Unsounded

I think it is obvious that this was all a plot by the illuminati

so yeah duane is going to murder the SHIT out of winalils

I think he's going to be torn by rage at being a random experiment, and a burning need to know what the fuck he is in the first place.

Okay... I'm guessing Lemuel was in on the hit (as previously theorized), and that's him with the knife and a bit of blonde hair poking out. Bastion was hired to assist in the assassination and part of his asking price was Duane's body... but either his brother got cold feet when he realized what Bastion was doing to Duane's corpse or he never planned to let Bastion have the body and was always fixing to double cross him. I'm leaning towards the first option since Bastion was allowed to at least complete the process.

Either way, Lemuel knifes Bastion in the back a whole bunch of times and leaves him for dead.

>I've come to learn all the Adeliers are.

What other Adelier you think he's talking about? Best guess is Lemuel.

Do you think he's really an "immortal?" What if Duane really can never die? What if Mikaila will always be closing the door before he can reach it? I'm not sure that idea will thrill him. He's going to be alone and wandering forever just like his god.

Maybe but winny didn't arrange his murder her was hired to do it. Plus I don't think winny got shot in at all. I just looked back at the fight and from what I can tell he was hanging back until dagger popped out his eye. He had little to do with the actual murder besides coming up at the end as shown in panel three.

I think he's talking about motherfucking Mikaila Adelier. That looks like a spell being cast on Winalils, not any sort of a knife.

>these details
It seems so sudden to just be straight up told who lich'd Duane, but we're still missing the big picture of who exactly hired Bastion on to help whack him in the first place.

>those implications
So did Lemuel get wind of the plot and arrive at the scene of the crime too late, or just end up having second thoughts?

No, it's definitely Lemuel. Fans have theorized he was involved in Duane's assassination for some time now. Plus, the blonde guy with the knife looking at what Bastion's doing in horror (the Crescian in the background looks horrified too) is probably Lem. Bastion is looking at his back as blood flies, and he says "all the Adeliers are" while showing a bunch of stab and slash wounds on his back.

Lem got his brother killed with the help of a crooked wright because he thought it was necessary, but that wright began to desecrate his brother's corpse, and Lem shanked his ass. Then, out of guilt, Lem helped Duane when he reanimated.

>Mikaila
>alive
Pretty sure Duane saw her soul leaving to the Khert.

Makes sense, Bastion thought he'd failed because he got interrupted by the (literal) backstabbing.

OTOH Duane's daughter got death stabbed and he is going to want to insanely destroy everybody he ever finds out was even peripherally involved in that.

Yeah I've always thought Lem was involved in the assassination but I'm not sure if I think he was directly part of it.

Turning a blind eye to something you deem "necessary" is one thing, actually helping kill your brother? That's something else.

But as said, to me that looks like some spellery along with some knifing.

I think Lem's the one who took his eyes.

So that fucker really was in on the whole thing. I hope Duane makes him suffer.

That was just another one of his hallucinations. Also keep in mind that we never saw her body.

I'm pretty sure he's the type of guy that would see Mikaila's death only to brush it off as the cost of progress and Duane would murder the ever-loving shit out of him for that alone.

But if it was Lemuel, why would he do it? Why?

There's no way Bastion is going to let Duane know he's responsible for his fate, he's just going to probe him for answers. Plus Duane is a gullible idiot.
Also Bastion was in Sharteshane before Sette and Duane left, he was well aware of Duane then so why wait all this time to speak with him now?

And Winalils easily becomes the 2nd most hated character, second only to Starfish

Well he cried as Duane was leaving so most likely he had no choice and regretted all the way through. Most likely the government decided to kill duane and blame it on the cresce.

Preserve the status quo? Maybe he's the Uncle Tom of golds?

On the contrary, he's becoming my favorite. I love a clever villain with interesting motivations. Also I want to slash the everloving fuck out of him and Duane now.

Duane would kill if he knew he was involved and bastion probably wants to know who wants Duane besides himself.

Well, not hated in the quality of writing sense, more "I want to fucking murder this asshole" type of character hate.

OHHHH SHIT

That's the thing though, they weren't at each other's throats, by all that we've seen they had a pretty good relationship.

