Source material: Kill Six Billion Demons: Seeker of Thrones, chapters 7-8 (7-74 to 8-100)
Blogged: January 26, 2020
Life outside of the wall
I could say I’d dreamed it
Real one time, if at all
I could hardly tell you
Who’s to know, what you’ll find
But it’s there, I’m sure
What you’re looking for is just behind the Dreamer’s Door!
Or in this case, inside the treasure vault’s door. Hopefully. Leaning towards not, really, or that he’ll be gone by the end.
There’s also the question of whether this is the real treasure vault. It seems like we’ve had too little exposure to the various traps of Yre, we still have like five people left to kill off or otherwise get rid of, and if I were designing a treasure fortress, I’d make the huge fancy door one of the most dangerous places to go, short of the actual vault found behind a much less conspicuous door. Mammon strikes me as smart enough to do something like that.
There’s just one way to find out, I suppose. Felicia’s time to shine?
Let’s open up the Dreamer’s Door.
I forgot the alt text on the Door page last time:
[alt text]
The priests of the Count are not exactly subtle in their interior design
Heh. Perhaps not, but perhaps they’re deceptive?
I mean they did fill a whole hallway with mimics and other classic D&D “the room attacks you” enemies.
Remember the control key issue I mentioned? That affects taking screenshots too. The hotkey for that is ctrl+F1. Which means that every time muscle memory makes me try to do that with the left ctrl key rather than the right, my browser is going to try to open the help page instead. That’s gonna get annoying quickly.
Let’s see what you can do.
Also did you design your outfit after lucky cats, are lucky cats based on legends of you, or is it all a big coincidence?
I’d like to imagine she’s addressing the purely decorative screaming head rather than questioning whether the head is purely decorative.
Right, in all my musings about the potential for the door to be a decoy, I managed to forget that Ciocie would know.
It seems I was right, though, in a sense. There are decoy doors like I was describing, it’s just that this is the right one. Mammon had the right idea, even if he failed to follow the shell game principle.
…wait. No, I think I misunderstood what Ciocie was describing.
All the doors are real and lead into the Labyrinth, which you have to go through to get to the Vault. Okay, but why so many doors then? Just to provide access to every part of the fortress from the Vault for Mammon and his staff?
[alt text]
Cleaning the labyrinth is a real pain for the Priest of the Count, because getting all the corners is, in some cases, literally impossible
Hah!
I know I got a bit hung up on the doors there, so let’s talk about what we just learned of the Labyrinth.
“a space without space, an infinite maze, proof to even Mammon’s dimension-splitting compatriots”
Sounds like a non-euclidean deal, where you can turn four equidistant corners to the left and end up in a different place than you started, and turning back doesn’t always lead to where you came from. Go play Antichamber, by the way.
At least it’s only a “space without space” and not also lacking a solid timeline. When you mix space without space and time without time you get a lot of weirdness. That’s the kind of place where you can travel in a straight line and collide with yourself, then go the other way and collide with yourself again, from the other perspective.
Help page opening count: 2
Naturally. 😛
Poor kitty ears.
Despite Felicia being clearly human, it’s nice to have confirmation about whether or not the ears on her outfit are functional or she has ears under the hood.
I suppose when lockpicking doesn’t work, you have to use a key.
Even better, Allison’s is specifically a skeleton key and should thematically be able to unlock any door.
Wait, are we not talking about using the master key?
Does this door require murder?
Well.
They did say they brought her to open the door.
Was Ciocie in on “the picking who to feed to it” thing?
[alt text]
F E E D M E A S T R A Y C A T
Careful, Abbadon, you’ll trigger Cat Master’s berserker mode.
I wonder how common Cat Master / Felicia is as a ship.
Yeah, Ciocie’s not as cool with this as she’s trying to make it look like she is.
I like Oscar’s faces in the top two panels on the right.
Time to interfere, Allison? Maybe you can use the master key after all?
Dammit, Incubus.
I like the transition here. Trapped!Allison’s outfit and the background kinda tip the reader off that something isn’t right in the panel on the far left, if they’re paying attention, and then the zoom out makes it gradually more obvious what’s happened.
