Grrl Power #958 – Succubi party games
See, the colors on the chokers randomize each time the little spinny arrow thing is spun, so you never know who is going to be “it.”
Now all I can think about is the succubus versions of different games, board and otherwise. I mean, their version of “Guess Who” is… well, still a game that favors a good memory. Succubus “Connect 4” is a little different though. “Ticket to Ride” is similar only in name. “Mouse Trap” is… well, not called Mouse Trap, I can tell you that. “Cards Against Succubi” is surprisingly way less racist. Succubi Yahtzee? Exactly the same.
Dabbler is giving everyone a simplified crash course in enchanting. It sounds like what she’s saying is that every sigil is hard coded with software, and that is mostly the case, it’s not the whole story. Most enchanted items are run and done, but some might have a limited number of options. A wand of cold might have a cone of cold option, a wall of ice, ice spear, and slippery floor setting, but all the other stuff in the enchantment is going to be pretty stock stuff. A spell of invisibility might not have any options besides on or off, but it might have a slider that lets you turn parts of you invisible, or let you target others, or do area effect, etc.
All those options make the sigil/spell more complicated which usually increases casting time. On an enchanted item, this can affect the activation time of the device, and more complex sigils/code can produce more complex effects. This can cost more mana, but not always. Sometimes a sigil will be complex because it uses efficient algorithms, or it might be a smarter spell. For instance a chain lightning spell could have some arcane friend or foe lookup tables, which is more mana efficient than making a spell that has a telepathic component to read the caster’s mind to determine targeting, but probably less flexible.
Some spells you can pump a shitload of mana into for a bigger effect, but most will burn out if you try that. The sigil has to be designed to handle a mana dump. It’s as much art as it is science.
July’s vote incentive is up! And it’s a little odd this time.
Okay, so, I didn’t visit my parents for Christmas last year because of the pandemic, instead we went down last month during summer break. It’s about a 4 hour drive each way, plus I had to actually, you know, interact with them and not just ignore them and not work the whole time. Bottom line is I lost about 3 days of work, because try as I might, I just can’t draw while riding in a car. Like, at best I could flat a page with the paint bucket, and even then I miss 1 out of three times and have to undo a ton.
Anyway, I can’t draw in a car, but I can write, and I made some decent progress on Tamer: Enhancer 2. I know I’ve been saying that for a while but I feel like the end is in sight. But, on to the vote incentive.
You guys don’t know who this is yet. (Her name is Xerxa.) I will give you one single guess what she might be from. (And no, it’s not Dabbler’s mother.) It was a piece I had half finished from a little while ago and given my time constraints this month, I threw a little polish and some background on it and here you are. Unfortunately there aren’t nine separate versions because she’s not wearing a ton to begin with. Hopefully you can read about that soon. I hope you like it, personally I think it turned out pretty good.
As always, nude version are up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Since Xerxa/Vote Incentive has 8 limbs, her species should be Arachnae and if she is displeased with the mating, she bites the head (her choice of which) off of her mate. Her hand jobs can rip the flesh off of her partners junk but her massages are divine.
She could be a vegetarian. Her favorite food might be a nice kali-flower.
If you want to date her make sure any jewelry you give her has three matched stones in it or she will rip your heart of your chest.
Max just looks so happy in the last panel.
Agreed – maybe she’s enjoying all the nerd talk? Or is she just enjoying the ‘not being a freak’?
I think she’s realizing that all these random people really do care about her. <3
Was coming here just to post this.
Max’s look in that last panel is just uber sweet.
She’s feeling that warm feeling from having so many people work together to help her with something that means a lot to her, that she previously resigned herself to not experiencing again.
That’s what makes is maybe the best panel out of the entire comic. So sweet.
She is feeling the love they all have for her.
That expression in the last panel is one of the best pieces of understated visual storytelling and character development in the entire comic to date. It’s really rare that we see Max have a moment like this, and of course she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it by saying something, but it’s really sweet nonetheless.
Is Xerxa maybe related to Ohio’s Third Rated Superhero?
Hopefully they add in a texture package because if she is so shinny she looks oily then her skin is going to look smoother then a photo shopped image. What I mean by that is that she will have no blemishes pores or any micro scars that almost everyone has. so even with a shader she might just come out with an uncanny valley vibe.
That’s… what they are about to work on, yes
They need to add a second setting that has black hair and a slightly greenish tint to the skin tone. It will go better with her ears. (Which brings up another point about her physical toughness. Can she even get pierced ears if she wanted?)
If Max wants to go completely unnoticed in public once they have the settings fixed, she needs to smile like she is doing in the last panel. No one who has ever seen a picture of her on the news will know who it is.
meh. She doesn’t need the choker at all. If she relaxes and smiles, nobody will know it’s her! (j/k)
Okay, is there a good reason why the blue Succubae has a knife strapped to her leg? O_o
Rule No. 9: Never go anywhere without a knife. So Sayeth Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
Maybe it’s not a knife. I can think of other things succubi would like to always have with them.
