Chapter 8: Page 5 - Nightshade -

Oct 2015

Chapter 8: Page 5 - Nightshade

Posted by Daniel Sharp / in Comic / 73 comments

Alright mysterious lady. Friend or foe? ;)

Last chance to sign up for the email subscription list in time for the extra bonus wallpaper pack! Everyone who signs up by the end of the day will get a nice email present tomorrow :)

Did you see the interview I posted with the Perry’s, creators of the fun steampunk comic, Out of My Element?

Next week we’ll be jumping back to everyone’s favorite cripple, Tenzin :D

Matt [in Middletown]

“About damn time.”
You think he was asleep too long too, ma’am?
Eonknight

Thalia?!? Can’t be, can it?
- Alpha Dragon
  
  Same thought I had….
  - Daniel Sharp
    
    I need like a shrug emoticon with an evil grin. _;P_/ Something like that.
    - Chris
      
      Definitely a sideways sticking out tongue with hands up.
      
      >;)
      - Daniel Sharp
        
        I’ll just say, go check out the Extras/Lore stories and come to your own conclusion about the identity of this woman ;P
    - NickDA
      
      That emoticon reads perfectly… should be your new go to for this.
    - Dusty Coyote
      
      ¯_(ツ)_/¯ works just fine, you smug yet beautiful evil genius
      - Daniel Sharp
        
        Oooh, but how do I make that? Just copy and paste it forever? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Adriano

STEALTH CLOAK FOR VEHICLE ERMAGRAD

I wonder how much it cost… You better not ripp it !
NickDA

What is this color I see… its sooo… lively, makes me feel happy… oh wait… GREEN… what is this??? what have you done with Seba!!!
- Adriano
  
  Wait ! I just realized…
  
  Happy colors can exist in TDA universe ???
  - Dusty Coyote
    
    Yes. But the robot apocalypse is coming. Dan will make sure it doesn’t last long.
    - Daniel Sharp
      
      …. It’s funny because the next page IS kind of the opposite on the color/happiness scheme. But NOT for your reasons :P
      - Adriano
        
        Moooh… I still wait for this robot uprising, Dan !
        Since Reine already did it in Greasy Space Monkeys ! You’re late, dude ;P
  - Matt [in Middletown]
    
    No, it is an hallucination.
    Happy is a foreign concept in the TDA universe.
    - Adriano
      
      Phew, I was starting to worry !
      Thanks, Matt !
      - Matt [in Middletown]
        
        Welcome!
        Wonder what the scene really looks like!
        (Dust, rock. Some lizard staring at the humans that are tripping out.)
      - Adriano
        
        Lizard with two heads, ofc
        It’s not a nuked area for nothing u.u
        
        (Mad Max 4 reference anyone ? ;P)
      - Matt [in Middletown]
        
        Two heads, some ridiculous frill.
        And a mile wide attitude.
        Feel the reptilian hate!
        Feeeeeeel iiiiiit!
        (Meanwhile, the lizard I self narrating the above from many feet away and nothing of the sort is true.)
      - DeNitro
        
        Already seen your weirded out lizard, nature needs no nuclear holocaust to do trippy things with those. This could be one grassy hillside and a tree, part of a oasis out in the bleakness your expecting. Then again, finding Micky mouse blotter strips in your coffee cup will enhance color perception … :-)
Otterkit

I want that chameleon tarp!
- Citrus Reaper
  
  Screw that, I want this girl’s cloak that’s apparently made of the same material!
  - NickDA
    
    We had a lot of nerd talks about invis cloaks and current tech, a lot of them have issues of the nano particles not being able to swallow all the photons effectively, or they are actively powered… fun dilema…
    
    Minerva has some awesome solar tech… so the direct sunlight photons hitting the cloak, would be higher energy then the photons its emitting (if you think its only emitting the equivalent of a bounced green photon, but its getting hit with a full white equivalent)… so in my head science hand waving, the thing is powered by the light it is getting, since that amount of light would essentially scale and always be somewhat greater than the “light” it is having to emit… blah nerd
    - Matt [in Middletown]
      
      Active camo for the win.
      - Adriano
        
        What about brain jammering ? :D
        (through nanobots, frequencies of light or other waves)
      - Matt [in Middletown]
        
        Brain jamming would require the target to have nanobots.
      - Adriano
        
        I was thinking of jamming their organic brain. You know, you can melt brain cells. Kinda disgusting and dirty, but meh, at least it is possible.
      - Matt [in Middletown]
        
        Hmm.
        Doable.
        A good directed energy pulse could work.
        Sound waves of certain frequencies.
      - Adriano
        
