2008-01-23 "So fine...I'll be you damn weapon."

[Graybeard]

You know, I'm getting a queasy feeling that the story may be about to jump the shark here.

Anita's vendetta against the Gewehr makes a measure of sense. They are competitors for business, in addition to being a personal affront. Furthermore, they are a problem of manageable size, one that the Ensigerum has every prospect of "solving" successfully, and one that Veracian society in general won't object to the Ensigerum solving. I mean, who really likes having a nest of mercenaries in their midst? At least mercenaries who aren't on your side, and have "invaded" (to be blunt) from a neighboring country you're not particularly fond of?

But going after the elves ... whoa. A smart leader (and Anita is smart, if not necessarily wise...) does not take on an adversary of unknown but possibly overwhelming power without a very good reason, and 2000-year-old racial animosities are not a very good reason. They may be a good reason, from the belligerents' point of view -- real-life wars are fought over such things -- but not a very good reason sufficient to risk one's own annihilation. Even the idiots who ran Japan in the 1930s, and made exactly the same mistake in assessing the US, never intended conquest of the US, let alone its destruction; they weren't that stupid. (Australia, well, maybe ... but the Japanese also had a pretty good idea what Australia was militarily capable of, which at that time, was not much.) And idiots or not, the Japanese generals knew a lot more about American capabilities than Anita knows about elven ones. She can't have better than an order-of-magnitude estimate of the real elven strength. The elves and Ensigerum can't be interacting much at present; if they were, the elves would know more about them, and rather than contemptuously dismissing them, would be taking a more ... active ... posture. Yet she must know that the elven strength isn't trivial; for one thing, the Sarine/Warrel fight says they're not easy targets, and for another, they've succeeded in holding the elven homelands for a very long time. So we're in a situation where she doesn't know how powerful they are, but the lower bound on that power still is "very powerful compared to us." No intelligent leader starts a war of annihilation under those conditions.

So I'm worried about the credibility of the plot now. This isn't a physics/catgirl-killing worry, but something more fundamental: is the plot about to start moving so fast that it no longer makes sense? Say it ain't so, Poe.

[DarkIntruder]

I was thinking the same thing in the back of my head. Why would Anita risk open war with a race that outnumbers her organization and are at least semi-capable of putting up a significant fight. Remember, like Jon, may be the exception rather then the norm in terms of skill.

The only thing I can think of is that there must be an ulterior motive to Anita's reasoning. Something we haven't had any glimpse of yet. An elf killed her father, and raped her mother, or something like that, except that Poe is far to allergic to cheesieness and cliché for that. Just an example on my part.

We'll just have to trust him.

[Lindley]

Typo sort->short. There were a few others when I first saw the comic, but I assume they've been fixed because I can't find them now.

[Pillaroforder]

Maybe Anita is trying to use Ian as proxy, without direct Ensigerum involvement. This way, even if the plan fails, the elves won't have anyone else to blame but an errant (Ian). Meanwhile the Ensigerum stay nicely in the shadows, where they allways lurked and did their thing.

[Neko7]

Maybe Anita is trying to use Ian as proxy, without direct Ensigerum involvement. This way, even if the plan fails, the elves won't have anyone else to blame but an errant (Ian). Meanwhile the Ensigerum stay nicely in the shadows, where they allways lurked and did their thing.

That's what I was thinking too, actualy.

As for having a reason:

http://www.errantstory.com/comic.php?date=2007-03-19
http://www.errantstory.com/comic.php?date=2007-03-21
http://www.errantstory.com/comic.php?date=2007-03-23

May be a certain paranoia convinced her that the elf are partly behind those thing too.

[Imp-Chan]

The Elves are currently the biggest power to be feared in the world, despite Tsuiraku's magical prowess. Anita is ambitious. The Elves appear to be moving, Anita wants a spotlight, taking out the Elves (using Ian) would seem a natural stepping-stone to world power.

It is entirely possible that capturing Ian was a bonus that let her think of that plan at all, and that she'd never even attempt something so direct without him. However, once the opportunity presented...

^-^'

[Shteven]

I think the world power is more likely, also. While what Anita said may have just been a sales pitch, when she said "Not just this village, but all humans everywhere" it seems like she's planning something much more massive. I'm not sure exactly how she'd get other countries to work with her, but it seems like she's picturing a more global humans vs elves war here. And since half elves are basically shunned by elves anyways, it seems natural she'll be able to get them on her side. Bonus points if one of them happens to have god-like powers.

Of course, that may make it a bit harder to convince the country said half elf just nearly leveled, but well, that's her problem

The Ensigerum in this case could be a smaller, elite fighting force. They wouldn't be seen as the main opponents, wouldn't have to take the brunt of elven attacks, etc. She wishes to direct the other world powers to fight her war for her, and then be in place to pick up the power at the end. Of course, I think her plan has a rather poor chance of working as planned, but that's at least what the plan looks like to me.

