Grrl Power #699 – Snek surfing
I hadn’t quite planned on Cora’s hard light projector being able to extend that far, because on top of giving her fairly broad disguise and shapeshifting powers, (on top of being a bit of a combat monster already), having an 18′ range on hard light constructs kind of turns her into a mini color accurate Green Lantern. At the very least, she could do a Doc Oc thing, or like a God of War bit with the sword/hook things on chains. I’m trying to avoid serious power creep with Cora, partially because I envisioned her being pretty powerful to begin with.
My half-assed solution to this is that everything on the snek tail past the second ground contact point is just projected hologram, and not actually hard light. So Cora’s cheating a bit there. I’ll say the hard light cutoff is about 8′. Still.
When Cora said this was an old loadout, she wasn’t kidding. I have a pencil drawing of her in this getup that’s like, 15-ish years old. She’s holding 4 scimitars in it, even though she’s not much of a melee fighter if she can avoid it. I had planned on scanning it, but it’s somewhere in a 10″ deep stack of drawings, so I’ll keep looking for it.
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.
I was WONDERING about the other plotline….
Since Deus is conducting some sort of business transaction that requires signing documents, it is clear that this is more than a simple shopping trip for him. You have to wonder what he just agreed to. I’m going to guess he’s just purchased space elevator technology in exchange for the alien dude’s space freight company getting exclusive docking rights for a few decades. This would explain why Deus choose an equatorial country to “liberate.”
Vale on the other hand is just using this as an opportunity to make the ultimate trip to the mall.
Bad country to “liberate” as we’ve already discussed his dependency on Opal to get things in and out of that landlocked state.
Land locked, not space locked.
Doesn’t really matter where you are on the planet if you use star gates, and if he can get his hands on more consistent portal tech he can just set up multiple intercontinental gates to transport goods without relying on one person along with off world transactions.
It’s very much possible he’s just shopping for technology he didn’t have access to before (to replicate it of course). On the one hand, he’s too careful a planner to make such huge plans in a single hour… but on the other hand he’s exactly the type to make such huge plans in a single hour.
I’m thinking the buying of a country is more motivated by the idea that there, he can do whatever he pleases with no legal restriction, or prying eyes, or taxes… or maybe he needed stuff from a certain alien temple. Or most simply, maybe this was the best way to get unlimited power (surely at a profit by being part of the country’s infrastructure, and without anyone looking into it). And there are still his mysterious “far-reaching goals”, which could be what you mentioned, or an ambitious “buy the world” plot.
I could see this being a perfectly legal transaction, and he’s only getting some small bit of tech that allows us , on Earth, to make that little jump to industrial manufacture of long-chain carbon nanomolecules. That’s all he’d need for Space Elevator, and also would be, in and of itself, a potent economic boon. And it’s only JUST on the edge of being tech we don’t have.
Nothing like juggling a bunch of MacGuffins to make the plot threads wave in the wind*. It is fun when they finally start coming back together though.
*See also actual juggling with threads.
This might just result in Sydney starting a taxi service between shifts. What other planets does he want to visit?
It seems that Vale’s one-liner for today could have just as easily been delivered by Sgt. Shultz from the old TV comedy show, Hogan’s Heroes.
“I see NOTHING!”
That was my reaction as well!
Well, here goes my idea of strapping extra hardlight hands to Sydney, Dzenyatta-style so she could use all the orbs at the same time.
It’s possible that the hard light hands don’t have the neural complexity necessary to work that way.
Actually, this raises a question. Is it possible that the reason she needs to hold the orbs in her hands is that they give a subtle tactile feedback, and that no other part of the human body is sensitive enough to work that way?
Could be. Recall those highschool textbook diagrams that mapped the somasensory cortex to the skin producing a distorted homunculus.
http://www.movementislife.be/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/I10-13-homunculus.jpg
But she didn’t have any luck with her feet, and one would suppose she tried her mouth, even though it wasn’t shown.
Next on the list are genitals if I recall correctly.
