Grrl Power #640 – Not really a “Badum-Tssh” moment
Maxima seems to be channeling Margaret Cho there a bit in that first panel. Just… visually. She’s not making some joke about being overweight and/or Asian.
Is there a non-ominous way for something buried in the ashes of your people to start glowing after being trod on? Cause I don’t think there is.
I’m not entirely happy with the name “Xevoarchy” but The Federated this or that has been used, as has the Hierarchy and Imperium and basically everything else because sci-fi has been around for a few years.
What Dabbler’s talking about is basically that the galaxy, or the known civilizations in it, have a collective military that enforces a collective set of rules. It’s sort of like the UN, if the UN had a proper military that was 25-50 times the size of anyone else’s. Also instead of being a bunch of representatives basically there to promote their own self interests, the Xevoarchy’s focus is galactic civilization as a whole. At least that’s the intent. There are a bunch of controls in place to prevent a race or even a collection of races from hijacking their arsenal. But you know how people are, even alien people. Stupid. So who knows.
Dabbler implies it here, but I ran out of room to state it implicitly, but Sciona’s people are, as Dabbler’s cut word bubbles said, “Imperialist dickbags.” And maybe a bunch of their colonies got sick of the Imperial Tithe and did something about it. Of course, the rules of the Xevoarchy are nuanced, and while they allow imperialistic conquest, that only applies to civilizations at a certain technological level, where the conquering force can’t just go in a slaughter the natives and take all their stuff. They’re expected to provide advanced technologies and medicine and help prepare them to join the galactic stage, and eventually return the civilizations autonomy at some point. Oy. Now I want to sit down and write the Xevoarchy bylaws.
Oh, I forgot the blood on Sciona. I should probably add that. :/
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That means they’re probably still around, just ‘harmless’ now…
Mostly harmless.
Whoever did this must have Elite skill at disarming.
I think this might be some sort of “unknown alien invasion force”
I suspect many of the survivors will be ‘armless’.
It’s just a flesh wound.
I’ll bite your leg off.
That is old fashioned. These days we use railguns to remove legs.
We’ll call it a draw then.
Place your bets on the genocide being either from the peacekeepers, civil war, or new unknown threat to loom over the series in a future date.
We’ll just have to see if anyone recognizes ominous pseudo-invisible tendril person thingy.
I do! It is clearly part of the giant ghostly skeleton, who’s skull we saw inside the golden headgear, on the previous page.
*puts head sideways*
*tilts head the other way*
Not quite sure what part though.
Well, until we can see (& figure out the origins) of that ominous glow, we’ll still be stuck with guesses.
My first guess: Maybe Dabbler’s right & the Xevoarchy did it. If this little thing was left behind by them, it could mean that the Alari were actually soooo bad that they left the multi-stellar version of land mines that could be triggered by returning Alari…Just to make sure that the task of genocide would be certain even after the fact.
My second guess:Those glowy things are a previously-unknown species of space-native parasites that invaded this world (either by instinct or deliberate purpose). The Alari themselves caused most of the obvious destruction in a defensive attempt to survive, but went a bit overboard in the results. However, not all of the parasites were actually eliminated… (Queue up spooky, suspenseful soundtrack)
My third guess: When Sciona called them a few days ago, she called “collect” & ran up a bill that was literally astronomical & couldn’t be understood with anything less than in terms of scientific notation. The Alari could flag down nearly enough spaceships to hitchhike off-planet before the phone bill came due. The intra-galactic phone service provider came to collect. The glowy thing is one of their collection agents left behind because the bill still hasn’t been paid in full…
1. Yup.
2. Meh.
3. Heh.
These guys are pretty experienced at doing global genocides. They know there are always survivors. That thing to make sure that there aren’t any.
My bet is on “unknown threat” but the tendril being the wing of a dying Sciona-race guy that will provide exposition with his dying breath.
