Grrl Power #1411 – Chef dragon-boy… R-D&D
Sometimes the page titles just come to me, and sometimes it takes me an hour to come up with something even the slightest bit relevant and is probably confusing. Guess how long this one took me. :/
Maxima could have disguised herself as a frumpy frump in a modest house coat, but she didn’t. Not assigning blame, just saying that getting hit on by a space-dragon-chef is not a completely un-predictable outcome.
The other reason Dabbler didn’t summon her vault of swords is simply there were too many to make it practical. The other page just showed the foyer. There are like 5oo melee weapons in that vault. Sure, she could have narrowed the selection to potential candidates, quite a few of them are, you know, starter weapons. If the real world had levels, they’d be the kind of stuff you’d get before level 10. Dabbler keeps them cause they’re still cool or unique or maybe have some very specific uses. There’d still be like 60 swords Max might want to give a test swing.
The background stuff in the first panel – the colored direction text says “Orgynasium,” Because, yes, this is Dabbler’s base, first and foremost. “Mass Fab 1-4,” “Petty Gold,” (like petty cash. They have a lot of gold laying around at this point, and if someone’s going to visit a planet that still uses precious metal for coins, they can stop by and grab a few bags.) Below that in yellow it says “Showers (Co-Ed)” There are non-coed showers for prudes on another floor. The next list says “Armory 6,” “Printers 13-24,” Arboretum 6,” and “Quarters 600-642.”
They’re on the 6th level, if you couldn’t tell. The symbol on the door is a Gold Molecule. That’s the Petty Gold vault. I say vault. It’s actually a closet with a lock. It’s usually not locked. There’s like 80 million in Earth bucks laying around in there. It’s alternatively sorted by material type and coin size in neat stacks, (they have some pre-minted coins for various destinations) and the other sorting option, big pile in the middle of the floor. Some people, possibly someone who might have a draconic bloodline, or maybe someone who just is a straight up dragon lurking around in a humanoid form, or maybe is a young dragon who hasn’t achieved his full feral form yet, and has a nigh-uncontrollable urge to roll around on a pile of gold and silver and platinum.
In case you were wondering, yes, Gaxgy’s head is modeled after the best Dragon Blooded head shape in Baldur’s Gate 3. I did that because I started freehanding a dragon head, then realized that the thing I drew wasn’t a shape that would… rotate correctly. It looked fine from the one angle, but it was probably a tiny bit non-euclidian. So I decided to switch to a model I could rotate for reference.
Let me tell you a little about my general design process. When I need a new design for the comic, like Maxima’s Stygan mask or whatever, I draw it for the first time on the page on which first appears, and… that’s my design process. I don’t really have a lot of time to sit and doodle. But for that reason, sometimes I discover that my initial design doesn’t quite work from every angle. So the design can sometimes drift over time as I draw them from different angles.
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
And here we thought that Sydney’s disguise was going to be an ongoing source of wacky hyjinks :)
She still has the blue gem as well, so clearly Maxima hasn’t reamed her out about that yet :p
I think it might just be a similarly colored but differently shaped gem now. One that doesn’t make her royalty.
Oh yeah you’re right, this one is circular as opposed to diamond shaped. The one that calls her out in the earlier chapter has a drop-shaped gem with only 1 sharp angle, I guess more angles = higher status?
Sapphire yes, Star Sapphire no. We’ve gone from 100k value to 1k value gem. Massive difference. AND without the cut it changes a ton. With the cut she was pushing a 1m+ value gem. Thus the immediate “Star Sapphire Princess” shenanigan event. 57 facets for crying out loud. Now picture that assumed as natural. Never mind that a lab grown 6 ct. 10 mm per side facing is 50k.
Oh… and that’s all assuming tiny little gems. Picture one as big as your forehead and try to assign a rational multiplier if you want. I won’t. In short she was pushing a Dabbler level move without realizing it.
I am slightly confused. I thought we were at Dabbler’s hidden fabrication plant, why is there enough footfall to warrant a food vendor?
Cora explained it a few pages ago, there are about 45 people who have access to the forge and people need to eat. That enough people to warrant a private cook imo.
She said there’s 45 beings who co-own the star forge.
There is scientists, engineers and staff too.
And, after the pirate incident that staff likely includes reliable mercenaries. No matter how much Dabbler might like a repeat of the “defeat pirate invaders” side-quest, the other owners would much prefer uninterrupted production and research (and probably expansion as well)
Also Dabbler seems like the kind of person who would employ a flirty chef.
