Grrl Power #553 – Now that is a big door
Everyone who has a secure location is probably going to claim that it’s one of the most secure ones in the world. It’s marketing. Just like everyone’s waffles or cheese blintzes or street tacos are World Famous. But in most cases, it’s fairly unlikely people in Zambia are all a buzz about Jose’s Street Tacos food truck in Reno.
But in this case, the fact that this location is 1000 meters down does probably place it in the top 20 of secure locations in the world. Really, when it was built back in the day, there weren’t internet billionaires who could afford recreational deep sea submersibles on a whim either. It was probably top 3 before the someone invented the bathysphere. Unless you happened to be “creature from the black lagoon adjacent,” or any other race that doesn’t need to breath, isn’t bothered by 100 atmospheres of pressure, aren’t exceedingly delicious to a large variety of fish, and know where it is in the first place. Of course there are normally internal defenses in that first chamber as well. Like walls of force that randomly smack you off that no-railings walkway into the spike pit.
BTW I know a moon pool wouldn’t work at 1000 meters deep unless that room was pressurized, which it obviously isn’t, but, you know, magic. Though it would actually add a level of security if anyone who wanted to break in to your vault had to spend 18 hours decompressing afterwards.
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Dave, if you are looking for a way to get your story back to the present this may be your opening.
They open up the vault and find the mystic gem of eternal darkness is missing. Gault says that if it activated with a blood ritual it has the power to enslave ‘all who see midnight at noon’, but this would only occur during a total solar eclipse. Gault says “It is a good thing we have over 6 years to find out who has the gem and get it back before that happens.” And cut to today.
This would be hilarious and definitely up the cut intervals quite impressively.
Readers > What happened between then and now?
Dave > Sydney passed basic training.
Readers > What else?
Dave > Lots of naughty and silly shenanigans, but nothing of importance.
Readers > but, but
Dave > Hush. Read and enjoy.
well he could always end the flashback, tell some story in the present and go back to the flashback. like somebody interrupting sydney in telling the story.
This is a flashback? I’ve lost the thread completely by now..
Yep. Page four started a “few months” flashback and we’re still less than a week into it.
It would be rather disorientating to flash forward without ending the current retelling of events first.
given that the flashback is a few months and we are several years behind current events…. we have a few issues here. maybe a whole subscription.
Of course there were 2 total solar eclipse in 2009, 2 in 2010, 4 in 2011, 2 in 2012, 2 in 2013, 2 in 2014, 2 in 2015, 2 in 2016, 2 in 2017.. There just wouldn’t have been on in North America for a few years. the 2009 were Jan in Sumatra/kajarta/Borneo, and July in central and northeastern India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, northern part of the Ryukyu Islands (Satsunan) 2010 were Jan in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Maldives, southeastern India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, central China, and July in Chile and Argentina. etc etc….
Silly rabbit, stuff doesn’t count if it doesn’t happen in the US.
More seriously though, it could be tied to North America or the US as part of the prophesy. “When the new world which is old sees midnight at noon, I will arise and take my throne.”
And… you would lose a lot of long-term readers just because of a few bored readers
Uh… Small problem with that, Juan, total solar eclipses occur about every 18 months on average. The next closest total eclipse to their time-line would be Nov. 13, 2012 (northern Australia got a good look at that one).
Still, I don’t think Dave would want to skip ahead in any case.
Err, sorry. I was looking at the wrong page in ‘The Big Book of Evil Artifacts”. what I MEANT to say was that the gem if activated in Yellowstone Park during a solar eclipse it will cause the Yellowstone super-volcano to erupt, destroying much of North America.
Hah, if I did that, it’d set a precedent that I’d have to jump the comic forward a few years every other storyline. Really the best solution is to do shorter arcs with an indeterminate amount of time in between them.
Just, continue telling your story the way you want, if it means it stays in 2011 for the next ten years, meh, that’s fine by me
+1, just be careful with the tour shirts.
