Grrl Power #763 – It’s an evil spaceship, not a death dreidel
Okay so, the pacing of this page is a little weird. If you read the panel order literally, it might seem like Maxima waited for the Fel ship the hit the atmosphere and dropped all the way down and started firing before she responded to the question. You know, for dramatic effect. Granted, a ship like that could traverse the 300 miles of atmosphere pretty quickly, especially considering something like 90% of the air is in the bottom 1o miles. Given unknown levels of alien tech like deflector fields or whatever, they could potentially largely ignore drag. Really, the biggest issue would be the sudden stop, assuming they could travel 300 miles in a few seconds. But that’s easy to explain as well. Any ship capable of accelerating to warp speeds has to have some kind of inertia dampener or cancellation device so the crew and everything inside the ship doesn’t get atomized when the accelerate to 80x lightspeed in 4 seconds.
So, while they could maybe have actually cut through the atmosphere in like 4 seconds, just assume the chronology of the middle panels is actually interleaved a bit with Max trying to get the press to safety. Just… the page layout would look wonky if I drew it that way.
Max’s “When a special forces colonel tells you to take shelter, it’s usually a good idea to do it.” line isn’t quite a pithy as “I am a bomb disposal technician. If you see me running, try and keep up.” but it’s probably equally good advice. Less clever is Sydney’s shirt that reads “I am an ADHD riddled superheroine, if I am acting distractible and agitated then that’s perfectly normal.”
![The Wraith: Danger Close (Superhero by Night Book 4) by [Haskell, Jeffery H.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41B7At%2B3X8L.jpg)
Oh, forgot to add this last night. The 4th Wraith book is available for preorder. This is Jeffery H. Haskell’s super powered Punisher-esque series, so if you like super vigilantes killing the balls out of really evil bad guys instead of bothering with all that wussy justice system stuff, then you might like this series. This is also his teamup book where Wraith teams up with his other hero, Arsenal, who is a proper hero, except for that time she genocided a species but it’s okay because they were all bad.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. 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.
Tonight, Archon’s gonna witness
the ultimate test of Halo’s shield’s fitness
The creme de la creme of a world with everything but space travel.
What is it with those CHESS references?
It’s a boom
It’s a thoom
It’s really such a pity that the press are asking questions instead of fleeing from the city.
They’re press. The only people trained to run towards trouble rather than away. They just don’t do anything besides take pictures and talk…
The only people trained to run towards trouble rather than away.
Aren’t you forgetting a few people? Like maybe the Police, Fire Fighters, Paramedics, Military, etc. All people I’d rather see during “trouble” than a bunch of useless talking heads.
You don’t train Police, Fire Fighters, Paramedics, Military, etc. to run at trouble and take pictures and ask questions. They have more important things to do.
And doing those things involves preparing, and running at the trouble.
Yeah, we should train politicians to do that instead.
The only things politicians run towards are cameras and cash.
I am remembering watching security camera footage from the outside of the Pentagon (somehow I do not think that interior security footage would ever be released) after the airplane crashed into it on September 11, 2001. As everybody was streaming out, there was a call for volunteers to go back in to rescue survivors. A huge number of people in uniform went running back into the building.
Time to find out how powerful Syd PPO cutting beam mode really is..
I didn’t realize this press conference was simulcast in Bangkok. (Thank you, Murray Head)
So, does anyone recognize the design of the newly-arrived ship?
It’s not like the ones that ended up traumatizing our dear Halo, is it?
No, no it’s not, it has nothing to do with Sydney or the Alari (the big clue should have been what they fired upon as soon as they stopped falling: hint, it wasn’t Archon HQ)
How do you know it has nothing to do with Sydney or the Alari? Alari is probably less likely than Sydney… But the way I see it… human, orbs, spicy food, galactic youtube… A little bit of sleuthing later and they’re following Cora’s ship to get the human with the tolerance for spicy food… because they want the orbs…
One way or another, the moment the video hit the galactic extranet, trouble was going to follow Sydney home.
this ship is after Cora cuz she stole something of theirs
Technically relocating something without permission… I mean who wouldn’t accidentally Kender an artifact of infinite… cuddles?
Because context tells us this is the Fel ship.
Cora stole and had a run in with the Fel,
two pages ago the galaxy police were chasing a Fel ship on its way to a pre-FTL world.
This ship is not the same as the one on Alar, and is firing on Cora.
So logically this is the Fel.
We don’t have any definitive indication that she ever stole from the Fel.
We know that:
1. Cora’s ship was delayed by the Fel on its way to retrieve Halo from the Alari homeworld.
2. We do know that After upgrading weapons on Fracture Cora had something called the Fel Artifact of Unspeakable (something Altus wouldn’t say in front of children) in the hold of her ship.
And
3. The Xevoarchy were chasing a Fel ship on its way to a restricted planet.
Cuddles. It was unspeakable cuddles. Which….I mean, Cora’s ship has a tentacle closet, so an artifact of unspeakable cuddles would fit right in with the decor. I refuse to believe he was going to say anything else until proven otherwise, regardless of how unbelievable that actually is, because that’s just too much fun.
Plus ‘cuddles’ terrified the poor kid
surprised him.
This was an annoying twenty posts discussion or something on that comic, pointing out it was a look of surprise because it was an unexpected answer, not a look of fear.
Eyes do not go that wide, and mouth does not drop that open due to simple surprise
Says you, but you aren’t the artist
It was wide eyed delight that they had something on board that gave unspeakable levels of cuddles. The kid did not look remotely scared.
To quote Tokumei: “Says you” :P
I just took a look… It looks to me like an expression of “OMG! CUDDLES! I LOVE CUDDLES!”
Exactly. The Alari child looked delighted at the prospect of the mere existence of an artifact which gives unspeakable CUDDLES. After all, who doesn’t like cuddles? No one but hermits and grinches, that’s who.