[normalphil]

I'm with Impy. That Anita has a literally bottomless ambition has been set up, even limitted to her attempts to 'sound out' Paul. A throw-away line to Jeramel even hints at some serious plastered-over cracks in the childhood psychological foundations.

Enter Ian, the power to kill Luminosita. He's in play. There is no altering that fact. Before, Anita was looking to establish a shadow-empire like out of the elven conspiracy theories, and was serious about suppressing everyone competing for that niche. Now a means to go about things more satisfyingly has dropped in her lap and the little orphan girl that looked up at the temple of Luminosita in Emrylon and swore to herself one day she'd be sitting behind the Big Desk there is going for it.

It isn't as half-baked as it could be; Ian is a weapon that has total deniability, and he was going after the elves anyway for internally consistant reasons of his own already. Also, Ian is a quasi-sane dangerous godling, and a good way to deal with that is to throw him at the Elves and see if they're up to the task of killing him. If they can, good- all the better if he knocks them a few more steps towards oblivion in the process. If they can't, good thing she didn't piss him off and set herself up as a committed ally working out of pan-racial alturism.

[Viking-Sensei]

Please forgive the absence of spell-checking on this...

My theory is that Anita was initially setting up the Veraticans to go up against the Elves... thus her decision to pay an up-close-and-personal visit to the Patriarch and her suddenly playing the politics much closer to the vest than ever before. Veratica weilded the power of Luminosita, who was already proven at least semi-effective against the elves once before, and they'd lost a considerable chunk of their territory and reputation after they lost face (and Ferral) to Tsuiraku, probably during those Priest/Mage wars that have been aluded to. By pitting Veratica against the elves, she stood to destabilize two of the major powers in the region, making her conquest that much easier.

The Wraiths probably had to be taken out not so much as competition but as an unknown element that stood between the two factions. The elves would never resort to outside human help, however Ferrel and Tsuiraku both would be uneasy about a large-scale Veratican military application, even if it wasn't specifically aimed at them, and might employ the Wraiths for all sorts of useful purposes.

Then enter Ian... Ian, who smacks Luminosita silly with one little disspell spell. Ian, the half-elf, who is antagonistic against the elves and is already looking for them on his own for god-knows-what reasons. Ian, who already did Anita's work for her and destablizied Veratica (by blowing up a large chunk of their capital and destroyingh their god, no less). Ian, who is pantless and needs a friend.

[Boss Out of Town]

You know, I'm getting a queasy feeling that the story may be about to jump the shark here.

But going after the elves ... whoa. A smart leader (and Anita is smart, if not necessarily wise...) does not take on an adversary of unknown but possibly overwhelming power without a very good reason, and 2000-year-old racial animosities are not a very good reason. They may be a good reason, from the belligerents' point of view -- real-life wars are fought over such things -- but not a very good reason sufficient to risk one's own annihilation. Even the idiots who ran Japan in the 1930s, and made exactly the same mistake in assessing the US, never intended conquest of the US, let alone its destruction; they weren't that stupid. . . . No intelligent leader starts a war of annihilation under those conditions.

So I'm worried about the credibility of the plot now. This isn't a physics/catgirl-killing worry, but something more fundamental: is the plot about to start moving so fast that it no longer makes sense? Say it ain't so, Poe.

As long as Anita more or less believes what she said to Ian, everything she does might make perfect sense . . . to her. One of the flaws in Western--and particularly American--diplomacy over the last century or so has been the assumption that people are ultimately reasonable, as we define it, and eventually they will make sensible decisions--per our notions of sensibility. That isn't the way human minds work. There's nothing in how Elves treat humans to suggest that they will never eventually get around to conquering the world. If and when they do, they will do so for reasons that make perfect sense--to them. Anita has dedicated her life and made a lot of sacrifices to build up the ensirgum. Whatever we may think of her, she probably has long seen the Elves as competition to be eventually overthrown. Ian is her best chance for the monks to accomplish that goal in her lifetime. From her point of view, this is a sensible decision.

In 1935, after a series of military disasters, the Chinese Red Army was a collection of about 7000 impoverished soldiers hiding in a wilderness backwater province of a three thousand year old nation of 500,000,000 people, hated around the world, being hunted down by a government actively supported by all the world's great nations. Twenty years later, they ruled China, had secured their borders against one of the two world superpowers and fought the other to a standstill in Korea--in spite of both superpowers having weapons that could annihilate entire cities and poison entire provinces. Mao Tse Tung was seen (correctly) in 1935 as a fanatical, bloody-minded peasant sociopath and very few people thought his ambitions at all rational. They made sense to him, though, which is what counted. The "reasonable" people in and out of China underestimated him constantly, and he won and they lost.