The worst case scenario is they’re going to be honoured as heroes in Arkherra. It’s also far from unlikely that they’re still alive over there.
I wouldn’t say allowing them to be alive in Sepia World as well/instead would justify letting HR take over and reshape the multiverse (or at least Secondary Arkherra, Cyberia, and Sepia World, and very likely Primary Arkherra, if not the rest of the multiverse).
I feel like they’ve been “dead” since they went in the tubes. HR downloaded their minds and was looking for proof that it had worked. He mearly kept up the pretence of them being trapped to keep carol on side until he could down load himself with god mode access.
HR and thier real bodies where all hooked up to the same system. When HR’s was putting out all that energy he was shot in both worlds at the same time, So his tube blew the others got hit from the fallout that caused . The one closest to HR loss both legs the others the right, as they where to the right of HR. how the 3 who were not in tubes didnt get tore up. Not really sure unless the fallout the energy was only really in the system and the wind and other effects the 3 in the room went though wheren’t as real as they seemed.
I think the three who weren’t in tubes were relatively “safe” because of the anti-grav effect. The tubes were all stationary at roughly the same level as HR’s, so when his blew, they caught the shrapnel as it traveled on a horizontal plane. The three saviors were floating up above everything, and the construction of the tubes probably meant HR’s tube had little in the way of a spherical explosion.
I agree the bodies where on life support . Like how hospitals keep bodies alive for organ transpplantation alive after brian death happens. the bodies where “alive” but there wan’t anyone home since they entered the tubes.
You’ll pardon me if I just sit and wait very patiently until I see them on the other side… I just thought there would be a shutdown or.. Well something other than this.
I can’t tell if the explosion of arcane energies obliterated their real-world bodies, or if they just fell apart and disintegrated without the tubes supporting them.
Um. River Song wasn’t really “saved”. A number of her memories got digitized and put on a shelf. And the Doctor simply left them there. He never went back for her because apparently it wasn’t really ‘her’.
Thanks Prof. I was just trying to find a way to not turn into a sobbing, snot-dripping mess. You now owe me 40 boxes of lotion-infused tissues.
And a laundry bill.
And a therapist’s bill.
And sympathetic hugs on demand.
The way the art looks it seems as if… Well… Never thought I’d use this outside of work…. Well they look like they’re still dripping. Due to the amount of trauma to the bodies I’m guessing it was the explosion and the reason far right test tube man looks worse is because he had direct line of sight on HR while the others seem to have had the explosion slightly brunted by the low table. All just speculation and theory on my part mind you. Chances are if I think it happens one way, next chapter it’s the complete opposite xD
I feel like we had some prior hint that their bodies were decaying, but I can’t remember when.
In hindsight, it makes sense — they were only supposed to be in those tubes for a few hours. It would have enormously complicated the design to provide for feeding them (and for eliminating waste).
Maybe they were kept alive by magic. But I’m inclined to believe they died a long time ago, and that their bodies were only held together by the fluid they were suspended in. That would be consistent with the way their bodies have disintegrated: they’re still mostly intact where the straps and so forth are in place.
Yeah, I have to agree. They weren’t in sustaining fluid, so much as preservative. And, perhaps not that good a preservative at that. They were long gone, after that much time in the tube, no matter what. The body starts to fail if you don’t move, blood clots form, muscles disappear, organs shrink or stop functioning.
Agreed. Those tubes were only ever designed for short term use, not the prolonged session they ended up with. So either he had to personally retrofit them for long term, (because he wouldn’t let anyone else in that room), or as many suspected, the bodies failed long ago, and were in a vegetative state until the final big bang.
Another possibility is that when HR was shot, and everything went kablooey (Technical term) there was a massive power surge, electrical or magical, and the power arcing through their bodies and attempting to ground through the floor, choose one leg as the path, and burned/exploded the tissue and bone on the way out.
The preceding dialogue kept alluding to “the accident.” The five were promised a 3 hour test drive which would seem a lot longer. Was HR bull shitting them or was that his plan all along. It is ambiguous what was an actual occurrence and what was just dreamed up in Carols drunken stupor flashback. This whole story has unfolded in a classy manor. Five out of five stars.
maybe I made the joke at the time I don’t remember and I don’t remember seeing the 3-hour thing when I did my last read through but I don’t know if I went all the way back.
I had a bit of a toss-up on who frigg and Byron would be, they could be either roll I think it works better this way because that way Mary Ann and the movie star are similar.
Movie star — Best,
Gilligan — Byron
MaryAnne — Frigg
Professor — Syr’Nj
Skipper — Gravedust
Millionare — HR
Millionare’s wife — Carol
Brain dead – most likely (this being “the accident” in question). The physical bodies looked perfectly preserved until now: either kept alive artificially, or merely preserved from decomposing – in any case, enough to fool the casual observer.
