Kill Six Billion Demons III: "Seeker of Thrones" (part eleven)

Too bad it's just part eleven of the review and not actually the eleventh chapter of the volume that's starting in Mammon's vault. I could have opened this with a bankruptcy joke. Ah well.

Where we left off, Cio had managed to shake off the temptation to revert into Yabalchoath and reconciled with Killy, albeit only after giving her even more injuries to deal with. They also had their first kiss, which I'd been rooting for for a while now, so that's cool. The Reverend Mother of the Count, Mammon's high priestess and vatra, recognized Cio-Yabalchoath and made to kill her. Fortunately, Mammon didn't remember that old theft any more than he remembers anything else at this point, and called the priestess off and told her to get back to the count with him and the others. So, at least for the time being, Killy and Cio seem to be safe. Whether or not any other party members survived the explosion is yet to be seen.


The Reverend Mother tells Cio that today must be her lucky day, and that she'd better take advantage of it and GTFO before Mammon stops paying attention again. Cio replies that she will, happily, but first she begs the priestess - on Killy's behalf - what happened to the boy who was being imprisoned here. He's just a human boy, a loved one of this other pitiful-looking human right next to her. If she can't release him to them, then can she at least assure Killy that her boyfriend is still alive before Killy and Cio leave and never come back?

Unfortunately, the priestess cannot give them that assurance even if she wanted to. Their princess has, once again, been relocated to another castle.

Specifically, he's now the property of Solomon David, another of the Black Seven who we've seen little glimpses of in previous volumes.

I'm starting to get the impression that Zaid is a hot potato that none of the Seven want to hold onto if they can help it. Either that, or they're just fucking with Killy by moving him around just ahead of her.

...although, come to think of it, I'm not sure why they'd believe the Reverend Mother here. She wants to get rid of them, and she doesn't care how much of a nuisance they make of themselves for the other Black Kings. Wouldn't it be in her interest to tell that exact lie even if Zaid was restrained somewhere right here in this vault?

Granted, she has a pretty convincing explanation for why she would have done this. If it's a lie, then it's a very, very good lie.

I wonder what they farm those spider type things for?​

So, that suspicion of mine that I talked about at the end of the last K6BD post has been confirmed. Just as it was ultimately Hastet's undying hunger, rather than Mottom, that ruled the last demiurgic empire we visited, Mammon's throne isn't truly his. The Reverend Mother and other senior Priests of the Count are the ones in charge, and the Bank of the Grand Dragon serves their interests rather than his.

And now, the entire story of Yre comes together and makes sense. It's all been redecorated since the priests took over. It's not Mammon's house, but theirs, and the art and symbolism all reflects their perspective on Mammon's life story. His greed built an empire, with influence and menace. His miserliness built a fortress, with enough space inside for a society to comfortably live. His callousness killed his family, and his regret over this caused him to bury himself in the count until senility set in and he forgot all else. His Key makes him immortal; an endless power source. His imperfect kindsy biology makes him docile and controllable in his dementia.

His life story produced a safe, comfortable environment for the People of the Count, and his continued, helpless existence maintains that environment. He gave everything he had - his family, his mind, his very personhood - and granted them this safe haven in a multiverse of chaos.

He's not their Zeus, or their Krishna, or their Odin. He's their Jesus.

It also shows just what the Black Seven have done to the moral landscape of the multiverse. The tragic martyr-god to whom we owe everything is the guy who paid silver to have innocent people executed. Their messiah figure is Pontius Pilate.

...

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but bear with me for just a bit.

The nature of the sacrifice is (at least partly) moral in nature. Mammon sacrificed his morality along with his happiness, and that's part of the providential tragedy that they commemorate in all of their art. It's almost like the admiration of "hard men making hard decisions" meme, only in this case Mammon didn't even have good intentions at the time. There was no greater good he was committing small evils in the name of. It ended up causing the desired end for the Count cult, but that wasn't deliberate on Mammon's part at the time.

