Annotated 29-17
This scene was nowhere in the outline, and full props to Phil for including the war-hardened troll general in panels 1-3. An inferior version would’ve had Penk guiding the army’s strategy, but that is neither his true role nor something he’s experienced enough to take on. Just leading five others (and not even all of them at once) is plenty for him at this point.
Plus, there’s that nice reminder that there are a whole lot of other people on the battlefield beyond even two sets of “heroes,” and many of them will be a less celebrated kind of hero today. And some, of course, will die doing that. We do never see this general again…
I’m a bit less enthused with the last two panels, which feel to me like what they are: an awkward attempt to shoehorn the Silver Centurion into the story, just to get you all going “Maybe not Ardaic??” We had a more graceful way to bring him in there in the outline, but that scene just wasn’t pulling enough of its own weight, otherwise. (And if we’d left this scene out and just put SC on the front lines and Ardaic in the infirmary, you’d probably think it was a continuity error.)
So who was the Centurion here? Anyone we knew? Sorry if this has been answered before, but Ardaic is the only one that ever comes to mind.
Nobody we know, as it turns out. That was the point, to the extent that there was one: if you suborn your identity to Gastonia’s national identity enough to serve as the Centurion, you become indistinguishable from the next guy.
Out of curiosity, what was the more graceful way you had outlined?
I mean, I think this works fine and sometimes you do just have to get a piece of exposition out there so it’s done, but I’m still curious.
The two of them were going to work simultaneously during the battle, with Ardaic making the strategic calls in the back and then SMASH CUT to Centurion in the front. It didn’t really work because the kind of calls Ardaic would be making at that point wouldn’t have a lot of immediate relevance and we wanted the focus to be on the front. Felt like spinning our wheels for its own sake. We finally got a sort of “backstage planning” scene in the last few chapters of the series that played similarly to what we would’ve done here.
Avian warriors get forgotten by those ground-dwellers all the time. Even when they imprison one.