So Lem doing the actual killing of his own accord seems suspect.

And why in the everloving fuck would the government deliberately involve someone in an operation where they are going to kill that guy's loved one? That just doesn't make sense security-wise.

There could be some elaborate backroom plot to make Lemuel pay for Duane's transgressions by forcing him to murder him, but that seems, while not impossible, unlikely.

Man, everybody is saying that dude is lem but I really don't think so. The hair on the masked guy has tighter, darker curls than Lemuel plus they have different faces IMO. I know this information isn't in the comic but I have the script for that chapter (it was offered as a reward for donating back before patreon) and the dagger he was using was from midmol's tannery, which is a shady underground organization in durlyne (info also not in the comic but off of Ashley's formspring) so it's probably one of his goons.

It could be both you know, maybe they both ganged up on Winalils at the end.

Jealousy. His brother's a tacit caster with two kids and a hot wife who's just one tragic death away from wanting to fuck him instead.

oh shit Winnalis is the silhouette in the back left here.

That's fucking bitchin' that you got a script man. That's really god damn neato of Ashley.

That's true, Lemuel had that one bitter panel bitching at Duane for being lucky enough to have opportunities to throw away.

I want to believe

Nothing about their interactions really smacked of jealousy to me. I maybe some resentment or frustration, but not jealousy, and certainly nothing murderous.

Yeah, there's been a lot of foreshadowing that Lem knew of or was possibly part of the plot to kill Duane, and his motivations seem to be a mix of extremist politics and personal jealousy. But so far we don't have a ton of evidence that Lem was one of the masked men who actually did the deed. Tonight's comic is the closest we've gotten: somebody connected to the Adeliers was responsible for Bastion's injuries. However, that could just mean Lem had told the thugs to turn on Bastion, not that Bastion did the stabbing himself.

Holy fuck, good eye user.

Wait, what the fuck? That page has been out for a good three years and we're just NOW noticing this extremely important little detail. This fucking comic, I swear.

>certainly nothing murderous
Et tu, Brute?

likely thought/was tricked into thinking this was the only way to save the ssaelit

My guess is that it was a way to instigate a war kind either with cresce or with the aldish geffendur but put together by aggressive Ssaelits. Lem was talking about wishing the shadwe was more bloodthirsty. He could have thought it was for the greater good but didn't know the reanimation bit, which prompted him to fuck up bastion. Its one thing to "sacrifice" your brother for the greater good and another thing to damn him for all time.
I think he was only involved in giving them Duane's rout home and making sure his daughter was there to distract him ("you promised your brother!"). Her getting shanked and the reanimation where never on the table.

I was trying to think what kind of spell Mikaila could have used to have left slashing scars on Winalils. There were plenty of swords around with edges she could steal but that doesn't seem right or satisfying enough so I just went back and reread. Look how Cope has that window specifically smash when Mikaila steals the Light out of it to blind the guy who stabs her. That would have left broken glass all over the snow. Perfect fodder for the Edge Aspect she'd need for a spell to save her dad!

Lem knew, if nothing else.

Plus, it's established a page or two before this that Lem was always a better hand-to-hand fighter than Duane and he had an alibi/excuse about having to "go on patrol" that night. I think he was one of the attackers.

Meg I don't think she gave home those scars, when you get stabbed he chest it's hard to do math, really. Plus the panel in today's page bastion doesn't look all torn up, and she was probably already dead at that point. He might have been referring to both lem and Micki. Lem for his swords fucking him up and Micki for being such a young girl yet still that good at pymary

I think this has been brought up before but there is a pretty clear shot of the assassin guy's face and he doesn't have Lem's scar. I suppose it's possible it could still be Lem in a glamour but then what is the point of wearing a mask as well? Or maybe the mask is part of the glamour as well?

Also thanks for sharing, script guy. It does seem likely he could be some third party thug.

It's Murkoph when he was still alive. Those are so Murkoph's eyes.

If this turned out to be true I wouldn't call bullshit it on it but based on what we have I really don't think he'd voluntarily be part of the kill party.

Sure, he might be jealous I can see that allowing it to happen at all, but everything we've seen seems to indicate they're on good terms, not estranged, legit sibling love. Actually running your brother through with a sword and stabbing out his eyes?

