Grrl Power #571 – Transmogrification
I’m kind of sad that Sciona’s achieved her goal here, or at least one of them. I was getting used to drawing her with the orc body. It’s a pain in the butt to draw with the stitches and the scar all the extra details that take time to select and color and all that, but without them she loses a certain visual distinctiveness.
Everyone has something about themselves they’d like to fix. Most of use could stand to lose a few pounds, unless your job requires you to be professionally in shape, like an actor, model, fireman, soldier, what have you. Maybe a personal trainer, but I’ve seen personal trainers who could definitely stand to practice what they preach a bit more. Having an out of shape personal trainer is a bit like getting a haircut from a hairdresser with an awful haircut. But I digress.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind fixing my thumbs. My whole life I thought they were double jointed because I could bend them backwards so far I could touch the side of my arm, but I can’t lay them flat across my palm, so I guess they’re single jointed and just on backwards. It’s a minor complaint and has never affected my ability to do anything like use a pencil or chopsticks. I actually never realized people could lay their thumbs across their palms until I was like… I don’t even know, like 38 or something? It doesn’t come up often. The only time it messes me up is when I need a reference for a hand doing something my hand can’t do.
I also broke my ankle once and it’s a little weaker than the other one now, and I messed up one of my shoulders good over the course of about 5 years in the gym. I suppose while I’m at it I could stand to sharpen up my vision, but I’ve been wearing glasses since high school so for the first few months after doing it I’d go to adjust my glasses unconsciously and wind up poking myself in the eyes a thousand times.
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Oh, DaveB, a hairdresser with a bad haircut is a poor analogy for an out-of-shape personal trainer. A personal trainer can train himself, but a hairdresser needs someone else to cut his hair.
Don’t you remember the puzzle about a town with two hairdressers, one with nice hair, the other with a mess, and you need a haircut. Who do you choose? The messy haired hairdresser, of course! He’s obviously the better hairdresser!
I kinda thought so, too. I think maybe a doctor that smokes would be more to the point.
On the flip side, when I wanted my goatee to be perfect for my wedding, I picked the Barber whose styled beard was a work of absolute precision, since that he does himself. :)
I have trimmed my hair just fine.
It’s long, and I had a lot of mirrors available to me.
Oh yeah. I do my own hair too. Not that there’s much of it anymore, but I used to when I had loads (sitting on your own hair can be SO painful when you forget!).
But for a really extravagant style, you’d want it done by someone who can see and reach everywhere without difficulty.
Don’t automatically blame all PTs for “not practicing what they preach.” I did some personal training — was an ACE-cert’ed trainer — until, while still actively working out in the gym, I started to gain weight uncontrollably. Doc would not check me out, just kept telling me to “work out harder.” Well [expletive redacted], I was lifting entire weight stacks on some of the machines, PLUS interval training on the elliptical; how much harder I gotta work out?
Flash forward three years when I’m having real problems and look 9mo pregnant — I changed doctors and he immediately determined I had “an abdominal mass.” Two surgeries later, they removed a 25lb, 4-6 liter water balloon of an ovarian cyst from my gut. Had it gone on much longer, I’d be dead — it was putting pressure on the blood supply to my intestines, starting to cut off the blood flow.
In the aftermath, I was diagnosed with PCOS — poly-cystic ovary syndrome — of which severe insulin resistance is part of the syndrome. I never did lose the extra weight, and they can’t treat the insulin resistance on account of several other chronic medical conditions I have, which are badly affected by the various medications. I already had bad knees on account of a congenital defect, and the excess weight (which I’m continuing to gain because insulin resistance) has worsened the knees. I can barely walk now, never mind work out in the gym.
So consider that your trainer might have some medical conditions or whatnot that s/he can’t help, and cut ’em some slack, guys.
Sounds like you’d have a lot to gain and little to lose trying out a low-carb diet, it’s not something doctors are too familiar with yet but lots of people have had great health benefits both in pcos and in insulin resistance from a change in diet. There’s a bunch of subreddits for it (the diets, people with pcos and the diet and more).
Doctors can be great when they save lives, but they can also let their education get in the way of learning new things.
This actually came up before in the comments about the barberian, see RockB’s comment here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1420/comment-page-1#comment-180090
I’m fairly certain Dave saw this, considering they replied a bit further down the reply chain. Probably just didn’t remember it. Can’t really expect someone to remember a random comment more than 3 years old ;)
So then why do I remember it? Not even just the comment, but the exact place to find it too…
You have benign hypermobility syndrome. More prone to dislocation and joint injury. Take care of your thumbs, important for drawing.
Huh, I never knew what it was called. Oddly, I’ve never dislocated my thumbs, but I have dislocated, or more accurately subluxated, both of my shoulders dozens and dozens of times, which is probably why it was so easy to grind them down in the gym.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers–Danlos_syndromes
<– type 2
If you are ever captured by a group of cannibals, maybe you can avoid being the main course by letting them know that this condition causes your body to produce abnormally low levels of collagen. Tell them this would make you very tough and dry if they tried to cook you.
So what you’re saying is that DaveB looks like Stu?
Aha, the old “he looks way juicier than me” ploy.
Plus remember that running away from lions and bears is a bad idea. Unless you can run faster than the guy next to you.
New name, HSD – Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders
>Tell me you wouldn’t tweak something on yourself
I would make myself female.
Only if I had more control over Age / weight / physical appearance. changing myself to an old overweight female version of me would be pointless :)
Her actual weight was less than that of a human head, so yes I think weight is quite controllable. At least to add stuff.
Muscle weighs more than fat, so if you can only add mass (not remove it) that’s probably the way to go. Then it’ll be easier to carry any and all pre-existing…. ah, nonmuscle. ;)
My opinion of age: I earned my years, dammit! But sure, if “telomere extension” is on the menu, so to speak, I’d opt in.
That reminds me of a funny story: Me and a couple of my buds were sitting outside a coffee shop one day when a girl walks by. Now on a scale of 1 to 10 she’d be a 12 so you know how we all reacted to that. The thing is though one of my friends is gay and when we noticed how much he noticed the girl we questioned whether he was going straight on us. His answer? “No, but [blank] sometimes I wish I was a lesbian.”
OK, bad enough you keep a vault full of dangerous things… that clearly you all want to use yourself (since if you were serious about keeping them safe, you would have set them inside a block of stainless steel with lots and lots of protective wards cast on the outside)… but you keep the items full charged!!
I really don’t like where this whole twilight council path has led… the comic started off with a simple premise (what if supers were real (and demons because of Dabbler)) and was trying to keep it real… but now we’ve officially left the reservation and are firmly in the realms of fictitious nonsense where stuff is the way stuff is to drive the story forward (as opposed to a reality based world, where stuff is the way stuff is because it makes sense (within our limited knowledge) and the story drives forward because that’s what stories do).
