BREAKER OF INFINITIES 3-94 to 3-95
Chapter: 3
Feet of Clay
Kill Six Billion Demons
BREAKER OF INFINITIES
WARNING: The next few KSBD updates are super spoilery. If you're cool with that, scroll down. If not, click here for the first page of the comic
HERE… WE … GO
One… bad… day.
IN THE EMERALD CIIITYYYY
Comments below this one will show you the same political divide we have in our own universe. People leaning left, people leaning right, people praising tyrants, people praising the invader, people crying “revolution!”. The Horror, The Horror…
Keep reading, there’s fun aplenty!
Bait, bait, it is bait
Hey, that’s bait
you sure are a master baiter
A master baiter indeed.
bait for the bait gods
Based and shitposting pilled
*W H E R E*
*I S*
*M A Y A ? ? ?*
she is right here
and there
and also there
i think this bit is also her
Brought low before the end.
He might be about to go lower.
Anyone else get the feeling that the clenched-teeth expression there at the end might be might be Dave’s prole-vaporizing face?
The guy’s under a lot of pressure…
Looks more like anguish to me. The look of a man unable to save the ones he loved, not once but twice.
The diamond is broken.
I’ve read through the series and come to this page- and comment- a couple of times now, and need to just put out there into the universe the satisfaction I derive each time I read “Dave’s prole-vaporizing face”. It’s just really great. Thanks for the laugh 🙂
Oof. I’m betting the ‘Granny Smk’ hurt more than all the swords, combined.
I think the resultant breach in his focus will last longer than a lone instant.
Swords and stones break upon his bones,
But words will ever hurt him
Yuh-oh!
Ah! To watch a god reach antiapotheosis is incredibly satisfying.
…I shouldn’t be particularly pleased by this, seeing as this means my boss and I are almost definitely not getting paid for our drink contract for the Tournament.
But who cares? The world ends! And a demiurge eats humble pie. I am most pleased by this outcome.
Apoantroposis?
A-po’boy-theosis.
Apoptosis?
Michael Jackson was the King of Apoptosis. And look where it got him.
That line was smooth. Criminally so.
apotheosis Is the high point often used when a creature reaches god hood or a divine realm, or in regards to a climax.
anti-apotheosis is the lowest of the lows, to fall from grace crash through the ground and find your self a realm or two below.
Should it not be peri-theosis? Or am I missing something?
As much as I like this idea, we have ‘Nadir’ for that. Speaking of ‘Nadir’, that sounds like a lovely name for a girl, if only…
I’ve met two men named Nadir. It always struck me as a somewhat cruel name to give a child, being defined as “the lowest or most unsuccessful point in a situation”.
There’s نَادِر in arabic (nādir), which means rare / extraordinary / unusual / priceless and/or precious, perhaps hence the given name; you could also yet meet a Nadira, which would be the cognate.
That makes more sense and it a pretty unfortunate coinkidink.
Nadira is a common Arabic name.
I’m not. The celestial empires citizens we’re my best market.
If the height of an orbit is an apogee, and the lowest part a perigee, one might call this fall of a god “peritheosis”.
You.
I like you.
You shall be renewed when the wheel turns.
The wheel will not turn again.
We have seen records from after the Third Conquest, which reference Cio’s “history.” Ergo, this is the final iteration.
Look, I mean, your faith? Totally inspiring! Loving it!
But we’re conversing on this strange side-universe’s peculiar set of signals where I’ve been informed it’s unwise to believe everything one reads or perceives.
More like anything.
the liturgy of YISUN is obvious in that
Though the most likely answer is that the wheel will turn while it is stopped
Perhaps the greatest lie is that there is a wheel to turn?
That would be the Bearer of Blade’s lie, and who would dare refute it.
As well, it would be beneficial for neither God’s Scribe nor the King of Kings to refute it, even if they could
I; for what else is the wheel seen upright and edge-on?
The hot Salami ceases to be; periperitheosis.
Pepperonitheosis.
DlDraco wins the internetz. Salamitations!
He got up again, didn’t he? What more do you want? If a mortal made him bleed, fine. But this here’s a god protecting you from the immortal at the end of everything and you begrudge him a short nap on a rock and a mild case of nontotal invulnetability. Suppose you were in the domain of a dragon and all this went down! You’d be three kinds of powder. Tsk.
Perhaps thus is the fate of those who’s world hinges upon never experiencing vulnerability
They would probably be more open to the “well he’s trying his best, what more do you want?” argument if he hadn’t been a tyrannical dictator longer then any of them had been alive while promoting them it meant absolute safety in a chaotic and deadly multiverse.
That’s what the 25 years thing is all about, “We all took the bargain of being under your oppressive rule in exchange for living in the only world they we knew wouldn’t get exploded by some other demigod on a whim, and look what just happened, we gave up so much to live up to our end of the deal and you didn’t”
I don’t actually disagree with the whole ‘Dave’s a big ol’ tyrant and can screw right off really with the rest of the warlords.’ Like yeah. Tyrants bad. But like… This isn’t exactly him being brought low. The price the citizenry paid to have the best protector, did in fact get them the *best* protector. He is the most powerful person, other than the actual threat, to be between them and the threat; He did not abandon them, or even let them be slaughtered in the crossfire if he could help it. He withstood blows that literally killed one of the other possible protectors and brought low the rest. Going all ‘waaaaah you weren’t good at all! Liar!’ seems to justify some of the ‘the masses are ungrateful rabble’ mentality of out-of-touch tyrants rather than be a reality check.
