Book 2 – Text Updates 054

[balder]

New One is up.

[madmaw]

Poor Cubins must really have no use in combat (or no juice). I wonder if Ace does, or he's just too stupid to recognise his duty?

[Duric]

why suicidal? maybe he is eager to become a tool?

[Xenon]

a moment of silence for a noble mancer, who has more testes than the titans.

[Cruiser1]

Cubbins' noble sacrifice to provide two extra Jetstone archers (with Ossomer's high leadership bonus) should be enough to allow the King to escape, while taking out enough Archons in the process to promote Tramennis if need be. Meanwhile, Parson and Wanda (if they actually enter/return to Jetstone) may finally get a chance to determine if a decrypted caster can still cast!

[sleepymancer]

why suicidal? maybe he is eager to become a tool?

Not 'suicidal' in the sense of taking his own life for its own sake, noble sacrifice would be a more fitting description.

I've had this mental image of Cubbins hanging from the tassels of Ossomer's carpet for a while, swinging through the air. I originally thought that choosing to catch him would be the moment that Ossomer turned. I can still hold onto the hope that Ossomer will catch him and I'll get that scene. But I doubt it. Like Bogroll, this sacrifice has too much narrative weight to it. If Cubbins does survive I will punch the air and whoop with joy; if he dies I will feel sorrow, yes, but the worthwhile sorrow of a poignant act in a lovingly-told story.

[Renion]

Is this a crowning moment of awesome for the little guy?

[holy_dwead]

Anybody have a sick feeling in their stomach reading this, and images of the WTC popping into your head?

Yeah, me too. Still, I loved the update.

[MarbitChow]

Anybody have a sick feeling in their stomach reading this, and images of the WTC popping into your head?

No, my sick feeling was "There's a new Erfworld update! Two weeks must have gone by... all my deadlines are past due!" and the room started spinning.

[Sieggy]

Noble, but dumb . . . a caster is far more valuable than a couple of archers (unless he's completely out of juice). And he's small enough that I would think that he and a smaller archer could have been easily carried by a Uni. Once airborne, who knows, he might have been able to pull something out of his hat.

A shame that Spacely didn't have the nickname 'Rocky' as the chance for Cubbins to call out "Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" and then throw a lion at an Archon would have been just too priceless . . .

[Aster Azul]

Noo! Why would Cubbins sacrifice himself? He must be worth a dozen archers!

[Kozbot]

However tactically useful a hat magician may have been I don't think tactical advantage was the point. The update starts with "A man can get used to nearly anything unpleasant, eventually." My take is that Cubbins had got used to surviving while other units went out to die, and at this point he was simply incapable of continuing to ignore it any longer. He didn't want to live when it meant someone else had to die in his place. Anyways, that's my take.

[The.Healing.Mage]

Is Cubbins a traitor? Shouldn't his Duty have compelled him to look out for Jetsone? Isn't he worth more to the future than a lowly archer? Now Jetstone will lose the hat magician that gives them forward intel! Unless this is some sort of contrived Disney death...

Hey, Rob, we know you like shout-outs, but you really didn't need to do George R. R. Martin.

[Kreistor]

Cubbins' noble sacrifice to provide two extra Jetstone archers (with Ossomer's high leadership bonus) should be enough to allow the King to escape,

There was no plan to escape. The King knows he doesn't have enoughb to kill all the Archons, and so planned to die getting the cash to raise Trammenis to Heir and then King. Everyone dies, standing on the Tower or not.

Cubbins knows that an Archer will be more effective in that role than himself, if he has used all his juice, or has no in-Combat capabilities greater than an Archer.

And he might survive the fall, anyway.

[Radagast]

With Ossomer back the King should actually be able to escape. Perhaps Ossomer will even rescue Trammenis.

Even if Cubbins was able to ignore the King's orders for some reason, why were the Archers able to do so?

