Hear the howls? …
Worg riders on the creep; Orc flunkies thirty deep;
Minor flunkies all riled; kobold dogpile.
Loot grab my place? Lava burst in your face.
Fly down; wing attack; both claws; tail smack.
Open mouth; failed their saves.
Send them flaming to their graves.
So what, Metatron is trying to prevent Kill Six Billion Demons from rising? Is that what the Thorn Knights and Jaggy before he decided to rebel are about? Trying to stop Zoss from defying fate?
Metatron supposedly wants to use Zoss to find a successor that can restore reality to one with a true singular godhead. Apparently Zoss could not / would not do, so Metatron empowered him to reset time at will, repeating events over and over until a worthy successor is found – the one who be the new YISUN (singular unified god). Presumably each reset is subject to some randomness, as Zoss clearly hopes “this time would be different”.
So, metatron wants to crown a new God (YISUN), Zoss is his tool running endless permutations of reality to find someone worthy of the title. Metatron has been using Jagganoth to clean up loose ends, probably executing any pesky Demi-urges that might foul up the time resets. Jag signed up to this thinking he got invulnerability with which he could destroy creation, only to find out creation would just be reset if/when he succeeds.
Jagganoth is no longer amused, and wants to break the whole system.
Allison seems to be a wild play by zoss, taking a different approach than what he’s tried before to see if things turn out better this time.
Jaggy seems to know this, and would very much like to ruin Metatron’s eternity by using Zoss’s power – part of which is in Allison now – to break time itself, destroying Zoss’ and Metatron’s stranglehold.
Zoss, while clearly a prisoner of his own power, also clearly still has some agency. He is up to something more than some screwball idea with Allison, but it’s not clear what… yet…
I find your capitalization of every word in the sentence odd, but will instead choose to read it as an angel name. What is 23 Holy Shit, This Is Why The Angels Were Gathering In The Void. It’s Time To Hunt The Key-Bearer like?
I have to ask, which Blake is are you talking about? The only one that comes to mind is RWBY and that would mean the show took a really wierd turn in the last two volumes.
Zoss has definitely been trying to break the cycle, so either he’s more independent than Jagg gives him credit for… or Metatron also wants out somehow.
Could that be his game? Give Zoss the names and send him off to try break the cycle, then if he fails call in Jagg to send things back to the drawing board?
What would Metatron even *want* from the end of the cycle? Considering his tormented status… could it be his own death and the end of time?
That would make this cycle’s Jagganoth not newly free, but the culmination of Metatron’s own omnicidal plan – his mind still as shackled as his existence to the violence Metatron desires him to commit.
Angels, of course, do not die as easily as mortals. And Metatron is no mere angel. Perhaps a great unmaking is needed for him to cease in his tortured state.
What would Metatron want? He was YISUN’s scribe in his speaking house among the host of gods. Perhaps by escaping the wheel, he may serve them yet again.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
But Jagganoth doesn’t now want what Metatron wants, or so he says.
Metatron: wants to go back to after the suicide of the Multiplicity, but before the first conquest?
Zoss: wants to go back to the moment of the first conquest? (And does so repeatedly, allegedly, although why he doesn’t do so again instead of messing around with a successor is unclear.)
Jagganoth: wants to go back to the time before time, the unity of YISUN before the first division?
Metatron wants the cycle with Zoss broken, but the wheel to continue turning, with the Angels providing Order once again, if I recall. And a resurrected God to serve.
Zoss wants to get out of the cage he created and put himself into.
He can’t break the cage of his own making, but a successor could. Or so he believes.
Jagganoth wants everything reset, even the Angels, so there’s no chance of ANYONE having any inclination to restart the cycle coming into play. No resurrecting God, no Zoss cycles…
We have been told that Jadis is the most knowing of any character in the comic. We have also been told she sincerely wishes to die. I wonder now if that has less to do with the torment of what happened to her and more to do with the reasons motivating Jagganoth, Metatron, and Zoss
I’ll say. It’s impossible to say how this information justifies ending all existence. So everyone had better take Jaggy’s word for it and let him get on with it I guess. I don’t understand what he’s trying to accomplish with this speech, he has to realize it’s only going to be taken as “Irrelevant religious ramblings mixed with whatever lies he thinks has the best odds to undermine Alison’s confidence and maybe divide the opposition, at best with some grain of truth twisted by fanaticism mixed into it”. Unless he wants to sit down and explain himself in detail.
More poetry that’s somehow supposed to justify killing I’m going to guess several quintillion souls. What’s so bad about becoming the painter? Sounds like more of Jaggy’s religious “all physical matter is corrupt and must be purged to return to God’s perfection” bullshit.
Which, I’ll remind you is as far as his concrete plans go that we know about. Destroy all space and time forever and then some vague philosophical slogans about making everything better that sound to me like making sure no new existence will ever interrupt God’s infinite perfection.
