Annotated 18-10
I cut the land shark from Phil’s first draft of this scene, Phil put him back in, and I just sorta rolled my eyes and let him. I’m still not super into the idea. Magick seems to require a little more… thinking than we generally see land sharks doing. Plus, there’s that “hive-mind” thing we established earlier.
I guess it’s best to think of this one as a bit of a mutant, like another extraordinary land shark we’ll meet later. And maybe there are a few others. Though maybe he’s the one we see in Cultist robes in a few more chapters. What the heck, I’ll name him in the tags. (Phil would probably object to this name, but haha too late.)
So yeah, Harky’s a little unsettled here but not flabbergasted. He knew that the original Peacemakers were up and kicking around (and therefore Iver and Auraugu knew too). Given that Byron already came back from seeming death once during the fight in Chapter 8 and how much that rattled Harky, I can very easily believe Harky had scouts checking on that gravesite until they found it empty. After all, E-Merl said people only come back from death if the circumstances are super weird… he didn’t say never.
(Although to be honest, part of the reason for this was that Phil and I just didn’t want to do a lot of “IT… CAN’T BE!! YOU’RE… DEAD!!”-type dialogue. It would have been neither dramatically effective nor much in line with the faintly RPG-like feel of the series.)
“Nah, man, nah… this is a game within a fictional world within the really real world, ain’t no comin’ back*!”
(*terms & conditions apply)
You said it, Skank!
“We cannot afford failure.” That’s a complete lie, because (as will soon become clear) they can totally afford to fail here without it having much effect on their overall war effort.
Why is there no Savasi shaman here?
The new breed of Savasi magick user wasn’t introduced until later, and the old breed was one Iver regarded as a threat to his power and had done his best to eradicate.
It’s not a lie if he believed it. But more than likely it was just a bit of an exaggeration. He probably believed they could technically afford it, but the toll and difficulty of winning the war would sky rocket.
And I would argue that the loss did have an effect. After this, Harky and friends have to retreat back to Souff Karal to lick their wounds. And it’s because of this defeat that Harky enlists his own squad of adventurers to combat the Peacemakers. Adventurers who would eventually redefine the course of the war.
No, no, it’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Well this is amazing nightmare fuel.
When was the Hive Mind established?
1972. It’s fairly recent.
Seriously, though, Best mentions it back in Chapter 9.
https://guildedage.net/comic/annotated-9-10/
Being near-mindless and obedient seems an asset for a secondary person in a ritual…no chance that they’ll go off-script and mess things up. As long as the instructions are simple enough to follow.
Also, having a hive-mind doesn’t necessarily mean that individual land sharks can’t perform different tasks on different mental levels. Much as the nerve cells in the body can be specialized to carry out specific functions, land sharks could be specialized (according to their rpg character class) to fulfill roles in their “society” without necessarily achieving individuality.
I don’t know who the lady gnoll is, but she has “smug” down to a science.
nameless avian lady is WIFE