King of Swords 5-47
Chapter: 5
The Concordance of the Demiurges was the greatest speaking house of any age, with many chambers, a small city on to itself, located in the very innermost circle of Throne, Sacred Spoke. Today it is a blasted, cursed ruin, untouched even by treasure hunters for its reputation. The corpses of the two demiurges who began the Universal War are, according to legend, still here, impaling each other on their weapons.
God king David bowie isn’t as good looking in person
Its a matter of perspective really…
It’s because he’s still alive in our dreams.
Maybe this is another huge leap forward in time? Can’t really tell…
He’s also the only one who washes his feet, apparently, goddamn.
In purple sludge, apparently!
I believe he has a predilection for bathing in the circulatory fluid of lesser beings.
Fucking Gog-Agog just gets more terrifying by the page. Massive boneyards and lakes of blood? Nah. But a weird court-fool theme? That’s a bad sign.
Indeed. Fortunately given Gog-Agog’s ever-changing nature, this fearsome clown theme is unlikely to last long. The sooner it goes put of style the better.
Yeah, but they have CALLIOPE music!
What was it last time? Tiny four-eyed Sumo wrestlers?
honk HONK
There was a man called Hisoka, who made realise how scary and twisted can a clown be.
But still – it could be worse. It always can and it always eventually is.
Holy shit. Number 1 is still alive after going toe to toe with Mottom.
I know, evidently Mammon saved her butt from Nadia’s wrath or 1’s a lot more powerful than we all thought O_O
To be fair, you probably don’t get a title like Number 1 to a God of the Seven-Part World without seriously having to earn it.
She also appears to have a dollar sign on one sleeve
Guess someone came over and offered currency *from a world not conquered in all this time*. After the sudden devaluation o the Guilder, people craved stability, and got suckered into this. On the plus side, the Dollar might actually be backed by gold, now.
She does seem worse for the wear, though.
She may just be miffed that Mottom is alive and well and not scattered in chunks about the Vault.
Either that or someone else inherited job after the dust settled.
And her replacement just happened to be another Ebon Devil, Heavy Metal, Bondage Nun?
The dragon must have a type.
That or Heavy Metal Bondage Nun is the aesthetic of the office. Or both!
N-NANI!?!?
Aww fuck me, not fucking clowns!
Shit I’m gonna have nightmares for WEEKS
Not Clowns.
Clown *costumes*, filled with maggots and red ichor.
Sweet dreams.
Not actual clowns, then? *sigh of relief*.
Look who brought her Insane Clown Posse.
the agog never
could percolate
how magnets
would operate
Matriarch.
Fornicating.
Divine-signs.
GOD OF JUGGALOS
Huh, Incubus’ flame is white, not pink-tinged.
Yeah, that has some seriously Nasty ramifications for every one present.
Note that his and Maya’s seal is a symbol of division
Incubus’ Seal is the crocus mars, the sign of fools gold.
Solomon David’s seal is the power symbol. Often mistaken for a symbol of Division, it actually represents Duality (On/off, good/evil, true/false), the result of division.
Maya’s symbol is a broken circle, the true sign of division.
No, I must both disagree and point out your fallacy: Solomon David’s throne may be placed before the pillar with the Symbol of Division, but that is not His Symbol. Properly, the Symbol of Division is inscribed on the pillar upon which rests the Throne of the King of Kings.
These last few pages have been pure gold. He’s done such a good job with Incubus, I think I can smell his rank odor…
That’s just the blood tang, like any Vampire.
Glad to see 0001 is still kicking.
Glad am I that Mammon’s Number One lives to fight another day !
From Dragon’s Redoubt, the Dragon’s Devout
Battled Mottom’s hordes of Consumption.
Mammon’s Paragon thought lost to Incineration
Combating the bearer of Glory, who strikes like an asp.
Freed from the Blood Flower’s grasp
by A Collapsing Tower’s River of Gold.
A wave of guilders cast her far, knocked out cold.
Awakened she cried out: “IA ! The Peaceful Land is Lost !
Never shall we count the Cost !
Though now we bear the Shame,
We’ll forget Not that Imperiatrix Om is to Blame.”