It does seem to be Jaggy’s intention that all of reality needs to be broken down to its most primal parts and then reformed with nobody around who would be tempted to take up the path of Zoss, the Angels or the demiurges.
Even himself.
So, yes, he’s willing to break down several quintillion mortal souls, all the demons and angels, and make a new wheel that nobody would rule over. Or want to.
Well, the implication is that those quintillions die when Zoss resets the world, and that it has happened several times before. Let’s say that the world is reset to a time hundred years before your birth. By definition you’re not part of that world, and you don’t exist anywhere else, so in my books that definitely counts as being dead. Jagganoth figures that since all these people are going to die anyway when Zoss wills it, he might just as well try to use this cycle to break it so it doesn’t happen again.
That would explain why he’s so indifferent to causing collateral damage, beacuse he knows that none of these people can be saved. All he sees is dead people who just don’t know it yet.
Of course then we have to talk about quintillions times infinite people who are never going to live at all. Just because Jagganath thinks their suffering isn’t worth it.
And then we end up talking about the quintillions times infinite people who will end up existing under Jaggy’s New World.
His intention, after all, is to recreate Creation so the suffering caused by the actions of the demiurges, angels and Zoss no longer are possible.
So, which souls shall we weigh?
The quintillions who will exist if Jaggy wins or the quintillions who will exist if he does not? The quintillions that will not exist if he wins, or the quintillions that will not exist if he does not?
How do you weigh a soul that does not currently exist against a soul that does not currently exist?
That’s assuming Jaggy’s dream world “without suffering” has any life at all. Which is just the kind of question he should be interested in talking about with more detail and less poetry if he thinks people might be interested in what he wants.
Zoss already has. Or at least considered it. Everything remains, however. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Have you ever heard this?
“we need to go someplace that’s completely desolate and that would never be in real life at all and it’s huge and it’s a bajillion miles wide and it’s nowhere to be found on earth. well it’s right over there”
If it was, why is he just now revealing it? Jagganoth is not an idiot, nor a bad orator. I have no doubt he could persuade others to his side. Not just the belligerent knights, but others as well. Is he scared? Does he see failure as a possibility and is trying something other than war?
And if Zoss did not torture the names of God out of Metatron, who put Metatron in such a state? We have seen him, and he has been tortured. Unless the fact that he has been tortured is my assumption.
jaggs might be misinterpreting something, although i am a huge idiot when it comes to figuring out where a story will go. but i read jagganoth as very similar to juggernaut star—smart but shackled, not really capable of breaking out of ingrained ways to read and respond to these sorts of situations. if it’s true, maybe he’s only revealing it now because he thinks aspected chaos is the only other being with a level of power capable of doing anything about it?
anyway i love the idea that metatron hasn’t been tortured he’s just vibing that’s just how he looks when he’s vibing. he’s just chilling, every crack in his shell stuffed with eye-covered wings, as you do
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
The page where we see Metatron broken and bleeding is flash-back: it represents Jugganaught Star’s telling of the story and may not be truthful. On the later page where we actually see Metratron in current time, he’s not bleeding and not stuck full of lances. He’s just immobile. So this fits with Metatron and Zoss having struck a deal: Metatron has lent Zoss his power and been disabled by it.
Wait a sec – in the first book, we see that when angels lie their armor deteriorates, possibly painfully. What does this tell us of an angels’ ability to lie when they are unarmored, as it were?
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
In the the first panel where we see him for real, Metatron seems to be armoured and yes, the armour is cracked all over. So he’s been lying like a rug.
This was addressed at some point; Abaddon made it clear that Metatron exists on a level of reality that largely frees him from the limitations of other angels. We have no way of knowing what he is truly capable of, or whether anything we know about him is true.
Yeah, I don’t trust the man who has become lost in his anger to realise the truth in such matters, unreliable narrators and the whatnot. I don’t doubt Metatron is not to be trusted, but Zoss strikes me as actually being the good guy here, not the angel’s pawn as Jag claims
Perhaps saying it out loud will attract Zoss’s attention, and thus a resetting of the board.
So why Jagganoth is saying it now is because perhaps Aspected Chaos is enlightened enough to remember, now.
Both could be true. Metatron could have planned for Zoss to “torture” the names out of him, and simply allowed it to happen, allowed Zoss to believe it was his idea.
He has told it every time. He has shouted it from the roof tops. It never makes a difference. So, why bother. Consider the ennui of immortality. Kalpas of violence endured just once would be bad enough. How many cycles have there been?
I’m with you 452, the greater context of “breaking the wheel”, metatron, the angels et al has totally been lost on me.
All I remember js that Zoss is “the conquering king” of this whole uni/multiverse and pulled Allison in. I thought there was someone destined to be his successor.
I don’t really understand the mechanics of the various realms anymore (you die, you drop to some soul realm thing, and then can come back somehow).
No idea what the wheel is other than that this -verse is basically wheel shaped, but even that is so long ago, that I can’t really remember how all the spaces relate to eachother.
