WHEEL SMASHING LORD 1-13 to 1-14
Chapter: 1
“Here is a cut I call the Life Cut. It is adapted from my ancient master, who roamed the world when it is young, and taught it to me in a different and weaker form. Listen, whelp. I have improved upon her fragile schemes. Where once my sword hand was held by my master, this cut has a secret art that can roam and strike him. It is the most important thing I will teach you – the blade that cuts its own wielder.”
-Great Blade Hermit Ryam to his student Ryo
It’s getting exciting again…
Grow up
There is only one way to be a pure master of sword law. This is to allow your body to become absolutely soaked with death.
Death is always in the body at all times, but happier people are able to let it live only in their skin, or on the surface of their eyelids. They may easily wash it off from time to time and carry on with their lives.
When I tell my students to shave their heads, partly it is so they cannot rid themselves of death so easily. Those who do not bathe in death regularly will forget it is there, and that is a very stupid thing to do when swords are involved.
– Meti Ten Ryo
“Here is the first rule of Sword Law: a sword is a tool for splitting men. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are, whenever you swing it, it will do what it was made for. Take that law and put it in the secret nook next to your heart, my student. It will serve you well.”
-Ryo ten Ryam
“Here is the second rule of sword law: a sword is not subtle. It is a naked instrument, hungry for blood. When you grasp its handle, treat it as you would a deadly viper.”
-Ryo ten Ryam
“O God of Shape, O Twitching God of color, carve our bountiful flesh with thy beautiful razors.”
-Unknown
“Beware the swordsman who carries no blade.”
-Proverb
“A brain is useful only up until the point when you are faced with your enemy. Then it is useless. The only truly useful thing in this cursed world is will. You must suffuse your worthless body with its terrible heat. You must be so hot that even if your enemy should strike your head off, you shall continue to decapitate ten more men. Your boiling blood must spring forth from your neck and mutilate the survivors!”
-Meti’s sword manual
I am making $100 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $16,000 a month by working on a laptop, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply. Everybody must try this job now by just using this website.. www.Moneypay6.com
-from Meti’s Sword Manual, free ad-supported edition
No.
No story can be 100% climax all the time, there’s gotta be pacing!
“To those who doubt, your wounds will never heal
To those who question my creation – I’m not real.”
-Meshuggah, ‘I am Colossus’
My personal opinion of KSBD is that while the story and world is intriguing, the characters are interesting, and the art is divine, the pacing has always been pretty bad
I mean, I’m sure Abbadon would agree with you. He’s stated explicitly that it’s meant to be read in graphic novel form. The pacing is much better if you read it all in one sitting.
yeah i caught up like a month ago and i had a blast reading it like that. no pacing issues at all. now that i’m caught up, it’s agonizing
But that’s not pacing. Pacing’s how it reads in complete form, release schedules aren’t a factor in it.
Well it looks like he heard you. I strongly agree with Angeline: complaining about the pace of a fairly reliably released story of this quality is like complaining that the bartender is pouring the most kickass drink in the megaverse too slowly hey to each his own.
“Dread those with the terrible star on their brow, for they are my kin. They trade in flesh, smoke, and star-knowledge. Their reins of power are made of coursing flame, and their chariot wheels trample the world in any direction they wish. When you see them you will know there are many ways to fill a man with death, and the walls of the world will feel thin to you indeed.”
-Au Vam, Pankrator of Vesh, ruler of the Yellow City
Power, Majesty, and Worthlessness.
“More ashes. More dust. More *disappointment*.”
“This one has become vestigial, useless.”
I feel like I’ve heard that before, is it from somewhere?
It’s a quote from the Darkest Dungeon narrator, when dismissing a hero.
Just look…at those /beautiful locks/
Meti: If you can be all-powerful, but only by the power of your locks, then you are not powerful at all.
The question: “Could I do it without my hair?”
That question ruined me.
I did not think that I could love Auntie Maya more, but now I do.
Loving Maya’s journey from skinny prince, to curvy king to chubby murder-bhudda.
Imagine giving in to the temptations of the Wheel.
I can imagine it pretty well.
Once you’ve mastered imagining defiling bread, imagining pretty much anything else must be of secondary import I’d guess.
There is no bread worth your true soul. And that’s coming from a guy that would walk to the bakery in the morning and make it back around night.
I once made my GM ban flour in his setting, does that count?
The only thing worse than bread is bread progenitor. The only thing better than bread is repurposed bread. You’ve done most well.
Damn Maya looked amazing back in the day! A facade but a pretty one!
