Scotty

I'm sure Sarah's gonna be asking for hazard pay. She can still claime PTSD from this experience even if there were no physical dangers. Yeah, he probably wouldn't have felt right if he wasn't consistent, at least in terms of hiding the nudity, inconsistency with the kind of outfit on the other hand is perfectly fine. I totally missed the fact that she kept the figure in the last strip as well, even before I read the commentary I was like "wait she still looks very curvy there".

I think Grace only had the monster in her dream be part Griffin because of the context that Tara did try to kill Elliot, but the circumstances of that were such that Tara herself would probably consider herself a monster if she had succeeded only to find out Andrea was never in any danger and Elliot had nothing to do with her not returning home. I think that's also why Grace had the conflict of whether or not to fight because if she was there, and ended up severely hurting or killing Tara, then finding out that she was being mislead and only wanted to find her wife, then Grace would think of herself as a monster. It's bad enough that she felt that way after killing Damien. It's not really as effective as it would have been if Grace had actually been thinking about that subject and not about Sarah and Sam. As we see, she's thoroughly confused. It seems that Grace and Ellen have been having trouble communicating though, I hope it doesn't become too much of a problem.

In the commentary, Dan mentions wanting to say that Susan's and Sarah's moms are there, and that it's been a while since we've seen Susan's mom and never seen Sarah's.

It's assumed that Pandora, being as powerful as she was, had herself convinced that what she was doing was fine and dandy. Any other Immortal might have more difficulty doing so, Pandora said that most Immortals need a special set of circumstances and permission. So while Pandora might not have been the only one able to get away with doing what she did, it'd be a very short list of who else could, maybe Voltaire is one, I dunno, if so, maybe he's past his reset date as well BUT, I would expect the other Immortals would know that when he contacted them to discuss making changes to Immortal Law.

Meeeeeeeerry Christmas. Edit: It's now in the sketchbook section: http://egscomics.com/sketchbook/2018-047

World Junior hockey is on now, and the Canada-Denmark game last night reminded me of Nanase and Susan's arm wrestle match.... Sorry Hack. Also triple sorry for everyone watching having to listen to Pitbull after each goal...

You can see Nanase's hairstyle from that comic in Mrs Kitsune in the milestone image though (exaggerated of course), there really isn't much different that would keep me from thinking that it was Nanase rather than her mother in that. Dan did say he gave Mrs Kitsune more weight though, so I would guess that if Nanase was sitting beside her in the same form, there'd be some difference in that regard, but otherwise they'd likely be almost twins. And Dan still owes us a milestone of Mrs Dunkel having asked Tedd to zap her with FV5. Also seems like Dan's going the same route with Mrs. Brown and Ms. Pompoms that he's done with Mr. Kitsune(commentary). Heck we haven't even seen Mrs. Brown so Dan could just whip up anyone that has some resemblance to Sarah and Carol. Ms. Pompoms at least has a more recent look that Dan could work with than Mr. Kitsune, so he can't really use the "I want to give a proper visual update" excuse. :shrugs: maybe I'm still disappointed that we didn't get to see Ms. Pompoms during Sister 3 with all that was going on with Susan.

You really went out on a limburger for that one.

I don't think so. She was deliberately not telling any details to Sarah and while she confirmed she wanted to be with her son to Tedd I don't remember her talking with him about the clog at all ... I think she only told that to the Disco Wizard. Yeah, I think the closest she got to outright telling someone, was Tedd, though it could be enough that Tedd would connected most of what have been happening to that. I still think there was a missed opportunity for Tedd to mention Voltaire's appearance earlier in the week, but he was probably caught up in the moment and it slipped his mind.

It was assumed by Grace that it was the same Immortal marking everyone, I would imagine that was the general belief among the rest of them, and they haven't seen evidence that the marks were given by more than one Immortal. So if Luke or Camdin did press Justin into telling more after Justin eventually got told by Tedd and/or Susan, it'd likely be the "an Immortal who wanted her son to have more freedom to help people, marked people to increase awareness of magic" story.

That why I added my theory that there's more to it. like when Pandora marked Rhoda, she might have seen Rhoda's aura that suggested someone with low potential, as she would have with Sarah, but there might be many other factors that could allowed Rhoda to awaken quickly and may also even allow Sarah to do the same, but those factors would be something that Pandora can't see despite how much power she has.

