18 KiB
[RT][HF] A Practical Guide to Evil Book 3: Chapter 63: Bridge
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Author: u/Zayits *
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URL: https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/chapter-63-bridge/
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Score: 57
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Created: 2018-02-12T05:10:44
Post:
Comments:
u/Yes_This_Is_God [+13] (36 minutes later)
Hey, looks like you've taken over my chapter posting duties :P
Decent chapter, though I do feel like the impact of Akua breaking the news to Cat is muted, as we saw exactly what happened with the battle. There's probably a better structure that could've been implemented there.
Poor Thief. Her entire appearance in the story so far is getting blown up/burnt/maimed/beat.
I didn't realize that Cat and Black had split up. Was that mentioned at all?
Also, thoughts on whose silhouette that was?
u/M3mentoMori [+11] (51 minutes later)
I didn't realize that Cat and Black had split up. Was that mentioned at all?
Midway through the last Cat chapter. It was overshadowed by Cat and Black's conversation.
Also, thoughts on whose silhouette that was?
Malicia, Black, and Diabolist are my first thoughts, and maybe Warlock or Masego. Not sure at this point.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+9] Father of Learning (an hour later)
50$ on black or malicia. That REEKS of a "Just as planned" message
u/None [+3] (14 hours later)
Yeah, I think Malicia. She's the kind of person that would usurp sorcery like that. She also has a big stake in this battle for all that her hand "appears" to be absent from it.
u/leakycauldron [+3] Imperium of Man (an hour later)
Assassin?
u/M3mentoMori [+5] (an hour later)
I think it'd take a lot more than a single sentence for Assassin to tell something to Cat and for her to listen.
u/idannadi [+3] (2 hours later)
I'm thinking Scribe actually. We haven't seen her in play and she is always Black's shadow. Cat wouldn't have recognized Assassin or trusted him/her.
u/leakycauldron [+4] Imperium of Man (2 hours later)
implying they aren't the same person
But yeah sounds plausible.
u/idannadi [+0] (3 hours later)
I have said this before, but Assassin is Ime not Scribe.
u/Keyenn [+5] (19 hours later)
We saw Ime once, and not in Book 1. You can rule her off. WoG said Assassin had screen time every book.
u/Zayits [+3] (6 hours later)
I'd say that, given that we weren't actually told what the silhouette said, it's something related to the plan or changes therein. It also is a last-minute message that risks attracting the attention of Diabolist, so it's someone's personal message, not a note prepared in advance.
We don't know yet whether this is actually happening during the beginning of the third Interlude or Akua's being selective in her assessment of the situation as usual, but the both actual mage-Names are probably out of the picture. Thief probably survived but none of her powers lend themselves to remote controlling magical constructs: she's more about bypassing magic entirely. Given that it's called a silhouette in the text, I'd expect Black to sneak a message in, but discreetly taking her enemy's magical construct sounds more like Malicia's doing. Perhaps she left long-term commands in the minds of Akua's henchmen, and they gave her the controls?
u/Zayits [+9] (an hour later)
You know, it's strange that Akua would notice the hero who has Hide for an Aspect, but somehow miss entire cohort of goblins that entered city the same way. My money is on her laying a trap for someone specifically capable of bypassing wards (like a ward containing combustible gas or something), and Thief having collapsed it prematurely to make a distraction or opening.
u/werafdsaew [+7] (14 hours later)
I think it's more likely that she couldn't detect Thief or the goblins, but knows that they'll likely go after the keystone and so set a trap there.
u/Zayits [+1] (49 minutes later)
Eh, I'm not consistently up this early to win the F5 race. Though I have to ask, do you get a notification for the new chapter or something? I don't usually post since you typically do it quicker than I can copy and paste the chapter's name. I might have overlooked the opportunity to subscribe.
u/Yes_This_Is_God [+3] (54 minutes later)
Yes, I get it through email. There's probably a link somewhere somewhere on the site.
I got into the habit of posting because you get automatically subscribed to the discussion post if you submit and I was too impatient to wait for someone else to get the discussion started.
What do you think about the chapter?
u/haiku_fornification [+12] (3 hours later)
Well, Akua is boned. Cat is now very firmly in the role of a hero: her mentor is captured, her army will be defeated without her intervention and her friend is possibly dead. She even gets a "we're not so different" speech from the main villain!
Time for some divine intervention from Gods Below? It would be interesting if, like in Book 2, Cat was offered a new name but this time from an agent of the Gods Below. The conflict is even taking place in a demonic version of Liesse.
u/AurelianoTampa [+7] (10 hours later)
Cat is now very firmly in the role of a hero
Historically, acting as a hero ends with her powers weakened. Narrative power notwithstanding, it's a square peg/round hole situation. She's not a heroine, and even if the story wants her to be, the mantle of her power gets shaken loose if she tries to do it. It worked with the fae because they're not really part of Creation/Names, and because they were bound to the narrative and thus able to be manipulated. Ubua is not, and they're in Creation again where Names reign over narrative.
