(no subject)

Obituary: Floosh [Vheshrame, 15 Trandary 4385]

Floosh tricked me.

I think it was payback for the time I sort of tricked her by mistake, when I hired her to make breakfast boxes for everyone in Oorah Thrassen, as part of a harmless but imposing display of Vae's magical power and a clear indication to our enemies that our nendrai was sufficiently intimidated that she would do the silliest things on our command. (Not strictly true.) It was rather a scramble on Floosh's part, and mine, and Vae's, and everyone in Threeze (Floosh's village). Floosh used her share of the spoils of war to buy the Academy Bakery from the then-owners.

The Academy Bakery was five blocks from Quelldrie House / Castle Wrong, or less if you're willing to fly over those blocks and, perhaps, get to glimpse something interesting or amusing or exciting going on in a courtyard. Students do quite a bit when they think nobody is watching. Also, Academy Bakery makes the best poptaloops in Vheshrame, and they are open well before dawn. So several times a week I flew there early, to get a poptaloop and some romantic advice or other wisdom from Floosh, and get to the Academy, or, later, my workshop, before it was time to start enchanting.

A few weeks after New Years Day, 4300, when I got to the bakery in the early morning, the assistant baker was in rather a state. Floosh had fallen face-first in the rye bread dough, and would not wake up. The latter was because she was dead. She was about a hundred and twenty years old [about eighty Earth years. -bb], so she wasn't being unreasonable about it.

She hadn't been dead very long, and I was (and am) a fully-qualified Healer's Guild member, so I made her stop being dead. Which wasn't going to work very well. There are no cures for old age; there are only preventatives.

She teased me for reviving her. After all, it was a new century, and she didn't want to spend it doing the same things in the same body as the previous one.

She did all the baking for her farewell party, or at least supervised it. It was rather a big party. We had to rent Ghaln-Yastrou Park for it. I think most of the Academy students and former students still in Vheshrame came, and lots of people from the Academy quarter. Ghirbis Vlaan travelled back from Mrasteia to be there (and stayed at Castle Wrong for two months, and seduced someone she shouldn't have, and there was Much Drama). She even brought Vae a package of leftovers afterwards, to say goodbye to her outside the gates.

A few days after that, she died quietly, back home in Threeze. That was a family affair; I was not invited. I did attend the funeral though.

I was rather surprised on my next birthday, when Academy Bakery delivered a cake to me. It was triangular, and bright blue, and covered with dragons waving brandy bottles and needles and cloth (I was doing my haphazard apprenticeship for the Couturier's Guild at that point), and tasted just like Floosh's baking.

I interrogated the bakers. Floosh had written a careful list of a hundred different birthday cakes for me, to be delivered over the next century. And, at the end of that, "I'll be back to plan the next hundred later."

A Digression on the Nature of Reincarnation on the World Tree

Reincarnation is a well-established scientific fact. The details are up to the creator gods: that is, Orren are always reincarnated as Orren, however it pleases the Orren's creator god Pararenenzu. There is no great uniformity to the process, as far as we can tell (which isn't very far): some people are reborn immediately, some after centuries, and some, perhaps, haven't been at all yet and never will be.

Personality and ego persist from life to life. Memories generally do not. For all practical purposes, when you are reborn, you are reborn as a baby, and there are very few differences between first-timers and hundredth-timers. I don't know which I am ... well, probably no more than a second-timer. I'm not sure that there have been a hundred Zi Ri with disjoint lifetimes since the world began.

(Exception: gods do know who was who, and if you pleased or offended a god in one lifetime, you may well have a boon or bane connected to that god in later lifetimes. And skills that you learned well in one life, to the point that they were nearly aspects of your personality, you can relearn quickly in a later life.)

It is possible for a mighty spell to restore full memory of all your past lives. My grandparent can cast that spell. Vae can't do it. I can't do it either, and I would have to exert myself mightily to even make a device which did it. It's a very hard spell.

In any case, reincarnation isn't a phenomenon of great practical importance.

Windigar

Everyone (in Floosh's family, at least) says that Windigar is Floosh's reincarnation.

