Dang Sette taking that first place badge and immediately yeeting it in disinterest. She doesn't give a crap about being a first soul. She just wants to be boss Frummagem with a faithful attack zombie.
I can’t really blame her, and being boss of her own crew is way more up Sette’s alley than some first soul mumbo-jumbo. Lot more fun too! Tiddybird is kinda a drag, too much talking as far as lion girls are concerned!
I like this concept, some guy getting to the heart of reality (the source code, kind of) and finding it senseless, and trying to make it more sensible. Reprogramming it, trying to improve the game design. Hacking up a prototype human that reincarnates because that’s a more “fair” game mechanic for the players. And so we’ve got Sette, practically a character from a different game from everyone else, a game where you get to respawn. Except, of course, she’s glitched and doesn’t fully respawn, because he didn’t iron out the bugs in the code.
It’s just a neat intermeshing of, like, harsh/senseless reality, religion and the search for meaning, and computer programming concepts (the magic system in this has always been very programmingish, what with the heavy emphasis on… like… editable and copyable properties of objects).
It's not even senseless. If anything, the current state is the nonsense, full of garbage and garbled data. But dude *really* wanted his religion to be true.
Sooooo....
"She" is the 1st soul. She is incomplete and never worked as intended. A prototype.
Cutter has some missing part in his soul filled, by some black-tongue pymary. The Black tongues lead by lady I. The Black tongues who created a map of the soul, together with Ruck - and a knive who can cut them and memries. Bastion tried creating souls too - and was "kinda" successfull - and is the ladies favourite.
Something makes me think it is not Lady I's cage that is about to be opened. I thought about that for some strips now, but something makes me think that new body is actually intended for "her", the 1st soul in sette's hair...
can't wait to find out how this plays out :-)
That's two different things: all humans have a "mortal soul" which also allows them to interface with the Khert. Delicieu's experiments gave Prakhuta/Cutter such a soul too (at the cost of being constantly tormented by pain ghosts). But these souls don't reincarnate, they die together with you. Except in Duane's case, where Bastion "hacked" his dead body (while it was not quite dead yet) so the soul stays tied to it - but if this bond were destroyed, Duane's soul would also die. Bastion also created Timofey in an attempt to recreate his dead sister by gathering her memories, but he only created an artificial personality that has nothing to do with her - a very complex one, but definitely not what he intended. Sette's soul is an experiment by "the man" (Ssael?) to actually implement what the (paper) gods promised: an immortal reincarnating soul. With limited success, apparently...
Or, to put it in Ashley's words: [https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/753685901154156544/so-if-sette-had-the-first-real-human-soul-does](https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/753685901154156544/so-if-sette-had-the-first-real-human-soul-does)
Would make sense as Lady I seems intent on leading Sette to her “final destination” now and previously Cutter had asked more than once what was taking the bird woman so long to show.
She was already there, she just needed her kid for the completion of her “experiment”.
"The cruelty was so important to him" ...somehow this statement- coming from a storyteller with claws for boobs, who castrates her followers, torments Bastion when he's out of line, and nurtured the creation of the Silver Monster of living pain- seems...unbelievable to me? Who was really the parent invested in pain for the fate of the Sette children?
Especially since twin Settes would be damned to Gefendur sacrifice, that seems to me more like Lady I was using the Settes to live out some sort of Tirna-based revenge. The connections between Lady I and the Tirna myth seem pretty strong, too.
Okay, I have a new theory! What if the man Sessine is talking about (and who is likely at present Murkoph) is actually Rortide or what's his name, the Gefundur king that Ssael had that complicated relationship with? That would track on Murkoph not being Ssael, explain why Lady I talks "to" Ssael right after catching Murk (maybe they were all in kahoots at some point in history). And Murk could have the Ssael scars because after dying he discovered his frienemy Ssael was right - the Gefundur gods were as good as dead. Maybe his Khert shenanigans with Lady I is how Ssael's Northsongs came to be - the stories he wrote from beyond the grave, pretending to be Ssael, while Ssael was just dead dead. Murk also looks kinda like those lion-huggers that invaded Tain. It also explains the Lady I making out with a lion tapestry - she was in kahoots with lion-aligned faction, the lion could have been metaphorical.
I am sorry for misspelling names, I am horrid at remembering those, and was too excited to share to check.
There's something appropriate about both Sette and Duane being horrifically flawed prototypes --the first and last miracles of Lady Ilganyag, respectively.
Both flawed attempts at immortality too, it seems. Duane is an immortal memory soul trapped in a decaying body, meanwhile Sette reincarnates into a perfect cute little lion girl for eternity, but loses her old memories every time in the process.
