First, an admin note, sorry if you’ve seen your comment get stuck in a moderation queue. Currently all comments with a link are getting flagged, and I have to manually approve them; we had some stuff get through the spam filter, and while I don’t care of a spam comment without a link gets through, if it’s got a link that can lead to virus’ etc. I am going to try to figure out how to white list my own domain so links to here don’t get flagged for review, but I haven’t done that yet (or confirmed its actually part of the wordpress kit I can… so… no promises).
This is one of those pages where I waffled pretty hard on if I was going to cut it. I know that from the reader point of view it seems like I meander through every possible conversation I can, but I do end up cutting a lot 😉 . In general, I don’t like pages that basically serve to summarize what a character thinks without giving out a good chunk of new information, because there are so many characters that’s basically a never ending feedback loop. But, in this case, I decided that it’s important we know the Consul’s perspective because she is a major player in what happens – I mean, she’s really the one that kicked off the expulsion of the IDS, no matter who else had their finger in that pie.
Plus, there’s more to this coversation I think we’ll see, and it’d be weird to just drop us into the middle of it without covering some things they would obviously discuss. But yeah, we’ll see more of that conversation, even if we don’t make it to the end here without an… intermission? Of sorts.
The map behind Peter is a map of the region, but don’t look at it for accuracy. I’ve published a more accurate version somewhere, and even that one, I’m making no real promises won’t be tweaked. The countries are where countries are, but I’m not going to guarantee I rendered all the bays and inlets and islands correctly… I draw fantasy maps for D&D, but those include like Dragon Turtles and Dragons lurking behind mountains, not geographical precision.
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She might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer….as Peter would probably stab anyone that tried taking that title.
But damn if she isn’t making herself look good for second place.
If anything, Madam Consul, he actually kept Weber alive, without even knowing that little tidbit. And while, yes, he’s totally the chessmaster playing games with your house and home, he does seem to want your place to come out of it in pretty reasonable condition, so I think your biggest worry is what category shitstorm to weather before it’s clear skies.
Peter really doesn’t seem like the sort of person to eliminate pieces because they’re dangerous. Otherwise, he probably would’ve given Muim authorization to end Rovak regardless of what Rovak decided, when they were having their little knife fight.
While I do agree that the Consul could be reasonably assured that Peter’s intentions are good… she appears to be here without a bodyguard, so she already knows that. But she probably also understands that there are different degrees to which Peter can succeed, and by actually talking with him, she may be able to assist him in saving her country and making life easier for both of them.
She’s engaging him in the fashion she is, rather than just stopping by to say, “Hey, you’re Peter. Thanks for saving our asses so far. Is there anything I can do to help?”, because she’s done her research, with the help of a number of her people, and she understands that this is how you talk with Peter.
Didn’t mean the stabbing literally. Also didn’t mean the Consul should be at his beck and call.
More that she’d….let him keep playing in the sandbox, but trying to trying to figure out how containable the mess is, and working towards that end. She’s got a vested interest in keeping the country as intact as possible, something that I don’t think she really expects Peter to have, but I also don’t think she sees much point in trying to stop whatever he’s doing. (Either not worth the effort, or counterproductive, or something.)
I also don’t expect her to be explicitly asking if there’s anything he needs from her, but I would think she’d want to know a little bit more about his endgame (at least for while he’s in Malsa), so that, at the very least, she can brace for what’s coming. (Like if there’s another war going to be expected, she probably would like some heads up. Or if there’s anything else like Skyhammer that he might expect to be shown off like Malsa is some kind of expo, well, the last showing was apparently directed at her office…)
I think her intelligence about Peter is that she wouldn’t directly hurt her unless she forced the issue, so I think she’d be savvy enough to know that showing up with a body guard would be seen as pathetic and a sign of weakness/insecurity (and unnecessary as long as she doesn’t try to kill him).
I think she realizes from Weber that Peter is a grandmaster-class “chessmaster” (as EnderDDT put it below), but that his plans can be disrupted and his weaknesses can generally be best exploited through direct contact (as he wasn’t really planning to give Malsa the dimensional gate detector anything nearly as early as he did, but Weber had pushed him at the right time).
