I picture them dressing up as the characters my brother called them by when he saw them off hand
Erin: Edward Elric
Alinua: Katara
Kendal: Luke Skywalker
Falst: Shadow the Hedgehog
Dainix: Lion O
Tess: Colossus (whether he meant the X-Man or the statue of Rhodes is up for debate)
I keep picturing them as this:
Falst: Garfield
Alinua: The Lorax or Amity Blight (cotton candy haired goddes)
Erin: Varian from Tangled The Series
Dainix: Your Therapist
Kendall: Link or Frey (Freyr? However it’s spelled)
Tess: Idk, lightning bolt? Something cool like that. Maybe a saxophone because it works with her skin tone.
Kendall Falst and Dainix are in camp of ‘Don’t know or don’t care about halloween’
Tess and Alinua and Erin(maybe) are very excited for costumes. Tess probably spends multiple weeks jump scaring Erin for funsies. Alina is just very happy to participate in the festivities. Erin is going for a detailed cosplay type of halloween costume.
I feel like Falst wouldn’t care about Halloween and either be very low-effort or not dress up at all, but him as Garfield would be funny. Tess might dress up as the Flash, I don’t know why my brain made this connection, but there it is. Erin HAS to be a smart character, maybe Varian, or Dr. Frankenstein, or my personal favorite, Artemis Fowl II.
Yeah, Erin would totally dress up as some evil genius.
And I think you made the Tess–Flash connection because she can make use of her lightning magic to go real fast when she needs to, and the Flash has a lightning bolt as his logo. Tess might be a bit less evasion–oriented tho? idk. Good connection though!
I have had this idea stuck in my head since someone (I don’t remember who) commented on how well they all matched up with the xmen. And here is my chance to share my thoughts!
Kendal would be wolverine. Both because he has a metal skeleton and the sword/not having his own memories are in juxtaposition (heckin love that word don’t know why) with Logan’s backstory and all the weapon x mental problems usually have him questioning his identity.
Falst is practically a one to one with beast when it comes to their appearance but coupeld with that they both give different perspectives than the rest of the team. Falst as an outcast of society for so long whereas beast is a scientist and poetry nerd.
I originally jumped to Tess being calosus (or however you spell his name, idk) ’cause they both have metal skin, but then I second guessed myself thinking she might dress as storm instead to highlight the lightning. So now it’s 50/50 in my head on this one. Let me know which you like more.
Next is Dainix. and I wanted to say he would make it a joke and pick his opposite iceman until I saw him fitting with gambit. Now i feel it’s a long shot, but hear me out. They both have a pokey stick and “gadgets” they fight with, and explosions are the closest I can come up with to fire, so deal with it😝.
After this I’m stretching it a bit farther, so bare with me, ok?
For Erin you can say he is kinda the face of the party and put him in place of cyclops. But if that doesn’t sit right with you like it does with me (for some reason I just can’t put my finger on) then lets try Forge. He can speak with technology and whatever, so anything the rest of this group cannot fix with their hammers he either has the gizmo or can whip it up for the job. Sort of like Erin’s mastery over all magic and knowledge.
So now we come to our final pairing in my wall of text.
Alinua is the hardest for me to settle on. Saying her and life mum resemble Jean and the fenix is not true but, I am having trouble finding more A-team xmen in my head. Would it be to far if I compare her self imposed exile to rogue and her constant absence of touch or not? I think I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
At any rate I am running out of brain power right now, so let’s call it here.
If you have any changes or characters to add go ahead.
Erin and Tess are going together as Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, respectively.
Falst is going as a vampire, classic and low-effort considering he already has the fangs and cloak.
Alinua is a fairytale character (some kind of Little Red Riding Hood-equivalent) givin out fruit instead of sweets.
Dainix is going as himself, Demon-mode.
Kendal is under a white sheet with two eye holes cut out (every child must experience it).
in my mind they are:
Falst is going as a catboy and changes 0 things about his appearance
Erin and Tess are Edward and Alphonse Elric. Walter might want to go as Homunculus
Dainix would manage a very good vampire costume
Kendal is reusing whatever outfit Vash used for halloween (Vash has absolutely dressed up for halloween every year for the past 1000 years) This probably involves cool sunglasses somehow, and is possibly a Superman costume
Alinua only learnt what halloween was a few days ago, and is using the outfit Vash used 2 years ago (Kendal leant it to her). Otherwise she has a carved pumkin on her head.
