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#Andrik why
inky-duchess · 5 months
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The Lost Prince | The Perska Vadiya | WorldBuilding
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Through the thousand years of Imperial rule, the Perska Vadiya stood guard. Formed from the most elite in the Imperial army, the Perska Vadiya was the honour every soldier aspired to reach. It was a brotherhood of five hundred, a close-knit and secret society serving the royal family as guardsmen, soldiers, generals and confidants, safeguarding the royal person and their secrets. For a thousand years, the Perska Vadiya defended and enforced the Vasily family rule over Vastia - until the Revolution.
Two hundred Perska Vadiya died with Prince Andrik during the failed peace talks. Betrayal came from within their own ranks, one of their former brothers, General Dehn, switching his allegiance from the royalist cause and making his own bid for power with the rebel leaders. Dehn was instrumental into bringing down the capital and the royal family. Under the attack, the remaining hundred Perska Vadiya broke and ran in the face of the approaching rebel army leaving the remaining members of the royal family and Palace undefended. Many royalists set the blame on the new policy of recruiting from soldiers of the lower classes. But most agree that the fault lay in the choice of sending all the experienced Perska Vadiya away to other royal strongholds on the assumption that no rebel army could breach the capital - they had not accounted for treachery.
Currently the remnants, some fifty Perska Vadiya, serves the Crown Prince Mikhail in exile.
Current Active Members
Captain Olterburg
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The Commander of the Perska Vadiya, an old soldier serving the royal family for forty-six years. He gained command of the Perska Vadiya after the Revolution and has led it, past retirement age ever since. Gruff and proper, he's a welcome member of the Imperial set.
Lieutenant Zybrik
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Zybrik is the second in command, the last Perska Vadiya to be trained by the traitor Dehn. At 25, he's the youngest lieutenant to serve in the Perska Vadiya. Despite his mentor and common background, Zybrik is a staunch supporter and fierce defender of his Prince.
Emil
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Emil is third in command. He had been just inducted into the Perska Vadiya mere months before the Revolution broke out. Emil is the most empathetic Perska Vadiya, often chosen for more private and personal tasks.
Vladimir
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Vladimir is one of the older Perska Vadiya. After the Revolution, he was offered honourable discharge on account of an injury to his eye but he refused. He is often mistaken to be cold and aloof but according to his brothers in the Perska Vadiya - he's hilarious. Nobody has seen this in practise.
Casimir
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Casimir had joined the Perska Vadiya after the Revolution, one of the raw recruits brought in to bulk up the empty ranks. Casimir had been chosen mainly on account of his father and two brothers who had perished in the service of Prince Andrik.
Alsandr
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The youngest of the remaining Perska Vadiya, two years older than Crown Prince Mikhail, which is why he tends to have trouble keeping His Imperial Highness in check. Generally considered to be the most amiable of the Perska Vadiya, he's nearly always calls on to attend the abrasive Grand Duke Sergei.
Kyril
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Kyril also joined the Perska Vadiya post-Revolution. Kyril had been a common-born farm labourer before the Revolution but after brave action during the flight from Vastia, he was offered a place among the Perska Vadiya - mistakenly some say on account of his surname being mistaken for an aristocratic one. He was permitted to stay on due to his feverent monarchist loyalty and skill.
TLP Taglist
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bebewrites · 2 years
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18 and 39, for the weird questions
18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.
“You can stop glaring at me, Ash. It’s not going to change my being here,” she said sharply. He hadn’t realized he was doing it. “But it makes me feel better.” “I want to save mother just as much as you do,” she said, crossing her arms. Then she glared at him. “You were just going to leave me there. To sit and do nothing and watch her die.” Asher had felt the same, which was indeed why he had taken matters into his own hands. “How would you feel if Andrik had snuck off on a secret mission to save mother and all of Anveria without you?” Asher cut her a pointed glance. “Andrik? Our brother Andrik? That would require him to take precious time away from deciding which asscheek he prefers to put weight on while practicing how to sit on the throne.”
here's a little passage between asher and his half-sister arden. i like this snippet of dialogue because it shows the relationship between the two of them and also their relationship with their brother. i wanted something like this pretty early on (this is in the first chapter) to show that asher is a person of action. arden shares that quality with him, plus being able to tell when he's up to something and coming up with her own plans :)
39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?
i guess just really feeling like there are so many stories i want to tell. sometimes i’m afraid i won’t get to tell them all! haha. that usually at least helps remind me of my love writing and that it’s not just all about publishing and making money and what not, even though i would absolutely love to make a career out of it lol. and that i genuinely love my wip and feel like i might go crazy if i don’t finish it 😂
weird questions for writers :)
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whumpkitty · 3 years
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Whumpay Day 1: “I wish you were dead.”
Tryna do all of Whumpay, gotta catch up haha
Danika gets pissed. Poor bean.
TWs: Toxic love, brief mentions of the following; things in skin, drugs, death, implication of needles, vaguely sui thoughts, permanent injury
Timeframe: A while after Danika has been Andrik’s Jewel
“Andrik, will this ever change?”
Andrik looked over at Danika. He was sitting next to the mafia lord on the sofa and leaning against his side with one of Andrik’s arms slung around his shoulders. He was frowning at the ground, hands twisting in his lap.
“What do you mean sunshine?”
Danika glanced at him before sighing and shrugging off Andrik’s arm, scooting a bit farther away from him.
“I mean, is this ever going to change? This... relationship?”
“I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand. If you’re asking whether I’ll ever stop loving you or if we’ll ever be apart, then no. Why do you ask, are you worried about something?” Andrik moved after him, putting a hand on the other’s knee. Danika pushed himself up, standing with a wince and limping away to lean against a table, knees shaking and face twisted in pain just from the short distance. Andrik watched him worriedly, moving to stand as well.
“Dani, if it hurts on your own, just let me-”
“No,” Danika shot him a glare, shocking Andrik into staying seated. The glare melted into a tired sigh as he rubbed a hand over his face. “That’s not what I was asking. I mean, is the nature of this relationship ever going to change? Or is it just going to stay like this forever? You in control and me stuck as your doll?”
“You’re not a doll sunshine, you’re-”
“Well you sure treat me like one!” He snapped. Andrik glared back at him, more than a little miffed at being cut off again. He stood, rolling his eyes.
“Dani, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not a doll, and no one treats you like one. Now come on, calm down and sit down. What’s got you acting like this, are you feeling alright?”
Danika scoffed. “No one treats me like one? Then what do they treat me as? Your plaything? Because it’s certainly not whatever you’re envisioning.”
“You are my partner and you are respected as such. Stop whatever this little fit is sweetheart, it’s completely pointless.”
“I’m not your partner, I haven’t been for years!” He barks a laugh. “Don’t try and say you respect me, that’s a damn insult. You don’t even let me leave the room alone. I can’t do anything Andrik, you don’t respect me and you don’t trust me either!
“Of course I trust you, I just don’t believe you’ll always work in your best interests, which is why I watch you.”
Danika shook his head, hands running through and tugging at his hair. Andrik sighed heavily, taking a step towards him.
“Sunshine-”
“No! Don’t call me that, you’re not allowed to, only Andi was allowed to do that and you’re not him, you’re not, no matter how much you try to tell me!”
Andrik stopped, an odd mix of pleading and exasperated on his face. “Dani, you’re just confused sweetheart, this is exactly why I have to keep you safe here.”
“You’re not keeping me safe, you’re keeping me trapped here, you used to keep me safe and I protected you back and we were in love, but this isn’t, I don’t,” he gave a short scream of frustration. “Andrik, please, we were happy once, we can be happy again, just… it’s not too late, we can make the promises again, we can go back, please.”
The mafia lord sighed again. “I’m sorry sweetheart, but this is all for your own good. You know I’m right, you’re just being stubborn for some reason. If you would calm down and see that, we can be happy, you’re the only one keeping us from that.”
Danika whirled on him.
“I’m not keeping us unhappy, none of this is my fault! It’s you, it’s your absolutely insane idea that this is in any way good!” His hands were shaking fists at his sides. “How could you possibly think that sewing things into me or taking away my ability to walk or drugging me with who knows what or killing my family is for my own good?” Andrik didn’t answer, watching him coolly even as Danika stumbled up to him.
“How can you not see that? Do you really think that all this shit you’re doing is for me, or are you just lying and, I don’t know, this is some sick fantasy you’ve had all this time and now you’ve finally got the chance to do it but you can’t say it to my damn face! God, what happened to you Andrik? What happened?” His voice pitched higher as he raised his fists. “We had dreams and you killed them all, you killed us! But you can still stand there somehow!”
“I wish you were dead! I-!” Danika slammed his fists against Andrik’s chest, pressing his forehead against him as his voice finally broke. “I… God, I wish I was dead.”
Andrik didn’t move, not even to look at his Jewel. Danika pressed closer, fingers twisting into Andrik’s shirt and tears gathering in his eyes. A few moments passed, the only sound Danika’s hitching breaths.
“No I don’t,” Andrik looked down at the other, eyes meeting Danika’s furious tear-filled glare. “I wish you never even existed, I wish I’d never met you and no one else ever did. Bastard,” Danika’s shoulders hunched up, shuddering sobs wracking his frame as his tears overflowed. Andrik remained still, watching the crying man with an unreadable expression. He hesitantly raised his arms, moving to hug Danika, but the smaller flinched hard and pushed himself back from Andrik. Danika tried to move away, but his shaking legs didn’t get him far and the mafia lord grabbed him by the arms to hold him there, head ducking to look his lover in the eyes.
“Dani, sweetheart, I know it’s been a big transition. I can understand why you’re distressed, you’ve been so deep in the terrible chaos of everything, but please, I’ve never wanted anything for you but the best. That’s exactly why I have you here with me, to make sure you get it and protect you from the bad things you’ve grown to depend on and expect.”
Andrik pulled him close, arms coming up around him in an embrace as one hand brushed through his lover’s hair. Danika tensed for a moment, trying to push away again before breaking down entirely at the gentle touch, sagging against Andrik as he sobbed. Andrik closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, looking down at Danika with a quietly rueful smile.
“It’s okay sunshine, I’m here.”
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charleewritesabook · 4 years
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Last Line Tag
Thank you @boredwriter-16 and @raevenlywrites for tagging me in this!!
Just like my best friend, I too like to overshare so here's the latest excerpt of The Croatoan War.
"Tali, please, don't do this." Raevyn held out her hand, the dark tendrils of her magic weaving between her fingers.
"Why shouldn't we be united; why shouldn't I rule?" Thalia asked softly, her eyes staring distantly ahead, the glass ball pulsing in her hand.
"Its not right," Raevyn pleaded, "We came here to stop this madness, not build it."
Thalia turned her gaze into the ball, "Andrik wanted to take the world by force, but I could being peace!" Thalia looked back at Raevyn. "I could do it."
Raevyn shook her head desperately as the balls power grew. "I can't let you do that, Tali don't make me do this, please I don't want to kill you."
"You can't stop me," Thalia's voice turned cold.
Raevyn threw her magic at Thalia as her hand closed around the ball, enveloping her friends body in shroud of ink. Something broke in her chest as Thalia's scream tore through the air. The glass ball flew across the room and shattered against the wall sending a rainbow of slivers scattering across the floor.
I'll tag @ajbrooks-writes @cjjameswriting and @writings-of-a-narwhal
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xtolovers · 4 years
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Wild Ember
Wild EmberCompanion fic to The Anvil Pairing: Aloy x Erend Rating: M ( albeit in later chapters) Warnings: Graphic Mentions of Violence Summary: Aloy is used to the look in people’s eyes when they regard her. Hatred.Mistrust. Disgust. Sometimes, careful curiosity. Even rarer, cautious friendliness. An unreprehended smile, almost never. The looks have changed since she became a brave, and again after she left the Sacred Lands, but they are never that different. She has a mountain of problems more pressing than helping a drunk Oseram find the murderers of his sister. The search for answers and revenge has driven her out of the Sacred Lands and a sense of urgency she can’t explain yet spurns her on. But there’s something about the grief and fury in his eyes that feels so close to her own, that Aloy can’t turn her back on. There is something else in his eyes she can’t turn away from either. Red stains cover her fingers as she’s ripping out another stalk of wild ember. The sun is just cresting over the mesa, casting a golden shine and the deep, long and soft shadows only found at dawn. The sounds from the waking city have started to drift down from the upper rings, but down here at the village set at the foot of Meridian people have been bustling about for the last half an hour. None of them have payed her much mind while she’s wandered the river shore, gathering herbs and passing the time, and Aloy is glad for it.
Back in the Sacred Lands, nobody had ignored her the way these people do. Back there, people acted like she wasn’t there by claiming loudly that they were not in any way acknowledging or accepting her presence. In her mind, she hears Rost’s voice, telling here they were only abiding the law and protecting themselves from even looking like they were breaking taboo, but the words were barely a comfort back then, and now, the grief and anger feel like Metalburn in her stomach. In Meridian all the attention she got was simply because she was a stranger, maybe a novelty as a traveling Nora, but to most of them she was just… part of the crowd. In a way, it’s like she’s not even here, and she can see how that could be lonely too, but to her it feels like a blessing, like sinking into a cool pond. The image makes her groan a little and she uses her free hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. Even though it is barely dawning, Meridian is already almost too hot for her. Admittedly the Blazon Armor helps, although her bare midriff is still something to get used to. It makes her feel unnecessarily vulnerable, but whenever a cool breeze grazes her skin, she knows it is worth it. The thought of spending the next days in the blazing heat of the desert is less than thrilling her, but she supposes it doesn’t make a difference. Even if she had turned down Erend’s plea, she’d still be baking in the sun for a while. Before she can head to Makers End, she has to make a detour to the Spurflints. She wants to curse her compassion, because she needs answers, but Rost’s last lesson has sunk too deep into her bones. To serve a purpose greater than yourself. Because of Rost, she wanted to kill Olin. Because of Rost, she didn’t. And now, this. Of course she had agreed to find Ersa, once she’d found out there was a chance she might still be alive.
A loud guffaw of laughter echoes down from the Eastern Gate, and Aloy taps her focus. Sure enough, she can see Erend’s familiar broad, purple silhouette flare to life, accompanied by five other people. She watches one of them rub his head as she starts to make her way up the ridge. The slightest bit of unease is buzzing in her stomach. This will be the first time she’s travelling with more than one person, and the fact that she is the outsider, again, is not exactly helping. Not like I’m not used to it. And Erend’s there. The thought gives her a little ease. As blunt and exasperating as he can be, Aloy knows his heart is in the right place, which is the reason she is hear after all. “A guy can remember that Aloy is the only reason we even know Ersa could still be alive, so a guy would do better to shut up!” Erend bellows somewhere on the ridge, and as Aloy’s head rifles through what this might have been the reply to, the unease crawls back. “I thought we were leaving at dawn. Where is she?” Another voice asks. The tone is more casual than exasperated, but Aloy clenches the herbs in her hand harder anyhow. She was here on time. She’d done everything right. She tries for sarcastic instead of angry, but her voice doesn’t completely comply. “At first light is what we agreed upon, I believe. She was here then, but because the rest of you weren’t here, I went down to the river and gathered some herbs in preparation.” At her words, Erend turns around, a look of … relief, she decides, on his face, while the other man, who has apparently spoken, clambers to stand up straight at her sight. A blush spreads across his cheek as another Vanguardsmen steps out between Erend and him, older than both of them, with a seasoned but kind face. At the right moment, he twists just so, and his hammer hits the younger man in the head. Aloy thinks of seeing him rub his head moments ago, and has to suppress a grin. The man bows his head to her, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see Erend watching him. “Apologies, m’am. We ought to have been here sooner, there is no time to lose.” Aloy corrects him and offers up her name. She has no business with titles and politeness, and there is no point in wasting time with them, not when the have a life to save.
