Title: 3384
on September 19, 2020
Chapter: Ranna's Fulcrum
Characters: ?, Ranna Goddess of Chaos and Cruelty
Location: Elegrost Fields, Ranna's Hell
I officially have a YAFGC patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/YAFGCRich
———–
So this has finally happened.
I posted this on a Saturday because I wanted to post it yesterday, but it was a lot of work and I’ve been busy. Still here, still drawing. 😉
-Rich “BK” Morris
Thank you. My weekend just got a lot better for this.
Thank you. I needed something not awful today <3
Your name is Falahn. The one name Ranna always forgets.
Eyup.
So she’s gone, & I assume all the other gods she’d absorbed went with her? Some "interesting" times ahead as the cosmos re-shuffles!
I don’t think they all went with her, I think it’s just her. As ? said, "All alone." At the least, I think we’ll get new deities from the outburst of power.
I think you are right, the spirits of the other gods have moved on as their power was stripped of them. Lady Marion gave us a glimpse of how it works, that the "afterlife" wasn’t supposed to be more of a cut scene as the soul moved on, beyond the game called Life.
As for new gods forming, one of the effects of the spell trap was that it was going to drain magic from the world. For better or worse, we are witnessing the end of the age of magic and gods. It was fun while it lasted, but now we may see a new era.
I for one am hoping Rich does some steam punk now. He got his first taste with the webcomic-hopping train, and he has shown us glimpses of a future with 21st century tech.
Looking at the "future" pages that we’ve had earlier, I think the next turn of it all is that *all* magic use, including divine magic, is now going to decline, as this spell drained so much of the world’s latent magic that, for the next several centuries, neither mage nor god will be able to use it.
I hope not – the future pages were talking about magic going into decline, not disappearing completely. So I expect mages will still be able to use it, it will just be harder so they will be limited to weaker spells. Gods, on the other hand … it’s possible that due to the low magic situation, there will be no new gods, and with the old ones mostly eaten by Ranna …
Goodnight, and this concludes your portion of the show.
Suddenly the last panel makes me think of the end of the Carol Burnette show for some reason.
I will now forever hear "I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together" as the BGM to that slow pan back from ?.
There are ways it fits, and ways it doesn’t…and the ways it doesn’t-fit fit perfectly, too. Yes.
How about "We’ll Meet Again"?
Was thinking of the line from that classic ‘Loaf song: "Fade to Black" (could even be a good title for this page)
Don’t know where, don’t know when…
"I’m so glad your time is over…"
Unfortunately, she has no ears to pull!
Oh, Rich- that sums up my feelings precisely!
Ooh, interesting fate. Can a god live without the energy of their worshippers? As Garanhir stated above, are all the gods she absorbed just gone-gone now? Including Ch’thier? And what becomes of this little character?
Gotta love an ending that provides interesting threads for more. Great job, Rich!
If she still has worshippers in this realm, will the energy reach her regardless? Or would a new version of her spring from the ether?
Read a book long ago, believe it was by Aspirin (not the ‘Myth Inc.’ series, a different one), about an angel trying to gain worshippers in Hell (to convert them to the side of Good) and how some of the Higher Ups detected the attention from hell directed to this angel and how they thought it meant something bad so they locked the angel away inside a cloud prison. The angel could still feel the energies being directed towards them, there was just no way for them to reach them. Can’t remember what happened to either the angel, their new ‘followers’ or the energies
Just wow.
Karma’s a b***h, isn’t it, Ranna?
Wow.
Just… wow.
what a shame, no more updates till the black ink is filled up.
Even with her existence on the line Ranna just couldn’t be nice to someone for a moment
Yup. Instead of giving her name immediately, she tried to haggle.
Rich, this page is 10/10. While I was reading it I forgot it was a cartoon. (It’s easy to reach that level of immersion while reading a novel, but harder within a one-page episodic comic!)
Great job on this page and on the story overall. Thanks for making a comic that’s really worth reading.
Well, I think I called it! Didn’t expect a few twists between then and now, but I called it!
Show me the money!! Oh…wrong show
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
I wonder if that ? is arachne
so now that Ranna is gone is Ch’their gonna fix all the shit she fucked up? I want Arachne back, I want the cozy home of Black mountain back, this war has taken far to great a toll. too many lives lost, too much destruction wrought, too many tears shed, too many wounds bled.
life was so much easier when it was just the adventures of a silly goblin and her friends, I miss the old days.
