Grrl Power #1463 – The coy succubus
Sydney, don’t go around the vault full of magic weapons pulling swords from their sheaths without reading the little tags attached to them. Your glasses can translate Dabbler’s notes. The Antagonistic Dancing Practice Rapier does pretty much what its nom de guerre implies.
Sydney has been interested in her own hammerspace since page almost immediately after meeting Dabbler. Well, she’d been interested long before that, but didn’t realize it might actually be a possibility. Of course there’s a difference between a “scabbard of holding” and right proper hammerspace, which may be why Dabbler didn’t think of this solution. Also, as she points out on that page, Sydney’s already well stocked with abilities. Granted, Dabbler has like 50 times the individual abilities that Sydney has, if you include her tech stuff and spells and limited alchemical dabbling. But Dabbler just met Sydney. She likes to get to know people a little before just giving away magic weapons.
Yes, Maxima could admonish Sydney for (wo)manhandling Harem. But Harem could just teleport behind Sydney and stick an ice cube in her butt crack. She’d have to make a pit stop in the kitchen first, but the ease with which Harem could escape this situation basically makes her complicit in not escaping it.
Sexy bodymod news lady Gail has a special one-on-one interview with Tournament Quarter finalist Saraviah Nightwing! And if you subscribe to Gail’s Space Patreon, (which, due to the vagaries of Earth and Gal-Net’s DNS servers, happens to be the same as the Grrl Power Patreon, go figure) you can see that same interview in the nude! Well, eventually. The nude part of the interview, as well as the version that includes shading will be coming soon. Of course, you can view the interview in the nude now if you take your own clothes off. You know. Technically. Just put a towel on your chair first.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
No way the Orbs fit inside of Hammerspace. They’re already multidimensional.
You cannot separate Sid and the orbs.
oh right.. the orbs. I was thinking immediately of fetish pornstar safety. XD
Equivalent of putting a bag of holding inside a bag of holding.
Dabbler just felt a chill, like she’s about to be transported into an infinite convent where every inhabitant is wearing a chastity belt.
Fortunately for Xuriel, Sydney didn’t causeway back to Earth instantly out of sheer outrage, and Harem *probably* can’t teleport either of them (even if she despawns a couple of bodies), so she’s only going to get it second-hand.
Sydney has the teleport/hyperspace ball, so she actually can port back to earth.
I’m not sure if Dabbler is equipped to deal with an eldritch Sydney…
Hence me saying she “didn’t [atherium] causeway back to Earth”, just grabbed Harem.
Harem *definitely* can’t teleport either of them, as has been explained in an early author blog, the comic itself, and now in the comments on this very page.
“you’re making my nipples hard” ahahahah she likes it rough
Sydney seems to have also picked that up from Lapha (p1248).
It seems Harem and I have something in common after all. :3
Vote incentive incoming.
Which is why she isn’t “vorping” out of the hairpull.
Harem: “You’re making my nipples hard!”
Probably the surest way to convince Sydney to let go!
Sydney may be past the point where this bothers her.
It’s big “Stop bullying me, you’ll make me cum” energy…but probably not a lie so…engorged energy?
I agree she’s come a long way, but she seems to still have some hangups. I’m thinking that walking the other side of the street is still one of them.
If Parfait’s attempts backed by her runaway lust aura couldn’t persuade Sydney to indulge in yuri fun, then all but surely she simply doesn’t have the right brain wiring for swinging both ways. A pity for her, really. Frix is an excellent lover but succubus sex is life-changing awesome regardless of gender and with her newfound open-mindedness for polyamory she would have been in a perfect position to indulge in ‘dating’ Parfait on the side.
Nope, not when it is about hammerspace.
Hmmmmm……
Conceded.
Hmmmm…….
Conceded.
If Dabbler can hand out ‘Hammerspace Glphs’, it is very likely she can make Bags of Holding and Portable Holes.
In the hands of Sydney that may be just the beginning of the troubles.
If you ask Dabbler for a Portable Hole, she’s just gonna hand you a fleshlight.
I got as big a laugh from this comment as I did from the comic itself – kudos!