So heres the question, were they killed in the explosion(?), or was it HR’s power keeping them alive through a semi-illusion and once it shattered, their forms as rotting corpses were revealed… I pray its the former…
I think they have been dead rotting corpses for some time. HR keeping them alive not by illusion but by dark dark magic. When thier former selves appealed to the adventure avatars. I mean, was it them? Was it impostures conjured up by HR to decieve the adventurers? Were they actually all that was left of the five gamers? When they were all swept up in the big energy corruptor beast maybe they wre allready absorbed before they appeared as apparitions to sway Frig and crew to surrender. Maybe HR needed them as much the five needed him to exist, Maybe Campbell and Kahn can whip up some more strips to show what happened to eeverybody in technicolor world.
To be honest, I was expecting them to be comatose or brain dead and on life support, with the removal of HR from the magickal system being akin to taking them off life support. The team really went for the shocker of them not even immediately rotting away as soon as HR was stopped but actually turning out to be decayED (past tense) corpses.
I can’t say that this was inappropriate or in bad taste or whatnot as far as comic strip storytelling goes, though. It hits hard and it actually hits right.
To be honest I did not know what to expect and the suspense was killing me as the the battle slowly unfolded. Until Xan interpretted the scans I fully expected the five to imerge from the tubes and put clothes on and grant interviews and shit. After HR / Corruptor beast number two ate Tectonicus, nothing would surprise me. I had no idea were this tale was going.
I find the nature of the damage to be interesting – Best is in the worst shape; whether that’s because he died “the most”/”hardest,” or just because he’s closest to HR, I don’t know..
But more interesting is that everyone else is damaged in the exact same way: missing their left legs, most of that hip, and some of that arm. That makes no sense in a physics sense – anything that blew off Gravy’s leg would have been even worse for Byron’s body, if the blast was directional – conversely, anything that blew off Byron’s leg would have blown off most of Gravy’s abdomen, given relative heights displayed – but that’s also not the case; the damage pattern is the same in all 4 cases – that smacks of something more deliberate at work.
Given the nature of the damage, I think it was inflicted by HR himself. We saw that he was starting to consume Xan and Shanna on the ceiling; I think he probably started to consume the Five as well, and they got eaten worse because they’re closer to the floor. There are damage marks on the structures of their tubes as well.
I’d say explosion. Their bodies appear intact whenever they are shown from here http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-49-page-5/ on, until now. Even if brain-dead (or having had their consciousness transferred completely into Arkerraworld), it took Xan’s knowledge to realise that the brain scans weren’t real, so their external appearance at least could fool the casual observer.
Yeah, I am reminded of some of the really, really dark stuff R. Crumb did back in the day. I still have nightmares about some of those, and may have them about this.
Really Xan, taking pictures of the dead guy? No matter his crimes that’s just poor taste. What does he even need the pictures for? Its not like he needs proof at this point.
oh but he does, with all the weirdness that has happened, I’d document the fuck out of it too. He just levitated, I think that warrants evidencial paranoia
Yeah, especially since Xan probably believes all of this will be covered up. Best take pictures so it will be difficult for the powers that be to cover up.
Actually his phone was running when the freaky anti-gravity stuff started happening so his might be the only evidence of that and he’s trying to get all of the evidence under one device so it can be destroyed it usually when they prevent Carol from going to jail for multiple mass murder because she’s an idiot. The only person she shot was HR after realizing that he was dead in the tube.
Carol was the perfect minion. Right up till the very end. she was an accomplice but I don’t think she actually did any of the murders. Jr knew what he was getting into getting into the tube with the others so I would consider that a suicide. Carol bury the bodies and protected the murderer but she didn’t commit the murders. I would say she would get criminally insane.
If Carol hired the hitman, she is guilty to the crimes of the hitman too.
Having had contact with the hitman (if she didn’t hire him), she will at minimum be considered an accopmlice to murder.
I’m pretty sure, based on the relative location of Carol, the way the body’s dangling, and the damage to it, that that’s SepiaBest’s corpse, not HR’s, so any crimes would be something Xan wouldn’t know about.
I am thinking it goes without saying that all the servers are down and the linkup with Arkerra has been severed permanently. I get Chrissie and Lia mixed up but whichever was so bummed when the Rachel avatar was digitally emulsified. Kingdom players all over sepia are looking at blank screens. This game was habit forming dare I say addictive. I think we are in for a bit of an epologue on this matter too as the once mighty Hurricaine is boarded up surrounded by crime tape.