She’s fishing for whatever information she can get with Weber’s injury as an excuse and trying to prepare herself if she needs to try to pressure him in one direction or another later.
Speaking of Mr. Farschel, does anyone want to hazard an educated guess on whether or not he and Peter actually did reach an agreement? By my estimation, I think he did. However, I’m mostly saying that based on the fact that it was important enough for pastutopia to write that encounter and give the discussion as many panels as he did. Shouldn’t that, alone, make it plot-relevant? Have we seen any red herrings so far?
Mostly, I’m curious about what Mr. Farschel could offer Peter that would entice him to help. And, though it does have its uses, I doubt Peter places that high an importance on money. The end-game plan seems to be Peter’s obsession. Maybe Peter agreed to help for an IOU – a promise to return the favor one day? Or, maybe Peter wants detailed info on designer children so as to figure out who the other rebels are – you know, people like Marc who are plotting to overthrow the Consul and The Families? Information seems like the kind of currency that Peter would value most.
Farschel had a really good point early, actually. What Engenus has is not just money, but potentially influence on an unprecedented scale. Money is meaningless if you can only buy what you want from a few places.
Assuming Designer Children really are perceived as superior in the setting, pretty much all wealthy and powerful people will need to place an incredible degree of trust in a genetics facility to handle designing their kids. That is gigantic leverage.
Now I am not sure Peter takes that seriously because the time frame of the plan is it decades and he is currently in the frame of reference of more like “next week” or “tomorrow”, and I am not sure he takes the designer kids thing all that seriously (which may make sense as he seems to be more exposed to a nurture vs nature (harsh training and possible cybernetic augmentation).
I could also depend on what those illegal experiments Egenus were doing. As someone pointed out, due to Miko’s history he could be quite annoyed by the sort of thing. Alternatively, a genetics/biotech company like that might have things like a cure for aging or a generic cure for cancer or way to boost magical abilities. It seems likely they have something new and big, as designer kids wouldn’t require them to play the shell game Peter is implying they want his help in.
If we trust what Aaron said about this world having potential cures for Miko, cures that did not exist in Central, and if we recognize that Engenus is at the forefront of the genetic modification field, then there is a good chance that Engenus has knowledge and expertice that nobody else has in any available universe. While the knowledge would be fairly easy to steal, even with a completely disconnected server, the expertice (the ability to use that knowledge effectively) would be much more difficult to take. Forcing them to reserch in a certain direction might be something he could get from them and from nobody else.
That said, I agree that with Miko’s history Peter might not really like them. Add that to how he called them out and was even less concerned with trying to pretend to not look down on them than he usually is, and I think that Peter likely already had them on his hit-list for the future and all they did by approaching him like that was to move their name closer to the top.
A potential explanation for panel space for EGenus could be to set up that non-PACT companies are approaching Peter begging to get in on a perceived “ground floor” and that a more plot-relevant company intended to be a surprise might come along with a pre-existing deal later. The Egenus thing could be a plot-neutral indicator that this is happening because the plot-relevant company would’ve been too much of a spoiler.
It’s still certainly possible that EGenus is relevant too. But I wouldn’t take their panel space as proof they specifically are relevant, so much as that there’s something relevant about them approaching Peter.
Interesting idea. Do you or does anyone else have any thoughts on who might be too “spoily” to be brought up? The story is pretty tight, such that I can’t really think of any other companies that have even been mentioned.
I will “begrudgingly” point out the typo on panel 6.
I like seeing a bit more of the Consul and her perspective and awareness. She is a very large background player, so ripples from who she is will spread, so knowing her better may come in handy for our interpretations fairly often.
I wonder if she was this aware that she was playing to someone else’s tune when she started this whole thing and decided the benefit was worth the unknown (like Ryn) or if she was more unaware and saw herself as seizing the moment on her own.
Probably bits of both depending on how early stages Peter’s influences were and how much research she had done at that point, with a sprinkling of going along with the flow to see how things turned out.
