Weekend open thread

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening[1]. Another week passes without much in the way of news. You probably failed to notice that the Recent Stuff box now shows five things instead of four, thereby always showing the last two entries and the last weekend open thread. Clever.

I don’t really have much more to say, honestly; the story rolls slowly forward. It’ll get more exciting soonish, I promise.

Of late I’ve been pondering what to do with finished chapters. I think it’d probably be best for me to go over them one more time with my red pen, then put them all together onto one page (thereby making the archives much less of a pain). I suppose I could consolidate the commentary, too, and separate the entries by little sets of Roman numerals…

I smell a Sunday project, I think.

[1] Or whatever time of day it is when you read this.

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Never Alone No. 2 – More Interesting Affairs

“We come now to Anja Grevdarsdottir,” the clerk announced.

Every person in the room was on the edge of his seat. Eirik had, by way of whispered conversations with nervous colleagues, discovered that they were almost uniformly uninformed about the girl. A few of the more enterprising ones had, with the help of Guild records, put two and two together and tried to grill Eirik for information. He knew how the game was played, though; for every aendemancer with a dubious grasp on sanity there was another who was only acting, waiting for someone to make an exploitable mistake. He sighed. The politics were a pain, although not nearly as literally as they were among the diviners. That was a bit of luck, he thought, and refocused on the floor with mild surprise.

The clerk had droned on about the complaints, rehashing what Eirik had already heard from Baltasar after steeping it in language carefully crafted to avoid suggesting any side of the debate was more valid than any other. What had caught Eirik’s attention was the introductions the clerk had just made. At the start of the Assembly, they had voted to elect a representative from those in favor of admitting the girl and those against it.

Baltasar had been chosen for the latter side, of course; he was an obvious choice, having been tempered in the fires of four previous Assemblies. Rather less obvious was the other side’s choice. Eirik knew Reynir Alvarsson, but not well enough to drop the patronym. Alvarsson was well-known for his temperament; where Baltasar was all fire, he was neither icy nor stony but simply unflappable, with a measure of self-control that would turn an abjurer green with envy.

Even so, it had always seemed to Eirik that Alvarsson harbored some amount of disdain for him, which put him in the unpleasant position of being on the bad side of both halves of the argument.

“We have agreed that we would be best served by hearing a complete and honest retelling of the events that led to this Assembly,” Alvarsson said.

Baltasar continued. “One of our own was there at the beginning of the whole affair. Master Eskilsson,” he said, voice dripping with exaggerated politeness, “would you be so kind as to grace us with your story?”

Unhappily, Eirik ran a hand through his hair. It certainly wasn’t as though he had a choice. As he went down the stairs he felt all eyes on him. Baltasar and Alvarsson took their seats as he took the floor.

It was a critical moment. For the time being everyone wanted his head, and not being a diviner, he couldn’t know which of the very narrow paths ahead were safe, but the least he could do was avoid walking by himself. A moment later, he was no longer alone.

If he were explaining the thing he could feel off his left shoulder to the captain of the Wandering Spirit, he would have begun with the words “spirit companion”. It was, of course, not an entirely correct description; the relationship was one of symbiosis, to begin with. The spirit did him favors in return for what he would have told the captain to think of as belief. He would have gone on to explain that aendemancy was, in large part, the study of spirits—it said as much right in the name—and part of the territory was learning how belief affected them. Eirik knew how to shape his thoughts just so, and consideration from a mind like his was a powerful incentive for a spirit to cooperate.

He had focused his efforts on one spirit in particular—Baltasar had always told him divided attention led to a fractured mind—which he’d pulled from a book, and therefore, with the directness he’d learned from Baltasar, called Book. At first, it had not been particularly useful, capable only of the slightest manipulations of the world, and concerning only things like paper and glue at that, but over the past few years Eirik had groomed it into something that, he, if forced to describe it in a few words, would have called a spirit of knowledge.

Most of the interesting tricks it could do it had picked up after Eirik had demonstrated a few times, but the most useful one it had, to Eirik’s surprise, puzzled out on its own. It was capable of digging into his memory and finding things he’d thought he’d forgotten. Effectively, he had perfect recall as long as he had goodwill to burn with the spirit, and he thanked it that he had a lot now.

He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he’d done nothing wrong, and faced the crowd. “Where should I start?”

