Kobold King

People base dragon habits on crocodiles or birds of prey most of the time. What about colonial nocturnal dragons based on bats?

You've seen my human!Starlight Glimmer, right? I am not an art person.

I'm not competing, but she's really good. By the way, was there anything you wanted changed about the Unicyclist's inclusion in that last post?

And then Nightowl's Bane died.

Darn it Twi. Everybody else in the house is asleep and I'm genuinely having trouble restraining myself from laughing loudly enough to wake them all up.

Is your best guess "with terror"? If so, give yourself a pat on the back for correctly judging Backtrack's entire character arc! Calamity spoilers:

I would be entirely okay with that.

Genus, actually. Though you are to be forgiven as there's only one species in it. (My brother at this point knows to question every fantasy name I suggest to him with the query "What latin name did you rip this off from?")

Portland post up! No Safety Dance parody, sadly, but hopefully you'll enjoy it. Voidus: I wrote the Backtrack post with the assumption I think we've talked about before, namely, that MV isn't much more eager to jump out and get swept up in the Empire's business than Backtrack is. Do correct me if I'm wrong. TwiLyght: if anything about the Unicyclist's actions in this post need changing, don't hesitate but to say the word and I will make the change. Chouta: you are singlehandedly responsible for me remembering Chicago Joe and deciding to incorporate him back into the story. I lay this upon your head.

