No offense to you in particular, but this theory needs to be put to bed. Sonorie is far from a saint, but the idea that her big plan is Aldish genocide flies in the face of a lot of what we have been shown about her.
Now, does that mean everything will be peace on earth and goodwill towards men? Absolutely not. She might do a targeted attack against the government, or reverse-Etelarche mind-control Alds into fanatical loyalty to her. But we aren't about to get millions of Alds dying in the streets, unless things become royally fricked.
But it means no more aldishmen will ever be born. Remember, any child conceived within the Dammakhert becomes an Ald, and Alds don't breed true outside of it. Without it they'll die out in a generation. Destroying the Dammakhert may not immediately kill every Aldishman, but it'll be the death of the Aldish all the same.
By UN definition (lol) it's a genocide. We can sidestep the question entirely by the simple fact that if the Dhammakhert goes down, Cresce will actual-genocide the Soud.
Yeah but the idea is that they're their own ethnic group which is primarily Ssaelit. Dammakhert dies, any new Aldish kids are gonna be just standard Kasslynian, the Soud will still exist but will then likely be wiped out since they're Ssaelit and the Aldish state was the only thing keeping Ssaelits from getting got. All Ssaelits will be targeted, but the Soud are small and almost exclusively Ssaelit while maintaining their own ethnic group post Dammakhert fall. Easy targets.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>and the Aldish state was the only thing keeping Ssaelits from getting got
Ironic then that it's the Vits that is going to be doing the culling in the end
1 year ago
Anonymous
That's all where this has been heading the Ssaelits pushed into a minority position in government since Duane's death was the major step in that direction. They talk hot shit about jolly cooperation but ultimately the country has two religions where one of them says their dude killed your gods. They only cooperate with Cresce breathing down their necks if the whole country is split open, that all goes out the window and the Ssaelit are gonna get round up.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Whoa now, hold the frick up. We're still gonna get cute Plat boys and Jet girls when the DK goes down right? The DK fricks around when there's race mixing but actual genetics are a thing right?
1 year ago
Anonymous
Anon... the castes don't look the way they do because of genetics
1 year ago
Anonymous
No, HOLD THE FRICK UP. WE'RE STILL GETTING MATTY'S AND CARA'S WHEN THE DK GOES DOWN RIGHT!?
1 year ago
Anonymous
No. Everyone gonna be brown
1 year ago
Anonymous
wait if the DK goes down does that mean that matty and quigly will be able to live normal lengthed lives?
will all the super long lived casts just start aging normally?
1 year ago
Anonymous
Any changes the DK makes at conception are permanent to that particular person, which is why a 200 year old copper doesn't just immediately die after setting foot outside it
1 year ago
Anonymous
say good bye to platty boys because all that is going to be born after the DK is gone is black people plus souds
Nope, once the DK drops no new of the five castes will be born. The DK overrides base genetics with its own phenotypes, the Alds look without DK frickery is closest to the Bronze, which are pretty close to just how Crescians look.The only really significantly different looking ethnic group were the Tains, which are now the Souds.
No. Everyone gonna be brown
If you've got a young Jet or Copper already born then they'll still be capable of living those 250 to 400 years absent the Dammakhert, but no more after them
I'll be honest. Having 2nd thoughts about destroying the DK.
Yes, the state sanctioned rape is bad
the mind control sucks
the death noting dissenters is not a great look.
but no more Plat lads? No more Jet ladies? Can't they just disable it or something?
1 year ago
Anonymous
It would make the comic look blander all the lack of colorful people
1 year ago
Anonymous
say good bye to platty boys because all that is going to be born after the DK is gone is black people plus souds
1 year ago
Anonymous
Nope, once the DK drops no new of the five castes will be born. The DK overrides base genetics with its own phenotypes, the Alds look without DK frickery is closest to the Bronze, which are pretty close to just how Crescians look.The only really significantly different looking ethnic group were the Tains, which are now the Souds.
1 year ago
Anonymous
If you've got a young Jet or Copper already born then they'll still be capable of living those 250 to 400 years absent the Dammakhert, but no more after them
It's a culture that itself can literally only exist through genocide, turning off the dammakhert just means their children's genetics now default to whatever the original race was of their great, great grandma that got gang raped by Aldish soldiers. Unless they're Soud which are ethnically just Tains with special dammakhert admin privileges.
No offense to you in particular, but this theory needs to be put to bed. Sonorie is far from a saint, but the idea that her big plan is Aldish genocide flies in the face of a lot of what we have been shown about her.
Now, does that mean everything will be peace on earth and goodwill towards men? Absolutely not. She might do a targeted attack against the government, or reverse-Etelarche mind-control Alds into fanatical loyalty to her. But we aren't about to get millions of Alds dying in the streets, unless things become royally fricked.
She's going to destroy the Dammakhert; this won't directly kill anyone, but will eliminate the social cohesion that keeps Alderode a country. The actual collapse of the state would likely be down the road, and some remnant government would probably still control a good chunk of the former territory, but the eternal Cresce vs Alderode fight would be over because "Alderode" no longer exists.
