Annotated 50-26
I assume those “special meds” of Syr’Nj’s were already in use during the post-victory celebration. Byron’s “I luvvv yewww, maaan” pose there does not look like it’s just a sugar crash.
Darke Ivy probably should get up and leave now, because this conversation taking over her table isn’t going to get any less awkward for her.
FB: By its very nature, adventuring involves breaking out of old ways of thinking, doing things that others don’t, being unexpected. Trying to manage a guild of adventurers is trying to regularize spontaneity, like scheduling a funny joke to happen on certain days of the week: it can be harder than it looks and every so often it just doesn’t come together at all.
Were there previous incidents when Byron’s berserker rage was triggered by alcohol consumption? I don’t remember that.
There were none, but Syr’Nj’s anti-berserk medication normally “doesn’t mix” with alcohol. We never really got into whether alcohol would dilute its effects or if it made alcohol taste like puke or what, but Byron became a teetotaler as soon as he started taking the serum.
I find this detail completely believable. I’m a pharmacy professional, and in real life, most brain chemical meds like anti-depressants and anti-psychotics can’t be mixed with alcohol. Is that where you got the idea?
More or less! I have no medical background, but I’ve known some people who use antidepressants and modified their lifestyles accordingly.
I was surprised that there was never a confrontation between Sundar and Ardaic. Is everyone just carefully not telling Sundar that Ardiac is the Silver Centurion? Or was it a different Centurion that killed Brunhilde (and took Sundars eye, but important grudges first) who presumably is not around any more.
Readers figured out the SC-Ardaic connection almost immediately, but none of the ex-Peacemakers or their friends knew until he met Frigg on the battlefield. And with everything else going on and Frigg being Frigg, I honestly think she never even remembered to tell the others.
Didn’t Brag eat somebody last we saw him?
Well, LAST time we saw him, he was feeling pretty bad about that.
It’s looking like he’s rehabilitated, both in the legal sense as in the personal, psychological sense.
I’d be extremely curious to know what Bandit’s player (dangit, I already forgot who that was …) would have done after the whole adventure, and after learning who the Five actually are. The whole thing with escaping prison and never talking to them again thing makes a lot of sense in-character, but if the player were still in control, and aware of the story in both universes … I bet that would change things. It would also make for pretty weird conversations because the players might get ideas about mentioning the Sepia-World story to the Five in some way or another, and would then have to explain that they themselves are just playing a game while acting in Arkerra, but they’re also real people in Arkerra, who do all the real-people stuff when the players are not playing, and nobody ever asked Bandit, Rachel, Scipio and E-Merl if they ever noticed their actions being controlled by someone from a different universe…
Extremely interesting but also pretty convoluted … maybe a good thing we don’t get to see that.
To keep it simple, I don’t think that’d be an option. Arkerra was never a place where people did things that only made sense if you knew gamers were controlling them. Gamers played characters and Arkerran people lived their lives, and it was never clear which, if either, was causing the other to happen.
Of course, the Sepia players would think of themselves as the ones causing things to happen. But their choices would be limited. I don’t think Chrissie would get the playable option to rejoin her old crew, much less to tell them anything that Bandit would never say. The only player in Chrissie’s friend-group who was still active at that point was Daniel, and if he tried to say something like that, either he’d find his dialogue restricted or E-Merl would end up rambling into his beer. He could try spelling out a message with E-Merl’s fireballs in a fight scene or something, but it’s unlikely anyone would pick up on that.
And also, even if Daniel could tell Syr’Nj, “You’re just a brain in a tank. Wake up!”, that might not be helpful. As we now know, Syr’Nj’s player was no longer alive to awaken. But even if she were, as Daniel and company hoped she was, then she’d still be suspended in a life-support tube with no way out. So all he would’ve accomplished would be yanking her out of a generally fulfilling existence into a nightmarish glass coffin that could drive her hopelessly insane before they rescued her. (Syr’Nj is a remarkably resilient mind; the player who conceived her, not so much.) All things considered, I’m not surprised that Daniel and Chrissie let sleeping dogs lie.