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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Tides of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 13

Tides of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because convince Ethri not to abandon plot, goooo!

Last times in book: Amri and co are on a quest to unite all the Gelfling clans against the Skeksis and it is not going great so far? Maudra Ethri has decided that the Sifa are going to ditch and sail to a new continent guided by Captain skekSa, multi-talented voluntary exile from the Castle of the Crystal. Ethri tries to ditch early but Amri and co catch up to her and Onica convinces her to read the flames and see what they have to say.

Chapter 13

A very convincing flame-reading, a new objective, some frustration

So now its time to throw some herbs in a fire and read the flames to see what the Sifa should do. Every other sign in the world says sailing across the ocean is a bad idea. skekSa says ‘its fiiiiiiiiiine.’ What will the flames say?

Onica took her own bundle from within her cloak. She and Tae followed Ethri, and soon three blue-gray trails of smoke cut like pathways into the sky. Onica led them in the ritual, raising her hands over her head and drawing mystic symbols in the air with the smoke of the smoldering herbs. Triangles and spheres, spirals and many other shapes. Amri saw the signs of the moons and the suns, the sigils of the wind and fire, earth and rain. Ethri and Tae mirrored Onica, the maudra’s motions reserved at first but warming with every passing moment.

“Deatea. Deratea. Kidakida. Arugaru. We open our souls to the fire. We open our minds to the wind. We open our hearts to the water. We open our hands to the earth.”

The bundles of herbs are thrown into the fire and there’s a blast of heat that blows away the smoke just leaving clear flames.

Within moments, the hearth beat again. The hearth of the ship, the heart of the Sifa.

Nice play on words!

Everyone around the fire breathes in the scent of the herbs and hold hands. It sounds like a pretty cool moment.

Onica’s voice rose from the quiet, one with the crackling fire. She did not speak words. The song from her throat was wordless, harmonious. Amri opened one eye to see her, head tilted back, crimson hair alight with the red of the fire. Her song changed, as if she herself were transformed - one moment a Sifa, Gelfing as the rest of them - the next, a different being, made of dreams.

She bowed her head to face the fire, eyes open, seeing all and nothing. All were silent.

“A hero stands before the hearth fire of the Gelfling. But not alone. From the darkness that surrounds him comes... Wind. Lightning. Light. Earth, Shadow, Water... Fire.”

Onica’s brows crinkled in pain, a tear escaping. Her voice was transparent, rippling, not her own. Amri listened, rapt. Saw Ethri and Tae, Naia and Kylan doing the same, every breath hanging on the Far-Dreamer’s words.

“Great trials face us. Pain and loneliness, I see... Seven maudra. Seven of seven. Bearing the fires. Wind, Lightning, Light. Earth, Shadow, Water, Fire. In this way, the Seven become One. By Gelfling hand, or else by...”

Not even going to finish the rhyme? Man, Thra prophecies love the or else by none thing, huh?

And the seven Gelfling clans have elemental associations, apparently. Grottan for Shadow seems obvious. As does Sifa for Water. Or are they Wind with the Drenchen being Water? Are the Vapra Wind or Light? I’m pretty sure the Stonewood are Fire despite their name evoking Earth so much. And what about the Dousan? Are they Lightning?

Some of the clans feel like they’d overlap several elements but this is symbolic, not wholly accurate.

My guess is Drenchen Water, Spriton Earth, Stonewood Fire, Grottan Shadow, Vapra Light, Sifa Wind, and Dousan Lightning.

The Gelfling at the hearth fire also see a vision of the Sifa hearth struggling to push back the darkness until Gelfling come with torches and increase the hearth’s flame.

With an obvious meaning.

“My Sifa,” [Ethri] said. “My heart breaks with grief that I nearly let you down. Forgive me... I will stay, if you will stay by my side. So that we may stay by the side of the others who stand against the darkness. For Thra.”

Tae lifted her hand to the sky, Ethri’s fingers entwined in hers.

