A Thing

doing diplomacy with the senator was a mistake

Well now you and Anon have me rereading Ch14 and I've noticed that... Lemuel is much kinder than Duane! Sometimes it feels like Duane is mostly kind when it's convenient, whereas Lemuel looks out for others even outside of his immediate sphere. Heck, just one example: Duane heard how Lem had to strangle someone to death and... didn't even blink twice! I know they're at war, but that seemed so cold. I don't know! tl;dr They're great characters that make me think :)

It’s an interesting observation! I think that Lemuel and Duane are both very kind, but they are also pretty masculine. And at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, it doesn’t seem that masculinity generally allows a man to easily give voice to his concerns and emotions. So Duane wouldn’t hear that Lemuel had to strangle a foeman to desperately save himself, and then turn around to Lem and ask if he was doing okay. He wouldn’t even do it in private. Likewise Lemuel wouldn’t ask Duane how he was doing after his travails at the Academy and his scary stint in Fachlyne. They just weren’t raised to talk to each other that way. Blame it on them mostly not having a mother, or on their grandpa being a hardass or on Alderode generally expecting men to be so emotionally opaque - but it’s not how these boys communicate with each other

But it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other or don’t do kindnesses for one another. Duane worked very hard to get himself transferred to the same Order as Lemuel. Duane’s very presence is in fact a great show of concern for his brother’s welfare. Seeking him out to fight alongside him in that first battle in ch14 was an act of kindness and concern. After the vliegeng falls from the sky, Lemuel goes into the chapel with Duane to be with him because he knew how nervous the whole thing had made him. The Adeliers may not *say* the right things to each other, but they are *there* for each other.

There were some other more subtle relationship dynamics at play in that chapter as well. In a sense, Lemuel’s ability to show concern for others was a privilege he could afford because he wasn’t an officer. Duane was, and didn’t feel he could show too much compassion because that’s a vulnerability. His charges would respect him less and have less confidence in their own roles if he wasn’t always a paragon of authority and strength to them. So he was always very concerned with their physical welfare, but showing concern for their emotional welfare was off the table.

(you see this learned pattern perfectly repeat fifteen years later with him and Sette)

You also see the brick wall between them in chapter 7 after their stickfight. Duane nudges a brick out of it and invites Lemuel to tell him why he’s been acting weird, but Lemuel does not budge. And Duane does not insist. Just like he never followed up with him in the army. Lemuel breaks down and bawls in his arms one night and Duane looks totally lost, defaulting back to how he would comfort him when he was a little boy. Lemuel holds on to his asploded comrade’s tooth and Duane just yells at him to burn it. Lemuel hacks up a giant boar in the wake of another comrade’s death and Duane continues on with his duties. Lemuel sets a cart of war prisoners on fire and Duane decides not to ever think about it again for fifteen years.

No, I don’t think the issue is one of a lack of kindness. It’s not knowing how to express his (frankly quite severe) concern for his brother in a socially acceptable way. Duane would have done anything for Lemuel, would have died for him happily, but he didn’t have the emotional tools to do what Lemuel really, truly needed.

Cool, thanks for answering! ^.^

Two things: 1) what exactly is the Foi-Hellick affair? I know it was an Aldish civil insurrection of some kind but I am interested in the details the details and 2) (if this is not too spoilery) What exactly was Queen Sonorie's agenda in having Duane killed? I never fully understood that. P.S. Love your comic so much it has taken over my life

Haha, don’t let it take over your life, there are better things out there like coffee and foot rubs.

You ask about intentional mysteries! Well, the Foi-Hellick affair isn’t too mysterious, it just hasn’t been discussed in the comic yet. The Foi-Hellick affair/war/insurrection/rebellion/call-it-what-you-will was indeed a civil insurrection. It concerned an attempt by two wealthy families recently joined by marriage (the Foi-Hellicks) in the Aldish district of Avelpit to declare their independence from the Aldish state and become a holding of Cresce. Queen Sonorie reneged on her promise of military aid after the mastermind of the affair, Roger Foi-Hellick, absconded to the Crescian court, abandoning his family and his cause. The Foi-Hellicks tried to go Just Kidding Bro but it didn’t work out so well for them. When it became clear they were going to be made an example of, they recruited a citizen army and hired southern mercenaries, kickstarting a pretty brutal few years of warfare that they ultimately lost. Badly. Impaled-on-spears-in-front-of-their-own-children badly.

Duane and his brother served in the army during this. We’ll see some of it firsthand in an upcoming chapter and meet many of the players. This was a very important event, which is why I threw in some early references to it.

As for why Queen Sonorie had Duane killed, you can believe Duane’s speculation here, or not. Duane thinks Sonorie wanted to encourage the ill feelings between Alderode’s two religions by making it look like she supports the Gefendur. The idea that Sonorie would kill a Ssaelit priest for them would have to positively infuriate Duane’s camp, no? If Alderode falls to all-out religious civil war, that can only be good for Cresce. “Divide and conquer,” suggests the zombie.

But this is only Duane’s speculation, and all he has to go on are words written on a wall in his own shed blood.

I HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GAME IN FOREVER BUT THIS IS AMAZING AND I HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS AND I JUST

I mean don’t get me wrong I loved the game but that ending-?????

So yeah enjoy this crappily drawn infinite wall of text I DID WHAT I COULD WITH WHAT I HAD TO WORK WITH

(also please open in new tabs if you want to read anything goddang tumblr makes things tiny)

(p.s. I did another dumb thing as a sequel)

Kelp Forest by divindk

*forms an emotional bond with the cool stick I found on a hike*

cracking open a cold one with the boys

is ilganyag's interactions with the blacktongues out of sync with time and she has to actively look for -when- to screw around with people or does she keep relatively in sync with the living world?

I almost hate to answer this one 'cause it can curtail theorizing, but we're getting close to it coming up in the comic anyway.

Have you noticed that Sette is interacting with the world on her own timeline? She's not reaching through a waterfall and knocking Ssael's hat off. Living entities - human or senet - are bound to their own timeline. It flows down and around them, the lens through which they view and interact with their reality. Ilganyag is no different. She cannot time travel, personally, inside the khert.

Of course she can theoretically look at memories from any time and glean valuable, highly anachronistic information from them, but she herself is a causal being trapped inside the khert that cannot interact with instantiated reality and people from another timeline. This would all be so, so much simpler if she could change history. Instead all she can do is research the future through scavenged memories, and try to change what happens.

It's a really awkward position, I find, but fascinating. To know pieces of the future, to have goals that you want, to change little things over a long span of time and watch how you're nudging the future in a different direction. It's like playing labyrinth, tilting the board back and forth as the shiny silver marble rolls inexorably forward, avoiding pitfalls, riding the edge, red eye on that goal of goals at the centre.

In the dark, the deer mistook my headlights for stars