Comic for Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
Sorry it ran a little late this week, but didn’t want to skip since we had a block of missed comics recently.
Little bit of a time crunch on drawing it, and figuring out how I want to draw the demon took a bit of time. We’ve seen them look completely human, and completely not, but not as much of the in-between stage, though we briefly saw it some with Atter as he started to take damage. Generally speaking, as they take damage they’ll regenerate it more like a demon, like if they lose an arm, it wouldn’t regrow as a human arm, but also just tend to start developing more monster like features as they use their powers too much, as their data overwrites the body they were using (various things cause that to happen much faster, but this isn’t a dissertation on demons in the settings, just an explanation of what the art is showing).
The demon isn’t a character we’ve seen before.
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Hey folks-
I hate to do this after just saying I wouldn’t skip till November, but I’m going to miss this week. I wasn’t able to get the comic finished today, and looking at what I have to do between now and the end of the month, I don’t see a slot of time in there labeled “finish the comic”.
I realize the pace has gotten a little glacial with all the skipped comics recently, have had a bit of a time crunch recently.
Putting food on the table is more important than slaking the unwashed masses thirst for a new comic. We’ll put Mr. Bean in charge of training for the next week. What could go wrong.
Food on the table!?! Past is a legit starving artist! Don’t be bad mouthing him!
I guess there’s no comic this week?
Patience young Padawan! It is too soon to say if comic will be late today. There are still almost 3 hours to go from New York City, 4 hours to go from Chicago, 9 hours left from Hawaii, etc. Sorry if I left out anyone’s time zone.
Malsa, obviously, which is where these get posted from, I think.
The problem is that while Earth and Palindra seem to stay roughly concurrent, the moment to moment flow of time seems to drag and race a bit. It makes a 1:1 correlation of time zones nearly impossible.
At any rate, I think it is reasonable to get out the pitchforks, get them oiled and sharpened. Just in case. Get the torches, make sure they haven’t dried out, freshen them a bit.
Someone get a band going? May as well have some music, it might be a long night.
I just want to lower the cost basis on those pitchforks for you all. You want to get your money’s worth out of those pitchforks, and it’d be a shame for them to get rusty from sitting in the shed too long.
That is the three prong fork is for privates. Where are the two prong forks for new recruits and the other forks? Squad leaders get a four prong fork. Platoon sergeants get a five prong fork. Platoon leaders and first sergeants get a six prong fork. The Captain gets a seven prong fork. Were are not at battalion level strength yet so that’s where it ends.
PS – If the purple haired girl with a pitchfork and the orange haired girl with a torch show up at your castle, surrender immediately! If the purple haired girl hands the orange haired girl a rock, I’ll attend your funeral.
So, between what we’ve seen from Atter and this shitty demon, it seems like a demon’s power and overall sentience depends on how old said demon is/how much data they’ve accumulated and maintained. With older demons, they can probably lose a significant amount of data and still maintain their self-awareness (like Atter did directly after his Kaiju fight) but it’d still be a heavy blow in terms of knowledge and power lost.
It also looks like the body hopping/possession thing wasn’t unique to Atter, other demons can do it as well.
Hmmmm … just had a thought. Perhaps shitty demon is Atter returned after Fluffy burn’t him to almost nothingness. He might have lost so much data/memory that he can’t remember Peter. Kally did say that Atter was too dead to be here but this might be a new shell. Sophie anchoring Atter could account for the quick return.
I’m skeptical that Sophie could anchor Atter all the way from Central.
And I trust Kally’s assessment until we have cause not to.
Yeah, I’m not feeling this as Atter. I’m not sure Sophie can’t get a demon through a gate. And she might have other pupils floating about.
Heck, she was cozy with some of the disenfranchised Malsan nobility, yes? How much of a lift would it be for her to teach a couple demon summoning spells to people like that? Legit question, as I don’t know. I mean in lots of universes demon summoning is relatively easy because the demons WANT to be summoned.
