Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

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crxbnt
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Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by crxbnt »

Well, did not get too much work done this morning, but boy did I enjoy this chapter! And we thought Fel was ratcheting up the pressue and leading to a blow up at the end of ch 15? This is getting much tenser (is this a word!?), and it sems likely that not one creature (man, dragon or butterfly) will be left unaffected by the end. I am not foolish enough to state that the tension must now have some relief. His Evilness likes to make sure everyone exceeds their breaking point before he veers off into an unexpected yet logical direction.

Let's hang on tight for the ride!

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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by schunn99 »

So the council chromatic is planning to go around the sages. I am pretty sure pissing off the sages is going to be a dead sentence. He is going to be in for a sore awakening if he thinks that the sages would just let him undermine their authority. Can there be assassination by magic? Or he pisses off all the other dragons, he is going to end up dead by claw, tooth, tail spike or breath weapon. I am really interested to learn if the Chinese have sky dragon magic books. And I smell a dragon raid to "recover" them
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by GBLW »

Imaginary future scene:
Chinese warship arrives in vicinity of Dragon Island, Mud Dragon swims out underwater to stern of vessel and removes prop with dragon claw - pops to the surface midship, gives helmsman and captain taste of dragon breath (aka ash cloud), dives down, swims back, surfaces then belches forth lava stream onto deck portside aft, dives, swims forward, surfaces and belches forth identical lava stream portside foredeck, eases back and watches as vessel quickly turns turtle, then founders. Mud Dragon shrugs and swims back to island.
End of scene.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by gnume »

GBLW wrote:Imaginary future scene:
Chinese warship arrives in vicinity of Dragon Island, Mud Dragon swims out underwater to stern of vessel and removes prop with dragon claw - pops to the surface midship, gives helmsman and captain taste of dragon breath (aka ash cloud), dives down, swims back, surfaces then belches forth lava stream onto deck portside aft, dives, swims forward, surfaces and belches forth identical lava stream portside foredeck, eases back and watches as vessel quickly turns turtle, then founders. Mud Dragon shrugs and swims back to island.
End of scene.
am its not really possible to earth dragons to use their breathe weapons when the do not have solid fireing platform
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by GBLW »

What, you've never heard of a Mud Dragon jet boat - faster in reverse than forward? :lol:
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by rjbrierly »

using the breath weapon as an escape mechanism that would be just weird. just shoot yourself off the boat.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by konman »

Sella is a representative of the earth dragons and thru working with them knows the earth dragons quite well. As well as the rest of her family and thru them the water dragons in general seem to understand the earth dragons very well.

Now Prisma is living and working with the earth dragons and is starting to understand and appreciate what the earth dragons have to offer. The rest of the Cromatics will not have this chance until the current situation is resolved. But once the council has been taken care of I imagine the sages would also like the library available to them online if they understand it is possible.

Perhaps they need to get a younger Sky and Fire dragon down in the cavern working with them to bring more understanding to the other dragons.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by ANTIcarrot »

Kell was the drake that usually went to China because he spoke Mandarin, and on more than one occasion, he’d been sent there to eliminate a hacker that was just too good. He’d been dispatched to China to kill a hacker four separate times, and while he’d found it very distasteful, the protection of the island trumped his personal feelings.
And Kell just sailed right past the Moral Event Horizon. Of course, he's been tending that way for a while as we learn more and more of his backstory. And why, exactly, are four brutal and unjustifable murders are just dumped in the middle of a paragraph? So... What is the take home message here? Hackers are disposable? Men are disposable? Slanty eyed foreigners are disposable? :evil:

More practically, destroying strategic assets is 'act of war' territory. Right now the chinese want to talk to living legends stright out of their oldest myths. If they learn what these particular dragons have been up to... That could get very messy very quickly.
“It’s not magic, that’s why they fear it,” Kell replied.
Plus the whole 'becoming dependent on others via the collapse of a key sector of your domestic industry and permanant and possibly irreversable loss of strategic skills is a bad idea' thing.
Hmm. I'm confused. Does pointing that out count as killing cat girls or not?
“But it’s not what we know, it’s what they think,” Kell pointed out to her. “And the Chinese are paranoid when it comes to perceived threats to their emerging dominance.
Or the flip side of the coin, America is paranoid about any threat to their ability to swagger around and do whatever the hell they like to anyone. Specifically they're in psychotic denial about the inescapable fact that they're a rich and fat 4% of the global population, and they will never be able to keep their edge forever, especially against a bigger and bigger slice of the world that can outnumber, outbuy, and out spend them.

