Grrl Power #487 – Semi-Angelic messenger
Well, I almost forgot to post this page since holiday travel has me all turned around, but here it is. Obviously Ravven should have a Who’s Who entry but I’m not in front of my regular machine, so I’ll get that up when I get back home.
Sydney has a talent for asking people just the right thing to move the conversation right direction. She didn’t ask Krona what her name meant (it’s the feminine of Kronos, BTW. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know if there really is a feminine version of Kronos, maybe it’s Kronosia, or Kronisia. I just made up Krona, but that’s the answer Sydney would have gotten had she asked her.)
Sydney only asked Gunnhildr what her name meant cause it’s a cool name with a cool meaning. It’s like a kind of precognition called “being the agent of the author.”
That name and the way she dresses (and the fact that she carries a sword around) should give you an idea of Gunn’s origin, though dressing in a manner which connects a vampire to their place of origin is an affectation some of them take on in certain social situations, usually when doing so shows of how old they are. Most of the time though, they dress in modern comfortable clothes. Well, modern clothes, maybe not entirely comfortable, as they also tend to dress somewhat eccentrically and certainly fancier than the average couch potato. Some vampires might have started off as peasants, but it’s tough to live several hundred years and not amass some small savings, so they’re not going to show up to a vampire munch wearing their original potato sack.
Check out Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers. Sydney’s first Crossover! I’ve made a dedicated blog post for it, please comment there.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Question for the flying traitor: when did you receive that information from the dryads? And why wait until after the distraction? o_O
What makes you think Raven has shade?
What?
Sellsword in this case probably means Mercenary/at one point they were opposite sides in a conflict. or even various points
Zack Tilly, which means she can switch sides at any time
Anyone can switch sides at any time.
In fact, I’m going to switch sides right now, and agree with you – All mercenaries are horrible awful people and none of them can be trusted.
/sarcasm
Don’t say that to Schlock ;)
Just for those used to DaveB getting hands wrong: Kronachrome is pointing to her hair with her left hand
She can alter reality. I’m sure she can change which arm her hands are on, too. #explanation #believethis
Good set of sellsword books is the Eddie Lacrosse series by Alex Bledsoe. It’s as if Mickey Spillane wrote Conan.
Krona is now 20% Cooler.
And 40% more cute.
I foresee ARC SWAT getting called on a lot of Council members now that one of the sigils is down.
According to Dave, the “Angels” on the Twilight Council either inspired biblical accounts, or were just fine posing as them, though given how angels are described in the Bible, they are most certainly posers
For more USE THESE LINKS:
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200000277
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200000345
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200003905
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200000945
The best descriptions of angels in the bible, in my opinion, are those of the fever dream or drug inspired visions of John in Revelations.
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was One like the Son of Man, dressed in a long robe, with a golden sash around His chest. The hair of His head was white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like a blazing fire. His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters. He held in His right hand seven stars, and a sharp double-edged sword came from His mouth. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest.
And upon seeing this, John fainted. Or passed out, the distinction is moot. Which seems only natural, given the situation.
I was pretty sure I had read about an angel with 7 heads and many arms, but I might be confusing that with the beast from Revelations, which had 7 heads and 10 horns. (So, 4 unicorn heads and 3 heads of more normal two horned animals? Or perhaps one head is a triceratops, 3 heads of more normal two horned animals, 1 unicorn head, and 2 heads with no horns at all? Theology is exhausting!)
What about the one described as ‘wheels within wheels’ and had eyeballs where the treads would be and was covered in wings?
Maybe check out the book, The Spaceships of Ezekiel. It’s literally a NASA Rocket Scientist‘s ideas on what is being described at that point in the bible.
Isn’t Krona Swedish for crown?
I thought it was a beer. No wait, thats Corona. My Bad..
(It’s probably still a beer somewhere though)
Now that you mention it, yeah! Maybe Czech?? Been a while since I lived in Europe so I forget.