That is, of course, if the plan works. I suspect their haste will cause the plan to only partially work, if at all. The Black Tongues really needed the extra time to find Delicieu's soul map, but the war wouldn't wait for them.
I'm still of the opinion that destroying the dammakhert would be an action the majority would support, and wouldn't need to be something you hide like this. There's something deeper here, more focused on a change that'll more immediately bring an end to this war. I'm willing to bet there'll be an etalarche modified to affect the dammakhert in some way, provoking some strange reaction.
If the Crescian public knew the plan (or even the sketchy details like Roger Foi-Hellick being important to it), then the Aldish government would get wind of it and start shoring up their defenses.
But to your point, doing a hacked Etelarche targeted on the Aldish government is a pretty good idea. Sonorie's previous statement a ways back that the plan would be be the /end/ of Alderode gives me pause though.
I wonder what happens if an Etalarche targets a concept instead of a person. Cuz you're right, just killing the current aldish leadership wouldn't end Alderode, even if lingering hate to them forced Alderode to graft a new set of leaders in type and styling. Could you stretch an Etalarche over the dammakhert itself? Or can you maybe take some of the triggers the Etalarche weaves into the soul and cause them to do something besides hate? Sonorie's speech about letting go of the feud to Bell during their talk about the Inak is still ringing warning bells in my head.
I think it's not even as complicated as making them hate a concept. The Dammakhert can induce all manner of feelings, such as deep an all encompassing peace and comfort. All she really has to do is use the Dammakhert to set the dial to 0 for all Alds. She might not even seek to acquire their territory, just stop the semi-lobotomized Alderode from trying to expand
The soud are already the smallest caste, so dealing with them in one way or another would be fairly simple, especially if Sonorie can appeal to the Tains and let them have their frozen shitholes in the north
1 year ago
Anonymous
She already formented civil war, started this actual war, used zombies as weapons, done deals with monsters...
What makes anyone think she wouldn't set all of Alderode on the Soud if she could? Or something worse? And I think it will be worse. I don't think she wants to use the Etalarche curse directly, she wants to use the holes that are drilled in the darmakhert and Aldish minds for the Etalarche curse to work to do something more direct. Hax.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Wait, do you think this particular panel had anything to do with Sonorie?
1 year ago
Anonymous
No, it was Bastions crew.
1 year ago
Anonymous
The civil war I was referring to was the one Roger and Duane fought in.
Duane's murder was obviously a fit-up. But... we know there's current strife in Alderode that it was part of.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Is Sonorie involved somehow in starting the March or do you just mean she's providing aid to them
1 year ago
Anonymous
She was aiding them, and she planned what was done to Roger with the salt lizard and Ruck, before Roger even knew it was the plan.
1 year ago
Anonymous
I don't think so. Roger found her in his mines, and she's the one who said to find Ruck and what his bites would entail
1 year ago
Anonymous
Sonorie's agent was right there, anon. The whole feeding Roger to Ruck thing was for the queen's tame black tongues to do whatever they are about to do.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Roger met the salt lizard before that encounter dude
1 year ago
Anonymous
I just genuinely don't understand where you think Sonorie got involved with Roger. Did she make him gay in the first place to cause friction within his family? Did she personally introduce him to Vampire and the March? Did she use some as yet unmentioned connections within the Aldish government to get them to place the Etalarche on Roger? How did she know the salt lizard was making a home in the mines of the Foi-Hellicks?
1 year ago
Anonymous
>I just genuinely don't understand where you think Sonorie got involved with Roger.
Pages 14_88 and 14_89, anon. Roger, science b***h and a bunch of Crescian soldiers travelled from Cresce to the mines to meet up with Vampire and the salt lizard, fully planning to set off the Etlarache curse. But the extension of that plan, feeding his cursed arse to Ruck, was not known by Roger at that stage.
Also, it was the incursion of science b***h and her fellow Crescians there that turned the cold war between Alderode and Cresce hot.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Also, as Vampire says at that stage, he hasn't seen Roger for 10 years at that point.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Sonorie had no clue about the Ruck feeding plan, Vampire knew though and presumably passed it onto his Crescian contacts since he was the real mastermind behind the rebellion, Roger was just a figurehead that they all needed to be etelarched for the full plan to go through.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Well, that depends on just how long Sonorie has been dealing with Ruck doesn't it. As Ufal asks here and she ignores. We only know the salt-lizard and erm didn't know where he was back in chapter 14.
