Tumblr text: good morning sunshine
Bluesky text: giving the person with the most visually complex magic her own highly magical solo adventure was definitely a choice I made
. The mass splits, sweeping to the sides to reveal a person, skin cast dark by the Life-lines covering it. The person has a long tail like a mermaid’s that narrows to a point, long flowing hair, and she’s holding an unconscious Alinua in one arm, tail supporting the elf as well.
. Selach stares openmouthed, oblivious to Valia as she stirs and cracks open one sky-blue eye.
. The person holds up a hand, examining it as the glow slowly fades, revealing silvery-white hair, white glowing eyes, and light gray-blue skin. She puts a hand to her throat as she tries to speak. “Ss– ssss–” Her voice rasps, fading into something more recognizable. “Sssstrange,” the Northern Wyrm says slowly. “…Ss-small. But…” The goddess looks down at Alinua with a face that has a line down her chin, a remnant of the Collector’s alterations. “Better…” she continues, “than I had hoped.”
I.. can’t remember what she looked like before that treatment, but yes, I noticed this too.
(I gues the time looking at Magnus fanart where either Michael or Jon has a more insect-y form paid off lol)
oh boy
(i wont explain because it would be two pages long but the short answer is horror podcast on Spotify called The Magnus Archives and it’s really good you should listen to it)
FELLOW TMA FAN SPOTTED!! AYYY! But back on topic, yeah, the split chin is weird. I mean, it could, theoretically, be a design choice, something something overcoming the trauma that led to this new me, but who knows! Red, probably, but not us!
Okay, Alinua made the Wyrm a new incarnation.
Personally, I don’t think the Wyrm will keep this incarnation in the long run and sheä’ll go back to her usual sea serpent form eventually. But this is a good interim form for recovery.
I notice we are distinctly not at the chapter end yet, though I think we’ll get there by Friday.
@Mat
Sorry, I realised after posting my comment that it was really unclear! I know hes not a merfolk, but i was pointing out that he doesnt really count when talking about merfolk not wearing clothes, because he isnt one
And we might finally get to see an interaction between (part of) our protagonist group with a God where Kendal ISN”T present! This will be interesting…. Albeit Primordial Life is involved so there’s still a “friendly deific power” tipping the scales in their favour.
so I think I had 2 out of 3 of my speculation bits right (and the third is… also maybe there. I’m looking at the “better… than I’d hoped” line with a magnifier here.
Something that came to mind looking at Alinua in the goddess’ embrace – she should look really weird to fishfolk with those soft bags on her chest! Unhealthy even.
So, is the Wyrm now like Kendal? Same path, god incarnation with the god’s soul stolen by collector (why else would she have shown up?) Dying but with its own soul, then healed by Alinua, which does… something to make it so it can live on its own.
About the first part of your comment, the reason she remained intact is because her over-soul, which encompasses her domain, was still intact. It is connected with her people, but its not so much ‘worshippers’ in the sense that we would think of it, its more to do with them living there than worshipping her. Not to say that they dont.
Actually… can the gods just leave their incarnations readily? You’d think the storm god would have done that to flee the smith god (sorry, bad with names and too lazy to look them up right now) when the latter showed up to test his god-soul-stealing dagger. I suspect it may be something where when they incarnate they’re stuck like that until their incarnation is destroyed, but they can typically unmake the incarnation to effect this when they’re done (IIRC we’ve seen a few gods unmake their incarnations). But the Wyrm’s form was too twisted for her to be able to unmake it (note Vash couldn’t do much with Kendall’s body due to how Alinua had accidentally “twisted” it), and in fact she was basically stuck as a prisoner of the berserk incarnation. I assume this means the Wyrm won’t be able to modify this incarnation either, considering Alinua appears to have crafted it, but we’ll see.
There is probably some element of that. That escaping a still functioning vessel takes some power, and gods who have been weekend can’t simply let the vessel drop dead and instantly flee.
Maybe part of the process which allows gods to inhabit vessels require some of the same processes that keep mortal souls tied to living bodies.
