/tg/, this is a code blue.
Outsider has updated not once, not twice, but three times this month with a note that more may follow tomorrow.
This is not a drill.
>Berserk was seven years on a ship
Any bets on how long this little voyage will take?
My god, it's almost like a regular webcomic.
If he keeps this up, I'll throw patreon dollars at him.
>>43922959
>>43922959
You know, isn't this page just a recap?
I'm sure almost all these points have been covered before.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!
>>43923143
Not just that, it looks like he's going to do infodump of history over the next few pages.
I wonder if !thog will show up to start doing thog edits.
The url for the next page is already up, it just seems like he's having uploading issues. He tried uploading 2 pages within 6 hours of each other it seems.
>>43922959
>>43923241
I reckon there's one more page of waffle, and then he'll do some kind of flashback. The flashback will necessitate drawing some new spaceships, so we'll be waiting another few years for updates.
>>43923143
If Outsider's plot had actually gone anywhere in the last 15 years I'd find the lengthy delays in updates more forgivable.
>>43922959
I don't understand whats happening. There were so many laws in the universe, it's impossible for Outsider to have updated already, that breaks one of the laws, so obviously Outsider did not update and this is some sort of scam or fake, right?
>>43924015
It's a message from the future, where Outsider has already finished, warning us about the singularity and how to stop it.
We just need to find the message.
>>43922959
>Tempo quickly cutting off Beryl to cover her ass
>Doesn't want the pink skin to know that there is a government political officer/assassin sitting next to him
>Doesn't want him to suspect that his life is over the second he gives a wrong answer.
>>43923143
>WHAT DOES IT MEAN
maybe he realized even berserk has a faster pace than outsider
>>43923875
The universe itself is resisting such fundamental violation of its workings.
>If you check back here tomorrow, I should have a surprise for you.
I'm scared.
>>43924783
But, anon, he has such sights to show you.
Aww yeah more space MILFs.
>>43924899
That phrase makes me think otherworldly horror, not blueberry elf waifu.
>>43924842
No, do not touch the lament configuration.
>>43922959
But where are the moustaches
>>43925276
The page is only a few hours old and it's not even 6:30am on the east coast of the US. Give it time.
>>43922959
Truely, the sun has risen in the West, the sky is falling, and Hell has frozen over. The End Times are upon us.
>>43922959
Brace yourselves, lads. It looks like a big war history segment is coming.
I'm scared
>>43926260
"They're bugs, we're not bugs. War was inevitable."
>>43927190
Humanity has gone to war for less.
>>43927190
Bugs are fucking gross. I'd nuke them too.
>>43927190
>they made fun of our hair styles.
>>43927363
inb4 >bugs are immune to nukes
I don't read the threads, but from all the comics I've seen posted, I genuinely thought this was Elerian fanfic.
Now I know they're a different race. Thanks OP
>>43927363
>>43927385
Rate outsider for me.
>>43927495
3/10 overhyped trash.
>>43927412
> I genuinely thought this was Elerian fanfic.
> Now I know they're a different race
Anon, they are based on the Elerians. The major Loroi problem is that they are way slow in R&D so the bugs are starting to chew them.
>>43927495
+ Good visuals, the spaceship design really gets me (very Homeworld style).
+ Promising plot
- Plot goes nowhere, slowly
- One race is entirely female for stupid reasons
It reads like someone played Homeworld at age 12 and came up with a universe and plot (space elves! who are all female!), drawing out the physics and universe. Then he put it down for 15 years, learnt graphic design and art, and came back to write it without changing any of the base assumptions.
Lots of room for improvement, but not actively awful like some.
3/10 when not updating, 6/10 if it ever gets a schedule.
>>43925242
That phrase makes me think that he knew we would think that and make that image.
>>43927578
>they are based on the Elerians
http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Elerians
>Known Empresses: Berylia, Ellowyn, Erethia, Grewind, Yarasi, Fireblade, Laurel, Myranmar, Omnisha
>Berylia
>Fireblade
Oh jesus how didn't I see it
>>43922959
Did the human guy fuck one of the blue elves yet?
>>43927363
Thats how you get Terraformars
>>43927701
I thought terraformars was an allegory about the dangers of black people
>>43927695
Any year now.
>>43927714
I'm prety sure it's an allegory for "don't use cockroaches to terraform a planet HOLY SHIT HOW IS THAT EVEN SUPPOSED TO WORK THAT MAKES NO SENSE YOU PIECE OF SHIT ARE YOU EVEN A REAL SCIENTIST OMG THIS IS SO DUMB".
Unless I misunderstood.
What takes him so long is the stupid unnecessary detail he puts into the fully modeled backgrounds. Since this scene doesn't require him to make any more backgrounds while they're on the transport craft, you're seeing the comic speed up. Don't be surprised when it return to a crawl the next time he has to draw a new interior or exterior scene.
>>43927842
He has a Patreon now. He's obligated to update more often if he wants to get paid as opposed to doing this between odd jobs and not starving to death. If he gets enough funding, he gets to update full time.
We're in a golden age anon.
>>43927842
The transport doesn't even look good, it's just bland. The man spent years designing a boring spaceship to use in a handful of pages of a sci-fi webcomic. That's life-wasting on an even higher level than most anons can aspire to.
>>43927893
>He's obligated to update more often if he wants to get paid
HA HA HA HA.
Implying the people paying him through Patreon aren't dumb enough to keep at it even if he doesn't publish anything new for another two years and completely disappears off the Internet.
>>43927893
Just think. Soon he will have fans flocking to suck his dick, the schedule will move forward at a breakneck pace and everything suffers.
Outsider will soon become a new Drowtales, only blue.
>>43927990
His patreon is per update, not per month.
Anon, he's on a "per page" patreon. He gets paid only when there is new content.
As it is: if he puts out 1 pg / wk it would be the same as earning $10.57 / hr at a regular job.
>>43927976
Yeah, its insane. He devotes himself to details no one cares about.
>>43923047
it ended already a few people got the raws and they posted it on one of the broads it showed it ended
>>43928177
Berzerk or Outsider?
