It's been awhile since I empathized so much with you Cat.

Anyway, not much to say about this chapter from a plot standpoint, because nobody knows what's going on and everyone thinks that what's happening is stupid. I continue to both love and hate blind strategies like this, and this is why.

I enjoyed this chapter on a more personal note, however, because it actually brings up what I was talking about regarding the Augur. For the sake of discussion, I'm going to take this as one of the periodic asides Errata--hell, all authors--does to clarify points and assume it's mostly accurate. If so, it's nice to have a clearer picture on what the Augur can do! But I'm not necessarily sure to really helps, unfortunately. To quote:

Previously, I thought she was ridiculously broad and powerful, and apparently she is, just in somewhat different ways. Assuming that she's limited as a coordinator, meant to get the right people in the right place at the right time, that's a ridiculously strong ability in its own right, but at least limits some of what I feared was implied. Except she can break those limits within reason by paying personal attention, and depending on what kind of vision she's getting, the limits on her predicting actions also varies.

That's kind of fucking crazy, better in some ways than what I thought and worse in others. Take the Vales, for example--not only was it a situation that one would assume Above would want to rig in their favor, but even if it wasn't, the Augur pays personal attention to Klaus and can look for and pass on information. So why the hell did that fight go so badly for him? Even if the Augur can't guarantee a victory, half the issue with that battle was everyone being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm appreciative of the explanation here but also confused by it.

 

I mean, the battle wasn't a complete landslides in his favor, but it certainly wasn't really a loss either. He has most of his fighting force left. Or at least enough that he feels confident digging through to Callow and then presumably pushing on into Praes.

You make it sound like he was savaged so horribly that he can't even function as a fighting force anymore.

Also "initiated decisions chains." is the key part. She couldn't predict where people would be until plans were finalized. Which they usually aren't until right before a battle begins.

Case in point is the White Knight's location.

Spoiler

“You ready now, yes?” the Champion asked. “Time for fight.”

“At dawn,” Hanno replied calmly. “The fourth day is the beginning.”

“Finally,” the Witch of the Woods murmured.

Even he apparently wasn't sure when he would take part in the fighting until literally the night before.

There wasn't much in the way of initiated decisions until after he'd decided to take to the field, regarding where he'd be on the battlefield.

Also there's this bit:

Spoiler

the Augur’s Role was that of a coordinator. She got the message out so troops would stand at the right place at the right time, but she wasn’t supposed to actually guarantee a victory.

So she's powerful at giving an army an advantage, but it's up to the army/commander/etc. to actually follow through and pull out a win.

And considering Klaus/the Crusaders were sieging a fortified position, which had months of forewarning, it's hardly surprising that they were bloodied.

Edit: Also, the battle didn't go that badly for Klaus himself, it's not like he was in any real danger during any of the battles, so why would the Augur have mentioned anything if his safety wasn't really a concern?

 

So I'll officially give the Augur a pass on "Sorry, but the Black Knight is in another castle", based on this. Gods can't directly beam that kind of cheat code to her, because it interferes too heavily in their game. And in order to look for it, she has to actually want to look for it. She definitely can, because if a seer can't give a Hero advice on how to kill his sworn enemy then I have no fucking clue what she's even good for. But she wouldn't think to look for that, and Cordelia wouldn't ask it. Sure, it'd make sense to do so, but Cordelia is weak on namelore, because Procer has so little of it. Her and Klaus' stance on the White vs Black Knight fight is "bah, Hero stuff. Let him handle it", and instead they'd have the Augur keep an eye out for other stuff like making sure neither of them gets murked.

It's also why Cordelia didn't get warning that the priests were gonna shoot her in the foot by declaring Cat arch-heretic of the east. What objection are the Gods Above gonna have to that? This is a Crusade, Cordelia. This was inevitable, given that you've labeled deposing Cat a key objective, but again she's weak on genre-savviness on account of being Proceran.

