Hey, from the point of view of the ranged attacker, it’s entirely fair. When facing a melee-tank, the best counter is to have superior range. On the other hand, for the melee-tank, the best advantage is to close the distance to a ranged attacker. The game balance is what makes it all fair.
I vaguely recall a story where the bad guy existed in two different states and the only way to defeat him was to kill him in both states simultaneously. Could be that the same applies here.
Also, it looks like the Five are using their own souls to guide the arrow. Which raises the question: will that result in them sacrificing their lives, or will it return them to their meat-bodies?
World of Warcraft also had a raid boss with this mechanic: it existed in two dimensions and your raid had to kill it simultaneously in both. It was irritating as hell.
Any chance you’re referring to Worm, the superhero web serial? I forgot the name of the villain, probably spoilers to mention it, but he does fit the ticket.
Actually, in the infamous Sonic ’06 game, the final villain exists relative to the whole timeline, so he has to be killed in the past, present, and future. Don’t think that’s what you’re referring to, but there it is.
HR tied Arkerra and Sepia World together so that certain actions can only occur in parallel in both worlds. In this sense, both worlds are just different perspectives of the same underlying reality.
The connection is so profound that it baffled even HR: When he tried to draw The Five from Arkerra, that proved to be impossible. He quickly realized the reason and therefore tried to implement a matching action in Arkerra by killing The Five. But I guess his understanding of the structure of Arkerra was too incomplete to do this properly…
You’re misunderstanding. Sepia world is a shadow of Arkherra. The events of Arkherra are duplicated there – imperfectly, in fewer dimensions, without color. If all you’ve ever seen in your life are the shadows, then they look like they’re happening on their own. But there’s a cause to them.
HR actually explained it as his theory in the comic at one point. It was a while ago. There’s no proof it’s true, but I would certainly consider him the authority on the subject.
If that is true and if HR created Arkerra then doesn’t that mean our bold adventurers have just brought about their own destruction (and the world’s) by destroying its creator and supposed life source?
First, by this theory, HR did *not* create Arkerra, because Sepia World is just a shadow of Arkerra.
Second, what’s baffled HR from the beginning is that Arkerra has an existence independent of him. He’s been trying to conquer a thing he does not control. So in any case — whether Sepia World is a shadow of Arkerra, or if Arkerra is a shadow of Sepia World that somehow became independent, or if they were always two independent worlds — Arkerra’s existence is not contingent upon HR’s.
One problem with that, there are numerous Arkerra events that have no sepia effects, and vice-versa.
The hypothesis with the lowest komolgorov complexity is that these are two independent worlds.
The synchronicity of events is best explained by the common denominator : HR Dedalus’s piss-poor leadership skills and his self-destructive self-loathing.
Oh! I’m dead. But just as well: did you see how my skin was contracting super quick psoriasis the last few pages? At least I won’t have to deal with that.
What? The naked unconscious guy in the tube was an imminent threat to all life on Earth? Yeah, sure lady. Step right this way please, there’s a special padded room all prepared for you.
Really, it’ll be best for everyone involved if HR decides he’s been working too hard and takes a trip on his private yaht, which runs into bad weather and sinks.
Can and wants to are two different things. Unfortunately, such agencies often need a reason to care about the person who just saved the world; Carol isn’t exactly innocent, and “Secretary of a reclusive CEO goes crazy and kills her boss” makes a great cover-up story. Hoping those smartphone videos come in handy!
On the one hand she does have the benefit of witnesses and probably high priced lawyers. But on the other, yeah, “crazed exec kills her CEO” is a convenient cover story.
Not too mention her witnesses aren’t exactly her allies.
I’m not sure there will be one. Xan’s video is still there, and even if that wouldn’t fly — which it probably wont — there’s enough evidence of shadiness that they might be able to suggest a “we tried to wake him up and he just snapped. There wasn’t anything we could do, officer’s, honest” sort of defense.
As far as we know, none of the Arkterra edolons are dead. Each of them added to Gravy’s arrow, but the strands are not depleting them.
There won’t be any prosecution because HR’s body will vanish into purple dust, and the basis of a murder charge is habeus corpus. I there is no body… there is nobody.
Kennerly is referring to the prophecy that Best’s grave will be a lonely and unknown one. He’s pointing out we have one last major plot hook to resolve.
