Drow Chapter 27 (plus or minus ten interludes): We're still in the Everdark for some reason. Why?

I kid, I kid. That is, I kid about being annoyed this one time, because this chapter was actually pretty interesting. Ignoring Cat, I mean, who, by the way, makes it openly clear how much she values the lives of her slaves, which is not at all, by intentionally causing both a rout among her forces to bait an opposing army and plans to intentionally sacrifice much of her Peerage as bait. Remember when I said taking those oaths was one of the biggest piles of horse shit in this entire story? Yeah, this is why.

But ignoring our main character, this was a cool chapter, because we learn about the backstory of the Everdark from someone who was there to see it. Which, by the way, we get a confirmation that the drow have been like this for over three thousand years, which sweet Jesus. Turns out that when the Bard said the Twilight Sages considered death the only sin, she meant it, because they tried to make their people immortal by stealing years from their unborn children, which the dwarves eventually ruined by making them their never-to-be-born children. Though, random note--how the fuck did Cat guess that?

Anyway, Sve Noc took command at that point, and came up with a solution. Not to give birth to more children, because everyone was in the process of dying already, but instead to make a deal--a reprieve for her species, in return for over three thousand years of willing bloodshed. The chapter quote has rarely been more applicable, because while Sorcerous said “There is more power in blood spilled willingly than unwillingly. The latter is simply a great deal easier to obtain.”, well, clearly he's never been to the Everdark.

See, the drow handled this Worm style; attempting every application of power, endlessly, through hundreds of thousands of hands, trying to find a way out of an impossible problem. Though, oddly, this is actually the cruelest we've ever seen the Gods Below--twice before now, we've seen them totally pay their dues, and the Drow have given everything Below might ask for for an age. Hell, apparently, the drow don't get born as mages, because instead, they all get born as priests and weild the Night--Below's counterpart to the Light, seemingly--in an eternal rite to the Gods. Frankly, from past evidence, I kind of feel like if Cat had Sve Noc under her blade and she asked the Gods to pay her back like Warlock did, it would end poorly as fuck for Cat. And, by the way?

Credit where it's due, that's badass as fuck.

The one bit of confusion I have though is, why haven't the drow been more offensive? Like, if this is about settling their debt, they've had three thousand years to go on killing sprees and, instead of dying for their country, making other people die for their country. Yes, there's less power in unwilling bloodshed, but there are loads and loads of Ratlings just next door, to say nothing of Procerans and Callowans if they find a route that far. Ivah said that adding outside sources to the Night was the most sacred of all acts, but this makes me wonder why it's not Plan A.

Cat points out her alternative, but, uh:

Kind of brushes over how even in this very chapter, she's sent her magically bound slaves to their deaths. That's an important detail, sweetie; you're not much better than this deal with the gods. You are, however, a very useful sacrifice! Which is why Rumena spent this entire chapter distracting her until the Lonstriders showed up, who fell for Cat's plan not at all.

Which, by the way, actually makes me excited for the next chapter of the drow arc, even though I've been burnt this way so many times before. Does this mean things are a-changing in the Everdark? Well, let's not go that far just yet, but I actually enjoyed this chapter, so who knows--maybe it'll pull through. I complain a lot, sure, but it's not like I want to be let down; if this is the sign of interesting conflict and drow development, I'm all for it. And the next chapter is a weekend chapter, which might help even more.

 

So is anyone else a little lost, confused, and annoyed?

 

A little bit of column a, b and c on my end.

 

Gonna need to put some Winter ice on that one. Seriously, are we doing this? For real? Because if so, I'm all about it. I'm gonna type this as I read with fresh eyes, to capture the ups and downs as I go, and I'll say this--I like the start in the sense that Cat seems to get comeuppance for dismissing the Longstriders this whole time for no fucking reason. The plan thus far has been 'They'll be stupid jackasses and fall into all my traps and turn upon each other', which they've sidestepped by being, you know, not stupid. This puts Cat in hot water because of a mistake she herself has made, and I dig it.

Early into the fight, someone throws down a ward, finally exploiting on of Cat's actual weakpoints, which has been long in the coming ever since it was show the drow know about the Fae, even if as the Splendid. We've gone nearly thirty chapters of no one knowing how to deal with Cat and that seems like it might be at an end, so props to that.

