Annotated 46-21
FB: TECTONICUS THINX: “Tick tock! Time to watch a titanic tussle! Tic Tac?”
The story is basically done with Iver after the last page. He does not appear in the comic again and is only mentioned one more time, in the past tense. My headcanon is that Gravedust offered Iver a choice between death and banishment. Iver would always opt to survive, of course, so Gravedust gave him the same sort of rations that the mystics used on their desert walkabouts, and sent him on his way with the instruction that if he made any contact with any of the Savasi, it would be considered treason and punished as such. Iver agreed to the terms, and while he was certainly dishonest enough to go back on his word, he didn’t judge it worth the risk to do so. He was never seen again.
Iver’s pregnant harem would do all right, although their lives wouldn’t be as cushy as they may have expected. Savasi still need babies, so single mothers of any kind would be given help and consideration by the tribe under Gravedust’s guidance. But Iver’s wivers wouldn’t have any sort of “royal family” status and would soon realize their connection to Iver was something to downplay. “We were celebrating the creation of the Champions, and I had had a lot of wine, and let’s just say there are several candidates for the father of this child, actually.”
I speculated that Iver’s guards would protect the wives in the short run. The wives might opt to form new partnerships with the guardsmen, which in turn would result in Iver’s children being raised by parents with some residue loyalty to Iver. Which could cause problems for Gravedust in the future.
As for Iver himself, I hoped for the familiar scene where he tries to backstab Gravedust after defeat, which leads to him getting killed by a guardsman. It’s a cliché, but it provides some satisfaction. Iver is VILE.
That scenario about Iver getting killed in the end is also some sort of cheap workaround for authors who want to satisfy some drive for bloody revenge, but avoid their heroes being seen to directly pursue it. So they just construct some scene where they don’t have a choice, at the cost of downgrading the villain to a cartoon variety, who cares more about being villainous than about their own life.
Iver will retire to a cave, from where he will tweet angrily about various “losers”.
“Tick tock! Time to attend to a titanic tussle! Tic Tac?” would alliterate even more.
Is the panel with the moon a callback to the first time we saw Harky enter the arena? http://guildedage.net/comic/annotated-8-13/
Almost certainly, but adding Tectonicus’ face gives it a little more sequel energy.
TECTONICDOME!