Grrl Power #1359 – The dragon goes, “Ow awoo uwu ooooo.”
A bit of an odd page for this comic, as it doesn’t have 9 panels or more. But I thought it’d be fun to draw. Well, it was sort of fun. But also a little tedious and didn’t really come out nearly as well as I would have liked. In my head, this page was more of a progression of downed enemies, with the ground littered with golems, giants, knights, angels, all that good stuff. But if all that stuff was visible, the the final dragon slam couldn’t be as large by comparison.
It turns out lizard feet are pretty boring looking. I can honestly say I’ve never googled “lizard foot bottom” before. They’re just scaly. They don’t have like, big scales or pads or anything. Just regular scales. Yeah, I know I’m drawing a dragon here and not a… well, a bearded dragon, so I could have just drawn it however I wanted. But then it probably would have just looked like a paw with little beans like a cat.
Oh look! The vote incentive has another update!
Okay, its getting closer. The dragon slam page gave me a bit of time to work on it, and the clothed version is done… well, there no background, but instead of spending like an hour trying to render a nice looking couch for them to sit on, I put some work into the bonus comic that will accompany this incentive. I’m seriously hoping to have it all finished by the beginning of next month and I can move on to new ones that won’t take 3 months to finish.
The Patreon version is updated as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
So, umm, how long has been since Dabbler and Max met?
I mean, how long has Hoss had to do “what he might” in Gygaxia?
It wasn’t too long before Archon was formed, less than a year (or maybe two years)
The Daphne’s were already part of the team, and she’s only 19 physical-age at the time of this page
An important question to consider when talking about a universe with so much supernatural, sci-fi, and other assorted gobbledygook going on is whether or not time passes at the same relative rate everywhere. It is entirely possible that it’s been 20 years Gygaxia-time, and people have been out looking for Earth for a while already.
What’s the point in having nice armor, if you only armor one arm?
I mean, unless you’ve got an Achilles type blessing where you only have one vulnerable point, I suppose.
actually as someone who did live blade sparring,, arm armor is one of the most crucial bit with leg armor,, if you know what you are doing the torso rarely get hit, but normally it would be on dominant arm since its the one at the fore front and most at risk!
Which works for sparring.
The only fighters who armored arms preferentially were gladiators. Who were also sparring; death rates were low because they were expensively trained.
The priority is head, then chest, then top of legs, then other stuff. Because those are the things where if you get hit there, you die.
Hollywood doesn’t armor the head because then you can’t see the actor’s face. Which tells you all you need to know about Hollywood’s priorities – storytelling over verisimilitude.
Since “Big D” is shown as a somewhat theatrical character, it could be a gladiatorial armor design.
I’m sorry, the moniker “Big D” already belongs to a most filial chicken
Beware of the Big D Chicken.
I understood that reference.
A few pages back he had a sword, so I’m assuming the one-arm-armor would work like a shield held in the off hand.
that last image of the 3 at bottom look like dabbler trying to cope a feel of halo
damn sorry for the kind of double post,, the page bugged and would not show it, so i assumed something went wrong
That’s why Sydney’s eye is twitching ;)
I look at it as Sydney looking sideways at Dave B, like ‘is she doing this because she’s like this, or because you made her do this?’
You say that like that wouldn’t be what Dabbler was intending to do, and that this is an artist error.
I had the same thought.
that last image on the 3 at the bottom make it look like dabbler is trying the old over the shoulder c*pe a f**l on halo
damn sorry for the kind of double post,, the page bugged and would not show it, so i assumed something went wrong
There is a posting delay by a few minutes so various measures can be applied to keep out the spammers.
More than a few minutes sometimes. I’ve seen postings not appear in the thread for up to an hour.
It’s random, sometimes it takes a while (can be a few minutes to an hour), and sometimes messages (like David Nuttall‘s) can be visible and then disappear when you reply to someone else
I’ve been hearing that the reason for this is the sudden explosion in private AI’s combing the web for data. This has been confirmed on at least one other forum I frequent.
No idea, just this has been a thing for a couple months now
Months? I’ve experienced this since the first time I posted. That’s easily well over a decade ago!
It’s more likely to do with the big internet routers caching different versions of the page, and individual accesses from the same user’s client grabbing from different routers’ caches due to the traffic conditions at those particular times.
