Annotated 36-18
Wait… wait, does the Cult that we usually just call “the Cult” actually… have a name? Oh, yeah, that’s right!
I don’t know, alt text, I don’t know. It sure would be nice if all the Cultists just started painting black-on-black artworks, like the ones from Rothko’s depressed late period, instead of all this.
Still, so far this fight is coming across as “chaotic but possibly manageable,” with the heroes mostly scoring points and no fresh attackers reaching them yet. From the script: We’re not going to have a lot of time in this chapter to cover good ol’ adventurer-on-cultist violence, so let’s make this panel real special!
It’s… it’s nice to see Colonnus enjoying himself. It’s… oh man, I’m not ready for this.
While stand by the option that Byron going into the woods was stupid, this was a good set up by the cultist. The adventures went to save a town that was mostly in on it the whole time. The murder, the interrogation, the ‘their waiting in the woods!’ was to split the team up into more manageable groups.
So there’s at least a gnoll, a goblin, and a couple of trolls that can be clearly identified as such, possibly more among the unidentifiable shadowy figures. Where exactly did these non-humans come from? I mean, while the adventurers who came to this town have been acting pretty dumb, you’d think that even they could manage to spot a bunch of savages during their search for the murderer…
They used an illusion spell.
Look closely at the first panel. You can see their villager clothes fading into cultist robes. The non-humans probably also had the illusion over their bodies in addition to their clothes.
And yet, they didn’t try to use that illusion to look like women, even if a “man-only-village” was really suspicious.
The cultists really insist on being a boy’s club, even for their cover stories, don’t they?
What would have looked more suspicious: a men-only village, or one where all the ladies walk and talk like men?
The former, of course, but maybe none of them wanted to play a woman because it felt somehow … uncomfortable to them?
More seriously: This may not be a year-round regular village but more like a seasonal encampment for working men who spend the summer chopping wood, then return to their families for winter.
Not sure why E-Merl feels it necessary to be lugging around the Big Book of Cultism right now.
I suppose he had it in his hands when things got going, and hasn’t really found the time to put it down yet … I actually expected the book to have some more significance before the end of this chapter but I just went back and I don’t think we’re actually shown how he gets/finds the book or why he’s carrying it.
“Dark work” just sounds cooler. I’m sure it’s a lot eazier to recruit people to your cult if you say you’re going to be doing “dark work to appease our dark master which hates life” than “killing people.” And if you say a thing during recruitment, it starts to sound normal and you say it all the time.