BGM: The Tower from Avantasia: The Metal Opera by Tobias Samett. The second-longest song in Avantasia, The Tower lasts around 9 minutes and is almost as grand as The Seven Angels due to its complex structure of refrains, recited lines and guitar solos. The chorus is an impassioned plea from Lugaid Vandroiy, Gabriel's mentor, encouraging Gabriel to "Go all the way to the Tower" and find out the true nature of its sinister lord. The "intermission" of the song is a recited dialogue between Pope Clement VIII and the Voice of the Tower, who always sounds creepy.
Breakfast: Haven't eaten yet.
Lunch: --
Dinner: --
Current Read/s:
+That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (Difficulty: Hard)
+The Myths of Magic (Magic: The Gathering) (Difficulty: Medium)
My cold's finally clearing up, I just hope it doesn't recur later when I go out with my aunt. I don't really like staying home all day if I can help it.
Anyway, I've already finished Ravnica: The City of Guilds. The story is, in a nutshell, an intricate dance of a power struggle between the ten guilds (although only four really do much in this particular novel: The Boros Legion, the Golgari Swarm, the Selesnya Conclave, and House Dimir) as the decamillennial celebration of the Guildpact draws closer.
The Guildpact is a magical treaty, signed by many of the founders of the guilds, that seeks to give them an equal share of control and lordship of the massive ecumenopolis that is Ravnica.
Ravnica itself is pretty mind-boggling: imagine Coruscant from Star Wars and turn all of those hi-tech spires and domes into Gothic spires and domes. While the city covers the entire surface of the planet, the urban center of the city is situated in the City of Ravnica proper. The City of Ravnica is an immense, circular area that consists of a millions of arches, towers, floating reservoirs, sewers and other forms of infrastructure. This is reflected in the game: Magic draws resources from five basic "lands"---White mana from Plains, Blue mana from Islands, Black mana from Swamps, Red mana from Mountains, and Green mana from Forests. In the Ravnica block, however, Plains are depicted as the plane's tallest towers, with white mana being drawn from sunlight instead. Islands are depcited as the city's vast waterworks and floating reservoirs. Ravnica's swamps are not fetid marshes but its cavernous insides---Old Ravnica, layers upon layers of forgotten structures upon which the current city was built. The mountains are huge, smoke-belching furnaces, while the forests are groves and forests grafted into the numerous spires of the city.
Ravnica is not a magical and pristine place---it's polluted, seedy and dank. Many thousands of races populate the ecumenopolis: humans, goblins, ogres, dryads, viashino (lizardmen), angels, demons, elves (Silhana and Devkarin), centaurs, minotaurs, and many, many others.
The city was actually designed by the Izzet league: a group of mad scientists, architects, wizards and demolition squads all rolled into one. The dragon-mage Niv-Mizzet actually designed the city in the shape of a vast power sigil that would give him control over the entire plane, but the goblins in his entourage messed it up (unintentionally or deliberately, the jury's still out on this one) and instead the city ended up as it is now.
Spoilers below, so if you don't like spoilers and plan to read the novel, skip the black-colored area below. Otherwise, highlight to read.
The climax was pretty exciting, with the rogue Golgari Swarm (Ravnica's resident necromancer guild, although strangely enough, they also supply the city with meat. Creepy, huh?) attacking the Boros Legion's Centerfort. As I mentioned in the previous entry, the Boros Legion is both military and police force to the City of Guilds, but the Centerfort is primarily a Wojek (Police) base. With the Gorgon Ludmilla at the head of the Golgari army, the poor 'jeks were no match for the undead swarm and their petrifying mistress. (Ludmilla is one of the Sisters of Stone Death, but her younger ssssystersss [sic] Lydya and Lexya had already been messily squashed by the ancient necromancer Svogthir, the Golgari swarm's parun (Guildpact signatory) whom the Ssssysterssss had imprisoned in the depths of their underground stronghold.) In a treacherous move, the Devkarin elf Savra, Matka (High Priestess) of the Golgari swarm, released Svogthir and reconstructed his rotted body in the form of an immense necroelemental. Svogthir easily smashed the younger sisters, but the wiser Ludmilla capitulated to Svogthir and Savra. The Matka then turned on Svogthir, using the body she made for him against him, and absorbed his several millennia worth of necromantic power. Savra, however, had more in mind than the leadership of the Swarm.
Savra conspired to have a member of the Selesnyan Chorus of the Conclave, a gentle loxodon (humanoid elephant) named Bayul, assassinated. Bayul was one of the few members of the Conclave who regularly left Vitu-Ghazi, the immense tree at the center of the city which the Selesnya Conclave held court. Because of this gap, the Chorus would seek a replacement---Savra. Despite being a death-worshipping Devkarin elf (as opposed to a life-worshipping Silhana), she was still an elf, and thus attuned to nature. Being fond of unity, it was very characteristic for the Selesnya to accept anyone, no matter the race, into the fold of the Conclave. Savra, of course, did this for the sake of power. She took control of the Selesnyan spy force (of course they won't call it that), the quietmen. (Quietmen are creepy humanoid creatures shrouded completely in white linen, their faces, hands and feet are all covered by cloth. They can fly, have psychic abilities, and can fly very well.) Savra replaced the quietmen with undead and
corrupted Vitu-Ghazi's living tissue, causing the entire Chorus to die out while she absorbed its power.
Savra wasn't smart enough to do this on her own. She was smart, but this needed the help of a dark and sinister master---the psionic vampire lord Szadek, who many Ravnicans thought was a myth. He appeared at Savra's coronation ceremony, and in classic villainous fashion, snapped her neck. Szadek then drew the unity elemental Mat'selesnya, the Selesnyan parun, out of the tree of Vitu Ghazi and tried to kill her in an attempt to void the Guildpact and take control of the plane for himself.
Okay, enough spoilers. But anyway, the book was pretty interesting, although the large amount of intrigue was pretty labyrinthine and difficult to crawl through. Of course, I'm sure my readers are certainly capable of that.
Also, another personality test taken from Katja's blog. (Ravnica left me with a rather Slavic taste for names right now)
| You Have a Melancholic Temperament |
 Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you. Given enough time alone, it's easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times. At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult. |
Pretty accurate, my mom wholeheartedly agrees that I'm melancholic. My brother is phlegmatic (he's passive, but a good companion), while grandma is sanguine (generally jolly, makes friends with everyone).
~Be Just or Be Dead~
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ー黒獅子アスラン
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