“I’ll tell you what has me confused. I did everything right,” says the Collector. “I crushed everything that harbored Vash’s soul. I severed his bonds to the world one breath at a time. Quite simply, there was nowhere he could go.” She keeps re-forming, the slime swirling together to form arms. “So how did he slip through my–”
Suddenly, a Sentinel’s hand smashes down on the Collector, crushing her once again.
“I will not repeat myself!” Zuurith shouts, pushing himself up. “All of you, GO!”
The citizens of Zuurith obey their god and start fleeing as the smushed Collector bits start moving again, swelling up. A rumbling fills the air.
Also: She’s going to do an Alinua on the sentinel, right? Remember in the like 3rd chapter when Alinua destroys Vash’s wild sentinel by splitting it with vines? Yeah she’s definitely going to do that
The citizens of Zuurith obey their god and start fleeing as the smushed Collector bits start moving again. The ground starts moving, rising around the Sentinel. A rumbling fills the air.
She tears up through Zuurith, his body smoulders, lies fallen,
His Sentinel’s hand crushes her with a blow.
“I will not repeat myself!” He yells
At his subjects, “All of you, GO!”
Collector: You sly dog! You got me monologuing!
I get the feeling the Collector didn’t do as much research about Vash as she could; she probably focused mostly on city geography and god behaviour, deeming it the easiest to put her plan into action. If she heard about his triumph over Tynan, how he made the starmetal and stone his own, and turned it into a sword, she may have targeted that too. Now she’s paying for it.
Once again, Zuurith making smart moves in slowing down the Collector to allow his citizens to flee, but even he must realise it’s not enough to stop her. Besides, we all know what happened the last time a Sentinel fought a powerful life mage.
Ohh, I don’t like the look of that ground in the final panel. That’s not just the Collector healing herself; she’s applying healing to Stone’s body around her. Quicksand perhaps? Destabilising the foundations of the surrounding area? She could destroy Zuurith with her powers and chimeras, but while Vash’s demise was quick, this city’s demise will be slow.
I think she understands life, and has been researching souls, but she doesn’t understand divine souls well enough for her to have foreseen that something like this might happen. After all, even the other gods didn’t know something like Kendal was possible – between the fact that the other gods make their incarnations much less resistant, the specific properties of starmetal, and whatever Life did to Kendal through Alinua (and it’s been suggested Kendal’s body might not have held out as long as it has without Life’s intervention), it’s safe to say his existence is such a fluke that nothing like him has ever existed before.
As for Zuurith’s citizens, I think the Collector is going to start killing them and he is eventually going to give in for the sake of saving the survivors. After all, without his citizens, Zuurith will either be easy prey for the Collector himself, or – if he manages to escape her – he’ll eventually just go up in smoke. He may also find his own power unexpectedly reduced because his own citizens don’t have that much faith in him anymore after he failed to save them from Tynan. But as long as the Collector is purely after information on Kendal and isn’t intending to take Zuurith himself, she’ll let Zuurith and his citizens live. For now.
Hmm. Now I am wondering if Red is referencing Cider Spider’s “Get drilled, Idiot!” or if both of them are referencing something else I am missing?
Also, this episode tripped the part of my brain that likes to play with mixing stuff from other people’s works with stuff in my universe. I can’t help but consider The Collector against my most powerful non-divinity, and I think they would find each other annoyingly unkillable. She lacks the raw power to do much of anything to him, and he’d have trouble destroying all of her thoroughly enough to keep her from regenerating.
If she requires at least one living cell in order to regenerate, he could do it eventually, but he’d have to keep her contained long enough to set up sufficient destructive power, basically a nuke. If she can use her raw power to regenerate without any corporeal bits to start with, then he’d try to figure out a more permanent form of containment. He might not be able to, especially if she gets wind of what he is doing first and bails before he can stop her.
It’s meaningless in the end, the world-building is kind of incompatible, but it is fun to play with. And writing it out makes me think about it in more detail. 🙂
I have a similar bit of my brain running very often, which can be rather dull as not many antagonists can come back from being turned into a pile of neutrons at the start of Round One. The Collector does seem like it’s not impossible that they could, though, which is interesting because then you have to figure out how souls work and whether that can be jammed.
In my setting, it’s theoretically possible to bind soul to body and destroy both together. Not sure my character could overcome her regeneration, though. (All the fire, all the time is potentially an option, but I don’t know if that would work.)
Despite an overwhelmingly strong opening by the reconstituted calcium carbonate collector, the surly silicate supervisor secures a few more seconds of delay.
