2.1.46
on May 8, 2024
at 3:00 am
And we’ll never see her again!
Arc 2 Chapter 1 (and its following interlude) are officially done! I’ll be taking a few weeks off to get my thoughts in order, build up the buffer again, and maybe sleep a little bit – if all goes well, Chapter 2 will begin on June 3!
Alt-text: well that could’ve gone a whole lot worse!
Image source: lucky
Tumblr text: Taking a little between-chapter break! Chapter 2 will (hopefully) start in the first week of June!
Twitte Text: and that’s sorted! be back in a few weeks!
Zer0Wolf is gone apparently, at least for today
The Collector releases the magic affecting the mountains. As the orange-haired human rushes to his elf friend, she says, “Really, thank you. You’ve been tremendously helpful. I’ll be sure to tell Vash. He could stand to learn a lot from your example.”
“Tell him what you will. I owe him no loyalty,” Zuurith growls. “And of all the things he could begrudge me for, I could never draw his ire by protecting my people.”
“I suppose not,” the Collector says, turning away. She puts a hand out, and the chimera next to her grows up to the size of a horse. “It’s so much more difficult to deal with someone with nothing to use.” Atop the giant chimera, she glances back at Zuurith with a big smile on her face. “So aren’t I lucky?”
As the Collector rides off, the other chimeras following, Pryder rushes towards Zuurith.
Thank you for mentioning Evil Genetics Major growing the chimera. I missed that.
Red’s minimalist line style for Aurora has taught me so much about how to be practical when drawing large projects, but sometimes I fail to parse an image or two on the first read.
Actually… hmmm…
In the first panel, there isn’t a chimera near the Collector, so either it ran over to her or she just created it/summoned it.
So maybe this?
“I suppose not,” the Collector says dismissively, turning away. She puts a hand out, and a chimera the size of a horse swirls into being, created by her Life magic. “It’s so much more difficult to deal with someone with nothing to lose.”
I had fallen asleep and missed the page release. It happens sometimes.
That’s all right! I would fall asleep sometimes staying up till three too.
Although you might be in a different time zone, so it might not be three for you
In my time zone, pages drop at 1 AM in Daylight Savings Time and 12 AM in Standard Time.
alt-text: well that could’ve gone a whole lot worse!
image source: lucky
Gooooood bye! Im sure we’ll never see her again 🙂
A guy who doesn’t care about emotional distress of his people is in emotional distress and Pryder who does care about emotional distress is the first one to run to help him with it. Irony so thick you can tar roofs with it.
L love that metaphor!
I think he does value the emotional health of his people, he just values their physical health more
Phew… ?
Well, maybe Zuurith should tell the other gods about this. Perhaps one of them might reach Kendal on time, maybe Argist.
Also, do as Red does, people, sleep! Don’t be like the floof squad!
He should prioritise warning Argist first, above all. He did inadvertently send the god taker his way, it’s the least he could do to apologise.
I wonder if she’ll go with threats first. Back to her lab, use Kendal as leverage… then when it doesn’t work, chase after the FLOOF squad.
…nope. Too much to hope.
Welp. Looks like while they’re lollygagging, every enemy is converging on Argist. This is going to be a dramatic escape. They might just need every bit of speed they can get to escape — even if the boat sails *over* the ocean instead of on it.
Yeah I’m not sure how the Collector could track the gang; she knows what the vessel looks like, but left without asking what his name is, where he’s heading, and doesn’t even have a scrap for one of her chimeras to track the scent of. From her confidence here, I’m sure she has some way of finding Kendal; maybe aura sensing akin of Alinua?
I had my doubts at first about Erin deciding to leave immediately as storms are building, a good chunk of the party injured to some degree, and in a barely tested boat. But in hindsight, staying in Argist for a few sindahlans (months) would be too risky with the Paladins, Shrike, and now the Collector on their tail. Leaving sooner is the best choice, but I just know Red has some conflict planned on the sea.
At least some body’s happy. She did just strong arm a god, so fair enough. I guess the real question is whether she’ll go scouting the area to find the squad, or go back to her lair and find a way to track Kendal down through his connection to Vash. Because, now that she knows what to look for she might be able to find him.
