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[PA Comic] Monday, October 22, 2012 - Thornwatch, Part Three
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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As far as we know they are Lookouts who didn't meet the standards or deserted, but the comic shows that popular belief in that world is that they are some vile monsters and that it is better to die than to deal with them.
Also what does that say about the Lookouts? If you are not willing to die in a fight you can not possibly win(boy that looks like a preschooler vs. the wolfbatthing) you get kicked out?
And how do they instantsummon the watch with some twigs around a tree?
http://www.zeldawiki.org/Groose
Because that kid's friend was gruesomely murdered in the first comic by a bat-dog-demon thing. I assume the kid used the Thornwatch call as a last resort.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
He can't hack the forest alone, he can't go home now, the Thornwatch is all he has left.
One would venture the thorn watch is not a fan of that system.
But the comic is great and any game that comes out with this lore and those mechanics will be pre-ordered as soon as possible.
I think it was probably done intentionally, using the same rhyme to begin and end as bookends, sort of. It would be a bit more effective if the poem/series had four parts so there were two stanzas in between and born/thorn rhyme didn't come up again so quickly, but yeah, backseat writing.
In order to facilitate passing down spoken lore, you want your rhymes to be simple and follow an easily learned pattern. The elder's aren't looking for a poetry prize, but for the survival of their cultural genes.
STEAM
What do we *know*?
We don't know what the beast is, or what the circumstances of the first comic are. We see a fallen short sword or dagger. We see a shredded green garment, but there is no body and no blood. There's no indication that anybody died.
In the second comic we see the boy with an expression on his face that is a mix of fear and shame. The fear is understandable. There's a bat/dog monster back in the woods. But the shame isn't as easily understood. The boy ran from a bat/dog. That's not a shameful act. And we don't know that he abandoned anyone or anything.
The poem mentions oath-breakers, but we don't know what oath was broken.
We know that he summoned the Thornwatch, but for what? Safe passage out of the woods? To kill the bat/dog?
There is blood all over the beast's mouth and legs. The shredded green cloak clearly belonged to somebody else, as the boy's appears to be intact.
It seems very clear to me that the beast killed the boy's partner and he ran away in terror rather than fight.
The absence of a visible corpse is problematic, but the other evidence clearly points to the beast having already killed somebody and the boy not wanting to be next. Maybe Gabe just didn't want to draw a dead kid?
I got a feeling from look outs, that sometimes they were just tasty snacks to make the monsters go away happy.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
edit: Seruko, we can assume someone died, but we dont know if they were sent to kill the beast, if both were playing in the forrest, discovered the beast and decided to attack, or if the boy was sent out alone all along and found the beast and his friends cloak, who had been missing for 3 days. All we know is " boy ran out of fear for the beast to the watch, because his people would hate him for running?"
Edit2: ok reading the wensday thread the comic makes this more clear. He didn't oathbreak, he witnessed his friends killed by the beast, no matter if they were sent or stumbled upon it. So he went and tied the wreath in order to call for the thornwatches help to kill the beast. Why the thornwatch is refered to in such a negative light when they are to be called upon in times of dire need, is never explained, just that they are in themselves oathbreakers. Maybe they are oathbreakers because they aren't all super "boot-straps mcgee" about the children.
This makes it shameful to ask for their help, and the community states that its better to die then say there right? It follows at least I guess? Even though there are multiple counts of the children getting help from adults and such in the other comics.
The Lookout universe seems to be pretty big on rules. If it wasn't, there'd probably be less preschoolers running through the woods trying to kill monsters.
Well, there'd be less preschoolers forced to run through the woods killing monsters.
That... makes a lot of sense.
Wasn't this more or less stated to be the case in the first Lookouts story (the one with the basilisk that started the whole concept with the voting contest and finished by the guest artists)?
Since "before/after" the fight is Cardboard Tube Samurai's shtick, it'd be nice to see Gabe do an action scene here...
"Make and tune human beings" is now my favorite way to say "raise a family."
You've missed a major point here. There is one instance of an adult helping a child Lookout, and said adult was then chastised by the village elders for not letting him die.
Seriously folks. This comic is your reference for the most Lookouts lore we've ever received. Those elders and their pact with the forest are the hub of it.
Said pact being left a mystery because sometimes it's fun to be mysterious and watch people throw crazy theories around.
Those of you asking for hard details are doomed to be disappointed for now as vague and mysterious is clearly the thing they are going for currently.
And I personally love it.
These are webcomics, not D&D lore- and rule-books.
Agreed, but at this point, I'm more than happy with the scent instead of the entree.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
I'm sick of the HEY LOOK AT SETTING I BUILT COMPLETE WITH A SPOKEN LANGUAGE.
I see the Thornwatch as being a response to the troubling ambiguity of the Lookouts story as it was initially told, where failed children were condemned to death.
Also, technically, that's not child sacrifice. It's more like they send their kids to get hands-on experience fighting monsters.