24

Jan 2014

Chapter 2: Page 21 - First Glance

Posted by / in Comic / 58 comments

Tada! Meet the deathbot (as we have affectionately begun to call it, for lack of a better term). [Actually, if anyone has any suggestions for more official sounding names, let us know in the comments below].

So who guessed this? I know Delta-v was guessing Amazonian warriors from Mars (I hope facetiously) ;)

  • Ha, I beat Delta-V to the post comment :D I continue to vote for deathbot :)

    • Well yeah, I like deathbot too. That’s why we say it. But that’s not what Aegis HQ is gonna call it. They’d have to give it some sort of cool acronym or something.

      • Charlie

        I bet the cool acronym starts with the letters “BF.”

        • OK I give. I can’t figure out what you’re alluding to here. What would the BF stand for? Big Fighter?

  • Delta-v

    Don”t get too cocky, Boyo, I’ve been packing and traveling all day. On the other hand you did beat me, and nothing can take that away from you. :)

    The mechanical beastie acts quite a bit Like one of Fred Saberhagen’s anti-personnel Berserkers (in a cape, yet). It’s also obviously designed as a hunter/killer, since it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of non-lethal attachments. Given Aegis’ fondness for mythical and semi-mythical names, I’m guessing “Caliban” as in “Caliban-class H/K, AP Variant”

    Speaking of voting, everyone please do. :)

    • Hope traveling goes well for you and that it is warmer wherever you go.

      Those names are all cool, but they sound like names Minerva/Aegis would use if they had designed it. Since it is a weapon used against them, I’m not sure if they would pick something so creative, especially since this is the first time they are seeing this. If/Once these became more common they might name it something like that, but I’m wondering what they would call it in the short term.

      • Delta-v

        You have a good point. I was playing off the fact that Caliban was presented as an ugly, misshapen, malevolent being.

        In a more modern example, NATO designated the Soviet Tupolev TU-22M long range nuke-capable bomber as the “Backfire”.

        Did everyone vote? :)

        • Sebasp

          We are currently ranked (in the sci-fi section) just below one of my favorite ever webcomics, Romantically Apocaliptic

          • That is a great one! One of the comics I follow (and therefore included in on our Links page).

          • Charlie

            If you call it Caliban, when they finally do blow it out of the sky, one of them could quote Stephano’s line to Caliban in “The Tempest:”
            “How now, mooncalf?” BOOM!
            I’d call it Bubba, myself. But that’s just me.

          • HAHAHA…. Dan: implement script rewrite…. :D

        • Yeah, I think I like the use of Caliban, maybe later on once they have time to give is a designation/nickname.

        • Can I swap my vote from deathbot to Caliban… that is awesome! Course, once the ruckus calms down and its safely a historical event and the scholars could argue about naming :D

          • Delta-v

            Sure, go ahead, but the only votes that really matter to me are the ones people cast for Demon Archives on TWC, and I wish there were even more of those. A LOT more. :)

          • Did you know Δv that you can comment directly on our TWC page with how cool and deserving of votes you think we are? ;) http://www.topwebcomics.com/sample/15797/default.aspx

          • Delta-v

            Not until now. A whole new vista opens before me. *_*

  • GeorgieGeorge357

    Well, as soon as Jane started referring to this (War machine? Mecha? Mechanical Anti-Personnel Unit [MAPU?]) as an “It” I thought it might be some sort of robotic warrior. Before that I wasn’t sure, but thought it had to be something more than just some bandits because Tenzin/Jane should have been able to see them.

    • You know what, I’ll end up making the conversation about what to call it part of the dialogue in a future chapter. Because I can see them having the same sort of thought process you are having, trying to decide what to call it. Thanks :)

  • Sebasp

    Id say that Minerva gives it just a serial number, something from their files coding system, but people calls it deathbot

  • jerry mcmasters

    Can’t any of you recognize a steam-powered locomotive kill-traption when you see one?

    • kill-traption might beat out deathbot in my book. But yeah, more like high density fuel cells than steam :D

  • There’s only one way to beat a robot: wildly illogical decisions!

    • Good plan! But what if it’s been programmed to expect wildly illogical decisions? ;)

      • It’s still pulling its expectations from a script. And even the most comprehensive list is finite!

        • GeorgieGeorge357

          Maybe that’s how J/T will defeat it.

  • Marius Hjelseth

    God, that freaking thing is terrifying!

    • It was one of the last pieces of concept art we got from Matias Basla before he stopped working with us (us = sad).

  • Pingback: We made a Patreon! |()

  • Excellent killbot. I wanted specifically to comment on this page- impressive and good sense of motion in the art.

  • Legendary Sisters

    Oh Hai Gais!

