Gentleman, you got your wish….Now you have to wait another week to see if…. But even I have to say, nice shot, Brian. You did it for Sephni. Whatever happens next, Jen would be proud of you.
Yes, we KNOW it’s not gonna work. But this, really, is not a shot. It’s a statement. The gun is sating “Blam”, but Brian is saying “I’m feed up with your shit and I’m not gonna just take it anymore, thank you very much”.
A.k.a. “character growth”
I remember that ancient Xtians said that D&D was satanic or something. Is that what happens when you abandon a game: it’s taken over by a demon? Dunno: never played such tabletop games, they never really arrived to my part of Europe (or rather did late, one generation after me, I was playing wargames in the meantime rather) and thus I only met the fantasy genre (other than in ancient novels) when Internet MMO videogames became a thing.
Anyway, who is he… or it? Is his name “PTSD, I went mad killing children in Falluja”?
He went after the world and characters of Brian’s campaign. And he looks like a creep nerd. So I’d guess he’s “THAT guy” from Brian’s gaming group. Perhaps the Draxxorel character was from another campaign from another group, before or after Brian’s, though.
Maju, I can personally confirm that tabletop D&D was already a serious thing in Spain (from where I know you are) in the early 80s. IIRC you are from the Barcelone area, and that was actually the most active RPG comunity in that time. I could also tell you about that time in 1991 (barely a decade later) when the very fiirst RPG club that registered itself as an asociation under Madrid city hall had troubles with their landlord, who thought they were just a bunch of nerds, just to discover that since most players were from the UCM they had more than a dozen active lawyers among them – after which hilarity insued. With the hilarious part being that it was the very publicited event that made RPG clubs respectable. Well, until the 1994 trololo.
“Draxxorel” (or whatever his real name) seems to come from way before than the early 1980s, however. He’s an entity of some sort that has latched upon Brian’s traumas. But we do not know if he IS also the source of his traumas. For several reasons, we have some motive to think he might be someone from Brian’s past, maybe a generation older than him – or maybe much more. We’ll see,
I’m Basque, from Bilbao. I don’t remember any D&D stuff at all, only wargames (and only some “nerds” like myself were interested in them, most rather played cards or football or also arcade games and futbolin, all of which I also enjoyed anyhow). The first D&D like thing I ever saw was much later, probably around the year 2000 among my brother’s friends, who are 11 years younger than me (i.e. gen. Y and not anymore gen. X or, as I prefer: Generation Punk). I didn’t understand much: they used figurines instead of cardboard abstract pieces, they measured the over-realistic board with a ruler… whatever.
Maybe it was a thing in the big cities you mention but not here in Bilbao. I do even remember that criminal case, “el crimen del juego de rol” (roleplaying murder) in which some nerds from Madrid followed and murderer a street cleaner whom they decided was “a goblin” or whatever. But that was already well in the 1990s (1994).
Disclaimer: roleplaying games were later formally discarded as the motivation but they were speculated about for years and even movies were made on the matter. The main murderer, Javier Rosado, had many of those in his home but also books by Hitler and De Sade. The two murderers did anyhow operate on a particular roleplaying game invented by Rosado called Razas (Races).
Sorry, I misremembered you as Catalonian. Then, from Bilbao, I might point out “Los Pelotas Dungeons Club”, the old club of one Alex de la Iglesia that you might have heard about. (Yes, THAT Alex de la Iglesia. The world-famous movies director). I had a lot of fun playing one of his adventures…
Trust me, Maju, D&D was quite popular back then – yoy just didnt notice.
Oh, and better don’t tell other Bilbainos that you called Madrid and Barcelone “big cities” but didn’t so to Bilbao proper – they would assault you with a folded Bilbao worldmap, as the joke goes 😀
The “Crimen del Rol” was the 1994 trololo I mentioned, and no, it was NOT roleplaying nerds – it was an actual psycho who killed a good man. But yep, I lived that one too closely for comfort – back then I personally had to mediate to prevent university-related clubs to be shut down (won’t give more details in order not to doxx myself).
For the record, the thing that turned the tide of hate away from RPG players was the son of Mr. Moreno (the victim: no reason to utter the killer’s name and forget Mr. Carlos Moreno) heeding the advice that another of those mediators gave him of, “they (the TV vultures, Mercedes Mila to be exact) are trying to get you clamoring for blood, because THEY want blood; don’t fall for that”. Don Carlos had taught his son well enough to realize that, so in Mila’s TV show he called for prudence intead of for blood. THAT didnt go as Milá expected, didnt it?
