Comic for Wednesday, August 14th, 2019
Aug14
…wait, it’s not Monday?
…
…oops?
Next week will also be a little hit or miss due to housing/moving stuff on-going.
I will provide a bit of context for this page, as the clues to what is going on are all there, but a bit scattered.
- The Families have previously given up their power to the Consul; the exact nature of this deal is unknown, but a fair number of Families did not support it, and are known as the rogue families.
- If the Consul were to die, it essentially triggers a race condition for which fallback condition would be triggered first, if a new a Consul was appointed or the Families took back power.
- It’s more complicated than just having a majority, as the Families have a record of strongest-politics (the votes of the most powerful members do not official count for more, but they can and do bully other families into voting their way).
- For reasons, some people think the Consul might be dead.
- Not everyone here is a Family head. Families are not strictly color coded by hair, but frequently have some degree of preference toward a side of the spectrum.
- Ash is Camilla’s younger brother, as Camilla doesn’t have an heir, that’d make him the next in line.
I dunno, I’m pretty out of it. Got about 3-4 hours of sleep last night and there isn’t enough caffeine in the world to make the world be in color right now. I think that’s enough for this page to make sense. I considered waiting longer till I could read this page when I was confident I was sentient, but I didn’t want to delay too much longer 🙂
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Page’ll probably be up Wednesday. We are drawing to the close of the time of troubles and late updates, but not out of the woods yet.
EDIT: …let’s aim for Friday. Sorry.
EDIT 2: More delays; not quite sure when update will be, but still aiming for some time this weekend. Moving stuff is going to be resolved in the next week or so at least. I am changing my tablet setup (and, for that matter, desk), which has lead to some unexpected delays.
May the time of troubles pass and a time of plenty and ease reign over the personal and professional lives of PastUtopia!
It’s the weekend. Please don’t make me beg.
Just give me a comic and I’ll go away quietly.
Anything will be fine. First couple of panels. Give me the first four panels, that’s enough.
Give me the first panel! Please!
OMG I’M IN WITHDRAWAL! SOMEONE HELP ME! I’VE GOT TO GO WRITE SOME FANFIC!!!!
Have you tried rereading everything from the start?
If instead you are writing fanfic from this world, are you taking requests?
What are your favorite things to explore?
Yes, twice. No, I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Sure.
Caves.
Page will be up this weekend, probably sometime tomorrow(well, Sunday, which I guess it today at this point) afternoon. The problem with giving one panel is that pages are drawn in phases: layout -> rough -> sketch -> lines -> color -> effects -> text -> borders and bubbles, one panel doesn’t really finish before the whole page 🙂
I am pretty sure we will get the mid week page this week, so we aren’t going to drop under 1 comic a week here. The troubles are being very persistent in how they drag on. It’s a long story, but can be summarized that a lot of people are a pain in the arse.
Sure one panel does. Only, if you’re like some artists that livestream, it may only be done about a minute before the whole thing. Also, the one panel that gets done first might be the last one. Or any of the others. Also, while it may be done, you don’t necessarily *know* that it’s done, until it’s all done.
Humming along to “I don’t like mondays” now…
Asvalt is Arkady’s father. Shemokie is the wizened wizard and ringleader? Ashvalt seemes to be looking in his direction and replying to him though he is talking after distinguished grey haired gentleman. Lidia is supporting Regin. Elmon is Ashin’s uncle?
If the woman in pannel 5 is Sarine her blouse should be lighter grey it is her cervet that is darker grey.
I just noticed that Lidia has her eyes closed I wonder if she “sees” in edios and can perceive discordance’s (lies) like Amy or Magnolia.
“For reasons, some people think the Consul might be dead.”
Well, if Peter has nothing to do with this, I’m blue. (With neon green hair.)
Peter did fake the Consul’s death, but may not have leaked that. We know that Peter likes to take advantage of seeing how information gets distributed like when he told all the Leavenworth students where Tyler was, and all the locations were false to see who reacted to what (he just underestimated the blind girl).
