The King of all creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old King shall choose a new, and He will ignite the third conquest.
He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, His coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of His Lordliness.
He will face the beast, and He will annihilate it!
He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of Heaven will quake with his coming. And His name… His name will be…
It is most definitely hard to achieve such instantaneous destructive power through any means short of a nuclear weapon or sufficiently large bolide, I’ll give him that.
Solomon would be wise to recognize that the time for angry glares and harsh words is long past.
“It is most definitely hard to achieve such instantaneous destructive power through any means short of a nuclear weapon or sufficiently large bolide, I’ll give him that.” Kinetic bombardment AKA “rods from God” might also do it
Yaun’s (Jagganoth’s) mother once said the gods would protect them, but she was split in two from by a claymore sword.
He hid under a trough, but was found by Jantris’ dead men, who brought him forth.
He was conscripted as a dead man. Whenever he cried for his mother, his farm home, and his village they burned, he was beaten.
He was beaten until he forgot his mother, he was beaten until he forgot his home, and eventually he forgot even his name.
The only thing left was a dead man skilled at parting men from their ghosts.
Not really. He never claimed that his care for his people extends to “die for them”. Especially dying *pointlessly* because that’s what this would have been.
I apologize. It’s easier to leak irony verbally than in writing.
After “justify”, I meant that anybody biased could continue with whatever sentence they felt like, because why not. It’s not like it’s not working in real life.
Villikertix, what the hell, man. I don’t see the point in everyone jumping on the most reasonable and rational Demiurge to date.
Everyone else is completely selfishly-focused, some crazed murder-junkie, or likely not a proper ruler. His people looked like they were enjoying the peace and order, safely and happily. Do you people hate the concept of competent authority THAT much?
Why blame David for these deaths? Did not Jagganoth swing the sword and then say the innocent deaths are JUST? From his words he is here to wipe out as much life as he can, for some fever dream outcome!
There is nothing unreasonable or irrational about Jadis. All she ever does is issue the occasional prophecy, and they all come true.
Solly has conquered a bazillion planets, certainly killing uncounted people in the process. And before you point out that they would have died anyway, remember that is exactly Jagganoth’s argument!
De’il Advocatin, cos us is. How ‘completesome selfishlike’ is’t that most if no all o ‘his people’ in Rayuba literally are geneticsome ‘his family’ by the now, efter spreadin his own DNA farlywide fer how many generatia? Soundin just a bitty focus’t on narcissistissicism an self-obsessin tae us.
You have an…interesting definition of “reasonable,” I find. One does not become a carrion god by acting calmly and peaceably at all times. Solomon almost certainly has the blood of millions directly on his hands, and the blood of trillions on those of his empire.
His continued perpetuation of his part of the corrupt reality is made the more bitter by his dressing the shackles up with a nice coat of paint. His death would likely be more beneficial to the people of the Wheel. Sic semper Tyrannis, as the saying goes.
They hate, because they do not hold real power for themselves. They lack understanding, because they are unburdened by heavy responsibility. They denounce and object from the sidelines, because building towards better social systems is rather much more work than simply opening one’s mouth!
I doubt that he would have actually been able to eat the whole of that attack, that was a massive fucking energy wave, at least 4 stories high. Its clear that David would have been obliterated and the attack would have gone through anyway had he blocked.
It seems Jagganoth has a deeper purpose than wanton destruction. To recreate the world from the ashes of the old one. Perhaps destruction is necessary to free the world from Zoss’s enchantment and let time flow again.
Jagganoth thinks that he can create a new world free of the faults of the old.
He understands the nature of creation and destruction but not transcendence.
Like each demiurge, the key above their brow is a shackle because they have let it be. I wonder if Allison learned Zoss’s lesson in time?
It has only subverted them twice thusly… the first being Allison actually managing her first kill in an interesting way and the second when White Chain went Off the Chain.
If fate is subverted there will be a final-final book that ties up loose ends.
Alas, I do believe we are not fated to get that… but rather ‘The Adventure Continues’- but the Bard? The bard is tired. And we are not cruel enough to make them shriek ragged tongues over dry lips to slake our own thirst for stories.
They are antagonists. An antagonist does not mean evil, the antagonist is the force that opposes the protagonist. The demiurges oppose Allison, so they are all antagonists.
I have been given a message from the other side of the King’s Road that things have indeed gone to hell at Rayuba…and that Jagganoth is behind it. Sadly, my ice is not so cold as to be able to withstand a Demiurge’s fiery onslaught for long, and my apologies to my customers at the Tournament for not making it so.
I may want to invest in some business insurance. And life insurance for my employees.
…why exactly did I think a drink contract with a Demiurge was a good idea again? (Well, aside from the ridiculous wealth of Solomon’s empire.)
He needed a master key to end Metatron and his meddling. If she gave hers, he would be done and could move straight to Metatron perhaps. But she didn’t, so now he needs to kill the other Demiurges and piece together theirs into a complete key.
Why are so many people trying to find decent motivations for Jagganoth? He is a monster who vaporized thousands of people when he appeared, before even making his foolish request to Allison that was supposed to “save lives” but wouldn’t. His avowed purpose is to destroy everything. Christ what an asshole!
They may have been human once, but no longer. Their vices drove them to madness eons ago, and the monsters that were once masks became their true faces.
Suffice to say, I place my bet that none are redeemable and none will face justice willingly.
Almost everyone has motivations or reasons. They don’t need to be good ones, or even moral, they are just that person’s motivations. Jag here has some preconception that everyone currently living is suffering tremendously, like an animal, riddled with cancer, and he’s actually helping them by bringing death and aiming for the power to kill pretty much everyone.
From his perspective he’s doing a service. He views everyone like we view that poor animal riddled with cancer. The animal doesn’t exactly want to die but it also doesn’t want to be in pain, it just can’t understand that its death is inevitable and best brought forward as opposed to prolonging the suffering. It’s a bull@%^& justification but he believes it so obvious that he seriously thought Alison might have gotten what he was saying and given him the power. When it was clear she didn’t get his insanity, he just grouped her with everyone he views as a dumb animal, incapable of understanding.
Unfortunately for those of us who live, there is little interest in saving lives and great gains to be made by spending them profligately.
It is a harsh burden, life.
The plot has taken a hard turn into End of Evangelion territory and I am here for it. I’m forseeing Allison won’t be as a much of a child as shinji and might use Instrumentality as a chance to forge a better world. Is Jaggonoth Gendo and Metatron Seele in this scenario?
Hey remember how i said that this less than democratic rule not worst thing for citizens , living standarts and just living , wise ? And that just removing Solomon from power might not in fact improve Rayuba citizens situation ? And that comment somehow not got through. Hmm. That might explain why you dont remember it.
But hey ! Dictatorship going down now and liberation comes ! Hear the screams of joy of Rayuba citizens being liberated. Freedom AND death , yay .
I mean there’s a big difference between removing a dictator and a completely invulnerable god whose mere passing can boil blood and shatter bone arriving and destroying the city but ok
And indeed, as it has been said, I guess there’s no difference between a dictator peacefully abandoning power and people being “liberated” by the fire of a superpower.
In fairness to YOU, HonkerBonker, you are strictly *correct* to say that living under Solomon’s rule is much better for the people of Rayuba than, say, getting blown up by Jagganoth. Being blown up by Jagganoth is terrible.
…
In fairness to everyone else:
1) Solomon has been justifying his rule by his ability to PROTECT his people from, well… exactly this kind of thing. The fact that he can’t stop Jagganoth from using his capital city as a target practice backstop, and is himself actively dodging shots that plow INTO his capital, pretty much makes a farce of that claim. His solitary, diamond-hard pride doesn’t make him strong enough to protect them, like he thought and said he could.
