bject: [FFML] Re: C&C [Fic]The Shadow Of The Past
It was a shame, he noted, that the war in Europe made
getting permission for American digs in sites in the
Mediterranean next to impossible. They museum had been
fortunate enough to get a dig permit from the Japanese
occupying army in China.
@@Hmmm, possible. Of course that would limit them to
only certain narrow portions of China.
In 1940, the interesting part would be how the artifact
was shipped around the Japanese. The area of the dig
would still be in either Nationalist or Tibetan hands.
swirling cloak. To her, he seemed a demon from her
grandmother's tales, a hungry ghost come to devour her soul.
She began to scream against her gag,
@@Oh come on. She just spit in the face of
Chu Wan, and she's on a "Blood Hunt". This seems
a little OOC for what has gone before. At least
give a little build up for this break down.
##Okay, I just wanted The Shadow to seem terrifying, even
to hardened
fighters like Koh-Lohn; I'll have to go back and justify it more.
I had trouble buying this also, and it's even worse if she's
in her 40s or 50s. Two ways to handle this: either Ke Lun
can see _more_ than a normal human would, something _really_
scary (e.g. more than a touch of the demonic in his soul),
or she's simply not scared at all.
His face... It was long, and sharp, and wicked, like a
dagger or a razor. It was cold, cruel malevolence she could
feel in the marrow of her bones, and the eyes were so very,
very black...
"<Ying-ko...>" She whispered in fear.
For Ke Lun in her teens this is okay. For one in her 40s,
you need more. Perhaps she _knows_ something about Ying-ko
that no non-Nujiezu does?
Why couldn't she be a girl in her teens, there is always the Nanbun mirror.
maybe jaunting around in the future, AND Happi made what she is. It would
be interesting, the last time I saw the shadow was 270 errr 60 years ago.
The girl regained a little bit of her self-possession,
swallowing hard. "<I was told of this... I was told that you
had met the Tulpa, and that he had enlightened you...>"
*YOU KNOW OF THE TULPA?*
The girl nodded still backing away. The Shadow followed,
looming over her. "<H-he was well-known in my province... He
was greatly mourned.>"
I think you should actually name the Tulpa here. The movie
didn't ('tulpa' is a title, not a name, and not a unique one),
but in this context, each person should know that some confusion
is possible. It is my understanding that 'tulpa' means _any_
reincarnated boddhisatva: the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama,
plus dozens or hundreds or others scattered across Tibet,
Qinghai, probably parts of Sichuan, Yunnan, Bhutan, Sikkim,
and possibly even Mongolia.
Koh-Lohn nodded warily.Such was the custom in many parts
of her native land, and amongst her people as well. Absently
she tugged on the ring, but it seemed stuck fast.
*DO NOT REMOVE THAT RING.* He glared once, and she
stopped. *YOU SEEK VENGEANCE ON THE MAN WHO ATTACKED YOUR
PEOPLE, AND SLEW YOUR MOTHER. YOU ARE AN ADEPT OF YOUR
PEOPLE'S WARRIOR ARTS, AND AS SUCH, YOU ARE USEFUL TO ME. WHEN
I NEED YOU, I WILL CONTACT YOU.*
Koh-Lohn's mind was awhirl with questions. How did he
know my name? How does he know why I'm here? Magic? Finally,
she stammered out: "<How will I know?>"
30s pulps tended to attribute mystic powers to orientals at the
drop of a hat, i.e. many of the Shadow's greatest adversaries,
such as Shiwan Khan. In this context, the pulpish thing to
do here would be to give Ke Lun a number of inexplicable
talents, not make her a normal human (sub-Shampoo, as far
as we know at this point).
"That's what I'm trying to... Aha! Here it is. 'Kneel,
mortal, before He who is Master of the World, the Dragon of
Heaven on Earth, Emperor of All Mankind. Here rests Shen
Leung'... My God... How the _hell_ did they manage to convince
the Japs to part with this?"
Kind of the point. They'd _never_ have been able to. It
can't have traveled through Japanese-held territory.
Hmmm, Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan group and the
written language was probably reasonably fixed at about the
sixth century BCE.
So, it could be pretty old and, if he's a Chinese scholar
he'd be able to read it.
