My darling Aldish Captain

"This I recognize. The old hollow virtue. The old toothless indignation. Maybe you are Duane. Grand man for speeches. But when time came to live the word how he shrank from threats to his tender... sensibilities. Well, there aren't pages enough in Ssael's writing, nor Gefendur scripture, nor even the Goddamned book of Duane Adelier to detail all that's been lost to the tender sensibilities of weak men." -------- This is a fan blog dedicated to Captain Lemuel Adelier from the webcomic Unsounded. Pretty much everything you might want to know about him can be found here.

[lemueladeliers]

“There aren't pages enough in Ssael's writing, nor Gefendur scripture, nor even the Goddamned book of Duane Adelier to detail all that's been lost to the tender sensibilities of weak men.”

[unsoundedcomic]

Just wanted to say, I personally found all the Lemuel questions we got these last few weeks quite interesting. I have a question myself, and this is the most important of them all: Why tf did he let his hair grow so much? Even Duane's whiskers didn't make him look as old as Lemuel's ponytail does. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the man is about the same age as Argenti Sr.

Long hair on a dude has a certain connotation in Alderode. Alds sacrifice locks of their hair when they make requests of the gods or Ssael or the Vaosa or even the khert, which some do pray to like a lesser deity. You'll see this in a sec.

Long hair on a dude connotes that they don't ask for shit. It's kinda impious and as a priest, Duane doesn't really approve of it! He gave Amadwe's silver braid the side-eye once and that was really the end of whatever good will saving Will had engendered.

Lemuel also just really liked it long and he liked to swap stories with his daughter while she tied it up in ribbons.

His captors cut this mane off, alas, before they probably killed him. If you look very carefully at that one shot in the dungeon, you can see one of the lady guards holding his ponytail.

[unsoundedcomic]

Is Lemuel secretly a convert or something? Last time I checked, only the Gefendur performed child sacrifices, so quit trying to send wee Simon on an early trip to Ssael, you muol! 😤

Lemuel says it's nothing personal, Simon is just so weird. He sits in a corner of the flat all day and builds models. He hates going outdoors and is rubbish at stickfighting.

He's just a garbage child, nothing personal, would never tell him that, but he is really some hot garbage.

[unsoundedcomic]

I'm don't know what cresce is looking for but I feel like one of the secret keepers would have been a more valuable PoW than lemon.

Very hard to capture a VITS official alive. They always travel with kill switches.

Lem's only a prisoner because he was knocked out during the battle. Cresce had no particular desire to keep him around and have probably already executed him for the comfort and healing of the Grenzlan assault victims o7

I should write his stand-off there in Grenzlan, when the crow zombies all came for him. I bet it was pretty epic.

[unsoundedcomic]

Grandpapa the tacit casting war veteran versus perusing Duane's old pymary library. Between Duane and Mikaila, who's the better wright at this age (assuming Duane didn't go to the academy yet)?

We must not compare the babies, the two of them are going down different paths in their training. Mikaila doesn't have the upper body strength to handle much weaponry so Lemuel has been teaching her more like a vliegeng pilot: acrobatics, aerial fighting, and unarmed combat. She's studied how to augment both with pymary, redistributing her weight as needed and minimizing showy attacks that can make her a target. A lifetime of having to hide her spellcasting has definitely shaped her style.

But that little punch redirection she did on Will is some of her bread and butter. Her timing and twitch reflexes have gotten pretty lethal.

She'll never go to a proper magery so she's always going to have an unorthodox, renegade style that would make Duane insane. She also has no interest in Old Tainish, spell composition, or much Materials and natural philosophy study. Her favourite thing to do is meditate on the lines, and sharpen and perfect what she knows. She practises obsessively at home, as we'll see.

[unsoundedcomic]

Is Lem just a dad from Will's perspective, or like a father figure to him since Ag sr. Is such a shit dad? If the latter, that's great! It makes him and M more siblingish which will make it way hotter when they mix silver and gold to make an alloy of beautiful bronze babies.

They would make Silver babies!

But no, Lemuel is Dad's Friend. I guess, to Will, Lemuel is an older and cooler chad that he doesn't really have any desire to emulate but whom he also is intimidated by. Will doesn't want to intimidate anyone; he wants to live up to his responsibilities, be a fine paladin and Ssaelit, marry some highborn woman and then take over for dad.

See, different from what Lemuel's about.

[unsoundedcomic]

Is being a massive try-hard a genetic trait of the Adeliers, or is it learned behaviour?

Shh, the Adeliers are perfect.

[unsoundedcomic]

I love how casual she is, Duane at her age couldn't sit up straight😭Either she got it from her mom ,or Lemuel was that good as a father figure...

Gotta hand this one to Lemuel. She just spent a year at his side, and Lemuel did not coddle her. It did her self-esteem and confidence up a treat. Once you win a few fights and learn how to knock people down, you start to carry yourself a little differently.

It's been fun to see all the assumptions people have made about what Mikaila and her life would be like. Lemuel has thrown a real wrench, I think, in a lot of those.

