"Well, see, King Ulfgerth of Jotunheim used to have this green 
>>diamond called the Eye of Destiny.  Colossal.  Got to weigh at least 
>>five pounds." 

Well, the Eye of Destiny was only what they went there for. Who knows what else they stumbled across* when they actually got in there?

On the other hand, we've seen Toph since that adventure and she wasn't nine feet tall and neckless, so we may presume they didn't find the Ruby of Cyttorak, or at least that she didn't touch it if they did. (And really, would Toph Beifong not touch that if they found it?) That stands to reason, though. One presumes Ulfgerth would be using that, not hoarding it, if he possessed it.

--G.
* Or, well, what else Corwin stumbled across. Toph doesn't stumble across things. Very surefooted.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Unless, of course, you get your news accounts from the Ember Island Players.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

... as opposed to the one you just replied to? :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

...

...

I just want you to know that I hate you and hope you're going to hell for that.

--
Mr. Fnord
A good memory for bad fiction is a terrible thing to have. :(

I must ask though, where'd they put the spigots?

This isn't a reference to a badfic...

This is a reference to THE badfic. The one. The only. The immortal...

EYE OF ARGON

The only fic that's also a party game!

-- Bob
(Seriously. You take turns reading, and see how long you can last before you crack up or can't continue for any other reason.)
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

"... Run?"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That's different, I was expecting the cliche.

Jeanne

	Jeanne Hedge http://www.jhedge.com
"Never give up, never surrender!"

AANG: Yay! ... wait, what exactly is that?

ZUKO: It's some kind of mystical gemstone.

AANG: Well don't touch it!

ZUKO: Why not?

AANG: I'm just very suspicious of giant glowing gems sitting on pedestals.

(ZUKO picks up the gemstone.)

Things proceeded from there in about the manner you'd expect anything involving Zuko making a decision of any kind to proceed in.

-Merc
Keep Rat

"Zuko, is that some sort of mystical gemstone?"
"Well, naturally."
"Did you take it off its pedestal, Zuko?"
"Well, I suppose... I suppose I must have done, yes."
"PRINCE ZUKO IS AN IMBECILE!"

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

There is much data to support that hypothesis.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's just that Zuko's superpower is to make really, REALLY bad decisions that are only balanced out by the fact that about one time out of ten, he manages to make a stupendously good one.

If anyone here ever played any Amber Diceless Roleplaying... Zuko has, like, a full 20 points of Bad Stuff. Straight up.

-Merc
Keep Rat

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I dunno. I can't read this conversation without imagining it voiced by Tom Baker and Ian Marter.

It'd be worth it, just to see Zuko in the ascot.

And Aang. In The Scarf.

I imagine he and the Doctor would have a lot of fun together.
"What's the point of being grown up if you can't be childish now and then?"....

I'm trying to justify having K-9 go penguin sledding...

"Leela and Sokka,
Sitting in a tree,
Kay Eye Ess - "

"STOP THAT!"

And now I'm imagining Samuel L. Jackson uttering an almost-but-not-quite version of a famous bad-movie line...

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

Toph Beifong is many things, but a gentleman she is not. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

------
Jon Helscher

Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

Thus, his propensity for random awesome crap to work in his favour.

Gentlemen, the truth is out at last; The Corwin Bowl is an extremely advanced infohazard designed to protect and empower a young deity finding his feet in the mortal realm.

CONSPIRACYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!111ONEONEELEVENANDSOFORTH

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

In other news, tinfoil makes for some supremely uncomfortable hat lining.

-Merc
Keep Rat

With Strossian plots, that's often not a boolean variable.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

True, although I was thinking of the UF potential. :)

>slash-labyrinth

... in more ways than one, considering the preceding.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The consequences of me not quite thinking that one entirely through are a bit of a chuckle here on the forums. :) Were the lads up in the Celestial Bureaucracy to actually fumble the ball on that one, things would probably proceed somewhat differently...

Chejop Kejak was not a happy man.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen, but was I or was I not present for each and every department meeting on this project?" He surveyed the assembled team of programmers, holy men, and shamans (in one case, all three, but Pathik was generally considered to be pretty weird) with a gimlet eye.

