Writing and Semicolons Thread

Originally posted by a deleted user

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This is a writing thread so write stories n stuff


What the fuck is a semicolon, some kind of medieval legend beast or somethin'

A semicolon can be used when you have two separate but closely-related independent clauses.  They can be used in lieu of a period, though doing this wholesale can result in overuse.

Notice in the previous sentence that a comma was used instead of a semicolon. This is because 'though doing this wholesale can result in overuse' is a dependent clause. This is rule one of semicolon use:
1> Don't use it in dependent clauses.

Here's some bullshit about conjunctions; notice how subordinating conjunctions introduce dependent clauses. 

The most common subordinating conjunctions are "after," "although," "as," "because," "before," "how," "if," "once," "since," "than," "that," "though," "till," "until," "when," "where," "whether," and "while."

Some examples:

Where he went, there were no roads.
There were no roads where he went.

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case, so you should not use one!


Notice that in the previous sentence, 'so' was not a subordinating conjunction.  'It would not make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case' and 'you should not use one' were both independent clauses, brought together by the coordinating conjunction 'so'. Without it, they could have been two separate sentences.  There are several ways to write such a sentence; each carries a different sense of flow and each assigns importance to the contents of the sentence.

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Spoiler

conjunction conjoining independent clauses

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case, so you should not use one.

period separating clauses into two sentences

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case.  You should not use one.

semicolon separating two independent clauses

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case; you shouldn't use one.

parentheses separating independent clause, conjunction added

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case (so you shouldn't use one here).

em dash separating independent clause, conjunction added

It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case—so you shouldn't.


What you should not do is this:
It wouldn't make sense to substitute a semicolon in this case; so you shouldn't use one.

This is rule two of semicolon use:
Do not add a coordinating conjunction like 'and,' 'but,' 'or,' 'nor,' 'for,' 'so,' or 'yet' and a semicolon.  They don't mix.

There is one exception to rule two.  Say you have a long sentence wherein: you have several dependent clauses, much like this one, which are separated with commas; you have commas, commas and more commas (more than you know what to do with); and it seems like, as if a large fish swallowing a medium-sized fish that has swallowed a school of small fish, the commas have blended together. In that case, you can turn the encompassing list which would normally have commas into semicolons even with the coordinating conjunction.

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SpoilerIn informal writing: I would label the long sentence in the  previous paragraph with a> b> and c> to label the separate clauses like so  for coherence's sake:

Say you have a long sentence wherein: a>you have several dependent clauses, much like this one, which are separated with commas; b> you have commas, commas and more commas (more than you know what to do with); and c> it seems like, as if a large fish swallowing a medium-sized fish that has swallowed a school of small fish, the commas have blended together.

so instead of:

I saw you do it; so you can go fuck yourself.

say one of:

I saw you do it; you can go fuck yourself.
I saw you do it, so you can go fuck yourself

em dashes
Em dashes (—) are similar grammatically to colons and semicolons—but they punctuate things with more immediacy and they pretty much rule school

I am a fan of semicolons; they are my favorite punctuation mark (next to parentheses, of course).

Which reminds me, there is something important to note about parentheses: namely, as a general rule, the punctuation that would end the parenthetical clause should, rather than going inside, go outside the closing parenthesis.

I...ridiculously abuse the emdash - at least it's an affectation I can't seem to shake. Uuuusuaaallly I write like I talk (thus that monstrosity of repeated vowels =.=) and the emdash represents a pause in speech - for example, when I insert another thought - that isn't quite as jarring timing-wise as a semicolon. It just doesn't sound like me; I don't place independent clauses like that in my speeching!

Slorange was booooored last week and wanted me to write a thing so I told him a story line-by-line about vultures in Nowhere. as always criticisms are welcome and suchlike

Fun Fa(cts/x): When I said "cast a wordspell on me" I meant "cast a magic spell that would allow me to accomplish the writing I was floundering on", but I didn't correct you once storytimes looked imminent.

