Kill6BillionDemons II: The Successor's coming will be followed by 108 burning threads

[JavaScribe]

Judging by that reaction... nothing good.

I mean, those words rarely preclude anything particularly pleasant happening, especially not when shouted, especially not when shouted by someone in a position of power.

Nonsense! I'm sure Jadis just came to lighten up the festivities with some magnificent red fireworks!

[Dragonus45]

I think a certain onmicidal demiurge is about to pay a visit, and the fear isn't that Jadis is there but what Jadis is responding to.

[Shogo]

I do like that Solomon seems as though he was going to keep his word. He wasn't rejecting the request out of hand or laughing it off, but basically saying, "This won't be easy nor will it be instantaneous. I hope you're prepared for a wait."

Though I was also half expecting something like, "Fine. We'll let the people choose."

And then the people just say they'd prefer to keep Solomon around as their leader.

[Narkis]

To me it doesn't look like he was going to keep his word, but immediately went for yet another excuse. As I've said before, every dictator ever said he's doing it for the people. There is always an excuse: the people aren't ready, it's not the right time, there's no one more qualified, the enemies of the state are lurking behind the corner, etc, etc. Solomon is nothing but a self-serving, and possibly self-deluding, hypocrite.

That aside, Jadis never even crossed my mind as a candidate for the demiurge to crash the party.

[Eldan]

I mean, she had to show up in the story at some point.

[sihnfahl]

To me it doesn't look like he was going to keep his word, but immediately went for yet another excuse.

I believe his words are: "What you ask cannot lightly be granted..."

Which, I suppose, depending on how you perceive him, can be him setting up for the reasons why ... or an excuse as to why not.

Being a stand-in of -pride-, though, I'm leaning to the second.

It does look like Jagganoth is going to crash the party, and in style.

[lord_khaine]

Yeah BS. Im STUNNED by how many people, especially in the comment section, but also here, are still trying themselves into a pretzel.
To somehow frame whatever SD does in the most negative way. What White Chain asks for can indeed not be done lightly.
The Celestrial Empire has been an Empire for generations. A very top heavy one.

And i think history is full of bloody examples on the kind of chaos that follows when a government suddenly vanishes or changes to swiftly.
Implementing what White Chain asks is likely the work of at least a decade?

So i think SD wanted White Chain to be certain she knew what was being asked.
As such, misconceptions about him being meant to represent a SIN instead of being a complex character aside.
Then we see his chief concern is for his people. His very first though was to evacuate this city.

[mystic1110]

There is no pretzel - people are guessing he was going to say something to effect of "It'll take to too long so I can't grant you your wish" rather than "I will grant you your wish but doing so safely will take a while".

[Spacewolf]

I dunno here it's ok but the comments section of the comic is pretty impressively hostile.

It should also be remembered White chain failed (Something the comments section seems to ignore) and is being forced into this because he cares to much about appearances. Any extra time between this and SD stepping aside could have been used to give the group some much needed training, although that's obviously not happening now.

[Vahnavoi]

It seems to me Solomon's reply was left deliberately ambiguous, because the author remembers there's a multiversal war going and it's so on now.

[Shogo]

Eh. It's mostly okay here. But holy hell does the comment section of the comic go out of its way to maliciously interpret every single thing Solomon does or says.

At least he cares enough to order the evacuation of the city. I don't think any of the other Demiurges would have bothered given he's supposed to be the only one who still thinks of himself as a hero.

[Rydiro]

At least he cares enough to order the evacuation of the city. I don't think any of the other Demiurges would have bothered given he's supposed to be the only one who still thinks of himself as a hero.

To be fair, he is a better hero than Allison so far.
"Your Empire could use more democracy and self-sufficiency." is such a luxury critique (both IC and IRL) that it practically proves solomon right.
I mean, Allison is a literal bank-robber.

[Rakaydos]

To be fair, he is a better hero than Allison so far.
"Your Empire could use more democracy and self-sufficiency." is such a luxury critique (both IC and IRL) that it practically proves solomon right.
I mean, Allison is a literal bank-robber.

Plato, the greek philosopher, claimed that an enlightened dictatorship was the best form of goverment, but that ensuring said dictatorship remained enlightened was the real trick. "Who will guard the guardians?"

Solomon is an immortal god-king who takes pride in his enlightened rule. But he has no successor. Should he fall, the empire will fall as well.

"Democracy is the worst form of goverment, except for all the others." the whim of the mob is itself immortal and self serving. Gog Agog knows this better than anyone else. There's always another Gog.

[sihnfahl]

Solomon is an immortal god-king who takes pride in his enlightened rule. But he has no successor. Should he fall, the empire will fall as well.

Which is where I see Pride in him.

He deliberately, using his power, beget only sons. For twenty five generations. Yet all of his sons have been, apparently, nothing more than advisors and generals.

