Unsounded

while Ashely's prose is absolutely up to snuff I'm far too embittered by Morbi to be entirely happy with such a prospect

I'd be up for more side stories done in this style. Also porn.

Yeah, I was initially thinking she too had resorted to completing her story in written form, like what happened with Morbi and Gigi of Cucumber Quest.

ashley is fucking great at prose
also myself and some other people assumed the curse just meant the dammakhert blocked you out and wouldn't let you back into the country but this is so much worse, holy shit

I love how this curse is like Excommunication on steroids. Ssaelism sends tingles up my cradle Catholic spine.

I was kinda expecting something more...permanent? yeah I guess people's feelings will stay but there's not really any lasting harm once you kick the bucket. Like if it made it so that you would be scorned and hated and generally live a shitty life every time you reincarnate (and never know why) or get locked out of the cycle all together, that would be the full level fucked up shit I was imagining

I feel like this is more about social control than specifically punishing the cursed person. The government's not only making everyone want to kill you but they're completely annihilating your legacy. So any political or religious movement you were going for is now kaput. Your entire life was meaningless. Your family, your friends, your lovers, your followers, gone.

yeah, it makes fine sense
>ywn smother Sette with a cushion

The other way around, says tumblr Ashley. Duane almost had his soul blown outta his body but survived because of his fucky tacit caster soul.

>soul blown out of his body
fucking metal. did she say what happens there? is it just like dying basically or would something stranger happen

You can see it in the first page's panel, his soul's separate from the body and only kept tied by the head (Presumably the extra tacit casting port). When you die your soul gets cut loose and gobbled up by Khert fishes, so that's likely what'd happen here if it came off completely.

Which kinda makes me wonder if Kasslinians fall into comas or if that's another difference between them and us (Apparently deafness isn't a thing because they hear with their soul)

That is pretty goddamn scary. Not even because "what if I was one of the guys that had the ire of an entire nation magically turned on himself", but because of the implications that an ENTIRE NATION (except the Soud) can be brainwashed. No wonder it's so carefully doled out.

I'd figure one guy can't just wave his hands and make it so, they'd have to have the means of activating it under heavy lock and key. Probably no quicker way to get a military coup shoved up your ass than to try something like that.

Dumb lizard, that's not even a spoiler.

Better than Gunnershit Fail

By the time you know it's a spoiler, it's too late. Best to cut them off regardless.

>No wonder it's so carefully doled out.
It's actually shocking that it isn't. Everything we know about Alderode is fairly dystopian. This is some Ministry of Love tier shit.

>his soul's separate from the body and only kept tied by the head (Presumably the extra tacit casting port)
Good catch. Further evidence about how exactly Duane got zombo'd. If the Tacit Casting Port helps anchor the soul more, that might help explain why Bastion's experiment had to be on someone with that port.

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based Sette's feet

Presumably there's some kind of severe draw back. Perhaps simply cost or some kind of inherent danger to actually using it. And even then, simply being a dystopia wouldn't necessarily mean they'd throw it about willy nilly anyway. The nature of these kinds of societies, Alderode especially, is they gain their authority from rigid social order. This gives immense power to certain classes, but also constrains the way in which they can implement it. They can practically do whatever, but the way in which they do it must adhere to the ideas that keep them in power. Fucking with the Dammakhert may be akin to meddling in gods domain. It almost assuredly is, actually. It may be seen as something almost beyond thought even for the most cruel of Alderode's thought police. Remember how much the prejudice against the Soud's comes from them simply not being tied into the kind of vague Dammakhert sense most Alds have.

Related to this, this also means Souds should be immune to the effects of it. Though as we've seen in this update, that doesn't mean they're safe from all the other Ald's who aren't Souds that are. Actually, the implications for this are interesting. Ssael's treasonous grandson was hit with it, but this would've been around the time Ssael's weren't as secure in their position in Alderode as later on, right? But such a curse sounds like it affects all Alds, Ssaelit and Grefendur alike. Which raises some concerns about what this could mean for the impending Civil War.

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There's different types of Dystopia. Alderode is a far cry from a dictatorship or 1984 one-party state. I'd think nobody wants their political rival to be the only one with their finger on the Etalarche button.

Etalarche was Ssael's grandson and was likely a Gold who are immune to the Dammakhert. How could it affect him at all? Even if it wouldn't target "him" it would still need to reference him to trigger the effect and Golds are nulls. Something deeper is at play here.

