#sb and l reads kencyrath

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kendar gorgeous

the original concept of this is from @words-writ-in-starlight, the bastion of kencyrath-related content on the internet. everyone say “thank you, star!”

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Tori: I was like 12 years old and my dad walked up to me and he said, “Hello… [chuckles] Hello, I’m Ganth Gray Lord. I’m your father.” And then he said the following, “You know, Tyrandis… was one of the great Knorth and masters of the Senethar, but sometimes he would be Shanir. And according to a song I heard once, when he was holding back the Shanir part, he did some of his best work.

Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that. And I don’t know if he was discouraging me from being Shanir or encouraging me to betray my people because of rigid concepts of honor, y'know, the way he did. But that is how he thought to phrase it to a 12-year-old boy. How would that ever work? Like years later, I’d be the Highlord about to follow my sister, the nemesis, into battle and I’d be like, “Wait a second… What would Tyrandis do?” Which of course would be to follow Jame into battle. I never talked to my dad about that after this, but I figured I would tell all of you.

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Tori: I never went to Tentir. I got all of my training from this randir, his name was Harn Grip-Hard. Go ahead and laugh. His name is ridiculous. That was his name. It was Harn Grip-Hard. He was from Tentir. He was a beserker. [audience is silent] Oh, gee, very sorry everyone, did that make you uncomfortable? Well guess what! You're all randir and he's not even HERE! So imagine being TWENTY THREE YEARS OLD, fresh out of the Haunted Lands, COMPLETELY untrained and you're sitting in a small enclosed space with him. He's still got blood on his ears. And he's looking you in the eye to tell you for the first time in your VERY young life that SOME people REALLY HATE YOUR HOUSE. And they may just have to kill you over it!

So Harn came every night with a program to teach me about the violent world waiting for me outside my bunk in the Southern Wastes, and that program was called Street Smarts! “Time for Street Smarts with Harn Grip-Hard. Shut up! You’re gonna die. Street Smarts!” That was the general tone. He would give me tips to deal with infighting between the houses.

I will share some of the tips with you this evening. “Okay, tip number one. Street Smarts! Let’s say a Randir pulls a knife on you to try and get the Highlord's seat.” You remember the scourge of muggings when you were in the Southern Host. You know how a Kendar thinks. “Man, I want to be Highlord, the traditionally Knorth seat. Hey, maybe that random Ardeth bastard with the extreme PSTD, y'know, shivering like a wet Chihuawawa will be able to help.” "Let’s say a Randir Kendar pulls a knife on you to steal the Highlord's seat. What do you do? You go fumbling for your father's ring. And you go fumbling for your father's ring. Well, in that split-second, that’s when he’s going to stab you. So here’s what you do. You kid get yourself an Ardeth crest on your jacket. Okay, you can get these at any haberdashery. You put a bright silver Ardeth crest and then when a guy flashes a blade, you point and go, ‘I think I saw a Knorth go that way!’ Then you run the other direction.”

“Tip number two. Street Smarts! Let’s say a kidnapper throws you in their base on a volcano…” This was at nine in the evening. [audience laughing] “Let’s say a Karnid throws you in their base. Don’t panic. [chuckles] Once you get your bearings… find the fabric that contains reality, get some slack in your chains, make a fist, punch through the fabric, thus creating a hole in reality leading to our ancestral enemy Perimial Darkling, then stick your little hand out and wave to your darkling sister training in the eaves of the Master's house to let her know that something HINKY is going on.” Can you imagine seeing that? [imitating the Senetha, pauses] “I think Tori's telling me I'm supposed to be on Water Blowing by now!” [audience laughing]

“Tip number three. Street Smarts! You Knorth have no upper body strength.” And we were like, “We know but, hey.” “If some guy tries to grab you, you can’t fight him with fists. So here’s what you do. You kids run into the nearest building, then go all the way up the stairs and jump down at him from the upper-level window. That’ll throw him off his rhythm.” That was a big thing with Harn, throwing potential assassins off their rhythm. “He’s not gonna know how to fight back with a feral creature of legend coming down at him.” [audience laughing] “If the Knorth women had an accessible flight of stairs and a fascination with the clouds, they’d still be alive today. Street Smarts!”

