Ch2 27
Well now. I guess she was right and nothing bad will happen. Nothing bad at all.
Speaking of something going ka-boom… it’s time for another…
Hasera and Lark Review:
Crezure
Lark
Lo’ani’s tits, are these characters attractive. While they may be young, they definitely filled out in all the right ways. All those Elementalist girls could give Lo’ani a run for her money. The story follows a cast of characters and revolves around some kind of unstable token thing that could explode and cause a lot of damage to the city, which is called Crezure. Honestly, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the story parts… I was looking at the ladies.
There’s a lot of back fill in this comic. A lot of who the characters are, how they know each other and what they do is revealed in narrative boxes. While this does give a better understanding of the characters and their relationships, it does remove me from the story. It’s like putting a giant pause on the story in order to tell me that two of the characters had boned each other once.
The story is interesting and it sounds like there are some pretty high stakes, but one thing does raise a concern of mine. I was put into the field when I was fifteen and while I may have been the best, even at that time, I still barely got any kind of respect. All of these characters look like they’ve maybe seen twenty years on their plane of the future and they somehow have some kind of underground black market? I guess Elementalists get more respect than Champions. What I wouldn’t give for someone to let me take over a Kingdom or two without all that annoying paperwork and ‘moral dilemma’ crap.
Other than the little hiccup of kids running the show, it’s interesting. It’s got enough action that I’m not only looking at the girls and trying to figure out what kind of things they can do with their powers – or even what their powers are.
The art danced between absolutely gorgeous to pretty good. I have a feeling the artist behind the work is constantly running against the clock. On some pages, you get amazing background and beauties and others, the lines feel blurred, or aren’t crisp like the others. It’s not really a concern because it’s pretty damned stunning. The only real negative I have for it is that the artist is so talented, but falls back on using what I think is called ‘chibi’ faces on a constant basis. The artist’s style is very well developed. Why they break into such a juxtaposition of art is a disservice to her talent.
I would highly recommend everyone take a look at this. Maybe if you’re into the whole ‘teenagers who are super awesome’ thing, it would work for you. The art is most definitely worth having a look at. The story is compelling and it seems to be getting into the meat of it right now – meaning some of the really good stuff is going to be coming up soon.
Hasera:
This is one of the prettiest comics I’ve had the pleasure of looking at. The story is a little confusing – probably because I’m not a native to the plane, but it holds itself together quite well.
The comic focuses on the story of Inessa, Ember and Natalia and how their paths are brought (back) together due to something called a Token that is found and that’s really bad news for the city. Apparently, Elementalists are bled out to make tokens that will cause a ‘flood’ effect. Generally a big boom. So, it’s kind of like Siphoning essence. Do it wrong and there will be casualties. Or, you know, so I’ve heard. I’ve never met and Siphoners, yet.
The art is pleasing to the eye. I’m jealous on some of the clothing those girls wear. I’d love to get my hands on some of then, but I don’t think I have the figure to pull it off. It’s a little strange to see such detailed and stunning backgrounds be replaced by colour fills so often. The artist is obviously incredibly talented at both background and characters, but might be doing this in between their employment? I don’t know. I just know I’m impressed by their ability to churn out amazing art, even when it looks like it’s rushed in comparison to their prime pieces.
Overall, I’d recommend this one to most of the girl readers out there. All the boys in the story are good looking and the pairings that I can come up with are absolutely out of this Plane. I mean, some are obvious. I secretly hope that Ember ends up with Isaac, but I know her and Nik have a thing going on… I know I’ll be watching this one with interest to see where it decides to go!
“Hey, Guardians are supposed to use healing magic, not ice magic!”
Interesting. The impression I had was that while Hasera had an ice affinity, she’d essentially ignored it in order to try to focus on the approved Guardian curriculum (including healing magic which she has no talent for). That, however, looks like something fairly sophisticated.
I’m curious as to just what sort of range it has. Healing magic in many settings requires being fairly close to the recipient, which may explain in part why Lark has gone through so many. If Hasera has stand-off capability with that ice, though, that could improve her life expectancy. If she can use that ice magic to prevent blows from landing in the first place, then that might compensate for her lack of healing magic according to the ‘inch of preservation’ principle.
If she’s successful, she might have a significant influence on how Guardians are viewed in the future… although I could see the end result being a change from just having Champion and Guardian to something closer to a full adventuring party.
