Grrl Power #624 – Vitamin-S
I’m sorry guys, I just got tired of drawing that armor. Anyone paying attention probably noticed it changed from panel to panel anyway. Anyway, if she could peel it off that easily after she took her shot of Vitamin-S, then it probably woudn’t have helped against Maxima or Hiro either. She never even used whatever was in those pouches on her belt either. Well, it’s my excuse to draw an actual skintight outfit in the comic for once that exists outside of Sydney’s daydreaming.
It looks like Sciona is going to try and meet the team on their own terms. If only she didn’t constantly betray everyone around her, she might have some backup. Well, charisma was her dump stat I guess. She also bought the disadvantage “Capriciously kills incompetent henchmen and allies and basically anyone” which earned her an extra 50 points, which she probably put into “Hard to Kill” because, I mean, she got most of her head cut off once, though we don’t know exactly how that went down. There’s a fair chance there were extenuating circumstances.
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I wonder if the blood symbol on her chest is it once and done. I imagine that given Sydney’s Alfons and Edward Elric knowledge she’ll try to wipe it off of her, and that will not succeed.
I’s an angry devil!
”It’s”, I meant ”it’s”.
With a monocle.
I liked your first post better
It had fiendish style.
Piratical
*parrot on shoulder*
Yaar!
Knowing Sidney, she’ll turn away to say a quip/be distracted by something and end up copping a feel by accident.
Imagine if Sydney will actually wipe it off, and Sciona being up and ready, blasting with speed of light, will suddenly come to a screeching halt and slam her face into a wall.
And Halo is all “Wow it worked… I mean I’m a genius. Just as planned”
And then Sciona goes – “What did you do?!” And begin imploding.
How the hell did I not connect her to Lust sooner? Thanks for pointing out the similarity.
What’s going on here with Sciona dropping all the references to supers? In the bridge episode she gloated “Stupid heroes, always getting distracted by innocent bystan…” Clearly she assumed that a superhero would be distracted by all the civilians that Maxima placed in peril.
And in this episode she’s griping “Stupid supers, always butting in.”
Supers are always distracted by innocent bystanders that they have placed in peril?
Supers are always butting in?
Scions appears to have a history with superheroes that this world’s history doesn’t appear to support. If there were any past always battles between Sciona and superheroes, you’d expect that she would be a fairly well known figure by now. I mean, some random vigilante super would even have to have the resources to manage to be in the right place at the right time to tangle with Sciona. Those folks would probably be of the non-super crime fighting variety.
It should take a really significant amount of encounters before Sciona would come to the conclusion that superheroes will always protect innocent bystanders*. And a really significant amount of encounters before she’d be able to bitch about superheroes always interfering with her evil schemes.
* She can be excused for not being aware that Maxima is protected against any civilian injuries caused by her reckless actions due to authorial fiat.
Super heroes foiled Sciona in:
1) her assault on the Twilight Council.
2) stopping her kidnapping and blood draining operation in the abandoned Mars warehouse.
3) tracked her down to Deus’s office, so that she had to lay low until they had gone.
4) caught up with her flying by the bridge and forced her to teleport in order to escape.
5) are presently assaulting this base.
I think she is justified in her grumbling.
For 1), Sciona wasn’t there. Perhaps she can see through her kill-manikins eyes? I don’t recall if we’ve seen that she has that ability. And I’m too lazy to archive-dive to check. Someone be my off-board memory!
For 3), Sciona was long gone, involved in her semi-fight with Vale, before Maxima and company arrived at Deus’s office. That leaves 2 encounters, exactly zero of which involved any indication that superheroes would always be distracted by the peril to innocent civilians in which the superheroes had placed them.
4) and 5) are the same encounter, since Sciona seemed convinced that they would be arriving Soon™.
Two encounters doesn’t seem to me like enough history for Sciona to be tired of superheroes always interrupting her plans, it is way too shallow evidence for that conclusion. Also, the reference is too generic. When one single group is plaguing you, you don’t tend to group all people like them together. If you do, there should be something to support that categorization. As in a lot of prior history with superheroes. Which as I said previously, seems like it couldn’t really remain secret. On Earth, at least. Large, destructive conflicts between superpowered beings tend to draw the attention of anyone in the nearby tri-state region. We have evidence of this from all the press that arrived at the Battle of the Steakhouse.
1) She wasn’t but she was aware of what happened, so must have been magically observing it by some means.
3) Work through the scenes and you will see that it must have worked precisely the way I described.
One ended with Vale and Sciona having been fighting, but Vale making an offer for Sciona to continue negotiating with Deus. In between we then see Arc-SWAT in Deus’s office with no sign of either of the two (despite Super Hiro looking out the window precisely where they were).
Yet, some time later, Sciona and Vale are in Deus’s presence. Whether they literally fled, as you indicated, or simply walked back into the building and kept out of sight, as I feel is the more likely, Sciona was having to lie low to avoid Supers.
