Grrl Power #609 – Little black encyclopedia set
Deus is rich in money and… other stuff. You know, friends. Sort of.
I could have come up with something other than a Draugr, but they’ve been on my mind lately. I like the name Rannevig. I may reuse that someday, but I don’t think Deus is going to run into that particular one anytime soon.
I never said what Sciona was before this point because I was just blanking on a name for her race. Sometimes I get really hung up on stuff like that, but there are a bunch of name/word/language generators online, and if you refresh them enough times, they get your fake word engine started. I did a quick google on “Alari” to make sure I wasn’t cryptomnesiaing something and typed it in. And of course, as it goes with these sorts of things, it wasn’t even 4 days before I saw Alari as the last name of a minor character in a book I was reading. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise. Weird how that works out sometimes. It was Baader-Meinhof adjacent at the very least. Yes, I’m going to make you google that. The most pronounced instance of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon I’ve ever experienced was upon learning the word “voluptuous” while reading a Piers Anthony novel. That dude sure knows how he likes describing women, that’s for sure.
I forgot to color in Deus’s nipple on the last panel there. He looks like Apollo from Star Trek: TOS. Apparently, they actually covered his nipple with makeup, because at the time, male nipples were too much for the viewing public. Maybe they thought it would get the lady folk aflutter. That’s pretty bonkers when you think about it, but this show also had the first televised interracial kiss in it. Before that, Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore were shown sleeping in separate beds because showing something on TV that was representational of every married couple in the country was too scandalous. Maybe 50 years from now we’ll look back and think how archaic it was that we didn’t have televised explicit eroticism during prime time. The 5th reboot of Power Puff Girls will be freaky.
For those of you who aren’t a fan of this scene, it’s got just one page left, so hang in there. Everyone has their clothes on if it matters.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Does he do the sketches himself? They’re pretty good.
Looks like. But Vale is another possibility. She probably has more time on her hands, when Deus is safely in his office.
Piers Anthony taught me the word megalocapious.
Literally had to look that word up when I read this.
Couldnt find a definition. What does it mean?
“Megalo” is abnormally large
“Capious” is to seize or arrest
So perhaps it means to seize a lot? Or to desire or want a lot? Or perhaps to have a lot?
I found it in Wikipedia…Basically, it’s a specific type of tree.
I’m not sure if you were trying to be subtly ironic or something. If so, it escaped me. I’ll just point out that your link doesn’t go to a wiki page which contains the word “megalocapious.”
I think miss-spelling and the auto-correct demon worked together to assist miss-direction for that wiki link.
That’s megalocarpus, not megalocapious.
I don’t think megalocapious is a word. But if it is I’m just wanting to know what it means, or if it’s a made up word from one of Piers Anthony’s books. I havent ever read any of his books.
He is very good, I am sure you would enjoy his work. A lot of it is like super-powers in a magical or science fiction setting (sometimes both in the same story, in their respective settings). He does have an extreme penchant for puns though in some (the Xanth series in particular). Plus he is prolific. Which is good if you want a huge amount of material. Or bad as it can get a bit samey.
Given the money I probably would have stuck with buying his books, despite that (time taken to read not being an issue as I can get through a novel or two a day). But as their price rose I gradually had to become more selective, so avoided the latest in long series of his (of which Xanth is the only one that springs to mind).
I think I played a retro game once called Companions of Xanth, but not sure if it was the same thing. It was a sort of generic RPG game. I don’t remember the storyline at all.
Turns out that it was based on part of the Xanth series. Odd that they should choose that series if wishing to make a puzzle game. Given that another of his series has much of the plot revolving around a series of games that dominate a planet. Generating tourism from across the occupied galaxy, given how high stakes and sophisticated the games are.
I guess he/they were holding out on more advanced gaming technology to actually simulate the games described. And they followed a huge gamut, from things you would expect to find in the Olympics, through competitive music to traditional games (like chess).
So I think a well designed game, which could also handle the meta game (winning the overall game, through being able to win at a variety of other games) would be a commercial hit now that the world has professional gamers. Ironically, given that it makes our world closer to that one.
Plus it would be well suited to a massively multiplayer game. Where folks could stick to their speciality games if they choose, or could take a stab at competing for the big money prizes.
Blue Adept was a good series.
Oh, and there would be the dynamics of political intrigue and other out-of-game plots to consider. Much of it revolving around ways to influence the meta game, such as finding a suitable partner for doubles games or finding a missing teammate.
Plus the nice twist that if you get fed up with that setting there are ways to slip through to a parallel magical world, with completely different dynamics!
He has written some interesting stuff.