Leaves Nekheb raiding the camp and dropping a fiery lake on the Procerans. Again, she gets a pass on the Gods not handing her clues. Not just a "this is Hero stuff and we're blind", but because they sent like a dozen heroes - three of which are primetime Names - to take care of it. Save the Overkill for the Endgame. They start using the Augur to bludgeon their way through every battle then the Gods Below are gonna say "back the fuck up" and hand some bonus to Cat, Malicia, or worst of all the Dead King.

So the remaining question regarding the Vales is: what did the Augur look for regarding that battle? If nothing, why? If she did, why would Nekheb and the Lake go unnoticed? Nekheb I can guess on , but not sure about the Lake. Possibly a specificity limit? We know she stopped assassination attempts but we haven't actually seen how specific those prophecies are. "Watch out for a trap on the third day" is pretty vague and a well no shit moment. Enough for Cordelia to blunt an assassination attempt, but not for a battle. Still something Klaus should've remarked on, at least.

 

Not really what I mean--though for a battle from a fortified position, Black's relative losses were pretty terrible. The issue is that he cut off all his own supply lines, any path of retreat, lost most of his mages, and is engaging in overtly villainous behavior.

This is specifically not what that means--she can predict what people are going to do once they begin to take steps towards doing it, which Black did months in advance.

No--Hanno made his decision when he decided to sit down to research Black.

Because the Vales were broken, thousands of his men died pointlessly, Good lost a major battle, and it resulted in an army invading Procer and pillaging the country side? Don't be silly now.

No? Telling someone where there enemy was is specifically called out as exactly what she can do.

Huh...? No, this is absurd--are you honestly saying 'There's no real reason why she would have thought to look for the enemy's chief general and strategist and see what he's up to?' Don't be silly. Hell, Cordelia's repeatedly gone into how terrifyingly dangerous Praesi villains and Black/Malicia specificalyl are, as has Klaus. Her ignorance of Name lore is only in regards to not knowing how the Narrative influences things--which, to be fair, I don't know that either--not of the terrifying capabilities of Named. This whole Crusade started because a Named cobbled together an intercontinental doomsday weapon, no less! This is reaching super hard is a flat-out absurdly thin excuse.

'They wouldn't think to care about the guys they themselves repeatedly call the most dangerous people on Calernia'? Please. Don't even.

Check again, Augur specifically looks for shit that fucks with Cordelia. Honestly, after this Extra Chapter, I half assume Cordelia just went along with making her Arch-Heretic because the Augur went 'Yeah, she's working with the Dead King.'

Um, no? I mean, the issue with that entire fight was that no one was where they were supposed to be, which is explicitly what Augur is meant to help with. And the issue her was that the Dragon was specifically meant to be a trap from the very beginning.

 

Ok, you seem to be stuck on the idea that Black only had one possible set of plans for how this battle was going to go, despite common sense saying he'd likely have at least a few possible variations on how the plan would unfold.

The ultimate goal of the Crusade is less 'Kill Black!' and more 'Liberate/Conquer Callow' and 'Invade Praes so the Heroes can go off and do their Villain killing stuff.'
I mean sure, killing Black would probably be a major goal if they thought they could do it, but the goal with the Vales was to GET THROUGH THE PASS.
And given the fact Klaus has basically said 'Eh, Black can go off pillaging and raiding, Ima head to Praes like a good Crusader. You guys back in Procer can deal with Black.'

As for "There's no real reason why she would have thought to look for the enemy's chief general and strategist and see what he's up to?" are you forgetting that Grem one eye was technically in command of the defence of the Vales, with Black constantly claiming to be an 'Advisor?
Grem is supposedly kind of badass all on his own. Y'know, since he's lauded as the only Orc beside Hakram who almost claimed a Name of some sort.

Basically, I gotta say. All your posts seem to come off as you just really think it's Crusade Vs Black here, when that's not it at all. Which also makes almost all of your logic flawed.

Edit: Case in point, you constantly say that 'this' and 'that' and 'so on' is part of the 'Plan' from the beginning, but I must have missed the part where the author explained Black's supposed 'Plan' in such excruciating detail.

