(no subject)

[sythyry]

Cloak of Another God, redux [14 Thory 4262]

Briefly (as from this, which is a long time ago), Cloak of Another God grants the subject all the physical aspects of the new shape, but not the magical aspects. So, when I'm being an Orren, I turn into a small otter in water; if Mynthë were to be a Zi Ri, she would would be able to fly, but not breathe water.

The four-page booklet on Cloak didn't mention this topic in particular, but reproduction sure sounds like a physical aspect of one's body, rather than a magical one.

And of course Mynthë -- that Orren boy -- and I -- that Orren girl -- hadn't taken the slightest precaution. It's not something that Zi Ri often think about, since body-play and reproduction are wholly different for us. It's not something that co-lovers often think about when they're only with one other partner, since they need a full triad to reproduce. It's not something that traff couples often think about, 'cause, obviously. So we hadn't thought about it.

And I was feeling awfully tingly about the womb.

Let's see. There are various dimensions of doom available here.

1. Getting pregnant by mistake is a sign of serious carelessness, or worse. It's bad enough for your average tradesman or something. For a would-be sorcerer with cley to spare and more than enough skill at all the relevant magic, it's utterly humiliating.
2. Being an unmarried ~mother~ is a grave social injury. Also an academic injury, as Thery and Yarwain have shown me in detail. Actually even being a married mother at my age isn't much better, as Thery and Yarwain have shown me -- they have pretty much dropped out of my social set.
3. What if the child is Orren-souled and I need to spend the next long time as an Orren, entirely?
4. How on wood do I explain that Mynthë is the father?
5. Sure, I like Mynthë, but it's rather early to be discussing marriage with him/zir.
6. And when the spell is up, won't I be pregnant, and thus in massive amounts of pain for a long time?

And all sorts of things like that.

Then...

I was in a bit of a state, I will have to admit. (I haven't really been the sanest lately, not since that last Mentador assault by Vae. I should do something about it, if I could think of what.)

I needed advice.

I was eight blocks from the library, and four blocks from Thestra's apartment. So I decided to ask Thestra, who'd probably know.

Me:"Hallo? Thestra? Are you there? It's Sythyry, in an Orren body."

Denaist:"Thestra goes to the market two and two-thirds hours ago to buy plantains and small meat pies and wheat cakes. This is the errand that takes a third of an hour. Probably she is having an affair for the other two and one-third hours. This is good! She deserves one!"

Me:"Denaist? Is that you?"

Denaist:"That is what my mother tells me. Especially when I am bad."

Asking Denaist a serious question is utter foolishness, but I was in a bit of a state.

Me:"Denaist? Can I come in?"

Denaist:"Sythyry, the mighty adventurer! Open the door and enter and see what the doom is!"

Me:"OK..."

Denaist:"Brandy? You smell like you need brandy. "

Me:"Thank you."I poured myself a quarter chalice, then realized I was large, and got the whole one.

Denaist:"The fear and the sex are the strange combination! Who is the lucky Orren boy, and why are you so afraid?"

So I told him everything.

Denaist:"Ah, I sniff, then I think when you come to the door, 'Who is the newly pregnant Orren woman visiting me?' Now I know, this pregnant Orren woman is Sythyry! This is the very sympathy situation!"

Me:"You can smell me ... I've conceived?"

Denaist:"There is no fooling a Sleeth nose!" Which is true; there isn't.

Me:"Do you know anything about how pregnancy and Cloak of Another God go together?"

Denaist:"Oh, yes. Before I am with Thestra I am a Rassimel man for an overnight. The Rassimel woman Zamma is not so careful. She is pregnant afterwards. She very much loves the Sleeth-sometimes-Rassy! She thinks and frets, she frets and thinks, she keeps the baby and stays pregnant."

Me:"You've got a Rassimel child?"

Denaist:"No! I try, but I do not. When the child is in her for six months, he grows the Sleeth claws. Mother dies, child dies. I am almost sad. This is the good reason to move to Vheshrame!"

Me:"... oh dear ..."

Denaist:"How spiky is Mynthë in the Herethroy body? How good a healer do you afford when your belly is big?"