Reply from The Order’s Head of Finance:
What? Has Dershan stripped you of your mind? Do you have any idea how many rounds that would cost? We would have to create an entire sub group of administrators whose sole job was to keep tabs on the ‘full adventuring party’, develop some kind of multi-essence-binding-system so that the Guardian would be able to heal more than just themselves and the Champion – Let alone the downtime when one of the group gets killed? We’d lose profits hand over fist at such a rate that the coffers would be empty in months! May the wrath of Jerza’il take you!The suggestion brought forth by an individual named Stardrake will be carefully examined. If The Order of the Nine sees any merit in the requirement of sending out more than a single Guardian and a single Champion to the field, it will contact Stardrake to inform them of their contribution to The Order’s new ruling.
Thank you for your suggestion,
Sincerely The Order
PS. :
Find out who this Lo’Ani is, and what her tits look like.
The librarian is adamant that we should have a book on said tits.
For … future reference, of course … not personal pleasure.
Interesting… so the binding ritual is required for healing magic? That would explain why the standard practice is one Guardian and one Champion, although it does open a few more cans of worms… such as, say, what they do to evaluate a potential Guardian’s healing ability in the first place… 😮
It’s called ‘The Academy’. Anyone can learn ‘magic’ in the basic forms (Though The Order wouldn’t want too many people getting a hold of that). There will be an in-comic explanation given, but it won’t be an exposition dump – more or less, it’ll trickle out as time goes on.
To use ‘magic’, you must first learn Godspeak/Godtongue. This is an incredibly difficult language to learn as it requires you literally weave essence into your words. An example of Godtongue is used by the High Council in chapter 1 (We got someone, G Pike from Title Unrelated to make us a font that felt incredibly foreign and wispy and by-golly, did she deliver!). Now that we have it, we can show it off (And, by the Gods, will it be).
The issue with learning the Godtongue is that if you invoke a God’s name and say the word wrong, the God will (probably on purpose) misinterpret what you meant and the spell will go wrong. A spell going wrong usually ends up with someone dead.
Now… imagine you’re in a high stress situation, like a Giant about to step on you and you ask a God, let’s say, Ith’ir, for protection. However, due to the complexity of Godtongue, instead of asking for protection you ask the ‘protraction’ because you fumbled your words. Ith’Ir doesn’t like your words, or the way you mangled his language and says: Nope!
Welcome to the Strife. Find yourself a battle buddy and off you go into the eternal conflict. Don’t forget to pack a lunch!
Now, on to the differences between Healing magic and offensive magic in Alteria (name of the entire conglomerate of planes). Offensive Magic requires the same stipulations as defensive magic. You ask a God to use their essence to complete some kind of task. With offensive magic, you’re generally creating flame, a kinetic force, forming toads from water droplets – whatever. The more versed you are in Godspeak, and the greater your internal essence pool, the better chance you have of succeeding at your spell.
All of these things are designed to interact in a negative way with the rest of Alteria’s existence. You ‘burn’ something, or ‘hit’ something or otherwise ‘change’ something with the essence weave about you. When it comes to healing magic, you have to be more precise. Asking for Jezra’il to simply ‘fix’ someone will result in them sprouting horns or perhaps being lit on fire – after all, his plane is covered in the stuff. Instead, with curative magic, you have to request from a God, in a flattering way, their hand in doing something in particular.
So why the binding ritual? It’s just asking for stuff, right? Well, yes and no. You see, you asking for something done to yourself is easy. You are the one asking for it and you’re using Godtongue, meaning the Gods hear you and see you directly. You asking a God for something to happen to someone else is like me asking you to look at the head of a needle and the one molecule I’m talking about. The Gods are powerful and can do such a thing, but it requires a lot of their attention. Attention they would much rather focus on winning The Strife.
So how do we fix this? Well, the answer is ‘link the Essences’. When a Guardian and Champion (Or two other poor, unfortunate souls) are linked, the Guardian can ask for a God to intervene on the Guardian or the Guardian’s bonded partner’s Essence. There’s a tether between the two, linking them to one each other’s Essence until that Essence leaves the Planes or is modified so heavily (AKA Essence Conversion) that it fades out (Death is the normal way and the sudden disconnect from the other Essence is enough to kill most regular people – that is to say, no Champions, Guardians or Sorcerers or anyone else who has gone through extensive Essence pool expansion training).