Karan, she learns is his name, complies without protest, something that doesn’t happen nearly as much as she’d like, and Aloy decides that she likes him. With him and Erend along, she can do this. She sees him send a look to Erend, who clears his throat awkwardly and starts introducing his men. The one who had asked where she was is called Andrik, he’s one of the slimmer ones of the troop, even though that means little. Apparently all Oseram are sturdier in built, and even Andrik is as broad as the stronger Nora men she has met. She supposes he is good looking, in an obvious way, with dark hair falling around his dark eyes, a small beard at his chin, but Aloy can see a cockiness about him that hides insecurity. Two brothers, Beren and Enoch, both young, dark-skinned and the smallest of the group, one with short cropped curls, the other with a shaved head but both with full beards braided in different styles. Oren, a giant towering above the group with a reddish tint to his skin, a light brown bushy beard and a leather cord wrapped around his bald head. She returns their nods curtly, and turns to look at Erend. This time there is no hesitation as he meets her gaze with clear eyes. He is sober, and she is glad. The need for alcohol seems to be replaced by purpose, and she thinks it’s a good sign that he’s able to quit it when he needs to. With a nod she pushes through them, unsure of what to do other than get on the road. As she passes Andrik she makes a point of pushing the wild ember against his chest, hoping it’s enough to assert her presence, before she leads the group through the gates and up the trail. She forces herself not to look if they follow. As Avad’s Vanguard they have to be good fighters she supposes, but drunks or assassins are different opponents than a herd of machines in the wild. Erend can hold his own, she knows, but he is not exactly quiet either, and if they are going to run into machines— and they will— then Aloy would rather be at the tip of the group, dictating the conditions on which they will fight. The sound of several pairs of heavy steps are encouragement enough for her. She half expects Erend to catch up to her, but no one slips in next to her. It’s a quiet procession due north, and the silence behind her unnerves her. Erend alone usually makes more noise than all of them together right now. She would’ve expected a group of them to be loud, talking, joking, a  drunken road-song or two bellowed across the desert. Maybe she has it wrong, or they suppress their Oseram nature. She wonders if that is because of their positions as Vanguard or because of their dire quest. Aloy’s held out for nearly an hour when she glances over her shoulder in curiosity, wondering what had suddenly managed to stop Erend out of all people from talking. He’s watching his steps, and doesn’t notice her looking at him, apparently lost in thought. Erend seems tense, but she supposes that is to be expected given the purpose of their mission. A mission she hadn’t wanted to be part of, at first. Why should you have justice and not me? With a huff she turns back to the road. It wasn’t like she was really going to deny him her help. It was her own need for revenge and answers that needed fulfillment, that made her turn him down at first, not disregard for him. Erend had been one of the first people to treat her without suspicion or apprehensiveness, even if his personality took some getting used to. Back then, in Mother’s Heart, he’d been brazen and confident, clearly enjoying his status as emissary in such a savage tribe, and maybe she’d have found him off-putting, had it not been for the ease with which he’d calmed the crowd and the easy acceptance with which he’d answered her two dozen questions. Two minutes talking to him and it was easy to see that while his bravado wasn’t as real as he put on, his friendliness was. Only later she’d realized that he’d been flirting a little, too, embarrassed at her own obliviousness. Not that she’d wanted to reciprocate, but it made her keenly aware that where she was sure and experienced in the wilds, she was lost and unpracticed in  society. That was the first time anyone had ever expressed interest in her other than a harsh and rude remark made by a drunk hunter somewhere on the edge of some small village, but she still felt stupid for not understanding what he meant. At first, when she had headed to Meridian, she’d thought that maybe he could mistake her appearing there as an acceptance of his invitation, but Ersa’s seeming murder had  put an end to that before it could begin. He’d been happy to see her, but since then he’d made no further attempt to flirt with her— at least she thought so. The Oseram where so blunt and open, Aloy felt like half the time they were flirting with the whole world for no other purpose than simply because they could. But even completely drunk he hadn’t flirted with her once when she arrived in  Meridian, and nor any other time since then, so maybe he’d lost interest. Or maybe he was not drunk enough to miss the look on her face when he’d greeted her, and knew better than to try.
If she was honest, half of the reason why she didn’t accept his plea at first had been the state she’d found him in. Aloy had tried some liquor she’d wrangled from Karst three summers back, and after a few sips and the following problems with walking straight, decided she didn’t like it. Out in the wilds there was no room for inebriation if you wanted to survive, and the few incidents where she’d met drunken Nora— usually men— had been extremely uncomfortable. A part of her could understand him. There’d been a small part, or rather, there is a small part of her still, that wishes she could just diffuse all the pain, all the anger, all the questions. But it wasn’t an option. Rost never drank.
Your mind is a blade, Aloy, useless if not kept sharp at all times. The weird thing was, despite seeing through his bravado, she’d also thought Erend was capable, and when she’d found him at the gate, she was relieved for a moment, expecting his help. That had turned on its head pretty quickly,  and she’d been disappointed in more than one way. Helping him investigate a battlefield wouldn’t just cost her time, if he was going to be drunk and loud and slow to understand, it would cost her twice, and Aloy couldn’t risk it. Don’t act like this isn’t personal. Don’t make me beg. He didn’t have to. In the end, concerns and causes aside, it hadn’t really been in question. She’d spent hours on her way from the embrace to Meridian helping others, Rost’s last lesson still branded into her mind. Erend was right, and turning him down would’ve been cruel. And the pain and fury in his eyes, not disguised or hidden as if they were a weakness, felt all to familiar to her own. So she’d agreed, albeit reluctantly, but told him that he needed to pull it together if he wanted her help. Aloy had vowed to herself that she’d go to Red Ridge Pass and help him only if he was sober. And he was. His mind wasn’t clear, but this time it was only grief and anger, nothing else that occupied his thoughts, and that was something Aloy understood all too well. He’d surprised her that day, following her step by step, trusting her conclusions, closing the gaps next to her in battle. And then she’d looked around and felt the familiar rush of answers to be found, the thrill of the hunt. It didn’t take her long to piece the signs together, and the moment she realized that Ersa had been abducted, not killed, she’d expected to feel envy, but there was none. There was a rush of victory and satisfaction that she’d been useful, because she knew that without her help, Erend would still be grieving someone who was out there, waiting for him. The look on his face when she’d laid out her theory had erased all her doubts about whether or not she’d wasted time. The thought hurt, but she was only chasing revenge. Erend was chasing someone who could still be saved. So when she came back to Meridian and had her theory confirmed, Avad didn’t need to ask her. She was going anyway. But last night Aloy had slept poorly, ill at ease at the upcoming trip, not knowing what to expect of her companions. Now it looked like there hadn’t been any need to worry, because nobody had spoken to her in the last four hours. Aloy tries to shake the thoughts from her mind, but like flies they keep coming back, settling, itching. She focuses on her feet, on their surroundings, enaging her focus now and then, but they’re still close enough to Meridian that the machines are scattered sparsely before them. Above them the sun bears down on them, and she can feel the sweat in the small of her back and gathering in her hair at the base of her neck. They’ve been walking for hours, and it’s almost noon. They’re slow. With a flinch she thinks back to the basement. I’m faster alone. It was true, but maybe a little cruel too. She hasn’t been to Pitchcliff, but by Erends description it is to the north way past Red Ridge Pass, up in the mountains past the desert. If they keep this pace, it’ll take them a week to get there. A week Ersa might not have. They had passed a herd of Striders earlier, and Aloy had considered to get all of them mounts, but the silence weighed heavy on the back of her mind. If they didn’t talk to her because they thought she was strange and a savage, walking up to them with a bunch of tame machine in her wake would probably not help her image. Maybe that’s why Erend isn’t talking to me. The thought makes her angry and for half a dozen reasons, and she starts to walk faster to blow off some steam. Within minutes she’s out of earshot of the group, hand up on her focus, pretending to scout ahead. It takes half an hour of solid effort to let the anger go. It takes half an hour more to swallow her pride and let herself fall back to Erend, but she knows they need the rest. At the last moment she remembers that he is supposed to lead them, and the way he doubted himself, so she leaves the choice to him. “There’s a small valley between those mountains up ahead where we can rest for a bit. Unless you want to push ahead.” “Something you never do, I’m sure. Do you ever eat?” It’s the first real laugh she’s heard of him all day, and a little of her unease slips away. The way he teases her is no different than usual, so it’s probably just the stress of chasing his sister that keeps him silent. Erend turns around and watches his men for a second, all  of them avoiding her eyes.
Or maybe it’s his men’s opinion of me.
The dread comes back a little. Aloy pushes it down. It’s nothing she hasn’t handled before. “Let’s rest.” With a nod, she turns away, and hurries to the front of the group, where she doesn’t have to see the looks. Just as she’s pondering whether or not she should tell Erend that she will hurry to Pitchcliff alone and scout ahead, she can hear steps picking up behind her.
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garecc · 5 years
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Me: *inventes a character from my characters past that was close to him but sadly died*
My gay brain: hey
Me: no don't fucking do it they are just friends
My gay brain: they were 100% lovers and the reason Larame became so obsessed with immortality was he was obsessed with bringing Andrik back and he knew he wouldn't be able to figure out how to bring him back in his lifetime and Larame never tells anyone jack shit and everyone he knew and trusted when he was a child is dead by now so no one remembers that he ever had a lover that he was serious and not litterally just for offspring and everyone pretty much assumed that he's always been a hermit and even he doesn't know his age and they don't find out until Galaren finds his ashen burnt up body and is like "Cool! A corpse I can reanimate this!" And then Larame screams a lot and-
Me: okay so Larame was aro previous to this why?
My gay fucking brain: because Andrik
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andryuska · 5 years
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“I never got to say goodbye
DEAREST IZOLDRUSHKA,
        i am sorry to have waited so long to write, for as our enemies advance, the mail carriers have been muddled, and did not deliver your letter in until this last monday. i write it with your words before me, having only momentarily removed them from where they are kept in my coat, and hope that you have not grown to anxious waiting, for news of the war must reach our home regularly, and not even the imperial crown could make salvage the ugliness of this conflict. the coming winter threatens our supplies as much as it does the enemies, and there is desperation upon the field when soldiers fight, and i fear that the chaos of it all shall not do well for our army. even for an officer as myself, dangers cannot be avoided. i fear for my safety, and so i have written with the intention to make provisions should the war take me before i can be returned to the comfort of your arms.
       enclosed you will find instructions on the management of the estate, and where deeds of ownership may be found in my study, as well as a list of those whom i would trust with both our lives should the worst befall me, who may provide assistance should you require it. i had written my will before i had left for war a few years ago, and have changed it significantly since: you shall find the proper copy in my study. that, and so many other things, shall fall to you, my love, my most dear companion.
           the books, in particular, are yours. each carries hours of discussion and thought and wonder, and those in my study are those for which i had the greatest fondness.i have at times watched you while you have read, and found rapture in the gentleness you have for those pages, and in the care you take for every word upon them, and i hope that you shall find, in my most favored books, all the beauty that we did not have time to share. as well, i hope you might find it in yourself to remember me, and to smile, if ever you read them. i would have smiled to have been there, to have heard your thoughts, to have basked in the beauty of your voice as you shared them, and to have argued and discussed at length at every idea all through the night, if only to be able to remain in your company. in these long hours at war, i have missed such days more profoundly than i would have thought possible.
          and i have missed you even more still. i shall not tell you of the nights when i lay awake, and miss the feeling of your arms around me in my sleep, and how gently you would kiss my shoulders and my hands. i will admit only that sleep has eluded me, on account of the cold that seeps into my barren bed when you are not there to warm it.
           my dear sister marya, though she may not have always been kind to you, have sent me with a promise that she will help you in whatever ways she is able, and i hope you will accept her kindness. i am not sure my family will be of much comfort, but i only hope that are not lonely. you, and all the good that you hold, which you do not even know, and which i see in you with every glance we share, do not deserve such loneliness. and though i wish i could promise to return to you, and to alleviate this myself, there is little to be done.
           all the arrangements for the home and for money ( most of which has been left to you ) have been made, and so i must request of you one most significant thing. should this war take me, and i think that it might, i am afraid that it might, then i want nothing more than for you to find yourself some other happiness. i do not know if this will be in the arms of another, or in books, or in the natural world for which we both shared an appreciation, but please, if you heed no other part of this letter, heed this. find happiness, and cling to it so fiercely that nothing will pry your arms from it. i have spent much of my life brooding in my own misery, and only when i found you, hidden away in a marriage i never expected to bring me so much joy, did i remember that there could be some bliss in living. only in your presence could i remember why my heart was beating, and though i cannot now promise that it will continue on, i can, if nothing else, attempt to implore you to find something of the same. i do not know if i ever brought you the same happiness that you brought me, and nor shall i ever, i imagine, but if not, then find something. please, for my sake, find yourself something that will allow you to be happy.
           my candle has burned low, and soon i shall be require to wake my soldiers, and to begin attending their duties for the day. when the sun rises, i shall think of the mornings we shared, watching that same sun through the window in my bedroom, and i shall touch the back of my neck, where you had so tenderly kissed me. it will be but a memory, nothing to the love in those moments, but it shall remind me of you, and in this dreary world, where mud and snow coat still worse horrors, that is enough.
          you have been so dear to me, and so beloved, and i shall remember you with my dying breaths, in the likelihood that they soon befall me. know that, in my own way, i have loved you, i have loved you with all that this weak heart could have offered. i shall die regretting that i could never find the bravery to tell you directly. forgive me, my dear.
                with love, your andrik.
send “ i never got to say goodbye ” for the last letter my muse left yours before they died  //  @intoxicatiing​
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sho-coach · 4 years
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𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 I curate my time carefully. Why? Because I have a lot of dreams and I want them all to come true. But on top of that, I want to be able to take care of myself as I want. I want alone time, I want to watch TV, workout, creative time, fun time. In short, I need and want time to do all of that. That's why I am super careful with my time. I don't have time to waste and I don't want to waste time. This is why I am very particular about how and with whom I spend my time. Especially the latter because not everyone is so time conscious. In fact, most people squander time. So how do I curate my time? I think carefully if I want to give my time to something or someone. This comes down to mindset. The word "give" implies that you in control of your time, that it is yours to give. This is opposed to "somebody taking up your time". This kind of thinking empowers but most people think of time as something they don't have control over. Realize that time is yours to give. Every day you are given a set amount of time, who are you going to give it to? What are you going to do with it? Take bake your time. Choose consciously. What do you think are your biggest time eaters and what can you do about it? Image by: Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash #time #metime #entrepreneurlife #focus (at Holland, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9PebQVpCAW/?igshid=14lg8nyiispic
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kinsale42-blog · 6 years
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Excerpt: Amplification
The sequel to “Illumination” (PG-13 for some violence)
Khadgar/Kinsale, also starring Kalec, Thalyssra, Silgryn, & Oculeth, among others seen during the campaign for Suramar
 A mild breeze was blowing in off the sea, making the awnings and pennants in the city of Suramar flutter gracefully. The scraggy clifftop cypress tree in which the lone raven perched shifted from side to side. His overlook was too good to abandon for a more stable perch, so he merely dug his talons a little deeper into the branch.
