(no subject)

[sythyry]

Hurrying [20 Hispis 4385]

The Justification

Everybody:"We want city walls and no more pirates! Can't we get to Eigrach faster?"

Me:"We're already flying all the time." I am, rather guiltily, standing two shifts (18 hours) as pilot. This is not, strictly speaking, approved by the guild, but I am sure to get a full shift's sleep (9 hours) after each one. Windigar, whose attitude towards time is rather more sensible than mine, is standing the other one, split in two 4.5-hour halves so I can get my nine hours of sleep between them.

Everybody:"No! Faster, faster, faster!"

Me and Vae:"Yes, but it's not a wonderfully good idea."

Everybody:"Do it! We have surely run out of doom for this leg of the voyage!"

Me and Vae:"Doom is not an exhaustable resource."

Phaniet:"Well, if we do thus-and-so, or such-and-such, the dangers are scarce, are they not?" She is my assistant for very good reasons.

Me and Vae:"Yes... Scarce ... well, more scarce. "

Everyone:"Do it!"

Me and Vae:"Well, um, OK..." Neither of us is particularly a leader, nor particularly good at denying our friends.

The Hurrying

Two-thirds of an hour later, we were in the sky eight miles over Eigrach. Most of the two-thirds of the hour was discussing details with Phaniet. The travel was only a few minutes. Locador magic is very effective and powerful magic.

The Vindication

The reason one does not generally use this much Locador on a skyboat, especially a skyboat containing as much Locador as Strayway does, poked a dozen mile-long black fingery spikes (Technically, I believe that it has only a single finger-spike, but that it is in several places at once) though the injury our skyboat had left in the world's outer rind. Which isn't actually part of the world per se; it's just a sort of a coating or shell just outside the world that keeps nasty things from coming in and bothering us. Except, of course, when we wound it by too much Locador magic. Locador magic is very effective and powerful magic, and that means that it has consequences now and then.

Me:"Oh, dearie."

Vae:"Oh, dearie, to be sure. The trouble and a half it is, when such a thing comes to visit."

Phaniet:"I was wrong, wasn't I?"

Me:"Yes." I'm usually nicer to her.

Phaniet:"What do we do?"

Vae:"The fighting. The troublesome fighting. If we are lucky, a god will come to us and help us."

Phaniet:"Is that likely?"

Vae:"If Oixe had not been with me the other time I faced one, yes, probably Flokin would have chased the being off after I died."

Phaniet:"Oixe isn't with you now."

Me:"I'll do what I can." I'm not nearly as dangerous as Oixe -- for that matter, Vae isn't nearly as dangerous as Oixe.

The Battle

Vae and the Vindication -- which is surely an unusual name for such a creature, but it is what I called it, short for "Vindication that I Was Right And One Should Not Overdo It With The Locador." -- got into a bit of a battle royale. The basic disagreement was over whether the sky-wound was to be big enough for the whole of the Vindication to come through (the Vindication's opinion), or not (Vae's opinion). The sky-wound obeyed them both quite happily. I tried my best relevant spell. The sky-wound ignored me.

So, the Vindication tried to distract Vae. It shattered one of its finger-spikes, and sent the shards as spiralling darknesses to attack her directly. I tried to stop them with spells, but they ignored me. Vae, who is much stronger and more experienced at this sort of thing, was able to block them, but at the cost of many seconds -- during which the Vindication had stretched the sky-wound much wider. We could see its four eyes peering at us, arranged in an equilateral pentagon with eleven mismatched sides.

Vae started tugging the sky-wound closed. The Vindication let her, and shattered another finger-spike. (I'm not sure how this works if it has only one finger-spike. Confusing abomination, that Vindication.)

That simply would not do. If Vae blocked the shards, the Vindication would open the sky-wound enough to get its whole head through, and then the rest of it, and that would not be particularly good. If she didn't, we would all die quickly from the shards, which was certainly preferable but still not a good idea. And Vae was the only one of any use in this fight, and she was overwhelmed by the Vindication's speed.

