I thought the metal smith was going to collect his soul? Or did he do that to Tynan? Idk, maybe he let him go on the condition of a speed run redemption arc or something.
Tahraim probably took Tynan. Vash told Zuurith that if he didn’t stop being a dick then Vash would come back and steal his city, but he was bluffing since he can’t come back to actually enforce that.
Well, it would appear @Question bag’s prediction on the last page was correct! This has many interesting implications, and I must say it would be truly fascinating to see Zuurith get a redemption arc, even if that takes a long time.
That guy’s face when Zuurith picked up the pillar. It’s scared, but also amazed as Zuurith saves one of his people, and there are a whole lot of other emotions there that I can’t put into words. Love it, Red!
This page is so beautiful Red. I’ve said it before just… I love this. I love the expressions on everyone’s faces. I’m crying because the art is so good. The more I look at it the more emotional I get. I think this is my favourite page in the entire comic. Love it.
Oh wow I’m actually awake when this is posted. That’s cool. Yay! The Ultimate Tsundere award goes to Zuurith! I gotta say, props to you Red for making someone like Zuurith somehow understandable and potentially likable later on.
Holy frick, he actually had a heel-face turn. I did not expect that. Well, having your home/city destroyed is a fairly common first step in a character arc.
He turns his imperious gaze to his city,
Sees the citizens helping each other.
One man strains to lift a log from someone’s legs.
And Zuurith flies across to help over there.
idk why but there’s something that’s really getting me about the whole ‘single perfect tear made outta light’ thing rn, because you can just TELL in that moment Zurrith’s questioning SO much about his ideals and what he wants out of himself, and how his people had been without their god in a time of great crisis because he was letting his pride drive him this whole time. But also they’re so thoroughly used to NOT having his help that people react in shock when he does, they’re used to the idea that their own city god wouldn’t help them and doesn’t care about them. Because he never acted like he cared about them anymore.
Why did he do that? Why did he let things get so bad that his people honestly wouldn’t expect him to help them in a time of desperate need?
Even though we’re moving away from Zurrith and back to our heroes now, I think there’s a very interesting offscreen examination of ego and self thats about to go down with Zuurith.
It turns out that “Even though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I’ll fear no death for my god is with me.” cuts both ways, as Zuurith just found out!
Look I know the focus here is more on Zuurith, but can we take a moment to appreciate what those people running back to rescue others actually means?
Zuurith’s entire worldview seems to boil down to people being inherently awful, that they need to be cowed and controlled ‘for the greater good’. He’s one of those guys that believes morality only exists because people fear the consequences/punishment society imposes on them for breaking the rules.
And in this moment his own people are proving that he is wrong to a destructive degree, because under all those draconian systems he imposed on them we only really saw them being awful to each other, passively allowing others to inflict suffering or injustice, and generally existing on a scale of active-to-banal evil. But here, with all those systems stripped away? We finally see them choosing to be kind, empathetic, courageous, and even heroic. Isn’t that beautiful?
I….was not expecting this.
But okay. It’s better than the alternative.
Maybe Zuurith is someone to keep an eye on after all…
(And we thank you for the A:TLA reference, Red. At least I think that’s where you’re getting it.)
Sometimes it takes everything you hold dear to crumble to pieces for you to finally face reality that you were doing horrible things, and with nothing to hide behind you are forced to be better
Hmm, I guess my earlier limerick about Zuurith having no pity was wrong. Ok then, time to make a new one.
There once was a devastated city
whose people were broken and gritty.
They look up, awed,
At the face of their god
As he proves himself capable of pity.
Yay! I always had a sneaking fondness for Zuurith, probably because I can greatly appreciate having a structured environment where all the rules are made clear. Nice to see a kind-of-villain get a redemption arc.
I admit, I was not expecting this. It doesn’t mean that I trust this attitude to stick. Zuurith seems very set in his ways, and has had many opportunities in the past to do the right thing only to shun that option. Him looking upon his devastated city is like looking upon a gaping wound on his own body; he’s helping his people to help himself. Once he’s been rebuilt, and we see this place again in-story sindhalans down the line, I will not be surprised if it’s “Welcome to the new Zuurith, same as the old one.” Usually I’m optimistic about people changing for the better, but there are some out there who wield so much power and who have used that power for evil deeds that I hope instead for them to be forced down from power. Zuurith is one of those people.
Sometimes, when life comes a-knockin’ to show you you’ve been an asshole, it’s less “a-knockin’ ” and more “a-crashing down from the heavens at great velocity”
You love to see it
God. Literally. Red why do you have to write about a bad person who seemed totally detached except, and then redeem him. This hits a little too close to home and now I have to re-read the entire part of the comic that Zurich is in to see it from his perspective. This is going to take me like an hour that I could be working in! Still, very well done page with great art. Gods crying is a mood.
What about the paladins. Voidy made an apearence in their city and i think that that is going to have some ramifications soon. My prediction for the next part of the story is that the gang leaves the city and is hunted down by the paladins.
OG Ryan: what do you mean by mass murderer? the arena? during his conversation with the arenamaster zuurith expresses disdain for the arena and that he’d perfer if it didn’t exist.
Everyone in the comments: the complexities of what this means for Zuurith.
Me (and Bottled.bluebells): the towns people!
@bottled.bluebells, eloquently put. That’s actually a lot like what I was thinking when I first saw the page.
When I read this page I was acknowledging that Zuurith was there, but my real focus was on the background details and all the people. I love how instead of just drawing a few fully drawn characters that are really close to Zuurith Red draws an all out scene with a full crowd all doing realistic things. When she goes through all that work to make it so quality how can you not appreciate the background?
@bottled.bluebells this is spot-on and also reminds me of Red’s analysis of Watchmen. Wait, does that mean this is a fix-fic where the detached “superhero” finally notices and internalizes the everyday kindness of people…?
I think the most important part of this scene is that a good number of the people helping out were the prisoners.
You can see the snake ferin lady in the background and you can see the elephant unstable shifter in the foreground of panel two.
Zurrith beleived that without rules these people would simply run off- continue to be ‘bad’. But they had the oppertunity to escape forever and instead they are helping. I think that is what is changing Zurrith here.
And the destruction from Tynan can help him grow because that’s how gods work I think
Yesssss Let Zurith learn something, let him GROW, let him change. That’s the good shit. I really really love when minor villains are allowed to learn from their mistakes and grow, especially when they’re (at least comparatively) not doing things that bad compared to the other villains. Like yes there’s clearly a lot Zurith has done wrong, a lot a lot, in leading his city, the prison alone is a huge thing, but like… I’m not sure how to phrase this other than like, gods working on a different scale? If that makes sense. Like it or not, this was his city, and he was leading it in the way he felt appropriate, and hopefully with this he can learn to lead it /better/, that there are other ways to accomplish the things he wants to accomplish, or at the very least care more directly about his people.
@alolanvulpix – I’ve said it before, so allow me to quote myself:
“As for Zuurith, being the creature that he is, I see his “distaste” for the bloodsport as entirely performative, a fiction that he puts on for his own benefit. He likes to think of himself as righteous and just, and not even he can mindbend something as objectively inhumane as death matches into that description. Hence this “necessary evil” narrative that he’s built around it, at least for the moment. It also suits his purposes to exercise power over the Arenamaster, and thus posing his acquiescence to the bloodsport as reluctant and conditional reinforces the notion that all power flows from him, all grace and good will is his to grant, thus making his subjects all the more eager to desperately appease his whims.”