They follow that up by showing coordination and experience, which has also been lacking in the drow, for all that they have centuries or millennia of Secrets to draw upon. They pretty much immediately force Cat into a situation she knows she can't win in a straight fight, and so she can either open her domain or die.

The thing is, while Cat mentioned being careful in how she used her portals, less someone pull a repeat of the Pilgrim's trick, she apparently forgot something that's happened a bunch of times. She used her domain on Akua and a ward shattered it. She used her Domain on the Saint, and the Saint cut that shit in half. She used it on the Skein and the Skein ate it. Her domain is incredibly, immensely powerful, truly, but it's proven pretty consistently vulnerable, and while she succeeds at making short work of the Longstriders, she makes a dangerous mistake--she allows Sve Noc a way inside, through the Night inside of them. Sve Noc makes her pay for that by exploiting the overlap between Moonless Nights and, you know. Nights. And strips away all her power in so doing.

And I like all that in a thematic sense. Cat has spent this whole book ignoring every warning she's received in the last three. She's been going big at every turn, she's been breaking out doomsday weapons as literally an opening move, she's been taunting people, she's been cornering them, and she's been behaving as classically villainous as possible at every turn. She's spent the last fifteen or so chapters as a literal slaver, after previously extolling the horrors of slavery, she's been ruining entire cities and killing anyone who gets in her way, and she's been tossing around power that she was explicitly warned about. She was told in Keter that if she started mantling people, it would free the Gods to intervene, and she thought--I think we all thought--that meant the Gods Above sending death bots at a lost cause.

Here's the thing, though--and there's nothing to confirm or even truly imply this yet, but I'm thinking it makes some sense. If the Gods Above intervene, it frees the Gods Below to get involved and balance them by bolstering the villains. But if the Gods Below get involved with Cat, why necessarily use that to support Cat? She doesn't worship them. She doesn't hold to their cause or even truly champion it. But here Cat came along into the Everdark, a people who have been spilling blood on Below's altars for three thousand years, who've been shaped to the bone by their principles, and the thought arises--why not put that power in some more useful hands? And here, what do we see, but Sve stripping away Cat's powers.

And again, I like the theme. But the issue is this. When a story makes things utterly hopeless for a hero, the fact remains that it can't be. There has to be a way out. Cat's not gonna die here, because that would be a shitty story, so she has to survive. However, the way things have been set up, Cat can't win because of her own cleverness anymore--she can only win because of Sve fucking up. Like, at this point in time, there's not much reason for Sve to do anything besides murder Cat, but she's not going to, and instead Cat will turn this around somehow to escape at least a total defeat. And at the end of the day, even if Cat doesn't remember, we know that Callow still needs an army.

So there's only a few possibilities. One, all those programmed restrictions Cat had in her Mantle will somehow still apply and allow Cat to puppet Sve if she lets Cat talk to her without anyway out, which would make sense as a callback but be an enormous anti-climax after this chapter and still not make sense in terms of 'why would she talk to Cat?' And certainly, none of Winter's former rules or oaths applied to Cat when she got the Mantle. Two, Cat is going to get a new Name soon that suddenly turns the tide against a literal goddess, which, uhhhh. Or three, the oaths Cat had her Peerage swear come into play now, and they are somehow relevant against Sve's two hundred-ish fuck-off crazy Longstriders that are soon to be Mantled. Fourth, Akua, who only matters if the Mantle holder allows her to matter and whom Cat has sworn to torment endlessly if her plans succeed, somehow helps.

This is an awesome climax and an incredibly high-stack situation after nearly thirty chapters of slow build up, but the only resolutions I can think of now are all kind of let downs in comparison and rely less on Cat being cool or clever and more on Sve being dumb.

Now, of course, I could be off the mark on all of that. It's just, if it's not something cheap like that, it's hard to imagine it making any sense, because Cat currently offers nothing of value to the drow, has just tried to enslave their whole race, and literally any drow around at all could kill her, to say nothing of the hundreds of demigods Sve has.