She could neither continue her negotiations with Deus, nor risk being seen by Arc-SWAT. So Sciona would have been very much aware of their presence (if Vale was making use of her capability, as head of security, to remotely monitor the situation, or Sciona herself, by scrying it). Or, at very least, having to sit around impatiently awaiting Deus to gave them the all-clear.
Hence her activities were being constrained by the presence of supers, and (especially given the strength of emotion she demonstrated in wanting to get her item) it would have been highly frustrating to her at that time.
These things are indeed a matter of judgement. However in one there was fighting and fleeing. Which Sciona broke by teleporting away. Each party then got on with disparate activities, which did not directly involve the other.
One repaired a bridge and then started analysing past behaviour of their opponent.
Whilst the other was creating an upgraded artefact.
So even though the two incidents will (likely) have occurred fairly close to each other time wise, Sciona was conducting very different activities in each. One having a pleasant flight interrupted. Another having her tinkering hobby time disturbed.* The commonality being that it was supers involved, in both cases.
* Whilst Sciona knew that they would be looking for her, she had no way to know that they would be able to predict her destination with accuracy (and even Dabbler only thought she had a 60% chance of success). And certainly not that they would be able to do so as fast as they did. So the most we could say is that Sciona may have been making preparations in case they did.
Psychologically though she was probably hoping that teleporting away had given her a clean enough break that they would have to resort to tracking her down by other detective means, thus taking longer. She is smart though, and they did find her previous base in one night. So I am sure Sciona would have expected them to find her in due course.
Mind you: she said that about heroes being distracted by innocent bystanders right after the bridge incident, either implying that she has encountered similar situations before (and maybe even used the same solution – though this time it was accidental rather than intentional) or that she’s been reading comics.
Solid observation.
1) or her allies informed her. Either way Sciona found out that it was supers who had foiled her.
… or the Aliri(sp?) have/had supers of their own which Sciona tangled with in the past-possibly the reason Sciona is on Earth…
Not a bad line of reasoning. There is only one aspect which leans away from that, which is that the Twilight Council have to study super powers, on Earth, and have failed (in their 3,000 year history) to figure them out. Whereas, if super powers are generally known about, in the galactic community then they would have been less of a challenge.
Various of the Twilight Council factions are comprised of members of galactic races (such as the various types of demons, of which succubi are just one example, albeit a very widely dispersed one). So they would have been better informed than they appear to have been, in the briefing given by Ingsol to Sydney.
This is only a slender piece of information though, so I make a lot of inferences from a single data point. Which should not thereby be overly relied upon. Thus making yours a good point. Loads of circumstances would allow it, without impacting on the canon at all. For example:
1) Ingsol may have just been playing his cards close to his chest and not revealing that extra-terrestrial super studies do help, even if they have not been able to figure out the situation for Earth’s supers yet.
2) The galactic supers may be just as much of an enigma as the Earth ones. Especially if they (as is common in various different settings) only have a narrow range of (or even single) super power(s) that may appear in any given alien species.
3) Galactic supers may be far rarer even than on Earth. Possibly to the extent that most races/civilisations are completely unaware of them. So Alari may have some (or many) supers, despite other galactic races not knowing that.
4) If the Alari are all as nasty as Sciona has shown herself to be, then, even if others do know that they have super powers, they would have a heck of a hard time studying them in any safe fashion!
For 1): her vampire cohort was present at the Council meeting and informed her of their failure and Maxima’s interference specifically. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2364
Thanks for linking that. Yea, as you say, he mentions Maxima’s involvement and (importantly for the thread) her use of her super powers. So that does confirm that Sciona was aware of such.
Clearly she reads comics.
+1
You may be taking her phrasing a bit too literally.
Not really. I wasn’t being serious…apparently something got lost in transcription.
It does not look like Vtech325‘s comment was directed towards you.
Whilst your prior comment was suitably wry. :)
And that is why one should read the entire thread…
Not like with blueprints, instruction manuals, and grimoires, where skimming is perfectly fine.
Klaatu Barada N… necktie… nectar… nickel… noodle. It’s an “N” word, it’s definitely an “N” word! Klaatu… Barada… N…
*coughs*
Okay then… that’s it!
Aside from Yorp’s examples, if she’s previously crossed paths with heroes, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they survived the encounters.
Yeah, it’s not like Supers only popped into existence in the last month or two, they were only officially recognized publically (by the US Government at least) in the last month
Les, Morph and Brooke were acting as vigilante’s prior to the formation of Archon, which means there is a good chance that others were doing the same thing, maybe just doing small hero stuff like stopping purse-snatchers and maybe stumbled upon Sci and maybe that is who were in her make-shift blood-donor room (certainly would explain how she got all those super blood samples)
I’d still like to know where you heard that those 3 were vigilantes previously. It sounds plausible and all but I’ve reread the comic a few times and never saw that mentioned.