He made his planet have -two suns-.

I have no doubt it would be within his power to not only beget a son who would be physically his equal when he was young, but also bring him to his equal, if not superior, in intellect. And groom him to have the 'right' mindset to continue the basis of his rule.

He just ... doesn't want to.

There's always another Gog.

It's not that there's another Gog ... it's that they're ALL Gog.

[lord_khaine]

He deliberately, using his power, beget only sons. For twenty five generations. Yet all of his sons have been, apparently, nothing more than advisors and generals.

Yeah. This is another of the pretzel examples i was talking about.
Honestly, how the heck does Solomon only having sons become a thing of pride?
If anything, its a case of melancholy and sorrow. He lost 2 daughters in the war. And have since not had any.

He made his planet have -two suns-.

Can be twisted into almost any emotion.
Wrath : They took my sun? ill show them! ill show them! TWO!!! SUNS!!!
Greed : I WANT ALL THE SUNS!
Lust : I so badly want a sun, 1 isnt enough any more.
Sloth : If i get a spare sun, its less work if one goes out.

I have no doubt it would be within his power to not only beget a son who would be physically his equal when he was young, but also bring him to his equal, if not superior, in intellect. And groom him to have the 'right' mindset to continue the basis of his rule.

He just ... doesn't want to.

Again this is something we absolutely lack any evidence for. That Solomon can control any more than the gender of his child.
Or that you can just randomly train someone up to become a demi-urge. Instead of that being a titel you need to forge though trial and hardship.

[Ibrinar]

Why are you treating the lines of sihnfahl's post as if they don't belong together but are separate arguments?

[Thales]

So we have the end of this book.

I think I don't much care for it? This feels abrupt, doesn't really expand the narrative for Solomon David or any of the protagonists, and we still don't have any explanations of what's going on. White Chain's manifesting of a human body specifically wasn't an angel thing, so how did she do it? How did she keep moving even in Solomon's super-speed? If the idea is just that, as Vigilant Gaze said, an angel changing can be something miraculous, but that honestly is pretty close to hand of the author. And all the no-name folks who got obliterated by Solomon — in-universe, none of them had as good of a story as White Chain?

Also, what exactly was Gog Agog's original plan? Fixing fights to get Allison into a match against Solomon doesn't help if she just gets obliterated in that matchup. Yeah, Allison has theoretically the most power of anyone in the comic, but extremely little skill, and so far, narrative > skill > power (see e.g. Meti, an unaugmented human who can severely damage Juggernaut, and Zoss, who originally overthrew the angels with just martial arts bull****, assuming he's not a member of the cast time traveling).

I recall there was some speculation that that one person in Allison's group had been taken over by Gog. We're not getting any resolution on that front this book? Did White Chain's wish for Solomon to abdicate instigate the arrival of Jadis and Jagganoth or was that coincidence? If so, did that demand matter at all?

Finally, we never got much of a sense for what things are actually like on Rayuba. When Order of the Stick had its gladiatorial games arc, we got to see a lot more of the Empire of Blood. But in this whole arc here, we got very little. A large part of the reason I and others have a negative view of Solomon David is from the comic's retelling of the dividing the baby story, which presented life for the average citizen of Rayuba as tightly controlled and subject to draconian laws. We didn't really see anything for or against that proposition here.

[Olinser]

So we have the end of this book.

I think I don't much care for it? This feels abrupt, doesn't really expand the narrative for Solomon David or any of the protagonists, and we still don't have any explanations of what's going on. White Chain's manifesting of a human body specifically wasn't an angel thing, so how did she do it? How did she keep moving even in Solomon's super-speed? If the idea is just that, as Vigilant Gaze said, an angel changing can be something miraculous, but that honestly is pretty close to hand of the author. And all the no-name folks who got obliterated by Solomon — in-universe, none of them had as good of a story as White Chain?

Also, what exactly was Gog Agog's original plan? Fixing fights to get Allison into a match against Solomon doesn't help if she just gets obliterated in that matchup. Yeah, Allison has theoretically the most power of anyone in the comic, but extremely little skill, and so far, narrative > skill > power (see e.g. Meti, an unaugmented human who can severely damage Juggernaut, and Zoss, who originally overthrew the angels with just martial arts bull****, assuming he's not a member of the cast time traveling).

I recall there was some speculation that that one person in Allison's group had been taken over by Gog. We're not getting any resolution on that front this book? Did White Chain's wish for Solomon to abdicate instigate the arrival of Jadis and Jagganoth or was that coincidence? If so, did that demand matter at all?

Finally, we never got much of a sense for what things are actually like on Rayuba. When Order of the Stick had its gladiatorial games arc, we got to see a lot more of the Empire of Blood. But in this whole arc here, we got very little. A large part of the reason I and others have a negative view of Solomon David is from the comic's retelling of the dividing the baby story, which presented life for the average citizen of Rayuba as tightly controlled and subject to draconian laws. We didn't really see anything for or against that proposition here.

