3540 And Then There Were Six
And I’m back again, after another prolonged neglectful absence. If you’re still here waiting, thank you. I’m sorry again about having disappeared. I’m fine. Health is good. Family’s good. But, I got some contracts, life changed again, kids get older, their schedules and needs change, and so I have to keep renegotiating places in my life to do my fun hobbies.
I’ve got this week’s worth of strips done, based on t!’s wonderful scripts, though he’ll be the first to tell you this one isn’t …. exactly as written.
The original version of this was written with the gamblers all in a group like in the end of strip 3539, with looks silently being exchanged between them. And… well I think t! overestimated my abilities, because the first two attempts at this were just a series of distant crowds and you could hardly tell the differences between them, let alone read expressions. As it is, I don’t know if you can tell what they’re supposed to be ‘saying’ to eachother. But, have a guess anyway. There might be clues and things in the expressions.
Sorry for the long delay again, to all of you and especially to t!. Please stick around, as there’s lots more story to tell.
-Rich “Beholder King” Morris
And now we reach the point where paranoia starts to set in, as you realize you are locked in with a killer.
Welcome back! It’s good to hear that the abscence wasn’t because of something negative. This murder mystery is really well thought-out and I’m curious who is going to be the killer(s).
Man, this comic has come such a long way from way back with Bob x Gren and Lewis the hilariously cursed Lich. It’s really fascinating to see characters start out as simple goof-balls, but over time they get fleshed out more and more, and eventually they have enough depth for deep story arcs.
Welcome back!! I’m glad to hear you and the family are safe and healthy. I was really hoping we’d get a conclusion to this murder mystery. Plus I can’t get enough Cadugan and Lucas!
I usually never comment. But glad you are back. Take whatever time you need, but I will always check in from time to time. I love your work.
I figure if they find out who "suggested" to Brother Yeecch that he could get away with cutting the rope holding the harpsichord if he did it during the lunch bell, they’ll be well on their way to solving this thing.
Damned good thought.
"All I’m saying is one taste of pratroot, and Taurenil would sleep right through tomorrow’s matches. And when it came out she’d been drugged, Maula would be ejected too. You know they’re both cheats anyway…"
"Be a damned shame if something were to happen to that infernal instrument. What’s that line about skeletons and tin roofs?"
"Yes, but a postmortem tissue sample in the name of science wouldn’t be disrespectful to the dead. It’s a mark of her brilliance as a gambler that people would STILL want to unlock the secrets of how her brain ticked."
"What do you mean I’m the murderer? I never TOUCHED her!"
P.S. Welcome back to our narrator/host.
Only difference between me and Hachikō is that you do come back. Your art is worth every second of waiting!
He returned! Knew refreshing the site daily would pay off
> I think t! overestimated my abilities
Probably more a case of me overestimating panel size.
I love what you did here. Having them *not* together increases the isolation and suspicion.
(totally planned it that way)
> Sorry for the long delay again, to all of you and especially to t!.
We never doubt that you love doing this, so if you aren’t, there’s a good reason.
t!
Congratulations.
In my experience when someone received a note like that is that this person make a lot of good.
Nobody wasting time in it only for do it.
This comic has long been worthy of any delays life throws at ya!
Here in Bulgaria, where I now live, if you want to find out what is happening in town, you do not watch the news, you go talk to any of the old, retired ladies that chat with each other. While the rest of the world is covered in security cameras, here, we’ve got GrannyNet.
Still here, but I must admit I would need to re-read to understand the face expressions.
Life is what happens when you make plans.
I don’t know what makes more happy, you come back to this strips or that your life continue being so… live and moved.
Without a good life one can lose all interest in the rest of it. A lot of examples last years.
And a poster on the bottom of the seven firsts strips and we have the perfect cluedo.
I think it works better without speech in each frame – it conveys the suspicion and friction between the suspects perfectly. Now put then all together in a locked room with nothing else to do and have the investigators listen in.
Good to hear you are continuing to get useful employment. Maybe set up a single panel filler – say, someone working in a mine with a caption ‘Artist occupied’ – to put up each time Real Life is going to get in the way?
No need to apologize for your absence! We get it, life happens. Just glad that it wasn’t anything bad. 🙂
Still here, but I must admit I would need to re-read to understand the face expressions.
Yep, still around. Hiatuses for various reasons is just part of the webcomic reading experience; it’ll take more than that to shake me away!
Great to see you, Rich, and glad to know all is good for you and the family. Tell ’em the internet nerds say hi!
