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The Old Hack

Story Wednesday March 14, 2018

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So, Adrian's idea of selling it to pay someone more skilled to fix Abraham's cursed noble friend would not work?

And Ashley TRIED to warn them. I hope Magus will manage to get his body and troubles will only start afterwards ...

... why should the "diamond" shatter? It survived previous divisions just fine ... and what will Abraham say about that? Will he stops getting "stoned"?

BTW, anyone who still doesn't think Sirleck plans to possess Magus should look at Ellen's face in panel six.

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I guess this might be my last chance to share my speculation on why this storyline is "Ellens and Elliots", both plural: Perhaps Elliot is under two "curses", the Magus possession and Ellen's FV5, and touching the diamond will result in a new being for each "curse" (maybe even a third for the combined form?).  (Elliot doesn't look like he's FV5'd, but Magus's possession could act like a clone form and have a higher priority than FV5, or maybe Magus applied yet a third enchantment to give himself a male form again.)

(Also I can think of multiple other possibilities...)

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

...why should the "diamond" shatter? It survived previous divisions just fine ... and what will Abraham say about that? Will he stops getting "stoned"?

I think that's part of the alteration, most likely something Pandora made so Magus new body is the last creation from it.

For what this means for Abraham, I hope it means he will became free from his self-imposed curse.

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14 minutes ago, Entropy said:

I think that's part of the alteration, most likely something Pandora made so Magus new body is the last creation from it.

Does raise the question,  why didn't some one break it before.

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36 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Does raise the question,  why didn't some one break it before.

I can just see Abraham hitting it with a crystal-shattering spell, but it doesn't work on a crystal-over-wood construct. Next, he uses a fire hot enough to burn diamond (the only flammable precious gem) but the actual crystal is not diamond and not flammable and protects the wood core...

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Just now, hkmaly said:

This is why I'm thinking the "diamond" was an artifact of an earlier magic system that was repurposed. Maybe Abraham didn't know what it really was either.

Just now, hkmaly said:

... why should the "diamond" shatter? It survived previous divisions just fine ... and what will Abraham say about that? Will he stops getting "stoned"?

Well Magus is going to modify the "diamond's" effect, my guess is he wants to ensure that it's him that gets bound to the duplicate body and not another copy of Elliot, maybe Pandora expected that his magic will make the "diamond" become unstable?

Just now, hkmaly said:

BTW, anyone who still doesn't think Sirleck plans to possess Magus should look at Ellen's face in panel six.

I remember many people thinking that Adrian was Sirleck's main target for possession.

 

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52 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I remember many people thinking that Adrian was Sirleck's main target for possession.

I think I probably floated that idea first, quite awhile ago, but I'm  not going to plow through my old posts now. My premise was that after Voltaire told Sirleck about Adrian, Sirleck might think Adrian would be an even better host body than Magus. Pretty obvious now that's not how Sirleck decided to go.

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

This is why I'm thinking the "diamond" was an artifact of an earlier magic system that was repurposed. Maybe Abraham didn't know what it really was either.

Oh my.  If that were true... if the suppressed magic of an artifact was the real reason Abraham's spell was off, that would be interesting enough, something that might make Abraham less likely to to blame himself, but if that were true, the Dewitchery Diamond is a suppressed artifact, there is no way of knowing what will happen now when Magus tries to cast his spell, but I am betting it will be a big surprise all around.

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

BTW, anyone who still doesn't think Sirleck plans to possess Magus should look at Ellen's face in panel six.

True, but dang, that is such a non-Ellen face, it kind of creeps me out.  Here's hoping Sirleck's plans get foiled one way or another.

 

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This is the Wednesday comic?

This means we may actually see what goes wrong on Friday, instead of waiting all weekend.

And I find it difficult to believe that  Dan, as an American in the Comic business, does not know the common, commercial name for wood shavings used as packing material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrRdbEi8GPI

 

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9 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And I find it difficult to believe that  Dan, as an American in the Comic business, does not know the common, commercial name for wood shavings used as packing material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrRdbEi8GPI

 

Stan Lee is really quoting Bullwinkle the moose quoting Longfellow in Bullwinkle's Corner in Rocky & Bullwinkle #88. 
 

Remember the youth 'mid snow and ice:
Who bore the banner with the strange device,: 
Excelsior!

The connection with wood shavings as a packing material is the punch line at the end.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

This is the Wednesday comic?

This means we may actually see what goes wrong on Friday, instead of waiting all weekend.

That just means the Friday comic will be an even bigger WTF! OMG! than we can imagine, right?

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6 hours ago, Scotty said:

I remember many people thinking that Adrian was Sirleck's main target for possession.

I did, actually. It was the only way I could explain why Sirleck was so agitated at learning of Adrian's existence at the time. Also the way Colonel Sanders seemed to stress that it was only a weak pair of Immortals who were guarding him, as if wanting to lure Sirleck to him.

