* Would be hilarious if it was this guy: but probably isn’t. Unless the twist is Ssael is a girl and Duane finds out his god was a giiiirl (lol)
I don’t think
Isabel Ne'er-Do-Well.
is right. While that song has featured a few times, there isn’t a known link between Isabel Ne’er do well and… literally everything. There’s no obvious story logic.
Things I have observed that I think are important:
In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half.
This kind of makes me think hair bird is her/their soul. If evil Sette used to have it, it must be Sette's reincarnating soul so now Sette F. has it. For whatever reason, it doesn't keep its past memories. Evil Sette died, the soul left her, and now she wants it back, maybe so she can live again or just have its specific powers for some plan.
The avian appearance of the soul and also the fact it's in her hair like Tiddybird's birds makes me think Tiddybird is either Sette's mom or her creator. She's responsible for creating the soul.
According to Sette over and over and even to Duane, Sette is human. She's a human that's been tampered with. I think my final guess is that Sette and her lion brother were Tiddybird's attempt to improve humanity (and lions?) by changing them to keep their memories together when they die. This also imbued them with certain powers. Now mom needs those powers to fix her "mistake."
seems a valid guess.
Problem with this is that Sette F. should ALREADY have "the soul" since she's been out in the world being human.
Personally, I don't know exactly WHAT it is, but it puts me in the mind of Prakhuta and something getting grafted onto his soul with pain. It's certainly causing Sette a great deal of discomfort.
From what we've seen, it's directly linked to Ana and also the painbeast. So whether it's cause of Ana or the beast is up for debate. But we've also seen that Tirna Sette also knows what it is and wants it, with all the implications of what you've said about it being around before and being with her and now with Sette.
“it’s grafted onto the soul with pain” could also be a valid guess, but still doesn’t say exactly what it is.
The bird is Sette's soul, you nimrods. Only Sette has a soul, and it was created by Tiddybird which is why it looks like an agib. Sette isn't just a human, she's the only human in the world. Everyone else is only their memories and they have no afterlife.
If I had to figure who was “bang on”, I’d guess maybe it was this fella.
The bird is Sette's soul, you nimrods. Only Sette has a soul, and it was created by Tiddybird which is why it looks like an agib. Sette isn't just a human, she's the only human in the world. Everyone else is only their memories and they have no afterlife.
I thought the front end of this seemed valid too but we have seen other people's souls in the Khert, so the 2nd half is too wrong to be bang on. It could be Sette is the only human and the other people we see are some 3rd thing that came after Inaks and humans but just call themselves human. Duane calls her materials human and we know he's a "world-class wright" so I would guess she's 100% human.
Isn’t that guy dissolving into his paineels and squishes? Chunks are being taken out of him and he’s probably in the early stages of ‘dematerialization’. Are there any complete souls beyond those clearly tethered or artificially tampered or just a flash in a memory flashback with that we see? I can’t remember.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
entering the khert dissolves a soul immediately, the only reason why he was partially intact was because he got tangled in duane's line
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yeah that’s kinda the angle I’m going for where the only times we see an (partially) intact soul it’s because there’s some unique quality or external factor going on.
Things I have observed that I think are important:
In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half.
This kind of makes me think hair bird is her/their soul. If evil Sette used to have it, it must be Sette's reincarnating soul so now Sette F. has it. For whatever reason, it doesn't keep its past memories. Evil Sette died, the soul left her, and now she wants it back, maybe so she can live again or just have its specific powers for some plan.
The avian appearance of the soul and also the fact it's in her hair like Tiddybird's birds makes me think Tiddybird is either Sette's mom or her creator. She's responsible for creating the soul.
According to Sette over and over and even to Duane, Sette is human. She's a human that's been tampered with. I think my final guess is that Sette and her lion brother were Tiddybird's attempt to improve humanity (and lions?) by changing them to keep their memories together when they die. This also imbued them with certain powers. Now mom needs those powers to fix her "mistake."
Problem with this is that Sette F. should ALREADY have "the soul" since she's been out in the world being human.
Personally, I don't know exactly WHAT it is, but it puts me in the mind of Prakhuta and something getting grafted onto his soul with pain. It's certainly causing Sette a great deal of discomfort.
From what we've seen, it's directly linked to Ana and also the painbeast. So whether it's cause of Ana or the beast is up for debate. But we've also seen that Tirna Sette also knows what it is and wants it, with all the implications of what you've said about it being around before and being with her and now with Sette.
>In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half. >She's responsible for creating the soul.
That would be a ridiculous power up for her and carry strange implications regarding the normal human souls - what happened to Lady Frummagem's original baby then?
Wait shit. Are the babby ballons all the children Ilganyag replaced Sette & Jac with?
And how do you even create an artificial soul? Jezzus Sette won't get over this.
This seems somewhat plausible to me, but I think there's a big piece missing. >Why is there only one Khette?
We have all this talk of cycles and Sette having lived more than her fair share in the cycle, but if she's supposed to be sacrificed at 12 (or 22) and Khette has lived in the khert long enough to be from when the sacrifice age was 12 then there should be dozens if not hundreds of Khettes and Jacs running around. Where are they all? If the baby balloons are Sette and Jac replacements then where are all the past Settes? If they got absorbed by the khert why did Khette not? If they get absorbed into Khette, why and how?
>Why is there only one Khette?
Because this one seems to have been saved dissolution on purpose, Lady Y being the cause.
Well, as much as dissolution applies to sette - "ive cut bad a million times"
> and Khette has lived in the khert long enough to be from when the sacrifice age was 12
depends on the region methinks. For all we know she could be the past reincarnation, or there's really only 2sette and they take turns
Tittybird has them all corralled somewhere, duh.
What do you think Cope meant by pointing out Sette was being called a runaway in her first meeting with the bird?
Well when I look at my cheat codes AKA the physical copy of the book the birds are AGIB or least they are what agib are described to be minus all the big bird bullshit that Sessine is. >story telling birds that can see into the mind of the makers and tell histories and shit from other realities >can see inside the mind of men and beast and drive them mad with tales of their misdeeds
They exist to gaslight you. Maybe it is their conscious or maybe it is how Sessine speaks to her settes.
This is interesting, it seems like she's hinting at 4th wall breaking capabilities. And Sette is capable of 4th wall shit. So if Agib are 4th wall breakers that tell stories from other realities, and the spirit looks like an Inak, and the spirit is inhabiting Sette, and Sette was sympathetic to the Inaks at the temple, then Sette is... an Agib?
Well, I’d say Sette’s powers derive from having this piece of Agib in her, and it’s why feral sette is jealous of another having what she used to have.
This is interesting, it seems like she's hinting at 4th wall breaking capabilities. And Sette is capable of 4th wall shit. So if Agib are 4th wall breakers that tell stories from other realities, and the spirit looks like an Inak, and the spirit is inhabiting Sette, and Sette was sympathetic to the Inaks at the temple, then Sette is... an Agib?
Fug this even sounds like Sette’s “best world” rewrites.
That's a fricking gay ass cormorant. How come Ilganyag is this different?
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Hmmm.
Perhaps, hairbird is what an agib is supposed to look like, red with silver traced through it.
And fact that Ilganyang doesn’t look like that, that’s why she can’t survive outside the khert - her silver “bones” are missing.
And the rest of her form, she was just making a face one day and her ability to shapeshift got taken away. Got stuck with it forever.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
If I recall correctly, it's extreme sexual dimorphism, like the Water Women/Storm Boys or whatever they're called.
Perhaps I'm misremembering whether it was confirmed or not or just anon speculation, but my memory is the "Agib" that most humans are familiar with are the dudes and Ilganyag is the last remaining female.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Thought about it, but were agib females so different, it's make little sense if there was no record of that (never mind that stray fresco). Which makes me think Ilganyag must be more special than that, maybe she's a special one-off abomination made from the species, like Cutter now is?
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
If I recall correctly, it's extreme sexual dimorphism, like the Water Women/Storm Boys or whatever they're called.