Unless those shirts are on time travelers…
Ya, sneaky time travelers. they end up everywhere (or is that every WHEN?)
Tho at this rate we’ll be at Team-Ups and Crossovers time frame some time in the next 2-3 decades.
comic book time was invented for a reason. If you read enough marvel and dc, you will see that they don’t like to put a date to anything. Some characters age somewhat, some don’t, some others get deaged by a new author. Most marvel characters age with about 1/4 speed, some don’t at all.
But make sure you warn them about Tr*mp. It’s only 2011 in the Grrlverse, they still have time.
What if all the attacks on the sigil were meant to force them to check the vault ? I’d have Sydney run a true-sight security check. Just in case someone with an advanced invisibility / mindshield veil & a physical light bending device is hiding in the hall. (Stuck on a wall, f.e)
For all we know, gogglehead up there may have already done something similar. He certainly has enough occular enhancement to be hiding something of that sort.
I think he’s some form of Spider infused member of the council.
Sounds like they already did what they shouldn’t have done, that’s why Maxi is pissed (more than usual) in the last panel, and why Gault was looking slightly ‘nervous’ in panel five
He doesn’t seem nervous so much as annoyed that the Council got tricked into doing something that was according to someone else’s plans. Sort of the same way that Maxima was forced into the scenario of either letting Sydney come or have to admit needing the Council’s help on something. It’s a matter of pride, not necessarily nervousness.
Not to mention the Council doesn’t need Archon’s permission on stuff involving their own members and group, which is far older than the United States, let alone Archon.
*huff*
Yes, but the Council isn’t officially recognized, they are not the official Government, and Archon has been giving jurisdiction over all this ‘stuff’
Archon hasn’t been given jurisdiction over all this stuff so much as that the Council and Archon work together on subjects where their interests overlap.
The Council has their own police force (the Semper Vigilantis, or Vi’s for short) to deal with supernatural ‘stuff’.
Archon is there for dealings with supers, natural disasters, and similar public affairs.
Archon is let in on this because they happened to be there when one of the sigils was attacked, and because the veil being undone affects everyone. But they aren’t meant to take care of all supernatural business.
Yep. If anything, the Council has members in Archon, not the other way around … with the exception of Zephen (and maybe Gwen, depending on which group she was a part of FIRST). Pixel, Dabbler, and possibly Gwen seem to be people from the Council who are also in Archon, who are also not supers but not human (again, except Gwen who is human but a novice mage).
Little addendum to what I wrote. Technically Pixel is a supernatural creature that is ALSO a super.
Technically she is a human. With some atypical features.
Cute little tattoos, or other facial markings, which look reminiscent of cat whiskers, but radiate from her eyes. Amongst others.
No, technically she’s not human. She’s a werecreature – a were-panther/jaguar/whatever. In World of Darkness nomenclature, she’d be called a Bastet. :)
That happens to also be a super.
So, legally speaking, if someone has some genetic material inserted into them, by another species, do they cease to be human? Would they then loose all rights to being considered to be a person?
If Pixel visited Europe, would she not be covered by the European Human Rights convention, but have to rely on legal protections for animals only?
Would anyone having sex of her be prosecuted for bestiality? Do note that as far as we know Pixel, and any other were would be able to mate with a human, Further we know canonically that the were-virus would be transmitted to the children.
So would the offspring of a legal animal and a human be classed as human or animal?
P.S. This includes you by the way, as humans do have some genetic code that they picked up from microorganisms.
* I do know that there is no legal category of ‘were-creature’ for racial classification purposes. So the choice would have to be human or non-human (as far as the were side is concerned).
Supers are a different matter mind. In the Grllverse there would likely be legal provision that super-humans count as human, given that the government has gone to the lengths of creating an act of law to cover the creation of Archon.
So it is likely that they would have (as a necessary prerequisite for that) clarified the legal status of supers as human, if only to ensure that they could legally be employed as cops. Police dogs not having the power of arrest, for example.
