I can buy the Cat/Goddess parts fine; the entire pitch behind the priestess role was that she wouldn't put up with their shit but also advance their interests, act as an advocate while being a jester whispering "you are fallible" in their ear. She amuses them but they aren't threatened but her.

The terraform bit is dumb though

 

I liked the Drow's political speeches, Jindrich's was epic but as usual Rumena blew it away. It felt like a death flag for him though.

 

I am surprised no one here (cough, cough) has flipped his shit out at those convenient angelic dreams explaining how Cat's behavior during the suicide straw picking mess was kosher, so everyone on the Good camp is ok with her when she comes back. Talk about cheap cop out narrative devices...

On another subject, some Choir or another should get fucking BAFF Rozala a Name. Maybe she gets to be a claimant to SoS, now that it's free. And some other Procerans who had stood valiantly against the HH, for that matter, like the foppish dude who threw his cavalry down a precipice to impale a zombie dragon. The White Fop has a nice ring to it.

 

Seriously though, how does he not get a name for that. Oh hi there Vivienne, you stole a bunch from nobles who you hate? Have a name. William, you hate Praes and wanted revenge against them and pledged yourself to a choir? Have a name.

If the dude who rode a horse off a cliff to stab an undead dragon in the face and hold the line against the undead doesnt get a name, I will call bullshit.

 

Eh, it's pretty irrelevant since Pilgrim came back to life. Both because that resurrection overshadows the dreams as a thing to complain about, but also because you don't need to avert the consequences of someone's death when they're still alive. There's really nothing the dreams copped out on.

 

That is not supposed to make it better. In fact, it makes the angelic dreamspam even more absurd to be included in the story, since Tariq's resurrection is a much more sensible narrative device to mend the gap opened by Laurence's death.

A hero with the potential of hurting the DK died: that's a huge conflict to be resolved between opposing sides seeking an alliance. Both Cat and Tariq were aware and tried to avoid this at all costs, until they couldn't because the alternative was letting the Arcadia shard crush the armies. Resorting to Choir Night News to make a conflict set up along several chapters simply poof out of the narrative is the very definition of a cheap-ass Deus Ex Machina.

 

And once again I find the side stories to be far more interesting to follow than Cat's merry adventure. While not the best of the interludes, the political shenanigans of a coup against Hasenbach is proving fun to follow.

 

They're shorter which means that the plot actually has to move in them. Plus the characters are just more fun because they're not slaved to being Cat's kooky minions

 

While I actually enjoyed this whole thing with Cordelia a great deal, I have three continued complaints:

1) My boy Hanno continues to be cockblocked at every turn.

2) The list of plans the Bard made that failed utterly continues to grow, making her seem ever less threatening.

3) While at least there's an explanation for Cordy not having a Name, anyone without a Name continues to be irrelevant, including the whole of Procer.

 

I really liked the ending. The first part was so very tell instead of show, although granted I'm not sure on their ability to show good politicking

 

I think I've made it fairly readily apparent at every turn that I think the Accords are, in a word, dumb as fuck, and stuff like this isn't really helping since--beyond the hundred and one different reasons why it should logically fall apart to begin with--pretty much everyone involved fucking hates each other, is plotting against each other, and is constantly scheming to get an advantage, which is inherently an issue between any of these political groups, but becomes enormously, blatantly obvious whenever Team Evil is involved. We had a pretty fair amount of this recently with Cat making a ton of demands that the Good Nations, while politically forced to accept, inherently fucking loath, from forgiving Black for being a goddamn mass-murdering hobo bathing in Old Evil tactics like pillaging, burning, and slaughtering villages, as well as getting deep into preparing to throw out good faith and kill, scheme, and strongarm her way to her goals while criticizing any Good Nations that do the same--but we also have this degree of infighting and sabotage, because yeah, every Evil Nation involved here, including Cat, are untrustable, godless motherfuckers.