Just because Maju is from the right area or the right era, doesn’t mean they were in the same groups to have personally associated with D&D until a much later time
I’ve heard of Alex de la Iglesia, of course. Apparently we frequented the same tavern at differnent chronologies and he used to have a presentation card with his profession being “dilettante”. He made a couple of good movies, three if you consider Perdita Durango to be so (I always had a soft spot for Rosie Perez cursing in Aramaic but that’s about it), then I lost track, woke up with that inquisitorial abhorrence of Zugarramurdi and for me he’s as good as dead. No idea he was into D&D, never met anyone who was into that my age or older. What a freak! XD
Whatever D&D was in the 80s, it was not “popular” but quite marginal. I was walking those streets very actively and meeting nearly everyone who matters, and many more who don’t matter, and also wargaming quite actively (and thus meeting many many “nerds” too) and never ever met anyone involved into D&D at all. De la Iglesia was definitely peculiar if he did, but of course he’s very unique.
In any case, what Wikipedia says on the matter is that: “It was also around this time, between 1986 and 1989, when he founded in Bilbao one of the first role-game clubs in Spain: Los Pelotas”. That’s very late in the 1980s, you must admit to that, and his was surely the only such club in all the Basque Country.
Good for Moreno Jr. to be able to see beyond the witch hunt, I guess. TBH, I never paid much attention to the whole issue: the D&D sphere was something totally out of most people’s radar, definitely mine.
@Guesticles: I’ve never been associated to D&D, for me fantasy genre is books and comics (which I did read in my teens, not just Tolkien but more importantly Conan and whoever was that guy who wrote the Dragonlance series) and then, two decades later, videogames.
Out of idle curiosity, and because I know there’s a lot of ballitics nerds who follow the comic, would anyone care to hazard what loadings Brian is using? We know it’s out of a 3in barrel .357 magnum, but is he using .38s? How many grains? Jacketed hollow points, lead round nose?
The “classic” .357 load is a 125 grain JHP, but I think Brian is using .158 grain JSP .38 special.
We do know it is a .357, and we DO know that Brian is NOT a gun nut.
So, from a literary standpoint, we should asume he is using the most common load for the ammo that the gun was designed to fire, until and unless the author shows us otherwise. Not our personal favorite load.
Well, to be honest, I think the gun I was using for inspiration for Brian’s is currently loaded with .38. I used to keep it loaded with .357, but I was teaching my daughter (adult) to consider it the “go to” gun in the safe if something bad happens when I’m not around, and I knew the heavier loads might be a little too much for her. Honestly, there would be much better guns to choose, but a “point and click” revolver seems like the simplest choice for a smaller framed person who has shown very little interest in shooty-bangy things.
To be honest, Wormius, it seems a weird ammo choice for what we know was a bloody suicide gun, to even consider the recoil. From bitter experience, I know that the people who buys a gun to blow their heads off usually do NOT buy underload ammo to go with it. Yes, YOU may have a .357 loaded wth .38, but a guy who buys a gun to potentially use it against himself at a dark time of his life (as Brian has admitted he did) is more likely to load it with buffalo bore and to turn it into a crudely homemade dum-dum for extra “let’s make sure it splaters” value, than to underload it for accuracy at range.
Very good point… It probably was .357 loaded in there when Brian handed it to the DM. My flavor of choice was 12 gauge buckshot for that particularly low moment in my life. I, for an infinite number of reasons, am glad something inside me decided to stick around to see one more morning, just to see how it went. Then again, my life ever since that night has been such an amazing roller coaster, a part of me still wonders if this isn’t some sort of “occurrence at owl creek bridge” thing… You guys are real, right? 8)
Real enough to be paying taxes 😉
I figured it was .38s because they’re a cheap commonly available “do everything” round, and the kind of thing to have laying around after a trip to the range.
We’re glad you’re still around as well Mr. Hunter. It wouldn’t be the same without you.
“I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
Glad to have you still around, Andrew. Just so you know, I even quoted one of your lines (with full quotation credit, OF COURSE) in my last book. Because it was something that the MC choosed to cheer a friend up, “since I couldn’t find my own words, I quoted those of another tale”, she said. Good you did choose to stay around and give us quotable material yourself.
