Unsounded

Big match Sonorie working the crescians, alds, and the readers into thinking she is a pawn.

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I'm actually applauding. Well done, Ashley.

So what do you think the over/under is on the next strip starting with Bastion violently killing Chubbers or whatever his name is here? Sharts are like rats, and lawyers are like diseased rats, I'm sure no one will miss one.

Sonorie amazingly gets worse and worse the more we deal with her. It's honestly impressive.

How powerful a wright is Bastion, combat-wise? Could he take on all those guys? They're all Black Tongues too, after all.

Pretty cool, makes me think that Sonorie wasn't actually above the pain bomb and just used mind controlled bell as a patsy.

Bastion is powerful enough that other wights seem to be as afraid of him as they are distasteful of him. And Black Tongues seem to hold regard for life somewhere in the realm of "zero."

Or the snake is playing her in a double-blind, mind controlling Bell to eventually dispose of her once he's sure he's done for Alderode.

I don't see why, though.

Being a black tongue doesn't mean you're a good fighter, they largely stick to research. Raam only got the best of the duane because of his fancy house gadgets. Bastion already got the better of darkest who apparently has some gadget he plans to spring on bastion.

Look at the way he handled Darkest a few pages back. He's probably no slouch.

Could be, but since the original plan was to send the pain monster to the aldish I think the main concern is fucking them up. Plus I can't imagine he would be so interested in the soul maps and not contact Cutter the product of that research when he had the chance.

Why can't Quigley's glasses be as cool as the lawyer's

Bring back silver waifu. In lewd form.

I think I'm just gonna start rooting for Alderode now, Crescians are just vile, fucked up monsters.

>Black Tongues abandoning their roots as detached eccentricts and plunging themselves into the shitty morass of political tribalism
How long until they install Smug Ruck iconography and mandate performances of their new anthem, "Shadilefheby"?

I've always liked Alderode better. Nice-looking women, nicer-looking husbandos, more interesting forms of torture, and 1 Duane, which is more than 0.


Anyone else notice in that animated strip a few pages back that Titbird is eating secrets FROM that wright's brain, not giving them to him?

Jet Castes are shit at long-ranged pymary and can't move a lot of aspect at once, but there's no way a prodigy like Bastion wouldn't invent some nasty means of compensating in a fight.

>Bring back silver waifu. In lewd form.

I like the way you talk, user.

Also how is no one alarmed or wary of the giant, secret eating snake monster that liquefies people's brains for their knowledge? How does no one not think "I wonder if I could be next?

Yeah, he can borderline teleport. He's a shotgun that can teleport.

It's only two frames, so it can look like it's going either way. Now I'm wondering if that was intentional.

Intentional. I live to fuck with your mind, it is what gets me out of bed every morning.

I feel like Bastion's not really a fighter, he'd just pseudo-teleport out of any conflict. Wouldn't want his perfectly-manicured nails to be damaged. Like what he did when he was caught playing doctor iirc

Oh yeah. No need to bring up Bastion's genetic limitations when we just had a demonstration of a hostile wright getting *teleprots behind u*'d and having his spell cast throttled effortlessly.

This is the twist nobody saw coming. Absolutely nobody saw it coming.

Also, Cresce and Alderode are two equally bad sides of the same coin. They're both dirty, underhanded, complex political bodies vying for survival and advantage. I promise, this is going to get uglier yet. Rooting for one over the other seems rather pointless.

I think that's the point. Every institution in the world is corrupt somehow, even the scholarly, impartial Black Tongues have now been shown to be shitty. You can only trust individuals, never institutions. That's the moral of the story I guess.

To be fair, they've been working with birdtits for so long that they probably figure one rich, bored senet beast is as good as another.

I'm with Bastion, these posers just need a leash around their neck and a tyrant to rule over them.
I love this comic so much, I look forward to every update more than anything else. Thank you.

Who is this four-eyed chucklefuck coming in here trying to tell BASED BASTION what's what?

I mean, our favorite be-boobed talking prolapse definitely has an interest in memories, so maybe she likes hoarding new ones from people that aren't dead yet.