Perhaps I'm misremembering whether it was confirmed or not or just anon speculation, but my memory is the "Agib" that most humans are familiar with are the dudes and Ilganyag is the last remaining female.
I was a big proponent of the idea of Agib being sexually dimorphic, but that idea is based on a lot of assumptions and I can't rule out it being a case of them being different "growth stages", like with water women or mountain ogres.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Ilganyag is famous enough to be included in folk legends.
Perhaps every time Sette kills a pain ghost it is actually being eaten by this thing. The memory associated with the thing was her ripping the ghost out of the silver beast which has yet to happen
and also in looking for this page and looking at how bastion is styled. I wonder if the hair crow is an extension of Sette's will or Sessine's.
The bird could be the Agent she is talking about tin the third panel nudging things to where they should be based on her deductions. I can't remember when or where but Sessine talked about being careful about how much she fricked with fate or the real world or something. Personally I though it shit like the big sette shenanigans we saw a few pages back. Or that these are like red ghost infecting people the same way ghost infect constructs.
The hair bird is an agib thing it seems. Illganyag has them too
but Sette isn't an Agib, Senets and Settes are meaningfully different things. So what the frick is their deal, and what are they supposed to be accomplishing?
I think that's specific to Sette, but I'm glad we're circling back to the Khert determining life spans stuff because I think that homeless schizo was right. The Khert predetermines life span and the Dammakhert takes the extra years from the lower cast and gives them to the upper castes.
You should be able to solve this.
Breaking out into a cold sweat remembering how my high school geometry teacher would tell us we had all the information needed to write a proof even though she never FRICKING TAUGHT US THE MATERIAL BEFORE THE TESTS. Granted, Ashley seems more warm and encouraging than sterile and exasperated.
>Khert determining life spans stuff
Not just lifespan, but shifting wrightness around so you have hypersensitive and long-range plats with short range jets and basically khert insensate coppers.
Are most Alds paler than usual because coppers are stealing the red from the rest of them? Souds seem pretty rosy compared to the rest.
What else did the higher castes steal? Does the proportional size of copper dongs mean another caste all have microdicks?
I don’t think the Khert determines lifespan. I think it already knows your lifespan.
I suspect the recording of human souls and using arts takes up a certain amount of khert “bandwidth” and the shorter your recorded life the less stress you place on the khert during your existence.
>Are most Alds paler than usual because coppers are stealing the red from the rest of them?
This doesn't work because silvers are dark skinned compared to the others, and they have the 2nd shortest lifespan.
How long you live also seems to be related to how connected you are to the Khert, though. Plats are very keenly aware of khert lines and do the best pymary and live the shortest lives. Coppers feel "slippery" to the khert and live the longest. Senet beasts are entirely disconnected from the khert, with their own mini-kherts, and are immortal. Inak also seem to live long, but they're still ruled by the khert since they don't have their own like the senets, and so they still die naturally.
What I'm getting from it is that "connectedness to the Khert" is somehow proportional to aging, or maybe time itself. Plats are hyperconnected and die at 25. Normally connected humans have normal lifespans. Coppers are barely connected and live to 400. Senets are completely sovereign and do not age.
Last update I thought it was all coming together and I understood what was happening, 48 hours later and it's all fricking with my head again. Victory is fleeting in this hocus pocus story...
She didn't let our Sette live. Sette's a runaway. Someone helped our Sette escape. Probably some bawd walking around naked, murdering good lads, getting whipped by little girls, fricking gay men and collecting every STD Kasslyne has to offer. Probably.
What makes you think the black tongue midwife murdered Jacaranda Frummagem? For all we know the twin conception / have a nice day bird installation was fricked from the beginning because it was supposed to happen in a lion.
>have a nice day bird installation was fricked from the beginning because it was supposed to happen in a lion.
why would they need jac to die/be sackerficed? the older twin is meant to just chill for the rest of their life, no? so what's with the grafted suicidal thoughts? it feels very intentionally for sette/the younger twin, especially since Khette's gone through the cycle already.
I don't think Bastion "got away" with that at all. Jackie's death was likely on purpose which Nary theorized. Sette ran away by other means not yet stated. If tittybird really wanted her sacrificed, she could have arranged easily.
Because her plan is near fulfillment, and although Sessine might somewhat care that Sette understands the reason behind her presence here before her sacrifice, Sessine doesn't need Sette's willing participation.
Website comment: >I think Lady Ilganyag is slightly less scary than pissy naked Not!Sette who looks like she wants to eat someone.
>-Ashley
Patreon comment: >A few old questions finally cleared up. Sette doesn't deny here that she's older than she looks - no point. If anyone would know, it's probably these freaks. If Duane or Jivi or Quigley was here though she'd be very flustered. It's probably the one single physical thing that she's self-conscious about. She also got very spooked whenever Starfish started his bullcrap about it.
>The teeth are awesome, the tail is amazing, and she is beautiful beyond all sense and reason. But why is she so stuck? Her single flaw v_v
>But why is she so stuck? Her single flaw v_v
'snot a flaw, it's her greatest asset.
Worth noting that she also gets flustered when Duane brings up how she's "too old to go about in [her] skin" when the kids are playing in the water in chapter 12. Glass has mentioned many times that Sette's comfortable in her skin so her being different is what bothers her. At the time we were primed to think that this was due to her lack of nipples since that had been revealed in the previous chapter and it's almost certainly what Jivi noticed that got his attention. But lacking nipples is only a small part of the problem, all you have to do to keep someone from noticing is wear a shirt; everyone in your town will notice that you don't age. Sette had just the day before been reminded of this by Starfish, and in this scene she realizes that sooner or later Jivi and Matty will know too.
my guess is that its the thing that allows Sette to command the ghosts, maybe related to Inaks past? Kinda looks like one to me. Anyways it being how Sette can command ghosts would explain why dark sette wants it back so bad, for the power it gives.
So it looks like Sette is confirmed to be 22 years old. Which is also the age at which twins are sacrificed. And the High Priestess was saying that they needed a twin from Litriya Shrine for today's twin sacrifice. And Sette did just come from there earlier this morning. Surely this bodes well.
Yep, normally Settes die at 12 because that's when twins used to be sacrificed at, and so she has never aged past 12. But at some point, the age for twin sacrifice became 22, and so Sette has lived 10 more years than she was ever meant to.
What I mean is, Sette wasn't ever going to be a gay-ass geffie sacrfice. She's about to get sacrificed here and now by tittybird for a purpose, not just empty ritual. Unless she stabs her right in the tit
Tirna was pissed when the spiderpaws were created. This thing looks like an Inak. If Tirna was an agib or whatever the frick, and the Inak were "her people" it would explain why she was pissed at the new upstarts and why the Inak worship her.
Yeah, same, tho I think the mortal bit is yet to come - it’s not going to be tittybird making the crossover, it’ll be Tirna who’s supposed to inhabit the silver. Bad news day, that.
And the sette entanglement is how she kept her soul intact thru the ages.
Perhaps every time Sette kills a pain ghost it is actually being eaten by this thing. The memory associated with the thing was her ripping the ghost out of the silver beast which has yet to happen
Poor Khette, cheated out of her bird companion for years because of Tittybird's plot... >but there was no easy poison then
50% chance Khette moves that fur to reveal some deep nasty wounds next page. It's not like Sette hasn't seen enough traumatizing things today.
Ashley's writing has been good for most of the series but this loredump's coming out of a clear blue sky.
What foreshadowed the 12-year cycle, bird inside of her, tittybird's ultimate goal being to harvest it, her brother wanting this mcguffin-outta-nowhere, etc?
>cycle
Minnow obliquely referred to it ages ago. I'm not sure 12 years is relevant besides it being a historical sacrifice age. It might still be, and if it is, it's probably because her Jac is dead. But it might not, if Sette is 22, then this is her death day in current Geffie orthodoxy (not accounting for her dead twin, of course).
>bird
Was just introduced. We don't even know what it is, except Sessine wants Sette to have it. It seemed tied to the silver monster in some what, at least when Sette touched it, Anadyne was not happy.