Chainsaw spears don’t seem like they would be very effective weapons compared to blender spears or drill spears.
While it is true that the mighty Drill Spear is widely considered the Pinnacle of spearkind, what Mammon’s followers wield appear to be more akin to chainsaw glaives. There a weapon designed more to slash with than Pierce. In this the chainsaw is most effective.
As anyone can tell you who ever tried to murder as many people as possible in short time, a chainsaw is both a very fearsome and totally ineffective weapon. It is designed to cut through immobile, hard objects, by applying a steady excavation push. When attacking moving targets, the mechanism is prone to jamming, not to mention the unwieldiness any lack of precision.
After the chainsaw-wielder missed me with his wobbly mutilation weapon, i elegantly stabbed him into the elbow with my halberd and he fell into his own rotating blade.
Give me a sharp, bladed polearm, and some room to outmaneuver the banking clerk maniacs, and I volunteer to fight five of them.
The humble lumbersoul’s chainsaw bears the same relation to the military pole-saw that a roofer’s shingle hatchet bears to the knightly pole-axe. Yes, each has a blade of linked cutting teeth, but on the proper military pole-saw these teeth are much finer and of a dimension to rapidly carve away at soft material. The saw handles very differently than the glaive or halberd; Where those weapons benefit greatly from inertia and are as often used to stab as not, the pole-saw serves best when firmly pressed against the enemy and kept in contact to do it’s grisly work. Some have observed that there is little different in the end result, but all agree that the work of the flaying chain is a grisly spectacle to behold.
If you want to slash things then a rotating saw blade would be far superior.
Solid sawblades have a tendency to bounce off of things they hit. Toothed chains bite in and dig deeper.
Spoken like someone who has never had a chain saw “kick back” at them.
There’s a reason most of them have a brake that pops on, if it happens to lunge at it’s user’s face.
i.e.toothed chains do bounce. They just bounce harder.
Getting stuck is a bad thing. Both sawblades and chainsaws have the problem that if the blades experience resistance or get stuck then the torque gets applied to the handle.
They’re also a bit difficult to stand in awkward silence with.
One practiced in the Ancient Martial Art of the Kalpavriksha Lumberjacks learns to overcome the limitations of their tools as they learn to overcome the limitations of the body.
lmao we found twinkle’s family
Jadis’ priests look like that Lancer pilot.
The Servant race of Eidolons, I think they are called.
I like how Mottoms Cleric-Tributes are just kinda scared and may not even be armed.
I think Incubus in the physical world is my favorite version of him. Really shows off his title- ‘god of the pit’.
In dreams, he is perfection.
In presence… well.
“rejoice in imperfect things, for their rareness is not lacking!”
-YISUN
I must say they chose a lovely spot for their meetings.
Emperor Palpatine’s looking good these days.
Brilliant at every single panel! Gog-Agog’s court is friggin’ ridiculous. And I really _love_ that touch with Incubus’s footprints.
Shall we wait for our Lord and Destroyer this session, or Prim Jagganoth doesn’t give a hang?
Incubus, wipe your damn feet.
Alas, the doormats were the first to succumb when the Demiurge war was joined. One could argue their callous destruction was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Aw come on dude! Not the marble floor!
Ah, violence. The supreme authority.
How did that hobo sneak past the guards…
Oh wait nevermind, its incubus.
Yes. THIS hobo is supposed to be there.
Ah, so Gog-Agog is a god of fools.
But at least she keeps interesting company.
Ah, the Reverend Mother lives. Fortuitous. The world is still quite metal.
Additionally: BEHOLD THE KING OF THE PIT
YOUR GODS ARE ALL BUTCHERS
You said butchers twice
*Duane Adelier voice* YOUR GODS ARE BREAD!!!
SHHH! You don’t want to call Derrick the Bread Defiler do you?!
I’m sorry, but I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave your information about bread (holy or otherwise) in need of defiling and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Thanks!
Is anyone old enough to remember whether Incubus earned those facial scars before or after becoming a master of the Head of John?
