3369 The Rift Widens
on July 31, 2020
Image request by Johnathan in Mississippi! Happy to oblige! 😀
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Image request by Johnathan in Mississippi! Happy to oblige! 😀
Wow! Hypocrisy much?
Damn, wrong word again, isn’t it 🙁
Referring to the last panel (and a little with the first, although first is more prejudgment: Rannite’s are ‘trouble makers’ so they _must_ have started it)
No, I think hypocrisy fits this scenario.
Someone’s gonna need a new quill. And a writing hand.
I think that if that quill isn’t enchanted they already used up several for that amount of paper.
Whan you believe you hold the only truth, as it seems Ch’Thier and her early followers did, then the ends justify the means. Their desire to impose order over improvisation, to make people do as they say, meant bending reality and not realising it was imposing their own cruelty.
One point I find funny in that whole narrative is that the followers of Ch’tier are creating chaos by willing to bring order. There lies the balance.
It’s like squeezing a balloon.
t!
It’s like spitting on a fish.
It’s like I said you gotta buy one if you wanna get one free.
Yup. The Ch’Thier followers dared to be stupid.
Panel One is so typical.
When you’re the popular favourite, you can get away with anything.
t!
You forget the part where it was *Ranna* who was the popular one?
They’re lucky it was just lies, if Ranna was actually as bad as they were saying at this time she’d have just killed them all.
The additional image needs to be part of the comic, of course the next one would be along the lines of " We are out of ink but here I have cut my hand open, keep writing!"
Anyway as always excellent stuff Rich. You keep me on the edge of my seat even when there is no "action" going on. 🙂 Character development and real story over flash for the win!
There’s a certain squid familiar eyeing those two with apprehension, dread, and "hands off my hypobrachials!"
Also, Leland’s going to need to soak that hand in a healing potion for about a month after this…the poor guy.
Was wondering who would be the first living document after they start tattooing people when they run out of papyrus 😀
I can easily see how Ch’thier’s followers went overboard, but it’s coming off like the early Rannites were completely blameless. That doesn’t seem quite right.
I thought it was clear that she’s aggressive and lashes out occasionally.
Yes. However, while Ch’thierians are explicitly described to have caused problems by trying to convert Rannites, and banned Rannites from ceremonies despite having provided the confrontation themselves, there is no equivalent anecdotes about Rannites acting poorly. Unless I’ve missed something, it comes across as though the followers of Ct’thier are almost entirely to blame for the conflict between them and the followers of Ranna.
Keep reading, this is just the beginninging
Is there a problem with this?
I think this is a show vs tell problem. We’re shown specific conflicts that C’thierians are instigating, but we are only told, briefly and without specifics, that Rannites were instigating conflicts of their own. So while I don’t expect them to be blameless, right now the story feels unbalanced.
No I don’t think so. In the story, the Ch’Thierians are instigating problems. The Rannites are not. The Rannites were a bit impulsive and a bit over-reactionary, but they got driven from the town by the haughty and jealous Ch’Thierians.
This is the story so far.
I’m not really understanding why people seem to think I’m forgetting something.
Besides, some of the whole point here is that ‘balance’ is bullshit.
EDIT: I’m starting to wonder if people are feeling uncomfortable in suddenly finding out that a villainous character was once innocent and sympathetic. And/or likewise, that the built-up ‘good’ character actually was a serious bitch in her youth. Is that it?
Paradigm change can be difficult.
> Paradigm change can be difficult.
I suspect, as you observed earlier in this arc, that arc fatigue plays a part here, too. You yourself have admitted to exhaustion from the sheer scale of the story being told here, at times — it is exhausting, too, for readers with their hearts open. That’s not a bad thing, or an inappropriate thing, mind you — caring this much, for this long, through this dark and long a night, is bound to leave a mark, and that’s part of why it’s a rewarding vicarious journey!