What it feels like to me is that Gog wants chaos and the war to finally happen. Gog, due to the fact that it's EVERYWHERE, successfully identified Allison's location and identity. Gog then manipulated Allison into taking part in the public tournament. Simply kidnapping her or pointing her out wouldn't do - Gog taking the Key wouldn't make it strong enough to take on all the other demiurges.

Presumably behind the scenes, Gog informed the other Demiurges that Allison was taking part in the tournament and was going to fight Solomon, with the obvious implication that Solomon was going to take the Key himself.

Jagganoth either saw the opportunity to seize the Key himself, or thought that it would weaken Solomon enough to finally go to war.

Gog's plan seems to have been to goad Allison into publicly revealing herself as a catalyst to finally spark the war, and seems to have succeeded smashingly.

[understatement]

Final book? Wow.

It feels...I dunno, like a lot of things were left unanswered, but I'm looking forward to the next and last arcs. Jagganoth looks scary.

[Eldan]

Yeah, put me down on side of "things are moving far too quickly". If that's the last book, we have never seen and probably never will see the worlds of half the Demiurges. I still have no idea what Jadis' deal is, for example. Or Incubus' empire outside of his palace of sad addicts and blood. Or a Gog-Agog world, though there I can guess. We don't know how White Chain did anything. And somehow, we have tons of storylines left to resolve. What is Meti's deal? What goals, specifically, are Incubus and Gog-Agog trying to achieve? Is Mammon's War going anywhere? How are the angels going to get involved? What was the Devil's deal?

IF all of that just ends up as quick cameoes instead of actual storylines, I'm going to be severely disappointed.

[Rydiro]

And all the no-name folks who got obliterated by Solomon — in-universe, none of them had as good of a story as White Chain?

Yeah Im with you there. The message of this book is "Work together, trust each other, friendship is magic". Apparently only if one of your friends has the master key and is fated to win. For everyone else, the last scene obliterates thousands of lives and proves the Demiurges right. To quote Xykon "Power is Power". Thats the real message here. Get a key or die, noob.

[BRC]

I mean, this has never really been a story about a group of The Right People Doing The Right things.
The only thing I'd argue that White Chain/our protagonists were right about this whole thing was her declaration that Salami Dave is holding the tourney despite never expecting anybody to actually draw the prized drop of blood. That the Tourney is anything other than a continual declaration of Salami Dave's position as God-Emperor by establishing that he's the toughest guy in his section of existence.

I'd also argue that White Chain was right when she accused Salami Dave of being "Terrified of a world that's grown past you", annd calling him out for acting like he doesn't want to rule when he very much does.


But they havn't done a great job as far as actually saying that Salami Dave, whatever his motives, is wrong. That he should step down. His empire appears to have been thriving until this moment, and this moment also demonstrates that, within the reality constructed by the comic, having an unkillable god-king is kind of important for any society, since if you don't, one of the other unkillable god-kings can show up and wreck you. The Ideal situation might be that some other government runs things, and your demiurge spends all their time doing cosmic sit-ups until the time comes to defend the empire from outside aggression, but even then your entire society exists at the mercy of your Demiurge, who could take over at any moment with nothing but their own word to stop them.

All the multiverse is run by Demiurges. Roll the dice, 1/7th chance of living in a thriving, if authoritarian, society with a high quality of life, vs a 6/7ths chances of living in a kleptocratic hellscape nightmare realm. "Rulership by Unkillable god-king" isn't a great look, but the first one we see our heroes actually take direct, intentional steps to bring down is the one that seems to be doing pretty well.

[Dragonus45]

"No more Demiurges." is clearly the only correct solution to beginning to rebalance the wheels of this world. But considering that so much of the power these individuals, and most of the people talked about in the lore, can be gained just through proper meditation and pushups removing the keys would just limit the scale of the danger to local worlds and remove some of the highest ends of the madness.

[Rydiro]

All the multiverse is run by Demiurges. Roll the dice, 1/7th chance of living in a thriving, if authoritarian, society with a high quality of life, vs a 6/7ths chances of living in a kleptocratic hellscape nightmare realm. "Rulership by Unkillable god-king" isn't a great look, but the first one we see our heroes actually take direct, intentional steps to bring down is the one that seems to be doing pretty well.

I think its the authors critique of dictatorship/patriarchy, while avoiding a strawman argument against those. He picked the best of the 7 kingdoms to demonstrate "This is not enough."
Ironically, his own worldbuilding proves him wrong. Cause an omnicidal god exists.

