Grrl Power #568 – Customer service with an evil smile
I can just imagine Sciona waiting on the phone to set up an appointment;
“If you’re calling because you suspect the company’s CEO of planting a mole in your organization, please press 1. If you’re calling because the company’s CEO was secretly trying to date you under the guise of business meetings, please press 2. If you’re calling about the company’s CEO undermining the political structure of your country and running it from the shadows, except he constantly tells everyone about it, please press 3. If you’re calling because the company’s CEO has horned in on your daring heist, please press 4. You have pressed 4. Transferring you to your childhood home, where the company’s CEO is currently banging your mom!” >dialtone<
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XD That phone-menu is even better than the comic!
Not to mention the automated response to #4.
^_^
Apparently even Deus isn’t above telling a “Yo momma” joke…
What joke? o_O
Well your mom is a joke.
Your mum’s face is a joke.
Point was, #4 wasn’t a joke, he really is your daddy (well, he’s your siblings’ daddy)
Luke, I am your father.
Luke, I am your father, but you are my great-grandfather. The Imperial Time Corps would like to have a word with you, about messing with causality.
Well, as even Shakespeare wasn’t…
^_^
(It’s in the infamous play ‘Titus Andronicus’.)
“Thou hast undone our mother!”
“Villain, I have done thy mother!”
“Papa? Is that you?”
That phone menu crosses the line and it is glorious! XD
He also brought an actual shopping list written on a cheap yellow notepad to go along with previous page’s shopping cart!
A wobbly SQUEAKY wheel.
Do you mean the business card? This is the first time i hear someone call it a Phone Menu
Siddy: No, he’s referring to DaveB’s blog for this page.
Heh, twice now I have looked for a smartphone in the comic. Coming to the conclusion that perhaps Michael Chandra and LordViking might be millennials, who might mistake the note pad (in panel 1) for a chunky smartphone! Before remembering the blog, that is.
“thank you for your call. Your anger is very important to us. Please stay on the line while one of our strike teams is on the way to your location.” All said in a very friendly tone.
That ranks right up there with Magrathea’s response on their automatic answering service.
“It is most gratifying that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives.”
“That’s what you get for calling tech support!” – Mom
It has been Scientifically Determined by Scientists with small children that bare feet are sensory organs for finding Legos in the dark.
what those same scientists won’t tell you is that the Lego blocks are actually sentient and all blocks are part of a single hive mind sent here to study humanity………..
We don’t step on the blocks, they MOVE under our feet to record and study our reactions to stimuli…..
Why do people find Legos in dark rooms so treacherous? They are not THAT hard to sense and avoid, just use the “sneaky walk”.
Seriously, its the exact same walking pattern you use to avoid snapping twigs in a forest. Takes a day or two to pick up. Easy.
Most people immediately put their weight down on the foot they’re stepping forward with. It’s automatic and unconscious: folks usually don’t even realize there is another way to take a step.
As a pup I used to walk barefoot most of the time. And ghosted through twig-strewn woods, like a gentle breeze.
But footwear is handy for avoiding punctures by sharp rocks and bits of glass. I can remember turning round, at the end of a city block, to see a trail of bloody paw-prints down its length. Mine.
Stealth walking is a skill though. And, like all such, it can fade without practice. Whilst I slip into that mode, under appropriate circumstances, I am nowhere near as light on my feet as I used to be.
Geeze, Yorp, you been working out. Is that a new dye job? Nice hat.
On the LEGO thing- I never understood that either- just shuffle. LEGO bricks aren’t exactly heavy enough to stub a toe on, and if you don’t lift your foot, you don’t let anything pointy get underneath.
*tips hat*
Also called ‘fox walking’, and a necessary skill for any one who switches to thin sole shoes like the Vibram ‘5-finger’ shoes.
An Undead like… a Vampire?
…and this should not be here, but one down.
That is an interesting conundrum. You have to use something that the field responds to as alive, yet technically inanimate to be able to pull out an artifact.
Undead would be obvious solution to that, but I’m betting Deus has something outside the box planned.