Someone also noted that if he didn’t see any value in the bloodsports, he wouldn’t have hired someone whose literal full-time job it is to organize them.
A quick definition from the UN about a certain word starting with ‘G’:
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
We know that Zuurith deliberately targets godless people who come too close to his borders for abduction into the Mountain, a Concentrated Labor Camp, and thus he is guilty of committing acts to deliberately destroy a religious group. We know that he authorizes the bloodsports, which is the organized killing of members of the religious group. We can surmise that the Mountain, which I cannot emphasize enough is a CONCENTRATED LABOR CAMP, causes serious bodily or mental harm to those unlucky enough to toil within its depths, as Concentrated Labor Camps are not known for robust safety protocols to safeguard the Laborers. Likewise, subjecting the godless who refuse to convert/submit to him -such as Dainix- to both repeated death matches and prolonged solitary confinement are conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
While we have no proof one way or the other that prisoners in the Mountain are refused conjugal visits or have their children abducted from them, it’s frightening easy to imagine a scenario where that is both true and common. But even neglecting those last two points, Zuurith is AT LEAST guilty for 3 out of the 5 criteria of G-word as defined by the UN. And considering the size of the Mountain, how Falst estimated that a third of the entire city’s population was subjugated, given the rate at which workers typically perish in a Concentrated Labor Camp, and with even modest speculation as to the numbers of prisoners coerced into joining the Arena (who then also perish), we can easily see how this system of power and control has been responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS.
And even if most of the people subjected to the horrors of the mountain survive their full sentence (which is a very generous assumption, but for the sake of argument let’s just roll with it), each one will still have had years upon years of their lives and labor stolen from them, with nothing to show for it but a lifetime of trauma.
This is the system that Zuurith (and to a lesser extent his people) has fostered over who knows how many years, decades, centuries. The bodies that he has trampled underneath him can never be brought back from the dead, their labor will never be repaid, their sacrifice never be acknowledged. At any point in the past however many years, he could have put a stop to this system as their literal god, and instead he actively cultivated the climate that allowed it to flourish. This is what happens when authoritarian leaders are given free reign to enact their reigns of terror over marginalized people in the name of “efficiency” and “the rule of law.”
But because he picked up a brick and looked a little bit sad, I guess that means we can skip the crimes against humanity tribunal.
Part of what makes this so profound for him is the juxtaposition in seeing the prison, The symbol of his tight control and order, is shattered and useless as a threat yet his people are doing their best with no supervisor or coercion.
Bro, the whole point of this page is that Zuurith is changing. No one said he’s getting off scot-free, we simply don’t know where this story goes yet, but we do know that now he is showing the beginnings of a willingness to change. We don’t know if he will ever (or, indeed, if he can ever) truly make amends for the evils he is guilty of promoting, but we do know that he has finally experienced basic empathy. That’s a good first step.
@OG Ryan you make a lot of good points, but I’d like to point out that “godless” as used in Aurora isn’t a religious category — it literally just means they’re not from a city with a god. The lore page indicates that the term is frequently assumed to mean that people got kicked out of god-cities for being criminals, though that is by no means the only option (see Alinua and the entire town of Windscrest). Also, I can’t find a page where it’s spelled out, but it’s heavily implied the gladiator track is opt-in for a quicker release schedule, rather than “punishment” for failing to comply with Zu-Zu’s system/rule (which goes further to explain why the Skunkmaster is steamed at Dainix’s refusal to kill than if he were forced rather than subtly coerced). So while it is a CLC, it wouldn’t meet the criteria for genocide on religious grounds (might be able to make a case for Ferin as a stand-in for racial categories, but that seems to be more of a case of bias fuelling systemic corruption rather than an organized effort to kill them all).
tl;dr Zuurith is a despot and the prison system is heinous, but it’s not genocide.
As for whether he can/should be redeemed… If he weren’t a city-god, I would definitely be inclined to have him giving up political power as part of any redemption arc. Since he is the literal embodiment of the city as well as its ruler, though, I find it helpful to think of him as the anthropomorphic personification of the society of Zuurith. If viewed through that lens, it’s less “oh we’re going to leave this despot in power because he’s good now, pinkie promise” and more an allegory for a society collectively realizing their failings and working to build a better system.
Thank you to all the commentators who saw Zuurith’s stream of tears and wrote comments. I missed that my first reading too.
Congrats Question bag on your guess being right!
@UnknownGame I have a round about counter argument (besides ‘no, your not’) (Youall have been warned!) I noticed the two people Zuurith helps look a lot like Falst and Erin. Now a good artist/storyteller always (OK- Often, never always) has a reason for why they show something their art. I offer that the reason why Zuurith helps these two is because Zuurith has begun to admires the loyalty Vash gets from his subjects/followers and wants to emulate himself. Just because the Alt-text implies otherwise is not a counter if someone remembers that Red is the co-producer of Overly Sarcastic Productions. A writer/artist of Red’s caliber would NOT just show similar looking characters of her leading players by mistake. I highly doubt was ‘unconsciously’ done – too much work went into it.
Zuurith didn’t hire Arenamaster. That greasy little skunk is his emissary, meaning he was born with a connection to Zuurith that gives him innate knowledge of the prison’s (and arena’s) needs. The vibe I got from their conversation is that the arena is AM’s idea and Z went along with it because that’s AM’s area of expertise.
The prison does release its inmates when they finish their sentences. The goal isn’t just to lock them up for the rest of their lives.
We see some inmates in 1.13.15 and they seem fine. They’ve got food, nobody seems malnurished or injured, and they just seem bored as opposed to miserable.
@Hermit Thrush- No, Zuurith’s thoughts and emotions are his own. According to here. Tl;DR: Zuurith’s personality he was ‘born’ with is based on how his city is perceived, but now that he’s a full-fledged god only his appearance and surface-level mannerisms can be changed like that. The city was probably harsh and controlling before his soul developed, and then he was made harsh and controlling to match. He can change from that on his own, if I’m interpreting other posts right.
@Me So I guess Zuurith isn’t as responsible as a human tyrant would be since his personality wasn’t shaped by his own choices? Tynan is definately evil though, since even before he was complete he went around making people fear him.
@Hermit Thrush: Thank you for the insight. I’ll admit, the way that gods in Aurora sometimes physically manifest and claim direct ownership(?) of their citizens makes mapping that concept onto the irl concept of religion very squishy. But it should be noted that Zuurith’s security very deliberately do not accost Erin Alinua and Falst on the street (at least while they’re not actively engaged in shenanigans) since they have the protection of Asera. I.e: They are not godless. I think a strong case can be made that godless people in this universe constitute a distinct and separate category of people, and the way that they are focused upon by the attentions of the Mountain and the Arena would still meet UN criteria.
But either way, this is still mass murder and cultural annihilation we’re talking about.
As to the quick release program: That’s still a method of coercion used by the Mountain to enforce its will. Looked at from another way, and indeed the way that the Arenamaster presented it to Dainix, the prison threatens to extend an inmate’s sentence unless they “consent” to fighting in the arena. Consent obtained upon pain of imprisonment or death is no consent at all.
