The Munk a Blind Guide

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, Matthew 23

This is one of histrofigs 25mm miniatues from their Blasted Planets Special Figures line. I finally got some paint on it. I reviewed a few of these miniatures back here and here.

More of Yagharek’s Musings

...I was once a creature of the air, and it remembers me. When I climb to the city heights and lean out into the wind, it tickles me with currents and vectors from the past. I can smell and see the passage of predators and prey in the eddying wash of this atmosphere.

I am like a diver who has lost his suit, who can still gaze through the glass bottom of a boat and watch the creatures of the upper and deeper darkness, can trace their passage and feel the tug of the tides, even though distorted and distinct, veiled and half hidden….

The air, stills with summer, is heavy with heat and now with these newcomers, these intruders, I cannot see. The air is laden with menace. My curiosity rises. My hunting instincts stir.

But I am earthbound.

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Yagharek’s Musings

“...I emerge into streets that wind like dark rivers through cavernous brick rock faces. The moon and her little shining daughters glimmer wanly. Cold winds ooze like molasses down from the foothills and mountains and clog the night-city with drifting rubbish. I share the streets with aimlessly moving scraps of paper and little whirlwinds of dust, with motes that pass like erratic thieves under eaves and through doors...”

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

The Garuda

"The great creature stood more than six feet tall, on cruel clawed feet that poked out from under a dirty cloak. The ragged cloth dangled down almost to the ground, draped loosely over every inch of flesh, obscuring details of physiognomy and musculature, all but the garuda’s head. And the great inscrutable bird face gazed down at Isaac with what looked like imperiosity. Its sharply curved beak was something between a kestrel and an owl. Sleek feathers faded subtly from ochure to dun to dappled brown. Deep black eyes stared at his own, the irises only a fine mottling at the very edge of dark. Those eyes were set in orbits which gave the garuda face a permanent sneer, a proud furrow."

page 30, Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

In those days no insult went unpunished...

In those days no insult went unpunished; no tribe failed twice in its obligations. The circle of French influence was firmly extended around the haunts of the Iroquois in New York and along the Ohio. From Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, north to Hudson’s Bay, was French land. To the westward, along the Ottawa River, and skirting the north shore of Lake Huron to Michillimackinac and Green Bay, were the strong French allies, the Hurons, Ottawas, Nipissings, Kiskagons, Sacs, Foxes, and Mascoutins. Down at the lower end of Lake Michigan, at the Chicagou and St. Joseph 6 portages, were the Miamis; and farther still, the Illinois, whom the Sieur de la Salle and Henri de Tonty had drawn close under the arm of New France."