By this point, though, I think she recognizes his mastery of the game about as well as Kally: once he’s cast a role for you, good luck getting out of that cast. He might not have one for the Consul specifically, but he’s got one for the area, and I’m guessing she mostly wants some heads-up as to what that role is supposed to be. (And maybe “pretty please” of not leveling the place while he’s at it….)
So we recognize Peter as the “Chessmaster” is this circumstance, lets broaden that scope to utalizing the “Batman Gambit” (specifically manipulating a person into doing what you want by taking account of their character, usually their character flaws).
What is the first thing you would do after starting a war over the murder of a citizen who somehow pissed off and got in the way of an eldrich abomination within your country? I know I would be trying to figure out more about that person, who they were and what they might have been doing there. And even if I couldn’t find much on the deceased I would talk to everyone else who might have known him (parents, classmates, childhood friends, neighbors, literally anyone who might have known him). The deceased is a national martyr! Why would the good Consul let that go to waste?
We can therefore conclude that this conversation, including the knowledge that MIUM either faked his own death or survived being stabbed through the chest, would be completely known. To what end? We don’t really know yet. Perhaps it was intended to be unimportant, a “You know, but you can’t really do anything about it” type of circumstance? Perhaps it was meant to build his mythos as one who can pull off these types of tricks? Perhaps it was just meant by MIUM to call in the cavelry against someone who would be nearly impossible to kill (under normal restrictions) and the fallout was only a secondary concern?
Does anyone else have any ideas on what happened there?
I’d bet the information that the “death” was actually Mium is kept pretty quiet, as the “eldritch abomination’s visit” would not be taken very well by the public anyway, the footage would just be an extra nudge against Atter, and making public that it was faked would probably not be very effective. More importantly, the footage was supposed to be made so that Mium wasn’t recognizable, and just because you have the name of the presumed deceased, doesn’t mean there’s anybody to talk to. (Would obviously have a hard time tracking down any friends or relatives of an imaginary person, and probably wouldn’t be hard to make it look like there’s nobody to go find anyway.)
So she’s aware that the information of knowing it’s fake is worth more than telling regular people that it’s not real, used as an introductory to a rather verbose “yes, I did my homework on you, no, I did not cut corners”, which, at a guess, doubles as her way of asking to him to be straight with her, punctuated by what I’d also bet to be her first real question (and not just an opener.)
Right. So she has reason to keep it under wraps because the perception (if not the reality) of the incident is politically good for her. So between the consul and Peter we know and question a few things. She knows it is fake. He knows she knows it is fake. He knows she will come talk to him about it because she knows it is fake. Does she know that he knows that she knows it is fake? Was there a point to the faking of it beyond the obvious (call in the cavelry, start a war)? Heck, were either of those even the point of it? Most likely since it was the “nuclear option”, and the “war” ramification would be pretty hard for even a normal person to miss.
Or maybe I am just overthinking it because I am analizing a character who is written to be a genius and who has information that I very much do not. ;P
My suspicion is that the Consul noticing that the supposed victim of Atter was a fake and that seeds of that person’s existence were provided several months before the incident is a bit of a gate/test. It’s something Peter would’ve expected her to see/find/notice and her noticing and admitting to him that she noticed is a statement that she’s not completely incompetent and she’s not trying to pretend that she is to use it alter as an advantage.
I see this conversation, on the Consul’s part, as an attempt to state that she knows that she (and her country) is at Peter’s mercy and that she’d like to offer playing straight as a trade against a reasonable degree of consideration for her (and her country) with regards to the end state of Peter’s game.
I think you are right about that. She already made it clear that she really can’t threaten Peter, partly because of Skyhammer and partly because he has shown himself capable of manipulating EVERYONE. That said, I’m not really sure where this conversation can really go next. That revelation of hers, unless she has something else to bring up that Peter wouldn’t know about (something by word of mouth) this snippet of conversation may be over.
Think about it: If she knows about Peter’s “subordinate with died hair” (Naomi) than she knows who stepped in to save Webber. Webber was essentially being tripple teamed by two warmages and a teleporting assassin till Naomi and MIUM showed up. She already pointed out knowing about MIUM’s involvement in the incident with Atter but, as Sandman pointed out, she can’t bring up the faked death without putting her war in jeopardy. She even came in calm and somewhat deferential (waiting till he addressed her to speak). So really, unless she has some startling news about the splinter group of family mages, there really isn’t much more to be said in this conversation.
