Grrl Power #602 – You’ve got a little something on your cheek
Again, this is more than I wanted to show of Vale at this point in the comic, but it’s fine. I suspect this little reveal might present more questions than answers.
Vale makes a good henchwoman because not only can she literally ignore being impaled through the skull, but she brings significant creep out factor to the table. Intimidation is important for bodyguards, and most people who see that will probably give her a wide berth. Also she seems pretty loyal so far.
I’ve found a new book series I’m enjoying immensely. Star Justice. The short version is; Space Marine gets experimented on and essentially turned into a were-tiger. Hilarity ensues. Actually mostly violence… and technically it’s a harem setup, in the sense that the main character is male and nearly every other significant character he meets is female, many of whom join him on his adventures, and most of whom express sexual interest in him to some degree. Well, okay, that doesn’t sound like I should be saying “technically” at all. That’s flat out a harem setup, but I feel like there should be some sort of asterisk on “harem” because the female characters are significant and important parts of the story, not just notches on his bedpost – and they’re all likeable (IMO) either straight away or after some initial antagonism is resolved. The sex scenes are terse and non-graphic which is really my preference in novels. I like it when characters I like hook up, but I don’t really need the gory details.
I won’t spoil anything, but one night I went to bed planning on reading a few chapters, and I got to a point where there is a rather significant turn of events, and I wound up finishing the book and reading like 30% of the next one before I had to quit because it was 5 in the morning. :P
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, maybe you will too. This sort of thing is hugely subjective.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Based on Sciona’s expression I think she may have pee’ed herself a bit, or struck a brown note in her panties… Or a bit of both…
I now loath your existence and wish for its end.
What in the unholy hell?!
Sci-fright just revealed her hidden kawaii, it’s over 9000
That might literally be where this critter is from.
Or, you know, from the Outer Plane…
Felt the need to comment that the entire Star Justice series is available with kindle unlimited
OK, now I’m impressed.
This reminds me of the Uligb from Buck Godot, they exsistance in 17&1/2 dimensions and like popsicles to stuff and mount.
Yes with all those eyes and such.
Really? It reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft.
But then I’ve been looking into his stories again recently.
Quick, quick – check your sanity!
1) Is there blood on any of your razors?
2) Are all your pets safely accounted for, and not, repeat NOT, strapped to either an altar or surgical table?
3) Can you fly? Please do not attempt to test this from more than three foot off the ground!
1.*sniffs* not mine does that count?
2. Yes but they are sitting on the alter next to a talking wolf…that just told me it’s ready for the sacrifice
3. *jumps off table*…No it’s more of a extremly slow decent. It took 20 seconds to touch the ground.
Should I be concerned?
Naw, yer good. And the wolf owes me five bucks.
1. Well, I was shaving…. and I got a pretty bad nick… at least that’s what I’m telling myself happened.
2. Does it count as safe if they’re acting strangely on edge and looking concerned out the windows?
3. Still in training for my pilot’s license, so not yet, at least not without an instructor with me.
Phil Foglio still owes me my prize for coming up with the rules for “Martian Charades” back in the early ’90’s. Just sayin’.
Not so fast, even this could be misdirection! Mwahahahaha…
Can Harem see this?
WTF! Kill it! Kill it whit fire, loots and loots of FIRE!
Hell kill them both whit loots of fire! Then launch whats left into the sun.
Easy there, Captain Atomic.
… We don’t know that necroplasmic entities are flammable. If they work like fire vampires, it’d just help her – it – regenerate.
I believe this is one of those “nuke them from orbit” situations.
Lol. To the whole thread.
Sorry all we got left is a Exterminatus button. Will that work?
Yes, as I pointed out earlier, sending Vale into the Sun is a start, but then you have to set the Sun to go nova and pray she doesn’t make a successful dodge roll.
So its like whitewolf where you can infinitely dodge the ground if you roll good enough in sort of a never-ending hover.
Thinking back to Vampire the Masquerade and corresponding werewolf manuals, I cannot think of a mechanism which allowed this. Not in the form presented, where presumably anybody could do that.
