 A big apology to all, but it seems I just can't get these things done on time. When the chapter finishes, I'll get to work on fixing this situation, and that'll be fairly soon. Evan gets back into town tonight, so we may be able to do some more gaming, getting some more source material for Dungeon Damage. Or maybe we'll just spend three months watching anime. It's difficult to predict the future. If you haven't seen it yet, go to the previous comic for the unannounced Hallowe'en special. Then again, the logs show a flat activity pattern, so I guess most of you already saw it. HISTORY Holy water isn't just something for fighting vampires. Go into a church and you'll find a font full of the stuff; it's used in baptisms and other ceremonies, and people entering the church for mass wet their fingers and make the sign of the cross. It makes sense that a vampire hunter would be supplied with holy water by his local authorities. However, there's been at least one case of someone being infected with a disease by holy water. It seems it's only truly effective against the undead. In other news, we've got two reader comments on the subject of days of the week, which I touched on in the last history section. I'll let them speak for themselves. Chris Csernica writes: The days of the week weren't named after gods, they were named after planets which themselves were named for the gods. This is something the Romans picked up from the Egyptians along with the 7-day week. I'm not altogether certain where the Egyptians got it; their traditional week had 10 days. Possibly from the Babylonians, who named the 7 days of their week after the same planets as the Egyptians, and in the same order.* But Roman soldiers returning from Egypt during Augustus' reign took to using the 7-day week alongside the Roman 8-day market week, so that's where they must have got it. The Roman week didn't officially have 7 days until Constantine. The week starts out with the Sun, the Moon, and then the planets: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, adapted from their Egyptian names. When this was taken up by the Teutonic tribes, they substituted the commonly recognized local equivalents to the Roman gods: Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Frigga. Saturn had no Teutonic equivalent, so that day/planetary name was left alone. The names as I have given them are Norse, and they're slightly different in other languages. In Anglo-Saxon, they were called Tiw, Woden, Thunor, and Frige. The Old English day names were thus Sonnandaeg, Monandaeg, Tiwesdaeg, Wodnesdaeg, Thunresdaeg, Frigedaeg, and Saeternesdaeg. They wore down to their modern forms along the way, so no one ever called the 5th day of the week "Thor's day", for example. By the time "daeg" became "day", Thunresdaeg was just plain old Thursday. You might have expected Odin to be idenitified with Jupiter as king of the gods, but for the ancients Thor was closer in personality, attributes (as a storm god) and in popularity. Odin in his aspect as wanderer, trickster, and magician was to them clearly more similar to Mercury. * But then so do the Japanese. The ordering of the planets in the ancient world is uniform across almost all cultures. There's something we don't yet understand here. And J.D.B, whose email ends in .dk thus giving authority in such matters, supplies this rough chart: Danish - English - god or object in the sky (Danish/English) Søndag - Sunday - Solen/The Sun Mandag - Monday - Månen/The Moon Tirsdag - Tuesday - Tyr (krigsgud/god of war) Onsdag - Wednesday - Odin (den øverste As(the Viking term for god)/All-Father, King of Valhalla) Torsdag - Thursday - Thor (torden gud/god thunder) Fredag - Friday - Freja (forårets og frugtbarhedens gudinde/ goddess of spring and fertility) Lørdag - Saturday - Loke (løgnen, tyvenes og forræderiets gud/god of lies, thieves and treachery) (I have used the gods/goddess Danish name) Since it was the Christian church that deicide on the order in which the come, thy might have falsely translated the god Loke as the equivalent of Satan (Satan's day). Well, although some might disagree about the origins of the word Saturday, you can see that there's a lot of interesting background when it comes to day names. (And dig those funky Danish characters! I don't even know how to type those!) Just to round the subject off, the Germans call Wednesday Mittwoch, which means 'middle of the week', thus getting around any arguments about that particular day. Those clever Germans... And finally, it has been brought to my attention that I've been making stuff up again. The greek symbols in Wednesday's strip spelt out Arrestate, which is gibberish. Much better is 'Parelyse' (imperative 'paralyse')or 'Stamata' (imperative 'stop, cease'), provided by John Chronakis who actually knows his Greek. He'll be helping with the incantations in future strips, for which we are all grateful. Thanks, John! ART This one took a while to colour. I wasn't too pleased with it until I started laying darkness over the first frame, at which point it all came together. I also used a time consuming technique for the blood on Libero's armour; I draw out the outlines of the blood splats in ink, scanned, and coloured metal both inside and outside the splats. Then I did a new translucent layer for the blood and flood-filled the lot. It's probably more trouble than it's worth, but the thinned blood colour isn't too bad, eh? Oh, and it appears I've parodied the classic 'monster with helpless woman in torn clothing' pose in frame 2. It's quite unintentional, I assure you. In fact, she's not even cradling him; she's using her natural climbing grip to hold him aloft, much like Spider-Man. GAME It specifically states in the Dungeon Master's Guide not to let an NPC bail the PCs out, but my players were very glad of Libero's appearance. Those of them still conscious, that is. And Libero's obviously had experience with vampire hunts before. He's aware that, if he did try to slay her with his blade, she'd probably turn to mist and fly away before he did any permanent damage. However, holy water is still dangerous to incorporeal undead... especially one as vain as this one. |
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