Schlock Mercenary

Dear tropers, today we gather to mourn the passing of one of the greatest, longest-running gags in the story. Rest in Peace, attorney drone contract.

Eh, it was fun while it lasted, but the storytelling by Mr. Tayler has really grown beyond cheap Running Gags like the attorney drones. "Ha-ha, an attorney drone got blown away" is not exactly the height of comedy.

But I still feel a little bothered that we didn't get to see Massey potting his second attorney drone (first during the closing part of the eye tree quest storyline).

Nah, we're long past the point where it's funnier to talk about killing attorney drones than to actually see it happening.

Also, this joke is over fourteen years old now. That's older than most webcomics. That's more than twice the age of Homestuck. That is how long they've been allowed to shoot attorneys on sight.

This probably means a lot more drones will go down soon enough, because they're expecting the Toughs to do the shooting, not a security firm.

Heck, the whole concept of the attorney-drones themselves doesn't really fit with the comic anymore.

Okay, for the latest strip, I'd say Chekhov's Boomerang, but it's not really quite the right trope.

Kaff may be thinking only of counterpiracy, but if your attackers are alive, you can also interrogate them.

This is going to be good.

Is it me, or did something happen to this comic's domain? All I get when I try to go there is a "Is this your domain" page.

Working fine for me.

DNS issues. The page is fine, your DNS just needs a bit time to refresh its cache.

Yeah, SM's site and the Nightstar forums have been having issues with DNS the past few days. It should be cleared up, either now or within another day or so.

It's working again for me.

It was out for me about 90 minutes ago, but it's back now.

How was that rule about not being afraid to shell your own position?

So, we're going to be reviving someone from a "backup", and more talk about who does and doesn't have personhood. Remember how at the beginning of this book it looked like the theme was gonna be something like the "is it the same shovel" question with regards to people? Well, uh, I think we're getting back to it.

And with the last few strips, ending up with today's, we've gone from 'the axe of my grandfather' to a mass-murder mystery. Although at least one of the hostile force's objectives is clear- they want information, very, very badly. Because that's a whole lotta mind-ripped F'sherl Ganni. And F'sherl Ganni don't exactly go down easily, either- from what's been revealed about them, they can survive hard vacuum without much more than needing to pee, are enough stronger and tougher than humans to consider an unarmed one to be precisely zero threat- and they know enough about humans to know better unless they really are that strong- and can be extremely dangerous when they want to be (seen back when the teraport was first introduced and the Toughs got a mission to take back a Gate that had been taken over).

Actually, I don't think they were mind-ripped, at least, not by anyone as competent as Petey. Also, the horns have moved, they used to be coming out of the top of the head, not the sides

That strip does not picture a mind rip, merely a cursory examination. See next strip's note

So yeah, they were definitely harvested for mind ripping.

The fourth time? Either this guy is really accident prone, things were quite turbulent in the past, or possibly the Oafa are much older than suspected.

They ARE old as all hell. Twelve mya the amorph-creators had a rise and fall of their entire civilisation while staying on one old dirtball. It was probably relatively quick, given the speed of advancement we're experiencing IRL.

THESE guys had been eating up energy on the level of stars and materials on the scale of entire planets to create the habitat we see. Practically speaking, it's jumping a whole Kardashev level.

Also Oisri may be them too.

edited 28th Dec '15 10:27:24 PM by Adannor

Seems like he's not a morning person...

I'd be grumpy, too, if I was only woken up for fixing something when it breaks.

So he's the Gasbag version of Bjorn the Fell Handed?

"I'm mentally replaying that moment when I cheerfully volunteered for this.", or more aptly, "What the hell have I got myself into?".

edited 6th Jan '16 6:38:50 PM by MattII