Hee hee~

My only complaint is that you don't write often enough :<

I wrote a silly story tonight. Here it is.

Akwar the Orc Sorceror

Once upon a time, there was a cat named Akwar the Orc Sorceror. He lived with an orc sorceror named Cat.
One day, Cat had to leave to do some particularly complex orc sorcery in a faraway land. He left Akwar the Orc Sorceror in the care of his brother, Akwar, who was also an orc sorceror and who Cat had named his cat after.
Unbeknownst to Cat, Akwar the Orc Sorceror hated Akwar the Orc Sorceror, and so he saw this as an opportunity to enact his plans for revenge. However, Akwar was not a very bright or successful orc sorceror, so his plans for revenge mostly involved cuddling Akwar the Orc Sorceror and then forgetting what his plans were.
After three days, Akwar the Orc Sorceror finally remembered that cuddling was not a good way of enacting revenge, and so he came up with a new plan. His new plan involved giving Akwar the Orc Sorceror a saucer of milk.
Akwar the Orc Sorceror watched with glee as Akwar the Orc Sorceror lapped up the milk. When the last drop was gone, Akwar the Orc Sorceror burst into laughter, and then Akwar the Orc Sorceror leapt into his lap and Akwar the Orc Sorceror started petting him.
An hour of petting and belly-scratching later, Akwar the Orc Sorceror realized that he had meant to put poison milk in the saucer but had just put regular milk in it instead.
The next day, Akwar remembered that he was an orc sorceror, and that meant he could do sorcery. So, Akwar the Orc Sorceror cast a spell on Akwar the Orc Sorceror. It turned Akwar the Orc Sorceror into an orc sorceror.
"Thanks!" said Akwar the Orc Sorceror. "I'd been trying to tell my brother for weeks that I accidentally turned myself into a cat and turned his cat into an orc sorceror. But I got distracted by chasing the catnip mouse and drinking milk and getting belly scratches."
"Meow," said Akwar the Orc Sorceror.
"Oh, right. I should probably turn you back into a cat. Poof! You're a cat again!"
And so when Cat came back, Akwar the Orc Sorceror was once again an orc sorceror, and Akwar the Orc Sorceror was once again a cat.
"Hello, Cat," Akwar the Orc Sorceror said. "How did the orc sorcery go?"
"Woof," said Cat. "Woof woof."
"Meow," said Akwar the Orc Sorceror.
"Woof! Woof!" Cat said, and he started chasing Akwar the Orc Sorceror around the room.
Meanwhile, in a faraway land, an orc sorceror named Dog was petting his dog, Cat the Orc Sorceror.
"I'm glad you're better now, Cat the Orc Sorceror," Dog said. "That orc sorceror did a really good job. He's a much better orc sorceror than I am."
"Yeah, you didn't pay him nearly enough," Cat the Orc Sorceror replied. Then he went off to bury a bone.

Unicorns

Great Lord Sparklesmith and Gordon were unicorns. Great Lord Sparklesmith was a loose cannon cop on the edge, while Gordon was his wisecracking wacky roommate with a mysterious past.
One day, Great Lord Sparklesmith and Gordon ran out of milk, so they decided to go to Dr. President's grocery store to buy some more. But when they arrived, they found that there was only skim milk left, and of course Gordon's magical powers could only be fueled by 2% milk.
They asked Dr. President (who was also a unicorn) what had happened to the 2% milk. He explained that the evil sorceror Nero Shaken'Bake (who was, of course, also a unicorn) had just bought up all the 2% milk to use in an evil ritual or possibly to make ten thousand pancakes, which would explain why he had also bought up all the flour and sugar and maple syrup.

