Dark Age Quotes

"Only fascists should make cities. Demokrats never have a salient thesis."

"A man may run, but none has escaped his fate. Yet."

"Ozgard the Mad. Ozgard the Bad. Ozgard the Berryclad."

"Make no mistake, Sefi, Queen of the Obsidians, this is no war of Wind or Fire.” He gestures to the dismantled Obsidian youth around him, with pity to the one holding the bone fragment in his neck. “This is a war of annihilation, and you are outmatched by the darker breed of my kind."

"Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains."

"Practical. Nagal is the superior language to Common. It conveys the soul better and has more beautiful words. Weldschmer. The pain in discovering the world fails to fulfill expectation. Fenwehr. The longing to be somewhere else. But we have no word for practical. Only honorable or shameful."

"This horse rides for only one man."

"All my life, I’ve tamed myself to not frighten others. Sometimes it is fun to let the lion out."

"I’ll never get used to seeing the fear Sevro wakes in people. Deep down they know Darrow is operating on a framework of logic. No one, not even me, believes that Sevro is completely sane."

"Spakr. In Nagal, quiet and wise are the same word. So if I say ‘Mann ni spakr,’ it means that man is not quiet, and thus stupid and loud."

"I’ve spent enough time in the past, love. The dead need no tears. They don’t rest easier for our vengeance, or our guilt.” She shrugs. “They’d want us to live. And life’s about the now and the future, eh?"

"Was my own clan that did me wrong.” His heavy eyes flick up. “Didn’t know that, did ya? They burnt off me what makes a man a man. Ares found me bleeding to death in a tunnel. He knew what they’d done. He fixed me, in more ways than one. But he did one better. He taught me it was Gold that broke us. Taught me Red could matter. Taught me I mattered. Ten years, I never saw his face.” He looks up at Sevro. “When he took that helmet off to you, to me, and I saw Gold, I wept worse than when they gelded me. First man who said I wasn’t broken was the master. The slaver. Hit me good. Right here.” He thumps his chest with a flat hand. “And I saw it hit him. I wasn’t his best. I wasn’t his favorite. But I was the only one who believed like he did. Was me that chose Darrow. Was me that had the keys to Tinos.” He swallows. “Boy…that father of yours never judged me ’cept by what I’d done. Began to understand I owed him the same. Made a choice, then. I’d stand before him. Him that freed me. Him that made me different, made me a force. And I’d tell him what he told me long before: a man is his actions, not his blood.” He looks back at the remains of the datadrop in sorrow that even now he still hides his truth. “The Jackal came before I got that chance. That is the greatest regret of my life. Your pa was my hero then and he is my hero now. I knew I’d never see his like again. I was wrong."

"Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself."

"I have thought it over. I think I would be a good father,” Daxo says at last. “After all, I have a fine example to follow."

"Ma’am…” I turn back to her. “It must be said: It is in honor to serve a true Sovereign."

"You were not misunderstood by your father, Atalantia. You were simply disliked. Aja was his pride. Moira was his joy. You were just…there with your silk, and your Venusian orgies. Acting out to get attention. And now you’re his last resort. The pitiable last sentence of a family saga that is almost over."

"that is the noble lie of demokracy, isn’t it? The belief in humanity, even though humanity is a screaming, selfish mob. I love humans, truly. But humanity…” She shivers. “I wanted, I needed to see your face as you realized we were right all along. It is true beauty."

"The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death."

"Beasts must stop for water. I carry mine."

"I believe we all begin equal parts light and dark. I fear you think your strength lies in your darkness. But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends."

"Daxo taught my son to build castles in the sand. Pax cried when the waves came in. Your brother sat him on his knee and told him that’s all life is. Moments you build only to see washed away. But that doesn’t mean it’s all for nothing. The key is having a long memory for the sweet, and a short one for the bitter. I will miss your brother, Thraxa. But he isn’t gone."

"Gold was seldom generous in victory. The genocide that followed the Battle of Peitho consisted not just of mass culling, but social and cultural reengineering. A domestication of a wild breed into a more…sustainable and predictable stock. Technophobia was introduced as well as other paradigm alterations. Allfather became Allmother. Mongol sociological structure became Norse. Patriarchy became matriarchy, an inversion of the division protocol they used on Reds."

"It wasn’t until Octarius that the first Kuiper Obsidian was spotted, and the name Ascomanni began to circulate. At first, they were of little concern. Further reconnaissance suggested nomadic caravans of ice miners, subterranean dwellings, sparse populations, and fractious tribal dynamics. It seems the Ascomanni even managed to take some carvers with them. Their skin was said to be red, possibly from genetic sculpting with Deinococcus radiodurans, an extremophilic bacterium highly resistant to deepspace radiation, vacuum, dehydration, and cold."

"Could be someone the Fear Knight helped to power. A translation discrepancy. Or maybe Atlas’s ships were damaged and he lost coms for ten years and tucked tail. Whatever the case, if this Volsung Fá exists, it would be highly unlikely Martian or Terran Obsidians who turned raiders would have any interaction with true Ascomanni. They’re years away on the ships they have. People just gave the pirates the name because people like legends. But it makes you wonder, what if they have met with their long lost brethren? What if they are coordinating and Volsung Fá rules not just the far Obsidian, but the pirates too?"

"Gray. So frail on our own. So impregnable when we lock arms."