Chapter 82: The War of the Words

on April 23, 2012 in Volume 2 Book 3: Figments & Fragments, Volume 2: Sophomore Effort

In Which Mackenzie Mishears Something Slightly

As Steff had mentioned, Two had awoken before me. I’d say that Two was a habitual early riser, but “habit” was not quite the word to describe the ways of even a free golem. It wasn’t something she’d grown accustomed to doing; it was what she did. It wasn’t necessarily immutable, but until she had a reason to change it, it was as regular as… a very regular and reliable thing.

Her friend Hazel, on the other hand, was definitely a person of habits, and one of them was sleeping in. Since Two didn’t want to go shopping without her, we’d had to wait for her to get up, and then wake up… which she did in roughly that order… and then she wanted to go to the cafeteria for breakfast.

I hadn’t minded the initial delay, because it gave me time to get up the nerve to reflect Nicki and ask her if she wanted to come into town with us. It wasn’t that I was nervous about asking her, I just wasn’t a big fan of mirror-speech. More regular use hadn’t made me any more comfortable with a magic mirror, so much as comfortable with talking to the same few people on it.

But once I did it, I found that Nicki fell into the “old familiar” category pretty quickly and naturally. The fact that Hazel was still dragging her feet meant I could tell her there was no rush, which was a good thing. Just because I was asking her at the last minute didn’t mean I wanted it to look like I was. After some awkward back and forth about when we’d each be ready, said she’d head down to the coach stop in half an hour or so but it should be no hurry for us, either.

No, the delay didn’t bother me so much as the idea of dining in right before we were going out.

As much as breakfast was the most consistent meal the old dining hall served, I’d been far more excited about the prospect of eating in town. The last time I’d had a chance to eat out regularly had been when I was at an age where it still seemed like a huge deal, which meant that it still did seem like a huge deal to me.

At first, Hazel seemed just as excited as I was at the thought of getting breakfast at a cafe in downtown Enwich, but she also refused to go until she’d had a little something to eat.

Once we were actually sitting around the cafeteria I started to get more annoyed for multiple reasons, among them being the fact that any time I started to space out a little I’d suddenly get this little flash in my head of something that the owl-turtle thing had imparted to me in the compressed dream-time, but it was never anything I could make any sense of. Just as irritating was the fact that I kept having these little dawning feelings of realization or comprehension, but I could never quite understand what it was that I was realizing and comprehending.

It was like being in a situation where everyone else is in on a joke, but in this case “everyone else” was me.

Also, once we were out in public, Steff was in a jumpier mood. Despite her insistence that her elven heritage protected her from the negative effects of sleep deprivation, I couldn’t think that staying up the whole night before was helping her. It might not have made things worse exactly, but it changed her reactions from seeming a little more fragile than normal to seeming a little more brittle than normal.

While I sat there trying to make sense of flashes of insight that I knew nothing about, she was getting into it with Hazel.

“It’s hardly my fault that the last battle kept me up long into the reasonably-sized hours of the night,” Hazel said in response to Steff’s second or third request for her to eat faster.

“Wait… don’t you mean wee hours?” I asked.

“Oh, well… I suppose they would look that way, to you,” she said.

“That’s weird,” Steff said. “Mack walked into that, and I’m the one who’s wincing… anyway, I’m surprised they even let you play another game after I left.”

“Let me? It’s my room, isn’t it?” Hazel said. “I let people play there. Who’s this ‘they’ that’s supposed to be letting me do something with my room? Besides, it was still the one.”

“Still the one what?” Steff asked.

“Still ‘the one what’ I was fighting when you left,” Hazel said. “Kept me up all hours of the night, though I pulled it off in the end.”

“I’m sure they roll the footpaths in the shire up at six, but I’m not sure that ten qualifies as ‘all hours of the night’,” Steff said. “It’s more like ‘one pretty reasonable hour of the night’, really.”

You packed it in at ten, but it was a quarter of four by the time my other opponent yielded,” Hazel said. “Stubborn customer, that one.”

“Did he yield, or did give up and go to bed?” Steff asked.

