Grrl Power #639 – My empire of dirt
So, no real surprise here. Sometimes the reveal is a big “duh” because of how the pages break down. I maybe could have squeezed a slice of this onto the previous page, but the dedicated splash page is more dramatic, even if it’s fairly telegraphed at the twice a week page rate.
Still, fun to see the results. I have to say, drawing blown up cities is a lot easier than drawing intact ones. If a building is looking wonky while I draw it, then I’m like “Nope! You get an explosion, and you get an explosion! Everybody gets an explosion! Except you. You get a CRATER!”
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.
An army of evil Maximas did it, ruled by the future version of the Maxima we now know.
I’d crap myself if that was the case.
Makes good sense though, so just in case, I’m gonna invest in some adult diapers.
If that is the case, I wonder how many Mosques the Alari had built? Maxima claimed only one by accident, but that was on Earth…
Maxima could do this on her own.
Doubtful. Remember: Maxima while being incredibly strong in some modes is nearly defenseless in others and I am sure that an advanced race like the Alari would have weapons that could even penetrate Maxima full armor mode and hit Maxima speed mode.
*nods*
Although we have not seen Maxima at full power yet. Possibly she may be able to fly up somewhere beyond the reach of their weapons (our nukes only barely go sub orbital, for example) and blast the c**p out of the cities, without exposing herself to counter-fire.
We know she would need life support, but that is something she has available. It would just be a matter of ensuring that enough had been stockpiled, in orbit, before commencing the attack.
Then it is just a matter of evading (or destroying) any mobile units sent to intercept her. If that was squadrons of Alari flying up, under their own power (their wings are magical, and don’t appear to flap, so should be fine in space), Maxima was able to catch up with Sciona, so should be able to keep ahead of any pursuers.
And if they respond in force, from every direction, she can just blast those who are in her direction of travel.
Of course, finally, there is the issue that she has been here all the time. So presumably it must be some alternate Earth Maxima. In which case she could have had the full support of the Halomobile (to provide air in transit, and to carry stocks of life support, for when Max needed to go outside of it).
Along with supply runs by alternate Harem (either to their wormhole/portal or to a hidden supply cache within her teleport range). Assuming that such analogues exist. But if not, Maxima can carry a huge amount of supplies by herself. We saw the much weaker Super Hiro carrying a bus.
So Maxima could probably drag around the same kind of life support system that nuclear subs use (complete with power source and people to run it). If not just outright adapting a nuclear sub for use in space!
Unless this is the future, and this is where Sydney earns the “Big Guns” name
*nods*
The mystery nuclear arsenal orb.
Or some serious upgrades on the PPO.
Oooooooooooooooooooh.
Nah, it’s Sydney’s last orb; it doesn’t do anything on Earth, but point it at an Alari building, and YOU GET A CRATER, AND YOU GET A CRATER, etc.
Heh. So Dave was just channelling Sydney then? :-D
And there Sydney thought that she had just been playing a quick bit of ‘Space Invaders IV’, on her Pip-Boy (to escape Sciona’s boring monologues). But it turns out that the orb was just using that as a medium to project the control mechanism!
I’d love to believe that passage through the semi-faulty portal did this, but based on the lowest-right corner, where we see
1)_portal (pink)
2)_heroes (smudges)
3)_Sciona (near statues)
…the 3 of these are in a line that runs up-&-left.
If this *WAS* the source of the carnage, then we’d see destruction in this area also.
Therefore, west conclude that the area was destroyed BEFORE they arrived.
Just as well, because if the portal WAS to blame, then using it to return to Earth would cause the SAME mayhem on the way BACK, wouldn’t it…?
TYPO:
not “west”
but “we must”
TYPO:
not “west”,
but “we must”
Why would destruction be on just one end of the portal?
Although Achilles might have jammed himself in it, like a cork?
[Yorp]:
My guess was based on their transit being from Earth to HERE…
…however, for the reasons given above, I’m ultimately not blaming the portal for this mess.
P.S.:
Dag-Nab thisshere double-posting glitchiness!!!?!
Yup.