Can’t remember when it was mentioned, could have been when facing the media, or it could have been in the defunct Cast Page
I can corroborate that this was established very early on in the comic and has been accepted fact for as long as I have been reading it. Making it very hard to pick out an ‘earliest example’ even doing an advanced google search, given how often it is mentioned (and the different ways it might be described).
Apparently though, it was originally on Heatwave’s entry on the cast page. But that bit must have been omitted when it was copied to the Wiki, as the Wiki entry, as it stands today, does not mention it.
However it is referenced, in its original form. by Gilhelmi here.
also it has been verified that there was supers way before they got organised, also sciona is old being so changes are she has met supers way before
I expect that the reason there is not a huge history on her is that the superheroes have to live to get away to tell others. And, since she has blood with a lot of powers to use, that means they did not get away and were drained dry of blood.
Yes, that was my point.
Not necessarily, I think Sciona is the kind of baddie that views *any* interference as “always butting in”, she could be referring to just the stuff we’ve seen. OTOH, our view of all of this starts with Sydney and the bank, ARC obviously existed well before we new about it.
Or it could be that she has some knowledge of the way superheroes in comics are always getting in the way. I think that since comic books are a thing in this universe that it is possible Sciona could be familiar with them and is using them as a reference… This is all conjecture and filled with some (possibly incorrect) assumptions of course!
That armor comes off you know Sciona, by its self!
Seen it happen so dont give me any bull about it taking too long to remove.
Does blood mages worry about AIDS at all?
Man i hope that dummy is a real DUMMY and just keeps cranking away in a somewhat straight line XD
I mean, I imagine a blood mage would find pathogens inconvenient at the novice level if they were doing the stuff Sciona is doing, but Sciona herself is apparently a competent enough bloodmage that decapitating her is merely ‘inconvenient’. As such, she probably keeps the more ‘benign’ (I.E. the diseases that can’t actually hurt her anymore due to her fixing the problems they cause as they come) diseases active intentionally. So she might well have hep, AIDs, HIV, the common cold, influenza, etc, it’s just that to her, they’re merely something she has to fix every day around eight or nine before going to bed, whereas to you, being in the same room as her without a gas mask is potentially lethal if she feels like fucking with you.
Bad news for Deuce.
“You’re test results are back, sir. You have everything”
“Not quite yet.” * smug smile*
“No sir, I mean you have everything. The fact that you are walking around right now is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, the CDC has now officially reclassified you as a pandemic. And that doesn’t even make sense.”
You know what I hope? That she invested in the strength increasing capabilities ignoring, or forgeting, that super strength requiers super resilience to wield it without breaking yourself.
Unfortunately, in that blood cocktail she injected, on the top you can make out “Blood: Super Toughness”. So, she’s got it covered.
Maybe the effects nerf her speed down to somewhere between “continental drift” and “the government’s latest response to climate change.”
If it’s closer to “continental drift” then she may stand at least a bit of a chance. Otherwise, she’s not going to do a damn thing.
When you lack anything resembling a moral, and when you are being paid to ignore climate change, you can lay down an awful lot of paving stones to the nether realms without any need at all for good intentions.
I’m wondering why she didn’t just give herself the super strength and toughness, which probably occur naturally elsewhere based on her method of obtaining them now, when she literally remade herself with a cosmic/supernatural wish.
Because that item was a charged device and her priority was to ensure that she fully restored her true body.
When she had done that, she found that she had a little power left over, so used that to boost her bust size.
At which point the device was probably fully discharged, so would have been useless until another 99 souls had been used to recharge it.
Technically Sciona had a deal with one of her minions (the basilisk assassin) that she would get it, after Sciona had made use of it (going by the well-informed comments that Deus made, strongly implying that).
Although we now know that Sciona happily betrays them at her whim. So she may well have had plans to do just as you said (and thereby avoiding the side-effects mentioned in panel 3 above), to use that to permanently improve herself. Perhaps intending to kill off the assassin, once she had recharged the item, but before she had a chance to waste it on improving her own body?
One example does not a pattern make, please stop it puppy
One example does not a pattern make, please stop it puppy
You seem to have forgotten that there were several examples.
1) Draining the blood of the vampire, against his will.
A small betrayal, compared to killing someone, but indicative that she does not care about others at all.
2) She hired Cooter for the express purpose of betraying him, by turning him into a human bomb.
This is quite a biggie.
3) Shoving Wyrmil’s head into the death field.
Being the most blatant betrayal, this is probably the one you are thinking about.
4) Abandoning all of her remaining minions (i.e. the ones she had not tried to murder), by teleporting out without them.* This meant that they were suddenly without their leader, so would have to deal with the presence of a rival villain group on their own. Be that fighting, fleeing or cutting some sort of a deal.
This is a betrayal of her team.
5) Stealing the Brane Ripper from Wyrmcoot. She had not provided either of him with a formal discharge from her service, so both were still employees of hers. Plus he had legitimately acquired the item. Any claim that she might have to it was lost with her abandoning the looting.
Then she comes along, cuts him in half and steals his property.
The latest in a long line of betrayals.
