Grrl Power #1243 – Firebreak
Yeah, I know Sydney still has possessed eyes. That will be addressed on the next page.
“Fire Jail” I assume involves a moat, and the guards would be firefighters. Maybe there’d be one of those shower heads that lowers the water pressure so much that the water falls slower than the pull of gravity should provide. By which I mean those rainfall showerheads. In my opinion, a shower should have so much pressure that if you have a tiny cut on your forehead, you’ll be peeled like a banana the moment you stick your face in the stream.
Another Pathfinder session, this one was rather combat heavy, and I’m playing a monk who mostly attacks with Flurry of Blows, and spends a lot of Ki on extra attacks, and we have a party member with a wand of Haste, and a Cleric who does uh, some blessing that lets you pick from a list of bonuses, like extra move speed, extra attack, bonuses to hit or save. I don’t recall the name of the spell, and I’m not sure the blessing attack bonus and the haste would stack, but the GM allows it so I regularly get 5 attacks in a round. Which I normally need in order to eke out 2 actual hits a round.
5, 20, 17, 17, 4, 10, 19, 17, 12, 9, 18, 18, 19, 1, 1, 3, 12, 10, 1, 1, 8, 15, 15, 20, 20, 14, 11, 11, 8, 1, 3, 12.
Non-combat rolls average to 12.6. Combat rolls average to 10.5. I started off really strong, but the 5 1’s normalized the distribution. Still, overall average was 11. Honestly I’m a little disappointed that I rolled better than usual that game because I like having D20 Persecution Complex, but I realize that tracking all my rolls means I can’t rely on confirmation bias to support it.
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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The following is not serious:
Lapha got orb copied, now has a twin sister still in Sydney’s head.
Also-Lapha begs Syd not to eat that horrible stuff anymore.
Her pleas fall on deaf ears.
Many years later, she ends up liking the stuff and her following hosts wonder what is wrong with her.
Or Bloodshot eyes just take a while for swollen capillaries to subside to normal, like a hangover… for a human.
“In my opinion, a shower should have so much pressure that if you have a tiny cut on your forehead, you’ll be peeled like a banana the moment you stick your face in the stream.”
And it should be hot enough that you can soft boil an egg for breakfast during your morning shower.
Just one shower-head? What are you, some kind of peasant? Four is the absolute minimum in any civilized society! Sheesh! :P
I prefer the type in films without a shower head, the water just falls like rain over several square meters. Unfortunately I haven’t tried one yet.
Or a moveable one which is standard here in Germany.
Way better to get rid of soap on your private parts.
Why not combine both and use a Truman Show type showerhead? Then you get a field of rain that moves with you.
I suppose four is okay for common folk.
https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1-multiple-shower-head-shower.jpg
ooohhh… Dabs’ looks promise a world of pain for Lapha…
I highly Dabbler would be so cruel, I’d say she’ll basically imprison Lapha and use her on a work release program. Basically giver her the possibility of a more useful body on the provision that she work for Dabbler for the foreseeable future.
Dabbler laughs at unwinder rounds…. her moral code is not up to human standards by her own admission. Remember she is a demon.
Dabble doesn’t exactly have final say here though, Maxima does. And she’ll have a human moral code, for what that’s worth.
That is probably part of the reason Dabble “saved” Lapha. I doubt Dabbler would actually save Lapha to torment her, she would probably let Lapha fizzle out if Dabbler wasn’t part of the team. Dabbler was probably also trying to protect Sydney’s mentality by not letting Lapha die from Sydney’s plan.
I suspect they will let Lapha go back to her actual body, after they know every thing she knows. Her employers/allies wont be too happy with her though. Since this is the second try at snatching Maxima some interrogation is in order.
She knows some cosmic-tier classified information though. I suspect she’ll be on a *very* short leash from the human authorities for quite a while.
More than just interrogation, I should think. Anyone who tries to kidnap the top commander of an elite branch of US military service – TWICE – is going to be locked up as an “advanced persistent threat.” And Lapha is doubly screwed in terms of having any say about it, as she is a non-citizen in the US without documentation, stateless as far as Earth law can treat her, and as a bodyjacker despised by her own people.
Bluntly speaking there is nobody in this world (except maybe Garamm, who is also a stateless undocumented alien on the run from both Earth and Galactic law) who will even miss her if they put her in a hole and never let her out.
Letting her fizzle would mean no interrogation, meaning no way of finding out if anyone else is after Halo/Maxima, who hired her, etc.
Dabbler isn’t stupid. She knows information is valuable.
Plus Maxima knows it’d look bad if the prisoner was tortured with chemical agents until their soul fell out and withered away. Not good precedent.
At what point did they torture Lapha?
They provided a special request treat for a valued team member who was mind-kidnapped by an alien entity, and put in an uncomfortable and quite dangerous position because of that.
A treat that the kidnappee in question is famous for craving on a regular basis.
