Maybe Byron is back to being Byron and he’s attacking something behind her. I mean, that’d be pretty much how I’d break him — use him to infect all the adventurers with bezerker disease and then let him come back to his senses and see what he’s done.
At least he won’t have to see it very long if he looses the bezerker ability to ignore damage right before Bandit starts popping his organs like their balloons and she’s trying to win a prize at the fair.
I’m fairly certain his wounds made him super dead. I want to be wrong, but the way these things are infecting the dead and wounded added to how much Harky definitely killed Byron in their first encounter, which made him lose control of his zerking in the first place, add up to Byron being finished. Besides, if he’s not, the team, the WORLD, can never trust him again if he does come back to his senses. Before he was the poster boy of the guild and adventurers in general. The best he can do now is rally the people against the cultists. He can’t be a hero anymore, but he can be a martyr.
Death doesn’t appear to be permanent in this game world (and his fatal wounds became less fatal when he came back last time) and The Five seem to be instinctively taking advantage of that to remain in the world against H.R.’s efforts probably because they have desires to save this world and so resist on some subconscious or spiritual level. Consciously they insert some “roleplaying” rationalization for their rez. So basically he will die when he has nothing holding him here.
If they can put a stop to the spread of this contagion then the world will know whatever the government’s P.R. department tells them. After all it appears all the citizens of this logging town were cultists and well, that’s no loss. A couple weeks of eliminating cultist threats culminating in wiping an entire colony of the bastards off the face of Arkerra can probably be spun positively. Now if the government’s Good Ole Boy brigade decides now is a good time to turn on them that would be another story. (can’t see them turning on the non-human’s in general until after the war is close to being over but I could see them wanting to reduce the adventurer’s guild growing power)
The Team let him be kidnapped and converted into a cult resource. They wanted him and perhaps he made it all much easier to do but then again maybe it was just Brother Homon convincing him that it should be Byron so as to make sure at least 1 of the 5 was down for the count right off the bat and the others would feel the need to try to help him and get infected themselves. As far as the Team knows they could have used anybody or maybe their requirements narrowed the field to only so many of the team but Byron was the first to get out in the open. *shrugs* So the team might even feel bad about what happened to Byron. Knowing her its more than likely part of Bandits rage is guilt fueled.
Do you mean the party killing? Well, several of the adventurers have already been converted and are attacking and converting more right now just like Byron couldn’t resist doing. If a decent amount of them can be saved they may reflexively defend Byron’s actions because if he is guilty for what he did under the influence then so are they.
The real problem here is Bandit. She formed the original Non-Five group and kept things going while they were “dead”. She has been the field commander for most of the Guilds existence. She is the only leader that can be spoken to out of character and so is the only one any of the players in the Guild can form that deeper relationship with (as we see she already has with the original four “replacements”). If she seriously turns on Byron she can turn the entire Non-Five Guild against him. (and since they don’t know their predicament maybe one or two of them as well) Conversely if she can be convinced to go along with a more positive outlook of what happened to and with Byron then anything else can be dealt with. (cept the government turning on them but that’s always true)
The composition of this scene reeks of Bandit’s death. She is going all in on that attack, she thinks he’s wide open and she plans to put him down for good, so he can’t hurt anyone ever again. She does not even see the arc of the swing.
Except we’ve seen that happen already, quite a while ago, back in Harky’s arena.
My money is on Byron being freed of possession (thanks to all the demons rushing out just now), so he’s actually back to his old self in time to look Bandit in the face as she murderstabkills him to death. He smiles with relief, says something poignant, and scene.
Compare the final shot of Bandit to the one just before. It’s a mirror. That’s not her raising the knife to deflect, that’s just the motion of her being in a dead sprint. She is completely unprepared to intercept.
I wanted to do the joke so I was going to go along with it but I don’t want people to think I don’t know that Byron is a berserker and not necessarily a barbarian. Can’t remember seeing him called that anyway though it would be just as catchy. Byron the Barbarian.
Well, judging by the shocked expressions of the cavalry in the last panel, either Byron’s dead or Bandit is.
Too bad we’ll all have to wait until Monday to find out which one of them kicked the bucket.
I hope their plan somehow uses those crossbows to fire anti-zerk meds cause wading into that is just gonna make more of THEM.
The red crosses on the medic’s uniforms suggest there has been significant cultural bleed from sepia world whether Arkerra preexisted the game as a “real” world or not.
They’ve just charged in the front gate of the town, and are facing the town square, which is full of cultists and adventurers who have just now been possessed by berserker demons.
Going back to chapter 8 when Bandit died the first time, Harky mentions that he believes the madness (berserker rage stuff) is contagious.
Is this why he thought that? Did he somehow witness this same thing some time ago?
If he did, it brings up loads of other questions about Cyberia and Harky’s past and stuff like that.
