Grrl Power #562 – Hoisted by being the vanguard
I get the impression from Cooter’s reaction that he may not have been fully informed about the plan. It’s almost like he’s been lied to about the group’s objectives from the start. Shame on you Sciona. It’s like you’re a bad guy or something.
Building a vault to keep out all manner of supernatural creatures would be a serious pain in the ass. Security though obscurity would be the single biggest measure you could take. In order, not letting people know you have a vault is the best thing you could do, after that, not letting anyone know where it’s located would be ideal. After that the best you can do is make them think anyone who enters it will be horribly killed or at least grievously injured. That and put a really thick door on the thing, but when you have to deal with beings that can walk through rock or shadow or control insects or see through squirrels’ eyes or what have you, and taking into account the power levels of some of the being that might be trying to crack the vault, the internal defenses would be a real challenge to design.
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Whelp, given from the white marks running from his eyes, Coot’s been crying buckets, so I’m fairly certain I *don’t* want to know what kind of tortures Sciona and the gang put him through to get Coot to turn into… er… that. Kind of amusing that his teeth are still shiney white bone, though. O_o
I kinda suspect it was less of turning into something and more they used that bigass pentagram thingy of Scionia’s to send him (or all of them but him first) “through the blood-o-verse” or whatever to get there and he’s just covered in blood because what else would the earth’s bloodosphere be made of?
My guess is that they send only him through. After he gets blown into bloody chucks, Sciona can use the new blood in the vault to work her magic, and get the rest of them in safely.
Oooh, smart!
With the added bonus that a lot of sensors will be covered in blood and gore, so may not be effective.
Probably stings like being put through the transporter on Star Trek but it is running slow enough for you to feel it pulling your apart piece by piece.
You know, much as it’s been attempted to portray Cooter as someone we should hate, I really can’t help but feel bad for him. He’s a monster hunter because monsters murdered his family. That’s sort of… incredibly sympathetic. That’s more like the Punisher than someone who should be automatically hated – pretty sure he just thinks most monsters are killers because of his personal experiences. And given that he’s now being manipulated by other monsters, they’re not exactly dissuading his opinion. :)
His monster hunting is not an issue for me. Even Ingsol had to remind Sydney that many of the supernaturals really are monsters (and by extension are thereby deserving of being killed).
Cooter lost my sympathy over being offensive to ladies (and others).
*gets out the hangman’s noose*
See now in overly-politically-correct cultures, hanging for such behaviour has gone out of fashion. But fortunately the monsters tend to keep to the old ways.
*tosses the rope to Sciona*
Coot may be “some country bumpkin” but he’s been around long enough to know when to keep his mouth CLOSED.
That is a concerning number of coffin-shaped panels panels in the floor of that vault. Almost enough that you start to wonder if it’s for a good reason or if it’s just the Council likes to be all spooky and mystic and shit.
I thought that the coffin-shaped panels were the lids for all those turrets. At least that is the impression I get from panel three.
No, the coffins are in front of each door, and the turrets are not (also the turrets are the wrong shape)
Well where do you keep your super old vampires once they’re too racist for society?
Given that they get more powerful as they get older, I doubt that they will ‘be kept’. Rather they will probably rise up to the top of society and be the ones calling the shots.
Seems like people usually go for the convenient, “The Old Ones sleep more and more as they age… ” sort of explanation for why giant trolls are just owning everyone and the skies aren’t being blotted out by ancient dragons with wingspans the size of the skyscrapers. Sometimes its just to stave off bored. (sleep for a few thousand years and SOMETHING worth reading about might have happened before you roll over to go to sleep again) Sometimes its to replenish the food supply. (all that amped up aged super vamp power probably needs more juice to sustain it?) And sometimes its just some left over from and older stage of their evolution into uber-critters.
Good point and well put.
-minus the massive wave of typos. Is it just me or am I actually getting worse? And I was bad before… :(
Brains are good at filling in missing information, or finding the nearest match to something that is not quite clear. It takes training to force such to be more noticeable. I just let my brain do its job.
Just look at it as you becoming more mellow with age.
oh, ye gods
I mean ye gods I think I am going to be sick
Well at least they didn’t skimp on the turrets, they’re all firing different ammunition!
honestly, i think these are just the targeting lasers for the (micro)misslie racks? would also explain the high level of gore they encountered ;)
But wouldn’t it make more sense for them to all for a different type of ammunition? You would want to cover all your bases, think of a shotgun shell loaded with silver, cold iron, rock salt, paint balls filled with holy water, oak falechette, etc. The point is no matter what gets in something can murder it!
Look at panel four: one turret has blue crystals and the other a flame for some flammable liquid thrower
The flame one is a scented candle to help calm the intruder into a sense of peace and tranquility (before the other ones blast him into tiny bits)
How considerate of them.