“For Thra,” she said.

All at once, the hands of the Sifa rose like wildfire.

A pillar of flame exploded from the hearth, sparks showering in a rainbow of colors. The fire burned in every color under the three suns, the whistling and howling of the air as it fed the flames resonating with a familiar, bone-deep song.

Kylan’s firca joins this song all on its own and dream-etches the Story Thus Far of Ethri, the Omerya, and skekSa’s ship into the deck.

The pyrotechnics end and Ethri has the Omerya return to the docks.

To Amri, Ethri finally looks like her two halves have been united. The youthful person that she is and the proud and valiant maudra leading her clan.

Also, look at that, two made one symbolism. It recurs.

Maudra Ethri tells Team Naia that when the time to rise up comes, the Sifa will be ready and asks where they’ll go next. That’s still up in the air.

And Naia reassures, kinda, Ethri that despite her fears of being the first to stand up, that the Vapra fire is already lit by All-Maudra Mayrin. And that neither were the first to stand up.

“You know, Maudra Argot of the Grottan was actually the first to hear our story and believe. And because of it, they were struck down. They lost their home. They’ve been in the dark and cold, alone. Waiting to know the other clans are out there.. and now, you are part of their hope. Your fires will guide them... You are not alone, and now, neither are they.”

As Team Naia leaves the Omerya, Amri realizes that somewhere under the waves there’s a skekSa who will soon realize that the Sifa have changed their travel plans. And he wonders if she’s going to be very angry or whether it won’t matter to her one way or another.

I suspect that he’s very glad that he isn’t the one who has to deal with that fallout!

The group goes to say goodbye to Onica, assuming she’ll stay in Cera-Na.

“I must go with Naia,” [Tavra] said. “But I will not forget our promise --”

Onica interrupted her with a sweet laugh. “Don’t be daft, my Silverling. You think I would let you go to light the seven fires of resistance without me?”

Awwwww (girl)frens!

Annnnd thennnn. Someone steals Tavra. Just bumps into the group and swipes her right from Kylan.

Geez, this was a feel good moment of the Sifa deciding to stay and Onica becoming a permanent party member and some random pickpocket ruins it!

“Why would someone steal Tavra?” Naia asked.

“I don’t know! She’s tiny, and shiny? You know, we never did figure out where Tae’s stolen jewelry went!”

Dang, I can’t believe I forgot that too!

The narration made a point that it was A Thing Occurring and then the explanation for Tae’s poisoning didn’t explain what happened to Tae’s jewelry.

I briefly wondered if maybe skekSa swiped it out of magpie kleptomania and that’s how the gang would turn the Sifa against her but that didn’t make much sense for skekSa’s character really. And then things got resolved with Ethri REALLY fast so it just slipped from my mind.

Team Naia plus Onica minus Tavra chase the thief off the beach and into the tropical brush between the beach and mountains.

Amri catches up to the thief first because of his great climbing prowess and tackles the hooded thief.

They rolled to the ground and wrestled until Amri came out on top, yanking back the hood. Beneath was the tattooed face of a Dousan boy. His face was pale and sand colored on the left, fading into a deep, glittering indigo on the right.

The Dousan bonks Amri with a rock but Naia catches him.

They get the jar full o’ Tavra and she reveals that the thief has Tae’s jewelry too, which ties up that mystery.

Naia stepped back, now that she had Tavra.

“So, what? You’ve just been sneaking about Cera-Na filling your pockets. What do you have to say for yourself?”

He shrugged. “It was worth it?”

Pffft

Naia is less amused by him than I am and drags him off to turn him over to Maudra Ethri.

So the Dousan changes gears, and introduces himself as Periss and says that he overheard the stuff about the seven fires of resistance and has seen the dream-stitched pink petals.

So he figures that they’re going around trying to unite the clans. And that they arrived on a sea ship that sails in the sea with sails. So Periss has a question.