Also there's potential Uaid hints in those pages. Mentions of their baby ogre and "two better". And we still haven't seen what sort of contructs they made at Litrya. I thought they might be something completely different to Uaid, more like the other weird-ass crescian constructs we've seen. But maybe they are mountain ogres after all.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>But the extension of that plan, feeding his cursed arse to Ruck, was not known by Roger at that stage
Yes it fricking was
1 year ago
Anonymous
NTA, but read those pages again. He didn't know. The Salt Lizard only revealed it to him when the Etalarche was being set off. Roger was an idealist being played by greater powers.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Sonorie had no control over whether or not he was etalarch'd
1 year ago
Anonymous
That page pretty much shows that Sonorie wanted Vampire to be the one cursed and didn't know about how Roger was manipulated until after.
Yeah, Roger got fricked over but it wasn't by Sonorie
1 year ago
Anonymous
It implies moreso to me that she didn't know the details of how Shaensigin's secrets would help break Alderode.
1 year ago
Anonymous
What? The conversation goes >I thought you were the perfect candidate for getting cursed so I sent the salt lizard to find you >Sonorie wouldn't do that she's my friend >You think I told the b***h more than she needed?
The topic of Shaensigin's secrets isn't the subject here
1 year ago
Anonymous
Also, while I don't really think it's that relevant, you have to keep in mind that Vampire is purposely framing the events in a way that will hurt Roger the most. As Ashley has once said about this exact scene, the person who knows how to hurt you the most is the person who loved you
1 year ago
Anonymous
Sonorie had no control over whether or not he was etalarch'd
Considering the parallels between pymary and programming I dount just plugging in a concept instead of a person would even work, like just syntactically
>She's going to destroy the Dammakhert; this won't directly kill anyone, but will eliminate the social cohesion that keeps Alderode a country.
This may remove Alderode as a political threat but wouldn't it also be bad to have a destabilized state right next to them?
I think destroying the Dammakhert will lead to an Aldish civil war after a decade or two, since it's the main thing that keeps the two faiths united against Cresce
Optimistic in what direction? There's been explicit tension between the faiths since Duane's assassination flashback, if the nation itself faced existential problems I think they'd be at each others' throats within the week.
Optimistic that it would take that long.
Within a fricking week of the dammakhert going down the March is going nuclear and shit just goes south from there
The Dammakhert is an almost divine figure central to the worldview of most Aldish people.
Its destruction would basically shake the foundations of the nation.
I'm not the only one who's noticed that Ruck will drop his silly "oooh, so interesting" act when he feels like it, right?
I noticed this back in his very first appearance in the Black Tongues' pocket dimension. His whole efheby "shiny thing, the modern world is so interesting" schtick is an act, at least up to a point. He plays it up when he wants to manipulate people, but when he wants to he is actually pretty good at understanding how the modern world works, and being very curt and sharp with humans.
So now we know for sure that the grand plan is to just completely genocide opposition out of existence so I guess breaking the treaty isn't going to be much of an issue.
The queen just said it herself. >end the fighting, END IT FOREVER.
What other options entail ending prospect of fighting FOREVER other than just killing everyone that opposes you and their women and children?
She already used women and children as meat shields for her mechs, what makes anyone think she would value lives of her enemies more than her own citizen is bizarre at this point.
Since you seem to have forgotten the context, she's talking about a nation where the majority of the people are inextricably controlled by a mind-controlling field from the minute they're conceived. A field which has she has secret knowledge of how to frick with, which has been handed off to people very good at fricking with things.
If you think genocide is the only thing "ending the fighting forever" could mean you've got a lacking imagination
I dont think it'll be a genocide. This plan is as much Roger's as Sonorie's, and he wanted to change Alderode, not exterminate it. And while Sonorie can be both ruthless and pragmatic she just doesn't seem the "kill them all"-type... I mean, she speaks of granting citizenship to the inak. And consider what she told Ruck earlier this chapter about the nature of humanity and religion, or look back at the unwillingness to use violence she shows in ch13_28 ("Everyone says that but maybe") or pic related (ch13_74).
As Irma, the blue-haired Crescian wright said just a few pages ago, Alderode has too long been too fractured; it cannot hold. It will collapse eventually. "And the days of using Cresce to delay it ends now." There's some kind of large-scale religious conflict going on (and probably some weeping plague going around) and Alderode (or specifically the Ssaelit) are using this conflict with Cresce to replenish their population long-term and to distract from the internal issues. So what, apart from genocide, could they be planning involving the dammakhert that would stop Alderode's attacks?
Given the views on Alderode's caste system that Roger and Vampire's henchmen held, the plan might be the destruction of the dammakhert altogether. Or perhaps she's planning a reversal of Roger's etalarche curse to make him a beloved martyr and engrave his ideals in every non-Soud Aldishman... Which, incidentally, may explain the future genocide against the Soud that Lady Ilganyag showed Duane. Or, perhaps more fancifully: a reprogramming of the dammakhert to prevent Aldishmen from leaving its boundaries, with consequences for those that do; Lady Ilganyag told Bastion he'd "long to die" if he tried to intervene in the events in Port Morstorben, and it didn't seem like a personal threat.
This seems pretty on point. I agree that whatever Sonorie's plan is, I don't think it involves the total annihilation of Alderode's people, it'll be more about making them unable or unwilling to fight.
