Here’s a behind-the-scenes secret for all you dedicated online readers– the ones who only read the printed version or just skim the archives will never know– it’s at this point that I took the rest of my script for chapter six, tossed it out the figurative window, and rewrote the ending. I actually had a page and a half completely penciled, which I had to then abandon because of the rewrite. This is pretty unusual behaviour for me, especially given my slow drawing rate. Each page represents a significant amount of time, so I do my best not to end up in this situation. But I went and did it anyway! I’d been feeling unhappy for a variety of reasons about the final scene of this chapter, but I think my solution… works out pretty nicely.
Any difficulty figuring out who’s talking on this page?
I hope all you Canadians in the audience had a wonderful Thanksgiving. 
Ooh… new name! Yes, it’s a little difficult figuring out who’s talking.
::biting tongue to prevent spoilers::
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s probably Vessa who’s speaking, right? (Except for the single bubble between panels 3 and 4, which is Carl.) After all, Vessa is the only one of them who can pronounce the Orehu squiggles correctly!
Here’s how I worked it out. First panel: thought it was Carl. Second panel: it cannot be Carl, so it must be a member of the survey team. The bubbles are connected, so first and second panels must be the same person, probably Vessa. Between panels two and three is Carl. Third panel is someone from the survey team.
I second Freds’ remarks.I followed more or less the same process. I had actually come to the conclusion that it was an unspecified mix of different speakers before reading the comments here and going back for a second (and third look).
Okay, that’s two words…
I’ve come to the conclusion that this writing system is phonetic with ligatures for certain commonly-used syllables, particularly those which end words. Both words for which we have transliteration have too many glyphs for it to be syllabic or an abjad, and too few for it to be purely phonetic.
Tara, my offer of organizing materials and such still stands. My own worksheets aren’t quite aligned with what you’re working toward here, but they’d be a start…
It would be good to see Tara’s work end up on omniglot.org in the con-lang section, wouldn’t it?
Hmm.. I can’t figure out who’s talking, but I think it captures the feeling of just having bad news, and trying to process it.
I mean, she’s not really paying attention to who’s talking either… it’s like static.. all she can think is “what happened to my husband?”…..
So, confusing, but a really good portrayal of sudden grief pushing down on you…..
I had no difficulty at all. Of course, given the lack of referens I didn’t bother to try…
No idea who’s talking, but Deirdre makes a good point… the way the world tunes out for someone when an emotion intervenes.
“They took us by surprise” particularly confuses it, plus the fact that Carl has just been asked a question he only started to answer, so it seems likely he would still be talking. Not till “you’re interplanetary patrol” did I see that it must not be him.
Sounds like Carl is finally going to drop the other shoe — or should we say drop the other boot (being a bit more than just a shoe’s worth). Yes, I agree – she just learned after all her struggle that her husband is dead – everything happening around her has to be washing over her right now. The center bubble is of course Carl – he’s the only one with the knowledge to make that statement.
Ah, yes: the +5 Shoe of Other.
I agree that it’s Vessa and Carl who are talking. However, I disagree with everybody’s assessment of the last frame. Instead, I suspect it was Carl’s statement that concerns her and what it implies.
Carl’s statement, along with the earlier definition of their name to being “Plague”, implies they could be carriers of some deadly virus. If so, then her husband didn’t die a violent but quick death; instead he died slowly (and possibly painfully) of an illness…and she wasn’t there to help him.
BTW, if this guess turns out correct, it might bring a whole new meaning to the attack on the survey crew; they were driving them away to prevent other deaths. They were also possibly angry that the Hiawatha crew (which the survey team could be mistaken for) didn’t “get it” that they had to stay away.
The comment about tossing out the script kinda confuses me more than the dialogue speaker, actually–I though you had already thrown out the original script a while back, as the strips on the site here are quite different than the printed versions I have–among other things, in the original, Patty the Mistress Of Silly Hats was killed in the initial attack, skewered by a stick that went through her and the shield generator pack…
Vulpis, you are absolutely correct – Tara has made several significant changes to the original print comic version!
