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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9617691" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:(from 170) Our war dart flies through the yellow haze and embeds itself in the monstrous thumb.(from 26) Our projectile "buries itself in the yellow wrist."Which is it, the creature's thumb or its wrist? This information is of vital importance.… the fog clears and we see "a circular shaft of light opening all the way to the top of the thick sulfurous cloud. The midday sun beams down on [us] like a spotlight directed with pinpoint accuracy."In a book full of mysteriously specific word choices that never pay off, add "circular shaft of light" to the pile. What is happening here? Is it literal? Symbolic? Both?Also: this cannot possibly be the "midday" sun because when we landed, nightfall was only "a few hours away". Even at our latitude, the number of hours between "midday" and "nightfall" has to be at least 5 hours, which stretches the intent of the phrase "a few".The shaft of light reveals the giant creature we attacked: a marid…Weirdly we don't get any physical description, perhaps because the shaft of light prevents a clear view. We do get an awesome illustration:[ATTACH=full]400357[/ATTACH]It's a marid, the most powerful of geniekind, towering at least ten feet above [our] head.If you measure Carr's height in the illustration, the marid is about three Carrs tall. Thus if the distance from the top of Carr's head to the top of the marid's head is ten feet, then Carr is only five feet tall!Alternatively, if we go by the Monster Manual II, then a marid is 18 feet tall. This would mean that one-third of a Marid's height is six feet, a more plausible height for a full grown male human. And six feet plus “at least” ten feet equals 16 feet, which is within the wiggle room provided by “at least”.There are also the issues of artistic license and forced perspective in the illustration, which renders our measurements meaningless. But when has that ever stopped me before?"You should know your targets before striking them, son of Landor."And YOU should be less of a gratuitously sketchy jerk, Mr. Marid. Your telepathy is strong enough to flood Rufyl's brain and fuzz out his telepathy, meaning that you could have communicated with us any time you wanted. Or you could have communicated with Rufyl and asked Rufyl to pass the message along. Or you could have used your voice like normal.But nope! Instead you think/say nothing as you grab our girlfriend out of the fog like a creeper, and then get angry when we quite predictably attack you with darts that don't affect you. Although I suppose they probably hurt nonetheless.On a side note: how typical that the one and only time we get to use our Chekhov's darts, they get us killed. This book consistently punishes us for any attempt to do something cool.</blockquote>

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