It has spread around the continent, other countries just handled it "better"
1 year ago
Anonymous
Better test it again if one nation dies the other deserves too as well
1 year ago
Anonymous
If Alderode dies it fully deserves it because it's a completely fricked nation and the only reason it has even survived this long in the first place is because the state can remotely disable dissidents with literal magic
It's not just a genocide against the Soud, it's a religious civil war. We saw a couple bronze and silver lions in green fighting off the geffie alds in the streets.
So what do you think is the ACTUAL reason Cresce and Alderode are always at each other's throat? It just can't be over cultural differences right? There has to be some economical to keep fricking with each other.
So what do you think is the ACTUAL reason Cresce and Alderode are always at each other's throat? It just can't be over cultural differences right? There has to be some economical to keep fricking with each other.
Both Alderode and Cresce are existentially threatened by outsiders. The Dhammakhert is threatened by the existence of non-Alds (as Sonorie is demonstrating, because anyone who wants to attack Alderode will attack the Dhammakhert), and Cresce is threatened by anything that isn't Crescian-Communism (See: Ethelmik, where foreigners simply being present corrupts the system). Alderode is just more extreme by virtue of having "capitalism" AND multi-casteism introducing inequality. Cresce happens to have an enormous trove of First Materials, so they can make their system work far more smoothly than Alderode can (remember that Cresce's Breath system runs entirely on First Material wires necessary to actually run the "moneyless utopia"), but the maintenance of the system is predicated on that wealth, abd they'll need more to continue their utopia (eventually). If either's opponent went away, they'd immediately turn on Sharteshane, Ulestre, Rachshane, etc. They have to. Neither can stop until they own the continent.
Cresce and Alderode have been warring since Cresce was founded, so the actual "first conflict" could be Crescian ideological aggression (liberating the oppressed Alds from the caste caste system) or Aldish expansion attempts (might as well if it's a civil war, right?), but it doesn't really matter because both are primed to fight for ideological reasons (safety of the Dhammakert vs safety of Crescian-communism).
How is it built in?
They lived for centuries without expanding trenched in a never ending stalemate.
It's just that these two countries are bordering each other and both aspire to be the hegemon of the continent (see England and France). Add to that the fact that migration from one country to another is impossible without the loss of your genetical heritage and religious differences and you have a recipe for conflict.
Oh, and if you want to look at the economy side of things - prosperity of Cresce is based on using plods, which third of Alderode considers to be blasphemous.
Absolute true, no bullshit?
Ssaelits. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY wants them, reminder that Geffies are really, really trigger happy and OK with genocide and ethnic cleanses.
Alds, on the other hand are extremely isolationist, even moreso than "don't come here to lench of our resources, we are full" cresce. So neither really wants to deal with each other, but Ssaelits makes everybody pretty hostile to alderode, them being the biggest buttholes ever also helps with the sentiment
>Alds, on the other hand are extremely isolationist
Haha fricking what? How can you be isolationist and also conquer all your neighbours? Reminder, there used to be whole fricking countries between Cresce and Alderode
Alderode does not allow non-Alds within its borders without special permission, and basically has its own equivalent of Hong Kong for import and export. Unless you have special and rarely granted permission, you cannot venture deeper into Alderode.
When Alderode expands, they slaughter the men, enslave the children, and impregnate the women. The next generations born in those lands are automatically Aldish, and are raised by Alds while their birth-mother’s homes and infrastructure are taken over and occupied by existing Alds looking for cheap land and ready-made infrastructure to start anew. And so in this way, Alderode manages to both both because the Dammakhert’s unique properties make it easy.
Because they slaughter the original inhabitants of any territory they conquer and repopulate it through mass rape to create more caste members thanks to the dammakhert being installed in the khert hubs.
Cresce is blocking any Alderonian land routes to the rest of the mainland. Sea shipping is fine, but it seems like there is a lot of frickery so land shipping is probably more stable
The land which the Foi-Hellicks ruled— Avelpit— and Fachlyne were once other countries/nations unrelated to Cresce, which were absorbed and conquered by Alderode. Alderode is ever-expansionist, because expanding the Dammakhert bring more bodies, more resources, more land.
There also seems to be a cost to the Dammakhert’s existence (The Red Cost?) that may require a constant influx of bodies to feed it.
They're the two biggest superpowers in Kasslyne with cultures that are the complete polar opposites of each other and share a border, conflict is inevitable.
i thought i'd be bored by these scenes until the details of the plan are actually revealed/shown but it's unreal how much i love these three maybe darkest paul too a little bit
Geffies and their shite religion are literally the source of all problems and conflict in this World.
Ssael should have killed the gods followers along with said gods and we would have been livin in paradise I say!
What's with all the Liggers?
Someone here called for 'liggers?
There's liggers in this very thread, sucking their queen's wiener as usual.
Aldgays need to leave
hmm Sonorie is not going to use the DK weakness to decimate Alderode?