I just want to point out that Vash still had worshippers. Not every citizen of Vash was in the city when it was destroyed. The Collector was able to take him because his domain (the city itself) and most of his people were destroyed. Then again, the Collector went for the Wyrm before she went for Vash and the Wyrm is I think both a nature god and a people god. The Collector can’t destroy the Northern part of the ocean and killing that many people spread out over such a great area would take too long. I think this may be part of how The Collector learned she needed to narrow down. That or she was experimenting with a different concept entirely.
In the strictest sense, you might be right, but Vash’s worshippers were concentrated in the city. If she’d managed to get literally all of them as well as the city, that might have killed him right then and there but then she’d have nothing to study, but destroying the city took out an overwhelming majority of them.
The point, though, is that in the case of the Wyrm, the merfolk and the domain seem to have been untouched, to the point where the Wyrm’s corruption was their main indication that there was a problem. The Collector attacked the Wyrm’s physical form, but that wasn’t enough to weaken the Wyrm enough to be claimed by the Collector. But yes, I suspect that this was where she decided that policide might weaken a city god enough to be claimed. With Vash being particularly susceptible due to geography that made it particularly defensible against most other threats.
Holy—
So Alinua did help the Wyrm reincarnate! Oh my goodness. I was not expecting a merperson-like one.
This is beautifully drawn, and a much happier resolution than the Wyrm being gone.
I thought that the Wyrm was probably still around ok, but id expected her to just disincarnate and then reincarnate later — they dont need to be permanently incarnated. But this is a nice surprise, and shes so pretty 😀
Fun fact:
Mutons are mean and scary and will take your lunch money.
(Context I have decided to replay XCOM2 lately, also I decided I’m doing these silly fun facts instead whenever I can’t think of a normal fun fact)
And your cover, and your armor. Keeping ahead of ADVENT’s firepower curve is important. Negative conditions and flanking shots are the way to go when they’re still a major threat to you.
Always have a backup plan for missed shots… and when you’re struggling to kill enemies due to low firepower, be careful not to overextend or pull new mobs with your last two squad members. Good luck, Commander!
…why is Alinua unconscious?
I really wanna see more of the Wyrm’s thoughts here. They probably have a really unique perspective and also everyone including the Wyrm seriously needs closure with everything that happened. It’s very clearly an odd situation, full of lots of weird emotions and I really enjoy exploring these existential things.
I was kinda blindsided reading the other commenters comments and seeing almost exclusively the use of she/her pronouns for the Wyrm. My concerns are A) the Northern Wyrm being a fundamentally very much not human being that we shouldn’t be presumptive to and B) that we only just met the Northern Wyrm (for real) and we haven’t gotten any real explanation from the horse’s mouth or anyone else. But I am just as ignorant here, and there’s a high chance that Red said something on social media or something, so I don’t want anyone to forget the concerns, forget to be cautious, but I also would very much appreciate anyone who does for sure know more things about the Wyrm’s subjectivity telling us what that is. And if Red hasn’t said anything about this, then I’m not going to be the one to ask her because I avoid social media like the plague.
I think its because the characters have used those pronouns? My first instinct was they, or even possibly it, but it seems that she/her is what the seafolk use. Then again, I feel like a decent proportion of gods probably dont care aboit gender, and almost certainly a merfolk god wouldn’t.
So, I’m simply going to talk about some things that I think about this page. Probably going to point out some obvious thinks tho.
1)visual design of the new incarnation: At first glance the new incarnation looks simply like a mermfolk but it seems to be bigger than mermfolk and some people have pointed out that the chin seems to be split and that the tail is too narrow for a fluke at the end, looking more like a snake tail. I don’t think the chin beeing split is an after effect of what the Collector did to the previous incarnation, instead It’s simply becouse the previous incarnation was more or less just a EXTREAMLY COLOSAL sea snake with teeth.
More evidence to this not beeing an after effect is that the previous incarnation didn’t seem too visualy altered+all or at least most snakes have split chin in real life and animals from real life that are in the comic are pretty much the same as in real life.
