I honestly thought it was a to keep the tension from previous chapter’s cliffhanger, and that it would be just a slice of life chapter following some rats around the inn. Then Mrsha appeared and I was pleasantly surprised. Then she tied the rats together and mistreated them and I started to feel off (especially because I don’t think this story would endorse animal cruelty). And then it just keeps escalating, from Lism provoking, to the gnolls deciding on mob justice and Mrsha seeing, then Erin giving her lessons on cruelty and finally it all perfectly tying together on her going and saving Calruz. That was… Masterful. Maybe one of my favorites chapters. Probably.

But the highlight was Lyonnete finally claiming Mrsha. That was the moment I actually got overwhelmed by that moment. Dear god, it was so fucking good… I love it. YOU GO GIRL! CLAIM YOUR DAUGHTER!!! AGH!!!

Luckily, rats don’t have a system and thus can’t get red classes. Just imagine…

I think it’s the sort of class that would change when you freed yourself or a class you eventually lose like how you lose royalty classes when you abdicate.

I think you’d need large scale earth prisoners and someone that got a life sentence to truly see prisoner as a main class. And the prison itself would warp the class. Earth style prison? Pocket Spaces, clown style, would be quite a good skill. [Everything is a Shiv] could be fun. [Intimidating Aura] for a [Prison Boss] type class.

No one, not even Zevara, is really arguing against punishing Calruz. He himself says that even if he was being controlled, he still needs to be held accountable in some way.

The main issue is the citizens don’t see the danger if he was being controlled. Zevara needs to know the answer to that question, so that she can protect the city. The citizens don’t care, and are willing to sacrifice both the law and anything close to justice for vengeance.

The rats are kind of similar. Everyone basically agrees they are pests, and should be killed, or gotten rid of. But the gnolls are fine with essentially torturing another living creature for the sake of their own enjoyment – basically what they want to do with Calruz.

But, for Erin and Elirr and some others, both the rats and Calruz are living beings that can feel pain. Kill them if you must, but torturing them is wrong.

A lot of people would consider mind magic like that way worse than death.

I’ve seen comments on other novels that have way less drastic mind fuckery than that get super, insanely triggered. Literally to the point of threatening harm to the author if they don’t change that part of the story.

Even being imprisoned for a long time, I imagine a Prisoner class wouldn’t ever get to very high levels. A big part of leveling is adversity. And yes, at the beginning, being a prisoner would be hard, and you could level easily.

But after say, level 10? Given the skills Calruz got, he’d be having a much easier time. By level.20, you probably have 8-10 skills, at least, making it more bearable. Eventually, much of the adversity of being a Prisoner would go away.

Even if you were a prisoner in a hellish work camp, there’s only so far you can go with getting beaten and such before you’d break entirely. So, even in that situation, eventually, you’d start having a lack of enough adversity to continue leveling.

I could see a Prisoner getting to maybe around level 30, at most. Getting beyond that would take so much effort on the part of guards and whatnot that your xp gain would be practically nothing.

You know…I’m bad at actually paying attention to descriptions of things in books.

When I think of Liscor, I see a wooden wall. Like the spiky pointed ones. But obviously stone makes way more sense, especially since the walls keep out the flooding in the spring.

And when I think of the Inn, I always place the tower in the center. And square. Like a church tower instead of a wizard’s tower.

Lastly: Hello from the future! As of writing this, we are 1 day away from Book 12 being released to Kindle. Which is why I’m here, since I finished book 11 yesterday and 2 days of waiting is too much!