More and more I believe that Allison and her gang are actually massive inept hypocrites. They do not solve any large scale problems nor do they take responsibility for the fallout of their actions. Well okay, allison beat up a few 'criminals' (are there criminals in absence of law?), you know, after she robbed a bank.

[mystic1110]

If anything it's an argument that Solomon should have gotten off his ass and left his kingdom to others so he can concentrate on training to be more than a blip for the Red God. He was so busy being the benevolent dictator that he had to rely on pact with the other demiurges as a deterrence for Jagganoth, a pact that he should have realized was worthless as the six of them are hardly up to the task given that they have been play acting being kings and despots rather than understanding that the war continues and only one of them has been getting stronger.

[Rydiro]

If anything it's an argument that Solomon should have gotten off his ass and left his kingdom to others so he can concentrate on training to be more than a blip for the Red God. He was so busy being the benevolent dictator that he had to rely on pact with the other demiurges as a deterrence for Jagganoth, a pact that he should have realized was worthless as the six of them are hardly up to the task given that they have been play acting being kings and despots rather than understanding that the war continues and only one of them has been getting stronger.

Kind of a logical flaw that they let jaggs build up a power imbalance for like the last thousand years.

[BRC]

I think its the authors critique of dictatorship/patriarchy, while avoiding a strawman argument against those. He picked the best of the 7 kingdoms to demonstrate "This is not enough."
Ironically, his own worldbuilding proves him wrong. Cause an omnicidal god exists.

I mean, it's the same dynamic that shows up in a lot of fantastical works, a thing is justified by the fictional world it exists in. In this instance, we're supposed to see it as a criticism.

"Is Bruce Wayne actually being good by being Batman?"

Well, that depends. "Should a billionaire spend vast amounts of money to secretly fund a personal war against crime in which they punch criminals", probably not for many, many reasons.

Given that Bruce Wayne isn't some random billionaire, but a genius detective and master combatant, AND that he exists in a fictional world that would regularly be destroyed were it not for the existence of a genius detective/master combatant with millions of dollars worth of specialized tech at his disposal, then yes, Batman is probably a good thing.


"Is an absolute dictatorship, even a benevolent one, a good thing". Probably not, such a system is inherently unstable, reliant on the continual mercy and wisdom of the Dictator. Even if the Dictator is continually wise and merciful, the system is reliant on their continual good health.
Even an immortal, perpetually wise and merciful dictator could be objected to philosophically speaking. There are plenty of valid arguments that, even if the Dictator always makes the objectively correct decisions, such a government CANNOT be considered "Just" due to the simple fact that the people deserve self-determination.

That said, here we have an Immortal Dictator who, while a bit of a jerk, is seemingly fairly wise and merciful (he gives both White Chain and the other Ring of Power combatants numerous opportunities to NOT enter a deathmatch against him, which I think falls under Merciful here), and without him, the land would almost certainly be swiftly conquered by one or more of his rivals. So it's pretty hard to argue that Salami Dave's rule is not a Good Thing, since there's no real solution where the state is not reliant on him.

If anything it's an argument that Solomon should have gotten off his ass and left his kingdom to others so he can concentrate on training to be more than a blip for the Red God. He was so busy being the benevolent dictator that he had to rely on pact with the other demiurges as a deterrence for Jagganoth, a pact that he should have realized was worthless as the six of them are hardly up to the task given that they have been play acting being kings and despots rather than understanding that the war continues and only one of them has been getting stronger.

If anything, this is the valid criticism of SD. It's that he views the Demiurges as Kings, and their domains as Nations, albeit on a cosmic scale. He's trapped by his own worldview and rules, rules which don't really apply when dealing with the Demiurges.

All the Demiurges are Mad, and Solomon's Madness is that he believes that the others are not.

Although, admittedly, all the Demiurges are guilty of this, but SD is the "Good" one.

[Rydiro]

Although, admittedly, all the Demiurges are guilty of this, but SD is the "Good" one.

Somehow, I get the vibe that Incubus is in perpetual warfare as well. He always says so. Idk why he adoptes a suicidal strategy though by siding with jaggs. Maybe he is just that spiteful.

[Vahnavoi]

Waiting for Salami Dave's beard to suddenly grow long and blonde now.

[slayerx]

Somehow, I get the vibe that Incubus is in perpetual warfare as well. He always says so. Idk why he adopts a suicidal strategy though by siding with jaggs. Maybe he is just that spiteful.

I assume that Incubus has some kind of scheme to beat Jaggs. He is certainly spiteful to the other kings but i do not think he's suicidal. He needs jagg's to help him kill off the others, but imagine that he believse that Allison will become capable to beating Jagg himself... However Incubus also thinks he'll be able to take out Allison after. Incubus seems to specialize in the mental-scape, so while Alison could become powerful enough to take down any of the demimuges in a fight, her mind might not be so well protected. It could even be related to how he took Maya's place