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He can’t alter his face. All that talking is draining his resources. When he’s finished, he’ll have to recuperate for a few rounds before he can move again.
Jarvis has some crazy maxed-out stats, feats and bonuses (that we won’t learn about until they’re truly needed), but the price he pays is that for him, talking is not a free action.
I’m pretty sure the council is actually right, though. Every time they find someone who’s doing something dangerous, they solve it by blowing the whole thing wide open in the middle of town square.
The giant tank that wrecked Gnometown was just sitting in a hangar when the adventurers arrived. If the investigation had been handled differently, with due process and with subtlety, it would have stayed there until it was seized by authorities. Perhaps the army could have bought it. Instead Bandit’s actions and words incited Taro to drive it out and cause mayhem. Then, once it happened, they focused on fighting the tank, instead of evacuating the civilians, setting up a perimeter, and trying to talk Taro down.
They arrested the main perpetrators for destruction of evidence without a fight and sent their best qualified agent to investigate the undercity for further evidence. How much more subtle could they have been?
And what the hell would that perimeter be made out of?!
Perimeters aren’t walls- they’re there as a ‘it’s dangerous past here, don’t cross this line’ rather than a ‘we’ll keep the monster inside with police tape!’, measure.
True, but how do you throw a perimeter around an enormous steam battle engine? It’s like the 800lb gorilla in the room, if it wants to go somewhere, it does. Whereas by focusing on stopping the tank, they had a clear (albeit not in how to accomplish it) goal in mind that would lead to the desired end result – no tank, no more people getting hurt/killed.
I understand a perimeter and what you’re saying, LockeZ, but what I’m saying is how do you keep all the civilians outside that perimeter when it’s a mobile perimeter, one that’s dictated by wherever Taro decides to drive that monstrosity? Seems an almost impossible task, especially with so few people to do it.
Also, great gravatar, one of my fav characters from my favorite FF game!
But what if the centre of the perimeter moves at roughly the same speed as the people you’d want to evacuate? I’m going to have to agree with Sumgai here. As far as I can recall the adventurers did a pretty good job under the circumstances.
What the council is doing is like blaming umbrellas for the rain. Which makes sense if they want everyone to get wet except for them, because they don’t have to go outside when it’s raining. They’ve got people who do that for them.
Okay, but the principle people at fault where Gastonians.
Like the people who commissioned the tank. The people who designed the tank. And the heir apparent to a certain noble family.
I’m mean seriously. I find it hilarious that it’s the perimeter that’s not strong enough that’s problem here. As opposed to, you know, the giant weapon of destruction that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.
Multiple people can, in fact, do something wrong in the same day. What the Peacemakers did wrong that day is that they focused on stopping the criminals instead of on protecting the city. It’s like if a police officer charged into a hostage situation instead of standing outside negotiating by phone.
They’re not morally at fault, but that’s not the same thing as not being causally at fault. We use the word “fault” in English to refer to both of those concepts, but they’re not the same thing. A police officer who doesn’t do a good enough job isn’t morally responsible, but is responsible in a pure cause-and-effect sense. He or she could have stopped the problem by doing a better job. That officer doesn’t deserve to be executed, but should be replaced.
Also, please don’t reply to yourself, that’s piss-obnoxious. Just take the extra three minutes to think of everything you want to say.
*Casually* the heads of house are most at fault.
They sent in the Peacemakers to fix a problem they made in the first place.
I don’t know what they thought would happen. They knew the gnomes are pacifistic but chose to use them to develop weapons in secret anyway. They’re lucky that volatile situation didn’t make a bigger mess than it did.
The collateral damage lies squarely at their feet.
Cause it was not the insane religious cult, the giant kraken, or sociopathic child with a giant robot that caused all that damage.
Definitely the adventurers.
How does this make sense to Jarvis & co.? Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
“So we’ve had some devastating defeats and near defeats recently, the Savage Races are banging on the doors to get in, and the cultists are already inside? Welp, as good a time as any to start pruning excessive resources, keep it all neat and tidy when things start crashing down.”
The people in power always believe they have A plan… Until they realise they have been deluding themselves and they take the suicide pill (or escape to the pleasure islands)..