 Khadgar had a dozen or so of these watchposts around the perimeter of the city. He generally used them to keep an eye on the level of demonic activity as the Burning Legion patrolled the streets and abused the citizens. He dared not enter the city himself just yet. Too much had yet to be done before he risked getting too close to where he was sure Gul'dan was waiting.
 Thus he was reduced to surveillance, forced to send others out to help build the resistance with the Nightborne exiles. Life had almost been simpler when he could be in the midst of the battle himself, where his primary decisions involved which orc to strike and how much magic he could safely use and still remain alive. He knew some members of the Kirin Tor were truly in their element in this sort of environment, but it wasn't his game. Khadgar had always been driven to acquire knowledge, and to know what was going on around him, but he was too straightforward for political maneuvering and meddling in the affairs of kingdoms. Espionage and intrigue frustrated him, and he knew that dealing in secrets only fed the belief that wizards were masterminds bent on shaping the world to their will.
 The breeze ruffled his raven feathers again. He couldn't stay much longer here, watching. There were other things that needed his attention, other things that troubled him about this war and the paths that had been hastily chosen to protect and defend his home world.
 He peered down into the Waning Crescent district. Fel flames still licked the corpses of civilians that had fallen when Elisande and her Legion allies had attempted to destroy the urban hub of the resistance. From his vantage point, he had a clear view of the bridge into Evermoon Market, and the citizens and patrolling guards that crossed it. As he watched, he thought he saw a flash of light as a face turned in his direction, a face with the pale violet skin of a Nightborne elf but with a faint shimmer that suggested the outline of an illusion. Even with his magically-enhanced vision, he could not be entirely certain he saw what he thought he saw, but the warmth that filled his raven breast was all he needed to be sure. He released his grip on the tree branch and sailed back to the spires of Dalaran.
 ***
 Khadgar took a deep breath as he felt the vision world coalesce around him. It had been a long time since his last foray into the past but the sensation of displacement was still all too familiar. The mountain air chilled him and frost was already hardening on the ground as the Alterac midnight took shape. A great spruce tree towered over him, draping him in deep shadow. The farmhouse and workshop that stood in a clearing before him were dark and silent in the moonlight, yet it seemed from the order in the yard that the residents had only stepped away a moment before.
 Had he timed this right? There had been a certain amount of guesswork involved in pinpointing the exact moment in question, even though he was in possession of enough of the key details to enable a defined target. A stealthy movement at the edge of the clearing caught his eye, and he saw two slight figures, one a little larger than the other, emerge from the shadows and race across the yard to the house. Yes, this was what he had hoped to see. He stood beneath his tree and waited for the figures to re-emerge.
 There was the glow of a spark and then the steady dim light of a candle flame shone through the front windows. It only lasted a few minutes, just long enough for the children to locate what they sought in the darkness of the abandoned homestead. The flame vanished, and Khadgar kept his eyes on the door. It opened soundlessly and the taller figure, who Khadgar knew to be a boy of fifteen, stepped out carrying a long narrow object. The moonlight glinted off the hilt of a sword. The smaller figure, though still tall for her twelve years, followed her brother out and closed the door behind her. She clutched something to her chest.
 The boy pointed off towards the woods in the direction they had come. Together they began to move that way, but as they reached the gate that stood open to the western forest, the boy paused and looked around. Khadgar heard muffled hoofbeats behind him and turned to see two mounted men approaching the stead from the south, keeping to the grassy verge of the road to stay quiet in the still night air.
 "Over here!" the boy cried out and waved his arm at the horsemen. The girl stopped like a startled deer, halfway to the shelter of the trees. As the riders passed Khadgar's vantage point, they picked up speed. Their dark leather armor and face masks hid their identities but the daggers they carried revealed their purpose. One of the riders went for the boy with the sword, reaching down and hauling him up onto the horse. The other pulled out something dark and apparently heavy from beneath his cloak and swung it at the girl as he swept by. Khadgar could hear the sickening thud as it made contact with her skull and she flew backwards to land in a twisted heap. He felt his heart wrench inside him, though he knew the outcome of this night would not be as tragic as it appeared.
 The dark riders vanished into the forest behind the buildings and the clearing fell silent and still once more. The shade that was Khadgar's vision form ran over to where twelve-year-old Kinsale lay in the frozen grass, and knelt at her side. Yes, her chest was still moving and the warmth of her breath was still just visible in the cold air. Her grandfather's libram, his holy prayer book, had fallen from her as she was knocked back, but her arm had been flung in that direction as well, and her fingertips just rested upon its edge. As he watched, a subdued glimmer appeared at that point of contact. For a moment he thought his eyes were playing tricks, that the moonlight was reflecting off the tooled and embossed cover of the tome. The light gathered strength, though, and soon the entire libram was aglow, and then the slender arm of the girl. Then her entire body was wrapped in the warmth of holy light, and a narrow but radiant pillar rose up from her into the sky above.
 Even as one who had spent years in the company of the na'aru, Khadgar felt awe at the power of the blessing he was witnessing. Then, in the reverse of how the vision had begun, the world began to disintegrate around him and he was back in his own time, in his private workroom in Dalaran. The image of the girl in the pillar of light remained burned in his mind.
 He had gotten the answers he'd wanted, which almost surprised him. His skill at targeting intentional visions had improved immensely over the years, but it was still an unpredictable process, and it was never certain that even seeing what he wanted to see would give him the information he needed. He sat down at his work table and closed his eyes, going over the scene one more time to be sure he hadn't missed any detail. Then he raised his hand and sent a finding spell to retrieve a record from his bookshelves. It wasn't even a minute before the tome he needed slid off the shelf and landed in his hand.
 Khadgar's eyes opened, the blue of his irises intensely bright as he began thumbing through the pages of      A History Of The Syndicate, As Reported By One Who Was There In The Beginning    . In his mind he could hear Kinsale's voice as he remembered the conversation that had started him on this quest for knowledge.
     "I miss my grandfather the most, the knight who became a healer, even though I was very small when he died," she said. "That's why we went back for his things, my brother and I...at least, that was my reason. Sometimes I'm not so sure about my brother."  
     "What do you mean? Why not?"  
     Kinsale replied, "Sometimes I have this dream, and it's that night. I remember feeling very cold except where I was carrying Grandfather's libram. And I hear my brother call out, 'Over here!' so I turn to run to him and then something hits me. That's when I wake up, every time." She paused. "But a few years ago, I thought, what if it wasn't me he was calling to? He had wanted Grandfather's sword so badly and I never understood why. And he'd been so angry since our father had rebelled against Perenolde and been executed for it. I just wonder... Was he running away?"  
 She had looked away, but Khadgar had seen the tears forming in her eyes. He'd heard the unspoken question. If her brother had left her intentionally, why had he left her for dead?
 His eyes caught the name he was watching for as he scanned the pages of the history: Andrik, recruited to the "cause" as a boy, not long after the founding of the organization. He only seemed to be mentioned at all because of the fine sword he had brought with him, a sword that had belonged to a knight of Lordaeron. Interestingly enough, the name of the knight had been recorded as well: Tursten of Tirisfal.
 Khadgar reached for a fresh leaf of the inexpensive and quickly-produced paper that he had shipped into Dalaran by the boatload from Pandaria, and rapidly filled it with notes on references and ideas for further research. He wished he didn't have to break away just now, but he was due at a meeting with Archmage Senach and the Tirisgarde regarding a crucial investigation, so he could not be late. He slid the sheet of notes into the history of the Syndicate and closed the cover, resolving to return to it as soon as he was able.
 ***
 As night descended upon Suramar, and the lamps and lanterns of the city began to glow, Kinsale slipped into a tiny confectioner's shop tucked away in a narrow alley. She nodded at the proprietor and climbed the stairs to the loft above. It was a only a matter of minutes before her Dusk Lily contact joined her.
 In a low voice, he gave her the instructions he had been sent to give her regarding her mission. "There is a round building at the very southeastern tip of Evermoon Terrace. At the base of it, you will find a translocation pad that will transport you to the top floor. You will receive more detailed information there."
 Kinsale nodded at the elf. "I know the area. I will find it. Thank you."
 "And take care," he cautioned. "The patrols are numerous tonight." He waited as she left the building, making sure no attention was drawn to the shop for the sake of the proprietor.
 Kinsale carefully threaded her way through the district, alert for the vigilant guards who would see through the illusion that disguised her as one of the common folk of Suramar. They did not take kindly to outlanders wandering their streets, especially since the grip of the Legion had taken hold. It was a strong enough spell to ensure her safe passage among those who did not look too closely, and she did not fear for her safety in most of the western part of the city. Still, she was cautious enough to prefer darkness to illumination and to put market stalls or shrubbery between her and patrolling guards whenever possible.
 At last, the short round tower she sought came into view, the translocation pad in front just visible by its blue glow against the stone paving. Two elite guards stood nearby, animatedly discussing something that Kinsale could not hear. The minutes ticked by as she waited just around the corner of the building on the north side of the small plaza, a conical cypress tree casting its protective shadow over her. She considered her target and the obstacles before her. She could just walk purposefully over to the translocation pad and hope that the guards didn't notice or didn't find her to be unusual in any way, but the plaza was well lit, and she didn't want to risk the safety of the house or the people inside by drawing too much attention or causing suspicion. Her lips pressed together in a thin line as she waited, frustrated by her lack of options.
 After another few minutes, the guards appeared to reach some sort of agreement, and moved away in separate directions. Kinsale held her breath as one approached her location but then passed her by at a safe distance, without a glance in her direction. When she judged they were both at last far enough away, she made for the translocator and teleported up into the building to find Silgryn waiting for her.
 He set aside the parchment he had been reading, and turned to greet her. "Good evening to you, Highlord," he said. "I have some news from our friends outside the city. Your presence is requested there -- Thalyssra herself has an important mission for you." Silgryn shifted a decorative screen to reveal a channeled portal and the device that was maintaining it. "And Oculeth has provided for your transportation."
 "Thank you, Silgryn," said Kinsale. "Light go with you always." Silgryn nodded in acknowledgement, and she stepped through the portal to find herself in the underground refuge of Shal'Aran.
finish the story at http://archiveofourown.org/works/9674912
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bebewrites · 4 years
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character intro: arden val’doren
“It’s kind of beautiful,” Arden said as she gazed through the window. “You know, if you ignore the ruins and abandoned villages and block out the dark, swirling tendrils of the Night Veil in the background.”
Arden. The one thing Asher did not think to factor into his scheming, and the one that probably should have come first before anything else. How long she’d been spying on their midnight meetings, he hadn’t asked. He’d been surprised and also not surprised in the slightest when she’d stumbled out from behind a pile of supplies in the back of the caravan after they’d made it safely through the Deadlands.
“You can stop glaring at me, Ash. It’s not going to change my being here,” she said sharply. 
He hadn’t realized he was doing it. “But it makes me feel better.”
“I want to save mother just as much as you do,” she said, crossing her arms. Then she glared at him. “You were just going to leave me there. To sit and do nothing and watch her die.”
Asher had felt the same, which was indeed why he had taken matters into his own hands.
“How would you feel if Andrik had snuck off on a secret mission to save mother and all of Anveria without you?”
Asher cut her a pointed glance. “Andrik? Our brother Andrik? That would require him to take precious time away from deciding which asscheek he prefers to put weight on while practicing how to sit on the throne.”
more about my girl Arden under the cut :)
[page · tag · psd · images] 
some fun facts about Arden Val’Doren!
She’s Asher’s half-sister (same mom, different dads) and she’s mixed race. At nineteen years old, she’s the youngest of the three royal siblings. (Andrik is the oldest and the crown prince.)
(Asher’s father died shortly after he was born. His mother spearheaded relief efforts for fury attacks along the Anveria/Elismare border and the king wanted to work with her. A couple years later they got married.)
Arden and Asher share a passion for adventure and knowledge. Where Asher is able to apply this directly to his everyday life, Arden takes to books. As a princess, she has a different set of responsibilities than Asher, although she has always longed to go with him.
She’s bisexual, but she’s never told anyone. Asher and Arden are closer to each other than they are with their older brother, so Asher figures it out. But he hasn’t told her and she doesn’t know he knows. She really wants to tell him, and he just wants her to be comfortable enough to say it if/when she’s ready or never at all.
Magic has been banned for almost a century at the beginning of TNV, but because of Arden’s fierce love of books and learning absolutely everything and especially things she’s not supposed to know, she ends up knowing more about magic and its history than most of the people left in Elismare.
She’s a huge animal lover! When she’s not researching the cure or how to break the curse, she spends time in the stables and attempting to win over Vega’s teacup dragon, Zazz. (This is how she + Vega initially bond. Vega is immediately smitten.)
She isn’t supposed to be on Asher’s secret mission to Elismare. She overhears his plan and sneaks into his caravan. He has no idea she’s there until they’re all screaming and trying to get across the Deadlands before the Night Veil reappears at dawn.
As two women who snuck off to fight in a war, Everly and Vega are super impressed by this later on.
She desperately wants to learn how to fight, at least to defend herself. Anveria isn’t as progressive as Elismare, and as a princess, her father refuses to allow it and gives her lots of guards when she needs them instead. Asher’s taught her a couple tricks and even gifts her a dagger under the guise of it being an “ornamental artifact”  he received from some exotic foreign kingdom she’s pretty sure he made up. She begs Everly and Vega to teach her, so Everly conveniently delegates to Vega.
Cue Vega teaching Arden swords and archery:  Arden: is this how you hold it? Vega: *has to put her arms around Arden to reposition* Vega: *sweats* Everly: *smirks in the distance*
I think that’s it for now! 
(zendaya images are from her new lancôme commercial, hopefully this passes for image credit 😅)
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whumpkitty · 3 years
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“I love you”
Decided to start posting my mafia boyfriends to Tumblr yay. They’ve got fluff and angst and it’s all mixed up in one big mess, but they’re fun and I love them.
TWs: N/A Timeframe: Somewhere in their late teens, just before they move to the city
“Come on Andi, what are you doing?”
Danika’s laughing voice rang through the air, reaching Andrik’s ears and painting a smile onto his face. He ran the rest of the way up the hill to where the other boy was standing and tackled him in a hug. Danika overbalanced with a yelp and the pair fell backwards, soft grass cushioning them as they rolled a little bit, coming to a stop with Andrik laying over Danika. He propped himself up on his arms, grinning down at his sweetheart, messy hair and grass stains on both their faces.
“Just admiring the view,” he dipped down to press a kiss to Danika’s lips. Andrik broke it off a few moments later, grinning widely at the flustered pout on the other’s face and laughing brightly. Danika broke out in a responding smile and pushed Andrik off with a huff.
“Oh stop it you idiot,” there was no bite behind the affectionate words and Andrik flopped onto his back next to the other boy with a breathy giggle, propping his head up on one hand and smirking.
“You know you love it when I surprise you like that Dani, don’t try to say otherwise.”
Danika just shook his head, blush dusting his cheeks and eyes sparkling. He sat up in the grass and leaned back on his hands, tilting his head to the breeze and closing his eyes.
“It’s so nice up here, isn’t it?” Andrik nodded, brushing his hand through some grass and picking a few wildflowers growing near them.
