the holy poopacy posted:

If it's really that potent then the Blacktongues are wasting their effort, they could just bombard Alderode with flyers of Roger Foi-Hellick and watch them devolve into impotent rage.

GunnerJ posted:

Strategically, any wide scale attack (like, on the whole nation, or even just a whole city) using the curse has got to work well enough the first time that you don't need it a second because something like that almost taking the whole Aldish nation and/or military out might be the one thing that would make the Vits Council undo the curse.

Oxxidation posted:

the, Lem, the

day-gas posted:

Her calling Lem Daddy legit made me a bit sick to my stomach.

Flavahbeast posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaXigSu72A4

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Conspiratiorist posted:

I suddenly remembered that, in one of those rare instances of Alderode and Cresce agreeing to common rules of war, plod soldiers are outlawed.

Formspring posted:

[...] Plods were originally invented not for slave labour, not in a search for immortality, but in order to bolster Cresce's army and fight the Aldish. Then the Aldish figured out how to make plods and both sides had them. The practise became ridiculous when Black Tongues took to the field for both countries and you had dead Crescians turned by the Aldish to fight dead Aldish turned by the Crescians. Treaties were signed and plods were banned from warfare entirely. Practical Cresce saw something promising, however, and repurposed plods as labourers, eventually enabling them to ban slavery and enter a progressive boom. Meanwhile, the Ssaelit of Alderode are scripturally forbidden from any pymary to do with desecration of the dead, so they lobbied against plods in both the army and as a domestic workforce, and recycled labour never got off the ground up north.

[...]

The plods were fairly effective in combat. They had two modes, essentially, just like the labourer variety has today: simple command enactment and direct control. Plods could be given simple commands like "Kill with a sword anything in a red tunic" and they'd be pretty effective at it, pushing forward in spite of all injury, even decapitation (though this made it hard for them to see red tunics). For more complex maneuvers they could be directed by handlers who could at a distance change their behaviours, taking them past pymary barriers that would cook a living man in order to wipe out the enemy's wrights or simply marching them in front of murder holes in barricades and physically clogging the enemy's sights with bodies.

Plods weren't permanent soldiery and the decay factor was not a big deal. Plods needn't be trained so they were exceedingly expendable, and easily replaceable by stealing enemy casualties or recruiting their own dead soldiers (the ones who'd given permission prior to dying of course). Eventually the practise just got out of hand, there was public outcry on both sides because families weren't getting their dead back for burial, soldiers were finding it increasingly distasteful and morale-breaking to be surrounded by the dead, and there were sanitary concerns in the encampments. No one was terribly sorry to see the plods go after the treaty was signed.

Integrating plods into the workforce was a bit of a struggle after all the bad PR they got during their military ventures. The Queen at the time really believed in the concept though, and saw it as a solution for the country's labour needs. She pushed for it, the government started selling the idea via a strenuous propaganda campaign, and Recycled Labour was eventually accepted and saw great success. Occasionally you get a plod that will get a little twitchy, a little too hungry, and he might wriggle out of his handler's control briefly, but this doesn't really happen often enough that it's a concern. You'd think this whole system is a setup for an eventual zombie apocalypse story twist, but I promise it's not. Plods just work. They are a useful, effective pymary-driven technology in much of Kasslyne.

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

That seems like a very silly thing to agree to.

Conspiratiorist posted:

I suddenly remembered that, in one of those rare instances of Alderode and Cresce agreeing to common rules of war, plod soldiers are outlawed.

quote:

quote:

Surely we past the point of worrying about esclation. I mean Alderode is trying to assasinate the Queen for the first time in centuries. Actually that reminds me how long have Cresce and Alderode been fighting?

Cresce and Alderode have been fighting for the entirety of Cresce’s existence. But it ebbs and flows, with long periods of chilly ceasefires and Cold War flavoured subterfuge and industrial espionage. One could tell some fascinating spy tales set during these eras.

And yes, Alderode could escalate, and so could Cresce in turn. This current skirmish doesn’t even qualify as a war. These countries have thrown the entirety of their technology and citizenry at each other in the past, permanently warping the khert itself in the throes of their fighting. Alderode hasn’t brought out its suicide vliegeng pilots, nor Cresce its napalm-spewing constructs.

There’s a reason there are rules of engagement now, haha. These lunatics have lit the world on fire in the past

Drakyn posted:

TBF, I don't think organized rape and execution of the civilian populace with blatantly genocidal intent is something that everyone sat down and wrote up as 'formally speaking, this is okay' so I guess everyone's got their naughty pants on today.
Which is why I think 'quick! sic the zombies on the small, youthful and most vulnerable-looking targets while they look scared and helpless!' is such a thing in this strip because otherwise I'm not sure why any of us would look at this as even marginally nasty.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Potentially! An established intended effect of the curse is leaving a deep, lasting hatred of its target that one simply accepts even if aware of its external nature - the one true unifying cause in all of Alderode is thus seeing THAT FESTERING, PUSTULENT rear end PIMPLE ROGER FOI-HELLICK dead and all his works buried and forgotten. It's not unreasonable to believe that to some degree the curse could be having an influence at the top level and consequently on policy, tempered as it might be by the complexities of national affairs.

habeasdorkus posted:

Turns out Cope answered my question as well as commented on Kasselynes laws of war on her tumblr recently:

Runa posted:

Well, at the very least, I would greatly appreciate it if Lem would die, as unlikely as that seems despite his predicament.

I wonder, is this truly the extent of their dammakhert-based attack or is there more to it?

Bad Seafood posted:

Combined with the above excerpt, it makes more sense than you'd think.

Ever wonder why (historically) a lot of armies wore vivid colors? So you could tell at a glance who was on your side. It's no lean feat, getting thousands of men to cooperate and coordinate in real-time, moving as a single unified force with unified directives. Bright colors, standard bearers, etc., was a mutually-beneficial arrangement that made organizing the chaos manageable. You stick out like a sore thumb, sure, but so do they, and being under fire didn't really matter since the issue was less getting sniped by expert bowmen and more a huge bloc of soldiers all firing "Generally" in your direction, hoping to hit you. So yes, I can see necromancers raising each other's war dead en masse as a bit of an administrative problem.

It doesn't sound like zombies make particularly clever combatants either, unless they're micromanaged, at which point you might as well send in living soldiers. Honestly, their most suitable use seems to be this update: a surprise terror tactic to decimate the enemy from within. Their use here, as a surprise terror tactic, makes perfect sense, but this isn't a traditional battlefield.

shirts and skins posted:

I think the zombies are very much a distraction from whatever the wrights are about to do with the beacon. I suspect speculation in here about manipulating the etarlache curse is dead-on. It's definitely been foreshadowed plenty.