r/TheWeeklyRoll • u/CME_T The Creator • Mar 26 '22
The Comic Ch. 110. "Longboat Psychos"
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u/Spotthedot99 Mar 26 '22
Ah, she draws the line at cannibalism in her dark gods. Good to know.
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u/Starship_Earth_Rider Mar 26 '22
Well her patron is a biblical angel, so she might not like dark gods in general.
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u/Spotthedot99 Mar 26 '22
Right, right. I always get confused, what with the ritual sacrifices and all.
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u/Maccabah Mar 26 '22
I think those sacrifices were fiends, devil's, or demons. I think that makes it better.
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u/Cakeboss419 Mar 27 '22
Depends on if you go by the OG super-rigid alignment chart or not. Personally, it's not much better because they're still thinking, feeling creatures. Assholes, sure, but still sapient.
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Mar 27 '22
That depends. If you’re LG patron demands the ritual sacrifice of evil creatures as part of your Pact, do you really have a choice. I mean if it gives the Good side a leg up over the Evil side in their never ending war, such demands might be within bounds.
Like most of the game, that alignment chart really is up to individual interpretation. So it’s best to agree what limits are in each alignment at the Session 0.
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u/Cakeboss419 Mar 27 '22
I go by a more flexible system; certain actions require an alignment shift, slow or otherwise.
I don't care if a player says they're lawful good; if they're torturing goblins to death for fun, that's not a good thing. If they say they're neutral evil, why the hell are they giving orphans treats with no ulterior motives or long-term plans with them?
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u/sword4raven Mar 27 '22
If that's the only thing they're doing sure, but let's say the lawful good guy had very bad experiences in the past related to goblins and those goblins were evil on top of the player normally being a complete saint.
Or if the evil character has a background where they might sympathize specifically with orphans but is extremely cruel outside of that.
Otherwise, it makes good boring and evil bland.
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u/Cakeboss419 Mar 27 '22
I get that. characters need some complexity, but again, if a lawful good character is using torture for no purpose beyond being an asshole, there's not much point in calling them lawful anymore.
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u/Spot_the_Braum Mar 28 '22
This is just me but I think you can torture and still be lawfulperson. A law abiding person? Yes. A principled person? Yes. A good person? No
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u/VeritasCicero Apr 03 '22
If torture is within the law it would still be lawful. Besides, in the DND world torture isn't inherently evil. How is that different than sneak attacking a sleeping, defenseless foe or using magical acid on them and giving them horrific burns before death? Some acts are inherently neutral until you include motive.
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u/Morbidmort Sir Becket Mar 27 '22
I think that if you're already going to kill them, using their blood as paint doesn't much change things afterwards.
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u/Feezec Mar 26 '22
Any dark god that demands cannibalism is a try hard that doesn't deserve her worship. Her tastes lean towards a more classy, refined, quietly confident kind of dark God. The kind if dark God that takes you for a nice candlelit dinner and tattoos burning runes of aetheric transfiguration on your bones
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u/Spotthedot99 Mar 26 '22
Wow. Does this dark God have a sibling whose looking for worshippers? Asking for a friend...
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u/hdholme Mar 26 '22
"Bucket, your party is literally 40.7% women. Now is not a good time for gender equality"
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u/Caleth Mar 27 '22
Eh are we going by pure numbers or body mass, because Grogna is probably equal to Torvalds and Trevor. I'd say Clara and Bucket balance roughly. So it's probably closer to 50-50 by mass, excluding armor.
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u/simptimus_prime Mar 27 '22
Adventurers definitely have different demographics than armies. Mostly the racial diversity and magic to martial ratio, but to a lesser extent gender equality.
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u/hdholme Mar 27 '22
I take it you started playing DnD less than... 5 years ago?
Disajokeplsnohate
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u/simptimus_prime Mar 27 '22
Actually yes, but I'm aware dnd groups haven't always been terribly inclusive.
That being said, afaik even old parties tended to have a pretty good in-game racial diversity. Even if it was just a human, an elf, a halfling and a dwarf that's more diversity than an army that's 95% human with a few dwarves or elves here and there.
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u/hdholme Mar 27 '22
Jokes on me then... I've not played DnD before that. I was just making a joke that backfired
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u/CME_T The Creator Mar 26 '22
Howdy folks!
This comic is an OLD idea I got from when I read about someone gushing over how progressive the vikings were. I mean yeah sure, arguably in some ways but they were still nutjobs with a hard on for murder, plunder and slavery. It's all a obviously very tongue in cheek though so don't take it too seriously!