I had hope that Zuurith might tell the Collector which way Vash went, in order to save his city. However, I just realized that Shrike, Trusk, and Theia (all objectively important characters) conveniently left Zuurith in the interlude, so I have a hunch Mr. L’Oréal commercial may not survive this chapter.
Watching Zuurith lose is either extremely interesting or his people have no survival instincts given the number still standing around watching. Anyone with half a brain should be halfway to the hills by now.
I do believe we have escalated to “Oh fuck.”
I was inclined to believe Zuurith was proud enough and stubborn enough to refuse to give the Collector what she wants, not to mention while he might not LIKE Vash, I feel like he wouldn’t be inclined to offer information that could be detrimental to the gods themselves? But the Collector is pretty goal-oriented, so I’m pretty sure she’ll just keep putting on the pressure (offing half the population, perhaps?) until Zuurith gives in.
I like the background detail of Elfaust pulling Dains’t away. It’s kind of nice that some of Zuurith’s people care about him, even if he’s a dick.
Zuurith’s becoming one of my fave fave non-protagonist characters (second to Tahraim).
Bro enslaved his citizens, got reality checked by an orange man, got struck by lightning, turned Maleficent to goop, and refused to elaborate
I think at this point, he knows he’s dead. This is Tynan all over again. He can’t kill her because she just reforms. Unfortunately, she’s also not a god, so you can’t separate her from her domain to weaken her.
I feel like Kendal and Zuurith have a similar dynamic to Captain America and Iron Man in Civil War, where Kendal thinks Zuurith isn’t the type to do the sacrifice play, and Zuurith thinks everything special about Vash is how he was created. Kendal proved Zuurith wrong, and now it’s time for Zuurith to prove Kendal wrong.
It startles the collector & forces her to reform again, buying his citizens time to run. Extra this time, bc she also has to get out from under the sentinel’s hand. Honestly that was a bit of a smart move- Zurrith can reform so long as his people are safe, but without his city, the collector can destroy him just as easily as she destroyed Vash.
I’m wondering if Zuurith knows that the best way to stay alive is to get his citizens to scatter… it won’t help him fight the collector, but he can keep it from stealing his soul.
I think Zuurith’s people are beyond saving at this point. Unless the Collector doesn’t care for his soul and is just going to thrash the valley (you know, not like that wouldn’t kill a lot of the people Zuurith is supposed to protect).
I’m not even betting on Zuurith. We’ve seen what the Collector is capable of. And I think he knows, too. That he’s just trying to keep her attention on him so she stalls and his people run to safety. I’ll be hoping against hope he at least manages that.
I thought she was an insanely powerful mage who went insane because she got too powerful. But it seems that she became something else altogether, and there’s hardly a trace of the original mage.
I sense a tragic story. And I’m starting to think she’s not an anomaly but somehow fits into the battle between V.D. and the Light Dragon.
Maaaaybeeeee . . . you know how Gods have a citizen who are born with a part of them- an ambassador? Maybe she is like an ambassador for Life? I know Alinua is like that, but she is more of “semi-possessed, access to powers” connected, while the Collector knows her true name and tries to carry out what she THINKS life would want.
Random other theory: do the Primordials also have a bit of VD and LD in them, or are they completely separate? Because if LD is sentience, and the primordials are also sentient but not because of LD, then does that imply that there is a fundamental difference between Primordial souls and Human/God souls?
We know from Red’s Tumblr that she’s the one who discovered Life’s true name. As for what it did to her… she says here that she touched Life’s mind and that warped her into someone whose only desire is doing what she thinks Life wants. I suppose her body was also changed by the experience into something that’s really hard to kill.
For anyone interested, Sunstorm the Budgie and Mat went very in-depth about the lore of invoking primordial true names in the comments of the previous page.
I’ve been theorizing, for the last few panels, that she’s something like the Psychic Torture Slime, but still fully sapient and in control of her actions, if not her motivations. Some horrific amalgam of Void corruption and Life corruption, at the cellular level… it’s also interesting to note that in referring to her chimeras, she uses “we” instead of “they.” This might not be poetic license.
Zurith really do be having a rough time in all of these fights.
This does sound like the Floof gang might be in some direct danger tho. On one hand, this is very bad, and for their sake I hope it doesn’t happen. Or I hoped it wouldn’t happen for a while. ON THE OTHER HAND, I would love to see what would come out of Alinua and the Collector being in proximity to eachother.
I mean Zuurith does have the slight advantage of (kinda) knowing what he’s up against; Vash assumed she was a regular human mage and that just stabbing her would do the trick.