I’m thinking it’s not just a matter of spell casting, but of raw horse power.
Okay, so not Atter. Maybe Atter’s little brother? LOL
Peter seems remarkably calm confronting the shitty demon. He ran from Atter. However, this shitty demon has a lesser demon appearance than Atter missing those red demon arms. Maybe Peter knows something. He also appears to be better prepared if the mana dots around him are any indication. Maybe after his Atter encounter he has an autocaster or two prepared for meeting a demon.
Anxiously awaiting the next reveal by the Archivist.
Past, I really like how the new format shows the conversation flow between Peter and the shitty demon in today’s comic. The layout also allows larger and more in depth text/conversation bubbles not constrained by panel borders. LOVE this new format.
Pretty sure there’s a spoiler on the page, but don’t think there’s a way to do a spoiler comment anymore.
I think Peter probably is bluffing. Or, more accurately stalling… or triangulating a precision dragon strike. Or all of the above. Just because I don’t think Peter would bother talking to the demon if he wasn’t.
That said, I’ve never been convinced Peter is powerless. I just don’t think he would have opted into fighting something personally, as it doesn’t seem his style.
I don’t think Peter is bluffing. As someone with sharper eyes pointed out to me, there are mana dots around Peter. In Panel 7, mana dots appear to be a foot or two from Peter and traveling towards the demon from Peter.
I’ve also had the same thought about Peter not being powerless. Things like him simply walking out of jail when he got bored seem to indicate some kind of power.
It has been noted that Peter doesn’t like showing his hand. How much does he have up his sleeve? Hard to say. But powerless? No, obviously not.
Still, if he starts smacking unknown-to-him demons around, I’ll reread his confrontation with Atter.
Peter has more than tricks up his sleeve. He keeps the reset button for Mium IN HIS ARM, so Peter might literally be made of tricks.
I feel like having an experimental device implanted in you while you’re a child to turn you into a weapon probably effects some psychological differences. That, incidentally, is a trick, and as it’s part of what made Peter what he is today, I think he is literally made of tricks.
That having been said, I think it’s also probably worth noting that it wouldn’t be wise to assume that the sleeve is not itself a trick.
Any idea of the date when Atter was after Peter? I want to magnify my screen and see if small mana dots are floating near Peter. Also interested if that was when Fluffy burned Atter to nothingness. Plans are to closely examine Peter in the future when Peter is in a confrontation. Thank you in advance to anyone who replies.
Here is where that scene starts. It’s one of the few times Peter looks actually alarmed, though he also doesn’t seem particularly scared of Atter, as he spends the next few pages having a snarky dialogue with Mium in front of Atter, before Mium blows Atter up with a tank, and then a bomb, while Peter gets clear of the blast zone. It doesn’t really stick though.
The scene ultimately cuts before Mium and Atter directly fight, but as they are both seen later and Mium earlier implies he cannot kill Atter without taking drastic actions, it’s pretty likely it was something of a draw.
Thanks, Ferrus. That scene was September 11th 2017 and no mana sparkles were detected around Peter up through October 30th where Peter is at school. That is more comics than expected since they were posted twice a week then. Mium did set the stage for destroying a demon construct that was biting his arm but there was no resolution with Atter. Sometime later Fluffy will end Atter but that is remembered well. I had to laugh at Arron’s lack of surprise upon finding Peter in charge of the MSB.
Something just noticed in the Thursday September 14th 2017 comic is that Atter had one of those braid thingys on the front side of his hair. Anyone recall who he was betrothed to or who he was before he was possessed? Again, thanks in advance.
All I’ve seen is speculation that this is the “battered shell” of Eliana’s missing fiancé – see comic of July 27, 2020 and the discussion.
“I have a friend who’s an expert on data manipulation. Say ‘Hello’. Mium.”