Actually I don’t want to know how that went.
I’m just waiting to see when she figures out that they actually function like Materia from the FF games, and she hasn’t figured out how to get them to actually bond into her body. *lol*
Not demonstrated directly but there was a panel with pants descending…
That was her butt she was experimenting with
I’m a DM. I’ve had player’s who’s characters have done what you are afraid to visualize. I’ve not been lucky like that: “You’ve done what with what!!?” (major artifact).
Oh, a humanoid simulicrum that looks like this thing in the last panel?
She did try her feet, and those are a close second to hands in terms on nerve density.
The two orb limit is to prevent Syd from becoming over powered and suddenly boring.
In thinking through combos, I wonder if the PPO can shoot from the LightBee projection?
This is sooooo much better than my guess. Pure and utter awesomeness.
I don’t think ANYONE was expecting ‘Marilith-lite’.
Yep. When the scimitars were mentioned, the Marilith instantly popped into my mind.
I imagine that controlling the lower arms must feel like your legs have just been swapped out with arms by Doctor Nick.
Deus groaning that he might not be the first when he finds out. Or start considering Sydney to be a worthy adversary type?
Also using the flight orb to keep her balance. Very cool.
Just read Dues’s bio next the comic…. come across a bit shady at times…. to call that an understatement would be a gross negligence..
Not at all what I anticipated. Once again Dave has managed to come up with something far cooler than any of us guessed. Let’s just hope Cora doesn’t use this loadout on any primitive planets (like Earth) as she’d end up kickstarting a whole new mythos.
Nice Naga
4-armed Naga!
Lamia or Marilith would be more fitting
I’ve seen 4-amed nagas but not t 4-armed lamias, and i’ve not heard of mariliths … although, according to someone else in this comment field, mariliths has 6 arms, not 4.
Actually design wise if we want to get all technical and name correcting than
Dragon, or Drakaina, or female Greek dragon would be the only thing that actually looked like this in mythology (consistently) although they also tended to have extra parts like multiple limbs, wings, wolf heads on their waists, ect… although the ancestor of the Sythians supposedly was one of these with a more just human woman upper body, snake lower body.
Lamia is debatable, due to multiple sources and cross-cultural variation, as on one hand we have the scaled lion bodied human headed one, but then we also have the lower body is a snake one who was a queen that became a child eating demon because Hera killed her kids; and the Lamiai with that extra I on there that were basically snake succubae / vampires.
Naga are typically depicted as snake with human heads, but are also shape shifters, and just as snakes.
Although if we want to use modern fantasy, which seems in part thanks to video games and the internet to have streamlined..or shoe horned depending on how you want to take it, certain terms to certain things. Naga has become more and more the monstrous or more snake like version and Lamia the more human with half snake body.
-I never see anyone use a D&D term like Merilith for them, *like never see Drow or Drider rather than Dark Elf or Arachne, unless being D&D specific-
D&D Lamia are half-human, half-quadruped beast hybrids, usually the upper part of a lamia is that of a beautiful human woman, its lower body is that of a beast such as a goat, deer, or lion. Lamia Nobles are the half serpents.
Then in Greek myth, which really mixes up things with at least 3 Lamia, one being a daughter of Poseidon. one being a woman who transformed into a monster after Hera destroyed (or made her destroy) all her children, one being a monster that terrorised the area near Delphi (it’s also known as Sybaris).
Then we have the Lamia from Basque mythology which were river sirens who looked completely human except for their feet, which resembled the webbed feet of ducks.
And finally there’s the Slavic (Bulgarian in this case) dragon species…
Naga are from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and denotes a race of semi-divine beings who dwell in the Netherworld, ad can take three forms: wholly humans with snakes on the heads and necks; common serpents or as half-human half-snake beings.
Marilith are demons which resemble women with six arms and a lower torso of a serpent.
