KING OF SWORDS 10-144
Chapter: 10
“Enyis reached the city of Golden Flowing Water, which was at the time the most brutal domain in the world. For spitting in public there, one could lose a finger. It was a thirsty, conquering city that took many slaves, enjoyed the whip, and worshiped the sword.
Enyis was surprised to find the streets sparkling clean and orderly. The buildings were well constructed, airy, and it was scattered with well tended gardens redolent with many colorful flowers.
‘They must enrapture you with splendor,’ said the Boar King, who had noticed Enyis’ confusion. ‘Otherwise, you might look down and notice the blood-matted beast who shoulders this city, and your mind will fill with unpleasant truths.'”
– Enyis and the Fivefold Sword
Godly abs take time.
And so the purpured legions of IMPERATVS SALEMANUS DOMS PLANETAE whirl’d round and round, their steel reflecting the violet all around and their eyes reflecting none of the violence they’d seen, blind as they day they were born. Each a mere puppet to the basest desire a king can have–pageantry. For those who are feared within and without need no grand gestures–little gestures. The slipping knife, a headsman’s axe, poison, plotting, pain.
None are so grand as an army. And yet the purple parades fade from memory,
but the executions remain vivid crimson and muddy dirt-color within the mind’s eye.
This man’s naked skin belies one thing–he does not fear his opponent.
Just look at those cum gutters!
PURE cum gutters, gotDAMN
I can’t look away!
Purple magic keeps that wrap from dropping to his ankles.
The man is proud, but damn! he’s got reason to!
I don’t wanna fight him, do you wanna fight him?
Bearer of the Word, SWOLE
The foremost art may be that of CUTTING, and one who aspires to royalty must learn it.
However, it is just as true that the royal art of FLEXING is the one most devoutedly practiced by those who have attained royalty.
Solomon David, bearer of the word Diamond and Dark Emperor of 111,111 universes, is the foremost practitioner of that royal art. Through flexing are worlds mantained; a biceps pump can quell a rebellion, a demure hamstring can pacify a rioting stock exchange, a showing of abs vivify a withered harvest.
and the godly halo forms above him:
HERO OF THE BEACH
You! Read this webcomic now, or the Earth is DOOMED!
Flex Mentallo- uh I mean Sol Davidoff, The Man of Muscle Mystery!
Dangit, now I want for two things.
A group to play Broken Worlds.
And try to build Flex Mentallo in it.
*Sniff* Such a beautiful sentiment…I cried a single perfect tear.
I can’t seem to find my seat..
What’s his onlyfans id
Solomon has forsaken the square beard. He shall surely lose this battle.
ABBADON WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIS BEARD?!
There is truly no mark of nobility greater than than the hallowed beard jewelry.
It’s turned into a hand grenade. Always handy to have a few grenades stashed about your person when entering a death match.
The holy hand grenade of Antioch
Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
And the LORD spake saying, “First, shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. FIVE IS RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.”
One… Two… Five!
Three sir!
…Three!
*𝘽𝙊𝙊𝙈*
It’s an Assyrian beard thing.
This guy has a balcony for his balconies and a grandstand for his grandstands.
Also, his beard is bound as a sign of restraint. He’s fighting a damaged angel, he has to handicap himself _somehow._
nevermind it was worth the wait
It always is. One must have faith in the reigning Prince of Hell.
We must question all splendor! We must look for the rot and dirt and corruption that build even the greatest cities! And we must criticize the beard choices of tyrants.
You just jelly of his awesome gains.
Sardaukar.
“When the Gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body.
Shamash the glorious Sun endowed him with beauty,
Adad the God of the Storm endowed him with courage,
the great Gods made his beauty perfect,
surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wild bull.
Two thirds they made him god and one third man.”
~ The Epic of Gilgamesh.
A quaint story. How unsurprising it would be for Solomon to believe something similar of himself. But, alas, he is a human being, and humans are nothing more than the blustering folly of an idiot Goddess.
