It really likely is, though, at least this particular scene. Jadis hasn’t had a functional body for ages, and the physical state we’ve seen Allison in under the care of those attendants is probably her current true self.
Yes. Perhaps Jadis is simulating this inside Allison’s head to… see if she’s still willing to fight? Though Jadis knows everything, so why would she need to? Or perhaps she wants to get Allison to choose between being restored and lose, or live as a scarred veteran and maybe win?
One thing I’m sure of is that this is not the end. On the cover we saw a scarred Allison with prosthetic limbs, and ALL seven Demiurges still alive. It sounds like time travel to me.
My guess is that this is Jadis trying to convince her that her injuries aren’t real, which would cause her body to discard the lie that it was ever injured in the first place. She did this before, when she temporarily went Evil breaking into the Vault.
The comic has always been one about major changes, hard consequences, and consistent setbacks. I’d only believe this was fake if Jadis were claiming everything is fine.
I wonder how long it takes for Jagganoth’s armies to purge an entire universe. Assuming travel time is easy due to the Magus Gates, how long does it take? How does he replenish his forces? Does he save his own worlds for last to ensure he has constant source of forces and supplies?
(I know these are all not important to the story but I like hypothesizing hahaha)
It would depend on how thorough Jagganoth’s destruction need be (and his tools of choice, of course). Destroying only those worlds with life on them is an unimaginably simpler task than actually reducing every single speck of matter to dust…but I gather he’s not the sort to do things by halves, so it’s difficult to guess.
Last I heard at a talk from one of the experts in the field, they’ve probed the possibility of vacuum decay but haven’t determined whether we ARE in a false vacuum, just that some uncertain terms in QFT could allow for it and have experimentally narrowed one uncertain term down to within the range of from “is absolutely impossible” to “maybe could happen any second” — although that was just about two years ago, at this point.
I believe it had to do with the relevant activation energy and energy released, but even if it could be a runaway reaction, no use worrying because it would propagate at the speed of light so it would be impossible to see coming!
You also need to bear in mind that the expansion rate of the universe is greater then the speed of light. So a single point of origin for a false vacuum event would be bad for PART of the universe, but not necessarily the whole thing due to expansion. As Einstein would say, it’s all relative.
He turned some matter into another drone under his control, and they made more. And more. And more. Eventually the entire universe and all its matter and energy were him. Then he collected all matter into one place, and destroyed everything.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Bear in mind that Jagganoth is no longer organising his forces, and the blurb for “War for Rayuba” said that they are not very self-organised. Resupply is probably not a thing for them. Neither are plans beyond “smash everything”.
Unfortunately. for the multiverse, Aubrey Chamberlain IV, neo-demiurge and leader of the Pyre now that The Sword Called RUIN is dead, is very good at organising.
I think he’d often not bother going around and murdering people because why go about destroying towns when you can just hit the planet hard enough that it’s orbit is ruined and it ends up flying into the sun? That only destroys one planet, why not just fill the sun with enough mass that it goes supernova and destroys the whole solar system. Doing the false vacuum collapse thing would be an even more efficient way to destroy a world. With how the Wheel and Void work there could be other properties and behaviors that could be exploited to wipe worlds out of existance.
I think the MO Jagg’s armies would be to arrive at a world and have the barely controlled horde of maniacs start causing havoc (in large part because those maniacs would start causing havoc anyway). Then under the cover of that chaos, the clever and ideologically motivated parts of the army set a local Armageddon in motion. Then the army loots as much supplies from the given world and ports over to the next world to continue the process.
The idea I described above is what the average invading force would look like. Some would just inefficiently pillage town by town without a goal and others would quietly initiate apocalypses without the obvious armed forces.
World War 2 was around 6 years, so each world taken by armed conflict would take at least as long but probably longer. I think Jaggs personally could successfully vaporize a world within a week by himself, and subordinates with the right training and equipment could do the same in about a month. Now that I think about it, I think most of the worlds would be taken out by Jaggs, and his armies are mainly there to waste time and resources for the opposition.
If we assume that it Jaggs a week to destroy a world (not just the living population, which he could accomplish in a couple days), then it would take him around 14916 years to destroy all 777,777 worlds, if he destroyed each on personally and they don’t offer meaningful resistance. He however has armies that he has been training up for a while to destroy worlds. So I think it would take centuries to purge the universe, or maybe decades if Jaggs is very good at strategy and has commanders who are very good at strategy.