Wasn’t a problem here until a couple months back (can’t remember the exact timeline), and haven’t experienced it in other places (been posting for near three decades now)
Like said, some posts that did appear will disappear again and not come back for an hour or more
I too have had this issue since I first started reading.
Do we even know how super powers work? I know Deus kinda broke down some theoretical concepts I didn’t really understand, but trying to weaponized the super force or whatever seems impossible or at least very difficult. Like you’d have to start some sort of eugenics-y super breeding program. I guess D did allude he might know how to make supers though. But again it doesn’t seem like something you can just do.
SmugD don’t know shit: he is bluffing because what he says sounds good, but no one really knows
And the jackass believes that, just by giving someone powers, he can create a completely loyal army (only if he included a killswitch… and not someone like Cthilla or even Valyeur, who both have their own agendas)
The fact the experts don’t know everything about something is never a good reason to assume they don’t know anything about the issue and everything goes. If two intellectual giants like Deus and Dabbler of vast expertise and radically different backgrounds and allegiancies agree on what they know or suspect about the nature of magic and superpowers I am driven to assume their conclusions are correct. For the same reasons, it seems best to assume that what Deus implies about his ability to create artificial supers is true.
Nothing is ever perfect but Deus seems to have subscribed to the best method available to ensure the loyalty of your subordinates: treat them well, be a good leader, and ensure your interests and theirs align.
This seems the simplist explanation of where Hoss got his super powers, if he has them.
SmugD subscribes to misdirections and lie-adjacent ‘facts’, and if those interests inevitably diverge… well, we know what happened to the king who wouldn’t play along, don’t we
What experts? Dabbles may be smarter than most, but that doesn’t mean much (specially in certain countries who education is subpar at best… ). She knows a little in a lot of subjects, but she doesn’t know a lot
I suppose it’s possible that Deus could have run a bluff during his interaction with Dabbler (with Max in the room). This seems unlikely. He would have to have gotten enough information about other things, like magic, to be able to fit those things in.
It’s true that he could have had a pre-written and rehearsed story, but it would have been a terrible risk. What if Dabbler came up with something during the conversation that he didn’t think of? If what he knows is real, he could say “That’s a good avenue for investigation”. If it’s BS, the whole thing likely would have fallen apart, in front of someone he wants to impress, who is a representative of the US government (and who is listened to), and is invulnerable to pretty much any pressure he could bring to bear.
The attitude towards Deus seems to be that people want to see him having to back down on one of his plans. Not because he was out-thought, just because he must be humbled in some manner, so anything will do.
He hasn’t been brought up short because the people who would want to either don’t have the ability, or else he’s doing stuff they support, or at least are mostly supportive of.
I doubt it’s going to happen, because for the change to be believable Deus would have to become incompetently stupid and hubristic. Not “I don’t know PowerPoint” stupid; that’s entirely possible the way Microsoft keep changing things, and cramming “AI” into everything (apparently there’s still people at MS that are Clippy fans).
And that’s a big change, so much so that I would suspect mind control or possession.
Dabbler is interested in explosions, magic, and technology. And is able to modify packaged stuff like firearms, which requires a lot of deep background. She dabbles in other stuff to support those things.
She’s not interested enough in swordplay to become really good at it. Her reaction is to acquire or modify a sword nasty enough that most opponents want to run away. It helps that she can fix most injuries and is not averse to having body parts replaced; she could have a regrown eye and arm from Cora’s spaceship facilities at any time (let alone an actual hospital) but decided not to.
Dabbler is likely *very good* at magic, since it affects her immediate interests. Canonically, *no one* is good at superpowers in this setting, at least not at that level.
Deus has hinted that he has more knowledge of powers than anyone else, but it’s only a hint.
Can he induce powers? Can it be done reliably? Can he select the powers induced, or is it inherent to the inductee? Does it require a human, or can he do it to other creatures (Earth-based or otherwise)? Probably doesn’t, see Pixel.
Can it be done off-world or does it require Earth in some fashion? How portable is the inducer? Does inducing powers require a human or humans to do the inducing procedure?
Can more powers be induced in a powered person? What control is there on the new powers if so? Can powers be reduced, increased, turned off temporarily or permanently? What interaction is there between being a magical creature and having powers?
For most of these questions no one is even hinted at having an answer. Deus has hinted at being able to improve the rate at which powers are induced or discovered in a population and that’s all.
