Annotated 43-1
This is an arguable callback to Chapters 1 and 5. In the former, we opened Gravedust’s segment with him wandering through the desert, in the latter, we opened the chapter with Byron and Gravedust making their way through a hostile environment. But if Gravedust is making a silent wish to get out of the heat at the start of this page, he’s about to learn that karma’s a bitch, especially when you’re no longer the one dispensing it.
The Arkerran scenes, as I said, were Flo’s, but the last line of this one was mine. Or more accurately, it was Byron’s, if you know what I mean: I just got to the end of the page script and he spoke through me right into the edit window. Gods bless him for it: he wasn’t truly alive again to me until then.
This page originally ran with the snowy-mountain cover image, so the FB update read, “Today’s GUILDED AGE keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold.”
… What the heck is Gravedusts expression in the last panel? “Oh boy… not these bozos again?” or is it about there being bad news in regards to Gastonia? “Yeah… did SO not see that one comming *cough cough*” or is he just tired? This is realy puzzling me xD
I read it as him just squinting because the magic light is currently blinding him.
So, if we’re being quite honest, Clair and Hollister *are* some kind of Deus ex Machina. The nice thing is that there’s a good reason why sky elf portals don’t save any situation, always. As with the Winter Elves, Sky elves in general are probably none too keen to play Angel Summoner to the human’s BMX Bandit, which explains why Clair and Hollister are the only ones to actually use their skills this way. And I suppose they, too, have a limited capacity for scrying and portaling, especially since there’s probably a certain limit to how much of this they can do without raising the attention of Sky Elf authorities in some way that might backfire catastrophically.
whoopsie, badly-formatted “a” tag — the link text ended up as the title … duh.
Incidentally, I find typing links one of the more annoying things about HTML…
Aaargh, and no idea how to escape things in HTML either … I’ll stop trying to correct this mess.
Also: wasn’t there some way of editing one’s own posts?
I don’t think you guys have that capacity, but I can edit them every once in a while…
Thanks a bunch! Apologies for giving you work.
So, like an Encounter power, or more like a Per Rest Power?
Sorry, don’t mind me, too much POE2
My first thought when I saw the image accompanying the annotation was “mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich”. Which I suppose is appropriate, since Gravedust *did* just bring Byron back from the dead.