And I am disappointed Sciona has fallen victim to a very human trap of body image problems (a trap created by us humans!!). Speaks poorly of someones view on boobs. Smart boys: “All boobs are awesome!”. Stupid boys: “I only like boobs of specific sort.”
Lets go down that list one by one.
1) Block of stainless steel.
Many of these items have secondary or primary purposes that mean they might have to be used in a pinch so you will want them available quickly via the proper channels if need be. Furthermore, when encased in something opaque it becomes harder to check if the item is still there or if there is now a hollowed out space where the item was supposed to be.
2) The artifact being charged.
Probably it was already charged when they confiscated it and put it in here. They could’ve drained it first, but that would mean that either someone would profit from 99 lives being taken, or those 99 lives would’ve been taken in vein. And again, maybe they needed it as some kind of emergency treatment.
3) The twilight council path.
This is more of an opinion so I can’t say too much about it, and I don’t mind this story line actually, but I can see where you’re coming from and I wouldn’t have minded if the magical realm had been more of an anecdote (to explain Dabbler) with instead the story focusing on human supers. With the magical branch being a possible future spin-off if/when DaveB gets enough finances to hire a team.
4) Body image.
Many of the supernatural are humanoid in appearance, and they appear both in body and mind very similar to regular humans, so to say it is a pure human thing is a bit over simplistic. And who’s to say Sciona herself doesn’t simply likes having bigger assets? Looking at her eyes, teeth, and jawline she made more changes than just the highlighted two.
5) Stupid boys like boobs of a specific sort.
Are you saying having a preference makes one stupid? Or that smart boys automatically like all boobs? And why would that only pertain to boys? Plenty of woman that like breasts as well.
Nothing wrong with having a preference. Claiming everyone, or at least all guys, are of the ‘bigger is better’ mindset is wrong though and there are plenty who have a different preference.
Wow, really? In one tainted breath you claim that all bewbs are wonderful, and in the very next breath you condemn her for picking a set that she likes
all boobs are wonderful. …
Zack Tilly, and some people, men and women, like bigger, and Sci-frights’ new assets aren’t that big
As I understand it, Sciona’s main body image “problem” is that it wasn’t her body, except the top of the head and brain. Maybe she could changed her eye or hair color instead – would that be considered a “body image” problem? Keeping in mind it wasn’t her goal in the first placejust an afterthought.
I’m not intending to troll or flame here, just to propose another view.
I’d like to be an inch or two taller, but I don’t fret over it. If I had to go to the extremes that Sciona did just to repair past injury, and could add an inch with little more than thinking about it, I just might. I don’t think I have a body image problem.
Just go into space. You will get your height increase for free.
The bad news is that you have to stay there, if you want to keep it. So be sure to book a room in the ISS. The alternative options are limited.
Space? I don’t want permanent head congestion and a multi-hour daily exercise regimen.
Put a booking in for a lunar apartment then. I imagine you will get a bit of extra height.
Or hang around until I can get a nice station going at a lagrange point. Would 1/10th gravity be an acceptable compromise between your height and exercise requirements? We will have a variety of centrifugally simulated gravities for you to choose from.
“Smart boys: “All boobs are awesome!”. Stupid boys: “I only like boobs of specific sort.””
Uh huh. Lets see how well that holds up:
“Smart boys: “All sex is awesome!”. Stupid boys: “I only like vagoos.””
Sexuality is sexuality. People don’t really get a say in what their sexuality is. Some people will like vagoos. Some people will like penises. Some people will like big boobs. Some will like small boobs. And some people will have no preference on either count. Telling me I’m not allowed to prefer big boobs is not far removed… possibly not removed at all… from telling me I’m not allowed prefer having sex with one gender vs another.
On the subject of body image issues… I’d like to be 300lb lighter, 10 inches taller, and able to grow a beard that doesn’t scream “look at me! I just hit puberty!” Maybe fix my voice so I can sing without it sounding like a cat in a blender. I would do all those things for _me_… because those are the results _I_ find attractive. Not because someone made me or made me feel like I had to. Certainly not because I expect women to suddenly fall over themselves to have sex with me.
I’m with you a hundred percent on the beard!
If I had that artifact I’d definitely go for a nicer beard rather than changing anything else about myself, I’d probably also pick a moustache, because there is no way in hell you could apply wax to what I’ve got under my nose and expect it to look better than a half shaved cat… =p
Personally, I’d go the opposite way. Facial hair is inconvenient and not being expected to shave or maintain it would be so much less hassle.
Not having to maintain it would be nice. But I look like a 5’4″ 400lb baby without mine. So I can look like I’m desperately trying not to be a pre-pubescent kid or I can look like a toddler with a pituitary disorder.
::shrug:: Or I could spend 3 nights a week at the gym and solve it that way. But that takes work… ::shudder::.
Get yourself a Jack Russel (or Parson’s Terrier, if you are in the states). All the exercise you need, but with pleasure rather than pain.
Sadly dieting would be necessary, either way. But we all should have regular exercise, regardless of our diet. And walkies is a great way to get it!
*holds leash in mouth, wagging tail eagerly*
Heh, I had not thought that others might aspire to my looks.
It would be interesting to have a magical device, working on the world-wide web, which could match up such desires.
“I am fed up with my ‘imperial’ nose!” “I want anything other than this button nose!”
“I want to be taller” “I want to be shorter”
“I want to be a woman” “I want to be a man”
“I want to be hung like a horse!” “Neigh!”
Waiting decades, huh? That puts a new complexion on this. How long has Maxima been active? I’d always assumed that she was the one who destroyed Sciona’s body, but maybe that isn’t possible…
What made you think that? Just being curious here as I don’t remember anything linking Maxima to Sciona before this story-line. The twilight council even said they dealt with Sciona before and were the ones that cut off (most of) her head.
The glowing eyes and the demon teeth are a nice touch. The instant boob job was a pleasant extra. You wonder if Sci also upgraded her ladyparts to be more ‘accommodating’. She’s the ultimate, blood mage porn star, now.
If she was remotely scrying when Super Hiro lost his pants, probably.
OK Sciona just became a more interesting character for me. That moment of vanity really humanizes her. Too bad Sydney didn’t witness that, I’d love to see her reaction :P
Sydney: Hey, what does this do? This doesn’t look that magical.
Max: Don’t touch anything! What part of that do you not understand?
Sydney: I’m just looking, not touching!
Gault: One of my apprentices installed that a few years ago. I have forgotten exactly what it does.
Dabbler: Let me take a look. Oh, I get it. This looks like a video replay device. Now, where would the cameras be?
