You know I have a theory that what Bird breasts showed duawe of alderode has nothing to do with the silver and everything to do with what the black tongues are doing. Which she manipulated into happening in the first place. I wonder if he's going to realize how much he's being played.
It's far more likely that it has nothing to do with either of those things, and is just everything coming to a head due to rebalancing. The Ssaelit had their share of representation and say in the government lessened. That's an existential crisis for them considering that every single other place in Kasslyne kills them. And in a more immediate way it means that effectively nothing they will care about will come to pass for laws, and things against their religion, like plod labor will become a reality.
You have a very desperate Ssaelit populace, with some extreme groups taking matters into their own hands, and a very power hungry Gefendur. The divide between the two widening more than ever.
Why would Lemuel want to cancel the attack? Because of the losses they suffered? Duane never got to tell him about the silver.
Spread themselves too thin and they risk losing control of the city, the thing allowing them to do this all in the first place.
That's what I thought, but why does the guy he's talking to still think they can proceed with it? I'm guessing ego or fear of his superiors.
It's a perfect time. Remember, the queen is going to be having some nice, juicy twin steak at a very public banquet. In a location less thoroughly guarded than her usual palace, up too high where khert lines are weak and vilegeng would struggle to fly. They also have the backing of Bell, internal unrest in Cresce they can take advantage of, and if they pull this off it might help forestall the civil war brewing in their own country. Even if it doesn't, at least Cresce wouldn't be any better off.
I was sure that after what happened last chapter the alds' attack on the queen would be cancelled, if only to have one less moving part this chapter. Things are gonna get pretty crazy with the silver, the two toes, Bell's coup, the Alds, the queen and her loyalists, Roger, the black tongues, Rukh, Starfish, our heroes and whoever else I'm forgetting all mixing up.
It doesn't sound like he does think it can work considering the whole "you've ruined us all" line. Probably more of a "we're already locked in, can't back out now".
Lemuel is realizing that Bell doesn't have a proper hold on the situation as he thought. If those were bell's troops than they wouldn't have had an issue. But they were the queen's meaning she knows what bell is planning to some extent.
Think about who all was killed. It was all piss mops. Those piss mops were probably assembled because they're immune to etalarche and can go after the queen without the curse turning them into lunatics. If Alderod sends other castes in there now because the pissers were killed, those other castes will frick the mission up thanks to the curse. Lemuel would know this personally because of that flashback chapter where he saw the curse's fx first hand
Oh. I didn't even think of the possibility that Roger's presence could be a great way to protect the queen. Although I can't imagine he's in any condition to be there.
Is the curse inflicted upon Roger or all (real) Alds? Can it trigger for the first time on Alds born after he left Alderode if they see him outside of the Dammahkhert?
It's inflicted on and emanated from Roger. And it'll affect every single Ald, whether they see him or not. Leaving the Dammakhert doesn't protect you from its effects, except while inside Juste, and never having met him or being born after him doesn't protect you either. It's permanent, and will taint everything to do with Roger, including everything he stood for. It's a very thorough way of squashing his efforts to rebel and eliminating any support he had.
People will say >Quigger >winning >ever
until he beats someone (Mikaila) and then they'll say >Quigger >can only beat a child
Quig haters are almost as bad as Lem haters.
He kinda deserves it. He's a total b***h, and he knows it.
Yeah that's what 14 was about. Vampire using Roger to pursuit his own goals, roger participating as an act of rebellion against ruling coppers
2 years ago
Anonymous
frick you, vampire truly loved and cared about roger
2 years ago
Anonymous
I don't disagree, I rather read it as real love, but yes Vamp is not new to conspiring against the ald state, the gears were moving way before any love existed
2 years ago
Anonymous
I remember Ashley saying there was an old conspiracy behind them led by Vampire's big sister, which Quig's wife worked for.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The march is fem!Vamp current pet project
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah I think so too. Sure, the things he said under the effect of the curse might be true, but they were probably old and small feelings vastly amplified by the curse. Memories weaponized into hate.
The fact Vampire told the Crescian commander to put him down if necessary to protect Roger was proof enough he loved him. And Vampire knew how shit was going down, Vampire was old enough to remember the LAST time the curse was put into use.
>except while inside Juste
This part I don't get, if it's inside Roger why would it suddenly stop working in Juste? Didn't it still have a Khert, just a separate one? Unless it actually does try to keep working, it's just that Juste has an "antivirus" installed that fights it and renders it ineffective.
The khert in Juste has been modded by the black tongues a lot. They likely (either intentionally or accidentally) eliminated the function in it that allows the curse to work.
pretty sure Juste is in like a big farcyte geode or something and thus separate from the greater khert
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yes, but that changes nothing if the curse is located in Roger, as it appears to be – from what is described it first had to reach him to start working, but afterwards it's mediated from his soul, as Aldishmen even outside the Dammakhert will hate on him. As such it has to work based on some universal working of khert and whatever is in Juste sure is separate from the Great Khert, but it still is _a_ khert, so will still have the same mechanism for the curse to work. It would have to be consciously removed or a process provided that targets the curse specifically to counteract it and I'm not sure if it was ever stated what stops the curse from working in Juste.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You can speculate and argue all you want...