Yes, we got a few important clues about how magic and superpowers work in this setting, thanks to some exposition and/or research by Dabbler and Deus. Both kinds of power are tied to fundamental forces of the universe (like gravity and electromagnetism) in this setting, the thaumion and superion fields respectively. Both require sapient intent to be tapped.
The Thaumion field grows stronger in the presence of life and powers magic and the abilities of supernaturals. A few human mages as well as members of several advanced civilizations (e.g. Alari and demons/succubi) know how to use it.
It is hinted that the Superion field is artificial and was created relatively recently (on a geological scale) by the same extremely advanced aliens (the Nth) that made Halo’s artifacts. It seems that it is encrypted and humans have the decryption key in their genome to tap it. This explains why as a rule only humans are able to tap it.
It also seems that alien hybrids with a sufficient amount of human genes (e.g. Hoss) and alien minds in human bodies (e.g. E-Sciona) can tap superpowers as well. It is suggested that being on Earth may be somehow conductive to activate superpowers if you otherwise fulfill the prerequisites, but once they are on, they keep working anywhere. Last but not least, the same individual can simultaneously tap magic and superpowers if they have the right prerequisites, as the cases of E-Sciona (a blood mage and a super) and Pixel (a were and a super) indicate.
Deus discovered the origin of superpowers and it is hinted he knows how to activate them, quite possibly on demand.
It still seems like most aliens or extradimensional beings couldn’t just show up and start harnessing the superion field for their benefit. I guess it depends on how widespread humanity’s genetic blueprint has spread throughout the galaxy and dimensions. A spike in human abductions might happen we’ve actually already seen a mini invasion with that exact motive even if they didn’t really understand the true details. I still think it can’t be something easy or Deus would be further along in the progression of his world agenda. Developing third world nations into global super powers tells me he still needs significant likely energy related infrastructure and or resources to just turn on super powers in humanity. It can’t be as simple as just hanging around Earth with some human dna spliced in you or we’d have way more supers right? In the multiple eras of human history supers seemed very rare. Even now in a boom period like 1 in million people are supers. (It might be more common than that I think Max said ARCs data was clearly inaccurate.)
Interesting side note: I guess Dabbler has no human dna in her widely diverse succubus heritage or maybe it works differently for them from their nature of their creation. But she’s spent a significant amount of time on Earth with no powers developing on noticing any of her potential to tap into the superion field.
Sorry if this was too long. The lore of Grrlpower is very interesting. Dave clearly put a lot of thought into it. The kernels of lore are fascinating.
It seems likely that a non-insignificant number of succubi exist with enough human genes to be potential superion channelers, but no one of them got the opportunity to activate this potential. Otherwise, Dabbler and Decollete would know about it, the former would not have needed to learn about this new power source from Hoss, and hordes of succubi would have come to Earth to breed with humans already.
I think it is more likely that no one of the four succubi we know to be Earth residents (Dabbler, Parfait, Decollete, and Tamatha) have enough human genes to qualify. Succubi seem far too good at incorporating the useful genes of other species in their own genome gainfully for humans to be an exception. We know from the cases of E-Sciona and Pixel that the potentials to tap magic and superpowers are not incompatible or especially antagonistic.
We seem to be forgetting that “supers” are still extremely rare. I forget the percentages, but they were stated a while back. Something like 2% or 0.2% range. Just because someone has a significant amount of human DNA doesn’t mean automatic powers.
Or really it’s just a few sequences in the correct location. So 1) very low percentage of humans have the correct DNA sequences, 2) multiplied by the even lower chances of having those exact fragments of DNA mixed in with alien DNA. The fact that Hoss or Big D *may* (probably?) have won the DNA lottery doesn’t mean *everyone* else in the comic with human DNA will.
What about Cora? She is a Terran-descendant, how much time does she have to spend on Dirt before the Super kicks in?
IIRC Max said that after the initial fight. The 1/1,000,000 figure was based on the capes USG was able to find out about. I.e. those willing to be contacted, and/or not subtle enough to avoid it.
But one news broadcast (admittedly repeated) was able to bring in 3 dozen or so capes willing to throw down in a parking lot fight against a government-backed cape team.
Which means the real incidence must be much higher. There’s people who like to fight. How many of them are willing and able to pick up and travel across the country to fight police for laughs, with no guarantees of being bailed or even being alive at the end?
