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Annotations Every Day - Written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn - Illustrated by John & Jason Waltrip

Humans get a natural +2 in Mergers/Acquisitions, so, Businessman is a pretty good class for them.

Chapter 17 – Page 14

on June 29, 2012
Chapter: Chapter 17
└ Tags: Byron, Carol, HR, Syr'Nj
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Discussion (85) ¬

    • Sunday Morning Funnies: But it's fire!
      July 8, 2012, 1:01 pm | #
  1. Fairportfan
    Fairportfan
    June 29, 2012, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    Hi Bandit!

    • Mr Never To Appear In This Role.
      Mr Never To Appear In This Role.
      June 29, 2012, 3:23 am | # | Reply

      I’d rather say it’s Syr’nj’s sister.

    • Bartimaeus
      Bartimaeus
      June 29, 2012, 5:45 am | # | Reply

      Nah, I think HR is playing Bandit! B/cause of the tie.

    • Valdrax
      Valdrax
      June 30, 2012, 12:55 am | # | Reply

      I finally starting to think that as they’re standing around not playing the game, that Bandit is neither of them. Just an advanced NPC with maybe some strings pulled in her favor.

      • Andreas
        Andreas
        June 30, 2012, 7:08 pm | # | Reply

        Bandit and the other “cool kids” are normal player characters, that much has been revealed already. The residual magic of the 5 makes them capable of embedding deeper than other MMORPG players.

        • centuriancode
          centuriancode
          June 30, 2012, 11:43 pm | # | Reply

          Has that actually been revealed? It’s been hypothesised, certainly, and I know we’ve seen some factors that indicate it may be true, but I didn’t think we’d seen anything that settled it.

          • Val Hallen
            Val Hallen
            July 1, 2012, 12:11 am | # | Reply

            Yeah. It was a FAQ day question.

            • Valdrax
              Valdrax
              July 1, 2012, 6:39 pm | # | Reply

              Link, please?

  2. Soirbleu
    Soirbleu
    June 29, 2012, 12:15 am | # | Reply

    “The four”???? What about *”the FIVE”*???? So does that mean whoever is playing Best died in real life, as well?

    • ShadeTail
      ShadeTail
      June 29, 2012, 12:33 am | # | Reply

      I think it’s just that he isn’t with them at the moment. He’s not actively involved in the game world. H.R. is concerned with the ones who are.

    • Katlamos
      Katlamos
      June 29, 2012, 2:37 am | # | Reply

      …I was wondering if that was a typo myself. Hopefully we get elaboration on this!

      • centuriancode
        centuriancode
        June 29, 2012, 2:48 am | # | Reply

        Nah, we’ve seen the “Four” before (ba-dum). In a previous scene H.R. said “the Five” and then corrected himself to “the Four”, seemingly signifying that Best died “fo’ reals” as Frigg puts it.

        • Andreas
          Andreas
          June 29, 2012, 4:00 am | # | Reply

          What? You don’t expect H.R. to know any better than the rest of them, do you? H.R. probably discounts Best because he’s no longer active in the game, and his avatar is not allocated to the area delimited by the game (not that he’s no longer active somewhere else).
          H.R. will be as surprised as the rest of us if/when Best returns from the realm of El-swe’yr.

          • Soliloquy
            Soliloquy
            June 29, 2012, 11:46 am | # | Reply

            I’m calling it: best is totally in Escape from Cyberia now.

            • Jean-Luc
              Jean-Luc
              June 29, 2012, 5:01 pm | # | Reply

              Yeah and when he’s done kicking ass there he’s gonna bust back into Arkerra with all sorts of cyber-punk gadgets and maybe a guitar that shoots lazors. And he’s gonna be all like “I’ve seen things you losers wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…bitches”.

              • Soirbleu
                Soirbleu
                June 29, 2012, 11:50 pm | # | Reply

                “… on fire off the shoulder of Orien… bitches.”

                … Because Best and Frigg really are soul mates.

    • theFae
      theFae
      June 30, 2012, 1:13 am | # | Reply

      i do believe when Best (the character) died, there was some talk about his player still being alive but not necessarily in the game. and then i thought it was pretty obvs he eventually was ‘reincarnated’ as the drummer troll.

