Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

WL, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wallhax

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

Oh! Leet-speak is just mangled English used by adolescents and hackers. "Wall hacks" in first-person shooters like Quake let someone move through walls to attack from unexpected directions. "pwn" means to "own" someone completely, as in, have complete mastery over. LOL stands for "laugh out loud."

The joke is to trivialize QB and Bauchelain's encounter. Does that "translation" help?

-Max

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

I think he didn't want explanation of leet-speak, but to know how the discussion went in English. If WraithLord didn't, I do!
I haven't read Memories of Ice or any Eriksson, but I've liked that quote for a long time. Whatever it was, it must've been good, because it was 1) translated and 2) even the translation sounds great.

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

Quick Ben has just recovered from several weeks of Chaos fever which he contracted sometime during the march to Capustan. He's secretly made a deal with the Barghast gods and with Talamandas, the (sort-of undead) Barghast shaman whom he rescued from the underworld, so that Talamandas will function as an intermediary to protect Quick Ben from the poisoning of the warrens, so that Quick Ben is one of the few non-Chaos mages who is still actually able to use magic within the Pannion Domin. Quick Ben goes out on the town to test the limits of Talamandas' protection and to enjoy having his warrens back. For sneaky reasons of his own, and ostensibly to deliver a warning about the Crippled God, he decides to break into the estate of two sinister necromancers named Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, who we as readers know survived the sack of Capustan mostly by being eviller and more powerful than the invading army. Quick Ben sneaks by the undead guards and is able to (barely) evade the demon Bauchelain set to guard the estate, and slips into the rarely-used warren of D'riss (stone) in order to move through the stone walls and penetrate the estate. He leaves Talamandas quaking in fear in the walls while he emerges to have a chat with Bauchelain, who is civil and unsurprised at Quick Ben's appearance but finds him interesting. There's a creepy scene where Bauchelain offers Quick Ben some wine and then chews out his servant Emancipor Reese for accidentally fetching virgin's blood instead (he can tell because of the taste). Korbal Broach, hopping around on the mantle in the form of a crow (or raven?), finds their witty repartee confusing and distressing and accordingly, says Bauchelain, wants to kill Quick Ben. Quick Ben warns him to stay where he is, whereupon Korbal Broach begins sembling back to human form in order (presumably) to attack. He doesn't get that far, though, because Quick Ben instantly blows him through the wall. Bauchelain is cooly impressed by Quick Ben's usage of half a dozen warrens at once (most mages have only one or two) and inquires of Quick Ben how he does this. Quick Ben declines to answer, and Bauchelain notes that one of his faults is that he is excessively curious, and when curious can become violent towards those who fail to satisfy his curiousity. As he begins to gather power, he notes again that Quick Ben's power is most impressive, but that, in retrospect, Quick Ben ought to have saved at least half his power. "But Bauchelain," replies Quick Ben, "I did." He then blows Bauchelain through the wall too.

In the next scene where we see Quick Ben, he is totally kaput and exhausted ("Now I *am* all used up", he tells Talamandas). But the scene with Bauchelain is classic.

-Max

Edited

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

Kewl :D

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

P.S. Another part I love is when Picker is stressing to Paran about how they're reliant on Quick Ben for battlemagic (he's a stiletto, not a sledgehammer--"You unsheathed the wrong weapon for this fight, Dujek") and how spectacularly wrong she turns out to be. No coruscating waves of power from QB, but his illusions and wraiths take out several of the Pannion battlemages and exhaust their energies, and the avalanche he starts takes out a large chunk of their troops. In Dom3 terms, they waste energy tossing Magma Eruption at his False Horrors and then he hits the Pannion army with a no-friendly-fire Earthquake. Cleverness and finesse even moreso than raw power.

And Quick Ben, unlike me, never accidentally suicides his gem-carrying scout in a Storm Castle attempt. ;)

-Max

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

Clearly OT but it needs to be said how good the Malazan series is. The personalities Erikson builds are interesting and not at all single dimensional. I esp love the attitude of the malazan sappers.

There's enough material there for several mods (or a nation bundle mod) - I mean the malazan empire, pannion domin, segula (I'm probably misspelling ), wickans, barghast, whirlwind and then the ancient races: the T'lan Imas, Jaghut, K'Chain Che'Malle, the Teloman Toblakai and forkrul assail, oh and the XXX andii.
I'm sure I've forgotten a few names and probably not aware of a few others. Lot's of great stuff there for the skilled dom-III modders :)

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

How come the people in that book all have colorful names like Talamandas, Bauchelain or Korbal Broach, but the protagonist is named a nonchalant "Quick Ben"?

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

B/C he's a bridgeburner. They all have short aliases (that stand for something, either absurd or heroic or stupid).
QB is actually Ben Adaephon Delat.

Re: A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod
 

MW - your summary of that scene was excellent- I wish I had you to clarify everything I read in the Malazan series :). I am actually re-reading the series from scratch in preparation for reading Toll of the Hounds (on Memories of Ice now). Amazing how much clearer things are the second time through. And I agree. the books are awesome. Some of the characters are classic: Korbal and Bauchelain of course, and Kruppe almost always makes me bust out laughing - I wish I could talk like that! :)