It don’t work that way. People have to adapt to the New Normals we encounter every day. I didn’t want YAFGC to succumb to the creepy timless limbo of such classics as the eternally teenaged Archie comics, or the permanently elementary school kids of Peanuts. I wanted the characters of YAFGC to have an effect on the world they live in, to grow up and live and experience and learn and change.
They’ll be fine. I can do anything about whether or not you will, though. So hang in there.
Oh, heavens yes, this. Absolutely, Rich.
Denying characters the consequences of their actions in meaningful ways — denying them the opportunity to actually affect the world they’re in, change it, be changed *by* it — denies them a significant aspect of their (fictional, yes, but still important) beinghood. Part of what I love the most about the characters of YAFGC is that their choices matter — some tragic and heartbreaking, some profoundly heroic and uplifting.
As for Sparrow’s frustrations, and the Black Mountain…was it ever really the geographical entity? Or was it the cultural melting pot, the people, the openness and cosmopolitan atmosphere? Was *what* the Mountain, really? I think Trevor was onto something when he said that King Glon *was* the Mountain….and that observation, I note, was made on several levels, simultaneously. Glon embodies the Mountain, in both his "mixed greenblood" and his upbringing, in his life, not simply a child of two worlds but a man *loved* by both of these worlds, one that both sides of his family regard most highly. Glon is the mortal embodiment of everything the Mountain stood for…and in his many friendships, and his willingness to relate to everyone he meets being-to-being, he brings the Mountain with him. Standing in his presence, you are *standing* within the Black Mountain…and it is very much alive and well.
The grief, the loss, the misery, the damage…these make the Mountain, as it survives, shine even more briefly, I think.
This said, though…yes, the long, dark, terrible night has been grueling, and I admit, I hope that many of the souls who have not yet checked in…well, that they survived the night, too, or if not, that they passed quickly and mercifully, and they can rest well, knowing that the dawn finally broke.
Rich, it’s been an *amazing* journey, this arc. Please take my weariness, my shakiness, my tears, my regular inability to say more than "Wow" or "Oh no," as very, very high praise of your work as storyteller, and the story to whom you’ve been both sire and midwife.
I don’t care so much about the actual physical mountain, that can always be rebuilt somewhere else, I care about all the people in it who got blasted. the troll might survive since he regenerates and the harpies could have easily flown away, buy what about the hags who play poker? the cyclops blacksmith? the countless other faces I can’t remember off the top of my head? I can only hope they were able to escape in time, either by not being in the mountain at the time or somehow burrowing under it, like in the troglodyte caves or something. seeing so many happy faces wiped out hurts me.
Arachne was my favorite character next to Gren, she resonated with me on a deep spiritual level. we both put up with nobody’s shit, we both couldn’t give a shit, we both love the sounds of someone being tied up and spanked, nobody understands me like she could, seeing her die is like seeing my hot female dark elf self die as well.
this is worse than the time I had to give up Steve the door, who saved me from undead frost giants, or Jeffry the corpse who saved me from dryads by being so damn stanky that they couldn’t mind control me, or the baby dragon that I watched my party slaughter a baby white dragon for shits and giggles when they knew my grandma was a dragon and I was trying to become one… it’s even worse than the time our barbarian ate the ritual chalk I was gonna use to summon an eldritch abomination… his name was Cho and he was gonna with everyone tentacles and barf up black puddings… shit woulda been cash money yo…
Ah. You know, it would save the rest of us some time and energy if you could maybe indicate somehow when you were speaking as a character rather than as a real human being. I wouldn’t have bothered trying to debate the issue with a Drow for whom the YAFGC world might be more real.
I am an actor, when I take on a role I become that character, full immersion. as far as I’m concerned all my characters are real. when I play as my Goblin Alchemist I exclusively eat junk food and I mix sauces and drinks together, when I play as my paladin I exclusively drink milk since he sees alcohol as a sin, when I play my warforged monk I listen to pop music because she’s programmed as a cheerleader and loves to dance, and when I play as my shadow Djinn I weep because I can’t turn into smoke nor can I find 40 wives for a harem… also I burn incense because that is his weapon of choice.
it’s probably some sort of mental illness tbh.
