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masterghandalfThis is a repost from Das_Sporking2. Previous installments of this spork may be found here.
Warning: This post contains slavery, abuse and some deaths.
MG: Well, everyone, it’s time to continue our journey through Robert Newcomb’s The Scrolls of the Ancients! Last time, we got some backstory on the circumstances of Wulfgar’s birth and why Morganna gave him up for adoption. Today, we jump back to the present and find out a bit more of what’s going on in Eutracia and what this book is going to be about. Joining us today will be Irinali and Tahiri! First off, we are told that this is the beginning of Part I: Recollection, and that we are now thirty-four years later after the prologue, officially placing us in the present of the story.
Chapter One
Irinali: Oh, goody. And, I believe because this is the beginning of a Part, before the chapter proper we begin with an in-universe quote:
And a great calamity shall befall the nation after the second earthly death of the Chosen male’s seed, for the endowed and the unendowed alike of the already beleaguered land shall find themselves in chains, with little hope of return. —PAGE 553, CHAPTER ONE OF THE PROPHECIES OF THE TOME
Irinali: …though I have quite happily read some rather hefty texts in my time, I have to concur with the sporkers for the previous volumes that more than five hundred pages for a single chapter is excessive. It also appears that, once again, the Tome foretells exactly what is going to be happening and when, and yet the wizards are doing absolutely nothing to prevent it. Is this from the part that Faegan has memorized, rendering him worthless, or from the part that only Tristan is supposed to read once he comes into his powers, by which point it will be too late to do anything? Either way, the incompetence stuns me.
Blood Matters: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 2
MG: Also, not to downplay the severity of what is, in fact, a fairly extensive slaving operations, but… this wording makes it sound like the whole country is going to be enslaved, rather than a relatively small number of people being taken captive for a specific purpose.
Tahiri: Great, so whoever wrote this was useless and bad at math. And I thought Force visions could be unhelpful! Anyway, we open the chapter proper with this charming image:
Whump! . . . whump! . . . whump! . . . The two massive sledges came down on the large, simple block of wood in perfect unison, one after the other, monotonously marking out the beat. Its cadence rarely varied. A sledge in each hand, the awful, barely human creature continued to bang out the mind-numbing rhythm as the filthy slaves seated in rows before him toiled endlessly.
Tahiri: …yeah, that sounds like a (very primitive) slave ship, all right. If any Hutts or Yuuzhan Vong warriors show up, I’m leaving. I deal with enough of that at home…
Built for war, maneuverability, and speed, the ship was unusually large. Christened the Defiant, she carried four full masts and a hundred oars. The cramped oaring stations lay one deck down, and smelled of sweat, urine, and slow death.
MG: Defiant has got to be the most ironic name for a slave ship I think I’ve ever seen; only one that would be even more ironic would be Freedom or something. And am I the only one side-eyeing the use of the word “christening” to refer to naming in a world without Christianity? I know, it’s probably just translation convention, but I’m not terribly inclined to cut Newcomb any slack.
Dastardly Deeds: 1
Gratuitous Grimdark: 1
Fifty such rows stretched down the dark interior of the hull, a single, wide walkway separating them into two equal halves. Six male slaves toiled in each of the divided rows, making six hundred of them on this deck alone. They had few breaks. They were forced to row whenever the wind was directly behind them, or the ship was in the doldrums, or simply, it seemed, when impatience overcame their new taskmasters. And even when they were allowed a few moments of rest, they remained chained in place, unable to stretch their muscles to rest their weary backs. The slaves wore nothing but soiled loincloths. Their callused, bleeding hands were chained together and their feet were in shackles, communally chained to the deck. Escape was impossible. Even if one or more of them somehow freed themselves of their bonds, there would be nowhere to go except overboard, to drown in the icy waters of the Sea of Whispers. They had been at sea for fifteen days. Legend had it that no ship had ever sailed farther than that—ships that tried never returned home.
Irinali: Oh, so does this mean we might be meeting the Necrophagians soon? That they haunt the Sea of Whispers is the reason it can’t normally be crossed, I do believe… and they sound rather more interesting than anyone else in this drivel!
One of the slaves looked down at the number carved into his oar handle. Number Twenty-Nine. That was his name now—a number, assigned by his captors. It was meant to be dehumanizing, he was sure, but he had seized on it as a symbol, a reminder that his life was not his own, that the slave manning this oar was not his true self. Twenty-Nine. He would use that as his name as long as he remained captive. But someday, somehow, he would be freed, and then he would take up his family name once again with pride.
Irinali: Wulfgar, I presume? But it seems rather curious to me that he has so readily accepted taking the designations his captors have given to him, even if he somehow has convinced himself it’s an act of defiance. I don’t have any firsthand experience in the matter myself, but I would think that keeping his true name in his heart, even if he can’t use it out loud, would be a much stronger act of defiance.
Tahiri: *coldly* I do have experience with… something like slavery… and I have to agree. I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but if our friend Twenty-Nine has already internalized the designation his captors have forced on him so strongly that he won’t even think his true name… yeah, I think this is more about Newcomb wanting to spring his real identity on us like it’s a surprise than anything.
MG: And before we move on, just to clarify something – Twenty-Nine is not Wulfgar. We’ll be meeting him before long, though. And Twenty-Nine’s true identity is being withheld for a reason and is going to be revealed later in the book… but it’s not really all that exciting, or surprising. So yes, it really does feel like Newcomb is just withholding his name to be dramatic about it later.
