Long Game 96: KKC in the Modern Age

[Mat he/him]

19 minutes ago, Archer said:

Have you tried being less poor? It really does solve a lot of problems :P. 

I'm village reading you for other reasons, but this is a known tell of yours. E!Mat has a victim mindset. You get screwed by wrong formula, right answer, then you try to argue out of it by pointing out the logical flaws in the formula used. 

Sart's vote is arbitrary. You trying to reason with unreasonableness to such a high degree is strange. It's weird that you're appealing to a sense of, for lack of a better word, fairness over this arbitrary vote - your character wouldn't know that, don't hurt me because I'm poor. Numbering your responses reminds me of my elim defense mode which is defensive and pedantic. 

Overall, it feels like an overreaction. If we factor in your suspicion of Sart, I feel like you'd be more open to accepting the arbitrariness of the vote and the fact you can't sway it with weak counter points about RP, not less. 

As you mentioned, I am poor, so an offhand arbitrary vote affects me much more than it affects, say, you. My main point was that he shouldn't vote based on RP, and I thought it was funny enough that his RP reason was wrong anyway to lump the second two points in there with it. I'd probably have made this point regardless of who he voted on, but I do think you're right in that me being the target strengthened my reaction. But again, it affects me more than most. The 'fairness' aspect was the secondary argument, not the main one. Votes based on RP are bad, regardless of anything else. I don't think that's a weak counterpoint :P.

Also, you should know better than to compare our elim playstyles, come on now

It might be an overreaction, but the wrongness of Sart's argument wasn't something I wanted to let pass. I almost want to argue that you double voting me for this despite village reading me for other reasons is an overreaction, but that probably wouldn't get anywhere :P.

Other thing-- reinstating the No Nobles PM was less about overthrowing them (that was Drake's thing) and more because I'd accidentally posted in the OG one today and needed to fix my mistake.

[Kasimir he/him]

14 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

It might be an overreaction, but the wrongness of Sart's argument wasn't something I wanted to let pass. I almost want to argue that you double voting me for this despite village reading me for other reasons is an overreaction, but that probably wouldn't get anywhere :P.

[OOC: Highlighting again more directly that you read me as E/E with TKN for this very same thing... :eyes:]

[STINK he/him]

Wrong arguments are a staple of the community

[Mat he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: Highlighting again more directly that you read me as E/E with TKN for this very same thing... :eyes:]

I saw your previous posts, but weren't you just saying that you were pointing out the faults in my argument (which were definitely there) the same way I was pointing out the faults in Sart's? Like, what I took from that exchange is that it wasn't a very good reason to e read you and that there was a reason for the difference, which I already sort of knew as I wasn't ever going to vote you for it. If I'm missing something further you'll have to be even more direct :P.

1 minute ago, STINK said:

Wrong arguments are a staple of the community

This is why I got misexed by ten villagers in my one MU game, yes :P.

[Kasimir he/him]

5 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I saw your previous posts, but weren't you just saying that you were pointing out the faults in my argument (which were definitely there) the same way I was pointing out the faults in Sart's? Like, what I took from that exchange is that it wasn't a very good reason to e read you and that there was a reason for the difference, which I already sort of knew as I wasn't ever going to vote you for it. If I'm missing something further you'll have to be even more direct :P.

[OOC: To be clear, I am wearing a gloating smirk that you got hit by the exact same situation, if you're also V, which I am currently believing for the moment  

I'm not making an especial point. I'm gloating/amused. I was, arguably, also basically just pointing out the flaws in Sart's and Wonko's argument about me in that same way. That's just about it. The Sart parallel is what makes me entertained.]

[Mat he/him]

Right, fair enough. Wear that smirk with pride  I guess the SE gods sent Sart's vote as a sign that you're village? xD

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: DISCUSSION, 687 words]

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Right, fair enough. Wear that smirk with pride  I guess the SE gods sent Sart's vote as a sign that you're village? xD

[OOC: I wasn't going to put too fine a point on it but:

• E!me arguably had zero incentive in calling early M2 for the Village to pick up the pace and then receding into the background - I either let y'all kill yourselves by chilling while you guys also chill off, or I go full Village leader mode. There's no point in trying to gain Village credit but also not following through.
   