2) This would have been a GOOD time for an alternate Solomon David, one who trusted others and shared power willingly, to have an army of Ki Rata-trained warriors all attack Jagganoth at once. A Ki Rata disciple without a Key killed a demiurge once; a bunch of them could maybe at least *limit* Jagganoth’s rampage.
Solomon’s desire to hoard power and control has left him with a vast empire that is nothing but inconsequential chaff in the face of Jagganoth’s might, which in turn means his empire is a soft target that he cannot protect. Even if his imperium (his command authority, not just the empire itself) isn’t maximally bad, that still makes him out to be a hypocrite and a liar.
Which is better than being a mass murderer- but still bad, especially for the embodiment of Pride whose sacred Word is Diamond.
You fault Solomon for not having allowed himself to be destroyed by Jagganoth’s cold cock first strike? That’s not only absurd and rather nihilistic, but how exactly would that benefit the Rayubans? Seems to me that Rayuba would become the first cinder in Jagganoth’s Universe of Ash.
No, it’s Solomon’s fault for claiming his iron cruelty is necessary to protect his people, because he’s powerful enough to do so. Yet when push comes to shove, he’s *not* powerful enough to protect them from Jagganoth. It was not unwise to dodge an attack you cannot deflect or block, but Solomon set himself up as a shield for his people.
Do not write checks you cannot cash in. Do not write legends you cannot live up to.
I don’t blame Solomon David for not being able to stop Jagganoth, or to stop Jagganoth’s attacks.
I DO blame Solomon David for being a poser.
I blame him for acting like he’s invulnerable and proclaiming that this justifies him in ignoring all less powerful beings, when in reality both those things aren’t true. All that showboating, from the first time he lifted a giant stone block to the last time he stepped up to fight White Chains, was him trying to create a legend.
And this is a legend that, as skaianDestiny says, he couldn’t live up to when the worst happened. Because no one could.
…
From what I understand, he never gives other people a break when they can’t live up to his rules.
Why should he expect any breaks when he can’t live up to his promises?
SD compares very favorably to the other Seven (apart from Jadis, of whom we know almost nothing).
Yes he’s a tyrant. When the only plausible alternatives are despoilers, omnicidal maniacs and eldritch horror, then what?
And I’m not even implicating time-rewinding Zoss, whose moral compass is probably so alien that its bearing are probably “blue”, “yesterday”, “the smell of a rock” and “ontology”
Unlike most of the other demiurge’s, Solomon’s flaws are *subtle.* He’s deliberately written to project an image of virtue and nobility, one that falls apart when you look behind the curtains.
It is to his credit that he can even keep up a pretense of being a good person, can even *fake* it well enough to pass the most casual of inspections. The other demiurges (excepting perhaps Jadis) can’t.
But at the same time, because his flaws are NOT obvious, they are more interesting to pick apart and discuss. But that makes it SEEM like people think he’s worse than the others. He’s not. He’s just more interesting to talk about because he’s not ONLY an atrocity machine.
The cut is beautiful. the cut is sublime. The results of the cut are horrific. Consider the mad end of unfettered cutting: “None remain to witness its art.”
I wonder if Jagganoth knows that the evacuation order has been given already? Though it may not have gotten out before he nuked the area.
Though, if it didn’t get out, responsible officials likely are starting evacuation after what Jagganoth just did, if they didn’t already start when the nuke went off.
I picture the Rayuban capital as like Santa Barbara CA, with the arena out on the end of Stearn’s Wharf. That suggests a population of ~100,000. Just about everybody who lives and works there could have been seated in a large stadium.
On the other hand, only favoured Solomonites would have been invited to the event. The rest wouldn’t get time of work.
The big problem with the evacuation is not enough time — a minute or two since the order was given, at most — and the world’s gate possibly being out in the bay beyond the arena, therefore hard to reach for a fleeing mass. If the people are running up to the hills “behind the mission” then they are probably OK so far but that won’t help if J and SD blow up the planet. A death-duel between demiurges is a`as deadly to onlookers than a direct attack on population.
I strongly suspect that there is no leadership left in Rayuba, and possibly the entire Celestial Empire, outside of Solomon. After all, there is no reason for a for a designated survivor, as any situation that Solomon David can not survive would mean the end of the Empire.
I fear he plans to tear the mask off of reality exposing the pure lying truth of it all. The blaze of truth leaves none untouched. Poor Jadis and even Aesma herself ought not to have peaked under The Mask.
Interesting idea. If you wanted to destroy everybody, why not make the the real shape of the universe visible to all? Anybody less powerful than Jadis will be destroyed.
I’m betting there’s also nonzero overlap with Solomon David stans, Trump voters, and people who think Tom Morello should stop being so political. Authoritarian fanboys love to tell on themselves.
And now begins the Seven Pact Slaughter. The Butcher has come ready for war and the Tyrant is wroth, but can we say the same for the rest of the Royalty? Who shall remain standing, no one can say for sure. Though it would be best to get moving… right about now.
This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny
Good guys, bad guys and explosions as far as the eye can see
And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be?
Eschaton 13:70 And the Rising King shall be flanked, upon his right, by three white flames: Spock, Bill S. Preston, and Theodore Logan; and upon his left, by three black flames: the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan.
[…]
Eschaton 13:74 And though it shall be the bloodiest battle ever witnessed by the eyes of man or God, in time the new champion in his now-bloodstained raiment shall stand alone above all others, and the rest shall truly know he is their better.
I mean there’s a difference between removing a dictator and a completely invulnerable god whose mere passing can boil blood and shatter bone arriving and destroying the city but ok
A dictator who still cared for the lowliest slave. Remember when he caught the stone block? His rule of law is harsh, but you can’t deny his world is a paradise.
lmao what. Never understood why people have such a raging anti Salami Dave boner. The dudes a saint and absolutely loves his people. Maybe not his offspring, but his citizens yes. The Main characters are petulant children compared to him. Whitechain especially. Look at the other worlds. Rotting and decrepit. Just look at whitechain/Allison giving Mottom a free pass.
I’m not sure how honestly you don’t get people’s objections, oh wanna-be Legate of the divine Salami.
Nevertheless, I shall pretend to assume good faith.
The dude isn’t a complete monster, but he is NO “saint.”
He is, if anything, just as childish and petulant as Alice, without any of the justification she might find in the fact that she is an actual child who hasn’t had thousands of years to sort her shit out.
You’ll need to justify your hating on white chain there, if you want me to engage with it meaningfully.
“Look at the other worlds” indeed though. It’s been made abundantly clear that Solomon’s armies open new world gates to pillage, rape and burn just as readily as Mottom’s, and tht the shining jewel of Rayuba prospers on the back of those tributes.
Why the free pass for him, and not her? Becasue she is “rotting and decrepit” as though his superior ability to maintain his physical health grants him moral superiority?
The implication that Dave’s sins are lesser because he has better looks is repugnant to say the least.
More than that, Dave and Mottom each have an annual festival dedicated to celebrating their conquests. Is his somehow more acceptable because it focuses on the killing, instead of the looting?
Dave isn’t less guilty than Mottom, he’s just deeper in denial, and drinking his Kool-Aid makes you just as deluded as him.
Remember that Dave and Mottom each had an orphaned king among the attendees of their festivals, come to avenge some massacre or another that the Demiurge had likely never heard of, as they have both sublimed the act of massacre.
Actual answer: it has absolutely nothing to do with what Solomon David is like in-comic and whether his actions are “justified” re: Jagganoth. It’s about the real-world implications of the arguments people are making. (Honestly the people criticizing Solomon David on the in-comic grounds of failing to protect Rayuba etc. could stand to be more up-front about the fact that that’s not the crux of the issue.)