Close… “crown” in Czech is “koruna”. But then, pretty much every European language uses some variation… krone, corona, kruna, goron…
Corona also means… wait for it… Halo.
It’s been mentioned some pages ago yes. It’s also the Swedish currency.
When Gunnhildr first appeared I researched her name and found more or less what Dave put in the comic, with an additional detail.
Vikinks used to give their children famous people’s names (what strange custom, isn’t it? :P), and it happend that “Gunn” and “Hildr” are actual names of two of the Valkyries. It’s propabely that initially “Gunnhildr” just to those “battle maidens” rather than actually it, same way “Mary Joseph” do not mean “parents of Christ” but is a reference to them.
BTW, Vakyries as fighters is a later poetic licence, in the myths they were not warriors and never fought.
I’m curious Dave, the lists of viking and old viking names I found include mostly “Gunhild”, took me a few tries to find one with “Gunnhildr”. How did you come across it? Is it from a game or something?
I messed up the tags :(
Where it say
‘initially “Gunnhildr” just to those “battle maidens” rather than actually it’
it should be
‘initially “Gunnhildr” just refered to those “battle maidens” rather than actually mean it’
I almost forget, for those among us that are into Viking’s culture and history: give this site a little love, the lady behind it is doing a fine out of love work: https://www.vikinganswerlady.com/index.shtml :)
Yeah, originally, Valkyrie were simply the Norse ‘angels of death’: it was their ‘job’ or ‘duty’ to scour the battlefields and pick the fallen to be carried to Valhalla, how they actually determined who was worthy after the battle was never really explained:
“Oh, look girls, this one has only a single wound, this must mean he was a great fighter!”
“But, this one has dozens of injuries, doesn’t that mean he was greater and it took more blows to bring him down?”
“Oh for Odin’s sake! Just take them both, no one cares!”
As for names losing (or, in some cases, gaining) their original meaning is fairly common, just look at ‘Camelot’, they didn’t even have camels in England :P
We do… well, in Cornwall, anyhows. There’s a river there that’s called the Camel, and the town of Bodmin is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘Bodmin on the Camel’.
^_^
Yeah, I was gonna say- after a few centuries of imperialism, “they don’t have X in England” probably doesn’t hold up. :P
The Arthurian legend of Camelot comes up a lot in the program rotation along with aliens and ghosts in the (increasing misnamed) History Channel. It appears that the first mention of ‘Camelot’ was by the 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes. He was writing a poem about Lancelot and needed something that rhymed, so he made it up.
Although at least two places whose Roman name was [i]Camulodunum[/i] have been suggested as the location of Arthur’s home because of the resemblance…
The Arthurian Mythology is exactly that. A Mythology. Created by a (still french speaking) Norman descended aristocracy to give them some kind of connnection to the anglo-saxon peasants (nother french word) and their barely remembered King Alfred.
Most castles at that time were called ‘Caer’, so it’s possible that there was a “Caer Melot“, just not a “Camelot” (also, it was a typo, King Artie got a sword from a Saxon, some idiot put ‘saxum’ {or what ever is Latin for stone} instead of ‘Saxon’)
It’s probably more like:
“This one was run through the stomach. We’ll take him for Valhala, and the mead drinking and such. Although with that stomach wound he’ll be a pretty prolific drinker, since it’ll all just run out as soon as he swallows it.”
“This one was stabbed in the back, probably running like a coward. Hel gets him.”
This.
Yeah, that sounds about right
More like they were watching the battle the whole time and decided then which guys were heroic enough for Valhalla.
it was their ‘job’ or ‘duty’ to scour the battlefields and pick the fallen to be carried to Valhalla,
In fact, in the original myth, they do not choose among the fallen, they do it among the living, actually deciding who will die and who doesn’t.
