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Eagle of the Forest Path

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About Eagle of the Forest Path

  • Birthday 12/11/1987

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    Pan Narrans
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    Belgium

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  1. Alien radio signals detected repeating with a regular 16-day cycle 16 days! Proof of Adonalsium (or at least of Preservation) ! (And the relevance to this thread: It takes a Sanderfan to make that connection.)
  2. Thanks, @KandraAllomancer, those two have been bugging me for a while now. I updated my list. Guess I'll be researching some Lovecraft now. I just hope it doesn't get too squamous.
  3. @Silk, I did not receive any mails on sunday 17th.
  4. This suggestion depends on to which level these islands of yours are man-made, but if their flight depends on some sort of rare mineral or some such, rather than technology (or applied magic), you could have new islands occasionally pop up out of the smog, when the "random, natural magic background energy" reaches a threshold in an area (or when topsoil erosion exposes a new lode of levistone). With a source of new sky-islands, you could have the inhabitants of the older islands either mining the new ones into oblivion, or just migrating to a fresh island when the old one wears out.
  5. Ok, how about the opposite of Pagliacci's question: What's keeping her in the town? She wants to leave, so why is she still there? Now you can have a problem to overcome, instead of an action to justify.
  6. Since there are two of them, washer and dryer?
  7. First things first: I liked it. Next, a little issue with the title: The Red and the Black already exists, which you might already know (in which case it could be intentional). If you weren't already familiar with the title (and if it matters to you that it's already been used), you could just switch it to "The Black and the Red", since the coffee comes first in your story and the ... other thing (spoilers) comes later. Possible plot-hole: if M.'s compatriots avoid caffeine, why is he/are they (and his/their employees/prey) regulars at a coffee shop? Why did he accept C.'s offer? Why did M. introduce himself? If he was the one that fired C., I'd expect she'd at least know his name. M.'s true nature took me completely by surprise, which I consider a good thing in a short story. C.'s personality change in the penultimate paragraph sent shivers down my spine. You manage to have a bad ending with a happy protagonist, though it takes the last paragraph to really drive that home. I like the word play you did with J.'s text message and C.'s reaction to it. Whatever you do, don't edit that out, please. It could maybe use some polish here and there, but as a whole it holds up quite well, I think.
  8. "Environment shapes culture" A society's industry, economics, politics, and customs are all dependent on one another, and most of it is in some way related to the environment in which the society lives (or was first formed). In a desert agriculture is never going to be the main industry, so a desert society might be pastoralists (cattle-raisers) or miners (or something else), and they will be dependent on trade with other cultures for resources. It's also likely that there will be some amount of raiding to get resources, which raises the value of military might, so the leaders of the society will probably come from the military. So military success equals political authority. And so on and so on. If land is fertile, however, growing your own food should be more efficient than raiding or trading for it. In this case military might might not be as important as wealth, so the political elites might be merchants (but more likely landowners). The good part about sci-fi or secondary world fantasy is that it doesn't matter in which direction you go: You can build the culture from the ground up, so to speak, starting from the environment, and then deciding how it shaped the people, brick by brick. Or you can decide on an aspect of the culture you want in your story (Oh, that's so cool, I wanna write about that!), and then reason your way back to how that aspect was formed.
  9. In Cosmere terminology, I'd say Dalinar was a Sliver, or something close to it. But it might be more like Vin with the Well of Ascenscion, and Brandon's confirmed that she didn't hold the power long enough to be a Sliver. "God" is a pretty complex definition: on the bottom end of the spectrum, "anything that is worshipped as a god, is a god", but at the top end, a god needs to be the creator of the universe and everything in it. Monotheism really screwed up the curve with that one.