Solomon is *explicitly* set up in the text of the story as “a ‘benevolent’ dictator is still just a dictator”. True, we don’t see the results of his oppressive rule firsthand, just how he pontificates and presents himself (a poor choice narratively, I think), but the quotes in the alt-text, the parallel to Yam Yeddo in the story below the comic, and White Chain’s soliloquy are pretty explicit. I think it’s fair to say that readers are expected to spot the parallel between Solomon David and real-world autocrats and dictators and extrapolate that he’s not as benevolent as he seems, just spouting propaganda. *That parallel means that this isn’t just a debate about some webcomic character, people are implicitly talking about the real-world dictators that Solomon represents.*
Some people just got whooshed by the point and took Solomon David’s propaganda at face value, which is a little uncomfortable due to real-world parallels but whatever. The real problem is that a lot of Solomon David defenders *got* the point that he’s meant to be a parallel to real-world dictators and choose to argue that dictatorship is good, actually, when defending him. I’ve seen people pulling arguments ranging from generic authority worship at the low end, through Hobbesian bs, monarchism and anti-democracy, all the way up to outright cryptofasist shit. Maybe those arguments aren’t people’s actual real-world views but a) that’s still not a good look, especially in a period of rising fascism and, b) maybe they are. (See again: period of rising fascism, and people tend to start actually believing things they started out saying unseriously if they repeat them enough)
It’s not that most of the people in these arguments have an “anti Salami Dave boner” for him as a character, it’s that people are trying to push back against this kind of “dictatorship is good” bullshit. That shit it will take over your community and get worse and worse until you’ve got an outright nazi cesspit if you don’t you stomp on it immediately.
That’s a big part of it sure, but people are also awfully eager to forget every terrible thing we learned about SD before meeting him, the moment they saw his glorious abs.
Who is responsible for the fall of the Celestial Empire?
The answer is obvious, it’s Solomon David. But in case you don’t understand why, I’ll happily explain.
Why is there so little modern technology throughout the multiverse? The reason’s the same as why there are no longer any Ki Rata monks. It’s a threat to the unilateral rule of the Demiurges. Solomon David has kept his empire in a medieval-ish stasis for a very long time. It helps him stabilize his empire and prevents rebellion, but it also cripples the Celestial Empire’s military.
The only Demiurge who actively encourages technological development is Jagganoth. As far as we’re aware, Jagganoth fields the most advanced military in the multiverse, and we’ve already seen Mottom using troops with gear that wouldn’t be out of place in World War 1. What happens when Solomon’s medieval armies come face to face with guns, tanks, and planes? Hell, what if Jagganoth has nuclear weapons? Even assuming that Solomon can stalemate Jagganoth, he’ll be helpless to do anything but watch as Jagganoth’s armies overrun the entirety of the Celestial Empire. Don’t you think the situation might be different if Solomon David had missiles, computers, and an order of Ki Rata monks to back him up?
White Chain was absolutely right, she just arrived a few hundred years too late. Solomon David justified his dictatorial rule with the idea that he could protect his subjects. However, in cementing his tyranny, Solomon suppressed the only things that could have given his people a chance of survival. In choosing to remain the totalitarian head of state, Solomon doomed his own empire, and now he has to watch it burn.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
But the empire hasn’t fallen. Even Rayuba is unconquered, so far.
Abbadon has said that technology can’t easily be transported through the void, therefore an equiv-tech army can’t pass between gates along the King’s Road without loading most of their gear. They arrive out-teched, in dribbles of units that the defenders can easily bat away.
The only viable way in is for a demiurge to bring an army by division. That’s possible, but Jagganoth can only do one world at a time. (No wonder he’s tired!)
Finally, where do you get the idea that the imperial army is primitive? As noted before, we’ve only seen the ceremonial part. I can go to London and watch blokes on horses with swords and plastic breastplates “guarding” the royals. Their day job is in a tank regiment.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Need I remind you that jaggys mere entrance nuked the stadium, and obliterated it. And a single swing from his sword made a shockwave that traveled into and took out at least 5% of the city. This is all within maybe 5 minutes. And jaganoth has done this by himself, while basically showboating. For all intents and purposes, the city is lost, it’s people dead men walking, and it’s buldings coffins
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Yes, it’s trashed but *not* occupied by an army. And we have no indication so far that Jagganoth’s forces have moved on other worlds of the empire. Tech-gap between Solomon’s empire and Jagganoth’s, as suggested by SINNER, is not the cause of the problem. Jagganoth himself is the immediate problem and he needs no tech to break things. But he has to go places himself to bredo it, so it’s slow and tiring.
Perhaps if he had the master key he could automate the wrecking and killing and go to the beach instead? Who knows?
I would be incredibly surprised if Solomon had any great amount of modern technology to call on. Abbadon stated that every Demiurge except Jagganoth doesn’t do much at all in the way of building up a technology base. If Solomon conquered a world with advanced technology, he’d take anything immediately useful and break down the rest. Abbadon explicitly noted that it’s very difficult to find modern-level gunsmiths because guns are so tightly controlled by the Demiurges, and again drew the contrast with Jagganoth, who is “hoarding all the military technology.” Maybe Solomon has pockets of advanced technology in places, but on a strategic level it’s going to be negligible because he keeps it so tightly controlled. If you can point out where we’ve seen any indication at all that Solomon would act differently from every other Demiurge in that respect, I’d love to see it.
To that end, I think you’re completely missing the point of Jagganoth’s threat. Thus far, we’ve seen that the base level of forces that each Demiurge can field are roughly at parity (Mammon vs. Mottom being the primary example). It would be extremely head-in-the-sand to think that Jagganoth can’t call on anyone equivalent. This isn’t some contrived scenario where Jagganoth’s forces arrive in a slow trickle, a concerted effort of invasion will have his forces matching anyone else’s even before his tech comes into play. Jagganoth isn’t going to use technology instead of the traditional KSBD armies, he’s going to use technology on top of all that.
So let’s talk about the technology factor. Technology is difficult to maintain in the Void, yes, but Abbadon has explicitly noted that Jagganoth puts a lot of effort into improving the technology he encounters. Do you think that the problem of crossing the Void never occurred to him? What do you think he was doing all that time, if not preparing his armies to cross the Void with his deadliest weapons?
Your argument seems to hinge on the idea that Jagganoth’s forces will arrive without their tech and will face a foe with superior technology on arrival. This essentially renders all of Jagganoth’s preparations a complete waste of time, and assumes that Solomon has been letting technology proliferate in a way that is completely counter to the way Demiurges are explicitly noted to act. I don’t want to be mean, but this sounds like nonsense.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
You might consider the other aspect of my previous post, where I speculated that Jagganoth can move an equiv-tech army by division, without suffering in the void and bottlenecking at the gates. Further, that can only do this where he is, personally, one world at a time. I don’t know if this correct, because Abbadon hasn’t told us, but it is the reasoning behind my “nonsense”. It has as much canon support as your interpretation.
I understand that Abbadon is not interested in battles larger than needed to fill a two-page spread. High-tech battles fought at range don’t make such good art, and distract from the personal stories that are the point of the work. I’m guessing that we won’t see these things in the comic and, if it’s necessary to justify their absence, Abbadon might confirm that they’re infeasible.
On a point of detail, I don’t imagine that Solomon’s forces are advanced as Jagganoth’s, or even as numerable, but I do think that they have parity with the armies of the other demiurges. It *might* even be his policy to maintain parity as exactly as possible, in order to support the balance of the seven-part world. What I do dispute is that because we have only seen pikemen, then pikemen are all he has. That seems unnecessary.