Yea. It does look pretty knife-like to me though.
But I am sure a succubus can make very good use of a knife, in many ways.
It’s a convenient tool. And it doesn’t decrease the sexy one bit.
DaveB: You know the ‘old’ adage:
It’s Tetris when you’re pushing them in,
It’s Jenga when you’re pulling them out.
Party. Choker.
she kinda looks like an older Sydney with the disguise.
Both code and processor … so basically an FPGA?
I read a lot of Rune Tech,
Or Written Enchantment that way
Like FPGA Core Tiles….
Connect them in the right pattern and you have a working “Spell”
Yes!
Okay as a computer scientist and sci-fi and fantasy writer I have *got* to speak up.
Spells being both processing *and* code is analogous to working with a very high-level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language to build custom circuits, or, like, you said, working with a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array.
Mana is expended in *building* the circuit, *running* the circuit, and *maintaining* the circuit’s existence.
This is neat! ^_^
Imagine a society on a water world, without access to metal. Which uses ice as its only available material to make its computers. With water flowing through the circuits instead of electricity. Perhaps their technology would even advance to allowing the machinery itself to freeze and melt certain parts for permanent memory or as hard reprogramming.
As anyone who’s ever played CoreWars will attest:
Self-modifying code is a P I T A to work with.
this would make memory leaks much much more interesting.
So glad I have already finished my coffee.
’twas way funnier than it should have been.
Will Xerxa be making an appearance in the foreseeable future!?!?
Different universe, so… maybe?
This reminds me of the phrase, “Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.“
Hissss!
No TVTropes warning!
I suspect Arthur C. Clarke was actually a grand wizard, just tweaking the noses of his fellow magic users, by talking about it openly, yet in a way that would not be recognised as unveiling a hidden truth.
That was actually a quote from Agatha Heterodyne.
Which was just riffing on Arthur’s much more famous original quote.
And the award for the strip with the smutty mind goes to…
So veins, cracks, or patch borders?
Never thought about it before but why not go the simple way and use Cora’s tech?
Too high tech for us caveman earthers. I think Dabbler just said that a page or two ago.
because Max will have it for about an hour before it is siezed and consigned to reverse engineering. It will say right on the form that she will get it back when they are done and it is working, of course time frames are flexible. the hour is out of respect- it will take that long for someone to do the paperwork so that it can be legally taken.
True. That said though Earth does have magic and Archon does have those who use magic. In fact Zoeng is a specialist with magical artefacts. So I think there is a flaw in the logic that it would be safe to give Earth magical technology, when it is considered too risky to give them a technological item which does the same thing!
Of course the flaw may not be Dabblers. She could simply be complying with the letter of any ban on giving technology to Earth, whilst revelling in breaking rules that she finds inconvenient. And that ban may well have been made at a time when most human societies considered magic to be heretical and might burn users at the stake. Hence not making it a priority to ban such items.
Especially given how important it was to conceal aliens and other supernaturals, when on Earth, and that rarer beings would not be included in the Veil’s programming. Likewise there being a need for protection in places where there is no coverage from it (for instance far out at sea, or at least in parts that do not have Atlantis or other supernatural lairs). Plus I am sure there would have to be contingency plans for when it either malfunctions in areas or is sabotaged.
Maybe it has to do with the fundamental difference between magic and technology? The difference has never been 100% clear in the story.
Maybe technology can be reverse-engineered, but magic can’t. Or maybe the total magic that a species can output is limited by/bound to their planet’s ambient mana, and it is impossible for a world to reach interplanetary status using magic alone, even if they could figure out how. Maybe some planets have more juice in their mana-field, but Earth’s is relatively low, and that’s why magical beings on Earth are small in number?
Alternatively, the choker is something that Earth’s mages are already capable of – there are already illusionists and artificers on Earth, this is just an artifact that produces an illusion, so it’s not really new. Maybe a bit of clever engineering but there’s nothing in it that could springboard Earth forward technologically.
it reminds me of a book i read long ago.. no i don’t know what it was called. but spacecraft range was more dependent on the number of drives. some humans from earth were stranded on the other side of a boundary because the rules had changed and they needed a ship towed by a team of unicorns or something like that to continue traveling. so the idea that magic does not enable interstellar travel (unless you are absorbed into the fel) means its less dangerous to share. so far Dave hasn’t placed a spelljammer ship in his world.
Since the current art style has people so shiny anyway, it really seems like the current way would be fine out on the street.
One thought is she can at least holo-make-up and stuff on, if she so desires. Since I think they mentioned previously that her skin sort of ignores it otherwise.
…Is it wrong that I really want to know how that succubae game is really played now? Probably can’t explain it properly and keep this page PG-13-ish, but dammit, I’m curious now! It’s such a tease!
Only Succubi, can play it, are you willing to convert???
(Spends a moment thinking about that very interesting question…)
I can’t help but imagine that would improve almost every aspect of my life except possibly lifting heavy things… (I’d add reaching things down of high shelves, but I’m only a very average 5’8″ to begin with.)
