Alice Grove: A new webcomic by Jeph Jacques of QC

What exact trope is in play here? It doesn't really fit Geas or Restraining Bolt, but it feels like something related.

Henchmen Race or Servant Race, mostly. (I must say that I don't see much difference between those two.) The enforcement method is hard-coded Emotion Control.

edited 28th May '17 3:25:04 PM by Spindriver

I believe the Henchmen Race is the combat equivalent of Servant Race.

So the difference lies in the precise degree to which your underlings are prepared to take a swing at your enemies?

Let's face it, "henchmen" is just a sneery word for "servants". It's no biggie, but there are better-distinguished pairs of tropes.

Hey look, motivation.

This guy is getting more sympathetic, although it kind of gets into the traditional argument of whether a simpler life is better.

Given his casual attitude to, you know, murder, I'm not going to sympathetic. But I'll give him "interestingly motivated".

I believe Visionary Villain with a side of Well-Intentioned Extremist covers this.

Splashed with a little Jerkass Has a Point as well. If Ardent's people could help instead of sitting in space scratching their dicks, why aren't they?

I hope he gets an answer to that question. Before Alice crushes his skull between her hands.

Hello Laridia, and Goodbye Chapter 6.

Jeph's comment about the end in sight makes me a little sad...I was hoping this comic would last for a good long while.

Same here.

We start chapter 7 with a little Q&A.

So the only one they consider "safe" is steam punk Lex Luthor?

Didn't they SEND HIM DOWN? And then Gavia too?

Apparently not?

It's been the assumption that they let Ardent and Gavia think they hacked them because they wanted to achieve their own goals.

But that question implies that they didn't allow it, and that they have no idea how it happened.

Which means either the both of them are Idiot Savants of the highest order, or there's an unidentified third party. Probably the second, since how did Ardent get his nanomachines in the first place?

Alice assumed that the Praeses set things up out of malice. But that always looked like jumping to conclusions; her ideas about their motives and plans were rather thin.

And their caution is about direct physical threats. Steampunk Lex Luthor might have the deviousness and ingenuity to threaten them - he seems to think so - but they're old and powerful, and his cunning plan seems to have a large chunk of "now I improvise something incredibly clever" at this point.

Yeah. Without Church, I don't see what kind of threat Jasper could be.

He's ruthless, opportunistic, and apparently quite smart; it's possible that he'd become a real Outside-Context Problem for them. But he could just turn out to be a petty, overconfident nuisance. It all depends on a lot of stuff that we readers just don't know; basically, what resources he could identify in their blind spot. (They have just shown that they have a blind spot.)

edited 26th Jun '17 3:12:15 AM by Spindriver

What if there are factions among the Praeses and one of those engineered Ardent and Gavia's departure? Both Alice and the spokesthing act as if the Praeses always act in unison but I'm betting not.

He may drive doubts into some of the spacers in their care, but to praeses themselves he is but a nuisance.

Well that's a thing...

edited 2nd Jul '17 5:37:18 PM by BaronPraxis

You know, I was wondering if everyone inside the Praeses was hooked up to them Matrix-style or something.

....I wasn't expecting anything quite like that, though.

And it looks like this is news to Ardent and Gavia.

Wait this explains why nobody in space seems to give a shit about Earth or know anything about it.

The universes or whatever they are inside the Praeses don't have Earth, so nobody can look down and go "huh. I wonder what it's like down there".

Not to mention that leaving these universes seems to be something that the Praeses aren't sure of how to do? So there's no chance of it happening on accident.

Except that it did so hmmmm.