Being an actor is all well and good, Sir Lawrence Olivier, but in our world when you text a message only you know when you’re being a character and which one.
I myself am also an actor. I also understand living characters. I’m also a writer, an artist, a storyboard artist, designer, scriptwriter, fencer, reenactor, amateur historian and paleobiologist. But I also know how to share public space with others. Take notes:
YOUR USERNAME IS "SPARROW." That’s how it ALWAYS APPEARS when you type, no matter whose head you’re immersed in. WE can’t tell unless you let us know somehow. So if you, or any of your stable of characters has a comment to make, it would be helpful if they’d tell us who they are before they confuse us all, yes? Let them know please. Thanks.
EDIT: Y’know, some of my best friends are actors and only a few of them make me want to punch them in the face. And then it’s usually on purpose.
Sparrow, in addition to everything Rich said…listen, man. I’m a fellow "rich fantasy life" type, but I can’t help but notice a contradiction between "I’m an actor and I immerse completely in my roles" and "I weep because I can’t turn into smoke nor can I find 40 wives for a harem." That’s not immersion. That’s *aversion*.
Speaking, again, as very much a self-described Walter Mitty type with a rich fantasy life myself, that sounds less like any kind of "acting" and more like profound dissatisfaction with who and what you are, when you leave the role and have to "be you" again. That saddens me, man. I’m not here to judge you for it, but I’d sure like to urge you to work on your happiness in your own skin, and your satisfaction in life outside of roleplaying.
I love being every character I’ve created and played. I just also love being the guy you created them and plays them…and that really does make all the difference. I hope you find that someday, too. You’ve put a lot of yourself on display here, so I hope it’s all right that I observe that I’m seeing signs of a person who really doesn’t feel at home in his or her own skin, in what you’ve shared here. I hope you’re able to make peace with yourself, and like being you enough that "coming back down again" from character immersion hurts less than what you’re describing here.
Apologies for talking about your private business like this, but…well, you chose to air it here, in the comments of a webcomic, on a thread with myself and Rich. I don’t know what else to say to such a personal and revealing set of confessions, save that I hope you come to love being you as much as you love being your many characters.
Wishing you the best, man. I didn’t feel it appropriate to respond to such a painful admission of discomfort like this with silence.
yes my name is Sparrow, that’s the character I was talking about, this is the picture I used as his character art. Sparrow the paladin/eldritch knight, he’s my go to human character, he’s the guy I play when I want to just have some wacky adventures, he’s got the most convoluted backstory I’ve ever written, his grandma is a red dragon, his grandpa is a Devil horse racer/historian, and his entire father’s side of the family are werewolves. this ragtag group of genes ends up creating a perfectly normal human who definitely doesn’t want to be human.
I have separate accounts that I use for my IRL self, but he’s boring so I don’t let him see all the fantasy sites I go on. I’ve got about 20 separate accounts for all my different personas. Sparrow is the only one who reads comics like this, Gilda is the intellectual one who prefers science to magic.
it took me hours to make them all and the payoff definitely wasn’t worth it but once I get OCD about something I have to see it through.
This is part of what makes YAFGC so engaging: it lives, it breathes, it CHANGES.
Indeed, Aebliss. I think we love our friends from YAFGC even more, for knowing they’re finite. It’s a very different love than that for Charlie Brown, or Calvin, or Opus the penguin, who are leitmotifs, certainly, but not symphonies, as they never truly journey or resolve. The Ode to Joy may be a tremendously memorable section of the Ninth…but it is *not* the Ninth, and the Ninth cannot truly be distilled down to simply the Ode to Joy, no matter how significant a role the Ode plays within the Ninth.
This war did really taken enormous toll but I still find it better than those "status quo forever" stories. Despite strong suspicion that what will follow will be dealing with fallout of this (which will be depressing) and then stories in weaker, less interesting world … like, no matter if YAFGC will continue, this will be in some ways an end of it – but, end is important part of story.
I have trouble imagining that anything Rich writes will really be "less interesting." Perhaps different, yes, perhaps even different in ways some of us must grow to appreciate. But wherever we’re going, it’s going to be amazing.