It feels like Jagganoth is talking in grander terms, like life and time are themselves a wheel, and breaking that will do something for them… put them out of their misery? Let them die for good? Remake the -verse in some way that isn’t full of war and fighting constantly, I dunno.
In any case, every time someone says to look at a wiki, I just think “yeah, so this plot isn’t easy enough to explaon, or maybe isn’t even fully contained in the comic”. Between the little texts below the comic, the alt texts, the patreon stuff and whatever else Abaddon has tweeted, I’ve basically given up trying to understand anymore.
The wheel is metaphorical, and not; it’s a place where multiple infinities exist next to each other, a.k.a. The Universe; one can assume that it is wheel shaped, with the “spokes” being the limits of said worlds. However, since infinite cannot exist without limit, the wheel is metaphorical in that infinity has no shape, it is simply a way to attempt comprehension of something that refuses and simply cannot be comprehended by a being that exists. And yet, different infinities exist within and without each other, one on top of the other, or next to it, in most of the more interesting places. As to the plot, it’s really quite simple, it’s the themes that are difficult to wrap your head around if you aren’t already familiar.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
There isn’t much “Patreon stuff” in the sense of background information (unless it’s up at the highest level of sponsorship, beyond where I’m signed up). There _is_ a long list of snippets posted by Abbadon on the K6BD Tumblr in response to questions. I.e. the available information is all public, without fee.
Further, I don’t think you’re _supposed_ to understand the greater matters of the comic from a simple reading. The protagonists are still unsure about what’s up, and all the major players are lying to each other. The presentation reflects the confusion of the characters. It’s possible to extract a _consistent_ rationalisation of the plot by obsessive rereading, and that’s what you’re seeing in the comments here; but there’s no _unique_ rationalisation so far: the universe is fragmented into mutually-incompatible plots.
I had a big long reply and I misclicked the captcha and the internet ate it, which I’m mad about.
Then I wrote a longer one. Oops.
Jagganoth is a traumatized human who (supposedly) wants to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the universe so it’s free of suffering.
Zoss is the first human to achieve Royalty (basically true divine power).
Kill Six Billion Demons is the prophesied name of Zoss’s successor, who will inherit his power. It’s deliberately unclear if this refers to Allison or Zaid.
Metatron is an angel, and the scribe of YISUN (basically god).
The longer answer is tinged by a couple of things: the characters could be lying, or operating on outdated information. Also, I only half-remember the plot, so I might be simplifying or getting things wrong.
In the beginning, YISUN created the multiverse, then split themselves into 777,777 gods, who created Throne. YISUN also created the Angels, who would protect Throne. The 777,777 gods each created a world, and went away. This left Throne as a hub between worlds, and empty except for the Angels.
Zoss was the first human to achieve enlightenment, and found Throne. From there, he obtained divine power: the 777777 True Names of YISUN. How he got it is up for debate. According to the old angels, Zoss tortured Metatron for all 777777 of the True Names. However, Jagganoth claims Metatron gave Zoss the names willingly. It’s unclear which version is true (and it could be both, or neither).
Zoss condensed the 777777 True Names into the “Key of Kings”, an artifact of power.
Zoss was the first human to find Throne, but he wasn’t the last. Things were cool for a while. Then they weren’t, and war broke out, destroying Throne and a lot of the multiverse. Eventually, the war reached a stalemate between seven powerful warlords, called the demiurges. Jagganoth is one such demiurge, who suffered greatly during the war.
Jagganoth saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. His plan is to wipe the slate clean and remake the multiverse from scratch, without suffering. This would be a hard reset.
Zoss saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. From King of Swords 10-141, we know that he tried to fix it, but failed. Part of his plan to “fix it” is to give his power to a successor, Kill Six Billion Demons. By prophecy (KSBD 1-81), Kill Six Billion Demons has he/him pronouns, and as such may be Zaid.
Jagganoth claims (Breaker of Infinities 2-45) that Zoss’s attempts to fix the multiverse were time loops, resetting the world over and over. This may be true. From Seeker of Thrones 9-101 we see Zoss say “I thought this cycle might bear out differently … perhaps it was a mistake after all”.
It is unclear if Zoss giving away his power starts a new time loop, or breaks the cycle entirely. Possibly both.
Metatron saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. Metatron has two plans associated with him. The first is to wipe the slate clean with genocide, restoring YISUN to power (Wielder of Names 3-56, 3-57). The second is to ensure Zaid becomes Zoss’s successor, and Zaid becomes a YISUN-like figure who will wipe the slate clean (Wielder of Names 2-21, 2-22). It’s unclear which (if any) Metatron actually wants, since Metatron never actually speaks.
It is unclear what kind of loop this would be — whether it’d be a time loop, a political cycle, or both.