Me:"... oh dear oh dear ..."

And another two-thirds of an hour of absolute panic in the Sleeth's room.

The Inevitable

Thestra:"Hey, Denaist. Oh! you brought me an Orren! Only slightly used!"

Me:"I'm Sythyry."

Thestra:"Ooh! Denaist! You brought me a Sythyry! Only slightly used!"

Me:"I'm pregnant."

Thestra:"You're what?"

Me:"Denaist smelled me. I'm pregnant."

Thestra sniffed me thoroughly. (Cani noses are just as good as Sleeth noses.)

Thestra:"Denaist? What makes you think she's pregnant?"

Denaist:"I have the good reason!"

Thestra:"Sythyry? When did you supposedly get pregnant?"

Me:"Um ... four hours ago or so."

Thestra:"You won't smell of it for at least two weeks, not to my nose and not to Denaist. Maybe one week for the best Cani nose there is."

Me:"... oh? ... "

Thestra:"Besides, can you get preggy with a Cloak?"

Me:"Don't you know about Denaist and Zamma?"

Thestra:"Denaist? Did you get back with Zamma without telling me? That Rassy is pure poison, I'm telling you. Every time you sleep with her you're crying about something for the next month. Every time."

Me:"Didn't he kill her with a Cloak-spawned child?"

Thestra:"He should have killed her with an icicle through the heart! Or any other way. She was alive and biting last week though."

Me:"Denaist? What about ..." and I summarized what he had told me.

Thestra and Denaist were warbling with laughter at that!

Thestra:"Denaist, Denaist. You keep your claws sheathed around Sythyry. Zie's my business partner, remember?"

Denaist:"It is only the small playing I do to zir!"

Thestra:"No! Bad cat! No playing with the business partner!"

Denaist:(starts taking a tongue-bath in the middle of the living room.)

Thestra:"Stupid cats. Some days I have not the slightest idea why I keep them in chocolate-and-ground-groundnut pies."

Denaist:"There's pie?"

Thestra:"Only after you apologize."

Denaist:"Sorry! Very sorry! Also somewhat sorry! Now give me pie!"

Thestra:"Sythyry gets the first slice, by way of more sincere apology."

Me:"Actually I'd like to get to the library before it closes."

Thestra:"Well, OK, I'll walk you there."

Which was far more useful than it sounds, since (a) I would have gotten lost walking, I usually fly over buildings, and (b) she calmed me down whenever glowing blue-green jitters exploded out of my ears. (For monsters: Metaphorically. I mean, I could do a spell for that I suppose, but why?)

Anyways, Yan Pozor's Structure and Interpretation of Corporeal Transmogrifications explains, theoretically, that gametes are their own proto-organisms and do not generally get transformed by ordinary Mutoc Corpador, and, practically, Cloak of Another God and similar spells do not yield fertile members of their new species. (In fact, according to the book, the simplest known spell to get two members of different species to have a child is a ritual of complexity 40, and if a simple Cloak could do it, we'd have known long since.)

The Spare Oops

Thestra:"Well, you should be able to sleep now. I suppose you could check at dawn."

Me:"... dawn? ..."

Thestra:"Or meditate to get cley back for the Kennoc Corpador spell earlier, if you really want. I hate meditating myself."

Me:"... Um ... oh! Right! I could do that!"

So I sponted a very straightforward Kennoc Corpador spell to check whether I was pregnant, and it said no. It might be wrong -- that happens once in a while -- but usually not.

The Judgment

I am so stupid.

Comments

O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Epic doom narrowly avoided!

*chorus* "Let's not mention this to the nendrai."

Re: O_O

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, epic doom avoided because it's not physically possible.

But I am not talking about this to Vae. No, no, no.

[Sythyry doesn't know it, but zie should be glad zie's on World Tree and there's a rule system and cosmology in place. If zie were from a less stabilized fiction, zie'd be preggy for sure. But Vicki and I discussed it, and it's pretty clear that Cloak doesn't work the way Denaist pretended it did. It's also pretty clear a Sleeth will play with zir not-so-close friends.-bb]

Re: O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I've had more than one character of mine get pregnant by bizarre mystical means -- at least one of them on purpose (in "Peaches from the Tree of Heaven").

