Wielder of Names 2-34
Chapter: 2
“My apprentice asked me why I prefer the company of dogs to men. I told her that a man is an kind of intolerable monkey who clings obsessively to his own fate. To subvert his mortality, he inflicts death and unfathomable torture upon the world. My apprentice told me that I was being a little severe, and asked me about dogs.
I told her that dogs keep my feet warm, and they care very little how badly I insult them. In this respect, they are also better than apprentices.”
– Meti, of the Yellow City
Very interesting. Both to see how that single mask shifts color to color, and to know that our dear Cio was once very powerful indeed. I wonder what effect this fact will have on things to come.
Nice page, Abbadon.
Man, if she’d quit name-dropping at Princess, that would have been one bitching-looking ebon demon. I wonder if all those ums, ahs, and uhs became part of the actual name.
Fully, but a name is intent. Uhm and Ah would not count, no?
At last we see the chapter title come to full meaning within the story.
AHAHAHAHAH YES INDEED I DID DECLARE IT SO, AND KNEW THAT I WOULD SEE IT TRUE!
CIO HAS DEGENERATED JUST AS VLADOK IS NOW PRINCESS!! AHAHAHA!
Excuse my outburst, t’was o’er an understandable development of my favored horned beauty that cause such uproarious joy to burst forth. Aha!
Nah. Vladok hasn’t degenerated, he’s just gone. He’s ceased to be, he’s an ex-demon. Princess Mamoru Moonshine Jagermeister Jack Jack Daniels Timothy Tim Bill Freddy Mercury Blueberry Luna, Esquire is a new demon made from Vladok’s flame.
You forgot the Um and the Ah, methinks.
the “you will remember a little in time” but seems to imply that’s not quite the case.
I’m pretty sure they still stay Vladok underneath it all? The whole concept is that there are multiple names for each of their colors.
Ah, scratch that. I forgot he destroyed his old mask.
Ah yes, tis always jarring to witness an old soul with a new mind
The more precise a demon is defined, the weaker he is since it limits expectations. With such a silly name this one is stuck in kindergarten forever … while Cio is probably defined further with “the pen is stronger than the sword” or somesuch which is not a bad way to keep her powerful, yet unable to fight herself and in need of a companion/champion.
Truly it is a shame Updog is not part of their name. But Princess suffices for that terrible cute demon.
I don’t get why that’s a shame. What’s Updog?
Nothing much, what’s up with you?
not much, whats up with you?
I can’t believe you feel for that xD
I, for one, am quite happy that they did.
Would quite like to subscribe to Meti’s newsletter at this point.
Wait, HER name? Princess Whatshername Esquire was a he before was she not? 2-26 Cio refers to her as ” ‘im ” so what happened? Is it because of the name, the color, the person who masked her..? Angels look down on gender, what do demons have to say about it I wonder.
I believe gender depends on color. All blue imps are female. So are yellow devils. It seems red and green are male. Ebon might be either/or/genderless. Probably same with pallid
I gather it’s the name. Everything I understand, which isn’t much, tells me the names define, limit, and conform the demon to expectations.
I think it’s a bad idea to make a close inspection on any devil. You know what they say: “Lovecraft was inspired by something.” Some things are better left to imagination. A devil’s second-most-guarded is probably one of those things.
So cause Princess is now the first name of Vladok that made his black flame form take up a feminine appearance? Interesting.
Any guess as to what Ciocie’s True Black Name is?
I say it’s Maximus.
*strokes his beard thoughtfully*
Yes, I approve.
I do not, for I believe it’s “The”.
The way demon names seem to work, I would guess at Maximus (=greatest, unrivaled) as well.
Considering how silly Ciocie’s full name is, Mayhaps it was Allison herself who sealed her in her current form after some temporal shenanigans?
“Oh my goooood”.
Someone is hit with Hangover Hammer.
Alas, poor Vladok, we hardly knew ye.
In fact, it looks like Vladok was effectively gone from the moment his mask was broken; like reverting back to the flame destroys a demon’s self. Does this mean that Princess Luna is actually a new creature? I wonder if she has even retained any memories of her previous existence?
Also: Cio used to be a mighty-ass demoness! Aw yiss. That puts Oskar’s comment about “the state you’re in” in a whole new light, I guess. I’ve no doubt that we’ll get to know more about her past exploits and how she came to be so blue ^^
it’s also interesting to note that when a devil shrinks from ebon to blue, they stay much larger than a normal blue devil.
Maybe? Cio is larger than Luna, and Luna looks larger than the little blue devils we’ve seen milling around the bar; but do we know what the size of a ‘regular’ blue devil is supposed to be? :/
The majority of blue devils we’ve seen so far, the bar devils, were v. small. Cio, Luna and Number 1 have been much larger. Maybe it fluctuates depending on whether the devil is newly-formed or has been demoted?
Maybe. Still so much to learn about the nature of these fascinating creatures and their binding…
On a related note: “You will remember a little”. The yellow lady says that, though it escaped my notice in the first reading. So there is something of Vladok’s old self left in there somewhere.
Is Number 1 a blue devil? They seem to defy everything we know about them. Number 1 appears to be a guy even though all imps appear to be female, his body is blue but his mask is red, and he’s got wings. There’s no other devil like him.