Lapha was, at all times, able to vacate Syndney’s mind and jump to the stable environment provided kindly by the alien liaison employed by ARC.
Any duress experienced during the process of providing said treat to the kidnappee by the kidnapper would be entirely their own fault, since the kidnapper had full access to the kidnapee’s memories, and could and should have known the kidnappee was a human specimen able to even enjoy *Grakz*, of all things.
Even to the point of minor fame/notoriety as her doing so was, and still is, available on intergalactic social channels.
Any half-baked lawyer can have the claim of “torture” slam-dunked out of court. Earthside or intergalactic.
Arianna would have a field day with it…
Hell.. an earthside court would probably deem it “unconventional, but valid and nonlethal use of force to resolve a kidnapping situation.” since what happened *was* a highly likely outcome, using a method that did in no discernible way put the kidnappee at any risk.
Traumatic to the kidnapper, maybe, but so is a SWAT sniper bullet…
I wouldn’t say Dabs has a weak moral code… it’s definitely different than ours, though. Might be the result of having to have a moral code that works with thousands of different life forms, each with differing physical and social needs. (The Needs Hierarchy Pyramid of a polyspecial society is going to look interesting. Perhaps not a pyramid?)
This thing, basically:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
I laughed at unwinder rounds as well because that shithead thoroughly deserved it and worse. Most of them are rich arseholes or ones in power who could have got away and likely have got away with murder, torture, rape, imprisonment etc. So yeah, sorry not sorry.
Only felt sorry for Syd having to see it and have the guy about to put a 9mm through her brain pan.
“Welcome to the first day of the rest of your miserable life.”
And ain’t it beautiful how well-deserved it is?
Well damn, that’s about as bad ass as Moist Von Lipwigs.
But I kind of *like* Moist Von Lipwig. Lapha? Not so much.
She may be redeemable. But she was very, very lucky that they were able to get her out without further harm to Sydney, and that they were willing and able to confine her rather than let her fizzle out.
If she *had* scrambled Sydney? Or if the only way to rescue was to scramble/unwind/torture Lapha instead? Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Defiant to the end.
I can respect that.
Nonetheless, I retain my position of “factory-reset” or deletion.Preferably the former, with all the “get adopted out to a good family and given a fair shake at a becoming a better person stuff I suggested before.
…in fact, I know I suggested the Scoville fam specifically, but what about the Shrapnels? They both seem to have good ethical and moral frameworks, for capitalists.
I would recommend the Adams Family …
I’m not as nice as you are.
You know that after a reset she would fit right in with Wednesday or Puggsley. As a pet. Less useful than Thing, but much more talkative.
Big on just murdering people, are you?
I have one exception to my “killing is wrong” policy, that being when it is demonstrably the only way to secure public safety.
Lapha has demonstrated herself to be an ongoing danger, and just to put the cherry on top, she’s compromised classified information.
I would prefer _not_ to kill her outright, which is why I propose what B5 called “the death of personality” as a marginally less bad alternative to a sudden increase in her personal entropy. Wipe everything between the death of her parents and the current moment, leaving only the brief memory of being incarcerated & offered the deal, so that she can go forward with the memory of “I severely screwed up, and I am being granted a second chance at life, with proper support and care, because these folks prefer to _not_ sacrifice their morals & ethics for convenience.”
It is _not_ a perfect solution, but it is better than just straight up deleting her.
If memory editing is on the table, a far more targeted edit might work as well. Remove classified info and traumatic memories, and leave her personality more or less intact. Keep her in custody for at least 6 months while she undergoes intensive therapy dealing with any lingering trauma and examining the life she’s lead.
A psychologist in Canada experimented with using extacy in treatment of PTSD, by having the subjects write about the experience that led to the PTSD while under the influence. The was in addition to intense psychotherapy. Checking back a year later, the subjects that had taken the extacy were fairing much better than the control group that had only undergone psychotherapy.
The reason is that when we recall a memory, the brain erases and the re-writes the memory, so current emotional state pollutes the emotional state associated with the memory. By polluting the emotional state of “deep horrifying trauma” with “elation and happiness” repeatedly, the memory lost its traumatic component. Very cludgy and low-tech memory editing for humans. With true memory editing, I’m sure you’d get even better results. “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.”
That sounds like an interesting study! Is it available online, or was it an article you read? (Seriously asking, it really does pique my interest.)
Yeah, selective memory edition isn’t an option that you proposed (and not an option we have even a hint of being available) You proposed either straight-up murder, or mind-wipe (which is also murder).
More reasonable, and likely, is to hold her until the State and Justice Departments can work out protocols for dealing with criminals from extra-terrestrial polities. The diplomatic niceties are going to be complex if we don’t want Earth to become an interstellar North Korea.
“Murder” is a legal distinction when it comes to killing. Your milage will vary depending on the state in which you did the killing. Take killing in self defense. Each of our 50 states has different criteria and what might be justifiable in one state would be murder in another. Now, let’s expand this to galactic….No, let’s not… my brain hurts enough already.
