Investment Advice of Eitharheinen [19 Lage 4385]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Me: “To some extent! I need to keep a fair bit of money liquid. I regularly find myself having to buy something insanely expensive, like a Grace of Mircannis not long ago.”

Eitharheinen: “The way you keep your money liquid, it dribbles right out of your purse.”

Me: “Deluges, even, at the end.”

Eitharheinen: “You have no excuse! You must go and do what any sensible enchanter would do! Convert these ‘liquid assets’ which you keep in the bank, where they evaporate like water that is breathed on, into cash, and metal, and gemstones, and other permanent and valuable things. Put these things in safe places. Spend a year or two enchanting suitable protective devices — I’m sure you know how to do that — and do not neglect the construction of animata and mighty spell-built guardians. And traps, of course. And it never hurts, for caches kept outside of the cities, to encourage a family or two of dangerous beasts to live there. Quite often they can be acquired quite cheaply, often for the cost of supplying them with the occasional guntry or crate of chickens. That is how sensible mages of quality and power have done it for thousands and thousands of years — not because it is traditional, but because it works well! It is cheaper than a bank, and far less likely to be robbed or embezzled!”

Me: “Fine, fine. When I come home I’ll build a dungeon or two.” It’s not as if I haven’t been meaning to do so for … well, Mynthë told me to do it too, so quite a long time.

Hiring Policies of Eitharheinen [19 Lage 4385]

Eitharheinen: “It’s a good thing you decided to go with Enchantment! If you were only a karcist like your cousin Saza, you’d be perpetually begging money from me and Hezimikkinen!”

(Fair enough. Saza can hardly disagree. Still, why is ~mother~ complaining about something that even she admits I did right?)

Me: “Well, then, I have decided to become an enchanter. I will have decided to become an enchanter. I have had decided to become an enchanter. I used to have decided to become an enchanter. I’m actually a decent one, even according to your ~mother~.” (Viz. Glikkonen, the one person in the immediate family whose credentials as a tree-class enchanter are indisputable; zie invented a significant fraction of the basics of the discipline.)

Eitharheinen: “Pah, ~mother~ is not half the wizard zie’s cracked up to be.” (Well, only a few people dispute those credentials. Zir child, my ~mother~, being one of those few.)

Me: “Even assuming, arguendo, that that were true, whose fault would it be? Who has been trading for thousands of years on Glikkonen’s reputation? Surely not Zimi, who is less than a thousand years old.” (Answer: Eitharheinen.)

Eitharheinen: “Don’t play dense with me, young lizard! I know perfectly well how Glikkonen did all that work that zie gets credit for, and you of all people should pay heed to zir lesson!”

Me: “What lesson is that?”

Eitharheinen: “Zie has an exceedingly good staff.”

Me: “I would call it more of a wand, if it’s the one I’m thinking of, and it’s not that good. Zie made it two thousand years ago, if it’s the one I’m thinking of. I could do as well myself with only a few weeks — not that it wasn’t a wonderful working for its era, mind you. Besides, it’s a mystical weapon, not an enchantment tool, or any other kind of tool.”

Eitharheinen: “You know perfectly well what I mean. Not a magic item! Zie gets the best people on the World Tree to work with zir, for a period of a few years or decades. Zie always has. They’re mostly more brilliant by far than zie is, but zie gets a quarter-share of any ideas or workings they come up with, and over 4380 years that amounts to something.” (I half-disagree — Glikkonen’s brilliant too. Some of zir protegées and students and associates are more brilliant than zie is, which fact zie does take advantage of, but the crowning deeds in zir reputation were done alone.)

Me: “True. Sometime, perhaps, my name will attract that kind of attention.”

Eitharheinen: “You are missing the point, my dear! Who, pray tell, is on your staff?”

Me: “My current wizard’s assistant is Phaniet, who is quite good.”

Eitharheinen: “She seems competent. She does not seem brilliant. You can do much better. But you do not! You only hire your fellow transaffectionate people! I do not deny that some of your sort have a certain degree of skill, but — how many, many excellent staff of all sorts you do not even consider, because they are decent people!”

Me: “Phaniet is, as noted, quite good! I shall not complain overmuch of the woman who was my assistant when I did the works that persuaded ~grand-mother~ of my quality!”

Eitharheinen: “Phaniet may, arguendo, be a gemstone in a dungheap. I don’t think much of your choice of accountants, though, and she was picked by the same exhaustive and detailed screening process of asking ‘Are you traff? Will you pleasure me? Can you add? You may be my accountant!’”

Me: “Rather more than that!”

Eitharheinen: “Yes, rather more. You exerted yourself to find someone with a considerable degree of skill in accounting and poor morals, and — behold! She has a considerable degree of skill in accounting and poor morals, and she uses both features against you. It is a matter of luck, only, that you have not had that sort of person as your assistant, or seneschal, or secretary, or something else crucial.”

