Intergalactic Summit

There's more here than victimhood. ... which doesn't seem like it applies so much, if I don't see myself that way.

There's something I want from him: the lives in his hands. (Also his temple out from its orbit around my homeworld, but that's likely to happen pretty soon anyway.) There are things he wants from me, too; I don't actually think my suffering's one, even if he sometimes gets that. If he did, it wouldn't matter very much to me. It would change the context a little, though.

I'm just a figment in this world, Ms. Ember. ... like any of us. Only, a little unusually, I'm aware of it. I carry my own life lightly.

I'm not ... helpless. But a part of what I do with Mr. Nauplius is a matter of honor, and honesty, and even trust. Part of that is that I don't hide my intentions, or my feelings. If he wants my anger, or my hurt, he can have those. He can have my slightly-uneasy trust, too, and my admiration for his own kind-of-strange integrity. And even my sympathy-- it's an awful god he serves, an awful universe he sees with his waking eyes.

I wish I could show him a better one-- for his sake, and that of those at his mercy. So, he also gets a little of my hope, however frail it might be.

He can't have my hate. ... at least not for long. That's not something I give so easily.

If I come away now and then with a few unlucky people who stood to suffer more than I was ever at any risk of, I count the trade worthwhile.

I understand where you're coming from. I lack the means to enlighten you as to where I'm coming from. You'll do as you will and carry the hurts that you suffer. You'll be educated by the abuse you receive. I hope you value the lesson, hard won as it will be.

Just going out on a limb here, but 'your grasp of technology is millennia out of date'... when discussing a thousand-tear old whiskey... ironic, no?

You're right about the off-topic nature of it, though! et voila!

It's really less about the 'limitations of alcohol processing', and more about the fact that how you make it is what makes a whiskey, especially any of the bourbon varieties. Once you change that... you're not making the same thing anymore.

It would be like calling a malt a beer.

The same general statement can be said of brandies, too. But as you say, cognac was a bad translation.

Someone's never tried a snifter of engine degreaser. A cheeky little vintage dating back to night before last, aged nicely in an oil pan. Mmm. That fragrant aroma you get a hint off before it shuts down your olfactory senses, that lovely complexity of flavors you'd surely explore with joy if you weren't too busy fighting off both your survival instincts and gag reflexes to notice. Pairs wonderfully with solvent fumes, I hear.

On a serious note, the Gripdjur aren't exactly famed for the distilleries, but I'll pit our clan brew - be it beer or meads - against your equivalents any time. The blend of old rediscovered craftsmanship with the finest Sebiestor engineering on the continent (bloody come at me, Elsebeth) and what may as well be eldritch sorcery from the nanotech and microbiology scientists has yet to be matched.

"Beer or meads" is all I need to hear to know that the Lok'ri Orisian estates are an order of magnitude or three better quality booze than the nonsense you are describing. A taste of Lok'ri Extra Ancient and you will never want to touch a grain or honey based drink again.

You punks miss the whole idea of thousand-year-old alcoholic beverages.

The point is not that it tastes good, or is super strong, or whatever, because it probably isn't.

The point is that it is irreplaceable, and demonstrates that the owner has the wealth and prestige, to be able to afford a beverage storage room large enough and well-engineered enough, to be able to keep beverage bottles and barrels in drinkable condition for thousands of years.

It's like wearing a dress that pre-dates Amarr space travel. it probably won't flatter your figure, or look particularly fancy, but the point is that you own it, demonstrating a level of wealth and prestige that puts social upstarts in their place. "Oh, my dress is older than your Holding", and so on.

Have you tried araka? The quick fermentation of milk from the single-toed ungulates found on the edge of the north Sobaki (tabuni in our dialect - I think the nearest common-experience species is horse) results in a mild, very social beer-like concoction. It has lots of names - among the Vidaraltyr it's known as tsegee. Takes about a day, depending on the length of the ride (the milk is put in tabuni skins, slung over the saddle and the motion swills the drink around so it ferments rather than coagulates. If you ride like a warrior, you end the day with alcoholic pleasure for the camp fires. If you ride like a farmer, you get butter).

The elders of the clan have the right and knowledge to distill this into araka, a very much more fiery beverage that requires a sharp winter and quite some courage. The name is reputed to be onomatopoeic in origin, being the hacking, coughing sound the newly initiated make on first consumption. Like most good booze, it gets smoother the more you drink.

Unlike tsegee, it travels very well and when our clan began to trade across the seas, the drink became almost mystical. It also helped significantly in 'enhancing' trade deals with the Brutor of the Mioar islands, so the gift of a bottle is seen as a very generous blessing for a colleague or kinsman.

I can't really fault him for that. And I'm sure there's worse things he could be doing.