3385 Conclusions
I officially have a YAFGC patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/YAFGCRich
Pick up your copies of YAFGC Volumes 1 - 5 at our online store. Multi-book bundles and sketch editions available.
I officially have a YAFGC patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/YAFGCRich
That was. . . . one HELL of a party!!
I am NEVER drinking that much again!
You say that every millennium.
But time passes, eventually the gods forget, and then it’s right back on the bender…
t!
"The gods must be crazy….or drunk."
"The gods aren’t crazy, they’re higher than kites…"
https://lesliefish.bandcamp.com/track/the-gods-aren-t-crazy
Any day that someone links Leslie Fish is a good day.
Okay, either that *wasn’t* a complete loss of magic, or it’s gradual and only just started having affect on the world, or… Bob is ‘special’
Or… we will just wait and see what happens next 😀
Beholders get their power from an inter-dimensional chaos source. Their central eye is a cone of powerful anti-magic, but their eyebeams can still hit things in that cone.
Okay, did not know that about beholders, thank you
Will just stick with the final sentence
?? How did you come to that conclusion? A character opens their eyes and you take that as proof that there’s magic in the world?
I thought beholders were magical creatures, not inter-dimensional
…. Okay. I’d have been a bit more sentimental about killing off a character as central to YAFGC as Bob, though.
I feel I should point out here again though -in general, not just to Guesticus/NotRichard- that I’m not using D&D rules to define the natures of my characters. I bound myself to D&D characters and situations in the beginning (2006), but I’m striking out on my own cosmology as much as I can now.
There are, still, magical creatures though, right?
Either created, or sustained, by magic?
Thing is, I don’t really know much about beholders *at all*
At this moment right now, I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve defined any in the comic and that’s the only continuity that concerns me at present.
I’m sure you will have figured it out by the time it becomes an issue (in which case, it will no longer *be* an issue) 🙂
Simplest answer would be: they become the last of their kind
Well, I suspect that we will see very soon which creatures are dependent on magic. Still, magic is supposed to be "on decline", not completely gone.
Actually, it’s a clever way of making this world yours, by making the beholders separate from magic as such. In this new world, there may be logical reasons for beholders to float such as controlling the density of the gases in their bodies, and maybe they even retain some of their abilities to attack if the means now follow physics instead of magic.
I am eager to see what you come up with, o Beholder King! How Bob, Lewie, and all the others adapt. How the flying ship copes with being grounded so far from water. If dragon wings still provide enough lift without magic to make their bodies lighter.
Or he’s a beholder as a creature, but no longer has access to previous beholder ‘magic’ (eye-beams, perhaps the floating as well?) ‘Beholder without magic is dead’ is a beatstick. ‘Beholder has to learn to cope without using magic’ is a story.
Beholders don’t float due to magic, they’re very much living zeppelins with teeth.
This will be an interesting next hour or so. Despite the fact that the two opposing deities are now ‘gone’ there are still two armies that would like nothing more than to make the other side die horribly. I just don’t see everyone waking up and simply going home, especially on the Ch’Thier side where there’s been years of bad blood building up. Regardless, there’s going to be some ‘revenge’ happening.
I’m hoping that everyone will wake up sufficiently tired of bloodshed that cooler heads will prevail. If the Ch’Thierians really want to honor the memory of their deity, they’ll remember what she would have pointed out: that many of the grunts in Ranna’s forces are reluctant conscripts (such as the barbarians) or brainwashing victims.
Well, about that… As I understood, Ranna’s undead army needed Ranna to operate, without her they are just a pile of bones. The barbarians already swopped side during the battle. Question is, what happens with the brainwashed people, and here I mean only the gorgonised ones. (Convertion through breaking one’s will is fundamentally different from magical brainwash.) Hopefully with Ranna gone the effect is wearing off, especially because the only person who knew how to break the curse is gone too. (I assume all those who cheered with so much enthusiasm at Kurassa’s demise forgot about this tiny detail…)
Anyways, once all those, who are still alive wake up, it would be an utterly stupid move from any remaining Rannite to continou with the fights. It doesn’t mean they won’t try though… but the battle is pretty much decided.
You are forgotten one other person who knows of the gorgonazolla-reversal (even if she didn’t know how it happened)
I’m personally concerned about the ‘good guys’ continuing the fight (or slaughter), in the name of ‘Retribution’
Well, he anounced front of both armies that Sahar is freed from the spell, so anyone who paid attention would know of it. But he was the only one who knew _how_ to do it.
Guess I wasn’t paying attention to that, can’t remember him telling anyone on the battlefield that Sahar and her dad were now free from their respective spells
It’s more the sort of arseholery though of thing he *wouldn’t* do, so that Vanessa would be worried that her daughter was somewhere amongst the other Gorgons in the fight
Ini the Librarian knows part of the secret — which book Kurassa used, and that the book is encrypted, though not how — and if Califf Tambid remembers the things he overheard as a tree, then he might know much of the encryption code. Hopefully the bright minds on the victors’ side can puzzle out the remaining details.
Ooo, I forgot about the librarian slave, and unless someone else in-world remembers her, what she knows is kinda irrelevant
Even if they do think to look in the library, even if Ini is still alive and didn’t leg it as soon as the coast was clear, they would have to specifically mention what they are looking for *to* Ini, and how many people would actually think to ask some lowly slave what they know about something as big as a de-gorgoning spell?