Contrivances and Coincidences: 1 (for withholding Twenty-Nine’s real name)
Dastardly Deeds: 3
Tahiri: Huh; I’m genuinely kind of surprised he’s not Wulfgar, then. So, Twenty-Nine can see a little bit out of the slot for his oar and sees other slave ships keeping pace with the one he’s in, in an inexplicable armada of shame. Uh, I somehow don’t think the slavers are ashamed of what they’re doing – people with a lot of shame don’t usually go into that line of work. He keeps pulling his oar, thinking about how much pain he’s in and how even though he’s apparently a skilled artisan, he’s not fit to work in his current condition. He also takes a moment to describe his captors:
They were horrific. Once they may have been human—but no more. They were tall and muscular, and their skin was pure white, alabaster, almost translucent. Even when there was a deficit of light, their pale, flawless flesh seemed to shine, as if their bodies carried no blood whatsoever. Twenty-Nine had often wondered if they would bleed, if cut. The four fingers and thumb of their hands ended in long, pointed talons, rather than fingernails. Their powerful chests bare, each of them wore an odd, black leather skirt, floor length, and divided down the front for walking. The toes of their black leather boots protruded from beneath the hems. A spiked, black leather collar encircled each one’s neck. Each creature carried a short sword in a scabbard hung low behind his back in an ingenious arrangement that allowed the hand to reach naturally down along the outer leg to draw the blade. Twenty-Nine had already seen several of them do so, and their speed had been staggering. Somehow they managed never to catch the swords in the bright red capes that were attached to their spiked leather collars. Their faces were grotesque. The heads were long, angular, oversized. A shiny metal skullcap covered the top of their white, hairless craniums, ran down between the eyes, then split down either side over the bridge of the nose. Each half extended down the sides of the cheeks to the jawbones, running back to encircle each ear before joining again with the top, leaving the creatures’ eyes, mouths, and ears exposed. The ears that protruded from the gaps in the masks were exceptionally high, pointed, and seemed to hear everything. A variety of earrings dangled from them. The wide, wrinkled mouths held black tongues and dark, pointed teeth. For eyes, they had long, narrow slits hiding orbs that were solid white, without irises or pupils, and quite vacant. Still, they missed nothing.
Tahiri: Huh. Add some scars and tattoos, and make them grey instead of white, and they might pass for Yuuzhan Vong. *An alien cast flits across her features, and when she next speaks, it’s with a hint of a harsh, sibilant accent* And I would kindly request Newcomb leave the Yuuzhan Vong out of this… whatever it may be. Or there will be consequences. *back in her normal voice* Also… what makes Twenty-Four think they were ever human? They don’t sound like it to me – if I met one of them, I’d just assume they were their own species. Even the Minions in these books weren’t human themselves, they were bred from humans.
MG: Also, spoiling this now (because Newcomb makes it really obvious even before the official reveal) but the slavers really were once human. How Twenty-Nine guessed that accurately… beats me.
Gratuitous Grimdark: 2 (mostly because the slavers’ design just screams “evil and edgy”)
Irinali: *studies the description of the slavers* Meh. I could make better. Has whoever these beings serve considered the utility of skeletons? They work harder and complain less than living slaves, at least. And you never have to worry about rebellion, or backtalking… We have a brief description of some of the slavers, who the narration calls “bleeders,” walking up and down between the rows, whipping any slave who doesn’t pull hard enough with whips or jabbing them with tridents. Beside Twenty-Nine, Twenty-Eight suddenly falls over and begs for water before he starts vomiting. One of the slavers comes over, and Twenty-Nine closes his eyes as Twenty-Eight starts wondering why no one is helping them (I know this man is sick, abused and probably delirious, but… you’re on a slave ship, in the middle of the ocean. No one is helping you because, I presume, no one knows where you are, and if they did, they couldn’t reach you. Also, Newcomb’s protagonists are fools, and his villains aren’t much better). The slaver stabs Twenty-Eight in the leg with his trident, twists it around before pulling it out, and orders him back to work. Which, honestly, is better than I’d expect. Once the slave is back in position, the slaver tells him that the next time he tries something, he’ll stab his eyes out. You are not of endowed blood, Talis. Therefore, you are quite expendable. *rolling her eyes* And of course, the slaver cares about blood, too.
Blood Matters: 5
Dastardly Deeds: 4
Tahiri: Well, we learn that all the slaves in the hold have been branded with the word Talis on their shoulder; Twenty-Nine doesn’t know what it means, but he thinks it sounds like Old Eutracian. His father and his father’s father had all handed down tales of a mysterious, beautiful language, now long since abandoned. So… I guess Old Eutracian didn’t evolve into modern Eutracian or anything, people just… stopped using it and switched to a completely different language? I’m not an expert, but that doesn’t sound right to me… Anyway, back at the port where he was taken captive, Twenty-Nine remembers seeing other slaves who were branded with the word R'Talis instead; he doesn’t know what that means, either, but I think I can guess…
Blood Matters: 6
Contrivances and Coincidences: 2 (apparently people just stopped using Old Eutracian for Reasons)
Irinali: And so, Twenty-Nine looks down at the floor, thinking about how there’s another deck below where more slaves are held, both men and women. He recalls how the slavers took both male and female captives, but only use men to row their ships. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re all about thirty-five years old. He remembers how the slavers administered a blood test to their captives before marking them as Talis or R’Talis, and the only difference he can see is that the R’Talis are treated slightly better and are exempt from the more menial forms of labor like rowing. Because, of course, we all must value blood quality above all else, even those of us who happen to be monstrous slavers of dubious origins and questionable fashion sense.