Finally, if Jagganoth really has solved the weapons-through-the void problem, I’m guessing — guessing, note — that he’s done it in some really lateral way involving sentient munitions: bombs with souls. Possibly specially-tailored devils, or forcibly-remade mortals and servants? This is so off-the-scale, in-your-face atrocious that it might just have a place in the story.
I do agree that Solomon’s forces wouldn’t be any less advanced than those of the other Demiurges, I didn’t mean to imply that they would be. I intended to emphasize that his forces are likely to be less advanced than Jagganoth’s armies, and are likely to be outmatched whenever the two clash.
I suppose Jagganoth could invade worlds one at a time, but I’d hesitate to say his plan involves taking all 777,777 worlds that way. Jagganoth doesn’t strike me as that kind of character, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard for Abbadon to show that the war has spread across the worlds. Your ideas for how he could get modern weapons through the void are pretty interesting, I personally would weigh in on the side of using specialized Servants.
I… still believe that my interpretation has more support, but I’ll leave it be since we’re likely to find out in the near future anyway. Apologies for the nonsense comment, I’m mainly irritated by the people justifying Solomon’s rule as if he was a competent benevolent dictator. He might care about his people, but if he cared about their survival more than he cared about being the one to rule them, he would have acted in a way that allowed them to prepare for Jagganoth better. As it is, I see no way for the Celestial Empire to survive what’s coming. Seven Demiurges and Meti fighting on Rayuba while Jagganoth’s allies and subordinates do who-knows-what… it’s a bad day to be Solomon.
As an aside, I wonder what role the Heretic’s Court will play going forward… I think they’re too interesting to be completely dropped. Perhaps intervention on the side of Allison and co.?
It tells you everything you need to know about Solomon that he has his people perform backbreaking labour every few years building his giant arena, “magnanimously” grants a few workers the day off to show how merciful he is by taking on their work himself, then later reshapes the entire self-same arena with a thought in less than a minute.
Exactly how explicitly do you need it spelled out that he is not the man he pretends to be?
You do realize Solomon could have constructed the entire arena in ten minutes, rather than allowing his citizens to work themselves bloody in the name of their God King?
And there you have it, the distillation of modern conservatism: everybody has the right to work to support my high standard of living. I own the capital, you own the shovel, we’re both winning, right?
Right but how recent? I don’t recall that bit exactly but also been meaning to look it up. Citation plz if u find it.
I *do* know that the last time we saw J-Wow before this scene he was forging weapons and armor to go to (this) war, so I’m guessing he already knew he was unkillable at that point. Maybe not. I’m often wrong.
He’s known he was unkillable from the start of the first war. However should note his” armor” is only in his forlimbs, and likely there for glitz and utility. Hes dann near naked otherwise, and has a fur cape of sorts.
I do like the look on Dave’s face in the bottom panel. He’s horrified but not by Jag’s power… rather by the senseless deaths of civilians. Authoritarian he may be but there is a compassion there as well that is humanising compared to the other gods (aside from Mammon). They may be brutally efficient in their acts, but each does have an agenda. Dave’s is perhaps the only that is not self serving.
Though at face value the creation of an empire is not necessarily self serving, the empire in question saw Solomon placed at the absolute center of power and law. He granted his empire no ability to change or grow, believing that nobody else was worthy of his position. Rayuba was rebuilt for the sake of his own pride.
I think that’s putting things too simple. While Pride may be his dominant characteristic, it doesn’t mean that’s all he is. Beneath that mask is a man who doesn’t let anyone come close because the last time he did that, they were horribly murdered. He may be Diamond, but I get the feeling that’s because he’s made himself that way to prevent any further pain. And now Jagganoth is recreating SD’s worst nightmare right in front of him. Diamond can be shattered if you hit it in the right place, and the shards are razor-sharp!
Hmm, yes. This is an important point. His base ethos is founded upon and mixed with his grief, with Pride as the flaw that led to Rayuba’s existence in stasis. Thank you for the insight.
Oh…wow
I do love his armaments:
–He is dressed for excess.
The King of all creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old King shall choose a new, and He will ignite the third conquest.
He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, His coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of His Lordliness.
He will face the beast, and He will annihilate it!
He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of Heaven will quake with his coming. And His name… His name will be…
KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS
What armament, one has a toga and the other one a thong!
It is most definitely hard to achieve such instantaneous destructive power through any means short of a nuclear weapon or sufficiently large bolide, I’ll give him that.
Solomon would be wise to recognize that the time for angry glares and harsh words is long past.
“It is most definitely hard to achieve such instantaneous destructive power through any means short of a nuclear weapon or sufficiently large bolide, I’ll give him that.” Kinetic bombardment AKA “rods from God” might also do it
That’s what Bolide means
Yaun’s (Jagganoth’s) mother once said the gods would protect them, but she was split in two from by a claymore sword.
He hid under a trough, but was found by Jantris’ dead men, who brought him forth.
He was conscripted as a dead man. Whenever he cried for his mother, his farm home, and his village they burned, he was beaten.
He was beaten until he forgot his mother, he was beaten until he forgot his home, and eventually he forgot even his name.
The only thing left was a dead man skilled at parting men from their ghosts.
HOLY SHIT.
A NEW REIGN OF TERROR HAS DESENDED UPON DAVIDS HOME.
A dead that comes swift enough leaves no time for fear.
*Death
There was a point when Jagganoth was called “Yaun, the Dead”, so both are correct.
“Why are they chopping the trees down?”
“To make the boars angry. Which makes them stupid.”
A princess Mononoke reference? Nice
Solomon does indeed stunt on people
But he will have to start tanking if he wants to save his people.
Yeah dodging was not the right move there.
David Solomon has the best cross-over this side of the seven-part world.
I’m unsurprised Solomon lived, but honestly, it might have been better for everyone if he didn’t.
Yeah, they would probably have lived like ten more seconds.
Really shows SD lack of moral integrity and clearly justify
Not really. He never claimed that his care for his people extends to “die for them”. Especially dying *pointlessly* because that’s what this would have been.
I apologize. It’s easier to leak irony verbally than in writing.
After “justify”, I meant that anybody biased could continue with whatever sentence they felt like, because why not. It’s not like it’s not working in real life.
This clearly justifies [insert fanwank here].
Ha-h! Such cleaver commenters here.
Villikertix, what the hell, man. I don’t see the point in everyone jumping on the most reasonable and rational Demiurge to date.
Everyone else is completely selfishly-focused, some crazed murder-junkie, or likely not a proper ruler. His people looked like they were enjoying the peace and order, safely and happily. Do you people hate the concept of competent authority THAT much?
Why blame David for these deaths? Did not Jagganoth swing the sword and then say the innocent deaths are JUST? From his words he is here to wipe out as much life as he can, for some fever dream outcome!
There is nothing unreasonable or irrational about Jadis. All she ever does is issue the occasional prophecy, and they all come true.
Solly has conquered a bazillion planets, certainly killing uncounted people in the process. And before you point out that they would have died anyway, remember that is exactly Jagganoth’s argument!
So… Jadis has conquered zero planets then?
De’il Advocatin, cos us is. How ‘completesome selfishlike’ is’t that most if no all o ‘his people’ in Rayuba literally are geneticsome ‘his family’ by the now, efter spreadin his own DNA farlywide fer how many generatia? Soundin just a bitty focus’t on narcissistissicism an self-obsessin tae us.
You have an…interesting definition of “reasonable,” I find. One does not become a carrion god by acting calmly and peaceably at all times. Solomon almost certainly has the blood of millions directly on his hands, and the blood of trillions on those of his empire.
His continued perpetuation of his part of the corrupt reality is made the more bitter by his dressing the shackles up with a nice coat of paint. His death would likely be more beneficial to the people of the Wheel. Sic semper Tyrannis, as the saying goes.