I just noticed, about an hour and a half after posting…
Wormius, the DM having changed the ammo from .357 to .38 (his oiginal guess) despite having no real reason to do so, JUST TO BE RIGHT, would be so hilariously in character for him, that unless you say otherwise, that shall be my headcanon
😀
If I can add my two penny-worth, Andy…I had a few such bad times when I was younger (much younger), and really low. Just a few times ending it all was fleetingly tempting. But first I too am driven – even now – by that urge to “know what happens next”, like every Monday with Delve. As shit as things are in the big wide world, or as sad as they sometimes are now in my life, I still have that desire to keep going. Also, thankfully, I live in a country where it isn’t that easy to find quick and all-too-easy ways to kill yourself. We don’t have loaded guns sitting on the shelf! And, no matter how grim it might seem at the time, life surprises us. You have shown that, with your artwork, imagination, humour, your Delve saga, of which we are all such big fans. Whatever the initial motives, you have created wonderful characters and story-lines, a fantasy world worthy of any of the mainstream writers. No one can take that away from you! Stay with us! Bree forever!
Looking back, there’s a scene where Sephni summons Tuul to her tent to “serve” her (the curtain is drawn over just what that actually meant), but I notice now, as Sephni talks she has ‘Draxxorel’s’ mouth. So I’m guessing the immortality collar was him controlling her? Right back to when she was captive by the Drakons.
I’m sure that is not Sephni and she is going to take that knife to stab him when he gets close. That ‘help me’ was too strange and I don’t think she even cared that much at the end with that regeneration necklace on.
He looks mildly annoyed. Had to be tried, though.
Gentleman, you got your wish….Now you have to wait another week to see if…. But even I have to say, nice shot, Brian. You did it for Sephni. Whatever happens next, Jen would be proud of you.
Love the shadow elf acrobat!
Yes, we KNOW it’s not gonna work. But this, really, is not a shot. It’s a statement. The gun is sating “Blam”, but Brian is saying “I’m feed up with your shit and I’m not gonna just take it anymore, thank you very much”.
A.k.a. “character growth”
also, the author himself is of the “Can’t blame him for trying” school
https://www.delvecomic.com/comic/reload/
Is the bullet silvery enough?
I remember that ancient Xtians said that D&D was satanic or something. Is that what happens when you abandon a game: it’s taken over by a demon? Dunno: never played such tabletop games, they never really arrived to my part of Europe (or rather did late, one generation after me, I was playing wargames in the meantime rather) and thus I only met the fantasy genre (other than in ancient novels) when Internet MMO videogames became a thing.
Anyway, who is he… or it? Is his name “PTSD, I went mad killing children in Falluja”?
He went after the world and characters of Brian’s campaign. And he looks like a creep nerd. So I’d guess he’s “THAT guy” from Brian’s gaming group. Perhaps the Draxxorel character was from another campaign from another group, before or after Brian’s, though.
Maju, I can personally confirm that tabletop D&D was already a serious thing in Spain (from where I know you are) in the early 80s. IIRC you are from the Barcelone area, and that was actually the most active RPG comunity in that time. I could also tell you about that time in 1991 (barely a decade later) when the very fiirst RPG club that registered itself as an asociation under Madrid city hall had troubles with their landlord, who thought they were just a bunch of nerds, just to discover that since most players were from the UCM they had more than a dozen active lawyers among them – after which hilarity insued. With the hilarious part being that it was the very publicited event that made RPG clubs respectable. Well, until the 1994 trololo.
“Draxxorel” (or whatever his real name) seems to come from way before than the early 1980s, however. He’s an entity of some sort that has latched upon Brian’s traumas. But we do not know if he IS also the source of his traumas. For several reasons, we have some motive to think he might be someone from Brian’s past, maybe a generation older than him – or maybe much more. We’ll see,
I’m Basque, from Bilbao. I don’t remember any D&D stuff at all, only wargames (and only some “nerds” like myself were interested in them, most rather played cards or football or also arcade games and futbolin, all of which I also enjoyed anyhow). The first D&D like thing I ever saw was much later, probably around the year 2000 among my brother’s friends, who are 11 years younger than me (i.e. gen. Y and not anymore gen. X or, as I prefer: Generation Punk). I didn’t understand much: they used figurines instead of cardboard abstract pieces, they measured the over-realistic board with a ruler… whatever.