“The modern image of the valkyries as elegant, noble maidens bearing dead heroes to Valhalla is largely accurate for what it is, but a highly selective portrayal that exaggerates their pleasant qualities [..] in heathen times they were far more sinister. The meaning of their name, “choosers of the slain,” refers not only to their choosing who gains admittance to Valhalla, but also to their choosing who dies in battle and using malicious magic to ensure that their preferences in this regard are brought to fruition. Examples of valkyries deciding who lives and who dies abound in the Eddas and sagas […] in the Darraðarljóð, […] twelve valkyries are seen prior to the Battle of Clontarf, sitting at a loom and weaving the tragic destiny of the warriors (an activity highly reminiscent of the Norns). They use intestines for their thread, severed heads for weights, and swords and arrows for beaters, all the while chanting their intentions with ominous delight.”
https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/valkyries/
Reinforces the “angels of Death” bit
Yep… they don’t hang around battlefields waiting for worthy heroes to fall… they pick out their heroes and ensure that death finds them.
By the way major points for the cool wingbone design on the…sellswords? wings, it looks really cool in the panel.
Major points followed by some minor confusion that the wing-bones go away in the next panel, and next page.
…Really, why are we seeing the bones inside the wings in the first place? Feels like a trace Dave did to make sure he got the wings the right shape, and then forgot to erase. Then Keith or whomever coloured them by accident?
So many people are going to wake up next to various were-people, among other things, as a result of this.
“Friends always told me you were a dog and a bitch, didn’t know they meant it literally! Wait! No! Don’t kill me!! It was a jok… ARGHHHHHHHH!!”
“Aaaah! You are a giant honeybadger!”
“Yeah. Please tell me why I should give a damn.”
“Ahhhhh! You are a giant honeybadger”
“And you’re a platypus.”
“I’m a WHAT???”
+1
I don’t know when and how many have said this (and maybe even myself in the past…), but every time I see Ingsol’s name, I end up thinking about a certain George Orwell novel. (Replace the ‘l’ at the end with a ‘c’. If you know it, you know it. If you don’t, maybe a Bing search will help.)
I think you mean Google.
Nope, some people don’t Google, they use Bing instead
And some of us use StartPage (formerly called Ixquick), because it doesn’t collect ANY personal information.
https://www.ixquick.com
Hmmm, hadn’t heard of icksquick, I’ve been using duckduckgo.
So they claim.
I’m calling it now: the banner between Angels and Invisibles is for Djinn.
FYI (and only because no one else has commented), yes, Krona would be the feminine form of Kronos – assuming you’re referring to the ancient Greek Titan. Technically, it would be spelled chi-omega-nu-mu-eta. (Don’t know how to code Greek text, sorry!)
Ignore that – I don’t know what got into me. Chi-rho-omega-nu-eta. (I can speel!)
Use the Character Map.
Χρωνη Happy now? I’m not. Χ is a Kh not a Ch and should be listed accordingly.
Eh, whatever. It’s all Greek to me.
DAVE! Is Gunnhildr’s wardrobe really historical? I know in France used to be a time when it was a fashion to expose breasts all the way to the nipples (how about a historical drama with THAT?). But I don’t know about any historical dresses that have cleavage window. I need a clarification here. I don’t recognize her sword either.
Many women warriors find boob sweat to be a serious issue.
And warrior men (why do you think most barbarian men went topless?)
Some didn’t even bother with any clothes and charged the romans naked.
An explanation I heard for that was that fighting in clothing would result in cloth potentially being driven by a weapon into the body. This would almost certainly result in a serious infection.
Also it must have been bad for enemy morale. Imagine a horde of guys clad only in blue paint charging you.
women were known to charge the Legions like that as well.
I think DaveB added the extra V to Ravven to make us think that Ingsol had pronounced her name with a ‘W’ in his (not Russian) accent. I personally think the extra V is there to pay tribute to her Vulcan heritage.
Also, she said “I have received word from our Dryads”. So, she heard it through the grapevine?
Either that, or she checked her tree-mail.
Azurath metrion zynthos.
