Thread 149695772

It's a bit too late for regret now, Sonorie.

>>149695772 (OP)
Cresce hungers for blood.

>>149695772 (OP)
Unsounded? More like I'd rather get sounded than read this fuckass comic

>>149695772 (OP)
I'll never understand how Sonorie grew so fond of him. I guess seeing how much he suffered in order to bring down the Alds.

>>149695806
He was a generally nice dude that willingly sacrificed himself to a rape snake that slowly dissolved his entire essence on the off chance his sacrifice would lead to a better future for both of the warring nations.

Website comment:
>FIVE pages today, keep clicking forward! I’ll update again on Wednesday, then do a skip. Thank you!

>Have you checked out the Unsounded Kickstarter campaign page [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ironspike/summer-2025-mystery-project]? Consider giving it a follow! The campaign will be launching in less than a month!

>-Ashley
Patreon comment:
>Five pages today! I wrote this scene a VERY long time ago, and it was supremely satisfying to finally draw it and have it more or less look how it had in my head for so many years. I do love a tormented leader of men. I love the raw and demanding hunger of the aroused crowd.

>Okay! So! Kickstarter was pushed back one day to TUESDAY. If you are following the campaign page you should get an email as soon as it goes live but I will ALSO update here as soon as I know it's ready to go. I'm excited! It's so soon!

>https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ironspike/summer-2025-mystery-project

>I wound up not making that sequestered Chapter 1 I had mentioned. With all the payment processor drama, we decided it was safest not to link to the comic at all on the campaign page. Sucks, no? I imagine a lot of people thought this drama had nothing to do with them, they don't read smut, but you see it even chills regular old adult fiction that dares to address sensitive subject matter. So feel free to be mad that payment processors are controlling what media you're allowed to make, sell, and buy. It ain't right, guys.

>I'll update here on Tuesday! Eyes peeled!

And in the end, the snake was right.

>>149695902
>>And all along, the snake was right.

>>149695808
DEATH
DEATH TO THE BUGGERING SIMPERING WORM
ROGER
FOI
HELLICK

>>149695902
>And in the end, the snake was right.
>>149695915
>And all along, the snake was right.
t.

>>149695780
Those Crescians should watch out for that rape snake right there.

>>149695806
Roger gave up sanity, then soul, and finally body for the cause, yet he will go down in history as a villain in both Alderode and Cresce. Sonorie cries because he deserves better, and she's one of the few who will ever know it.

>>149695806
Sonorie seems pretty consistently empathetic even if it leads to her making some fucked choices.

>>149695790
Can anyone make out the full text of Maha's biography?

>>149695816
Ufal really helped her out here.

>>149696348
I mean he kind of has too as much as he doesn't want this going out of control. Having the crowd collapsing in on itself is much worse.

>>149696320
>even now, as I finally complete the excruciating, drawn out murder of this man, I am thinking how it affects me

>>149696320
[A]fter a reign spent predominantly in her Grandmother's [shadow] Maha is best remembered today for her [*]ing and monstrous final acts. In the face of professed [love? distance? Roger] Third Consort, and after making a great show of the [constructs?] brought with him from his family's FM [mines*** with?] her own hand burned Third Consort [***] though it was at the time [***] a [***soli]darity against Alderode, Cresce's ruling [nobility?] took it to heart as an icy threat agains any further actions against her agenda. They were cowed, and the people looked with new eyes upon their ageing Queen; a figure that had [proved?] capable of anything, even fina[lly] undoing the murderous North [**].
Thoug earlier in her [reign?***]

>>149696076
DIE YOU SIMPERING WORM!!

>>149696399
You gotta accept that Roger was a willing participant in this, man.

>>149696465
So was the queen.

>>149696430
>Maha is best remembered today for her [chill]ing and monstrous final acts.
>though it was at the time [***] a [show of? demonstration of? display of? soli]darity against Alderode

This is all I can add.

>>149696399
She's not crying for herself, man. She's crying because of the final bit here:
>>149695790
>The Queen's greatest fear
>was that they intended us exactly as we are

The Queen's subplot has been consumed with the tension between mankind's better nature and its violent urges. Roger is gone, there's nothing to cry over. But the tears are because this is not how she hoped it would go. Having to galvanize a populace with their hatred of him. Hearing their demands for his dead and suffering. The Etalarche Curse has no effect on Cresce, yet the fundamental thing the curse preys upon lives there too. Maha wants a better world, but the best she can do is appease and direct its worst impulses.

I'm also fond of the few faces showing sadness or shock among the crowd. There's some people there not driven by hate and blood lust. Nowhere near as many, and nowhere near enough, but some.