“Made a thousand times more so by you being here sunshine.”
Danika raised an eyebrow at him and giggled. “You are terribly cheesy, you know that?”
“Why thank you, it’s my specialty,” he grinned and swept an arm out to the side in a mock bow. “But it is always very nice, it’s why we’re up here so often, isn’t it?” Andrik copied Danika’s expression. “Why do you ask?”
“I dunno,” he sighed. “I suppose I’m just in a bit of a sentimental mood today,” he stayed quiet for a few minutes longer. He drew his legs up to his chest and set his chin down on them before asking quietly, “How did you know you were in love with me?”
Andrik looked up at him, surprised. “What?”
“It’s just been on my mind for a while. I don’t doubt what we have at all, I love you to the stars and back and I know you feel the same about me but I just… wondered.”
Andrik thought the question over for a few moments, shrugging slightly and smirking. “Must have been our incredibly smooth first meeting that just had me falling absolutely head over heels for you,” he broke off sniggering and dropped onto his back.
Danika turned to face his boyfriend, a vaguely annoyed look on his face. “Andrik, please be serious for a moment, I want to know, honestly.”
Andrik sighed and rolled over, grabbing Danika by the arm and pulling him down into the grass, the other giving a small squeak of surprise and glaring lightly at Andrik.
“Andrik-”
He leaned over his boyfriend, cutting his exasperated voice off with a gentle kiss that had Danika blushing despite his frown.
“You want honesty? I knew from the moment that I first saw you Danika, and I knew it from the way your eyes mirrored mine. We fit together, we’re made to match, and I can’t explain beyond that.”
Danika sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. When he opened them again he was smiling softly and he raised a hand to cup Andrik’s face.
“You mushy romantic idiot, have I ever told you how much I love you?” Andrik grinned down at him.
“You could always stand to say it again sweetheart.”
Danika shook his head again, laughing and wrapped his arms around Andrik’s neck, returning his kiss.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
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liesandarbor · 7 years
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Every mention of “obsidian” and “dragonglass” in the books.
Happy Friday Thrones and ASOIAF fans! With all of the talk of obsidian, dragonglass and the great war to come this season, I gathered an ultra post of every mention in ASOIAF text of Dragonglass and Obsidian (BONUS: and some ‘black oily structures’).  There’s a little crossover in a few of the quotes!
Let’s jump to them at the cut.
Every mention of “Dragonglass” in the books:
 "Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something." He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads. Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the table. "Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand. "Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian." "And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm and bound them tight with long strips of linen. Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He thought it beautiful. "Can I keep one?" "As you wish," the maester said. "I want one too," Rickon said. "I want four. I'm four."  Luwin made him count them out. "Careful, they're still sharp. Don't cut yourself." "Tell me about the children," Bran said. It was important. A Game of Thrones - Bran VII
 The next day two of them came together to audience; the Greatjon's uncles, blustery men in the winter of their days with beards as white as the bearskin cloaks they wore. A crow had once taken Mors for dead and pecked out his eye, so he wore a chunk of dragonglass in its stead. As Old Nan told the tale, he'd grabbed the crow in his fist and bitten its head off, so they named him Crowfood. She would never tell Bran why his gaunt brother Hother was called Whoresbane.
 A Clash of Kings - Bran II
 A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .
Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an auroch's horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall, and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black.
A Clash of Kings - Jon IV
 "This Andrik may be a great fighter, but men do not fear him as they fear you." "Aye, that's so," Dagmer said. The fingers curled around the drinking horn were heavy with rings, gold and silver and bronze, set with chunks of sapphire and garnet and dragonglass. He had paid the iron price for every one, Theon knew.
A Clash of Kings - Theon III
 Trader captains brought lace from Myr, chests of saffron from Yi Ti, amber and dragonglass out of Asshai. Merchants offered bags of coin, silversmiths rings and chains. Pipers piped for her, tumblers tumbled, and jugglers juggled, while dyers draped her in colors she had never known existed. A pair of Jogos Nhai presented her with one of their striped zorses, black and white and fierce. 
A Clash of Kings - Daenerys III
"A fine trick," announced Jhogo with admiration. "No trick," a woman said in the Common Tongue. Dany had not noticed Quaithe in the crowd, yet there she stood, eyes wet and shiny behind the implacable red lacquer mask. "What mean you, my lady?"
"Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets."
Dany looked uneasily at where the ladder had stood. Even the smoke was gone now, and the crowd was breaking up, each man going about his business. In a moment more than a few would find their purses flat and empty. "And now?"
A Clash of Kings - Daenerys III
 Sam came puffing up as Jon crossed the camp. Under the black hood his face was as pale and round as the moon. "I heard the horn. Has your uncle come back?" "It's only the men from the Shadow Tower." It was growing harder to cling to the hope of Benjen Stark's safe return. The cloak he had found beneath the Fist could well have belonged to his uncle or one of his men, even the Old Bear admitted as much, though why they would have buried it there, wrapped around the cache of dragonglass, no one could say. "Sam, I have to go."
A Clash of Kings - Jon V
 Jon slid his new dagger from its sheath and studied the flames as they played against the shiny black glass. He had fashioned the wooden hilt himself, and wound hempen twine around it to make a grip. Ugly, but it served. Dolorous Edd opined that glass knives were about as useful as nipples on a knight's breastplate, but Jon was not so certain. The dragonglass blade was sharper than steel, albeit far more brittle. It must have been buried for a reason.
A Clash of Kings - Jon V
 Every fourth or fifth step he had to reach down and tug up his swordbelt. He had lost the sword on the Fist, but the scabbard still weighed down the belt. He did have two knives; the dragonglass dagger Jon had given him and the steel one he cut his meat with. All that weight dragged heavy, and his belly was so big and round that if he forgot to tug the belt slipped right off and tangled round his ankles, no matter how tight he cinched it. He had tried belting it above his belly once, but then it came almost to his armpits. Grenn had laughed himself sick at the sight of it, and Dolorous Edd had said, "I knew a man once who wore his sword on a chain around his neck like that. One day he stumbled, and the hilt went up his nose."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell I
 His duty done, he finished dressing with clumsy, frightened fingers, donning his cap and surcoat and hooded cloak and buckling on his swordbelt, buckling it real tight so it wouldn't fall down. Then he found his pack and stuffed all his things inside, spare smallclothes and dry socks, the dragonglass arrowheads and spearhead Jon had given him and the old horn too, his parchments, inks, and quills, the maps he'd been drawing, and a rock-hard garlic sausage he'd been saving since the Wall. He tied it all up and shouldered the pack onto his back. The Lord Commander said I wasn't to rush to the ringwall, he recalled, but he said I shouldn't come running to him either. Sam took a deep breath and realized that he did not know what to do next.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell I
 When he opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.
Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."
"Obsidian." Sam struggled to his knees. "Dragonglass, they call it. Dragonglass. Dragon glass." He giggled, and cried, and doubled over to heave his courage out onto the snow.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell I
 "Why can't I just be Samwell Tarly?" He sat down heavily on a wet log that Grenn had yet to split. "It was the dragonglass that slew it. Not me, the dragonglass."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 But Dywen listened, and Dolorous Edd, and they made Sam and Grenn tell the Lord Commander. Mormont frowned all through the tale and asked pointed questions, but he was too cautious a man to shun any possible advantage. He asked Sam for all the dragonglass in his pack, though that was little enough. Whenever Sam thought of the cache Jon had found buried beneath the Fist, it made him want to cry. There'd been dagger blades and spearheads, and two or three hundred arrowheads at least. Jon had made daggers for himself, Sam, and Lord Commander Mormont, and he'd given Sam a spearhead, an old broken horn, and some arrowheads. Grenn had taken a handful of arrowheads as well, but that was all.
So now all they had was Mormont's dagger and the one Sam had given Grenn, plus nineteen arrows and a tall hardwood spear with a black dragonglass head. The sentries passed the spear along from watch to watch, while Mormont had divided the arrows among his best bowmen. Muttering Bill, Garth Greyfeather, Ronnel Harclay, Sweet Donnel Hill, and Alan of Rosby had three apiece, and Ulmer had four. But even if they made every shaft tell, they'd soon be down to fire arrows like all the rest. They had loosed hundreds of fire arrows on the Fist, yet still the wights kept coming.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 "Yes," said Sam, "but is it the cold that brings the wights, or the wights that bring the cold?"
"Who cares?" Grenn's axe sent wood chips flying. "They come together, that's what matters. Hey, now that we know that dragonglass kills them, maybe they won't come at all. Maybe they're frightened of us now!"
Sam wished he could believe that, but it seemed to him that when you were dead, fear had no more meaning than pain or love or duty. He wrapped his hands around his legs, sweating under his layers of wool and leather and fur. The dragonglass dagger had melted the pale thing in the woods, true . . . but Grenn was talking like it would do the same to the wights. We don't know that, he thought. We don't know anything, really. I wish Jon was here. He liked Grenn, but he couldn't talk to him the same way. Jon wouldn't call me Slayer, I know. And I could talk to him about Gilly's baby. Jon had ridden off with Qhorin Halfhand, though, and they'd had no word of him since. He had a dragonglass dagger too, but did he think to use it? Is he lying dead and frozen in some ravine . . . or worse, is he dead and walking?
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 Lord Commander Mormont gave him a withering look. "You are a man of the Night's Watch. Try not to soil your smallclothes every time I look at you. Come, I said." His boots made squishing sounds in the mud, and Sam had to hurry to keep up. "I've been thinking about this dragonglass of yours."
"It's not mine," Sam said.
"Jon Snow's dragonglass, then. If dragonglass daggers are what we need, why do we have only two of them? Every man on the Wall should be armed with one the day he says his words."
"We never knew . . ."
"We never knew! But we must have known once. The Night's Watch has forgotten its true purpose, Tarly. You don't build a wall seven hundred feet high to keep savages in skins from stealing women. The Wall was made to guard the realms of men . . . and not against other men, which is all the wildlings are when you come right down to it. Too many years, Tarly, too many hundreds and thousands of years. We lost sight of the true enemy. And now he's here, but we don't know how to fight him. Is dragonglass made by dragons, as the smallfolk like to say?"
"The m-maesters think not," Sam stammered. "The maesters say it comes from the fires of the earth. They call it obsidian."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 Sam stumbled. “Jon found more, on the Fist. Hundreds of arrowheads, spearheads as well . . .” “So you said. Small good it does us there. To reach the Fist again we’d need to be armed with the weapons we won’t have until we reach the bloody Fist. And there are still the wildlings to deal with. We need to find dragonglass someplace else.” Sam had almost forgotten about the wildlings, so much had happened since. “The children of the forest used dragonglass blades,” he said. “They’d know where to find obsidian.” “The children of the forest are all dead,” said Mormont. “The First Men killed half of them with bronze blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron. Why a glass dagger should—” The Old Bear broke off as Craster emerged from between the deerhide flaps of his door. The wildling smiled, revealing a mouth of brown rotten teeth. “I have a son.”
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 "Tell them what, my lord?" Sam asked politely.
"All. The Fist. The wildlings. Dragonglass. This. All." His breathing was very shallow now, his voice a whisper. "Tell my son. Jorah. Tell him, take the black. My wish. Dying wish."
"Wish?" The raven cocked its head, beady black eyes shining. "Corn?" the bird asked.
"No corn," said Mormont feebly. "Tell Jorah. Forgive him. My son. Please. Go."
"It's too far," said Sam. "I'll never reach the Wall, my lord." He was so very tired. All he wanted was to sleep, to sleep and sleep and never wake, and he knew that if he just stayed here soon enough Dirk or Ollo Lophand or Clubfoot Karl would get angry with him and grant his wish, just to see him die. "I'd sooner stay with you. See, I'm not frightened anymore. Of you, or . . . of anything."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 "You—" she started.
"I have the knife. The dragonglass dagger." He fumbled it out as he got to his feet. He'd given the first knife to Grenn, but thankfully he'd remembered to take Lord Mormont's dagger before fleeing Craster's Keep. He clutched it tight, moving away from the fire, away from Gilly and the babe. "Paul?" He meant to sound brave, but it came out in a squeak. "Small Paul. Do you know me? I'm Sam, fat Sam, Sam the Scared, you saved me in the woods. You carried me when I couldn't walk another step. No one else could have done that, but you did." Sam backed away, knife in hand, sniveling. I am such a coward. "Don't hurt us, Paul. Please. Why would you want to hurt us?"
Gilly scrabbled backward across the hard dirt floor. The wight turned his head to look at her, but Sam shouted "NO!" and he turned back. The raven on his shoulder ripped a strip of flesh from his pale ruined cheek. Sam held the dagger before him, breathing like a blacksmith's bellows. Across the longhall, Gilly reached the garron. Gods give me courage, Sam prayed. For once, give me a little courage. Just long enough for her to get away.
Small Paul moved toward him. Sam backed off until he came up against a rough log wall. He clutched the dagger with both hands to hold it steady. The wight did not seem to fear the dragonglass. Perhaps he did not know what it was. He moved slowly, but Small Paul had never been quick even when he'd been alive. Behind him, Gilly murmured to calm the garron and tried to urge it toward the door. But the horse must have caught a whiff of the wight's queer cold scent. Suddenly she balked, rearing, her hooves lashing at the frosty air. Paul swung toward the sound, and seemed to lose all interest in Sam.
There was no time to think or pray or be afraid. Samwell Tarly threw himself forward and plunged the dagger down into Small Paul's back. Half-turned, the wight never saw him coming. The raven gave a shriek and took to the air. "You're dead!" Sam screamed as he stabbed. "You're dead, you're dead." He stabbed and screamed, again and again, tearing huge rents in Paul's heavy black cloak. Shards of dragonglass flew everywhere as the blade shattered on the iron mail beneath the wool.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell III
 "Sam?"
Grenn looked away. "He killed one of the Others, Jon. I saw it. He stabbed him with that dragonglass knife you made him, and we started calling him Sam the Slayer. He hated that."
Sam the Slayer. Jon could hardly imagine a less likely warrior than Sam Tarly. "What happened to him?"
A Storm of Swords - Jon VI
 Ser Ilyn bowed before the king and queen, reached back over his shoulder, and drew forth six feet of ornate silver bright with runes. He knelt to offer the huge blade to Joffrey, hilt first; points of red fire winked from ruby eyes on the pommel, a chunk of dragonglass carved in the shape of a grinning skull.
Sansa stirred in her seat. "What sword is that?"  Tyrion's eyes still stung from the wine. He blinked and looked again. Ser Ilyn's greatsword was as long and wide as Ice, but it was too silvery bright; Valyrian steel had a darkness to it, a smokiness in its soul. Sansa clutched his arm. "What has Ser Ilyn done with my father's sword?"
I should have sent Ice back to Robb Stark, Tyrion thought. He glanced at his father, but Lord Tywin was watching the king.
A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VIII
  "And Sam the Slayer," said Grenn. "You slew an Other."
"It was the dragonglass that killed it," Sam told him for the hundredth time.
"A lord's son, the maester's steward, and Sam the Slayer," Pyp mused. "You could talk to them, might be . . ."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell IV
 Stannis snorted. "I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark as well. Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would doubt his honor or his honesty. You have his look." A big man, Stannis Baratheon towered over Jon, but he was so gaunt that he looked ten years older than he was. "I know more than you might think, Jon Snow. I know it was you who found the dragonglass dagger that Randyll Tarly's son used to slay the Other."