>>43927644
But the Loroi aren't all female.
>>43927990
The patreon is set up to pay for each completed page rather than monthly. If he stops producing the money stops automatically.
>>43922959
So, according to Tempo, Jardin's safety is Fireblade's highest priority.
Tsundere confirmed. Psychic catfighting with Beryl at this very moment confirmed. Keked by more outgoing less socially awkward Listel confirmed.
>>43928556
Hnnnngg
>>43928234
Berzerk
>>43927644
>Homeworld
>Not Master of Orion
Shit anon, get it together.
>>43927644
Dude, the aliens have nothing to do with Homeworld, they're based off the Elerians and Klackons from Master of Orion II.
>>43928556
>Getting keked by the biggest nerd in that side of the galaxy.
how long till fireblade mutters her first word? she can't keep her "words r bad mkay" teidar bullshit forever.
>>43931898
When Beryl tries to deepen her understanding of Alex's biology.
Part 1/3
Fireblade had struggled with herself since they made landfall.
Standing again on Seren had awakened a thousand dormant memories. Not all of them bad, but all of them made painful by those which were.
She had striven to retain control ever since she first was charged with escorting the alien back to her former homeworld.
It was not a struggle she was winning, but one she was duty-bound to fight regardless.
Few even of her fellow Loroi could perceive the intensity of Fireblade's inner war. The occasional burst of night terrors had been expected, of course, and so she slept alone each passing cycle... just as she had all those years ago, with no comrade to guard her as she lay dreaming, no ally to stand watch that she could rest secure. Her dreams were fraught with terror and anxiety and she would wake at the slightest sound, her every instinct primed to kill whatever carapaced monster or war machine might have interrupted her troubled slumber. These times frayed her nerves, and more minds than her own were strained by her nocturnal visions.
Even some of her waking sights had been twisted into flashes of horror, by quirk of memory or association. She could not bear the crushing weight of her memories for much longer. Not alone. But the shame of needing to unburden herself, and the intimacy of such an unburdening through telepathic means, would both be very great. She could not simply commune with Beryl, not if she wished to retain some measure of the dignity and privacy she had spent long years cultivating after the rescue of Seren.
>>43932449
This alien had shown interest in her history, her personality, her self. Every time he did so, he, unaware of himself, opened another door in Fireblade's mind that she had spent years bolting shut. Perhaps, though, if she could make him understand even a small portion of herself, then they would both be better off; though her burden would be no lighter, at least a portion of it would be shared in a way, and she would no longer be so terribly alone. Though she was growing increasingly willing to do so, she had not responded to his interest. This was not out of hauteur on her part; there are things that cannot be described even in the intimacy of sanzai, much less through speech, and far less through speech relayed by an interpreter like Beryl, who constantly moderates her words, seeking the friendliest and softest way to say each thing. Coddling the alien as if he were a male--well, a real male. But there is no nice, soft, or friendly way to speak of the Fall of Seren and speak truly. So even if there are any words that can hold such truth, none of Beryl's soft, civil verbal coddling could ever make the alien understand. Beryl would be of no help as an intermediary, could only hinder Fireblade, and would herself not understand Fireblade's intent. If words need be used to bring the alien into truer comprehension, then Fireblade knew that they would need to be her own words. Though she would rather face a thousand foes in honest combat, this was something that Fireblade needed to do herself.
Fireblade resolved to make the alien understand. But she would have to change their surroundings to do so; she could no more make him understand the Wrack of Seren in brightly lit and comfortable quarters than she herself could have understood his people's strange ways in those days when she had known nothing but the harsh crucible of war, the stony ground her only bed and death her trusted companion.
>>43932526
The old ways would only make sense in the old lands, far from the comforts and complications that make them seem so alien. It would be only a brief journey to her old territory, and it was there, in those lands that remained shrouded in darkness beyond the boundaries of their tenuously rebuilt civilization, that she could make the old days make sense to him.
She would choose her ground carefully. Seren and Fireblade both had borne many scars, and it would be unwise to probe those that had struck too deep, lest unhealed wounds burst open anew. She would not willingly tread again amongst those now long-gutted ruins where the Enemy's works had turned the water to poison and where no living thing would ever grow again; once she had sought shelter in such a waste, only to find herself in an unpeopled desolation worse than any wilderness, where everywhere the absence of life was called to attention by the signs of former settlement.
But there were subtler desolations left as well, where the indelible taint was not a poison of water, earth, or sky, but of the spirit. She had seen vales of bones where the Enemy had dumped thousands of those who could no longer threaten them; it would not be well to stand again on grounds stained blue by the dead and dying, where the air had been heavy with the charnel scent of plasma-seared flesh and the sounds of mortal agony. Nor would she ever again willingly set eyes on that site where the homes of good Loroi once stood, where her own family had built for themselves a life on a foundation of hope during years of prosperity, where the Enemy had burned them al...
>>43932552
It would not be well to go there. It would not be well to go to many, many places.
But west of that scarred land the hills rose wild and there were valleys with deep woods that no axe had ever cut. There were dark narrow glens where the trees sloped fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickled without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. Past the higher slopes hid a small lake with shores ancient and rocky, where once she had found comfort and solace in isolation.
There were swimming creatures, both beautiful and edible, in those waters, and some scarce game in the woods beyond the shore. The freshwater brooklets had slaked her thirst as the plant and animal life sated her hunger. The treelines had shielded her from aerial observation and the unsteady ground made the Enemy's forces unwilling to venture into that region without good reason; reason she never gave, for she knew well how to hide signs of her presence from them.
There she had known rest unlike any she had ever felt before, where the lapping waves sang to her a soft lullaby and where the uneven and rocky ground, so far removed from any settlement, had never known the heavy tread of hardtroops. She did not stay there for long at any time, nor was it at the center of her long-ranging wanderings, but to those shores she oft returned for what measure of healing and solace she could find in her world, torn apart and ravaged though it was.
That place, beyond the horrors of the blasted heaths of the old settlements but also beyond the light and comfort of civilization, would be good for the imagination. And perhaps, she felt, it might even bring restful dreams at night as once it had, free of the night terrors which haunted her so cruelly in the present.