Well, along similar lines, since the phrase has been mentioned and we know an elixir exists that achieves the effect: there absolutely must be the temporary-tattoo/vajazzle glyph equivalent to enable a vagoo of holding…
Assuming that Sydney is still dating Frix, I would assume she would want that as well. No worries about running out of potions.
Sydney actually has several of those (although I think she only has one left now, since she gave one to Harem so Harem could have the sexytimes with Altus).
My mind instant put this in to say out of the blue at the portable hole… To boldly hole where no hole has holed before…
Oh yes I remember that song nerd rage. I don’t think Harold was quite informed about Sydney’s powers and capabilities despite working with her
All of Dabblers holes are portable
*snerk*
I have a feeling Dabbler is going to get an unscheduled, nerd rage-induced workout.
As she runs for dear life that is, considering what happened the last time Sydney wanted hammer space.
I can understand her outrage. Do you understand how much storage problems can be solved with those things? Though, admittedly, I’d prefer to get the hang of the application before trusting them with anything valuable (which I doubt she will).
Remeber when she got a utilty belt and had to decide what put in it? She could have a utilty belt of holding! She could be almost as prepared as Batman!!!
The problem with Sydney having access is she’ll flood Dabbler’s storage with all kinds of “OOO pretty” stuff, some that wiggles/growls/reproduces at an alarming rate… Then Sydney will interrupt Dabbler for a “refill” during her “recharge” visits that Sydney will complain about. Comedy ensues…
Sydney needs to learn to take things slower, Dabs can’t hand out alien tech without getting everyone involved in trouble with the galactic police, as it is they are taking a huge risk having Max play ringer in these games. Several people that know Max have figured it out already.
Giving Terrans access to alien tech while out in space is a non-issue – note Deus was able to legally make a huge purchase, he just had no means of legally getting the stuff to Earth (which didn’t matter thanks to his stargate). Giving them alien tech while on Earth is a serious issue. Not that they haven’t skirted those regulations before, even where Sydney was involved (her glasses come to mind), but Hammerspace is a bit too showy to readily trust Sydney to keep it under wraps. Plus, it was literally the first day Dabbler had met her when Sydney requested access, and today’s Sydney is a beacon of responsibility and rationality compared to how she was behaving that day. Dabbler liked her, sure, but it would have been extraordinarily irresponsible to give her such tech back then. I think she’s demonstrated that she could probably handle it now, but it still probably wouldn’t be worth the risk.
Max is not at all sorry about what she just unleashed.
Everybody remember Orb #7, the one that looks tan to me, with no known function?
Halo may have been toting a cargo hold around with her all of this time, and never realized.
What do you suppose the previous owners left in there?
Could they want it back?
Could it be live cargo?
That was discussed but it was decided not to try to empty what might be an alien prison or worse.
This still strikes me as one of the sillier decisions Max has made. Sure, when they discussed it wasn’t the right time, but that just means you need to create the right time–get all the heavy hitters in one place, have then let Syd try to access the hypothetical storage space. The notion of just ignoring one-seventh of Syd’s potential is just absurd and short-sighted.
It’s probably not that simple — presumably Sidney tried to get it to do something but couldn’t get it to produce any noticeable effects. (It might have done something she didn’t realize, just as maybe she *did* get the atmospherorb to work but she just didn’t notice it adding more air to the existing air in the air-ea.)
If it’s a brig, that means it contains something the Nth-tech owners considered dangerous, so there’s a risk even having all the heavy hitters assembled won’t be enough. But Sydney still has no idea how to access that orb’s abilities anyway. I think Max’s decision was more along the lines of “Here’s a good reason to not stress over not being able to use that orb” than “No, stop, it might be dangerous!” But it has been quite some time since I read that page.
Infinite donuts
Daleks
How do ‘Bags of Holding’ deal with f=ma?
How do they NOT become Perpetual Motion Machines?
Dabbler’s arm of holding has a star as a power source.(external power source to avoid becoming a perpetual motion Machine
Maxima’s magical scabbards are “represented” as glyphs which probably just means she still carries them, but in the compressed form of a glyph
That would be an interesting drawback. Imagine hypothetically the glyph or tattoo method still carries the weight of the objects being contained and Maxima’s natural super strength makes that not an issue.