"The operational spec clearly called for those prayer strips to grant Tomorrow's Son the auspicious powers of the Handsome Boy Eyes Prana, scope of all of Midgard, triggered any time he meets a new person governed by fate of the -appropriate gender and sexual orientation-. Mind telling me how we left that last bit off, and how it survived three debug passes and actually got uploaded into the World-Engine? And why, instead of it providing him with near-total immunity to Muspelheim's latest bout of asshattery, Mister Ravenhair's entire romantic destiny -instead- went into a loop snarl that threatened to overrun its buffer?" His eyes shifted to the Project Lead, seated immediately to his right. "Gorodo?"

Gorodo the Red (Programmer First Class, Bureau of Destiny, Futures and Fates Department, currently Project Lead for the Tomorrow's Son Labyrinth Entanglement Undertaking), white-scaled and scarlet-feathered, managed not to cringe back from his boss, clacking his claws on the conference table. He'd managed to sublimate quite a lot of his draconic heritage to the needs of the job, but 'when in doubt, go on the offensive' was a hard habit to break. So he coiled himself up angrily, and retorted, "With all due respect, sir, it -happens-. We're crafting destiny by committee here, boss!" Pause. "Really, it's nobodies fault."

"Oh?" Chejop raised an eyebrow. "Would you care to try and sell that line to Skuld?"

This time, Gorodo didn't manage to not cringe.

Kejak gave the team one last good glare, and then sighed. "Recriminations later. Business now. Fortunately for you all, I've managed to stopgap this entire debacle temporarily by assigning Mister Ravenhair his father's destiny, which is similar enough to his own to adhere at least temporarily." Relief rippled through the room.

"BUT."

And then promptly ceased to.

"The nightly cleanup routines are going to notice that there are two of those running at the same time and collapse the one without the proper timestamp on it. When that happens, Mister Ravenhair's own destiny will snap back. So you have... a little over twelve hours to fix this." He favored the room with a small, humorless smile. "And I'd recommend taking less, because the Midgard-Knight is scheduled to have a romantic encounter with a 74% chance of sexytime with Skuld sometime in the next forty-eight hours, so unless someone would also like to volunteer to explain -that- after it happens..."

One of the junior programmers in the back raised a timorous hand. "Sir, who will be handling the infovores while we're getting the protective destiny entanglement properly functioning again? They're not going to be fooled by a simple duplication; these are class fives, and they have Lord Corwin's scent already. We think one of them might have already devoured the set of potential destinies involving him, Kaname Sterling, and snowball fights; we're double-checking hers right now."

Chejop Kejak sighed, and rubbed his neck. He'd been safeguarding destiny since doing so meant going to Midgard and walking two thousand li across Diqiu with nothing more a begging bowl, a set of prayer beads, and an iron staff, scattering salt mixed with the blood of gods into the ocean in order to ensure that demons did not crawl up between the gaps in the strands of fate where the sea met the land.

Things had changed a lot since then. He didn't carry a begging bowl anymore, but the first coin ever dropped into it, a copper tael he'd kept, had been melted down to form the contact points on his cervical-spine interface jack. His prayer beads had been cut apart to form the wooden inlays on the cyberdeck that the Norns had presented him on the occasion of the three thousandth year of his service.

He still had the iron staff, though; always close by. His hand closed around it now. He stood up, popped his neck.

"I will enter the World-Engine and deal with the infovores personally."

Hell, he needed to get out of the office more anyway.

-Merc
Keep Rat

(I've probably stepped MASSIVELY outside the boundaries of proper behavior for a guest in this house; originally this was just going to be a quippy response to Ben, and then this... thing insisted on dropping out of my head. I blame society.)

*blink*
Did you just write fan-fiction of the original creation of a fan fiction universe set to the tone of yet a third universe with a callback to a universe that hasn't actually been inserted into the Ur-UF?

I'm impressed.

--
-Pasha (Also, it's canon that UFGryph and Skuld aren't that kind of friend anymore, iirc)
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

"Probably"? Bless. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I probably should have deleted it, but I write so rarely these days I figured "Worst that can happen is people get mad."

-Merc
Keep Rat

And, hey, some of the rest of us have done it from time to time. One or two of us with... somewhat epically disastrous results... *coughs, shifty eyes*

-Terminus
(No, you don't wanna know. It was bad.)

Given Utena's nature, said officemouse would probably end up going home, telling her pointy-haired boss to take this job and shove it, and move on to bigger and better things.

Peter Eng
--
"I did it again, didn't I."

Get out of my *head*, Psicop scum.

Mine's Knight Rider: 2300. Go big or go home.

(Technically second, since Cor had already started on Otaku Rising when I first met him, but he's not here and I am. :) )