Yes, he tried to be a protector, but he didn’t have to be an oppressor to do that. If the protection is him, in his own body and powers, the foul laws and regime aren’t contributing much. Gaslighting a quadrillion people was not necessary.
Yes he did. He brought order from endless immortal war and chaos, he gave them society and safety and peace. Other Demiurges use their people as target practice, make them kill themselves for fun, just drug them and let them rot, uses them as worm breeding grounds/disposable avatars.
You have only experienced peace in comparison, who are you to question a man who rules 111,111 universes, and gives them civilization and some sense of security as opposed to just being slaughtered randomly at whim?
They have no right to complain. They’ve benefited all this time, and all they had to do was listen to their ruler. Even when in a combat that could have easily killed him – the greatest and most unbreakable shield – he still spilled his own blood to protect as many of them as he could. He tried to avenge the ones who died, as well.
He is a god-king, yet he spills his holy blood to avenge faceless and nameless peasants. He could have easily just let The Red God destroy the world and moved the fight somewhere more advantageous to him. But he cares for his people. He loves them – as proven that only they can break him.
Remember they don’t know what’s been going on. All they know is that during the annual “I’m a god that holds a contest where all the most powerful warriors in the multiverse come to fight and none of them can even hurt me because I’m so powerful” competition there was a massive explosion followed by an attack that levelled the entire city. All they see is the man who they were told would protect them beaten and bloody. All that rage and resentment to a system that white chain herself said was rotten is now bubbling to the surface.
People living at his whim have no more security than those dying at the whim of another demiurge. Their lives may be better, but they were powerless to stop him on those occasions that he chose to destroy them. If he loved them, he loved them as objects, not people.
Not knowing their names does not make them nameless nor faceless.
Law and order doesn’t have to be oppressive. Even baseline humans in RL sometimes manage an orderly and non-oppressive state. Should be easy for a god-king.
You keep saying ‘god-king’ but he’s just a man-king.
A stupidly strong man, yes. Possibly immortal man, yes. But he’s no omnipotent omniknowing entity.
Unless you mean god in the polytheistic sense in which case, I assure you that every polythiestic religion in the universe contains plenty of room in which their gods screw the pooch.
I meant “god-king” in the sense that he’s so personally powerful that he cannot be forcibly removed by his subjects. (Yes, he can be talked out of power and perhaps that what’s about to happen here. But.) Secure tyrants don’t _need_ to oppress to stay in power. It’s those who are a hair’s breadth from deposition who most often get heavy with their people.
Once more, the greek gods and roman gods were far more likely to institute an oppressive and despotic rule than a fair one, and the Norse gods were worse.
In fact, the majority of gods in the majority of polytheistic religions when given power over a human society, immediately become tyrants.
This is because in polytheistic religions gods, for all their powers, generally represent concepts, and usually only a small number at that, whereas humans… well, humans have a lot of variation both internal and external.
That’s what bugs me about all the fash justification in these comments. It’s not very convincing at all in general, but in this situation a strict, regimented society is entirely irrelevant to the purposes of defense against the other demiurges. He could protect them from the other demiurges while not interfering at all with their politics; his power doesn’t rely on their resources, there is no prayer as essence conduit going on, nada. There was no necessity involved, he made an empire where you get thrown into jail for drunkenness because he likes that.
I agree with both the point and bugging. Remarkably few people are mentioning Solomon unnecessarily ruling. Mammon literally receded from the council to hide in his Tower- he sure as hell wasn’t ruling then.
The Celestial Empire might even be said to make Solomon less effective at protecting his 111,111 universes. After all, the time he spends ruling and imposing a virtuous, regimented society is time he could be spending on training for, I dunno, ten-finger-plus-forehead-knees-elbows-and-gland ki rata.
i’m reminded of Jack Nicholson’s famous monologue in A Few Good Men: “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”
You mean the story about a man who’s arrogance got a man killed because he thought he was above the code of the United States military and when shit hit the fan, he threw two subordinates under the bus to save his own ass?
Yeah. His lack of giving a damn is noted and discarded as the worthless piece of trash it is. He broke the rules, he messed up, and he got someone killed. Wrapping that all up in jingoism and a sense of self importance, thinking he’s above and reproach from criticism, is the kind of toxic attitude that leads to people thinking they’re above it all.
Ironically, Jack Nicholson’s character is a lot like David Solomon. He messed up, people suffered because of him, and he’s too proud to notice, care, or think he’s anyway responsible.
Isn’t it funny how the only part of that movie people know is that speech?
Just as a clip it sounds great, but in the movie it’s the narcissistic ramblings of a raging asshole who’s been caught.
Since you didn’t voice an actual opinion on yer quote, I’m not going to assume that you got the wrong message from the movie.
But if you think Jessep was a good person or justified in what he said and did… You got the wrong message.
