Monday, March 31, 2008
The Cult of the Silver Pistol
As you can see I have edited this post so the general comments actually appear in the comments section. They are, of course, out of order, but the ideas remain. Part II of this post coming soon.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Death of Colfax the Semigod
Ok, so here's something to start with. Take what you want if anything. This is extremely rough both in concept and expression so just think of it as an idea sketch.
Much has been written and much more said about the infamous deeds of Colfax the Semigod - so called because, although he was just a man and really the commonest sort, he made up what he lacked in powers of mind and body in bald faced audacity the likes of which the world has never seen. What hasn't been written, what hasn't even properly been said is that Colfax died. Seemingly, to anyone taking an interest in his remarkable history, he has lived obscurely forever or whispered away into a vague nothingness the way some more supernatural creature might do. What follows is reassurance that his end has come and as scientifically as for anyone else.
At that time in the city, of course, only three of the gods were still known to be in residence. Colfax was one of them. His seventy years installed as an invisible tyrant in the nib of Sure Tower are well recorded.
Just as the old men at the pubs were beginning to lick the beer from their lips grimly and declare him to be at the height of his powers he unexpectedly fell: A boy, no older than fifteen but a son of Galvinsteel, Nimrod's armor bearer, solved all eighteen of the puzzles on sure tower's first eighteen floors in a single day (before they began to rearrange themselves for the night) and came at last to the penthouse on the nineteenth floor where the Semigod had hidden his quivering, flabby, ungodly self inside a cabinet in the wall. So perfectly was it concealed in the panelling of the wall that the boy would never have found Colfax except that he smoked compulsively, and all the more in fear, and had to crack open the door before he was asphyxiated in the little sealed room.
On seeing him in all his ingloriousness the boy became so angry (he had come to plead for a divine medicine to heal a teacher he had fallen in love with) he took a gun from one of the cases on the wall, put it to the Semigod's inviolate temple and forced him out onto the balcony where the previous god had, from time to time, stood to address the city. A large crowd was gathered for the evening vespers and when they saw Colfax emerge from the building sweaty and overweight they were amazed.
It had long been generally acknowledged in the city that the new deity in Sure Tower wasn't half the god the previous tenant had been if he was even a god at all (by this time, Colfax had already more than earned his surname) but everyone was happy all the same to have someone living there they could talk about, pray to and fear in his turn. So the reception on the balcony was far more reverent than Colfax could have hoped or the boy would have wanted. But the lad was only recently arrived in the city and not yet jaded by its injustices and so he challenged Colfax in front of the crowd.
It was a bewildering exchange, particularly on the Semigod's side, and has been recorded in depth elsewhere. But the end of all was that Colfax was constrained to demonstrate his deity.
The city had grown weary of these tests of godhood and the crowd seemed ready to bypass the formality. But such was the boy's insistence and intensity - to say nothing of the gun barrel pressing into the divine spine - that Colfax offered to produce one even without an angry, demanding mob: a lock of the allegedly indestructible hair that grew on the venerated head of Bronte of Thunder delivered to his accuser by sunset the next day. This would have been a very simple end to things since Colfax knew where to find a lock of Bronte's hair in his own apartments that relic having been a gift - of great worth - to the previous divine tenant.
However, it wasn't to be, for one inebriated lore master in the crowd pointed out that such a task might be worthy of a hero or perhaps a desperate lover but was hardly proof of omnipotence - even semi-omnipotence. The people all agreed to the wisdom of this and it was proposed that Colfax bring someone back from the dead or move Thrusheed mountain a little to the left. Again, the lore master slurred his disapproval exclaiming that no god had ever done such a thing in the city since its founding by the son of Cain. The ultimate test of a god was besting another god in verbal combat.
This mystified the crowd sufficiently to win broad approval and it was decided that, since Bronte of Thunder had been previously evoked he would do nicely as the litmus for this new test.
Colfax was not nearly as troubled by this turn of events as might have been otherwise because he assumed, as most dishonest men do, that others were at heart liars. He had long felt sure therefore that the other gods in the city were no more divine than himself. The sight of the crowd, the blithe confidence in his claims awakened some of the old audacity that had marked him in his prime. Doubtless he was as unclear as anyone as to how one bested a god in verbal combat but surely he felt it worked to his favor because, as is well shown, his lies flourished best amidst uncertainty. Then he spoke to the crowd thus:
"People of the City. Long I have sat in my tower contemplating the might of the other gods of the city, not least Old Thunder-Gast. The depths of my wisdom have understood this - that Bronte of Thunder is no god at all! You all know it is true in your hearts. No genuine god would be so often in the open, so obvious in his displays of strength. Even if it were the habit of true gods to show off their power and emerge once a year or twice from their fortresses - on, of all things, holy days - what is the use of such gods? Can you have faith in one that you have seen with your eyes? Can you pray to him who already does miracles without being asked? Can you fear the god whose terrors are already too well known? No! Such ideas are absurd. This hour I wouldn't have chosen to unmask the Thundering One - preferring rather to wait until his own missteps betrayed him - but you have drawn me out and now I will do it at your bidding because a god must, of all things, first listen to his people."