"Ghost found it. The blade was wrapped in a ranger's cloak and buried beneath the Fist of the First Men. There were other blades as well . . . spearheads, arrowheads, all dragonglass."
"Ghost found it. The blade was wrapped in a ranger's cloak and buried beneath the Fist of the First Men. There were other blades as well . . . spearheads, arrowheads, all dragonglass."
"I know you held the gate here," King Stannis said. "If not, I would have come too late."
A Storm of Swords - Jon XI
 King Stannis gazed off north again, his gold cloak streaming from his shoulders. "It may be that I am mistaken in you, Jon Snow. We both know the things that are said of bastards. You may lack your father's honor, or your brother's skill in arms. But you are the weapon the Lord has given me. I have found you here, as you found the cache of dragonglass beneath the Fist, and I mean to make use of you. Even Azor Ahai did not win his war alone. I killed a thousand wildlings, took another thousand captive, and scattered the rest, but we both know they will return. Melisandre has seen that in her fires. This Tormund Thunderfist is likely re-forming them even now, and planning some new assault. And the more we bleed each other, the weaker we shall all be when the real enemy falls upon us."
A Storm of Swords - Jon XI
 "Y-yes, Your Grace. Jon Snow gave it to me."
"Dragonglass." The red woman's laugh was music. "Frozen fire, in the tongue of old Valyria. Small wonder it is anathema to these cold children of the Other."
"On Dragonstone, where I had my seat, there is much of this obsidian to be seen in the old tunnels beneath the mountain," the king told Sam. "Chunks of it, boulders, ledges. The great part of it was black, as I recall, but there was some green as well, some red, even purple. I have sent word to Ser Rolland my castellan to begin mining it. I will not hold Dragonstone for very much longer, I fear, but perhaps the Lord of Light shall grant us enough frozen fire to arm ourselves against these creatures, before the castle falls."
Sam cleared his throat. "S-sire. The dagger . . . the dragonglass only shattered when I tried to stab a wight."
Melisandre smiled. "Necromancy animates these wights, yet they are still only dead flesh. Steel and fire will serve for them. The ones you call the Others are something more."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell V
 "Sam the Slayer!" he said, by way of greeting. "Are you sure you stabbed an Other, and not some child's snow knight?"
This isn't starting well. "It was the dragonglass that killed it, my lord," Sam explained feebly.
"Aye, no doubt. Well, out with it, Slayer. Did the maester send you to me?"
A Storm of Swords - Samwell V
 He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger . . . he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought.
A Storm of Swords - Jon XII
 Armen crossed his arms. "Obsidian does not burn."
"Dragonglass," Pate said. "The smallfolk call it dragonglass." Somehow that seemed important.
"They do," mused Alleras, the Sphinx, "and if there are dragons in the world again . . ."
A Feast for Crows - Prologue
 "Long ago," Jon broke in. "What about the Others?"
"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night . . . or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
"We knew all this. The question is, how do we fight them?"
"The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed," said Sam, "and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian." He remembered the one he had faced in the haunted forest, and how it had seemed to melt away when he stabbed it with the dragonglass dagger Jon had made for him. "I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it."
"Dragonsteel?" Jon frowned. "Valyrian steel?"
A Feast for Crows - Samwell I/A Dance with Dragons Jon II
 "Scared? Of what? The chidings of old men? Sam, you saw the wights come swarming up the Fist, a tide of living dead men with black hands and bright blue eyes. You slew an Other."
"It was the d-d-d-dragonglass, not me."
"Be quiet. You lied and schemed and plotted to make me Lord Commander. You will obey me. You'll go to the Citadel and forge a chain, and if you have to cut up corpses, so be it. At least in Oldtown the corpses won't object."
A Feast for Crows - Samwell I/A Dance with Dragons Jon II
 ". . . obsidian," said the other man in the room, a pale, fleshy, pasty-faced young fellow with round shoulders, soft hands, close-set eyes, and food stains on his robes.
"Call it dragonglass." Archmaester Marwyn glanced at the candle for a moment. "It burns but is not consumed."
"What feeds the flame?" asked Sam.
A Feast for Crows - Samwell V
 "Some smaller than others." Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted.
A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII
 Seven hundred feet up, Jon Snow stood looking down upon the haunted forest. A north wind swirled through the trees below, sending thin white plumes of snow crystals flying from the highest branches, like icy banners. Elsewise nothing moved. Not a sign of life. That was not entirely reassuring. It was not the living that he feared. Even so …
The sun is out. The snow has stopped. It may be a moon's turn before we have another chance as good. It may be a season. "Have Emmett assemble his recruits," he told Dolorous Edd. "We'll want an escort. Ten rangers, armed with dragonglass. I want them ready to leave within the hour."
"Aye, m'lord. And to command?"
A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII
 Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain was falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.
A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX
 The arms most wildlings carry are little more than sticks, thought Jon. Wooden clubs, stone axes, mauls, spears with fire-hardened points, knives of bone and stone and dragonglass, wicker shields, bone armor, boiled leather. The Thenns worked bronze, and raiders like the Weeper carried stolen steel and iron swords looted off some corpse … but even those were oft of ancient vintage, dinted from years of hard use and spotted with rust.
A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI
 The giants had no kings and no lords, made no homes save in caverns or beneath tall trees, and they worked neither metal nor fields. They remained creatures of the Dawn Age even as the ages passed them by, men grew ever more numerous, and the forests were tamed and dwindled. Now the giants are gone even in the lands beyond the Wall, and the last reports of them are more than a hundred years old. And even those are dubious—tales that rangers of the Watch might tell over a warm fire. The children of the forest were, in many ways, the opposites of the giants. As small as children but dark and beautiful, they lived in a manner we might call crude today, yet they were still less barbarous than the giants. They worked no metal, but they had great art in working obsidian (what the smallfolk call dragonglass, while the Valyrians knew it by a word meaning "frozen fire") to make tools and weapons for hunting. They wove no cloths but were skilled in making garments of leaves and bark. They learned to make bows of weirwood and to construct flying snares of grass, and both of the sexes hunted with these.
The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age
 The one thing that can be said for certain is that it was a cataclysm such as the world had never seen. The ancient, mighty Freehold—home to dragons and to sorcerers of unrivaled skill—was shattered and destroyed within hours. It was written that every hill for five hundred miles split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, and entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, and red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons. To the north, the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself, and an angry sea came boiling in.
The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Doom of Valyria
 The children fought back as best they could, but the First Men were larger and stronger. Riding their horses, clad and armed in bronze, the First Men overwhelmed the elder race wherever they met, for the weapons of the children were made of bone and wood and dragonglass. Finally, driven by desperation, the little people turned to sorcery and beseeched their greenseers to stem the tide of these invaders.
And so they did, gathering in their hundreds (some say on the Isle of Faces), and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice (a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves. The Summer Sea joined the narrow sea, and the bridge between Essos and Westeros vanished for all time.
The World of Ice and Fire - Dorne: The Breaking
   Every mention of “Obsidian” in the books:
 Catelyn had more faith in a maester's learning than a septon's prayers. She was about to say as much when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of the mountains on either side of them. Where the pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride abreast, twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent faces watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and his armor were grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish, wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. "Who would pass the Bloody Gate?" he called.
A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VI
 The stewards! For a moment Jon could not believe what he had heard. Mormont must have read it wrong. He started to rise, to open his mouth, to tell them there had been a mistake … and then he saw Ser Alliser studying him, eyes shiny as two flakes of obsidian, and he knew.
A Game of Thrones - Jon VI
 The next morning it was Ser Brynden Tully himself who rode back to them. He had put aside the heavy plate and helm he'd worn as the Knight of the Gate for the lighter leather-and-mail of an outrider, but his obsidian fish still fastened his cloak.
A Game of Thrones - Catelyn IX
  "Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something." He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads.
Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the table.
 "Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand.
 "Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian."
"And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm and bound them tight with long strips of linen.
 Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He thought it beautiful. "Can I keep one?"
 "As you wish," the maester said.
 "I want one too," Rickon said. "I want four. I'm four."
 Luwin made him count them out. "Careful, they're still sharp. Don't cut yourself."
 "Tell me about the children," Bran said. It was important.
A Game of Thrones - Bran VII
 "But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horror-struck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.
A Game of Thrones - Bran VII
 All the colors that had been missing from Vaes Tolorro had found their way to Qarth; buildings crowded about her fantastical as a fever dream in shades of rose, violet, and umber. She passed under a bronze arch fashioned in the likeness of two snakes mating, their scales delicate flakes of jade, obsidian, and lapis lazuli. Slim towers stood taller than any Dany had ever seen, and elaborate fountains filled every square, wrought in the shapes of griffins and dragons and manticores.
A Clash of Kings - Daenerys II
 A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .
A Clash of Kings - Jon IV
 When he opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell I
 Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."
"Obsidian." Sam struggled to his knees. "Dragonglass, they call it. Dragonglass. Dragon glass." He giggled, and cried, and doubled over to heave his courage out onto the snow.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell I
 "The m-maesters think not," Sam stammered. "The maesters say it comes from the fires of the earth. They call it obsidian."
Mormont snorted. "They can call it lemon pie for all I care. If it kills as you claim, I want more of it."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
 Sam had almost forgotten about the wildlings, so much had happened since. "The children of the forest used dragonglass blades," he said. "They'd know where to find obsidian."
"The children of the forest are all dead," said Mormont. "The First Men killed half of them with bronze blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron. Why a glass dagger should—"
A Storm of Swords - Samwell II
  Sleeping alone in my own cold cell never made me any harder or braver, though. He wondered what his father would say if he could see him now. I killed one of the Others, my lord, he imagined saying. I stabbed him with an obsidian dagger, and my Sworn Brothers call me Sam the Slayer now. But even in his fancies, Lord Randyll only scowled, disbelieving.
A Storm of Swords - Samwell III
  Roro had sailed past Skagos into the Shivering Sea, visiting a hundred little coves that had never seen a trading ship before. He brought steel; swords, axes, helms, good chainmail hauberks, to trade for furs, ivory, amber, and obsidian. When the Cobblecat turned back south her holds were stuffed, but in the Bay of Seals three black galleys came out to herd her into Eastwatch. They lost their cargo and the Bastard lost his head, for the crime of trading weapons to the wildlings.
A Storm of Swords - Davos V
 The king gave that a curt nod, as if to say he knew and did not care. "You slew this creature with an obsidian dagger, I am told," he said to Sam.
"Y-yes, Your Grace. Jon Snow gave it to me."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell V
 "On Dragonstone, where I had my seat, there is much of this obsidian to be seen in the old tunnels beneath the mountain," the king told Sam. "Chunks of it, boulders, ledges. The great part of it was black, as I recall, but there was some green as well, some red, even purple. I have sent word to Ser Rolland my castellan to begin mining it. I will not hold Dragonstone for very much longer, I fear, but perhaps the Lord of Light shall grant us enough frozen fire to arm ourselves against these creatures, before the castle falls."
A Storm of Swords - Samwell V
 "What are these glass candles?" asked Roone.
Armen the Acolyte cleared his throat. "The night before an acolyte says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern is permitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper . . . only a candle of obsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light that candle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who have made a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut their fingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors. Then, with bloody hands, they must wait upon the dawn, brooding on their failure. Wiser men simply go to sleep, or spend their night in prayer, but every year there are always a few who must try."
"Yes." Pate had heard the same stories. "But what's the use of a candle that casts no light?"
A Feast for Crows - Prologue
 "I know what I saw. The light was queer and bright, much brighter than any beeswax or tallow candle. It cast strange shadows and the flame never flickered, not even when a draft blew through the open door behind me."
Armen crossed his arms. "Obsidian does not burn."
"Dragonglass," Pate said. "The smallfolk call it dragonglass." Somehow that seemed important.
A Feast for Crows - Prologue
 "I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night . . . or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
"We knew all this. The question is, how do we fight them?"
"The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed," said Sam, "and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian." He remembered the one he had faced in the haunted forest, and how it had seemed to melt away when he stabbed it with the dragonglass dagger Jon had made for him. "I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it."
A Feast for Crows - Samwell I/A Dance with Dragons Jon II
 The candle was unpleasantly bright. There was something queer about it. The flame did not flicker, even when Archmaester Marwyn closed the door so hard that papers blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange to colors too. Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring. The candle itself was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black. "Is that . . . ?"
". . . obsidian," said the other man in the room, a pale, fleshy, pasty-faced young fellow with round shoulders, soft hands, close-set eyes, and food stains on his robes.
"Call it dragonglass." Archmaester Marwyn glanced at the candle for a moment. "It burns but is not consumed."
A Feast for Crows - Samwell V
 The soldier pines and sentinels wore thick white coats, and icicles draped the bare brown limbs of the broadleafs. Jon sent Tom Barleycorn ahead to scout for them, though the way to the white grove was oft trod and familiar. Big Liddle and Luke of Longtown slipped into the brush to east and west. They would flank the column to give warning of any approach. All were seasoned rangers, armed with obsidian as well as steel, warhorns slung across their saddles should they need to summon help.
A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII
The giants had no kings and no lords, made no homes save in caverns or beneath tall trees, and they worked neither metal nor fields. They remained creatures of the Dawn Age even as the ages passed them by, men grew ever more numerous, and the forests were tamed and dwindled. Now the giants are gone even in the lands beyond the Wall, and the last reports of them are more than a hundred years old. And even those are dubious—tales that rangers of the Watch might tell over a warm fire. The children of the forest were, in many ways, the opposites of the giants. As small as children but dark and beautiful, they lived in a manner we might call crude today, yet they were still less barbarous than the giants. They worked no metal, but they had great art in working obsidian (what the smallfolk call dragonglass, while the Valyrians knew it by a word meaning "frozen fire") to make tools and weapons for hunting. They wove no cloths but were skilled in making garments of leaves and bark. They learned to make bows of weirwood and to construct flying snares of grass, and both of the sexes hunted with these.
The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age
 It has long been held that they did this for protection from predators such as direwolves or shadowcats, which their simple stone weapons—and even their vaunted greenseers—were not proof against. But other sources dispute this, stating that their greatest foes were the giants, as hinted at in tales told in the North, and as possibly proved by Maester Kennet in the study of a barrow near the Long Lake—a giant's burial with obsidianarrowheads found amidst the extant ribs. It brings to mind a transcription of a wildling song in Maester Herryk's History of the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall, regarding the brothers Gendel and Gorne. They were called upon to mediate a dispute between a clan of children and a family of giants over the possession of a cavern. Gendel and Gorne, it is said, ultimately resolved the matter through trickery, making both sides disavow any desire for the cavern, after the brothers discovered it was a part of a greater chain of caverns that eventually passed beneath the Wall. But considering that the wildlings have no letters, their traditions must be looked at with a jaundiced eye.
The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age
 The "unicorns" of Skagos were once scoffed at by maesters at the Citadel. The occasional "unicorn horn" offered by disreputable merchants has never been more than the horn of a kind of whale hunted by the whalers of Ib. However, horns of quite a different kind—reputed to be from Skagos—have been seen by the maesters at Eastwatch upon occasion. It is also said that those seafarers brave enough to trade on Skagos have glimpsed the stoneborn lords riding great, shaggy, horned beasts, monstrous mounts so sure-footed they have been known to climb the sides of mountains. A living example of such a creature—or even a skeleton—has long been sought for study, but none has ever been brought to Oldtown.