Or you could just read what Ashley has to say about the matter.
Interestingly this means that the whole emotion-reading between Alds doesn't work in Juste either.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Well, yes, I'm aware of those asks, hence why I was saying what I was saying, basically rephrasing Ash. My point here is that she doesn't really clarify (I guess because that's too into implementation detail weeds for her) what exactly that information transfer mechanism is – it has to be something that's also there in the Great Khert since it works outside the Dammakhert, but it also apparently has to be something normal souls don't really use, as I guess it would be mentioned if "normies" are somewhat handicapped in Juste as well (or they somehow are and it was just glossed over, because it's not very important, contrary to the curse).
2 years ago
Anonymous
>there in the Great Khert since it works outside the Dammakhert
The dammakhert is the great khert, literally
The bigger thing is just the khert.
The way it works from other asks, is that any soul belonging to one of the aldish casts (except golds) who ever enter the dammakhert after the curse is implemented, get programmed to hate the subject
The Juste khert supresses this effect.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I mean, yeah, that's the literal translation of Dammakhert, but all casters say "Heed me Great Khert" even to the "normal" khert, which is why I called it thus (as opposed to the verbatim Aldish name). I guess I remember it being also called the Universal Khert when you want to disambiguate, so I'll use it instead to avoid confusion.
Why would Bastion care about whether Duane could protect himself? The plan wasn't to make him a zombie and then just let him go free.
[...]
It's actually more than that, if you as an Ald ever meet an Ald infected by the curse outside the DK, you still get infected.
It's presumably using the mental connection between Alds that allows them to read surface thoughts and detect lies. Which might be an extension of the mechanism behind how the Weeping Plague spreads, through "moment of mutual recognition as Human when you look into someone's eyes" there's probably some connection made between souls even in the regular khert.
Thanks Anon for stealing my thunder, was about to post exactly the same – that it must mean that the Curse works on some Universal Khert principle, nothing specific to the Dammakhert and maybe it's the exact same mechanism the Weeping Plague works on. Well, unless Ash didn't keep some implementation details straight, but given this all feels very plot relevant I imagine she has the minutiae covered.
And if so, doesn't that mean it would all tie into how tacit casting works? Since from what I remember Bastion got his idea from working on Weeping Plague victims. And maybe
Apparently tacit casters have a direct phone line to Ssael and it's Important
isn't a jest at all?
2 years ago
Anonymous
It might be something like the Weeping Plague works by somehow destabilizing the soul's structure, and the reason it was necessary for Bastion's experiment is that it opened up an avenue for him to directly manipulate the soul somehow.
I think we're going to find out. The more I think about it the more sense it makes that the comic showed that etalarce freak out with the adelier brothers. It was probably foreshadowing and setup for how the queen survives like four different factions all coming for her
Mikaila still partially in denial about losing in wrightness. Her ego needs to be shattered properly and I still hope that it's Quigley that does it. He's the perfect person for the job.
People will say >Quigger >winning >ever
until he beats someone (Mikaila) and then they'll say >Quigger >can only beat a child
Quig haters are almost as bad as Lem haters.
She's not that great a wright, there's probably tons around her who are better than her. She must be hung up about freezing and getting a flashback to that night while that weirdo fondles her face.
I mean she's a teenager in a society that doesn't teach girls anything outside how to be a house wife. It's understandable she's still not amazing at it yet.
She's likely as anything to sincerely thank him and in the same breath try to have him killed because she doesn't want an overpowered Aldish demilich running around to potential frick up her plans
Honestly now I'm kinda wondering if she KNOWS there were supposed to be Alds from Grenizlan attacking and she's counting on the lowered troop presence for the black tongues riding towards town to do their thing
Duane's existence violates all known life-soul science. The physics of the soul as dictated by the khert simply goes like this: once your body is physically dead, the khert defines you as dead and your soul is immediately shipped to the khert. That means in this world, there is no reason to restart the heart to revive the body because the khert will have already removed the soul. Duane represents actual immortality as the soul is no longer chained to the physical and health of the body but only the physical - and I'm sure robot bodies are possible given Duane's ability to use pymaric eyes.
It will take a scientist one day to realize what Duane is and will demand he is confined for study to reverse engineer Bastion's work. Imagine your finest royalty and warriors surviving age and fatal wounds by transfering their soul to a ready robot shell. There's no fricking way meeting the queen will allow this fact to remain secret.
And this is on top of the security concerns of meeting the queen, which Duane would also not pass even if he were alive. In fact, Duane's credentials: composer candidate, motadwe, and rector would add to the reasons to not allow him within eyeshot of the queen.
The best we're going to get is Duane seeing Roger and closing the loop of their interaction, and I doubt Roger's fit to travel and be here.
It's a proof of concept.
Once you know it works, you could try to refine the technique to work on non-tacits too. Or you could try and figure out a way to turn people tacit.
Duane being a tacit caster has nothing to do with why Bastion's experiment worked on him. It was a case of having the best/unique specimen - a person who could protect themselves. Bastion could have conducted the experiment on anybody, like a homeless person, but he's probably not the kind of person who starts small.