And with this he turned from the balcony, heeding the boy no longer, his old strengths of bluff and persuasion all about him.
However, he suffered an ordeal descending to the base of his own building in spite of the "safe route" of Hawking the Alchemist and obtained a wound on his hand before being forced to follow behind the boy like a serf. He hid the wound when he emerged by holding his hand sanctimoniously beneath his coat. Later, as he led the growing crowd toward the Fortress Dorn, an old street witch almost gave him away by trying to read his palm but he was the quicker and balded her head by removing the wig and tossing it in to a nearby fire. This audacious show impressed everyone present and bolstered his following particularly when the witch began to hurl curses after him, condemning him to gruesome death.
At length the Semigod approached the great pyramid in which Bronte lived, the mob all around him, and wrapped loudly on the portal just as the moon was rising. Since the beginning of Bronte of Thunder's shekinah in the city which had now grown to four hundred years, he had never permitted any mere man or the daughter of a man to pass his threshold.
But when Bronte's porter told him Colfax was pounding on his door he was filled with scheming malice because he had long hated the Semi god and wished to see him deposed. He might have seen to it himself many years before, in fact, but had long feared to essay from his stronghold before the time was ripe, hoping to claim the city's devotion to himself all at once.
So - the porter let Colfax pass and most gathered in the mob were content that this alone demonstrated his divinity and went about their business. A few waited, many of them all night, for some sign of what had become of the Semi god and some proof of his victory or defeat in the duel of words. But none came, not all that night nor the rest of the next day or the next.
The boy who had challenged Colfax in the first place stood outside the pyramid and watched, neither eating or drinking for two weeks and would have stormed the stronghold himself, as he had done the tower but some passersby prevented him saying that he was only throwing away his life. He was too weak by then to resist them. It is told how after that he returned to Sure Tower and lived there himself, dismantling at last the puzzles and turning the tower to uses totally foreign to its history.
As for Colfax himself, he scarcely lasted 2 hours. He was led into the grim outer chambers of The Fortress Dorn which were ornamented each with hundreds of blades, with guns and with terrible machines. Into one of these machines he was placed and then carried, thus imprisoned into the sanctuary of Bronte himself. There Colfax beheld the majesty of a true god of the city at the pinnacle of his strength and still 350 years from his end: Bronte of Thunder. And Colfax quailed.
But Bronte was at first wary of his captive, having heard of all his unlikely deeds and misadventures and he spoke words of power to him. Colfax, of course, being too mean a man for such high things to have any effect on him and understanding not a word of it but perceiving that Bronte was still uncertain, recollected his nerve and responded:
"Hear me O so-called God of Dorn. I Colfax of the Tower have come to depose you. To strip you of your false names and false dominion. They'll pray to you no more for I, a true god of might in the city shall show how weak is a false god beside a true one."
Then he tried to daunt Bronte with his eyes because he had no other plan and was entirely immobilized by Bronte's machine. But Bronte, intrigued by the impudence of such a speech and by the daring of Colfax said:
"I doubted whether or not you were a true god in the City but I see I have been made a fool. Surely a true god would not answer another in this way, as though he had never even heard the Great Speech. But I will test your body to see if it is as strong as a god's." And he spoke quietly a Great Word and the machine in which Colfax was imprisoned began to pull him slowly apart. It was designed by the god not to kill but to daunt. Colfax did not perceive this, however, and, terrified for his life, repeated the word Bronte had used, imagining, in his ignorance, that it was a word of battle.
But such words are not easy for the tongue of a mere man to wield and Colfax screamed it far too loudly, having no control, and it tore open his throat.
Amazed, Bronte immediately ordered another of his machines be brought to help the dying man to breathe. The machine was carried in by two men and put over the head and throat of Colfax. But the Semigod, in the confusion before death, assumed that his outcry had hurt the other god and that Bronte was attempting to gag him. He tried, then, to shout the word a second time - his body writhed with the effort and he broke the breather and died, his eyes open in defiance.
So passed Colfax. But no report of his death came ever out into the city and most thought that he went on living among the gods. Bronte used his remains for study and with them increased the power of his machines of war.
