Ehh they’ve got a literal lake of lava between the ignans and the crawlers so the locals will probably be fine. Once Rakhn gets bored of fighting crawlers im sure he’ll pour some magma down there… though if his lava acts how it looks and has mafic properties that might take a lot of lava.
So, are they purposefully unleashing the void tainted zombie army on the island? That would be pretty dark, especially by Kendal “Nobody dies for me” Kennedies standards.
I think there might be too much lava in that cave for crawlers to be an issue. Cave-crawlers don’t like light and heat. And even if some crawlers come out, then the paladins have a lot of practice fighting them and the local ignans all have fire magic.
All in all it will probably be fine
No, they said some panels back that the plan was to trick the Paladins into thinking Erin was trying to release the Dragon. So they bust open the nearest opening to the Singing Caves to make the Paladins think he was heading for the Adamant prison. The Paladins would rush to the opening to stop him, meanwhile, Erin and Dainix run for the shore to go underwater where the spellbirds can’t track him. With lava and trained Paladins, cave crawlers won’t be a problem for anyone.
They discussed the plan clearly on pages 2.6.19 and 2.7.5.
The goal is to distract the Paladins with the danger of him going for the singing caves. Him actually doing this is their worst case scenario and they can’t ignore it.
The Cave Crawlers they saw can be defeated by any halfway competent military force. And there are Paladins, Dragons and a literal Volcano god spawn camping the exit.
If there is anything that can even threaten those forces, it will be something completely unknown.
I’m really curious about how the paladin leader guy (forgot his name) will react to this. Mainly, will he buy it? I think he’ll send troops either way, but it will be interesting insight onto his character and the philosophy of the paladins as a whole to see wether he sends troops because he genuinely expects Erin to turn evil, or because he thinks it is a trap/distraction but sends troops anyway because the possibility is still too risky to ignore.
He seems far more grounded than Tam, so if even he treats Erin as this evil agent of the void dragon, it probably means paladin philosophy as a whole promotes that kind of thinking, versus only zealots being so extreme about it in the case he focuses on the tactical motivations behind this move first.
In that case, it would be neither ‘who’ nor ‘whom’, but ‘whose’.
‘Who’ is a subject, and performs the action of a verb. Tess is the one WHO blew up the volcano.
‘Whom’ is an object, and receives the action of a verb. Tess, WHOM Erin ran away from, blew up the mountain.
‘Whose’ is an interrogative or relative pronoun. WHOSE plan was it to have Tess blow up the mountain?
Not a better writer, just more familiar with the quirks of the English language. Trust me, there are people who know grammar systems back-to-front and are TERRIBLE writers, so you’re all good.
Well Tess i CERTAINLY the powerhouse of the group.
Perhaps the reasons she can do it only once is that a simultanious discharge of so much elemental energy leaves mages drained. Therefore they can’t cast even simple spells, let alone something like THAT, for a decently long amount of time. Physical durability doesn’t seem to be afected, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Also, DID SHE MAKE A HOLE SO DEEP IT LEAD DIRECTLY TO THE ADAMANT PRISON, like girl, you only needed to open a path to the singing caves, it did NOT need to lead directly to the suposed destination.
I interpreted “I can only do this once” as being because as soon as she explodes the tunnel, she’ll get the attention of the paladins, and a second explosion won’t fool them the same way.
Loquor: Flying patrols, report! Paladin Mount: We’re in a hole lot of trouble, even crater than before! Our tunnel vision has led us into a depression and, with this pit in our stomaches, we might cave into the pressure- Loquor: SOLDIER! Paladin Mount: Sorry … I do it when I’m nervous.
… And she’s OK folks! (audience applause) After years of lightning charged punching, jumping, and other physical feats, Tess has tested her durability thoroughly, so (probably) knew she’d be fine. She’s battered, but I doubt she’s seriously injured; goodness knows the gang can’t afford another member in a compromised state.
Oh that final panel is beautiful: the different glow effects from fire, lightning, and what looks to be stone at the bottom; the sense of depth, both in the hole and above it with the dragon and rider; and just how ominous this all feels, even knowing this is good for our heroes. Yep, nothing short of Rakhn’s direct intervention is going to plug that, and with how interesting this whole situation is, I don’t think he’ll be in a hurry to do so.
Prediction for next week: No way are the Paladins letting this go unaddressed. A substantial number of their forces, maybe even all of them, will converge on the hole, fearful that Erin is down there and making his way to V.D.’s prison, while the gang sneaks around them to the ocean. Just as planned.