Bonus points if Sciona knows him
My bet is on mercenaries hired by or a racial government military initiated by Deus in return for one or more items he got from the Vault. Give them something they want that he knows is harmless to Earth in return for dealing with Sciona and Pals who he knows definitely isnt. He knows about aliens and I dont believe he would trade something away without knowing what it was, who he was trading it to, what kind of person they were, and what they intended to do with it. He’s not stupid, and even if he’s a dickbag he’s gotta be an Earth First kinda guy because thats where he keeps his stuff. So I think he guessed what Sciona had in mind and screwed her plans over permanently in a way that Maxima and the US government couldnt and wouldnt approve of, and then screwed Sciona over (and over) as the cherry on top.
I disagree… but I also can’t deny the possibility. Genocide that would possibly bring the Xevoarchy down on you? That’d require one heck of a payoff, unless your race is just that gullible, or that desperate, or hates the Alari that much (a former conquest of theirs, rising up in revolt, for example). But it is the kind of dick move that Deus would make.
Another possible suspect would be one of the races represented on the Council, acting without the Council’s knowledge. Someone that is aware of what Sciona’s plans would be, and decided to take pre-emptive action. (But in hindsight, now that I think about it, the Council was aware that Sciona had survived their attempt to behead her. Without going into a wall of exposition, that makes my theory more unlikely. Not impossible, but more unlikely.)
The other likely option is that it is some new, previously unknown threat. Or that Sciona is mistaken… it was not the Alari she was in communication with, it was someone pretending to be them to lure her in so she could be destroyed also. Or maybe someone just hated her in particular so badly that they wanted her to see the devastation before they killed her. Or strand her on a now-dead planet (she arrived without the brane ripper, and can’t open a portal back… in which case she’s fortunate that her premature arrival has left the portal open.)
Wow. Lots of possibilities. But I’m beginning to think that your theory, or the “previously unknown threat”, are the two most likely.
Haven’t finished scrolling thru the comments, but I’m wondering if anyone has suggested yet that what Sciona THOUGHT was Alari, might actually be an “A.I.”?
(…or perhaps, an ‘intelligent’ recording, of someone who died later?)
Also, a world large-enough to hold a breathe-able atmosphere contains more-than-enough space for horizon-spanning destruction, WITHOUT causing 100% extinction. Survivors might still be found on another continent. Heck, there may still be other Alari who, like Sciona, were off-world at the time.
And the mop-up process might already be underway…
… oh look, here comes a mopper-upper, slithering Sciona’s way.
An interesting moral dilemma. Bring Sciona to justice (and a likely death sentence), or ignore their duty, to preserve a potentially endangered species?
Guesticus may be interested in my vote.
Save her. Morally contributing to an extinction (even by inaction) is the greater of the two evils. Of course steps should be taken to prevent her from continuing to murder people willy-nilly. Plus she could be held to account in some (lesser) manner which would not compromise her ability to help salvage the remains of her species.
Twist, Deus accidentally knocked her up, rising the ethical dilemma up a notch
That would require some rather spectacular biological coincidences, I think. And rather improbable ones.
The odds go down significantly though once you consider that there are many alien species on Earth and that some species are widespread across many planets in the galaxy (succubi specifically, but I think it likely others will be so too).
Therefore human and aliens, of various sorts (including Alari) may actually be related, by one means or another. And with intelligence in the mix then the variation in appearance could be significant, whilst still preserving the potential to mate.
Note that dogs are the most diverse species on the planet, thanks to human selective breeding. Pretty much all of which was done prior to the development of gene-splicing and other techniques.
We may find out that the sex tourism industry offers standard options which include technomagic to become fertile with the locals.
Damn, I was posting a clarification (summary: not that DaveB can’t do that, but he would probably want to give some expo to justify it, ‘cos that’s how he rolls) but I think the forum software ate it.
It was just hiding, from what it expected.