You mean to tell me she doesn’t look amazing still?
Oh, she looks amazing now too. Just great appearances either way
And then she grew old, and became EVEN HOTTER.
Abaddon needs to stop because i can only be so gay
Abaddon, reading this comment: “Challenge accepted”
surpass your limits, young soul. homosexuality is boundless.
This is the most ksbd comment in the history of comments.
Upon witnessing King Maya:
*In Squidward voice* “Oh no she’s hoooot!!!”
Mathangi “Maya” Maiar: Maya “Murder the Gods and Steal Their Big Naturals”, Wearer of the Maybe Bra, conquering General of 40,000 worlds, Impetus of Questioned Sexualities.
So, then – might the question be, “How do I win?”
Strange game…
Or maybe: “How do he not win?”
How do we survive?
How about a good game of chess?
Put aside the mistake called “I” and ask rather, “How can he be defeated, destroyed, and cast down into nothingness?”
“How can the world be saved from him?” If Jagganoth were still extant but somehow no longer a threat, surely that would also be satisfactory.
And that, in turn, depends on why you are fighting in the first place.
No, that seems more like an Incubus question, and his entire thing is being a walking example of how not to do things.
There is countless ways to lose a fight, a battle, a war. The Red God has nothing to lose in any way that matters, worn down to merely a mechanism of the Wheel that continues its existence. You can draw no blood from cold stone, nor kill a dead man.
Perhaps the better question is: How do I stop him from taking everything I love?
There is only a single true answer to that.
I think it’s ‘how do I fix him’?
The correct question is: “When do I defeat him?”
Sounds like the question should be “How do I defeat myself?”
Defeat the Enemy called I
There is no opponent, because the word “I” does not exist
Alternate thought. “How do I beat You.”
It is said, the enemy you train against is always your self.
This one’s fourth inner eye predicts that the correct question is either “how do I stop him?” or “how do I save the world?” Meti’s lesson with the mouse was about using violence to stop others from committing unwanted violence, to be able to save what you want to save.
Causality is fickle, and my predictions are sometimes correct…
This seems likely to me as well, sibling. We have failure, then success of the teacher- relating to the saving of rats, and so far a failure of the student to save her rat. Should lose the other I might pray for the success of Yaun’s mission, for even the angels in the abyss are not spared his wrath.
I’m thinking your on the right path, though “Jaggy just needs a hug” seems a little too anticlimactic for this epic series. Probably more along the lines of the anime trope “I want to protect those close to me” Then again Abandon is the master of curve balls, Allison is probably going to follow that path, find it won’t work, and break the universe to find a 3rd way.
“Which will you choose? A, or B?”
“What was the one in the middle?”
If you come to a fork in the road, sit down, wash it, and eat a salad.
We know that Zoss can turn back time. It’s possible they might deal with Jagganoth by going back and changing his tragic backstory? Or take present Jag back there and allow him to reckon with it. This still leaves Metatron as the final boss, though (while Maya deals with Incubus). Perhaps Himself will be involved with that battle? I have a feeling he and Metatron are two sides of the same coin, something like primordial fragments of YISUN.
Surely “How do I smash the Wheel?”, would stop the Wheel-Turning Lord from doing his eponymous thing.
The goal of preventing Jaggy from destroying everything and restarting the cycle is to smash the wheel and restart everthing the way you want it to go.
Turning the wheel would restart the cycle; why should smashing the wheel restart it?
And the whole point is to allow it (life, everything) to continue as it will, not the way Allison (or anybody else) necessarily wants it to go.
Everything upon a suddenly stopped wheel would continue on, in a straight line.
Stopping the wheel would remove the cyclical nature of existence in this multiverse, and perhaps then even restore/create causality.
One feels the word ‘smashing’ might also be a tad emotive, and possibly a metaphor for what might have to happen – “destroy the grand enemy called I”.
I is the wheel on its side, yet there is or perhaps should be no I, as everyone/thing is Yisun. So the master key bearer must perchance stop trying to figure out how to defeat the wheel-turning demiurge, and instead figure out how to defeat herself. A paradox one is sure Yisun would appreciate, or indeed created.
Somehow I am reminded of an old saying from an as-yet-unlinked world: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.”
I wonder where this might go.
“How do I stop him?” must be the one. Maya often uses similar phrasing: “If you don’t like that, you will have to stop me”. I guess the current story she’s telling is going to be a lesson relevant to this (emphasis is on the “unstoppable”).
The question “how do I kill him” is the wrong question to be asking, because “killing him” is the *answer* to the right question.
