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Tom Sewell

Pandora's Aberration Apocalypse

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I'm starting this one because I have nagging questions about Pandora's Terminator-style Judgement Day for Aberrations. Here are some roughly in order of how nagging:

  1. Why isn't Sirleck dead?
  2. How could the Immortals have killed so many Aberrations with a spell that only has a range of several miles?
  3. How much collateral damage resulted?
  4. If Adrian Raven needed Susan's sword to slay Aberrations, where do Susan and Diane get their hunter talent from?
  5. How do Helena and Demetrius find Aberrations? Why wouldn't they have detected Sirleck's presence in Moperville when he came to possess Francine and then Ellen?
  6. When and how was Sirleck sure that Helen and Demetrius wouldn't be guarding Elliot? (I'm not saying that he was necessarily right about being sure.)
  7. When did Sirleck look up at the lights in the sky?

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32 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I'm starting this one because I have nagging questions about Pandora's Terminator-style Judgement Day for Aberrations. Here are some roughly in order of how nagging:

  1. Why isn't Sirleck dead?
  2. How could the Immortals have killed so many Aberrations with a spell that only has a range of several miles?

1. The attack was on the physical plane, Sirleck was not.

2. Several miles from each Immortal. Apparently there are a lot of Immortals, spread out across much of the world.

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9 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

1. The attack was on the physical plane, Sirleck was not.

Basically my conclusion from the attacks (I think Sirleck was hit by between two and four), but Sirleck was in the physical plane in Moperville at least once earlier in the day, when he took possession of Ellen at Moperville South. He has to be on the physical plane to attack a victim. I was going to say "twice" but I've had a job that took an hour or more to commute to or back from so Sirleck might have taken Francine outside Helen and Demetrius' detection range.

However, the "dodged a bullet" remark" makes me think that Sirleck felt those attacks, probably through the interface he has with Ellen. Muscle memory and more passes back through that interface.

20 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

2. Several miles from each Immortal. Apparently there are a lot of Immortals, spread out across much of the world.

Yes, I suspect more than Dan thought would be necessary. I did some real math on the problem. I estimated that just to cover all the urbanized land areas on Earth could take something like 70,000 Immortals, or about one Immortal for every 100,000 humans. That would make Immortals 100 times more commonplace than Seers. I was using a value of "four" for "several," and only 3% of the land area on Earth, the most generous estimate I found.

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Two counterpoints-

1. Given how immortals work it is entirely possible that there are that many immortals out there..

2. Immortals and aberrations are both drawn to places where there is a high magical potential, immortals to guide and empower, aberrations to feed, it's more than likely that most immortals were close to a lot of aberrations, especially since both groups don't normally interact directly.

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27 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Basically my conclusion from the attacks (I think Sirleck was hit by between two and four), but Sirleck was in the physical plane in Moperville at least once earlier in the day, when he took possession of Ellen at Moperville South. He has to be on the physical plane to attack a victim. I was going to say "twice" but I've had a job that took an hour or more to commute to or back from so Sirleck might have taken Francine outside Helen and Demetrius' detection range.

However, the "dodged a bullet" remark" makes me think that Sirleck felt those attacks, probably through the interface he has with Ellen. Muscle memory and more passes back through that interface.

Sirleck was in possession of Ellen at the time Pandora made all the Immortals do their aberration nuke spell. He might not have known what the lights in the sky were exactly, and not how widespread they were,but he had to have known they'd be related to the vampire attack he set up, so that could be why he felt he dodged a bullet.

On to the other parts:

3. It doesn't appear that Pandora's nuke caused any actual damage though there are very likely piles of ash everywhere that a vampire once stood that need to be cleaned up. There's probably some minor damage in the mall from the initial vampire attack, the worst of it maybe being scorchmarks from Gullet's fire spell, but it's possible that Adrian completely negated it.

4. Susan and Diane get their affinity from Pandora, the question of why couldn't Adrian have summons a magic sword, it's quite possible that he doesn't have that spell, just because you have an affinity for something doesn't necessarily mean you automatically get that spell. Adrian's probably got other "bane" related spells or something that gives him an advantage when fighting aberrations.