I still wonder what her problem with women is, though. Castrates her men, never accepted woman worshipers. She's not a worshiper of Ssael, so it's not like she'd have some weird 'don't bring more people into this world of suffering' idea. Going by incidental stuff way back, I think she's just butthurt that she can't have kids of her own and apparently kills any she tries to nurture herself (god knows where I remember reading that).

Or it could just be that ovaries are a lot harder to cut out than testicles, and she's not willing to compromise on sterility.

I say 'woman worshipers,' but I suppose I should say...partners? Cultists? I dunno.

Yeah. Cresce is bad, but full of good people. So is Alderode. So are the Black Tongues. As well as bad, of course. Institutions are the merciless devouring machines.

I see a fight scene happening in the next page or three. The conflict with Darkest and the escalating argument here suggests it's going to be one hell of a mess-- and something tells me it may not end entirely well for Bastion. He's got teleportation, but there are limits to his capabilities and he IS outnumbered-- against a number of wrights who are surely familiar with his offsetting and potentially have mulled over counters to it.

>make a song about how mommy bird has left you and how you want to leave
>get mad when someone else takes over the club

1. Other women = competition for female attention, and the general assumption is that she can seduce men easily. Women, not so much.

2. The castration is similar to Roman worship of Cybele-- it's a permanent commitment and it makes them more like her (both in terms of losing their balls and in not being able to have children). She is to be the center of their world, no one else-- she doesn't want them distracted from her. She is a jealous god.

>Anyone else notice in that animated strip a few pages back that Titbird is eating secrets FROM that wright's brain, not giving them to him?
It's very clearly going into his brain.

Also, yes, ovaries are WAY harder to cut out. Castration is a potentially deadly procedure due to blood loss and infection (in men), but in women, the odds of death are astronomically higher. Even if she allowed it, odds of a woman surviving and joining are... extremely low.

I think the thing about her killing children was either on the tumblr or mentioned when we saw stained glass windows of her at Rahm's...

On second look it seems to be three frames, but it's few enough that it still looks like it could be going either direction. It's a nice optical illusion.

OH SHIT ITS HAPPENING

>ask me anything (but spoilers!)
>asks spoilers
>gets spoilers
wtf ashley

>Redhead fuckboy being puppeted by Ruck (and thus the queen)
>Bell being puppeted by a different snek to counter it
I could see it happening.

Both Cresce and Alderode are a blend of weird and evil, but it seems to me like Alderode has a lot more weird than evil, while Cresce has a lot more evil than weird.

Alderode is the bigger threat and therefore the better prize. Every body who isn't Alderode wants their secrets of the dahmakert. Even the senete beasts want to get hip deep in it and Duane being tanish and immune has something to do with his conversion into a revenant. It's no coincidence that Bastion is a jet.

Kind of impressive that Sharteshane actually manages to be the least corrupt country in the region.

Sure, the monarchy is a vestigial organ that doesn't care about anything and everybody is crooked but nobody really pretends otherwise.

For a grown man, Bastion does insist on behaving like an edgy teenager. I hope something horrible happend to him soon.

That doesn't make them less corrupt, it's just that they're honest about the shitbags they are.

How old is Bastion, anyway?

Alderode is run by people who tried to set a vaguely defined, horrific plague amongst a set population of their citizens, so they wouldn't lose votes.

I'm sorry boss, but you can't avoid the shit.

I think I recall somebody saying he's in his 20s or 30s? I'm probably wrong about that, but he's definitely young even by the standards of people with normal lifespans.

As I recall, they didn't sic the plague on the Gefendur Alds, they just weren't so keen on curing it among that portion of their population.

Still awful, but perhaps marginally better.

wtf I hate Cresce now

Sonorie sicked that ruck on her own husband and father to her child? That is fucked up.

No, it (for entirely defined reasons) hit some Ssaelite population centers, so it was proposed that they let it loose in some Gefendur ones.

Because otherwise, they'd lose some votes.

He's in his 40s I think.

Well it's not like she doesn't have more husbands to spare

She should tell that plotting/rebelling general about that. He would chill right the fuck out and probably get an erection.