Yes, she decided, it was by those healing waters that she would find peace and the alien would find his answers to questions both asked and unasked.
Part 2/3
Alex paced in his quarters.
The Loroi had kept him in considerable comfort since he arrived on Seren, but his mind was troubled by the burden of a responsibility which no other human had ever held. He was further troubled by the same feelings which had made his dreams so... interesting of late. The recent spate of hyperspace-induced night terrors had served as an inspiration for his subconscious, which had decided to take the main themes of his jump nightmares and run with them. Sleep brought few comforts to his uneasy mind.
Alex was, in a word, restless.
Normally on these sorts of nights he would call on Beryl for conversation, but tonight she had some other duty to perform. She'd return tomorrow, but he wanted to talk with her tonight. It wasn't about the conversation itself, but the comfort of familiarity, limited though it might be.
At this point, he was willing settle for a chat with Fireblade.
Well, maybe not Fireblade.
Alex sighed. He knew that griping about the way things were wasn't going to make him any less anxious. He'd just have to try to force himself to relax. Back on Earth he might have gotten some warm milk and a decent book, but the Loroi would be unable to provide either.
Still, he could at least do something. As abominable as Loroi food was, at least he had access to potable water. An ice-cold glass of pure water might not help him sleep, but at least the physical task of acquisition would take his mind off of things, if only for a few minutes. He reflected on how fortunate he was that the Loroi had no equivalent to the municipal fluoridation of his native California; he did not know if a Loroi version of fluoridation would be unpleasant to humans, but he had no intention of finding out.
>>43932640
Alex left his bedroom and made a line for his suite's drinking water, nodding to the soldiers standing guard immediately outside his door. But as he made his way back, he paused. The two Loroi, Fireblade and Highcloud, appeared wrapped in intense telepathic discussion. Usually when the Loroi engaged in casual sanzai it was all but unnoticeable; here, Fireblade at least appeared to be concentrating more heavily on the conversation than on anything else.
He struggled inwardly with his desire to ask what they were talking about. Knowing the Loroi in question, he would likely receive only stony silence from Fireblade, but Highcloud might be willing to tell him something. Still, it would be awfully rude to interrupt what was apparently an important and possibly private matter for the two of them. Alex restrained himself. Barely.
His curiosity became irrepressible the moment the Loroi broke for their conversation and approached him.
"Hey, what's going on here?"
Highcloud began to respond, but to Alex's shock she was waved off by Fireblade, who, for the first time in Alex's memory--possibly for the first time in anyone's memory--began to speak.
>>43932667
Such was Alex's surprise at her sudden elocution that he barely even heard her words, much less understand them. Her voice itself had been strange to his ears. Medical technology had rendered almost all varieties of deafness essentially a treatable condition amongst humans, so Alex had no apt comparison for the labored, faltering and slow manner of her speech, but her atonal and somewhat slurred enunciation made it clear that she was unpracticed. Alex was certain that she had not actually said what he thought she had said; perhaps he misheard due to his own surprise, or due to the unusual qualities of her voice. Even though he was by now used to Loroi speech patterns, she still seemed unusually terse and strangely accented, as though she had been articulating her phonemes based on rough description of the techniques involved rather than with the ease or experience demonstrated by even the most laconic of the other warriors. Was it any wonder he had misheard her?
She made Stillstorm's clipped and harsh speech seem positively effusive in comparison.
He asked her to repeat herself because he had not understood.
This earned him a snarl from the Teidar Pallan. Alex took a startled back as she glowered darkly and her lips were pulled back in a subtle curl. He knew little of her anger at this point, but he knew enough to fear, and he saw that Highcloud--whose senses and knowledge offered her deeper insight than his own--had firmly gripped her rifle's handle. Alex could have sworn he heard the Teidar growling.
Beryl's moderating influence was absent, Fireblade was angry, Highcloud was alarmed, and the two warriors had been saying something, probably something very important, that he had missed.
Tonight obviously was not going to be his night.
Before the situation could escalate further, Highcloud interceded.
"Be at ease, Captain Jardin. Fireblade only said that, if you are willing, she would like to show you her penis."
Ah.
So he hadn't misheard her.
>>43932706
That was certainly... uh...
Something.
"Captain Jardin, your words do not make sense."
Alex realized he must have been thinking out loud again. He hoped at least that it had been in English.
Highcloud and Fireblade exchanged a look, and Fireblade's face fell slightly, but she and Highcloud returned their gazes to Alex. Highcloud continued. "If you want me to accompany the two of you, I would be obliged to do so."
"Uhm..." Alex vocalized aimlessly while his mind whirred.
He had been teaching Beryl English during many of his restive nights. Her vocabulary had grown exponentially and Alex was nothing short of amazed at her prodigious aptitude for the subject. He had sometimes noticed her carefully enunciating English words to her fellow Loroi while they shared those odd, silent conversations of theirs; doubtless she had been passing English idioms and human mannerisms on to her fellow Loroi, perhaps in the hope of better allowing them to understand him when his Trade slipped.
He could not specifically recall teaching her any words related to genitalia or sexuality (he had felt distinctly uncomfortable whenever he sensed the subject approaching, and avoided it as best he could), but he could not rule out the possibility either. The nature of their nocturnal English lessons, used largely as a passtime to exhaust himself while somnolent oblivion laid just out of reach, meant that he was often somewhat muddled during their sessions (Beryl would often remind him that she had already mastered a certain quirk of grammar and pronunciation), and remembering them in detail after he had slept was all but impossible.
>>43932735
But Fireblade had said exactly what he would expect if she really meant…
"Captain. I want you. At my penis."
Alex strained himself to parse the word's meaning. Fireblade's accent and pronunciation were so awkward that he could not grasp her tone the way he had learned to grasp Beryl's. Her expression certainly looked sincere. Her features had assumed that almost pleading look that he had only seen her wear once or twice before. But with her temperament, at once mercurial and volcanic, he could not possibly guess at what was afoot, and it might be dangerous to try. Highcloud was as stratospherically distant, cold and impassive as her namesake would warrant; he could find no clues in her indifferent expression.