No offense to you in particular, but this theory needs to be put to bed. Sonorie is far from a saint, but the idea that her big plan is Aldish genocide flies in the face of a lot of what we have been shown about her.
Now, does that mean everything will be peace on earth and goodwill towards men? Absolutely not. She might do a targeted attack against the government, or reverse-Etelarche mind-control Alds into fanatical loyalty to her. But we aren't about to get millions of Alds dying in the streets, unless things become royally fricked.
I agree it is unlikely to be genocide, but is it "well actually, technically that's not genocide" or is it definitely not genocide?
Let’s not get into if destroying the Dammakhert is genocide or not
Turning off the DK probably doesn't kill Alds. It just frees them from the grip of Aldish doctrine
But it means no more aldishmen will ever be born. Remember, any child conceived within the Dammakhert becomes an Ald, and Alds don't breed true outside of it. Without it they'll die out in a generation. Destroying the Dammakhert may not immediately kill every Aldishman, but it'll be the death of the Aldish all the same.
By UN definition (lol) it's a genocide. We can sidestep the question entirely by the simple fact that if the Dhammakhert goes down, Cresce will actual-genocide the Soud.
Cresce won't have a chance to, the geffie alds will beat them to it
We literally already know this
huh? I thought the Goldies are like the only ones not fricked over by the Dhammakhert? Like they're outside it's influence?
Yeah but the idea is that they're their own ethnic group which is primarily Ssaelit. Dammakhert dies, any new Aldish kids are gonna be just standard Kasslynian, the Soud will still exist but will then likely be wiped out since they're Ssaelit and the Aldish state was the only thing keeping Ssaelits from getting got. All Ssaelits will be targeted, but the Soud are small and almost exclusively Ssaelit while maintaining their own ethnic group post Dammakhert fall. Easy targets.
>and the Aldish state was the only thing keeping Ssaelits from getting got
Ironic then that it's the Vits that is going to be doing the culling in the end
That's all where this has been heading the Ssaelits pushed into a minority position in government since Duane's death was the major step in that direction. They talk hot shit about jolly cooperation but ultimately the country has two religions where one of them says their dude killed your gods. They only cooperate with Cresce breathing down their necks if the whole country is split open, that all goes out the window and the Ssaelit are gonna get round up.
Whoa now, hold the frick up. We're still gonna get cute Plat boys and Jet girls when the DK goes down right? The DK fricks around when there's race mixing but actual genetics are a thing right?
Anon... the castes don't look the way they do because of genetics
No, HOLD THE FRICK UP. WE'RE STILL GETTING MATTY'S AND CARA'S WHEN THE DK GOES DOWN RIGHT!?
No. Everyone gonna be brown
wait if the DK goes down does that mean that matty and quigly will be able to live normal lengthed lives?
will all the super long lived casts just start aging normally?
Any changes the DK makes at conception are permanent to that particular person, which is why a 200 year old copper doesn't just immediately die after setting foot outside it
I'll be honest. Having 2nd thoughts about destroying the DK.
Yes, the state sanctioned rape is bad
the mind control sucks
the death noting dissenters is not a great look.
but no more Plat lads? No more Jet ladies? Can't they just disable it or something?
It would make the comic look blander all the lack of colorful people
say good bye to platty boys because all that is going to be born after the DK is gone is black people plus souds
Nope, once the DK drops no new of the five castes will be born. The DK overrides base genetics with its own phenotypes, the Alds look without DK frickery is closest to the Bronze, which are pretty close to just how Crescians look.The only really significantly different looking ethnic group were the Tains, which are now the Souds.
If you've got a young Jet or Copper already born then they'll still be capable of living those 250 to 400 years absent the Dammakhert, but no more after them
Crescians don't make that distinction, and besides the Pissmops are all heathens anyways.
It's a culture that itself can literally only exist through genocide, turning off the dammakhert just means their children's genetics now default to whatever the original race was of their great, great grandma that got gang raped by Aldish soldiers. Unless they're Soud which are ethnically just Tains with special dammakhert admin privileges.
She's going to destroy the Dammakhert; this won't directly kill anyone, but will eliminate the social cohesion that keeps Alderode a country. The actual collapse of the state would likely be down the road, and some remnant government would probably still control a good chunk of the former territory, but the eternal Cresce vs Alderode fight would be over because "Alderode" no longer exists.
That is, of course, if the plan works. I suspect their haste will cause the plan to only partially work, if at all. The Black Tongues really needed the extra time to find Delicieu's soul map, but the war wouldn't wait for them.
I'm still of the opinion that destroying the dammakhert would be an action the majority would support, and wouldn't need to be something you hide like this. There's something deeper here, more focused on a change that'll more immediately bring an end to this war. I'm willing to bet there'll be an etalarche modified to affect the dammakhert in some way, provoking some strange reaction.
If the Crescian public knew the plan (or even the sketchy details like Roger Foi-Hellick being important to it), then the Aldish government would get wind of it and start shoring up their defenses.
