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What that guy said. I'm not someone who believes writers owe readers anything. Do it in your own time ofc.
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# ? Jan 11, 2016 07:11 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:07 |
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General Battuta posted:Ah, the month is almost over! I'll never be this famous again! I just finished the book, it was pretty good, these threads are also interesting and I thought you did a good job making your world interesting even without the very interesting protagonist. But please...spoil me, daddy!! Tell me these things!!
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 02:51 |
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I will do it for you son It seems like Ri seduced Bel Latheman (the banker), manipulated Nayauru into jumping into the war too early, used Latheman to wreck Governor Cattlson's finances, then, once Cattlson was out of money and Parliament was on his rear end to kill the rebellion without wasting more time and funds, she forced Cattlson (and her dad) to go die at Sieroch, leaving her and Latheman married and in charge of the province. The actress in the bar is plainly Nayauru. Duke Sahaule the Horsebane is killed at Haraerod by the scar-faced soldier woman from the bar in Act 1, who lost a horse to him a while ago and who has been on a crazed quest for horse vengeance. Xate Yawa has been offered exactly the same deal as Baru, but by (presumably) Hesychast or Renascent, not Itinerant. Xate Olake's daughter with Tain Ko...aaaah, I shouldn't spoil that one. You can track her down very quickly if you're sharp-eyed. The man with the iron circlet is related to the story of Duchess Erebog. Tain Hu killed him in a forest skirmish when she was young. The Tu Maia heartland fell to a species of beetle that ate the poo poo out of their cash crops. Masquerade eugenics are Lamarckian.
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 06:21 |
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Nice, I picked up on the actress bit based on the reaction at the big meetup at the end. I think my favorite part of the novel was the currency manipulation & then the letters at the end. Baru is a great character. If I had anything critical to say its that some of the nonsense fantasy words bothered me a bit, but overall it was a great read. I didn't feel the Nihilism that other readers had when they reached the end, I guess I fell more on the hope side?
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 07:03 |
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(stolen via Battuta's own twitter) Peel fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Feb 1, 2016 |
# ? Feb 1, 2016 13:12 |
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This has to be included in the front matter of the new book, Battuta.
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 13:17 |
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Here is a random rough draft scene from the sequel, and I do mean rough, it's all pretty basic sketch-level writing. I just like the factorquote:There was a patient in the Rainbow Room.
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 15:50 |
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Jesus gently caress If you were trying to get us to hate the Masquerade you're doing a bang-up goddamn job.
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# ? Feb 1, 2016 23:54 |
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General Battuta posted:a crazed quest for horse vengeance I want to read this book.
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# ? Feb 2, 2016 03:04 |
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Peel posted:
Oh my god Hygiene loving killed it for me
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:14 |
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Could you put up your different builds and uses for those builds? Like what different medics do you use and why? I know you've done a lot of this in the different posts but yknow gathering it in one place would be really cool. I think I build my poo poo wrong. When given the choice of crit immunity I always take it basically. Because I'm terrified of crits and pretty much every infantry and assault gets extra conditioning too. Engineers go one of two paths and don't touch the other crap and medics are just.. I have no idea what to do with them besides sticking a medkit on them and making them officers...
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:28 |
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Affi posted:Could you put up your different builds and uses for those builds? Like what different medics do you use and why? I know you've done a lot of this in the different posts but yknow gathering it in one place would be really cool. Ditch the infantry and all that poo poo, don't worry about crits. Focus on teching up infrastructure systems like bureaucracy (to track food/population/labor and reduce corruption), ideology (to maintain loyalty over widely dispersed populations) and hygiene (to reduce attrition and unlock surgery). The goal is to rush for control of the market and gain control of all the factors necessary for the opponent's build to work. Engineering is great for keeping aqueducts and the like running but you should be sure it's secondary to good economics (and then you'll get a nice spiraling takeoff). It's weak to rushes in the short term but your win rate will go way up and I guarantee it'll change the whole meta.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:35 |
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Oh god this is the wrong thread isn't it?
