December 4th, 2018
4 Dec 2018 · page 856 of 1306
i was gonna put the opening lyrics for ana ng in here but you guys beat me to it in the comments of the last page, you good-taste-having palookas :P
Cast: Eliza Swift, Vincent Knott, Will Sharpe
Comments (86)
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So, if we're going off the antipode theory that Eliza's presenting here, the anchor would be in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 miles west of Chile, according to the answer I was able to find on Google.
This also conveniently would likely satisfy the "low countering high" aspect, if the Mountain anchor is indeed high up Everest (Interesting and cool that the world of Widdershins recognizes it by the Tibetan).
I was going to say that made the Auroras a probable choice, but it's off the wrong coast. However, just going by dead reckoning, it looks to be in about the right place for the phantom island of Podesta.
"Phantom island" you say?
[Phantom island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island"). Islands that were reported as being discovered and appeared on maps but which were later found to not exist.
Super interesting stuff. The Aurora Islands are a particularly intriguing case because over the course of about 3 centuries and in no particular order several different explorers reported finding them and exploring them at length, while several others reported preforming thorough searches of the patch of ocean where they were reported to be and finding no islands of any kind, but there are plenty of others.
Yes, about here:
[https://www.google.co.uk/ma...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-27.9881,-93.075,10z "https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-27.9881,-93.075,10z")
Not a lot to see, above the water at least!
So, sounds like either Easter Island or R'lyeh.
Ooo, is Harry gonna beat up Big Squishy!
R'lyeh sounds like a good bet. It would explain why the World broke when Ms Swift discovered it.
Huh, now that you mention it, if that's the area we're looking at, I suppose it could be at [Point Nemo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility#Oceanic_pole_of_inaccessibility "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility#Oceanic_pole_of_inaccessibility").
I thought R'leyh was down around New Zealand.
Well, cant fault her logic and scientific methods to prove it :-)
As I'm not allowed firearms anymore, I had to make do with a piece of string stretched around the outside of the globe.
Google's drawing a blank on "Tapu Tohunga Motu", but I'm assuming based on quoteless results that that's some sort of Māori holy site New Zealand?
Chomolungma is the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest (which wasn't given its English name until 1865), confirming that the Tibetan anchor is indeed located there. Though from the sound of it, "Chomolungma" wouldn't have been spelled that way in English until the 1950s (admittedly irrelevant in spoken dialogue, since they're not actually spelling it).
I plugged the words into a Maori dictionary (https://maoridictionary.co.... "https://maoridictionary.co.nz/)") and found...
tapu- to be sacred, set apart, prohibited or possibly holy?
tohunga- to be an expert, skilled person
motu- to cut or sever, or as a noun: island, country, land, nation, clump of trees, ship - anything separated or isolated
It looks like a Tohunga who is Tapu, refers someone who either communes with the spirits of the dead or handles the remains of the dead. Roughly speaking, mediums and morticians.
Could it be just "spirits", instead of "spirits of the dead"- like a witch? So an Island of the Witch essentially?
I don't know enough about Māori culture to say if they make a distinction between different kinds of spirits or different kinds of sorcerers, but it seems very possible that what the English consider a Witch in this universe might be considered a Tapu Tohunga by the Māori.
So the Pacific Anchor is located at... the Witch Place. Glad we cleared that up.
> tapu- to be sacred, set apart, prohibited or possibly holy?
The word related to "taboo", maybe.
That's what I thought too. I looked into it and it looks like there's a shared root. Taboo comes from the Tongan word "tabu" (which means more or less the same as "tapu", but with slightly different nuance), and both the Tongan and Māori languages are derived from Proto-Polynesian. In both cases, the concept is a bit more complex than "taboo" in English.
Thanks for info!
> In both cases, the concept is a bit more complex than "taboo" in English.
I, for myself, met (the Russian analogue of) this word for the first time in a novel of Verne, in the context of Māori culture exactly, where the author tries to explain the term to the audience. :) Now I begin to worry about Harry as I recall that part of the novel.