And while I believe you have never seen anyone using a D&D term for certain creatures, it’s quite common amongst Roleplayers and gamers to use the D&D terms for black skinned elves (drow), spidertaurs (drider), though it gets confusing with Naga and Lamia as those terms get used interchangeably for any snaketaur (something with a human torso, arms and head, and lower snake body), as we all know what they look like.
I love every aspect of this mode. the costume, the tech, the color scheme. just, knocked it out of the park. well done!
if there was any doubt about knowing Dabbler, this should eliminate it. Gee I wonder where she got the idea of using extra arms from…
DaveB, gotta ask:
Is Cora’s form here a tribute to something? Like to D&D or to a webcomic?
There’s a type of multi-armed serpent Demon in D&D called a Marilith, although those have 6 arms instead of 4.
Halo and Cora are getting along REALLY well…. is this a costume thing? a girl thing? Does Cora just like showing off her toys? Does she see Halo as this weird but loveable little puppy-primitive?
……
wait a minute… maybe Halo radiates a “release your inner geek” aura.. like Turn Undead but Turn on Geeky’ness?
She did get Maxima to show her geeky side in that “You say that with PRIDE!” bit.
I think Halo’s inner child just loves all Cora’s toys. I’m sure my inner six year old would.
And Cora is loving an appreciative audience for something she spends a lot of time on :D
Indeed. Having a beginner be super excited to learn about one of your passions is incredibly fun and tends to get people to open up.
I think Cora likes to show off and Sydney likes all the cool toys and reacts to excited. They just have a lot of fun together.
The unknown orbs give Sydney a +5 to Charisma. Hence her antics coming across as endearing/charming vs annoying.
I’m sure there’s a term for it, but 4 limbs seems standard for many Earth creatures.
Two arms plus two legs for apes and humans.
Four legs for cats, dogs, horses, etc.
Two legs and two wings for birds.
Not sure about whales and such.
It’s as if the brains only have 4 mechanical output channels.
actually whales evolved from land bound mammals and still have remnants of the bones that were lower legs before they went back into the water.
I believe the term is “tetrapod”.
that’s because of our shared ancestry. all tetrapods share them same 4 fin-ed fish in their history and as evolution doesn’t randomly add new limbs it just refines they ones we already have. that means we all use that same mold on how the body works.
there were and still are other body base types out there like bugs and arachnids (honestly since they out number us 1000 to one yo could say all 4 limbed animals are actually the odd balls of the animal kingdom.) . or the radial symmetry of star fish and plants and so much more.
All vertebrates with a full skeleton (Gnathostomata), which are the fishes (including sharks and rays), amphibians, reptiles, birds (including the extinct dinosaurs too) and mammals (including marsupials), are all built on this same model. The count and arrangement of bones is the same for each, just with different sizes and uses for each and not just adjusting for the size of the animal. Some bones are fused or so small as to be useless, such as tails on apes (entirely internal) or thumbs on ungulates. We have 7 bones in our neck; so do mice, elephants, crocodiles and giraffes (theirs is just a lot longer). The basic pattern continues.
There are a few groups within the infraphylum that deviate from the pattern, such as snakes, but the vast majority follow the same overall pattern with two pectoral limbs near the head and another pair attached to the pelvis, along with a bony (and often muscular) tail used for various purposes depending on the critter’s environment. The pelvis is also important as the end of the digestive system, the exit for the renal system and the exit (and sometimes entrance) for the reproductive system; those can be much more efficient when there is a bone collar available to pull against when trying to get things out.
I think snakes still do have remnants of limbs, but you can’t see them on surface because the bones are too small.
At least Constrictors still have some surface remnants in the form of tiny downright itty bitty limb spikes.
An interesting quirk of tetrapod gaits is that the simplest model that produces all of them as a stable pattern requires 8 linked nodes, 4 of which control limbs, while the other 4 merely stabilise certain patterns. So, in a sense, and assuming the way the brain does it matches the mathematical model rather than being something more complicated, tetrapods are actually octopods missing half their limbs…
Actually, by number of species, hexapods are the most common earth creature, somewhere around 80% of all earth species. Tetrapods are only thought to be common because the individual is larger and more visible. By number or total mass, insects vastly outnumber humans or any other species on this planet.
