A Pair Of Queens – Page 1120

ZONN:  Is this real?     IPOLA: Hello, Yanora. Yes, Zonn, it’s real. We found a cache of these in the Tower of The Moon after the war.  I give them to important people I really need to keep in touch with. YANORA: Like me.  Hello, Zonn. For a man who’s been dead for twenty-five years, you look very good. PANEL3 ZONN: Yanora.  You look … lovely, as ever. YANORA: Flattery, from Zonn The Wanderer?  You’ve gone soft while you’ve been away. ZONN:  I’m not one of your Kivalian dandies but  I call it as I see it. YANORA: Part of what I always found so charming about you. YANORA:  So - another piece on our side of the Tuntach board, Ipola? IPOLA: Yes.  We still have to work out how to bring them to the game, but that is just a problem, and I already have ideas about solutions. VOICE: Your Grace - someone coming. YANORA: Must go now.  Lovely chatting. Tat-ta! ZONN:  That’s … handy. IPOLA: I still prefer to use the birds for most things, but this is instant. ZONN: I can definitely see the advantages.  So I will be able to see you, then. IPOLA: Yes, when it’s important.   ZONN: What if I just miss you, and want to see your beautiful face? IPOLA: Well, that almost sounded like something from a Kivalian courtier.  

15 thoughts on “A Pair Of Queens – Page 1120

  1. Really handy! 😀 I like how easily Yanora adapts to seeing Zonn alive after all these years. Such formidable queens.

  2. It would seem that somehow, the desert has taught Zonn the fine art of banter.

    Oh, and I love how perky Yanora is in her prison. (But then, I guess she sees it as a vacation from the throne room: no silly courtiers to deflect off, no Maldik to filter, she still gets some every now and then*…)

    “Zonn the Wanderer” reminds me of Groo, but I guess that’s involuntary.

    And I’m hundred percent with Zonn wanting to see Ipola’s beautiful face every day.

    Last but not least, I seem to remember that years ago, in response to a comment, JED stated that there were no rules for Tuntach yet — has someone come up with something?

    *I tried to archive dive for that, but struck out and have no time to try again. Sorry.

    1. If it is the same board game that a certain cousin of Lord Dell was playing with the Bull Scion…then I think that there are varying rules of how to play the game. It sounded to me like it had a basic set of rules, then over time and cultures it gained “House Rules.” That’s why the Cha took so long to be balanced.

  3. Why is it that they are so negative about practically anything and anyone Kivalian? 😛

    1. “Why is it that they are so negative about practically anything and anyone Kivalian?”

      *Any* human social hierarchy, which Kivalia has a *lot* of, generates a situation of hypocrisy, where people are not *supposed* to be pursuing their own ends, but they do, and thus, “you can’t keep humans from politic’n any more than you can keep them from copulatin’, …and probably shouldn’t try.” That is recognized when people are freer, as in Erogenia, because they have relatively little social hierarchy. They then get to point and laugh at the jerks doing political dances within those furrin hierarchies, and ignore their own fighting, without the restraints of such hierarchies.

      1. @Tom Billings
        “and ignore their own fighting”

        Well, that’s hypocritical from them, then, is it not? 😛

    2. I don’t read it as being negative in this case, but rather dismissive. In our world, people are often dismissive of overly appreciative speech, which has been associated with the people of several different nations (though generally I think it’s been associated with one nation per region at a time.)

      Basically, if you know someone tells everyone they’re beautiful, you stop believing it. But the Kivalian courtiers have the reputation of having not picked up on that bit of wisdom quite yet. It’s not exactly a bad thing that they do it – it doesn’t make it insulting. But it’s like hyperbole, it degrades the value of superlatives to that of ordinary words. When someone only uses the best and the worst, they become the same as good and bad, to the point when they say something is very good, it has more weight.

      1. @Someone’s Ed
        Since they are indeed dismissive of most things Kivalian, how are they not negative, then?
        I mean, one is not dismissive about things one considers positive, right?

        1. Dismissive is neutral – apathetic. (Like animals, as opposed to the neutral – zealous of some druids.)

          Anyone telling you that everyone not with you is against you is an extremist, out to destroy the world for their own pride. And in uniting the world against them, they ensure their downfall.

    3. Just because they’re “in tune with nature” and all that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own flaws. Remember that their entire culture is about self-monitoring for signs of regressing into the evil, awful, horrible, unholy behaviors that resulted in the Eregonian Empire being destroyed, the Urtts hating all humanity (to the point they don’t eat humans because they enjoy the taste, they eat them because they hate humans THAT MUCH. They hate-munch), and their god of evil and tyranny being traded for a goddess who serves as a kind of celestial parole officer. So here they see Kivalia, which has some of the flaws of the ancient Eregonian culture and none of the self-monitoring… and they don’t quite notice how the Kivalians don’t seem to NEED that self-monitoring the way the Eregonians do.

      It kind of reminds me of Star Trek: DS9, and the episode where Quark tears Sisko a new one for all the anti-Ferengi sentiment he’s been dealing with. Where Quark points out that the humans might be all pure and saintly now, but they used to be much like the Ferengi… only much, much worse. “Slavery. Genocide. There’s nothing like that in our own history. We’re not like you humans. We’re BETTER.”

  4. “A pair of queens” AND a king. :-3

  5. ***

    Did Zonn just invent magical sexting?

    1. I was wondering the same thing!

    2. Not sure he invented it (yet), but maybe reinvented it. 😉

  6. Just because someone says ‘everyone’ is beautiful, doesn’t mean they are all beautiful for the same reason or even at the same time. I’ve learned for instance that calling a woman ‘young lady’ is often a simple way to get a smile or a chuckle out of them. Its a complement that isn’t tied to physical attribute but instead to a state of mind. When you make the statement, it tends to invoke a reaction making itself true to an extent. Someone smiling or laughing always seems younger.

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