The Golden Torc

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Brailsford, J. W., "The Sedgeford Torc", The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1/4 (Spring, 1971), pp.16–19, JSTOR The famous Roman copy of the original Greek sculpture The Dying Gaul depicts a wounded Gaulish warrior naked except for a torc, which is how Polybius described the gaesatae, Celtic warriors from modern northern Italy or the Alps, fighting at the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC, although other Celts there were clothed. [10] One of the earliest known depictions of a torc can be found on the Warrior of Hirschlanden (6th centuryBC), and a high proportion of the few Celtic statues of human figures, mostly male, show them wearing torcs. The overall story that unravels here was however very good, and while its often the people around Eddie who are often in more danger than he is, the story holds up a good amount of tension and suspense. Some of the twists of the story I didn't see coming which is always a good thing in a novel wrote this way, and the big evil secrets are as big and evil as could be imagined!. The golden armour. Knowing that all the Droods are wearing armour that nothing can penetrate makes him pretty much invincible. There is a sub plot where Eddie’s armour is pierced and he is being slowly poisoned but even then there was never any real sense of danger to me; it was obvious he wasn’t going to die. Many finds of torcs, especially in groups and in association with other valuables but not associated with a burial, are clearly deliberate deposits whose function is unclear. They may have been ritual deposits or hidden for safekeeping in times of warfare. Some may represent the work-in-progress of a workshop. [17] After the early period, torcs are especially prominent in the Celtic cultures reaching to a coast of the Atlantic, from modern Spain to Ireland, and on both sides of the English Channel.

Saga of the Pliocene Exile by Julian May - Goodreads Saga of the Pliocene Exile by Julian May - Goodreads

Other possible functions that have been proposed for torcs include use as rattles in rituals or otherwise, as some have stones or metal pieces inside them, and representations of figures thought to be deities carrying torcs in their hand may depict this. Some are too heavy to wear for long, and may have been made to place on cult statues. Very few of these remain but they may well have been in wood and not survived. Torcs were clearly valuable, and often found broken in pieces, so being a store of value may have been an important part of their use. It has been noted that the Iberian gold examples seem to be made at fixed weights that are multiples of the Phoenician shekel. [11] Kuhal Earthshaker and his brother Fian Skybreaker – the Irish legends of Cuchulainn and Fionn mac Cumhaill Shaman Bond, the alias of Edwin Drood, is the greatest secret agent in the world. Sort of. Edwin Drood doesn't work for any government but his family of former druids turned mystics. They guard the world from the vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. However, after a routine mission ends up with him witnessing the suicide of the world's most knowledgeable occultist, Edwin finds himself in hot water with the family. So much hot water that he may be forced to go rogue and seek the protection of the Drood family's worst enemies. I liked Shaman Bond and Molly, the agent and anarchist who form the crux of the book's narrative. They form a good pair of modern-day Avengers with a decent bit of chemistry combined with contrasting worldviews which aren't so different underneath the surface. It was perhaps a little too easy for these two to fall in love given their circumstances but I was rooting for them to so I can't exactly complain, can I?Elaborate examples, sometimes hollow, used a variety of techniques but complex decoration was usually begun by casting and then worked by further techniques. The Ipswich Hoard includes unfinished torcs that give clear evidence of the stages of work. [3] Flat-ended terminals are called "buffers", and in types like the "fused-buffer" shape, where what resemble two terminals are actually a single piece, the element is called a "muff". [4] Bronze Age Europe and the East [ edit ] González-Ruibal covers these in detail in the section "Torcs" and the "catalogue" following. The ancient territory of the Gallaeci extended further east along the coast than the modern province, and the linguistic make-up of the region remains controversial. Eddie Drood, aka Shaman Bond, is a field agent for his family. The powerful Droods have guarded mankind for centuries against all the things that go bump in the night. Like that other better known Mr. Bond, ShamanEddie has all sorts of cool gadgets at his disposal. Those will come in handy because when his family suddenly declares him rogue – something the Family never takes well – Eddie finds himself on the run and looking for answers in all the wrong places. Gigantic crystalline organisms, self-aware and powerfully psychic, which evolved in and continue to inhabit interstellar space in the Duat Galaxy. Ships were capable of superluminal travel through mental generation of an aperture into hyperspace ("grey limbo"). Ships were entirely benevolent and many of them undertook a symbiotic "mind-marriage" with humanoid females of the Duat daughter-worlds. Ships routinely carried the Duat citizenry on interstellar voyages of considerable distance, the passengers traveling within a vessel embedded in the Ship's crystal body. Sebi-Gomnol – Human Lord Coercer Eusebio Gomez-Nolan, engineer who created the grey and silver torcs – Goibniu, Irish smith-god

Torc - Wikipedia Torc - Wikipedia

There were too many dead-ends in the story. I recall Mr. Green writing scenes in Nightside that seemed unimportant to the plot but that explore some bizarre idea he must have had. This book has entirely too much of that. I think if a few of them had been cut out/saved for later books this might have been a better story. Furthermore the pacing of the story seemed like utter crap to me. This might have been my own fault since I did not complete it in one sitting, but it did continuously ensure that my expectations would clash with the progress of the book.

Operant humans in the Galactic Milieu are not allowed to enter Exile, so most humans in the Pliocene are latent at most. The few who are operant are sometimes categorized using terms from the Milieu. These categories include adept (stronger and more in control of their abilities than basic operants, roughly 1 in 10 of operants) masterclass (a well above normal level of metapsychic power roughly 1 in 10,000), the grand master class adepts (extremely powerful metapsychic abilities in 1 or more categories, like Elizabeth. One in a million) and the Paramount Grand Masters (with truly world-shaking metapsychic powers. This incredibly rare group, about one per billion humans include Marc Remillard (leader of the Metapsychic Rebellion), Aiken Drum/Aiken Lugonn, and Felice Landry). Individuals generally have different levels of ability in the various classes of metapsychic powers they may possess. For instance, Felice Landry is Paramount in creativity, PK, and Coercion, but roughly masterclass in farspeak and only adept in redaction. Then he's declared a rogue agent. The only punishment of a rogue by the Droods is to be killed on sight by any member of the huge family. Eddie is stunned (frequently physically as well as mentally and emotionally) and sets out to find out why he's been labeled rogue. González-Ruibal, Alfredo, "Artistic Expression and Material Culture in Celtic Gallaecia", E-Keltoi, Volume 6, online Each latent or operant individual has a different combination of these abilities and, amongst the Tanu, those with similar abilities were organized into guilds, called the Five Guilds Mental, each with a guild leader. As of the start of the first novel, "The Many Colored Land", the leaders of the five Tanu guilds were as follows: the Coercer Guild was led by the human Sebi-Gomnol (formerly the embittered Eusebio Gomez-Nolan, ennobled because he invented the controlling silver and grey torcs). The Creator Guild followed Aluteyn Craftsmaster, while the Farsensor Guild was led by Mayvar Kingmaker. The Psychokinetic Guild followed highly influential Nodonn Battlemaster (leader of the Wild Hunt), and the Redactor Guild was led by peaceful Dionket, Lord Healer. All of the guilds came under the authority of a Tanu noble called the Dean of Guilds, Lady Eadone Sciencemaster (the oldest surviving child of the Tanu King Thagdal).