The wonderful world of writing
Mar. 4th, 2026 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseJust to update you all on the earrings: I did get a reply yesterday afternoon from X Jewellery. I think they'd spent some time very carefully working it out, because it was really interesting to see exactly what it did and didn't say. But the line that stood out for me, no matter how carefully they'd attempted to bury it, said that I had to be signed up to the website to get stock notifications. In other words, when I requested the stock notification, I'd been automatically signed up to both the mailing list and the website itself, and the screen that came up just after that asking me if I wanted to sign up to either of those was simply a lie.
So I will never visit their site again, and I promptly went and bought a pair of 9 ct gold earrings from a slightly more up-market jeweller. They were, of course, a bit more expensive; however, they won't tarnish (I've had a fair bit of 9 ct gold before), there's no plating to rub off, and also they're thin enough to hang charms on, which my original pair was not. Since I have some earring charms, I've now got five or maybe six pairs of earrings for the price of one, which makes it suddenly not so bad after all.
Anyway. I'm now almost at the end of chapter 11, and the sequel is going to be much more complex (and probably also longer) than the original book. The thing is, it isn't even just that characters keep developing on me... although they certainly do that; Nivaunel, the main protagonist, has gone in the space of a couple of months from a neglected young woman without a great deal of confidence to a fully-fledged cleric with enough confidence in her god to challenge an entire dwarf town when she discovers that one of their traditions is starting to slip out of keeping with the Lawful Good alignment that most of them have... and win. (She's a very good negotiator. Dwarves, it is true, tend to be sticklers for tradition, but they're even more sticklers for their alignment, so it just took Nivaunel to point out what was happening and then dig her heels in. In fact she's Neutral Good herself, not Lawful Good; but the tradition had slipped on the good side rather than the lawful side.) If it were just that, it would be interesting enough. But no - things unrelated to the characters keep happening that I didn't originally predict.
Like the sword. Darg, the party's rather adorable half-orc fighter, who's probably autistic (he takes things extremely literally, and he apparently thinks tact is some kind of glue, but he's generally very cheerful and friendly), needed a new greatsword. That is to say, his old one wasn't bad, but the party could afford to get him a better one and decided that that would be a good idea. Darg is Chaotic Good, and he worships Kord, who is the Chaotic Good god of strength. So he wants to get his new sword from the Temple of Kord if possible. Turns out it is, so they get him the new sword; normally it would cost a lot of money to give it a permanent blessing (which is to say the weapon becomes good-aligned and you get a bonus if you're fighting anything evil), but Nivaunel is an aasimar and her angelic ancestor has already turned up once to deliver a couple of items that Kerian and Lindith (who are in Elysium and can't safely leave there) want to give her. The angelic ancestor is therefore persuaded to make a second visit in order to bless the sword, which she can do easily without incurring any cost.
Darg - who is rapidly becoming the chaotic equivalent of a paladin - is delighted. So is the rest of the party. They, and I, think Darg's managed to get a full-on holy sword at a bargain price. They take the road up into the mountains, and... oh, look. Two dwarves, who don't appear to have any spell-casting ability, are being attacked by a winter wolf (intelligent, evil, and pretty nearly the size of a horse). Our party hurries to the rescue...
...at which point, the sword suddenly demands to know if there are any undead it can fight. And I had no idea that was going to happen till I actually typed it.
It turns out that the sword is called Kythis, and while I never directly quote game mechanics in the narrative (this is D&D-based but not full-on LitRPG), I did then have to go and work out its stats for reference. It is a +2 holy sword with INT 16, WIS 16, and CHA 10 (so it is a bit more tactful than its wielder, but not a whole lot); can both speak and read Common, Celestial, Elven, and Draconic; has 60 ft darkvision and hearing (dratted D&D, everything is in imperial so I have to keep converting); can cast Detect Magic at will, and both Bless and Zone of Truth three times a day; its special purpose is to defeat/slay undead, and anyone wielding it gets a +2 bonus on any attacks, saves, or checks which further this purpose; and its Ego score, if I've worked that out correctly, is 16. Since it was made in the Temple of Kord, its alignment is almost certainly Chaotic Good. The person who forged it died shortly after, and Kythis was bright enough to say nothing so that it didn't end up with a massive price tag, because if it did, it would probably be priced out of range of whichever wielder it decided was the right one. And it picked Darg as being the one most likely to be sympathetic to its aims.