2)the reaction of the Northern Wyrm goddes to the new incarnation: I’m not really surre what exactly shocked her in panel 4 (the bottom left one) but I think it’s iether a) how the new incarnation looks or b) that theres so much of the life ellement inside it. It’s probably the first option tho becouse of what she says in the next panels, speaking of this the way she speaks is also saying (not sure if this is a pun) something, at first, she’s just hissing (is that the right word for the ssssss sound?), I think this means that this is the first time she is in an incarnation capable of verbal comunication aka speaking but once she figures out how to say stuff she speaks slowly but clearly, that probably means that she knows how her people speak which means her previous incarnation must have had exelent hearing.
3)stuf the Northern Wyrm goddes actualy says: the “Strange” is obviously connected to her shock, to be more specific it’s probably becouse the new incarnation looks diferent the she thought it would which is strange BECOUSE She is the one who made the incarnation (note: I doubt It was Alinua who made it becouse she was both unconcious and only thrying to unmake the preavious incarnation), actualy now that I think about it was it the goddes who made the incarnation? Well I still don’t think it was Alinua, at least not intentionaly but when the goddes says “Small” it implies that she would make a LOT bigger incarnation but then the “But…Better…than I had hoped” makes it kinda confusing. The best way to explain it is probably by saying that, before (even before what the Collector did to the previous incarnation), she was probably wondering how an incarnation more simmilair to her people would feel, and now it feels better then she had hoped. Oh, and one last thing, she doesn’t really seem to be opening her mouth when speaking, even other gods are opening their mouths when speaking, and it just seems strange how she doesn’t. Altho It probably has something to do with the fact that she is maybe trying not to open lower part of her mouth so she wouldn’t scare those who are curently looking at her (did I say this right?).
Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say now. Hopefully this could help you understand this page better.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Huzzah
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: not technically a bridal carry but I still feel like we should increment the count
Image source: better
Tumblr text: good morning sunshine
Bluesky text: giving the person with the most visually complex magic her own highly magical solo adventure was definitely a choice I made
I didn’t realise that Tumblr and Bluesky users got different Alt text, but have now remedied that. Thanks.
. The mass splits, sweeping to the sides to reveal a person, skin cast dark by the Life-lines covering it. The person has a long tail like a mermaid’s that narrows to a point, long flowing hair, and she’s holding an unconscious Alinua in one arm, tail supporting the elf as well.
. Selach stares openmouthed, oblivious to Valia as she stirs and cracks open one sky-blue eye.
. The person holds up a hand, examining it as the glow slowly fades, revealing silvery-white hair, white glowing eyes, and light gray-blue skin. She puts a hand to her throat as she tries to speak. “Ss– ssss–” Her voice rasps, fading into something more recognizable. “Sssstrange,” the Northern Wyrm says slowly. “…Ss-small. But…” The goddess looks down at Alinua with a face that has a line down her chin, a remnant of the Collector’s alterations. “Better…” she continues, “than I had hoped.”
Huh, does the wyrm have a split chin? An after effect of the tri-jaw collector treatment?
Good spot! Maybe we’ll find out
I.. can’t remember what she looked like before that treatment, but yes, I noticed this too.
(I gues the time looking at Magnus fanart where either Michael or Jon has a more insect-y form paid off lol)
Who are they?
oh boy
(i wont explain because it would be two pages long but the short answer is horror podcast on Spotify called The Magnus Archives and it’s really good you should listen to it)
I dont have Spotify 🙁 but apparently its available in other places, I might check it out sometime! Ive heard about it, it sounds cool
you can also find the episodes on youtube! The producer is Rusty Quill
Probably the “Northern Wyrm” the ocean goddess, reincarnated into a new form.
The magnus archives are also on Apple Podcasts if you are on apple 🙂 they’re popular so I’m fairly sure you can find them in other places than spotify
FELLOW TMA FAN SPOTTED!! AYYY! But back on topic, yeah, the split chin is weird. I mean, it could, theoretically, be a design choice, something something overcoming the trauma that led to this new me, but who knows! Red, probably, but not us!
Huh, neat.
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Very happy that alinua is alive and well. also tha tseems to be the norther wyrm, which means the god is in tact at least.
Oh I cannot WAIT for all the shocked faces next page.
ALS, this is gorgeous and I love it.
