Ice Palace; Treeleaper

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_Brooke_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 05:18:16 -0400



Alex writes, responding to Stephen:
>> Ice Palace is _always_ due north when it is visible, which seems
>> appropriate, and the constellation called by the Doraddi Pamalt's
>> Spear is always directly south, also appropriate.

> This being so, might it not be better to hand-wave these constella-
> tions in a similar way to the Jumpers, rather than assuming that some
> whole patch of Sky must behave in the same way?

My own guess is that Ice Palace is the Aurora Borealis (or Walindis?), a strange crystalline glow which appears above the Glacier in winter, when the star Kalikos is in that part of the sky, and that Pamalt's Spear is a southern Jumper. FWIW. That's how I'd have treated them, eventually...

Surely it makes for both Yelmic sense and consistency with ES to have the sun dead-centre in the Midsummer Noon sky.



Jane writes, responding to David:

>> The Lunar hell that Treeleaper is in is exactly the same one as >> Sheng is in (possibly Gerra's Hell of pure suffering).

> And that obviously isn't where Sartar is, or where Kallyr went. Or
> she'd have brought Treeleaper back, since he's an old friend of hers.

Is Treeleaper a friend, or a rival, to Kallyr? She always seemed rather pushily ambitious to me. I can see her justifying leaving him in Hell, if=

it leads to a more "unified" command for her current rebellion: it would have *worked* back in '13, if only they'd let her take all the decisions!=

(A "Hell" isn't just one small room, BTW, unless it is. Just because Shen= g
and Hofstaring and Sartar and (any others) are all in notionally the same=

Lunar Hell, doesn't mean this is obvious to anyone going there to save on= e
of them, does it?)

Mind you, I'm influenced by Boris Mikey's "The Day the Fire Died," where Hofstaring Treeleaper gets all the sympathetic lines (and Kallyr runs off= ):

        And the three kings then who led our host,
        Kallai, Kallyr, Treeleaper most,
        They're dead, or fled, or damned (poor ghost),
        Since when the Fire died.
        And they were singing:
        "Bye, bye, time to fight now or die,
        Tell my pappy I'll go happy, tell my mammy don't cry,
        Us Sartar boys will take our weapons and try,
        Gonna tear that Red Moon down from the Sky."

Everyone coming to the Victoria RQ-Con in a fortnight: write a Story, and=

get ready for the Singalong!

::::
Nick
::::


Powered by hypermail