Something that takes a really long time to die/finish moving? Most of the issue there would be that the object you were trying to retrieve would probably not be able to exit through the field.
Can Opal make portals inside the fields to bypass them? Or, does Deus just know what the pass code to turn them off is?
I was so focused on thinking of a way to grab the item it hadn’t occurred to me that the item itself would also be blocked from exiting. That makes it a little harder to come up with ways they might gather the items. (Plus precautions that might have to be taken that keep the item from going berserk while/after being pulled from the field).
Fresh octopus tentacles will grab your teeth and try to keep you from eating them, for quite a while after being separated from the octopus. Tossing an octopus into the field, while keeping one tentacle outside might work.
in fairness, that’s because each of an Octopus’s tentacles actually has its own proto-brain.
Isn’t panel 4 precisely showing one of opal’s portaals opening within the artifact’s field?
They are in the center of a ring of columns. The portal is behind Deus’ group. The Glove is suspended in the column closest to the viewer and is twitching in (Rocky Horror mode activated) “antici….pation.”
P.S. I would like to thank Dave for hiring the glove to appear in this comic. He hasn’t had much work singe his appearance in the Yellow Submarine movie.
And I was thinking it looked more like the hand of Venca.
I was thinking of someone with long hair.
I was actually thinking Doomfist a little.
More like Soul Edge got busy with a Nintendo PowerGlove. (It’s so bad it’s become an EVIL artifact)
You saying the PowerGlove wasn’t evil to begin with? o_O
Obviously, some abilities could counter the field. I’ll bet that Achilles could walk right through it.
Simple. Use some potted plants to grab the artifact, then discard the dead sticks.
or use a severed limb that has an artificial heart pumping blood through it to keep it alive. Use electrical pulses to manage the muscles. I would imagine that would be Sciona’s method anyway.
As Chronocidal points out, would the field allow the dead sticks to pass back out through the field? Technically, it is no longer living matter.
Who cares? Just push the artefact out, the twig now takes its place
Will the artefact itself pass through the field, if it is not living matter?
Does the “kill field” effect occur before or after the “living matter only” check does? If so, then your potted plant turns into sticks and goes nowhere. And, if any of the artefacts you want to retrieve qualify as “living matter” then you obviously don’t want them to die on the way out…
How about a large hollowed out torus shaped pumpkin? If it’s fresh enough, it should be still alive by the time you enter the crypt and you can then reach through the field assuming the field doesn’t cut through things as it tries to re-establish itself.
Hmm, I mean how do you even take the item out, unless the item is somehow alive, if the item cannot pass trough the field?
You either have to make a hole into the field, bypass the field (Opals portals), or have the passcodes for the field.
It is not specified if the fields block the Artifacts from leaving. If not, they could “spoof” being the proper artifact with the removal item. Kind of like Matching your Disruptor Frequencies to the Enterprise D Shield Modulation.
I think the barrier would block the artifact though, since most of the artifacts are non-living.
The big question is “Define ‘Alive'” because we’ve yet to be able to do that.
“If you are calling because the CEO stole one of your shopping trolleys, press 5”
+1
If you are trying to reach our pharmaceuticals division to report that one of our drugs has caused you to develop OCD, please press 6; over, and over, and over, and over..
just leave this here, Mental help hotline; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqyiYd4iCYY
“If you are calling because Villians broke into your vault and our CEO intercepted to “save” some of the contents of your vault, please press 7.”
“If this is Maxima and you want our relationship to be unprofessional again, please press 8.”
“To continue to the second list of options, please press 9.”
“If you’re unsure of how, who, what, why, when, where, or if our CEO has helped/hindered/rocked-your-world, please press 0 at any time to talk to the attendant.”
“Welcome to the second menu out of ten.”
“If you are calling because our CEO said something intriguing to you, or alluded to something intriguing during this phone menu, and you’re part of the press and want to write a story about it and want all the juicy secret details, press 1 to hear our CEO’s latest megalomaniac monologue recorded (note, timing of thunder was delayed in recording, due to a glitch, the actual thunder occurred earlier.)”
