For mobile readers.
Alt-text: I know it’s absolutely out of line with the mood of the page but I can only ever hear “impressive” in the voice of The Chosen from Smosh
Image source: impressive
OH MY WORD… Red has independently created a concept her videos inspired me to come up with: the Hopeless Villain! A villain or antagonist who has given up on everything good and kind, because they’ve lost their faith in anything but ruthless pragmatism. A subset of Sympathetic Villain, the villainous counterpart to the Sour Knight, not happy about what they’re doing, but convinced There Is No Alternative. Possibly the result of a Heart character’s righteous rampage Gone Horribly Wrong.
The grief and dissociation in Lord Stefan’s face… it’s terrifying and deeply tragic… it’s now clear to me, at least, how Stefan can be so careful and sensible with his own forces, yet as ruthless and duplicitous as everyone else seemed to pick up on weeks ago. Truly a terrifying antagonist!
You know, Stefan, your single-mindedness is blinding you to many truths of the situation. For instance, that your prisoner is not human and you won’t be able to read his mind with your Dragon-granted powers no matter what you try. Or that he’s the actual closest thing the group has to a leader instead of Erin.
I am begging for someone other than Erin to lead the party. Especially if this is about to become a Kendal Rescue Mission instead of a Soulshaper Monks Quest. Dainix, man. You’re the only one with relevant work experience.
I see. So he’s only a good, kind, thoughtful leader to his own people. To everyone else, especially anyone even tangentially connected to Erin or the Void Dragon, he’s a blind zealot who, at the end of the day, agreed fully with the Champion. In fact, the only real difference between how the two of them would’ve handled the situation was that he wouldn’t have needed the Lady to say “Don’t worry, you were just following orders.”
I don’t know whether to be relieved or devestated that Falst didn’t get there in time to start throwing hands / try to hitch a ride.
goddamn it my heart. Look at Falsts face!
Well that answered one of my questions. Kendall *is* conscious, just in a great deal of pain…Given how it’s going down, I’m not holding out hope he’ll get any healing. Really highlights the casual cruelty of the paladins here…
Vros: (groggily waking up) If anyone asks, there were twenty- no, thirty of them, armoured mages or something like that. Caled: Sorry, Lord Stefan already told Aquilis it was just one. Vros: Damnit! That bird brain is totally going to tell Calian; they’ll all be going on about it for sefs.
Seeing themselves as a bulwark against a constant, nebulous war and justifying all of their actions as necessary means to an end. Well, looks like, while their methodology differs, Stefan is just zealous in his stance as Tam. Negotiation with the Paladin leadership is out of the question, individuals like Theia on the other hand …
With his philosophy, posing, leadership position, hair, and Kendal-napping, Stefan looks to be going full Zuurith. Never go full Zuurith.
Damn, Falst missed Kendal, though I don’t think breakout would have been possible. If Aquilis had been carrying a boat, maybe Falst could have snuck into it and attacked later, away from the rest of the Paladins; flying free as they are, Falst can’t even reach them, let alone mount a rescue.
I’m sure Falst will now sneakily make his way back to Tess to regroup. He certainly isn’t getting any thoughts about smuggling himself inside that boat, hitching a ride to the Snowfast, and improvising a rescue solo, right? … (pleading) right?!
… You know, I just had a thought. Maybe Stefan isn’t going full Zuurith, so much as Zuurith went full Paladin! We know they’re friends, well, allies at least
“There is nothing beyond this war” is really goddamned shortsighted considering the Dragons are not the only force that shapes the world anymore. Especially since that’s blinded them to a new world destroying threat in the Collector. At least I assume they don’t know about her since the Lady has no idea who Kendal is and this likely isn’t part of the big god group chat where they keep updated on that lady that kidnapped one of their souls and single-handedly erased a city in one move.
Yeah. At the current time, the Collector is a MUCH bigger threat to the continued existence of life on the planet than Walter. He’s got a vessel, yeah, in theory, but an unwilling one who is desperate to be rid of him, whereas the Collector thinks primordial Life WANTS her to kill everything, and has been working very single-mindedly towards that goal for centuries.
I disagree. Because the Void Dragon currently has a vessel, all he needs is an opportunity to enter the caves to end the world, and the only thing standing between him and that is Erin’s diligence and dumb luck in stumbling into no less than three magical countermeasures.
The Collector is a very real threat, yes, but only to the party at this stage. Erin speculated that she’s still in data-colleciton mode, and has no real means of completing her goal yet. But had Kendal and Alinua not found Erin in the wastes, the world would already be destroyed.