I don't think we've been shown enough to logically come to that conclusion.

The guy that takes his eyes has that big cut across his face, and later when we see Lemuel while Duane was being reanimated I don't think he has that cut.

Murkoph is definitely not that recently dead, if he was ever even alive to begin with.

she got the entire middle part of her torso stabbed out anonymous! only spell you get to cast with your organs completely all destroyed is Stop Living (Sor/Wiz 1).

Well, Mikaila was kind of a prodigy. Who knows.

Duane is going to eat this fucker's heart.

Isn't it more likely that Duane unconsciously cast a spell as he was being reanimated, or even before he died? Wouldn't be the first time he's done that, he core leeched a fucker in the middle of getting lynched back in college.

I mean, look at his ghost hand up there, that's got to be something.

Incidentally, Bastion's face as he bad touches Duane's corpse is rustling my jimmies.

You might have a point there. That ghost hand definitely looks like it's trying to cast.

wow, this is fucked up

what's the context?

>what's the context?
Unsounded. A webcomic by Ashley Cope.

>I mean, look at his ghost hand up there, that's got to be something.
I think that's just his soul starting to be pulled into the khert or something.

Read the comic, it's worth it. But if you must know, actual spoilers: Duane was ahigh ranking mage, and some assassins jumped him while he was walking home with his daughter. and then they all died.

I do wonder if there isn't more going on here than even this full-blown reveal lets on.

As Bastion says, this is something that's never been done before. Why here? Why now? Maybe he really was the first to try, but what if he succeeded for a reason?

Do we know anything about the 'grand designs' of the gods of Unsounded? Could Duane's existence be something the Khert, or Ssael, or the other gods allowed to further some end? It all smacks of divine purpose.

So Bastion created Duane, but he did it purely out of scientific curiosity? Bastion's just a middleman? Who the fuck had Duane murdered, then?

Guy getting assassinated; they kill his daughter along with him.

>other gods

>and a burning need to know what the fuck he is in the first place.

More like a burning desire to know who paid for the hit in the first place. Bastion better have a lot of extra skin stored somewhere, because he's going to need it.

I'm still standing by my absurd theory that Duane's murder was/is part of some kind of radical, cultish Ssaelit plot to try to re-create Ssael.

>so yeah duane is going to murder the SHIT out of winalils

Winny was there. Winny helped the men who killed his little girl.

Duane is going to murder that sack of shit so ugly the Gods Themselves will feel bad about it.

And he deserves it.

>gods

I'm kinda surprised at how unlikable Bastion's being made out to be so far considering he's supposedly Ashley's husbando.

The question is, can he do it? Bastion's no pushover. Is Duane the stronger wright?

yes, gods. duane is stupid as hell to not realize that "dead" doesn't mean what he thought it did

Ashley's other husbando is Murkoff.

Possibly not, but he's at least strong enough to make Bastion fuck off with his claim of ownership over Duane.

Bastion's a Blacktongue. They seem to be the mad scientists of the wright community. So he's invested a lot in using pymary to do weird shit.

However, in that same token, I wonder if he's not a slouch in combat. Duane seems to have been trained to potentially cast spells in battle. He's excellent in a duel. I wonder if he wouldn't wipe the floor with Bastian even if they're equals in magical power, simply because Duane knows what to do in a fight.

Being black tongue doesn't really mean shit in terms of combat or even ability. They just tend to cast off normal conventions. Quigley tried that with Duane and we saw how that turned out.

What the fuck is even happening anymore?!

Doubt it. Being the most badass wright around is his main thing aside from being a zombie and all.

>Is Duane the stronger wright?

"Best wright in centuries."

And that was BEFORE he got turned into a deathless, nigh-indestructible engine of horror.

You will note that aside from the true silver shenanigans, nothing the silver monster did to him even slowed him down or inconvenienced him over much.

Duane is massively badass, aside from his eye popping out at inconvenient moments and similar slapstick foolishness.

Ashley is into some weird shit.

This probably the most likely interpretation. We even hear people going "you can't do that to a priest!" during the flashback.

If Mikaila did anything at all then, she's most likely still dead. Ashley has said as much, and she's not the lying kind of author.