Blood Matters: 7
Tahiri: Twenty-Nine gets shocked out of his thoughts as a slaver whips him; he deliberately screams as loud as he can, and so the slaver is satisfied and wanders off to torment someone else. That… was marginally clever of him, though I can’t say I approve if someone else ends up getting beaten in his place. And that’s when a door opens and someone who Twenty-Nine has only seen briefly before comes in; he’s nicknamed him the Harlequin and this is what he looks like:
As had been the case the other time Twenty-Nine had seen him, he was absurdly dressed. His long-sleeved, black-and-white-checked doublet was fastened fastened down the center with shining gold buttons. Highly padded epaulets broadened the shoulders, and short, white ruffles on the raised, circular collar and cuffs of the doublet lengthened neck and arms. The almost obscenely tight, bright red breeches ended in black, square-toed shoes with raised heels and highly polished silver buckles. Rings adorned almost every finger, and a matching gold necklace hung to his breastbone. The long fingernails were also red. Strangest of all, his face was painted. The effect was chilling. His face was stark white; his lips were deep scarlet. A bright red painted mask surrounded dark, piercing eyes. Angular and foreboding, its edges swept back sharply from the eyebrows and lower lids into the stark white field surrounding it. The haughty, prominent nose was severely aquiline, the jaw surprisingly strong. An inverted red triangle was painted beneath the lower lip. His hair was dyed a bright red, and was pulled back tightly from the widow-peaked hairline to the rear of his skull. Fastened to his belt was a device that looked like two small iron spheres, one black and the other white, attached to either end of an alternating black-and-white knotted line. The line was coiled up and hung neatly from a hook on his belt at the right hip. Sometimes, usually when he was deep in thought or watching something he found to be particularly stimulating, the Harlequin would reach down and grasp the twin spheres, then gently rub them together, producing a soft clinking sound. There was something unnerving and perverse about the action, and Twenty-Nine cringed whenever he saw it. Taken as a whole, the Harlequin looked like a freak on view at a province fair rather than the leader of the fearsome taskmasters controlling the oarsmen.
Irinali: …well. It certainly seems like the slavers are not the only ones here with terrible fashion sense; they appear to be taking their cues from their master.
MG: And, okay, I know it’s supposed to be creepy, but between “white-painted face” and “red-dyed hair” all I can picture is “evil Ronald McDonald.” And that’s… not exactly intimidating. Or, taking his whole ensemble into account, maybe he’s more of a Piedmon.
MG: Either way… yeah, one of this book’s main antagonists is an evil clown, with the nickname Twenty-Nine gave him only serving to underscore that this is how we’re supposed to think of him (we’ll learn his real name before too long). No, we never learn why, and what little we do get of his backstory suggests he’s a rather mundane mercenary. Who happens to be an evil clown man, because reasons.
Gratuitous Grimdark: 3 (not really sure this is appropriate, but not really sure where else to put the evil clown man and it feels like he deserves to be noted somewhere and I guess “evil clown” falls under “gratuitously edgy” more than anything)
Tahiri: *sigh* Let’s just roll with it… Anyway, “the Harlequin” gives orders to the slavers, who call for a halt, much to the slaves’ relief. The Harlequin announces they’ve arrived at their first destination, and he wants forty slaves, Talis only. Wait… I think Irinali may be getting a chance to meet the Necrophagians after all. *she glances over at her co-sporker* If the two of us get eaten by evil ghosts, I’m blaming you. The head slaver starts marching down the aisle, singling out particular slaves, including Twenty-Nine’s friend, Twenty-Eight. The chosen ones – but most definitely not The Chosen Ones – get unchained and hauled out past the Harlequin, who tells them that they’re going to a better place. *she snorts* Yeah, and the Yuuzhan Vong call death “the Blessed Release.” You’re not fooling anyone, buddy.
Irinali: After the chosen slaves have left, Twenty-Nine suddenly feels the ship go still, and then the temperature starts to drop. *she claps excitedly* Oh, I think we are going to get to meet the Necrophagians today! I really should be writing this down… Twenty-Nine adjusts his position to get a better look through his oar slit (good man!), and this is what he sees:
The ship seemed to be in the grip of an impenetrable gray fog, the likes of which he had never seen. Growing up in the coastal city of Farpoint, he had seen fog banks roll in, to be sure. But this was decidedly different. As if it had a life of its own, the fog began to slither into the boat, tendrils reaching in through the oar slits and falling down the stairway from which the Harlequin had descended. It quickly filled the deck. As it increased in density the fog replaced the smell of the salt sea with a cleaner odor, such as one might inhale on land after a brisk, cold rain. Then came the voices: many voices whispering as one. “Pay us our bounty or we shall first take your ships, and then your bodies.”
Irinali: Necrophagians indeed! But, if they take the ships first, would they need to “take” the bodies? Which would, without ships, presumably already be dropped into the sea, the Necrophagians’ domain… Twenty-Nine can hear screams from on deck, suddenly cut short, and then the sound of bodies being tossed overboard; from his vantage point, he can see a few plunge into the water. He briefly hears another sound, as of something in the ocean feeding, and then the surface of the water is stained red. Finally, it goes quiet, and it seems the Necrophagians have had their sacrifice. A moment later, the Harlequin returns, wiping blood off the hem of his doublet and ordering the slavers to bring up new rowers from below, Talis only. Now, beg pardon, but wouldn’t it have been more efficient to select your sacrifices from the slaves you weren’t currently using to row your ships? That way you wouldn’t have to replace your rowers before you could get moving again? If you had, perhaps, retained the services of a certain brilliant and charming necromancer who could provide you with a crew of skeletons who could row tirelessly and without complaint, you wouldn’t have this problem…
Blood Matters: 8
Dastardly Deeds: 5
Gratuitous Grimdark: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 2
Tahiri: Seriously, that’s your takeaway? Anyway, the slavers follow their orders and replace the rowers, and finally the Defiant can get back under way again. The Harlequin tells the slavers they have to make up for lost time – hey, I guess Irinali is right, you shouldn’t have used your rowers as your sacrifices! – but the head slaver wants to make sure they’re clear first. The Harlequin assures him that the sacrifices were sufficient, and “I think it safe to say they all disagreed with something that ate them!” *crossly* Look, just because you got the turn of phrase backwards doesn’t make it a joke… and I’m pretty sure you killed them before you fed them to the Necrophagians so they weren’t actually feeling anything at the time, and… gah. But the slavers all think this is hilarious (guess it doesn’t matter the species, everyone laughs at the boss’s jokes…) and the Harlequin hops into his chair, where he takes out his metal bolas and starts toying with them by clacking them together in perfect time with the drummer’s beats as the scene ends.