“If you are calling because you are a super looking for employment, please press 2 if you are male and you will be connected with HR, press 3 if you are female and you will be connected with our corporate legal line to approve our corporate harassment waiver policy followed by connection with our corporate costuming department where you will be assigned an outfit involving a collar and/or cleavage window.”
“If you are calling for a woman’s right’s magazine and are appalled by the previous option, please note that I pay women 20% more than men, I donated over fifty million to Hillary’s Campaign, my business has gender-neutral bathrooms, the waiver is not mandatory (although it does come with a matching grant that encourages a lobbying program to encourage more women in CEO positions), and we supporting lobbying to support unionizing sex workers in Nevada. If you wish to further complain about Deus being a sexually liberated individual who encourages women to be sexually liberated and actually follows on giving and requiring full and written consent, please press 4.”
If this is Maxima again who is wanting to request more items be added to the preceding list and are willing to discuss it over a romantic dinner, please press 5.”
“If you feel you have reached this line in error and are actually wanting to reach the corporate office and not our CEO’s personal card line, please press 6.”
“If you are in the business of selling one-of-a-kind artifacts, please press 7.”
Since the council has AI robots and constructs. It would be racist not to consider them alive.
But their sense of alive might still be different from what the field kills.
Johnny 5 no want to help bad man!
Nor does the Mad Mental Crazy!!!
Multiple exclamation points. Sure sign of a deranged mind.
!̧̢̲̙͈̖̤̫̰̮̰̯̝̬̮̮͉͘!͠҉̰̘͖͖͚͍̝̮̘̼̜̤͍̝͇̩̩͢!̼̭͔̻̦͖̝̕͠!̸͖̜̦̦͎͍̰͚̮͍̩̣͍̠̭̝͖͢͜͞!̢̦̝̺̥͙̯̠̱̗̮!̨̰̦̦̱̣̭̜̖̤̕!̴̛͓͔̝̙͚̦̱̪̘̫̯̖̝̖̦̠͘͘!̷̨̧̤͚̟̟̥͈̝̯̼͇̝̙́̕!̡͏̣̖̤̙͙͕̥!̶̛͕̜͇̗͎͎̠͠͞ͅ!̛̣͓͔͎̪̲͚̟̝̠̼͎̦̲̕̕͠͝ͅ!̸̧̺̤̖̫̞͉̳̮͎̤͉̮͓̗̬͖͇̱͟͢!̧͓͈͖̺̻͍͕͍͇̳̣̀͘͝͠!̸̶͖̞̩̠͕̩̭̬̱̲̼̳̖̱̕̕͝
Now I’m curious what powers Vale have.
By bet is her only power is Deus’ insane bluffing skill.
For some reason I am getting a ‘badass normal’ vibe from her. So highly skilled and trained in different techniques, maybe she’s related to Math with martial art techniques that rival with actual super powers.
you don’t get to BE a Body Guard on the power of: “can the guy i’m working for BLUFF his way out of getting attacked in the first place?” and NOT need to be skilled in such matters as Body-Guarding 101…
Now, whether she has any super-powers or not is certainly up for debate but, at the very least, she’s got the SKILLS to be one i’m sure.
Vale’s got a nice little smirk going in panel 3, which leads me to guess she really does have the powers to back it up. The best way to bluff is not to be kidding. Or else she so good at pretending she rivals Deus in that department.
Vale’s Power… Staring Contest Perfection…. Cannot be stared down EVER…..
Can handle semi-undead blood mage ogre women enhanced by superpowerful artifacts.
Oh god this chattering girl with the orbs why won’t this elevator open aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
To be fair, Sydney is insanely powerful, she just doesn’t have much training to go with it yet.
And, d20, a power-level 5 character (mutants & masterminds) character can easily match many epic level characters (D&D3e/Pathfinder).
+1
Is she a badass normal? I’m beginning to think not (OR- that’s one helluva bluff from Deus).
