It’s pretty conceivable, seeing as how they arrived while the others were smoking by the fireplace…. That was them in the carriage out front of their guild hall.
why is everyone so shocked about her? from the art, she’s barely been ruffed up. one or two feathers missing from stress, a scrape on her shoulder and bruising. (granted, we can’t see her legs for signs of more intimate violence) if they truly wanted to torture her, they’d have plucked her naked and broken her arms to make sure she could never fly again, thus demoralizing her. and why not burn off her beak tip, like industrial farm chicken? chaining her to the wall? really, a little interrogation and bruises is very very much so on the “humane” side of war time imprisonment, then and now.
I also would have thought those were just injuries from falling out of the sky. Interrogation doesn’t necessarily mean physical torture. We’ll see, I guess.
She’s a creature of the air, in a tiny, windowless box. With a chain on her foot.
I would imagine she *cannot* open her wings to full extension.
Her wings may have been clipped, also – a perfectly sensible move if you don’t want your prisoner flying away, chain or no chain. Still, if they did clip her wings, that takes weeks to come back: even more of a nightmare.
John, damn good job on the art here; for anyone slightly familiar with birds, she looks completely miserable and stressed, feathers slicked down that way.
Look at the cell. Notice anything? Bare. Completely bare except for a drain. How does she sleep? On the stone floor. How does she relieve herself when she needs to? Squatting over a drain.
I’m pretty sure most prisoners at least have a cot and some basic facilities.
Bird, plural Birds. Man, plural Mans.
Yalaria’s use of language seems internally consistent at least.
I suspect an examination of other creatures’ habits may give us all some sense of perspective. I haven’t paralyzed anyone and handed them over to my children who then slowly eat them alive. Man may be barbaric, but we at least try to do better than out worst instincts, the majority of the time.
This person is part pf a group that attempted to use a weapon of mass destruction on a city. My opinion on Gastonia went up when I realized she was still alive.
She helped run a plot that would have killed an entire port town. She can whimper all she wants, she’s not getting much sympathy from me. I wonder if you all would be quite so heart-broken if the anonymous almost-victims had more screen time.
That being said, she might have been duped or otherwise pressured into it. So we’ll see.
Still doesn’t excuse torture. It also goes to show another example of how poorly Gastonia treats other races given half a reason.
I agree that she may have been duped. Judging by her dialogue while she was fighting Rachel, she doesn’t seem especially intelligent, which just makes torturing her for information even more wrong. She’s highly unlikely to know anything useful.
“Torture” is a subjective word. One can flay, one can stretch a prisoner on the rack, hobbling a prisoner, thumbscrews, inserting splinters into the nailbed, flogging …
All we’ve done to this wretch is waterboarding. We waterboard all recruits and they’re okay. Old Pete over there won’t go near water anymore, but he’s okay.
There’s no proof of torture yet imo. The bird-lady got her feathers ruffled by Rachel in the fight and also dropped from a large height into a pile of fish. This could account for all of her physical injuries.
It’s also perfectly conceivable that she’s simply scared out of her wits even without having been tortured. She does seem to be “delicate”. Since this is her first time meeting Syr it’s likely not much time has passed.
Then again, she could’ve had her brains tortured out of ‘er.
She’s already protesting that she doesn’t know anything, but Syr’ng only asked about her name. Yes, that seemed a bit “delicate”. Of course, torture might leave someone like that. Or maybe that’s just what she wants Syr’ng to think.
Indeed.
I find myself amazed that an outraged Gastonian mob hadn’t drug her out of the cell and hung her from a light post. People often react far more viciously to threats against their families than anything you might do to them in ‘honest’ combat.
The concept of attacking populations at large has always been associated with “barbarian hordes” and even when it was fantasy, you could whip up a massive fury in a population by claiming such things had happened.
At the very least, you can expect that she would have taken Bandit high and threaten to drop her. Once Bandit answered, she probably would have dropped Bandit anyway.
In actuality, though, it looks like Syr’nj is the good cop, and it’s semi-established that the bad cops are two or more men. Since I don’t really see E-merl or Scipio in that role, I’m gonna go with “nameless Gastonian grunts” for the bad cops.
Then again, Scipio is pretty quiet. You know what they say about the quiet ones…
Byron knows about good cop, bad cop. http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-3/chapter-3-page-10/ I have the feeling that the mans, whoever they were didn’t. And I don’t know that anything much happened. The avian may just be faking it all.
“Hi, I’m a doctor and I’m here to help … it’s just that I don’t know much about the physiology of your species so I’m really hoping that this potion hypo will help and not ruin your metabolic rates. G’luck!”
