Annotated 24-29
That’s got to be one of Phil’s all-time best alt texts, there.
Byron’s last name is kind of like “Sundar the Sunderer” or “Syr’Nj,” an on-the-nose pun that fit Guilded Age a bit better before we completely settled on a tone for it. I mean, there’s still plenty of chuckles in Arkerra, but the naming conventions moved to a lower key of humor (“Braggadocio the Beast-Eater,” “Lectrus,” even “Fr’Nj”) when they were humorous at all. Bringing “Hackenslasher” back here, though, is a nice way of underscoring the irony: neither Byron nor his ancestors ever expected to be standing in these hallowed halls.
Pardo’s not the most gifted politician in the Hall, but clumsy as he can be with Syr’Nj, he knows how to give Byron the answer he’s seeking while managing his expectations a bit. Although really, Syr’Nj’s smile has already done the first job for him.
Given that the comic is called “Guilded Age”, did you always intend to build up to a moment like this? It’s interesting that it only occurs about halfway through the series.
Yes and no. We knew that some of our original five would end up spearheading a big social movement, but most of the details of what you see here were nowhere in our original outline. This basic plot was definitely Phil’s idea, so I’m not quite sure when he conceived it, but it was probably not too long before we started wrapping up Chapter 18.
I seem to recall the cultist Byron and Syr encountered on their date doing the most notable foreshadowing for this moment, or at least the most memorable. So I’ve always assumed that was the first time y’all telegraphed this development…
Look at Bandit. Hopeful. Believing. Inspired.
It’s been around 10 years since Guilded Age ended (in my heart) and I still can’t get over how these too ended. And this made it hurt again.
For another 10 years (in my soul).
Hackenslasher… isn’t that where Miss Teschmacher’s mother lives? :-)
It’s standard manners to not require Halflings to kneel: They’re already at the correct hight.
I think “Hackenslasher” is still very fitting, precisely because of the shift in tone. From the POV of the embedded players, Arkerra is supposed to be a roleplaying world, and the MCs are supposed to be created by the players. So, like in a tabletop RPG, it makes sense that some players would give their characters joke names, underestimating the seriousness of the campaign.
Literally all of the OG MCs fit the bill.
Byron and Syr are the most obvious, then of course Gravedust Deserthammer (who wouldn’t have expected that out of the serious roleplayer he originated from?), Best (for the egotist), (Bandit?), and Frigg perhaps least obviously – with Frigg being the kind of name I’d have expected her old self to have mashed onto a keyboard after being prompted to enter a name for her character when all she came here for was to get some action and smash.
As an aside, the game from the commentary image, “Hack n Slash”, is well worth your time if you’re interested in game mechanics and design. The first thing you do in the game is break your sword in half, revealing a USB plug that you can plug into any object to manipulate its local variables. The puzzles and meta-exploration just get deeper from there, until you eventually have nearly unrestricted access to the game’s own source code, represented within the game itself as an enormous fractal library. It’s really quite neat!
I always thought it was a made-up last name he gave himself purely for this presentation to the Gastonian leaders – that “the Berserker” wasn’t acceptable as a last name for official business, but that Byron didn’t have a family name. So that made this pun was my favorite one in probably the whole series. He’s standing there straight-faced and can manage to do it despite “Gesundheit” ha.
Over the course of this re-read Pardo has grown on me quite a bit, after passing almost entirely unnoticed by me the first time around. He’s a good-humored and mostly well-intending chap without tons of pretense or arrogance, something that I have learned to value in a politician in the last few years. It’s really too bad (though not too surprising) that he was done in by the more corrupt heads the moment they could not use him anymore. I wish we had seen him in one last scene leading a quiet but content life.