Yay! The comment highlighter script has spontaneously started working again!
Sad news today. We lost Princess Leia to a heart attack at only 60 years old.
RIP Carrie Fisher
Coming to comment on it. That galaxy seems farther than ever :(
Farewell Carrie, you will be remembered.
She has become one with The Force and gone on to become more powerful than you can imagine.
I just heard that myself. May the force be with her, always.
As if it wasn’t bad enough. It was announced today that her mother Debbie Reynolds has passed away on Wednesday, one day afterwards.
My melodrama instincts have been acting up again.
When I heard that Debbie died only one day after her daughter and that some of her final words were supposedly about wanting to be with Carrie, I jumped to the conclusion that the mother had committed suicide. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case, a stroke getting her instead.
RIP Debbie Reynolds
You know, this fight would’ve gone VERY differently were it not for Max and Sydney. Really, what Sydney did that was most important was give Max the heads up so she wasn’t surprised like everyone else, or else that grenade would’ve caused some pretty nasty collateral damage.
Here’s the thing about Max. She has the ability to move fast, but she’s not a Speedster, because she doesn’t have a dilated temporal perception. Umm… in plain English, she goes fast, She doesn’t see the world as going in slow-motion. Which is why she got hit by unexpected fear-vomit. Her reflexes are on the high end of normal, but merely there.
For those who have seen the CW spinoff The Flash, every time Barry speeds, the perception is that the whole world is in slow-mo. That’s the hallmark of a true Speedster, and probably THE reason why they are so deadly, even more so than their actual speed. You’ll see time and time again something happens, they react before anyone else is even aware there’s something to react to. And this is something Max doesn’t have. Not necessarily quick reflexes, so much as reaction time.
The book Path of Fury by David Webber actually goes into this with his ‘Drop Commandos’ having an implant that can inject them with a drug which alters their perception of time. They don’t actually get any faster, but they are able to *process* stuff mentally faster and it buys the soldier the most precious commodity in combat: time. Time to think. This is something speedsters do innately, and with some extremely powerful results. That’s why when the V battle was going on, and a Speedster showed up, Max was like ‘okay, is my number two going to be able to handle this or do I need to, as the only two possibly capable of handling it’. That’s the level of threat a speedster possesses, and it’s because of their temporal perception.
By giving Max the head’s up, the initial attack was completely thwarted, which almost certainly would not have been the case if she hadn’t gotten that half-second warning. Because she would’ve needed to conduct threat analysis before engaging. This isn’t her home turf, this might be a very dramatic member of the group making a dramatic appearance, for all she knows. And the problem is that grenade goes off before sight is cleared to positively identify threat. So because Sydney let her know these are definitely NOT friendlies, her menu of options went from a decision point of ‘hostile or not hostile’ with a significant delay in identification to ‘threat response -> start with non-lethal and work up from there’. So when the grenade went out, she immediately recognized it for what it was and responded appropriately. Notice that no one else, not even the lycanthropes with superhuman reflexes, were able to do much more than oggle or maybe gasp before that happened.
Without that warning for Max to be able to respond swiftly and appropriately… this would’ve turned out very poorly. Silver shrapnel taking down the lycans, mages screwing themselves over, and one of a vampire’s nightmares is something that can drain IT’s blood. This attack was tailored to the known occupants. They just didn’t account for Sydney and Max. And to an extent, Dabbler. But without magic, and without the ability to use the tech powerful enough to end it without severe collateral damage, Dabbler’s options were rather harshly limited.
Well analysed
Will say one thing about The Flush: we have only really see his ‘dilated temporal perception’ a few times, most times we simply see a red-yellow flash and everything has been sorted, we saw more of that ‘world in slow-motion’ in the “Smallville” series (as seen in this clip)
This wasn’t to knock what you said, just to show it better :D
It also showed Clark extending his ‘time bubble’ around others, something yet to be seen on The Flush
Is sort of question the not a speedster thing sure looks like she is At least that is what I assume the “Bullet Time” reference meant.
