Grrl Power #572 – Sciona revealed! (Cause she’s nude, see?)
So yeah, Sciona isn’t actually a dark elf (or a drow or a shadow elf etc.) I haven’t quite come up with a name for what she is yet, but I’m sure Sydney will ask someone about it sooner or later. And no, Sciona isn’t mannequin smooth, just pretend the lighting is at exactly the right angle so you can’t see her bits. I considered putting Deus’s “Neat.” bubble over her boob but I thought that would be even more distracting.
This is one of those pages I had to split into two, which is why it trails off in the middle of a sentence. I do try and make each page it’s own semi contained… clause, I guess, but sometimes there’s just no way to make it all fit on one page. I think 17 panels is my record, which is pretty crazy. That should be 3 pages in a regular turn-the-next-page comic. I just really wanted to draw a nice big splash panel of Sciona in her ‘final form’ so to speak, and the next page has too many panels to try and squish ’em all in on this one.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Uh, Sciona?
Tazerface is RIGHT THERE, possibly behind you, has already threatened you with death rays, you no longer have a troll body, and he’s worked with Deus before.
Tread lightly…
she already took care of that. with light beams
Firstly, Cthilla is a “she.” Secondly, Deus that this form was far more powerful than her orc body was.
Well that’s an interesting way for that to malfunction. Wish these fucking comments had edit so I could trial and error these commands. Testing:
He just said that.
He just said that.
He just said that.
Here is a sandbox where you can test things, if you wish:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_links_w3schools
Its compatibility has drifted a bit from here, with recent updates. So there are less things that you can preview in links. Plus it never could handle the spoiler tag. But for the kind of thing you were trying it should work fine. Just for info mind, as you seem to have sorted your testing OK this time.
He did say that this Sciona with said weapon would be more powerful.
He also said that even with more power, she just *might* be a match for Vale. Y’know, the pink-haired bodyguard standing right next to him. And with Cthilla around, it would be two on one.
You are forgetting both Heavenly Sword and Opal. Heavenly was originally intended to be one of the Archon heroes, before being repurposed as a villain. So I imagine she is a formidable opponent, as most of Arc Swat are on the stronger, rather than the weaker, end of the super scale. Not to mention the fact that she is presently holding an artefact in her hands!
Meanwhile Opal is capable of opening multiple portals, so is not hampered by sustaining their escape route. Plus personally I rate portals as being one of the strongest super powers going. Especially as Opal is able to create them so fast that she can block an attack!
Opening a couple of portals horizontally, through the middle of Sciona and Cthillia’s respective heads should do the trick nicely. Gravity will get the top halves of their heads to fall through, ending up 10 miles above them, with the rest of their head and bodies falling to the ground. Atmospheric heating, during reentry, should neatly dispose of the remote parts.
Darn it. I also meant to mention the still-open portal itself. We know that Deus employs other mercenaries too. Of which there could be any number no more than a few paces away. Some of whom may have Sciona in their sights (be that actual or metaphorical, if dealing with someone with mind-powers, magic or any technology which can remotely monitor a situation and guide an attack).
Her wings are a color that might be described sometimes as “periwinkle” (almost).
So now we who For Whom The Death Tolls was fetishing over.
…So now we know….
sigh. I hate my thumbs. All ten of tyem.
here it is.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1471
Nice!
….
reminds me of how I miss Dave’s coloring though :-/
Same… The new colouring makes it look like all of the art has tanked. :(
I wasn’t keen on it at first. But it has grown on me. The linked page seemed kind of flat, by comparison.
Excuse you. Now we know WHOM For Whom The Death Tolls was fetishing over.
So, who read Dues’ “Neat” comment in Alucards voice?
I always read him with voice of that guy tgat said “No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.”
Gert Frobe, playing Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger.
From Team Four Star’s Hellsing Abridged? Fuck yeah.
His role in this comic has my in-head narrator voicing him as the animated version of Lex Luthor.
Varia and Ingsol are the only ones who have any kind of accent, for me. Which remains even on pages where Dave forgets to modify their dialogue. For some reason I very rarely ever allocate a mental voice to any comic character.
Even hearing Sydney speaking with a Texan accent would probably take me by surprise.
And what precisely does a Texas accent sound like?
Depends which part you are from, being a big place. The Dallas accent, for instance, sounds like this:
“Mary had a little lamb, her fleece as white as snow”
So the Dallas accent is … english?
Pretty sure they speak American English. But all those words are common to both real English and American English, so I can see how you might have misheard. I suggest you listen closely to the subtle nuances.
houston sounds ok too. the “texas” accent in the eastern half of texas is almost always an unreal affectation
Maybe you could try, “Mary had a little lamb & the Obstitrician died of shock.”
:D
Lol.
In my mind he’s always sounded like Gaston. It’s probably the chin.
