King of Swords 1-6
UN-Medam is the chief of the gods of law. He has a staff so heavy no man or god can lift it, except for Medam himself. Medam does not lift the staff, even though he could. It is a terrible thing, banded with iron and hewn from a twig of the Flaying Tree, a thousand miles long and weighing four hundred million tons. The mere presence of the staff is enough to make the most hardened demon quake. If Medam must call order in the court he merely lifts it a millimeter off the floor and lets it drop, letting forth a mighty shockwave that crumbles mountains, flattens buildings, and causes gods and their servants to topple off their feet for twenty miles around.
If one is to understand the law of the gods, you must understand this: Medam does not need to lift his staff.
– The Song of Maybe
These settings are gorgeous. Great compositions too. They’ve been consistently good but I’m especially impressed with these past few pages.
The shocking change in composition and mood of the scenes gives us contrast to compare the previous art.
As we supposed, both this theme and the other are greatly executed.
What better king to inherit the perfect kingdom than the Rising King.
Clever.
I’d wager it’d be harder to get that drop of blood from him than make him see that his sexism is clouding his judgement as to the identity of the true heir.
Dude, he isn’t even aware of Allison’s existence yet and is acting off the prophecy Jadis gave the Demiurges, don’t jump straight to the conclusion of Sexism with no evidence.
It strains credulity that he has no idea Allison exists and has the power, given that Allison blew up Mottom’s Giving Tree and teleported a whole ship in an incredibly obvious display of power, that Mottom tore an entire infinite vault clear open searching for her, given that Incubus and Jagganoth also both know she current has the power, given that the angels also know that she has the power, and also given that there is an army of mercenaries after her that likewise know that she’s got power.
And his sexism is pretty friggin’ self-evident given that he willingly chooses to not have -any- daughters; it’s not a jump to a conclusion as much as it’s looking even a little bit at any of the seven pages we’ve seen from Solomon.
Salami Dave: Look at all this awesome shit I made and did. But now I am weary.
All of the demiurges we’ve seen so far: Cry me a fucking river.
If I had to name a single defining theme of the comic, I think it would be this. The demiurges are pathetic, and even pitiable, but not sympathetic. Their power has only enabled them to carve their anxieties and pretensions onto the multiverse with blood and divine fire. Remember: Zoss, the only true achiever of Royalty, abdicated.
and theres the ” but…”
…that cracks have begun to form?
I think he’s grown bored, everything is a perfect well oiled machine. He was once a warrior he fought to get his power, he’s had no reason to fight for a very long time.
As a conqueror in a minor world once said.
“To conquer the world on horseback is easy, it is dismounting and governing that is hard”
It is not the decades of combat and warfare that make hollow husks out of conquerors, it is the boredom of guaranteeing that their conquests remain conquered.
When the strong king admits his weariness, he admits his desire to return to the days he was before he was a king.
It is the path of a liar and a dead man.
When a carrier of books decides upon the fate of kings; it is truly a case of the mighty falling… and the book carrier not doing their job.
As is fated.
A koan, o god emperor of ten thousand worlds: What would you give for a hot bowl of noodles right now?
For once before, the question was answered rightly.
A problem not even YISUN could overcome. The test of time permits none to endure forever.
Jesus, that’s more like an Adams melon, beakie-dude. No offence though, you great!
That’s what the woman next to him seems to be thinking.
a city full of curling horns
and buttons rattle, is alright
but the mouth don’t stop
Zaid, loudly: “y’all got a nation straddling countless worlds but no-one figured out wifi yet?”
for reals tho, such an educated society, yet they appear to have fallen behind the lonely closed off world that zaid himself is from.
I have often believed it a gift that we were denied magic, this proves it once again. Magic truly kills human achievement.
I suspect the Demiurges actively stifle technological advancement. New technology creates new problems, and new opportunities for those without power to take it from those that do.