Though rarely seen off their island, the stoneborn once were accustomed to crossing the Bay of Seals to trade or, more oft, raid—until King Brandon Stark, Ninth of His Name, broke their power once and for all, destroyed their ships, and forbade them the sea. For most of recorded history, they have remained an isolated, backward, savage folk, as like to murder those who land upon their isle as to trade with them. When they do consent to trade, the Skagosi offer pelts, obsidian blades and arrowheads, and "unicorn horns" for goods they desire.
Some Skagosi have served in the Night's Watch as well. More than a thousand years ago, a Crowl (a member of a clan that passes for nobility on Skagos) was even Lord Commander for a time, and the Annals of the Black Centaur speak of a Stane (a member of another Skagosi family) who rose to become First Ranger but died shortly thereafter.
The World of Ice and Fire - The North: The Stoneborn of Skagos
 Mentions of oily black buildings/stone/structure:
 Neither the dancers nor the drinkers took much note of Theon Greyjoy as he strode to the dais. Lord Balon occupied the Seastone Chair, carved in the shape of a great kraken from an immense block of oily black stone. Legend said that the First Men had found it standing on the shore of Old Wyk when they came to the Iron Islands. To the left of the high seat were Theon's uncles. Asha was ensconced at his right hand, in the place of honor. "You come late, Theon," Lord Balon observed.
A Clash of Kings - Theon II
 Even among the ironborn there are some who doubt this and acknowledge the more widely accepted view of an ancient descent from the First Men—even though the First Men, unlike the later Andals, were never a seafaring people. Certainly, we cannot seriously accept the assertions of the ironborn priests, who would have us believe that the ironmen are closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind.
Archmaester Haereg once advanced the interesting notion that the ancestors of the ironborn came from some unknown land west of the Sunset Sea, citing the legend of the Seastone Chair. The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to have been found by the First Men when they first came to Old Wyk. Haereg argued that the chair was a product of the first inhabitants of the islands, and only the later histories of maesters and septons alike began to claim that they were in fact descended of the First Men. But this is the purest speculation and, in the end, Haereg himself dismissed the idea, and so must we.
The World of Ice and Fire - The Iron Islands
 Maesters and other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the engimas of Sothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them, Yeen has remained a desolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it on every side has scarce touched it. ("A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter," Nymeria is supposed to have said when she laid eyes on it, if the tales are true). Every attempt to rebuild or resettle Yeen has ended in horror.
The World of Ice and Fire - Beyond the Free Cities: Sothoryos
 The maester did not believe in omens. And yet . . . old as he was, Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets. He wondered if his gargoyles had ever seen its like. They had been here so much longer than he had, and would still be here long after he was gone. If stone tongues could speak . . .
Such folly. He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing beneath him, the black stone rough beneath his fingers. Talking gargoyles and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child again. Had a lifetime's hard-won wisdom fled him along with his health and strength? He was a maester, trained and chained in the great Citadel of Oldtown. What had he come to, when superstition filled his head as if he were an ignorant fieldhand?
A Clash of Kings - Prologue
 Lord Stannis Baratheon's refuge was a great round room with walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass. In the center of the chamber was the great table from which it took its name, a massive slab of carved wood fashioned at the command of Aegon Targaryen in the days before the Conquest. The Painted Table was more than fifty feet long, perhaps half that wide at its widest point, but less than four feet across at its narrowest. Aegon's carpenters had shaped it after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. On its surface, darkened by near three hundred years of varnish, were painted the Seven Kingdoms as they had been in Aegon's day; rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests.
A Clash of Kings - Prologue
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The Lords of the Four Shields
In a game of chess, the opening move locks the players into a certain pattern of engagement. This is so called "the first-move advantage", and many chess theorists argue to this day that given perfect play by both sides, White can force a win just through the choice of first move.
In ASOIAF, chess became Cyvasse. And Cyvasse is the harmless cousin of the game of thrones. But nothing about the concept of first-move advantage has changed.
The Taking of the Shields
Euron's opening move in his attack on the entirity of Westeros was a seemingly insignificant target, in the grand scheme of things. How many times had the Shields been mentioned in the series? What was there to care about? Cersei pretty much has the same reaction.
"Why then, your brave brothers had best roust them off these rocks."
"Rocks?" gasped Margaery. "Did your grace say rocks?"
But no matter how humble the conquest, Euron has given the Ironborn, who have historically been victimized and belittled and looked down upon by the prosperous greenlands, real conquest.
Euron had seduced them with his glib tongue and smiling eye and bound them to his cause with the plunder of half a hundred distant lands; gold and silver, ornate armor, curved swords with gilded pommels, daggers of Valyrian steel, striped tiger pelts and the skins of spotted cats... and yet all that was little and less, compared to this. Now he has given them conquest, and they are his for good and all, the captain thought.
The Old Way is back, baby. Euron has time to do some PR with the Ironborn, and he takes advantage of it.
On the dais, Euron pushed aside his slattern and climbed upon the table. The captains began to bang their cups and stamp their feet upon the floor. “EURON!” they shouted. “EURON! EURON! EURON!” It was kingsmoot come again.
“I swore to give you Westeros,” the Crow’s Eye said when the tumult died away, “and here is your first taste. A morsel, nothing more... but we shall feast before the fall of night!”
So Euron doubles down on the Kingsmoot pitch. Like the coke dealer who will offer high-quality product on the first purchase to get a customer hooked - except instead of coke, Euron’s dealing conquest.
(Side note: Euron's “slattern” is Falia Flowers, the girl who will be impregnated by Euron before having her tongue cut out and being bound to the prow of the Silence as a "gift for Aeron)
But as an aspect of Euron’s first-move advantage, there is a bigger advantage to the taking of the Shields - the holding of the Shields.
The Death Trap Islands
As its new ruler, Euron gets to name four lords of the Shield Islands. Since this is the very first conquest by Euron, no sane Ironborn would refuse. Lands and lordship are lands and lordship, and someone from the small, shitty Iron Islands would recognize the insanity of refusing Euron's gift. Even Victarion thinks this... and figures it out.
Victarion had expected the Crow’s Eye to give the lordships to his own creatures, Stonehand and the Red Oarsman and Left-Hand Lucas Codd. A king must needs be open-handed, he tried to tell himself, but another voice whispered, Euron’s gifts are poisoned. When he turned it over in his head, he saw it plain. The Knight was the Reader’s chosen heir, and Andrik the Unsmiling the strong right arm of Dunstan Drumm. Volmark is a callow boy, but he has Black Harren’s blood in him through his mother. And the Barber...
Victarion grabbed him by the forearm. “Refuse him!”
Victarion's reasoning here, I think, shows he's not as "dumb" as most people think. Despite a life of obedience and the conditions of the Iron Isles, he figured out Euron's plan immediately. That puts him on par with the one of the only other Ironborn certified to have a brain, Rodrik the Reader - who told Nute the Barber the actual situation with the Shields earlier that chapter. But Nute does not listen.
Nute the Barber gave a hoot at the sight of them. “Reader,” he called out, “why is your face so long? Your misgivings were for nought. The day is ours, and ours the prize!”
Lord Rodrik’s mouth puckered. “These rocks, you mean? All four together wouldn’t make Harlaw. We have won some stones and trees and trinkets, and the enmity of House Tyrell.”
“The roses?” Nute laughed. “What rose can harm the krakens of the deep? We have taken their shields from them, and smashed them all to pieces. Who will protect them now?”
“Highgarden,” replied the Reader. “Soon enough all the power of the Reach will be marshaled against us, Barber, and then you may learn that some roses have steel thorns.”
This foreshadows Nute being unable to realize Euron's trap, and understandably unwilling to listen to Victarion's warning (the Iron Isles are really shitty).
And the Barber...
Victarion grabbed him by the forearm. “Refuse him!”
Nute looked at him as if he had gone mad. “Refuse him? Lands and lordship? Will you make me a lord?” He wrenched his arm away and stood, basking in the cheers.
And now he steals my men away, Victarion thought.
So Euron used the first conquest to give out four lordships to the most threatening people on the Iron Isles who he could be reasonably sure would accept the lordship. Hence, no Victarion, no Rodrik the Reader - but Victarion's right hand man, and Rodrik's right-hand man are named lords.
Of course the answer is given to us in The Forsaken: Euron is not naming his political opponents as lords of the Shields to be actual lords. He's doing it to kill them.
"Your victories are hollow. You cannot hold the Shields."
"Why should I want to hold them?" His brother's smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice. "The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand, and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother. It is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts."
And who did Euron leave behind to help hold the Shields?
“On the morrow we prepare once more to sail,” the king was saying. “Fill our casks anew with spring water, take every sack of grain and cask of beef, and as many sheep and goats as we can carry. The wounded who are still hale enough to pull an oar will row. The rest shall remain here, to help hold these isles for their new lords.
So the lords of the Shields have as their garrisons the wounded Ironborn who can't even pull an oar. And considering the Shield were taken very quickly and easily, there probably weren't many wounded in the first place. When Garlan and the Tyrells come to reclaim the Shields, Euron is doing all he can to make sure the Shields are death trap for their four "lords".
So let's look at the lords, and figure out why they're such a threat to Euron that he sets up an elaborate trap to kill them?
(By the way, we're not going to talk about Nute. We covered him already, and he's there to serve as our "control" for the motivations of the other three.)
The Lords of the Four Shields
The torches along the walls were burning bright, and so was he, blue lips, blue eye, and all. “What the kraken grasps it does not lose. These isles were once ours, and now they are again... but we need strong men to hold them."
Number One: Ser Harras Harlaw, Rodrik the Reader's chosen heir
"So rise, Ser Harras Harlaw, Lord of Greyshield.” The Knight stood, one hand upon Nightfall’s moonstone pommel.
Number Two: Andrik the Unsmiling, champion of Dustan Drumm
“Rise, Andrik the Unsmiling, Lord of Southshield.” Andrik shoved away his women and lurched to his feet, like a mountain rising sudden from the sea.
Number Three: Maron Volmark, minor lord on Harlaw and the true heir of Harren the Black
“Rise, Maron Volmark, Lord of Greenshield.” A beardless boy of six-and-ten years, Volmark stood hesitantly, looking like the lord of rabbits.
Number Four: Nute the Barber, Victarion's right-hand man
“And rise, Nute the Barber, Lord of Oakenshield.”
So the question is, why these four men? Let's quickly through them, one by one.
Ser Harras Harlaw, Lord of Greyshield
I did an extended writeup on the Knight in Harras the Heir: Bend Beneath the Scythe so I refer you to that for the purposes of saving space. But the bottom line is that Harras is the Reader's heir, so he definitely recognized Euron's trap too. The point being, it's not certain that the logic going on in Nute's head ("Lands and lordship? Wowee!") is why the other three accepted their islands.
One thing I didn't mention, is that Harras is the first of four attempts to weaken other Kingsmoot claimants, his chief rivals for power. Harras was appointed by Rodrik the Reader as Asha's protector, but Asha fled the isles - Euron must know she intends to try to challenge his rule at some point, so Euron is taking the opportunity to eliminate her protector Harras before he rallies House Harlaw beind Asha's claim. After all, Rodrik is an old man Euron can kill anytime he wants, but Harras is perhaps the second most formidable fighter on the Isles; only by putting him in an situation where survival is impossible can Euron be certain to win. Oh, and speaking of formidable fighters, let's talk about #1.
Andrik the Unsmiling, Lord of Southshield.
First, let's look at how he accepts his lordship. While it was an extremely happy moment for Nute,
He wrenched his arm away and stood, basking in the cheers.
Andrik the Unsmiling is true to his name. After all, we saw him supposedly celebrating, but with a blank look on his face.
Andrik the Unsmiling staggered by with a woman under each arm; though he remained unsmiling.
And when he's named a lord he simply clumsily lurches to his feet. No basking in cheers, but no signs of suspicion. He just gets up.
Andrik shoved away his women and lurched to his feet, like a mountain rising sudden from the sea.
Well, who is Andrik? He has a curious distinction. Three of the four lords of the Shields joined the Ironborn cast of characters in A Feast for Crows, when we got all the new POVs and the Ironborn story absolutely exploded. But Andrik is the only one who goes all the way back to 1998, when A Clash of Kings was published.
Here is Theon, trying to flatter Dagmer Cleftjaw into helping him to take Winterfell:
“You are my father’s man.”
“His best man, and always have been.”
Pride, Theon thought. He is proud, I must use that, his pride will be the key. “There is no man in the Iron Islands half so skilled with spear or sword.”
“You have been too long away, boy. When you left, it was as you say, but I am grown old in Lord Greyjoy’s service. The singers call Andrik best now. Andrik the Unsmiling, they name him. A giant of a man. He serves Lord Drumm of Old Wyk.
And we see the design again; the Drumm made a claim at the Kingsmoot too, and this is Euron's attempt to undermine him. And Andrik featured prominently in what made the Drumm's claim convincing (that and his Valyrian Steel sword).
The Drumm came next, another old man, though not so old as Erik. He climbed the hill on his own two legs, and on his hip rode Red Rain, his famous sword, forged of Valyrian steel in the days before the Doom. His champions were men of note: his sons Denys and Donnel, both stout fighters, and between them Andrik the Unsmiling, a giant of a man with arms as thick as trees. It spoke well of the Drumm that such a man would stand for him.
Andrik is the best fighter on the Iron Isles, a giant of a man, unstoppable in battle. And yet he seems to be simply an emotionless, completely bodyguard for Lord Drumm - hence his nickname, Unsmiling.
Remember, right before this feast we saw Rodrik the Reader conspiring with the factional heads of two other Kingsmoot claimaints: Victarion's faction and the Drumms.
In the yard Victarion came on Gorold Goodbrother and old Drumm, speaking quietly with Rodrik Harlaw.
If you remember back to the Prophet, Gorold Goodbrother is the head of the biggest House on the Isles, an ironmongerer, and the main superdelegate for the election of Victarion. Goodbrother talking in low voices with Rodrik Harlaw, the symmetrical head of the other huge house and the main superdelegate of Asha, is like if the head of the Republican Party and the head of the Democratic Party were seen chatting in low voices in a side room in the Capital building. And in on the private chat is the only independent candidate who seems to actually matter: Dustan Drumm, the Drumm, the Bone Hand, Lord of Old Wyk and of Nagga's Ribs.
The confrontation with Nute, as discussed above, has Rodrik immediately mentioning, in front of the other lords, that the Shields are clearly a trap - Euron let the ravens fly. He's using them as bait, and anyone who tries to hold it in Euron's name are going to get sliced up by Garlan the Gallant very quickly. The Drumm knows this just as much as Rodrik, yet his champion accepts anyway.
The question of why the Drumms are a threat while Euron seems to ignore the Farwynds remains open. Again, they're equally unlikely to accomplish anything. Both fielded unpopular candidates who were only supported by their own houses, and both failed pretty quickly. But Euron feels the need to cripple House Drumm, and not House Farwynd.
Perhaps it has to do with the Drumms' history of black magic, and the fact that the most magical place on the Isles, Nagga's Ribs and the bones of the Grey King's Hall, are on their land. Andrik does have a near-exact resemblance to another emotionless bodyguard with limbs as thick as trees...
No. Her savior was real. Eight feet tall or maybe taller, with legs as thick around as trees, he had a chest worthy of a plow horse and shoulders that would not disgrace an ox.