They hate, because they do not hold real power for themselves. They lack understanding, because they are unburdened by heavy responsibility. They denounce and object from the sidelines, because building towards better social systems is rather much more work than simply opening one’s mouth!
Yeah, but… David makes everyone do paperwork.
I doubt that he would have actually been able to eat the whole of that attack, that was a massive fucking energy wave, at least 4 stories high. Its clear that David would have been obliterated and the attack would have gone through anyway had he blocked.
Finally. A player of the Great Game not afraid to reach heaven through violence.
It seems Jagganoth has a deeper purpose than wanton destruction. To recreate the world from the ashes of the old one. Perhaps destruction is necessary to free the world from Zoss’s enchantment and let time flow again.
Jaggy’s weakness would be then. . .a cherry pit?
Or, like the Iron Plum, Yisun need merely remember that she is a consummate liar.
That or the Director’s Girlfriend.
(nice ref, btw)
Jagganoth thinks that he can create a new world free of the faults of the old.
He understands the nature of creation and destruction but not transcendence.
Like each demiurge, the key above their brow is a shackle because they have let it be. I wonder if Allison learned Zoss’s lesson in time?
I do hope we are not fated to watch what amounts to the antagonists fight one another for the entire end chapter. That sounds incredibly unfun.
Chillax. We’re seven pages into what is probably a 177+ page book. It’s weird you’d even think that.
It is a trend that I have seen many times. Alas; it is but an opinion- I hope that I am fated to be wrong.
And does this comic often follow your expectations?
It has only subverted them twice thusly… the first being Allison actually managing her first kill in an interesting way and the second when White Chain went Off the Chain.
is this really going to be the last book? I want things to keep going…
If fate is subverted there will be a final-final book that ties up loose ends.
Alas, I do believe we are not fated to get that… but rather ‘The Adventure Continues’- but the Bard? The bard is tired. And we are not cruel enough to make them shriek ragged tongues over dry lips to slake our own thirst for stories.
Are any of these people still antagonists?
All of them. Especially the midget.
Chill out. There has only been one blow thrown and it missed, okay?
There were two thrown. The first annihilated the colosseum.
That was last chapter you dunce.
They’re not necessarily antagonists in the first place. Solomon was still doing good from his perspective. It simply needs to be understood.
They are antagonists. An antagonist does not mean evil, the antagonist is the force that opposes the protagonist. The demiurges oppose Allison, so they are all antagonists.
They’re more of a Dragon Ball style menagerie of defeated rivals, at this point.
As Amon Ra stated. But with more fate talk.
[Pretentious quote implying you have missed the point]
[Excessively pretentious quote implying that he was fated to miss the point and thus the point was missed purposefully because of fate.]
I have been given a message from the other side of the King’s Road that things have indeed gone to hell at Rayuba…and that Jagganoth is behind it. Sadly, my ice is not so cold as to be able to withstand a Demiurge’s fiery onslaught for long, and my apologies to my customers at the Tournament for not making it so.
I may want to invest in some business insurance. And life insurance for my employees.
…why exactly did I think a drink contract with a Demiurge was a good idea again? (Well, aside from the ridiculous wealth of Solomon’s empire.)
I know a bar on Throne where you can buy a cocktail with a demiurge’s toe in it. Very expensive, but it has a unique flavor.
A demiurge’s, aye, but ’tis a worm and not a toe!
I think Gog-Agog is the only demiurge with toes for sale, and they are not very expensive. At least not in terms of money.
Jagganoth asked to be given the most powerful artifact in existence to “save lives”. Allison was right not to give him the key.
He needed a master key to end Metatron and his meddling. If she gave hers, he would be done and could move straight to Metatron perhaps. But she didn’t, so now he needs to kill the other Demiurges and piece together theirs into a complete key.
Imagine how hard it must be to kill a Demiurge
Good thing he has a lot of hostages
Why are so many people trying to find decent motivations for Jagganoth? He is a monster who vaporized thousands of people when he appeared, before even making his foolish request to Allison that was supposed to “save lives” but wouldn’t. His avowed purpose is to destroy everything. Christ what an asshole!
(now prove me wrong, Abbadon, I beg you)
All of the demiurges are more human than they first appeared, so it makes sense that we are all guessing how we’ll find the man inside this monster.
Everybody is betting on their chance to say “I told you so!” later.
Some of them double down too hard on that bet, and forget that the man lives inside a monster.
They may have been human once, but no longer. Their vices drove them to madness eons ago, and the monsters that were once masks became their true faces.
Suffice to say, I place my bet that none are redeemable and none will face justice willingly.
The Third Conquest will come in a form you cannot anticipate.
Almost everyone has motivations or reasons. They don’t need to be good ones, or even moral, they are just that person’s motivations. Jag here has some preconception that everyone currently living is suffering tremendously, like an animal, riddled with cancer, and he’s actually helping them by bringing death and aiming for the power to kill pretty much everyone.
From his perspective he’s doing a service. He views everyone like we view that poor animal riddled with cancer. The animal doesn’t exactly want to die but it also doesn’t want to be in pain, it just can’t understand that its death is inevitable and best brought forward as opposed to prolonging the suffering. It’s a bull@%^& justification but he believes it so obvious that he seriously thought Alison might have gotten what he was saying and given him the power. When it was clear she didn’t get his insanity, he just grouped her with everyone he views as a dumb animal, incapable of understanding.
because literally everything in this story has more to it than the face value and also it’s fun :3
Unfortunately for those of us who live, there is little interest in saving lives and great gains to be made by spending them profligately.
It is a harsh burden, life.
*everything on fire* This is Fine… Everything is FINE….
Hell……………Yes
This is what’s known in chess as a “skewer”.
Yeah, if your side of the board has only one, giant queen that shoots fucking laser beams.
I do have fond memories of Battle Chess(tm). Interplay taught us well: Don’t mess with the magical laser queen!
In the immortal words of Rock Lee: “Do them dirty in front of they whole squad.”
The plot has taken a hard turn into End of Evangelion territory and I am here for it. I’m forseeing Allison won’t be as a much of a child as shinji and might use Instrumentality as a chance to forge a better world. Is Jaggonoth Gendo and Metatron Seele in this scenario?
Evangelion has a lot to do with psiquiatry, what makes you think that Instrumentality will be applied to Allison and the other?
While the mutual influences of esotericism are apparent, I think you’ll find Voltron:Legendary Defender they more applicable anime.
I am getting more of a Charlotte’s Web vibe: Allison is the pig, Cio is the spider, White Chain is the… oh, forget it.
White chain is the spider, Cio is the rat.
Hey remember how i said that this less than democratic rule not worst thing for citizens , living standarts and just living , wise ? And that just removing Solomon from power might not in fact improve Rayuba citizens situation ? And that comment somehow not got through. Hmm. That might explain why you dont remember it.
But hey ! Dictatorship going down now and liberation comes ! Hear the screams of joy of Rayuba citizens being liberated. Freedom AND death , yay .
its good man its so good
I mean there’s a big difference between removing a dictator and a completely invulnerable god whose mere passing can boil blood and shatter bone arriving and destroying the city but ok
What you just said is so asinine and so complitely missing the point that it’s obvious you aren’t arguing in good faith at all.
“Do not feed the Clewn.
He is nobody’s friend.”
Sir, I do believe you a boot in your mouth.
And indeed, as it has been said, I guess there’s no difference between a dictator peacefully abandoning power and people being “liberated” by the fire of a superpower.
No, sir.
No difference at all.
There was an old saying during the Viet Nam war: “It became necessary to destroy the village to save it.” It is just as untrue here as it was then.
everything is exactly the same
In fairness to YOU, HonkerBonker, you are strictly *correct* to say that living under Solomon’s rule is much better for the people of Rayuba than, say, getting blown up by Jagganoth. Being blown up by Jagganoth is terrible.