It has nothing to do with the Alari because the last several strips, as well as several other strips involving Cora talking specifically about the Fel, have been very obviously setting up that these aliens are the Fel, and they are not anything remotely related to the Alari or the squidwards or anything Sydney-related, since Sydney has never even met the Fel.
Learn to read. I never mentioned the squidwards. I’m saying they may have seen the galactic extranet videos that allowed Cora to find Sydney in the first place. Remember, Sydney was eating that alien spicy food, attracting a crowd, and got posted to Alien Youtube and Alien Twitter. This allowed Cora’s crew to find her with a simple search. And then, you take that and Page 690 and put 2 and 2 together… the Fel may have seen the videos, done some sleuthing to find out where Sydney went off to, and followed Cora’s ship from there.
In short… learn to read.
Again, why would the Fel be interested in some hyu-mon who eats arze-glowing food, wen they already have a stated interested in the Cora the thief
If they know what the orbs are… Jeezus… learn to read…
Maybe you should learn to read instead.
I said ‘Alari’ OR ‘the squidwards.’ Meaning I was responding to both your incorrect guess and anyone else guessing the other frequently suggested incorrect guess of the squidwards. For you to assume that the Alari were busy watching galactic Youtube while they were fleeing for their lives or being refugees on Earth or on Fracture station seems to be quite the leap of logic for you.
Also, what Guesticus said.
Did you even bother going back to page 690 and doing the math? Is 2+2 really that hard? If the Fel know what the orbs are, they could easily be trying to get the orbs for themselves, or at the very least, get the orbs out of the picture, because anybody having those orbs could technically constitute a threat to the sovereignty and freedom of every living thing in the universe.
Also, I wasn’t saying the Alari are after Sydney. I said they could be after the Alari… Get your head out of your rear and clear the brown from your eyes and learn to read.
There is literally not a SINGLE point in the comic where it’s even implied that the Fel have in any way seen Sydney’s orbs, nor that they would know what they were if they had seen them. In addition, there is absolutely nothing in the comic that even remotely implies that the Fel are in any way after the Alari, or even in any type of skirmish with the Alari. It’s entirely coming out of your headspace, not the comic.
I’m not sure what comic you’re reading, but it’s clearly not this one. Your hypotheses make no sense whatsoever, and your method of arguing – ie, to call people names and tell them to learn to read – is only going to get other people having to fight fire with fire if you’re going to keep presenting ridiculous ideas AND be jerky about it.
Suffice to say Cora’s ship has been carrying SO MUCH that another race could want that we have NO IDEA what’s what. Sydney with her orbs, refugees from a race of blood mages that are have a reputation of being anything but “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” type of people, and ancient artifact of the Fel (people assume that Cora stole it, but that’s not clear. She could have bought it on Fracture. She could have found it adrift in space. She could have received it in payment for some service to the Fel.
We really have no idea where it came from at this point, and any evidence that she stole it is about as circumstantial as you having a pair of shoes is evidence that you stole those shoes. Maybe you stole them, maybe you didn’t.
DaveB, in an example of a storyteller doing ‘show, don’t tell’ has so far done everything aside from pointing a big neon sign saying “The Fel are here because Cora has one of their powerful artifacts” to show the reason why the Fel just attacked. He went out of his way to specifically have the characters state they had the Fel Artifact on board, not many strips after mentioning in another dialog that they had either some sort of attack from, encounter/conflict with, or avoidance of the Fel. They’re the only alien race that have been brought up multiple times by Cora and her crew by name. If she ‘found it adrift in space, why would she have it named ‘The Fel Artifact of Unspeakable’ (whatever, insert ‘Cuddles’ here)? She knows in at least some sense what she has, and she knows it belonged at some point to the Fel, who seem to be pretty damned warlike, since Galactic Police are unlikely to be chasing and firing on peaceful alien ships.
And somehow you are repeatedly missing it and doubling down on your theory, which has been brought up exactly zero times in the comic. And she did not buy the Artifact on the Fracture. She was already having to avoid the Fel BEFORE they even got to the Alari Homeworld, let alone the Fracture.
So either thing you said. Whether it’s that you think the Fel are after the Alari, despite no reason for them to even know the Alari are on Cora’s ship (why not instead attack the ALARI SHIP IN GALYTIN?), or whether it’s that you think the Fel are after Sydney’s orbs that they say on Galactic Youtube 2 days ago (despite no reason that ANYONE aside possibly from the Squidwards would know what the hell her orbs are, given they’re the only ones to have ever done a scan of it, not the Fel), you’re still wrong.
You’re not doing 2+2=4. You’re doing 2+2+X to the ninth power of Pi multiplied by Graham’s number=4. Because that’s how many leaps that are ridiculous you’ve been making. No one knows what the orbs are. Especially not from just looking at them floating around Sydney’s head, not actually doing anything. Once again, the only aliens that even scanned them was the Squidward’s scout. The alien who was streaming Sydney to Youtube had no clue what they were and just figured they were possibly helping her with digesting Grakz, and it’s been established that there are a few million humans in space so the alien did not even assume that Sydney was Terran.
Go with the most obvious, most spelled out scenario. The Fel, who are (as far as we have seen so far) warlike, have been after Cora, because Cora has an Artifact, presumably one capable of inflicting great harm, which belongs to THEM. Nothing about Alari. Nothing about Sydney and her orbs.
Pander – You are correct, but not succinct. Not concise. You do not say what you want to say and then stop. You say it again in a different way. You are redundant, and go on and on. You are Mojo Jojo.
All that exposition could have been replaced by “The Law of Conservation of Detail”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail?from=Main.LawOfConservationOfDetail
Tokumei –
We have been told, twice, that Cora’s ship was involved with the Fel.
* First, by the fact that the Fel had delayed Cora’s first appearance
* Second, by Slyv having to move the artifact
You can look at each of those breadcrumbs as a glint off Chekov’s gun.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun
Now, per the Space Pigs, the Fel are arriving, right over Cora’s ship.
If the Fel were going to be chasing Sydney,
* Neither of those details would have been planted…
* It could have been any other race chasing Sydney…
* The Fel ship could be over anything, not just over Cora’s ship.