More magic enhanced candle to use against creatures that feed on violence or rage
Hmm… Interesting that some of the artifacts and relics are possibly vampires?
Ooooh… Craaap… Impossibly old and ancient vampires, with high ‘levels’, that an enterprising blood mage could ‘tap’ for a LOT of mojo? Yeah, think we have our motive.
Place your bets, place your bets hear!
In the blue corner we have Coot being sent in via a blood based teleportation spell!
In the red corner we have Coot being turned into some blood golem thibgy? We don’t really know what’s in the red corner, but boy is that a lot of red!
He still has his eyes, his teeth, and the skin under his eyes is skin coloured, probably from crying.
He’s probably going to be turned into a blood golem thing pretty soon though.
My money’s on that they vamped him with an ancient enough sire that his sired (Sires? Sirees? Siren?) get blood forms, and then force-shoved him in with some method. Now Coot is in the process of getting repeatedly blasted to pieces and reformed.
If you check page one of the comments, you will find that the author has enlightened us. Continually.
Amazing how many people seem to have not noticed Coot’s gun and his clothes, which would rule out him being a blood-golem (or a golem of any variety)
We sadly announce the passing of one of our Robotic-American astronauts who was killed on the job while on a mission to boldly go where no robot had gone before. The last transmission received today from Saturn was heard to be “but I was only one day away from retirement!”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/us/cassini-mission-ends/index.html
So long and thanks for all the data, Cassini!
Still years worth of data to analyse though. I wonder how long it will take them to find the teapot?
Oh definitely! So much wonderful data. I’m more on the cosmology side, but if it’s in space it interests me. So I’m curious to see what my planetary science colleagues make of it all.
Darjeeling.
The coffin shapes are turrets, all around a center square, so one, really bad mofo in the center… Dracula type maybe?
Dracula seems a bit weak. Perhaps this is Alucard’s private retreat?
Alucard IS Dracula. (That’s why Alucard’s name is Dracula’s name spelled backwards. He was trying to reinvent his image without completely tossing it away. Gotta find some way to not get bored over centuries.)
And Ingsol dissed Dracula, seemingly knowing him personally. I wonder if the bald vampire, who was heckling Ingsol from the peanut gallery, was Dracula’s brother Dracip?
More likely Ingsol knew Anne Rice.
The real Dracula was Vlad Tepes III (Vlad the Impaler) – for all we know he was never a vampire in the Grrlpower universe to begin with :) Just a wannabe.
Hey I live near to there, in a village that used to specialise in vampire hunting. Plus the region has hundreds of archaeologically verified vampire burials. And I do not know of so much as a single wrongful prosecution having been successfully brought in any of those cases!
Of course there is also the misinformation of history to consider.
Vlad the Impeller was actually a vampire hunter. And Bram Stoker was bribed to write that you kill a vampire by staking his heart, whereas you actually have to stick it up his bottom!
And it has to be medium-rare, served with a garlic sauce.
Vlad has been confirmed to not have been a vampire in the grrlverse. Ingsol claims he was “just an ass hole” in his introduction.
Well remembered!
And if he was a vampire hunter, we would expect Ingsol to have a negative opinion of him.
*wags tail in amusement*
I wonder if Sciona gained her teleporting powers from Harem 4A’s* blood?
* Halo A, Harem 4A** & Pixel A being the pre checkpoint originals. Halo B, Harem 4B and Pixel B being the clones created by the reset. With Harem’s 1A-3A & 5A being unduplicated originals.
** 4 chosen arbitrarily.
Blood teleport seems to work a lot like Sydney’s comm orb lightbee teleport.
Just as worrying. Mmm. More worrying.
*ears droop
What difference would it make, that is, which Harem Sciona copied from? I get it matters which super Sciona copied from – if from Harem, Sciona may also have gotten the “Ctrl C, Ctrl V” teleport rather than “Ctrl X, Ctrl V”, which makes a big difference. but would it matter which Harem Sciona copied from?
It would matter.
Who is to say (Hey Dave where are you?) that when a Harem teleports, her microbial colonies don’t mix between herselves? I’d assume that each Harem’s microbes are different even if they’re all the same consciousness. They are decorated differently, so why not their immune systems?
She’s more than likely had sex with different bodies of her own, so the viruses, bacteria, fluids (and proteins!) gained that way could alter each body, though not enough to alter her powers.
We do know she can get injured in one body and not the others, though the rest possibly feel it. So there are differences seen.
We have no indication that Harem even met Sci-fright, last we knew was she was still fluffing around upstairs and hadn’t found a way below when the reset happened
If there are Harem A’s and now a 4B, does that mean there is still a 4A?