We don’t make mistakes. We make happy little accidents.
Such wisdom. Thank you, Oce-UN.
I palm my face in the second way.
13 Stands is observant, in the ways of the pun.
The diamond glitters like sun off a glacier! Go forth, mighty Demiurge! Defeat your foe! (May we have many more drink contracts to come!)
The squawking bird is blue
his lines from tool and you
aren’t as loud. He came through.
wouldn’t want to put blood on his white clothes
Aeons don’t bleed, fortunately, and our fire is clear and smokeless.
Doubtful you’ll see this but I wanted to say I love the music your name references 🙂
I guess the pageantry and the purple invoke the glory of imperial Rome. But I look at the banner carriers in the first three panels and I see … Nuremberg? Sorry, can’t shake the image.
Nuremberg as in the Nuremberg trials? Not seeing it.
Nuremberg as in the Nuremberg rallies, before WW2.
Ah, with the banners and all that? I wouldn’t be surprised if those rallies took the banner inspiration from Rome, which is where Abbadon has clearly been getting the inspiration.
Ah, the machismo of imperial ambition. It tends to take similar forms, even across many hundreds of years.
Probably no coincidence. The Nazis admired ancient Rome, and called themselves the 3rd Reich because they considered Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire to be the first, which itself considered it the successor to the imperial Roman title.
Sorry, *considered itself*.
Apparently I words flip when it’s too early in the morning.
So soon we forget that the tyrants were tried on the floor of their own theatre, sent to their own prisons, and executed by their own people.
None of these things are as easy to chain as they had thought.
A lack of originality is one of the hallmarks of fascism. That, and big, big flags.
And big prisons.
I pause here to dwell fondly on the suicide of Hess, and the erasure of his prison from the Earth, when he had, at last, no more need of it.
Such a bitter cup is to be sipped slowly, and well remembered.
This is some excellent artistic imagery – it puts us into the twisted, delusional mindset that Solomon David must have.
The halo of light, the open-armed pose, the retinue of near-angelic attendants – all of it serving to make him look divine, even downright messianic. But in context we know it’s all a facade – this man knows only how to brutalize and oppress, not save in any way that truly matters.
The pageantry is a needed distraction, lest his citizens question why their so-called deity is fighting angels.
Ah, but angels are not necessarily good in this context. They are servants to the grand order, and to light, but good is a moral question they do not all agree on.
Yeah, it’d be more accurate to say that angels are on the side of order and devils are on the side of chaos rather than a good/evil axis.
There are definetly devils who act evil in the the very sense of the morality and angels who are good in the same way, but there’s far more grey in between. Just as not all angels agree on the moral question of good, not all devils may agree on the moral question of evil. There may be things that some devils find too evil to ever do that others are cool with, though we haven’t seen much evidence of that.
We’ve seen the outliers far more on the angel side than the devil side though in the form of the Thorn knights which seem far more angry and disillusioned than evil, even if their version of ‘good’ and ‘pure’ involves purging Throne of everything that isn’t an angel.
On the devil side… obviously there’s Cio in her current state, but we haven’t really seen much in the way of outliers outside that. Perhaps their chaotic nature makes any ‘good’ outliers more muddled.
We saw many devils appalled at Vladok breaking a pact. That is Just Not Done.
Well, I mean, breaking such a pact does mean tearing off your face, and sublimating your existence to release the fiery anima the propels you to exact your vengeance upon your oppressor.
Murder/suicides are usually pretty shocking to witness.
Chaos by its very nature should produce the whole spectrum, from completely random to localised order, from incredibly ‘evil’ to selfless ‘good’. One imagines such a spectrum would follow a bell curve, and the extremes would only amount to a very low %age; such an extreme may be Cio.
As for order, it should be less likely to produce chaos one might think. Yet it still does – one may know and understand all the ordered and logical equations to describe a process happening in a complex system, but yet the further from the starting point, the more chaotic it becomes and the less predictable. The proverbial butterfly’s wingbeat. Ultimately all order becomes chaotic again – perhaps why there are more examples of Aeons walking that path.