I think we can be hopeful things will improve. I have noticed a marked drop in the problem, from when it first started. So I think patches are likely being put in place, behind the scenes, whenever the website’s code is automatically updated (presumably by WordPress).
> 3 of these are in a line that runs up-&-left.
So, somebody has been walking their fire?
Dave.
Maxima = destroyer of mosques.
DaveB = destroyer of cities!
Yorp = Destroyer of snax.
Wow. Could we get that as a wallpaper?
I want a poster of the giant undead ghost (wearing that headgear) rising up.
Telegraphed, yes. But I was on the edge of my seat theorizing on how you could depict enough utter devastation to take the light out of her eyes like that. And mission accomplished! Also… who says the portal ripping was benign? Hard to tell on this side. And who knows what it and/or the self-destruct devices did back on earth.
The previous comic’s caption:
Does this mean that Sciona needs to start blowing out the candles?
I think we can agree that “blowing” is what got her in this situation. Someone blew a whistle, she lost her head. Someone blew a door, she got her body back. She blew a guy, Maxima was on her ass. She blew a bridge, they found her lair. She blew her lair… You see where I’m going with this? =D
Huh, this must be fairly recent if the buildings are still burning…
That’s what I was thinking.
Sciona was a day late (but was she a dollar short?)
She left her purse on her other body.
LOL!
Delayed reaction on that one I am afraid. What you said did not sink in, until the second time I read it.
is that a protoss pylon in the forground?
Maybe. We have had a lot of folks identify it as such, so there is a good chance it is a deliberate nod.
It also implies that significant power was being supplied to the structure they are presently at (which makes sense with a long range portal). Although, obviously, it could just be one of a line of pylons. But that proximity makes it seem less likely to me.
what if this is where that fire demon dabbler was talking to in that vision thing came out
I’m wondering if those bright spots in the sky are attacking spaceships in orbit. The carnage looks like what one might expect from a combination of Kinetic Bombardment and Directed Energy Weapons.
I’m guessing the Alari managed to make themselves enough of an annoyance to other beings that somebody called in the Orkins.
I’m looking at right now on Patreon. They’re still indistinct, but they’re definitely not stars. They’re an elongated oval shape with dark fronts and glowing rears, like fireflies. There are three across the top left in a line and a fourth that is just between the two right most smoke plumes. The fourth one doesn’t seem to have a glowing rear and may be broken into several pieces.
Maybe the glow is the ships’ drives as they are now leaving after having scorched the planet. Got to move on to the next civilization on their extermination schedule.
Or, it may just be flames: if you look at oil-well fires (thank you US, for the increased fuel prices) there are similar flashes waayyy up in the plume of smoke
You actually missed the one on the top right
Yeah, I see it now. It’s broken into several chunks unless I’m seeing it wrong. I’m guessing really big ships in low orbit maybe?
They came to misbehave.
Plot twist — everybody’s fine; they just threw a really wild party last night.
Sciona totally missed it, too.
:-D
“NO! I missed New Year’s again! Stupid Earth and its stupid leap year calendar!”
Yes, you expect that with Sciona being the example of the Alari that they would make enemies that they shouldn’t have.
I kinda feel sorry for Sciona……sure she is a evil lunatic who has to be stopped. But she dod all that to get to home it seems, she gets the crap kicked outta her, loses a leg, BUT manages to get home, just to see that it looks like Godzilla threw the worlds biggest frat party on her home. FOr all we may know she may be the last of her kind now.
Thinking that ‘this’ definitely qualifies as an “Uh-oh!” moment.
So they arrive right in the middle of a meteor bombardment.
The timing for this is more then just a bit contrived.
And here, tourists, is the great burning as mentioned way back that shall herald the return of angry banished demon from dabbler’s flashback… feel free to take pictures for the next 10 minutes while the bus driver attends to the failure of the a/c units on the bus…
:-D
Did you take Mac’Aree (Mac’Aronee, hurr durr) as an inspiration for the Alari hometown ?
TDS reference. You just surpassed OOTS as my fave web comic.
*happy little doggy dance*
Not that I dislike OOTS. In fact, it is a great webcomic, and thereby showing you have good taste. But it is nice to increase the Fellowship of the Orbs ™.