  10. Brandon tends to persistently re-use a number of themes/motifs/tropes. He himself has mentioned his fascination with the concept of 'The City of the Gods': Elantris is the home of the "god-like" Elantrians. T'Telir literally has a Court of the Gods. Luthadel is home to the Lord Ruler, the Sliver of Infinity. I'll also mention Urithiru, even though it technically doesn't have gods. There's one I call "The Idealist Despot": Elend Venture is an idealist, giving up his throne because of his ideals of democracy, but then switches to ruling by force because the others wouldn't uphold his ideals of equality for the Skaa. Dalinar Kholin spends most of The Way of Kings trying to "inspire by example" the other Highprinces into following the Codes, because it wouldn't mean anything unless they chose to act honorably, but then he grasps power and forces them to follow the Codes anyway because the Highprinces "are like children". But the big one, to me, is "Atheist Becomes God": Sazed spends most of The Hero of Ages disproving religions, then at the end he becomes Harmony. Lightsong keeps insisting throughout Warbreaker that the Returned aren't gods, but then in the tunnels in chapter 57: You could even count Galladon, he states several times that the Elantrians weren't gods, yet becomes an Elantrian himself. This one is doubtful, because even as a restored Elantrian, I don't know if Galladon ever actually accepts this means he's a god. (I can't wait to see what kind of god Jasnah turns into, maybe one of a new set of Heralds?)
  11. Looking at the list of the Unmade's names (thank you, Coppermind), it struck me (not for the first time) that both Moelach and Nergaoul are similar to other names I knew: Moloch and Nergal, both deities from the Ancient Near East (it appears they're mentioned in the Bible, but I only recognized Nergal because he's also a god in DnD's Forgotten Realms). I thought I'd do some web-searching to see if this held up for the other Unmade as well. Turns out, in a lot of cases it does. Here is a list of where I believe the Unmade names came from (I noted which ones I'm not sure about), with links to Wikipedia: Ashertmarn (Heart of the Revel) Asherah (speculative), a Semitic/Akkadian/Ugaritic goddess of motherhood and fertility. Ashtaroth (spelling varies), the Great Duke of Hell in the first hierarchy with Beelzebub and Lucifer; he is part of the evil trinity. (suggested by @Ripheus23) The (male) devil Ashtaroth was based on the Phoenician goddess Astarte (she is mentioned in the bible as Ashtoreth), which fits with the near-east theme of the other unmade (aka Ishtar and Inanna) Ba-Ado-Mishram (no epithet) Abaddon (this is just barely a hunch, really, and it's probably combined with something else), both a place of destruction and an angel of the abyss. In the Hebrew Bible, abaddon is used with reference to a bottomless pit. Baal, or Ba'al (suggested by @Honorless) is a possible source for the first element "Ba" in this Unmade's name. It means "lord", or "owner", and according to Wikipedia was a title particularly associated with the Canaanite storm and fertility god Hadad, which could reasonably be morphed into the second element "Ado", given enough imagination. By Word of Brandon, this name is Lovecraft-inspired (see quote below, thanks to "Doombrigade", via @KandraAllomancer) Chemoarish (Dustmother) Chemosh, the god of the Moabites (and possibly the Ammonites). possibly in combination with Ares Dai-Gonarthis (Black Fisher) Dagon (speculative), Mesopotamian/Canaanite deity with links to fertility. Interpreted as a "fish-god", maybe a link with "The Black Fisher". Most likely in combination with something else, though no idea what yet. Moelach (no epithet) Moloch, a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. Nergaoul (no epithet) Nergal, Mesopotamian (solar) god of war and pestilence. Re-Shephir (Midnight Mother) Resheph, Canaanite deity associated with plague (adopted by the ancient Egyptians as a god of horses and chariots). Sja-anat (Taker of Secrets) Anat, a major northwest Semitic goddess. ‘Anat is a violent war-goddess, a maiden ..." Yelig-nar (Blightwind) Possibly straight-up Lovecraftian name or a connection to Yggdrasil (suggested by @Ripheus23) (I don't buy the Yggdrasil idea, by the way, it's just too dissimilar in sound) By Word of Brandon, this name is Lovecraft-inspired (see quote below, thanks to "Doombrigade", via @KandraAllomancer) If anyone has ideas for the remaining names and name-parts - or disagrees with my speculations - please tell me and I'll edit this list (giving the suggester full credit for the discovery).
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