My guess is that Sciona is a doppelgänger and has the forms of all of the council members stored. And I guess also the codes.
Soooo… wait she is a what again? A vampire?
She has never been a vampire, nor has she ever been mentioned or hinted at being a vampire. Yet this is what many people for some reason think.
(And it is even mentioned in the author comment that DaveB hasn’t come up with a name for her race yet.)
Probably because of the whole blood thing.
@LordViking
I thought she was one of the vampire that been beheaded that was mention by Ingsol.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2361
She’s been surviving by draining blood, including from powerful vampires. That makes her functionally a vampire even if she isn’t invited to reunions.
She isn’t draining blood to survive, she is draining blood to power her creations, but she isn’t feeding on it.
True, but that’s a ‘vampire’ as PROFESSION, not by nature. She isn’t undead, and can’t turn into a swarm of bats.
True enough, as Sciona draws blood professionally but doesn’t consume it, just like the phlebotomist at your local clinic. But unlike the phlebotomist, I doubt that Sciona has the necessary license do do it professionally though.
Dunno, the Twilight Council probably regulates magic use. On one paw we have seen that they have a mage faction, whilst on another this vault is for things that have been banned. Blood magic may be considered legal (for instance animating the manikins could provide a useful workforce).
So Sciona may have originally been operating as a licenced blood magic practitioner, who subsequently got caught doing something naughty and ‘mostly beheaded’. At which point who would bother revoking the license to practice, for a dead person?
She is the one that was mentioned by Ingsol to have been beheaded, but he wasn’t speaking about vampires. He says there are a dozen individuals that could have made the mannequins for the attack, but there is only one that could’ve done this many but she was beheaded. Nowhere does it say it is vampires he is speaking about.
Blood witch, fangs like crazy – seems pretty obvious to me.
The fangs were making it look like that, on the previous page, I agree. But as LordViking says, the author has mentioned this in his blog above:
So a (presumably predominantly evil) elf species. Making the wings an anomaly, but presumably that is just magic at work, as opposed to a racial feature.
The alternative being that she is a “terrifying [dark elf] laser moth thingy”.
Light Wing beings I can think of:
Wingly: Legend of Dragoon
https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/3201/446644-lenus1.jpg
Polyphonic Spirits: Polyphonica (which have a lot of variety in shape and color)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f2vdbiViNpg/hqdefault.jpg
https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/aozoranopresent/imgs/2/a/2adbf4c5.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6eJ3uEole98/maxresdefault.jpg
https://simkl.net/episodes/26/26221220a41959f0c_w.jpg
https://cs1583.vkontakte.ru/u4316487/92079811/x_713626b4.jpg
Angels will often have some form of light wings in anime: Although so will demons sometimes.
https://rorymuses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/holy-light-wings.jpg?w=640
the offspring (and select others) of the Chousin in Tenchi Muyo have what are called “Light Hawk Wings” which look like light and are blades
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/tenchi/images/5/57/Tenchimuyogxp24idol.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121011181708
Heh. Dark Elf Laser Moth sounds like an awesome techno metal band.
Dark Wode Aelf Ray Fiend.
[speaking slowly and loudly] Nice to meet you. Thank you for trying to speak our language. You are not from around here, are you?
1) I’m Canadian
2) all of those are spelled correctly
3) it’s an acronym for DWARF, just to be funny
1) Wow, over 8,000 km away. I was right.
2) *presents a gold star*
3) Ooh, I missed the acronym. Now it makes sense. :-D
Why is Raymond a fiend? o_O
I love how Vale is knocked her fingers to signal “whatever power you have now, go one and I smash your face hard enough that you wish the orc part back”
+1
Similar to how I translated her language there.
Deus: You can’t airquote my name. It’s my real name. It’d be like me saying ‘Sciona, if that is your real name’.
Alternatively, it could be a subtle hint that Deus is using a body double, robot copy, hard light telepresence, etc.
Or Sciona is just throwing shade.
IS his name actually Deus though? Maxima did the same when she and Sydney went to meet him.
Though how Sciona would know this is unknown.
DaveB wrote the following back in #386
“We’re interviewing the head of Machina Industries. I’m not going to say his name because the guy writing this comic can’t decide if that’s his first or last name, or if it’s a mononym like Sting or Madonna. Probably leaning towards mononym cause otherwise if it’s his surname then what, his full name is Motimer Deus? Brad? Jordache? No, just no.”
While it might have changed since then, it seems like his name really is Deus.
I forgot about that. Seems it is his name then.
it’s quite possible his last name is Deus and his first and middle name are Opie Mugglebluff , or something equally embarassing
She throwing so much shade it is causing an eclipse.
The sub-meaning that I got was along the line of ‘You, puny mortal, DARE to call yourself a god!”