….but honestly I was thinking more along the lines of sending Dabbler down to her next visit “home” with a camera-phone so I could later watch the video online. (I said I was curious to know HOW it’s played, not necessarily that I wanted to PARTICIPATE sight-unseen, with no idea what I’d be getting into.)
Heck, originally I just wanted the written rules.
have yo say that last panel gave me the happy proud vibe
Did DaveB forget to draw irises on Leon’s eyes?
I think he’s used that style on him before, aiming to convey that he’s hyper-focused on whatever he’s looking at. That interpretation would go better with the third and fourth panels than it does in the first, though – especially if the eyes in the first panel were ‘normal’ so that the contrast highlights the focus.
I want one so I can Cosplay UNITY (Re: Skin Horse)
Yes I Know, UNITY is normally housed in a Female Structure
But as far as I Know, That isn’t Required….
OK, here’s an attempt to figure out how that Succubus game might work based on the description given:
– “It’s like a combo of Twister, Musical Chairs, and Tag”
– It involves changes to the players’ colour
– There is a caller, who uses a similar format to Twister (“[Body part], [colour]”)
The caller activates a random choice element for both body part and colour. Be that a spinner as used in our universe’s Twister, a pair of dice, or whatever. This returns a combination, and shuffles the players’ colours at the same time. The caller then relays the combination to the active players.
Which is when the race begins. Whoever is now the designated colour is ‘it’, and all the other active players must race to place (and keep) the specified body part in contact with ‘it’. The last player to succeed in doing so loses the round. The body parts called might start with something easy like a hand – innocuous, doesn’t take up much area on ‘it’, allows the touching players to maintain some distance from ‘it’ and each other – but all those characteristics may vary as the game goes on.
If they’re playing to a winner, then the eliminated players stay out. But that gets boring, especially for a growing number of players, and it’s over too soon. So the player who loses one round becomes the caller for the next round, and the previous caller rejoins the game. Minus an article of clothing. And anyone who runs out of those…
Good attempt! Would totally play that.
Would a curse to make Maxima look uglier cost less energy? Curses and disguise spells probably have radically different structures and costs, but it might help her walk around without being noticed.
Even if it is only temporary, that can cause emotional distress and lack of esteem. I recall a TV series where celebrities had extensive makeup to take on the features of people with facial disfigurement of one sort or another. Some felt that they would be able to cope because, unlike the person they were emulating, it was only transient. They found it highly traumatic, being the victim of people showing disgust, flinching, being unable to maintain eye contact and so on. The impact is even greater for someone with good looks who is used to positive reactions.
Far better, I think, to curse someone with being inconspicuous. A safer prospect, in the event of a malfunction which makes the curse permanent! Further, it would directly give Maxima the attribute that she actually wants, when being incognito. Whilst avoiding most of the worst effects of ugliness. Not to mention allowing her the prospect of dating whilst using the item. A far far harder prospect otherwise.
At the end, I think Max is thinking “My God, my people are all so weird… and so AWESOME!”
Once Krona has learnt enough about magic, she should be able to hack it just as easily as anything else in reality.
I vote last panel becomes Max’s new Who’s who pic at the top :D
But wait, all three ladies playing the Twister/Musical Chairs/Tag game are wearing panties or at least some form of crotch covering. Seeing as this is the case, how are the players supposed to get their right hands into the pink?
When the music stops of course, once they have been tagged.
A real world portal, connecting two cities!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-57694055
Really brought out her humanity in that last panel.
Yorp’s comment above regarding people in ugly disguise leads me to wonder how traumatic Max’s transformation was for her. The topic of her transformation gets touched on briefly early in the comic but it doesn’t really get that much into the impact on her self image. Suddenly, as a teenager, she no longer looks standard human. In the story line present it has been over a decade since she could easily go unnoticed on the street. Even amongst most supers she stands out. It will be interesting to see how Max”s version of Clark Kent handles this.
*paw print of approval*
Well, she sure didn’t look too happy about it at the time.
Like Krona, I didn’t get it until today
It does sound like a fun party.
I think it is appropriate to abuse a Klingon quote.
‘that is a good day to die’
Getting realistic looking skin is actually really difficult, because skin isn’t like paint. It the light merely reflects off the surface, then you just look like a mannequin.
In real skin, the light actually partially passes through skin before being reflected back out, which is why you can see veins under your skin. This means that skin is a 3D surface, rather than a flat 2D surface. This effect is difficult to duplicate properly, which is a large part of the reason why the “skin” of “real dolls” doesn’t quite look like human skin (in addition to the coloration being too homogenous).
Rather than “programming a shader”, it would probably be better to copy the look of some existing skin, if such a thing were possible.
Typo: “It the light…”
Should be: “If the light…”
Getting skin to look right is something that the programmers at Pixar have been improving on over the years. The characters in their movies actually started looking more real about the time The Incredibles was released.
That last panel is so heartwarming…