Collector is over here living her best life, and ain’t got time for no haters! She is THRIVING, she is SUCCEEDING, she is ENJOYING HERSELF bymaybemurderingalotofpeopleinhorribleandpainfulways and that is something NOBODY CAN DENY!
Also, I think she’s going to search the tomb of Vash for clues first, then move on to some labratory research with her fave test subject, and only then try to track down her main subject of study himself.
Your first paragraph has some really big Collapsing Empire vibes. Nadashe Nohamapetan, to be specific. “Could some people maybe call me evil? NAAH.”
Sleep is important!
I have a lighter, text-only schedule for myself, so it’s much easier to build a backlog. I can only imagine how much work it is to build a backlog for this comic.
You work hard between this and OSP, take all the time you need to rest and recuperate.
Zuurith survives everyone calm down!
Yoooo!! She just found out that Vash has something to loose after all!! 😀
No wonder they’re happy 🙂
I have absolutely no idea what a meeting between BBEG and Alinua would look like, would she be able to see life through her? Would life see the collector? What would be the reactions? And then the exact same for the void dragon! Their goals are so close I am surprised he haven’t contacted her before(or has he?) He must have noticed her seeing as she is basically his neighbor and has been for centuries. I really want the collector to find the party and simultaneously REALLY don’t want her to. This comic is so cool.
“I will never draw his ire by protecting my people.” Nor the audience’s ire, it seems! I don’t think I’ve seen one person who blames him for this. Not that that’s a bad thing. I don’t blame him either. I just think it’s funny because it almost feels like a fourth wall nudge, whether or not it really is.
Yeah, like, we’re all sitting here going “oh no, this is bad news for the floof squad” but none of us can argue that it was the WRONG thing for Zuurith to do. Maybe if he’d known this was coming and had time to think, he could have thought of a lie that would have protected both his people and Kendal, but he didn’t.
Maybe we’ll check in on Zuurith in a few months or a year in-story and see how his redemption arc is going. This is a strong start, gotta say.
No, with all the time in the world to plan, I believe he wouldn’t have thought up a lie. However, it’s possible he would have thought up a well phrased truth.
It’s incredibly rare for the “supervillain demands something in exchange for a hostage’s life” trope to EVER show up in media and NOT make me roll my eyes in exasperation, personally. The heroes always fail to recognize that the villain will just kill the hostage anyway, and/or the villain makes it way too easy for the heroes to just come and rescue the hostage, so it always just feels like a really cheap plot device that ruins my suspension of disbelief. But Red actually handled this really well, and I am SO grateful for that! The Collector’s threat was all too real, but her promise to let everybody go once she had the information she wanted was ALSO real and 100% believable from the start. And Zuurith didn’t even consider giving into her demands until he had exhausted all options for trying to stop her, and even when he did give in, it was only to share some basic info about people whose privacy he was under no obligation to protect.
Using popular tropes well is one of Red’s greatest strengths as a writer, as one would expect from the creator of OSP’s Trope Talks.
Red is as OP in real life as the Collector is in the Auroraverse. She’s a brilliant narrative theorist with the artistic and writing skills to back it up, plus she’s a skilled mathematician, a canny businesswoman, and she has super strength.
In all seriousness, her parents must be bursting with pride!
As always, really not interested in giving the slightest bit of praise to ZuZu. He folded like a tent to save his skin (albeit indirectly), and let loose the world-ending calamity upon Kendal’s trail on the *hope* that she would leave his people alive. He lived like a punk, and by all rights he should have gone down like a punk too.
Honestly, I’m far more confused / intrigued by the Collector here. Between her moment of panic at the revelation of soul abiogenesis and actually letting the people of Zuurith survive, she’s not behaving completely like I anticipated. Certainly she had to have SOME notion about how soul energy is formed, as it’s a process that surely happens every single time a new animal or person is born(???). Also, I was certain that the lives of every single person in that valley was forefit the second she showed up, and instead she-
-well, I suppose it’s less sparing their lives and more giving them a temporary stay of execution. If / when she gets her way, every single living being on the planet is going to be melted into tang, so I guess she thinks that it’s not really worth the effort at this specific moment now that she has her intel. In any event, looking forward to June!