>harvest it
Does she want that? She seems to want current Sette to have it, and maybe to use it. Sessine and Bastion both mentioned a 'mistake' she wanted to correct at earlier points in the comic.
>Jac
I don't really think Jac cares about the slam poetry bird, he's just here for Sessine and Sette and seems to defer to Sessine's judgment.
I'd got the impression from the Tirna myth, and allusions Murkoph and/or Duane are (versions of) Sael, that Ashley's setting will either be
1. Worlds within worlds. With certain patterns in the creation cycle repeating.
2. An endless recreation cycle, like The Elder Scrolls Kulpas, with who's an Aedra or Daedra (Tirna or Sael) potentially changing between incarnations.
3. Timeloop. Murkoph's a future-Duane who's completely degraded. The moment of creation/destruction is the reset but like backup files the khert keeps past builds.
It has been built-up that the cursed silver's absorbing pain Ghostbusters style, this's somehow related to what souls are (as the experiments on the lizard mention), the etalarche curse may allow for a hacking/breaking/reprogramming of Adelrode's system, and the Silver is a conduit to takeover the khert/reality atleast locally within a hub.
As Duane himself is an experiment in soul-grafting (stich a soul to a zombie after sticking one to a two-toes) these experiments might have been Tiddybird's steps towards grafting her own soul onto the silver, possessing it, and having a giant battle in the sky with Khert-scale Sette like the ending of the 9 Divines, or NGE, etc.
But some of the features right now like...Sette's brother became a Lion in the Khert? She gave birth to a bird she has always had? Are really blindsiding me. I know there's the artpiece of her riding her brother, the lion theme, and the recent twin revelation but if anyone has any past references to her hairbird please post the comic page.
If it's her soul then...was her brother's soul given to her so she's double-souled? Or was his/her soul the source of the Inak's soul and the reason she hasn't aged/died is because she's soul-less?
>Murkoph and/or Duane are (versions of) Sael
oh. i feel so stupid connecting all now, but Murkoph isn't Ssael because they're both off-shoots from the same template? they're both Sette F.s to a Khette? Duane is another one too? wow, i don't know why i didn't think fo that before
Man, I love her story and her style, but Ashley absolutely baffles me with takes like this. She tells us Ssael was killed by intelligent lions and that his body was paraded around as a trophy, that Ssaelit priests paint their faces to match the scars the lions gave Ssael, shows us a character from another time period with real scars in the right places to match the face paint, and we're supposed to realize that the real scars are mimicking the painted ones and not the other way around? What?
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
The face paint scars couldn't be given by actual lions though, we've seen they have 5 claws (with thumbs?) so we'd see either a 4x4 or 5x5 set of scratches instead of the 2x3 depicted in the painting.
Murkoph also paraded around naked so we could confirm he wasn't scarred elsewhere.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Is that something ever stated in the comic itself or just worldbuilding from the Q&A? I try to just keep the latter out of speculative theory since it just kind of fricks with the process. like maybe its not spoilers but it doesnt really help to know that at the moment
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
She mentioned that she kind of regretted introducing Murkoph so early for this reason, because it’s largely implied his role is really for book 2, even though I suspect we already saw him in book 1 (I think he was the spellslicer assassin). But she also implied that someone may have scarred his face that way to mock his faith.
Similar to someone mocking a Christian by killing them via crufixion, if you get my drift. “If you love your god so much, here, why don’t we help you out…”
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Frankly, I don't understand why people keep bringing up Murkoph's scars as an argument for him bein Ssael. His scars are way too regular and clean to come from an actual mauling to death. They were clearly made this way on purpose, and that means he lived after Ssaelism spread and adopted them as a symbol.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
I can understand that logic, Ashley, but the lions are known to have had human intelligence, the mauling to death would have been most effective as a disemboweling leaving Ssael's face mostly untouched. They could have very reasonably been been added by the lions after death to serve as a deliberate message, like when a scorned wife murders her husband and then cuts off his genitals afterwards.
>As Duane himself is an experiment in soul-grafting (stich a soul to a zombie after sticking one to a two-toes)
not entirely acurrate. Duane was killed by the pymaric itself, not by the asassins.
Sette being stuck as a kid has been a thing since Anadyne pointed it out years ago at the Nevergreen. I think all the bird soul is is a visual representation of this problem/ability, and evil Sette wants it so she can live again. Tiddybird wants it for its other powers, and she just pointed out basically the entire adventure has been about getting Sette here in this state so she can, I guess, take it.
I'm not judging yet until this scene is over though. Having to read a climactic revelation a page at a time is fricking awful.
The bird is Sette's soul, you nimrods. Only Sette has a soul, and it was created by Tiddybird which is why it looks like an agib. Sette isn't just a human, she's the only human in the world. Everyone else is only their memories and they have no afterlife.
Ashley's writing has been good for most of the series but this loredump's coming out of a clear blue sky.
What foreshadowed the 12-year cycle, bird inside of her, tittybird's ultimate goal being to harvest it, her brother wanting this mcguffin-outta-nowhere, etc?
Ashley saw your slander you cur, may your insides melt and your outsides rot.
Things I have observed that I think are important:
In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half.
This kind of makes me think hair bird is her/their soul. If evil Sette used to have it, it must be Sette's reincarnating soul so now Sette F. has it. For whatever reason, it doesn't keep its past memories. Evil Sette died, the soul left her, and now she wants it back, maybe so she can live again or just have its specific powers for some plan.
The avian appearance of the soul and also the fact it's in her hair like Tiddybird's birds makes me think Tiddybird is either Sette's mom or her creator. She's responsible for creating the soul.
According to Sette over and over and even to Duane, Sette is human. She's a human that's been tampered with. I think my final guess is that Sette and her lion brother were Tiddybird's attempt to improve humanity (and lions?) by changing them to keep their memories together when they die. This also imbued them with certain powers. Now mom needs those powers to fix her "mistake."
This one? But like the reply says, our Sette should already be ensouled so her getting one now doesn't make sense.
Yeah, I think the bird is Tirna. Being passed from Sette to Sette is how she stays in the mortal world
The bird could be the Agent she is talking about tin the third panel nudging things to where they should be based on her deductions. I can't remember when or where but Sessine talked about being careful about how much she fricked with fate or the real world or something. Personally I though it shit like the big sette shenanigans we saw a few pages back. Or that these are like red ghost infecting people the same way ghost infect constructs.
I dunno, that feels too simple to me.
By the way, interesting that they say "Tirna's worst day" here when they talk about the silver showing you your worst day later.
I like this one the most. It's the day the twins are supposed to die and it's been the worst day of Sette's life, so both of them having their worst days on the same day is no coincidence... If it's Tirna's soul then the Settes are fated to have their worst days at 22 on Twin sacrifice day forever.
if we rule out all the Q&A and patreon stuff, between both threads we have
* sette doing the ghost exorcism for the silver and * bastion killing sette's brother in the womb.
* sette dying at litriya sacrifice age (hinted by the dead birb)
>Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated
That's deliberate. No idea what it means though.
Something something mantling the divine twins. But I've seem nothing that says Jacaranda is analogue to wheel god. They could just be a dual aspect of Tirna.
If he can that’s her best odds. Tittybird presumably looked him all over, if she saw his 2nd death why would she look any further? He could be a real blindspot and these kinda fate-visionaries tend to be fricked when they don’t see something coming, no experience with improvisation.
If Sette has Tirna, did Jac use to have Yerta? Was the twin rebirth/sacrifice routine interrupted at some point, devolving into the modern day empty gesture celebrated among geffies? Was Ssael actually an evil butthole that killed the nicer of the two gods, permanently, in the khert, so that the other one couldn't be reborn anymore?
Khette is dead. She was sacrificed. Right? Jacaranda, elder twin, died naturally. Not sacrificed. Right?
But they both appear here in the khert as whole beings, their memories intact, souls unshattered. Their fates are unlike anything that happens to other humans or sentient non-humans.
So what we’re seeing in the khert— of Khette— what is she, then?