Well, that is sad. I kinda wanted those five to wake up and return to their old lives. They must have had families, friends, heck, maybe just a friendly neighbor who liked to greet them every morning. And now they are stuck in a videogame which we have no idea if it is really real or just made to feel “real” for the ones inside.
If the story continues for them in Arkherra after their indisputable death in Sepia World, then it means that they have indeed transferred their consciousness to a real alternate world instead of merely having their brains plugged into a video game.
I seem to be, surprisingly to me, in the opposite position from most people who are expressing opinions on what happened. I was afraid this was going to end with “now they get unplugged and go back to their lives in Sepia World”; I am relieved that four characters who were barely in the story died so that Syr’nj, Byron, Gravedust, and Frigg can live rather than the other way around.
From a meta-perspective, both Sepia World and Arkerra are fictional–and Arkerra is where most of the story has taken place. Even Sepia World’s nickname highlights which world is primary: normal colors are for the world that has elves and doesn’t have skyscrapers, the other world is “this is a variant” toned.
Since we know the characters do stuff even while logged out, I guess it’s okay that the game is likely going to be shut the heck down after this giant mess, because the 5 can live on that way, sorta.
I’m just shocked that it turns out they were dead for… quite a while now. Why keep them in the tubes then? A charade, just for Carol? Did HR really not know they were long dead bodies? Or he did know and still believed he could somehow bring their consciousnesses back into the rotting tube bodies? Or, as he seemed to hint at, he didn’t care if they were dead, alive, in the game or out, his focus had shifted to becoming a god instead of well. Anything else.
I feel super bad for the five’s family. I’m itching to know how this all wraps up. How do we get a happy ending, knowing their bodies are all dead and they’re stuck in the game, a game about to become defunct? D:
I guess not all endings are happy.
It was never on the servers. It was an altered version of a parallel world, which could be controlled by magic, which in turn was controlled by the servers.
No I disagree. I do not think that The Five have been dead for a long time; I think that they were quickly consumed by HR. Note the gruesome blood spatter inside of the tubes. I think that arterial spray happened when limbs were ripped off.
I assume you meant to reply to me, or, at least, your post seems to fit as a reply to me, so I’ll reply to you as well. :)
I can see that now that you mention it! It does indeed seem they were killed here and now and haven’t been dead for a long while, as I thought.
So, now, I suppose I can speculate that, had they all looked into the same basin that Best did, wherein he saw a lonely grave for himself… that they would ALL, actually, have seen the same lonely grave for each of themselves.
I still think somehow Cyberia gets tied back into this mess, but I’m REALLY not sure how. *IF* Best’s fate is somehow different from the other four’s, I think it would be because of SOMEthing to do with Cyberia.
I hope two of my biggest questions also gets answered before the end: How and why did Bandit come back after her death? Has she been a player all this time, or something else? She’s always been the odd one out since the big reveal that the heroes were players and it was all a game.
In the last couple of pages , we saw what just a short period of time was doing to HR’s body – what with the … ahem. Skin condition. True, he was burning through a tremendous amount of power, but the Five had been in there for considerably longer too. It’s possible that something like what was happening to HR happened to them, just less quickly.
I was actually surprised Carol shot him dead (We DID get lots of hints at the end)I was wondering if it was gonna be Shanna Or was it Gravy Or was it everybody. TREEMENDOSE CLIMAX huh? Kooler than an I phone X with a built in fidget spinner.
I can see that actually. Carol hasn’t mentioned anyone’s life is in peril. So 911 may be transferring to the call to a detective or some other division that handles confessed murders. After all, they need to keep the 911 lines clear for emergency calls.
No way. I mean, it’s a clever way to add a positive beat to the end of this strip, but busting a mass murderer is top priority, and has to be considered an emergency situation – the cops have to err on the side of caution and assume the mass murderer may go off and kill more people if not detained immediately. So the standard procedure would be to get the subjects name and location, and then keep her on the line until the SWAT team got there – putting her on hold risks encouraging her to hang up.
Probably wouldn’t be the first time someone prank called or falsely confessed (possibly while drunk or drugged). I just don’t think the cops would consider it an emergency unless her next words were “Oh, and I have hostages.”
I’m somehow relieved that Carol is accepting the blame.
But Sepia World is now truly monochrome. Following the discussion from the last strip, I’m wondering if Sepia World is now nothing but a shadow of Arkerra — as it was, to begin with.
Carol never had the makings of a good super villain. She has the gun. She could easily dispense with Shanna and Xan and get a cleaner to take care of the rest.
