bandit king of lunch and string

!!!! beeeeeeees <3

 

gaz -- which is to say, gareth -- isn't the one who has the nobles rallying against him. that's casimir, across the border. gaz has some cousins who thought they had a shot at the throne, and are thus not pleased to see him, but he derails them with gifts and quests and praise, and they don't actually move against him. he's fairly politically deft. the ones he has trouble with is the military, because he's so anti-war that they feel like he pulled the world out from under them.

casimir does not wear proper kinging clothes at all, but his nobles already have so many issues with him being, you know, a dirt-common reindeer herder with not one drop of noble blood, that his refusal to cover the magic tattoos on his arms barely registers.

 

plus casimir's like five foot eight, gaz's coronation robes would actually fit him. :D

 

yeah, i should have gaz's minister of protocol suggest that. what he'll actually end up doing is ordering a much lighter formal robe, fancy enough to be ceremonial but made of colorfully embroidered silk instead of gold and jewels, and wearing that instead. he'll probably claim that altering his father's robes of state would be disrespectful and he can't do it -- which isn't quite true, though he does feel weird wearing someone else's coat, but really he just can't stand the heavy scratchy stiff thing and it makes it hard to do his job.

at some point he should start complaining about it to casimir and casimir's like, "do i look like someone who sympathizes with your decision to let your underlings dress you up like a doll?"

 

it was hilarious. :D

 

barb: wake up, jesse, it's morning!
me: no it's not.
barb: what is it then?
me: it's... it's... bricks.
barb: wake up, jesse, it's bricks!
me: i know when i've been outmaneuvered.

 

thinking about what gareth's personal symbol/crest/banner should be. definitely a gold lotus on blue, but i'm wondering if it should be a mandala or a more floral sort of item.

 

the kind of thing gaz will have made for his new long-enough ceremonial robes.

 

casimir's banner is, of course, goth as fuck.



and he doesn't have it delicately embroidered on things, he has it stencilled roughly on things like a logo. or block-printed on posters, there's a lot of that, because when he makes a proclamation or decree, he has it printed up and wheat-pasted to walls in three languages all over the country. he also repealed the law against damaging or defacing government postings, because he knows that a) they don't last long and thus become an eyesore within a week or two, b) they're most effective on the first day anyway, and c) once it's not illegal, people take them home as souvenirs, which makes your message travel farther than forcing the populace to treat every moldy wanted poster and city ordinance as some kind of holy icon.

so you see soldiers tooling around with a hourglass-and-antlers stencil and a bucket of cheap white paint pretty frequently. they'll be marking crates of relief aid or condemned buildings or anything else that says "we're doing a thing with this, civilian hands off." enforcement varies from 'someone shoos you off with a broom' (for minor construction sites) to 'shoot on sight' (for armory shipments to active units) so people are pretty quick to learn to leave that shit alone.

contrast gareth having beautiful public fountains made with literal, actual gold-and-lapis inlay on them, and just... trusting the public not to steal them. and this works somehow. did he put a spell on them to make people disinclined to steal the decorations? we just don't know.

 

from a discussion of stalemate plotty things w seebs:

 

-raises hand- so I haven't been on Tumblr since like... 2016? Maybe even longer?

Soooo... What is this fic you keep talking about? It seems like original fic? Does galley have anything to do with galley?

I'm so lost here xD

 

original fic, yes! two lands locked in eternal war; two kings determined to end the stalemate and bring peace; a bunch of asshole gods going "oh no you di'nt!"

this galley is an orc mage, casimir's right hand man and best friend. he's inspired by @Vast Derp 's troll galley, but isn't a copy of him.

i'd be happy to tell you all the things, but i just woke up, so i'm easily confused. ask specific questions and i will answer.

 

some advisors who don't like the alliance marriage: but surely now that the treaty is signed you could tell the high priest to annul it?
gareth: i believe according to religious law you can't annul a marriage once it's been consummated
the advisors: wait, are you telling me you...
gareth: yep
the advisors: and that man...!
gareth: i mean have you seen that ass

 

not that i am in any way looking forward to my post-hermes life (seriously i hate that cats don't live past 20 much, so unfair) but every cat i have should be a maine coon. they're so gloriously weird. and those big fluffy tufty grabby snowshoe paws. wonderful.