Comic for Monday, May 31st, 2021
I know that the wiki does not seem be working. I’m not sure why. At a glance, nothing seems wrong with it, so it may just be the webhost being weird. If it doesn’t fix itself in a bit I’ll try to poke around.
UPDATE EDIT: The wiki is fixed. Some poking was required.
EDIT 2: Seems to be broken again. Unfortunately it may stay broken for a bit; fiddling with the media wiki install seems like a bigger problem than I have time to try to figure out. Not really sure why everything seems to be breaking; I’m guessing there was some php update in the backend that ended up breaking the various old tech the site used (comments, the wiki, etc). Trying to figure out new versions of these will be a future project I guess.
EDIT 3: After more poking, it’s working again, but I’m honestly not entirely convinced it won’t break again, as I didn’t fully update it, I just fiddled with the busted file, and I’m not entirely clear on why the busted file was busted. It probably needs to be updated/reinstalled at some point, but that sounds like a chore and half.
EDIT 4: Nope, the wiki is completely broken again. No idea. I can only guess some update to some backend thing made the version it’s on obsolete or something. I will try to fix it at some point in the future. It seems like it can be temporarily fixed by poking around, but just breaks after a few hours for no obvious reason (it says the skin stylesheet is unreadable, but that’s sort of obviously not the root of the issue by the fact that it works for a bit everytime I poke around; I’m guessing something it’s trying to cache or something doesn’t work, but honestly have no idea). Best I can tell the only potential fix for it is to update mediawiki (the backend of it which has clearly broken), but after trying to do that for a bit, that seems like a bigger project than I currently have time for.
EDIT 5: And the next comic will be delayed. Aimming to catch back up next week rather than keep delaying day at a time.
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A few comics back Past commented that Ashvalt and Camilla are the mages the rogue family fear most – as they are the strongest duelist. But I got the impression that Eliana was actually the strongest mage the families have – she was referred to as “the families trump card”. Is she just not the as good as a direct duelist compare to Ashvalt?
Apropos of duelists, I miss Nathan and Rovak.
Great! I’ll gather. the stones and bring Gatorade! Lynching is thirsty work, after all!
I was trying not to do this, but it is time to dox Past.
Grab your pitchforks and torches. Past lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in DC.
I don’t know…
That didn’t work out so well the last time folks tried that trick back on 01-06-2021.
That all depends on whose side you were on. For one side, it worked exceptionally well.
It’s 2021. Even if they aren’t needed here, I’m sure not a week will go by before they’ll be needed elsewhere.
Hey folks; comic will be late; probably end of day Monday. On the bright side, computer replacement is imminent now (got the new computer, just need to get things set up and working over the next week), which should help quite a bit.
Noted. I’ve got the trailer full of pitchforks and will begin handing them out at midnight. Someone else will have to provide the torches.
Have to be careful that isn’t used against you š
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aGdyEoK_700bwp.webp
That’s fine. I’ll just switch to scythes.
So does this mean I should return the bucket of tar to Home Depot and the bag of feathers to Hobby Lobby?
No. Hold onto those. We can use those to improvise torches when torches get banned.
A sound strategy, but I have to wonder: What fool would attempt to ban torches?
The fool with the fire truck.
We’ll just need a couple #teamPitchfork ers to puncture his hose. Any takers?
Sorry folks; but I’m not yet caught up. I’m going to have to delay a week, and just roll it over to next week.
I’ll need the focus with torches and pitchforks to form nice orderly lines and pick up the litter after the mob, no making a mess.
Lot of factors here, still trying to get the computer swapped over and a little swamped on other fronts, and technical difficulties getting the new computer up abound (a dearth of cables I tell you, a dearth; doesn’t seem like I’m getting out of replacing my monitors too as apparently they are too old to talk to the new computer without adapters and having some trouble with those).
Anyway… my apologies and we’ll reconvene next week.
Actual Footage From Outside the PastUtopia Offices:
Team torch or team pitchfork?
Please don’t hurt him!
If you do, we may never find out what is past Utopia!
And i am definitely on #teamPitchfork
Always Team Pitchfork.
#teamTorch
Do we have any takers for team scythe?
#teamTorch
You seem thirsty. Care for a cup o’ tea?
