Prediction: Julie doesn’t hold, she just punches Offscreen Guy and moves on with her quest, without even showing them. Ridiculously out of character, anticlimatic, but the thought amuses.
Yeah, ridiculously out of character. And out of genre here; as I mentioned before, one of the standard things about classic Russian faerie tales such as Prince Ivan is that the hero is rewarded for being good to people along the way by those people being good back later on.
Yeah… the important part of this arc so far is that Julie has been rewarded for being respectful and listening to others. The question here is whether this encounter is one last triumph for this, or the kind of final test that shows she has to trust her own judgement and not be led astray by others.
Totally agree. But for a slightly different reason. A ‘true’ hero mindset is: “Who am I responsible for?” The question that she is being asked is, “Are you ready to be responsible for everyone on Earth?” Glory and prestige are not even a part of the issue.
And the “Who am I responsible for?” question is a question every mature adult asks themselves. Children are responsible for no one. Mature adults are responsible for themselves, their better-halves, their children, and the other people and children around them.
So the real question to Julie/84 is, “Are you ready for this level of responsibility?”
On a personal note, I have met some very mature 12 year olds that I would trust with my life and I have met some very immature 30-somethings.
Wait, what? So in the time it took to have a brief conversation with Firedrake, and go through both Firedrake’s and Conjuror’s incorrect answers and Julie’s correct ones… either that took almost an hour and a half (92 minutes was Conjuror’s estimated time remaining) or his mystical timepiece was way, WAY off.
Remember, they were in a forgetful loop for a while and only broke out of it when Julie insisted that she had seen that rock before. How much time had passed during that continual loop?
Or everything took a little longer than first would appear.
Assume (1) Firedrake punctuated his talk with demonstrations – i.e., maybe “I got the whole dragon thing going on” was followed by a pause while he generated the flaming dragon, etc; (2) Conjurer saying “we’ve arrived” only meant they could finally see the gate a ways down the road; (3) he took a little time for investigation from a short distance before moving in closer and commenting on the fog; (4) Foggy has a really low, slow, dramatic voice. Add those together, you might be able to get to the needed 82 minutes.
If I were a betting man, though, I’d go with Moe’s guess.
In traditional Russian folklore / fairytales … Koschei the Deathless kept his soul “in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a rabbit”. The rabbit would try to run away from anyone who tried to catch it. If you caught the rabbit, out would come the duck, to fly away. Et cetera.
And he WAS deathless, precisely because his soul was hidden there, not in his own body.
…
So this could literally be a matter of “bring me the eye of the needle in which Koschei’s soul is kept”. That might lead to a Last Crusade “he chose … poorly” scenario.
OR, of course … it could literally be Koschei’s “I”, his Id or sense of self.
I am a little puzzled about this “eye at the heart of the egg”. There are clues about it, but they are negative clues. The Guardians in the maze didn’t think of “eye” as something they were supposed to guard. And the mist guy is saying that 84 was clever to call it that to get past the Guardians of the first gate. But both Veles and Grigor simply referred to it as “eye”.
Actually, I seriously doubt that’s what she’s been sent to get, because of the reason she and the others were actually sent into the egg. Veles sent them in to figure out who was worth to be the new champion of earth. He’s not looking for the biggest, most violent sociopath around to smash buildings with, he’s looking for someone to live up to the old Atlas’s moral standards, and be “worthy”.
Everything they’ve been sent through so far has been a test of honesty, or character.
Right from the start, “did you care enough to listen to and speak with the guy at the entrance”, turns out to be important in not just one, but two gates so far, the final question, and the stone guardians. Since they wanted to know why they were there, and the “older and wiser” people present would likely have tried to BS their way through it, 84’s honesty “we were sent to get the eye” (exactly what she was told they were sent to get) got them through.
Even with the time-loop trap, it wasn’t won by smashing things, that was what got Neuronet and Phligiston knocked out of play, even if it was Neuronet running the brute-force gambit and dragging her with him. (Surprisingly violent for a supposedly “brains” type hero.) That trap was won by trying to understand the perspective of the guardian Rastov, and helping him to see that he had been duped too.
This last “a word…” is another test of character, to see if she can set aside her “must rush to goal” to help one last person, and it will either leave her with so little time that she just makes it in and grabs whatever looks like an eye to take back, ignoring whatever supremely powerful artifacts are stored there, and therefore winning, or it will result in her finding out that the real “center of the egg” was the room they started in, not what’s beyond the gates.