Other demiurges let their people rot? What, like throwing them in jail for 25 years for drinking?
Jaggy’s realm is that of the Strong. People kill one another in the pursuit of being the strongest. If you are not strong, or sly enough to avoid attention, you can end up dead, without consequence to your murderer.
Mottom sacrificed many a young woman to maintain her youth; she fed them to her (now burned to ash) depraved Tree Husband, whose fruit maintained her youth. And she’s such a hedonist that realms are beggared to feed her appetites and that of her Court.
Gog-Agog? Your individuality is forfeit if Gog-Agog needs another host. Or just feels like having yet another body.
Mammon’s realms are flush with folks whose fortunes have been put to Mammon’s fortress, subject to an unending count because the stockpiled ‘wealth’ just keeps going and going and going…
Gee, when you put it that way you start to make it sound like those who have the most power don’t necessarily make for the best rulers.
Jaggy-No. He’s far too practical to have his worlds go all mad max. He also values science, so he must value order and stability. Maybe a fascist hellscape but we don’t know.
Mottom- insists it’s her court that demands the new worlds burn, but that’s just cowardice. Subjects suffer.
Gog-Agog- Is insane. runs her worlds poorly if at all. Does NOT force herself on her subjects, generally.
Mammon-His subjects love him and come to him by choice. Great place to live.
I bet Jaidis has nice worlds.
Incubus probably has the very worst worlds. It wouldn’t surprise me if he eats them.
I’m not sure about Jadis. It seems like she’s relatively passive on account of the God-Coma, but has maniac worshippers. No idea how far her reach goes.
I think what we have to remember here is that these are the survivors of his city that have somehow managed to crawl out of the wreckage to see the tyrannical protector bloodied and bowed. Like the woman says “Paternum – my family!”
They didn’t accept the bargain for “the best protector”. The thing they get in this bargain isn’t Solomon himself. They accepted tyranny in exchange for safety. Solomon himself doesn’t matter to them at all, only the feeling of safety. That’s gone now.
He hasn’t disappointed them, he has failed to provide them with the thing they actually cared about enough to accept him.
He was never a beloved and venerated ruler, he was just a very effective means to an end.
He provied it for hundreds if not thousands of years, as far we know this is the first time he is failing.
That’s kind of the point though, Solomon is the DIAMOND: and like diamond it seems invulnerable on the surface, but it’s brittle.
It was only ever going to take one event like this, and now the justification of his rule and the heart of his political power are broken. Remember, Solomon only made this empire AFTER the war, after the Pact of the Seven Part World. He staked out his bubble and he wasn’t ever defending it, he simply allowed the other six parts of creation to go to various kinds of hells, while he turned his into a stifling monoculture.
Remember, though, the peace was only upheld AFTER millennia of bloodshed between the Demiurges. He’s a world leader where everyone has nukes pointed at one another.
He doesn’t have to be a particularly GOOD ruler; he just has to control the nukes that protect the nation from the other rulers with nukes.
But in the eyes… he lost. And that means the means did not achieve the end.
But here’s the thing though:
He didn’t promise them he would try to defend them, he promised them he would *do it.*
His entire reign was based on the premise that he is a perfect god and that he would not, COULD not, fail.
And he just failed. What else did he lie about? In what other ways did he betray their trust?
He bred an entire civilization of children, and did everything in his power to have them take him for granted. Why are they to blame when everything they thought they knew is ripped from them, and they have no idea how to deal with it?
He did keep trying to find a successor. Someone else who could stand a chance in such a fight.
That’s about as worthless as a day old fart. His “search” was just a tournament he used as an excuse to murder a couple thousand combatants every couple of years because he needs an excuse to remind the masses that he’s the one in charge. If he was ACTUALLY sincere, he wouldn’t have been so pissed about White Chain scratching his cheek.
Perhaps he was just culling those prone to ambition through lethal violence from his realms? Grim and cynical, but not unjustifiable …
See also Ottoman succession rules.
Incorrect: HE is the nuke, and he has hardly controlled himself in regards to harming his own people.
Solomon didn’t have to expand his empire, to take over a hundred thousand worlds. He could have just let them be, disallowed the other Demiurges to enter his gates, and been better off for it. He didn’t have to rule- and his rule directly harmed thousands. He’s pride incarnate.
His rule over his seventh of the multiverse has murdered *actual trillions* of innocents, in order to sustain New Rayuba, and even the people there have a lot of festering resentment towards his totalitarianism, primitive justice system and moral absolutism.
25 years she’s carried this grudge. She only feels safe voicing it now.
Well, felt safe. She probably regretted that call very briefly.
A while back, right after White Chain got her new human body, Solomon David stood listenig to his people cheering her on and Gog-Agog laughing at him and he told WC:’Today I have learned something.’ IMHO he learned that his people didn’t love him, like he always thought; instead they RESENT him. It looked a lot like the last panel of this page, except that was before Jagganoth put him through the wringer.
It looks like SD is about to flip his lid. A pity; I would love to see him hit Jagganoth with a Ten Point strike, but it looks his concentration is shot. (Then again, at least now he may no longer hold back for the sake of his people.)