Re: O_O

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

On purpose, I think it is not so hard.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[Just out of curiousity, were you always planning this tangent, or is this as a result of my raising the issue a few posts ago?]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[While I'm at it, are World Tree characters aware of numerical spell complexities? Or do they just see spells as subjectively harder or easier?]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The numerical spell complexity is directly observable: a complexity-N spell takes N cley to copy. So they have the same complexity scores that we do. (But, confusingly, complexity is given in units of cley, rather the way that atmospheric pressure is given in units of inches on Earth. I don't do that in the translation, so I don't have to explain why a 5-cley spell only costs 1 cley to cost.)

Spell power isn't quantal and isn't observable in universal units that way. It's measurable, but the scale is arbitrary. I forget whether primes use the same scale that the game uses.

RPG Physics

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

They are. Their anchor point is that they know each pattern spell takes N*5 hours to graft (learn), apparently independent of skill. So, they can say "this spell is Complexity 20," ie. it takes 20 hours. I don't think they could directly measure rituals that way, but there's an indirect way.

*consults a book*

(Also, hammer casting and spell transcription (making new copies of learnable pattern spells) have features strictly based on complexity, so those are other ways of getting a numeric complexity rating.)

Say you can cast a Level 10 water-creation spell (Cr Aq) and a Level 10 water-knowledge spell (Kn Aq) but not a Level 10 fire-creation spell (Cr Py). Pattern spells can be grafted regardless of a prime's skill, but can only be cast if (Memory + Worst Noun + Worst Verb) >= Complexity. By comparing successes, you'd know that your Aq skill is higher than Py. How much higher? If you can cast Cr Py 5 and Cr Aq 10 but not Cr Py 10 or Cr Aq 15, then swapping Py out for Aq gets you 1-4 additional points of complexity, so Aq is 1-4 points higher than Py. By such comparisons you could get numeric estimates of your skill in each art -- and in your Memory stat.

You could also measure other stats through comparisons. Eg., a first meditation of the day gives a cley if (Meditation + Faith + s20 >= 20), and you get Faith + Cley Base + d6 cley at dawn. The second equation would let you see, statistically, what your Faith + Cley Base must be, and the first would let you see Meditation + Faith. From those you could calculate your Faith. Some Rassimel is sure to have figured out these tricks.

Primes are also aware that they have hit points. Sythyry mentioned that this is proved by the gruesome method of "titrating" primes, inflicting minor wounds to the point of death (followed by quick resurrection). Some adventurers volunteer for this treatment because it counts as major endurance training, raising their future HP limit. I think Sythyry also mentioned knowing a numeric value for zir HP, after being killed by the nendrai.

Moral: Having intelligent beings in a world with explicit RPG mechanics means that they eventually become aware of them!

Re: RPG Physics

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Having intelligent beings in a world with explicit RPG mechanics means that they eventually become aware of them!

We call it "science", and we uncover more curiosities in our rulebook every day. My goal instead is to be one of the characters referenced in a charming little blurb for one of the listed skills.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

OOC: yes, exactly. What skill?

Re: RPG Physics

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

OOC: Knowing me, it'd be something like "Confuse" or "Distract", the ability to totally derail someone's train of thought by acting up or suggesting something zany.

Boomer: (aims a sonic cannon at Eekay) Oi! You zorch my rig, you pay the price!
Eekay: Price? I have my checkbook here. U.S. dollars or Khonnen ration creds... or have you switched to euros yet? Oh, wait, this is my base-eight checkbook. One sec, I'll get the right one. (ducks into another room)
Boomer: ...whuh? (stands utterly confused for one turn of game time)

Also, I really, really should make a Wave Pepperbell Wave icon so folks can tell when I'm channeling her. Her skill would be Woodworking, because her lack of it is legendary.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

OOC: Yup! Sythyry has fussed about zir Cley Base + Faith before, when classes and boyfriend sometimes took more cley than zie got on a bad day.

