DShomshak

I, and most ofthe people I've played with, enjoy genre simulation, so we largely accept all these tropes if the GM is not too heavy-handed; and none of them happen all that often. When they happen, they are fairly Big Events. Like, early in my first Champions campaign, the Seattle Sentinels captured several lesser villains: Mob enforcer types, minions of bigger villains, etc. They also accumulated clues that there was a vampire in town, moving on organized crime. So while it came as a nasty surprise when Lady Twilight broke a bunch of the villains out of jail to form her gang, it was not an arbitrary event. The PCs also learned that captured members of the Devil's Advocates were not going to stay in jail for long, because the whole team never took to the field at once. But they stopped evil plots, saved the world a few times, and made sure the group could never attempt a scheme asecond time. No villain has ever returned whom the PCs thought was genuinely dead. Atomized in the explosion that knocked out all the PCs? Yeah, right, they knew Baron Frost is still alive somewhere. On reflection, the only games I've run where a supposed ally turned out to be an enemy, I had player cooperation. Same player, in fact. For several sessions, the heroine Bluejay was possessed by the Mind-Master Complex. The player even tried dropping clues, which the other players missed. Much later, the NPC bounty hunter/semi-hero ally (and Bluejay's sometime love interest) Javelin was revealed as the supervillain Blitz using a different costumed identity as part of a long con. (But it ended happily: He liked being a hero and eventually defected from the Evil Organization.) There've been occasions when players resented these tropes, but I admit I'd been clumsy at GMing them. Or once,m there was a player who flat-out refused to treat DNPCs as anything just Disad points, and sacrificed them without a qualm when the villain threatened them. But he was extremely gameist and, moreover, had been scarred by past experiences in games with very bad GMs. Dean Shomshak

If there is any signs of hope, it's that in many cities the protests have stayed peaceful on both sides. And that some military leaders are censuring Trump's bluster about using soldiers against protesters/rioters -- the ones still serving are carefully measured in their reminders that they took oath to defend the Constitution, not the mad whims of whoever's in the Oval Office, but they are still saying it. It seems they do not want to be actively complicit in the slide to autocracy. It is a small point of light in a dark time, but I'll take it and hope it grows. Despots need to be sure that soldiers will fire upon their own people when ordered, and some of the people tasked with transmitting those orders are saying there are orders they will not obey. Moreover, the recent statements from bishops and former general Mattis have held contempt as well as outrage. As Machiavelli warned, a ruler can survive hatred, but contempt is far more dangerous. Dean Shomshak

If there is any signs of hope, it's that in many cities the protests have stayed peaceful on both sides. And that some military leaders are censuring Trump's bluster about using soldiers against protesters/rioters -- the ones still serving are carefully measured in their reminders that they took oath to defend the Constitution, not the mad whims of whoever's in the Oval Office, but they are still saying it. It seems they do not want to be actively complicit in the slide to autocracy. It is a small point of light in a dark time, but I'll take it and hope it grows. Despots need to be sure that soldiers will fire upon their own people when ordered, and some of the people tasked with transmitting those orders are saying there are orders they will not obey. Moreover, the recent statements from bishops and former general Mattis have held contempt as well as outrage. As Machiavelli warned, a ruler can survive hatred, but contempt is far more dangerous. Dean Shomshak

As far as vandalism goes, here in The Other Washington we've had to shell out several thousand taxpayer dollars to clean the steps of the state capitol after one of the anti-lockdown protests and counter-protests. See, a couple people from the Temple of Satan stood there (not sure what side they were on, it wasn't in the news story). Afterward, our nuttiest state rep, Republican Matt Shea (who has been censured for circulating a tract on the proper Christian way to engage in civil war and has been implicated in domestic terrorism) poured olive oil on the steps where he thought the Satanists had stood. Part of some kind of exorcism, I guess. Anyway, the marble steps are somewhat porous to oil, so he created a stain that is very difficult to remove. Hence the cost. So, our marble monuments are a bit more delicate than you might think. But dozens of soldiers in riot gear seems a bit, hm, melodramatic. Dean Shomshak