Thoughts if NOT a bluff:
1. Sciona, a Frankenstein’s monster blood mage capable of penetrating a supernaturally designed and guarded safe built under the sea, would only be a match against Vale AFTER using a magical artifact sealed away in said safe, meaning said artifact itself granted tremendous power to its user and was dangerous enough to warrant being put away in such manner.
2. This comic runs on the “Most Common Superpower” trope where anyone with inherent superpowers tends to get an impressive, even perfect physique. Vale, let’s admit it, is HOT. Likelihood of being superpowered: HIGH.
Caveat, however, just to keep things honest: In this setting, having superpowers gives you a great body, but having a great body does NOT mean you have superpowers. It would be possible to be fit AF and thus have a great body but not be metahuman. Peggy and Math come to mind (Math is interesting because he’s said to be at the border of badass normal and superhuman to the point it’s hard to tell what he is).
3. Vale doesn’t have to be reality-warping godlike in powerful, if you think about it. We’re not talking Infinity Gauntlet or even some levels below that. She just has to be MARTIALLY strong enough to wipe the floor with Sciona one way or another. For example: master swordswoman* + freeze time/superspeed power, like Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho. She could behead Sciona before the latter got a spell off, dicing up her skull as it fell off.
* – Why am I assuming she’s a swordswoman? We’ve never seen her fight. Huh.
4. #3 leads to this thought: how “badass normal” is someone like Black Canary, BTW? Her sonic scream is indeed powerful, but she’s also known as a premier martial artist. Some fans would even rank her as a better martial artist than Batman.
5. And… Batman, speaking of whom. He’s beaten gods, but he’s done so by outwitting them. I raise this not to knock on him and his fans but to try to set a limit on how a badass normal can overpower someone like Sciona in a fight. In this particular situation, it’s unlikely for Vale to beat Sciona the way Bats would. She’d had no time to prepare the scene beforehand and any reliance on special gadgets and equipment makes it unlikely she’s Sciona’s equal in a straight-up fight after the blood mage had obtained the Epimorph.
Deus could also just be wrong. Like, it isn’t like there is a ‘ultimate super fighting league’ (although there SHOULD BE), where you can hash this stuff out.
With regards to #2:
Someone training so hard that they reached badass-normal level would have almost no body fat and therefor would not have the most common superpower. As witnessed by A-teamer Peggy. Vale could have surgically enhanced herself, but I can’t see someone building themself up to that high a level and then adding what is effectively two rupturable balloons to a common attack area*. If for no other reason that it would be harder to fit her with ballistic protection as she is now. Which would all lead credence to the idea that her build indicates her potential superpowered state.
* Math distraction aside, they’d tend to be liabilities in most fights.
A common misconception. The typical bodybuilder physique is due to a special diet that strips them of their body fat (which creates a lot of health risks, BTW)–with just exercise, many women find that their bra size increases (due to increased pectoral girth).
Yeah, I’ve heard of this. Bodybuilders normally (ordinary days, casual, not competing) are actually sort of chubby. It’s normal and healthy to have some fat on you, but for competitive purposes, the fat gets in the way of showing of muscle development. Thus bodybuilders don’t just diet but even fast and dehydrate themselves right before they perform. They’re actually at their physical weakest during competitions because of it.
That said, and not meaning anything disrespectful, Marquar also has a point. That’s one heckuva rack on Vale there, and I doubt its from having developed but otherwise still ordinary pectoral muscles.
Or, and this seems to be a shocker to most people: she is naturally that size
Vale doesn’t have any visible weapons. That doesn’t necessarily mean she can’t crush, chop, perforate and julienne an opponent, however. At the same time.
But you do need to shudder when she combines it with engastration.
Actually, according to DC, Black Canary is ranked as the 8th best martial artist on the planet.
Batman is ranked as the 5th (first is Richard Dragon, then Lady Shiva, then Cassandra Cain, although Cassandra beat Shiva once decisively), then 4th is Karate Kid for some reason (although they used ti claim he was the best in Legion of Superheroes, even though Batman beat him each time they fought), then 6th is someone called Bronze Tiger, then 7th is Slade Wilson, then 9th is David Cain (Cassandra’s father) and 10th is surprisingly Vic Sage (The Question, who apparently even Shiva was impressed by).