"We can't allow Nero Shaken'Bake to make that many pancakes!" Great Lord Sparklesmith declared. "I'm going to break that bastard's neck and get our milk back!"
"But wait!" Gordon interjected. "What if it's just an evil ritual? Then we have to let it succeed so we can have a climactic battle with the demon he's summoning or whatever. It's in the rules."
"Maybe you play by the rules, but I'm a loose cannon cop on the edge. That means I beat the bad guy up a lot and then his evil ritual succeeds. Now come on, if we get there early maybe we can get some free pancakes out of that bastard before I start shooting him."
"I guess you could say you'll leave him battered," Gordon said, and everyone in the store laughed, including the unicorns who couldn't hear him. (Because, of course, everyone in the store was a unicorn.)

But suddenly, there was a dramatic musical chord, and The Ancient And Wise Baron Proudmane stepped out. He was also a unicorn, and he had a top hat and a monocle and an evil mustache.
"Not so fast, Great Lord Sparklemane and Gordon!" he announced. "I can't allow you to interfere with Nero Shaken'Bake's plans. Not because I have any association with him, but because I cannot allow you to go on any adventures until you've beaten up my henchmen and eluded me in a high-speed car chase!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a half dozen henchmen who were also unicorns jumped out of the aisles.
"Damn! He's got us there," Gordon said. "What do we do, Great Lord Sparklemane?"
"We do what any loose cannon cop on the edge and his wisecracking wacky roommate with a mysterious past would do, of course," Great Lord Sparklemane said. "We fight crime."
And then Great Lord Sparklemane punched out several henchmen, while Gordon defeated the rest of them with wisecracks and wacky antics, like dropping an entire shelf of groceries on them or making two of them charge into each other and knock each other out. Dr. President was upset that his store was being messed up, but he was too busy laughing at Gordon's hilarious antics to complain.
"Curses!" exclaimed The Ancient And Wise Baron Proudmane as his henchmen fell one-by-one. "You've defeated my henchmen! Now I'll have to pursue you in a high-speed car chase!"
"Not if we pursue you first!" Great Lord Sparklemane shouted.
"Wait, aren't we the guys who have somewhere to go? I think it makes more sense if he's chasing us and we have to shake him off," Gordon replied.
"Hmm. But he's at a disadvantage. He should be fleeing and we should be trying to chase him down for information," Great Lord Sparklemane observed.
"This is a difficult problem to resolve," Dr. President said. "I think we'll have to take this to Unicorn Court."

Judge Galacticamaru, who was a unicorn, looked over the court.
"Can somebody explain this dispute to me again?" he asked.
"I will, Your Honor," said Sheinalica, who was Great Lord Sparklesmith and Gordon's attractive and intelligent lawyer, and also a unicorn. "My clients claim that they should be pursuing The Ancient And Wise Baron Proudmane in a high-speed car chase, while the opposing side claimas that The Ancient And Wise Baron Proudmane should be pursuing my clients."
"Uh, actually," Gordon said, raising a hoof, "I agree with the other guy. I think he should be chasing us."
"Objection!" shouted Dr. Commissioner James Gordon, who was The Ancient And Wise Baron Proudmane's no-nonsense lawyer who got results, and also a unicorn. "That statement wasn't wacky at all, and is therefore at odds with Gordon's established character."
"Objection sustained," said Judge Galacticamaru. Then he paused. "Wait a minute, how is this a legal dispute at all?"
Everyone in the courtroom looked at each other for a few moments and then started mumbling.
"Right, that's it. I declare the whole lot of you guilty of wasting my time! Everyone in this courtroom is sentenced to life in prison!"

Five minutes later, everyone was sitting in a jail cell.
"Well, this sure is a wacky and zany outcome!" Gordon said. Everyone laughed.
"Oh, shut up," Judge Galacticamaru replied. "Why didn't anyone remind me that I was in the courtroom?"
"I tried, but you wouldn't let me!" Gordon said. "You kept telling me that whatever I said couldn't possibly be important."
"You're all missing the two most important things here," Great Lord Sparklemane said. "The first is that we haven't had any high-speed car chases at all today. The second is that we're not going to be able to get any pancakes in here!"
"Damn," Gordon said. "I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles."
Everyone laughed, even though Gordon's joke didn't have anything to do with cookies.