Jagganoth claims that Zoss’s attempts to fix the multiverse and Metatron’s attempts to reset the multiverse are, in fact, the same. If all of this is true, this means that Zoss giving the successor power doesn’t *defy* the cycle, but *enforces* it. It may also imply that Zoss giving Zaid power enforces the cycle, and Zoss giving Allison power was the mistake that might *break* the cycle.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Apparently, we’re not expected to understand Metatron. Abbadon said, in a Tumblr post some time back, that he’s been incarnate so long that he’s basically an “eldritch horror”. Whether that means that he’s ascended to a higher kind of thought or descended into madness is unrevealed.
I’m pretty sure that Zoss’s inheritor was originally supposed to be Zaid, as told by Jadis in book one, the demiurge in the crystal. She has perfect knowledge of the shape of creation, thus she can see the curve of time. She knew Zaid was Zoss’s successor.
However, Zoss, having achieved Royalty, can operate outside of the Wheel, thus can change the events that transpire, as Jaggy just said. This time around, instead of choosing Zaid as his successor, Zoss chose Allison. The reason being most likely that choosing Zaid has not resulted in his goal: breaking the wheel.
Remember, one who masters the wheel cannot break it.
The version of the universe we are familiar with is *violently* sexist. I’ve assumed since more or less the very beginning that the prophecy always referred to Allison, but the scribes relaying Jadis’s words never even considered the idea that the person being referred to might be anything other than male, so that was how they translated it.
However, the true nature of events is as-yet unclear. Precisely what role to play Zaid has, we cannot yet say.
When Jadis’s scribes were reciting the prophesy, we see her hissing “s”‘s, which I thought could be her trying to correct her scribes saying “he” into “she”. Meaning the real prophesy has she/her pronouns, but it was misinterpreted (by everyone including the angels)
I bet he’d drop a fire rap album.
Yo, I’m King Dragon…
I’m the king of the lair
And now that you’re in here, you’re not going anywhere!
But down on the ground, cuz I’m gonna kick your ass!
Hear the howls? …
Worg riders on the creep; Orc flunkies thirty deep;
Minor flunkies all riled; kobold dogpile.
Loot grab my place? Lava burst in your face.
Fly down; wing attack; both claws; tail smack.
Open mouth; failed their saves.
Send them flaming to their graves.
Well, that escalated quickly.
How would it escalate if MAYA were around?
W H E R E
I S
M A Y A
? ? ? ? ?
Dragon Boy up in that ohhh
Bravo, Tenfold
Tenfold Archer just spawned into existence one of the first, and only, surviving works of slam poetry from Mammon’s youth. We live on a blessed day
Wait where are you… dude stop going into random side rooms. You already have like 86 ethers.
Doom is for the children.
Yeah, adults play Wolfenstein 3D.
Amateurs! True Royalty plays nothing but Taco Bell – Tasty Temple Challenge! No FPS can compare to its tactical hot sauce gameplay!
Know that the names of God were Chad, Brad, and Chet… knowing them is a terrible curse and a burden.
No, no, no. They were Moe, Larry and Curly.
And Ligma.
What’s that?
He’s from the same pantheon as Fromunda.
No, my friend. They were Hugh, Pugh, Barney Mcgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub, though few remember these ancient names.
No kind sir, they were Rick and Sanchez.
No dear frugivore, they were Pugh, Pugh, Barney Mcgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb. The Pugh brothers were twins.
No, Sweet Child of Summer, they were Darryl and my other brother Darryl.
You forget Larry, sibling to Darryl and also sibling to other Darryl, blasphemer!
That certainly explains how Zoss can survive being beheaded.
If Metatron entered into a willing deal with Zoss, I wonder if we’ll also find out that Himself did something similar.
So Zoss would also be flanked by a white and black flame, paralleling Allison. (Or she would parallel him.)
The embodiment of ego should be powerful enough to conquer gods, as is. What threat or use would a prideful angel be?
I do wonder what powers angels get as they age. Metatron was the only prime angel, SOMETHING killed the rest and maimed him.
Hrmm… Reckon Himself the demon / devil is Zoss’s black flame “assistant”?
sick-ass poem dog.
So did this page get taken down?
plot twist!
So what, Metatron is trying to prevent Kill Six Billion Demons from rising? Is that what the Thorn Knights and Jaggy before he decided to rebel are about? Trying to stop Zoss from defying fate?
Metatron supposedly wants to use Zoss to find a successor that can restore reality to one with a true singular godhead. Apparently Zoss could not / would not do, so Metatron empowered him to reset time at will, repeating events over and over until a worthy successor is found – the one who be the new YISUN (singular unified god). Presumably each reset is subject to some randomness, as Zoss clearly hopes “this time would be different”.
So, metatron wants to crown a new God (YISUN), Zoss is his tool running endless permutations of reality to find someone worthy of the title. Metatron has been using Jagganoth to clean up loose ends, probably executing any pesky Demi-urges that might foul up the time resets. Jag signed up to this thinking he got invulnerability with which he could destroy creation, only to find out creation would just be reset if/when he succeeds.
Jagganoth is no longer amused, and wants to break the whole system.