That would be a very smart twist.
Depends on the verse/magic in question. “Simple” bags that are just bigger on the inside would probably have to do that, and I recall a Manwha where the MC used that to create a training weight that was much easier to handle. Other ones are more akin to dimensional doors, so you’re not carrying the stuff, you’re carrying a door/window that you reach through.
You’re assuming the ‘inside’ of a bag of holding is still in normal space. The inside could be anything from a pocket dimension (outside of normal reality), a mini-wormhole, a teleportation device, etc.
None of those things would violate f=ma since once inside the bag, it likely has no reference point to normal space. In other words a would always equal 0 since there would be no causal linkage between the ‘outside of the bag’ (regular space) and the ‘inside of the bag’ (other location/dimension)
So, the space ‘inside’ a bag of holding doesn’t move or go anywhere, at least, from an internal perspective. The stuff inside feels nothing of the world that the bag is in.
On the outside, the bag has a pre-set ‘mass’ that is heavier than a normal empty bag of the same size, but far less than the potential contents of the bag. This mass remains unchanging no matter what you put inside.
Which solves the f=ma problem, but still an easy perpetual motion machine. For a simple version, turn the cars of a large Ferris wheel into “bags” of holding. Take a heavy mass out of each car when they pass the top of the loop, leave it out as the cars are accelerating down, then put it back in at the bottom. Generate electricity or mana or something. Profit.
I wonder if this tattoo method is just harder to do? It seems like it. Charging a spell and doing a hand sign seems inherently more complicated than just yanking your gear out a pocket dimension at will. I wonder why Dabbler implied Sydney would have to give up a limb for it? There must be some catch to Maxima’s method is all I’m saying or maybe Dabs just realized giving Syd hammerspace when her powers already occupy her hands does more harm than good.
Pretty clear the glyph method was developed to allow non-mana using individuals to still get the benefit of hammer space. Which makes sense, because there are waaaaaaaay more individuals that can’t directly use magic/mana than those who can.
And even for magic users, it would make sense to have a “pre-charged” backup that doesn’t put any further drain on your mana pool, in case of emergencies.
Dabbler has a cybernetic arm, which is how she can teleport things to/from her lab.
I think it’s easy to figure out.
The current system Dabbler uses is in her cibernetic arm. Sidney demanded to have that and Dabbler take it literally to avoid having to do extra work and basically have to deal with Sids antics.
Imagine the scenario of making “hammer space” for her. Sidney would want things tweaked constantly, would want to know all the options to make “smart choices” and more. It would eat Dabbler’s time and sanity.
My guess is that Dabbler doesn’t use the glyph method herself because the built-in teleporter is generally better (if you conveniently already have a cybernetic body part to install it into), and just didn’t think of it as an option when she got distracted by a particularly bizarre Sydney moment.
Okay I know I’ve mentioned this before and I’m sure it’s been discussed sveral times by now but Harem has gotten a huge power up from this trip. Not only can she teleport across light years of space possibly also correcting for time dilation but Sydney is possibly assuming she could go too? And for all we know that’s exactly how her teleport works with no upper limit beyond Daphne’s mental capacity to familiarize herself with a location. I’m just assuming the superion field/effect just rewrites reality on the fly at this point. Seriously though it might be a smart move to just leave a Daphe as part of Cora’s crew at all times (if she wants to of course) to build a convenient network of intergalactic travel points like Dabbler’s star forge or that space port place. Deus has bern spending most of his resources building a star gate and ARC just has two working for them.
It is entirely possible that Daph doesn’t have a range limit on her power and that, until recently, she had no extra planetary locations in her memory or the option to acquire them. The requirement of having to physically visit or see a location first can be quite a handicap at times. Access to a starship makes things a lot easier, though.
Yes, the Superion and Thaumion fields permeate the universe and are boundless energy pools for what we know, so it makes perfect sense that in this setting sufficiently powerful mages or supers with the right abilities can effortlessly teleport across interstellar distances. Having a link requirement to the destination such as having been there previously makes a lot of sense as well.