* Whilst I initially speculated that she may have just done a local teleport and carried on looting the complex with the rest of them, and then exiting using a blood portal, as a team, we have since found nothing to support that.
Whilst such is still a possibility, the fact that Sciona did not get any of the remaining items shows that she did not continue the looting plan. Likewise we have seen no hint of any of her companions. Unless the next scene shows her rallying the gang, for a counter-attack, I think we can discount the possibility.
Without something of that nature, it is reasonable to take the scenes we saw on their face value. I.e. Sciona teleported out alone.
No, you said “Happily betrays them at her whim”
Draining the blood of the traitor vamp hardly counts because A) she didn’t ‘drain’ him and 2) he didn’t seem that upset
Cooter was hired for that express reason, and they were all in on it (except for him, obviously), so that was hardly a ‘whim’
We have no way of knowing if she planned on using Wyrmies head (and its regenerative properties) all along, butt like said, that was the one betrayal
Again, we have no idea what happened after Sci “WINK”ed out. As you said, we have found nothing to support her sticking around and taking them with her, we also have had nothing to support her abandoning them
We don’t know if she did or didn’t get any of the other items as the only one that interested her was the Brane Ripper. Did we find out what items your pal SmugD got? No? Then, does that mean he got nothing? Or almost everything (almost because he didn’t manage to steal the BR)?
You are assuming she knew who had the BR, if she did, then she knew that they survived being a blown to giblets and had a fist through their face, so assumptions (isn’t it great? assumptions can work both way) are that she knew they would survive a mere slicing
So again, one example does not a pattern of ‘whimsical betrayal’ make
Rubbish, he was clearly upset. And to make it unequivocal he said: “NOT ME!” (emphasis as per original dialogue).
Rubbish. She felt like doing it, and went ahead with it. The fact that others were happy it was someone other than themselves does not make it any less of a betrayal of him.
Your arguing of semantics over ‘whim’ is irrelevant, as a planned betrayal is worse than one done on the spur of the moment! Further it supports my contention that she may have planned to betray the basilisk assassin.
Which means we have to go by what we did see. Namely Sciona leaving on her own. If you want to contend that she rescued the rest of her team, you prove that. Until you do, that stays on my list of betrayals.
I am assuming nothing. We know Sciona did not know who had it. However she made a deal with Deus, then flew straight to Wyrmcoot’s location. At which point she could see that it was one of her employees, even if Deus had not told her that before. Either way she still chopped him in half and stole his item! I said nothing about her having intent to kill him.
Plus the fact that he didn’t die does not stop it from being a betrayal! Why do you think that causing ACTUAL BODILY HARM and THEFT are OK?
Do you really not understand even basic morals?
If he was truly upset, he could have ka-bats’ed out
Wait, how the Fronkensteen does slicing someone and stealing some gadget count as betrayal? o_O
And again, ‘whim’ means very little forethought prior to doing, apart from what happened the fist time with Wyrmie, everything she has done was with forethought
You need to look up the definition of ‘whim’
Looks like having to explain, yet again, not defending Sci as being a ‘nice’ person, just objecting to your use of the word ‘whim’
No I do not. I have already told you that I will not be drawn on your playing with semantics. The key issue is the betrayal.
Besides which various of the betrayals came across to me as being ‘on the spur of the moment’. Which means that characterising her as acting on a whim is entirely justifiable. The most blatant example of which was shoving Wyrmil’s head in the death field.
You, of course, are entitled to your opinion as to whether it was or not. Whilst I am entitled to ignore your opinion. You have a blind spot for this murderous and despicable individual, whom you champion so intently. Which renders your judgement tainted, in my opinion.
Because both Wyrmil and Cooter were loyal employees of hers. I already explained this part to you. The fact that she had already attempted to murder them* and they were justifiably pissed at the betrayal does not stop her committing a similar act a second time as also being a betrayal.
It just reinforces the pattern which you seem to think does not exist!
I have never accused you of doing that. However I am free to keep pointing out that she is not.
When talking about somebody’s character, and whether we should suspect their motives as being malign, this is an entirely pertinent matter to keep at the forefront of the debate!
When we debated over whether Harem is a traitor, the good aspects to her personality helped to mitigate the accusations, and allow granting the benefit of the doubt (when such was possible).
Sciona though shows no evidence of any redeeming personality traits. Really searching for something the best I can come up with is that she is not body shy. Which does not balance the scales, in any meaningful way.
Anything else you have raised is pure speculation, with nothing to back it up.
She did not even stop to try and rescue the endangered kitties!
* And your repeated excuses against this do not need to be reiterated yet again. It is worrying that you feel committing an act which actually would have killed Wyrmil, even with his full powers of regeneration, is fine, simply because Sciona may have thought he could survive it.
Incidentally, if she really did think that, then she should have taken Wyrmil with her, to make sure that he was not left headless with enemies all around him!
Hmmmm. It will be interesting to see what other super-abilities the not-visible blood injectors will impart. (I wonder which supers all those blood samples came from?)
