2.1.42
on April 29, 2024
at 3:00 am
“I can’t find villains. There’s only slime.” “What do you mean there’s only slime?” “It means there’s only slime!” “WELL THEN GET OUT OF THE SLIME AISLE-“
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: don’t tread on me
Image source: beasts
Tumblr text: don’t worry, I’m sure that giant obscuring dust cloud killed her for sure
Twitter Text: glort……… 2!!
What do you think of this? Should I keep doing it? Would Red be fine with this?
Also- on the original document that I wrote this on, the text and highlight is the god’s speech-bubble colors in the comic, and they don’t have quotation marks, but because the colors don’t work on here they do have quotation marks.
It was hard coming up with words for the Collector’s goop X)
Zuurith suddenly twists away, yanking his chain. It slices through the Collector. The people of the city stare frozen at the pile of goop where she once stood.
“Back, all of you!” Zuurith shouts, darting forwards. “The beasts may still be dangerous!” Beneath his feet, the shreds of Collector tremble.
Suddenly he screams as they explode upwards. “We certainly are,” the Collector says, grinning out of a half-formed face, her body coming back together. Zuurith lays beneath her, purple smoke wafting out of the places where the slime had ripped through him.
Oh. Oh this would be R-rated in a live-action production.
Still, props to Zuurith for not mincing words and trying to stand and fight. Too bad Collie is literally unkillable.
At least her clothes also grew back, that would definitely make things much more awkward
i also habe a feeling in which Red does not want to draw boobs or any other places of that sort
welp. i meant ‘have’ but my brain resorted to german
You don’t give the Collector enough credit, @Spider. The only reason we did not get a magical girl transformation is that would ruin the shock and terror of the moment. And that wat Red can just turn back to The Collector when she is back to Villainous presence. Red did want to do an ace friendly story after all. (bow in Red’s direction).
Not yet but I am sure the Collector can do that easily. But a magical girl transformation would kill the shock and horror vibe though!
Wrong choice 🙁
Poor god, and poor people…
The axe rips out, purple glowing,
It shreds the chimeras’ maker.
“Back all of you!” he warns his subjects.
Beneath him reforms the God-taker.
Zuurith and Vash gonna have a lot to talk about together huh?
A chain doesn’t do much good it seems
When the Collector rises from dark streams
Say it with me now kids!
Don’t assume you can one-shot the big bad!
Also, RIP Zuzu
Hellooooo
Come to think of it, can she grab his soul? I keep thinking that the dagger was a one-shot item, but I’m not sure if my memory is playing tricks or not.
I think she probably could but it requires she destroy all his connections first, so everyone in Zuurith would have to die first.
OH SHI-!!!
And here I was wondering what would happen if you cut her to pieces!
Behold the unmatched power of the Malcareous ooze.
WHY WHERE YOU LOOKING FOR VILLAINS IN THE SLIME STORE
Damn Zuurith got that confidence and it seems warranted, too bad he didn’t ask Kendal exactly what he was up against or intuit that maybe someone who could destroy a city and steal a god wasn’t to be messed with. Still I guess in his eyes mortals are mortals, no matter how powerful they may be they can’t survive getting ripped apart, or shouldn’t anyway.
I think there may also be an element of guilt over failing to defeat Tynan making him extra rash in trying to defend his city
Oh no… OH NO. Zuurith you’re a moron but please don’t die
YOOOOO!! Man, when primordial life makes you immortal, she makes you immortal. >/strong>
“Alright you don’t have to shout at me! (walks to next aisle) There’s more slime”
Alright, you don’t have the shout at me!” (walks to the next isle) “There’s more slime”
Is the page text a reference to something? Feels like it is and I’m not getting it.
Look up “i’m at soup” on youtube
Much appreciated!
To paraphrase the great Skank McGank: “If it was easy to kill a high level magic user, you didn’t kill ‘em.”
Oh hey! It’s Daisn’t and Elfaust again, thanks for the names @Gogo the mimic, though it looks like their redemption debate is on hold at the moment.
Restraining the attacker, killing the attacker quickly once “negotiations” fail, then orders his citizens to stay away from the dangerous chimerae; all sensible and decisive actions that would have worked fine against most enemies. However, Zuurith seems to have bad luck with regenerating villains.
And what an unsettling and visceral regeneration is it; Red draws her world and people so pretty, it makes her grotesque work all the more unsettling. The disparity between her solid face and amorphous limbs, the sickly sheen of life magic around her, and her unfaltering smile as her body slithers back together. Does any of her internal anatomy resemble a human anymore? Are those clothes she’s wearing made or shapeshifted plant or flesh material? Is anyone else getting flashbacks of the Glort?
Welp, that’s Zuurith wounded and potentially immobilised, the Collector soon to be no worse for wear, and the army of chimerae the city is not prepared to fight. Hate to say it, but the only way to avoid mass casualties is for Zuurith to spill the beans about Kendal.
I know no damage was done to the collector but it is still cathartic
Also :”Oh gods no”
What a satisfying Shripp!