Praising those who are evil enough to do what you think needs to be done, but that you'd rather not be culpible for yourself.

It kind of makes me think of Killology. You know, the "dicks, pussies, and assholes" thing. Canines and ungulates. Fundamentally, a sheep dog and a wolf are the same species. One of them just happens to have interests that align with the sheep...or so they think. The "Het and the Rakshasa" story was a great literalization of how little of a difference the distinction in that allegory actually makes. And, on some level, I think most people who advance this type of worldview are aware of this. The priests of the Count - or at least the thinkers and ideologists among them - know that Mammon doesn't actually deserve any gratitude for doing what he did. We can see the barely veiled contempt on the Reverend Mother's face when she's interacting with her alleged god and master. She knows he was no different from the "cannibal gods' of the outside world she speaks so negatively of when he did all the stuff they praise him for.

Some canids just happen to be useful, and others happen to not be. And really, if you're capable of acknowledging that, of thinking about other beings in terms of those who are useful enough to live and those who you'd just as soon see die, then are you really the sheep you think you are?

Fetishizing the evil that Mammon did in the past also lets the cultists take their attention away from what they're doing (pretending to be acting in his name) in the present. I might be speaking too soon here, because we haven't seen what life is like in the 111,111 worlds under the cult's dominion; unlike in the previous volume where we saw the damage Mottom's regime does to its subjects, we don't really know how much harm the Grand Dragon Bank does on a day-to-day basis. It's probably a lot, though. Maybe not quite as much as Mottom, but a lot.

Take another look at the pasture. There's nothing but wolves in it. No sheep, or sheepdogs. Just wolves.

...

Cio picks up Killy (who has finally passed out from blood loss) and tries to bind her wounds and carry her away (to where? I doubt even she knows) as best she can. She's not able to get very far, however, before this happens:

Heh, I actually totally forgot she was inbound.

Also, her ship appears to have punched right through Yre's outer defenses and broken into the central vault just by brute force. Looks like the fortress was never actually as secure as anyone thought, at least when it comes to the really big fish. Wish we could see the Reverand Mother's face right now. Or, better yet, see her being crushed by debris before she even realizes what's happening.

Also, it's a good thing Mottom is so blinded by rage that she just Al-Queda'd her ship into the fortress instead of being more diplomatic. If she had chosen to work with the Priests of the Count rather than antagonising them and their pet demiurge, this would probably be GG for Killy and Cio right now. With the way she went about things though, Cio and Killy can probably slip away while the baddies fight each other.

Also, we get an external view, and I'm not sure if Mottom's ship will ever be able to detach itself from Yre now. That might very well have been its final flight.

On an unrelated note, the skeletons are still all sitting around waiting for Charon to come back to them. Does that mean he's still alive? I hope Charon is still alive.

Also...I guess someone must have heard me say "the baddies fight each other while the goodies escape" a moment ago, because right on cue here they come.

God, these guys are batshit. What, are they planning to steal Killy's masterkey right out from under two demiurgi's noses and then immediately try to sell it back to them?

Speaking of batshit though, Mottom hovers off of the deck of her wrecked mothership where it lays on the gold-covered floor of Yre and starts flying up to Mammon and Co, angrily demanding that they turn "that little whore" over to her this instant. It takes Mammon a second, but he really has a feeling that he knows this ruffian who just broke his vault and messed up all his gold. Once she closes the distance and adresses him by name (along with a string of insults), he recognizes Nadia Om, and asks her why she just broke his vault. They used to be friends, didn't they? Why is she being all hostile?

Heh. I got the sense that those two had better relations than most of the Seven, earlier in the comic. Looks like they DID in fact have a friendship at one point, but that it's eroded in the time since Mammon retreated into his vault and went senile. At this point, sadly, he seems to remember those better times more clearly than she does, which is a pretty impressive achievement for Mottom.

The Reverend Mother tries to put herself between Mammon and Mottom. I...doubt this is going to work out very well for her.