[alt text]
Oscar’s tailor gets a lot of work
If you want to be a bigshot time traveler, you’re going to need a good tailor.
Everyone knows that.
chomp.
I like how the face looks, uh, satisfied. Not just the kind of satisifed from a good meal, but more like.
Let’s just say some would describe it as glowing.
Also the opening sequence in the last panel reminds me of when Allison was first sent to Throne.
[alt text]
F
Big F for Felicia.
Careful, Incubus, that’s the kind of reaction that might give you away.
More oversightly than I expected, and with easy access to what appear to be raised walkways you can just walk straight on. But if it’s infinite and possibly non-euclidean, that might not help as much as it seems like it would.
[alt text]
There’s a long way to go
I wonder how many things there are in this maze that could kill you.
If that number is even finite.
Also, given what Ciocie said about the door working to destabilize groups, the maze might attempt to make groups destroy themselves from within. Which is a track we were already on anyway.
White Chain?
White Chain.
No, 83 White Chain.
I for one like the Saotome Anything Goes style.
[alt text]
Among other angelic martial arts: Demon Flips the Cart, Pattram Sword Hand, Falling Snow, and Head of John. The last one relies almost entirely on headbutts.
Demon mention!
Head of John sounds like a fun but headache-inducing style.
Oof.
That “arrest me–” getting cut off is worrying. Is White Chain about to prove how much she’s changed by doing more violence than necessary?
Yep.
White Chain, you were kind of a bore when you were chill, but even so, you need to chill.
Allison, you should probably hurry back when you can. White Chain’s going a little off the deep end.
Although really, Nyave has much better odds of being able to stop this than Allison does.
[alt text]
The poor petal knight being beat up here is 33 Judicious Rains Sear the Unrepentant. I thought I might mention that here just in case, you know, something bad happens to her/them/it
Yeah, uh, I had few illusions of this angel lasting very long unless Nyave got involved quickly.
Yes!
Some things are predictable for the simple reason that they’re good and satisfying writing.
Smoking is not good for your health, White Chain.
Actually, what do I know. White Chain’s body is a stone statue.
“For all that nonsense, you’re carrying the groceries.”
I love White Chain just awkwardly putting the table down.
[alt text]
Even the hottest rage can be quenched by cold remorse
The tricky part is triggering the remorse.
You’re praying to the wrong people. The one who needs to forgive you is you.
And Nyave. And Judicious Rains. And all the people you terrified. And… you get the point.
It doesn’t matter if the gods forgive you if you hurt everyone else, yourself included. The gods aren’t around anymore. They are.
Wait, what? Isn’t that Mottom’s palace?
What’s it doing here, and in one piece? Did Mottom manage to regain control and follow Allison?
Or maybe it was hijacked by Mathangi ten Meti?
[alt text]
Her journey is far from over
Okay but whose exactly? White Chain’s? Mottom’s? Nyave’s? Allison’s?
Yes.
(It’s probably mostly White Chain in this case.)
At least Incubus is lending them some of his competence, I guess.
Hey, look, using the master key to open a door!
I wonder, if someone leaned their ear in real close to her face, could they hear Allison’s eye talking?
This is why you don’t make deals to let the villains into your head, Allison.
Kinda pissed that Incubus is being you more effectively than you?
I really like yellow Allison’s hair.
[alt text]
This is where it gets weird
Please.
I hope that means we get dialogue between the Allisons.
h e l l y e s .
I’ve personified my self-criticism before. Kind of a bummer when years pass and you start relating more to that character than the supposed author avatar he spent most of his time criticizing.
I’m amazed it took her hours to get to this point.
Also, looking snazzy, Incubus!
Well, fuck. Demiurge!Allison.
[alt text]
The Once and Future King
Once? I don’t know. Future, definitely. Unless of course the ending involves her refusing the throne, which I could absolutely see her doing.
Can this happen to anyone, or is it related to your shenanigans?
Well, that was a… productive meeting.
Critic!Allison is a mood.
