The Blog of Roon

My sense is that Renate is going to lose the Dragonhunt. When I have a chance to jump, I just don’t jump the right way. Poor girl, she deserves a better player.

But I’m proud of her anyway, because she’s going to fail well. Despite Alan’s protestations, the Dragonhunt world is not one designed for noble heroes—it is designed for loud, arrogant, warmongering blowhards. Renate isn’t any of these things. QED.

Aaron Wrenfall, you will remember, snuck off to arch-enemy Glenworth in order to have words with his not-quite-ex-wife, Heaven functionary Poya Kern. Renate couldn’t manage to track him down, so she promptly lost what was left of her temper and decided to put her own spoke in the wheels.

Which she did in gallant style, by issuing a personal challenge to Baron Stephen of Glenworth and then refusing to hurt him, offering her own life in redress of the damage Karlbotel had done him. Noble. Heroic, even. And it failed.

Well, it did and it didn’t. It certainly derailed the tournament, along with whatever personal confrontation Aaron had planned. So she has achieved her immediate goal of getting him and Coris out of Glenworth unharmed. But mad Stephen wasn’t having any satyagraha, thank you; it took Aaron’s wife’s intervention to keep him from sending Renate home in chains or putting her in the stocks or something similarly humiliating. (Which, of course, she would have put up with patiently and with dignity, because Renate’s all about the dignity when the occasion calls for it.) She did win the open, public admission that he is trimming with Andragar, sufficient that even complacent Ilium will have to sit up and take notice. And she took the measure of Stephen’s chamberlain, an interesting fellow indeed. As failures go, it was a successful failure.

And really, it was an enormously Renate-like thing to do, entirely in line with what I know of her personal ethical code. No one is above sin; likewise no one is beyond redemption. (Why will Renate never be an indiscriminate killer? Because death ends the possibility of redemption.) Ex-enemies are the best friends. When you make a mess—and sometimes there’s just no choice—own up to it and clean it up yourself. Nobility amounts to dignity, honesty, responsibility, and sacrifice. Heroism is not war; seeking peace is often more heroic than battle. Nor can worth be measured in a single person or a single decision or action; it is the sum of many people and a thousand thousand actions. (This, to her as to me, is the signal failure of the Kahanite belief-testing mechanism.) The value of a sentient being (or a group of them) is not necessarily measured in skill or even efficacy, and certainly not by belief. Forgiveness and mercy are godlike, and revenge is outright evil; when you must kill, kill for the sake of the future, not the past.

(Which is why Stephen of Glenworth just hit her “better-dead” list, along with Keph LoCaine and [ha ha] Dark Eternal. Stephen’s going to make a hell of a mess if he’s let live. I have other ideas for what to do about Glenworth, but if Stephen’s chamberlain has the sense he appears to, he’ll keep Stephen way the hell away from Renate in future. She gave Stephen his chance; he didn’t just turn it down, he spurned it. Renate’s got no personal animus about that, but she’s fully aware now that Stephen of Glenworth is immediately dangerous to Ilium in general and Karlbotel in particular and needs to be neutralized, by death if there’s no other way.)

Renate does not violate her personal code by allying with the nominally (or actually) evil, only by working toward an unacceptable goal. The idea that one denies another an opportunity to do good, whatever their tangled personal reasons for it, is just enormously strange to her. (She and Aryk have fought over this point, and doubtless will again.) She does not necessarily violate her personal code by keeping another’s secret (though she vastly prefers openness), only by cravenly hiding from her own deeds. Hypocrisy, I think, is the sin that would damn her in her own eyes.

I suspect that my fellow players and GM think that Renate’s cold conduct toward her brother violates her code, considering how highly she values forgiveness. They’re wrong; that’s not what I think they’re thinking it is. They should ask about it sometime.

But in any case, I reiterate that I don’t think this code is going to get Renate to her goal. She will, however, fail nobly by my lights and die well, and I am reasonably content with that, as much as I would prefer to imagine her dying quietly at an advanced age sitting under apple-trees in bloom with the sound of her grandchildren’s laughter around her.

I found this lovely story about how Dungeons and Dragons brought unlike souls together, and had to share.

Shame this chap hasn’t tried diceless RPGs. I think he might like them.

I am having just entirely too much fun with a hairsplitting Monrroyo back-and-forth on the nature of time. Dangers of GMing, I suppose.

And normally I hate these kinds of discussions…

I’m teaming up with lovely MC again for this year’s Murder at Christmas. (Last year, we played sweet but silly Selina and her cannier but eviller brother Will.)

This year, MC decided against her usual rakish bloke in favor of Arabella, Dowager Countess of Gower. I will be playing her daughter Lady Pamela, one of those nice, plain, oft-disregarded English girls who seem to feature prominently in almost any novel you name, usually as a foil for the much-lovelier female protagonist.

(We’ve got beauty to burn this Murder, it seems; an actress and a Southern-belle singer and I don’t know what-all. I’m sure they’ll appreciate having Pamela around to sneer at and steal beaux from.)