The armor, it’s so shiny, almost… luminescent.
A whited sepulcher–nothing of value inside! Ha ha!
poor white chain, shes going to be obliterated
Remember, she only needs one drop of Solomon David’s blood to win.
I hear the closest anyone has ever come to winning the tournament was when a wise man dressed as a doctor and offered to check Solomon’s cholesterol.
I keep thinking back to the manual of hands and feet entry on Empty Palms: “…None, however, deny the power of its techniques, which include YISUN’s Open Palm, widely regarded as an unbeatable move.”
It seems not every practitioner knows all 47 techniques, given that one angel’s surprise at White Chain using Burning Finger and promptly surrendering, so I don’t know if White Chain can use YISUN’s Open Palm, and using it may have severe consequences. However, can the ultimate technique overcome Ki Rata?
From my knowledge of it, ’tis not that Burning Finger is surprising on it’s own, but that it is employed on the ones the aeon deems truly guilty and seeks to obliterate.
Judicious Rain misunderstood the scale of White Chain’s fury, before she clarified it with her use of Burning Finger.
As for the Open Palm, I too believe we shall see it in action here.
If White Chain can avoid being turned into milkshake within the first millisecond of the fight, she stands a fair chance.
White Chain obliterated? Since only an angel can kill an angel, no. The body might need a little more TLC from the two medical hunks, though.
It took a legion of angels to bring down Yablchoath and she had but a fragment of a single Word in her forehead.
The keys of kings change the rules, when one has the understanding to wield them.
Though, it might be wise for such a wielder to remember that they are keys, not swords, and even a key powerful enough to be used as a sword or a spear, can be more useful when used in the intended manner.
Any fool can find the rot of decadence by following the unmistakable stench. (It is a thick, cloying odor of rare incense and overripe fruit).
The splendor that comes dressed in gleaming silver and spotless white has no such stink about it. You will know it by the extravagant cleanliness it calls “austerity”, but such piety is as hollow as an angel’s tomb! I trust not those who bear not a speck of filth upon them, for such immaculate visage is measured by a weight of ashes and the fat of butchered flesh.
A moment of perfection is a rare beauty to behold: a perfectly-formed petal at the exact instant of its fullness, the gasp of a lover in the height of passion. These are perfect and worthy because they are passing. They must be sought out, cared for, and looked to for their meaning and worth to enrich the world, their beauty held to improve the beholder as they carry on, that it may inspire their growth.
This show of splendour is death and horror, well-cut, finely polished, and placed on a pedestal. The god Solomon David is a god of the hammer and chisel, broken earth and blood-rusted iron. His splendor is detractive and destructive: diamonds only sparkle after many cuts.
Look in terror upon a godly monster.
Are the balconies near Allison and Cio for Dave’s wives then?
Or his son’s wives, if he allows them to have wives.
I was wondering about that myself. The balconies round about where Allison and Cio are look like they’re for ladies. Important ladies perhaps. Going by the hairstyles (or hats?) and the way they appear to be dressed, though it is difficult to be sure at that size, esp since we can only see them from the back.
Solomon’s sons, we know what they look like, and we see them seated somewhere as well. Not entirely sure of where they are in relation to the other viewing areas though.
If hair colour, or hat colour, means anything, perhaps these ladies vary in age, which could indeed mean they are Solomon’s sons wives.
The other thing I noticed is that, while Allison and Cio have a box to themselves, there are other boxes that are elevated above theirs. I suspect their seating is another subtle barb from Solomon: A private box, as befits a visiting demiurge, but not a prominent one or even ones in an area reserved for dignitaries.