Sydney: [ Holding yellow orb ] There, there, there and over there. Oh, and one over the door. They all look like they are covered in the same reddish-brown gunk.
Ingsol: That is definitely the remains of a human.
Sydney: Because you can smell the blood, like for feeding time?
Ingsol: [Reluctantly answers Sydney] Yes. Also, I can see bone fragments and organ pieces in the mess. This is the head of a human femur and this is all four parts of the same human outer ear. See, they fit together perfectly.
Sydney: Oh yuck! Don’t touch it! That’s gross.
Max: Yeah, it’s gross, but sometimes you will encounter this kind of thing in the field.
Sydney: What field are you talking about? A mine field?
Max: [ Suppressing unpleasant memories ] Yeah, that too.
Sydney: You aren’t going to eat that, are you?
Ingsol: What?! Of course not.
Dabbler: Okay, I got it working. Let’s see. The last event was two days ago for about an hour. Let’s take a look at that.
That’s my new head canon.
I am honestly terrified of the prospect of Sydney going into the artifact room. Lets just hope Deus has taken all the especially shiny artifacts with him.
“I think we are near the artefact chamber. I am going to hug them, and pet them, and give them pretty pink bows, and put them on my little pony plushy and take them for rides and…”
*artifacts jump off their pedestals and run after Deus, through the portal*
“Wait, wait, you forgot us!”
Honestly, almost no one who has ever had breasts would want to tweak them to be bigger. They’re a giant pain.
tell that to a plastic surgeon my friend
Oh, but see? All those women were forced or coerced into having the surgery, none of them wanted it… :rolleyes: :vomit:
Pretty sure vampires, who generally seem to have above average mortal strength and physical durability would not really have that problem. So while I definitely get your point, I do think this qualifies in the “almost” category.
Plus being dead probably trumps back pain.
that’s a pretty silly generalization. I know two women who got ++ and one who got –. no one pushed any of them into it – them did it for themselves.
How would I keep getting free drinks at the bars without them?
*cries*
We will never get sexual equality!
No way would that work, with man-boobs.
I’m told the male equivalent is scars and fabricated war stories…
I haz plenty of scars and let me tell you about this time I took on an SS panzer division, single pawed!
I am pretty sure that the transformation turned her troll body at the basic level into her new body, while integrating anything beneficial into her new body.
Also Deus said she “might” be a match for Vale, if I recall correctly…might have to double check…
Do people not read the Auturb? DaveB said it was an orc body, and the troll blood came via a vial
I remember the orc body discussions, but missed the blood vial one. Do you remember when he said it? Or if there was a duration to the effect?
Again, fairly sure it was in the page where she appeared behind Sydney or the following page
You have repeated made known that you dislike commenters calling it a troll body. Maybe Demnorc was just… (puts on sunglasses) … trolling you.
Actually I remembered Troll Regeneration/Blood, thought to myself that it didn’t look like a troll to me, but decided to run with it rather than skipping back to find the right page with the answer. Mainly because I would have to retype everything.
Also did anyone notice that she also got larger fangs and sharper looking teeth, plus the glowy eyes after she “enhanced” her breasts?
Yes.
The glowy eyes started in panel three, and she can turn them on or off
Does that mean she is a Goa’uld, or is she just using the same special effect?
Well she got the voice, in the final panel. Just listen to her reverb!
He did indeed say that after using the Epimorph that she MIGHT be a match for Vale.
Also she might have made that…adjustment because of old ridicule, probably an old classmate implied something about being mistaken for a boy or something equally as disparaging because they were jealous she was stronger…
I mean the SEXT-ing system for the supernatural imply a very liberal vew of sex, and body shaming over something that isn’t as large as peers is very likely with rivals. Maybe a Succubus she had a feud with…
Eh, I thought she was pretty well endowed before upgrading, but hey, yah gotta be comfortable in your own body. :)
And this kids is why you chop the vampire into four pieces and spread them across the world. That or ash and seal it in several containers and then hid those around the world and at the bottom of the ocean. They have an nasty habit of surviving everything.
She’s also not a vampire, she’s a blood
artificermageHeckuva set of fangs for a not vampire.
Vampires aren’t the only ones who can have sharp incisors…
Can confirm, have fangs but am not vampire (even though I act like one…)
Be careful not to visit parts of Africa then. One country is presently under curfew, to stop vigilante attacks on suspected vampires. A number of people have been killed by the mobs (and it is affecting more than one country).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41574608
To those commenting about Sci-fright needing her “Who’s Who” updated, hold your water (actually, most of those who would be, don’t read the comments anyway, so never mind), DaveB always updates it the page after the change (and no, it will not be retro-active, just like the early entries for Sydney and Maxi)
I resemble that remark :P
Well, obviously not the second part :P
I will say that not all women would want to have larger breasts. My late wife had large breasts, and she often talked about wanting them to be much smaller.
And so she would probably have used the artifact to drop from a venti to a tall, no doubt.
Whereas for me? I’ve got a list of changes, and yeah… a couple are for vanity, sure.
Very true, not all women would want larger breasts, but that is not all women, just like not all women are happy with small breasts, just ask Sydney
I will convince Sydney of her perfection!
Would I? Only if it could help my bad memory. (Yeah, I’m overweight, but I’m not really vain. Besides, that ship has sailed without me on board.)
Perfect memory, athletic physique and eternal youth.
And if you want an immortal companion, just kill 99 strangers. Or ants, if they will do.
Where’d her clothes go?
Sacrificed to the gods of fanservice.
It turns out that the legends regarding how the blade is recharged are mistaken. It does not absorb 99 souls. Destroying the clothing (including shoes) shows that it absorbs 99 ‘soles’.
So those that cross Sciona know will shoe the day?
A bootiful perversion of the requirements.
“Where’d her clothes go?”
Full transformations probably require a vast amount of energy. Transforming the clothing into energy would provide the artefact with all it needs. Any surplus just being stored, for future use.
It is probably used to users deciding to subsequently activating “KERPANTS” to create new clothes, in a style suitable for their new body.
To be fair, clothes are a better fuel source than souls. Clothes can be burned, providing thermal energy. Souls are claimed to be immortal, meaning they’re non-reactive, making them a terrible fuel source…
Although maybe with magical artifacts, it’s not that they -need- souls, but that souls have become a common unit of measurement due to being a semi-reliable metric – kind of like horsepower or an ‘arm’s length’ (aka, cubit). Except, like with arm length, if you are an artificer or similar, you can sense the energy output of a soul. Then judging by this comic, the Epimorph may have been anywhere between empty and full, at which point we can consider that a full set of clothes and the mass of an orc body sans head is equivalent in energy to somewhere between 1-99 souls.