There are others in the top 20, like Wildcat, The Master, Green Arrow, Jason Todd, Bane and Prometheus – although I don’t really count Prometheus because he sort of cheats in how he learns his martial arts.
I remember this one comic where Batman was talking to Mr Terrific about Karate Kid, and how Superman ranked him as a 15 in fighting style, while he only ranked Batman as a 12. Then Karate Kid sneak-attacked, and Batman proceeded to beat up Karate Kid with ‘Good ol’ Gotham streetfighting.’ And he said ‘Oh how I love to prove Clark wrong.’
Btw, this doesn’t include Wonder Woman though, who pretty much everyone ranks as #1 when it comes to melee weapon fighting, and has about 1000 years experience at it. But she’s also one of the very few heroes OR villains who has that level of fighting skill while also having immense superpowers (the other notable ones are Supergirl, who knows a Kryptonian hard-style martial arts called Klukor, which is sort of like Krav Maga in how she uses it, Artemis (who taught Supergirl), Barda, and most of the Female Furies (who each tend to have different levels of superstrength enough to be able to fight people like Barda and Wonder Woman almost to a standstill when they’re working as a group).
Oh also surprisingly Oracle, despite being in a wheelchair, is one of the top escrima fighters on the planet, next to Nightwing and Richard Dragon. Which sort of makes sense since Richard Dragon’s the one who taught her groundfighting and escrima fighting (although she started learning escrima fighting with Nightwing).
martial arts rank puts bruce lower than kid but bruce doesn’t limit himself to martial arts (street fighting)
Bruce doesn’t count: he is the ultimate Marty Stu, he knows everything and can do anything, he only gets ‘beaten’ if he allows it, so no, he doesn’t count
Only when badly written.
When Batman can hurt kryptonians using only martial arts, he can talk smack about Val Armorr. Until then stfu, Bruce.
are you sure you’re remembering those Batman/Karate Kid fights correctly? Because the two I remember Karate Kid beat him both times in open hand fighting, and Batman might have had to use gimmicks to take him down. The later one he actually split Bat’s cowl in half with his bare hand AND took his utility belt off of him, all without taking a scratch from Bats.
Karate Kid was capable of splitting a block of titanium manganite with his bare hands. He was by far a better martial artist than anyone in the 20th century, because he had a thousand more years of martial art knowledge and alien styles to draw on.
He actually managed to stun Superman with nerve punches and use him as a human shield against the other legionannaires. Batman isn’t anywhere in the same room, he just might have gadgets, which is NOT martial arts skill.
On the subject of the ‘impenetrable’ field. I’m thinking either something that heals faster than it is killed, or going terminator by using a claw coated in living material (nothing sentient of course, Deus isn’t that kind of evil (I hope)).
As I said above, just bat the artifact out of the field using some potted plant. Simple and OK from a moral point of view (unless you are a trehugger).
In which case, use the treehugger :P
I know more than a few potted plants that would take issue with that.
And I know a potted plant hivemind* that might also object…
^_^
(* in http:;//www.nationstates.net…)
he is groot
Oh that was very groot.
I would think that an artificer, blood mage, and probably other stuff wouldn’t have any issues with that force field at all. Not to mention that going to all the trouble of getting into the vault just to be turned away without any artifacts because you failed to overcome that force field would be a hilariously loser move.
Make a kudzu lasso. Can’t kill that stuff with anything.
Is it too cliche to think he is bluffing and he is totally riding off this heist’s coattails and needs to know their technique?
That would be easy to call him on though and he’d lose face going “Oh your way is much better, I’ll use that instead”.
So, if I’m reading this right, it’s not breaching the fields that is the issue; it’s getting the artifact out that’s an issue, assuming the artifact isn’t living flesh (unless it’s only a one-way issue). You could breach the field with a tree branch you just lopped off of a tree since the cells in the branch are still alive yet, and wood doesn’t die as fast as pliable flesh does.