Allison seems to be a wild play by zoss, taking a different approach than what he’s tried before to see if things turn out better this time.
Jaggy seems to know this, and would very much like to ruin Metatron’s eternity by using Zoss’s power – part of which is in Allison now – to break time itself, destroying Zoss’ and Metatron’s stranglehold.
Zoss, while clearly a prisoner of his own power, also clearly still has some agency. He is up to something more than some screwball idea with Allison, but it’s not clear what… yet…
Here’s a hype-as-hell theory that is probably also wrong.
Jagganoth says to Allison: “You were given the Key of Kings by random chance. But you were not the first to be so unlucky. I was.”
In other words, Jagganoth was, like Allison, one part of the endless permutations of reality, entrusted to bring about YISUN.
People say “What if Zoss is future Zaid”. Here’s my wild-ass comment. What if *Jagganoth* is future Zaid?
What if Allison is future Zaid? Would that make this a “He Zaid/She Zaid” story?
This word-play is the truly important takeaway from the K6BD deep lore discussion. This is gold.
Metatron, the opposite of a fool.
Metatron is a loofa?
well you cant get those looks without exfoliation
Exfooliation.
This one wins.
These are some heavy gnostic vibes.
Heh, yeah, I feel like any story that has “demiurges” as a major character category is going to end up with a lot of gnostic vibes.
Holy Shit, This Is Why The Angels Were Gathering In The Void. It’s Time To Hunt The Key-Bearer
I find your capitalization of every word in the sentence odd, but will instead choose to read it as an angel name. What is 23 Holy Shit, This Is Why The Angels Were Gathering In The Void. It’s Time To Hunt The Key-Bearer like?
Someone call me?
no fuck off i was called where’s the fucking key-bearer
So the Red God is a follower of Blake? [questing emoji]
I have to ask, which Blake is are you talking about? The only one that comes to mind is RWBY and that would mean the show took a really wierd turn in the last two volumes.
Famous poet William Blake? Writer of ‘The Tyger’ in 1974.
The famous Beat poem, not to be confused with the 1794 poem of the same name, by an author of the same name.
He does burn bright, that is for sure.
(Ironically, wouldn’t that make him a follower of Yang?)
Pure Ego
From the Upanishads
EIGHTEENTH KHANDA.
‘When one perceives, then one understands.
One who does not perceive, does not understand.
Only he who perceives, understands.
This perception, however, we must desire to understand.’
‘Sir, I desire to understand it.’
Zoss has definitely been trying to break the cycle, so either he’s more independent than Jagg gives him credit for… or Metatron also wants out somehow.
Could that be his game? Give Zoss the names and send him off to try break the cycle, then if he fails call in Jagg to send things back to the drawing board?
What would Metatron even *want* from the end of the cycle? Considering his tormented status… could it be his own death and the end of time?
That would make this cycle’s Jagganoth not newly free, but the culmination of Metatron’s own omnicidal plan – his mind still as shackled as his existence to the violence Metatron desires him to commit.
Angels, of course, do not die as easily as mortals. And Metatron is no mere angel. Perhaps a great unmaking is needed for him to cease in his tortured state.
What would Metatron want? He was YISUN’s scribe in his speaking house among the host of gods. Perhaps by escaping the wheel, he may serve them yet again.
But Jagganoth doesn’t now want what Metatron wants, or so he says.
Metatron: wants to go back to after the suicide of the Multiplicity, but before the first conquest?
Zoss: wants to go back to the moment of the first conquest? (And does so repeatedly, allegedly, although why he doesn’t do so again instead of messing around with a successor is unclear.)
Jagganoth: wants to go back to the time before time, the unity of YISUN before the first division?
Metatron wants the cycle with Zoss broken, but the wheel to continue turning, with the Angels providing Order once again, if I recall. And a resurrected God to serve.
Zoss wants to get out of the cage he created and put himself into.
He can’t break the cage of his own making, but a successor could. Or so he believes.
Jagganoth wants everything reset, even the Angels, so there’s no chance of ANYONE having any inclination to restart the cycle coming into play. No resurrecting God, no Zoss cycles…
We have been told that Jadis is the most knowing of any character in the comic. We have also been told she sincerely wishes to die. I wonder now if that has less to do with the torment of what happened to her and more to do with the reasons motivating Jagganoth, Metatron, and Zoss
Probably due to the fact she saw the shape of the Universe.
It broke her body, snapped her mind and gave her true Omniscience.
She’s now entombed within a glass cage, and cannot leave it without her battered body suffering for the act.
And she probably cannot die, for she has not killed herself, nor asked anyone else to kill her.
From what we saw of him, Metatron ain’t lookin’ so hot. Maybe the dude just wants to die?
Well this complicates things.
I’ll say. It’s impossible to say how this information justifies ending all existence. So everyone had better take Jaggy’s word for it and let him get on with it I guess. I don’t understand what he’s trying to accomplish with this speech, he has to realize it’s only going to be taken as “Irrelevant religious ramblings mixed with whatever lies he thinks has the best odds to undermine Alison’s confidence and maybe divide the opposition, at best with some grain of truth twisted by fanaticism mixed into it”. Unless he wants to sit down and explain himself in detail.
