{"id":758,"date":"2010-04-21T00:11:03","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T06:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=758"},"modified":"2010-04-21T00:11:03","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T06:11:03","slug":"old-age-and-treachery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=758","title":{"rendered":"Old Age and Treachery"},"content":{"rendered":"

…is supposed to trump youth and beauty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But who is really old?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A half year ago, Kieri, Arcolin, and Dorrin would have said they were growing old.\u00a0\u00a0 Not ancient, just old.\u00a0 Kieri, some of you will recall, commented to the Marshal-General (in Oath of Gold<\/em>) that he was getting old and didn’t have an heir, and worried about the fate of his domain.\u00a0 (He was right to worry, but for other reasons…)<\/p>\n

Arcolin is almost Kieri’s age, within a year or two, but just as Kieri is a natural leader, Arcolin is a natural second in command.\u00a0 Now he’s inherited–with no effort on his part–a domain, a mercenary company, and a whole slew of responsibilities he never anticipated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like Kieri, he’s aware of the need to provide an heir.\u00a0 Unlike Kieri, he has no memories of past loves to distract him…well, one, but he’s given up on her.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He’s struggled, since his promotion, to figure out what he’s supposed to do and do it.<\/p>\n

Dorrin’s a little younger than Arcolin, but also had been feeling her age–there’s some gray in that black hair now, and some stiffness in the joints in the mornings and cold weather.\u00a0\u00a0 She, like the others, considered herself as one of the “seniors”…not feeble, but not young or inexperienced.<\/p>\n

People older than they (humans, that is)\u00a0 they expect to be weaker, sliding slowly or quickly toward death.\u00a0 Wisdom is hoped for, but never a certainty.<\/p>\n

But cunning? Treachery?\u00a0\u00a0 Until the discovery of the ability to move personalities from body to body, none of them had considered that<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 And serial transfers to successively younger bodies…just how old are<\/em> the oldest of the magelords?\u00a0\u00a0 That remains to be seen.\u00a0 But there is no evidence so far that all have been found, exposed, and eliminated.<\/p>\n

Verrakaien have bided their time before, when trouble closed around them.\u00a0 They are likely to let the new duke alone for awhile–the first attacks failed, so withdraw, regroup, plan better next time.<\/p>\n

Another ancient with a taste for treachery threatens…Achrya the Webspinner.\u00a0\u00a0 Dorrin has cast Liart out of her domain (or–to the best of her knowledge she has) but as someone else remarked, if you toss one demon out the door, and don’t put something better in, another demon may sneak into the empty space.\u00a0 Dorrin has Falk on her side–but her people are not yet converted to any positive good.<\/p>\n

Nor is that all…for Kieri, too, faces some very ancient and possibly treacherous foes….and friends.\u00a0\u00a0 Kings of the North<\/em> opens new cans of worms, and the book I’m working on now simply dumps them out by the cartonload…though I’m not sure they all belong in that book.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet.<\/p>\n

So our main characters, who think of themselves as being of the older generation…are by no means the oldest or most cunning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s certainly possible that not all of them will survive–or, if they survive, will have to do so by re-inventing themselves (modern terminology.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…is supposed to trump youth and beauty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But who is really old?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A half year ago, Kieri, Arcolin, and Dorrin would have said they were growing old.\u00a0\u00a0 Not ancient, just old.\u00a0 Kieri, some of you will recall, commented to the Marshal-General (in Oath of Gold) that he was getting old and didn’t have an heir, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[22,106,107],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-contents","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}