Spoken horsewords · 11:39am Oct 28th, 2017
It's always nice when you get a wee spate of notifications on behalf of an older story.
It's even nicer when you look into why said notifications are coming, and discover said story's had a reading done for it!
ObabScribbler and several other Youtubers, all linked to in the video description, have done a superb job with The King In The Mountain, providing the narration, individual character voices, and atmospheric background effects to make for one hell of a reading. All due credit and massive thanks to them for managing to uplift my own literary ineptness to something entirely listenable and nigh-professionally put-together. This was an lovely surprise to receive from out of the blue. 
Go check it out. And mind all the old ghosts in Tartarus, now.
I actually ended up missing a reading for a story of mine once because I didn't get the notification. It was posted on this recent Friday the 13th too, so I blame that. Probably.
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Eldritch forces are well-known to intercept any and all messages pertaining to readings, so that makes sense.
They're not what they once were, the eldritch forces. A shame, really.
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I blame things that aren't eldritch forces for taking their jobs.
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"Fear us eldritch forces, humankind. For we shall, as we have done for so long, send sicknesses amongst your ranks, burst your skin with boils, sap the vitality from your very -"
"Um, I'm afraid not. It's just ... we've found these new things called germs, see, and we think -"
"Oh, god damn it."
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but what if germs are the eldritch demons?!?!?
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"Fear us, humankind! For we shall, as we have done for so long, send sicknesses -"
"Haha, wow, you're tiny! I'd expected eldritch forces to be ... larger."
"Shut up! Just for that, we're going to make you sneeze out your own trachea!"
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At least they haven't gotten my kidneys, right?
Kind of funny how things work out. Celestia's canon Nightmare Daybreaker is a lot like Astralus. The part of her that's tired of being a shining paragon all the time and just wants to be worshipped.
Makes this story a bit more poignant in retrospect.
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It's a neat parallel, isn't it? Celestia at her potential worst had more than a few Astralus-y elements to her. This was written well before Daybreaker was introduced, and was my first foray into exploring Celestia's inner demons, so it's nice that things have ended up aligning there. Not scuppered by canon for once.
A reading by Scribbler for The King In The Mountain? I can barely believe my eyes. Scribbler and the others always do amazing readings and this is another one. The audio and voice acting really add to the story, the Nightmare’s voice especially. Reminds me of Diablo’s voice from Diablo 3 even though it is deeper. Anyway, I loved the reading and the fact that it is one of your stories makes it even better. I hope that they do readings on your other stories, especially Tempest. It would be amazing to hear all the characters come to life so to speak.
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It is an amazing reading, isn't it? The Nightmare was good and suitably thunderous and Astralus was every bit as maniacal and raspy as I could have hoped, though the role I was most taken with was Celestia. If they'd claimed to have shanghaied Nicole Oliver herself into the role, I'd have believed them.
Ha, I'm not sure there's even enough voice actors on Youtube for that sort of ensemble! Unless they have one or a few very versatile (and increasingly very breathless) actors tackling all the roles.