The golden headed statue has always had feet of clay. Without a true foundation, a single stone will shatter it.
yeah, in a universe with very real daemons and fallen angels and a gaggle of demiurgs squarreling about they haven’t had it that bad.
gonna wager that life in Solomon’s prisons was likely better than normal citizenship in most of the other domains.
he represented himself as omnipotent and indestructible. ie a true god. turns out he’s just a wizard playing god.
I don’t get why these comments have such hate for Solomon. He is actually an enlightened leader. Sure he’s proud, and has a weird “cut me” mode of government. But his empire is leagues better than all the chaos and death literally EVERYWHERE else in the universe. Dude created a utopia, and these threads hate him because he’s proud of it.
Go get turned into a fruit tree or waste time lathing in devil flesh you protagonists biased commenters.
Because a benevolent tyrant is still a tyrant just like how a gilded cage is still a cage. You can establish trade, infrastructure, and protection without being a despot.
Being the best of a bad situation doesn’t make something good.
25 years in prison for a drunk and disorderly is not an enlightened regime. It is a regime that confuses “strict” and “bearucratic” for enlightened and civilized.
There’s little evidence that his people are happier, safer, richer or more satisfied with his rule than Mottom’s or Mammon’s. If anything, Mottom seemed more egalitarian, and Mammon’s people seemed either more prosperous, or safer and happier.
We just have Dave saying, “I am the best ruler out of the Seven,” and people taking that at face value.
You can’t take that at face value though, because of course he would say that. He even believes that. That doesn’t make it even remotely true.
Incubus told Alison that Solomon David was the only one of the Demiurges to actually try and RULE his slice of the Omniverse. Mottom only plunders; the worlds in her domain were looted one after the other. They ere emphatically not happy.
Mammon’s people looked happy but the only ones we actually met were the people in his vault who were descnded from his would-be killers.
Gog-Agog appears to assimilate her subjects; they are happy because they are controlled by the worm within.
We haven’t actually seen much of the realms of Incubus, Jadis and Jagganoth. Incubus seems to act as a kind of vampire, feeding off his people. Jagganoth is focused completely on war; he’s the only one who actually encourages research into better ways of killing and waging war. Jadis… doesn’t seem to do much, though she apparently is revered as a goddess by her people?
All in all, it looks like Solomon David’s people have it better than most.
I think jadis has attendants out of an aspirational awe at her achievement, they attend her as an oracle which is a neat foil to the kinds of social structures the others have. Mammons corporate body, incubus harem etc
I do personally believe that Solomon is the best ruler out of the Seven, but that is an *incredibly* low bar. Just because the others are even worse doesn’t mean that Solomon isn’t a tyrant and despot.
You’ve got an “Amen” from me …
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” – CS Lewis
I’d rather live in any of the other domains, because I’d at least have the possibility of freedom rather than the certainty of oppression.
All she’s asking for is truth in advertising. Aren’t we all?
To be fair, I think they more resent being thrown in jail for drinking than him defending them from the invincible megagod.
The end of a long life full of hypocrisy and hubris. Let’s see what’s left of him when he realizes that he ist still just a man; just like everybody else.
He earned his throne, doing his part to end the war that their ancestors did naught else but scream and cry and die in. With his own hands he carved out order and peace, then raised civilization from the rubble of all existence. Of the Demiurges we’ve seen, his part of the Seven-Part World is the most like what we consider a peaceful society.
He didn’t have to manage them. Didn’t have to take care of them, develop them, guard them generation after generation, balance politics with societal stability. His power is not based on them, his divinity was not granted to him by them – but snatched from the brows of eternally-warring minor kings.
It is quite immature to hate him just because he wields authority, especially authority he earned and was not merely handed by others.
White chain said that this kind of society cannot stand on its own. Now we’re seeing why.
Because Jagganoth Chakravartin is too powerful? Literally no kind of society can stand on its own, then.
The only reason Jagganoth is around is because Solomon has God’s Name in his head
The only reason one of the other six, objectively worse, Demiurges doesn’t rule over the worlds that make up the Celestial Empire is because Solomon has God’s name in his head.
The choice isn’t between “Solomon as Ruler” & “No Demiurge as Ruler”.
It’s between “Solomon as Ruler” & “A Worse Demiurge as Ruler”.
How does Solomon protecting those worlds from the other demiurges necessitate him writing their laws?
Solomon could just prevent the other demiurges from ruling and not rule himself and it’d be fine.
Any society that can’t survive the death of its founder isn’t a functioning society. The real world doesn’t have any Jagganoths in it but it also, y’know, doesn’t have immortal god-kings at all.
Society isn’t gonna collapse because Solomon is gonna die, society is gonna collapse because Jagganoth is invading.
If in the past Solomon had dipped out, and there weren’t any other Demiuirges ready to swoop in, the bureaucracy of the Celestial Empire would have still ran, until a new ruler was chosen.
Would it have, though? Solomon deliberately established no line of succession, teaches his sons that the only way they’ll get the crown is by killing the person wearing it, and in general seems to be more concerned with legitimizing his own rule than legitimizing the rule of the Celestial Empire as an institution. Even if Jagganoth weren’t a looming threat, I see no future for the Celestial Empire once Solomon dies or retires other than collapsing into warlordism just like Zoss’s empire did.