That factoid has always seemed unfathomable and a little creepy to me. Just think, somewhere out there is a giant multi-human-equivalent mass of bugs with your name on it, several times larger than you. Probably working on how to get through your basement window when the time comes.
Could be worse, could be something out there like the ants from Phase IV.
Also why would it need to get through your basement window when there’s perfectly good AC ducts and/or letterboxes leading into your home. Since a bug mass wouldn’t need to keep its humanoid form, that’s just not efficient.
Many hexapodal critters also have wings, so maybe they also have eight brain locomotion modules.
And then there is centipede and millipede to totally toss out the entire thing.
*sigh* there needs to be a reg-ex for finding and describing IRL and fictional genus type that Google understans :)
Lookit them with the basket!!!
Possibly my favourite point in all literature, ever :)
4 or 5 Ranks of Variable Power would cover this in Mutants & Masterminds and easily let her do everything she’s done.
Tetrapods is the word you’re looking for:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapod
We have four limbs because we all diverged from an ancestor who also had four limbs.
It’s one of the things that irritated me with Avatar.
Here you have an entire planet where every creature had 6 limbs, except the Na’vi. Why? That’s not how this works.
the Na’vi evolved higher brain function and have a prehensile tail that connects them to the animals and plants on the planet, so I’d say that more than makes up for one missing limb
Then explain kiwi.
and whales.
Both are tetrapoidal species, but only have a single pair of limbs today.
Or snakes. They started with two pairs and have non left.
Sorry to disappoint, but kiwi DO have vestigial wings, so still fall in to the ‘tetrapod’ classification.
Poor kiwi.
True fact: a kiwi farmer was the first man to fly, a couple months (or was it years?) before Wrong Sisters
As early as 1902, and he flew in a monoplane as opposed to a biplane.
Whales also have vestigial hind limbs. They’re not visible externally, but the bones are still there in some species. Mammals are all pretty clearly related.
Well, if you want the real reason, it’s because all the creatures on Pandora were completely CGI, except for the Na’vi. To make the Na’vi more relatable, they used motion capture technology with human actors, and humans don’t have 6 limbs.
The Na’vi aren’t hexapods like the rest of the higher fauna because they aren’t native to Pandora. They’re the feral/degenerate descendants of a much higher tech-level race that dropped by, manipulated the local biome to all have sockets they could plug into, and then got so comfy they lost their spacefaring culture.
Oh, that’s one of the fan theories, isn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s an animal on Pandora called the prolemuris (for lack of a better description, I’ll call them the blue lemur-monkey things). Unlike other Pandoran animals, the prolemuris has only a single neural queue (all the other animals have two neural queues), no secondary set of eyes (all the other animals have two pairs of eyes), and no operculi in their chests. While they do have two pairs of arms – making for six limbs, along with their legs – the upper arms are partially fused together. From the shoulder to the elbow, the prolemuris has only one large arm, but at the elbow it bifurcates into two separate forearms.
Officially (and this is from canon material), the prolemuris represents a transitional evolutionary step between the other six-limbed animals on Pandora, and four-limbed creatures like the Na’vi. Because of this official material, I find the fan theory to be an interesting hypothesis, but I find it less than compelling on the weight of the evidence offered. I would need more or better evidence.
it’s pretty much canon Prolemuris are their ancestors.
Because it’s really really obvious that Pandora is a heavily if not completely constructed world and the na’vi are in all likelyhood not native to the moon
Not according to canon material, Zog. Any theory that the Na’vi are not native to Pandora is just that… a theory. And an incorrect one, at that.
you forgot about Sphinx from the Honor Harrington books, every creature mentioned from there except humans has 6 limbs or their equivalent (Sphinxian koi have 6 fins for example)
I really hope Deus and Sydney run in to each other. That would be hilarious.