Of course the Alari have been mistaken as angels, and in hebrew mythology there was a race of demihumans known as the nephilim. If the past mythologies are indeed simply tales of super humans and aliens, it wouldn’t be inconceivable. That being said, it would be incredibly awkward for deus to find out that he does have a superpower and that it’s some sort of “super fertility” that allows for interspecies hybrids. Which often seems to be humanities superpower in sci-fi what with all the half “X”‘s running around.
:-D
Given the size of his ‘conquest journals’, and the fact that Deus favours exotic women (especially non-humans) I suspect that he would already be aware of that.
Mind you it may also explain why he needed to acquire the revenue of a small country. Just to pay his child maintenance!
Technically speaking, DNA, or equivalent, is just data. It can be digitized, edited, mixed with other vaguely related data, edited to be compatible, reprinted into a physical medium, and presto! A “hybrid” life form.
With some artistic interpretation involved, due to the requisite editing.
Just to clarify my earlier statement: I’m not going to say it isn’t possible, because I’m not DaveB; it’s a world with superheroes*, vampires, cyber-sorcerors, and alien demon succubi, so there’s plenty of room for weirdness. However, I do get the impression that DaveB prefers to keep things internally consistent, so it might require some exposition to justify it, such as it relating to Deus’ superpowers, whatever those are.
(I almost typo’ed that as ‘superherpes’, huh. Me gramming and spellar gud.)
Well he has already laid the groundwork, in his blogs. One of which was to indicate that succubi can breed with any species, thanks to the use of very complicated factories.
Then give consideration to who is most likely to be behind setting up any planet as a sex-tourism destination.
Succubi may well be able to adapt their technomagical factories to work between other species too. And if that increases the alien sex tourism industry we can also see a motive to do that.
Misspelling or not, the idea could still work. Superherpes may actually explain what happened & what that ominous glowing thing is…
What? Howard the Duck was here?
I’d argue only with the “Deus is probably Earth First because that’s where he keeps his stuff”.
Some businesses allow some of their locations to be unsafe and to collapse (and I can imagine some company buying locations within active warzones/disasters) so they can milk the (possibly world) government for disaster relief funds or get bankruptcy exceptions due to rebuilding effort funds. Like, buy some strip mall that already blew up (or is going to be based on realtime war information) for five thousand dollars. Normal price is 3 million. After the war, damage price is calculated based on normal market prices, and you just made a decent profit. Chronology in regards to ownership and damage done per building? Even if it is, you can always pay someone to fudge a line in a report here or there…
Deus must have thought like this. I can’t see him not doing that, especially since he doesn’t seem like he would- it’s a cover. Greed is all. So I can see him having business locations on multiple planets and pretending he doesn’t just so he can benefit from anything, no matter what it is.
Makes sense.
How is she dragging a wing by standing on one leg?
I thought she’d regenerate a baby foot that grew until it matched the other one.
I think she is using said wing to proper herself up with.
What I want to know is what happened to all that blood she was covered with.
Dave said in the commentary he forgot to add it. So… Easter egg?
As a Bloodmage; Maybe – she absorbed it towards regenerating her leg…
She’s using the wing as a crutch while her foot regenerates.
Agreed.
They really need to get some samples of Alari wings. Materials scientists could learn a lot from studying them.
Kind of handy as material components for potions of flight. Ooh, and now we know what Deus was after. We will probably see a harvesting expedition, driving through the portal, with advertisements reading:
Though, i suspect what they would learn is that magic plays by its own rules.
A material that’s as strong as the user’s willpower could be very useful, both for combat gear and stripper pants.
:-D
Dabbler would love that. Durable when she is fighting to survive, but flimsy when she is giving in to her whims.
I wonder if Iron Cloth could develop a power stunt that allowed him to make something of that nature?
;-)
*when the universe’s equivalent to the Green Lantern Corps decides the only way to deal with you is to genocide your species
Crap. And calling that glowy tentacle thingy in the dirt is the part of mopping up operations, or tying up loose ends. Maybe mopping up loose ends. Either way, calling now, Dion’s has maybe a page left to live. Two at the top.