In most (if not all) States, intentional killing when the target has been neutralized, is murder
Self defense is an affirmative defense to a charge of murder – it’s not a type of murder.
Given the information she has, they can’t let her go. She could sell the existence of Nth-tech on Earth to anyone with a desire to get an instant power-up, and the Earth would end up being the target of non-stop attacks. Sure, the more overt attempts will be easy to put down, but I expect dopplegangers and other space species who are natural spies. Sooner or later, one would get through to Sydney, and take her out and take the orbs. The team’s gotten lucky in that the first person to try it was an impulsive idiot. They can’t afford to rely on luck alone going forward.
Any plan of release that does NOT entail wiping, at a bare minimum, her knowledge of everything that happened when she melded with Sydney, is simply not an option. (To go with your analogy, do you think we would release a Russian agent who had been known to have memorized a list of all of our foreign assets?)
What information? Just because we, the audience, have reason to believe that Sydney’s orbs are Nth tech doesn’t mean that anyone in-universe is going to have any reason to believe Lapha. Knowledge is worth nothing unless it’s accompanied by some kind of proof. Otherwise, some enterprising being could just pick a random planet and sell the “information” that there’s someone on it with Nth tech. That information needs to be credible, and I suspect, given Lapha’s history of crime, that she’s not considered particularly credible.
Let’s not forgive that Sydney’s memories about the orbs include discussion of their nature with Cora and of the Superion field with Deus. If Lapha managed to access that, she stole some very valuable and sensitive data.
The galaxy at large is already aware of the existence of supers, and their efficacy in the face of what other specifies would call an ELE: the Fel Warship that tailed Cora & Crew to Terra.
There is an official record of Sydney being on Fracture Station: the cop who arrived after she & Cora went HAM on alien muggers.
There is already an official representative of associated galactic powers on Terra in an official capacity, who can, and most likely already has confirmed all of this to his superiors.
Lapha’s intel is “credible.”
If all her data on Terra, supers, the orbs, et al, doesn’t come out of her proverbial head, then she needs to catch a double tap. It is harsh. I would even call it cruel, because I do genuinely feel for her.
It is also a necessity.
Exactly. The galaxy is already aware that Earth has access to power beyond their understanding of physics. What information does Lapha have that is both dangerous and not already widely known? And more specifically, what can she prove? How is someone else to know that she isn’t lying just to make a quick buck? Truth is not inherently discernible from a lie without external verification.
Well, if you go back and review my comments the last several pages, you’ll see that I did, in fact, make that suggestion. If, on the other hand, you want to pretend that nothing existed before the moment you chose to engage, sure, you can “be right.”
You seem really interested in picking a fight with me.
Or maybe continuing one you might have started under another name, at some point previously?
Really, who can say? It _is_ the internet, after all.
All that aside, I don’t like killing people. I generally find it to be both a permanent solution for a temporary problem, and extremely distasteful, not to mention lazy, and f*ing annoying, as every body generates it’s own weight in paperwork.
But it’s an option, and rarely, a necessity. And on those rare occasions where it is a valid choice – even by my standards – it is best for all involved to acknowledge it quickly, and execute it immediately, and without much preamble. The longer you take, the harder and more traumatic it becomes, and the more opportunities there are for things to go wrong.
Lapha is a demonstrated, planetary-level threat to the entire population. She has shown herself willing and able to hijack Arc-SWAT members, which both strips part of the planet’s defenses, and potentially hands those capabilities over to extraterrestrial hostiles. I’d rather not kill her, but if that’s the only option beside sticking her in jar until circumstances conspire to turn her loose again, then I’ll pull that trigger myself.
_Kevin_ is less existentially threatening than Lapha is.
Oh I think Kevin is a -much- bigger existential threat than Lapha. Lapha can only possess one person at a time, and its only a sharing instead of a takeover. Kevin can do huge groups and it IS a takeover. Plus he is much harder to contain or stop without a huge bodycount. Plus Lapha’s motives are easier to deal with than Kevin’s. Greed isnt as difficult to counter than ‘because I wanted to’ is.
Kevin hasn’t compromised classified information pertaining to the powers, tech, sorcery, and science currently on Terra, and how these may relate to planetary defenses in the case of an invasion.
Also, stopping Kevin is as easy as getting him out of the atmosphere.
Ya gotta take the lawyer/superpower-fan girl hate off for a second, and put on the Intelligence Officer hat.
“Loose lips sink ships,” as we say.
I get she had a rough start in life, that’s no excuse for torturing and killing people. Lapha is just using it as an excuse for acting the way she is. Clearly she has no limit to her life expectancy, so maybe a few decades of therapy will help her adjust, or being stuck handling an IRS database for that long might make her long for the good life…
when was lapha torturing and killing people? so far her shtick has been kidnapping
To sell into slavery. Which no doubt involves some torture and murder.
So, in your world, kidnapping someone and selling them as a commodity – the word for that is enslavement, btw – is _not_ torture?