Is the rubble Cora is kicking up real or part of the illusion? I doubt that the fishcop lady would appreciate Cora tearing up the public walkways.
I do not. That’s a ticket for littering and jaywalking.
Request timed out, hope this isn’t a double-post.
Cora said before that the station doesn’t allow certain advance technology to “primitive” planets. So, is Deus’ plan to take a ship home? Was the portal a one way trip, and now he needs a lift? I cant imagine he is able to call up the portal when ever, and back when they showed us the portal, it seemed to take up a lot of power to just turn on.I doubt he would keep it on. Plus, they would probably have to go through customs to get back to the portal.
It’s all in the timing…provided he doesn’t also have a subspace radio.
Alternately, the portal may have “powered down” to a mere pinprick, to allow him to use his smartphone to order it back to full size…and full power consumption.
most things take more power to start up than to maintain running, and the updraft generator thing would supply a constant amount of power once it was running, so if it supplied enough power to start up the gate it would, barring malfunction, be able to maintain it indefinitely. and before he went through he said something to the effect of “keep the lights on”… since he built his own gate it might be that his entry point and return point is not on one of the standard gate locations and not connected to the gate network, so bypasses “customs”, further supported by the fact that he did not go through any bureaucracy on arrival
…Seriously, though, where the hell did Cora park?! It seems like the two must have gone miles by now.
Since they’ve just passed Deus, again, it seems most likely not that far to the ship, and Cora is just taking the scenic circle route to show off her toys to the newbie.
Wheeee!
Well, they did have that bonding moment, where they all but wiped out an alley full of thugs.
I would have to wonder how many of those toughs were embedded in the walls,…at about thirty feet up, by Sydney’s lighthook throw.
None.
Cora did all the work before Syd could barely react.
Hence the expression on her face in the aftermath.
Good point.
Nobody. Ever. Looks . Up.
Heh, like I said before, Sydney has the luck of the devil. Even when they talkes to the police after the fight, nobody connected her with the pile-up of spaceships she had just caused. Looks like she gets away scott free after all.
But seriously, yes, how long have they been walking? Sydney’s endurance stat must be maxed out if you consider the day she’s having, and she still seems perfectly fine!
Something tells me the ships were more a case of bumper cars than crash and burn wreckage.
I would give the slow moving space craft more credit than human shuttles and planes in terms of durability, and possibly always on even if at lower intensities force fields. So they bumped into each other, a few scraped paint jobs perhaps, maybe a dent or two on less military models. But being craft meant to fly through the depths of space and all the space dirt without damage for prolonged periods of time, I’d assume it would take more than a slow speed collision to take them down.
Eh… Not THAT much power creep. In gaming terms, she’s a Multiform character, which are a bit cheesy, but not horrible. That or one could make her build as Illusion/Disguise, with one point of Stretching, since her base power set doesn’t change much.
As for the projection, its possible that she has actual physical objecta under the hard light. Perhaps a cluster of projectors on tentacles or something. Thus the extended tail just has a long bit in it.
You know, if that filter-mouth goes off on a long monologue about the merits of joining the House of the Analytic, I may make a squee of my own.
…I still need to buy and read the rest of that series…
I knew it wouldn’t be too long before Deus and Sydney would cross paths again…!
BTW-How would Cora look as Globulus,the ruler of Cobra-La?!?!?
Deus appears to be lacking in the “Spidey Sense” category. Not that Sydney is threatening him, but the hairs of his neck should be a-pricklin’.
A lot sexier than the original is what I’m thinking. Also, Vale seems to have gone on quite a shopping spree! Elder horror she may be, but I can’t help but like her. :)
Okay, that was not the comment I thought I was replying to. Weird.
How powerful Cora is only really matters in terms of how long she sticks around in the comic, I guess. I mean, her theoretical personal combat power when she’s off in space having space adventures won’t affect the team’s battles on Earth much.
Oh no, second comic series!
Also even with all of these she isn’t as powerful or versatile as Dabbler and the two of them are fellow adventurers.
