The Legacy of Dominic Deegan: The Unending Snark

[lord_khaine]

Or else its an instruction to %¤#%¤ back home to his cave, and forget all about this.

[random11]

My bet is on some variation of "We kidnapped your friends, do not follow us, we kept you alive for {insert BS reason here}, consider it mercy"

[Vinyadan]

Now it only says "meet horned mongrelfolk in your area."

[Celestia]

It's an ad for Raid: Shadow Legends. The Ink Witches need some way to make money.

[Traab]

Its either totally blank, a goodbye message is all thats left, or possibly a threat. I think the first two are the most likely. Im getting a distinct vibe of manhunters after green lantern here for some reason. Maybe ink witch is guilty of treason for both working with snout and not killing arduack on sight so now both are bring bought back to The Inkwell, the headquarters of all things magically inky, to punish them.

[Kornaki]

Speculate no more, for we now know the answer! Good job having it be one of the many guesses we collectively made.

Spoiler

Show

It was the raid ad!

[Mewtarthio]

Excellent work, Evil Ink Witches. You've managed to steal Snout's exhaustive research on... the same recurring dream that he's been having every night. If the Good Ink Witch (Gelpenda?) was telling the truth about her strictly hands-off approach to dream invasions, he'll probably have that same dream again soon enough--and, if not, he only really has to remember two symbols that he's been studying for days.

[Traab]

Excellent work, Evil Ink Witches. You've managed to steal Snout's exhaustive research on... the same recurring dream that he's been having every night. If the Good Ink Witch (Gelpenda?) was telling the truth about her strictly hands-off approach to dream invasions, he'll probably have that same dream again soon enough--and, if not, he only really has to remember two symbols that he's been studying for days.

Apparently her presence is what lets him remember the dreams. But yeah, its not like he has an entire encyclopedia to memorize from his notes. Im kinda curious as to what will happen now. Will he start randomly questioning people to find out what happened when he got knocked the heck out? Will he go on a rescue mission to save his friends? Will he continue to research his goal of wanting to know who DD is? Im guessing it will be tracking down his buddies who he will learn were carried off by the evil inkies. He will walk in the direction they flew off in and thats all it will take to find them.

[random11]

Excellent work, Evil Ink Witches. You've managed to steal Snout's exhaustive research on... the same recurring dream that he's been having every night. If the Good Ink Witch (Gelpenda?) was telling the truth about her strictly hands-off approach to dream invasions, he'll probably have that same dream again soon enough--and, if not, he only really has to remember two symbols that he's been studying for days.

Well, it's less about sabotaging Snout than it is about gaining information they didn't have before.
Although they didn't have to do it in such an over complicated way:
Ha, we will use our ink magic to copy all the pages from his diary to our scrolls!
Or... You can just take the diary and keep it?
NO! That is not the ink witches way!

As for Snout, I wonder if he's more concerned about the research, the fact his friends are gone, or the fear that someone would read his "snuggle" pages in his diary...
Dude, don't use the same place to write research data and personal stuff.

[Kantaki]

New comic

I guess the answer isn't "Go home and forget this whole mess ever happened"?
On the other hand Snout will stumble into the next part of the plot anyway, might as well wander around randomly.

[Celestia]

Ah, yes. I'm sure Snout will have no trouble finding his love interests friends. After all, with such a huge clue like "they disappeared," it's only a matter of time until he catches up to them.

[random11]

Update

Ah, yes. I'm sure Snout will have no trouble finding his love interests friends. After all, with such a huge clue like "they disappeared," it's only a matter of time until he catches up to them.

Well, the ink witches HQ would be the first guess.
Shouldn't be too hard to an average person since I don't think the place it a secret.
Most of the problems will come from Snout's complete lack of experience in traveling more than 5 steps from his home (not to mention outside the wild zone).

[Celestia]

Update



Well, the ink witches HQ would be the first guess.
Shouldn't be too hard to an average person since I don't think the place it a secret.
Most of the problems will come from Snout's complete lack of experience in traveling more than 5 steps from his home (not to mention outside the wild zone).

The joke is that my post is 100% serious because Snout will literally trip over the next plot point.

[lord_khaine]

Well, it's less about sabotaging Snout than it is about gaining information they didn't have before.
Although they didn't have to do it in such an over complicated way:
Ha, we will use our ink magic to copy all the pages from his diary to our scrolls!
Or... You can just take the diary and keep it?
NO! That is not the ink witches way!

The bigger your hammer are, the more problems look like a nail.
And when you got an awesome trick, your more likely to use said awesome trick to show off whenever you can.

[random11]

The joke is that my post is 100% serious because Snout will literally trip over the next plot point.