We have to remember that Duane was a convenient corpse. It's very likely Bastion was hired to kill Duane and the opportunity to perform the experiment was a bonus as the assassins he hired were clearly fricking pissed that the assassination doubled as a science experiment, putting them at risk and as we saw, likely resulted in them getting caught. He was meant to die first and foremost (i.e. removed from society to ferment hostilities between the faith). Even Bastion was surprised Duane survived.
You're wrong.
Bastion needed a Tacit Caster specifically for the experiment.
He had no considerations at all about Duane being able to survive on his own, he thought the guy to be scum, the plan was to make him a compliant slave, except it got interrupted.
It just seemed to me like Bastion was happy to have an exceptional test subject. The story is better served this way now that I think about it, it makes the whole tacit extra-port setup have much more meaning than just be simple worldbuilding. And it also might have a connection to why Duane was sent to fight the weeping plague if only to have him cross paths with Bastion. Imagine if being a flashy smug ponce while fighting the plague is what brought Duane to Bastion's attention as he was there too tending to the sick.
>Duane being a tacit caster has nothing to do with why Bastion's experiment worked on him.
I'm not sure about this. Ashley showed us that tacit casters have an additional khert port in their neck. And the pymaric that powers duane is replacing or enwrapping one of his neck vertebrae.
Why would Bastion care about whether Duane could protect himself? The plan wasn't to make him a zombie and then just let him go free.
>there in the Great Khert since it works outside the Dammakhert
The dammakhert is the great khert, literally
The bigger thing is just the khert.
The way it works from other asks, is that any soul belonging to one of the aldish casts (except golds) who ever enter the dammakhert after the curse is implemented, get programmed to hate the subject
The Juste khert supresses this effect.
It's actually more than that, if you as an Ald ever meet an Ald infected by the curse outside the DK, you still get infected.
It's presumably using the mental connection between Alds that allows them to read surface thoughts and detect lies. Which might be an extension of the mechanism behind how the Weeping Plague spreads, through "moment of mutual recognition as Human when you look into someone's eyes" there's probably some connection made between souls even in the regular khert.
>It's actually more than that, if you as an Ald ever meet an Ald infected by the curse outside the DK, you still get infected.
What do you mean? An ald no never entered the dammakhert after the curse would be infected by another ald who is is infected by meeting him outside the dammakhert?
How do you know that?
2 years ago
Anonymous
I think Ashley stated it in a tumblr ask once but the tumblr search is horrid so I won't bother looking for it.
Different anon, but I too remembered that Ask and found it without too much work.
2 years ago
Anonymous
God I love the world building in this comic. That's so cool
2 years ago
Anonymous
> Because souls are the khert, and the souls of the Aldish are the Dammakhert.
But how that works if the intervening space between them is not of Dammakhert? Do they "send packets" over the normal khert in the normal khert way (correct me if I'm wrong but that "spark of recognition" works for all Kasslynians?), but it's just that the curse stuff knows some magic "port knocking" scheme to be let in? Or maybe, given that the khert doesn't really give a frick about normal spacetime all of the Dammakert is really coterminous and the only thing that matters is the "spark" of recognition and the Dammakhert just reaches out behind the scenes of reality to infect the other dude? I feel like I'm missing something in how all of this works.
Goddamit, I want to ask Ash, but then she will probably say "don't get too into the weeds anon, it's ultimately irrelevant to the story" : X
2 years ago
Anonymous
I guess Alds carry the dhammakhert with them.
Not enough to affect non-alds, but enough to connect with other alds.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I guess Alds carry the dhammakhert with them.
Not enough to affect non-alds, but enough to connect with other alds.
The Khert (which we might as well call heaven) is just a blanket atop reality, thick on the surface, thinning out if you go too deep or too far up. As Sette showed, you could cut a hole in reality and walk into the Khert. It's there and everywhere around you, in the rocks, living beings, it's why when you remove an aspect from something, the Khert reacts immediately because it's just another dimension. Hubs to me are just anchors that pierce the veil between reality and the Khert that allow pymary users to do their thing. When the hub goes down pymary users can't cast (safely), the "dead zone" between Alderode and Cresce are likely regions where there are no hubs and it's up for revelation whether literally nothing lives there because the Khert has no influence or if it's just unoccupied nature. I think hubs are where the souls are drawn into the Khert after a person dies, and ghosts are just chips of that soul that escape the attention of the Khert finding safety from the Khert in first materials or the souls of compatible living people. Angry people harbour eels, likewise happy people harbour squishies.
The Dammakert just rewrites how every soul born into it interacts with the Khert. Alds giving birth outside of Alderode give birth to Alds even if outside the proximity of the Dammakert because their soul "genetics" have already been altered. The weeping plague and etalartche likely function on the same principle, they are genetically inscribed into Alds and it is an imposing genetic imposition. Your genes can be forcibly mutated as the plague and curse both likely do.