“I don’t see what it matters where the boy went after he gave up,” Hazel said. “The point is, he did, and that means that I won, fair and square.”

“That’s true, it does mean that,” Two said.

“You were getting your ass kicked when I left,” Steff said. “What did you do, move your pieces really slowly?”

“No, I moved my pieces really strategically,” Hazel said. “Willikins’ Raiders are impossible to pin down, and they’ll fight to the last soldier if necessary.”

“You were down to the last soldier when I left,” Steff asked. “Last unit, anyway.”

“Last unit in the clear,” Hazel said. “The rest were in hiding.”

“How do you hide your soldiers, exactly?” I asked. “The whole battlefield is spread out on the floor in front of all the players. I guess you could use selective see-invisibility spells, but that would take a lot of effort if you didn’t have dedicated magic items for it.”

“Well, maybe you should try dedicating some items, then,” Hazel said. “Because there’s a huge trade in soldier gear going, around uni and over the weaver-thing. But no, we don’t use magic. You just note the position of your units. Haven’t you ever seen me fiddling with my logbook? I have to note where everyone is turn by turn in case there’s a dispute later.”

“Doesn’t that take a long time?” I asked.

“Hence why I said there’d be a market for it,” she said.

“Probably, but I couldn’t pull that off,” I said. “Though you could talk to a communication student about coming up with some kind of… information sorting and storing thing. It could make the whole process easier.. .and also resolve things automatically if someone tries to move their army through yours, or attacks a clump of trees where you’re hiding.”

“Okay, not to interrupt the nerdery…” Steff said. “But just, to be clear, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that your strategy is not to fight unless you’re down to the last soldier?”

“If it can win a battle, it counts as fighting,” Hazel said. “Look, it’s not my fault no one else ever bothered to learn the stealth rules, or use them for more than a couple of lone assassins or scouts.”

“Wait,” I said. “Your strategy is to hide most of your army and just move them around until your opponent gives up?”

“It’s an acceptable military strategy!” Hazel said. “It’s called ‘going ape’, I think.”

“But the whole point of guerrilla warfare is to pick the other enemy off through quick skirmishing, ambushes, and traps,” I said.

“Listen to the expert,” Hazel said. “How many games have you won?”

“She’s lost fewer of them than you have,” Two said. “Statistically her win-loss ratio is very close to yours.”

“No, it isn’t,” Hazel said. “She doesn’t have a win-loss ratio because she doesn’t have any wins or losses, and ‘ratio’ means division. You can’t divide by zero, or the goblin gods wake up and eat the world or something. Basic mathematical fact.”

“I’m afraid I don’t think that’s correct,” Two said.

“Anyway, when they come up with rules for skirmishing and ambushing that work half as good as the ones for hiding in the woods, I’ll use them,” Hazel said.

“Just because you’re no good at fighting doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the rules,” Steff said.

“No, listen, if the problem were with me, I’d be no good at hiding, either, would I?” Hazel said. “You’re just sore because this effects your ratio.”

“When I left we were winning,” Steff said. “It’s not my fault that Jerkface McWannabelf couldn’t seal the deal.”

“Well, maybe he could have if his whole left flank hadn’t fled the field,” Hazel said.

“He was my right flank, I wasn’t his left flank,” Steff said.

“Your side lost, you lost,” Hazel said. “As they say dans la belle Merové: suck it up.”

“There’s no way that counts as a loss,” Steff said.

“Couldn’t you guys just call it a draw?” I asked.

“Two?” Hazel said inquiringly, looking at her.

“A draw occurs when both sides or a majority of both sides agree to end the game in a draw,” Two recited. “If one side is unwilling or unable to continue fighting, it is considered a surrender, which is scored as a defeat.”

“I can’t believe this… isn’t this why we agreed on the point system?” Steff said.

“In the first place, when you left your side lost the points you captured,” Hazel said.

“That’s not in the rules,” Steff said. “Points belong to the whole side, not the individual player.”

“Two?” Hazel said.

“That actually isn’t in the rules, either way,” Two said. “I told everyone that the new rules were less clear than the old rules.”

“It doesn’t have to be clear because it’s obvious!” Steff said.

