Posted In: comic
– I’m really excited to say that the Mermaid Hunter Kickstarter has funded on Kickstarter! Thank you all so much for helping Nick and I bring this set to life. We’ve moved on to stretch goals, and we’re hoping to add some cool extras to this project!
For those of you who don’t know, Mermaid Hunters is a starter set for the all-ages Yeld role playing game, created by myself and my brother Nick. The set includes everything you need to play, and is perfect for you players and people who are new to role playing! The set also contains a book full of illustrations and comics about Yeld, so if you’re interest in the Yeld setting this is a great place to learn more!
Okay, that’s fishy. How does the terminal know her?
Biometric scanner, a.k.a. a “palm reader”.
More interesting is why her name’s even in this computer’s database. Perhaps that will be revealed.
But… how did she access the door without realizing?
I guess the tower security recognized her based on some mysterious power, let her in, and also programmed her handprint into the console?
See that’s the problem with weak passwords
@_@?!?! What the what?! Is Yeld in the far future?!
My guess is that the system is keyed to the armour she inherited from Urano
I like that theory. How does the armor transmit her name to the tower though? I guess if the armor has wireless communication or the tower has really good scanners. ..
It’s magic, so whatever process bonded the armour to her was doubtlessly powerful enough to determine her user credentials and transmit them back to the central server when she logged into the system by powering up the armour against the mermaids.
This also means the Tower probably is the Hydrax, er, a space ship…
It’s a Unix system! I know this….
“I prefer to be called a hacker!”
Now that is a failed perception check, if I ever seen one!
Hand on the panel. Fingerprint recognition. Pre-programmed user, is my guess. The question is who programmed her as an acceptable user.
Maybe the door WASN’T open. Maybe there was supposed to be a force field there but she deactivated it. I like the idea that the system is keyed to her armor… I guess someday we’ll find out if that’s true or not…
Now, that’s eerie!
lolwut sci fi all of a sudden
Dragul traveled to many worlds between his first (presumably Earth, since he loved Coca-Cola as a kid) and Yeld, and we know he can’t leave Yeld. Well, we know that from a magic construct placed in Modest’s mind by Dragul, and if you think about it Prince Dragul doesn’t seem much like a liar; evil, yes, but he’s given us no real reason to believe that he’s an outright liar.
Anyway, one other thing that was said by the construct was “Making portals is an inexact science, and Yeld having magic complicates that, so sometimes you get a portal in the mouth of a monster” <–probably shouldn't have put quotes there since I almost definitely paraphrased a bit, but the important thing is that the construct Dragul (From this point forward he shall be "Congult" – or "Conni" if you're nasty), the important thing that Congult implied that other worlds don't have magic, or at the very least the magic of Yeld is different than other places. So if there's a spectrum amongst worlds of magic having-ness, with No Magic Earth (or, well, little to no magic Earth) on one end and Magic So Magickal That It Keeps People There (And Makes Portal Science Get Mucked Up), then there are probably worlds out there whose method of going from world to world would be really Sci-Fi esque. Technology to, perhaps use an entire ship as a portalling Vehicle?
And I'm obviously really speculating on the "how" part, but maybe by making portals big enough to travel the "Tower of Autumn" (which COULD be a spaceship) through; in such a situation, portals could be projected around it and others could presumably use them…
I know it's a stretch , but if even a single part of my wild speculations is correct, that means that this Tower was someone's entrance point to Yeld, from which they obviously couldn't leave afterwards (with the Tower still, y'know… being there.
Probably even more of a stretch but like… in an earlier comment on a recent strip I noticed some similarities between the Mermaid Escape Pod and the Tower of Autumn. And those former-Deepdwellers are now emphatically and enthusiastically loyal to Prince Dragul (not Conni, they don't know about Conni, the only people who have met Congult are Modest, Modest's snakes (or at least Sneaky), and Xbox… and Modest & Xbox told Aunt Naga about Congult), the mermaid escape pod could be something Dragul provided for the mermaids…
Especially if the Tower of Autumn is how Dragul initially arrived on Yeld.
I don’t know if you have access to the Yeld: 2nd Edition rulebook, but we talk about the Tower of Autumn, the Arsenal of Winter and their role in the makeup of Yeld there. Let me just paste the relevant info:
There is a legend of a great treasure, buried deep in the heart of Yeld where the Serpent God slumbers. This treasure is a collection of weapons so powerful that they could sunder the Magical Land. It is said that Old Witches first crawled from this arsenal, and that it is the true source of Black Magic and other more terrible weapons beyond comprehension. No one has ever seen this treasure, but heroes and kings have searched for it for thousands of years. It is a thing of myth and legends, whispered of in stories. It is called the Arsenal of Winter, and every story about it is wrong.
