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Page 33

12 thoughts on “Page 33

  1. The teacher has a healthy set of lungs on her, huh.

    1. It’s that voice all teachers have, when there is no other option to control an unruly class.

  2. On the second panel there is this big personwith a coat with circles. I think they are the same guy from page 11. Big guy, shirtless under his coat with circles, scar on the chest and what looks like a lettuce leaf hanging from the right ear 🙂

    1. Surely not! I mean, that would imply he was a recurring character or something. And there’s no way Laurel would think to use visual foreshadowing. I can’t think of a single time she’s done that! >_>

    2. He does seem to be hanging around a lot! And those ears next to him… hmm.

  3. I will have you know that I heard Vader’s voice from “Star Wars Gangsta Rap” during the, “No, they would NOT!”

    1. I’m down with that 😀

  4. caught up
    if the real world was preventing me from seeing the future I would be really annoyed
    of course I would probably be one of the people who ticked of the cluster in the first place by trying to advance technology with it, or that one dude who built an army of robots to fight the zombie apocalypse

    1. There are probably more than a few unlucky people at this point who tried to investigate the Cluster or use it for their own purposes, and now I’m thinking that would make for some good subclasses… hmmm.

      1. maybe someone who managed to splinter themselves off from the rest of the hive mind and is being constantly pursued? he also can’t build his own cluster, not that he would if he had the option, for a reason ranging from not having a strong enough mind to dominate others to anyone he converts being taken control of by the cluster, and has figured out that he can ‘harmonize’ with the crystals and use them to take direct control over the machines he used in his lab, and has been on the run for a while with the ones that were both mobile and that he’s been able to jury rigg to keep running after they broke and what he’s been able to pick up, build, or repair along the way to wherever we meet him. there are probably other effects like being able to seamlessly attach prosthetics and use it like he was born with it, after he lost an arm for reasons that could range from infection (mundane or by the cluster) to it being completely crushed in some form of accident, maybe he even had it when the cluster tried to convert him.

        If we meet him after he’s had a chance to build a base it would probably be in the ruins of an industrial city that remains one of the last hold out in their region due to their mysterious (to outsiders and new comers) mechanical defenders.

        of course he’s not completely sane after being infected, before he was driven and dedicated to developing his machines, convinced that they would eventually replace spells and things enchanted with current “wasteful” methods (he uses Rune-tech, just so that’s clear) and was among the people trying to use the cluster’s properties, in his case he saw great potential in their ability to share resources between each other without any kind of physical or viewable magical connection to each other to be able to solve the charging problem. well…he succeeded…after he was infected. his machines’ efficiency and constantly eating everything he can then using his own energy to power them are the only reason he managed to keep them running while on the run, and after setting up a base he is able to constantly take energy from them to be able to work forever.

        after he’s infected and on the run for a while…paranoia, “the flesh is weak”, though he’s not going to try and force it on someone who doesn’t want to cut off their own limbs to replace them with metal and understands that most people’s bodies aren’t anywhere as near receptive to modification as his is, by the current time period he’s probably something like half machine due to no longer caring about his body beyond making sure it doesn’t die and him with it and that he doesn’t lose anything that he’s unlikely to be able to replaced by the next time he needs it, this includes sections of his torso with mechanical organs being visible from the outside in some places – not gorey, just he never bothered to put fake skin over the replaced organ to hide it due to not needing it, and there’s stuff that looks like it came off an exosuit attached to the outside of his body increasing the force he can bring to bear. he also thinks incredible quickly, uncannily so, and is highly logical, with emotions dictating his actions rarely, and also scarily pragmatic – he’s the kind of person to identify that someone has no chance of living without a miracle, and because the threat is close behind them and they can’t afford to waste time trying to save someone they can’t save, he’d let the other’s try for their miracle if there was time but there isn’t, so he blows their head off so that the horde can’t get them and to put them out of their misery and gets moving again. he’s also unnerving to watch while he’s working with his automatons, it doesn’t look like he’s directing them, it looks like they’re all a part of the same entity, which they are, but most of the time when someone says that it looks like the person is the nerve center or something along those lines, and seeing them work together looks like he’s just another member of the entity

        maybe he develops advanced prosthetics that have shards that are harmonized with him in them that people can attach to themselves and functions like a normal limb, though they’ll have to relearn how to use the prosthetic to some extent. wonder what kind of side effects those would have…nothing short term, and the long term ones would be negligible – for one limb any way. but once people start using them comparatively to their creator, and after they’re no longer using the body…who knows? but higher machines are bound by purpose, and this collective of them is bound to survive, beat back the cluster, and minimize the damage caused by it as much as possible without compromising directives 1 and 2.

        if it ends up being a subclass this dude might have been the first one infected, and his prosthetic was infected instead of latching into his flesh directly, giving him the chance to break away from the cluster without also shattering his ability to connect to others the way most who managed to escape did – and maybe some of the subclasses are people who formed a half connection to his hivemind, a full connection would make them just another member of it, but the half connection influences them and gives them typically far less extreme forms of the original’s madness and lets them send and receive information from the Collective, turning it into something like acquiring knowledge from an eldritch mind, information that is freely shared between the Collective with the people who attach themselves to it – if it sees them assisting the Cluster however, it brutally shatters their connection and frequently their minds and makes all the information it gathered through them a part of it’s database (trading for knowledge with it is closer to giving it permission to share knowledge it learned from you in exchange for it giving you what you want to know.

        you don’t have to use all this if you don’t want to, but I would greatly appreciate it if you did, and if something needs to be tweaked I only ask that you maintain it’s spirit – one of my other suggestions was unraveled back a decent ways and then rewoven with new ideas into a broader and geater archetype (that’s basically what I was proposing at the time) that looked little like the original idea but was built from the same core ideas and ended up better and more coherent, though less impactful, than the original – and that’s without accounting for changes you would need to make to fix places where I’ve inevitably and unknowingly violated the lore

        look forward to seeing your work unfold Taleweaver

        1. could I maybe get a raincheck on if any of this is likely to be used, if only as inspiration, and if so how much by percentage?

        2. I only use stuff from writers that I contract, this is all yours!

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