He won’t write it if his agent and/or publisher tell(s) him it won’t sell.
He is sexist as.
His agent gets less percentagewise than other authors tithe their agents – and this is why his books are more expensive.
He loves to write long author notes to pad his works, and most puns in Xanth were submitted by fans; they are credited in even more volume-padding.
He is not a nice person, and does not want to be a nice person. (I know, because he said so in such an author note.) He also admitted that he wanted a smart wife so that he’d get smart kids, and waxed #firstworldproblems whinging that he’d saved up $ for kids’ college only for them to all get scholarships. “Sigh.”
He is the person who ‘polarised’ women on a spectrum with beauty at one end and intelligence at the other, in the character of Chameleon, as in ‘A Spell for Chameleon.
I could go on, but it’d be more effective if you read this stuff for yourself.
God, Piers Anthony. I don’t really like him. He’s a big massive creep who’s strangely obsessed with underage sex.
Who cares if some character has the same name as your fantasy race?
Ah, but another fantasy race with the same exact name? That’s a whole other ball of wax.
Sciona doesn’t seem to have any nature-based powers, but if you do just a tiny bit of further reading on that wiki you’ll quickly see that the god of the Alari is now creating things that can only be called evil, including an artifact which only purpose appears to be to cause strife and which has brought about multiple wars between the Alari.
PS: Your Google-fu is somewhat lacking. The link I posted is the top result for the search term “alari race.” It does not appear at all on the first page if you only search for “alari.” On that first page there is a character with that name in Guild Wars 2, and a chimpanzee, and it is an acronym for various things.
Its hard to find a sequence of (good sounding) vowels and consonants that hasn’t been used by someone in some form.
also considering how many different versions in fantasy there are of elves, pixies, trolls, goblins, and ogres, that bare little resemblance to the various folklores (seriously troll queens were gorgeous and have elemental powers), or each other.
Not to mention how many things so common in fantasy that bare so little resemblance to their folklore and mythical counterparts.
for instance
Alraune *what you just pictured in your head was the result of videogame design evolution, not the folklore monster, which the “Mandragora” (by the way same thing different languages) is the original version.
Minotaur *individual not race*
Lamia *myth did evolve to snake women in some areas, but seems to have been the result of cross-pollination with Drakanae myths as the individual was just a beast or depicted as more of a scale covered sphinx*
Harpies *are wind elementals not physical creatures*
ect…
I’ve always thought that the evolution of myth over time says a good deal about us and how we are changing.
Yea, like that big bada boom origin myth.
And apparently Sirens are more resembling Harpies than being evil mermaids
Yep, bird with a human head, blame bestiaries from the middle ages though for the mix up. Water maidens from rivers and lakes have a similar sing trick to lure in victims, killer fae from springs, and even some mermaids like merrow, so these people making these books mixed them up.
of course these same books gave tigers spots and had described elephants as fighting dragons.
Sorry qbout this ive seen your name to much so i must say hello to the best healer in the game.
Oh, wow, hah. I guess I suck at that. Oh well, it’s not like I introduced a character named Drizzt. :P
I dunno, I consider myself pretty good at searching now, but would probably have just put in “Alari” rather than “Alari race”. Normally less is more, unless you are getting a lot of clutter from something specific (such as a popular new movie).
Not that it matters, but Alari is also the name of a cuddly space warrior race in sergej lukianenko’s starshadow/stargame books (or whatever their english titles might be).
But as it has been pointed out before, there are only so many combinations you can do with 26 letters.
I cannot tell if Deus is humoring I her in the last panel or actually serious. Then again I wouldn’t put it past Deus to hedge his bets.
He is mocking her
It might have been better for Deus to hold off on the mocking part until after Sciona signed the book…It’s not really clear whether she did or didn’t. If she did sign it, then he picked a good time for mockery because at that point, he’s already gotten another conquest under his belt (pun intended).
Well she was passing the book back so either she signed already or has no intention of signing it.
Have you noticed that the book she’s handing back is a match to all the others in the bookcase behind him? And that there’s a gap 5 from the top left?
Deus’ “little black book” covers a WALL. I think he can brush off the rejection.
But his “little black book wall” isn’t just his conquests, it is also his wish list. So while he is still the most-confirmed-banged person in this strip to date (I’m pretty sure Dabbler has only the Barberian and then a sock on the door handle or something), we don’t know what proportion of that encyclopedia is wishes and what proportion is fact.
Good points, but Sciona has a good question: When DID he draw that picture? This is a new look for her and her entry has her name plus equally new biographical facts like height and cup size(?).
And was she on his wish list when she had a troll’s body?