Considering Demiurges have been known to move entire suns, it seems taking a world’s sun would be the most efficient way to make sure nothing and nobody survives in the longer run.
There’s really not much more shit that can be meaningfully be beaten out of Alison. Maybe going back to Earth and seeing that it’s been purged of all life (although that’d honestly be less meaningful than the other shit that’s happened at this point- we’ve escalated beyond her old life), but other than that this SHOULD be the darkest hour. Going much further beyond this will just be misery porn.
I refuse to believe Cio is dead until the story is over… She’s the storyteller, she’s the fanfic writter… She’s gotta finish this story alive. I swear. I can’t see her not being at the ending.
The quotation from Pangoxes, Meta-historian of the Retroactive Record Monks at Seeker of Thrones 1-7 reads “It is unfortunate that the only near-complete and exquisitely detailed chronicle of the Rising King was so elaborately embellished.”
The latest events Cio would have recorded would be less than halfway through King of Swords. That’s about 500 pages into the comic, and there have been 200 pages since (not to mention that the most recent 200 pages tend to more tightly focus on Alison’s story than do the preceding couple hundred, which digress to show many extended sequences that wouldn’t appear in Cio’s record). Even if there are only 100-200 pages left of the comic, it would mean Cio’s book records a little more than half of Alison’s story. For it to be “near-complete,” it would have to include material that could only be written after Cio’s apparent death.
*Keeps repeating this to myself in reassurance.*
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
Much depends on Cio’s book, which she left in the arena on Rayuba, having survived.
If Cio is gone for good, then the book _is_ the surviving record.
If Cio’s coming back as Cio, then Headcanon reckons it’s because her soul has anchored to the Book as a mask substitute. Somewhere in volume 6 of the comic, Allison will recover the Book and find that it’s writing itself. (Probably wrong, but one imagines comfort where one can.)
He subsequently said on Twitter that the remaining material wouldn’t fit into one book so there would have to be a sixth. I’m guessing that volume 6 will be 50% main story and 50% side stories plus character sketches. And I’d buy it just for the character sketches.
One hope:
The B Team has probably spent the past 3 years training and preparing to combat Jagganoth and his hoards. So we still have an angel, a devil, and a king(?) to fulfill the prophecy.
She didn’t say that Incubus would be leading the army, or even that he was still alive, just that he would be “at their head”. They might be carrying part of him as a totem. Gibbering head in a box kind of thing.
Incubus seems to be playing both sides, he made some sort of pact with Jagganoth and does his dirty work. His part in the fight on Rayuba was largely for show and to test the strength of Allison vs. Jag, but I doubt Jagganoth actually cares if he plans to betray him or not.
I am Begging to be right about there being some timeloop timeline shenanigans so Allison can A. be with her girlfriend B. look cool C. maybe save the entire universe?
Cio’s been pieced together by her mask once, by someone with probably less motivation. It can be done again. Jadis even has some spiffy restorative facilities.
But first Allison should go find White Chain. And of course all the angels will go, “No, even if you reawaken her, she’ll be reset and won’t remember you” but Delicious herself said before she was beaten to death with Jug’s wheel they will just change again on rebirth.
So I think Allison should go wake up 83 White Chain, and maybe snag Delicious while she’s there so White Chain has a girlfriend, and then they should all go to Hell to fix Cio.
It’s probably time to check in on Himself, anyhow. I’m pretty sure he had some sort of dibs on Cio’s soul per their last visit, especially since it seems likely that contract wasn’t fulfilled, which might have kept her or her mask from being completely disintegrated, so if there’s any leads, they might start there.
And taking two forcibly-reincarnated angels into Hell as your backup would be pretty badass.
I do not believe her.
The main reason is: “Solomon is nowhere to be found.”
Solomon had knocked Jagganoth into Throne before the Technique of Relief. There were witnesses to their battle for sure.
But even more, the uncertainty is incredibly suspicious. Jadis is omniscient, that’s her schtick, so she is either deliberately lying here, or this is not the real Jadis.
Unless you look at it “from a certain point of view” like in Star Wars. Solomon is nowhere to be found because he atomized himself fighting Jagganoth. Or he literally landed someplace referred to as Nowhere.
