Chapter 15: A Mending Friend

This chapter title doesn't exactly rhyme, but it is an anagram of Damned Fine Grin.

Barar has been hiding out in his wood-chipped house in the secret Plenarian city of Nepesh for six hundred years. The survivors have been trying to find other possible Plenarian remnants, but are hampered by their photography skills which are "honestly, just not very good."

Eventually they find two other settlements Devad and Zachariah. Barar has been elected to Nepesh's governing body "The Establishment," and when the three settlements join up, he seems to be part of the new government as well.

When visiting the newly discovered city of Devad, Barar heads into a shoe shop called -- and I'm not making this up -- Hope for the Sole. Who said COW doesn't have a sense of humor?

Savvy readers will have connected shoe shop with the humble cobbling origins of Saint Wesley. And indeed, this is the shop of Elphis, a.k.a., Emit, a.k.a., Zarak II, a.k.a., Zaragiagain. Barar, using his assumed name Liufang, notices the resemblance to Zarak and strikes up a lively conversation:

"So, the clone of  Zarak escaped and is now living here."

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

Barar takes his leave, and then spends the next six pages larping Matlock. Some soldiers were considering retaking Mote and broke into a weapons cache. At the end of the ordeal, they are only convicted of cutting a lock. Their punishment is to view an excavated mass grave and re-fill it. Classy.

Our old friend Rezah from LPB shows up as well. He may seem like a grounded Plenarian, but you know in truth he is more of a 

SKEPTIC