      • Andreas
        Andreas
        June 30, 2012, 7:05 pm | # | Reply

        Ask yourself this: How often does falling into an interdimensional vortex kill people? In fantasy, that is, not talking about that incident at CERN last year.

        Not often? Never? About right.

        So, he’s out there. Probably shagging the blue thingies from Avatar, or maybe he’s joined forces with Tyrion and killed off all those damned mouth-breathers in Game of Thrones. It’s just him, the Imp and a continent full of fast women ;D
        Of course, then he ain’t coming back…

        • theFae
          theFae
          July 1, 2012, 4:16 pm | # | Reply

          did he fall into the vortex though, wasn’t Gravy able to sense his fading lifeforce under all that rubble? True, in fiction you aren’t dead until your body is shown, and even that isn’t a guarantee. The other four remember were truly dead until Gravy (who was dead too) brought them all back.

          Think back to Bandit’s recollection of what happened to her when we all thought she was dead too. Obviously if it’s an MMORPG, there’s gotta be a respawn point or something when you die, unless they’re playing some sort of high graphics Roguelike where dead is dead, reroll another character please.

          • Andreas
            Andreas
            July 1, 2012, 6:20 pm | # | Reply

            Ba-Da-Bing: http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-12/chapter-12-page-18/
            Alive. Kicking.
            Probably playing Skyrim. He comes back a corpse-eater.

    • HLY
      HLY
      June 30, 2012, 7:44 am | # | Reply

      or perhaps when his character died, he was no longer trapped and got out?

      • centuriancode
        centuriancode
        June 30, 2012, 11:44 pm | # | Reply

        It would explain why H.R. is so sure that killing the characters is the right thing to do.

        • Andreas
          Andreas
          July 4, 2012, 3:14 am | # | Reply

          Look at link above. He still can’t get him out.

  3. coldelectrons
    coldelectrons
    June 29, 2012, 12:18 am | # | Reply

    Question for Carrol: Was this ‘artist’ tall, burly, ginger, with large, good hands? Did he have a penchant for inconic drawings of arachnids?…or did he tend more towards the *ahem* erotic arts?

  4. Hardcover
    Hardcover
    June 29, 2012, 12:32 am | # | Reply

    I think I speak for many of us when I say:

    Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

  5. karishi
    karishi
    June 29, 2012, 12:34 am | # | Reply

    Friggbutt!

    • coldelectrons
      coldelectrons
      June 30, 2012, 2:39 am | # | Reply

      Full-frontal Gravedust.

      • Syncline
        Syncline
        June 30, 2012, 11:51 am | # | Reply

        My eyes! My inner eyes need brain bleach!

  6. SteelRaven
    SteelRaven
    June 29, 2012, 1:01 am | # | Reply

    I think things stopped going as you planned a long time ago HR.

    • Fren
      Fren
      June 29, 2012, 7:38 am | # | Reply

      Just another reason why H.R. shouldn’t be a D.M.

      • centuriancode
        centuriancode
        June 30, 2012, 11:45 pm | # | Reply

        Since when do things go according to any DM’s plans?

        • Tsapki
          Tsapki
          July 1, 2012, 5:38 pm | # | Reply

          I can vouch for that. Epic final confrontation of the final villain, a trickster devil who had a perchant for getting child to do his dirty work by convincing them they had no choice, ruined when the one character who had the most reason to hate him got sucked into a magical mirror and the other characters smashed it to pieces before the fight even started, removing him entirely from the fight.

  7. Mr Never To Appear In This Role.
    Mr Never To Appear In This Role.
    June 29, 2012, 3:25 am | # | Reply

    Shoot ! How will they explain to his family that “Payet Best” died for real ?

    • Andreas
      Andreas
      June 29, 2012, 4:03 am | # | Reply

      They don’t coz he didn’t. They showed five tanks with five people.
      Not five tanks with four people and a rotting bloated corpse… that one in the middle is supposed to look like that :D

      • eschmenk
        eschmenk
        June 29, 2012, 10:39 am | # | Reply

        …and this was so secret, his family probably wouldn’t know where he was, anyway. We don’t know if it was ever intended that the five get out alive.

        • kagato23
          kagato23
          June 29, 2012, 6:11 pm | # | Reply

          … The five were interviewed at a gaming con. And noted in story that the coverage these two watched wasn’t the only coverage. Plus Best appears to have been at least a minor celebrity in the real world as well.