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Tori: Harn told me things that haunt me to this day. He came one night for training. He goes, “Okay, when you get kidnapped…” Not if, when. [audience laughing] "Okay, so when you get kidnapped, the place where the guy grabs ya, in the biz we call that the primary location. Okay. Your odds of coming back alive from the primary location, about 60%. But if you are taken to a secondary location, your odds of coming back alive are slim to none.”

I am 35 years old and I am still terrified of secondary locations. If I’m at a place, I never want to go to another place. I’ll be at a council at Gogrethor and someone’ll be like, “Hey, Highlord, you coming to the barracks? We’re all gonna get drinks and keep the party going with the Kendar!” I’m like, “Nah, sister. You’re not getting me to no secondary location. You want it? Look at my Ardeth crest!” Street Smarts! Stay alert out there.

Between Harn and my father’s warnings about the Shanir, I thought I was going to be murdered my entire childhood and young adulthood. As Highlord people are like, “What are your top three plans for the Kencyrath?” I'm like, “Top three plans? I thought I would be dead in a Karnid base or murdered by my darkling sister by now!”

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Tori: I restored Gogrethor. The whole thing! Holy shit, right? I just got a letter from the Women's World, which was fun ’cause mail, you know? So I open up the letter and they said, “Hey, Torisen, it’s the Matriarchs. You remember?” I say, “Yes, of course.” And they said… How did they phrase it? They said, “Give us a child!”

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Jame: I found out recently that jokes don’t do well in court. So, some friends of mine were sued back in Tai-Tastigon for property damage. And they were guilty. And the lawsuit dragged on for years and years and eventually I got a letter when I was lordan of the Knorth. It was my friend from Tai-Tastigon, Darinby. He said, “Hey, that lawsuit with my neighbor is still dragging on and my neighbor just subpoenaed all my letters that mention him or the lawsuit.” And I said, “That’s crazy. But why are you calling me?” And he said, “Because you should be concerned.”

"He said, “I have an letter here from when we were apprentices where I wrote, ‘Hey, guys, I’m going to miss drinks at the Moon tonight because I have to meet with my neighbor about that lawsuit thing.’ And you replied, ‘Hey, do you want me to kill that guy for you? Because it sounds like he sucks and I will totally kill that guy for you. Okay. See you at the temple of the Three-Faced God.'”

[audience laughing]

Of all the things I did in Tai-Tastigon I would be ashamed to have mentioned out loud in a court of law, I think the top one is “See you at the temple of the Three-Faced God.” I'm goddamn religious and everything, but that rat bastard doesn't need to be reminded that people worship him.

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Tori: Jame would go like this. [glares intensely] And Caldane would just do whatever she said! Now that’s not nice, right? The way I was raised, you’re supposed to say, “May I please have some respect, please?” And then maybe you will get some. And I bet all of you were taught to say please and thank you. But if all of us could go "Boo!" and Caldane would float up to the ceiling, we’d do it all day long. Even if you're not even mad at Caldane, you’d just do it so you could get some shade in the afternoons.

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YAY! awesome! i’m hoping to turn it on as i play one of the many candy-crush-esque games i’ve been addicted to- and i JUST found tpbipl on apple podcasts so woot woot lol. gonna get on that pretty quickly.

i was already out of room on my ask (and didn’t have the patience to figure out two parts), so please have my dump about kencyrath-related thoughts (some of which @aethersea and i have already discussed, sorry finx, i’m only tagging you so i don’t have to retype this to you separately):

i love jame and tori a lot! so much!! i’m also a SUCKER for twin relationships, halves of souls, etc, and i am SO HERE for them and how inextricably they’re tied together and!!! ahh!!!

but i also love them on their own!! jame is SUCH A DISASTER, god, i love her so much, and i’m VERY MAD because the cover on the god stalker chronicles is SO OBVIOUSLY N O T JAME!! she’s half darkness and half feral and it’s a WILD combination, sorta like rey from star wars i think? anyways it’s so good and i’m half in love with her already.

and tori! the best man! just doing his best! a very good leader who’s just So Tired and i’m HERE for him!! with burr and kindrie and a random werewolf he DEFINITELY slept with a few times and the dreams he shares with a sister he half fears and half hopes against everything to see again and! i love him! i need him to be protective of jame, like, yesterday. (and then obviously she punches him but like, points for effort my dude.)

