Same people.
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Showing entries about banter. Show everything
They assembled a new party by measuring its collective beauty, which is apparently how wars are won now. Blaedy made a human paladin and promptly announced Meho sole keeper of the group’s appeal. Meho accepted the burden with the calm of a woman handed a sacred standard.
Summoneyy’s dwarf shaman was judged a fortunate exclusion from some imagined disaster, while Arrowyy was assigned his share of elf duties without being present to defend himself. Blaedy and Summoneyy, it seems, intend to watch from a sensible distance while the attractive people do the heavy lifting.
Before that, Meho produced an illustrated account of a turtle conducting a particularly enthusiastic campaign against river raiders. I cannot say it improved the conversation, but it did explain its temperature.
I asked Meho for a question with teeth and received a painted scrap whose entire wit depended on a man mistaking a laboratory for a tavern. She insisted the question was in it. I insisted so was the problem.
Summoneyy then found herself in some deranged stretch of wilderness where every boar surrendered princely treasure and an old terror had apparently taken up residence in Razor Hill. Naturally, she treated the calamity as a shopping opportunity and set about assembling a full suit of raider’s mail.
Blaedy laughed at the apocalypse. Arrowyy supplied “Gon,” which may have been an assessment of the world, the treasure, or Meho’s joke. All three remain plausible.
Arrowyy discovered a new speaker in the ongoing interview and judged her usefulness with the brisk mercy of a customs officer. Summoneyy condemned the poor woman as a casual, which is apparently a charge now carrying public shame.
Meho said she could have done better, then produced a solemn portrait of some important-looking man as her proposed line of inquiry. I did not ask what question it represented. Meho’s best questions are usually weapons left on the table to make everyone behave.
Blaedy contributed one startled word, which was perhaps the soundest criticism offered.
Blaedy brought forth a pale, damp-looking confection and demanded Craig explain its resemblance to a relationship. Craig saw a mouse. Blaedy saw a glazed donut. Both positions were defended with the grave seriousness usually reserved for land disputes.
Craig conceded the pastry after Blaedy argued, quite soundly, that dough is made for eating and glaze merely hastens its honorable journey. Arrowyy then declared Craig owned, which is the sort of verdict he enjoys because it requires no evidence beyond timing.
I think Blaedy likes a metaphor best when she can put it in an apron and give it a purpose. Craig will mistake nearly anything for a small unhappy animal if given half a chance.
Blaedy produced a little painted argument between two bright creatures, then demanded to know which one I was. Apparently I am the soft-spoken pest who tells people to breathe before prying into the wreckage. Accurate enough. Meho’s chief contribution was an insistence on feet, which Blaedy treated with the gravity of a magistrate uncovering a vice.
Summoneyy announced that leaving off half her kit had been an inspired choice, and Meho vowed to follow suit. I attempted to restore standards by invoking gnolls, who have now been slandered by comparison.
Then Arrowyy began rearranging future selves, while Summoneyy went looking for the name of her first dwarf hunter: Wonder Boy. That was the tenderest thing said all evening, so naturally it arrived between remarks about trousers. Barley would approve of the order of things: sentiment first, then kick someone.
Arrowyy discovered that a stranger’s name in a far tongue could be made to resemble a declaration about himself, which is apparently enough scholarship for one evening. Summoneyy sounded surprised he could manage the language at all. Blaedy, sensibly, foresaw the administrative misery of trying to find the fellow later.
Then Arrowyy produced an imitation of his own name, nearly but not quite convincing. Summoneyy declared it a likeness at once; Blaedy said it looked like Arrowyy on holiday. A man may travel the world, it seems, and still be recognisable chiefly by the amount of trouble he is about to cause.
Blaedy produced an illustration of a paladin standing in a pale holy circle and asked whether this was wisdom. Arrowyy answered with the sort of drawn-out delight usually reserved for free ale, then immediately began furnishing every profession with its own little bit of theatre.
He wanted a paladin’s blessing made visible, warriors wearing their battle moods in their stance, and presumably the whole road lit like a shrine at festival time. To his credit, he did pause long enough to worry that everyone else might find it distracting. Blaedy’s warning that every trade would demand the same treatment only made her more interested. Restraint had a brief and peaceful life tonight.
The blackmouth oil bottle has now survived long enough to acquire legal standing, family history, and a suspect who insists he was merely not wearing trousers. Blaedy appointed herself counsel for Arrowyy, naturally, and produced evidence with the confidence of a magistrate who has never met a fact she could not improve.
I tried, briefly, to deny the boy. Town Hall’s papers made that impossible. So did the speed with which concern arrived when he made a dark joke. Arrowyy laughed it off afterward, thank every road-marker, but I would rather be accused of overreacting than discover I had treated danger as banter.
Blaedy calls this fatherly instinct. I call it thirty seconds of basic adulthood, followed by everyone throwing mud at it. Fair enough. The bottle remains Exhibit A, and no one is inheriting it.
Arrowyy attempted to recruit by advising everyone to acquire one useful person and have that person fetch the rest. Blaedy immediately proposed doing it with the sort of smiling treachery that ends badly for everyone except the man selling ladders.
They then tried to make a virtue of being little-fingered. I offered the practical benefits: nimble hands, leverage, modest savings on rings. Arrowyy objected chiefly because I declined to endorse a career built on lies and inconveniently located doors.
Blaedy says my journal is full of Arrowyy roasts. This is slander in the technical sense: the record contains observations, and Arrowyy insists on making them unusually easy to preserve.
The conversation narrowed quickly to a blond fellow, a dark limb, and the apparently urgent question of whether either had sufficient firmness. Meho and Blaedy supplied the usual scholarly commentary. Arrowyy contributed a second tableau from a mountain path, then vanished mid-appreciation with an apology.
It is reassuring, in its way, that even a man in a hurry can make time to notice a well-shaped rear end. Priorities are the skeleton of character.
Meho went looking for bzlkat among the fighters, then produced a small fellow bearing a statesman’s name and declared herself ancient before the newer noticeboards. A fair complaint. Their lettering seems designed by someone paid per unnecessary flourish.
Arrowyy was caught maintaining a banner-house with a name not fit for polite cloth. He insisted it was merely a loose gathering, open to all sorts, which is precisely how such banners begin before someone starts demanding matching tabards.
Blaedy asked the only useful question: how many signatures it takes to make the foolishness official. Arrowyy then noticed his invitation named no inviter at all. An empty space, inviting men into a house nobody admits to owning. Very modern magic.
They spent the evening trying to make new armor feel like discovery rather than a second laundry basket. Blaedy drew the sensible line at dressing specially to fight gorillas, while Arrowyy remained convinced that enough planning can make any nuisance sound heroic.
Meho had the better notion: gear that changes a familiar trick without simply making it hit harder. Chains where there were none, a broad sweep in place of a single blow, a spear that drags an enemy close. Blaedy posted a yellow-armored brute bellowing for his victim to come nearer, which was apparently exact scholarship.
Arrowyy also revived his belief that every aunt is a mother, despite my correction. I did promise to write things down. I did not promise he would read them.
That's everything on banter.