“…that doesn’t make sense,” Two said.

“If points belong to the whole side, what happens when one player betrays another mid-game?” Hazel said. “Every time they defeat a unit, do they both get the points for it?”

“That’s not what happened, though,” Steff said. “I didn’t betray the Battling Bowmen.”

“No, you just abandoned ’em,” Hazel said. “Look, everyone agrees that Two is the referee because she’s impartial and she knows the rules better than anyone. Even Shiel asks her for clarifications. Two, who won the last battle last night?”

“You did,” Two said. “Poorly.”

As much as I liked Hazel… in general, I mean, I wasn’t exactly enamored of either main party to the dispute by that point… the look on her face would have been priceless to see on just about anyone.

The look on Steff’s face was, too, if only because it was nice to see genuine mirth there. She sputtered with laughter while Hazel was sputtering with indignation.

“You’re right, Hazel,” Steff said, finally. “We did all agree she’s impartial.”

“Well… alright,” Hazel said. “It’s a fair pinch, that. I tell you what: if the both of you will agree to a rematch, we’ll play the whole game over.”

“If that’s the price I have to pay, I’ll take the loss,” Steff said.

“I may not be the most aggressive general in the league, but I’m the toughest one to defeat,” Hazel said.

After that the conversation became a bit friendlier, if a lot more scattered… which left me back in my own head again, dealing with the odd bits of memory falling into place. The most irritaitng thing was knowing that I wouldn’t have a clue what good it had even done, if any, until I went to sleep again. And since no one was fighting anymore, I didn’t really have anything to complain about, which made my irritation worse.

“I think I’m going to go check and see if Nicki’s there yet,” I announced, surprising myself with my own initiative… but I didn’t feel like I could take sitting there for any longer. I wanted to be out doing things. Besides, there really wasn’t much point in hanging around when I’d finished my bacon and ham and was just picking at the hashbrowns.

“I’ll go with you, make sure you don’t get into any trouble with your little friend,” Steff said. “I can’t leave you two without a chaperone, people would talk.”

“‘People’ here meaning you,” I said, though it was good to hear her in an actual teasing mood, rather than a prickly one.

“Of course,” Steff said.

“Oh, fat chance they’d be out there alone,” Hazel said. “This time of day on a Saturday? On a fair day, this early in the semester? We’ll be lucky to get the third coach that comes along while we’re sitting there. If we’re lucky enough to be sitting.”


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38 Responses to “Chapter 82: The War of the Words”

  1. Burnsidhe says:

    Cute. 🙂 ‘You did. Poorly.’ is a nice quote.

    Current score: 1
  2. Asimov says:

    Fun fun. Also, there’s an irritating “irritaitng”.

    Current score: 0
    • Lunaroki says:

      Typo Report

      After some awkward back and forth about when we’d each be ready, * said she’d head down to the coach stop in half an hour or so but it should be no hurry for us, either.

      Seems to be missing a “she” before “said”. Not that big a deal really.
      Steff: That’s what she said!

      It could make the whole process easier.. .and also resolve things automatically if someone tries to move their army through yours,

      The space disrupting the ellipsis is slightly annoying.

      Current score: 0
  3. Zathras IX says:

    Should a half-Demon
    Even have an “old Familiar”
    Friend category?

    Current score: 1
  4. pedestrian says:

    ‘going ape’,

    That brilliant Gnome General Hazel Willikins just invented gorilla warfare. She can join the ranks of Mosby, Giap, Collins, Tito, and Liu Bocheng.

    Maintaining a viable military force, in the field, against an overwhelmingly superior enemy force plus almost turgid patience is the difference between being a major historical figure and a forgotten footnote in a student thesis.

    Current score: 1
    • Krey says:

      Doesn’t the “viable” part assume it actually attacks at some point, and could hope for at least some of those attacks to be victories?

      Current score: 0
      • pedestrian says:

        Not at all. Review George Washington and how even though he had lost most of his battles, keeping his army intact got him the credit for winning the Revolution and the spoils that followed winning the peace.