Lines like that convince me that Erin’s theory on Light Dragon’s origins was correct. The original Paladins were probably people who realized Walter was a thing, decided they had to Do Something about him, and their belief was strong enough for long enough to make a god about it. Since then, they have forgotten or were completely unaware that the war didn’t start with them, but with the Primordials. They’re now acting like they’re the only ones aware of the threat and the only ones capable of mounting any kind of resistance to it.
Also, the whole “There is only this war” thing is like someone looking at the Matrix and only seeing the ones and zeroes, failing to see or refusing to acknowledge what the binary digits combine to create. I almost wonder if the Collector could convince them to help her in her quest, making sure no one was left to set Walter free, so long as she promised to save them for last.
If the paladins created the Light Dragon, who gave the humans the spark on 0.1.2? Would their faith be enough to create a god who could give them power over an element? I think there’s more to the Light Dragon than the paladins have figured out, either because she’s keeping the Light/Void duality from them, or she doesn’t realize it herself.
Conversely, given that trying to reconstitute Life would require destroying the planet, maybe the Collector and Walter would team up. They’re apparently neighbors too, both living down towards the planet’s center.
If they can get the bird out of the sky, they could fish Kendal out of the water.
But nothing less then a Collector or Norther Wyrm would be required for that.
Erin’s going to be crushed. Alinua’s going to be livid. And what’s the play now? The party is wholly against sacrificing anyone for their sake, being especially adverse to captivity of any kind. They’re all going to want to go after him of course but the monks are so close and the sooner Voidy stops being a threat the sooner they can put this dragon business behind them. They could split up to pursue kendal but could they take on the paladins with half their usual firepower? Decisions, decisions…
Given how Erin acted in Zurrith—willing to put solving the dragon problem first because, while Kendal was imprisoned, he was unharmed. Then being plagued with guilt the entire time, purposefully cutting his research time short to free him sooner, then abandoning it completely once he realized the others were in danger—Erin, and the rest of the floof squad, will absolutely put the dragon problem on hold to go save Kendal. He’s their friend and one of the dragon countermeasures, and, unlike Zuurith, the paladins do not see Kendal/Vash as a peer to begrudgingly respect, and clearly have no scruples about torture.
Ya, they really have no idea what they are dealing with or what the group dynamic is. If anything, they just nabbed the closest thing the group has to a leader.
It’s getting increasingly weird that none of the paladins recognize Vash’s sword. Are they willfully ignoring that, now that Walter has a vessel? I could be wrong though, since as a reader I have all the information the characters don’t, and I tend to project my experiences onto others.
The only people that have gotten close enough to see any details about Kendal the Sword have been Tam and Stefan. Even if a lot of the other Paladins had gotten that close, how many of them have even been to Vash the City? Let alone gone to see, study, and memorize the appearance of Kendal the Sword where it would’ve been assumed to have been a decoration or Sword In The Stone. Furthermore, Kendal the Person is the first of his kind. No one, including the other gods, thought such a thing could be possible.
Possibly. Given how dedicated they are to their goal, I can see them being blind (willfully or otherwise) to events that don’t relate to said goal. And I don’t know how much the paladins might listen to their archivists, especially junior archivists, even if they do know something about that…
The only people who recognize the sword are people who live close to Vash, and gods. The paladins are neither, so of course they don’t recognize the sword. As for Vash’s distruction, only those close to Vash, and gods, seem to know about it at the moment. Everyone else is more focused on the Storm disappearing. And most people(except gods) think Vash was destroyed by either chimeras or the chimeric plague, so the paladins wouldn’t care because it has nothing to do with their quest.
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
KENDAL!!!!!!
I hope we can all agree that this is probably the worst way this could go.
– Signed The Glowing Vessel Of A God
(aka The Princess)
Also I can say for sure I hate Stefan!
He seriously doesn’t understand anything about The Floof Squad™, like “”servant”” “”master””.
He also KENDALNAPPED HIM!! Which is definitely not going to cause any problems when Alinua finds out what happened to Kendal.
Well unless Alinua and the Northern Wyrm, intervene, it looks like Kendal is going to be taken back to some kind of paladin fortress city. However, depending on how large the city is, it might just have a city god, who probably won’t be to happy to find out that their citizens have captured and harmed the vessels of one of their fallen equals. One who is in fact trying to stop the end of the world.
And depending on how fast Kendal’s meeting with Artist has spread, he may know more about Walter and Erin, than the paladins do.
