When Sarnor greeted his fellow soldiers and patrol parties, he shouted the first word of Quenya that Faron clearly understood and learned, that for survivors. Only later would Faron learn the word had originated in the Telerin dialect.
…
“We are surrounded by strangers wearing our loved ones faces,” Faelindis said. “What a strange torment.”
Redesigning Alis’s belt and sort of laughing at myself that I drew a very wide leather belt when the proper and fashionable thing for ladies was very thin belts, as this quote most amused me:
“Margherita Datini, an Italian medieval woman of means, listed two leather belts in her personal inventory of 1397, a blue one and a black one, both with silver-gilt buckles. She preferred the heavier belts to the lighter ones currently in fashion and gained a terse reply from her husband to her wishes to return one such belt:
“if Margherita wanted to wear what the peasant women wore, then all right.”
And ya’know, this is perfect serendipitous characterization here, because Alis is the vague Selina Kyle/Catwoman expy (with a definite Golden Age bent in that matrimonial case). As in a classy mostly reformed cat burglar passing herself off as a wealthy socialite. And having a belt was a necessity for her outfit, as to hang all her purse, keys (lockpicks, whip, etc…)
Now if to add cat motif mountings on this belt or not (or leave it to just the suggestion of cat-themed embroidery on the purse)
tagged by @yavieriel
Go to page seven of your current WIP, go down to the seventh line, and copy seven sentences.
Okay, this was hard because my WIPs are either the next chapters of stuff that are more than seven pages long – thus the WIP parts don’t start on the seventh page- or are less than seven pages. So I’m cheating:
“They were after the Noldor Gems and are now gone, weren’t any of the fighting near our camps and never would be. It was only two intruders, the-”
“Fëanorians, we know,” Faron interrupted. “Always them, whenever news came to Angband of elves killed and cities destroyed when Morgoth wasn’t to blame. Made him happy, the Dark Lord and his Balrogs. Laughed about it.”
Faelindis shivered.
(And on the document that has the various WIPs for the rest of the Band of the Red Hand that isn’t Release from Bondage proper)
He wouldn’t remember his mother-name, Costawë, for his mother foresaw he would live a life surrounded by strife, though she could never have imagined the fighting he would do against monsters out of half-told nightmares in a strange and distant land. Nor would she have approved, a devout Vanyar who passed down her bright yellow hair to her half-Noldor son. He won’t remember how rare that yellow hair is for elves in this land, a color naturally possessed, with only a few exceptions, by the sons and daughters of the line of Finarfin, the third branch of royalty of the House of Finwë. The cruel lord that had captured Costawë and imprisoned him in the dungeon of Tol-in-Gaurhoth was confused by that yellow hair, uncertain if this lowly soldier was a prince or not. The other blond, the one that dueled songs of power against the lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Sauron was almost certain was one of the remaining sons of Finarfin, though the devious mind of the dark Maia could not comprehend why a king would be here with such a small company disguised as orcs trying to bypass the island going north. Sauron remembered the elven lord he had stolen the isle of Tol Sirion from, the one he overthrew to make this white tower into the den of werewolves. Neither of the blonde elves now imprisoned in Sauron’s dungeons matched the glimpse of the fleeing Lord Orodreth.
aka pieces of the info-dump that comes slightly less clunky when dealing with Urwin instead of Rohese. Where forests grown from the bodies of primordial evil monsters cause unsurprising side-effects and I wish i had a word picked out for star-themed sidhe/avatar. Also, my internal debate to use the term harpy or not, and if not then also ban the word mermaid?
Here are the words of knowledge repeated from tenth Primach, as recorded by his servant Okter to repeat to all others.