 

This seems like the strongest narrative justification when it comes to the Augur not solving everything the last couple chapters. With the Augur only able to look at one thing at a time, and presumably only able to make only so many predictions a day, it gives the author a ready-made explanation as to why the Augur wasn't involved in whatever is taking center stage at the moment.

For example, maybe Malicia took up her attention by making large amounts of assassination plans and sending hordes of assassins to take out people that are important enough to warrant Agnes focusing on them instead of Black or Cat--Cordelia, Klaus, Agnes herself, whomever. If Agnes isn't constantly looking for these plots, one might get through and then everything goes to shit. It's pretty thin, but it's reasonable enough that my suspension of disbelief isn't really broken.

 

No, I'm stuck on the idea that there were certain things Black needed to make happen for his plan to work.

You know. Because Black said so. The main points of that plan were to keep the White Knight in the wrong valley, keep the Witch occupied, and get the heroes in the wrong place to help their army. If that doesn't happen, the plan doesn't get off the ground--Black main plan for dealing with heroes when they have the advantage or are too disadvantaged, is to run the hell away, remember?

No? Killing Black and Malicia is a pretty major part of the Crusade, in point of fact, because they're so dangerous--the thing about the rest of Praes is that it spent most of it's history as a laughing stock with, like, two other exceptions. Without them, Praes most likely collapses into infighting and self-destructs again; Cordelia has outright noted this. To the extent that they intend to leave things to the heroes, it's because they all know they can't beat the Calamities without them. It's not dismissive apathy or anything.

Even Klaus staying at the border had a reason, if you recall--namely, the other terrifying villain nearby; as long as he remains at the border with a large enough host, Callow itself is checked utterly, as we saw, to the point that Cat decided to go with the craziest plan possible for lack of any other ones.

1) If Augur was looking at his plans, the exact same thing applies.

2) Grem is as much of a nobody as basically every other general in this story is, once the Named come into play, and he's as ignorant of narratives as Black is, as he made clear in his talk with him.

3) Black was still the one feeding Grem pretty much all his winning strategies and setting things up so he wasn't slaughtered. The point remains.

But even ignoring that, because why not, this argument falls apart on point 1--if Grem is in charge, the Augur just feeds Klaus his strategies instead.

It basically is the Crusade against Black, actually, because as has been deliberately called out by people on both sides, including Black's closest friends, without Black there, Praes just kind of falls apart. We've seen how quickly Malicia and Warlock are ready to return to their classic villain roots, Scribe only cares because of Black, and while we don't know much of anything about Assassin, he doesn't seem to be much of a patriot to Black's cause either. Black has a lot of powerful, loyal friends who love him and follow him, but he's the only one that believes in his own cause. The reforms that built modern Praes? Come crashing down if he's not there. Malicia is specifically against a lot of the Greenskin reforms and wants them pulled back, because they give too much power to people she doesn't trust, because the only person she really trusted was Black. So honestly, yeah, as far as we all know, killing Black kind of defangs the entire Crusade because he's the only thing keeping a bunch of different pieces together.

But, more to the point, that doesn't matter, because whether we're talking about the Crusade vs. the Legions or the Crusade vs. the Villains, the fact remains that it should logically result in the Augur doing basically the same things.

You sure did; he literally spent half of Lest Dawn Fail monologuing about it.

This is the type of argument that seems like it makes sense for all of two seconds and then utterly falls apart, for a bunch of reasons.

1) It was outright noted that trying to overwhelm her with sheer number of assassins wasn't working.