But, whilst I did enjoy reading the manuals, as the character creation and spell casting aspects were inspiring, I never did game extensively in those settings. When LARPing the mechanics were invisibly handled by the games masters. Whilst the tabletop sessions I did likewise didn’t focus on ways to abuse the mundane mechanics. The powers had such vast scope for creative play that there was no need!
Wasn’t Whitewolf a system from the ’90’s? I know it was an RPG magazine.
The magazine merged with another company and produced various RPGs. Plus collaborated on producing a MMOLG based off that. Which ultimately came to nothing.
It’s one of those rules lawyer things that any good dm would say no to.
…Like the peasant railgun that breaks all logic.
It was the wording that got it but with all bad lawyering only really bad gms or silly ones accepted it.
Well, that hardly seems fair. I mean, everyone has creepy-looking innards. It’s just that it rarely comes up, fortunately enough.
She eats fire,
bleeds acidic eldritch tendrils,
and cries beautiful snowflakes.
oOOOOKAY THEN
Ain’t anything okay about that. :-/
Didn’t Sciona just scream a few hours ago, “I am WHOOOOOOLLLLLEEEEE”?
It’s beginning to look like she won’t be for long.
If you’re referring to the lines on her face, that’s actually the broken face guard of her headgear.
If that’s not what you meant, I don’t see Vale tearing her apart just yet, Sciona’s probably going to decide that fighting is not the best thing at the moment.
There’s a faceguard?
It is what is between the two earpieces and below the forehead band. Kind of like a clear welder’s mask. And it if has a heads up display it clearly didn’t give her enough heads up.
i think it miss a little box: “and at this moment, she knew she was F***ED”
Morgan Freeman voiceover:
“Sciona kinda suspected right then that something was off. Yeah, she had her wings back, and yeah, she felt pretty powerful, but you can’t help but feel a bit intimidated when all of that just feels inconvenient to the person you’re trying to kill.
Yep, she felt pretty darn f__ked right about then.”
I don’t think it’s even inconvenient to Vale.
I must admit, Even with Dabbler around, i was not excepting such a completely in-hinted at Plot twist.
Heh. Nicely called Pander!
And beautiful reveal, DaveB! Vale’s unconcern is almost… robotic.
But the important question is:
Did Archon’s actual supergenius succeed in getting the pants off of elf boy?
I feel like a super-genius right now. :)
Actual super-genius Pander LaBeouf.
Err not implying anything about your choice of diet. It is just hard to get the ear-worm out, once you have made that association.
*gingerly wiggles claw in ear*
Oh, Dave, you might want to fix the copyright year on your templates. Lower-right corner of the image.
Not going to lie, while I didn’t quite expect energy/magic construct or something, kinda called that. I was thinking she was a robot or something just due to how she acted up to this point.
As she appears to be repairing in that second to last panel, either Deus has a Rezo the Red Priest level mage around to create an ultimate magical mannequin, or she is something else INSIDE the human like shell and those wisps would be part of her real body.
Too bad Sciona probably didn’t read the Council after-action report or she would know to look for a broken piece of enchanted sword in Vale’s head.
If you are referencing the Blood powered golems that attacked the council.
Sciona sent those herself.
Yea. And she has already sliced open Vale’s head so has a fairly good idea about the kind of stuff that is inside.
She seems worried. Something that would not be the case if Vale was a construct of a type that she knew how to disable.
OK, my fault. I totally forgot she was involved before I posted that.
Uh… what?
I have no words for this. This is so weird it defies even snarky commentary.
Also note that MSE has a great group on Facebook and is extremely active with his fans.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1562248853809471/
Well, I guess this explains why she puts up with Deus’ shit. Shes not actually human.
I don’t recall seeing Deus treat Vale anyway other than with respect.
Yeah, he’s not stupid enough to tick off something that can ignore having its head sliced with magic and has the strength to knock an armoured body for a loop.
I don’t think it is some much a concern of him being disrespectful, just him being one of those hammy and eccentric seeming bosses that makes you occasionally think “It’s so embarrassing when he does this.”
She has been with him since at least the Galytn acquisition. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1974.