To be vaguely “fair” to the paladins, nothing like Kendal has existed before and so it makes sense to assume he’s some kind of homunculus made by the super powerful wizard they have a vested interest in seeing as morally wicked (and “deserving” of death). Even Kendal acting like a person isn’t evidence against this, I vaguely remember in some extra lore seeing a mention of an old construct that has preferences and a personality and all that. That assumption and the resulting treating Kendal as an extension of Erin is super gross! “It was cruel of your master to let you believe that” made me fully cringe in disgust and the way they’re already setting up to dismiss any point Kendal makes as literally programmed in rather than real actual points the result of real experience is yucky, but not jumping to “autonomous ensouled god vessel” isn’t stupid!
Hey, this is a really great analysis… it’s always deeply satisfying to see someone else write out, with eloquence, ideas I’ve only intuited or felt emotionally!
My prediction is that this is going to lead to a big “let’s reunite kendal the sword with kendal the demigod” time, leading into Kendal maybe learning to use starfire without the sword when it doesn’t go entirely to plan. Regardless, am excited to see what the floof squad is going to do about this. Ahh, I can already hear falst blaming himself from here.
…Y’know, actually, Aquilis asking if this is the magus is interesting.
If they had the magus in such a vulnerable state, wouldn’t they just kill him, no dragon required? I wonder if they have some other plan for Erin. hm.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: I know it’s absolutely out of line with the mood of the page but I can only ever hear “impressive” in the voice of The Chosen from Smosh
Image source: impressive
Tumblr text: everyone has priorities I guess
Bluesky text: splitting the party again 🙁
I can only hear it in the voice of the Green Goblin from Toby Mcguire’s Spiderman
If all you know is war, I guess it would be hard to believe there is anything else in the universe.
OH MY WORD… Red has independently created a concept her videos inspired me to come up with: the Hopeless Villain! A villain or antagonist who has given up on everything good and kind, because they’ve lost their faith in anything but ruthless pragmatism. A subset of Sympathetic Villain, the villainous counterpart to the Sour Knight, not happy about what they’re doing, but convinced There Is No Alternative. Possibly the result of a Heart character’s righteous rampage Gone Horribly Wrong.
The grief and dissociation in Lord Stefan’s face… it’s terrifying and deeply tragic… it’s now clear to me, at least, how Stefan can be so careful and sensible with his own forces, yet as ruthless and duplicitous as everyone else seemed to pick up on weeks ago. Truly a terrifying antagonist!
“Well, there’s a dragon who wants to eat the sun, and he can possess the one guy able to break him out of prison. Kinda seems like a priority?”
You know, Stefan, your single-mindedness is blinding you to many truths of the situation. For instance, that your prisoner is not human and you won’t be able to read his mind with your Dragon-granted powers no matter what you try. Or that he’s the actual closest thing the group has to a leader instead of Erin.
Yeah, those last lines betray a deep ignorance of the party’s dynamics, and that is absolutely going to bite the paladins in the butt.
Ironically, if he *could* read Kendal’s mind, there’s a slightly better chance he’d actually *understand* all this.
I am begging for someone other than Erin to lead the party. Especially if this is about to become a Kendal Rescue Mission instead of a Soulshaper Monks Quest. Dainix, man. You’re the only one with relevant work experience.
“that scarf is turning out to be falst’s most versatile possession by a country mile”
When a god of the forge and a god of Ignans love each other very much, they lovingly create very useful items…
And then give those useful items to angry cats.
I see. So he’s only a good, kind, thoughtful leader to his own people. To everyone else, especially anyone even tangentially connected to Erin or the Void Dragon, he’s a blind zealot who, at the end of the day, agreed fully with the Champion. In fact, the only real difference between how the two of them would’ve handled the situation was that he wouldn’t have needed the Lady to say “Don’t worry, you were just following orders.”
I don’t know whether to be relieved or devestated that Falst didn’t get there in time to start throwing hands / try to hitch a ride.
goddamn it my heart. Look at Falsts face!
In the grim darkness of the aurora, there is only war.
It’s a good thing auroras emit light then!
The Smosh reference in the hover text had me cackling
Well that answered one of my questions. Kendall *is* conscious, just in a great deal of pain…Given how it’s going down, I’m not holding out hope he’ll get any healing. Really highlights the casual cruelty of the paladins here…
Yeah, and super fucked up that Stefan said “the cruelty is behind you” which has some ugly implications given what we know about the paladins so far.
Vros: (groggily waking up) If anyone asks, there were twenty- no, thirty of them, armoured mages or something like that.
Caled: Sorry, Lord Stefan already told Aquilis it was just one.
Vros: Damnit! That bird brain is totally going to tell Calian; they’ll all be going on about it for sefs.
