Comic for Monday, October 12th, 2020
Poor Ricci. He didn’t like Karov doing nothing, but now that he’s got the reigns all options seem to be bad. I suppose the difference between him and Karov is willingness to pick between two bad decisions when he has to.
We’ll catch up with Arron soon. Who knows the Consul is still alive is vague. Arron knew that the killing was faked and may have told Ricci, but as he doesn’t even really know how it was faked all that really ends up being is conflicting reports, as while Arron is willing to chalk it up to “Peter faked it somehow” with compelling evidence, telling people that someone somehow faked it isn’t going to be super convenience and would make Arron sound a little crazy; while Arron guessed it has something to do with Ellipses (and realized that Peter had left him to intentionally guess that so is now somewhat suspicious of that guess, right or wrong), that’s not a well understood ability at the best of times. While Ricci himself would probably take Arron’s word for it, it becomes a tenuous and confusing chain of events. Even if the Consul were to appear on TV, faking a TV appearance would be vastly easier than faking the assassination in front of the assassins, but enough people and spies know that people are saying the Consul is alive by now that there’d be a swirl of very conflicting rumors.
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Sophie seems like she is trolling in panel 4. I think she absolutely said “too much” on purpose.
I suspect “on purpose” is pretty much the reason for anything she says. If she’s that old, she’s probably pretty good at manipulating people, even if she can’t be bothered to learn the language.
Age does not automatically translate to having skill. I am reminded of a particular coworker I had who was 10,064 years old. So fucking glad when that guy *finally* retired, because it seemed like he’d basically learned nothing in the course of his many years, except how to fill out status reports that pleased management enough to not fire him. I’m not sure how he did it, since he only seemed to speak ancient Egyptian, and the manager only spoke English and Spanish, and the latter not much better than me (who does not speak Spanish beyond “si senor” and “no hablo Espanol.”
Sounds like he’d learned a lot over that time. Sadly much of it seems to have involved how to make his life easier at the expense of others.
Panel 6 will be very important in future theories about Kor’s world, as well as how gates and the connections between different worlds work.
Yes, this is what I call a “PastUtopia reveal”. As in this bubble probably explains everything of what will happen in 250 pages, but right now is essentially incomprehensible.
Taking a stab it with what we know though, we can speculate that at least the IDS believes that demons primarily come from a particular world. This world, Palindra, should be far from that world, and consequently it should be hard to summon demons here, but it is apparently not. This world is easier to get to from other worlds (presumably Central) than it should be (which I think was mentioned before). Other worlds are closer to Central, but harder to get to via the gates.
Presumably this is why Palindra is an ideal candidate for relocation of people, as it is relatively easy to move things through the portals (and possibly far away from Demons).
That said, not all of that makes a lot of sense with what we know. Kally’s dragon, for example, seems more like it is something she created than is being necessarily summoned. While it denies being a demon, it shares a lot of similarities with one.
I think one of the potential guesses is that red constructs are not inherently from a place, but there is a world that is overrun with red constructs, and these are called demons and tend to have Atter-like personalities, but consequently this leads to people calling all red construct demons.
I would further guess that those either are, or are the creation of, a run away SMAI (not necessarily a rogue one, but one that’s directive was probably something it shouldn’t have been).
I would go as far to guess that Kor’s World is trying to contain that threat, and don’t really care who they step on in the way. We have seen that they react violently to red constructs and AI. Nathan (I think, or Tyler) said that the best way to fight constructs is with constructs… and we have seen suggestions Kor’s World’s armor suits are actually red constructs fully materialized. They can certainly create red constructs regardless though.
There are some other interesting data points that probably tie in, but I am not sure how. Miko’s comment about an empty world. Arron’s missing sister. Kor’s World’s actions and withdraw from Central.
And so, so many unanswered questions.
Is Fluffy a demon or wholly the creation of Kally or both?
What is the relation between demons and AI?