Dastardly Deeds: 6 (I’m starting to get the sneaking feeling that the Harlequin is a bad guy…)
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 3 (the Harlequin lampshades his own villainous stupidity this time – remarkable!)
Irinali: And so, we suddenly cut to another slave, chained up with the others in the lower deck:
His eyes were hazel. His straight, sandy hair was pulled back from his face into a tail that was secured with a bit of worn leather string and ran down almost to the center of his back. Before being chained down he had been branded with the word R’talis, as had many of the others imprisoned with him. He was strong and in the prime of his life, but in the darkness of this hold it didn’t matter. Nothing did.
Irinali: He’s surrounded by vomit and… fluids (ugh, I may work with corpses, but I generally prefer cleanliness in other aspects of my life, thank you…) but he’s been kept fed and hydrated enough to keep him alive and in reasonable condition. From where he’s chained down, he can’t see what’s going on outside the ship and has no idea where he’s going or that the ship is part of a larger fleet or why it stopped earlier and then started again; he just wants freedom. All he can do listen to the moans of his fellow captives and wait, licking his lips and feeling the mole on the left-hand corner of his mouth as the chapter comes to an end.
MG: And, in case you haven’t already guessed from his description and the R’Talis brand… this is our friend Wulfgar. Now, the next chapter is very short, so we’ll be doing it today, too!
Blood Matters: 9
Chapter Two
Tahiri: We open with an old woman happily pointing out a bottle of something called dried tulip of Rokhana while a man in a two-colored robe takes it down and stows it in his pack. Apparently, wherever they are, they’re surrounded by more herbs than the old woman has ever seen in her life, and so she’s looking around as a greedy child might. Let me guess – more bad guys (the old woman is also missing some of her teeth, ‘cause I guess Newcomb is going with ugly=evil? Ugh.)? She eagerly points out another herb called sneezeweed - if that one does what it says, keep it away from me! – and the old man gets it as well. We learn that this is all taking place at the house of an ancient herbmistress near the town of Florian’s Glade in Eutracia… and the old woman pointing out the herbs isn’t the herbmistress, because she’s currently trapped in the corner by a wizard’s warp the robed man conjured so he and his companion could rob her blind. Yep; definitely more bad guys.
Dastardly Deeds: 7
Irinali: The robed man takes down another jar, and the old woman says it’s the ground flowers from a shammatrass tree, which apparently, they don’t need for their purposes… but is rare and valuable and probably took the herbmistress her whole life to collect this much. And the old man takes this as his cue to dump the bottle into the fire, apparently just so he can watch the herbmistress’s horrified reaction. Gah, you fool, even if you don’t have any use for that right now, you could have sold it, or kept it for later in case you did need it! Cruelty is one thing, but I have to draw the line where cruelty takes priority over profit! The robed man then promises the herbmistress that once he leaves here, he’ll be visiting the Lead Wizard and will give him her regards; he began to laugh, but his laugh quickly decayed into an all-consuming cough. He quickly covers his mouth with a cloth, and when he pulls it away it’s full of blood – which is already tracing his blood signature. That is either fascinating or disturbing; it might take me a while to determine which, after running various tests of my own, of course… He manages to calm down before asking his companion if there’s anything here that can help him, but she doesn’t have good news.
“As I have told you before, Krassus, there is nothing of this world that can help you now. As you yourself have said, your illness is of the craft. What you have swirling inside was given to you by your previous master, the dead son of the Chosen One. What shall be shall be.” She turned her attention back to the shelves. “The items we take today should, however, help me locate the scroll you seek. And hopefully before it is too late,” she added softly.
Tahiri: …well, we learned his name, at least? “Krassus” is certainly less of a mouthful than “The man in the two-colored robe,” anyway. But, having found what they came for, the two of them leave, and hours after they’re gone the warp collapses and the herbmistress is left alone to clean up her ransacked home as the chapter ends. Wow; that was a short one, wasn’t it?
MG: And just wait until we learn what’s actually up with Krassus’s illness and why he has it… let’s just say that even being dead isn’t stopping Nicholas from being posthumously stupid and leave it at that. Newcomb characters never fail to amaze, and not in a good way. Anyway, these two chapters… weren’t terrible, by Newcomb standards. They weren’t exactly subtle about the slavers being evil, but, well, it’s a slave ship, it’s supposed to be inhumane and horrible, so that tracks. Twenty-Nine is a decently sympathetic character to introduce all this, even though the withholding of his real identity is going to prove to be rather underwhelming, IMO, and this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of him, though we’ve only just been teased with Wulfgar. The next chapter honestly could have been cut, since it basically just boils down to Krassus and Grizelda (remember, we briefly met them both in the epilogue of the previous book) breaking, entering and stealing herbs and feels like it could have been related secondhand; the only really new information we get is that Krassus is sick, which could have been introduced later, and we’ll be meeting the herbmistress again… but she could probably have been introduced later, too. And it’s really hard to get over the fact that one of our villains is, inexplicably, a clown who commands an army of BDSM monster slavers (not a sentence I expected to type…) who don’t exactly seem to be running a tight operation here. But by Newcomb standards, it’s practically subdued. Next time, sigh, we catch back up with our actual protagonists in the Redoubt, as Krassus comes calling. We’ll see you then! Our counts stand at:
Blood Matters: 10
Contrivances and Coincidences: 1
Dastardly Deeds: 7
Exposition Intrusion: 3
Gender Wars: 1
Gratuitous Grimdark: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 3
Retcons and Revelations: 3 (Newcomb is to the point where he’s starting to introduce more “fantasy-ish” terms for some of his concepts he’d previously given mundane names – in this case, Talis and R’Talis for regular and endowed blood)
Warning: This post contains slavery, abuse and some deaths.
