OOPs #373
Oct29
All right, looks like everything’s up and working! I’ve been sitting on this site redesign too long, and just needed a couple days to get everything remade. And in a strange bit of good (?) timing, my Wacom tablet died a few days ago, which I assumed was the universe’s way of telling me to get off my ass and update the site already. Thankfully Wacom made a speedy repair and delivery back, so I’ve already sketched up the first few panels of the next OOPs page.
And a special shoutout to Xandispin, who first suggested a site update several months ago, then set up this snazzy new WordPress layout for me to customize (which I then sat on until this past week). Thanks man; it took me long enough to get around to it, but without you the site would still be looking like something from the early 2000’s!
Seriously, I was manually creating pages and re-entering every altered link when there was a new page, using a long-defunct version of Dreamweaver 2001. That gets tiring real quick.
Anyway! There’s some new stuff in the Art & Extras section now as well, which you might not have seen if you don’t frequent Deviantart and such.
The fact that the yinglet child getting physically taken from vizlet is at most only mentioned by her in the text as her being “punished” is interesting.
Well, she did say “…ze females… longtime friends, sisters… all sent away” on the previous page.
That DOES appear to be a female Younglet, given the little poof they have.
Yeah, I noticed that too.
So… all because of the rivalry between the House Ivenmoth and the yinglets.
Wait a minute. Vizlet had asked Beizel and Kattajak to tell their subordinates to not take orders from Narklet… was that order completely pointless?
I think the local Yinglet population—or at least a large contingent of it—are still loyal to her. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the younger males know nothing of this power structure that exists behind closed doors. But Narklet has the backing of the central enclaves. If she pushes too much he may dispense with all pretensions of who’s in charge and pull rank on her, or even call in the central enclaves.
Ouch 🙁
I doubt Narklet and the Central Enclaves were too explicitly public about the shakeup in leadership, because if that were the case they’d have just deposed Vizlet and saved the effort. It’s probably just Vizlet and the Patriarchs who are keenly aware, and maybe some of the smarter yinglets. It’s also hard to tell how much of this was explicit, overt punishment and how much was more subtle threats and the central enclaves exerting standard practices but just more heavy-handed than usual as vague punishment.
I’m curious if potentially the area around Val Salia is particularly rich in antiquities, and/or this enclave is particularly good at finding things and/or Vizlet is an extremely capable administrator and leader and they don’t want to waste her talents if they can keep her in line.
…
i am…
speechles
What could dese antikwitys be?
This story feels a bit fishy to me, and not because I think Vizlet is lying.
If antiquities gathering is so incredibly important to the Central Enclaves that Vizlet and her enclave were punished this harshly, you’d think that they would’ve had a Patriarch of Scavenging already installed in every enclave (because why risk any screw-ups?) or have an envoy from Central show up to chat with a brand-new Matriarch about how this is VERY important and maybe give her a vague sense of why so she doesn’t trade Valuable Ying Secrets for basic material goods.
And, despite the harshness of the punishment, Vizlet is left in place with a very powerful local ally and they send Narklet as a replacement overseer. Yeah, sure, he’s a fantastic head scavenger and a true believer, but he’s also managed to antagonize all of the other Patriarchs without appearing to realize it, gets easily distracted by telling him that he’s a Very Special Boy, and is such a zealot that he didn’t even consider using Kass’s position in Val Salia’s command structure as a way to recover antiquities that got into Viracroix’s hands… which would seem like a golden opportunity if Vizlet trading away “useless scraps” provoked this vicious of a backlash.
My suspicion is that the Elders used Vizlet’s “sin” as an excuse to spread around a bunch of Yinglets who suddenly had a lot of new building techniques and transferable skills, and after the first Patriarch of Scavenging confirmed that she hadn’t traded away anything important they dumped Narklet on her to get him out of their fur and gave him a bullshit snipe hunt to keep him occupied. It makes sense with how he appears to be looking for something very important but doesn’t appear to know what zhat zhing actually is – otherwise, he’d probably be a little more suspicious about the random adult female yinglet that appeared out of nowhere employed by the guy Vizlet traded a bunch of antiquities to.
Hmm… bit of a wild guess here.
Since Humans seem pretty content advancing on their own, with possibly only Val Salia pushing so hard for Antiquities of any kind, perhaps the Central Enclaves are far more advanced than they let on?
They’ve specialized and focused SO hard on finding Antiquities and scouring the world for them, that perhaps they are the primary reason for their advancements?
…What if all these ‘special Yinglet inventions’ are mainly Antiquities, or from Antiquity knowledge?
Heck, what if they even have machines, perhaps war machines, back in the secluded Central Enclaves, which they don’t want anyone else to know about, or not yet?
They don’t want to risk anyone else getting an advantage, no matter how small, so they just blanket order ALL Antiquities to be sent back, to make sure they can be properly analyzed and learned from. Or, at least, out of the hands of potential enemies.