The more this goes on, the more I have to wonder what Vale’s deal is. What exactly are her powers, expertise, and why she can’t find a shirt that fits?
Oviously the shirt fits exactly as intended. It is the most common superpower after all.
There was speculation [quite a while] earlier on that she might be another succubus or part-succubus…
Dang!, Cthillia is even TALLER than DEUS is!
That surprised me also, he is the only tall figure in a comic filled with supers where are just average to short length. Even Sciona is just average length in my book. And only a shorty would consider her length as tall.
she* Cthillia’s female.
Wut? All the supers with the exception of Sydney are tall. It is inherent in whatever makes them super also makes them tall. Anvil is extremely tall, and has issues with it.
Ok, Deus is moving into almost as in control as David Xanatos territory and I love it. I love when you have people antagonists like this who are so in control that everything is according to plan, they have a plan for everything, nothing can phase them, and they’re so damned SMUG about it!
+1!
THANKYOU!!
I knew Deus was reminding me of someone. His attitude is nearly a dead ringer for Xanatos, just with a little more fun and enjoyment of his role in life. Basically a tad more deadpool-y Xanatos.
Wait… Deadpool Xanatos…
DEadpool xanatOS
DEOS…
DEUS…
…
naahhh
I have seen worse leaps of logic made entirely seriously.
Mance Rayder from asoiaf…
Turns into Mancer Aider. A person who is a wizard (Mancer as in necromancer or geomancer or something) and aids people. It may be worse than the Time Traveling Fetus theory.
Time Traveling Fetus theory?… Do I want to know?
And even if they technicaly don’t have a plan for the stuation that just unfolded, then have one now and are still in control.
You’d probably enjoy Tatsurou’s take on Valmont in “Three More Things”- a fanfiction. Cool as a cucumber, and the best sort of villain- a decent, honorable guy who happens to find illegal goals preferable to working with the law.
Well he is a tactical genius, which is why things go “just as planned”.
Okay, Deus is clearly either a Bunny Ears Lawyer, Crouching Moron Hidden Badass, or both.
Can you explain Bunny Ears lawyer without a tvtrope link?
Someone extremely good at their job, but also extremely eccentric. Like a lawyer that shows up to court in bunny ears but basically always wins their case. Often their eccentricity is such that they would be fired, but they’re so good that they keep their job anyway.
Oh, like Danny Crane and Alan Shore from “Boston Legal”?
This has been a superior episode.
Loving Vale’s little smirk in panel three :D
Deus’ solution? He knows how to turn off the fields (believe someone above may have mentioned something similar)
Or just create a portal inside the barrier, with your portal girl
That’s my guess. “Oh, look, here’s the power cord. Normally even looking at it sets off all the alarms in the world, but funny thing about that…”
Maybe that is why Heavenly is here, to use her energy blades to cut the pillar open and destroy the power source.
I was thinking tongs and a bucket of Koi.
Is there a fish with a non-slip coating?
Mittens made out of Armadillo?
And this is why Deus is awesome!Im still amazed that Sciona is being so witless here though it seems shes slowly becoming aware that picking a fight with a guy not remotely intimidated by you in a room full of artefacts that at best are as prone to inflicting chaos and death as the necronomicon is in fiction and at worst actively can cause planetary extinction events while being maliciously sentient might be a bad idea.
…………
Ok i confess if Sciona doesnt know how to get past the last hurdle id find that hilarious(And assume its something her council insiders didnt know about).
Did I miss something? Where did all the gore on the walls go?
Different room, that was just the lobby
Nice Mask
Did.. vale just SMIRK in panel 3? O.O
Yes, she did. DaveB cut out her smile at the bottom of the panel, but you can see the corners of Vale’s mouth spread wide, into her cheeks.
Yes, yes she did, the first time we have seen her do that in fact :D
Gethertodoitagain!It’satrulybeautifulsight!
Add this to the list: “If this is Sciona calling,please hang up!”
Different room.
I LOVE that Deus evidently gets as much enjoyment from messing with Bad Guys as with Good Guys.