“Yes, but the Council isn’t officially recognized”
Actually you’re wrong. The Council IS officially recognized by the US government, and has been for quite some time. Look at panel #6.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2270
Also check the first few panels here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2265
“, they are not the official Government,”
You’re again wrong here.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2253
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2235
“and Archon has been giving jurisdiction over all this ‘stuff’
Wrong here as well. The Council pre-dates ARC. It also predates the US government, period. It also has various holdings within the government and the private sector, as well as other governments around the world. Think ‘Illuminati’ but on a supernatural scale.
The Council polices itself and has since before the Founding Fathers of the USA were conceived. It doesn’t need Archon’s permission to exist and they actually seem to have the jurisdiction to be able to exclude Archon from their meetings if they so wish. And I’m pretty sure the only reason they even have relations with humanity and the government at all is because of the existence of supers in the first place, and somehow I think that Archon wants to be on good relations with a supernatural organization that both greatly outnumbers Archon and also spans not only the globe, but the entire galaxy (at least, since the Council also includes alien life). Not to mention all the mages that are a part of the Council.
Honestly, most of this was shown in overview when Sydney first was shown the existence of the Council in the first place.
“Most secure place on the planet” and “We didn’t see the proximity alarms went off till we realized..” makes me think that the council does not know how to do security right. Shouldn’t someone ALWAYS be watching the vault , just in case of exact or similar situations?
You only prepare for security concerns you expect or understand – or if paranoid enough, that you can imagine. A magical culture who setup their protections a long long time ago has almost certainly setup for many situations, but the “enemy: getting thru the defense isn’t on the side they thought, its from their own people, who knows the security layout & even built part of them. The dagger in the back from someone you though was a ally, if not a friend are the hardest to see, much less stop.
True but the sensors were still set off, so I dont think they helped build the thing. Also, the vault and the council’s meeting place reflects how bad they are at security. Sure the vault is 1000 meters under water and 100 years ago that would be fine but now it isnt. The council meeting room had no security other than two guards at the secret entrance and no one with grenade launchers to destroy the magic trapped dummies. Its the Harry Potter problem. everyone uses magic, but use little to no technology other than the aliens and possibly dwarves.
Summary: Invest in some goddamn gun turrets, anti-virus software, and grenade launchers. Also, get cell phones or at least use them. Crimson could have been shot or worse.
Note in the council attack the were-bunny was not concerned with the grenade fired at them till she saw what it was loaded with. The council chamber’s primary defense was security through obscurity. Bunches of guards and weapon emplacements are not obscure. Sadly though it has the same problem mentioned above. If one of your own implements an attack, you are ill prepared.
Ya, but security through obscurity is stupid and everyone knows it, and having actual physical security measures would have helped. A LOT. The girl with the magic book was able to pull out an assault rifle and was able to damage a dummy murder machine. Archon had taser nets waiting for Crimson. What is wrong with having security somewhere with a key to a gun locker? And yes, if you have someone on the inside, that helps put a wrench in your security, but still, I dont think they would tell all the members of the council about all of their security. Especially sense they hinted that not all the races still get along. I want to know, what EXACTLY is wrong with having physical security?
Your issue is in thinking that the council would bother with physical security. Every member in there is already one of the best of their “representative peoples” as seen by how fast they started tearing apart the blood rune soldiers. There is also a high end fighting force controled by the council, but even that is used for serious ongoing issues, not as security gurds for people who dont need it.
If not for the inside info from the “traitor” about which group meets & where & when & what to use on each the fight couldn’t have gone as well/
Yes, I will grant they might rethink the security now, but that is hindsight. Until this moment the council had no physical concerns at all since no one would attack that way, and magically they had/have multiple layers of defense against whatever magic could do to slow or stop them.
