Okay, this isn’t related to anything in this page, but I just realized, Tam’s eyes—when we see him fight Erin on the boat a while back—are a god’s eyes, so he must be a god? But he’s The Lady’s champion, and I’m pretty sure he used to be mortal, but Erin’s eyes aren’t a god’s eyes and he’s Walter’s “champion” but I guess he’s actually VD’s vessel, are champion and vessel different? Ali’s Life’s vessel, and I think her eyes do the god/glow thing? I’ll have to check again. Then again Walter isn’t known for sharing his power the same way The Lady is. I checked and Tam is definitely mortal. The Collector still puzzles me. She does not have mortal nor godly eyes. She is immortal(to what has been tested) but not a god. Anyway, it can’t simply be The Lady sharing power with Tam right? Because when she or VD do that the eyes look different again. Lord Stefan used Her Lady’s power, or his abilities granted by The Lady’ power, and his eyes didn’t go godly. But the Storm Drake’s eyes went godly when Her Lady used it as a vessel to alert the Paladins. When Kendal was Vash during the Tynan fight he had godly eyes, and when he was Vash before The Collector he had godly eyes because he was a god, but when Kendal is Kendal he has mortal eyes. I think Tess’s eyes are just like that because she’s Metalcaste(idk how to spell it) or because she’s got chosen by the sky.
I might be reading into this too much, and this is the only site that I actually keep watch on, so if more info has been shared in other sites I would love to hear it.
This is kinda all over the place, sorry.
(reads alt-text) Yeah, sorry, this is an Alinua focused chapter; Red’s drawing hand could only be kept safe for so long.
You can really hear the hesitation and trepidation in Alinua’s voice; she wants to be wrong, about who did it, why they did it, and what the Wyrm’s current state is. She’s also aware that the other possibility, someONE else, can be just as bad after what happened with Jolon. Personally, I’m still hopeful the Wyrm can be saved, but I understand completely why Alinua isn’t.
Yeah, if there’s anyone in this world who knows about keeping godly vessels alive after the god leaves via mass infusion of life energy, it’s Alinua. If the Wyrm made their vessel as detailed as Vash did, it’s possible it could survive after the god left via life magic; maybe the starmetal component isn’t as necessary as I thought it was.
However, as Alinua points out, the timings don’t make sense; if the Collector already had a god as powerful as the Northern Wyrm in her custody, why go after Vash? There’s also the fact the Wyrm was scared of Alinua’s light show; is that just aversion to bright lights, or is it a sign her mind, or a mind, is still in there?
Prediction for next week: A full view of the Northern Wyrm’s shrine, or what’s left of it if the case may be. Also a look at the water chimeras to confirm Alinua’s fears.
I’ll hold on to that hope with you. My personal theory is that the Collector tried to weaken the Wyrm, but never did get enough control over the Wyrm’s soul for capture and study. She may have damaged or destroyed the soul in the attempt, though, or had only planned to destroy on the spot from the outset… Crossing my fingers for that not to be the case, and for the incarnation to have simply started running amok beyond the Wyrm’s control while the Wyrm herself still exists, more like what the forest god (agh, blanking on the name!) said could happen.
Maybe going after the Wyrm and failing was how the Collector figured out about having to take extra steps before being able to capture a more powerful god’s soul? Maybe she couldn’t do that with the Wyrm, and so she went and captured Vash instead, whose city and people she could destroy to get his essence more concentrated into his incarnation.
Another, more optimistic possibility – maybe the Collector tried and failed, corrupting the body but the soul was too strong for her to capture, and that’s how she learned to start by killing the worshippers before trying to claim a god’s soul.
Maybe that’s also when she commissioned the “Soul Extraction Tool” (or whatever it was called) from the Smith god. Or this was her first attempt with it, at which point she realized she had to start with the mortals.
OMG I didn’t even make the connection until you said this!!! That makes … so much sense. But Tahraim said he denied her request? Did she make one herself?
I’d assume she went to ask for that a lot earlier. She would have needed it to capture all the spirits and minor gods she’s been experimenting on for over a century. It is possible she only needed something like a sturdier version to hold a more powerful god from Tahraim, but seems unlikely to me that she already had a solution and just wanted him to upgrade it.
It would also be a bit of a rushed timeline:
1. Fail to capture the Wyrm (several months (sindhalans) ago)
2. Fail to upgrade capture method herself
3. Be desperate enough to go ask Tahraim himself for help. Get denied.
4. Succeed on her own, maybe with a cryptic hint from Tahraim.
5. Select Vash as target and go besiege him for a month.
6. Success! (About 2 to maybe 3 weeks ago)
For somebody with literally all the time in the world, she would’ve had to have been in a helluva rush to go through points 2-4 in one fewer than a few months.