Oh. I didn't get around to mentioning this before, but if anyone's interested: "Silentiary" is a real word, though obscure. It can mean a person who has taken a religious vow of silence; a court official tasked with maintaining order and quiet; or person under oath to keep state secrets. All are relevant, indirectly. Hm. Having a deity speak first person has done well, but not when it's in blank verse. I'll remember that for next time. I can't be too vexed, though: Hermit did real good, a joy to read. Dean Shomshak

Kylvn asks only that you have a coldly logical, dispassionate basis for your choice. (I know what a spanner is. But throwing a wrench "in the works" usually has an implication of sabotage or other destructive disruption, at least as I've heard the expression used before. Most of what DT cites as spanner-throwing was perhaps surprising, but I wouldn't call it sabotage.) Dean Shomshak

ATC yesterday discussed the alleged "liberal bias" of social media platforms. The expert they consulted said that, no, conservatives aren't the only people who get fact-checked or blocked by Twitter. She mentioned Black Lives Matter and Muslim extremists as having experienced this as well, though without citing specific posts or people. It would perhaps be interesting to study the relative frequencies of flagging or banning, relative to population of people holding various political positions, to see if there is indeed any sort of bias, or if it's just that some groups are more prone to wackadoodle claims or hate speech. But as I mentioned earlier, the Anti-Defamation League's historical survey of American political violence showed the great majority of it is associated with conservative causes. Dean Shomshak

ATC yesterday discussed the alleged "liberal bias" of social media platforms. The expert they consulted said that, no, conservatives aren't the only people who get fact-checked or blocked by Twitter. She mentioned Black Lives Matter and Muslim extremists as having experienced this as well, though without citing specific posts or people. It would perhaps be interesting to study the relative frequencies of flagging or banning, relative to population of people holding various political positions, to see if there is indeed any sort of bias, or if it's just that some groups are more prone to wackadoodle claims or hate speech. But as I mentioned earlier, the Anti-Defamation League's historical survey of American political violence showed the great majority of it is associated with conservative causes. Dean Shomshak

I am not sure what is meant here by "throwing a spanner in the works." But I'll say that Inscissivus had the most surprising concept here. "Cutting" seems awfully abstract and narrow at first thought, but Old Man made it work. Dean Shomshak

Let's also not forget that Donald Trump was not the anointed candidate of the Republican Party grandees or their corporate masters. As far as I can see, his was a genuine populist insurgency from the party's base... ...Though one could certainly argue -- and I would -- that the Republican Party base's alienation and rage was consciously cultivated for generations by those party leaders and corporate masters. And now they seem quite happy with a president who says openly what was coded in dog-whistle language, and openly attacks the political norms they spent decades undermining. Dean Shomshak

On the Media: Listen | WNYC Studios | Podcasts The latest episode has an excellent segment interviewing historian John Barry about his book, The Great Influenza; specificaqlly about the political and media aspects of the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. Humanity had the bad luck for the pandemic to happen in the middle of World War One. Governments involved in the war thought home front morale would be harmed by news of hundreds of thousands of citizens dropping like flies, so they all locked down the news instead of their populations. Including the United States: The Wilson administration had an office of propaganda and censorship with the avowed mission to manufacture uniform, unwavering, white-hot zeal for the war and let nothing get in the way of that goal. Especially truth. Congress had already made it sedition to say anything critical of participation in the war (and even a member of Congress was jailed for defying it); newspaper publishers were told they would be crushed if they deviated from the administration's line that the pandemic was just ordinary flu, wash your hands and carry on as normal. Of course people knew this was rubbish. Barry describes some of the social unraveling that resulted. Also that Pres. Wilson contracted the flue while he was in Paris negotiating the Treaty of Versailles and was, hm, not at his best mentally (not that I've heard any modern historian speak highly of his intellect at the best of times, despite his having been an Ivt League college president). Which may have had something to do with the more deranged and punitive aspects of the treaty. Nowadays, the US also has a president who regards a deadly pandemic as an annoying distraction from what he thinks matters, who brushes the disease off as "just flu." But at least he hasn't been able to strong-arm most media into repeating that party line and forcing people not to do anything about the epidemic. So bad as things are, I guess they could be worse, because not so very long ago they were. Yay? Dean Shomshak

Which leads to the interesting possibility that in this world, the undead are not intrinsically evil. Most fantasies play it that way, but (as Kylvn might say) that is not a necessary assumption. Log? What are the undead actually like in the Helix?(Or did miss this? I'll have to look back at earlier pages.) Dean Shomshak