But as we all know, “When someone asks if you’re a god…”
… you say “No, but he is”, whilst pointing at your most imposing/expendable companion.
Me? A God? Of course not, being worshipped by something as lowly as a human is beneath me.
Circe? Is that you? o_O
Species name for Sciona. Let’s quickly wikipedia search “list of beings referred to as fairies” (due to her wings). Needs supernatural powers, not shapeshifting (assuming her bust is caused by the artifact).
The Aos Sí, aka Aos Sídhe, or just Sídhe, are a dark fairy. One was included in The Adventures of Puss in Boots. But she had illusion powers… the Sídhe have many variants like the Dullahan, Leprechaun, Cat Síth, Kelpie, Selkie… But the ones more likely to be Sciona are the Am Fear Liath Mòr or Greyman, and the Leanan Sídhe who offer short but highly inspired lives.
While typically childlike, the idea of the Chaneque may seem nice. A being so terrifying, it’s said your soul leaves your body; if you don’t perform a ritual in time, you’ll fall ill and die.
Mogwai would be a hilarious name for Sidney to pop culture mixup. Not to mention they’re normally demonic beings that prefer to torture their victims with endless suffering.
The Persian Peri, or Piri, and Daeva, or Divs, are a class of fallen angels required to do penance or a type of djinn/false god.
Expand to fiction, and beings with light wings, she reminds me of the spirits from Polyphonica; some of which are ancient, but many of whom became “addicted to” and reliant on the human spirit expressed through music.
https://animevost.org/uploads/posts/2015-01/1421690998_3.jpg
Scion’s Who’s Who entry should be updated. Pretty sure she hasn’t any scars now… Unless it’s forshadowing.
Looking at Vale… it could be.
DaveB hasn’t decided on the smug-shot yet, unlike with Sydney’s recent change, he possibly hasn’t even drawn it yet
Question….why super powered people go all hair floaty… is it just the hair or do other things float too?
Now I was picturing a super powered female person with very large breasts, those are not fixed in place, they move around… you get a big boobed girl to do a handstand those are gonna smack her in the face.
The same can apply to guys… is he’s a super guy who is super equipped is it all just gonna start floating upwards?
That could ruin a persons epic threatening floating you know.
Sometimes its weird gravity produced as part of their levitation ability, sometimes they have too much power to contain and it escapes through their hair follicles, and sometimes its simply a magical wind used to intimidate others.
“…you get a big boobed girl to do a handstand those are gonna smack her in the face.”
Well, if it weren’t for Archon’s primary tailor, that could have happened to Maxima right here. However, they may not even need to rely on a super-powered tailor if they could contact this tailor, who specializes in bras.
…i want that as a super power
just the ability to make big boobed women do handstands. i dont care how hard maxima punches me.
Lol.
I would opt to have small boobed women fall in love with me, without getting jealous or going all insane. It would probably end badly, for some other reason mind. But it will probably be a good way to die.
sounds like a way to start a valentines day riot.
or gain stalkers.
That is an improvement from a Valentine’s day massacre.
They are only stalkers if you try to avoid them.
Brittany the Were-Cheetah in Gold Digger’s sister has apparently designed those kinds of bras for her sister, it was actually a plot point in one storyarc because she didn’t have one on and couldn’t run at her full speed during a critical moment to save her daughter (and only realized when she was left broken to the limits of her regenerative ability she could have shifted to her complete animal form to get around the problem, probably because she’s so used to remaining in her humanoid form and has regular human shyness unlike many weres).
Maybe it is a reference to how hair starts to rise/separate when someone becomes charged with static electricity?
This lends a whole new concept to why so many supers wear spandex. It’s shapewear! It holds things in place, to keep ’em from floating all over!
Are there two of you? Or do you like observing paired stellar objects?
1t’s n0t always 1 0r the 0ther, s0met1mes 1t’s b0th
But can you see them both at the same time?
Only if you close one eye and squint
I want to say she’s some sort of fallen aasimar or some sort of evil celestial being. Am I close?
I’m not as up on my lore as I’d like, is there any reason that aasimar and ur-elves couldn’t be related?
Could Sciona be to those what dark elves/drow are to more modern elves?
Would this afford her the same power creep as vampires and fox spirits have?
How old would she have to be to pre-date modern elves, bearing in mind their long time between generations?
Assuming that there’s no limit to age-based power creep, how would her power then compare to recent supers?
So many questions but I do like the idea of her power being tied to age, not species.
Butterflies only live for a single season, normally (the mating season). Given that Sciona mentioned ‘several decades’, that would make her an incredibly ancient butterfly!
Looks like Deus failed his perception check against rhethorical questions.
You think‽
Well, now that you mention it, I hadn’t spent much time mulling over that topic.
