It’s not just the bit players who are starting to reach the end of their adventurous glory days in Guilded Age: this will be the last chapter that Scipio’s a really active participant in the action. He’s seen here and there in the finale and has some sharp character beats in the next chapter, but this little profile of his thought process does feel like the first of several parting gestures we’d make to him.

The low stakes of this particular moment make it more about his character than the plot: he takes the time to save one person and also sets himself up to save as many as possible. He still rarely speaks without purpose: even the last panel, where he reveals his strategy, could be seen as discouraging any ill-advised escape attempts.

This robe-wearing guy has an interesting story we never really touch on. Why is he one of very few in Lumberton who is not a Cultist, and yet also a robe-wearer? My best guess is that the townspeople have been wearing robes “because they’re comfortable” for a long time before this, and not being a Cultist means he didn’t get the memo to put them away when the adventurers showed up.