Aug01
AbscondWithAPie:
Zombies can’t even really eat, anyways. At least, they can’t digest…
Altermentality:
Fill up your BRAAAAAIIIINS with some knowledge on zombies! They won’t eat you. That’s a negative stereotype.
The Fourth
Updated Mondays and Fridays!
The Fourth by Courtney Svatek and Victor Acuña is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Low self esteem with such a dapper Beethoven getup? Preposterous.
He does his best to look nice and cover up as much of the rotting corpse he inhabits as possible. I think the clothes are enchanted too, special-ordered, to reduce the cloying stench of death. Maybe just the ascot is. That is a fine ascot.
I wonder if his hair was specially ordered as well…
Awww. The poor man.
It’s actually real, but it’s dead and doesn’t grow anymore, and keeps falling out in clumps and he has to reattach it all the time. He won’t just give up because that is some glorious hair. And he doesn’t have much else going for him. Funny enough, Skarva has similar hair and similar logic.
what waitaminute IS SKARVA’S HAIR UNDEAD
So, do they eventually degenerate into undead skeletons, or is total skeletonization the point when they Move On?
Well, it’s hard to say. Curses, like the gods who place them, are a very fickle thing; sometimes they are quite tailored, while other times broad and indiscriminate… as with ghosts, a zombie curse can seem eternal, but for many there is an eventual point when they can finally be at peace, apparently when the gods decide they have been punished enough. Something very significant usually has to happen, like they are defeated by a hero, or they accomplish something that helps to rectify the wrongs they did in life.
As for zombies created by magic… although necromancers have historically been some of the most feared and powerful mortals, they are still not gods, and their spells will run out eventually. Perhaps not for a very long time… but the more a zombie rots (albeit a slow process), the more strain gets put on the magic to hold them together. A skeleton would be held together by no flesh whatsoever, and thus would be very hard to maintain, thus a zombie would probably have stopped “working” by that point, releasing the soul.That second part is wrong. A necromancer’s magic won’t ever “run out” because it’s a one-time use spell that binds a person’s spirit to their corpse. The person’s spirit serves as the source of the light healing spell that allows a zombie to reattach limbs easily. Also, zombies rot very, very slowly. Most zombies that have exposed bones and other such extended rotting usually got to that point before they became zombies, or else had some accident occur that removed skin (for example, intense burning). Zombies can’t feel physical pain, so they are prone to injury.
Skeletons certainly can exist, and would be held together by the same magic that allows a zombie to rot slower and reattach limbs. Spirits can’t be released from zombification without external magical power; for example, a skilled wizard – or even, a “good” necromancer – might be capable of extracting a spirit from its zombie corpse, thus allowing it to rest. This is incredibly difficult to do, depending on the source of the original zombification. A skilled Necromancer’s power might be too great to reverse, and of course the gods’ curses are rarely undone by mortal magic.
The point is, magic is resilient. Even though the spirit isn’t technically willing to be a zombie, it still has self-preservation in mind. Thus, it will maintain its undead body for a near infinite amount of time.
I tried to write because I thought Victor would be too busy at work, but I got out-canon’d. BOOM!
Okay, with all this talk about death, are you going to explain re-spawning, or has that been retconned to reduce the whole “video game world” thing?
We don’t want to retcon anything. Except for early character designs, a consequence of me not knowing what I was doing as a young webcomic artist… watch the ear-length on the entire Lurkin species magically grow in the first 100 comics! Not to mention Davis’s belly button which appeared and disappeared in the very same page… wtf.
Oh but anyway, Idenau IS a gamey world, and rather than explain stuff away as “it wouldn’t REALLY happen like that,” we seek to explain some of games’ more senseless attributes in a humorous way that makes at least somewhat more sense. That’s part of the fun of the whole comic.
Most of that comes in the dungeon tours, but we will get around to clarifying the process of respawning someday.
There will be a “Dungeoneering” Encyclopedia entry that will explain a lot of this stuff. I already have a specific explanation for re-spawning worked out.
“What kind of stereo do you have?”
“Oh, my stereo type is negative”
“Thats cool”
“Yeah, negative stereo types can be pretty funny”
I’ve really been loving the encyclopedia series. You guys are awesome!
Aww. Thank you. :3 They’re fun to work on, too!
Low self esteem and self image issues?
So, teenagers?
I certainly felt like a zombie throughout my teenage years, out of place and lacking in energy and happiness…
Does anyone else now think that the first Skarva was a Necromancer? Just judging by how reprehensible the act of creating a Zombie sounds.