Well, it settled for killing the wolf for the time being (not undead, but evil, and that would do), but it was very happy later on because it got to finish off a ghast. And... I think I'm going to need to create a whole new D&D class now, especially for Darg!
So I will never visit their site again, and I promptly went and bought a pair of 9 ct gold earrings from a slightly more up-market jeweller. They were, of course, a bit more expensive; however, they won't tarnish (I've had a fair bit of 9 ct gold before), there's no plating to rub off, and also they're thin enough to hang charms on, which my original pair was not. Since I have some earring charms, I've now got five or maybe six pairs of earrings for the price of one, which makes it suddenly not so bad after all.
Anyway. I'm now almost at the end of chapter 11, and the sequel is going to be much more complex (and probably also longer) than the original book. The thing is, it isn't even just that characters keep developing on me... although they certainly do that; Nivaunel, the main protagonist, has gone in the space of a couple of months from a neglected young woman without a great deal of confidence to a fully-fledged cleric with enough confidence in her god to challenge an entire dwarf town when she discovers that one of their traditions is starting to slip out of keeping with the Lawful Good alignment that most of them have... and win. (She's a very good negotiator. Dwarves, it is true, tend to be sticklers for tradition, but they're even more sticklers for their alignment, so it just took Nivaunel to point out what was happening and then dig her heels in. In fact she's Neutral Good herself, not Lawful Good; but the tradition had slipped on the good side rather than the lawful side.) If it were just that, it would be interesting enough. But no - things unrelated to the characters keep happening that I didn't originally predict.
Like the sword. Darg, the party's rather adorable half-orc fighter, who's probably autistic (he takes things extremely literally, and he apparently thinks tact is some kind of glue, but he's generally very cheerful and friendly), needed a new greatsword. That is to say, his old one wasn't bad, but the party could afford to get him a better one and decided that that would be a good idea. Darg is Chaotic Good, and he worships Kord, who is the Chaotic Good god of strength. So he wants to get his new sword from the Temple of Kord if possible. Turns out it is, so they get him the new sword; normally it would cost a lot of money to give it a permanent blessing (which is to say the weapon becomes good-aligned and you get a bonus if you're fighting anything evil), but Nivaunel is an aasimar and her angelic ancestor has already turned up once to deliver a couple of items that Kerian and Lindith (who are in Elysium and can't safely leave there) want to give her. The angelic ancestor is therefore persuaded to make a second visit in order to bless the sword, which she can do easily without incurring any cost.
Darg - who is rapidly becoming the chaotic equivalent of a paladin - is delighted. So is the rest of the party. They, and I, think Darg's managed to get a full-on holy sword at a bargain price. They take the road up into the mountains, and... oh, look. Two dwarves, who don't appear to have any spell-casting ability, are being attacked by a winter wolf (intelligent, evil, and pretty nearly the size of a horse). Our party hurries to the rescue...
...at which point, the sword suddenly demands to know if there are any undead it can fight. And I had no idea that was going to happen till I actually typed it.
It turns out that the sword is called Kythis, and while I never directly quote game mechanics in the narrative (this is D&D-based but not full-on LitRPG), I did then have to go and work out its stats for reference. It is a +2 holy sword with INT 16, WIS 16, and CHA 10 (so it is a bit more tactful than its wielder, but not a whole lot); can both speak and read Common, Celestial, Elven, and Draconic; has 60 ft darkvision and hearing (dratted D&D, everything is in imperial so I have to keep converting); can cast Detect Magic at will, and both Bless and Zone of Truth three times a day; its special purpose is to defeat/slay undead, and anyone wielding it gets a +2 bonus on any attacks, saves, or checks which further this purpose; and its Ego score, if I've worked that out correctly, is 16. Since it was made in the Temple of Kord, its alignment is almost certainly Chaotic Good. The person who forged it died shortly after, and Kythis was bright enough to say nothing so that it didn't end up with a massive price tag, because if it did, it would probably be priced out of range of whichever wielder it decided was the right one. And it picked Darg as being the one most likely to be sympathetic to its aims.
Well, it settled for killing the wolf for the time being (not undead, but evil, and that would do), but it was very happy later on because it got to finish off a ghast. And... I think I'm going to need to create a whole new D&D class now, especially for Darg!