Maybe it was a thing in the big cities you mention but not here in Bilbao. I do even remember that criminal case, “el crimen del juego de rol” (roleplaying murder) in which some nerds from Madrid followed and murderer a street cleaner whom they decided was “a goblin” or whatever. But that was already well in the 1990s (1994).
Disclaimer: roleplaying games were later formally discarded as the motivation but they were speculated about for years and even movies were made on the matter. The main murderer, Javier Rosado, had many of those in his home but also books by Hitler and De Sade. The two murderers did anyhow operate on a particular roleplaying game invented by Rosado called Razas (Races).
Sorry, I misremembered you as Catalonian. Then, from Bilbao, I might point out “Los Pelotas Dungeons Club”, the old club of one Alex de la Iglesia that you might have heard about. (Yes, THAT Alex de la Iglesia. The world-famous movies director). I had a lot of fun playing one of his adventures…
Trust me, Maju, D&D was quite popular back then – yoy just didnt notice.
Oh, and better don’t tell other Bilbainos that you called Madrid and Barcelone “big cities” but didn’t so to Bilbao proper – they would assault you with a folded Bilbao worldmap, as the joke goes 😀
The “Crimen del Rol” was the 1994 trololo I mentioned, and no, it was NOT roleplaying nerds – it was an actual psycho who killed a good man. But yep, I lived that one too closely for comfort – back then I personally had to mediate to prevent university-related clubs to be shut down (won’t give more details in order not to doxx myself).
For the record, the thing that turned the tide of hate away from RPG players was the son of Mr. Moreno (the victim: no reason to utter the killer’s name and forget Mr. Carlos Moreno) heeding the advice that another of those mediators gave him of, “they (the TV vultures, Mercedes Mila to be exact) are trying to get you clamoring for blood, because THEY want blood; don’t fall for that”. Don Carlos had taught his son well enough to realize that, so in Mila’s TV show he called for prudence intead of for blood. THAT didnt go as Milá expected, didnt it?
Just because Maju is from the right area or the right era, doesn’t mean they were in the same groups to have personally associated with D&D until a much later time
I’ve heard of Alex de la Iglesia, of course. Apparently we frequented the same tavern at differnent chronologies and he used to have a presentation card with his profession being “dilettante”. He made a couple of good movies, three if you consider Perdita Durango to be so (I always had a soft spot for Rosie Perez cursing in Aramaic but that’s about it), then I lost track, woke up with that inquisitorial abhorrence of Zugarramurdi and for me he’s as good as dead. No idea he was into D&D, never met anyone who was into that my age or older. What a freak! XD
Whatever D&D was in the 80s, it was not “popular” but quite marginal. I was walking those streets very actively and meeting nearly everyone who matters, and many more who don’t matter, and also wargaming quite actively (and thus meeting many many “nerds” too) and never ever met anyone involved into D&D at all. De la Iglesia was definitely peculiar if he did, but of course he’s very unique.
In any case, what Wikipedia says on the matter is that: “It was also around this time, between 1986 and 1989, when he founded in Bilbao one of the first role-game clubs in Spain: Los Pelotas”. That’s very late in the 1980s, you must admit to that, and his was surely the only such club in all the Basque Country.
Good for Moreno Jr. to be able to see beyond the witch hunt, I guess. TBH, I never paid much attention to the whole issue: the D&D sphere was something totally out of most people’s radar, definitely mine.
@Guesticles: I’ve never been associated to D&D, for me fantasy genre is books and comics (which I did read in my teens, not just Tolkien but more importantly Conan and whoever was that guy who wrote the Dragonlance series) and then, two decades later, videogames.
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the Dragonlance series (based on D&D 😛 )
Out of idle curiosity, and because I know there’s a lot of ballitics nerds who follow the comic, would anyone care to hazard what loadings Brian is using? We know it’s out of a 3in barrel .357 magnum, but is he using .38s? How many grains? Jacketed hollow points, lead round nose?
The “classic” .357 load is a 125 grain JHP, but I think Brian is using .158 grain JSP .38 special.
We do know it is a .357, and we DO know that Brian is NOT a gun nut.
So, from a literary standpoint, we should asume he is using the most common load for the ammo that the gun was designed to fire, until and unless the author shows us otherwise. Not our personal favorite load.
