The Way Back Home 122
└ posted on Friday, 20 April 2018, by Novil
Yesterday, I uploaded slightly adjusted versions of the following pages to make the course of action clearer:
- The Way Back Home 116: The captain Reginar now gives an order in the last panel to kill all guards under Eldor’s command to minimize the risk for his men.
- The Way Back Home 120: Alissa now only mentions Salena to follow them in a minute in the 3rd panel.
- The Way Back Home 121: The magic effect that allows the swords to cut through the elves’ armor in the 2nd and 3rd panel has been highlighted.
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Alissa is definitely getting some action now.
Nice to see the author is actively trying to make stuff clearer. Or at least more consistent. 😉
Are those stasis pods? That’s not ominous at all. Also, what’s the green magic doing? It looks different from the silencer wands, so I assume it’s a different effect.
Also, these are the best guards ever for the fortress of somebody who wants to become immortal, controls a super-strong wizard girl, and seemingly has the means to kill a god.
Seriously though, they’re in Room Y99 now.
I thought Alissa would go for headshot, seeing how the first victim in this page is helmetless. I didn’t expect the arrows to be able to penetrate the armor too! Is that what green magic is for? For making projectiles be able to pierce through armor? But that doesn’t seem to explain the magic encompassing all of the body… Is it silencing magic too?
Also, to think Ryn and Alissa took down 3 elven guards in FIVE seconds! That is too awesome that I can’t just simply believe in first glance! 4th elven guard was down when Fabius was already inside, though.
Jack wrote:
So far, we haven’t seen any proof that those guards are bad at their job. It’s the old rpg Problem, you go through a lot of effort to properly secure your lair and hire elven plate armored elite guards and still you get raided by some rich guy who stacked up on insanely overpowered premium items 😉
First use silencer wands, sneak around, stealthily kill people before they see you, and then exclaim all clear when you are done. Seems like a great plan.
bob wrote:
He’s probably not screaming that – and noone seems to be close enough to hear that.
Onihikage wrote:
it does look like that’s what those are. i thought perhaps in the last installment they might have been unusual church pews…
So have these elves been guarding this base for a thousand years? More than enough time to become a little less on full alert.
Too “op” to my taste…this is starting to look like a movie. The minions are useless, the entrance to your secret base isn´t full of traps (magic of course) that only the boss can disable…don´t know…
@ Razel:
Razel wrote:
Looked like a binding spell to me. Like they used it to hold the guards corpse and keep it from falling on the floor and making a ruckus.
If you’ll look closely you’ll see what appears to be threads/ropes around the guards torso’s from the green magic.
I don’t know why some think this is implausible. Please don’t forget:
– There was no warning sign whatsoever for the guards.
– Alissa, Fabius and Ryn have the best of magic weapons available.
– The entrance is hidden in a place that is controlled exclusively by the worshippers of Eldor’s cult, making the danger from that side look pretty low.
And last but not least two more points:
– Eldor is busy doing the “big thing”, maybe the elves are busy with that, too.
– We don’t even know whether the “facility” is really that important for Eldor anymore. Important, yes, but how much we don’t know.
Okay, new reader here, so I may be confused. But isn’t this the realm of the elves they’ve just entered into? Which the elves don’t think anyone can get into (except Eldor I guess). So they aren’t expecting human attackers?
oceanburning19 wrote:
I think (or most readers in the forum think) that the current place is not behind this “mythal”. Instead some elves seems to live somehow on this side of the mythal. Maybe, because elves (or some of them, like Eldor) can easily traverse the mythal, but humans cannot. Or maybe because these elves at some point stranded here. We have no idea. (To quote another web comic.) 😉
Where this place is and why it is important – well, again – we have no idea! Of course, there are theories, like that it is the magical tower that was at some point accessible from the hiding place of the Shadowdancers. They are, however, just theories by some readers so far.
By the way: if I missed out any knowledge bits, then please tell me. I have only read the comic once and feel reading it two or three times with careful look for all details might be needed to get everything out of it… 😉
Razel wrote:
No Need for magic for arrows to pierce plate armor. Longbows have been capable for as long as they existed. That is something that scared the nobility, the fact a peasant could pick up a bow and kill a knight.
I worry that attacking these Elves is going to have unpleasant consequences. Weren’t they meant to be preventing a magical meltdown or something…?
Hm. Looks like they found the hibernation lab. Now the question is, who or what exactly are they keeping asleep in there?