This, exactly. White Chain pointed it out. The contest was only ever about showing off Solomons power to everyone. The Celestial Empire was only ever an act of utter vanity, of pride.
it also served to cull the most powerful out of any threat of rabble-rousing
actually it kindof does, a constant and ever-working force that kills all rulers and gods. Irl we have time to kill our rulers, the slaves to the demiurge don’t get that blessing
There is no society in the history of any world to not collapse given enough time and people within it, to say that an oppressive autocracy is good because its really durable isnt a very great conclusion imo.
we have only seen the grand capital of his empire at the hight of its stylings (for the tourny). what about the other trillions of planets? one god is not attentive enough to know the plights of all life
And some of those worlds thrived before any of the demiurges came along and took over.
Solomon didn’t open the gates, he didn’t start the multiversal conflict. “Unfucking the mess the other demiurges made before he was even born.” is his whole thing.
Those other worlds? Solomon isn’t the singular God-King, he is the guy trying to keep the other six from making everything worse.
The conceit of “he should step down” doesn’t work, with six other Demiurges right there, all ready to make everything worse.
“Solomon Lets Go = Jagganoth goes Chakravartin on the Multiverse Faster”
He can prevent the other Demiurges from taking over his worlds without ruling over them as a God-King. Or, he could have. Also, by doing so, he prevented himself from using his full power to stop Jagganoth from destroying the universe.
How? Each Demiurge has some manner of military force beyond themselves. Even Jagganoth, specially Jagganoth.
His position as Emperor of The Celestial Empire is part of why he gets invited to the meetings, why he gets to call meetings, and why he gets to keep a 7th of the world.
If he’s just some personally powerful dude with no claim to the place he is defending, the other six are not taking him seriously.
He needs to project strength in order to keep The Celestial Empire, or do you think that if he stepped down, Incubus or Gog-Agog wouldn’t have taken it as a sign of weakness & re-started the War?
Jagganoth is the current immediate threat, but for millennia Gog was as likely to devour the world as Incubus was to invade, as Nadia was to conquer it to feed her court’s lust for power, or as any of the Guilds was to set up shop in any one part of his Empire.
It is a heavily flawed system, but it is an incredibly messed up situation that Abaddon designed.
… Jadis is literally an Ice Cube worshipped by lunatics. Mammon hadn’t left his vault in a millenia, and didn’t even show up to the first one we saw, but I highly doubt his worlds were conquered by the other Demiurges (otherwise the Pact would be broken). They’re on the Council because they have a 7th of God’s Name in his head.
Jadis we don’t know enough about to really comment but Mammon still has a military presence even if its psychotic accountant not him who is organising it. Heck even big red has an army.
The Demiurge are powerful, but all of them (except agog obviously) can’t be everywhere all the time and while their power is greatly reduced in the ksb universe armies are still dangerous and in the event of a universal war act as a small but significant variable that could change the course of history, Solemn needs an army because everyone else has one its a tragedy of the commons where everyone would be better off if they disregarded their personal interest, but it exists and is indispensable part of warfare.
Jadis is important in her apparent inactivity. Also, Mammon’s entire army seemed to be in his vault, secluded from the world. He hardly sent representatives to the council. I will concede that Solomon creating an army in the hopes of protecting his people from the hordes after the war restarted would be justifiable, but it seems that his army is more so to keep his own people in check.
There’s no point in making an army when the only thing keeping the other God Heads from invading is Solomon himself. Moreover, without the gates being open then only Emissaries or Demiurges, who number incredibly few, can hope to journey between worlds. If Solomon locked his gates and disallowed the demiurges to pillage his worlds, many millions would be better off.
Especially since without Solomon David’s intervention Rayuba would be a frozen, lifeless world after Yemmod stole everything of value, including the sun!
… and who cares? We have several lifeless planets in the solar system. Sure, it’s cool that he did it, but Solomon just used the planet as a toy for his pride.
Hubris most certainly but he never struck me as a hypocrite, how so?
Well, he claims to be invincible and all powerful in front of his people and pretty much everyone else. Which isn’t only extremly prideful (hubris), but we also see now that he only claimed that part –> hypocrisy.
For him, a fate worse than death
Who needs the crown Jewel, when the king is dethroned?
All this because he forgot to take his arm braces off?
I think the Diamond may have cracked.
And I expect the hammer is about to come down to finish things.
Here we stand
Or here we fall
History won’t care at all
Make the bed
Light the light
Lady mercy won’t be home tonight
Diamond Dave?
Just a gigolo…
MC Hammer?
Can’t touch this…
If this is where he dons the rictus and asks “Why so serious?”…
*sigh*
some people?? turn themselves into immortal kings sovereign from the laws of god and man alike??? to cope????
this guy *gets it*
Imperialism in a nutshell.
His failure to keep people safe here is…. kind of not his fault? Like… seriously, everyone has their limits.
Giving someone 25 years imprisonment for drunkeness though? That- that’s your own shitty law. Whoever made that law and accepted that law is to blame for *that injustice*.
And… maybe the old bastard deserves to be punished for the injustices he has permitted, or been the architect of.
