Annotated 35-33
Flo and I went back and forth on when Penk should enter this scene. At one point, I felt he should come in just in time to see Rachel’s death, or at least to ask the question that Magda asks here, just to firmly cement in his mind that Peacemakers died protecting his people. As it turned out, though, the last three pages of the chapter will definitely hammer that loss home to Penk without his needing to witness it personally.
Magda has figured on Frigg and Rachel being lovers since the first time she met them (see panel 5 here). Except for a slight awkwardness (“‘Companion’ is the correct term, yes?”), she seems to have no problem with homosexuality, unlike a more conservative dwarf I could mention. This will be important later.
Note that Frigg actually looks more pained once Fr’Nj starts healing her. Her physical injuries are not as bad as the pain that consciousness is going to bring her. This will be important a lot sooner.
Wait wait wait, Magda thought Frigg and Rachel were lovers?! I missed that!
I’m pretty sure they weren’t (in Frigg’s words: “Gaaaaaayy!”).
As I see it, you could maybe have said that Rachel loved Frigg, as in “adored her as an idol”, which maybe turned into more of a motherly role over time. Frigg accepted Rachel’s admiration and rejected everything else, except she eventually, grudgingly, kinda did start learning Rachel’s lessons.
Also, Rachel was very clearly in love with E-Merl (and vice versa), so the idea of Frigg an Rachel having a romantic relationship is … well, the story has no direct counter-evidence but I don’t see any supporting evidence either, especially given the level of detail with which Frigg’s other advances in the field have been documented.
I read Magda’s “companion” first as “fellow peacemaker”, and maybe as “friend” because you can of course see that the two stuck together more than the others, and wielded similar powers.
Yeah, I promise you, we definitely would not have just maintained a headcanon that Frigg and Rachel were lovers and never confirmed it in the actual script. I mean, we’re not J.K. Rowling. (Flo did consider Frigg pansexual and I had no objections to that, but the only non-male character she was even semi-officially paired with, in a romantic-sexual way, was Syr’Nj.)
Magda’s perception of the matter says a little about how clearly deep the bond between Frigg and Rachel was, but it reveals more about Magda. Some freedom fighters don’t permit themselves to see their enemies as capable of love and tenderness: Rana doesn’t, and Hammerhead doesn’t care. But Magda’s power was tempered by compassion for all from her earliest days as a Champion. (“Companion,” I can see reading ambiguously, but “your beloved” seems more definitive.)
»“Companion,” I can see reading ambiguously, but “your beloved” seems more definitive.«
…wait, where does she say “your beloved”? I just went a few pages either way and can’t find the phrase.
Also: The phrasing in your comment above kind of reads (to me) as if you’re saying “the two were lovers, and Madga figured it out” rather than “Magda believes them to be lovers (but they aren’t actually)” — which probably added to the confusion.
Anyway, I still have a hard time reading the story as if Magda believed them to be lovers, but I also don’t see how it would aid the story if she did. She sees that there are strong bounds between the Peacemakers, and that they’re willing to aid each other and even enemies if and when they think it is necessary, which seems a big enough deviation from her expectations to explain her change of mind.
“Surrender, and we’ll grant you and your beloved quick deaths.”
In the story so far, Magda’s misperception is just an amusing aside (Penk has no such misperception and certainly didn’t need it to start changing his attitude about humans), but her LGBTQ allyship will have a bit more relevance in “A Traal to Remember.”
I think I might’ve asked this a couple of chapters back, but when you say “resurrection is normally a possibility” … what’s the deal with that? Other than The Five, specifically, it seems like every death is treated with the same sort of finality, and resurrection is rarely mentioned (and remarked on as unusual when it is. Is KoA a game with permadeath for players, or has every single named character (except the obvious ones) been an NPC? Or some other combination of things?
yes it would have been more appropriate to ask this yesterday, shhhhI think that referred to the fact that Bandit literally respawned after being cleaved in three pieces and she didn’t even need a mystic doing a spiritual journey to make it happen. PCs seem not to be aware of their deaths in-universe but we the readers know that they respawn just like in any other game so the point needed to be made for us.
I guess Iwatani will just BRB and spank his demon-son.
BUT the memories of that death (that never happened) still haunt her forever! Tragic!
I think I can say with no hesitation that
1) The Heads of Houses (not counting Syr’nj, who is able to warp the plot around herself as one of the Five)
2) Their immediate families
3) The Peacekeepers’ primary questgiver (Ardaic)
and
4) The leadership of the World’s Rebellion (not counting Gravedust; see Syr’nj)
are all NPCs. Cultists are enemies to both player factions, not a playable factions. That leaves the list of people who die and don’t come back and ever might have been PCs a lot shorter. (Rabbit and…not sure who else. Rachel, of course.)
I kind of assumed that Sundar and everyone his backstory involved were all NPC’s as well. Mostly because of Rendar’s in-world contributions to technology being so significant, but that would also bring Sundar and Rabbit into the NPC box alongside him.
This is a thread I never wanted to pull on too much, and Flo might’ve had a different take. In my view, the world of Arkerra was more likely to parallel gamers’ respawns with seemingly impossible escapes, and Kingdoms of Arkerra was structured in such a way that character deaths were rarer and straight-up respawns less encouraged.
That still leaves a little wiggle room for the “super weird circumstances” E-Merl described in Chapter 18, but it does get us somewhat closer to a world where dead’s a lot more likely to be dead.