My guess is she was a “lowly street-sweeper” the day after the fight with Vehemence.
Heh. Took a bit of mental gymnastics, but I got you.
Was the sex with Deus unprotected?
Doing blood magic after unprotected sex is contraindicated…but no one remembers that warning in Bloodmagic 101… they focus on harvesting virgin blood (even your own) for a magical booster instead… the students expecting gore are totally mesmerized by the tantric magic overlap in that chapter. And the drawings. As expected of the magic type involved, the images are graphic. Though some blood magics cringe at the thought of actual sex to harvest virginities and often farm that out to minions or blood golem constructs…of course they tend to get overthrown and harvested themselves because of that failure to remember the rule…Don’t share your blood powers. Blood links all…and well minions and golems have an inherent selfish streak too.
As for Sciona… she powers up for battle and suddenly she gets morning sickness… Deus would chuckle… it’s his progeny too…I am sure he’s SUPER fertile and knows about that lil rule from Blood magic 101…
Sciona – Max I can now fight you and your folks on EVEN GROUND… I will —- BLARGH— Ugh…
Dabbler looks at Halo and whispers – “You know she was with Deus recently…my quote porn sense unquote tells me that much…”
Halo- “You don’t actually say quote unquote, you use your fingers…”
Dabbler – “And yes I know about you and your pillo-URGHLE Right in the quasipods again…”
Max looks at them “What do you mean?”
Harem – “Uh, I know you’re a bad girl and all that…but are you pregnant?”
Other girls in group – “Yep that looks like morning sickness…do you need a moment?”
Sciona…”can I have an hour? I need to have a T.A.L.K. with someone…”
Max- “You’re kidding right?”
Halo “She’s gonna be a mommy? Who’s the daddy?”
– in background “OMINOUS THUNDER AND LAUGHTER”
Everyone “OH…yeah.”
Harem “Almost happened to me…what? I caught it in time…so he lies about things like that. At the time you’re very distracted…very…”
Dabbler- “I need to try him myself.”
Sciona “I’m okay now… shall we do this thing?”
MAX face palming “No one hit her in the abdomen…no telling what might happen…” Crushes the head of the remains of a golem trying to regenerate with one hand… “Her face though? That’s fair game.”
Sciona reaches for another booster…
Halo – “Uhuh…” Tentacle snatch “Bad for BABY!”
Sciona “I will kill you for that. I will kill you all… I will BLARGH”
Max “I was ready for that…” Looks at Halo who looks abashed.
More like vitamin O+
You know, I think this is the first legitimate reason I’ve ever seen for female armor to have an open chestplate… can’t think of any other character that might need to stab themselves in the chest at a moment’s notice.
+1
I thought Vitamin S was what a guy talks about when he wants the other person to swallow it.
Wouldn’t that be Vitamin D?
That she can apparently use blood magic to gain the powers of supers *possibly only temporarily, always assume boost magic is temporary till stated otherwise*, leads credence to her pondering before if anyone could use Sydney’s orbs if they had enough of her blood.
Oh my God, it’s the legendary Super Alaryan ! Run for your life, her strength is over 9.000 !!!
(If you don’t get the joke, either you never saw Dragon Ball Z or you have yet forgotten Sciona’s species https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2806 ;) )
Everyone gets that joke. It’s so overused that people who’ve never even heard of Dragon Ball get the joke.
Wasn’t scion a grey? Is she purple now?
She was never a gray, even to Max.
Truth. :)
And her eyes are too small.
Oh I imagine that fight will last about 30 seconds once Maxima is involved… I mean given what Sciona has pissed off one of THE most powerful supers. Trying to up your power for 30 seconds won’t mean much probably be a good little skirmish then BAM bye bye Sciona.
Just an old point, regarding Halo’s shield. She should be good for air in it for a lot longer than depicted, as shown that even in an airtight coffin Adam Savage could go 47 minutes, before carbon dioxide levels started to rise enough to be a concern.
That is at rest mind. In a situation where Sydney (and possibly passengers) are being more active, which would include any combat situation, even if only from stress, the time would be shortened.
To offset that though a coffin holds a heck of a lot less air than the shield (other than if it is streamlined for high-speed solo flight).
Shame on you, Dave. SHAME. Mixing D&D and GURPS into the same character sheet. You have no idea the chaos you unleash.
GURPs is designed flexibly enough to be able to cope.
The numbers do get messy though. ST 9,000 for example would be off the chart and need you to reach for a calculator and locate the relevant formulas to figure out damage and lifting capacity. But it does have detailed supers source books and rules, so is more than up to the task.
D&D does have its advantages, of course, in ease of handling its core settings, such as magic.
It would be fun for a (capable) DM to combine elements of both, in a single super campaign. The supers handbook even gives a few handy hints for how to do that. For instance detailing how to create a ‘ring of fireballs’, for a super character.