I was around at that time, but I wasn’t paying much attention as I was taking a holiday in Gog-Agog’s realm of Worms. It was quite the experience, and left me feeling an altogether changed man.
Gog-agog’s arc will be mirthful indeed
A mirthful arc? A loop-de-loop perhaps!
See the trail of fools run far
see the ballet, dancing star,
see the bear in the little car
And of course, Henry the Horse dances the waltz.
Harry the Horse had very long hair.
It tripped him whenever he walked.
It got in his eyes,
tickled his nose,
and got in his mouth when he talked.
H.
Horse.
Through the cities, through the carnage
Comes a god-ling wild and free
Smirking at their silent scheming
Who can guess who the victor’ll be
Poor Mottom’s peach-bearers, had to stand quietly and pretend they couldn’t see Incubus lining up his dramatic entrance.
F O R E B O D I N G
Panel 1’s Prismatic Coneheads are truly terrifying. Imagine one running head-down at you!
NO MORE PYRAMID HEAD FLASHBACKS NOOOOO !!!!!!!11ONE
Is that Incubus, or He-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Worn-Out?
Pointless theorising: Those are not Gog-Agog’s servants. Gog-Agog is one and many.
I think the same. They have the same striations on their skin.
An interesting conjecture. It raises many questions about the nature of power shared.
No different than the power “shared” among the worms that make up Gog’s primary body. She’s probably trillions of worms strong and keeps many, many bodies. That would explain why she’s stated as being the strongest demiurge if not for her insanity.
Bagoret’s thirty second student chose silence.
This was observed FBC 05.
Interesting that the key makes a physical hole in the skull when removed. Didn’t think it was a material object.
Look up “trepanning”
Cio had to plug the hole on her forehead with a ruby, it’s been there the whole time xd
I see an angel’s armor pinned to the wall. Curious that the wearer has not reincarnated in all this time.
Perhaps more likely they have different armor now.
* If that is an angel ( and not a demi-urge who had modifications made ) – then yes we could expect the angel to re-vivify – but only if someone pulled out that spear. Piercing the armor of the Angels appears to be a reliable way to cast their spirits back to the Void.
Once the foreign object is removed, their spirits can return.
The Shard that impaled white chain seem to be of peculiar color. I think it was more a property of the needle than simply having a foreign object. It could be though that the spear is of the same material, thus forbidding the angel from returning.
That was definitely a specialized tool for banishing angels, however it is possible to do enough damage to ashen armor that it can no longer hold it’s angel in the material plane.
Without such a specialized tool, one can expect considerable collateral damage, however.
When/if that angel chooses to reincarnate, he will likely need a new suit of armor made, just as the Prime Angels whose original armors are now used as busses had to get new armors when they were reincarnated.
Those prime angels are still awaiting reincarnation, actually. Whoever is using their bodies at the time they come back had better hope that said bodies are too damaged to be re-inhabited.
Wonder who those two who began the War were? Though we probably never heard of them. Though, back when White Chain and Cio talked about the end of the peace, the Demiurg we saw looked suspiciously like Maya. But she is still alive.
“Alive”. “Dead”. Tricky words, when dealing with gods.
Demiurges. Aint. Gods.
Though apparently, there are more demiurges alive than gods…
Technically true but close enough to false to be indistinguishable from a lie.
It is said that YISUN made truths be lies and lies be truth.
“We could make beans into peas!”
I doubt it really matters who, exactly, set off the War. That’s not the point. The War was inevitable, because the Demiurges are flawed, war-bound beings. It was *always* going to end in violence. The commencing of hostilities between those two was merely a formality.
Not all legends are true.
What an entrance! As always, all the little details are amazing, but the contrast between Incubus and Solomon was especially well conveyed.
Also, glad to see Number 1 lived.
I hadn’t thought about it… but Incubus looks a lot like allison now. I mean, the robes and long white hair, the face scars… Uncanny, dare I say.
I’ve noticed it since near the end of the last book with the holiday page. But I just keep scratching my head over what it could mean! Nice catch, tho.
That seldom bodes well
Incubus: “Allison, I am your father!”
Didnt he look like that already when he struck his deal with Jagganoth?