That’s some Florida-level evil right there.
No, slavery is not in itself torture
(Many slaves were tortured)
and I’m quite comfortable with saying that both Slavery and torture are evil and wrong, but that doesn’t make slavery torture.
That is some very specifically DeSantis-level evil, right there.
If you are talking about legal definitions, then slavery is not technically torture. BUT I can see the argument that slavery should be a subset OF torture. Ie, all slavery is torturous but not all torture is slavery.
Torture is an act committed by a person specifically intending to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control. So I can see the legitimate argument being made that slavery is at the very least mental pain and suffering due to the deprivation of freedom outside of lawful sanctions (ie, imprisonment for a criminal act).
Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised according to Article 1 of the 1926 Slavery Convention and the European Court of Human Rights.
Spotted this at smbc m immediately thought of you: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/law-4
:) hehe
“Laws are everything that’s borderline.” Sounds a lot like that was inspired by the old adage by Oliver Wendell Holmes – “Hard cases make bad law.” (And yes I know it was actually said 60 years earlier by Judge Robert Rolf in Winterbottom vs Wright but it was made famous by SCOTUS Justice Holmes :) )
Care to expand on that rather baffling claim?
I don’t know, but if you are willing to steal a body from someone else, just to kidnap another to sell into slavery, (and with trying to take Max) working with hard-line fighters that don’t care if they kill anyone, I’d call that murder. Torture comes in when you wail on some super that just. Won’t. Stop. Tendi isn’t exactly having fun is she? Lapha is like so many criminal types, making excuses for their actions so they can feel justified.
Eh…ionno.
Yes, I get that it is very reasonable to assume that someone caught out like this would point to their background and insist they have no, or at least reduced, accountability for their actions, purely for the sake of avoiding some or all punishment.
But…that doesn’t negate the validity of the point raised. As much as some people like to insist that they are altogether and entirely self-willed, the reality is that we are _also_ products of our circumstances. Our choices are informed by our experiences. In this regard, one could argue that we are all “data beings.”
That aside however, this is largely why I suggested wiping her back to “just before she went into the orphanarium.” Clearly, the singularly most impactful element of her existence was spending X time watching her parents slowly derez while she was still just-initialized. That’s the _core_ of her personality, so imo, it would be unethical to remove it. One could easily argue that her experiences as a street rat were nearly, if not just as, formative. But this is where I start getting into the weeds.
The choices that created Lapha as we know her – let’s call her L-prime – all stem from the cruelty and privation of that time. Not just material privation, but emotional and social privation as well. Trying to set L-α on a better trajectory, while leaving that set of experiences intact is going to create some massive dissonance and resentment, at _best_, probably in the form of “oh, _now_ people can be bothered, when I become a pain in their ass. How typical.”
What I would be striving to engender is, “Oh, I did a lot of screwed up stuff, I guess, because of where I was, but these people on Terra, they’re giving me a chance at a better life, even after what old-me did.”
Now someone might argue that this would still be “oh, now they care because I became a problem,” BUT, unlike with the galaxy at large, Terra has really only had this more-or-less one experience with L-prime.
Yes, I’m treating this as a continuation of the New York incident.
As such, we could easily counter that assertion with our own, “Lapha, we’ve only really got one experience with you, and we’d much rather help you, than hurt you. We’re not always perfect, or even particularly good, but we do generally try to be the people Mr. Rogers knew we could be.”
At which point, L-α asks “who’s Mr. Roger’s,” and we plunk the re-initialized tot down in front of the tv for a few episodes. ^_^
YES I AM ARGUING THAT MR. ROGERS COULD SAVE THE GALAXY
…and yes, I am also deliberately implying that we should name L-α, “Alpha.” X’D
You’d leave her with the defining tragedy of her existence? If you’re going to pick and choose what she gets to keep, you might as well go whole hog and wipe her completely, or build her into whatever you want. Any line you choose would be just a fig leaf for your ethics, because you’re making the choice for her, denying her any right to exist or participate in the universe except as a puppet of your own will. The only ethical thing to do would be to let her make that choice.
Sorry to take so long.
Our experiences are what make us the people we are. That includes the painful ones.
I have often thought about the idea of being relieved of my painful memories. To not be burdened by the crippling rejection anxiety, and fear of abandonment that they engendered in me. I’ve wondered if I would happy.
Getting older, I recognize that the answer is an unequivocal, “no.”
Because in such a case, “I” would not exist anymore. Now, I could argue that that would be a net positive in the world, buti couldn’t guarantee it. The same pain that makes it all but impossible for me to trust another human being, is also what motivates me to move heaven & earth for those who are in pain, or frightened, or otherwise suffering. Remove that experience, and that person ceases to exist.
And _that_ is why the option – and yes, it offered as a option, a choice for L-prime to make – is to have everything _after_ that first, horrible experience taken, but not that formative experience itself. In order to preserve the core of her personality, her core identity, intact. Because she _is_ a person, not an object to be reconfigured as is convenient.