When I look at the prisoner, I find myself reversing the situation.
Put Syrn’j in Yalaria’s place.
If anyone in the guild was captured, this scene simply wouldn’t happen.
Once questioning was over, what use would the Savage Races have for any of them? No matter how terrible this looks, no matter how badly she may have been treated, I am rather surprised to see her alive at all.
Gastonia’s existence is a crime against the world, and yet it is still a hundred times better than the only alternative we have seen.
I don’t know, the Savage Races seemed terrible but, knowing our authors, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that some of those “savages” can be as courteous and civilized as Syr’nj. Maybe, they’re just scared and hopeless, tired of being treated as scum by Gastonia and other kingdoms.
If I only knew the Gastonian concil guys, I would think they are monsters as well.
I am sure some of them may be, but we did see some others murder the entire cast earlier in the series in their death-pit, so…it may be best to err on the side of caution for the moment.
Actually, we saw their leader take on them, four against one, then Byron went berserk, the leader freak out that he was against a demon possessed aberration. Bryon then killed half the team and then cleansing by arrows against whoever was still alive.
This episode of Guilded Age brought to you by: PETA. KFC is murder! Delicious, delicious murder… damn. Now I want a Double-Down. Nothing tastes quite like Heart Attack.
I’ve seen a few tropes in the comments and I’d like to suggest another for your consideration: What Measure is a Non Cute? I’m not complaining, just interested in the potential differences if this were a male and/or less anthropomorphic and more hideous.
There are also a variety of ways to interpret this page, and I think the idea was to assume she was tortured from her reaction. But the authors enjoy subversions and twists, so there is no real way of knowing.
Personally I got the impression that she was interrogated without physical torture. Her reaction is perfectly plausible if she was questioned by unsympathetic people, even without outright torture. She seems more upset and less damaged.
Of course they have her on a ball and chain, she’s an obvious flight risk. And there are no bruises on her neck, so no-one’s been choking the chicken. Finally, if Syr’nj gets her to talk, does that make her a stool pigeon?
Well, if you really need someone to wing it for puns…I suppose you could say they’re being cagey with the bird lady. And her primary target logically would be escape. Then again, if she doesn’t chicken out, she may peck up a couple of pieces of info to fly home with.
Thanks, Phil. I did try to hold back a bit. I mean, I never said “A bird in the can is worth two in the bush”. And I never pointed out that although they gave her the bird-degree, she wouldn’t squawk. And it never once crossed my mind to sing “She’s Only A Bird In The Guilded Age”.
I think the key point here isn’t to forgive her entirely or pass judgement on either group. It’s to remind us that she exists because I completely forgot all about her and I assumed she was new until people started referencing her fight with Rachel. Poor Yalaria. How easily you were forgotten.
Then again, SO much has happened… and I’ve forgotten plenty of other folks when they resurfaced. I do still remember the gnoll though. Wrestler Gnoll is my hero because I love gnolls. I don’t remember his name though. I could go back and reread that chapter to try and find it but… I’m lazy.
Anyway, having read all of the comments for and against everything, I’ll wait for several more pages before forming an opinion. The person who equated her with Ducky though… I didn’t want that voice in her beak, dagnabbit! Too cute. And horrifying, in a way, if she is “mentally” or otherwise a child.
Something for everyone to keep in mind as they measure up her wounds: Birds have hollow bones. For fellow Mass Effect fans out there, just imagine that this is Joker that’s been potentially tortured. Bones are most likely broken.
…and Syr’nj just brought her food. That bread alone heals 61 hp per second, and with that ball and chain, she’ll have no problem remaining seated while eating.
Bird bones are actually really strong and rarely do birds have have appreciably lighter skeletons than other animals of the same overall mass. It’s counter-intuitive but bird bones are partially hollow in order to make up for how strong and dense the solid parts are. Bird bones are kinda like making a baseball bat out of tungsten: You have to core it out just to make it possible to lift the silly thing, but the end result is still stupidly strong.
Like some people have pointed out, while this is ofcourse a very sad situation, she has brought this on herself.
Serieusly, she almost killed our lovable Frigg worshipping monk girl, as well as many innocent men, women AND children should their plan have succeeded!
She’s far from being an innocent here, and man is far from being the “baby eating monster” that some cliche “writers” are trying to put down :/ Sure, their not saints, but that is pretty much what all sentient beings would be like.
To have peace, the former combatants must be able to see each other as fundamentally decent and reasonable people, who used force only as necessary. There are reasons for the struggle to create and enforce “rules of war”, particularly with regard to fair treatment for prisoners.
