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
Granny Jailbird just joined the ranks of characters who’ve smacked a god.
“what are you TRIGGERED??????? XD XD XD”
I love this angry old woman
I doubt Jagganoth will need to seek him out, instead Solomon will kneel before him begging – release me from this.
Honestly at this point all I want from this comic is for Solomon, out of all the Demiurges, to really learn. I’m quite in agreement with the point that Solomon is not only the least bad, but also frankly *good* by any standard except that of the late 20th century and a FEW places prior. Furthermore, there wasn’t really an option to NOT be a protective god, because the existence of the Demiurges renders everyone below god power essentially helpless. On the other hand…
First, the “tyranny” charge gets thrown around a lot, and it’s not all that unjustified. Solomon wants a society that runs perfectly, and that is frankly demanding too much of people. The efficiency of his regime makes his overregulation of people’s lives far more constricting than regimes with comparable values in older eras, and from the example given here, there is really no room to screw up – even getting piss-drunk and making a huge, chaotic scene shouldn’t merit *twenty-five years.*
Tl;dr – Solomon is trying to create perfect people and that invariably results in the most restrictive tyrannies.
Second, “learned helplessness.” On the one hand, obviously people can’t hope to stand up to the Demiurges. On the other hand, we KNOW that power armor and advanced firearms exist in this setting. There is no reason that threats lower than a Demiurge shouldn’t be met with everything from space marines to citizen militia snipers; Solomon has no need to be so overwhelmingly personally present in people’s lives. Yet, the picture I get from this is that Solomon’s overbearing benevolence has absolutely stifled innovation and the capacity for individuals to respond to crises on their own initiative
Tl;dr Solomon is too protective for his own people’s good
Solomon’s sin is Pride, which, granted, is DEFINITELY the most justified, but it’s a sin for a reason. I think Solomon, basically alone out of the Demiurges, is a Good Man, and I would like very much for him to finally swallow his pride, so that perhaps, even if the story demands he die, at the last it might be with his people standing alongside him instead of hiding behind him.
Ultimately his main flaw in ruling seems to be he expects everyone else to hold themselves to the same standard that an obsessive cultivator driven by the end of his world does.
You. I like you. So many comments missing the point. This is a good one.
Ironically, restricting the use and development of power armor and firearms that might have been a threat the the power of the demiurges was Solomon’s idea.
He didn’t want it messing with the stability of his realm, nevermind that a gun that could threaten a demiurge might really come in handy * right now.*
Right, we could possibly better prepare Earth for an alien invasion if we armed all the nations with nuclear weapons and gave them orbital launch capabilities and weaponize space, but have decided that would have too high of consequences in the meantime.
If I was Solomon I likely would have tried sponsoring cultivation and forged viable successors, but for some reason he seems content for one to have just spawned in the wild randomly.
The amount of discourse in the comments for this strip that seems to lean towards “Yeah I would totally throw an alcoholic in jail for a quarter of a century IRL” is a mite disturbing.
You aren’t even exaggerating, either. Also how do you add an icon to your username? I keep having to input my information manually and I can’t save it.
Kill six billion monkeys – assuming you’re talking about the pfp next to the usernames, you have to click on “Get a Gravatar” next to the email line under the comment box; once you complete the sign up process, you can tie an image to a given email address, and then when you use that email here when leaving a comment or on any other site that uses the same system, it’ll automatically load in whatever pfp you’ve chosen.
For whatever reason, Solomon brings the people who crave tyranny out of the woodwork.
Solomon’s entire kingdom of shit was always shit. It was just a bit shinier than the other kingdoms of shit.
The best-off worlds are literally all of the the worlds that the demiurges hadn’t reached yet. Which we know exist, since Earth was in *Mottom’s* dominion yet had not been subjugated yet.
I think there could have been more examples outlining how strict and autocratic Solomon David’s empire is. It was often said that he was an authoritarian tyrant with a cult of personality, but not shown so much, which is why I think he gets defended as the “good” demiurge.
