3113 Wolf Flambe
on January 26, 2018
Chapter: Under New Management
Characters: Baron Robert Greyfort, Fasi, Flannet Hunter, Lord Elgin Muc, Lucas Greyfort, Maran, Naroasa, Niko the Werewolf
Location: Greyfort
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Ah the smell of victory….also anyone want that leg?
Take it, or should I say go get a head?
I love the smell of burning werewolf fur in the dead of night. It smells like victory.
Okay, that’s as horrible as advertised. o.O;
Indeed. Those Elves did NOT mess around!
The carrot thing isn’t so pleasent either
He seems more theatrical now than the first time around.
Probably due to all those earlier frustrations!
Hellfire, dark fire, now, Niko, it’s your turn.
Your heart is your pyre, this night the werewolf burns!
That is freakin’ awesome filking <3
Sssssmokin’ 😀
Well, Elgin, you are free now.
That’s right. Nico is the new spirit of vengeance.
Not sure about that. He didn’t stopped burning yet. Might be for forever. But at least he doesn’t need to travel.
I keep thinking is unfair to lie about a curse…
It’s also unfair to do pretty much everything she’s done, so.
If Niko had bothered to do even a little research into the history of barons of greyfort and their spouses, she might have been able to figure out that it was a trick. Her fault for not verifying the information she was given by an undead spirit whom she had no reason to trust.
Considering that it was just the first Baron who wronged the elves, not his successors or their spouses, I’d say the curse itself is pretty unfair, so…
Curses usually are. Look at the Oedipus story.
Look at the family curse on Kelemvor Lyonsbane from the Forgotten Realms, the start of the curse was with a guy who was utterly amoral, evil mercenary who only cared about money so he was cursed to turn into a bloodthirsty animal (a feline I think, or maybe wolf) if he did anything that wasn’t charitable. Guy chose to stubbornly die in poverty rather than submit to the curse. Meanwhile as it passed onto his descendants since newborns are pure the curse reversed, so the curse SPAWNED generations of utterly amoral, mercenary men and women who couldn’t do anything altruistic without changing and had to charge for everything that they did. So the curse created the very thing it was meant to punish and stop.
This is not exactly the Olympic Games.
I see what you referenced there 🙂
He’s still the baron; he has to protect his land somehow.
Man that was satisfying to read through. Super intense too! Great job, Rich!
All that, and werewolf Lucas is pretty badass. I kinda hope he stays that way.
Welp, at least she was hot.
Apparently, too hot for her own good! ;3
Light her up, boys
How is she surprised a ghost lied….why would they tell her the truth?
That being said, getting people to fall for obvious lies is why I GM
Hey, even as a DM I can tell delver’s the truth & PC’s can still die. At one point there was a portal up against a wall & it was labeled "Emergency Exit." The portal was a permanent Dimension Door spell that led outside of the dungeon truly enough, but about a half-mile above the ground.
You see, the one who built the dungeon also had a Fly spell made Permanent, so the Emergency Exit did indeed worked at labeled for him…
And yonk.
Actually the most fun part is giving PCs an empty room and seeing how long it takes them to leave.
Reminds me of a basic game of Paranoia.
Put the team in a room without a door and see, how long it takes, until they will kill themselves.
Next Level: when the team gets bored about killing each other, give the room a door….
A good DM will never lie… and still make players believe he did.
If Flannet is still married to anyone, she had better get those annulment papers in order immediately. Although, if Niko is "dead" in all tenses that the curse cares about, then Flannet is also immediately Duchess Flannet ..?
Also, I did not miss "Okami Niko." Awesome to drop okami into the strip like that. Now, would that have been her surname, then? On more than one occasion I had wondered if Niko was Asian, but the ears always made me pass it off as Elf or Drow influence.
I think the curse was going in chronological order, meaning that since Niko got hit by the curse, and Flannet was most recently married to Niko, there’s nobody else for the curse to hit.
Could be the forkmer duke just made a ctach all clause .
All marriages prior to becoming duchess of greyfort are forthwith and immediately annulled..