No, there was no headstone (at least not one that has ever been shown or mentioned), and when they visited the winter elves, the lonely grave was still in Best’s future.
Habeas Corpus actually has nothing to do with the corpse of a murder victim. It literally means ‘You have the/your body’ and refers to the right for someone to not be kept imprisoned indefinitely without a court deciding whether it’s legal for him to remain in prison.
I’m pretty sure a lot of people were convicted of murder even with the body never found.
The evidentiary principle, which Odo was probably referring to, is ‘corpus delicti’…which also doesn’t mean that you need the corpse (it applies to all crimes, not just murder, so a corpse might not even be relevant) – it simply means you need evidence that a crime happened before you can charge someone with that crime. The ‘corpus’, here refers body of evidence, not the victim’s body. While, in the case of a murder, the corpse is one of the stronger pieces of evidence, the corpus delicti could be built around other things that point to murder, though it might take a lot to reasonably eliminate other potential circumstances (lesser crimes, such as battery or kidnapping; accidental death; the ‘victim’ deliberately disappearing; etc).
From within and without, both entities needed to die – now I imagine there is an echo, a vengeful spirit or something else like that which prevents the re-purposing of the game universe.
I’d’ve seriously liked that song a helluva lot more if it weren’t so 90’s whiny corporate Indy. Still drives me batshit to this day.
Please! Someone talented cover that song!! Make it punk or something!!
– then we’d kill Him/Her/It. See: HR, and JC. Speaking of, Daedalus got off pretty easy with a simultaneous bullet/arrow preceded by his “children’s” frustrating rebellion; I’d take that over flogging & crucifixion any day.
Really love seeing the bullet and the arrow on the panel at once in that last one.
Just random speculation dump:
But what about the Cyberia people who knew WAV? And Best’s lonely grave? Original hypothesis I keep saying is that Best dies on the way out, and the lonely grave is a marker in the gamefor him, and a maybe a real one in the real world, too, but a body is in neither grave.
Maybe they aren’t all out yet and somehow the Cyberia peeps have something to do with helping them out. Or maybe because Best is in some way tied to Cyberia that’s why there’ll be some weird technical mumbo jumbo about why he won’t be able to leave the game with the rest of them, thus the lonely grave? Stuck in limbo forever.
She still has the glowy hammershit in the first panel but you can see it lifting away revealing white underneath, which I assume is her “true colour”. The orange glowy hammershit was always a thing that was external to her that she could channel (and she was not the only one who could).
Her test tube color (and sepia world color), was silver. But I suspect that glowing silver is a bit hard to pull off, so the John opted for white instead. Plus it fits her as a paladin.
Sheesh, someone is glowing a bit, and pushes you away with magic and you go right to killing them? For shame, maybe they are just awakening to their magic powers or something, do you want to get shot when you have involuntary magical emanations?
Things that I’ve noticed only after lots of careful observation:
– Gravy actually closes his eyes, which are emanating a white vapour, right before letting the arrow fly.
– Frigg’s “true colour” seems to actually be white.
– In the last panel you can actually see the arrow and the bullet flying in opposite directions. Interestingly, the arrow can be seen in a panel fragment of Sepia World and the bullet in a fragment of Arkerra. This may be significant taking into account that the “souls” of the Five are riding the arrow.
Don’t you hate the boss fights when after you grind down 90+% of the bosses’ 1.25 billion hit points, the last 5 or 10% turn into a scripted scene? At least no one hit ESC and skipped the entire cutscene.
Last time we saw the Five was ch.49 pg.19, but that was only in the background. A better view of them was in ch.49 pg.5. The issue with the last times we saw them was that they were shown in the exact condition they were when they first entered. At the very least, Grave should have been losing weight, and the others should have been losing muscle mass. This means it was either Carol’s delusion that they were alive, an illusion placed on the dead bodies, or that they were in some sort of magical suspended animation.
I’m inclined towards the second theory. They were shown in ch.49 pg.11 to still be online and able to fight while the serves are down. This means they no longer needed a connection to the servers to live, and that they were on a permanently existing alternate world. They no longer had need of their regular bodies, and those were just likely shells. The bodies were likely being used as an anchor point to link HR to the other world, with the data collected being based on the signal. That is why the charts looked so wrong. They were showing fluctuations in energy and signal, just not brain activity.
