(circling motions with my finger) Okay…okay…wrap it up, Gravedust…wrap it uuuuup…

Yep, this is the third speech Flo added to the text that I could personally do without. Everything on this page and one transitional line on the final page were inserted per her request. I still remember pausing to take her call while campaigning for my local representative and thinking, Well, she let me do the rest of the chapter my way except for those little tweaks on Bandit’s arc, I can let her have this one.

Thinking it over, I do enjoy the visuals we’re getting here: one last glimpse at the farmers, at Hammerhead, and at Faerekshch’Nj’s family dinner. One little bit with E-Merl and Frigg trying to automate one of Rendar’s training dummies. One more Guilditization sneaking in there (hi, Rendermaw). And maybe you really wanted some assurance that Annunziata did not live happily ever after despite his escape from custody, as chronicled in one of our Ask an Adventurers. If so, enjoy.

I have picked on Flo a fair bit in these annotations. Acknowledging our conflicts was the only honest way to do the annotations at all…and the only interesting way, really. But the texture of this story’s universe, the discipline to keep pushing for better, the protestor’s energy at its heart…are just three of the many, many things I still love about this completed work that came directly from her. Thanks, old friend.

FB: Time really flies when you update a webcomic three times a week for nearly ten years.