Occam’s razor says we need look no further.
In short: what I said three days ago:
*
Because context tells us this is the Fel ship.
Cora stole and had a run in with the Fel,
two pages ago the galaxy police were chasing a Fel ship on its way to a pre-FTL world.
This ship is not the same as the one on Alar, and is firing on Cora.
So logically this is the Fel.
*
It is pretty straight forward.
Also of note, it is best not to be married to a hypothesis, the telegraphed path in a story is the most likely. I don’t see this story pulling a random shift on the audience like having Bat-Man follow a bunch of joker cards, clown themed goons, circus themed traps to face the enemy at an old run down carnival and then the mastermind turns out to be Turkish Spider-Man.
Rhuen:- that… actually sounds like a legit modern Blat-Man comic plot
What do you mean “fired as soon as they stopped falling”? I though they used their weapons TO stop the fall.
Yeah, me too. I thought those were landing rockets and they were landing right on top of Cora’s ship. They must have a LOT of confidence in their ship’s armor to fire those huge guns that close to their target. (Either that, or they are REALY lousy shots and they know it!)
No, that was a giant screw. This one’s a giant top.
It’s the giant gyroscope ships you really have to watch out for.
If you combined the Giant Screw Ship with Deathstar Giant Ball ships, that would be a Screwball space navy.
Probably administered by Spaceballs.
* giggles *
Oh shit, there goes the planet.
If you’re living in a bubble and you haven’t got a care,
Then you’re gonna be in trouble cause they’re gonna steal your air… orb?
That would really suck.
Maybe not. It could go from suck to blow.
yes, this is not the first comic where that ship appears. a few comics ago there was a police cruiser chasing a criminal starship that was headed for a “non ftl planet”. Now we know WHICH planet it was heading towards, and we also know that the police ship failed in their attempt to stop it. the details in that comic are a little hard to make out, but it is clearly the same ship.
One word of advice for the Fel. When building a giant space weapon I have found that a spherical design is easier to build and uses less materials. And by the way, if you have any thermal exhaust ports, be sure to put retractable cover plates over them.
Retractable cover plates only work if you remember to retract them when you come under enemy fire (even snub-fighters firing pew-shooters)
Reminds me of a series of books, set in Poland just before Genghis (or was it Attila?) swooped through Europe: this guy from the future was observing the battle, he was completely protected by a similar shielding as Maxi, except he… forgot to blink when someone threw a spear at him, and his eyeball was not able to protect him like Les’)
So, this guy had shielding over his entire body except for his exposed eyes, and the Genghian just happened to land a spear right on that spot? Ouch.
Touch of poor foresight and deus ex machina there.
More like, he got cocky, and paid for it big time
At least the main character got a new talking horse out of it :P
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist-” John Sedgwick.
Infamous last words. Yeesh
Wikipedia claims that he did in fact complete the sentence. But not the action.
Cross-Time Engineer. Great book!
The guy was wearing a super-suit made to look like medieval armor, and the eye shutters malfunctioned at the worst possible time.
Thank you, read the series (or at least four of them) in the 80’s, forgot most of the details (including the name)
Did NOT enjoy the wedding scene where the kid basically raped his unwilling bride into complete devotion (with the protagonist and at least one other standing outside the door to ensure she didn’t get away)
Yeah, I remember that as engineer porn.. in both senses. Not terrible, except when it was.
For me, it was simply a time-travelling alternate-future’s sort of story (guy goes back in time with modern knowledge, changes the course of history, becomes king of the world after re-inventing the flushing indoor toilet)
Covering an exhaust port sort of defeats the purpose of having an exhaust port. How long does your car run if you plug the exhaust? Seconds at most, right? Same thing on a big ass space ship. Of all the things people complain about in the original Star Wars that is probably the silliest.
Well now, how long it will run really depends on design.
If you have an internal device to store the heat, you could continue to operate until the heat sink is at capacity. I think the US Navy uses some type of similar system to keep their submarines from emitting to much heat. I bet the stealth jets also has some type of heat storage.
Heck, just the size of the Death Star should have allowed them to run for quite a while just raising the internal temperature 10-20 degrees throughout the station, before a heat sink. Add a well engineered system in and they could probably fought off the rebels for week before having to blow exhaust (and then at such high pressure that there is no way a torpedo could go in there even if it was a straight shot).
Unlike Death Star, stealth jets really don’t have anywhere to dump the gigantic amount of heat generated by jet engines. They have the exhausts on top and are mixing cool air into exhaust, but if they would close the exhausts they would explode. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_signature
“even if it was a straight shot”… that’s the part that’s always bothered me, even as a kid.
“Okay, so they’re hitting a tiny target, and they have to get really close from a low angle to avoid defensive fire. Which Luke does with ancient space magic, fine, I’ll buy that. But obviously their torpedoes aren’t guided or a) we’d have seen that somewhere else during the fight scenes, and b) they’d have been able to shoot from farther out and higher up – and basically straight at it.
So how the $#@! did those particular torpedoes suddenly decide to turn a corner abruptly and accurately enough to navigate a narrow shaft halfway through a ship the size of a moon?!”
> obviously their torpedoes aren’t guided
I would posit that obviously they ARE or else they’d be rather useless. They clearly travel slower than the bore-sighted lasers, so they need to be able to correct their flight path to hit a moving target. We don’t see that elsewhere because in A New Hope, the torpedoes fired at the Death Star are the ONLY torpedoes we see at all.
As for
> b) they’d have been able to shoot from farther out and higher up – and basically straight at it.
I believe the aforementioned defensive fire was also capable of targeting and hitting either the fighter (which is why they needed to slip into the trench at that particular blind spot) or the torpedoes themselves (as they’d be on a predictable path).
