Teres

I just realized, this is a bit of paradox, if you take into account everything we know about the Avar. They don't plant things, right? Well, if you're going to grow a forest, it has to start somewhere. You could theoretically wait for it to spread on its own, but unless you plant saplings to help it along, that could take centuries. No new trees for you!

SCSF: Indeed they do not, and even if they did want to do so for the forest, I hardly imagine that they would be much good at it. In either case, Faraday will be the one to plant all the saplings for the forest that eventually exists, so I suppose that circumvents the problem?

(Of course, it would still be much more difficult than the Avar seem to think...)

I can let this slide, because if you come from a race that lives in a dense forest, you could easily view open plains as being barren, even when they're nowhere near empty.

If it were just the Avar, I would like it, as I do the name "Plains Dwellers" (which they use even though areas like Rhaetia are peopled). But after the talk about how the Plains of Tare and Arcness are "barren" (from Acharite characters!) and how wonderful the Avarinheim is, I cannot help but think that this is Douglass talking.

Is anyone surprised that she never addresses what could actually be a really cool conflict? Anyone? Aaaaanyone at all? Those of you in the back? No? Didn't think so.

Oh, I am hardly surprised, just quite peeved that this would make for a quite sensible source of Drama, and she does not use it!

They really should choose for her as a matter of practicality, if nothing else.

Nah, she's too busy explaining and re-explaining things we already know, because she apparently thinks her readers have memories worse than a goldfish with Alzheimer's.

At this point, she is almost beginning to remind me of Newcomb, though she is still far from as bad about it as he is, thankfully. (Incidentally... how much of that did you read?)

Case in point... Stop wanking over Axis, already! We all hate him, and we're not fooled by you insisting that he's actually the Best Thing Ever.

Oh, she will ease off on that eventually... because Azhure needs to shilled more.

So all of the Icarii Enchanters are arrogant assholes, then? I would not be surprised if this was true.

From what little I remember, it is not exactly a universal thing, so this is not wholly accurate.

THE EVISCERATED BUNNY BEGS TO DIFFER! I am never going to let that go. You can't tell me how peaceful someone is shortly after describing how they tore the still-beating heart out of an animal's chest.

Yes, I will not be letting that go, either! I could get behind a sacrifice, and I might support one that involves tearing the hare's heart out immediately, but one where the hare is severely wounded, then the Bane puts their fingers in the wound and marks the prospective Banes, and only then tears out the heart... I cannot support that. If they need to get blood from a living hare, they could do just as well with a smaller cut in a region with good blood supply (the ears, maybe?). It might take longer, but it would be less cruel. What they do now seems to be done just for convenience, and I find that not enough to justify the hurt it causes.

So, if it needs to be done this way, it could be done with much less hurt to the hare, and the fact that they do not reflects quite poorly on them.

It makes me wonder if Douglass is interchanging 'beatings' and 'whippings'. Because if she were whipped, long, thin scars like that would be the result.

Oh yes, that would make sense, though that turns out not to be what is going on; this is a very clumsy Red Herring for it.