Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, Mk. XLVI: A Tark of the Klones, Electric Boogaloo

[SaintRidley]

I did find this, though. This is how TIM came back originally.

I just realized that TIM was bursting out of water. It took me six years to decipher Mookie's drawing to realize that that wasn't grass and that Celesto was lying on a beach.

[Zaq]

Holy crap, Ridley, you're right. I never would have noticed that if you hadn't pointed it out.

Wait, where are there beaches in Dominion?

[Mewtarthio]

Or actively redirecting banishment spells, something that apparently happened often enough to make humans a sizable part of Snuggly's diet - which I guess would explain why Celesto went from just stupid and crazy to functionally braindead and completely insane and psychopathic.

Which is odd, since, when Miranda banished TIM, she first invoked her authority as Archmage to "proclaim [his] crimes to the cosmos." I got the impression from that scene that banishment was supposed to be some crazy awesome thing that only Archmages could do. Now that we can see how common it is, I'm wondering why it wasn't even more common. I mean, if you don't have to be Miranda to banish people, you'd think that the King would want to encourage banishment.

That'd be pretty cool, actually: Start out by establishing the King as a ruthless fascist who chucks political dissidents into the Far Realms, then when you eventually reveal that he's really been feeding all these people to his pet Eye-Gods, it's a legitimate twist.

...Hang on a second, if a significant number of people have been fed to the Beast through banishment, then why is TIM the only herald the Beast has?

[Traab]

Holy crap, Ridley, you're right. I never would have noticed that if you hadn't pointed it out.

Wait, where are there beaches in Dominion?

At the borders of the nation of fish people? There might even be a decent sized pond somewhere in callan. You know, the worst part about this comic is mookie can do no right at this point. I dont mean we are mean nitpickers, I mean he has already put in so many contradicting bits of lore and background story, that no matter what he does, we will be able to find a comic that said the exact opposite. This most recent bout of "not mind controlling humans" only to find out that he totally mind controls humans whenever he wants to, is just mookie not wasting time with adding in new contradictions.

Makes me wonder though, is he going for an Aizen from bleach style of big bad guy? Artifact of huge power he wants to control utterly, he manages to mind control everyone secretly to make events happen as he wants them to, and only now that he has been sorta kinda exposed is he being forced to directly take part in anything instead of hanging back and letting the peons do things subtly.

[Oracle_Hunter]

...Hang on a second, if a significant number of people have been fed to the Beast through banishment, then why is TIM the only herald the Beast has?

He's the only one who wasn't digested.

Infernomancer of Wounds y'know

[Veridis Quo]

Hey everyone, I'm back from my summer vacation and still playing catchup on the amazing adventures of DJ Callan but I thought I should share something I found while on my travels.

For your consideration I present to you another example of an Innappropriate Wall. I found this beauty while travelling through Ephesus, Turkey.

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This segment was some distance from the rest of the ruins so I can only assume that the rest of the wall was destroyed over time.

[Trazoi]

For your consideration I present to you another example of an Innappropriate Wall. I found this beauty while travelling through Ephesus, Turkey.

That wall must be a distant cousin as it knows how to align its bricks to perspective.

Sneaky Gate. Dave must be a seer as he's never aware of anything.
Future Link

"I love Dominique":

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[SaintRidley]

"Political fallout and scandal"

Mookie, you sure know how to avoid saying the one interesting thing.

What scandal and fallout?

[Trazoi]

What scandal and fallout?

There was some scandal and fallout after War in Hell, due to all those murders and Dominic engineering the jailbreak that freed Urban Eddie (can't remember the details, could have been Klo Tark II that did it). Dave allows a free press in Callan because reasons and had infernomancers including an orc infernomancer in his castle despite everyone been all super Heart buffed because reasons and never knew about all the Chosen and demons running around ruining everything because reasons.

[Zaq]

Panel 3 of I Love Dominique is amazing. I'm not sure what turned into that katakana there (it says "udonroo," and I can't figure out why), but it's all good. Thanks thanks. Rebellious son of a rebellious son.

[Rhapsh]

Now that's a way to make the King feel like a threat. Have a flashback where all his carefully laid plans are going to ****. He now apparently was losing even before he was fully introduced.

Yep, really feeling some dramatic tension here.

[Oracle_Hunter]

There was some scandal and fallout after War in Hell, due to all those murders and Dominic engineering the jailbreak that freed Urban Eddie (can't remember the details, could have been Klo Tark II that did it). Dave allows a free press in Callan because reasons and had infernomancers including an orc infernomancer in his castle despite everyone been all super Heart buffed because reasons and never knew about all the Chosen and demons running around ruining everything because reasons.

Seriously, I did better plotting when I was a 10 year old running my first game of D&D -- and that involved a literal city of assassins that lured a Paladin into its midst for reasons.

This reads like nothing more than a lazy DM trying to wrap up a disjointed campaign by tying every side-quest to the BBEG he just invented.

How could DJ be complacent after the Storm of Souls was nearly released on his kingdom? Why didn't he keep tabs on his replacement (who was instrumental in stopping the Storm the first time!) after her son ended up being the freakin' Champion of Balance and became allied with The First Necromancer? And why the devil did the racist bastard keep an utterly redundant Royal Seer who was both an Orc and an Infernomancer on hand?