5. Helena and Demetrius believe they need to protect Elliot, Ellen might not even factor into this and so she's left open for Sirleck. Sirleck might have also set up distractions for them so they'd be looking away when he did something like swap bodies. They're also probably not powerful enough to detect Sirleck on the spirit plane but aberrations in the mortal plane might be more obvious to them.

6. This one is unknown really since we've seen no sign of them at all during the vampire attack or in the aftermath when Pandora was "reset". It's why I've got a sneaking suspicion of why Magus' and Sirleck's entry into the facility and access to the diamond seems "too easy".

7. I've said before that Sirleck sees the lights as he's driving Magus and Ashley to the facility, he's looking out the car window as it's happening and you see Magus in the passenger seat.

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30 minutes ago, Scotty said:

7. I've said before that Sirleck sees the lights as he's driving Magus and Ashley to the facility, he's looking out the car window as it's happening and you see Magus in the passenger seat.

If seeing the lights was the signal to Sirleck that the two Immortals watching Elliot would be distracted, then this would have happened before Sirleck zapped Elliot so that Magus could get into position for the zap. Sirleck looks up at the lights toward the end of Part 22 Apocalypse, which begins "Not long before Sirleck zapped Elliot." I thought Dan had banned time travel in EGS. Magus doesn't have a body to be visible  until after the zap, and I doubt Sirleck would have been able to get into the house, zap Elliot, get a re-jacketed Ashley into the car, and Magus, and drive much of anywhere if he had to wait for the lights before going into the house to zap Elliot.

I'm going to break here, but I am going to respond to all of your counterpoints. An please note that I haven't totally refuted your argument here; I'm basically saying that I think Dan dug a plot hole for himself, unless he comes up with another reason why Sirleck would have felt he knew the Immortals would be distracted by the vampire attack at the right time and long enough to make the switch--or whether, say, someone told Sirleck that the Immortals wouldn't interfere, like Voltaire, or even Abner. Don't forget Abner.

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4 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

If seeing the lights was the signal to Sirleck that the two Immortals watching Elliot would be distracted, then this would have happened before Sirleck zapped Elliot so that Magus could get into position for the zap. Sirleck looks up at the lights toward the end of Part 22 Apocalypse, which begins "Not long before Sirleck zapped Elliot." I thought Dan had banned time travel in EGS. Magus doesn't have a body to be visible  until after the zap, and I doubt Sirleck would have been able to get into the house, zap Elliot, get a re-jacketed Ashley into the car, and Magus, and drive much of anywhere if he had to wait for the lights before going into the house to zap Elliot.

Those lights weren't the signal or else they'd be too late to indicate that Helena and Demetrius are distracted, also those lights being the signal would have indicated that Sirleck knew about the aberration nuke spell, but Pandora said that it was a spell that no mortal could get, and now that I think of it, might be considered the Ultimate Bane from which Pandora's descendants get their affinity from.

No, the original signal was to tell the vampires to attack and we never saw what that signal was, Sirleck might have just assumed that once the attack was under way then Elliot would be cleared for zapping. And it's likely he was risking it by assuming, but again maybe Helena and Demetrius let him and we're about to find out soon where they've been this whole time. Heck maybe there's been a miscommunication about which Immortals were spotted at the mall, if say Scarf Guy reported back to Sirleck that he's spotted 2 Immortals at the mall, Sirleck would assume it'd be the Immortals that he needed to be distracted, but in reality it was Pandora and Zeus that were seen, not Helena and Demetrius.

 

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1 hour ago, Bluedarkyugi said:

1. Given how immortals work it is entirely possible that there are that many immortals out there..

Yes, and the more Immortals, the rarer Seers are in comparison to them. This is actually supported by Voltaire's latest appearance. 

 

1 hour ago, Bluedarkyugi said:

2. Immortals and aberrations are both drawn to places where there is a high magical potential, immortals to guide and empower, aberrations to feed, it's more than likely that most immortals were close to a lot of aberrations, especially since both groups don't normally interact directly.