I can imagine Bronzes are just Crescians born under the influence of the Dammakhert. The Alds have likely made a place in their society for the product of rapes, which if you really think about it is absolutely disgusting but so fricking pragmatic you'd expect it of a highly structural caste society.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Bronzes are just the result of intercaste breeding, every other Dammekhert birth yields a random caste including bronze.
2 years ago
Anonymous
All castes breed true, castemixing works like this:
Bronze + Anything = Bronze
Soud + Other caste = Other caste
Plat + Silver = Silver
Copper + Jet = Jet
Copper + Plat = Bronze
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Copper + Jet
Disgusting
2 years ago
Anonymous
Apparently there also exists some halfbreed freaks of nature that are half and half of their parents, who are when more shunned
Alderode is weird
2 years ago
Anonymous
Less "halfbreeds" and more absolute weird ass chances. They're just glitches in the Khert that are exceedingly rare.
2 years ago
Anonymous
All castes breed true, castemixing works like this:
Bronze + Anything = Bronze
Soud + Other caste = Other caste
Plat + Silver = Silver
Copper + Jet = Jet
Copper + Plat = Bronze
It's crazy that the people who sat down to design the Dammekhert had the competence and foresight to contemplate that. Like, that's basically what the Nazis were like in as they validated everything, including their awfulness in law, they thought the shit out of everything and gave it a legal stamp of credibility.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I can imagine Bronzes are just Crescians born under the influence of the Dammakhert.
crescians born under the influence of the dammakhert can be any caste, provided neither parent is an ald
2 years ago
Anonymous
Wait, are you saying that if two non-alds fricked in the dammakhert there's a chance they could pop out a copper?
2 years ago
Anonymous
That is how it works.
2 years ago
Anonymous
yes, the caste assigned to the offspring is random (can't be gold since they're not a real caste) so it's possible
2 years ago
Anonymous
>then we breed out the trash
Whaddya think pal
2 years ago
Anonymous
>>I think hubs are where the souls are drawn into the Khert after a person dies, and ghosts are just chips of that soul that escape the attention of the Khert finding safety from the Khert in first materials or the souls of compatible living people
Not so. We know from the Sette's jaunt into the khert is that the khert basically opens a small hole and sucks the dead soul in. Whatever the cause, when the khert opened up to accept Turas' soul, the hole jammed open and that's how Sette fell through. It had something to do with the khertfire from the gossamer trap, I don't recall the specifics.
I think the khert hubs are just dual-natured: they exist in the physical world and the khert in the same place in the same way and are like anchors holding everything in place.
2 years ago
Anonymous
We know the cause. His soul got tangled in the line connecting Duane's night-waking soul to his physical body.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The thing they're referring to happens because each Ald other than the ssoud carries a part of the dammakhert inside them. This is why they still sense each other outside of Alderode and how the etalarche curse still spreads and functions outside Alderode. They're their own tiny khert hubs, in a way.
So if you go to great-great grandma's house and make noise she won't ask you to be quiet but will drive you out while shouting how a rat can't run from a vliegeng's claws?
>Bastian can't even form a new friendship with Rahm and Lori >He'd get a crippling migraine if they ever meet again, and then he'd forget that meeting after
Rough
Duane deposited Mason on the ass-end of the Vilegeng. Duane had to fly up to get to Mikaela and the Vilegeng was flying in smoke and bullshit to avoid getting shot down so Mason probably couldn't see shit.
I've stood in petroleum fuel smoke and forest fire smoke. It's dark. You're very much blinded beyond a meter. You know how people in movies in burning smoky buildings get out of the burning building easily - it's not actually that easy if you don't know the building, it's actually really fricking hard.
I understand it's hard to imagine because most people haven't experienced actual threatening bullshit in their lives and movies really portray a strange portrayal of reality but reality can get scary as frick. We have evolved to survive through intelligence and group cooperation and as a result our eyes can't do supernatural shit like see in the dark, see beyond the chromatic wavelengths, or have telescopic range.
What if, plot twist, the Ssael tittybird is looking for isn't actually the slayer of gods but Sette's lion sibling. Maybe tittybird had a sense of humor when naming him(?)?
Speaking of the whole spark of recognition: What would happen if a regular human from our world landed in Kasslyne and didn't explode/disappear/noclip through the world? Would the people get uncanny valley effect?
Eh, I never liked "what if someone from the real world got transported to this different metaphysical fictional universe" thought experiments. They just fall apart if you go too deep into them.
what's with all the rapers?
You know I have a theory that what Bird breasts showed duawe of alderode has nothing to do with the silver and everything to do with what the black tongues are doing. Which she manipulated into happening in the first place. I wonder if he's going to realize how much he's being played.
It's far more likely that it has nothing to do with either of those things, and is just everything coming to a head due to rebalancing. The Ssaelit had their share of representation and say in the government lessened. That's an existential crisis for them considering that every single other place in Kasslyne kills them. And in a more immediate way it means that effectively nothing they will care about will come to pass for laws, and things against their religion, like plod labor will become a reality.
You have a very desperate Ssaelit populace, with some extreme groups taking matters into their own hands, and a very power hungry Gefendur. The divide between the two widening more than ever.