• On further reflection, Wonko's point about Village acquiring info roles feels a bit wrong-headed for multiple reasons including that targeting is ultimately parasitic on strength of thread discussion, and thread discussion unfortunately has to be guided by the threat of penalty, i.e. voting, or Elims don't feel pressure and don't expose themselves. I also sort of feel he's overestimating some of the roles, e.g. Linguistics E'lir is a passive that doesn't really give you a boost until later on when spying begins, or when players get expelled. I don't know if it's because the game was different when he played.
   
• Drake and JNV are not me kills, simpliciter. You can argue I'd have a vested interest in defeating that meta, but given I just royally stabbed Drake and JNV in the back in the game I played right before this, and also had to substitute out because I felt very bad about my role in the mess and was just an emotionally compromised mess by that point, I think it's a tall order to believe I would be okay with killing Drake or JNV that early, or that my team would agree to pull that on me. Keep in mind I also explicitly asked Stick, who replaced me, to spare Drake if she could. Drake was V reading me and we'd planned to do some shenanigans together (the stuff he wanted the Ceald for) which was vaguely in scope for my RP, and which I could have used for my advantage, if I were Evil. There's no utility to killing him early when he's still in a position to help me out. (There's a further argument that leaving him and Archer, whom I V!read, to brawl things out would be very helpful here.) Similarly, JNV tends to trust me and to reveal information to me. (Cf. Ruin.) Anything gained by being against meta is also lost if my team immediately kills JNV, including information and the chance to try to nudge JNV into helping us.
   
• SDs have a lot of planning to do this game and as much as you guys apparently have a high opinion of me, it's taking basically all my bandwidth and attention/energy to 50k,  and I really don't think I'll hit it before I die/get sabotaged, much less to try to work with a team in a doc and to help plan while I'm at it. Hell, there's no point in posting egregiously over the wordcount chunks of what, 1.3k words? It's a valuable resource to be saved over time. I'd be more focused and stick to 400 word drabble chunks.
   
• It's clear the 50k isn't just a shield - I'm not using the RP to sit back and relax even though I could. I think there's a difference between hardcore Villaging and being present and still doing basic Village stuff, e.g. refusing to vote for anyone I feel I have a decent read on, and actually asking myself about those reads and interacting with people in the thread. I think the complaint from Wonko about my being shielded by RP basically seems to misconstrue what I'm doing and also presumes I'm not actually doing anything Village-side ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
   
• There's a couple of meta reasons too, I'm not bothering to point them out because they're not very fair to people.

Simply put, if you needed a sign from the SE gods, I don't really know what to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Now I'm curious however about Sart as now that you bring my attention back to him again, V!Sart and I tend to butt heads more than E!Sart and I, so I don't really know if I'm missing something here.]

Edited August 2, 2023 by Kasimir

[Mat he/him]

So I just realized I signed up as “Francis, wannabe baker”

Whoops

[Ashbringer he/him]

9 hours ago, |TJ| said:

ashbringer - don't remember non-rp posts. leaning more towards rp in rp-analysis scale. shades of dingo because of it. but much more active here compared to dingo which is giving me pause. leaning evil though.

I do want to say - I don't think this is Dingo for me, not exactly. Dingo was me going strictly RP because I couldn't build the energy to actually contribute to my Elim team, for a variety of reasons game-related and not. I'm just busy now. Work tends to be right when rollovers happen and my break is usually spent doing different things, then I sleep, and I also just have other things to do while I'm awake. I'm still trying to pay attention to what's happening, and I am trying to vote based on at least gut instead of just random tuition-decreasing votes. I'm just not doing it very well because I'm not posting a lot.

Plus in games like this, I like doing things in the background more than the foreground. There's a lot of actions available, and I am a Re'lar, I'm not just sitting around.

There's also the note that the last two times I decided to step up on the analysis I ran face-first into Paranoid Threnody Ash, which I am... trying to avoid 

 

Going to try gut reading things (this is partially quantity over quality, but for now I don't have much time for more):

• Good: Kas, TKN
• Good-Meh: Archer, TJ, STINK
• Meh: Mat, Sart
• Meh-Bad: Araris, Szeth
• Bad: Idk
• MIA: Steel, Wonko

For now, Araris Steel. Not really confident in either of those so I'll leave it without double voting.