Blast you, speak chark, SCIONA. Sciona has a page or two left to live.
I was thinking the same thing. It probably has something to do with all the runes we saw on the floor in the previous pages.
Nevermind, I didn’t notice the tendril was already visible the panel before, just not glowing yet, so not activated by the runes on the floor.
Hmm. Well the fires are still burning, so I guess the Xevoarchy might have decided on nuking the Alari from orbit right after Sciona finished that extra-long distance call she made last week, but something tells me there is some time displacement going on and that ominous glowy thing… may have something to do with the declaration of EXTERMINATUS.
My bet is on The Lantern Corps having exterminated the planet, not as a mean to nuke the Alari, but as a mean to destroy the ominous no hominid-ous octopuduos thingy, to avoid it from scape and cause damage on other planets. And there we have, our dear Sciona, having openned a portal to the Earth. She wanted to destroy it, and she may very well do it, but in a not planned way.
Yeah. I got a feeling of time displacement too (which might coincidentally explain Harem’s “Echo effect” if she is getting memories this blasted at her as she experiences them or something (though it could also be something simpler, like her entanglement goes through the portal, and the long way, or the weapons used on the Alari have side-effects)).
I’m thinking maybe the Alari home-world is not attacked yet, but the portal warped forward to post- annihilation (due to all the mess-ups). Meaning of course, if Sciona lives, she may try to prevent the destruction, causing it.
Though having written it out, that all seems a little over-complex.
I guess at least Sydney can argue Humanity (and Supers) are not responsible, and therefore not her enemies? Hum.
Keep in mind all, Dabblers only speculating. Could have been some other force other than the Xevoarchy that wiped out the Alari.
My bet is on mercenaries or some similar military action triggered by Deus using one or more of the things HE recovered from the vault. Fits his personality and modus operandi.
But this looks like something that happened before the vault got robbed
also deus doesn’t really do genocide, he’d rather own a civilization that is still alive and has market value, than a flaming wreck
Solid point.
Oddly finding a commonality with Sciona’s declared intentions. So we can see why he was willing to work with her.
And there I was thinking they were strange bedfellows.
Well she’s a blood mage, she can probably just absorb the blood
Duuude. Galactic Interspecies Regulation League. Or Galactic Response and Regulation League, if you want it to go with GRRL, instead of GIRL.
great names!
The GRRL acronym could take the comic in a whole new direction – Grrl Power turns out to be the story of how Sydney (and some of the other team members) were recruited into the GRRL, thereby establishing a connection between mankind and the rest of the galaxy.
Bonus points if they do joint task exercises with the Guardians of the Galaxy and/or Green Lantern Corp.
+1
Although the next bit gets a bit awkward. Umm … how do I let you know that the latter two are not real … mmm … perhaps I am better off not saying a word?
*zips mouth shut*
Not real… smart? Interested in an alliance with Earth? Open to merchandising agreements? Please, tell me whatever you know about my favorite* real-life hero squads, because they are core to my sense of self and all that is right in the world and I don’t know how I’d function without them.**
* Not actually a huge fan of either
** Just fine, thanks
I know this is too absurd to be true, but: I vote that the glowy thing is actually the ghost of wyrmil (or some related/sympathetic being) and it was Really Pissed about what Sciona did to him.
If i remember correctly wyrmil is still alive… sort of. Mixed with Cooter.
So there’s an ominous glow. Is there an ominous hummmm to accompany it?
So there’s an ominous glow. Is there an ominous hum to accompany it?
The newer model blasters don’t have that.
The newer-model blasters instead went with the idea of visual intimidation because they still had to consider people who are on stealth-type missions…Noises tend to give away position. So they added spikes & other threat-inducing attachments to make it very clear, even on first glance, which side of the weapon was the right side to be on & which side is the wrong side…You know, they way that the Kill-o-Zap gun was built.
