Annotated 36-30
And if Bandit’s military intelligence were up to date, this would’ve worked. Channeling all her fear into energy, she outflanks Byron again and again, winning by speed and guile what can’t be won by strength, almost cutting him into fourths…
And unquestionably makes things worse, in what the script describes as “an explosion of fuck.”
From the comments (biggmac, Lexible, CredulaPostero, TJCROW, l33tninja, Titlebreaker)…
Now, let me tell,you a story about a gal named Pandora
A sly little gnome, who we all adore-a
Well one day she was stabbin’ a berserker
When out of his back popped a buncha flamin’ jerkers (demons, that is)
And now it wasn’t looking great for her
As the demons within begin to stir
They were flowin’ and flyin’ like ’lectri-ci-ty
And the sight of the carnage made everybody pee (in fear, that is)
Hmm, for some reason I thought the demons were invisible and only the readers could see them, but apparently not. Like, Arkerrans know of the Sickness and justifiably fear it, but no one before now has described giant red demons pouring out and jumping into wounds. I figured that’s because they’re actually invisible. (But perhaps it’s actually because no one has survived seeing one before.)
The giant red demons are new, as evidenced by the surprise of brother Tom.
No, we caught a glimpse of the demon inside Byron in Ch. 13 here: http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-13-page-19/
And Tom had seen Cyberia before. Homon says “So certain were you that you had found the land where your deity dwells … you never considered, upon encounter, that Cyberia could be anything else.”
http://guildedage.net/comic/annotated-36-12/
Tom’s surprise was in finding out that Cyberia was not the home of the Countless, as Homon says.
It seems the berserker demons have affected the alt text, too.
Whoops. Composed a new one on the spot.
No hover-text today btw. I don’t know how intentional it was, but I like how the arc of Byron’s throwing arm in panel 2 leads to the arc of his axe-swing in panel 3, albeit backwards, which then pretty much ends on a tangent with Bandit’s own attack. It all looks very smooth.
Thank you. Choreographing fight scenes is always difficult. You want people to be able to follow what’s going on, and have it look good and interesting too. Even if they’re berserker-demon possessed zombies, some reality and believability must be maintained!
Is she on speed? Or is she just that good?
“almost cutting him into fourths…”
So she one-upped him, then?
This is kind of the crux of bandit’s problem, I guess. Because the cultists used byron for this attack, bandit pins the whole thing on byron’s curse, but this isnt the same thing, not really.
The safeguards on byron’s madness failed because he isnt just in the rage they were built to protect against.
Its poetic to use byron, but presumably anyone could have been killed, pumped full of demons, and set on the village.
Whats worse, if someone else was, and syr’nj and/or byron were present for this event, they almost certainly would have been having a conversation during the fight where they deduced this distinction.
This does make me curious as to how exactly the madness at Battleshire was created.
Did brother Tom actually managed all the way back then to somehow access parts of Cyberia, or was it something else entirely?
It would be interesting to know the finer points of the distinction.
The glimpse that Gravedust saw of the demon inside of Byron from way back in Ch. 13 looks quite a lot like the Cyberian demons (though more finely detailed). And Tom did say he’s accessed Cyberia before.
I’m not sure we know anyone would have done for the ritual. Certainly, HR very much meant to use Byron.
The cultist Scipio interrogates a few pages ago implies that they wanted adventurers, because they’d be hard to kill. Byron would be among the hardiest.
Does anyone else take Bandit’s side in this? Like, fuck Syr’nj, that guy is not worth *this*.
It’s what comes after this that puts Bandit y a bad light.
Yes, this. If Bandit had said “Look, your potion didn’t work, and then when I stabbed him to try to make him stop attacking everyone all these demons poured out of him,” and Syr’Nj had still locked her up, I would say Bandit was unquestionably in the right. But instead, she did everything she could to reinforce the idea that she had simply killed Byron because he needed killin’ and if Syr’Nj wanted any other explanations she could talk to the hand (and mind the dagger that was still clenched in it).
Syj’Nj described it as Bandit secretly always blaming Byron for his illness; I suspect it was more a matter of Bandit thinking that it was unjust for anyone else to get multiple chances when, as soon as her theft compulsion was revealed, her own people instantly demoted her to Street-Washer and later to Bandit. But either way, as soon as they established that Bandit was uninterested in forming any variation on the phrase “I’m sorry he’s dead,” expecting either friendly interactions between Syj’Nj and Bandit or unilateral apologies from Syr’Nj meant guaranteed disappointment.
Byron CHOSE to be cursed.
No he didn’t. Some guy in Sepia World, who appears in the last few pages of the comic, chose for Byron to be cursed. And neither of us even knows that guy’s name.
If you think Sepia World is the only “real” world in the comic, there’s little point in discussing the morality of anything that happens in Arkerra anyway.
His choice had actual consequences – the violent death of his friends and family, who were real people with souls. I’m not the one implying people aren’t real here.
But it wasn’t his choice.
The player is not the “player’s character.” HR may believe otherwise, but that’s part of why HR didn’t win.
As T points out, you’re–not implying so much as asserting–that two characters are in fact one, so yes, that does require one of them to be not real. Yes, Byron’s player’s choice had real consequences–just as Bandit is genuinely miserable about being an outcast because her player decided she was a kleptomaniacal outcast. But that doesn’t make “Byron chose to be cursed” an accurate statement, any more than “Bandit chose to be an outcast” would be.
I do take Bandit’s side, kind of. Not speaking that i know it’s not really Byron, but a reanimated corpse. Still, even if it was him alive, SHE knows he gets to rez anyway, so there’s no downside in uberstabbing him for safety’s sake. It’s just a coincidence* Syr’Nj is about to witness that without an explanation and misunderstand, of course. But that’s yet one thrill of the storyline.
I think the injustice is made worse by the fact that Byron chose to be cursed when he entered this world. He chose to be this way.
I do. Byron and Syr both knew the danger of cultist, madness and Byron. But decided to go along and take the bait anyway because science and love and self confidence will protect us all. Bandit did what needed to be done : take down the “carrier”. She did it alone and by herself. No potions, no bakup, no magick. All she gets in return ? A hit to her face with her guard down and the thing she feared the most : finally being an outcast and rejected by everyone she cared for.
I never voiced this before but I was very angry with the autors for how they treated Bandit. She was strong and lacked confidence, but did the best job that could be done. But she gets the short stick because the feelings of another woman who has all the autority and power her born status gave her never managed to be rational with herself as she tricks herself to be with everything else.
Anyways, I’ll stop my rambling and just be happy about Bandit’s efforts to make the best out of a worst-scenario situation.
Honestly, even Syr’Nj might’ve been okay with what Bandit does in frames 4-6 here, considering she tried the serum first. She tried to save Byron and everyone else, she found Byron past saving, so now she’s doing what she has to in order to save everyone else. It’s not personal for her. Not yet.
Okay, so as i suspected, that gray underneath Byron is wearing isn’t a chainmail, but actually a loose-threaded warm sweater that Syr must’ve knitted for him. That explains why he gets deeply stabbed and cut and pierced by small blades and all that. And also, i’m not being a jerk neither sarcastic, just a little smart-ass!
I do like this scene very much, kickass job everyone!