So I'm simultaneously excited but leery, because when there's no logical way for the main character to survive remaining, it's rarely a good sign for a satisfying resolution, which has been something the story has struggled with lately. And I do want Cat, as the main character, to succeed--but I want her to succeed in a way that doesn't leave me sighing afterwards.

Especially since this isn't even the first time Cat has had all her powers stolen. Remember when she lost the Name of Squire?

 

There's going to be 6 books now, because 4's so much larger than originally intended it's being split into 2.

 

Awesome. This 1) gives Errata a month to get shit together before diving back into the Crusade, and 2) we’re virtually guaranteed to get a glimpse of Kairos and Anaxares in the epilogue or a last minute interlude.

 

Actually, I just thought of two other things that could happen, one of which would annoy the hell out of me and one of which would make me laugh, but may of may not make much sense. The first is that we basically get a repeated of what happened with Chider, wherein Cat took advantage of Chider having trouble adapting to her new senses, stating it was an issue with a new Name. Accept, uh, we saw Cat get her new Name, and she absolutely did not have that issue even once.

In the same way, I could see Cat twisting the enormous force of Winter's alienation against Sve, ignoring the fact that Cat has completely and utterly ignored that 'consequence' of her Mantle since this book started, with it being an issue all of one time--when she told the Saint she'd make a useful artifact--and even that's being really generous since nothing came of it. If that's the trick used to defeat Sve Noc, I will be miffed, because it absolutely could have been set up as a thing Cat had to deal with, but absolutely wasn't. Hell, even in this chapter, when she opens her Domain, she says there's too much alienation to shunt off, but then just turns around and suppresses the urge to monologue with no problem until everyone is dead. Also, just being able to shunt that off, period. Also also, remember back when Akua was the only person she could shunt to? Akua also didn't say a goddamn word.

So that would irritate me.

On the other hand, the idea that would make me laugh, but might not make much sense, is the idea of a redemption story. The Pilgrim set the barest semblances of the foreshadowing of the beginning of that in motion and absolutely nothing came of it, but here's the thing. We were told that if Cat started handing out Mantles, the Gods Above would weigh in on things. Well, as it happens, Cat did hand out Mantles...but, she's no longer the Queen of Winter. And, what's more, she's the only unnamed human in the Everdark right now. With Sve Noc logically about two seconds away from opening Pandora's Everdark and spilling an unending tide of darkness upon the land, I could see someone upstairs going 'You know what, guys? Desperate times.' and sending someone Cat's way to get her a Name and hold a light against the darkness and such not, saddling her with all the heroic issues that come with it--because she's kind of been going out of her way to make Calernia a shitty place for heroes and shit be going down. So actually, Cat having to side with Good as the only way to remotely salvage this catastrophe and simultaneously getting forced to suddenly deal with that Praes/Tyrant/Dead King/Drow situation she's been ignoring could be rad as fuck.

Extra laughs if some Angel is a dick and goes 'Justifications only matter to the Just' as part of it.

 

You've convinced me. I'm onboard for Judgment Cat.

Any takers on Archer being dead?

 

I’m down for just about any pivot as long as Cat doesn’t end up taking the mantle back.

Honestly, if I had to point to one place where the story started down spiraling, it was when Cat picked up her indiscriminate, poorly boundary defined Winter powers. Will be happy as hell if we can just go back to plain jane Name and 3 Aspects.

EDIT: Uhhhhhhhh.

I'll take that money, Imraefi.

On the note of the last verse (if we're theorycrafting), 'trust is the wager that takes your life', it doesn't actually state that the wager is lost, IE, that your trust was misplaced. Just that trust is the thing that takes the life.

'Takes' isn't necessarily death, and 'your life' doesn't necessarily mean your very own life - it can also mean someone else's life that could be said to belong to you, or something that is equivalent in value to your life.

Also, Archer and Cat death-flagged themselves hard with that final night tryst before the battle. One of them's probably gotta go, and it can't be the main character.

My money is on Akua ganking Archer now that she's off her leash in some way that saves Cat, with Akua being all 'tada, I did it and saved you!'. Trust, knife, love ends, cruelest step. Archer dies and it's 100% her fault.