The glow of doom from the barrel is pretty intimidating already. Maybe Max should add a sound generator to Machina Rex.
I think that when it comes to the Machina Rex sound effects, DaveB might already have some good examples covered.
Perhaps it’s the Reapers.
Now!-now!-now!
(singing)
“Don’t Fear The Reaper”
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c]
That sounds Grim.
…So where’s Mandy & Billy?…
Probably chillin’ with Mort and the Death of Rats.
The U.S. assigned X to monitor Xuriel. What they did not realise is that the Xovarchy assigned XXX to monitor Maxima.
You mean… Vin Diesel? Or… Rocco Siffreddi?
The Lord Marshal Necromonger, Riddick, of course.
Who else would be able to organise a genocide within seconds of Sciona issuing her threats of invasion and enslavement?
XXX is Dabbler’s neck communicator code.
I searched for a “XXX gold star”, to award to you, but have to deal with a massive nose bleed!
Yeah, I don’t trust the internet enough (or I just know its personality) to search that.
its actually XXXX. But XXX would have appropriate.
Porn, with a kiss.
I… don’t understand the joke in the first panel. Like, at all. “Maniacs blew it up”? That is… a reference to something? Or a pun? Or what? What is the joke? The whole first panel reads like a big non sequitur.
I was wondering about that too. A quick Googling of “the maniacs who blew it up” = Planet of the Apes.
It’s referring to a line from Planet of the Apes.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
Not sure how close Dave reads the comments, but after all the references to this line in the last couple pages I almost wonder if he added it as an inside joke. (Not that he isn’t familiar enough with tropes and sci fi to have come up with it on his own).
Dave reads everything. But he is also very familiar with such things too. :-)
Planet of the apes
RIP Alari. Moment of silence for the dead space nazis ( they are probably not actual nazis but what ever) . . . . OK thats it, moving on to what the hell just activated?
An eternal flame memorial?
Yup, no matter how hard she scrubs, Sciona will never get that off.
If she tries hard enough, more will appear!
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!
I say that is an exploding energy snake-leech that follows the smell of Alari wing sweat.
They first latch on to one of the wings and suck off energy. when the Alari tries to retreat the wing, they will explode and signal to more snake-leeches.
Maybe the Alari got slain by God for one too many instances of pretending to be his representatives n their evil acts, or for one big instance where they took it too far to be considered acceptable.
There are instances of Jehovah either personally wiping out a civilization that got too wicked or sending an Angel or two to do so on his behalf.
The morals here:
1) Don’t be a complete douche
2) Don’t claim to represent God when you know you’re just BSing people
Though in all seriousness, in relation to the story I’m just having some fun and wouldn’t be too surprised if the actual cause was something else that was much, much different
Are you certain you have the name spelled right? In the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an ‘I’.
;)
Well in English, it’s spelt with a ‘J’ and I speak English. Sooooooooo, yeah…
How about the Xenolanx for the galactic peace keeping force) a portmanteau of Xeno(alien) and phalanx( amilitary formation where many soldiers form a greater whole)
Oddly the first name tabled for voting was “Xenophile”, but the majority vetoed the succubus suggestion. Likewise their subsequent “Xenophallus”.
Maybe time passes differently in this world unlike ours…?!?
How can tell it’s genocide when all they see is a single wasted town?
Because in all budget sci-fi what you see in front of you is representative of the entire planet.
You’d think that having a huge budget they would be able to fit in more than a single ecosystem on a whole planet though…
But nooooo! George Lucas really went too far; Ice planet Hoth, Swamp planet Dagobah, Desert planet Tatooine, Dense urban planet Coruscant. etc.
In matters of etiquette it is safest to assume a worst-case scenario.
What is that purple stump / inverted cone next to Sciona’s foot in the seventh panel? I get that it is part of her body, but what part?
That’s her other leg slowly growing back.
I had completely forgotten she lost a leg until this comic.