As is customary in Murder at Christmas, all characters have secrets they are desperately trying to keep from everyone else. I don’t know Arabella’s (how could such a sweet-faced old lady have a bad secret?), but I can say that Pamela’s isn’t horrible or evil, just rather sad and sorry.

Last year’s game was a trip; I have high hopes for this year’s.

An IM conversation:

Me: Heh heh heh. Congratulations for inducting Matt into the Dragonhunt Hall of Paranoia.
Alan (D’hunt GM): Now it’s everyone from any Dragonhunt campaign ever!

In the wake of Renate being thrown together with Coris Nightblade again, the back of my mind has been trying to elucidate how she manages her rather strange (by the usual standards) lovelife.

I finally figured it out. Renate acts just like my cats.

Dream and Didi genuinely appreciate being around their people. They will lie in exquisitely uncomfortable places in the office just because we’re there. At night if Dream starts feeling lonely, he’ll wail hollowly or scratch at the bedroom door or both. He doesn’t want food, just companionship.

The thing is, though, it doesn’t particularly matter to either cat whether it’s David or me they get affection from. They assuredly know the differences between us; I’m fat, so I’ve got a better lap, but David’s knobbly (and unweakened by RSI) fingers are better for scratching cat skulls. We’re each valuable in our little uniquenesses.

Moreover, the cats have definite boundaries; they’re not indiscriminate. David and I are their people, and anyone who isn’t their people is regarded with suspicion. Dream thaws relatively quickly, Didi quite slowly; he will cuddle with our Wednesday-night houseguest, while she will barely let herself be touched. And they make perfectly clear what treatment they don’t like—more politely than most cats, but even so. Don’t touch Dream’s belly; don’t touch Didi’s paws.

But it simply doesn’t occur to either cat to be “monogamous.” A housemonkey is a housemonkey. A lap is a lap. They’d think it was weird to be required to stick to just one housemonkey, weirder still for David or I to be jealous of each other over them. There’s plenty of cat fur and cat purr for everyone.

Which is how Renate feels about love, really. There’s always more of it, and always more people to give it to. Not that she loves everyone; that would be absurd. Not that she loves those she loves the same way; everyone is different, everyone needs something different and can give back something different. But the idea that she can only “truly” love one person at a time—ridiculous.

She loves Rien, as much as that fact is killing her right now. She loves Coris, too, though neither of them has admitted it. She loves Aryk despite his maddening self-righteousness and sexism. She loves Godfrey dearly, and Kligh Darenton, and she’s even fond of stiff-necked Talos Clybourne. Of course no two of these relationships are alike. One simply can’t hug Godfrey Cuyler, and one can’t not hug lonely Rien. (Well, right now she can manage not to, as Rien lied to her and betrayed her, but they’ll work that out in the fullness of time.)

Eventually, I suspect, she’s going to inspire some jealousy, and she’s going to have a hard time understanding it. She’ll deal with it, establishing firmer boundaries if she has to, because she doesn’t want to make people unhappy. The right people for Renate, though, realize that the more love and strength she shares, the more she’s got.

Players, they have this curious habit of not responding to signals.

The bomb I dropped on Monrroyo the other day was a serious assault on two of their number, a mage and her guard. I gave every signal I could that the pair of them were going to die, but my players weren’t having any. One knocked himself out (literally) with Creo Corpus, and another is bringing her Kabbalah knowledge to bear.

So, okay, fine. They win. I’ve thought of another way of getting rid of this mage (because in a meta-game sense I need to; she belongs to a player who didn’t show up for the start and as best I can tell isn’t going to), one that doesn’t involve death or Twilight.

And one which might open up some very intriguing and quite unexpected leadership tendencies I’m seeing in, of all people, Ximun.

“If ever I doubted how much vanity there is in most men’s courage…” or something like that, quoth Mary Renault.

Eh. It’s true. I think the major reason I haven’t fallen apart like an overcooked chicken over what is going to happen to my poor benighted country is that Renate and Juskinah and Suhayla would despise me for it. (Afletana would understand, but even she would hope for better.)

Renate’s a good kid. I wouldn’t want her ashamed of me.

Dropped a bomb on Monrroyo. Waiting to give everyone a chance to respond to it. Thus far, they are oscillating most satisfactorily.

It’ll get worse, though. They don’t know how bad this is. Yet. And they’re almost certain to misinterpret it.

Mua-hahahahahaha. I think GMing is bad for me.

I’ve been rereading part of Renate’s prologue to remember just what she and Coris had managed to say to each other.

It was amusing (to say the least) to see how the person who oscillated like a mad thing at the thought of fighting a mere exhibition match with Lord Hyuri of Vesper was later able to stare down Fire Stingray from a vulnerable zeppelin without losing her cool—even able to reassure others.

They do grow, characters. Even considering the state she’s in, Renate is a stronger, braver, wiser person than the little girl Coris met in Larkspur.