Through Adversity Quotes

“There was a part of me that distrusted her for how she had handled me, as though a fight where we’d both been yelling would have been more honest. That was how my parents had always settled matters.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“I tried to make the training as intensive as possible, exercising as many skills as I could. The end result of that was me dashing across the open clearing, trailing flames from my hands, singing Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, while Fenn fired blunted arrows at me. Fenn had very quickly set up obstacles by dumping furniture out of her glove, and she’d put small targets up for me to strike with my sword. Grak stood at one end of the clearing, ready to spar with me when I looped back to him, and at the other end were a few melons I was supposed to strike unarmed.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Chapter 36: In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“I mean, we can fight about it if you want to,” I said. “It certainly seemed like you wanted to fight. But I’ve been trying my best not to get into arguments with people just because I found a solidly fortified position to fight from.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“I could feel myself getting angry. As little as a few months ago, I probably would have responded to her with righteous fury, telling her that yes, she should go tell him the truth, even if it cost us. It wasn’t even that I was particularly inclined toward being a staunchly moral person, it would have just been that we were on opposite sides. So I took a step back and tried to think things through.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Or rather, it was interesting, but it didn’t seem like it would crack the world open, and if I wasn’t going to crack the world open, then I wanted something that actually resonated with me.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“I guess we get to see whether you’re nuts or not.” “This is the first time you’ve made specific, testable predictions,” said Amaryllis, which sounded enough like agreement that I was slightly hurt.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Sometimes, for reasons that no one really understands, one of these artisans will go into a forge frenzy where they’re overcome by a very particular idea and become dead-set on pursuing it, to the exclusion of money, reputation, family, sleep, food, et cetera. Once they’re finished, they come out of it, and sitting on their workbench, or wherever, is this thing that they didn’t actually know how to create, drenched in otherworldly magic and utterly, forever unique. Those are the entads. You’ve seen two of them so far, Fenn’s bow and the teleportation key.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“on and on until you have hundreds of voices arguing with varying strength that the imperial law is either good and bad, and eventually the vote gets decided by some combination of money and influence rather than whether it’s actually good policy.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“The body had 10 pints of blood or so, I knew that from research I’d done before we played a one-shot of Vampire: The Masquerade.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Tell me what you know about blood magic.” “Uh”—I paused—“nothing. I mean, I have some guesses, but nothing immediately springs to mind.” “Guess for me please,” she said. “Well … my guess is that it would be something like what I’ve seen before, back on Earth,” I said. “So maybe blood magic is the ability to control blood telekinetically, or maybe it’s using your blood to store spells from other sources, or maybe it’s tapped into the elemental plane of blood, or maybe you have to drink blood to take on the blood’s power, or maybe you have to spill your own blood as a sacrifice in order to fuel different effects.” Amaryllis was giving me a funny look. “Was one of those correct?” I asked. “No,” she said. “The depth of the dream-skewer astounds me sometimes.” I frowned at that and she hurried on. “No, blood magic taps into the raw, vital essence of the body, tapping it and shaping it for other purpose. The most skilled blood magi can extend their power beyond the body itself, extending their essence into the shape of a tool or weapon.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Was it better to die or to live a life of eternal suffering? I didn’t know that I could properly answer that.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“It’s not about simulation,” Arthur replied. “You’re not supposed to think that the whole world is made up of people with levels who are acting in accordance with these abstract rules, that’s what’s -- I don’t want to say dumb, because I can see where that might appeal to people, but that’s not what these games are usually about. They’re about telling this small, improvised story that no one but a handful of people are ever going to hear. Having a rule like an automatic hit on a natural 20 is just in service of story-telling.” He turned to me. “Joon, tell us that story.” “Which story?” I asked. “The one about the level 1 commoner and the best warrior in the world?”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Anyway, the real question wasn’t so much what I believed to be true, but how I would change what I was doing on the basis of the possibilities.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity

“Destroying souls in order to fuel a motorcycle that would get us out of here … well, that was pretty metal, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.”
― Alexander Wales, Through Adversity