Much has been written and much more said about the infamous deeds of Colfax the Semigod - so called because, although he was just a man and really the commonest sort, he made up what he lacked in powers of mind and body in bald faced audacity the likes of which the world has never seen. What hasn't been written, what hasn't even properly been said is that Colfax died. Seemingly, to anyone taking an interest in his remarkable history, he has lived obscurely forever or whispered away into a vague nothingness the way some more supernatural creature might do. What follows is reassurance that his end has come and as scientifically as for anyone else.
At that time in the city, of course, only three of the gods were still known to be in residence. Colfax was one of them. His seventy years installed as an invisible tyrant in the nib of Sure Tower are well recorded.
Just as the old men at the pubs were beginning to lick the beer from their lips grimly and declare him to be at the height of his powers he unexpectedly fell: A boy, no older than fifteen but a son of Galvinsteel, Nimrod's armor bearer, solved all eighteen of the puzzles on sure tower's first eighteen floors in a single day (before they began to rearrange themselves for the night) and came at last to the penthouse on the nineteenth floor where the Semigod had hidden his quivering, flabby, ungodly self inside a cabinet in the wall. So perfectly was it concealed in the panelling of the wall that the boy would never have found Colfax except that he smoked compulsively, and all the more in fear, and had to crack open the door before he was asphyxiated in the little sealed room.
On seeing him in all his ingloriousness the boy became so angry (he had come to plead for a divine medicine to heal a teacher he had fallen in love with) he took a gun from one of the cases on the wall, put it to the Semigod's inviolate temple and forced him out onto the balcony where the previous god had, from time to time, stood to address the city. A large crowd was gathered for the evening vespers and when they saw Colfax emerge from the building sweaty and overweight they were amazed.
It had long been generally acknowledged in the city that the new deity in Sure Tower wasn't half the god the previous tenant had been if he was even a god at all (by this time, Colfax had already more than earned his surname) but everyone was happy all the same to have someone living there they could talk about, pray to and fear in his turn. So the reception on the balcony was far more reverent than Colfax could have hoped or the boy would have wanted. But the lad was only recently arrived in the city and not yet jaded by its injustices and so he challenged Colfax in front of the crowd.
It was a bewildering exchange, particularly on the Semigod's side, and has been recorded in depth elsewhere. But the end of all was that Colfax was constrained to demonstrate his deity.
The city had grown weary of these tests of godhood and the crowd seemed ready to bypass the formality. But such was the boy's insistence and intensity - to say nothing of the gun barrel pressing into the divine spine - that Colfax offered to produce one even without an angry, demanding mob: a lock of the allegedly indestructible hair that grew on the venerated head of Bronte of Thunder delivered to his accuser by sunset the next day. This would have been a very simple end to things since Colfax knew where to find a lock of Bronte's hair in his own apartments that relic having been a gift - of great worth - to the previous divine tenant.
However, it wasn't to be, for one inebriated lore master in the crowd pointed out that such a task might be worthy of a hero or perhaps a desperate lover but was hardly proof of omnipotence - even semi-omnipotence. The people all agreed to the wisdom of this and it was proposed that Colfax bring someone back from the dead or move Thrusheed mountain a little to the left. Again, the lore master slurred his disapproval exclaiming that no god had ever done such a thing in the city since its founding by the son of Cain. The ultimate test of a god was besting another god in verbal combat.
This mystified the crowd sufficiently to win broad approval and it was decided that, since Bronte of Thunder had been previously evoked he would do nicely as the litmus for this new test.
Colfax was not nearly as troubled by this turn of events as might have been otherwise because he assumed, as most dishonest men do, that others were at heart liars. He had long felt sure therefore that the other gods in the city were no more divine than himself. The sight of the crowd, the blithe confidence in his claims awakened some of the old audacity that had marked him in his prime. Doubtless he was as unclear as anyone as to how one bested a god in verbal combat but surely he felt it worked to his favor because, as is well shown, his lies flourished best amidst uncertainty. Then he spoke to the crowd thus:
"People of the City. Long I have sat in my tower contemplating the might of the other gods of the city, not least Old Thunder-Gast. The depths of my wisdom have understood this - that Bronte of Thunder is no god at all! You all know it is true in your hearts. No genuine god would be so often in the open, so obvious in his displays of strength. Even if it were the habit of true gods to show off their power and emerge once a year or twice from their fortresses - on, of all things, holy days - what is the use of such gods? Can you have faith in one that you have seen with your eyes? Can you pray to him who already does miracles without being asked? Can you fear the god whose terrors are already too well known? No! Such ideas are absurd. This hour I wouldn't have chosen to unmask the Thundering One - preferring rather to wait until his own missteps betrayed him - but you have drawn me out and now I will do it at your bidding because a god must, of all things, first listen to his people."
And with this he turned from the balcony, heeding the boy no longer, his old strengths of bluff and persuasion all about him.