Now I’m curious as to what the primary symptoms of corruption from the other six elements would be. What are your thoughts about the kind of destructive character traits each element would produce if it accumulated in excess to the point of corruption?
I wrote down a quick list in the fan discord a while ago, so I’ll just copy-paste the list here:
STONE: lethargy, cognitive decline, ossification and, terminally, petrification.
FIRE: fevers, emotional volatility, ultimately spontaneous combustion.
WIND: lightheadedness, bone atrophy, aphasia, ultimately loss of physicality (you kind of evaporate).
LIGHTNING: neurological and psychiatric symptoms, seizures, paralysis, you probably fry your brain at the end stage.
WATER: bone erosion and overall tissue decay, you essentially liquify from the inside out.
LIFE: Basically magic cancer. End stage is chimeric mutation.
VOID: Appetite increase, development of increased cravings, malabsorption. Terminal stage is you turn into a cave crawler. ALT: you got blasted by void energy and are getting Thanos’d.
LIGHT: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Red has stated that the disintegration effect is effectively a form of elemental corruption. What happens is the void energy from the blast takes root in the body and rapidly agitates the physical Void matter in the body, causing the disintegration effect.
Personally, I’m not sure Light Corruption is a thing, especially if the Light Dragon represents soul energy. She wouldn’t really be able to corrupt a being if she PROTECTS a being from corruption. But that’s just speculation. Where would you find enough ambient Light energy to cause corruption anyway?
If it is a thing, then symptoms might involve blindness, I guess? Or a sort of Charles Xavier-style ‘can’t stop hearing everyone’s thoughts’ psychosis since telepathy is clearly a Paladin ability. Perhaps the soul itself unravels and joins the ambient energy, leaving an empty husk.
I’m not sure if Light corruption is possible either due to what it is linked to (mind and consciousness) and the fact that the Light Dragon is nominally an active participant in the channeling of her power, however I am quite confident that Light != Soul.
Soul energy is omnipresent and for all we know it’s an inherent part of the universe. When woven together and structured, it forms a lattice that protects objects and organisms from foreign influence up to a point. It is unreactive, passive and can’t be controlled directly, but rather needs to be guided. Moreover, soul energy can manifest itself in any color, as primarily seen with divine incarnations.
Light, by contrast, appears to be linked with the mind and consciousness. Paladin magic appears similar to elemental magic in that you command the element to do something, e.g. manifest a hardlight construct or connect to another mind. Also, perhaps most crucially, Light is depicted with a consistent color coding of white with light blue highlights.
This is speculation on my part, but possible symptoms of Light corruption would likely be various manners of psychoses and psychological disorders. Possible end stages would probably lead to some nasty stuff like ego collapse (you become an empty husk – a philosophical zombie) or Cotard delusions.
So, we have seven elements without light (meta-textually, I just assume a mythologist with a math degree would stick to magic numbers for magic, but she clearly plays with other tropes). Void magic was calculated long ago but light magic wasn’t. Light magic seems to have acted “on it’s own” and from a being incapable of using the other forms of magic. It would seem that “light magic” isn’t really magic (see above discussions of soul energy and it’s apparent differences) in the same sense as the other magics. I’ve been thinking about this way too much since it came to light. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
I for one am glad that Erin technobabbles so generously! And looks cool while doing it. But yes, “monologuing too close to the sun” as commenter Mat wrote is, I’m afraid, applicable here.
…the sixth panel, though ;-; Poor boy.
“Slow, cumbersome pile of hungry meat” Geez Erin, body-shaming much?
Erin seems to be faring better against the glort; maybe because of his mage training? Dainix is powerful, but a relative novice when it comes to his fire abilities; Erin’s been training for years with fire and lightning so knows how to apply both to cause concentrated damage. That makes me more confident Tess’s arrival will help turn the tides.
Everything Erin is saying does make sense; either this thing has spent so long in the caves and became so corrupted it turned into this, or was some unique and rare mutation. If it’s the former, then that raises the terrifying possibility that there are more of these things, buried so deep into the caves they’ve never been seen on the surface until now. If it’s the later, said mutation might have been stirred by whatever was being done in that Ancient lab on the dais. But how does the trauma vision factor into this?