*proudly examines the term*
I think that is nicely all-inclusive. The main thrust is towards Halo’s orbs. But there are plenty of other orbs that feature heavily enough, for the term to be applicable, for other readers. And more discreet orbs for the remainder.
Perhaps this is the time Sydney’s last unidentified Orb will be of use.
Not sure I follow? If it remains unidentified, it will remain of no use (other than for punching with the orb). Whereas if it is identified, it is likely to be the same as the others, and be of ongoing use. None of them appear to be temporary items, which might run out of charge. Let alone being one-shot items.
So I guess that your intent is that this is an instance where discovering the properties of a mystery orb could help ‘save the day’. After which that trick cannot be used again, as there will be no more unknown orbs?
If so, that is true.
However there are still an awful lot of undiscovered skills, on the skill tree. So the same principle can be used, but within a more limited scope. Each skill being likely to be related to the properties of the orb, rather than something radically different. Whilst noting that, even then, there are some (like the Truesight orb) which do have very disparate powers (truesight vs teleportation vs image projection).
Oh. You might be on to something. Remember “Am I a spaceship?”
If she is, one of the things she doesn’t have yet is a star drive. Her flight is NOT adequate to that purpose. If her speculation is on point, then it seems obvious that the last orb should be a warp drive/worm hole generator/interstellar teleporter/bloater drive/etc…
If analysed from their current predicament, and assuming that the out of control wormhole cannot be stabilised, then yes.
Although do not forget that the Fly Ball has a huge number of undiscovered skills and a open-ended grey line leading off it. So that has plenty of scope for FTL options, of various sorts. And, if going by the departments of a space ship crew (or by compartmentalisation by function), it would be logical for maneuvering drive and FTL drive to fall under the same category.
I am continually curious about how Dave plans to reveal the unknown orb, as well as additional features / combinations of the ones we do know about. We’ve seen some brief exploration and testing, leading to the discovery of the atmosphere (and who knows what else) generator, but it’s hard to stumble on stuff by blind luck.
Really the best option for discovery is to get into weird situations like this and start experimenting; unfortunately, those are also the worst time to be experimenting. “Hey Sydney, we’re who-knows-where, with a known enemy and probably other unknown forces at work, and possibly in mortal danger. Why don’t you take a couple minutes and mess with different combinations to see if we can get an instant replay or a healing ray for Sciona’s leg or something. Just don’t accidentally close the port- … dammit.”
Dave has delayed concluding the basic training and the power testing which would happen in parallel to that. Which may be because such would be sure, if thorough enough, to uncover the properties of the last mystery orb. Given that we already saw one discovered in regular testing, Dave may want to do the final one under more dramatic circumstances.
So Ashen Shugar could well be onto something.
And, if it turns out to be a black hole generator, then there is much less harm to be done here, than on Earth.
“Oops”
I should acknowledge that there may be some really weird things present here which might make the task easier than on Earth.
Although ‘radiation protection’ would seem to fall more under the auspices of the green life-support orb, that is one thing they might find a need for!
Am further reminded of an old comic from the 90’s (heh, couldn’t remember the name of the book and the goodguys, butt was able to recall the name of the badguys {TNTNT} and thus the comic: “The Strangers“, published by Malibu Comics), it was a group of, well, strangers who got hit by a mysterious beam and given powers, one of them could change to the colours of the rainbow, and each colour gave him different powers, he could never figure out what one of them did, until after a series of adventures learning how to control their powers and get stronger (as individuals and as a team) they ended up on the moon and discovered the last power provided a breathable atmosphere, something he would never have discovered on Earth, which already has a breathable atmosphere
So, it is likely the last unidentified orb may only be identified if Sydney ever ends up in a similar situation (remember how she learnt how the Green Ball worked?)
Indeed. But controlled test conditions can emulate most things that the orb is likely to be able to do. They already know what six of the seven do, and there is a wealth of speculation about what the remainder may be for. Of which the more rational ones could be tried first.
