Chapter 25 p27 – Ta-da!
Dec29
on December 29, 2017
at 12:01 AM
Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Five
Characters: Sharon Applebaum, Sparrow Applebaum
And with that, BICP is going on semi-hiatus until February. I’ll be posting bonus content 1-2 times a week — including an announcement when Volume 1 is available in print.
We’re due for another Being Q&A, so if you still have any burning questions, ask now!
Sparrow: Hi, Mom!
. . . so I should probably catch you up on what I’ve been doing at work.
So cute!
I think some Sparrow is in trouble now XXXXD
It’s not really a Being question so much as a Being Lore question, but… Has there ever been a time where a Being has (at least semi-flawlessly) integrated into society without being discovered? For example, using a nickname (to avoid the inability to say their name) and having their master nearby to do any reading for them?
An instance of this that immediately comes to mind as a possibility would be the Raven’s old master, Hannah, having him take the identity of someone who already existed – but we’re lacking details (such as if the ruse was discovered!), and we don’t know if any other Beings have done anything similar in the past.
afaik, A being cannot claim ANY name as their own, and really would only be caught out if someone directly challenged them to format the sentence as “My Name is…” instead of “I go by…” or “you can call me…”
As for Jesse Riverton, I suspect that the ruse wasn’t discovered until long after Hannah’s big plans came to fruition. and possibly not in any way that anything could come back to haunt them.
Short-term, yes. It’s hard to keep up — there’s never been a Being who pulled it off for the length of a whole human lifetime. But if the Being plays the part for long enough to accomplish a goal, has a small group of supporters to back them up, and “leaves town” before being discovered, it may be that nobody ever thinks back on it and realizes something was off.
Marian did it with the Donkey, having him impersonate Josh for a while before “ascending to heaven” (with help from the Dove), and nobody was ever the wiser. Hannah had the Raven play Jesse Riverton just long enough to get her family to Canada, then set his house on fire. All the official records assume that’s what killed him.
That woman is amazingly calm given what just happened.
Also, is Sparrow trying to pull off the Doctor look? I don’t know that much but that seems like a very Dr. Who look.
Sparrow is looking dapper!
I want that outfit. Except I don’t think the boots really go with it.
Right? What is that, her “I’m a sorcerer now” jacket? (More likely, her “I can afford nice clothes now” jacket.) It looks badass.
I’m more impressed that she finally nailed the spell.
I like Sparrow’s boots! They are very well drawn and also look nice and sturdy and wonderful.
“No shoes on inside the house, young lady!”
I don’t know if that’s actually a rule, but it’d be a funny come back line for the mom to drop.
Can you give us a brief recap of how spellcasting works, and what people have achieved with it so far?
Are runes single use only? It looks like this one is…
How it works:
– Pick a pentacle that has the powers you want
– Create an image of the pentacle by hand (drawing, carving, etc)
— If you want to affect a specific person, come up with an unambiguous way to identify them
— If you’re teleporting, you need 2 pentacles, one at the start & one at the end
– Give an order, using the Language of the Contract
– If you drew it perfectly, and pronounced it perfectly, and have enough understanding and strength and emotional investment to match the scale of whatever you’re trying to do, the thing will happen.
And yes, they’re single-use. The pentacle comes off the page (slab, etc) and manifests in its big glowy floating form, then vanishes.
Effects we’ve seen so far:
– Teleporting (first appearance, chapter 5)
– Compelling obedience from Beings that you aren’t the Master of (can be overridden by direct orders from Master) (first appearance, chapter 6)
– Enabling non-Masters to view a Being’s battles (first appearance, chapter 25)
Effects we’ve seen attempted, but not successfully:
– Acquiring knowledge (first appearance, interlude 2)
– Whatever Josh was trying to do (first appearance, interlude 4)
Are the shape shifting abilities of Being defined in the Contract, or some other way?
If they’re in the Contract, are they written permissively (“you can shapeshift into these kinds of things”) or exclusively (“you can’t shapeshift into anything but this”), and can that be rewritten to expand or restrict their abilities?
A mix of both. Patrick’s Contract defines his available animal-shapes in relation to “dogs”, but “dogs”, in turn, is defined by…all the dogs currently in existence. (This is why the Auroch-Being turned into a second Cow-Being after aurochs went extinct. No more referents.)
In theory you could write two sets of animal-shape referents into the same Contract, but it would be exponentially longer and more complicated, because you have to make sure every clause refers to both sets without overlap or conflicts. One dropped semicolon and you’ve got a Being that freezes whenever it tries to grow a tail.
Has anyone explored the limits of using being deliberately prolonged battles as a way to get extra hours in a day, such as a writer bringing a manuscript to work on?
They have, yes!
Things in battlespace aren’t “real”, with the exception of injuries to Beings. So you can’t, say, take in a manuscript and write a bunch of notes and then come back and have the notes intact. What it’s good for is thinking, brainstorming, processing. You could take in your chem notes and have a few extra hours of studying. Or challenge your therapist and get an extra-long session.
Sparrow’s outfit is fashion goals.