AAaA Ardaic 1
I think Phil and I were as surprised as anyone that this question went to Ardaic, not only because he’s not an adventurer, but also because he’s not the person I’d pick to field it. Byron has the sort of well-traveled air that I’d associate with knowledge of Arkerra’s relatively remote corners, and Syr’Nj is a biologist among her other talents. Heck, if you really want to ask about what is and isn’t “anywhere in this universe,” your go-to folks are Clair and Hollister. (Well, Weo would be even better, but we haven’t met him yet.)
Ardaic, at first, seems like his concerns end with what might threaten his own nation or its borders. But this question going to him meant we got to see him flex his own diversity of interests a bit.
To be totally honest with you, I completely missed the pun in the last frame until readers pointed it out. Boy, talking about hunting over a nice sherry sure does loosen Ardaic up.
Nice of him to sherry his expertise with us.
The way I see it is… *takes a deep breath*
That he is the very model of a modern major general and…
Oh, you know how it goes. XD
While Byron is traveled, he comes of as a bit uneducated. Syr’Nj then again is a bit coddled to be trusted with more than “what I’ve read about this” type answer.
Ardaic gives off very strongly the sense of dedicated renaissance noble who’d pride himself with great variety of fields of study and practice, from martial to zoology. Unlike some of the actual human nobles who are more focused in their interests or even seem to be your usual highborn flotsam.
All in all what I’m saying, I think it’s quite fitting to ask the man about this one, adventurer or not.
I like the green one that looks surprised. “What? I’m dead? This is bullshit! Headshots are bullshit!”
Okay, it’s been bugging me since I first saw this six years ago… is the surprised dragon in panel 4 a reference to something? It looks familiar, and a lot of people in the original comments thought so as well.
My first thought was that it was a reference to Eustace from this Shortpacked comic, but looking at it now, I guess that’s incorrect: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/dawn-treader
Not that I’m aware of. John?
Maybe I missed this, but the original questions were from actual readers, and not just planted for gag purposes?
From my understanding ya, the questions were asked by readers, now whether the picked and chose based on gag purposes, who knows
Phil was very dedicated to answering real questions from readers, but not all the answers would’ve been interesting or enlightening. And as Frigg mentions a time or two, they could sometimes be repetitive. Plus, we only had 52 installments to work with. So we (really just Phil) picked and chose.
That is correct!
He may not be the right person to ask this of. I bet Gravedust’s answer would be a lot more interesting.
Especially because Gravedust’s power could have allowed us to hear what those dragon kin heads had to say (that green dragon needs to say the interjection he most likely was prevented from finishing)
I was confused by what looked like a bullet hole in the non-dragon’s head, and thought firearms didn’t exist here period, but I went back through this chapter’s battle scenes and saw some being used by (gnome?) soldiers on page 2.
If they’re in early enough stages that they’re expensive and rare, that explains why most soldiers use swords, spears, axes, etc.., and why Ardaic could use them for hunting big game… but why do the core cast never seem to? IIRC.
Or rather, the previous story chapter’s page 2.
There’s also a gun in this page, on the wall behind him in panel 4.