(no subject)

[sythyry]

A Modest Repast [23 Hispis 4385; Eigrach, Srineia]

Vae took the shape of a twelve-foot-tall demon with seven tusked mouths and seven arms holding seven blazing flags. "Not a single-jivu sort of-edu attack-nob is this! The-unhi invitation-edu is-nob with me-edu!" She made a hash of the Srineian, which I found reassuring: she hadn't done her usual Mentador tricks to learn the language.

The guards, ignorant of Vae's actual wickednesses and language patterns both, took their jobs seriously. "We are betrayed! The foreigners have betrayed us!", one of them yelled. Spells of entanglement and paralysis becames spells of scent distortion and vegetable transformation when they struck Vae's shield. Other spells of entanglement and paralysis entangled and/or paralyzed Phaniet and me.

Vae picked up Harulse and waved her at the tower. "Not like that, not like that! The invitation is ours!", she proclaimed, in seven voices speaking not quite in unison.

"Save me!" wailed Harulse in a regrettable moment of comprehensibility.

"They've got that dunce Harulse!" cried the sergeant of the guard. "Get her free!"

"Absolutely, haven't we just!" yelled the mayor frantically. "Underneath it all!"

I have previously noted that Eigrach's and Srineia's magic is not the most sophisticated. The walls are far inferior to those of Vheshrame, or even to what I could build. Their magic weapons, similarly, are not of the highest quality. And of course there are many more monsters in the area than there are in Vheshrame.

Yet, Eigrach and Srineia survive, and prosper.

They do so, naturally, by the strength and skill of their heroes. At home, the city guard are tolerably well-trained at arms, and spend an hour or two each week studying with an arms-master. Mostly they patrol the city or stand by the gates and let everyone know that the city is Well-Guarded. Here, the city-guard has a great deal to do by way of actual fighting against monsters. Their training is practical rather than theoretical, and it is not confined to the occasional lesson. The Eigrach city guard is quite good.

Three Cani flew at Vae's face, menacing her eyes and tongues with quick dancing blades. She hissed, and bit one of them. A daring Herethroy teleported next to her, and whacked off her hand with a huge three-handed sword. Harulse fell to the ground, and two Orren dashed out and scooped her up.

"Never, haven't we enough, exactly!" yelled the mayor.

Vae, still protesting obscurely that she was invited, crammed the Orren guards and Harulse into a pocket universe. Since this looks just the same as, say, disintegrating them or transforming them into air, the remaining guards redoubled their assault. Vae, crying a storm of bloody shards by this point, disembowelled the Herethroy guard and one of the Cani, grabbed her severed hand, and teleported off in a complete and miserable huff.

Sometime or other while that was going on (the details are obscure), I got unparalyzed, and Phaniet got free entirely. So some city guards shot three arrows into my chest, and one into Phaniet's shoulder, and shouted for us not to move or cast spells. So we didn't, until Vae had left.

The remaining guards surrounded Phaniet and me, pointing seven hundred very sharp and dangerous things at us. "Foreigners! You -- do -- not -- move!" growled the sergeant. Which we didn't.

"Never, quite thoroughly, absolutely!" wailed the mayor, dashing down the fort's stairs. A few other Eigrach notables, including Phaniet's new old friend Bwipin, followed him. The injured guards reembowelled themselves.

I was bleeding rather a lot, so I healed myself. I didn't move a bit, I swear it, but evidently the sergeant counted spellcasting as moving. So he stabbed me through the ribcage. Which was, in my professional opinion, about as much of an injury as the three arrows had been. Very annoying. Also very painful.

The mayor tackled the sergeant from behind, knocking him to the ground, and punched him in the face a few times. The sergeant looked puzzled and not very badly hurt.

Bwipin said, "Phaniet, you weren't attacking us, were you?"

Phaniet wagged her tail. "No. The nendrai just has taste for the dramatic now and then. You can tell when she attacks you though; the sky is full of the most terrible elementals, and she picks up hills and whomps you with them."

The mayor scribbled on a bit of paper: "I never intended anything of this sort to happen. I am quite thoroughly embarrassed, and will make absolutely any sort of apology that I can!" He waved it at the sergeant, and then at me.

"Let me heal my assistant and myself, to start with," I said. The guards put their weapons down.

Phaniet shook her head. "Draw this arrow out and stop the blood, but wait a bit on healing the wound." So we did that. She looked quite a mess, with her triple-cloak all rips and shreds, and her black silk dress ruined with her blood. I healed myself all the way. The sergeant looked a bit ashamed.

"What happened to Harulse and the Orren guards?" wrote the mayor.