I’m sure that souls would be reactive to chlorine trifluoride. That stuff burns even the most non-reactive stuff.
Oh. I guess that it will only be of use to politicians and bankers then.
Or both, our former PM is now the head of one of our banks :eek:
Going to note that it was stated that the Epimorph needs 99 lives to recharge.
However, it’s never been stated what kind of lives are necessary. It would be really embarassing to find out that all they needed was cattle, or chimps/other primates, not humans.
Or it might just be a matter of potency; natural changes can be performed with animal lives, but supernatural upgrades require sapients. Who knows.
Also, whatsherface has to have a limit to what upgrades she can stuff into a body.
Else you’d be looking at something like the second coming of Darkseid right now. And probably wouldn’t need the Epimorph to perform a little cosmetic tweaking.
Or bamboo.
Magic is weird and its laws do not always make sense.
for example you could create a magical artifact that requires thousands of lives to activate, but as long as you manage to define the rules of it vaguely enough you could get it going by just washing your hands with antibacterial soap.
Kind of imagining her frolicking through a herd of cattle now, going “hehe” every time she +1’d the epimorph out there.
… Didn’t Maxima reference that, of the two people who had fought her to a stand still (pre-Vehemence at least), that one was presumed dead? And from the looks of Sciona… Maybe she’s like Maxima? Having one’s body amputated above the jawline would, for most people, be a pretty good indicator of death…
Deus never was able to find the other half of Max’s meteorite, was he?
Obviously she did not have a body like Maxima’s… her body was amputated above the jawline.
If you’re implying that Sciona is one of the few to have fought max to a standstill, I think we can safely say No. Max seems to have no knowledge of her or her powers, while the council states they cut off most of her head already.
Agreed.
Presently the most likely culprit was one of the guys we saw responding to Maxima’s challenge, when she did her nuke-like blast. The Arabic (Farsi?) speaking fellow wrapped up in bandages. Which would match the likely appearance of someone who Maxima had left for dead. Plus we know that she fought in both wars in Iraq, so she would likely have faced such an opponent, at some point.
I wouldn’t put it past Deus to have found a use for the other half.
Golden body for her, golden mind for him.
Put it past him? I’d have done the same in a heartbeat.
After all, a golden mind is a terrible thing to waste… =p
“Aha, the diabolical mastermind behind this plot. Goldfinger, I presume?”
“No Mr Bond, I had something else transformed.”
I severely doubt it was Sciona who fought Maxima to a standstill. Pretty sure she was referring to another super. Mainly because she said that there are only two other SUPERS who have fought her to a standstill. Sciona is not a super, she’s like some sort of blood mage night elf thing.
I also get the impression that one of the supers who fought her to a standstill was from when she was on deployment in the middle east – maybe the guy with the head-wrapping who people were mistakenly thinking was Cthhlia (or however you spell her name).
What I loved about Sciona’s design is that it’s always been clear that her *actual* face is beautiful and feminine. Not that it would matter if it wasn’t, but obviously it was supposed to be, so I’ve always appreciated the visibility of that.
+1
And now, finally, after so many years, the other ladies will stop looking at her weird when she goes into the women’s bathroom! (That’s really what this was all about.)
Why weird? Her replacement body was female
It looked male, which is the important thing. Even if that is only because humans are not good at distinguishing orc females from males.
I’ve always assumed it’s a male orc body. Female orcs, in all the art I’ve seen… aren’t exactly flat.
Maybe the body was the (former) orcess weight-lifting champion
You shouldn’t judge a species by the hentai porn :P
I’m actually talking D&D art I’ve seen, comics (like Rat Queens as an example) and more; which is honestly about as canon as it gets** as D&D was the first to make them a species in their own right… and orc women are nearly always sporting impressive sets despite being way more muscular than any human male, and Sciona’s orc actually looks to be a runt among orcs, which would have proportionally speaking implied she would have been even bigger if she had been a she.
**Orcs are actually a rather recent invention in fantasy, as originally pre-Tolkien it was just another spelling of ogre and not its own myth species, and with Tolkien they were just tortured and brainwashed elves.
Googling “female orc” of the first 20 results, I would say that less than 1/3 are busty. OK a lot of them are clearly female (contrary to my original jibe), but mostly that is through hair styles, facial features or their clothing. Here are a couple of nice examples:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a4/56/1c/a4561c8e5214e5fda1b2fb00c7ec9867–goblin-girl-female-orc.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/06/1d/49/061d49878fc254b9be3fdbc64a37fcbe–female-orc-fantasy-monster.jpg
Whereas this one was used to illustrate a piece talking about female orcs in Lord of the Rings (which, yes there were, and this was what they could find from the movie art):
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7bc5df898cf926eb573a9e9da6903e58-c
For what it’s worth, I’m glad Sciona got to pick the body she wants. I always felt bad for her, what with the stitches along her jaw. Her face really shows what she was originally like.
Well, that was what her original body looked like (minus the +2 extra BYOING)
I am just ~slightly~ disappointed the panel layout didn’t break around the byoing à la Grinch heart.
https://fcc.gctnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/FCC-Grinch-New-Heart.jpg
In a previous page someone mentioned that if she was smarter about it she would have regenerated a full body, but would have also altered her appearance enough that the wanted posters on file for her would no longer match.
My addition to this plan would be to then recharge the blade and transform another (soon to be) corpse into a copy of her original self. Then arrange to leave the body at the scene of a purposely failed robbery at another council-warded location.
Good idea, but that would require 99 souls (or whatever) to recharge the dagger first, and that could take some time
Maybe there are limits to just what alterations she can make to her body (and note how she stabbed herself in the temple, implying that if she had stabbed herself anywhere in the orc body she would have, literally, lost her mind)
If you double check, she didn’t stab herself in the temple – she pressed the hilt against her temple.
Guesticus did not specify ‘stab with the blade’. The first panel shows tines extending from the hilt. Which, in the next panel, were stabbed into her temple.
Maybe her way of praying for a restored body? ;-)
Importantly you can see that the points have entered the flesh, so it is fair to characterise that as a stab. Albeit that they may not have gone any deeper than we see, so your description of pressing it is also fair (if compared to pushing it all the way in).
Fair enough.
Hmm. If she leads any kind of athletic life, she may come to regret her enhancement… or not. Just sayin’.
You may be interested to learn of this wondrous invention, called the “Sports Bra”, it allows ladies of all chest sizes to participate in sporting activities without hurting themselves (some men would be wise to acquire at least one pair, and not just for sporting activities)
You may be interested in the fact that a single sports bra is insufficient for some women. 40″ bust on a <=32" band for instance.
