Trixie Slaughteraxe for President

[Welf]

Well someone advanced their career. I guess she learned a lot from Barbara.
Also, poor Zoozo. He was a good guy and tried to do the right thing.

[Lissou]

Yeah, I loved Zoozo, I was hoping he'd escape the trail of deaths. Poor guy.

[Welf]

387 days have passed, so no shocking reveal Zoozo has survived.
Audrey was very pragmatic again. Somewhat heartbreaking, but she is usually right. Which is bad for Lyndon and Trixie.

I forgot about the fever. It seems there was more to it, but I can't find more clues what will happen So first Lyndon had the vision of his execution. That prevented his death, and kept Trixie's campaign alive. She probably was executed too in the original time line. Then Trixie has the vision of her dieing of a sickness, and Klara was with her. So she would have ended up with her anyway, but maybe later. And she never was going to win the presidency in either future.
So do the Skyggemyr start the sickness? Was Trixie or Lyndon a danger to their plot in an alternative time line?

[Welf]

This got more and more depressing. I hope this will all turn out to be a dream/vision. But we know it's not.

Last comic has the Skyggemyyrians invading. I think it's because of the opportunity, not because they are behind the sickness. At the end of the first arc Betty Wolfwrestler says the glass box contained the toad god Goortryb, captured by the witch Etheldred. Then it turns out that was just a regular monster toad that gets easily defeated. In hindsight, I wonder if that was all. In a castle full of dangerous animals it seems strange that this giant toad gets hidden in a box in a statue. Maybe Goortryb was inside, but as some kind of spirit? From the picture we have from he does look like that toad, but with a crown. And he seems to hate humans in particular. Everywhere we see humans and non.-humans, so a picture of only humans that get his wrath seems significant.
The three magical objects the gang finds seem to tell a story. There is the orb with Goortryb (?) hidden in castle protected by a powerful mind altering spell and guards, there is the Scepeter of Death that shows one's demise, and the glove that can put the conscious of a person into an animal. Maybe Etheldred foresaw what Goortryb or his followers were up to, and used the gauntlet to get close to him and capture him? Although she was said to be a follower of him and her cult was almost completely wiped out by a rival Goortryb cult.

[Onyavar]

Depressing, alright.

The large time skips and the bad developments are screaming a time travel or alternate reality is going to be arranged. Probably with an artifact.

[Welf]

Last comic seems to go into that direction. So a little hope? The little guy seems to know more, but it also seems it can't bring back his dead family. Maybe an alternative reality split of when Lyndon touched the jewel and nothing happened?

[Gez]

Here's a ridiculous idea. You remember the premise from Interdimensional Brainchip? New realities are constantly splitting in an exponential growth of alternate realities?

What if the Scepter of Death uses this, magically. When you use it, it splits the timeline in two. One that is frozen, and another that plays normally. The one that plays normally continues until the user dies. Then the last moments of the user's life are sent as vision to the other timeline, which is unfrozen at this point and proceeds naturally.

[Welf]

There's a good chance for that. Hitmen for Destiny and Transdimensional Brain Chip featured alternative realities. That's 2 out of 4, and Lies, Sisters and Wives doesn't count. (also, I'll read that comic now again)

[Lissou]

Maybe Lyndon's most recent spell is to create an illusion that replaces actual reality, which is why he has to be alive for the illusion to still exist.

[Welf]

So that is the star thing. I think she knows now. Is that dream universe collapsing? But if so, why would Torgeir bother to offer Audrey to tell her where Lyndon is to get free?
Btw, it's been 2142 says or 5 years and 317 days since Lyndon disappeared and 1014 days or 2 years and 284 days since she spoke with Torgeir Lykke.

[sty.silver]

I've been reading Thorsby's comics for a while, and have been suspecting that the current universe in this one is fake. But there is no reddit and no-one I know personally is reading it. So I had to use google to find some place where it's being discussed so that I can state it before the fact and feel accomplished.

... and, of course, the idea isn't the least bit new. Nevermind me.