But to your point, doing a hacked Etelarche targeted on the Aldish government is a pretty good idea. Sonorie's previous statement a ways back that the plan would be be the /end/ of Alderode gives me pause though.
I wonder what happens if an Etalarche targets a concept instead of a person. Cuz you're right, just killing the current aldish leadership wouldn't end Alderode, even if lingering hate to them forced Alderode to graft a new set of leaders in type and styling. Could you stretch an Etalarche over the dammakhert itself? Or can you maybe take some of the triggers the Etalarche weaves into the soul and cause them to do something besides hate? Sonorie's speech about letting go of the feud to Bell during their talk about the Inak is still ringing warning bells in my head.
I think it's not even as complicated as making them hate a concept. The Dammakhert can induce all manner of feelings, such as deep an all encompassing peace and comfort. All she really has to do is use the Dammakhert to set the dial to 0 for all Alds. She might not even seek to acquire their territory, just stop the semi-lobotomized Alderode from trying to expand
The soud are already the smallest caste, so dealing with them in one way or another would be fairly simple, especially if Sonorie can appeal to the Tains and let them have their frozen shitholes in the north
She already formented civil war, started this actual war, used zombies as weapons, done deals with monsters...
What makes anyone think she wouldn't set all of Alderode on the Soud if she could? Or something worse? And I think it will be worse. I don't think she wants to use the Etalarche curse directly, she wants to use the holes that are drilled in the darmakhert and Aldish minds for the Etalarche curse to work to do something more direct. Hax.
Wait, do you think this particular panel had anything to do with Sonorie?
No, it was Bastions crew.
The civil war I was referring to was the one Roger and Duane fought in.
Duane's murder was obviously a fit-up. But... we know there's current strife in Alderode that it was part of.
Is Sonorie involved somehow in starting the March or do you just mean she's providing aid to them
She was aiding them, and she planned what was done to Roger with the salt lizard and Ruck, before Roger even knew it was the plan.
I don't think so. Roger found her in his mines, and she's the one who said to find Ruck and what his bites would entail
Sonorie's agent was right there, anon. The whole feeding Roger to Ruck thing was for the queen's tame black tongues to do whatever they are about to do.
Roger met the salt lizard before that encounter dude
I just genuinely don't understand where you think Sonorie got involved with Roger. Did she make him gay in the first place to cause friction within his family? Did she personally introduce him to Vampire and the March? Did she use some as yet unmentioned connections within the Aldish government to get them to place the Etalarche on Roger? How did she know the salt lizard was making a home in the mines of the Foi-Hellicks?
>I just genuinely don't understand where you think Sonorie got involved with Roger.
Pages 14_88 and 14_89, anon. Roger, science b***h and a bunch of Crescian soldiers travelled from Cresce to the mines to meet up with Vampire and the salt lizard, fully planning to set off the Etlarache curse. But the extension of that plan, feeding his cursed arse to Ruck, was not known by Roger at that stage.
Also, it was the incursion of science b***h and her fellow Crescians there that turned the cold war between Alderode and Cresce hot.
Also, as Vampire says at that stage, he hasn't seen Roger for 10 years at that point.
Sonorie had no clue about the Ruck feeding plan, Vampire knew though and presumably passed it onto his Crescian contacts since he was the real mastermind behind the rebellion, Roger was just a figurehead that they all needed to be etelarched for the full plan to go through.
Well, that depends on just how long Sonorie has been dealing with Ruck doesn't it. As Ufal asks here and she ignores. We only know the salt-lizard and erm didn't know where he was back in chapter 14.
Also there's potential Uaid hints in those pages. Mentions of their baby ogre and "two better". And we still haven't seen what sort of contructs they made at Litrya. I thought they might be something completely different to Uaid, more like the other weird-ass crescian constructs we've seen. But maybe they are mountain ogres after all.
>But the extension of that plan, feeding his cursed arse to Ruck, was not known by Roger at that stage
Yes it fricking was
NTA, but read those pages again. He didn't know. The Salt Lizard only revealed it to him when the Etalarche was being set off. Roger was an idealist being played by greater powers.
That page pretty much shows that Sonorie wanted Vampire to be the one cursed and didn't know about how Roger was manipulated until after.
Yeah, Roger got fricked over but it wasn't by Sonorie
It implies moreso to me that she didn't know the details of how Shaensigin's secrets would help break Alderode.
What? The conversation goes
>I thought you were the perfect candidate for getting cursed so I sent the salt lizard to find you
>Sonorie wouldn't do that she's my friend
>You think I told the b***h more than she needed?
The topic of Shaensigin's secrets isn't the subject here
Also, while I don't really think it's that relevant, you have to keep in mind that Vampire is purposely framing the events in a way that will hurt Roger the most. As Ashley has once said about this exact scene, the person who knows how to hurt you the most is the person who loved you
Sonorie had no control over whether or not he was etalarch'd
Considering the parallels between pymary and programming I dount just plugging in a concept instead of a person would even work, like just syntactically
You're right, of course, and queenie's #1 fan is wrong. It's why Ruck's sly little jab there struck home.