And yet … part of me wonders if Stefan will take the bait. Tam, if he was here, would definitely make a b-line to the hole and take everyone with him, but even with this spectacle, Stefan may not be fooled and suspect misdirection.
Strategically speaking, he will definitely send troops, probably try besiege of the area surrounding the cave entrance, its too much of a risk, and our gang will get past them, from the looks of it, tess won’t catch up to them yet(also from the chapter cover we can interpret). Man these chapters keep getting better, I excited by the possibilities of this playing out.
Stefan will certainly send SOME, maybe MOST of his forces, but he seems the cautious type. Even if he fell for the bait it would be foolish to give up on the search entirely, especially if the Spellbirds are about to start telling him that Erin is NOT in the Caves (or anywhere else).
I’m reminded of a certain firebending princess. “The Avatar is trying to give us the slip!”
Now that’s how to spread some fear among your enemies! Perhaps instead of the whole dragon thing, I should have just blasted open an entrance to the Singing Caves right below Zuurith’s pompous temple and watched the mortals scurry.
I’m worried about my girl… that was super rad but now she’s probs out of commission combat wise, and it’s established that she’s a lot slower if she can’t channel. We also don’t know what over-channeling looks like for Tess, whether she’ll just be a bit low on juice or if she could experience some sort of elemental corruption from this. If they do come looking for her she might be a very shiny sitting duck. Ideally the paladins are preoccupied and she has time to recharge, but things are probably going to go poorly for Erin and she’s not in prime shape to KRAKOOM to his defense. Kudos to Red for (probably) sidelining her powerhouse without throwing her through a wall.
If things go REALLY bad for Erin it will be interesting to see whether Tess splits from the rest of the group about it. Her “he’s a runner” comment about Falst have some foreshadowing for her own arc than an accurate read on the catboy’s issues (which stem specifically from abandonment and rejection, not being tied down like Tess was. It feels likely to me that his breaking point came from doing SO MUCH to try to save everyone, especially Dainix, but everyone just keeps putting themselves right back in danger because he can’t actually do much about the root cause of the threats. Even if he is currently hyperventilating in a tree somewhere, it seems really unlikely that he’s going to stay that way)
(Speaking of Falst, a few pages before his Big Leap, the Important Paladin Beard Guy (name??? idk) gives his “there’s nothing more damaging to an army than a hero” speech. I’m deeply concerned for my little guy’s health moving forward. Like, successful heroic behavior has a pretty high injury rate, but a failed act of heroism could also be very bad for Falst’s mental health, and I really don’t think the gang’s getting out of this unscathed. Either he actually saves the day and reinforces his shield complex, or it DOESN’T work (or potentially makes things even worse) and he blames himself. He’s starting to work out that he’s got something weird with paladin magic as well, which is a whole extra confounding factor, besides the fireseed and his willingness to jump into a volcano. Whether or not he had a plan when he bolted, I don’t trust him to make healthy choices in his current state.)
same, girl
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: it was made for me!
Image source: ow
Tumblr text: yea that about sums it up
Bluesky text: plan went great!
“This is my hole, it was made for me!” A reference to Junji Ito’s Enigma of Amigara Fault.
For those who don’t know, like the rest of Junji Ito’s work, it’s a mix of psychological and body horror.
Alinua is gonna be so pissed when she gets here.
Hopefully someone deals with that hole after all this is done, or else Rakhn might be crawling with crawlers…
Ehh they’ve got a literal lake of lava between the ignans and the crawlers so the locals will probably be fine. Once Rakhn gets bored of fighting crawlers im sure he’ll pour some magma down there… though if his lava acts how it looks and has mafic properties that might take a lot of lava.
It’ll take a while, bc at first it’s just gonna be enrichment for Rakhn.
for a sec I thought that was rakhn as the island saying “ow” but it’s probably Tess
sdfkjg oh that would be really funny– but yeah, I think it was Tess
I immediately thought Tess, but this is the funniest thing in the world to me.
^
Yeah I think they will notice this
So, are they purposefully unleashing the void tainted zombie army on the island? That would be pretty dark, especially by Kendal “Nobody dies for me” Kennedies standards.
I think there might be too much lava in that cave for crawlers to be an issue. Cave-crawlers don’t like light and heat. And even if some crawlers come out, then the paladins have a lot of practice fighting them and the local ignans all have fire magic.
All in all it will probably be fine
Given that the cave entrance was blocked off by a lava flow it’s probably safe to assume that Rakhn can reseal it.