I think the level of challenge will depend more on how bored Mookie is than anything else.

We can say that Snout will have problems since he has no concept of society, and his last adventure started with him traveling for hours without a map or even a destination in mind.
But if Mookie is bored and just want to get to the next point, expect Snout to magically find a partner to bring him directly to the city (maybe the crashed ship?) and skip all the potential issues.

[Vinyadan]

We do know that this is the last week in Mongreltown. The question is whether he will go forward alone with what he has learned or he will look for Arudak and the others.

[random11]

Update

Few days ago I was only joking when I asked what will Snout's priorities be.
I thought it was obvious he will look for his friends first.

Apparently I was wrong, and the research comes before looking for his friends.
I am amazed on how bad it makes Snout as a character.

[Celestia]

So, he just remembers it all with exact wording? Why does he even need a diary?

[Vinyadan]

So, he just remembers it all with exact wording? Why does he even need a diary?

He clearly had (naive) literary ambitions. Remember when he imagined Arudak's reviews?

[Celestia]

He clearly had (naive) literary ambitions. Remember when he imagined Arudak's reviews?

No. I had deliberately forgotten that idiocy. Thank you so much for reminding me.

[random11]

Update

I am impressed, AMAZED.
All you have to do is continue "I know what to do" with "I will find my friends"
It's such a cliche you can TRY to mess this up and fail because this is the only way to continue the sentence without making the protagonist a freaking sociopath.

And YET, he actually made it.
Snout retraces back his work on the pages, but not even a mention about the information he knows about either the ink witch or Arduak.
He then doubles down on this, directly mentioning his journal and how he hasn't lost his curiosity or memory, saying he will continue his quest, but not even a mention of his friends.

If DD was his obsession before he started this quest, MAYBE it could have been played as a character flaw, but literally - He knew the ink witch for a longer time than he knew about DD and the prophecy stuff.

This is the most selfish protagonist I have ever seen that is still played as a good guy.
Well, maybe Danica, but that's for a different thread...

[Celestia]

Update

I am impressed, AMAZED.
All you have to do is continue "I know what to do" with "I will find my friends"
It's such a cliche you can TRY to mess this up and fail because this is the only way to continue the sentence without making the protagonist a freaking sociopath.

And YET, he actually made it.
Snout retraces back his work on the pages, but not even a mention about the information he knows about either the ink witch or Arduak.
He then doubles down on this, directly mentioning his journal and how he hasn't lost his curiosity or memory, saying he will continue his quest, but not even a mention of his friends.

If DD was his obsession before he started this quest, MAYBE it could have been played as a character flaw, but literally - He knew the ink witch for a longer time than he knew about DD and the prophecy stuff.

This is the most selfish protagonist I have ever seen that is still played as a good guy.
Well, maybe Danica, but that's for a different thread...

He did put finding them on his to do list last page.

[Mewtarthio]

My god, it all makes sense now.

We've known for some time now that the pages themselves are magical. We should have thought back to that ludicrously one-sided Pro/Con list the moment we realized. Why did Snout begin his quest, when the only real "Pro" was idle curiosity? Why does he continue his quest, even as his ostensible friends face an unknown fate? And just what is the Legacy of Dominic Deegan?

The truth is inescapable: The pages contain a sort of magical virus that infects the dreamscapes of those who read them, corrupting their wills until they become obsessively fixated on uncovering the Legacy. Snout is dead now, nothing more than a soulless tool for a long-dead puppetmaster. He does not know it, but all his actions are now in service to the Legacy: To inject his virus directly into Asinotaph, thereby embedding it into the collective unconscious so that Dominic Deegan can rule the world from beyond the grave!

This, of course, is the true source of the conflict between the Ink Witches and Aardvark the Orc. They may not understand the nature of the virus (else they'd have been far more careful with the pages), but they have their suspicions about the Legacy. The Ink Witches believe the world must know Dominic's posthumous plans in detail, so that everyone can organize a defense and prepare to identify any signs of its fruition. Aardvark believes it's not worth the risk that publicizing the data will allow some deranged cultists (such as the Church of Dominus that rules Barthis with an iron fist, or certain radical professors at Quirrel) to bring the Legacy to pass.

The Ink Witch who has traveled with Snout is already lost. Perhaps at one point she actually believed that nonsense about the Wild Edge making her accidentally cast dream magic, but that no longer matters. In truth, her preexisting suspicion that the Legacy had something to do with dreams, combined with her own brief exposure to the pages, was enough to nudge her into opening a direct connection between her dreamscape and Snout's, thereby exposing her directly to a mature infection. If Snout has seemed oddly forgiving of her destruction of property and violations of privacy, it is only because they share the same will. If Snout has never bothered asking her name in all their travels together, it is only because they share the same identity.