Cat is knee-deep in preparing to backstab and murder anyone in her way, Black would happily do everything he did before all over again, Scribe is flat-out prepared to risk the survival of this whole Alliance (and probably half the continent along with it*) to put Black on the Throne she thinks he belongs in, the drow still think murder, violence, and betrayal are sacred, the Tyrant is going to betray everyone involved the first chance he gets and literally everyone knows it, and the Hierarch obeys a series of rules and laws that are nightmarish when they suddenly start happening to you.

And we're expected to believe the Accords are going to last more than five seconds past the point where anyone involved can help it, because...?

*Friendly reminder that, whether Scribe has control of the Eyes of the Empire or not, in literally any universe where Cordelia isn't the stone-cold, cast-iron Queen Bitch of Procer who'd rather jump out of a window, break her leg, and risk her survival on the honor of some random Alamans rather than be captured by some punk-ass motherfucker, the Alliance immediately evaporates and Procer's ability to wage war promptly crumbles as it's plunged into a Civil War, because the North that's been bleeding to death for the rest of the nation just saw their Queen usurped during war with the Dead King, and that shit's just gonna get worse and worse the more heroes get involved. Like, this plan was donkey fuck insane to begin with, but you've gotta realize, both the Pilgrim and the White Knight are now in Salia.

Speaking of which, the plan is now to keep what's really going on secret from two people who can't be lied to and someone who can see the future, all of whom are behind Cordelia right now, which, uh, um, guys? I know heroes are utterly worthless and will never accomplish anything in this story, much less against Cat and Black, but you guys should still think this is a bad idea.

 

Are we still trying to pretend you care? Akua has been your go too girl for everything in the last hundred chapters.

Also, no, Ratface is long since forgotten. It took, like, fifty chapters after his death to get a any actual emotion about it.

Since fucking when? Yes, I'm still on this.

Hey, maybe it'll even amount to something, finally.

...Haaaaa.

Even acknowledging the risks, keeping these secrets when the Heroes are in town should be a terrible idea, but probably won't be. Anyway, my boy Hanno's back, so that's nice. I'll admit, I have a guilty love for heroes and villains just, like, walking into each other around the town and only realizing it after awhile, so I'm interested in this.

 

While it's understandable for any sovereign power to want to avoid giving up the right to judge it's own citizens, I think it's notable that while she only touches upon it lightly, Cat says this with full knowledge that part of this is because a lot of people on her team don't deserve to live.

Case in point. And the funny thing is, you kind of have to sit down and think about this bafflingly horrible logic, as Cat says Black is 'the man who’d stood between Praes and its worst impulses for decades, and perhaps the monster needed to reform the Dread Empire into a nation that wouldn’t vomit its poison over the rest of Calernia every few decades,' somehow forgetting that 1) Black has been the executor of said impulses upon Callow for that entire time and was the only reason Praes successfully accomplished anything, after a run of fifty consecutive losses. Yet we're somehow supposed to accept that things would be worse without him?

Cat, your mentor has butchered his way across half the fucking continent. Forty years ago, Praes couldn't make it across the fucking fields.

Also, I feel like, first of all, a bunch of shit is being forgotten here, including the ability of Mage Named to snap their fingers and blow up cities, the difficulty most groups have in gathering information, the fact that Named arise from specific societal circumstances, and, you know, fucking history. In case anyone forgot--because apparently everyone fucking forgot--assholes causing trouble like this boils down to Praes and Helike for the most part*, the former of whom went through over a thousand years of devastating, humiliating, colossal failures, being crushed by Callow pretty much every time they interacted and mostly resorting to staving off starvation by dying en masse on Callowan swords. The latter? Is literally built upon the story of invading the rest of the continent anyway.

Historically speaking, shit like this has already happened, and it didn't change anything.

*And now maybe the drow, but keep in mind--basically no one can do anything about the drow. Cat talks big, but she has an opinion because the goddesses that made her their bitch allow it.

 

Is it just me or is there a romance story being angled at Hanno and Cat here. Mutual respect and curiosity and a call for a secret frowned upon meeting after hours. White Knight, Black Queen.