I don't think Etelarche was affected by that curse, it was just named after him - because the people hated him so much they tore him limb from limb.

True. Even though the actual effect is embodied in how other Ald's see them, it still targets the individual specifically, it seems. I'd overlooked that. Perhaps what it does it adhere itself to them or something? More fucking Khert mysteries from Ashley.

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Duane says on these pages Etalarche was the first person to have to Curse done to him and thus it is named after him.

>The very first had been its namesake: Etalarche, my God Ssael's grandson who betrayed Him to his enemies.

The page says it was first used against him.
>Less than a dozen men have ever suffered the burden
>The very first had been its namesake: Etalarche

Perhaps Duane is being poetic, but it doesn't really seem like it.

>How could it affect him at all?
Doesn't technically affect everyone(Except the golds) else by brainwashing them into hate?

Yes but how would it inform people to hate him in particular when Golds are nulls in the Dammakhert. Etalarche was presumably a Gold since Ssael was and the whole caste purity thing. How can the Dammakhert trigger rage in everyone else when it can't reference the target?

>how would it inform people to hate him in particular
Well if you were doing a rush job just make it hate everyone named Etalarche so that when people hear his name they go hate

>Aldrode can use literal mind control on its citizens to incite mob assassinations.
Goddamn why is this country such a fucking nightmare?

Souds aren't nulls, they're just not part of the inter-Ald telepathy network. You can still cast on a Soud, and if you know their name remotely do spellery on them. Ashley said earlier that this is part of why Roger is going by "Vampire": not only so Vits can't just Sting him, but also so that people can't just use wide area spells to fuck him in particular.

Presumably the Etalarche Curse can be APPLIED to a Soud (as again, the Dhammakert, being a subsection of the Khert, knows their name and can interact with them by name), but Souds aren't affected by the whole "hating the target" thing.

Makes me wonder how the khert fuckery is going to fuck everything up. My first thought was that everyone soud aren't people caught in the area will be affected by the curse, though that may be unlikely.
>Duane and Lem watches all of his surviving plats turn on each other and start killing each other

I don't think the dammakhert existed during the time of Ssael and Ethalarche.

So THAT'S why Roger is enacting a plan that will ensure his own death. The Etalarche Curse makes him hate himself.

Interesting idea but one would wonder why he doesn’t just kill himself or have someone do it for him
He’s at least ethnically gefendur and wouldn’t have the same compunctions against suicide

Well, he's obviously got some strong anti-Alderode sentiment. Maybe he wanted to kill himself, but hung on long enough to make sure he could do it in a way that would strike back.

This

>So THAT'S why Roger is enacting a plan that will ensure his own death. The Etalarche Curse makes him hate himself.
If that was an actual aspect of the curse, I feel like it would've been mentioned. I think Roger was just taking part in a plan that would eventually result in him not just dying but being completely obliterated by the rules of the setting's metaphysics because he truly believed it was the best chance to up end Alderode. It was a nice double twist, where first you think the Queen has played Roger by turning him over to Rape Snake but actually he was going along with the plan the whole time. Having an Aldish man participating in her plan that's probably something super fucked even if it's not going to be outright violent genocide probably helped Sonorie feel a bit more secure in what she was doing too, I imagine. A nice confluence of feelings. I wonder how long they'd been planning this.

Could you imagine if the whole reason Roger caused so much trouble was to purposefully get himself cursed so they could use that for whatever key part of their plan relies on that? Wild shit.

Yesterday was the 9th anniversary of the comic's launch.

Everyone forgot Sette's birthday :(

Apparently it's something even VITS council is reluctant to unleash, probably for the same reason chemical weapons are avoided in our world: if using them becomes standard, eventually your enemy will start using them too, and the horror will be turned against you.

There might also be metaphysical ramifications for it we don't know about yet, which seems probable. It does seem unlikely a mere social / religious taboo would restrain Alderode's government from using such a potent weapon more often, there's probably some immense risk or terrible cost to the one using it, something the government tries to avoid if possible.

Given that glamors stop working if the observer is aware of them, it could be that Vits can only pull it out on people who, ironically, actually deserve by Aldish standards to be torn apart limb from limb by a fucking mob. If they started using it to whack every dissenter, eventually people would catch on and it wouldn't work.