>>149695780
kino page

>>149696430
>after making a great show of the [constructs?] brought with him
I think this part, the word you're thinking is constructs ends with an l. And I'm not sure construct is the best fit anyway since they started as raw materials when he gave them to her. Material is my best guess but that sounds awkward over materials.
>In the face of professed [love? distance? Roger] Third Consort
I think this part might say love for, and leave off Roger's name altogether.

>>149696121
A traitorous simpering worm deserves much worse.

Does killing him break the curse or are people still gonna go mad at his name knowing he's dead?

>>149695780
Rape snake bros we can't stop winning.

What does the crowd think of him laughing like a maniac? They have no idea at all why, right?

>>149696623
>was that they intended us exactly as we are
Also known as 'Ssael was right'

>>149697013
Alds are just like that

>>149696961
My understanding is they'll still hate him and curse his name, but they won't be going into a murder frenzy anymore. Even when that happened in the comic, it was only when they thought there was actually an opportunity for them to kill him. Say his name in the capital and they're not going to just run off in whatever direction they think he is to try and kill him, because they understand that they don't have an imminent cause to do so. Now that he's dead, they're never going to believe they have the opportunity to kill him, so the curse will never affect them to that level. He'll just go on being a universally despised figure in history.

>>149696961
His name is poison anyway, enough time with the cultural memory of hate has destroyed any semblance of meaning to why, it is enough to say because they felt it, it will remain justifiable hate.
The curse is broken, but the memories remain.

>>149696961
Killing Roger's soul ended the self destructive violent rage. Remember, it was Ruck they targeted in the end, not him. But after that, everything >>149697166 said goes.
>>149697013
That he's been heavily drugged in preparation for this as one final mercy by the queen, I presume. I'm not sure how his laughter here works though. There's nothing going on upstairs anymore, so how and what is he reacting to?

>>149697166
Honestly, I see no reason why they would believe that Roger is dead. Do they feel it through the Khert? Otherwise, it'd be RIDICULOUSLY simple to keep the viciousness alive. They'd just need to think: what, are they supposed to trust that the bitch-queen executed the great traitor? Please. It's all just a show, and Roger is still alive, pulling the strings from behind the scenes! We need to find that strawberry asshole OURSELVES and WRING the life out of him, and only THEN will we be sure!

You can keep a legend like that alive for centuries, especially with the instinctual rage all Alds feel for him. All you need are tenuous excuses to latch on to.

>>149697013
>Alas, poor Roger! I knew him, Ufal: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning?

>>149697221
>I'm not sure how his laughter here works though. There's nothing going on upstairs anymore, so how and what is he reacting to?
It could just be in Sonorie's head, like how she imagines him in his armor on the first page. The state of mind she's in right now, it wouldn't be a stretch for her brain to parse any screams of pain as mocking laughter.

Or, it's simply a stress response. Humans get weird under pressure.

>gaslighting
he was right, though

>>149697221
We saw him in bed when the shit in the city was going down. He was already fully gone by then, but he was laughing then, too. The truth is, we don't know how this should work, because the condition is unique to the world of Unsounded. The body is whole, but the soul is gone. He's not brain dead as we understand the term. I suppose it's just neurons firing randomly, but with the entire brain involved, without the soul there to guide it. Whatever's left of him doesn't know how to respond as a person, but physically all the proper behavior is on file in his brain. Maybe it's pure luck that he didn't start reciting word salad poetry.

>>149697525
Bro, it's literally soul magic. His soul is gone. The curse ended the moment Ruck swallowed him. That also means every Ald KNOWS he is dead.

>>149697525
Given how the Curse plays upon their psychic new type flashes in the khert, but it worked just as well at ginning them up even when he was nowhere nearby, one assumes there's still some lingering effect. Consequently we can guess that they'll never "feel" him dying, except those nearby (if that's really a thing Alds can do). There's an entire country who will never experience that, so it's not like death can have some sort of universal, pymaric effect

But KNOWING he's dead probably puts some damper on it, or constrains the ways you can abuse it. We saw Vampire freely talk about his experience with the last target without any problem, so it definitely fades with time or distance. I imagine you can still use it for awhile to get people, but some will eventually be born without the effect and those old enough will probably develop, like Vampire, enough self awareness to prevent it from making them explode like it used to.

>>149697794
To quote another ruthless lizard:
>Out of all the stories you told me, which ones that you told me were true and which ones weren't?
>My doctor, they all were true.
>Even the lies?
>Especially the lies.