If they thought Harem could bring someone else, they wouldn’t have brought Halo. Sydney’s entire reason for being here is “get Max back in a hurry if needed on Earth”.
Also, technically, she didn’t teleport to the ship. She despawned (“unteleported”) the short-haired body and remanifested it beside the blonde body. She couldn’t have teleported a[nother] bpdy to the ship if one of her wasn’t already there.
I did kinda forget some of Harem’s teleport rules. Upon looking it’s only Varia that can teleport with her which is whole rabbit hole of how super powers interact with each other type discussion itself. I do think Harem’s explanation justifying despawning as not teleporting is probably a little bullshit? She says herself she doesn’t actually understand it and hypothetically her body would still be traveling an insane distance even if it only “seems” like she’s standing next to herself when she despawns. We don’t know how that works either, my best guess she has some kind of Harem dimension she pulls her bodies from? Has she ever even experimented with just that? That alone is incredibly powerful. Either way I still think a lot of her limits are entirely based on her mental capacity or imagination.
Not sure if Sydney is grabbing Harem to get her to teleport to Dabbler and tell her to come quick (and not in her favourite way) or she’s had an idea on how to make use of this newly revealed toy.
Giving Harem the ability to transport a LOT of things over long distances instantaneously could be a worldbreaker, remember the effect, or lack of effect, the limitations on how much she can carry at once had on the big superfight…
Harem can talk in real time with Dabbler, because she’s standing there next to Dabbler and next to Sydney. She can’t carry anyone else with her when she teleports, except for Varia, but that’s Varia’s power at work, not Harem’s.
Sydney: Aside from being better trained in hand to combat then you, Harem also gains strenght when she un-teleports bodies. Did you really forget the Dabbler Science segment already?
I mean, Sydney did make it through basic training; she’s not a COMPLETE physical push-over. Also, those last two panels combined are just hilarious
Yeah, I’m going to need that second-to-last panel as a reaction image :3
…Wait.
Is this how we discover the use of that last Unknown Orb? If her Orbs are like a Portable Ship, then it makes sense in hindsight that the last orb would be either Cargo Management or The Medical Wing. Even a single-seater fighter needs room to store emergency supplies (including first-aid kits) if it’s properly equipped like an X-wing rather than a TIE Fighter, after all, and even TIE fighters have at least some emergency supplies in case of the pilot getting shot down and somehow surviving in such a way that they can signal for pickup before their combat group leaves the area.
As for why I believe the unknown orb to be Cargo instead of Healing: Life Support could cover Medical Necessities, after all, even if she hasn’t properly unlocked it yet, and the actually-rather-applicable Color Coding System marks healing as green in numbering on the UI as often as it does red in item-form like with healing potions.
Hmm. Sydney with an effective zone of holding. What could she do with it? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
Except the last thing Syd needs in a crisis situation is a portable doom pile to sort through. You KNOW she’ll cram her hammerspace full of too much random shit.
I’m visualizing “Min Max” and “Three Moves Ahead” (p428) strangling each other.
Don’t what or why Sydney’s desire for Dabbled is about, but the look on her face is DEFINITELY frightening…
Because Dabbler previously denied her any kind of hammerspace tech, implying that the only option she had would require chopping off an arm. Sydney is upset because she thinks Dabbler was holding out on her, that she had other options, like these magic glyphs, and failed to mention or offer them.
That Sydney face is amazing. Reminds me of Junji Ito.
Sydney with an inventory sounds more like a threat than a fun scenario. And it’s soon going to be everyone’s problem.
Even worse than Sydney with unlimited inventory – Digit, of the never ending harpoons.
Anyone else getting 403’d again?
She just needs it to store extra supplies of X^^Xtra hot sauce. She’s a Scoville after all…
Condiment *and* a crowd dispersal tool.
Sidney would sacrifice an arm if she could have hammerspace
she was stopped by the idea of her orbs NOT working if it was a robotic arm…
yeah, she’s about to go crazy
A hammerspace is like a holy grail for Sydney. I could see an arc where she has built the idea up in her head to the point that no actual hammerspace or similar object could ever live up to the mental image she has of it. She would have to deal with the crushing disappointment, learning that having was not as satisfying as wanting. It would turn out it worked like a storage unit where she finally wants that one thing only to remember it is all the way at the back and she has to take everything out to get to it.