Heard on the BBC yesterday: the Paris Observatory reports that, using the Very Large Telescope, theyhave observed evidence of a protoplanet forming. Not the protoplanet itself, but a distinctive S-shaped kink in the dust cloud around a star. (I think they said AB Aurigae.) Dean Shomshak

The End approaches... Final pick: Legendary Guardian/Mythic Monster: The Angel of cold Shadow, Kylvn’s Wrath. Monster. Definitely monster. Because a proper god needs something dark and terrible to trouble theologians. Before the world was cut from out the void, Cold Kylvn looked within his holy self, Beseeching Andrea and Augurie To show the worst that he could ever be. He saw he could succumb to deadly wrath, Illogical, unreasoning, malign, A curse released upon all mortal kind, Betrayal of his calm and ordered mind. And so he took Inscissivus’ blade, That cuts all things and cut into himself, Removing through this godly surgery The evil, raging possibility. Then locked it in an admantine box By Liminus anointed, boundary That nothing could then cross, eternal sealed. For ages as the world was shaped it sat, Unheeded, inoffensive, until Fox, The fool, discovered the dark box. “I wonder what’s inside it?” pondered he. “It must be wondrous, I shall set it free!” He stole the keys by which Eternus passes To any place, no matter how well guarded, And oped the box! While somewhere Malice laughed, As Fox felt from the depths a chilly draft… Then blast of ice, that froze him nose to tail! A frozen fury, thousand winters’ bite; Since when, the Fox has had a streak of white. The Angel of Cold Shadow was released, Its curse upon the world has never ceased. — from the Frozen Analects (generally considered apocryphal) No god can remember Kylvn losing his temper. Ever is he courteous. The most they’ve seen is mild pique, and an arch suggestion that certain actions are not logical. Kylvn’s worshippers say that while the Cold God’s actions may not be kind, they are necessary and ultimately for the benefit of mortals and the world. Except there’s the Angel of Cold Shadow. This figure of ice has six faces of silentiaries, merged in a ring to look full circle at once. Twelve arms, with fingers like long blades of ice. Six wings fledged with sleet and a body robed in blizzards. First seen, it stands about a hundred feet tall; but it can grow vastly larger. As it rises into the sky, its wings spread to overshadow a city, or an entire province. Its shadow brings snow and a deadly cold. Even frost elves and silentiaries might shiver; all other folk freeze in minutes, though the W'Brrm usually can thaw afterward and survive. For everyone else, the Angel’s shadow brings death. Only when everyone within its shadow is fled, dead or frozen stiff does the Angel vanish once more. The Angel of Shadow appeared over the city of Scalzaris when riots and civil war set it aflame. It appeared over the kingdom of Vallish-Miir after loyahs overran it, and over the bandit-wracked province of Zung. From such appearances, some speculate the Angel is Kylvn’s dread judgment upon chaos and evil. But the Angel also appeared over the peaceful island of Bonatha, slaying both the native humans and the high elf refugees they had succored. Another story says the angel is truly Kylvn’s wrath: that once, he did lose his temper and sent it forth as the Angel of Cold Shadow to destroy those who had offended him. He regretted this spasm of rage, but could not undo it, nor destroy the emanation of himself. He instead borrowed, or stole, the all-cutting blade of Inscissivus and cut the event from the chronicle of Time and the memory from all other creatures, even the other gods. But the priests of Kylvn condemn this tale as heretical; and anyway, if it were true who would know? Or maybe it's just that Kylvn, too, must sleep and dream on occasion... and the sleep of reason breeds monsters. Some say Malice is the Angel’s lover, and that she seduced it to serve Shayol; but other tales say the Angel is one of only five creatures that Malice fears, and it has nearly slain her. Kylvn refuses to dignify such tales with a response, saying that a logical mind restricts itself to facts; which, his fellow gods observe, is not a denial. They also see that Bestimm the Determinator and the Dragonslayer have both slain the Angel, yet it has returned, as if something truly deathless sustained its existence. Never have they see Kylvn direct the Angel; and indeed, he helped Nogrom guide a hero to the Man of Gold in time to stop the Void-Zealots from summoning it at the base of the Integral Tree. Because all bringers of death are known to Eternus, that god knows how the Angel is called. A mortal who is absolutely convinced that all hope is lost — believes this is proven beyond possibility of error — that there is no choice left between a horrible ending and horrors without end — can summon the Angel of Cold Shadow by freezing and starving to death. The mortal calls to the Angel with their last breath; and by Volcanis' gift, the Angel hears, in whatever cosmic adytum it waits. And the Angel delivers the ending they seek. An end in silence, and stillness, and the unity of a common grave. ----- It is ended. Dean Shomshak