Assuming it's in Chinese. ^_^
Somewhere I read that the Chinese and the Greeks are the
only two people on earth where the man in the street can
read a 2000-year-old stone inscription (and think of it
as his native tongue; i.e. Latin doesn't count). [Most
of the peoples in between had their alphabet replaced
in the 700s-800s.]
"Oh yeah? What ever happened to them, anyway?"
"It's a mystery, actually. The British found no evidence
of this mysterious 'Musk Dynasty' when they invaded,
Not clear on what this refers to. The Younghusband expedition
never got past Lhasa. Surely you don't mean the joint Brit-French
expedition to Beijing? I think you'd be better off referring
to Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, or one of the other Xinjiang/Tibet
explorers/archaeologists.
celebrated counterpart. The hidden city of K'ung Lung, the
legendary Springs of Jusenkyo... He had done his doctoral
thesis on the legends of lost Sino-Tibetan civilizations so
prevalent in the Manchurian and Sezchuan provinces.
Manchurian? Why that? As little connection to Tibet as you
can find in China. I'd think you'd want to mention lost cities
in the Taklamakan or other parts of Xinjiang (you wouldn't
spell it that way in this story, probably; you'd go back to
'Chinese Turkestan' or somesuch), or Tibet, Qinghai (probably
Tsinghai in this story), maybe peripheral parts of Yunnan.
This cries out for a trace of Lovecraft, as in "he had done his doctoral
thessi on the deep places of legends, such as exemplified by the shuddering
histories of the Mad Arab Abdul Alharzed, the particular tales of Innsmouth
and
the less well reported mysteries of Sino Tibet.
I've long thought that the citadel of the Musk is as likely a place as any
to
have a long corridor leading eventually to R'lyeh.
@@I read your end notes. I think you could have left
the Amazons in the mountains. ^)^ (especially if he's
been studying Tibetan civilizations. They're right on the
border.)
##I couldn't find any info on the Byankalas in my brittanica, or
googlesearch, so I simply stuck 'em in Seczchuan, since it's
small, has it's own dialect and culture, and fairly
independant of central authority before the establishment of
the PRC.
The Bayankala usually is spelled 'Bayan Har Shan' in most current
maps. It forms the Tibet-Qinghai border, edging into Sichuan
on the east. And are you sure you're not confusing Yunnan
and Sichuan here? Sichuan is not small, is extremely populous,
and most of it has been pretty Han for a long time.
The bottom lock sprung open in turn, then shut, followed
by the other six in rapid succession. Richmond jumped back,
alarmed. Had he set off some kind of booby-trap?
I found this kind of irritating, probably because I found this
part of the movie very irritating. I'd consider just
skipping this and opening the casket.
He'd always had a fascination with the Orient; after the
Great War, his army unit disbanded, he'd made his way east,
until he came to the Sezchuan province near the Tibetan
border.
@@Why not go via Qinghai? It directly borders
Tibet, Sezchuan does as well but the common border
is much smaller and further south. IMO it's easier to change
his rout of travel to take him through Qinghai to Tibet
rather than move the Amazons. For instance he could come
down from the old silk road, through Qinghai and into Tibet.
There's a lot of smuggling in that area so it's plausible.
Coming through Sezchuan you'd run into a lot of officials. ^_^
##See above. I couldn't find any info on Qinghai or the
Byankala Range.
Anyone traveling east from Europe after WWI would NOT have
gone through Tibet west to east. Actually, they probably
wouldn't have gone through Qinghai either; they'd have
traveled just north of Qinghai, though the natural corridor
between Qinghai and Inner Mongolia. You'd then go south
from the Xining-Lanzhou area, in all probability.
Suppose he had fought with the White Russians. a lot of them
ended up in China
My assumption, from the Shadow movie, was that the area
of Ying Ko's operations was Qinghai rather than today's
'Tibet Autonomous Region', anyway. Or, rather, the far
eastern edge of Tibet/Qinghai and western edge of Yunnan,
shading into just north of the Burmese border (at the
time, Burma was a British colony, so its north was
somewhat more pacified than it is today).
Actually, it sort of depended on which guides you found.
I'm not an expert on the region but the trans Siberian RR
was in existence at that time.
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