Relax, Sir Archive Keeper! Those two are working undercover to protect you. Trust me, if either of those two wanted to harm you, forensics would be picking up the pieces, if there were any pieces. The cute young woman with the pitchfork is a purple haired version of the Hulk. She keeps getting stronger as a conflict progresses. She has punched a strong mage through/into a wall and shattered shield constructs when she ramps up. As for the cute little orange haired girl, she would be the real threat. If you really get her mad at you, all that would be left is the incandescent vapor of your remains and the building you were hiding in. If less angry, she is known to use a powerful sniper rifle.
You may also have additional support. Look through the crowd for a dark blue haired man in a suit pushing a light blue haired woman in a wheelchair, a young man with a blue scarf, a dark haired woman riding a red dragon or a purple haired young woman holding hands with a salmon haired young man. Also may be a straw haired young man with a bandage on his neck, a scruffy red haired middle aged man and a scruffy young man with a crowbar. At a distance from the crowd may be a man in civil service garb and an older one armed soldier but they would probably not get directly involved.
Thank you. That was very helpful.
I am sorry to report that, contrary to your update, the wiki does not appear to be working now. It may be poking back.
Weird, it was briefly working.
EDIT: While it was briefly working, it does seem be busted. This may be beyond my ability to fix. I’ll look into this later, but it seems like something is broken with the install (I cannot fathom why, nothing has changed with it for years).The best solution I can understand would be update or reinstall mediawiki, but honestly that may be a little too complicated for me to deal with in the near term; I don’t really remember how I installed it in the first place and it seems about as user friendly as a bag of cacti. I fiddled with it for awhile, but this seems like a bigger project than I have time for at the moment.It is sort of working (for now) but pretty broken.Maybe sort of working. For now. We’ll see.Nope, completely broken again. No idea. I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I’ll try fiddling with it next time I have some spare time.
So, apparently the old families are so full of themselves as to make even the IDS look humble. . . .
Exactly. The Old Families are so sure of their superiority that they do not seek in depth knowledge of the world around them. I’ve mentioned their lack of intel before. Green Hag Saraine didn’t know the extent of Kally’s the Red Dragon Mage’s powers although Ashvalt apparently does…. http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-february-16th-2021/
Mium works in the background so they may not have a name for the anomaly. If they have been gathering any intelligence about the world around them, they should be aware of the cute little always hungry, adorable, lovable homicidal maniac. Let’s see how they react when the elevator opens. My bet is on “Momma always said, stupid is as stupid does”.
I googled the following … I do not practice Christianity, Judaism or any other religion but a verse from the Christian/Jewish bibles fit: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Proverbs 16:18 New International Version) (in Hebrew, Mishlei). Maybe the last word should be “falls” as there were two pieces of the Green Hag that fell! LOL.
I’m reminded of an RPG gamer whose character repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that his character’s inability to detect the power of someone who demonstrated significant amounts of power meant that someone was using an alternative power source or other kind of assist, and were not particularly skilled.
This despite the fact that the game we were playing specifically had options for magically adept characters who wanted to be less noticeable, and some of the other players made use of them.
GM made a point of populating higher end mages in their game world who also made use of such rules. While the players who made use of those options did have to spend character resources that could have optionally made their characters more dangerous in other ways, the NPCs did not have any such constraints. Or, rather, the GM gave them a resource budget that left plenty available for those sort of shenanigans.
Of course, this makes sense – the player characters were all relatively early in their theoretical careers, while many of the people they went up against had decades of experience. It also proved to not be nearly the poor decision that the player who eschewed those options thought they were. Because their character did their best to look as dangerous as possible, they were generally the character most likely to be detained, which led to their character missing out on a lot of xp, new spells, and some improved gear. (Showy gear generally went to that character regardless of whether they were around for it. I mean, everyone else recognized the value of having a fall guy on the team.) At some point in the game play, they actually got to be the weakest in the party, even discounting stealth points.
That game system did allow for a certain amount of safe sparing, and the team did a certain amount of that. But the majority of the team looked at their sparing as a method to explore specific capabilities, not to see who was the biggest badass in the party. So the one character who sparred to see who the biggest badass was never figured out that he decidedly wasn’t, until such point as that became painfully obvious on the field.
The player who ran that character *did* figure it out long before that point, but for all their interest in power gaming, they did know how to role play, not just roll play. They made additional characters who understood the value of finesse even before their first character bit it, in large part because they realized their first character was going to. They weren’t keeping up on the power curve, and they couldn’t fix that without breaking character.
Very interesting – he hasn’t sensed the power of any of his peers, while Malsa’s big tactical mage is coming up the elevator. That might be a bit of a shock.