But yeah, 25 years in the chokey for a drink? Solomon’s no better than the rest of the Gods and now we get a chance to see it.
I agree, all we got was all of the sunshine and rainbows of Rayuba, with only the vague hints of its strict totalitarianism (which compared to the rest of the Wheel we’ve seen, easily keeps it in the #1 place to live in Demiurge-touched territory). This fact that a woman got 25 years of jail for drinking kinda feels like it came out of left field.
Like does it sound like something that Solomon would impose? Yeah
Have there been hints that Solomon’s empire has an overly strict implementation of puritanism? Not really
Somewhere in the written matter — text below a page? On Tumblr? — there’s Abbadon’s version of the Judgement of Solomon story. TL;DR: instead of seeking truth and the compasionate path, KSBD Solomon applies rules rigidly and wrecks the life of everybody involved.
Patreon content, perhaps?
I can cite at least two examples of tyranny the Celestial Empire.
1) Solomon’s Emissary Saharus presented 600 young gladiators as gifts to Mottom at her Palace. So the Celestial Empire engages in slavery and child slavery.. Wielder of Names 4-64.
2) Remember the Centurion brutally driving his men to drag stones into place ? That leader thought nothing of separating those citizen soldiers from their families and compelling them to put in even more time than was asked of them. Despite the Centurion’s words to the contrary, I believe those men did not volunteer for that and were NOT prepared to sacrifice their bodies just to complete the arena. King of Swords 1-8
3) Although the Real World is plentiful with paternalistic cultures excluding women’s participation in ruling ( both past and present, ) here it is a striking absence in Solomon’s council of advisors. This is clearly intentional in design. For unmentioned reasons, Solomon does not have femaie advisors. It is strongly implied that Solomon distrusts/discounts the views of women ( truly a patriarchal bias .)
* In order to get more of a view of the flaws of each Demiurge’s realm Abbadon would’ve had to send Allison & Company on side quests through each of the Seven Realms. [ Which I would totally support of course. ] Much could be learned. That would’ve extended the epic by an unknown number of pages. Also a VERY good thing in my view – though Abbadon might feel as put upon as Michaelangelo did while trying to please a demanding Pope Julius II.
“MORE ABBADON ! MORE, MORE, MORE !”
I can imagine ABBADON saying in reply:
“Salvami ! Voglio una Vacanza !”
Actually, Solomon’s advisers are all his own sons. He exclusively has sons for a different reason, but you could easily level a charge of nepotism at him.
Solomon has no daughters because he feels he could never replace the ones he had before he was a Demiurge. The sons he does have he hoped would replace them, but none have showed the potential, and so he gives them council seats.
Ah, well spotted Oneirimancer.
I was never under the impression that any of the demiurges were good people or even great leaders of people and examples such as those you provided remind me of why. Perhaps another re-read is in order!
I certainly don’t want Abaddon to feel overworked. I’m grateful for the story that Abaddon gives us and I’m interested by and enjoying Solomon’s personal tale right now also. Kudos to the author!
Yeahhhh I think thats a lot of it, while his depiction actually wasn’t as sympathetic as people make it out to be (though it is empathetic, yes, as are virtually all the characters in this aside from some devils and angels) the last book really could’ve done a better job actually demonstrating how fundamentally un-self-justifying his rule was. W only really got mentions of some massacres, slave labor, and arbitrary imprisonment without ever quite seeing its harm spelled out. Though I suppose if it did people would call it preachy haha!
This saga has been an object lesson in why fascism values aesthetic so much. People can tolerate a lot of heinous shit if it’s dressed up nice enough and as the embodiment of Pride, Solomon clearly understands that. It’s a tad disheartening how effective it’s been on people who don’t live in Rayuba.
Solomon David definitely seems the kind to disguise an iron fist with a velvet glove. You make a grand point!
I expect blood. Lots of it.
Salomon David did nothing wrong.
Solomon David did nothing that was as wrong as that comment.