MG: Well, everyone, it’s time to continue our journey through Robert Newcomb’s The Scrolls of the Ancients! Last time, we got some backstory on the circumstances of Wulfgar’s birth and why Morganna gave him up for adoption. Today, we jump back to the present and find out a bit more of what’s going on in Eutracia and what this book is going to be about. Joining us today will be Irinali and Tahiri! First off, we are told that this is the beginning of Part I: Recollection, and that we are now thirty-four years later after the prologue, officially placing us in the present of the story.
Chapter One
Irinali: Oh, goody. And, I believe because this is the beginning of a Part, before the chapter proper we begin with an in-universe quote:
And a great calamity shall befall the nation after the second earthly death of the Chosen male’s seed, for the endowed and the unendowed alike of the already beleaguered land shall find themselves in chains, with little hope of return. —PAGE 553, CHAPTER ONE OF THE PROPHECIES OF THE TOME
Irinali: …though I have quite happily read some rather hefty texts in my time, I have to concur with the sporkers for the previous volumes that more than five hundred pages for a single chapter is excessive. It also appears that, once again, the Tome foretells exactly what is going to be happening and when, and yet the wizards are doing absolutely nothing to prevent it. Is this from the part that Faegan has memorized, rendering him worthless, or from the part that only Tristan is supposed to read once he comes into his powers, by which point it will be too late to do anything? Either way, the incompetence stuns me.
Blood Matters: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 2
MG: Also, not to downplay the severity of what is, in fact, a fairly extensive slaving operations, but… this wording makes it sound like the whole country is going to be enslaved, rather than a relatively small number of people being taken captive for a specific purpose.
Tahiri: Great, so whoever wrote this was useless and bad at math. And I thought Force visions could be unhelpful! Anyway, we open the chapter proper with this charming image:
Whump! . . . whump! . . . whump! . . . The two massive sledges came down on the large, simple block of wood in perfect unison, one after the other, monotonously marking out the beat. Its cadence rarely varied. A sledge in each hand, the awful, barely human creature continued to bang out the mind-numbing rhythm as the filthy slaves seated in rows before him toiled endlessly.
Tahiri: …yeah, that sounds like a (very primitive) slave ship, all right. If any Hutts or Yuuzhan Vong warriors show up, I’m leaving. I deal with enough of that at home…
Built for war, maneuverability, and speed, the ship was unusually large. Christened the Defiant, she carried four full masts and a hundred oars. The cramped oaring stations lay one deck down, and smelled of sweat, urine, and slow death.
MG: Defiant has got to be the most ironic name for a slave ship I think I’ve ever seen; only one that would be even more ironic would be Freedom or something. And am I the only one side-eyeing the use of the word “christening” to refer to naming in a world without Christianity? I know, it’s probably just translation convention, but I’m not terribly inclined to cut Newcomb any slack.
Dastardly Deeds: 1
Gratuitous Grimdark: 1
Fifty such rows stretched down the dark interior of the hull, a single, wide walkway separating them into two equal halves. Six male slaves toiled in each of the divided rows, making six hundred of them on this deck alone. They had few breaks. They were forced to row whenever the wind was directly behind them, or the ship was in the doldrums, or simply, it seemed, when impatience overcame their new taskmasters. And even when they were allowed a few moments of rest, they remained chained in place, unable to stretch their muscles to rest their weary backs. The slaves wore nothing but soiled loincloths. Their callused, bleeding hands were chained together and their feet were in shackles, communally chained to the deck. Escape was impossible. Even if one or more of them somehow freed themselves of their bonds, there would be nowhere to go except overboard, to drown in the icy waters of the Sea of Whispers. They had been at sea for fifteen days. Legend had it that no ship had ever sailed farther than that—ships that tried never returned home.
Irinali: Oh, so does this mean we might be meeting the Necrophagians soon? That they haunt the Sea of Whispers is the reason it can’t normally be crossed, I do believe… and they sound rather more interesting than anyone else in this drivel!
One of the slaves looked down at the number carved into his oar handle. Number Twenty-Nine. That was his name now—a number, assigned by his captors. It was meant to be dehumanizing, he was sure, but he had seized on it as a symbol, a reminder that his life was not his own, that the slave manning this oar was not his true self. Twenty-Nine. He would use that as his name as long as he remained captive. But someday, somehow, he would be freed, and then he would take up his family name once again with pride.
Irinali: Wulfgar, I presume? But it seems rather curious to me that he has so readily accepted taking the designations his captors have given to him, even if he somehow has convinced himself it’s an act of defiance. I don’t have any firsthand experience in the matter myself, but I would think that keeping his true name in his heart, even if he can’t use it out loud, would be a much stronger act of defiance.
Tahiri: *coldly* I do have experience with… something like slavery… and I have to agree. I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but if our friend Twenty-Nine has already internalized the designation his captors have forced on him so strongly that he won’t even think his true name… yeah, I think this is more about Newcomb wanting to spring his real identity on us like it’s a surprise than anything.
MG: And before we move on, just to clarify something – Twenty-Nine is not Wulfgar. We’ll be meeting him before long, though. And Twenty-Nine’s true identity is being withheld for a reason and is going to be revealed later in the book… but it’s not really all that exciting, or surprising. So yes, it really does feel like Newcomb is just withholding his name to be dramatic about it later.