Finally, the People vs. Zuurith. It’s possible that since Tynan had not lain claim to any mortals the way that the other gods had, he was uniquely susceptible to Tahraim’s imprisonment. But I do not recall anyone making that explicit, nor was there any attempt made by Vash or Tahraim to find out, which is my biggest frustration with this whole arc. They had an opportunity to at least TRY to permanently entomb Zuurith, and it wasn’t even considered. Which leaves us with the rebuilding efforts.
Absent any kind of Marshal Plan (eg: Germany) or direct military occupation (eg: Japan), I don’t see how major reforms can be imposed on Zuurith, nor do I see how the system will change. Institutional momentum is a thing, and even after a major upheaval like this, societies typically seek to rebuild along lines similar to their original trajectories. And Zuurith himself, being a walking talking personification of institutional momentum, would be the strongest source of that inertia carrying the city back onto its original path of awfulness.
Which is why this sudden heel-face turn feels sickeningly unearned. He hasn’t paid any price for his atrocities, aside from being momentarily inconvenienced by Tynan and taunted by Vash. His city may be in ruins and a significant percentage of his people may be dead, but his corporeal form seems in no way diminished. There is nothing stopping him from once again building the Arena and the Mountain, only “better” this time. A “kinder” arena where combatants are merely maimed instead of killed, and a “gentler” mountain where workers get an odd day off and occasionally some fresh air. The same systems of stealing labor and destroying culture but with a shiny veneer of Progress(TM) this time to appeal to his own already titanic ego.
A life is a life, and it is a travesty when it is destroyed by flooding or by arena combat or by being forced to work underground until it is old and grey. Zuurith and his people have destroyed countless lives, and this is not even close to the reckoning needed to balance that ledger.
While Z may not be bound innately to his city’s beliefs in the way that he was originally created, it isn’t that hard to imagine him still feeling essentially connected to them (as a matter of ego, if nothing else). And if so, their choices in the moment, reacting to this crisis that literally almost destroyed the city that gave rise to him, may well be inspirational to him at a very profound level.
Even if true, that doesn’t guarantee that it lasts. This moment is not, in itself, a heel-face turn — as Red’s commentary made fairly clear, this is just “not as big a jerk as you could have been”. It might — *MIGHT* — turn out to be “the pivotal moment” in a true heel-face turn. Or it might turn out to be “a glance over the shoulder” that vanishes as soon as the crisis is past (or even before then). If he does actually manage an about-face, he’s still going to have a very, very long road to atonement. Easily as long as the road down took.
On the other hand, while might be a sense of either karma or poetic justice in Zuurith being imprisoned the way he did to others, it leads directly to the question “and how is that any better?” The answer, of course, is that it isn’t any better, and the only justification for it would be preventing further harm from being done. In that regard, I have to say that as long as the bluff holds, Vash’s approach is arguably the best bet, _especially_ if there is any doubt as to the possibility of being able to imprison Zuurith without killing his city first. Even if it doesn’t, thing aren’t really any worse than where they otherwise would be.
You’re right about there being nothing stopping him from rebuilding the Arena and going on as before. Or rather, there is nothing _external_ stopping him. Whether he himself can or will stop himself… remains to be seen. He has not paid for his atrocities, but locking him into a knife wouldn’t make him pay for them, either. It might prevent them from recurring, but it just as easily might lead to either the city forming a new god that not just xenophobia but justifiably paranoid of any outside interference… or to a city without a god, left entirely unprotected. “Godless” in a very direct way. Whether or not _Zuurith_ deserves it — do they? _All_ of them?
@ OG Ryan, I’d say he’s paid a price that’s a lot harder for him to get back than if he was just injured: he’s lost the belief that he was right. Any damage to his soul would repair itself on its own, but he can’t really go back to his previous worldview. Like @bottled.bluebells said, Zuurith thought that his system was needed because the people would turn on each other like animals without a leader like him. Yet here, the opposite is occuring. Without his orders, the citizens are banding together to help each other. Even the prisoners, who broke his laws, are doing it! Nobody would be able to stop them from running off into the wilderness, but they’re staying because it’s the right thing to do, laboring alongside the guards who arrested and imprisoned them. If there’s anything that more consisely rejects what Zuurith stands for, I can’t think of it. It’s really beautiful.
Kendal, Vash, Tahraim, and even Tynan have been telling him what a terrible god he is, for holding himself above his people when he should be taking care of them, and they’ve been proven right. The mountain, his great prison, has been split open. They won’t be locking anyone in there anytime soon. His chain, the symbol of his power, is probably destroyed from Tynan’s blast. He’s been brought low plenty. And while that doesn’t make up for whatever amount of people died under his thumb, he’s got a long time to get to work on that.
@Stark9865 thanks for the link to the tumblr post! I’m not on tumblr, so I hadn’t seen that bit of lore. Overall I’m glad that gods have free will, though I have mixed feelings about how it applies to Zuurith. On the one hand, he can change, which is encouraging for the possibility of a redemption arc. On the other hand, he can change, as someone capable of making his own decisions, all of what he did up to now was by choice. I’m generally in favor of redemption arcs (and suspect that might be where Red is going given what she’s said about them in Trope Talks), but it’s going to be a long, hard road if Zuurith truly wants to atone for what he’s done.
@Hermit Thrush: Even if you don’t have an account like me, you can still look through the posts. There’s some interesting lore to be found, among Red’s other thoughts. A few months ago there was this big discussion about something called the Amalgam Star, which is aparently Life’s parent, and from there people learned about where the other primordials came from. Fascinating stuff.
Aulde:
First, I know that Red was being sarcastic in the alt text. The alt text isn’t what Zuurith is saying or thinking. What I’m saying is that, from what we’ve already seen of his stubbornness, Zuurith doesn’t seem like the type of person to undergo a heel-face turn; and even if he is undergoing one, it’s driven by Vash’s threat hanging over his head, and reinforced out of a sense of personal devastation over seeing his city trashed.
Second; Zuurith only saw Erin once through a purple-tinted magic hologram, and he didn’t see Falst at all. He wouldn’t have seen this human and half-elf in the crowd and thought “Ah, those two look like two of the people who were with Vash and not-Vash. I’ll help these two specifically because of that.” Simple coincidences in appearance are possible, even in storytelling.
OG Ryan:
While I agree with you in that Zuurith has done and abided too many atrocities to be worthy of redemption, I want to say a couple things.
1) Being godless in this setting isn’t a religious practice (or lack of one), it’s a person living in a rural area, being nomadic, or being exiled from a larger city-state or nation. It’s still deeply f*cked up that godless individuals were abducted and imprisoned for simply being near the city, but it’s not religious persecution; it’s more like a specialized form of xenophobia.
2) A change to the city’s government from within would be preferable to a post-WW2-style military occupation. Organizing the people downtrodden by the system to take Vash’s threat into their own hands would be a viable way to dethrone Zuurith from within; after all, without his system in place, he’s just some guy, no matter how immortal he is.
