teres: A picture of a fire salamander against a white background. (SCSF)
Teres ([personal profile] teres) wrote 2025-02-26 07:52 pm (UTC)

There's also the 'slight' issue that trees require more water then grass does. If the conditions are bad for grass, they're likely bad for the trees of the surviving Avarinheim.

SCSF: Indeed, and that would certainly be trouble in the southern Plains of Arcness (as I see I noted earlier). The Avar could probably use magic to get around that, and they must have done so in the past... so why is ploughing worse than keeping a forest alive in a place it should not be? How is that "living in harmony with the land"? The more I see of this, the more I get the feeling that most of the Avar do not actually know how to do so, which hardly gives them a high ground over the Acharites.

You know, I can't help but suspect that all this melodrama over the Tree Friend being an Acharite is meant to not-so-subtly reinforce the idea that the Acharite culture is evil and must be destroyed.

In this specific case, I think it is meant to emphasise just how divided the different races are (especially since Barsarbe, who is supposed to be "overly strict", shares this sentiment)... but in the execution, it does look like what you describe.

Uh, Helm? Sleds only work when pulled over snow. That's what they're for.

Well, if the roads are "clear", I imagine it should be possible to draw Raum on one, though it would probably be easier to use crutches, and that would help him with recovering from his injury, too. In fact, that is just what he ends up doing the next time we see them!

(Also... I think that Helm means the roads are clear of snow? If so, that is just where the sled would work best. If not, Douglass should have been clearer.)

Yes, and that is why Azhure should be asked! In fact, she could have solved this by saying "Hagen was about to kill Shra. I pulled on his ankle to distract him, and he fell on his knife and died." They would not necessarily believe her, but this scene would be quite a bit less silly, at least.

Douglass's 'grand language' would sound better if she actually understood it. As it is, it sounds nonsensical instead.

Exactly! It sounds roughly convincing on a surface level, which is probably all that Douglass considered, but it completely crumbles beneath logical thought.

Hang on, those are whip marks! Forget scarring, she could have been crippled!

Given what the cause turns out to be in the end, she should be dead by rights, in another case of Douglass turning up the drama all too much.

There's also the 'slight' issue that Hagen's death in no way resembles the sacrifice ritual, but I've already talked about that.

Indeed... The only reason I did not complain about that is that this apparently "counts" as a sacrifice according to the Horned Ones, so I guess it could be legitimately done this way, though we certainly need an explantion for that.


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