True, but Cora doesn’t seem a dabbler to me, more like someone who specializes in a couple of skills. Dabbler may be more versatile, but as long as Cora plays to her strengths, she can easily hold her own I think.
Dabbler is a jill of all trades, she is still young yet (by immortal demon standards), and likely will be much more powerful in the future; of course she will likely suffer then from choice paralysis…so do I use the Omega Death Beam, Darkness Penetration, or Shards of Reality to…where’d my target go?
Right now with Archon she has an interesting conundrum, non-lethal methods. She is so used to being allowed to maim and kill her opponents that holding herself back she sees her physical feats aren’t what they could be, and her spells and gadgets need tweaked to work in a non-lethal policing capacity. Likely she is currently at (tool or kill) for her spells and gadgets.
for instance wind, summon breeze *to clear away dust, ward off airborn pests, ect..*
but its hard to see her putting much focus on low level wind attack spells meant to trip, knock back, or stall larger enemies, but skipping right up to “Wind Blade” and “Razor Winds” type spells.
Funny thing is, Lina Inverse has sort of the same problem, she has three spell levels (tool), (low end attack), (blow up the city).
like she has is stuck in a fight when her opponent also knows Flare Arrow and Fire Ball, but her location doesn’t allow her to use Dragon Slave, or another dark lord spell.
Deus, must record every word he makes so as to have a record of it, he will play it back, and hear it again. Just as DR Doom does.
I could see Dues getting a holographic ‘Thunder and Lightning’ set from that dealer Syd got her wings from
Deus already has a dramatic thunder and lightning machine back home.
Since my character, has seen to have unlimited number of limbs. A power given to her by Tiamat the Chaos Dragon. When she was adopted by Tiamat as a daughter. there are :”Daughters of Tiamat”. in not the same way. Tiamat has given her the Sword Of Chaos. Which only Tiamat and Sasha can use She summons it but doessn’t carry it.
I adore the shoulder zip-outs on the orange jacket the character in the first panel is wearing. :-)
There is a double entendre tail riding pun to be made here, but the linguistic puzzle pieces just aren’t fitting for me.
Riding the tail makes Sydney squee with pleasure… though the convulsions leave a trail of rubble.
I suspect that Sydney’s not the only one experiencing pleasure given the expression on Cora’s face and the extreme proximity of a rhythmically pulsating piece of machinery to her crotch.
Ah, the wonders of a little combat bonding. This is the same woman who, just a few pages ago, was lecturing Sydney on maturity.
Regarding hard light holograms, I always felt Star Trek really tends to underutilize such an amazing technology, though I do realize it’s probably due to budget limitations. There are a lot of interesting things you could do with such a versatile technology as depicted in the 24th century, and, If you think about it, by the 30th century, pretty much everyone should be able to have a portable projector that basically makes them all “Full Spectrum Lanterns”.
Especially since they have actual sentient Photonic Lifeforms (the Emergency Medical Program for the best known example)
Holographic projectors were fairly large, and apparently notoriously difficult to calibrate. Voyager tried to just rig some up in vital areas so they could send the doctor to the bridge for example and it was continually a failure. We do see one ship developed as a prototype with projectors throughout, but it takes time for new models to prove useful enough to go into mass production. That said, Voyager did pull some fancy tricks with holoprojectors on the outside of the ship with parabolic mirrors once, to mixed results.
I used to wonder why they didn’t combine Transporter, Replicator and Holodeck technology to build ships that could repair or reconfigure themselves on the fly, simply by projecting anything they need. All you would need was a small core ship that contained the necessary tech and you could form the rest of the ship as needed. I think Enterprise encountered an alien repair station that used something like that to repair damage to itself (and possibly to clients’ ships?)
Cosplay level: infinite.
I read several web comics, including this one … I very much enjoy this one, especially with Sydney’s reaction to what ever happens around her.
I am SOOO glad the L.O.L. was created too. Yes, I did laugh out loud.