Counter-bet - what's the chances we get Mighty Rumena as one of the homies for the future, because that make-me shit? That sassy eons old murderer shit? Rumena Tomb-Maker shit? That's my shit.

 

I'm pretty sure the third verse was fulfilled way back at the end of Book 3 with Black. Love ends with the kiss of a knife? She severed her relationship with him by stabbing him. Trust is the wager that ends your life? Black's gambit has been described as breaking Cat's trust in him, as that trust led to Black reducing her to a tool and nearly killing her. Hell, it caused her apotheosis so metaphorically that trust did kill her (only metaphorically. Fuck you Warlock).

This verse is all about betrayal, a key part of villainy and particularly the Praesi breed. The words are intentionally a bit vague, but all boils down to the same idea; either the aspirant will be betrayed or will have to commit the same to somebody of importance to them. Black betraying Cat's trust fits better than Akua ganking Archer or something else would here in the Everdark.

Also I'm not sure if that's actually in Akua's best interest. She stated in Cat's interrogation that her principal goal is survival. Since she's tied into the mantle of Winter, the Sve now own the reins to her life, and I don't think the Sve are interested in her continued existence. Meanwhile, if she kills Archer then no level of usefulness or "well I saved you" would stop Cat from sending her down to Hell for good. Classic Evil or no, Akua's just not that dumb. It looks like her two options are 1) unravel herself from the mantle and become free, or 2) put Cat back in charge. I'm not sure if she can actually do the first, and if we're being real here then the second is what'll actually happen.

 

If it seems like I quoted everything Rumena said, it's because I pretty much did, to chart his climb up the ranks of best characters.

Also, Cat was here. Not really doing much, to be honest; she mostly just fell back to her old 'rant like a crazy person and make people somehow give a shit for no real reason' plan. Akua showed up at the end, though, either helping her or betraying her; it could go either way, really, and I don't really care which. It's pretty much certain that Cat's going to make it out of this somehow or other, because Sve did just have her carried to an altar and slit her throat for absolutely no reason whatsoever. As goddesses go, Sve Noc's not super impressive so far either, I've got to say, but we'll see what happens when she stops playing at being Zordon.

I do kind of have to wonder how Akua is able to do much of anything, though, since last I checked she had no power of her own and was completely bound to the Mantle of Winter, but eh, I don't really care. Even if it's a mistake, it's probably not gonna be the dumbest thing that happens to get Cat out of this situation.

 

TBH it was pretty meh, but Akua wins the best line:

 

So the chapter was enough snark to put Whedon to shame, but given how terrible this are has been I ended up really enjoying it. Rumena sounded exactly like Archer and Cat's previous snarkoffs though which was a slight downside as the author is having issue giving them their own voice no matter how fun it was

 

I'm with Cat here, I missed her human self more than I even thought. If she's going to get her mantle back, please keep her like this. Great banter between Cat and Rumena. If Cat comes out of here with the drow, put down Rumena as top candidate to run them. Gotta up that dread lieutenant count.

Also I guess this revealed where Cat planned to put the drow. Sure, she didn't actually think Rumena would take her up on the offer, but offering something she was going to do anyway fits her style. Northern Procer, then. Presumably the pieces promised to the Dead King in the deal with Malicia. notagreatplan.gif, but we knew that.

Still, a nice fun chapter that harkened back to the good ol' days. And Akua's ending line was just so fucking gold.

 

Wait. Question time. Are we 100% certain Akua is bound to Winter? Because if I'm not mistaken she only stole a part of winter and is actually bound to Cat's cloak of Woe.

 

From her internal monologue in Kaleidoscope VI. Masego confirms this later in Chapter 25, saying that she turned her prison into an anchor and wove herself into the fabric of Winter. The "prison" being her binding to the cloak, and I guess it's keeping her soul from being completely devoured by Winter despite weaving herself into it. Her situation is similar to that of Ivah and the Peerage, where they're still mortals but the oaths put a bit of Winter into them.

So she's basically bound to both.