Well, I’ll give the god of totalitarianism one thing: he puts up a decent fight, and actually prioritizes his people’s survival when the situation is sufficiently dire. I might have to revise that title; the latter might disqualify him for it.
I haven’t seen anyone point out that the Collector has figured out that Vash “snuck out,” as we used to say at Camp. She has suddenly become a more immediate threat to the Floof Squad, and apparently to anyone she (it?) thinks can give her information about Kendal.
On the other hand, the Collector as of yet may not know that Kendal even *happened.* But Zuurith will probably explain, once the Collector makes him talk.
Shoutout to the jumping chimera-dog in panel 4. I know its an “abomination” being used for “the forces of evil” or whatever, but all I see is a spooked little guy.
Zuurith keeps getting Ls.
But not without a fight, gotta respect that at least.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: get giant robotted idiot
Image source: confused
Here ya go!
“I’ll tell you what has me confused. I did everything right,” says the Collector. “I crushed everything that harbored Vash’s soul. I severed his bonds to the world one breath at a time. Quite simply, there was nowhere he could go.” She keeps re-forming, the slime swirling together to form arms. “So how did he slip through my–”
Suddenly, a Sentinel’s hand smashes down on the Collector, crushing her once again.
“I will not repeat myself!” Zuurith shouts, pushing himself up. “All of you, GO!”
The citizens of Zuurith obey their god and start fleeing as the smushed Collector bits start moving again, swelling up. A rumbling fills the air.
Also: She’s going to do an Alinua on the sentinel, right? Remember in the like 3rd chapter when Alinua destroys Vash’s wild sentinel by splitting it with vines? Yeah she’s definitely going to do that
After looking at it a bit more, an edit:
The citizens of Zuurith obey their god and start fleeing as the smushed Collector bits start moving again. The ground starts moving, rising around the Sentinel. A rumbling fills the air.
Twitter Text: so you had a bad day-
Tumblr text: I’d say things are going about as well as could be expected
She tears up through Zuurith, his body smoulders, lies fallen,
His Sentinel’s hand crushes her with a blow.
“I will not repeat myself!” He yells
At his subjects, “All of you, GO!”
Well, the crackshippers will probably be happy about this turn of events. “And there was only one orb.”
And they were orb-mates?
Oh my gods, they were orb mates …
BRUH XD
crack shippers? I can infer what it means, but why crack?
“Crack” as in “crack cocaine”, as in “they must be high on crack to come up with these ships”.
Collector: You sly dog! You got me monologuing!
I get the feeling the Collector didn’t do as much research about Vash as she could; she probably focused mostly on city geography and god behaviour, deeming it the easiest to put her plan into action. If she heard about his triumph over Tynan, how he made the starmetal and stone his own, and turned it into a sword, she may have targeted that too. Now she’s paying for it.
Once again, Zuurith making smart moves in slowing down the Collector to allow his citizens to flee, but even he must realise it’s not enough to stop her. Besides, we all know what happened the last time a Sentinel fought a powerful life mage.
Ohh, I don’t like the look of that ground in the final panel. That’s not just the Collector healing herself; she’s applying healing to Stone’s body around her. Quicksand perhaps? Destabilising the foundations of the surrounding area? She could destroy Zuurith with her powers and chimeras, but while Vash’s demise was quick, this city’s demise will be slow.
I think she understands life, and has been researching souls, but she doesn’t understand divine souls well enough for her to have foreseen that something like this might happen. After all, even the other gods didn’t know something like Kendal was possible – between the fact that the other gods make their incarnations much less resistant, the specific properties of starmetal, and whatever Life did to Kendal through Alinua (and it’s been suggested Kendal’s body might not have held out as long as it has without Life’s intervention), it’s safe to say his existence is such a fluke that nothing like him has ever existed before.
As for Zuurith’s citizens, I think the Collector is going to start killing them and he is eventually going to give in for the sake of saving the survivors. After all, without his citizens, Zuurith will either be easy prey for the Collector himself, or – if he manages to escape her – he’ll eventually just go up in smoke. He may also find his own power unexpectedly reduced because his own citizens don’t have that much faith in him anymore after he failed to save them from Tynan. But as long as the Collector is purely after information on Kendal and isn’t intending to take Zuurith himself, she’ll let Zuurith and his citizens live. For now.
“Get giant robotted idiot”
Hmm. Now I am wondering if Red is referencing Cider Spider’s “Get drilled, Idiot!” or if both of them are referencing something else I am missing?