Seeing themselves as a bulwark against a constant, nebulous war and justifying all of their actions as necessary means to an end. Well, looks like, while their methodology differs, Stefan is just zealous in his stance as Tam. Negotiation with the Paladin leadership is out of the question, individuals like Theia on the other hand …
With his philosophy, posing, leadership position, hair, and Kendal-napping, Stefan looks to be going full Zuurith. Never go full Zuurith.
Damn, Falst missed Kendal, though I don’t think breakout would have been possible. If Aquilis had been carrying a boat, maybe Falst could have snuck into it and attacked later, away from the rest of the Paladins; flying free as they are, Falst can’t even reach them, let alone mount a rescue.
I’m sure Falst will now sneakily make his way back to Tess to regroup. He certainly isn’t getting any thoughts about smuggling himself inside that boat, hitching a ride to the Snowfast, and improvising a rescue solo, right? … (pleading) right?!
Calian will be too embarrassed by getting burnt at the bottom of the ocean to laugh at Vros for losing to the guy who beat Tam, methinks
… You know, I just had a thought. Maybe Stefan isn’t going full Zuurith, so much as Zuurith went full Paladin! We know they’re friends, well, allies at least
“There is nothing beyond this war” is really goddamned shortsighted considering the Dragons are not the only force that shapes the world anymore. Especially since that’s blinded them to a new world destroying threat in the Collector. At least I assume they don’t know about her since the Lady has no idea who Kendal is and this likely isn’t part of the big god group chat where they keep updated on that lady that kidnapped one of their souls and single-handedly erased a city in one move.
Yeah. At the current time, the Collector is a MUCH bigger threat to the continued existence of life on the planet than Walter. He’s got a vessel, yeah, in theory, but an unwilling one who is desperate to be rid of him, whereas the Collector thinks primordial Life WANTS her to kill everything, and has been working very single-mindedly towards that goal for centuries.
I disagree. Because the Void Dragon currently has a vessel, all he needs is an opportunity to enter the caves to end the world, and the only thing standing between him and that is Erin’s diligence and dumb luck in stumbling into no less than three magical countermeasures.
The Collector is a very real threat, yes, but only to the party at this stage. Erin speculated that she’s still in data-colleciton mode, and has no real means of completing her goal yet. But had Kendal and Alinua not found Erin in the wastes, the world would already be destroyed.
Lines like that convince me that Erin’s theory on Light Dragon’s origins was correct. The original Paladins were probably people who realized Walter was a thing, decided they had to Do Something about him, and their belief was strong enough for long enough to make a god about it. Since then, they have forgotten or were completely unaware that the war didn’t start with them, but with the Primordials. They’re now acting like they’re the only ones aware of the threat and the only ones capable of mounting any kind of resistance to it.
Also, the whole “There is only this war” thing is like someone looking at the Matrix and only seeing the ones and zeroes, failing to see or refusing to acknowledge what the binary digits combine to create. I almost wonder if the Collector could convince them to help her in her quest, making sure no one was left to set Walter free, so long as she promised to save them for last.
If the paladins created the Light Dragon, who gave the humans the spark on 0.1.2? Would their faith be enough to create a god who could give them power over an element? I think there’s more to the Light Dragon than the paladins have figured out, either because she’s keeping the Light/Void duality from them, or she doesn’t realize it herself.
Conversely, given that trying to reconstitute Life would require destroying the planet, maybe the Collector and Walter would team up. They’re apparently neighbors too, both living down towards the planet’s center.
If they can get the bird out of the sky, they could fish Kendal out of the water.
But nothing less then a Collector or Norther Wyrm would be required for that.
Giggling, kicking my feet >:)
Erin’s going to be crushed. Alinua’s going to be livid. And what’s the play now? The party is wholly against sacrificing anyone for their sake, being especially adverse to captivity of any kind. They’re all going to want to go after him of course but the monks are so close and the sooner Voidy stops being a threat the sooner they can put this dragon business behind them. They could split up to pursue kendal but could they take on the paladins with half their usual firepower? Decisions, decisions…
Given how Erin acted in Zurrith—willing to put solving the dragon problem first because, while Kendal was imprisoned, he was unharmed. Then being plagued with guilt the entire time, purposefully cutting his research time short to free him sooner, then abandoning it completely once he realized the others were in danger—Erin, and the rest of the floof squad, will absolutely put the dragon problem on hold to go save Kendal. He’s their friend and one of the dragon countermeasures, and, unlike Zuurith, the paladins do not see Kendal/Vash as a peer to begrudgingly respect, and clearly have no scruples about torture.
now it is time for a Alinua to emage from water and save the day also they need to invest in better information gathering he is not a servant
Ya, they really have no idea what they are dealing with or what the group dynamic is. If anything, they just nabbed the closest thing the group has to a leader.