If you look close(r), the torpedo kinda gets sucked in to the exhaust, that’s why they ‘turn a corner abruptly’
That wasn’t the outgoing exhaust, that was the intake port for the air-cooled reactor (again, teeny tiny hole for an ‘exhaust port’ for a moon-sized battle station)
So the exhaust port that Luke’s torps went into was an intake for the air-cooled reactor? The air-cooled reactor for the Death Star that travels in space? Where space is a vacuum?
… Yes
Go back and look at that scene again at the 1:47 mark, both torps curve into the port (normally their spacing would have had them hit on either side)
Re Death star weaknesses and such
There is of course no telling how much heat the powerplants were generating that they were using to power up the HFG (when a standard BFG just won’t cut it). It might be that their heat sinks were already being used.
It is also stated (I think?) that it was an emergency vent, not one that was expected to be in continuous use. Only when a powerplant had a crtitical failure. No idea what fuel a death star would use but call it anti-matter. When a powerplant failed they needed to blow out the reactor and the antimatter pronto. You do not want to have to manually open the valves when every microsecond counts ;)
This is more to the credit of the writers of Rogue One than of George Lucas, but the vulnerability was deliberately added by its designer. The one critical weakness he could design into the thing that his overseers would overlook. (in other words, the writers of that movie agreed that the death stare having one weakness that their fighters were ideally suited to take advantage of was a bit contrived ;))
I admit, I have not seen Rouge One yet. Been meaning to, just haven’t.
Now I am a bit curious what they ended up writing. I had assumed they just didn’t mention it out of fear someone would point out the silliness of it all.
Dave, you realize this will be “The Death Dreidel of Doom” forever now. Specifically because you said it’d wasn’t.
That’s what I was thinking.
“The Death Dreidel of Doom” will now appear on T-shirts, cakes, hoodies, lunch boxes, the side of vans, sneakers, and will become a NEW TV series on Adult Swim.
Death Dreidel – the Musical will probably flop though.
Dunno, we’ve got some decent lyrics going on the first page… we just need someone to do the choreography.
Six(-ish) words.
Spider-Man Bring on the Dark.
you spelled Dork wrong
;P
I’m just going to state that Jewish people in our very real world are under very real attack by fascists in our very real government at this very moment, so let’s not villify or demonize anything Jewish right now. You don’t want to add fuel to that fire, not on DaveB’s page.
Besides, it’s VERY clearly a d10 (or possibly a d16, yes they’re real, I have one, as well as a d14), and thus not a dreidel. It’s a Death Roleplayer’s Battleship, because only a gamer geeknerd would totally pimp out their dice that way.
(I’m a gamer, I can vilify my own kind, nyahahaha!)
As Emma rightfully points out below, it’s clearly a Dodeathahedron. *thbbbpt!*
I’m Jewish. He’s not implying anything about us with the Death Dreidel joke and anyone who finds offense in it is looking to be offended.
Thank you for clarifying that first paragraph of nonsense was, in fact, nonsense.
I’m not sure if it’s a d10 or a d8 with problematic proportions, because only four booms are present, and one of them clearly was out of line with the target ship.
Technically, it would be a d16 (eight sides on the top half, eight on the bottom), if you go by the number of ‘platform’ thingies shown (three) and extrapolate that there if a fourth opposite the middle visible one, and four sides fired and, again, extrapolate that that was because those four sides were closest to Cora’s ship
Of course, that’s not counting the two tips, which would make it a d20 (or ignore those corners ‘being cut off’)
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line
Closer to 60 than 300 miles.
Huh, I knew already where the Karman line was, but always thought it was just a nice round number (100 km) – didn’t know which scientific criteria determined it.
While I too scoffed at the 300 miles remark, the atmosphere becoming being too thin to allow a craft to generate meaningful lift past a certain altitude rather specifically means there is (very thin) atmosphere past that point. So while aerospace engineers might consider that the end of the atmosphere… scientifically it is not.
In fact, satelites in low-earth orbit (the majority of them) still have to fire thrusters at semi-regular intervals because they are constantly being slowed down by drag (which would cause their orbit to decay). Such drag effects extend as far as an altitude of 300km (186.4mi). The atmosphere logically must extend even further than that before one reaches a region of “true” vacuum (no measurable atmosphere at all).
Friction with the air is what really matters to a spacecraft entering the atmosphere. Gathering enough relative velocity to traverse 300 miles of atmosphere in seconds is trivial in space. The amount of friction produced is primarily a function of relative velocity and atmospheric density. With enough speed, even the thinnest trace of atmosphere would produce enough friction to heat the exterior of a spacecraft. _OUR_ spacecraft (traveling ~4.86mi/sec) typically begin experiencing this at an altitude of 75miles… but as we’ve already established the atmosphere extends at least twice as far as that. Traveling at 100mi/sec (0.00054 lightspeed), it’s reasonable to assume the effects of friction would become an issue much sooner.
“Friction with the air is what really matters to a spacecraft entering the atmosphere.”
Not even, it’s the blast wave bulding up in front of the ship, the air gets compressed, and thus generates heat.
…Friction is what causes the compressed air and heat…
Not really ALL due to friction though, it’s the fact that the individual air molecules can’t MOVE out of the way FAST ENOUGH, due to inertia that causes the buildup in the first place, yes, friction DOES play a part in the atoms RIGHT next to the object, but for the ones WAY out in front, nope its ’cause they can’t get out of the way fast enough so they just get compressed and pushed ahead…
There’s a fraction too much friction :P
Just because there’s a fraction too much friction does fracture the function of the action to reach fruition.
*does not
It’s a classic song, always looking out for places to show it off :P
I wasn’t able to click on the link until I was out of the courtroom. They frown on people in the gallery listening to youtube while in session. :) So instead I just made a tongue twister.
It was a good’in :D
It works like the sound barrier, you readch the speed of sound, and your “blast” wave collapses, and creates sound.
Sort of why Hypersonic aircraft cannot be in an atmosphere.
RE: ohttps://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-671-level-duhp/, only with air.
So, Sydney brought home some friends from out of town?
