Girl Genius

The Master was allies with Andronicus back in the day, right? It'll be interesting to see them meet, whether the Master will try to talk him down, and whether Andronicus sees him as trustworthy.

(Talking about The Master is throwing me off. But saying "Voltaire" would be just as confusing.)

You may call him Simon, since that's his first name.

After all, in Paris, when he says something, you'd better do it.

But how much has the Master changed since those days?

I'm pretty sure that no one is going to be happy about the investigation into where the &$$@*#¥£ the other messages got to or why they weren't passed on promptly.

If some just stuck them in his inbox as routine matters, heads are gonna roll. And maybe be put in jars.

By the way, that is a TERRIBLE pun.

edited 7th Dec '16 4:19:18 PM by Candi

No, someone's issuing "stand down" orders to the city troops in the Master's name. This was deliberate. I do wonder why this particular message managed to get through, unless they're setting up a trap for him.

If the Library is capable of delaying Andronicus, my respect for them just went way up. And my respect for them was pretty high already.

The real concern is the missing messages that never made it to The Master. We have a high ranking traitor, or should I say wasped turncoat? After all, if I was trying to take over a city under the thumb of a benign dictator and had a way to force the loyalty of his inner circle, that's an obvious first step.

I'm guessing that Agatha's movements have upset the routine subversion of the Master's government.

Let's not forget that in Othar's alternate twitter future, Europa got nuked.

Completely depopulated, which is not the same thing as nuked; Paris was evidently the site of some sort of desperate last stand. It is interesting to wonder if that is what the Other is planning to do this time around.

Eh, I was erring on the side of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

Routine bureaucracy can be in place of stupidity. (See Time Crime, H. Beam Piper, the initial interdimensional slave ring report.)

Which stupidity/etc. doesn't really hurt things when life is normal, but when the cowpie hits the fan, it can turn into a heck of a roadblock, even without subversive help.

Well, in this case we already know that the villains have successfully wasped Parisians, and have successfully subverted some of the defenses (so the Geisters get seen as kids), so it's pretty likely they also wasped a few in the chain of command. It's just unsure whether they wasped enough / the right ones to take out the Master (I'd bet they didn't).

Is it possible that the traitor is that multiple-robot-bodies guy? He claimed that he was going to inform the master immediately ("consider him informed"), and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to use him to relay several more messages since he has a direct line to anywhere his other bodies are, of which one is probably near the mater.

Some stuff like biological constructs were basically unwaspable until the spark option which was made and used on Klaus; but as I'm guessing biological constructs are tailor made and therefore a pain to get a wasp tailor made for each option.

I'm putting the cookie chip onto bureaucracy and that the Master of Paris has a bit of the Ridcully approach to routine paperwork.

The Master's been ruling Paris for so long, I figure he knows how to keep communication clear, prompt, and efficient. So him not hearing multiple high-priority messages seems like a big deal. I'm also assuming it's a highly-placed traitor, possibly wasped.

Nomophilos: It was Agatha and the mini-Castle who changed the settings on the Child-Catchers.

The entire system sees frolicking children. All DK-bot did was alert the child-catchers.

Shoot, you're right. I don't know how I missed that.

The Master is not going to be happy.

I wonder if the Master has the same problem that Klaus and Gil have had -their subordinates have their big fancy hats, but constantly bug the boss instead of using the brains under them.

He was certainly angry that he had to get personally involved in Du Quay's take-over attempt.

Thing is that the number of efficient underlings is not high so I can picture the whole part that in a neutral situation the Master of Paris and Klaus were able to drink a few and bemoan the lack of brains in their administrations.

Klaus did mention that he would like to have time for research and considering the size and issues he had to deal at the time he only had a handful of intelligent minions under the big fancy hats who weren't so keen on the hats. As Gil pointed out "you didn't seem convinced by the hat so once I'm back in position I'll upgrade you from your station."

Comic for Friday, December 9, 2016: sneaky gate permalink

Moxana points for Brickman! Well scoped that man. And now Beaulesoil is a dead construct.

Well, that particular Beausoleil at least.

I assume he's working for the Other, but it would be amusing if it turned out he wasn't.

And if the Master is really smart, he won't destroy this clank, but try and use it to learn more about what's going on and who he is up against.

edited 8th Dec '16 9:37:12 PM by Geoduck

A tangent for y'all, brought to you by the loathesome Gilgamesh in the anime Fate/Zero:

Theory: Despite his name, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is actually the Enkidu to Tarvek's overcivilised prince. Discuss.