The evidence for this seems to be:

1. Windigar, as a child, was quite fond of pastry.
2. Windigar, nonetheless, does not want to run the bakery; he finds it tedious, as if he has already done it enough. He wants to be a sky pilot. (In fact, he is a sky pilot; we studied together for it.)
3. Windigar is unusually sensible for an Orren.
4. Windigar is Flooosh's great-great-grandchild.

To which I would add, despite being Orren, Windigar and I have no romantic interest in each other, as was true with Floosh and I.

One might argue that, e.g., many children like pastry; that running a bakery is boring compared to being a sky pilot; that, by definition, 10% of all Orren are in the most sensible 10% of Orren; and that Floosh has many great-great-grandchildren. And that, in any case, Pararenenzu has no particular reason to reincarnate someone as one of their descendants.

To which I might add that I haven't had any particular romantic interest in any new Orrens, or any new people of any kind, for decades now. I have been busy with other matters. Or something.

True or not, everyone in Threeze seems to believe it. Windigar has been called on to ceremonially relight the oven fires every year, and such as that.

In any case, I have hired Windigar to be the pilot of Strayway. More of that later.

(no subject)

Obituary: Floosh [Vheshrame, 15 Trandary 4385]

Floosh tricked me.

I think it was payback for the time I sort of tricked her by mistake, when I hired her to make breakfast boxes for everyone in Oorah Thrassen, as part of a harmless but imposing display of Vae's magical power and a clear indication to our enemies that our nendrai was sufficiently intimidated that she would do the silliest things on our command. (Not strictly true.) It was rather a scramble on Floosh's part, and mine, and Vae's, and everyone in Threeze (Floosh's village). Floosh used her share of the spoils of war to buy the Academy Bakery from the then-owners.

The Academy Bakery was five blocks from Quelldrie House / Castle Wrong, or less if you're willing to fly over those blocks and, perhaps, get to glimpse something interesting or amusing or exciting going on in a courtyard. Students do quite a bit when they think nobody is watching. Also, Academy Bakery makes the best poptaloops in Vheshrame, and they are open well before dawn. So several times a week I flew there early, to get a poptaloop and some romantic advice or other wisdom from Floosh, and get to the Academy, or, later, my workshop, before it was time to start enchanting.

A few weeks after New Years Day, 4300, when I got to the bakery in the early morning, the assistant baker was in rather a state. Floosh had fallen face-first in the rye bread dough, and would not wake up. The latter was because she was dead. She was about a hundred and twenty years old [about eighty Earth years. -bb], so she wasn't being unreasonable about it.

She hadn't been dead very long, and I was (and am) a fully-qualified Healer's Guild member, so I made her stop being dead. Which wasn't going to work very well. There are no cures for old age; there are only preventatives.

She teased me for reviving her. After all, it was a new century, and she didn't want to spend it doing the same things in the same body as the previous one.

She did all the baking for her farewell party, or at least supervised it. It was rather a big party. We had to rent Ghaln-Yastrou Park for it. I think most of the Academy students and former students still in Vheshrame came, and lots of people from the Academy quarter. Ghirbis Vlaan travelled back from Mrasteia to be there (and stayed at Castle Wrong for two months, and seduced someone she shouldn't have, and there was Much Drama). She even brought Vae a package of leftovers afterwards, to say goodbye to her outside the gates.

A few days after that, she died quietly, back home in Threeze. That was a family affair; I was not invited. I did attend the funeral though.

I was rather surprised on my next birthday, when Academy Bakery delivered a cake to me. It was triangular, and bright blue, and covered with dragons waving brandy bottles and needles and cloth (I was doing my haphazard apprenticeship for the Couturier's Guild at that point), and tasted just like Floosh's baking.

I interrogated the bakers. Floosh had written a careful list of a hundred different birthday cakes for me, to be delivered over the next century. And, at the end of that, "I'll be back to plan the next hundred later."

