eke out posted:

i assume his message to allison is "with your key, i could effortlessly murder these demiurges, rather than have a long war where lots of people die" but... yeah when your ultimate goal is cosmic murder it's not a very good argument

YaketySass posted:

I think the calculus here is that he could kill everyone alive and do it quickly, or kill them in a slow and painful campaign along with everyone else born in the meantime.

skaianDestiny posted:

I have a feeling Allison is going to lose her key.

quote:

Yaun hid. The men roamed about the village, looking for him, two at a time, their feet treading down the soft earth of the smouldering village. Each footfall like a battering ram.

“God and his saints will protect us,” his mother had said, but they hadn’t. His mother had been split from nape to nave by a broadsword. He had never known there was so much blood in a person.

Yaun would have survived, would have stayed in that village, but he was the unluckiest son, and always had been. In among the men came Jantris, tallest of the dead men. He was a star warrior who wielded a vorpal sword art. His brow was clad with precious stones and his clothing was finer than the others, and less smeared with blood. Yaun could feel the heat of his breath even from his hiding place, but his limbs were too frozen with fear to move.

It took them less than an hour to find him, petrified, under the old water trough where he clung to the mud. He had been bathed in that trough, when he was a baby, and played with the pigs.

He was brought before Jantris, and the men laughed like hyenas, and made a motion as if to chop off his head with their bare hands, but they didn’t. Instead, Jantris, tallest of the storm lords, leant down to Yaun. His eyes were bright, like glowing smoke.

“Now you are dead,” he said, and handed him the hilt of a sword.

King of Swords 9-93

---

Yaun cried at first, for his family, but then the men, with their hyena faces and lolling tongues, would slap him until he stopped.

“Dead men have no families,” they said to him. They painted his skin with the burned ashes of his village and forbade him to wash. The sword that the star lord had given him was a rough tool, and heavy, far too large for his small frame. He couldn’t cry so he bit his tongue and tried to remember home, and his mother, but all he could think about was the raw smell of blood.

King of Swords 9-94

---

“I cannot remember my home,” said Yaun.

“We will beat it out of you eventually,” they said plainly, “Every trace.”

King of Swords 9-95

--

The men with the hyena faces did what they had promised.

“You will forget the face of your mother,” they said to him, so he did, between each crack of the lash. Instead, he learned how best to clean their weapons and wash their blood soaked clothing. He carried water, spare boots, and ammunition.

Yaun worked very hard, for he had been an obedient son, and grew quite strong, for he constantly lugged around that heavy iron sword the master of the company had given him, and the men with hyena faces ate extremely well. The whole company ate well in those times. It was a fat age for killers. They tramped from town to town where men with perfumed breath and powdered faces would pay them for every lopped off hand. Often they would come right back to the home of a former employer on the behest of a new master, and burn it to ashes. Each time they visited a town, they would find or make many motherless little boys to make into dead men, and so their company grew tenfold.

Eventually Yaun became aware that some time had passed, and nearly everything had been beaten out of him. All that was left was just a set of eyeballs in a hollow skull atop an overlarge body with callused hands, and feet that kept tramping forward. It was oddly freeing.

Jantris was crowned with stars and had a long stemmed pipe of fine make he kept about him. His skin was smooth and dark and his eyes were a lion’s eyes.

“Now that you are completely dead,” he said to Yaun one day, “We can fill you with useful knowledge.”

King of Swords 9-98

--

You are already a dead man. From the moment you started to exist, death has bored into your ribcage and settled in your chest. It has its fingers into your very bones. When you are born, death is very small and weak, but he grows stronger every second, until he will wear you like a second skin. Do not fool yourself into thinking he is not there. You will feel him. Do not deny his presence. You must swallow death, and make him a part of you, and make of your ribcage a home for him.”

-Yaun, the dead

King of Swords 10-143

Darth Walrus posted:

I note that Jagganoth is missing the same eye Allison is going to lose. Is this going to end up being some kind of Odin thing?

PMush Perfect posted:

I genuinely hope we don't get another whole mini-arc exploring why Jagg is big and strong and sad.

Joe Slowboat posted:

E: We already know why he's big and strong and sad, Yaun ten Jantris is a name we know already.

GunnerJ posted:

I had no idea who that was until I read this thread.

GunnerJ posted:

I honestly don't like most of that text? Just something about its style annoys me in a way the same type of stuff would not in the comic. So I typically don't read it.

There Bias Two posted:

E: ^^^ You're missing a large chunk of the story's background context by skipping it.

Rigged Death Trap posted:

There is so much context and flavor in those stories, and many are written much in the grandiose way of parables and koans, which is why i think you dislike them. Personally, however, I dont see much difference in how the stories and the comic are written.

GunnerJ posted:

That's the stylistic issue, it reads like a lot of worldbuilding draft notes that aren't usually intended for outside consumption, like out-takes from the K6BD version of The Silmarillion. It is not to dissimilar from how a lot of characters talk in the comic but there's something grounding about that kind of thing coming from a character placed in the world and usually with an audience of a Normal Earth Person trying to make sense of it. Lacking that it's just purple prose, to me.

I'm not going to keep defending the fact that I don't like the under text because I am not attacking anyone for liking it. But I also want to mention that the term capital-R Royalty is something I am not sure comes up in the comic (or maybe only in passing? idk) because I only remember first encountering it reading this thread. It's also something that I don't think I am missing much for not "getting" by not reading the under text because from what I can tell, as a background worldbuilding concept, it's clear enough in the way the comic shows its characters acting even without a term to put to it.

Donkringel posted:

I still haven't read all the text, need to psyche myself up for another read-through with all the text included.

GunnerJ posted:

That's probably what I'm going to do once it's all over, but for now I want to see things from the same fish-out-of-water perspective as the main character (which is another reason I think I've avoided reading it).

Straight White Shark posted:

I am amused that when you gently caress up bad enough the Paternum uses your full name so you know you're really in trouble

Lights posted:

Livid Dad Energy. What do you think about groundings, girl?

DarkCrawler posted:

The text is essential to the full KSBD experience for Intra alone.

Anyone else thought there would be a full book for each of the Seven like with Mottom, Mammon and Solomon David? Incubus has had his equivalent moment in the spotlight through Allison and Maya but I feel like we don't know as much about Gog-Agog, Jagganoth and Jadis, with much of what we know being out-of-comic lore.

Demiurge4 posted:

Demiurge4 posted:

Straight White Shark posted:

I am amused that when you gently caress up bad enough the Paternum uses your full name so you know you're really in trouble

maswastaken posted:

Since he's planning to nuke reality, more like an especially radioactive rock.

Also,