With this link, a Guardian can request the intervention of the Gods far more easily on another person. Not only that, but the Guardian now has an expanded Essence pool of the Champion they are linked to, meaning they have a wider variety of potential spells that they could try (Though The Order does not recommend this, as ‘new spells’ usually end up in ‘one less Guardian’.
So… a lot of this will be brought up in bits and pieces throughout the story, but because I absolutely love to talk shop, I decided to just wall of text it here for those interested! Enjoy
Man… I need to set up a wiki.
Hrrrmn. So all magic is essentially through prayers? Seems a little weird, then, that Hasera can be good with ice magic but bad with healing magic. Maybe there are particular words she trips over? Or the God(dess) of Ice and Fire (you seem to have a ‘gods have paradoxical domains’ thing going on :P) happens to like her and is more forgiving of her errors?
Does this mean that a bonding can also make it easier to employ non-healing forms of magic on a bonded partner? Say, for instance, Hasera wanted to create an ice shield over Lark to block a swipe from an Abyssal’s claw. Without the bonding, she’d have to specify (in Godspeak) something like “65 feet in front of me and seven feet off the ground”, and then it turns out that she’s underestimated the distance, the shield manifests behind Lark’s head, and Lark gets a face full of Abyssal claw (which may only be a minor inconvenience for the Lark, but still an embarrassment for Hasera). With the bonding, however, she just needs to say “Four feet in front of my bonded partner’s head” and the ice shield manifests with the Abyssal’s claw already stuck in it, putting the Abyssal at a significant handicap.
Is that a reasonably accurate analysis?
All magic that is condoned by The Order and practiced across Alteria requires the invocation of the Gods, yes. If you are requesting to know about forms of magic that are forbidden, then I suggest you report yourself to The Order’s Sorcerer’s University in order to become educated on the subject…
hint hint, did you see Hass say anything to cast that spell?
I was wondering about that – and also about how dragons could be strong in magic if all magic was coming directly from the gods (presumably that would make everyone’s power based purely on their skill with Godspeak, and dragons would presumably be weaker since their patron god is dead). So Hass’s “ice thing” might not actually be ‘condoned’ magic. That could have the potential to cause issues further down the track…
Dragons were weaved directly with God Essence. As such, they did not need to ask for permission from Quel’Lan to use her powers, but instead were able to bend the weave of Essence to their will. Their Essence pools are also quite significant when put against a Neutral – think kiddy pool vs. Marianna’s trench..
Also, I have no idea what you are talking about. Hass will never be called out for using uncondoned spells!
Clearly not. Equally clearly, Lark’s “wait, what?” is certainly not a recognition on the Lark’s part that there was something up with what Hass just did beyond using a different form of magic than guardians normally use.
All he wanted to do was have sex but instead- this.
Doesn’t that summarize almost all men’s lives?
Pretty much.
Though it seems that Lark is living the dream.
I’m relatively certain that’s how 95% of people came to exist. o.O
What about the other 5%? Accidentally tripped and fell on top of him while both our pants were off and we were stumbling in the dark? :B
Artificial insemination?
LMAO! I was going for actually intending to procreate, but that works too! *dies laughing* Though it would be an awesome story to tell your kid. “No really. If that laundry hamper hadn’t been in the way you totally wouldn’t be here right now.”
Some stories are better when romanticized:
My dear boy, we ‘fell’ in love at the Laundromat. Our visions ‘collided’ with each others in the middle of the aisle, she with her whites, and I with my colours. We were ‘thrust’ together in the most awkward of situations and when we tried to talk to one another, we kept being ‘hampered’ over simple words, as though they wouldn’t leave our mouths. We ‘stumbled’ through a terrible conversation that was both embarrassing and exhilarating. The whole ordeal ‘floored’ us completely and we left our separate ways after having shared merely moments together. Once we regained our senses, your mother and I realized we had traded some of our most personal effects, we met up again and were surprised to find we had so much in common…
I am ‘that guy’: there ain’t an ‘e’ in “truly”.
OK, with that out of the way…
Love Lark on this page, doing his best to save Hasera from her idiocy, but she just won’t listen.
Guess she’ll learn. Or die. One of those, I bet.
Can’t it be both, Bob? Can’t it?
Thanks Bob, as soon as I’m home I’ll fix that spelling error =)
No Lark, your tits. She has her hands in your man tits.