Author Topic: PC122: Kingspeaker  (Read 21743 times)

Heradel

  • Bill Peters, EP Assistant
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Reply #50 on: October 26, 2010, 12:39:59 AM
The discussion as to the deliciousness of maple sugar may be found here: http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=4492.0

I Twitter. I also occasionally blog on the Escape Pod blog, which if you're here you shouldn't have much trouble finding.


yicheng

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Reply #51 on: November 03, 2010, 05:18:44 PM
While I generally enjoyed the story, it felt very very toned down in terms of plot and character dimensionality.  The Kingspeaker "has no voice", "only speaks words belonging to the King", etc, etc.   We are continually reminded of this fact like a mantra, until it gets rather annoying.

I also thought the plot "twists" were rather obvious.  The Bandit King evading the King's army and seemed rather obvious tactic, akin to the classic boxing duck & weave.  Any general that didn't at least counsel the king to properly scout out the location of the enemy and to protect his supply line ought to have his head lopped off.  And how exactly does a massive army moving through your countryside, looting and pillaging, escape your detection?  Contrary to popular belief, it is *extremely* difficult to massacre everyone in a village/town (e.g. Darfur, Nanking, Stalingrad).  Even assuming you take everyone by surprise and none of the local guards manage to ride out for help or light a signal fire, there's always some little kid that manages to escape into the forest, some old woman hiding out in a cellar, or some guy that manages to play dead.  Always.  One of those people would have surely stumbled down the road to warn the city.

And assuming that for a moment the Band King's army was disciplined enough to make their way unnoticed to the *Capital* of the country, it doesn't make any sense that he wouldn't have kept some sort of vanguard to watch for any ambushes, which again is a rather obvious tactic.



Unblinking

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Reply #52 on: November 04, 2010, 01:57:05 PM
Contrary to popular belief, it is *extremely* difficult to massacre everyone in a village/town (e.g. Darfur, Nanking, Stalingrad).  Even assuming you take everyone by surprise and none of the local guards manage to ride out for help or light a signal fire, there's always some little kid that manages to escape into the forest, some old woman hiding out in a cellar, or some guy that manages to play dead.  Always.  One of those people would have surely stumbled down the road to warn the city.

That's a good point.  Being completely thorough would take a long time, long enough to starve out the lurkers.