Who’s though? Who would Kodachi trust with his “something precious to him”? In the myths he was pretty good about not trusting anyone, hence the multiple trap layers in his Soul jar.
Although what if the Something Precious IS a person, like a wife or kid or something that he shoved in a “No Aging” Zone so he could always go there an meet them, and they would never die? An interesting idea…
And the eye could be their eye, either because Veles wants 84 to bring the whole person out, or like the PotC guy the person has a fake eye that holds unimaginable power or something.
That is another notation from the fairy tales I read as a child. The ‘older and smarter’ siblings would lie cheat and steal, while laughing at their gullibly polite and hardworking youngest sibling. They got their come uppance and the youngest often would try to save even them. Hmm.
…so, maybe she may be given the choice: Free her team mates from inside the egg (we only have Rastov’s word that they are outside the egg, he may have been deceived on more than aspect of the test), or take the eye.
I find it to a horrible choice for her! But it would be very interesting to see what she would do – her reasoning for the choice she might have to make would certainly tell Veles a lot about her. The fact that she would find that decision agonizing (unlike a number of her “team” that would have ditched the “failed” members just to save the city – and get the prize) would be a strong indicator that Veles is on the right track in finding his champion.
84 is smarter (or at least saner) than Mr. Welch. I’m sure she won’t abuse the privilege. :p
Besides of COURSE you fly all over the place! The Ground is where they try to GET YOU! WIth Pit-traps, or Spiked floor-traps, or even the most deadly of enemies!! GRASS!!
I don’t understand Fog Guy’s problem. Up until now it appeared like he was magically bound to come up with a question that it was possible to answer, and it does not appear that the first two questions were all that impossible. Now he’s positively astonished (not to mention insulted) that Julie managed to guess. But if he’d held up a card with an odd number in an unknown suit that Julie had never heard of before, the question would, it seems to me, have been a HUGE cheat.
My guess is that everyone who had made it that far before had failed. Foggy knows his questions are technically possible for the person to answer, but has come to expect everyone to fail – note how he reflexively starts to say “incorrect” before even checking the card. He’s caught completely off-guard when 84 actually gets it right.
I suppose I should say “he or she” when referring to Foggy since technically no gender has been revealed, but I just can’t read him without hearing a slow male bass voice, booming and slightly gravelly.
As an amorphous, insubstantial (presumably magical) construct, it’s kind of silly to assign it a gender, right?
Or, if assume it has a gender, but can’t tell, they is a singular pronoun, too.(Not all dictionaries agree, but written usage of it apparently dates back 600 years or so. That should be good enough for most people)
True, but even if you consider Foggy genderless, “it” just doesn’t seem right for something with personality. We need a good non-neuter gender-indeterminate singular personal pronoun (for now, I guess “they” will work as well as anything – but I’m still calling Foggy “he”).
What’s the difference of a few decades to a being that’s been around for centuries? In its minds eye, there may not be much difference between an adult human and a child.
Fog guy is a bad sport. And if Julie is as tired of interruptions as I am, everybody had better watch out!
Actually I think Foggy is being a pretty good sport. He’s downright saying the “eye” isn’t what it seems, since she bested him.
Prediction: Julie doesn’t hold, she just punches Offscreen Guy and moves on with her quest, without even showing them. Ridiculously out of character, anticlimatic, but the thought amuses.
Yeah, ridiculously out of character. And out of genre here; as I mentioned before, one of the standard things about classic Russian faerie tales such as Prince Ivan is that the hero is rewarded for being good to people along the way by those people being good back later on.
Yeah… the important part of this arc so far is that Julie has been rewarded for being respectful and listening to others. The question here is whether this encounter is one last triumph for this, or the kind of final test that shows she has to trust her own judgement and not be led astray by others.
Yeah really OOC, even if she was in a big hurry, she would probably just pull the door open and go in while ignoring the voice.
…while calling back, “Sorryyy! I don’t have much time!” 🙂
Ooh, the final riddle! The Eye of Koschei the Undying, found at the heart of an egg, what might that be?
Theory: This is the warning that she can take out only 1 item from the eye and never come back afterwards.
So she had better “choose wisely”.
Which reminds me of the ending of Indiana Jones 3?
Huh, must be a generation thing, ’cause immediately thought of Disney Aladdin. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall how the original genie story went.)
Offscreen guy is probably Rastov’s number 6. (And, could be the one with the secret shame)
Now of course she will be confronted with the dilemma of whether it is better to complete the task or not
My thoughts exactly… “Are you sure you want to be the ‘Defender of Earth’?