In the extremely improbable event of Sciona and Max ever comparing notes, I daresay they’d find a lot in common on the subhect of ‘Deus’.
H eis an equal oportunity messer. He is just so point blank. He could give Vulcans a run for thier money.
What I recognize:
P4, left three: a knife from somewhere, The Mask (made by Loki to cause chaos), and a puzzle box also from somewhere.
Right one: green crystal from somewhere.
I’m assuming this is another reference rooms like Dues’ weapons cabinet?
The box is from ‘Hellraiser’, the mask is from ‘The Mask’, and the crystal next to the mask may be the shard from ‘the Dark Crystal’.
Personally, I thought the green crystal looked like the all-important crystal given to Kal-El by his father in the original Superman movies (and was used to rebuild the Fortress of Solitude in Superman II).
I’d stick a link in, but I’ve only got a few minutes – and other people here are so much faster and better than me at finding decent links.
The big gauntlet is a portmanteau of the Infinity Gauntlet, Doomfist’s Gauntlet from Overwatch, and Glove from “Yellow Submarine”. I think.
[MetsChthonia]:
I’m guessing the green crystal might be the Kryptonian Shard from the 1978-Superman film, which Clark Kent used to “grow” his Fortress of Solitude.
Heh, so did Begalund, at the same minute as you.
*awards each of you a star*
You know rather than bother with the overly complicated magic force field set up why wouldn’t you just break the clearly vulnerable cylinders that are generating the fields? I mean it’s like those moments in a ttrpg where the party faces a 12 inch steel door in a wooden wall, just grab an axe and bypass the red card blue card nonsense.
Nah, those columns are there to stop the killing field spreading throughout the rest of the room.
And that wooden wall contains a colony of fast-moving flesh-eating beetles who can crawl under armour faster than you can say “what the heck are those?”.
Deadly Designs, DisInc.
Possibly, however the main thrust of the issue is that if whatever generates your “impenetrable doom field of death” is not [also] contained in such field. Defeating the field becomes a simple (if time consuming) exercise in locating the origin point of the effect.
Or another option is to initiate a drain on the field faster than it can replenish itself bringing it down through starvation. or given that most of these items are metallic and seem to include some sort of metal, just use a strong enough magnet to pull the items out of the field.
Moreover if the columns are made of a material that can negate and shape such a field, that material itself would be a prime source in defeating the field. Jade grilling tongs anyone?
And then there was the published module in which the dungeon had mithril doors… so several parties of adventurers bypassed the whole “go into danger searching the dungeon for loot” stage by simply removing the doors from their hinges & taking those as their loot for the run…
^_^
So, i see the Lament Configuration and the Mask in the background….
Is that a Jedi Holocron?
Lament Configuration, AKA the box from Hellraisers.
I like that Deus is thorough enough to not trust his shopping list to memory. No getting back home and while going through the swag going ‘*bleep*! Forgot the Scepter of Greeble!’
2 Thoughts:
1)__For each item, what about just taking the entire column, including the “death-field” & its’ contents, then dismantling it at their leisure when they get it home?
2)__I’ve no doubt that some of the items might need to be kept apart, due to their respective curses working synergistically to magnify each others’ effect…?
Ok so if you read the order of the stick you will know ethan gains a power up to his combat ability as he puns while he fights. Im starting to think deus gets more power the more smugness he emits because DAMN thats a lot of smug for one man to release. I wonder what the variation on vehemic energy is for smugness? Because at this rate deus will have to ka-pants himself if he uses it. :D
Ahh, Smugic energy. Interestingly enough it would have to be the reverse of the normal process in being generated by the super, rather than the individuals surrounding him.
Or the alternative is that he feeds off irritationic energy, from others reacting to his smugness aura.
He has to be a male succubus. He’s a giant dick who f***s with everyone he meets…
You mean, an Incubus? And no, not that crappy band
I don’t know, I don’t see any chocolate stuffed Ghost Peppers on his person…
She should have taken the card…
and left it behind in the wreckage.
Indeed. Would screw him over pretty royal, I would expect.