          While in world HR is the greatest threat they’ve ever known, I doubt he wants them dead in his own. For one thing… they are floating in vats in front of him on life support. All he’s gotta do is go find the fuse box or turn off the oxygen if he just wants to off them.

          • SteelRaven
            SteelRaven
            June 29, 2012, 10:47 pm | # | Reply

            He’s the villain because as he continues to play god, he is oblivious to how much he is hurting them in the ‘game’ world

            • HLY
              HLY
              June 30, 2012, 7:47 am | # | Reply

              but at the same time, whilst the game goes on, they’re trapped out of the real world.

              so by trying to make them loose, he’s trying to free them

              anti-villain? he has a good reason for it…

          • Valdrax
            Valdrax
            June 30, 2012, 12:59 am | # | Reply

            It does beg the minor question of how publicly their avatars are known to the general populace. No one seems to be following them around acting like OOC jerks, like you’d expect with a real celebrity PC. Maybe no one knows who they are, which might also explain the following question:

            If Best is a minor celebrity, and he isn’t active in the game right now, why has no one been pressing the company on his whereabouts?

            • Andreas
              Andreas
              July 3, 2012, 1:33 am | # | Reply

              There has been hints that the five modify the code and their surroundings: After all, how many mmos let people get high on ssssssillibusss?
              The five would just mod out all the OOC jerks. Turning them into obnoxious children or toothless old men… or soon-to-be-noseless land sharks.

  8. Andreas
    Andreas
    June 29, 2012, 4:05 am | # | Reply

    How do Businessmen fight? Do they use merger/acquisition-based attacks?
    Why does that make me think of human amoebas, absorbing their enemies into their own bodies?

    • Mujaki
      Mujaki
      June 30, 2012, 8:18 pm | # | Reply

      “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

  9. Timlagor
    Timlagor
    June 29, 2012, 6:41 am | # | Reply

    They’re in an MMO right? How can there possibly not be a player with Alternate Characters? (I haven’t spotted a mule though )

    H.R. however did say earlier that he was trying to kill off the characters as a way to extract the players so the player is presumably not dead (even if the fifth isn’t also playing Bandit).

    ..I’m also waiting for Peter the Blessed to make another appearance. http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-1/chapter-1-page-20/

    • Andreas
      Andreas
      June 29, 2012, 5:00 pm | # | Reply

      Again, H.R. is not trying to get the players out for their sake. He just wants them to stop messing with his game so he can take their place (and then some). He would go in right now, but he’s afraid that the five would be able to resist/foil his schemes. So he’s trying to kill or extract or otherwise disable them.

      • kagato23
        kagato23
        June 29, 2012, 6:15 pm | # | Reply

        Again, if that’s the case, he just has to turn off their oxygen. I imagine he doesn’t want the five flagship people advertised to make the game better dying, looks bad for business. He can stall right now, say they are in their by choice, but it’s harder to sell five corpses and not have a scandal.

        He might not be doing it for their sakes, but I honestly believe he wants them alive and out. Maybe an emphasis on the out, but killing them is too easy for it to be that simple. And he strikes me as a guy who wouldn’t just keep them in for a challenge, considering he just tried to program their demise.

        • MathMage
          MathMage
          June 30, 2012, 4:35 pm | # | Reply

          Pretty sure Andreas means HR is trying to kill the characters, not the players. “You’re messing up my game, I keel you!” seems a bit of an overreaction.

        • Andreas
          Andreas
          June 30, 2012, 6:56 pm | # | Reply

          Obviously killing their bodies will not achieve his goal, or he’d have done it already. Maybe he suspects they’d become even more deeply embedded in Arkerra if their bodies die?

          • Abcus
            Abcus
            July 3, 2012, 11:34 am | # | Reply

            I was under the impression that the magic he used to get them in there is also keeping them alive, so he physically CAN’T kill them. Or did I read that wrong?

            Cheers,

            Cote

  10. centuriancode
    centuriancode
    June 29, 2012, 7:12 am | # | Reply

    So H.R. (and his glasses) is annoyed that the players keep taking the blue pill?