So how does the Black Tongues secretly working for Cresce let them "survive Lady Ilganyag's abandonment" exactly? Is it just money? Or is that meant to be a mystery for now? This political shit always goes over my head

Reminds me of Tales of the Dragon Guard and a central message it has.
Even if you don't want to be mixed up in politics, doesn't mean you can. And being an organization can mean you're already political, and trying to deny it does you no good.

I wanna say Cope mentioned there's a female snek tits messing around maybe.

Without tittybird they're lacking purpose and backing so they've resorted to trying to court stupid patrons with more money than sense. It's like when a starving artist turns to furry inflation commissions to pay the bills.

I thought that was obvious a long time ago. Cresce and Alderode are both horrifyingly evil.

Calling it now, Sonorie and Ruck are setting up Bell as a fall guy for the Silver and to clean house of the disloyal elements in Cresce after Bell's coup fails.

his story doesn't add up. Ruck is only useful to the queen thanks to Delicieu's research on memories. You want me to believe the queen got her hands on his notes, realized they worked together with Efheby poison and then hired a snake in that order?

Not to mention she'd have to be a complete sociopath to soul-rape her husband and still act all lovey-dovey with him. It's not like she could tell herself it's only some memory-delving after inventing the entire technique herself.

>scholarly, impartial Black Tongues
I doubt we were ever supposed to have a good opinion of them since they were introduced in the context of the First Silver weapon and child slavery and murder.

Don't the Black Tongues have enough Alds in their crew to understand Alderode's khert, or are the real secrets only known by a some as-yet-unseen shadowy wizard cabal, or only by the ones who fashioned it centuries ago, or by no one at all?

Yeah, surely Sonorie could have gotten her hands on a different copper Ald or not bed and wed the one she got for experimentation purposes.

...fuck. That makes way too much sense.

Might be she was trying to fuck knowledge out of him and decided to take a more prosaic approach.

Yeah, come to think of it - why go to the trouble of mind-liquification when ordinary turncoats should be much easier to come by?

That sort of process seems like it would be more useful for extracting information from someone without making it obvious they're a security weakness - so if you want to use it to get information about Alderode, you're probably not going to want the subject to also be known very publicly as consort to the Queen of Cresce.

Because if he's already on Cresce's side enough to marry its monarch, why can't they just, you know, ASK him these things?

So I suspect the information they're looking for is probably not something he or anyone consciously knows, if this pick-through-his-mind scheme is really happening at all. If it is, sounds like they're trying to reverse-engineer what the Dammakhert does or something.

Presumably they don't know Cutter is/was/took over/melded with Delicieu

...

But the wiki says: >Because Coppers are poorly connected to the Dammakhert, they make very poor wrights.

You would think that a Plat would make a better test subject for the effects of the weird Ald khert.

Coppers and Plats are equally affected by the Dammakhert, just in different directions.

If that aspect really is a factor into this horrible soulrape experimentation, I imagine that it'd be just as interesting to determine the exact mechanism that would cause someone's natural lifespan to increase by such a massive degree.

Bastion himself is a bit of an oddity there; clearly he has as few scruples about toying with life and death as the rest of the order, nor does he express any qualms about snuffing Duane in the first place, but he actually seems to abhor death and especially war. We see him helping the wounded in Ethelmik, Darkest mocks him for tending to Alderode's plague-stricken, there was that whole "it's never fine to die!" scene (although he was using Elan to test a rather fucked up prototype pacemaker)

It's interesting. I expected him to just be a foppish, Machiavellian monster, which would be cool enough, but he's actually got some weird sort of conscience rattling around in that head.

Thing is, not even the Aldish know precisely why the Dammakhert does what it does. They've figured out how to extend it into conquered territory and use it to sting dissidents, but that's about it. I don't even think they want to know, it's practically a religious thing for them.

Presumably, Roger's information is not something he knows but rather something he IS.

>be-boobed talking prolapse

hahaha 10/10 description

If they claim to be independents, they should all just sack up and find their own w-

oh, yeah. Nevermind

>he was using Elan to test a rather fucked up prototype pacemaker)

Nah he told Elan the technique was well known, but Crescian doctors didn't think it was worth the effort.

CRESCIAN DEATH PANELS in other words.

>Cresce has some hellish, actually cruel version of the NHS

...