Meanwhile, Nero Shaken'Bake had summoned the evil and powerful demon Prince Makebelieve, who was also a unicorn but also a demon, and had made ten thousand pancakes.
"Where is everyone?" Nero Shaken'Bake grumbled. "I thought for sure they'd come over when they heard I had ten thousand pancakes!"
"Oh well, more for us," Prince Makebelieve said. "Could you pass the maple syrup?"
"Sure thing," said Nero Shaken'Bake's neighbor, Shaniqua Melona Ledasha Shakira Niltharix. "By the way, has anyone told you you're cute?"
"No," Prince Makebelieve replied, "but they've told me I"m a fearsome monster who devours souls. Although honestly, these pancakes are much more delicious than souls. Maybe I should change my diet."

Pirates

Two Bit Fred and Lucy McLucy were pirates. They worked at the local library.
One day, Blind George came into the library. He was also a pirate.
"Yarr!" Blind George said to Lucy McLucy. "Where ye be keepin' the bottles o' rum, matey?"
"Blind George, ye blind fool!" Lucy McLucy shouted back at him. "This be the library! If it's rum ye want, ye should go to the tavern!"
"Oh," said Blind George. He held a hand to his chin thoughtfully, then screamed in pain because it was his hook hand. Two Bit Fred quickly grabbed a bandage from the first aid kit and put it on Blind George's chin.
"Blind George, ye need to be more careful!" Two Bit Fred said. "Haven't we been tellin' ye for weeks ye need a seein'-eye parrot?"
"Bah! I can see just fine, matey! They don't call me Blind George for nothin'!" Blind George said to a bookshelf.
"Blind George, do ye even know what the word blind means?" Lucy McLucy asked, frustrated.
"Er... well, no, not as such," Blind George replied.
"I'll show ye what it means, ya great big oaf!" Two Bit Fred shouted, lugging a heavy dictionary over. "It says it right here in this dictionary!"
Suddenly, there was a burst of cannon fire and the library wall came crashing down. There was a pirate ship on the other side of the wall.
"It's John Maritime, the most notorious pirate on the Seven Seas!" Two Bit Fred gasped.
"And he's shellin' our library with heavy artillery!" Lucy McLucy shouted.
"Hand over that dictionary, mateys!" shouted John Maritime, the most notorious pirate on the Seven Seas. "Or I'll make ye all walk the plank!"
"But we be on land!" Lucy McLucy said. "How did ye get that thar ship of yers all the way this far inland, matey?"
"That be none of yer business, landlubbers!" John Maritime snarled. "I've come for the dictionary!"
"Why do ye want it?" Two Bit Fred shouted at him.
"So I can find out what 'notorious' means! And then I'll know what to say when they call me the most notorious pirate on the Seven Seas!" John Maritime replied. "And 'artillery', too. That's a new word on me."
"Get yer own dictionary, ye scurvy knave!" Blind George shouted at a stuffed moose head. "I'm about to find out what 'blind' means!"
"Curse ye, Blind George!" John Maritime screamed. "Now I've got to look up 'scurvy' and 'knave', too! Salty Chuck, grab that book before they give me any other hard words!"
"Aye aye, Cap'n!" said John Maritime's first mate, Salty Chuck, with a hearty salute. He leapt off the pirate ship and walked around the library, then knocked on the front door.
"Two Bit Fred, would ya see who that is at the door?" Lucy McLucy asked.
"Aye aye!" Two Bit Fred said. He ran to the door and opened it, finding Salty Chuck.
"Good day, matey!" Salty Chuck said with a smile.
"Arr! I be sorry, me hearty, but we be busy at the moment. Perhaps ye could come back later?" Two Bit Fred asked.
"I just wanted to take out a book," Salty Chuck replied.
"Which book?" Two Bit Fred asked, suspiciously.
"Why, the dictionary!" Salty Chuck said eagerly.
"Tell him we don't let people sign out reference books!" Lucy McLucy shouted.
"Oh," Salty Chuck said, disappointed. He yelled out to the ship. "Cap'n! They won't let us sign out reference books!"
The cannons suddenly stopped firing.
"Curses!" John Maritime snarled. "Then I guess we've got no business here, Salty Chuck. Come on, it's back to the Seven Seas with us!"
"Where you can be the most notorious pirate, Cap'n?" Salty Chuck said, running through the library and jumping out the hole in the wall.
"Aye, matey! Even if I haven't the foggiest idea what that means."
And with that, John Maritime's ship sailed down the street.
"Well, that was an exciting adventure, wasn't it?" Blind George said to a chair. "And we all learned somethin' from it, too!"
"What's that we learned, Blind George?" Lucy McLucy asked, puzzled.
"We learned that the library doesn't sign out reference books!" he said, chuckling. "Well, see you later, me hearties!"
And then Blind George walked into a wall and passed out.