Ego, sometimes if you’ve put a lot of thought into something you’ll spring board off of anything that remotely reminds you.
And why is her hair all ‘antigravity’ and stuff?
Maybe for a similar reason why Sydney’s hair doesn’t fall to normal gravity-orientation when she flies; For Sydney, the Flight Orb orients gravity to pull towards her own feet instead of the Earth, but this is only for Sydney herself (& her hair), Maybe Sciona’s hair has a personal anti-gravity effect instead.
;)
Morphic Field. She’s going to look like how she wishes to look, within limits.
And apparently, Sciona likes looking as if she’s getting a blowout from below.
You may not have noticed but it is not just her hair that has gone all anti-gravity. Sciona herself is floating above head-height there. Presumably her hair is just more susceptible to the anti-gravity effects than the rest of her. Or her body is more resistant to the effect, and the hair less? Drow do have some (limited) magic resistance, if I recall correctly. Not enough to stop an artefact’s magic, but it is reasonable that it might weaken it.
Or maybe it may just be down to static electricity (or an magical analogy of that), as a side effect of the magic girl transformation.
I feel like she could be a fey. maybe a water fey who found blood magic. blood being like 90% water giving her innate skill.
Which would explain about her “true” form eliminating clothes… she’s a water Nymph.
And part orc. There was a show my aunt showed me a long time ago named Nymphoid Barbarian… is that Sciona?
You mean A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell?
Yes.
It is a wonder if the voice-over artist, and everybody else associated with that production, did not commit suicide in shame!
Even worse, those who saw the trailer & chose not to see the movie still heard names being named…
These are the same people who brought us “Toxic Avenger”, what’s wrong with it? o_O
Well that one just looks cheesy with poor production values. So it can appeal to folks who like the former and can put up with the latter.
Whereas the other movie can only be appreciated by folks who believe ‘it is so bad it is good’. Which does not include me.
Getting more a Polyphonica light spirit wings vibe here than water.
Would love the first panel as a background, maybe it should be a spread in book form.
Hey wait a second.
That hentai-bot that was/worked for/made by Sciona? It got laser morning-star studs from Pixel, but it should have been able to do that anyway because of Sciona’s wings.
Unless it has even more abilities but didn’t use them because it would show off who made it? Hmm.
The wings may be a new addition. But if they are part of Sciona’s original form it is entirely reasonable that she would not want to give it a sample of her blood. She, more than anyone, will know how even a drop of that could be misused, to find out information about her, and maybe even set up a mystical link.
See Voodoo (the Hollywood version) for an example of magics which require bits of an enemy, to cast curses on them.
Whelp, spirit wings certainly fit the bill indeed.
Hmm. find myself more and more wishing she hadn’t leveled up her bits. but thats personal opinion.
Plus the idea of her fighitng max with the opposite body type would be interesting.
Though we’ll get that from Syd someday
I would have thought Sydney to be more of an opposite body type, in most regards (height, bust, colour, physique, wings and even down to needing glasses versus presumably 20/20 vision). But I am guessing you mean more photographic negative instead. Which is true enough.
Although the wings will still stand out as being unique.
First time posting, love the comic! Been reading for quite some time now! Keep it up.
Also.. anyone notice the mask of Loki in the background? From the Mask movie :P Great easter egg!
(Also appearing in a few previous vault comics)
Welcome to the community.
The mask has indeed been picked up quite a few times before. It appears to be quite iconic.
The one that we see for the first time, which has me the most worried, is the up/down arrows and slider of the evil Microsoft Window artefact! Beware the mother of all Windows is about to be unleashed. Windows Infinity!
The Blue Screen of Death becomes a certainty…
I predict Sciona has just picked a fight she can’t win.
It was no mistake that he got that sword first.
And she’s going to find herself short a head, again.
But this time Dues will personally make sure she’s dead.
Why does everyone believe she is attacking Deus? o_O
Her grim and leering expressions, coupled with the “WHOOSH” onomatopoeia accompanying a (presumably) striking wing.
Personally, given the context of her mentioning ‘there’s another way to get at these artifacts”, I think it more likely that she is putting that into practice.
Slicing a pedestal in half may do the trick, for instance. Someone else suggested that, for Heavenly Sword, some pages previously, but it works just as well for a laser wing as it does a sword. Without its support the artefact should just fall out.
Zack Tilly, she’s not leering (that’s a different facial expression, normally directed at people like her, you know, hot and naked and typically female), she’s pissed that Deus is talking and demonstrating what she was talking about
Laser moth wings, now I could do with those. I am guessing that Sciona would not want to part with them though.
I’d have put the speech bubble over her boob TBH. Distracting? Mayhaps, but everyone would know what you’re doing and why. Besides, you’ve managed to have fun with the concept before.
Hmm. Maybe you should’ve talked less, chuckles.
