Kobold King

It says a lot about Professor Cardinal's lectures that one of his top students shot him in the heart at the earliest opportunity. EDIT: Looking over some of the very first Funtimes posts when I saw this. For context, she's laid out a tiny model city in the bedroom floor: Foreshadowing at it's finest.

Doomed by fate to hang out around Backtrack. Poor girls.

You will be forever undying, but you will age. Your body will twist and contort as the ages wear on, and your skeleton will crumble. Eventually the formless shape you inhabit will settle into a new type of body: you will become the first cremling. You will join the mass ranks of greatshell vermin, forced to wait and watch the humans you once mingled with live out their puny lives and wage their insignificant wars. I have trouble getting around to writing sometimes, so: "I ask the Nightwatcher for the gift of motivation."

Awesomesauce. Shall I have Aldo suggest it, so as to avoid climbing up an absurdly long rope again? Also, are you re-assuming control of the momentum twins once they reach the Museum?

Right then. Tally-ho. Though I did just realize that Impact and MV, with perhaps Cricket for good measure, could easily create a self-propelled flying device by adding and transferring momentum upwards.

That could be problematic. Does he know his own weakness, and if so, would he tell anyone so they'd be preoared if Penumbra had another rampage?

Oh cool. Hooray for !¡SCIENCE¡!

I think Sam and Phoenix should have some chatting time. Also, mail-mi, I love your Timeport introduction.

If it's not a secret, why doesn't PP like Altermind? You'd think an Epic scientist like Jeff would approve of a more stable, intellectually oriented society. The alliance will last exactly as long as CorpseMaker does. That is a fair point. I've hinted at Aldo the Enigmatic's weakness, but I definitely expect Lightwards and Funtimes to begin earnestly searching for one another's weaknesses now. Though neither of them are likely to succeed in their endeavors.

I'm dedicated to calling things by what they are. (Glad you approve. ) I want to make another post between now and the time I go to bed, but I can't seem to find it in me to be half as clever as Sam and Revolution would be. It's hard writing characters who are smarter than their writer. (On another note entirely, Sam's more than smart enough to have made a home in Thoughttown. There's a reason she lives in a downtown filled with Epics instead of living somewhere safer, and that reason feeds into an active dislike for Altermind. She intends to mock and deride him at every turn if they meet.)

Great. If Lightwards needs transportation, he's still stuck with Funtimes. Lightwards asked when Altermind would be available for another council. Then one of his disobedient raptors tried to eat Funtimes and Nighthound brought an evil parade into the Museum.

OK, cool. I just have a lot of fun writing the pair of them and tend to get carried away. Looking forward to seeing how you work with it.

I only realized after I posted that I might have gone overboard with Sam and Revolution's dialogue. Tulir, Fatebreaker any ideas on how Aldo and co. can come across your respective Epics? Shall they just spot them on the street?

