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Considering that was speculation Butters made right before being an incredible idiot thinking he should bug his friends while they worked an ultra sensitive case, I'm inclined to think he didn't know what he was talking about and Dresden seeming to hit his limits faster being on account of other factors. (Aside, Butters basically got the sword of Faith as a result of having absolutely no faith in his friends. Weird.) One factor I haven't seen discussed here is that Harry was mentally pregnant with a 12 year old baby. Sure, he had that sweet Winter magic epidural, but still. If it is a retcon, it's dumb.
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May 28, 2014 17:54
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I know he has said any Maggie & Mouse stories would be kids book level rather than short stories, but I still want to learn more about the monster under the bed they slayerized
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May 28, 2014 18:20
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Fried Chicken posted:I know he has said any Maggie & Mouse stories would be kids book level rather than short stories, but I still want to learn more about the monster under the bed they slayerized I think it would be really short. Maggie: There's something under there Mouse!  Mouse: Woof. The monster runs for its life. Maggie: Yay! Doggie hugs!  Mouse wags his tail.
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May 28, 2014 18:27
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CPFinnit posted:Did anyone catch Maggie calling herself a Dinosaur Cowgirl? Just like her old man. Oh man I can't believe I missed this. Speaking of Hecate. Can anyone with a better understanding of Greek Mythology tell me if she's supposed to be a prior incarnation of Summer/Winter faeries or is Hecate distinct enough to be the "Third" faerie queen that has been hinted at previously. Also, what's the deal with Goodman Grey's payment being 1 dollar. That's twice now Harry managed to swing the service of a heavy hitter for cheap. In Cold Days he got advice from Vadderung for pocket change. Sure they have a history and Vadderung likes him, but still. Is there some sort of allusion or reference I'm missing? I'm pretty interested who Grey owes Rent to.
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May 28, 2014 18:49
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the weird thing with Hectate is that according to Welcome to the Jungle Hectate was a hag. Now she is a faerie queen? Is this a Kringle/Vadderumg thing?
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May 28, 2014 18:55
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Xtanstic posted:
Vadderung helped Harry for a nickel because he actually wanted to help him and so asked for something trivial in return, because it's against his nature to do something for free. I assume a similar thing is going on with Grey. Or perhaps it's the nature of the exchange that he benefits from. Maybe completing a bargain has value to him in and of itself.
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May 28, 2014 18:58
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AllTerrineVehicle posted:Vadderung helped Harry for a nickel because he actually wanted to help him and so asked for something trivial in return, because it's against his nature to do something for free. I assume a similar thing is going on with Grey. Or perhaps it's the nature of the exchange that he benefits from. Maybe completing a bargain has value to him in and of itself. That's a good point. It might be Grey needs to do 'a good deed' every so often to maintain his 'good-guy-nagloshii' status. I seem to remember him looking at Michael weirdly when Michael went all Archangel mode in the bank vault. More random thoughts from the book: I guess Ferrovax is a progressive Dragon seeing as he doesn't hoard everything and banks some of his loot with Marcone 
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May 28, 2014 19:05
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Xtanstic posted:I guess Ferrovax is a progressive Dragon seeing as he doesn't hoard everything and banks some of his loot with Marcone And while I'm on that it is really weird Molly only has access to < $1 billion. Maybe Mab doesn't trust her? Or maybe that is just liquid, and the rest is tied up in assets? Because even at average 50 year stock market returns Winter should have wealth approaching the annual GDP of G20 nations
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May 28, 2014 19:35
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Fried Chicken posted:which is odd because per the AMA Sinthorax's hoard is still sitting untouched, because it is all cursed. What could Ferro have that he wants less protection for? Stuff he wants safe but still needs regular access to? Stuff for his agents (assuming he had any) maybe? Could just be that's where Ferrovax keeps all his paper money. After all, while useful, greenbacks aren't shiny. Or maybe he has some other reason to try to build up Marcone. As far as Molly's funds, I'd guess that money is her discretionary fund. To Winter it's probably something along the lines of giving a kid a $20: it seems like a lot to the kid, but honestly not that much in the grand scheme of things. She's still pretty new as a Queen and so probably doesn't have casual access to the keys to the kingdom yet.