In short having extra physical security would have been redundant & possibly insulting to the supernaturally powerful in that room, so its not something anyone thought of or concerned themselves with
The only reason why there even still is a Council, is because Maxi and Sydney happened to be there, if it wasn’t for them, everyone at the table would be dead and many many of the other representatives in the peanut gallery as well: remember what almost happened when they used magic against Manny?
Pretty sure not every single supernatural creature on the planet was in that room. Just their chosen representatives. And not even the most powerful of their representatives necessarily (Ingsol isnt the most powerful vampire, etc). They could pick new ones. Also I doubt that every representative would have been dead, given that Brunhilde and the other vampire were in the ‘peanut gallery’ and are a PART of Sciona’s group. Seems like a dumb plan to set off a bomb which will kill yourself unless you’re a suicide bomber, which those two do not seem to be.
also worth mentioning, with the meeting room itself, they had such little security because until now, their primary goal has been to not be found. sure a well established physical security system could have prevented the invaders from getting in, it would have made them more noticeable to mortals, which would be the ultimate loss.
Now that they know of a traitor, they may start to balance that risk with their previous mentality, but the ultimate loss is still being noticed, so don’t expect much more than a few more guards, or a forewarning/scout system.
Depends on whether or not they have people to man the monitors that all factions trust equally. If not, the most equitable choice to all factions is to make the vault as impregnable as possible and keep it off-limits to all.
Just in case there are people not up on their ancient / mythological culture terminologies. A Black Reliquary is supposed to be a storage facility for forbidden or super dangerous artifacts or magics to the world (or in particular, the people putting stuff in them) Could also hold super dangous people who are turned to stone or something because they can’t be killed, ect.
In short, it means a very very bad thing is about to happen, and we get the ring side seats.
(My personal bet is split between the priestish guy or the demon from the villans rebuttal page.)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189
So last comic, did someone else in the comments get sea urchin as a possible interior decorator?
Cause I was proud of that. In my head.
Yeah that sounds sadder when I write it out.
This is the kind of door you push people through from the other side and lock. That is why it is so huge and the way away from it is so narrow. With no food and only a salty moon pool you will either wither away or throw your self on the spikes in the hope that it ends your pitiful existence in a quick way. What you don’t know is the spikes are made of rubber and now you cant even get at the salty water — sucker.
Hey, you know about Jose’s Street Tacos? *lives in Reno*
Guess they really are famous! XD
Nebraska? o_O
Can Ingsol pronounce Sydney’s surname properly, or should that be “Scowille?”
Oh shit I forgot about his accent, hah hah. quickly does some edits
Well, you have already established that his accent ‘slips’, so no worries
like pratchett’s igors they speak with a lsip because it is the proper thing to have as an igor. but if they explain something complicated they request to stop it for a time.
I like that everyone has finally learnt to ignore Sydney’s questions :D
Sorry everyone, I’m going to hit you up with a couple of stupid security stories from my past.
In the military, I was escorting the guys fixing the fences in the special weapons area. If you don’t know what special weapons are, just guess. I won’t tell you if you’re right or not, but if you don’t get it on the first try, slap yourself in the head. Anyway, we are between fences, in full view of the tower, in view of the patrol vehicle, in view of the cameras, in the are of the ground and the motion sensors, and can also be seen by anyone walking between the different buildings, like when the shop in there goes to lunch…
So it’s now a couple hours after my replacement was supposed to have shown up to relieve me for lunch, and the fence guys finally take their break, so I can go to the SPs (air force version of cops) and use their phone to contact my shop. The SPs freak! “WTF have you been?!?! And HTH did you get in and out of the area without us knowing?!?!”. This confused the heck out of me. Apparently my replacement had shown up on time, but the SPs didn’t let them in, because despite all the security that I was right in the middle of, THEY COULDN’T FIND ME!!!!! I gave them hell for that for months.