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

I like that last post from Ash. Feel the Dingo comments have been inaccurate the last few times they've been used? I'll go with MozSart Sart here, partly as a CC, partly as a WitW was that vote on Mat, and partly as a Kas sheep, though that’s thankfully only a very small part.

Now to just write one more roleplay before rollover.

[Kasimir he/him]

7 minutes ago, The Known Novel said:

I like that last post from Ash. Feel the Dingo comments have been inaccurate the last few times they've been used? I'll go with MozSart Sart here, partly as a CC, partly as a WitW was that vote on Mat, and partly as a Kas sheep, though that’s thankfully only a very small part.

Now to just write one more roleplay before rollover.

[OOC: My gut is that this is a closer parallel to LG93 and LG94 for Ash. I don’t have anything to support this, just sort of feel it's the case. (Agree I could just go read them but it's a function of how ham I want to go again.)]

Edited to add:

Personal note I am still reconsidering the Sart vote. Not fully sure. Do not know if have time to relook once more before conference. Good night y'all I am going to take an hour to sleep >>

Edited August 2, 2023 by Kasimir

[STINK he/him]

22 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Going to try gut reading things (this is partially quantity over quality, but for now I don't have much time for more):

Don't make me point at the sign again

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

• On further reflection, Wonko's point about Village acquiring info roles feels a bit wrong-headed for multiple reasons including that targeting is ultimately parasitic on strength of thread discussion, and thread discussion unfortunately has to be guided by the threat of penalty, i.e. voting, or Elims don't feel pressure and don't expose themselves. I also sort of feel he's overestimating some of the roles, e.g. Linguistics E'lir is a passive that doesn't really give you a boost until later on when spying begins, or when players get expelled. I don't know if it's because the game was different when he played.

It's possible I'm being mislead by last game, I suppose. It is true that back then, we were using the then-E'lir-level Linguistic Analysis as a de facto alignment scanner, so we definitely had more information to work with. Both Archives and Naming have pretty powerful information acquisition tools, though, so I think it's still a reasonable point -- and again, the exe is radically depowered in this game compared to normal SE; we can put some pressure on with it, but ultimately it just doesn't have the same bite as it does elsewhere. We need other tools at our disposal, this game cannot be won on exe alone.

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

• It's clear the 50k isn't just a shield - I'm not using the RP to sit back and relax even though I could. I think there's a difference between hardcore Villaging and being present and still doing basic Village stuff, e.g. refusing to vote for anyone I feel I have a decent read on, and actually asking myself about those reads and interacting with people in the thread. I think the complaint from Wonko about my being shielded by RP basically seems to misconstrue what I'm doing and also presumes I'm not actually doing anything Village-side ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree with this even more now than I did back then, and even then I said it was only a light suspicion. It just always gives alarm bells when someone seems to have a strong, NAI, appeal-to-emotion reason not to exe them, and you were repeatedly stressing that reason by talking about the time you had left before getting killed. You've contributed substantially since then, though, even though you didn't want to, so my light suspicions there have almost completely been washed away.

For now, I'm too busy to do a vote count, but I see a lot of votes on Sart, Sart, which is a very good opportunity to give this exe teeth for once, and possibly expel a player. I really didn't like the tone of that vote on Kas last cycle, as it seemed like a way of floating suspicions about Kas while maintaining the deniability of "it's just RP".

[Ashbringer he/him]

3 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: My gut is that this is a closer parallel to LG93 and LG94 for Ash. I don’t have anything to support this, just sort of feel it's the case. (Agree I could just go read them but it's a function of how ham I want to go again.)]

Oooh boy 3 quotes immediately.

I'd agree that those are closer, in that I was just too busy to look at things in depth and trying to actually dig myself out of it wasn't going anywhere. But there is the difference that I was actively suspected for most of both those games, vs just some light glances from you+Archer here, and spent a lot of what time I had either fighting an exe or trying to get the village to decide whether or not to actually exe me. I'm trying to avoid that backslide now that I can do things.

Paranoid Threnody Ash isn't good but Discussion Black Hole Ash is worse 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

54 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

For now, I'm too busy to do a vote count, but I see a lot of votes on Sart, Sart, which is a very good opportunity to give this exe teeth for once, and possibly expel a player. I really didn't like the tone of that vote on Kas last cycle, as it seemed like a way of floating suspicions about Kas while maintaining the deniability of "it's just RP".