No. This is the Fel. They’re here almost definitely because of Cora, not Sydney. Cora has the Fel Artifact of Unspeakable Cuddles. It’s pretty much been telegraphed that these are the Fel for the last couple of strips, plus 2 other strips involving Cora where the Fel are named to tie into these aliens, who were called the Fel by the galactic police duo – Taranjella Straightshooter and Shroomgirl McMicroaggressions.
Still think the ship and weapons should have had more of a copper-green fiery motif if you’re gonna call them ‘Fel’, but the arcane runes and demonic script are good enough – More than likely DaveB’s concept of ‘Fel’ is taking a different path than my understanding of it. Do like the design for the ship though. If you’re able to defy gravity and the laws of space/time, who gives a flying fangoririffic fig about aerodynamics?
Cora & crew, thinking fast with them shields!
Doubt it has anything to do with fucking Warcraft
Nah, they are space privateers, standard operating procedure when ever they land is to deploy the shields (never can tell when someone they have robbed shows up looking for payback)
As I understand it, if Dave went with copper-green Fel, the Blizzard trademark lawyers would have more ground to stand on. We don’t want that.
fell: adjective
1a : fierce, cruel, terrible
b : sinister, malevolent a fell purpose
c : very destructive : deadly a fell disease
2 Scotland : sharp, pungent
Dreidel Song :P
Better Dreidel Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ8BEisIVh4
“Because I said so”
Last panel should have just been …
*withering glare*
“Stupid question. MOVE! NOW!”
It’s a Dodeathahedron.
:rofl:
Ha! You win.
That’s a horrible pun. I am so jealous.
Dammit I wish I thought of that.
Hours late I saw the comic and my first thought echoed that somewhat—
DodecaheatDoom
^^^ Win. +10 (see what I did there?) for recognizing it’s an RPGer’s pimped out battleship.
Fel weaponry seriously disappointing, compared to what Cora’s ship is supposed to be packing. There should be a crater the size of New Jersey where her ship used to be (or at least commensurate fireworks, if her shields held). The fact that there is not suggests that the Fel are exercising heretofore unprecedented restraint.
I guess they want their “Fel Artifact of Unspeakable Cuddles” back intact?
Well, Cora came out relatively unscathed in their last encounter, and then Slyv was having The Interdictor overhauled while Cora looked for Sydney on Fracture.
I submit that The Interdictor was probably more advanced to begin with, and then Cora had it optimized for predictable further encounters with the Fel.
And left shields at maximum because of this likelyhood.
I mean, what do you think the chances are that Cora wasn’t lounging around Archon with the expectation of getting some Archon bees to kick some Fel butt?
Delivering Sydney home from Alari, when she’s already wanting to basically chart a random course for the near future: kind of already paid for.
Getting Sydney and her friends to pull her ass out of the fire she chose to put it in? Priceless.
Keep reading that as the shields on the left (as opposed to the ones on the right) were at maximum :/
I think my favorite part of this ship is the Pride Rock platform for having the supreme leader address the masses. Good to see that “form follows function” applies even to alien world-conquering ships.
I’m still wondering if “The Fel” refers not to a race, but rather an Intergalactic cult. If it is a cult then they obviously need the Pride Rock platform so the high priest/priestess has a place from which to oversee the conversion and/or executions of the heathen masses.
The Fel are the Borg, with magic thrown in.
1) They had plenty of warning to raise shields. Starting at “Wuh oh”, Slyv had two panels plus another half page.
2) Placement of shots on the shields indicate that these are not primarily weapons; they are retro rockets deployed in “shock and awe mode”. MY reason for deducing this is that the third from the left is behind Cora’s ship. That would mean they are taking up a position above the ship to prevent its escaping. The Choom-Booms are making a statement, more than attempting to kill anyone.
Too bad they misspoke.
3) Hey, here’s a new line I didn’t notice… “Slyv wanted to load up on some horrifying new armaments as usual.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-707-a-fickle-modesty/
So the Fel Artifact of Unspeakableness may have been purchased on Fracture Station, and the prior run-in with the Fel be coincidental and not related to getting the artifact.
Alternately, Slyv has a free reveal coming to slip out of the Fel pin.
So the Fel Artifact of Unspeakable Cuddles could be an ancient weapon that the Fel use on each other?
Power it up and the Fel stop fighting and start necking?
Having just come from Sydney’s checkup results with the APLL all Maxima would have to do is buzz Sydney and give her authorization to try and bisect that ship with the PPO. Hell make it a race between the two of them to see who can get to the middle first.
The Fel ship looks a lot like Goa’uld designs, with the pyramid shapes, gold hull, and runes/glyphs.
It looks like it has a similar weaponry paradigm as well, being visually intimidating but inaccurate. That rightmost shield impact looks like it would have just hit the ground in front of the ship.
About Sydney’s ridiculously oversized glasses…
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article18951842.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_Chloe-Ferry.jpg
Is that a thing or is it a filter like cat ears?
it looks like a filter, from the way the glasses are ‘constructed’
it’s a filter. like the dog nose and tong, cat ears, flower frame exc…
In that case I hope the lips were also done via filter. Because if not I feel sorry for that gal.
Nope, real lips (if you consider bad plastic surgery to still count as ‘real’)
So much for earth being too boring and unimportant to invade..
I think they are after Cora since their attack appears to be focused on her ship. that or one of the planet busters managed to track Sydney back home after she demonstrated her Macross blaster skills.
Given what Syd was capable of, they’d be idiots to track her down for another round.
D12 rolls for initiative. Cora’s ship shields rolled higher.
What game system is that? All the ones I’m familiar with use d20 or multiple d6.
Meant roll for “Damage” The ship kinda looks like a D12, you know, with sides rearranged a bit.
@DaveB Top right. Should have put the “final” panel in the top right of the splash panel. Would have made it much more clear that things were being shown out of sequence. Combining with a [minutes later] annotation in panel 3 would have cinched it.
* A few moments earlier * (Jacques Cousteau voice)
“Any ship capable of accelerating to warp speeds has to have some kind of inertia dampener or cancellation device so the crew and everything inside the ship doesn’t get atomized when the accelerate to 80x lightspeed in 4 seconds.”
