Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

I have to say this before the moaning starts: i liked the scene. I liked the fact that the war is shown as dark and dangerous and horrible and painful and Lewstrom is shown as a lich.
And i liked Maula's disgust and pragmatism as well.

I had quite a lot of empathy left over for Lewstrom from his origin story-arc and how he behaved afterward, chosing exile after regaining his freedom from his Goddess-of-Death-whose-name-escapes-me-at-the-moment.

It is definetely one of my favourite story-arcs, we knew it was going to end badly and I felt sorry all the way... poor guy, who saw everything he once loved being destroyed in front of him and was left in the worst company possible.

(Plus the image of the frenzied berzerker chipping mindlessly at a wall for 15 mins and the comment of his friends still makes me smile whenever I think about it)

.. but for me he just crossed the moral event horizon. Experimenting on civilians to develop such a monstruous, painful weapon ? I certainly won't argue that it is perfectly in character for a lich. I just expected a different result from the introspection during his exile, considering the man he once was, than "Yep, a lich I am, time to really act like it".

The inhabitants of the Black Mountain are evil. Really evil. They do evil things. To each other. All the time.

This is perfectly in character for Louie. He decided not to be quite so evil, as in not to destroy the world. He is still a lich though, rotted, mad and tainted. Performing hideous experiments on slaves is to him such a minor evil as hardly to register.

Murder and torture are frequent pastimes for those living in the BM. Arachne has a vast, fully-equipped torture chamber and we often see her doing gruesome things to some unfortunate. She gets away with it more easily though because she is sexy.

We had this reaction to the chilling storyline with the Drow Queen. YAFGC principally follows the lives and misadventures of evil creatures, so step back and don't expect them to act anything like good people (who often don't act at all nice in the YAFGC world anyway, the first ever torture chamber scene after all happened in a human castle).

Dude, Lewie crossed the Moral Even Horrizan in that same arc you were talking about. Kila wasn't mind controlling him into doing any of that, he willingly enslaved his neighbors and tried to commit genocide on everyone.

Today's strip was nothing.

Interesting though.

If he can refine the formula a bit, then you have a powerful bio-weapon to keep the balance of power when things calm down. Of course the drow would then work on countermeasures and an orc specific version - Black Mountain would start having an arms race.

Even more interesting is what would it do to Lolth. While manifested she is made of 'drow tissue'. Would terminating her result in total death, or just banishment as per destroying the physical form of demons?

Lewie Lewie, oh no
Flesh gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Lewie Lewie, oh lich-y
Flesh gotta go

I don't think she's simply flesh, she's still a goddess,and a degree of invulnerablity comes with that.

What worries me is how this formula is going to be deployed.
Is Maula desperate enough to have it generally released or will some more precise method be taken?
If it is just released willy nilly then we may find ourselves mourning for beloved drow characters, such a wolf, Arachne, or even our young little drow protagonist.

I do love Lewie's face in the last panel. He's totally going "I LOVE THIS JOB 8D"

Re-read 748, 787 and 788, the one's framing Lewstrom's origin story, perhaps he wasn't mind controlled in the most magical, irresistible, traditionnal way possible but he had been manipulated to the point of brainwashing... skullwashing ?

The second he remembered who he was, that he never wanted to be a lich in the first place, he quit. Either the guy had standards and does not anymore or I was simply wrong to have sympathy for him before.

Wait... there used to be a frenzied Berserker character in this comic?

Lewie was pissed at having been so manipulated and losing everything he ever cared about. Lewie is evil now, a lich. He's so outt of touch with living being he doesn't even remember the appeal of boobies. He's a monster now, whatever he may have been, pure and simple.

I don't see the testing as sick. Humans test on animals all the time. From a lich's point of view, how is testing on living beings different? And better to test on less useful civilians than risk killing an orc warrior. He probably would have been hard put to capture a drow warrior to test on.
The actual way he's going about killing the drow- that is the sick thing.

I had a reader (a very dear old friend who comments privately on pretty much each and every strip I've ever done in YAFGC) comment that it's interesting how the acid dissolves Drow clothing as well!

HAH! I'd never even thought of that for some reason. I replied that I supposed the Drow made their clothes out of ex-husbands.

Just thought I'd share the lol.

... but not Drow ligaments (which keep bones together), or does the potion also automagically convert the victim into an animated skeleton?
If so, Maula may defeat the Drow only to get overwhelmed by Lewie's NEW forces...