He may not have leaked it, but it’s entirely possible that he predicted that those present for the “assassination” (and others spying from afar) would be blabbing to the aforementioned “some people” here, presumable for the specific purposes of seeing who tries to take advantage of it.
And while it might not be something he would need to set up for himself, necessarily….if it’s less bothersome to arrange for this than to deal with whoever would be replacing the Consul if she were dead, I don’t see why he wouldn’t set this up so she can take care of it herself. (Plus the part where he appears to be trying to keep her alive right now, and if he had exact records of what was said here, he could get a better read for who wants the Consul dead/replaced (and anyone and who just wants to take advantage of the situation.)
Indeed: Never ascribe to Peter’s machinations that which is adequately explained by the Consul’s own scheming.
Change “call you Camilla your daughter” to “call Camilla your daughter”?
Panel 2: “these family conferences” Panel 6: “nine major family coalitions” I have a question for Panel 10, what is “wizened”?
wizened means shriveled or wrinkled with age
And thus reason 7 why Peter manufactured the death of the council is confirmed.
I am sure when Peter jolts the board, ALL the pieces move a little 🙂
It sounds like there is an interest in a simple majority, and that 9 families constitute a simple majority. That places the number of families at around 16 or 17.
The older folks seem to have the exotic color coordinated eyes and hair and in panel 4 lips, so whatever is going on with the designer children is either mimicking the families, or is exactly what the families have been doing for a while.
One motivation for placing power in a non family mage would be to remove that power from the families. The more powerful families would have little reason to do this. So I’m betting that the rogue families, while fewer in number, are among the most powerful.
It sounds more like the number of major family coalitions would be around 16 or 17. And that the major family coalitions are of similar size. And that the minor coalitions and unaligned families are negligible. Or maybe there are some verbal shortcuts taken here. 🙂
Hmm … does mage-commander Weber get a vote? 🙂
Oh, wait. Weber is indisposed. So, just like Camilla’s family is represented by the heir apparent, Ash, so might Weber’s family be represented by his designated heir, the head of the M.S.B.
… and now I’m wondering who Peter will pawn that title off on …
… or is he going to show up in person? 🙂
Wow, good point (http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-february-5th-2018/). And you bring this up just as it is established that the families mostly recognize the Consul as a (potentially recurring) role in their system. That suggests that the Consul’s decision to name Tyler might be recognized, at least by the same one that recognize the Consul. It might require an extra vote, but Peter can probably arrange for enough firepower to swing it in Tyer’s favor.
I’m not clear that Weber gets a vote. It sounds like there is a vote per family, but being the equivalent of a family mage isn’t the same as the Consul caveating into existence a whole new family.
Or maybe it is. That’s one way to consolidate her power, make lots of new families, diluting their power, and having the new families be more grateful to her.
But that’s not how I read it.
I don’t think Weber would get a vote.
A) He got a position/title that was typically reserved for family mages, but family mages are family mages *before* they get such a position, not *because* they get such a position. Maybe she’s trying to put him on track to become one, but he’s not from around Malsa and seemingly hasn’t been previously inducted to family status.
B) I don’t think the Consul could unilaterally create a new mage family (population 1). Even if she tried, I don’t think such a creation would be recognized by the other families. Unless she married Mium, adopted Ila as a daughter, and freaked everyone out by having Mium nullify all their magic as a show of relevance.
I don’t imagine Weber or Peter will have a say in whatever decision the families are about to make: Weber is unavailable and Peter won’t need to say anything or be present to affect the outcome.
Not convinced.
After all, the explanation given to Weber was:
“Sir.. It’s a title that has been historically used to raise people LIKE HIM to full Families status”
It does sound like the status comes with the title.
Considering the term ‘Family mage’, I could easily see the system traditionally being two requirements for a new family:
1. Non-family mage demonstrates sufficient prowess and loyalty to motivate the current head of state to granting Mage-Commander title.
2. New Mage-Commander gets (or possibly already has) a spouse.
Apart from this possible unmet requirement, I think the only things standing between Tyler and having a vote in this meeting are whether the other Families will recognize his promotion, as it was given such a short time before both Tyler and the Consul were taken out of commission, and, well, Tyler being in the hospital.
