O-Chul and Lien discuss their home and their fortunes while a new threat appears overhead.
Cast[]
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Lien: OK, here's one: A magical snow genie pops up and offers you any food you've ever had, right now. What do you ask for?
Lien: And don't give me the cop-out answer that you'd send the food to starving orphans instead.
O-Chul: I would.
Lien: Noted. Answer the question.
- Panel 2
O-Chul: Kimchi.
Lien: There's like 200 types. More specific.
O-Chul: One of the spicy ones.
Lien: More specific!
O-Chul: The gimjang that my aunt made with the women of our village when I was young.
Lien: Nice.
- Panel 3
Lien: For me, there was this booth just a few piers over from ours that made the most amazing dish with rice noodles and peanuts and tumeric fish.
Lien: I used to sneak out of the house to meet my friends there when I was a teenager.
- Panel 4
Lien: You actually ate there once. I'd gotten knocked around in training, and you insisted on walking me home to make sure I was OK.
O-Chul: Oh, yes. Yunji was with us. They had a nice seaweed thing.
Lien: Right, yeah.
- Panel 5
Lien: Of course, I don't think any of us have had a meal like that since we fled the city.
O-Chul: So many fine citizens died that day, taking pieces of our shared culture with them.
Lien: True.
- Panel 6
Lien: But in this case, the chef made it out with the fleet. She just hasn't been able to get her hands on any decent spices.
Lien: That's one of the nice things about having grown up on the waterfront: everyone I knew owned a boat, or knew someone who did.
- Panel 7
Lien: My whole family got out alive. Both parents, both sisters, a brother-in-law, three nieces, and an 83-year-old grandmother.
Lien: And my boyfriend, and his whole family too.
Lien: Even his awful aunt, who blames me for the hobgoblin invasion as if I conjured them personally just to put her out.
- Panel 8
Lien: When you consider that Yunji and everyone else in the Sapphire Guard is dead but I'm alive—
Lien: —I think I may be the actual luckiest woman in the world.
- Panel 9
O-Chul: Many people, in your position of having lost their home and so many friends, would come to the opposite conclusion.
Lien: Yeah. But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever.
Lien: There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair.
- Panel 10
O-Chul: Ah, so your optimism is a direct result of your relentlessly negative view.
Lien: Ha ha, I guess so!
- Panel 11
Oona astride Lancer looks down on the pair from above
Lien: The best part about always expecting the world to bite you in the butt is sometimes, you're pleasantly surprised.
D&D Context[]
- The creature in the last frame is an Yrthak. They do not have eyes and instead rely on sonar navigation. They can also focus their sonic abilities into a burst of sonic energy, something displayed in the next comic.
Trivia[]
- This is the first appearance of Oona and her animal companion, Lancer. Her name would not be revealed until #1036 and her companion's name until #1037.
- Yunji's name was last given in the print version of War and XPs. She was present in the battle against Xykon, being the paladin with short hair and a halberd who ultimately perished in the chaotic melee caused by Xykon's Symbol of Insanity.