I feel constrained to point out that while we know Best was destined for an unsung, lonely grave, I don’t think there’s ever been any solid statement that that wasn’t to be the fate of all five… Wouldn’t surprise me if Best was simply the only one to find out about it…
I find it unlikely that the protagonists–that is, Syr’nj, Byron, Frigg, and Gravedust–are dead. They’re not ever going back to Sepia World, but we’ve never seen them do anything but hover in tanks in Sepia World except a very little bit in one of Carol’s dreams anyway.
Things would have gone a lot better for HR if the five hadn’t fallen apart on him. The ultimate gaming experience really cost them an arm and a leg, but they were willing to take the plunge anyway. That took guts. I think the biggest problem, however, was HR’s god complex, which ultimately got him in (a tube filled with fluid that was) over his head, and in the end, he didn’t have a leg to stand on, ethically speaking. His quest for power ended only in a broken heart – that or a punctured lung – with his life’s work lying shattered around him.
in chapter 49 pages 19 and 26 show the 5 in canisters that are intact and so are their bodies. these are to be Mark 1 canisters. page 47 shows Gravedust firing one of his spirit arrows into HR as the spirits of the 5 are attaching themselves to at about the same time HR is being killed on the next page. the canisters probably combusted leaving scorch marks on the upper parts shattering their their glass casings and partially burning the bodies of the 5. the question is where do the spirit arrows take the spirits? HR’s mark 2 canister or master canister appears to have power still flowing through it.
HR had hinted previously that flesh was required in the metamagic equation when he made his homunculus. I reckon the flesh is required as a conduit for the power, and in this particular case, a very powerful conduit went head to head with a group of inexperienced, wild conduits in spectacular fashion.
When the threads that tie the universe together snap like rubber bands, I don’t think a little bit of meat will do much to stop the implosion.
I’m really hoping that’s not the curtain call for HR. His character had so much potential beyond a generic evil deity to be defeated by his creations, and it feels like his story isn’t over.
…What is there left for me to do in this life
Did I achieve what I had set in my sights
Am I a happy man, or is this sinking sand
Was it all worth it, was it all worth it…
Wait. What? What the hell happened to the Five?
The bridge was burned. Guess which side they were on.
Well damn, almost seems like just letting JR win was the better option.
The worst case scenario is they’re going to be honoured as heroes in Arkherra. It’s also far from unlikely that they’re still alive over there.
I wouldn’t say allowing them to be alive in Sepia World as well/instead would justify letting HR take over and reshape the multiverse (or at least Secondary Arkherra, Cyberia, and Sepia World, and very likely Primary Arkherra, if not the rest of the multiverse).
It’s an Everworld situation. After living there for so long, there’s no way they’d ever go back home.
Proposing an Everworld-Narnia scale for reacclimation to mundane worlds post-fantasy.
I’m just giddy to see someone reference Everworld!
HR tried to sell them “these are the real you, you need to give up your Arkerra identities and come back to them.” And they told him no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-udg9zQSE
‘Nuff said.
Looks like they, uh, exploded?
Yeah. I want someone to explain why their IRL bodies got turned into chunky salsa suddenly. Especially since the other three are fine.
Well, it saves on uninteresting exposition and can be hand-waved away with all the weird shit that went down
And selectively, their lower left sides took the worst of it for some reason. 4 our of 5 of them still have most of a right leg, but no left.
I feel like they’ve been “dead” since they went in the tubes. HR downloaded their minds and was looking for proof that it had worked. He mearly kept up the pretence of them being trapped to keep carol on side until he could down load himself with god mode access.
HR and thier real bodies where all hooked up to the same system. When HR’s was putting out all that energy he was shot in both worlds at the same time, So his tube blew the others got hit from the fallout that caused . The one closest to HR loss both legs the others the right, as they where to the right of HR. how the 3 who were not in tubes didnt get tore up. Not really sure unless the fallout the energy was only really in the system and the wind and other effects the 3 in the room went though wheren’t as real as they seemed.
correction. they where to the left of HR so that would make the right side take the hit.
I think the three who weren’t in tubes were relatively “safe” because of the anti-grav effect. The tubes were all stationary at roughly the same level as HR’s, so when his blew, they caught the shrapnel as it traveled on a horizontal plane. The three saviors were floating up above everything, and the construction of the tubes probably meant HR’s tube had little in the way of a spherical explosion.
yeah… that sounds good. i’ll go along with that.
They were dead all along. They couldn’t have been sustained like that for that long.
I agree the bodies where on life support . Like how hospitals keep bodies alive for organ transpplantation alive after brian death happens. the bodies where “alive” but there wan’t anyone home since they entered the tubes.
U-uh.. Yeah, they’re probably fine.
