The older man nodded in understanding of the farmer's words, looking out over the field again and sighing before going to join Emmett on the stone wall. "Standing up to her, speaking up, and letting others know they aren't the only ones against what's happening is important. If we let her be the only voice to speak out, we let her control the story. And it's not hers to write." He shook his head, but his frown lightened at the question, and he nodded his head as he introduced himself.
"No natural, lad, but I keep mostly to myself and live off the land in the outskirts, hunting and trapping and leaving well enough alone. People are all right in small doses, but I don't care much for towns. And especially not for kings and queens," he added with a grimace. "Not that there can't be good ones, but this looks to be a particularly bad one." A little would-be Osmund Zydow, pulling puppet strings and making people dance to her tune, was this Zariah. Offering to talk and then silencing all protest by force when she proved unpopular... unlike Zydow in that, at least. The old man had been clever enough to build his allies and resources for years before staging his coup of the Technic League.
"What do you do when you've got a particularly noxious weed spreading in your fields?" the old man asked curiously. "When it starts strangling your crops and trying to take over?"
"No natural, lad, but I keep mostly to myself and live off the land in the outskirts, hunting and trapping and leaving well enough alone. People are all right in small doses, but I don't care much for towns. And especially not for kings and queens," he added with a grimace. "Not that there can't be good ones, but this looks to be a particularly bad one." A little would-be Osmund Zydow, pulling puppet strings and making people dance to her tune, was this Zariah. Offering to talk and then silencing all protest by force when she proved unpopular... unlike Zydow in that, at least. The old man had been clever enough to build his allies and resources for years before staging his coup of the Technic League.
"What do you do when you've got a particularly noxious weed spreading in your fields?" the old man asked curiously. "When it starts strangling your crops and trying to take over?"