Portland was a quiet city. When the people weren't screaming in mortal terror or laughing in maniacal glee, that was. The people on the street gave Backtrack and MV a wide berth, not because they recognized them as being super-dangerous Epics working for even more super-dangerous Epics--because they probably didn't look the part--but simply because they seemed to give everyone a wide berth. There was no talking on the street. There was no mingling. There were no couples holding hands or merchants selling their wares. And a peak into the past showed that that was pretty much just how people lived around here. Here in Portland you were part of a neverending flow of humanity from one building to another, with the path from point A to point B taken with your head down and your posture as non-threatening as possible. After the military-grade liveliness of The Dalles... it was actually a little disquieting. Backtrack found himself subconsciously mimicking the passerby's posture as he walked, and took to taking peaks into the more distant past to boost his confidence. It didn't help. MV was stiff and acting mad at him again, and peering far enough into the past to see pterodactyls just reminded him of what he'd have to face again at the end of the walk. Also his stomach was starting to growl a bit because he hadn't had breakfast. Which happened a lot on the road but dampened any remote enjoyment he could have had from walking close to a smoking hot she-Epic. Portland sucked. Eventually MV stopped in her tracks, and Backtrack froze along side her. They were at the end of a street, staring out over the next block which seemed abandoned by both residents and pedestrians. In the center of it was the crater where once stood a museum, and high, high above it hovered the bobbing fortress of the wacko Epics. "Neither of us have a way to get up there," MV pointed out. "Great plan." Without warning she punched him in the shoulder, in a way that seemed kind of playful but still kind of hurt a bit and made him rub his arm and frown. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?" she asked, sounding like she genuinely expected one. It was probably fair to assume he had one, since he'd been the one to insist on coming back here. He actually didn't have one. At all. "I, uh..." MV just turned red and faced herself pointedly away from him, scowling into the abandoned city sector. Backtrack winced and went back to staring at the museum, feeling more hopeless than ever. Then the Museum fell from the sky. It happened suddenly, starting with a lurch and accelerating into a horrifying death-dive from the heavens that made a kind of low meteor whooshing sound that was hard to make out but Backtrack could swear he heard it! It fell like a brick, then slowly slowed in its descent as if someone had set off a parachute. It came to float just above the cracked asphalt, its doors swinging open and the shapes of dinosaurs starting to spill out onto the street. Backtrack felt a little bit like passing out, but instead he grabbed MV by the hand and suddenly pulled her into one of the abandoned buildings lining the street. He slammed a door that hadn't been slammed in years behind them, leaving them alone in a darkened dusty old motel with no light source but the cracked window they were standing beside. She turned red, of course, and looked like she was about to shout his head off and punch him in the jaw. Backtrack winced but managed to work up the nerve to put a finger up to her lips, eyes wide and heart racing. "They're leaving!" he hissed in a frantic whisper. "That means they're going out to do stuff. Bad stuff. And by bad I mean it'll get us killed if they decide to take us along with them." He peered out the broken glass for as long as he dared, as the Epics of the Museum left and began their trek into a part of the city Backtrack hadn't explored. They were far enough away that he had trouble making them out--whispering probably wasn't necessary, but you never knew which Epics might secretly have super-hearing without you knowing. Lightwards came out first, escorted by what seemed a whole herd of mismatched dinosaurs. Then came the magician and his cute assistant, and then the... guy with the unicycle and the bagpipes. For a moment Backtrack felt a shudder at not seeing the scariest of the Epics with the rest of them, but he comforted himself--with what comfort it was--with flipping through the immediate past and seeing the two of them leaving not long ago. That left the Museum free of most of the really terrible slontzes. "Let's wait till they've gotten away a bit," he continued in his whisper, "and then just hang around in the Museum a while until they show up again. That way we get a day off and look really loyal when they get back." He coughed, suddenly aware that he was passing out orders. "If, uh, that seems like a good idea to you. You're in charge." The people of Portland were of course to be surprised when the Empire of Light intruded upon their streets. Perhaps they were accustomed to Epics who prowled at night rather than the early morning. Perhaps they were simply caught unawares by having beasts from the long distant past corral them and cut off their escape routes at either end of their street. Perhaps they'd built their homes at a tiresome enough walk from the Museum that they weren't expecting Epics to break into their homes of an early morning. Whatever they'd expected, it all came crashing down into their own personal hell this morning. Their homes were built together like apartment complexes, complexes which now blazed around their heads with their families huddled terrified inside. Their scents mingled with the smoke of their houses, driving the raptors and Allosaurus waiting outside for them into a frenzy. Their screams rang discordantly with the bagpipes playing as a madman rolled down the halls of the building and burned it from the inside out. Many of them managed to stampede out of the buildings, either evading the flames or else seeing the destruction from the next house over and taking a chance at survival before the fire could spread. Most of these fell to dinosaurs who ran them down and killed them on the street. Their bodies were mangled and divided between the pack in moments. But a few... a lucky few... were strong men and women with guns who felt brave enough to raise them towards the Epics in the middle of the street as they came out. These were picked off by the magician with the keen eye and the sniper rifle from his sleeve, but their story did not end so bleakly. Lightwards had their bodies hauled closer to him by his raptors, and with caring, put an end to the horrific confusion of their morning. "I am your savior now," he whispered, channeling his power into a dead woman. He yanked a bloodied crucifix from around her neck, studied it in dispassionate interest for a moment, and tossed it aside into a street that was increasingly stained with blood and ash. The woman herself stood back up with a certain stiffness, raising her rifle once more in service of the Emperor of Light. About seven such Warriors now stood around the Emperor, all fresh and ready for battle. Lightwards looked around the street, smelling the air and considering the destruction. An entire street depopulated before noon. Progress. He raised a pistol towards what seemed to be a huge dog carrying a crying toddler out of a house and into the safety of the far end of the street, but lowered it as the pair rounded a corner out of sight. They were of no consequence. A few vanillas had undoubtedly escaped in all the commotion or through back doors, but they would only serve to spread fear of the name Lightwards far and wide across the city. I will need living soldiers to take this city, he mused. At least until my limits have been surpassed. My success with Funtimes' girl can be replicated. Living men may serve me out of fear if not as extensions of my will... "You are seeming quite appeased by the morning's work," Aldo the Enigmatic observed, cheerily shrinking his rifle and stowing it away in his clothes. He had no visible pockets, but this didn't seem to stop him from producing an endless assortment of lethal tools from his thin attire. "There is something to be said for it," Lightwards responded, stepping over a severed arm. "If is satisfying to have one's presence known." What sounded like crying was silenced by a burst of fire and a screaming blast of the bagpipes, and the Unicyclist rolled out of the last smoldering house on the street. He did circles in the asphalt between piled body remnants for a minute, before rolling to face Lightwards with the dispassionate gaze of a man wearing a blood-spattered Darth Vader mask. "You have done well," Lightwards told him. "Your life is weighed in the lives you claim for me. Remember that." The Unicyclist played a couple of notes on the bagpipes in response, which was... at least vaguely respectful, Lightwards supposed. Satisfied he turned away from the strange Epic and surveyed the streets. "I had hoped some lesser Epics would be drawn out by the destruction," he continued, frowning in slight disappointment. Perhaps none of them cared enough to test their mettle against us." "I would hardly blame them," Aldo said with a smile. "But if they're clever enough to have made that judgment call, they'll be by your side in no time at all." Flattery. Lightwards let it slide. "Maybe we just need to burn something more interesting than a bunch of poorhouses," Cricket muttered, grinding a human femur under her shoe in idle disinterest. "Poorhouses are only where it begins," Lightwards snapped. "A war is waged not against armies but against the people who back them. Once the people of Portland fear me more than they fear the cowardly invulnerable and the secluded illusionist, the city itself will be mine as surely as if I held a Warrior in every home." He strode away from her down the street, his raptors perking their heads up and following in anticipation of his anger. "Do not presume to question my strategy. I have pondered my goals for a long time, little Epic. I--" "Ya burned down Wellard Street! Why the sparks wouldja burn down Wellard Street?" Lightwards swiveled in place, feeling the itch of a smile at the challenge. Finally, one of Portland's lower Epics answered the call. "Who demands to know--" He cut off mid-sentence, no longer certain he was interested in the answer. The challenger did not strike the image of a classic Epic. The challenger was, in a word, a hobo. Like once inhabited every city in the Fractured States, lurking in the grassy patches outside Walmarts and begging for change on every street corner. He wore patchy clothes. His face was dark and wrinkled and slightly scruffy with grey hair. His gait was nothing more than a stagger, and his smell was potent enough to be noticeable on a street where people had just been burned alive. Lightwards, as he was being accustomed to, felt slightly cheated. "What concern is it of yours," he asked, annoyed and exasperated, "what streets I choose to destroy? I have the right to this city and these people." "But this is Wellard Street," the hobo hiccuped. "The people here let me eat their scraps sometimes. And they don't have nothin'." The man was quite clearly drunk, and if not an Epic, insane. It was Cricket who made her voice known again. "Are you secretly the most powerful Epic in Portland to be talking to us like this, or are you just dumb?" "Ah'm an Epic," the man belched. "Name's Chicago Joe, ma'am." Lightwards raised an eyebrow at the antiquated name... and the name itself. "Are you here to challenge us," he spat, striding closer to the man, "or merely to revolt us?" "Actually," the smelly Epic replied, "Ah'm here to join ya. Heard yer the new Epics in town. None of the others want me." "I wonder why," Lightwards growled. "Are you actually gifted by Calamity, or is the word 'Epic' used more liberally in this town than I knew?" Chicago Joe turned to stone, becoming indistinguishable from a particularly ugly statue. Aldo whistled. "Self transmutation. Not common." "Not useful, either." Lightwards grumbled. "...Joe, was it? Can you hear me?" The hobo statue turned back to flesh in a blink. "Sure can. So do Ah get the job?" "I'm considering it." Lightwards considered it. With a sigh, he made his decision. "I will accept your service, Joe. Know that you serve and live at my mercy alone. And my mercy is not cheap." Chicago Joe only grunted, which did not make himself more appealing as a minion. "You may begin to purchase my mercy," Lightwards carried on, itching to call his raptors forward and have done with the conversation, "by giving me information. Tell me what you know of the resident Epics in this city." A thoughtful expression crossed Chicago Joe's face, one which surprisingly didn't cause him to pass out from exertion. "Well... there's CorpseMaker." "I'm well aware of him," Lightwards snapped. "Go on." "There's an Epic named Altermind up in Thoughttown." "He is my ally." "There's four slontzes who live in the museum downtown--" "I gather you don't look up very often." "There're rumors of a new chick in town who can turn things into other things. Left kittens around someplace." "Met her, landed blows on her lover. Currently her ally. The weigh of your usefulness is now lower than my vexation, Chicago Joe." For the first time, the man seemed to shed a bit of sweat. "...well what about Chimera? Down at the zoo?" Chimera? A zoo? The name and the lair implied an Epic with an affinity for animals. Potentially second only to the museum itself as a source of Warriors for his growing Praetorian guard. "I am listening," Lightwards replied slowly, giving a tight-lipped smile. "Do go on. And walk as you talk. I wish to meet this Chimera."