Speaking of the trauma vision, looks like Erin’s gonna get a face full of it. I’m reminded of V.D.’s encounter with Crucible-Dainix, how he was so confident, thought he knew exactly what Dainix was, and went to kill him as a “mercy”, only to be proven horribly wrong. Still, Erin here is far more genuine about the “mercy” part. I’m both wondering what the vision will entail, and how Erin will alter his current slime hypothesis after recovering.
Or, more terrifying, once you get to a certain point, these things have all conglomerated into a single massive mass and it’s a sea of glort all the way down to the core…
I’m also revising my opinion on what the glort draws inspiration from. It seems to currently most closely resemble a maw-mouth from the *Scholomance* trilogy.,
unless the Twins created an entire separate biosphere deep underground I feel like there probably isn’t enough biomass available to form an underground sea of glort, fortunately
I’m sticking with the fact that the Glort is a relatively unique creature since we found them in very peculiar placement in a very odd room of a very unexplained place. The Glort, the tech recognizing Falst, the array of lacrimas: there’s a whole lot for our heroes to put together as the immediate threat subsides and the group, well, regroups. The Glort being an oddball and not the consistency of the core of the planet makes more sense given the nonsense.
Fair. Though we don’t know how large the core is, or how old the planet is, so we don’t know how long life has been on it or how much glort it would take to insulate the core. We also don’t know how long glort conversion takes or how many creatures enter the caves and fall to either it or the corruption in general–I know it’s extremely unlikely, but I still say it’s possible, and that the glort we’ve come to know it only a snippet–perhaps taken as a sample to study?
After all, all life today exists on a world of the dead–the breakdown of ancient organic matter created the early soils for new life to grow from, and the process continues today. And I can think of at least one science-fiction story where the planet itself was incorporated into a lifeform in some way. (There was one, and I have never been able to find it, where the characters visited a world of fog and anemone-like lifeforms, and thinking they were plants took a tentacle as a study sample. Turns out the anemones were the sapient species and the tentacle they took was a child. They ended up returning it, but a couple of the crew almost got strangled by the enraged parent in the process)
I’m imagining a battle in the center of the mind with V.D., Erin and the glort. Worst case scenario for the gang, V.D. and the glort come to some kind of understanding and the glort does the symbiote thing like Venom.
> Erin seems to be faring better against the glort; maybe because of his mage training?
I notice Erin is hitting it with *combined* blasts of Fire and Lightning at the same time all the time – he hasn’t even tried a single element blast. Maybe it’s harder to absorb the mix than it is to absorb the Purest Fire or Purest Life that Alinua and Dainix can bring to bear – configuring yourself to absorb one fucks you over for the other, kind of thing.
erin, you’re a good guy! you’re supposed to be the one taking advantage of monologues, not the other way around!
this is why i call you hubris mcsicktats…
I heard it explained, somewhere, don’t remember where, that Erin would be an amazing villain, but he doesn’t want to be one, so now he’s a mediocre hero. That’s why he’s so good at monologuing.
Anonymous Aurora Question #29: How different do you think Erins Trauma eyes vision will be from what the other commenters have theorized? (Artificial elemental magus, probably not the best family situation)? Which new tidbits might be revealed?
I don’t know why people think the eyes will give us dedicated backstory. The trauma eyes were very vague with everyone else, don’t think we’ll get any real answers just from the trauma eyes.
That’s a good point. We didn’t learn much from the previous ones, and what people managed to interpret out of the mad flashes was mostly stuff that had already been guessed. So I’m thinking we’re going to get a lot of imagery that we can only guess at what it is about, and some clues so that the theorisers stay keen.
Chances are, all we get is to know
There indeed is some trauma he hides deep below
I’m thinking at least one image of pre-“chosen by the sky” Tess, when she was a child with no free will of her own. The guilt he feels over her treatment, even if it wasn’t even his fault, weighs on him even today.
I was thinking as well about how we got much more vague the eyes have been with the other characters, and that maybe we won’t get a big-old expo dump but instead he will behave in a way that lets other members of the gang in on the fact that he’s hiding whatever it was that he and Tess were talking about (and maybe from a slightly different angle than we, the audience, have seen). So things come out third-hand after the encounter and the other two heros finally show up.