You might think I’m being cold and ruthless, and you seem to think I am talking about reconstructing her, like some sort of lazy cartoon villain. I am not. What I am proposing is the opportunity to make different choices, to have different experiences and circumstances. To grow up all over again with a real family, if it isn’t her own species. It’s because I _am_ such a bleeding heart that I even suggest such a thing.
Were I being purely pragmatic, purely the calculating monster, I would snuff her out and go to lunch, content in the knowledge that an existential threat was zeroed. And, if that’s a the option she wants to take, then so be it. Far be it from me to stop a fully informed, willful, deliberate, and intentional #CheckOut.
But based on what we’ve been shown, and what has been implied, about Aetholiths, and Succubi memory manipulation magics, I think it’s not unreasonable to think that my proposal is a viable option.
And it is absolutely worth presenting it to L-prime as an alternative to just being deleted.
I could never accepting having my formative trauma removed, but if I could retain that, while having everything else deleted, and given a fresh chance to start over from childhood?
That I would take in a hot second.
And I greatly suspect L-prime would too.
And I’m saying that she should have the option to have that first traumatic experience taken from her. Otherwise, you’re just imposing your own values on her. No matter what she decides to have removed, or keep, it at least maintains the chain of provenance: she would be her own creation. By insisting that she keep any particular memories over her objections, you’re making her your own creation, taking her self-determination from her in the name of your values. As long as you insist that you know what’s best for her better than she does, you’re demeaning her.
And aside from that, ætholiths obviously derive something of themselves from their parents, so it’s not like wiping that first traumatic experience would erase her unique identity anyway.
Ah, I misunderstood your aim.
Well, sure. If L-prime wants to have that initial experience deleted too, I don’t feel I have grounds to object, though I would emphasize that it would, practically speaking, also be a kind of #CheckOut. Not that I’m judging.
That aside, I want to make a specific point: my argument wasn’t about ‘values,’ it was purely about the practical realities of how personalities are developed. While in this case, the formative experience was horrifyingly traumatic, the same would hold true if it were not. I am not attempting to advocate for some sort of, “suffering is good” philosophy.
I _am_advocating the position that all persons have value and worth, innately, even if they are created in suffering. Somewhat tangentially, I add to that that personal suffering is often the source of an individual person’s capacity for empathy. By example, many historians agree that while FDR was not a bad person before being stricken by polio, it was that very experience – the end of his charmed life – which granted him the ability to truly connect with the ordinary, and the disadvantaged citizens, and made him a truly “good,” albeit still flawed, man.
But, yes, I agree. If she wants a truly blank slate, then by all means.
Although I suspect that like myself, she would hold fast to it. Out of pure spite, in her case, refusing to relinquish what she sees as a cosmic truth, about the uncaring nature of reality. Which would, I think, actually be of benefit to her in growing up in a new family: the universe at large may be a cold and uncaring void, but people can hold back that darkness by caring for one another, making life a warm, and loving thing.
I think we’re largely in agreement then. I’m just making the same argument that I made in reference to Dabbler interfering with how people reacted to Parfait’s aura: trauma is neither inherently “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad”, that we can make the choice for other people whether or not to experience it. We shouldn’t impose it on people, but it’s also not something we should take away from them without their consent. We are the choices we make, and how we respond to the events that happen to us. If we don’t get to determine who we are, then we aren’t people — we’re puppets.
And there are certainly other moral frameworks that societies have chosen, that place something other than the individual at the center, and treat people as mere parts to a machine, slaves to a god, property of a society, to be made or unmade, molded into something for a purpose. I am certain that those moral frameworks are fundamentally wrong, but don’t yet have the capacity to express why, at least not in a manner that others will necessarily find convincing. I do believe that people have unique value, and that forcibly changing them obscures or denies that unique value. I believe the universe should be a product of many wills and minds, rather than one or none, and that to override another’s will is to deny them participation in the universe, to the detriment of both.
“YES I AM ARGUING THAT MR. ROGERS COULD SAVE THE GALAXY”
Is it really an argument if it is unquestionably true?
“They both seem to have good ethical and moral frameworks, for capitalists.”
That’s like saying “They’re pretty tall, for giants”.
Seriously, the primary “other” choice besides “capitalist” is “socialist” (in the original Marx, where “capitalist” comes from, that’s everybody, IIRC), and the track record on “socialists” and “ethics” is… very, very bad. Like “literally the most murderous ideology in the history of mankind” bad.
*citation missing
If you think “capitalism” and “socialism” are the only two possible sources, well… there’s been many other systems tried throughout history. But would you care to define either of those?
Probably not.
This individual seems likely to think that “The Black Book of Communism” is anything but a work of deranged fiction.
Now we just need to find out why Sydney still has the eyes. I suspect she won’t exactly be allowed to be free if that is an unknown factor to Archon and Dabbler.
