milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

teja,
vic sage

(no subject)

Charlie has homework. Or that's how it feel.

See, Sir Nicholas Fury asked him to write up everything he can about his reality's super-heroes, as a way of helping plan for whatever restoration of super-heroes can occurs in Fury's timeline. And if that's what will allow Charlie to help with that world, he's fine with it.

Only there is a lot for Charlie to say about his world's heroes. Which means he first just needs to get his thoughts organized. Maybe even make a outline sorted by era and by team. Thus, it feels like homework.

Come and interrupt him before he gets too involved listing the members of the All-Star Squadron from memory.

[ooc: slowtime for work and meetings likely]

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It seems to be an important list Charlie is writing, so Teja merely says "Greetings," as he passes with a mug of tea in his hands.

"Hello," Charlie says as he stops after jotting down two or three more All-Stars. "How are you?"

"My work goes well, and there are good people about," Teja says. "There is a strange infestation of moving dough outside, but then, who are we, the denizens of Milliways, to say there should be a limit to strangeness?"

"I saw the dough. It got me up a tree, in fact. But it's pretty harmless otherwise. More a cat than a tiger, I guess. And given how strange can get anywhere, I don't see why the Bar would be any different.

"What work?" Charlie doesn't recall any mention of work, but he's been having so many chats that everything blurs after a bit.

"It is somewhat obnoxious," Teja says, "and not truly dough. I baked that which had attacked the forge cats, and Carlotta -- but when I tried the bread out on the demonic rabbits, the inside was hard, sandy, and strange, and the creatures would not eat it. So I threw it away."

Pause.

"And the work is in the forge -- I am a smith, as well as a harper and a fighter! That skill has come truly useful to me, in this place."

"Ah." Charlie had seen the forge while running, but didn't give it any notice. "So if I see a sword here, is it yours, or from outside?"

"Most men will bring their own swords, of course," Teja says; a warrior of his time (and many before, and after!) will never go without.-

"But I make them; and I have made many already that men have taken away to their worlds."

"I've never give the sword much thought. I think I mentioned that I'm not big on weapons. And in my day, a sword isn't all that useful. Most of the time." Should he add what kinds of weapons heroes use to his data? No, that wouldn't be of much use to Fury.

"Indeed -- I have heard of firearms, flying machines, and explosives," Teja says. "Since I came here, I have even seen, and used, all of them, so I would know what it is like. I still prefer the edged weapons of my time, and am learning unarmed combat from one Ryu Hayabusa -- I told you before, if I remember right."

"What would you use explosives for?" That's not the sort of thing Charlie would ever use, or know a thing about.

"A friend of mine, by name of Atton Rand," Teja says, "claimed that my knowledge was grievously incomplete before I had seen a great explosion, and fireworks."

"Maybe I can accept that you needed to see fireworks, but explosions...the number of good things that come from explosions under most circumstances is easily dwarfed by the number of bad." Even if you are using them for a good cause in a war, it's still a war.

"It was a great, mighty noise, and much destruction," Teja says. "I wish I had had such to set off in the camp of our enemies. But then, they would have had them soon, also, and the advantage would have been moot."

"Which is the nature of war. Which is probably why I'm not particularly unhappy to not be a warrior.

"No offense, of course."

"You may believe me," Teja says, "had I had the chance to spend my life as a harper and smith, married to the girl I would have married, and raising children in peace, I would have! But none may live in peace if that does not please their bad neighbours."

"That's true. The time period in my world's history that I'm writing about was like that. Though the aggressors, I have to tell you, might count as your heirs. Or at least might count themselves as such."

"Who were they?" Teja asks.

"Germans. Germans with some rather hideous ideas about how to run things, who to hate, and how far to go with both. They were defeated, at a huge cost and using every resource my nation had, including limited actions by that era's costumed heroes."

"That would have been the great bloody war of the twentieth century, would it?" Teja says. "And indeed, their language was somewhat similar to ours, clearly related -- I met one man here that was German, and I clearly understood his name meant 'creek of ashes'. And we did hold some of the lands that would later be held by them -- north up to Augusta Vindelicorum! But how would that entitle those Germans of the future, the very Germans that laid waste to a continent -- call themselves the heirs of the Goths?"

"It wouldn't. But they did a lot of things that they weren't entitled to do as part of an effort to depict themselves as the peak of the great line of Germans and Germanic tribes and so on."

"I can hardly go there from this place," Teja says, "and tell the entire people and their demented leaders that I am Teja, last king of the Ostrogoths, and I forbid them to use the name of my people in justifying their mad ideas, or there shall be cosmic retribution! But I would if I could. A good leader or true hero will give his life for his people, rather than demand that his entire people die for his ideas!"

[[OOC: Yay finally somebody opened this can of worms IC-ly! I had a long rant that touched this issue on my blog in German -- but so far, people were too polite to make the connection into Teja's fictional face, a connection that totally exists and that I have not let out of my sight from day one. The German navy during WWII had auxiliary cruisers on the Black Sea by name of 'Totila' and 'Teja', for example. Anyway, it only proves that the stupid Nazis hadn't read the book, as even the author's canonically patriotic and nationalistic stance is not conducive to imperialism, in the final analysis; so they are not really heroes to name ships after....]]

"There aren't many true leaders. But the man in question here...he was a master of propaganda as well as hatred, violence, and lies.

"But his day was over when I died." Charlie can tell that Teja would not like Hitler in the least, but that it might still be prudent to tread carefully about the topic. If nothing else, he recalls that thing on the Internet that if invoke Hitler in a debate you lose.

[ooc: Charlie isn't very polite. And I am glad to be of historical service.]

"A truly evil mis-leader of his people, then," Teja says, "that cost the world like none other before him!"

One may invoke Hitler in a historical debate, rather than make him the rhino in the room that everybody carefully talks around!

[[OOC: Good! Thanks!]]

"What have you been told about World War II?" Well, if Charlie is going to ponder the heroes of that time...

"Almost all lands of the Old World, and many beyond, were involved, and fighting on one side, or the other. Britain, and the new lands beyond the oceans, fought on the same side. Flying machines dropped explosives on the cities of their respective enemies, and other flying machines fought to keep them away; I know a man from he lands beyond the oceans that flew such a machine, and died, defending Britain. And the Germans, under their evil rulers, systematically and intentionally murdered six million women, children, old people, and non-fighting men of the Jewish people. It shocked me deeply, when I first heard of it."