A Digression on the Nature of Reincarnation on the World Tree

Reincarnation is a well-established scientific fact. The details are up to the creator gods: that is, Orren are always reincarnated as Orren, however it pleases the Orren's creator god Pararenenzu. There is no great uniformity to the process, as far as we can tell (which isn't very far): some people are reborn immediately, some after centuries, and some, perhaps, haven't been at all yet and never will be.

Personality and ego persist from life to life. Memories generally do not. For all practical purposes, when you are reborn, you are reborn as a baby, and there are very few differences between first-timers and hundredth-timers. I don't know which I am ... well, probably no more than a second-timer. I'm not sure that there have been a hundred Zi Ri with disjoint lifetimes since the world began.

(Exception: gods do know who was who, and if you pleased or offended a god in one lifetime, you may well have a boon or bane connected to that god in later lifetimes. And skills that you learned well in one life, to the point that they were nearly aspects of your personality, you can relearn quickly in a later life.)

It is possible for a mighty spell to restore full memory of all your past lives. My grandparent can cast that spell. Vae can't do it. I can't do it either, and I would have to exert myself mightily to even make a device which did it. It's a very hard spell.

In any case, reincarnation isn't a phenomenon of great practical importance.

Windigar

Everyone (in Floosh's family, at least) says that Windigar is Floosh's reincarnation.

The evidence for this seems to be:

1. Windigar, as a child, was quite fond of pastry.
2. Windigar, nonetheless, does not want to run the bakery; he finds it tedious, as if he has already done it enough. He wants to be a sky pilot. (In fact, he is a sky pilot; we studied together for it.)
3. Windigar is unusually sensible for an Orren.
4. Windigar is Flooosh's great-great-grandchild.

To which I would add, despite being Orren, Windigar and I have no romantic interest in each other, as was true with Floosh and I.

One might argue that, e.g., many children like pastry; that running a bakery is boring compared to being a sky pilot; that, by definition, 10% of all Orren are in the most sensible 10% of Orren; and that Floosh has many great-great-grandchildren. And that, in any case, Pararenenzu has no particular reason to reincarnate someone as one of their descendants.

To which I might add that I haven't had any particular romantic interest in any new Orrens, or any new people of any kind, for decades now. I have been busy with other matters. Or something.

True or not, everyone in Threeze seems to believe it. Windigar has been called on to ceremonially relight the oven fires every year, and such as that.

In any case, I have hired Windigar to be the pilot of Strayway. More of that later.

(no subject)

Strayway, really this time [Vheshrame; 18 Trandary 4385]

Strayway is my new sky-yacht.

I had been planning to buy a used sky-yacht of some fairly ordinary design, probably birdy or dragony. I was going to paint it blue as a minor concession to vanity. Not quite my own shade of blue. I'm not that vain.

I made the mistake of mentioning this at dinner in Castle Wrong.

Everyone:"We gasp in horror, Sythyry! Such a tedious ship would not fully express the crucial message, of Behold! Here comes a mighty yet deviant wizard! Your sky-yacht must be a gaudiness -- a spectacle -- a wonderment -- a flamboyance supreme!"

Me:"I suppose so..."

So I got an ordinary transvective skyboat, used, and started doing nighttime enchantments on it. Some illusions, some transformations, some other things, and some rather tricky Locador stuff.

Strayway is now in the form of a seven-armed silver and amber candelabra, with seven burning candles in its radially-symmetric spirally arms. The body is a big silvery vase, some fifteen feet tall and ten in diameter (Don't worry, it's much bigger inside.) The vase depicts certain selected standard and ordinary scenes from mythology and history which, while undeniably standard and ordinary artistic themes, if taken together, might suggest a certain interest in some topics which I am in fact interested in. A bouquet of greatly magnified flowers sprouts out the top -- or, rather, a greatly magnified illusion of anything placed in the centerpiece vase on the high table of the Grand Dining Hall inside. I plan to stick with flowers. Strayway is drawn by three three-headed antelopes made of green glass and green copper and green emerald, with scorpion tails ending in lampy gems. (Yes, of course they breathe fire. (Yes, it's real fire. Why would I make fake fire?))

Everyone:"Oh, no, Sythyry ... you didn't!"