And for all we know, that could have been less than a year prior to this event (maybe even just a few months)
Very unlikely. Uplifting a nation from poverty, to a high average standard of living, takes years if not decades. Which Deus successfully achieved in the country in question.
If he is so talented as to be able to accelerate that to just months, or a year, then Deus should be put forward immediately for the position of Dictator of Earth!
So, he waited several years before splashing his face on late late night cable TV?
Yeah nah, doubt Mega-ego would wait that long
He would not take years to first boast about it, agreed (although he would be likely to carry on boasting about it, in various interviews, for the rest of his life). But you are now talking about time elapsed since the completion date. Whereas the point in question hinged on the difference from the start date.
Deus would have had to have started the whole process many years earlier, even if he rushed to the studio the instant it had been achieved.
So, working on the assumption that is what he did, there still must have been years worth of infrastructure upgrades, investment and other economic development, after the scene where we saw Vale with Deus assassinating the former leader.
Otherwise he would not have been able to claim to have elevated the country’s standard of living. Nor would the little girl have given him the gift for having done that.
The ‘background montage’ while he was defending his actions to Cici Sainte Croix would imply well over a decade. From scared kid in a box, to school, to university, to new mother, is not a timescale easily rushed. We could even close the circle of the imagery on a full generation, if that mother and child become the warehouse engineer and little Angel.
That looks like “Nope!”
Hey Dave! I have bought Black Friday (The Valens Legacy Book 1) written by Jan Stryvant. It is urban fiction with some similarities to what you mention to be in Star Justice. College student is assaulted, gets turned to werelion, he starts kicking ass and gathering a harem (“pride” for lions). Some of the sex scenes have little in the way of details, but most get skimmed over with a sentence or 3.
Those who want more detailed sex scenes, I recommend Good Intentions & sequels written by Elliott Kay. Also urban fiction and first women in college guy’s harem are succubus and angel.
Technically, in Good Intentions & sequels, the angel and succubus are the only members of the main character’s harem. He has hookups with other women but it’s never long-term.
That looks like seven kinds of “Oh, shit” just dropped by. Almost like some Elder God or Outsider suddenly was added to the gaming board, and you hit the worst dice throw of the week. Kinda reminds me of the old Nietsche saying “When you gazes into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes into you”. Siconia, meet Abyss…
Yes! *cackles* OMG, sooo yes <3
Yep,
as someone who often has eldritch beings show up to mess with supers I am inclined to go that route, although a few other paths are possible (like a variant on Concretia’s power and Sciona just doesn’t recognize this as a super), I am inclined against any magical construct angle given the repairing going on and dark essence tendrils whipping about from within.
I quit reading the Star Justice novels once the Valkyrie chick showed up: she was just too obnoxious and the way the author gushed about how awesome and great her Vikings In Space society was compared to everything else was silly.
Plus, the dialog was getting stale: Adam (the main character) swears a lot, but he just uses the same few words over and over like he can’t think of anything new ever.
See, I was like that too at first, mostly I was pretty damn annoyed at how she acted around not only Adam, but also the others. However, I stuck it out and continued and it does get better.
As to Adam’s dialogue, I’ve not noticed any changes, but then again he’s always been pretty much been all-business.
That’s the problem with Adam’s dialogue: it *doesn’t* change. It’s incredibly repetitive- in one of the books he called someone a rhymes-with-trucker six times on the same page. It’s boring to read.
I hate it when characters resort to calling enemies “mucker plucker hog-sucker chucker bloodsucker” and whatever the sixth rhyme might be!
TFW you *wish* you were throwing down with Superman…
It took me a minute to realize what that crack on Scions face was. Nice job on the broken visor.
I was been wondering what that was. Up until this point, I hadn’t even realized she was wearing a visor.
It is hard to see on a PC monitor for some reason. I didn’t realize it was a vizor till looking at the page on mobile and zooming in, zoomed in it becomes really clear, yet somehow is nearly invisible at standard size on a monitor.
A clever tactical ploy. It makes her face appear to be a vulnerable weak-spot in her armour. Much like her heart-cleavage.
YES!!! I love that book series too, just picked it up as well. Have you seen his other series, Tamer? Worth the read if you’re finishing up the last book of Star Justice.