HR Dedalus has just become HR Icarus.
RIP Dedalus?
HR Deadalus
“Ahhhh! My HP!”
Critical hit!
Ranged classes are so unfair :-)
Hey, from the point of view of the ranged attacker, it’s entirely fair. When facing a melee-tank, the best counter is to have superior range. On the other hand, for the melee-tank, the best advantage is to close the distance to a ranged attacker. The game balance is what makes it all fair.
Well I’m not cleaning up this mess.
It’s easy to clean this up…Access the primary hard drive, select all, delete. See, just a few keystrokes.
Really digging the final panel.
It begs the question though- which one “mattered?” Taking out the HR in Akerra or in Sepiaworld? Would one have done anything without the other?
Maybe they both mattered. Maybe neither, and it was actually a third unknown universe that determined it.
Perhaps someone rolled a natural 1.
I vaguely recall a story where the bad guy existed in two different states and the only way to defeat him was to kill him in both states simultaneously. Could be that the same applies here.
Also, it looks like the Five are using their own souls to guide the arrow. Which raises the question: will that result in them sacrificing their lives, or will it return them to their meat-bodies?
World of Warcraft also had a raid boss with this mechanic: it existed in two dimensions and your raid had to kill it simultaneously in both. It was irritating as hell.
For no reason, I am going to mention The Dreamland Chronicles.
No reason. Certainly no reason connected to your comment.
Any chance you’re referring to Worm, the superhero web serial? I forgot the name of the villain, probably spoilers to mention it, but he does fit the ticket.
Actually, in the infamous Sonic ’06 game, the final villain exists relative to the whole timeline, so he has to be killed in the past, present, and future. Don’t think that’s what you’re referring to, but there it is.
HR tied Arkerra and Sepia World together so that certain actions can only occur in parallel in both worlds. In this sense, both worlds are just different perspectives of the same underlying reality.
The connection is so profound that it baffled even HR: When he tried to draw The Five from Arkerra, that proved to be impossible. He quickly realized the reason and therefore tried to implement a matching action in Arkerra by killing The Five. But I guess his understanding of the structure of Arkerra was too incomplete to do this properly…
You’re misunderstanding. Sepia world is a shadow of Arkherra. The events of Arkherra are duplicated there – imperfectly, in fewer dimensions, without color. If all you’ve ever seen in your life are the shadows, then they look like they’re happening on their own. But there’s a cause to them.
Yikes. I never thot of that. Explains everything.
HR actually explained it as his theory in the comic at one point. It was a while ago. There’s no proof it’s true, but I would certainly consider him the authority on the subject.
If that is true and if HR created Arkerra then doesn’t that mean our bold adventurers have just brought about their own destruction (and the world’s) by destroying its creator and supposed life source?
First, by this theory, HR did *not* create Arkerra, because Sepia World is just a shadow of Arkerra.
Second, what’s baffled HR from the beginning is that Arkerra has an existence independent of him. He’s been trying to conquer a thing he does not control. So in any case — whether Sepia World is a shadow of Arkerra, or if Arkerra is a shadow of Sepia World that somehow became independent, or if they were always two independent worlds — Arkerra’s existence is not contingent upon HR’s.
One problem with that, there are numerous Arkerra events that have no sepia effects, and vice-versa.
The hypothesis with the lowest komolgorov complexity is that these are two independent worlds.
The synchronicity of events is best explained by the common denominator : HR Dedalus’s piss-poor leadership skills and his self-destructive self-loathing.
He made this happen.
That would be consistent with the obvious color cue: sepia.
Oh! I’m dead. But just as well: did you see how my skin was contracting super quick psoriasis the last few pages? At least I won’t have to deal with that.
Yeah, I just noticed it too. Nice detail!
Nothing a little Noxema can’t clear up!
I wonder how Carol’s going to enjoy her impending potassium chloride injection …
Seeing as how this is the only murder they could convict her of in a state that rarely executes people anyway.. not likely.
Under the circumstances, accepting life in prison is a reasonable sacrifice.
I’m fairly sure this would fall under “Self Defense”, here.
Or defense of another (who were unable, such as a minor, disabled/unconscious etc.)