Seedy wrote a thing and I wrote something based on that thing.

A D&D campaign I'll be playing in will be starting soon, and I thought it would be fun to do some writing as my character from it as a role-playing exercise. It turns out it was, but it did manifest as the unholy union of serious game bullshit nerdery and high-grade Discourse™. I may have to do more as this character in the future; I enjoy him and his stilted pseudoacademic tone.

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SpoilerOn Mammalian Ethics
From the To-Be-Collected Works of Ketrak, Kobold Ambassador

It is with great fascination that I have learned of and documented during my travels the staggering amount of inconsistencies and misconceptions that riddle the societies of the mammalian races; while an individual dwarf or human may be counted on to be largely reasonable when dealt with in person and lead adequately through a particular thought or belief, their social structures as a whole can be counted on to effectively quash reason and perpetuate the sort of harmful thinking that prevents the individual from realizing its true purpose within society and society's true purpose for the individual. These demonstrably false — or at least easily argued — core concepts of mammalian thought range all the way from the loftiest realms of philosophy to the basest understanding of physical and arcane laws and serve as the basis for a great number of heuristics that are if not consciously shared by all at least widespread enough to inform mammalian behavior as a whole and, especially, govern their interactions with the other races.

Consider, as an instructive example, the nomenclature they choose to use when referring as a whole to those races that fall outside of whatever milieu of society the speaker considers "civilized": the savage races. Savage, indeed! Aside from the obvious connotative problems the word savage engenders — one is certainly likely to lend little credence to the opinion or sentient status of a species they consider savage as opposed to pastoral or, may the high lords of their ascending heavens banish the thought, simply different — it is so blatantly inaccurate as a descriptor for those races as a whole to tread the line between galling and humorous. Perhaps the lizardfolk, in their impermanent marsh homes and with their simple ethos of survival and reproduction, could be considered primitive, savage, but even the lowest of the goblinoids have cultures with laws, art, and governance, to say nothing of the oral traditions of the centaurs, or the clansongs of the merfolk, or of course the world's greatest and oldest historical records maintained by the kobold nations.

It is perhaps easy to dismiss this example as simple quibbling over a fundamentally irrelevant choice of word; perhaps the reader may think that a name is just a series of letters, that the dialectics I have alluded to matter only in the most superficial of ways and even then only as a matter of pride rather than as a truly powerful tool of propaganda and disinformation. However, words are the units of thought, the way in which abstract cognition becomes concrete action, and it is truly only the most deluded of thinking beings that refuses to acknowledge the power these mere collections of sound and symbol have over their user. If a bugbear is a monster, it is ethical and fair to slay it on sight; what matter is the life of such a beast? Nothing, and indeed less than nothing: failing to kill it when one reasonably could have places culpability of its further atrocities on the head of whoever chose not to end the rampaging of a monster. Savage, lesser, monster, evil... These are not so much words as thought-stoppers, giving false rectitude to whoever employs them against those they detest or fear or desire to maintain power over. It is immaterial that that bugbear may be a merchant or scout or simply lost; it is irrelevant that the lizardman that threatens with brandished spear is defending its home; no consideration is given to the gnoll seeking medicine for her ailing mate. They are monsters, inherently evil, and deserve death or the psychic death that is forced indoctrination into whatever society deigns to abolish and assimilate the lesser cultures. It is by means of symbols and speech that the mammalian races exert their true power over all others and organize the world into right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, Good and Evil.