You don’t necessarily have to go through an entire list if you have a defined point of cut off. Guess Niko gets to be the CUrse’s new agent then.
ÅŒkami is Japanese for Wolf. It also is used for werewolf too.
Niko was an Asian Half-Elf Werewolf. 🙂
Yeah, you don’t want the Greyforts as enemies…
THIS is why you do research. If a couple sources are independently telling you the same thing, they’re probably telling the truth. But if you only have ONE source… how much do you trust them?
The real reason a good king has multiple advisors isn’t just for good advice… but also to keep the advisors honest. 🙂
Well, that’s just the thing… She isn’t very bright. Powerful, greedy, and ambitious, but she’s used to other people doing the thinking for her…
If a coule sources independently telling you the same thing, they probably got that thing from the same source. 😉
Wow. I had quite a few thoughts reading this strip. As for one, I didn’t think that Lucas can get so… brutal… I wonder whether it was him or Maran who severed that head on panel 4.
As for an other, how expressive your drawings are. I always admired it, but sometimes it just strikes me again. Like Flannets face on Panel 16, seeing Elgin. It might be just my interpretation, but I’ve got the feeling she just realised that she couldn’t save him after all.
The third one was that I will miss Niko… I found her pretty amusing.
Well he is more inclined to ‘wolf out’ as a Lycanthrope. It’s one of the reasons it’s seen as a curse rather than a superpower.
Keith Baker (creator of the Eberron setting) has been making that same point on his blog and a recent Manifest Zone podcast. Becoming a lycanthrope fundamentally changes a character, even when the victim has control over their form.
Agree, and that’s why Lucas insisted on leaving Cadugan and the rest of the group behind, I would suppose. A common trope is that the lycanthrope kills a friend, something Lucas would know from bards, from his treatment sessions, and so on.
I hope that Lucas will be cured. I don’t want to see Cadugan having to do a werewolf version of the ending from "Old Yeller."
That has to be one of the best stories you have done. Very nice.
I do notice that our Rannite leadership seems to be falling all over. Wonder when Ranna is going to take notice of this, or is she too egotistical to not even notice?
I imagine her being of the "we have reserves"-school of thinking.
A deeply satisfying conclusion!
Wonder if Niko was a Spitualist. If so she’s now a Medum Done Well
I regret that this comment board has no upvotes for me to give you.
My first thought upon reading this?
"Hm – Niko had a heart."
t!
Yup. It was a hardened lump of blackest coal. Which coincidentally made it very effective medium of combustion.
Very nicely done! Also, loved Elgin Muc. He reminded me of a grumpy neighbour from my childhood. Even looks like him on panel 14!
Ghost: "I lied"
That right there is a mic drop moment.
Not only that, but he didn’t tell her the part about carrots either.
The carrots thing only affects the baron and argueably that was the least important part.
That was oddly satisfying.
That was a bad case of heartburn. She shouldn’t have eaten those carrots…
The carrots thing affects the Baron(ess), not their spouse.
Did anyone bring marshmallows?
Rich, you did a great job with today’s comic, the pacing, the action, the appearance of Lord Elgin and the curse starting its work on Niko, all very well done. Bravo.
I must compliment Lord Elgin’s (and your) timing! That was an epic strip. I loved the "I lied", and his expressing while saying it. You do NOT mess with the Greyforts! I don’t think I have ever seen an ancient family curse leveraged like that in a story. Well done!
Any remaining mistresses that don’t run for their lives, or surrender on the spot are too stupid to live.
This whole page is wonderfully satisfying, but for me, the absolute highlight is the panel with the ghost saying "I lied."
You couldn’t resist putting in another topless scene, could you…:P
I know, right?
It was SO hot!
t!
*rimshot*
Well, at least that avoids the never ending debate about Niko regenerating. Thanks God!
You sure about that? Is that enough to kill a werewolf? Maybe she will keep regenerating and bursting into flame in an endless, eternal cycle. They could end up using her to fuel the castle furnace.