We have hardly heard Dr Chuckles say anything‽
*woofs*
Deus DOES have a tendency to monologue. It’s one of his ‘super-villain’ affectations, like laughing with a thunder-and-lightning effect in the background.
And monologuing can get you thwarted and/or killed.
Kinda torn here. They both could stand to be taken down a peg. But… I really don’t like Sciona as a person.
That is a sign of good taste and morals.
Nice symbology DaveB, what with a creepy caterpillar turning into a pretty butterfly. A good analogy for Sciona transforming from her Fankenstein orc body.
From orc body to troll doll hair.
Ahh, thank you. I knew there was something familiar about the image.
Now that she has ‘hatched’, Deus needs to send Vale through the portal and bring back a giant bug zapper! Maybe that beacon from “Wreck it Ralph” https://www.ramascreen.com/wp-content/uploads/60.0-021.0021.jpg
While I like Deus’s style, I don’t like him. He’s an arrogant snot who basically strolls in where he’s not wanted or invited. He’s already rich and powerful yet he’s constantly looking for more tools so he basically craves power and more of it. Such people are dangerous to the world at large, even if they’re clever, ESPECIALLY if they’re clever. I want to see him taken down a notch or two along with his minions, thugs, goons, whatever you call them. So I’m interested in seeing what Sciona is going to do to him.
Every negative thing you’ve said applies to Sciona as well, so I’m not sure I like the idea of her being the agent of his comeuppance.
“ESPECIALLY if they’re clever”
Depends on the type of clever. It really seems like the shortsighted destructive idiots are doing the most damage to the world of late. The clever people don’t seem quite able to keep up.
It is easier to destroy than to create.
You know, people always say that and yet more people are born every year than are deliberately killed. I would say as a species we are much better at creating than destroying. I personally much prefer the act of creation to any kind of destruction.
Ahh, but you are limiting your measure of success to the number of humans on the planet. Yet that measure is ignoring all of the destruction that is being wrought to achieve that. Rather than just counting the number of humans, we should instead put those on one side of a set of scales, and see if it outweighs the other.
On the other side we can see many species going extinct. OK some would do anyhow, in the natural order of things. The quantity though is far in excess of what it would be without a destructive species such as humanity wreaking havoc.
Not that I am having a go at humans in particular mind. Other species have managed to unbalance their environment before. Showing how easy it is to destroy. Humans just happen to be better at it than any prior species on the planet.
In our lifetimes we have changed the geological strata being laid down, such that alien archaeologists will be able to established when we lived, and the likely cause of the mass extinctions on the planet, just by examining the geology we left behind.
Hopefully we will be as good at creating, as you claim, and will still be around to meet them in person. Whether we will have much of a biosphere to show them around is another matter. Odds are it will mostly consist of humans and their domesticated species.
Pretty sure we’ve still created more things than we have destroyed.
It’s basically human nature to make and invent new objects/cultures/ideas.
Again it depends how you measure things. Currently our pesticides are killing off all the bees. Do you rate one screw or nail as equal to one bee? Has the total number of nuts and bolts we have ever produced exceeded the number of insects we have killed? OK mosquitoes do their best to do the same, to us. And make a good job of that. But, again, destruction is easy.
Then we must also look at the lost potential. Every creature we kill is one that could have gone on to create more life and to be creative, in their own way. Bees could make honeycombs and pollinate plants, for example. Six million Jews could have gone on to have generations of artists and scientists.
In a world where there had not been a genocide in Rwanda, one of their descendants may have turned out to be the greatest mathematician or philosopher, to have ever lived.
Of course we can console ourselves that others carry on, in their stead. But that will only happen if we keep the planet habitable. Too much radiation, too little oxygen, too much pollution, or no bees to pollinate our crops and human life could become unsustainable.]
The risks from all too many of those problems keep on getting higher. Because it is easier to just allow the status quo to continue (which means conditions deteriorating as humans go about their beloved task of creating ever more humans), rather than take the harder steps to counter and reverse these problems.
Creating more nuclear weapons, wooden goods and pesticides does increase the balance of ‘things we have created’. However it also risks toppling the scales over, by contributing to an extinction event. Not the ones I listed above though (although loosing the bees will wipe out many other species too) but humanity.
The trouble is we have all been bombarded with this knowledge, all our lives. Individually there is little that we can do about it. And whatever small contributions we might make are easily wiped out by the destruction caused by the indifferent. So, to stave off depression and to allow ourselves to carry on with our daily lives, we push these gloomy thoughts to the back of our minds.
However we should not allow that self-deception to reach the point where we think that there is not a problem and humanity is doing a good job. It is not.
It could. But only if we (collectively around the planet) focus on doing that. The first step of which is to counter denial, when we come across it. Of course we should also enjoy life, and celebrate the positives, when we can. Just not letting the negatives slip completely out of mind.
