Chapter 17 Page 6
April 18th, 2018Hello Mother; Hello Father! Here I am at Fort Belfroi! Alays writes a letter, but it’s not to her parents… She’s a long way from serving punch at the Harp & Trumpet.
The wilderness of northeastern Everique is breathtaking (just like the Adirondacks of upstate New York which this is modeled after). See for yourself when you vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics!
The camp is very entertaining! And madame Marshal d’Emperset says we’ll have some fun when it starts raining bullets.
“Hello, whoever will intercept this message. All of our military is concentrated in this one point at the moment. What could possibly go wrong?”
Hmm… what indeed…
… we number less than 4000, and this is what our commanders look like, you should have no problem identifying them.
My thoughts exactly. Even though this seems far fetched and an egregious military faux pas to great to be plausible remember the US Northern army of aggression actually found General Lee’s Special Order No. 191, the battle plans for Antietam in a field wrapped around cigars. Life is stranger than fiction.
These sort of letters were incredibly commonplace in 18th-century warfare. After every battle, there was a flurry of missives sent out in all directions. These letters were to demonstrate the officer’s competence, give reports to superiors, cover your ass when things went wrong, blame your rivals, or even reassure families. That’s how we know so much about battles from this time period.
You mean the northern army fighting against the army of the slave owners treason.
I’m not sure how serious you were in your phrasing, but I do like to mention this more honest characterization when that slur against the anti-slavery side is mentioned.
BTW this is an interesting analysis of 2+ centuries of US politics.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.ca/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html
All right. Please no more on the Civil War topic. I deliberately chose not to write a comic set in that era to avoid these discussions. Our focus here is fantasy pre-Revolutionary War North America.
Please note that Alays is writing this report while in the fort, surrounded by thousands of troops. She’s intending to send the letter after the battle as a report to Vivienne.
She may also use it as a way to prove that she is worth ransoming if the fort falls. “Look! I serve someone important! She’ll pay you to return me whole and unharmed!”
Perhaps this all part of Vivienne’s cunning plan and she wants this information to fall into enemy hands. I seem to remember Lord Veterinari saying that you need to know what the enemy knows about you if you are to predict what he is going to do next. It made sense when he said it.
Allo, ma mère! Allo, ma père! Je suis arrivée au Camp Belfroi!
(be glad I didn’t stoop to saying j’ai arrivée)
Why be glad you didn’t put it that way? Is it simply ungrammatical, or is “arrive” liable to the same double entendre in French as in English?
It’s Québécois slang. “It’s ungrammatical” Yeah, and when has that stopped slang before?
ah crap, now Alays has Allan Sherman’s voice. Thanks, Eric.
Oh God no! She sounds like Audrey Tautou from Amélie.
Bonjour, Alays! Looking genuinely snappy in that uniform. Stay safe, hon!
Something that I continue to love in this comic, Eric, is your inclusion of women background characters as soldiers, sailors, and camp-workers–places where women aren’t traditionally found in period storytelling. I liked seeing them in both Viv’s cavalry and in the Morantine cannonade during the Vineyard Hill vignette. And the militiawoman by Ald in panel five is an effective touch as well. Thank you for this!
Aw! Thank you! A lot of that is the work of Julian, the artist. I’ve encouraged him to include men and women in the background of all walks of life. He took the idea to heart!
When you’re doing a historical comic, you have to face a lot of -isms. Sexism, racism, colonialism, classism, etc. Which -isms do you want to stress or downplay? I picked classism and colonialism as the focus of this story and minimized sexism. Racism is still there, but it’s more a subset of colonialism in this story.
Hurrah! Ald is back. The only honest man in the story. And he’s on the take.
If I have it straight the Liranequois are equivalent to the Iroquois & the Elakanois are equivalent to the Algonquin or maybe the Huron. That makes the native/settler alliances equivalent to real history.
You have it straight! Good eye! The Elakanois are based on the Huron. Loosely. It is a fantasy story.