There is Motutapu Island. It's full name is Te Motutapu a Taikehu, which translates the Sacred Island of Taikehu. and Taikehu was a tohunga (yes I'm paraphrasing from wiki)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motutapu_Island "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motutapu_Island")
However it's antipode would be in Spain not England. And is in Auckland. on that globe the shot looks to be near the Chatham Islands
AU geography may mean that things aren't quite in the same place.
Parsley the cat: ^I disapprove of this demonstration method SO VERY MUCH!!!^
>:=)>
I wonder if he jumps there after the first shot or only after the second one.
"This season, I shall be wearing the classic arch-and-glower Halloween stance."
Sharpe, you may not believe it, but even the smartest of us make mistakes (yes, even you).
Yeah, it is somewhat pot-kettle of him to disparage somebody else's risky methodology, no? xD
What are you talking about? Drugging a cop and breaking your already tried and convicted client out of prison sight unseen is a completely normal and not even a little unorthodox part of the lawying process. Knotty would know, on account of him totally being a lawyer and definitely not anything else. He's lawyed tons of times. All his lawyer friends can vouch for him (you wouldn't know them. They live in Gibraltar, but they're super legal).
I was actually commenting on Sharpe's "Really?! Are you pulling my leg?" expression, not on Knotty's "It's honestly not as bad as it looks!" defensive reaction.
ah, I see. So by this theory, there can not only be "a 5th anchor", it'd have to be one or more other pairs of anchors.
There are 2n anchors in the world.
There can be a 5th anchor, it would just have a 6th anchor on the opposite side of the planet.
that's, uh, what I just said
Yeah, I missed the only bit when reading it the first time. 8^( sorry about that.
Agreed, but it seems to me they should form a 3-dimensional shape (preferably one of the platonic solids), and if the 3 known and 1 theorized anchors are all antipodal, that pretty much rules out a tetrahedron. An octahedron (8 sides, but 6 vertices) is possible. I think that would put the 5th and 6th anchors near Saint Helena and somewhat south of Hawaii. Those are just rough estimates with [https://www.echalk.co.uk/Sc...](https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/physics/solarSystem/InteractiveEarth/interactiveEarth.html "https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/physics/solarSystem/InteractiveEarth/interactiveEarth.html") though since I don't have a physical globe handy - if someone else can figure it out more precisely, that would be nice.
The solids with more vertices are too much for me to figure out without references for the necessary calculations, and having that many vertices would most likely predict anchors in places where they'd have been discovered already if they existed.
Update: I've got a physical globe now, and I'm pretty sure Chomolungma (aka Mount Everest) is less than a quarter-circumference from Widdershins (or just about anywhere in Great Britain), so I don't think an octahedron would fit the pattern. A cube might, but I think that would put an anchor somewhere near the Kerguelen Islands, which are opposite Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, and maybe one near Guam (with its opposite west of Saint Helena)
i love everyone's different reactions to eliza firing a gun through a globe.
Especially the lady in the middle, furiously taking notes. I like her.
And the globe explodes, leaving the location of the fourth anchor still unconfirmed. Nice touch.
get a new globe and shoot the mountain anchor first :P
Well, maybe "Narrative's power" is so strongly inclined to prevent everyone from getting to know the location of the Fourth Anchor that the globe will break from the first shot. :)
Buy two globes and rotate them so that Widdershins and Chomolungma are aligned along the same trajectory.
Only in-story.
[https://www.google.com/maps...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/27%C2%B059'17.2%22S+86%C2%B055'30.0%22W/@-28.2123826,-100.5961974,4.4z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-27.9881!4d-86.925!5m1!1e4 "https://www.google.com/maps/place/27%C2%B059'17.2%22S+86%C2%B055'30.0%22W/@-28.2123826,-100.5961974,4.4z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-27.9881!4d-86.925!5m1!1e4")
I made an estimate of the mountain anchor more or less in Tibet, and within the (large) error. I get somewhere in the Chilean Andes.
the nazca line would make a perfect anchor sight and its in the area
It's on Everest specifically. Chomolungma is the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest. The English name for the mountain hasn't been coined yet at this point in history.