She might still be tethered to Silver in some way and can only be fully untethered once she returns to her own body. Aeolith residue perhaps?
I am sure that Dabbler knows how to deal with it. Worst case, if this is something that Sydney is stuck with, Dabbler will glamor her eyes.
Lapha connects with the entire body, could be it takes a few minutes for the effect wears off. Like any drug, just because you stop taking it, doesn’t make the effect suddenly stop.
And who knows what the possession did to Sydney’s body chemistry?
She might now be immune to her medication.
The steam should be thick enough it condenses to fill a water bottle
man, the power of spices compels you!
THE SPICE MUST FLOW!!!
Showers where you can’t even feel the waterpressure are a crime against humanity!
Here, here!
Hear, Hear.
Har, Har.
Arr, Arr …
(Okay, it is not yet talk like a pirate day, but who cares?)
I agree, although I like the option. In an old house, I once had to take a shower and didn’t want to wake my roommates so I turned the shower to “dribble” and probably used no more than a few cups of hat water in near silence. My current shower is binary: off or full blast and all I can control is the temperature. 99.9% of the time that’s what I want, but I’d still like the choice.
Ours keeps breaking shower heads. Which I wouldn’t mind so much if the most recent one hadn’t hit me hard in the face when it blew off. It didn’t knock me out or anything but I had an awesome bruise for a week or so.
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Aren’t comments here held for moderation? The “generic compliment + link” formula is obvious spam…
I’m amazed it’s still here. Website literally tells you it’s not responsible for any malware it installs.
No, they are not
The reason why posts can take time to show up is not because of moderation
MagA.I. brain-napped a person in the WRONG country is she wanted to commit suicide to avoid jail.
More like she welcomes imminent death by accident in the lack of immediate medical assistance in order to avoid jail, but yeah.
She wasnt trying to commit suicide as much as when she thought that she was going to die she didnt care because her life has sucked as far as she was concerned. It’s sort of sad really and I hope she has a redemption arc.
Should Dabbler still be wearing the anti-hijack crown?
I assume she still does but either it does not show (previously it was only noticeable close up), or lapha is in the way when Dabbler catches her up, or Dave simply did not draw it (it is not so remarkable a detail).
Moreover, the crown won’t be necessary anymore since the device could forcibly extract aetholiths and hence it can trap them and restrain further hijacking attempts.
I believe it wasn’t physical but a spell and may still be active though not visible. She deliberately showed it before.
What is that device Dabbler used to catch Lapha and should Max know about it?!?
It’s the same device they were threatening to use to extract Lapha like four pages ago. Then she went “well, if I’m getting extracted, I’m wiping her brain on the way out!”
ooh, that’s the ‘you threatened my friend’ face.
I hope the possessed eyes stay, they look cute.
Just how hot was the thing Syd just ate that a piece of sentient fire that can possess people decided “ABANDON SHIP!”
In all evidence it was less a conscious decision and more an instinctual move (if a suicidal one in cold mind) to avoid an intolerable sensory stimuli. The equivalent of jumping off a window in a high rise to avoid a fire.
The restaurant made that dish for her and named it in her honour! It has got to be in the million+ Scoville units. Any body else at that restaurant will probably think The Mighty Scoville is a direct reference to the heat level.
Diner: Let’s see. One pepper is mild. Two peppers is medium. Three peppers is spicy. Four peppers is hot. Why does this dish have 10 peppers beside the name?
Hottest chilli pepper is currently Pepper X, at around 2.7 million Scoville units. Pure capsaicin is 16 million, weaker derivatives such as homocapsaicin and nordihydrocapsaicin are around 9 million. Resiniferatoxin is 16 BILLION Scoville units, it’s powerful enough to kill the nerve endings on contact and cause severe burning sensations in NANOGRAM quantities.
You know when Arianna is going to hear of this, and if this doesn’t get classified, Sydney is going to say to reporters “When I got possessed, I just tortured myself until it was too much for the demon!”. And Maxima is going to let Sydney run with that because god, that sounds intimidating.
“I accidentally almost murdered a demon combat squad before torturing *myself* so hard one of them tried to commit suicide to escape. ahh, Tuesdays.”
Not gonna lie, I LOL’ed at that one. And TBH it wasn’t a combat squad, just a bunch of college friends trying to get Parfait out of her contract with Tom and into a contract with one of their friends.
Don’t mention torture and just say it couldn’t handle it and tried to leave suicidally. Sometimes the less said the more ominous. Self torture doesn’t give a competent appearance to a super cop.
Not to forget: it’s not torture if it’s something Sydney eats regularly
They couldn’t stand being me for a day, so they quit.
“They couldn’t stand being me for one meal so they tried to kill themself. What a weakling.”
“Remember it’s never a War Crime the first time.” – the fat electrician
I would say this is probably the first time Earth Law has dealt with an honest-to-goodness possession by an alien. Whatever happens to them is therefore not a war crime.