        Yeah,that’s what I meant. Pulses of light and sound waves, that liquefy your brain. Scary !
      - NickDA
        
        Or just high velocity copper sheathed lead nuggets… easier brain liquifying tech… But the concept of induced memory loss etc… there are some fun things but they usually require really really strong magnetic fields like fMRI machine level stuff to really much around with nuerons without the aforementioned “liquifying”
      - DeNitro
        
        Near future has many terrifying military replacements for old fashioned “Lead Poisoning.” One is LIPC Shock weapons that will enable quick killing by electrocution of any line of sight targets hit with its laser. A Laser-Induced plasma channel weapon might not sound as terrible as a gauss gun, but a “surviveable” wound to the head would erase more than simple memories. 8-0
      - Adriano
        
        Ahah, lead nuggets, why haven’t I think of that before ? xD Nice one Nick xD
    - Citrus Reaper
      
      Even more awesome! And even in the (very likely) event that it doesn’t give you full active camoflage, it would sure make you look spooky to all the wasteland raiders and crazies and stuff.
      - NickDA
        
        We talked for a while about what would happen if you turned off the output, and the cloak was absorbing and emitting very very little light. Would it behave like the blind spot our eyes already have? Like our brain would have a hard time focusing on it… would it look like a “whole” of just super black? Since that’s not a thing we are primed to see, and with soft organic edges, its intriguing to wonder how our brains would deal with it, and if it would actually be hard to focus on.
      - Citrus Reaper
        
        Hmm. That there sure is something to think about. I wonder if our brains would simply fill the blank spot with something that made more sense, or if you simply wouldn’t perceive it.
      - SebasP
        
        like some kind of Demon ;)
      - Citrus Reaper
        
        Precisely. Except a demon with an assault weapon, so the very worst kind.
  - Otterkit
    
    HAHA okay agreed
melaredblu

Hmm. I thought everything was desert and ruined city in this setting, but now there’s grass. Where could we be now? Judging by the types of letters our mystery language was using, the setting there was probably roughly in the vicinity of Russia. We know from the coordinates that Minerva is located in Kyrgyzstan. Tenzin hails from Tibet. So far, we’ve kept most everything to the same continent, so I’m gonna keep with that pattern, as much as the grass immediately makes me think Africa.

So, looking at a world map to see where countries are in relation to each other and referring to a biogeography map to see where the grasslands in Asia are distributed, I am going to guess this person is possibly in Kazakhstan. There’s a swath of temperate grassland that stretches from Turkey to the edge of Mongolia, so any of the countries in this range would apply, but since Kazakhstan is located directly between Russia and Kyrgyzstan, it would tie together the events we’re drifting between very nicely.

Of course, it’s not a perfect theory. For one thing, English isn’t a major language in that region and since I don’t know the language distribution of this world, I have to go by what I know now. Also, looking at Google images of grasslands in this region, I haven’t spotted any trees that resemble the ones of this page. Assuming it’s not artistic license, the types of trees I tend to find are much thinner and more spindly. Without knowing the species of the tree or even if this is a native species, it’s impossible to know if they’re even a viable clue. However, I did see a lot of hills in the photos, which reflects what I’m seeing on this page. Again, though, more than one country within the temperate grassland zone of Southeastern Asia has hilly regions. This could very well be Mongolia too.

So tell me (if it’s not a spoiler), did I at least come close?
- NickDA
  
  you… you are awesome…
- Daniel Sharp
  
  Hehe, you’d have to ask Seba about artistic things. I certainly didn’t give him any ecological/geographical guidance ;)
  
  Plus, I like having the handwaveability of climate change from nuclear winter and whatnot + Minervan terraforming to explain away errors XD
  
  Have you seen the Map I’ve been working on in the Lore section? Or do you remember the map shots from a chapter back? ;) Who has giant walls with random guys with guns outside of them? ;P
- SebasP
  
  I think I’m careful wit the details and then you just make me see I am not
  
  Lets see, there are a good 100 years of climate change ( remember the Russian city from one of the nightmares?) but I tried to stay within the current weather here, and I did search for trees of that specific zone.
  
  But the real reason to see some grass here is to serve the narration. We have a real baddass character and I we needed to show that she had her ATV hidden far away from where she was located.
  
  far away but walking, so the options get reduced to forest, coast and grassland (I wont make her walk to the arctic). And then comes the location of the story, so forest and coast aren’t the most representative options to show where she is.
  