I’m guessing his ability to sense powers at a distance is through a mechanism such as conjuring constructs with no Hyle representation and having them perform reconaissanse. Either he doesn’t understand what it means that none of the constructs are returning to report, he hasn’t even bothered to have them return to give null reports, or Mium’s able to selectively edit what they perceive or remember.
It’s my guess it’s the first and the second. I mean, why have your servants bother you with null reports if you don’t understand their value? It does seem to be in keeping with their level of pride.
I’d guess that Magnolia would also pass beneath their notice, but due to her ability to perceive the constructs well enough to edit them and modify their behavior to behave as they’re instructed to do for ‘perceived nothing of interest’, whatever that was.
I did think for a bit about the possibility of them not even knowing about Eliana, but then I remembered that Saldur is aware of the dangerous little cripple.
Not sensed the power of any of my peers…. perhaps he is well aware of who is there, and simply doesn’t consider them to be peers.
Perhaps his sensing is not construct based, but more literally sensing mana concentrations, or something similar. We know Mium can manipulate that.
as he stated that Ashvault was barely perceptible, either his scanning abilities are horrible, or his can only tell the difference between ppl if they’re a 8+ and everyone else “feels” like a 1.Kinda like Shaltear’s comment
Balder is not sensing the power of his “peers” because Eliana has not been using her magic. Mium & Illia have been running interference and probably knocking out close circuit monitoring precisely so that Eliana’s arrival to confront this group about the attack on her home is a tactical surprise.
There seems to be a certain lack of tactical awareness.
This seems applicable:
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-05-25
The bald one appears to be Saldur. http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-december-23rd-2019/ I suspect that some of the others were also in that room.
The redhead looks familiar. The white maned one is not Akatmar Shemoki.
Frustratingly, we have two characters here who have not been clearly named, and only one new name. I’m guessing that Daelia is the white maned one, mostly because the redhead’s gone without reference a bunch already. But I’m sure that we’ll see one without the other soon enough and thus know for sure.
… I should read author comments more diligently. Past said Daelia is the one who was seen before, so that’s the redhead. That’s a bunch of page links I need to add to my Daelia entry.
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-december-16th-2019/
Here’s one page that I would add for Daelia. She might be the equivalent of the Audio Visual club we had back in junior high and high school. (That group of nerds who could thread the filmstrip projectors and 16 mm movie projectors without reducing the film to something that looked like it went through a shredder.)
Also the first two pages of that chapter. She didn’t do anything there, but she was on panel. I’d thought there were more, but I did not find them.
Ahh.. the building may be separate from the grid, but once Mium is within the building he now has direct physical access and that beats all sorts of virtual protections. Heck maybe he seeded the building long before he became a threat.
Buildings not in the grid are the ones that are the most interesting from a threat model standpoint because they are autonomous points in a community. The true stealth buildings would report nominal flows to the world, just like any others in order to disguise capability.
Yup. Kind of like really fast cars…they aren’t loud. The wheels look stock and thus you don’t notice they are not stock size etc. It’s the ones that pass as ‘normal’ you have to watch.
The elevator doors open and a nicely dressed young man, a young woman in a wheel chair and a child exit the car. I don’t believe these people are as smart as Will Smith in MIB so they may not perceive those three as the threat that has neutralized their defenses. Will there be a frantic Keystone Cops search of the elevator and shaft? It may be amusing to see how long it takes the bad guys to realize their mistake. It may not be amusing for the bad guys if they try to attack.
Correction: really fast cars don’t *have* to be loud, but some are anyway.
Larger diameter tires don’t help speed very much; you can get most of the same advantage by adjustments to the transmission. Wider tires, on the other hand, provide more traction, regardless of whether you’re accelerating, decelerating, or just turning.
Source: My ex wanted to live in one of the traffic accident centers in our country, so I bought a Volvo. (At the time, it was the most affordable tank-ish car I could afford. The closest contender had a reputation for maintenance issues, so it was an easy choice.) I’ve never intentionally used its speed, but it’s frightening how easy it is to accidentally get up over 110 mph when the highways are sparsely populated and the reference other cars are going over 110 mph. Note that I just got the S40, as the higher numbered models didn’t offer much more safety, just more speed.