I share these thoughts, and +1 on the insights regarding the extremely short timeframe since her makeover and the current ugly-bumpin’. One would assume that most of Deus free time was marketing the sellable pieces of his newly acquired collection… not sketching Alari babes.
So, is his encyclopedia erotica the product of someone with magical foresight (“Use your powers to sketch and write biographies of every girl who I’m going to @#$% in the next 30 years.”), is he an unpowered TIME TRAVELER?! I’m no longer buying the “mundane background” explanation.
I actually mentioned this as a possibility in another post. Or that he might have been visited by his future self (sort of like David Xanatos in Disney’s Gargoyles).
But then I thought it would be a much simpler answer to say that he has spies within the Council who gave him that information.
It’s not a completely new look for her. Aside from the breast augmentation this is her original body. Who knows how long she was 3/4 of a head stitched onto an orc body, but it wasn’t long enough for people to forget what she once looked like.
Simplest answer is that he added her after they met in the vault. The cup size being crossed out and updated could be a note to himself about the change — “This is what it was originally and then she changed it.”
It’s supervillain banter. There’s an etiquette to these things.
I would tend to agree.
We know that Deus is a non-delusional megalomaniac, who stands a far better chance of plonking his bum in the World Throne. Especially given her dreadful people-management skills. So he would be entitled to do an evil genius laugh, at her claims.
However Sciona is capable of making constructs which can duplicate super powers, and others that have mind affecting abilities, and figured out how to break into the most secure vault on the planet. And more than one tyrant has overcome their lack of charisma through ruling by fear alone. Hence Sciona remains a strong contender.
So, as Peter says, it is banter. It is tipping a nod to her, in acknowledging her potential, whilst humouring her ego in not pointing out his superior capabilities. He knows it is all too easy to provoke her, and there is no need to do so here. As such, running with her fantasy is a sensible route to go. In this case probably genuinely stating what he would do should she find herself in that position.
Leaving unstated that he would be plotting for a way to overthrow her.
God I hate that you search far and wide for something that hasn’t been used before think you’ve found that one perfect gem and then *BLAM* you find out it’s been used multiple times before. It’s especially hard I find for fantasy and super heroes. Seems like no matter where you go some one has been there before.
In vaguely related news I used ARC Swat for the name of my Hero League in DCUO is that all right?
I would have asked first but I was really tired of belonging to “The Justice Placeholders”.
I have had times trying to come up with a name for an elder god, string together some random vowels, and it turns out to be the name of a spice somewhere.
super hero names are worse, at this time its been nearly a century of comics, cartoons, and movies, numerous comic companies have come and gone along side the two big names and any name you can think of that isn’t just meant to be for a joke knock-off *and even then* has been taken…or used…sometimes more than once.
Sometimes you just have to shrug and go, “eh, whatever” so long as its not an A-list DC or Marvel character…and even then some X-men names should still be okay (provided the character doesn’t look, act, or have the same powers…especially those named after mythical creatures, animals, and nouns or verbs)
“ALL WILL TREMBLE BEFORE THE GREAT GOD… cumin? Does this say cumin? Really? We worship cumin? So is curry a sacred sacrament? Because I can get behind that.”
Got you beat by a few years “arc swat” was the name of my first guild on World of Warcraft, way back in 2005. I think we had a Shadowrun or Spelljammer group with that tag as well.
Plus. if you google it there is whole raft of stuff with that name.
I love how…. oddly pragmatic Deus is.
Looks like Dues is hunting for 100% completion on his Sexbox Live achievements list.
Lol.
Okay, does it bother anyone else that Deus measures his encounters’ heights in centimeters but their measurements in inches?
I hadn’t even noticed it, until you mentioned that. So very well observed.
It is interesting though, as Dave is vehemently against the use of imperial measurements and considers metric to be far superior. So to show Deus mixing them indicates just how villainous Deus really is!
In addition to the whole ‘being a cad and a bounder’ issue.
In Quebec, there’s a semi-common French surname that’s written Alarie. Just sayin’.
Hmmm… maybe it is the signature that grants him safety from/domination over his conquests, with sex as part of the spell?
THATS realy smart and devilish just up Deus alley.
I hearby subscribe to this theory.
Just in case: a female Lord (as in land owner with tax paying tenants) is called a Lady.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Lady would imply a different status, so a woman has the ‘male’ title. A royal example would be Jadwiga of Poland, female King of Poland.
The word is still “lady”. It’s not a title like “king” was for that queen. Otherwise Deus would’ve just said it as it was. Instead he’s speaking like Sydney.