Thus spake Kylvn: Concerning fire, My acolytes expect Commandment that they hold in enmity This shining element of heat and change, Destroyer of the handiwork of frost. Indeed, it contradicts much hat I am; But also serves My will in subtler ways. The hearth gives central order to a home, And lamp-light permits study into night, That thoughts be analyzed and fixed in ink. And if the fire destroys when uncontrolled, Then mortals learn to plan around that fear, With comfort, light and cooking as rewards, And safety from the dangers of the night. Besides, the world has holy symmetries: My logic for the madcap whims of Fox; Schemata to unite in ordered plan The diverse entities from Blade-God’s cuts; Hard fixity for dreams of Andrea. ‘Tis meet, then, that as cold doth crystallize All things into a hard and rigid form, The Helix should contain an opposite, That melts, consumes, releases into smoke To evanesce into the empty air! And as the fixéd purity of ice Is emblem of dispassioned reasoning, So fire is worthy emblem of the love You give to mortals, sibling Tasha — What? The fire is claimed by Shayol? Pardons, please, You know you look so very much alike! Dean Shomshak

This is odd: My post on the Silentiaries seems cut off half way through. I'll re-post and hope the whole thing appears, because there was quite a bit more. -- DS -------------------- Kylvn approves of the Frost Elves, but they are not truly his people. And so he created the Silentiaries. He sang them into existence from living frost, breathed souls into them, and finished the work with a great silence. Kylvn create hive insects and similar creatures as early attempts at orderly species, and the silentiaries build on those experiments. Silentiaries somewhat resemble oversized grasshoppers about six feet long, walking (or jumping) on four hind legs but with slender arms with three fingers each. They appear to be made of translucent, pale blue ice with glittering, crystalline compound eyes. Folk of other species find silentiaries very difficult to tell apart. They are cold as ice as well, and take no harm from even the greatest chill. One reason for their species name is that silentiaries cannot speak: They breathe through spiracles in their sides. They communicate through sign language. Their language can barely be managed at a crude level by creatures with only two arms; full fluency requires four. Though they have no voices, siloentiaries can make silences, and these flavor their sign-speech the way humans use gestures to emphasize their speech. They also love music. Their styles are intricate and contrapuntal, full of fugues and interlocking rhythms. These folk live in hives grown from living frost, labyrinthine and many-turreted, amid extensive ice-reefs. They mostly eat living ice, though they cannot survive for long without cold-tolerant ordinary crops such as turnips or rye. The farmland is of course tended collectively. Silentiaries rarely go far from their hives except in winter. Other seasons are at least unpleasant for them, and the hottest weather is deadly to them. In winter, though, silentiaries can travel far in vessels of living ice, animated and directed by music, that stride on a dozen jointed legs through the snow. They venture out to trade, to found new hives, or to perform special feats of ice-shaping for other folk. On rare occasions they are sought for their remarkable mental prowess, for every silentiary is highly trained at memory, observation and logic; or as musicians. But this is dangerous, and not just for the silentiaries. Silentiary society is divided into six ranked castes. Most silentiaries begin in the worker caste, with numerous subcastes for each occupation. Workers have a lifespan of 36 winters. A worker who shows the six disciplines of truthfulness, logic, equanimity, reciprocity, loyalty and perseverence and advances six degrees in their occupation is elevated to the supervisor caste and receives another 36 winters of lifespan along with greater responsibility. Supervisors of great diligence and sagacity can be promoted into the Gaon caste of lawgivers, judges and priests, responsible for maintaining the order of the hive and relations with the outside world. Gaons receive another 36 years of lifespan. But Kylvn paid attention to Shayol’s curse of god-addiction. He saw that, unchecked, order could become a mere fetish of homogeneity or pattern with no real use, rigid and self-destructive. So some supervisors are instead promoted into the Daimon caste of blasphemers, rebels and clowns, tasked with bringing a bit of Fox’s chaos into the hive to prevent complacency and create possibilities for new and better practices. They also receive a longer life. Either gaons and daimons can be promoted for merit into the fifth caste; but of this caste it is forbidden to speak, and no one below the rank of gaon or daimon is allowed even to know what it does. Finally, hives are ruled by a single silentiary of the sixth caste. These prophet-monarchs commune with Kylvn personally, and the Cold Lord is willing to make introductions to other gods if the need is proven. Prophet-monarchs can live up to 1,296 winters – no more. Then Kylvn gives them to Eternus. Kylvn finds Shayol and Tasha both tiresome, in