GO SYDNEY!!
P.S.
The language of those aliens.
(or is my translator ad libbing?)
I don’t know… still technically gives her a 10-foot-reach (although only being able to hit three feet into that second square should be worth at least a -2 attack penalty). Still, an 8-foot radius forcefield of hard light would be great in a pinch. Or a nice aoe of 1-dimensional armor piercing beams of light. In addition to the piercing damage they’d probably deal fire damage as well. This is why if I were an Avenger I’d be Hawkeye.
As far as a reasonable limitation on Corra’s shape shifting goes, instead of there being a distance limit, limit the effective mass of the progection. So if she over extends you are just hit with something that feels like styrofoam.
New sport! Naga surfing!
Wonder if Cora’s met Nada the naga frorom Xanth now?
Xanth was the first thing I thought of when I saw this page.
X(A/N)TH leaked Magic.
Cora uses technology.
To some civilizations, higher technology is Magic!
Neat how Halo is using the Fly Orb just to counter motion sickness here so she can enjoy the ride.
Oh, good. I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed Halo’s using the Flight orb during this ride.
(And I checked both pages (presently) of comments before saying this)
Add some horns and she could pass for Guinness from Krakow Comics
Is Deus is shopping at the (2001 a Space Odyssey) Monolith Store?
Or he’s signing up for a new body like the bosses in Starslip Crisis.
The Monolith Mall “My God…It’s full of stores.”
I think Deus is making deals on the premise that he’s the only Terran/Human able to reach the Station.
He’s gonna have to BOHICA when he finds out that Sydney was there at same time and has proof. (Videos of her in circ everywhere of her eating super spicy Glack! (sp?).
If he’d seen her there I am sure Vale would have been sent to disappear sydney. Deus liking her or not. Her presence there undermines a lot of his plans.
It will be KARMA striking back when the wheels fall off his deals.
Two arms short of a marilith.
Cora needs an upgrade to fit in with the demon crowd.
Dabbler will be miffed because she only rates as a succubus. :P
I assume she has a second mobile projector that embeds itself further down the tail to get that extra distance
I’m thinking that Cora may have 4 (or 5) independent nanovoxel projectors.
As a minor Cora wore a succession of limb suits, basic models that were whatever her planet’s health services were willing to supply. These suits were not actually grafted to her body, she just rode in them like they were some sort of high-tech wheelchair.
After Dabbler entered the picture, and after Cora had reached her full growth, she was able to get fully cybernetic limbs grafted onto her body. These would have required the surgical implantation of hard points for the limbs to attach to, along with neural implants to hook up the control circuitry. While once again her planet’s health services would only procure basic models for her, they didn’t stay basic for long thanks to Dabbler.
Now that Cora has gone fully hard light I suspect she would have kept the neural circuitry and installed the nanovoxel projectors onto the hard points where the cybernetic limbs were previously mounted. This would have the advantage of not requiring any additional surgeries. If Cora were to shut down the system entirely, we would see a nude torso and head, with nanovoxel projectors mounted on each shoulder and each hip. There probably would be an additional fifth nanovoxel projector that independently protects her torso with the “clothing/armor” that covers her real body. A fifth projector would explain the glowing backpack like device we’ve seen in previous pages. This projector would be larger than her limb projectors to provide room for projector and power supply redundancies. Clearly Cora would want these redundancies in the part of the system responsible for protecting her actual meat body.
The current naga form Cora is wearing is possible because all of her nanovoxel projectors have some ability to back each other up in the event of a projector failure. Each shoulder projector is now generating two limbs apiece, while the hip projectors combine their efforts in order to generate the snake form with embedded conveyor belt. Little mental effort on the part of Cora is required to do this as an onboard computer does all of the detail work. Cora just has to think about where she wants her limbs to go and they do it.
This of course is all conjecture on my part. Hopefully when Cora and Sydney finally get to Earth we’ll get to see how accurate this guess is as Cora would certainly want to show Dabbler all the details of how the system works.