  A detail, We didnt mean to hide where she was at the beginning of the chapter. I just realize now that it wasn’t clear enough. I wonder if it works better or worse now that you dont know for sure.
  - melaredblu
    
    Honestly, the answer may very well be looking me in the face and could be obvious to everyone else. I do have my dense moments where I miss the obvious.
    But either way, a little ambiguity never hurt anyone. I’m sure everything will be revealed sooner or later.
    - Daniel Sharp
      
      I could tell you….but I suppose I’ll at least wait until the end of this chapter to see what you think then.
      ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Honza Prchal

There is lots of grass in Russia. It even grows where there is permafrost, after all, and Siberia is a major grain exporter, just like Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, much less the Dakotas, Montana and so on. The trees are a bit stumpy and insufficiently larch-like, I suppose, but not implausibly if the area around the clearing gets high winds. The place could be a mountain vale, which would make sense for escape and evasion purposes.
Adriano

GOSH SEBA NO !
xD
How could you have written on the bookcover WIP “not Indira” as a label for the girl next to him ? xD I’m so dead xD
- Daniel Sharp
  
  Hehe. For everyone confused, Adriano is referring to the email he got for being subscribed to our email list (see link in post above or in the top menu).
  - Adriano
    
    About the mail thing, and maybe Patreon, and surely in general, what is lacking to me is Seba’s input.
    I know, I know, he’s super busy and all. But it feels like we almost hear your input/opinion about TDA, which is awesome, heh, nothing to say in your implication and all in the comm section or elsewhere ! It’s truly great.
    Buuuuut, where’s Seba in all of that ? Of course, he’s also there on the comm section, but, you know, maybe he could say a word on the “about” thinggy under the update/page ? Like some others webcomic duet-creators do.
    
    Of course, if Seba’s too much busy, it’s okay, I’ll understand.
    
    Example of what I mean in webcomic “Cassiopeia Quinn” : http://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/
    - Daniel Sharp
      
      I would have no problem with that, assuming @sebastinpriz:disqus has something he wants to add :D
      - Adriano
        
        Yay ! I hope so. I mean, sometime in the example I gave, the artist just leaves a line of talk, but that’s enough for me x3
      - NickDA
        
        In the maybe ever gonna get done theme redo, I want to include more of the sketches, selections of the basecamp conversations as we design the page… etc. That’s where Seba’s insight just bloody shines.
    - SebasP
      
      I believe I’ts much better if I dont speak a lot :P
      - Adriano
        
        Mooooh :'(
- SebasP
  
  I suck at names. seriously. we work with some kind of private forum and I’m constantly editing the posts where I talk about the characters to change the names ( and that’s when I realize at time)
  - Daniel Sharp
    
    Hehe, for a long time Lily was just “not Indira, the other girl” to Seba ;)
    - SebasP
      
      you did name her from the beginning right?
      - Daniel Sharp
        
        Oh yeah she’s been Lily for forever.
      - Adriano
        
        “And before that, her name was indeed “
    - Adriano
      
      I think it’s a very accurate name, why changing now ? xD
  - Adriano
    
    Oh, okay xD I thought it was intentional. Such sarcasm/irony would have been really mean to Tenzin xD
Dusty Coyote

Gonna go with killed by the robotic death machine just after a proper introduction so Friend/Foe doesn’t really matter.
- Daniel Sharp
  
  You wound me :P
  - Dusty Coyote
    
    Aye for and eye. Truth for a tooth.
  - DeNitro
    
    I just know every time I hear the last name Gordon I expect to see a crowbar,,,,
    :-P
- DeNitro
  
  I just know every time I hear the last name Gordon I expect to see a crowbar,,, :-P
DrCrazy102

Please tell me that the little orange splash in the second-from-right, bottom panel is just the screen being broken and/or ‘technical’ reasons?

Also, why do they still have Bruce Wayne’s “Tumbler” Batmobile from the ‘Dark Knight Trilogy’? See here … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batmobile#The_Dark_Knight_Trilogy
- NickDA
  
  wait… what do you think that splash is?
  - DrCrazy102
    
    Orange juice from someone’s lunch; in-story or creative.
    OR, just maybe:
    Hidden message that someone is about to be killed by a “Godfather” (every time an orange appears, someone dies either in the same or the next scene of each “Godfather” movie) which has grounds on the basis of Jacqueline being killed right after being shown to us in a dangerous situation.
    - NickDA
      
      I did not know this thing… huh… have to rewatch that movie now
- SebasP
  
  I think the full model doesn’t look like it ;)
  - DrCrazy102
    
    The car/vehicle I assume? Didn’t think it would since you’ll make it look even better and yet be even more function … as you always manage to do @sebastinpriz:disqus
theRoUS

‘Nightshade’ is certainly in line with the ‘shadows’ theme..