Oh wow. I don’t know what Vale is and my speculations are probably futile and silly, but I LIKE IT! Bottled cosmic horror? Descended extra-dimensional super-entity? Sentient space-time anomaly? Probably none of the above!
Active part on Vale…. SCARYYYY!!!
Wouldn’t be the first time a cosmic horror or entity was walking about in a human form, from Trance Gemini in Andromeda to M-bodies in Marvel (and the more recent Ego’s avatar body in Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2)
heck I use several cosmic horrors in a human shell to shake things up in a series *usually the cause of the problems in the long term*
I am trying to remember if Vale was ever present when Sydney had her true sight turned on. I wonder what she would see.
Since the disco event Sydney has been avoiding using the trusight orb where she can be observed. It is classified, and she found out why then.
Other than projecting her image to scout at the Mars factory (along with the inadvertent teleportation), Halo’s only use of the truesight function was to check the auras of the magic items (and co-incidentally those of the folks in the Council chamber).
Vale is MUCH scarier of a powerhouse than I originally expected, so I have to ask: what motivates her to work for Deus? Yes, he has personal charisma and vision/purpose (loosely paraphrasing one of his hired guns from the old king’s assassination) and undoubtedly pays VERY well, but given how long-suffering she is from putting up with his eccentricities up to this point, there’s something else going on there.
Sidenote: seeing a truly shaken Sciona is a pure treat that I had not expected to enjoy so soon.
Considering I have an eldritch abomination char in my works that “currently enjoys time with humans” as a way to pass the “endless years of timelessness” and avoid boredom, there are all sorts of options possible here. But most definitely agreed, something else going on here, lmao.
And oh yes, poor Sciona, lmao, that expression is priceless <3
It’s possible he paid to have Vale summoned and bound through magical ritual — or some scientific method.
She’s probably bored, he gives her lots of stuff and luxury, so might as well.
A lifetime of servitude for the low, low, price of your eternal soul. (Assuming you believe in such things.) Feel free to read the fine print in the contract to check for loopholes.
Well if she’s a cosmic horror, I only have the motivations of my own cosmic horror in human forms characters to go on but…
all the justifications aside it comes down to *current mood, whim, personal amusement, self appointed limitations for such, and WHY NOT*
Hey, on the plus side…
No spiders!
I wonder though if Vance made her Vale suit?
I’m really looking forwards to when we get to see Vance ‘loosen up’ and spread out. Especially if it starts with their skin just… deflating, and a flood of Vance scuttling over everything.
And rather than typical spiders, they are tiny Vance-heads with legs
Given that the eight eyes and fangs contribute significantly to the scariness, that would actually not be anywhere near as bad. For an arachnophobia anyhow.
Still have the eight legs
So do octopi, but they are cute. And I never freaked out about crabs legs for that matter. Even though they are relatives of spiders.
But yea, assuming they are hairy there would still be pushing some arachnophobia buttons. But not all of them.
Even at the height of my arachnophobia I found some spiders cute. There were ones that looked like coins with little legs in Rhodesia, for example. Even though they had the habit of falling off the ceiling, when you turned the lights out, and landing on the bed, that was just icky, rather than scary.
Whereas any ‘real’ spider doing that, especially en mass, would have had me quite literally running from the room screaming!
Nowadays mind daddy longlegs and similarly innocuous spiders can crawl on me, and I won’t bat an eyelid. Ugly or big ones though still get introduced to Mr Rolled Up Newspaper.
Or snakes, or rats. The Jones family is safe.
are we sure? They might be deeper inside…Hiding in the “Engine room”.
SHHHHHHHHHH!
Interesting. I wonder if Sciona recognizes what she is? Otherwise it seems early to declare her a non-super. Concretia, for example, could probably do something like that if she got herself a custom body built by Eda Mode, or you know Dabbler.
Well, if we assume she is not just making assumption, out of surprise, we should factor in that Sciona is an expert at making artificial life-forms. And has no qualms about chopping up the non-artificial types, to see how they tick. And has been around a long time and has associated with a host of eldritch and other supernatural life-forms.