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May 28, 2014 19:46
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Silento posted:So, with Skin Game coming up, and the resolution to the Lash/parasite plotline sure to be included, what are people's theories on what will happen? Personally, I expect Lash to act as a replacement for Bob, now that Bob isn't readily available for Harry.  Hoping this pans out so I can say I predicted something at least one time.I enjoyed Skin Game. It wasn't quite as good as Cold Days, but still among the better books in the series. The action was really solid, and some of the twists really surprised me. "Nice try? Mister, where I come from there is no try."  Maggie is so adorable! Hades is such a bro, and Uriel continues to be cool. Does anyone mind explaining to me what the Spear of Destiny is? My family is Jewish, and I've never studied much religion anyhow.
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May 28, 2014 19:46
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Silento posted:
Here.
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May 28, 2014 19:50
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Silento posted:
The spear that pierced Christ's side during the Crucifixion -- essentially, the weapon that actually dealt Christ's death blow. In the Grail Legend, the Fisher King was wounded by the Holy Lance, and hence could only be healed by drinking from the Grail.. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 19:51
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Silento posted:
Its the spear the soldiers poked Christ in the side with as he hung on the cross. Ostensibly grants various powers depending on what story you're looking at. Edit: gently caress, beaten like a cheap drum.
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May 28, 2014 19:51
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I don't know why it didn't occur to me to just google it.  Thanks, though.
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May 28, 2014 20:21
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I'm up to Chapter 9 or so in Skin Game and it is super good. It's Dresden's Eleven!
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May 28, 2014 20:45
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Xtanstic posted:
Vadderung(Cold Days): Harry gets Vadderung's services for a nickel AND a favor. Favors on Harry's level are a pretty major currency and Vadderung will take that poo poo seriously. I'm pretty sure he didn't get that information cheaply. The nickel also seemed like it was mostly to drive home the point that Harry needed to ask his friends for help on this one and that he couldn't Lone Ranger it just because he was afraid of getting them involved with Winter Bullshit. Grey: Vadderung said that Grey would take the contract if he introduced them. Maybe Grey owed Vadderung a debt and this was part of the payment for it?
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May 28, 2014 22:42
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I hope that future books don't have as many nerd references as this book contained. It was saturated with them, and while it is sort of who Harry is, it's just getting to be a bit much.
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May 28, 2014 22:46
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Fellwenner posted:I hope that future books don't have as many nerd references as this book contained. It was saturated with them, and while it is sort of who Harry is, it's just getting to be a bit much. I found the idea of someone else in the series other than Dresden having watched The Black Hole far more immersion-ruining. I didn't think there were that many references personally but then again I kept reading the Iron Druid books after the loving lolcats part so maybe I have a higher tolerance for nerd.
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May 28, 2014 22:55
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Well now that we've had it confirmed that there is crossover between the Greek pantheon and the Faerie courts, do you think Hades is purely Greek or could it be another mantle? I could definitely see the parallels with the Erlking there, and it would explain why he would have access to the souls of the dead for the Wild Hunt.
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May 28, 2014 23:18
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Fellwenner posted:I hope that future books don't have as many nerd references as this book contained. It was saturated with them, and while it is sort of who Harry is, it's just getting to be a bit much. I really could not see any major extra references in this book compared to the old ones. It may have been a bit more noticeable with one being a code word.
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May 28, 2014 23:18
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Oh, and while Lasciel mentioned it, I'd say with what we know now about his power set that it was Anduriel who whispered into Harry's ear.
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May 28, 2014 23:31
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Some thoughts : * glad to get some resolution to the parasite storyline - bitterly disappointed lash is truly gone. I thought that the healing thing was a real good line of thought. Harry and lashs spirit child is a good compromise though. I think my reaction was the same as Murphy's to Harry's "I'm pregnant" thing. * what's with the dream between him and molly in the first quarter of the book? Was it a denarian trick? * if not, how did coin lasciel know of him and lash's kids when it's been put in place for a very long time that they were distinctly separate entities. Seems a bit of a plot hole. * re the coins left in hades realm, lasciels coin is also trapped under a poo poo load of molten rock, which will have cooled to stone by the time anyone figures out another way back in to that realm. That's all I can think of at the moment, I want to do a re listen at some point soon to pick up poo poo I missed the first time through.
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May 28, 2014 23:43
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Sir Rabia Tirnova posted:Some thoughts : No, he actually talked to Molly. She was asleep and so was he and it had been the first time in a while they were both in that situation and somehow it let them mentally connect. I assume Lashel could sense Lash Jr inside Harry's head or had enough knowledge to know what would have happened.