I'm not Oixe; I don't have any fraction of her native violence. But I do understand time reasonably well. I cast Dancing in the Garden of Statues on her. She seemed to teleport eleven inches that way, presumably because she wasn't quite standing still when she was Dancing. The attacking shards had become peanuts and show tunes all at once from her defensive spells. And the top of the sky-wound had gotten a bit stitched up; she must have had a bit more time than she needed.

So I cast Dancing three more times on her, giving her two full minutes and some to do whatever she wanted without the Vindication interfering. I would have kept casting, except after the third, she left a note saying "The we have won already" over my eyes.

I looked. The sky-wound was closed. Scarred terribly, as always with Vae's Mutoc-based healing, but closed enough to keep the Vindication out.

The Investigation

Arfaen:"I thought I saw some ... black lightning or something? Any idea what it was, Sythyry?"

Me:"Well, yes."

Vae:"Not a thing to worry about was it."

And so we didn't.

But I don't want to hurry that way again.

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I think Vae meant that the battle would be won, even if (as probably would happen) we died. Which greatly improves our chances of being reincarnated -- which we take for granted ordinarily, but should not do, when enemies of this sort are involved.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Given that your world's form of reincarnation still results in the anhilation of the self, I've never gotten why it's supposed to be more comforting than outright destruction upon death.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

No, the self endures. It's all that does, but it does.

Anyhow, it may not be very good, but it's what we've got. The same can be said for, oh, our gods, and our civilization, and our magic system. Not, fortunately, for our beetles and our brandy. Yum, beetles and brandy.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I think we have a different opinion of what constitutes 'self'. Absent a continuity of mind from one life to the next, I wouldn't consider the person to have survived in any meaningful sense, even if some of the material that made them has been recycled. The fact X got Y's soul, absent receiving Y's memories and personality, doesn't make X Y anymore than having gotten a transfusion of Y's blood makes X Y.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what part of the body contains the personality in your world, but here, it's the soul. Memories do not survive; personality does. So it's better than nothing, and, in any case, the only game in town.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

The most likely answer is the personality is an epiphenomena of an organ we call the brain and is the combined effect of all of one's accumulated life experiences. So in some sense, the 'soul' is made of your memories.

Sadly, this means that all is lost once the body ceases to function.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Though not EVERYONE believes that. Many of us, with no real hard evidence, do believe in reincarnation or paradise after death scenarios similar to what you all have.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

"What will happen to us who want to believe, but cannot?"

[zeeth_kyrah]

"You will be given another chance."

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Sadly that wasn't the actual answer.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I see the relevance. Why does a god about your opinions or beliefs?

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Indeed! Or verbs, for that matter? ;>

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard's mistake there. -bb]

Why does a god care about your beliefs or opinions?

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Priest/Death: What are you waiting for?
Block: Knowledge.
Priest/Death: You want a guarantee.
Block: Call it what you will.
[Block kneels as if praying to the figure of Jesus.]
Block: Is it so hard to conceive God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a midst of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart, but He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. Do you hear me?
Priest/Death: I hear you.
[Block turns to kneel before the priest behind the confessional screen.]
Block: I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.
Priest/Death: But He is silent.
Block: I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.
Priest/Death: Perhaps there is no one there.
Block: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is nothing.
Priest/Death: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.
Block: Until they stand on the edge of life and see the Darkness.
Priest/Death: Ah, that day.
Block: [laughs bitterly] I see. We must make an idol of our fear, and call it God.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Dreampark has an expression. Dead-Dead. If your character dies, it's okay, because you'll come back as a zombie or be reincarnated in the next game, but Dead-Dead means you are gone. Forever. Tear up the sheet and start again at level one.

... now imagine if someone was doing that with your soul, and it makes a huge comfort that you're not dead-dead, really.