Well, everything went a bit better than expected for our heroes.
While they did face overwhelming odds upon emerging from the minigame, the overwhelming odds aren’t facing them, but each other instead. It seems that a slight case of professional rivalry between the two big chieftains, of which very perceptive readers might have noticed some indication before, has flared up a bit in the meantime. This is not entirely unheard of, I’m afraid, in situations were there is more than one big chieftain at the same time. >_>
Fortunately, the Forces of Evil ™ have established HR conflict resolution processes to deal with this sort of issue quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, they are so tortuously painful for all parties involved* that the parties involved in the current conflict opted for an alternative conflict resolution strategy instead: a knife fight. Fortunately again, a knife fight is also capable of solving this sort of conflict quickly and efficiently, plus it’s only painful for one of the parties involved – and both parties are currently still counting on being the other party. As an added boon, it supplies agreeable entertainment for all of the underlings, thus raising morale in the whole workforce.
Nobody’s been hurt up to now, though – save from a slight injury to Snuka’s feelings. Who is smart enough, however, to prefer that slight psychological injury to the multiple heavy physical injuries he had expected to be already suffering from at this point.
More on Thursday.
* Which is the price of a human resources department not actually staffed by humans.
Actually, Snuka has really gotten off scot-free this adventure (that’s been shown on-screen). Mopey has been the one to endure various mishaps and humiliations vis-à-vis being the only other designated female capable of teaching Biff the, um, “Ins-and-outs” of being a woman.
Secretly, I believe this is because that’s an actual actor playing Snuka and the real Snuka has been relegated to stunt-double work and the “up close” shots of Si’ri.
I’m amazed the fold-up figures have a back. I half-expected a blank, white canvas and other-half-expected the front and backs to be the exact same resulting in the orcs facing back while also facing forward (just, their ATTENTION is forward and not back).
Well, Snuka did get beaten up, along with Gregory, when they made inquiries about the (censored) of Vecna in Gattungsmäßigburg. But aside from that incident, you’re right – he did get less than his usual share of pain and humiliation in this chapter. Kinda deservedly, though, since his paladinity has reined in his delinquency to some degree.
I think Snuka is still played by Lee Douglas, though. He’s just wearing facial prosthetics and walking on stilts. But, yeah, the close-ups of Si’ri could also be him, that’d seem perfectly in line with George Geekish’s thinking. Fake boobs, a tight corset and some white body paint, and presto: another 25 dollars saved from the budget.
Fun fact about the fold-up figures: When I originally made the models, they did look the same on both sides, which was okay for all of the strips before this one…only here did I realize that I would have to give them a different back. And of course, once I had changed the texture, half of the models were facing the wrong way, so I had to spend quite some time to turn them around one by one. XD