She went over that a few pages back: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1408-celestial-self-refilling-xmas-stocking/
“Well, us and about 45 others. And there’s a full time staff, scientists and engineers, too.”
It’s a shared facility. It’s not the sort of place you’d want to leave vacant when you weren’t in, it’s safer to share it with enough people to avoid any worries about squatters moving in.
Who said it was ‘hidden’?
When the place works like a semi unlimited money vault you need people on it to keep it running and to keep it protected. Then of course you need someone to feed them or one of them takes cooking up as a hobby because they get tired of the same boring standard prefab food stuff and wants something different.
A chief will eventually appear. It’s now how, but simply when.
Ah the Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld effect. If you build it, intentionally or not, they will come. I hope none of those researchers are in a fey mood without proper resources. My other pet theory is that Dabbler or a friend started a survival challenge on some world and oops’d their way into a star forge. “if I research better kitchen stuff I can cook more efficiently….” *mcguyvers a grav drive out of a high tech oven that was supposed to maintain multiple temperature zones for different things to cook at the same time*
Proper Great Dragons are in fact non-Euclidian. Which makes things such as formal portraits a bit tricky. Generally, they settle on “doesn’t disappoint to the level I’ll kill the artist.” I mean, not that I’ve ever worked a contract for a boss with a penchant for art to clear their head and had… um, interesting associates. No matter what stories have said, they never get dragons ‘right’ they just get the angle that looks like it’s wrong and isn’t.
Space Gyros, with space sauce on space pitas,with a side of space hummus.
Ngl. Having never heard of the this Greek derivative of the Turkish doner, I had to look up what kind of food ‘gyros’ was, as my first thought was “why would they be eating gyroscopes?”
Why should we assume aliens have the same nutritional requirements as Earthlings do?
Anyway, maybe they just want a balanced meal.
it’s good food.
… in space.
You have to stretch out the word Spaaaaaaace Goaaaaaaaaats to sound correct.
I wonder how Earth food ranks intergalactically. You think pizza really blows alien’s minds? I remember an old Disney cartoon called Lloyd in Space where the human kid was trying to find something that humanity had contributed to the stars culturally for a school presentation and it turned out it was their food that had the most appeal.
In Phil Foglio’s sci fi romp Buck Godot: Zapgun For Hire, humanity was considered dull and mundane until aliens found out about popsicles. The idea of freezing food and eating it *while frozen* actually saved three planets…
i think it boils down to unique spices or blends.
as shown here, roasting meat is clearly a known factor but Frix seemed to be unfamiliar with Ribs so either he personally managed to avoid the whole BBQ experience until now or Earth has a way of cooking that might be unfamiliar.
maybe the smoking side of it? i mean, filling an exlosed space such as a ship with smoke is something frowned upon so the practive got lost?
Gaxgy… naw it can’t be an allusion to a someone else.
Thank You!
I understand the designs shifting. You don’t have a staff of artists to call upon, unless you have a few mirrors set up.
“Oh, this? This is for ME. Get your own food!” What? He’s a dragon.
Gaxgy *COUGH**COUGH*syllablereversal*COUGH**COUGH* probably isn’t a full-time cook. With such a small population, the station may round-Robin its duty roster. Or, like I said, he’s just making himself a snack?
Ok, Sorry, need to say it. Gold ATOM, not gold molecule. Gold is an element, and the drawing seems to be a gold atom, (I can’t count the electrons, but looks quite a lot, that is right) please, don’t say gold molecule. Please.
Oh my, alien “Shwarma” and Gyros, Imma want. Reminds me of downtown Istanbul street foodies.
I see that Sydney has changed to a forehead jewel less likely to result in excessive offers of clan inclusion..
All I can think of now is “Space Goats Coats to Coats” which would be a late-night show featuring old cartoons about Space Goats, along with Harvee Birdwoman (who’s a paralegal)
Actually… there is a Birdwoman, and, just like with Batman and the Batchicks, she’s not related to Harvey
Have to wonder what is in the vault that is: ‘For Xuriel eyes only’ first meal keepsakes, tinkering station, ye wall of what suucubi would consider ‘dirty’ that lesser beings would react worse to than Stitch’s swearing, and cyber eye/limb lab probably.
Did you say space goats? I heard he had a talk show.