Also, we haven’t seen Byron’s face in 2 pages, even when close right here. I suspect something incredible is going to happen when we finally see it. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s snapped out of it because he has run out of zerker beasts, or maybe it’s just building up tension before Bandit gets superkilled.
I could go out on a limb here and say it’s symbolic by not showing Byron’s face as he murders his friend and team-mate, that it alludes to that it’s not the same Byron; he’s not himself. It might be wrong to say Bryon kills Bandit if he’s no longer actually Byron. (Or if he doesn’t actually kill her, of course. I’d be happy to see Bandit rushing into a very dangerous encounter with at least a TINY plan for staying alive other than charging the crazy zerker)
Well, he could have chosen not to go on the mission that he already knew for a fact was a trap, which was also more than likely targeting him specifically. See Ch 34-12.
Order the volley, and fire. Drop as many as you can, as fast as you can, and start the healing. It’s the only way any of them are going to survive. We’ll just have to count the fatalities, and tally losses when it is done.
He was ordered to put some space between himself and the town then open a portal for reinforcements before it really got rockin’. Byron hadn’t even broken through the gate yet. So the demonically forced faction switch is new. Since Byron’s original town seems to have snuffed itself out I can assume that Berserkers originally were free for all but these seem to prefer uninfected prey first if they can get them? Could it be that the original berserk infection agent was from a different source than these demons which seem to share goals more intelligently with each other or is Brother Homon exhibiting some influence over them in order to guarantee a quick spread of the infection?
Also is Byron the only one with more than one demon and therefore the only one capable of infecting more or are more than one jumping from him to others (or does this activity feed them enough to make more?)? Either way stopping him will probably be a Syr priority so we should find out shortly.
I’m not sure he saw ANY possessions. He was already sent off with the order to bring back more serum. So the only reason he would be expecting them was that he knows what the serum does.
I agree, Benedikt. Bandit was a great team leader. She wasn’t bossy, she was THE boss. And she told people what to do. Which was what she was supposed to do. Because she was good at it.
So long, Bandit.
Counterargument:
Bye, Byron.
Maybe Byron is back to being Byron and he’s attacking something behind her. I mean, that’d be pretty much how I’d break him — use him to infect all the adventurers with bezerker disease and then let him come back to his senses and see what he’s done.
At least he won’t have to see it very long if he looses the bezerker ability to ignore damage right before Bandit starts popping his organs like their balloons and she’s trying to win a prize at the fair.
His organs have balloons?
You don’t even want to know where he keeps the brass ring…
Or DO WE? Hrmmm. No. No. I don’t think we do.
That facial expression indicates that you’ve already seen where…
Don’t tell me. I’d rather live with without knowing.
I’m fairly certain his wounds made him super dead. I want to be wrong, but the way these things are infecting the dead and wounded added to how much Harky definitely killed Byron in their first encounter, which made him lose control of his zerking in the first place, add up to Byron being finished. Besides, if he’s not, the team, the WORLD, can never trust him again if he does come back to his senses. Before he was the poster boy of the guild and adventurers in general. The best he can do now is rally the people against the cultists. He can’t be a hero anymore, but he can be a martyr.
Death doesn’t appear to be permanent in this game world (and his fatal wounds became less fatal when he came back last time) and The Five seem to be instinctively taking advantage of that to remain in the world against H.R.’s efforts probably because they have desires to save this world and so resist on some subconscious or spiritual level. Consciously they insert some “roleplaying” rationalization for their rez. So basically he will die when he has nothing holding him here.
If they can put a stop to the spread of this contagion then the world will know whatever the government’s P.R. department tells them. After all it appears all the citizens of this logging town were cultists and well, that’s no loss. A couple weeks of eliminating cultist threats culminating in wiping an entire colony of the bastards off the face of Arkerra can probably be spun positively. Now if the government’s Good Ole Boy brigade decides now is a good time to turn on them that would be another story. (can’t see them turning on the non-human’s in general until after the war is close to being over but I could see them wanting to reduce the adventurer’s guild growing power)
The Team let him be kidnapped and converted into a cult resource. They wanted him and perhaps he made it all much easier to do but then again maybe it was just Brother Homon convincing him that it should be Byron so as to make sure at least 1 of the 5 was down for the count right off the bat and the others would feel the need to try to help him and get infected themselves. As far as the Team knows they could have used anybody or maybe their requirements narrowed the field to only so many of the team but Byron was the first to get out in the open. *shrugs* So the team might even feel bad about what happened to Byron. Knowing her its more than likely part of Bandits rage is guilt fueled.
Do you mean the party killing? Well, several of the adventurers have already been converted and are attacking and converting more right now just like Byron couldn’t resist doing. If a decent amount of them can be saved they may reflexively defend Byron’s actions because if he is guilty for what he did under the influence then so are they.