If Ini knows, or soon learns, that people throughout the world have been unwillingly converted to Rannite gorgons, then I expect that she would not wait to be asked before sharing her knowledge of a potential cure.
BOB! *hugs him* We have one survivor at least! Oh, gods, I hope Gren made it, he needs his Gren. So appropriate that things begin anew with him.
The undead look somewhat the worse for wear. It will be interesting to see if any of them made it through that, on either side. At least Lewstrom isn’t undead any longer, though depending on conditions, both divine, and magical, he and his sister, if they still live, may now age normally from their current biological age. There are worse fates though.
Sooo many consequences to come, this will take quite a while to play out.
Always figured that they would simply age normally, not suddenly have all the years they were alive (or alive-adjacent in Lewie’s case) suddenly catch up to them like that bad guy in "Indiana Jones III"
To quote the opening cinematic of Heroes of Might and Magic IV:
And to all things comes a beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8XdpoW7F0w
Yay! Bob’s alive. It would be a bummer if he lost the ability to float, though.
And we’re back to the beginning, seeing Bob in the last panel.
What?
Someone’s left Mistresse’s just lying around!
Now to add some to my collection!
Too bad those ones are starting to rot. Those outfits are going to expand like balloons.
DM balloons!! Getcher DM balloons here! Here ya go kid- now remember, don’t let go of the hair if you wanna keep it!
I must say, I found it a really good beginning. It shows perfectly the magnitude of the spell.
Also, its good to see that at least one of our friends is still alive. After such great battles one always wonders who is still there, as there are many things going on off screen as well. Eventhough I guess, the most important deaths are shown to the audiance.
I adore that this strip starts with panel 6 from the last strip.
Also I love the sense that *any*thing can happen next. It truly does feel like some kind of dawn.
t!
"Sunrise moment," indeed.
Somehow, it made me think of this theme from Flight of Dragons (well, not quite but it’s along the same lines)
https://youtu.be/JzOkxsB9bo8
*sighs in relief* Bob survived. There is hope…
That it was Bob, specifically, through whom Rich chose to bring us the first glimpse of the "morning after" really touched me, too.
I can only hope, now, that all, or at least many, of our friends made it through this long, dark, terrible night, too. Fingers crossed for many, many "check-ins" to come. (Your dearest, I am all-but-certain, is a cosmic constant, and his safety is not even an issue!)
Nice fade-in! 😉
Okay, Bob is among the living–which is good.
If the first thing he spots after this is also Gren–even better.:D
Seriously interested to see where we go from here.
That’s one way for a war to end for sure
An interesting philosophical question here. What happens to someone like Meegs, who is trapped as a statue, when the magic fades completely I wonder. Does she die? Is the fact that she was ever human erased and only a statue remains? What if, in such a scenario, the magic comes back and her petrified form makes it here, does she become once more a petrified person and not a rock? These are interesting questions to ask when things like the afterlife are literally places that exist and can be manipulated.
We know that she remains a garden ornament for several hundred (a thousand?) years
Well, yes, but that doesn’t answer the metaphysical question presented. …Also she isn’t a garden ornament she is a cave ornament and then a museum piece!
That is a good question: her spirit may not be able to move on, if there is still a possibility of her physical form being restored. Or she does move on, and a potential restoring of her body would then lack the spark, dying listlessly… or would be inhabited by a new soul. A new Meegs, with the former Meegs’ memories, but a new soul.
Well, we do know, that the souls of stoned people reamin in their bodies. As for one, Ranna states it (indirectly though) when Tempul is freed. (https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3176-angry-evil-goddess/) Than also we know that people, who got destoned, are the same as before (see Lucas and Cadugan).
So indeed, bububub2’s question is an interesting one…
So many friends I dearly hope to see stir, on this "morning after."
Thank you so much for beginning the new day with one so utterly dear to everyone’s heart.
And, somewhere out there, is Joan HalfOrc still running around?
Quite possibly chasing Captain Fang off into the mists of eternity…
Intriguing title- as it’s currently fueling more ?s 🙂
Love the fade in, then the dread of all the still bodies. Excellent emotional tug. And the re-beginning with my favorite beholder. Beyond wow
It’s strange that they’re resting peacefully in the aftermath.
Fairly sure they were knocked out by the blast that sent Ranna away
Well looks like the end of this arc or YAFGC might be coming to an end
Good to know magic being mostly gone doesn’t mean all the magical creatures die!
Where is all the magic is going to go talk coming from? I don’t recall anything of the sort.
This strip here shows historians in the future talking about the events surrounding the destruction of the Black Mountain. It’s hinted at here.
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/2915-a-glimpse-into-the-future/
It only says magic "went into a bit of decline", not that it went away!
Considering they are talking about myths and legends, it’s a good bet that magic, let alone magical creatures, is no longer a common occurrence (why else would they be using a *mechanical* digger?)
Agreed!
-R
Bob is lucky this battle wasn’t on a hill. 😛
HAH! Awesome.
Also – they blew up his hill.
(makes me wonder if the Black Mountain inhabitants have a varient on English’s meptaphor: "That’s not a hill I’m willing to die under."
t!
…I’m stealing that if I play any dark elves in the future.
I’m a little late for this comment, but wow… that was the most epic of tragedies, the kind that has you wishing and hoping at every moment that one or another of the participants will do something, anything, righr.
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.” — Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Thank you, Rich.