You know, this would actually be a much more appropriate person for Mottom to give a "we're not so different" speech to than Killy. But then, if Mottom had that kind of rhetorical insight, she wouldn't be Mottom.

In other news, she seems to have de-aged herself at least temporarily. She looks maybe later thirties or forties at present. Could be from a limited supply of fleshfruit she still has saved up from before Hastet's death, or she could have found another rejuvenation method since then. Probably an inferior one, in the latter case, or she wouldn't still be quite this asspained.

Also, that outfit. It's like a cross between a widow's mourning dress, a Wicked Witch of the West cosplay, and a piece of DnD character art. The first part of that is grimly amusing; like, she actually cares enough about Hastet as anything other than a fruit machine to do a show of mourning for him? Really? Also, she could have chosen any sort of outfit to wear into battle. She had all the prep time in the world. Which means that she intentionally put together this look in a way that could STILL incorporate a gigantic stupid hat. It might only be a fifth of the size of her usual one, but it's still big enough to have its own zip code even if not its own flag and national anthem per usual.

Mammon keeps stammering out his demands for an explanation for this behavior from his old friend and vocally bemoaning the fate of his poor, perfect vault. Mottom expresses disbelief that he's actually rotted away this badly, and shrieks a bunch of nonsense about how war has come back to the multiverse, and he can't hide from it any more, and also about how evil Killy is for ruining everything.

...she also seems to have had a whole fleet of spelljammers trailing after her ship. I thought those were rising from the hulk where it's laying across the floor at first, but no, they were following it under their own power apparently. I wonder how many survivors there actually are aboard her palace-ship, then? Either before she smashed it through the wall and let it skid to a stop across the gold, or afterward?

She's doing a really deranged mix of calculated and impulsive actions. Calling or launching a fleet for backup, and then needlessly kamikazeing her flagship without even trying to do things the easy way.

The Reverend Mother tells Mammon to avert his eyes from the unpleasantness that is about to occur (huh...interesting parallel with White Chain's "forgive me for the violence I am about to commit" mantra. And also with the "blind god to our wickedness" anti-prayer that the devils do before a heist, come to think of it). She then declares, defiantly, growling in rage, that this is a peaceful land, and that she will be keeping it that way. You know, if she was actually so sure about this she wouldn't feel the need to keep repeating it to herself. Then she rips off her habit to reveal this nonsensical suit of armor made entirely of belts and random metal clips under it, and enters fight mode.

I actually thought she was shooting a laser beam out of her left nipple-spikes before I realized it was the handle of her energy-axe. Oh well.

As the battle begins, Cio (who had wisely hidden Killy behind a pillar. I guess she's lucky Nadia didn't think to cast an x-ray vision spell or something) starts dragging her away across the coin-dunes. Grumbling about how heavy she is, and how unconscious she is. One of the Priests of the Count sees them Cio struggling away with the much larger human, and leaves the battle to chase after her. Declaring that they're the ones who brought Mottom and her army down on this peaceful land and innocent people, he raises his chainsaw-glaive and rushes toward Cio while she has her hands full with Killy. Before he can reach her though, he's seized, thrown to the ground, and crushed underfoot by Princess!

Princess made it!

...actually, it turns out that ALL of them made it. Even Catmaster's trap-detecting cat.

This may not be a good thing, depending on how much they saw.

Also, it makes the Priests of the Count really look like chumps, tbh. I feel like at least one or two of them should have bitten it.

Well, Cio is the conscious one, and seemingly nobody saw either her or Killy abandon them in the rubble (or at least, those who did were the types to be understanding of such actions). So, that's one more problem we won't have to deal with, at least! Additionally, with Cio as our protagonist and the devils talking to each other freely without it being filtered through human perceptions, we finally get the return of devilbonics!

Dang. Poor Cio. Really rethinking some recent life choices at the moment. Or at least, some recruitment choices.