I'm guessing that either Akua was able to separate herself from Winter and reverted to being another stripe on the cloak, or this is because the Sve doesn't have complete control of Winter yet. Betting on the latter, as the back part of the latest chapter was talking all about that. Hell, again, going back to the Peerage comparison:

If Sve hasn't got complete ownership of the mantle or the drow who swore oaths to it, then stands to reason that she hasn't quite got the domination over Akua we expected.

 

Not much to say about this chapter, beyond 'Akua, the Hero we Need!' Seriously, I love her, and from what we've seen, the Gods Above probably would take her in, and may even be better off for it. If she becomes the heroic antagonist of this story, I think it'd work out quite well, just because Cat's really been lacking any emotional tie to her enemies as of late.

But other then the confirmation that Akua really is going into corny dialogue in the hopes of a heroic high-five, which is phenomenal, this chapter is kind of eh. I have an eternal disdain for mind battles like this, especially when by all accounts, this wasn't how things worked in any fight prior to this one. Like, that shit about being massive but hard to change sure as hell didn't matter when Cat was the Winter Queen; any time she used her phenomenal cosmic power on mortals, they just died, so it very much seems to be a walk back here. That said, Cat has resolved not to go back to being the Winter Queen, which I appreciate, and we get to see a bit of the backstory of Sve Noc here, too.

 

With the end in sight, it's clear that the now truncated Book 4 is all about Cat's flirt with immortality. Teach us the powers and the highs, and the costs and the lows. And because this is Catherine Foundling, she will always worry about the latter more than the former like a good ol' pessimist. The Prologue and Battle of Camps was meant to show off how Cat is a battle-wrecker who can toy with the paltry heroes she struggled with in the past. Keter was to explore apotheosis, set up expectations for that, and awaken Cat to what she truly was. And the Everdark is the averted climax, where she was supposed to complete her ascension. She started indulging in Classic Evil. She forcibly shackled an army to herself, assembled the Peerage who are basically her Nazgul, and was all set to absorb a (second) primordial source of power and unleash a terror literally millennia in the making upon the world. If she beat the Sve and came out of here as Sovereign of the Moonless Night or whatever you want to call that portmanteau of power, she'd have all the ingredients needed for that legend of a thousand years of darkness.

And she rejected it, because that's just what she does. First she rejects Good, then Black and Practical Evil, and now immortal power and godhood get told to fuck off. And because character progression is important, she's graduated from slapping angels to flipping the bird at the gods.

Eh. Solid enough idea, but flaws in the execution. It's not over yet, so we'll see where we wind up wrt how much of this power Cat might wind up keeping (just wait. Cat will beat Komena, get enough of a hold on Winter where she still controls her army, leave the Everdark through a fairy gate, then run into the Elves who stayed in Arcadia just so they could stop the drow from escaping their hole). But it did get us on board with Cat's new "mortal to the end" mantra, if perhaps not for the reasons intended, so mission somewhat accomplished.

 

I personally liked this chapter a lot, especially with the reference to 'the oldest game' in Cat and Sve's fight. It's very old school mythology style, which is appropriate for the situation.

For those unfamiliar, I'd recommend either looking up Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics (specifically, Choronzon vs Dream), or simply the Binding of Loki from classic Norse mythology.

The rules of the oldest game are pretty well summed up in Sandman:

:>

Anyway, I'm interested in finding out the truth about Sve Noc, and the sisters' current relationship with each other after a bajillion years of Night. Their situation is clearly a distorted mirror of Cat and Akua's - one person a warrior of an evil empire, the other one an initiate of their ancient evil rights.

 

I liked the chapter, Akua and the battle against Sve alot, but I am not really sure about the Mortal line. I really like mortal Cat beeing back, but all her oaths were to the sovereign of moonless nights.

The way the story has escalated Cat needs the power of Night/Winter behind her. The oaths of the drow and pretty much Callow are build on that power protecting her interest. If she loses that where does she go from her? The next fights will most likely be the dead king and the wasteland and she wants to force the rest of the world to accept the Liesse Accords. How does she think will she achieve that without being a literal god with all that power behind her? Especially when she already lost with all of Winter behind her against basically everyone. I really don't think a new Name alone will cut it and even if she kills Sve who will claim the Night then if not her?

Not to mention if kinda negates alot of Cats growth in this book and the idea of her peerage.