I’m going to push back against this (in a small part because my character is currently chilling with Sart’s ). Kas is the sort of player that floating suspicions doesn’t work well against. If you sus Kas, he’s (usually) going to get in your face about your reasons for it. And since Kas has pretty strong tells, that sort of thing tends to be useless anyways. I’m not sure when the last time v!Kas got exed was.

Basically, I don’t think an elim would take that approach with Kas. They’d either try and pocket him or NK him.

[STINK he/him]

Also whole lotta A people looking at this thread I'm starting to understand whoever had the bias against the A's

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

Sweet sweet roleplay!

He ran up the stairs, taking two at a time, panting. Cavothee ran up the stairs, then right as he got to the first landing, his hat shook and fell off. His hat fell off. His hat!

Cavothee stumbled to a stop. He had to get his hat. A loud clang came from the stairs. No! The sygaldry would be damaged!

He pivoted with a speed few would expect from a man of his size. He dashed down the steps as quickly as he could. 

Bounce clang, bounce clang, the hat fell down the stairs. Kuh clang! The hat came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He almost fell down the last few steps to the hat to pick it up.

It was scuffled, but mostly untouched.     Cavothee dusted it off, then removed the outer layer to examine the sygaldry. It was similarly battered, but nothing vital was interrupted. He carefully reattached the external shell of the hat, integral for full stylishness. He donned the hat, and, feeling nothing awry, went back up the stairs. He was much more careful the second time. 

The Windy Tower lived up to its name. Though Cavothee couldn't attest to its windiness, it was certainly a tall tower. After seven (how lucky) flights of stairs, he arrived at Rinth's room.

Rinth would be so excited! Cavothee raised his hand up to knock on Rinth's door. 

He knocked and nobody answered

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Ashbringer said:

Oooh boy 3 quotes immediately.

I'd agree that those are closer, in that I was just too busy to look at things in depth and trying to actually dig myself out of it wasn't going anywhere. But there is the difference that I was actively suspected for most of both those games, vs just some light glances from you+Archer here, and spent a lot of what time I had either fighting an exe or trying to get the village to decide whether or not to actually exe me. I'm trying to avoid that backslide now that I can do things.

Paranoid Threnody Ash isn't good but Discussion Black Hole Ash is worse 

[OOC: W00ts one hour of sleep I am a god >>

I don't disagree about the differences, just feel for whatever reason that my gut just thinks it's that flavour of RP + activity profile. I don’t think Dingo is right and really wish I knew why. Might be because I kind of don't feel Drake is a you kill despite that being defeasible.]

1 hour ago, Wonko the Sane said:

It's possible I'm being mislead by last game, I suppose. It is true that back then, we were using the then-E'lir-level Linguistic Analysis as a de facto alignment scanner, so we definitely had more information to work with. Both Archives and Naming have pretty powerful information acquisition tools, though, so I think it's still a reasonable point -- and again, the exe is radically depowered in this game compared to normal SE; we can put some pressure on with it, but ultimately it just doesn't have the same bite as it does elsewhere. We need other tools at our disposal, this game cannot be won on exe alone.

I agree with this even more now than I did back then, and even then I said it was only a light suspicion. It just always gives alarm bells when someone seems to have a strong, NAI, appeal-to-emotion reason not to exe them, and you were repeatedly stressing that reason by talking about the time you had left before getting killed. You've contributed substantially since then, though, even though you didn't want to, so my light suspicions there have almost completely been washed away.

For now, I'm too busy to do a vote count, but I see a lot of votes on Sart, Sart, which is a very good opportunity to give this exe teeth for once, and possibly expel a player. I really didn't like the tone of that vote on Kas last cycle, as it seemed like a way of floating suspicions about Kas while maintaining the deniability of "it's just RP".

Ah soddit imma drop OOC for now it's a pain and mobile is hell. See I don't disagree but Naming's one role though. And my read of foundational Archives is it gives a binary answer which is absolutely helpful but it's like staking on one Seeker and one half action tracker. I don’t really disagree about the exe being weaker but an expelled SD still can't hit anyone other than expelled and Imre students, which functionally advances our wincon and cuts down their actions available. I don’t know if I think it’s Evil per se but it's something that popped out to me when rereading. 