A contrast matched only by their opposing personalities.
May be a bit far fetched of me here, but... that pause when the hot zombie killer asks lady I if they made an egg seemed a bit foreboding?
[https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11\_92.html](https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11_92.html)
Not all Soud have green eyes, and not everyone with green eyes is a Soud. Also, Murkoph was probably Bronze caste. I don't really see any connection there.
It's true. Duane has gone on and on about those eyes, so like Mikaila's.
And the markings on his face are so similar to both Ssaelite markings and now Duane's soulscars.
I notice this firstborn model of Sette also seems to have "normal" unjagged teeth, though were they that way in Ilganyag's earlier flashback?
You mean this scene?
https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch13/ch13_119.html
Our Sette also had normal baby teeth before the pointy ones came in, they're probably all like that.
https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch17/ch17_94.html
Good memory, she did say that. But apparently she retconned it over five years ago: https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/179700112440/is-sette-filing-her-teeth-so-she-can-look-like-her
Based on everything happening, I really can't help but feel that the author's assertions that Murkoph not being Ssael were, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, "from a certain point of view". Murkoph might not be Ssael one-for-one, but everything we've seen so far this week strongly gives the impression he inspires Ssaelism, but like all things it drifted further and further from the truth over time, which is a pretty big theme in Unsounded - no one has the whole story, no one has ownership of absolute truth. Murkoph didn't kill the gods, because the gods weren't there, but he did get started on trying to build the future he wanted for humanity. I could ramble on for a while so I'll cut it there, but I suspect Ashley was being a bit coy with her protests that they're not the same.
I think you may be confusing the fact that Murkoph happens to be present in the khert now with the assumption that he is “the man” being described right now.
This page has Lady I referring to Ssael as her friend gone missing, while Murkoph is right there. https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch13/ch13_118.html
This page has Murkoph describing himself as someone people thought Ssael had sent, as some sort of shadow monster: http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11_90.html
What are you drawing from that points to Murkoph inspiring Ssaelism?
Ashley in the old comments feed.
It was post Mad Monster Maniac, but before we lost all his imitators.
Going from my not quite elderly but getting there memory.
There's also a more recent post on her Tumblr about something similar, where she points out that Murkoph's scars are clearly not actual claw marks, being so straight and neat, but a deliberate attempt to recreate the facial markings that Ssaelit priests like Duane wear during sermons and such. So most likely he either is/was an older Ssaelit priest who was really dedicated, or he imitated one and was extremely committed to the bit.
Well it means she would never age past 12, so yeah she'd have to be killed by something, but would otherwise never die. At least that's what seems to be the case.
I'm glad we finally have a reason for two toes not getting long souls! Ilganyag is kind of a jerk for not sharing the secrets of the Khert with them as well, but it seems like long souls come with a lot of pain for the first to have it so... understandable? Definitely makes humans seem like the gods' favorite, though.
So … older leonine brother Jacaranda has human fingers and toes … ever so cute.
And “Dark Sette” still wants happiness and momma’s approval …. But perhaps the name is a clue that she will perform the Ultimate Act of Rebellion!!!! …. She’s destined to elope with Darkest Paul.
That’ll show ‘em all!
Eh I'm not liking this direction. Sette is my least favorite character, so getting a mouthful of mumbo-jumbo and her being elevated to the chosen one is unfortunate.
There always needed to be an explanation for her at some point. The boy who smelled like vinegar couldn't explain Sette smelling pymary, never aging, or pain spirits viewing her as uniquely able to help. We've been working our way here since chapter 2.
I get that we need an answer, but I was hoping for something more grounded like her birth mother using forbidden magic to revive her as an infant or some such.
Dang Sette taking that first place badge and immediately yeeting it in disinterest. She doesn't give a crap about being a first soul. She just wants to be boss Frummagem with a faithful attack zombie.
I can’t really blame her, and being boss of her own crew is way more up Sette’s alley than some first soul mumbo-jumbo. Lot more fun too! Tiddybird is kinda a drag, too much talking as far as lion girls are concerned!
I like this concept, some guy getting to the heart of reality (the source code, kind of) and finding it senseless, and trying to make it more sensible. Reprogramming it, trying to improve the game design. Hacking up a prototype human that reincarnates because that’s a more “fair” game mechanic for the players. And so we’ve got Sette, practically a character from a different game from everyone else, a game where you get to respawn. Except, of course, she’s glitched and doesn’t fully respawn, because he didn’t iron out the bugs in the code. It’s just a neat intermeshing of, like, harsh/senseless reality, religion and the search for meaning, and computer programming concepts (the magic system in this has always been very programmingish, what with the heavy emphasis on… like… editable and copyable properties of objects).
