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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9578659" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:"Mignam flerol, lursip gravdam," Dalris says in the "spell language of the aboriginal Kandian druids."The words of Dalris's Entangle spell are a neat touch. Some spells' verbal components are phrases in Common (well, English in my version of the gamebook), some are recognizable Fakus Latinus, and others are purely made up like in this example.---Waving our prize in one hand, we yell to Dalris that she should "kill this thing" so we can get out of here.It’s only been one section and we’ve already forgotten that the entire reason Dalris is here is so that we DON’T kill the manticore. When Dalris reiterates that as a druid she is sworn to protect all living things:We retort that we should’ve used our original plan to cripple the manticore with Magic Missile and then grabbed a tail spike before it died.So we double down on our assertion that the only good manticore is a dead manticore, even though we know this will upset Dalris. This is just the first of many, many examples that show that we are an insensitive jerk.---We emerge next to Dalris and a now visible Rufyl who resembles a "four-foot-high" red dragon. Rufyl has put on a LOT of weight: he was only two feet high in the previous book.---Landor was a proud Kandian. "His magic has its roots in the Bhukodian sorceries of your precious ancestors, and they weren’t druids!"Are we back to Bhukod does NOT equal Kandia, when it was clearly established in the previous book that they were one and the same? Or Bhukod does still equal Kandia, but Carr's point is that the ancient Bhukodians were sorcerers and not druids? If so, at what point did sorcery give way to druidism? Presumably after the fall of Bhukod 500 years ago, but WHY?If only there was some long-lived race of beings for whom 500 years ago is well within living memory. We could ask them whether the Ancient Bhukodians had druidism going back then or if not then, when and why druidism replaced sorcery.Oh well! Too bad there are no races at all in AD&D who live way, way, way longer than a human lifespan.---We "watch with amusement and joy as the bard’s clear eyes sparkle with fury, bringing her wild beauty to life." The "lithe" Dalris has heard this taunting many times. She bounds away into the forest, leaving Rufyl and us behind.Not only are we a big jerk, we’re a big jerk who deliberately taunts a woman we supposedly like, such that she will angrily run off into an area that could be the hunting grounds of an extremely dangerous wild animal, AFTER she has expended some spells to SAVE OUR SORRY ASS. Indeed, we do this with “amusement and joy”!Is this behavior meant to endear us to us? Because it’s horrible.I again wonder what lessons are being taught to the teenage audience here: It’s OK to be the biggest jerk imaginable because you’re (supposedly) smart and important? It’s OK to taunt someone into danger? It’s OK to murder an innocent wild animal to harvest its organs, without any attempt at a nonlethal solution, because you found some old recipe?Hypothetically this could be the reader’s first introduction to OUR Carr Delling. What a glorious impression he has made thus far.</blockquote>

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