Annotated 18-20
Harky himself is an avatar of Tectonicus, so you might think he’d be right in the thick of the summoning here instead of anxiously pacing its edge, or else right at the front of combat, clotheslining Frigg and Rachel and breaking their anti-tank defense. But his awareness that he can’t be everywhere and do everything is actually his strongest asset, as later chapters will make clearer. There are plenty of shamans here, and the battle is too chaotic for a single general or fighter to be decisive. The position of guard may seem like a lowly one, but strategically it’s the best one he can fill.
Good on Phil for remembering how aerobatic Harky can be, as seen in the opening move of his last personal fight with Peacemakers.
And hey, being able to joke about your trauma is a good sign of actually coping with it. Great marks all around, everyone.
Don’t forget Gizzard Wizard in the tags!
Good catch!
You know, we’ve seen so much of the landsharks, and seen the thoughts and actions of their leader, the largest, and smartest, of them all, Hammerhead. So now I find myself wondering what’s the deal with this landshark shaman? Being a magic user generally requires some serious intelligence, so who or what is this person? I feel like there’s a whole story here in that one figure.
Or maybe it’s the usual moron landshark who was given a stick and told to dance, just to fill out the everybody-is-represented make-up of this group and who is actually contributing nothing substantial?
I’d love to know.
I prefer to see the shamans as something similar to 5e Druids. A druid’s magic comes from their wisdom, a lot of which can be accounted for as ‘animal intelligence’. Maybe being more in-tune with their instinctual “lizard brain” could be making this landshark an effective spellcaster.
…and now I see the commentary in the previous page. Still, the idea of an idiotic landshark just dancing around pointlessly is to me, very funny.
I don’t know, Gorram, there seems to be some “shark fin” magic coming out of that stick! It sure looks like he might be a real Shark Shaman. Actually, I felt there might be a possibility of there being other landsharks that were as different and unique as Hammerhead, but in other ways. Perhaps not many of them ,but some. And I did want to round out the group, and represent all the savage races in this scene.
I like it. It’s not like these Shamans are the booky herbalist kind. They are dancing and prancing and yelling. It makes sense that Tectonicus would respond to beings getting in touch with their (even more) wild side. The Landshark Shaman just needs enough awareness to channel that and his landshark-ness is already as wild as it gets.