Whew!
It’s been quite a journey getting here.
Thank you all for the kind words and helpful advice as we look toward a new era in the world of the Delve. I hope that, in the coming weeks and months ahead, you’ll all stick around to see where we go from here.
I think I would like to get back to something a bit more light-hearted and fun, though there will still be moments of pathos interwoven with the narrative no doubt, but the story I’m envisioning is one more intimately tied to the natives of the world rather than the ghosts of another world who have crossed the gulf between.
I’d like to see what life is like for those who can’t break the rules of the game, so to speak.
In any case, I’m kinda brain-fried at the moment, so I won’t ramble on too long.
That being said, we do have one more visit to pay before we begin our journey to the future. There is still the matter of a couple of cats, last seen in the Grayside who need to make their way home again, and, as per tradition, I’m certain Mister Prancy will be happy to explain everything to the longsuffering Sir Branwell.
In short, if you have any questions about the story so far, please respond here and Prancy will do his best to explain things in next week’s comic.
Thank you, and I love you all!
I think I need a nap.
Sartre was right: Hell are other people, especially when those people but also yourself are petty and selfish. “No Exit” is a great play. Never watched it but read it avidly several times in my youth, along with the other play that came in the same book: “The Respectful Prostitute”, which is about patriarchy and racism in the southern USA in the days of McCarthyism.
I could never get myself to read “Nausea” however: the main character seemed mentally too weird for me.
Some say that Sartre improved a lot after he abandoned Existentialism, which tends to Nihilism, for Marxism, which is more optimistic, humanistic and idealist. I’m not expert enough to judge.
Whatever the case I agree: Hell’s architects are total lunatics.
Sartre seemed another writer/philosopher you probably can only appreciate when you’re young, like 15 to 16 maybe, otherwise reality kicks in and you have more important things to think about. I read “Nausea” but now can’t remember a thing about it, it was more than over half a century ago. His “Roads to Freedom” trilogy I still have, the final “Iron in the Soul” making the biggest impression on me.
Dear DM, I so love how you get such a range of expressions and emotions from just two eyes and a mouth. Great dialogue, love it! Lines like “I kinda miss the sex dungeons” have a sort of immortal ring to them. And Teal, who always cares, who looks as gorgeous as ever naked, especially panel….um, lost count…22? Where she says “Now look”, with her boobies swinging about…. Delightful, and then we get doubly spoilt with a full-frontal Incentive Art. The last two panels are….interesting….Challenging, thought-provoking, clever….
So, we have next week to look forward to, and then new adventures, new characters, new direction.
Hopefully, you will continue to give us the occasional glimpses into Bree (and perhaps Paige and Teal’s) past deeds extra to the new main story. It has been a long, long journey. and endings are always rather emotional.
What abut the sword-girls?
If I wasn’t confused before, I sure as heck am now!
She’s leading her to The Mother. Remember that Teal died and was brought back to life by her… long ago.
Interesting….That could make sense.
Rather than Hell, D.M. is more likely to be in Limbo.
Limbo looks even worse than Hell. Sooooooo boring!
I love how the horns, as they fly off, seem to gain wings to fly.
I love Teal — period.
Actually, if you look at the previous panel, those ‘wings’ are still part of the horns, they have always had three points
Yes, but in the second-to-last picture, it seems to me that they have changed nature in the epiphany of the moment and the horns are now flying — not “off” but flying.
They are breaking up and falling away
Interesting, I don’t think that’s Brian… but almost surely a greyside human?? I wonder what their story is (note: Not assuming gender)?
This one tugged at the ol’ heartstrings, not gonna lie.
Obviously it’s not Brian, Brian is the new DM
I don’t care if the afterlife looks like how far the lazy neighbor kids got on their tree house, Teal and Kitty might be back…? Yay!
And the forever DM finally gets to put the screen away and play for a change. But like my DM always said – if you gotta go, go with a naked slime girl!
Question for Prancy: Why don’t the anthropomorphic inhabitants of the Delve world have areola? Always wondered.
Too much hair?
Or maybe, like with dear Teal, they are the same colour as their ‘skin’
Such an angelic beauty 🙂
All heil Prancy-Who-Knows-Everything!
Question to him: do valrins trio really want to go back into Abyss? After they abandoned their hunt and ignored “only 1 survives” rule?