Except Alinua’s dialogue on this very page makes it clear that Vash happened first.
I’m guessing she may have kidnapped another god for her experiments, possibly deliberately so she could recreate Kendal 2.0 after finding out about him.
What are you talking about? Alinua specifically said that the wyrm was damaged sindahlans earlier and that’s why we’re having a whole debate as to how it would make sense for her to have tried and failed with the wyrm.
Why would she want to recreate Kendal 2.0? I thought when she found out about him, it seemed like she was going to end him. I mean, he’s going after her – technically he’s a threat to her (I mean not really yet, but we know he def will be and I think she has an inkling he might be).
And her goal is to untangle Life’s soul from everything and everyone it’s caught up in; I wouldn’t think she’d care about something miniscule like Kendal’s existence in comparison to her objective. Unless, of course, Kendal’s existence disrupts her understanding of her goal, which I don’t think is ready to happen yet
I’m pretty sure it did disrupt her understanding. “If amalgams can just form new souls…” seemed to have her really worried, but then she realized “that vessel’s soul must have come from somewhere. And I am so excited figure that out!”
I could imagine she’d want to recreate Kendal to study that effect, but we do know she wants to find him first.
No, it makes it clear the Northern Wyrm happened first. “That”, meaning Vash, happened after the attack on the Wyrm. And if she already had the Wyrm, why go after Vash?
I was thinking this might be the case a few pages ago, and in that case Alinua might have hangups about killing the Wyrm’s body since it’s kind of the same thing that created Kendal, so she might be thinking about their similarities and how Kendal was doubting his right to live, and not want to prove his doubts right in some way by killing the Wyrm. Although it is different since the Wyrm has been killing people, but anyway. Maybe the Wyrm’s body is just confused and in pain?
Hey, sorry, this is my first time waiting for a page to come out on its own, lol. I just started ab half a week ago and got caught up on Wednesday, so now I have to wait as per normal. Totally worth it, though; I’m loving this so far!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Best case scenario:
– the Nothern Wyrms body was corrupted and dropped out of control
– the northern wyrm can only respawn in this shrine
– the respawning takes some time
– the corrrupted Wyrm Body keeps spawncamping the new body
After buying volume one three weeks ago and then catching up on the rest of the archive, I’m finally here for my first day-of page!! Hi fellow readers!
I’m thinking the collector tried to steal the goddesses soul, but she was too tied to her realm and the collector only succeeded in destroying it. I don’t know why she would have turned her into a cimmara though.
I’ll content myself in knowing that we’ll only have a first glimpse and still not know anything on Monday. Erin’s not here with gills to give us all a satisfying data dump, seasoned with hubris: “I didn’t mean to imply the potential death of your deity’s avatar was *fascinating*.”
I’ve wanted to ask this for some time, but always forgot: Is this font publicly accessible or is it specific to this site? I find it really pretty, which is why I wanted to ask.
Unless you’re talking about the comment section type font, which I don’t know but I would assume it has at least something similar in Google docs or the like. The comic writing is Red’s handwriting though, so I don’t think it’s a font.
I believe Red said in response to an ask that she used a custom font generator to upload samples of her own handwriting, so it is her own penmanship but streamlined so that it stays consistent and she doesn’t have to hand-write each line of text.
Wait, no way, you are the person who sang “The Screm Pit”, wow.
Sorry, I hope this comment doesn’t seem rude or anything, idk, sometimes I can’t estimate how I come across, but I just wanted to say that I listen to the song often.
I did actually Talk about the comment section font, but thank you all nonetheless! I found an online Tool that found the font, it’s called “Artifica”, I think.
Red’s handwriting is, of course, also very pretty:)
I’ve seen a few people saying that maybe the Wyrm was a previous attempt by the Collector to take a major god’s soul and failed, and while I think that’s very possible, I have another theory. We’ve been shown that most gods don’t make their phyisical bodies as durable as Vash or as large as Tynan’s dragon form, most gods seem to make simple constructs from a few elements associated with their domain rather than a full living body, and the ones with a lot of Life in their domain like Gleicann still have modest incarnations. The Wyrm is an absolutely colossal creature with all the trappings of a normal living body, and is by far the most powerful incarnation we’ve seen. So what if the Collector was testing the limits of Life energy overwhelming the soul barrier of living things? I mean, if she could channel all of Life’s power through living things without having to kill the soul first, all of her problems would go away, she could just start freeing Life immediately. And what better way to test it than the god with the largest and strongest living body?
