Makes sense he'd blamed tbh. I mean, it *was* one of his fostered sprogs whose power turned the nightmares loose. Why he didn't move Chernyl to a small island somewhere, I will never know.

Wow. Just gonna casually blame the person *they* shot with black crystal. For the tragedy that didn’t need to happen huh. =.=*

Damn that sucks for the Malhart kids to have to deal with… But Han is right. (Not that it’s easy)

I mean technically it was Malharts fault for spreading paint everywhere that it was so bad.

It would have been surprising that the empire would have made publicly known that Chernyl was the problem after having captured her, especially if they wanted to weaponize her.

Besides, after having painted the painter as a Blight for years, they have no interest in changing their narrative.

It's just a sucky situation all-around. :(

@whispers : Malhart is old, so he was looking for magic users and train them to take his place in protecting Chernyl from herself. it wouldnt have been easy on an isolated island.

besides, lving on an islated island isnt really comfortable, and Chernyl as a kid would have suffered from the solitude.

@Whispers
Might be as simple as him not having the capability of doing that reliably.

@Saturine
Par for the course for this kind of country.

The perspective in the last panel doesn't really work though.

Kick that rich boy ass.

Ooooh, fake news in the Empire, who'd have thought?

The problem with moving Chernyl to an isolated island is then there is nothing to stop the Empire from just bombing them off the map. They had to hide in a populated area or else the Empire would have killed them.

I still can't believe Malhart would go on a rampage like that...

@Saturine: The thing is, if he hadn't been shot, then the Haven nightmare scenario would play out, in much the same way, without Windows around to put a stop to it (this would happen when Malhart inevitably kicked one of those buckets that always seem to be lying around). I don't imagine things played out in the optimum fashion (Vader's kidnapping put paid to any chance of that), but any Windows free scenario could only have ended in disaster.

And yes, Vader choosing to bring the exact magic user needed to stop Chernyl to Haven was essentially blind luck. Or fate perhaps. But the point stands, without Windows 'Dead Kid' Radar, Haven would have fallen to Chernyl shortly after Malhart's death, possibly within seconds. And nothing would have stopped her nightmares from over running the continent if Windows did not. I mean, it's not inconceivable that someone with a comperable power could exist (*cough* *cough* Minori *cough*), but that's going to be vanishingly rare.

@Strannik: While that's true, Chernyl's power breaking loose would have doomed those young magic users, just as surely as the JSP's bullets.

Well that depends on the island, some are rather nice.

@Some guy: It could be that, yes (some of those Malhart sprogs have very usefull powers mind, but they could easily have limitations we don't yet know about). Or simple over confidence, he may have underestimated Chernyl's power by a considerable margin. As memory serves, Noel did seem to think she's grown in strength to a surprising degree.