Annotated 20-7
Another of Phil’s good additions was the confusion over what to call “a former resident of Battleshire.” It’s a nice comedy bit, though it gets sadder when you reflect that any authorities on that subject are no longer with us (Byron, who was a child when he lost his town, doesn’t really count).
The original plan for this scene was to include Bandit and to have E-Merl head things up. If Phil had gotten his way, we would’ve stuck to that, especially E-Merl as the key researcher: “He needs a bag that’s entirely his own.” I just sorta drifted over to the version you see here, partly because we’d spotlighted Bandit in the Axemas Special and would again in the following chapter, partly because while I agreed with Phil’s statement above, I couldn’t see E-Merl sprouting the confidence to take on a leader-like role yet.
Neither Phil nor I planned or anticipated Gravedust and E-Merl settling into a mentor-mentee relationship. Looking back, it seems like we should’ve, but we were focused on making these magic users distinct from each other (a lot of fantasy tends to treat all wizards as basically the same character at different ages).
All the magical crap at E-Merl’s disposal and he doesn’t have one that just dumps water on something?
Truth is E-Merl doesn’t have “all the magical crap”. He has a few weak cantrips of his own, but mostly he has two magical items – one makes fireballs and one makes windy-shields. He just uses those two items to great effect (usually, anyway).
And that third one that does illusions – mostly of himself, but if he has the luxury of being able to focus all his attention on the task, basically anything.
Traditionally, spellcasters tend to specialize into a few elements, and rarely have spells of opposite elements in their repertoire.
Well, older players may have mages with a diversified portfolio.
Also, the DM is sometimes a bit short on creativity when you attend to douse a magical fire with magically-summoned water. Somehow, the former is supposed to be stronger than the latter, to the point of actual immunity.
(a bitter personal experience here, involving a lava elemental and a dwarf priest, don’t mind me)
attempt, not attend.
Time for bed for me.
This particular blunder of his grated on me. Sure, he lacks self-confidence, but here he’s being played as inept, for comedic effect. It may be that I thought the joke was taken too far – it would be like if Chunk knocked something over (“You klutz!”), and burned down the whole restaurant.
Figuring out just how blundery to make E-Merl was a constant high-wire act, but in this case, as next page shows, we were playing with readers’ expectations a bit.
Yeah, some sort of “cantrip of dampness” would really be useful there.
Gravedust’s expression on the last panel is priceless.
And yeah, I really enjoyed how E-Merl was the exact opposite of most magic-user tropes. Especially at this point of the story when the comic took a much more stoic tone for the meta plot.
That movie looks like it’s trying to be like one of those Youtube videos about, like, abandoned pets rescued from the brink of death, the ones you can’t always bring yourself to watch because you can’t handle all those feels, but unlike those videos, it’s probably just sappy and clichéd, and I can feel it trying to tug on my heartstrings and I’m like “I don’t think you’ve been authorized to do that. Kindly leave the premises or I will have to call security.” and it’s just so frustrating that I even have to deal with this shit and… was that nametag printed in Comic Sans?
The internet tells me someone from Lancashire is a Lancastrian, so maybe it’s Battlestrian? (“Yorkshire demonym” and “Worchestershire demonym” were both unhelpful searches, FWIW.)