[alt text]
When you’re a thousands-of-years-old demigod, you tend to come up with elaborate ways to amuse yourself
I love characters like that.
Oh hey, someone’s actually on-duty.
Priests of the Count don’t have a high life expectancy in this comic, in terms of panels.
Ooh, time to see how the painting is used. So are they going to disguise someone as this priest?
That sounds a lot more sensible than my first thought of disguising the priest’s corpse as another devil and parading him around Weekend at Bernie’s style.
[alt text]
Xand and Nxor are well known for their exploits in Throne’s underworld, including painting a full body portrait of a merchant baron’s wife so convincing that the baron didn’t realize his real wife had left him for several months.
Ahahaha
Beautiful.
I take it they need that flame gem thingy to proceed?
Gunshot-esque magic through the mask?
Oh right, I forgot guns do exist in Throne.
Hm. Does he have a tendency to pick things symbolic of his own history to turn into important magic items? Might get along with Voldemort, then.
[alt text]
Everything has a price
And yet, he managed to get it back.
The Point of No More Relying on Ciocie’s Knowledge has been reached.
What’s up, Goofy-Eyes Bros? Something behind the group?
This whirring and clicking and everything kinda makes me feel like 1-11 is about to get his time in the spotlight.
Well, that’s helpful.
Is there some mechanism to make stairs pop out of the wall, making this similar to the stairwell we just saw the priest walk down?
[alt text]
Mammon’s really heavily into the whole ‘murdered my family’ decor
Oh, that’s what the blades on the door are! I didn’t realize they were sticking through the throats of creatures of Mammon’s species at first.
I… actually kind of called this while turning the page? I caught a glimpse of the previous page’s description, and it said “Unseen Territory”. If I’d had time to talk about that before it finished turning to this page, I would’ve totally called that this was what that meant.
Now the next question is why things are clicking out on the invisible platform. We’ve got 1-11 on the spot, so it’s almost certainly something mechanical.
I mean I was hoping for something he could help solve before his demise, but fair enough.
- Allison
- Mamoru
- Ciocie
- Oscar
- Nxor
1-11- Cat Master
- Charon
- Xand
Felicia- Kitty
(in case some you don’t read the Between posts: this list is a survival probability ranking from here)
Felicia was brought along to help with opening doors. 1-11 was brought along to help with mechanical traps. Well, I suppose they both served their purpose, if not in the ways they expected.
[alt text]
Not even the dragon knows how the Prison of Air was built, and its final architect was burned alive in molten gold
Prison of Air? Ominous name.
Are those all explosives?
Firefly-based lanterns are a thing K6BD has in common with, of all things, MLP:FiM.
Literal fireflies. This could be a problem.
[alt text]
How much more convoluted can this get, I wonder?
It can always get more convoluted.
Charon isn’t wrong. If they’d kept 1-11 alive, he could maybe have helped them disable the traps.
Yeah, um, let’s have one thing clear: I don’t fully believe Incubus that this is all Allison, by any means.
Is he actually offering up his cat as a body to throw at this? Weirdly enough, that’d put the cat higher on my survival probability list. The main reason it was at the bottom was the idea of its death upsetting Cat Master.
It’s also not a terrible idea. The trap that got 1-11 was clearly designed with larger beings in mind.
[alt text]
Let the culling begin
What are you talking about, we’re three bodies in.
Whose blood are they using to mark the paths?
Nitpicks: The plural of “thy”, i.e. when you’re talking to multiple people, is “your”. And even if you ignore that part and stick with the singular for the effect like Abbadon seems to have done here, it’s still not quite right. When followed by “expurgation”, “thy” should be “thine”. (It works the same way as “a” vs “an”.) “Hath” is even worse, because that’s third person singular and has no place in these sentences at all.
“thyselves” is something you’d say to a hivemind.
At least that’s how these things worked in our world. Maybe it’s different in Throne.
I like the dollar symbol on thy fancy robes, priest.
[alt text]
000001
I have no idea what this is about (something in the description?) so I choose to believe it’s a scoring of the priest’s grammar.
Ohh, the priests are numbered. Fair enough.