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Never Alone No. 1 – No Confidence

Eirik harbored the belief that Baltasar might have been a bit too hasty in his judgment of Anja Grevdarsdottir. The girl had been through a lot, Eirik would allow, but the very fact that, by all appearances, she hadn’t died again said a lot for her. He knew better than to take a side which wasn’t Baltasar’s when Baltasar was around, though, and so he had merely nodded and made noises of vague agreement. Baltasar took them at face value, and as the two of them reached the central building the rest of the mages had silently reached a consensus and begun to filter into the main hall proper.

It occupied the bulk of the building, the skylights serving to keep it bright and inviting in the daytime. Today, the slowly receding fog served to keep the light ashen and the room unpleasantly dim. On all sides of the open area at the center of the room where, to Eirik’s understanding, the aendemancer with permission to speak would be shouted down by the rest, the floor rose by steps to form something of an amphitheater, chairs and tables interspersed on each level.

Eirik and Baltasar took seats next to each other. The room filled quickly, and the latecomers found themselves standing. Eirik wondered how the chairs had run out—there was one for every full member of the Guild—until he remembered the aspirants he’d seen earlier, who apparently numbered enough to fill the chairs left by absent aendemancers. Just before the murmuring echoing off the walls shifted in tone from curious to discontented, a clerk took the floor. From a piece of paper, he read the litany of grievances; predictably, there was a very small amount about the girl and her fate and much more about the bickering and politicking that had followed the arrival of her first letter.

The first and most pressing order of business was, however, the selection of new proxies. The Guilds had been given broad authority under their charters to govern themselves as they saw fit. They had each settled to different points between authoritarian and anarchist, and the aendemancers had ended up somewhat closer to the latter. They ran their guild as a pure democracy, each full member receiving exactly one vote. It was a decision made without regard for practicality, as the early aendemancers had quickly discovered—it was rare for even a simple majority to be present for important decisions, much less an actual quorum. They’d decided to allow proxy voting, which had solved most of the problems with the original model.

It had introduced a new one, though. The reasoning behind the democracy was that it diluted power. Proxies concentrated it, and every decade or so there were issues with corruption—a proxy stepped out of line, and the rest of them replaced him. It had never before happened that there weren’t enough proxies who were not demonstrably untrustworthy to pick new ones. This time was different. Out of two hundred forty-one votes, one hundred eighty-seven were controlled by proxies who had ignored the written directives of their principals as they pertained to the Anja Grevdarsdottir matter.

For his part, Eirik wasn’t sure who he was going to assign his vote to. In the past he’d chosen Baltasar, but their difference in opinion on the girl told him that there might be a deeper gulf between their positions than he had originally thought. He tried not to picture Baltasar’s response. The man had a reputation for being as mercurial as a heliomancer faced with a problem clearly unsolvable by fire; cantankerous didn’t even begin to describe it. At the least, he’d have a few hours to mull it over.

It turned out to be two days. The administrative procedures which had built up over the years had been developed with voice votes by ten or fifteen proxies in mind took an eternity to slog through with some two hundred fifty secret ballots, and the first day was over by the time they’d finished. The second day was marginally more interesting. Most of it had been spent listening to the malfeasant proxies’ futile attempts to defend their actions, and to the other proxies and the candidates to replace the deposed ones explaining how they would be better choices. On the morning of the third day, Eirik had chosen another of his former teachers, Alrik Einarssen, to represent him. Over lunch Baltasar had a blazing row with him, and when they returned to the Assembly Baltasar made a point of sitting on the far side of the room and attempting to fry Eirik with angry looks.

Eirik wasn’t worried. During his time as a student he and Baltasar had been on worse terms once or twice, and things had always worked out alright then. He was distinctly more worried about the direction the Assembly was taking. When it reconvened, they wrapped up the last of the business to do with the proxies; if they were going to pin something on Eirik it was going to happen very soon.

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Weekend open thread

With the techno-magic of scheduled posts, I am now writing to you from the past[1]! Readership remains steady on the order of 100. Tell your friends.

In other news, I haven’t written very much of the current story lately, but I have been busy doing other things. I also have a concrete plan for what’s going to go down come Christmastime: I’ve decided that there will be a brief break from Lägraltvärld updates. However, there will be other updates during that time. I like the universe from which last weekend’s unrelated writing comes, and I haven’t really ever written anything of reasonable length in it. You’ll be getting probably about for weeks of science fiction in the middle of your fantasy. I hope you’re alright with that.