>it was literal

God damn it, Ashley.

makes sense; Bell let slip about his "goddess" earlier, probably all he remembers of his own mindrape.

Just think back to all the mentions of Sonorie's "weakness" for handsome Aldishmen. She wasn't just thirsty, she was looking for victims.

Quigley dodged a hellacious bullet.

But why does Sonorie have to get involved with that sort of thing personally? Her subjects clearly get upset by it. Research like that should be handled by shady spymaster types.

Obviously cause she can't trust anybody in her court. Just look at Bell for a good example of why.

Damn this is elaborate.

Not the moral - A moral, Unsounded is too vast to be held down by just 1 lesson.

He's our new Aldish hero. Quigley out. Bastion in.

Alderode is about to genocide their own people.

And Cresce already has.

That wasn't "genocide" It was just an convenient nonracially motivated massacre.

The Alds DO make it so that one of the largest subsets of their population gets less than half of an average pre-modern Earthling lifespan, with a slow death of rotting from the inside out that Ashley described as pretty gross.

Then again, this whole Dammakhert thing is a huge mystery - we don't know who or WHAT is it that instated it.

The Alds say it was the gods - the government spiel in Unsounded is almost always lies and propaganda.

We were only with her that one time in the beginning of this chapter, how is it "worse and worse"? And how is it impressive? In her last appearance, she was quite affable and made a defense for her citizens against Ufal. This bombshell makes her possibly one of the most insanely devious characters in the entire comic.

And yeah, Chorley is repulsive. Ashley sure knows how to design a character - that Chorley is one slimy-looking bastard.

read thru the tumblr [ unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/ ] and u'll see that cope's been pretty excited to show off bastion and bastion's ass for quite a while now.

Oh yeah. He's a player. A big one.

Quigley is a hero to no one. Not even his own son

If the Ald was only ever destined to become a mind slave for ripping out Aldish secrets, there is literally no reason to actually marry the guy. He could have just acted as an ambassador or even a political hostage until she decided to throw him to the snake. By fucking him she's earned herself the enmity of her people and opened herself up to being prey for multiple political coups. All of which could have been avoided by not making the mind slave her fuck slave. What an idiot.

Only things I can think
>The process is empathetic, meaning he can't be in some dungeon somewhere
>She married him anyways for intel- it wasn't until after that they got the brain juice
>Ruck and co. are lying about being in league with the queen
>They can't let Alderode know they're brain draining someone high up- if he's already married there's plausible deniability in that maybe he's just a rat

>Ruck and co. are lying about being in league with the queen
I think it's going to be this one. They are also apparently controlling General Bell, who leads the anti-Sonorie coup, so it's in their interests for the Queen to fall, not to succeed. I think that the Queen dug her own grave by marrying the Ald, and that the Snakeman and Black Tongues are trying to get in good with the new administration who deposes her, by turning the weakness (the Ald) into an asset (knowledge of the Dammakhert).

Plus, as other posters have said, using such a high-profile individual for mind experiments is kind of a waste. You could grab any old Aldish peasant and use them for similar research. A nobleman like the fuccboi could bring in ransoms, hostage exchanges, or other things. Anything really valuable he could say he probably already has, since he showed up willingly and appears to be a genuine defector. No reason to waste mind control shit for that.

The more I think about it, the less the "Sonorie was using him as snake bait" story adds up.

At least that guy's high collar is explained now.

>Or haven't you been BATHING regularly?

im not sure why everyone is bringing the Dammakhert into this. 'Understanding the systems of Alderode' reads as the ridiculously complex political systems keeping Alderode running to me. Rogers had to flee to Cresce because his coup failed due to no military support from Sonorie. I don't think he would sell out his homeland to Cresce without getting his own kingdom to rule. Why would the ability to read memories offer any insight into the Dammakhert anyway.

That's what I'm thinking too; while I suppose Bell could be under the power of a different snek or not controlled by a snek at all, I think what you're saying is far more likely.

Also, Sonorie revealed to be ruthless tacitcal mastermind which I guess shouldn't be surprising for the head of one of the most powerful nations on the continent

If you can read memories nobody will be able to keep anything secret.

That would be why she was interested in Quigly