Sandbox Discussions

[anthusiasm]

Bells losing is...really disconcerting. I'm uncomfortable.

I mean, it had to happen eventually, though.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

On a happier note a Bell is good-and-proper omnipotent and Milan is so sparkly and they might rez Tialle and bond her to her friend's dragon that would be the best thing.

[Nemo]

didn’t Kithabel have a mental privacy thing operative? Are the entities just That Powerful, or did it have convenient gaps? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were just That Powerful, but the defense wasn’t mentioned at all.

And why aren’t the entities going to Kithabel’s homeworld? They have to know about it; they would have checked both her and Panacea.

Answers

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I forget whether or not we mentioned her having a mental privacy thing. In the original plan she would have faced the Simurgh more and developed that, in which case the answer was going to be that her background level of immunity is lower than when she's actively defending. And Eden > Simurgh, of course. It would have made a lot of sense for her to be actively defending when Eden woke up, given Cauldron's admittedly unreliable warnings, but remember that Scion was using a "that's not important" power at the time. (He's also his precognition, checking for a world where Kithabel is convinced to play along, hence him acting a bit out of character with the talking and the showing her Cauldron's dungeon and the using that power in the first place.)

They aren't going to Kithabel's world because they can't get there under their own power (not an Earth/outside their multiverse). Once Kithabel can get them there, they don't have any reason not to go. Useful more for sorcery (gotta catch 'em all) than for the universe itself, of course.

Note that this does mean they've solved the cycle. The genocides can eventually stop, species-wide, as soon as they get enough sorcery and someone convinces them it's a good idea. Technically a happier ending than Worm.

[DanielH]

Okay, on a different topic: why was Kithabel’s Bonding so much more pleasant than Sarion’s? I think Sarion’s oversharing period just never ended, but why not?

[MaggieoftheOwls]

...Well, Liselen did say that it would help that Milan would be a very young dragon, and Ansharil is about ten thousand years old...

[Alicorn]

That and I think kappa said something about how Ansharil is so in Aianon's head because Jokers and this did a thing even for a different Bondmate? Kappa should explain that part instead of me.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

But what's the risk difference between this and Sarion with a normal dragon? She decided not to meet any long before the island.

[Alicorn]

The dragons around Sarion were older (remember, they're having a population crisis after a really serious bottleneck) and also people around Sarion do not think of the oversharing thing as being a big deal, which made her wonder if they even got why it would be and would provide accurate warnings. And she can't really ask.

[DanielH]

She could explain her concerns to a Bondmate, though, and hopefully get more detailed warnings.

I expect it’s also relevant that elf mages are not instantly effortlessly nigh-omnipotent. If she had momentum I expect she would have weighed the tradeoffs differently or considered the value of further information high enough that she would put more effort into finding out (maybe even dropping into War Manners with a non-elf who would not mind). That might not make it worth Bonding with Ansharil, but it might make a difference with other dragons.

[Ezra]

If Mehitabel wants her book to be The One Book for ever and always, I think her book will need characters, in more than a dry biography way. People relate to characters.

Her book might even benefit from getting a professional storyteller involved.