Actually, NO, in the largest way. It is impossible to accelerate past the speed of light, so whatever means of FTL travel they’re using by definition does not involve Newtonian acceleration, so it definitely wouldn’t require internal dampers.
The most “realistic” means of FTL travel I’ve personally heard of in fact wouldn’t even require a ship to be able to move at faster than walking speed: If your FTL technology involved generating a temporary but stable wormhole between the space beside you and your intended destination, the 3D space distance between where you are and your destination might be extremely short—from a few feet to a few miles–and you could just slowly drift through the hole in no hurry, as long as it didn’t take extra energy to keep it open.
It’s true that you don’t need the inertial dampeners when switching from normal speed to FTL or back. However, you likely need them both when flying with sublight speeds and when maneuvering in FTL.
Oh its firing blasts in the last panel? I totally thought it was hovering and the shields were blocking the heat impact.
“choom” -> “baboom” imply staccato percussion blasts, not consistent smooth ignition.
Given this shield is invisible beyond the points of impact, despite the similar appearance I don’t think this is Sydney’s shield, but rather Cora’s ship’s shield or something Archon has.
I was assuming it was Cora’s ship – hadn’t thought about Archon having some alien-level shields as well but ArcDark most likely does.
The ship appears to be parked next to the building though, so given that the shield is just above it and not surrounding the entire complex makes me think this is ship shielding.
Every time your characters start quoting the Streak I giggle uncontrollably. Thank you for these moments
I thought that the Karman line was the altitude where the speed needed for aeronautical lift was the same as orbital speed at that altitude, meaning that there is no functional difference between being a spacecraft from that height and up. It is slighlty above 100km but it is commonly rounded down to 100km for convenience, and is also the height you must exceed to be considered a astronaut (or kosmonaut)
The things you learn from amateur fiction :)
OK, two things here: First, is it ACTUALLY an evil spaceship, or do they have legitimate beef with Cora of a sort that galactic law says they can settle violently? Yeah, unlikely, I know, but not impossible by a long shot.
Second……wow did these guys ever pick the wrong planet to pull this crap on. Sydney and Max are about to open cans of whoopass. And the rest of Arc-SWAT too, if there’s anything left after those two.
We don’t have enough information to know whether they have a legitimate beef or not.
We do know that they are being chased by the Xevoarchy (space cops) so unless you buy into Guesty’s “cops are pigs” line of reasoning that tends to indicate that the Fel are either outright bad or anger prone and easily manipulated.
Did you not see the title of page 761? o_O
You don’t have to believe that cops are pigs to believe that they are capable of honest mistakes. Toying with this possibility, it’s just possible that the Fel have no respect for the Xevoarchy and prefer to handle things themselves and thus chose not to bother talking to the space cops who couldn’t catch them anyway. Which is, admittedly, dickish, but not necessarily evil.
But, as you said, we have no idea what their beef with Cora is (clearly they HAVE one since they’ve come to a planet that they shouldn’t even be approaching in order to destroy her ship) and therefore don’t know whether it’s legitimate or not.
It is a belligerent spacecraft, taking actions on a pre-FTL world that are likely to cause massive damage to local property.
“Evil” is probably meaningless in this context, on either side.
At high enough fractional c even the handful of hydrogen atoms per cubic meter in intergalactic space are starting to hit with the force of nuclear explosions …
More realistically the interstellar space is dirty enough with minuscule bits of matter that at, say, 70% of lightspeed you will have to mount massive lasers on front of your space ship (or rather, on the ablative armour that extends tens of miles in front of your ship) just to vaporise before they impact like kiloton nukes on your ice hull.
It is also important to notice that the effect of our sun’s ‘atmosphere’ extends pretty much halfway to the nearest star, i.e. a light year or two (as does that sun). Of course it is just trace amounts of radiation and the odd ionised atomic nucleas that got accelerated past the escape velocity of the solar system. But apparently it is now believed that the Oort cloud extends far far beyond the heliopause, and that there are maybe as many stray planets as there are solar systems, and hundreds of thousands of asteroid like bits of planetary debris for each of such planet. Though the sheer size of space between solar systems still means that the odds of encountering any of them are neglicible as they would have trillions of cubic kilometers to themselves, if not orders of magnitude more.
It seems that it is a good thing that even this far out in our galaxy stars are dense enough that even at 10% of the speed of light it takes less than a lifetime to travel to the next system over. At such speeds simple ablative armour made out of the ice that is the fuel for the fusion powerplants is still more than up to the task of protecting the ship from the small space debris it will inevitably encounter every few weeks or months. Unless of course you plow head first into a miles wide dark asteroid or a rogue planet.
With life extension technologies now around the corner it is not even inconceivable that people who expect to live for hundreds or thousands of years do not think taking 40 year to go to another solar system all that extraordinary. Crossing the entire galaxy at that speed will take some 2 million years so that probably will not something anybody will expect to live through ;)
It does put the Fermi paradox to the front of the discussion though. Nuclear fusion and cheap enough launch abilities (orbital rings) are both expected to be available before the end of the century (we could start the orbital ring today even if even the global economy could not yet afford it, it doesn’t really need any special technology that we do not already have. They are just a really tightly packed series of small satelites connected by strings of magnetic rings. Putting something like that up is nothing we are not already doing (though we usually put our satelites up even higher to reduce the atmospheric drag). It just requires (tens of) thousands of rocket launches.
Once we have a working fusion powerplant then we can build spaceships that can speed up to 10% of lightspeed and carry enough fuel to slow down again at the end of the trip (as per Isaac Arthur) and we could expand across the galaxy at a speed of 1 lightyear between one and two centuries (to set up a colony at every solar system along the way).