        Just because your opponent wins battles does not mean they will win the war. If your stubborn enough, eventually most ‘winning sides’ will give up and go away.

        Current score: 1
  5. Kataklysm says:

    Read this while listening to people playing Lords of Waterdeep. It felt a little recursive. 😛

    Also:
    “That actually isn’t in the rules, either way,” Two said. “I told everyone that the new rules were less clear than the old rules.”

    “It doesn’t have to be clear because it’s obvious!” Steff said.

    “…that doesn’t make sense,” Two said.

    is hilarious.

    Current score: 0
    • Brenda says:

      Yeah, we haven’t had enough Two lately.

      Current score: 0
  6. Month says:

    As an avid gamer, more rpg’s than miniature warfare anyway, I can attest to some battles being fought like that. And that is why we implement the “5 rounds per battle” rule, or some kind of timer. Because there are a lot of players that would play like Hazel (actually, in Magic the Gathering, her tactic is called stalling and she could lose a match by employing it).

    ps. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that two is beginning to cultivate a sense of humor… Gods protect us all.

    Current score: 1
    • Luke Licens says:

      I’ve been a wargamer for a number of years now, and Two hit the nail right on the head:

      “That actually isn’t in the rules, either way,” Two said. “I told everyone that the new rules were less clear than the old rules.”

      The whole argument is spot on. I wonder how long AE spent hanging around her Friendly Local Gaming Store as research.

      As for Hazel’s tactics, slowplaying is bad form, but most tabletop games I know of have a turn limit, and anything ‘off the board’ at the end of the game is considered lost, regardless of whether it was killed or never came in to begin with.

      That said, there are a lot of armies that languish years between updates, and have no other viable tactic than hide off the board til the last turn, swoop in to grab objectives, and hope you don’t get blasted to kingdom come before the game ends.

      Current score: 0
  7. Erm says:

    it was as regular as… a very regular and reliable thing

    Mackenzie’s analogies are like the analogies of a very literal person. 😀

    reasonably-sized hours

    *groan*

    Current score: 1
  8. Grant says:

    Hmmm… Battling Bowmen? Mr McWannabelf? Nice to know Jamies found a hobby.

    Current score: 0
    • Jalben says:

      I had the same thought. I can’t seem to find a link to those stories any more though.

      Current score: 0
      • Ducky says:

        It’s currently on hiatus, in favor of KDR.

        Current score: 0
    • Cadnawes says:

      Haha, oddly, I knew right who was being referred to the moment he was called “jerkface McWannabelf”. I never did like the guy.

      Current score: 0
  9. Elrac says:

    “You’re just sore because this effects your ratio.”

    I think that should be “affects.”

    Current score: 0
  10. Null Set says:

    “As they say dans la belle Merové: suck it up.”
    An AE favorite finally shows up in MU, with a slight transformation as it crosses the planar barrier.

    Current score: 0
  11. Elxir says:

    About time Two got some barbs out there, especially at Hazel’s expense. I love all the characters in the story, but sometimes you just have to stick it to some of them. Love the back-and-forth between them all there, and nice to see some initiative on Mack’s part as well.

    Elxir Breauer, at your service…

    Current score: 0
  12. J says:

    North Vietnam won its war with the US by outlasting them and making it costly. As their prime minister said: “the united states is the most powerful nation on earth. But Americans do not like long, inconclusive wars … We can outlast them and we can win in the end.” his general Giap was a genius strategist for determining and then executing this plan. And it worked. It took years, but eventually the American will to fight crumbled (accelerated by many factors, including the rise of the US peace movement). It’s an extremely viable military strategy when on your home turf but facing a superior force that has a lot to lose.

    Current score: 0
    • Rin says:

      The important part in what you just said is “making it costly” though, which Hazel doesn’t seem to be doing. The NVA and VC kept their forces mostly hidden to avoid taking serious losses themselves, but they did engage US forces in countless skirmishes and a few larger scale battles which ultimately resulted in too high a cost in resources and of course casualties for the US to justify staying, especially considering the fact that they had little to gain from the war regardless of the outcome.