They don't know the underlying rules in all cases, though the magic rules are pretty well understood.

And, Vicki and I reserve the right to declare a World Tree RPG rule an approximation of a more detailed physical reality. World Tree is an RPG, after all. In-world, it's clearly some sort of adventure game, but the engine governing it (viz. the Noun gods) is capable of performing tasks that have more intricate mathematical behavior than humans are willing to perform while gaming.

E.g., the standard experience rule (using experience pools) isn't exactly what happens, it's just easier on bookkeeping; the alternate rule (experience in skills) is more accurate. Sythyry's class on adventuring takes advantage of the more accurate rule.

Sythyry doesn't have a full charsheet though. I did calculate zir magical arts scores not too long ago. Zie and I were somewhat alarmed.

Re: RPG Physics

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

What? I can't force you to abide by my interpretation of your world's rules?! 8)

I'd reword your comment below about discrete phenomena: WT seems to have physical laws that are consistent but coarser-grained than Earth's, as though it were some sort of RPG running in another dimension. I see from looking up an entry about hit points ("Biometrics") that primes use much smaller HP units than the game book, so that's an example of me mistakenly assuming that the book's rules aren't just approximations.

A thought experiment I like about approximate physics: say you were building a simple game and decided that rather than modeling the complex physics of a tumbling object, you just pick a random number and have that determine what side the object lands on. People inside that game-world would say, "The physics of my universe makes it impossible to determine how objects fall; there's an innately random aspect to it." Real-world physics seems to say there's a random aspect to some aspects of physics, but physicists might yet determine that the randomness is just an approximation of a more complex rule.

Re: RPG Physics

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

OoC: If it were possible, Sythyry would need one or two ritual spells to make it happen, if zie were so inclined. One to make the pregnancy actually happen, the other to prevent the child from being a shifter-hybrid. The problem being, if my memory serves me well, is that Ritual of a Fertile Union actually requires the participants to be of different species. So the question then becomes would the Cloak fool the karcist spell into believing they were both Orren, and therefore fail automatically?

The second question is, if Fertile Union were to work, would Purebreed Puppy be required?

Naturally, this is neither here nor there as Sythyry is not interested in become an unwed, young mother of a child not zir own species.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

(IC) I don't know of a ritual to keep a child from being a shifter hybrid. Except a death ritual of course.

Fertile Union: Cast on two subjects, at least one of whom must have organs which could normally bear children, at least approximately. (Ordinarily one of the two will be female, though not necessarily fertile. The ritual works on, e.g., two females, or a hermaphrodite and a co-lover, but not on two males — unless one of them is of an egg-laying species or the like, in which case the ritual’s behavior will be alarming but effective.) If the subjects couple at any time after the spell is cast, the union will be fruitful. The child of a different-species mix will be a shifter hybrid, shifting back and forth between his parents’ species every few hours, and subject to a variety of unpleasant physical afflictions. Unwilling subjects are allowed Magic Resistance rolls.

So it's mainly used on infertile same-species couples, and it works fine there. Shifter hybrids are very rare, which is a good thing.

Re: RPG Physics

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

(OoC) At the time of writing, I did not have the rulebook at hand, even though it was in the same room. So species is not so important to Fertile Union then. Now I know that Purebreed Puppy doesn't work to prevent a child from being a shifter hybrid. Unless Sythyry is insufficiently informed or otherwise mistaken.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

No blame -- Fertile Union mainly comes up as an explanation of why some character or other is so amazingly screwed up. Not that it couldn't be used in play, but I haven't heard about it.

Re: RPG Physics

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

The child of a different-species mix will be a shifter hybrid, shifting back and forth between his parents’ species every few hours, and subject to a variety of unpleasant physical afflictions.

Without ever having read that before, I have to chuckle because I have a character with almost precisely that issue. One parent was an (apparently) normal human, the other was from a long line of Russian semi-magical arctic-fox shapeshifters (lysoborotnya, the not-so-short and possibly very inaccurate shorthand) who passed the ability down only through the females. This is normal; the pairing should produce a child who was either a normal male human, or a lysoborotnya female.