Yeah, I may be grasping at straws but I’m seeing inconsistencies. While Solomon could indeed have burned himself to dust and Gog may be willing to watch the world burn out of spite would Jaggy even take Incuboy to his side at this point? After what was clearly a betrayal of their deal? He might be like “sure, I don’t care, I can use your skill and then I’m going to rip your head off anyway” and Inky would take any deal that lets him survive a day longer but this does deny J another demiurge key for a time and it wouldn’t seem he’d NEED Incubus at this point. Unless Jagganoth suffered some serious wounds from Solomon and needs someone else to lead for a time… or even has not been seen since that fight and Incubus took over in some gambit or claims to speak in his name.
But then there’s another thing. Wasn’t Jadis entombed in her crystal because her body was falling apart? Doesn’t look too damaged to me. And if everything is lost why bother bringing Alison from the edge of death anyway? Out of the goodness of her heart? That would be a first for a demiurge! And even if, it would hardly be a mercy to bring her back with all her friends missing or dead just to give her front row seats for the apocalypse.
No, Alison is in some kind of coma but holding onto her key and Jadis is trying to undermine her will to be able to extract it. Or at the very least she wants something from Alison and she wants it badly despite trying to be all casual. I mean, she had the power of prophecy right? And the other demiurges relied on her words for direction believing they shared a common threat. If any of the demiurges has learned to actually manipulate rather than force and threaten others it would be Jadis. She has some kind of endgame of her own.
Given that Allison is still alive we can probably assume that Jagganoth is at least somewhat incapacitated, Jadis only ever references his forces so I think maybe Incubus has at least temporarily turned traitor.
When the red god does return incubus survives a little longer and, might by taking the keys of the remaining demiurge stand a chance against Jagganoth, or more of a chance than he does now. I mean anything is better than nothing right?
The solution: Jadis sends Allison’s mind back to right before that moment, and before Mottom can say a word, Aspected Chaos yells:’Of course we need you, Gog-Agog!” The Worm Queen’s mollified, they all fight together and Jagganoth is Bound. The threat is over!
And that’s when 2Michael and 1Metatron make their move…
Guys it’s fine they got this
I am more and more certain this is a simulation or dream of some kind.
“Of course, if you’d prefer to not have lost while we get the pain gone and your bits back, we could start earlier than this.”
It really likely is, though, at least this particular scene. Jadis hasn’t had a functional body for ages, and the physical state we’ve seen Allison in under the care of those attendants is probably her current true self.
Yes. Perhaps Jadis is simulating this inside Allison’s head to… see if she’s still willing to fight? Though Jadis knows everything, so why would she need to? Or perhaps she wants to get Allison to choose between being restored and lose, or live as a scarred veteran and maybe win?
One thing I’m sure of is that this is not the end. On the cover we saw a scarred Allison with prosthetic limbs, and ALL seven Demiurges still alive. It sounds like time travel to me.
My guess is that this is Jadis trying to convince her that her injuries aren’t real, which would cause her body to discard the lie that it was ever injured in the first place. She did this before, when she temporarily went Evil breaking into the Vault.
Such are the teachings of YISUN…
Mmm… sweet, sweet copium…
The comic has always been one about major changes, hard consequences, and consistent setbacks. I’d only believe this was fake if Jadis were claiming everything is fine.
I agree purely because I don’t think the Maya/Incubus fight would end off screen
It might just be that this story doesn’t end the way you want it to.
3 Years. 3 Tears. 3 Fears.
> NO FEAR
> TOTAL MULTIVERAL PURGATION
> ONE FEAR
> No Fear
> “Your girlfriend is dead”
> One Fear
Tears For Fears
That was awful
That was on purpose.
The messanger is all tranquility, the message all despair. What is there to do but hope that this truly is the space behind the mirror?
White Chain
White Chain White Chain White Chain
Where where where
WHERE
No!
The right question is:
WHERE IS MAYA?
Ok yeah but where is my White Chain
Dead
Those news aint obvious wheres my money back
The check is in the mail.
Chapel Perilous
I wonder how long it takes for Jagganoth’s armies to purge an entire universe. Assuming travel time is easy due to the Magus Gates, how long does it take? How does he replenish his forces? Does he save his own worlds for last to ensure he has constant source of forces and supplies?