I think the frozen-timeline-via-scepter is the most plausible specific scenario. So Lyndon is only special because this is his vision, but the scepter is just working as intended, and it's not doing anything novel. The ambassador has studied it and figured out how it works, so after Lyndon touched it and didn't see anything, he knew that his current version wasn't the original anymore but the one trapped in the vision. That checks out with the dialogue on that chapter. Everyone in this sphere of reality is now going to die, and it's going to resume to them breaking into the mansion with Lyndon having gotten the vision, but with no-one remembering all the stuff leading up to it.

[sty.silver]

At least it seems like there are only two layers, one real universe and many fake ones branching off of it. (This is based on the impression that the scepter doesn't work in the fake universe.) So it's much less crazy than reality, where the universe actually splits up at every moment, and each branch splits up etc.

This is all pretty cool, I found the Trixie comic just a little bit weaker than Trans-dimensional brainchip and space spy so far, but I think this twist changes that.

Edit: Another thought: the reason for the star thing could be that the scepter isn't actually copying all of reality, but is only copying a 2142 light-day large radius around the current location. The stars are all farther away so they don't get copied, however the light they've sent out in the last 2142 days does get copied, so for 2142 days, it seems as though the stars are still there. In reality, they've been gone ever since the vision started.

The Sun ought to be closer than that, so that did get copied. So there's nothing (at least nothing obvious) that will make this universe crash anytime soon. It could last for another 60 years, until Lyndon dies of old age...

[Welf]

The fake universe theory looks very likely. The Skyggemyrians really put some effort into keeping Lyndon alive and as healthy as possible. He seems in the shape of his live (except for the hair).

Now I wonder how useful the sceptre is. However he dies it will be as result of him saying he has no vision, and the ambassador confirming that. Without that they probably will kill him. The guard monster would get him, or the ambassador would get him with an arrow. And they can't try to fight their way out because of the witch and her weapon stealing spell.
Also Lyndon pretty much knows nothing important I presume. He was kept in a prison and I doubt they briefed him about the details of Abyssium's politics and how to stop the war they started. And even if they did, he needs to get told right before he dies in the fake universe so he can do something about this.
I actually think they will try to salvage this universe and keep Lyndon alive as long as possible. It's horrible, but all they have. Alternatively, he and Audrey come up with a a plan and murder him after talking about it. Maybe learn a new spell?

[Ibrinar]

If it is the scepter it is weird that non of the others remarked on it not just showing their death but also the entire time up to it.

[sty.silver]

I think the way it works is that, once the fake universe collapses, the person who has touched the scepter remembered the last few moments of their life, and everyone else doesn't remember anything. That would explain why the others didn't say anything about that: they don't know.

Once the universe does collapse, I think Lyndon will have a vision, namely one of dying in whatever way he ends up dying in this universe.

I don't think Audrey will try to kill him once she knows what's up. You could look at it as them returning to their old lives that way, but you could also look at it as dying once the universe collapses and someone else living on. I think that's the perspective everyone will take. Seems more thorbsy-like.

[Welf]

This is one way to introduce yourself. Audrey is my favourite character.

[sty.silver]

I bet they're about to find out everything from reading the diary

[Ciffo]

Very interesting way to know some little bit of future, if you are crazy enough to kill yousrself! It's more and more strange the disappearing of the stars, it seems to happen in all the different possible futures avoided by the ambassador.

[sty.silver]

So the stars disappear a fixed time after the scepter is touched. That checks out with my theory.

[sty.silver]

They've learned a way to transmit messages from the phantom world to the real world. Once they figure out what's up they should attempt to transmit a message that will change stuff in the real world.

Their break-in to get the scepter happened right before the president died and Trixie disappeared. So it's not totally impossible that they can manage to keep the president alive if they act quickly, and maybe save Trixie, too.

[Lissou]

They've learned a way to transmit messages from the phantom world to the real world. Once they figure out what's up they should attempt to transmit a message that will change stuff in the real world.

Their break-in to get the scepter happened right before the president died and Trixie disappeared. So it's not totally impossible that they can manage to keep the president alive if they act quickly, and maybe save Trixie, too.