Still, I suspect some of what you’re seeing is weariness. When the sun finally crests the horizon completely, and this long and terrible night finally ends, I suspect many of us are quietly hoping for a gentle, still, and peaceful morning, and if there are twitches and kneejerks to surprises of any sort…it’s likely, I think, a sign that you have taken all of us on one hell of a rollercoaster ride.
Of course, I also note that it’s the responsibility of the reader to couch this weariness as a very, *very* exciting night draws to a close in respectful context, and that grumbling about further twists, while very human, must be done in a context of respect, and in recognition of the creator-reader relationship in play here.
Just a theory, mind you, but it fits both the facts and my informal observations. You’ve admitted "march fatigue" — and I suspect those who’ve followed the march diligently have it, too. (I’ve loved the drama, but y’know, a few weeks of sweet, gentle, kind, cooperative rebuilding vignettes peppered with not-strictly-necessary breasts would not at all be a disagreeable thing, following this…)
Ranna and her followers don’t look blameless to me. Neither do Ch’Thier, and hers.
Ranna’s crowd stirs up sħit. Sometimes they do it for all the best, "Speak Truth to Power" reasons, but I think it’s clear that a lot of times, they just like stirring up sħit, and showing ugly contempt for anyone uncool enough to call them out on it.
Ch’Thier’s crowd wants to be in charge. Again, sometimes it’s because "We can do and discover more together that we ever could as scattered individuals," but it’s also clear that they like being deferred to, and showing ugly contempt for anyone not in their in-group.
At this point in the story, neither group is good, and neither is evil. If we wanted to place them on the classic D&D alignment grid (which we might NOT want to do, since it ain’t like there are only nine different possible moral and ethical systems in the universe), Ch’Thier at this moment is (Dangerously!) Lawful Neutral, and Ranna is (Dangerously!) Chaotic Neutral.
And if Falahn had hoped the girls would each be drawn back to the other’s orbit and build a better understanding of the Balance together than she’d been able to as only one person…instead, she has to watch them accelerate apart, each becoming more extreme by the decade, precisely in order to NOT be like her sister.
Frikkin’ kids…
> instead, she has to watch them accelerate apart, each becoming more extreme by the decade
While she ages, knowing that she will not be there to help them much longer, and will likely die with them still moving further apart.
What a horrible, tragic thought.
t!
And yet, there is little more profoundly human than holding out hope for the future. I suspect a part of Falahn held onto the dream that one day, her children would be ready to look at this situation, and one another, anew. She might not live to see that day, of course…but she imagined that *they* would.
Of course, it remains to be seen, what the siblings do with this opportunity. Still, though…my gut tells me, heartbroken and afraid for their suffering, a very human Falahn might still have trusted in the future of a long, long game whose conclusion she, of course, would not live to witness. And that…that is *remarkably* mortal, and "human" [pardon the humanocentric word], of her.
I would love to believe that.
Panel three suggests otherwise to me.
But if anybody could help her get there, she chose well.
t!
Panel three looks to me, like a heartbroken mother seeking comfort from a sibling, the ‘holding out for the future’ would come after that panel, specially knowing her sister retained her immortality and ‘could keep an eye on the kids’ when Falahn was no longer able
Sort of like a parent who is dying young entrusts their children to a family member or a friend
> Panel three suggests otherwise to me.
Panel three suggests to me that shock, grief, disappointment and heartache were her first reaction, and likely key ingredients, ongoing. I can only draw from my own experiences as a parent, here…but hope for one’s kids springs eternal, and its dandelions take root, even if ephemerally, on some of the most scorched earth.
But I certainly see the heartbreak, too. Not denying that in the slightest.
What do you want to bet that Falahn’s passing will be the thing that sets their attitudes in concrete, and lead to this situation?
