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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.
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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.
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An excerpt from Bee’s journals about reading Fitz’s writings and him destroying many of them precedes “Up the River.” Bee and her companions depart Bingtown in haste aboard the Vivacia, exploiting a loophole in Trader laws to allow themselves cover for executing their intentions. Joined by the Kendry, the Vivacia proceeds to and up the Rain Wild, Bee glossing the transit and the sights she notes along the way, as well as relating in summary the reports of events she makes to those who ask about how she has fared. Beloved attempts again to reconcile with her, to less effect than he might have hoped.
Scenery? Photo by Juan Felipe Ramu00edrez on Pexels.com
The Vivacia reaches Trehaug and ties up alongside Tarman for a hurried transfer of supplies and crew. Bee is welcomed aboard the old barge and watches events. The Kendry joins the other two liveships, and both are stripped of as much as the Tarman could take on while the ships’ captains confer. All watch as the Vivacia imbibed shipped Silver and begins to transform; the Kendry does, as well, even as a delegation from the Rain Wild Traders approaches and attempts to interdict the ships’ transformation into dragons, finding no success.
Later, Leftrin notes changes in the Tarman as Bee laments the barge’s slow up-river progress. Beloved lays out some of his understanding to Bee as they proceed, and they arrive at length in Kelsingra. There, they are met by Skill-users from Buckkeep, one of whom doses Bee against the Skill at work in the city. Skill-work that had been going on is related, and it is determined over Beloved’s objections that a Skill-pillar trip is in order to get Bee back to Buckkeep.
As often, the prefatory comments attract attention. In the present case, Bee’s assertion that she means to collect and write down Fitz’s accounts helps to address a question I noted earlier that the texts present: who is the author (within the milieu; outside it, of course, the answer is obvious)? It’s not a total answer, however. While it can be posited that Bee herself does a lot of the writing that constitutes the Farseer, Tawny Man, and Fitz and the Fool novels, and no few components of the prefatory materials are themselves cited as deriving from elsewhere (about which some previous comments are here), not all of them seem accessible. And there are some other factors at work, I think, but that is something only clear from the vantage of rereading; I think I’ll address those factors as they come up. For now, it will be enough to say that a partial answer is posited, but a full one to the question of “Who is doing the writing, really?” is not in evidence…at least not yet.
In the chapter itself, I think there is more for me to say about how the Traders mimic or emerge from the experience of the early United States. Some geographical cues are present, although they are only a few and serve primarily to reinforce ideas already present rather than to introduce new ones–fittingly enough, given how late in the novel the present chapter is. Legalistic notes are more evident, I think, with the reference to fines and the peculiar loophole at work in Trader law reported as being at work. In the chapter, the comment is made that, if a ship is underway when the local legislature passes a law, that ship cannot be held in violation of that law; this would seem to be a somewhat merciful thing, an acknowledgment that promulgation of a law has to be part of a law’s enactment and enforcement. This brings to mind the idea of “free, prior, and informed consent,” one applied in international law and by treaty especially to indigenous peoples and groups…something with which the United States has had some decided difficulty but which, as with so much else, is held out as an aspirational best practice. As in other chapters, then, the Traders are held out as something like a refinement of the early United States, albeit not with one-to-one correspondences in place, in the present chapter.
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I‘ve mostly been stolid and staid; That I’m no fun has often been said. I did never much toke When I was with such folk As for that task had much outlaid.
When in Rome…but I never did get to Rome, really. Photo by Keloke Grow on Pexels.com
Elliott RWI 