In the deep and distant future, the descendants of humanity, who had long since left the Earth behind, discovered a structure in deep space that they could not identify or classify. These distant descendants of humanity were a curious and scientific people, and could not leave such an alarming discovery unstudied. Their finest scientists and logic engines studied this mysterious discovery for centuries before coming to an alarming conclusion. The structure was a repository for storing vast quantities of data. It seemed to hold record of the entirety of everything that had ever existed in their reality. From the very dawn of time, and perhaps into the future, to the end of everything. More than that, it seemed to contain data for an unlimited number of alternate realities and an endless number of possibilities. Everything and everyone that had ever existed, and everything that ever could. Because the structure was vast and coiled like a snake, they named it the Serpent God. These spacefaring descendants of humanity determined that their discovery needed to be both protected and studied, and to this purpose, they created two great ships. The Summer was
devoted to study, and served by its vanship, the Renewal. The Winter was tasked with protecting both the Serpent God and the Summer, and in this task was assisted by its vanship, the Autumn.
The Summer learned that the Serpent God was not just a repository of data, but a great nexus connecting all realities, and that travel between realities was possible. The Winter used techniques developed by Summer to connect itself to countless alternate realities, and agents of Winter searched each for weapons of mass destruction that might be used against the Serpent God. These weapons were collected and housed in an impenetrable arsenal, locked deep within the multidimensional maze of the Winter.
In time, the crew of the Summer decided that they could use the Serpent God to edit history and existence itself. They experimented on other realities, destroying some and changing others. This was the power of gods, wielded
by scientists who could barely understand it. The crew of the Winter, known as Apocalypse Wardens, could not tolerate this. They launched a raid on the Summer to protect all of reality and the Serpent God. During the battle, the Summer was destroyed, and the Renewal was lost in time and space. The Winter was pushed into the structure of the Serpent God, which collapsed around it. Perhaps as a form of self defense, the Serpent God reset itself within reality, preserving its data repository but sending itself back to the dawn of time. The Autumn followed in a last ditch effort to save the crew of the Winter. Emerging at the very dawn of creation, the Serpent God was wounded and fused with the Winter, wrapped around the planet-sized ship like a giant coiled snake. In time, matter congealed around their form, creating a planetoid that eventually was seeded with life and became the nexus world of Yeld. The crew of the Winter was dead, and whatever intelligence resided within the Serpent God slipped into a deep slumber.
Billions of years later, the Autumn emerged from time transit. Unable to control itself, the vanship crashed into the planetoid of Yeld. The ship was disabled and would never fly again, but its core computer remained intact. Since that time, the Autumn has attempted to repair her systems and establish a link with the remaining structures of the Winter trapped deep within Yeld.
Over the centuries, few people have discovered how to access the Arsenal of Winter. It is said that the Old Witches crawled from a leak in the Arsenal, powerful weapons of mass destruction quarantined by the Apocalypse Wardens. The Dragons knew the secret of the Arsenal, and shared it with the Leviathan Queen. Others have come to Yeld, searching for a key or door that will lead them to this unimaginable power. So far, the Arsenal of Winter remains sealed.
There’s more information out there in various Yeld books, and in the season you’re reading now. As you can see, the Winter was definitely capable of moving from reality to reality, and so probably was the Autumn and other ships. I think its likely that characters like the Seamstree, the Archivist and the first Hunter in Darkness were survivors of that original crash at the dawn of time, or possibly the crew of the Autumn that came much later (but still in Yeld’s
distant past).
Your idea that the Prince arrived via teh Tower is interested, but incorrect. Dragul has been in Yeld for about 1000 years, but the Tower’s arrived was much more ancient. We haven’t seen exactly how Dragul got to Yeld though, although in the Yeld rulebook it says that he was lured there by rumors of the Arsenal of Winter.
Okay well ok I went back to see what the Pod was called, and I didn’t notice the below-comic explanatory note!
First things first, the pod is called “the Apparatus”, at least by fishy folk. I learned that one from both comic and the entry caption beneath the comic).
Secondly (and likely more importantly) it’s definitely related somehow to that Tower of Autumn.