He would have to try to grasp what she was about based upon what little he knew of her character, rather than her diction; asking for clarification once had already been alarming, asking a second time might be suicidal.
She and he had never gotten on, he thought. They had been tense ever since he had first awoken in Tempest's medical facility, a moment that seemed as though it had been many long years ago. Things had escalated somewhat since then, additional contact producing new tensions and adding new wrinkles to old ones. In particular he remembered the Loroi Tea Incident...
"Give me a second, please."
Alexander considered his position. He was the ambassador of the human race, and he certainly couldn't afford to make any missteps on the diplomatic front, but he had no idea what would constitute a misstep in this situation. He would have to trust his instincts and his own judgment.
>>43932761
Another man may have made a different decision. A fearless explorer like Carl Hamilton might have rushed at the chance to encounter the unknown. An endless font of enthusiasm and curiosity like Ellen Kirkland might have eagerly leapt at the opportunity to gain a more intimate understanding of the Loroi. An actual diplomat, one of the many bureaucrats aboard the Prahbu, might have chosen to humor the frequently hostile Loroi.
But Alexander Jardin was, by instinct, inclination, talent and education, a tactician. His first, best proficiency lay in the analysis of a subject in terms of risk and positional advantage. His best judgment would be limited to his own aptitudes; trying to guess at what a Carl Hamilton or a real diplomat or even an Ellen Kirkland would do in his stead could only impede his reasoning.
Before him stood Fireblade, whose animosity had smouldered for the entire time they had been acquainted. She had chosen to confront him about... something, her... "penis," at a time when Beryl, the closest thing he had to an ally here, was absent. When questioned about the matter, she responded with hostility, though that was really to be expected regardless of her initial intentions. Highcloud was a fairly typical warrior. Laconic, diligent, and sincere, but frequently inscrutable, and duty-bound to her commanding officer to an extent far beyond the bounds of human military discipline. The admittedly low-key conflicts between Alex and Fireblade had never met any sort of final resolution, and their underlying animosity lingered still in their shaky, truceless ceasefire. After a few incidents in the Academy that had earned him some disciplinary marks in his permanent record, he learned that sometimes, it might be wiser to avoid an oncoming prank war rather than roll with it, but he might not have much choice in this case.
>>43932790
So here he had a known hostile, though that hostility had so far been limited to mild and petty affairs. They were on ground alien to him but familiar to her, and she sought to direct him to another ground even more to her favor. She was initiating contact of an unknown variety, with all possible tactical and strategic advantages leveraged against him.
Alex knew a losing battle when he saw it.
Though hubris urged him to accept and try to seize control of the situation despite his disadvantages, reason forced him to acknowledge that Fireblade had gotten in more than a few licks of her own during their previous low-level sparring, and was not to be underestimated. His pride had been further tempered by Beryl, whose agile and tireless mind swiftly mastered every subject he brought before her; even in chess, a domain where he had once thought himself all but invincible, he was increasingly straining himself. Though he still won far more games than he lost, his margin was decreasing--and Beryl had only known the game of kings for a very short time, she should hardly have been able to win any games at all. Alex sometimes suspected that Beryl might have some telepathic advantage against him--perhaps she could read some of his thoughts after all, or perhaps she was able to consult other Loroi for advice--but he was at least mature enough to recognize that this was his wounded pride talking, and not reason. He consoled himself with the fact that she had said that for his part, he was doing very well at learning and playing Loroi strategy games, though that was small consolation indeed when he learned that the traditional primary technique involved in most such games was to probe the opposing player's mind telepathically and that immediate on-table strategy had been a secondary concern for most of the players he had squared off against.
>>43932817
No, Alex was increasingly faced with the realization that, really, he was not always going to have the upper hand. He'd realized the truth of some of Ellen's barbs, that he had always acted as though he was sure to be the smartest person in the room even though that was not necessarily the case. This newer, humbler Alex might have some wisdom he had not previously held, but he lacked a certain measure of the insouciant bravura of his previous self, founded as it was on absolute confidence. The bravado of his sworn oath to destroy those who had so easily crushed the Bellarmine rang hollow in his memory, aware as he now was of the true scale of the war, and this doubtless contributed greatly to his troubled nights.
His emotions might have demanded that he play along with Fireblade, but he knew himself well enough to control those sentiments. He knew that at least half of it was because he was actually hoping that she'd try something, so he would have an excuse to reignite their quarrels, childish though that behavior might be. He also knew that much of the remainder was simply that he was bored, and that doing something just because you're bored and think you can get away with it is how you earn disciplinary measures, not honors; not appropriate behavior for a young space cadet or a junior ensign, and most certainly not appropriate behavior for an official ambassador.
But he walked along a knife's edge here; to flatly refuse could be as disastrous as playing too far into whatever the red-haired one had planned. He needed to create a polite way out, even though he still struggled with the Loroi conceptions of polite action and, honestly, even among humans, he had never been a master of the art of conversation.
>>43932855
He could see that Fireblade was becoming impatient. Or anxious. Possibly dyspeptic. Sometimes it is hard to tell, especially with someone you don't know and have never held a single conversation with.
He remembered that the Loroi considered lying to be horrifically impolite. But he also knew that the Loroi consider a host of things impolite, and it was more than likely that they would never catch him in this particular lie.
"Normally, I'd be perfectly willing to... uh... see your penis. But I'm exhausted tonight. I'm going to sleep now. We can talk about this again later."
Alex removed himself as respectfully as he could, turned the lights off in his bedroom, and--knowing he was monitored at all times--laid down and shut his eyes, pretending that rest would take him soon.
After an hour or so spent maintaining this pretense, sleep finally came to Alex, bringing with it all the usual horrors.
Thus he did not hear the sounds of anguish that rose outside his door. Or perhaps he did, but found that they blended seamlessly into the cries that tore through his mind throughout his own oneiric suffering.
Part 3/3
Fireblade realized that it was probably her own fault.
She realized this as soon as she had become angry.