(I know these are all not important to the story but I like hypothesizing hahaha)
It would depend on how thorough Jagganoth’s destruction need be (and his tools of choice, of course). Destroying only those worlds with life on them is an unimaginably simpler task than actually reducing every single speck of matter to dust…but I gather he’s not the sort to do things by halves, so it’s difficult to guess.
That depends entirely on how stable the universe(s) is/are.
See also, the dreaded “False Vacuum collapse”. (google it. It’s scary)
Imagine everything you think you know about the universe, ENDING, in an outward expanding bubble, expanding at the speed of light.
Imagine that being done at multiple points within the universe, via the magus gates, such that there is NOWHERE to run.
Alarmingly, current physics indicates that our universe does in fact, inhabit a false-vacuum state, and thus, COULD end that way.
Jaggy could just blow a rancorous god-fart, and then depart just as quickly, and end all reality as you know it.
Last I heard at a talk from one of the experts in the field, they’ve probed the possibility of vacuum decay but haven’t determined whether we ARE in a false vacuum, just that some uncertain terms in QFT could allow for it and have experimentally narrowed one uncertain term down to within the range of from “is absolutely impossible” to “maybe could happen any second” — although that was just about two years ago, at this point.
I believe it had to do with the relevant activation energy and energy released, but even if it could be a runaway reaction, no use worrying because it would propagate at the speed of light so it would be impossible to see coming!
You also need to bear in mind that the expansion rate of the universe is greater then the speed of light. So a single point of origin for a false vacuum event would be bad for PART of the universe, but not necessarily the whole thing due to expansion. As Einstein would say, it’s all relative.
I’m thinking of Mantrid and his drones from Lexx.
He turned some matter into another drone under his control, and they made more. And more. And more. Eventually the entire universe and all its matter and energy were him. Then he collected all matter into one place, and destroyed everything.
Bear in mind that Jagganoth is no longer organising his forces, and the blurb for “War for Rayuba” said that they are not very self-organised. Resupply is probably not a thing for them. Neither are plans beyond “smash everything”.
Unfortunately. for the multiverse, Aubrey Chamberlain IV, neo-demiurge and leader of the Pyre now that The Sword Called RUIN is dead, is very good at organising.
I wonder if Abbadon actually used that result. I doubt it, since without Jagg’s army there isn’t much conflict, but still.
at least three years as it turns out
I think he’d often not bother going around and murdering people because why go about destroying towns when you can just hit the planet hard enough that it’s orbit is ruined and it ends up flying into the sun? That only destroys one planet, why not just fill the sun with enough mass that it goes supernova and destroys the whole solar system. Doing the false vacuum collapse thing would be an even more efficient way to destroy a world. With how the Wheel and Void work there could be other properties and behaviors that could be exploited to wipe worlds out of existance.
I think the MO Jagg’s armies would be to arrive at a world and have the barely controlled horde of maniacs start causing havoc (in large part because those maniacs would start causing havoc anyway). Then under the cover of that chaos, the clever and ideologically motivated parts of the army set a local Armageddon in motion. Then the army loots as much supplies from the given world and ports over to the next world to continue the process.
The idea I described above is what the average invading force would look like. Some would just inefficiently pillage town by town without a goal and others would quietly initiate apocalypses without the obvious armed forces.
World War 2 was around 6 years, so each world taken by armed conflict would take at least as long but probably longer. I think Jaggs personally could successfully vaporize a world within a week by himself, and subordinates with the right training and equipment could do the same in about a month. Now that I think about it, I think most of the worlds would be taken out by Jaggs, and his armies are mainly there to waste time and resources for the opposition.
If we assume that it Jaggs a week to destroy a world (not just the living population, which he could accomplish in a couple days), then it would take him around 14916 years to destroy all 777,777 worlds, if he destroyed each on personally and they don’t offer meaningful resistance. He however has armies that he has been training up for a while to destroy worlds. So I think it would take centuries to purge the universe, or maybe decades if Jaggs is very good at strategy and has commanders who are very good at strategy.
Considering Demiurges have been known to move entire suns, it seems taking a world’s sun would be the most efficient way to make sure nothing and nobody survives in the longer run.
Welp.
Oh.
Oh, FUCK.