Giving a D&D-like ‘magical item’, but with the GURPs costs precisely calculated. But the resulting item is familiar enough that someone only used to D&D would not have any problem making good use of it. And feeling awed that it would not run out of charges.!
Max, Halo, Dabbler & Sciona would all be seriously high point cost characters. In the thousands.
There are conversions. Though, based on the non-fantasy nature of this story, I’d suggest going GURPS.
Or HERO 4th/5th.
Or Mutants and Masterminds (or for you old folks out there, maybe TORG).
Heh, with my problem with names, I thought you were really referencing some old school stuff. But you will have to go back a few more decades, than the ones you mentioned, before you get truly old school.
BESM (big eyes small mouth) would probably be the easiest way to translate, it’s a modular system based purely out of using D6’s designed to simplify encounters where magical girls meets mecha meets Dragonball. Good luck finding a copy though. (Meets tenshi, meets the gokusen, meets modeling Andromeda style spaceship battles) There’s some unbalanced stuff you can pull because it is modular, but having near every possibility in one book can be handy.
Dave was using DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes rules.
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10144.phtml
Interesting link thanks.
It’s a good game… I’m currently DMing it for a different group than the one Dave was in, but he’s been too busy with the comic to play lately, I think.
Random out of nowhere question, related to blood though, and not sure if asked before.
Vampires.
In Grrlverse, is there just the one kind of vampire? Or at there various “tribes”, “clans”, “breeds” or whatever? Or as a third option much like therionthropes, automata, and other groups are there a variety of different creatures that share enough traits in common that they get umbrella termed under “vampire” for council purposes?
-for instance like Estries, Nosferatu, Moroi, Upir, Uttuku, and Glaistig; could all be considered vampires. Although so to by loose definitions things like Yuki-Onna, Jiang-Shi, and so on (and so on and so on and so on…trust me the whole nocturnal being that drains something from people is pretty universal and has a very wide variety)…including not so nocturnal versions that walk around during the day, or only show up at noon (Lady Midday is sometimes considered a vampire by some), ect…
There are various different types. Sadly not detailed on the page entitled Vampire 201, although that does give some pertinent related information.
But, at some point, probably in a blog (or maybe with Ingsol dialogue) Dave does indicate that there are different bloodlines of vampires. Each of which can have distinctly different appearances and powers.
So we can tell that Ingsol and Sciona’s ally are likely to be of similar bloodlines, as they have both demonstrated the power to turn into bats, to fly. Sciona’s when fleeing from Archon, and Crimson when caught sneaking into Archon HQ.
*POOF* Who summons me?
Considering she’s a blood mage woulnd’t those be… exsanguinating circumstances? ;P
*neatly packages up The Internet, and puts a bow on it*
*bows and presents the package, whilst holding the bow*
May the Elders of the Internet bestow favour upon you.
*Holds The Internet by the bow as well* … This looks unstable and ready to blow at even the slightest amount of jostling… Why would anyone want this?!
It is a rare moonbow, interwoven with a rainbow. They are ephemeral.
Folks like to look for a pot of gold, at the end.
Ha! “You have won the internet, here it is!”
“Holy ferret balls, this box is ticking and leaking who-knows-what all over the floor, please take it back!”
(…raises his whiskey shot-glass, drains it, flings it into Spider Robinson’s brick-lined fireplace, where it shatters into shiny shrapnel…)
got to wonder if the blood magic super juice she just pumped herself full of has side effects cause it seems like boosting yourself like that would have consequences
Yup. Sure does. As mentioned specifically in panel 3 above.
Your subconsciousness latched onto it, even if it did not sink in consciously.
Bonus pun points to Dave if one of the vials is from a vampire and she acquires The Thirst as a side effect.
Bonus storyline points if she manages to bite someone on the team and we get a page on Archon HQ having to install ADA-style accommodation for upside-down sleeping quarters and no-sunlight meeting rooms.
Just don’t hint about that, to Sydney.
Otherwise she will be walking around with her shield down, her head tilted and with some tasty sauce smeared on her neck!
Don’t worry, knowing Sydney’s tastes, the sauce would likely work against her.
I’m going to assume that one of those vials contained Blood of a Super Saiyan! I can’t be the only one to notice the similarities in hair? Just dye that shit blonde and you’ve already taken Halo out the fight because she’ll be too busy fan girling and Sciona can get in a free shot!
Yup. Plus, even with the colour difference, she is bound to be thinking about that. And wondering if she can customise a toy key chain.
Now we know what really happened to Buster. Even though Adam Savage thought that vaporising him was enough. Despite being worshipped as an incarnate deity!
Awww, I liked her armor.
Great thread everyone! I just want to know where I can get one of those coffee mugs that says “World’s Greatest Bloodmage”
Not necessarily, I think Sciona is the kind of baddie that views *any* interference as “always butting in”, she could be referring to just the stuff we’ve seen. OTOH, our view of all of this starts with Sydney and the bank, ARC obviously existed well before we new about it.