The rest of the world is not stupid. America has shown complete contempt for every other nation on the planet. On this occasion, the rest of the world will almost certainly side with China.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by dellstart »

says who?
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by hoppy »

ANTIcarrot wrote:
Kell was the drake that usually went to China because he spoke Mandarin, and on more than one occasion, he’d been sent there to eliminate a hacker that was just too good. He’d been dispatched to China to kill a hacker four separate times, and while he’d found it very distasteful, the protection of the island trumped his personal feelings.
And Kell just sailed right past the Moral Event Horizon. Of course, he's been tending that way for a while as we learn more and more of his backstory. And why, exactly, are four brutal and unjustifable murders are just dumped in the middle of a paragraph? So... What is the take home message here? Hackers are disposable? Men are disposable? Slanty eyed foreigners are disposable? :evil:

More practically, destroying strategic assets is 'act of war' territory. Right now the chinese want to talk to living legends stright out of their oldest myths. If they learn what these particular dragons have been up to... That could get very messy very quickly.
Now I can't figure out what side your taking here, Kell was acting as an agent of his government and they were acting as agents of their government.
“It’s not magic, that’s why they fear it,” Kell replied.
Plus the whole 'becoming dependent on others via the collapse of a key sector of your domestic industry and permanant and possibly irreversable loss of strategic skills is a bad idea' thing.
Hmm. I'm confused. Does pointing that out count as killing cat girls or not?
Your argument only works if they consider earth dragons enemies
“But it’s not what we know, it’s what they think,” Kell pointed out to her. “And the Chinese are paranoid when it comes to perceived threats to their emerging dominance.
Or the flip side of the coin, America is paranoid about any threat to their ability to swagger around and do whatever the hell they like to anyone. Specifically they're in psychotic denial about the inescapable fact that they're a rich and fat 4% of the global population, and they will never be able to keep their edge forever, especially against a bigger and bigger slice of the world that can outnumber, outbuy, and out spend them.

The rest of the world is not stupid. America has shown complete contempt for every other nation on the planet. On this occasion, the rest of the world will almost certainly side with China.
Of course that presupposes might, outnumbering and money make right(yes I do know the world often seems work that way, although supposed efforts to make it not work that way tend make it work more that way I don't accept that it does.)
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by ANTIcarrot »

hoppy wrote:Now I can't figure out what side your taking here, Kell was acting as an agent of his government and they were acting as agents of their government.
Do you watch Game of Thrones? You remember all the times when good people are killed by evil people, not in self defense, but because killing 'people less important than themselves' was more convenient than having their dirty little secrets exposed? That's Kell that is. That's his society. And I don't care who authorised it. 'I was just following orders' is not a defence used by reasonable people.

In something like Fatherland, you can easily get away with something like this on chapter one, but by chapter 16 we're seeing the *real* Kell. The person who got all torn emotionally up over killing a dragon in self defense, but remembers killing four humans in cold blood as merely an unpleasent task, like taking the trash out.
Plus the whole 'becoming dependent on others via the collapse of a key sector of your domestic industry and permanant and possibly irreversable loss of strategic skills is a bad idea' thing.
Your argument only works if they consider earth dragons enemies
:| Seriously?
Nations can't go from buying externally to building internally quickly, because that requires building the tools to make the tools, and teaching the teachers who train the required workers, scientists and engineers. This is why some nations struggle to maintain an independent shipyard or aerospace capacity, even if it's 90% government subsidised. Because once you loose it, it's extremely hard to get back.

Technology will be far more convenient for many things than using magic. Fridges for example. If a perpetual motion spell and some simple plumbing can do the work of a cold spell, who bother practising the old spell? What woudl you ever need it for? It would get written down, and a few decades later almost entirely forgotten about. Maitaining the curent chromatic skill set takes effort and resources and the willing cooperation of young chromatics. If they reform their system (with IT) there's probably some spare capacity. They might retain everything if, say, 20% of chromatics chose to do other things. So what happens when 21% choose to do something other than devote 100% of their time to studying magic?

