[2546] A huge source of ether

[Timberwere]

If Coyote is such a huge source of ether and the court needs that for their moving activities, then the first question is - who or what would be the alternative?

[blackouthart]

My first thought was Zimmy. Their last panel is eerily reminiscent of zimmyngham, though I know vaguely Zimmy mentioned the court being done with them…

Edit: scratch that, I looked back and in Find Yourself/2430 Zimmy mentions she knows the Court built a machine that can look at the ether and she thinks Gamma and her are getting involved again, which she fears.

[theonethatgotaway]

To quote the great chaos savant of our times, Dr. Ian Malcolm: "... uuh, well, there it is." We know why the Court is going after Coyote. I'm afraid that "the other sources" would be all the kids in the special classes, the elves, etc.

Why does the Court need all that ether to move, though? They're no fans of wishywashy stuff, they like science! Are they just trying to be the kid that walks away from the pitch with the football (that they didn't bring) because they don't like the game anymore?

[aline]

Well, that's not ominous at all.
Also where does the Court want to move that they need such amounts of magic to do it? Aren't they the all hail technology guys with unlimited access to robots who do all the work?

[atteSmythe]

Nov 15, 2021 8:23:17 GMT theonethatgotaway said:

Why does the Court need all that ether to move, though? They're no fans of wishywashy stuff, they like science! Are they just trying to be the kid that walks away from the pitch with the football (that they didn't bring) because they don't like the game anymore?

My guess: to water the seed bismuth, make it grow again.

[madjack]

Nov 15, 2021 8:26:02 GMT aline said:

Also where does the Court want to move that they need such amounts of magic to do it? Aren't they the all hail technology guys with unlimited access to robots who do all the work?

What else? The entire Court itself, Miyazaki style.

[basser]

Do they need it for moving or do they just need to be certain they've got magic canine power at the new digs?

Unrelated but I wonder if the ultimate goal of the Court is really just to turn off humanity's ability to affect the ether, on account of nonsense like retroactively creating mystical canines is doubtless pretty dang annoying to try to plan around. And in the pursuit of that goal I suppose they'd want to round up all the magic kids they can find, sort them based on how magic they are (and perhaps whether their magic could be safely excised), maybe they'd want a crack team of folks who understand magic but don't use it, and maybe people like Tony would be all in on this plan cause separating magic from people would mean his wife doesn't get soul-sucked by their child. I dunno how predicting slug romance or spreadsheets fits into that goal but whatever it's fine.

Imagine how hilarious it would be if they are actually trying to decouple humanity from the ether with a main goal of stopping all the god-making shenanigans - they finally succeed, pull off the impossible, but then Kat the Hyperdimensional Robot Goddess just slides right on in with her new race of reality-warping sentients. Whoops.

Actually from a meta standpoint that'd all be a pretty tidy allegory for the decline of spiritualism in modern society and the way aspects of those belief systems quietly reassert themselves with the rise of AI-driven societal trend shaping. We made thinking machines in our own image and gave them the power to guide us where they will.

[bicarbonat]

Nov 15, 2021 8:26:02 GMT aline said:

Well, that's not ominous at all.
Also where does the Court want to move that they need such amounts of magic to do it? Aren't they the all hail technology guys with unlimited access to robots who do all the work?

I feel like the robots have been skating on thin ice for some time.

1) They aren't ideal power. Tech is new and knowable, directly of them; magic does much that they don't understand, from sources difficult to perceive, & has the prestige of age. Familiarity breeds contempt.

2) They've had some...slips: ranging from whimsical failings to creator error to weird zealot sects to frightening (from GC perspective) glitches (the SHIP? And its surprise henchbots??) You could almost paint their proximity to "living beings" as an influence they fail to operate under without being "corrupted."

3) The Court is that well-off person who, on uni move-out day, ditches their fully functional refrigerator and buys another at their destination just to avoid the hassle of caring.

[TBeholder]

Nov 15, 2021 8:12:09 GMT blackouthart said:

My first thought was Zimmy.

Zimmy seems to be the opposite of that, a massive ether-sink.

[justhalf]

Nov 15, 2021 8:23:17 GMT theonethatgotaway said:

They're no fans of wishywashy stuff, they like science!

They are still using the ether in a more scientific way in the form of Anja's computer, though.

[theonethatgotaway]

Nov 15, 2021 10:14:02 GMT justhalf said:

Nov 15, 2021 8:23:17 GMT theonethatgotaway said:

They're no fans of wishywashy stuff, they like science!

They are still using the ether in a more scientific way in the form of Anja's computer, though.