…
In fairness to everyone else:
1) Solomon has been justifying his rule by his ability to PROTECT his people from, well… exactly this kind of thing. The fact that he can’t stop Jagganoth from using his capital city as a target practice backstop, and is himself actively dodging shots that plow INTO his capital, pretty much makes a farce of that claim. His solitary, diamond-hard pride doesn’t make him strong enough to protect them, like he thought and said he could.
2) This would have been a GOOD time for an alternate Solomon David, one who trusted others and shared power willingly, to have an army of Ki Rata-trained warriors all attack Jagganoth at once. A Ki Rata disciple without a Key killed a demiurge once; a bunch of them could maybe at least *limit* Jagganoth’s rampage.
Solomon’s desire to hoard power and control has left him with a vast empire that is nothing but inconsequential chaff in the face of Jagganoth’s might, which in turn means his empire is a soft target that he cannot protect. Even if his imperium (his command authority, not just the empire itself) isn’t maximally bad, that still makes him out to be a hypocrite and a liar.
Which is better than being a mass murderer- but still bad, especially for the embodiment of Pride whose sacred Word is Diamond.
Maybe Dave should walk around to the other side, so when Yaun takes another swing at him it’ll mostly hit the ocean.
You fault Solomon for not having allowed himself to be destroyed by Jagganoth’s cold cock first strike? That’s not only absurd and rather nihilistic, but how exactly would that benefit the Rayubans? Seems to me that Rayuba would become the first cinder in Jagganoth’s Universe of Ash.
No, it’s Solomon’s fault for claiming his iron cruelty is necessary to protect his people, because he’s powerful enough to do so. Yet when push comes to shove, he’s *not* powerful enough to protect them from Jagganoth. It was not unwise to dodge an attack you cannot deflect or block, but Solomon set himself up as a shield for his people.
Do not write checks you cannot cash in. Do not write legends you cannot live up to.
Hmm. But there’s no-one who might do a better job than he. If a grandmaster of Ki Rata cannot protect them, who can?
I don’t blame Solomon David for not being able to stop Jagganoth, or to stop Jagganoth’s attacks.
I DO blame Solomon David for being a poser.
I blame him for acting like he’s invulnerable and proclaiming that this justifies him in ignoring all less powerful beings, when in reality both those things aren’t true. All that showboating, from the first time he lifted a giant stone block to the last time he stepped up to fight White Chains, was him trying to create a legend.
And this is a legend that, as skaianDestiny says, he couldn’t live up to when the worst happened. Because no one could.
…
From what I understand, he never gives other people a break when they can’t live up to his rules.
Why should he expect any breaks when he can’t live up to his promises?
True, Solly is a poser. But he makes it look GOOD!
SD compares very favorably to the other Seven (apart from Jadis, of whom we know almost nothing).
Yes he’s a tyrant. When the only plausible alternatives are despoilers, omnicidal maniacs and eldritch horror, then what?
And I’m not even implicating time-rewinding Zoss, whose moral compass is probably so alien that its bearing are probably “blue”, “yesterday”, “the smell of a rock” and “ontology”
I think we’re caught in this loop.
Unlike most of the other demiurge’s, Solomon’s flaws are *subtle.* He’s deliberately written to project an image of virtue and nobility, one that falls apart when you look behind the curtains.
It is to his credit that he can even keep up a pretense of being a good person, can even *fake* it well enough to pass the most casual of inspections. The other demiurges (excepting perhaps Jadis) can’t.
But at the same time, because his flaws are NOT obvious, they are more interesting to pick apart and discuss. But that makes it SEEM like people think he’s worse than the others. He’s not. He’s just more interesting to talk about because he’s not ONLY an atrocity machine.
“The most insidious lie is a half-truth.”
I trust you know this axiom of Lucifer well.
witness the first, last, and only art:
cutting.
The cut is beautiful. the cut is sublime. The results of the cut are horrific. Consider the mad end of unfettered cutting: “None remain to witness its art.”
I feel like Jagganoth was counting on Solomon casually bullet-timing out of the way so he’s now also responsible for the strike carrying on so far.
I wonder if Jagganoth knows that the evacuation order has been given already? Though it may not have gotten out before he nuked the area.
Though, if it didn’t get out, responsible officials likely are starting evacuation after what Jagganoth just did, if they didn’t already start when the nuke went off.
I’m not sure any of Solomon’s officials are still alive.
I doubt that every single one of Solomon’s sons (his officials are all his sons, right?) was at the Tournament.
He also has Emissaries. But why wouldn’t they be?
I picture the Rayuban capital as like Santa Barbara CA, with the arena out on the end of Stearn’s Wharf. That suggests a population of ~100,000. Just about everybody who lives and works there could have been seated in a large stadium.
On the other hand, only favoured Solomonites would have been invited to the event. The rest wouldn’t get time of work.
The big problem with the evacuation is not enough time — a minute or two since the order was given, at most — and the world’s gate possibly being out in the bay beyond the arena, therefore hard to reach for a fleeing mass. If the people are running up to the hills “behind the mission” then they are probably OK so far but that won’t help if J and SD blow up the planet. A death-duel between demiurges is a`as deadly to onlookers than a direct attack on population.
I strongly suspect that there is no leadership left in Rayuba, and possibly the entire Celestial Empire, outside of Solomon. After all, there is no reason for a for a designated survivor, as any situation that Solomon David can not survive would mean the end of the Empire.
He doesn’t seem like he cares, even a little.
How exactly does he plan on reforging them anew after death and in whose image?
I fear he plans to tear the mask off of reality exposing the pure lying truth of it all. The blaze of truth leaves none untouched. Poor Jadis and even Aesma herself ought not to have peaked under The Mask.
Interesting idea. If you wanted to destroy everybody, why not make the the real shape of the universe visible to all? Anybody less powerful than Jadis will be destroyed.
No.
Everyone will have never existed to begin with,
because they were always a lie.
Mildly concerned for the sanity of the disembodied multiversal commenters stanning for jaggy, fun as he is
I fear this may be due in part to Jaggy’s Battle Thong
DEFINITELY because of the thong
Indeed. This piece of cod which passeth all understanding.
His is the cod which will pierce the heavens?
At the least it has the power to sway the loyalties of the weak-minded.
Cod dammit!
if he killed me, i’d enjoy it
Case in point.
I’m betting there’s also nonzero overlap with Solomon David stans, Trump voters, and people who think Tom Morello should stop being so political. Authoritarian fanboys love to tell on themselves.
The serial killer groupie thing is only cute when the victims are fictional, and even then it’s pretty weird.
And now begins the Seven Pact Slaughter. The Butcher has come ready for war and the Tyrant is wroth, but can we say the same for the rest of the Royalty? Who shall remain standing, no one can say for sure. Though it would be best to get moving… right about now.
How terrifying.
Or in other words:
This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny
Good guys, bad guys and explosions as far as the eye can see
And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be?
Eschaton 13:70 And the Rising King shall be flanked, upon his right, by three white flames: Spock, Bill S. Preston, and Theodore Logan; and upon his left, by three black flames: the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan.
[…]
Eschaton 13:74 And though it shall be the bloodiest battle ever witnessed by the eyes of man or God, in time the new champion in his now-bloodstained raiment shall stand alone above all others, and the rest shall truly know he is their better.
So it is written.
Thank you, the both of you, for this excellent bit of commentary.
Jagganoth might say he’s seen the error of his ways, but he’s still fully on board with the basic beliefs of the Metatron death cult.