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 00:38 |
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General Battuta posted:Ditch the infantry and all that poo poo, don't worry about crits. Focus on teching up infrastructure systems like bureaucracy (to track food/population/labor and reduce corruption), ideology (to maintain loyalty over widely dispersed populations) and hygiene (to reduce attrition and unlock surgery). The goal is to rush for control of the market and gain control of all the factors necessary for the opponent's build to work. Engineering is great for keeping aqueducts and the like running but you should be sure it's secondary to good economics (and then you'll get a nice spiraling takeoff). So Baru would be terrible at RTS (because of the assumptions RTS matches make - separate economies for one) but she'd probably be an unholy stewardship-intrigue CK2-type game player.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 05:04 |
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Fried Chicken posted:I have to side with other reviews I've seen. This is probably the most depressing and nihilistic work of genre fiction I've read since Blindsight. Take Guns, Germs and Steel, and then add in the feeling of any hope or plan being crushed by the implacable gears of a great machine, where the only way to survive is to trample the weak and hurdle the dead as you are beaten into becoming what you are trying to overthrow. I know, I love it too.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 06:36 |
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Well, I just finished this. Count me in as one who was surprised by the ending, and Baru's decision to join the powers-behind-the-throne took me by surprise until I realised she'd decided to go after a bigger fish, so to speak. I liked Baru's relationships with Aminata and Tain Hu, and the fiercely contemporary reflections of the real world: tear-gassing rioters(? - I think), or the exocet. And some of the imagery, especially the map weighted down with coins (wish you'd done more with this one). On the other hand, I thought the powers-behind-the-throne were pretty one-dimensionally villainous; the Masquerade was all about control, never civilising or paternalistic. I'm happy the novel wasn't a paean to Empire, but it felt a bit moustache-twirling. And, more seriously, the worldbuilding felt, for want of a better word, thin. I'm calling it serious because the plot relies on it being a realistic, functioning world, but the text contradicts that. The late-19th-century vibe of the Masquerade and quasi-mediaeval Aurdwynn felt inconsistent rather than a deliberate tension. They have torpedoes on sailing ships and naval mines, but not guns. The Masquerade puts notices up in the Aurdwynni villages, so why are there enough literate people to make this worth while? The Masquerade felt like it had been imposed on the world, with the economic and scientific knowledge of the twentieth century, preying on other nations... "Yes, first I'll trade with you, then I'll crash your economy, you silly foreigners... dance, puppets! Dance!" It seems to sit at the top of the world, unrivalled and omnicompetent. The effect was that the novel felt a bit didactic. Questions/comments for the General, if you like: Were the red ships arriving at the start a reference to Delany's Tales of Neveryon? And I'm sure I caught a nod to "Diving into the Wreck", too. Apparitor is sometimes called "the Apparitor", which looks like a copyediting mistake to me. By the way, I think part of the reason people were expecting it to be sf is this thread's tag, not the book. I read the UK edition and I think the cover's okay.
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# ? Feb 3, 2016 23:33 |
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19th century's a bit premature. Torpedoes were in play during the Islamic Golden Age, and naval mines were around by the 16th century too. The Masquerade and Oriati are right on the edge of a transition towards cannon armament (which also happened in the late 16th/early 17th in our world), but right now the Masquerade's incendiaries are much better, and since they won the last war with firestarters they're doctrinally attached. Nor is the Masquerade's scientific and economic knowledge super 20th century — it's again drawing a lot on the Islamic golden age, Indian Ocean trade circle communities, and financial gambits as old as Ancient Egypt. Speaking of literate people (sorrrrry I couldn't resist), the sentence about putting up notices reads right like this, at least in my manuscript (maybe it got fumbled in page proofs?) quote:Jurispotence Xate Yawa ordered a bulletin posted on every door in Aurdwynn and read to the illiterate in every market and square: A lot of the research that went into the book involved creating situations that felt anachronistic but still made structural and technological sense, to show how our own narrative of history is shaped by the way we remember the origin of innovations and social mores (Taranoke's society is largely based on some tribes in the Amazon). Next book will be going even harder on the things-that-feel-unrealistic-but-totally-could've-happend! I've never read Neveryon or 'Diving into the Wreck', alas. Thank you for the comments!
