Chapter 4: The Sword & the Samsonite

Townsfolk retaliating against Facadia in episode 21

### Key events

Facadia vs. the peasant revolters concludes, Facadia vs. the knights of rouen begins, fire spreads into the Notre Dame cathedral

## Summary

In **Chapter 4: The Sword and the Samsonite** of Wisher World Facadia lets loose in fighting against her enemies in the city of Rouen, France. It’s broken into eleven parts spanning episodes 21-31. The first episode holds the chapter title. The four following episodes are titled “The Sword”, followed by an intermission episode, with the last episodes titled “The Samsonite”. In this chapter Facadia uses the violence against her as an opportunity to express her playful love for combat.

### Plot

The story starts with the whole crowd of town people charging at Facadia. Her enemies are struggling to fight her with one mind. Facadia nonchalantly defends and attacks against several armed men, dealing severe injuries in moments. Out of desperation a group team up to restrain her, but she feels they’re reluctant to commit and knocks them away.

Facadia begins fighting with her stretchy tail. Some of the knights pull back, and tell the peasants that whoever fights her will get a reward. They plan to let the peasants wear her down so they can kill her once she’s exhausted. A knight also notes that Facadia has abnormal fighting prowess that’s not expected of a mere wisher. Facadia gets a good fight in between a heavily armored knight, an old woman, and a muscled peasant man. In this exchange it’s shown that strong metal like the knights helmet can deflect Facadia’s punch. The wound in Facadia’s stomach caused by the knight in Chapter 3: A Battlefield of Will is now a weakness, and becomes a target.

Facadia temporarily retreats. Doing so, she sees the son of the family man who she fought. He’s crying by his unconscious or dead father’s body. Facadia tosses the boy out of the broken window into a tree, saving him from the violence inside the cathedral.

Outside the cathedral, Enguerrand is still taking in the damage and bloodshed of the city. He is alone now, and mourning. Keomi watches him lifting a large piece of stone wall, surprising her with his strength. She feels conflicted about her empathy for this stranger’s feelings. They are from different worlds in terms of social class.

Cutting back to the inside of the cathedral, the townsfolk ponder where Facadia went. Facadia, is winding up her tail around a column. She contemplates if she's spiritually or physically exhausted, and concludes the later. With that she jumps back into the fight. This eventually results in Facadia smashing another window with her kick. Fire rushes into the cathedral and the peasants begin to disperse in chaos. The knights move in since the peasants are of no more use. However, Facadia is popping in and out of the smoke teasing them. The fire is also blocking them from rushing her at once.

Facadia flips over to a ledge and looks down on all of the town’s people. She compares the crowd to herd animals in their mentality, concluding she can’t be upset with them. However, despite Facadia’s triumph, the pain from her wounds kicks in hard. The last episode of the chapter reflects on Facadia’s scenes leading up to this point. Now she is in pain, inhaling fumes, and fighting knights in the darkness of the growing smoke. She thinks to herself that she’s given into her desires and can’t even feel right from wrong anymore. Just as Facadia thinks there’s no need for her to be saved, a hole cracked open in the ceiling of the cathedral. It lets in a heavenly light.

## Publishing

*Chapter 3: A Battlefield of Will* was published on Webtoon Canvas in 11 episodes.

### Episodes & dates:

* Episode 21: The Sword & the Samsonite pt. 1 / Aug 19, 2022
* Episode 22: The Sword pt. 2 / Sep 2, 2022
* Episode 23: The Sword pt. 3 / Sep 17, 2022
* Episode 24: The Sword pt. 4 / Sep 30, 2022
* Episode 25: The Sword pt. 5 / Oct 20, 2022
* Episode 26: Intermission / Nov 4, 2022
* Episode 27: The Samsonite pt. 1 / Nov 5, 2022
* Episode 28: The Samsonite pt. 2 / Nov 20, 2022
* Episode 29: The Samsonite pt. 3 / Dec 6, 2022
* Episode 30: The Samsonite pt. 4 / Dec 12, 2022
* Episode 31: The Samsonite pt. 5 / January 2023

### Extras

* Episode Promo Cover Art Gallery 3# [ Episode 31]

## Concept/ Background

* After three chapters of set up, the big all out fight was drawn to be long. It was planned especially lengthy as Punloid was excited to draw action after years of working on comics without getting to the fight scenes. As a consequence, some of the action occurs for the sole sake of choreography [particularly episodes 27-29]. Some of the action choreography was story boarded nearly a year before the episodes were drawn. Even so, many scenes were cut out to not further bloat the already long chapter.

* There was an intention to mix serious combat with cartoony gag attacks in order to characterize Facadia as playful rather than vengeful or blood thirsty.

* The knights introduce some strategy into the brawl in order to give the “hoard” of enemies their own unifying style and narrative structure.

* The chapter is the longest in the story so far. It was split into parts with different titles in hopes of appearing less dragged out.
* The colors in the first 5 episodes were picked to be significantly different than Wisher World’s previous episodes. This was to indicate the progress and change despite taking place in the same setting as Chapters 1 and 3.

### Earlier versions

* Punloid began working on the second half of the chapter after working exclusively on Wisher World: Call to Action. There was some adjusting to be done in terms of the narrative direction when returning to the main series. Due to this, the 3 episodes produced after returning were scraped. Then later parts of them were added back into the last three episodes of the chapter in a different order and context. These story parts that were scraped and re-added focused on the knight’s battle strategy, Facadia’s personal assessment of her enemies, and the physical toll on Facadia’s body.

* One deleted scene that did not make it into the final chapter was Facadia destroying the gold mound. While she only knocked it down due to a domino effect in this deleted scene, it still made her appear too powerful.

## Trivia

* The color scheme for the panel of the townsfolk running at Facadia in episode 21 is the same one used when Facadia is stating the rules of her wishing powers in episode 6 Chapter 1.