You’ll pardon me if I just sit and wait very patiently until I see them on the other side… I just thought there would be a shutdown or.. Well something other than this.
They’re still good! They’re still good! They’re just a little maimed and burned!
This game has some serious UI problems, good thing Hurricane had an internal beta.
“But other than that one thing, how did you enjoy Kingdoms of Arkerra?”
jyaeah other than that. Huh?
drip
I can’t tell if the explosion of arcane energies obliterated their real-world bodies, or if they just fell apart and disintegrated without the tubes supporting them.
Oh gods… I thought the same. Either way, the ruin of their bodies is devastating.
Okayokay–just think of River in the Library; “River Song has been saved.”
Yes I feel better now.
and this might explain why Carol got
can someone link chapter 48 page 50, please
http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-48-page-50/
So the tubes dissolved them?
Um. River Song wasn’t really “saved”. A number of her memories got digitized and put on a shelf. And the Doctor simply left them there. He never went back for her because apparently it wasn’t really ‘her’.
Didn’t the Doctor go back in a later episode?
*possible spoiler alert*
She came to him in her digital form on Trenzalore.
Thanks Prof. I was just trying to find a way to not turn into a sobbing, snot-dripping mess. You now owe me 40 boxes of lotion-infused tissues.
And a laundry bill.
And a therapist’s bill.
And sympathetic hugs on demand.
*sniff* why you gotta be so mean * snerf*
The way the art looks it seems as if… Well… Never thought I’d use this outside of work…. Well they look like they’re still dripping. Due to the amount of trauma to the bodies I’m guessing it was the explosion and the reason far right test tube man looks worse is because he had direct line of sight on HR while the others seem to have had the explosion slightly brunted by the low table. All just speculation and theory on my part mind you. Chances are if I think it happens one way, next chapter it’s the complete opposite xD
I feel like we had some prior hint that their bodies were decaying, but I can’t remember when.
In hindsight, it makes sense — they were only supposed to be in those tubes for a few hours. It would have enormously complicated the design to provide for feeding them (and for eliminating waste).
Maybe they were kept alive by magic. But I’m inclined to believe they died a long time ago, and that their bodies were only held together by the fluid they were suspended in. That would be consistent with the way their bodies have disintegrated: they’re still mostly intact where the straps and so forth are in place.
I really didn’t see this coming, though.
Yeah, I have to agree. They weren’t in sustaining fluid, so much as preservative. And, perhaps not that good a preservative at that. They were long gone, after that much time in the tube, no matter what. The body starts to fail if you don’t move, blood clots form, muscles disappear, organs shrink or stop functioning.
Agreed. Those tubes were only ever designed for short term use, not the prolonged session they ended up with. So either he had to personally retrofit them for long term, (because he wouldn’t let anyone else in that room), or as many suspected, the bodies failed long ago, and were in a vegetative state until the final big bang.
Another possibility is that when HR was shot, and everything went kablooey (Technical term) there was a massive power surge, electrical or magical, and the power arcing through their bodies and attempting to ground through the floor, choose one leg as the path, and burned/exploded the tissue and bone on the way out.
So, those brain scans that were not brain scans meant …. they were dead the whole time?
yeah /their bodies/ physically dead
The preceding dialogue kept alluding to “the accident.” The five were promised a 3 hour test drive which would seem a lot longer. Was HR bull shitting them or was that his plan all along. It is ambiguous what was an actual occurrence and what was just dreamed up in Carols drunken stupor flashback. This whole story has unfolded in a classy manor. Five out of five stars.
…a three-hour tour.
The weather started getting rough…
Why don’t they just eat Best?
maybe I made the joke at the time I don’t remember and I don’t remember seeing the 3-hour thing when I did my last read through but I don’t know if I went all the way back.
I had a bit of a toss-up on who frigg and Byron would be, they could be either roll I think it works better this way because that way Mary Ann and the movie star are similar.
Movie star — Best,
Gilligan — Byron
MaryAnne — Frigg
Professor — Syr’Nj
Skipper — Gravedust
Millionare — HR
Millionare’s wife — Carol
*role
Brain dead – most likely (this being “the accident” in question). The physical bodies looked perfectly preserved until now: either kept alive artificially, or merely preserved from decomposing – in any case, enough to fool the casual observer.
