Historical documentary for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4JSTXuP9E
Thanks as usual to Raptie for handling the character coloring and shading on this page!
Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
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Something that came to mind. After rereading this whole thing. With the bug lady, bit late so name didn’t stick. I think she needs electricity from a brain to keep calm? She can feel the presence of others of her kind. Maybe due to them putting out a kind of EMF electromagnetic field, kinda thing? Maybe not sure. Main reason I think this, is she felt calm rubbing that one guy’s head and that is close to the brain. She could have felt that electricity from it? Just a guess.
Yannit. It could also just be physical contact as a way of assuring herself they’re “real”, since they don’t give off the olfactory cues she’s used to.
Like, imagine if you moved to a place where everyone was invisible. You could only hear their voices. You might go crazy too, if you didn’t touch them once in a while to confirm their reality.
Indrels definitely use pheromones amongst themselves, but that does not mean they use only the pheromones. I’ve had three theories about Yannit’s SoothThing : EM fields, pheromones (or other chemicals stored in hairs), or just hairs being a worry blanket (no special senses involved but purely psychological). So I’ve asked Val and his answer was “I like keeping things vague and letting people come up with their own theories”. So officially it is undefined.
That’s true. However, just to add my two cents, my interpretation is the same as Quidquad’s.
You could make a sport out of this. Yinglet Yeeting.
That’s gotta hurt.
I strongly suspect the rat isn’t feeling much of anything anymore.
I don’t know, rats can be notoriously difficult to kill.
Look at his face. He’s just done. With everything.
Doubtful. He will probably live long enough for interrogation.
No, elim. Not brakka. Elim has the expression of someone who is fed up with everything.
Indeed, Elim when through glee(I can help my friend in need), then frustration (I need to help my friend) to cold anger ( my friend’s in need). Nothing is fearsome than a good man’s wrath, an evil man will want to gloat, giving you time to think… a good man will simply kill you.
Oh that was beautiful. -XD
Truly a champion of Yinglet Launching.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
ON THE WALL
yeet
You know, it looks like Brakka used his best shiv to stab Elim the first time.
Red is good for concealing blood.
Just ask the Spartans!
Wait… where are they?
Covered in blood.
Please return /***COVERED IN BLOOD***/ safe and sound
Ying-yeeted. Hopefully Elim survives this without any major infections!
pretty sure he broke his neck when he hit the wall
Let’s hope so.
you know, reading this page again, i had a silly stupid thought for the smol bastards voice. similar to bug version of Cell from DBZ Abridged. just a octave or two higher in voice.
Ok.. now we see Elim going for the ‘from the back overhead whip toss’… and there it goes! it looks great! Wonderful form… Cleared the first wall and… Oooooh! He hit the left corner foul line! That’s gonna cost him some distance overall.
Pro stealth strategy: loudly voice your grievances while sneaking up on your foe.
I think those are thought bubbles. They don’t have the tail pointing to Brakka’s face.
well….assuming this is it and doesn’t continue on, seems our first real antagonist has been dealt with rather…swiftly
Modern Art?
This is why Kratos does not have a tail
Oof. That sudden cutoff on the scream. Brakka might be dead.
Why kill a perfectly good bad guy we like to hate? If he’s dead, who’ll come up to with a perfect bad plan to srew up and keep up the anguish scream running gag?
At the Yinglet enclace, there is a representative of the larger Yinglet community. The matriarch is quite salty of his presence, implying their politics do not align, and the supahspy implied Brakka was carrying”ze Thing” on his behalf…
perfectly good badguy? sure. but also clearly someone elses henchmen.
also, only main characters and the officers can wear red shirts and live.
I’d have slammed him on the ground like the Hulk did to Loki in the first Avenger’s movie. It would have certainly either killed him or broken his legs and arms which is pretty much a death sentence for a scav.
I thought that as well buttt if you did that it wouldnt have the same comedic value
Iunno. I’d laugh pretty hard. doubly so if the artist animated it
Am I the only one who thinks that Elim can’t pull Brakka like this? Elim seems to be left-handed, so to launch Brakka with his right arm he can’t use all his strength with his arm in that position and he doesn’t have enough thrust to throw him so far. Even if a yinglet has hollow bones like birds, an adult yinglet is still a fair amount of weight to lift. Brakka has 3 “hands” to hold onto Elim’s back, so it’s not so easy to pull him off his back. At the very least, he would have sink his fingernails through Elim’s clothes and back, leaving deep wounds on his back and big tears on his clothes. Have you ever tried to pull a cat by its tail while his nails are planted on your back? Just one more thing … Elim has bloody and therefore slippery hands. Does he really manage to have such a strong grip on Brakka’s tail? And didn’t he leave even a bloody handprint? I think it would have been more plausible to grab Brakka’s neck and pull him forward, throwing him on the ground right in front of Elim’s feet.
Anyway… I hope to see brakka with at least one broken arm and asking for Kass’s help to be healed and not end up like the oracle. 🙂 Info vs healing… this can be a good deal, isn’t it?