Yes! I love that webcomic. Interesting to note that, on the surface, Solomon David is a lot more polite and affable than Zuurith is, but is actually a lot worse, given that his dominion spans nigh-incomprehensibly further than just one city, and he’s had many more millennia than Zuurith to commit or abet atrocities; we see that he conscripts slaves to build enormous monuments that get trashed by violent superpowered gladiatorial combat only days after their completion, and he’s one of the current main seven conquering emperors in all of creation. What else has he done that we just never see or hear about?
I get what people in the comments are saying about wanting a revolution rather than the guy in charge of a city built on slavery having a change of heart, but with the way the world red has established works I just don’t see how she could realistically have this kind of revolution in such a short span of time. It’s been established that cities in aurora are run by the city god themself with the help of emissaries born into the role. With a government set up like that I think the change of heart on the gods part is just about the only way for any meaningful change to occur. How could the people really rise up against Zuurith? They can’t exactly threaten to kill him or anything. The only way to do that would be to destroy the city Zuurith and then these people would be left without a home.
None of that is to excuse Zuurith of the terrible things he’s done, I completely agree with commenters who have characterised his system as genocide. Even if you don’t count godless in general as an ethnic or religious group, ignans most certainly are. Despite Ignans having a god to represent them just as citizens of cities do, it’s clear that Zuurith doesn’t respect caliban enough to consider their people to have protection and instead views them as just as godless as the rest of his prisoners.
I hope that we get to come back to Zuurith at some point far down the line to see how much it’s actually changed. I agree with commenters saying Zuurith is unlikely to have changed much just because he is feeling sympathy in this moment. However, the process of rebuilding the city will take a long time and I think it’s possible for him keep changing in small ways during that time until the small changes add up to something big that could actually make a difference. Though I still think there would be room to improve whenever vash swings by to make good on his threat to check up on Zuurith.
One final hopeful thought: the damn mountains cracked open! They can rebuild the city, but I don’t see how they could rebuild that, and if they try, I doubt any of the mountains formers occupants would be interested in helping. It’ll be much more difficult to corral them into doing forced labour without it.
The Gods in Red’s story don’t seem to have a Zeus, Tahraim mebbe little bit Odin; but just as much Hephestius.
I in no way shape or form endorse having a rapist egomaniac be in charge of the Gods!
In this story the Gods seem as much like local nobility with their powers (unlike magic, Ferris etc) being tied to *there “domain” and an “absent” higher nobility?
The brushstrokes are well done, referential to stories Red (and most of us) love without plagiarizing or reskinning a story in a different time/universe;
If I had to sum up the world building it would be Gods as Lords, not a separate, both invisible and omniscient GOD…
Early myths and recorded stories as Red pointed out in her Deus ex machine video, took mortal/god interactions as the norm; to people living in that era mebbe it felt more like Red’s story than our current (Now) reality and how that “feels”
To be objective that “feel” would have to be differentiated and the parameters of what it “feels” like to be in a corporeal body delineated.
Subjectively = ART = <3 ???
Based on how territorial and ubiquitous the gods are I’d be inclined to think that if you got rid of Zuurrith the process that birth city gods might start again and you’d have a new city god, who might not be much different from Zuurrith (might be worse) in short order, meet the new boss same as the old boss. Or a foreign god might decide to make a move now that the city was no longer protected (and one willing to do such a thing would probably not be particularly nice) etc. Communities without gods (stably for a long period of time) are presumably too small to generate a god (or interest from outside) or have some other factor both stopping the formation of a local God and the incursion of external gods.
i think i’ve seen a few people say that it’s unreasonable for zuurith to have a redemption arc because he got out of the event uninjured/uneffected by it, but he literally had his worldview shattered, and i would honestly be suprised if his behavior didn’t change at all. zuurith has viewed everything he’s done as nessesary evils and now he’s being shown that they weren’t nessesary after all. even if zuurith doesn’t feel pity or empathy for the people in his city, he is prideful in the sense that he likes to think that he’s always right, so i think that it’s unlikely that he would continue to something that he thinks is wrong just because it’s what he has been doing for a long time.
also (and this is entirely my opinion) i don’t think zuurith is crying because of pity for the people caught in the destruction or anything like that. i think zuurith is crying because he realized that he was wrong and zuurith is definately the type of person to cry over the fact that they were wrong.
OH MY GOOGLY EYES NEW CHAPTER ART!
If we assume “petri” is in terms of stone or becoming solid, and “ichor” meaning blood, that is one heck of a cool idea and the art is heavenly!
@The Unknown Game- Thank you for your thoughtful response! Point taken! 🙂 But I will wait to see if evidence supports you or someone says Red says so. What is more important is to enjoy Red’s story.
Reading the later comments I pose a question- Do the Gods model the people in their city or the people and the God shape each other?
The thing that Zuurith’s “redemption” hammered home for me is actually the scale of the disaster. I mean I was expecting flooded homes and destroyed supplies that would be a bit problem. But the storm part really leveled the city. The suffering if very intimidate and widespread.
Of course, Zuurith is probably more aware of that than a mortal in his position would be. Connected to the city and citizens as the city god he is. Despite being the type of person who will use bloodsport as a distraction and a prison complex as the backbone of his city, and he was probably pretty aware of that too.
So it didn’t come off as “Zuurith cries the the face of disaster” its “the disaster is so bad Zuurith cries”.
There is so much here conveyed without words, in this page and the one before it. The stark difference between his old, oppressive systems of law compared to his people, who are hurting now,, amazingly done.
TO THE ONE GUY WHO SAID ZUURITH WAS GONNA HELP A GUY
RED DODGEBALL
OH MY GOD YESSSSS HEARTS LETS GOOOO IM SO NORMAL HE CHANGING <333333
Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.
I thought the metal smith was going to collect his soul? Or did he do that to Tynan? Idk, maybe he let him go on the condition of a speed run redemption arc or something.
Tahraim probably took Tynan. Vash told Zuurith that if he didn’t stop being a dick then Vash would come back and steal his city, but he was bluffing since he can’t come back to actually enforce that.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: it’s not like I like you or anything, citizen
Image source: zuurith
Well, it would appear @Question bag’s prediction on the last page was correct! This has many interesting implications, and I must say it would be truly fascinating to see Zuurith get a redemption arc, even if that takes a long time.
Life magic script says: “STOP BLEEDING, CLOSE WOUND”
OH MY GOD HES CRYING!!??
How DARE you make me feel emotional for this asshole, Red >:(
That guy’s face when Zuurith picked up the pillar. It’s scared, but also amazed as Zuurith saves one of his people, and there are a whole lot of other emotions there that I can’t put into words. Love it, Red!
zuurith’s heart grew three sizes that day
Fully with Red here: not as big of a jerk as you could’ve been, Zuzu
@Beansprout Wow, great spot! He really is crying!
Man, that Intimidation check really worked its magic on Zuuzuu
This page is so beautiful Red. I’ve said it before just… I love this. I love the expressions on everyone’s faces. I’m crying because the art is so good. The more I look at it the more emotional I get. I think this is my favourite page in the entire comic. Love it.
REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC REDEMPTION ARC
WAIT EVERYONE. HE. HES CRYING.
Wait holy shit he’s crying!!!
Oh wow I’m actually awake when this is posted. That’s cool. Yay! The Ultimate Tsundere award goes to Zuurith! I gotta say, props to you Red for making someone like Zuurith somehow understandable and potentially likable later on.
