3374 The Empire That Fell Asleep
on August 12, 2020
Chapter: Ranna's Fulcrum
Characters: Ch'Thier Goddess of Health and Purity, Lady Marion of Heatherdale, Ranna Goddess of Chaos and Cruelty
Location: Elegrost Fields
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They both appear to be normal size now. Or has everyone become a giant?
It’s a little detail like that what makes the comic so good!
Also, note that they both have lost their wings. It seems that they are either reflecting the way the armies now see them, or they are remembering and their physical forms reflect how they see themselves.
so if one of their followers decided that they were nudists then this god party would get a lot more interesting.
I don’t think ONE follower would be enough. But I can see such addition gain track …
Hoooooly deeeaaar.
I think it reflects that the story is changing how their followers, and themselves, look at themselves. They are now able to remember, because their followers believe, they are also being humanized and becoming more accesible.
This story could easily weaken all the gods, as they are shown to be every-day people that are powerful because people believe they are, not because there’s anything inherently godly about them.
I wonder too, there hasn’t been an outright explanation given for why magic is so much lower, if not gone, later on. We could interpret it that the goddess wars consumed much of it. But I wonder if it’s simply people stop believing in it. If belief is what causes godhood, couldn’t magic also come from belief in it too?
And now they look like what they are and were: two misbehaving children who have awoken from a dream of power…
…when in the end, the true power lay with the mortals who shaped them into something terrible.
So what now? If I were them, I’d want to go somewhere beyond the reach of the faithful and sort myself out.
Yeah, this isn’t quite on the level of Mommy calling you on the carpet, but I’ve seen that exact look too many times on my kids’ faces when they both knew they were in for it and that they deserved it.
And in this case, it’s not Mommy calling them out, but Auntie.
And she’s reminding them that they let their Mommy’s death pass as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, of no personal significance to them. That’s got to sting.
I think that’s a good point, they are formed by what their followers want from them, not their own choices, not really. Right now they are being reminded of who they were and it is reverting them back to themselves, but it’s clear that is a temporary solution, their followers always re-write them eventually and they are back to square one.
I think their only real solution would be to leave. But I don’t know where they could go. Is there a retirement spot for deities that are sick of their ‘followers’ making the gods into what they want.
Maybe they could go into the afterlife, as opposed to watching over the access point?
I recall Ch’Thier mentioning she couldn’t affect the Orcs’ afterlife to pull Goria out, so the sisters might be able to find refuge from their followers’ belief there – if they find the right area.
This is happening in front of their most faithful followers. That’s a key difference from every time they’ve met before.
I could stick, simply because this story will be retold for a very long time. Long-term who knows, but we’ve seem glimpses of the future that tell us that the era of gods will not return to what it was before.
I’d even ask: why would they believe it, if the believers don’t let them? If they were able to forget their mother and family, and that they were children and born at some point, why would they believe this story as anything other than heresy? Only because their followers are hearing the story, believing it, and helping shift their space.
Conveniently Eddie and Company are preparing a dimensional hideyhole far beyond the reach of their followers’ beliefs where they can start over.
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3343-trap-evil-trust-good/
Arent the wizards just preparing a place like that? They might decide to go their on their own, just to really be themselves, and to eventually sort their differences out without the messy intervention of their followers…
Hey, Ranna with a different hairstyle!
No, she has always had dreads, in panels one and three, they are just *long* dreads
…seriously? You’re seriously going to insist that short dreads and a long ponytail are exact the same hairstyle?
Only one who can say for sure is Rich, but to me, it just looks like long dreads tied back in a ponytail
And panel six looks like loose dreads (can’t tell the length from that angle)
She’s literally, talking them down to size.
It’s not going to keep going is it?
Honey, I shrunk the gods!
Turns out the entire history of this world is a giant physics experiment. They’ve finally reached the stage where they can shrink two gods to sub-proton size, so they’ll come back with groundbreaking new data on quark-quark interactions!
"It’s working, Marion! Tell them their mom would not be angry with them, only disappointed. We estimate that sentence *alone* will make them feel nearly four orders of magnitude smaller!"
They keep getting smaller and smaller untill they finally cross dimensions and wind up in Terry Prattchet’s "Small Gods."
Or find Antman floating in quantum space.
Down imagination! Down!
Typical of big political power plays, it’s always the little people who suffer for them. I doubt there is an ideology anywhere that doesn’t have blood on it’s hands. Also, it appears the Dark Mistress is patiently waiting for all this boring talking to end so she can get back to having fun.