Sorry for my bad english. 🙁
Elim is also really fed up right now. I dont think his arm cares how heavy Brakka is. He also might be ambidextrous🤔
Well, Elim is pretty much on adrenaline right now, remember stories of people lifting trucks when their loved ones are stuck underneath? Besides, it’s funnier than Elik back ramming Braka against a wall repeatedly. ……and let’s not overthink too much, a tail is to be used by an author, just a cape is to get stuck in a jet engine.
Seems improbable, but who knows? Maybe its divine intervention, or just Karma repaying Kass for being turned into a Yinglet. Throwing Brakka 10 foot in the air single handedly would be similar to throwing a border collie similarly. Brakka had his chance to Hamstring Elim, and he chose to climb on his shoulder not using the stab in his hand in any useful way. Has to be Karma. The Gods aren’t that nice.
Left-handedness doesn’t mean your left hand/arm is stronger, just more precise. I’m left-handed and I sometimes think my right arm is stronger. That’s probably not the case, I likely just subconsciously use it more for blunt work/carrying stuff to have my left one free.
If you look at the second page of this you see that Elim has a shield with a sharpened metal point, most likely for punching, jabbing, stabbing etc. It makes sense he would train with such a weapon and with such a weapon you would likely want a really strong blow from it for maximum damage. Also consider the armor, earlier it is explained the cloak is heavy and covering the armor underneath. While I don’t think he has heavy plate underneath it, I wouldn’t put splint mail or at least heavy leather. It is also possible he could have a coat of plates which is basically just a bunch of solid steel plates riveted to a leather coat. That said, seeing how that flimsy dagger went clean through it’s safe to assume he doesn’t have solid metal armor, most likely thick leather. The last point I would say makes sense, they have already determined Yinglets don’t have particularly strong limbs, while he could claw to try and hold on I don’t think he would have the strength to prevent being hurled.
@ Earthroot, It isn’t that Elim isn’t normally strong enough to do this, its that he’s doing all this with a obvious gut wound. If the weapon has serrated edges at all beyond the point, its tearing his intestines to ribbons with each movement. As far as Armor goes, don’t think he has any with this being the equivalent of a social visit to the Yinglet enclave. Traditionally if your friend got a gut would, you would kill them yourself, sparing them the death by sepsis later. As a student of history, I’m not loving where Elim is here, even if they’ve won the fight. Oddly enough, the way to save him may be to turn him into a Yinglet, as the transformation would heal his wounds.
I’m sorry the second panel on THIS page or the flash back cause elim has no shield presently I can see. Evidence is the green eye singlet biting his right arm last page. If left arm I cant deny nor confirm that if he has a shield so… maybe.
Also dont think a poor grunt would be given armor at all because of budget and reasonability. Hes a refuge living in poor conditions. He may just book it any day (from a commander’s perspective) just his get and uniform and pray your not stabbed from behind. The clock just makes it so one guy cant go stabby on any guard if there’s a chance he Is armed or armored.
Page two of the prologue, not panel two.
I’m also left-handed but i think this is plausible. I just tried it with my backpack. Not quite a Yinglet but it worked fine.
The backpack weighs about 12 lbs. I reached back with my right hand, grabbed the sling and threw it…propably too far because people are looking at me funny right now.
I think it’s funny you guys are arguing about how far you could throw a yinglet. A YINGLET. Some suspension of belief is necessary to enjoy the story.
there is a bit of difference between a yinglet and a cat. the yinglet, or at least Brakka, has these large, solid finger pads, and his claws go out then down, then down, while a cat’s claws start from inside a split pad and immediately curve downwards. So less hooking action, and if the hook is not solid, the fingertips will weaken the hook. second, I doubt a yinglet is as strong, pound for pound as a cat. on the other hand, the feline’s short toes dont allow it to grab things and manipulate them.
That’s a good observation! It mostly comes down to the way Elim swung him around in a half-circle arc, applying centripetal force, combined with the average yinglet’s weight being comparable to that of a housecat.
Sure suspension of disbelief and such are useful elements in storytelling, but I do try to keep things as grounded/realistic as possible, if only so that people can logic out various parts of what’s going on. : D
Well, Brakka looks heavier than your average housecat. On the other hand we know yinglets are full of stupid. And stupid is a very special material indeed. It has weight of air so it is really easy to carry around but that is not what it makes so unique. Its variable inertia is the root of the specialness. Object containing stupid can be as hard to get moving as if it was made of lead one second and the next one it speeds off to wild yonders at the tiniest poke. Collisions with stupid can have terrible consequences irrespective of the size or weight of the object containing said stupid.
This circle technique doesn’t seem to be nearly as effective as it looked in the diagram. Perhaps because they don’t have spears?
This circle technique doesn’t seem nearly as effective as it looked in the diagram. Perhaps because they don’t have spears?
Crap, I sent it twice.