    • coldelectrons
      coldelectrons
      June 30, 2012, 2:53 am | # | Reply

      Given how out of hand things are, maybe the players have stepped outside the binary solution set – and are taking the green pill.

      • Andreas
        Andreas
        June 30, 2012, 6:59 pm | # | Reply

        The green suppository you mean :D

  11. █████
    █████
    June 29, 2012, 7:30 am | # | Reply

    Wait wait wait.

    Did they create a character just so he could be rhymed with orange?

  12. eschmenk
    eschmenk
    June 29, 2012, 10:36 am | # | Reply

    Carol is as much of a villain as H. R. :-\

    • kagato23
      kagato23
      June 29, 2012, 6:16 pm | # | Reply

      She’s more likely to be the doe-eyed assistant that always loved him then the one that’s secretly harboring thoughts of aiding the good guys.

      And she doesn’t exactly have the doe eyes out.

    • ShadeTail
      ShadeTail
      June 29, 2012, 6:53 pm | # | Reply

      I’m not convinced that H.R. really is a villain. What has be done so far? He’s tried to end their game so that he can pull them out of the tubes and back into real life. Is that really villainous?

    • Valdrax
      Valdrax
      June 30, 2012, 1:02 am | # | Reply

      In the context of the game world, she is.

      In the context of the real world, she’s as much a morally ambiguous character as he is too. Both want to pull the players out for their own good. RL is also feeling the power trip a bit and wants them out as an assertion of his power over his creation/discovery, and Carol is an enabler at the very least.

  13. Veggieburrito
    Veggieburrito
    June 29, 2012, 10:40 am | # | Reply

    Every time I start thinking I am understanding what is going on around here you guys pull this stuff on me.

  14. wwlaos
    wwlaos
    June 29, 2012, 10:53 am | # | Reply

    You brought an *artist* home? Well of course he reacted badly! Any father would!

    Anything less than rage would be irresponsible when faced with a possible artist son-in-law.

    • Soirbleu
      Soirbleu
      June 29, 2012, 11:55 pm | # | Reply

      My whole family is (are?) artists. We react badly to possible dates with accounts, lawyers, or the dreaded merger-acquisition Businessman class.

      … Actually I’m not joking.

      • Soirbleu
        Soirbleu
        June 29, 2012, 11:55 pm | # | Reply

        … Man I hate this particular avatar. It just doesn’t suit me at all…

        • Valdrax
          Valdrax
          June 30, 2012, 1:03 am | # | Reply

          Well, you’re the one from a family of artists.
          Make a new one!

        • Fairportfan
          Fairportfan
          June 30, 2012, 8:27 am | # | Reply

          Register with Gravatar, then.

      • centuriancode
        centuriancode
        June 30, 2012, 12:03 am | # | Reply

        Technically, it would be “family is”, because family is the subject (the thing doing the existing) so the verb conjugation is singular. If you wanted to use “are” you could say “the members of my family are” because members would be the subject. Family would just be a qualifier. However, though “family is all artists” is grammatically correct, the singular/plural mismatch between the subject (family) and objects (state of being artists) still sounds odd. A way around this, while still using “is” could be “my family is made up entirely of artists”.

        As for bad reactions, what kind of response would executive producers and music record executives draw?

  15. Joe
    Joe
    June 29, 2012, 1:52 pm | # | Reply

    He should really stop being surprised when things don’t go according to plan.
    They’re on like plan C or D, by now.

    • Kamino Neko
      Kamino Neko
      July 1, 2012, 6:08 am | # | Reply

      C or D? You’re being generous. I think they’re somewhere around Plan Ø by now.

  16. Brian Vaughan
    Brian Vaughan
    June 29, 2012, 2:18 pm | # | Reply

    Wait, *who* sees the Four as competitors?

    I’m guessing it’s not simply Naror’Nj.

    • SteelRaven
      SteelRaven
      June 29, 2012, 10:51 pm | # | Reply

      HR. By his logic, they are the only other people rewriting their fate in the ‘games’ script.

  17. Miyaa
    Miyaa
    June 29, 2012, 3:02 pm | # | Reply

    Okay, here’s something I’m not getting. One of the Four is pretty obese. He’s been in stasis with tubes to just keeping him alive and fed. How is he not losing weight?