Easter Island is ~20 degrees West of being directly opposite Everest.
Well, nobody got hit or nearly hit. Glad my prediction was wrong, in this case.
Eliza, your theory is truly world-shattering!
Eliza! How could you? You drilled a bullseye clean thru the mortal garden of England's heart!
Oh, so that's why the Brits were so intent on keeping the Falklands!
(Yeah, I know IRL the Falklands are on the other side of South America, but it was too fun to pass up.)
Well, that rules out Harry being near the third anchor. The antipode to Yorkshire is in a REALLY cold part of the world --- more antarctic than polynesian. However, Harry landed in a lush area with the trees all in bloom. At the end of Curtain Call, it was spring or summer in Widdershins, since the trees are green and Lux was just sipping a cup of tea outdoors. That makes it fall or winter in the southern hemisphere, and whatever trees she'd find at 53 degrees south latitude would be bare. But landing at the antipode to Everest (28 degrees S latitude) works.
FWIW, my home (in Texas) is at 30 degrees N latitude, and the trees are finally losing their leaves. They'll be back in a couple of months.
The evidence of the doors in the Witch Space indicates otherwise. There were two fully-formed doors besides Mal's, and Harry went through one of those. The fourth door was just a faint outline on the wall, which suggests that it belongs to the undiscovered fourth anchor. (Something that just occurred to me - do Mountain Witch and Island Witch know about the fourth anchor and its presumable witch, or is it a secret even from them?)
Perhaps the Fourth Anchor has no Witch. The Door to the Widdershins Anchor only appeared when Mal accepted his role as Witch (or at least begrudgingly agreed to preform the duties of Witch, just this once). That suggests that the Doors only exist if their respective Anchors have an active Witch.
It would make sense that if the Fourth Anchor is somewhere not only undiscovered but totally uninhabited, there'd never have been an active Witch, because there'd never have been a local population for a Witch to be born into. And Fourth Anchor Witches born elsewhere would never have been able to assume their role because nobody, including them, knew that role existed.
Most native trees in New Zealand are evergreen so it's not impossible that Tapu Tohunga Motu is where Harry landed. Add to that the strong Maori influence on the door design and I'm pretty sure those birch looking trees are actually young Kauri. Then again if they are birch, which are only native to the Northern Hemisphere... who knows.
So, how are they going to deal with the witnesses? There are at least four other people in this meeting besides Eliza, but they don't have tags. Don't yet have tags, anyway... Will they join the search? I could see some extra searchers on the team proving to be quite useful, but to get them on board Eliza's going to have to do a whole lot of fast talking!
Maybe they'll lurk outside until the meeting ends so they can catch Eliza alone.
Maybe, but won't that waste precious time? They have less than eight hours to get this done, and it's Knotty who'll decide whether to lurk or go in. I don't think he'll be willing to wait -- he's staked everything on finding that essay.
Good point. I wasn't thinking about the time limit.
Since they don't have tags yet, let's call them bluesuit, yellowdress, orangedress, and greensuit. The more I look at how much individuality each one has shown already, the more convinced I am that all four are about to become named characters.
Bluesuit... wait, he does have a name. Charles is a bit stand-offish, skeptical, unconvinced, startled by Eliza's producing a gun. He's going to be the hardest sell, I think.
Greensuit's body language says "fascinated", and on the Dec 4th page, he must have hitched his chair quite a bit forward in panel 4, to allow for the reaction shot in panel 6 with just him and Charles in view, framing "WHA...! She's got a gun!" And on this page, he looks like he's thinking, "Wait, is she CRAZY? What am I doing here?" But he was fascinated before, so he might be persuadable.
Orangedress is obsessive about the fourth anchor, even more than Eliza. The gun doesn't phase her one bit, she's just busy scribbling notes that might lead to clues to solving the all-important mystery. Once give her the notion that this expedition might lead to uncovering super-secret information about magic that was being kept from the public? You won't be able to stop her!