If they were all local, that makes the figure even further off. AFAIK Archon’s HQ is “centrally” located in the continental US, which limits the size of the city they’re in. If powers are distributed randomly, then you’d expect a lot more in e.g. NYC.
Let me guess, Gygaxia is a world filled with dungeons and dragons?
And that dragon use to be called Thaco :P
‘Thaco’ is a goblin in another comic
And probably came from the same source :)
Wasn’t that Spelled out in the commentary on the last page?
But I’m sure there’s a Ranger of biomes there.
Can’t just be all Lich that.
(Ok, that last one was a bit of a reach)
am i the only one who think horse boy and dick/deus x have very similar smiles?
All evil (pipe down cheerlawyer) dictator’s have that smile
Poor Dragon…. How dare
Perhaps it was a evil dragon that had it coming.
“Kind of looks like something i might do.”
What? Invade another planet and kill a native creature just for being itself?
With or without it being sapient
Looks like they let him carry the ultronium armor through the gate, but not the sword. Sensible. It also looks like Hoss didn’t really need the sword.
And Maxima? When you hear what a cocky arrogant bastard does, and say, “that sounds like something I would do”? Look in the mirror, girl.
Considering Dabbles has no idea what Big D has done, that’s probably just ‘artistic license’ (based on what she has experienced from Maxi) :P
Please to be noting how she is squinting her eyes at Dabbles when she says that, not just narrowed like at the top
I, for one, am personally okay with the idea of dragon toe beans.
Toothless is most definitely a cat
Well, I had a good laugh at this page, so I’m glad ya did it!
Sydney definitely has a look on her face like she’s trying to classify what type of dragon he might be fighting as it relates to D&D archetypes, maybe trying to figure out what CR it is. Which means that she’s most likely also casting her teammates as different D&D classes and building a party for any potential future raid on the planet
No middle age comments along the lines of “what dragon, those are just my kitties.”?
An idea a fantasy world that learns the OP adventurer got Isekaied from Earth and they seek to invade Earth for this power ..
And typing that I just realized this is a sub plot from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime where they know summoned people get powers so will summon people from Earth on purpose.
But actual supers and learning this power can be obtained by others is another ball game.
I don’t think that was magma the dragon’s head landed in.
NEW STORY ARC INCOMING!
In laymans terms:
1. Assume the whole galaxy knows earth has superpowers
2. Assume a relevant part of them wil come to take control of supers
For the record, Dragons _are_ Cats.
I wonder how Hoss and to a larger extent his species exists to be able to qualify for super powers. It seems to me like at some point in human history some earthlings were abducted and just started fucking their way across space. I just find it really funny that Hoss probably exists from someone fucking an alien unicorn.
So in Gygaxia is the most popular baby name Gary?
Given the face that Halo is making, I would like to believe that Dabbler is copping a feel, but I don’t think her arm is in quite the right position for that. T-T
No, she’s trying to get a good view of the dragon: tilted head, one eye slitted
Dabbler, I think the universe in general already knows about Earth and powers, so Hoss making a mess probably doesn’t make much of a difference.
Although maybe it’s the difference between some guy posting on a blog “Sol 3 has this weird stuff” and his followers investigating (the Times Square thing) vs. TV and radio equivalents all posting at once. Maybe Gygaxia only allows in holovision cameras with accredited press and Hoss’s dragon smackdown goes viral.
Or the universe is really big and the Times Square thing was local, while Gygaxia is closer to the center of things, somehow.
Given that the above is primarily a mental image, I wonder if it isn’t at least a little bit filtered through Sydney’s D&D player’s mindset?
I’m gonna be honest here; I don’t think I’ve ever commented on this comic’s artwork, but I really feel the need to point out that I could barely make out what’s going on in that scene. I get that it’s supposed to be a dark environment, but the lack of contrast between the ground, the creature, and whatever else is in the pic makes it REALLY hard to tell what’s going on in the scene without squinting and checking it a second and third time.
(And I don’t think it’s my monitor… I try to keep mine as “color-accurate” as I can, and even viewing the scene on a brighter monitor mainly just made the red wings stand out a little more. There’s still a lot of detail there that gets lost, which I’m sure wasn’t the intended initial reaction.)
There’s absolutely historical precedent for describing dragons as having cat-like or lion-like features. I was looking through heraldic designs for an example, though, and it looks like they all draw either the sides or tops of the claws (perhaps specifically to avoid drawing dragon beans?)