The king of birds flies, West
has red upon his breast.
Don’t rob ‘im, he’s the best.
There was a swole man from Rayuba
A mensch of the kind known as Uber
He got punched by a dyke and then had a God-Fight
Now his subjects all think he’s a goober
I love the comments whenever Solomon is involved.
Its Great!
People who hate him, those who like him, those who understand him, those who misunderstand the character etc etc.
He brings them all out and make the comments an enjoyable read.
Three Cheers for Solomon my favorite Demiurge!
Ah, but you misunderstand Solomon David to think that People understand Solomon David.
He built an empire on his back and held it in place with a fist of iron. But now his back is buckling and his grip has weakened. A benevolent tyrant is still a tyrant.
Oopsie woopsie! uwu Solomon made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo!
Not gonna lie this would hold a lot more impact if the ’25 years for a little drinking’ was the kind of Rayuba had seen from the getgo, rather than an entire book of essentially endless praise for Salami Dave and his perfect empire. Like, it’s kind of neat that the breakdown is actually happening, but I don’t feel even remotely sold on it.
It’s interesting to me that this is the first time Solomon has been explicitly called out as a tyrant by one of his subjects. Behold the despot so powerful no man may call him so!
Pity the lonely man
But fear the man who walks alone.
Welp.
This can only end well.
Oh no, these DEMONS, being panicked about the horrible calamity that has just happened and asking answers from their leader!!!!!
it looks a lot like they’re doing more than just demanding answers.
hell yeah good for them
it sure LOOKS like they’re demanding answers to me… and he’s literally a god-king. this is an uneven power dynamic…
I’m just going out on a limb, but the natural response of a populace to an invader showing up and wrecking the place is probably not going to be turning on the godlike force who’s been protecting them from that force for millennia. Solomon might be a monster, but he’s their monster.
Solomon’s tyranny must have been a great deal more relaxed than we’ve been lead to believe if the populace believes that they can “take up the poor service with the manager” the first (or second, depending on how we view White Chain’s win) something untoward happened.
they seem to believe he’s already failed. utterly.
and they’re not far wrong.
Your suggestion amounts to the following: – Rayuban Citizen: “I’ve come to the sudden and total realization that the ageless superhuman who has both ruled me with an iron fist and protected me from a harsh and scary multiverse will be unable to prevent my imminent demise at the hands of a nigh-Lovecraftian death god who has suddenly invaded my world. I’m going to go antagonize the demigod I’ve spent my entire life fearing and / or worshipping.”
If we are to believe that Solomon was a merciless tyrant, we can not also believe that his people do not still fear him enough to act as they are doing now.
Jagganoth will slaughter them all, because they are even more powerless than Solomon. Why not lash out in one final act of spite at the man who intentionally kept them weak and dependent on him? What do they have left to lose?
The most valuable thing they posses: what time they have left.
Solomon made a great show, on a regular basis, for millennia, of demonstrating what happened to the common member of the empire who raised a fist against him.
Yet, you have forgotten the first rule of dealing with mortals:
They are dumb as bricks when panicking.
No seriously- people when afraid for their lives, and in the face of the potential destruction of all they hold dear (or having had said destruction already happened), will rarely, if ever, make good choices.
These are people who managed, by dint of literally NOT being in the wrong place at the wrong time, survived whatever bullshit Jagganoth pulled off here. The smart one are running for the gate, or hiding in bunkers (or the equivalent). The smart ones are being quiet, and trying desperately to NOT BE NEAR THE GODLY THROW-DOWN.
What you have left are the dumb ones- or, at least, the ones that have experienced their higher thought processes crippled by fear and shock.
So yeah- it’s kind of inevitable that a great number of them will attempt to mob or press the man, because he showed off his power and it wasn’t enough to deal with the threat. They literally are not thinking clearly enough to choose to do anything but lash out at a convenient target… Even if it is a nigh-immortal excessively-powerful demigod.