To clarify today’s post, though, in the web incarnation, there were about 6 more scripted pages for this chapter that follow from today’s page. I’m guessing it would have taken her another dozen or so comic pages to complete the chapter as she originally planned on doing it. However, she decided mid-stream that she really didn’t like where the chapter was going and decided to change it. Tara has a general progression of events (time-line) from here to the end of the story, which she follows when she’s scripting chapters. USUALLY, once she has something scripted, she only makes minor changes as she’s drawing a page. And I can’t think of a time before when she set aside a completely pencilled page because of a sudden change in what she wanted to do. It’s actually a pretty significant event for her. We should all ask her to keep that page and a half and maybe sometime down the road she’ll run some sort of fan contest and the winner will get to see the story that wasn’t. 
I figured that the talking was out of consciousness, but that isn’t my main concern here.
Usually in a physical first contact conflict (as far as stories go), the best weapons of a civilization is pitted against another civilization’s weapons. And, as per a story’s requirement, one civilization is vastly superior to the other. This isn’t the best way to win, but it doesn’t hurt to have the biggest stick in the neighborhood.
In this case, the best weapon the Rautani have was not revealed. And in the next page we HOPE Carl mentions what makes them so dangerous. Of course, the worst thing to happen will be a ground shaking interruption that makes Carl NOT tell them (and then we have to find out what it is by having the weapon “happen” to one of the expedition group).
I still want zombies…
If I’m right in my thinking, I think the Rautani are the survivors (perhaps a few generations along, depending on how long ago this world’s civilization fell) of a nasty bit of biological warfare — that they are infected with something that turns down their thinking ability and turns up their savagery (perhaps hosing up their fight-or-flight mechanism and hooking fear directly to fight – making them attack strangers on sight).
So they’re Reavers> With rakes? Rakers?
Sorta – not as extreme as Reavers probably – though without the cognitive ability to handle higher tech (which frankly makes no sense in Reavers – though it makes for good nightmare fuel). It’d be a good idea — make the infected lose the mental ability to work their war machines and infrastructure while wildly attacking in all directions (likely part of how the virus or whatever is spread). Probably intended to work for a while to cause major havoc and then kill its victims — but of course, biology is never that predictable – or that stable – and viruses and such have no idea what an “enemy” or a “friend” is. From Carl’s comment last time on viruses, sounds like there were a number of nasties let loose on this world that are still active in one form or another.
Not sure that Reavers or Zombies are a proper comparison to what the Rautani are.
Our first glimpse of them was a well-coordinated ambush focussed on Patty. They were clearly able to speak (to judge from the curses when Scavina tossed one into the dirt back in chapter 5). My thinking is that we’re looking at something like a group-mind. More exactly, an expanding group mind. Getting killed by the Rautani is not the scary thing – it’s becoming a Rautani.
If this is a homegrown biotech disaster, I’d be more willing to bet that it’s more of a result of some transhumanist cult seeking to bind everyone together so that wars and violence cease to exist. But I’m also thinking that we could be looking at a kind of alien invasion – some group-mind critter that has taken humans as a host, and uses a very simple criteria to determine friend or foe (i.e. attack anyone that’s not part of Us, because their minds are closed to Us).
That would explain the attack that happened without provocation. A group-mind’s worst fear would be minds not part of the group, since you don’t know what they’re thinking, and hence they could plan to hurt you. And the concept of an alien group mind using humans as puppets might explain why they aren’t skilled at combat, as Vessa mentions on this page.
Eagerly awaiting the next page to see just how much of this is correct…
Maybe people from other planets irritate them so much they feel compelled to chase them with rakes.
Well, if they were all as reluctant as Carl to get to the point, I could sorta sympathize with this — I’ve wanted to smack Carl upside the head several times now. Which I feel a little guilty about, since he seems a really nice guy, and I can see that he wouldn’t want to be the one to have to tell them all of this — but still….
Indeed. How many characters does it take to say “Ship crashed, crew got eaten by space zombies. Your husband’s missing”?
I mean it’s the future. They must have met space zombies before, right?
It’s like Starbucks. EVERY future has a space zombies.