My first thought when I looked this page was “Too late!” because nobody else could be heard by Erin as he analyzes and ruminates.
I really love the detail on Erin’s hand and tatoos and Red’s interpretation Erin’s magic action, “Fwaaa” with fire and lightning that is a wonderful word-picture!
Ok, so, we know that the goop is made of void, but why does it have the eyes? They are white with a chromatic aberration, not yellow or purple like VD. It could be all of the other elements it’s accumulated mixed together, or it could be something else. Anyway, I’m hoping we get to see Erin’s backstory next update.
Well, I don’t think Glort being a cave crawler disproves my theory about what Voidhammer means. Maybe the lacrimas gave it every other kind of corruption on top of Void, IDK.
Erin really is about to have gone from confident and composed, to neck–deep in dread, to totally elated and full of himself, back to confident and composed, and now likely to eyeball–deep in whatever horrible memories that thing digs up, all in the span of a few minutes at most.
I’m reminded that everyone present (except Kendal and maybe to a lesser extent Alinua (got some zzzs) and Falst (claims to need fewer zzzs)) desperately needs some sleep.
Seems like everyone is enjoying all the Erin characterization + character development and some of this has been pointed out but I want to highlight:
-Erin DID try to ask his teammates for intel on the unknown glob monster, which is big character development! He’s learned not to go in assuming he already knows everything! Unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown, so hopefully he’ll take the lesson to the logical next step: “there are always unknown unknowns to safeguard against”
-I’m continuing to love the parallels between him and VD Walter, especially because it makes Erin’s genuine regret and compassion shine even more by comparison
-Very curious to see how the trauma eyes are going to interact with VD Walter…
So… what if Erin’s not the only one who’s trauma we get to tour here? VD’s in there too. What would be trauma to the devourer of all things? When the Primordials entrapped him? When the Twins created the key to his escape, only to see it gain free will and flee? When Erin paralyzed them in the Singing Caves? Something long before it targeted this particular sun?
Uh oh
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: BOO
Image source: sorry
Tumblr text: 👀
Aurora Question #101: What costumes are the gang wearing for halloween?
I think Kendal would go as Vash, and change nothing about his outfit.
nah he’s gonna dress up, but like, by putting on a hat
I picture them dressing up as the characters my brother called them by when he saw them off hand
Erin: Edward Elric
Alinua: Katara
Kendal: Luke Skywalker
Falst: Shadow the Hedgehog
Dainix: Lion O
Tess: Colossus (whether he meant the X-Man or the statue of Rhodes is up for debate)
Falst as Edgy The Hedgy, yeah that tracks.
Your brother was spot on.
Spot on.
I keep picturing them as this:
Falst: Garfield
Alinua: The Lorax or Amity Blight (cotton candy haired goddes)
Erin: Varian from Tangled The Series
Dainix: Your Therapist
Kendall: Link or Frey (Freyr? However it’s spelled)
Tess: Idk, lightning bolt? Something cool like that. Maybe a saxophone because it works with her skin tone.
kendal off has been giving off such link vibes this whole time to me honestly
Kendall Falst and Dainix are in camp of ‘Don’t know or don’t care about halloween’
Tess and Alinua and Erin(maybe) are very excited for costumes. Tess probably spends multiple weeks jump scaring Erin for funsies. Alina is just very happy to participate in the festivities. Erin is going for a detailed cosplay type of halloween costume.
I feel like Falst wouldn’t care about Halloween and either be very low-effort or not dress up at all, but him as Garfield would be funny. Tess might dress up as the Flash, I don’t know why my brain made this connection, but there it is. Erin HAS to be a smart character, maybe Varian, or Dr. Frankenstein, or my personal favorite, Artemis Fowl II.
Yeah, Erin would totally dress up as some evil genius.
And I think you made the Tess–Flash connection because she can make use of her lightning magic to go real fast when she needs to, and the Flash has a lightning bolt as his logo. Tess might be a bit less evasion–oriented tho? idk. Good connection though!
I have had this idea stuck in my head since someone (I don’t remember who) commented on how well they all matched up with the xmen. And here is my chance to share my thoughts!
