stillsostrange | (no subject)

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Current Music: Dragon Age

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the bone palace

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Feeling less stressed today. I sorted out a huge point of character motivation/action, and filled in an important [conversation]. And the first half of the book is still fun to read.

Today's random WiP questions:

Who is the saint of hunters?

What is the formal name of Erisín's east gate?

What costume is this assassin wearing when he infiltrates the royal ball?

What are some of Selafai's superstitious cures for the flu?

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As you know, Amanda-Bob, I've been doing serious research into flu remedies. I recommend steeping grated ginger in boiling water, straining, and adding honey and a healthy slug of rum or other strong drink. It burns like hell going down, though, and I imagine there are various requirement for prayers and imprecations directed at Selafai's saint of healers. (My own personal favorite is "motherFUCK that hurts." Efficacious, even if it lacks poetry.)

Other cures are various broths and soups--like tom yum kai, or whatever they call it in Selafai. Tea, with or without liquor. Hot chocolate for when you just can't face cooking, but you need some sustenance. (Do they have chocolate?)

No chocolate for them, alas. But those are all things that actually work, unlike leeches or heroic doses of mercury or breathing in flowers/onions/latrines to ward off the foul vapors that caused the plague.

Making up incantations to sing over the soup is Not My Job. :-)

I have a batshit crazy aunt who snorts cayenne powder to ward off fell spirits of the pest. Pretty sure she'd be one of villagers praying to the swamp gas when the plague rolled in. Unrelated, but she once gave my parents a lecture on how I shouldn't be allowed to play D&D or Doom, which I thought was something fundies only did in urban legends.

Ha. My landlady, in whose home I rented a room my last two years in college, required that I keep my D&D books somewhere other than her house. The car parked in her driveway was acceptable, but not my bedroom. (Yep, born again Southern Baptist.)

What are some of Selafai's superstitious cures for the flu?

Given that flu is so contagious and likely deadly in a world without antibiotics, I'd guess the cures would be likewise deadly - ducking, maybe? Some sort of hogan-like structure where noxious substances would be burnt, driving out the evil? Maybe the cure will depend on what the culture believes the flu is. If it's magic, some magic-related act or substance. If it's evil, something to drive out the demons.

Antibiotics Do Not Work On The Flu. /annoying PSA

Why, so they don't. But people still use them like magic, eh?

And, anyway, it's not the flu that kills you, it's the pneumonia and that ilk, if I understand correctly.

But pneumonia can be killed by antibiotics. (I had a course of whatever it is you stockpile against anthrax, right at the peak of th anthrax assassinations. O the fun time.)

I was once fed a concoction of honey, cayenne, and raw garlic by an herbalist "friend" to treat the flu. That WAS evil. And ineffective.

And the Catholic patron saint of hunters is St Hubert, if that helps at all. :)

What costume is this assassin wearing when he infiltrates the royal ball?

A vest? Can't go wrong with vests, I say.

Gate of Night's End? (As it faces the sunrise.)
Yay on character sorting.

Heh. If it faces the sunrise, by definition it also faces the dusk. The Gate of Encroaching Shadow, for the gloomy amongst 'em. Can a gate change its name, according to the time of day? (Yes, Chaz, but that would be another book...)

Who is the saint of hunters?

Aktaion.

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