I think the ladies are wearing their long hair tied back, covered with turbans. It’s either fashion, or a court convention. In fact, of all we’ve seen outdoors today, the only ones without headgear are Allison, Solomon and the two craftsmen aiding white chain. Query: are hats (and coronets) a big status thing in this world? There was one young lady on the previous page with no hat, and wearing the same style of dress as Allison. Query: is Allison’s costume prescribed dress for a girl rather than a woman? Patern(um)alism is quite keen on treating women as children so that they can better be ignored.
It would make sense with Solomon obvious complex over the death of his daughters (and wife), after all something to remember is that the secrets of the Demiurge dosn’t seem to be their wickedness -for it’s obvious to all- but their pain.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Solomon is projecting his own fear and guilt of his familly loss on Cio/Alisson, or just on women in general.
Local man has difficult hang-ups regarding women, more at six.
Coffee is for closers. Matrimony is for heirs.
Oh my. Solomon….oh my.
*cough* Very um. Very nice physique there.
wow… well done capturing exactly how full of himself he is in a single image. Diamond abs. Pride indeed.
Everybody else: AAAAAAAABS
Me: WOW Look at that armor design!!!
I KNOW RIGHT! I know absolutely nothing about armor design, but that stuff looks SO ridiculously detailed, fancy, and shiny, while at the same time not being obviously impractical! How cool is that?!?!
Can’t say I’m an expert, but I’ve looked into armor designs a bit for game-modding reasons.
Some of it is mildly impractical (the armor itself, not like, the obviously decorative and optional cloaks), but some can just be called off as ceremonial.
There’s three distinct ranks among the troops: the regulars, shown first, then probably some kind of captains, shown second (fancier helmets and more decor overall), and up with Solomon, some kind of special troop. Probably not a personal guard, since Solomon is too prideful for that, but maybe the lion face guy is the general and the other guys up there are the general’s personal guard.
As for practicality, I think the helmets are the least practical part, since the helms have exaggerated details as opposed to standard Roman helmets (which they’re based on), and are thus a bit more likely to catch a sword blow rather than detect it away, which is bad for blunt trauma to the head reasons. The regulars’ helmets look pretty much fine, though, it’s just the general’s helmets that have the exaggerated decorations, and they might have more practical helms for battle. And then whoever has that lion face mask probably has a less ridiculous one for actual fighting, seeing as they’re likely high ranking to have a fancy type of armor and be up on the podium with Solomon. Still, it could be their actual helm, visors aren’t a super important part of the armor and knights frequently lifted their visor after the initial charge for better ventilation and visibility. The kneeling guys might have the worst helmets for realism, since those are awfully ventilated and the visors don’t really look like they come off. Some older helmets (early middle ages) were designed just for the initial charge into battle and would literally just be cast aside in favor of some kind of helm underneath (a skullcap), but we’ve no idea if they’re normally mounted soldiers or what they are.
Past the helmets, most of the rest of the armor looks fine practically. Minus the plate neckguards (they have an actual name when they’re not part of the coif, but I forget it). We don’t have a great view of their full extent, but man those look like they’re awful for turning your head. The regulars don’t appear to have a consistent theme for neck protection from what I can see, though. One has their armor jutting out past their chin, so the regulars don’t have the same neckguards as the squad leaders. And outside of the neckguards, the shoulder thingies (which were actually used on the one side of the head) are absolutely massive in their girth. If it were designed to be fully practical it should just be a regular thickness piece of armor that does that, which makes it a lot harder to get a slash into the gap between the chestplate and helmet, which normally only has a bit of mail protecting the neck.
So, yeah, kudos to Abbadon.
All the soldiers are in parade dress. I imagine their battle dress is very practical, since there is fighting currently on the fringes of empire. If they wear armour into battle it would be the ballistic cloth kind, or powered exoskeletons. And guns.
A good comparison here is the Pope’s Swiss Guards, who have renaissance armour and pole-arms for tarting about and more practical clothes (and guns) for actual guarding. There’s also the Yeoman Warders at the tower of London, who are retired warrant officers rather than serving soldiers.
>Why yes, my favorite Star Wars character is Rey Palpatine, how could you tell?