Annotated 39-18
Times are hard. But good on Syr’Nj for managing to turn a dire situation into a beautiful moment with her assistant. Panel 2 Kur’Ik just had every moment she’s spent in Gastonia vindicated.
The smear campaign against the Peacemakers is a plot idea we could have pursued, but it felt redundant with the campaign against adventurers, and in practical terms, there doesn’t really seem to be a difference. It’s not like any of the bars that banned Sundar changed their minds after seeing him accompany E-Merl or clarify that he was a Peacemaker.
The wine cellar was prepared to handle Frigg, but not Frigg, Sundar, and the newly alcohol-dependent E-Merl.
I realised now that Syr’Nj and Kur’ik is coming from the meeting with the heads of houses right? The altruists must have moved pretty quick to hire the Peacemakers for kobold duty, and hire an assassin and teh assassin beats Syr’Nj and Kur’ik to the Peacemaker’s guildhall. Not to mention Iwatani having time to assassinate Persson and chat up E-merl.
If this is a plot hole, then it doesn’t matter, a plot doesn’t have to be perfectly consistent and timed, as long as it is engaging enough for the reader to overlook the small inconsistencies. And it is, I didn’t notice this on the first read.
He did all that before the meeting.
He did it thirty-five minutes ago.
So, the other murdering which Iwatani is doing happens in a parallel thread — no problem. He only needed to get his mobile phone of his pocket on the way out of the guild hall, call his favourite assassin and give the order — done.
But! Based on the order in which things are told in the story, I had the impression that the Heads meeting was _before_ Iwatani met E-Merl, and that E-Merl and his minders are in a field killing kobolds right now, which means that it’s now the day after the Heads meeting. I’m pretty sure Syr’Nj should have been able to make it to the guild hall before the rest of the crew had time to leave E-Merl in the tavern, sleep, get suckered into the kobold thing, go out into the field and get bored killing kobolds.
Also: The sun is low, so I’ll assume it’s the next morning, but Syr’Nj talks about leaving by Moonrise, which would be more then 24 hours … so something’s off.
Maybe the the Heads meeting was actually on the same day the others went to kill kobolds, which would make this the evening of that day? That would be solved by having the E-Merl/Iwatani scene _after_ the Heads meeting. Which in turn would either put the Sepia world insert into a worse spot or break the nice scene transition from E-Merl to his player.
Actually: I probably would have missed the issue because that’s so many pages ago, that at one page/day, I’ve usually forgotten that kind of detail. But at the same time, the time of day and such things seem to be fairly meticulously kept consistent in this story, so it does stand out.
Logically they wanted everyone Syr’nj could turn to for support as out of the way as possible before confiding in her