Annotated 19-24
Nice spoken-word poetry from Gravedust here.
One of Phil’s and my arguments while meta-plotting this chapter and the next five was “What to do about Gravedust and Naror’Nj.”
My position was that Naror’Nj’s soul should be kept in Gravedust’s quiver as a Chekov’s arrow. I didn’t have much worked out beyond that, but if we’d gone that route, I think Gravedust would treat him the way he treated the pirate spirits in Chapters 3 and 4: perhaps debating with him a bit about the dangers of trusting humans, then shooting him as an arrow when doing so would resolve Naror’Nj’s unfinished business as neatly as possible. Maybe that would’ve meant saving Byron’s life, as a way for Naror’Nj to make peace with his daughter and her romantic choices.
I was like, “Why do we even HAVE a guy whose whole deal is that he gives ghosts catharsis via violence if we don’t let him do just that for our actually IMPORTANT dead characters?”
Phil’s take, IIRC, was that this chapter was about laying to rest not only the dead warriors but the wood elves’ isolationism, and that if Naror’Nj was any kind of going concern after it was over, that would blunt its effectiveness. And two chapters of backwards backwoodsiness may have been as much as he could stand; old-school wood elf culture was never to his taste. He did slip ol’ Naror into this funereal scene (which was at first conceived without him), a compromise I wasn’t then entirely happy with. But if reading this page means anything to me now, it’s that sooner or later, you gotta learn to let things go.
I had completely forgotten this page, but it is quite beautiful. Both writing- and art-wise.
It might have been good to see Gravedust do things beyond just shooting bad guys with his enchanted arrows. Sending messages would come to mind. Not sure what else. The idea being that he can help spirits that don’t necessarily need violence to speed them on their way, but still need something more than a bit of poetry.
Didn’t he have a ghost scout ahead one time in one of the earlier chapters?
I’m with Phil on this one. This is a good way to end the forest scenes, especially with this nice poetry from Gravedust, and keeping Naronj as an arrow would have been keeping a tether to the “old guard” in a sense. When the whole resolution to this section was about Graiya telling the elves they needed to move on, and then the burning of the forest also sortof forcing the change. It also made sense to me that with so many souls to help move on, Gravedust wouldn’t be able to take the time to pick and choose who was important enough (or tethered too much to unfinished business) to add to his quiver. And I sortof see it as Narornj not really having unfinished business. Yeah he was arguing with Syrnj as he died, but his personality to me seems like maybe it would be tired and old and just ready to move on to someplace else.
I think I’m more toward the middle on this one. For me, the ideal solution would of been not to show Naror’Nj at all in this scene. That way, if the story calls for it, Gravey could pull Naror’Nj out of his quiver. Use Naror’Nj’s ghost as a Schrödinger’s Gun.
One question sort of comes to mind with the commentary–is it Gravy’s choice, or the spirits’ whether or not any particular ghost gets to be an arrow? If I’m a dead spirit floating around, how do I feel about becoming an arrow (or some other method of actively aiding a mystic), or about missing my opportunity to help because I died in a massive battle and just got sent off with everyone else?