What? The naked unconscious guy in the tube was an imminent threat to all life on Earth? Yeah, sure lady. Step right this way please, there’s a special padded room all prepared for you.
Really, it’ll be best for everyone involved if HR decides he’s been working too hard and takes a trip on his private yaht, which runs into bad weather and sinks.
Even if the FIB doesn’t exist in this universe, there’s probably some government agency that can pull a “nothing to see here, folks.”
Can and wants to are two different things. Unfortunately, such agencies often need a reason to care about the person who just saved the world; Carol isn’t exactly innocent, and “Secretary of a reclusive CEO goes crazy and kills her boss” makes a great cover-up story. Hoping those smartphone videos come in handy!
On the one hand she does have the benefit of witnesses and probably high priced lawyers. But on the other, yeah, “crazed exec kills her CEO” is a convenient cover story.
Not too mention her witnesses aren’t exactly her allies.
I’m not sure there will be one. Xan’s video is still there, and even if that wouldn’t fly — which it probably wont — there’s enough evidence of shadiness that they might be able to suggest a “we tried to wake him up and he just snapped. There wasn’t anything we could do, officer’s, honest” sort of defense.
Its not over yet, guys. Payet’s not dead.
Well, the way I interpreted the vision: he’s a hero in Arkarra and is buried in a longely grave in SepiaWorld.
As far as we know, none of the Arkterra edolons are dead. Each of them added to Gravy’s arrow, but the strands are not depleting them.
There won’t be any prosecution because HR’s body will vanish into purple dust, and the basis of a murder charge is habeus corpus. I there is no body… there is nobody.
Kennerly is referring to the prophecy that Best’s grave will be a lonely and unknown one. He’s pointing out we have one last major plot hook to resolve.
That already happened, though. He was sucked into the vortex, and a lonely headstone was left in remembrance of him.
But he came back.
No, there was no headstone (at least not one that has ever been shown or mentioned), and when they visited the winter elves, the lonely grave was still in Best’s future.
Habeas Corpus actually has nothing to do with the corpse of a murder victim. It literally means ‘You have the/your body’ and refers to the right for someone to not be kept imprisoned indefinitely without a court deciding whether it’s legal for him to remain in prison.
I’m pretty sure a lot of people were convicted of murder even with the body never found.
The evidentiary principle, which Odo was probably referring to, is ‘corpus delicti’…which also doesn’t mean that you need the corpse (it applies to all crimes, not just murder, so a corpse might not even be relevant) – it simply means you need evidence that a crime happened before you can charge someone with that crime. The ‘corpus’, here refers body of evidence, not the victim’s body. While, in the case of a murder, the corpse is one of the stronger pieces of evidence, the corpus delicti could be built around other things that point to murder, though it might take a lot to reasonably eliminate other potential circumstances (lesser crimes, such as battery or kidnapping; accidental death; the ‘victim’ deliberately disappearing; etc).
QUICK! KILL HIM!
…Oh wait, you didn’t mean it like that?
ALWAYS double tap.
At least if the caliber of your weapon doesn’t start with a 4 or larger anyway.
start with a 4? if youre using 4.000 caliber ammo, im willing to assume “tapping in the general vicinity” is more than adequate.
I think it was meant .4, as in .45
By your powers combined, I am Captain Bullet!
well bullets do seem to beat most things on the planet..
so…. yeah, i’m willing to regard that as an upgrade.
From within and without, both entities needed to die – now I imagine there is an echo, a vengeful spirit or something else like that which prevents the re-purposing of the game universe.
What if God was one of us?
What if God smoked cannabis?
What if God wasn’t a fan of us?
What if God’s a platypus?
What if God drives a mini-bus?
What if God takes Antabus?
What if God oozed purple pus?
I’d’ve seriously liked that song a helluva lot more if it weren’t so 90’s whiny corporate Indy. Still drives me batshit to this day.
Please! Someone talented cover that song!! Make it punk or something!!
Ask and ye shall receive, apparently. Recording quality is pretty bad on both though, unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLEXthe_pcQ more pop-punk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjfDP2iBq4k more rock
What if God used Papyrus?
– then we’d kill Him/Her/It. See: HR, and JC. Speaking of, Daedalus got off pretty easy with a simultaneous bullet/arrow preceded by his “children’s” frustrating rebellion; I’d take that over flogging & crucifixion any day.