>As Bastion says, this is something that's never been done before.
The same reason no one tried making an atomic bomb until the Manhattan project. Pymary is a science, and the black tongues are at the cutting edge of it. Note that Winalils mentions "testing [his] hypotheses on a creature so rare as tacit caster." Tacit casters are extraordinarily rare, and no one besides one of the best Wrights even had a vague inkling of how to do what he did.

In many ways, Duane is an accident. Only attacked because of political turmoil, and only left as he is because they just happened to contract the one Wright who could lich him. Not only that, but it being a situation where the fellow conspirators immediately turned on him when they realized what he was doing.

It's a pretty dark twist, in a way. "Dark" in the sense that there's no greater purpose to Duane's situation: he was successful experiment that happened to get away. Fits the story pretty well.

Murkoph's not her husbando, he's just her plaything / fetish outlet.

I don't think Ashley's ever blatantly said that Mikaila is dead.

She's dead m8

>Bastion is 46
Fucking pretty boy Jets, I swear they're the worst

Might explain why he's obsessed with upping the ante on his accomplishments, having already produced multiple increasing masterworks without even clearing a third of the "prime of his life."

>Bastien is living it up and got nearly a century of healthy life left.
>Quiggley is stuck mucking about in the ass end of the world and is dead in a few more years, and his blind son will barely be in his mid-teens, if at all.
I can kind of see why Alderode is so fucked up and the Aldishmen creep people out.

show me a body

We cant, she could be anywhere in those sewer tunnels!

Can someone pls remind me why Duane was assassinated? It's been a while since I've read the flashback chapter in the archive

Take your pick:

He hit Bodie, a high ranking politician after he proposed a highly illegal and genocidal move that could start a civil war. Either of those could get him killed (Either as revenge for the insult or to keep him quiet if they go along with the plan)

Then there's the overt reason, a gang of infiltrated Crescians killed him to drive a wedge between the two religious Aldish factions. But they were easily caught so that may have been a false flag. Duane was also slated to become the Ssaelit composer which is another reason to off him.

And then there's Bastion and his experiments, though he clearly states he "accepted the job" rather than instigated it. And whatever involvement his brother may have had.

We don't actually KNOW, but there's some solid theories. Basically:

>there's tension in Alderode because the weeping plague is primarily affecting the Ssaelit population
>because of this, the Gefendur leaders are pushing for "rebalancing" which will change the number of Ssaelit leaders on the council thing that runs the country and leave them lacking in political power
>Duane's brother is a bit of war monger, and all too willing to go to war over the issue
>Duane's death is made to look like the work of Crescian agents helping the Gefendur Aldishmen

There's a few ways this could be played. One is to radicalize the Ssaelit into being more willing to fight for their position against the Gefendur Aldish, by tainting the public image of them with a Crescian alliance (the only thing the two hate more than each other is their long time neighbor). Another is that it was meant to unite the country against Cresce by having Cresce appear to assassinate a popular clergyman and veteran. Either way, it was to turn Duane into a martyr.

It seems to have been galvinized by Duane losing the Composer position. We do see Lemuel crying right after he and Duane discuss his incident at the meeting. If he'd gotten it, it would've made Ssaelits have a stronger presence in the capital. But without it, the conspirators may have decided he better served their purposes as a martyr.

Either political, religious, or scientific reasons, or perhaps a combination of the three. We don't know yet.

I don't think that masked guy is Lem. Not blonde enough. (Compared to Duane, same lighting)

I am not so sure that assassin guy is Lem?? His hair looks darker than Lem's-- look at it in comparison to Duane's, in the same lighting.

>Pretty sure Duane saw her soul leaving to the Khert.

Dude was also more than half dead at the time and hallucinating crazy shit.

Face changing glamours are pretty common in Unsounded.

Didn't Ash once say in a fair wright-fight Bastion vs Duane, Bastion'd be the roadkill?

She's dead. Just let go.

We noticed it three years ago. there have been theories that it was Bastion, Lemuel, that guy Duane punched in the face, etc.

Holy shit, he was supposed to get that promotion and it was just to make his assassination even a bigger thing. His bosses were on it too.