{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/598",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 598,
    "subject": "Meanwhile, back at the gate",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-12T14:09:28+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-12T14:09:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0151@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-12T14:09:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Meanwhile, back at the gate",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "                                                                      \n12/05/98\n                                                                      11:07\n Meanwhile, back at the gate"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Mantis wrote:\nRe: no monsters at the gate of Nessus, that this is standard\noperating procedure, firing military hardware into the crowd just to\nkeep them off the road, when will they ever learn, setting\nthe wagon on fire, after a few chiliads you'd think evolution would\ntake hold, yawn, just another boring day for the bloodthirsty\nhighway patrol at the Sanguinary Turnstile.  Silly."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wrong. This _is_ standard operating procedure, as Gene Wolfe\nis careful to make Master Palaemon tell us: \"...there is a redoubt,\nso I've heard, every fifty leagues... [the roads] are patrolled by\nuhlans under orders to kill anyone found on them, and since they\nhave permission to loot the bodies of those they slay, they are\nnot much inclined to ask excuses.\" Shadow, XIII\n\nAnd no-one is suggesting that firing on the crowd has been going\non for \"chiliads\" as you say. We are specifically told that the roads\nhave only been closed in Master Palaemon's lifetime. Since the\nsoldiers are mounted they are clearly one of Palaemon's patrols\nrather than a redoubt, and it is simply the travellers' misfortune\nto encounter them here.\n\nI find far sillier the idea that"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "...the patrol/watchers at the gate have spotted Hethor and want him \nfor questioning at the least"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "These watchers spend a lifetime watching for a familiar face, and\nyet when they see one they don't block-off the gate, or infiltrate\nthe crowd, but station soldiers _outside_ the gate with orders to fire\nindiscriminately? Hardly. As Dr Talos says \"if they were to see the\none they seek, they would sally out and lay hold of him.\""
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}