EE wouldn't be that blatant, right? Right?

 

I feel like something is afoot as well.

 

So I've been quiet for awhile, but in my defense, the story has been dumb for awhile. I thought of replying to the last chapter and even did, elsewhere, but someone reminded me that I technically shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch--the trial wasn't over, so I shouldn't go casting judgement on it, even if the series has reached the point where the most surprising thing it could possibly do is literally anything that actually does surprise me. Still, for reference, I said this:

And I'm sticking to that shit all the way, not that we got the follow up, because good God, wouldn't you know it; here I am, the same was as every other time it does this shit. In a lot of ways, this chapter fell flat because it feels unearned--Kairos gets to have a death scene instead of an immediate execution, for story reasons that, like every other attempt at story logic in this story, are hot fucking garbage because it sure didn't work that way a bunch of other times. That's not the part I take issue with, though, because if there was any case where the rules should logically bend, yeah, fair enough, the Gods Below could just be repping for their boy.

The problem is Anaxares, who's utter trash throughout all of this, because he hasn't earn jack fucking shit. Like, you have to realize and understand that he's barely been in this story since he became the Hierarch and he's done basically nothing. Just to start with, he's got no weight to him, in or out of story, no real narrative or build-up, it's just stated that because he's insane and certain in his beliefs, he's betterer and the strongest 5ever. So strong that he can just shows up to this farce, pronounces a one-sided judgement, and oh lawdy, he's a match for an entire fucking Choir. Because he just is.

And that's not even the worst of it, because then you stumble right into an even bigger pile of horseshit, whereupon you find out what this has all been leading up to--Kairos making the Hierarch, the trial plotline, everything involving the Free Cities and Hanno both, etc. See, he's going to spontaneously transcend and become an Angel of Judgment.

Yeah.

Hearing it out of context like that, you might wonder 'Wait, what? How?', but you see, logic is for losers. There's explanation given, he just spontaneously transcends. You might go '...So he had an Aspect for that?' and no, not at all; we see all three of his Aspects here, as it happens, and they're Mend, Receive, and Indict. He's not a mage, as it happens, and his powers are accounted for. He hasn't done much of anything at all, aside for try and kill peasants and stuff, as it happens. He's Hierarch by a technicality, even, especially as the Free Cities are flat-out abandoning the Tyrant right now. And so you have to wonder, how the fuck is he doing this?

Now, I know, I know. This might seem silly mind you, and I understand why--we're all used to villains in this story just being able to whip out their dicks, piss a message in the metaphorical snow, and have the world go along with it. This is just a continuation of an ongoing trend. I get it! But let's pretend this world made a goddamn lick of sense for a moment and think about this.

The Hierarch, a villain, just made himself into one of the most powerful Angels, by virtue of just fucking feeling like it, I guess, and apparently none of these angels could do anything about it and just have to put up with it. Anaxares, a mass murderer who cares nothing for any laws or circumstances but what he deems acceptable and who's flat-out threatened to kill all the Seraphim, who has no Aspects that facilitate this and no magical background, just decided to invite himself into Heaven, fuck you if you don't like it. He just went 'I'mma be an angel now, broseph,' and lo, he fucking was. And no heroes could do anything about it. No Angels could do anything about it, not even as a whole Choir. The Hashmalim, I assume, couldn't do anything about it. The Cherubim, stronger than the Hashmalim by far, as well as the Ophanim--they can't do anything about it. Nope, he can just do this, because he felt like it.

And I guess I'm supposed to be impressed at this wet, dripping shit that got pulled out of someone's ass and held out to me, with no backing or basis, by a guy who's barely been in the story so far--but no, see, he's hot-shit, he is, because reasons, and it's a big deal and stuff, yeah, sure, of course.

Fucking Christ.

 

Oh come on @Ryuugi Shi. Aren't you being a little... Judgemental?

 

The sooner the Hierarch's removal from the story the better.

 

But then this whole section would be... Plotless.