Holy frick, he actually had a heel-face turn. I did not expect that. Well, having your home/city destroyed is a fairly common first step in a character arc.
He turns his imperious gaze to his city,
Sees the citizens helping each other.
One man strains to lift a log from someone’s legs.
And Zuurith flies across to help over there.
First time doing this from university!
Didn’t notice the tears until a commenter pointed them out, might add something about them,
“What will you do?”
“Whatever I can.”
I’m reeeeeeeeally not interested in a redemption arc for a mass murderer.
Hm, that could be useful
Gods are made by their people, they are how they view them, what they believe them to be.
This has changed Zuurith forever. Not just the god, or the physical city, but it’s people.
And the god changes with them.
First act of about 90.000 hours of community service.
idk why but there’s something that’s really getting me about the whole ‘single perfect tear made outta light’ thing rn, because you can just TELL in that moment Zurrith’s questioning SO much about his ideals and what he wants out of himself, and how his people had been without their god in a time of great crisis because he was letting his pride drive him this whole time. But also they’re so thoroughly used to NOT having his help that people react in shock when he does, they’re used to the idea that their own city god wouldn’t help them and doesn’t care about them. Because he never acted like he cared about them anymore.
Why did he do that? Why did he let things get so bad that his people honestly wouldn’t expect him to help them in a time of desperate need?
Even though we’re moving away from Zurrith and back to our heroes now, I think there’s a very interesting offscreen examination of ego and self thats about to go down with Zuurith.
Red reveals her priorities with the uwu-ification of fantasy Pol Pot, more at 11.
It turns out that “Even though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I’ll fear no death for my god is with me.” cuts both ways, as Zuurith just found out!
No wait this is actually way better
Will some character development matter
I adore the that when gods cry, their tears glow, that is amazing. I hope all the other gods do that too and it’s not just Zuurith.
Yayyyyyyyy!!!!!!
Son of a… How dare you make me feel sorry for this arrogant blowfish
Look, everybody! He’s taking baby steps.
That’s just..wow. This page really hit me in the feels, it adds so much dimension to Zurrith’s character
Look I know the focus here is more on Zuurith, but can we take a moment to appreciate what those people running back to rescue others actually means?
Zuurith’s entire worldview seems to boil down to people being inherently awful, that they need to be cowed and controlled ‘for the greater good’. He’s one of those guys that believes morality only exists because people fear the consequences/punishment society imposes on them for breaking the rules.
And in this moment his own people are proving that he is wrong to a destructive degree, because under all those draconian systems he imposed on them we only really saw them being awful to each other, passively allowing others to inflict suffering or injustice, and generally existing on a scale of active-to-banal evil. But here, with all those systems stripped away? We finally see them choosing to be kind, empathetic, courageous, and even heroic. Isn’t that beautiful?
Zuurith gets +10 morality
Is that a tear going down Zuurith’s face?
I….was not expecting this.
But okay. It’s better than the alternative.
Maybe Zuurith is someone to keep an eye on after all…
(And we thank you for the A:TLA reference, Red. At least I think that’s where you’re getting it.)
Sometimes it takes everything you hold dear to crumble to pieces for you to finally face reality that you were doing horrible things, and with nothing to hide behind you are forced to be better
Hmm, I guess my earlier limerick about Zuurith having no pity was wrong. Ok then, time to make a new one.
There once was a devastated city
whose people were broken and gritty.
They look up, awed,
At the face of their god
As he proves himself capable of pity.
@bottled.bluebells
I really like your interpretation of why he’s changing now and what is likely going on in his head!
BREAKING NEWS:
Zuurith has emotions besides rage! Development leaves commenters shocked!
Yay! I always had a sneaking fondness for Zuurith, probably because I can greatly appreciate having a structured environment where all the rules are made clear. Nice to see a kind-of-villain get a redemption arc.
YAYY
The humbling of Zuurith, love it.
The other commenters have already said everything I needed to say.
also I feel like I need an alt cut where Zuurith throws the log away with a barely audible ‘yeet’
I admit, I was not expecting this. It doesn’t mean that I trust this attitude to stick. Zuurith seems very set in his ways, and has had many opportunities in the past to do the right thing only to shun that option. Him looking upon his devastated city is like looking upon a gaping wound on his own body; he’s helping his people to help himself. Once he’s been rebuilt, and we see this place again in-story sindhalans down the line, I will not be surprised if it’s “Welcome to the new Zuurith, same as the old one.” Usually I’m optimistic about people changing for the better, but there are some out there who wield so much power and who have used that power for evil deeds that I hope instead for them to be forced down from power. Zuurith is one of those people.
hes finally sober and realized the damage that has been done huh? good thing hes up off his high horse. mabye we can grow to like zuurith.
Ohhh character development, actually kinda caring about the people who you’re supposed to be the protector of
*Reads comments*
Holy crap, he is crying!
We’re aaaaall in this together!
Yay, Zuurith has found some chill.
Is…Zuurith…crying? Or is that just Totally Normal God Eye Things
Is…Zuurith…crying? Or is that just Totally Normal God Eye Things?
Sometimes, when life comes a-knockin’ to show you you’ve been an asshole, it’s less “a-knockin’ ” and more “a-crashing down from the heavens at great velocity”
You love to see it
God. Literally. Red why do you have to write about a bad person who seemed totally detached except, and then redeem him. This hits a little too close to home and now I have to re-read the entire part of the comic that Zurich is in to see it from his perspective. This is going to take me like an hour that I could be working in! Still, very well done page with great art. Gods crying is a mood.
What about the paladins. Voidy made an apearence in their city and i think that that is going to have some ramifications soon. My prediction for the next part of the story is that the gang leaves the city and is hunted down by the paladins.
OG Ryan: what do you mean by mass murderer? the arena? during his conversation with the arenamaster zuurith expresses disdain for the arena and that he’d perfer if it didn’t exist.
Everyone in the comments: the complexities of what this means for Zuurith.
Me (and Bottled.bluebells): the towns people!
@bottled.bluebells, eloquently put. That’s actually a lot like what I was thinking when I first saw the page.
When I read this page I was acknowledging that Zuurith was there, but my real focus was on the background details and all the people. I love how instead of just drawing a few fully drawn characters that are really close to Zuurith Red draws an all out scene with a full crowd all doing realistic things. When she goes through all that work to make it so quality how can you not appreciate the background?
@bottled.bluebells this is spot-on and also reminds me of Red’s analysis of Watchmen. Wait, does that mean this is a fix-fic where the detached “superhero” finally notices and internalizes the everyday kindness of people…?
I think the most important part of this scene is that a good number of the people helping out were the prisoners.
You can see the snake ferin lady in the background and you can see the elephant unstable shifter in the foreground of panel two.
Zurrith beleived that without rules these people would simply run off- continue to be ‘bad’. But they had the oppertunity to escape forever and instead they are helping. I think that is what is changing Zurrith here.