Kill for the sake of killing and you will struggle. Kill to Save the Rat and you’ll be finished without a thought.
It isn’t about him, stop him or kill him, someone else can take his place, i question isn’t about stopping anything, it’s about turning the wheel towards it’s destruction, so instead ask”how do I smash the Wheel?”
A fourth inner eye is not required to see this. One may remember from past entries of this record that the very first thing Mei said to her young student was: “If you want the mouse to live, you should have stopped me from killing it.” or at least something to that effect.
Then note further that here, Maya refers to Allison as Mouse- and asked an extremely similar question, telling Allison to stop her if she does not want her to drink.
Oh what a day to be gay
And opaque
Seeking peace with power and destruction has been done a million times over and has only worked for the time YOU can hold that power. While for the demiurge that time is long, it’s still a fickle thing. The right question i do not know but i doubt it’s going to be: “cut him good” or “punch him with the master key”.
I don’t know. I still think that step one is probably going to be “violence Jagganoth until he is less of a threat.”
Violence is not a complete solution, but neither can it be removed from the solution entirely.
Perhaps if power is a matter of timing, the question might be:
“How do I make the moment that I defeat him arrive?”
Or otherwise my initial guess:
“What must I be, that my opponent questions how they might defeat me?”
IIUC, Jagganoth still has his invincibility hack with the angel feathers, so simple violence cannot work. Ditto for subtle and complex violence a la Maya.
A while back, somebody suggested that keyholders should battle at the metaphysical level, like competing to edit the world history such that their opponents never existed. I suspect that Allison will eventually do an arse-backwards version of this and win accidentally.
But Maya isn’t teaching Allison anything about battling with her key. Which strengthens my suspicion that Maya wants Allison to take up the Maybe sword to kill *Incubus*, not Jagganoth.
You speak of being a king in the form of quantities, as if these are what makes a kingship. That your armies are this great sum in strength, that you possess such this grand tally of treasures, that this many lands kneel to you. Does the mountain proclaim its great height in how many pebbles raise it up? Does the ocean declare its depth in how many droplets comprise it? No; and yet, they are still mountains, they are still oceans. A crown is something beyond such petty numerology; and to put faith in figures is the first step towards its loss.
I think your chastisement falls on deaf ears, sibling, for Mathangi Mantra has long renounced her crown in all of its size and opulence. She is ruined in status and ruined in ego, qualities I find quite divine, despite the hatred to make a devil burnished black quake in fear.
Reminds me of the bit from Sandman, with the Emperor of America. Quite similar ideas.
Auntie is looking like Karaba the witch
Ah, yes. The return of low detail Maya. I have awaited this for some time.
I can’t believe I am laughing my ass off at THIS
She’s one-punch-man’s auntie! This explains everything!
No Sword Woman
Auntie? Sorry. Auntie? Sorry. Auntie? Sorry. Auntie? Sorry. Auntie? Sorry.
I’m in love with that DO!
Architects we won.
“I commanded”, “I had”, “I was”… if it was the echoes of Meti’s intent which Maya felt, they were correct. Maya had indeed lost. She’d ceded victory to the wheel, and to the false idol of the self. The truth Allison must realize is that her victory is only achieved in one way:
Defeat the great enemy called I.
I truly hope that once this marvelous story is over, Broken Worlds can get an update and grow, because I’m sure there will still be plenty of tales to tell. Now that the author has experience after designing the very good LANCER, Broken Worlds can become much greater than what it is now and, with that, this universe could be expanded beyond what we have seen in K6BD.
I am not a fan of the PbA system, so a change would be nice for me as well.
I didn’t know broken world was a thing before your post.
I already made my own ksbd RPG based on Feng Shui (by Robin D. Laws) ruleset, and it works quite well (I wouldn’t touch PbA with a ten feet pole).
By the way, Lancer is great.
Abby, I love you, but as a prosthetist, that leg is a war crime. At least let the wheel-smashing lord get a socket she can stuff her limb into, I’m begging you.
I came here to say this!. Experience gained from my late father and his prostheses.
I beg thee, pray. For the soft tissue damage.
I knew the leg was going to be bad when I saw the straps. I am horrified to realize that the arm is even worse. Is there any chance that she’ll realize you’re supposed to wear the straps across your body and not just pull them really tight?
Considering she can break knives with her eyeball, I don’t think a bit of tight leather is gonna slow her down too much.