2) This makes a huge amount of assumptions about the number of assassins Praes can just throw at Praes in the middle of a Crusade, particularly because those assassins would have to cross through Callow. Something important to remember? For anyone who's not Cat, getting from Praes to Procer takes literal months. Malicia cannot do something like that with anything close to ease and doing anything but having them wait and jump on random chances alerts Augur long ahead of time. Malicia also doesn't have endless assassins and her Assassin presumably left with Black. It also just kind of assumes that even after five years of shadow wars with Praes, no one has taken any measures against assassins. Recall also that Klaus is in a camp with a dozen heroes, too. Like you say it's thin but a workable excuse, but the mere idea of that being the case is utterly laughable. But, and this is the most important part--

3) None of that matters, because this entire argument hinges on something that's just not true--namely, the matter of time and of the Augur being too busy. This is the kind of thing that might seem like it could be the case, at times, because you might look at the big picture and go 'Oh, there are so many threats to Procer. Kairos and the Hierarch to the South, Black in the Vales, Callow, Malicia--so many plans in motion! She only has one set of eyes!'

Except basically nothing so far has happened simultaneously. There has not been any point in time where there would really need to be a judgment call or risk of looking the wrong way, because again, for everyone but Cat, travel is slow as shit. The Battle of the Camps was over something like a week before the Vales came to ahead. It has since been about two weeks to a month of everyone traveling with deliberate destinations in mind, with even Cat heading slowly towards Keter. Malicia has actively been working on this plan with the Dead King for six months or more.

A lot of things in the story can seem like they're happening at a brisk pace, because we read them from chapter to chapter and the time between gets dropped in a single bit of text. But the Crusade has been going on for two or three months now and every confrontation thus far has stretched out over at least a week. Augur having a limited number of foresight per day can work as a weakness in theory, absolutely, but absolutely nothing has happened even slightly simultaneously, so it doesn't actually work. The Augur could have one foresight a day and still be impossible to deal with even with that utterly ridiculous low-ball, simply because basically no one can move with enough speed to exploit that weakness in a meaningful way--because one thing happens and then two weeks later another thing happens and then a month later something else happens. This whole thing with Black invading Callow is stupid because it involves running off without supply lines into enemy territory for literal months, with no safe haven or path of retreat.

Keeping her too busy could work as an explanation, but only if the Augur wasn't given a minimum of a week, and sometimes literal months, between things actually happening. As is, that explanation just doesn't hold water.

 

Looking back, I phrased myself poorly. On mobile so hey maybe I won’t do better but fuck it.

I see Black’s decoy as being a fundamentally Story move. One with implications and utility for the battle, but it’s principally about the White and Black Knight facing off. Because of it, I believe it is a blind spot for the Augur barring specific circumstances. If Klaus asked her to look for Black’s schemes, she’d probably see the lake or something. The seer dispensing advice to a hero on how to kill his sworn enemy is definitely a thing she can and probably will do, but that’s a weapon with limited ammo and ergo must be used sparingly. On top of that, I think that the White Knight must be the one to ask her. Because story. Seriously Hanno, get a sit down already.

I wonder what the delay is between the order going out and Augur getting the omen. I also wish we saw the wording of some of her more targeted predictions, to see how specific she can get/how much legwork Cordelia and Klaus have to do on a regular basis. It could be an explanation for some things. But again, no matter what Klaus and Black should have at least mentioned her in those chapters.

 

New chapter's out. It's alright, but mostly more of the same; nobody really knows what's going on and it's all a mess, which actually caused a minor problem this time, though it didn't really amount to anything. The Skein is villainous Ratling Name, which is interesting, and we find out a bit more about them--simply put, they're like Hollows from Bleach, fueled by constant hunger and growing endlessly and through various, stronger forms. The Skein was one of their big dogs, from once upon a time, and is about sixty feet tall.

Interestingly, Thief can use Hide to evade his sight to some extent, though apparently with weird limits on it. I'm curious whether this is due to a power on Thief's end or a weakness on the Skein's; presumably, either Assassin's aspect differs in a major way or the Augur doesn't have this weakness, else Cordelia would be dead by now. It might be a villainous seer thing? Dunno, but Cat notes 'Prophecy by spun thread,' so eh.