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May 28, 2014 23:56
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Sir Rabia Tirnova posted:Some thoughts : We know that Anduriel can listen in on spoken conversations. Presumably he had Harry under full time surveillance this book, overheard Harry explain the Lash-baby to Murphy, and passed the gossip onto Lasciel. Still, not very well written. Really that goes for all of Lasciel's appearance. For someone nicknamed the Temptress/Webweaver she was as subtle as a sack of bricks. "Surprise, it is I, Lasciel, hiding in this bit-role character. I am a woman scorned." /gets rear end kicked
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May 29, 2014 00:02
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Grey: My guess is that his "Rent money" is favour and symbol based rather than an amount of cash, and probably has something to do with Vadderung. He mentions several times that he's doing this job for Rent money, and in the end he walks away with a buck. That looks like someone/something (Vadderung?) who works with favours and the symbols of favours has said "do this job, collect a single dollar from Dresden and give that to me for this month's Rent". It's not like he could just produce any dollar, and that's a very Odin way of doing things.
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May 29, 2014 00:19
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Any idea about who Nick was referring to as THE ENEMY? He's pissed off a lot of people but, the major ones that strike me would be the White God, Nemesis, or Lucifer.
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May 29, 2014 00:24
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Azuth0667 posted:Any idea about who Nick was referring to as THE ENEMY? He's pissed off a lot of people but, the major ones that strike me would be the White God, Nemesis, or Lucifer. It's Nemesis, pretty explicitly. He even talked to Harry about it before.
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May 29, 2014 00:26
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Good read. Some thoughts: Were we meant to know who River Shoulders/the Forrest people are? I had no idea. I think Harry might have mentioned meeting Bigfoot one time, but no details. Surprised Dresden is still getting poo poo for "beating up" Andi. She attacked him in wolf mode, was ripping the poo poo out of his back and trying to bite his neck, and he struck her once to get her off. She's also a werewolf - pretty tough and heals fast. We see Will pre-Cold days pull a knife out of his arm and heal up almost instantly. Seems like it should be a "mistakes were made by both sides, no one seriously hurt, move on with your lives" situation. How can Christ-artifacts be anti-Outsider weapons? The Outsiders have been trying to become Insiders since Reality was created. Winter has been the guardian for "this era", which given the lifespan of some of the powers and no one giving Mab poo poo for being the new kid on the block must have been a long drat time already. Have there been major Outsider attacks since Christ was around? Nick would have been alive for those then, and the White council existed in that period - and given the lifespan of wizards 2000 years isn't such a long period that records wouldn't be kept (McCoy has a journal chain going all the way back to the original Merlin, for example) yet the Council as a whole seems clueless about the threat. I assume Nick told Tessa Dresdan killed Deirdre, but after seeing the Gate of Blood stuff I had assumed Tessa knew what Nick would have to do to get into the vault and was trying to stop it to save Deirdre. If so, it seems pretty credulous of her to believe Harry did it when Nick comes back from his Deirdre-killing trip sans Deirdre. If not, what was she trying to stop that was important enough to fight Nick over it and yet not so important she wasn't willing to help him at the end? Slightly disappointed Harry didn't punch anyone or use his ice-claws, I really thought he'd whip them out to surprise evil Bigfoot or kill the goons at the end. Maybe even use them to fight Tessa in the vault since using fae powers wouldn't break technology. I enjoyed the reoccurring "Parkour!"s, especially when Grey used it at the end. Hades/Spot were awesome too. Someone mentioned Grey possibly being Kincaid, but I doubt it. Remember Harry has seen both Kincaid and a nagoshii with his Sight, Kincaid was big and scary, but nothing like the nagloshii. People have also mentioned surprise that someone with a nagloshii parent isn't pure evil, but they were originally some kind of divine messenger. They aren't genetically evil - they just fell pretty hard.
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May 29, 2014 01:03
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Well I plowed through that book and honestly I was a little disappointed, I really loved the last two Denarian books but this one just felt flat. It wasn't bad it just felt short and left out a lot of things that would have been really interesting. I thought for a book hyped around a heist of the underworld there was just too little heist poo poo going down. I wanted a Dressen Oceans 11 but there was so little of the robbery in the book it was disappointing. I also felt like the first 40% of the book didn't really go anywhere and didn't really set up anything, there was a little foreshadowing of Butter's being batman but there was so little that was happening besides the relationship building between Karrin and Harry, which has had enough buildup since Changes. The only real event before the showdown between Murphy and Nicodemus was the Fomor in the ballroom and I have no idea why the Fomor were there or what the motivations were. That would have been a great opportunity for Murphy to explain what the paranet and normal folk of Chicago were seeing with this unknown evil. The book also felt like it ended way too abruptly, I would have loved to have had some idea what the new spirit of intellect was like I think the fact that it ended so neatly and didn't add any cliffhangers like the previous books hurt it. But we at least got some foreshadowing on time travel so I thoroughly expect that to happen in the future books. Well at least 12 months until the next one I just hope it has more substance and overarching plot stuff and doesn't just feel like an episode in Dresden's life the soap opera. Then again Grave Peril felt kind of similar to this in structure but ended up setting up the plot for the next 10 books.