“No, but I’m the only one who can save a city from Veles!”
She doesn’t *want* glory and prestige. She only wants to help people, so she’ll do what she must to that end.
She really is the hero the people of Earth need.
Totally agree. But for a slightly different reason. A ‘true’ hero mindset is: “Who am I responsible for?” The question that she is being asked is, “Are you ready to be responsible for everyone on Earth?” Glory and prestige are not even a part of the issue.
And the “Who am I responsible for?” question is a question every mature adult asks themselves. Children are responsible for no one. Mature adults are responsible for themselves, their better-halves, their children, and the other people and children around them.
So the real question to Julie/84 is, “Are you ready for this level of responsibility?”
On a personal note, I have met some very mature 12 year olds that I would trust with my life and I have met some very immature 30-somethings.
Wait, what? So in the time it took to have a brief conversation with Firedrake, and go through both Firedrake’s and Conjuror’s incorrect answers and Julie’s correct ones… either that took almost an hour and a half (92 minutes was Conjuror’s estimated time remaining) or his mystical timepiece was way, WAY off.
Or Fog Guy is lying.
Or this place’s clocks are set for Dramatic Narrative Time.
Remember, they were in a forgetful loop for a while and only broke out of it when Julie insisted that she had seen that rock before. How much time had passed during that continual loop?
Or Conjuror’s estimate was wrong.
Or time is subjective, and interplanar time dilation is such that a different amount has passed here than outside the egg-dimension.
Or everything took a little longer than first would appear.
Assume (1) Firedrake punctuated his talk with demonstrations – i.e., maybe “I got the whole dragon thing going on” was followed by a pause while he generated the flaming dragon, etc; (2) Conjurer saying “we’ve arrived” only meant they could finally see the gate a ways down the road; (3) he took a little time for investigation from a short distance before moving in closer and commenting on the fog; (4) Foggy has a really low, slow, dramatic voice. Add those together, you might be able to get to the needed 82 minutes.
If I were a betting man, though, I’d go with Moe’s guess.
Just a thought. But what if the eye is not the center. But I am the center.
Eye two was thinking of homonyms in this context.
Aye! Eye? I!
In traditional Russian folklore / fairytales … Koschei the Deathless kept his soul “in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a rabbit”. The rabbit would try to run away from anyone who tried to catch it. If you caught the rabbit, out would come the duck, to fly away. Et cetera.
And he WAS deathless, precisely because his soul was hidden there, not in his own body.
…
So this could literally be a matter of “bring me the eye of the needle in which Koschei’s soul is kept”. That might lead to a Last Crusade “he chose … poorly” scenario.
OR, of course … it could literally be Koschei’s “I”, his Id or sense of self.
Aaron is rapidly approaching “Jos Whedon” levels of “excellent writer who engages me in the story at the same moment he annoys the snot out of me.”
Very well done, Mr. Williams.
I am a little puzzled about this “eye at the heart of the egg”. There are clues about it, but they are negative clues. The Guardians in the maze didn’t think of “eye” as something they were supposed to guard. And the mist guy is saying that 84 was clever to call it that to get past the Guardians of the first gate. But both Veles and Grigor simply referred to it as “eye”.
Given what we know as meta-knowledge about the fairy tale, I suspect the “eye” they seek is the eye of the needle in question.
Actually, I seriously doubt that’s what she’s been sent to get, because of the reason she and the others were actually sent into the egg. Veles sent them in to figure out who was worth to be the new champion of earth. He’s not looking for the biggest, most violent sociopath around to smash buildings with, he’s looking for someone to live up to the old Atlas’s moral standards, and be “worthy”.
Everything they’ve been sent through so far has been a test of honesty, or character.
Right from the start, “did you care enough to listen to and speak with the guy at the entrance”, turns out to be important in not just one, but two gates so far, the final question, and the stone guardians. Since they wanted to know why they were there, and the “older and wiser” people present would likely have tried to BS their way through it, 84’s honesty “we were sent to get the eye” (exactly what she was told they were sent to get) got them through.
Even with the time-loop trap, it wasn’t won by smashing things, that was what got Neuronet and Phligiston knocked out of play, even if it was Neuronet running the brute-force gambit and dragging her with him. (Surprisingly violent for a supposedly “brains” type hero.) That trap was won by trying to understand the perspective of the guardian Rastov, and helping him to see that he had been duped too.