Well, to be honest, I think the gun I was using for inspiration for Brian’s is currently loaded with .38. I used to keep it loaded with .357, but I was teaching my daughter (adult) to consider it the “go to” gun in the safe if something bad happens when I’m not around, and I knew the heavier loads might be a little too much for her. Honestly, there would be much better guns to choose, but a “point and click” revolver seems like the simplest choice for a smaller framed person who has shown very little interest in shooty-bangy things.
To be honest, Wormius, it seems a weird ammo choice for what we know was a bloody suicide gun, to even consider the recoil. From bitter experience, I know that the people who buys a gun to blow their heads off usually do NOT buy underload ammo to go with it. Yes, YOU may have a .357 loaded wth .38, but a guy who buys a gun to potentially use it against himself at a dark time of his life (as Brian has admitted he did) is more likely to load it with buffalo bore and to turn it into a crudely homemade dum-dum for extra “let’s make sure it splaters” value, than to underload it for accuracy at range.
That said, good choice on YOUR personal weapon.
Very good point… It probably was .357 loaded in there when Brian handed it to the DM. My flavor of choice was 12 gauge buckshot for that particularly low moment in my life. I, for an infinite number of reasons, am glad something inside me decided to stick around to see one more morning, just to see how it went. Then again, my life ever since that night has been such an amazing roller coaster, a part of me still wonders if this isn’t some sort of “occurrence at owl creek bridge” thing… You guys are real, right? 8)
Real enough to be paying taxes 😉
I figured it was .38s because they’re a cheap commonly available “do everything” round, and the kind of thing to have laying around after a trip to the range.
We’re glad you’re still around as well Mr. Hunter. It wouldn’t be the same without you.
“I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
Glad to have you still around, Andrew. Just so you know, I even quoted one of your lines (with full quotation credit, OF COURSE) in my last book. Because it was something that the MC choosed to cheer a friend up, “since I couldn’t find my own words, I quoted those of another tale”, she said. Good you did choose to stay around and give us quotable material yourself.
I just noticed, about an hour and a half after posting…
Wormius, the DM having changed the ammo from .357 to .38 (his oiginal guess) despite having no real reason to do so, JUST TO BE RIGHT, would be so hilariously in character for him, that unless you say otherwise, that shall be my headcanon
😀
If I can add my two penny-worth, Andy…I had a few such bad times when I was younger (much younger), and really low. Just a few times ending it all was fleetingly tempting. But first I too am driven – even now – by that urge to “know what happens next”, like every Monday with Delve. As shit as things are in the big wide world, or as sad as they sometimes are now in my life, I still have that desire to keep going. Also, thankfully, I live in a country where it isn’t that easy to find quick and all-too-easy ways to kill yourself. We don’t have loaded guns sitting on the shelf! And, no matter how grim it might seem at the time, life surprises us. You have shown that, with your artwork, imagination, humour, your Delve saga, of which we are all such big fans. Whatever the initial motives, you have created wonderful characters and story-lines, a fantasy world worthy of any of the mainstream writers. No one can take that away from you! Stay with us! Bree forever!
Ahh, the classic psycho’s ravings: “i’m not the one to blame, it’s you for allowing me (wanting me) to do it. this is all your fault!”
Brian: “SO, it’s your fault for not being a moving target”
> I’m Basque, from Bilbao
Not to get far off topic (well, yes, I am) mi suegra de Cedeira en Galicia had as her maiden patronymic-matronymic “last name” Arrivi Agrait.
Seem to have been a fair number of Basques moving westward.
Looking back, there’s a scene where Sephni summons Tuul to her tent to “serve” her (the curtain is drawn over just what that actually meant), but I notice now, as Sephni talks she has ‘Draxxorel’s’ mouth. So I’m guessing the immortality collar was him controlling her? Right back to when she was captive by the Drakons.
In the words of Admiral Akbar: Its a trap!
I’m sure that is not Sephni and she is going to take that knife to stab him when he gets close. That ‘help me’ was too strange and I don’t think she even cared that much at the end with that regeneration necklace on.
We all know that the Devourer can only be defeated by true love
https://www.delvecomic.com/comic/all-you-need-is-wuv/
And that this is the battle plan:
https://www.delvecomic.com/comic/battle-plan/
However, we do not what the Dracomage and Brian are capable of. A DM is almost almighty, but true love?
Who else is getting Bill Cypher vibes from this guy?
Bullets with the magic of caring are more effective
Alternate title: Brian Lets the Devourer Know What He Thinks