I was under the impression that the Court wasn't too happy about that, but allowed it because they gave it a pretty science-y explanation, probably threw in a few Quantums and Nanos.

[noone3]

Nov 15, 2021 8:31:12 GMT madjack said:

Nov 15, 2021 8:26:02 GMT aline said:

Also where does the Court want to move that they need such amounts of magic to do it? Aren't they the all hail technology guys with unlimited access to robots who do all the work?

What else? The entire Court itself, Miyazaki style.

Yup, they gonna Hauru the whole shebang!

[Karretch]

My fear is all the build-up surrounding Kat, that in the end she's going to be the source they use.

[blahzor]

ya know it'll be hella easy for Kat to change how The Court is ran if The Court left for elsewhere first

[todd]

The Court is definitely coming across here as being so obsessed with its great goal (whatever it is) that it's ignoring everything else, such as the safety and well-being of its people. A sort of "All that matters is our Cause, and to achieve that Cause, we will sacrifice everything - our people, right and wrong - everything."

[philman]

So what power source could be equal to Coyote's? Clearly not Annie, or any of the other forest spirits. The only equivalents we have seen are perhaps Zimmy and the robot goddess Kat, unless they are going to try and tap into something even more fundamental, such as the Psychopomps or the ROTD itself.


Their goal is still very vaguely defined, Coyote claims they are trying to become gods (which is likely a gross misrepresentation of their exact goal), Shell claims they want to move the humans and found a new Court (which is likely a gross simplification).

I think we are still missing a base definition of what the court actually is. It is clearly something more than just a collection of buildings and people, if that was all it was then moving it somewhere else would be laughably simple given the resources they obviously have access to.


What is the seed Bismuth, and what does/did it do? If they wanted to use Coyote's power to found a new Court, was the seed Bismuth the dying echoes of a different, older god?

We saw with Jeanne that the court was not above killing its own to create protectors of itself, was Bismuth something similar?

[mordekai]

Uh...oh...

Will it be Annie? Renard? Zimmy? Aata? the Psychopomps...?

I am scared now...


And, what do they need that Ether for, anyways? And where are they getting their Ether from NOW? The Forest? The Seed of Bismuth?

[liminal]

Nov 15, 2021 11:38:30 GMT Karretch said:

My fear is all the build-up surrounding Kat, that in the end she's going to be the source they use.

My very first thought seeing this page at 3AM was "Oh no! Kat!" before thinking whether that was wild or regular spec and getting ready to dive into the archives...

Sleep won last night.

[davidm]

Nooo, I have a terrible feeling about this. First Loup hiding in court and now this. They are all after Boxbot and his sexyness/ether, and that's terrible.

Foreshadowing: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=203 "You Had Me at Hello" the famous movie line, song, etc. Proof of foreshadowing, a few pages later we see shadow: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=206

[imaginaryfriend]

Regarding Zeta, even if you view her as only a sink she's still got ether flowing/trying to flow through her. They can store ether so they wouldn't have to drain her all at once. I think it's a quality problem either intrinsic to Zeta or as a result of Gamma's support complicating the purification process. I don't know if ether is twice as hard to filter if there is an additional mind/will in the mix, only a little harder since it's still the same process, or exponentially harder, but it should be harder. It could also be her ether is so scrambled that they can't drain it, or there isn't much left after they purify it, or they can't completely purify it resulting in an unstable or unpredictable end product. That last possibility isn't something that can't be overcome on the back end but might not be worth the hassle.

[shadow3]

Run, Zimmy, run!

Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

[Gemminie]

So I skipped Friday's update because of life, but the previous page shares much in common with this one, being more of this conversation between Annie and Shell.

So Shell's summary of the Court's plan is that the humans are leaving the Court per se to go across the ocean to start a new Court. It's already started – meaning that a site has probably already been selected, and setup of some sort has begun. The Court needed Coyote's power because it's a huge source of Ether, Shell says, but she doesn't explain why they need a huge source of Ether.

Finally, ominously, Shell says that the Court's going to have to find an equivalently huge source of Ether elsewhere, no matter the cost. What that means is unclear, but I suspect it may mean no matter how many ethereal entities the Court has to kill or drain, they will do it (I'm thinking this is a tacit Zimmy reference – though if there's a way to drain all the Ether out of Zimmy without killing her, she'd probably be all for it, as she considers it a curse rather than a gift). And as Shell says this, the camera pulls back to show us some of the destruction that Loup's caused – the cost of this latest attempt to obtain the necessary Ether. Tony, Kat, and Renard are seen in the background, following after Annie and Shell, and there appear to be others behind them – possibly some of the tree people, as the Forest creatures will be moving somewhere.