This last “a word…” is another test of character, to see if she can set aside her “must rush to goal” to help one last person, and it will either leave her with so little time that she just makes it in and grabs whatever looks like an eye to take back, ignoring whatever supremely powerful artifacts are stored there, and therefore winning, or it will result in her finding out that the real “center of the egg” was the room they started in, not what’s beyond the gates.
Something that occurred to me: Who’s to say the eye isn’t currently in an eye socket? Good place to hide it.
Who’s though? Who would Kodachi trust with his “something precious to him”? In the myths he was pretty good about not trusting anyone, hence the multiple trap layers in his Soul jar.
Although what if the Something Precious IS a person, like a wife or kid or something that he shoved in a “No Aging” Zone so he could always go there an meet them, and they would never die? An interesting idea…
And the eye could be their eye, either because Veles wants 84 to bring the whole person out, or like the PotC guy the person has a fake eye that holds unimaginable power or something.
No, the mist guy is saying that Veles was clever to call it that, so that the heroes would not know what it was, letting them get past the first gate.
Aaaaaaaahhhh! There is no next button! I’m caught up with current continuity!
And, by “caught up” I mean “seriously hooked” you know.
i bet the voice is Grigor, with last minute advice
So Julie’s good manners when talking to Grigor got her the clue she needed for the fog gate as a reward. ^_^ That’s nice.
That is another notation from the fairy tales I read as a child. The ‘older and smarter’ siblings would lie cheat and steal, while laughing at their gullibly polite and hardworking youngest sibling. They got their come uppance and the youngest often would try to save even them. Hmm.
…so, maybe she may be given the choice: Free her team mates from inside the egg (we only have Rastov’s word that they are outside the egg, he may have been deceived on more than aspect of the test), or take the eye.
A city ruined by a god, or two innocent people and two not-so-innocent people trapped for eternity inside a magical egg.
Unless she can find a third option, that’s not a good choice to force on her.
I find it to a horrible choice for her! But it would be very interesting to see what she would do – her reasoning for the choice she might have to make would certainly tell Veles a lot about her. The fact that she would find that decision agonizing (unlike a number of her “team” that would have ditched the “failed” members just to save the city – and get the prize) would be a strong indicator that Veles is on the right track in finding his champion.
Hey wait! I just realized 84 is breaking one of MR.Welch’s rules:
500. My superhero will not spend points to fly just because he’s too lazy to walk.
She might just be concerned about stepping on something that will cause her a delay she can’t afford.
84 is smarter (or at least saner) than Mr. Welch. I’m sure she won’t abuse the privilege. :p
Besides of COURSE you fly all over the place! The Ground is where they try to GET YOU! WIth Pit-traps, or Spiked floor-traps, or even the most deadly of enemies!! GRASS!!
http://spoonyexperiment.com/game-reviews/ultima-3-exodus-breaking-news/
That only applies if you have to spend some sort of “points” in order to do it. I’m pretty sure basic floating is a free action for FISSes.
At least, they never seem to stop being able to do it–except if they are unconscious. It seems as easy as standing.
I don’t understand Fog Guy’s problem. Up until now it appeared like he was magically bound to come up with a question that it was possible to answer, and it does not appear that the first two questions were all that impossible. Now he’s positively astonished (not to mention insulted) that Julie managed to guess. But if he’d held up a card with an odd number in an unknown suit that Julie had never heard of before, the question would, it seems to me, have been a HUGE cheat.
My guess is that everyone who had made it that far before had failed. Foggy knows his questions are technically possible for the person to answer, but has come to expect everyone to fail – note how he reflexively starts to say “incorrect” before even checking the card. He’s caught completely off-guard when 84 actually gets it right.
I suppose I should say “he or she” when referring to Foggy since technically no gender has been revealed, but I just can’t read him without hearing a slow male bass voice, booming and slightly gravelly.
You could just say it, I guess
As an amorphous, insubstantial (presumably magical) construct, it’s kind of silly to assign it a gender, right?
Or, if assume it has a gender, but can’t tell, they is a singular pronoun, too.(Not all dictionaries agree, but written usage of it apparently dates back 600 years or so. That should be good enough for most people)
True, but even if you consider Foggy genderless, “it” just doesn’t seem right for something with personality. We need a good non-neuter gender-indeterminate singular personal pronoun (for now, I guess “they” will work as well as anything – but I’m still calling Foggy “he”).
Some Mists are just sore losers.
This one’s taking finally being outwitted — by a child — after aeons undefeated with amazing grace, all things considered.
What’s the difference of a few decades to a being that’s been around for centuries? In its minds eye, there may not be much difference between an adult human and a child.