She’s not like Duane, whose soul glows the color of his pymary when he falls in at night. She’s not like Turas, whose soul turned blue as it fell apart in the khert.
Two things, one Sessine is very good at manipulating the Khert she might have put them together herself. Hell she is probably why Bastion could do it, it would be pretty bad to base you plan on the chance of someone having an idea. Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated. Duane also stopped glowing green multiple times during the argument with Sette. Khert visuals be wild.
>Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated
That's deliberate. No idea what it means though.
>GAY LION! TWOFACE KHETTE! INAK TIRNA! BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM DISCOUNT SSAEL!
I mean, probably not, but it would've been funny is Sette+Lyinbro are a hack stopgap solution to something Ilganyag and Ssael broke in the Khert way back when
Whatever that bird thing is the other Sette seems to believe our Sette is hoarding it just on account of being alive. So it being their soul or mortality or whatever makes some sense. Of course that raises even more questions but whatever, Ashley says the answer will come in a couple of pages anyway.
It also seems like Khette believes that when Lady I takes that “her” from Sette, it will be returned to Khette.
“Take her, crow!” And “She’s mine!”, plus she literally tried to attack Sette a couple pages ago once she realized Sette had “her”.
by why would there be 2sette? Not to mention that the comic doesn't lend itself to people not mentioned they know someone prior. Khette treats Sette as a stranger.
I think Khette is either a Sette plugged off the Khert by Lady Y or the "ur-Sette" like some khert version of the platonic ideal of Sette, and the bird basically copies and pastes her.
But I'm speculating here because so far nothing Sette or Khette are corresponds to how the Khert works, despite the ghost hands.
And tbh I really just want her to be Tirna.
Okay, something bothering me here.
Khette is dead. She was sacrificed. Right? Jacaranda, elder twin, died naturally. Not sacrificed. Right?
But they both appear here in the khert as whole beings, their memories intact, souls unshattered. Their fates are unlike anything that happens to other humans or sentient non-humans.
So what we’re seeing in the khert— of Khette— what is she, then?
She’s not like Duane, whose soul glows the color of his pymary when he falls in at night. She’s not like Turas, whose soul turned blue as it fell apart in the khert.
So what is she?
You just now realized the kid that literally falls into heaven is not bound by heaven's rules? We straight up don't know. She's either divine or according to some other anons here, artificial
Two things, one Sessine is very good at manipulating the Khert she might have put them together herself. Hell she is probably why Bastion could do it, it would be pretty bad to base you plan on the chance of someone having an idea. Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated. Duane also stopped glowing green multiple times during the argument with Sette. Khert visuals be wild.
>Duane also stopped glowing green multiple times during the argument with Sette. Khert visuals be wild.
Duane's "Soul" (if it can be called that in the Khert) exists in a permanent state of reliving his memories. He's been fighting it off a bit so it doesn't just engulf everyone in them. But it's not something that stops, he's constantly shifting his appearance to the memory he associates the most with his current emotional state.
If Sette has Tirna, did Jac use to have Yerta? Was the twin rebirth/sacrifice routine interrupted at some point, devolving into the modern day empty gesture celebrated among geffies? Was Ssael actually an evil butthole that killed the nicer of the two gods, permanently, in the khert, so that the other one couldn't be reborn anymore?
there's a 4th god holding a wheel in the pageant, but i don't think he was namedropped.
The character in the pageant background is Brother Baelar, Riv's younger twin. He's credited with weaving pymary, hence the spinning wheel. We have reason to believe that Baelar is connected to the wandering roots, and we know historically there was one that could talk
The bird in Sette's hair has to be connected to her claws. We see it's corpse in Lady I's nest and it has kinda liony paws likes it's a small gryphon.
Ashley says it's no agib, does Sette have a Black tongue pymaric in her like Duane does?
>Ashley says it's no agib, does Sette have a Black tongue pymaric in her like Duane does?
I would doubt Sette has any sort of artifact in her. She, and her stillborn lion bro, were born "normally" so any weirdness with her is solely through khert frickery. Since Aggro Sette mentions having the bird thing previously, it also seems unlikely to be a black tongue pymaric like what's in Duane.
That said, it could be some sort of template for it that Bastion worked off of for his abomination of nature. But it doesn't seem to be something Sette had before nor something she needs to be what she is.
>by why would there be 2sette?
There might be 3 active right now at a minimum. Remember Cheep Cheep? Sessine saying "runaways" plural makes even more possible.
Now that you mention it, ever since Sette woke up in tittybird's clutches, she hasn't said or done anything that would strictly point to her being "our" Sette. BODY DOUBLES. SETTE EX MACHINA.
> You just now realized the kid that literally falls into heaven is not bound by heaven's rules?
Yes, because I always assumed that if Sette died, her soul would behave like any other human’s soul. Silly me. Duane walks the khert, so does Murkoph, because Duane’s soul is bound and Murkoph isn’t really dead.
Is the hair bird one of the things in this comic that was always secretly there but was never mentioned, or is Sette just that good at rolling with the punches?
Have no idea what Murkoph's deal is, but now I'm thinking about it a bit more. Maybe if a Sette needs to kill someone close to them every cycle, Murkoph was Khette's evil partner in crime for a while? A Duane prototype? Real Sette mistook Murkoph for Duane at first, and they had some initial rapport before Murkoph got really murdery. Murkoph and Duane also both have eye scars. Coincidence? No clue.
Can't remember where it was mentioned, but Alderode is having a fertility crisis. Presumably, all those tied up fetus souls are souls that were meant to be born in Alderode.
>ties kid's soul to a railing >nothing personnel, kid >I just fricking hate your country
Makes sense. The fertility crisis is one of the two major factors behind the proposed re-balancing (the other being the plague) if I remember correctly. No re-balancing push means no need for Duane to be a spell composer, means no political assassination hit put on Duane, means no tacit casting zombie pet for everyone's favorite bird fricker, means no escort for Sette.
Sessine seems to be antinatalist, going by her demanding balls and making her Black Tongues shoot sterilizing goo. No clue why she's targeting Alderode and Ssaelit specifically. Maybe it's to do with the Weeping Plague.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
And the she gets all -dovey over Settle. I think that's more control than antinatalism
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
She's literally just malding because she can't make baby herself
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
She's literally just malding because she can't make baby herself
Which is what I think is the whole crux of her plan. She's attempting to alter the whole "Senet Beasts can't reproduce" thing
All the ingredients seems to be present:
The black tongues, whose whole deal is experimenting with and pushing the khert to its limits. Soul creation and alteration being just one facet of their work. It's her whole R&D department
Black tongue balls for raw materials to make a physical body. the semen in the balls has all the genetic material one needs
A zombie man in storage to conduct experiments on and, I presume, use as a means to facilitate impregnation once she thinks she has a working method
Fetus Forest full of unborn baby souls to use in her experiments
My guess is she's trying to change the nature of her existence and the "Runaway" Settes were just early experiments that failed or, as she said, ran away.
Just my thoughts on it though
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
oh this is an interesting one. i like the ideas around Sette essentially being Sessine's kid, being created by her. truly Sette has the most fricked up family imaginable
But what's with all the smoke eels?
okay yeah at this point even I'm lost
WHO THE FRICK IS THE HAIR BIRD AND WHY ARE THEY PLAYING ODDBALL WITH IT
The hair bird is an agib thing it seems. Illganyag has them too
You should be able to solve this.
It's Ssael
I will not elaborate
It fricking could be you know. That poem/song it kept repeating could be straight out of the Songs of Ssael...
Sette the Hedgehog keeps calling it a she thoug.
Listing the guesses in order with commentary.
* Would be hilarious if it was this guy: but probably isn’t. Unless the twist is Ssael is a girl and Duane finds out his god was a giiiirl (lol)
I don’t think
is right. While that song has featured a few times, there isn’t a known link between Isabel Ne’er do well and… literally everything. There’s no obvious story logic.
seems a valid guess.
“it’s grafted onto the soul with pain” could also be a valid guess, but still doesn’t say exactly what it is.
