Wait a minute… I just had a random thought. Whatever happened to the orcs we saw a LOOOONG time ago? I’m surprised we haven’t seen ANY orcs. They’re not part of the Savage Races as far as I can tell…
He’s trying to work out if he should explain what a Don uses the word ‘family’ to mean to Harky. The survivalist instincts in him suggest that this is really not the time to be correcting the angry troll. The toadying instincts are screaming that he ahould be helpful right now.
The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system. It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.
“Good” and “bad” are social constructs. “Good” is “us”. “Bad” is “them”. Nobody walks into a war thinking that they are the “bad guys”. They’re just the poor saps that are dying for their country. If you really look at it, every group in the World’s Rebellion has suffered under Gastonian expansion. That’s rather much the reason that they sounded the drums of war in the first place, to fight back against the colonial invaders that wish to strip the resources from their lands. Think, if you will, of the Empire from Star Wars. Sure, they were bigoted and human-centric. They repressed aliens. Did they do it for the sake of it? Sure. But the Emperor also had the motivation of trying to harden up the galaxy against an invading force that he KNEW was coming. Evil committed in the cause of the aggregate good and such. Doesn’t make it LESS evil, mind. Just that everyone has their own motivations, and doesn’t view themselves as “evil” or “bad”. The world’s just more gradient than that.
Of course, Harky also responded to a peaceful overture by diplomats by deciding to slaughter them.
On the other hand, he may well have been right that all Gastonia wanted the diplomats to do was keep the savage races distracted long enough to lay a whuppin’.
You have to remember though that the peaceful overture was at its best just another attempt to keep the status quo. A system where they have no voice, no real power except to be viewed as monsters to be killed, or to be pushed to the very outskirts of what can be called habitable land. One example being the Savassi, forced to live in the deserts where even dye is an unheard of luxury.
I love this webcomic simply for the fact that aside from its awesome story, it makes one think. And we get laughs…
“The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side”
So hard ? No. I cheer for them anytime.
“and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system.”
No one ever said or even just suggested that the “Savage” races would do a better job at ruling the whole shebang and being nice with the other races. For all we know, they don’t even remotely look like democrats either.
“It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.”
Yeah, and he attempts to completely genocide another race. See what he did to the wood Elves. Was that called for ? No, it wasn’t. During that battle, Harky even had his drummer killing a fleeing librarian, a non-fighter. What a glorious act of resistance against oppression, really. Not to mention they also killed many female wood-elves. Once again, making no freaking difference between on-duty, armed soldiers and non-fighters.
And way before that, a team of three or four representatives of the Rebellion (I’ll call them that way) attacked a human port and would have summoned a huge kraken-like creature to complete the “job”, if the occasion they had to do so hadn’t been foiled in the nick of time by our heroes.
It wasn’t even a military port, just a civilian fishing one.
And again before that, Harky even had an entire (human or elvish, I can’t remember) village destroyed, Lidice style (or Oradour-sur-Glane stlye, for the French people out there).
Gravedust even tried to have the souls of the dead telling him who did it to them, and barely got the name “Harky” from the screeching ghosts.
So much for pretending not to be the real savage out there … :-/
Yes, they are overall less civilizated – it was quite fortunate that the dwarfs and the goblins were pushed to their side. But that doesn’t make them less willing to fight to defend themselves, and as such, they have to engage in assimetric warfare, thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor. Destroy the positions where the enemy could get support and entrench. Steal the wood elves sacred branch and try to get a superweapon – because even if the wood elves could had become allies, they would be very reluctant and overall less usefull than having Tectonicus around.
Assymetric warfare ? You’re daft ? They had war machines and were more than enough in numbers to engage in conventionnal, head-on warfare.
“thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor”
It’s a civilian harbor, still. They’re not even trying to sabotage or rigg a military dockyard to blow, they’re attacking a fleet of fishing boats.
Now, concerning the Woodies, you say “they could had become”. Is that grammatically correct ? I’m just asking. English isn’t my native language and some subtleties still escape me.
On the other hand, “an army of Savage Races destroys a Gastonian settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is a shocking development that shakes the nation to its core.
Meanwhile, “an army of Gastonians destroys a Savage settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is, by all indicators, a Tuesday.
Not to mention he might have killed him if he hit him that way. The edge of the gauntlet extends past the flat of his knuckles. That punch would have gone through the bridge of nose and into his eyes.
Another key delineation of unarmed martial arts is the use of power and strength-based techniques (as found in boxing, kickboxing, karate, taekwondo and so on) vs. techniques that almost exclusively use the opponent’s own energy/balance against them (as in T’ai chi ch’uan, aikido, hapkido and aiki jiu jitsu and similar). Another way to view this division is to consider the differences between arts where Power and Speed are the main keys to success vs. arts that rely to a much greater extent on correct body-mechanics and the balance of the practitioners energy with that of the opponent.:..*”
The War Machine business is going to take a bath if spit like this keeps up.