Maxima would easily be able to book time with a NASA vacuum chamber, for example. Or she could just strap on life support, for both of them, and fly up high enough to test them out. With suitable safety protocols, of course.
Likewise they can seek the assistance of a bunch of different types of supernaturals (magical, alien and legendary), with the help of the Twilight Council, to test a heck of a lot of exotic options.
Whilst it may provide less drama, thorough and exhaustive testing is more likely to reveal results than waiting on stumbling across something randomly.
Which means you are probably right, as drama is important to stories. :-D
Probably the ball of multi universal travel.
Yeah, that’s why the last colour was revealed last, after they had gotten some experience, because if they had headed straight to the Moon, they wouldn’t have stood a chance, so have confidence that Sydney’s last ball’s secrets won’t be revealed until she has had another month or two of experience (and there is no guarantee that she knows what it does even three months from now, comic-time)
Yep saw that coming, looks like they were assaulted heavily by someone that wiped them out…. without mercy.
Sciona: …Alright, I claim asylum. I’m entitled to refugee status as a disaster victim, right? Or as a war refugee… I really can’t tell which it is at the moment, and I’m not sure any of us want to stay and find out. Plus, I can claim citizenship through my husband-to-be Deus X, father of my-
Dabbler: *scan* You’re not pregnant.
Sciona: What?!
[…]
ARC doc: *studies scanner image* You’re definitely not pregnant.
Sciona: What?!?!
[…]
Deus X: Well, naturally, I took precautions… however, you don’t have to trap me into marriage – just sign this pre-nup, and I’ll arrange everything. *takes folded prenuptial agreement from inner pocket, hands it to her*
Sciona: *opens, scans document* WHAT?!?!!?!??? *slumps, screws up document* Fine. I’m done. Lock me up, or deport me far away from this piece of ****.
Deus X: *smirk* *tragic sigh* Why does it always end this way? WHY?????? Oh well… will you show me out, Maximillia, my dear?
Maxima: SQUAD!! Escort Mister X to the exit!
Deus X: Riflemen? Indoors? And don’t you know that bayonets went out fifty years ago? Hey, don’t jab the $3000 suit! This is really poor guest protocol…
>:=)>
He he. Well written.
Good stuff, man. XD
See what happens when you fight about whether beer or wine is better.
*sticks tongue out, in an expression of disgust*
Vodka and coke for me thanks. Or any liquor that can be mixed with something sweet enough for my tastes. Or, of course, the ones which have enough inherent sweetness (or are at least not too dry).
Unless you go right up to trockenbeerenauslese, wine is pretty much wasted on me. I can drink either that, or beer, to be sociable. But beer is too gassy for me (it interferes with one of my cybernetic implants). So I have to either sip it, or risk the consequences. Which are less than sociable.
So, it’s NOT about the quality of ‘lite’-beer…?
“TASTES GREAT!”
“LESS FILLING!”
—or was it about paper towels:
“HEFTY-HEFTY-HEFTY!”
“wimpy-wimpy-wimpy!”
—or maybe a medieval debate-team:
“Did Jesus own the Clothes that he was Buried in?”
:P
Seriously, though, I thought this was about which end of the egg was best to cut open?
(Them Lilliputians get REALLY hot under the collar, don’t’cha-know!)
I am ashamed of all of you! Loads of speculation on what caused this, but missing a vital one!
Ninjas.
Don’t be ridiculous. You’re forgetting the inverse ninja rule. Ninjas could never have done this. A Ninja might have.
Blooming good point. However that one applies to when you can see either a ninja or many ninjas. Presently there are none to be made out (clearly). You must always suspect ninjas.
Always EXPECT ninjas. EXPECT.
(Even if you start having a cramp.)
I mean…the fires are still burning, that implies this was fairly recent, there could be survivors.
Also a random thought, do we have an approximation of Maxima’s top speed cause if she flatlined that, then shunted everything to defense and plowed into the ground she probably could act as her own crowbar from heaven style kinetic strike…assuming her maxed out defense could absorb the damage that would do to her.
Yup. And Archon may feel honour-bound to help rescue such. Which would need to be offset by the threats Sciona was just making.