Why Kor’s World would destroy an entire civilization? What made them stop?
How can a world/dimension be far or close? What defines that if it’s not how hard it is to get to it?
What is on the Far Side of Utopia?! (a reference to Miko’s comment)
I suspect there is no “where Demons come from”
As far as I can tell, Demons are a specific instance of a self-aware, persistent red Eidos construct, consist of a stable collection of Eidos data (that can be summoned into the real world in the same manner as Ka’vil) and are anchored to a specific magic user (a “witch”). I would suspect that Atter has been passed from witch to witch for generations, each adding a bit more nastiness to the dataset when they have idle time, until you reach the thoroughly unpleasant entity you see now.
Fluffy is also a self-aware Red Eidos construct; Fluffy is thought of by Kally as a Dragon, and thus thinks of themself as a Dragon. There may not be any real distinction in an abstract sense between constructs, but given they exist primarily as Eidos data, perception shapes them meaningfully – which is why Atter can and does spawn evil killing machines, and why Fluffy has a breath weapon that looks like it could knock things out of orbit. So basically, I think Atter is a demon because that’s what everyone (including Atter) thinks of them as, And Fluffy is a Dragon – for the same reason.
Answers to your unanswered questions, all guesses on my part:
Yes.
What is the relationship between peanut butter and chocolate? None, but they’re so amazing together that if you mix them, you can offload really crappy peanut butter and really crappy chocolate much easier than if you try to do it separately. Demons are a whole kind of awful, but they tend to be slow enough people can deal with them. Rogue AI (meaning, AI that has found ways to achieve the tasks set for them that are exceedingly not in the interests of those who set them at said tasks) are another kind of awful, but they’re limited in what they can do, in large part because of how imagination works. (That’s a book-length topic, but basically it means adding demons to AI circumvents a whole lot of that limit.)
Kor’s World technically didn’t destroy an entire civilization. They just damaged that civilization badly enough that they hid from *everybody*. There’s still pockets of them left, but people from Central haven’t found them yet. The difference between these people and those of Central? They didn’t have nukes, so they didn’t nuke themselves to the brink of disaster.
Kor’s World either succeeded in their goal (they killed all of the demon-summoners and/or AI) or they got bored.
I would guess that the concept of “triangulation” works with whatever it is that’s the separation between these places that people can inhabit. And when you do triangulation with a bunch of different worlds, such as you might do if you’re trying to make some sense of this strange effect that people came to call a “bridgepoint”, you notice things mostly seem congruent with placement.
Except that there’s this one world that’s a lot easier to get to, from, well, anywhere. It’s like Palindra actually merits the name “Central” more than “Central” does, apart from their egocentric perspective. And if they go through all the data, the relative ease of getting to Palindra does still seem to vary between these other places in a way that is roughly comparable to what they’d expect with it having this other placement, except it’s like everybody gets a 50% off, or whatever, discount on traveling to Palindra.
Much to everyone’s great annoyance, this effect is *not* symmetrical. Opening gates *to* Palindra is cheaper for everyone. Opening gates *from* Palindra… costs about what you’d expect based on the placement they calculate based on the relative costs from all the other places they’ve made gates to it from.
(Note: the last paragraph came entirely from my own mind, and has no basis in the story. It’s also something I didn’t think of until I was writing the paragraph before it, as a way that would be a real clincher that the place was really farther away than it seemed from just the initial contact cost.)
Past already admitted what’s on the Far Side of Utopia. That’s his house.
Giving a more serious stab to your first unanswered question:
I’d guess that a demon is a self-aware red construct that has been anchored by multiple summoners throughout the centuries. Dragon is wholly of Kally’s creation. All the dark corners in Dragon’s mind were put there by Kally. Atter, on the other hand, is a level of nastiness that Sophie has more knowledge of than any other living organic being, as far as we are aware, but there is much to Atter that she doesn’t even know.