Didn't Lyndon touch the scepter soon before he was captured? Knowing that, he could send a message as he dies, although of course he needs to die. Maybe that's why they're keeping him alive. Maybe they realised the scepter only goes a certain amount of time forward, so if they keep him alive that long he won't see anything.

[sty.silver]

He touched it like 10 seconds before they were caught, I think.

If they wanted to stop him from sending a message, they could just kill him, right? But I think they want the fake universe to exist as long as possible.

[Lissou]

True, if they had killed him right away he couldn't have sent a message either. There goes my theory :P

[Ibrinar]

Yeah first idea was a "knows he is in a virtual world and doesn't want to stop existing" scenario before we got more info. With the whole regularly commits suicide to send himself messages scenario there has to be some concrete purpose to this. The simplest is just another data point, tell him something before you kill him and real you can then question the original about his vision.

[sty.silver]

I don't think it's clear that the ambassador knew about beings in the simulated universe being conscious as he wrote those entires. All that his real-life version experienced is touching the scepter and receiving a vision immediately. Yeah, he pre-committed to the message thing, but that could still work if you imagine the scepter just quickly simulating everything without involving consciousness.

However, his versions in the simulated universes must have figured out what's going on? At first, they probably just thought the scepter has stopped working, like Lyndon at the start of the current simulation. But since they stuck to the plan of communicating messages, we can conclude that they did eventually figure it out. Which would beg the question of why the simulated ambassador didn't also think "by the way, I'm conscious" before dying.

Or maybe he does understand how it works, but chooses to use the scepter anyway. Maybe I'm wrong and he does take the position of "this is just another version of myself, and if I die here I still live in the real world?" But then why work so hard to keep Lyndon alive? Maby he changed his position?

I actually think the key question ought to be about whether or not it's ethically good to basically duplicate all experience on the planet. But the ambassador doesn't seem to have a problem with starting a war just to keep some family in power, so he's probably not a utilitarian.

[sty.silver]

I think one reason why I was so quick to assume that everyone considers their life to be over once the simulated universe stops is how Torgeir Lykke has talked about it.

I know something. Something bad. Bad, bad, bad. And this terrible knowledge has not been great for my mental health.

If he took the 'I'll return to my other life'-position, then why would the secret be so bad? You essentially get an extra life. Sounds good to me.

I wonder whether Thorbsy will really dive in and explore the philosophical stuff or just leave it all up to the readers.

[sty.silver]

Thinking more about this, the behavior of trying to keep Lyndon alive for self-preservation and the behavior of willingly committing suicide seem pretty incompatible. They basically each contradict one of the two philosophical viewpoints. This could mean that he wants to keep Lyndon alive for a different reason? Maybe Lyndon is younger than he is and so this is a unique opportunity for him to look farther into the future? But I don't really think that's it.

[Gez]

Thinking more about this, the behavior of trying to keep Lyndon alive for self-preservation and the behavior of willingly committing suicide seem pretty incompatible. They basically each contradict one of the two philosophical viewpoints. This could mean that he wants to keep Lyndon alive for a different reason? Maybe Lyndon is younger than he is and so this is a unique opportunity for him to look farther into the future? But I don't really think that's it.

No, it's not inconsistent.

The one who uses the scepter gets a vision of a simulated future. However, if the simulated people know they are simulated, they can mess up the simulation (and therefore, cause the scepter's prediction to be fully invalid) by simply acting differently from how they would have acted normally.

Only the one using the scepter gets a vision. For the ambassador, keeping Lyndon alive doesn't have any specific interest, other than making sure the vision Lyndon gets is not useful to Lyndon.

[Ibrinar]

Which can be done either by immediately calling of the chase (if you were the likely next cause of death) in which case you are done in minutes or by catching him, bringing him to a random place and killing him in a random way. There really isn't the slightest need for a multi year charade if you just want to make someones vision useless against.

[Welf]

But why bother to keep Lyndon alive? If the ambassador hat shot him with the arrow he wouldn't have gotten any useful information out of this. Or give him a slow-working poison and put him in a dark cell.