Contrivances and Coincidences: 1 (for withholding Twenty-Nine’s real name)
Dastardly Deeds: 3
Tahiri: Huh; I’m genuinely kind of surprised he’s not Wulfgar, then. So, Twenty-Nine can see a little bit out of the slot for his oar and sees other slave ships keeping pace with the one he’s in, in an inexplicable armada of shame. Uh, I somehow don’t think the slavers are ashamed of what they’re doing – people with a lot of shame don’t usually go into that line of work. He keeps pulling his oar, thinking about how much pain he’s in and how even though he’s apparently a skilled artisan, he’s not fit to work in his current condition. He also takes a moment to describe his captors:
They were horrific. Once they may have been human—but no more. They were tall and muscular, and their skin was pure white, alabaster, almost translucent. Even when there was a deficit of light, their pale, flawless flesh seemed to shine, as if their bodies carried no blood whatsoever. Twenty-Nine had often wondered if they would bleed, if cut. The four fingers and thumb of their hands ended in long, pointed talons, rather than fingernails. Their powerful chests bare, each of them wore an odd, black leather skirt, floor length, and divided down the front for walking. The toes of their black leather boots protruded from beneath the hems. A spiked, black leather collar encircled each one’s neck. Each creature carried a short sword in a scabbard hung low behind his back in an ingenious arrangement that allowed the hand to reach naturally down along the outer leg to draw the blade. Twenty-Nine had already seen several of them do so, and their speed had been staggering. Somehow they managed never to catch the swords in the bright red capes that were attached to their spiked leather collars. Their faces were grotesque. The heads were long, angular, oversized. A shiny metal skullcap covered the top of their white, hairless craniums, ran down between the eyes, then split down either side over the bridge of the nose. Each half extended down the sides of the cheeks to the jawbones, running back to encircle each ear before joining again with the top, leaving the creatures’ eyes, mouths, and ears exposed. The ears that protruded from the gaps in the masks were exceptionally high, pointed, and seemed to hear everything. A variety of earrings dangled from them. The wide, wrinkled mouths held black tongues and dark, pointed teeth. For eyes, they had long, narrow slits hiding orbs that were solid white, without irises or pupils, and quite vacant. Still, they missed nothing.
Tahiri: Huh. Add some scars and tattoos, and make them grey instead of white, and they might pass for Yuuzhan Vong. *An alien cast flits across her features, and when she next speaks, it’s with a hint of a harsh, sibilant accent* And I would kindly request Newcomb leave the Yuuzhan Vong out of this… whatever it may be. Or there will be consequences. *back in her normal voice* Also… what makes Twenty-Four think they were ever human? They don’t sound like it to me – if I met one of them, I’d just assume they were their own species. Even the Minions in these books weren’t human themselves, they were bred from humans.
MG: Also, spoiling this now (because Newcomb makes it really obvious even before the official reveal) but the slavers really were once human. How Twenty-Nine guessed that accurately… beats me.
Gratuitous Grimdark: 2 (mostly because the slavers’ design just screams “evil and edgy”)
Irinali: *studies the description of the slavers* Meh. I could make better. Has whoever these beings serve considered the utility of skeletons? They work harder and complain less than living slaves, at least. And you never have to worry about rebellion, or backtalking… We have a brief description of some of the slavers, who the narration calls “bleeders,” walking up and down between the rows, whipping any slave who doesn’t pull hard enough with whips or jabbing them with tridents. Beside Twenty-Nine, Twenty-Eight suddenly falls over and begs for water before he starts vomiting. One of the slavers comes over, and Twenty-Nine closes his eyes as Twenty-Eight starts wondering why no one is helping them (I know this man is sick, abused and probably delirious, but… you’re on a slave ship, in the middle of the ocean. No one is helping you because, I presume, no one knows where you are, and if they did, they couldn’t reach you. Also, Newcomb’s protagonists are fools, and his villains aren’t much better). The slaver stabs Twenty-Eight in the leg with his trident, twists it around before pulling it out, and orders him back to work. Which, honestly, is better than I’d expect. Once the slave is back in position, the slaver tells him that the next time he tries something, he’ll stab his eyes out. You are not of endowed blood, Talis. Therefore, you are quite expendable. *rolling her eyes* And of course, the slaver cares about blood, too.
Blood Matters: 5
Dastardly Deeds: 4
Tahiri: Well, we learn that all the slaves in the hold have been branded with the word Talis on their shoulder; Twenty-Nine doesn’t know what it means, but he thinks it sounds like Old Eutracian. His father and his father’s father had all handed down tales of a mysterious, beautiful language, now long since abandoned. So… I guess Old Eutracian didn’t evolve into modern Eutracian or anything, people just… stopped using it and switched to a completely different language? I’m not an expert, but that doesn’t sound right to me… Anyway, back at the port where he was taken captive, Twenty-Nine remembers seeing other slaves who were branded with the word R'Talis instead; he doesn’t know what that means, either, but I think I can guess…
Blood Matters: 6
Contrivances and Coincidences: 2 (apparently people just stopped using Old Eutracian for Reasons)
Irinali: And so, Twenty-Nine looks down at the floor, thinking about how there’s another deck below where more slaves are held, both men and women. He recalls how the slavers took both male and female captives, but only use men to row their ships. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re all about thirty-five years old. He remembers how the slavers administered a blood test to their captives before marking them as Talis or R’Talis, and the only difference he can see is that the R’Talis are treated slightly better and are exempt from the more menial forms of labor like rowing. Because, of course, we all must value blood quality above all else, even those of us who happen to be monstrous slavers of dubious origins and questionable fashion sense.
