What SRD term or description you like?

[Loredoctor]

For me, it's 'Coherent Ruin' - the description of the Super-Light Proton beam.

[Invain]

Hellfire and bloody damnation

[drew]

I don't care what other people say..I LIKE Puisance.

[CovenantJr]

"Excoriation" is quite good.

[dlbpharmd]

"Bifurcated"

[Furls Fire]

From The Power That Perserves, The Healer:

And gleaming like the grief of trees, they sang themselves away...

Ah, such music..

[CovenantJr]

"Bifurcated"

I use that in every day conversation. My mum gave me a strange look, I can tell you.

[Fist and Faith]

Yes, Furls, SRD's descriptions of music are excellent! I love when Atiaran and Findail sing!

The song made Covenant quiver, as if it concealed a specter which he should have been able to recognize. But Atiaran's voice enthralled him. No instruments aided her singing, but before she had finished her first line, he knew that she did not need them. The clean thread of her melody was tapestried with unexpected resonances, implied harmonies, echoes of silent voices, so that on every rising motif she seemed about to expand into three or four singers, throats separate and unanimous in the song.

But Findail did not begin his tale at once. Instead, he lifted his eroded visage to the stars, spread his arms as if to bare his heart, and raised a song into the night.

His singing was unlike anything Linden had heard before. It was melodic in an eldritch way which tugged at her emotions. And it was self-harmonized on several levels at once, as if he were more than one singer. Just as he occasionally became stone or wind or water, he now became song; and his music arose, not from the human form he had elected to wear, but from his essential being. It was so weird and wonderful that Linden was surprised to find that she could understand the words.

And the descriptions of Caerroil Wildwood and Caer-Caveral.

A shimmer of music rippled his sight. When it cleared, he saw Caerroil Wildwood walking toward him across the greensward.
The Forestal was a tall man with a long white beard and flowing white hair. He wore a robe of purest samite, and carried a gnarled wooden rod like a scepter in the crook of one arm. A garland of purple and white orchids about his neck only heightened his austere dignity. He appeared out of the gloaming of the Deep as if he had stepped from behind a veil, and he moved like a monarch between the trees. They nodded to him as he passed. With every step, he scattered droplets of melody about him as if his whole person were drenched in song. His sparkling voice softened the severity of his mien. But his eyes were not soft. From under his thick white brows, a silver light shone from orbs without pupil or iris, and his glances had the force of physical impact.

The man was tall and strong, and robed in whitest sendaline. In his hand, he held a gnarled tree limb as a staff. Melody crowned his head. Music flowed from the lines of his form in streams of phosphorescence. His song was the very stuff of power, and with it he cupped the night in the palm of his hand.

And yes, drew, I like puissance too. Perhaps he overuses it, but I don't care.

All-time best word: unambergrised.

Therefore that night the army from the Westron Mountains gathered under the south wall of Revelstone. All the Haruchai joined their minds together and out of their common strength forged the metal of the Vow - unalloyed and unanswerable, accessible to no appeal or flaw, unambergrised by the promise of any uncorrupt end: a Vow like the infernal oath upon the river of death which binds even the gods. This they wrought out of the extremity and innocence of their hearts, to match the handiwork of the Giants and the mastery of the Lords. As they spoke the hot words - Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab ho-eeal - the ground seemed to grow hot and cognizant under their feet, as if the Earthpower were drawing near the surface to hear them. And when they brought their Vow around full circle, sealing it so that there was no escape, the rocks on which they stood thundered, and fire ran through them, sealing their bones to the promise they had made.

[Furls Fire]

See dlpsy, I told you that was Fist's favorite word.

and ah...the Quote King strikes again

Starfare's Gem seemed to ride music as well as the wind...

[dlbpharmd]

Here's a great moment:

In the song of the merewives we heard the fire of our yearning for that which we have left behind. Assuredly we were deluded - but the delusion was sweet. Mountains sprang about us. The air became the keen breath which the peaks exhale from their snows. And upon the slopes moved the women who call to us in their longing for fire and seed and offspring. Therefore did we leap to answer, disregarding all service and safety. The limbs of our women are brown from sun and birth. But there is also a whiteness as acute as the ice which bleeds form the rock of mountains, and it burns as the purest snow burns in the most high tor, the most wind-flogged col. For that whiteness, we gave ourselves to the Dancers of the Sea.