The other one is when I was doing lots of tech support for various software packages, including antivirus. This isn’t one case, it’s a scenario that kept occurring. An office/company would be infected by a rather contagious computer virus, so we’d have to instruct them to clean ALL the machines, even if they don’t think it’s infected. Around half the time, they’d leave one machine out for some reason, and get reinfected on their network. You’d be amazed how often it was the “secure isolated computer that doesn’t have a network connection and nobody is allowed to use disks (or usb storage devices) on”. I’d have to convince them to check it out, just to humor me. 9 out of 10 times, it was infected as well. Now before anyone starts thinking computer viruses can do magical things, they can’t. The apparent magic here is there’s always some yahoo that thinks the security restrictions don’t really include them, or one little violation is of no risk. That’s all it takes to screw things over, especially when dealing with infectors.
So we had a general rule that when somebody has an isolated computer that absolutely can’t be infected, they are almost always wrong. (Once in a while it didn’t even have a keyboard or mouse. The person that was messing with it was hooking up their own keyboard/mouse to it when nobody was around.)
No matter how secure anything supposedly is, you always have to assume that it isn’t and keep tabs on it, at least if you have decent security people.
Daniel here. Never fails to amaze me how simple things can be overlooked. It’s like I keep saying, “Never underestimate the power of Human stupidity…”
Meanwhile Screwball wants to know the location of that special weapons storage, but don’t tell him. He’s bad enough as is with the toys he’s got…
How is any location secured when you’ve got teleporting/warping/portaling people around?
Like this.
Or if teleporting is real then so would the super science ability to have area denial fields, or teleportation shifting away from points, or super speedsters on watch to attack them, or magical traps, or any other number of possbilities
Speaking as a DM, the big complicated door would be a section of the wall designed to look like a door including lighting up when a macguffin was placed into each pedastel. In the end though it’s just a wall. The actual entrance would be a small door off to the side or a hidden staircase in the floor. Actually had a player at one time who got tired of locked doors from playing with other DMs who played a half orc barbarian with a war hammer and every variant of power attack feats he could find who tried breaking through fake door/side of the cavern once who had to be dug out after the ceiling and wall collapsed on him. I was a nice DM though and made sure there were at least a few obvious doors to smash through. Another fun one was the solid stone treasure chest fake out. To bad nobody liked playing dwarves at my table.
I like playing as a dwarf- sadly, my DMs don’t like hidden doors or odd stonework.
“Grand entrances are ALWAYS impractical. It’s what makes them grand.”
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider Legend
The problem with having a posted security guideline is that it provides a roadmap for bypassing said security. Well, that and SOMEONE is going to decide that it doesn’t apply to THEM obviously.
Aside from obligatory ‘you’ve activated my trap card’ reference, this is a fairly typical Xanatos Gambit.
Seems pretty obvious to me that one of the steps in a potential veil breach is to secure the non-disclosed relics in the Black Reliquary, which involves accessing it, which in turn opens it vulnerable to invasion. Alternately, this has ‘inside job’ written all over it, or at least ‘mind-controlled mole’. Failing that, well… someone already mentioned Hail Hydra.
Either way, someone familiar with security protocol used it to access Something Which Really Shouldn’t Be F**KED With, and now we proceed to ‘attempted damage control’.
At least part of the plan is probably drawing Max down there, because if anything is likely to kill her, imploding a bubble at roughly 100 atmospheres is a likely candidate. However, they also probably acknowledge that it is a long-shot at best, and have a backup ‘second punch’ lined up to hit her when she’s recovering.
Had a thought and had to look up this chapter: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/709
If it was Air, not Fly, that hit him, then it would HAVE to be named “bean ball” because of making it a fart joke (beans make gas, so does the ball haha) plus reference to hitting someone with something.
But that wasn’t the orb that KOd Math.
I would have bet money on Halo saying this after that KO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b18DjXWyWuc
Well I’m in Zambia, and have you had one of Jose’s tacos?!? Nom,nom, nom, nom. Soooo good!
I plan a vacation to Reno every year just to have some more.