So heres the question, were they killed in the explosion(?), or was it HR’s power keeping them alive through a semi-illusion and once it shattered, their forms as rotting corpses were revealed… I pray its the former…
I think they have been dead rotting corpses for some time. HR keeping them alive not by illusion but by dark dark magic. When thier former selves appealed to the adventure avatars. I mean, was it them? Was it impostures conjured up by HR to decieve the adventurers? Were they actually all that was left of the five gamers? When they were all swept up in the big energy corruptor beast maybe they wre allready absorbed before they appeared as apparitions to sway Frig and crew to surrender. Maybe HR needed them as much the five needed him to exist, Maybe Campbell and Kahn can whip up some more strips to show what happened to eeverybody in technicolor world.
To be honest, I was expecting them to be comatose or brain dead and on life support, with the removal of HR from the magickal system being akin to taking them off life support. The team really went for the shocker of them not even immediately rotting away as soon as HR was stopped but actually turning out to be decayED (past tense) corpses.
I can’t say that this was inappropriate or in bad taste or whatnot as far as comic strip storytelling goes, though. It hits hard and it actually hits right.
To be honest I did not know what to expect and the suspense was killing me as the the battle slowly unfolded. Until Xan interpretted the scans I fully expected the five to imerge from the tubes and put clothes on and grant interviews and shit. After HR / Corruptor beast number two ate Tectonicus, nothing would surprise me. I had no idea were this tale was going.
I find the nature of the damage to be interesting – Best is in the worst shape; whether that’s because he died “the most”/”hardest,” or just because he’s closest to HR, I don’t know..
But more interesting is that everyone else is damaged in the exact same way: missing their left legs, most of that hip, and some of that arm. That makes no sense in a physics sense – anything that blew off Gravy’s leg would have been even worse for Byron’s body, if the blast was directional – conversely, anything that blew off Byron’s leg would have blown off most of Gravy’s abdomen, given relative heights displayed – but that’s also not the case; the damage pattern is the same in all 4 cases – that smacks of something more deliberate at work.
I mean, the game must have cost an arm and a leg to get…
*slow clap*
I knew there was a sick twisted pun in there.
Given the nature of the damage, I think it was inflicted by HR himself. We saw that he was starting to consume Xan and Shanna on the ceiling; I think he probably started to consume the Five as well, and they got eaten worse because they’re closer to the floor. There are damage marks on the structures of their tubes as well.
Check out the cracks in the floor.
I’d say explosion. Their bodies appear intact whenever they are shown from here http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-49-page-5/ on, until now. Even if brain-dead (or having had their consciousness transferred completely into Arkerraworld), it took Xan’s knowledge to realise that the brain scans weren’t real, so their external appearance at least could fool the casual observer.
At least they’re still looking better than they did here http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-48-page-50/
Oh god, that is grusome
I second your sentiment. O_O I was not expecting that.
indeed. holy crap. what a subtle but horrid reveal, well done Phil et co.
And gruesome.
Yeah, I am reminded of some of the really, really dark stuff R. Crumb did back in the day. I still have nightmares about some of those, and may have them about this.
Really Xan, taking pictures of the dead guy? No matter his crimes that’s just poor taste. What does he even need the pictures for? Its not like he needs proof at this point.
oh but he does, with all the weirdness that has happened, I’d document the fuck out of it too. He just levitated, I think that warrants evidencial paranoia
Yeah, especially since Xan probably believes all of this will be covered up. Best take pictures so it will be difficult for the powers that be to cover up.
Actually his phone was running when the freaky anti-gravity stuff started happening so his might be the only evidence of that and he’s trying to get all of the evidence under one device so it can be destroyed it usually when they prevent Carol from going to jail for multiple mass murder because she’s an idiot. The only person she shot was HR after realizing that he was dead in the tube.
Carol was the perfect minion. Right up till the very end. she was an accomplice but I don’t think she actually did any of the murders. Jr knew what he was getting into getting into the tube with the others so I would consider that a suicide. Carol bury the bodies and protected the murderer but she didn’t commit the murders. I would say she would get criminally insane.
She did hire the hit man that murdered Kaye.
If Carol hired the hitman, she is guilty to the crimes of the hitman too.
Having had contact with the hitman (if she didn’t hire him), she will at minimum be considered an accopmlice to murder.
I’m pretty sure, based on the relative location of Carol, the way the body’s dangling, and the damage to it, that that’s SepiaBest’s corpse, not HR’s, so any crimes would be something Xan wouldn’t know about.
The damage to the glass is also consistent with it being Best and not HR; and the body has a missing right hand; HR still has both his hands.
Thanks for the catch, Kamino Neko, I’d just assumed it was HR till I saw your comment.
“Can’t stop the signal, Mal.”
That Xan for you. That is like so Xan. Stay tuned we have alot of loose ends to mop up as the police come to the campus of Hurricaine Software.
