We will probably publish only one new page next week.
- Ryn: No, these people don’t seem to be dead. They seem to be sleeping.
- Alissa: This face looks oddly familiar.
- Ryn: Hey, look at this, Alissa!
- Ryn: It’s Amos, from Oakdale!
- Alissa: You’re right!
- Alissa: All these people are from Oakdale!
- Alissa: Do you think we can wake them up?
- Ryn: Let’s see!
- Alissa: What are you doing?
- Ryn: Having a look at the options.
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Nice to see they aren’t all dead.
Thank u always for ur great work…
^^…
always nice when Ryn gets a chance to shine, haha
For all his villainy, at least Eldor didn’t actually mass-murder all the inhabitants of Oakdale, he just put them into cryostasis. Given his power, he could’ve easily murdered them all (and he has shown that he’s not above doing that when it suits him). Still… it makes one wonder what exactly he’s after. Immortality seems like just a guise for something else. Something he “lost”, apparently, or taken away from him, if what he told Lili is to be trusted.
Huh. So he knows how to interface with the technology here. Perhaps they have some odd magical equivalent at the university, but otherwise that seems rather strange…
@ Blue: Yep. Me too! Haha Ryn is actually my favorite. 😀
Hurry, call tech support! We have no time to navigate infinite nested menus! Wait, tech support are worthless…
You do it, Ryn!
Also, that’s the ‘unmemorable 4-weeks-ago thing involving fire.’ The abduction, though we could have known…
Start with someone you don’t like, in case you make a mistake! XD
oooh stasis pods. interesting.
When uncertain, look at help menu. Nice one Ryn.
Huh, some of us were right about Oakdale residents being there.
Well, Ryn, please don’t mess up with the options, in case it has bad options like disabling life support.
Well, that explains how the people within the illusion were so realistic – Eldor probably had their minds jacked into it like The Matrix.
We’ve know about this for a while, Eldor admitted to it in this comic.
Not that we can trust Eldor, but honestly, he only seems to lie when it suits him– in this case he was telling the truth.
Well, so much for the “Eldor lured them into a completely innocent Elvin realm just to get them in trouble” theory.
Options:
Deep sleep
Stasis
Nightmare
Injection
Fuel
Wake
Posession
I have to say: I didn’t say this coming and I think no one really did. Fills in a lot of gaps and is highly interesting. Great plot twist!
Okay, so what do they do with that finding?
Waking up all Oakdale people won’t help too much to stop Eldor from whatever sinister things he is doing, I am afraid. They won’t even be of much help against further potentially armed guards. But maybe there is more to be found. After all this seems to be really EHQ (Eldor Head Quarter): I don’t think that he would put such a fancy thing in a location that he could only access via the assembling place we have seen before. There should be a clean connection from his other “spacey” location(s). I doubt, however, that there won’t be more security to be overcome if they want to go there!
“We will probably publish only one new page next week.”
Oh no! Too much suspense! 🙁
@Novil : Maybe someone already asked and I missed it, but when and why Ryn and Alissa changed their hair colours? 🙁
OK, this wasn’t totally unexpected, but is nonetheless gratifying.
Obviously, Eldor only kills people when he has no other choice. Given an opportunity to plan ahead, he simply put the residents of Oakdale into hibernation. He clearly does whatever is most efficient… which means he’s potentially more predictable than a random killer would be. Good to know.
This is a very interesting forgotten and thought dropped plot point. “If you burn down the village, everyone dies. But if everyone dies, then who’s running the NPC’s? I guess Eldor’s magic’s just that amazing!” If we’re going backstage, they may as well find out how a few of the tricks are done.
The Design of Eldors facility is pretty damn awesome. I like the whole drawings of the webcomic (Gaia and Sandra and Woo), also the story is very good, i read it now 1,5 Years (also SaW) and i have enjoyed every page ^^
A book about the story of Gaia would be awesome, it is a bit like Eragon, but with much more technical gimmicks. Eragon was more like 12-1300, Gaia is more like in a alternative 19th Century, which is slightly unusual for comics/books which feature magical abilities.