The subject has become the painter and the painted. The only way to stop things is to destroy the canvas and deny the painter a medium.
Then create a new medium that the subject is no longer the painter nor painted into.
More poetry that’s somehow supposed to justify killing I’m going to guess several quintillion souls. What’s so bad about becoming the painter? Sounds like more of Jaggy’s religious “all physical matter is corrupt and must be purged to return to God’s perfection” bullshit.
Which, I’ll remind you is as far as his concrete plans go that we know about. Destroy all space and time forever and then some vague philosophical slogans about making everything better that sound to me like making sure no new existence will ever interrupt God’s infinite perfection.
It does seem to be Jaggy’s intention that all of reality needs to be broken down to its most primal parts and then reformed with nobody around who would be tempted to take up the path of Zoss, the Angels or the demiurges.
Even himself.
So, yes, he’s willing to break down several quintillion mortal souls, all the demons and angels, and make a new wheel that nobody would rule over. Or want to.
Well, the implication is that those quintillions die when Zoss resets the world, and that it has happened several times before. Let’s say that the world is reset to a time hundred years before your birth. By definition you’re not part of that world, and you don’t exist anywhere else, so in my books that definitely counts as being dead. Jagganoth figures that since all these people are going to die anyway when Zoss wills it, he might just as well try to use this cycle to break it so it doesn’t happen again.
That would explain why he’s so indifferent to causing collateral damage, beacuse he knows that none of these people can be saved. All he sees is dead people who just don’t know it yet.
Of course then we have to talk about quintillions times infinite people who are never going to live at all. Just because Jagganath thinks their suffering isn’t worth it.
And then we end up talking about the quintillions times infinite people who will end up existing under Jaggy’s New World.
His intention, after all, is to recreate Creation so the suffering caused by the actions of the demiurges, angels and Zoss no longer are possible.
So, which souls shall we weigh?
The quintillions who will exist if Jaggy wins or the quintillions who will exist if he does not? The quintillions that will not exist if he wins, or the quintillions that will not exist if he does not?
How do you weigh a soul that does not currently exist against a soul that does not currently exist?
That’s assuming Jaggy’s dream world “without suffering” has any life at all. Which is just the kind of question he should be interested in talking about with more detail and less poetry if he thinks people might be interested in what he wants.
Which does seem to be his aim. Why create the Universe with nothing in it? Empty. Sterile.
Why build a house that nobody would see or live in? A painting none, even yourself, could admire?
So, timeloop? Metatron and/or Jagganoth try to end all of existence, Zoss resets it before they succeed?
Hmm, the eternal recurrence strikes again. As it is wont to do.
The circle, pure, infertile. Was that from K6BD? I forget.
From which loop did you forget it from. It could have been any of them!
2 Michael said it to White chain in the void.
This has been kind of obvious for awhile, ever since Jugernaght stars rant. But it’s still pretty cool.
Zoss already has. Or at least considered it. Everything remains, however. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Have you ever heard this?
It seems I’ve been placed here instead of two threads above. Oops.
spatiotemporal dislocations are to be expected with this type of reality reset.
“we need to go someplace that’s completely desolate and that would never be in real life at all and it’s huge and it’s a bajillion miles wide and it’s nowhere to be found on earth. well it’s right over there”
Now THERE’S a reference I haven’t seen in almost two decades.
What’s it a reference to?
How very interesting. Not that I think it true.
If it was, why is he just now revealing it? Jagganoth is not an idiot, nor a bad orator. I have no doubt he could persuade others to his side. Not just the belligerent knights, but others as well. Is he scared? Does he see failure as a possibility and is trying something other than war?
And if Zoss did not torture the names of God out of Metatron, who put Metatron in such a state? We have seen him, and he has been tortured. Unless the fact that he has been tortured is my assumption.
jaggs might be misinterpreting something, although i am a huge idiot when it comes to figuring out where a story will go. but i read jagganoth as very similar to juggernaut star—smart but shackled, not really capable of breaking out of ingrained ways to read and respond to these sorts of situations. if it’s true, maybe he’s only revealing it now because he thinks aspected chaos is the only other being with a level of power capable of doing anything about it?
anyway i love the idea that metatron hasn’t been tortured he’s just vibing that’s just how he looks when he’s vibing. he’s just chilling, every crack in his shell stuffed with eye-covered wings, as you do
The page where we see Metatron broken and bleeding is flash-back: it represents Jugganaught Star’s telling of the story and may not be truthful. On the later page where we actually see Metratron in current time, he’s not bleeding and not stuck full of lances. He’s just immobile. So this fits with Metatron and Zoss having struck a deal: Metatron has lent Zoss his power and been disabled by it.