I don’t think that’s where this is going, but I absolutely want to read that fanfic, lol
No, they said some panels back that the plan was to trick the Paladins into thinking Erin was trying to release the Dragon. So they bust open the nearest opening to the Singing Caves to make the Paladins think he was heading for the Adamant prison. The Paladins would rush to the opening to stop him, meanwhile, Erin and Dainix run for the shore to go underwater where the spellbirds can’t track him. With lava and trained Paladins, cave crawlers won’t be a problem for anyone.
Ooooooh right that makes much more sense
They’ve discussed the plan on screen before. They just want to lead the Paladins INTO the Caves, not lead anything OUT.
They discussed the plan clearly on pages 2.6.19 and 2.7.5.
The goal is to distract the Paladins with the danger of him going for the singing caves. Him actually doing this is their worst case scenario and they can’t ignore it.
The Cave Crawlers they saw can be defeated by any halfway competent military force. And there are Paladins, Dragons and a literal Volcano god spawn camping the exit.
If there is anything that can even threaten those forces, it will be something completely unknown.
yeah, looks like the recoil was no joke
Tess didn’t suffer any recoil.
The ground she was standing on however? Yeah, that went flying.
I’m really curious about how the paladin leader guy (forgot his name) will react to this. Mainly, will he buy it? I think he’ll send troops either way, but it will be interesting insight onto his character and the philosophy of the paladins as a whole to see wether he sends troops because he genuinely expects Erin to turn evil, or because he thinks it is a trap/distraction but sends troops anyway because the possibility is still too risky to ignore.
He seems far more grounded than Tam, so if even he treats Erin as this evil agent of the void dragon, it probably means paladin philosophy as a whole promotes that kind of thinking, versus only zealots being so extreme about it in the case he focuses on the tactical motivations behind this move first.
He’ll send troops there because it is the right thing to do.
Lord Stefan.
Tess, succinctly <3
“Ow?” That’s your exit strategy? Who (or whom) plan was this?
If I was made of metal, ballistic retreat would be my exit strategy, too.
Since you brought it up, neither. The coorrect one here is “whose”
In that case, it would be neither ‘who’ nor ‘whom’, but ‘whose’.
‘Who’ is a subject, and performs the action of a verb. Tess is the one WHO blew up the volcano.
‘Whom’ is an object, and receives the action of a verb. Tess, WHOM Erin ran away from, blew up the mountain.
‘Whose’ is an interrogative or relative pronoun. WHOSE plan was it to have Tess blow up the mountain?
I stand corrected. Thank you. (bow to better writers)
Not a better writer, just more familiar with the quirks of the English language. Trust me, there are people who know grammar systems back-to-front and are TERRIBLE writers, so you’re all good.
Ouch
Well Tess i CERTAINLY the powerhouse of the group.
Perhaps the reasons she can do it only once is that a simultanious discharge of so much elemental energy leaves mages drained. Therefore they can’t cast even simple spells, let alone something like THAT, for a decently long amount of time. Physical durability doesn’t seem to be afected, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Also, DID SHE MAKE A HOLE SO DEEP IT LEAD DIRECTLY TO THE ADAMANT PRISON, like girl, you only needed to open a path to the singing caves, it did NOT need to lead directly to the suposed destination.
This world is rather small, but not that small, I don’t think. That glow at the bottom is probably not the Adamant Prison
I interpreted “I can only do this once” as being because as soon as she explodes the tunnel, she’ll get the attention of the paladins, and a second explosion won’t fool them the same way.
Loquor: Flying patrols, report!
Paladin Mount: We’re in a hole lot of trouble, even crater than before! Our tunnel vision has led us into a depression and, with this pit in our stomaches, we might cave into the pressure-
Loquor: SOLDIER!
Paladin Mount: Sorry … I do it when I’m nervous.
… And she’s OK folks! (audience applause) After years of lightning charged punching, jumping, and other physical feats, Tess has tested her durability thoroughly, so (probably) knew she’d be fine. She’s battered, but I doubt she’s seriously injured; goodness knows the gang can’t afford another member in a compromised state.
Oh that final panel is beautiful: the different glow effects from fire, lightning, and what looks to be stone at the bottom; the sense of depth, both in the hole and above it with the dragon and rider; and just how ominous this all feels, even knowing this is good for our heroes. Yep, nothing short of Rakhn’s direct intervention is going to plug that, and with how interesting this whole situation is, I don’t think he’ll be in a hurry to do so.
