So here’s the plan; since this is up so late, I’m going to delay the next comic to Wednesday to space them out, and than back to Monday’s like normal for a bit; the next comic should be up on Sunday to patreon.
The delay came from that I’d originally planned to truncate this scene so we’d only see the tailend of it, but I decided to expand it somewhat, because I think knowing more about who these people are (via their bickering, I suppose) may matter somewhat; I reread a good bit of the comic and my notes while traveling, and realized how little we have seen the Family powers so far.
It’s late and I’m pretty wiped out from the week, so I’ll spare you the ranting and complaining. Suffice to say that returning to work after traveling did… go smoothly. Dung heaps on fire. Everywhere. I’ll reconsider my employment options at the end of February.
Appreciate the patience, and sorry for the delays. Over the next day or so, I’ll fix any issues with this page and the issues I haven’t yet fixed from the last page or two, and the next page will be up on Patreon sunday, hopefully to catch w/e errors I make before it goes live here 😛
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Of course I realize that there’s always stuff that Past doesn’t tell us. That said, I find Elmon’s implied assertion in his third word bubble to be odd. Malsa has two firm borders with other nations. It’s my understanding that there’s only war with Arpon at the moment. As far as I’m aware, Malsa is not at war with Resh. They may not be on great terms, but there’s been no indication of open hostilities going on.
Furthermore, it was my understanding that the Consul went to war on information that Arpon was building up to invade Malsa. Was that information not released to the family heads? Or does Elmon take extra issue with the Consul initiating a war with the country he was living in and planning to assist when they declared war on Malsa?
Alternatively, did Mium’s gambit of taking the Arpon president to Resh result in Resh and Arpon going to war? If so, did Elmon get confused by the country he’s residing in having a battle on multiple fronts?
I think part of the problem seems to be that they were fed reports of what would have happened at the front without ILA/Mium intervention.
Which I’d feel safe to say looks entirely different from reality at this point.
And they don’t know Peter fabricated the Consul’s death via hologram as well. Really they are making a number of completely understandable but horribly mistaken assumptions that are going to go badly for them. But given what they were up against that isn’t a surprise.
There’s also apparently a newly emergent war with Central, where as previously it was an uneasy peace.
I think that one is going to get interesting. The war is more with IDS than Central, and Peter’s offer of a home for 40K refugees in Malsa is going to mean Central has a vested interest in the opposite side of IDS’ war….
At this point, the war with IDS is mostly with IDS, if I’m not mistaken. So status quo, it’s just that it was more apparent to the Malsans for a bit.
That said, Jindra34 and Byzantine’s point applies to this: the rogue family heads basically have very little insight into this stuff. I’m sure they know a lot of stuff about the situation that we don’t. But I trust Past to give us all of the most pertinent details, which means I expect the details they know that we don’t to mostly not be very useful, due to the things they don’t know that we do know.
Oh, further comment on what the rogue family heads know about the war with the IDS: I suspect that most of what they know about it is from having talked to the other Sophie side of said war, without talking to anyone else from the IDS. As such, they don’t understand anything about the IDS infighting that it’s rather infamous for.
Just in case it’s not clear from this comment and the last: I understand now where Elmond is coming from, and I’m thankful to all of you for helping enlighten me on this point. My last post and the start of this one probably sound like I’m suddenly talking like I’ve been on the opposite side of my question the whole time, and I really do not mean it like that.
For a little bit, I was forgetting to look at the rogue family heads’ actual perspectives, because always keeping track of other people’s perspectives is difficult. It turns out there’s a lot of other people, and they *all* have a different perspective from both mine and seemingly everybody else. It’s like different people are all different, and some of them are very different.
Panel 2: Or do [you] mean to simply forget the accord?
“Suffice to say that returning to work after traveling did… go smoothly. Dung heaps on fire. Everywhere.”
I’m sold! Monday morning I’m lighting dung heaps on fire!
I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself. It can’t make things worse, so it probably DOES make things go smoother.
If nothing else the fire alarm should empty out the building, resulting in comparatively fewer distractions.
I find it much more difficult to get sleep when fire alarms are ringing. Just saying, so you know.