… but I still won’t blame him for failure to keep people safe. He tried. He bled. He did his best to keep the other demiurges on task.
He was just kind of useless at it.
Oh well bud. Here’s your chance to be redeemend. Can you buy their safety with the last of your blood.
Solomon put the *moon* in it’s place, who on this planet besides him do you think is so much as consulted on legal matters?
Well, that’s the thing – the justification for those shitty laws was always either “Solomon David says so, and he knows best”, or “It’s bad, but it’s worth it if it means we’re safe.” But now everyone knows that’s a lie.
If he can’t protect them, there’s no justification for what he’s done. I mean, there never was (since he could have been just as effective a protector being Superman instead of God-Emperor), but now even that flimsy justification for his tyranny has been stripped away.
Oh yeah- I agree. His justification for being a tyrant were stupid. He never should have been a leader. Superman would have been much better, and even then, I’d probably say he should have stuck with “Super reclusive superman that deals exclusively with Demi-urge level threats”, and not “Superman patrolling the streets for crime” type superman.
There’s a reason that we don’t run our governments on “Military might= political power” etc etc.
And Jimoth is right- it seems 97% odds any law that exists is exclusively SD’s idea. 3% it was instead one of his sons, in which case he still pretty responsible.
I ain’t claiming his rule was in any way justified.
I’ll condemn his rule, while still giving kudos for the fight he put in at the end, and critique for the failure to prepare better sooner.
That the thing, Salami couldn’t do that, because ultimately he is motivated by fear. Fear of chaos, because to him chaos is what took his world, tooks his wife and daughters, took every single thing he had and knew. So better Order, at any price, than chaos, because in chaos and war all burn and worlds die.
Dave simply never got over the death of his familly and his powerlessness to do anything about it ; I think there is a reason he only ever got sons from what we know, and it’s not because of imposition of patriarcal society me think, but simply because him, Solomon David could not bear even the idea of watching another daughter die. His life has been ruled by the fear of watching the destruction of Rabuya happen again.
And then White Chain’s human form was “born” of his flesh… and she’s now unaccounted for and presumed severely wounded/dead. So in the end for all he knows he kinda *did* loose another daughter, even if that daughter was a strange quasi-angel-mostly-human who became such by a technicality. (And also like, totally isn’t dead. She can’t be. Please don’t do this to us, comic.)
Does it count as White Chain dying offscreen if we saw Aspected Chaos get hit?
If either Allison or Cio suffered 100% invariably fatal wounds from it, I suppose so. But with 2/3 surviving with identical injuries and the other being made out of strange human/angel meat, I’m still saying theres room to hold out hope lmao
I wouldn’t say he was useless at protecting his people, he just had the bad luck that Jagganoth has Plot Armor coming out the wazoo. In a realistic fight things would have gone very different.
Plot armour is when an important character overcomes or avoids life-threatening danger against seemingly impossible odds. Jagganoth does not have plot armour, he’s on the other side of the impossible odds. Assuming he is eventually defeated, he may have the opposite of plot armour… but I suspect things will not be so simple.
I’m just sitting here watching everyone’s daddy issues come out to play.
I guess a god wouldn’t be used to criticism as nobody would dare criticize them in the first place, huh?
Ah Solomon… you still think yourself the hero…
>Air turns into swords
>Everything dies
>Solomon is only mildly injured
“yOu’Re jUsT a MaN!!!1”
Stfu civilian
> Everything dies
I see a crowd of people who are very much not dead, but are much closer to it because their supposed god can’t actually protect them like he insisted he could.
Though much *less* dead than if he’d dodged. He put himself between them and a lot of harm through this fight.
That’s worth at most a couple of months in jail for drinking.
Don’t demand perfection if you aren’t perfect.
“Diamond IS Breakable”
He’s so sad and lonely…
that’ll cut to the bone, that’ll cut close to home
Whelp, the peasanters are getting unruly. Let’s see how well they do against Jagg, I’m sure it will go well for them. I’m totally routing for them. ‘Waves tiny flags’
Oh, how the mighty crumble…
There’s some really wild takes on whether or not Solomon David was in the wrong or not in this thread.
(hint he was in the wrong, he’s a baddie)
If you think those are wild takes, don’t read the comments section on the previous volume.
Very much this: I’m pleased everything reasonable is being done to spell it out.
What an ignorant take. Solomon David is potentially the second most powerful being in this domain, and he’s certainly spent the entire series trying to keep his realm as safe as possible. Who are you to judge? The realities of running a multi-planetary empire mean that you can’t be “a nice guy” and Solomon is about as reasonable a person as you can expect to both make the correct, sometimes hard decisions for a more prosperous society for all and also have the best interests of the whole in mind. Just because now he’s finally found his match in power doesn’t mean he didn’t run basically a utopia for many lifetimes of citizenry.
Even this single example highlights that point: She was jailed for drunkenness. A drunkard is exactly the type of person that sows discourse and is undesirable for society, there is no “positive influence” to alcohol, it’s a blight and if it wasn’t incredibly easy to produce it would have been rightfully eradicated from our own society by this point.
Who are you to judge him to be in the right? What do you know about running a multi-planetary empire? How do you know that it requires tyranny?