“So... how are you planning on reaching the Dousan clan in the Crystal Sea? Without a, you know. A sandship, and a Dousan to sail it.”

Amri hated the smug tinkle in Periss’s eyes.

What a character, this Periss!

He’s a lot more of a shit than Rek’yr.

Tavra concedes that the little shit has a point. You can’t cross the Crystal Sea without a sandship and even if you did, out of Naia-esque stubbornness, finding the Dousan would be a hell of a challenge because they’re nomadic.

Amri looked up at the Claw Mountains that rose south of Cera-Na’s sandy shore. He had never seen the Crystal Sea in person, of course, but he’d seen maps and drawings. On the other side of the Claw Mountains spilled a vast desert of golden and white sand. The desert sprawled southeast, stopping only when its waves of sand lapped the border of the Dark Wood. Between the Claw Mountains and the Dark Wood, it was a world of light and constantly changing terrain. Desert creatures roamed the dunes. It was somewhere out there, navigating the constant storms, that the Dousan Gelfling had made their home.

“I think Tavra may be right,” Amri said.

Periss’s hands had drifted from the air to his belt, his expression of surrender transforming into a pompous smile.

What a little shit!

So now that they’re not going to turn him over to Maudra Ethri because they need him and now that he’s feeling smug about it, he presses the advantage and brings up the question of payment.

“We’re not paying you,” Naia retorted. “Your reward for helping us is knowing you took part in saving the Gelfling race.”

“I’m afraid good feelings don’t make my heart as full as a pocket of pretties. So, show me what you have to give, and I will tell you if you’ve come up short.”

Wow!

Takes guts to charge to help save the world but y’know, if they save the world then he has the payment. If they don’t save the world then it doesn’t make a difference whether he charged or not. Its win-win, of a sort.

Periss winds up taking Naia’s sweet metal dagger and Kylan’s bone firca as payment. Also, Onica has to read his fortune. For those three things, he’ll be their guide and transport as long as it takes to find Maudra Seethi and the Dousan.

Doesn’t seem fair. The firca is an irreplaceable magic item and the knife has sentimental value. Buuuuut they do need to visit the Dousan. They’re the only ones that haven’t been touched on yet.

The Dousan gestured with a broad smile.

“Congratulations, my friends. You’ve just bought yourselves a one-way trip into the desert of death.”

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #liveblog #Tides of the Dark Crystal #Amri #Naia #Kylan #Tavra #Onica #Maudra Ethri #Periss

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vaccerelli · 6 years

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For a moment, it was still. Even the wind hung suspended, waiting.

The great metal sandship rose above the first crest of the desert, shattering the trails of grains, and passed over the threshold into the desert proper. Dense fog hung over the Arkhakane, as the native saddayat had called it, obscuring the sky in smears of gray and gossamer.

Before this, Teshstil had never left Burrodwerth. He was used to the towering buildings, the ancient federal frescoes, the arches and bricks of a city. His family, doting wife and infant daughter, had lived in one of the protected ghettos, where astrologists and scientists and the libraries had all folded on top of each other, great towers of learning suspended against each other, the skyrail passing between them, sometimes interrupting and infuriating the scholars who spent their lives miserly in the stacks. Teshtil, who was nervously trying to keep from biting his nails as he watched the desert part beneath the prow of the ship, was a ruinologist, trained in the stuady of the Lost Empires, who had passed from this world some thousand years ago, leaving endless crippled artifacts and shattered miracles for the new world to uncover. The Federated Lands encompassed the entire southern edge of the continent, using much of the remnanti tech, and some said it had grown too fast, and too soft in these times.

Fedbred, some of his shipmates called Teshstil, for he was not the kind of sand-skinned, leathered slaver they were. They had crossed the desert, as close towards the Uninhabited as a living being could go, and it had marked them, deeper than their skin, the war-tattoos banded up and down their arms, deeper even than their scars and replaced limbs. Teshstil had never seen such ingenious prosthetics before stepping on the sandship. One man had an arm of a kind of supple ivory, that could soften and harden on a whim. He claimed he could use it as a whip, and had scourged several runaways into total submission with it, and the cold laughter that reached his eyes had caused Teshstil to avoid him from then on.

