It’s been quite a while since I last updated my landing page, and a fair number of things have changed since then. More details are in my bio, linked below, and something of a table of contents for this webspace appears, well, right down there, too:
So you know what you’re getting… Image is mine, severally.
I’m happy to take commissions for various kinds of writing and related work. Some more detailed information about the kinds of things I can do is here, but I’m happy to confer with you about your needs via the form below. And I am always happy to accept your generous support.
Read the previous entry in the serieshere. Read the next entry in the seriessoon.
Remarks from Chade regarding Skill-pillars in the Six Duchies preface “The Quarry.” As the chapter opens, Fitz attempts to reorient himself after his journey through the Skill-pillar from Furnich. Conferring with Nighteyes, Fitz realizes he is back at the Skill-quarry where Verity had carved his dragon. Nighteyes asks Fitz if he remembers anything of his passage through the pillars, during which he encountered Shrewd, Verity, and Chade, and he reports to Fitz that something is amiss in his body. Fitz determines that he must send a message to Buckkeep, for which he must strengthen himself. He undertakes to do so, surprising himself with what the Skill permits him to achieve in doing so.
I think this apt again. Image from the Legend of Zelda wiki, here, used for commentary.
Fitz wakes the next morning and assesses his location, recalling his prior sojourn in the area. As he considers what to do next, Nighteyes urges him to begin work on his own stone-carving. Motley takes herself off to Buckkeep via the Skill-pillars, leaving Fitz and Nighteyes to confer. Nighteyes again urges stone-carving, and Fitz asks him after his current existence. Nighteyes points out that Fitz carries parasites, and the effects of them in him begin to show themselves.
Fitz begins to survey stones in the area, still conferring with Nighteyes. As the pair reflect on their first meeting, Fitz feels the memory of it pass into the Skill-stone he touches, and he lifts his hand to find a small piece of it shaped. Nighteyes again urges Fitz to begin the work of carving the stone, although Fitz resists, hoping yet to return to his family at Buckkeep. He rests, only to wake in the night to find the wolf has left him again.
The present chapter is not the first to have the title it does, sharing it with a chapter in Assassin’s Quest. As with previous coincidences of chapters, I wonder about reading them against each other; the present chapter makes the comparison easier than many of the other examples I might find, given how much it calls back explicitly to the earlier time Fitz spent in the quarry. Indeed, Fitz repeatedly visits the campsite he had shared with Kettricken, Kettle, the Fool, and Starling, and he pores over the memories of his time there–if perhaps with less vagueness and confusion than afflicted him when he had approached and inhabited the place earlier. Changes to the location are noted; changes to the characters receive some attention, as well. Changes to the readers are more difficult to attest; I may have been reading the novels across a span of years, but some readers will be taking in the whole Realm of the Elderlings corpus at a crack, and their experiences will be different than mine. And even my rereading, going slowly as it does, will show some alterations…about which I should probably do some more thinking that I yet have.
I wonder, too, if I ought to make something of the porcupine that presents itself in the chapter. Hobb does mention, in the present chapter and elsewhere in the Fitz-centric novels, that Nighteyes finds himself drawn to the creatures, but whether this is “merely” a character quirk or something more substantial is not immediately clear to me. It does seem to be the case that the prevalence of the creature suggests a non-European-ish setting for the novels, since, while there are porcupines in the Old World, they are not in the parts of Europe towards which the Six Duchies and Mountain Kingdom motion; at the same time, the porcupines of the New World do inhabit areas to which those fictional nation-states compare. And the symbolism of the animals themselves might be at play; Fitz, after all, is himself somewhat prickly and self-isolating, and Nighteyes does rather cling to him. So there’s another scholarly someday to be addressed, perhaps.
There is more to do with the novel, to be certain. Even in my rereading, this is still the case; there are yet four chapters and nearly fifty pages to address. I am presently at work on one paper that takes it up to some extent; I know there are many others yet that can be written. How many of them are mine to write, I do not know, but I expect I’ll be at work on at least a few of them, even as this series ends and I move on in my rereading to other things, yet.
I’m even now happy to write for you; fill out the form below to begin!
The dice soon will no longer fall, For initiative rolls soon no more call Will be at table made; The game is near-played, And the last round I cannot forestall.
Just a little more… Photo by Nika Benedictova on Pexels.com
A few days remain in the month, but I’ll remain available to write for you, if you’d like!
I regret that but eight months remain In which some might voice the refrain That we are at war– But where is the store That itself with Christmas is pained?
Picking up from the previous session, pregame discussion for the penultimate scheduled session asked participants to reflect upon narrative endings–namely, what makes for good ones and why those are good. Part of the purpose of the discussion was to gesture towards the stated desire for overtly educational content in the game; part, too, was to develop materials for the final session. As previously, while there is hope for continuation in a future term, there is no guarantee of the same; sequel hooks are already in place if there is a return to Hanlon, but if there is not, then there will, at least, be some resolution to be found for the players and their characters.