And the destruction from Tynan can help him grow because that’s how gods work I think
I’M NOT CRYING IT’S JUST MY JUSTICE POWERS LEAKING SOME SHUT UP
Now thats what I call character development
Yesssss Let Zurith learn something, let him GROW, let him change. That’s the good shit. I really really love when minor villains are allowed to learn from their mistakes and grow, especially when they’re (at least comparatively) not doing things that bad compared to the other villains. Like yes there’s clearly a lot Zurith has done wrong, a lot a lot, in leading his city, the prison alone is a huge thing, but like… I’m not sure how to phrase this other than like, gods working on a different scale? If that makes sense. Like it or not, this was his city, and he was leading it in the way he felt appropriate, and hopefully with this he can learn to lead it /better/, that there are other ways to accomplish the things he wants to accomplish, or at the very least care more directly about his people.
@alolanvulpix – I’ve said it before, so allow me to quote myself:
“As for Zuurith, being the creature that he is, I see his “distaste” for the bloodsport as entirely performative, a fiction that he puts on for his own benefit. He likes to think of himself as righteous and just, and not even he can mindbend something as objectively inhumane as death matches into that description. Hence this “necessary evil” narrative that he’s built around it, at least for the moment. It also suits his purposes to exercise power over the Arenamaster, and thus posing his acquiescence to the bloodsport as reluctant and conditional reinforces the notion that all power flows from him, all grace and good will is his to grant, thus making his subjects all the more eager to desperately appease his whims.”
Someone also noted that if he didn’t see any value in the bloodsports, he wouldn’t have hired someone whose literal full-time job it is to organize them.
A quick definition from the UN about a certain word starting with ‘G’:
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
We know that Zuurith deliberately targets godless people who come too close to his borders for abduction into the Mountain, a Concentrated Labor Camp, and thus he is guilty of committing acts to deliberately destroy a religious group. We know that he authorizes the bloodsports, which is the organized killing of members of the religious group. We can surmise that the Mountain, which I cannot emphasize enough is a CONCENTRATED LABOR CAMP, causes serious bodily or mental harm to those unlucky enough to toil within its depths, as Concentrated Labor Camps are not known for robust safety protocols to safeguard the Laborers. Likewise, subjecting the godless who refuse to convert/submit to him -such as Dainix- to both repeated death matches and prolonged solitary confinement are conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
While we have no proof one way or the other that prisoners in the Mountain are refused conjugal visits or have their children abducted from them, it’s frightening easy to imagine a scenario where that is both true and common. But even neglecting those last two points, Zuurith is AT LEAST guilty for 3 out of the 5 criteria of G-word as defined by the UN. And considering the size of the Mountain, how Falst estimated that a third of the entire city’s population was subjugated, given the rate at which workers typically perish in a Concentrated Labor Camp, and with even modest speculation as to the numbers of prisoners coerced into joining the Arena (who then also perish), we can easily see how this system of power and control has been responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS.
And even if most of the people subjected to the horrors of the mountain survive their full sentence (which is a very generous assumption, but for the sake of argument let’s just roll with it), each one will still have had years upon years of their lives and labor stolen from them, with nothing to show for it but a lifetime of trauma.
This is the system that Zuurith (and to a lesser extent his people) has fostered over who knows how many years, decades, centuries. The bodies that he has trampled underneath him can never be brought back from the dead, their labor will never be repaid, their sacrifice never be acknowledged. At any point in the past however many years, he could have put a stop to this system as their literal god, and instead he actively cultivated the climate that allowed it to flourish. This is what happens when authoritarian leaders are given free reign to enact their reigns of terror over marginalized people in the name of “efficiency” and “the rule of law.”
But because he picked up a brick and looked a little bit sad, I guess that means we can skip the crimes against humanity tribunal.
Part of what makes this so profound for him is the juxtaposition in seeing the prison, The symbol of his tight control and order, is shattered and useless as a threat yet his people are doing their best with no supervisor or coercion.
The systems that represent him were never needed.
In its own way it frees him from his own biases.
@OG Ryan
Bro, the whole point of this page is that Zuurith is changing. No one said he’s getting off scot-free, we simply don’t know where this story goes yet, but we do know that now he is showing the beginnings of a willingness to change. We don’t know if he will ever (or, indeed, if he can ever) truly make amends for the evils he is guilty of promoting, but we do know that he has finally experienced basic empathy. That’s a good first step.
@OG Ryan you make a lot of good points, but I’d like to point out that “godless” as used in Aurora isn’t a religious category — it literally just means they’re not from a city with a god. The lore page indicates that the term is frequently assumed to mean that people got kicked out of god-cities for being criminals, though that is by no means the only option (see Alinua and the entire town of Windscrest). Also, I can’t find a page where it’s spelled out, but it’s heavily implied the gladiator track is opt-in for a quicker release schedule, rather than “punishment” for failing to comply with Zu-Zu’s system/rule (which goes further to explain why the Skunkmaster is steamed at Dainix’s refusal to kill than if he were forced rather than subtly coerced). So while it is a CLC, it wouldn’t meet the criteria for genocide on religious grounds (might be able to make a case for Ferin as a stand-in for racial categories, but that seems to be more of a case of bias fuelling systemic corruption rather than an organized effort to kill them all).
tl;dr Zuurith is a despot and the prison system is heinous, but it’s not genocide.
As for whether he can/should be redeemed… If he weren’t a city-god, I would definitely be inclined to have him giving up political power as part of any redemption arc. Since he is the literal embodiment of the city as well as its ruler, though, I find it helpful to think of him as the anthropomorphic personification of the society of Zuurith. If viewed through that lens, it’s less “oh we’re going to leave this despot in power because he’s good now, pinkie promise” and more an allegory for a society collectively realizing their failings and working to build a better system.
Thank you to all the commentators who saw Zuurith’s stream of tears and wrote comments. I missed that my first reading too.
Congrats Question bag on your guess being right!
@UnknownGame I have a round about counter argument (besides ‘no, your not’) (Youall have been warned!) I noticed the two people Zuurith helps look a lot like Falst and Erin. Now a good artist/storyteller always (OK- Often, never always) has a reason for why they show something their art. I offer that the reason why Zuurith helps these two is because Zuurith has begun to admires the loyalty Vash gets from his subjects/followers and wants to emulate himself. Just because the Alt-text implies otherwise is not a counter if someone remembers that Red is the co-producer of Overly Sarcastic Productions. A writer/artist of Red’s caliber would NOT just show similar looking characters of her leading players by mistake. I highly doubt was ‘unconsciously’ done – too much work went into it.
Yo he actually looks like almost sorry in that last panel – good for him!
@ OG Ryan: A couple things
Zuurith didn’t hire Arenamaster. That greasy little skunk is his emissary, meaning he was born with a connection to Zuurith that gives him innate knowledge of the prison’s (and arena’s) needs. The vibe I got from their conversation is that the arena is AM’s idea and Z went along with it because that’s AM’s area of expertise.
The prison does release its inmates when they finish their sentences. The goal isn’t just to lock them up for the rest of their lives.
We see some inmates in 1.13.15 and they seem fine. They’ve got food, nobody seems malnurished or injured, and they just seem bored as opposed to miserable.
@Hermit Thrush- No, Zuurith’s thoughts and emotions are his own. According to here. Tl;DR: Zuurith’s personality he was ‘born’ with is based on how his city is perceived, but now that he’s a full-fledged god only his appearance and surface-level mannerisms can be changed like that. The city was probably harsh and controlling before his soul developed, and then he was made harsh and controlling to match. He can change from that on his own, if I’m interpreting other posts right.