Blood Matters: 7
Tahiri: Twenty-Nine gets shocked out of his thoughts as a slaver whips him; he deliberately screams as loud as he can, and so the slaver is satisfied and wanders off to torment someone else. That… was marginally clever of him, though I can’t say I approve if someone else ends up getting beaten in his place. And that’s when a door opens and someone who Twenty-Nine has only seen briefly before comes in; he’s nicknamed him the Harlequin and this is what he looks like:
As had been the case the other time Twenty-Nine had seen him, he was absurdly dressed. His long-sleeved, black-and-white-checked doublet was fastened fastened down the center with shining gold buttons. Highly padded epaulets broadened the shoulders, and short, white ruffles on the raised, circular collar and cuffs of the doublet lengthened neck and arms. The almost obscenely tight, bright red breeches ended in black, square-toed shoes with raised heels and highly polished silver buckles. Rings adorned almost every finger, and a matching gold necklace hung to his breastbone. The long fingernails were also red. Strangest of all, his face was painted. The effect was chilling. His face was stark white; his lips were deep scarlet. A bright red painted mask surrounded dark, piercing eyes. Angular and foreboding, its edges swept back sharply from the eyebrows and lower lids into the stark white field surrounding it. The haughty, prominent nose was severely aquiline, the jaw surprisingly strong. An inverted red triangle was painted beneath the lower lip. His hair was dyed a bright red, and was pulled back tightly from the widow-peaked hairline to the rear of his skull. Fastened to his belt was a device that looked like two small iron spheres, one black and the other white, attached to either end of an alternating black-and-white knotted line. The line was coiled up and hung neatly from a hook on his belt at the right hip. Sometimes, usually when he was deep in thought or watching something he found to be particularly stimulating, the Harlequin would reach down and grasp the twin spheres, then gently rub them together, producing a soft clinking sound. There was something unnerving and perverse about the action, and Twenty-Nine cringed whenever he saw it. Taken as a whole, the Harlequin looked like a freak on view at a province fair rather than the leader of the fearsome taskmasters controlling the oarsmen.
Irinali: …well. It certainly seems like the slavers are not the only ones here with terrible fashion sense; they appear to be taking their cues from their master.
MG: And, okay, I know it’s supposed to be creepy, but between “white-painted face” and “red-dyed hair” all I can picture is “evil Ronald McDonald.” And that’s… not exactly intimidating. Or, taking his whole ensemble into account, maybe he’s more of a Piedmon.
MG: Either way… yeah, one of this book’s main antagonists is an evil clown, with the nickname Twenty-Nine gave him only serving to underscore that this is how we’re supposed to think of him (we’ll learn his real name before too long). No, we never learn why, and what little we do get of his backstory suggests he’s a rather mundane mercenary. Who happens to be an evil clown man, because reasons.
Gratuitous Grimdark: 3 (not really sure this is appropriate, but not really sure where else to put the evil clown man and it feels like he deserves to be noted somewhere and I guess “evil clown” falls under “gratuitously edgy” more than anything)
Tahiri: *sigh* Let’s just roll with it… Anyway, “the Harlequin” gives orders to the slavers, who call for a halt, much to the slaves’ relief. The Harlequin announces they’ve arrived at their first destination, and he wants forty slaves, Talis only. Wait… I think Irinali may be getting a chance to meet the Necrophagians after all. *she glances over at her co-sporker* If the two of us get eaten by evil ghosts, I’m blaming you. The head slaver starts marching down the aisle, singling out particular slaves, including Twenty-Nine’s friend, Twenty-Eight. The chosen ones – but most definitely not The Chosen Ones – get unchained and hauled out past the Harlequin, who tells them that they’re going to a better place. *she snorts* Yeah, and the Yuuzhan Vong call death “the Blessed Release.” You’re not fooling anyone, buddy.
Irinali: After the chosen slaves have left, Twenty-Nine suddenly feels the ship go still, and then the temperature starts to drop. *she claps excitedly* Oh, I think we are going to get to meet the Necrophagians today! I really should be writing this down… Twenty-Nine adjusts his position to get a better look through his oar slit (good man!), and this is what he sees:
The ship seemed to be in the grip of an impenetrable gray fog, the likes of which he had never seen. Growing up in the coastal city of Farpoint, he had seen fog banks roll in, to be sure. But this was decidedly different. As if it had a life of its own, the fog began to slither into the boat, tendrils reaching in through the oar slits and falling down the stairway from which the Harlequin had descended. It quickly filled the deck. As it increased in density the fog replaced the smell of the salt sea with a cleaner odor, such as one might inhale on land after a brisk, cold rain. Then came the voices: many voices whispering as one. “Pay us our bounty or we shall first take your ships, and then your bodies.”
Irinali: Necrophagians indeed! But, if they take the ships first, would they need to “take” the bodies? Which would, without ships, presumably already be dropped into the sea, the Necrophagians’ domain… Twenty-Nine can hear screams from on deck, suddenly cut short, and then the sound of bodies being tossed overboard; from his vantage point, he can see a few plunge into the water. He briefly hears another sound, as of something in the ocean feeding, and then the surface of the water is stained red. Finally, it goes quiet, and it seems the Necrophagians have had their sacrifice. A moment later, the Harlequin returns, wiping blood off the hem of his doublet and ordering the slavers to bring up new rowers from below, Talis only. Now, beg pardon, but wouldn’t it have been more efficient to select your sacrifices from the slaves you weren’t currently using to row your ships? That way you wouldn’t have to replace your rowers before you could get moving again? If you had, perhaps, retained the services of a certain brilliant and charming necromancer who could provide you with a crew of skeletons who could row tirelessly and without complaint, you wouldn’t have this problem…
Blood Matters: 8
Dastardly Deeds: 5
Gratuitous Grimdark: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 2
Tahiri: Seriously, that’s your takeaway? Anyway, the slavers follow their orders and replace the rowers, and finally the Defiant can get back under way again. The Harlequin tells the slavers they have to make up for lost time – hey, I guess Irinali is right, you shouldn’t have used your rowers as your sacrifices! – but the head slaver wants to make sure they’re clear first. The Harlequin assures him that the sacrifices were sufficient, and “I think it safe to say they all disagreed with something that ate them!” *crossly* Look, just because you got the turn of phrase backwards doesn’t make it a joke… and I’m pretty sure you killed them before you fed them to the Necrophagians so they weren’t actually feeling anything at the time, and… gah. But the slavers all think this is hilarious (guess it doesn’t matter the species, everyone laughs at the boss’s jokes…) and the Harlequin hops into his chair, where he takes out his metal bolas and starts toying with them by clacking them together in perfect time with the drummer’s beats as the scene ends.