Cat could theoretically inherit a new Name, even a heroic one; but doing so would still leave her weak. Names very rarely inherit more than a single Aspect from the start; it takes weeks or months to learn them all. If the Gods Below decide to grant her a new Name, I can only see it working if Ubua's already on the ropes (eg, has already used all three Aspects). But even that's... boring. Too much of a trope. I feel like if Cat's going to get a new Name, it's going to be in an unexpected way, like Ubua controlling her soul, forcing her to kill Black, and her inheriting his title. It would turn the trope on its head, power up Cat, and be horrific.
u/RynnisOne [+9] (15 hours later)
She's not purposefully acting it.
She's fulfilling that role expected by the "Universal Narrative Rules" but she isn't trying to be in that position. She only takes the backlash when she goes against her Name or Role.
u/TideofKhatanga [+4] (5 hours later)
Cat is now very firmly in the role of a hero
The thing is, she isn't a heroine. She never was on that train, even during the Liesse Rebellion. It's way too late for redemption and staying on the undecided path will only end up with her dead.
u/werafdsaew [+1] (11 hours later)
Gods Below is all about equivalent exchanges, and doesn't do divine intervention like the Gods above. Since Cat now has a heroic role, however, fate tends to screw over the other side, the same way she won the previous time in Liesse also.
u/paradoxinclination [+11] (38 minutes later)
You know, I'm actually impressed by just how hateable Akua is. Every time she shows up on screen I can practically taste how much Cat wants to stab her, and I'm basically crowing for it to happen. Fantastic writing.
u/Zayits [+8] (an hour later)
Yeah, I find myself actually waiting for the Crusade, since the Good guys' reactions to the events in Callow were far more interesting than Akua's changing her opinion mid-sentence and pretending that everything ever goes according to her plan. "Ahead of predictions" my ass.
Good guys that aren't William are the viewpoint that this story sorely needs. I get that setting up the positions in the debate so they have a chance of winning is Cat's and Black's (and in longer term, Bard's) thing, but the warped narrative that ensues sometimes gets as uncomfortable to read as the sequence that leads to Captain's offscreen death (if not as explicitly deliberate).
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
It will also be lovely to get Tyrant back in the game.
u/Zayits [+6] (an hour later)
Fall is a rather strange choice for an opening move. Certainly, there's nothing she could Take yet, Break should be held back to match Bind, and she moved close to Diabolist's forces before waiting for them to move in for a fight, so she'll be able to freeze everything on sight, but the downsides are nothing short of disastrous.
Akua has just implied that she's seen the defeat of Princess of High Noon in detail, which means that her dimension-scrying artifact isn't affected by Fae-induced lens flare, and so she's likely seen what Fall can do and prepared for it. If entering her domain is as brief and tiring for Cat as it was last time, she'll have reinforcements moving in as soon as it goes away, when Squire is at her weakest.
The only way this will be of any longer tactical significance is if Cat will blackout the whole Liesse like she did with Sulia's crippled domain, but given that Liesse is Diabolist's home turf, I wouldn't bet on it. I honestly expected Cat to get into a fight or bait Akua before using an Aspect first.
u/TideofKhatanga [+9] (5 hours later)
Fall is also her only "anti-army" aspect. She can use it to clear a path through the horde and she can't use it on Akua anyway. Akua is Diabolist, a mage who's messing with other dimension as a hobby, not some Summer noble with an allergy to Winter magic. Also, she can't use Break or Take anyway. Akua is right, there's no way for the Squire to win that fight.
That's the thing though. Cat is getting pushed toward taking a stance on her past action and redefining her path, her objectives and the method to support both. Her story, in a way. Cat isn't going to stay the Squire for much longer.
u/LordGoldenroot [+5] (2 hours later)
I like how that while Akua is very hateable she is kind of right in that while Cat always talks about how she is better she has not really shown it.
u/panchoadrenalina [+9] (8 hours later)
come on, one just killed an entire city, cat sacrifies soldiers but that is why they are for, more or less. they knew what they enlited for. the ones akua squished were civilians.
is like comparing a farmer killing a fox bent on munching on his hens and a hunter going out of his way to shoot a fox, both end with a fox dead but there is a huge diference in motive, besides in this case the hunter is killing scores of foxes that were just chilling in the forest doing harm to no one the hunter cared about.
there are diference in kind and in scale between akua and cat
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (16 hours later)
I think Cat it unambiguously better than Akua, but she was very bad at articulating why in this chapter.
u/Oaden [+6] (9 hours later)
The amusing bit is that the one way Cat is better than Akua is that she has a cause, a justification if you will. That's a pretty fine reason.
It just kinda clashes with her words. "Justification only matters to the just"
u/panchoadrenalina [+5] (11 hours later)
I dont agree with that. Sometimes the amount of something changes the category.