    • Hehe. I just imagined it awkwardly trying to make friends.

      “Hai Gais! Will U B Mai Frainds? Wai R U Ded?”

      • Adriano #WR

        excellent x)

  • nightgaunt

    A damned sophisticated robot.

  • Adriano #WR

    I didn’t expect that x)

    For the name… “Spike-bot” could be funny, no ? Because of the flechettes x)

  • Adriano #WR

    Seeing a robot killing humans make me think of Terminator x)
    Skynet has begun his attack :o

  • Oh snap… a killer robot.

  • Ah-hah, saw a bot coming, no heat/not human levels anyway, precise 1 shot 1 kill? Didn’t see one with a cape coming though, that’s just putting on airs, freakin’ high and mighty robot.

    Thinking of a name? Slap some letters and numbers together with a subtitle. UX-2 M.K. (Marine Killer) or … H.K.-YX. (Hunter Killer) …MaHK: Marine Hunter Killer. Then again you may have this figured out.

  • Whoa, really cool page and first look at the “thing”. :)

  • Citrus Reaper

    Damn, I’m struggling to come up with a good name for this thing. I’m leaning towards Yaoguai for the time being

  • l33tninja

    That robot . . . has a cape.

    • I’m enjoying reading your comments as if you really were the Ninja from Mystic Rev :D

      • l33tninja

        I’m glad you got the reference. MR is the first webcomic I ever read, so I kind of like to give a subtle shout-out with the ol’ avatar.

        • Seems like it might be coming to a climactic finish soon? Would be nice if it gets the solid ending it deserves and not just a fade away into the land of never updating comics…

          • l33tninja

            Jen has mentioned in her update posts that she is into the last story arc right now; so I would guess we are nearing the end. The updates are still occurring pretty regularly.

          • Yeah I’ve got it on my RSS feed reader. Was more comparing it to other comics I’ve read that just died off and never finished :/

          • l33tninja

            there is no shortage of those, that’s for sure.

    • capes make everything awesome.

  • theRoUS

    Seriously? Bipedal with anthropomorphic articulation? Meh. Check out the drones from “The Episode with No Name” from Reboot! season 3.

    Still a kick-ass look, though. :-)

  • smurfton

    Welllll…. I guessed this… but only because when he was sitting on the rooftop, he had a robot head. Not much of a guess, really.

  • Adriano

    It’s not “a robot”. It’s Deathbot!

  • Henrik Svantesson

    Ooooh, reminds me of the old AI Quest on /tg/.

    Next question being, if it’s a robot, why is it so large? A human-sized platform is really unnecessary to carry a weapon the size of a cat. Why not just put four legs and sensors on the gun (and an ammobox) itself?

    This allows you a small target with minimal critical hits possible - seeing as it’s a bot, you can even armor the damn thing just as well as power armor for way, way less cost without losing mobility!

    • Part “Rule of Cool”, part its creators not being perfect, part us not being perfect ;)

      • Henrik Svantesson

        Can only worry what the next iteration of this thing will be - for the same cost as one, you might be facing 16 of these things, mass-produced, but the size of a housecat (or the minimum size of the gun, at least), leaping from wall to wall faster than a human eye can follow and definitely faster than a human-controlled barrel can track, firing with absolutely perfect accuracy.

        Or just make the ammunition into robots. How big would an explosive need to be to penetrate those suits? Imagine swarms of robotic insects that land on you and fire off a shaped charge into the weakest part of your suit - humans would quickly be rendered completely obsolete on the battlefield for any purposes but command roles.

        • *totally doesn’t steal your ideas for down the road*

          • Henrik Svantesson

            We had other fun ones in that quest - when your main character is an AI but your enemies have a hundred times the resources and infrastructure you do, you have to be creative.

            The thing after that we came up with was a four-limbed power-armor type bot that used the fact that it didn’t have to protect a squishy human to just completely overpower all opposition of similar weight. Ordinary anti-power-armor weapons don’t work when the thickness of your armor is comparable to the enemy’s tanks, and you have a massive shield on a central arm and four arms, each equipped for dealing with different kinds of threats using weapons that would usually be mounted on vehicles, AND you’re accompanied by the deadly jumping spider-gunners.

            Needless to say, the enemy’s main strategy became to avoid all ground or boarding engagements whatsoever and just kill us in space - which led to further fun developments you can do in space when a crew is not an issue (your ship can dodge mass drivers and torpedoes if you use a small nuke against an armored plate to take a quick leap to the side, and your armor doesn’t need to be as thick if you just jetison it at the projectiles before they hit).

            Also, the webcomic is getting better by the page! :D

    • I like how you think

      How about power? batteries are proving to be really difficult to shrink down.