Other cars I’ve driven gave much more feedback regarding ones speed. Like the Mustang rental I got once on a job interview trip with the right company and just the right timing (They paid for an economy rental, but the rental company only had one car left. They told the prior three people they were out of cars, despite all of them having reservations. Then they looked at my reservation, saw the company I was going to interview with, and let me have their last car.) also made it very easy to drive excessively fast, but the road noise was very audible so it was clear exactly how fast I was going. I did not take the Mustang up to 100 MPH, though I’ve no doubt it could’ve gotten there. I kept it below 110% of the speed limit, but that was a real struggle. (I tried to do about 5% below the speed limit, but sometimes got to 108% of the speed limit by accident.)
I’ve also been a passenger of a Camaro driven by a lunatic. They did 80 in second gear, they got up to 150 in 5th. As I recall, that car didn’t let in a lot of road noise, but the engine itself sounded pretty loud, especially when that lunatic was exploring what the car could do.
That particular experience was an out of town friend of a friend came by to show off their new car. We went out to eat somewhere around 100 miles from where my friend lived. Texas, though, so not really that far. There was traffic on the way there, so we got to see how the car handled at normal speeds. It was throaty and loud, but comfortable. We stayed at the restaurant until it closed, and on the way home, the roads were kind of empty, and I felt very grateful for the sturdy panic handles. Two hour drive to get to the restaurant, about 45 minutes to get back to my friend’s house.
Thinking about how Mium infiltrated the ‘air-gapped’ server in chapter 13, I think you’re probably right. This building was compromised weeks ago, because it stuck out like a sore thumb as something interesting.
I mean, there are probably dozens if not hundreds of buildings in this city that are off the grid and have not been compromised by Mium. But those other buildings are
– not routinely entered by Important People
– not near the center of things
– not apparent hubs of activity, except possibly for activities which narrowly map to their apparent purpose. (For example, a food kitchen/homeless shelter would be a hub of activity, but that activity would be food deliveries and poor people going to eat and possibly sleep. There wouldn’t be any tech going into or out with them.)
– not particularly secretive in nature or design.
– mostly small buildings, not large enough to need an elevator.
– do not have elevators, unless they’re multi-story buildings for the mobility impaired.
I wouldn’t want to put money on there being dozens.
While it is possible for a technology company like Avon to do everything “in house” as a closed system, It is more common for things like elevators, climate control, even security cameras and door access controls to be contracted out, and for internal users to want to be able to “dial out” to external resources like NavTrans, receive inbound video calls or messages, and so forth.
If you add to that the idea that a building that deliberately tries to be “off grid” from Mym is gonna look pretty suspicious to Mym and stand out like a sore thumb….
Your last remark seems spot-on. That building would appear as a black box to Mium and therefore demand attention.
I’m sure there are plenty of buildings that are off the grid because they really don’t have any particular technology in them at all, or it’s been turned off, but something like an unoccupied single family residence isn’t terribly useful as a hq for a conspiracy.
Exactly my point. The homeless shelter nearby only has telephones, lights, TVs, electric heat, and one computer. I’ve heard there are others in this city without the computer.
Most completely unoccupied buildings lack much in the way of active technology. If they’re one floor or both has few floors and is not handicapped accessible, there may not be an elevator.
The buildings I’m talking about do not contract out their cameras, they have none. Climate control is limited to heat, and the controls are not programmable. The door locks are manual. There is no security system. At most there’s phones, not computers. I don’t mean smart phones, I mean the things that hung on the wall, back in the day, with buttons or maybe even a rotary dial, but no display. But they may not even have phones.
That makes no sense for big business, but I’m not talking about big business. I’m talking about places that fit in the nooks and crannies between big businesses, or sometimes in converted warehouses formerly owned by big business.
I’ve heard of a few other places in town that basically have no tech. There’s a yoga studio where the only phones are the cell phones the instructors and students bring with them. But they’re supposed to be off for lessons. The only active tech built into the building is electric lights, electric heat (manual thermostat), and running water for the bathroom.
Sure, that business does use more technology than that, but it’s not on-site. The tech is all in the owner’s home.
I agree this doesn’t sound like something that would show up in this comic. It’s just stuff that’s probably in the city that we’ll never see because it’s so boring Mium hasn’t even bothered with it.
This is one of those pages where a cast list would be really helpful.
Thank you in advance.
I updated it, but I don’t think we’ve seen 2 of these characters yet (Tefzarin and the white haired bloke). Well, technically we saw Tefzarin last page, but that’s not super helpful for context. The bald mage (Saldur) is a Family head we saw last saw at the Families meeting (and technically Daelia was seen there too).
Panel 5: Tefzarin, use the spirit to activate it or detonate the spirit if you must. Panel 6: I will move our forces to the lobby.
Fixed, I think š