That’s not spit… and its coming from the goblin behind Harky. o_O
Cut out the right third and it just screams for a “Brazzers” tag
X-D Gross. Gross, but funny.
Awesome possum. :3
Wait a minute… I just had a random thought. Whatever happened to the orcs we saw a LOOOONG time ago? I’m surprised we haven’t seen ANY orcs. They’re not part of the Savage Races as far as I can tell…
From what we saw, they were being used as slave labor. But that is a good question as to what has happened to them now…
Soup.
*avian facepalm* /jpg
Ha! Precisely what I was going to say.
*beakpalm*?
*beakwing*
Good name for a band, actually
Check out “Hatebeak”
I actually feel a little bad for Harky.
Hm.
“This Duke is more concerned over his men than the spice! I must admit, against all better judgement, I like this Duke.”
Nice.
/clap
Yeah well look how well that turned out for Liet, just sayin
Yeah, but he was a desert creature.
So now who’s the hot daughter that winds up sleeping with the messiah, here, then?
There’s always the bird following Iver.
Yes, but where is your god now?
Presumably somewhere… on fire.
presumably on the back burner for now
hehehe.
Note the nonchalant backing-away of the Dwarf and Avian in Panel #1. :D
Yeah. It literally got me. X-D
No, it figuratively got you. If it literally got you, Liam Neeson would have less than 24 hours to rescue you.
Hmm … fair enough.
He’s all furry. Is that guy… a Grinch?
They said his heart grew three sizes that day. So did his waistline.
And thus, Axemas was saved thanks to the brave troll and his mighty fist
I like to think the sideline goblin in the last panel is frowning because he sits more with Harky on this issue.
He’s trying to work out if he should explain what a Don uses the word ‘family’ to mean to Harky. The survivalist instincts in him suggest that this is really not the time to be correcting the angry troll. The toadying instincts are screaming that he ahould be helpful right now.
WHUDD?
Whudd id the soud dat a puch bakes whed hiddig a face? Souds bore lyg I’b tryig to asg “Whud?” wid by dose stubbed ub.
Whud the hell are you even saying.
“What is the sound that a punch makes when hitting a face? Sounds more like I’d be trying to ask ‘What?’ with my nose stuffed up.”
the grinning shark dude in the background of the last panel is possibly the best thing ever
What is he doing behind that speech bubble?
Nw Harky’s speaking my Gob-lingo!
Laying down the real gobstopper.
Popped that guy right in his gob, he did.
He did not expectorate so low in his opinion.
Harky is a real spit fire.
I’ll admit, when I saw how Iver and Gondolessa wisely stepped back I did a spit-take.
That landshark looks immensely pleased in the last panel.
Great page today, in every aspect. Panel 4 is super effective!
Last panel: Apply cold water to burned area
Apply directly to the forehead!
The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system. It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.
“Good” and “bad” are social constructs. “Good” is “us”. “Bad” is “them”. Nobody walks into a war thinking that they are the “bad guys”. They’re just the poor saps that are dying for their country. If you really look at it, every group in the World’s Rebellion has suffered under Gastonian expansion. That’s rather much the reason that they sounded the drums of war in the first place, to fight back against the colonial invaders that wish to strip the resources from their lands. Think, if you will, of the Empire from Star Wars. Sure, they were bigoted and human-centric. They repressed aliens. Did they do it for the sake of it? Sure. But the Emperor also had the motivation of trying to harden up the galaxy against an invading force that he KNEW was coming. Evil committed in the cause of the aggregate good and such. Doesn’t make it LESS evil, mind. Just that everyone has their own motivations, and doesn’t view themselves as “evil” or “bad”. The world’s just more gradient than that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Of course, Harky also responded to a peaceful overture by diplomats by deciding to slaughter them.
On the other hand, he may well have been right that all Gastonia wanted the diplomats to do was keep the savage races distracted long enough to lay a whuppin’.
You have to remember though that the peaceful overture was at its best just another attempt to keep the status quo. A system where they have no voice, no real power except to be viewed as monsters to be killed, or to be pushed to the very outskirts of what can be called habitable land. One example being the Savassi, forced to live in the deserts where even dye is an unheard of luxury.
I love this webcomic simply for the fact that aside from its awesome story, it makes one think. And we get laughs…
This is a property of a lot of the fantasy stories I read though…
“The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side”
So hard ? No. I cheer for them anytime.
“and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system.”