I like steampunk (because they solve simple problems with totally awesome machanics), also i like the magical stuff, because it offers much more abilities to the “users”.
In Gaia both are joined so perfectly, like the cryostasis-capsules: They are complete clean in their appearance, but the interface uses witchcraft to work. (Yes, at Gaia they call it blue and redstream, i know 😉 ).
And that is what makes this story and the complete package so good: The complete world in Gaia works, there aren’t any big logical issues, you two (Powree and Novil) have made awesome work. I want to say thank you for the world you created.
Also i’m looking forward what Eldors final goal is: Combine the red and bluestream and then what he want’s do do with it? He has put a whole village in cryostasis, what he plans for the people? Or had he a moral conflict, and kept them alive? It must be for a reason, Eldor doesn’t do anything without a good reason.
Then, keep on going guys and Greetings from good old germany,
SLVRSRFR 🙂
Has no-one in this group watched any sci-fi movies, playing with stasis chambers never resulted in anything good !
I’m not sure if Eldor would put guards ‘just’ to keep some stasis pods safe if they didn’t serve another purpose. Like, for example, magic battery or something.
Alright, stasis chamber it is! No, don’t thaw them yet. Might cause an alarm or somethin’.
All-Purpose Guru wrote:
I did totally not remember that, thanks for pointing out.
@ Lurker:
I may be wrong but Eldor probably still needed the “source code” alive and running so their reactions to Lily and co. will be genuine.
SLVRSRFR wrote:
I think he mentioned that something dear was taken from him long ago. Something or someone, I think the wording was ambiguous on that aspect. Could it be that he got cut off from his family when the Mythal went up, and he has been looking for a way to break it ever since?
Traveller wrote:
I’d challenge that conclusion. First of all, a person as powerful as Eldor rarely ever has “no other choice”, even if we assume that pursuing his primary goal in the first place is absolutely necessary (which we don’t know). Second, we have seen him brutally murder the guy who rescheduled Lilith’s execution (OK, technically he didn’t kill him, but sent him straight up to a hell dimension with a no return ticket to be slowly tortured to death there, but that really equals killing). Second, we have the red hall massacre and the order to his cultists to kill anybody who remotely looks like Sandril and the guy who’s with him. I seriously doubt all those deaths were absolutely necessary even from Eldor’s twisted viewpoint.
Rather than “He only kills when he has no other choice / when it is necessary” I’d state that he tends to avoid killing if he sees an equally efficient way to pursue his goals without killing – or less nicely phrased the other way round: He kills whenever he deems it efficient. The inhabitants of Oakdale were probably useful for him to make the Illusion of Oakdale more realistic (by letting their actual minds steer their illusionary avatars Matrix style rather than having a fully artificial behaviour for every illusionary person) and their lifes are a means of pressure to keep Lilith in line.
Wait a sec… Eldor has been promising immortality to his followers. “Immortality” can be interpreted in different ways. Ever seen Virtual Nightmare? The ending of Enslaved? Or, as everyone already pointed out, to a lesser degree, the Matrix? Methinks the immortality he offers isn’t exactly the one the cultists are imagining.
I think that all these people are indeed connected to Oakdale illusion, like some stated already. To say more, I think they (or at least a few of them) are minimally aware of the fact that they are in illusion, but Eldor’s magic and/or technology keeps them mind-controlled. This could explain that scene where Amos gave Ryn a newspaper; (BaB 129-130) Amos somehow managed to temporary break out of mind control and gave Ryn a clue.
Also, that man on 2 panel *really* looks familiar, but I don’t feel like re-reading all Oakdale pages.
Foraz wrote:
I think he’s Torin Szabo from BaB-142
how do they even know how to work those?