Good and evil are at the very heart of mammalian hypocrisy. Consider the laughable moral frameworks they have erected around the sorcerous arts: magic is simply a force of the universe, a physical law like any other that is manipulated with arcane will rather than bodily exertion, completely without motivation, purpose, or intent. Even the most morally deluded monkey cannot convince itself that fire is evil because it can burn flesh; why, then, is negative energy and its manipulation inherently wrong, inherently Evil with an immutable capital, simply because it withers the same? Why is the same scrutiny not afforded to sorcery that addles or controls the mind? A spell that completely subsumes the will of the subject is rightly considered simply a tool that can be used for good or ill as the caster wills, but a spell that simply detects how close to death those the caster sees are is branded evil, wicked, useful only to those with malignity in the core of their being. Triage, apparently, is a concept both foreign and foul to the mammals.

This disconnect between intent and morality is baffling to me regardless of how long I choose to study it and theorize as to its nature. Oh, certainly I can see how it is used as a tool by the powerful to maintain their thrall over the powerless — and what an effective tool it is! — but what I fail to understand is an individual's ability to adhere to such self-evidently wrong and facile ideas. Were I a megalomaniac with interest in establishing some kind of personal or even specieal hegemony, I would certainly condition my subjects to hate and fear anything that could threaten my rule or that I found personally distasteful; such would be only pragmatic for a being with no scruples or interest in the well-being or dignity of others. What I cannot fathom is how such overtly, blatantly self-serving cultural mores stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny, nor the apparent lack of interest in engaging in such scrutiny without external prodding. How the downtrodden cling to the boot that crushes them with love, faith, and acceptance, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

A thought experiment I find useful for demonstrating the necessity of intent to the nature of morality is what I think of as the parable of two wands: there exist, hypothetically, two magic devices; they were crafted by no-one, and simply have always been. One projects an exploding sphere of fire, capable of igniting most organic matter and even melting less hardy metals; the other turns corpses into mindless servants, animating them without in any way interacting with the souls of the deceased. Both have the capability to cause great harm, any would agree, and if pressed most would even admit either could be used to good purpose. The latter even moreso, as its capacity for creation (in the form of tireless unskilled labor or sending the dead to perform dangerous but simple tasks without risking harm to the living) far outstrips the former. If the rod of fire were used to murder a great number of innocents, the evil is housed in the wielder, not the tool; this much, almost all I have proposed the scenario to agree. If the rod of reanimation were used to defend the wielder's city from a rampaging army or mindless magical beast, I feel it is clearly and obviously if not a good act, at least one that is not in any way immoral; this is where I lose — at least temporarily — the agreement of many. Interestingly, if the second wand is changed to create golems from unliving (or even, often, deceased!) matter, however, the question of evil never even arises, despite golemeurgy requiring the summoning and enslavement of an elemental spirit to animate the golem's physical shell. Reusing a corpse, the conclusion then is, is evil, but ripping a sentient clump of matter from its home to pilot an enraged construct is not. Curious.