Prediction for next week: No way are the Paladins letting this go unaddressed. A substantial number of their forces, maybe even all of them, will converge on the hole, fearful that Erin is down there and making his way to V.D.’s prison, while the gang sneaks around them to the ocean. Just as planned.
And yet … part of me wonders if Stefan will take the bait. Tam, if he was here, would definitely make a b-line to the hole and take everyone with him, but even with this spectacle, Stefan may not be fooled and suspect misdirection.
Strategically speaking, he will definitely send troops, probably try besiege of the area surrounding the cave entrance, its too much of a risk, and our gang will get past them, from the looks of it, tess won’t catch up to them yet(also from the chapter cover we can interpret). Man these chapters keep getting better, I excited by the possibilities of this playing out.
Stefan will certainly send SOME, maybe MOST of his forces, but he seems the cautious type. Even if he fell for the bait it would be foolish to give up on the search entirely, especially if the Spellbirds are about to start telling him that Erin is NOT in the Caves (or anywhere else).
I’m reminded of a certain firebending princess. “The Avatar is trying to give us the slip!”
Now that’s how to spread some fear among your enemies! Perhaps instead of the whole dragon thing, I should have just blasted open an entrance to the Singing Caves right below Zuurith’s pompous temple and watched the mortals scurry.
Tynan, the Storm of Terror, Shadow of Thunder, if he possessed more than two functioning brain cells
^ as told by Shanyasi the Story-Keeper as a stand-up comic, see more at the link in my username
I think Rakhn is going to owe Kendal and company for some more entertainment.
He is actively providing the entertainment right now.
°^°
Hey, Aurora is exactly 7 years old today!
Heck yea!
Happy birthday comic! Wonder if Red realizes.
Wait, I’ve seen this one before! They just need some Lightroot seeds and a few Sundellion-based meals in case they step in gloom down there.
since @redpandaofalltime is still missing I guess this is just gonna be my thing now
oh my golly me it’s Tess
oh my golly me it’s a dragon and paladin.
oh my golly me its an angy volcano
I think they only do it on pages with Dainix, so they’ll be back once he’s on-screen again
Do you think that is the party standing above Tess in Panel 4, or is it a squad of Paladins?
Yes, go investigate the giant hole that could shoot lava any moment.
I’m worried about my girl… that was super rad but now she’s probs out of commission combat wise, and it’s established that she’s a lot slower if she can’t channel. We also don’t know what over-channeling looks like for Tess, whether she’ll just be a bit low on juice or if she could experience some sort of elemental corruption from this. If they do come looking for her she might be a very shiny sitting duck. Ideally the paladins are preoccupied and she has time to recharge, but things are probably going to go poorly for Erin and she’s not in prime shape to KRAKOOM to his defense. Kudos to Red for (probably) sidelining her powerhouse without throwing her through a wall.
If things go REALLY bad for Erin it will be interesting to see whether Tess splits from the rest of the group about it. Her “he’s a runner” comment about Falst have some foreshadowing for her own arc than an accurate read on the catboy’s issues (which stem specifically from abandonment and rejection, not being tied down like Tess was. It feels likely to me that his breaking point came from doing SO MUCH to try to save everyone, especially Dainix, but everyone just keeps putting themselves right back in danger because he can’t actually do much about the root cause of the threats. Even if he is currently hyperventilating in a tree somewhere, it seems really unlikely that he’s going to stay that way)
(Speaking of Falst, a few pages before his Big Leap, the Important Paladin Beard Guy (name??? idk) gives his “there’s nothing more damaging to an army than a hero” speech. I’m deeply concerned for my little guy’s health moving forward. Like, successful heroic behavior has a pretty high injury rate, but a failed act of heroism could also be very bad for Falst’s mental health, and I really don’t think the gang’s getting out of this unscathed. Either he actually saves the day and reinforces his shield complex, or it DOESN’T work (or potentially makes things even worse) and he blames himself. He’s starting to work out that he’s got something weird with paladin magic as well, which is a whole extra confounding factor, besides the fireseed and his willingness to jump into a volcano. Whether or not he had a plan when he bolted, I don’t trust him to make healthy choices in his current state.)
Important Paladin Beard Guy is Lord Stefan!
Insane reference in the alt text
Tess is the Knuckles of the Floof Squad, confirmed!
(Mentally merges Tess and Knuckles features and grins foolishly) Thanks for that image!
Needs more PLORT.
I was not expecting the Junji Ito reference
Ow