It seems almost certain Sirleck's motivation is different now. But I'm still not sure precisely why Sirleck became so agitated when learning of Adrian's existence.

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So the dewitchery diamond was just a very fancy looking doodad before Abraham made arguably the biggest mistake of his life, assuming it wasn't an artifact from a previous magic system. If it was a suppressed artifact, then things are going to get very complicated very quickly. Mixing magic, even within the same magic system, often leads to unexpected results.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:
8 hours ago, Scotty said:

I remember many people thinking that Adrian was Sirleck's main target for possession.

I did, actually. It was the only way I could explain why Sirleck was so agitated at learning of Adrian's existence at the time. Also the way Colonel Sanders seemed to stress that it was only a weak pair of Immortals who were guarding him, as if wanting to lure Sirleck to him.

It seems almost certain Sirleck's motivation is different now. But I'm still not sure precisely why Sirleck became so agitated when learning of Adrian's existence.

Because Adrian being in Moperville and supposedly linked to the two Immortals he hoped to distract complicated the plan. With just a records search, he could get a rough estimate of Adrian's age and therefor a rough estimate of Adrian's power and skill. With a powerful elf in the picture, Sirleck was going to need more than a couple vampires making noise to distract Helena and Demetrius. He was going to need enough vampires that were coordinated together to pose a serious threat to the elf, which meant more money and resources poured into a plan with greater risk if it failed

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10 hours ago, partner555 said:
11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

BTW, anyone who still doesn't think Sirleck plans to possess Magus should look at Ellen's face in panel six.

Did anyone actually thought otherwise? I was under the impression it was obvious since Sirleck agreed to the plan.

I would think so as well, but there were people claiming he's planning to possess Adrian at that time ...

8 hours ago, Haylo said:
9 hours ago, mlooney said:

Does raise the question,  why didn't some one break it before.

I can just see Abraham hitting it with a crystal-shattering spell, but it doesn't work on a crystal-over-wood construct. Next, he uses a fire hot enough to burn diamond (the only flammable precious gem) but the actual crystal is not diamond and not flammable and protects the wood core...

... only flamable? Was this theory tested properly?

8 hours ago, Scotty said:
11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... why should the "diamond" shatter? It survived previous divisions just fine ... and what will Abraham say about that? Will he stops getting "stoned"?

Well Magus is going to modify the "diamond's" effect, my guess is he wants to ensure that it's him that gets bound to the duplicate body and not another copy of Elliot, maybe Pandora expected that his magic will make the "diamond" become unstable?

Hmmm, that would make sense.

6 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:
8 hours ago, Scotty said:

This is why I'm thinking the "diamond" was an artifact of an earlier magic system that was repurposed. Maybe Abraham didn't know what it really was either.

Oh my.  If that were true... if the suppressed magic of an artifact was the real reason Abraham's spell was off, that would be interesting enough, something that might make Abraham less likely to to blame himself, but if that were true, the Dewitchery Diamond is a suppressed artifact, there is no way of knowing what will happen now when Magus tries to cast his spell, but I am betting it will be a big surprise all around.

Tempting, but I think Abraham was really that inexperienced.

(That doesn't mean the diamond ISN'T artifact from previous magic system - just that I don't think it was reason why Abraham's spell was off. Magic from previous systems should be inert at that time ...)

 

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

It seems almost certain Sirleck's motivation is different now. But I'm still not sure precisely why Sirleck became so agitated when learning of Adrian's existence.

I think it was Sirleck thinking opportunity was knocking and he was rushing for the door to answer it. He'd been stuck in that brain dead host for nearly 10 months. 10 months of waiting for Magus to get Ellen to zap Elliot and go to the Dewitchery Diamond. It was clear that Sirleck told Magus about the vampires being effective in distracting Helena and Demetrius, and Sirleck at least mentioned learning about a half immortal being related to one of them, what's unclear is whether Sirleck mentioned Adrian by name though, Magus could have just assumed there is more than one Elf in Moperville, since we never saw Magus correct Sirleck and say the Adrian is the son of the crazy ancient immortal that coerced Sirleck into helping the first time.

So yeah Sirleck was likely getting tired of waiting and when Voltaire dropped that bit of info on him, he just couldn't pass it up.

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Does anyone else think that Pandora telling Magus the Dewitchery Diamond would probably explode when Magus used it to create a new body for himself sounds  borderline psychic? Pandora hasn't communicated with Magus for a long time, at least since Magus refused Pandora's "enguidance" to make Edward kill Abraham, and they weren't discussing exploding diamonds then. There could be several reasons Pandora told Magus that, but since we didn't hear Pandora telling Magus and have only just now heard Magus say that Pandora did warn him about the possibly explosive diamond, Dan hasn't given us much more than a tease in this comic, and license to speculate, at least until the next comic.