@Me So I guess Zuurith isn’t as responsible as a human tyrant would be since his personality wasn’t shaped by his own choices? Tynan is definately evil though, since even before he was complete he went around making people fear him.
@Hermit Thrush: Thank you for the insight. I’ll admit, the way that gods in Aurora sometimes physically manifest and claim direct ownership(?) of their citizens makes mapping that concept onto the irl concept of religion very squishy. But it should be noted that Zuurith’s security very deliberately do not accost Erin Alinua and Falst on the street (at least while they’re not actively engaged in shenanigans) since they have the protection of Asera. I.e: They are not godless. I think a strong case can be made that godless people in this universe constitute a distinct and separate category of people, and the way that they are focused upon by the attentions of the Mountain and the Arena would still meet UN criteria.
But either way, this is still mass murder and cultural annihilation we’re talking about.
As to the quick release program: That’s still a method of coercion used by the Mountain to enforce its will. Looked at from another way, and indeed the way that the Arenamaster presented it to Dainix, the prison threatens to extend an inmate’s sentence unless they “consent” to fighting in the arena. Consent obtained upon pain of imprisonment or death is no consent at all.
Finally, the People vs. Zuurith. It’s possible that since Tynan had not lain claim to any mortals the way that the other gods had, he was uniquely susceptible to Tahraim’s imprisonment. But I do not recall anyone making that explicit, nor was there any attempt made by Vash or Tahraim to find out, which is my biggest frustration with this whole arc. They had an opportunity to at least TRY to permanently entomb Zuurith, and it wasn’t even considered. Which leaves us with the rebuilding efforts.
Absent any kind of Marshal Plan (eg: Germany) or direct military occupation (eg: Japan), I don’t see how major reforms can be imposed on Zuurith, nor do I see how the system will change. Institutional momentum is a thing, and even after a major upheaval like this, societies typically seek to rebuild along lines similar to their original trajectories. And Zuurith himself, being a walking talking personification of institutional momentum, would be the strongest source of that inertia carrying the city back onto its original path of awfulness.
Which is why this sudden heel-face turn feels sickeningly unearned. He hasn’t paid any price for his atrocities, aside from being momentarily inconvenienced by Tynan and taunted by Vash. His city may be in ruins and a significant percentage of his people may be dead, but his corporeal form seems in no way diminished. There is nothing stopping him from once again building the Arena and the Mountain, only “better” this time. A “kinder” arena where combatants are merely maimed instead of killed, and a “gentler” mountain where workers get an odd day off and occasionally some fresh air. The same systems of stealing labor and destroying culture but with a shiny veneer of Progress(TM) this time to appeal to his own already titanic ego.
A life is a life, and it is a travesty when it is destroyed by flooding or by arena combat or by being forced to work underground until it is old and grey. Zuurith and his people have destroyed countless lives, and this is not even close to the reckoning needed to balance that ledger.
I really like that the visual storytelling that started the whole strip is making a return now that we’re at the end of such a big story ark
this is such a nice way to tone down the action. zurrith 🙂
@OG Ryan (partially), but perhaps more generally:
While Z may not be bound innately to his city’s beliefs in the way that he was originally created, it isn’t that hard to imagine him still feeling essentially connected to them (as a matter of ego, if nothing else). And if so, their choices in the moment, reacting to this crisis that literally almost destroyed the city that gave rise to him, may well be inspirational to him at a very profound level.
Even if true, that doesn’t guarantee that it lasts. This moment is not, in itself, a heel-face turn — as Red’s commentary made fairly clear, this is just “not as big a jerk as you could have been”. It might — *MIGHT* — turn out to be “the pivotal moment” in a true heel-face turn. Or it might turn out to be “a glance over the shoulder” that vanishes as soon as the crisis is past (or even before then). If he does actually manage an about-face, he’s still going to have a very, very long road to atonement. Easily as long as the road down took.
On the other hand, while might be a sense of either karma or poetic justice in Zuurith being imprisoned the way he did to others, it leads directly to the question “and how is that any better?” The answer, of course, is that it isn’t any better, and the only justification for it would be preventing further harm from being done. In that regard, I have to say that as long as the bluff holds, Vash’s approach is arguably the best bet, _especially_ if there is any doubt as to the possibility of being able to imprison Zuurith without killing his city first. Even if it doesn’t, thing aren’t really any worse than where they otherwise would be.
You’re right about there being nothing stopping him from rebuilding the Arena and going on as before. Or rather, there is nothing _external_ stopping him. Whether he himself can or will stop himself… remains to be seen. He has not paid for his atrocities, but locking him into a knife wouldn’t make him pay for them, either. It might prevent them from recurring, but it just as easily might lead to either the city forming a new god that not just xenophobia but justifiably paranoid of any outside interference… or to a city without a god, left entirely unprotected. “Godless” in a very direct way. Whether or not _Zuurith_ deserves it — do they? _All_ of them?
@ OG Ryan, I’d say he’s paid a price that’s a lot harder for him to get back than if he was just injured: he’s lost the belief that he was right. Any damage to his soul would repair itself on its own, but he can’t really go back to his previous worldview. Like @bottled.bluebells said, Zuurith thought that his system was needed because the people would turn on each other like animals without a leader like him. Yet here, the opposite is occuring. Without his orders, the citizens are banding together to help each other. Even the prisoners, who broke his laws, are doing it! Nobody would be able to stop them from running off into the wilderness, but they’re staying because it’s the right thing to do, laboring alongside the guards who arrested and imprisoned them. If there’s anything that more consisely rejects what Zuurith stands for, I can’t think of it. It’s really beautiful.
Kendal, Vash, Tahraim, and even Tynan have been telling him what a terrible god he is, for holding himself above his people when he should be taking care of them, and they’ve been proven right. The mountain, his great prison, has been split open. They won’t be locking anyone in there anytime soon. His chain, the symbol of his power, is probably destroyed from Tynan’s blast. He’s been brought low plenty. And while that doesn’t make up for whatever amount of people died under his thumb, he’s got a long time to get to work on that.
@Stark9865 thanks for the link to the tumblr post! I’m not on tumblr, so I hadn’t seen that bit of lore. Overall I’m glad that gods have free will, though I have mixed feelings about how it applies to Zuurith. On the one hand, he can change, which is encouraging for the possibility of a redemption arc. On the other hand, he can change, as someone capable of making his own decisions, all of what he did up to now was by choice. I’m generally in favor of redemption arcs (and suspect that might be where Red is going given what she’s said about them in Trope Talks), but it’s going to be a long, hard road if Zuurith truly wants to atone for what he’s done.
@Hermit Thrush: Even if you don’t have an account like me, you can still look through the posts. There’s some interesting lore to be found, among Red’s other thoughts. A few months ago there was this big discussion about something called the Amalgam Star, which is aparently Life’s parent, and from there people learned about where the other primordials came from. Fascinating stuff.
Aulde:
First, I know that Red was being sarcastic in the alt text. The alt text isn’t what Zuurith is saying or thinking. What I’m saying is that, from what we’ve already seen of his stubbornness, Zuurith doesn’t seem like the type of person to undergo a heel-face turn; and even if he is undergoing one, it’s driven by Vash’s threat hanging over his head, and reinforced out of a sense of personal devastation over seeing his city trashed.