Well, you have to realize something here.
Once the agricultural output is maximized, if your planet does not go to different means of food production (and there are many), for every additional person born in excess of current numbers, an equivalent number of insects or rodents have to die, equivalent in food intake to the intake of that person.
While agricultural output is not maximized, most of that is due to political will in some countries, primarily Africa.
I could express that as an equation, but most people don’t do math.
I do. Just so long as you don’t require that I use more than …
*mouth moving silently as taps nose to each paw in turn*
… four paws.
If you’re going to count every individual animal/human and object that has been destroyed then you would be right.
But literally no creature on this planet has or could create more than they break if bound by that criteria.
You need only count those which are destroyed as a result of their actions. And, of course, can offset those which are replenished. So humans get a nice bonus for their domestic animals, drops and managed environments (like sustainable forests). Provided that they do not wipe out too many others in prioritising the ones that they favour.
Oh, you are pro-creation? :P
Whenever and wherever I get the opportunity to practice.
At this point in time I would say we are the opposite. We can destroy bigger, faster more thoroughly than we can build.
We have created a climate alteration of the Type I Level event. And if we don’t act, as a species, it will be well out of our control and overwhelm us killing most life on this planet every bit as bad as the Permian-Triassic Great Dying 250 mya. It will be totally out fault for doing so blindly and with little or no restraint. If we can’t stop it we are broiled and done probably as a species. Depending on the over all severity it may only take 10 million years to fully recover. Maybe longer.
The average is 10 – 50 million years for global recovery of the larger extinction events. The smaller ones take less time.
Unfortunately humans do it faster. What it takes Nature to do in a 100,000 years to millions we can accomplish in hundreds of years. We are that good at it. Which isn’t a good thing. You see we can ignore Nature and also cause an effect. We see what that brings us. No intelligence can survive like that.
I wonder what the Council has planned for that?
Wiping out humanity completely would do the trick. Equilibrium would be restored, in due course, without any further intervention required. Trouble is they do have human members of the Council, so that may not be an ideal solution for them.
Not to mention ruining snacking potential for vampires, unless they keep some sustainable stocks of volunteers. Plus there would be galactic repercussions due to the collapse of alien sex tourism on Earth. Although I am sure the succubus ambassador could come up with an emergency plan, if they can transport sufficient quantities of succubi to Earth.
Just MHO, Vale, nor that matter any of the others will be standing around watching her smack Deus around.
Not that he’s ever been said to have no powers of his own, he’s just said that being rich is the BEST power.
I dont know why but i was under the impression Sciona was a vampire. Might be due to the fact she survived a partial decapitation.
She has a heavy association with blood, and used an elder vampire as an involuntary donor. It would be easy to form that impression. Likewise the fangs on the previous comic may have subconsciously reinforced that.
Oh, I get it. It’s a morphic Epi pen.
Anyone else read Deus’ “Neat…” in the voice of Alucard from Hellsing Abridged?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BI8O8PiMtg
Yes. Stigmartyr762, near the top of this page of comments.
Dark Valkyrie perhaps?
Darkyrie?
Mmm, wonder if she tastes like a daiquiri?
possibly a hickory daiquiri, Doc.
*chomps on a carrot*
What’s up D…
… Stroyer?
If she’s old enough I vote for a “Remnant;” a being that crossed over from an older universe.
She’s a Mursaat!
But if you can see her, you must have truesight.
Sydney, is that you, disguised as a Yorkie Bar?
*licks lips*
Nope, a Yorkshire Terrier, yappy little things, make a Chihuahua look (and sound) placid and docile
*now imagining a Yorkshiuahua*
I know “Lucky” a Jack Russel/Chiwawa * cross. Very cute. Despite me disliking practically any dog smaller than a Jack Russell, on principle.** Fortunately he is more the Jack Russel in size, behaviour and general looks. But does manage to capture some of the cute characteristics of the smaller breed.
* No google chrome spellchecker, not “Chinaware”! You could at least offer the alternative spelling of “Chihuahua”, if you do not approve of “Chiwawa”.
** Outside of countries where noses get cut, in mutilation attacks, small dogs are the most common single cause of injuries requiring nose reconstruction surgery. People make the mistake of thinking they are cute, lean too close and… CHOMP!
The horror! :eek:
That appears to be Loki’s mask second from the left. Also we have an incredibly rare item between the women; a solved Rubik’s cube. I get the feeling I’ve seen the other cube somewhere before, but I can’t quite place it.
It would be a mass produced, and easily destroyed item, although they somehow also get reproduced rather frequently and distributed by skeletal goat demons disguised as homeless men; and permanently closing the gate so no more can be made apparently requires building one the size of a space station.
Anyone else notice the huuuuuge chin on Deus in panel 1?
