Inheritance Spork - Chapter Sixty-Three: The Storm Breaks

[pangolin20]

Rorschach wrote in Antishurtugal, 2013-01-02 22:31:00

Inheritance Spork - Chapter Sixty-Three: The Storm Breaks

After his plane crashed in Alaska, Dr. Doomsduck is leading a team of oil workers to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves is haunting their every step. Because of that, and that we’d both dibbed this chapter, he asked me to take over

Chapter Sixty-Three: The Storm Breaks

A boy comes to tell Roran it’s time. Neither he nor Katrina have slept. I’m not sure what this means. He armors up and Katrina gives him some bread, cheese, and tea. He ignores the bread. Probably a wise decision, it’s not like he’ll need those carbs!

Roran tells Katrina to name the child “something fierce”, regardless of the gender, and they share a parting embrace. I would love it if they decide later to name the child Something Fierce. That would be an awesome name

He joins the group of men, Urgals, and elves under his command. We learn that Roran doesn’t care for or trust the elves because they’re too different. Although the only reason they’re even there is to help protect his group against Galbatorix’s magicians. That’s awfully nice of them

Roran spends a few minutes thinking about how it’s finally down to this. The Last Battle. The Final Countdown. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves. This will be it: after today, there will be no more battles. Unless, of course, Uru’Baen doesn’t fall on Day 1 of the fight or the battle lasts for more than 24 hours. But how likely is that?

They creep towards the walls until they’re spotted and the alarm sounds, and then they charge forward. Roran decides he’ll be the first one up the ladder and up he goes

He was less than a yard from the battlements when a soldier with blue eyes leaned over the edge and looked straight at him

“Bah!” Roran shouted, and the soldier flinched and stepped back (page 628).

Okay. Let’s imagine you’re a soldier on the battlements. Enemies are attacking and slamming ladders against the walls and climbing up to try and kill you. Wouldn’t you, I dunno, get a spear and stand there, explicitly waiting for them to get to the top so you could ram the spear into their throat? Or at least anticipate it so when he gets to the top and baas like a sheep you don’t jump backward because you’re so surprised…when you know for a fact that this is coming

Also, it’s dark out, I find it extremely unlikely that Roran can tell what color a soldier’s eyes are

Anyway, this gives Roran the time he needs to jump over the battlements onto the wall. He gets stabbed, but Eragon’s magic stops the sword from actually penetrating him, and he kills the rest of them handily, then looks around. The Varden are reaching the top of the other ladders but few are actually clearing the wall because there are clumps of soldiers at the top of every ladder waiting to kill them. Unlike the soldiers at the top of Roran’s ladder, because he’s Special.

Maybe if he’d taught the rest of them his Sheep Trick this wouldn’t have happened

All the soldiers on the top of the wall have been made unable to feel pain which makes it twice as hard to actually kill them. Setting aside the dubious logic behind this, when Roran fights normal enemies without this magical lack of pain, he’s an Unstoppable Killing Machine that isn’t wounding his enemies and leaving them to slowly bleed out, he’s murdering the shit out of them, usually with a couple of blows. However, here it’s suddenly slightly more difficult.

Except it isn’t, really. It’s just Roran and one other chap from Carvahall, Baldor. Together, the two untrained peasants managed to brutally kill about twenty-five trained soldiers while suffering minimal injuries, until more of the Varden gain the top of the wall

He sees Thorn and Murtagh swoop overhead, then there’s an enormous crash, a bunch of water jets up into the air [???] and the main inner gate collapses. The soldiers panic and run. Hooray! That was easy!

15 comments

[1]

pipedreamno20
January 2 2013, 09:09:29 UTC
Nice reference ;) Although will we be left forever hanging as to Dr Doomsduck's fate as we were in The Grey?

"Something Fierce this way comes!"

"Oh hey, Fiercey. What's up?"

That yelling-random-syllables-to-startle-enemies technique is so stupid. Didn't Eragon do this at one point also during the book? I had a search around and couldn't find the particular point in time but remember something like that...