That said, I do expect that Peter will be appearing in this meeting, albeit slightly transparent, to represent Tyler… fashionably late, of course.
My memory is telling me that Tyler ended up in the hospital because elements of the Families preferred to try killing him rather than accept his promotion to mage-commander. If that memory is accurate, then I doubt there is any simpler option to exclude him.
That said, I remain unconvinced that he possesses a vote just yet.
Still, it would be pretty cool to see him back in the action.
I don’t think Weber was targeted because of his promotion to mage comander:
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-february-15th-2018/
“This is just an execution for whoever the consul sent. Weber just lost the draw”.
That’s Acillia’s assessment of the situation. Considering the subsequent assassination attempt and Mium’s lowest assessment of Webbers chance of living without intervention it is likely that the higher ups had a good idea of where Webber would be operating and arranged for the colaterally expensive Rovack level of overkill to target him personally.
That’s quite possible… Although it could also be they targeted him for assassination afterwards because he had heard too much during thefight with Acalia and the kardus.
I think I’m with Revan on this one. Acalia is someone important in the rogue Families. Even if she wasn’t a critical member due to family connections, she can fricking teleport, which must be huge. I mean, it’s certainly a game breaking ability, and she doesn’t even have the narratively common limit of needing to have been there before, as far as we can tell.)
As such, there’s a pretty big incentive to seal that leak. Tyler was both the easier target (unconscious and immobile, so it’s just a matter of finding him. I mean, what are the chances that somebody would have an Anolian spy, MSB number 2, *and* a missing prototype standing guard around him? Not to mention a member of House Ashvalt who’s pending on transfer to House Camilla…
Further, he was the more serious security risk; he had connections that really mattered. Naomi’s a flake, a randomly “wandering hero” whom few would believe over a Family member. Also, who even knows where she *lives*? I mean, she has a registered address, but that was already investigated, and nobody lived there. And then, inexplicably, it blew up. Of course, that was before Naomi saw what she shouldn’t have, but the point is, her last known address was known to not be right, and isn’t there any longer, so she’s kind of harder to locate.
I suspect that there are less than 16 major families. He specifically says a majority of 9. A standard majority works if there are 16 or 17. He seems to be referencing a supermajority.
I think nine is quorum.
Correction: Nine is majority for quorum, not nine is quorum.
So Regin was just in the bickering meeting with the consul. Safe to assume he is in on the whole plot. I assume Ash is also in on the plot, and is just pretending that Camilla is out of commission.
I assume Eliana and Camilla are likely the most powerful mages out there, so peter’s plot prob requires the rogue families believing that all theee major players are out: consul, eliana, camilla.
I read it as nine being the number WITHIN which a majority would be needed, meaning that just five would be enough…
“But even if they could get nine to confirm a crisis”
That sounds like 9 is enough of a majority to have a serious talk about the subject, but not enough to really change things. So I’m guessing it’s a simple majority to have the serious discussion, which is 9.
It’s unclear if the obstacle to really changing things is the number of families needed, or if it’s the fact it’s easier to get somebody to agree to talk about something than it is to get them to agree to change their minds.
I’m going to make a guess and say that there’s 18 families, so they need 10 for this decision, but they are discounting Tyler, either through not knowing of him, or thinking he’s also among the dead and don’t know he’s named an heir.
Either it’s clearer after the rewrite, or my head is clearer now, but 9 seems to be the number of “major families” requires for a majority, and the notes seem to be referring to the same ones: “It’s more complicated than just having a majority, as the Families have a record of strongest-politics (the votes of the most powerful members do not official count for more, but they can and do bully other families into voting their way).”
So maybe there’s 16 or 17 major (ducal?) families and any number of minor (comital/baronial?) families?
And house Weber is not a “major family”. Even if they didn’t completely lack a history of bullying the other families into voting their way, they are not exactly poised to doing so now. (Even if Peter shows up, representing house Weber, bullying is not his style.)