Who else would it be? The Collector is, as far as I can remember, the only one who can pull that kind of trick. Is this going to be a new God-taker character that got the Wyrm’s soul, or is Alinua wrong, and the Collector just tried and failed to get the Wyrm, as other commenters have speculated?
Alinua (much of the party but currently her) look incredibly competent and powerful to outsiders. Consider the merfolk view of her right now: she drove off an attack by their mad god and adapted to the depths WHILE UNCONSCIOUS, instantly escaped their restraints and declared she was leaving, took pity on them when she realised this is collateral damage left by an old enemy of hers, she’s encountered a similar impossible god-slaying before (creating a new person in the process) and is currently hunting the one doing it with a reasonable expectation of winning… and that’s only the relevant feats.
Awww that little squeeze
VERY EXCITING!!!!
Okay, this isn’t related to anything in this page, but I just realized, Tam’s eyes—when we see him fight Erin on the boat a while back—are a god’s eyes, so he must be a god? But he’s The Lady’s champion, and I’m pretty sure he used to be mortal, but Erin’s eyes aren’t a god’s eyes and he’s Walter’s “champion” but I guess he’s actually VD’s vessel, are champion and vessel different? Ali’s Life’s vessel, and I think her eyes do the god/glow thing? I’ll have to check again. Then again Walter isn’t known for sharing his power the same way The Lady is. I checked and Tam is definitely mortal. The Collector still puzzles me. She does not have mortal nor godly eyes. She is immortal(to what has been tested) but not a god. Anyway, it can’t simply be The Lady sharing power with Tam right? Because when she or VD do that the eyes look different again. Lord Stefan used Her Lady’s power, or his abilities granted by The Lady’ power, and his eyes didn’t go godly. But the Storm Drake’s eyes went godly when Her Lady used it as a vessel to alert the Paladins. When Kendal was Vash during the Tynan fight he had godly eyes, and when he was Vash before The Collector he had godly eyes because he was a god, but when Kendal is Kendal he has mortal eyes. I think Tess’s eyes are just like that because she’s Metalcaste(idk how to spell it) or because she’s got chosen by the sky.
I might be reading into this too much, and this is the only site that I actually keep watch on, so if more info has been shared in other sites I would love to hear it.
This is kinda all over the place, sorry.
I think we’re gonna see Vash 2.0
Hi commenting to load up comments
i think you can add a ? At the end of the url plus some random text to get the same effect, or something similar (so https://comicaurora.com/aurora/2-5-18/?jahvouy).
(reads alt-text) Yeah, sorry, this is an Alinua focused chapter; Red’s drawing hand could only be kept safe for so long.
You can really hear the hesitation and trepidation in Alinua’s voice; she wants to be wrong, about who did it, why they did it, and what the Wyrm’s current state is. She’s also aware that the other possibility, someONE else, can be just as bad after what happened with Jolon. Personally, I’m still hopeful the Wyrm can be saved, but I understand completely why Alinua isn’t.
Yeah, if there’s anyone in this world who knows about keeping godly vessels alive after the god leaves via mass infusion of life energy, it’s Alinua. If the Wyrm made their vessel as detailed as Vash did, it’s possible it could survive after the god left via life magic; maybe the starmetal component isn’t as necessary as I thought it was.
However, as Alinua points out, the timings don’t make sense; if the Collector already had a god as powerful as the Northern Wyrm in her custody, why go after Vash? There’s also the fact the Wyrm was scared of Alinua’s light show; is that just aversion to bright lights, or is it a sign her mind, or a mind, is still in there?
Prediction for next week: A full view of the Northern Wyrm’s shrine, or what’s left of it if the case may be. Also a look at the water chimeras to confirm Alinua’s fears.
I’ll hold on to that hope with you. My personal theory is that the Collector tried to weaken the Wyrm, but never did get enough control over the Wyrm’s soul for capture and study. She may have damaged or destroyed the soul in the attempt, though, or had only planned to destroy on the spot from the outset… Crossing my fingers for that not to be the case, and for the incarnation to have simply started running amok beyond the Wyrm’s control while the Wyrm herself still exists, more like what the forest god (agh, blanking on the name!) said could happen.
Rakhn, I think. Or something like that.
Rakhn is the volcano island. You’re thinking of Gleicann.