It was called the Ukalegon, once a glorious frigate belonging to the Khanate, stolen by these ruthless mercenaries of the Slaveocracy. They were not the merchant-caste, who sold and traded the bodies of others, they were something less and more — chattel-catchers. They made their coin by hunting down the expensive runaways, the trained flesh, the scholar-slaves. They had become merciless in this task, unable to separate sadism from business after their long time spent hunting, and Teshstil took it as a sign they saw him as weak, that they looked down upon his flinching and frailty, that he was still a man, and not a heartless beast.

Arkhakane was the only place for slaves from Stycyr, the center of the Slaveocracy, to escape. To head west was to face the Maqdis, the badlands, where only the few remaining living machines, and horrific beasts could survive.

Tashstil had been traveling with them for nearly a month now. He knew a lot of the familiar faces.

Captain Vashtanossa, a Vashian from the Deep Mercantile South, his blinded third eye milky in the center of his poxed forehead. The only other Vashian on the ship was the ship’s pike, Vashaddrodian, of a different social and economic class than the Captain, yet bound by the Slaveocracy to follow his orders — but could never complete them without the contemptuous sneer of the blueblooded gentry, his blinded eye rolling merrily in it’s socket.

The ship’s assassin, the Exalted One, a vrahmortalis, born under auspices and certain indexes of the three moons. He rarely spoke to the others, and his long gray hair and many knives staked him as the one who would bleed them in the night and dump them in the sand if they attempted any form of mutiny. The Executioner’s Guild had leased him to the ship for an extravagant fee. He spoke quick Deadtongue, the language of assassins, whenever they did commerce with other sandcraft, be they the Sirion battlecruisers spoiling for a fight with the Khanate, saddayat skiffs, whosoever, often conferring with the corresponding members of the Executioner’s Guild.

Akuurai, the cook, who had served the crew many a limb of a misbehaving capture. Scholar-slaves returned with parts missing still fetched a hearty sum, so long as they could speak academic.

Chewto, the ship’s dogsbody, a freed slave with no sense of irony.

The head navigator, Sjadros, a man with intricate spectacles that allowed for all manner of magnification and clarification. Sjadros was brilliant and twisted, a man from the Federal war colleges who had been dishonorably discharged for reasons he dare not say.

Dr. Tremmenberth, the ship’s torturer, who spoke to no one but the captain, and carried a black leather bag wherever he went.

And the Lieutenant, a longcloaked and dour man from Jhekk Redeemer who rarely even so much as glanced at Tashstil. Tashstil found it a blessing, for the pitch skin and pallid red eyes under the Lieutenant’s hood unnerved him deeply. Some of the crew gossiped contradiction about him — an inverse albino; skin of pure blackness, like the cavelings of myth, who had never seen the sun. Others said he was simply so old that he had soaked up more desert sun than all of them combined, and so bitter he couldn’t be killed. Akuurai claimed he had once seen the Lieutenant rip a man’s arm off and beat him to death with it without even changing his expression nor pace. Akuurai also claimed to have seasoned that arm in changespice and narcograss and ratbird egg, which had no effect on the Lieutenant whatsoever (several midshipmen howled in stunned laughter at this, for changespice was for too expensive for thrifty and cunning Akuurai) and in fact claimed it was the best meat he’d tasted outside the Redemption’s carnage markets.

The midshipmen and mechanics rarely even acknowledged Tashstil, much less the frigate’s compliment of soldier-slaves, who often spent days asleep in the lowest berth, soothed by the constant rill of the sand. The master-at-arms, Viet-Hasu, a former curse-knight, treated them as a kennelmaster would a pack of prized dogs. None of the soldier-slaves ever once considered escape; Hasu had layered hex and curse upon them in such prodigious layers that to even seriously consider fleeing would boil their bones from the inside out.