For now, though…yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to be a bit punchdrunk on the intensity of the last great crisis, and a little allergic to drama. I’m quietly hoping for some sweet, gentle rebuilding moments, and to see many faces counted among the survivors. It has to be completely okay to be shaken; those of us who emotionally followed YAFGC through these past few years have shared in a great deal of pain and heartbreak. But if we trusted Rich through that…it only makes sense to continue to do so.
I’m pretty sure he has amazing things ahead. An era ends, yes, but an era emphatically begins here, too.
There's a middle ground between "status quo forever" and totally upending the table. Even before all of this, the characters were growing and ageing, the children had grown up, Glon had his wives and kids, Owen died, Lucas became baron… I'm not going to recount the entire history of the comic, but the point is that things were never static before *without* having to fundamentally change the world, which seems to be what is happening with this storyline.
The name ? Is extremely appropriate…. And I want to know the answers too lol
I’m thinking the gods Ranna absorbed are now gone/defunct, but only BK knows. If true, it leads me to wonder what will happen to Lucas’s ancestors, and any others with deals/arrangements/vows to those gods.
I wish Ranna could’ve not continued to be the goddess of cruelty… Although that is just as much because of my own phobia of drowning…
There is something creepy? Definitely disturbing about this strip, but it is intriguing as well! Well done (as always)!! Steveha is sooo correct!!
She didn’t drown though, she just lost her hold on the spiritual plane and was pulled into their trap dimension.
She did kinda drown, just not in water.
I wonder which part of her journey made Ranna so stupid? Was it being locked in Charlotte’s mind for so long? Becoming the goddess of cruelty, thereby forcing her to be cruel instead of practical? Something else?
She basically spent this entire arc brute forcing things, casually discarding much needed allies, not paying any attention to what’s going on around her. Really, if she hadn’t caught everyone by surprise she never would have got so far.
Oh well, can’t wait to see how things change after this.
I would say that being locked in Charlotte’s mind made her impatient which made it worse, but looking at her history, she was never that much practical.
Name first, then help
Endings and conclusions are notoriously hard…but this was amazing.
Great use of colour–I love the opening spell effects, and the use of darkness in the last panel.
Also add to the chorus about the great evolution in this strip. So glad this isn’t hitting a cosmic reset button and we’re moving on from here.
Although I wonder–with magic gradually lessening in the world, will this mean someone like Eddy will now quickly age and die?
I believe Rich once said he’s pushing at least a couple centuries.
Just musing–not really expecting an answer, particularly if I tread close to spoilers.
Kurassa was a good metaphor for this arc–’twas very draining. Emotionally and impact-wise, that is.
Quality, as usual, was off the chain.
Applause, applause!
There is something strangely satisfying about this page.
That last panel is so profound. There is darkness all around, but you *can* go up, there *is* light. It’s up to you.
And you only. Which is why Ranna’s exit was perfectly in keeping with how she’d come to live this cycle: interested only in herself, and assuming that everyone had an angle. Beautifully poetic.
I’m not convinced ? *could* have helped her. ? never committed to that either way, of course. But Ranna didn’t have it within her to find out.
As others have mentioned, Rich, those first few panels are gorgeous. And I love the contrast between them and the later panels.
t!
How telling, that the darkness effectively…ate her alive. Levels upon levels of nuance to that, and yes, that final panel. You understand, I imagine, that my nod about Carol Burnett was not at all flippant.
Forgive me if I need a little breathing room, and am not terribly articulate at the moment. If you’ve ever been badly snowblinded, and everything’s a storm of swimmy bright green afterimages…that’s how my capacity to feel, and to process feelings, is holding up, at the moment. This has been, well and truly, the ride of a lifetime.
I regret nothing. I am, however, impressed. I thought tremendously highly of Rich, and his ability to blow my mind and tell amazing stories, already — I didn’t make it thirteen years into our friendship without at least hints of the man’s capability as a storyteller 😉 — but I think it’s fair to say that I’m still blindsided, and reeling. He managed to exceed all expectations…of someone who sincerely thought they knew him, and his talent, quite well.