I have to fix this, he should be referred to as a red devil
Number 1 is a queer fellow indeed. His mask is red, but the rest of him doesn’t fit Thulsa Drulle’s description of a red devil at all 😛 Should we doubt even the words of the Masters?
Of course there’s no devil like him, he’s Number 1!
Wait who’s this number one?
It’s also worth noting that clothes seem to be part of the default form for gold and blue demons, but not for the black, green or red.
In the void a flame is a thing of substance, in the wheel it is not. Only a mask has immutable form in both. It would not be unwise to assume that this is why devils appear so unlike their voidly selves while within creation. Both Number 1 and Preem Nand show suitable masks, but forms significantly dissimilar to those of devils within the void. Even Cio appears less armedley within within the void.
I’d like to take this moment to shamelessly promote the K6BD subreddit, for easy fan disussion without needing to wade through half a mile of comments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/killsixbilliondemons/
(hopefully this doesn’t trip the spamfilters)
Someone was hit with Hangover Hammer. Hard.
“Oh my goooood”.
To be named by Royalty is a heady liquor- it must be, lest the Liars know the sobriety of the Black Flame unbound. Admittedly, actual liquor can be pretty heady as well.
You wake up in the middle of a field of waste, as if there had been a truly epic pub brawl. You see fire and bottles around you. Your head hurts. Before you is a human. What do you do?
> Where am I?
> What did I drink?
> Who am I even?
Your head hurts. Your name appears in your mind. It is windy and long, containing the names of human spirits of terrible power, but overall seems to spell “Hangover Personified”.
> WHAT?
Your head hurts.
> Oh my goooooood.
Your head hurts. You want to grieve in peace but it doesn’t seem like the outside world will let you.
You have the feeling it’s gonna be a long day.
So … with these two panels next to each other, and the exact shape of the horns, I’d not wonder if once-ebon Cio stole said key.
Already established, see KSBD 3-40: http://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/ksbd-3-40/
Indeed, ’twas our Ms. Cio; her theft was referred to by 82 in an earlier comic.
3-40, to be exact.
So, looking back at the first pages, the key that Allison has looks different than the one Cio stole. This is probably obvious, but I thought it was worth checking. Allison’s doesn’t have the crosspieces, although it does have the loop.
I wonder if she’ll eventually get a halo, too?
Another thing I’ve been considering is if ‘demon’ is the same as ‘devil’. I’m currently leaning towards no, based on two things. If I’m remembering correctly, the words have never been used interchangeably in the comic or footnotes. and, AND, looking back the riders who attacked Alison and her boyfriend in the beginning, they look an _awful_ lot like thorny angels. The same sort of slim outlines, and very definitely spiky.
So I’m going to hazard that the ‘demons’ in Kill Six Billion aren’t ‘devils’ but ‘fallen angels’. We’ll have to wait and see how things develop, I guess, but I’m currently pegging the main antagonists in this comic as the Path of Thorns folk, and possibly Metatron. I wonder if the light-bringer will show up eventually.
This is currently shaping up to be one of my favorite comics, ever. Epic and beautiful and very nicely executed.The more I know, the more questions I have. There are some answers here… yet I still understand nothing.
If I remember right, demons and devils were initially set to be different orders of creatures: demons were to be ethereal/insubstantial/spiritual beings, whereas devils had physical bodies; or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, that concept was ditched and now ‘devil’ and ‘demon’ are effectively two different names for the same thing.
I recall that Devils were the Black Children of YIS, while Demons were the White Children of UN. I had simply thought we had not encountered any of the latter yet? If they are non-corporeal that might be a reason as to why.
Then again, while names have power and significance, we also see that they can change meaning, and loose power. Perhaps the White Children of UN were indeed once known as Demons. Perhaps their insubstantial nature has obscured their presence, or they have for whatever reason fled Throne and any “known” regions for their own purposes…but for whatever reason, few remember them, and so the Name has changed meanings, and become a vernacular way to refer to Devils.
With Princess and Cio, Allison now has two fallen ebons in her entourage. Someone with two ebon servants is bad enough, someone with two ebon servants reduced to blue only because they looked at the master wrongly is truly terrifying.
It was very interesting seeing the demon form in accordance to the names it was given.
Also what’s with all the demons kneeling?
They bow because they know they are in the presence of true royalty with the proof being the kings key and the witness of the demotion of a ebon devil within the span of mere seconds. These lowbloods are right to assume that they should prostrate themselves in the vicinity of a true example of a proper and powerful heiress.
I see them lurking, but not kneeling.
“You wanna fight me too?” I literally snapped my fingers haha tell ’em girl.
…and the Demon’s Moral of this tale is: Bargain for your new mask ->AND<- name. Otherwise the new name you shall acquire when masked will be randomly generated on the fly by a completely inebriated sorority girl and her holy host of ethereal followers.
Or the moral is that you don’t break your vow when losing a demonic drinking contest to someone who you know to be commanding a true Key, since they’ll be drunk off their ass when they slap you down and give you your new name.
Am I the only one who imagines Cio talking *exactly* like she does now when she was an Ebon?
So the question ultimately becomes, what the heck happened to Cio between stealing that Key of Kings and meeting Allison? I mean, besides gaining a bunch of names and becoming the unhappy employee of what I assume to be an overgrown gold devil?
She got caught and punished, obviously.