Ok, now about this:
Well, bullshit. We’ve been told that taking down the sigils could do exactly that. It’s like saying “Cutting the support beams for this bridge was not designed to make it collapse.” Um, no. Despite any other possible nefarious intentions behind that action, cutting the support beams was clearly intended to make the bridge collapse. A feint is only a feint if there is the perception of some danger which does not actually exist. Were a sigil to suffer a random failure (and you have many to cover exactly that eventuality, right? Just like the bridge has many support beams.), were one of the remaining bridge support beams to be in need of repair, or were the bridge to encounter a lot of heavy vehicle traffic for any reason, failure of the sigil network or collapse of the bridge could easily occur.
It’s right there in the definition of the word: Feints are maneuvers designed to distract or mislead, done by giving the impression that a certain maneuver will take place, while in fact another, or even none, will.
A faint isn’t where you stab someone in the leg and then inform them they are going to bleed out if they don’t get medical attention. Because once you’ve stabbed them in the leg and they are spewing arterial blood all over the place you may have killed them anyway, even if your ultimate goal was to accomplish something else entirely.
“Hah ha!!! I could have stabbed you in the heart, but now you will have to tell me the combination to the safe!”
“No, now I will have to seek medical attention. You ain’t getting that combination if I die, so you may as well either help me or finish me off. Finishing me off will never get you the combination, so try to think things through a little more carefully this time.”
And now come the host of white knights to defend this poorly thought out plot twist… 5…4…3…2
Do you even read what you quote? “not designed to expose” is the relevant part, exposing the truth about (nearly) every mythical creature and entity is just and added extra bonus, the real design was what they did, which is where we are now
It has been mentioned that the attack on the Council wasn’t done that well, as it took Maxima barely a second to take care of the upgraded automaton. Either they underestimated what Maxima/Archon could do, didn’t count on Maxima/Archon being there, or it was meant to fail.
It was four constructs against a room filled with a large variety of creatures, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. While they could’ve done more damage if Maxima wasn’t there, it is not very likely they would’ve reached the sigil.
To use your own analogy: “Team A’s attack on the bridge wasn’t designed to make it collapse, it was used to keep our attention on the bridge while team B robbed a bank.”
The bridge collapsing or not is irrelevant as it was only a distraction to hide the real target.
You mean like how the other attack against the fey guarded sigil didn’t fail?
You mean like how Maxima was trapped under rubble and unable to act for long enough for the manikillers to kill everyone else and destroy the sigil? The attack on the Council chamber where Archon was visiting could have just as easily been a success, if the magic absorbing properties hadn’t been figured out in time. Maxima and presumably Halo would have survived, and if Halo survived so would anyone she managed to get into her force field, but the sigil would have been destroyed and a lot of Council members and possibly some Archon members could have easily died.
No, despite being a failure the attack on the Council was not a feint, and it was clearly not intended to fail.
If you want to be literal then replace the ‘was meant to fail’ with ‘was allowed to fail’.
The fey have a ‘use magic first’ approach, which backfired greatly on them because the husks explode after draining someone or something completely. If they had alternate ways of defense they too might have come out on top.
The Council was packed with plenty of creatures that have ways of fighting the husks without the use of magic, and it was shown they were doing quite well and were winning even before Maxima came back.
Could the husks have overtaken the Council and destroyed the sigil? Possibly, but not very likely, and either way that wasn’t the point.
The destruction of the sigil, the following risk to the veil and chance of exposure of the Council races to the human population were not the purpose of the attack(s), it was a means to an end. The end being to motivate the Council in doing whatever they’ve done that lead us to this gathering.