If I had to figure who was “bang on”, I’d guess maybe it was this fella.
I thought the front end of this seemed valid too but we have seen other people's souls in the Khert, so the 2nd half is too wrong to be bang on. It could be Sette is the only human and the other people we see are some 3rd thing that came after Inaks and humans but just call themselves human. Duane calls her materials human and we know he's a "world-class wright" so I would guess she's 100% human.
is the murkoph is ssael theory still valid or someone has explaine why he has the lion marks?
Iirc Ashley has repeatedly denied this. We don't really know what the frick his deal is yet and probably won't until book 2.
Isn’t that guy dissolving into his paineels and squishes? Chunks are being taken out of him and he’s probably in the early stages of ‘dematerialization’. Are there any complete souls beyond those clearly tethered or artificially tampered or just a flash in a memory flashback with that we see? I can’t remember.
entering the khert dissolves a soul immediately, the only reason why he was partially intact was because he got tangled in duane's line
Yeah that’s kinda the angle I’m going for where the only times we see an (partially) intact soul it’s because there’s some unique quality or external factor going on.
What the frick IS up with that guy anyways?
Like yeah, I know he's like this super murder/maybe that one god dude-But why does Titbird care so much about him???
What if Ssael, but Inak?
It's Nanna.
It's the friends we made along the way
Isabel Ne'er-Do-Well.
It's my best friend suicidal ideation
Things I have observed that I think are important:
In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half.
This kind of makes me think hair bird is her/their soul. If evil Sette used to have it, it must be Sette's reincarnating soul so now Sette F. has it. For whatever reason, it doesn't keep its past memories. Evil Sette died, the soul left her, and now she wants it back, maybe so she can live again or just have its specific powers for some plan.
The avian appearance of the soul and also the fact it's in her hair like Tiddybird's birds makes me think Tiddybird is either Sette's mom or her creator. She's responsible for creating the soul.
According to Sette over and over and even to Duane, Sette is human. She's a human that's been tampered with. I think my final guess is that Sette and her lion brother were Tiddybird's attempt to improve humanity (and lions?) by changing them to keep their memories together when they die. This also imbued them with certain powers. Now mom needs those powers to fix her "mistake."
Problem with this is that Sette F. should ALREADY have "the soul" since she's been out in the world being human.
Personally, I don't know exactly WHAT it is, but it puts me in the mind of Prakhuta and something getting grafted onto his soul with pain. It's certainly causing Sette a great deal of discomfort.
From what we've seen, it's directly linked to Ana and also the painbeast. So whether it's cause of Ana or the beast is up for debate. But we've also seen that Tirna Sette also knows what it is and wants it, with all the implications of what you've said about it being around before and being with her and now with Sette.
>In the nest, hair bird has a tail and lion legs. The hair bird in Sette's hair hasn't been shown to have those. This leads me to believe it's only half there and her dead brother has the other half.
>She's responsible for creating the soul.
That would be a ridiculous power up for her and carry strange implications regarding the normal human souls - what happened to Lady Frummagem's original baby then?
Wait shit. Are the babby ballons all the children Ilganyag replaced Sette & Jac with?
And how do you even create an artificial soul? Jezzus Sette won't get over this.
This seems somewhat plausible to me, but I think there's a big piece missing.
>Why is there only one Khette?
We have all this talk of cycles and Sette having lived more than her fair share in the cycle, but if she's supposed to be sacrificed at 12 (or 22) and Khette has lived in the khert long enough to be from when the sacrifice age was 12 then there should be dozens if not hundreds of Khettes and Jacs running around. Where are they all? If the baby balloons are Sette and Jac replacements then where are all the past Settes? If they got absorbed by the khert why did Khette not? If they get absorbed into Khette, why and how?
>Why is there only one Khette?
Because this one seems to have been saved dissolution on purpose, Lady Y being the cause.
Well, as much as dissolution applies to sette - "ive cut bad a million times"
> and Khette has lived in the khert long enough to be from when the sacrifice age was 12
depends on the region methinks. For all we know she could be the past reincarnation, or there's really only 2sette and they take turns
>Why is there only one Khette?
What about the baby Sette and Jacaranda that Sessine was seen nuzzling ages ago?
Tittybird has them all corralled somewhere, duh.
What do you think Cope meant by pointing out Sette was being called a runaway in her first meeting with the bird?
Well when I look at my cheat codes AKA the physical copy of the book the birds are AGIB or least they are what agib are described to be minus all the big bird bullshit that Sessine is.
>story telling birds that can see into the mind of the makers and tell histories and shit from other realities
>can see inside the mind of men and beast and drive them mad with tales of their misdeeds
They exist to gaslight you. Maybe it is their conscious or maybe it is how Sessine speaks to her settes.
This is interesting, it seems like she's hinting at 4th wall breaking capabilities. And Sette is capable of 4th wall shit. So if Agib are 4th wall breakers that tell stories from other realities, and the spirit looks like an Inak, and the spirit is inhabiting Sette, and Sette was sympathetic to the Inaks at the temple, then Sette is... an Agib?
Well, I’d say Sette’s powers derive from having this piece of Agib in her, and it’s why feral sette is jealous of another having what she used to have.
Fug this even sounds like Sette’s “best world” rewrites.
The frick is an agib fricking patreon readers
This.
That's a fricking gay ass cormorant. How come Ilganyag is this different?
Hmmm.
Perhaps, hairbird is what an agib is supposed to look like, red with silver traced through it.
And fact that Ilganyang doesn’t look like that, that’s why she can’t survive outside the khert - her silver “bones” are missing.
And the rest of her form, she was just making a face one day and her ability to shapeshift got taken away. Got stuck with it forever.
If I recall correctly, it's extreme sexual dimorphism, like the Water Women/Storm Boys or whatever they're called.
Perhaps I'm misremembering whether it was confirmed or not or just anon speculation, but my memory is the "Agib" that most humans are familiar with are the dudes and Ilganyag is the last remaining female.
Thought about it, but were agib females so different, it's make little sense if there was no record of that (never mind that stray fresco). Which makes me think Ilganyag must be more special than that, maybe she's a special one-off abomination made from the species, like Cutter now is?
I was a big proponent of the idea of Agib being sexually dimorphic, but that idea is based on a lot of assumptions and I can't rule out it being a case of them being different "growth stages", like with water women or mountain ogres.
Ilganyag is famous enough to be included in folk legends.
call it baru and give it an economics degree
Well, she sure has the traitor part down pat
From the comic anon see
and also in looking for this page and looking at how bastion is styled. I wonder if the hair crow is an extension of Sette's will or Sessine's.
The bird could be the Agent she is talking about tin the third panel nudging things to where they should be based on her deductions. I can't remember when or where but Sessine talked about being careful about how much she fricked with fate or the real world or something. Personally I though it shit like the big sette shenanigans we saw a few pages back. Or that these are like red ghost infecting people the same way ghost infect constructs.
My peenus weenus of course lol, it's my peeus weenus!
>Why doesn't Sette age?
She was supposed to die at 12.
So now we know. And it seems obvious now we know. Don't go gentle, Sette. Rage. RAGE.
Is this how fate works in the Unsounded universe? The Khert has your lifespan pre-made, and if you exceed it for whatever reason you stop aging?
if it is, she never hinted at it before
but Sette isn't an Agib, Senets and Settes are meaningfully different things. So what the frick is their deal, and what are they supposed to be accomplishing?
Here’s how Quigley can still win.
Here's how Duane can still LIVE
I think that's specific to Sette, but I'm glad we're circling back to the Khert determining life spans stuff because I think that homeless schizo was right. The Khert predetermines life span and the Dammakhert takes the extra years from the lower cast and gives them to the upper castes.
Breaking out into a cold sweat remembering how my high school geometry teacher would tell us we had all the information needed to write a proof even though she never FRICKING TAUGHT US THE MATERIAL BEFORE THE TESTS. Granted, Ashley seems more warm and encouraging than sterile and exasperated.
I know him too
>Khert determining life spans stuff
Not just lifespan, but shifting wrightness around so you have hypersensitive and long-range plats with short range jets and basically khert insensate coppers.