Or ILA shows up and Peter says “say hello to my little friend!” LOL
I feel calling Peter powerless is a very big miscalculation. Much less engaging in banter with him.
Even if Peter himself really were weak and powerless in a literal, personal combat sense, he knows too many people and which of their buttons to push to ever be truly powerless. And that’s before even thinking of those where “people” is arguable.
And hey, give the “shitty demon” some credit. With Peter, bantering will probably let him exist the longest. (Five minutes is an improvement from…..seventeen seconds, if he’s lucky. So there’s that.)
Another demon summoned by Sophie? An Atter “seed” demon? This demon appears fresh with blood running down the shirt where demon spikes erupted through the skin. I find it strange that this demon knows of Peter.
Peter has both hands in his pockets. Hope he has an autocaster or potent weapon or both. While I don’t think Peter can summon Fluffy using an autocaster, it appears he is hiding something in his pockets. Peter did levitate the pen for Miko so he can do at least some magic by some means.
There are mana dots around Peter’s pocket, and then around Peter. I’m not too concerned.
Yeah, their knowledge of Peter sounds like it’s from Central. But several characters from Central have voiced this info on Palindra, even more or less in front of known rogue family agents, so it could still be local intel.
Oops! My old eyes and brain didn’t notice the mana dots until you mentioned them. Turning up screen magnification revealed that Peter has mana dots surrounding him in every panel in which he appears in this comic. It must really be a shitty demon to not notice the mana dots.
I would guess that Peter has multiple autocasters in his pockets. I think we saw at one point that the advanced models can have 6 spell slots. Peter likes to be prepared for all contingencies, which suggests to me that he’ll have upwards of 12 prepared spells. Also, if you have one you have none, so he probably has at least a half dozen autocasters, and they’re distinct by touch alone.
I don’t think that Sophie’s the only option. Eliana appears to have most of what’s needed to summon demons, Saldur was able to summon “spirits” which easily could’ve been demons. Hadrian appears to be fairly construct-intensive at this point. I feel like it’s pretty safe to say there’s enough Palindra magic sophistication to summon demons.
Peter’s been making a pain of himself. I feel like a demon Sophie summoned would understand that not being born with magical talent doesn’t necessarily mean no ability to magic. For that matter, any demon summoned by anyone from Central should know about autocasters, and I’d guess a bunch of them would know about the autocaster implants like the one Peter has and could probably turn on pretty quickly if he somehow couldn’t do what he needed with everything he has in his pocketses.
Couple of thoughts.
1. Despite your excellent cataloging of magical abilities, I don’t recall anyone from Palindra capable of summoning an honest demon. Things close to Fluffy, yes. Full on demon? Not on screen at least.
2. Recall the response from the tactical class mages on the battlefield in response to Atter. Atter seemed very foreign to them.
3. Peter is not helpless, powerless, etc. We all know that. But when did he EVER accept any more risk to his own person than was absolutely required? Dude RAN from Atter’s constructs. Now he’s tackling an actual demon? No. Miko is not in danger, and he could take Kally and run rather than confront a demon. So. No. Just, No. Something else is in play.
4. Please kindly examine panels 6 and 8. I believe that whatever Peter is doing, he is NOT directly approaching that demon. Maybe he is doing the exploding mirage of Peter again? Panel’s 6 & 8 look like he is marginally transparent again.
Yeah, 4 there is the spoiler I referred to in my comment. Past has made it harder than usual to tell, but this is almost certainly an illusory copy of Peter. Peter is vaguely transparent (you can only tell by looking at where the lines on the wall are behind him, and that you can vaguely seem them through Peter, which is the usual tell of the illusions).
My take between that and the fact that Peter is basically just taunting the demon is that his goal is to get the demon to chase the illusion into a trap, most likely a dragon shaped trap. Note that we see half of the conversation with Kally.