It is said the world is like a shallow bowl, the rim stretching wide beyond the horizon with the sky and all its clouds curving above. That this bowl is made of precious metals and deep earth, floating on the stillness of the void. All the magic flows like water from the rim of the bowl, seeping into the earth and pooling in the center. In a perfect circle in the lowest point of the world there is an inland sea. The waves slosh green and gray and blue against the shore. Mists hang heavy and constant over the sea, rolling out towards the encircling shores, dampening the waves’ sounds, hiding their secrets, and soaking the world around with magic. Unfathomable creatures live in this mist-hidden sea, the most wondrous of which are mermaids. Greater terrors surface from its depths, and few are the ships would brave the oppressive mists, contrary winds, and territorial inhabitants. Cloaked and shielded by the mists at the very center of the lake is the realm of the ones men call the appointed of the divine, home of those who can call upon the powers of sun and stars and moon, the great beings of magic, the vessels for the majesty of gods. Their realm is said to be a vast island floating in the sky, or another realm where the weight of magic has it pulled away from the world. It is said that if one were to sail successfully through the magic-thick fog, overcome and outwit the creatures that lived in its depths, one would reach a wall of water along the horizon, a waterfall that flows upward into the sky. Here the natural laws reverse; sea becomes sky and sky becomes sea, and day is as night and night as day. Here the mermaids of the great inland sea fly up the veil of thundering water to change scale to feather and tail to wings, to become the bird-women that attend the appointed ones as messengers and heralds. This is the Mirror Realm rarely seen by mortals, home of the vessels of the divine, greatest of which is its ruler, the bright sun queen who bequeaths this knowledge. For the appointed ones are both immortal and mortal, in bodies human and yet not, magic flowing through in a most perfect way, spiritually attune, and of them the greatest and purest is appointed to take upon the avatar of the foremost goddess, who through the power of the sun’s magic and the divine creators flow.
In the beginning there was no world, until the first primordial god and goddess made creation, defining what was the void and the earth, water and sky, time and death and life. Inhale-of-Breath and Exhale-of-breath, they are the primogenitors of all divine to follow, and the greatest of their creations is the goddess of light, the Sun-in-Glory. She is the ruler of the heavens, mother of the stars, the one to give the spark of life and mind to men, and be their protection from evil.
The Moon is her favored consort, the father of her many daughters the stars.
The Sun cannot protect the world and watch for evil without rest, so her consort took up half her duties, though far weaker and knowing the separation would have few respites, and many daughters and followers volunteered to aid. Each star is one, or the spirit of an appointed one ascended to the heavens.
Evil came, the learned say, from the void when the primogenitors created the realm, that the creation of all that was left an absence now in what was not of, and in this begat evil and hatred of creation.
Others say that it was the slow but inevitable death of the first god and goddess, that to make and create all that would exist from their own essence was the inevitable cause, for there is nothing that is infinite. Thus by giving life gave themselves death, and in this death created atrophy, chaos, and evil.
The world is material, and tainted thus by atrophy, chaos, and evil, but it is false to say that the immaterial is not tainted, or that the material of the world is not the work of the divine, to be cherished and honored.
There was an invasion of flying monsters of scale and bone, of claw and teeth and poisonous breath, across the sky from brim to brim. So tightly packed were they that the updrafts of their beating wings buffered and disturbed each other’s flight. They were the manifestation of this evil born of the void, of the absence and hatred of life caused by the birth of it.
The Queen and her consort and their innumerable daughters fought the monsters, slew them from the sky.
The bodies of the creatures dissolved into the earth, each hair and scale of the monsters transforming into trees. Thick forests covered out from the shore of the world in all directions. Magic and malice still clung to the trees, and the forests were fearsome places. Below the roots the bones of the monsters calcified into stone and ore, the malign will lingering in their veins. Creatures that made such woods their home were changed by the lingering tainted magic, animals and plants twisted into mad things that hated other life. Over time the malice in the magic was sealed away or dissipated into the wider flow, but not always and not everywhere. Many families were infused with the magic, or had in their possession enchanted objects carved of wood from the trees or forged of ore from the stones. Cursed they were considered if the tainted malice overpowered or twisted the gifts of magic.
Priests found their power to purify the forests, as well as objects and animals from them, of this lingering malicious taint, thus rising high into the positions of society by this power they wielded. Their role as educators and counselors, as those that presided over funerals and ensured the souls of the dead flowed to the center gate for the dead, reprioritized almost secondary to their ability to gentle the land. Sancter-priests were those that had the will and talent to exorcise the malignant lingering will that men call the forest-taint.
The three methods of purifying were the chant and song and dance. Alone or in chorus the priest or priests chanted or sung ritual words, and the two methods were closely linked, though chant depended on the clarity and power of each word, and song on both clarity and harmony. Schools of thought stressed the degree of importance of these two qualities. Will alone would not suffice, so acolytes undertook rigorous training in enunciation and oration, and lisps and stutters would be considered hindrances but not disqualifications. Chants directed at a specific target could remove the malicious magical taint. Song was more useful at repealing a taint from spreading onto an area or in special cases a person or thing, and to anchor a purification ceremony. The third form was dance, rarest of holy talents, that a priest or priestess could convey the holy text through movement. Though such force was weak compared to the directed chant, its touch had a broader effect area.
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