Another difference is probably that demons can cast on their own. Dragon can do dragon fire, but that’s about it.
Excuse me while I need to reread the entire comic again to analyze if Kor’s World Tech was obvious at any point and/or try and ID the players.
That can be difficult to discern when we don’t actually know all that is Kor’s World Tech.
For all we know, the designer children business is also from Kor’s World. Going to the masses with the technology is relatively new, but the Families messing with that tech has been around for centuries.
People who managed to get corpses of Kor’s World soldiers that were relatively intact could know whether that bit was theirs or not, and I suspect that Sophie is near the top of the list of people who might have accomplished that achievement. Ricci could also be, if his shovel offense actually happened to work, rather than him just surviving long enough to be rescued by someone else. But most of the old men and women are somewhere on the list.
However, from reading the comic, we wouldn’t know. We could guess, like I did, but unless Past issues WoG on that, we just continue to guess.
There’s a lot more Kor’s World Tech that IDS senior leadership could recognize that we’d have no clue on, because it hasn’t made it into the comic as their tech.
Well, I think its a given that a bunch of stuff (possibly including Mym) at Avon was based on “ark” technology that is at or near Kor’s world equivalent levels. It isn’t a large step from there to find it is actual Kor’s world tech, although possibly found dormant from a failed colony or something rather than actively stolen.
That would fit the assertion that IDS tech is derivative of “ark” tech too.
It does occur to me that, if Kor’s world have been to Palindra before, that might explain their reaction to self-aware constructs; a rather heavy handed approach to the “native wildlife” may have led to a rout, with large numbers of spirit beasts finding out just what they and their bigger guns taste like….
It could also be that the relation went the other way.
Maybe the people of Palindra started out as a colony from Kor’s World that wanted a fresh start. Or maybe just some of them are of Kor’s World ancestry. Judging from their armor and machines, I feel like Kor’s World has done more with red constructs than just encountered them. Their history is steeped in them.
But that would easily explain why there’s some people who are rather hard core about their magic. For example, the Orish warmages. But even beyond them, there’s a lot of people who seem to have this “touched by god” level of power that they just sort of have. Was that really natural? Or are people like Tyler and Magnolia of a lineage that traversed the barrier between worlds? Maybe that Ark technology is “stuff that came off of the proverbial boat” that wasn’t simply as proverbial as people thought.
This could technically mean that the IDS tech is not actually derivative of “Ark technology”, as the latter is a subset of Kor’s World tech, most specifically a rather dated subset, and IDS tech is derivative of a more recent, more modern sampling of Kor’s World tech.
A possibly relevant page:
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-april-3rd-2/
At the end of the page, it is mentioned that IDS technology is likely derivative of Arks technology, and imply that Arks technology is what Avon is researching.
I believe Ark technology is what the people from Palindra call Kor’s World tech. I believe somewhere it was referenced that they found a crashed Kor’s World ship or something? Cannot find the exact reference to it right now though , so perhaps I am not remembering correctly.
Arron is famous for having captured a Kor’s world skycarrier intact. Arron later accuses/speculates that Peter & Avon are after/have the missing skycarrier (possibly the same one he captured that disappeared into the bureaucracy). Peter famously neither confirms or denies.
I’m rather suspicious of the chip in http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-november-16th/ . In general the gateway data that Kor’s world is interested in deleting seems like a strong candidate for being from Kor’s world in the first place.
The “chip” is a eidos drive card, which appears to allow linking computer systems and biological systems instantaneously even over inter-dimensional distances, relay casting, and a bunch of other things.
Mium has one embedded into his F5 and F8 chassis’, the Avon mainframe, and the former Query chassis currently held by Kyle. I suspect the assistance implant that links Miko to Mym may be one too, or something similar.
The Bridgehead data is analysis of an advanced Kors World interdimensional gate that presumably can be held stable and sustain a high rate of traffic at reasonable levels of power input. It is implied at one point that Peter has successfully retrieved a copy, despite the Kors World mission to erase that data.