I am thinking it goes without saying that all the servers are down and the linkup with Arkerra has been severed permanently. I get Chrissie and Lia mixed up but whichever was so bummed when the Rachel avatar was digitally emulsified. Kingdom players all over sepia are looking at blank screens. This game was habit forming dare I say addictive. I think we are in for a bit of an epologue on this matter too as the once mighty Hurricaine is boarded up surrounded by crime tape.
Well, that is sad. I kinda wanted those five to wake up and return to their old lives. They must have had families, friends, heck, maybe just a friendly neighbor who liked to greet them every morning. And now they are stuck in a videogame which we have no idea if it is really real or just made to feel “real” for the ones inside.
If the story continues for them in Arkherra after their indisputable death in Sepia World, then it means that they have indeed transferred their consciousness to a real alternate world instead of merely having their brains plugged into a video game.
That was confirmed a while back.
Five whole chapters ago, in fact. (Or, since this is an extra-sized one, closer to six.)
I suspect H.R. chose the five in large part because they had no real outside connections. Nobody really interested in looking for them.
frsure
@TxGator: Payet Best begs to differ and so do I. The guy was a minor pop-star. Surely his disappearance would at the very least interest the tabloids?
Was he really a minor pop-star? Or just one in his own head? I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t put self-delusion past him.
I seem to be, surprisingly to me, in the opposite position from most people who are expressing opinions on what happened. I was afraid this was going to end with “now they get unplugged and go back to their lives in Sepia World”; I am relieved that four characters who were barely in the story died so that Syr’nj, Byron, Gravedust, and Frigg can live rather than the other way around.
From a meta-perspective, both Sepia World and Arkerra are fictional–and Arkerra is where most of the story has taken place. Even Sepia World’s nickname highlights which world is primary: normal colors are for the world that has elves and doesn’t have skyscrapers, the other world is “this is a variant” toned.
A bit worse then raisin fingers. Never ever fall asleep in the tube.
Since we know the characters do stuff even while logged out, I guess it’s okay that the game is likely going to be shut the heck down after this giant mess, because the 5 can live on that way, sorta.
I’m just shocked that it turns out they were dead for… quite a while now. Why keep them in the tubes then? A charade, just for Carol? Did HR really not know they were long dead bodies? Or he did know and still believed he could somehow bring their consciousnesses back into the rotting tube bodies? Or, as he seemed to hint at, he didn’t care if they were dead, alive, in the game or out, his focus had shifted to becoming a god instead of well. Anything else.
I feel super bad for the five’s family. I’m itching to know how this all wraps up. How do we get a happy ending, knowing their bodies are all dead and they’re stuck in the game, a game about to become defunct? D:
I guess not all endings are happy.
but its copy of real arkerra on servers where five has interfaced … killing servers could mean death of their arkerra avatars
It was never on the servers. It was an altered version of a parallel world, which could be controlled by magic, which in turn was controlled by the servers.
No I disagree. I do not think that The Five have been dead for a long time; I think that they were quickly consumed by HR. Note the gruesome blood spatter inside of the tubes. I think that arterial spray happened when limbs were ripped off.
I assume you meant to reply to me, or, at least, your post seems to fit as a reply to me, so I’ll reply to you as well. :)
I can see that now that you mention it! It does indeed seem they were killed here and now and haven’t been dead for a long while, as I thought.
So, now, I suppose I can speculate that, had they all looked into the same basin that Best did, wherein he saw a lonely grave for himself… that they would ALL, actually, have seen the same lonely grave for each of themselves.
I still think somehow Cyberia gets tied back into this mess, but I’m REALLY not sure how. *IF* Best’s fate is somehow different from the other four’s, I think it would be because of SOMEthing to do with Cyberia.
I hope two of my biggest questions also gets answered before the end: How and why did Bandit come back after her death? Has she been a player all this time, or something else? She’s always been the odd one out since the big reveal that the heroes were players and it was all a game.
Chrissie is Bandit’s player.
In the last couple of pages , we saw what just a short period of time was doing to HR’s body – what with the … ahem. Skin condition. True, he was burning through a tremendous amount of power, but the Five had been in there for considerably longer too. It’s possible that something like what was happening to HR happened to them, just less quickly.
Goddamn, that was unexpected. I love that you guys still manage to surprise me. It’s been a great ride.
I was actually surprised Carol shot him dead (We DID get lots of hints at the end)I was wondering if it was gonna be Shanna Or was it Gravy Or was it everybody. TREEMENDOSE CLIMAX huh? Kooler than an I phone X with a built in fidget spinner.
Lol! I was eating breakfast at the time I opened this page and saw the top panel. Almost lost my appetite!
Holy Fuck!
Indeed.
OMG, this is such a well done panel.
