Grrl Power #1238 – Cannibalympics
Maxima will get around to lambasting and/or threatening Lapha, but as Sydney is secured, she’s allowing herself a little preamble. Also she’s hoping it throws Lapha off her game a little. It will probably have limited effect, however, if Lapha looks into Sydney’s memories and sees how most of her interactions with the team go.
Being sick/poisoned is about the only time a succubus doesn’t feel sexy, and it’s already been established that they have incredible resistance to disease. Their resistance to poison is pretty good too, as it helped during the time their species was doing a lot of assassination work. Drinking from the same poisoned wine bottle as everyone else makes people lower their guard. It’s not at the same level as their disease resistance, but it’s still very good. Drinking ten mana potions in on night will make anyone queasy though. Well, not like, constructs or magends, or any beings that are more magical than biological. Mana potions either have no effect on them or they’re like energy drinks… which… if most biological beings had ten of those in a night it would definitely fuck them up, so that’s a bad example.
Anyway, remember in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal did have to cut that one guy’s face off, change clothes with him, drag him to the elevator, pry the door open and throw him down the shaft, although really, he probably had to lower him down the shaft because if he’d landed face up, or with his head turned just right, that would have given away the game. He also had to hoist the other guy into place and pose him, so it was more involved than just looping an extension cord over a rafter and heaving to until he was the right height. Hannibal is the kind of guy who likes to savor the little moments in life, but a properly motivated psychopath? Ninety minutes is probably a little longer than it would have taken, but I think… thirty minutes would be the absolute minimum. Probably closer to 45. Honestly it’s really hard to estimate because a multi-part activity like that is so far out of my range of normal activities. Like, if I was a firefighter and was used to hauling adult male bodies around, I could probably make a better guess, but Maxima’s point stands. Hopkins was in his fifties during that film, I think 52 when it was filmed, 53 when it was released. Not that being fifty means you suddenly start falling apart physically, of course, but Hannibal didn’t really strike me as the kind of guy who was doing 500 pushups a day in his cell, either, so his fitness level should be taken into account. Still, Maxima is probably underestimating what a motivated cannibal can accomplish.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
It’s my Ifrit Pathfinder 1e monk, Fray! Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Poor Xuriel, I wonder if some vitamin D would help her.
She’d probably prefer Vitamin T.
Dabbler needs a warm hug! :)
As a succubus what she really needs is Vitamin Giggity.
Th big question is… Does Dabbler have a holding device for lamphas in her *special* storage already? Or is it something she’s gotta build after she’s recovered a bit more…
It might be the one thing she does not have off-hand, as it’s one of those restricted devices you are supposed to have a license for because it has unlicensed legitemate uses. Something that even Dabbler might not want to be caught with.
Dabbler’s relation to the idea of law is a bit iffy.
On the other hand being caught with unlicensed clippers might make you a valid target for an Unwinder, and I don’t think Dabbler would find that half as funny. I get the impression that the galaxy has a medium level of vigilante justice, but once the actual police get involved you shut up and do exactly as told because you only get one chance.
Some stuff is more of a hot potato than others. And it may also just be the case that Dabbler just didn’t need something like this before. Or that getting one and keeping on “just in case” might lead to awkward questions or stigma she doesn’t want to deal with for a “just in case”.
Been reading for years. Finally had to chime in.
1) Sydney’s though process: Some of these have already been brought up.
Priorities: unload the hitchhiker.
a) All lines of communication are being monitored, in both directions. StarFleet Regulation 46A “No uncoded messages on open frequency.” Max knows this.
b) When are her meds going to expire for the day? What will that do to Lapha?
c) Wait for something to happen? What is the play? How will it be communicated?
d) Or do it herself? Assets? Liabilities? Then what?
e) Where can she move Lapha to?
f) Where are her glasses?
g) Can she sift Lapha’s memories and thoughts to somehow turn the tables, or at least collect resources?
h) hungry, when’s food?
2) Story happenings:
a) Max talking movie/geek is code. Also why she changed from the sweater to the leather jacket (or is it?) So what is the code, that will get past Lapha, so long as Sydney does not dwell on it?