Yellowdress is kind of dismayed when the globe shatters at the second shot, but her reactions all seem more low-key than the other three. I wouldn't be surprised to learn she's a friend of one of the others, maybe Orangedress, dragged to the meeting by her friend's enthusiasm. In any case, if everyone else winds up going on this mad expedition, she might be talked into going along too. But of the four, I would say she's the most likely to surprise us.
I thought she owned that shop and now she's drilling bullet holes into bits of it; doesn't sound all that smart to me ('though Sherlock may well be shooting up his mantlepiece at this very moment so there is precedent.)
On the other hand I note that one prison guard must have had keys to the handcuffs, the cell door, the wing door AND the main door of the prison and there was no other guard on duty at any of these control points - the prison governor ought to be arrested for criminal negligence - but there's no point in locking him up. Nicola has some remedial work to do here...
... although now I come to think of it, already Nicola may be on her way to investigate the sound of gunfire after midnight.
Holmes hired his room, didn't own it, that's the difference. :) In the books, at least, don't know about BBC series.
Same with the BBC series as they still keep the landlady character.
If this were Girl Genius, she'd clearly be a spark. And held in much esteem.
I'm convinced that Vee and Lei are both Sparks too.
Vee certainly has a touch of the Girl Genius look.
Sparks aren't really held in "esteem" in universe. Generally it tends towards "fear" or "anger."
Depends on the Spark. And how far away they are.
The further away the better usually.
Yes, but she destroyed the world! In front of an audience! Not a lot of sparks can claim that.
"It is better to be feared than loved" -- Niccolo Mackey, Matchey, (ah, let's just call him Saint Nick. Kids are terrified of that guy.)
how does she know she's pointed it dead center?
This seems like an idea someone else would have come up with before.
But really, it's all in the presentation.
She would be censured for using a gun in the classroom, but no one wants to go in and confront her about it.
Depends. I had a teacher that used to use a starter pistol during class to show people how memories aren't set in stone and people aren't very observant. During a lecture he would have a student aide turn off the lights and as soon as the room went dark he'd fire the gun and then have the aide turn the lights back on. Then he had the students write down exactly what happened and read them back to the class. Obviously, he stopped doing this after the Columbine shooting. But, unless there is a valid reason NOT to have guns in classrooms at this time in Widdershins, I don't see why she wouldn't do it. Having said that, she would probably be a valid reason to not have guns in the classroom in the future. That poor globe and desk.
Preliminary results indicate it's in this table.
I... I don't think I've ever felt this way about a fictional character before.
Well, not someone else's, anyway.
Seems a bit odd that nobody checked a map before now... Are accurate globes a new thing in this world?
Maybe there was only one. A few seconds ago.
Eliza- two thoughts.
1. Referencing grid coordinates is less destructive.
2. If you insist of shooting globes, use a paperboard one, they shatter less.
Literally could have achieved the same thing with a drill. Or a tape measure.
Buuut... the antipodes for anywhere in Yorkshire are down in the desolate, wind-blasted sub-antarctic region!
This means that either the world of Widdershins has a markedly different climate; or else the continental drift has been slightly different and britain is further south; or else I am overthinking this too much and should just enjoy the fantasy.
Well, or Eliza could be barking up the wrong Agathis tree and have only a vague idea of the actual location of "Tapu Tohunga Motu".
Does that mean that the fourth anchor is Machu Picchu? I mean, it's not quite right - the antipode of Chomolungma (Mount Everest) is a bit west of South America, but then, the antipode for New Zealand isn't perfect either.
Wait, no. Rapa Nui/Easter Island. Which is also low to balance the anchor it's opposite. Or R'lyeh, with Cthulhu as the fourth witch. One of the two[*]
Well, hm! I was expecting a tetrahedral layout but hadn’t sussed out where the other points might be. If the anchors are on opposite sides, I might have expected six or eight of them. Most curious….