I believe I speak for many of us when I say:
Well. Shit.
where do we go from here?
Up, hopefully. This page deserves to be Allison’s nadir. But in a true Crapsack there’s always further to fall.
There’s really not much more shit that can be meaningfully be beaten out of Alison. Maybe going back to Earth and seeing that it’s been purged of all life (although that’d honestly be less meaningful than the other shit that’s happened at this point- we’ve escalated beyond her old life), but other than that this SHOULD be the darkest hour. Going much further beyond this will just be misery porn.
I refuse to believe Cio is dead until the story is over… She’s the storyteller, she’s the fanfic writter… She’s gotta finish this story alive. I swear. I can’t see her not being at the ending.
The quotation from Pangoxes, Meta-historian of the Retroactive Record Monks at Seeker of Thrones 1-7 reads “It is unfortunate that the only near-complete and exquisitely detailed chronicle of the Rising King was so elaborately embellished.”
The latest events Cio would have recorded would be less than halfway through King of Swords. That’s about 500 pages into the comic, and there have been 200 pages since (not to mention that the most recent 200 pages tend to more tightly focus on Alison’s story than do the preceding couple hundred, which digress to show many extended sequences that wouldn’t appear in Cio’s record). Even if there are only 100-200 pages left of the comic, it would mean Cio’s book records a little more than half of Alison’s story. For it to be “near-complete,” it would have to include material that could only be written after Cio’s apparent death.
*Keeps repeating this to myself in reassurance.*
Much depends on Cio’s book, which she left in the arena on Rayuba, having survived.
If Cio is gone for good, then the book _is_ the surviving record.
If Cio’s coming back as Cio, then Headcanon reckons it’s because her soul has anchored to the Book as a mask substitute. Somewhere in volume 6 of the comic, Allison will recover the Book and find that it’s writing itself. (Probably wrong, but one imagines comfort where one can.)
Volume 6? Didn’t Abbadon say either the end of volume 4 or beginning of volume 5 that volume 5 was the last.
Yes, I believe you are correct. This is the last volume.
He subsequently said on Twitter that the remaining material wouldn’t fit into one book so there would have to be a sixth. I’m guessing that volume 6 will be 50% main story and 50% side stories plus character sketches. And I’d buy it just for the character sketches.
I don’t doubt this, but could you dig up the source and link it? 👀
Sadly no. Current web-interface for Twitter only shows me a few recent tweets because I’m not a Twitter member.
Oh I totally believe Cio is dead. I just don’t believe Cio is going to STAY dead.
Don’t demons come back? Like I thought she’d already died once.
That’s what I thought too. Of course, they usually don’t come back as the same person as they were before…
The pain of the body is gone. The pain of the soul? I suspect not.
Uh uh no Incubus definitely got smacked
That is quite the time-skip
Even if the time skip were a single day, they’d still be screwed.
Now they are ROYALLY screwed.
One hope:
The B Team has probably spent the past 3 years training and preparing to combat Jagganoth and his hoards. So we still have an angel, a devil, and a king(?) to fulfill the prophecy.
Wait, what? Incubus!? I demand an explanation for this.
She didn’t say that Incubus would be leading the army, or even that he was still alive, just that he would be “at their head”. They might be carrying part of him as a totem. Gibbering head in a box kind of thing.
Head of John is it’s own special risk.
Sounds like Inky took over the Red God’s armies in his absence… This implies Auntie Maya lost the duel though.
She protected the rat, and probably left soon after. We’ll see her again, I expect.
I’m pretty sure it was a “I’m going to kill that rat bastard orphan or die trying” situation.
Then again I don’t trust that Jadis is being perfectly honest, nor that this is reality. Who knows, though.
Incubus seems to be playing both sides, he made some sort of pact with Jagganoth and does his dirty work. His part in the fight on Rayuba was largely for show and to test the strength of Allison vs. Jag, but I doubt Jagganoth actually cares if he plans to betray him or not.
what matters is winning and by siding with Jag he is. simple stuff!
I am Begging to be right about there being some timeloop timeline shenanigans so Allison can A. be with her girlfriend B. look cool C. maybe save the entire universe?
Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!
Why save the Wheel from itself when you can Break it, and Build something better?
