FB: About half of HR’s investors are fairly well-informed about the giant financial strength and impact of the modern gaming industry and its continued prospects for growth and robustness. The other half heard his name on the news and think he makes “Marios.”

So how much of this is real, and how much is just “How Carol remembers it?” There’s one small variable here that’s starting to diverge from the way things probably happened that day. But the rest of it feels true to the characters we glimpsed in Chapter 9 and the spirits of the in-game characters they will inhabit/create/become. I’d say that Syr’Nj’s player is the least like her “avatar” of the group, but she does resemble the Syr’Nj we saw in the earliest chapters (“Isn’t anyone going to say how INCREDIBLY AWESOME that adventure was?”) Naturally, as the most bookish person here, she’s the least comfortable with public nudity, which will give her a mini-arc on the next page. Best’s player, bottom right, didn’t even need to be told it was time to reveal his body’s perfection to the eyes of the others.

In the earlier draft, HR’s “Just my investors” was something about “the gods of long hours and elbow grease.” The new line is not only funnier, but it shows that even in the earliest days of the project, HR was quite comfortable lying about how much supervision he had.