She had tried to check herself. Honestly, she had. She knew as soon as she had resolved to open her heart to the alien that he would most likely reject it, and not necessarily out of spite. A lack of comprehension, or a somewhat justifiable apprehension, would suffice.
She had tried, even in that moment, to see things through his eyes. This was no simple matter; without the gift of sanzai, she could not even say for sure how his actual, literal eyes saw the world.
Fireblade tried to make allowances for him as best she could. She had constantly striven her hardest to be as courteous and respectful towards this creature as her civilized compatriots required.
That was not an easy endeavor. For his own part, the alien had seemed almost to revel in antagonizing all and sundry, smirking at their annoyance whenever he stepped just too far beyond their tolerance.
Testing them. That's what Beryl had once said about his behavior. That he was studying them, poking at them, prodding them just to see what happened. Beryl had seemed entirely too pleased at the thought; Fireblade merely found it disturbing.
But this had not felt like a test. It would not have tested Beryl, who was entirely inured to the vexations of interaction with the alien. His insistence on speech, his open disdain and impertinence towards Loroi, his basic strangeness, none of these aversely affected the Listel Tozet. Nor would Beryl have invested herself so wholly into her proposition. None of the other Loroi would have cared so much about something so simple as a single alien's reaction to her attempt to come to an understanding. None of the other Loroi would even have a reason to seek understanding or harmony with an alien in the first place.
>>43932943
But Fireblade was not like the other Loroi.
Typical Loroi warriors had lived and grown swaddled in one another's company, facing trials crafted by millenia of custom and law for the purpose of making them warriors, and making for them a high place in a warrior's civilization. There was a ceremony and tradition to their years of initiation, and there is comfort in ritual even if the ritual is a trial by fire and iron. A young warband would struggle, and struggle mightily, but their struggles had clear purpose, offered great reward, and would not be bourne alone. Though a young warrior initiate's band of fellows could expect to face hardship, they would expect to face it together.
Fireblade had not known such civilized luxuries.
She was Loroi to the core, but she was to other Loroi as the ordinary warrior was to the human. She was an old Loroi; very, very old. Though she had seen only three eightyears and one, she was in a way among the oldest Loroi in all of space. A Loroi from an era long gone, forgotten in all but the dimmest of myths and legends.
>>43932973
Between the days when the Void consumed the Ancestors and the Sister Worlds had sundered, and the rise of the Early Menelos Period, there was a Reign of Chaos, when petty kingdoms rose and fell across Deinar as water rises into and falls from the clouds. A thousandscore legends walked the myriad lands of Deinar in those days, and some tattered but much-loved remnants of their fame and glory live on in fragments of memory precious to the Listel. In those days, before the caste system had made stable the fundament of civilization, when fortunes would rise and fall in the time between the beats of a heart and the flick of a blade, when cities would stand in peace for the space of a night or an eightyear or a lifetime only to be torn to ruin in the savagery of war, when the only lasting laws were of the unequivocating rule of sword and psionic might, a hundred-score Fireblades had carved for themselves realms and adventures beyond imagining. To the ancient heroes and legends of that time, Fireblade would have been quite familiar. Wild-haired, flashing-eyed, sword in hand, a survivor, a reaver, a slayer, of vast dark melancholies and bright quickburning mirth, set to tread the jeweled thrones of Deinar beneath her sandaled feet.
Not for her were the strange and supercilious ways of the cultured warrior; her might had not been tempered by the discipline of a harsh society, but by the raw and horrific rigors of survival in a burned and broken land in which all of that society's strength had failed. She had reaved and ruined her way through a world where she would sometimes go for many months without so much as the sight of azure skin; and those few Loroi she did meet were often mad and wild.
>>43932994
Perhaps madness and violence were what it took to survive in a mad and violent world, in which all that remained of settlement and civilization was under the control of a vile and apparently unconquerable foe; by the end of it, she had certainly been as mad and wild as any wounded beast.
For those years she had killed and burned and maimed the Enemy as she could, and lesser enemies as she needed to; for it was not always from the slain of the Enemy that she had reaved, nor had all those she had reaved from been slain when they had met. In the shattered remnants of a ruined world, a dying people can become as terrible a foe to one another as any stranger, their very tenacity to cling to life spelling death for all their kind. She had never killed without cause, but cause had never been in short supply. Horror and death were everywhere, and some reflection of this can be seen in the eyes and minds of every single one of the survivors of Seren. But Fireblade had been an outlander and a barbarian even among them, with no hope nor home nor band nor clan nor clade to call her own.
She had not even had a name.
Nor need of one.
All of this had Seren reawakened in her. All of this and more, and worse.
It was no wonder to her that they feared her. She could walk among these domesticated and sophisticated Loroi; she could converse with them, eat their foods, wear their clothes, learn their ways, even lead them in battle. But she and they and all others who had eyes to see would know that she was not one of them, could never be one of them. Her spirit burned with a deeper fire, an unquenchable wildfire that threatened to consume all it touched.
>>43933020
She had known that she could not expect the human to understand; that was, after all, why she had wanted to take him to her lake in the first place. So that she could make him see, make him understand, make him hear her and know some small measure of what she had felt. She knew that it would not unburden herself, not completely, but she had hoped to at least no longer be so terribly isolated in her burden.
She had offered him some small measure of her soul and he acted as though she had tried to take his.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't right.
She was not even angry at him, as little help as that was to her. Her anger had been at all of it, the entire situation, elements of which both did and did not involve him. She had no intention of taking out her anger on him or anyone else, though his fear was understandable. Because she knew herself well enough to understand why others fear her, she forgave him, and forgave Highcloud's startled fright as well; she knew she could never be like Stillstorm.