Solomon David, especially, seems like the sort to craft laws against certain technologies, and then justify it by claiming such things create disorder. A stagnant tech level is an easily managed tech level. A society that never develops internet is one that need never experience wide-spread dissent or shifting ideas.
It isn’t Magic that’s the problem. Magic is just another technology. The problem is Autocracy.
The savage calls it magic, the sage calls it technology. Truly, they are one and the same.
UN-Medam’s staff itself would splinter beneath the weight of so much porn.
Solomon wouldn’t want his people to have wifi, or any form of internet. That’s too much communication among the masses, might unbalance his “perfect” society.
“Aesma once stole Medam’s staff to use as a toothpick” – I somehow knew it would eventualy lead to something like this. Probably because of Pedam’s staff she stole in the three Masters’ story. Suspiciously similar names.
Even Solomon David must bow before the weight of ages, in spirit if not body.
That’s what you get for living in a place with two suns, son.
Ah, Aesma, truly who the gods deserve and need.
Ah, but what is more powerful?
The weapon that doesn’t need to be used?
Or the weapon that need only be used once?
You say that as if the latter isn’t the direct result of the former.
The weapon that makes the Song of Maybe mix metric and imperial.
Solomon: “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
Solomodo Davins
Behold The Star-Emperor!
He wears a chain of His own forging!
He can be bound by none but His own Hand!
Behold the Star-Emperor.
Pitiable slave, whose master is the Great Enemy.
Merciless are her chains. Merciless is her whip.
Four hundred million tons lifted by a height of one millimeter in an environment similar to earth’s surface gravity would only be about a megawatt-hour of energy, or the equivalent of a little bit under a ton of TNT. On the Richter scale, that’s a 3.2, “very rarely causes damage.”
How long did it take you to calculate that?
Well, clearly, the realm of the gods has higher gravity, then, if that can topple mountains.
Another possible explanation would be that the surface it lands on is not perfectly incompressible. If we assume the Flaying Tree is comparable in density to more mundane types of wood, while the courtroom’s floor tiles are no denser than the core of a white dwarf star, Newton’s impact depth approximation says a thousand-mile-long projectile would continue for at least another 10 cm between contact and coming to a complete stop, releasing proportionately more gravitational potential energy in the process.
Also, according to the calculation I just did on WolframAlpha, it’ll have a radius of 22 meters/24 yards across, if it has the density of a typical piece of wood. 400 million tons / density of wood to get volume, divided by 1000 miles to get cross-sectional area, divided by pi to get radius squared, then taking the square root to get the radius of 11 meters/12 yards, then double that to get the diameter of the staff.
Wolfram Alpha says the effect of 400,000,000 tons of weight being dropped .001 meters is more like 11 tons of TNT, but I get your point. Still a pretty impressive trick to get peoples’ attention.
The more you know, huh. Thanks, science!
The real TIL is always in the comments.
Thank you for this cool and educational comment. Let’s hope it survives in some fashion.
Ten thousand years, huh? Gotta give it to SD, he’s done a much better job of it than the Emperor of Mankind.
Heretic!
UN-Medam: “My staff is so heavy no one can lift it.”
Aesma: “Hold my beer, I need a toothpick.”
Indeed. Aesma sounds like so many I have known.
Fortunately, I also know how to lift Medam’s staff. It’s quite simple! Tell the law the truth of its error: Chaos is required for balance to exist.
Zaid’s beard really isn’t cutting it with the ladies…
Don’t worry, Zaid. It’s not you. Any candle would pale in comparison to the light of the sun.
This may be the fighting tournament chapter, but something about this page gives me the impression that it’d also be very appropriate for skateboarding.
Solomon David’s domain is a curious one. Or, at least this one world of it.
The people show no acknowledgement of this demigod who walks among them and is their sovereign. They may be accustomed to his presence but it verges on indifference of him but appreciation of his works.
Interesting, no?
Generations of seeing what happens to those who do not scrupulously yet casually ignore his presence, is what I’m thinking.
I dunno. The smile of the woman in panel 2 is looking rather forced…
Thus rome always falls from within