The real problem here is Bandit. She formed the original Non-Five group and kept things going while they were “dead”. She has been the field commander for most of the Guilds existence. She is the only leader that can be spoken to out of character and so is the only one any of the players in the Guild can form that deeper relationship with (as we see she already has with the original four “replacements”). If she seriously turns on Byron she can turn the entire Non-Five Guild against him. (and since they don’t know their predicament maybe one or two of them as well) Conversely if she can be convinced to go along with a more positive outlook of what happened to and with Byron then anything else can be dealt with. (cept the government turning on them but that’s always true)
The composition of this scene reeks of Bandit’s death. She is going all in on that attack, she thinks he’s wide open and she plans to put him down for good, so he can’t hurt anyone ever again. She does not even see the arc of the swing.
I KNEW IT! SHE’S NEKKID AND LIGHTIN’ A REEFER, AND HERE COMES FREDDY VOORHEES!
Except we’ve seen that happen already, quite a while ago, back in Harky’s arena.
My money is on Byron being freed of possession (thanks to all the demons rushing out just now), so he’s actually back to his old self in time to look Bandit in the face as she murderstabkills him to death. He smiles with relief, says something poignant, and scene.
Or she gets shot full of calvary arrows as they she she is crazy like the rest of the bezerkers.
think. as they think she is crazy. jeez.
That’d be especially potent if Byron turns out to have been de-zerked just before Bandit lands the killing blow.
You fools, Best has returned!
SAY IT ISN’T SO JEAN-LUC!
Make it so, Jean-Luc.
Pretty sure she can see the arc just fine and has one dagger raised to deflect. That’s certainly not a double-stab position she’s in.
Compare the final shot of Bandit to the one just before. It’s a mirror. That’s not her raising the knife to deflect, that’s just the motion of her being in a dead sprint. She is completely unprepared to intercept.
Nothing happened, there’s no cliffhanger, they’re all just shocked to learn what’s happened to Byron ’cause unlike us they didn’t know.
caught in the ax red handed
Or red axe caught in the hand.
COME! LET US HUG, WITH BLADES.
This makes for a damn good cliffhanger, btw.
Hi, my name is Pyre and I like warm hugs!
This cliffhanger is on the razor’s edge.
It ax-fully very good with all this stabbing commentary.
Poor Byron, I don’t think he axed for any of this.
I don’t like the swing of things here. Definitely a somber timber.
I feel like Bandit is trying to make a point.
NO! THIS TIME I KILL YOU, BYRON!
“Bisect me once, shame on you. Bisect me twice, shame on me.”
Just checked the relevant page from Chapter 8. Make that “trisect.”
Well she was short to begin with so it won’t be much of a dramatic change.
Bisect, trisect. Either way, Byron’s very good at short division.
Lately he’s been getting a lot better at multiplication as well.
He’s awfully good at math for a barbarian. Most of them can handle 1…2…many.
And yet I’ve never met a barbarian who wasn’t good at subtracting things.
I wanted to do the joke so I was going to go along with it but I don’t want people to think I don’t know that Byron is a berserker and not necessarily a barbarian. Can’t remember seeing him called that anyway though it would be just as catchy. Byron the Barbarian.
I get the feeling that the Adventurers’ Guild is about to lose any and all of their support from the Gastonian Government.
On the other hand, they seem to have gained a lot of support from the red viruses. So maybe it’ll all work out.
This will not end well for anybody!
I dunno, it seems like it’s going great for the cultists.
Well, judging by the shocked expressions of the cavalry in the last panel, either Byron’s dead or Bandit is.
Too bad we’ll all have to wait until Monday to find out which one of them kicked the bucket.
Well there’s also the massive mayhem and massacre that’s been metted out before their very eyes. c:
Why not both?
I thought Byron already was dead.
Maybe now he can finally fall.
Because maybe his lifeless carcass ran out of those Cyberia beasts?
On a minor character note: Pyre just roasted Hewie. One of ’em must be ‘zerkin.
Berzerker who can cast spells. Never seen that before. Fun.
Good to see that fan character still doing some good work, in the background. c:
He’s going to have bad ankles from now on. Poor guy.
I hope their plan somehow uses those crossbows to fire anti-zerk meds cause wading into that is just gonna make more of THEM.
The red crosses on the medic’s uniforms suggest there has been significant cultural bleed from sepia world whether Arkerra preexisted the game as a “real” world or not.
It’s not a cross, it’s a target. In any game your first kill is the healer on the enemy team as it makes the rest of the fight a whole lot easier.
How extremely cooperative of them!
When the dust settled, they realized that someone’s prank had caused their pillowfight to take a horrible turn.
Is Pyre setting Hewie on fire? :(
I know, kind of tragic, right? Just a little extra bit of brutality
Bandit is using the Forbidden Technique –
the technique all rogues swear, upon their Honor Among Thieves, never to use –
The dreaded Frontstab.
