Annotated 11-9
I get that we wanted Frigg and Syr’Nj to use different words to underscore the differences in their characters, but it’s a good thing Gravedust is similarly well-read, or Syr’Nj’s shouting “REGICIDE” to her allies would’ve been pretty unproductive.
As a reader or two pointed out, it’s a nice reversal that Syr’Nj has to go to Frigg for the conflict-resolving battle strategy.
The cover served as a clue that this blue floor and slate-gray staircase represented their quest nearing its end, but most readers were focused instead on the fact that Byron was nowhere to be seen on this page.
It funny that Syn’Nj says she couldn’t play human games but this is a Sky Elf temple and the ones playing it before were gnomes. I would think of chess as a Sky Elf game based on that.
Fair point. The wood elves condemn a number of things as “human” that are later shown to be not exclusively human, especially the (relatively) urban lifestyle, which gnomes, goblins, and sky elves are way into.
I guess it goes to show how isolated the welves were.
I love how a few pages back Syr’Nj says that the sky elves would not of made traps that their children couldn’t get through. Yet here they are now battling life sized chess pieces, and this shortly after having dodged laser blasting giant golems.
Man sky elf children are tough hombres! No wonder Grand Marshall Jarvis would later be willing to exchange 50 soldiers for one sky elf. ;-)
Nah, sky elf children just know the four-move checkmate. They only ended up fighting against the pieces because Frigg decided to just storm onto the board and start busting heads.
I agree.
When I was reading this first time through, I reconciled that as the golems would either recognize sky elves, or have an easily stated phrase in their native language to allow passage, or there would be essentially ID cards for security clearance, you know?
Heh. True. And to be honest, the sky elves probably programmed the golems & chess pieces not to attack sky elves.
Given the isolationist nature of the sky elves, they probably viewed all other species as fair game!
And now I want to see Sky Elf Revisionist History, just as we saw Arkerran ethnicities through Gastonian eyes. In particular, I want to read about how the Sky Elves “really” invented chess.
This is the first time I noticed Gravy is left-handed.