I feel like Peter’s illusions are basically an advanced form of ellipses. While Arron can make people see him as someone else and Tom can make people not notice him at all, Peter can make people not notice that illusions aren’t real.
That’s my theory anyway.
Initially I thought Ellipses wouldn’t work on a demon as Atter was able to track Arron down, but when it was revealed that Arron had a piece of Atter’s code in his arm, it sort of confirmed the opposite of that, as Atter wouldn’t need that if he could see through Ellipses.
Peter also uses it in the standard way, at the same time.
1. Illusion Peter on top of Peter.
2. Real Peter is now undetectable, despite illusion Peter being at the exact same spot and still visible.
3. Real Peter leaves while illusion Peter goes on talking.
I think part of Peter’s realistic illusions is simply harnessing change blindness. The step 1 illusion is incredibly realistic, as anything about it that’s off is somewhat hidden by the fact that real Peter is still there. The step 2 illusion no longer has Peter backing it, but Ellipsis confers that realism onto the remaining illusion. That is, because Ellipsis causes you to not notice things, it causes you to not notice the now apparent issues with the illusion. In step 3, you’re thus less likely to notice the escaping Peter because you can see him right there. Anything else is a distraction. Look, he has to be there, he’s *talking*.
I think Peter’s greatest trick was using his illusions and Ellipsis trick such that Naomi was able to deliver illusion Peter to the IDS CI office. I mean, as someone who has a considerable amount of power at her disposal, Ellipsis is probably somewhat out for her. I’d guess it required her to at least stop boosting before she left Aaron’s office until she was discovered.
My suspicion is that he wants the demon to stand still so Kally can blast it.
This demon doesn’t seem as powerful or knowledgeable as Atter, for one he’s using a knife construct rather than the creatures Atter created.
The possibility of it being some sort of hologram of Peter rather than Peter himself might work, but that seems to also suggest this demon isn’t that great if it can’t see through it, or notice the magic sparkles.
But, I do notice that the magic sparkles are also aroudn the demon, not just Peter…
I agree that we haven’t seen anyone on Palindra summon actual demons, but also I do feel like any demon from Central should know enough not to underestimate anyone with the name “Kepler”.
This is a secret research lab of some kind. It’s possible that they are researching demons, and either summoned or captured it.
Sigh. Some people just have to explain the magic.
Me? I prefer my less clear “he’s casting a spell that will one-shot the demon” rather than your “he’s going to get Kally to one-shot the demon.”
I was not trying to suggest that Peter was approaching the demon. Why would anyone do that, especially someone who was buying time to cast his over-powered demon one-shot spell?
My main point was, we’ve seen the folks on Palindra do basically everything up to summoning demons, except possibly the final step. (Would a Kor’s Worlder see Saldur’s spirits as demons? That’s not clear.)
Sure, Atter’s very different from what they’ve previously seen on Palindra. But there are a great variety of demons. Demons vary significantly more wildly than humans.
Personally, I think what keeps the people of Palindra from summoning demons isn’t not knowing how, but rather the threat of the Orish Warmages descending upon them en mass, as the latter are basically Kor’s World descendants. This thought is a bit at odds with the IDS Situation Creation department hiring Orish despite being run by their ancient demon-summoning sorceress. However, it’s possible that the handful of Orish in her employ were paid well enough to get them to look the other way so long as it was just the one. Or maybe she hired them so she’d know exactly where they were so she could make sure Atter was somewhere else.
Given all the spoilers below, my real feeling on what’s going on here is
do these spoiler tags work?No, so I guess I’ll pass on that.I figure if there’s any magic Peter would be interested in, it would be in the data manipulation category.
Data destruction seems hugely useful for disabling stuff, and if you can also kill demons with it, bonus!
Data creation is more complex, but I can imagine Peter working out a spell to let him do keyboard input with his mind, in case his hands get disabled.
Reading, changing, rerouting or hiding data – all very useful for somepne like Peter…
Woot woot!
Very cool art!