However, he suffered an ordeal descending to the base of his own building in spite of the "safe route" of Hawking the Alchemist and obtained a wound on his hand before being forced to follow behind the boy like a serf. He hid the wound when he emerged by holding his hand sanctimoniously beneath his coat. Later, as he led the growing crowd toward the Fortress Dorn, an old street witch almost gave him away by trying to read his palm but he was the quicker and balded her head by removing the wig and tossing it in to a nearby fire. This audacious show impressed everyone present and bolstered his following particularly when the witch began to hurl curses after him, condemning him to gruesome death.
At length the Semigod approached the great pyramid in which Bronte lived, the mob all around him, and wrapped loudly on the portal just as the moon was rising. Since the beginning of Bronte of Thunder's shekinah in the city which had now grown to four hundred years, he had never permitted any mere man or the daughter of a man to pass his threshold.
But when Bronte's porter told him Colfax was pounding on his door he was filled with scheming malice because he had long hated the Semi god and wished to see him deposed. He might have seen to it himself many years before, in fact, but had long feared to essay from his stronghold before the time was ripe, hoping to claim the city's devotion to himself all at once.
So - the porter let Colfax pass and most gathered in the mob were content that this alone demonstrated his divinity and went about their business. A few waited, many of them all night, for some sign of what had become of the Semi god and some proof of his victory or defeat in the duel of words. But none came, not all that night nor the rest of the next day or the next.
The boy who had challenged Colfax in the first place stood outside the pyramid and watched, neither eating or drinking for two weeks and would have stormed the stronghold himself, as he had done the tower but some passersby prevented him saying that he was only throwing away his life. He was too weak by then to resist them. It is told how after that he returned to Sure Tower and lived there himself, dismantling at last the puzzles and turning the tower to uses totally foreign to its history.
As for Colfax himself, he scarcely lasted 2 hours. He was led into the grim outer chambers of The Fortress Dorn which were ornamented each with hundreds of blades, with guns and with terrible machines. Into one of these machines he was placed and then carried, thus imprisoned into the sanctuary of Bronte himself. There Colfax beheld the majesty of a true god of the city at the pinnacle of his strength and still 350 years from his end: Bronte of Thunder. And Colfax quailed.
But Bronte was at first wary of his captive, having heard of all his unlikely deeds and misadventures and he spoke words of power to him. Colfax, of course, being too mean a man for such high things to have any effect on him and understanding not a word of it but perceiving that Bronte was still uncertain, recollected his nerve and responded:
"Hear me O so-called God of Dorn. I Colfax of the Tower have come to depose you. To strip you of your false names and false dominion. They'll pray to you no more for I, a true god of might in the city shall show how weak is a false god beside a true one."
Then he tried to daunt Bronte with his eyes because he had no other plan and was entirely immobilized by Bronte's machine. But Bronte, intrigued by the impudence of such a speech and by the daring of Colfax said:
"I doubted whether or not you were a true god in the City but I see I have been made a fool. Surely a true god would not answer another in this way, as though he had never even heard the Great Speech. But I will test your body to see if it is as strong as a god's." And he spoke quietly a Great Word and the machine in which Colfax was imprisoned began to pull him slowly apart. It was designed by the god not to kill but to daunt. Colfax did not perceive this, however, and, terrified for his life, repeated the word Bronte had used, imagining, in his ignorance, that it was a word of battle.
But such words are not easy for the tongue of a mere man to wield and Colfax screamed it far too loudly, having no control, and it tore open his throat.
Amazed, Bronte immediately ordered another of his machines be brought to help the dying man to breathe. The machine was carried in by two men and put over the head and throat of Colfax. But the Semigod, in the confusion before death, assumed that his outcry had hurt the other god and that Bronte was attempting to gag him. He tried, then, to shout the word a second time - his body writhed with the effort and he broke the breather and died, his eyes open in defiance.
So passed Colfax. But no report of his death came ever out into the city and most thought that he went on living among the gods. Bronte used his remains for study and with them increased the power of his machines of war.
Friday, January 18, 2008
My Warg
heres a sketch of how i always imagined them from my very first encounter in The Hobbit:
I realised after completing the drawing that what toddl said a few weeks ago makes alot of sense. Wargs are creatures of darkness twisted through the vileness of Morgoth. Travesties of nature.
My imaginings are much to majestic/beautiful etc. almost giving the creature a noble quality.
i lose.
Sorry for the irrelevance.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Map
This is a map i made of world. Take note of "Delhi" (actually cleverly stolen from modern day "New Delhi") and the cabbage forest, or caabie or whatever. (cleverly adapted from our much loved greenfood).
Mountains in this case are represented by "humps" or "land pimples".
the boat in the northern Odin Sea is not really there but a simple decoration.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
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