[Avatar]

It sure is. One of those that make the chills run up my spine.

My favourite parts, in terms of sheer power of language, (can't quote them verbatim, so won't try), are:

Fouls original message, given to Covenant on the Watch in LFB,

the meeting of the Search, in TWL,

and best of all, when the First names Covenant Earth-Friend.

Those last two, and a couple featuring the Haruchai, are usually enough to make me feel like crying. There are no words sufficient to describe it.

--Avatar

[aliantha]

Here's a great moment:

In the song of the merewives we heard the fire of our yearning for that which we have left behind. Assuredly we were deluded - but the delusion was sweet. Mountains sprang about us. The air became the keen breath which the peaks exhale from their snows. And upon the slopes moved the women who call to us in their longing for fire and seed and offspring. Therefore did we leap to answer, disregarding all service and safety. The limbs of our women are brown from sun and birth. But there is also a whiteness as acute as the ice which bleeds form the rock of mountains, and it burns as the purest snow burns in the most high tor, the most wind-flogged col. For that whiteness, we gave ourselves to the Dancers of the Sea.

For a people who don't typically use spoken speech, the Haruchai can certainly wax lyrical when given half a chance, huh?

[Warmark]

Roynish!

[wayfriend]

Has anyone noticed that SRD's simile's are absolutely astounding? Somehow poignant and ironic. I absolutely love how he uses them. Especially the "like a man" ones.

Like a man battering himself in armless impotence against a blank doom, he leaped after the High Lord.

After a moment, he sat down, murmuring aimlessly to himself, wandering in his mind like a man striving to comprehend a language he no longer knew.

He met the High Lord like a man exalted, and repeated, "I have felt it, Mhoram."

But when Covenant awakened briefly during the night and looked about him, he saw the Graveler staring up into the darkness of the heather like a man bidding farewell to the use of his eyes.

Carefully, like a man who did not want to die, Covenant got to his feet.

He looked like a man who Was willing to do almost anything for her.

At times, he looked like a man who had spent years yearning for the company of Giants.

He slept like a man who feared to face what was coming.

Honninscrave looked like a man who was determined to rejoin his brother at any cost.

He obeyed her like a man who would soon be beyond reach of any command.

Cail bowed to them, looking as much as his dispassion allowed like a man who wanted to say something and had almost made up his mind to say it.

When he found his voice, he sounded unexpectedly small and lonely, like a man who could not afford to let even one friend go.

As he chewed bread and dried fruit for breakfast, he went on nodding to himself like a man who had no other hope.

Sighing rue and relief like a man who had been reprieved or damned and did not know the difference—did not care if there were no difference—he thrust the ring back into place and followed her.

Lit only by the ghoulish emanations of the creatures, he stood in the bottom of the crevice like a man who had just been maimed.

And many, many more. [/b]

[Warmark]

Like a man battering himself in armless impotence against a blank doom, he leaped after the High Lord.

I like this one best, is it Covenant jumping after Elena in Earthroot?

[Fist and Faith]

"It is said that upon the edge of the Earth at the end of time stands a lone man who holds the meaning of the Haruchai - a man whom we name ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. It is said that he has mastered all skill and prowess that we desire, all restraint and calm, and has become perfection - passion and mastery like unto the poised grandeur of mountains."

[wayfriend]

Like a man battering himself in armless impotence against a blank doom, he leaped after the High Lord.

I like this one best, is it Covenant jumping after Elena in Earthroot

Yes. And yes, it's extremely evocative. SRD should be searched in airports for the words "like" and "as" - his similes are dangerously sharp.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

My favorite like-a-man quote is in either Chronicles or Gap or Mordant -- but I cannot remember it exactly and I cannot find it!!! Can anyone help?

It goes something like "He walked from the room with his arms wrapped about himself, like a man holding together the pieces of his broken dreams."

I have been trying to find it for a long time. Any help is appreciated.

[I'm Murrin]

Damn, I know that quote. No idea where it's from, though. Considering that my feeling is I read it more recently than most, I think perhaps Gap or Mordant is more likely than Covenant.

[Guest]

"loss" and pitchwifes song of bereavement, completely and undeniably tortured

[Guest]

"loss" and pitchwifes song of bereavement, completely and undeniably tortured