Move over, though, 000001. There can be only one Number One, and it’s not you.
Ah, now you’re getting it. I’m glad our little grammar discussion helped, even if you did just refer to the priests collectively with “thee”.
[alt text]
The Martyrs will die well
The remainder of the excess characters? Or just the ones the priests would see as martyrs?
If this spread isn’t available as a poster I don’t know what Abbadon is doing.
It’s certainly going in my wallpapers folder.
[alt text]
The Shield of the Dragon
It seems like the shield is getting poked a lot.
Did Mamoru just gain a better name and level up?
Looking pretty awesome there.
Counters?
My first instinct would be that the death of, say, 13 would reduce the numbers of everyone 14+ so there were no gaps, but we see two of these hit 0. Those are the bloody ones, though, so maybe that’s just what happens to the counter when its wearer dies.
[alt text]
Princess Jack Moonshine
Can she unlock other devil levels by being selective about how her many names go together?
Oscar is just so damn goofy and I kind of love it now.
Charon, where are you off to?
Well, priests, if you didn’t want them to find their way through the prison of air, you seem to have fucked that up.
Some poor sod’s gonna have to scrub this unless Allison breaks the whole place before she’s done, or the explosives go off. I see that firefly.
And so does Ciocie, suggesting it’s about to happen imminently.
Also, hey, even the cat survived! For now, at least.
[alt text]
The Martyrs have died well
Heh.
Yes, bring back paper doll wielding Ciocie Cioelle who cares about her friends not being blown to pieces!
Yeah, uh.
Something is clearly wrong.
You two need to help each other shake this shit out.
[alt text]
The high caste are born and die in the vault, they shall never feel the sun upon their face. They often wail and torment their own flesh in sorrow for the Dragon. They are holy creatures indeed.
More like holey creatures, after this bunch is done with them.
Ciocie, if you have to knock her the fuck out to bring her with you, you have my permission.
She’ll probably be murderously pissed afterwards, though, especially if it doesn’t bring her back to her senses.
I’m glad Ciocie recognizes this. This scene would be even more painful if she actually believed this was coming from a balanced Allison.
It is coming from Allison, but not all of Allison.
I wonder what Mammon would think if he knew of Incubus’ involvement in this whole affair.
Anyway, kaboom. Let’s hope this helps somehow.
[alt text]
Tension
Yeah, no kidding.
This was only a question of time ever since the explosives got scattered, but I do wonder how many of the raiders are going to be fatally wounded by this.
Ciocie and Allison look like they’ll survive, though Ciocie will probably be wounded. That does not look like a pleasant back massage.
Don’t you dare, Allison.
[alt text]
“A horrendous sound was heard in the Deep, like a ringing of a great and discordant bell. ‘It is one of the Devils of the Old World,’ said the Boar King, ‘Breaking free from its prison of stone. Enyis, we should hide now.'” – Enyis and the Boar King
Sounds reasonable.
End of K6BD: SoT ch. 8-9
Well. That was intense.
I’m going to be working under the assumption that Ciocie makes it somehow until definitely proven otherwise, on account of both narrative plot armor and the prophecy (unless… the devil in the prophecy could be Mamoru?? didn’t look like it but worth considering), but her relationship with Allison is going to take a lot of work from both sides to fix. And before that we’ve got to fix her little sociopath pilot issue, too.
These chapters were really fucking good.
Next time, we’re finishing up Seeker of Thrones. We seem to be getting close to the Vault, but from there it’s a matter of, in no particular order:
a) getting in,
b) dealing with Mammon,
c) finding Zaid if he’s still there,
d) dealing with Incubus’ shit,
e) possibly getting words of wisdom from the old king,
f) possibly breaking the whole place,
g) learning of the next goal,
h) reciting the alphabet apparently,
i) probably killing off any of the fanmade characters who didn’t die to the explosion,
j) getting out,
k) hey that’s my letter,
l) maybe getting a start at restoring Cio and Allison…
In short, there’s a lot to do in the final three chapters of the book. I look forward to seeing how all of this is tied together!
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