IC: Addendum

[sythyry]

(An answer to several people)

Their curse is simply poverty, and perhaps provinciality. These have made an ordinary sort of accident far worse. Due to poverty they did not want to spend the night in an expensive Vheshrame hotel; due to provinciality they had no friends in the city to stay with. So they drove for home. Due to poverty they had little experience with driving, and none at night; due to provinciality, all they had driven before was a heavy farm-wagon, not a light carriage. Due to poverty, the carriage in question was the mayor's, not their own.

And it had been a bad day, and whoever was driving was surely exhausted and perhaps distracted.

So, over the bluff they went.

At least no primes were injured in the accident.

Comments

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

Aye, perhaps, but all those things can sit more heavily or lightly upon people. It's not clear if you know how things were for them before the birthday party, but it seems that every and various things have been more doomful since - yes, even your intervention, if you think of things in potentials for doom.

Or perhaps it's just that you wouldn't be telling us their story if they had not already lived through the doom of moving, lock, stock, and carapace, to Kismirth.

One thing I don't understand is why the Summoner (who's name has slipped the tattered bonds of my memory) did not advise them to wait till Dawn, so that should there be someone around with the appropriate spell, it could be cast just before Dawn, such that no cley would have been pre-empted by using it when it should be saved for emergencies?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I am telling the story of a family that moved to Kismirth. Most people who move to Kismirth do so because their situation at home is unendurable. (The remainder, I suppose, are people whom we have bribed to come to Kismirth: teachers, the heads of guild chapters (mostly people who wanted to but could not rule chapters in their home cities), various experts.) So of course their story is a string of disasters. Also, I mostly have the story from their own mandibles. Tansy is reasonably eloquent; zie is also gifted with a fine sense of drama, and a fine appreciation of how zir saga plays on the emotions of listeners.

---

The Summoner was sure that the farmers could not afford any healer's fee, regardless of whether there was cley or not. (And she, like many in the guild, wants to hold healers to the standard fees as much as possible.) In any case, some healers have queues of people wishing for cosmetic or inessential healing, shortly before dawn. The farmers would have had to join such a queue. (The other healers use their last cley for binding spells; it does not go to waste.)

[kensaro.livejournal.com]

I know that selling cley is rather frowned upon, but one would think that it would be a different situation if it was gifted and not sold, especially if it were then to be used for the healing of oneself of a relative/loved one?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Transferring it is the intimate act: between relative and doctor. Payment makes a shameful situation more so.

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Intimate, in this case, meaning that in most cases* it requires at the very least a bodily embrace, and often means things that would amount to foreplay in any other situation. The distaste is largely associative, for the same reason that public nudity is classified as a sexual offence in numerous terrestrial jurisdictions.

*In other cases, we're getting into cley vampires and particularly invasive spells. You don't want to go there.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

So are you intentionally targeting immigrants that seek a 'better place' to live in your city? Are you intentionally trying to build a society with greater possible upward mobility (in an economic or social sense) for more types of groups, more people who were oppressed for one way or another, more people who are poor through no fault of their own? Are you trying to set things up so that more categories people who work hard and come up with new ideas on how to do something useful can become successful in ways they couldn't elsewhere? Is Kismirth striving to get closer to that impossible ideal of a meritocracy? Such things can be the framework of a very, very, very vibrant culture... if you have done any of these sorts of things in a way that is different than has been done elsewhere, what have you done toward this goal?