That’s the same as regular bra ‘issues’: women simply not being fitted correctly, or at all
Or unable to find one even when they do get measured properly. Small band big boobs? The root of the book doesn’t automatically grow, so end up with underwire wrapping past the armpit.
“And now, to hide this away, so it can’t be used against me or anyone else to use it.”
*Sciona walks a few steps forward and trips*
“Ow. Why are my feet on backwards.”
After all, there’s bound to be some tweaking/changes that need to be done after such a major change.
Comedy option: The camera was panning up and she’s like a centaur, but coming out from where the troll head would be. On the plus side, she now has four arms. The downside is getting through doors is much harder. (Yeah, I know this wouldn’t be the case, considering that it’s clear that the change is going downwards, but the image is hilarious. Though given the fact that it hasn’t [yet] shown her feet, she could still have troll legs.)
She never had a troll body to start with…
I think the comedy would play with orc legs just as well as troll ones. It is interesting to note that even the above page does not preclude the possibility that she was originally an orc, and it was the top part of her head that got replaced, when lopped off.
OK the clever Yorpie Snax™ will be on her having been a drow (or vampire or drow/vampire). But the outside chance is possible. And the rule of funny could sway the odds nicely.
Especially if the artefact was only charged up with 50 lives!
*wags tail merrily*
Well, that would make it all the more of a mistake to have ended up with troll legs. :P
(I’m not sure why I typed ‘troll’ instead of ‘orc’. Guess my eyes glanced over other comments and it got mistakenly put into mind? The irony is that I had just looked at that paragraph in the author blurb where it says the right word too…)
Possible confusion stemmed from her using troll blood after the encounter with Pixelicious and a large portion of the readers assuming the green body was that of a troll
I think poor Sciona is already enough of a laughingstock to the readers without adding slapstick to her routine.
Only a laughing stock to some readers
Indeed. Those of us who suspect that Dave is chronicling real events will be more circumspect about the scary monster, with world-ending artifacts in her possession.
Even if she may not presently be on our world. :-)
I admit, I’d like the use of that sword a lot myself (assuming no super horrible side effects).
The side effect is that it would urge you to kill people, in order to use it. Taking a full ninety nine murders to fully recharge.
Whether that is super horrible though depends on your world view. For Sciona and Cthillia it will barely register, other than for the inconvenience factor of needing to avoid being caught.
Hmm, does it have to be murder, or do I just have to kill? I could go to a country where euthanasia is legal . . .
Then get it added to the legal methods allowed. But if it is quick and painless, then that is actually a good idea.
Damned traumatic mind. Taking even one life is profound. Let alone so many. I do not think you would be the same person finishing that process, as started.
Ironically enough, you would transform yourself emotionally and mentally, long before you got to do so physically.
Oh, I’d be a different person, I am sure. Still, a quick beheading is about as quick and painless as you can get. Possibly more painful* than replacing the oxygen with an inert or haemoglobin binding gas, but a lot quicker. So, ending suffering while letting me get a so very wrong body that doesn’t make me cringe every time I . . . well, all the time, actually, but sometimes more than others, I just might do it.
*the data on this is admittedly lacking
Wow, must have been tired when I wrote this. *me get a body that doesn’t
I have been there, barring the ‘suffering’ part, (other than emotionally speaking) so I know the feeling. It is nightmarish to be trapped in such a situation. Fortunately my situation was soluble, with years of work, and my issues are nothing more than memories now. Others though do not have such a luxury, so I truly feel sorry for them, and you, if that is the case.
One aspect I can offer advice on is not to assume that others feel the same way about you as you do. Looking at an extreme example Stephen Hawking has an atrophied body that he is unable to even move. Yet has managed to find a second wife and have kids.
In my case I knew, intellectually, that there were women who were not bothered about my particular issue. Having, for example, one workmate who’s husband was much like myself. Yet emotionally I was in the state that as I loathed my own body, anyone who did not do the same was automatically suspect. Anybody who could like something I loathed could not be right for me.
Had I not been able to resolve my physical issues, and be permanently stuck in that situation, I would have to address my mental and emotional problems, in that regard. And, with hindsight, realise that I should have done the same even with the prospect that I could return to a normal state.
Failing to do that meant I had many lonely years. Which made my other tasks all the harder, without having the support that a partner could offer.
And it is worth mentioning other unfortunates who see their perfectly normal body as being hideous (or some part of it). No matter how much others may tell them they are fine, Again this is a problem that can be resolved with the appropriate professional help.
So I would not hesitate to follow that route myself now, if I were not presently happy with my prospects. I have scars, but know that I can find someone who is not bothered with those. In the meanwhile it is fun to indulge in escapism.
You’re forgetting the Deus-like solution.
Epimorph wielder: “I need to take 99 lives? Legally is preferred? Okay.”
*next day*
Local Mayor: “Wow, it sure is nice of you to throw a lobster dinner for all the homeless people around here. Thanks for saving me a plate by the way. This is delicious.”
EW: “Eh, you know how it is. You get a new set of kitchenware and you just can’t wait to try it out, and before I knew it, I had gone through a hundred lobsters, and figured this would be the best use for them.”
LM: “Right upstanding actions there good sir. Even publicly admirable I might say. It might do a politician well to appoint you to some position of importance in the city. What would you say to being in charge of the public works department?”
EW: “Eh, I’d be happy with just being a food inspector. I do very much enjoy fresh lobster.”
So would he be stabbing 99 lobsters? Or did you have 99 homeless people in mind?
If animals count, shit, I could do that easy. Just put me by an anthill, won’t take too long.
Sci-fright is also happy she can finally close her mouth properly and talk normally (plus what ever else she missed doing with her mouth…)
Although her new fangs seem a lot sharper and more inconveniently placed, if less noticeable. So whilst she may be more likely to perform fellatio, her partner is less likely to survive unscathed.
Butt, she’s probably used to those teeth, seeing how she was born with them (her poor breast-feeding mother… )
If you notice, her true teeth (panel six) are of the fairly mundane variety. They aren’t scary like that until she decides to make some improvements while she’s at it.
Agreed. She does have a couple of pointy teeth there, but pretty closely matching human teeth. Distinctly different from those in the final panel (even allowing for artistic variability).
Of course we should not discount artistic licence. The final panel may be over-exaggerated, for dramatic effect. So we should only draw tentative conclusions for the moment.
But presently it does look like Sciona had more than a couple of points she wanted to enhance.
Check out panel three, you can see the same pointy teeth, they only stand out in panel ten because she is snarling her upper lip whereas in panel six the upper lip is covering her upper teeth (you can make out the sharp pointy teeth on the bottom though)
Good point.