Spread themselves too thin and they risk losing control of the city, the thing allowing them to do this all in the first place.
It's a perfect time. Remember, the queen is going to be having some nice, juicy twin steak at a very public banquet. In a location less thoroughly guarded than her usual palace, up too high where khert lines are weak and vilegeng would struggle to fly. They also have the backing of Bell, internal unrest in Cresce they can take advantage of, and if they pull this off it might help forestall the civil war brewing in their own country. Even if it doesn't, at least Cresce wouldn't be any better off.
I was sure that after what happened last chapter the alds' attack on the queen would be cancelled, if only to have one less moving part this chapter. Things are gonna get pretty crazy with the silver, the two toes, Bell's coup, the Alds, the queen and her loyalists, Roger, the black tongues, Rukh, Starfish, our heroes and whoever else I'm forgetting all mixing up.
Aww, Mikaila has picked up mannerisms from BOTH her dads.
Mikaila is a cute. A CUTE.
No, OP, Starfish is later this chapter.
Lemon is worse than Starfish
They're on the same list but Lemuel isn't even close to the child rapist
Yeah he's too far ahead
>pls stop exposition me
Also, eat shit Lemuel
;-; of course Miki gon' get talked over, she a woman in aldland
Fug, she looks like she's used to it to.
No sympathy, she killed Uaid.
She didn't know jack shit about Uaid. Just that he (probably it to her) was a rebel science experiment created by a traitor on the run.
true, but it doesn't mean that as a viewer we can't dislike her for it
not that I do, I agree with you. I just get where that anon is coming from
Why would Lemuel want to cancel the attack? Because of the losses they suffered? Duane never got to tell him about the silver.
bro they lost like an entire strike force, that's not a good start to the mission
That's what I thought, but why does the guy he's talking to still think they can proceed with it? I'm guessing ego or fear of his superiors.
It doesn't sound like he does think it can work considering the whole "you've ruined us all" line. Probably more of a "we're already locked in, can't back out now".
Lemuel is realizing that Bell doesn't have a proper hold on the situation as he thought. If those were bell's troops than they wouldn't have had an issue. But they were the queen's meaning she knows what bell is planning to some extent.
Think about who all was killed. It was all piss mops. Those piss mops were probably assembled because they're immune to etalarche and can go after the queen without the curse turning them into lunatics. If Alderod sends other castes in there now because the pissers were killed, those other castes will frick the mission up thanks to the curse. Lemuel would know this personally because of that flashback chapter where he saw the curse's fx first hand
Oh. I didn't even think of the possibility that Roger's presence could be a great way to protect the queen. Although I can't imagine he's in any condition to be there.
Is the curse inflicted upon Roger or all (real) Alds? Can it trigger for the first time on Alds born after he left Alderode if they see him outside of the Dammahkhert?
It's inflicted on and emanated from Roger. And it'll affect every single Ald, whether they see him or not. Leaving the Dammakhert doesn't protect you from its effects, except while inside Juste, and never having met him or being born after him doesn't protect you either. It's permanent, and will taint everything to do with Roger, including everything he stood for. It's a very thorough way of squashing his efforts to rebel and eliminating any support he had.
Just kill the dammakhert.
Literally the Queen's plan.
He kinda deserves it. He's a total b***h, and he knows it.
And that's why he's a great character.
What if Roger and his rebellion are just pawns in internal copper power struggles and he got the curse straw because he was young and expendable?
Young and impressionable ideologue gets seduced by a much older man of unknown background? Sure, why not.
guess it was worth it for them
tfw no big copper mommy to seduce me
Yeah that's what 14 was about. Vampire using Roger to pursuit his own goals, roger participating as an act of rebellion against ruling coppers
frick you, vampire truly loved and cared about roger
I don't disagree, I rather read it as real love, but yes Vamp is not new to conspiring against the ald state, the gears were moving way before any love existed
I remember Ashley saying there was an old conspiracy behind them led by Vampire's big sister, which Quig's wife worked for.
The march is fem!Vamp current pet project
Yeah I think so too. Sure, the things he said under the effect of the curse might be true, but they were probably old and small feelings vastly amplified by the curse. Memories weaponized into hate.
The fact Vampire told the Crescian commander to put him down if necessary to protect Roger was proof enough he loved him. And Vampire knew how shit was going down, Vampire was old enough to remember the LAST time the curse was put into use.
>except while inside Juste
This part I don't get, if it's inside Roger why would it suddenly stop working in Juste? Didn't it still have a Khert, just a separate one? Unless it actually does try to keep working, it's just that Juste has an "antivirus" installed that fights it and renders it ineffective.
The khert in Juste has been modded by the black tongues a lot. They likely (either intentionally or accidentally) eliminated the function in it that allows the curse to work.
pretty sure Juste is in like a big farcyte geode or something and thus separate from the greater khert
Yes, but that changes nothing if the curse is located in Roger, as it appears to be – from what is described it first had to reach him to start working, but afterwards it's mediated from his soul, as Aldishmen even outside the Dammakhert will hate on him. As such it has to work based on some universal working of khert and whatever is in Juste sure is separate from the Great Khert, but it still is _a_ khert, so will still have the same mechanism for the curse to work. It would have to be consciously removed or a process provided that targets the curse specifically to counteract it and I'm not sure if it was ever stated what stops the curse from working in Juste.