Did you have one in mind? Princess Diana of Themyscira? Ororo Munroe? Sailor Princesses? Princess Twilight Sparkle? Xena: Warrior Princess? Princess Fiona? Snow White? Princess Jasmine? Padmé Amidala? Galadriel? Princess Buttercup?
By the way business cards get handed out. So it only narrows down the list of suspects to people who may have come into contact with people who once met Dues or were given a card for some other reason.
King Randor?
Beats King Ralph, I guess.
Wait, are Sci-fright and Vale… related in some way? Look at their beautiful eyes? They are almost the same!
Sciona is Vale’s mirror twin. Meaning that Deus must be their dad.
Kinky :D
That explains the hostility and the trolling XD. Sciona: “Dammit daaaaaad!Why do you always butt in on my evil plans!?!?!!?”
Lego land, in bare feet, with lots of bricks having feathers sticking out of them.
Hmm… interesting difficulty. Only living matter can pass thru the barrier, and it kills anything that touches it. An Animus?
isnt that pretty easy? you just get a bunny launcher
bunny gets shot through field, dies but kicks out/displaces the artifact?
I have yet to see a situation that cant be solved with creative use of the allpurpose evil bunny launcher.
Note that the launcher is evil, not the bunnies, that would rather be launcher of evil bunnies, which is probably sealed away in that very vault.
God help us all if Deus has that one on his shopping list.
(i am pretty sure its in the apocalyptic section)
I was thinking of an octopus cannon, but the bunny launcher is a perfect idea as well. I’d add that it’s staffed and maintained by Suicidal Bunnies (see: The Book of Bunny Suicides, which is a real thing).
Poor bunnies!
*gives each bunny extensive counselling, and sends them to the Orphanage and Bunny Sanctuary*
In the first panel, the gold thing on the right looks like the crown from HellBoy II that controlled the mechanical army.
When it was stated that this was a vault of evil artifacts I was hoping to see Ice King’s crown.
You have correctly identified it.
I thought that was Billy’s “gauntlet of the hero” but Billy has five fingers plus a thumb on each hand, as well as his gauntlet, so it’s something else.
The one Oogy Boogy used in Grim Adventures? No I don’t think that one had an eye on the back of its hand.
You are looking at panel 4, which matches the Hand and Eye of Vecna, two of the most iconic artefacts in D&D.
Whereas CaSToR is referring to panel 1, which the author confirmed, on the previous comic page’s comments, came from Hellboy, The Golden Army.
I doubt those are the Hand and Eye of Vecna.
Because those are make from the actual bodyparts of Vecna. A player needs to remove his own eye (or hand) and put the relevant relic in it’s place. It’s not a glove or a eye-patch you wear above your own.
Also, they don’t combine. Chirurgically implanting the Eye on the back of the (or your) Hand, does nothing other than waste it.
I am open to alternative suggestions. It is just that we have not had any that matches better than the Hand and Eye of Vecna. Which, if you check out the link, is depicted with the two items together, despite the description being as you say. In fact if you google the term you will see that is by far the most common depiction.
Although I do grant that the items shown here are not organic items. But, if you think about it, Vecna was sans a hand and an eye. Perhaps these are his replacements? Probably making them more powerful than the traditional relics, as I am sure he would have gone for upgrades, if going to the trouble of crafting new parts.
But don’t allow my confidence, in such matters, discourage you from alternate speculation, nor speaking up if you recognise it from elsewhere.
My first thought was the glove of Myhnegon from Buffy. But that was clearly wrong. Secondly that it was from dnd , but I looked through the entire MIC but nothing seemed to match. Now I think the screws on the sides are a clue. I seem to have a vague memory of them screwing themselves into your arm automatically when you put it on, ensuring that you can’ t take it off.
Any takers?
There are also two other artifacts shown in the background. One looks like a miniature tie-fighter and the like a ring with large stone. Anyone?
Could be worse. Could be the Head of Vecna.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Head_of_Vecna
In the big middle image, on the left that seems like The Mask. And the Cube on the left in the first image seem like a (starwars) Holocron to me.