Author Topic: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14  (Read 3195 times)

hubay

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July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« on: July 26, 2011, 07:17:36 AM »
I ended cutting the last half of this chapter, and completely failed to rewrite the next bit. bleh. I'm at an odd point here. Jhuz got knocked out at the end of the last chapter, and generally I'm not a fan of "character wakes up in an unfamliar place" as a plot device. I'm also on the fence on Hex as a character. He's an assassin, and he doesn't really interact with people much on account of invisibility. So he's a bit off and it shows in his dialogue, which I'm ok with. I'm just worried that in general, when people try to write offbeat characters it ends up sounding like poor humor or fanfiction or something, and I'd rather Hex came off as a little more cracked and unstable than quirky and silly. Let me know what you think.

Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14 (L,V) 1500 words

Summary: Jhuz's position as Prefect seemed stable and the Legion is finally on the mend, but an intruder knocks him out in his tent.

CH14: We meet Hex, Jhuz's assassin captor and octopus-metsi Servant of the Eight.

akoebel

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2011, 09:15:54 AM »
In fact, I liked Hex as a character. Yes, some of his sentences felt a little odd, but I saw them as in character, so I let that fly.

What troubled me was his reasons.
He was contracted to kill someone, so someone has to die? If your mark got killed before you got there, wouldn't that void the contract? Also, having an assassin organization refusing to kill innocent people felt a little silly. People with contracts on their heads aren't necessarily evil, so why the stricture?

If Hex was hired to cause chaos, there was a large array to choose from to cause mayhem without killing anyone : poisoning supplies, sabotage, ...
Why did Hex restrict himself with killing the head of the army? In my opinion, killing minor officers would have resulted in much chaos, and there were bound to be some there which were not that innocent.

Aside from that, nice chapter. I liked the explanation about the eggs!

SkyhunterCommander

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2011, 06:34:58 PM »
I liked Hex as well. His strangeness didn't feel forced, so I felt that it worked.

While I noticed some of the same things as akoebel, it didn't bother me very much. The way I understood Hex's explanation of why he kidnapped Jhuz was that he was hired to kill the previous leader of the army, who was already dead, but something relating to how the contract thing worked forced him to have to accomplish the mission regardless, but he had not been sent to kill Jhuz specifically, so he kidnapped him instead.

When he said that he could not kill an innocent, I read that as he could not kill anyone except for whomever he was assigned to kill, not necessarily an 'innocent'.

I think it was a bit unclear about what exactly Hex's mission was (though it could be it's meant to seem strange, given his strangeness), but I think  if it was clearer exactly what his job was, if it was specifically to kill the leader, or just to cause chaos.
I will get around to giving feedback to my fellow Reading Excuses members. As soon as I can.

Will777r

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2011, 10:43:34 PM »
I liked Hex too. He was quirky sometimes, but I don't think he came off as poor humor. I particularly liked the ending comment by him. I laughed at that one.

I found the "rules" that govern him employment interesting. Everything made sense to me except the part about him being contracted to "create chaos". I didn't see why kidnapping Jhuz would have the best effect there. Not unless there's something deeper going on, like the Jackal being in league with Hex or something of that nature. I understand why he couldn't kill Jhuz, but it just seems like it be easier to say he was contracted for something more specific regarding the leadership of the legion.

I loved the explanation of the eggs. I was wondering why you kept mentioning it in the last chapter. The answer was fulfilling. But technically wouldn't poisoning him kill him? Or was it something less poisonous like the apples?

Good chapter overall. I'm interested to see how Jhuz gets out of it.

Will777r

hubay

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2011, 12:47:32 AM »
Yeah, they're both just drugged.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll probably end up re-writing the contract so it makes a little more logical sense.

cjhuitt

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2011, 03:12:14 AM »
I agree that Hex seems fine so far.

My biggest question, and one I assume is address elsewhere in the text, is how big of an area Hex can make invisible, and how selective it can be.  Apparently it was enough to get Jhuz out of the camp.

Hex talking about apples, not eggs: He lied about the first part (the apple's not poisoned).  It makes me wonder what else he's lied about.

Since the Servants of the Eight were legendary, and Jhuz knows about them and their talent, it seems odd that a couple of things would be as they were earlier in the story.  Not horribly unfixable, but odd.  The first is that Jhuz noticed things moving that could easily be explained by an invisible person, and he doesn't even think about the possibility.  The second is the body-guarding routine; I would think it would change some from our routine it there was a serious chance of invisible people.  For one thing, Jhuz likely would't be left to wander into his tent until either it's been checked by the guards and/or bodyguards, or the bodyguards would stay very close while he was in the tent.  In fact, they'd probably be in there with him.  I'm sure some other changes would be made as well; you might want to think of a few.  The alternative might be that nobody really thought Jhuz would be worth a contract, so they didn't bother doing the job as well as they ought to,

Finally, I wonder about the use of the word "poison."  It can certainly stand, but it makes me think of fatal poisoning.  I don't know off-hand what might be a better word, either.

Overall, it was quick and fun.  I'm looking forward to reading more.
Caleb

Asmodemon

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2011, 04:34:56 PM »
Short chapter this time and pretty good.

So Hex is an octopus metsi. I’m trying to figure out how that might work in terms of becoming invisible. I can see him shooting ink and in the water a cloud of ink will make him hard to see, but true invisibility is something different. How does his power work?

As a character Hex was fine, but I felt his reasoning didn’t quite add up. For instance, he’s taking Jhuz to the Nothroi so they can kill him, but he won’t leave him in the wilderness for animals to find because it comes too close to killing him. That makes no sense, it’s actually the opposite as Jhuz has more chances to escape if he were left in the wild.

The contract should also have been considered void if he was contracted to kill someone already dead. He shouldn’t have to find another target to kill simply to make up for the one he couldn’t kill. And there are more ways to sow chaos than to convolutedly kidnap the enemy commander, take him back to the enemy camp, and let the enemy kill them. Assassins are efficient killers if they want to remain undetected (and stay alive to take on more contracts) and this is not efficient.

I’d change the word ‘poisoned’ to drugged or tainted or something to that effect, simply because when I read poison I expect something more lasting than a knockout.

Speaking of the knockout, Jhuz woke up after being hit in the head with a chair without obvious head trauma, which means he suffered a mild head injury. With a mild head injury he would be unconscious for about a maximum of thirty minutes. I had the feeling that he was unconscious longer than that, since Hex had to escape camp, get to a river (was the river nearby? I can’t remember), get on his boat and travel for a ways, since the camp in nowhere near anymore.   

hubay

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Re: July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2011, 05:48:50 PM »
Octopi have better camouflage than chameleons – that was the logic I used. It's not necessarily a well-known fact, though, so perhaps I should mention that at some point in the novel.

As for his logic, I should probably re-write a lot of what he said. Part of his rationale is religious – he takes his eight strictures seriously, so he sees killing Jhuz directly as a sin, but still needs him dead. The other part is because he isn't telling Jhuz everything about his contract ( he actually was hired by the same person who had him assassinate the Emperor's bodyguard, among other thing ).