their fashions, and so he did his utmost to insulate his people from their influence and their contest. Evil coming from The Female of the Species? Silentiaries are genderless; and as they reproduce asexually, they have no need or understanding of love. Three silentiaries can drain a bit of their cold, clear blood into an urn of ice filled with snow, which is sealed and quickened with music. After a turning of the year, the urn hatches as a young silentiary. Silentiaries can also reproduce by pure music. If five silentiaries play improvisationally and achieve a spontaneous moment of perfect harmony, a sixth silentiary appears, already adult, with knowledge gleaned from all five of its “parents.” These silentiaries, the Songborn, are gaon or daimon from birth. But gods are not balked. Tasha and Shayol both claim their due from the silentiaries. Shayol’s baleful power in the Helix made the silentiaries a plague unto all other intelligences – literally. Careless contact with a silentiary, especially with its blood, can induce a deadly disease in other folk. The victim gets colder and colder until he or she freezes. This is usually fatal, but about one in ten frozen victims crack to release a young silentiary with the person’s memories. Only the frost elves are immune, by the way the Fair Star made them. Tasha might say she levies no curses, but her influence likewise has a deadly effect. Mistletoe induces desire, but silentiaries cannot feel it. They go mad from the contradiction and probably die within a week if they do not kiss someone of another intelligent species… which merely triggers the second phase of the curse. The silentiary falls into a frozen coma, then splits several days later to release an individual of the kissed person’s species, retaining memories of his or her life as a silentiary but unable ever to return to the hive. As silentiaries largely keep to themselves, rumor about them flourishes. Tales say that silentiaries, playing in concert, have animated the surrounding reefs to massacre invaders with ten thousand blades and spears of ice – or even reshaped the hive as a titanic juggernaut that can crush dragons. Their leaders and magi are said to know strange magics as well, such as incarnating spirits in bodies of living frost. There are somewhat reliable stories of gaons extracting dreams and memories and storing them in ice-jewels… and daimons releasing those stored visions into the minds of other folk. It is even said, by those who claim to know more than other folk, that the silentiaries can control the curses of Tasha and Shayol to trap other folk in a chrysalis of ice and bring them forth as folk of another species – loyahs turned into cave elves, reynardi become humans. But few would dare to investigate these claims first-hand. The silentiaries are pariahs to most other folk, literally untouchable, for fear of their strange, icy contagion. Dean Shomshak

I admit, I am of at least two minds. On the one and, yes, American culture fetishizes guns to an astonishing degree. Insurrection from any nationwide attempt at sudden, serious restriction or regulation is a real threat. Though bluntly, I think the odds are high of insurrection within the next 5 years anyway. A civil war disconnected from real economic or political issues -- only about mythology and identity. I hope I am proved wrong, but there seems to be a significant percentage of the population that is *flipping crazy* at the loss of their caste privileges and cherished myths of identity. OTOH, we do have the example of gay rights. There were predictions of civil war over that, too, and it didn't happen. First laws against homosexuality were rolled back. Society didn't collapse, either in a Gay Sex Orgy or an Evangelical crusade. Then a few states tried civil unions. Again, nothing happened. Then outright marriage. And what do you know, nothing happened. Finally the Supreme Court (narrowly) declared same-sex marriage had to be legal everywhere. And God did not smite the country as He smote Sodom and Gomorrah, neither did the Evangelicals rise up in armed rebellion and the military join them. Too many people realized they had friends and family who were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and they were just people instead of some abstract boogyman of "The Gay." A solid majority of Americans think same-sex marriage is just fine, and what's the big deal? Already, polling shows that a solid majority of Americans think some kind of tighter gun regulation is okay. So it may be possible to follow the same-sex marriage playbook. A few states or major cities institute small restrictions, such as on magazine size. There are lawsuits, some laws fail but some stand. Some politicians support these restrictions, the NRA fails to unseat them in the next election, and starts looking like a paper tiger. More regions institute more restrictions, and yet the people are neither crushed by jackbooted government thugs, nor massacred by brown criminals invading their homes! And the myth starts crumbling. Success is not assured. Like I said, we could still get a Seinfeldian civil war over nothing, or Donald Trump could secure de facto dictatorship. But all hope for improvement is not lost. Dean Shomshak