Yayayayayayay!
Oooo captain valia is waking up! Let’s hope she’s okay.
She’ll probably be pretty confused too.
Valia: “What happened to the Wyrm? And who is that?”
Okay, Alinua made the Wyrm a new incarnation.
Personally, I don’t think the Wyrm will keep this incarnation in the long run and sheä’ll go back to her usual sea serpent form eventually. But this is a good interim form for recovery.
I notice we are distinctly not at the chapter end yet, though I think we’ll get there by Friday.
How am I supposed to imagine them naked when they’re already naked? This doin’ numbers on anyone with stage fright.
She looks like she’s incarnated as a merfolk, so its normal for her to be naked — all the merfolk are
This is Diaphanous Twink erasure.
He’s not a merfolk?
Caturus, aka Diaphanous Twink, is a Sekrai, not a merfolk. Notably, merfolk cannot be mages, which Caturus is.
@Mat
Sorry, I realised after posting my comment that it was really unclear! I know hes not a merfolk, but i was pointing out that he doesnt really count when talking about merfolk not wearing clothes, because he isnt one
I think she has a snake tail instead of a fish tail. It’s hard to tell, but it seems to narrow too much for a fluke at the end.
Well, since she incarnates as a sea-serpent kind of thing, thats probably right!
All the people who thought it was the Wyrm!! You were right!! 😀
She pretty
Yay~ :3 She did a good. ^-^
Another one for the godfinder crew! They’re catching them like Pokemon
And we might finally get to see an interaction between (part of) our protagonist group with a God where Kendal ISN”T present! This will be interesting…. Albeit Primordial Life is involved so there’s still a “friendly deific power” tipping the scales in their favour.
Wow. Two panels that could be a poster this page! We eat good today. 🙂
The first panel, for sure. But what is the second could-be-a-poster panel?
The lower left one, I would guess. The fading green light and growing blue light make it very pretty!
Yeah, that’s the one.
Whoa, Alinua has done the impossible!
so I think I had 2 out of 3 of my speculation bits right (and the third is… also maybe there. I’m looking at the “better… than I’d hoped” line with a magnifier here.
the first panel is gorgeous
Is it a Piéta reference? I think its Piéta reference.
Something that came to mind looking at Alinua in the goddess’ embrace – she should look really weird to fishfolk with those soft bags on her chest! Unhealthy even.
So, is the Wyrm now like Kendal? Same path, god incarnation with the god’s soul stolen by collector (why else would she have shown up?) Dying but with its own soul, then healed by Alinua, which does… something to make it so it can live on its own.
She still had worshippers, so the Collector could twist her physical form but her godly power remained intact.
It is interesting that she did seem to be more bound to a physical form than the gods on dry land.
About the first part of your comment, the reason she remained intact is because her over-soul, which encompasses her domain, was still intact. It is connected with her people, but its not so much ‘worshippers’ in the sense that we would think of it, its more to do with them living there than worshipping her. Not to say that they dont.
Actually… can the gods just leave their incarnations readily? You’d think the storm god would have done that to flee the smith god (sorry, bad with names and too lazy to look them up right now) when the latter showed up to test his god-soul-stealing dagger. I suspect it may be something where when they incarnate they’re stuck like that until their incarnation is destroyed, but they can typically unmake the incarnation to effect this when they’re done (IIRC we’ve seen a few gods unmake their incarnations). But the Wyrm’s form was too twisted for her to be able to unmake it (note Vash couldn’t do much with Kendall’s body due to how Alinua had accidentally “twisted” it), and in fact she was basically stuck as a prisoner of the berserk incarnation. I assume this means the Wyrm won’t be able to modify this incarnation either, considering Alinua appears to have crafted it, but we’ll see.
The storm god’s name is Tynan and the smith god is Tahraim. 🙂
There is probably some element of that. That escaping a still functioning vessel takes some power, and gods who have been weekend can’t simply let the vessel drop dead and instantly flee.
Maybe part of the process which allows gods to inhabit vessels require some of the same processes that keep mortal souls tied to living bodies.