I also did not expect the people of Zuurith to survive, though the impression I get is that they survived not by mercy or by the Collector being honest but instead by the Collector being too distracted by a new science prospect to bother with grabbing a second god soul.
I see where you’re coming from with Big Z, but he didn’t exactly fold like a tent; he spend a few pages threatening, slicing, and crushing the Collector to stop the threat she posed before caving. He did cave in to save himself and his people, but he only gave her the bare minimum of information about Kendal. He also was never told of the Collector’s end goal so he lacks the big picture perspective of what she intends to do. I agree he doesn’t deserve praise for what he did, but he doesn’t deserve blame either; he did exactly what any city god would do in that situation.
As for the Collector, I think she’s in a mix between fear and curiosity; this new soul inhabiting an old body might be the thing that makes or breaks her plans. She needs to find this soul sooner rather than later as, unlike godly souls, this one’s on the move and she may loose the trail if she doesn’t act quickly. She can destroy Zuurith later, either to get a new god soul or when she enacts her grand plan.
We as an audience tend to have some sort of bias towards protagonists and against antagonists, so there is a bit of that at play here too. Because the Collector was introduced as seemingly cruel and genocidal, we are primed to draw parallels to villains and people with a similar curriculum in pop culture and history, thus the expectation that she will always take the most callous course of action purely by being on screen.
But the thing is, while Red does not shy away from tropes and does use them as shorthand (for better pacing, clearer communication of themes, etc), a principle she seems to value a lot is that characters should behave in accordance to their own internal logic. Red has shown in various of the Collector’s interactions that she is not petty, and is in fact deeply pragmatic. Her “evil” comes from the absence of empathy, not malice or resentment towards humanity and the gods. The Primordials seem to be the only thing that truly matters to her, and (for now at least) she does seem intent on dying together with the rest of the world to set them free.
The tension from the last few scenes was sorely on Zuurith and how he would behave. If recent events changed him for the better even if a little, becoming humble enough to endure this humiliation and protect his citizens, or if he would double down in his posturing to protect his pride and ultimately fail as a city god and die because of it. I am pretty sure Vash and Kendal would respect his decision here (Alinua, Falst and Erin would probably be shrieking tho).
On a semi related note, seems like Elfaust and Daisn’t live to see another day. Doomed yaoi was not so doomed after all.
Had to do a double take on that last sentence xD. Elfaust and Daisn’t are very good names for them though. Actually, now that I think about it, they’re the most developed background characters in the whole comic. Probably the only ones to get dialogue too.
Unsurprisingly, I disagree. Zuurith fought back as much as he could, but once his peopl are put in harms way there’s not much else he can do except let them die to preserve his pride. He made the right call, and I think it does deserve recognition as something very different to Zuurith MK1. You saw how he fumbled with Tynan.
I’m fascinated by the juxtaposition of “gone down like a punk” and “soul albigenisis.” You sound like someone who might understand me after I’ve had 2 cups of coffee.
The speed and ferocity with which y’all are rushing to defend a fascist slaver whose only moment of “redemption” involved selling out a rival -and in so doing helped condemn the entire world to destruction- is really depressing.
I mean that one’s past mistakes should stick with a person forever is a large part of the underlying worldview that supports fascism and slavery, a bit of sympathy for others and acknowledging that they’re trying to be better is as important as acknowledging that what they did in the first place was wrong. Plus “folded like a tent” is pretty extreme for a guy who was resolved to throw away his life and then got a city of people held hostage against him. I know I wouldn’t have held out as long as zuzu did.
So, so, SO glad to see her ride off into the sunset.
And I love that Pryder immediately rushed to comfort/pick up Zuurith. Maybe people will start trusting him more after this?
Phew… Okay. Guess the Collector can’t be bothered to destroy the city for now. This is still, uh. Not great. But I’m glad they survived.
Enjoy the rest and take your time!
Thanking Zuurith for his help, grinning with joy,
The Collector spares her prey.
With a promise to tell Vash where she learned of the ploy,
On a chimera she rides away.
This late comment brought to you by the stayed up late and had a long lie in gang. To be clear, I’m working on British time.
Sympathies @Ballad!