Somebody on reddit posted this alarming parody: I'm gonna try really hard not to imagine Lightwards singing this as he marches through Portland.

Oddly enough though, as soon as you said it I was able to immediately get who it was without checking back. Definitely the best kind of cameo.

I can't believe I didn't catch that. Seriously, how did I not notice that?

This comic inspired me to ponify one of our old recurring jokes. No Calamity spoilers at all, surprisingly.

A little goodie for those of you who've seen Rainbow Rocks.

My headset. Because I don't have it right now and can't watch the video.

Depends on how ludicrously racist it gets. The Weasleys are great and all, but they're not wholesale immune to the prejudices of the wizarding world at large. Even Arthur looks at Muggles with the same condescending fascination you and I might give an ant farm.

Ron had a comic book called The Adventures of Martin Miggs: The Mad Muggle.

He's definitely white on the covers, but I wouldn't use those to shoot down the headcanons of anyone who wants to picture him as African-American or Filipino or Arabic or whatever else they want to believe. I don't think there's anything in the text of the books themselves that specifies his race.

You didn't ask why I chose Nathaniel Days as his real name! Okay okay, I'll tell you anyway. It's because if his name was Days, then his Rending, the moment at which everything that he was was destroyed and Obliteration was born, would be... ...the end of Days. ... Get it? Yes? No? Too subtle?

The random theory I came up with at church today is that Obliteration, once Nathaniel Days, was a blind man who got his sight back through a faith healing and subsequently devoted his life to studying and proselytizing Scripture. His greatest fear, and thus weakness, is having that healing revoked and being struck blind again... which is why he freaked out every time in Firefight that somebody yanked his glasses off his face.

Double post with a spoiler-y Calamity-RP question. Seriously, there's some whoppin' spoilers here.