>>149697794
We're talking about gaslighting in a more nuanced, broad effect. Presumably, specifically about what her intentions with Bell were. Ruck thinks he knows, that she wanted the blood and violence he would bring. But in truth she just wanted him crazier to ruin his reputation and her own short sightedness and lack of imagination prevented her from understanding what the fallout would be. This does not, in the end, make her actions actual any better in a moral sense, but it does mean the person who made them was not some cold minded warmonger who was fine with what happened and welcomed it.

Ruck's talk kept in that vein. Much like Starfish, he had a twisted vision of the target of his "affection" that was at odds with the actual person. Ruck is older, more subtle, and more experienced at it, but the interaction was the same: twist the person life and actions in order to present them a narrative shorn of nuance and entirely self serving for the speaker.

>>149697966
>twist the person life and actions in order to present them a narrative shorn of nuance
ruck really does post here

>>149697935
We actually have no idea what the queen did we the constructs.

>>149697946
Til bigoted bajorans bake bloated blasphemy here.

>>149695849
this, he's a rare grand heroic figure in this bleak ass story.

>>149698791
Toma and Jivi are pretty fond of grand heroism too.

>>149695805

Pearls before swine.

Nothing truly good came come from.. picking apart a man so good as Roger.

they used everything of him, body, mind, soul, and most of all his legacy, how can you really make a great future on the back of such a neat, and total ruination?

I suppose that's why she see's Ruck here gloating, her cementing and finishing this horrific final act of defiling a good man and pretty much everyone jeering and screaming for it in the crowd means he was right, at least this time.

To me, the Sonorie isn't trying to convince the crowd, or herself that all this was worth it, but Roger and the history books to come.

On a long reread. I originally stopped reading Unsounded somewhere around the first shrine chapter, came back in and caught up around the finale, and rereading from the start I'm back up to just past the Deadly Nevergreen.

I've got a couple of questions about Murkoph/Ilganyag I wanted to run by the thread. I don't have a lot of context for Ashley's Q&A info, the last time I checked any of that I think it was still a Formspring. So I just wondered if anyone could fill me in or give more info.

First, this is my understanding:
>Lady Ilganyag had a relationship with a human that spawned Sette and Jacaranda as these infinitely repeating lives and turned the khert into what it is now
>Lady Ilganyag also seems to have had a relationship with what Murkoph once was before he ended up being a cannibalistic serial killer
The first part sounds like what could have been turned into the Ssael myth, but I don't think we ever get direct confirmation that the man Ilganyag rewrote the khert with was Ssael. But we know Murkoph is definitely not Ssael and I think Ashley even commited to 'hand on heart I am not doing he's not Ssael *anymore* wordplay or anything like that'.

It feels a little weird for me Ilganyag would have hooked up with two separate humans, but maybe it shouldn't. She is/was the patron of a whole bunch of them. But in my head it's like:
>Ilganyag did the khert rewrite with Ssael, Murkoph is a different man she hooked up with
>Ilganyag did the khert rewrite with someone else, Murkoph is the remnant of that person
>Ilganyag did the khert rewrite with Ssael or someone else, Murkoph is not that person, Murkoph might not actually be human at all but just the current form of some older senet beast or something
Is there any particular support for either of these that I don't know about?

>>149698865
"The Man" seemed to have instantly forgot everything once they changed the Khert.

SSael however seems deeply aware of all the mysteries of the world and has/had a plan for it.

Murkoph is likely someone who got fucked with by Lady llganyag or another Senat beast, likely in an attempt to make somehting like what Duane is, but something, soul or memories were transfered into the sentient corpse.

either way he's still deeply entwined with her whether he wants to or not and still relaying her will even after she got blown up (even if that is just a temporary, but long setback for her existence)

>>149698880
OK, thank you. I did look up in desuarchive a bit but couldn't find much more. It's really funny the accepted fandom name for the dude involved in the khert rewrite is just "The Man".

>>149698105
She says it'll not cost any Crescian lives so I can only assume:
>destabilizing the dammakhert
>etalarche'ing the ssaelit and gefendur Alds to go ham on each other

>>149698963
>rortidians kill eachother
>alderode becomes a Tainish ethnostate
One can only hope.

>>149695772 (OP)
>>149695780
Are they actually cheering or is she hallucinating them like she's hallucinating the snake

>>149698996
>Duane's aldish nationalism is facing a crisis
>Just in time for him to discover a bright future as a soud nationalist
pottery

>>149698865
>>149698880
Ashley has indicated pretty strongly that "The Man" was indeed replaced by the person who would become Ssael, but because of the reality overwrite they are for all intents and purposes different people. Even aside from the memory fuckery, it's quite possible that they didn't have continuity of consciousness.