I disagree, not that they’re “dumb” when frightened, but more that this is not how they would be “dumb” when frightened.
Solomon’s been running things for 2,000 – 4,000 years. (I actually thought it was longer, but the wiki says that this is so). He’s an every day part of life for the people of Rayuba, as long as anyone can remember. In fact, outside of historians, the average member of the populace may be unaware that he wasn’t always there. When frightened by an “other”, it seems more likely they’d turn inward, to the familiar… to Solomon.
Solomon’s whole thing was perfection, and the narrative thrust is that, now that the populace has seen that he’s “imperfect” they immediately abandon him. But that just doesn’t seem to mesh with how people actually act. Nation states tend to betray their stated ideals with reckless abandon, yet their citizens continue to believe in them. They’ll rationalize an incredible amount (sometime horrifyingly so) to justify that belief. And most historic nation states are ephemeral compared to Solomon’s rule.
In the end, it’s fiction, and this is what the plot demands. But it feels heavy handed.
Your argument is very high-concept. The response of aggrieved people is not to sit down and consider the larger political landscape or to make future projections. A more common reaction is to find someone to hold accountable, then lash out with the fury of someone with little left to lose.
What’s more, don’t forget what happened when White Chain ‘won’ in the arena earlier. It only took a bruise for Solomon’s people to start murmuring, so their faith in him is clearly not absolute. Now they’ve seemingly lost everything because he couldn’t deliver on the protection he promised as he took their liberty from them.
This seems like a natural reaction (albeit maybe sped up as it is a comic after all(.
I fear I would disagree. This might be a natural reaction in the first hundred years, maybe the first millennia. But apparently Solomon’s been running thing for at least 2,000 – 4,000 years. What conception of liberty without Solomon would the Rayuban populace have? Solomon’s been the law of their world for longer than most of the populace can conceive of history. Only historians may be generally aware that there was ever a time before him. These are the kind of time scales that would sculpt a people.
Count the speeches in the second-last panel: 10 appealing for Solomon’s help and only 3 decrying him.
Did he not tell them to evacuate the city? Beeline to that gate. The fact that his people being disappointed in Solomon wounds him, that people feel comfortable enough to go pound on his chest, that he has to restrain his power when around his citizens for fear of destroying them indicates Solomon isn’t the degree of villain people want to write him off as. Nor is he, by word of author, perfect or even ‘right’ in the other direction.
He built an entire empire and state religion around himself and his own power and invulnerability – the sole diamond pillar upholding everything about their society.
“My body is the state and the whole of the law” – those were his words, and he spent millennia enforcing them. When said body gets its ass kicked and is sent crashing down to earth dripping in his own blood (the same blood he’s been holding tournaments for centuries to prove is unobtainable), what is their reaction supposed to be?
I’d like him to snap, but more in the way of “shut the fuck up, you have no god damn clue what just happened and how much bigger this is than all of you” and the like. Dude kinda IS a god. But they just had to go up against a goddier god with a broken chain of gods. a god whose only purpose is seemingly to end everything. Can’t do a whole lot about that most of the time.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that was what happened on the next page. A vocal outburst from Solomon David would be more effective than him simply killing all of them. Also more satisfying to hear him vent like a normal guy just once.
Today’s story feels…forced. A normy might be very much afraid of being called out; a god-emperor-tyrant who has personally killed multitudes, probably not.
what kind of human species have you met where the people cathegories of “builds a god-empire of shining spires and crystals and oppression towards the common man where he’s constantly showing off as god-emperor and literally has a tournament dedicated to repeatedly showing off that he is an invincible god”, and “*doesn’t* respond badly to being called out with evidence and confronted about his cruelty”, are cathegories that overlap. at all
Oh, tyrants will respond. Probably flay alive everyone who witness the offense. But after millennia in power and fighting innumerable existential threats, this wouldn’t even rise to a Yelp bad service review.
You’re omitting the most crucial difference though.
