With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Dun Dun Duuuuuun!

 

I think it's more about people with power rings being compromised working for outside forces like the Guardians or Controllers usually. Thanagar is a space empire. They probably have tech and tactics to deal with a rogue ring bearer. They just haven't had to deal with one. Paul us probably their most consistent contact with a power ring. Maybe Thanagarian high command wargamed fighting him, but given Paul is a peaceful visitor they're trying Bleez with a sexy friendly face.

 

That almost makes me wish that Paul will have to fight the Thanagarian Empire in the future, and then demonstrates more high level Emotional Spectrum manipulation abilities.

 

”No work.”

An oddly relaxed exampled of ‘Damn you muscle memory!’

Always good to have clear communication.

That ended the moment you started hacking the monitoring systems and talking about what people Want.

 

Yeah, the Thanagarians probably have anti-Lantern tech that they can use.

I also think Paul once mentioned that they apparently hire pirates to fight Lanterns to see their capabilities, and that Paul's fight with those cultists was some kind of test, so wargames did kinda happen.

 

I disagree. The dehumanization implicit in slavery damages a society and both sides of the whip in irreparable ways. It might be good for building infrastructure I guess? If for some reason you care only for that metric. But beneficial for a people in general? That's way too much imperialist bullshit for my taste, it sounds like someone typed this from another century.

 

To paraphrase Dalinar Kholin, ring-bearers can't hold ground. A smart, practiced Orange Lantern could fight off a strong navy, probably, but the minute their back is turned or they have to attack somewhere else, the territory will get snapped up again. And Thanagar has definitely wargamed 'fight a Green Lantern' extensively and probably has specifically wargamed 'fight Paul' since the Seven Devil cult incident.

 

The semicolon should either be a comma or a colon.

It highly depends on what metric you're evaluating, what cultural mores you're assuming, and what the rest of the contemporary society is like. It also highly depends on the nature of the slavery -- historically in many cultures it was actually BETTER to be a slave than to be a pauper. If commoners are already being dehumanized, then being the property of a rich person might give you more protections, because a noble might think nothing of killing a peasant because it was convenient but they would think twice about damaging the possessions of another noble. And since a slave is an investment, a wise master would strive to protect that investment, making sure the slave is well-fed and well-rested, as a hungry, exhausted slave isn't as useful.

It should be telling that some people would choose to sell themselves into slavery.

That's not to say that slavery is good. The kind of horrors that modern society sees in slavery stem from the use of slavery as a form of industrialization, with slaves that are replaceable commodities instead of expensive assets. When it's more efficient to buy dozens of slaves and throw out the ones that aren't good enough, that drives an increase in capturing people to sell as slaves, which makes it easier to buy more slaves, which makes those terrible practices more efficient... That's the vicious spiral that industrialized, imperialist slavery caused. And of course it would be better if the societies that practiced non-industrial slavery would instead provide the same kind of welfare for their servants without restricting their freedoms or treating them as property. But it isn't automatically the unalloyed, unmitigable evil that modern society makes it out to be.

 

Thank you, corrected.

 

Describing it as them "choosing" to sell themselves into slavery is a bit inaccurate imo. Being forced by circumstances is hardly a real choice.

 

I'm sure there there were choices. It was probably something along the lines of letting them and their family starve to death, risking it with banditry, or going into slavery. Or maybe come up with a one in a million clever scheme. None of those were good choices, but they were all real options.

 

Quite. Also, those were all (fringe) individual examples which I intentionally didn't comment on because Mr Zoat started by admitting that individually at least slavery isn't generally a good thing (altho he went on to like the reply so idk).

I was specifically talking about the idea that being enslaved was good to a people, which is so ludicrous I was half expecting someone to point out to me that I had misunderstood.

Edit: right color for hope.

 

So, working my way through a reread of the story, and I've got a question concerning Hades...

What does he get out of accepting the alien dead into his realm? Judging by how we're told hell works, and the way that he has to hook shades into titan magic to bring them up to full awareness... It seems like this is decidedly not one of those settings where a soul is potentially a source of unlimited energy which arcane lifeforms desire, in fact it sounds like each shade is a net-drain on resources given that they need external energy to be self aware.

So he's doing a lot of work (judging billions of souls, reactivating the full bureaucracy of death, etc) and spending a lot of power (even if it's not strictly speaking his power) for...?

 

He seems to take pride in his work, so the opportunity to induct more dead to his realm pleases him.

 

Basically. It also adds variety, and is a sign that other people think that he's doing a good job.

 

'if elven'

 

I know next to nothing about the non 40k warhammer, but this inspires a great deal of worry.

 

So...I guess that political marriage thing happened after all.....

The coming comments should be fun.

 

Guess she has a thing for barbarians.

 

Hmmm... his first meeting with Khalida featured using the ring to transmute a living body around one of her handmaidens as a demonstration of a potential route to eventual golden demigodhood. The actual result was a mindless skeleton with a living but essentially brain-dead body. Then he asked to marry Khalida, who has apparently accepted and gotten herself a similar flesh body since that time.

 

Hmm, no Violet yet. Guess it's gonna take more time for that relationship to deepen.

 

I didn't notice that, thanks for pointing it out. Actually I don't think Fantasy Paul's had any violet with Aranei either, but can't say for sure. (out of curiosity, does anyone remember the first time Paragon-Jade had violet speech for Paul?)

IIRC, Word of Zoat indicated that he was actually just enquiring if she was available to marry for general diplomatic purposes rather than the specific goal of marrying her himself, though of course the framing of that both in-universe (with Paul's romantic denseness) and out-of-universe (ending the chapter with that question) does strongly give the impression that he was asking for himself.