I do find the sentiment of dung heaps on fire everywhere making things go smoothly reminds me of a situation my ex had on returning to work once. Everybody was so distracted by the various crises going on that they basically did whatever she said without question. They were also all crises that she’d predicted and had action plans on file for handling, so nothing was really unexpected to her, and shouldn’t have been to her coworkers. But unfortunately, none of them apparently read the documents that they reviewed together and had to all sign after the last time.
(That was, for the record, not something that happened at her current employer. She’s yet to return from vacation to find crises everywhere there. Sure, she’s gone on vacation, and returned to find problems, just not problems everywhere.)
After a very long conversation with HR I am convinced that I did something wrong. I assumed cow dung would be fine.
What am I missing here? Monday did NOT go smoothly.
Please understand: I am just guessing here. I’m not the expert on this. I’ve never once deliberately set dung on fire, ever. I’ve had nightmares of being burned at the stake, and I have actually been knocked over into a cooking fire during a camping trip once, so setting things on fire is something I generally try very hard to not do. I’m always on the side of putting these things out. The people I spend my free time with are always on the side of putting these things out. Most of my coworkers are generally on the side of putting these things out, and the ones that weren’t so much have all retired.
That having been said, my father had a work experience I think may be applicable here, and there’s also something I’ve noted from years of putting out burning dung.
My father went into work one day covered in cow dung. He had to meet his boss in the lobby that day, due to the first work activity scheduled for the day. His boss came out to the lobby when my dad showed up, arriving just as soon as somebody else arrived at work. The third person (fourth if you count the receptionist) said, “I don’t know who this guy is, but I don’t think you should hire him. He smells bad.” My dad’s boss replied, “I’d like you to meet your new boss.”
The thing I’ve noted about all of the dung fires I’ve helped put out is that none of them actually smell anything like fresh cow dung. I have personally not done any in depth composition analysis of the formerly burning dung to make any determination of what it was. I’ve always relied on the post mortem analysis team to even determine that it was dung. I don’t even know who exactly it is that makes this determination.
That said, I have lived in a rural enough area that my father could have plausibly fell into a massive pile of cow dung on his way to work if he stopped to help someone fix a flat tire at the wrong place, so I know quite a bit about what fresh cow dung smells like. I also know a fair amount about what week old cow dung smells like, and it wasn’t ever even that strong of a scent. It’s possible it could have been chicken excrement recently cleaned from the floor of a chicken house. However, I’ve never heard that stuff being referred to as dung, so I’m not certain that’s a definite possibility. It’s just another data point that I have from my experience that I could share.
So… Just to clarify…. Your father was NOT on fire, right?
And you’re recommending the use of burning chicken manure?
It all makes sense now!
I love how the mention of it being illegal to bring dead people, strongly implies it’s been done before.
Hey, we let them vote here, in a magic charged society there’s all the more reason to include them.
I think the implication was it was not only been done before, but it was *just* done. Is Cadaver that person’s actual name, or is Ashvalt just attempting to bring his point home in a way that wouldn’t go over his head despite the target being a hunchback and all? (Not that height has anything to do with whether points actually miss people, but apparently when one wants to speak a language one has to follow the precedents set up by untold generations of … less than clever people.)
I read it as “cadaver” being an insult to his age, and implying he couldn’t really be that old, he must have died and been reanimated.
And of course the over riding theme being that the consul wouldn’t be welcome anymore, because she’s already dead.
That is sort of what I was saying. Although I think it’s less his age and more his health, and the amount to which he is handling his health problems with magic. At some point, you get to where you’re not really all that different from a magically animated corpse yourself – it’s just a matter of who is pulling the strings.
I don’t think that “Cadaver”‘s depiction looks that incredibly unhealthy. I’m just reminded of the three top magic users in Dave Duncan’s ‘Man of His Word’ series, and how much they resembled undead creatures when viewed with that world’s parallel to Eidos vision, despite looking like little kids to everybody else.
I can see exactly how that went over. “Yes, my mother is here. See? Here she is. She votes no. Yes, I know she’s dead. There isn’t a law against dead people voting.”
from RL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
^_^