He did have the same very chunky look on the previous page. Obviously he has taken some magical potion which will allow him to carry an obelisk on his shoulder, or punch a roman centurion through the wall!
Another way through the fields, I am going with something I guessed during the bamboo page; solid light; those look like light wings so that’s my guess.
PS: If right that also means Sidney would have been able to get through too with the light hook.
Good call.
Not sure that the tentacle would actually qualify as ‘solid light’ however, given that Sydney was just looking for cool-sounding names, rather than using a term to describe its scientifically determined properties.
Of course it may actually turn out to be accurate. The one problem being that the lighthook almost certainly does not even pass through her own force field,* so making it unlikely that it can pass through others.
The wings though they may well have that property, and would explain why Sciona has chosen to manifest them. They do not look like a racial feature (although that is going by what we know of mundane creatures, with supernatural ones that impression could easily be mistaken), and there is not much need to fly in an enclosed vault.
So unless Sciona just manifested them to look imposing (or her species is actually winged) then she created them for a reason. Killing Deus being one, but I agree that getting artefacts is another. I had another one in mind, but yours seems highly plausible. Light is neither alive, nor dead, nor matter for that… um… matter.
* Sydney has been experimenting with them for months, prior to the comic starting, so would have been bound to find this out, at some point. Yet we do have the scene, in the car park fight, where she realised that she did not know how to summon the tentacle inside the shield.
Had she been able to summon it outside, but reach in, she would doubtless have done that. Her mind was hopping around all over the place looking for solutions, and her life was in danger, helping to keep her focused on getting a solution. Which would have been readily apparent, if she had ever done that before.
I’m not sure about those conclusions regarding Sydney’s lighthook and shield, and how they would apply to this scenario.
[i] We do not know for certain that the Lighthook cannot pass through the Shield. Granted, there is that line of dialogue in the Diner Fight. However, this would imply that Sydney has a very effective and fairly complex Plan B ready to go immediately after that ‘unexpected disappointment’. Alternatively, ‘Plan B’ may have been Plan A all along, and the line about bringing the tentacle inside the shield simply a bit of distraction to allay suspicion of her subsequent actions.
[ii] Sydney’s Shield and the Vault Shields have very different effects and strengths. We’ve been shown that Sydney’s Shield can stand up to just about anything – solid projectiles, laser-like beams, even Maxima’s Earth-Shattering Kaboom[TM]. In contrast, the Vault Shields are described as having specific pass and block characteristics*, and we don’t know what their load strength is for resisting anything in the ‘block’ category. Even if the Lighthook is unable to pass through Sydney’s Shield, that does not necessarily preclude it passing through the Vault Shields.
On the other hand, there may be a direct argument that it should not bypass the defences, being a hard-light construct under the direct control of a life-form. The existence and versatility of hard-light constructs suggests that some visitors would use them instead of mechanical manipulators, be they Extraterrestrials in environment suits or terrestrial Constructs. There is therefore a possibility of someone with hard-light ‘hands’ accessing the Vault, and one would expect the designers to scope their defences to include that type of Person alongside the ones with fleshy or mechanical hands.
*There may or may not be a parallel to certain physical systems in our universe. It’s fairly easy to make a substance that’s transparent across most of the EM spectrum, and even easier to make a full-spectrum reflector. It is possible to make a screen that transmits a specific spectral band and reflects the rest, but these usually have narrow sidebands of transmission either side of the designed one. If the ‘life’ band happens to have a sideband for ‘hard-light controlled by life’, then Sydney may be in business.
We must call in the experts to deal with her:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f2vdbiViNpg/hqdefault.jpg
Hold on,
this just hit me;
is it me or does Sciona kind of look like a silver version of Maxima a little bit?
I would describe her more as a negative image of Maxima. With bigger boobs now, plus fangs and wings. Their expressions can look similar, when angry, and they do both have pointy ears. You just have to imagine Maxima with her hair blowing upwards and naked (don’t worry anatomically undetailed).
OK. So when I said her true form was less visually interesting, I wasn’t expecting her to be Tyriel. That helps.
Also…Are we doing the manga thing where nipples and genitalia exist in a state of quantum flux, and cannot be directly observed?
Yes.
Where is Dr. Chuckles? Deus mentioned his presence yet I haven’t noticed him anywhere…
He could be either out of shot, or yet to enter this chamber. We know that the vampires are around, yet not directly in sight.
This would not be unusual, Dave indicated some while ago that he will position characters who are not playing an active role out of shot, to cut down on unnecessary drawing.
As for Deus’s comment, I presume that he is saying that using invisible ink? Because without any decoding goggles I am not seeing such a remark (including going back several pages).