Second; Zuurith only saw Erin once through a purple-tinted magic hologram, and he didn’t see Falst at all. He wouldn’t have seen this human and half-elf in the crowd and thought “Ah, those two look like two of the people who were with Vash and not-Vash. I’ll help these two specifically because of that.” Simple coincidences in appearance are possible, even in storytelling.
OG Ryan:
While I agree with you in that Zuurith has done and abided too many atrocities to be worthy of redemption, I want to say a couple things.
1) Being godless in this setting isn’t a religious practice (or lack of one), it’s a person living in a rural area, being nomadic, or being exiled from a larger city-state or nation. It’s still deeply f*cked up that godless individuals were abducted and imprisoned for simply being near the city, but it’s not religious persecution; it’s more like a specialized form of xenophobia.
2) A change to the city’s government from within would be preferable to a post-WW2-style military occupation. Organizing the people downtrodden by the system to take Vash’s threat into their own hands would be a viable way to dethrone Zuurith from within; after all, without his system in place, he’s just some guy, no matter how immortal he is.
Anyone else look at that last panel and immediately have the mind snap back to Solomon David in Kill Six Billion Demons?
https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/king-of-swords-1-9/
Yes! I love that webcomic. Interesting to note that, on the surface, Solomon David is a lot more polite and affable than Zuurith is, but is actually a lot worse, given that his dominion spans nigh-incomprehensibly further than just one city, and he’s had many more millennia than Zuurith to commit or abet atrocities; we see that he conscripts slaves to build enormous monuments that get trashed by violent superpowered gladiatorial combat only days after their completion, and he’s one of the current main seven conquering emperors in all of creation. What else has he done that we just never see or hear about?
I get what people in the comments are saying about wanting a revolution rather than the guy in charge of a city built on slavery having a change of heart, but with the way the world red has established works I just don’t see how she could realistically have this kind of revolution in such a short span of time. It’s been established that cities in aurora are run by the city god themself with the help of emissaries born into the role. With a government set up like that I think the change of heart on the gods part is just about the only way for any meaningful change to occur. How could the people really rise up against Zuurith? They can’t exactly threaten to kill him or anything. The only way to do that would be to destroy the city Zuurith and then these people would be left without a home.
None of that is to excuse Zuurith of the terrible things he’s done, I completely agree with commenters who have characterised his system as genocide. Even if you don’t count godless in general as an ethnic or religious group, ignans most certainly are. Despite Ignans having a god to represent them just as citizens of cities do, it’s clear that Zuurith doesn’t respect caliban enough to consider their people to have protection and instead views them as just as godless as the rest of his prisoners.
I hope that we get to come back to Zuurith at some point far down the line to see how much it’s actually changed. I agree with commenters saying Zuurith is unlikely to have changed much just because he is feeling sympathy in this moment. However, the process of rebuilding the city will take a long time and I think it’s possible for him keep changing in small ways during that time until the small changes add up to something big that could actually make a difference. Though I still think there would be room to improve whenever vash swings by to make good on his threat to check up on Zuurith.
One final hopeful thought: the damn mountains cracked open! They can rebuild the city, but I don’t see how they could rebuild that, and if they try, I doubt any of the mountains formers occupants would be interested in helping. It’ll be much more difficult to corral them into doing forced labour without it.
@bottled.bluebells Indeed, it’s beautiful.
TL;DR: Look at that, big old jerk who just got his city wrecked is no longer being such a big old jerk.
Character development? For my antagonist?! Scandalous. I love it.
The Gods in Red’s story don’t seem to have a Zeus, Tahraim mebbe little bit Odin; but just as much Hephestius.
I in no way shape or form endorse having a rapist egomaniac be in charge of the Gods!
In this story the Gods seem as much like local nobility with their powers (unlike magic, Ferris etc) being tied to *there “domain” and an “absent” higher nobility?
The brushstrokes are well done, referential to stories Red (and most of us) love without plagiarizing or reskinning a story in a different time/universe;
If I had to sum up the world building it would be Gods as Lords, not a separate, both invisible and omniscient GOD…
Early myths and recorded stories as Red pointed out in her Deus ex machine video, took mortal/god interactions as the norm; to people living in that era mebbe it felt more like Red’s story than our current (Now) reality and how that “feels”
To be objective that “feel” would have to be differentiated and the parameters of what it “feels” like to be in a corporeal body delineated.
Subjectively = ART = <3 ???
"then we can explore space; both inner and outer"
so,
yeah or yesssss?
Based on how territorial and ubiquitous the gods are I’d be inclined to think that if you got rid of Zuurrith the process that birth city gods might start again and you’d have a new city god, who might not be much different from Zuurrith (might be worse) in short order, meet the new boss same as the old boss. Or a foreign god might decide to make a move now that the city was no longer protected (and one willing to do such a thing would probably not be particularly nice) etc. Communities without gods (stably for a long period of time) are presumably too small to generate a god (or interest from outside) or have some other factor both stopping the formation of a local God and the incursion of external gods.
i think i’ve seen a few people say that it’s unreasonable for zuurith to have a redemption arc because he got out of the event uninjured/uneffected by it, but he literally had his worldview shattered, and i would honestly be suprised if his behavior didn’t change at all. zuurith has viewed everything he’s done as nessesary evils and now he’s being shown that they weren’t nessesary after all. even if zuurith doesn’t feel pity or empathy for the people in his city, he is prideful in the sense that he likes to think that he’s always right, so i think that it’s unlikely that he would continue to something that he thinks is wrong just because it’s what he has been doing for a long time.
also (and this is entirely my opinion) i don’t think zuurith is crying because of pity for the people caught in the destruction or anything like that. i think zuurith is crying because he realized that he was wrong and zuurith is definately the type of person to cry over the fact that they were wrong.
OH MY GOOGLY EYES NEW CHAPTER ART!
If we assume “petri” is in terms of stone or becoming solid, and “ichor” meaning blood, that is one heck of a cool idea and the art is heavenly!
@The Unknown Game- Thank you for your thoughtful response! Point taken! 🙂 But I will wait to see if evidence supports you or someone says Red says so. What is more important is to enjoy Red’s story.
Reading the later comments I pose a question- Do the Gods model the people in their city or the people and the God shape each other?
3rd frame on this page in someone’s arms, BABY ALINUA (i know they’re not related to alinua at all but stiil thats how I imagined baby alinua looking)
The thing that Zuurith’s “redemption” hammered home for me is actually the scale of the disaster. I mean I was expecting flooded homes and destroyed supplies that would be a bit problem. But the storm part really leveled the city. The suffering if very intimidate and widespread.
Of course, Zuurith is probably more aware of that than a mortal in his position would be. Connected to the city and citizens as the city god he is. Despite being the type of person who will use bloodsport as a distraction and a prison complex as the backbone of his city, and he was probably pretty aware of that too.
So it didn’t come off as “Zuurith cries the the face of disaster” its “the disaster is so bad Zuurith cries”.
There is so much here conveyed without words, in this page and the one before it. The stark difference between his old, oppressive systems of law compared to his people, who are hurting now,, amazingly done.