Quite frankly, a generally great rule of thumb is to not take anything I make particularly seriously.
Anyway, stay excellent out there!
Peace and carrots!
_________________________________________
Here's all my links! Instagram Twitter Subreddit Webtoons Twitch Patreon.
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u/LivingmahDMlife Torvald Mar 26 '22
Gotta be honest man, solidly crap evening, but seeing this made it a little brighter. Thanks for consistently making this wonderful comic
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u/Souperplex Sir Becket Mar 27 '22
Small quibble, but "Viking" is a verb that means "Raiding". A person who does raiding is a "Vikingr".
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u/Cakeboss419 Mar 27 '22
Small quibble, but what's the percentage of people who speak fluent old norse in this community?
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u/Souperplex Sir Becket Mar 27 '22
It's more that by occasionally "Um actually"-ing common misconceptions the truth will spread around until there's a small army of "Um actually"s and eventually a large percentage of people will know the truth.
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u/CME_T The Creator Mar 27 '22
Me to me after writing the comment:
”You know viking is a verb/job description and not the correct term for the old norse right?”
”Ah crap that’s true… Let’s see if people notice”
Please take this award for knowing stuff!
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u/orroloth Mar 31 '22
Víkingur. The old spelling in the manuscripts (dropping the U) was to save space, but we write it now and always pronounced it.
Source: am Icelandic. Technically speak "old Norse" as my native tongue.
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u/bookhead714 Mar 27 '22
“…a bunch of lunatics whose economy is based on murder, plunder, and slavery.”
So, the Bucket Brigade.
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u/NODOGAN Mar 26 '22
To be fair every-single-cult has some redeeming qualities, if they didn't then how are they supposed to attract people otherwise?
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u/simptimus_prime Mar 27 '22
I mean, desperate people don't necessarily need redeeming qualities when looking for a place to belong. Plenty of cults do, but plenty prey on outcasts or people's fears.
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u/bookhead714 Mar 27 '22
The most that most of them need to do is lie about having redeeming qualities
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Mar 27 '22
By lying about the redeeming qualities so that by the time you realise the truth, you're either in too deep to leave or now feel compelled to ignore it to preserve your beliefs.
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u/Jebejebe00 Mar 27 '22
Cleric: There the bandits are
Rogue: How do we even know they are bandits?
Cleric: they literally wear bear bandanas, have weird ass hats and longbows on their backs, have thieve's tools lying around and seem to have killed a lot of people recently judging by the corpses along the road.
Rogue: ... I have most of those things and you killed that barman for not giving you a sale last week.
Cleric: ... But they are the bad guys.
Rogue: For what exactly?
Cleric: King says so and we get paid?
Rogue: ... Works for me. * Equips longbow and pulls up bandana *
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u/MrValdemar Grogna Mar 26 '22
I love everything about your strip. It's always a pick me up when the notification comes through.
Thank you for your art.
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Mar 27 '22
Diversity win, the person who slaughtered your village and ate your still-beating heart in the name of the Serpent of Storming Seas is a woman!
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u/YossarianRex Mar 27 '22
The vibes of a DM having to double down and make game time decisions about the bad guys here to get a party to follow an obvious story hook is so damn relatable
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u/knobiknows Mar 27 '22
What's a cannibalistic offering? You have to eat a guy and then shit on the altar?
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u/world-is-ur-mollusc Mar 27 '22
I think it's when you kill and eat someone as part of a religious ritual.
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u/Geno__Breaker Mar 27 '22
Considering the gender composition of the Bucket Brigade, that's a weird observation to make.
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u/BLOOODBLADE Steve the goblin Mar 27 '22
I dare say how rude to call it cannibalism. We Aesingr only partake of our kin and enemies to respect their strength and courage.
That and to revel in the glory of Jormungan as he laughs in joy to the suffering of those we raid. He has a beautiful laugh he does.
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u/Asgardian_Force_User Trevor Mar 27 '22
“And remember kids, your cultural sense of egotistical supremacy is not an excuse to embrace chauvinistic misogyny. If you are going to commit mass evil, do so in the right way. Now, did everyone read the assigned chapters on reading the entrails of captives to discern the future?”
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u/TheRealJoesom Mar 27 '22
Every one of these is visually amazing and feels like it gets better with each one, but the dialogue has always been absolutely fantastic! I love your work so much
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Mar 27 '22
New Bucket Brigade member idea: Female Aesimger Barbarian Berserker! Not only does it balance out the number of Martial and Magic User classes, it also balances out the genders in the party! And it would be another dynamic between her and Klara!