And oddly enough, apparently magic-users also have a ‘use magic first’ strategy. Strange how that worked out, eh? If Maxima and Sydney weren’t there the so-called feint on the Council chamber where she and Sydney would have opened with the deaths of several council members due to the silver shrapnel grenade. Even many of the non-lycanthropes probably have that same Sydney weakness to being riddled with bullets, regardless of the bullets (or shrapnel) in question being lead, silver, or wood. And even so the manikillers mana drain would have ended with a large boom. I dunno how close the sigil is to the conference room, but it’s quite possible that it would have either destroyed the sigil or lead to its destruction via collapsing underground chambers, just as Maxima was pinned however breifly by the collapsing tunnel she was jetting down.
Sending things carrying explosives and other deadly weapons that themselves make large explosions when a spell is cast on them in to a meeting of people who include magic-users when your intent is really not to have a spell cast on them or to cause a large explosion cannot be said to have been a plan which was ‘allowed to fail.’ That’s just laughably ridiculous. Even Xanatos doesn’t lay plans that require many people to take exactingly specific actions in an exactingly specific order.
But I can see it now:
Evil Mastermind: My plan is perfected! I’ll have my manikillers open with an explosive grenade filled with anti-werewolf and vampire silver shrapnel. It’s so convenient when your opponents have the same weaknesses, isn’t it? But not to kill anyone! No, no, we wouldn’t want that. We know that Maxima is fast enough to catch that if warned in advance. But, hmmm, how to get her that warning? I know! We’ll rely on her new recruit being sent out of the room for disrupting the proceedings. After watching her on TV once I know that will happen with a 100% certainty, because what good is an evil mastermind if you can’t pull a Holmsian deduction like that out of your ass when you need to? Then the recruit will spot our manikillers and warn Maxima, because how could she not just happen to be using her true seeing orb which is classified and therefore no one knows about? Brilliant! And of course Maxima will immediatly take a text message from her recently expelled recruit, because why would she not allow said recruit to further disrupt the Council meeting? That could never happen! Ok, now Maxima has kept the grenade from making a big boom, killing a few Council members, and possibly bringing down the house because as we’ll establish later the place does not react well to explosions… But all is going according to the master plan! And then, at least one of the magic-users present will no doubt cast a spell, charging the explosion of one of the manikillers. Then Maxima will no doubt fly it out of there so that no one is harmed, pinning her under the rubble of the collapsed tunnel since I have oh, so carefully calibrated the magic energies which will be absorbed and the structural integrity of the tunnel. Then, we’ll further cement the value of this feint by having a variety of lethal poisons and other stabby and otherwise deadly attacks be made by the remaining manikillers, none of which will succeed in doing more than temporarily incapacitating the Council members which I need to be kept alive in order to pull off this masterful feint. Of course they will fail, but that’s just as I have planned all along! It’s so expensive to lose these wonderful toys, but omelet and eggs, dontcha know?
Yeah, I see that happening. It’s all so very plausible!
How much reaching are you doing to get that conclusion out of what I said? Of course no one would be able to predict the exact events as they happened. But that wasn’t needed because the outcome of the attack itself didn’t matter to the grander scheme at hand.
The plan most likely was a lot more simple:
* Send in attack squad of combat capable husks.
* Do as much damage as possible to the Council/Constructs/Fey and their sigil.
* Survivors will have to take the subsystem that is used to send long range messages off-line.
* ???
* Profit!
And yes, there would be survivors. Not all Council members are fighters and those could get away either to a safe room or an emergency exit once the fighting started. We’ve seen others enter the chambers via another door so we know there is more than one entrance/exit to the chambers.
Also, at least two Council members that we’ve seen are working together with Sciona, and there could be more. I highly doubt that they were in much risk of being killed or they wouldn’t be working with Sciona. (And before you point out the anti-vampire shrapnel of the grenade, they knew about the attack so they’d know to duck behind cover the second the door exploded.)
Furthermore, there would be colleagues ready to step in and take seat at the Council as the new representatives of their race if the current ones were killed.
You are much too focused on this being a feint, which you already said this wasn’t and I agree it isn’t a feint to the letter of the definition. It was a misdirection. Make them think the attack was meant to disrupt the veil and expose the various races, while instead the goal was to have the subsystem be taken off-line for repairs.