Me:"Um, actually I did."

Everyone:"The Doom! The utter and highly characteristic Doom!"

This sort of thing is why wizards get a reputation for being eccentric. Wizards are not actually eccentric. Wizards simply listen to their friends.

(But I didn't dare show her in public for a decade after that.)

Some notable features of Strayway include:

1. The hull is plated with real silver. Not a lot of real silver, but not such a little either. I have a somewhat complex arrangement with the Smith's Guild about how much metal I can create. (Most members of the guild can create as much metal as they can. As a skilled enchanter, I can make a talisman which creates unlimited amounts of metal to sell. As a loyal and honorable Smith's Guild member, I do not create unlimited amounts of metal to sell. ... but I still have the talisman, and I can use it for things which I promise not to sell for a thousand years. Actually it's not unlimited creation, just a pound and a half a day, but it was enough to turn a thirty-year full-time apprenticeship into a three-year afternoon-only one.)
2. The doors are not evident from the outside.
3. The candle flames are real fire. They are provided with braziers for burning nice woods, and fireproof cushions for lounging, if one is inclined to sit in one and meditate or watch the landscape without much company. One of them has a lectern which renders books fireproof, in case one wishes to read.
4. The Grand Dining Hall is pretty grand. I was trying to see how long I could make one room be, and ... it's about three-quarters of a mile long. And thirty feet wide.
5. I did an extremely poor job with the interior geography otherwise. The interior is best thought of as being divided into eighteen regions (corresponding to the eighteen space-expanders I installed). Within a region, geometry works as one might expect: if one goes through a door from one room to another, walks ten feet, and goes through another door into the first room, one ends up about ten feet from where one started. This is unlikely to be true if one crosses between regions, and one can get thoroughly lost while one is building it, and have to spont Go Home to escape from one's own sky-yacht. I installed a regiment of signposts and maps. That still proved insufficient for me to find my way around. A certain part of the delay in actually leaving for the vacation is the necessity of constructing and providing guides.
6. Accordingly, each room has a sentient, mindful item of furniture, capable of giving directions and other useful advice. The Grand Dining Hall has one by each door.
7. The pilot's room is an utterly standard and ordinary any-species sort of control room. It is not one bit rococo. I did not modify it, except to add a scrying device. Oh, and I replaced the quick-escape device. The original Strayway (which was called something tedious at that point) had a one-use teleporter for escaping from danger. (She got into danger, got badly clawed up, teleported away, and got sold second-hand.) I can do better, and I did do better. And my "better" even works with all the other Locador on the yacht ... though we shouldn't use it too often.
8. The pantry is provided with a device that prevents foods from spoiling. It does not prevent them from aging, though, so we can make our own cheese and wine, if we want.
9. I didn't make any animata or other mindful servants, though. I thought about it, of course. One rarely sees an eccentric wizard without an animated floating teakettle with seven leather whips as tentacles, or something like that, where a less skillful nobleman would hire a Khtsoyis porter. I decided that -- as with Castle Wrong -- I would rather bring friends and people from my community along, especially ones who have trouble getting jobs elsewise.

There's more, of course. I have been tinkering with Strayway for two dozen years or more, in my spare time.

(no subject)

Strayway, really this time [Vheshrame; 18 Trandary 4385]

Strayway is my new sky-yacht.

I had been planning to buy a used sky-yacht of some fairly ordinary design, probably birdy or dragony. I was going to paint it blue as a minor concession to vanity. Not quite my own shade of blue. I'm not that vain.

I made the mistake of mentioning this at dinner in Castle Wrong.

Everyone:"We gasp in horror, Sythyry! Such a tedious ship would not fully express the crucial message, of Behold! Here comes a mighty yet deviant wizard! Your sky-yacht must be a gaudiness -- a spectacle -- a wonderment -- a flamboyance supreme!"

Me:"I suppose so..."

So I got an ordinary transvective skyboat, used, and started doing nighttime enchantments on it. Some illusions, some transformations, some other things, and some rather tricky Locador stuff.