Dastardly Deeds: 6 (I’m starting to get the sneaking feeling that the Harlequin is a bad guy…)
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 3 (the Harlequin lampshades his own villainous stupidity this time – remarkable!)
Irinali: And so, we suddenly cut to another slave, chained up with the others in the lower deck:
His eyes were hazel. His straight, sandy hair was pulled back from his face into a tail that was secured with a bit of worn leather string and ran down almost to the center of his back. Before being chained down he had been branded with the word R’talis, as had many of the others imprisoned with him. He was strong and in the prime of his life, but in the darkness of this hold it didn’t matter. Nothing did.
Irinali: He’s surrounded by vomit and… fluids (ugh, I may work with corpses, but I generally prefer cleanliness in other aspects of my life, thank you…) but he’s been kept fed and hydrated enough to keep him alive and in reasonable condition. From where he’s chained down, he can’t see what’s going on outside the ship and has no idea where he’s going or that the ship is part of a larger fleet or why it stopped earlier and then started again; he just wants freedom. All he can do listen to the moans of his fellow captives and wait, licking his lips and feeling the mole on the left-hand corner of his mouth as the chapter comes to an end.
MG: And, in case you haven’t already guessed from his description and the R’Talis brand… this is our friend Wulfgar. Now, the next chapter is very short, so we’ll be doing it today, too!
Blood Matters: 9
Chapter Two
Tahiri: We open with an old woman happily pointing out a bottle of something called dried tulip of Rokhana while a man in a two-colored robe takes it down and stows it in his pack. Apparently, wherever they are, they’re surrounded by more herbs than the old woman has ever seen in her life, and so she’s looking around as a greedy child might. Let me guess – more bad guys (the old woman is also missing some of her teeth, ‘cause I guess Newcomb is going with ugly=evil? Ugh.)? She eagerly points out another herb called sneezeweed - if that one does what it says, keep it away from me! – and the old man gets it as well. We learn that this is all taking place at the house of an ancient herbmistress near the town of Florian’s Glade in Eutracia… and the old woman pointing out the herbs isn’t the herbmistress, because she’s currently trapped in the corner by a wizard’s warp the robed man conjured so he and his companion could rob her blind. Yep; definitely more bad guys.
Dastardly Deeds: 7
Irinali: The robed man takes down another jar, and the old woman says it’s the ground flowers from a shammatrass tree, which apparently, they don’t need for their purposes… but is rare and valuable and probably took the herbmistress her whole life to collect this much. And the old man takes this as his cue to dump the bottle into the fire, apparently just so he can watch the herbmistress’s horrified reaction. Gah, you fool, even if you don’t have any use for that right now, you could have sold it, or kept it for later in case you did need it! Cruelty is one thing, but I have to draw the line where cruelty takes priority over profit! The robed man then promises the herbmistress that once he leaves here, he’ll be visiting the Lead Wizard and will give him her regards; he began to laugh, but his laugh quickly decayed into an all-consuming cough. He quickly covers his mouth with a cloth, and when he pulls it away it’s full of blood – which is already tracing his blood signature. That is either fascinating or disturbing; it might take me a while to determine which, after running various tests of my own, of course… He manages to calm down before asking his companion if there’s anything here that can help him, but she doesn’t have good news.
“As I have told you before, Krassus, there is nothing of this world that can help you now. As you yourself have said, your illness is of the craft. What you have swirling inside was given to you by your previous master, the dead son of the Chosen One. What shall be shall be.” She turned her attention back to the shelves. “The items we take today should, however, help me locate the scroll you seek. And hopefully before it is too late,” she added softly.
Tahiri: …well, we learned his name, at least? “Krassus” is certainly less of a mouthful than “The man in the two-colored robe,” anyway. But, having found what they came for, the two of them leave, and hours after they’re gone the warp collapses and the herbmistress is left alone to clean up her ransacked home as the chapter ends. Wow; that was a short one, wasn’t it?
MG: And just wait until we learn what’s actually up with Krassus’s illness and why he has it… let’s just say that even being dead isn’t stopping Nicholas from being posthumously stupid and leave it at that. Newcomb characters never fail to amaze, and not in a good way. Anyway, these two chapters… weren’t terrible, by Newcomb standards. They weren’t exactly subtle about the slavers being evil, but, well, it’s a slave ship, it’s supposed to be inhumane and horrible, so that tracks. Twenty-Nine is a decently sympathetic character to introduce all this, even though the withholding of his real identity is going to prove to be rather underwhelming, IMO, and this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of him, though we’ve only just been teased with Wulfgar. The next chapter honestly could have been cut, since it basically just boils down to Krassus and Grizelda (remember, we briefly met them both in the epilogue of the previous book) breaking, entering and stealing herbs and feels like it could have been related secondhand; the only really new information we get is that Krassus is sick, which could have been introduced later, and we’ll be meeting the herbmistress again… but she could probably have been introduced later, too. And it’s really hard to get over the fact that one of our villains is, inexplicably, a clown who commands an army of BDSM monster slavers (not a sentence I expected to type…) who don’t exactly seem to be running a tight operation here. But by Newcomb standards, it’s practically subdued. Next time, sigh, we catch back up with our actual protagonists in the Redoubt, as Krassus comes calling. We’ll see you then! Our counts stand at:
Blood Matters: 10
Contrivances and Coincidences: 1
Dastardly Deeds: 7
Exposition Intrusion: 3
Gender Wars: 1
Gratuitous Grimdark: 4
Plot-Induced Stupidity: 3
Retcons and Revelations: 3 (Newcomb is to the point where he’s starting to introduce more “fantasy-ish” terms for some of his concepts he’d previously given mundane names – in this case, Talis and R’Talis for regular and endowed blood)