"Over there, stuck in a pocket universe," I said.

"Unhurt?"

"I can't tell from here," I hissed, and then remembered how to do it. "Actually I can. No extra spells cast on them."

"This isn't at all what we intended," wrote the mayor, and another half-page of apologies.

"Boss, you go make sure the nendrai is calm," said Phaniet. "I'll stay here and explain matters to the Eigrachters."

("Boss" here is evidently used in the sense of "The one whom I tell what to do.")

So I stared at Vae through her insignia -- she was getting one of our parlors on Strayway all bloody, from her wrist and both eyes (being back in her usual big-lizard shape) and another dozen wounds from where she was biting her flank. I wasted a cley getting there in a hurry, and another one putting the hand back on, and a third making myself large enough to hug her properly.

And spent the next hour and a half trying to return her to what passes for sanity in a N. lacrymosa. She was furious at herself for starting a battle by mistake, for ruining the one and only invitation that a prime had given to her in the last century (this clause was revised several times until it became factual), for letting the guard cut off her hand, for grabbing Harulse, for not just teleporting to the top of the platform. And, above all, for having yet another mental blind spot with which she can terrify or horrify primes and not realize it until too late. She's actually noticed this one before; she just can't remember having it.

(The only way that I managed to stay calm for Vae-petting was that I promised that I could have an episode of the utter shrieking fantods at Kantele when I was done.)

There's only so much comfort that anyone can give. Most of what she's desparing about is true.

Comments

[rowyn]

Well, that went worse than even I expected. I blame the Srineans more than Vae, truly. Sure, she was being terrifying. Honestly, what did they expect a nendrai to be? If their guards were going to attack because of a display of terrifying power that harmed no one, they'd no business inviting her in the first place. And they've enough experience with monsters that they really ought to know better. Hmph!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The guards (as was discussed at great length, mostly with Phaniet, which I might write about later) thought that Vae was setting up a stronghold, protected with winds and magic-corroding owl feathers and firebats. Honestly, it was rather a stronghold.

I assign blame thus: Mayor 5%; Me 10%; Vae 15%; Guards 20%. Unattached to anyone: 50%.

[rowyn]

Possibly someone could've warned the guards about Vae's proclivities more, I guess. I'd still blame the guards & the mayor at least twice as much as you & Vae.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Poor Vae.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Indeed! She was just trying to look good for her adoring public!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Actually sadkittyeyes might be more appropriate here for Vae!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I concur. Poor Vae. All she wanted to do was go to the party.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

BTW, since I came in rather late in the previous set of journal entries, which specific God was responsible for Vae's creation?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Gnarn.

Rather: we are generally sure that Gnarn created the nendrai collectively. Vae is ... I don't actually know what generation she is. She was not directly created in any case; she was hatched from an egg in the usual way.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Should Gnarn get a big chunk of the responsibility for created a species doomed to be miserable?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I would happily give her some.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

And if you haven't read the game book: Gnarn is the goddess of Change (Mutoc), but is rumored to have originally wanted Destruction. She tends to design really nasty, powerful monsters, and in the nendrai's case she apparently went out of her way to make intelligent beings designed to cause and receive plenty of suffering. (Hence the name Sythyry's translator used for Vae -- "Woe".)

There's also been some mention earlier in Sythyry's story that there are different subspecies of nendrai. Vae is considered a recent model with more raw power/complexity than some of the originals. (Probably palette-swapped too!)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Definately substandard weapons. They stabbed you with them and you *lived*.

And I'm starting to get the picture that Vae is basically artillery -- if you were going to use her in a war, you'd want to keep her very far away from the enemy, where should could rain down destruction without getting random bits cut off.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, she wasn't wearing much armor to speak of. Besides, it's not as if they did much actual damage to her.

If I was going to use her in a war ... I would investigate myself for mind control or injury first.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

I think that's a point we monsters sometimes have difficulty keeping in mind - that injury doesn't work on the World Tree as it does here; that even debilitating injuries(which, since Vae could've just reshaped herself to have both hands and turned the old one to air, this wasn't, but might be for someprime) don't necessarily put one in any danger of dying.

It's been mentioned in the past that Vae can take overall punishment that'd kill a dozen prime warriors - good ones, I presume - and not even be close to dying. The thought of what Oixe can dendure - especially with those brazinion scales - is rather terrifying.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Vae was in no great danger. She had, by my count, rendered four of the twelve guards hors de combat in a matter of seconds: two could not get back, and two were shaken from having died. Eigrach's guards are quite good, but Vae is designed to trouble the old cities, not the new ones.