And that last part is what Gault is saying in the second to last panel. The attack appeared to be meant to disrupt the veil, but actually it was meant to have them take the subsystem off-line while making repairs.
Ingsol even spells it out that even if all three assaults were successful they’d still have a few days before the veil would fall, during which they’d still do what they did now to buy more time.
And to cement this even further, Sciona’s reaction is: “They failed utterly?” (emphasize by her).
She is not surprised that the assault failed, she is just surprised how little damage it has done overall.
More like a Deep One than the shallow black lagoon inhabitants of the Amazon backwaters could withstand such pressures. Just an FWI. Speaking of such, are there anything like them in this universe? It was only in recent times that the Deep Ones had found humans traveling easily in their watery world when the first true submarines were constructed and used in the early decades of the 20th century. One of them fired upon Devil Reef and damaged it when Innsmouth was raided by the Federal govt in 1926. Innsmouth is one of their upper world bases mostly inhabited by hybrids.
The Twilight Council doubtless need to ship goods all over the world, be that crates of soil from a given home country or Industrial air conditioning units of stranded yeti tourists. Of course Amazon would have a backwater department, for all sorts of specialist needs, whether they require storage in a lagoon or a freezer, as the case may be.
Maybe this has been brought up before, but I suggest Ingsol’s description on the Who’s Who should be expanded to “Apparently, a vampire. Expressly, not Russian.” Or, changing the punctuation, “Appently a vampire. Expressly not Russian.”
No no, it should be “Apparently a wampire.”
I’m concerned that the Who’s Who still says he’s “apparently” a vampire. Is this not certain? He has sirelings who are definitely vampires (we’ve seen them feeding and Crimson turned into bats and back) and he claims to burst into flames in direct sunlight. It seems the “apparently” wouldn’t be there unless it’s foreshadowing some startling twisty reveal that he’s been faking being a vampire all this time.
I have a very bad feeling about what I’m seeing here.
You think that door is the size of a small moon?
That’s no moon…
Do you recon this guy is in the employ of the men in black? Or maybe he is a werewolf troubleshooter, for the Twilight Council?
Check out his basement and he probably has half a dozen cryptoid outfits, each with a matching website that makes him look like a crazy nutter.
“Sure boss, I can get there in twenty minutes. Which outfit do I need?”
“Hellboy… again.”
Once a guy who runs a group called “Bigfoot 911” decides to give himself the title of “commander” my respect, which was already very low, goes away entirely.
Which is the more likely scenario:
1) The guy who actually owns (for whatever reasons and more power to him I guess) the animal skin ‘shaman’ suit was spotted when he claims that he was wandering around in the woods and misidentified by members of a group who hope and believe with all their hearts that mankind has somehow managed to miss a species of 8″ tall hominids who “move with a speed unmatched by any human” and yet they “tracked him for over an hour.” As Sydney would point out, one of those statements clearly must be false.
-or-
2) Mankind has somehow managed to miss a species of 8″ tall hominids who “move with a speed unmatched by any human.”
Ok, you got me. It has to be 2. Because the aliens and Illuminati and Lemurians and time travelers and wizards are all in cahoots with each other to keep Bigfoot hidden from us.
Well of course. That is what the Twilight Council is all about!
Does the door opener…helper…probably-not-man actually need all the lenses on his helmet thing? Having a lot of eyes probably helps when you’re a security guard.
The helmet and lenses are just there to stop people from freaking out that he has a spider head. Here he is just operating as a technician. Whereas if he has to act in a security role he needs to take off the helmet, and most intruders will run screaming!
You know, my plan for if I was a Lich is hiding my phylactery in a shaft at the bottom of the sea of a random spot under the North Pole. Well, a nice little dungeon off to the side 3/4 of the way down of the deepest shaft I could dig and then refill. But now I’m thinking maybe it should have some large spikes as well.
Heh.