Well, at the very least, she can try to satisfy some curiosity about him. Perhaps she doesn’t need the conversation to be all that long to get quick read on him for what he’s like. And perhaps there will be plenty more said, just in hyper-condensed format. (Paragraph into about three words or so….back and forth. Which just means extrapolating the rest of that conversation is going to be annoying…but hopefully accurate…)
We know that there will be more to this conversation (PastUtopia said as much above), but we don’t know if it will continue this conversation or be a complete departure. Because “starting in the middle of the conversation” was an option I’m thinking that it will be more of a departure than a continuation. I could be wrong, though, there are plenty of ways that parts of this conversation could be leading into the next.
I think that Weber by designating Peter as heir threw a monkey wrench into both Peters and the Consul’s plans to reintegrate the exiled families into society, or at least threatened to sense he is not quite dead yet. Among other things Madam Council is there to see if her plans are going off track and get them back on track if so.
That’s an interesting thought. Why would Peter becoming a family mage prevent the exiled mages from coming back? For that matter, what makes you think that the Consul (not to mention Peter) are concerned about the family mages at all, and especially about reintegrating them?
Though, I do very much agree that trying to figure out Peter is a major point of this conversation for the Consul.
The reason for reintegrating the exiled families is that turns a major security liability into an major asset. Weber is a foreign born mage granted an hereditary title of Mage Commander that he doesn’t really understand the implications of. It is possible that the consul plans to allow the exiles to return Using Weber as precedent maybe with with just a slight variation of family names. Then they can then enlist in the military and regain some semblance of their former titles, without admitting that they lost or the Consul formally rehabilitating them. Of course it helps if Weber has some bastard connection to the exiles, and the exile was at least a generation ago. But the most relevant condition might be Weber being allowed to pass on his title to an acceptable heir. Peter not being a battle mage might make him unacceptable to one faction or another, or peter turning down or being denied the title could destroy the prescident thus the lure to the exiles.
Panel 4: “I’m a little short on people trying to arrest and/or kill me right now.” Panel 9, it should be “he’s left to spite me.”
Panel 7: about you being designated his as his heir. (too many his)
Fixed, thanks!
did you get what i said about Panel 4?
Begrudingly -> Begrudgingly
But best as I can tell -> but as best as I can tell
OR but the best that I can tell
OR but as best I can tell
Seems to be a little squishy as a colloquialism, several forms sound more natural to me than the version I read. Pick
@willis: did you want him to remove the word “not” like your correction did? ^^
looking back on it, I forgot to add the word “not” in my correction. I was focusing on the word “to”.
@willis In panel 4:
I am surprised you got all the way to the second bubble.
I think “You seem to You have reached a strange conclusion” should read: “You have reached a strange conclusion?” Or perhaps: “It seems you have reached a strange conclusion.” Or the second “you” could be dropped, I suppose.
Of course there should be a “to” between “trying” and “arrest” in the second bubble.
Fixed(er) I think. Thanks 🙂
Hopefully we won’t need a fixedest update this time… 😛
@willis: That’s what I thought had happened. I just found humor in it, that’s all. 🙂
“I have some cards, but you have the whole deck, including my cards”
In the comments, some people have tried to compare Peter’s game to a real game. Chess, go, life, or something else? The consul’s opinion is good one though. A card game where you have all the cards? You just have to choose the right cards for any given situation. That is pretty easy.
Sounds like a round of FLUXX I had. Three people playing. It was play all and I had a trade hands card which was my last play and the person I traded hands with had a rotate hands card in their hand at which point I played all of their cards and then rotated hand to get the last persons cards and played all of those and the last one I played of that was something that you set the rules to the basic.
Of course I’ve played the game enough and know the cards so well and know what’s in my deck that instead of trying to win myself I tried to make it so that somebody else wins. That’s a much harder challenge to accomplish. It keeps the game fresh for me. And I usually pick the person who’s going to win based on what we talk about during the game.