I think all I have left is Kylvn's legendary guardian/mythic monster. I have soime thoughts on this and hope to finish soon. This has been a remarkable experience. I'm seeing people create myths that feel like myths. I'm even seeing theology. I hope I'll be able to participate again. Dean Shomshak

Kylvn approves of the Frost Elves, but they are not truly his people. And so he created the Silentiaries. He sang them into existence from living frost, breathed souls into them, and finished the work with a great silence. Kylvn create hive insects and similar creatures as early attempts at orderly species, and the silentiaries build on those experiments. Silentiaries somewhat resemble oversized grasshoppers about six feet long, walking (or jumping) on four hind legs but with slender arms with three fingers each. They appear to be made of translucent, pale blue ice with glittering, crystalline compound eyes. Folk of other species find silentiaries very difficult to tell apart. They are cold as ice as well, and take no harm from even the greatest chill. One reason for their species name is that silentiaries cannot speak: They breathe through spiracles in their sides. They communicate through sign language. Their language can barely be managed at a crude level by creatures with only two arms; full fluency requires four. Though they have no voices, siloentiaries can make silences, and these flavor their sign-speech the way humans use gestures to emphasize their speech. They also love music. Their styles are intricate and contrapuntal, full of fugues and interlocking rhythms. These folk live in hives grown from living frost, labyrinthine and many-turreted, amid extensive ice-reefs. They mostly eat living ice, though they cannot survive for long without cold-tolerant ordinary crops such as turnips or rye. The farmland is of course tended collectively. Silentiaries rarely go far from their hives except in winter. Other seasons are at least unpleasant for them, and the hottest weather is deadly to them. In winter, though, silentiaries can travel far in vessels of living ice, animated and directed by music, that stride on a dozen jointed legs through the snow. They venture out to trade, to found new hives, or to perform special feats of ice-shaping for other folk. On rare occasions they are sought for their remarkable mental prowess, for every silentiary is highly trained at memory, observation and logic; or as musicians. But this is dangerous, and not just for the

Vide my post about Ice Reefs, I hadn't defined mountaintops as cold, or have any knowledge that anyone else had done so. Kylvn did not insist upon it: Except for Winter, he leaves climate to Volcanis and the other gods. But he accepts Fox's decision that it be so, at least in Silyyaytsa. On seeing the new country, Kylvn smiles austerely and says, A gift divine this truly is, O Fox! And if some details be a trifle edged, As jests in names, or godly foibles tweaked, Why, Fox must e’er be Fox, as Kylvn must Be pompous. (Did I say those words aloud? Ahem. Pay them no heed.) Consistency Is in erratic way thy virtue chief. And if the residents must take some care In which notes they do sing? I still approve, For discipline is good for mortal souls. Be thou assured that I shall not forget, And count on Kylvn’s reciprocity. I seem to recall that "yaytsa" is Russian for "eggs." I shall have to look up the meaning of "silyy." Dean Shomshak