You can speculate and argue all you want...
Or you could just read what Ashley has to say about the matter.
https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/644647484149415936/reading-the-plot-summary-and-now-curious-about-the
https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/644706553917833216/youd-think-bastion-would-then-fly-into-a-rage
Interestingly this means that the whole emotion-reading between Alds doesn't work in Juste either.
Well, yes, I'm aware of those asks, hence why I was saying what I was saying, basically rephrasing Ash. My point here is that she doesn't really clarify (I guess because that's too into implementation detail weeds for her) what exactly that information transfer mechanism is – it has to be something that's also there in the Great Khert since it works outside the Dammakhert, but it also apparently has to be something normal souls don't really use, as I guess it would be mentioned if "normies" are somewhat handicapped in Juste as well (or they somehow are and it was just glossed over, because it's not very important, contrary to the curse).
>there in the Great Khert since it works outside the Dammakhert
The dammakhert is the great khert, literally
The bigger thing is just the khert.
The way it works from other asks, is that any soul belonging to one of the aldish casts (except golds) who ever enter the dammakhert after the curse is implemented, get programmed to hate the subject
The Juste khert supresses this effect.
I mean, yeah, that's the literal translation of Dammakhert, but all casters say "Heed me Great Khert" even to the "normal" khert, which is why I called it thus (as opposed to the verbatim Aldish name). I guess I remember it being also called the Universal Khert when you want to disambiguate, so I'll use it instead to avoid confusion.
Thanks Anon for stealing my thunder, was about to post exactly the same – that it must mean that the Curse works on some Universal Khert principle, nothing specific to the Dammakhert and maybe it's the exact same mechanism the Weeping Plague works on. Well, unless Ash didn't keep some implementation details straight, but given this all feels very plot relevant I imagine she has the minutiae covered.
And if so, doesn't that mean it would all tie into how tacit casting works? Since from what I remember Bastion got his idea from working on Weeping Plague victims. And maybe
isn't a jest at all?
It might be something like the Weeping Plague works by somehow destabilizing the soul's structure, and the reason it was necessary for Bastion's experiment is that it opened up an avenue for him to directly manipulate the soul somehow.
I think we're going to find out. The more I think about it the more sense it makes that the comic showed that etalarce freak out with the adelier brothers. It was probably foreshadowing and setup for how the queen survives like four different factions all coming for her
It's inflicted on everyone connected to the dammakhert including the victim and it spreads like a disease from ald to ald even outside the dammakhert.
Mikaila still partially in denial about losing in wrightness. Her ego needs to be shattered properly and I still hope that it's Quigley that does it. He's the perfect person for the job.
Quigs is a b***h and will die as one. No more wins for him for the rest of his life
You know Ashley doesn't work like that. It's more likely he will.
People will say
>Quigger
>winning
>ever
until he beats someone (Mikaila) and then they'll say
>Quigger
>can only beat a child
Quig haters are almost as bad as Lem haters.
Except he won't beat Mikaila, you guys are dreaming
Hating Lemuel is extremely good and correct, so not sure what you mean by this.
She's not that great a wright, there's probably tons around her who are better than her. She must be hung up about freezing and getting a flashback to that night while that weirdo fondles her face.
I mean she's a teenager in a society that doesn't teach girls anything outside how to be a house wife. It's understandable she's still not amazing at it yet.
Wonder who "sir" is here
good morning sirs
Will Mason make it to retirement?
For some reason I assumed we weren't seeing more Miki until book 2. Not that I'm unhappy about it by any means.
Woah, are Lemmy's bloodshot eyes intentional?
They were pretty bloodshot at the end of last chapter too.
Yes, from smoke irritation
That Khert hub is kinda gay, I figured they would look more impressive.
It's a huge boner, of course it is gay.
I desperately need to see the queen personally thank duane for helping her after all this
She's likely as anything to sincerely thank him and in the same breath try to have him killed because she doesn't want an overpowered Aldish demilich running around to potential frick up her plans
Honestly now I'm kinda wondering if she KNOWS there were supposed to be Alds from Grenizlan attacking and she's counting on the lowered troop presence for the black tongues riding towards town to do their thing
She won't need to kill him when Duane's going to core leech himself when it happens
It's not going to happen.
Duane's existence violates all known life-soul science. The physics of the soul as dictated by the khert simply goes like this: once your body is physically dead, the khert defines you as dead and your soul is immediately shipped to the khert. That means in this world, there is no reason to restart the heart to revive the body because the khert will have already removed the soul. Duane represents actual immortality as the soul is no longer chained to the physical and health of the body but only the physical - and I'm sure robot bodies are possible given Duane's ability to use pymaric eyes.
It will take a scientist one day to realize what Duane is and will demand he is confined for study to reverse engineer Bastion's work. Imagine your finest royalty and warriors surviving age and fatal wounds by transfering their soul to a ready robot shell. There's no fricking way meeting the queen will allow this fact to remain secret.
