Ch7p22
Chapter: Paso Doble
Location: Salamanca
I looked at a Goya drawing once and I lost my goddamned mind
↓ Transcript
4 Panels
Panel 1: A painting depicting three dead mangled bodies tied to an olive tree, being scavenged by three very black crows.
Alessandro (off panel): My son, you and the Senate are SHORT-SIGHTED if you don't see the advantages of opening up the Atlantic for the Meditan Empire.
Steffano (off panel): Don't you mean the advantages for our family? All that land! all those seatrade routes! Are we not rich enough as it is, or are you that upset our fame as blood-thirsty necrophages has soiled the Senate's favour of us?
Panel 2: Alessandro's silhouette stands against pictures of fighting soldiers.
Alessandro: People died for the great Medita Augusta and you claim superiority over them, child!? You were never even near the battlefield and yet you claim to know of war!
Panel 3: Alessandro points at the big portrait over the fireplace with his glass of wine. The portrait features a woman holding a sword, with a crown of golden leaves over her head and on horseback. She very clearly looks like she belongs to the Corvo House.
Alessandro (off panel): It is because of weak men like you we can't fix Lusitania! We need to make a strong move, like in Gibraltar.
Steffano: AHAHAHAHA!
Panel 4: Steffano claps slowly and sarcastically, amused. Alessandro seems pretty peeved by this behaviour.
Steffano: Ahaha!! Aaahh, now there's the father I know and love! Advocating for genocide now? How classy.
Panel 1: A painting depicting three dead mangled bodies tied to an olive tree, being scavenged by three very black crows.
Alessandro (off panel): My son, you and the Senate are SHORT-SIGHTED if you don't see the advantages of opening up the Atlantic for the Meditan Empire.
Steffano (off panel): Don't you mean the advantages for our family? All that land! all those seatrade routes! Are we not rich enough as it is, or are you that upset our fame as blood-thirsty necrophages has soiled the Senate's favour of us?
Panel 2: Alessandro's silhouette stands against pictures of fighting soldiers.
Alessandro: People died for the great Medita Augusta and you claim superiority over them, child!? You were never even near the battlefield and yet you claim to know of war!
Panel 3: Alessandro points at the big portrait over the fireplace with his glass of wine. The portrait features a woman holding a sword, with a crown of golden leaves over her head and on horseback. She very clearly looks like she belongs to the Corvo House.
Alessandro (off panel): It is because of weak men like you we can't fix Lusitania! We need to make a strong move, like in Gibraltar.
Steffano: AHAHAHAHA!
Panel 4: Steffano claps slowly and sarcastically, amused. Alessandro seems pretty peeved by this behaviour.
Steffano: Ahaha!! Aaahh, now there's the father I know and love! Advocating for genocide now? How classy.
Goya will do that to a person.
Also were Steffano’s cobat actions classified so dad does not know his seen has seen plenty of combat?
Oh, he knows his son has seen combat. He just doesn’t think he’s seen real combat.
I’m sure he’d be a proper alcoholic like his dad if he had…! X-P
Nikita probably agrees more with Alessandro than with Steffano (if not for reasons of pure greed) but even as a hardened soldier that is not a battle he should volunteer to wade into…!
(Can you please change the text style of the transcript to just black with no shadow? It is extremely hard to read as it is now, even on a large and pretty good monitor here, but I love that it’s there as it really adds to the story!)
Thanks for pointing out the readability issue 😉 I have fixed it, it may take a while for the cache to catch up but it should be black now.
That is much easier to read now! Thank you! 🙂
Well, they have Gibraltar (and possibly the African coast there too, because they have the coast of east of it), so nothing stops them doing Atlantic trade from the Mediterranean ports. Not only that, but based on the map that was on the wall of Shizamura’s office in Chapter 1 they do have Atlantic ports too (Cádiz and Huelva).
Or the Lusitanian fleet is so strong that their route to the ocean is still blocked even from those ports? I doubt it. In naval warfare tricks like those zombies are less effective than on land (because less melee).
It would be better argument to say that Lusitania would attack on the first sign of weakness or discord, because they are fanatics.
But in reality he might want to play Caesar. Amass troops and economic power under his personal command during a big war (Gallia for Caesar) and then use it against the senate and become emperor.
That wall map looks like the one in the maps section on this website (https://sarilho.net/en/mapas). Both Huelva and Cádiz seem to be underwater there and although there is an unnamed city on the coast of the new bay, it may not be a major port (and Córdoba is probably far too inland).
As for using Mediterranean ports, there a big problem in the form of a dam. Yes, at least from the map it looks like they somehow managed to dam the Gibraltar strait in order to stop the rising sea levels from flooding the Mediterranean coasts. You can see that even though they are pretty low, Málaga and Barcelona are still there.
Btw. it’s kinda hard to tell by how much the water has risen, from the Espagnia map it looks like *at least* 60 meters, which would imply that ALL of the ice in the world (including the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) has melted (at least I think). However, the map of Coimbra implies a somewhat lower (though still huge) raise of about 30 to 50 meters. So yeah…
Fair points, but still: they have access to the Atlantic. If the old ports are flooded just build new ones above them. Even seems cheaper than a large scale war. The Lusitanians surely had to do the same.
BTW, does the Gibraltar dam mean they have control of the East Mediterranean too? A Gibraltar dam is useless without a Suez dam. They’d need another dam of about the same length there.