Because reasons that's why. And Mookie is waving his hands as fast as he can while simultaneously explaining things as slowly as possible so it is impossible to ignore the holes. Hell, it would have been better to have just done one of Mookie's patented Dynamic Panel Layouts, like he did when he "introduced" DJ via his authorized biography. At least then we could try to fill in the gaps that Mookie is clearly incapable of even concealing

[Cavelcade]

Dammit, that biography does it as well! Why is elected constantly in quotation marks - we have literally been told that the only thing he "legitimately" did was get elected. Stop it!

Also yes today's comic continues the hilarious, "I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing" Mookie's had going on all week.

Okay, he knew nothing of the war in hell...vaguely believable, I guess - but why on earth did it sever his connection? And why can't he just reform it? He's an archmage, for christ's sake!

Why would he know nothing of the rebirth until it's "too late"? By which I mean, what is it too late for?

And finally...I thought the destruction of Maltak was to make the heart of magic behave oddly so they could find it. And once they did, they bound it to Callan. If they didn't actually do that, the deal with his on eyes/eye that DJ made makes even less sense as Snuggly did even less.


Glorious!

[Zaq]

Heh. I just realized that Snuggly is actually a lovely shade of pink. That just gives the whole mess an even more adorable flavor, don't you think?

I wonder if Mookie remembers.

[T-O-E]

TIM looks so happy in panel 2. He finally made a friend.

The fourth panel is pretty damn smug. I think Buckley could afford to make a few notes.

Oh and an old comic: This. I interpret panel 4 as Luna knowing that it doesn't matter whether or not her plans make sense, they'll work anyway.

[random11]

This is what happens when you have a plan about magic, but you decide to spend half of your life being a king when you never really needed or wanted it.

[elros]

On this note, he selected her to be the arch-mage after the original Maltalk war, where iirc Miranda sided AGAINST Callan.

I forgot about that! Classic Mookie.

In panel 4, DJ looks like he should be next to a bong. That would have been the funniest joke in DD yet!

[Traab]

This is what happens when you have a plan about magic, but you decide to spend half of your life being a king when you never really needed or wanted it.

While there are other ways he could have set things up, putting himself in place as king makes some things easier. For example, he doesnt have to hide his actions from those in authority. As the archmage of the fifth circle AND king, noone outranks him or is able to legitimately question him. He still cant be blatant in his more dubious actions, but a lot of the pressure and fear of discovery is cleared away like that.

And yeah, I can see being a bit overwhelmed by running a country, how the hell would he have known what it was like? He wasnt ever royalty, until he was "elected" of course. So its a bit like grabbing some random stranger off the street and saying, "Hey you! Wanna be CEO of Microsoft? Get to work!"

As for not noticing, once again, I could see this happening to an extent. DJ has been on top for a long time, as he said, he got complacent. He spent all his time setting up his own plans, and paying no attention to whatever other people were doing unless it directly effected his plans in some way. The war in hell conclusion was so out of the bathtub that he wouldnt have even considered, "Hey, what if the storm of souls remains semi sentient when it goes to hell and sparks off a massive demon war to claim it, until karnak throws a spear into the mix that somehow blows up all of hell and makes him the demon king?"

As for reforging the connection to the beasts demiplane, meh, we dont know enough about how magic works to state how it could happen, or why it would be so difficult. It could be similar to rebuilding the highway system after a nuke was dropped into the middle of a huge nexus of roads. Noone can go anywhere until the roads are rebuilt, and that takes time and effort to pull off.

[Trazoi]

And yeah, I can see being a bit overwhelmed by running a country, how the hell would he have known what it was like?

By not being a complete idiot and actually knowing something about his country?

But then again, his country's monachy and politics were designed by Mookie, so who can blame him? Mookie has no idea what a monach does either.

[T-O-E]

So I found this old thing again, made way back in 2008. Pretty cool that comics from after it was created can show up.

It's not perfect but it can yield some good stuff. Here's an example

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EDIT: Damnit. I got the perfect comic. The first one was about someone talking about having to fight an obscenity of evil and chaos for years and the third was Miranda saying she was retiring. The only problem was the second panel, so I locked it and... Got rid of the other two

[Trazoi]

So I found this old thing

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[T-O-E]

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[Johnny Blade]

That last one is perfect.

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(Oh, and I think we aren't allowed to post images more than 400 pixels wide without spoiler tagging them.)

[Cavelcade]

I also like how this doesn't deal with what he was doing during the Storm of Souls in the first place.


Also this thing is great. Cheap laughs ahoy!

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[T-O-E]

(Oh, and I think we aren't allowed to post images more than 400 pixels wide without spoiler tagging them.)

Noted. I thought that size was acceptable but I'll spoiler them now, although it might take a while because the site's acting a little slow

And another:

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[Johnny Blade]

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[T-O-E]

Ok, one more and I'm done.

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[Welf]

While there are other ways he could have set things up, putting himself in place as king makes some things easier. For example, he doesnt have to hide his actions from those in authority. As the archmage of the fifth circle AND king, noone outranks him or is able to legitimately question him. He still cant be blatant in his more dubious actions, but a lot of the pressure and fear of discovery is cleared away like that.

So basically he went from hiding from his superiors to hiding from his inferiors. Why didn't he name a prime minister or chancellor? All he needs is to find a hardcore nationalist who also thinks Callan should rule the world. Like Warlord Damaske, or pretty much anyone from the major houses.

[Mewtarthio]

Or use mind control to ensure their loyalty.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Or use mind control to ensure their loyalty.

Because DJ doesn't use Mind Control on Callanians. Didn't you hear?

Next you'll be telling me that Dominic uses his Second Sight on his friends without their permission.