We’ve seen the elves working with Eldor once before, in what appeared to be some secret compound of his, NOT inside the Mythal. So this could easily be the same place.
Drake wrote:
No Need for magic for arrows to pierce plate armor. Longbows have been capable for as long as they existed. That is something that scared the nobility, the fact a peasant could pick up a bow and kill a knight.
Sure, but what she’s using is no longbow. It’s way too small. It’s some variety of shortbow.
I’m surprised they don’t seem to think much about the fact the guards are elves. I thought all elves had secluded themselves behind a huge magical barrier and nobody has seen one in millenia. For all they know, they are currently starting a war with Ysdar by charging in guns blazing.
@ Drake:
The average combat longbow could not, in fact, pierce the thicker plate mail worn on the chest like Alissa manages here. Perhaps the thinner armor out on the limbs? But not a chestplate like that. And even if they could: certainly not that kind of bow, and certainly not that shape of arrow (that kind is built to cut in and create a wide hole behind, you need a more compact point to punch through in a smaller area in order to actually move in to any depth), and most certainly to the depth shown in the very last panel. These arrows are most certainly magically enhanced. (Youtubers Lindybeige and Skallagrim both have videos where chest plate is tested. For the former: a 150lb draw weight longbow against a chest plate at 20 yards. For the latter, a 350 lb crossbow and a 976 lb crossbow against a lamellar chest pieces, also at close range. The crossbows actually made some nasty dents, but did not pierce through and stick into the plate, the longbow merely left a scratch.)
@ Tomana:
This was meant to be @ Wanderer but I clicked on Drake’s instead. Oops.
Now I start to wonder. Ryn and Alissa are not that hardened combat veterans. They just killed four people in less than a minute, with no visible psychological effects. Actually, they are, as far as I remember, their first kills. The second kill of Alyssa’s was probably the most difficult: shoot a non-threatening humanoid by surprise in cold blood.
If these guys don’t start to show some kind of aftereffects for their actions, I am starting to suspect whether these are the good guys. It is one thing for the Academy to train proficient spellswords and completely another one to train people into killing in this kind of callous manner.
Drake wrote:
Chainmail, yes, without any effort. Real solid plate armor, made from quality material? Not so much. At least not if you hit an armor plate and not one of the weak points where the plates are joined together. A shot from a particularly strong longbow might damage the plate and cause a superficial fleshwound to the body underneath, but not the extent that the arrow penetrates deeply and comes out again on the back.
It’s weird. Eldor has done some really terrible things in this comic, His minions are all awful people, and there have been several battles where people have died in much worse ways. However, these last two pages seem the most murdery of all the events so far. Including that time Eldor straight up murdered Elea Calisto. I think it’s because the elves have not been shown doing anything hostile, they are killed before they have a chance to defend themselves, and these elves in particular have no lines.
Traveller wrote:
the people from oakdale maybe?
Wait… Alissa have just pierced through a WHOLE person with an arrow? Someone is getting a real fantasy hype, or she just trained with The Rock xD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwCiBdBYUEw
@ someguy:
Arrows do not penetrate mail “without any effort”. They can penetrate mail if the bow’s draw weight is high enough (what’s high enough varies depending on the mail and the arrows), but an untrained person will have a hard time drawing a bow powerful enough. There are accounts in war of arrows both having great success at penetrating mail and being unable to do so.
if the portal would have led to an orphanage, would they have started killing all orphans?
I mean I get the justifications to a point but this is a Society in which even killing animals seem to be some sort of great taboo (remember the fish?)
and here we have Alyssa and co going Seal Team 6 on elves
(elves!, that alone should give them atleast a pause, unless I missed something)
with a “we take no Prisoner, massacre them” order
it just feels .. weird to me
Nobody wrote:
I doubt they have the best magical weapons available. That honor should to go to these guys!
I could also argue that the complete lack of warning is itself unrealistic. Do the elves really trust the cult THAT much? To me, they didn’t appear as competent as the elves appear and so a direct portal with no warning system ought to just not happen.For all I know, no one in the cult even has the requisite access privilege to send a warning!
(Of course, gotta emphasize that I’m going off looks to gauge competence. It is, however, worth noting that the elves–on a whole–probably have no real combat experience and so cannot respond to a break-in properly when one actually happens. Nonetheless, there ought to be automatic warnings all over.)