[unsoundedcomic]

Speaking of the Council Army, I think Claggart might have been the closest non-Soud Ald to acknowledge how dangerous the Etalarche Curse actually is, even to the point of claiming he might have questioned the purpose of such a thing had he not been linked to the Dammakhert. This makes me wonder: Had he or any of the Adelier brothers switched roles that day, would he have prioritized killing Foi-Hellick or saving Will? Just curious where the Captain's moral compass would lead him in that scenario

Claggart still would be a Jet and still controlled by the curse, so he'd go for Foi-Hellick over Will in any situation. Will's only still alive today because the Adeliers were Soud, and had the available agency to pick him over the Etalarche.

Which I think speaks well for our blondes. No surprise Duane would pick the kid, but no one ever gives Lemuel credit for picking the kid too! If Lemuel had killed Roger that day, he'd have enjoyed a lifetime of celebrity and privilege; instead he went for a kid that PROBABLY was actively dying as he'd just been literally eaten by a monster. Really low odds of plucking him from the jaws of death, but they did it!

[unsoundedcomic]

How close was Will with Lemuel? Was Lemuel a role model in the same way Duane was, or were they more like friends due to the smaller age gap?

It's a little weird. Will's dad developed a dad-crush on Lemuel pretty quickly after he joined the Lions, so Lemuel is strictly "Father's Friend," in Will's head. This only deepened when Duane died and Lemuel became Mikaila's dad and even more dad-coded.

There's not a huge age gap there, no, but the social chemistry is too weird for Will to think of Lemuel as a friend, and their positions in life too different to think of him as a role model exactly either. Lemuel is intimidating and tricky to figure out. Only Mikaila seems to understand him, and just laughs whenever Will suggests Captain Adelier is kinda bloody scary.

[unsoundedcomic]

Which castes have curly hair as part of their Dammakhert-assigned phenotype, or is hair straightness not really controlled by the Dammakhert?

Only the Bronze and Soud. Lemuel has pretty wavy hair, and you could see Duane's curling in the back when it was longer. The Bronze tend to go pretty wavy too, though no one has really cool tight curls.

[unsoundedcomic]

I was reading people talk about what kind of memories simon would have of duane and going from my own experience it would probably be 0 if simon was only 3. My first memory was when I was almost 4. It's kind of weird how long it takes a human to form. A giraffe gets popped out and starts walking.

Simon has a picture in his head of the man, but it's one informed by things his mom and dad and sister have told him, and nothing he's able to conjure from memory. Simon's old enough that he's started to develop a lot of resentment towards Duane. Everyone expects him to follow in his footsteps, but Simon really doesn't have much interest in pymary or even in the priesthood. His financier uncle is more compelling. How luxurious to sit in a beautiful and warm building all day, in control of so much wealth, never breaking a sweat or putting yourself at risk while everyone from almost every walk of life comes to you to kiss your butt and beg for access?

With Lemuel mostly ignoring him, Simon often wishes this other uncle was his dad :/

[unsoundedcomic]

Does the average person know that the Souds' appearence is wholly natural, or do people assume that they have been modified by the dammakhert despite otherwise being disconnected? Asking this because, especially compared to other characters, the striking yellow hair and green eyes really does look unnatural at times, and if anything are more bizarre than Jets or Bronzes. Like if I didn't know any better I could totally believe that the Soud are another unholy Dammakhert monstrosity!

Alds know they are Fake, but foreigners generally assume they're Dammakhert freaks same as the rest. Soud do sometimes glamour their appearances though if they have to. They want uniformity for the purpose of solidarity. Lemuel has caught all kinds of shit for not doing something about his eyes.

[unsoundedcomic]

Does Diva mean something else in Aldish, or is her name exactly what it sounds like?

Exactly what it sounds like. Lemuel named her after Duane, who introduced him to the opera term "Diva."

[unsoundedcomic]

Does Lem have a favourite kid?

I mean, he literally took Mikaila off to war like a favourite pocket knife. Hard for him to make a convincing case she's not the love of his life.

[unsoundedcomic]

New merch poll:

Would you be more likely to buy...

A large cloth map of Kasslyne with illustrations around the border

Four 6x9 character art prints with gold foil and embossing?

Voting ended onMay 21

The cloth map would be single colour lineart, done in like an old timey style. The surrounding illustrations would probably be an assortment of the story's major senet beasts, I think? For the prints, it would be Duane and Lem, the Quigleys, I think the old Volume 3 cover which I still really like, and then I'd illustrate a map for the fourth, but in colour.

Help D:

[lemueladeliers]

Vote for the character art prints!!!! Get me some physical Lem merch!!!!!!! Please!!!!!!!!!! Your local Lemuel Adelier PhD holder pleads for your aid!!!!

[unsoundedcomic]

I don't usually like to make story statements unless specifically asked, but I noticed someone on the blessed chans saying Lemuel is "suicidal," and man, no. He needed to die to get to Ssael, but there's not a suicidal bone in Lemuel Adelier's body. It's just an unfortunate fact that to get to Ssael, you need to go through the khert, and to get into the khert, your soul has to be separated from your flesh.

This is complicated by the fact that self-slaughter is forbidden in Ssaelism, so he had to die in battle. But Lemuel doesn't WANT to die. He WANTS to fuck up Ssael and save his people.

This is very important, I had to clarify.