So I think this page might be a good place to start talking about some fan theories I’ve been spinning in my head for a while. Specifically, I want to talk about the parallels between the Collector and Tahraim.
I’ve heard some people theorise that Tahraim discovered Fire’s truename. This theory is mostly based on a few facts. Firstly, Tahraim claims he was once a mortal, and that he “reforged himself”. The first invocation of each Primordial truename is known to have activated the Primordial’s higher properties. Fire’s higher property is transmutation, which seems very thematically relevant to the god of smithing.
We also know that the first invocation of each Primordial truename had massive and often catastrophic immediate effects. Water sunk cities into the sea. Wind raised the Flying Islands. Life started the chimeric plague. It doesn’t seem too far a stretch to suggest that Tahraim’s “reforging” was actually the result of his discovery. Another thing to note is that Tahraim seems to know quite a lot about the Crucibles. Could this be because he is indirectly responsible for their existence?
Another detail to note is that Tahraim’s speech bubbles are styled similarly to the Collector’s. Both have black text on a coloured background, rather than the more colourful and stylised speech bubbles of many other gods.
If we do assume that Tahraim discovered Fire’s truename, this leads to some interesting implications.
Curiously, it would seem Tahraim and the Collector also share some personality traits. Both seem to have contracted a serious case of the blue-and-orange morality post-transformation, and they’ve even apparently met before (see 1.18.18 for that).
However, their differences are just as interesting as their similarities.
See, we know for a fact that Tahraim is a god. But certain things we’ve seen would suggest that the Collector is not. Gleicann explicitly says that “she will always be human”, and it’s implied that this is what allows her to sneak up on the gods.
But what caught my attention about this page is the way the Collector… reforms herself? Her ability bares striking resemblance to how gods incarnate… although most divine incarnations aren’t quite so… biological. The Collector also seems to never age… despite her apparent humanity, she has traits that are very reminiscent of godly abilities, as if she’s somehow standing on the line between mortal and divine.
Although… she’s not the only one to take the gods by surprise. In 1.18.16, Vash doesn’t notice Tahraim until he’s looking right at him. So maybe the Collector isn’t at all unique in that regard.
So is the Collector a god? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t a simple yes or no answer to that question. But I will note that any differences between the Collector and Tahraim shouldn’t be surprising, after all, Life and Fire are different Primordials with different abilities. Just like how Alinua and Dainix may appear to have very similar relationships to the Primordials on the surface, but under the surface it’s more complicated.
I’m hoping that sometime in the future we get to see what happened to the other mages who discovered the Primordial truenames, though that might not happen for several years, if it happens at all. That being said, I would like to note that there miiight be one other named character in the comic who has a similar thing going on.
Huracan.
Obviously, Huracan’s encounter with Void wasn’t quite the same as what happened to the Collector or Tahraim. But there are some similarities. Most notably, Huracan’s aging was either slowed dramatically or stopped entirely. Which seems kinda odd, given that Void is mostly known for corruption-induced hunger and consumption of all matter. But if this was a common effect of contact with the Primordial truenames… things begin to make more sense.
Do we know all this, or are these assumptions? I feel like I’m missing a lot of information.
1) Have the other Primordial Truenames been found, and what happened?
2) Is Dainix’s Soulfire related to Primordial Fire? I haven’t seen any indication this is the case.
3) When did Tahraim ever talk about reforging himself?
Most of the info is from Word of Red, both from when she did Discord Q&As and now on Tumblr.
1) See my post below. All the Primordial truenames have been found, or rather deciphered. The Great Runes are essentially compressed versions of their truenames, VD said so himself in his Ch.7 monologue.
2) Yes, insofar as Crucibles first started appearing after Fire’s First Invocation, and how VD reacted to Dainix’s Crucible form.
3) Early Word of Red. Tahraim is the only mortal to have ever ascended to godhood.
Some of it, I can help with. The “First Invocations”, as I like to call them, and what happened with the mages that did them, are as follows: (NB: current in-universe year is 6182)
STONE: First invoked around the 1100s, it resulted in worldwide earthquakes and gave the Singing Caves their name. The mage responsible descended into the caves, and presumably still remains somewhere down there, petrified. (Personal theory is that his remains are in Stone’s 2nd heart, as the 1st and 3rd hearts contain the Adamant Cage and the Collector’s lair, resp.)
FIRE: First invoked in the 2000s by an ignan mage, it halved the local ignan population and caused volcanic fissures in the area (and led to Tahraim’s apotheosis, maybe). Notably, Crucibles first started appearing after the First Invocation.
WIND: First invoked sometime in the early 3000s by an elf mage, she used the power boost to raise what is now the Archipelago Nimbus into the sky.
LIGHTNING: First Invocation was made by the same mage who discovered Wind’s truename, so these two must have happened within at most 20-30 years of each other. What exactly happened then, and to the elf mage, is unknown, but what we DO know is that Stormbreakers first started appearing in the wake of the First Invocation.