I still hate/love that those things have eyes on their chins
An eye under every jaw. This makes them wonderful at identifying targets, but it does also hinder them when it comes time to actually attack. Much like a bull can’t see its target once it begins its charge, these things can’t see their targets once they decide to start eating.
Idea: eyes in its throat
Like in Last Train Outta Wormtown?
There once was a god of stone
Who was working hard to atone
For all of his sin.
He quickly gives in
So the Collector’ll leave his people alone.
The god-taker finally lets the citizens go
Then rides off in the sunset, chimaeras in tow
I have an erratic creative process, so I have been forcing myself to hold off posting basically anything until the end is done, and when I get bored/hit a road block/get distracted by ooh shiny I write a spin-off to post in between updates on the main story when I get to it – I want to do regular updates and for the chapters and upload dates to roughly line up lol
fuuuu—
The Collector has a chimera mount, Shrike and Co. have at least one pack animal to pull their cart, why can’t the gang have any funky horses- (remembers 1-5-19) … oh, yeah.
The Collector is keeping her word, for now. Zuurith won’t be spared from her grand plan, but with the major characters gone from the city and the Collector getting what she needed, we and any antagonists are unlikely to visit this city again for the foreseeable future. Though it would be nice of Zuurith to send out an alarm to other gods about this recent development. Unless something happens at the Paladin archives, Red’s tree drawing hand is safe.
I’m not sure if the Collector is intentionally rilling Zuurith up with those comments about telling Vash and how lucky she is, or whether she’s so detached from their rivalry it doesn’t register to her. She seems oddly at ease after almost losing her cool last page; maybe she thinks that this new soul in Vash’s body could be a new lead in her plans.
Art wise, nice to see Pryder, Dains’t, and a very shaken Elfaust made it out alive; I wonder how views and opinions change after this. I’m also appreciating just how much variety there is between the Collector’s chimeras; sizes, horn types, tail types, and I find that one with the puppy tail in the final panel oddly charming.
Of course, all this great art takes time and concentration. By all means Red, take a well earned break. This comic already updates far more frequently than any other webcomic I follow; by all means, rest, recuperate, and build up the buffer.
Prediction for next … month: Back to Argist to see the gang loading the boat, with doubts from Alinua and dry commentary from Falst about said boat. Maybe have Argist or an emissary of him show up to tell the gang of what happened here if Zuurith does spread the word.
I just want the gang to meet Tarren. Like, they’ll run up to Erin on the docks and be like, “Oh! I forgot to tell you- who are all these people?” and then Erin will either have to explain everything or come up with a fake explanation for Tarren. I also kind of have a feeling that they’ll meet Tarren again.
Yeah, fingers crossed they meet Tarren before they set off as they’re working on the final touches of the ship. I particularly want to see them and Falst interact; Tarren’s cheer and optimism clashing with his dry humour and snarkiness would be fun to watch.
I hope that Tarren gets swept away with the gang if only so that we get more Tarren. i do understand that this would put Tarren in mortal danger though.
Seconding the vote for a Falst/Tarren interaction! Though I might add that, while their temperaments might seem to clash at first, I expect they would quickly start getting along like a house on fire the moment Falst asks any sort of question about runes and spellcarving. Falst is extremely eager to learn, Tarren is eager to teach, and they’re both humble outsiders who are used to breaking the rules just by existing as themselves. They would make a GREAT mentor/student pair.
Ooh, I do like that thought. I can see a scene of Erin and Dainix complimenting Falst’s skill at spellcarving to Tarren, Falst would try and deny it, but Tarren latches on and before you know it they’re describing the intricacies of the boat lacrimas to him, and he’s actually interested.
I hope she has a weak point. That said, if she does, it’s going to be one the heroes will be unwilling to destroy… If not, she could be a deity of all those mutated human monster underground.
shes definitely not a god. the lake goddess and gleicann from the earlier chapters confirmed that
My guess is the weak point will either be Alinua as a competing overpowered life mage, or Erin as the vessel of the void dragon, since we know the dragon killed life earlier, his abilities should be able to leave lasting harm on the collector, even with them being so weakened.
I’m fairly certain her weak point will be Alinua, or rather, what Alinua represents. That dream she had makes it very, very clear that Life does not want what the Collector is trying to achieve. The realization will shatter her, I’m sure
Have a great break, Red! You deserve it!