Cat is a hardass general, akua is a genocider (she exterminated the liessan culture within callow) as the assassin from tf2 said. One is a job the other is mental sickness.
There is a diference of more than just numbers between killing scores and killing hundreds of thousands
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+5] Father of Learning (18 hours later)
Agreed. Cat has a purpose, not a justification. She has killed people for little reason (remember the smuggler with "choke on your tongue"?). There's a goal for it, but unlike with a justification she's turned herself into a horrible, murder-y person to reach that goal. There's no excuse, she is a bad person, but the difference is she's doing what she has to, rather than what she wants to.
u/Nihilvin [+2] (8 hours later)
Yeap. I kind of like Akua. She's fucking evil and she owns it. Cat just makes justifications to herself all the way which is honestly a little grating
u/RynnisOne [+10] (15 hours later)
Yeah, it's not like one wants to protect a nation while the other wants to turn it into spell components or anything.
Cat already owns up to "her" brand of evil, and despises the BS-filled Ubua variety.
u/muns4colleg [+5] (11 hours later)
Do you feel like a
heromorally ambiguous practical anti-villain yet?
u/CeruleanTresses [+3] (10 hours later)
Akua's argument that Black and Malicia are using Cat as a tool to gut her own country was pretty brutal. It sowed some doubt in me, at least.
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (17 hours later)
Ah, probably not. It's not like they'd need her if all they wanted was to kill a lot of Callowans. Plus there's still the logistics of feeding Praes, which requires a lot of non-dead Callowan peasants.
u/Keyenn [+1] (19 hours later)
You can use dead Callowans if you have good enough Necromancy.
u/rabotat [+3] (15 hours later)
Ubua is kind of right, Catherine is not so different, especially when you take into account her allies.
Ubua has her own justification, her own belief in her culture and people her own wish for survival of the way of life of her nation.
The difference is in two things.
One is that Catherine is not willing to go to the same lengths to achieve victory, and the other is that Cat's people have a saner culture that is objectively less evil.
u/RynnisOne [+8] (15 hours later)
Yeah, no.
Cat would sacrifice what was necessary to save her nation.
Ubua would sacrifice her nation in order to achieve her personal goals.
u/rabotat [+4] (16 hours later)
True. Still, one of Ubua's motivators is that her culture is being changed and the nobles are losing their privilege. I am unsure if she would act the way she is if a Trueblood was on a throne, her mother for example.
u/RynnisOne [+1] (a day later)
Personally, I'd imagine she'd still grasp for power and she would pull the same exact level of craziness. Iron sharpens iron, and all that.
u/muns4colleg [+4] (16 hours later)
Cat would sacrifice what was necessary to save her nation.
<Looks at Liesse>
I don't think it's working.
Also, Catherine never really seemed to have all that much of a connection to her own country on a Cultural level, she views many of it's traditions and ideals with contempt. Meanwhile on an ideological level she took to villain will to power mindset like a fish to water.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+6] Father of Learning (18 hours later)
she took to villain will to power mindset like a fish to water.
She took to the New Evil mindset like a fish to water. Old evil still disgusts her.
And I don't particularly like the US government, but i'd still prefer it not to collapse
u/muns4colleg [+1] (18 hours later)
That's not particularly encouraging. The Stalinists may have been disgusted by the Tsars, but they were still Stalinists, and ultimately not too different from the Tsars in their impact on the world.
u/nick012000 [+1] (3 days later)
Pretty sure the Stalinists were worse than the Tsars, to be honest. I don't think the Tsars ever deliberately starved millions of their own people to death.
u/RynnisOne [+2] (a day later)
Liesse? The city that Ubua sacrificed? You're going to hold that against Cat?
Most of the traditions and ideals she holds in contempt are the ones forces on it, or the ones that it has possessed but were demonstrably failures.
u/Jello_Raptor [+2] The Last Tool User (11 hours later)
I am just waiting for when the wandering bars pops in to actually kill black, right before he could turn the tables on Akua.
u/ForgottenToupee [+6] (13 hours later)
I doubt it. It’s been made very clear that while she can influence, she’s not allowed to directly intervene. Part of the limits of her Role
u/Jello_Raptor [+1] The Last Tool User (13 hours later)
You underestimate what influence is capable of. Making sure that Akua has heard of the thing that Black is counting on, or simply being drawing attention to the right thing by popping in to say hi is a very powerful force in situations that are such important points of leverage.
u/werafdsaew [+2] (14 hours later)
She also cannot act except as part of a heroic band, and the White Knight's band is not currently active.
u/ForgottenToupee [+1] (18 hours later)
Ohhhhhhh, I thought you meant literally popping up and killing Black
u/Sonderjye [+1] (3 days later)
Intermediate Footrest. Greater Footrest. Royal Footrest. High Footrest. Supreme Footrest.
Royal Supreme Footrest of our beloved Callow. Please. I want the name.