When your definition of tyranny is just “he made rules I had to follow and I’ve hated rules ever since my mom made me go to sunday school” then yeah, I can safely assume I know better than you.
The universe Solomon David exists in, even more so than our own, requires strict rules. Drunkenness is a blight, as I’ve said. Making laws punishing drunkenness is not “tyranny”. Drunkenness is not a victimless crime. Punishing shitty behavior extremely harshly is not “bad”, it’s a deterrent.
Excessive punishment IS tyranny.
25 years jail time for drinking? Not drunkenness, drinking.
That’s ‘getting stoned to death for sex out of marriage’ levels of tyranny.
A culture having a much more negative view of delinquent behavior than Westphalian ones is not, by default, tyranny.
Delinquency harms society. Sex outside of marriage, in general, does not. Solomon David places a high priority on a smoothly functioning society, that doesn’t make it bad, because drunkenness is, again, not a victimless crime.
the ksbd comments section always provides a good show with people twisting themselves into knots trying to figure out how the dude who kills hundreds of his subjects for sport and jails them one quarter of a lifetime for drinking is actually the good guy
That’s the thing though: it’s not the culture that has that negative view. Just Solomon David. Because the people didn’t make that decision on their own, because the rule descends from authority rather than morality, it has no durability beyond Solomon David. He didn’t convince them of its correctness, didn’t make them a better people. He just forced them to follow a rule. That makes them just puppets, and their entire society a theatre play, rather than a virtuous empire.
Even IF you were right about drunkenness being a ‘blight’, Solomon David is a god. If he wanted to stop people doing something, he could remove the thing from society entirely. Punishment is not necessary if you can prevent the ‘crime’ from ever being committed.
Not only this, but the punishment is far worse than the crime to the point where it is a crime itself. This is a method of controlling his society through fear while also convincing people like you that he is righteous and good. Solomon thinks of himself as a philosopher-king, a great teacher and role model, so why does he not focus on rehabilitation and helping his citizens to better themselves? Oh right, because he is a tyrant.
I mean, alcohol is apparently illegal in his society.
It is, however, appallingly easy to make.
There’s only so much one man can do. He can’t be everywhere. He can’t do everything.
But if I was him, I would also ban alcohol.
Hilariously, you’ve reversed how most societies in history would have viewed drinking and sex outside of marriage – drinking would be considered a social good, and sex outside of marriage a devastating social ill.
For the former, drinking is a social, bonding activity, and in many traditional cultures it’s customary to seal friendships and alliances with – what else? – heavy drinking. Still happens today, in fact! Now that’s not to say that you can’t bond or be social without alcohol, but it’s often named a social lubricant for a reason.
Meanwhile, sex outside of marriage produces CHILDREN outside of marriage prior to contraceptives, and that’s always a sticky question for a society, especially a pre-industrial society in which survival rests on a knife’s edge and in which inheritance customs are a vital factor in family survival. Who raises the child? Who can claim the benefit of their labor after they grow up? Who will provide the resources to make sure the child is fed? When the parents die, which kids get a share of the inheritance? It may have gotten dressed up in ideas of honor over time, but fundamentally shotgun weddings happened because SOMEONE needed to pay for the kids.
“25 years jail time for drinking?”
You have taken one person’s complaint as fact because it suits your narrative.
And as long it wasn’t drinking int he privacy of her home, I happen to agree. Get krunked in public, go to jail.
The point isn’t that it’s a crime, the point is that the punishment is far beyond what would be reasonable for that ‘crime’.
It has nothing to do with my ‘narrative’, whatever that’s supposed to be. We KNOW he’s a heavy handed authoritarian and tyrannical. Not just from this one page, but from the story as it has unfolded.
I really don’t get why people are trying to excuse his actions?
The why is pretty simple actually: A scarily large number of people like the idea of an authoritarian despot, as long as it’s _their_ choice of authoritarian despot.
For many people, democracy, amongst other ideas, is simply a means to an end. They’ll advocate for, or take the position of, whatever they think will benefit them at the moment, and abandon it just as readily. They neither understand nor hold any particular principles.
A lot of people enjoy drinking regularly – it’s not my thing, but it’s a free country. Why do you think that what is important to you is not treated with the same iron fist by our man Mon Solo?
Freedom of speech: Perhaps being an outspoken critic of Salami could get your tongue cut out.
Right to bear arms: Who knows, maybe citizens can’t carry blades over a span long for fear of a public flogging.
Freedom of movement: Enjoy romantic sunset walks? BOOM! Thrown in gaol for breaking curfew.
Dave’s Pact of the Seven Part World explicitly forbids the use or trafficking of firearms, because they dilute the value of the Demiurges and their magisters.
So yeah. He’s not a fan of people bearing arms.
Note that Mottom and Jagganoth both maintain standing armies of gunpowder using troops, and plenty of gun witches and mercenary gunners exist, so outside of Rayuba enforcement is spotty.
I tend to assume Abbadon wouldn’t write her as lying because why would he? To deliberately blow smoke up everyone’s collective ass and have a red herring about the narrating he spent an entire book building up around Solomon? I also generally assume that a person wouldn’t go up to a demi god that could still kill her with his pinkie and tell a lie that both he, and everyone else, could easily tell was a lie.