She can go fast, but Maxi isn’t technically a Speedster, not even Soupcan is a Speedster even though he can almost catch The Flush
Since we have broached this topic, I have my own peeve about speedsters. There was a scene in Smallville where Clark was standing in a street and saw a sniper fire a bullet at one of his friends. He runs over to try and stop the attack. He does NOT just grab the bullet out of the air. Instead he shoves the target individual out of the path of the bullet. So, instead of a few grams of metal hitting the person at 1000 fps we have a 200+ pound object hitting him at MORE than 1000 fps. He should have basically exploded into a cloud of blood and body parts at that point. Even if the person survives due to the writers saying he is in range of Clark’s ‘personal protection field’ he is now headed straight into a brick wall at several hundred miles per hour.
superman cornholes physics, just roll with it. The basic gist is, his aura or whatever you want to call it, zero range telekinesis or something, allows him to ignore stuff like momentum and leverage. At least The Flash has “The Speed Force” to hand wave the fact that everything everywhere should die with his passing.
Pretty sure Maxima has the perception-of-time ability, as well. Remember that she, and her superiors, are confident that she would be able to catch a bullet AFTER it had been fired from a gun, and stop it from hitting a target at nearly point-blank range. (ref., her gun vs finger demonstration with Sydney)
While she’s holding the gun, the hypothetical situation involved is an accidental discharge, so not something she would be prepared for. This implies that her reaction time is well-into the realm of superhuman (albeit, possibly only when she has her “speed stat” cranked up).
While the scenario for Max holding the gun is an accidental discharge that must be reacted to, the fact of being in that scenario does (or should!) prime her to be paying particular attention for that particular accident, and have the stats dialed in to respond accordingly. Without the foreknowledge that she’s in a live-fire situation, there’s more chance that she’ll relax her speed setting towards the baseline of those around her, meaning that her reflexes will be at ‘good baseline’ rather than ‘speedster’ level.
Bee A Gun?
It’s supposed to be a Starter pistol
Not to be confused with a Bee Bee Gun.
(TV Tropes link deliberately NOT provided. You’re welcome.)
It had not occurred to me that Maxima might not have quick-thought as well as quick-motion.
She seems to have it when she has activated her speed mode. Otherwise she wouldnt have been able to disarm a grenade in mid flight like she did.
Enter the angel. Or is this another winged entity that we have not seen silhouetted before? The one at the ‘angel banner box’ had a halo in a couple of the pages, but not at other times.
‘Sellsword’ does not sound typically angelic, and Ravven does lack a halo. But there again demons like Dabbler do not match legends, so the possibilities are open.
I hope y’all had (and/or are still having) a very merry time over the festive season.
I love Krona’s smile at doing her rainbow-hair makeover.
Awesome world-changing powers, put to a small-scale fun use.
“With great power comes small amusements.”
*waves paw*
[a tiny amusement park appears, in 1/12th scale, with the best examples of each type of ride or game from all over the world, concession stalls serving nothing but five star food, all manned by fully realistic animatronic staff, and with no queues for anything]
“vampire munch” I understood that reference.
what reference, where?
“munch” is a term used in BDSM/kink circles to describe a casual get-together. Normally over appetizers/tea/dinner/other munchies. Hence, “munch”
Considering how similar it is to “brunch” I’m really surprised it isn’t a wide spread term.
As for crossovers, just saw Sydney mentioned in Ryk E. Spoor’s newest, “Challenges of the Deeps”, a new Grand Central Arena novel (currently available as eARC from Baen). (Pretty much just a throwaway, but still.)
Wait, so the Dryads do message relaying?
So that news literally traveleld through th grapevine?
+1
No sour grapes, that I did not spot that.
I only just noticed that Krona changed her hair to a rainbow.
From what I heard, the meaning of 1212 angelic messenger is to “be strong and confident,” is that correct? :-)