34 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I’m going to push back against this (in a small part because my character is currently chilling with Sart’s ). Kas is the sort of player that floating suspicions doesn’t work well against. If you sus Kas, he’s (usually) going to get in your face about your reasons for it. And since Kas has pretty strong tells, that sort of thing tends to be useless anyways. I’m not sure when the last time v!Kas got exed was.

Basically, I don’t think an elim would take that approach with Kas. They’d either try and pocket him or NK him.

1. 2018 if Vulture counts, I was deliberately not acting like me though. Extreme kelspeak. Otherwise probably somewhere like QF3. Alv totally @ me for a change in playstyle when no drek my playstyle changed it was the first time I was a Villager >>

2. Don't disagree but have noticed some Elims will push me no matter what. You and Sart did actively consider sussing m in LG82.

3. I'm mostly torn because I still feel I tend to butt heads more with V!Sart cf. Heron in AG8 and I also feel Sart's votes have been in CC territory which I take to be more E!Sart indicative. I'd just really like to get more out of Sart to make the call but that doesn't feel realistic at this juncture. 

4. As a side comment I'm playing an Inquisitor of Sarenrae in a campaign right now and codeswitching between that game and this is brutal. Nothing to do with Sart other than an "I see what you did there dawnflower"

[STINK he/him]

Drake Verner was a name chosen at random by a member of the public that will not be described to you people reading this passage at this current time. Suffice to say, they were unaware of any context whatsoever as any good question should be provided as.

If you were to ask me for a description of one Drake Verner, I would be unable to provide until details were given to me by a member of the public although perhaps one of the members of this fine academia would be able to provide. If you were to ask me if this was further offloading of work that should be done, I would ask if you were truly a student at this institution and how you are managing to deal with this workload.

I would like to reiterate for everyone reading this that again, Drake Verner was a name chosen at random and they were unaware of the presence of a supposedly insane other Drake somewhere on the campus though one really must question the logistics of what happens when a student goes ‘insane’ and seemingly just co-operates with the security on campus and goes wherever they end up going. 

You telling me not a single one ever did not co-operate and resist and run off somewhere? Every single insane person ends up in the same place with no problems whatsoever? Sounds like a load of crockery to me if you ask, but I’m not the guy responding to a question because it turns out that no-one actually asked and now I’m just sitting here like if no-one asked and I answered is that really an answer or just a statement being thrown out? 

I’m gonna end this here ‘cause I not really know where this is going to be honest, say hi to Drake Verner if you want.

-------------------------------------------------

That's RP suckas you're welcome to be graced with my presence in two forms now. 

[little wilson she/her]

This turn is now over! The new turn will (in theory) be posted in 3 hours! (it will likely actually take longer than that because it's a new term, but hopefully not much longer)

[Elbereth she/her]

---

Wonko has gone insane!

Araris was brought on the horns and charged with Conduct Unbecoming. He was expelled! Sart, Mat, and Stink were also brought on the horns. Sart and Mat were charged with Undignified Mischief and must make an apology. Stink was charged with Reckless Use of Sympathy and lashed!

Sart (8) - Mat, Kas, Kas, Wonko, Wonko, TJ, TKN, TKN
Araris (3) - Mat, Ash, Stink
Mat (3) - Archer, Archer, Sart
Stink (2) - TJ, Araris
Steel (1) - Ash
Wonko ()) - Araris
TJ (0) - Sart

These students were elevated: Kasimir, Wonko, Ashbringer, TJ, Stink

Term 2, Month 1 has begun and will end in 44 hours, at 7PM Mountain Time. Good luck!

[Mat he/him]

Whoa expelling happened okay then

I’m more than a little annoyed at the whole me on the horns thing because it literally sprung from an rp character quirk but sure I don’t mind a downgrade in living conditions and an even steeper uphill climb for tuition, nooope :|

If you think I’m rping my apology in relation to the votes on me you’re dead wrong because as far as Francis is considered no one at his food thanks muchly 

But that’s for tomorrow cause it’s laaaate >>

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Maybe another person would have been shocked at expulsion. But Aralor knew, despite the lack of complaints, that he’d deserved what the Masters had charged him with. Figuring that she was harmless, he’d brought Velocity to the Medica for Sarenrae to take a look at her. Aralor had been impressed with how quickly the other student had been able to discover and treat the unhealed wounds still plaguing the bird. But then they’d all learned what sort of predator he’d taken under his wing. Velocity had bolted from the table, slipped out into the hallway and into the next room, where she’d begun savaging another patient. Aralor managed to subdue her before any permanent damage was done, but that was merely a small stoke of luck too insignificant to balance out the harm. The master Physicist had shouted at him so loud that half the University had heard, and the master who’d sponsored his elevation to E’lir had been worse.