Not much else to say, really, because they mostly just got lost this chapter. I feel like this plan is still kind of weak, if only just because, again, no one really knows what's going on, and frankly, they're being a little...I'm not sure if dismissive is the term, but thus far, everything they've done has just been to try and get past the Skein and that's leading them in such random, looping paths it's amazing it hasn't fallen apart yet, but more pressingly, they haven't really seemed to give much attention to the waiting issue of the Dread Empress they need to kill, who's been notified of that already. The simple fact that things have been working even this far is kind of reaching, honestly...

Most of that's supposition and the rest is false. For one thing, we literally have yet to see anyone have to go up to the Augur and request knowledge; she just goes up to people and tells them. Second of all, getting people in place for battle is, supposedly, the literal point of the Augur; Black's move was a trap to lead him in the wrong direction; Hanno already had the knowledge of how to win, he was just sent elsewhere. And, again, Black had been working on this specific plan for weeks or months.

 

Son of a bitch. Someone commented on the website and I literally facepalmed.

Guys.

Cat's going after a rat in a maze.

 

I have to wonder is that an intentional narrative on Errat's part or if they saw that comment and are now laughing hysterically.

 

Cat fights an elf. It goes poorly. This plan continues not to be great--like, there were multiple times they could have all just died right there and they're still just working on getting through the door to get to the guy that they hope they can beat so they can fight the person that they still don't have any real information on, much less an actual plan for taking down. Like, they don't even know the one Aspect Malicia has that we're aware of.

Still, elves are hardcore.

 

Actually...thinking about it, does anyone else feel like maybe something weird is going on right now? Like, the Skein was one thing, if he does have the villainous need to monologue--assuming that Thief can get in, reveal herself to him for the entire monologue, and then get out, keeping in mind that her hiding from him doesn't necessarily make getting out through displaced doors any easier, at least. The Thief of Stars? Maybe at least a little believable, since Eddie gave them a heads up, though I will note that until that point, the entire team had failed to even notice her. Making detailed plans regarding both of them, based on what little information they have, by successfully predicting the precise moves they'd make? A bit of a stretch, but let's put that aside for now.

But the only way they'd know about the Spellblade is if they'd already tried to enter the Palace, because he's hanging out in Arcadia--specifically, a part of Arcadia that's only accessible from a point within the Palace to begin with. So the only way they'd be able to make plans for him is if they'd already met him, the only way they could have met him is if they'd already successfully invaded, and yet the very process of getting to him alerts the Skein ahead of time and results in Malicia being ferried out of the Palace. How much of this has already happened, for them to even be able to plan for half of these things?

And given the sheer number of times Cat herself has gone 'This is a lame-ass plan; who wrote this shit?', what if they didn't write these plans, or at least not as willingly as they believe they did. Because even leaving aside Malicia's three Aspects, Cat mentioned something that seemed really out of context at the time, but thinking about it...

I have no idea whatsoever if this is even close to correct--but if it was, then damn, that'd be a hell of a twist.

 

At this point I'm wondering is there anything Thief can't steal? If she just went out onto a battlefield and started stuffing souls or hearts into her bag that could make for an awesome scene.

Reasonably though, I'm assuming that her stealing things like stars and souls would be an aspect level grab so she's limited.

Can anyone clarify the exact nature of Cat's role now? I know she's gone from Squire to Black Queen but BQ isn't so much as a role as a title because of winter shenanigans.

Is she just some brand new role being etched into creation for the first time? She doesn't have aspects anymore, right? Just winter powers that are eclectic and vague.

Also, a random thought struck me there. The role of Squire is open right now and there are two Knights on the field. It'd be a traditional narrative for Hanno to take a Squire and to die at the hands of the BK just for the Squire to become WK and shank BK.

 

Cat doesn't have an actual Name anymore. She's the Queen of Callow and Pseudo-Queen of Winter. That plus being the head of the Woe and formerly Named all gives her enough power and narrative weight where she's still part of the story and can fit in Roles, but apparently lacks a Name. This isn't unprecedented. In first Liesse when facing off against Chider, Cat mentions that Chider's fucked because she's standing in the way of Cat and her final face-off against her two rivals. Akua had stolen her Name, but Cat could had a Role in a story that basically guaranteed her victory against Chider.

