3268 Rannas Little Helper
Some of you may remember, way back in the beginning of YAFGC, that I did not run this all by myself. My dear wife Hilary aka: Dungeon Master, was the editor and webmistress. Then she kinda disappeared after a while. Well, just to keep you all updated as to where she’s been and what she’s been up to, here’s my chance to boast about her:
She spent the first few years of that time getting her Master’s degree and then the past 4 years getting her PhD! So she’s Doctor Dungeon Master now! And also during that time she found her own literary voice and wrote a whole bunch of novels which got published! And in the brief moments of downtime she carves out for herself between all this accomplishment, she also works as an editor and teaches several classes at the university!
But while we miss her dearly around here, she’s still hugely busy. She’s working on her post-doc and her four or five other jobs while also doing seminars and talks at special events.
So as much as you guys are all very supportive of me and what I accomplish here, she’s the one who’s really doing great things. I’m proud of her and what she’s done and the things that she will do in the future.
-Rich
EDIT: Some of you have quite naturally asked a few questions about the above post and here are your answers:
DM’s PhD is cross-disciplines regarding material culture. Specifically her dissertation was all about the pre-expulsion Acadians and what could be learned (or better yet: UNlearned) about their culture through the clothing they wore. What made this particularly difficult was that very little of their garments survived because of the acidity of Nova Scotian soil and so she all but invented a way to infer that data from connected surviving artifacts. I helped with some of the illustrations and lighting some of the fiddlier fragments she had to photograph. Really neat stuff and she really wowed her supers!
As for the books she’s written, I’m afraid I cannot go into any more detail at this time for reasons I will not discuss (consider it a sort of legal/professional issue) but I really wanted to let it be known that she’s been busy creating wonderful stories. Sorry to leave you hanging like that but if at some point it becomes feasible for me to spill all that info on this site trust me I’ll be pushing them on this site like I have for other authors.
Congrats to Dr DM! That is an immense amount of effort, and I can’t imagine juggling all that!
And to think she gave birth during the Master’s degree work! I’ve always told her there’s nothing she can’t do. Man did she prove that.
omg i am even more impressed! just doing the thesis felt like giving birth!!!
And amazingly stupendous that she did it by all but inventing a process!!! my MS profs told me to keep it as simple as possible- basically reiterating work already done, so it’s lovely to see that some places actualy hold a theses to be a learning process in itself 🙂 yay for cross-discliplines- we need more of that. 🙂 triply more proud of her- i hope she sees at least a bit of the miracles she’s wrought
AND Ranna just lost the war …
Sheesh! Working AND Laboring.
As a male, I will never be able to fully understand what going through Labor is like. Some would describe as pulling your lower lip up & over to the back of your head. Others might say it’s like passing a golfball-sized kidney stone through your urinary tract.
About the best I can understand is that it’s probably the most physically demanding task a human being can perform…And they don’t call it "labor" for no reason.
Congratulations, Doctor DM!!!
Congratulation to Doctor Dungeon Master, but I still think YOU did greater accomplishments. There are lot of PhDs …
Me? I draw a moderate-quality webcomic and I struggle to work as a factory ‘bot in the animation industry.
Nonsense! This is not only the greatest webcomic I have ever read, but also the greatest work of literature. I name thee king of fantasy, long may you reign.
It is a very good comic, that has been delivering "the goods" pretty regularly, faithfully, and has kept the interest of ppl around the world.
In itself, not a simple feat.
And you’ve helped raise a child (just 1?) AND kept active in the animation industry???
You’ve done well. You BOTH have!
Now, about these novels… I read. A LOT. And you’ve piqued my interest, sir! I hope you tell us about these novels. Fairly soon. After all, I’m not getting younger. (How old IS your oldest reader? Is it me, at 68?)
Great to read updates on now Doctor Dungeon Master
Hmm, guess that answers the identity of that mysterious figure from all that time back… or does it? 😀
Congrats to the good doctor! So what does she write, and under what name?
Sorry, I can’t go there from here.
Are the books not yet published? Can you at least hint at a genre? Or discipline, if professional?
You’re VERY good at Baiting a Damned Hook, btw ?
Congratulations, Dr. Dungeon Master! Well done!
lovvvve the tag! and once again, you’ve intrigued me to a new level!
Congrats to the DM Doc! That’s a fantastic accomplishment. 🙂
Well when that much magic energy is flowing, a few Demigods are bound to pop up.
Too talkative to be related to Jone.
Um, point of order- I’m pretty sure when you mention someone you know has written a book, let alone several books, you’re supposed to then plug them at the same time, especially if its your wife!
So link us the books!
Yeah, I wanted to. But I can’t here. Sorry. I know that seems counter-supportive to her and rotten of me to lead you on with a bit of teaser info, but trust me I cannot. Not right here or now.
Would be funny if they were set in a fantasy world, but I guess Lynn Flewelling has that covered!
An accidental creation that is ignored and treated badly. This smells of Achilles Heel.
it would be funny if she ends up freeing t’chier
Where can I find the novels?
I can’t tell you that I’m afraid.
congratulations Dr DM
PhD in what field though?
THAT I can answer. Please see above!
"How much magical energy do I have to consume to keep going"? Sounds like Ranna might not be as invulnerable as she seems.
And congratulations! ˆ_ˆ
The name of this page reminds me of a way earlier one…
https://yafgc.net/comic/1318-adwens-little-helper/
Congrats to Dr. Dungeon Master, and, might I add, that would be a great supervillian name.
Congratulations to Dr DM!
As a librarian, I want the names of those novels too. Details, man. Details! 😉
In the comic itself…I love that "gormless" was used in a sentence. That’s the type of word that gets removed from dictionaries these days, so they can include "selfie".