Looking forward to the last chapter.
Yeah, I’m sure putting her on hold is standard procedure.
I can see that actually. Carol hasn’t mentioned anyone’s life is in peril. So 911 may be transferring to the call to a detective or some other division that handles confessed murders. After all, they need to keep the 911 lines clear for emergency calls.
No way. I mean, it’s a clever way to add a positive beat to the end of this strip, but busting a mass murderer is top priority, and has to be considered an emergency situation – the cops have to err on the side of caution and assume the mass murderer may go off and kill more people if not detained immediately. So the standard procedure would be to get the subjects name and location, and then keep her on the line until the SWAT team got there – putting her on hold risks encouraging her to hang up.
Probably wouldn’t be the first time someone prank called or falsely confessed (possibly while drunk or drugged). I just don’t think the cops would consider it an emergency unless her next words were “Oh, and I have hostages.”
I really like the way Shanna looks at her… they are more alike than Carol realizes, but Shanna is fully aware.
I’ve come to the comments to learn what happened and now I just feel more confused.
I’m somehow relieved that Carol is accepting the blame.
But Sepia World is now truly monochrome. Following the discussion from the last strip, I’m wondering if Sepia World is now nothing but a shadow of Arkerra — as it was, to begin with.
Carol never had the makings of a good super villain. She has the gun. She could easily dispense with Shanna and Xan and get a cleaner to take care of the rest.
Unless, somehow, Xan already sent any photos/videos to the other friends who were standing out in the woods and they go to the cops with it.
I feel constrained to point out that while we know Best was destined for an unsung, lonely grave, I don’t think there’s ever been any solid statement that that wasn’t to be the fate of all five… Wouldn’t surprise me if Best was simply the only one to find out about it…
I find it unlikely that the protagonists–that is, Syr’nj, Byron, Frigg, and Gravedust–are dead. They’re not ever going back to Sepia World, but we’ve never seen them do anything but hover in tanks in Sepia World except a very little bit in one of Carol’s dreams anyway.
And just when they needed a leg up the most…
Sorry, I needed a little levity to distract me from the feels.
Y not u can haz both?
Things would have gone a lot better for HR if the five hadn’t fallen apart on him. The ultimate gaming experience really cost them an arm and a leg, but they were willing to take the plunge anyway. That took guts. I think the biggest problem, however, was HR’s god complex, which ultimately got him in (a tube filled with fluid that was) over his head, and in the end, he didn’t have a leg to stand on, ethically speaking. His quest for power ended only in a broken heart – that or a punctured lung – with his life’s work lying shattered around him.
NOOO please don’t end the story Sniff Sniff – one of best web comics out there.
Ooooh man, the bodies of the Five mirror Carol’s nightmare. She knew subconsciously that they were already dead.
Damn Campbell, Kahn, and Waltrips… Way to end this thing with a Fucking Blood Bath! That’s going to be in some nightmares now.
in chapter 49 pages 19 and 26 show the 5 in canisters that are intact and so are their bodies. these are to be Mark 1 canisters. page 47 shows Gravedust firing one of his spirit arrows into HR as the spirits of the 5 are attaching themselves to at about the same time HR is being killed on the next page. the canisters probably combusted leaving scorch marks on the upper parts shattering their their glass casings and partially burning the bodies of the 5. the question is where do the spirit arrows take the spirits? HR’s mark 2 canister or master canister appears to have power still flowing through it.
HR had hinted previously that flesh was required in the metamagic equation when he made his homunculus. I reckon the flesh is required as a conduit for the power, and in this particular case, a very powerful conduit went head to head with a group of inexperienced, wild conduits in spectacular fashion.
When the threads that tie the universe together snap like rubber bands, I don’t think a little bit of meat will do much to stop the implosion.
I’m really hoping that’s not the curtain call for HR. His character had so much potential beyond a generic evil deity to be defeated by his creations, and it feels like his story isn’t over.
I’m actually wondering if they really died when they got trapped in the arena way back, and not just now, nor from the start.
I will say this, o-writer of woes.
Fuck. Fate.
gonna sell out to Stan Lee and let Marvel have a crack at it live action ?
Excelsior!
Holy crap, this sure feels like the worst possible outcome! Look at the Five, omg.
They were fated to die terribly; it’s how it always is with comics that go through what you mortals call ‘Cerberus Syndrome’.
It will not break! It will not break- IT BROKE!!!
Speaking of which, sure is irritating when stuff breaks… like my browser’s form fills…
…What is there left for me to do in this life
Did I achieve what I had set in my sights
Am I a happy man, or is this sinking sand
Was it all worth it, was it all worth it…
Kudos, gentlemen.