-ai.livejournal.com]

I thought a Metal Slug was some sort of miniature tank? Ah, I see that Rassimel beat me to it.

I thought they were legendary too, till I saw Blurry Photographic Evidence!

A Zi Ri probably could amass a lot of wealth and power by getting zir claws on a few metal-working spells -- or spending a lot of time inventing one. It'd be one step towards that boiling iron kettle full of fireproof Orren! And you do have access to a source of advanced magical help...

Why didn't you just carry the trowel inside a wooden box, or even a backpack? Makes me think you're spoiled by all that magic, being unable to do things in a non-magical way.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well... it seems that many people are talking about Metal Slugs. As mentioned before, where many of us come from, a "Metal Slug" is a euphemism for a particular type of war chariot on our world, called a "Tank".

They aren't invulnerable, they aren't intelligent, they aren't city squishing by any means, though they hold intelligent people who give them commands and work them, but they are made mostly out of metal and do have a powerful weapon that fires metal at very high speeds. They are mostly made to take and hold a city with military force.

If you can see this page, you might want to look at it. You can read it if you want, but at least look at the pictures...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it takes many skilled people using many advanced tools and processes to design and make one, and they certainly can't spawn or be grown, especially not from something as simple as a trowel -- they have to be built, manufactured, and put together...

Oh, and we created them *without magic*.

Think about that. we created these tools with no magic whatsoever... societies can use things other than magic as powerful tools...

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

... there's off world alien things, anyway??

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, I have one in my closet now.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

Unless, of course, the shovel-part needed some intense heat to incubate and cast off the wooden plug from its feeding orifice. Just imagine! Your closet could be full to bursting with little, hungry metal slugs this very instant! Waiting - WAITING - to pounce upon the first person to open that door! Then you'd have SCORES of off-world alien things in your closet, not just the one.

.. well, possibly not. Still, does make you wonder, doesn't it...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's how I was trying to intimidate Kaim-Su!

*checks*

No, just a trowel.

[revar.livejournal.com]

Drat not seeing poll results before answering! I seem to have been beaten to my silly GhostBusters movie reference.