They changed the hunt, not abandoned it, and don’t believe “only 1 survives” was ever a rule
It’s not “Highlander” 😛
“Until only 1 survives to tell the tale” WAS their rule. They are ignoring it because the Hunt ENDED when they found the Devourer had returned. Then they restarted their fundational mission (of which the Hunt was merely a replacement to pass their time, not even saying that in jest) of pwning Draxorel well pwn3d. They finished it, too, so it’s their turn to return, gloriously, to tell the tale not of the glory of a mere Hunt, but of their final, very, very final, victory against their sworn enemy. And to find a new way to pass time. Maybe a new Hunt, maybe something else, since the Hunt was, as stated, a mere replacement to pas time and avoid turning into each other, and they now found NEW ways to keep themselves occupied, like teaching others (the Orcs for starters) not to be noobs in the battlefield.
Don’t remember it being a hard rule that only one could return
What happens if they complete the hunt with more than one Valryn? Turn on each other? Didn’t you say that that was the original reason for The Hunt?
Didn’t a whole bunch of them survive The Hunt to find Nog? When they first parted ways with Breen? After she rudely killed their dragon with a rock!!
That’s the thing, they never “complete” the hunt – they keep hunting and hunting new things (comic 79, one-shot and confrmed in comic 95, fire-dance) ’till there’s only one left (that particular point is confirmed VERY emphatically by Tess in comic 398, rabbit-hole). After finding Nog they simply kept hunting. (again,comic 95)
No, I don’t have a supermemory to remember all the Delve trivia, that¡s what the search by character tag is 😀
Okay, thank you
Didn’t remember the Highlander part of it: so basically, there can only be one from each generation? Makes breeding the next generation difficult…
Not “from each generation”. From each group that takes the Hunt. And we have no specifics of how they organise those – other than Tess mentioning “their training” and “everyone I grew up with” (comic 390, confession) which may or may not be literal. Since there are others to TRAIN the youngs and they have to return to TELL the tale, it follows that not ALL of then take the hunt at the same time. (Obvious. Or else there would be noone to train, nobody to return to). From here we could especulate, but from that point onwards t’s just that- especulation.
Lielly the ones who return from a hunt stay instead of taking a new hunt? And maybe the hunters (who we know trained and grew up together) are like our schools, maybe there are sevral of them and several hunts at the same time. We don’t know. Here your headcanon is as good as mine 🙂
So, who was the *original* DM?
That was kinda my question too.
Someone
Neither. It’s implied or at least I infered that they are soul bonded or paired for reasons beyond us. If they didn’t combine into a single entity I presume one either enhances or replaces the other. Thus either becoming a new entity, enhancing the delver or replacing them. I’d even hedge my bets and suggest all of this is simply some form of afterlife. Greyside being purgatory and the Delveside being some other part of the after life. It all seems interplanar enough. But to be fair that’s a lot of leaps of logic on my end.
Love the look of Teal leaning in panel 23. Guess we’re closing the chapter on her and the OG DM.
…And sidenote just realized how many panels this page was divided into.
I thought the DM merged with his greysider half. I’m very confused.
Nope, DM pushed (or threw, can’t remember which) Brian through the door after giving him their gloves to open the door
No, Brian fell through the opened door, the DM threw Sephni after him, and then stood in the doorway saying “Good luck, Dungeon Master.” It’s quite clear the two remained separate. But once Brian was in the Delve world presumably the power of the gauntlets changed him into the new DM. Simples.
Teal is the cutest, kindest slime-girl ever.
What about her sister?
Do you mean Rosa, who was horrid to Bree, hated people in general, and got zapped by the Drakons?
That’s the one, she had a cute beret
Thank you for sharing you story, Andrew.
Not quite the resolution I was expecting for DM, but glad to see he’s not left in the void forever. As for Prancy and Phawkes, no questions only love. They we’re some of my favorites besides Dm and Brian.
What happened in the Greyside after Jen died? Did they group keep playing?
How was everyone turned to stone?
Did Brian know the person the Devourer was? Or was that how he saw himself?
I think the D&D group broke up after the tragic events of that night. Everyone turned to stone because Sephni used the power of the Elvish throne to “protect” everyone in her kingdom, a throne that another character was quite anxious to get his claws on until some pesky elven rogue put a dragonslaying arrowhead through his flame gland. Brian doesn’t know who the Devourer really was, but he saw him as an unpleasant person from his past because the Devourer was forced to draw things from Brian’s mind to build his stronghold, the same way that the Dracomage could only pull allies from Brian’s fears (At least until the Devourer weakened the walls of Brian’s environment via the spilling of Brian’s blood and the DM was then able to contact some old henchmen, and Teal was able to reach out to an old friend). I hope that helps explain some things.
Despair… DIS PAIR OF NUTS!!!