Maybe going after the Wyrm and failing was how the Collector figured out about having to take extra steps before being able to capture a more powerful god’s soul? Maybe she couldn’t do that with the Wyrm, and so she went and captured Vash instead, whose city and people she could destroy to get his essence more concentrated into his incarnation.
That was my initial thought, but the timing doesn’t work. As I understand it, the Wyrm was damaged *after* what happened to Vash.
What I’m hoping for is a power-up for Alinua, courtesy of the Primordial Life, where she can restore gods. That would give us an option to save Vash.
Oh, wait, nevermind, I’ve got the timing reversed. It could very well be that the Wyrm was practice before the Collector took Vash.
Another, more optimistic possibility – maybe the Collector tried and failed, corrupting the body but the soul was too strong for her to capture, and that’s how she learned to start by killing the worshippers before trying to claim a god’s soul.
“So that is when I learned I had to comit genocide first!”
Yeah, I suspect the Wyrm is only mostly dead
Which means she’s still a little alive! (Princess Bride Reference)
(It’s always better when you don’t mention the film and everyone just knows)
(Also: *slightly alive)
Now, with all dead… well, there’s only one thing you can do with all dead.
Go through their pockets for loose change?
*Alinua heals the wyrm*
Wyrm: where’s buttercup?!
Maybe that’s also when she commissioned the “Soul Extraction Tool” (or whatever it was called) from the Smith god. Or this was her first attempt with it, at which point she realized she had to start with the mortals.
OMG I didn’t even make the connection until you said this!!! That makes … so much sense. But Tahraim said he denied her request? Did she make one herself?
I’d assume she went to ask for that a lot earlier. She would have needed it to capture all the spirits and minor gods she’s been experimenting on for over a century. It is possible she only needed something like a sturdier version to hold a more powerful god from Tahraim, but seems unlikely to me that she already had a solution and just wanted him to upgrade it.
It would also be a bit of a rushed timeline:
1. Fail to capture the Wyrm (several months (sindhalans) ago)
2. Fail to upgrade capture method herself
3. Be desperate enough to go ask Tahraim himself for help. Get denied.
4. Succeed on her own, maybe with a cryptic hint from Tahraim.
5. Select Vash as target and go besiege him for a month.
6. Success! (About 2 to maybe 3 weeks ago)
For somebody with literally all the time in the world, she would’ve had to have been in a helluva rush to go through points 2-4 in one fewer than a few months.
But why would she be so rushed?
Except Alinua’s dialogue on this very page makes it clear that Vash happened first.
I’m guessing she may have kidnapped another god for her experiments, possibly deliberately so she could recreate Kendal 2.0 after finding out about him.
What are you talking about? Alinua specifically said that the wyrm was damaged sindahlans earlier and that’s why we’re having a whole debate as to how it would make sense for her to have tried and failed with the wyrm.
I somehow flipped what she said in my mind, whoopsie. Which obviously means my idea for why is complete nonsense too, as Kendal didn’t exist yet
Uh… No? “…and that was sindahlans **after she attacked the Northern Wyrm**”
Why would she want to recreate Kendal 2.0? I thought when she found out about him, it seemed like she was going to end him. I mean, he’s going after her – technically he’s a threat to her (I mean not really yet, but we know he def will be and I think she has an inkling he might be).
And her goal is to untangle Life’s soul from everything and everyone it’s caught up in; I wouldn’t think she’d care about something miniscule like Kendal’s existence in comparison to her objective. Unless, of course, Kendal’s existence disrupts her understanding of her goal, which I don’t think is ready to happen yet
I’m pretty sure it did disrupt her understanding. “If amalgams can just form new souls…” seemed to have her really worried, but then she realized “that vessel’s soul must have come from somewhere. And I am so excited figure that out!”
I could imagine she’d want to recreate Kendal to study that effect, but we do know she wants to find him first.
No, it makes it clear the Northern Wyrm happened first. “That”, meaning Vash, happened after the attack on the Wyrm. And if she already had the Wyrm, why go after Vash?
I was thinking this might be the case a few pages ago, and in that case Alinua might have hangups about killing the Wyrm’s body since it’s kind of the same thing that created Kendal, so she might be thinking about their similarities and how Kendal was doubting his right to live, and not want to prove his doubts right in some way by killing the Wyrm. Although it is different since the Wyrm has been killing people, but anyway. Maybe the Wyrm’s body is just confused and in pain?
I don’t know, wrecking the boat didn’t seem very confused to me.
