Because Klo Tark asked the Dominus to help him, the Dominus uses his Seer abilities to
look into the past and finds out that Acibek is Iron Man in a bubble. It seems that
an Acibek was once
common and they were representatives of Law and Order, but they were cancelled because they weren't needed. And now they are.
So Elf Guy is basically the head of The Chosen, but for Law and Order. Acibek decides to
rebel, probably because murder is bad. And Acibek knows this because Elf Iudge Dredd ("I am the LAW!") killed
relatives of those who were in his cult, and that, logically, enforcing laws by killing people would create more insurgency and rebellion.
On another note, Acibek is a mix of
Iron Man and the Borg. I think I'll call him Acibek the Borg King.
Which leads us to this sentence: The Borg King suggests killing Elven Iudge Dredd because he murdered people. Except that
lady who's currently with Venus saves Elven Iudge Dredd.
The Dominus freaks.
It turns that that she's Hexlia, you know, the lady who tried to kill the Deegans when they were lickle.
Kink update: black leather straps for clothing and thigh high leather boots make another reappearance. Fetish finalised.
Mama Machina looks fairly awesome here, fighting to save her children from the evil necromancer. If you look though, Iacob (currently in emo-gothic teen mode (oh, and he
does bleach his hair)) is clearly enamoured with her and her skills, he's smiling. Not scared one iot. I'm also forced to wonder what on earth is keeping Lil Gregory and Lil Dominus' hair up so perfectly spiky. Rather than show us an epic battle between Mama Machina and Helixia we cut back to the present to show the Dominus pondering things. I love his logic from p.1 to p.2 "The Borg King was a golem, and he was the world's leading Mage of Order.
It explains why law-based magic is so structured and logical. Head. Desk.
No.
Really? law-magic is orderly and structured like the
law system. I suppose you're going to be shocked when it turns out that chaos-magic is
chaotic and has no rhyme or reason to it?
Idiocy aside, the Dominus assumes he's going to need to build another Borg King to redefeat the SoS. Way to keep to conclusions, what if it wasn't iust the Borg King who stopped the SoS?
The Dominus realises the flaw in his logic and skips ahead a couple of years to find out the thrilling conclusion! It has
Darth Vader? He even speaks like him! Or it's Klo Tark. I hereby dub him Darth Tark.
Time skip!
It's time for the
last stand against the forces of evil. I mean the "obscenity of chaos". His chosen warriors are the Sylvan Oracle, Darth Tark and . . . Rilian? Here I thought Rilian was evil, because all necromancers are evil. The Dominus said so. I can see why Rilian's here though, iust because he uses dark magic doesn't make him an advocate of chaos. In fact, given the difficulty of his magic necromancy must be a highly structured magic. You don't want to mix chaos with necromancy.
You might get flesh-eating zombies a la
28 Days Later and
The Evil Dead when you didn't intend to!
The Borg King's looking a little crumbly around the edges, so he's going to commit suicide. Hummmm, I thought Rilian was an ally, because necromany is
evil, but the Borg King - the oderliest Mage of Law and Order ever! - calls him a friend. Necromancy must have received some bad publicity between than and now. And the Sylvan Oracle has a name: Leaflette. Punny.
The cloak's effect in p. 4 is very nice.
Well, it turns out that the Borg King
indirectly created The Chosen. Oops.
So now we get to see a climatic battle right?
This is going to be awesome.
Never mind. It's iust another
mass murder and the Elven Iudge Dredd rips off Mama Deegan's wing effect from back in
TEatE which is itself ripped off from several
Discworld books.
So Rilian is forced to
kill his best friend. What is it with paragons of goodness forcing their friends to kill them or participate in them getting severely iniured? Rilian's fingers are also very blocky, but I quite like the way Rilian cradles his frien's head. It must have hurt Rilian very much to help the Borg King kill himself.
Anyway, he Borg King goes all
laser-y on the Elven Iudge Dredd, kills him, and separate chaos down into
patterned blocks sealing away the SoS for a long time.
And then Darth Tark
attempts some mind-rape. Attempted Rape/Rape Count: 11.