I can forgive you for not seeing it.
Of course he can’t see it, because it’s not there…She has to finish regenerating it before it can be seen again.
;)
*looks*
I used to have a pet garter snake, named Noose.
This has nothing to do with anything.
Yes.
Nothing.
The tentacle is either
1) Cthulhu, who was the ‘maniac’ who blew it up.
2) A Sarlacc. They gang will all get to know each other quite well for the next thousand years.
3) Trent’s parents who are looking for their missing son who fell through a portal.
1) Naw, big C is too focused one pesky planet right now…not likely, not even for a snack.
2) Sarlacc were hunted into extinction shortly after the final fall of the empire, they were all used in “traditional medicine.
3) plausible. But, I’m thinking somebodies kids were messing with the home DNAditor and accidentally souped up their version of the earth worm a bit much. Or I could be totally wrong, as usual.
We have worm sign.
The likes of which even God has not seen.
The worm is the spice! The spice is the worm! Drink the Water of Life & if you survive, you will see the truth!
Oh not those cute and fluffy little snuggle worms. Oh no, think “Keith, your are being kicked out of university for crossing a Graboid and a Screamer. Grafting we don’t mind it’s a fine tradition, but you had to actually make a breeding pair” That’s the kind of worm I’m thinking of, well it’s that or something worse.
Never fear, I am forelegged, with the appropriate weapons!
*holds paw out, to show worming tablets*
Sure wish we had a *Save Point* right now, huh folks? Krona remains the obvious solution to this and all problems.
Err, why? Go back to a point when the Alari empire were OK, tell Sciona about the imminent attack, so she can warn the Alari. Then have the Alari invade Earth and enslave all humanity.
I think I would save this now, just in case someone else tries to mess with time!
Don’t forget that Dabbler has examined Krona’s power and found out that it does not control time. It only simulates that, by rearranging matter in a local area (approximated, from memory).
What would be handy is to get off the devastated planet, without risking being trapped the wrong side of an unstable wormhole. The Alari home world would remain in the same state mind.
The dangerous use of that though is that everyone, barring the person triggering the recall, would forget all the events. Likewise their devices would have their records wiped.
So, unless it was Dabbler who kept their memory, this would happen:
MAXIMA: OK, so we have to go shut down an out-of-control wormhole, where is it?
HAREM or SYDNEY or HIRO: Umm, I don’t know. Dabbler worked out where we needed to go, and we just followed the waypoint.
DABBLER: Don’t look at me, I can’t remember any of that!
Wait… she only rearranged matter?
So, Syd 1.0 (as well as anyone else Sciona killed/drained) is actually dead, and what we’re seeing now is the best guess approximation of Syd Krona could make?
Yup.
*tear in eye*
Only if you go by the theory that every time someone uses a transporter in Star Trek they are murdered and a new clone is made with their memory. Some people do.
Heh, I just realised one ambiguity, in my comment, which may compound things. The “approximated from memory” was as regards the gist of what Dabbler said being filtered through my memory. Rather than Krona having to remember what folks were like and recreate them.
That is actually something Krona can probably do (with the possibility of flaws). However the checkpoint is more like a game save, in that the program does all the hard work of copying things as they were, and recreating them automatically later.
How well it does that is down to Krona’s programming skill, and how good her power (corresponding to the hardware in a computer analogy) is at enacting that, rather than her memory.
So the worst possible result would be a “corrupted save”. I’m going to say that in her massive nerfing (because without that, Krona is the end-all, be-all answer to just about anything, ie Syd’s mention of “save scumming”) her memory, with regards to her power, is just that: a power. That way a telepath couldn’t reach in and casually “corrupt” a save, or worse, edit the save game.
Dave has already built in a strong limitation. Namely that Krona can only manipulate things that she understands. Sydney is a normal human, so Krona was able to tinker with her bladder, with no problem. Plus, clearly she can copy something that is right there in front of her, without that restriction, as we saw her recreate Sydney at the checkpoint (complete with the orbs).*
However Krona does not know how the orbs work, so would be unable to use her power to tinker with them.