[2]

emrlddragon
January 2 2013, 12:21:20 UTC
Forget waiting for the enemies to climb the ladder, pushed the ladder over, or pour boiling oil down it (they have been camped within sight of the city, so there is prep time), drop a large rock, or just shoot him with an arrow. There are plenty of medieval battle tactics to be employed here.

[2A]

cherrypep
January 3 2012, 05:53:37 UTC
Most of which Roran listed a couple of chapters ago. Fortunately the enemy are even worse at this than he is.

[3]

white_wolf03
January 2 2013, 17:05:39 UTC
The Varden are reaching the top of the other ladders but few are actually clearing the wall because there are clumps of soldiers at the top of every ladder waiting to kill them

For some reason, this makes me think of whack-a-mole

[4]

cherrypep
January 2 2013, 23:44:58 UTC
"Roran decides he’ll be the first one up the ladder and up he goes "

Three hundred feet up, in fact. Which incidentally makes it an extremely impressive ladder.

[4A]
Deleted comment

[4A1]

cherrypep
January 3 2013, 04:23:01 UTC Edited: January 3 2013, 04:39:06 UTC
When I visualise the Varden attack on the walls, the only way I can make it work is by giving Roran the powers of the uber-Licker (giant wall-crawling zombie thingummy) from the latest Resident Evil movie, minus slime and tongue-tentacle, plus eyes, hair and skin. Bouncebouncebounce wraaaaargh.

Edit: Actually, I'd really enjoy that version of the Eragon universe. Galbatorix (Wesker) in the smoking remnants of the citadel(White House), talking to his mutated lab-experiment dragon while Eragon (post-T-Virus-psychic Alice), Roran (post-mutation Matt Addison turned giant killer bouncy roaring hammer-zombie) and their latest cast of disposable colonial-marine sidekicks attack. Maybe it's time to lay off the zombie movies for a while...

[5]

adder_snake
January 3 2013, 02:01:03 UTC
"Also, it’s dark out, I find it extremely unlikely that Roran can tell what color a soldier’s eyes are"

No, you're forgetting that Roran has super-special-awesome-plot-contrivance eyesight. This is the guy that can perfectly judge scale and identify rocks from miles away!

[6]

Anonymous
January 3 2013, 08:41:32 UTC
"The storm breaks". Hmm that sounds familure to a chapter in The Hobbit called "The clouds burst". Also note they are both about wars beginning.

[7]

dr_doomsduck
January 3 2013, 11:53:12 UTC
Once again, many many thanks for doing this. Damn wolves.The poor oil workers didn't make it, but I left I nice cross of their wallets in the snow...He is actually a she, but after getting compared to Liam Neeson, I am really not complaining.


Do we know what the kid is actually named in the series? Because if not, he/she will forever be known as 'something fierce' from now on.

[7A]

Anonymous
January 3 2013, 18:31:54 UTC
When she's finally born they name her after Katrina's mother, Ismira.

[7A1]

cherrypep
January 3 2013, 19:08:46 UTC
Which presumably means 'perpetually late' in the Ancient language?

[7A2]

dr_doomsduck
January 3 2013, 19:59:31 UTC
Katrina's mother...whose name we've conveniently never heard before?

[7A2A]

the_bishop8
January 3 2013, 23:32:57 UTC
Who's name we had never heard before...until the second chapter of the first book.

I'm the anonymous person who commented above, by the way. Forgot to sign in.

[8]

Anonymous
February 21 2013, 04:51:26 UTC
"“Bah!” Roran shouted, and the soldier flinched and stepped back (page 628)."

Must be a French soldier.

[9]

Anonymous
June 2 2013, 23:40:56 UTC
Is it me, or is the Empire completely and totally outmatched by the Varden in most head-to-head fights? Apart from Galbatorix and Murtagh, it seems as if any one person on the Varden side is about 3-5x as strong as any Imperial soldier. The only battles that the Empire has one are the ones where it ambushed the Varden at night with overwhelming forces (at least twice as many soldiers) and the Varden had no magic users on hand.