Some anomaly caused this poor kid to be a male human... but to manifest the shifter nature around seventeen years old. It came out warped; the only accessible forms are human and half-fox, not full fox, and the half-fox is female. On top of that, the change doesn't happen on command but randomly, anywhere from a week apart to a few hours with only a couple minutes' advance notice. (This made school a bit rough, yeah.) Also, the magical powers are split up; only half are available in each form.

I actually did this in City of Heroes as two characters with slightly different names (Sonjun Auric and Sonjun Argent) and wholly different powers. I'll play one in a group for a while, and then just get the urge and have him/her apologise, rush off to go change, and then log in the other character and re-join the team. This has made for interesting complications, but some brilliant roleplay.

Re: RPG Physics

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Er, make that response and this one OOC. Heh. Should've thought to make it feasibly in-character.

Re: RPG Physics

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure if the literary version of world tree exactly followed the game mechanics with regard to complexity. For instance, the instruction book explicitly states that spell power is only an approximation of what actually happens. I didn't know if complexity was like that or not.

Indeed, assuming the literary mechanics match the RPG mechanics would lead to some very bizarre conclusions. For instance, World Tree characters have a single strength metric for their entire body. This would imply that, for instance, they're capable of throwing something that weighs as much as they do as far as they can jump, a highly unlikely conclusion for most of the population.

Secondly, even to the extent that the literary rules do follow the RPG rules, there's still the question of whether the characters are away of this. If Sythry's 'Theory of Differentials' class is any indication, World Tree mathematics is relatively primitive compared to our world.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

OOC: The literary mechanics are Bard's impression of the underlying reality. For which the game mechanics are a good approximation, so it's not a big gap, and you don't see the details of either one in the story very much.

I don't quite get the point about throwing heavy things -- is that a consequence of something in the rules? I don't remember specific rules for either how much you can throw, or how far you can jump.

Sythyry's class was more parallel to a freshman calculus class (in a world where simple discrete phenomena are more fundamental than they are on Earth). It simply gives a lower bound on the sophistication of WT mathematicians. I (with some math degrees) have avoided thinking about WT mathematics, mostly.

Re: RPG Physics

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Upperbody strength and lowerbody strength tend to be independent quantities (and for most people, their lowerbody strength is significantly higher than their upperbody strength). If we take strength as a literal explanation of how the body works instead of an approximation, we have to conclude their arms are as strong as their legs. Which would mean that if the legs are strong enough to throw their body X feet in a standing jump, their arms would be strong enough to an equivalent weight the same distance.

Re: RPG Physics

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

That doesn't necessarily follow. They're average at 0 or +2 or whatever at doing normal things with their legs, and at doing normal things with their arms. What falls into each category is not going to be the same set of things -- legs include 'walking' and 'jumping' and 'kicking balls', arms include 'carrying things' and 'throwing balls'.

It'd make perfect sense to have different formulas for how far you can kick a ball and throw a ball, and base them on one strength score. This doesn't take into account people with an unusual ratio between their upper and lower body strength, but it doesn't automatically make the ratio 1:1.

Re: RPG Physics

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

((You also forget that when done properly, most feats which a human thinks of as 'upper body strength' is being performed to a large extent by the legs and torso.))

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, that's an unduly fussy interpretation. By the same reasoning, you could conclude that the fingers were as strong as the lower body, say, or that the ear-wiggling muscles were.

A somewhat better interpretation is that Strength is measured by some suite of physical tests -- let's say a dozen tests like bench presses and leg presses, whose scores are reduced to small integers, and then averaged. That has the unrealistic result that person Sh (who scores 0 = average on all the tests) has the same Strength as person D (who scores +5 on all upper-body tests and -5 on lower-body tests): the two have the same Strength score, but very different strength measures at all times.

If D were being constructed as a PC, D's player should petition the gamemaster for an Advantage (in this case) reflecting the nonstandard distribution of bodily strength.

Re: RPG Physics

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Well, I picked a bad example then my apologies. But my whole point is still it seems odd to suggest, as kris_schnee did, that all of the RPG's rules would be recoverable in game with sufficient character effort, because one would expect many of the rules are just approximations of what actually goes on in the 'real' world tree universe.