[kefkakrazy]

To whoever suggested a Unipegataur might be able to carry Cubbins and an archer because of his small size:

I doubt it strongly. Sure, it makes sense from our perspective, but remember, Erfworld's "physics" are actually applied game rules. Heavies can't ride flying mounts; by the sheer act of decreeing promotions to Heavy status, remember, all of the promoted units in Jetstone airspace dropped out of the sky, dwagon and all. I would imagine that similar rules are in place preventing multiple people mounted on a flying unit (aside from unit specials/etc; Megalogwiffs appear to have a Capture special allowing them to haul a second unit, for example).




I wonder. Was Ossomer the Faction Heir at the point of his capture, or merely Chief Warlord? He may count as an Heir now that he's Jetstone-loyal again, if he was before... but I don't remember.

[Chit Rule Railroad]

Is Cubbins a traitor? Shouldn't his Duty have compelled him to look out for Jetsone? Isn't he worth more to the future than a lowly archer?

Possibly. Casters have lower Duty than any Warlord. Yes.

I would be surprised if Cubbins would disobey a direct order from Slately (which is separate from Duty), so I instead suppose that Slately's order was unclear. His words were ambiguous, and I'm supposing that in Slately's mind he assumed Ace and Cubbins would use the mounts personally and didn't even conceive that he would need to order them to do so. Therefore, the intent of his order may have lacked that key element. Then he and Pierce (who could have ordered Cubbins around, as Chief Caster) were too focused on Ossomer (as depicted in the comic page) to notice what Cubbins was doing.

@Radagast: As non-command units, the archers have no Duty. The only Commander they have received orders from is Cubbins, so they followed the orders.


@Kreistor: While Cubbins may or may not be out of juice, most or all of the archers are also out of arrows. I doubt Cubbins was tracking whether there were any exceptions.

[madmaw]

Is Cubbins a traitor? Shouldn't his Duty have compelled him to look out for Jetsone? Isn't he worth more to the future than a lowly archer?

Possibly. Casters have lower Duty than any Warlord. Yes.

I would be surprised if Cubbins would disobey a direct order from Slately (which is separate from Duty), so I instead suppose that Slately's order was unclear. His words were ambiguous, and I'm supposing that in Slately's mind he assumed Ace and Cubbins would use the mounts personally and didn't even conceive that he would need to order them to do so. Therefore, the intent of his order may have lacked that key element. Then he and Pierce (who could have ordered Cubbins around, as Chief Caster) were too focused on Ossomer (as depicted in the comic page) to notice what Cubbins was doing.

@Radagast: As non-command units, the archers have no Duty. The only Commander they have received orders from is Cubbins, so they followed the orders.


@Kreistor: While Cubbins may or may not be out of juice, most or all of the archers are also out of arrows. I doubt Cubbins was tracking whether there were any exceptions.

I have a totally different take.

Cubbins understood Stately perfectly, however he realised that he would be useless in combat (or at least less useful than an archer). Bearing in mind that if Slately dies now, the side ends anyway, duty compelled him to sacrifice himself for a slightly better chance in the upcoming fight, even if his long-term value to the side is greater than that of an archer. Hence his final salute, he's saying that he has done his duty.

[Sieggy]

Uuummm . . . I kinda have to ask what good an archer with no arrows is going to be. In none of the art have we seen any full quivers carried by any of the troops on the tower, in fact I went back and looked, and page 53 was the last one where they were even seen carrying bows. Given that Parson gave orders to wait until the volleys stopped before doing the Decrypts, I am assuming the archers ran out of ammo whereupon Wanda did her thing. But since then, the archers have just been standing there doing nothing, not even with bows in their hands. So . . . did Cubbins nobly sacrifice his life for nothing . . ?

Edit - the archers on Unis on P. 73 look like they might have bows slung, but none of the archers on the current page are shown as being armed in any manner. Unless their bows are magical and can be resized for stowage, I have to wonder where they came from?

[cheeseaholic]

Or maybe they were just friends of his.