Harder to tell in panel 4 though. To me it either looks like it has gotten bigger, or if you interpret the shading slightly differently, becoming much as they appear in panel 6, i.e. human-like. If it is the latter then panel 3 was just part of the work in progress.
But easier to wait, as you say regarding other points, until we see how she looks subsequently to the transformation sequence. The pointy teeth may just be there for dramatic art purposes, much like we might see an over-exaggerated chibi, for other characters.
Eating blood-filled chocolates?
Up until now she’s been 2%
Cue Sciona landing face down on her first step because she doesn’t remember how to walk with her almost original body?
He he.
Especially as her original body was as shown in the penultimate panel. Not as top-heavy as in the final one!
Why is that technology in the vault and not in some supernatural doctors office? It doesn’t seem particularly world-endy to me. Sciona’s whole tragic villainous backstory could have been circumvented if they just had this seemingly harmless device monitored and used by a professional.
The aforementioned numerous human sacrifices required to charge it.
I think you have forgotten that the device is recharged by killing 99 individuals. OK if it is 99 ants, then you have a very good point. Mind you Deus has also indicated that various of the artefacts are likely trying to get the intruders to kill each other. So even the artefacts, in this vault, which appear to have a beneficial function may well have that nasty side-effect. Amongst others.
I do rather doubt that ants or even mice or cattle will do the trick. So your doctor would be killing 99 patients in order to conduct cosmetic surgery on one! That device was being kept in the right place.
Ok, so it just so happens to be conveniently charged when Sciona acquires it?
Think through what will happen with it now. The plan is for Cthillia to use it next. Doubtless Sciona will leave it up to her to do all the killing. And she is likely to demand that Cthillia top it back up again, before returning it to Sciona. Perks of being the boss.
Then it will sit around until Sciona has a need sufficient to justify the time and effort of having murdered 99 people. If it gets used, for an emergency, it is natural that she will top it back up again, ready for the next crisis (such as finding a boyfriend who does not like big boobs).
In other words, when in the possession of someone both powerful and who holds life in no regard it will almost inevitably be found fully charged. Unless used in the fight against those seeking to take it.
The only exception being if they either had a need to keep using it frequently. Or were operating in a society where deaths are closely monitored and policed.* In which case it would be at a random stage of recharge.
* Even today more rough sleepers die or disappear, than that, in a year, in a large city or county/state (for the countryside dwelling mass murderers).
And why would the store it fully charged. It’s “too useful not to use” and it’s already charged.
Because artefacts have a notoriously corrupting influence. Golem used to be of a species very similar to hobbits, for example. But close association with the Ring, rapidly drove him mad and eventually transformed him physically too.
And that is a mild case. Others are far more radical, such as ripping the life-force out of a user, and converting them into an undead monstrosity!
Deus has already indicated that various of the artefacts are trying to influence them to “kill, kill, kill” and that is just being in the same room, let alone actually using them.
Even under controlled conditions a doctor is likely to be turned into a heartless serial killer (outside of office hours). Possibly only after prolonged use (say if bumping off death-row prisoners, for the state). But if you look at the final panel you will see that the person being ‘upgraded’ may be the one transformed into a killer. So even the one use could have severe repercussions.
Clearly was collected after a last moment interruption of the previous owner’s diabolical plan, but while too useful to dispose of, the council just could not come to agreement on who got to use it.
One episode of the old Babylon Five series was based on a scientist finding an immortality serum. It was heralded as a great advance until it was found that it could only be created by killing large numbers of sentient beings to get the ingredients. When it appeared that the formula was to be made public the Vorlon ambassador destroyed the scientist and the research to prevent galactic carnage.
https://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Jha%27dur
That sounds an awful lot like the Philosopher’s Stone in Fullmetal Alchemist.
The premise is basic enough that it could easily have been conceived independently.
Although it is worth noting that B5 ran from 1993 to 1998. Whilst FMA was 2003 to 2010.
and now i want to see an entire hentai/anime crossover mashup of Full Metal Alchemist and Harry Potter.
I remember that plot.
It wasn’t that a many lives would have to be sacrificed for one, but that many lives would be lost because it would take just one to give another person immortality.
That means nearly anyone could push themselves to justify using it, and it wouldn’t be so easily corked once opened. Stopping a massacre of 99 lives for the benefit of one? Yea, horrible, massacre… a life for a life though…? People on death row for high ranking politicians? Sure, people can see that (and all of a sudden you see a rise is death-punishable offenses). Volunteers? All of a sudden you have mothers raising and brainwashing children for the pure purpose of being “their one”. High stakes poker now includes “life exchange for immortality” and lots of families lose a member. Suicide/immortality pacts. The person who ruined your life? Get revenge by forcing them to supply you an immortal one.
Once it was going, noone would stop it. The holocaust would be never ending, because every day the number of supporters of it would increase, immortal. Society would completely restructure, favoring people who are willing to take the lives of others for their own benefit, and weed out those willing to sacrifice themselves to help others, meaning eventually an end to civilized civilization.
Nasty Vorlon, keeping such a wonderful technology from us!
<——– *keeping a straight face*
There hasn’t been a ‘civilised’ civilization since the Stone Age
We shall just have to wait until the Unobtainium Age.
Her boobs were plenty big, why would she want to look like they are bigger than her chest? Talk about painful. Granted there are women who get plastic surgery to look like that, but Mostly I’ve seen it in women who’s job is benefiting from that size, namely porn stars and exotic dancers.
Itd be hilarious if she reduced them down some after a bit of time.
As for personal trainers that look overweight, I’d be careful about judging them. I have a friend with a pituitary gland problem that makes her look very fat, but she is an outdoors nut who hikes every weekend and a runner who coached and can still outrun most people. There are distance runners who look overweight and can go further than most “healthy “ looking people. Just because they look overweight or, conversely like skin and bones, doesn’t mean they aren’t “practicing what they are preaching.” More than likely it means that their healthy and normal (or as healthy as those practices and modern medicine are going to get them) is different from what you expect.
I’m going to go with “because vampire” and also what with all the supers running around being super boobed maybe she felt left out.
I’m going to be unpopular and say that most people who are, shall I say… morbidly obese… are not healthy. Also they are most likely not so because of a pituitary gland problem. Maybe teensy tiny fraction are, but most don’t have a pituary gland problem, they have an ‘eating too many triple cheeseburgers’ problem. Or perhaps a ‘does not exercise enough to burn off the calories they intake’ problem, since I do love me a good triple cheeseburger every now and then, and my gym loves that I love them too since it means I have to go there several times a week. :)
(pause for any potentially angry response posts)
But seriously, if I saw a personal trainer who was fat (I’m not saying just weighs a lot, because muscle is heavier than fat – I mean actually overweight in fat) or if I saw a nutritionist who looked literally anorexic, I would not be very likely to be their client, any more than I would get makeup tips from someone who looked like Tammy Fay Baker or Do-It-Yourself building tips from Tim the Toolman Taylor (unless my health insurance premiums were paid up).