This is not just someone calling him out, this is someone calling him out immediately after Salami Dave has massively _failed_ in his role as patriarch. You saw how a small scratch from White Chain affected him – clearly Dave drinks his own kool-aid and even a small loss like that was a crack in his self-image. And now Jagganoth humiliated him and made him a liar to his people, who are now presumably mostly dead. I think we’re about to see the diamond crack.
In other words, right now would be the time a bad yelp review could crush him.
And it just occurred to me:
Was the last time Salami Dave failed to protect someone when he lost his family?
ive come to make an announcement Solomon the David is a Bitch-Ass Motherfucker he put me in jail for 25 years for having a long island iced tea that’s right he took his long fucking beard and he put me in jail for 25 years for having a fucking drink and he said his power was THIS big and i said that’s disgusting. so i’m making a callout post on the streets of rayuba, Solomon the David you got a small power its the size of this walnut except way smaller
Response: One Pinky Stroke. SPLAT!
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” -MLK. The “peace” of Solomon David was no such thing. His tyranny left people in prison, certainly in fear, and probably in the hands of cruel and torturous jailors, guards, and police.
These people are rightfully angry to see a man who claimed to be God, who did all of this to them in the name of their “safety” and on the promise of his 7 part pact, not only fail to win this fight (because he has obviously lost the fight), but fail even to keep them safe from the fighting.
The first move of Jagganoth wasn’t to swing at Solomon, it was to cut passed him into the city. the attack that knocked Solomon to the ground scared the face of the whole planet in red hot cuts. He told them for centuries that he would give them the protection and peace of a god, and now they’re seeing it was all a ruse. His pact failed and so did he.
Some of y’all out here are really quick to defend his tyranny, but guess what all that tyranny got those people at the end of the day? 25 years in prison for some booze and a front seat to hell on earth. They weren’t “safe”, they were being attack by Solomon and his law the whole time he was “protecting” them, and then the first time a real threat shows up since the universal war and he’s lost the fight handily.
It’s like getting shaken down by the mob for your whole life and then the one time you need that protection the mob gets crushed in an afternoon by the guy who robbed you
How can so many have read so far and so completely missed the point?
Citizens of EVERY Demiurge realm are meat-puppets, only the type of control changes.
In Gog’s realm it is literal, Inky controls with pleasure and your value is defined by output of coin upon Mammon’s worlds. Mottom allows her crops to grow with minimal interference so the harvest is more uniquely pleasurable. Big Red? Meat for the grinder that is war. I don’t know enough of Jardis to call it, but my instinct is everyones destiny is fixed according to her/her disciples ‘plan’.
Solomon, too, rules mere puppets, controlled by the same illusions of safety that calls so seductively to us in this world. In exchange citizens merely must give up just that little bit more of their autonomy. Maybe this is why so many find his control more palatable, preferring to be bound in silk and lies then chains and stark truth.
And so does Gog’s prediction come to past.
His law of kings was no more substantial than a fart.
And it has finally dissolved into spectacle.
Now would be an awfully inconvenient time for Salami Dave to get ganked by the Jag. That was the point of all this, wasn’t it? Dave was the one who could (to some degree) fight back against him.
Surely his merit was not that he himself could fight off Jagganoth, but that he organised the seven-way pact so that there would be six demiurges to do so.
That’s what would make sense from a storytelling standpoint, but Jag is WAAAY closer to Allison, Cio, and Incubus.
Though both Maya and White Chain may well be close to Solomon David now. As may Zaid and the others.
Imagine not being able to say to a Worm god that you need their help.
David could have prevented all of this if he just said “please”.
Did he even get the chance? As far as I remember Mottom immediately lashed out at Gog-Agog.
He can move faster than the speed of sound.
I don’t believe the Bearer of Diamond was accustomed to casting spells; such as that cast by Aspected Chaos: The Fool; as much as the Bearer of Glory was, and was, therefore, able to both focus on the spell, and yell at the Bearer of Beast.
Sounds like a “him” problem.