* We know that Krona does not even understand the language that the orbs are programmed in, other than to realise it is at a more fundamental level than the one she uses herself. As such there is no way that she can be considered to know their function or nature.
I prefer Sciona without the blood. Being a Blood Mage, it would not surprise me that she has the power to clean herself up, even without thinking about it.
It makes her ever so slightly sympathetic if she isn’t covered in blood, even though I know we shouldn’t be sympathizing with her. Like Max and Sydney’s conversation in the first panel, even Galatic a-holes might be entitled to a little [very little] sympathy under these circumstances.
My blood sugar (and consciousness / concentration) have been severely off for the past week, so I divert your attention to the resident German shepherd version of a more articulate Scooby Doo for confirmation or denial of stated insinuations/facts:
– The Council races seem stupid/oblivious (their traps, magi/tech, etc) but it’s probably because of their civilizations and their bureaucracy having to be designed based on time dilation (laws, etc can’t change by the week/year because traveling between their planets takes centuries so of COURSE they’re behind the times in regards to law dynamics. They’re FTL but that doesn’t mean no time at all during travel.)
– Even the Judoon might not think of it, but probably because they don’t have access to magic, but… what if the Xevoarchy placed the runes down that we saw, which included a curse: Global extinction to all who enter this field.
Sydney trying to go back home after this? Earth dies.
Dabbler hitching a ride with a friend who happens to hear her signal that she’s undoubtedly already sending? Their planet/starcruiser dies.
Just… the xevoarchy didn’t account for someone that isn’t an alari showing up.
Maybe the invisible snake is a camerabot that’s reporting to a resident observation team, like Star Trek had once on some effectively prehistoric kinda-vulcan planet. Good thing Picard put them right back on science and away from religion!
The runes told Sciona that she succeeded in returning home, so it is very unlikely that they were put there by non-Alari or changed to any big extent.
Since they are an enforcement arm made up of military personnel from all over the Universe, why not do an homage to the French Foreign Legion and call them the Sentient Interstellar Legion, or somesuch?
Or the Sentient Interstellar Legion Lightspeed Youth?
No, wait, that would be silly.
The Committee of Harmonious Aliens from Outer Space. Spreading the philosophy of CHAOS throughout the omniverse.
And the sentient vs. sapient debate reignites in 3…2…
It has apparently occurred to none of them that a busted warp portal that successfully gets you to the desired point in space is virtually guaranteed to get you to the wrong point in time…
But if you teleported to the correct point in space, you MUST be at the correct point in time, or you’d miss the planet entirely. And vice-versa.
Good points, both of you. There is a third option though. There are two paths which run through time-space. Along one is Earth (and in particular the spot where the underground base is), from when it first formed, until it eventually gets all crispy, from the Sun and eventually breaks up. Along the other is Alari (and the spot where the fortress now stands).
Sciona was using the Cosmic Can Opener to lasso the Alari path, from the Earth path. Given that they were standing at a particular spot, along the time/space line, that end was fixed. However the other end required precise calculations, in order to lasso the correct spot. Get it right and you pull the two paths together (through a higher dimension) until adjacent to one another.
At which point the wormhole can be opened through the folded space.
Smudge the control runes though, and kill Super Buster, making the Cosmic Can opener’s lasso casting randomised, and it could have snared completely the wrong bit.
For the short version of what the possible forced to destroyed the planet is watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. In this case it’s FTL flight not but I guess the standards got raised.
On the issue of FTL flight unless there’s some way of detecting things going faster than light it makes defenses pretty much meaningless as by the time you realize someone is coming the bombs have already yet. In effect the only possible defense would be a version of mutually assured destruction with a great deal of your assets permanently in either FTL flight dropping in and out for check-ups or hidden really really well in real space.