Well, I'm told that J. K. Rowling is a billionaire because she wrote some books that a lot of people liked, and had the luck or foresight to insist in the copntract that she get a cut of any spin-off profits from merch and movies. I don't see how she robbed or cheated anyone. An unusual case to be sure, but it's an "existence proof." If one can exist, so can others. It's why I no longer feel outrage at high-paid athletes or entertainers, when so many obviously more worthy people toil for modest wage. Consider everyone who enjoys watching, say, LeBron James play basketball. Millions ever game. Imagine each one of them could pay ten cents directly to him in appreciation. Clearly, he soon becomes a very rich man. And can one say that each of those millions did not receive ten cents' worth of pleasure? Repeat for actors, musicians, etc. I am willing to extend this exercise to providers of other goods and services, dividing profit gained by the value gained by others. BUT... In such cases, everyone in the supply chain for providing those goods and services has a right to a share as well. If the business model that makes a few people very rich depends on keeping most people's wages artificially low, there is certainly unfairness that should e corrected. Or if the wealth comes from rent-seeking rather than honest competiton for customers. Returning to J. K. Rowling, it is likely she would not be as wealthy as she is if all the people making the Harry Potter merch in Third World countries were paid a share rather than, well, Third World factory wages. But she would still be very rich. I see the problem as less that some few people are so very rich as that so many are so very poor. And that their poverty is not an unfortunate natural event, but deliberately created by those who would rather extract wealth than create it. Dean Shomshak

Oh, and if anyone wonders how silence can be a thing instead of a mere absence, I offer these words from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, a better writer than I could ever hope to be: ----- PROLOGUE A Silence of Three Parts IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die. ----- I don't know how spirit magic works. That's for Liminus to decide. But if magic words are involved -- words being things of both worlds, material sound and immaterial meaning -- I propose that magic silences be involved, too. Dean Shomshak

But why does Living Frost count as flora or fauna? Because if you don't fix its form with a silence, it keeps growing on its own. And this gives Kylvn his contribution to the landscape. Geography: Ice Reefs. Living Frost can appear spontaneously from people singing in a snowstorm, or a chance harmony of winds whistling through cracks in a rock. It's small at first, but if nothing breaks it and it survives the passing seasons to the next winter, it grows. Not fast, but it grows and new forms appear. In time the patch of living frost resembles a coral reef: a mass of odd lumps, branches and fern-like sprays of ice, riddles with crevices and little caves where the wind can make more music and keep the reef growing. People may destroy a nascent ice reef because they don't want it freezing and taking over their farmland. Kylvn understands, and has no desire for his creation to trespass and disrupt the domains of Liminus or Nogrom. But in some places the reefs grow miles wide and hundreds of feet high. (And villages may tend a small walled ice-garden so they have ice year-round, and a place to cool off in the hottest times of the year.) Okay, my first thought for Kylvn's geography was mountaintops. Nobody's mentioned mountains IIRC; and a rim of mountains would keep seas and rivers from draining off the edge of the Helix. And ice castles on glacier-clad peaks were tempting. But it was still too obvious and too Earth-like. The Helix may have a raised rim and possibly mountains elsewhere, but they are not Kylvn's doing. Dean Shomshak

Since I'm falling behind, I'll keep this one short. No b;lank verse, sorry. Is it flora, fauna, or ore? A bit of all three, as Kylvn gives the world Living Frost. A great musician can set the snowflakes dancing in patterns, and the ice crystals growing in chosen forms. It grows like the traceries of frost but can leave a surface to grow up and out, denser, until solid objects are formed. Then the form can be locked in place using powerful, intense silence -- for as cold in this world is not merely absence of feat, silence is not merely absence of sound. Once set in this manner, living frost becomes as hard as stone -- nowhere near as hard as adamantite, of course, more like marble -- and has a melting point comparable to silver. Given time, castles or entire towns can be built of living frost. If I had a picture of Crystal Castle from the end of The Dark Crystal, I'd post it here. Dean Shomshak

Long overdue but unlikely to happen, even discounting that Trump finds them useful. Back in the Obama administration -- I think it was during the Bundy Ranch standoff -- I heard that the FBI has a policy of never going after these far-right extremists for fear of provoking a worse, more violent backlash. They call it "Weaver fever": Many believe the Ruby Ridge standoff against Randy Weaver, followed by the Branch Davidian standoff, led to the Oklahoma City bombing. Now, I think coddling the fringe in this way only encourages them: It looks weak: Their anger feeds on itself, while perceived weakness increases contempt and confidence that they can get away with violent acts. So we might as well have it out and deal with any resulting insurrection, because -- as the Anti-Defamation League essay A Dark and Constant Rage points out -- this political poison has been around for decades. It isn't going away on its own. Dean Shomshak