That brief dismissal there will also prove, I think, that Ranna herself is lacking in gorm. 😀
Yeah…. I wish I’d thought of it before I mentioned that specific fact. But as I say above, for /reasons/ I cannot divulge that here and now.
Ah, come on. It would boost her sales. You are teasing us!
Grats to Dr DM.
Now to the matter at hand with the page. I think Ranna may have just committed the primordial oopsie in regards to creations. Of course I have been wrong in the past.
FFS, Ranna. Minions need a few emotional scraps thrown to them now and then to maintain loyalty. Just like dogs.
Learn to evil. Sheesh.
Just would like to know two things: are the novels fiction or non fiction? and what genre are they?
congrats
This is intriguing.
Ranna is *consuming* magic. No wonder it seems to be leaving the material plane.
And then she created a being… somehow… without being aware.
*SO* cool.
t!
The notion that magic, like other forces, observes the laws of thermodynamics is an intriguing one. Its consequences are many, and often profound…and I’m sure you’ve chased the possible consequences of this model deep into the rabbit-warrens of potentiality, here.
I wonder if anyone’s having dreams about knights in armor, saying something about a queen…
In a sense, magic always HAS, at least in dungeons and dragons. Magic doesn’t create energy, it siphons it from the outer planes (in the case of religious magic) or from the inner planes (The elemental planes and the positive and negative material planes) The planes have a basically unlimited supply of energy.
I always figured the energy cycled back to them; "entropy" is just the energy returning to its origin plane.
Oh, the conversations we could have about 2e-era planar dynamics…but I digress. I’m well aware of how various non-YAFGC universes work, but this one runs entirely by its own rules, as Rich pens them. I find it helpful to avoid projecting expectations upon it.
My "imagine the consequences" was by no means a general observation, by the way. It was very much a situationally-specific one. (I’m sure t! picked that up, of course.)
That goes back to Larry Niven’s discussion of magic, and "mana" as magical energy. Though D&D went with Vance style magic being spells that mages need to memorise, other systems like GURPS used the Mana model of magic being a sort of energy that is tapped into, and can eventually be used up.
Yeah, always preferred the Mana-version, where yu can cast as many spells as you have the energy for (once you have learnt the spell, naturally), and the recovery is a heck of a lot quicker (the numbers of time spent days ‘relearning’ spells just to heal a party is ridiculous, fortunately those games weren’t on a time-schedule, _literally_ game days, with the risk of getting interrupted, having to fight off the disturbers and then starting all over again, or have to run back to the temple after almost every fight…)
I believe someone has just been given the name "Getbent"! Interesting to see where this is going.
Either that, or "Getlost".
A late response, but thanks for the clarification above, Rich.
I guess we have seen that creature before, I remember people speculating that it was Arachne making some sort of comeback. It is interesting that Ranna is just dismissing it rather than trying to eat it or otherwise destroying it outright. That seems out of character.
Of course congrats to Dr DM. Never though of calling myself something like that. Then again I haven’t DM-ed in a fairly long time. I discovered that I enjoyed the player side way more once I was putting theatrics in it.
She seems to want to gobble up sources of power, or bite the heads off of being that annoy her. This being hasn’t really annoyed her yet, and seems to be of lower power. Probably not worth the effort to eat. I suppose it still could be Arachne, playing a roll in order to hang around, and not get eaten. If anyone could fool an evil goddess, it would be her. She had one for a roommate for a while.
Her roommate was more attractive 😛
True!
And not just in her elf-form either 😉
Congratulations to Dungeon Master! That is awesome!
I’m wondering if this little helper is related to a certain much-missed Drow. Arachne’s death was caused by Ranna and the exact nature of the soul binding effects was never explained. Long time callbacks and slow burning reveals have for so long been a feature of this story that it seems almost more likely to me that this will come back to bite Ranna than to be just a throwaway bit of flavour (there is remarkably little throwaway in YAFGC as I notice more each time I reread).
Also passing on my congratulations to Dr DM. Depending on the target audience of the novels it is always possible that the occasional nudity etc here would make it impractical to link them to this comic – sadly once something is linked on the internet it is very hard to unlink (and one person’s bit of fun can be another’s cause for a moral crusade). This is without crossing over into potential issues if YAFGC or another of Rich’s comics has previous covered characters that Dr DM is writing about professionally. Im not asking for answers, merely pointing out some of the reasons why they may not be forthcoming.
If that happened to me, I’d go freelance.
Congratulation to DM! That is quite some accomplishment there!
…and now the wait for her stories begin…
I got thinking how ? looks a bit like it’s dressed as a Dark Mistress (to not use the abbreviation DM seemed appropriate lol) and accidental creations like Drowcup and all the consuming… Is it possible Ranna shat a being? 🙂
On a side note- I just noticed how close the words consuming and consumation are… i gotta delve into that intriguing factoid now. Either that or rejoin the race thru the archives lolol
I’m thinking these "drastic measures" mean that Ranna’s existence might be in jeopardy at some point.
Time to kill a god perhaps.
So people have already said that the lack of magic in the future probably relates to what Ranna is chowing down on and how this war will end, but I’m kind of curious what happens to species that are inherently extremely magical. Beholders, gorgans, heck even elves. There were mixed species in the little future shot but I wonder if they still have some of their magical traits.
I guess Ranna’s a Mom again? Better care for the child or it will alwasys have trouble with relationships and social behaviour…
With Ranna as the mother? That will be a given anyway 😛
Congrats to your wife!
To bad she’s not a medical doctor, then she could be DM MD!