That's what I have also assumed. However, how often to Aberrations have to feed? Not all Aberrations have a human form; some are monstrous all the time. Those aberrations would be wise to stay away from high-population areas when they don't have to feed. If more than 1% of them are monstrous all the time, then the Will of Magic is wrong about how many Aberrations have been destroyed.

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22 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Don't forget Abner.

Abner was a last moment character that Dan didn't intend on making until he realized that he couldn't have Voltaire contact Sirleck directly, I'm not sure if we'll see him again though BUT it wouldn't surprise me that, considering Abner doesn't seem to trust Voltaire, he might also be part of why the facility seems too quiet and that Magus getting to the diamond was too easy. Maybe that's why Magus was quick to interrupt Ashley when she was about to point out the lack of any other signs of life in the building.

It seems like it's complicated, but it might be simplified enough by pointing out that Pandora was made aware of Voltaire's actions at the mall the week before, and while it's unclear if she ever found out who he was, she knew that Helena and Demetrius played a role in thwarting him. And Pandora did make a promise to tear him to shreds, and while she's no longer able to do so herself, I can't help but think that maybe she set a plan that involves Helena and Demetrius dealing with Voltaire eventually.

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12 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Heck maybe there's been a miscommunication about which Immortals were spotted at the mall, if say Scarf Guy reported back to Sirleck that he's spotted 2 Immortals at the mall, Sirleck would assume it'd be the Immortals that he needed to be distracted, but in reality it was Pandora and Zeus that were seen, not Helena and Demetrius.

Good one! I hadn't thought of that. Still, there's just not that much time between Zeus' and Pandora's appearances and the reset. And there may be another implied problem.

When Ashley is first seen in Elliot's home, she's just beginning to take off her jacket. She just got there. Elliot just has the same shirt (or an identical shirt) he almost froze in six nights before, so he's probably been home and someone dropped off Ashley, maybe her mom, or her dad, or the rest of her family for all we know. And while Elliot's parents are seen only in Elliot's flashbacks, they could have just left, talking with Ashley and perhaps someone who dropped her off. They could even be outside talking with the other party. These things could delay Sirleck approaching.

But there's no reason some time couldn't have passed before the next comic when Ashley found out Elliot shared a room with his sister. However, Sirleck definitely does arrive at house by the end of the comic because who else would be opening the garage door?

In the first panel of the next comic, Elliot hears a loud door slam--either the garage or the connecting door into the house. Next panel, Ellen's voice calls out to him. Next panel, he's out of the room at the top of the stairs. Last panel, ZZZ--

The next comic finishes the zap, and Magus has a body--just not his own body, yet.

BTW, if Magus is supposed to be from some kind of pseudo-medieval magical world, why does he wear a modern-style school uniform? I mean, besides the Harry Potter.

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1 minute ago, Tom Sewell said:

That's what I have also assumed. However, how often to Aberrations have to feed? Not all Aberrations have a human form; some are monstrous all the time. Those aberrations would be wise to stay away from high-population areas when they don't have to feed. If more than 1% of them are monstrous all the time, then the Will of Magic is wrong about how many Aberrations have been destroyed.

Since Aberrations use magic to feed, I doubt if the Will of Magic isn't aware of every time one of them does feed. Maybe the WoM slept through all those math classes?

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32 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Abner was a last moment character that Dan didn't intend on making until he realized that he couldn't have Voltaire contact Sirleck directly

Where did Dan say that?

35 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It seems like it's complicated, but it might be simplified enough by pointing out that Pandora was made aware of Voltaire's actions at the mall the week before, and while it's unclear if she ever found out who he was, she knew that Helena and Demetrius played a role in thwarting him. And Pandora did make a promise to tear him to shreds, and while she's no longer able to do so herself, I can't help but think that maybe she set a plan that involves Helena and Demetrius dealing with Voltaire eventually.