It's still pretty likely that whatever her fricked up plan is, worst lizard is about to screw it up.
Either Delicious or Bell.
>She's going to destroy the Dammakhert; this won't directly kill anyone, but will eliminate the social cohesion that keeps Alderode a country.
This may remove Alderode as a political threat but wouldn't it also be bad to have a destabilized state right next to them?
Less bad than a stable one that's trying to invade you. If only because the roving rapists psychopaths will be lacking logistical support.
I think destroying the Dammakhert will lead to an Aldish civil war after a decade or two, since it's the main thing that keeps the two faiths united against Cresce
A decade is extremely optimistic
Optimistic in what direction? There's been explicit tension between the faiths since Duane's assassination flashback, if the nation itself faced existential problems I think they'd be at each others' throats within the week.
Optimistic that it would take that long.
Within a fricking week of the dammakhert going down the March is going nuclear and shit just goes south from there
Good thing Mikaila's on her way home to safety.
The Dammakhert is an almost divine figure central to the worldview of most Aldish people.
Its destruction would basically shake the foundations of the nation.
Isn't the entire plot of Duane a psy-OP to remove one of the religions from prominence in Alderode? Or was that the destruction of Duane's home town?
I'm really starting to like queenie. She'll probably fail at least partially, but I like her ambition.
> I'll explain later.
okay nm, everyone here is dead. deader than dead. the deadest
watch out! It's handsome ruck!
I'm not the only one who's noticed that Ruck will drop his silly "oooh, so interesting" act when he feels like it, right?
I noticed this back in his very first appearance in the Black Tongues' pocket dimension. His whole efheby "shiny thing, the modern world is so interesting" schtick is an act, at least up to a point. He plays it up when he wants to manipulate people, but when he wants to he is actually pretty good at understanding how the modern world works, and being very curt and sharp with humans.
He's sulking because Sonorie verbally kicked his ass earlier
So now we know for sure that the grand plan is to just completely genocide opposition out of existence so I guess breaking the treaty isn't going to be much of an issue.
What? No we don't.
The queen just said it herself.
>end the fighting, END IT FOREVER.
What other options entail ending prospect of fighting FOREVER other than just killing everyone that opposes you and their women and children?
I dunno, I can think of at least one thing off the top of my head. End the primary reason that Alderode is expansionist
This.
She already used women and children as meat shields for her mechs, what makes anyone think she would value lives of her enemies more than her own citizen is bizarre at this point.
Since you seem to have forgotten the context, she's talking about a nation where the majority of the people are inextricably controlled by a mind-controlling field from the minute they're conceived. A field which has she has secret knowledge of how to frick with, which has been handed off to people very good at fricking with things.
If you think genocide is the only thing "ending the fighting forever" could mean you've got a lacking imagination
"Crescian chaos protects the homeland."
I dont think it'll be a genocide. This plan is as much Roger's as Sonorie's, and he wanted to change Alderode, not exterminate it. And while Sonorie can be both ruthless and pragmatic she just doesn't seem the "kill them all"-type... I mean, she speaks of granting citizenship to the inak. And consider what she told Ruck earlier this chapter about the nature of humanity and religion, or look back at the unwillingness to use violence she shows in ch13_28 ("Everyone says that but maybe") or pic related (ch13_74).
As Irma, the blue-haired Crescian wright said just a few pages ago, Alderode has too long been too fractured; it cannot hold. It will collapse eventually. "And the days of using Cresce to delay it ends now." There's some kind of large-scale religious conflict going on (and probably some weeping plague going around) and Alderode (or specifically the Ssaelit) are using this conflict with Cresce to replenish their population long-term and to distract from the internal issues. So what, apart from genocide, could they be planning involving the dammakhert that would stop Alderode's attacks?
Given the views on Alderode's caste system that Roger and Vampire's henchmen held, the plan might be the destruction of the dammakhert altogether. Or perhaps she's planning a reversal of Roger's etalarche curse to make him a beloved martyr and engrave his ideals in every non-Soud Aldishman... Which, incidentally, may explain the future genocide against the Soud that Lady Ilganyag showed Duane. Or, perhaps more fancifully: a reprogramming of the dammakhert to prevent Aldishmen from leaving its boundaries, with consequences for those that do; Lady Ilganyag told Bastion he'd "long to die" if he tried to intervene in the events in Port Morstorben, and it didn't seem like a personal threat.
This seems pretty on point. I agree that whatever Sonorie's plan is, I don't think it involves the total annihilation of Alderode's people, it'll be more about making them unable or unwilling to fight.