Are most Alds paler than usual because coppers are stealing the red from the rest of them? Souds seem pretty rosy compared to the rest.
What else did the higher castes steal?
Does the proportional size of copper dongs mean another caste all have microdicks?
I don’t think the Khert determines lifespan. I think it already knows your lifespan.
I suspect the recording of human souls and using arts takes up a certain amount of khert “bandwidth” and the shorter your recorded life the less stress you place on the khert during your existence.
>Are most Alds paler than usual because coppers are stealing the red from the rest of them?
This doesn't work because silvers are dark skinned compared to the others, and they have the 2nd shortest lifespan.
How long you live also seems to be related to how connected you are to the Khert, though. Plats are very keenly aware of khert lines and do the best pymary and live the shortest lives. Coppers feel "slippery" to the khert and live the longest. Senet beasts are entirely disconnected from the khert, with their own mini-kherts, and are immortal. Inak also seem to live long, but they're still ruled by the khert since they don't have their own like the senets, and so they still die naturally.
Also, Sette seems to be destined to die at 12 (or 22) and can smell pymary and manipulate pymarics subconsciously. Very platty of her.
It's important to note that recently Ashley has been hinting at some connection between Senets and Coppers.
What I'm getting from it is that "connectedness to the Khert" is somehow proportional to aging, or maybe time itself. Plats are hyperconnected and die at 25. Normally connected humans have normal lifespans. Coppers are barely connected and live to 400. Senets are completely sovereign and do not age.
...is "Khert" the Tainish word for time??
The copper connection to Khert isn't just muted, they agitate khert lines so technically it would be hazardous to cast when surrounded by coppers.
Last update I thought it was all coming together and I understood what was happening, 48 hours later and it's all fricking with my head again. Victory is fleeting in this hocus pocus story...
Ilganyag has gone totally wooby in a way she's never done in any other circumstances. She must REALLY like Sette.
She didn't let our Sette live. Sette's a runaway. Someone helped our Sette escape. Probably some bawd walking around naked, murdering good lads, getting whipped by little girls, fricking gay men and collecting every STD Kasslyne has to offer. Probably.
I don't think Bastion would be able to get away with midwife murder of Sette's Jac. Surely Sessine would be watching.
It seems she can't watch him through his torq though, she needs her crow minions. And he doesn't like them watching him.
What makes you think the black tongue midwife murdered Jacaranda Frummagem? For all we know the twin conception / have a nice day bird installation was fricked from the beginning because it was supposed to happen in a lion.
>have a nice day bird installation was fricked from the beginning because it was supposed to happen in a lion.
why would they need jac to die/be sackerficed? the older twin is meant to just chill for the rest of their life, no? so what's with the grafted suicidal thoughts? it feels very intentionally for sette/the younger twin, especially since Khette's gone through the cycle already.
I don't think Bastion "got away" with that at all. Jackie's death was likely on purpose which Nary theorized. Sette ran away by other means not yet stated. If tittybird really wanted her sacrificed, she could have arranged easily.
Why do you think she's being any more honest now than she is otherwise?
To be fair if there's one thing I might be slightly willing to believe her about it's her desire to be a mother.
Because her plan is near fulfillment, and although Sessine might somewhat care that Sette understands the reason behind her presence here before her sacrifice, Sessine doesn't need Sette's willing participation.
He's literally me fr fr.
I wonder, what's it like to have a voice inside your head telling you to have a nice day?
Oh, wait
Website comment:
>I think Lady Ilganyag is slightly less scary than pissy naked Not!Sette who looks like she wants to eat someone.
>-Ashley
Patreon comment:
>A few old questions finally cleared up. Sette doesn't deny here that she's older than she looks - no point. If anyone would know, it's probably these freaks. If Duane or Jivi or Quigley was here though she'd be very flustered. It's probably the one single physical thing that she's self-conscious about. She also got very spooked whenever Starfish started his bullcrap about it.
>The teeth are awesome, the tail is amazing, and she is beautiful beyond all sense and reason. But why is she so stuck? Her single flaw v_v
>But why is she so stuck? Her single flaw v_v
'snot a flaw, it's her greatest asset.
>t. Starfish
Worth noting that she also gets flustered when Duane brings up how she's "too old to go about in [her] skin" when the kids are playing in the water in chapter 12. Glass has mentioned many times that Sette's comfortable in her skin so her being different is what bothers her. At the time we were primed to think that this was due to her lack of nipples since that had been revealed in the previous chapter and it's almost certainly what Jivi noticed that got his attention. But lacking nipples is only a small part of the problem, all you have to do to keep someone from noticing is wear a shirt; everyone in your town will notice that you don't age. Sette had just the day before been reminded of this by Starfish, and in this scene she realizes that sooner or later Jivi and Matty will know too.
Sette's at the age where they kill twins
Good catch, and it would appear the age has gone up over time. Modern Geffies less squeamish about eating an adult?
That's the litriya tradition, not the one shrine that sacrificed settes
my guess is that its the thing that allows Sette to command the ghosts, maybe related to Inaks past? Kinda looks like one to me. Anyways it being how Sette can command ghosts would explain why dark sette wants it back so bad, for the power it gives.
It definitely resembles an inak, doesn’t it?
So it looks like Sette is confirmed to be 22 years old. Which is also the age at which twins are sacrificed. And the High Priestess was saying that they needed a twin from Litriya Shrine for today's twin sacrifice. And Sette did just come from there earlier this morning. Surely this bodes well.
Sette the Hedgehog and Tittybird are talking about old school sacrifices here. 12 years old. Younger twin. And no poison, old school throat cutting.
Yep, normally Settes die at 12 because that's when twins used to be sacrificed at, and so she has never aged past 12. But at some point, the age for twin sacrifice became 22, and so Sette has lived 10 more years than she was ever meant to.
What I mean is, Sette wasn't ever going to be a gay-ass geffie sacrfice. She's about to get sacrificed here and now by tittybird for a purpose, not just empty ritual. Unless she stabs her right in the tit
She doesn't count as a twin. Her twin died in the womb. I assume birdbreasts had that arranged.
She didn't count as a twin for stupid-ass geffies. But she counts as a Sette for whatever Sette sacrifice tittybird does.
Yeah, I think so too. I don't think it matters to tittybird which means Sette needs to book it outta there.
It would be very peculiar for Cope to two times now bring up the sibling death exclusion clause in her narrative for it to be irrelevant.
Tirna?
Tirna was pissed when the spiderpaws were created. This thing looks like an Inak. If Tirna was an agib or whatever the frick, and the Inak were "her people" it would explain why she was pissed at the new upstarts and why the Inak worship her.
Maybe tittybird isn't Tirna after all.
I dunno, that feels too simple to me.
By the way, interesting that they say "Tirna's worst day" here when they talk about the silver showing you your worst day later.
Yeah, I think the bird is Tirna. Being passed from Sette to Sette is how she stays in the mortal world
Ilganyag is Tirna, have you learned nothing?
That's not so clear anymore.
Yeah, same, tho I think the mortal bit is yet to come - it’s not going to be tittybird making the crossover, it’ll be Tirna who’s supposed to inhabit the silver. Bad news day, that.
And the sette entanglement is how she kept her soul intact thru the ages.
It's Ruffles.
Perhaps every time Sette kills a pain ghost it is actually being eaten by this thing. The memory associated with the thing was her ripping the ghost out of the silver beast which has yet to happen
Poor Khette, cheated out of her bird companion for years because of Tittybird's plot...
>but there was no easy poison then
50% chance Khette moves that fur to reveal some deep nasty wounds next page. It's not like Sette hasn't seen enough traumatizing things today.
Lady please hurry up the real world is waiting for you.
Okay someone tell me who or what Agib is because I constantly see people discussing it but I don't remember it from the comic.
extinct corvid-esque senet beast. I don't think its been talked about in-comic, just in one of Ashley's side stories and tumblr.
Not quite extinct. Master Ballanstern had a male companion Agib that we see in the chapter where we first meet Ruck.