The closeups do a great job of establishing lines of trust and lack thereof. Now that Maula can rejoin the gamblers’ company, I’ll be interested in seeing how each one looks at HER. Framing Maula might have been as much a part of the motive as eliminating Taurenil…
Hey Rich, its nice to have you back! 🙂 And yeah, we are here, as you can see. We are just like the Greyfort ghosts in that regard – we like it here way too much, so we stick around. It’s just as Eolhin said under the previous strip: it is simply good to know every now and than, that you are still doing fine, even if you don’t update.
And soon we will learn that they did it together, and yet none of them actually did it- stealing away and than back the pratroot juice from Maula, dosing it out, making sure that she drinks it, and than taking her book- it was a cooperation from all of them. The harpsichord was an accident, it hit her the wrong way, not because it was a failed attempt to kill her, but because it wasn’t meant to hit her. She just stumbled underneath as the prattroot started to take effect. Brother Yeecch didn’t notice her as he was cutting the ropes…
And than there will be the real murderer, the one who pushed the needle through her eye and stole the book from the gamblers… And its gonna be someone noone would have ever guessed.
Dude.
Dude, dude, dude.
I am glad you are back!
I also am glad that the reasons for your absence were so, well, fulfilling. I take vicarious joy in how you keep your family together, and feel you make all of the right choices.
And a great series of panels. I half expect David Suchet to peek around the corner!
Very glad to have you and this story back!
Thank you for coming back!
Welcome back! You guys have a great story going. I look forward to the rest of it.
Good to have you back. Life goes on, but it wont stop us loving this comment
"Janet!"
"Dr. Scott!"
"Janet!"
"Brad!"
"Rocky!"
Somehow, I don’t think any of these ladies is the murderer.
I get the same feeling…but I’d also bet (*monks materialize with notepads* — "It’s a figure of speech, dammit!") that every one of them has something to hide.
If you were to put everything they know together — which of course they’ll desperately try not to let happen — then their combined knowledge is probably more than enough to crack the case.
I still believe that if they just ask Maula who did it, and why, she would have the answer. Her years as leader of the Black Mountain would make this murder seem like a walk in the park to her. She of course, is watching the investigation with a metaphorical bucket of popcorn as the amateur plod along and try to figure it out.
I’m delighted to see a new comic, but even more importantly, it’s good to hear that all is well with you and your family Rich.
I once saw an x-ray of a portrait painted by one of the greats. I forget which but it might have been Leonardo da Vinci or van Gogh. He had a nightmare getting the proportions of one of the arms right. He drew it and redrew it about 60 times before it finally looked the way he wanted. In those days they could only afford one canvas so he was forced to use the same one over and over again.
So repeating until it’s right is not a measure of ability, but of perseverance and dedication to ones art.
So Vera is unlikable, unliked, and likes no one in return. She can’t be the (primary) murderer; it would be too damned easy.
Not really appropos anything, but I’m thinking again about Vera’s cheating accusations against Taurenil, and about Taurenil’s mysterious book. I’m far from the first to suggest this, but it’s gotta be a math text on probability theory. The world is on a fast track to a scientific rather than magical paradigm, and this brings new conceptual tools as well as physical ones.
To the unitiated — and who among us is more unitiated than poor perplexed Eliddel? — a page of equations would look just like she described it, "a list of initials, or magical formulae." If Taurenil is the first to hold up the game of Gnu to the harsh light of statistical analysis, she would develop ways of playing that might look insane to any other expert player…so when these strategies WORK, it’s no surprise that a hothead like Vera would leap to accusations of cheating.
So our cozy little mystery story is also a window on how rapidly the world is changing; even if magic gradually resurges, nothing will ever be the same again…
> So Vera is unlikable, unliked, and likes no one in return.
Pretty much! She’s our version of the Christie governness.
> She can’t be the (primary) murderer; it would be too damned easy.
We expected people would think that.
t!
Your response reminds me of rhe Princess Bride duel of wits scene when Vizzini is trying to figure which cup has iocane powder…
Abbott Heigh: "And to think, all that time it was Lady Bloodhand’s suspect who was guilty."
Maula: "They were all guilty. I spent the last ten years building up a file of prosecutable charges against every person I would meet when the Tournament re-opened."
I’m waiting for the big reveal, when Cadugan and Lucas have caught the guilty party. They then pull the mask off the "murderer" and reveal that it’s….Captain Fang!
"And I’d have gotten away with a coffee tea cup, if hadn’t been for you meddling peanut butter sandwiches, and your damn tomato soup!"
No, I don’t think for a minute that Fang is the culprit. Not our adorable, Capt. Fang. 🙂
If Fang was here the Abbey would’ve accidentally blown up at least once by now.
He would have won the tournament by now using Uno cards and the rules of chess…
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/0378-poker-in-da-face/
…or maybe not.
It is amazing how you illustrated so many varying expressions of doubt that indicate personality! I continue to have my mind blown!
Congrats on the contracts and life going so well 🙂