>>149699321
It'll be cool to finally see the Mmatont.

>>149698865
Not direct confirmation in the story but Ashley has pretty much said that The Man was a pre-reboot Ssael and after him and Ilganyag fucked up the khert he got wiped and replaced with Ssael who was horrified by the state of the world

>>149699109
I think their cheers are real. Seems like a thing people would do at a high profile execution of a hated figure.
>>149698963
Can't make the curse work on the soud without rewriting the dammakhert entirely. I suspect that even with the resources they do have, that's beyond them, and they will only be able to retool and harness the etalarche curse towards the rest of the Alds. But that will be enough.

>>149698865
Murkoph is not Ssael, Ashley has been pretty adamant on that from the beginning. Not even in a technicality sort of way, Murkoph is not a version of Ssael in any possible way. The fact he has Ssaelit face scarring means he had to have existed after his death and the establishment of Ssaelism. Murkoph is not secretly another character that was mentioned, Murkoph is his own character whose backstory we currently do not know.

>>149700275
And blamed Ilganyang for it. So at least the desire to blame higher beings for the ills of the world is very consistent between Ssael and the man.

>>149698996
Don't think that would ever be a possibility because Souds are such a minority in the Aldish caste system, the Dammakhert fuckery means the only way to make more Soud is to keep it within their own, they don't even get any benefit from the territory expansion.

>>149700306
>Murkoph is not secretly another character that was mentioned, Murkoph is his own character whose backstory we currently do not know.
We know there's a living Murkoph in the story coming up, right? So isn't it likely a family name?

>>149700335
There are tains living outside of Alderode. They will reclaim their lands, you'll see.

>>149700374
In a disputed territory that no one else on the continent except maybe Sharteshane would care to make the distinction about.

>>149700335
They have a solid chance if they join forces with Cresce. Right now they're in a civil war against the rest of Alderode, it's not like they have much to lose. I wonder if what queen's about to propose Duane is soud independence in exchange for their loyalty. Having a weak, insignificant faction of ssaelit living up north fits Crescian agenda pretty well. And it's not like the queen gives a single shit about what her church might say on the matter.

>>149700643
>They have a solid chance if they join forces with Cresce
They're already a maligned minority viewed with suspicion by the rest of Alderode because they're immune to Dammakhert fuckery, even a whiff of them siding with their mortal enemies would only mean immediate genocide. Not to mention they already have issues with Aldish geffies seeing as they're already almost entirely ssaelit, they're not going to even consider siding with geffies of an enemy nation.

>>149700698
>would only mean immediate genocide
Isn't that what's already planned for them by their fellow alds? The bird's vision painted a pretty bloody picture.

>>149695816
God damn, why is that guy such a boss? Someone make him King already.

this is painfully bad and soulless. can't even do an epilogue right and gotta set it up for 10 more years of slop.

>>149701196
Those that would make the best kings are rarely made kings.

>>149701196
Ufal is really good at rolling with Sonorie's punches and managing things but I think he'd crack if he actually had to be in charge. And then Toma would lose shirt privileges.

>>149700781
I wouldn't trust anything that's come from her at face value, especially when she was using that to explicitly manipulate Duane

>>149698963
I thought the idea was to inverse the etalarche to make the Alds love Cresce. Forget where I got this notion though.

>>149701239
Sorry you don't have anywhere else to post this anon.

>>149701831
Yeah it's pretty interesting how much of that conversation you have to treat with total suspicion now.

>>149700305
>I think their cheers are real. Seems like a thing people would do at a high profile execution of a hated figure.
One of the things I noticed on rereading was there's like an auto-da-fe going on in Alderode both when Duane takes Mikaila to the temple and when they're taking revenge on Duane's 'killers'. Made me wonder if that's just constant in Durlyne, just every single day they publically torture and execute people.

>>149703529
It wouldn't surprise me. The Aldish are a sick people.

>>149703529
The only sick thing is that noble Alds are forced to stain their hands with such extremity to counteract the disgusting influence of the Crescian bitch-queen.

>>149700306
>The fact he has Ssaelit face scarring means he had to have existed after his death and the establishment of Ssaelism
The body he's in, anyway.

>>149703529
Public executions used to be common entertainment back in the day. People would dress up and bring their children, sometimes they'd go to the next town over just to catch them.

That said, I imagine it's a lot more common (and gruesome) in Alderode, given how it's a pressure cooker of a nation that's always one bad day away from pogroms and civil war. There's a much bigger need for their government to both put on a show, and to make examples of anyone who steps out of line. Keep them distracted and keep them scared.