Comic for Monday, March 15th, 2021
I think most people would describe Arron as the Director of the Criminal Investigations department as competent, but I think it is telling that when he decided that shit was fucked, he reverted to being Major Arron Kepler more or less right away – there was good reasons for that, as it placed him outside the authority people he was suspicious of, but I think he also reverted in much more than just the authority he was acting under – from that point forward he approached his problems with a more and more military mindset.
He is almost certainly giving the military too much credit here, and they likely were trying to tell him nothing more than that they didn’t want trouble, but this is sort of his pivot to realizing that hammers cannot really clean up messes, that’s what mops are for, and perhaps a bit of a change in how he views the actions of some other people.
That Minerva just jumps to assuming that he had a convoluted plan all along is probably somewhat informative to how people view the Keplers in general. We saw a similar thing from the IDS Analysts, where they just assumed that Peter being rogue meant there was a convoluted high stakes plan playing out rather than taking seriously the idea that Peter had gone wrong. While Arron has a more military mindsight, he is not necessarily immune to this sort of behavior in his past, though he tends to operate somewhat fundamentally different than Peter or Kyle. While convoluted plans might be common among Keplers, they all tend to operate in somewhat different flavors.
Loading ...
Wait, where’s his right arm? How did I not notice this for the last two pages! HAS HE ALWAYS BEEN MISSING IT!!!!
Always no, since he showed up wearing armour attempting to get The Consul to safety yes.
For reference I believe the fist page without his arm is here
And the last page where he had it is I think here
Got it removed to get rid of Atter’s device.
Go to Malsa as civilian. Get a job. Maybe the MSB is hiring. Deal with Kor’s World, smugglers, PACT, rogue families, and any other messes that need to be cleaned up. Maybe Miko or Mium can get a neato arm fabricated in that new lab of theirs.
I’ve always liked the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try a bigger hammer.”
Granted, I can see how Aaron might’ve fallen into that direction and be deciding it’s not how he wants to deal with things at the moment.
Or a skyhammer?
In response to your commentary, I’m not sure something has gone wrong with Peter. At least not in the traditional sense. Its more something has gone too right. Say what you will, but he has managed to get the I.D.S. an offer that seems to be better than what they could have hoped for out of Malsa. Sense of duty to something over loyalty to the nation has gotten a better result.
what happened to Arron’s arm in Panel 6?
He lost that arm a while back, to get rid of Atter’s little present
I had the horribly amusing idea for a while that the code in his arm was actually Atter’s anchor. Sophie would have found the irony irresistible if Aaron was Atter’s secret anchor.
I had the impression that anchoring a demon was something that took ongoing deliberate effort, rather than something that a non-thinking object such as an arm could do.
Admittedly, if anchoring a demon requires ongoing computations, and a magical construct can do computations, I suppose it could be possible that code that anchored Atter could be placed in Arron’s arm. But I’d bet that something would probably then need to anchor that code. Otherwise, one could simply wind up a demon and set it loose, divesting onesself of the ongoing cost completely. Kally seemed pretty sure the fact that Atter survived some stuff meant that Sophie needed to be actively anchoring them.
True, Sophie could and probably does know stuff about magic that Kally doesn’t, and a lot of that is probably about demons and tricks that could be done with them. But it seems like it would also be a pretty significant vulnerability. If Nathan had any hint such a thing could happen, I’d guess he wouldn’t feel like it was worth the risk to leave Atter running loose, just to be able to trick Sophie into thinking that Arron was somewhere he wasn’t.
That said, thinking further, I could imagine that unshared knowledge could include that a demon could have multiple anchoring points. Giving Atter additional anchoring points would probably increase their durability at the expense of allowing them to be more independent of Sophie.
That feels like a pretty foolish trade-off, but it also seems like it’s the sort of thing Sophie would do if she could do it. I mean, she’s already shown a casual disregard for highly likely negative consequences.
Perhaps all that code really needed was Aaron’s Key. The anchor might not know he is an anchor, if the code can access the key without the anchor being aware.
Pretty sure Atter would be dead in that case, since the arm had already been removed by the time Kally fought Atter, and dead things clearly cannot be anchors.
Also, I don’t know why Sophie would bother, I doubt she cares much about what might happen after she dies.
Sophie wouldn’t care, but it’s possible Atter would? Thinking it would be wise, if you were an evil demon-thing whose anchor was not particularly dragon-resistant, to have a backup plan involving the dragon-witch’s boss…
I’m a little surprised they haven’t started growing or making him a new one yet, but then, I suppose the time that has passed can be more easily measured in hours than in weeks or months. The lead time for even a decent prosthetic is probably longer than the less-than-a-week that has passed since he had it amputated.
Oh. and a bible quote. “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.” That was taking it rather more seriously, and literally, than most can manage.
Yeah I was really confused there too. Had not noticed him losing it and then a went back a few pages like “Oh wow, it’s totally been gone this whole time.”
You could say Major Kepler has has been unarmed!
I’m sorry… That was pretty sad.
no it wasn’t I like that joke.
Or disarmed!
Is he leaving the Army becomes is isn’t as handy as he used to be?
They live in the future, where pretty much everyone goes around armed all the time. I’m sure they have the technology to re-arm him, it just takes a bit of time for the armament orders to process. As others have noted, very little comic time has passed.
out on a limb with that one…
He’s only partially disarmed.
For a guy whose claim to fame includes attacking enemy combatants with a shovel? Partiality disarmed is pretty significant. Shovels are two handed weapons.
For most people, sure.
I’ve wielded a shovel one-handed on multiple occasions before, without injuring myself.
Admittedly, it’s a lot more difficult to use a shovel that way. It’s something like a -12 on your success roll, when using a D20 for that roll.
That said, David’s right, you have Arron confused with Colonel Ricci. The shovel incident is mentioned in chapter 13, page 13 and chapter 14, page 40.
I recall Arron having captured a Kor’s World sky carrier or something like that, but I’m not finding any references to it. It could be that it wasn’t shown in comic; I do not have a cache of author comments.
It’s also possibly worth mentioning that there exist single-handed shovels, though they tend to be much smaller than the two-handed variety. They can still be used to shovel stuff. They’re usually called “spoons”, though. 😉
Pretty sure that was Colonel Ricci. Aaron was previously better armed 😀
Where is Aaron’s Right-hand Man when he needs to get anything done!