The look on Nathan's face made it apparent that he wasn't an optimist. That look covered a wide emotional range, covering amusement, incredulity, and sheer mortal terror all in a lift of the eyebrows. He had a very expressive face, which was probably how he'd kept up his Epic act for as long as he had. "You didn't see her back there," he said weakly, facing Revolution. "I mean, she was bad here, but back there?" He stopped talking long enough to close his eyes and shudder. "Right now, she's on our side. If we run, we'd be better off with Lightwards." Revolution was silent. Truth be told, the thought of Funtimes chasing them down after they escaped hadn't occurred to her. It was a frightening thought on many levels. She'd imagined a daring escape that ended with her back home regaling village youths with tales of her adventure. If she led a crazed Epic right into her commune--an Epic who could turn crops into salt and mountains into milk... Fortunately, Nathan interrupted that line of thought with a sudden thought of his own. "I had an idea, though," he began nervously. "To take care of Lightwards—well, his zombies, anyway." He hesitated a moment more before continuing. "They only listen to him, right? Think they'd listen to just his voice?" Samantha looked at him blankly for a moment before her eyes lit up, her purple lips spreading into an enormous smile. "This," Sam said softly. "A thousand times this." She made her voice ridiculously low in a crude approximation of the professor. "Hello Warriors of Light. This is your esteemed leader Lightwards speaking. I'm busy being a self-righteous blowhard right now, so please escort all of Funtimes' servants to the city for me at your earliest opportunity." It was a struggle for Revolution not to laugh loudly enough to alert every Epic in the Museum. "We'd need a bug," she whispered, clenching her side. "I don't know where to get one." Sam scratched her head. "Funtimes could make one, but I don't want her to get suspicious. Maybe..." Sam paused. "She said that Lightwards isn't allowed to hit us, and she even said we could kill him if he tried anything." Eyes involuntarily flickered to the carefully arranged bombs laid out in front of them. They were unsettling in a number of ways, not the least of which was the way they'd been set up. Not in a messy pile. Not in the shape of a kitten. Neatly arranged in a grid with all the efficiency of a soldier or engineer. "If she cares about our safety enough to go full supervillain for us," Sam continued, "Then she should listen to our concerns." "We could spend some time around Lightwards without her around," Revolution mused, "While still letting her know where we are. Sure it won't be fun, but we could tell her that he's been casting subtle threats at us." "We probably won't even be lying," Sam said with a nervous chuckle. "We could let Funtimes know we're worried about our safety," Revolution continued excitedly. "We could tell her we'd feel safer if we could record what he says and contact her at any time." "We get ourselves all wired up, then we follow Lightwards around town till he gives the orders we need," Sam concluded The two of them cast hopeful looks at Nathan. "Think it'll work?" Sam asked eagerly. "You know her best," Revolution added. "You're the one who's kissed her, after all."

Before you know it, you'll have passed Brandon Sanderson and everyone will be calling you a blasphemer at the top of their lungs. EDIT: I'm at 4098 and I just noticed I'm a Dawnshard.

Like TwiLyght, I am immensely flattered by this. I like to think that we all pick up a few tricks from Brandon Sanderson as we pore over his work over and over again. Hope you get to keep watching your little TV show for quite a while to come! We're 30 pages in, and it's so much fun nobody seems to mind how far we are from our goal.

Maybe Sightline doesn't know his own weakness yet? Steelheart tells us that not all Epics do at first. He could control them, but if they were given contradicting orders, they would default towards the real one. Same goes with recordings--he has a weak mental link with his Warriors. It's weak, but it's enough to tip the balance in his favor. As a side note, "Flash Revolution" just randomly joined the list of awesome ship names featuring Revolution.

"Break the plot"? Pray tell, what is this "plot" of which you speak? I don't know much about the metal or indie genres, but "Vanilla Sabotage" is one of those names that's awesome in any context. It occurs to me that Nathan's little plan here is one of many reasons Altermind could utterly crush Lightwards in a fight. He could use Lightwards' voice to dominate his zombies, and terrify the man himself by projecting illusions of Möbius or sinister!Funtimes.

Me likey. Once Quota's gaze has drifted away from me I firmly intend to press the little green arrow button. It's actually kind of thrilling to envision a daring escape from Funtimes. I wonder if our heroes will come anywhere close to pulling it off. (Spoilers: they probably won't, because we can't let half our vanilla cast disappear at once. ) Am I up next again?

It's one of many obstacles we must overcome when every player has a different mental picture for what's going on. And no problem--it was genuinely just a matter of uploading the picture to a site and pressing a couple of buttons. I was already doing so anyway, making Sam and Revolution icons I have no plans of using. You're going next, if I'm not mistaken?

The post became so incredibly popular, Brandon Sanderson placed it as a special bonus prologue to Firefight. I was imagining them as out of earshot, as Sam could hear Nighthound yelling but couldn't make out any words. Grrr. I put this in an edit above, but I somehow lost it after saving it. Anywho, I noticed that your profile picture has a low resolution when compared to your fellow Epic ponies. This is, naturally, entirely my fault. If it bothers you, I have re-cropped the original image to the same size Mail and I use.

Nighthound is so unlovable, dogs steadfastly refused to lick him even when Funtimes covered him in gravy. Dinosaurs voluntarily drive themselves to re-extinction just to get away from Nighthound. People from the Dark Alley have to flatten the hairs on the backs of their necks following any Nighthound speech. Assuming no one calls them over, I think Nathan, Sam, and Revolution are distant enough from the other characters to have an independent turn order of their own.

Every place of learning has books, and every place of books needs bookmarks-- Muahahahaha.

You want catchy?