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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9588741" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:The College of Arcane Sciences "founded by your father before you were born"...I should hope so, given it was founded 38 > 40 years ago, and we were born only 16 + 5 = 22 years ago.(Yes, I know the founding date is now 5 years older than it was in book 1. So fine. It was founded 43 > 45 years ago. Happy?)… "like the watchtower it was in the days of pirates and smugglers on the Tikandian frontier."You mean the days in the ancient past of five years ago, when Thayne had us "translate" a map of pirate tunnels?Or maybe you mean the ancient past of EARLIER TODAY, when Dalris's kinsmen SMUGGLED US HERE?Dalris asks how we want to do this: "Do we just present ourselves at the door…?"It's official: Dalris also has WIS 3."At an academy of magic, there's always someone more advanced than you in certain areas of occult knowledge. That one fact keeps things honest and even. You learn to respect your colleagues' powers even if their level is lower than yours."In a gamebook series full of sanity-shattering nonsensical writing, this paragraph is either the pièce de résistance or a brilliant example of parody.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's always someone more advanced than you in certain areas of occult knowledge. -- The College Arcane has a strict color-coded robes hierarchy; the lighter your robes, the closer you are to archmage-level understanding of magic. The higher you climb, the more your understanding outclasses those beneath you. Now, maybe this sentence is supposed to be saying something about specialization of knowledge. Sure. But….</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That one fact keeps things honest and even. -- This HAS TO BE sarcasm from the doctor of anthropology Morris Simon. As anyone who has ever spent any time in academia knows, the fact that someone else knows more than you not only doesn't "keep things honest and even", it ACTIVELY DETRACTS from honestly and even-handedness because you HATE the people who know more than you, so you work to undermine them using any means available.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You learn to respect your colleagues' powers… --- Hahahahaha!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">… even if their level is lower than yours. --- Ahhhhh hahahahahahahahahaha! collapses to the ground, unable to breathe</li> </ul>Dalris chuckles and adds, "Carr is saying that sorcerers like himself are just too damned independent to be dominated by each other."Whatever element of truth this statement has figuratively, it ignores the in-world reality that Arno convinced a bunch of paladins to turn 180 degrees from their oaths and become eeeeevil. Given that Arno corrupted a bunch of noble paladins, he could also easily corrupt a bunch of stereotypically amoral sorcerers to join his cause.Or, for that matter: maybe Arno LITERALLY dominated the other sorcerers of the College Arcane!---(110) if we've come here straight from Wealwood(45) if we've come directly from Saven(23) if we've come by way of DelmerOur first example of a TRIPLE inbound node. Mostly we conceive of gamebooks as flowcharts in which some sections are decision points that lead you down different outbound paths. This gamebook expands on that to bring multiple inbound paths together to one section, but then instead of using that section as the narrow point of a funnel that only leads in one direction, it allows the paths to split apart again.I’ll have more to say about this when we reach the end of our journey.</blockquote>

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