For that matter, aren’t you assuming she’s lying because it’s inconvenient for your narrative?
Guessing you’re the sort of person who unironically argues that thieves should have their hands chopped off, yeah?
I am not surprised that someone with the handle “ColdHardFacts” is an authoritarian apologist. And yes as someone else commented, I have seen some comments threads that almost make we wonder that there’s a secret other version of KBSD that only some people see because like lol are we reading the same thing here?
January 6 was a portal, apparently. To the goetia, I’m thinking.
“The realities of running a multi-planetary empire mean that you can’t be ‘a nice guy'”
that sounds less like a defense of salami dave here and more like an indictment of “multi-planetary empires” as a system. which was. sorta the whole theme of the last bit of the last chapter
I agree with you. Drunkards are, frankly, awful. Alcohol does not contribute positively to society.
You’re going to look pretty silly when Dave vaporizes this crowd of complaining plebs on the next page.
> He’s an antagonist in this story
> Therefore he’s categorically wrong
Wow.
You’ve managed to compose the most asinine post in this entire comment section.
Congrats.
I don’t think you are interpreting “baddie” in the sense that it was intended.
Solomon David is the personification of the cardinal sin of Pride. For all his good qualities, he’s given himself over to sin … like Marxists with envy.
Richard III. Act 5, Scene 2.
“What do I fear ? Myself ? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.
Is there a murderer here ? No. Yes, I am.
Then fly ! What, from myself ? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself ?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself ?
O, no ! Alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, “Guilty ! guilty !”
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die no soul will pity me.
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself ?”
― William Shakespeare,
Oi! Brilliant that.
As Hans said in Die Hard, “Benefits of a classical education.”
Feet of clay indeed!
Loving this!
I want to be generous to Solomon David and wonder if that lady isn’t downplaying what she did by calling it ‘a little drinking’ (like maybe she drank and drove or something) but it seems unlikely the author would choose to have a liar making shit up about how minor their crime was for such a pivotal scene. I really don’t know why I want to give this particular tyrant the benefit of the doubt. I mean, there has to be some reason other then those other jewel in their head assholes setting the bar so low I want to give him points just for putting his citizens well being on his list of priorities (and then letting his ego get in the way of really looking out for them).
Because his society functions and everyone (aside form this lady and crowd) has seemed to live a blessed, if sometimes mildly frustrated, life.
It is quite likely he has soul crushingly strict rules on everything. That is the Diamond, all angles and hard planes, no smooth lines or fudged curves.
However, I too cut him loads of slack after we’ve seen the comparison between a few realms. The devastation of Mottom, greed and delusion of the Dragon, addiction of Ickyboi… compared to them stultify and excessive rules for peace and efficiency almost feel good. Like the trains to the prisons seem to run on time…
I really wish we’d gotten a direct view of the Worm’s realm or Jadis’ realm. But we’ll have to settle for what we’ve seen indirectly and biased.
He literally juiced an arena full of people wanting to win glory because he wanted to show off.
“People wanting to win glory.”, people already willing to pulp each other for the sake of “glory”.
They were cultivators.
In KSBD, Abaddon’s amazing story about The Elder Scrolls’ Xianxia cousin filtered through Hindu & Abrahamic myth, by way of Exalted & 40k.
This is the most beautiful summary of KSBD I have ever read. And I’ve read at least… 3 or 4, mind you.
Several of them were Solomon’s own children, and all were brought to that place by Solomon’s demand for a powerful successor. He didn’t host the ring of power for the sake of culling cultivators, but rather finding one he thought was sufficient.
“mildly frustrated” = quarter of a century in jail for public drunkenness..?
Is it because Solomon has shown some admirable qualities? He has on several occasions shown genuine concern for the safety of his people, but he’s also an abusive and tyrannical demigod who is too blind to see any opinions besides his own as just. He’s wrong and hurts those he cares for but is too prideful to see it.
Well… Debating the morality of Salami Dave’s rulership is kind of fruitless – it’s clear to anyone except the hardcore authoritarian apologists what the problems with it are. And said apologists will never budge because they don’t see a problem with a “conform or else” attitude drawn to an extreme.
But as a person, unlike the other demiurges, Dave still thinks he’s the good guy. Mottom even introduces him with “You still think you’re the hero” at their first meeting. The other demiurges are unapologetically selfish or unconcerned with their subjects as anything but something to exploit.
Dave at least gives the impression of _trying_ and having, in his own mind, noble intentions. And while that and a dollar will get him a cup of coffee, it’s more than we can say for the others based on what we’ve seen.
It’s ESSENTIAL to Solomon David’s scam that he honestly consider himself the good guy. Like most fascists, he draws strength to do what he does from an unshaken conviction that he is a Good Dad. I think we’re about to witness the moment where he stops scamming himself on that point. Question is, will he go full Joker, or will this be a Fortress of Solitude moment? Ah patriarchy, let my people go.
The funny thing is that Salami Dave is basically Evil Superman as seen in Injustice and a host of other comics. I wonder if these people are cheering for Evil Clark when they read those comics.
Even the Diamond will shatter under enough pressure.