This might be easier if we hadn’t killed all the people who know how to work this stuff…
All-Purpose Guru wrote:
Well, it’s settled – I need to reread it all. Thanks for the reference page! I wonder how many other details I forgot…
I really hope Malva is safe, but then again I am biased hahaha 😀
SLVRSRFR wrote:
It is always a bit weird how large publishers choose their books. Especially in Germany. I think Gaia has some shortcomings but it is clearly better than Eragon. In fact, if I browse the bestseller lists on Amazon & compare the books listed to a whole lot of independent books/webcomics I know I always wonder how they manage to end up there.
Fatima.Moon wrote:
They dyed their hair to disguise themselves before infiltrating the cultists’ hideout. Some of the cultists could recognize them if they didn’t dye their hair. Especially there’s one cultist named Vernon, the same guy who falsified testimony against Lilith in court in light of Red Hall Attack.
Nobody wrote:
Not necessarily. If you recall, Lilith is helping Eldor due to emotional blackmail. He told her he had the Oakdale people asleep somewhere, and he would let them all go only after he gets what he wants. (Monster-85)
So what would happen if Lilith sees that all these people are released before she is to cast the Doomsday spell?
@ SLVRSRFR:
Agreed, they took a decent amount of time explaining the magic and it is blended perfectly. The morale dilemmas are also an interesting plot point.
Lurker wrote:
They were likely needed to control their illusion copies
@ PMark:
It’s hard to be sure about anything here – remember how Lilith looked at “Breaking all barriers” book back in Monster-74? I think emotional blackmail plays a big part here, but she’s probably also using it as a cover-up for her addiction ot the book.
I’m more interested in what would happen if Eldor saw them released before Lilith cast the Spell.
I’d bet on something unexpected happening before they can wake everyone up, after , let’s say, 4-5th person wakes up. It would let us get enough information to speculate on past/future events, their current whereabouts or maybe even something new.
@Lazaro Azo True. I Like when there is a bit more complexity. It offers much more possibilitys for Plot twists.
@Arent Yeah, Eragon isn’t the “Benchmark”, but all the four Books are quite nice to read. A few things I find a bit weird, but ok. Gaia has it shortcomings, but it is a free webcomic. The other books in those “Rankings” are mostly pure writing, without any awesome drawings. But, that how it is, specially in Germany. In Germany some people are going to think you’re a weirdo when you really into cars and wear a car related t-shirt…
My taste of books is a bit technology heavy or with post apocalyptic storys (ok, I read only metro 2033/2034), also a pair of Russian authors I find very good. I can’t translate the name of the books from German to English well, but they all combine technology and sometimes aliens or impossible things. Specially the book with the “deep”, where only divers can do fancy things. (The deep is a virtual reality thingy, in German the title is “Labyrinth der Spiegel”. I also like fantasy like Eragon or so. Red rising was also a interesting book, but it wasn’t exactly 100% my taste. I don’t visit bookstores often, beacuse then I spend 2-3 hours insinde and start reading some books. When a Story chatches me, then the book is buyed. ^^
Gaia is, like I said, equipped with all what I like. Quite complex, moral dilemmas, the nice join between futuristic technology and magic abilitys and very good characters. A awesome universe they created.
Some of them remembering a bit to mass effect (specially Eldors lab). I wouldn’t be surprised when commander Shepard lands with the Normandy and gets things done when the other people only waffle about how they could do it…:D
I see forward what Eldor lost and how he tried to get it back. Also I hope we get to see more of the facility, also how they plan to free Jael. Maybe Eldor plans a time travel to reverse what has taken action. I think when he teached Lilith he mentioned a bit about time manipulation. That would be super awesome. Time travel adds a extremely extra complexity, because every small action can take massive changes in the future. Or you could ran straight into a time paradoxon.
So, another “30feet” long comment. Shieeet. ^^
Nobody wrote:
Actually, it will help a lot. Eldor has been holding their lives over Lilith’s head to get her to do his bidding. Take away the prisoners and Eldor has less leverage over Lilith.
Are all those people there for experimentation, or did they… “sign up”?