The Occupant is correct. Whilst in the majority of cases you would refer to a female lord as a ‘Lady’, that is not always the case. So Deus is correct to query it for an exotic race’s choice (especially, being aliens or supernaturals, as they might not use our conventions).
To give a couple of examples from the UK and Commonwealth though, firstly the Queen is also the Lord of Mann. Secondly Lord Mayors are referred to as “Lord”.
I asked the all knowing Google what an Alari was and got nothing.
Any source materals for me i can read?
It was made up by the author but as with anything, if you look in the right places you will find it.
add the search term “race” and you should get some hits in page 1 instead of being buried on page 2 onward.
Alar: a·lar
/ˈālər/
adjective
Zoology
adjective: alar
relating to a wing or wings.
•Anatomy
winglike or wing-shaped.
•Botany
another term for axillary.
I’m getting some serious Hunter X Hunter vibes from that book.
Chrollo’s Nen ability, anyone?
Remember this page? Deus wasn’t spelling out his full thought in front of Sydney and Maxima. He really was thinking more like this.
Heh.
And I just now realized there’s an entire bookshelf of those books…
Yup. And folks wonder how Deus has the physique he does. Those volumes indicate he spends a heck of a lot of his time ‘working out’!
If you check the picture it appears that he has taken out the 5th volume on the top shelf, implying he plans to have many more ‘workouts’ in future than he has in the past. 4.75 volumes is still quite a bit however.
Which could be true. I have though argued elsewhere though that he does not seem to be the sort to have most of a trophy case being blank. So, for instance, that could have just been taken down from the “A for Alari” section. Maybe a lot of it is his wish list. Or perhaps the whole thing is just conquests.
Check out this superpower-like skill!
Nice to see Deus does not tell Scinoa she will fail, Deus is soooo romantic. Giving her a list of requirements to evilly ignore later is just icing on the delusion cake.
Just so he has repeated business with her.
OH, gotta love how large that library is. Deus REALLY thinks he’s going to fill every page, is he??
Let’s see, 3 sex a day approx for approx 1000 sex a year, say he’s somehow 100 year old. That’s 100’000 sex (plus some extra on the side since he will sleep with someone twice, or a whole Harem at once).
Still not need a “library” that large. Except as intentional show of ego…
The worrying part is that is the conquests section. The ‘to do’ volumes are in the basement.
To be fair who says all those books are sex books, they are unlabeled on the outside.
And the empty space is only 5 books in suggesting that it’s just a few books worth.
I will confess. At first I wasn’t too much of a fan of the scene, since Deus was using sex as payment and Sciona didn’t really look all that pleased…but I will say, you handled it, in my opinion, rather brilliantly. Loads of comedy, a good bit of disgust, but in the end, I found it rather hilarious, and I am very glad I stuck around. Doesn’t hurt that Sciona is rather attractive, for an evil bint I’d rather see get hit with a bus. >.>! So i gotta say, Dave, really well done. :)
I think part of the problem is pacing.
If this was a comic book we’d have eight to twelve pages in a single sitting, in a matter of minutes most likely to get a full image. Online comic though we are seeing just one page at a time and days to mull over it unless its part of an archive dive *but speaking of new pages only* the readers are left to ponder it and re-read one page far more often than they’d likely read and read into one page from a comic book.
can imagine how many pages of a comic book could be taken out of context if you had days between the pages.
Don’t know if anyone said it yet, but there is no way that Sciona’s bra size is 38 DD. That would mean her ribcage measured tightly directly below the chest is approx. 38 inches and her bust size is 42 inches. As she is a rather skinny muscular type, I guess a 32 F/G (small waist – large breasts) would fit her better and would provide better support (tight band = more support = less back pain … not that it matters for her …)
Did anyone else, on their first look at panel 2, think that the character drawn/book was saying “What?”
… yes
Can we appreciate just how… chill he is about her “bedchamber pet” comment? Dude’s got class. Deus has been growing into one of my favorite characters in the comic.
Pragmatic: better to be a pet in a hot chicks’ bedchamber than kneeling in the rubble along with the rest of the world :P
Deus had his brain parasite replicated, and the host is also happy with his duties. It’s like these 2 are not in a parasitic relationship but a true partnership!
PLEASE BURN DUES AND ALL HIS WORKS TO THE GROUND
I think I have solved it. Deus is a super, but he is not powered by tantric energy. Rather he draws upon disgustric energy!
Sciona will become a mere second fiddle, once Deus gets to meet Cooter. Although just standing near him, behaving normally, should probably do the trick. No need for … um … you know … ahh … the other stuff.