Hold up, are we still in wood elf territory here? I thought the gastonians were the ruthless bastards. Or is it another flashback/forward chapter?
Is it inconceivable that Syrn’j and Byron at some point returned to home base, where the prisoner was being kept?
It’s pretty conceivable, seeing as how they arrived while the others were smoking by the fireplace…. That was them in the carriage out front of their guild hall.
Plus, y’know. Chapter change, time skip.
No jokes from me. This is kind of a depressing page.
THIS MAKES ME SO SAD
Yalaria is probably the avian that tried to feed Rachel to a kraken-y thing.
But this treatment is still atrocious.
why is everyone so shocked about her? from the art, she’s barely been ruffed up. one or two feathers missing from stress, a scrape on her shoulder and bruising. (granted, we can’t see her legs for signs of more intimate violence) if they truly wanted to torture her, they’d have plucked her naked and broken her arms to make sure she could never fly again, thus demoralizing her. and why not burn off her beak tip, like industrial farm chicken? chaining her to the wall? really, a little interrogation and bruises is very very much so on the “humane” side of war time imprisonment, then and now.
Is she not injured because she just lost a fight?
Nah, probably also put to the question a bit. She does show some signs of interrogation.
I also would have thought those were just injuries from falling out of the sky. Interrogation doesn’t necessarily mean physical torture. We’ll see, I guess.
I’ll wait for the next page or two before I’m completely certain on my position, but I think that the way she’s cringing into that corner says a lot.
One small item you all are missing.
She’s a creature of the air, in a tiny, windowless box. With a chain on her foot.
I would imagine she *cannot* open her wings to full extension.
Her wings may have been clipped, also – a perfectly sensible move if you don’t want your prisoner flying away, chain or no chain. Still, if they did clip her wings, that takes weeks to come back: even more of a nightmare.
John, damn good job on the art here; for anyone slightly familiar with birds, she looks completely miserable and stressed, feathers slicked down that way.
Thank you, Hawk.
Exceeding late I know, but small other detail.
Look at the cell. Notice anything? Bare. Completely bare except for a drain. How does she sleep? On the stone floor. How does she relieve herself when she needs to? Squatting over a drain.
I’m pretty sure most prisoners at least have a cot and some basic facilities.
Albatrossious
Truly, man is the most savage race of all.
No, I’m pretty sure that’s Gnolls.
Gnolls Barkly?
Good pun. ;-)
Truly mans* is the most savage race of all.
Corrected that for you.
And you can say things you don’t know! Politicians do it all the time!
Bird, plural Birds. Man, plural Mans.
Yalaria’s use of language seems internally consistent at least.
I suspect an examination of other creatures’ habits may give us all some sense of perspective. I haven’t paralyzed anyone and handed them over to my children who then slowly eat them alive. Man may be barbaric, but we at least try to do better than out worst instincts, the majority of the time.
This person is part pf a group that attempted to use a weapon of mass destruction on a city. My opinion on Gastonia went up when I realized she was still alive.
The Iwatani boy sucessfully used a weapon of mass destruction on Gnometown. What happened to him again?
Buh buh buh bird bird bird, bird has no words.
Saw what ya did there. :-D
Rejected!
Well, everybody knows that the bird has the word!
Gotta say the alt text was in poor taste here.
Then again I’m not really a fan of black comedy.
Gallows humor rather.
This is heart-breaking. It’s hard to say anything else, even if I’m a fan of Rachel.
She helped run a plot that would have killed an entire port town. She can whimper all she wants, she’s not getting much sympathy from me. I wonder if you all would be quite so heart-broken if the anonymous almost-victims had more screen time.
That being said, she might have been duped or otherwise pressured into it. So we’ll see.
Still doesn’t excuse torture. It also goes to show another example of how poorly Gastonia treats other races given half a reason.
I agree that she may have been duped. Judging by her dialogue while she was fighting Rachel, she doesn’t seem especially intelligent, which just makes torturing her for information even more wrong. She’s highly unlikely to know anything useful.
“Torture” is a subjective word. One can flay, one can stretch a prisoner on the rack, hobbling a prisoner, thumbscrews, inserting splinters into the nailbed, flogging …
All we’ve done to this wretch is waterboarding. We waterboard all recruits and they’re okay. Old Pete over there won’t go near water anymore, but he’s okay.
There’s no proof of torture yet imo. The bird-lady got her feathers ruffled by Rachel in the fight and also dropped from a large height into a pile of fish. This could account for all of her physical injuries.