Me: “Grackle grackle grargle grackle!” I may have actually said something coherent, and rather more intense, but it was awfully hard to argue.

Eitharheinen: “Sythyry! You are being rude!”

Me: “I certainly hope so!”

Eitharheinen: “Then you must go to bed. You are a polite young lizard until you are over-tired; but when you start grackling at me, it is time for you to sleep.”

As if I were ten years old, not a hundred and fifty (or considerably more by my own timeline.)

Me: “Ah, of course. Good night!”

Eitharheinen: “Good night!”

It at least gave me a decent escape from The Conversation.

Comments

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Oooh oooh I hate it when people do that to me! Use arguments that make sense.

Though Zascalle being a thief with no ethics had NOTHING to do with being her being TRAFF that wasn't fair at all. And if you don't hire traff peeps who will?

A singer sang a song about words...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

"And if their eloquence escapes you,
their logic ties you up and rapes you."

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Owwie! That's even worse! It sounds like something a nendrai would do with logic. Brrr!

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think he was just talking about the times when you really really don't want to do what someone's telling you but they're making so much sense that you have to do it anyway even though you'd rather gnaw off a limb.

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

... is that better?

I guess it is. That hasn't happened to me much though. You can't spend your whole life doing things that are horrible just because they make sense when someone else explains them. Just because you can't articulate why something is right doesn't mean you're wrong. It could just mean you're not very good at explaining yourself. And someone who's really clever can make the most ridiculous things sound reasonable but that doesn't mean it is. Why I once heard someone argue that using Mentador to reshape the minds of criminals so they would be unable to break laws was kinder than executing them! And better for society! How horrible is that? But the Herethroy advocating it was really convincing at the time.

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That was Fezem Winterberries, wasn't it? Horrible man.

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Uh-huh! He had a bunch of other awful bizarre ideas too. Like that Primes on Choinxeia should pay reparations to the Cyarr. O_o

He was sort of fun to listen to in a sick horrid way. I heard he packed up and took his family to Birknazza last year. Brrrr!

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That's unfortunate. I imagine we'll be seeing him again, sooner or later, under dire circumstances.

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

You think so? I hope not! I thought he was a harmless kook but you never know ....

Re: A singer sang a song about words...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

After whatever training Birkozon gives him? He'll be a very dangerous kook, I fear!

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I wonder what sort of curse was required for a Zi Ri such as Sythyry to end up with a Jewish mother. ;>

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

*is glad he wasn't drinking anything when he read this*

That... was great! =D

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Is Grackling like when you are grrring at someone, and fire crackles out of your mouth?

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'm thinking more along the lines of too upset and frustrated to form a coherent argument.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Oh, and your mother, and my Ascended Goddess of Traps lady would have gotten along splendly. She agrees. Invest in traps! One can never have enough traps!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

So there are more wicked accountants than there are dungeon-raiding adventurers? Or is it just that the adventurers succeed less often?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that too! It sounds like just the way you get adventurers from Oorah Thrassen to decide to loot the Dungeon of the Evil Wizard from Vheshrame. Not that Sythyrs is an evil wizard but that's what an adventurer from Oorah Thrassen would say!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Just from the our 'monster world' examples, I would say, yes.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

A good staff is an excellent idea! Especially one that you can trust not to tell adventurers how to get into your cleverly enchanted and trapped dungeon of treasure-holding.

...

How do you tell if a prospective employee is trustworthy, without using mentador?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Every hundred years, use The Long Exile to send a particularly trusted employee back in time to warn you about the ones that weren't?

[terrana.livejournal.com]

That's the kind of practice that's likely to get some Tempador elementals breathing down your neck. As I understand it, Kaimiri generally approves of the sort of extra time Sythyry creates for zirself, but is rather less happy about abusing history. And Kaimiri left rather detailed instructions as to what to do about such things...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

So *she* can use that method, but nobody else is allowed?

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Gods are fickle like that...

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

It occured to me a few weeks ago that a Zi-ri who could cast The Long Exile would be essentially invincible. Any time they got into a fight they couldn't handle, an arbitrarily long series of progressively more powerful versions of themselves would suddenly begin appearing from 100 years in the future.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Temporal Fugue, from Creatures of Light and Darkness! Wakim and the Iron General wreck a world with that trick, early on.

But, for whatever reason, in my WT variant, people don't seem to be doing it.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Well, it only would apply to Zi Ri, who live long enough to send themselves back through the loop multiple times.

[rowyn]

There's a bunch of other people who've made themselves immortal, though, so the pool of eligible people is growing!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

This assumes.. that... well, the Zi-Ri got away the first time, and then lives long enough to care about the fight, and then gets zier timing right.... And then you have a problem of you just changed your Personal History so you can't do that anymore.

... and then we have to decide how rubber band the time physics of World Tree is...