So now that we know Deus has had his way with an Elite Drauger Lordess there is a new possibility for how he got his scar. She just gave Deus his rating!
my dong of control theory is becoming more and more logical.
he keeps track of all his “minions” and their abilities.
wait…what if he gains the abilities of the women he sleeps with.. O . o
Ahh, so you think with your d**k? I would have thought this scene would have just made you less logical, and more focused on your objective.
Unless one can gain superpowers via exotic STDs …..
The thing I keep wondering is, “What, to Deus, would be considered SAFE sex?”
Alari. Hm. Funny, I was playing Stellaris with semi-random race named Alari. They were space elves.
No wings, though.
This is a theory that was rattling around in my head for a bit so I figured I’d post it here. What if Deus’s ability to create those “memoirs of fleeting passion” comes from his power that everyone seems to be speculating about. What I’m proposing is his power or part of his power includes the ability to, after laying with one of these women, to know everything about her, strengths, weaknesses and background, the contents of which are stored on a page in those books he creates. It’s unclear if Sciona did, in fact, sign the book, but that could be the second activating condition of the power, giving him some kind of benefits that are connected to her by that book. It’s unclear what those benefits would be and I’ve seen some excellent speculation in the comments feed, but some of my favorite guesses are some kind of greed based power, in this case sexual greed, some portion of her powers or skills or some control or influence over her. With the last theory, Sciona agreeing to keep Deus as a bedroom pet after she enslaves the world would hint at some kind of sympathetic influence, despite her appearing to be sarcastic and demeaning with how she presents it. It could either be a slow burn, or something Deus can activate, my guess is with the book or perhaps just a power inherent to him. Those are my thoughts, I guess we’ll see where Dave takes it.
Interesting thoughts. You might want to consider spacing out future lager posts a bit with paragraph breaks. I lost my place twice. But worth the effort, nonetheless.
One thing to point out is that Deus seemed to know an awful lot about Sciona, and the rest of her team, before even meeting her. Let alone having sex.
Although that does not render your theory invalid, as he probably has multiple intelligence sources. Which would also serve to cover up him acquiring extra information, in the way you propose. He may, for instance, have gained information from Cthillia that way.
OK most folks would not consider bedding a scaly reptilian basilisk. But Deus is clearly much more flexible in that regard.
Out of curiosity is there any sort of beastiary info on Alari? (Oddly the plural is probably Alarii, as in Alari-eye)
Dave created the race himself, so unlikely, unless he did so as a way of making notes about them. That would need to be fairly recent though, as he only had vague ideas about the race and even the name, until recently. Beyond that it would be one of his own creation, rather than a dark elf, or some such.
Of course anybody is welcome to start up a new ‘bestiary’ page on the GrrlPower wiki. We met a whole host of new races (and even interrelated species, when you consider the various types of lycanthropes) in the Twilight Council chambers.
There could be pictures as well as notes on any information we have learnt about them. For instance we have learnt quite a lot about Succubi. Whilst others we know so little about that the race would need a descriptive name, instead of a canon name (with a note to that effect).
There could even be an honorary mention of notable animals that have appeared, such as the squirrel that survived a barrage from Budget Halo, the New York park critter that felt the effects of the underground explosion and maybe even a doggy.
*poses humbly for photograph*
You know…this is spooky. I’m writing a book, and one of the characters in it is a female Draugr. A lot of zombie puns are made.
Imagine Dues and Dabbler get together and he asks her to sign his book and she says “only if you sign mine” and pulls a comically large book out of hammerspace that says like volume 36.
I love how he sounds genuinely sincere about preparing a list of his accomodation and bedsheet threadcount needs, like it doesn’t phase him at all, he *knows* he can switch gears just that fast and be a successful bedslave. …He’ll still be plotting to take over or at least manipulate stuff from behind the canopy bed curtains, so to speak, but it just comes across as him being genuinely sincere about enjoying sex just that much.
I like that he’s genuinely smooth in his reply. I like the sex-positive attitude. Even if he is a bit villainous, he has some really good qualities, too, and that complexity makes his part of the Grrl Power story all the richer (in non billionaire ways).
RIGHT?! The “I’ll prepare a list of my accommodations and thread count requirements” has me GENUINELY impressed with him. I think I like him now.
Another “gross”, but trying to high-five your sexual conquest over same sexual conquest is boorish enough to deserve a splash of cold water. “Gentlemen don’t kiss and tell” Though Deus is only as gentleman as he wants to be, that’s classless enough to revoke his rights to it.
Being as filthy rich and powerful megalomaniac as he is, he probably wouldn’t be too bummed about that. Chicks dig megalomaniacs.