[1] [2]
[2] Self-deprecation!

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The Nighttime Visitor No. 2 – Henrik’s Letter

Rakel Magnusdottir:

 

I hope your preparations are going to your satisfaction. I understand you’re still staying at the Hammer and Anvil, if my agent is to be believed. He says you took the table for more than a crown, and that the innkeeper had to kick two of the other players out after you did; I see your capacity for attracting attention remains undiminished.

Putting aside the notice you shouldn’t have drawn to yourself, you will find the sanction papers for one Rakel Andersdottir in the same envelope as this. We’ve spoken with the School of Conjurers regarding her history there. She was admitted in 308 at the age of nine, and graduated seven years later. She was a quiet and undistinguished student, but after attaining full membership she was involved in a number of indiscretions—cited in detail in her sanction papers—and since then has found herself increasingly distanced from the day-to-day routine at the Guild. In short, she is ripe for less-than-legal employment. We decided to leave the finer points of her personality to you, given your talent for improvisation, with the caveat that Rakel Andersdottir should be an unremarkable person, notable only for her involvement in a handful of notable events. Don’t overplay your role.

You’ve been granted an exemption from parts of the Code for the duration of your time undercover. You will not be prosecuted for violations of sections two, three, five, twelve, twenty-one through twenty-four, and thirty-four through forty, provided that any violations can be shown to be necessary to maintain or strengthen your cover, or essential to further your mission or prevent injury to your person. The Council and the Magehunters are trusting you with a great deal of latitude in the interpretation of those terms. Any controversy you stir up will bring a storm down on my head from the Council, so please, for the sake of my sanity, play it safe if at all possible.

Knowing your habit of ignoring details that don’t seem important and forgetting the ones that are no longer immediately applicable, I am forced to assume you don’t remember the substance of our talk about the criminal underground in the aftermath of the events of late 315. It’s relevant again, so I’ll repeat the parts most likely to come up. The large majority of the city is claimed as territory by one or more organizations of criminals. The City Watch is able to limit their visible activity in the Riverfronts, the major remaining signs being widespread racketeering and the operation of most of the city’s racetracks, gambling houses, brothels, and fighting pits. The gangs tend to see their territory as a place to establish such questionably legal ventures and to limit their blatantly criminal acts to areas outside their control. Turf wars are common, but interference from the Watch would only serve to make things worse, and all told the gangs do a passable job of keeping the citizens in their territories safe while parting them from as much money as possible.

The gangs are, of course, permitted under the Code to employ mages, but very few can afford to, and of those many choose to hire them on a temporary basis. Mages in that situation are trusted with very little, and you should endeavor to find full-time employment.

You are to operate in the southern extreme of the Riverfronts, beginning about five miles south of the Heimdal, between three and four miles west of the ocean. Parts of this slice of the city are claimed by five different gangs. The Order of the Black Dagger is the oldest and best-established, and the most likely to yield information quickly. They already employ mages, and may therefore be more difficult to infiltrate. The Silver Spear gang holds a very large amount of territory across the city, but lacks strong central authority. Influence in one area might not help elsewhere. The other three—the Miller Street gang, the Shadow Brotherhood, and the Red Skull Thieves—are more local in scope, and limited in their capacities to afford a full-time mage; further, as an outsider, it will be difficult for you to gain their trust.

The Adjudicators have no recent information on any of the gangs in this area, having been forced, of late, into securing more dangerous areas of the Riverfronts. We leave the decision of which gang to pursue to you.

If you need to contact me, you can send a letter to Anders Andersson at the Prefecture for the Preservation of History, and it will be forwarded to me. If I need to contact you, it will be in the usual way.

 

Henrik Gunnarssen

 

P.S. Please don’t get yourself killed.

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Commentary, The Nighttime Visitor No. 2

Ugh. I really don’t like this entry. I’d claim it was badly written on purpose (*cough*), but that would be dishonest[1].

The lack of small caps is, of course, purposeful.

[1]On rereading it before it goes live, I find myself liking it more. It may not be the best writing I’ve ever done, but it’s more Henrik’s voice than I thought before, and it does quite adroitly describe the relationship between Henrik and Rakel. It could also be that I’m tired, but I don’t like that explanation as much.

