Wbn - Blog Posts
WHAT DO YOU MEAN CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN AND GREAT GRANDCHILDREN?????????
I MISS WHEN STEEL WAS JUST A STERN BUT LOVING MOTHER FIGURE WITH (huge) IMPERIALIST TENDENCIES
im sorry but the sense of scale that brennan is capable of conveying is just amazing. Like in the last episode episode i was wondering how the citadel could battle those horrifying creatures… BUT THEN THE EPIPHANY APPEARED AND JESUS ITS SO OP
WBN animatic "The Vote"
More people need to see this
I think he also illustrated well how these moments will become stories. opening with the mythos around the epiphany, describing the perspective of the soldiers seeing these fantastical powerful things... their individual deaths may be forgotten but the stories of the "heroes" will live on.
Really really really loved how Brennan showed the two different sides of this "combat"
The insane fantasy moments: the dreadnoughts, Eioghorain, Ame's curse, the chained dragon, everything with that last scene between the sorcerer and Steel. Devastating and scary, but also really cool
Intimately juxtaposed with small moments that brought the true light of horror back: realizing a solider is only 17 in his first battle where he will surely die, the acid damaging the land so it will know no life for generations to come, bodies of those that begged for an academy not to be demolished, Suvi recognizing the wizard she just killed. Just admissions that there are no winners here. Every part of this is a loss.
It makes everything feel so much more real
spoilers for whatever the hell steel did at the end of episode 47
Long moments pass, the western sky is hell itself. You see, glimmering for a moment, a point of green light appear. Concentric circles, lined with runes, stretching some hundred and twenty feet in all directions begin to spin in the manner of a gyroscope of light and figures, arithmetic and language arcane around the figure of the Wizard Slain, who appears in the sky.
Lowering a staff of the leader of the Citadel's war mages, he carves a line into the heart of one of the shahoran, destroying one of the sorcerers below. Raising up his staff, he begins to abjure, protecting the war mages around him as best he can.
And the sun rises in the west. A sorcerer, so radiant as to blind you even some miles away, hangs in the air and extends a finger towards the Wizard Slain, beckoning him towards the light. And the Wizard Slain is unmade.
You look, and see, crowned in light and gold, a robe and cloak some forty feet in length, twisting nobly in the wind behind him - first one set of arms, a second, and a third, as Harmas Raunza, leader of House Raunza, appears, in visage over the battlefield.
As he appears, points of light begin teleporting and some hundred nobles of the House of Raunza appear on the battlefield, from across the wide world of Umora.
He points forward, towards Twelve Brooks. The dreadnoughts converge, and as he raises his hand, he opens a door in space. Hundreds of spirits, bound to the House of Raunza. The Bashaal - the spirits of those of his house that failed the trial of their ordeal to enter into sorcerous covenant with their noble lineage, who now bear the heads and wings of white eagles made of blinding light, wielding broadswords, doublehanded, curved at the end, fly forward, gushing onto the battlefield. A cheer goes up from the forces of Gaothmai. "For the Cauntaranacht! For Raunza!"
As the lord of House Raunza holds his hands wide, "It is here we make an end to their tower!"
A white cape, streaking through the sky from the Epiphany. A flash of steel, a glint of a sword.
A bubble forms around the leader of House Raunza, and a white cloaked woman with auburn hair, who hangs in the air before him.
Time slows. She twists her wrist, turning her sword ninety degrees to the right. All of the world is mapped out, like a map of the stars. Your own body is simply lines, and the names of your joints and blood vessels. She twists to the left, raising the sword up in front of her in guard position, vertical, matching her straight spine. All the world is rendered in black and white, as though drawn in charcoal on fresh paper. She levels it.
Straight out, floating in air, written in the Lingua Arcana, is simply her namecloak - "The Wizard Steel". And before her, the symbol of House Raunza. With her offhand, she touches that symbol, undoing his true name in front of her. She points, draws her sword back. The image fades. It never happened, it was just a dream. How could she have changed the nature of the world itself?
The point of her sword, at his heart. "You shouldn't have brought so many of your grandchildren, old man." Pushes the sword through his heart. Blood bursts like a wave from his back, killing not only him but each and every one of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren on this battlefield, who fall like rain from the sky, their light extinguished.
The Sword of the Citadel hangs in the air as the leader of a Great House falls before her blade. The cheer from Gaothmai dies, as quickly as it was born.
The Wizard, The Witch and the Wild One, episode 47
(Worlds Beyond Number podcast)
Finally listening to the most recent ep of wbn and I'm realising that this whole time I've been picturing the man in black as Zac Oyama from his 2023 4/20 tweet
“can I see your teeth?”
thank you to brennan lee mulligan for my minor breakdown during my drive home from work today. much appreciated
Arc 3: The Witch and her retinue