Andrik the Unsmiling, a giant of a man with arms as thick as trees.
It seems like that one Sand Snake was wrong when she said “there was not another like Gregor Clegane in all the Seven Kingdoms.” The Drumms are known for necromancy... and besides the identical physical description, George does all he can to make Andrik seem like an Ironborn Gregor Clegane: Andrik even gets up out of his chair
like a mountain rising sudden from the sea.
Now, whether Andrik will attempt to hold his castle, or whether he will join Harras in (what I think) will be a coming defection to the Tyrells remains to be seen. Sure, he's the stereotype of a dumb, blindly obedient brute - but if Dunstan and Rodrik were conspiring together, perhaps Andrik and Harras have been given orders to work together as well.
Maron Volmark, Lord of Greenshield
And now we arrive at what seems like the least important appointment - the others are all legendary fighters and connected to great lords, but Maron Volmark is minor lord of almost nothing and a sixteen-year-old.
“Rise, Maron Volmark, Lord of Greenshield.” A beardless boy of six-and-ten years, Volmark stood hesitantly, looking like the lord of rabbits.
And we don't hear of him doing anything impressive in the battle. There is no reason to name him lord. But this might actually be a serious clue to Euron's endgame and the purpose of his invasion of Westeros.
Volmark stood hesitantly, looking like the lord of rabbits.
Maron, like Victarion, is suspicious as hell when he's named a lord - because there's no reason he should be honored. House Volmark were Victarion supporters at the Kingsmoot, and Maron lives at Volmark the Isle of Harlaw.
The true reason Euron wants to eliminate this boy is revealed by none other than Tarle the Thrice-Drowned, the second best Drowned Priest on the Islands, who crowned Balon during his first rebellion.
“Long enough to see that Uncle Damphair has woken more than he intended. The Drumm means to make a claim, and Tarle the Thrice-Drowned was heard to say that Maron Volmark is the true heir of the black line.”
Victarion deduces this as well.
Volmark is a callow boy, but he has Black Harren’s blood in him through his mother.
And we learn the origins of this in TWOAIF:
Qhorin Volmark, a minor lord on Harlaw, was the first man to claim the kingship. His grandmother had been a younger sister of Harwyn Hardhand. On the basis of that tie, Volmark declared himself the rightful heir of “the black line.”
Even their heraldry proclaims this: a black leviathan on grey.
Yet when making fun of Samwell, Leo Tyrell tells us some leviathan facts:
"...and now a black-clad whale. And here I thought leviathans were grey."
So House Volmark took the grey leviathan and turned it black, signifying their connection to the line of Harren the Black.
But why does it matter? The Black Line died out hundreds of years ago. Why would Euron care whether the "true heir of Harren the Black" is hanging around in his army, especially when he's just a boy of sixteen with almost no lands or longships who poses no threat at all? The only solution is something magical. In TWOIAF learn that the Black Line was
“black of hair, black of eye, and black of heart.”
And this describes Euron perfectly.
Black of hair:
His hair was still black as a midnight sea, with never a whitecap to be seen.
Black of eye:
He wore a stained white leather eye patch that reminded Theon of his uncle Euron. He'd wanted to rip it off Umber's face, to make certain that underneath was only an empty socket, not a black eye shining with malice.
And black of heart:
"Euron. Crow's Eye, they call him, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail."
From this, and his opposition of Maron Volmark, we can conclude that Euron has inherited some of the Black Blood. Oh, and did I mention the Kings of the Black Line were godless, and opponents of the Drowned Priests?
True ironborn had salt water in their veins, the priests of the Drowned God proclaimed; the black-blooded Hoares were false kings, ungodly usurpers who must be cast down.
So right off the bat it's astoundingly odd that Tarle the Thrice-Drowned called to revive a line who the Drowned Priests worked their saltwater-soaked butts off trying to depose for godlessness. Since Tarle is the only Drowned Priest not tortured after Aeron disappears and since Tarle is Aeron's chief rival on the Iron Islands (Tarle was once thought so holy he could crown a king, but Aeron is better at drowning, more charismatic for the lowborn, and more influential among the lords), this is more evidence that Tarle betrayed Aeron and is working for Euron. But that's neither here nor there.
The important part is that Maron Volmark represents no real political threat but Euron is killing him anyway, seemingly out of fear of his status as heir of Harren the Black. And if he's not doing it for a political purpose, Euron is eliminating other heirs of Harren the Black for a magical purpose. Which means at some point in his conquest he intends to walk in Harren the Black's footsteps and claim Harrenhal - but with dragons on the Ironborn side this time.
So look out, Harrenhal. Euron has divine ambitions.
"A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits."
And look out, Isle of Faces. Euron wants to be a new god, and he has a new god's eye to go with it.
He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.
It's time for the new god to get started.
TL;DR: Euron's opening move in his Feast for Crows is to weaken or eliminate four potential rivals: Rodrik the Reader, Victarion, Dunstan Drumm, and Maron Volmark. Victarion and the Drumm each were major Kingsmoot opponents, and Rodrik was the reason Asha had the support she did. Maron Volmark is the true heir of Harren the Black, and Euron wants him dead because Euron has Black Harren's blood as well... and has endgame designs on Harrenhal.
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xtolovers · 4 years
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The Anvil
Pairing: Aloy x Erend Rating: M ( albeit in later chapters) Warnings: Graphic Mentions of Violence, slight mentions of alcoholism AO3  / Fanfiction.net
Uncomfortable
“I can’t move troops to the border without provoking the Oseram. But I could send a few Vanguardsmen… and perhaps an exceptionally gifted Nora as well?” Erend suppresses a growl as he recalls Avad’s words from the day before. If he’s honest, it’s less the words — Aloy certainly deserves the praise— but the look and step forward that accompanied them. He doesn’t know if the rumors about Avad and Ersa are true, and fire and spit, he doesn’t want to think about it, but even if they aren’t, he still can think of a good dozen reasons why the Kings praise rubs him entirely the wrong way. Sure, one of them might be his… fondness for Aloy, he will admit as much, but there is a reason he thought Ersa and Aloy will get along well- both of them are free. And Avad might be likened to the sun all day and all night, but he is tethered to his throne and to his people. So why that damned look? “So cap, is she really as pretty as they say?” Irritation turns to anger as Erend turns away from where his eyes are searching the bridge, ready to give Andrik a good punch. 
“Ouch!” As he turns he sees that Karan has beat him to it: Andrik is rubbing the back of his head with an insulted look on his face while his second-in-command crosses his arms. “What matters is if she’s as proficient as they say. Our goal is to get Ersa back, not to help you with one of your conquests,” Karan snaps. Erend gives him an appreciative nod. The older man was— is one of Ersas most trusted companions, and Erend knows he can count on him. In the past two weeks that he’s been staggering around trying to fill Ersa’s shoes, Karan has helped him more than once, and he is grateful for him, even if his competence makes Erend feel even more useless. Andrik shrugs, not bothered. “A guy can ask, can’t he?” “A guy can remember that Aloy is the only reason we even know Ersa could still be alive, so a guy would do better to shut up,” Erend barks. He knows he’s being hypocritical, because her looks were the first thing he himself had noticed, and Andrik hasn’t even met her. But back then his sisters life hadn’t been on the line and he hadn’t seen what Aloy was capable of. Andrik is a good guy, but his comment makes Erend grit his teeth. His shoulders feel as if they’re made of steel with all the tension they’ve been holding in the last weeks, and he knows that spending the next week watching Aloy dodge Andrik’s flirting will thoroughly exhaust his patience. He needs her to find Ersa, and distracting her is off limits. He willfully pushes down the tiny part of his brain that thinks that that’s only half of the reason he wants Andrik to keep his thoughts to himself. “I thought we were leaving at dawn. Where is she?” Andrik asks as he’s leaning himself back against a bridge post. “At first light is what we agreed upon, I believe,”a voice rings out behind him. Andrik snaps upright, and Erend and his men turn towards the path next to the bridge, Aloy crosses the last few steps of distance between them, eyebrow raised defiantly, a bunch of wild ember in her hand. “She was here then, but because the rest of you weren’t here, I went down to the river and gathered some herbs in preparation.” Andrik opens his mouth to reply, and that can’t mean anything good, but before he can form the words, Karan steps forward and turns to Aloy, his hammer conveniently swinging just so that it slightly hits Andrik in the back of his head. “Apologies, m’am. We ought to have been here sooner, there is no time to lose.” Erend watches Aloy’s eyes linger on Karan’s hammer for a second, the slightest smirk on her lips, before she scowls and shakes her head. “My name is Aloy, no need to call me anything else.” With a gratuitous motion that Erend couldn’t pull off if he wanted to, Karan bows his head. “ Karan. At your service, Aloy.” Then he looks expectantly to Erend, who feels like a complete ass because he was too slow again. Too slow to call Andrik to order, too late to gather his men, too late to apologize. Karan’s meaningful look feels like a gesture of pity, even though Erend knows it’s one of respect. Respect you haven’t earned. He clears his throat. “Apologies, Aloy. Karan here is my second-in-command. This bung over here is Andrik, these two are Beren and Enoch — they’re brothers —  and this is Oren.” Each of his men nod to her as he calls their names, and Erend feels that the introduction is far more lackluster than it ought to be for a Vanguard strike team, but for the life of him, he can’t recall what Ersa used to say. He’d have to ask her. This time, he’d learn from her as much as he could. Aloy returns their nods, plainly studying each of them for a brief second. At the end, her eyes meet his, searching,  and Erend knows what she’s looking for. He meets her gaze steadily. After a second, the green in her eyes becomes the tiniest bit warmer, and she nods, apparently pacified.
“Then let’s go.” She strides right through them and presses the wild ember against Andrik’s chest without any further comment. Beren and Enoch snicker as he starts to tie the bundle to his sack where it can dry. His men start following her up the ridge, towards the way that will lead them north to Pitchcliff, and Andrik shoulders his sack before he grins. “So she is pretty.” This time, Erend is not too late. Karan’s and his hand smack Andriks head exactly at the same time.
About an hour past noon Aloy looks over her shoulder and let’s herself fall back next to him. Until then, she had steadily led the group, always on the lookout, only slowing when she was engaging her focus. His men had given her some distance— by Erend’s orders. They’re good men, and he’d easily die for each of them, but Erend remembers how uncomfortable and overwhelmed she had looked back in Mother’s Heart during the celebrations. Aloy wasn’t used to being surrounded by people, and his men weren’t exactly considerate. Since yesterday when he’d broken the news to them, all of them had been gripped by a sense of restlessness and a thirst for revenge, and he was too grateful for her help to make her uncomfortable. “There’s a small valley between those mountains up ahead where we can rest for a bit. Unless you want to push ahead.” Erend shakes his head with a laugh. “ Something you never do, I’m sure. Do you ever eat?” “Sometimes,” she shrugs, but the corner of her mouth twitches. He takes a look around at his men. If he asked, they’d march all the way to Pitchcliff without a stop or complaint, but Erend can see that the hours on the road have taken their toll. “Let’s rest.” Aloy nods and scans the area around them, apparently content with her findings. She starts walking faster again, and Erend has to push down the urge to follow. Instead, Karan slips next to her, and he can see her tense up for a moment. This was exactly what he didn’t want. “If I might ask, what does this… device show you, Aloy?” Erend sees her contemplate for a second, and then her shoulders drop and she starts answering him. After a second of contemplating it, Erend decides against interceding. “Why is Karan allowed to talk to her and I’m not?” Andrik asks behind Erend’s right ear. “Because Karan can behave himself, and you’ve already insulted her once today,” Erend growls back. Andrik mumbles something but falls silent as he sees Erend’s face. Up ahead, Karan and Aloy are chatting amiably, laughing now and then. He should be happy that she’s getting along with someone— their trip could last at least two weeks after all— but it doesn’t sit right with him. Aloy and Karan are chuckling ahead of him, and Erend’s teeth grind together. He really hopes he isn’t seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. Karan is a good man, but he’s twice her age. But he can see why, with the force of nature that she is, that wouldn’t stop somebody. Yesterday when she arrived at the palace she was suddenly clad in Blazon Armor that barred her midriff and clung to her body, and the only thing that kept his mind on the task and his eyes from Aloy’s navel was the thought of Ersa suffering somewhere in a dark dungeon. Now that she was walking ahead of him, hips swaying slightly with each step and the sun on the very well defined muscles of her back and her legs, Erend was sure he’d be sore tomorrow with the effort it took not to stare. Embarrassingly, he was doing a poor job of it, catching himself a couple of times, or at others, hearing Beren’s snicker behind him. But fire and  spit, Andrik is right— she is pretty. Who could blame Karan for noticing? Sure, they are talking about tracking techniques now, and all Erend sees is respectful camaraderie between two travel companions, but still. Karan is, despite his years, a damn good looking bastard. The sun and the fights have done their fair share to cover his face with wrinkles and scars, but his skin is tanned from the sun, his hair fair and golden, even if there is the odd white strand showing now and then. For an Oseram, he’s unusually slim, not as stocky as the rest of them, but muscular enough to make up for it. Erend has visited enough taverns with him to see women fawn over him and his stupid blue eyes, a lot of them not much older than Aloy. Bastard. By the time they reach the valley and start to make camp, Erend is thoroughly annoyed. “Do you mind clearing the perimeter?” He turns to Aloy, who frowns for a second, but shrugs in the end and jogs to the other side of the valley, scanning the surroundings. Before Karan can get any ideas, Erend turns to him and asks him to start distributing the food, something that usually is Oren’s task. Karan studies him for a moment and he can see him barely suppress a smirk as he nods and turns around to comply. “Of course, Captain.” He’s sure he’s hearing Beren and Enoch chuckle behind him, and Erend turns away to study the landscape as he feels himself blush. In a week he’ll have Ersa back, and she can wear her own damned boots again so that he doesn’t have to stumble around in them and feel like a gods-damned fool. Aloy comes back to them without any news, and an awkward silence settles over their group as they all silently bow over their lunch. He can feel her eyes on him a few times, searching, probing, but she doesn’t say anything. Her shoulders are stiff again. They rest for an hour, and then they continue their track the same way they have so far, with Aloy slipping to the front, leading them north. Mostly they make good time. The further they get from Meridian, the more machines they see, usually further away. At some point they happen upon a small herd of tramplers, and Erend has to grin as his men disbelievingly watch while Aloy takes down two of them by herself while the Vanguard collectively handles the other two. As they bring down the last one, she pushes her arm in all the way to the shoulder and rips out the machine’s heart with a well practiced twist of the hand.  