Bestiary included in one of the physical print volumes; don't recall which.
Volume 3, before the comic with Duane's family and the story about Kissfist Baxter
Aside from the bestiary, agib were briefly mentioned recently in the comic itself
>even spilled, their silver extended their wills
So the red bird is probably the will/"soul" of whichever agib provided Sette's internal silver?
She's 22?
ZAMN
Ashley's writing has been good for most of the series but this loredump's coming out of a clear blue sky.
What foreshadowed the 12-year cycle, bird inside of her, tittybird's ultimate goal being to harvest it, her brother wanting this mcguffin-outta-nowhere, etc?
>her brother wanting this mcguffin
Sette the Hedgehog is a girl, anon.
>cycle
Minnow obliquely referred to it ages ago. I'm not sure 12 years is relevant besides it being a historical sacrifice age. It might still be, and if it is, it's probably because her Jac is dead. But it might not, if Sette is 22, then this is her death day in current Geffie orthodoxy (not accounting for her dead twin, of course).
>bird
Was just introduced. We don't even know what it is, except Sessine wants Sette to have it. It seemed tied to the silver monster in some what, at least when Sette touched it, Anadyne was not happy.
>harvest it
Does she want that? She seems to want current Sette to have it, and maybe to use it. Sessine and Bastion both mentioned a 'mistake' she wanted to correct at earlier points in the comic.
>Jac
I don't really think Jac cares about the slam poetry bird, he's just here for Sessine and Sette and seems to defer to Sessine's judgment.
I'd got the impression from the Tirna myth, and allusions Murkoph and/or Duane are (versions of) Sael, that Ashley's setting will either be
1. Worlds within worlds. With certain patterns in the creation cycle repeating.
2. An endless recreation cycle, like The Elder Scrolls Kulpas, with who's an Aedra or Daedra (Tirna or Sael) potentially changing between incarnations.
3. Timeloop. Murkoph's a future-Duane who's completely degraded. The moment of creation/destruction is the reset but like backup files the khert keeps past builds.
It has been built-up that the cursed silver's absorbing pain Ghostbusters style, this's somehow related to what souls are (as the experiments on the lizard mention), the etalarche curse may allow for a hacking/breaking/reprogramming of Adelrode's system, and the Silver is a conduit to takeover the khert/reality atleast locally within a hub.
As Duane himself is an experiment in soul-grafting (stich a soul to a zombie after sticking one to a two-toes) these experiments might have been Tiddybird's steps towards grafting her own soul onto the silver, possessing it, and having a giant battle in the sky with Khert-scale Sette like the ending of the 9 Divines, or NGE, etc.
But some of the features right now like...Sette's brother became a Lion in the Khert? She gave birth to a bird she has always had? Are really blindsiding me. I know there's the artpiece of her riding her brother, the lion theme, and the recent twin revelation but if anyone has any past references to her hairbird please post the comic page.
If it's her soul then...was her brother's soul given to her so she's double-souled? Or was his/her soul the source of the Inak's soul and the reason she hasn't aged/died is because she's soul-less?
>Murkoph and/or Duane are (versions of) Sael
oh. i feel so stupid connecting all now, but Murkoph isn't Ssael because they're both off-shoots from the same template? they're both Sette F.s to a Khette? Duane is another one too? wow, i don't know why i didn't think fo that before
I dunno, Ashley is pretty insistent that Murkoph is not Ssael is any way
Man, I love her story and her style, but Ashley absolutely baffles me with takes like this. She tells us Ssael was killed by intelligent lions and that his body was paraded around as a trophy, that Ssaelit priests paint their faces to match the scars the lions gave Ssael, shows us a character from another time period with real scars in the right places to match the face paint, and we're supposed to realize that the real scars are mimicking the painted ones and not the other way around? What?
The face paint scars couldn't be given by actual lions though, we've seen they have 5 claws (with thumbs?) so we'd see either a 4x4 or 5x5 set of scratches instead of the 2x3 depicted in the painting.
Murkoph also paraded around naked so we could confirm he wasn't scarred elsewhere.
Is that something ever stated in the comic itself or just worldbuilding from the Q&A? I try to just keep the latter out of speculative theory since it just kind of fricks with the process. like maybe its not spoilers but it doesnt really help to know that at the moment
She mentioned that she kind of regretted introducing Murkoph so early for this reason, because it’s largely implied his role is really for book 2, even though I suspect we already saw him in book 1 (I think he was the spellslicer assassin). But she also implied that someone may have scarred his face that way to mock his faith.
Similar to someone mocking a Christian by killing them via crufixion, if you get my drift. “If you love your god so much, here, why don’t we help you out…”
Frankly, I don't understand why people keep bringing up Murkoph's scars as an argument for him bein Ssael. His scars are way too regular and clean to come from an actual mauling to death. They were clearly made this way on purpose, and that means he lived after Ssaelism spread and adopted them as a symbol.
I can understand that logic, Ashley, but the lions are known to have had human intelligence, the mauling to death would have been most effective as a disemboweling leaving Ssael's face mostly untouched. They could have very reasonably been been added by the lions after death to serve as a deliberate message, like when a scorned wife murders her husband and then cuts off his genitals afterwards.
>As Duane himself is an experiment in soul-grafting (stich a soul to a zombie after sticking one to a two-toes)
not entirely acurrate. Duane was killed by the pymaric itself, not by the asassins.
Specifically, he was killed by the hyper concentrated weeping plague, according to an ask. Not even Duane knows this, though.
Sette being stuck as a kid has been a thing since Anadyne pointed it out years ago at the Nevergreen. I think all the bird soul is is a visual representation of this problem/ability, and evil Sette wants it so she can live again. Tiddybird wants it for its other powers, and she just pointed out basically the entire adventure has been about getting Sette here in this state so she can, I guess, take it.
I'm not judging yet until this scene is over though. Having to read a climactic revelation a page at a time is fricking awful.
Reincarnation was implied by minnow
Jacaranda has been visually namedropped for 4ish chapters
Only new thing is the birb and the ghost hand
>Hey, anon, what's the opposite of Unsounded?
>...A urethral infection
The bird is Sette's soul, you nimrods. Only Sette has a soul, and it was created by Tiddybird which is why it looks like an agib. Sette isn't just a human, she's the only human in the world. Everyone else is only their memories and they have no afterlife.
Ok nignogs, so who of you is the correct one?
ass
I mentioned earlier that the “bird” in Sette looks an awful lot like an Inak.
I wonder if the original Tirna was an Inak.
Ashley saw your slander you cur, may your insides melt and your outsides rot.
This one? But like the reply says, our Sette should already be ensouled so her getting one now doesn't make sense.
I like this one the most. It's the day the twins are supposed to die and it's been the worst day of Sette's life, so both of them having their worst days on the same day is no coincidence... If it's Tirna's soul then the Settes are fated to have their worst days at 22 on Twin sacrifice day forever.
Has to be
He's too confident to be wrong.
if we rule out all the Q&A and patreon stuff, between both threads we have
* sette doing the ghost exorcism for the silver and * bastion killing sette's brother in the womb.
* sette dying at litriya sacrifice age (hinted by the dead birb)
Something something mantling the divine twins. But I've seem nothing that says Jacaranda is analogue to wheel god. They could just be a dual aspect of Tirna.
>bastion killing sette's brother in the womb
I wonder if this was the "curated incompetence" he was talking about in
...
Oh god oh frick there's something unnerving about finally getting answers while Sette is on her way to being sacrificed. DUANE COME BACK.
If he can that’s her best odds. Tittybird presumably looked him all over, if she saw his 2nd death why would she look any further? He could be a real blindspot and these kinda fate-visionaries tend to be fricked when they don’t see something coming, no experience with improvisation.
ashley he posted sette kissing tittybird last thread, it ain't gonna end with her dead
No. She posted Khette, not Sette.
