Annotated 47-29
Flo left this page to me and said, “Honestly torn on whether Penk should bench Rana. Your call.” At the time, I didn’t think twice about my answer, but now I’d probably say, “Fair question.” As leader, Penk is responsible for everyone under his command. If he always chooses compassion for the few or the one, he’ll end up a Ned Stark: too honor-bound to be effective. It’d be better for almost anyone’s mental health not to have to fight in a war, but he can’t afford to reduce his forces to volunteers only. So is this a job for Compassionate Penk, who can tell Hammerhead “I respect you” and mean it even as Hammerhead withdraws his forces from the Rebellion? Or is it a job for Pragmatic Penk, who can kill even his father figure for the good of trollkind?
Trick question! It’s a job for both. Rana isn’t just anyone: he’s a Champion, and therefore, how Penk treats him will be talked about. Rana is skilled enough that he might have taken down ten to forty enemies, maybe another whole airship, before his exhaustion and carelessness did him in. But letting him commit suicide by war would do much greater harm to Penk’s side in terms of morale. I’m not sure if that calculus enters Penk’s thinking here: he may just be following his compassionate instincts. But his choice is still the right one, by every metric.
(Love Flo’s use of “caught a madness for it,” too. Trolls are brave and tough, but they know to fear madness in all its forms.)
FB: The World’s Rebellion doesn’t have a trauma center per se: they handle it in more of an open-mic format.
Just finished reading this comic. Picked it up a few years back (about 6 of them) and kinda fell off after a while. Have to say… I loved, I laughed, and I cried. Thank you guys for making such an amazing story, and thank you for sharing it. For the Guild!
Hey, thanks!
Looking at Rana’s face in the last panel, it might have been a better strategy to tell him to rest _before_ joining the battle again. This whole thing would likely last more than a few days, so even if Rana was out for three or four, he would still be useful. In fact, I think the best argument would be to tell him to rest, gather his thoughts, calm down *in order* to be more effective in the battle he’s so eager to fight. That would have the bonus of giving Rana a perspective, a good reason to get his wits back together.
… and I wonder if Weo couldn’t have told Rana some different glimpse of the truth that would not have affected him in the same way. But of course, Weo is even less of an expert psychologist than Penk, and we don’t know how good Winter Elves’ predictions of hypothetical scenarios are.
For better or worse, the winter elves don’t really do “hypothetical scenarios.” They generally regard the future as etched in stone: “what will be will be.” Weo did concede that some things couldn’t be predicted, but the winter elves don’t tend to focus on those.
Honestly, though, I think Rana needs a lot of recovery time. The fatigue, lack of sleep, and lack of food could probably be addressed in a few days if he were healthy otherwise, but he’s not. It’s his mind that really needs healing.
I already considered a trick question even before the first line of the second paragraph, but I feel you focus too much on the optics for the pragmatism. Yes he’s a champion and yes he can solo, but honestly, in his condition, there’s a number of ways he could damage his compatriot’s efforts, if not their persons. If he wasn’t put with any former Gastonians, probably he wouldn’t go Telly Salvalas (Dirty Dozen refernece. No it doesn’t date me since it was before my time. Everyone (American at least) should see it. It’s a classic both as a war movie and caper movie), on the Savage Races. But even falling short of that can be really, really bad and cause severe damage to the cause, if unintentional.
I guess mixing both what I wrote with an optics view, though anyone assigned with or near Rana would hopefully be concerned about him for his sake, they may also be thinking, “uh, could you assign me with someone else.”
Yeah, that’s reasonable. It’s the individuals-vs.-unit problem: Rana as he is would likely be an unhinged, dangerous opponent in a one-to-one battle, but an army has to coordinate. And if Rana almost wrestles Penk in response to this one order he doesn’t want to hear, how commandable would he be on the battlefield, with the howl of war and vengeance in his ears?
Was the alt-text on the previous page intentional foreshadowing for this one?
Nah, I think it was just a riff on Rana’s already obvious exhaustion.