Rofl, thanks for that thought – Now i’m imagining a corrupted Lucas biting and marring one person after another to slowly convert the YAFGC world into another layer of hell with the heat dissipating from all the burning corpses…
Well, fire tends to be to go to against regenerating creatures like vampires, werewolves, trolls, etc.
Then at least Niko would be useful as a renewable energy resource 😀
Last Panel. Elgin Muc: "About damned time I got to do that to someone… guess third time is a charm."
Elgin looks so smug in the last panel.
Oh…
Ouch.
The others were strangled, but he didn’t fuck around here did he?
Messy.
Makes me wonder who the ‘rightful stewards of this sacred land’ are, and what was done to take it away from them. Probably somebody did it the old fashioned way, by murdering everyone in the old ruling family. :p
Addenda, I think the murdering involved fire, considering the scars on Elgin’s head and the nature of her messy demise.
For the answer to these questions, you’ve got to reread a bit of the "Ghosts of Greyfort" chapter, starting here:
http://yafgc.net/comic/0844-the-story-begins/
Ah! Had completely forgot all of that. So, the elves were the rightful stewards of the land, and as I thought, burned to death in a fire. Makes sense.
Thanks.
wonder if Flannet got a toasting fork as a wedding gift because it would be useful about now
Panel 20. "The ghost said…" I don’t know if it was intentional or otherwise, but it’s perfect. There is what appears to be non-erased text… as if it were an echo. A thought. A sudden realization before the baron said anything. She knew he lied. When the old baron finally said he lied, it wasn’t necessary–it was simply powerful. It was a confirmation of her receding doubt.
Probably reading into it too much, but I think this is one of those scenarios where an unintentional flaw creates an amazing scene.
Oh, I thought that was intentional and brilliant! Almost under the breath as the cogs turn…setting you up for the I lied.
I’d love to tell you it was a carefully considered artistic choice…. but I’m going to have to fess up and say it was an editing error. I somehow missed deleting some of the rough text in that bubble. Ah well, if it’s somehow enhanced your enjoyment of the comic, I’ll try to keep that effect in mind in future!
‘Lord Elgin? Before you go, you couldn’t just clear one thing up for us, could you?
‘Exactly *how* many hells – oh, damn, he’s gone.’
Probably one of the few good things, Elgin Muc ever did.
Well. I didn’t know how I expected this to go, but I did not expect a person to burst into flames.
Now I wonder if flannet can somehow convince the rannanites she’s tooootally on their side and can inherit and turn greyfort into the hidden resistance or something.
I doubt Duke Lucas of Greyfort is going to go along with that idea.
Woo-hoo, I’ve caught up!
Woo-hoo, the b***h is dead!
And it’s still AWESOME!
And… I still haven’t forgiven you for Arachne, but carry on, that story makes addictive.
I wonder if Muc will stick around. Perhaps he’s gotten a glimpse of Ranna’s revamped afterlife and figure that keeping up on being forever consumed by the cursed fire isn’t that much worse.
I figure he could provide colorful commentary. Perhaps also give closure to Flannet on her other ex-husbands.
Well, he didn’t Muc about this time 😛
So now, do the bitten mistresses become werewolves if they’re not already dead? And do they remain rancid, or obey Lucas the biter?
Who said the mistresses were bitten? They were sent by the Rannite ruler to help/support Niko.
Panel two says the mistresses were bitten… what *else* do you think Lucas and Maran are doing to them?
Now that he reminds us of it's origin, why is Lord Elgin Muc the "Hand of the Curse" as it were? You'd think it would be an Elven ghost?
Pardon me, I forgot who the fat guy was for a bit; Mrs. Hunter's first husband, and the most recent individual slain by the curse. I get it now; each bitter ghost passes it on to the next victim, like a not-ironic-enough game of "Hot Potato".
(Alright, not "first husband". First in our sequence of endangered husbands not formally divorced (unlike Glitterbranch, Cadagan's dad, who divorced properly, we presume.)
I hope this is my last correction of corrections post. -_-