And this is on top of the security concerns of meeting the queen, which Duane would also not pass even if he were alive. In fact, Duane's credentials: composer candidate, motadwe, and rector would add to the reasons to not allow him within eyeshot of the queen.
The best we're going to get is Duane seeing Roger and closing the loop of their interaction, and I doubt Roger's fit to travel and be here.
But if Duane worked out only because he is a tacit caster knowing how he works is still going to be useless unless you're one in a million.
It's a proof of concept.
Once you know it works, you could try to refine the technique to work on non-tacits too. Or you could try and figure out a way to turn people tacit.
Duane being a tacit caster has nothing to do with why Bastion's experiment worked on him. It was a case of having the best/unique specimen - a person who could protect themselves. Bastion could have conducted the experiment on anybody, like a homeless person, but he's probably not the kind of person who starts small.
We have to remember that Duane was a convenient corpse. It's very likely Bastion was hired to kill Duane and the opportunity to perform the experiment was a bonus as the assassins he hired were clearly fricking pissed that the assassination doubled as a science experiment, putting them at risk and as we saw, likely resulted in them getting caught. He was meant to die first and foremost (i.e. removed from society to ferment hostilities between the faith). Even Bastion was surprised Duane survived.
You're wrong.
Bastion needed a Tacit Caster specifically for the experiment.
He had no considerations at all about Duane being able to survive on his own, he thought the guy to be scum, the plan was to make him a compliant slave, except it got interrupted.
Guess I'm wrong.
It just seemed to me like Bastion was happy to have an exceptional test subject. The story is better served this way now that I think about it, it makes the whole tacit extra-port setup have much more meaning than just be simple worldbuilding. And it also might have a connection to why Duane was sent to fight the weeping plague if only to have him cross paths with Bastion. Imagine if being a flashy smug ponce while fighting the plague is what brought Duane to Bastion's attention as he was there too tending to the sick.
>Duane being a tacit caster has nothing to do with why Bastion's experiment worked on him.
I'm not sure about this. Ashley showed us that tacit casters have an additional khert port in their neck. And the pymaric that powers duane is replacing or enwrapping one of his neck vertebrae.
I would expect a connection.
Apparently tacit casters have a direct phone line to Ssael and it's Important
Why would Bastion care about whether Duane could protect himself? The plan wasn't to make him a zombie and then just let him go free.
It's actually more than that, if you as an Ald ever meet an Ald infected by the curse outside the DK, you still get infected.
It's presumably using the mental connection between Alds that allows them to read surface thoughts and detect lies. Which might be an extension of the mechanism behind how the Weeping Plague spreads, through "moment of mutual recognition as Human when you look into someone's eyes" there's probably some connection made between souls even in the regular khert.
>It's actually more than that, if you as an Ald ever meet an Ald infected by the curse outside the DK, you still get infected.
What do you mean? An ald no never entered the dammakhert after the curse would be infected by another ald who is is infected by meeting him outside the dammakhert?
How do you know that?
I think Ashley stated it in a tumblr ask once but the tumblr search is horrid so I won't bother looking for it.
Pics or it didn't happen then.
https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/642684981861400576/anon-congrats-on-posting-the-end-of-another
Different anon, but I too remembered that Ask and found it without too much work.
God I love the world building in this comic. That's so cool
> Because souls are the khert, and the souls of the Aldish are the Dammakhert.
But how that works if the intervening space between them is not of Dammakhert? Do they "send packets" over the normal khert in the normal khert way (correct me if I'm wrong but that "spark of recognition" works for all Kasslynians?), but it's just that the curse stuff knows some magic "port knocking" scheme to be let in? Or maybe, given that the khert doesn't really give a frick about normal spacetime all of the Dammakert is really coterminous and the only thing that matters is the "spark" of recognition and the Dammakhert just reaches out behind the scenes of reality to infect the other dude? I feel like I'm missing something in how all of this works.
Goddamit, I want to ask Ash, but then she will probably say "don't get too into the weeds anon, it's ultimately irrelevant to the story" : X
I guess Alds carry the dhammakhert with them.
Not enough to affect non-alds, but enough to connect with other alds.
The Khert (which we might as well call heaven) is just a blanket atop reality, thick on the surface, thinning out if you go too deep or too far up. As Sette showed, you could cut a hole in reality and walk into the Khert. It's there and everywhere around you, in the rocks, living beings, it's why when you remove an aspect from something, the Khert reacts immediately because it's just another dimension. Hubs to me are just anchors that pierce the veil between reality and the Khert that allow pymary users to do their thing. When the hub goes down pymary users can't cast (safely), the "dead zone" between Alderode and Cresce are likely regions where there are no hubs and it's up for revelation whether literally nothing lives there because the Khert has no influence or if it's just unoccupied nature. I think hubs are where the souls are drawn into the Khert after a person dies, and ghosts are just chips of that soul that escape the attention of the Khert finding safety from the Khert in first materials or the souls of compatible living people. Angry people harbour eels, likewise happy people harbour squishies.