It is here that words again become important, and the deception at the core of inherent or objective "good" and "evil" is revealed. Those uneducated in the nature of magic claim, without justification, that reanimatory necromancy is simply inherently wrong, as is the creation of disease, the manipulation of negative energy, and even a handful of arbitrary abjurations and evocations. It just is. Many will invoke the commandments of some deity or other, and while this at least serves as a basis for that belief without begging the question, it ignores the fact that a god is not good just because it says it is, nor is it right simply because it is a god. There are a great number of gods, many of them truly abhorrent, and to accept an ethical framework simply because it is proffered by a more powerful being is foolish at best and dishonest at worst. However, it is those who do know enough about the nature of magic to be aware of the "aligned" spells that have most succumbed to the devious twisting of nomenclature; they use such sorcery's evil (or good, or chaotic) name as self-proving evidence of the objective nature of the (im)morality it represents. Such a spell is evil because it is an evil spell, and even if used for good that spell is still tainted by foulness. What they fail to address, and what I have yet to be presented with a good counterargument for, is that even within the fundamental nature of arcane reality, the property they describe as "evil" is just a physical law that is named such; in the same way as fire burns even if called ice, our descriptions of reality are simply concepts we apply to the universe to understand them and have no objective truth to them. Evil spells could have been called Delicious spells by the ancients when they were codifying arcane lore, and today's sages would argue that the existence of zombies proves the objectivity of flavor. It's all just words.

The divinations that reveal alignment are of particular interest to me, and a particular crux of my morally deconstructionist theories of magical law. Repeated uses of the same spell by the same or different mages typically reveal the same conclusion, and when they do not, it is reasonably explainable by a change of heart of the subject (people do change) or a mistake on the part of the caster. To me, though, it is this consistency that is the most damning evidence that whatever the spell sees, it is not an objective representation of the subject's moral fiber; my personal theory is that it instead detects what the subject thinks of itself, but that is largely irrelevant. Regardless, to make my reasoning clear to the hypothetical non-kobold audience, I will briefly explain the ascension of Kurtulmak (blessed be his barbed tail):

Many ages past, so many that even we, the world's preeminent historians, do not have clear numbers, the world was without both dragons and kobolds. It was Io, the Ninefold Dragon, who created the first true dragons; they were originally divine beings like Io himself, each with a different aspect of his personality. They were less powerful than he, however, and lacked his ability to divinely create; they desired such, and petitioned him for aid. Io gave them the knowledge they needed, but warned that using it would render them forever mortal, unable to return to the heavens and destined to eventually wither and die; the original dragons happily took this knowledge and departed for the world, each making itself a mate and as part of the process of so doing creating the first tribes of kobolds. We served them faithfully, taking up pick and spell to seek wealth from the earth for their pleasure and our purpose. Kurtulmak (hallowed be his impenetrable scales) was the first kobold created by the first dragon to use her new ability, and he lead his siblings with honor and glory. So faithfully did he and they serve that they were eventually released from that service to seek their own destiny, and with glee they did. They plumbed the soil and stone, harvesting, crafting, perfecting, and recording. By his peerless leadership and paramount sorcery, the first kobolds created a utopia, Darastrixhurthi. They were without equal in the fields they chose to pursue, and Darastrixhurthi was without equal in both its bounteousness and its perfect execution.

Indeed, it was this lack of an equal that would doom them, for jealousy is not solely the domain of mortals.

Garl the Deceiver, patron of the feckless gnomes, saw what Kurtulmak (champion of sorcerors) and his kin had created, and was outraged. The gnomes were to be the preeminent gemcutters in the mortal realm, the gnomes were to amass the most wealth, the gnomes were to outstrip all the other small folk. This was his belief, and when the gnomes themselves spent such time on games and jokes and japes and foolishness that the hardworking kobolds surpassed them in every respect, he decided to force his belief on reality in the way only a divinely-empowered despot can: he collapsed Darastrixhurthi with one wave of his gnarled hand, killing the kobolds to the last wyrmling, crushing them to the last egg. It was just a joke, he claimed. A prank, of the kind he was so well known for. He engendered a slaughter that to this day even Erythnul has been unable to match, a senseless act of bloodshed that must have made Nerull as jealous as he was delighted, and called it a joke. Few of the corpses sealed in what was once a thriving civilization were laughing.

