Comic for Thursday, May 5th
Comic! Just when you thought I’d forgotten y’all entirely.
In my defense, I have a lot of excuses this week. Good, fine, excuses! I was sick (cold, nothing too serious, mostly better now). Work! I had to manually edit a bunch of stuff and my wrist was bothering acting up again. I wasn’t happy with the page, so I kept redoing parts of it (… okay, that’s not really an excuse, is it?). And many more! Anyway… sorry ’bout the page being late.
Monday’s may be late as well if we are being honest here. I have to do stuff over the weekend, and haven’t started it yet. We’ll get the pages out eventually though, don’t really want to drop more pages then we already are at 2 pages a week.
Anyway… the page. Part of what bothered me is that Don is pretty chatty for a fellow in his condition. I would have liked more of his dialogue to be panic’d yelping. And maybe speculation of what happens if you wet yourself while half buried in the floor. Unfortunately I felt there should be some more plotting text and had to work vaguely rational notions into his dialogue; since he has a history with Jayce (see related comics…) it does fit at least.
Mechanically his fairly spot on about what happened. Someone maintained low energy spell keeping the floor in non-natural state of low density; without a lot of effort a spell like that will collapse as soon as soon as another persons interference field screws it up on it’s own even their interference is minimal (just an average person). It’s a tricky bit of interplay between mechanics of a fairly experienced mage.
It works because once the magic collapses, it’s at it’s natural state and thus seriously not inclined to changed without further magic. While a mage of equal caliber with the same calculation could redo the spell assuming their the one in it (and thus not having to worry about interference) that would assume they are capable of a density shifting a large block of hardstuff with enough control to start directly at, say, where their feet are. Too low, you sink, too high, you’re still rooted.
Related Comics.
- What Don is doing here. ie: Last Page.
- Last time Don met Jayce. It didn’t go very well. It was also last time we saw Don.
- I was going to link to a how-magic-works page here, but it turns out I haven’t written one. Oops.
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Someone’s getting cocky. I don’t think this will end well for her. Certainly not the way she expects it to.
Cocky rarely ends well. Karma and all.
I get the feeling that their overcofidence was a core job qualification for this job though, as I can’t imagine you could convince more-sane people to take a gig like theirs… 😐
Don really has Jayce Myer on the brain ever since Jayce kicked Don’s butt the last time they met. ^^
Seeing Don trying to use his chin to access his autocaster, was pretty funny, too. 🙂
Nice saving jump by the soldier lady. You really are getting perspective down, now. 🙂
It seemed appropriate, both for the situation and Don. Doesn’t seem to have worked well for him 😐
Don is probably not looking forward to meeting Jayce again considering the circumstances… 😀
I’m surprised at the two IDS guys here. They should have been much more suspicious about the “dust” or fog. Also, I think all of them should be able to stay in communication with hands-free headsets. I’m disappointed in IDS for such an equipment blunder.
I have mixed feelings about the Orish “Psycho” girl. On the one hand: She’s a soldier and she’s always alert for danger, so she jumped out of the way at the earliest sign of trouble. On the other: She’s underestimating her enemy, practically as a non-threat! For a soldier, that’s ALWAYS foolhardy.
im not shure theyre “offical” ids, maybe an axuillary arm or 3rd party contractors for that one lady aaron was talking to. since don and mook seem to be only slightly better equiped than say your average terrorist. i think there was a bit a page back where i said the same thing. them having less… situational awareness.
psycho otoh seems to be useing some near first or second tier milspec equipment, possibly from her supposed orish military training.
but yeah they all seem to have a severe case of overconfidence.
I agree with you that they are probably contractors. Anyway, that’s how I read Rovak’s statements on THIS PAGE. 🙂
for some reason your link will not link for me, highlights like it will but nothing.
im assuming its his little talk with mium?
I agree with your guess, so I made his link go there 😉
Correct me if I’m wrong Mr. V 😐
That was it. 🙂
Have I mentioned lately that you are a wonderful human being? ^^
“im not shure theyre “offical” ids, maybe an axuillary arm or 3rd party contractors for that one lady aaron was talking to…”
You’re probably right. But that doesn’t explain why they can’t easily contact their team leader. Considering that this world has cars (and motorbikes) which drive themselves, AI, and even androids, I’m pretty sure that hands-free 2-way radios are readily available, and not just for military use. And considering the cost of other equipment a merc unit would need, they shouldn’t be that expensive. (Google search for “hands-free 2-way radio”…)
Are they just not using them because they figure Avon would listen in to whatever channel they use? They could speak in code words, if nothing else, being careful of what they say. Even if they assume eavesdropping, being separated without communication could get them killed or captured faster.
Well, Don was suggesting they get Rovak, and we’ve seen them communicating remotely previously.
That said, Don’s previous guess about why they couldn’t get ahold of their parameter people wasn’t that implausible; it’s likely that Avon would have reason to prevent most wireless transmission from working deeper in their building, especially given that they work with AI.
The wristband is likely an autocaster based on what we’ve seen before, and Don’s probabe first concern is not being stuck in the floor before Jayce finds him – either way, Rovak would be some time away.
That is an excellent point how Avon could be jamming radio signals.
But if they use magic for so many things, why couldn’t they have magic walkie-talkies that worked on the principles of sympathetic magic and action at a distance? That is, magic instead of radio waves. If such were possible, they could be more secure than signal encryption and difficult to jam…
Don’t worry about the tardiness, pushing yourself, etc. If your wrist is acting up, I’d take it easy if I were you. I’ve seen webcomics go on hiatus for months, even over a year, largely because the artist’s drawing wrist got bad or their health declined.
A few years ago I had a sore, slightly red wrist, which I wondered might be symptoms of early carpal tunnel. But after taking it easy for a couple weeks, it resolved itself and I haven’t had an issue.
Appreciate the patience.
I’ve taken some steps for it; I brought a vertical mouse to work, and started doing my wrist exercises again. I had this trouble a few months ago when I was trying to draw a lot more, but will make sure to work around it.
I’ve got a bit of a bad record with injuries from overdoing things, but I’m paranoid with the wrist as I really need that wrist to keep working for a long time 😛
Glad to hear you rebounded from your brush with injury that front. Have definitely seen far too many people, especially webcomic artists, hobbled wrist problems.