The very actions they’re taking against the adventure’s guild makes them a logical target for the guild. They’re signing their own death warrant, AND monologueing (well, as a group) their evil plans right to one of the people that can do something about it. Classic villain mistakes, I love it.
Your gravatar is perfect for that comment. Very prescient. And that’s the look they’ll all have on their faces when the Guild comes knocking on their door.
I feel like this is the if there were no super heroes there would be no super villains argument from the Awesomes. (Now available for streaming on Hulu*)
*Bounces is in no way associated with Hulu, this is not a paid endorsement.
That’s an interesting question, really. In very, very many superhero works, the greatest villains are a direct result of the hero- Joker was (possibly) made by Batman, Luthor would’ve probably died in childhood if Supes hadn’t saved him, Doom would’ve just been a rich dictator if it weren’t for RICHARDS!
But then you need to realize that, for each villain that’s been ‘made’ by the hero, there’s a half dozen that would either have existed as ‘regular’ criminals and sociopaths, dictators, etc.- Most of the Flash’s villains, folks like Poison Ivy and Gorilla Grod, Hades, all doing their thing regardless of whether or not there’s a hero there to oppose them- and often that hero rises up because of the villain- Green Lanterns tend to follow this path, and even Punisher and Spiderman only became heroes (“heroes” for the Punisher- I actually rather dislike him as a protagonist) because of pre-existing villains. Osborn would’ve taken that serum regardless, as would Doc Connors, and without a Web-slinger to capture their attention, they’d turn Manhattan into a warzone in short order.
And that’s without the natural disasters and various invasions that Heroes tend to stop- things outside the control of, well, anything else.
so they have a large band of extremely skilled, but unconventional and inherently chaotic combatants of somewhat dubious loyalty, and they think this band will get less disruptive if they’re all put out of work at once?
what a crying shame they don’t have some big pressing existential threat they could use to grind them down to dust by repeatedly throwing them into the fire.
In some cases, the council is right. The giant robot should have been handled differently and probably by different people. Of course, if Iwatani and his child weren’t such sociopaths, it probably wouldn’t have gotten to that point. The council has been using the adventurers like a hammer, smashing anything that they don’t like in the least subtle way possible. This is what made the guild look so bad rather than any particular fault of its own.
Also, doesn’t it seem like it’s mostly Jarvis, Iwatani and Bedard leading this? Miyamoto seems almost too brash to have handled any of this.
Okay, Miyamoto actually has a reasonable point. Adventurers may not cause all the collateral damage of their adventures, but they do generally cause a sizable portion of it. It’s like Superman knocking Darkseid into a building in order to prevent Darkseid from knocking down more buildings. It’s not as bad as it would have been if Superman didn’t do anything, but it’s still not as good as they’d like.
But the only way it makes sense for them to dismantle the guild right now is if they’re stupid enough to believe that the entire cultist threat was neutralized right in that one incident.
This makes me wonder… Could it be that Iwatani made that deal with Brother Tom with the blessing of the other Heads? If they can admit to Syr’Nj’s face that they intended and expected the Adventurer’s Guild to be “neutralized”, it wouldn’t be an awfully huge step to admitting that they arranged for it to happen from the start. Of course, that would mean that they foresaw the forming of the AG, but Miyamoto kind of implies that they did.
I would actually be a bit disappointed if this turned out to be true, because it would mean that Iwatani wasn’t going behind everyone else’s backs at the time. I mean, even if it ultimately benefits him, it isn’t the proper thing for a scheming backstabber to do. ;)
Then again, she could just go right along with it, while working within the system/behind the scenes to neutralize and counter them, while also sowing the seeds of their destruction. Like the mighty tree crumbles the boulder, working its roots into the cracks and widening them… I mean, she is a politician now, after all.
In the next exciting installment, Jarvis will explain their plan to dismantle the military for causing all of those wars, followed by the city guard for causing all of that hat theft.
Wait, the adventurers are the only ones with any real success against the World’s Rebellion OR the Cultists.
The Gastonian military has been thoroughly routed repeatedly and the cultists are pretty much just doing whatever they want. I’m not seeing a viable endgame, here.