Oh, the other gods were outraged, or claimed to be so. The most Good among them demanded an explanation and received no more than they already had, but none acted. The kobolds were not their children, so why should they be moved to do anything on their behalf? Pelor may claim to be the champion of all good people, Elhonna may say she protects all things that live, Heironeous believes himself to be not only the paragon of justice but its very incarnation, but did any of them show these traits? Did any of them truly prove themselves Good? They did not. It was not their death, not their injustice, not their problem. Punctilious disgust was the order of the day; action and fairness were not.

Eventually, it was Io himself that deigned to care. He brought the soul of Kurtulmak (may he mine forevermore) before him and offered a choice: Kurtulmak (all-watcher of all-watchers) could either recreate his society or be deified such that the kobolds would never again fear divine punishment without a guardian to champion them. It was no choice at all. Darastrixhurthi would remain buried and forgotten, paved with the bones of its builders, but the kobolds would have their god.

There are, of course, a great number of facts and details omitted for clarity and concision here, but the central thesis remains both true and indisputable. Even Jealous Garl and his craven priesthood do not deny the reality of his heinous actions, try to deflect and recontextualize it though they might. This is no mere legend, no folk tale for mewling hatchlings, it is a historical fact.

And yet. And yet! Any amount of divination and planar examination would reveal that Murderous Glittergold is inherently, immutably, objectively good. Not just good but Good. Jealous, petty, power-mad, deceitful, blood-soaked, genocidal, two-faced, a killer of children and the unborn, but Good. What sane morality would allow those facts to be simultaneously true? Even if he had ever made any attempt at making amends (he has not), or done great selfless works since then (there have been none), or even simply expressed remorse (ha!), how could such a being, such an unparalleled murderer, be considered good? No mortal who caused such suffering and death would be given such latitude. No other deity, even those called evil or who call themselves evil, has ever committed actual specicide. He is a laughing butcher, but the magic says he is good, so we accept it without questioning what it measures; his priests, such as they can be called, have access to the domain they call Goodness, yet can cast by his grace through that domain a whirling barrier of razor-sharp swords. Where is the inherent goodness in summoning a couatl, what is to prevent Aid being used in support of treachery or evil?

There is none, and there is nothing. It is all just words. Words the mammals and their gods wrap themselves in to avoid truly confronting morality. True goodness exists within selflessness and work and respect, not within a cackling killer simply because he claims to contain it.

It is worth mentioning at this point that nothing I have discussed here is an inherent failing of the mammalian races; most can be made to understand the truth of things if that truth is framed in the right way, and those that cannot usually only can't because they've been so thoroughly deceived by others. I do suspect that it is in the nature of social traits the mammalian humanoids share that allow these lies and misconceptions to both spread and take such firm root, but there is no reason they cannot free themselves from the shackles of deceit and false certainty if shown how. Indeed, some have come to the same conclusions on their own; my thoughts are hardly unique within the vastness of our reality. It is only with the disestablishment of self-interested power structures, both mortal and transcendent, that a truly valid ethical and moral system can be created and understood, and this is not solely the ability of the kobolds. We are simply better equipped to make these realizations, with our comparatively great tendency towards collectivism, altruism, and unity versus the surface-dwelling mammals combined with the factual reality of the suffering our great race has endured.

I find it interesting that the greatest mammalian allies I have made towards the ultimate deconstruction of traditionally flawed mammalian mores have been among the dwarves; while they have always shared a great deal with our people in terms of philosophy, tendencies, and simple proximity, they also share many of those same things with the gnomes that I, even in my station, struggle to communicate with without encountering their blunt refusal to see the truth or even eventual violence. Perhaps the gnomes themselves could be seen as victims of Garl of the Thousandfold Atrocities in a certain light, though it disgusts me even to consider it. These, though, are musings for another time, I feel.

this thred offends me. what if i can't read, Wheat? What; if; i; abuse; semi;colons; wantonly;