>>43933046
Stillstorm was the apotheosis of the civilized warrior. Her wrath was a tempered steel blade; an implement, one which empowered the wielder proportionate to her skill, and Stillstorm's was a very skilled hand indeed. Her vehemence could be worked for years, folded and woven upon itself over and over again, processed and purified and alloyed and sharpened as need be, worked and reworked, and come out stronger than before, compounded and reforged as a sterner and sharper tool for days or weeks or even years before the strike. Her ire would be as cold as the darkness between the stars or as hot as the skin of the sun as the need came. It was Stillstorm's essential nature to command; the moment she walked into a room it became her room and all within it bent to her will, the moment she laid eyes on a foe they became her foe and all rival claims on their blood would fade to insignificance, and the moment she felt anger, it was her anger, to wield or withhold as she saw fit. It was misleading to think of Stillstorm as becoming angry, because it was not Stillstorm that changed to match anger, but anger that became something more in her hands, refined and reforged into a weapon that was utterly her own. It served her well and struck her foes as she willed. Stillstorm was the master of her fury, no matter its force.
Not so Fireblade.
>>43933067
Fireblade's rage was of a more primal nature. Not a carefully honed implement but an unrestrained whirlwind, the unstoppable frenzy of a mad demigod. Her inner fire was unmasterable and dangerous even to its own host, much less her friends or allies. The sort of volcanic ferocity that could, in the ancient times, have leveled towns and conquered thrones and won for her fame and power and wealth and males and glory. But in this civilized age, when power flowed not from individual potential for violence, but from the massed ties of commerce, industry, and pre-established social bonds enforced by soldiers armed not with individual prowess but the powers of technology, an age where individual might held less potential than the intangibles of law and wealth and webs of obligation, she was a liability. A throwback to a way that did not work anymore, a world whose time had passed.
But though she understood all that had happened, it had torn savagely at her heart.
This was not the first time her heart had been torn asunder. Nor the worst. Nor even would it be the last.
But that did little to comfort her that night.
Only a short time after the alien excused himself, so too did Fireblade take her own leave, as Highcloud radioed for the replacement shift. For convenience's sake she had been given quarters in the same building that served as the alien's current abode, and for the sake of all the Loroi around her, her quarters had been private. Nobody else would need to suffer her nightmares, not here, where living quarters were not so limited as aboard a warship and where comfort was as high a concern as any.
>>43922959
stopped caring a very very long time ago
>>43933093
Beryl would be back tomorrow. Her opportunity had been missed.
As sleep crept upon her, anger and sorrow roiled through her being as her dashed hopes and once-forgotten memories skirmished across the borders of her conscious and unconscious mind. She had not known such tumultuous emotions for a number of years.
Soon she was lost to them.
Soon after that, her mind began to scream.
It was fortunate indeed that so large a portion of the building had been dedicated to the human, and so only a small number of Loroi occupied his immediate vicinity. For so anguished was that psionic cry that a number of Loroi on the two adjacent storeys joined it, wailing misery with both voice and mind throughout the night.
>>43933135
by Solemn
http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=709&p=11707&hilit=Ira#p11707
>>43933177
>dat ending
>>43922959
>Berserk off the ship
>Outsider updated 3 times this month
>Naruto is over
This is the end of the world, isnt it?
>>43933299
Well Hisui is dead too so yeah.
>>43933299
>Berserk off the ship
>"Uh, what is that dude talking about? It can NOT be in any way remotely related to the manga. I will even check on some site to confirm so. Because there is no way in hell such a thing would- HOLY SHIT FUCKING FINALLY!!!"
The End Times are upon us lads.
>>43932706
>Amazing story
>Really well written
>Fantastic characterizations
>Incredibly talented Anon author
>Futa
Oh fuck this green earth.
>>43934072
Don't judge a book by it's cover.
srrsly tho, keep reading you wont regret it, or maybe not as much as you think you'll do.
>>43934170
Oh, I finished reading the whole thing... And I feel so fucking sorry for that post I made. I regret writing it now, because of fireblade's terrible linguistic failing...
But I do wonder, how you get "penis"... From " place". Or whatever word she had intended to use.
>>43922959
They put him in isolation to prevent the crew from raping him didn't they?
>>43934367
It's not rape if you consent.
He would have to be a colossal faggot to refuse pretty much any of the 800 elves the Tempest has on board.
>>43927760
>>43927714
Actually Terraformars was "what happens if aliens seeded every planet with a 2001 style uplift-o-tron black obelisk and humans decide to dump a bunch of cockroaches on top of one."
>>43934509
>and humans decide to dump a bunch of cockroaches on top of one
Yes, but WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU DO THAT???
>>43934367
Tempo said that "unforseen events" prevented her from being present during Alex's interrogation, and took full responsibility for the consequences of her absence. But can you imagine any event that would keep the chief diplomatic officer (or any of her subordinates) from being present during the first contact interview with a new alien species, short of being actively prevented from doing so? Who aboard Tempest has the authority to exclude Tempo from such a meeting?
Why didn't Tempo visit Alex in his cell subsequent to his interrogation, and why did she have Alex come all the way to the bridge to talk to her? Who was conspicuously absent from the bridge when Alex arrived?
During Tempo's interview with Alex on the bridge, Stillstorm returns to the bridge, and Tempo interrupts Alex (who is in the process of trying to give her important location information) and bestows formal diplomatic status on him, in front of two foreign witnesses. Why would she do this? Does Stillstorm seem pleased about it?
As the battle is about to begin, Alex is dismissed from the bridge, but Tempo calls him back under the pretext of observing his funerary rituals. Why would she do this? Does Stillstorm seem pleased about that?
When Alex is dismissed for the second time, he is promptly thrown back in the brig. Do you really think that was an oversight? Do you think it's standard Loroi procedure to lock up diplomats? Under whose orders could such a thing even be considered?
Why did neither Tempo nor Beryl (nor anyone other than the guards) visit Alex in the week or so subsequent to the battle? When Alex asks her why, Beryl dodges the question and apologizes that she "was not able" to visit him earlier, and that she's full of questions for him. One might speculate that Tempo also had a few questions for him. What or who could have prevented them from visiting him?
>>43934895
Because the cockroaches are actually black people
>>43935477
Estrus cycle?
>>43935477
Of course all the other Loroi are uncomfortable as fuck around Tempo as well.