Ahhh, the arrogance of man. I have missed you old friend. Although, I would like to point out what tends to happen when mercenaries (adventurers by a different name) are betrayed: they tend to kill their treacherous employers in revenge, and then establish themselves as the new power structure, establishing a relatively stable military dictatorship that last until their grandchildren take over and are invariably less effective than their grandpas. (I.e. look no farther than the Catalan band) Also, someone on the council didn’t read enough Machiavelli.
There’s a rat infestation around town lately, so let’s send the adventurers to go kill 50 of them each so that they don’t kill random NPC’s out of boredom.
Ask a stupid question….
I’m looking forward to the moment HR comes knocking on their door.
These guys have it coming.
HR will show them that the adventurers only cause the shadow of collateral damage. For perfect collateral damage you need a god.
Yea, it’s like these buffoons have been living in a Cave all their damn lives :))
Careful there Jarvis, if you don’t alter your face for three strips in a row it might stick that way.
Yeah, but what can he do about his face ? Smile ? Pft, as if.
I wanted to comment on the artistical laziness, but it just makes too much damn sense for this character (and we hardly know him yet)
He can’t alter his face. All that talking is draining his resources. When he’s finished, he’ll have to recuperate for a few rounds before he can move again.
Jarvis has some crazy maxed-out stats, feats and bonuses (that we won’t learn about until they’re truly needed), but the price he pays is that for him, talking is not a free action.
I hope we see him at a joyful wedding later on, same expression. A single tear slides down his cheek.
“I’m so happy.”
Oh, so it’s like that, huh?
Correlation-causation fallacy.
Adventurers are supposed to be where the chaos and collateral damage are at.
To be fair, a lot of them are pretty chaotic. Get that many boisterous toughguys in a group together, and you’re bound to have problems eventually.
I’m pretty sure the council is actually right, though. Every time they find someone who’s doing something dangerous, they solve it by blowing the whole thing wide open in the middle of town square.
The giant tank that wrecked Gnometown was just sitting in a hangar when the adventurers arrived. If the investigation had been handled differently, with due process and with subtlety, it would have stayed there until it was seized by authorities. Perhaps the army could have bought it. Instead Bandit’s actions and words incited Taro to drive it out and cause mayhem. Then, once it happened, they focused on fighting the tank, instead of evacuating the civilians, setting up a perimeter, and trying to talk Taro down.
They arrested the main perpetrators for destruction of evidence without a fight and sent their best qualified agent to investigate the undercity for further evidence. How much more subtle could they have been?
And what the hell would that perimeter be made out of?!
Perimeters aren’t walls- they’re there as a ‘it’s dangerous past here, don’t cross this line’ rather than a ‘we’ll keep the monster inside with police tape!’, measure.
True, but how do you throw a perimeter around an enormous steam battle engine? It’s like the 800lb gorilla in the room, if it wants to go somewhere, it does. Whereas by focusing on stopping the tank, they had a clear (albeit not in how to accomplish it) goal in mind that would lead to the desired end result – no tank, no more people getting hurt/killed.
Also, I blame Taro. :P
No, you misunderstand. A perimeter is an area around the danger that you keep civilians out of.
I understand a perimeter and what you’re saying, LockeZ, but what I’m saying is how do you keep all the civilians outside that perimeter when it’s a mobile perimeter, one that’s dictated by wherever Taro decides to drive that monstrosity? Seems an almost impossible task, especially with so few people to do it.
Also, great gravatar, one of my fav characters from my favorite FF game!
That’s the trick to perimeters- making them big enough that you have time to shift them if the reason for the perimeter moves.
But what if the centre of the perimeter moves at roughly the same speed as the people you’d want to evacuate? I’m going to have to agree with Sumgai here. As far as I can recall the adventurers did a pretty good job under the circumstances.
What the council is doing is like blaming umbrellas for the rain. Which makes sense if they want everyone to get wet except for them, because they don’t have to go outside when it’s raining. They’ve got people who do that for them.
Okay, but the principle people at fault where Gastonians.
Like the people who commissioned the tank. The people who designed the tank. And the heir apparent to a certain noble family.
I mean, it’s sort of the fault of the guys illegally building a tank in the middle of a community that didn’t want it.
I’m mean seriously. I find it hilarious that it’s the perimeter that’s not strong enough that’s problem here. As opposed to, you know, the giant weapon of destruction that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.