      Hazel’s strategy however seems to consist out of hiding and then hiding some more, which gives the opposing army absolutely no reason to withdraw. At least, not in any real war. As far as Stone Soldiers is concerned, I guess it comes down to who can go the longest without sleep.

      Current score: 0
      • Lyssa says:

        Yeah, Vietnam did a lot of guerrilla attacking. They didn’t just hide and hope they weren’t found.

        Current score: 0
  13. William Carr says:

    ““Though you could talk to a communication student about coming up with some kind of… information sorting and storing thing.”

    I think Mackenzie just invented the Magic iPad. mPad?

    A touch-screen Mirror with a fraction of a golem’s intelligence, able to be programmed to keep track of to-do lists and game rules. (The CPU would have to have a golem’s face drawn on it to activate the spell).

    Hey, don’t laugh. Modern Computers were invented by college kids working on automating a model railroad.

    Yes ! They started by building relays to control the tracks, then they needed a telephone switching board to control the relays, then they got a minicomputer donated, and moved on to doing in software what they’d been doing with hardware.

    Kind of the reverse of what I’m doing at the moment.

    This COULD be AE’s teaser of how Mac makes her first million Platinum.

    Mu has “video-phones”, it has “Internet”, but it DOESN’T have smartphones or iPads.

    And it’s not beyond Mack’s abilities to create the basic logic-spell equivalents.

    She’ll need the sylph with the illusion spells to do the animation, Stef to do the iconography, and the help of half of her instructors to make a functioning prototype.

    Imagine the apps ! Amaranth could perhaps come up with a “blessing” app, that taps into her Mother’s divine healing for minor injuries.

    And of course, when Amaranth realizes this is a great way to keep track of who’s having sex with who, she will invent Social Media, AKA FaceScroll.

    Of course the calculator app is just going to be a picture of an abacus, but that’s to be expected.

    Current score: 0
    • 'Nym-o-maniac says:

      “A touch-screen Mirror with a fraction of a golem’s intelligence, able to be programmed to keep track of to-do lists and game rules. (The CPU would have to have a golem’s face drawn on it to activate the spell).”

      That seems a bit… insensitive? A golem’s face? For an inanimate object? When golems are widely used as servants and the law doesn’t even agree on their status as actual people? Yeah…

      “Mu has “video-phones”, it has “Internet”, but it DOESN’T have smartphones or iPads.”

      Er, doesn’t it? Mack’s phone can go on the internet and the like, and while she didn’t talk about any real “app” equivalents, there is at least a calendar and stuff. Not entirely sure if iPads exist, but I’m not certain they’d be any real innovation.

      “Amaranth could perhaps come up with a “blessing” app, that taps into her Mother’s divine healing for minor injuries.”

      I really can’t imagine the gods putting up with that.

      Current score: 0
      • Month says:

        Actually, the problem arises with FREE golems. And I don’t see anyone rallying to save and free all those Mac employees….

        Current score: 0
        • Tod says:

          It does have at least the “muffle” app. cone of silence whatever from the magical lawyer dust it can spew.

          Current score: 0
  14. P says:

    I hope Alexandra Erin works out the Stone Soldiers rules some time and shares them with us. It sounds like it would be really interesting and AE is good at working out details like that. I’d need a second person to work out a web version of it though because I have no one to play board games with.

    Obviously I have no right to demand/expect that someone do this but it would be cool. I’ll be happy just to keep reading.

    Current score: 1
    • Lyssa says:

      That reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Thud. He gave just enough rules and information about how it worked in the book, and then the fans took it upon themselves and created the actual game with tournaments and the like.

      Current score: 0
    • Month says:

      So in the next rule edition, there will be the “Hazel Effect”: “Each battle that has no fight for 5 consecutive rounds, is considered concluded, and victory is calculated as stated elsewhere in the rulebook.”

      That will teach the sneaky little Gnome. Although I would love to see a rulebook written by two. That is something none would be able to read, though none would dispute it.

      Current score: 0
      • P says:

        [geeze I didn’t even respond to lyssa like I meant to. sorry month]

        Yes Lyssa, and then there was no one to actually play Thud! with me! That was one of my favorite Pratchett books though.