I just want to point out that Vash still had worshippers. Not every citizen of Vash was in the city when it was destroyed. The Collector was able to take him because his domain (the city itself) and most of his people were destroyed. Then again, the Collector went for the Wyrm before she went for Vash and the Wyrm is I think both a nature god and a people god. The Collector can’t destroy the Northern part of the ocean and killing that many people spread out over such a great area would take too long. I think this may be part of how The Collector learned she needed to narrow down. That or she was experimenting with a different concept entirely.
In the strictest sense, you might be right, but Vash’s worshippers were concentrated in the city. If she’d managed to get literally all of them as well as the city, that might have killed him right then and there but then she’d have nothing to study, but destroying the city took out an overwhelming majority of them.
The point, though, is that in the case of the Wyrm, the merfolk and the domain seem to have been untouched, to the point where the Wyrm’s corruption was their main indication that there was a problem. The Collector attacked the Wyrm’s physical form, but that wasn’t enough to weaken the Wyrm enough to be claimed by the Collector. But yes, I suspect that this was where she decided that policide might weaken a city god enough to be claimed. With Vash being particularly susceptible due to geography that made it particularly defensible against most other threats.
Maybe it’s Maybelline!
So SO beautiful!!!
And: Wahoooooo hooray for Alinua!
SHES SO PRETTY?!!!!!
Re alt text, YES
Holy—
So Alinua did help the Wyrm reincarnate! Oh my goodness. I was not expecting a merperson-like one.
This is beautifully drawn, and a much happier resolution than the Wyrm being gone.
I thought that the Wyrm was probably still around ok, but id expected her to just disincarnate and then reincarnate later — they dont need to be permanently incarnated. But this is a nice surprise, and shes so pretty 😀
It’s not a bridal carry, it’s a pieta, we can start a separate counter for that.
XD
Okay we we got a fire bridal and we got a water bridal. Just a couple more ’till its a bingo!
.. alright folks I need you to hear me for a seco
OH MY GOD??? I CALLED IT??? IT WAS SOMEHOW BOTH OF MY GUESSES AHSGA GSH
All I wanna do, is be bridal-carried by, a giant (sea) woman, a giant (sea) woman!!!!!!!!! IYKYK
“Huh. I have this strange body. Small, new. Still got the tail, so that’s good. Got some arms now, cool.”
Hell yeah!
She’s just like the Pale King from Hollow Knight lol
Is anyone out there keeping track of the bridal carries? It’s gotta be at least 15 by now
YAY! Not how I predicted, but I don’t care! This is AWESOME!
Bridal carry or be bridal carried, those really are the rules
Suddenly understand the shape of water, kinda jealous of Alinua, being held like that by a hot androgynous fish-person.
VICTORY FOR THE FORCES OF JUSTICE
TRULY
A
Congratulations on your second demigod.
Fun fact:
Mutons are mean and scary and will take your lunch money.
(Context I have decided to replay XCOM2 lately, also I decided I’m doing these silly fun facts instead whenever I can’t think of a normal fun fact)
And your cover, and your armor. Keeping ahead of ADVENT’s firepower curve is important. Negative conditions and flanking shots are the way to go when they’re still a major threat to you.
Always have a backup plan for missed shots… and when you’re struggling to kill enemies due to low firepower, be careful not to overextend or pull new mobs with your last two squad members. Good luck, Commander!
I have been binge reading this for a couple weeks now and now that I’m caught up I’m just hungry for more!! This comic rocks!
Red that first page is GORGEOUS. Can we have it as a print? It is seriously incredible
Alinua’s accomplishments now include: “Transmuting a God.”
Girl, you are rapidly becoming far more terrifying than anyone else in the Floof Squad.
Did anyone else notice that Alinua’s arm is missing?!
Can take the god out of the snake but cant take the snake out of the god
Hey, welcome back
Am I the only one who thinks this thing is The Collector. That this was some experiment to transform herself.
Yo holy shit?? Super cool!!!!! I absolutely cannot WAIT to see what the Wyrm says on Friday, no matter what it may be!
…why is Alinua unconscious?