The Universal War
left a Seething Scar
Upon the Axle of Creation.
Where godlings bones turn to chalk,
Who dares to Stalk,
After the Scouring ?
None but the Devouring.
Death defines this Concordance Ring
Enter here a Circle of Mad Kings.
No matter how high you sit on the throne, theres always something in the shadows bidding its time
The higher you sit the more hidden they are.
For not even am eagle can see whats behind its neck
Truth coming out of her well to shame humanity, only that it’s Incubus, come out of his Pit, and he’s there to specifically shame Solomon David.
There is never shame in attempting the impossible for the good of all. The fact that this will inevitably decline into chaos and slaughter does not negate the time of relative peace Solomon has forged out of his Peet’s bickering.
So, I’m legit a little confused; What’s with old, grotty Allison in the last couple panels? Time-travel? The immutable non-time of the demon realms? A completely different character?
…that’s Incubus, not Allison.
Is…is this a joke? That is Incubus, did you not read the previous chapter where he was introduced as this?
They have been looking more and more alike ever since Don’t Wear It Out.
My thoughts as I saw the last panel: Heavy robe. Diagonal scars. LEFT earring.
Ally-length, Ally-colored hair. White aura.
We’re SUPPOSED to notice this, right?
Phew, the clowns just have balloons. If they were also spinning and throwing confetti I’d have been really worried for their future.
First time we’ve seen Solomon looking uncomfortable
I don’t blame him.
There’s only one that can easily see through his facade. The mind master.
I don’t know if anyone has ever mentioned this before but in the original gnostic myths there was only one Demiurge and while he was a being of great power he was ignorant of the true nature of the universe, and this ignorance was the source of the world’s suffering. That implies interesting things about viewing any of these would be gods as sources of wisdom.
Comment sections in general tend to be weird, but this comic has by far the weirdest with how many people seem to be roleplaying in the comments? That’s weird.
It’s also great.
Aresius is observant.
If anyone hasn’t, I strongly recommend rereading the comic and checking both the alt-text and the comments for each page.
The comic is less interactive than it once was, and much of the evidence of it’s original form is gone now, but there is a wealth of great content here.
Preem Lyn of House Fae, does it not make sense for the commentators of a New Weird webcomic to make weird comments? There is a graceful symmetry to be found when one acts like a weirdo in the company of other weirdos. Some might call that peer pressure; others would call it getting along with your own kind. What you call “weird” or “strange” or perhaps even “unfathomable,” we simply call “normal.” Things are strange only for as long as until you get used to them; then they become normal.
Hrmm… Mister Blood Reaper has it right. Y’all need to go back to the beginning, when folks was sometimes asked to tell the story rather than have the story told to them. Reckon?
Ah, but it does make me wish for days gone by sometimes 😉
The phrase “a small city on to itself” is an impossibility. While spacetime can be warped or reshaped without limit, not even the greatest of bodhisattvas can make duplicates of the same matter occupy the same space. The phrase “a small city unto itself” is better.
Journey to the speaking house of Yisun, Lawgiver.
You have much to learn of what is impossible.
That is true, I have much to learn of what is impossible. But then, don’t we all?
The Lawgiver is observant too.
Is this the center of the multiverse or the kiln of the first flame? Scholars asked and studied the sins of gods, but their secrets remained locked away by the eons.The multiverse may never know.
If only I were there, when the Wheel was set ablaze, when Demiurge slew Demiurge and the new world was forged. If only I were there, then I could have followed the example of Lord Mammon and bought a piece of the Seven-Part World, to have it placed upon my brow for all to see but none to possess. I would have wealth and power beyond equal.
But which Demiurge would I replace? Whose seat would I occupy at the Concordance, in this ideal world? Certainly not Mammon’s; were it not for Him, I would have no path to follow. The Witch in the Brick, she who does nothing with everything, would certainly not be missed. The Worm is a form of life almost as low as I presently am, undeserving of her Key. But the Hag, she who breached the hallowed walls of Yre and brought renewed war, who destroyed the value of my wealth, she is one I not only despise but also hate.
I would be a god, if only so that Mottom would not be one.