Hmmm … even movements like Summer of Love can probably be linked to something, like some blood in Vietnam …
Except, in this case, it was literally the ‘little people’ who put Ch’Thier and Ranna in this position in the first place
Maybe that’s the whole point. There isn’t little and large people. There’s people in power, and the masses that move them and follow them. And there’s a feedback loop, the masses are controlled by their leaders, but their leaders become what the masses want them to be. Human nature in the end..
"Distant memory of your mother teaching" … sooo, they didn’t actually forget their mother. They just got so firm conviction no mortal can be their mother they didn’t TRIED to remember.
They’re holding hands in Panel 6:
What a beautiful, and thought-provoking, delicate little detail.
t!
And the geek in me immediately wondered if it was a touch attack.
I do prefer your line of thought
> What a beautiful, and thought-provoking, delicate little detail.
I choked up. Seriously.
Yeah, no matter how much they fight, they are still (at their core, buried deeper than either would want to admit) sisters
This is a consistent detail: in previous tellings of this story, this handholding was also portrayed then.
In fact, several of these scenes — including the hand-holding sisters — are panel-by-panel remakes of the story Ata told in https://www.yafgc.net/comic/2722-the-legend-of-ranna-and-chthier/ .
I wonder if that’s a hint that Ata herself had heard the story directly from Marion?
Would had to have learnt that prior to Ata ending up in Ruun, wouldn’t it?
Which is possible. Marion could have been a presence, regular or occasional, in Lewie and Ata’s old kingdom.
(She also might have had occasion to visit Ruun in the intervening centuries and meet Ata there. If *anyone* could find and reach the place, it’s the loremaster herself. )
Don’t think so, there’s a lot of nuances that show.
I see it more like the things that are different, and the things that are the same, and the things that are same but different.
Note the differences:
* Ranna and Ch’thier choosing to be in the mortal plane instead of ethereal like other gods. When in Marion’s story, at that time, most Gods seem to still be around.
* Ch’thier’s showing, in Ata’s version she’s surrounded by believers. In Marion’s she’s alone, realizing that her demand for perfection left her with limited followers and Ranna grew stronger whenever Ch’their threw someone away. Neither sister sees this irony, they’re already in their new roles.
* The extra panel with the memory inside Ch’thier’s mind.
Note the things that are the same:
* Ranna’s army and attitude
* The actual encounter
* The physical nature of the encounter.
Note the things that are the same but different
* Ranna’s army did not come from nowhere. It was the culmination of those that were ignore freeing themselves, but in the process becoming oppressors themselves. The war, we now know, was started by Ch’thier.
* The touching of hands, very different context to what it means. It was barely noted in Ata’s telling, even though it’s the exact same panel.
I think it’s on purpose. To make us revisit the same story, now at the part were it’s the "story we know" except we realize we didn’t know the whole thing. There’s part of the story that made it unharmed, there’s parts that were changed, and parts that were missing. If Ata knew even half of Marion’s tale, I doubt she’d be able to keep her faith, much less dedicate herself to keeping Ranna trapped.
Wow, yeah. It’s been a while since I went back to those. Thanks, you two.
It’s quite something to re-read them in the current context.
And the matching is a *great* touch, Rich!
t!
In other words without yin & yang, the world became even more chaotic.
I’m starting to see how magic started to disappear as the mentioned in that Flash Forward. If the mortals beliefs reflect the goddesses and the goddesses are now being brought back down to size, they won’t have as much magic to give out.
Last panel, both sisters share one thought: oops! We done goofed, didn’t we?
Next page: Ranna turns to Ch’Thier- "Wait a minute, We are *gods*, We don’t have to take this!"
Marion- "Oh crap! We almost had them! Hit them with everything you got Eddy, NOW! Before they start growing again!"
Somewhat noble? Sister Alouette sealing herself and the Dark Prince Croix was completely noble, I will tolerate no hidden insults even if they are only directed at people with similar circumstances.
I believe she finished her story.
What about the other gods though?
I think the story was just going to be about Ranna and Ch’Thier, otherwise it would end up longer than the whole comic.
Yeah I think there is more to come involving the other gods
Y’know, this felt a little like this story that Aang once told (in Avatar). The party had run across two warring religious groups, and he explained how it was all a misunderstanding and snowballing of a minor incident a century or two earlier between two kids arguing over a ball. When the factions made peace and the party left, he explained that he had no idea what the truth of the matter was, only that the groups were now at peace.
I don’t think that Lady Marion is pulling the same fast one, but I kinda halfway wonder…