The spell is almost certainly Blessing of Fervor
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blessing-of-fervor
RAW it’s not cumulative with Haste but if the GM is allowing it go to town
“That will be addressed on the next page.” Ack cliffhanger. HATE!
Dum, Dum DUUUMMM…
That concludes this week’s throwing tale of daring do. Stay tuned thrill seekers!
Who knows what happens next?
The SHADOW KNOWS!
Given the combat bias of the comic the lack of non-combat super powers is not surprising but I do wish that Archon had a super chef in the ranks. Someone who can enhance the quality of food to well past a supernatural level. Food so good that it could ease the tension between rival soccer team fans on its own. So good that Republicans and Democrats would commit to bipartisan legislation for more of it. So good that a Jeff Bezos would help found a union for Amazon warehouse workers to get more of it. So good that the memory of it is fleeting as a way for the brain to avoid a “Flowers for Algernon” situation for your taste buds. I suspect that Deus has a super like this.
I spy a SAOA reference! I think Velveteen had a superhero called The Baker, but it was never explained just how weaponisable their powers were?
They have a super with healing powers as well as a super-tailor. There are possibly more in Arc Light and Arc Dark, but the comics focuses on Arc SWAT, so combat-type powers are the most commonly seen.
And direct support powers. Like being able to teleport needed gear. Exceedingly adaptable to changing situations.
The spell is blessing of fervor. It does not stack with haste. But it does a lot of cool stuff that haste does not.
Well, this is all very dramatic.
Good lord, Lapha willingly jumped off of Sydney knowing it would literally kill her? That seems kinda nuts.
From her demeanor, I’m not sure she willingly jumped off. Her dialog suggest it was an involuntary response.
Well, for her, willingly would be ‘taking Maxima hostage to sell’, so I have VERY little sympathy for her.
It’s no different than someone jumping out of a 6th story window to avoid burning to death, it’s not an intelligent choice, just a panic response. I’m a bit like Sydney, I love the hot stuff, but in the first few moments i cough and the whole nine yards, but by the third bite I’m used to it. Lapha clearly has never tried much less figured that part out, to her the “building” she’s squatting in has caught fire and is about to burn her alive! Maybe now she’ll figure out that humans are NOT to be messed with…
Naa…
Ah, yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Giving up your bargaining position I could totally see, but it felt weird that should would give up her life like that.
That said, the fire example isn’t *quite* the same, because the spicy food would be traumatizing and excruciating, but Lapha would know that it’s not life threatening (unlike in a fire). I suppose that just further reinforces that it was a instinctual response.
I’d add that she isn’t exactly… bound to living. I mean, she seems to be ambivalent about survival, at best. “Sure, if I can enjoy a bit of time, that’s cool, but if I gotta die, then so be it, at least the shitshow is over.” So she had less resistance to the idea of jumping out of Syd than most of her kind would, I think.
Can we take from this that Lapha feels that her life wasn’t worth the deaths of her parents during her “birth”? Or is she just “raging against the dying of the light”? The two would seem to characterize her differently.
You made the flame cry
Didn’t Dabbler have some fancy tiara necklace pendant forehead protector thingy, to prevent possession? And the plague doctor mask? What happened to those?
The plague doctor mask can be slightly seen in the first panel; looks like Dabbler took it off to check behind Sydney’s chair.
LOL! Good, maybe this is Lapha’s chance to learn a lesson and to stop being stupid… Naa, comic-book super villains are both smart AND dumb otherwise you’d run out of them. Lex Luthor is a perfect example, I read somewhere 41 times he’s built a super-suit in an effort to kill off the Justice league, and each and every time he gets his tail kicked.
I’m not certain if you’re being glib, but that statement was made by Deus in a previous comic when Sydney was in his pet African country.
Well, you have to remember that part of the reason for that is that comic books used to be on an eight-year (or so) cycle where it was considered kosher to re-use a plot device after that point, because everyone figured that once you discovered girls, you’d stop buying funny books. The existence of non-stop continuity didn’t really become a thing until the mid-80s or so (and even then, that ethos took over slowly).
I wonder if Sydney’s utility belt has packets of ghost pepper sauce?
a can of aerosolized pepper spray for use as either mace or salad topper
How long could Lapha survive without a host? Was that stated on a previous page?
She was dying on this page, that’s what panels 4 to 6 showed.
Yes, I see that. I was looking for more established information for that “dying without a host”.
The author’s notes on page 1229 mention them needing “a mana source and a kind of data feed which might be explained later on in the comic”, but does not provide any information about how long they could survive without a host, other than “slowly burn out”.
From how quickly she started to Frizzle out here, and her presumable “Last words”, not long at all. Seconds.
Agreed on the shower head pressure. Or at least the sentiment. (Maybe a little less than “peels you like a banana?”)
Point is, yeah, low shower water pressure sucks.
Dave, what youve got there is the classic case of ‘Flurry of Miss’, a time honored tradition in Monk temples throughout D&D history.