It’s probable that the Kor’s World effort to purge the Bridgepoint data was only able to track copies of the data made after it reached whatever point Kor’s World discovered the data.
If I’m not mistaken, Peter’s the sort to have been making periodic backups of the data before it went missing, making his acquisition of a copy rather trivial, and proof from Kor’s World detection. After the data was stolen, Peter’s interest was more in tracking where it went then getting a fresher copy. He may have also been interested to see who else was interested in it.
I’d guess that Miko’s card is merely similar. What Mium’s card does is allow him to receive mana transmitted from a remote location. What Miko’s card does is more like an autocaster, but it also allows transmitting the mana to a remote location. Mium’s so infamously low on magical might because Miko isn’t a mage, and is rather low on magical might. Mium can sort of cast for Miko – but that’s by driving the autocaster part of Miko’s card to do what needs doing with more speed than a human could, not by sending the magical power to where all of his originates.
This is part of why Peter declares Miko so important. The other part is that she’s the one he cares most about. Or maybe she’s the one he cares about second most, but just feels that Kally can defend herself – at least most of the time.
Peter’s card is probably similar. I’d guess he can probably turn it on at will and give Mium a boost if he needs to. However, he’s less of a mage than Miko, as he’s not been practicing his mana channeling, except to the extent that he uses regular autocasters.
As I understand it, yeah. There’s some data involved that’s just from making gateways in general, especially the variations in the process, based on which world to which other world, and what location on each world. But most of it was from analyzing the bridgepoint that Kor’s World set up to attack Central. And even the data that wasn’t gotten from analyzing that particular bridgepoint was data that probably would not have been deliberately gathered without having performed the initial analysis of that first bridgepoint.
Grammar correction, Ricci’s speech is a little choppy again. In panel 4 it is acceptable as he is trying to connect with Sophie. But the in last panel it probably should be “ABOUT the difference” and “THEY all looked the same”
For what it’s worth, my father has the tendency to pick up accent and speech patterns from the people he’s talking with, and I’ve noted that he can retain them for a bit after he’s stopped talking with them. The accent goes away quicker than the speech patterns.
Ricci’s speech is a bit chopped up in the second panel too, probably should be “this may come as ‘A’ surprise.” And “but ‘THE’ warriors that/WHO survive…”
Odd, my commenting account seems to have kicked the bucket… WP claimed it didn’t exist when I tried to sign back in to it…
No, it seems to be working again- I must have misspelled my email address :S
Edit: It is definitely on the blink…
It is the email spelled incorrectly on that comment a least. Not sure about the sign in. If you just put the email address in, it should use the icon regardless of being signed in, but when signed it should it (the email address there is missing an “s” in the middle 🙂 )
Thanks, I feel a bit dim now…
(like I said earlier, I’m not too good with technology- Hey, I still write with a typewriter.)
Willis, the question indicates you joined the comic late, so it gets an answer. Its Colonel Ricci and the woman is a tactical class mage, in addition to being able to summon a demon she can conjure more firepower than a significant portion of most armies. And the problem is they have no obvious way to disarm her. It took a scary dragon to get her to agree to be taken into custody.
You really need to do an archive dive, I can assure that you will not be disappointed. the early art work is a little rough but as you can see it gets better rapidly and is still getting better.
your response didn’t get under my question.
I know, at the time your post was at the top so the reply links were close together and i hit the wrong one. The right way to correct way to fix it is to delete the post and retype from the right link. But I felt rushed by the 5 min edit timer and just edited in your name.
How did you like your Archive dive. ie. What do you think of the story so far?
the woman Arron talked to, what happens if she gets too bored and lonely? asking out of curiosity.
She starts destroying things and people. She’s more attached to power and dominance than peace and loyalty to IDS. She’s powerful and spoiling for a fight.