The only other person Tashstil spoke with frequently was the ship’s astrology and conjurer, Jullingr. Jullingr was from the Federal Lands as well, and had escaped the customary crucifixion of conjurers, and fled to the Slaveocracy for work. The twin holes in his hands spoke to his dedication. He was constantly evaluating the movements of the three moons, basing haphazard predictions upon the chaotic turns of the Cursed Moon, frequently arguing with Sjadros over the ship’s direction. Jull claimed to be a cartomancer, once bringing out forbidden things such as the dark tarocco, ancient remnanti cards emblazoned with the faces of their long-forgotten kings, before Tashstil forced him to put them away.

Tashstil was not frequently a superstitious man, but the crooked and leering faces of the debauched kings had haunted them, their unnatural positions, the strange weapons they held and gashed at each other at. Jull had told him he’d once given a fortune to one of the Khanate’s tribal sons, only to nearly be executed there, as well. Conjuror’s luck, he explained to Tashstil with a casual shrug. Here to balance out the blessings the stars have granted me.

He never conjured anything more than a hash hangover, insofar as Tashstil could see.

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skyview-temple-spring · 1 year

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#pumpkin extract #skyward sword #legend of Zelda #polls #[stolen sandship]

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skyview-temple-spring · 1 year

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May I ask why don’t you like GhriaFi? Not complaining, I’m genuinely curious

I can and will write (and have written to some extent) an essay on this but tldr basically they're straight /j

The real tldr is they have no chemistry the fans ruined any possibility I could work with it

Okay but for real it comes down to three things and those are 1. The fans 2. I like different headcanons of them than as lovers and 3. They just don't have ANY chemistry

1. The fans:

God ghirafi fans have some of the straightest cishet interpretations of these characters it's gross. It's all hyper femme big boobs Fi and super muscular masculine Ghirahim. The only reason they are shipped is because they're the only male/female pair of their kind. They don't interact, ever, Fi basically has no personality, Ghirahim shows no interest in her. He has more enemies to lovers chemistry with Zelda, Groose, or fucking. Impa based on canon (not saying I ship those I don't). Also, Ghirafi fans in my experience have been extremely antighiralink despite them being the same premise? Like Ghirafi is enemies to lovers as much as ghiralink is. And for some reason Ghirafi fans have been like ew... Ghiralink bleh🤮 and turned Ghirafi into some morally correct ship. Some have even been outright homophobic. And on the flip side, some have tried to counter Ghirahim's blatant queer coding by making him extremely hetero (it's still fucking creepy and homophobic to have the effeminate character the bad guy! It doesn't resolve you of your guilt of liking him!) And they have a weird thing about Ghirahim conquering Fi which yeah okay lots of ghiralink does that but I just can't get past the added misogyny in the het pairing. Personal trauma or preference or whatever but I cannot do m/f pairs with a dominant male. I can barely stand submissive f/f as is. So yeah the fans caused me to have an irrational hatred and a block on sight policy for them. I have seen 2 good interpretations of Ghirafi and they were both porn. In one Fi pegged Ghirahim's sword form and the other was Ghiralinkfi and the first one was deleted from the internet anyway

2. Two, different headcanons

Idk who started it but I really like the siblings headcanons :) I just think it's neat. That doesn't stop me from shipping them in a different universe or whatever (as I do like Zelimpa and use them in some AUs but generally I ship Hylimpa and Zelda acts as Hylia's demigod daughter in a way) but re:the fans. So thus the irrational hatred prevents me from exploring that

3. As I touched on in p1 THEY HAVE NO CHEMISTRY. other than she was a girl, he was a boy, can I make it any more obvious. Even as enemies to lovers they have nothing because of Fi's apathy. Idk it feels very "I can change her" on Ghirahim's part and as a lesbian who has had this line used on me..... Ew.

#ask #anon #[stolen sandship]#that's my ship discourse tag

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