Annotated 30-27
Oh, look at that.
Nice touch that the other airship, the nonexploded one, vibrates with the shockwave. And then there’s that one poor guy falling out of the front, though he’s arguably no more unlucky than anyone else still on board. Several combatants down below fall over as well, though I think that’s because both teams have come to a sudden stop to stare as the sky turns to flame right over their heads.
I think the Rendar panel’s proximity to the surviving airship helps the reader understand that he’s on it. His face is lit by flame from a slight distance, not flame spreading all around and above him.
Rendar: “aaaand I just remembered ‘Light Air’ is explosive… this is the missile car all over again.”
Oh the huge manatee!
Goblaurance’s Gambit: Yea or nay?
On one hand, it’s a desperate, last ditch effort to stop (or at least hamper) a devastating war vessel capable of mowing down a large part of your armed forces. It was a strategy jury-rigged at the last minute, with minimum resources, and it was at least partially successful
On the other hand, the cost of such a stunt is nothing to laugh at. It costs you quite a few elite soldiers and precious explosives (that the World’s Rebellion can’t mass produce in the same way Gastonia can), and it’s in no way guaranteed to work
Was it worth it?
If they win the day, it was worth it.
Not sure if I should get involved with this one
buuuuuut
I mean, we’re basically talking three soldiers (the most elite of whom survives) and three explosives. The latter are scarce because Goblaurence didn’t anticipate this threat and is working with scraps, not because goblins are that incapable of designing engines of destruction (they just about match the Gastonians tank for tank here). The “not guaranteed” part is right, but the loss of resources is not that severe.
And “Goblaurence’s gambit” makes it sound as if he just took on this job himself. Penk assigned him the gig, and made it clear multiple times (most recently on the prior page) that he regarded it as essential, not only to the army’s victory but to the army’s survival. (Even in retreat, they wouldn’t escape the blimps’ bombing range until sundown.) So if the choices are to do the Hail Mary play or get bombed into oblivion, you do the Hail Mary play.
Thanks for getting involved!
I get that Rana was the only named character sent to that perilous mission, but the way I see it, flying soldiers are a precious tactical advantage in any imaginable conflict. True, there are several more from where those came from, but sending men into the meatgrinder without batting a eye is not a great way of showing respect for the troops. Now, those valuable bird men were soldiers and, as such, they were prepared to face death, and I’m aware the World’s Rebellion was losing badly, but I would still hate to see Penk being glad that he “only lost three guys”
Now, about the explosives, I did notice the goblin tanks (Do they have a proper name?) as well as Goblaurence’s Tony Stark-ian feat of being able to build those missiles in a cave, with a box of scraps. I’m sold on the goblins’ technical know-how. Now, what I’m not sure they have is an infraestructure capable of procure all the saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal needed to produce more than a single batch of projectiles per battle
Again, thank you for answering my comment.
Two (not three) avians against one of two airships full of boom (the escond of which will probably retreat now)? And we haven#t been shown how many avians have already did to the anti-air fire from those airships
Or, to put it another way: Risk three avians or accept the death of a very large proportion of the whole effing army? How is that even a question?
Now, for me, the question would have been of course: Go to war, knowing that a bunch of your own soldiers and some other people will inevitably die (including potential allies in another timeline, uninvolved civilians and enemy soldiers who could have otherwise been friendly people if they hadn’t been conscripted), that many of people on either side become traumatized, or turned into beasts, or both — or don’t go to war and do something else? But that decision was made long before this story started, and this is not a tale of passive resistance, so I guess we’ll have to live with that decision. The sort of scenario we see here is something which comes with the decision to go to war. Part of the package. Anyone not prepared to do this, have this done to them, and having to witness it shouldn’t go to war in the first place.
In fact, I wish nobody ever went to war, but who ever listens to me?
In truth, as a reader, I never liked this scene.
Or, more broadly, the role of the airships during the entire battle up to now, but especially this casual destruction of one.
If they were truly a threat, then the mid-battle time needed to work up a way to destroy them should have taken a much greater toll on the ground forces. If they prove so easy to destroy or so slow in their destruction that that impact was not made before this scene, then they were never such a great threat anyway.
I know (now, thanks to annotations) that there were broader story concerns about overall pacing, but it really felt like the World’s Rebellion should have taken a real spanking in this fight (as happens in reality when an army faces an unprecedented weapon) and then showed their ingenuity and resilience by striking back quickly in a later battle.
As-is, it makes the goblins’ technology feel arbitrarily strong, the airships (and thus human/gnome technology) arbitrarily weak, and generally distracted from the fight between ‘heroes’ taking place elsewhere on the field.