Thinking about the crazy plan currently going on in Keter, one possibility (that I don't know if it will wind up being relevant) is that at some point the ridiculously overcomplicated schemes have to work. It'll require some very specific circumstances to work, but they still can. You have to establish the villain's scheming as a threat somehow; they can't all be bumblers. In this story, Marchford comes to mind.

- Chapter 32: Draw

Akua unleashed the demon and readied her army with the intention of forcing the Draw in their pattern of three, so she could save the win for the end when she needed it most. It worked, because the story conditions allowed it to. Akua fit the Role of schemer to a T, and with her Loss already spent on the Blessed Isle back in Book 1, she couldn't eat another L there. She had effectively used the story to guarantee her plan would succeed. Also helped that it was Villain vs. Villain, as we have in Keter.

That said, this overly complex plan was a subset in an even larger scheme that failed (securing the angel in Liesse), but only mostly failed given that she still got her minimum need of the Liesse governorship.

But part of the trope is that the plan will work as intended up until the climactic moment unless you're comic relief. That will carry the Woe further through this crazy complex plan, and as the predestined fail point is when they try to kill Malicia (because really, you think you can outscheme her?) unless Cat came up with some brilliant way to abuse story rules.

So the story lets her reach Malicia, but how she goes from there to a win I'm not so sure. Abandon the goal of killing her and instead negotiate? Have the scheme end upon reaching her and turn the act of killing into the standard improvised mess (something in Cat's wheelhouse, but I'm not sure if this would work)? Banish her into Arcadia as a minimum win of getting her out of Keter? Flat out fail? I dunno, but I'm guessing that's where this all leads, and more so why things have gone their way so far.

Also, does the end of that chapter mean Akua can open fairy gates? That's concerning.

 

I don't think Cat's Role is any singular thing. She still fulfills the role of the Squire by leading a band of villains. The fate of Callow has been tied to her ever since she's pulled the sword out of the stone. Most importantly, she's become the enemy of the Heavens by mugging the Choir of Contrition. If combined into one, it's eerily similar to a role of a Dread Empress: leading Named, ruling a country and aiming to overthrow the gods.

The last one's been brought up a lot recently, and for good reason. Being someone's enemy is a huge narrative boost. It's why Kairos betrayed both Black and the Bard and ultimately why he aligned himself with the Hierarch. If you declare yourself the enemy of the Gods and manage to actually hurt them - therefore establishing you really are an antagonist - the narrative laws will elevate your power, if only to make you a feasible threat.

 

Cat's plan continues to not go well--and remember, these are guys with only shadows of the power they had during life, which apparently allows them to just warp reality at their whim. Cat's plan to get at Malicia involved going through two guys like that, neither of which has gone very well so far, and they haven't even gotten to the part where they have to kill the Dread Empress yet. But she apparently has some plan here?

Honestly, I'm still just wondering where they're getting all the knowledge for this plan, though, since the Skein has now been written out; we don't know how Akua got this far into the palace, either, and we still don't know where Archer is, as she wasn't listened in any of the plans we heard about. How'd they get this much information then? Something else has to be at work here, just for them to have gotten even this far, particularly since it doesn't seem like they could have successfully scouted this out themselves, with the Spellblade and Skein kicking their asses so hard.

Unless something new comes into play--like this all having been some kind of subtle mindfuck from King Eddie--the only people who seem like they could have managed this are the Dead King and the Empress, but even then, I have no idea why they would or how.

It's weird. Interesting, but weird.

 

The only thing I can think of is that the dead king actually wants Cat to meet Malicia. Skein did as ordered, passed the info of the defences to thief. Thief then tells the woe who begin to plan around all the defences in place while knowing they're dealing with an Oracle. They then wipe their memories but follow the plans they created with the end goal of moving malicia out of the palace so that Hakram and Archer can kill or capture her.