Kendal would be wolverine. Both because he has a metal skeleton and the sword/not having his own memories are in juxtaposition (heckin love that word don’t know why) with Logan’s backstory and all the weapon x mental problems usually have him questioning his identity.
Falst is practically a one to one with beast when it comes to their appearance but coupeld with that they both give different perspectives than the rest of the team. Falst as an outcast of society for so long whereas beast is a scientist and poetry nerd.
I originally jumped to Tess being calosus (or however you spell his name, idk) ’cause they both have metal skin, but then I second guessed myself thinking she might dress as storm instead to highlight the lightning. So now it’s 50/50 in my head on this one. Let me know which you like more.
Next is Dainix. and I wanted to say he would make it a joke and pick his opposite iceman until I saw him fitting with gambit. Now i feel it’s a long shot, but hear me out. They both have a pokey stick and “gadgets” they fight with, and explosions are the closest I can come up with to fire, so deal with it😝.
After this I’m stretching it a bit farther, so bare with me, ok?
For Erin you can say he is kinda the face of the party and put him in place of cyclops. But if that doesn’t sit right with you like it does with me (for some reason I just can’t put my finger on) then lets try Forge. He can speak with technology and whatever, so anything the rest of this group cannot fix with their hammers he either has the gizmo or can whip it up for the job. Sort of like Erin’s mastery over all magic and knowledge.
So now we come to our final pairing in my wall of text.
Alinua is the hardest for me to settle on. Saying her and life mum resemble Jean and the fenix is not true but, I am having trouble finding more A-team xmen in my head. Would it be to far if I compare her self imposed exile to rogue and her constant absence of touch or not? I think I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
At any rate I am running out of brain power right now, so let’s call it here.
If you have any changes or characters to add go ahead.
Erin and Tess are going together as Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, respectively.
Falst is going as a vampire, classic and low-effort considering he already has the fangs and cloak.
Alinua is a fairytale character (some kind of Little Red Riding Hood-equivalent) givin out fruit instead of sweets.
Dainix is going as himself, Demon-mode.
Kendal is under a white sheet with two eye holes cut out (every child must experience it).
They’re all dressed as Homestar Runner characters that are themselves dressed as in-universe pop culture references.
in my mind they are:
Falst is going as a catboy and changes 0 things about his appearance
Erin and Tess are Edward and Alphonse Elric. Walter might want to go as Homunculus
Dainix would manage a very good vampire costume
Kendal is reusing whatever outfit Vash used for halloween (Vash has absolutely dressed up for halloween every year for the past 1000 years) This probably involves cool sunglasses somehow, and is possibly a Superman costume
Alinua only learnt what halloween was a few days ago, and is using the outfit Vash used 2 years ago (Kendal leant it to her). Otherwise she has a carved pumkin on her head.
Honestly, I can picture her not knowing how to carve the pumpkin and just wearing it uncarved
Pahahaha
Dainix goes as a pirate.
Alinua is Dorothy
Falst is the Cowardly Lion
Tess is the Tinman
Kendal is the Scarecrow
Erin as Harry Potter
Erin as Victor Frankenstein, convince me otherwise
why do I sense Erin Backstory incoming
i sense it too. and i am so excited to see him suffer 🙂
^^^^^
I feel kinda bad for him but also yessssssss give me the lore >:)
Please tell me your right
I have never been more excited to see someone’s traumatic childhood (sorry Erin)
👁️👁️
Now I’m curious as to what the primary symptoms of corruption from the other six elements would be. What are your thoughts about the kind of destructive character traits each element would produce if it accumulated in excess to the point of corruption?
I wrote down a quick list in the fan discord a while ago, so I’ll just copy-paste the list here:
STONE: lethargy, cognitive decline, ossification and, terminally, petrification.
FIRE: fevers, emotional volatility, ultimately spontaneous combustion.
WIND: lightheadedness, bone atrophy, aphasia, ultimately loss of physicality (you kind of evaporate).
LIGHTNING: neurological and psychiatric symptoms, seizures, paralysis, you probably fry your brain at the end stage.
WATER: bone erosion and overall tissue decay, you essentially liquify from the inside out.
LIFE: Basically magic cancer. End stage is chimeric mutation.