"Humbled" comes to mind. There was a moment, some years ago, when Rich played in an AD&D campaign I ran, and reverently after a solo scene, commented to me something to the effect of "I thought I knew you, I thought I understood what you were capable of delivering, and I wasn’t at all ready for that!" (forgive me, wording slips my mind). I remember how honored I was, how touched…how amazing it was to have broadsided a writer of his calibre.
I expected the sun, moon and stars from Rich, on this arc. He *still* managed to broadside me, and force me to reinvent, from the ground up, my entire understanding of what the man’s capable of.
It’s a little like the moment, when traveling as The Doctor’s companion, that you finally see old Theta Sigma for who and what s/he *is*…and realize what an act of mercy that kindly, humanlike form s/he wore was, for your and others’ benefit.
I just…wow. Holy crap, this just happened and furthermore, wow.
🙂 Everybody should have friends like t! and Rancourt. These are the people that make life fun and creation joyful.
Heh, well the wife and kids do as well, but their love and praise is contractually mandated.
Rancourt, t!, and others have already expressed far better than I ever could what a powerful comic this is, and how well it fits with this whole story line.
It’s powerful that at the end Ranna is finally pulled down into the darkness. But this is how her life has been going. Yet, where this is one chance left, where she is looking for an "anchor" she can see the light, but she makes no effort to go there on her own power. She insists someone else has to bring her there.
At this point she no longer looks at anyone as people, as individuals, they are in a way all like "?", just bodies who are there only to serve her. What if she had broken through that attitude and given "?" a name. Would that have been enough to start a change of attitude in Ranna? We’ll never know for sure, but I suspect not. Some hearts may become too hardened to be able to change.
Rich, you are indeed a master storyteller. Thank you so much for all that you have done.
She sought help, how is that a bad thing?
*How* she sought the help was bad, not the seeking itself
If you fall down, do you not ask for help?
If you *demand* help (like Ranna did, and she only did that after ? asked her what ?’s name was), then you deserve a boot to the head
If you find yourself in a hole and are in desperate need for help, and the only one around is a complete stranger, do you waste time asking for their name and history first? Or do you make introductions *after* you are safe?
Not saying Ranna did or didn’t deserve what happened, just wondering how getting short *while being dragged under* is what makes her a bad person (everyone knows she already *was* irredeemable by that stage)
T-Chall: *Yes*. In her final moments, she could have asked. She demanded. I’m not about to suggest that ? would have, necessarily, obliged a request…but it’s telling that, even in the moment of truth, Ranna couldn’t *make* one.
Also: There is something very *right* about this strip being untitled.
t!
Yes, some concepts are beyond words. 🙂
I find it interesting that after the deities that had designed various afterlives are yanked… those stairs, and that door to the light remain. Perhaps now souls will be free to design their own afterlives. Beyond the barriers of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that were separating them, just people. Some more objectionable then others, clearly, but that is why the afterlife needs distance and geography… so you can choose your neighbors. 🙂 When his time finally comes, hopefully far in the future, Glon should be able to hang out with all his family and friends, of whatever sort. I hope we get to see what happens to the afterlife, and all those that were killed.
Whatever it is though, this was beautiful. 🙂
An end to a saga, will be interesting to see the fallout, and the next arc!
Maybe the woman on the stairs represented what was left of her humanity, and she just couldn’t hold onto it.
She was never human, or at least, never mortal: she was *born* a goddess
You missed the point of Lady Marion’s story, didn’t you? All the gods started out as mortals. Yes, including the twins, born to a mortal mother, sired by a mortal father.
No, I’m pretty sure their mother moved her godhood into them so they were born gods.
I think the stairs, the door, the pit and everything in that "dimension" is all in their head. It isn’t a physical place.
Halfway down the stairs is the stair where I sit
There isn’t any other stair quite like it
All you had to do was give her a name…now enjoy your eternal time out for your greed. Pride came to your fall.
If Ranna is willing to vomit up all the gods she’s consumed, she’ll have plenty of company.
So, that’s a ‘no’ then?
Thanks for this, Rich. This page is gorgeous.
I especially like the last panel – the huge, lonely vastness of the staircase, but also the promise of the open door at the top.
To quote a famous pig:
That’s all Folks!
Forlorn hope, I suspect, but I do hope that ? finds a place in life, maybe companionship and happiness.