Red, have a good rest and come back when you’re resfrshed
In the while…
Hope Zuurith send word of the Collector’s visit and eventually it will reach Vash and companions
And this will be not the last time he will see the Collector, for she will be back to “erase/heal the wound” – unless the heroes stop her.. This, ofc, happening in the far future
And hope they find some weak point on the Collector.. dang, smashing, stabbing, slicing, won’t do a thing to her
TL;DR: Objective changed. New target identified.
Oh lawd she comin
Incoming thoughts on the page. They are not organized I typed them quickly in excitement.
I love Zuurith’s point that Vash would not be angry with him for protecting his people. I think Kendal would agree, especially with his “no one dies for me not ever.” I want to reread Vash and Zuurith’s talk in chapter 18.
The Collector seems happier now that she has a science project/ new angle on her current science project. There’s the faces from chapter 1 and 11 that I was missing the previous pages! Her dialogue here reminds me of Erin and the Void Dragon’s convos in ch 7 and 21.
Every so often I am reminded that Vash is actively getting vivisected while our characters are doing stuff.
Love seeing the citizens of Zuurith helping each other on this page. Man they’ve had a rough day(or two? what day is it)
Pyder running to zuurith oh I love that. Don’t think we’re going to get a full Gliecann (help spelling) style change in Zuurith but we’re getting something.
1. I think you spelled Gleicann right? idk. It might be the I and E switched, as I spelled it here.
2. It has *definitely* been less than one day after the Collector appeared, but I think it’s been a few weeks since Tynan, because the gang would need enough time to get to Argist on the coast from, what… the middle of the continent? about? My guess is about 1 1/2 weeks, because it seems like Falst’s arm has healed(mostly) after being broken MULTIPLE TIMES, and we know he heals fast, so that seems like a reasonable estimate.
3. Yeah, I like Pryder too. As the alt-text said a few pages ago, Pryder has the hardest job trying to shape Zuurith’s personality into diplomacy.
Yeah, Zuurith would be a great choice for a “Gleicann-style change,” the second one we’ve heard about and the first one we’d ever see. But Red would have to deem it practical or necessary to create a new character design for him. Perhaps we’ll see that months from now, after Helm, on the return journey, or possibly just a stylized image illustrating someone’s second-hand description, as they explain to the Floof Squad what Zuurith’s like now.
Thank you for writing and taking the time to articulate this beautiful work Red! Take whatever time you need to rest (and hopefully sleep too).
Ohh shoot the Collector’s properly after Kendal now. I don’t like Zuurith all that much but i honestly I can’t blame him for telling her, he has a much bigger duty to protect his people. that being said I hope he sends a message to the gang somehow to give them a head’s up.
Collector summoning that Chimera like “Now we ride, bitches!”
So, exactly what did the Collector mean when she said she has “nothing to lose”? She’s unlikely to die, she has no loved ones or irreplaceable material possessions, but what about progress toward her goals? She’s put in centuries of effort, surely some of that progress could be reversed! Or does she not consider a setback as a loss, because she has the time and ability to recover from one?
Also, considering that the Collector has ascended into an ooze of immortal cells, would soulfire damage her as it did the Psychic Torture Slime? Her attitude suggests that she doesn’t fear it. She’d probably gone after Vash knowing full well what he did to Tynan.
She was referring to Vash, who up until this moment she thought was someone with nothing to lose – as his people were all dead and his city destroyed. But now she knows he does have something to lose, so now she has leverage
I was slightly confused by the “lucky” line myself, unsure if she was talking about Zuurith (wherein she’s lucky that he’s now started prioritizing his people…previously, he may not have backed down) or Vash, who she now knows has something — or rather, someONE, to protect.
Thank you sooooo much for the amazing chapter Red! I hope u enjoy ur well earned time off<3
Speaking of Kendal, since the comic will miss this:
Happy 5th birthday to everyone’s favorite paragon! Born May 18, 2019 with nothing but a cool sword and a stab wound.
Happy Early 5th Birthday to Kendal!
