Been meaning to ask this – please please give content warnings. I’m sure some sensitive souls (more than just me) read your writing. And people with trauma. You gave one for the chapter about sex and there wasn’t even any sex in it. This would make reading your story so much more accessible. If you ever read this, it would mean so much if you would consider. From a dedicated reader, with love and respect.

“I heard of what had befallen Esthelm too late, but I set out as soon as I realized the other local cities were doing nothing to address the issue.”
-> “I heard of what had befallen Esthelm too late, and I set out as soon as I realized the other local cities were doing nothing to address the issue.”

To me it’s the fact that they have fae titles, the fae have names for gnomes and a couple other races (I forget the chapter where they were used) but I imagine the timeless fae wouldn’t refer to them as a different title if they were elves, the youngest doesn’t fit for elves when gnomes and stuff are running around on mortal time frames so I doubt it

The flames in Torne’s eyes dimmed as he saw they all wore armor and moved to surround him.

Toren is misspelled. Great chapter though

Pirateaba excells at writing non-humans, and these chapters clearly show difference and common denominators. Tone, descriptions, and voice in this arc is at a level that most other povs don’t display. I couldn’t agree less with you, this is so much better than the whole Magnolia storyline.

How in the world did you come up with the idea that these chapters are trying to make Toren and Rags look good?

Rags was the one that initially sacked the city. Everything that is happening is directly due to her decision.

The Red Fang warriors kill multiple adult humans so they can eat them, but because they decide to save a child that would be no threat at all to them, they are “good”? They stop Toren from killing the monster girl because she might the one that their chieftain likes, so they are ” good”? No, and no.

The only “good” thing Toren has done might be killing the goblin shaman, but even that is iffy. He didn’t do that to be “good”, but because he enjoys killing and the shaman tried to command him. Everything else he’s done – killing humans near the road, attacking the adventurers, stalking humans to find some to kill, attacking Ylawes, attacking the Florist girl – is pretty firmly in the “evil” category.

Yes, the humans are acting like shitbags, but that’s because it’s the middle of winter, there’s barely any supplies around, and everyone is basically freezing, starving, and probably hurt from the original goblin raid. Humans act like shitbags all the time, this is just worse because the situation is overall worse. Humans acting like shitbags doesn’t make other shitbags good, it just makes both groups shitbags.

Everyone is beating each other up because most of the city was burned/destroyed and looted. There aren’t enough supplies to go around, and it’s the middle of winter. Everyone is cold, scared, probably hurt, and starving. Instead of working together, small groups formed and took advantage of even less fortunate groups/individuals. This makes everyone else band together in small groups for protection, but with as few supplies as there are around, they also inevitably prey on other groups. The cycle repeats until there is some external influence (such as Ylawes).

In the Riverfarm scene, they started fighting over the shovel and trying to get Durene to help get their families dug out first.

The biggest factor in both cases is the winter. The Esthelm residents didn’t have enough supplies to make traveling somewhere else viable. They’d either freeze, starve, or get killed by goblins/monsters on the way. For Riverfarm, the avalanche had covered everything with enough snow that digging by hand randomly wasn’t going to do much. All their tools were buried, so fighting for the only available tool – Durene’s shovel – was pretty much the only chance they had. Whoever had the shovel would basically get to decide where to dig, which meant you could potentially save your own spouse/parents/children/etc.

Neither situation has people acting smart, but responses to crises is generally not logical but emotional. This is how people act in times of crisis, when there is no one to provide leadership. We don’t typically see this kind of response in the modern world because there is almost always an immediate leadership response as well from helpful sources.

This is why as soon as Laken starts providing leadership, everything calms down and stuff starts to get resolved. And when Ylawes shames the people into stopping, we can start to see the same thing. Both are leaders for the people to rally around, that aren’t just thinking about a few other people, but the entire community.

It’s also very confusing on why all the men are just beating each other up for “reasons”. It hardly makes sense. Same for the Laken shit where everyone was brawling isntead of looking for their kids. This isnt how people act in times of crisis at all.