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# ? Feb 4, 2016 00:17 |
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General Battuta posted:19th century's a bit premature. Torpedoes were in play during the Islamic Golden Age, and naval mines were around by the 16th century too. The Masquerade and Oriati are right on the edge of a transition towards cannon armament (which also happened in the late 16th/early 17th in our world), but right now the Masquerade's incendiaries are much better, and since they won the last war with firestarters they're doctrinally attached. I said 19th century because the Masque's emphasis on races and homosexuality struck me as being very modern and the civil service exam gave me a strong British Empire vibe. So did the seafaring, but that's probably just an accident of the plot. I did a bit of searching and I think you're talking about this thing <- click this link, guys, this is cool when you say torpedoes... I just didn't pick up on it from the description. Gotta argue with you about cannon, though: they've been around since the 14th century and were effective siege weapons by 1500. quote:Nor is the Masquerade's scientific and economic knowledge super 20th century — it's again drawing a lot on the Islamic golden age, Indian Ocean trade circle communities, and financial gambits as old as Ancient Egypt Ooh, you don't have a bibliography, do you, because this sounds fascinating! quote:A lot of the research that went into the book involved creating situations that felt anachronistic but still made structural and technological sense, to show how our own narrative of history is shaped by the way we remember the origin of innovations and social mores (Taranoke's society is largely based on some tribes in the Amazon). Next book will be going even harder on the things-that-feel-unrealistic-but-totally-could've-happend! I don't think I understand. Are you saying you deliberately made your cultures by combining stuff from different real-world cultures, but in a theoretically possible way? If that's the case, Masquerade Aurdwynn didn't work for me, I'm afraid. quote:Speaking of literate people (sorrrrry I couldn't resist), the sentence about putting up notices reads right like this, at least in my manuscript (maybe it got fumbled in page proofs?) I don't doubt that's what I read, but I asked myself "why not only announce it?" Even if you don't take the "every door" thing literally. quote:Thank you for the comments! It didn't come across in my first post, but I enjoyed your novel. Thank you for writing it! Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Feb 4, 2016 |
# ? Feb 4, 2016 15:41 |
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House Louse posted:I don't doubt that's what I read, but I asked myself "why not only announce it?" Even if you don't take the "every door" thing literally.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 04:58 |
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Kids who go through Masquerade schooling, whether in a basic form or the full residence treatment, will tend to be more literate than their parents, and if kids can read posted notices the parents can't, you're (in the Masquerade schema) helping draw them away from their existing cultures and making them, literally and figuratively, intermediaries between the two. Plus you can hopefully get them involved in reporting on their parents and earning rewards.
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 05:58 |
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When I thought about it I just assumed she was grandstanding for political benefit and nobody actually expected it to happen vv Imagine the poor devils traipsing through Aurdwynni mud with a sackful of notices on their back. Suddenly, bandits...
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# ? Feb 5, 2016 17:40 |
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General, for whatever it's worth I recommended this book to a friend who also writes some books and he just posted to his FB:quote:The finest fantasy novel of intrigue I've ever read, with no close second. Not only a worthy epic of discovery, politics, and conquest, but a penetrating look at identity and power. Possibly worthy of being taught in the same classes that teach Chopin's THE AWAKENING or Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN. And, above all else, deeply emotionally investing.
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# ? Feb 18, 2016 03:45 |
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Thank you! That's great to hear.
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# ? Feb 18, 2016 05:42 |
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Is it Bah-ru or bah-roo? My mother pronounces it one way and I had been thinking it was the other.
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# ? Feb 18, 2016 06:04 |
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I say BAH-roo, if, uh, that makes sense? Soft a, emphasis on the first syllable.
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# ? Feb 18, 2016 06:05 |
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General Battuta posted:I say BAH-roo, if, uh, that makes sense? Soft a, emphasis on the first syllable.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 20:42 |
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Seth Dickinson posts here, in the Something Awful forums? What the gently caress? The last place I expected. I'm in the middle of the book and loving it. You can't sign my ebook, but quote this post and I'll pretend it's the same thing, good job man
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 22:23 |
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General Battuta posted:I say BAH-roo, if, uh, that makes sense? Soft a, emphasis on the first syllable. You might have mentioned that to the audiobook narrator.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 23:51 |
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Started it yesterday finished it today, unlike everyone else it feels like the Masquerade while awful is going to lower the child mortality rate, feed the average person better so they are not malnourished, and provide stability. It felt like the reason so much of the inquisition poo poo was going on was because they were a colony and in the capital the thought crime was a lesser issue, but in the wild colony it was a tool of control to bring them in the fold. Same reason the head of the faith was a Masquerade agent that may have kept the faith personally but still informed on it allowing it to continue instead of dying out completely.
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# ? Apr 14, 2016 05:20 |
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Well at least the trains ran on time.