One speculation I have is that Pandora may have planned all along to destroy the Dewitchery Diamond as part of Magus' resurrection; that would be a satisfactory end to to her quest to destroy what destroyed Blaike Raven.

That leads me to another speculation: Is the possibility of the diamond exploding related to the change in magic that has reactivated all enchantments from before previous changes?  That seems pretty appropriate to me now, although Magus didn't seem to have that possibility in mind when he noted that the artifacts in the other boxes didn't seem to be as useless or as inert as he expected in the last two panels of the comic for Friday, March 9.

Could Pandora have expected that if the plan worked at all magic would have changed and she would have caused that change with her final spell during her reset?

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3 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Does anyone else think that Pandora telling Magus the Dewitchery Diamond would probably explode when Magus used it to create a new body for himself sounds  borderline psychic? Pandora hasn't communicated with Magus for a long time, at least since Magus refused Pandora's "enguidance" to make Edward kill Abraham, and they weren't discussing exploding diamonds then. There could be several reasons Pandora told Magus that, but since we didn't hear Pandora telling Magus and have only just now heard Magus say that Pandora did warn him about the possibly explosive diamond, Dan hasn't given us much more than a tease in this comic, and license to speculate, at least until the next comic.

I think this is something she would have told him around the time Ellen was created.

5 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

One speculation I have is that Pandora may have planned all along to destroy the Dewitchery Diamond as part of Magus' resurrection; that would be a satisfactory end to to her quest to destroy what destroyed Blaike Raven.

Quite possible, she might have engineered it hoping that Adrian would kill Abraham and avenge his father's death, that's assuming the "Unwaking Wolf" that the diamond created was the one that killed Blaike.

8 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

That leads me to another speculation: Is the possibility of the diamond exploding related to the change in magic that has reactivated all enchantments from before previous changes?  That seems pretty appropriate to me now, although Magus didn't seem to have that possibility in mind when he noted that the artifacts in the other boxes didn't seem to be as useless or as inert as he expected in the last two panels of the comic for Friday, March 9.

Could Pandora have expected that if the plan worked at all magic would have changed and she would have caused that change with her final spell during her reset?

This I'm not entirely sure of, mainly because I'm not sure if she could have predicted Tedd being able to convince the WoM to open up magic the way it did. I'm not even sure if Heka actually told Pandora what the second purpose of a Seer is, he did mention there being a second purpose, but suggested that he didn't want to risk Tedd becoming ineligible for it, and Pandora seemed to concede to his judgement.

 

Here's another possiblity, Pandora did get in contact with Magus again, and convince him that she's sorry for jerking him around and set things up so that he'd have a clean shot at getting his body back (lights on, no guard, might be Pandora's doing), Magus might have even mentioned Sirleck's plan about the vampire attack, didn't it seem fishy that Pandora arrived just in time to warn Adrian about the vampires, how did she know they were about to attack? The only wrench in this whole thing would be magic opening up the way it did which is leaving a lot of unknowns  that could happen.

Basically Magus could have been acting when he got to the part of his story about Pandora helping him, I mean he would have felt like that genuinely before, but at that moment he might be pretending to still hold a grudge against her.

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A wooden core inside a crystal? That's unusual; although I suppose it could be natural, it seems more likely to me it was created by someone with the magic to control crystal growth - which would further imply it's no ordinary piece of wood. My speculation: the wood core is actually an ancient wand. (Hmm... Maybe it was a highly important and/or dangerous wand, and someone encased the wand in crystal to protect it and keep people from using it?)

14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And Ashley TRIED to warn them. I hope Magus will manage to get his body and troubles will only start afterwards ...

Same here. For one thing there's a better chance of Elliot coming out of this unscathed that way. For another, I'm kind of rooting for Magus a little here. And most importantly, the plot thread of Magus' resurrection has been left hanging for over a decade of real time (and I've been waiting for it's resolution most of that time) and I really don't want to see it left hanging any longer now that we're so close.

2 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

That leads me to another speculation: Is the possibility of the diamond exploding related to the change in magic that has reactivated all enchantments from before previous changes?  That seems pretty appropriate to me now, although Magus didn't seem to have that possibility in mind when he noted that the artifacts in the other boxes didn't seem to be as useless or as inert as he expected in the last two panels of the comic for Friday, March 9.

Could Pandora have expected that if the plan worked at all magic would have changed and she would have caused that change with her final spell during her reset?

Pandora had no idea there was any risk of a Magic Change (and had forgotten they were a possibility) until well after she parted ways with Magus. So unless as Scotty suggested there's been a reconciliation between the two of them we never saw, she must have told Magus about the exploding Diamond long before she knew about the Magic Change, and in that case the exploding Diamond and the Magic Change must be unrelated.

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