Re: RPG Physics

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Your whole point is wholly right. Many of the RPG rules are approximations of an underlying reality.

A few of them are correct -- e.g., the rules about spell complexity (and most of the rules about manipulating cley, I believe.)

Many of them are pretty close -- e.g., the rules about experience, and about spell botches. (We did the math to estimate child mortality due to spell botches, for one thing.)

The rest are the closest approximation in the restricted form Stat + Skill + s20 vs. threshold (or whatever) that there is to the underlying physical rule. Which is pretty far off in extreme cases for nonlinear realities, say.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The pregnancy scare, from before you mentioned it.
Denaist's part came from a discussion with Vicki, due to you mentioning it.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

gametes are their own proto-organisms and do not generally get transformed by ordinary Mutoc Corpador

In our world, everyone of any size (i.e., who's not microscopic), has symbiotic organisms in their gut to help digest food, with each species having its own particular types. The chemical products of these organisms contribute to one's scent, enough so that sensitive-nosed individuals can often tell when someone is having a digestive upset by the change in their scent, sometimes before any other symptom occurs.

Given that Cloak of Another God can't be detected by smell, and that organisms 'along for the ride', as it were, aren't changed, I'd have to conclude that digestive systems on your world work differently.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

(Or that Sythyry's reference book's reason was wrong -- the fact is right. Or something. E.g., Cloak may not be detectable by smell, but a Cani can tell that that Herethroy has been eating meat recently but is not sick, so something unusual is going on.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a bona-fide Brain Fart! (I am going by the idiomatic term, by the way. It roughly translates to, "A momentary lapse in the thought process and ability to think something through or remember something simple.")

Like you had the capability to logically think through what was going on, ultimately, but you couldn't do so *right then*.

It happens to many sentient individuals! And I am sure it has happened to a good number of your GODS in relatively famous instances, if my information on them is right! So you are in good company. Don't worry!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The next time you think you've gotten pregnant by mistake and you've got a Sleeth playing with you, you tell me how clearly you think!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

...Um, I was trying to be on your side, and say that it's not a bad thing, and that it happens to lots of people all the time, and you shouldn't be ashamed, and it isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of things?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Oh! Thank you!

[winterbeast.livejournal.com]

Brain Farting.
Hmm. Fart. in and of itself, it's a verb. or when applied to a senior citizen, a noun. Would there be two separate Gods for each usage of the word?
I would think it would be important, as the second leading cause of death amongst Remorshkas is rocketry grade flatulence, which backshells them with out the ability to right themselves, making them easy prey for the next passerby. I know this is true, because the captain of the Whiskey Elemental told me so...

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Would I be considered a bad monster if I laughed over this until I placed my bladder in mortal jeopardy?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I think that would make you a quite good monster.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

The playing with, is approved.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Okay... that last sentence makes me worry.... What did you forget? Is this a The End (?) type of thing, or is something Horribly DOOMED!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It's just a good summary of today, Kensan. Not that I promise to be any smarter tomorrow, mind you.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Oh good. This isn't the cry of teenage mistake. Good.

... although I'm not exactly sure what is a teenager for a Sythyry, though.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Sythyry is roughly late teens / early 20's in Earth years. -bb]

[thestra.livejournal.com]

For the record, there's an easy way to tell when a Sleeth is teasing you: Their lips are moving.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Really? They don't tease in Sleeth Silent Language too?

(Not that I know Sleeth Silent Language.)

[denaist.livejournal.com]

Hrrar... Silent language is the mocking, not teasing.
(He licks at a paw, grooming.)
And the tongue is for the...
(He pauses, and then just breaks into a broad grin.)

[rowyn]

And for all that, he is sort of entertaining.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

He is very entertaining -- himself!

(And Thestra, I imagine. Thats' OK.)

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

I'm rather sure I can look this up in one of the textbooks I am needing to acquire, but I -think- it is because pregnancy is also a magical property, not just a physical one.
I haven't seen anything from you in quite awhile, I do hope everything has been alright.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[OOC: heavy deadline at work. -bb]