VOID: Appetite increase, development of increased cravings, malabsorption. Terminal stage is you turn into a cave crawler. ALT: you got blasted by void energy and are getting Thanos’d.
LIGHT: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t think getting blasted by Void Energy counts as elemental corruption, much in the same way than getting set on fire would not either
Red has stated that the disintegration effect is effectively a form of elemental corruption. What happens is the void energy from the blast takes root in the body and rapidly agitates the physical Void matter in the body, causing the disintegration effect.
Personally, I’m not sure Light Corruption is a thing, especially if the Light Dragon represents soul energy. She wouldn’t really be able to corrupt a being if she PROTECTS a being from corruption. But that’s just speculation. Where would you find enough ambient Light energy to cause corruption anyway?
If it is a thing, then symptoms might involve blindness, I guess? Or a sort of Charles Xavier-style ‘can’t stop hearing everyone’s thoughts’ psychosis since telepathy is clearly a Paladin ability. Perhaps the soul itself unravels and joins the ambient energy, leaving an empty husk.
I’m not sure if Light corruption is possible either due to what it is linked to (mind and consciousness) and the fact that the Light Dragon is nominally an active participant in the channeling of her power, however I am quite confident that Light != Soul.
Soul energy is omnipresent and for all we know it’s an inherent part of the universe. When woven together and structured, it forms a lattice that protects objects and organisms from foreign influence up to a point. It is unreactive, passive and can’t be controlled directly, but rather needs to be guided. Moreover, soul energy can manifest itself in any color, as primarily seen with divine incarnations.
Light, by contrast, appears to be linked with the mind and consciousness. Paladin magic appears similar to elemental magic in that you command the element to do something, e.g. manifest a hardlight construct or connect to another mind. Also, perhaps most crucially, Light is depicted with a consistent color coding of white with light blue highlights.
This is speculation on my part, but possible symptoms of Light corruption would likely be various manners of psychoses and psychological disorders. Possible end stages would probably lead to some nasty stuff like ego collapse (you become an empty husk – a philosophical zombie) or Cotard delusions.
If the “Light = transmuted Void” theory is true, they would probably have the same symptoms.
So, we have seven elements without light (meta-textually, I just assume a mythologist with a math degree would stick to magic numbers for magic, but she clearly plays with other tropes). Void magic was calculated long ago but light magic wasn’t. Light magic seems to have acted “on it’s own” and from a being incapable of using the other forms of magic. It would seem that “light magic” isn’t really magic (see above discussions of soul energy and it’s apparent differences) in the same sense as the other magics. I’ve been thinking about this way too much since it came to light. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Erin, you fool! You fell for the classic villain blunder and monologued too close to the sun!
GET GLORTED, IDIOT! XD
At least Falst’s arm should be healed by now
Rune script is too small to be legible, but if It had to make a guess, I’d bet it’s the “REVEAL DAMAGE REVEAL SUBSTRATE …” script.
This… does not seem good
I for one am glad that Erin technobabbles so generously! And looks cool while doing it. But yes, “monologuing too close to the sun” as commenter Mat wrote is, I’m afraid, applicable here.
…the sixth panel, though ;-; Poor boy.
“Slow, cumbersome pile of hungry meat” Geez Erin, body-shaming much?
Erin seems to be faring better against the glort; maybe because of his mage training? Dainix is powerful, but a relative novice when it comes to his fire abilities; Erin’s been training for years with fire and lightning so knows how to apply both to cause concentrated damage. That makes me more confident Tess’s arrival will help turn the tides.
Everything Erin is saying does make sense; either this thing has spent so long in the caves and became so corrupted it turned into this, or was some unique and rare mutation. If it’s the former, then that raises the terrifying possibility that there are more of these things, buried so deep into the caves they’ve never been seen on the surface until now. If it’s the later, said mutation might have been stirred by whatever was being done in that Ancient lab on the dais. But how does the trauma vision factor into this?
Speaking of the trauma vision, looks like Erin’s gonna get a face full of it. I’m reminded of V.D.’s encounter with Crucible-Dainix, how he was so confident, thought he knew exactly what Dainix was, and went to kill him as a “mercy”, only to be proven horribly wrong. Still, Erin here is far more genuine about the “mercy” part. I’m both wondering what the vision will entail, and how Erin will alter his current slime hypothesis after recovering.