Phaniet and I could have been killed with a fairly minor additional effort. We probably would have escaped, even so, but it would have been a close and very unpleasant thing.

Oixe is terrifying from head to head to head. Vae is going to have to work very hard -- or persuade Oixe to be fair -- if she's going to be the girl next time 'round.

[rowyn]

If you were going to use her in a war, I'd hope it was a war to stop a branch from being utterly destroyed, or worse. It'd have to be a really impressive war if using Vae in it looked like a good idea. O_o;;

Though I guess the attack of the breakfast boxes went all right. Not really the same kind of war.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Though Terrycloth is correct; she was used as artillery in that war.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

IIRC correctly, World Tree primes don't have internal organs in the sense we do, so they can withstand far more severe damage to their bodies without it proving fatal.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

We certainly do have internal organs! I have seen far too many kidneys today!

[The internal organs are more fault-tolerant than terrestrial organs: damaging a heart or a lung to the point of nonfunctionality takes more effort than it is generally worth. -bb]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Well if you saw them, they obviously weren't internal organs, now were they? ;P

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Excellent point.

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

[Presumably they are, in part, tools for focusing and manipulating fractionated magical operations in specialized ways as a part of their function, and have to a much smaller degree non-unique function as a result. in such a model, a prime's heart could be removed, and blood would continue to circulate, albeit through a much less efficient uncoordinatedly brute force functionality which burns through the body's reserves; this would put substantial strain on the body's function of offering a suitable focus setting for storing and interfacing with a soul and a mind. Or is my interpretation off?]

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

That just means your standards in weapons have to be higher!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, it means that Blunt Force is more effective then precise strikes. With lack of meaningful vitals, damage over a larger area is more effective, as the only reason precise tiny shots kill us monsters is because our insides are very fussy about what shape they exist in.

[mharreff.livejournal.com]

The vitals are meaningful! But they are not so easy to destroy. The spirit keeps them working and repairs them.

Only the great expert kills with a rapier. So it is with arrows. But lasting damage to the limb or the organ is still grievous.

Still, to kill a warrior, it is easier to punish the body so much that the spirit cannot hold. A blow to the heart does much damage indeed, but a single one may not kill the experienced warrior whose spirit is good at holding on.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I still say squishing them under rocks or smacking them with a huge hammer is probably more effective then poking them with thin light blades. :D

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

If you can afford large enough rocks to squish someone with, you can surely afford a well-tuned magic weapon!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

A rapier that becomes a huge hammer after already penetrating the ribcage, say.

[mharreff.livejournal.com]

That is why the strong warriors use maces or axes, and most others use swords! They cause much harm, not the tiny tiny wound of the rapier.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

I think it wouldn't much matter if she were prepared for combat, since she's got the equivalent of bound spells for defense. Also, her magic relies on being within tail range, and while she's very capable of abusing that rule, it'd help to be near the target for that.

If she really wanted to be terrifying and devastating, creating a hundred illusion copies of herself and then warping around rewriting enemies' minds would be just one of many things she could do in seconds.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Kill your gods. Eat their livers with a nice Chianti and some fava beans.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Once we can maintain the universe without them, we will take your words under advisement.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

All you need to do is make a portal to an alternate universe that's as large as the World Tree, then shove the World Tree through it.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

It worked for the Thanagarians, but granted, that universe operates under decidedly different rules.

[valdary.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, time for cupcakes I think.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Cupcakes and treacle, even.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I feel very sorry for Kantele all the sudden, after reminding myself about her...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm not that bad ... am I?

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I've never listened to your have a conniption fit. I imagine, however, that given everything, you've had a hard week, so it might be hard on people.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It hasn't been a particularly good week, actually.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Poor Mayor. Everything's tumbling down around him, and he can't even get people to settle down without physically striking them.

This really highlights his aphasia, though. Apparently he's not only good with words when writing is involved, he's also very quick with a pen. I suppose he has to be, if he wants to "say" his piece before people leave him behind.

Inviting Vae was ill-conceived, perhaps. But it was a well-meaning gesture, and I don't think any reasonable person could've expected it to turn out this badly.

*sigh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Poor Vae. Poor Sythyry. Heck, poor mayor.

For every problem, there is a solution which is simple, obvious, and wrong -- in this case, inviting the nendrai into the city.

I recommend instead showering the nendrai with diverse and fascinating gifts at the city's expense. And oh yes, Sythyry should get her sky-yacht completely repaired for completely free, both as an apology for the mayhem and as payment for her efforts in keeping the nendrai from destroying the city.