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The Nighttime Visitor No. 1 – A Head For Subterfuge

Rakel woke to the clatter of metal on metal. She had halfway unsheathed the dagger beneath her pillow before she realized what the noise had been. She climbed out of bed, sheepishly buckling the sheath at her side, and groped her way over to the candle standing hooded on the bedside table. Lifting the hood, she saw the nail she had, when she’d come up to the room for the night, stuck in a few hours down the candle’s length sitting on the base of the candlestick. Taking it between two fingers, she held it up in the candlelight and looked at it through half-lidded eyes, mouthing a few syllables of Elvish. The nail sagged and flowed like hot wax. For an instant it was nothing but a shapeless blob, but a moment later it was a fine likeness of a one-chieftain coin.

Rakel looked at it with an air of faint satisfaction. She’d left off some of the fine detail, but it would probably pass in a bad light. She pocketed it and felt a little pang of guilt; she could list about twenty rules she’d broken by making a coin, but she supposed it would be alright if she didn’t try to spend it.

She covered the candle again and looked out the window. The moons were out, but only a little light reached past the rooftops down to street level. She stared into the blackness until shapes began to reveal themselves in the shadows, and then swung the window wide open and looked down at the side of the building. She was on the third floor, and it would have been a difficult climb had Kajsa not predicted that such a climb might be necessary. Rakel heard heavy footsteps and saw a particularly large shadow round the corner of the building. She waved, and the shadow set the ladder it carried up against her windowsill.

Kajsa had made use of an old conjurer’s trick, one of the few which took no magic beyond the mundane, everyday magic of expectations. It went like this—at any given time, somewhere between a few dozen and a hundred conjurers were in the city. Almost every one had a couple of constructs to his name and business all over the city which needed attention. It turned out that constructs made excellent couriers—they never tired, were impossible to sidetrack, and couldn’t be forcibly stopped by anything short of a gang of very determined men with very large hammers, or possibly a small siege engine. Constructs charging unstoppably around on a myriad of errands had been woven into the tapestry of city life to the point that they were seen as background detail, no more unusual than anything else on the long list of unusual things that happened in Vrimderheimdalskaagerholmegvorrighrimdalholm on a daily basis.

Kajsa had taken advantage of their ubiquity and simply sent the construct on a long and circuitous path around the city to the inn; even late at night it wasn’t out of place, and it wasn’t as if anyone was going to challenge it.

“Hello, Two,” Rakel said to it, stepping off the ladder’s bottom rung. She had always held a special disdain for conjurers who gave their constructs real names; it was a bad idea to get attached to tools. “Hold on a moment.”

In her letter, Kajsa hadn’t mentioned why she’d chosen Two for this task, but Rakel had an inkling. Two was no whirling engine of death like Six through Nine were, but rather an engine of versatility and stubborn endurance. To those ends it had working hands, of which Rakel was still very proud almost a decade after she’d made them, and rather a large build—it was several feet across the chest. Rakel reached up and rapped on it, and was rewarded with a dull echo. She grinned. A head for subterfuge indeed.

A few moments’ worth of Elvish mutterings served to open the construct’s chest. Rakel looked inside. It was too dark to see anything more than the vaguest of shadows, but she figured she trusted Kajsa to get it right. She closed Two up and told it, “Off you go, then, as soon as I’m back up the ladder. You know where you’re supposed to unload?”

It nodded at her gravely, and she scrambled back up to her room. She waved at the construct, who shouldered the ladder and stomped off.

Rakel climbed back into bed. There were two things she was thinking when her head hit the pillow: first, that it wasn’t until later that Kajsa’s plan got good, and second, that even though she could now add the threat of apocalyptic distortion of reality to the list of crises she’d worked on for Henrik, she could not deny that it was always fun.

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Commentary, The Nighttime Visitor No. 1

Rakel isn’t the sneakiest person around (it’s less her than being a mage in general). Kajsa is only better by comparison.

It’s a good thing I looked this entry over before it went up. I just fixed three typos and made ten or twelve style changes; either that means I’m getting better at this whole writing thing, or I had an off day when I wrote this entry. Or maybe both, or possibly neither.

I guess that covers all the bases.

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