Think it’s for a cornered foe who is also trying to survive. Also I think they just charged him cause there was little coordination if that was the circle.
https://www.valsalia.com/comic/out-of-placers/oops-94/ Brakka ordered them to go into a circle, though they obviously didn’t execute it very well. Elim’s injured, so really it should have worked better on him than someone who wasn’t.
Also Elim DGAF, he just absorbed the taunt-hits as he mowed through them.
I’d imagine that the encirclement works much better with longer spears instead of dinky little shivs. Brakka also took too long getting behind him. By the time he was ready to land the killing blow, all of his distractions were already incapacitated.
If his Luck is good, Brakka might be seeing Stars for a while. However, if his luck is Manure, he’s dead. We just need to wait for the Following Pages to learn the Truth.
Now Brakka (and all information about “zhat zhing” will be gone for a while.
Meh, still better than getting shanked.
Oh, don’t worry, the person who gave him zhat zhing will surely come after Kass in time.
And then he ends up landing on the Oracle’s roof, and now they both have broken legs.
@RandomYinglet, The shiv that Brakka used seemed to be his “nice” shiv, meaning it might better resemble a humans speartip (not serrated). Elims guts might be okay for now, but what I’m wondering is as to why you assume the transformation into a Yinglet heals wounds. (I would love to hear an explanation though, very curious)
I would like to add too this saying how would they change elim into a singlet. Yes there’s “zat zhing” but how do our characters get it for themselves? Best bet were heading back to the refugee bunks (because the medic is there) and he’ll start getting treatment. But too defend the yinglet magic who knows…
Maybe it just works \(‘-‘)/
“Zat Zhing” reformats Human biology into the shape of that of a Yinglet. I’d think wounds, or even age might not be a factor in producing a viable female Yinglet biologically around 3 years of age. Its just too drastic of a change for something like having a hole in one’s abdomen to really make a difference. And as for how they would get “Zat Zhing”, Brakka knows the source, even if he didn’t know what it did. providing he landed non-fatally of course.
As for the Blade, the 5th panel of this page shows the blade itself as being thin at its base, making it likely serrated along its entire length like the scav’s stabs they used in the fight so far. Can only hope they are bad at sharpening edges, though if it was dull, how’d it penetrate so far then? And last, if I was a Scav, and 60% smaller than any other sentient being, I’d have poisoned my blades if I was prepared to go into a fight. In the Sister Comic “Scav’s Glory” its shown that House Ivenmoth has 0 compulsion to executing Scavs for petty crimes, so there would be no mercy if captured in this instance, so no reason not to deal fatal damage with slicing cuts vs losing one’s weapon in a Forward stab (Yinglet Weapons have no blood grooves which allow one to pull out a weapon once it has been used in a stabbing). In a world that has little value for them, there would be a huge incentive to fight dirty.
There is no such thing as a blood groove nor is there any need for them. Fullers are forged into blades to make them lighter and stronger. Withdrawing a polished blade from torn flesh produces considerably less resistance than ramming that blade into intact flesh and no noticeable suction. Blades stick in stabbing victims because they get wedged in the ribcage. Blades get wedged in the ribcage because stabbing victims collapse instantly when you ram a blade through their chest. There is no poison fast enough to be any use in a swordfight, especially anything available to a preindustrial society. Real sword fights last seconds and even something as potent as ricin or VX takes about 20 minutes to kill and won’t be debilitating until after it’s all over. Creating a poison as toxic as ricin or VX requires 20th Century organic chemistry. And as a former US Army chemical warfare specialist with bayonet training I do know what I’m talking about.
Could also see “Zhat Zhing” being re-labelled as a sovereign cure sold to both Kings and Armies as a way to cheat death, even if for a decade or two, or as a way of Permanent Exile for people convicted of numerous crimes. Maybe even as a means of torture, say letting a newbie Yinglet taste a clam, then suspending them over a barrel of them, just out of tongue’s reach of the slimy delicacies until they talk. So many possibilities, both good or bad, but all for the good of the Yinglets until someone else figures out how its made, then well, its back to zhe drawing board for the whel design and use.
My respect for Elim has just jumped massively. Which is no small feat considering that I respected him from the beginning. That was no Berserker rage like he was making it appear that was calm premeditated destruction of the enemy. The thing that got me near the end was the fact that elim let that one yigglet climb up his back just so he could grab them by the tail and sling into a wall. That was a major badass moment if you ask me
That bounce. That flat spin. Gorgeous.
Epic throw. 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKaFjCUH5DM
Brakka is totally not dead. We didn’t see a body and he has a mysterious backstory.
would have preferred a little more hulk smashing loki style. but methinks this is a recurring character and that would definitely kill him
*freeze frame*
It was at this moment
He knew
He f**ked up
Y’know throughout all this, I wonder how yinglets would react/interact with the Avalis(cause, they kinda in form)
It’s in the air…. ITS GOOOOD!
What a field goal.