Does the Dead king want to fully break the relationship between all the major villainous powers? Does he want to create a bigger target to keep the gods above pointed away from him? Fuck if I know at this point. This arc has been fun but my God is it confusing and filled with BS luck so far. If this isn't being pulled off in a suitably impressive bit of planning by one of the parties here, I'm going to be seriously let down.

As a plus though all of our elves being OP foreshadowing came through. If this is the Spellblade at a fraction of his strength then I'm suitably stoaked to meet a living one.

 

Also, random thought--I've gone into how power creep has been slowly effecting the series over the last two books or so before, what with us having gone from 'Yeah, Named are really tough, but a few hundred soldiers can still bring down the former Black Knight, one of the biggest dogs around' to the current 'Any Named worth a damn should be able to casually solo an entire army or what are they even doing?', and that's definitely still a major things now, but these last few chapters suddenly made me realize something I hadn't before. See, several books back, Cordelia commented on how Procer's disrespect for Callow's need for Named to run their country was silly, because unlike Procer, Callow had to deal with mad-men with city-destroying flying fortresses, and at the time, I was like, yeah, fair enough.

But at the time, when they said 'ratlings', I figured they meant smaller than human savages who happened to have large numbers, not these motherfuckers. The Horned Lords are all apparently sixty foot tall death machines, a mere shadow of whom is bouncing around three of the strongest guys to come out of Praes in centuries. They all apparently have 'Can eat anything, yes, including that' as an at-will power, too, and are each, individually, thought of as hardcore by Ranger. Even just the Ancient Ones are apparently thirty or forty foot nightmares. And Procer has dealt with raids and invasions from these guys regularly since before there was a Procer, or even a Praes.

How the fuck does that work? Even just a glimpse of a shadow of the Skein has put him firmly in the territory of one of the strongest villains we've ever seen, and there are more of these guys, all of them stronger then him, because they're the real deal. Hell, there's probably another actual Skein by now. This is the shit Procer has to deal with and they're impressed by what Praes throws out!? The Queen of Winter just threw her full domain at a weakened version of one of the Horned Lords and he ate it. You'd figure that after forty to sixty years of shit like this, when Klaus is faced with Praesi held battlements swarming with hostile mages and layers with traps, he'd just shrug and say 'It's not fucking ratlings though, right?'

This seems like another case of absurd off-screen competency by the Good team. Like, if I'm expected to believe that Lycaonese soldiers can deal with this shit, I have a really hard time buying that they have difficulties when they face normal soldiers. That whole thing where the Crusaders were routed by a bunch of heavily-armed eight foot tall Orcs? Get outta here with that weak-ass shit--you better be forty feet tall if you want to play with Hannoven.

Like, holy fucking shit, remember this paragraph? I feel like it has somewhat different implications now than it did before:

Shit like this is just something that happens in Northern Procer, apparently. How the hell do they not slaughter everything in their path if they can survive shit like this with their normal soldiers?

Like, goddamn, my Cardcaptor Sakura crossover where she holds off the Ratlings and Kingdom of the Dead in Northern Procer and that has trickle-down effects elsewhere still works, sure, but it got a lot crazier looking based on recent chapters, and the results a lot more absurd.

 

Think it has to do with rattling behaviour. I'm flipping back and forth between them being an ork WAAGH or a race needing to thin their population. Procer probably deals mostly with the regular ratlings which are smaller than humans with the occasional ancient one when they mean business. The horned lords are essentially your vasto lords going with the bleach analogy who have reached their pinnacle and mostly dont care anymore.

Also, this is the shadow of a Named Horned Lord which is an entirely new tier of bullshit power levels. We also aren't sure if he is capable of using his powers within a fight yet so who knows, this could be it going all out from the start. I doubt that because when has the story ever acted that way, but it's a thought.

And are we not going to comment that Cat turned her body to mist? We've gotten to the point where she is actively manipulating her physical form like an old school vamp here.

Invisible crossbow?