I'm interested in the social statuses of Aranei and Khalida in Paul's life, in multiple ways; how he views them in relation to himself, how they view each other in relation to him, and what any outside party (who knows about them) thinks of the dynamic. The closest polyamorous relationship we got (that wasn't a Mercy dream) was Mandated Paul with Jade and Jade, and there he wanted them to be in relationships with each other as well. Being enmeshed Warhammer politics and general changes due to the setting and simple passage of time might mean that Fantasy Paul is fine if his prospective partners aren't in relationships with each other, but presumably he'd be open to them having additional partners of their own.

I'd guess Khalida would view Aranei as a royal concubine-equivalent, while Aranei would be competitive but also conditioned to accept the idea of Paul (a strong warlord in her eyes) having multiple partners, and wouldn't rock the boat because Khalida is politically (and personally?) more powerful than her- she'd view Paul's apparently equal treatment of both of them as the oddity, if anything. Admittedly this is based on superficial impressions and speculation on the nature of Ancient Nehekharan and Druchii social norms and how Paul would deal with the situation.

I suppose there's no Paul who actually ended up in the Avatar: the Last Airbender universe and wasn't just future-Paragon, but I'd assume if there was one, he'd get together with Azula and internally reform the Fire Nation or whatever. I don't typically think of With This Ring as wish fulfillment the way that SI-stories are stereotyped to be, but at this point the list of all the prominent fictional women the Pauls have been with is getting pretty long. Kind of want to see them all hanging out at a multiversal meetup or something.

 

Yes, manpower is not an issue, when your 'men' are unthinking, unfeeling automata who feel no tiredness or boredom. The only significant issue will be remembering to tell them to stop digging. Otherwise, they may well dig a canal all the way to the Imperial City of Cathay.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

And if any Skaven or Goblins happen to take issue with that, there's a big orange boot ready to step on them...

Yes, it is quite the project. Well deserving of the term Titanic.

A sight rare to any upon the world. The joy of medieval levels of technology. It means medieval levels of cartography.

For reference, that's wider then the entire Empire (Which covers most of the Europe equivalent.) In our world, that's the distance from Miami, Florida to New Hampshire.

Yes, that is as far as you think it is.

Amazing how far you can see in a nice, flat land like Nehekhara.

A Tomb King? A Sigmarite Flagellant is saner than him. But at least they can be directed, I hope.

To be fair, Paol probably conceived of it while observing from near-orbital altitudes.

...So, expect plenty of Nehekharan statuary, which may or may not also serve as security guards?

...That is not all that reassuring. It just means that now he can actually produce some of his madder designs.

Indeed. If you're lucky, you'll merely be killed quickly. If they really don't like you, then the flesh-eating beetles get involved.

That would be in Estalia, their version of the Iberian Peninsula. That is, Spain and Portugal. Largely ignored in the stories of the setting outside of its interactions with Bretonnia.

For reference, that's basically Sicily in terms of geographical placement.

Elves are dicks, yes. This is common knowledge throughout the Old World. No doubt they demand a payment for safe passage past the equivalent of the Cape of Good Hope.

It's good to see friends get ahead.

As long as it doesn't get the attention of Nagash, Lord of Undeath. You know, the person who got the ancient rulers of Khemri into this state.

Yes, dealing with this sort of thing isn't good for the sanity of mere mortal men...

And yes, they actually existed in the tabletop game. You can see the mad models at the bottom of that wiki entry. Usually used as disposable flanking skirmishers by most players, since they were fast cavalry with flight...

Think about it, Gaius. Your name will be remembered for as long as men keep histories...

And there's going to be quite a few merchant guilds in the region with coin-shaped eyes and big grins once they hear about this.

Consider Reikland the test-bed. Your prototyping station.

He's certainly got the Imperials pegged well.

Heh. So many ways to take that statement of Gaius'.

So, best behaviour, then.

Oh, my! Now that's quite the response. She's likely greet the Emperor of the Reiksland while remaining seated...

Heh. I'll bet they don't. Hard to rewire patterns of necromantic energies that have run in their course for millennia...

...And there's the Grim Dark. Now I see why she rose to meet him as an equal.

Well, then. The largest engineering project in the entire Old World (The Great Old One's polar gates don't count!) has begun. And yet another Paul has a reformed bad girl for a love interest. At least the flesh is living (and presumably kept that way by occasional treatments by Paol's ring...) And I rather imagine more than a few Powers are having fits at all this.

---

...actually rises to greet me as I bow.

 

How exactly is Paol being in a relationship with the High Queen an example of Grim Dark? I ask because I don't really know Warhammer lore.

 

Well, she is still an animate skeleton coursing with necromantic energies more or less wearing human flesh, no matter how living it is. I don't know about you, but that's just a bit creepy to me...

And you'll note he described it as unfeeling? She can't feel any damage the fleshy bits suffer in the course of a typical day. That's... Pretty dark. Think about the little knocks and bumps you experience without noticing, just walking about. Never mind if she spends all day sitting upon her throne... Amusingly, she could probably be thankful she can't feel the pin and needles.

 

Why do you assume she's reformed instead of just playing him?

After all... She doesn't have a soul...

 

Thank you, corrected.

Who said they were married?

Foreign concubines are a status symbol.

Sure, that's... Usually for kings rather than queens, but who's going to argue?

That's a little unfair.

Thank you, corrected.

 

No, no, it's very fair.

 

So they're friends with benefits? Or engaged?