Well, anyway, regardless of how anyone feels about themselves or their companions, they need to GTFO. The other devils have already grabbed all the treasure they can carry, so they're happy to hightail it now if only they can find a way. Thanks to Mottom, they do have a convenient exit nearby. But, also thanks to Mottom, there's quite a lot of stuff going on in their way.

Anything that calls attention to themselves, of course, is likely to telegraph to Mottom's forces that they've got Killy with them. Fortunately, they get the distraction they need in just a few minutes, when one of Mottom's spelljammers crashes and a different gang of attention-grabbing weirdos comes spilling out into her army's flank.

What the hell do these jokers even think they're trying to accomplish? Just randomly attacking part of Mottom's force isn't going to get them any closer to the Masterkey.

My best guess is that they were planning to use the ship to scout the vault and find the target while everyone else is fighting, but failed to secure it and ended up crashing. Alternatively, they do still have Mathangi among them; I could see her sabotaging the ship to protect the Rising King from the others.

So, Cio tells the team to hold it a minute, and then surge forward and slip passed the commotion right when the murderhobo brigade are making the biggest nuisance of themselves. We then get the most spectacular high-rez scenescape of the entire comic so far.

Click here for a version you can zoom in on to see all the details.

In the upper right quadrant, you can see that Mottom's WW1 cosplayers have been supplemented with a legion of Dino Tribe warriors from one of her subject universes, Dinoworld. She pillaged their homeworld just like all the others and took everything besides the dinosaurs, and she even taught them how to attach guns to them in exchange for good behaviour. You can see that the wealthier clans have proper megatortoise palanquins with purpose-built artillery built into them, while the poorer ones resort to therapod technicals with jerry-rigged SAW mounts. In all cases, common warriors not of noble lineage support their chieftains and champions as either infantry or mounted deinonychus dragoons. The ornate shields that you see the dragoons and footman bearing don't look like the rest of their craftmanship; the reason for this is that these shields were scavenged from the ruins of another civilization native to a different part of the same planet, who Mottom genocided for not having any dinosaurs.

Moving down into the bottom right quadrant now, starting from the far right and moving leftward. The legendary Crayfish Knights haven't been seen outside of Yre since Mammon built the place, and indeed the people of Throne would panic if they knew that this terror out of ancient history wasn't actually wiped out during the Multiversal War like the official records claim. Even the Priests of the Count fear them, which is why they killed all their mounts and taught some mimics to take their shapes on command. The Knights can't command the mimics to transform, and they also aren't nearly as terrifying without their namesake mounts, so the Reverend Mother kinda has them by the balls.

Moving left, passed the alternating rows of Crayfish Knights and Count chainsawglaive columns with their flag, flail, or crucified skeleton-wielding squad leaders brings us to an anime fight taking place between Mottom and the Reverand Mother. I'm surprised RM is still alive, wow Mottom sucks lol. Right above and to the left, a group of bounty hunters including Time Baby, Encyclopedia Kickassica, Incubus' twin brother Benji, and Sixgun Tex bravely hold off the Priests of the Count. Unfortunately, Ted the Flayer just to their left isn't doing nearly as well, and the notorious father-daughter duo of Old Man Teslawrist and Three-Armed Betty are just barely holding their ground. Below them, some of the last surviving warriors of a Netflix Original Animated Series that Jaganath invaded eight hundred years ago - Froggie, Bunny, Fisto, and Thoth - are doing a bit better, channeling the rage and pain of their lost homeworld into preturnatural combat prowess. It's truly a tragedy, that these proud and noble warriors have been reduced to criminal bounty-hunting to get by, but they retain a solemn dignity even despite that.

Elsewhere on the battlefield you can find Adventure Turtle and his sidekick Hoops who accidentally wandered into the fight and are just trying to survive, a europop boyband who decided to sign up with Mammon one day after realizing they could breathe lightning, Whoopie Goldburg and her podium being marched to the front lines by slaves so that she can do some real damage, and Mammon standing there in the middle of everything trying to remember how this war got into the vault and whether or not he invited it.

In short? It's Warhammer 40K, but actually good.


That's all for now.