It’s getting increasingly weird that none of the paladins recognize Vash’s sword. Are they willfully ignoring that, now that Walter has a vessel? I could be wrong though, since as a reader I have all the information the characters don’t, and I tend to project my experiences onto others.
The only people that have gotten close enough to see any details about Kendal the Sword have been Tam and Stefan. Even if a lot of the other Paladins had gotten that close, how many of them have even been to Vash the City? Let alone gone to see, study, and memorize the appearance of Kendal the Sword where it would’ve been assumed to have been a decoration or Sword In The Stone. Furthermore, Kendal the Person is the first of his kind. No one, including the other gods, thought such a thing could be possible.
Wait did they not notice that The City of Vash is dead.
Possibly. Given how dedicated they are to their goal, I can see them being blind (willfully or otherwise) to events that don’t relate to said goal. And I don’t know how much the paladins might listen to their archivists, especially junior archivists, even if they do know something about that…
Even if the Paladin leaders did hear about Vash I feel like they would have been like “damn that’s crazy, we have a teenager to kill tho”
Somehow, I doubt Vash would have given the paladins the time of day, much less a good look at his sword
The only people who recognize the sword are people who live close to Vash, and gods. The paladins are neither, so of course they don’t recognize the sword. As for Vash’s distruction, only those close to Vash, and gods, seem to know about it at the moment. Everyone else is more focused on the Storm disappearing. And most people(except gods) think Vash was destroyed by either chimeras or the chimeric plague, so the paladins wouldn’t care because it has nothing to do with their quest.
I hope the gang steals whatever boat the paladins have cause they are doomed otherwise
OH NO THIS AIN’T GOOD
oh no this isn’t good 🙁 poor Kendal! poor Falst! poor paladins! Alinua’s not going to be happy about this…
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
KENDAL!!!!!!
I hope we can all agree that this is probably the worst way this could go.
– Signed The Glowing Vessel Of A God
(aka The Princess)
Also I can say for sure I hate Stefan!
He seriously doesn’t understand anything about The Floof Squad™, like “”servant”” “”master””.
He also KENDALNAPPED HIM!! Which is definitely not going to cause any problems when Alinua finds out what happened to Kendal.
Well unless Alinua and the Northern Wyrm, intervene, it looks like Kendal is going to be taken back to some kind of paladin fortress city. However, depending on how large the city is, it might just have a city god, who probably won’t be to happy to find out that their citizens have captured and harmed the vessels of one of their fallen equals. One who is in fact trying to stop the end of the world.
And depending on how fast Kendal’s meeting with Artist has spread, he may know more about Walter and Erin, than the paladins do.
To be vaguely “fair” to the paladins, nothing like Kendal has existed before and so it makes sense to assume he’s some kind of homunculus made by the super powerful wizard they have a vested interest in seeing as morally wicked (and “deserving” of death). Even Kendal acting like a person isn’t evidence against this, I vaguely remember in some extra lore seeing a mention of an old construct that has preferences and a personality and all that. That assumption and the resulting treating Kendal as an extension of Erin is super gross! “It was cruel of your master to let you believe that” made me fully cringe in disgust and the way they’re already setting up to dismiss any point Kendal makes as literally programmed in rather than real actual points the result of real experience is yucky, but not jumping to “autonomous ensouled god vessel” isn’t stupid!
Hey, this is a really great analysis… it’s always deeply satisfying to see someone else write out, with eloquence, ideas I’ve only intuited or felt emotionally!
I don’t like seeing Kendal hurt. It feels wrong. It also makes my blood boil with rage.
That’s the trouble with evil people; they are so often convinced of their own righteousness, there is no evidence that can sway them.
I was fully expecting Potoo Dragon to carry Kendal in its mouth…
Faust’s Scarf has the same properties of a town and if you’ve read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you know how versatile a tool a tool is.
First cruelty, yes, but what about second cruelty?
My prediction is that this is going to lead to a big “let’s reunite kendal the sword with kendal the demigod” time, leading into Kendal maybe learning to use starfire without the sword when it doesn’t go entirely to plan. Regardless, am excited to see what the floof squad is going to do about this. Ahh, I can already hear falst blaming himself from here.
…Y’know, actually, Aquilis asking if this is the magus is interesting.
If they had the magus in such a vulnerable state, wouldn’t they just kill him, no dragon required? I wonder if they have some other plan for Erin. hm.