Diogenes loses his hand again

There have been many people dedicated to causes greater than themselves. I have tried to be one of them my entire life. Of these, several have lost hands. Tyr lost his hand to keep Fenrir as at bay. He also transformed deceit into something like a fair trade. The wolf didn’t believe the gods and said “look, i’ll only let you bind me if you put this guy’s hand up as collateral.” Once you accept collateral you’re basically saying “if I get screwed here, I’m okay with it on these circumstances.” So, he was doubly good. He gave up his hand to save the world from the damage of Fenrir, and also to save the other norse gods from strait up tricking a wolf and converting the situation into something like a fair exchange.

On the other hand, Scaevola lost his hand dedicated to the Roman Republic. I’m not sure if he was doing this for the sake of the army—which isn’t something I can really get behind—or for the sake of protecting his family, which is something I can (unless the family are all jerks like my dad).

In any case, it is clear that someone losing a hand for a cause is an act of such high symbolic import that it is considered noteworthy and memorable, because why should I know about a couple of lost hands that happened many generations ago?

I would like to set the record straight here. I am no iconoclast, but I don’t think that I am especially memorable. I would rather the cause for which I am giving my hand up to be remembered. I think it’s difficult to suss out why Tyr and Scaevola gave up their hands. Everyone just thinks “whoa, those dudes are bad-asses.” I mean, I don’t want people to think about me that much. I want them to think about Jesus that much. Even that, I mean, think about what he said, not what he looked like. Who cares what people look like. I mean, unless they’re really ugly. Then they’re probably great people. But, its a negative correlation not a positive correlation. You only care about what people looked like if you really don’t want to look at them.

So, everyone who is setting up long stories and speeches about how great I am — just stop it. Instead talk about how poor people deserve to eat beans so much that a dude was willing to give up a hand trying to make sure that the planet wasn’t destroyed by evil or ruled by some guy who is so lawful that he does not care about the poor but only about the laws.

Oh—right, so I lost my hand, again. Here’s how that happened.

We were waiting in that room when a dragon king came and told us to take the spit and to sound the stone if we wanted.

We did as they suggested, and then a woman came and started to attack us. I cast silence on us, so that those of us who did not wish to be were not affected by the stone. Karl was, and I put a gilded fetus on him to stop his dancing. Our weapons were fixed.

So, anyway, we couldn’t hear this lady. I tried to get her to see that we couldn’t hear her by running over and putting her into the silence cone that I was in. That didn’t work very well, and she was going to attack everyone, so I struck her trying to stop her spell, and then jumped away. This didn’t work either. I just got struck by lightning and then hit her in the face with a hammer.

At this point Gershom was able to start talking to her and Kuie came out. Gershom said something that got me unsilenced, and then I tried to explain how everything was just a misunderstanding. The dragon king wasn’t going to talk with us unless we gave up the hand that smacked his friend in the face—so I ran over and let him bite it off. Then we all chatted, and explained the misunderstanding. It seems that the dragon who told us we could have the things was actually just one of Kuei’s servants playing a trick on us (while trying not to bother the king). In the end Kuie decided to let us go, but told us that we owed this guy a favor since he got us what we wanted and not eaten.

Then we left, after seeing that we had condemned a whole manager of animals to dance until they died. Man—I could not have felt worse at that moment if both of my hands had been bitten off.

On our way out Zombres just started to try to make as much noise as possible, and we get attacked by a golden fetus. We beat it up and then save it’s body so that we can make someone else stop dancing.

Oh yeah, we gave Kuei, through his shape-changing servants, our +5 bow.

Anyway—I have to figure out what life will be like without my hand. Pardon the penmanship here. I have not written left handed before. I might try using my right foot next time. Maybe I can become right footed more easily than left handed.