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May 29, 2014 01:13
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Illuyankas posted:Oh, and while Lasciel mentioned it, I'd say with what we know now about his power set that it was Anduriel who whispered into Harry's ear. Makes sense but how the hell did he do that while on church grounds? Darkrenown posted:Good read. Some thoughts: My guess is he met him in a short story that hasn't yet been collected into a compilation Darkrenown posted:Good read. Some thoughts: My read on this that the Christ-artifacts are simply powerful on a worldwide belief scale in that they have a large number of followers therefore imbuing the relevant religious symbols with Power. No idea how they would be used practically. Locker Room Zubaz posted:
Wait what? I must have missed this. Care to clarify? Xtanstic fucked around with this message at 01:19 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 01:14
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Darkrenown posted:Good read. Some thoughts: It's been shown that articles of faith have immense power and there really aren't any more tangible articles of faith than the items from the death of the founder of the second most popular faith in the world. So yeah the outsiders probably don't fear Christians or Jesus but using the spear that killed him as a conduit of all the faith of millions of people seems like it would have some serious power
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May 29, 2014 01:19
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Just finished the book and loving cheered when Michael kicked the gate off the hinges and went after Nick. So awesome 
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May 29, 2014 01:20
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Xtanstic posted:My guess is he met him in a short story that hasn't yet been collected into a compilation There's a series of three Harry Dresden stories about Bigfoot. quote:“I Was A Teenage Bigfoot” — from Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste, edited by Kevin J. Anderson.
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May 29, 2014 01:25
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Darkrenown posted:Good read. Some thoughts: Outsiders and Artifacts: I don't think that the artifacts are anti-Outsider weapons; I think they're just weapons that are effective against Outsiders. The Swords exist to save the Denarians, but back in Proven Guilty Michael shows up with Amoracchius all covered in gore and Ebenezer says that he showed up and straight up saved their lives from Outsiders, so it's obviously effective against them as well. Bob's also of the opinion that it has the power to straight up obliterate a demon's essence; faith magic is powerful poo poo.
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May 29, 2014 01:38
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There is a quote somewhere about how even the most powerful wizards have to burn a heap of energy to scratch an Outsider, which would seem to imply that they're resistant rather than impervious. Said artefacts are probably so powerful (owing to the nature of their creation) that they can just push right through that resistance. They might be better wielded by a Starborn, but they'll still get the job done if not.
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May 29, 2014 01:50
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quote:
When he talks with Michael: "Can you go into the past, change things that have already happened?" "Theoretically?"
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May 29, 2014 01:54
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Khizan posted:Outsiders and Artifacts: The Swords seem to give the Knight whatever they need to match (not necessarily defeat) their opponent, as long as the wielder doesn't betray the sword's purpose. This would include the ability to cut things that are normally un-cuttable, should it be necessary. Michael's Sword doesn't cut through Nick's sword because Michael doesn't need that sort of thing to have a chance of beating Nick in a sword fight. Butters does need something like that, and his Sword obliges. Since they're levellers the Swords' abilities seem to depend on who's wielding them.
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May 29, 2014 02:40
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Outsiders have DR/Good.Xtanstic posted:Makes sense but how the hell did he do that while on church grounds? I figure Anduriel broke the rules to get the message across just that once, like breaking a window to eavesdrop instead of just listening to people talking outside (in this instance the window is the immaterial boundary of a church faith's threshold).
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May 29, 2014 02:42
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In regards to the whisper from a fallen I thought lasciel claimed credit for it directly in their showdown? Maybe I misread that part.
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May 29, 2014 02:42
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AlphaDog posted:The Swords seem to give the Knight whatever they need to match (not necessarily defeat) their opponent, as long as the wielder doesn't betray the sword's purpose. This would include the ability to cut things that are normally un-cuttable, should it be necessary. Michael's Sword doesn't cut through Nick's sword because Michael doesn't need that sort of thing to have a chance of beating Nick in a sword fight. Butters does need something like that, and his Sword obliges. Since they're levellers the Swords' abilities seem to depend on who's wielding them. This is exactly how they work in the official RPG, by the way.
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May 29, 2014 02:50
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