Or, more terrifying, once you get to a certain point, these things have all conglomerated into a single massive mass and it’s a sea of glort all the way down to the core…
I’m also revising my opinion on what the glort draws inspiration from. It seems to currently most closely resemble a maw-mouth from the *Scholomance* trilogy.,
unless the Twins created an entire separate biosphere deep underground I feel like there probably isn’t enough biomass available to form an underground sea of glort, fortunately
I’m sticking with the fact that the Glort is a relatively unique creature since we found them in very peculiar placement in a very odd room of a very unexplained place. The Glort, the tech recognizing Falst, the array of lacrimas: there’s a whole lot for our heroes to put together as the immediate threat subsides and the group, well, regroups. The Glort being an oddball and not the consistency of the core of the planet makes more sense given the nonsense.
Fair. Though we don’t know how large the core is, or how old the planet is, so we don’t know how long life has been on it or how much glort it would take to insulate the core. We also don’t know how long glort conversion takes or how many creatures enter the caves and fall to either it or the corruption in general–I know it’s extremely unlikely, but I still say it’s possible, and that the glort we’ve come to know it only a snippet–perhaps taken as a sample to study?
After all, all life today exists on a world of the dead–the breakdown of ancient organic matter created the early soils for new life to grow from, and the process continues today. And I can think of at least one science-fiction story where the planet itself was incorporated into a lifeform in some way. (There was one, and I have never been able to find it, where the characters visited a world of fog and anemone-like lifeforms, and thinking they were plants took a tentacle as a study sample. Turns out the anemones were the sapient species and the tentacle they took was a child. They ended up returning it, but a couple of the crew almost got strangled by the enraged parent in the process)
I’m imagining a battle in the center of the mind with V.D., Erin and the glort. Worst case scenario for the gang, V.D. and the glort come to some kind of understanding and the glort does the symbiote thing like Venom.
> Erin seems to be faring better against the glort; maybe because of his mage training?
I notice Erin is hitting it with *combined* blasts of Fire and Lightning at the same time all the time – he hasn’t even tried a single element blast. Maybe it’s harder to absorb the mix than it is to absorb the Purest Fire or Purest Life that Alinua and Dainix can bring to bear – configuring yourself to absorb one fucks you over for the other, kind of thing.
YES!!! Yes!! That is SO it!
Yikes on all fronts.
I guess he did, in fact, not know about the eyes
Erin trauma HERE WE GO.
(Ps: I don’t think he has the full picture)
Welp, Erin backstory here we come! Now I know what the alt text was talking about,
ΟΗ ΝΟ, BY ΜΥ HUBRYS
-Erin, probably
erin, you’re a good guy! you’re supposed to be the one taking advantage of monologues, not the other way around!
this is why i call you hubris mcsicktats…
I heard it explained, somewhere, don’t remember where, that Erin would be an amazing villain, but he doesn’t want to be one, so now he’s a mediocre hero. That’s why he’s so good at monologuing.
I love this. Even the purple cape.
Anonymous Aurora Question #29: How different do you think Erins Trauma eyes vision will be from what the other commenters have theorized? (Artificial elemental magus, probably not the best family situation)? Which new tidbits might be revealed?
I don’t know why people think the eyes will give us dedicated backstory. The trauma eyes were very vague with everyone else, don’t think we’ll get any real answers just from the trauma eyes.
That’s a good point. We didn’t learn much from the previous ones, and what people managed to interpret out of the mad flashes was mostly stuff that had already been guessed. So I’m thinking we’re going to get a lot of imagery that we can only guess at what it is about, and some clues so that the theorisers stay keen.
Chances are, all we get is to know
There indeed is some trauma he hides deep below
I’m thinking at least one image of pre-“chosen by the sky” Tess, when she was a child with no free will of her own. The guilt he feels over her treatment, even if it wasn’t even his fault, weighs on him even today.
I was thinking as well about how we got much more vague the eyes have been with the other characters, and that maybe we won’t get a big-old expo dump but instead he will behave in a way that lets other members of the gang in on the fact that he’s hiding whatever it was that he and Tess were talking about (and maybe from a slightly different angle than we, the audience, have seen). So things come out third-hand after the encounter and the other two heros finally show up.
