by TJ Reynolds
18.“Battle is a mirror. What you see of yourself in its pristine surface is often more frightening than the bloody bits.” Wardahl Sevenhalls – Though less skilled and, by far, less eager than his brother, Wardahl is nonetheless a terrifying foe on the battlefield.
19.“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.” ~ Anonymous Benefactor of Genly Ai – an Ursula K. Le Guin quote from A Wizard of Earthsea. The attribution winks at another series that gets a less attention than it deserves. If you like far-reaching sci-fi, read The Left Hand of Darkness.
20.“Not if we hold true to each other.” ~ King Elessar Telcontar – Who other than Aragorn could drop a clean and reverberating line like this?
21.“Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done.” George Gordon, the 6th Baron – a line from Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” The man was the Lady Gaga of his time and traveled the world savaging the social scene of Europe for decades. The poem though, if you are a fan of fantasy, inspired many bards throughout the ages. It is a fragment of truth struck off from a star-shard that fell to the earth so long ago.
22.“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” ~ Scion of the Endless Poem – “Paradise Lost” …. Have you read it? Dear God, I have twice now, and neither was my idea. Yay for grad school. It’s the longest poem that should never have been written. Some great lines though, and did you know John Milton accidentally made Satan sexy? Ha!
23.“Nothing like the dire peels of a battle horn to stir the blood to action.” ~ Harnoth Stonescale – this great commander once survived a battle against four armed fafniri wyverns. His claws are sharp enough to rend granite.
24.“A leader is no more than the sum of her followers.” ~Selna Amredor of the Sirrushi Direbane – though older than Judas, who is only in his twenties in the real world, she has found a spark of affection in her heart for the wizard. Can a VR uploaded human and an AI make babies though? They can sure try.
25.“Defense is the best defense. Everyone knows that.” Wardeen Sevenhalls – the blacksmith’s uncompromising pragmatism makes him the finest fighter and the worst of lovers.
26.“And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from afar Ancestral voices prophesying war!” ~ From the Lays of Laudanum – Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems deserve to be considered the seeds of modern fantasy. His wild imagination found a home among the Romantics, and if it weren’t for the “milk of the poppy,” if you will, he would have surpassed them all.
27.“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” ~ Forgotten son of Denethor – who else remembers Faramir? What a rotten hand he was given! Boromir was a jerk, and yet everyone remembers the single moment he died with a dozen black arrows buried in his chest and not when Faramir marched to his certain doom at the behest of a fear-mad father!
28.“History is a cyclic poem written by time.” ~ The Blasphemous Bard – a line by Percy Bysshe Shelly. Wrote some decent poems, kicked it with Lord Byron, and drank enough to kill a circus of elephants. What’s not to admire?
29.“What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed?” ~ Progenitor of the Man and His Monster – written by the finer of the two Shelly authors, Mary Shelly of course, who has given us Frankenstein. Have you read it? I was in college when I did the first time and reveled in the amount of words I had to circle. Who has that kind of vocabulary and narrative power at 18?!
30.“But because they are shackled, they are unable to turn their heads.” ~ The Old Man in the Cave – its Plato! You’ve read the Allegory, no? Such an awesome metaphor and useful for a hundred different thought experiments.
31.“It is best to open your eyes and see the storm coming… but oh how tempting it is to squint.” Goodman Thom J. Reinold II – now what kind of fool would write something like this? Surely, not a man who’s known fear…
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