Chapter 4: Page 35
HEY! I know I sound like a broken record by this point, but if you haven’t voted in this year’s Ringo Awards, please consider casting your ballot for Beyond the Western Deep in the “Best Webcomic” category (and any other categories you think fit)!
https://ringoawards.survey.fm/ringo-awards-2021-nominations
Obviously we don’t produce new Western Deep pages to get awards, but these kinds of things are fantastic ways to help us expand our readership and introduce even more new people to the comic who wouldn’t have otherwise discovered it.
Oh hey! Looks like Bevan is being tossed around like a sack of potatoes again! It’s been a little while, so for folks who can’t remember what Bevan was referring to in the earlier scene regarding Dakkan having “one hell of a swing” it was this moment:
In that instance, Bevan try to roll a sweet persuasion check and landed on… 1. Yeah, Dakkan wasn’t having it. This time it would seem Bevan rolled an acrobatics check to avoid Rathik’s retaliatory throw and… yup, that’s a 1 again. Darnit, Bevan!
If you haven’t followed us on the official Western Deep Twitter page, it’s a great spot to get updates from us during the week in between pages–which is admittedly a bit rare in these post-Kickstarter months as we hunker down on new projects and keeping the pages flowing–but it’s still a great way to get in touch with us, share artwork, and all that good stuff!
You can follow us right here! https://twitter.com/TheWesternDeep
Please don’t die, Rathik. At least not like this. :(
That guy had it coming… happens if one is rage-driven.
The Canid are just watching the show at this point…
On the previous page, Bevan was playing an assassin. And now he’s learning to fly like a Superman! (Or, mayhaps, Superweasel).
Rathik nooo …. I look at him in the 3rd and 4th panels and my heart is breaking. Don’t kill my boy, he’ll change. After all, everyone deserved a hit.
Lol, In 3rd panel, Rathik looks in this dramatic pose, so poor and so hurt and well, already losing strenght and start dying – that he remind me with this, some one great death aria from some opera, where main character dying after duel I guess. But for now I cannot remind, what was the name of this opera. Anyway I fell so sorry for him. Poor Rathik. And I don’t need to say that Bevan didn’t learn nothing new since last hurt lesson, during Deltrada battle lol.
Sometimes a character can be both sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. Poor Rathik. He clearly brought this on himself and didn’t think the situation through at all, but it looks like he sincerely felt he was doing the right thing. But it looks like the blood loss is catching up to him now. And now the group has two fewer ermehn than it started with. (And half a crossbow.)
I feel the same. He was kinda dumb, but I didn’t want him to be stabbed to death by his fellow rebels.
He may have rationalized why doing whatever he wanted was a good thing, most terrible people do that. He also committed murder because he was in a bad mood. His actions weren’t thought through because he’s rationalizing after the fact.
Hardin commits murder every now and then as “diplomacy” thing, tricks Ermehn into believing his cause and sends them to death, not even considering an alternative. Rathik is right about Hardin, though I don’t know if murder is the best option. Hardin won’t change, he proved it in garrison battle. I cannot imagine a worse leader than Hardin at this point.
I think the most tragic part of this event is that neither Hardin or Rathik communicated what they saw as the worthy way to tell the Ermenh story. And the levels they were thinking were very different.
To Rathik, they need to bring glory through sword and blade. To force others to see Ermehn as worthy again. Not just to avenge his ancestor, but to also prove superiority.
To Hardin, this is bigger than the fight, bigger than the Ermehn. If nothing else, they have to leave something behind to tell their story. To be remembered in their own words.
What Hardin sees as a failsafe, Rathik sees as betrayal. What Rathik sees as right, Hardin sees as small-minded.
“I did this for us.” YEAH, EVERY “martyr” says that.