Hey, sorry, this is my first time waiting for a page to come out on its own, lol. I just started ab half a week ago and got caught up on Wednesday, so now I have to wait as per normal. Totally worth it, though; I’m loving this so far!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Best case scenario:
– the Nothern Wyrms body was corrupted and dropped out of control
– the northern wyrm can only respawn in this shrine
– the respawning takes some time
– the corrrupted Wyrm Body keeps spawncamping the new body
I got one Auroran dollar that says Monday’s edition is one (epically done) panel with zero dialogue.
I’ll take that bet!
I too will take this bet 🙂
I will too, and add a few of those glowing barnacles
After buying volume one three weeks ago and then catching up on the rest of the archive, I’m finally here for my first day-of page!! Hi fellow readers!
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: or you could stay in the easy-to-draw fissures with the nice glowing coral and barnacles
Image source: here
Tumblr text: speculation!
Bluesky text: mystery abounds
tumblr text: speculation!
Thank you everyone! phone readers appreciate your service :)))))))
I’m thinking the collector tried to steal the goddesses soul, but she was too tied to her realm and the collector only succeeded in destroying it. I don’t know why she would have turned her into a cimmara though.
Oh, such a tease!
I’ll content myself in knowing that we’ll only have a first glimpse and still not know anything on Monday. Erin’s not here with gills to give us all a satisfying data dump, seasoned with hubris: “I didn’t mean to imply the potential death of your deity’s avatar was *fascinating*.”
@AsTheLightFades: So you were right, they ARE barnacles:D
I’ve wanted to ask this for some time, but always forgot: Is this font publicly accessible or is it specific to this site? I find it really pretty, which is why I wanted to ask.
Red based it off her own handwriting, so I doubt it.
Red based it off her own handwriting, so I doubt it.
Might be duplicating here? IDK.
Unless you’re talking about the comment section type font, which I don’t know but I would assume it has at least something similar in Google docs or the like. The comic writing is Red’s handwriting though, so I don’t think it’s a font.
I believe Red said in response to an ask that she used a custom font generator to upload samples of her own handwriting, so it is her own penmanship but streamlined so that it stays consistent and she doesn’t have to hand-write each line of text.
Wait, no way, you are the person who sang “The Screm Pit”, wow.
Sorry, I hope this comment doesn’t seem rude or anything, idk, sometimes I can’t estimate how I come across, but I just wanted to say that I listen to the song often.
I did actually Talk about the comment section font, but thank you all nonetheless! I found an online Tool that found the font, it’s called “Artifica”, I think.
Red’s handwriting is, of course, also very pretty:)
Three weeks ago, I bought volume one – and after catching up on five years of comic I’m here for my first day-of page!! Hello fellow readers!
Worm time!
Poor Alinua looks so scared 🙁 I dont blame her one bit. I would be beyond terrified in this situation.
I’ve seen a few people saying that maybe the Wyrm was a previous attempt by the Collector to take a major god’s soul and failed, and while I think that’s very possible, I have another theory. We’ve been shown that most gods don’t make their phyisical bodies as durable as Vash or as large as Tynan’s dragon form, most gods seem to make simple constructs from a few elements associated with their domain rather than a full living body, and the ones with a lot of Life in their domain like Gleicann still have modest incarnations. The Wyrm is an absolutely colossal creature with all the trappings of a normal living body, and is by far the most powerful incarnation we’ve seen. So what if the Collector was testing the limits of Life energy overwhelming the soul barrier of living things? I mean, if she could channel all of Life’s power through living things without having to kill the soul first, all of her problems would go away, she could just start freeing Life immediately. And what better way to test it than the god with the largest and strongest living body?
Huh! nice, I hadn’t thought about that angle
I’m pretty sure the mermaid is panicking in mind, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah, sheeeeeeeee’s ded, sheeeeeeeee’s f*cking ded, aaaaaAAAAAAAAAA-“
Who else would it be? The Collector is, as far as I can remember, the only one who can pull that kind of trick. Is this going to be a new God-taker character that got the Wyrm’s soul, or is Alinua wrong, and the Collector just tried and failed to get the Wyrm, as other commenters have speculated?
TL;DR: God-theft has been on the rise as of late.
the underwater shading is sooo goooddd
Alinua (much of the party but currently her) look incredibly competent and powerful to outsiders. Consider the merfolk view of her right now: she drove off an attack by their mad god and adapted to the depths WHILE UNCONSCIOUS, instantly escaped their restraints and declared she was leaving, took pity on them when she realised this is collateral damage left by an old enemy of hers, she’s encountered a similar impossible god-slaying before (creating a new person in the process) and is currently hunting the one doing it with a reasonable expectation of winning… and that’s only the relevant feats.