Involved, yes, but Helena and Demetrius have reset since Magus' first came to the Moperverse and Voltaire hasn't. He's probably much more powerful. But Edward said that human wizards could deal with Immortals once, Voltaire seems to have counted out Elliot as a further problem, and it is quite possible the other Immortals are very angry with him and will deal with him in a way which will set an example. I can safely say that Voltaire is outnumbered, even if he's too full of himself to see the dangers.

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

3. It doesn't appear that Pandora's nuke caused any actual damage though there are very likely piles of ash everywhere that a vampire once stood that need to be cleaned up. There's probably some minor damage in the mall from the initial vampire attack, the worst of it maybe being scorchmarks from Gullet's fire spell, but it's possible that Adrian completely negated it.

Ash implies fire or at least enough heat to kindle a fire. Also, Sirleck may not be the only Aberration driving a car when the Apocalypse hit; some may have even been piloting aircraft. Just the light display may have distracted innocent humans enough to cause accidents.

I'll leave the political and religious implications up to Dan. 

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

5. Helena and Demetrius believe they need to protect Elliot, Ellen might not even factor into this and so she's left open for Sirleck. Sirleck might have also set up distractions for them so they'd be looking away when he did something like swap bodies. They're also probably not powerful enough to detect Sirleck on the spirit plane but aberrations in the mortal plane might be more obvious to them.

They left Elliot at least seven times before to deal with Aberrations, or eight if you count them following Magus to France before they reset. 

 

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

4. Susan and Diane get their affinity from Pandora, the question of why couldn't Adrian have summons a magic sword, it's quite possible that he doesn't have that spell, just because you have an affinity for something doesn't necessarily mean you automatically get that spell. Adrian's probably got other "bane" related spells or something that gives him an advantage when fighting aberrations.

Adrian's had hundreds of years to come up with such spells. Why did he borrow a sword from Susan? Just to make her feel better about herself? Why didn't he use one of those other spells on Gullet instead of regretting that Susan's sword was only a short-range weapon?

 

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

6. This one is unknown really since we've seen no sign of them at all during the vampire attack or in the aftermath when Pandora was "reset". It's why I've got a sneaking suspicion of why Magus' and Sirleck's entry into the facility and access to the diamond seems "too easy"

I agree. Perhaps we should both wait for more theories or Dan to actually explain this one.

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19 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Where did Dan say that?

Here:

Quote

Abner, on the other hand, wasn't a planned part of this story, or any story, until very recently when I realized that it made absolutely zero sense for Voltaire to have direct communication with Sirleck. I will elaborate on at least a couple reasons why in the next commentary, but a middleman was absolutely necessary, and I was alarmingly slow to realize that.

 

20 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Involved, yes, but Helena and Demetrius have reset since Magus' first came to the Moperverse and Voltaire hasn't. He's probably much more powerful. But Edward said that human wizards could deal with Immortals once, Voltaire seems to have counted out Elliot as a further problem, and it is quite possible the other Immortals are very angry with him and will deal with him in a way which will set an example. I can safely say that Voltaire is outnumbered, even if he's too full of himself to see the dangers.

I didn't say they would deal with Voltaire directly, but there'd probably be some way they'd be able to expose Voltaire and maybe get him forcibly reset?

10 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Ash implies fire or at least enough heat to kindle a fire. Also, Sirleck may not be the only Aberration driving a car when the Apocalypse hit; some may have even been piloting aircraft. Just the light display may have distracted innocent humans enough to cause accidents.

I'll leave the political and religious implications up to Dan. 

We know it saved at least one person's life though (the one that was about to be attacked), but yes there might have been some indirect damage cause by people paying more attention to the lights than to what might be in front of them on the road.

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2 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

They left Elliot at least seven times before to deal with Aberrations, or eight if you count them following Magus to France before they reset. 

The first time when they followed Magus to France, they might not have even been protecting Elliot, or they thought Magus was a threat to Elliot and so chasing him to France was still protecting Elliot.

3 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Adrian's had hundreds of years to come up with such spells. Why did he borrow a sword from Susan? Just to make her feel better about herself? Why didn't he use one of those other spells on Gullet instead of regretting that Susan's sword was only a short-range weapon?