The fact Marion has had to remind them, many many times, suggests their orbits ebb and flow , bringing them close together again before moving apart once more
Really? Ranna and her followers were disruptive and got banned for it, and rather than reflecting on her poor behaviour (which granted it might be troublesome for a literal goddess of chaos to consider if she's going too far) she throws a tantrum and storms off. Banning people for disruptive behaviour is quite justified.
I’m really starting to wonder how Vanessa, Sahar, and Fatinah are taking all these revelations.
And I really hope Trevor can find someone in that crowd of spellcasters willing and able to cast "fabricate" or even "creation" for him! =)
Or even just loan him their shirts.
Really, what they need is a recording [s]app[/s] spell.
Sahar isn’t on the battlefield, right? She and her Dad were last scene back in that prison in Umbril. ‘Course, they could well have escaped by now, given the general brainpower of their absentee warden. Especially since Ini the Librarian is probably still in Umbril too…
I don’t think this story will shake Vanessa’s or Fatinah’s faith much. Vanessa serves, loves, and respects the Ch’Thier she knows in THIS Age, not the abstract idea of what Ch’Thier is meant to be. And who knows better than Fatinah that what you ARE is more important than what you WERE?
Sahar’s faith, though, has always struck me as more brittle, so maybe hers COULD be broken by the knowledge that her goddess is a "fraud". Then again, maybe the experience of being broken and restored will help her relate a bit more readily to others who have journeyed through dark places. (And as a side benefit, maybe she’ll be nicer to Fatinah now?)
Yeah, forgot that Sahar is still in Umbril.
*facepalm* Why oh why couldn’t those two dimwits have listened to their mother and auntie more? >_< WHY?!
Kids.
Never thought I would want to slap Ch’Thier and hug Ranna… But here we are…
Biggest turn around I felt in this comic ever since Lewie back in the ring saga.
is this gonna be a #Rannadidnothingwrong plot twist and Ch’their was the bad guy the whole time?
Does it SEEM like one?
My money is on "people are more complicated and more deeply damaged than we expect, but that doesn’t absolve them of responsibility."
> Does it SEEM like one?
Indeed, Sparrow. Rich is a nuanced and subtle writer. I’d give him much more credit than you seem to be affording.
it’s called reverse psychology. I use it on my GM every now and then, whenever I sense something really cliche coming up in the story I make a joke about it. if he laughs I know he’s not doing that and I can rest easy, if he gets nervous when I say it then he’s obviously gonna do that exact same thing, and when he starts telling his own jokes that’s when I know the party is totally fucked, we are fucked sideways and I need to stockpile healing potions.
never trust a story teller who starts cracking jokes with his captive audience.
Reverse psychology is when you try to get someone to do a thing by pretending to support the opposite thing.
That’s not what you’re doing. You’re trying to draw out your DM’s tells to try to predict what he’s got planned.
If I were your DM I’d probably start trying to plan the adventure open enough that when you start asking probing questions I can alter the story to most surprise and fuck with you.
In the case of YAFGC, while I haven’t already /written/ the strips, I have them planned and know where the story is going. I’m clearly not immune to cliche, but I am attempting to write more thoughtful stories than the obvious. I like to think my archives support the idea that YAFGC is more than a morality chess game or a regurgitation of ‘my favorite adventures books/movies’. Your mileage may differ, of course, and I hope I don’t disappoint, whatever you’re looking for in these panels. But I’m committed to the story I’m sharing and I’ll stick with it.
> You’re trying to draw out your DM’s tells to try to predict what he’s got planned.
The elements of "negging" in it (the use of projected criticism and speculative semi-accusations to try to put you onto the defensive from the start, then suggesting that it’s really a "test" of your ability to handle it, and objection to the method constitutes failure) are what bother me the most, I admit. But if you’re not bothered, Rich, then it’s just so much hot air and posturing being tossed around, I suppose.
Nope, not bothered.
I’ve DM’d games where people, joking at the table, have said things like "All we need now is for x to happen, harr!" and X was exactly what I had planned. Now, I’ve always assumed (a) I didn’t think about my story deep enough for my players and (b) it was spoken in faith that I was better than that and not as an attempted psychological manipulation.