Also, this episode tripped the part of my brain that likes to play with mixing stuff from other people’s works with stuff in my universe. I can’t help but consider The Collector against my most powerful non-divinity, and I think they would find each other annoyingly unkillable. She lacks the raw power to do much of anything to him, and he’d have trouble destroying all of her thoroughly enough to keep her from regenerating.
If she requires at least one living cell in order to regenerate, he could do it eventually, but he’d have to keep her contained long enough to set up sufficient destructive power, basically a nuke. If she can use her raw power to regenerate without any corporeal bits to start with, then he’d try to figure out a more permanent form of containment. He might not be able to, especially if she gets wind of what he is doing first and bails before he can stop her.
It’s meaningless in the end, the world-building is kind of incompatible, but it is fun to play with. And writing it out makes me think about it in more detail. 🙂
@Zagaroth, did you know Red is fan of ReBoot cartoon series?
The Canadian made cartoon ReBoot to be more precise
Oh, is that what both of them are referencing?
I never watched much ReBoot. I had just joined the Coast Guard when it came out.
I have a similar bit of my brain running very often, which can be rather dull as not many antagonists can come back from being turned into a pile of neutrons at the start of Round One. The Collector does seem like it’s not impossible that they could, though, which is interesting because then you have to figure out how souls work and whether that can be jammed.
In my setting, it’s theoretically possible to bind soul to body and destroy both together. Not sure my character could overcome her regeneration, though. (All the fire, all the time is potentially an option, but I don’t know if that would work.)
Despite an overwhelmingly strong opening by the reconstituted calcium carbonate collector, the surly silicate supervisor secures a few more seconds of delay.
Happy May Day everyone!
the plot is plotting
Ok, but the Collector is rendered gorgeously!
Yeah, I was really hoping the Collector’s updated appearance would be extra awesome, and Red did not disappoint!
Huh, Red really is going through every single option people suggested for killing the collector… neat
At this rate, the only way to stop her will be to throw her into space
You know, we may just know a person for that…
I had hope that Zuurith might tell the Collector which way Vash went, in order to save his city. However, I just realized that Shrike, Trusk, and Theia (all objectively important characters) conveniently left Zuurith in the interlude, so I have a hunch Mr. L’Oréal commercial may not survive this chapter.
L’Oreal hair- it’s so true. Vash VS Zuurith . . . More like Dove VS L’Oreal XD
Stomped on like a bug. Maybe a kink?
Watching Zuurith lose is either extremely interesting or his people have no survival instincts given the number still standing around watching. Anyone with half a brain should be halfway to the hills by now.
don’t underestimate the power of the freeze response
In every single one of the Collector’s appearances, I’ve been playing Astor’s Theme from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in my head.
I share this now because I’m pretty sure the music is about to switch to Astor, Prophet of Doom.
I do believe we have escalated to “Oh fuck.”
I was inclined to believe Zuurith was proud enough and stubborn enough to refuse to give the Collector what she wants, not to mention while he might not LIKE Vash, I feel like he wouldn’t be inclined to offer information that could be detrimental to the gods themselves? But the Collector is pretty goal-oriented, so I’m pretty sure she’ll just keep putting on the pressure (offing half the population, perhaps?) until Zuurith gives in.
I like the background detail of Elfaust pulling Dains’t away. It’s kind of nice that some of Zuurith’s people care about him, even if he’s a dick.
“I will not repeat myself! ” And then he repeats himself
The third panel is so perfect.
I never thought i’d say this but poor Zuurith, he’s having a really rough 24 hours.
ok but now I’m questioning how the collector’s clothes work. the implications are… ick
the clothes are merely an extension of her skin
Zuurith’s becoming one of my fave fave non-protagonist characters (second to Tahraim).
Bro enslaved his citizens, got reality checked by an orange man, got struck by lightning, turned Maleficent to goop, and refused to elaborate
I think at this point, he knows he’s dead. This is Tynan all over again. He can’t kill her because she just reforms. Unfortunately, she’s also not a god, so you can’t separate her from her domain to weaken her.
I feel like Kendal and Zuurith have a similar dynamic to Captain America and Iron Man in Civil War, where Kendal thinks Zuurith isn’t the type to do the sacrifice play, and Zuurith thinks everything special about Vash is how he was created. Kendal proved Zuurith wrong, and now it’s time for Zuurith to prove Kendal wrong.
* Zuurith thinks everything special about Kendal is how he was created.
Y’know, when turning her into chunks didn’t work I fail to see how turning her into paste will be any better
It startles the collector & forces her to reform again, buying his citizens time to run. Extra this time, bc she also has to get out from under the sentinel’s hand. Honestly that was a bit of a smart move- Zurrith can reform so long as his people are safe, but without his city, the collector can destroy him just as easily as she destroyed Vash.