Right, the biggest error is that it’s Metadork in charge and not YA BOI JAGGANOTH
I mean there’s a difference between removing a dictator and a completely invulnerable god whose mere passing can boil blood and shatter bone arriving and destroying the city but ok
I meant to reply to someone, not sure why it posted that on it’s own lol
A dictator who still cared for the lowliest slave. Remember when he caught the stone block? His rule of law is harsh, but you can’t deny his world is a paradise.
You might want to re-read what the fuck did you just write. His world has slavery, and you call it a paradise? Real mask-off hours here.
I was under the impression that was a military unit helping with construction… Let me go reread…
Yes, It was a military unit. They were called “centurions” or something like that.
They were called “citizens” by SD himself. Definitely not slaves.
I think they themselves called themselves his slaves, and from the way they looked, it was meant as a sign of respect.
>Mask off hours
lmao what. Never understood why people have such a raging anti Salami Dave boner. The dudes a saint and absolutely loves his people. Maybe not his offspring, but his citizens yes. The Main characters are petulant children compared to him. Whitechain especially. Look at the other worlds. Rotting and decrepit. Just look at whitechain/Allison giving Mottom a free pass.
I’m not sure how honestly you don’t get people’s objections, oh wanna-be Legate of the divine Salami.
Nevertheless, I shall pretend to assume good faith.
The dude isn’t a complete monster, but he is NO “saint.”
He is, if anything, just as childish and petulant as Alice, without any of the justification she might find in the fact that she is an actual child who hasn’t had thousands of years to sort her shit out.
You’ll need to justify your hating on white chain there, if you want me to engage with it meaningfully.
“Look at the other worlds” indeed though. It’s been made abundantly clear that Solomon’s armies open new world gates to pillage, rape and burn just as readily as Mottom’s, and tht the shining jewel of Rayuba prospers on the back of those tributes.
Why the free pass for him, and not her? Becasue she is “rotting and decrepit” as though his superior ability to maintain his physical health grants him moral superiority?
The implication that Dave’s sins are lesser because he has better looks is repugnant to say the least.
More than that, Dave and Mottom each have an annual festival dedicated to celebrating their conquests. Is his somehow more acceptable because it focuses on the killing, instead of the looting?
Dave isn’t less guilty than Mottom, he’s just deeper in denial, and drinking his Kool-Aid makes you just as deluded as him.
Remember that Dave and Mottom each had an orphaned king among the attendees of their festivals, come to avenge some massacre or another that the Demiurge had likely never heard of, as they have both sublimed the act of massacre.
Actual answer: it has absolutely nothing to do with what Solomon David is like in-comic and whether his actions are “justified” re: Jagganoth. It’s about the real-world implications of the arguments people are making. (Honestly the people criticizing Solomon David on the in-comic grounds of failing to protect Rayuba etc. could stand to be more up-front about the fact that that’s not the crux of the issue.)
Solomon is *explicitly* set up in the text of the story as “a ‘benevolent’ dictator is still just a dictator”. True, we don’t see the results of his oppressive rule firsthand, just how he pontificates and presents himself (a poor choice narratively, I think), but the quotes in the alt-text, the parallel to Yam Yeddo in the story below the comic, and White Chain’s soliloquy are pretty explicit. I think it’s fair to say that readers are expected to spot the parallel between Solomon David and real-world autocrats and dictators and extrapolate that he’s not as benevolent as he seems, just spouting propaganda. *That parallel means that this isn’t just a debate about some webcomic character, people are implicitly talking about the real-world dictators that Solomon represents.*
Some people just got whooshed by the point and took Solomon David’s propaganda at face value, which is a little uncomfortable due to real-world parallels but whatever. The real problem is that a lot of Solomon David defenders *got* the point that he’s meant to be a parallel to real-world dictators and choose to argue that dictatorship is good, actually, when defending him. I’ve seen people pulling arguments ranging from generic authority worship at the low end, through Hobbesian bs, monarchism and anti-democracy, all the way up to outright cryptofasist shit. Maybe those arguments aren’t people’s actual real-world views but a) that’s still not a good look, especially in a period of rising fascism and, b) maybe they are. (See again: period of rising fascism, and people tend to start actually believing things they started out saying unseriously if they repeat them enough)
It’s not that most of the people in these arguments have an “anti Salami Dave boner” for him as a character, it’s that people are trying to push back against this kind of “dictatorship is good” bullshit. That shit it will take over your community and get worse and worse until you’ve got an outright nazi cesspit if you don’t you stomp on it immediately.
That’s a big part of it sure, but people are also awfully eager to forget every terrible thing we learned about SD before meeting him, the moment they saw his glorious abs.
This is an error deserving of correction.
Yes, this exactly.
Also, probably, we folks in the USA all a bit fight-y on account of the stress of the impending election.
Mad props for centering the extra-dagetic conflict.
Who is responsible for the fall of the Celestial Empire?
The answer is obvious, it’s Solomon David. But in case you don’t understand why, I’ll happily explain.
Why is there so little modern technology throughout the multiverse? The reason’s the same as why there are no longer any Ki Rata monks. It’s a threat to the unilateral rule of the Demiurges. Solomon David has kept his empire in a medieval-ish stasis for a very long time. It helps him stabilize his empire and prevents rebellion, but it also cripples the Celestial Empire’s military.
The only Demiurge who actively encourages technological development is Jagganoth. As far as we’re aware, Jagganoth fields the most advanced military in the multiverse, and we’ve already seen Mottom using troops with gear that wouldn’t be out of place in World War 1. What happens when Solomon’s medieval armies come face to face with guns, tanks, and planes? Hell, what if Jagganoth has nuclear weapons? Even assuming that Solomon can stalemate Jagganoth, he’ll be helpless to do anything but watch as Jagganoth’s armies overrun the entirety of the Celestial Empire. Don’t you think the situation might be different if Solomon David had missiles, computers, and an order of Ki Rata monks to back him up?
White Chain was absolutely right, she just arrived a few hundred years too late. Solomon David justified his dictatorial rule with the idea that he could protect his subjects. However, in cementing his tyranny, Solomon suppressed the only things that could have given his people a chance of survival. In choosing to remain the totalitarian head of state, Solomon doomed his own empire, and now he has to watch it burn.
But the empire hasn’t fallen. Even Rayuba is unconquered, so far.
Abbadon has said that technology can’t easily be transported through the void, therefore an equiv-tech army can’t pass between gates along the King’s Road without loading most of their gear. They arrive out-teched, in dribbles of units that the defenders can easily bat away.
The only viable way in is for a demiurge to bring an army by division. That’s possible, but Jagganoth can only do one world at a time. (No wonder he’s tired!)
Finally, where do you get the idea that the imperial army is primitive? As noted before, we’ve only seen the ceremonial part. I can go to London and watch blokes on horses with swords and plastic breastplates “guarding” the royals. Their day job is in a tank regiment.
*losing most of their gear. Effing autocorrect, mutter mutter.
When your capital becomes the battleground for a demiurge fight, it gets leveled.
It’s like setting Godzilla and Destroyah loose on Tokyo.
See also: Alice vs. Mottom in the flying palace and Mottom vs. Mammon in the Grand Dragon Bank.
Need I remind you that jaggys mere entrance nuked the stadium, and obliterated it. And a single swing from his sword made a shockwave that traveled into and took out at least 5% of the city. This is all within maybe 5 minutes. And jaganoth has done this by himself, while basically showboating. For all intents and purposes, the city is lost, it’s people dead men walking, and it’s buldings coffins
Yes, it’s trashed but *not* occupied by an army. And we have no indication so far that Jagganoth’s forces have moved on other worlds of the empire. Tech-gap between Solomon’s empire and Jagganoth’s, as suggested by SINNER, is not the cause of the problem. Jagganoth himself is the immediate problem and he needs no tech to break things. But he has to go places himself to bredo it, so it’s slow and tiring.