Within the game, proper, players’ characters continued their attempt to withdraw from the dungeon they had been investigating for the last many sessions. It is the case that their decision to do so in the previous session came as a surprise to me, and it was not a universal that they wanted to do such a thing; there were a couple as wanted to press on, but the majority thought they should escape. I’ll confess to a little chicanery in keeping them in the dungeon for the remainder of the previous session, although I had evidently given myself enough narrative room previously to make it make sense in context. (The characters had, some time back, tripped a trap that had no visible effects at the time; the players accepted that the effects manipulated the layout of the dungeon to some extent. It was serendipitous; I wish I could take credit for foreseeing things in such a way. I suppose I have more to learn about running games, even all these years into doing so.)
I suppose there is a lesson to take from the experience in that having things happen without obvious effect now allows flexibility in storytelling later, something of a variation on Chekhov’s gun. I’ve done a few such things, as I think on it, whether a pressure plate triggering some strange ticking or a spell scroll making itself available to one or another of the players’ characters’ who might, if it is remembered, find some use in the party’s current situation. Railroading–that is, forcing players’ characters into a single path of action–is generally regarded as a bad thing in tabletop roleplaying games; players like to have agency over their characters’ lives, even if those characters are moving through a dungeon that generally admits of “forward” and “backward,” with the latter leading to no treasure or glory and most characters being actively interested in at least one of those things. If there is to be any of it, whether because of outside demands or because a person running a game has to scramble to address something entirely unexpected and has to stall for time to do just that, it works far better if there is something on which it can be predicated sensibly within the context of the game, itself.
How and whether I will make use of any such lessons, I cannot know. Whether or not I will run a game again is uncertain, honestly; I am not so young as I once was, and other things increasingly command my time and attention. Gone are the days when I can spend many hours of each day poring over the books and staring at the webpages I’ve needed for the games I’ve played. I do nurture some hope, though, that some of what I’ve been able to do at the table so far will translate to others taking up the work of running games, helping others to sit around their own tables, rolling dice and telling lies to the delight of those taking part.
I’m happy to help you have your own TTRPG stuff; fill out the form below for its start!
Read the previous entry in the serieshere. Read the next entry in the serieshere.
Another excerpt from Bee’s journals precedes “A Princess of the Farseers.” As the chapter begins, Bee reflects glumly on her new status as a royal. The passage from Kelsingra to Buckkeep is glossed, Bee noting complaints about the necessities of royal travel as she rehearses events. A reunion with a maid from Withywoods prompts emotional release, and Bee begins to be integrated into the courts. She and Shun are initially polite but cool after their shared experiences, and Bee finds herself beset by duties and tutors and the sniping of pampered court ladies that she adeptly addresses to Shun’s relief.
Bee is adept with more than one kind of cutting. Photo by Ali Pli on Pexels.com
Bee begins to settle into routines, one of which is with Beloved, now masquerading as Lord Chance. Some of them also touch on the Skill, in which Bee remains untutored and therefore of some vexation as her thoughts leak out at night. Reunions with Hap and others do ease her, however, even as she continues to struggle with the changes and comes to better and better understandings of a father she has mourned. Bee does take some opportunities to act out, struggling for reconnection and earning some rebuke.
One evening, Bee finds herself wandering the halls of the keep and stumbles upon Thick. From him, she begins to find a new friend and to learn more of the Skill. It is, for her, a strange taste of normalcy she had lacked.
The present chapter reads as sort of a passing thing, one intended primarily to move action along to its next point of importance rather than to do anything on its own. For the most part; there are some rather pointed goings-on that might well be read as toothing-stones from which another series might be constructed. The exchange in the present chapter between Bee and Violet over Shun is one such; Bee even remarks upon being certain to come into conflict with Violet again (780). While, in effect, a bit of petty sniping, it is one that serves a useful purpose–Bee is to be commended not only for taking up for one who had helped her, but also for rebuking scorn unearned–and it is one that gestures towards ways in which Bee is being set up to succeed the Fool. Speaking uncomfortable truths to adjust behavior is a function of the character-type the Fool has been by the in-milieu time of the present chapter, and Bee seems well positioned to keep on doing that very thing.
I note, too, that the present chapter does much to address the tension surrounding how Bee is and should be treated. While her numerical age is not entirely clear from the narrative, and her growth has been noted to have proceeded at a strange pace, Bee is somewhat ambiguously a child. She is not an adult, certainly, but given her experiences and her nature, she is not a child as other children are; she knows too much and too well, and much of it unpleasantly. As with the Fool, she crosses a number of categories, multidimensionally liminal, and how others must react to her is uncertain. Given the presence of the Skilled, however, with whom she might be able to share more (and “might” does a lot of work, here), those around Bee might (and, again, “might” does a lot of work, here) well be expected to understand her position better. She has responsibilities to those around her, certainly, but they also do to her, and it seems to me as I read the chapter again that the latter could use more attention.
I’m still happy to write for you; fill out the form below to begin!
Elliott RWI 