Thankfully, it appears the other Ink Witches have managed to detect an anomaly in one of their own's dreamscape, and have successfully quarantined Aardvark and the infected Witch. Unfortunately, they overlooked Snout somehow. Clearly, they don't yet understand the nature of the virus; perhaps they assumed the Ink Witch was Patient Zero, and that the anomaly could not affect a non-mage. Our only hope now is that Aardvark has manage to resist infection, and that his interrogation will manage to convince the Ink Witches to destroy Snout before he can spread the virus further.

[SaintRidley]

* Find "A Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming"
* Find Ink Witch and Arudak
* Discover legacy blah blah

I mean, the obvious plot here is he is going to find the book, learn how to be active in his dreams, use that to talk to Ink Witch and find out where she and Arudak are in a dream, then find them, and finally together they'll do the Deegan stuff.

[Celestia]

My god, it all makes sense now.

We've known for some time now that the pages themselves are magical. We should have thought back to that ludicrously one-sided Pro/Con list the moment we realized. Why did Snout begin his quest, when the only real "Pro" was idle curiosity? Why does he continue his quest, even as his ostensible friends face an unknown fate? And just what is the Legacy of Dominic Deegan?

The truth is inescapable: The pages contain a sort of magical virus that infects the dreamscapes of those who read them, corrupting their wills until they become obsessively fixated on uncovering the Legacy. Snout is dead now, nothing more than a soulless tool for a long-dead puppetmaster. He does not know it, but all his actions are now in service to the Legacy: To inject his virus directly into Asinotaph, thereby embedding it into the collective unconscious so that Dominic Deegan can rule the world from beyond the grave!

This, of course, is the true source of the conflict between the Ink Witches and Aardvark the Orc. They may not understand the nature of the virus (else they'd have been far more careful with the pages), but they have their suspicions about the Legacy. The Ink Witches believe the world must know Dominic's posthumous plans in detail, so that everyone can organize a defense and prepare to identify any signs of its fruition. Aardvark believes it's not worth the risk that publicizing the data will allow some deranged cultists (such as the Church of Dominus that rules Barthis with an iron fist, or certain radical professors at Quirrel) to bring the Legacy to pass.

The Ink Witch who has traveled with Snout is already lost. Perhaps at one point she actually believed that nonsense about the Wild Edge making her accidentally cast dream magic, but that no longer matters. In truth, her preexisting suspicion that the Legacy had something to do with dreams, combined with her own brief exposure to the pages, was enough to nudge her into opening a direct connection between her dreamscape and Snout's, thereby exposing her directly to a mature infection. If Snout has seemed oddly forgiving of her destruction of property and violations of privacy, it is only because they share the same will. If Snout has never bothered asking her name in all their travels together, it is only because they share the same identity.

Thankfully, it appears the other Ink Witches have managed to detect an anomaly in one of their own's dreamscape, and have successfully quarantined Aardvark and the infected Witch. Unfortunately, they overlooked Snout somehow. Clearly, they don't yet understand the nature of the virus; perhaps they assumed the Ink Witch was Patient Zero, and that the anomaly could not affect a non-mage. Our only hope now is that Aardvark has manage to resist infection, and that his interrogation will manage to convince the Ink Witches to destroy Snout before he can spread the virus further.

I 100% believe that this is a better story than whatever Mookie will give us.

[random11]

I mean, the obvious plot here is he is going to find the book, learn how to be active in his dreams, use that to talk to Ink Witch and find out where she and Arudak are in a dream, then find them, and finally together they'll do the Deegan stuff.

Sure, but that only works because the author shares the plot with the main character.


As a side-note, there are some problems in the forums.
Hope it's not like last time, I don't know if I can survive the ending of Star Power and this comic without the threads.

[Kornaki]

It's possible the point here is that snout and the author don't think the ink witch and arudak were taken by someone who means to harm them.

[random11]

At the very least Arudak is in danger since he hurt (and maybe killed?) ink witches in their base.

As for a more general view, Arudak was afraid of the bald guy, Snout was attacked for basically nothing, just before passing out the ink witch was held back, and they were taken presumably without their consent.
Even if they are not in an immediate life threatening situation, it is worrisome enough to give it priority over finding out about some author who donated books to your library many years ago.

[Kornaki]

We certainly can see that they should be in danger. I'm just not sure we should credit anyone involved with the story with understanding that

[Mewtarthio]

New comic is up, though there's not much to say about it. What is worth mentioning, though, is that the new chapter is titled "Natural Necromancy."

This can only mean one thing: We're going back to Maltak.

God have mercy on our souls.