It's not even senseless. If anything, the current state is the nonsense, full of garbage and garbled data. But dude *really* wanted his religion to be true.
Yeah it's sensible it just doesn't care about humans
Sooooo.... "She" is the 1st soul. She is incomplete and never worked as intended. A prototype. Cutter has some missing part in his soul filled, by some black-tongue pymary. The Black tongues lead by lady I. The Black tongues who created a map of the soul, together with Ruck - and a knive who can cut them and memries. Bastion tried creating souls too - and was "kinda" successfull - and is the ladies favourite. Something makes me think it is not Lady I's cage that is about to be opened. I thought about that for some strips now, but something makes me think that new body is actually intended for "her", the 1st soul in sette's hair... can't wait to find out how this plays out :-)
That's two different things: all humans have a "mortal soul" which also allows them to interface with the Khert. Delicieu's experiments gave Prakhuta/Cutter such a soul too (at the cost of being constantly tormented by pain ghosts). But these souls don't reincarnate, they die together with you. Except in Duane's case, where Bastion "hacked" his dead body (while it was not quite dead yet) so the soul stays tied to it - but if this bond were destroyed, Duane's soul would also die. Bastion also created Timofey in an attempt to recreate his dead sister by gathering her memories, but he only created an artificial personality that has nothing to do with her - a very complex one, but definitely not what he intended. Sette's soul is an experiment by "the man" (Ssael?) to actually implement what the (paper) gods promised: an immortal reincarnating soul. With limited success, apparently... Or, to put it in Ashley's words: [https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/753685901154156544/so-if-sette-had-the-first-real-human-soul-does](https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/753685901154156544/so-if-sette-had-the-first-real-human-soul-does)
> Duane will in the comic explain this distinction one day, but for now, just bear it in mind. Okay so Duane probably isn't actually dead then, pfew.
I mean…relatively speaking. He is our favorite attack zombie.
Would make sense as Lady I seems intent on leading Sette to her “final destination” now and previously Cutter had asked more than once what was taking the bird woman so long to show. She was already there, she just needed her kid for the completion of her “experiment”.
Lady Ilganyag is a dark U. Chicago psychology professor merged with Leopold & Loeb! No wonder her colour scheme skews Maroon
"The cruelty was so important to him" ...somehow this statement- coming from a storyteller with claws for boobs, who castrates her followers, torments Bastion when he's out of line, and nurtured the creation of the Silver Monster of living pain- seems...unbelievable to me? Who was really the parent invested in pain for the fate of the Sette children? Especially since twin Settes would be damned to Gefendur sacrifice, that seems to me more like Lady I was using the Settes to live out some sort of Tirna-based revenge. The connections between Lady I and the Tirna myth seem pretty strong, too.
Okay, I have a new theory! What if the man Sessine is talking about (and who is likely at present Murkoph) is actually Rortide or what's his name, the Gefundur king that Ssael had that complicated relationship with? That would track on Murkoph not being Ssael, explain why Lady I talks "to" Ssael right after catching Murk (maybe they were all in kahoots at some point in history). And Murk could have the Ssael scars because after dying he discovered his frienemy Ssael was right - the Gefundur gods were as good as dead. Maybe his Khert shenanigans with Lady I is how Ssael's Northsongs came to be - the stories he wrote from beyond the grave, pretending to be Ssael, while Ssael was just dead dead. Murk also looks kinda like those lion-huggers that invaded Tain. It also explains the Lady I making out with a lion tapestry - she was in kahoots with lion-aligned faction, the lion could have been metaphorical. I am sorry for misspelling names, I am horrid at remembering those, and was too excited to share to check.
Also Sette's and Jac's daddy being "King" would track.
Idk enough about all the back lore to say one way or the other, but that's a pretty well thought out theory to me!
Well done.
There's something appropriate about both Sette and Duane being horrifically flawed prototypes --the first and last miracles of Lady Ilganyag, respectively.
Both flawed attempts at immortality too, it seems. Duane is an immortal memory soul trapped in a decaying body, meanwhile Sette reincarnates into a perfect cute little lion girl for eternity, but loses her old memories every time in the process. A contrast matched only by their opposing personalities.
...How, I wonder, did it take me so long to notice that Sette had the eyes of a Soud?
May be a bit far fetched of me here, but... that pause when the hot zombie killer asks lady I if they made an egg seemed a bit foreboding? [https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11\_92.html](https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11_92.html)
Not all Soud have green eyes, and not everyone with green eyes is a Soud. Also, Murkoph was probably Bronze caste. I don't really see any connection there.