SO there's this
battle which Darth Tark
wins, thereby making it actual mind-rape, not attempted mind-rape.
And this sets up a temporal paradox.
Because none of this would have happened if the Dominus hadn't looked back into the past to make Darth Tark look into the future. But the Dominus only looked into the past because Darth Tark possessed his arm (seriously? His arm!) and told him to research the Borg King. But Darth Tark only did that because he raped the Dominus' mind and found out the future. But he only found that out because the Dominus looked into the past because Darth Tark told him to. But the Dominus only - my head hurts.
So it seems that both time
and chaos are wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey/chaosy balls of stuff.
And because this happened Darth Tark knows the Dominus is a very powerful magician. So he suggests a
Vulcan mind meld from
across dimensions. Luckily, this mind meld explains why the DOminus - or someone else - wasn't contacted earlier about the End of the World. It would have driven
anyone else insane.
Naturally, the Dominus decides to
fight The Chosen again. Because, hello, noone hurts a Deegan or their loved ones and lives.
Back with Venus de Seer he's concluded that The Chosen's beliefs are nuttier than a fruit 'n' nut bar, but then
he gets to see the
SoS. He does the exact same thing as the Dominus, gets hs arm asploded off - Attempted Rape/Rape Count: 12 - and
asplodes a soul iar with his
evil Seeing powers. But it seems that it
wasn't Venus' powers. (Attempted Rape/Rape Count: 13? I'm undecided, so I keep it at 12 until more evidence appears) And the other soul iars attack, but he wakes up (and
hasn't lost a week, so why did the Dominus?) and starts freaking out because he doesn't know what the hell is really going on when Darth Tark appears out of nowhere and says he's going to
destroy Venus de Seer and
tear his mind apart! Attempted Rape/Rape Count: 13!
While I understand why Darth Tark does this, you really have to pity Venus. He has no iea what's going on, only that The Chosen want to assist him in killing the Dominus and all he loves, and Venus is only going along with it because The Chosen have some pretty nifty spells. If anything, Darth Tark's attack will only cement Venus' decision to help The Chosen out properly. And we mustn't forget that Venus is only contemplating helping them because the Dominus was instrumental in helping kill the woman he loved.
Hexali intervens to save Venus and Darth Tark is about to be eaten by a fangy SoS and we end our run for the day.
This is a genuinely dramatic, dark and interesting plot; even if Mookie is prone to killing the moment through some stupid art, puns and general weirdness. And while everything's too linked - once again everyone to ever interact with a Deegan is in this arc - there are at least some well thought out reasons for doing so. Although I think that getting Leaflette, Dirk and Dryad involved was fairly pointless, and only there to have symmetry with the flashback to the Borg King's asissted suicide.
Rilian in the past - Rilian with his protege.
Leaflette in the past - Leaflette with her friends.
Darth Tark in the Past - Darth Tark introduces himself to his protege.
I could even argue that the pointlessly tantalising one-panel flashback to Halxia mirrors her finding
her protege (Venus) in the present and that mirrors Haxila saving
her master from the Borg King's laser attack. This makes Venus the new Elven Iudge Dredd.
So the Dominus is either to be the new Borg King, or helps make one.
It'd be nice if that's what Mookie really intended. This arc again has promise in these two parts, as opposed to the less-than-mediocre part two.
It's a little complicated, but hey I've read David Edding's
Belgariad and
Mallorean wherein the two halves of the universe (one Light and one dark) duke it out for control of the universe by choosing champions so that they can fight without obliterating reality.
Curses.
Mookie is ripping off one of my favourite fantasy author's work.
Despondcy aside, my biggest question from this entire expository setting up of the plot is: why is Klo Tark wearing a Darth Vader mask? Does he come from the
Star Wars universe? Does this mean he's Iedi or Sith? Given he's a proponent of Order I'd say Iedi, but the mask is too Darth-y for words.
Yep. That one thing is more interesting that the rest of the story. Although I do wonder how Iacob managed to get
Rilian as his mentor
and only be set off on the necromantic pat by the woman who threatened to murder his mentor's best friend.