Annotated 47-2
FB: TFW the guy you rely on for optimistic talk is fresh out and you’re not sure whether to try cheering him up or just say “yeah, man, you’re right, everything’s one big suckhole”
Including Keeper Kepfer here presented some challenges. The scene wouldn’t work without him: the only one who can address Reynolds’ crisis is someone who speaks for the common people of Gnometown. And by definition, Bandit and her gang of odd cogs don’t. “No gnome in Gnometown would fault you” just doesn’t have the same weight if it comes from a gang of former exiles, you know? Also, the group is going to need Kepfer’s communal authority to help set certain plans into motion on page 3.
But the last time we saw Kepfer, he stated that criminals had no place in Gnometown. That belief and his position as a local leader were his defining traits. Bandit and most or all of her team are criminals, pardoned or not. Kepfer is not going to make an issue of that here, but we don’t have time to investigate how he feels about it. Is he changing his views, or just keeping quiet about them? He’s standing well apart from the others, but that doesn’t tell us much. Ultimately we had to just power on past this issue, because no one in the room is unprofessional enough to derail this meeting over it. We maybe could’ve addressed it in Kepfer’s next scene, though.
I’m not sure I understand Reynolds here. What is the big revelation for him vis-a-vis Gastonia? It’s not like Gnomish technology wasn’t already being used for weapons of war this whole time. Those battle tanks and so on. So what about this weapon made him snap?
I initially read the previous page at outrage at Micholuszek and Franzington for betraying Gnomish values. But anger at Gastonia? What about this constitutes a surprise? The war didn’t start yesterday.
This isn’t a “surprise” so much as “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” but there are two novel aspects of the situation. One is that M&F are still working for Gastonia after Ardaic told Reynolds otherwise. The other is the sheer destructive power that gnomish science has been used for.
But mostly, this is a meltdown that has been building in Reynolds for some time. It started as early as Taro going unpunished for the damages and casualties to Gnometown, was forestalled by developments like Syr’Nj’s ascension and Annunziata’s dismissal, and then started building again as Syr’Nj vanished and Caneghem warned him of “winds of change.” Seeing these physical, undeniable designs was the last straw, but there’ve been lots of other straws.
Clicking on his tag and going through his last few appearances, the impression I get is he knew many of the Heads, often a majority, would sacrifice gnomes for wartech, but that not all had that inclination and if he kept working the relationship was salvageable, worth it. Examples of the good to be drawn out including compensating Gnometown for damages, adding Syr’nj who seemed a better force for equality-through-politics than he could be, ejecting one of their more flagrantly racist members, and most recently, re-jailing M&F and putting war research on more lawful terms, even if that was explicitly because they were short on results.
His realization now pertains especially to the last thing. He realizes they were straight up lying about changing the research focus, because they had what they needed from M&F. And they were also using the sky elves’ tech. And they used the change with M&F to manipulate him into stepping back from the Heads of Houses, so they could do what they wished. So previously it seemed like the racism and manipulation was some of the members some of the time, but now he realizes it’s all of the members all of the time, that every time he’s been engaged with it’s as a patsy and never once as a partner, that they never can or will change, even that he was a fool to try.
I appreciate the answers.