I'm saying Pandora marks Rhoda thinking she was a D rank talent with an S rank spell and thinking it would take her longer to awaken, she didn't count on her using her spell frequently enough to awaken faster than expected. When it came time to tell Sarah about her spell and how she could awaken, she would again think Sarah was a D rank talent with an S rank spell, but recalling what happened with Rhoda, Pandora's probably thinking that there's always a chance that Sarah be better than she seems. Now this part's just a theory, but maybe there's more to magic users than just their power, like Pandora looks at a person and judges their ability based on power, but there might be something that dictate how quickly a person gains power, or learns a new spell, or something else that makes it easier, or even harder to pick up magic. Pandora would have been looking at Rhoda and Sarah and see someone with low power and believe that they'd be relying on ambient energy for a while to cast the spells, but what she didn't see in Rhoda would be an ability to exercise her power more efficiently and quickly be able to cast the spell with her own power.

http://egscomics.com/egsnp/nanasecraft-30 And while Sarah likely can get her clothes back on, Nanase's 1 clothing transformation away from having to finish this temple naked, unless Sarah does have an extra shirt or something Nanase can wear. Either that or the next room is the one with the artifact.

Camdin looks like a good candidate for Voltaire to have fun with, but I doubt that's the case right now. Camdin's nosy and suspicious of everything, I don't think he'd even believed that he was marked as a plot to allow Pandora's son to have more freedom.

That's clearer, yes. As for how possible that is, there is Pandora's statement that she thought Rhoda a D-rank talent with an S-Rank spell, which she also used to describe Sarah. We know that in Sarah's case, Pandora told her that awakening should take longer than getting enough power to cast the spell on her own, so maybe she was taking Rhoda as an example of someone who should have taken longer to awaken, like "it has happened once before so maybe it'll happen with you too."

I'm having a tough time understanding this statement. You're saying that Pandora knew Rhoda had awakened this whole time and when Rhoda used her other spells, she acted surprised just for the heck of it? I apologize if that's not what you mean, but I figure that Pandora would have to look at someone with the intent of assessing their potential in order to know if someone can be marked or awakened or how close to awakening they are. For Pandora I would imagine it'd be a quick matter, but I don't think she'd have done that to Rhoda until after the surprise. Looking back, it was said that he was head of the local branch, so he would have mainly covered the Moperville area or at most the Illinois state, he still could have hand picked the agents for that branch if he had any influence within the FBI.

She was already planning on writing a scathing review, so I was being generous here. And what if the temple was procedurally generated? I mean the puzzles themselves probably aren't, but their order might be randomized, and maybe there's another set of puzzles that get swapped in from time to time at random too, so that each run through is rarely the same.

If Arthur knew, what kept him from mentioning it? Considering he was already telling them that Ashley was a wizard, saying she was also given a magic mark at some point would have been insignificant news. Also I would think having a mark would give Ashley an advantage in learning to become a wizard, because it would mean she'd have a spell to work with to get more power before going to learning new spells like a wizard. Also, considering how much time has passed since she took part in Pandora's "Survey", if she did get a mark with one of those 3 kinds of spells, there had to have been plenty of opportunity to accidentally use it, stubbing toes, hangnails, got a papercut, etc. Heck I've bumped my elbow against a table, the instinct is to grab it with your other hand and rub it to make the pain go away, and a sharing feelings spell might have revealed itself at any time when she was with Liz, or even with Bad Tom. Pandora marked Rhoda on a whim and didn't pay any attention to her after that, also Pandora did have a thing for not wanting to predict outcomes, it made things less boring for her, so it's likely that Pandora just glimpsed at the kind of spell would fit Rhoda, but didn't do a thorough check to see what kind of potential she had. Arthur would be more likely to do a thorough check because it's his job to be thorough, and being a Seer,. I would expect that it'd be very difficult to miss something. If it was any other wizard that checked Ashley, I'd be more willing to concede to the possibility of them missing something what Ashley had was too weak for them to detect (like how Pandora detected Sarah's affinity while Jerry didn't) but Arthur being a Seer who, like Tedd, would have access to power beyond ambient energy, been immersed in magic for a large portion of his life and "seen" all kinds of thing. It wouldn't surprise me if any of the agents currently in service in the paranormal division (like Edward) were hand picked by him because he saw their potential. Ashley, as I said above, should have had plenty of opportunity to use her spell, even if she didn't know she was using it. Using the spell though would have built up her power, even if slowly, that should make her power more detectable, though I still think that being marked would be like getting a target painted on your back saying "I've been marked!" for anyone able to detect that sort of thing, like Luke. And Justin assumed that his new power was a result of his ASMA training finally paying off, no one questioned it, not even Edward which really is a failure on Edward's part since he should have known Justin could do minor illusions and this being a new spell should have made him believe Justin had awakened and thus needed a spellbook. Though Edward did question it a bit, he did ask Justin to confirm what he said about the fire golem being really light to which Justin confessed was just a cover to avoid questions of how he was able to kick like that. Edward not following up on it might have been due to being distracted by Arthur's appearance on TV.