I really wanna see more of the Wyrm’s thoughts here. They probably have a really unique perspective and also everyone including the Wyrm seriously needs closure with everything that happened. It’s very clearly an odd situation, full of lots of weird emotions and I really enjoy exploring these existential things.
I was kinda blindsided reading the other commenters comments and seeing almost exclusively the use of she/her pronouns for the Wyrm. My concerns are A) the Northern Wyrm being a fundamentally very much not human being that we shouldn’t be presumptive to and B) that we only just met the Northern Wyrm (for real) and we haven’t gotten any real explanation from the horse’s mouth or anyone else. But I am just as ignorant here, and there’s a high chance that Red said something on social media or something, so I don’t want anyone to forget the concerns, forget to be cautious, but I also would very much appreciate anyone who does for sure know more things about the Wyrm’s subjectivity telling us what that is. And if Red hasn’t said anything about this, then I’m not going to be the one to ask her because I avoid social media like the plague.
I think its because the characters have used those pronouns? My first instinct was they, or even possibly it, but it seems that she/her is what the seafolk use. Then again, I feel like a decent proportion of gods probably dont care aboit gender, and almost certainly a merfolk god wouldn’t.
Yeah, the sea people have consistently used those to refer to the Wyrm. For example, this page.
Alinua just channeled a Primordial being to transmute a god. You’d be unconscious too, after that much exertion!
She’s passed the bishounen line! (bishoujo line, I guess?)
So, I’m simply going to talk about some things that I think about this page. Probably going to point out some obvious thinks tho.
1)visual design of the new incarnation: At first glance the new incarnation looks simply like a mermfolk but it seems to be bigger than mermfolk and some people have pointed out that the chin seems to be split and that the tail is too narrow for a fluke at the end, looking more like a snake tail. I don’t think the chin beeing split is an after effect of what the Collector did to the previous incarnation, instead It’s simply becouse the previous incarnation was more or less just a EXTREAMLY COLOSAL sea snake with teeth.
More evidence to this not beeing an after effect is that the previous incarnation didn’t seem too visualy altered+all or at least most snakes have split chin in real life and animals from real life that are in the comic are pretty much the same as in real life.
2)the reaction of the Northern Wyrm goddes to the new incarnation: I’m not really surre what exactly shocked her in panel 4 (the bottom left one) but I think it’s iether a) how the new incarnation looks or b) that theres so much of the life ellement inside it. It’s probably the first option tho becouse of what she says in the next panels, speaking of this the way she speaks is also saying (not sure if this is a pun) something, at first, she’s just hissing (is that the right word for the ssssss sound?), I think this means that this is the first time she is in an incarnation capable of verbal comunication aka speaking but once she figures out how to say stuff she speaks slowly but clearly, that probably means that she knows how her people speak which means her previous incarnation must have had exelent hearing.
3)stuf the Northern Wyrm goddes actualy says: the “Strange” is obviously connected to her shock, to be more specific it’s probably becouse the new incarnation looks diferent the she thought it would which is strange BECOUSE She is the one who made the incarnation (note: I doubt It was Alinua who made it becouse she was both unconcious and only thrying to unmake the preavious incarnation), actualy now that I think about it was it the goddes who made the incarnation? Well I still don’t think it was Alinua, at least not intentionaly but when the goddes says “Small” it implies that she would make a LOT bigger incarnation but then the “But…Better…than I had hoped” makes it kinda confusing. The best way to explain it is probably by saying that, before (even before what the Collector did to the previous incarnation), she was probably wondering how an incarnation more simmilair to her people would feel, and now it feels better then she had hoped. Oh, and one last thing, she doesn’t really seem to be opening her mouth when speaking, even other gods are opening their mouths when speaking, and it just seems strange how she doesn’t. Altho It probably has something to do with the fact that she is maybe trying not to open lower part of her mouth so she wouldn’t scare those who are curently looking at her (did I say this right?).
Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say now. Hopefully this could help you understand this page better.
Well this coment certainly looks like a brick. But it was the first big coment I wrote so…
Well then, mission accomplished
It counts as a bridal carry if you classify the prehensile merfolk tail as an arm, I say it’s close enough for the count
Woo! A helmet saved a life!