What if the truth was within you all along?
I am that guy who knows that internal strikers don’t work like that,
and have to fight it back to enjoy this pivotal moment of storytelling.
Don’t worry. I’ll make it through. Somehow.
Maybe it’s supposed to be an FNP-40 instead of a Glock… Yes…. Yes this will allow me to sleep tonight.
Nope. From the shape of the trigger guard, it looks like a Springfield Xd 40, Walther Pp 40, or Desert Eagle 40.
Not being a gun enthusiast, this passed me by.
Until you mentioned it.
Thanks.
Like my avatar, I aim to please.
At least I’m no longer alone with my struggle.
holy crap. didn’t even notice that in the picture. huh. well thats going ta bug me.
o/ Shot through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give love a bad name o/
Worst. Day. Ever.
When a day is said to be the worst ever, a worse day tends to happen later, usually shortly after (in the first months after this day)
well done.
Defied by all six of his “children”. De-deified, even.
PLORP!
Carol looks at the others in bewilderment.
Carol; “Did it..?”
Shanna; “..go ‘plorp’…”
Carol; “…instead of ‘bang’?”
All three; “…ew.”
Is the background superimposed with a real photo of pubic hair? Or is that supposed d to be HR’s signature mustache?
Nice shooting, Tex
Really love seeing the bullet and the arrow on the panel at once in that last one.
Just random speculation dump:
But what about the Cyberia people who knew WAV? And Best’s lonely grave? Original hypothesis I keep saying is that Best dies on the way out, and the lonely grave is a marker in the gamefor him, and a maybe a real one in the real world, too, but a body is in neither grave.
Maybe they aren’t all out yet and somehow the Cyberia peeps have something to do with helping them out. Or maybe because Best is in some way tied to Cyberia that’s why there’ll be some weird technical mumbo jumbo about why he won’t be able to leave the game with the rest of them, thus the lonely grave? Stuck in limbo forever.
Why has Frigg gone all white-ish and lost her glowy hammershit?
She still has the glowy hammershit in the first panel but you can see it lifting away revealing white underneath, which I assume is her “true colour”. The orange glowy hammershit was always a thing that was external to her that she could channel (and she was not the only one who could).
Her test tube color (and sepia world color), was silver. But I suspect that glowing silver is a bit hard to pull off, so the John opted for white instead. Plus it fits her as a paladin.
Isn’t Carol like really drunk still?
It’s like the summoning of Captain Planet.
turns out I can’t spell my own name after getting a new computer :-(
Gotcha!
…oops, sorry. Blue paintballs were sold out.
Sheesh, someone is glowing a bit, and pushes you away with magic and you go right to killing them? For shame, maybe they are just awakening to their magic powers or something, do you want to get shot when you have involuntary magical emanations?
Things that I’ve noticed only after lots of careful observation:
– Gravy actually closes his eyes, which are emanating a white vapour, right before letting the arrow fly.
– Frigg’s “true colour” seems to actually be white.
– In the last panel you can actually see the arrow and the bullet flying in opposite directions. Interestingly, the arrow can be seen in a panel fragment of Sepia World and the bullet in a fragment of Arkerra. This may be significant taking into account that the “souls” of the Five are riding the arrow.
Don’t you hate the boss fights when after you grind down 90+% of the bosses’ 1.25 billion hit points, the last 5 or 10% turn into a scripted scene? At least no one hit ESC and skipped the entire cutscene.
Last time we saw the Five was ch.49 pg.19, but that was only in the background. A better view of them was in ch.49 pg.5. The issue with the last times we saw them was that they were shown in the exact condition they were when they first entered. At the very least, Grave should have been losing weight, and the others should have been losing muscle mass. This means it was either Carol’s delusion that they were alive, an illusion placed on the dead bodies, or that they were in some sort of magical suspended animation.
I’m inclined towards the second theory. They were shown in ch.49 pg.11 to still be online and able to fight while the serves are down. This means they no longer needed a connection to the servers to live, and that they were on a permanently existing alternate world. They no longer had need of their regular bodies, and those were just likely shells. The bodies were likely being used as an anchor point to link HR to the other world, with the data collected being based on the signal. That is why the charts looked so wrong. They were showing fluctuations in energy and signal, just not brain activity.