Unfortunately I don’t know if running away will keep them safe, I still doubt we know the full extent of what the collector is capable of.
I’m wondering if Zuurith knows that the best way to stay alive is to get his citizens to scatter… it won’t help him fight the collector, but he can keep it from stealing his soul.
A monologue is just about to commence
When a Sentinel’s fist cuts off the sentence
When Zuurith then orders his people to GO
Some Collector juice moves to reshape the foe
Yep Zuurith’s screwed, Welp. I can’t even say he had a good run.
TL;DR: Monologuing is not a victimless crime.
-Red
I do so love when a monologue gets cut-off
Hoo boy, he’s screwed. But he did try! He got in a second hit! That’s better than Vash managed 😂
*Bob from ReBoot voice* This is bad. Very bad!
I think Zuurith’s people are beyond saving at this point. Unless the Collector doesn’t care for his soul and is just going to thrash the valley (you know, not like that wouldn’t kill a lot of the people Zuurith is supposed to protect).
I’m not even betting on Zuurith. We’ve seen what the Collector is capable of. And I think he knows, too. That he’s just trying to keep her attention on him so she stalls and his people run to safety. I’ll be hoping against hope he at least manages that.
Zuurith continues his slow ascension up my favorite characters list. Too bad there’s only a .01% chance he makes it out of here.
“Slipped through my-“
“Fingers!”
“I will not repeat myself! All of you, GO!”
I enjoy how even when fighting heroically to protect his people he’s still a bit of a jerk.
What *is* she?
I thought she was an insanely powerful mage who went insane because she got too powerful. But it seems that she became something else altogether, and there’s hardly a trace of the original mage.
I sense a tragic story. And I’m starting to think she’s not an anomaly but somehow fits into the battle between V.D. and the Light Dragon.
Maaaaybeeeee . . . you know how Gods have a citizen who are born with a part of them- an ambassador? Maybe she is like an ambassador for Life? I know Alinua is like that, but she is more of “semi-possessed, access to powers” connected, while the Collector knows her true name and tries to carry out what she THINKS life would want.
Random other theory: do the Primordials also have a bit of VD and LD in them, or are they completely separate? Because if LD is sentience, and the primordials are also sentient but not because of LD, then does that imply that there is a fundamental difference between Primordial souls and Human/God souls?
Thoughts from anyone would be appreciated 😊
We know from Red’s Tumblr that she’s the one who discovered Life’s true name. As for what it did to her… she says here that she touched Life’s mind and that warped her into someone whose only desire is doing what she thinks Life wants. I suppose her body was also changed by the experience into something that’s really hard to kill.
For anyone interested, Sunstorm the Budgie and Mat went very in-depth about the lore of invoking primordial true names in the comments of the previous page.
I’ve been theorizing, for the last few panels, that she’s something like the Psychic Torture Slime, but still fully sapient and in control of her actions, if not her motivations. Some horrific amalgam of Void corruption and Life corruption, at the cellular level… it’s also interesting to note that in referring to her chimeras, she uses “we” instead of “they.” This might not be poetic license.
Zurith really do be having a rough time in all of these fights.
This does sound like the Floof gang might be in some direct danger tho. On one hand, this is very bad, and for their sake I hope it doesn’t happen. Or I hoped it wouldn’t happen for a while. ON THE OTHER HAND, I would love to see what would come out of Alinua and the Collector being in proximity to eachother.
Hehe. Squish.
I do have to wonder how Zuurith thought he could win when Vash lost while having a body that was aparently strong enough to survive death
I mean Zuurith does have the slight advantage of (kinda) knowing what he’s up against; Vash assumed she was a regular human mage and that just stabbing her would do the trick.
Girl his vessel, sword, and sentinels were all still walking around like it was no ones business. Nowhere smh
Well, I’ll give the god of totalitarianism one thing: he puts up a decent fight, and actually prioritizes his people’s survival when the situation is sufficiently dire. I might have to revise that title; the latter might disqualify him for it.
I haven’t seen anyone point out that the Collector has figured out that Vash “snuck out,” as we used to say at Camp. She has suddenly become a more immediate threat to the Floof Squad, and apparently to anyone she (it?) thinks can give her information about Kendal.
On the other hand, the Collector as of yet may not know that Kendal even *happened.* But Zuurith will probably explain, once the Collector makes him talk.
Haha, fingers. I see what you did there 🙂
Shoutout to the jumping chimera-dog in panel 4. I know its an “abomination” being used for “the forces of evil” or whatever, but all I see is a spooked little guy.