Because no matter how much you try build a better model, you’ll never be able to avoid making the same mistakes
Cio’s been pieced together by her mask once, by someone with probably less motivation. It can be done again. Jadis even has some spiffy restorative facilities.
But first Allison should go find White Chain. And of course all the angels will go, “No, even if you reawaken her, she’ll be reset and won’t remember you” but Delicious herself said before she was beaten to death with Jug’s wheel they will just change again on rebirth.
So I think Allison should go wake up 83 White Chain, and maybe snag Delicious while she’s there so White Chain has a girlfriend, and then they should all go to Hell to fix Cio.
It’s probably time to check in on Himself, anyhow. I’m pretty sure he had some sort of dibs on Cio’s soul per their last visit, especially since it seems likely that contract wasn’t fulfilled, which might have kept her or her mask from being completely disintegrated, so if there’s any leads, they might start there.
And taking two forcibly-reincarnated angels into Hell as your backup would be pretty badass.
Why not three?
Ohh. Does Jadis’ ability of Omniscience come from simulation of possible realities? Computer lady.
I do not believe her.
The main reason is: “Solomon is nowhere to be found.”
Solomon had knocked Jagganoth into Throne before the Technique of Relief. There were witnesses to their battle for sure.
But even more, the uncertainty is incredibly suspicious. Jadis is omniscient, that’s her schtick, so she is either deliberately lying here, or this is not the real Jadis.
Unless you look at it “from a certain point of view” like in Star Wars. Solomon is nowhere to be found because he atomized himself fighting Jagganoth. Or he literally landed someplace referred to as Nowhere.
Yeah, I may be grasping at straws but I’m seeing inconsistencies. While Solomon could indeed have burned himself to dust and Gog may be willing to watch the world burn out of spite would Jaggy even take Incuboy to his side at this point? After what was clearly a betrayal of their deal? He might be like “sure, I don’t care, I can use your skill and then I’m going to rip your head off anyway” and Inky would take any deal that lets him survive a day longer but this does deny J another demiurge key for a time and it wouldn’t seem he’d NEED Incubus at this point. Unless Jagganoth suffered some serious wounds from Solomon and needs someone else to lead for a time… or even has not been seen since that fight and Incubus took over in some gambit or claims to speak in his name.
But then there’s another thing. Wasn’t Jadis entombed in her crystal because her body was falling apart? Doesn’t look too damaged to me. And if everything is lost why bother bringing Alison from the edge of death anyway? Out of the goodness of her heart? That would be a first for a demiurge! And even if, it would hardly be a mercy to bring her back with all her friends missing or dead just to give her front row seats for the apocalypse.
No, Alison is in some kind of coma but holding onto her key and Jadis is trying to undermine her will to be able to extract it. Or at the very least she wants something from Alison and she wants it badly despite trying to be all casual. I mean, she had the power of prophecy right? And the other demiurges relied on her words for direction believing they shared a common threat. If any of the demiurges has learned to actually manipulate rather than force and threaten others it would be Jadis. She has some kind of endgame of her own.
Given that Allison is still alive we can probably assume that Jagganoth is at least somewhat incapacitated, Jadis only ever references his forces so I think maybe Incubus has at least temporarily turned traitor.
When the red god does return incubus survives a little longer and, might by taking the keys of the remaining demiurge stand a chance against Jagganoth, or more of a chance than he does now. I mean anything is better than nothing right?
“I need’a sheet on’a bed!”
“Yooo nooo shit on’a a bed, you dirty sanamabitch’a!”
There are more questions being made each second… Not enough time answer them all
Well, this is unpredecent.
I sort of want to see Zaid and the others having turned into a guerilla faction that Allison runs into.
NGL Jadis looking kinda hot.
Which is sus. Everything is sus.
But starting on the back foot is where Allison thrives. I expect what Jadis says to be mostly true.
Poor Jadis is soooo lonely. 1000 years in a box and now she’s out everybody is too dead to come visit.
Imagine – all of this happened because a bunch of worms didn’t receive a compliment.
The solution: Jadis sends Allison’s mind back to right before that moment, and before Mottom can say a word, Aspected Chaos yells:’Of course we need you, Gog-Agog!” The Worm Queen’s mollified, they all fight together and Jagganoth is Bound. The threat is over!
And that’s when 2Michael and 1Metatron make their move…
I need……… time travel………………..