Wait a sec – in the first book, we see that when angels lie their armor deteriorates, possibly painfully. What does this tell us of an angels’ ability to lie when they are unarmored, as it were?
In the the first panel where we see him for real, Metatron seems to be armoured and yes, the armour is cracked all over. So he’s been lying like a rug.
Nightmare fuel thought:
Except he is the Metatron, the Scribe of God.
And if God lied … a LOT … Metatron would be showing the effects of writing down and repeating those lies.
“for beginnings are false and I am a consummate liar..”
If God harmed you and God is dead, where do you turn for revenge? You punish all of creation.
This was addressed at some point; Abaddon made it clear that Metatron exists on a level of reality that largely frees him from the limitations of other angels. We have no way of knowing what he is truly capable of, or whether anything we know about him is true.
Yeah, I don’t trust the man who has become lost in his anger to realise the truth in such matters, unreliable narrators and the whatnot. I don’t doubt Metatron is not to be trusted, but Zoss strikes me as actually being the good guy here, not the angel’s pawn as Jag claims
crackpot theory, but perhaps he doesn’t heal across time loops, and he is beat up from all the times Jaggy tried to kill him, but couldn’t.
Perhaps saying it out loud will attract Zoss’s attention, and thus a resetting of the board.
So why Jagganoth is saying it now is because perhaps Aspected Chaos is enlightened enough to remember, now.
Both could be true. Metatron could have planned for Zoss to “torture” the names out of him, and simply allowed it to happen, allowed Zoss to believe it was his idea.
He has told it every time. He has shouted it from the roof tops. It never makes a difference. So, why bother. Consider the ennui of immortality. Kalpas of violence endured just once would be bad enough. How many cycles have there been?
so i love this comic and have been following it for the past like three years but can someone please explain the plot so far lmao thank u
that’s to say Metatron, Zoss, who Kill Six Billion Demons is and all that thank u.
The comic has a wiki you can check out.
I’m with you 452, the greater context of “breaking the wheel”, metatron, the angels et al has totally been lost on me.
All I remember js that Zoss is “the conquering king” of this whole uni/multiverse and pulled Allison in. I thought there was someone destined to be his successor.
I don’t really understand the mechanics of the various realms anymore (you die, you drop to some soul realm thing, and then can come back somehow).
No idea what the wheel is other than that this -verse is basically wheel shaped, but even that is so long ago, that I can’t really remember how all the spaces relate to eachother.
It feels like Jagganoth is talking in grander terms, like life and time are themselves a wheel, and breaking that will do something for them… put them out of their misery? Let them die for good? Remake the -verse in some way that isn’t full of war and fighting constantly, I dunno.
In any case, every time someone says to look at a wiki, I just think “yeah, so this plot isn’t easy enough to explaon, or maybe isn’t even fully contained in the comic”. Between the little texts below the comic, the alt texts, the patreon stuff and whatever else Abaddon has tweeted, I’ve basically given up trying to understand anymore.
Like seriously, someone must just have a list of pages to read in order to get the current plot.
Has no one made an explainer video?
The wheel is metaphorical, and not; it’s a place where multiple infinities exist next to each other, a.k.a. The Universe; one can assume that it is wheel shaped, with the “spokes” being the limits of said worlds. However, since infinite cannot exist without limit, the wheel is metaphorical in that infinity has no shape, it is simply a way to attempt comprehension of something that refuses and simply cannot be comprehended by a being that exists. And yet, different infinities exist within and without each other, one on top of the other, or next to it, in most of the more interesting places. As to the plot, it’s really quite simple, it’s the themes that are difficult to wrap your head around if you aren’t already familiar.
There isn’t much “Patreon stuff” in the sense of background information (unless it’s up at the highest level of sponsorship, beyond where I’m signed up). There _is_ a long list of snippets posted by Abbadon on the K6BD Tumblr in response to questions. I.e. the available information is all public, without fee.
Further, I don’t think you’re _supposed_ to understand the greater matters of the comic from a simple reading. The protagonists are still unsure about what’s up, and all the major players are lying to each other. The presentation reflects the confusion of the characters. It’s possible to extract a _consistent_ rationalisation of the plot by obsessive rereading, and that’s what you’re seeing in the comments here; but there’s no _unique_ rationalisation so far: the universe is fragmented into mutually-incompatible plots.
Also, we are KSBD, thank you for coming to my lecture. T-shirts will not be sold, because I’m not a sellout, everything is free forever.
Lifeplucked twae times wi’in moments. Some’un nae be likin tha blether.
That’s the price of dealing in words instead of swords, I s’pose.
I had a big long reply and I misclicked the captcha and the internet ate it, which I’m mad about.
Then I wrote a longer one. Oops.
Jagganoth is a traumatized human who (supposedly) wants to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the universe so it’s free of suffering.
Zoss is the first human to achieve Royalty (basically true divine power).
Kill Six Billion Demons is the prophesied name of Zoss’s successor, who will inherit his power. It’s deliberately unclear if this refers to Allison or Zaid.
