I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey recently while in the UK quarantining from Malta which may have pulled my mind back in the direction of Greek myths, so I'm glad you liked the poem. Orpheus doesn't (as far as I know) show up in the game, but Herodotus is talking my ear off....
Letters Fabian sat down at the table in the kitchen and heard the chair creak beneath him. Like most of the things in the house it was old and not in the best condition; his ex-wife had gone through and tried to take everything that wasn't nailed-down or prisable-up and it had taken several strongly worded letters from his lawyer, plus an admonition from the judge, before she'd started to behave a little more reasonably. Though, if Fabian were honest with himself, he suspected that it was their daughter's reaction to his ex-wife's rapaciousness that had really caused her to back off in the end. On the table in front of him, where he'd just set it hot from the pan, was pasta alla norcina; tubes of penne with a creamy, sausage-y, peppery sauce clinging to it. Strands of white pecorino cheese lay atop it like a tracery of frost, gradually melting into the sauce. The smell of his was making him salivate, but he forced himself to pour a half-glass of wine -- the same used in the sauce -- out first, knowing that if he poured it after eating it would a whole glass, or even two. The first tender forkful of warm pasta with the unctuous sauce was enough for him to close his eyes in almost-prayer. Then, as he ate, he considered the lecture he'd just attended at the Remedna temple. Once again the lecturers had arranged themselves on the raised platform though only one of them actually spoke, and the focus this time was on cthonic magic. Fabian realised that he'd formed the impression that the speaker was fascinated by this magic, though it seemed there wasn't much known about it. "Raising the dead," he'd said, "is the best known form of this magic and is employed by humans. Elves are often considered resistant to it, and some teachers--" he paused and grinned broadly at the other lecturers, who grinned back, "--believe this is due to an innate superiority of elves. But! But the historical record shows that elves used necromancy as well, and to good effect in, say, Terrence's War or the Ashkenite Incursion. Indeed, there are well-written and -attested accounts that suggest that humans may have studied necromancy with the elves at some point. So there are clear indications, to scholars at least, that this resistance the elves have is not innate but rather learned, or developed later on. "But cthonic magic is about erosion, decay, and entropy. The touch of a mind-flayer, an illithid, produces a local entropy gradient that draws intelligence away from the victim and into the mind-flayer. Leave a prisoner alone with a mind-flayer for long enough and you will retrieve a drooling idiot. The mind-flayer though, having absorbed all that intelligence, will have escaped if you didn't think to take sufficient precautions." A nervous chuckle ran through the audience at that point, and Fabian set his fork down -- just a little reluctantly -- long enough to send message the question he'd thought of then. 'Have we ever had a mind-flayer escape because it got too intelligent?' Then he returned to the important job of eating his pasta.
Greg - ah, nice. I've always found the Assassin's Creed games intriguing, they look beautiful with some interesting game dynamics and story lines. Never actually played one, mind, but they're pretty to look at.
Beautiful description of the food at the beginning there. Feels like it might have been inspired by real life.
Caught me off guard that the second lecture was done as a recollection but then I realized it was definitely the right move. Can't have us sitting in class with Fabian too often!
Intriguing lesson about mind-flayers, by the way...
2 comments:
I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey recently while in the UK quarantining from Malta which may have pulled my mind back in the direction of Greek myths, so I'm glad you liked the poem. Orpheus doesn't (as far as I know) show up in the game, but Herodotus is talking my ear off....
Letters
Fabian sat down at the table in the kitchen and heard the chair creak beneath him. Like most of the things in the house it was old and not in the best condition; his ex-wife had gone through and tried to take everything that wasn't nailed-down or prisable-up and it had taken several strongly worded letters from his lawyer, plus an admonition from the judge, before she'd started to behave a little more reasonably. Though, if Fabian were honest with himself, he suspected that it was their daughter's reaction to his ex-wife's rapaciousness that had really caused her to back off in the end.
On the table in front of him, where he'd just set it hot from the pan, was pasta alla norcina; tubes of penne with a creamy, sausage-y, peppery sauce clinging to it. Strands of white pecorino cheese lay atop it like a tracery of frost, gradually melting into the sauce. The smell of his was making him salivate, but he forced himself to pour a half-glass of wine -- the same used in the sauce -- out first, knowing that if he poured it after eating it would a whole glass, or even two.
The first tender forkful of warm pasta with the unctuous sauce was enough for him to close his eyes in almost-prayer. Then, as he ate, he considered the lecture he'd just attended at the Remedna temple.
Once again the lecturers had arranged themselves on the raised platform though only one of them actually spoke, and the focus this time was on cthonic magic. Fabian realised that he'd formed the impression that the speaker was fascinated by this magic, though it seemed there wasn't much known about it.
"Raising the dead," he'd said, "is the best known form of this magic and is employed by humans. Elves are often considered resistant to it, and some teachers--" he paused and grinned broadly at the other lecturers, who grinned back, "--believe this is due to an innate superiority of elves. But! But the historical record shows that elves used necromancy as well, and to good effect in, say, Terrence's War or the Ashkenite Incursion. Indeed, there are well-written and -attested accounts that suggest that humans may have studied necromancy with the elves at some point. So there are clear indications, to scholars at least, that this resistance the elves have is not innate but rather learned, or developed later on.
"But cthonic magic is about erosion, decay, and entropy. The touch of a mind-flayer, an illithid, produces a local entropy gradient that draws intelligence away from the victim and into the mind-flayer. Leave a prisoner alone with a mind-flayer for long enough and you will retrieve a drooling idiot. The mind-flayer though, having absorbed all that intelligence, will have escaped if you didn't think to take sufficient precautions."
A nervous chuckle ran through the audience at that point, and Fabian set his fork down -- just a little reluctantly -- long enough to send message the question he'd thought of then.
'Have we ever had a mind-flayer escape because it got too intelligent?'
Then he returned to the important job of eating his pasta.
Greg - ah, nice. I've always found the Assassin's Creed games intriguing, they look beautiful with some interesting game dynamics and story lines. Never actually played one, mind, but they're pretty to look at.
Beautiful description of the food at the beginning there. Feels like it might have been inspired by real life.
Caught me off guard that the second lecture was done as a recollection but then I realized it was definitely the right move. Can't have us sitting in class with Fabian too often!
Intriguing lesson about mind-flayers, by the way...
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