Sciona has enough breadth and depth of experience to be able to have a feel for what Vale is. Be it a construct or something summoned from the depths of Hell. Sciona makes or summons things like that on a daily basis. But her surprise, and lack of specifically identifying it, makes me think that would be having a pretty broad idea only.
“Picking up shed loads of summoning mana leaking out of that” or “Ahh, just how the heck did they make the skin that realistic, and what did that eye originally belong to?”
So something enough to point at it being magical or a construct or whatnot, rather than a natural-born super.
So Sciona hates supers? She now has an all new category of powered beings to hate! Now, what the heck is she?
by the looks of things she is either a Shoggoth of a Goat Spawn, neither of which are good news for Sciona, though she might be something else entirely, lots of eldritch entities out there after all
Or she could be one of the thousand masks of Nyarlathotep…
from the constructs of ancient gods, to the outer dwellers of the dark between and the infinite forgotten, to those who dwell in the Eldritch Sea of the dark abyssal ocean beneath and beyond the oldest of Hells predating the souls of mortals and immortal alike, the true eternal ever changing and never forgetting all forms *with preferences*
A dark dweller who like short pink hair and spike leather gear. Seen weirder…like one that likes dressing like a cat-girl Halloween witch.
You say the latter like it has some special significance?
Not sure who that is, not surprised my character wasn’t very original, an amalgam of Anime tropes, cat-girl witch and magical girl *but also secretly something far greater*
Xin the Cat Witch
https://rhuen1.deviantart.com/art/Galactic-Guardians-02-Xin-s-Halloween-503911722
Who sometimes acts like a magical girl superhero, on other words is the mysterious cryptic messenger, or trickster. Daughter of one of the Architects of Magic and inhabitant of the Timeless Land. Granted I could have just said Albia or Red Squid (more traditional Eldritch designs, the later of which also has played superhero), but Xin is so much more…well a cosmic being version of a concept I’d seen in some anime, I think Soul Eater has a cat-witch also.
Nice concept.
Thank you,
nothing throws off the bad-ass barbarian hero more than a cute cat-witch delivering a dark cryptic message, doing a little spin, and vanishing in a cloud of cartoon yellow stars and sparkles. LoL
-took the tv tropes description (breaks the rules of the setting) to its extreme LoL
Behind the mask is obviously Jim Carrey. Because as we can all see, he is ssssmokin!
Okay, data point of one here, but I’m a bit intimidated.
Two. Add in side order of creeped out.
Ohhhh hell. Does Dues have an eldritch abomination on the payroll? *eyes narrow* What the hell would he pay her/it? But regardless. Poor poor Sciona. Suddenly she ain’t the top of the food chain that she presumed she was *cackles* The look on her face is priceless <3
Maybe she doesn’t need paying. She just needs to stay under control.
Or likes the attention, Deus amuses her, she is having (fun) playing bodyguard to pass the time, video games.
I mean Guu just likes to bug Hare and all the attention she gets from the village by the looks of her.
https://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y246/mindlesspit/GIFS/guu.gif
Oh gods of the nether this just occurred to me on this gag.
An uncovered photo of a younger Deus, Vale, and “unidentified” boy LoL
https://www.jasms.de/anime/hare_guu/bilder/24.jpg
Heh.
Not that I recognise the source.
I shall conduct research on Gru and Hare.
you should, it is a great series.
Hare+Guu,
it is literally an Eldritch gets interested in a kid and his family and hangs around, distorting perception and reality to her own ends *which may be good or bad…for one individual who SAW through her disguise…it goes very bad very quickly…subtle enough it took me a second watching to realize why that character did such a massive character shift so quickly from…oh she’s the mysterious lady one village over who can see ghosts to…she’s a crazy stalker after white haired men* But otherwise it can even mess with the viewer on just what her motives are, and just how much she is messing with Hare and his perception.
We don’t know where Sciona was, when she was mostly decapitated.
I wonder if she had been joyriding in a saucer, near Roswell?
that was not a Saucer near Roswell, Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
Roswell is just a target range for dabbler and her Strange friends from way out of town…
the truth about the roswell crash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5NrOwe-Pfo
Sooo… Deus makes deals with Outer Entities…. this… cannot end well
This page, apart from making me want to scream with terror at what’s hiding inside Vale’s skin, reminds me of Haiyore, Nyaruko-san.