I was off in the timing of nudity, didn't expect Sarah think about the handkerchief possibly ruining the balance, but seeing as she was shrunk out of her clothing to begin with, the intention of the puzzle was likely for her to be naked the whole time. I'm sure she'll leave a comment at the end along the lines of "scale puzzle was alright, but would have be better if I was shrunk with my clothes, even if that meant shrinking a but smaller to keep the desired weight."

There was likely diminishing returns on each use, though Pandora did say that Sarah was making progress towards awakening but still had a long way to go. Pandora's suggestion of how many times Sarah would need to use the spell was probably such that Sarah wasn't completely tanking her ability to exercise her power, sure Pandora did say that Sarah can do more if she could manage, but at that point she likely wouldn't be getting any training value from it. She could have also been referring to being awakened by an Immortal vs naturally awakening, like Nanase was awakened by an Immortal despite having been dreaming naturally, and Susan was marked by an Immortal but awakened naturally, they probably don't have similar looking auras than Justin who was both marked and awakened by an immortal.

It should also be noted that Camdin seems to believe that Grace is the "Shadow Guy/Lady" in the last panel, if Camdin is the person Luke is talking to on the phone, the insistence on "Shadow Lady" after Luke states Grace has the same, it'd be easy to assume they're the same person. Especially if Luke has only seen Noah in shadow form.

I would have no clue who the other person would be, the best we could have hoped for would have been it being a twist and Luke's friends being someone we've seen before (like Good Tom), but it was mainly Luke's conversation with Justin about how he knew there was even a difference between someone with a mark and someone with magic but not marked. Justin guessed that Luke saw at least two magic users with confirmed marks and one without, and there's no indication that Luke is included as one of the two marked ( I dunno if he could look at his hands and see an aura, or look in a mirror). So who the other friend that was marked, and maybe even the non marked magic user, are completely new yet to be introduced characters. I dunno what criteria Luke would be using for what a non marked magic user's aura looks like though, if it's a confirmed "they have magic and they let me look to see if they had a mark" thing, then it's probably another person Luke knows, if it's a "I see an aura that look different from someone that's been marked" thing, then it's possible that he was using Noah (Shadow Guy/Lady) as a non marked reference. Of course, base on what Pandora says later about Luke not knowing the difference between someone marked and someone that was just awakened by her, there's more to it.

That's assuming that Pandora ignored the fact that Ashley's goodness prevented her from wacky shenanigans. And yeah, Ashley was known(so was Liz, for a long time) but I doubt Dan ever actually planned on marking Ashley, or if he did, it was after he'd already laid out the marks for Squirrel Prophet and then decided to give her Kevin. There is another friend of Luke's that could have that last unknown mark though. I think it's more likely.

Sarah couldn't touch it though. and actually, Camdin could get to it, unless the room it's normally held in is completely airtight, as a cloud, he should be able to get into anything connected by A/C ducts.

Liz was a last minute addition as well though. " Liz was first in this scene because she's Ashley's friend and someone for her to interact with. No more, no less. Then I started thinking about what her answer to this question would be and what sort of spells she could get, and things snowballed from there. " Yeah, he's gotta be the cloud. Probably not as lame as you'd think though, as a cloud, you could get through cracks in walls, or under most doors, sneak up on someone. Of course the number of criminal acts one could do with it are very high, if anything you carry is included in cloud form, you could enter houses and steal things without leaving evidence of anyone ever being there. Camdin's giving me the vibe of someone who would do that sort of thing. I don't like him.