(SIDENOTE: I CALLED JAMETHIEL BEING THEIR MOTHER D A Y S AGO AND I’M VERY HAPPY TO BE CORRECT!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! GIVE ME THOSE PARALLELS PLEASE!!)

the worldbuilding is?? so good?? i know i’m preaching to the choir here but i honestly wasn’t sure about this whole protaganist-has-no-CLUE-what-she’s-doing-or-where-she-is and now i DIG IT!! there are armored unicorns and the magic is SO cool and i’m NEVER GONNA BE OVER THAT IMAGE OF THE LITTLE SHADOW GIRL IN TORI’S ARMS, THANKS FOR THAT. just?? the souls?? and the gods?? i love it!! i want visuals DESPERATELY!! this is what good fantasy looks like folks!!

anyways i’m sure i’ll think of a million other things to say but I LOVE THIS SERIES AND THANK YOU FOR RECCING IT and also i’m dying for content so i will probably be enthusiastically reblogging fic as soon as i finish!

STAR! I’M NEARLY DONE W DARK OF THE MOON AND I’M LOVING IT SO MUCH, GOD, THIS SERIES IS SO GOOD!! I’M REALLY EXCITED but v nervous about tori and jame meeting bc it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna be the reunion i’ve been waiting for, AND I HAVE BEEN WAITING. anyway i’m desperately trying to balance my id’s need for content w a healthy fear of spoilers, so: does the podcast have any spoilers? how long are episodes? (i’m gonna try it BUT my brain is bad w podcasts, so it’s a crapshoot lol.)

BLUE!!!!!

I AM SO DELIGHTED TO HAVE CONVERTED YOU!!!

Okay, so, the podcast episodes vary pretty wildly in length, they’re shorter at first (an hour) and then get longer in Dark of the Moon because things get more complicated once you drop Torisen into the mix (usually more like an hour and forty minutes), and we are doing our absolute damndest to be spoiler-free!  I am just now editing the episode for Ch 7 of Dark of the Moon, the one with the rathorn mare and the Builder city, and I have done my level best to cut anything more spoiler-heavy than broad statements like “we meet more changers later,” and while I’m not perfect, I think I’ve done pretty well.  We also try to do trigger warnings at the start of each episode, although, again, we’re human.

Re: listening to the podcast, first off, don’t hang yourself out to dry over it if you just have a hard time with podcasts, my “subbed media is Absolutely Prohibited” ass certainly won’t hold it against you.  Don’t feel obligated, but also you ain’t gonna find a lot of other Kencyrath stuff out there.  Our chatter is usually pretty easy listening and doesn’t require a lot of attentiveness in order to follow it, from what I’ve been told.  Since we basically just go over every chapter beat by beat, if you read the book recently, you can sort of tune in and out without missing anything (this is a problem if you are me, the editor, who knows these books back to front and often tunes out during editing).  The intro episode’s audio is…not good, we had some pretty acute technical issues, but if you’re already two books in, you can definitely skip it outright, it doesn’t include anything of importance.  We initially posted on Castbox, but the Podcast Bound in Pale Leather can now be found on most podcast platforms including iTunes, and we are getting approved for Spotify, Stitcher, Google Music, Podcast Republic, and SoundCloud, so…go wild.

Incidentally, I’ve convinced more people to read these books since starting this podcast nine months ago than my mother and I COMBINED had managed in the preceding DECADE, and if you’re not careful I will go MAD WITH POWER.

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“True, people often died around her, but she seldom killed them, even in a berserker rage. It was more as if she created a climate in which death was likely to occur.”

The Sea of Time, P. C. Hodgell

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also, continuing the saga of ‘essbie listens to taylor swift and has emotions’, today i... listened to lover. and had emotions.

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F I N I S H E D

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suddenly i am very invested in jame

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officially deleted all of the “intellectual” books off my to read list and... so relieving.

now i’m left with a bunch of fantasy books, which is really good except for the fact that i’m currently unable to read ANYTHING, so, y’know, a mixed bag. i might buy myself a nice set of the queen’s thief books to promote rereading, even though i do not have space for another book series in my bookshelf. we shall see!

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oh god no, i'm having kencyrath feelings again, this is NOT okay, there's only like SEVEN FANS IN THE WHOLE WORLD