And by “new” I meant “knew”, of course. :)
I can’t help but feel like this scene needs some Ominous Latin Chanting, and a crack about “her true form.”
I find it interesting that all of those vials are prefixed with “blood” instead of just the power it will grant – what else is she putting in identical vials that needs to be tracked separately? And what labeling mistakes have lead up to her needing a catalogue system?!
Between the organized filing system, the corkboard, and Buster (or is he a battle droid?), I am starting to respect her methods and professionalism a lot more.
Sciona does make extensive use of technology, as well as magic. You really do not want to mix up vials of WD40, hydrofluoric acid or even generic mad-scientist super steroid fluid with what you think is blood. Even if (as with the latter example) the rest of the label might be identical.
That clip from that movie, did no one not notice that when she straightened the label to show a llama, there is no way for it to have formed a skull when loose?
The teeth come from the llama legs on the front the rest comes from whatever’s on the back of the label (it’s curled over). Why there’s a random picture of an upside-down half skull on the back I don’t know but maybe it’s from reusing labels?
Was referring to the eyes part, and it wasn’t curled over, but curled down like a backward ‘s’
You are correct, the label doesn’t actually quite work for the gag, but don’t sweat it, it’s not that kind of movie. There’s more than enough slapstick, one-liners, and lampshading in the movie to make up for a few inaccuracies.
Ahh, but it can actually work provided there is something different on the other side of the label.
remember kids, don’t do blood.
But it does a body good
https://cdn1.skgcl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/123123.png
Helen Baxendale used to star in a TV series called “Cardiac Arrest”. Pretty actress, who I liked. But one scene she got blood all over her face. And it upgraded her to looking absolutely stunning. For reasons I really cannot say. Bloody faces are not a turn on for me, in other instances.
I was not the only one who thought that it suited her though. It featured heavily in some promotional material. Sadly I have not been able to find what. I did eliminate the opening episode title sequences, for the first three series.
Almost worth rewatching the whole lot though. It was enjoyable, in its day, and is probably not something which would age badly. And Helen was incredibly hot in that scene, in particular.
Although that was not the intent. It was a serious drama, and the blood was there due to an emergency.
In this case the vampiress was eating a guy.
But what you speak of sounds like the smeared lipstick look. It was a popular fetish for awhile as I recal, but its so tame that you don’t hear much of it. Usually seen with clown girls though, in a creepy fashion.
Personally I don’t normally care for the vampire having blood all over their face; usually because its so messy, wasteful, or the movie does this gross *drooling* thing (is that supposed to be scary? sexy? making your “Noble” lord of the night look like a baby that needs a bib? It just makes them look incompetent).
Now the picture in question, well…she was actually eating a guy (her type of vampire turns everyone they feed on, so to prevent that if they don’t want to make more vampires, they need to eat the whole body till nothing is left).
This was no smudge-like effect on her makeup. Her face was dripping with the stuff! She probably had to hack someone open, and give them a heart massage. Or something like that.
I do recall the shot in question was rushing the person, on a trolley, presumably to an operating room. So she had a really intent look on her face, adding to the impact.
Innocent Blood and Lost Boys both had messy feeders, with the vampires getting glowing eyes and other effects to make them look horrific. So avoiding the ‘sexy sucking’. They did not do the sucking at all but just ripped out folks’ throats and drank the blood as it gushed out!
Innocent Blood stipulated that the spine had to be severed, to stop the process. So decapitation, with a shotgun, was the heroine’s technique of choice.
Prior to the 2000’s and 2010’s flood of bad movies thanks to companies like Asylum and other SyFy channel level fair, vampire movies could often be easily identified which era they were from by things like how the vampire’s fed, 80’s and early 90’s were an era of messy feeders, it was a time of gore going up in movies, so more of a spectacle was made of it. Anyone who has hunted for watched predatory animals hunting can tell you nothing turns into a blood fountain *squirter with enough pressure but nothing like the movies*, but realistic gore was never their intention.
When a movie can’t deliver on psychological horrors or suspense it goes for gross out and/or gore; which I am in the bank of finding less “scary” and more just either gross or comical, a lot of vampire movies turned comical because…well baby eating spaghetti level of silliness to it. Blood doesn’t rush that fast out and cupping a mouth around it to get every drop except maybe some little spill at the end.
I mean if they wanted to go disturbing there are better ways, using more traditional vampires *such blood out through the sole of the foot*, or have a crows and other birds peck at a still conscious but paralyzed victim and sucking up their blood to deliver to their master in her lair where they regurgitate the blood into their mouth, use a vampire that has the spiked proboscis tongue and go in through the ear or eye *granted that would be less horrific today thanks to various alien creatures*,
but yeah, unless the vampire is also a meat eater it just feel silly to be all that messy unless its one of the more horrific breeds of vampires and not just trying to twist about the 1800’s literary (or “classical”) vampire. But hey, they can, but having your vampire lapping up blood in the air like the dog on the lawn sprinkler just comes across as funny to me.
