Annotated 47-11
In an earlier draft of this speech, Caneghem showed particular loathing for goblins: “Sky elves died from goblin explosives while defending human interests…Why should more die from human explosives defending goblin ones?” My thinking was that elder sky elves had the same disdain for the goblin dons that old money has for rich gangsters, especially when that old money hasn’t been earned in the most law-abiding of ways, either. This would have the side effect of driving the rebellious youths toward the goblins, just like parental disapproval only enhances some musicians’ popularity by giving them the lure of the forbidden. Everything would go Don Gobligno’s way without his lifting a finger…which is good, because he’d probably fuck this up if he actively tried to court any sky elves, young or old.
Young sky elves and goblins would indeed grow closer in the remaining chapters—we’ll see two interactions between the races in Chapter 50. But their relationship by then will be way more complex than “goblins like money and young sky elves hate doing what they’re told.”
FB: Fun fact: they only call him “Archmage” because nobody is better at the scornful eyebrow.
Yeah. What the alt-text said…
They’re honestly words to live by.
I had a feeling you’d use that panel from the Watchmen since that’s what most of the commenters said when this strip was posted.
I honestly wonder how long he’s been sitting on this. I mean, obviously weeks at minimum, but the Archmage really seems like the kind of guy who, the first thing he does after he agrees that he *has* to join this coalition, is to start working on ways to get *out* of said coalition.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s had this spell ready to go since chapter 12, but was just waiting for the point where Gastonian airships or Avian attacks wouldn’t be a problem for them on their way out.
I’m with you on the interpretation that Canaghem has probably been preparing the spell even before signing the alliance with Gastonia.
This page suggest that the sky elves rely on Gastonia for food. But Canaghem has likely been expecting from the start that eventually Gastonia would be more trouble than it’s worth, and he has just pokerfaced it to everyone until the time was right.
Canaghem is a bit of a dick, but damn he is a badass as well.
I would have said Months rather than Weeks. Maybe even Seasons or perhaps Years. This should have been a very long game
So at what point did you decide this was Caneghem’s end game?
We knew Caneghem was going to leave Gastonia to its own devices in some fashion, but the specifics were not clear to us almost to the end. We sorted out the “rooted by the oldest of magicks” bit pretty late in the game. Originally, Caneghem wasn’t even going to be in this scene (making it a true bookend to the sky elves’ first appearance), but we realized he’d give it more juice almost immediately. But having him take the city over the horizon raised the question of why the sky elves didn’t just do that as soon as they heard they might be invaded back in Chapter 4. So we had to explain that, and then also explain why Caneghem *could* do that *now.*
So, how would an important politician such as Canaghem find the time to cast (apparently by himself) a seemingly laborious and complicated (counter)spell of such magnitude?
For the laborious parts he puts on resting scorn face and mumbles the spell under his breath during meetings.
For the complicated parts he sends an illusion of himself (complete with resting scorn face) to the meetings. He invented the whole concept of using a picture of yourself as background image in zoom-meetings and ducking out of the camera view, before zoom meetings where even invented (Guilded Age takes place during the Nokia era).
Carefully? We don’t know the details, of course. Some of the time-consuming part could be a set-your-own-hours thing, some of it could just involve getting the right ingredients or setting off other spells as prerequisites. Lots of explanations if you want ’em, I think.