As for where she was, probably overseeing the salvage op on the Bellarmine or dissection of its dead crew. I think it was Beryl that offhandedly said that they rescued more crew but were unable to resuscitate them. We never see those corpses or hear of what happened to them, they are never given burial rights on screen. Most likely they were dissected with Tempo overseeing to ensure that they weren't some sort of Umiak construct.
>>43935477S
I think it's pretty clear what's going on here based on comments by the Barsam courier.
The Loroi have some sort of state religion/ideology that places them above their fellow Soia-Liron organisms on the basis that they are likely the descendants of the Soia due to their psychic powers. We've got some stuff on the Insider that mentions this as a philosophical issue between the Barsam, Loroi, and Neridi. Of the three, Loroi and allied species have only encountered the natural counterpart to the Barsam.
Alex, and by extension Humanity, are a deadly threat to this ideology since there are far too many physical similarities between the Loroi and Humans to be waved away. This would likely indicate that the Loroi are not descendants of the Soia but rather another creation of the Soia. While this revelation might not be too terrible for liberal minded Loroi such of Beryl or Tempest, perhaps it is more troubling to Loroi of a nationalist/conservative bend, which Stillstorm is hinted to be.
Basically I'm guessing that Alex's treatment had a lot to do with the ideological struggle humanity causes.
>>43924899
14 years old.
MILF.
Er, this isn't space-Alabama, is it?
>>43936538
It's different species that ages differently. Also they apparently all pop out a replacement before embarking on a military mission.
>>43936538
That was copyrighted in 06 though, she's 23 now
Also different species that age at different rates and we don't know if that's earth years or loroi years
>>43936833
Loroi years have their own name so i'm guessing earth years.
Insider says they're good to go at 9 so she must be like 25(?) on human years,
>>43934223
It came from hitting "auto-generate new word" a few too many times.
>http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=9603#p9603
>>43936538
Yeahhh...
Every space elf makes a baby before going on a military mission.
So, 14 year old milf.
I feel dirty writing that.
>>43937726
>The loroli word for lake was Penis, until the author threw a prude.
That makes so fucking much sense and is simultaneously hillarious.
>>43938018
Don't worry, I'm sure the FBI didn't notice.
So how long will it be until we get the beard edit for this page?
>>43923241
Outsider usually doesn't have nearly enough text in it for full page Thog edits.
>>43941266
>Come to /tg/ for cyoa
>See Outsider
Welp time to go back to /co/ and make a Outsider thread
hey /tg/ guess what?
>>43942030
Well hey, that's pretty cool
Also, probably a sign of the impending end of times.
>>43941266
>ay lmao
>>43942030
Well,nothing we didn't already know, just put out in comic form instead of having to dig through the insider info.
>>43942030
Man, beard guy is gonna have so much work when he checks back in on this.
>>43942030
>We don't know who started it
>But they totally had it in for us and were waiting for an opportunity
>And we're constantly on the defensive
>And it's surrender or die
This sounds suspiciously like half the story - there is absolutely something being left out.
>>43942055
Yeah, as if the whole 2015 smashing the previous record for hottest year in recorded history... 2014, wasn't a good enough indicator.
>>43942030
It'll be interesting to see what the Umiak's side of the story is, but we probably won't hear it before getting back to Earth-controlled space and getting details of other scouts' contact with the Hierarchy.
>>43942189
makes sense keeping sensitive information away from a third party
>>43942189
IIRC this is actually what most of the spess elves know.
The Umiak perspective will be interesting, but less interesting, IMO, if there's some Loroi conspiracy covering up the origins of the war. It's enough that the Umiak simply see the Loroi as an uncomfortable reminder of the precursor races.
These truly are the end times.
>>43942502
Maybe there was a conspiracy in the Loroi military to blitz the Umiak, but it went wrong and everyone involved with it died, leaving the rest uncertain as to how it actually started and why the Umiak are offering no quarter.
>>43942030
My god, it's a double event
>>43942741
Well if they started an organized large scale invasion right before, there was obviously some sort of buildup beforehands.
Were Loroi unaware of it, or did they thought that their raid was worth the risk and cost of a counterattack, because of macguffin maybe?
Or that Loroi attack was much larger scale than general populace knows? How would you justify large amount of military personnel vanishing though? They'd have to have entire secret fleets.
Of course that's all assuming the blue elf is speaking the truth as she knows it.
>>43942775
The hilarious thing was that when he started posting again, someone referenced exactly this for the upcoming release schedule. And now it's here.
>>43943619
>How would you justify large amount of military personnel vanishing though?
Easy, spread out the loss reports so it doesn't look like they were all lost at once. Wait a bit then, oh, by the way, these units were destroyed attempting a counter attack, and these ones were lost holding the line, and that bunch over there went missing - we assume they were ambushed en route.
>>43943744
They were not at war then though. Can you get away with accumulating large amount of troops out of what could plausibly pass for losses in minor border skirmishes? Russia even has problems covering up the few thousands she sent to Ukraine.
>>43943766
Strikes me as a bit of a silly line of reasoning honestly. If the spess-elves were building up to war like that, and the bugs simply beat them to the punch, why would they have been driven back so far?
Seems more likely they were caught with their pants down.
>>43943797
Indeed. Either that or they really suck at warfare.
Or else their version is bullshit. Guess we'll find out sooner or later.
all the slow update comics are speeding up.
>>43936135
Pretty much the impression I have.
There are couple of scenes where it is communicated without words to the reader that there's a lot of backroom political-arm-wrestling going on.
For some reason this reminded me of the political dickery and play in the Reichskanzler between the Heer, luftwaffe and Schutzstaffel.
ok comic read
holy shit this is a lot of extra background information to read through
>>43944332
They are literally space Nazis
>>43943833
The insider backs up their version. The only thing in dispute is which side shot first.
Bugs were batshit and prepared for war the minute they met. Space elves weren't big expansionists and had gotten used to aliens falling into their lap through peaceful relations, so while they did see the bugs as a threat they didn't think it was something worth massive military buildup until they got zerg rushed.
>>43944776
I'd fall into their collective laps.