>and probably some weeping plague going around
Time to spread that all around the continent MAD time
It has spread around the continent, other countries just handled it "better"
Better test it again if one nation dies the other deserves too as well
If Alderode dies it fully deserves it because it's a completely fricked nation and the only reason it has even survived this long in the first place is because the state can remotely disable dissidents with literal magic
It's not just a genocide against the Soud, it's a religious civil war. We saw a couple bronze and silver lions in green fighting off the geffie alds in the streets.
Is Ufal saying his gaydar picked up on Roger? Heh
That seems to be the case yeah
So what do you think is the ACTUAL reason Cresce and Alderode are always at each other's throat? It just can't be over cultural differences right? There has to be some economical to keep fricking with each other.
Because Alderode must always expand. It's literally built in with the dammakhert
Both Alderode and Cresce are existentially threatened by outsiders. The Dhammakhert is threatened by the existence of non-Alds (as Sonorie is demonstrating, because anyone who wants to attack Alderode will attack the Dhammakhert), and Cresce is threatened by anything that isn't Crescian-Communism (See: Ethelmik, where foreigners simply being present corrupts the system). Alderode is just more extreme by virtue of having "capitalism" AND multi-casteism introducing inequality. Cresce happens to have an enormous trove of First Materials, so they can make their system work far more smoothly than Alderode can (remember that Cresce's Breath system runs entirely on First Material wires necessary to actually run the "moneyless utopia"), but the maintenance of the system is predicated on that wealth, abd they'll need more to continue their utopia (eventually). If either's opponent went away, they'd immediately turn on Sharteshane, Ulestre, Rachshane, etc. They have to. Neither can stop until they own the continent.
Cresce and Alderode have been warring since Cresce was founded, so the actual "first conflict" could be Crescian ideological aggression (liberating the oppressed Alds from the caste caste system) or Aldish expansion attempts (might as well if it's a civil war, right?), but it doesn't really matter because both are primed to fight for ideological reasons (safety of the Dhammakert vs safety of Crescian-communism).
How is it built in?
They lived for centuries without expanding trenched in a never ending stalemate.
It's just that these two countries are bordering each other and both aspire to be the hegemon of the continent (see England and France). Add to that the fact that migration from one country to another is impossible without the loss of your genetical heritage and religious differences and you have a recipe for conflict.
Oh, and if you want to look at the economy side of things - prosperity of Cresce is based on using plods, which third of Alderode considers to be blasphemous.
Absolute true, no bullshit?
Ssaelits. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY wants them, reminder that Geffies are really, really trigger happy and OK with genocide and ethnic cleanses.
Alds, on the other hand are extremely isolationist, even moreso than "don't come here to lench of our resources, we are full" cresce. So neither really wants to deal with each other, but Ssaelits makes everybody pretty hostile to alderode, them being the biggest buttholes ever also helps with the sentiment
Nah the patriarchal northern Geffendur hate the southern Geff too.
>Alds, on the other hand are extremely isolationist
Haha fricking what? How can you be isolationist and also conquer all your neighbours? Reminder, there used to be whole fricking countries between Cresce and Alderode
You can be both.
Alderode does not allow non-Alds within its borders without special permission, and basically has its own equivalent of Hong Kong for import and export. Unless you have special and rarely granted permission, you cannot venture deeper into Alderode.
When Alderode expands, they slaughter the men, enslave the children, and impregnate the women. The next generations born in those lands are automatically Aldish, and are raised by Alds while their birth-mother’s homes and infrastructure are taken over and occupied by existing Alds looking for cheap land and ready-made infrastructure to start anew. And so in this way, Alderode manages to both both because the Dammakhert’s unique properties make it easy.
Because they slaughter the original inhabitants of any territory they conquer and repopulate it through mass rape to create more caste members thanks to the dammakhert being installed in the khert hubs.
Cresce is blocking any Alderonian land routes to the rest of the mainland. Sea shipping is fine, but it seems like there is a lot of frickery so land shipping is probably more stable
where's "fricking florida" on that map
Hanret-Rachshane.
I thought it was desanctimonia now
Bottom right
>Sea shipping is fine,
It probably would be if Sharteshane didn't hate Alderode as well.
The clergy does, but Beadman knows how to make a profit.
The land which the Foi-Hellicks ruled— Avelpit— and Fachlyne were once other countries/nations unrelated to Cresce, which were absorbed and conquered by Alderode. Alderode is ever-expansionist, because expanding the Dammakhert bring more bodies, more resources, more land.
There also seems to be a cost to the Dammakhert’s existence (The Red Cost?) that may require a constant influx of bodies to feed it.
They're the two biggest superpowers in Kasslyne with cultures that are the complete polar opposites of each other and share a border, conflict is inevitable.
i thought i'd be bored by these scenes until the details of the plan are actually revealed/shown but it's unreal how much i love these three
maybe darkest paul too a little bit
I love Cope's dialog. It makes conversational scenes just as entertaining to me as the action scenes.
Oh one of them is totally gonna die
Geffies and their shite religion are literally the source of all problems and conflict in this World.
Ssael should have killed the gods followers along with said gods and we would have been livin in paradise I say!