So… how do the gods punish a vile Necromancer and those who supported his efforts? TURN MORE PEOPLE INTO ZOMBIES!!/ghosts
…Actually that totally sounds like something they’d do.
I don’t really get it, why is creating a new spirit to stick in a body so much more evil than trying to get a dead person’s spirit to become your servant?
Creating a new spirit is considered more evil because the High Necromancers generally intend to use them as endless undead soldiers in some kind of evil scheme. On the other hand, Necromancers who focus on reanimating corpses with their original souls are really just inconveniencing the given dead person.
Also, it’s much more unnatural for a Necromancer to create a spirit from scratch.
Ok, if they have ‘some other container’ for an artificially created spirit, doesn’t that make it a golem of some sort instead of a zombie because it’s not a ghost of someone dead or the corpse of the deceased but a created spirit and an artificial body?
Also as for respawning that I saw in the posts up above, it reminded me that when I read some of the original grim’s fairytales (yes, even all those many others that most don’t know about) there’s infact a ‘root that heals anything even after death’ sorta thing which is basically a 1up mushroom. So basically someone could easily make a videogame based on grim fairytales. Also I know this is probably getting ahead of myself but I’m going to take a wild guess and at least for the hero blank, being a hero for the gods, probably has some of that divine power behind him for when he needs respawned.
Technically, yeah. But it’s much more common (not that Necromancy is common at all, in this age) to use a corpse, since bodies are, after all, designed to move and walk and carry out a variety of tasks, and otherwise you’d essentially have to build something to have it do what you want. So it’s just easier to take what’s already given. The fresher you can find the body, the better. And as long as it’s in the body of something that was once alive, it’s still regarded as a zombie.
I wonder if you could put a human’s spirit in, like, a dead dog…
Man. “I don’t want this to be a dark comic!” -Victor
Speaking of things that are dark, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, I took a fairy tales course in German and HOLY CRAP, can those stories get intense! Here, read this one: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm046.html And just know that it sounded worse in German because everything sounds more intense in German. Especially since I’m not *that* great at German, and I was like “Wait, doesn’t this say that she found a pool full of blood choked with the hacked-up body parts of dead girls? No, that can’t be it.” And then a few minutes of verifying my vocabulary later: “Nope. That’s what it says.”
Hello again! Decided to comment on this one because I have a question. Also wanted to say that I really like these entries! They’re very interesting. C:
…So my question. This might just be because I’ve got D&D on the brain, but, when you mentioned powerful Necromancers, my mind automatically jumped to Liches. So, could a Necromancer become a Lich, or is that the kind of thing that the gods would curse you for?
Liches are possible, but it would take a lot of effort and skill for a Necromancer to become a Lich himself. It would involve a manipulation of one’s own spirit after death that is probably beyond most Necromancers. Still, it’s possible, albeit rare. It would be easier if other Necromancers created a Lich, although it would still be tough to do since the spirit they’d be dealing with would be very powerful.
In all, Liches aren’t common. Honestly, they aren’t even common enough in Idenau to have a special name. They’d really just be zombies with powerful magical abilities.
*sees message at top of page*
A filler, huh…?
All characters as Pokemon! :U
*shot*
I was gonna say Pokémon, too… Skärva as a Zoroark would be neat.
YOU GUYS
I mean, I would love to do that, but last night when I saw Moar’s message I had reservations about posting outright copyrighted characters as part of the comic… but it IS just a filler, it’s not like I’m sticking a poster of Mewtwo in the boys’ room… so, we’ll see.
I’m glad you think Zoroark for Skärva! Because it has always reminded me of him, but I kept thinking I should go with something more shark-like… but Sharpedo is just kinda… dumb. I might be ok with Garchomp if it didn’t have those… jet engines(?) on the side of its head.
(Personality-wise, though, between its magical and scheming nature and its fierce desire to protect those it loves, it seems like a cross between Skärva and Derk =P)
The minions were really easy to pick Pokémon for, but I’m still clueless as to most of the other characters…
Everyoone as The Avengers. Derk as Hulk, Blank as Captain America, etc.
I think Davis is the only one full enough of himself to be Iron Man. That’s a hilarious image.
Filler requests? Perhaps something reminiscent of Despicable Me where Skarva reads a story to Derk and Lorelei (maybe the minions as well?)?
A cat! Doodle a cat! I don’t think I’ve seen one here, and I really live animals! Plus Sunday is the day after my birthday so I command this cat to were a top hat! MUHAHA!
Is… is that Zombie Oscar Wilde? And would that be considered an improvement?