The one redeeming feature of the chromatic council, and the reason they probably haven't been thrown out on their ear already, is that for all their bigotry and racism, ultimately, they are fundimentally justified in their concearn that they will loose not only culure but knowledge.
Of course that presupposes might, outnumbering and money make right(yes I do know the world often seems work that way, although supposed efforts to make it not work that way tend make it work more that way I don't accept that it does.)
So when America relies on it's own might to make right, that's okay, but when filthy grounders other nations do it, it's a evil and terrible thing? That's you that is. That's your society.

There's a certain kind of story about Americans (or faux Americans) who are forced entirely against their will to do extreme things to defend their shrinking empire against evil and foreign untermensch because otherwise something vague and unspecified might happen - which would just be the end of the world! In these stories anything the Americans (or faux Americans) do agains the evil and foreign untermensch is justified, because otherwise the evil and foreign untermenche might win, and that vague and unspecified thing could come to pass! Often when these stories are read several years after they are written, they come across as rather unpleasent.

Ask yourself which is really more unreasonable: The rest of the world (it won't just be China!) asking America to share humanity's first contact with a non-human sentient species, or America deciding to keep everything for themselves?

It's not really a question of whether Fel is writing one of these stories at this point. The only question is why? Because he agrees with the philosophy, or because he's pointing out the flaws in it.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Fel »

I figured dropping that little blurb in there more or less out of nowhere would incite a reaction.

It was meant to seem almost casual..."oh, and Kell also works as an assassin when necessary." Kell is meant to be a somewhat morally ambiguous character from our point of view, but in his society, he's not. He has his own shades of gray.

Even earth dragons have their arrogance. For as much as they are (or were) at the bottom of the totem pole in dragon society, they consider themselves above humanity. But, instead of taking out their perceived persecution out on humanity, they're at least noble enough to limit their arrogance to mental superiority rather than Third Reich-ness, where human lives have no value to them. In reality, earth dragons admire humans more than any other dragon, admire their creativity, their drive, and their accomplishments. But when they threaten department operations, the field agents are tasked to dealing with them...permanently if necessary, as it has happened in the past.

In his auspice as a direct agent of his government, Kell has killed humans. He didn't like doing it, as was mentioned in the story, but there it is. Take it for what you will. ;)

In this regard, the dragons (and especially the earth dragons) demonstrate that even other intelligent species can form governments that become morally shady, even if they represent a very noble race.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by artreus »

i would think the hunters posed a greater threat to dragonkind then a few hackers did.

so why didn't they kill the hunters then ? ( we never would have had this story, if Price was killed as soon as he became a hunter)
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Fel »

Because the Hunters didn't pose an imminent threat. The department simply worked around them as necessary...and in a way, the Hunters were also doing THEM a favor by chasing down or eliminating other hackers (which was one of Price's jobs, using his sniper training to kill threats to American cyber-security, JUST like the department has done).

The Hunters are a good example of the morality of the earth dragons. They aren't above assassinating people who threaten their operations (hackers too close to their ghost system), yet they wouldn't harm the Hunters, who were out to stop them in what they were doing, but were never quite in a position to pose the same threat that others had in the past. The department was almost always one step ahead of them, because the Hunters really didn't understand what the department was doing. And, like I said up there, the Hunters were doing the department a favor by being out there for the hackers and criminals to fear.

But, if the Hunters had become an imminent threat, if Jenny had somehow cracked the department, then Trekka would have been paying her a little visit some dark and stormy night, and he wouldn't be there for a friendly chat.
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Re: Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Zor »

I really didn't see the comment about Kell killing a few humans out of place. The dragons are vary full of them selves. They kind of look at humans in the same way you might look at a pet. My cat has feelings he expresses emotions. But if where to go and run over some stay cat, how long would I feel bad? How diffrent would it be if I where to hit a person?
We kind of stand with a similar favoritism for are fellow humans over the animals in the world.
You also have to keep in mind, at the time that these people where killed Kell was not friends with a human. He wouldnt of had any friendly interaction with a human.
Humans wouldn't be much more then a statistic on a page to him.
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