How could we ever be angry with such a pillar of the community as you?
(Your evil twin sister, now that is another matter. And even she is too cute to be mad at.)
I have debated the point, with one of the world’s leading experts. Years ago mind, but I have kept an eye on developments, and have not found anything to contradict what he said. Nor have I come across any research since which might invalidate it.* To paraphrase him:
So whilst it is an “eating too many cheeseburgers” problem,** it is not one that occurs on a level playing field. Whilst an average person will eat a meal and feel full, someone with a broken appetite will not. For the more extreme cases, even moments after eating enough food to sustain them for the rest of the day, they will still feel ravenously hungry!
So, until scientists find a way of breaking normal people’s appetite mechanism, so that they can find out what life is like feeling eternally hungry, it is not possible to “walk a mile in the other man’s shoes”.
* Not that I track health news that closely nowadays, so would be happy to be enlightened if I have missed any significant developments.
** Very much so, per the expert. When you are talking about a completely broken appetite, it would be necessary to go from being in a sedentary job to one that was the equivalent of hard manual labour. Otherwise there would not be the hours in the day to burn off the excess calories, from unrestricted eating!
Any artifact that can’t give you a set of clothes with your new body is not worth considering.
It’s against the laws of fanservice.
:-D
Dave, I got LASIK a few months ago after having worn glasses since fourth grade. So 20ish years. (And I’m pretty thrilled, so if you get a magical dagger and can fix your vision, I’d say go for it.) I did admittedly go to push up my glasses a lot, but I usually did that at the bridge, so I typically just ended up poking myself between my eyebrows. Trying to take my glasses off at night was the weirder part. I would just snatch at the space around my eye sockets two or three times before I’d remember there’s nothing there.
Well, that and the fact that everything looked huge. I had a -9 prescription, and glasses actually give you a shrunken view of the world. IMAX screens did not fill my whole field of vision. But the LASIK corrected my vision without doing that. So for the two weeks or so until my brain adjusted, everything looked enormous. I’m sure everyone in the grocery store thought I was high off my mind as I stood in the produce section in my sunglasses (you have to wear shades everywhere for the first part of recovery — light sensitivity, plus keeping particulates from drifting into your eyes) laughing my head off and exclaiming over how these lemons were the size of mangoes and the mangoes were like watermelons.
Had LASIK about ten years ago, still sometimes almost see the edges of the glasses in the periphery, and the marks made against the temples and on the nose are still there! :(
So, we have a device that allows full body regeneration. It wouldn’t happen to be of Gallifreyan design, would it?
HAHAHA :D Fantastic!
Huh, I always thought the bottom 90% of Sciona’s body was the real part, and she had the top half of her face melted off and someone else’s grafted on.
I would make myself a eunuch. Also not sickly all the time… And not weak/asthmatic/numb due to lymes/etc. Also make my hair manageable.
So I was right before in the whole poke it with a stick evidently.
Why does the regeneration destroy the troll body and the clothes though? Was it designed to do that?
Because it regenerated her original non-orc body, what else would it do with replacement body?
We don’t actually know if she is naked yet, it could be like the old Magical Transforming Girl anime where it looks like they are naked but they are not
Yup. I thought it broke the rules, but it can work.
Artefacts are powerful enough that they do not have restrictions that medical or normal magical powers might. Sciona has not used any ceremony or spoken any commands, so it must either have a specific task or be following her mental commands (or subconscious desires).
The specific task would be to restore the subject to their original form. Whilst artificial objects could be ignored, consider what would happen if someone like Peggy or Dabbler used it. They would not have their prosthetic limb/eye replaced with a real one. Likewise for someone needing a pacemaker or other artificial implants. As such, if using a default setting, it is reasonable that the whole subject (including prosthetics and clothing) will be changed in the process.
Alternatively, if working from Sciona’s mental command, it would be based on how she issued the order. Presumably it went along the lines of:
Transform me [mental image of Sciona as she presently is, including clothing] into my original form [mental image of her original body]. As a mage she would have the mental discipline to ensure she precisely visualised her former body, and would not be fooled by covering up any bits of her mental image with clothing. That runs all too many risks of being misinterpreted as to what may be underneath.
This is just like cosmetic surgery would work, in the real world. The fist thing you do, if a patient is too modest and has kept clothing on, underneath the hospital garments, is to remove them. It is necessary for the surgeon (or controlling mage) to not have anything interfere with the operation.
And Sciona may just be an exhibitionist and wants to show off her shiny new body to an audience. Given the penultimate panel, that seems very likely (if she were totally unconcerned with the opinions of others she would not have bothered with that further modification). She wanted to show herself off to the best effect.
Grant me that sweet, sweet androgynous bod right away.
Also give me colour vision, good visual acuity, regular-sized breasts that I could either show or conceal, destroy all those hair follicles I don’t want…
If you can tweak your body as much as you want, I’d probably end up going for some magical stuff, I mean flying is cool and all, but I’d probably have to research a lot on wings beforehand.
Just one thing: this tool is genderfluid (and trans in general) heaven.
Unless it only allows you to tweak within the base gender model: she already had breasts, so it would be much to make them bigger (or smaller) but not give her a dick
A change from orc to dark elf (/vampire or whatever) is a lot more radical than a gender swap. Especially given that we carry all the DNA for both genders, even though only expressing the one (normally). So a gender swap should be relatively simple by comparison to the greater changes clearly made.
Of course any tool can have limitations placed on it, over and above the technical ones. So your scenario is viable, but not compulsory (which you correctly did no b][o’k#l<M t stipulate).
That’s why said ‘base gender model’, as in Sci-frights original body: the Epimorph was able to restore her original body, and, because it already had breast, she was able to adjust the volume while she had time
While we may carry the DNA for both genders in our genes (which is not really that good of an indicator as we also carry the DNA for a lot of other things, not all of them pleasant) the most she could hope for ‘down there’ would be to grow her clit into the shape of a dick, not completely rewire her reproductive region
It is true that our current technology has such a limitation. But it is not a fundamental one. We are already growing simple replacement organs for patients (in a laboratory environment), from their own genetic material.
If you are doing that from cells upwards, and (once the techniques have been developed enough) are dealing with a sexual organ, you will have to actually specify “make the female version of this” or vice versa.
So whilst we will probably find one gender or the other to be more complicated (varying depending on the techniques used) there will not actually be any (medical) reason why we cannot provide fully functional gender-reversed genitalia, for those who have such a need.