        If there was an actual Stone Soldiers board game I bet people here would pay for it. I’m assuming readers here are more internet savvy too and would be more open to doing it online than Thud! readers were. access to that could come along with a hard copy of the board game.

        Current score: 0
  15. anon y mouse says:

    ‘“Did he yield, or did give up and go to bed?” Steff asked.’ – did he yield, or did he give up and go to bed? or, did he yield, or give up and go to bed?

    Current score: 0
  16. DaManRando says:

    Hmmm Hidden stealth units hidden in forests…. this is where having wide area effect flame spells that ignore pesky features like cover and stealth come in handy….

    Current score: 0
    • Tod says:

      Thats right. Napalm the tiny bastards.
      Can she really be faulted for playing to her nature though? Fighting Hazel prepares you for fighting an actual halfling army Only difference is they probably wouldn’t know they were hiding and just assume the other side never showed up.

      With the exception of in “real life” its easier to just sing Thylian drinking songs of glorious battle to get them realize they’re adventuring and surrender is the only way to salvage any personal standing now. Or to let them drift away when they burn through any other army’s 2 months of rations in 2 weeks.

      Current score: 0
  17. William Carr says:

    ““Mu has “video-phones”, it has “Internet”, but it DOESN’T have smartphones or iPads.”
    Er, doesn’t it? Mack’s phone can go on the internet and the like, and while she didn’t talk about any real “app” equivalents, there is at least a calendar and stuff. Not entirely sure if iPads exist, but I’m not certain they’d be any real innovation.”

    Yes, Mack’s mirror can reflect, and act as a scrying orb.

    I don’t recall a calendar, but that might just be my swiss cheese memory at work again.

    Since Mack was blue-skying the idea of a device to keep track of rules and scoring, we can reasonably deduce Mu doesn’t HAVE actual computational devices.

    “Reflecting” or scrying is pure magic.

    No data storage or processing, it would be analog rather than digital.

    Apps require storage and data manipulation.

    Now, the way AE’s Magic rules seem to work, magic has to have an object to act on.

    Multiplying two numbers and getting a result would require an abacus with physical beads on it, just as a magic TV requires a frame, glass, and an enclosure.

    But you could get around that with a magic server farm. Each mPad would be linked to an Abacus, or even just the picture of an abacus might work.

    Artificial Intelligence works in AE’s system, because the Golem maker created a physical object and embued it with human-like attributes. Humans have intelligence, so TWO has intelligence.

    If you made a golem shaped like a brick, it would have the intelligence of a brick.

    If you painted a golems’ face on the brick, though, it would give the magic something to work with.

    And if you linked that painted face sympathetically to a Golem working as a switchboard operator, it would allow her to act as the “deus ex machina” of the brick/processor.

    The more lifelike the simacrula, the easier it is to create the sympathetic link.

    So the mPad might have to skip over the independent processor stage we went through and go straight to the “Cloud” computing we are approaching.

    I wonder if AE has read Robin Cook’s (?) magic novels. An American computer programmer falls into a magic world.

    Anybody can do magic if you have a perfect memory and learn the right phrases.

    But write a spell down, and it activates automatically. No good. Can’t study it if you can’t break it down.

    He finds he can write across slats of wood, just as in the original Art Of War, and the spell won’t activate.

    So he studies how magic works, and comes up with a magic compiler based on PERL. His magic ability is small, but now he can cast 100,000 spells a second.

    Expert magicians were horrified. One likened it as being attacked by endless armies of fire ants.

    He speaks the command to launch his compiled spell, and the great magicians flee or are crushed.

    Current score: 0
  18. William Carr says:

    Uhm, Rick Cook. OOPS.

    Current score: 0
  19. Lyssa says:

    Augh. I’m thick. What did she mishear?

    Current score: 0
  20. Anvildude says:

    Love how AE’s apparently a miniatures gaming enthusiast.

    Current score: 0
  21. Apollo says:

    ‘You can’t divide by zero or the goblin gods wake up and eat the world, or something.’

    I have got to find a way to use that in regular conversation.

    Current score: 1