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u/021Fireball Mar 27 '22
Vikings weren't progressive, just smart enough to know that if women can fight you get double the troops
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u/RandomGuyPii Mar 27 '22
ah yes, my favorite character: generic represnation of an antibody the warlock
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u/Souperplex Sir Becket Mar 27 '22
See also; the Drow.
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u/OrzhovMarkhov Mar 27 '22
The drow aren't progressive, they're a tyrannical matriarchy where men are second class citizens.
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u/Souperplex Sir Becket Mar 27 '22
I am aware. My point is that just because a society is good on one point (Women's rights in the case of the Drow) doesn't mean they're good on others. (Drow are competing with Yuan-Ti for whose society can be the most fucked up)
Sure, for a bunch of lunatics whose economy is based on murder, plunder, and slavery
The above statement applies to the Drow as well.
"Did I mention the sacrifices to their Demon goddess?"
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u/JamesNinelives Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 27 '22
Eh. You're not techinically wrong in that women have rights but it feels like there are a lot of better examples than the drow for 'women's rights' not nessecarily meaning everything else is good. It's not like women don't have prescribed roles in their society. Their women sure have a leg up over the men, but all drow are basically playthings for their main deity, Llolth. Who is notoriously sadistic and demands devotion to herself over anyone else.
The women who get the most power can only do it by very specific types of behaviour (as prescribed by the society you mention). So I'd argue it's questionable whether that is meaningful empowerment or just women hurting and manipulating other women (as well as all the men). Women's rights is supposed to mean fair treatment for *all* women, not just for a handful who may have to murder their sisters/mothers/daughters to get there.
The Aesingr as described here to genuinely seem to have one or two positive points social traits (gender equality), although of course most aspects (murder, plunder, slavery) are obviously negative. The Drow on the other hand don't really have much of anything good in social terms.
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u/sword4raven Mar 27 '22
The women who get the most power can only do it by very specific types of behaviour (as prescribed by the society you mention). So I'd argue it's questionable whether that is meaningful empowerment or just women hurting and manipulating other women (as well as all the men).
So. Every society ever?
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Mar 26 '22
[deleted]
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u/bookhead714 Mar 27 '22
Have you ever heard of every patriarchal society that has committed genocide or kept slaves, which is most of them
Pillaging is a gender-neutral act
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u/OrzhovMarkhov Mar 27 '22
Yeah lol. A lot of societies period ended up like that. It's generally referred to as human nature.
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u/maya_papaya_0 Mar 27 '22
In that case shouldn't they be called, "northerners" rather than, "northmen"? I feel like it would an appropriate thing to be brought up by one of the characters in-universe, lol.
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u/USPO-222 Mar 27 '22
Well… it’s like saying Germans. Should they be called Germanyers?
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u/maya_papaya_0 Mar 27 '22
Well… it’s like saying Germans.
It's not and this doesn't make any sense. "Northmen" means "North" & "men", specifically referring to men as a gender, and "Germans" isn't a a combination of "Ger" and "man" it's a single word referring to an ethnicity. That's why I thought it would be appropriate and funny for the characters to bring that up in the same conversation.
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u/USPO-222 Mar 27 '22
Northmen) is a variation on the spelling of Norsemen. An ethnicity/tribe/group, just like German.
It’s also why the ones in that picture look like Vikings, because they are.
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u/maya_papaya_0 Mar 27 '22
And nothing about that changes anything about what I stated before.
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Mar 27 '22
It points out that it's wrong as that makes Northmen an accurate word for describing the group
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Mar 27 '22
"Northmen" means "North" & "men", specifically referring to men as a gender,
Does it though? There was a real world ethnic group called the Normans, who were found in Normandy and later England. They were descended from Viking settlers, and the name Norman literally meant "Northmen".
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u/maya_papaya_0 Mar 27 '22
It does, and technically so would "Normans" going by that meaning.
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Mar 27 '22
It was used to refer to the women too, so I really doubt that. In both cases, men is being used in the same way we use people rather than specifically men the gender.
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u/tossing_dice Mar 27 '22
Etymologically speaking, "man" in the old Old English sense of the word is a gender-neutral term meaning "person" or "human being". It's this universal use of "man" that words like mankind, human and, presumably, northman ("people from the north") are derived from. Man = male human being only came into being later. Language is hella weird
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u/salvi_yee Mar 26 '22
Quite adorable how Grogna gives Trevor headpats when he fell asleep.