Multiple people can, in fact, do something wrong in the same day. What the Peacemakers did wrong that day is that they focused on stopping the criminals instead of on protecting the city. It’s like if a police officer charged into a hostage situation instead of standing outside negotiating by phone.
They’re not morally at fault, but that’s not the same thing as not being causally at fault. We use the word “fault” in English to refer to both of those concepts, but they’re not the same thing. A police officer who doesn’t do a good enough job isn’t morally responsible, but is responsible in a pure cause-and-effect sense. He or she could have stopped the problem by doing a better job. That officer doesn’t deserve to be executed, but should be replaced.
Also, please don’t reply to yourself, that’s piss-obnoxious. Just take the extra three minutes to think of everything you want to say.
*Casually* the heads of house are most at fault.
They sent in the Peacemakers to fix a problem they made in the first place.
I don’t know what they thought would happen. They knew the gnomes are pacifistic but chose to use them to develop weapons in secret anyway. They’re lucky that volatile situation didn’t make a bigger mess than it did.
The collateral damage lies squarely at their feet.
[Activates Sneering Imperialist trait.]
YEAAAAAAAAAAAH BOIIIIIIIIIIII
Damn, my gravatar really did not match up with my comment this time.
No no, it looks just about right.
Cause it was not the insane religious cult, the giant kraken, or sociopathic child with a giant robot that caused all that damage.
Definitely the adventurers.
You can always count on a certain type of person to blame the people trying to solve a problem, and ignore the cause of the problem.
Blame the people, ignore the cause…
And then run for re-election!
Vote Mujaki 2016!
Because it’s your fault people! :D
How does this make sense to Jarvis & co.? Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
“So we’ve had some devastating defeats and near defeats recently, the Savage Races are banging on the doors to get in, and the cultists are already inside? Welp, as good a time as any to start pruning excessive resources, keep it all neat and tidy when things start crashing down.”
The people in power always believe they have A plan… Until they realise they have been deluding themselves and they take the suicide pill (or escape to the pleasure islands)..
And that works, right up until the adventurers finally get a competent leader who might actually start considering your notion of insurrection.
Panel two: shouldn’t that be, “have kept FROM forming”?
Also, “IT ‘S” (rather than “IT’S”).
And why is it an adventurer’s guild, and not an adventurers’ guild?
Possibly because it’s possessive, it is their guild, they claim (some level of) ownership over it.
I’m very tired.
Yeah, there’s that too. Should we do a Kickstarter to supply you with enough energy drinks to finish out everything? :)
The very actions they’re taking against the adventure’s guild makes them a logical target for the guild. They’re signing their own death warrant, AND monologueing (well, as a group) their evil plans right to one of the people that can do something about it. Classic villain mistakes, I love it.
Your gravatar is perfect for that comment. Very prescient. And that’s the look they’ll all have on their faces when the Guild comes knocking on their door.
Imagine an army of them… an insurrection of them!
I feel like this is the if there were no super heroes there would be no super villains argument from the Awesomes. (Now available for streaming on Hulu*)
*Bounces is in no way associated with Hulu, this is not a paid endorsement.
That’s an interesting question, really. In very, very many superhero works, the greatest villains are a direct result of the hero- Joker was (possibly) made by Batman, Luthor would’ve probably died in childhood if Supes hadn’t saved him, Doom would’ve just been a rich dictator if it weren’t for RICHARDS!
But then you need to realize that, for each villain that’s been ‘made’ by the hero, there’s a half dozen that would either have existed as ‘regular’ criminals and sociopaths, dictators, etc.- Most of the Flash’s villains, folks like Poison Ivy and Gorilla Grod, Hades, all doing their thing regardless of whether or not there’s a hero there to oppose them- and often that hero rises up because of the villain- Green Lanterns tend to follow this path, and even Punisher and Spiderman only became heroes (“heroes” for the Punisher- I actually rather dislike him as a protagonist) because of pre-existing villains. Osborn would’ve taken that serum regardless, as would Doc Connors, and without a Web-slinger to capture their attention, they’d turn Manhattan into a warzone in short order.
And that’s without the natural disasters and various invasions that Heroes tend to stop- things outside the control of, well, anything else.
So is the mayor on their ass or what?