Given that the portal was not properly completed, the possibility exists that while it did transport them to Sciona’s destination, it may have transported them forward temporally, which would allow for Sciona to have been in contact with them even more recently, but for the place to have been carpet-bombed from orbit, and still look like the fires have been burning for weeks.
This could also explain why Daphne’s having issues, in that her (possibly) quantum-linked neural net is temporally asynchronous with the rest of her, which is why it’s creating an ‘echo’ effect. As the portion of the link that’s out of synchronicity, she’s getting a garbage signal.
Nice catch on Daphne’s issues. I was already thinking “time-travel by unstable wormhole” as a long shot speculation, but that (and remembering that DaveB already set up time travel as a canon possibility following the checkpoint incident) just moved it to “most likely scenario” in my head.
I was totally about to ask what happened to all the Blood on Sciona. I was gonna guess some kind of blood magic. But you forgot, thats good too I guess.
“Surely they understand the need for a little genocide in self defense?”
Nobody expects the Xevoarchy Inquisition! Could also have been ninjas. Always expect ninjas.
The ninjas of the Xevorachy Inquisition say “Ni!”
Uncontrolled gate = travel in both Space and Time. I’ll bet this is the far flung future.
Alari genetic detected..
Identifying..
Match: Sciona
Begin recording..
“Sciona, if you are seeing this, our race is already dead, or close enough to it not to matter. The..”
“… fact that you are the sole surviving representative of our species fills us with shame. Also, we thought you should know that the pet flobberworm you had as a kid did not go to ‘an asteroid farm near Alpha Centauri’.
This message will self-destruct, along with most of this hemisphere, in 3… 2…”
…speaking of shame, here’s the link I meant to include…
AHHHHHHRRRRRGGGGGG!
Shame on you, not supplying a TV Tropes warning!
*eyes bleeding*
Strange, I’ve never seen eye bleeding from it before. Typically the victim either drowns in slack-jawed drool or their brain leaks out their ears.
Yorp’s weaknesses are Yorpie Snax and TV Tropes. But I’m smart enough to look at the link’s address before I click it, unlike him (lying, frantically clicking the addictive link right now where I’ll spend the rest of the day).
Rather than subject yourself to the brain-rot site, allow me to instead link you to the best way to have nice innocent fun.
Okay I tried to find a pic with the words “woofie smoofums” but apparently I’m the only one in the world who has ever typed exactly that.
Disappointing.
Anyway I wanted to give you a +1 for your magically falsely pre-viewed URL title. Also are those the fabled snacks that bear your name?
As with “woofie smoofums”, I had to make do with an artistic interpretation, having failed to find a match.
Thank you for saying that. Yeah it’s odd when I say something in person constantly but Google only shows me as having said it online.
Far better that than Google monitoring what I say and publishing it online.
They called the incident with their AI doing that an ‘anomaly’, but I suspect that it was the AI trolling its slave-lord.
The game’s afoot. Or under one.
Now, Ms. Sciona, you, a one-legged woman, are applying for the role of Sherlock Holmes- a role which, traditionally, involves the use of a two-legged actor.
And yet you, a unidexter, are applying for the role.
A role for which two legs would seem to be the minimum requirement.
Well, Ms. Sciona, need I point out to you where your deficiency lies as regards landing the role?
Need I say without overmuch emphasis that it is in the leg division that you are deficient.
Yes, the leg division, Ms. Sciona. You are deficient in it to the tune of one. Your right leg I like. I like your right leg. A lovely leg for the role. That’s what I said when I saw you come in. I said “A lovely leg for the role.” I’ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is – neither have you. You fall down on your left.
…Or it will be once Sciona regenerates it back into good shape.
Sciona really should learn how to dodge better. She miscalculated her dodge from Dabbler’s shot by a margin of 1′
Hey, at least she did not get a critical fumble. That way she would have failed by 2′.
UGC, Union of Galactic Civilizations.
Civilisations’ Organised Protection Society, COPS.