I play virtual DnD most weekends with a group of my friends. I’m currently playing a gnome character (Finn Chompsky, son of Gnome Chompsky) artificer. He was cursed to be frozen as a statue some few hundred years ago, and only recently woke up. (He believes.)
Finn is under the impression that some percentage of statues, carvings, etc. are actually curse-frozen people of various sizes and is on a mission to free all of them from their prisons. However, everyone around him sees that he’s just casting the Animate Objects spell on carvings and such, and believes that he is deeply delusional.
Thus, this little easter egg of the opposing armies of painted gnomes in the shaman’s yard, frozen mid-battle.
/Trivia
Discussion, theories, and everything else welcome.
I caught the chapter shockingly fast today and ran here to discuss (with one small detour to go sign up for typo hunting, not that any jumped out at me tonight).
It’s amazing how childish Siobhan is (not derogatory). It seems somehow very appropriate that cursed cannibalistic people are on par for scariness as an adult who might be angry with her. That bit where she worries about Rory’s mother being angry at her for knocking rang so true for a child her age.
I’m worried for Aimee. She’s one more level of security for Siobhan and the poor child has been steadily more and more isolated. It would follow the pattern - everyone she loves either abandons her, lies to her or dies (or some combination thereof). I’m worried for Rory for the same reasons. And because he’s been bitten.
And because the blood egg foretells the death of a child.
This feels a bit like how I felt watching Sinners - you get a glimpse of the ending and it increases your dread of what’s going to happen because you know it’s going to get much worse, but you don’t know how much worse.
On a more positive note, it’s nice to hear that she did have interactions with the People and that she has some knowledge of their magic and ways. The fact that the pain muffling spell comes from that part of her heritage is really cool.
I wonder if this corpse is what grandfather didn’t know she’d seen? It doesn’t feel right, though.
Oh well! Time to stop theorising and get to bed. Thank you for giving us something to look forward to this Monday, Azalea!
Love that background about your gnome! Was he full on cursed or was it more of a basilisk petrification type deal?
Tin foil hat time: your sharing of this anecdote is to hint at the fact the shaman has been cursed and turned into a gnome in the front garden! He’s definitely not dead in the basement…
This is the trouble with superstition. It lacks a link between cause and effect. Which child? When? Is it a prediction if it doesn’t happen right away? what if it happens weeks pater? months later?
I just bought my first Tarot deck the other day (for the art), and I am probably never going to use it for “reading a fortune.” Down that road leads to making maps of north american and claiming the shape of spirit animals is visible on the geography, and if there was no God why are there animal shapes?
I am not making fun. And older man recently attempted to engage me with this logic that there were clearly shapes in geography. Him: See, it’s right here where I drew the shapes over a copy of a north american map. me: Uh, ok.
I’m guessing a lot of children are going to die. It would be nice if Siobhan can give some of that plot armor to Rory.
Normally I’d agree with you but this is a magical world with divination, luck magic, curses and all other fun stuff.
But the “which child and when” is very relevant. That was kinda what I was hinting at because it doesn’t have to be Siobhan - Rory frequents their house often. He’s her friend.
I’m a little worried that Siobhan might be more of an anti plot armour right now. This is her past and we know it scarred her so badly that she still wakes up screaming when she gets a look at what’s behind that curtain. The death of a friend…
I’m not sure she would have ended up on the streets eating rats if Rory lived.
But I hope I’m wrong. I hope he lives. I hope there was a reason they lost contact - like she ran like hell through the woods and was never seen again.
Edit: even in a magical world I agree with you to an extent about superstition, I’m just not going to dismiss it out of hand. It might be that it’s a superstition because the presence of certain malignant entities can cause the hens to mislay out of stress or just their warping of nature and those malignant entities can either directly or indirectly lead to the death of young children. Not all blood eggs will have that as a cause - it’s still a natural phenomenon - but sometimes it’s an early warning system. A sign of trouble and the wise would keep their vulnerable away.
Or it could be a spontaneous magical phenomenon, perhaps reacting to the concentration of magic, which causes omens and portents to crop up.
The problem with dismissing things too readily as superstition is that there might be something in the superstition that has yet to be quantified by science - I’m sure if they ran a study to see if there’s a spike in child mortality when there’s been reports of a blood egg then people would find them unconnected or having a negligible effect, but that’s not always going to be the full picture. A blood egg in the midst of greater unease and weirdness would probably be more of a cause for concern and evidence of malfeasance than a blood egg at a time of ease and calm.
Anyway, I’m just rambling now. TL;DR I don’t think superstition should be entirely hand waved away just because it’s superstition, I don’t think thaumaturges are any more or less susceptible to superstition than the common person, I think this particular phenomenon could have multiple explanations and superstition in a magical world might have a lot more weight to it.
I do suspect things like luck and fate magic either have to be really special or related to something likeba Aberrant due to sheer causal scope. I would assume thus that the egg may not be too meaningful a sign, unlss it was used as such intentionally. Given the seeming bleed in from the spirit world, it may not have started or been enforcable but it could be eventually.