Hmm…would people without a solid background in D&D understand that calling a weapon “dancing” means it has the power to hover in mid-air and conduct a battle by itself as if a ghost were wielding it? We can pretty clearly see it doing so in Panel 2, but I expect plenty of people would still imagine that calling it that means it does ballet or waltz moves occasionally mid-battle.
Sydney probably knows that, but according to the author comments she didn’t stop to read the labels.
Max snrked because she was thinking of a way to use her attributes to get even with Harem. Oops, indeed.
Sydney would definitely want palm tattoo versions. The real question is, what gizmos would she put in there? Mainly the stuff too heavy for her utility belt, I assume…grappling gun, gas grenade bandoliers, at least one huge mallet….
I need that second to last panel as a full blown page on its own
Oh, look, another character portrait.
you know, if sydney can remember this after the arc, shes coming at xuriel with the full name she can pronounce and making demands she has no right to. however small (considering the scope of the posibilites) and dabbs is just gonna poke fun at her about it.
Wait! How does panel two even work? Cora doesn’t even have arms (or legs)!!
Print they glyph on skin? Maxima’s skin has been shown to shed just about anything; hopefully the print function has an ‘extra sticky’ option.
Well, it wouldn’t be on her actual skin, but the ‘skin’ of the suit she is wearing
Just like the glyph on Cora’s arm (remember, Cora doesn’t have physical arms at all)
I don’t think the one Cora’s wearing is a glyph. I think it’s just strapped to her arm, and she’s only wearing it for demonstration purposes, because she uses the same teleporter system that Dabbler does.
Point being: Cora doesn’t have an arm to glyph
They got the “disguise” she’s wearing to stick to her somehow. They basically printed it on her skin.
Panel 7 reminds me of Arya meeting Walter Frey
Been a while since we had seen horror/eldritch Halo.
Of course, the reason Sydney wants to contact Dabbler _immediately_ is that she risks having this important information slip from her mind at any moment.
I Am Losing My Mind.
I just looked up at the top of the page…and (assuming that Dave has continued with featuring current characters in the mini Bios)…apparently that the freckled Blonde-is-apparently-one-of-the-Harems (without the choker?)
…I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks that that was…erm…. “Gizmo”? “Trinket”? (the girl with super-techno powers, and the personality and attention span of a massively hyperactive 14-year-old… wears magnifying lenses and her own version of a Utility Belt)?
I couldn’t even find her in the Wiki Characters page…
Somebody Help?
NeverMind…. Found her…Digit!
(But why isn’t she in the Rogue’s Gallery?)
Nevermind…Found Her… DIGIT!
(But why isn’t she in the Rogue’s Gallery…?)
I don’t think any of them are wearing their chokers — they’re trying to avoid being identified with Earth or ARCHON.
Dave’s art isn’t exactly consistent, and characters often change from one appearance to another, but Digit doesn’t have freckles. The cast page hasn’t been touched in years, which is why it has broken hypertext leaking through, and only has a small fraction of the characters.
I’ve been working on the wiki (grrlpowercomic.fandom.com) bit by bit as I find time.
Thank you!
Knowing Maxima’s skin is decidedly resistant to products sticking to it, I wonder what they’re using to print onto her… I guess they could probably use anything equivalent to a dyed super glue.
Considering how often magic comes up, it’d probably be good for them to include some kind of basics course into the ARCSWAT ciriculum to help them recognise and deal with magic users in their activities. The sorts of basics that help them understand if they come across an arcane rune or sigil if its ok to just damage it to stop its function or if that could cause an explosion.
Gwen mentioned she can test if people have enough mana and it could take as little as a few days to teach someone how to use it. Dabbler doesn’t want to spread technology, but she could help the team with Earth magic and provided they have enough knowledge to empower a rune it probably opens up a slew of opportunities.
Who said it was being stuck to her skin?
Do you see a glyph on Cora’s arm? Cora doesn’t even have a physical arm to stick anything to it!!
It’s the rule of three. You have to repeat it three times to show the importance of it.