Then there's the question of what the Court needs all that energy for. The Omega Device is apparently functioning already. Maybe it's not as powerful as they want it to be yet? Are they basically trying to create a god they can control, and they need a godlike amount of etheric energy to do that?

So, wherever Loup is, the Court may be leaving him behind. Are they abandoning their attempts to get Coyote's power from him? Also, when Shell says all the humans of the Court are leaving, what does that mean about people like Annie, who are mostly human? What about humans with etheric abilities? And what about Zimmy?

[Igniz]

If the higher-ups need such a great amount of ether to carry out their plan (whatever the true extent of it is), it could be assumed that it is to move, at the most, the entire Court itself (or really huge portions of it), at the least, the Seed Bismuth.

And it doesn't matter if they don't "like" etheric things — from what we've seen, if it serves to further their objectives, they'll use it.

Regarding the alternatives, Dragon Ball Zeta seems to be the most likely candidate at hand, which is backed by Jones's words in this page's fourth panel.

[ctso74]

Llanwellyn: "Unfortunate about the Coyote attempt, but I know a guy. Baba Yaga Structure Relocation. No one has a chicken phobia, right?"

I'm still leaning toward "across the ocean" being a created place. Whether it's etheric, physical, or a pocket dimension remains to be seen. There still a lot about the Court's plans, that we have no idea about. I wonder if they need a single source of Ether, or if they can use multiple sources?

[bicarbonat]

Nov 15, 2021 13:19:15 GMT philman said:

Their goal is still very vaguely defined, Coyote claims they are trying to become gods (which is likely a gross misrepresentation of their exact goal), Shell claims they want to move the humans and found a new Court (which is likely a gross simplification).

I think we are still missing a base definition of what the court actually is. It is clearly something more than just a collection of buildings and people, if that was all it was then moving it somewhere else would be laughably simple given the resources they obviously have access to.

And where is Jones in all of this? We saw her walking the halls during the recent hullabaloo and we've seen her input handily ignored by Llanwellyn. I assume she still feels a duty of care for James at least (whether we argue the fine points of "feelings" or not, Jones is scrupulous when it comes to fulfilling care, as seen with Mort).

This would put her at odds with the Court, proper – and I hope that any final stand there isn't how we find out that she can indeed be broken.

[mturtle7]

Ooh, that makes sense. I mean, even putting aside wild speculation, we know the Court is trying to do SOME sort of experimentation with raw Ether, so collecting a big ol' gods-worth of it before they go is a pretty obvious thing to do.

Delving a little more into the speculative side of things, I really wonder how much Coyote & his creations have already played a role in the Court's ether research program. The only thing we've actually seen them collecting ether from was a (apparently) ordinary lake, and yet...I can easily see the ridiculous abundance of ambient magic Coyote caused in the Forest spilling over at least a little to the other side of the ravine, such that the Court could take advantage of it. Maybe that spillover has also been part of what's attracted so many magical creatures to the Court, i.e. Basil, Mort, Chang'e, etc.

[csj]

It's probably zimmy but imagine if they tried putting the psychopomps out of a job
Delectably ghoulish

[Nnelg]

Nov 15, 2021 8:04:13 GMT Timberwere said:

If Coyote is such a huge source of ether and the court needs that for their moving activities, then the first question is - who or what would be the alternative?

No, I think that's backwards.

The Court needs a huge source of Ether for something. If they can't get it at their current location, they'll move somewhere else in search of another source.

[pyradonis]

Nov 15, 2021 17:46:56 GMT Nnelg said:

Nov 15, 2021 8:04:13 GMT Timberwere said:

If Coyote is such a huge source of ether and the court needs that for their moving activities, then the first question is - who or what would be the alternative?

No, I think that's backwards.[...]

You know what they say on reddit...? "Username checks out."

But if you read the penultimate and the current page together, I believe it's clear that they first need the Ether before moving.

SHELL: All the humans are going to leave the Court. Across the ocean, to start again. A new Court. They've already started.

ANNIE: Why would you need Coyote's power to do that?

SHELL: Because it's a huge source of Ether.

[mochakimono]

I'm getting a suspicion that all of this is moving us closer and closer to the post-apocalyptic wasteland Tea's bonus scenes take place in. Alternatively, that those pages take place in the alternate timeline which the Norns won't tell Kat about in detail - perhaps the real consequences of Kat never inventing a Tic-Toc extend beyond just Annie's death, and this new time loop is crucial to maintaining the structure and relationship of the living realm and the Ether entirely. Eh, who knows, I'm just swinging in the dark here trying to figure out how this all ties together.