True that we do not know that. Equally though there is nothing to disprove it. Harem was looking for Pixel and is competent, so my assertion is that she could have reached there. And as an experienced teleporter may well have done so quicker than Sydney, for that matter.
But before or after Sciona proved capable enough to take out other heroes easily, so on her own I doubt Harem would prove a match for Sciona.
Of course I am only speculating within the extreme bounds of possibility, rather than probability.
Yup. Although for that to be the case she would have to have been kept unconscious (or dead) or else the other Harems would be aware of her present state. However the former option does match Sciona’s blood-draining modus operandi, so it does fit. For example bopping her on the head (or using a spell to render her senseless) would have done the trick, when capturing Harem.
The power-duplicating construct brought Sciona plenty of time to gather up all three of her captives. We know her to have a variety of minions and constructs, so it would be a trivial matter for her to order that, as a part of the evacuation process.
And, worst-case scenario, there may well now also be Sciona A and Sciona B (along with various minion A & minion Bs) too!
Note that Krona never left the checkpoint area so duplication was not triggered for her, but (under this line of reasoning*) it may well have done for everyone else in the area affected by the power (Maxima having been outside of it, for example).
* Which I must credit to have originated with other commentators – I am just running with it.
Yes, but Harem specifically said she was still looking in the main building and not in the ‘basement’ (she hadn’t found the sewer entrance that Sydney used)
Reasonable point. All still part of Sciona’s complex though, and we know that she had detection wards up (because she commented to that effect). So Sciona could have dealt with Harem even in the main building. Clearly she had already finished dealing with Pixel and gone away for some reason, given that she only returned after Sydney showed up.
Maybe a bio break, or maybe breaking a teleporter’s head?
She went away to get an infusion of Troll-blood to recover from Pixelicious’ reluctance to being caught
Sounds like the kind of thing I would carry around with me, if I were an evil mastermind.
Sciona already learnt the lesson of what happens if your body gets cut off. You have no arms or legs to go get stuff. The less distance you have to drag yourself, with your upper lip, the better your survival chances!
Then does that mean Sydney Scoville Jr. died and Sciona has her by the balls?
*has her balls
*has her orbs?
Possibly. If that scenario is the way Krona’s power worked. Or she may have survived. It is not known whether the attack would have been fatal or not.
Non fatal to increase blood volume collection
That set up would take many hands and brains. Many layers and over all that power expended, a cover spell to hide its arcano-energy signature from prying sense organs and PKE devices. And then there is the architecture, materials and more solid defenses. And you have to be able to make it tough enough to not collapse if hit in the right weak spot. Security is a bitch and if you aren’t willing to pay for it like Equifax, then you get hacked. For a corporation the ultimate penalty should be discorporation. For them the loss just may be too high to calculate on any ordinary ledger.
i recently saw a “funny bumper stickers” video, and one of them was “I’ll believe that Corporations are People, when Texas executes one”… would that be the same as dissolution in this case?
Hi Guys,
I was looking through the archives and had a thought that is not at all connected with this page, but it seems to me that Anvil has something in common with Dabbler. They can both charge up from sex…
Someone may have already made this comment years ago however…
Ok, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
They sure can. And throw Vehemence into the equation too. He just likes it rough.
And some of Vance’s colony will likely eat their partners, so gain energy that way. He needs to make use of
tinderwebder if he wants to make an energy gain though.This scene reminds me of…
THIS scene (hi, Young Patrick Stewart)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586T56XQ-MU
Warning: blood, obviously.
That special effect still holds up against modern effects after 30+ years
Better Cooter than this poor guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pROVjlzUxYI
Nah, Coot ain’t as dumb
Yea.
“Get away from the tub”
And then goes and stands even closer to it than the other guy!
Frankly, he is a liability in a survival situation. If tried to get out of the tub, he should have been clubbed over the head, with his Darwin Award.
I love the fact that every one of those turrets is a completely different kind of weapon.
“We don’t know exactly what supernatural being you are, but we have SOMETHING that will kill you!”
Who was expecting a Bloody Cooter in the vault? Not Me.
RIP Cooter. You were a massive dick, but no-one deserves whatever the fuck is happening to you.
He may yet survive.
He has just been teleported using blood magic. Although he is as confused about the process as you, it not having appeared on TV.
Umm, no, anything that has suddenly appeared in the middle of the supposedly-secure Vault of Mostly Indestructible Things (VoMIT) is to be treated as extremely dangerous and must be reduced to sticky wallpaper
Wait, why does everyone keep calling him “Cooter“? His name is “Coot”
no, it’s Cooter, according to him, anyway.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2525
According to the “Who’s Who”, it’s Coot
And Sydney Scoville Jr is only listed as “Sydney/Halo”. It is just an aide memoire rather than a resume. Coot is both “Coot” and “Cooter”.
Wow, they Hellraiser’d him in there.