I’m betting Sydney is pregnant with Lapha’s and the orbs baby. Its going to become some kind of AI orb assistant thats merged with the last mystery orb which is probably the database orb.
Check out the Monk updates they are planning for D&D 5.5 or whatever they are calling it. Planned for September I think. Makes Monks a little more playable. Bare hand attacks are still crippled compared to having a magic weapon for a bonus to hit though.
You could just add enchanted bracers or bandages for the same effect. Like the Gloves of the Long Death in the NWN games.
Heck, DDO has enchanted handwraps specifically for monks, and it’s 3.5
Oh geez you aren’t playing 5.0. sorry
Smaller damage dice and fewer attacks *shudders* 5e isn’t great if playing for the first time and taking the monk class.
3.5 and PF are fun but my first 5e campaign really felt the nerf.
Apparently only a few seconds without any form of host at all (sitting on the floor). But no information about the “holder” device. Tenri’s been on one for quite some time by now, maybe days.
What happened to Dap’s anti possession head band?
Hey, Dave, do you do any of the Math involved on hitting stuff in your game? I mean, figuring average damage is easy, let’s say 10 points. Multiply 10 x # of attacks x chance to hit, and you can instantly see the difference just raising your TH number makes, vs having more attacks. That -2 to hit for the Flurry taken across five attacks is probably really, really hurting your offense, the whole ‘flurry of misses’ thing. You’re probably better off NOT doing the flurry, and going for getting as high a hit bonus as possible, simply because of the chance to hit.
Example: 10 x 45% x 5 attacks = 22 damage.
10 x 55% (without the -2) x 4 attacks = the same 22 damage. Flurry isn’t getting you anything UNLESS you have a whole bunch of extra damage per attack (like, flaming holy fists, or something).
10 x 65% x 4 attacks is 26 damage, just an extra +2 to hit.
I understand you may be playing the impulsive monk throwing up a wall of fists, but if you want to be effective, what you really need are more bonuses to hit. That’s why Weapon Finesse can be so powerful, if your Dex gives you an additional +2 to hit… that’s an awesome thing to have, it directly increases your damage over time!
But, eh, you probably looked at it, but the Flurry of Misses is a long and storied thing in both 3e and Pathfinder.
Do you have the Book of Nine Swords, and is your DM open to some things in there? One of the great enchantments for a Monk in that book is the Discipline enchantment. If you practice the appropriate Martial Art, it gives the weapon+3 To hit (instead of +1 to hit and damage). For MOnks it’s a godsend. Add it to your Amulet of Mighty Fists, and that +3 to hit across all your attacks will be instantly noticeable!
…If you didn’t realize it, Flurry of Misses is basically a form of Two weapon Fighting, improved for monks. Just like fighters, it really doesn’t do much without a LOT of extra damage and bonuses to hit.
The best basic weapon to use with a Flurry, IF you are fighting with others, is a weapon of Subtlety (normally a shortsword). That +4 Th/Dmg anytime you qualify for sneak attack damage (even IF you don’t do Sneak attack damage!) is extremely nice if you’ve got a fighting partner, and the Improved Flanking and Outflank Feats providing even more TH bonuses really help, too, even they are situational.
The Wolfpack Stance, where you determine where your flanking partner can stand, and you don’t need to be on the opposite side of an enemy to get the bonus, means you can stand right next to someone, and suddenly you are both +2 to hit the same opponents!
So, I’m seeing some 3.x advice that’s not specific to PF1. I know monk flurry used to suck, but they actually got rid of that with the unchained monk! The flurry is at full bab, and you just get bonus attacks, so there isn’t any downside at all. Ki Strikes also adds an extra attack, and using style strikes like Flying Kick lets you do a full move in the middle of your full attack.
You can also get handwraps to add weapon enchants to your unarmed strikes, so you don’t have to pay the 2x cost that going amulet used to need.
How flurry works changes a bit on whether he’s doing original or unchained monk
The original pathfinder monk treats their BAB as full when they flurry but not if they aren’t, so straight away a monk flurrying is only taking a -1 to hit compared with a non-flurry attack and at 5th level they’re not taking a penalty compared with non-flurry attacks
Unchained monk and flurry just gives them an extra attack without any penalties
@Dave While one can never really get rid of D20 Persecution Complex via facts (like many gaming mental disorders there’s a component of irrationality in it); you can tame it a bit by float testing your dice (assuming you’re not a monster and rolling metal dice (which are heavy enough to screw with rolling for other reasons)) and using a dice tower.
She’s probably going to be pretty amenable to ARCHON’s work-release program once somebody points out that she now knows information that would have intergalactic nation-states hunting her to first extract the information, and then ensuring she’s permanently silenced.
Also, I’m pretty sure the ADA would require that she be provided with a suitable body since that would fall under a reasonable accommodation, and because she kinda needs one to survive.
Like I said – a good idea would be to offer her a ‘jobm in the same way Jabberwokky was or Detla was. Hopefully to reform her into a more law abiding person.