Annotated 49-45
FB: [YELLING IN/AT COLOSSUS]
Funny how Syr’Nj and Gravedust, the most “mature” members of the group, were also the ones to pursue the strategy of “literally blowing his ass up.”
If Byron and Best have transcended their old limitations (and even Frigg seems to be leveling up in panel one, there), it makes a sort of sense for Gravedust to transcend his new ones. We’ve seen his eyes glow yellow and/or blue many times, before he gave up those powers in exchange for Byron’s life. Here, the glow returns as a straightforward white.
Most of this page was Flo, but the last line was mine. I’m pretty happy with it, though I’d be even happier if it were the last line for the whole scene. But we’ll get into that tomorrow.
My interpretation here, and maybe it wasn’t intentional on yours and Flo’s part, was that the Five were beating HR at his own game— They’re Gods of this world, too, and have had as much a hand in shaping it. They defeat him using the things that only really exist in Arkerra because of their influence. Byron becomes a berserker, and the berserker virus was his creation. Syr’nj does science to HR, and she was, honestly, likely the reason that Science can be done in this world. Gravedust uses his mysticism, Frigg uses her glowy divine willpower stuff… Best uses himself and that’s super fitting.
I also got the impression that they were using their connection to the outside world to influence it in the same way HR is. Especially since we don’t see any of them using their powers after the connection is severed.
That’s a really cool interpretation, like it!
So is he like…. Gray-vedust now?
I’ll show myself out.
Simply rendering HR’s physical manifestation(s) asunder, either by using blades, magic or explosives, would strike me as insufficient to exterminate something that has transcended the need for existing as a single form. I can definitely accept the concept of a cost of some sort for HR creating new bodies or weather phenomena, so I don’t think destroying HR’s little purple selves is pointless, but I think I need to see The Five do a little more than whittle HR’s hit points/mana points away. Thankfully, Gravedust is about to do something cool…
In this case, if a transcendent being chops at another transcendent being and **wills** it to function, then it functions, at least if the target is ultimately claiming to be more than they are. HR can’t defend himself here because he can’t believe he’s actually being harmed.
If he could believe he was being harmed, he might be able to **will** himself to recover, but simple disbelief won’t work.
Are Gravedust and Syr’Nj really leveling up here?
Sure, Gravedust’s eyes are glowing, but we don’t know if that actually contributed anything. He’s mainly just helping Syr’Nj rig up the dynamite. And Syr’Nj: She’s simply using more explosives than before, which is not a new skill.
Except: Maybe that bag of holding is her (player’s) invention? And now that she really needs it, she is making the requisite amount of dynamite appear. Possibly unconsciously, but she is altering the world in such a way that her problem becomes solvable.
And Gravedust: So it seems like he does still (again?) have some connection to the spirit world, but we don’t know what it is, if he’s using it here in any way, and to what effect.
Either way, I think it’s alright that not all Five are simultaneously learning spectacularly new tricks, within the same scene. And Syr’Nj has had a bigger part of the spotlight for a while, so it’s fine with me if she does the “conventional” thing now.
I can her that screencap in the annotations