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July 25 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch14

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hubay:
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:
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:
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.

Will777r:
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:
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.

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