Deus says: “I Imagine Dr. Chuckles is here for the Lazarus Scalpel.” on page #567
Yet I’ve gone back through every single image for the heist looking specifically for Dr. Chuckles and have not noticed him in a single one of them. Vamp is shown near the beginning of the heist and has been in the background several times. Chuckles has not shown up at all.
So… where is he?
Ahh, indeed. One page further back than I went, and had forgotten that. Or at least I recalled the line, but did not remember it stipulating that he was present. Still my bad.
Unless Deus is just going by intelligence informing him of that, then we should assume that he (and likely the vampires) are just out of shot, or in the corridor leading to this chamber, but are holding back from entering. This would make sense if Sciona did not want the team clumping up and exposing more of them to influence by the artefacts than necessary.
Alternatively Deus’s source had indicated that Dr Chuckles was coming, but was mistaken and Sciona chose not to correct him.
We did though see Dr Chuckles when Cooter arrived. And have not heard any reason given for him not coming along. So the odds are that he is around.
Maybe his thing is invisibility? Or some other ability that would not render him obvious to us.
For instance he could be a shapechanger who chose to become a utility belt, so that Wyrmil could carry him around unnoticed. Thus explaining one other earlier conundrum. Or he could be travelling through rock, and listening in by feeling the vibrations. Or he may be phased in an adjacent dimension, telepathically keeping an eye on things.
I just though of something. She said it could be recharged at the cost of 99 lives. It seems like she was counting on it being fully charged when she came in here.
Sciona has two vampire members of the Twilight Council, who have been both assisting her and providing her detailed information, about the vault and its contents. As that has proven accurate for every aspect up until now, she had good reason to trust what they told her, as regards it being fully charged or not.
Provided the Council knew its status, when they put it in here, they would have recorded that along with other important information (like “do not feed after midnight and do not get wet”). Which the traitors will have passed on to Sciona.
You make a very good point. I mean, why bother charging the thing if you have no particular purpose for the power in mind? If it isn’t a temporary effect, and Sciona’s transformation does not appear to be temporary, then charging it up can only be for some new application of its power. And the user who charged it would need to have had it taken from them at the exact moment it was finally fully charged, before they could apply that power. And that seems like a fairly unlikely scenario.
This vault is purportedly for items of an apocalyptic nature. Altering one person would not, on the face of it, appear to qualify for that. However if it can totally rewrite their genetics, then that is another matter. What used to be the orc parts of her are now another race, so we can see that such potential exists.
Where this can become apocalyptic (from the point of view of the present inhabitants of a planet) is if such a change creates a new species with a significant competitive advantage over its rivals.
In a stable society there is no justification for risking introducing a new, potentially invasive species. Further we can easily see the potential risk if we realise that this item could be what created the first vampire and werewolf (and other lycanthrope species). Currently this world does not have zombies, but someone bent on wreaking havoc could use the Epiomorph to create a species with an infectious attack, like them.
It need not even be an overtly dangerous species. What of someone who wanted to make their brains function ten times as fast, store ten times as much information and make connections between seemingly unrelated facts ten times easier? They and their decedents could easily come to dominate the world.
Possibly not a bad thing if the process involved breeding with lesser mortals and passing on their combined heritages. However who would want to have some of their children so retarded that they functioned at one tenth the mental capacity of their smart parent?
So even after someone upgraded themselves to such a status, they may choose to seek out a mate worthy of being upgraded. During which time it would make sense to top up the Epimorph ready for use. After that they may choose to transform allies. However if they do not have any, then time will pass, either until they make trustworthy friends or until their children grow up and find suitable mate of their own.
Again it would be sensible to keep the Epimorph fully charged. You never know when the political situation may change and the lesser mortals may turn on the rightful rulers of the planet. So having the potential to upgrade a newly-found ally (or mate) would be sensible. In other words, viewed over the course of decades, the Epimorph may spend more time fully charged than empty or partially charged.
Note all this is assuming that it is in private hands and was captured by the Twilight Council But even if it was drained upon capture, they too could envisage uses for it. In times of trouble. There are clearly many different races and other factions in the galaxy. So anytime the council may face a threat of a nature they have never encountered before.
Being able to upgrade someone to counter that threat (or gradually do the same for an army) would be a handy trick to keep up their sleeves. Such threats though may not patiently sit around whilst you charge up your weapon. So, again, even an organisation would find it handier to keep the item charged, ready for use. Provided they did not have qualms about the cost of charging it up.
I forgot to mention that Sciona enhancing her breasts indicates that the Epimorph is not just limited to existing genetics but can specifically tweak them, on demand. Again assuming that the change is not just cosmetic, but is actually a genetic one.
But that would provide a good reason for keeping it in this vault. Were it simply a cosmetic item, with an unacceptably high mortality rate to use, they could have sought out whatever means might be used to destroy it. Or could have sealed it up in a way that would make it hard for anybody to ever use it.