To be fair, it looks like she initiated a charging backstab technique. He’s just countering with a surprise 180 swing technique.
I don’t know why the medics are so shocked about this. Doesn’t look like they have a good view of the whole thing.
They’ve just charged in the front gate of the town, and are facing the town square, which is full of cultists and adventurers who have just now been possessed by berserker demons.
But they have no eyes.
Oh the more we get together, together, together
Yes, the more we get together, the happier we’ll be
Cause your friends are my friends,
And my friends are your friends…
Or alternatively:
The more we chop each other, each other, each other,
The more we chop each other, the more of us there’ll be
Going back to chapter 8 when Bandit died the first time, Harky mentions that he believes the madness (berserker rage stuff) is contagious.
Is this why he thought that? Did he somehow witness this same thing some time ago?
If he did, it brings up loads of other questions about Cyberia and Harky’s past and stuff like that.
Also, we haven’t seen Byron’s face in 2 pages, even when close right here. I suspect something incredible is going to happen when we finally see it. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s snapped out of it because he has run out of zerker beasts, or maybe it’s just building up tension before Bandit gets superkilled.
I could go out on a limb here and say it’s symbolic by not showing Byron’s face as he murders his friend and team-mate, that it alludes to that it’s not the same Byron; he’s not himself. It might be wrong to say Bryon kills Bandit if he’s no longer actually Byron. (Or if he doesn’t actually kill her, of course. I’d be happy to see Bandit rushing into a very dangerous encounter with at least a TINY plan for staying alive other than charging the crazy zerker)
Crosses fingers for a splash page come Monday.
Whatever happens to either Byron or Bandit, it’ll probably be a very red splash…
Bandit… please… It’s not his fault… This was not his choice.
Agreed. But Bandit never forgave him for the first time, this is just more fuel for the fire that already wanted him gone.
Well, he could have chosen not to go on the mission that he already knew for a fact was a trap, which was also more than likely targeting him specifically. See Ch 34-12.
Order the volley, and fire. Drop as many as you can, as fast as you can, and start the healing. It’s the only way any of them are going to survive. We’ll just have to count the fatalities, and tally losses when it is done.
THIS IS THE WORST SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER.
If Bandit dies… that’s it, I quit. Dumping this silly comic.
Been nice knowing you, I guess.
Take it easy out there.
As long as she isn’t eaten by a data corrupting monster she’ll just come back later with an odd roleplaying excuse.
Also pissed off.
C’mon E-Merl, don’t act so surprised, you’ve already seen this.
He was ordered to put some space between himself and the town then open a portal for reinforcements before it really got rockin’. Byron hadn’t even broken through the gate yet. So the demonically forced faction switch is new. Since Byron’s original town seems to have snuffed itself out I can assume that Berserkers originally were free for all but these seem to prefer uninfected prey first if they can get them? Could it be that the original berserk infection agent was from a different source than these demons which seem to share goals more intelligently with each other or is Brother Homon exhibiting some influence over them in order to guarantee a quick spread of the infection?
Also is Byron the only one with more than one demon and therefore the only one capable of infecting more or are more than one jumping from him to others (or does this activity feed them enough to make more?)? Either way stopping him will probably be a Syr priority so we should find out shortly.
I think he’s probably surprised at the number of possessed people since he didn’t see the flood of electro-dudes out of Byron’s back.
I’m not sure he saw ANY possessions. He was already sent off with the order to bring back more serum. So the only reason he would be expecting them was that he knows what the serum does.
“OH GOD DAMN IT NOT AGAIN!”
Your gravatar is great for that statement.
I concur
Where did bandit get the second knife? She threw her second one already. Did she have a hidden backup? Where did she have it?
She’s a rogue. It’s probably safe to assume that she will never run out of knives in any battle that lasts less that two hours.
Daggermen have infinity daggers.
Chapter 36 – Page 30 panel 2 — Thrown.
Chapter 36 – Page 30 panel 4 — Got it back.
Nice.
Two grade A cliffhangers in a row? You’re killing me!
No, no. If anyone’s killing you, it’s probably Byron.
I think the next Sepia World break is gonna be time for my first reread. Details are starting to get hazy and slip.
honeslty i hope Bandit dies she’sa tool to begin with and never really did do alot for the team other than cause mischief so go byron go!
YOU HAVE NO SOUL
His avatar does happen to show him as a Ginger…
Shots fired.
Ooooo, careful. Recently finished archive dive data suggests that’s a dangerous road to start down. (It doesn’t bother me though)
You forgot to add “being awfully bossy”. :-P
And what does “bossy” mean? Being the boss while being female?
I agree, Benedikt. Bandit was a great team leader. She wasn’t bossy, she was THE boss. And she told people what to do. Which was what she was supposed to do. Because she was good at it.