Maybe he doesn't learn spells the same way other wizards do, or it's not as easy as we think it is and he just hasn't learned it. Even though he is hundreds of years old, we shouldn't expect his spellbook to rival Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

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4 minutes ago, Scotty said:

The first time when they followed Magus to France, they might not have even been protecting Elliot, or they thought Magus was a threat to Elliot and so chasing him to France was still protecting Elliot.

They didn't remember why they were protecting Elliot back in Sister II. And they have consistently put hunting Aberrations over protecting Elliot. And they didn't actually protect Elliot from anyone but Sirleck until Helena found out Voltaire was provoking Dame Tara to attack Elliot. Priorities still seemed to be skewed toward killing Aberrations when detected. And Sirleck is definitely an Aberration, not just a mere monster,  summoning, or whatever the Goo was.

I'm getting out of sequence here, but I'm not going to correct the sequence and risk falling even further behind the curve.

12 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Where did Dan say that?

Okay, should have looked it up. Thanks. However, just because Dan made up Abner hastily doesn't mean he won't be important.

12 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I didn't say they would deal with Voltaire directly, but there'd probably be some way they'd be able to expose Voltaire and maybe get him forcibly reset?

Maybe, but I wouldn't take my cookie off the Elliots just yet.

28 minutes ago, Scotty said:

We know it saved at least one person's life though (the one that was about to be attacked), but yes there might have been some indirect damage cause by people paying more attention to the lights than to what might be in front of them on the road.

Not to mention fielders missing a catches that lose night games and bump them down to the minors where they babble about those damned lights in the sky for the rest of their careers.

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14 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Not to mention fielders missing a catches that lose night games and bump them down to the minors where they babble about those damned lights in the sky for the rest of their careers.

I think more than just the fielders would be distracted to have missing a catch even matter really, the runner might have stopped short of touching home plate to look and if the fielder was quick enough could run up to tag him out. Or there'd just be a general stoppage of play.

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24 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I think more than just the fielders would be distracted to have missing a catch even matter really, the runner might have stopped short of touching home plate to look and if the fielder was quick enough could run up to tag him out. Or there'd just be a general stoppage of play.

A good point on its own, but you completely missed the reference to Men in Black.

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Just now, Tom Sewell said:

A good point on its own, but you completely missed the reference to Men in Black.

Sorry, been a while since I've seen that movie.

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Holy crap, I can't believe I only just realized this!

Magus said Helena and Demetrius were hounding him, even following him to France.  Following him.

Then, they get distracted by the Aberration that went after Susan, and then they got forcibly reset at some point after that.

The two of them showed up back in Moperville, and started following Elliot around, even though they had no idea why they were doing so.

Of course they didn't know why -- they were following the wrong version!

Magus and Elliot are duplicates from alternate universes.  Magus is a version of Elliot, Elliot is a version if Magus.  In their recently-improperly-reset befuddlement, the first version they came across was Elliot, and they vaguely recalled that they'd bern following this guy, but since he wasn't an Aberration or any other sort of "didn't belong here," they assumed it was to protect him.

Makes sense to me, at least!

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Makes sense to me, too. I think the previous selves of Helen and Demetrius thought Elliot was some kind of ghost looking to possess a body to live again; they said something like "your time is over," didn't they. Turned out they were sort of right, although Magus only possessed Elliot for a short time, insisting on touching the diamond to make a new body for himself and give Elliot back his own.

You deserve cookies not just from me but everyone else, including maybe Dan. He might not have figured that out himself.

Edited by Tom Sewell
Just -ice.

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Just now, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Why do so many things seem obvious only after some one else points them out?

I am more worried about things that are obvious and do get pointed out, but a lot of people still have trouble accepting as true.

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12 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I am more worried about things that are obvious and do get pointed out, but a lot of people still have trouble accepting as true.

I don't care how much mutton and mead you offer, the rest of the world outside Scandinavia will not voluntarily resubmit to Viking rule.

Despite the obvious advantages.

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