It’s also perfectly conceivable that she’s simply scared out of her wits even without having been tortured. She does seem to be “delicate”. Since this is her first time meeting Syr it’s likely not much time has passed.
Then again, she could’ve had her brains tortured out of ‘er.
She’s already protesting that she doesn’t know anything, but Syr’ng only asked about her name. Yes, that seemed a bit “delicate”. Of course, torture might leave someone like that. Or maybe that’s just what she wants Syr’ng to think.
She’s a birdbrain, are you saying?
You got it.
“Oh, I only tried to kill all of you, yet you imprisoned me and asked me questions! How horrid you all are!”
Yeah, not really feeling the sympathy, here. :/
Indeed.
I find myself amazed that an outraged Gastonian mob hadn’t drug her out of the cell and hung her from a light post. People often react far more viciously to threats against their families than anything you might do to them in ‘honest’ combat.
The concept of attacking populations at large has always been associated with “barbarian hordes” and even when it was fantasy, you could whip up a massive fury in a population by claiming such things had happened.
And there is also the question of how she was intending to question Bandit. She was pretty certain that Bandit would tell her what she wanted to know. http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-13/chapter-13-page-14/
At the very least, you can expect that she would have taken Bandit high and threaten to drop her. Once Bandit answered, she probably would have dropped Bandit anyway.
The way I see it, she’s a child. She’s simple. She’s pretty much Ducky from A Land Before Time.
Therefore this page makes me super sad and she gets all the sympathy.
On a related note, to quote from GA+ (if I’m allowed to do that): “Yalaria’s going to be a lot of fun when we talk to her again.”
WHY DO YOU LIE, PHIL?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m having a ball.
SNERK.
She is clearly faking, next page she will attempt to kill Syr’nj.
I’m gonna go with “Way to go, hero.”
In actuality, though, it looks like Syr’nj is the good cop, and it’s semi-established that the bad cops are two or more men. Since I don’t really see E-merl or Scipio in that role, I’m gonna go with “nameless Gastonian grunts” for the bad cops.
Then again, Scipio is pretty quiet. You know what they say about the quiet ones…
He is Scipio the Scorpion on the cast page…
… and on his armor.
Byron knows about good cop, bad cop. http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-3/chapter-3-page-10/ I have the feeling that the mans, whoever they were didn’t. And I don’t know that anything much happened. The avian may just be faking it all.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreyAndGrayMorality
Two sides to every story, at least.
I’d reserve judgement about our heros until we find out exactly what she’s talking about.
Man, I can see problems already …
“Hi, I’m a doctor and I’m here to help … it’s just that I don’t know much about the physiology of your species so I’m really hoping that this potion hypo will help and not ruin your metabolic rates. G’luck!”
Here’s to you Yalaria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAJgVfeXlDI
I want to meet your iTunes library.
Well, at least now we know where the giant birds they always have at those feasts come from.
Spoken like your Avatar. Bravo!
When I look at the prisoner, I find myself reversing the situation.
Put Syrn’j in Yalaria’s place.
If anyone in the guild was captured, this scene simply wouldn’t happen.
Once questioning was over, what use would the Savage Races have for any of them? No matter how terrible this looks, no matter how badly she may have been treated, I am rather surprised to see her alive at all.
Gastonia’s existence is a crime against the world, and yet it is still a hundred times better than the only alternative we have seen.
But we haven’t seem much.
I don’t know, the Savage Races seemed terrible but, knowing our authors, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that some of those “savages” can be as courteous and civilized as Syr’nj. Maybe, they’re just scared and hopeless, tired of being treated as scum by Gastonia and other kingdoms.
If I only knew the Gastonian concil guys, I would think they are monsters as well.
I am sure some of them may be, but we did see some others murder the entire cast earlier in the series in their death-pit, so…it may be best to err on the side of caution for the moment.
Actually, we saw their leader take on them, four against one, then Byron went berserk, the leader freak out that he was against a demon possessed aberration. Bryon then killed half the team and then cleansing by arrows against whoever was still alive.
This episode of Guilded Age brought to you by: PETA. KFC is murder! Delicious, delicious murder… damn. Now I want a Double-Down. Nothing tastes quite like Heart Attack.
I have yet to brave the Double-Down.
The KFC between my home and my day job taunts me daily.
A word of advice: Notarize your will before you attempt it.
I’ve seen a few tropes in the comments and I’d like to suggest another for your consideration: What Measure is a Non Cute? I’m not complaining, just interested in the potential differences if this were a male and/or less anthropomorphic and more hideous.