If I’d found out my players were attempting what Sparrow sees as a brilliant plan to assess my stupidity, then I’d have banned them from my gaming table.
As it is, nobody in this reader’s group has any effect on my storytelling that I don’t want them to have, and Sparrow can try to call out my bullshit all he likes. He’ll either get what he expected or he’ll be surprised, but he’ll get what I’m serving.
He’s no Guesticus, I’m just happy he’s engaged.
When I see comments like that I just assume they’re rhetorical. I can’t be expected to answer to things like that.
you can say what I’m doing is wrong all you like, but you don’t understand my GM. he’s a great guy, and his stories are almost always interesting, but if you don’t properly prepare for whatever he has coming you’re dead. he once created exploding robot zombies that splashed an AOE of acid that ignored armor and dealt roughly half our HP in damage which we couldn’t save against… and there were like 50 of them at once for our 5 man party to deal with. the only reason we survived was finding a choke point and basically making out 2 tanks be living walls. I personally died like 10 times in that fight and our back line had to raise me with magic or healing potions. we missed his telegraphs about the acid on lower floors and were unable to properly prepare, if I wasn’t stockpiling potions like a doomsday prepper it would have been a TPK at least 3 times over.
figuring out what people are thinking has become a defense mechanism for me, literally yesterday he threw a group of 10 assassins with player levels who were as strong as us at a group of lvl 8 characters as part of a oneshot while he worked on the main champaign. we were "supposed" to realise they were all illusions even though they had actual physical bodies and were both doing and receiving damage. they were all doing psychic damage so were were supposed to ignore the 10 dudes stabbing us for half our HP each turns to focus down the 1 guy who didn’t have purple eyes even though we could only see 1 person who did have them, he was like "the guy who stabbed you has purple eyes" I thought ok cool, my last character had purple eyes maybe it’s a reference to that, or maybe they have dark vision despite being human, or maybe they have true sight to counter my invisibility and darkness spells since I was mainly a support character, nope we were all just dumb for not focusing on that 1 thing he casually mentioned and figure out this puzzle as we’re being roflstomped from all sides by super soldiers. supposedly it was meant to be an easy fight and not a TPK as it ended up being, the real fight would be the beholder that was summoning shadow horrors but we never even made it out of the starting town.
the number of times my guesswork has saved our party I can’t count on my fingers, please forgive me for letting that bleed into other aspects of my life. I love my characters like children and the thought of them dying kills me inside.
You gotta do what you gotta do, man. I already told Rancourt I’m not bothered by what you said.
I’m just saying that I’d resent it if I found out people were doing that to me. But I’m also a DM who strongly feels that communication is important and the PCs are the heroes. I’m not out to kill them, I want them to have a good time.
Perhaps I might suggest that what you have there is an unhealthy relationship with your DM and it’s maybe time to have a sit-down talk? If you’ve taken to psychologically manipulating your friends and that has bled out into your normal life, /because of your D&D games/ something seriously needs to be addressed.
Seems more like a case of "neither side is perfect and this is why."
either way Ranna needs to be burned at the stake simply because she killed best girl Arachne, and she used 4th best girl Short Arachne to control Godzilla.
Wow, nice job Ch’thier /sarcasm
Awesome drawing! Thanks! Education beats war every time.
Knowledge prevents unneeded conflict (although, it can also _lead_ to conflict, so, it’s a bit like a double ended dildo of death)
Looking back through the comments, there’s a lot of ‘turns out Ranna wasn’t so bad after all’ and ‘Ch’Thier has a dark side after all’ but when you dig down and look closely, you see that the world is not as black and white as it seems. Of all the things that are happening on the battlefield now, what Trevor and Leland are doing is in my humble opinion, the most important.