So breaking character here, I know that we’re operating on a lot of suspension of disbelief, but Ally’s prostheses are asking for way too much suspension from the POV of someone in the industry. There is no way on god’s green earth that mere leather straps are anywhere near enough for suspension, both for the arm and the leg. The arm is just going to fall right off, and the leg has so many issues that I’d have to write out an essay to spell it all out. Let’s just say that severe soft tissue damage is pretty much a guarantee with that set up.
The thing is that fixing this is pretty easy. For the arm, use an 8-figure harness. For the leg, just include a socket and you’re golden. I’m not expecting crazy stuff like suction suspension and active vacuum, just the basics. There’s tons of diagrams online that Abaddon could reference if need be.
I mean, before she had the prostheses, she was standing and running on a mental energy projection of her leg and raindrops were bouncing off her phantom limbs. These wooden versions are probably held in place by the energy projection mostly, which is why they don’t need the same suspension as real prosthetics. Maya said they’re to help her conserve her strength – it’s probably strenuous to maintain a solid limb using nothing but psionic energy, but easier to use that same energy to animate an already solid wooden limb.
You’re missing the point. I’m not talking about how the prostheses work, I’m talking about doing the bare minimum. Literally just a harness for the arm and a socket for the leg. Sure you might write it off as iT’s FaNtASy, but to actual amputees and healthcare professionals involved with prosthetics, Allison’s devices are an egregious oversight that could’ve been avoided with some basic research. It’s right up there with Solomon’s misplaced nipples, potentially worse bc I’m not sure if Abaddon would fix this
Exactly this.
They seem to be more like a glove and a boot that fit over her phantom limbs, rather than actual prosthetic limbs. If the intention was to depict realistic prostheses, then yes it is an oversight. I suppose no explanation of what they are or how they work was explicitly given in the comic, so we should probably assume this is the case. In that respect they do look a bit weird visually, seeming to be held on only by small straps.
Abbadon is usually mindful of things like this, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was changed or explained.
That’s a massive cop-out. What’s the point of making your character an amputee and giving them prostheses if everything can be handwaved away by magic limbs? Abaddon has clearly been building towards making Ally a prosthetic wearer, and literally had her destroy the fancy cybernetic limbs that Jadis gave her because they were crutches allowing her to hide from the realities of her situation and prevent her growth (among many other readings of that moment). It would’ve been cool if he had actually gone into the realities of losing both an arm and a leg on the same side of the body, but it’s not something I’m too pressed about because that can be difficult to research and physical rehab is not what the comic is about anyways.
What I am pressed about is if you take all that build up, and the fact Abbadon put Allison’s prostheses front and center in these panels, and he couldn’t even do the bare minimum.
So breaking character here, I know that we’re operating on a lot of suspension of disbelief, but Maya’s Hotness is asking for way too much suspension from the POV of someone attracted to women. There is no way on god’s green earth that mere mortals are anywhere near enough for this, both for the demiurge and mendicant knight. My jaw is just going to fall right off, and the straight legged piggyback has so many issues that I’d have to write out an essay to spell it all out. Let’s just say that severe self induced soft tissue damage is pretty much a guarantee after seeing this much hawt.
The thing is that fixing this is pretty easy. For the demiurge Maya, use some overalls. For the Mendicant Knight Maya, just include a little less badassery, and you’re golden. I’m not expecting crazy stuff like clown costumes and being a rotten corpse queen, just the basics. There’s tons of diagrams online that Abaddon could reference if need be.
Come on, DM/Abaddon: That prosthetic leg destroyed my immersion.
What do I want?
“Ah, *much* better. Now answer it.”
Something about Maya’s expression on her mobile throne here reminds me more than a little of Mother Om’s
That luxurious shade of orange might have something to do with it.
GLORIous even.
Is this call back to Meti’s big lesson in King of Swords 6-59: If you wanted the rat/the world to live, you should have been prepared cut down your classmate/Jagganoth with all your might?
Despite Mathengi/Maya’s great and terrible army ever, she was never ready to address the doubt and the possible lack of focus in her own heart?
Uh. Hey auntie.
Kung-Fu monkey is back!
‘Jags needs a hug’ Seems to have been tried before with just chilling out and having some tea. Didn’t work unfortunately.
“I’ve been rich. Easier than being poor. Harder than doing just fine.”
How do you smash the wheel?
Ash Lays On Ground is observant.
Zoss effectively said he could not smash the wheel because he knew too much about it and had grown to the height of his mastery being intricately entwined within it. He hoped that Alice as an ingenue could.
Even now, she has the master ley-stone, but is still not really a demiurge. She’s still an outsider.