If Sette has Tirna, did Jac use to have Yerta? Was the twin rebirth/sacrifice routine interrupted at some point, devolving into the modern day empty gesture celebrated among geffies? Was Ssael actually an evil butthole that killed the nicer of the two gods, permanently, in the khert, so that the other one couldn't be reborn anymore?
an aldishman being an evil butthole? surely not.
Okay, something bothering me here.
Khette is dead. She was sacrificed. Right? Jacaranda, elder twin, died naturally. Not sacrificed. Right?
But they both appear here in the khert as whole beings, their memories intact, souls unshattered. Their fates are unlike anything that happens to other humans or sentient non-humans.
So what we’re seeing in the khert— of Khette— what is she, then?
She’s not like Duane, whose soul glows the color of his pymary when he falls in at night. She’s not like Turas, whose soul turned blue as it fell apart in the khert.
So what is she?
Two things, one Sessine is very good at manipulating the Khert she might have put them together herself. Hell she is probably why Bastion could do it, it would be pretty bad to base you plan on the chance of someone having an idea. Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated. Duane also stopped glowing green multiple times during the argument with Sette. Khert visuals be wild.
>Two both Jaca and Khette were all spectral when they showed up and just started looking normal when they seperated
That's deliberate. No idea what it means though.
>GAY LION! TWOFACE KHETTE! INAK TIRNA! BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM DISCOUNT SSAEL!
I mean, probably not, but it would've been funny is Sette+Lyinbro are a hack stopgap solution to something Ilganyag and Ssael broke in the Khert way back when
*sounds ur great sounded*
The thing in her head thinks she should die, too.
All those pain ghosts want to die…
What if Sette’s role is to consume pain ghosts, then she dies, taking the pain ghosts with her? Her death is the key to their release.
Whatever that bird thing is the other Sette seems to believe our Sette is hoarding it just on account of being alive. So it being their soul or mortality or whatever makes some sense. Of course that raises even more questions but whatever, Ashley says the answer will come in a couple of pages anyway.
It also seems like Khette believes that when Lady I takes that “her” from Sette, it will be returned to Khette.
“Take her, crow!” And “She’s mine!”, plus she literally tried to attack Sette a couple pages ago once she realized Sette had “her”.
You think they take turns possessing "her" and getting born in Kasslyne?
Starting to look like it, doesn’t it?
by why would there be 2sette? Not to mention that the comic doesn't lend itself to people not mentioned they know someone prior. Khette treats Sette as a stranger.
I think Khette is either a Sette plugged off the Khert by Lady Y or the "ur-Sette" like some khert version of the platonic ideal of Sette, and the bird basically copies and pastes her.
But I'm speculating here because so far nothing Sette or Khette are corresponds to how the Khert works, despite the ghost hands.
And tbh I really just want her to be Tirna.
You just now realized the kid that literally falls into heaven is not bound by heaven's rules? We straight up don't know. She's either divine or according to some other anons here, artificial
>Duane also stopped glowing green multiple times during the argument with Sette. Khert visuals be wild.
Duane's "Soul" (if it can be called that in the Khert) exists in a permanent state of reliving his memories. He's been fighting it off a bit so it doesn't just engulf everyone in them. But it's not something that stops, he's constantly shifting his appearance to the memory he associates the most with his current emotional state.
there's a 4th god holding a wheel in the pageant, but i don't think he was namedropped.
The character in the pageant background is Brother Baelar, Riv's younger twin. He's credited with weaving pymary, hence the spinning wheel. We have reason to believe that Baelar is connected to the wandering roots, and we know historically there was one that could talk
The bird in Sette's hair has to be connected to her claws. We see it's corpse in Lady I's nest and it has kinda liony paws likes it's a small gryphon.
Ashley says it's no agib, does Sette have a Black tongue pymaric in her like Duane does?
>Ashley says it's no agib, does Sette have a Black tongue pymaric in her like Duane does?
I would doubt Sette has any sort of artifact in her. She, and her stillborn lion bro, were born "normally" so any weirdness with her is solely through khert frickery. Since Aggro Sette mentions having the bird thing previously, it also seems unlikely to be a black tongue pymaric like what's in Duane.
That said, it could be some sort of template for it that Bastion worked off of for his abomination of nature. But it doesn't seem to be something Sette had before nor something she needs to be what she is.
>by why would there be 2sette?
There might be 3 active right now at a minimum. Remember Cheep Cheep? Sessine saying "runaways" plural makes even more possible.
It would be weirder if there weren't multiples of them. You don't say "Sette is always sad" if this is the second Sette you met.
Now that you mention it, ever since Sette woke up in tittybird's clutches, she hasn't said or done anything that would strictly point to her being "our" Sette. BODY DOUBLES. SETTE EX MACHINA.
Hair bird?
> You just now realized the kid that literally falls into heaven is not bound by heaven's rules?
Yes, because I always assumed that if Sette died, her soul would behave like any other human’s soul. Silly me. Duane walks the khert, so does Murkoph, because Duane’s soul is bound and Murkoph isn’t really dead.
I can't help but think the "her" whose cage Prakhuta is unwittingly opening is Sette's poetry bird, not Sessine.
Is the hair bird one of the things in this comic that was always secretly there but was never mentioned, or is Sette just that good at rolling with the punches?
>about to find out her entire life is a lie
duane and sette are really two of a kind kek
Have no idea what Murkoph's deal is, but now I'm thinking about it a bit more. Maybe if a Sette needs to kill someone close to them every cycle, Murkoph was Khette's evil partner in crime for a while? A Duane prototype? Real Sette mistook Murkoph for Duane at first, and they had some initial rapport before Murkoph got really murdery. Murkoph and Duane also both have eye scars. Coincidence? No clue.
>is an alderode thing
I can't even imagine what unless it's dhammakert related.
Can't remember where it was mentioned, but Alderode is having a fertility crisis. Presumably, all those tied up fetus souls are souls that were meant to be born in Alderode.
>ties kid's soul to a railing
>nothing personnel, kid
>I just fricking hate your country
Makes sense. The fertility crisis is one of the two major factors behind the proposed re-balancing (the other being the plague) if I remember correctly. No re-balancing push means no need for Duane to be a spell composer, means no political assassination hit put on Duane, means no tacit casting zombie pet for everyone's favorite bird fricker, means no escort for Sette.
I think there's more to it than that. Ilganyag still has the babies tied up, and she even went and reattached the ones Sette let loose.
Sessine seems to be antinatalist, going by her demanding balls and making her Black Tongues shoot sterilizing goo. No clue why she's targeting Alderode and Ssaelit specifically. Maybe it's to do with the Weeping Plague.
And the she gets all -dovey over Settle. I think that's more control than antinatalism
She's literally just malding because she can't make baby herself
Which is what I think is the whole crux of her plan. She's attempting to alter the whole "Senet Beasts can't reproduce" thing
All the ingredients seems to be present:
The black tongues, whose whole deal is experimenting with and pushing the khert to its limits. Soul creation and alteration being just one facet of their work. It's her whole R&D department
Black tongue balls for raw materials to make a physical body. the semen in the balls has all the genetic material one needs
A zombie man in storage to conduct experiments on and, I presume, use as a means to facilitate impregnation once she thinks she has a working method
Fetus Forest full of unborn baby souls to use in her experiments
My guess is she's trying to change the nature of her existence and the "Runaway" Settes were just early experiments that failed or, as she said, ran away.
Just my thoughts on it though
oh this is an interesting one. i like the ideas around Sette essentially being Sessine's kid, being created by her. truly Sette has the most fricked up family imaginable
This ties it in to her pretty neatly. I also wonder if it could be related to the Red Cost that was mentioned.
Pretty sure that'd just be consuming kussen in a gruesome way
ah my theory's been disproved. back to the workshop with lady frummagem's original baby soul theory
man I don't care about the trying to glean lore from hints and bits and bobs I just wanna read the goddamn pitcher book ya wankers
So frick off and read?
how about I frick in and have you suck me off
yea, naw
>brave
so long gay browser
Look, it has a lyin' in the logo, that's very Ssaelit
Don't be mean to Sette, she can't read. She just wants to look at the pretty pictures