A galactic empire it isn’t going to be, not with half a lifetime of travel between colonies, but it is something that is likely to going to happen as soon as fusion power becomes available (somebody will want to be remembered as the first human to set foot in a different solar system than sol’s and somebody is going to finance such an undertaking, even if it is only to get away from the rest of humanity)
Of course, this assumes that there is not a “work around” to the ‘laws of physics’
One of the reasons that scientist stopped calling things “laws of” and started saying “the theory of” is because they kept finding new a fascinating things about the world and universe in general.
Your colony ship utilizes the “laws of physics” as we know them today. I hope that we have only scratched the surface of physics and new things are around the corner.
“One of the reasons that scientist stopped calling things “laws of” and started saying “the theory of” is because they kept finding new [and] fascinating things about the world and universe in general. ” – Gilhelmi
Not quite. A ‘Law’ is a generalisation based on prior observations, useful to predict what will happen without necessarily getting involved with how or why it happens. A ‘Theory’ is a suggestion for how/why it works, which can also be used to make predictions. Both are open to refinement or even complete replacement, if new results come in that aren’t consistent with the previous data.
In most cases, a Law or Theory that has been superseded can still be useful – even if the understanding of the overall picture has changed, the old version can still give good results within its limits, often saving calculation capacity for other things. The classical Pythagoras theorem of
[c^2]=[a^2]+[b^2]
is still valid for the special case where C is a right angle, despite the existence of the more general form
[c^2]=[a^2]+[b^2]-[2*a*b*cos(C)
– which is still valid on a Euclidean plane even though it isn’t on a curved surface.
“More realistically the interstellar space is dirty enough with minuscule bits of matter that at, say, 70% of lightspeed you will have to mount massive lasers on front of your space ship (or rather, on the ablative armour that extends tens of miles in front of your ship) just to vaporize before they impact like kiloton nukes on your ice hull.”
Those lasers will be flat-out useless for that intended function… what will happen is ASSUMING that the laser can TRACK AND FIRE soon enough that the energy from the shot actually HITS that “miniscule bit of matter” AND transfers enough energy into the target to “Vaporize It”… the MASS of those atoms IS STILL THERE!!! all you did was convert it from a solid to a gas! it will STILL HIT YOUR SHIP!
The only way you could even possibly get out of this situation is to have something that could cause the incoming atoms to undergo TOTAL ANNIHILATION (ie, an anti-mater style of total conversion) by using an ANTI-MATTER beam weapon to hit those bit’s ‘o matter… but then even THAT wouldn’t be good enough, because the first few ATOMS that touch and annihilate each other will cause an explosion that will force the REST of the materials AWAY from each other… so NOW you have not only regular matter incoming, you also have the leftover remains of your ANTI-Matter projectile that may or may not be on a reciprocal trajectory from the first explosion/impact…
Or just not have a wimpy ship and one whose hull as part of the time/space bending function can either deflect such particles or convert the energy of the impact into usable energy for the ship via a specialized hull design for precisely that.
Quick Sydney, call dibs on salvage rights so Kora and or the space cops can’t take the wreckage under some idiotic “prime directive” claim.
Those poor dammed fools…. I thought that the team would meet them in space.
But no, they attacked not only Sydney, but Lt.Col Maxima and her brand new facilities. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be to lose your shiny new HQ in the first 2 months after going public?
And the Colonel has so many strategic and tactical options.
I wonder, can she call in Artillery and Air support on her location? A few high explosive missiles a few cruise missiles. Maybe soften the shields up a little bit. (a low-yield Nuclear would be a bad precedent, but I doubt the international community would be to put off. Not ‘happy’ but if it stops the invasion well…….)
Oh Noooo!!!!
The Dice Gods have finally decided to get us! Run for your lives and try not to fumble!!!
Maxim 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
2. A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.
3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
The only thing worse than a boot lieutenant with an idea is two boot lieutenants with a plan.
That’s one boot lieutenant short of a committee.
then you find out the Fel look like maxima and the thing she touched was one of their artifacts that didn’t fully corrupt her or something.
Whatever the Fel artifact is, it seems they aren’t too afraid of accidentally blowing it to pieces.
Tune in next time for Sydney vs. The Evil d10 from Space!
Not Pictured: Suzie Wen who is probably smart enough to already be runnin!
No, she’ll realize that she can’t outrun death raining down.
She will grab the nearest camera crew (doesn’t matter if they are from her station, this is pro-journalism award bait, the other station will be praised for corroborating with others teams to get the scoop knowing they are all about to die. /drama).
Then bravely report on the battle as ARCON fights the invaders off. Becoming a war reporter for the first Alien Invasion.
Of course, Max will be complaining later about the idiot reporters not having common sense by not leaving a brand new war zone.
…To be fair, Sydney’s shirt is rather necessary for basic human contact…
Next page: Peggy and Sydney are in a specialized truck driving to a gun range.
Next panel: Peggy is standing beside Sydney in the back of the truck beside the minigun mounted to the truck.
Peggy: There’s your target [ points to a large concentric circle paper target 200 meters away ]
Sydney: I thought we were going to shoot at a car.
Peggy: I want to make sure you can handle this thing safely. Always point the weapon down-range! [ Reaches over and touches a lever ] That is your mode selector. When I tell you “Safety off,” you will point the minigun down-range at the target then move the lever to S. That will put you in a single-shot mode. Do not touch the trigger until I give you the order to Fire.
Sydney: Oh, I get it, in case I miss, I am not wasting lots of ammo.
Peggy: Well, that too.
Sydney: Hmm, Let’s see. [ Examines the selector switch ] O, S, B, A? So what do those mean anyway?
Peggy: Zero is safety; shoot zero rounds per trigger pull. Really, it air-gaps the mechanism and jams the trigger from moving. S is semi-automatic; one round is sent down-range for each trigger pull. B is burst; 3 rounds are shot each time you pull the trigger. A is automatic; it keeps firing 50 rounds a second so long as you are pulling the trigger. You will be using semi-automatic mode until I am sure you can handle it. To keep the barrels from overheating in automatic mode, you have to turn on this motor when you select full auto, but we are getting there yet.