Perhaps if he had the master key he could automate the wrecking and killing and go to the beach instead? Who knows?
I would be incredibly surprised if Solomon had any great amount of modern technology to call on. Abbadon stated that every Demiurge except Jagganoth doesn’t do much at all in the way of building up a technology base. If Solomon conquered a world with advanced technology, he’d take anything immediately useful and break down the rest. Abbadon explicitly noted that it’s very difficult to find modern-level gunsmiths because guns are so tightly controlled by the Demiurges, and again drew the contrast with Jagganoth, who is “hoarding all the military technology.” Maybe Solomon has pockets of advanced technology in places, but on a strategic level it’s going to be negligible because he keeps it so tightly controlled. If you can point out where we’ve seen any indication at all that Solomon would act differently from every other Demiurge in that respect, I’d love to see it.
To that end, I think you’re completely missing the point of Jagganoth’s threat. Thus far, we’ve seen that the base level of forces that each Demiurge can field are roughly at parity (Mammon vs. Mottom being the primary example). It would be extremely head-in-the-sand to think that Jagganoth can’t call on anyone equivalent. This isn’t some contrived scenario where Jagganoth’s forces arrive in a slow trickle, a concerted effort of invasion will have his forces matching anyone else’s even before his tech comes into play. Jagganoth isn’t going to use technology instead of the traditional KSBD armies, he’s going to use technology on top of all that.
So let’s talk about the technology factor. Technology is difficult to maintain in the Void, yes, but Abbadon has explicitly noted that Jagganoth puts a lot of effort into improving the technology he encounters. Do you think that the problem of crossing the Void never occurred to him? What do you think he was doing all that time, if not preparing his armies to cross the Void with his deadliest weapons?
Your argument seems to hinge on the idea that Jagganoth’s forces will arrive without their tech and will face a foe with superior technology on arrival. This essentially renders all of Jagganoth’s preparations a complete waste of time, and assumes that Solomon has been letting technology proliferate in a way that is completely counter to the way Demiurges are explicitly noted to act. I don’t want to be mean, but this sounds like nonsense.
You might consider the other aspect of my previous post, where I speculated that Jagganoth can move an equiv-tech army by division, without suffering in the void and bottlenecking at the gates. Further, that can only do this where he is, personally, one world at a time. I don’t know if this correct, because Abbadon hasn’t told us, but it is the reasoning behind my “nonsense”. It has as much canon support as your interpretation.
I understand that Abbadon is not interested in battles larger than needed to fill a two-page spread. High-tech battles fought at range don’t make such good art, and distract from the personal stories that are the point of the work. I’m guessing that we won’t see these things in the comic and, if it’s necessary to justify their absence, Abbadon might confirm that they’re infeasible.
On a point of detail, I don’t imagine that Solomon’s forces are advanced as Jagganoth’s, or even as numerable, but I do think that they have parity with the armies of the other demiurges. It *might* even be his policy to maintain parity as exactly as possible, in order to support the balance of the seven-part world. What I do dispute is that because we have only seen pikemen, then pikemen are all he has. That seems unnecessary.
Finally, if Jagganoth really has solved the weapons-through-the void problem, I’m guessing — guessing, note — that he’s done it in some really lateral way involving sentient munitions: bombs with souls. Possibly specially-tailored devils, or forcibly-remade mortals and servants? This is so off-the-scale, in-your-face atrocious that it might just have a place in the story.
I do agree that Solomon’s forces wouldn’t be any less advanced than those of the other Demiurges, I didn’t mean to imply that they would be. I intended to emphasize that his forces are likely to be less advanced than Jagganoth’s armies, and are likely to be outmatched whenever the two clash.
I suppose Jagganoth could invade worlds one at a time, but I’d hesitate to say his plan involves taking all 777,777 worlds that way. Jagganoth doesn’t strike me as that kind of character, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard for Abbadon to show that the war has spread across the worlds. Your ideas for how he could get modern weapons through the void are pretty interesting, I personally would weigh in on the side of using specialized Servants.
I… still believe that my interpretation has more support, but I’ll leave it be since we’re likely to find out in the near future anyway. Apologies for the nonsense comment, I’m mainly irritated by the people justifying Solomon’s rule as if he was a competent benevolent dictator. He might care about his people, but if he cared about their survival more than he cared about being the one to rule them, he would have acted in a way that allowed them to prepare for Jagganoth better. As it is, I see no way for the Celestial Empire to survive what’s coming. Seven Demiurges and Meti fighting on Rayuba while Jagganoth’s allies and subordinates do who-knows-what… it’s a bad day to be Solomon.
As an aside, I wonder what role the Heretic’s Court will play going forward… I think they’re too interesting to be completely dropped. Perhaps intervention on the side of Allison and co.?
^ not Meti, Maya
It tells you everything you need to know about Solomon that he has his people perform backbreaking labour every few years building his giant arena, “magnanimously” grants a few workers the day off to show how merciful he is by taking on their work himself, then later reshapes the entire self-same arena with a thought in less than a minute.
Exactly how explicitly do you need it spelled out that he is not the man he pretends to be?
You do realize Solomon could have constructed the entire arena in ten minutes, rather than allowing his citizens to work themselves bloody in the name of their God King?
You would have Solomon David rob his own citizens of their jobs? That’s monstrous!
And there you have it, the distillation of modern conservatism: everybody has the right to work to support my high standard of living. I own the capital, you own the shovel, we’re both winning, right?
Yeah, “make work” programs are such a staple of conservatism.
I’m rather sure it was sarcastic
A man who strikes without thought of his action can cut God.
What can a god who strikes without thought of his action cut?
(buildings, apparently)
The cheese.
Something has been bugging me about Jagganoth’s character design… if he’s unkillable, why does he need armor?
The last panel makes it clear: to protect him from his own weapons. Now his armor makes sense.
have you seen the mask he made or himself? the guy is clearly going for style
To be fair, he wasn’t always invulnerable. That was a recent gift, from Metatron if I remember correctly.
Right but how recent? I don’t recall that bit exactly but also been meaning to look it up. Citation plz if u find it.
I *do* know that the last time we saw J-Wow before this scene he was forging weapons and armor to go to (this) war, so I’m guessing he already knew he was unkillable at that point. Maybe not. I’m often wrong.
He’s known he was unkillable from the start of the first war. However should note his” armor” is only in his forlimbs, and likely there for glitz and utility. Hes dann near naked otherwise, and has a fur cape of sorts.
I do like the look on Dave’s face in the bottom panel. He’s horrified but not by Jag’s power… rather by the senseless deaths of civilians. Authoritarian he may be but there is a compassion there as well that is humanising compared to the other gods (aside from Mammon). They may be brutally efficient in their acts, but each does have an agenda. Dave’s is perhaps the only that is not self serving.
Though at face value the creation of an empire is not necessarily self serving, the empire in question saw Solomon placed at the absolute center of power and law. He granted his empire no ability to change or grow, believing that nobody else was worthy of his position. Rayuba was rebuilt for the sake of his own pride.
I think that’s putting things too simple. While Pride may be his dominant characteristic, it doesn’t mean that’s all he is. Beneath that mask is a man who doesn’t let anyone come close because the last time he did that, they were horribly murdered. He may be Diamond, but I get the feeling that’s because he’s made himself that way to prevent any further pain. And now Jagganoth is recreating SD’s worst nightmare right in front of him. Diamond can be shattered if you hit it in the right place, and the shards are razor-sharp!
Hmm, yes. This is an important point. His base ethos is founded upon and mixed with his grief, with Pride as the flaw that led to Rayuba’s existence in stasis. Thank you for the insight.