Recording history is vitally important, recording _unbiased_ history is not as easy as it sounds
> Of all the things that are happening on the battlefield now, what Trevor and Leland are doing is in my humble opinion, the most important.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, they say…and one cannot learn from history if it isn’t accessible. I admit, quietly, to hoping that they have the time, the foresight, and the opportunity to approach Lady Marion and ask, point blank, if she has more she’d like to say…about basically anything.
(Trevor has surely thought about this, but if I know Trevor, he’s distracted by the prospect of interviewing *so many* of his heroes and idols, today…)
Well, didn’t Marion say it before? Chaos is not equal evil, and order is not equal good. They both can be either, but ultimately they are neither.
So a new-new schism again?
i love this story but i can’t shake the mental image of marion telling this whole thing in the middle of a battlefield, people bleeding yet quietly listening,
Hopefully, Ch’Thier had the sense to quietly stabilize the wounded as Marion began her story.
What I particularly love about this mental image of yours, e, is that it really drives home who and what Marion *is*, and just how powerful a figure she is. There will be some, I’d sure, who find it implausible…but I think the real lesson here is "Goodness, how many have underestimated Lady Marion of Heatherdale…"
Those who stop entire battles, who inspire *everyone* present to politely stop and listen…that’s real power we’re seeing. And like Rich himself, it’s patient, kind, as gentle as it’s able to be, open, and it makes room to bring out the best in everyone present, if they’ll allow it.
This study into both Lady Marion personally, and Rich’s vision of who and what someone in her position would be, is quite moving, and quite powerful, isn’t it? She’s louder than the entire conflict…in her gentle and patient storytelling voice.
I get the feeling that this is going to be the end of organized religion, at least to some extent…
I mean, Ch’thier’s reputation is going to take a big hit thanks to these revelations, and even before that, she has dismissed all the suffering caused by Ranna as a necessity because of "Balance", which honestly would make me doubt even before listening to Lady Marion’s story…
And whatever reason Ranna had to change, she is still a psycho, and all her followers are psychos too… I wouldn’t be eager to shake hands and make amends…
And there is the fact that gods have been revealed to be nothing but ancient elves shaped by human faith, changed by it even against their will…
Yeah, I could see Ch’thier and Ranna making amends but the mages saying "screw this! we aren’t taking a chance to be crushed by Ranna again!" and casting their mega-spell, trapping Ranna, and probably provoking Ch’thier to retreat to keep "Balance…".
"I get the feeling that this is going to be the end of organized religion, at least to some extent…"
I mean Ranna ate most of the gods. So until or unless belief creates a few new ones, it may be tricky.
I wonder if they call it history because it’s normally written by men, i.e. the people who were traditionally in authority.
This will go down in the annals of herstory.
I like it!
No. The root word is <I>la storia</I>, literally the story.
Just between you and me, I think Aaron was joking.
No, actually I was quote Michael Jackson. 😛
But I appreciate the etymology lesson. Love that stuff.
The etymology I found starts from Green "histōr", meaning "wise man", so Aaron was actually fairly accurate.
What odds the super-spell takes both of these over-powered kids out of the game?
Maybe everything will be sorted out and then the spell will go off and the war will start again.
Why bother lying about them when they’ve already left? Like, they fucked off, you got a bigger temple out of their stuff. Seems unnecessary to spread lies about it.
It might not have been Ch’Thier herself who started the lies.
Was thinking it was the priests acting on their own, to ensure the Rannite’s _couldn’t_ return once Ranna had calmed down, same as her followers probably didn’t tell Ch’Thier just _where_ those new building supplies actually came from
Wouldn’t have been the first time followers did shit the leader had no knowledge of, and then is forced to back them up or been seen as weak who can’t control them
Fair point, though the priests are playing a dangerous game bad mouthing their goddesses sister. They are lucky it wasn’t a "I can fight with my sibling but the second someone else comes after them I’m defending them no matter what" situation.
" Who will rid me of these turbulent Rannites "