However the invasion potential of the Alari homeworld seems to be very much reduced. So greater weight could be placed on humanitarian assistance. Which would be the more heroic path. Albeit running the risk that, should they be restored to a fully functioning society, that they may proceed with the plan Sciona detailed.
I would advise:
1) determine what caused the devastation (it affects all subsequent decisions, including the humanitarian ones).
2) render whatever assistance can be made, to help vulnerable survivors (unless the previous point shows a very good reason not to).
3) simultaneously assess just how mad the species is (on a scale of ‘not very’ to ‘they are all like Sciona’).
4) if they are really all like Sciona, or it otherwise is apparent that they intend to co-operate with her plan, then no further assistance should be provided. All effort should be diverted to closing the technological and magical gap, whilst they are in this weakened state.
If not then they should deal with whatever caused this, if they can (unless it was done for good reason) organise whatever large-scale aid can be provided (probably requiring the assistance of the Twilight Council, if they can get in touch with them).
5) get back to Kansas.
We know Maxima can go at least Mach 4, because she did that with Sydney. However her top speed was clearly above that. But we do not know by how much.
However even a jet fighter, crashing into the ground at Mach 8 will do far more damage from its payload than its impact. And they are a lot more massive than Maxima.
Another way to estimate such an attack’s potential force is to compare it to Maxima’s physical attacks. This is reasonable because all of her powers (barring the energy blast) are drawn from a common pool. The same thing that propels her, in flight, is also the one which allows her to punch like a south-bound freight train.
As such we can look at her MFP, which put Sciona through a 4 meter concrete wall. The author’s blog indicated that this is near the upper end of Maxima’s attack scale.* Indicating that it is unlikely that Maxima could fly anywhere even vaguely approaching light-speed, for example. Likewise that her impact crater is more likely to be Maxima-sized,** rather than emulating the ones we see above.
An exception would be building up massive momentum by going into deep space, turning around, then accelerating constantly until ludicrous speed is achieved. However there would be a very long delay in between each attack. Compounded by the high risk of damaging or destroying her life support on each attack (her shield protects things worn, but not as well as it protects her).
And the upper limit on how fast Maxima can enter the atmosphere is how well her force field could shield her from both the impact (with the atmosphere) and the heat build up by compressing the air. Which means that the upper impact capability discussed above can also be used to estimate this. Therefore she is not likely to be able to use this trick to massively extend her damage potential.
But pull a similar trick with a comet, or other convenient stellar object, that she could ‘fire and forget’ (or use as a shield whilst she guided it in) and Maxima could easily replicate the bad day that the dinosaurs had!
* I should note that he did not indicate if this was using the exponential scale that the power rankings use. If so the most powerful punch might put Sciona clean through the back of the mountain!
** Pretty much true of any human body hitting the ground at terminal velocity. Flying into it at deliberately greater speeds, than can be achieved by falling, will increase the crater size. But not staggeringly so (having eliminated the possibility of
This is what happens when the Black Templars find a world of filthy Xenos.
PRAY! BURN! KILL! PRAY! BURN! KILL!
Looks like the Alari declared war on the Protoss… and lost.
Sure, they took down a proxy pylon, but it didn’t seem to help much.
Sciona: “Huh, so they cleaned up the place since I was here last.”
“Where are the row, upon row, of impaled aliens? Something is seriously wrong!”
So, the craters and other battle damage was all hiding under the thin layer of dust that Dabbler’s wind spell blew away?
And since when does truesight let Sydney see through dust? I can understand seeing through an illusion, but the dust wasn’t an illusion.
Sydney could tell that the dust had been thrown up by the portal, because she indicated that, when she asked Dabbler to clear it. So the dust was not literally covered in dust, the problem was a cloud of airborne dust around the team.
As for seeing through dust, I totally agree with your conclusion. Previously I saw two ways that Sydney would have been able to see beyond the dust cloud. The first being by projecting her image beyond the radius of the dust and looking from the eyes of the image.