    • Gillsing
      Gillsing
      June 29, 2012, 4:46 pm | # | Reply

      Why would he lose weight? It’s not as if he’s exercising and burning fat in there. And as long as they feed him as much energy as his body uses, that fat wouldn’t go anywhere. At least as far as I understand things. But I’m not a physician.

      Though all of them should probably lose weight as their muscles atrophy from disuse. And obese people should have more muscles built up by lugging around all their fat. So from that point of view I guess he should get a little thinner.

      • Soirbleu
        Soirbleu
        June 29, 2012, 11:59 pm | # | Reply

        Well, if you really want to get all technical about it… in game terms, their RL choices are affecting the game and the way it is written. So couldn’t their in-game activity (fighting, lugging things around across the countryside, random or not-so-random sex, being heroic…. and so on) be burning enough calories that they keep the figures they had?

        … or something.

  18. Jean-Luc
    Jean-Luc
    June 29, 2012, 4:55 pm | # | Reply

    Wtb wallpaper with Carol going “Wheeeeeee!”.

  19. Timelost
    Timelost
    June 29, 2012, 8:05 pm | # | Reply

    In the words of the great Latverian patriot.

    “I’m seeing Squirrel Girl everywhere now and it’s starting to freak me out.”

    -Doom

  20. anders.jorg
    anders.jorg
    June 29, 2012, 9:36 pm | # | Reply

    Byron looks kinda guilty… AHA! So he WAS a lumberjack!

    • SteelRaven
      SteelRaven
      June 29, 2012, 10:49 pm | # | Reply

      …are you saying he wears woman’s clothing?

      • coldelectrons
        coldelectrons
        June 30, 2012, 2:35 am | # | Reply

        If there’s a place where “women’s clothing” is leather, chainmail, and plate, then I want to see it.

      • anders.jorg
        anders.jorg
        June 30, 2012, 7:15 pm | # | Reply

        @SteelRaven – If he did then that would surely be an ameliorating aspect for the elven community Or so it would seem from the look of it.

  21. Soirbleu
    Soirbleu
    June 30, 2012, 12:00 am | # | Reply

    And what, 40 comments and no puns? I’m disappointed. I mean, I know I never contribute to the pun scene, but that’s no reason for other people to not help out!!! C’mon guys, I mean I read every single one of these comments. And it’s not like I do that with every webcomic I read or something…

    • centuriancode
      centuriancode
      June 30, 2012, 12:07 am | # | Reply

      Fine.

      I guess H.R.’s plan has been arrested because the guards won’t leaf Byron alone. But this shouldn’t be surprising. Human resources never gets things right.

  22. Bob
    Bob
    June 30, 2012, 12:11 am | # | Reply

    Everyone keeps talking on about Best and the “Four.” I must have missed something. I thought that Best disappeared whenever Bandit showed up and vica versa, thus indicating that they were two sides of the same coin. I.E. The two characters are being “played” by the same person.

    • Valdrax
      Valdrax
      June 30, 2012, 1:08 am | # | Reply

      They’ve been in scenes together before.* That theory only works if you count the post-death Bandit as a new character, but that Bandit doesn’t show Best’s trademark narcissism (that seems to be a projection of his real world persona).

      * Chapter 2, pp. 7-8. Found using http://guildedage.net/tag/bandit+best/

  23. coldelectrons
    coldelectrons
    June 30, 2012, 3:40 am | # | Reply

    Pisher potchka, primes plot pitfalls, plans plotz, pissed paternal putz pugnacious, princess’s paramour penned.

    Puce-pilus protector’s puckered posterior peeks.

  24. Darkstand
    Darkstand
    July 1, 2012, 1:20 pm | # | Reply

    NOOOOOOOOOOOO~

    Archives…… completed….. must…. get… new… page…

    In all seriousness, great comic so far. I finished archive binging and I like both the art and the story (so many times comics have on or the other). I cannot wait to see what comes next… although it seems I must….

  25. EveryZig
    EveryZig
    July 12, 2012, 12:15 am | # | Reply

    Nerf Businessman! Their political contribution ability is so OP.

  26. lumzi23
    lumzi23
    September 9, 2013, 6:26 am | # | Reply

    H.R looks like William H Macey

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Guilded Age is co-written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn, and illustrated by John Waltrip. Site design by Samantha Kyle. Fonts by Blambot.com.
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