>>43944569
lots of precurser races
i like the Neridi sense of humor
>>43944791
bow chicka wow wow
>>43944776
The bugs are basically Space Romans. Anyone is a threat they have to conquer and absorb into their empire, and if not absorb, then destroy.
Followed by the destruction of their slaves at a later date. Everyone is a threat to them. Everyone.
>>43944905
>Space Romans
>collectivism
>overpopulation
>quantity over quality
>not space Chinese
>>43933299
Who says they won't have to sail back again afterwards?
>>43945842
Come on, Elf Island has got to be worth 3 years at least.
My God, Shuttle-Namek might not be as long as I thought
>>43946526
Maybe our children IMBLYING will live to see the end.
>>43948101
i might never have children but im sure i will be an uncle some day they will have to see the end for me
>>43934072
It's perfect, right!? I'd put above the one with the beareded Fireblade.
>>43942189
Well, she does admit that they were the ones who shot first- even if she tries to justify it, this fact combined with the general attitude of superiority and disdain for other species shown by Stillstorm and most of the command bridge personnel we've seen, it's not unlikely that Loroi tempers are at fault for the conflict. Perhaps the Umiak saw them as dangerous; short-tempered elves with a superiority complex probably have a tendency for overreaction, which is can be detrimental to efficient running of interstellar civilization.
>>43949578
i dont recall her saying that shot first just that its unclear who shot first.
and they dident seem to have such major personality problems under the last emperor
>>43923875
kek
>>43949681
The latest page, >>43942030, seems to indicate that, at the very least, the Loroi believe they initiated open combat, but that they don't know the circumstances that led to it.
>>43950158
hm your right
im going to go with the bugs started it though
>>43929564
The writer of the comic was big into the Homworld community, so much so there is an easter egg in Homeworld2 about how Arioch started a shitstorm over the change in voice actors for S'jet. ship design.
Get it together anon
>>43950279
The bugs were certainly preparing for it. We seem to be slightly skipping over the circumstances before open conflict (though I guess it's also more detailed in the background information I haven't gotten to yet). If what little we know about the Umiak is true, it seems odd to me that they would need a pretext to go to war.
I'm kind of personally hoping the bugs are more complicated. Partially out of pure bias because I love bug races and am disappointed that they're always evil, but it does seem to me that there's more going on than even the Loroi's straight forward explanations indicate. Beryl keeps saying nothing of what the Umiak say should be trust, that it's probably outright lies, but it does seem odd that the human ship was immediately destroyed and then the Umiak try to make a play like they don't know what it is if they did destroy it. Narratively, we saw nothing of the ship that destroyed the Bellamine, even though the ship and the commanders deck clearly got a look at it. That, and the clear suspicion Alex has for everything seems to me to be indicating something murkier going on, even if the Loroi are on the up and up. Maybe some third party taking advantage of the war.
Though, it is also odd that the Umiak are just now stopping the Far Seeing thing. A likely situation to me is that the humans accidentally ended up close to whatever the Umiak use to stop it, perhaps a stealth ship of some sort, and it shot them down to try and prevent further detection. Not showing the ship could be so Alex doesn't recognize it later. Or perhaps it's to put the reader in Alex's shoes as someone who quite honestly does not know who cold bloodedly destroyed his neutral ship and thus needs to be suspicious of everyone.
>>43950279
>im going to go with the bugs started it though
The Umiak have ALWAYS been ready to raise arms. The Loroi saying "they had lots of ships prepared" about them means little.
>>43949578
The ancestors of the Umiak were oppressed primitive tribes under the Soia rule, and they remember this. Loroi have an obvious Soia connection and claim to be their heirs and like Soia have non-Soia species reduced into junior partners, so better get rid of them. Umiak also subjugate their clients, but they are utilitarianists and do not have a moral dilemma about it.
>>43950490
Or Historians are playing the sides against each other, first giving Loroi monkey models of their plasma guns and now Umiak get a psi-disrupter. Human ship was shot up by them because there's some kind of special American potential to mess up their plot.
>>43950615
They did say the ship was destroyed with a plasma focus. That's originally Historian Tech from the Loroi side.
>>43942030
I think the speed-up is at least partly because he's not going crazy with 3d-modellers making new sets and ships for every page at the moment. He's already got the whole interior of the shuttle made, so as long as he stays in it, he can crank pages out faster.
blueberries lie innocents die
don't believe them, /tg/
>>43953468
innocents are overrated
If the update schedule stabilizes.. we might actually see an end to this arc by the time we meet blue space elves IRL
>>43955528
I don't know, last I heard all they really needed to get the Alcubierre drive working was about two trillion trillion tons of stuff that probably doesn't exist. It can't take all that long to scrape together.
>>43955528
joke's on you when real life spess elves are brown elves.
>>43950729
so the blue fuckers killed the ship?
>>43956334
Why would they blow the ship then rescue it's last survivor?
>>43956685
to experiment on him, they don't show up on radar and dead things can only tell you so much.
also if something pops up to you next in a war zone and you didn't see it until it was next to you; do you wait or do you kill it?
>>43956685
sexy time
>>43956685
Maybe blowing up the ship was an act of panic? I mean, someone you can't detect on your early-warning system showing up as close as they're stated to be from the ship that fired on them would freak any military vessel out, and when they didn't show an "ally" signature/beacon/ID system, they assumed enemy action and opened fire.
>>43956917
I think the major problem is the Bellamine was clearly out of the way of the fighting, and were assaulted by a lone ship, also way away from the fighting. The attackers' circumstances are very odd within the context of the fight, even if it is a ship from either of the major sides.
>>43956685
>>43956803
>>43957774
I just love that Beryl is clearly playing rock-paper-scissors there.
>>43957097
True. Plus the plasma bursts had a green tinge, while the Loroi energy weaponry seems to be tinged red. That suggests the possibility of a third party being responsible.
>>43955640
Actually the reworked the calculations and found out we only need an amount equivalent to the voyager probe for it to work.
>>43957774
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7a66m_astronaut-jones_fun
One thing I do not understand, why are all the beards gone?
>>43961101
They're still there, anon. They're always there. Just waiting to be unleashed.