Which, as taboos on the subject get broken down, turns out to be for a much bigger proportion of the population than we realised even a few years ago. Back when I first saw Amélie, such appeared to be poignant but rare anomalies.
But look at modern classrooms (in the UK anyhow) and we see a very different picture developing.
However there will be readers who will get to see this technology come to pass (barring the zombie apocalypse getting in the way of course). Whether I will still be around when the first baby, of a gender swapped couple, is born, is another matter. But it will happen.
Artefacts though should not have any such delay, given their transcendent power. The DNA provides the blueprints and they create whichever version is needed.
Doh!
Ma Vie en Rose not Amélie. Two very different girls, even if my brain has them both stored in the ‘girls from arty French films pigeonhole’.
” b][o’k#l<M " = kitty speak.
I do not know why she inserted this. Perhaps she is signalling a precursor to the kitty uprising?
double check, are you now blue with a lightning bolt streak in your hair, and are you seeing cartoon talking animals?
Two out of three.
I’d lose the gut and pull the shoulders in a couple of inches. My mental map of myself doesn’t disagree with reality to dysmorphia levels, but I’m very wide and tend to bump into doorframes.
So DaveB is a rakshasa?
Shhh! He may not know yet. He may just think that his kitty affinity is a natural thing.
PLEASE have Sciona complaining about back pains at some point, and have someone else point out she’s just added 5 pounds to the front of her chest, which WILL cause back strain!! I can accept enlargement, but with great bra cup size comes great aggravations. Trust me, my back is **permanently** screwed up from being too large up front for too long, and it’s still screwed up badly even after reduction surgery took 5 pounds off…but NOT as badly as it was before, by any means! Putting ON five pounds is going to give her problems, trust me!
If she was smart, and she does seem to be rather familiar with anatomical issues, I’m sure there were some spinal and muscular alterations to go along with that. (Heck, even without breasts, the human back is kind of a mess.)
Smart yes. Wise, no. We have just seen Deus calling her out for not finding a way to avoid harming her minions. Sciona found a solution, to what she needed, and did not pause to consider the consequences or alternatives.
For a psychopath it’s all about assets. Deus and Sciona are both psychos. It’s just what they consider a key to success that’s different. Consider the fact that Deus has money, charm and high intelligence. His three prime superpowers so-to-speak. Meaning in order to succeed he needs to surround himself with people that substitute whatever abilities he does not have.
Whereas Sciona (so far as we have seen) neither seems to be particularilly rich, nor charming. I wouldn’t doubt her intelligence or wisdom for that matter though. While it might look unwise for her to antagonize her allies, we still haven’t seen Cynthilla’s reaction, so we don’t know whether she was in the loop with Wyrmil’s sacrifice. They both were with Cooter, so it stands to reason, Sciona might have pre-emptively made sure that Cynthilla will not overreact to her plan. And, assuming Wyrmil died, there’d be no-one to complain. And with her powers as a blood mage, and the constructs we’ve seen her be able to build, she might not care for who thinks what of her, or for keeping allies for that matter.
I think Deus is right about the idea locking, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t weigh her decisions and calculated her risks.
Time will tell, I guess.
Balanced arguments.
I would quibble about the psychopath conclusion for Deus though. Of course he may turn out to be that. However you do not have to be a psychopath to kill. Soldiers, for example, will do so because there is a socially acceptable need. Society does actually find the killing off of tyrannical dictators to be acceptable (although polite society may look the other way, if feeling hypocritical).
OK when private individuals decide to do that it is understandable that you might leap to that conclusion.
But do consider this very scene, to see that it is not necessarily right to characterise Deus that way.
This is a vault full of world-changing artefacts. Any true psychopath would want to get their hands on all of them, whatever the cost. As we saw from Sciona’s reaction, to the possibility of loosing even the ones she desires the least. It is only the prospect of her being defeated by a superior force, which held her back.
Now contrast that to Deus’s behaviour. He clearly knew all about Sciona and the contents of the vault. Unless he was outright lying about Vale being able to beat Sciona, it would have been very easy for Deus’s team to wipe their opponents out, when they opened the portal.
For instance Cthillia has worked for Deus, so he knows her capabilities (and thereby how to overcome her). Gaze attacks are very specific, so can be countered, if you know about them in advance (and have his kind of resources).
It is certainly the way I would deal with a known psychopathic monster bent on stealing my artefacts. Kill her. Make sure she is dead. Twice. Loot and go.
Deus though chose to personally expose himself, and has allowed Sciona first pick of her team’s favored items. Despite the considerable risk from allowing them such powerful items. Plus he found a non-psychopathic solution to the death field. And was emphatic enough to realise how differently his and her respective solutions would play to their teams.
Not that the latter is enough, on its own mind. It is possible to fake such emotional behaviour. But it is consistent with the former and previous behaviours.
Fair enough.
No, Deus is a sociopath, not a psychopath, and we can’t even label Sci-fright as a psychopath yet
I am not sure he would even qualify as a sociopath, actually.
“a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”
Yes he has elements that match. But you need to consider the ones which do not. He was extremely sociably conscientious when he implemented a policy of improving the healthcare and standards of living for the country he is ruling behind the scenes.
Whilst most of his behaviours are characterised more as eccentric (his lightning clicker), greedy and petulant. So antisocial, but not extremely anti-social.
Likewise his reaction to Sciona’s sadistic brutality was not to appreciate it (which a sociopath who was stronger than her might do), but rather to point out how antisocial it was.
That said though each of my points does have the flaw that Deus may just have been acting in a way designed to achieve his aims in a way that appears socially acceptable. Fit happy minions will work harder for him. So even if he has no feelings for them, if he understands that intellectually he could still act this way.
Plus, the best point supporting your diagnosis is the fact that he is trying to acquire apocalyptic devices. Which would be extremely antisocial, and require a lack of conscience, if used.
However we have yet to see how, or for what purpose, he intends to use them. At the very least he is keeping them out of even unsafer hands. Hopefully he just has greedy, but socially (relatively) acceptable intentions.
Might be a nice reality check, if only she wasn’t a powerful blood mage. Makes me think she can wisp the back pain away.
That seems likely. Remember that she did not even bat an eyelid when Halo broke the bones in her arm.
Although she may just habitually disguise any pain. Having her head chopped in two probably gave her a measure that others do not have.
So I think it would be a good thing if the pain does get a mention, at a suitable point. Perhaps when she regrets needlessly substituting back pain for her headache.
I have a growing list of corrections or improvements on both the plain apparent physical level as well as the relatively unseen genetic one, but of course, it all boils down to genetics, more or less, it’s kind of hard to know for sure when it’s being done by ancient magic artifacts someone else made.