The second being if she activated the aura sight. That allowed Sydney to see through the walls of the Council Chamber and make out all of the individuals aura’s there. If there are people still alive, Sydney should be able to make them out, even through dust. In fact their glowing auras would probably make it easier for her to distinguish people at a distance, if she was not seeing other clutter to confuse things.
Therefore she may be able to make out if they are mostly lying down, or perhaps dismembered, or otherwise not behaving like healthy crowds. Now if Sydney’s aura sight can distinguish auras of corpses (which seems likely – she could pick up the undead with no problem, so a recently deceased person would probably still have an aura too), then she would be able to tell there was a major problem.
Further we saw that the Twilight Council have lots of magical items. One got given casually to Sydney. Plus there was a spare room filled with all the junk nobody needed. A loft with no security, at all. Thus strongly implying that they are not considered highly valuable.
Which gives us clues that magical items may be in pretty widespread use amongst interstellar civilisations. Plus Sciona clearly makes very heavy use of magic (and a distinctive type of technomagic at that). Lending further credence that the Alari might also be heavy users of technomagic.
In which case there will be bits of blown up magical items scattered all over the disaster areas. Bits of which (or even dust potentially) could be outlining the craters and destroyed buildings. Again allowing Sydney to see through (mundane) dust, even though all she can make out is the magical and living/dead creatures auras.
I am now more in favour of the second option, as I looked back to when Sydney was holding the truesight orb. I could make out a small slither of what looked to be the inner orb. If my interpretation is correct, then the lightbee was still in the orb. Meaning that Sydney could not have been projecting her image.
Sydney likely didn’t use the truesight function. She probably sent the Lightbee up to give her a view of their surroundings.
Ooh, despite me discounting that, I just thought of how it could be OK. Namely that Sydney had sent off the lightbee, to project the image, and scout beyond the dust. However, once she had viewed the devastation, she dismissed the image and the lightbee returned to the orb. Whilst Sydney then tried to get everyone’s attention.
Thus explaining how the lightbee could be in the orb (which I think we can see a bit of it, in that scene), yet whilst keeping the use you described.
Which I am pleased about, as was my favoured option, before spotting that problem.
I just noticed on the last panel of 636 or 637, I can’t remember which, when she says she has new information, that she has comm orb eyes. I’ve only ever noticed her eyes look like that when using the lightbee function of the comm orb. I dont remember seeing her eyes change like that when she was using truesight or aura sight.
Dumb autocorrect messed up my name and I only just now noticed. Confirmed my suspicions. Page 469 when she used aura mode normal eyes and pupils. Page 497 when she used the lightbee her eyes changed to resemble the comm orb. Hence why I called them comm orb eyes.
Perhaps the Alari made the mistake of hosting a Disaster Area concert.
Ahh, I think you have finally brought us close to the true culprit. Harem!
Clearly Harem’s wibbly wobbly state is because she is turning into a zombie! All because she decided to sneak a drink (the bonus comic, below even the extra scene, underneath the main comic).
Yeah.
…
If Sciona is typical for an Alari, then this is very far from surprising. Either they ticked off the wrong people or they butchered each other.
My analysis of the scene, just for fun:
Almost certainly a result of high tech warfare, not a portal blast.
There are too many incidents of discrete damage vs. a pure shockwave, which you’d expect from the portal. Also, the team passed through the portal within moments of it opening, the shockwaves and active after-effects from such a massive blast wouldn’t even have begun to settle. They would have stepped through into a blooming mushroom cloud or something. Furthermore, Sciona is shown leaning on a nearby building with no apparent damage on it.
The weapons used were probably not massive weapons like nukes or large-scale mass drivers, but indiscriminate point bombardment weapons used en-masse, like cruise missiles, artillery shells, small scale mass drivers, beam bombardment or some combination of the above.
The pits in the foreground are suggestive of high angle bombardment with energy weapons – quite possibly orbital bombardment from ships or satellites. The pits are deeply conical in nature and still incandescently hot, which doesn’t suggest explosive weapons, though there might be high tech penetration warheads that could achieve that. It also suggests that whatever happened was VERY recent. Like, within hours of their arrival – a few days maximum – which is a very high level of coincidence.