The Dammakert just rewrites how every soul born into it interacts with the Khert. Alds giving birth outside of Alderode give birth to Alds even if outside the proximity of the Dammakert because their soul "genetics" have already been altered. The weeping plague and etalartche likely function on the same principle, they are genetically inscribed into Alds and it is an imposing genetic imposition. Your genes can be forcibly mutated as the plague and curse both likely do.
I can imagine Bronzes are just Crescians born under the influence of the Dammakhert. The Alds have likely made a place in their society for the product of rapes, which if you really think about it is absolutely disgusting but so fricking pragmatic you'd expect it of a highly structural caste society.
Bronzes are just the result of intercaste breeding, every other Dammekhert birth yields a random caste including bronze.
All castes breed true, castemixing works like this:
Bronze + Anything = Bronze
Soud + Other caste = Other caste
Plat + Silver = Silver
Copper + Jet = Jet
Copper + Plat = Bronze
>Copper + Jet
Disgusting
Apparently there also exists some halfbreed freaks of nature that are half and half of their parents, who are when more shunned
Alderode is weird
Less "halfbreeds" and more absolute weird ass chances. They're just glitches in the Khert that are exceedingly rare.
It's crazy that the people who sat down to design the Dammekhert had the competence and foresight to contemplate that. Like, that's basically what the Nazis were like in as they validated everything, including their awfulness in law, they thought the shit out of everything and gave it a legal stamp of credibility.
>I can imagine Bronzes are just Crescians born under the influence of the Dammakhert.
crescians born under the influence of the dammakhert can be any caste, provided neither parent is an ald
Wait, are you saying that if two non-alds fricked in the dammakhert there's a chance they could pop out a copper?
That is how it works.
yes, the caste assigned to the offspring is random (can't be gold since they're not a real caste) so it's possible
>then we breed out the trash
Whaddya think pal
>>I think hubs are where the souls are drawn into the Khert after a person dies, and ghosts are just chips of that soul that escape the attention of the Khert finding safety from the Khert in first materials or the souls of compatible living people
Not so. We know from the Sette's jaunt into the khert is that the khert basically opens a small hole and sucks the dead soul in. Whatever the cause, when the khert opened up to accept Turas' soul, the hole jammed open and that's how Sette fell through. It had something to do with the khertfire from the gossamer trap, I don't recall the specifics.
I think the khert hubs are just dual-natured: they exist in the physical world and the khert in the same place in the same way and are like anchors holding everything in place.
We know the cause. His soul got tangled in the line connecting Duane's night-waking soul to his physical body.
The thing they're referring to happens because each Ald other than the ssoud carries a part of the dammakhert inside them. This is why they still sense each other outside of Alderode and how the etalarche curse still spreads and functions outside Alderode. They're their own tiny khert hubs, in a way.
>Duane being a tacit caster has nothing to do with why Bastion's experiment worked on him
lol
Duane accidently starting his own cult
>you will never be ALDed by religious zealots
I call dibs on Claggert
I like Mason, I hope he doesn't die early in the chapter
hate that the soldier has to be black to avoid racism
Racist detected
>bronzes
>black
Dats raciss
Does the size and caste difference make old coppers see everyone around them as annoying kids?
Ashley confirmed exactly this yesterday.Try to keep up!
https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/689129473318191104/so-is-part-of-the-reason-coppers-are-so-secretive
So if you go to great-great grandma's house and make noise she won't ask you to be quiet but will drive you out while shouting how a rat can't run from a vliegeng's claws?
>Bastian can't even form a new friendship with Rahm and Lori
>He'd get a crippling migraine if they ever meet again, and then he'd forget that meeting after
Rough
What's the daily caloric intake of a four centuries old copper? How big are their yummy shits?
So I'm guessing Mason missed Lem decapitating "Ssael" a minute later?
There was fire, smoke and Crescians everywhere
Duane deposited Mason on the ass-end of the Vilegeng. Duane had to fly up to get to Mikaela and the Vilegeng was flying in smoke and bullshit to avoid getting shot down so Mason probably couldn't see shit.
I've stood in petroleum fuel smoke and forest fire smoke. It's dark. You're very much blinded beyond a meter. You know how people in movies in burning smoky buildings get out of the burning building easily - it's not actually that easy if you don't know the building, it's actually really fricking hard.
I understand it's hard to imagine because most people haven't experienced actual threatening bullshit in their lives and movies really portray a strange portrayal of reality but reality can get scary as frick. We have evolved to survive through intelligence and group cooperation and as a result our eyes can't do supernatural shit like see in the dark, see beyond the chromatic wavelengths, or have telescopic range.
What if, plot twist, the Ssael tittybird is looking for isn't actually the slayer of gods but Sette's lion sibling. Maybe tittybird had a sense of humor when naming him(?)?
Speaking of the whole spark of recognition: What would happen if a regular human from our world landed in Kasslyne and didn't explode/disappear/noclip through the world? Would the people get uncanny valley effect?
Eh, I never liked "what if someone from the real world got transported to this different metaphysical fictional universe" thought experiments. They just fall apart if you go too deep into them.
Cope has said that we'd seem uncanny to them, yeah. Deeply wrong and soulless.