Oh my god, it’s been five years…
Love the Collector’s little grin as she rides off on her chimaera. Zuurith thinks he’s in Aliens, the Collector thinks she’s in Princess Mononoke
I have been thinking. The smith god(I forgot how to spell his name) said that four world shattering forces are converging on dainix in less than a week. Were are the others. The floof squad at best represents two, as if over half of the forces were in one group, he would have said something like”arriving”. Beyond that, he said that the plan was mostly luck. That implies that some of it isn’t luck. Beyond that, how did the collector know to go to zurriuth
I love that Pryder is running to check on Zuurith in the last panel. It’s so sweet, much more so than he deserves.
Have a good rest Red!
Shaa!
Spooky
So she’s a life mage/avatar that sees the body of Stone as something that can actually be healed. Not sure if that mindset is what allows her magic to work this way or if it always could and she just needed to see it that way to do it. Curious if Alinua could do the same now..
The real question is how she made herself intangible/incorporeal to the point that she’s immune to attack. Figuring out how to nullify that is the first step (likely of many) in combatting the Collector.
But how will I survive without semi-daily releases D:
She forgot to ask for directions… Oh well I’m sure she’ll figure something out, diabolus ex machina, show up at the worst possible moment while everyone’s busy fighting and all that. Enjoy your break Red.
The thing is, the Collector looks so NICE. She’s just like this really nice, friendly, cheerful person who happens to be totally fixated on her goal of destroying everything. It’s disturbing.
Bye foreverrrrrrr!
I’m glad to see this encounter turned out all right for the people of Zuurith! (Although I think Elfaust will be needing therapy). For all that it costs our Floof Squad, I’m glad to see Zuurith prioritize his people’s safety. And he’s right, that is the one thing neither Vash nor Kendal would ever hold against him. I kind of hope we’ll see him and his people again…I’m kind of invested now to see how much a god can change.
The list of reasons for the Floof Squad to get the hell out of dodge keeps growing. Though I do wonder how the Collector plans to FIND Kendal et al. It’s possible to guess they’d head for the nearest port, I suppose.
Have a good rest, Red! We’re 1 chapter (and a bit) in, and Arc 2 is already promising to be a wild ride. Possibly literally, if Tarren is involved.
Aww, really, Red? Three weeks? Kidding. Take a looong break, you deserve it.
Nooooooooo I’ve caught up!! Okay can’t wait to see more! Have a good rest, Red!
Y’know I don’t see a lot of people being this up, but personally I cant wait for the Collector to encounter Erin and the VD. Considering how her goal of reviving the primordials (or at least life anyway) directly contrast against the VD’s goal of escaping and presumably eating the entire world, it would be interesting to se how’d she react. Maybe with her first genuine expression of fear in centuries as she realizes whats at stake if the VD succeeds. Another interesting possibility is the VD somehow hijacking Erin for way longer than usual, and for the first time the Collector and the Floof Squad’s goals might align. That probably wont happen though as the collector would probably want Erin dead instead of snapping him out of his shadow funk, plus she’d probably act on her other goals of dissecting Kendal and would be much more concerned with Alinua as a fellow avatar of primordial life. Ultimately I can’t wait for her to inevitable catch up with the Floof squad. As a side note I kinda love the idea of two separate world-ending threats with completely opposite reasons for doing so fighting each other, plus I think the collector and VD would have good chemistry. Maybe the VD would be just as, if not even more scared to fight teh collector than Alinua. Crazy how more people aren’t talking about this.
I did comment about this once(I think a few pages ago), saying basically that I just want it to turn into a three-way Collector vs. VD vs. Life(Alinua) fight. And maybe Crucible Dainix would join it, too? Though he would be on Alinua’s side so still a three-way fight.
But yeah, I wonder how the Collector would react if she heard about VD’s plan.
Also he eats suns, not worlds, but that would still doom the world too…
I am once again begging Yanks to either learn the intricacies of ordinal numbers or use a better date format, lest they make days look like months in the reign of Augustus
You mean how dates go like 5/14/24 means the 14th day of the 5th month in the year of 2024 instead of the 5th day of the 14th month in the year of 2024? Yeah… *shrugs*
Wait, the Romans used day/month/year? Huh, don’t think I knew that. cool.
gawdam
Magnificent work. The chin grab insight was a nice touch =)