roachpatrol:

@ everyone who’s read the goblin emperor: 

please consider how utterly interested maia would be in chatelains. 

like, maybe they’re a new technology starting to come in to the elflands from the goblins’ realm via merchants and emigrated servants, so maia is rivited the minute the head of his serving staff shows up to give a report. and she’s like ‘we need to do this and this and that’ and he’s like ‘okay i get where you’re coming from but you have a shiny gadget and that is all i am going to care about for the next five paragraphs.’ and of course he’s too polite to ask to see it so he really tries to pay attention, even though the thing she has is so clever and interesting, sigh. 

but then a goblin merchant at a dinner wants to talk to him about silk tariffs and he’s also got a chatelain on his belt, under his jacket, and maia’s trying to do the emperor thing but /there it is right there/ everything time the merchant gestures he gets to see the little chains jangling around and guess at what items there are, like tiny scissors and a roll of measuring tape and maybe something to touch up his nails and a comb and compass and a little magnifying glass and he has a really hard time caring about silk tariffs

and then finally when meeting with the clocksmiths over improvements to the pneumatic system or whatever, the clocksmith he’s talking to knows the look of someone who is helplessly fascinated with a gadget, and he takes his chatelain off and hands it over to maia to look at, and of course a clocksmith is going to have the most gadgety possible chatelain. there’s a little packet for colored pencils, and of course a fold up sharpening knife and a flask of oil and tiny screwdrivers and wrenches and itty bitty screws and cogs, and magnifying lenses and a fold-up t-square and a leveler and even a notebook up by the belt hook with a leather cover that unfolds to show conversion tables for times and distances and amounts. 

and maia is like things i don’t want to give back: THIS. but of course the emperor does not steal shiny gizmos from common folk like a deranged magpie. especially not toolkits. a servant’s workset! he is the emperor. his heavy-ringed hands aren’t meant for the business of mending and making. so he tucks everything away and gives it back, and they get back to work. 

but a month later, going through the mail with csevet, a package arrives from the clocksmiths and in it is chatelain for an emperor, all made of silver and ivory and opal. there’s a compass and a spyglass and a tiny clock that you can set to make a tiny chime, and a cunning notebook with his personal seal embossed in gold ink on the cover so no one can protest that an emperor doesn’t take his own notes, and a leather envelope with a fold-out map of ethuveraz showing every road and river and principality, and a map of the court on the back, just as detailed, and a magnifying lens, and devotional tokens for his gods, and a carved ivory matchbox for lighting candles, and even— provokingly— a little flask for lacquer, so he can carry around each day’s color and touch up his own nails. 

and that summer, wearing chatelains becomes very popular among the nobility.