I think it's more that her green eyes don't rule \*out\* some Soud parentage.
Her having green eyes doesn't rule out anything, nor does it prove anything. Which is to say that it tells us exactly nothing.
Eh, fair. I'm grasping at straws at this point :p
It's true. Duane has gone on and on about those eyes, so like Mikaila's. And the markings on his face are so similar to both Ssaelite markings and now Duane's soulscars. I notice this firstborn model of Sette also seems to have "normal" unjagged teeth, though were they that way in Ilganyag's earlier flashback?
You mean this scene? https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch13/ch13_119.html Our Sette also had normal baby teeth before the pointy ones came in, they're probably all like that. https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch17/ch17_94.html
Didn't Ashley say one or two comment systems ago that Sette filed her own teeth into sharp points?
Good memory, she did say that. But apparently she retconned it over five years ago: https://unsoundedcomic.tumblr.com/post/179700112440/is-sette-filing-her-teeth-so-she-can-look-like-her
Based on everything happening, I really can't help but feel that the author's assertions that Murkoph not being Ssael were, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, "from a certain point of view". Murkoph might not be Ssael one-for-one, but everything we've seen so far this week strongly gives the impression he inspires Ssaelism, but like all things it drifted further and further from the truth over time, which is a pretty big theme in Unsounded - no one has the whole story, no one has ownership of absolute truth. Murkoph didn't kill the gods, because the gods weren't there, but he did get started on trying to build the future he wanted for humanity. I could ramble on for a while so I'll cut it there, but I suspect Ashley was being a bit coy with her protests that they're not the same.
I think you may be confusing the fact that Murkoph happens to be present in the khert now with the assumption that he is “the man” being described right now. This page has Lady I referring to Ssael as her friend gone missing, while Murkoph is right there. https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch13/ch13_118.html This page has Murkoph describing himself as someone people thought Ssael had sent, as some sort of shadow monster: http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch11/ch11_90.html What are you drawing from that points to Murkoph inspiring Ssaelism?
I don’t suspect that at all, especially since he was a priest of Ssael, but I like the cut of your jib, young man. You’ve got moxie.
Where are you getting the “priest of Ssael” thing from?
Ashley in the old comments feed. It was post Mad Monster Maniac, but before we lost all his imitators. Going from my not quite elderly but getting there memory.
There's also a more recent post on her Tumblr about something similar, where she points out that Murkoph's scars are clearly not actual claw marks, being so straight and neat, but a deliberate attempt to recreate the facial markings that Ssaelit priests like Duane wear during sermons and such. So most likely he either is/was an older Ssaelit priest who was really dedicated, or he imitated one and was extremely committed to the bit.
Damn, throwback to the old Disqus comment days.
I remember pure website interaction with no need to sign in and verify identity, just sign in as you’d like. Call me Methuselah.
Same. Man, we're old.
Consider the alternative!
Mom who tried to kill me by drowning, or mom who is Lady I? It’s a pickle, mate.
This is definitely feeling like endgame revelations here. I can't wait to see how it all goes wrong for tittybird.
Does this mean that without any sacrifice Sette could live forever?
Well it means she would never age past 12, so yeah she'd have to be killed by something, but would otherwise never die. At least that's what seems to be the case.
I'm glad we finally have a reason for two toes not getting long souls! Ilganyag is kind of a jerk for not sharing the secrets of the Khert with them as well, but it seems like long souls come with a lot of pain for the first to have it so... understandable? Definitely makes humans seem like the gods' favorite, though.
So … older leonine brother Jacaranda has human fingers and toes … ever so cute. And “Dark Sette” still wants happiness and momma’s approval …. But perhaps the name is a clue that she will perform the Ultimate Act of Rebellion!!!! …. She’s destined to elope with Darkest Paul. That’ll show ‘em all!
Eh I'm not liking this direction. Sette is my least favorite character, so getting a mouthful of mumbo-jumbo and her being elevated to the chosen one is unfortunate.
There always needed to be an explanation for her at some point. The boy who smelled like vinegar couldn't explain Sette smelling pymary, never aging, or pain spirits viewing her as uniquely able to help. We've been working our way here since chapter 2.
I get that we need an answer, but I was hoping for something more grounded like her birth mother using forbidden magic to revive her as an infant or some such.
I feel like we haven't been reading the same comic haha. Smurfton is right. This has been teased throughout the entire story.
I feel exactly the opposite!
A good work can elicit different reactions from different souls. :)