As for the disposition of Sciona’s race, I would assume that they are at least modestly warlike and/or Sciona herself is very highly placed in their social hierarchy. She came through the portal operating under the assumption that her fellow people would quickly take up the banner to aid her in the conquest of Earth, despite her being gone for presumably some number of years.
Given the coincidence of the city/world’s destruction shortly before the portal opened, my best guess is that Sciona was quite possibly a/the leader of her empire, and that in the ?years? of her absence it fell into internecine warfare resulting ultimately in the recent destruction of their homeworld as the final result of that conflict, either by conflicting internal forces or by external forces taking advantage of their weakness.
Her deeply egotistical attitude towards even high end super-humans such as Maxima also suggest that she is not a ‘typical’ example of her species, but either far more powerful than a fellow Alarian, or far higher ranked, or both. A typical Alarian would not expect her entire race to rush to her aid after vanishing for several (possibly many) years.
Regarding survivors, unless the attacker(s) employed some kind of especially horrific bio-weapon or some kind of massive radiation wave that very quickly dissipated afterwards, I’d expect a very substantial percentage of the native population to survive an attack of this magnitude, even if most of the planet’s surface looks like this patch right here.
Point bombardment is a great way to blow up key infrastructure and sow general chaos, but if you’re looking to quickly depopulate a planet, it’s not very efficient. Of course, the following months of starvation and disease will do a lot of that work for you, so if you’re in no hurry, it’s fine.
The enemy could of course deploy large numbers of troops or hunter/killer drones or self-replicating bio-killers to finish off the defenseless enemy population after such an attack, but that process would likely take months to complete, at a minimum.
Given that we’re looking at a city that looks like it just sustained heavy bombardment a short while ago, there should be quite a few survivors in among the ruins – again with the possible exception of some ultra-weapon like planetary-scale neutron radiation bombardment. But if you had that, why bother to destroy anything when you could just cleanly annihilate the population and then move into all the nice buildings in a couple weeks?
So Sciona is unlikely to be the ‘last of her kind’ – not yet anyway.
I don’t know if Dave intended it, but do you guys all see the face in the rubble looking up at the crystal?
Yup. It looks like a ghostly alien (generic, rather than Alien) skull.
…
Is it possible Deus does in fact have superpowers that he gained because of being human but having sex with so many not-humans that their bacteria act funny after colonizing in his immune system and he wanted to bang Sciona because of some relation to microbiology that originates on her home planet?
There was some episode of Outer Limits or a movie or something I watched, where some chick was supposed to be protected by a time traveler so she wouldn’t come into physical contact with certain people, which would make her immune system become the source for a world-ending plague. Then the time traveler had to kill himself because he beat up the people the girl had originally come into contact with, so now he was the patient zero.
isn’t that the plot of the movie “12 Monkeys” with Bruce Willis? though i don’t remember a girl involved in it… maybe 12 Monkeys took the idea from somewhere else (Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits probably) and did a reboot on it?
can anybody say “loot” and also…free planet!
Lebensraum!
“Your last portal to Earth will be closing in 3, 2, 1 …”
Did you seriously use that Johnny Cash song? if so, you are ten times more awesome. Twenty points gryffindor!
Or rather…I’ll put the observation I wanted to make from a couple pages ago here.
What if that fog or cloud was actually smoke? If so…
On the one hand, I’m kinda surprised they didn’t smell scorched buildings and stuff upon arriving…but on the other hand, they just came through a chaotically unstable portal that sucked them up and spat them out, probably discombobulating not just Harem’s sense of self, but their more complex senses, such as balance (everyone but Sydney trips & falls) and smell. (She’s in a bubble, probably refreshing the air every so often with her green orb.)
Plus, they came from a battlescene with rock dust and oodles and splashes and galore-gallons of blood both old/dried and new (or at least magically kept fresh, ewww). The stench of blood as it slowly dries can be a bit…strong…on the sinuses sometimes, when encountered in copious quantities.
Humans are noted for the shortcomings on their olfactory sense. Being unable appreciate the bouquet from each corpse, or to distinguish subtle, distant, aromas, which may be masked by the more immediate ones.