Only goats to goats though :P
Mit space scharf bitte! (please make it space spicy)
My math says $80MM USD of gold is about 31 liters at today’s price, though I hope I haven’t dropped a decimal somewhere.
So it’s not a large pile of gold, it’s a small one. It would fit in a gym bag (and not a large one) though you’d have to have one made of really-strong-ium and a forklift to move it.
Gold is very dense, which is why it was used for (large) money. The US double eagle was nominally a $20 coin, current metal price roughly $4000. There’s been some inflation…
With a perspective like that, who can blame him
I figured Dabbler wouldn’t have labeled co-ed showers as such. Just “Showers” and the other one “Showers (for prudes)”
Dave, as pointed out above, you might want to raise that ‘gold’ thing a few orders of magnitude, like, to $80 billion, instead of $80 million. Dabbler’s shown as having as much gold as Smaug, and certainly enough to satisfy an ancient dragon. With gold currently at $4000 to the oz, that’s $64,000 dollars to the lb, and at 1200 lbs per cubic foot, you, uh, have literally one cubic foot of gold in that vault.
A ‘roomful’ of gold, 10x10x10, would be $80 billion. Enough gold for an ancient dragon to sprawl out on would likely be $800 billion, and that’s still less than Smaug had in the movie.
He is CLEARLY not Chef Dragon Boy R D&D. I am 1000% convinced his name is “Chef Boyar Drake al Dux.” For he is both large and in charge!
I presume that the name Gaxgy is an anagram for Gygax. This would please Gary, who routinely used anagrams of his and his friends’ names for things.
Gold is all well and good, but even on the scale of Earth’s economy it becomes rather unwieldy. If you’re doing high-energy nuclear reactions anyway, your most compact form of storage for wealth would probably be flerovium-298 or flerovium-342, or possibly unbihexium-310 or unbihexium-354, depended on which theory for the next proton magic number wins out. They would be slightly unstable, but probably still good for long-term storage. They are extremely uncommon in nature. It’s hypothesized that there is some of one of them in the system of Przybylski’s Star.
There is something uniquely universal about “Meat on a stick”.
Gold pressed latinum is a safe investment. Latinum is even better if you are a lurian and can store it in your stomach.
Turn that log of ‘meat’ into a donair, with a sweet creamy garlicky sauce that disguises the spiciness of the meat just long enough for it to be a surprise :) Start with sweetened condensed milk, add a little vinegar, and then the garlic…nope, that’s not enough, put in what you think is way too much…then double it. Slice the meat from the log into strips into an oiled and steamed or grilled pita then add chopped onions and tomatoes and cheese if you like. I like mine with ‘sauce on the side’ so I can dip each piece to make sure it gets sauced. Even Sydney would approve, especially if she got the extra-spicy kind.
When it come to weapons I suspect that Dabbler would be kind of like one of the more hard core gun guys that I know. For him, there are two groups of guns. On one hand there, are the “collection guns”. This includes an example of every sort of Japanese Arisaka style rifle ever produced. He collects these the way some people collect pokemon. These are carefully stored away and seldom see the light of day. Then there are the “working guns”. While these are usually non descript old milsurp pieces they are carefully maintained and usually modified for the task of feral hog hunting. Dabbler likely has a collection of weapons she has made, captured or otherwise obtained that hold some value to her but don’t meet her more immediate needs. The local hammer space is her version of concealed carry.
True, some things have value because they’re rare or are highly appreciated for their craftsmanship.
When it comes to weapons there are the ‘worth money’ ones and the ‘worth your life’ ones.
A pristine, original 800 year old match fired ‘handgonne’ will kill you just as dead as a 7.62 battle rifle like an FN or H&K, but I know which one I’d reach for if push came to shove.
I think Maxima would reject any implication that it’s *her* responsibility to make guys think with the big head, so the “frumpy housecoat” option is right out.
Chef Boyardragon
i hear the dragons voice being the meat cook charr hero point in guildwars 2 on the second map y ou would go to after teh starting map. near the tower.
…Is Maxima about to be grumpy about the fact that the space dragon is attracted to her? Because this isn’t something she can blame on “the Patriarchy.” They’re in Dabbler’s private starforge, far away from the planet Earth, dealing with people who have never been to Earth.
At what point does it start becoming offensive, the equivalent of a tourist from the British Empire wandering around India or Africa and sneering at the locals for having customs she disagrees with?