No one ever said or even just suggested that the “Savage” races would do a better job at ruling the whole shebang and being nice with the other races. For all we know, they don’t even remotely look like democrats either.
“It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.”
Yeah, and he attempts to completely genocide another race. See what he did to the wood Elves. Was that called for ? No, it wasn’t. During that battle, Harky even had his drummer killing a fleeing librarian, a non-fighter. What a glorious act of resistance against oppression, really. Not to mention they also killed many female wood-elves. Once again, making no freaking difference between on-duty, armed soldiers and non-fighters.
And way before that, a team of three or four representatives of the Rebellion (I’ll call them that way) attacked a human port and would have summoned a huge kraken-like creature to complete the “job”, if the occasion they had to do so hadn’t been foiled in the nick of time by our heroes.
It wasn’t even a military port, just a civilian fishing one.
And again before that, Harky even had an entire (human or elvish, I can’t remember) village destroyed, Lidice style (or Oradour-sur-Glane stlye, for the French people out there).
Gravedust even tried to have the souls of the dead telling him who did it to them, and barely got the name “Harky” from the screeching ghosts.
So much for pretending not to be the real savage out there … :-/
Hey, but they actually admit they ARE savages.
Yes, they are overall less civilizated – it was quite fortunate that the dwarfs and the goblins were pushed to their side. But that doesn’t make them less willing to fight to defend themselves, and as such, they have to engage in assimetric warfare, thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor. Destroy the positions where the enemy could get support and entrench. Steal the wood elves sacred branch and try to get a superweapon – because even if the wood elves could had become allies, they would be very reluctant and overall less usefull than having Tectonicus around.
It’s a dog eats dog world after all.
“they have to engage in assimetric warfare”
Assymetric warfare ? You’re daft ? They had war machines and were more than enough in numbers to engage in conventionnal, head-on warfare.
“thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor”
It’s a civilian harbor, still. They’re not even trying to sabotage or rigg a military dockyard to blow, they’re attacking a fleet of fishing boats.
Now, concerning the Woodies, you say “they could had become”. Is that grammatically correct ? I’m just asking. English isn’t my native language and some subtleties still escape me.
True enough.
On the other hand, “an army of Savage Races destroys a Gastonian settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is a shocking development that shakes the nation to its core.
Meanwhile, “an army of Gastonians destroys a Savage settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is, by all indicators, a Tuesday.
Well, neither side is supposed to be good or bad – since players can pick either side when they make a character.
You can see why so many people follow Harky.
I’m really gaining respect for him. Besides the whole aptitude for chaotic violence, he seems to be quite the leader.
#WorldsRebellion #TrollBikiniBabes #UMadBro
Huh, I’ve never noticed that gem on Harky’s stomach before.
They say it glows when you rub it with your thumb!
It’s basically the troll equivalent of a codpiece.
I say it’s a koteka, not a codpiece.
“How many of *my* war machines did you destroy…”
Hmm… ‘his’ clanks were one-offs of the Gnomish model.
(Since I *don’t* think that was a writer’s mistake, I’m going to regard Don’s statement as a clue.)
P.S. — Kudo’s to Harky… he resolved a leadership issue, AND raised the spirits of his defeated troops all in the same go.
I really like Harky. He reminds me of Wiegraf from Final Fantasy Tactics.
Also, I hate to be “that guy” but that’s not how you throw a punch. The back of his hand should be facing up.
In boxing, perhaps, and even then what really matters is using your hips and pulling your fist away from the point of impact as quickly as possible.
Regardless, Harky’s hand is covered in metal and spikes. It doesn’t really matter what technique he uses.
Not to mention he might have killed him if he hit him that way. The edge of the gauntlet extends past the flat of his knuckles. That punch would have gone through the bridge of nose and into his eyes.
In boxing, perhaps, as Schneidend cuttingly observed. In some martial arts styles you do it as Harky does. (WWHD)
thanks for the don’s conveniently placed left hand in panel 3.
Ditto!
Harky’s punches sound like Dub step.
Sound like dub step, look like Gob stomp.
Needs more Kwok.
So many unexpected feels on my part…
I need to voice this page.
WHUDD.
I think there could be merch material there :D
Another key delineation of unarmed martial arts is the use of power and strength-based techniques (as found in boxing, kickboxing, karate, taekwondo and so on) vs. techniques that almost exclusively use the opponent’s own energy/balance against them (as in T’ai chi ch’uan, aikido, hapkido and aiki jiu jitsu and similar). Another way to view this division is to consider the differences between arts where Power and Speed are the main keys to success vs. arts that rely to a much greater extent on correct body-mechanics and the balance of the practitioners energy with that of the opponent.:..*”
Catch you around
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