Cut the face off – get Lapha out of Syd. Ninety Minutes – time to action. Ninety minutes – That long? Hoisting/posing the second body – things are going to happen to get her out. Difficulties – there are some problems. My pinky – or i could use my powers and hurt you while getting her out.
b) Where are Parfait and her friends? What about debriefing them?
c) Are they going after Tenri? How will they handle Garamm? Did any Arc- personnel go with?
d) Will Cora, or some other non-earth base character, be involved in any way?
e) Lapha’s future, with the information she has?
f) ORBS: can the cross link between the Yellow/Tele. orb and the Violet/Forcefield orb do a mind/body level forcefield that forces out intruders, and protect the user from mental intrusion? Or does one of the orbs already have this as an ability?
Or, do the cross links just allow access to functionality with out needing to change orbs? IE switch controls displayed.
One thing to note: only the readers (or others on this side of the fourth wall) can tell when it’s Laph doing the speaking)
Maxi talking movie geek is natural to her (she was a relapsed nerd geek until Sydney showed up: remember when Sydney first showed her balls? it was Maxi who guessed Ion Stones, or whatever the frock they are called)
> One thing to note: only the readers (or others on this side of the fourth wall) can tell when it’s Laph doing the speaking)
How sure are you of that?
Laph probably has a very different accent to Syd.
Ioun stones. From Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series. But later adopted by D&D.
Well, an embarrassingly large portion of D&D was cribbed from The Dying Earth…
Yes, Lapha, it’s a fictional movie, but for every psychotic crime in that movie, humans exist who have done worse. Think about that for a moment and ask yourself, is this truly where you want to be?
That’s why, if any peoples from other planets happen to monitor Earthicon signals, there won’t be any ‘First Contact’, they will simply obliterate the planet from outside the solar system
or just assumes humans are no different than any other wild animal, just clever animals that built what by comparison are simple machines. One of the themes I work with is aliens that keep humans as pets but even those have this cognitive dissonance like humans do and forget that the “wild” version of their adorable house pets are at the end of the day animals.
Squirrels eat baby birds, koalas maim each other, every predatory animal you’ve ever seen has zero reservations eating a new born as helpless prey, chimps brutalize each other and will track down lone members of other chimp groups to kill, Dolphins engage in gang wars and murder other species for fun,
etc…
even the ones we find to be cute, fun, pets, cuddly, when in the wild are brutal, savage, and if they had the capabilities would kill off every rival for territory and food, or just because they could. So humans and most species to anything that views themselves as “higher” may just regard them as “oh that’s just how animals are” and view it as a reminder of that.
(including positive cognitive dissonance of their own similar behavior).
Once upon a time, there was a First Contact or so story in Analog. The aliens looked at us and wondered how we could be so peaceful and gentle. Their League of All Worlds (or whatever) had started with 90 planets, and was now down to 65, the remainder having been sterilized in the course of minor trade disputes.
Think about everything that’s happened in the last 10 years.
If you’d gone back to 2010 and suggested that as the plot of a movie you’d be turned down for being too unrealistic.
Ifrit Pathfinder incentive pic just makes me think female phantom Ganon.
And it’s for reasons like that which I say never be ashamed of a non-optimal build. Sure, a WIS penalty on a Monk character isn’t great, but it’s not the end of the world and you can compensate for it in other ways. Make a character you enjoy playing, that’s the most important part. It makes the game easier for everyone, yourself included.
Looks like we are getting a new member of the team soonish
Maxima’s showing impressive proficiency in the art of conversing with Sydney.
So I just had a rather concerning thought that might move this plot forward.
(As someone already pointed out above) at some point- out of sheer ADHD boredom if not sooner- Sydney is gonna start mentally ‘wrestling’ with her hitchhiker to try and get her mind/body back. What happens if mental training produces enough XP (after all, it’s a skill she hasn’t trained much yet) for her to level up again? What happens when the Orbs break out of their case to show the skill tree?
I forsee some potential drama up ahead……
(Before anyone steps in to argue with me about the mittens- I’m firmly in the camp of believers that Sydney controls the Orbs woth her MIND and the whole ‘hand’ thing is either: a mental crutch she will eventually train past, or one of the mid-to-high-level skills she will eventually unlock [I assume probably one of those “center circle” skills will unlock that ability eventually- she already has certain mental controls over her orbs- like how she can levitate any one she wants into her hands])
That’s partly why this setup is in place. Archon does not, cannot, know how the orbs work or whether there might be some loophole that Lapha could exploit. Or if Lapha has more nasty surprises in stock in case things get worse, such as mind-wiping Sydney.
Archon decided that it’s better safe than sorry and focused on disabling any orb-using ability on the only vector they know. If there is a way to bypass that, there is not much Archon could do to prevent that other than having sedatives ready for Sydney’s body. Which she probably has under those clothes.