There are also a variety of ways to interpret this page, and I think the idea was to assume she was tortured from her reaction. But the authors enjoy subversions and twists, so there is no real way of knowing.
Personally I got the impression that she was interrogated without physical torture. Her reaction is perfectly plausible if she was questioned by unsympathetic people, even without outright torture. She seems more upset and less damaged.
I am so disappointed in you all.
Of course they have her on a ball and chain, she’s an obvious flight risk. And there are no bruises on her neck, so no-one’s been choking the chicken. Finally, if Syr’nj gets her to talk, does that make her a stool pigeon?
There, that oughta ruffle a few pun-feathers.
*disdainful sniff*
Well, if you really need someone to wing it for puns…I suppose you could say they’re being cagey with the bird lady. And her primary target logically would be escape. Then again, if she doesn’t chicken out, she may peck up a couple of pieces of info to fly home with.
Happy?
Hawk.
The Gold Stars and I are so disappointed in you.
How could you pun at a time like this?
Way to wing it, Hawk!
Gold Star for having the wherewithal to pun in the face of today’s page.
Personally, I am horrified and disappointed. But I don’t get to pick when Gold Stars are given out.
Only the Gold Stars do.
Thanks, Phil. I did try to hold back a bit. I mean, I never said “A bird in the can is worth two in the bush”. And I never pointed out that although they gave her the bird-degree, she wouldn’t squawk. And it never once crossed my mind to sing “She’s Only A Bird In The Guilded Age”.
(c’mon, Guildies! These are just too damn easy!)
How dare you be hilarious at a time like this.
You guys need to stop hen-pecking the details. It’s not like this is going to be her swansong. Syr’nj is far to kind for fowl play.
War is never nice for anyone. At least Syr’nj is here.
it’s all fun and games
untill you get hurt yourself
Dang it.
Why you got to make me empathise with her, huh?
I think the key point here isn’t to forgive her entirely or pass judgement on either group. It’s to remind us that she exists because I completely forgot all about her and I assumed she was new until people started referencing her fight with Rachel. Poor Yalaria. How easily you were forgotten.
Then again, SO much has happened… and I’ve forgotten plenty of other folks when they resurfaced. I do still remember the gnoll though. Wrestler Gnoll is my hero because I love gnolls. I don’t remember his name though. I could go back and reread that chapter to try and find it but… I’m lazy.
Anyway, having read all of the comments for and against everything, I’ll wait for several more pages before forming an opinion. The person who equated her with Ducky though… I didn’t want that voice in her beak, dagnabbit! Too cute. And horrifying, in a way, if she is “mentally” or otherwise a child.
Auraugu.
Something for everyone to keep in mind as they measure up her wounds: Birds have hollow bones. For fellow Mass Effect fans out there, just imagine that this is Joker that’s been potentially tortured. Bones are most likely broken.
Indeed, they need light bones in order to fly. Considering that I wouldn’t be surprised if Rachel broke more than a few with her holy combo attack.
…and Syr’nj just brought her food. That bread alone heals 61 hp per second, and with that ball and chain, she’ll have no problem remaining seated while eating.
The problem is that, at that size? Hollow bones don’t really make a difference in your weight. They’d only subtract a few pounds.
…Seth Green being tortured?
Sign me up!
Bird bones are actually really strong and rarely do birds have have appreciably lighter skeletons than other animals of the same overall mass. It’s counter-intuitive but bird bones are partially hollow in order to make up for how strong and dense the solid parts are. Bird bones are kinda like making a baseball bat out of tungsten: You have to core it out just to make it possible to lift the silly thing, but the end result is still stupidly strong.
The bird does look like she just had a run in with Colonel Sanders.
Also: new avatar, AWESOME!
They’re just trying to save money. See, in this case, they only need the tar.
Eh, she had it coming.
Like some people have pointed out, while this is ofcourse a very sad situation, she has brought this on herself.
Serieusly, she almost killed our lovable Frigg worshipping monk girl, as well as many innocent men, women AND children should their plan have succeeded!
She’s far from being an innocent here, and man is far from being the “baby eating monster” that some cliche “writers” are trying to put down :/ Sure, their not saints, but that is pretty much what all sentient beings would be like.
You haven’t seen where they’re going with this yet.
To have peace, the former combatants must be able to see each other as fundamentally decent and reasonable people, who used force only as necessary. There are reasons for the struggle to create and enforce “rules of war”, particularly with regard to fair treatment for prisoners.
This is Syr’nj being heroic.
DUDE. And now what we know about her husband/boyfriend person in the other group of heros???
This could get uuuugly.