WATER: The truename was discovered in the 4000s by a trio of mages. However, internal strife between two of them spiraled into open conflict, sinking their city. The third of the mages completed the puzzle, and used the power granted to them by the First Invocation to change their city’s population s.t. they could breathe underwater and survive, thus creating the Sekrai – Water-adapted humans.
LIFE: The First Invocation occurred some time between the years ~5860-5880, invoked by the woman who would become the Collector. The result was Life’s consciousness being roused from dormancy, thus indirectly starting the Chimeric Plague.
I will note that, though I initially posited the Tahraim theory on the fan Discord (and I still stand by it), Red has confirmed that Tahraim’s speech text is not wholly black like the Collector’s and other mortals, but rather a very very dark blue (best seen via color picker)
On the note of Huracan, she was near ground zero when the Storm of Magic erupted. She wasn’t exposed to void as far as I can tell, but rather was blasted by the various other elemental energies running rampant.
Seems like VD describes his own Truename being “discovered” in 1.7.23. He crafted his own rune which broke the Pedestal, creating the Storm Of Magic and indirectly leading to Erin being possessed by VD all this years later (and maybe contributing to the decline of the Ancient civilisation as well).
Although I have to wonder, if the Ancients discovered the Great Runes, which are “a Primordial Truename in its purest form”, why do these not count as the First Invocation?
Either way, that does help. Thank you! Did this all come from Red’s Twitter?
from what I recall, the Ancients discovered the physical symbols for the Great Runes however as their language used a different writing system they had no way to actually speak, and thus invoke, the Primordials’ truenames
Oh, the Ancients couldn’t speak? Wild.
@veggiesnake I’m pretty sure the Ancients could speak, they just couldn’t use truename magic. Since none of them were mages, all of their magical work was done by runic inscriptions like computer programs; they had the great runes for those purposes, but not the means to “hear” what they meant, let alone invoke them.
As for V.D., while we know his great rune, we don’t know his truename … yet. I see the potential for someone like Erin, the only Void mage to find it out and invoke it, and I have a niggling hypothesis that such an invocation may be a way to deal with his V.D. if the soulshaper monks fail. V.D. did say making such a rune was treacherous and could lead to his downfall.
However, the first invoking of the six dead primordial truenames was dangerous and catastrophic enough; invoking the truename of an incredibly destructive, still alive primordial might be even worse. If this is the route to go by they must do it as far away from civilisation as possible. Maybe get Tarren to get working on spaceships and do it out there.
Ah, so THAT’S the level of immortality we’re dealing with. I see. Still, I have to wonder if Void Magic would be more effective?
On another note, I realise that when The Collector asks “How did Vash come here?” she isn’t referring to Kendal. She’s referring to Vash himself disappearing on her and somehow fast-traveling to Zuurith (she probably tortured this information out of him) and now she’s here to basically find his escape tunnel. She doesn’t even know Kendal exists yet, but she’s probably about to find out.
TBH, if ***this*** is what the Collector became, and given how powerful she is, I’m not very convinced even a full-power void blast from a possessed Erin would be enough to actually kill her. If Alinua is any indication, the Collector is likely able to simply outheal any damage dealt to her. Keep in mind, she squared up against *Vash* who had starfire as an option, thus implying that she accounted for it and/or had countermeasures.
I’m pretty sure all the void dragon has to do is say “thank you”, and the collector will spontaneously combust
So this might be a “vaporize the enemy completely because literally anything else will just let them regenerate” kind of situation
Wait a second, is the Collector made of roots underneath her skin?
Glort… 2!
OH
OHHHHH SHOOT
EVERYONE IN THAT CITY BOUTTA DIEEE
Ooo we got some Belos shit goin’ on
This is some serious Immortal Hulk type stuff. She’s like the Leader in that series if he had just focused on the physical world instead of going to the Below Place.
How durable is she?! How durable is alinua?!
Thats creeepy!
Well we now know the Collector is actively immortal even if you shred her apart. So Zuurith has acted rashly, and now many will die, I am very sad.
I feel like no one’s mentioned here how the Collector’s speech bubbles in the last few pages change colour as you scroll down each page, starting as ordinary (mortal) black on white that gets saturated with her distinct sickly green
Not sure what you mean. I don’t see that effect on my end.
If you mean the white bubbles while Pryder hurries away, those are her talking… the Collector’s bubbles are always green and black. It might be different for you though?
TL;DR: Schlorpity schlorpity, your soul is now my property.
“We”? As in, the chimeras are an extension of herself? Smart, Collector, smart. Now ZUURITH GIVE HER THE INFO MY DUDE YOU AND YOUR PEOPLE ARE ABOUT TO DIE
man I though that was void goop for a minute and that SCARED ME.
But no, just dead plants or something?
Actually, that’s Collector goop.
Oh…Oh, that ain’t right. Did anyone else notice that her essence kinda looks like the Life-touched bits of Glort the Flood Squad had to deal with? There’s implications there I don’t think I like…
Wait she WAS THE CHIMERAS?