To be specific, it reminds me of the male protagonist’s reasons for feeling apprehensive about getting into a relationship with the titular character, who is a Nyarlathotepian; the 999 other masks apart from her pleasant female human persona.
Now Vale isn’t pleasant, but she was fun to look at. And it amused me no end that Sidney got her goat. But now we know what lurks inside her skin, she’s just eurrgh…
Tl;dr: Vale — veil — is darn creepy.
Oh right, Nyarko-San,
heh, and my first thought was Hare+Guu (I blame the pink hair) LoL
Oh, I didn’t know it was rape a cloxk already.
Its just a quarter till.
Dave is right that this does pose questions. Interesting ones. Such as:
Who is the boss, in the relationship between Deus and Vale?
Neither, the true overlord mastermind is hiding in the desk drawer, sitting at a tiny table sipping its coffee while petting a tiny floofball.
And from a dust speck on the floofball we can just make out a chorus chanting “We are here! We are here! We are here! Now do our bidding!”
Hah! Have you completely forgotten who rules behind the scenes?
and the ruler of the rulers,
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/7/78617/3203019-squirrel_girl_full_artwork.png
as for me … I wonder just when will characters page be fixed … to have anything (its completely plank …so anyone wanna share who was vale again?)
It is presently residing on:
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast
Vale is Deus’s long time bodyguard. We have seen her helping him to test his thunder making clicker. Likewise being present at the assassination of the dictator. Plus every time Harem or Halo have visited him, Vale has been present. Likewise she intimidated Sciona enough, in the Dark Reliquary, that she did not attack.
The rest of the time, such as in the TV interview, she was unseen, but doubtless present.
Just got to say it, Sciona in the last panel is pretty damned cute. Didn’t think she still had it in her after all those years of sourpussness.
“Nonplussed” is a good look for her.
So, if you faced an inescapable fate of being dropped into a pool of acid, or escaping that by bedding either Vale or Sciona, which would you choose?
*slides pool of boiling acid into place*
*puts a DANGER DEADLY warning sign on it*
Kitsune are probably less vulnerable to most acids than to whatever Sciona and Vale are.
That said, as nice to look at as Sciona is, I am guessing that an intimate encounter with Vale is more survivable, assuming I haven’t done anything to draw her ire, such as endanger Deus.
Vale defiantly, even if i die afterwards. I kinda like her a little even if im not sure what she is…
Sciona is just evil even if its the only choice to live of the three im not entirly sure i could.
If its just Sciona or the acid. id seriously be hesitant to choose knowing Sciona the way we have. I might lean towards the acid if i can jump head first in.
As an eldritch mass beyond human comprehension whose most accurate description of a physical form beyond the avatars could best be described as what you’d get if you crossed an Alraune-rose bush with an octopus and Sadako from Ringu *and about a trillion serpent, griffon, demon, heads, jewels for eyes in twisting vines, and numerous white masks who is at the center of the sea of chaos; which is but an extension of the body as well*
what was the question again? Oh I’d have to choose one or the other? how cruel? Could it be one then the other? Or would we need to move sideways through time so both can be first so they don’t get jealous and….hmm…maybe that’s how Tenchi solved that problem with Ayeka and Ryoko,
I guess it’s to be expected that Deus is good at contracts…
Ah. A daemon. I see.
…just gonna back away slowly for a bit.
Dabbler is a demon. Vale is … worse.
See, that’s what the extra “e” is for. Makes it more ominous.
Not really,
“Demon” is a generic term for any malevolent supernatural entity; whose specific rules (spirits, ghosts, flesh and blood denizens of Hell, ect…) can change with the setting as its really just another way of saying “monster” really.
“Daemon” however is the root word, and (aside from the Digimon that uses the same spelling but different pronunciation) comes from Greece and refers to any spiritual entity, basically things greater than mortals but not as great as gods. Basically “lesser gods” of nature, everyday tasks, and the like.