@ Silhalnor:
The Elves may not trust the cult, but the portal *is* behind two locked doors that members of the cult are unlikely to be breaking through, due to their adoration of Eldor. Eldor may simply have felt that was enough.
Drake wrote:
This is completely a myth. On the rare occasion that an arrow would kill a knight, it would be if it happened to hit a gap or joint in the armour. If you want to see what happens if a longbow-shot arrow hits a breastplate, here you go: https://youtu.be/Ej3qjUzUzQg?t=55s
Killing (or incapacitating) elves, my internal Pelinal Whitestrake is having an orgasm right now.
@ Wiley:
I guess the motive of this strategy is just “kill them before they can kill us”.
Lurker wrote:
I just noticed that Alyssa is even smiling at the end! Ryn, sure, he habitually puts up a happy front all the time. But Alyssa too? It’s liable to be genuine.
Well, Alyssa… Congrats on removing combatants, I guess?
Well actually, had the guards heard an alarm of some sort I’m sure they would’ve conjured some magic armor to back the one they already have, to prevent arrows and swords to easily pierce throught them.
@ Silhalnor:
It’s the mentality of “They are my enemy, so I will kill.” Had they given more thought to the Elven family they had just ruined and kids without fathers to guide them so they turn to a life of crime and commit mass murde… oh wait their dads already help in that.
hkmaly wrote:
Well, there is an exclamation mark
I am getting more and more umcomfortable with this. Sure Eldor is evil and these guys guard his headquarters. But they them self haven’t really done anything. Isn’t there any other way to incapacitate them?
They sure are about to lose the moral highground here…
Wiley wrote:
Well… I’m pretty sure the thing with the fish was just Lili’s personal hang-up. After all, tigers, wolves, and other carnivores are not going have any issues with eating animals – and you can’t have an ecosystem composed entirely of herbivores; there’d be nothing to keep their numbers in check. Even microscopic organisms have lots of carnivorous predators among their populations.
I think you did miss something. Why should elves be any different than anyone else? They’re working with Eldor, presumably to do something awful, so why would you think that they would get a pass just by virtue of not being humans?
I don’t see why. Everyone is using swords, so it’s not like Alyssa & Ryn can step in, point a gun at them, and order them to put their hands up.
When you’re using blades, rather than missile weapons, surprise is your only advantage, and you have to kill the other guy before he can pull his out and kill you. If the elves were unarmed, that might be a little different story, although you still wouldn’t want to afford them a chance to give the alarm.
So there really isn’t a choice here. And a fight between two small groups of armed soldiers is hardly a “massacre”.
This really IS a good parallel to a commando operation; it’s a small team entering a large camp, and they can’t afford to be burdened with prisoners. And these aren’t orphaned children we’re talking about, they’re highly-trained, fully-armed, enemy soldiers, who would kill you as soon as look at you. Think of it as a few US GIs infiltrating a Nazi army encampment.
@ Wiley:
I’m right there with you
Ok now I’ve been holding it for too long and I have to say it.
The way Ryn taps Alissa’s shoulder is downright unnatural.
He has a sword in his hand, which should be naturally pointing forward. Yet as he taps her shoulder, the sword is pointing towards the back. Which means that in this somewhat narrow doorway, he would need to either let the sword swing downwards and come up in the back, which would be awkward on his wrist, or raise it all the way up and back past Alissa’s head, which is slow and unsafe. It would be much more natural to have the sword still pointing down forward and tap her shoulder with your fore knuckles.
Sorry. It’s a small and relatively unimportant detail, but it’s been bugging me and now I feel better.
People are saying that those guys went down easily for Eldor’s gaurds, I suspect that they are not and this place is just another step on Eldor’s paths from A to B and may not be directly affiliated with him… I think our “protagonists” have basically just shot and stabbed the conductor, ticket collector and nightgaurd.
@ Eliyahu:
It depends also on arrowhead (a long straight arrows with a thin tip were specificaly designed to break trough armor)
It required a good longbow also.
the main drawback of bow – it takes long time to train archer to do that (cultivate strenght and precision), that is why crossbows prevailed – greater power, easier handling, usable by peasants, but they took long time to reload.
in anyway – halberds and such were generaly issued to peasants as can openers against knighs – in general a full plated knight had little chance against peasant with such can opener. (halberds are long… big lever for opening)
@ Nobodyreally:
Stealth mission.