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# ? Apr 14, 2016 17:23 |
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Affi posted:Well at least the trains ran on time. It's more like the only reason Baru's army was able to succeed is that she used the hygiene for waste, dead bodies, and food to lower the scurvy and limit sickness keeping her army alive. It did horrific things but so has just about every real life nation. Look at what happened to Alan Turning in the UK, or plenty of other places. People would be willing to put up with a lot of poo poo if it meant if they had a kid it no longer had a 1/3 dying during winter, your children grew up healthier, and you had free access to medical care. While reading it seemed like doctors and dentist were part of the government and paid for with taxes. People are willing to put up with a lot of poo poo for a stable and "safe" society. They are evil and for the greater good but for a lot of people that good is great because its not evil to them. They make human carriers for diseases but also inoculate the citizens and teach hygiene to prevent disease making people want to be more hygienic so they don't get sick. Super evil but I can see why people deal with it.
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# ? Apr 14, 2016 18:21 |
I picked this book up a few months ago but have fallen way behind on finishing it. I've been recommending it to everyone I meet. I was actually really surprised to find it on Australian shelves. Every book I'm usually interested in I have to buy from overseas.
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# ? Apr 15, 2016 10:48 |
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GB, I don't know if you play Magic at all, but I was watching a pro (LSV) stream and he started talking about books and said he really liked Lies of Locke Lamora, so I asked if he'd read TTBC and he said "that was one of the books I read on my last trip and honestly I think it was the one I enjoyed the most." So I guess there's like 1400 people on Twitch who just heard it get recommended and hopefully at least one of them buys it!
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# ? May 19, 2016 05:28 |
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DACK FAYDEN posted:GB, I don't know if you play Magic at all, but I was watching a pro (LSV) stream and he started talking about books and said he really liked Lies of Locke Lamora, so I asked if he'd read TTBC and he said "that was one of the books I read on my last trip and honestly I think it was the one I enjoyed the most." Whoa, that's awesome! What a good thing to hear. Here's some random poo poo, spoils the end of the first book quote:As the firestorm burnt up everyone who’d trusted and believed in him, as the monsoon rain of rocket arrows and incendiary bombs lit his ships like screaming human skewers, Awoharo Abd tried his very damndest to die.
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# ? May 19, 2016 05:44 |
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Ah gently caress you is that from the new book!?
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# ? May 19, 2016 15:49 |
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Hopefully! If it survives the editing process.Poldarn posted:Another question from the peanut gallery: Thanks! I'm glad to hear it. I don't have a HEMA background but I did just enough krav maga to realize what a clumsy rear end in a top hat I am (which played into the hand-to-hand fights), and I did a lot of HEMA research to get the sword bits right. Some of the choreography's just a straight rip of demo fights on Youtube. RiotGearEpsilon posted:Hey, as long as I've got you in the thread - are the Clarified at all inspired by / derived from the Dunyain from the Second Apocalypse sextet? Not directly! I think Bakker read some psychology, I come from a psych background, there's maybe some convergent evolution. IIRC the Dunyain are superhuman manipulators with perfect conditioning and eugenically tuned biology. Uuunfortunately humans are really hard to breed effectively because our generations are so long, and because humans are evolved as cultural sponges: we start picking up prestige cues and complex techniques even as infants. The Clarified are a bit more of a down-to-earth take on the concept of the eugenically produced, psychologically conditioned superhuman: they're great at their specialized tasks, but they're kind of weird and glitchy and they tend to break down catastrophically because, really, it's not super easy to condition someone for absolute enthusiastic loyalty and performance and then get that conditioning to stick long term. All the alleged genetic superiority will get explored more, I hope, but claims of superhumanity should be evaluated critically!
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# ? May 20, 2016 07:44 |
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The thing about the Incrastics that stuck with me the most is their use and overloading of the word 'hygiene'. Hygiene is important; it's an obvious benefit of science and wisdom. It protects us from illness and plague. But then they took that concept and just... extended it, to everything they wanted people to think is good. Sanctioned behavior is hygienic, obedience is hygienic, everything they like is hygienic. Everything else is unclean. "Order is preferable to disorder." Sure, but... Who defines what 'order' is, exactly?
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# ? May 20, 2016 17:26 |
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General Battuta posted:Answers Neat, thanks!
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# ? May 20, 2016 17:45 |
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General Battuta posted:All the alleged genetic superiority will get explored more, I hope, but claims of superhumanity should be evaluated critically! I laugh every time I think about that guy sincerely believing that
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# ? May 20, 2016 18:07 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:07 |
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That excerpt/draft is awesome, thanks! Looking forward to seeing more of the Oriati.
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# ? May 20, 2016 18:15 |