Strayway is now in the form of a seven-armed silver and amber candelabra, with seven burning candles in its radially-symmetric spirally arms. The body is a big silvery vase, some fifteen feet tall and ten in diameter (Don't worry, it's much bigger inside.) The vase depicts certain selected standard and ordinary scenes from mythology and history which, while undeniably standard and ordinary artistic themes, if taken together, might suggest a certain interest in some topics which I am in fact interested in. A bouquet of greatly magnified flowers sprouts out the top -- or, rather, a greatly magnified illusion of anything placed in the centerpiece vase on the high table of the Grand Dining Hall inside. I plan to stick with flowers. Strayway is drawn by three three-headed antelopes made of green glass and green copper and green emerald, with scorpion tails ending in lampy gems. (Yes, of course they breathe fire. (Yes, it's real fire. Why would I make fake fire?))

Everyone:"Oh, no, Sythyry ... you didn't!"

Me:"Um, actually I did."

Everyone:"The Doom! The utter and highly characteristic Doom!"

This sort of thing is why wizards get a reputation for being eccentric. Wizards are not actually eccentric. Wizards simply listen to their friends.

(But I didn't dare show her in public for a decade after that.)

Some notable features of Strayway include:

1. The hull is plated with real silver. Not a lot of real silver, but not such a little either. I have a somewhat complex arrangement with the Smith's Guild about how much metal I can create. (Most members of the guild can create as much metal as they can. As a skilled enchanter, I can make a talisman which creates unlimited amounts of metal to sell. As a loyal and honorable Smith's Guild member, I do not create unlimited amounts of metal to sell. ... but I still have the talisman, and I can use it for things which I promise not to sell for a thousand years. Actually it's not unlimited creation, just a pound and a half a day, but it was enough to turn a thirty-year full-time apprenticeship into a three-year afternoon-only one.)
2. The doors are not evident from the outside.
3. The candle flames are real fire. They are provided with braziers for burning nice woods, and fireproof cushions for lounging, if one is inclined to sit in one and meditate or watch the landscape without much company. One of them has a lectern which renders books fireproof, in case one wishes to read.
4. The Grand Dining Hall is pretty grand. I was trying to see how long I could make one room be, and ... it's about three-quarters of a mile long. And thirty feet wide.
5. I did an extremely poor job with the interior geography otherwise. The interior is best thought of as being divided into eighteen regions (corresponding to the eighteen space-expanders I installed). Within a region, geometry works as one might expect: if one goes through a door from one room to another, walks ten feet, and goes through another door into the first room, one ends up about ten feet from where one started. This is unlikely to be true if one crosses between regions, and one can get thoroughly lost while one is building it, and have to spont Go Home to escape from one's own sky-yacht. I installed a regiment of signposts and maps. That still proved insufficient for me to find my way around. A certain part of the delay in actually leaving for the vacation is the necessity of constructing and providing guides.
6. Accordingly, each room has a sentient, mindful item of furniture, capable of giving directions and other useful advice. The Grand Dining Hall has one by each door.
7. The pilot's room is an utterly standard and ordinary any-species sort of control room. It is not one bit rococo. I did not modify it, except to add a scrying device. Oh, and I replaced the quick-escape device. The original Strayway (which was called something tedious at that point) had a one-use teleporter for escaping from danger. (She got into danger, got badly clawed up, teleported away, and got sold second-hand.) I can do better, and I did do better. And my "better" even works with all the other Locador on the yacht ... though we shouldn't use it too often.
8. The pantry is provided with a device that prevents foods from spoiling. It does not prevent them from aging, though, so we can make our own cheese and wine, if we want.
9. I didn't make any animata or other mindful servants, though. I thought about it, of course. One rarely sees an eccentric wizard without an animated floating teakettle with seven leather whips as tentacles, or something like that, where a less skillful nobleman would hire a Khtsoyis porter. I decided that -- as with Castle Wrong -- I would rather bring friends and people from my community along, especially ones who have trouble getting jobs elsewise.

There's more, of course. I have been tinkering with Strayway for two dozen years or more, in my spare time.