My first thought when I looked this page was “Too late!” because nobody else could be heard by Erin as he analyzes and ruminates.
I really love the detail on Erin’s hand and tatoos and Red’s interpretation Erin’s magic action, “Fwaaa” with fire and lightning that is a wonderful word-picture!
“Erin. The eyes are coming. Oh the twins he has science airpods in! HE CAN’T HEAR US.”
Hhhhh, I tried with this here meme, I really did. And you’re right, that onomatopoeia is really pretty.
Ok, so, we know that the goop is made of void, but why does it have the eyes? They are white with a chromatic aberration, not yellow or purple like VD. It could be all of the other elements it’s accumulated mixed together, or it could be something else. Anyway, I’m hoping we get to see Erin’s backstory next update.
Erin’s in for a treat (please excuse the pun)
Erin in the LowTierGod voice: “Your body is NOTHING. Your hunger sustains no form and serves ZERO purpose. You should kill yourself NOW.”
ruh roh!
Yanna, is that you?
Nice, an update on my birthday
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday!!
Happy Birthday! Mine’s next Monday 🙂 An Aurora page is the best birthday gift
Happy birthday!
Happy Belated Birthday!
As a treat, Erin got a good ~2 pages of monologuing before the Consequences
o h n o
There once was a Magus boy
Who thought the glort he’d destroy.
But–surprise, surprise–
It opened its eyes.
Now he’s gonna get trauma’d–oh joy!
vehry spooky 👀
Well, I don’t think Glort being a cave crawler disproves my theory about what Voidhammer means. Maybe the lacrimas gave it every other kind of corruption on top of Void, IDK.
Could be Water?
Ceaseless watcher
Let’s Go! I knew there was overlap in these fandoms.
Ooooohhhh, what fandom?
The Magnus Archives
a fiction horror podcast
made by Rusty Quill
Glad I’m not the only one 🙂 I love how easily Glort could have been canon, it’s literally a bunch of eyes that show you your greatest fears.
It took me way to long to recognize this reference 😅 Anyway, I’m so ready for the sequel show!
Erin’s glowing tats look so so so cool!!!
I WARNED YOU ABOUT THE EYES BRO
IT KEEPS HAPPENING
Erin really is about to have gone from confident and composed, to neck–deep in dread, to totally elated and full of himself, back to confident and composed, and now likely to eyeball–deep in whatever horrible memories that thing digs up, all in the span of a few minutes at most.
I’m reminded that everyone present (except Kendal and maybe to a lesser extent Alinua (got some zzzs) and Falst (claims to need fewer zzzs)) desperately needs some sleep.
oooh the parallels between Erin and glort and Alina and the bear chimera back from chapter 8…
Seems like everyone is enjoying all the Erin characterization + character development and some of this has been pointed out but I want to highlight:
-Erin DID try to ask his teammates for intel on the unknown glob monster, which is big character development! He’s learned not to go in assuming he already knows everything! Unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown, so hopefully he’ll take the lesson to the logical next step: “there are always unknown unknowns to safeguard against”
-I’m continuing to love the parallels between him and VD Walter, especially because it makes Erin’s genuine regret and compassion shine even more by comparison
-Very curious to see how the trauma eyes are going to interact with VD Walter…
Erin “the Expositioner” does his thing
But the Ceaseless watcher prepares its sting
Credit for joke: @Octavia a few comments up.
TL;DR: I will use my tendency to make observations as a sneaky costume for my loredump.
How bad is this gonna be?
How bad could it be?
Anyone else seeing some parallels between what Erin says and does here and what the light dragon’s champion did back when?
Ooh, Trauma time. I wonder what character development this will set up?
Oh, the Jeff has pupils, lovely. Have fun with all those soulful gazes, Erin, assuming Voidy doesn’t wreck them for their presumption or something
Whomp whomp
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!¡!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway Erin trauma anyone
HUBRIS.PNG
Ow! Right in my hubris!
So… what if Erin’s not the only one who’s trauma we get to tour here? VD’s in there too. What would be trauma to the devourer of all things? When the Primordials entrapped him? When the Twins created the key to his escape, only to see it gain free will and flee? When Erin paralyzed them in the Singing Caves? Something long before it targeted this particular sun?
I love how surprised Erin’s hand looks in that last pannel.