• they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)


perhaps I should write a story about how Sisyphus blows up his fucking rock. with all respect to Albert Camus, who was a much wiser person than I've ever been, imagining Sisyphus happy isn't quite as satisfying as imagining him terminally pissed off, and determined to do something about it.

what could he do? you ask. I've got one idea anyway, although I'm not sure how much free time Sisyphus would have (in between rock-rolling episodes) to work on it. but if we grant that Sisyphus can piss about for a little while on his hilltop before trudging back down to retrieve his boulder, then he can spend some of that time...pissing.

he could piss on the same patch of ground, over and over. it'd be easier if he had help, like if visitors also urinated on the same spot. the point is to build up as much nitrogen there as possible and let the soil bacteria work on it over a long period, then scraping up the earth and ashing it. with a lot of tedious work, one can obtain a nitrate salt—the key component of a simple explosive. carbon would be also relatively easy to obtain by pyrolysis of suitable organic matter, as from plants.

and that would be enough. readers will probably remember that the standard "black powder" formulation has sulfur in it, which probably makes the reaction more reliable: the sulfur melts and acts as a fluid reaction medium for the other components. but it's not strictly necessarily. all Sisyphus really needs is a strong oxidant, i.e. the nitrate, and an avid reducing agent, i.e. the carbon. mix those two things together finely, collect a huge amount of it in a hole in the ground, improvise some way of lighting it, roll the boulder atop the hole...it might work. and you could always try again. I suppose it might take a very long time.

~Χαρά


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