Metatron is an angel, and the scribe of YISUN (basically god).
The longer answer is tinged by a couple of things: the characters could be lying, or operating on outdated information. Also, I only half-remember the plot, so I might be simplifying or getting things wrong.
In the beginning, YISUN created the multiverse, then split themselves into 777,777 gods, who created Throne. YISUN also created the Angels, who would protect Throne. The 777,777 gods each created a world, and went away. This left Throne as a hub between worlds, and empty except for the Angels.
Zoss was the first human to achieve enlightenment, and found Throne. From there, he obtained divine power: the 777777 True Names of YISUN. How he got it is up for debate. According to the old angels, Zoss tortured Metatron for all 777777 of the True Names. However, Jagganoth claims Metatron gave Zoss the names willingly. It’s unclear which version is true (and it could be both, or neither).
Zoss condensed the 777777 True Names into the “Key of Kings”, an artifact of power.
Zoss was the first human to find Throne, but he wasn’t the last. Things were cool for a while. Then they weren’t, and war broke out, destroying Throne and a lot of the multiverse. Eventually, the war reached a stalemate between seven powerful warlords, called the demiurges. Jagganoth is one such demiurge, who suffered greatly during the war.
Jagganoth saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. His plan is to wipe the slate clean and remake the multiverse from scratch, without suffering. This would be a hard reset.
Zoss saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. From King of Swords 10-141, we know that he tried to fix it, but failed. Part of his plan to “fix it” is to give his power to a successor, Kill Six Billion Demons. By prophecy (KSBD 1-81), Kill Six Billion Demons has he/him pronouns, and as such may be Zaid.
Jagganoth claims (Breaker of Infinities 2-45) that Zoss’s attempts to fix the multiverse were time loops, resetting the world over and over. This may be true. From Seeker of Thrones 9-101 we see Zoss say “I thought this cycle might bear out differently … perhaps it was a mistake after all”.
It is unclear if Zoss giving away his power starts a new time loop, or breaks the cycle entirely. Possibly both.
Metatron saw all this go down and was like “well, this sucks”. Metatron has two plans associated with him. The first is to wipe the slate clean with genocide, restoring YISUN to power (Wielder of Names 3-56, 3-57). The second is to ensure Zaid becomes Zoss’s successor, and Zaid becomes a YISUN-like figure who will wipe the slate clean (Wielder of Names 2-21, 2-22). It’s unclear which (if any) Metatron actually wants, since Metatron never actually speaks.
It is unclear what kind of loop this would be — whether it’d be a time loop, a political cycle, or both.
Jagganoth claims that Zoss’s attempts to fix the multiverse and Metatron’s attempts to reset the multiverse are, in fact, the same. If all of this is true, this means that Zoss giving the successor power doesn’t *defy* the cycle, but *enforces* it. It may also imply that Zoss giving Zaid power enforces the cycle, and Zoss giving Allison power was the mistake that might *break* the cycle.
Apparently, we’re not expected to understand Metatron. Abbadon said, in a Tumblr post some time back, that he’s been incarnate so long that he’s basically an “eldritch horror”. Whether that means that he’s ascended to a higher kind of thought or descended into madness is unrevealed.
He has ascended to a higher kind of madness.
I’m pretty sure that Zoss’s inheritor was originally supposed to be Zaid, as told by Jadis in book one, the demiurge in the crystal. She has perfect knowledge of the shape of creation, thus she can see the curve of time. She knew Zaid was Zoss’s successor.
However, Zoss, having achieved Royalty, can operate outside of the Wheel, thus can change the events that transpire, as Jaggy just said. This time around, instead of choosing Zaid as his successor, Zoss chose Allison. The reason being most likely that choosing Zaid has not resulted in his goal: breaking the wheel.
Remember, one who masters the wheel cannot break it.
The version of the universe we are familiar with is *violently* sexist. I’ve assumed since more or less the very beginning that the prophecy always referred to Allison, but the scribes relaying Jadis’s words never even considered the idea that the person being referred to might be anything other than male, so that was how they translated it.
However, the true nature of events is as-yet unclear. Precisely what role to play Zaid has, we cannot yet say.
When Jadis’s scribes were reciting the prophesy, we see her hissing “s”‘s, which I thought could be her trying to correct her scribes saying “he” into “she”. Meaning the real prophesy has she/her pronouns, but it was misinterpreted (by everyone including the angels)
Hi.
Abaddon watched Kaido lift an island into the sky and thought to himself:”I can do that too but I will make it more metal!”
“He was not an aspirant for royalty, and thereby attained it through little effort.”
YISUN had to walk both ways uphill in the snow for his royalty.
I dunno, 1 Metatron looked pretty messed up. Sure looked like he lost a fight.
Each new cycle is a new lie. You know what lying dies to angels.
Poems wander forth and back
across the line but what they lack
is in the white between ink (black)
One hazards that the venerable Wax Head has never succumbed to the ebon temptations of Aam’ya’ke.