Ah, never mind what I said about them not wanting to piss off the Guild.
so they have a large band of extremely skilled, but unconventional and inherently chaotic combatants of somewhat dubious loyalty, and they think this band will get less disruptive if they’re all put out of work at once?
what a crying shame they don’t have some big pressing existential threat they could use to grind them down to dust by repeatedly throwing them into the fire.
I know right, ye olde “Evil Mastermind” route.
wait . . . you just described this comic!
In some cases, the council is right. The giant robot should have been handled differently and probably by different people. Of course, if Iwatani and his child weren’t such sociopaths, it probably wouldn’t have gotten to that point. The council has been using the adventurers like a hammer, smashing anything that they don’t like in the least subtle way possible. This is what made the guild look so bad rather than any particular fault of its own.
Also, doesn’t it seem like it’s mostly Jarvis, Iwatani and Bedard leading this? Miyamoto seems almost too brash to have handled any of this.
He’s next to go…after Syr’nj.
Okay, Miyamoto actually has a reasonable point. Adventurers may not cause all the collateral damage of their adventures, but they do generally cause a sizable portion of it. It’s like Superman knocking Darkseid into a building in order to prevent Darkseid from knocking down more buildings. It’s not as bad as it would have been if Superman didn’t do anything, but it’s still not as good as they’d like.
But the only way it makes sense for them to dismantle the guild right now is if they’re stupid enough to believe that the entire cultist threat was neutralized right in that one incident.
I think that’s exactly what they believe.. probably fed by the one who is a cultist himself.
Actually, he’s not a cultist, he just foolishly believes he’s so smart he can manipulate everyone to do his bidding.
It’s almost as if these here heads of houses don’t realize they are in a GAME!
This makes me wonder… Could it be that Iwatani made that deal with Brother Tom with the blessing of the other Heads? If they can admit to Syr’Nj’s face that they intended and expected the Adventurer’s Guild to be “neutralized”, it wouldn’t be an awfully huge step to admitting that they arranged for it to happen from the start. Of course, that would mean that they foresaw the forming of the AG, but Miyamoto kind of implies that they did.
I would actually be a bit disappointed if this turned out to be true, because it would mean that Iwatani wasn’t going behind everyone else’s backs at the time. I mean, even if it ultimately benefits him, it isn’t the proper thing for a scheming backstabber to do. ;)
Wood Elf meltdown in… 3… 2… 1…
Or perhaps she’ll go cold and aloof and tell them where to
stick their council…
You never quite know with Sry’nj…
Eli…
Then again, she could just go right along with it, while working within the system/behind the scenes to neutralize and counter them, while also sowing the seeds of their destruction. Like the mighty tree crumbles the boulder, working its roots into the cracks and widening them… I mean, she is a politician now, after all.
Ooo… I’m liking this. Here, have an Internet. Also, will there be popcorn?
Eli…
In the next exciting installment, Jarvis will explain their plan to dismantle the military for causing all of those wars, followed by the city guard for causing all of that hat theft.
Wait, the adventurers are the only ones with any real success against the World’s Rebellion OR the Cultists.
The Gastonian military has been thoroughly routed repeatedly and the cultists are pretty much just doing whatever they want. I’m not seeing a viable endgame, here.
I don’t think they really realize the extent of the cultist problem. Iwatani thinks he’s going to be able to manipulate them and control them.
Unless, of course, they found a more suitable solution to their problem.
Possibly a steam-powered solution.
Ahhh, the arrogance of man. I have missed you old friend. Although, I would like to point out what tends to happen when mercenaries (adventurers by a different name) are betrayed: they tend to kill their treacherous employers in revenge, and then establish themselves as the new power structure, establishing a relatively stable military dictatorship that last until their grandchildren take over and are invariably less effective than their grandpas. (I.e. look no farther than the Catalan band) Also, someone on the council didn’t read enough Machiavelli.
The council is just jealous that the adventurers get to go on cool adventures, get cool loot, and all the hot babes(frigg and bandit). XD
So that´s what mmorpg-NPCs think about adventurers ? This explains so much (for example the “keep them occupied with tedious tasks” thing).
There’s a rat infestation around town lately, so let’s send the adventurers to go kill 50 of them each so that they don’t kill random NPC’s out of boredom.
They must have run out of space for bear ass storage.