Peggy: So let me get out of the truck and I will give you clearance. Remember, as the range safety officer, you have to listen to me at all times. If I tell you to stop firing, you stop right away and put the gun on safety.
Sydney: Switch to zero. Got it.
Peggy: [ Now standing behind the truck by a couple of metres ] Aim!
Sydney turns the gun to the target, taking aim through the sights.
Peggy: Safety off!
Sydney moves the selector switch to B and then back to S.
Sydney: That got away from me a little, but I got it set now.
Peggy: At your own target, on your own time, …
Peggy’s and Sydney’s radios activate:
Harem (over the radio): Recall 1, Battle-stations! Recall 1, Battle-stations!
Peggy: Safety on! [ Runs over to the doors of the truck and locks it closed. ] Get out of there! We are going back to headquarters right now!
Sydney: What’s going on?
Peggy: Somebody is attacking Archon HQ.
Sydney: With Max there? How suicidal are they?
Peggy: Pop your bubble around us and fly us home as fast as you can. Did Max say you can go supersonic?
Sydney: Yeah, I can.
Peggy: I just drove half an hour to get here. How long at your top speed to get back?
Sydney: Not sure, a couple of minutes. [ Shield forms around the two women ] Let’s find out. [ Turn on her aviation radio ] This is Archon uh, [ counts on her fingers ] 4 to air traffic control. Emergency flight plan. Flying straight up at 3G acceleration to 60 000 feet then proceeding at mach 10 or more to Archon headquarters then descending at ludicrous speed, just short of crashing into the ground. Estimated flight time: under 5 minutes. Get everybody out of my way!
Peggy: Punch it!
After looking at Wolfram Alpha to get the time up (25 s), the time to above head quarters (6.6 s), and time power diving to head quarters (3.4 s), the whole travel time is less than 1 minute.
If they drove thirty minutes to the range, at a guess they can see the Fel ship already. Conversely, the Fel can see them.
I figured the firing range is about 20 miles away. You’re right, that streak through the sky and the accompanying sonic boom would be noticed that far away. So the “What’s going on?” question should be a little different.
So picking up from the middle:
Peggy: At your own target, at your own time …
Sydney: What the dolphin eyeballs is that?
Peggy: What are you talking about?
Sydney: [ Points to the BIG streak of light to their right ] That! [ Sonic boom reaches the ladies ]
Peggy: Safety on! Get over here with your shield up. When that asteroid hits the ground, it will kick up a huge shock-wave! [ Runs over to the front of the truck and locks the doors closed ]
Sydney lands beside Peggy and puts the shield up around herself, Peggy and the truck. Hey, she can’t fire the minigun if it is wiped out by a shock-wave. A new kind of music: wreck & roll, which usually starts with a huge percussion movement.
Harem: (Over their radios) Recall 1! Recall 1! Battle-stations! Battle-stations!
Sydney: What the? What does that mean?
Peggy: That means that somebody is attacking the HQ! That is a weapon system, not an asteroid. Drop the truck and we have to high-tail it back to Archon HQ. Did Max say you can go supersonic?
Sydney: Yeah, I can do that.
Peggy: Good, we are going back as fast as you can. Break the sound barrier as soon as you can.
Sydney: Ok. [ Turns on her aviation radio ] This is Archon uh, [ counts Arc-Swat flyers on her fingers ] 4 to air traffic control. Emergency flight plan: Straight up from the Frank Castle Rifle Range at 3G to 60 000 feet or so, then Mach 10 or more to Archon Headquarters then down at 3Gs to the ground, vertical landing. Estimated travel time is less than 5 minutes. Make sure nobody is in my way!
Peggy: Right. Punch it!
Without crash couches 3G acceleration is likely to result in some broken bones or other injuries for Sydney’s passengers. Sydney is protected by the properties of the flight orb itself.
The Saturn 5 had about 2G acceleration, the space shuttle had a limiter to prevent it from exceeding 3G acceleration.
I figured that Peggy was trained as a high-performance pilot and knows how to handle 3G acceleration (breathing techniques, etc.) laying on the bottom of the shield to distribute the force. But doing a similar consideration for decent, a 3 second power dive will put Peggy through too many Gs. So I guess if it takes 25 seconds to go up, it should take 25 seconds to come down. Sydney’s passenger is not Anvil after all.
No amount of training allows you to not be tossed around the inside of a featureless sphere when you have no straps to hold you in place. And the human body doesn’t just ‘learn’ to not be injured by laying on the bottom of a non-human shaped sphere.
Pilots have contoured chairs, straps, and for high performance jets the pilots even have body hugging suits that attempt to ‘squeeze’ the blood out of the various areas it tends to pool during high-G maneuvers. None of this can be learned.
We have seen the passengers are also protected.
Sydney has been hauling passengers since the day after the bank robbery.
We’ve seen her move passengers, but it was never shown (to my memory) to have been at speed or while violent maneuvers were taking place. Picking up Harem for a lift to the office, transporting a few team mates to the Council Super Sekret underwater lair, that sort of thing doesn’t typically come with multi-G turns.
Short version:
Panel 1: From behind, Sydney is on a BIG GUN, sighted in on distant target. Peggy to the side, facing away from us, looking at the target through binoculars.
Peggy: “on my mark…”
Panel 2: Peggy’s face, reacting angrily and starting to swing back as the SOUND “ChaBOOM” from behind her blows her hair forward. In the distance we see a streak of fire downward out of the sky.
“I said hold fire to my mark”
Panel 3: Sydney “I didn’t…” and then she cuts off, mid sentence, at the look on Peggy’s face.
Panel 4 (splash for remainder of page): in the distance, smoke and fire mushrooming over the Archon buildings.
NOTE: Yes, any fire hot enough makes a mushroom.
“It’s an evil spaceship, not a death dreidel” — It can be both….
Two points.
1) It clearly IS a Death Dreidel. It also happens to be a Fel warship.
2) If a Special Forces Colonel orders you to do ANYTHING tactical, DO IT NOW. If you live you can discuss it layer.