Despite all that, despite his expulsion, Aralor resolved to stick around and do his best to help in the Fae crisis. Some of the students were his friends now, after all. Sarenrae had been caught up in his mistakes, for one, and he owed her for that. He’d heard there were ways to make money across the river, and with his purse free from tuition, perhaps he’d have enough coin to make some small difference.

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 613 words]

1 hour ago, Elbereth said:

Wonko has gone insane!

[OOC: What.]

1 hour ago, Elbereth said:

Araris was brought on the horns and charged with Conduct Unbecoming. He was expelled! Sart, Mat, and Stink were also brought on the horns. They were all charged with Undignified Mischief.

Sart (6) - Mat, Kas, Kas, Wonko, Wonko, TJ
Araris (3) - Mat, Ash, Stink

[OOC: Literally what sort of clowncar is this Tehlu-damned game even.

@Araris Valerian, I assume this affects your read of Wonko in a positive light?]

xliii. archives

Kevan liked the Archives, liked the scent of old paper, ageing leather. The pages rustled softly as you flipped through them, drank in the hushed sounds of students perusing tomes and scrolls. Perhaps it was the thought that there was so much knowledge in the Archives, crammed on all the shelves, to the point the Archives didn’t always know what they had.

(Inevitable disruptions by the death of a Master Archivist, or warring Master Archivists, one succeeding the other, or the Lannis Massacre, so many years ago, and the death of the then-Master Archivist, and the collection of El’the and gillers stepping up to try to keep the University running. That, Valerra had said, was the point at which some of the great changes happened, and why wouldn’t they? The entire leadership of the University had been replaced in one fell swoop; the new Masters had different ideas, different perspectives on how the University ought to have worked. Kevan wondered if Master Anders had seen those days, and did a three-day search in the registers, breathing in the dust of the old storerooms and handling the records—as the scriv insisted—with cotton-gloved hands, feeling strangely as though he was in the Medica once again, with Master Bob instructing everyone to clean their hands, put on the sterile gloves, which were then spritzed again with a mild disinfectant. Master Anders was the second Master Rhetorician to succeed the position since the break.)

Ikran Abantja had boasted of the University’s Archives in his Farewell (and condemned it, in the same stroke), where he wrote that the greatest minds of the Four Corners had known much less about far fewer things than the Archives had lost in their collection.

He liked books, liked reading. Liked the idea you could flip open a book, and give voices to the dead, that someone distant, or dead could speak to you through the pages. (Unlike the story knots, where the knowing was lost, except for the few like his grandmother who remembered, and he supposed he’d done a little remembering of his own, in the end, passing what little he remembered on to Eithne, who was, herself, trying to catalogue story knots in the Archive’s keeping.)

There was a certain enchantment to reading, and a certain desolation to reading the end of a book, intoxicated on the ideas you’d come upon. A sense that you were part of a conversation with those who had once been living, breathing human beings, like you, with their own priorities, their own urgency. You could come across a line so beautiful, so perfectly-phrased it stole the breath from your lungs and returned it at the denouement. 

Even from the start, when he’d encountered the Archives for the first time as a fresh-faced young student, he’d quickly made himself at home among the stacks, and taken to reading books on philosophy, travelogues, on languages, anything he could get his hands on. There was a hunger in him, a sense that he was making up for lost time, for what the schoolmaster in Tirnagh couldn’t impart to him, making up for being who he was, born to the circumstances he was. (Some of the children of nobles had their own books. He hadn’t grown up with any, and he’d read everything in the schoolmaster’s collection from cover to cover.)

Perhaps that was the first sign he hadn’t been a good fit for the Fishery, Kevan thought. He’d had his heart in the Stacks, more than he’d had it in the Fishery. 

He’d wanted to make something that would last, and he wondered, sometimes, if he should have been looking to books rather than to Aturan roads.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

Okay now I’m fundamentally confused on how Elevations work but that’s fine because if I understand things right I never have to worry about them again.