And here I was worried he’d be stuck with his non-magical great club the rest of the series. (Does Roy still have that?)
Love the last line.
It is an interesting development from the time he spent in the afterlife, when he didn’t have the sword (or a spiritual imprint of it, or whatever) because he still thought of it as Horace’s, not his. That must have changed, or I don’t think this sort of magic would work.
Or Rich had another entire subplot (read: yawning delay in the actual story) planned around it and got the message that his readers were getting annoyed with the whole thing.
The sword of Godric Greenhilt…
Surely there have got to be significant advantages to having a weapon that can’t be permanently taken away from you. That’s why I’m inclined to disagree with the notion that Rich canceled a “finding the weapon” storyline so as not to annoy the readers.
If Rich wanted to cancel a story line, he could just have V cast Locate Object, fly down and we’re done. He doesn’t even need to show that much – V casts it, flies off panel while Roy is talking to someone, flies back on-panel with the sword and we’re done. No need for adding new sword powers unless they were already planned out for the upcoming story.
One obvious advantage I can think of:
“So, this is where the meeting of the Dwarven Elders is being held, right? I have some business with them.”
“Very well, sir, but according to our ancient laws and traditions, no weapons are allowed in the meeting hall. You’ll have to leave your sword out here.”
I actually was thinking the entire ship subplot was all just for this reveal. He needed Roy to lose the sword somewhere off the path.
Makes far more sense than Burlew suddenly caring about the opinions of the current live readers. It’s all about what he this is will be the best when it is finished.
As far as I can tell, Burlew hardly even reads his own message board any more. He used to come down hard on thread drift, yet I’ve seen several of those in the last few weeks that have not been tamped down. (For that matter, his moderators haven’t been on the job either, since there were several recent spam posts that took a long time to go away.)
Anyway, I don’t think he’s seen much, if any, of the bitching about the potential for yet another side plot to retrieve the sword, so I really doubt he cancelled anything based on that. I’m sure he planned the sword-return function all along. I certainly expected it, although I figured it’d show up in a different manner.
That all sounds to me like maybe people were losing enthusiasm or even leaving over the previous lull. If fewer people are on the boards, the mods don’t check in as often.
Remind me again why they didn’t use all those ballistas against the giants?
In the second panel you are literally told exactly why by the captain…
I’m guessing that maneuvering the ship to fire the ballistas against a (relatively) small and mobile target like the giants wouldn’t work well. Plus, the whole time you have giants throwing rocks at you or jumping on your ship. They refer to them as siege weapons so I’m guessing they’re mainly on the ship for either busting into buildings or maybe ship-to-ship combat against merchant airships (Elan fired one with a grappling line that Julio escaped from Tarquin with).
Also, I had to go back a million months real time make sure I got Felix’s reference.
THANK YOU!! I knew it was a callback to something but couldn’t remember the story enough to know what. You’re a hero!
In general, yes, but giants are pretty big targets. Which is why this…
…which I hadn’t noticed before, so thank you.
So you guys were right that this doesn’t count as a random encounter. Though I do think it’s unlikely there will be another attack, just because of how long this whole thing took.
I wonder if Burlew is presumptively responding, or actually saw people making that argument.