ponderings

[bedlamsbard]

Aslan's How: still around by LB? I wouldn't see why not, but I really feel no particular inclination to the Narnians in there again. Maybe have Peter and Co. ride past it and regard it in silence before moving onwards. I know that the deleted scenes from PC say that only the mice know about it, but seriously, it is a big mound in the middle of the country. It is a holy site! If not everyone knew about it, then I would be shocked beyond shocked. When I was writing Water, I had Caspian wax rhapsodic on it: the How is a stronghold that was built during the Dying Times, after the Belgarine-Natarene invasion and before the Telmarine conquest, and the Telmarines have legends of it.

The underground lake from SC: still around by LB? It seems a little like overkill, but I can't really see what it would be good for, unless I'm planning on drowning Calormenes somewhere outside of Narnia!Salamis.

Huh. Rereading Water to double-check on the How situation, I kind of want to go back to it. I do still have a significant amount of Story left.

...ahahahahaha, I'd forgotten I wrote this into Water.

“Well,” Lucy says, “when the call went out they brought everyone of fighting age. Mostly the males of fighting age –” she makes a face, and Peta smiles wryly, “– but there are a few women too. It’s just that most of them don’t know how to fight. There are some bowmen, and a lot of folk that know how to use a sling, and some who know how to use spears, but there are hardly any swordsmen or real fighters. Glenstorm says that his family has been preparing for this for time out of mind, and he’s just about got the only real fighters in the lot, him and some of the minotaurs, but the rest of them don’t know anything. I mean, there is a rumor that there’s a troop of mercenaries coming out of Archenland –”

“Mercenaries?” Peta interrupts, frowning. “Who do you mean? Not –”

“Centaurs,” Lucy says. “Narnians that left years ago, back when the Telmarines first took over. They’re supposed to still be loyal to Narnia, but no one’s seen them, and no one knows if they’re anything more than a rumor. But if they do come, then they’re real fighters, ones with experience in battle.”

I didn't put the foreshadowing about the Red Company into a deleted scene from Dust 3 like I thought, I put the foreshadowing into the wrong friggin' story. (This was written the better part of a month before Dust 5.)

*highly amused* Oh, here is Peta telling off Reepicheep for being an idiot and starting the war early.

“Has your race lost what little intelligence it has in the past thirteen hundred years, or is this just you?” Peta demands of Reepicheep. “Because I remember mice that were brave, and noble, and valiant, and that had brains, and you are none of those things.”

Wait, where was I? Oh, Dust. Right. Actually, band concert. *sigh* I don't want to, I want to stay here and write and watch Narnia and Criminal Minds, which, yes, I'm aware that that is the weirdest combination ever.

Comments

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

re: aslan's how
maybe a pile of stones whose significance is now unknown. maybe kinda like stonehenge. scholars have pondered its significance, and theories widely vary: most say temple, some say tomb, a few even say some sort of military fort, though this last one has been largely discredited due how easily it can be besieged and starved out NUDGE WINK

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

after only three hundred years, though? and i mean, it's going to be in caspian's memoirs, but still -- but then it's mean, i have no concept of the passage of time. *bats at air*

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

will his memoirs hold up as 'truth' under the lens of academic scrutiny? and a lot of people don't know (or mostly don't care) what happened a generation ago, let alone 300 years.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

this is true. *ponders* i mean, i don't want to leave it out, but i also don't want it to be a major thing, just maybe something that peter stops his horse to look at for a long time on their way eastward, and tirian and eustace look back and forth at each other and kind of blink in confusion. and of course eustace is all, "can we get on with the attacking already? i want to go home."

they are on the road currently.

[dikela.livejournal.com]

Well, in the battle the Telmarines almost brought down the entrance, and the Narnians with Caspian brought down parts of the cave. Caspian would have his hands full with everything and everybody -- so I guess the How could be left for later, they would just make sure that the Table chamber is safe.

But you know how it is, every day there are new problems and restoring the How is not so urgent; and then you pass there and you see that more stones fell and the entrance is sealed, and you take note, that you must definitely take care of the sacred relic, but there are more problems and maybe the How would be safer if it is hidden...
And so on, and so on.

And in a couple of generations the How is a legend, the Narnians remember still, but they too think that the How is safer hidden, and then even they forget where it is.

So after three hundred years the idea is remembered but the place itself is lost, and maybe it wasn't a real place but an idea.

The How hill is avoided but no one knows why.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh, I like that, and it makes a lot of sense. There are still pieces of history scattered across the Narnian countryside, but so much of it has been forgotten since the Golden Age, since Caspian's age, especially after the Ban. And everyone knows that Rilian thinks that Caspian was probably half-mad when he wrote his memoirs anyway, and by the time they started expanding westward again, by the time they rebuilt the lionsroad and the roseroad and the rest of the Golden Age Narnian road network, it was just another ruin. There are enough of them scattered across Narnia anyway, and no one knows where they all come from.