I’m expecting this guy to come popping out of that hole. The arc’s been heading that way ever since the start of the comic.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1145
But what was ‘the great burning’? The bridge?
You mean these Burning Bridges? o_O
If Kelly’s heroes are coming through that gate, then Archon should engage full run-away mode. No way could they stand against the tide of the entire US Army, convinced that they will get a share of a bank heist!
I’m thinking each of these https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189 is going to be an arc on their own. That said two data points isn’t exactly a good start for extrapolation.
Nonsense, just two data points let’s you do all kinds of interesting extrapolation. It’s when you start trusting the results that you get into trouble.
It really bothers me when people (like our artist) say it (and yes, I’ve heard it a few times in games, idle discussions and such): You don’t cut off a person’s head unless they DIED. If they are still ALIVE, you’ve REMOVED THEIR BODY.
Whatever makes you, you, is in your head and as long as it lives, you are around. The rest of your body is just meat you drive around and maybe decorate with piercings and tattoos. Sciona lost her body and had to strap on a new one to survive and move around. She got a body transplant just like you would get a kidney transplant.
If you replaced her head, you would have SOMEONE ELSE driving that body around.
This is basic set theory and people somehow always discuss this in a weird way.
If her head had been dead/gone, there would be no Sciona. It’s an odd thing to get hung up on, but maybe that’s the bioethics background talking, I dunno.
Good point
I expect that Archon is still actively developing their training curriculum, but I’m sure “Applied Bioethics 201” will be in the manual relatively soon since it keeps coming up during missions.
Just realized I didn’t put in the actual statement I was responding to.
It’s this one: “I mean, she got most of her head cut off once…”
Nope. She got all of her body cut off once. She lived.
Honestly, this is turning into one of those scenarios where I actually want to see the villain win so I can see what they are trying to accomplish. Also, Sciona has worked really hard and suffered for this, so she kinda deserves a win, even if the heroes eventually undo whatever she accomplishes.
Also, you don’t need to explain wanting to draw beautiful people in skin-clad outfits. Artist’s prerogative. :)
Oh I think we will see that, regardless. Dave is not such a tease as to end the arc on an anti-climax.
I do though hope that it does not end with a win for Sciona. She has already (possibly) killed Sydney once. I think our heroine could do without that happening a second time!
Especially as, this time, they do not have Krona around, to give them a replay.
Given the events on the following page, surely you meant anti-climb-Max?
More like anti-demurustration.
You know it would be really entertaining if the last orb Halo has no idea what it does actually can create minions for her made of material of what ever the orb is pressed against. (Unknown max number but skill tree…why not based on how advanced they are) Like a rank in that now the minions have personalities depending on what the creator chooses. and since she’s Heavily ADHD it’s very likely she’s going to have them have a very wide variety of personalities mostly likely besed on Comic cook characters. Like picture a 3 foot tall minion halo accidentally made from an Iron frying pan with a came can calling itself Batman. Or a minion created from a couch with the personlality of the Ultimate Warrior (he had his own comic written by him believe it or not and it makes no sense just like him so this one makes no sense to but doesn’t stop talking) and so on.
Awesome idea, and an inspirational one too!
*awards a 24 carat gold star*
Quite worrying if Halo summoned a minion without pressing the orb against another substance though. Because then the only thing that it could be created from is Sydney. Effectively creating Sydney clones, but with some quirky traits based on her thoughts, at the time.
So she might have one minion who genuinely is burnt if exposed to sunlight.
Whilst another might be able to hold a wotsit up so that, from her perspective, it looked as big as a building, but having the ability to push the building over with it!
And, if she is feeling self-assured, one of her likenesses may be Omnigal (from the start of the comic)!
All that said though, the core idea of gaining properties from other substances (with a Sydney induced twist) is wonderful, in its own right.
Thinking about where her original body was vut, I’m having an awful image of Sciona’s former body sitting in deathmonger’s lair somewhere (in another universe), that being dm’s modus operandi. Although she usually only does that to capes with Giant Growth power…
*put
You know what’s interesting, most of the other supernatural-types have paired off or have hints that there’s other creatures like them. The Succubi, Vampires, Werewolves, etc.. Wonder if Sciona’s trying to find the rest of the Alari.
That (or at least opening up a route home) is one of the leading theories.
The other being that she is intending to bring through something really nasty.
But it is entirely possible that both are correct, if using your take on the former. Provided that they prove to be just as unpleasant and murderous as she is.
Another of man’s best friends. Well, maybe “little girl’s best friend” may be more apt. ;-)
Nice for him to be promoted to honorary police dog.
F5ing like mad.
Am i the only one that notices she has a mug that says best blood mage?
World’s best. No, Pander, amongst others, mentioned it. Finding it quite endearing.
It’s Sciona wearing pants in the first panel?
Hey, even super-villains need to answer nature’s call! It is not like SWAT teams make an appointment. So she was not exactly dressed for company.
You have to mute her magic incantations, because you know someone at home will try it, and the consequences will be on your head.