His men step back and let her do the looting— it’s easy to see she’s far better at it. Despite their protest, Aloy disperses the parts between the men and herself. Above them the sun crawls their way over the sky as they slowly make their way north, the men chatting amongst themselves as Aloy strides ahead. Now and then he can see her scanning, and Erend has the feeling she is searching for something. Once she startles, only to sink down disappointed, and he hears her mumble Grazers. She leads them around the herd without disturbing it. Several times, when he’s not busy thinking about Ersa or wishing for a drink, Erend considers going up to her and striking up a conversation, but he has no idea what to say, and he’s afraid to make an ass of himself again, so he leaves her be. They decide to make camp at a river bend next to a cliff face. He sees Aloy scan their surroundings. “So what is it this time? Machines to take down, or killers to track?” he asks as he steps next to her, and his stupid quip is rewarded with the first genuine smile he’s seen on her face all day. “No machines except a few Glinthawks south of here, but they don’t worry me,” she points in the direction, but there’s just the side of the cliff. It takes him a second to realize that apparently, she can also see through mountains with her focus. “ There are some goose downstream however.” With that she draws her bow and skips over some rocks in the water. Within moments she is on the other side of the river and disappears into the tall grass, her red hair blending effortlessly with the color of the stalks. Erend shakes his head and turns around to the camp. With a pang of guilt he can see that Karan has already delegated all necessary tasks, and is now watching him. He takes a few steps to Erend’s side, and then looks over to the spot where Aloy has vanished. “She seems as capable as you have said.” “I have the feeling I’ve only seen a fraction of what she’s capable of,” he replies, and Karan gives him a look that makes him blush the faintest bit. Erend looks away. Because Karan is a bigger man then he, he let’s it go. “She seems uncomfortable.” Defensiveness raises the hairs on his back. “ Of course she’d be. She was outcast from her tribe her whole life, and alone most of the time afterward. A rowdy, loud group of Oseram would make her uncomfortable, that’s why I told them to behave.” Karan was silent for a moment, nodding slightly to himself.  “That… might be true. But a rowdy, loud group of Oseram who don’t talk to her might be even more uncomfortable for someone who was shunned her whole life.” Karan looks at him, his eyebrows the slightest bit raised, and Erend’s stomach sinks. He thinks of Karan asking her questions earlier, and the way Erend rewarded that with giving him an unnecessary task to occupy him. “Shit.” Karan chuckles and pats his shoulder, a gesture that feels undeserved. “ You tried.” “And failed,” Erend mumbles as Karan retreats back towards the rest of their group. His men are setting up the tents for the night, and after he has pitched his own, Aloy is still nowhere to be seen. She’s left her pack with them, so he gets started on hers in an effort to make up for it. Behind him, Beren and Enoch are talking about Aloy’s victory over the tramplers, and he decides he has to do something. “Listen lads… I think you can ease up on her now,” he starts, but as he sees Andrik’s eyes light up, he amends: “ A little. Don’t wanna give her culture shock now, do we? Doesn’t mean you can’t talk to her, though. Respectfully.” Karan gives him a small nod, but Erend knows he’s chickened out again. There’s rustling behind him and Aloy appears out of the brushes, carrying a bulk of Ridgewood and  two turkeys. As she starts to settle on the ground to pluck them, Oren makes his way over to her. “Let me handle those. You did the catchin’, I do the cookin’.”Oren is a big mountain of a man, huge even for Oseram standards, but ironically one of the gentlest of the Vanguard. At his low-pitched, rumbling request, Aloy hesitates for a second, always assessing and analyzing the situation, but then she smiles and hands them over. “Never been much of a cook myself, anyway.” “But an excellent huntress, I can see. Straight through the head.” “Can’t afford to waste the meat when you’re the only one feeding yourself.” “And good training for aiming at anything with even bigger heads.” She laughs then. “That, too.” As Oren sits down to take care of the birds, Aloy looks over to him and sees his progress on her tent. “You didn’t have to do that.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “Eh, had nothing better to do, and you were already making yourself useful, so I thought I should do the same.” Her face is hard to read, but she nods and touches his shoulder lightly before she takes the straps out of his hands. The spot on his arm stays warm for a long while. This rest is different then the first. Not exuberant— it can’t be, given the cause of their mission— and not fully comfortable yet, but not as awkward as the first. When the odd lull in conversation happens, it’s simply because they don’t know each other well enough yet. But this, finally, is something Erend is good at. Rambling, telling jokes, making people comfortable. So he does. Little stories about failed flirting attempts— none of them his stories, of course— or Vanguard mishaps, and soon he has her laughing, has all of them laughing. It doesn’t take them long to make short work of the two birds Oren has expertly prepared, and the sky  turns from red to purple to blue. Around them, the crickets start their songs, signaling the evenings arrival. “ I can take last watch, I don’t mind getting up early,” Karan offers, and Oren volunteers to join him. “I’m not tired yet, I’ll take first, then,” Aloy says. Across from him, he can see two devilish glints flash in Andrik and Beren’s eyes, albeit of a different kind. Before Andrik can speak up, Beren steps on his foot. “Andrik and I can take middle, he still has to finish telling me about this girl he’s met and her brother, who is apparently a very interesting prospect for one lonely Oseram Vanguard, warrior and hero. “ He pounds his chest with a laugh, and replaces it with the stupidest, most calculated look of fake pondering as he turns to his brother. “Enoch, you’re probably tired right? You haven’t marched this long in a while, with your busted foot.” Enoch, who had twisted his ankle months ago, makes no point of concealing his grin as he yawns deeply, and Erend’s scalp starts tingling. Bastards. “Brother, I am surprised I’m still awake right now. You know, I really need to go to bed. So sorry I can’t take a shift today.” “No no, we need you strong tomorrow. Cap’ can take the first shift, and then we’re all set up, right, Cap?” Steel to his bones, he’s going to strangle them. It doesn’t take long for them to disappear into their tents, and silence settles around the camp. Aloy busies herself with the Ridgewood she has gathered earlier and starts making arrows. Erend tends to the fire, trying to come up with something to say, but she beats him to it. “How are you doing?” Her eyes are on him, appraising.
“Haven’t had a drink in nearly a week, so could be better. It helps that I don’t have to mourn Ersa now, but the worry isn’t exactly
better.
You didn’t eat a lot.”
“Eh, I’ll eat better once we have her back, and once I can have an ale with it. Before that, my stomach is denying me its work.”
The scowl is back on her face. “Are you in pain?”
“Nah, just… queasy. Happens to the best of us, right?” The worried line between her eyebrows is back and he just can’t have that. “ It
does
happen to you, right?”, he quips, and Aloy rolls her eyes.
“Put some water on, I’ll be back in a second.”
Without further warning she slips away into the darkness, silent and swift like a Stalker. Because he has the feeling that protest is futile, he complies and puts on of the pots back on the fire, and fills it with water.  
Two minutes later, Aloy reappears silently next to him, some kind of dark purple root in her hands, dripping with water.
“Ochrebloom root. The tea will help your stomach.”
He watches her slip a small knife from a leather strap on her boot, using it to peel and slice the root before she puts it into two cups, a treacherous warmth spreading in his chest.
“Thank you,” he murmurs as she hands him the tea. Silence falls over them while they both sip carefully.
She stares into her cup, her thumb absentmindedly tracing its rim, and Erend feels guilty.
Time to man up, Erend.
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itsworn · 6 years
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Hawaiian Hot Rodding Pioneer Jimmy Pflueger’s Last 1932 Ford
Pronounced “how vella,” hao wela is the Hawaiian word for hot rod; and contrary to what mainland hot rodders might imagine, drag racing hot rods in Hawaii has been as popular as anywhere in the U.S. since years before Hawaii was a state. It was shortly after World War II and Kahuku Point Army Air Base’s abandoned airstrip was the place to race. The Kolea Racing Team ran the first dragster constructed in Hawaii; the three-man team consisted of Buddy Hughes, Eddie Sorenson, and Jimmy Pflueger.
The Kahuku dragstrip closed down eventually, but in 1964 Jimmy Pflueger gathered a group of Honolulu doctors together and funded the construction of Hawaii Raceway Park. By now a self-made millionaire, Jimmy opened the very first Honda automobile dealership in the United States. The Honda N600 debuted in 1969 and Jimmy’s Pacific Honda sold America its very first Honda Civics. It was May of 1970 before Honda sold cars on the mainland in Washington, California, and Oregon through its motorcycle dealerships already up and running.
Roy Brizio Street Rods, of South San Francisco, built this 1932 Ford for Jimmy with the guidelines it was to be traditionally themed and in Jimmy’s favorite color: black. The build process started in bare metal and stayed in bare metal until the car was fully assembled with all the drivetrain, suspension, and body parts installed into place. The frame (Deuce rails) is a fully boxed Brizio 1932 Ford reproduction with a 106-inch wheelbase. As Jimmy specified, the 1932 is pure Ford from front to rear. The rearend is a Currie 9-inch Ford with 3.50 gears and limited slip and is located with chrome-plated Pete and Jakes ladder bars. The antiroll bar is from SO-CAL Speed Shop, and Panhard bar, Brizio’s. Having a better ride overruled a traditional buggy spring on the rear, so aft suspension is handled with QA1 coilover shocks.
The front suspension and steering is handled with a fully chromed Super Bell dropped I-beam axle sprung with a Durant monoleaf spring damped with Pete and Jakes tubular shock absorbers. Steering is genuine Vega box plucked from Chevy Vega controlled with a Mullins steering column capped with a Mooneyes four-spoke steering wheel. The juice brakes are traditional in the sense that they are drum, but later design Ford police brakes are in the rear and big Lincoln drum brakes with chrome-plated backing plates up front. For pedals there’s a Pete and Jakes trap pushing a Wilwood master cylinder and proportioning valve. Polished stainless steel lines handle all of the car’s plumbing needs.
Bigs ’n’ littles, the front tires are 695×14 BFGoodrich Silvertown bias-ply and the rear 950×14 BFGoodrich Silvertown bias-ply tires mounted on 6-inch-wide General Jumbo wheels.
Powered by Ford, the engine is a 302-inch Edelbrock crate motor with an Edelbrock hydraulic roller cam resting beneath an Edelbrock aluminum intake with a 650-cfm Edelbrock AFB carb operated via a Lokar spoon pedal. The cylinder heads are Edelbrock with porcelain-coated Sanderson headers exiting exhaust through 2-1/4-inch pipes into a pair of Stainless Specialties mufflers. The ignition is MSD with Taylor spark plug wires handling the secondary circuit. The 302 Ford puts out 300 hp at 4,000 rpm. The cooling system begins with an Edelbrock water pump pushing coolant through a Walker brass and copper radiator assisted with a SPAL fan.
In keeping with an all-Ford drivetrain, the Lokar-shifted automatic transmission is a C4 Cruise-O-Matic rebuilt and beefed by Hillsdale Transmission in San Mateo, California. The custom-made driveshaft was sourced from Drive Line Service of San Leandro, California.
The beauty of building a 1932 Ford from scratch is all the parts are available, and that includes a brand-new steel body. Brizio started with a Brookville Roadster body that arrives completely assembled with subframe, floorpans, cowl section, doors, and decklid. From there the cool stuff on Jimmy’s 1932 started; Brizio’s Andrik Albor sectioned and dropped a Rootlieb 1932 Ford hood 3/4 inch at the front and mounted a Brookville 1932 shell with a Dan Fink grille insert.
Albor metal-finished and finessed the gaps and then final fit and finishing took place in Hayward, California, at Compani Color where Joe Compani, Ryan Campi, and Travis Duffy took the 1932 all the way into House of Kolor Jet Black urethane.
Back at Brizio’s, Jimmy’s 1932 went directly to the final assembly area where parts that were sent out to Sherm’s Custom Plating for show-quality chrome were laid out awaiting installation. The headlights came from OTB Gear and the outside mirrors from Valley Auto Accessories. Nestled below a pair of 1939 Ford taillights resides a Tanks Inc. 14-1/2-gallon 1932 Ford stainless steel gas tank.
Before the interior work could be done the electrical system needed completion. Jim Vickery started by mounting an Enos panel, and then installed Classic Instruments and connected the rest of the wiring. A Powermaster alternator handles charging. Next Dynamat thermal acoustic adhesive sound deadener was applied to the floor and surrounding areas. The DuVall windshield sports green tinted glass and a Vintique inside rearview mirror.
For upholstery Jimmy’s 1932 was transported to Sid Chavers Co. for a custom scratch-built seat, and then fine Bolivian Brown full-grade leather with corresponding German square-weave carpeting. Matched attention was paid to the trunk.
Jimmy Pflueger became a hot rodder at age 20 and was for over 70 years. On April 25, 2017, when STREET RODDER photographed Jimmy’s 1932 we asked why he built this car, and he answered: “I wanted one more hot rod.” On September 25, 2017, Jimmy Pflueger died, leaving his 1932 Ford roadster to the Petersen Automotive Museum.
The post Hawaiian Hot Rodding Pioneer Jimmy Pflueger’s Last 1932 Ford appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/hawaiian-hot-rodding-pioneer-jimmy-pfluegers-last-1932-ford/ via IFTTT
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We Deserve More Than What Modern Dating Is Giving Us
New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/we-deserve-more-than-what-modern-dating-is-giving-us/
We Deserve More Than What Modern Dating Is Giving Us
ANDRIK LANGFIELD PETRIDES / Unsplash
When I was a little girl, my Grandad would walk me home in the winter, when the sun disappeared at 4 p.m. and snow would cover the ground, and every time, he would tell me the same story of how he used to walk an hour from the neighbouring town to spend an evening with my Grandma. No matter the weather, he had to see her, every day. I always hoped for a love like that. A high-school-sweetheart kind of love. Something reliable and faultless. But at 26, I realize that what we have now is world’s away from battling through the snow just for an evening in someone else’s company.
What we have now is modern dating. And it effing sucks. 
Because modern dating takes away everything beautiful about finding someone and falling in love. It gives people a constant stream of better options and a million ways to hide it. It enables men to make you feel as if you are the only girl in the world whilst they’re messaging 10 others behind your back.
It is drowning in loop holes, all giving men both the chance and the ability to see, kiss and fuck another girl all while telling you you’re heading somewhere serious. It’s a hot-spot for all those men who want to have their cake and eat it too. Who revel in having a gorgeous woman ask about their day and make them fresh coffee but who also need that thrill of tit pics and 3 a.m. hookups. Who, for some unknown reason, will never be satisfied with just one girl.
It allows men to lie about this stream of other girls, to make excuses about why they haven’t texted back in a few days or why they’re always busy when you make plans. It somehow gives them an imagined right to treat women as if they’re replaceable, disposable and never good enough. It destroys all of those old-fashioned hearts which still crave serendipity; those moments you only get to see on a big screen, where the guy bumps into the girl at a coffee shop or walking their dogs in the park, who have an instant spark which develops into something wild and chaotic and beautiful.
It shatters this notion that when you’re first dating someone, they are only interested in you. It takes away the idea that movies and books have fed us, that courting is a phase which A. Exists and B. Happens mutually between two people.
It makes our stomachs do a little anxiety somersault whenever the guy’s phone vibrates or he receives a call or the room lights up at night because his cell is forever going off. It puts us in a constant state of limbo but refusing to believe that’s where we are.
It tapes our mouth shut when we want to ask “Where is this heading?” or “What do I mean to you?” Because we know we will only get the same vague response about going slow or casualness or somewhere serious, which at this point seems like a fictional destination.
It turns us into people we never used to be- confused and needy and pointlessly hopeful. 
It denies that little girl who still lives inside all of us, the right to a beautiful story. It takes away that excitement which was born through romantic films and the books we used to fall asleep holding against our chests, of the handsome guy who looked at us if seeing for the first time, who would hold us as if their life depended on it and would stop flights and trains and run through a storm just to confess their love to us. It has replaced the sound of their voice with emoticons and one word answers. With sometimes, no reply at all, just three little dots which stop and start again. Which disappear all together, just like him.
And the worst part is, we still know we deserve more. We still know what is possible. We can still listen to the stories our grandparents tell us. But what will we tell our grandchildren? What kind of magic will we give them to dream about? What will they hope for?
Because I want it to be more than this.
It has to be more than this.
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