Grrl Power #1044 - Familial foibles (Patreon)

Thanks so much for your support! For serious!

I apologize for my terrible spanish.

This page should answer any questions about what's going on here, in case you weren't up to speed, or, you know, have just forgotten some of the details of a webcomic from 5 months ago. The TL:DR version is that the symbol on a succubus's collar is determined by her master. Parfait's collar looks different than Dabbler's, but still features the quadruple X symbol, meaning her master is also Tom.

I had to edit this page as I was drawing it. Originally, I figured Dabbler would be incensed by Thothogoth here, but as shown on the page linked above, Dabbler said that succubi like who they are, including their bonds. It definitely depends on who they're bonded to to some degree, but, again, on that page she also said that the council of succubus Matriarchs provide considerable disincentive to those who think they're signing up for a punching bag/fleshlight.

So originally, Dabbler immediately whipped out her vierhander (her sword is a 4-hander) and threw down with Tom, but if I'm trying to be true to her earlier statements, then she'd actually be happy for Parfait. It's still kind of a dick move on Tom's part though. I mean, normally if your kind-of-current-but-mostly-ex-even-if-you-banged-him-like-three-days-ago-boyfriend basically announces that he's going to start banging your younger sister because you're not well behaved enough? Uh, yeah, you're gonna throw down. But these are succubi, so it's... a little different for them. It still doesn't mean Dabbler can't be protective of her little half-sister.

I'm not sure a soul-eater (yes, she's holding Blackrazor there) would actually do much to a person unless it strikes the fatal blow, but the way Dabbler is threatening with it here, I'm going to say that anything that gets chopped off by a soul-eater can't be regrown without taking some really extraordinary measures.

As far as the whole "infinite regen+portal+volcano" goes... I mean, yikes, right? Only, since Tom is a Fiend, he's going to have some not-insignificant resistance to heat. HOWEVER - lava is fucking hot. It generally ranges from 1,300 to 2,200°F. So 50% heat resistance would still mean getting your dick cooked at, let's average it out to 1,200°? I almost wrote "Ice Volcano" but that seemed like it would take a little more explanation. Like... a geyser of liquid nitrogen or something?

I don't think people appreciate how hot lava is. I've actually been near lava. My family went on vacation to Hawaii, I want to say it was in 1984 after the volcano erupted and a big swathe of the island got covered in lava. Maybe we went in 85 or 86, because at the time, you could take a bus out to see the cooled flow, which just looked like a million trucks full of asphalt had spilled down the mountain all the way to the ocean, and then melted. Anyway, there was still an active tube of lava running under all the cooled stuff, and we could lean out over a cliff and watch the stuff pour right into the waves. The tourguide said that if the wind started blowing in our direction, we would have to leave right away, because the steam from the lava hitting the water would have all sorts of nasty shit in it and would destroy our lungs.

So standing upwind from this lava that hadn't had a chance to cool hardly because it was running up a lava tube before it hit the air, from about... 100 feet away(?) the heat from this lava was cooking the oils out of my face. It was like sticking my face into a really hot sauna whenever I leaned out to look at the lava.

I say all of this to reinforce the horror of Dabbler's threat, but also to tell you that the experience in Hawaii has ruined every movie with lava in it since. That Kali-Ma scene in the Temple of Doom when the guy was in the cage and the trap door opened up below him, then he's lowered into the lava below? ABSOLUTELY NOT. The instant that doop opened, he would have been blasted into ash like he'd been standing five feet behind an F-16 when it was taking off. The shaft would have focused that heat into a heat laser. Like a blow torch verses flash paper. And the scene in the Tommy Lee Jones movie Volcano, where the subway chief guy is standing on the back of the subway car, surrounded by lava, then he tries to jump over it, but lands in it, then tosses the guy on his shoulder over the lava while his bones melt? How 'bout no! Standing two feet directly above lava means not only are you on fire, I'm pretty sure the ambient air temperature means your lungs would be ash already. Even discounting the heat, I'm pretty sure if my bones were melting, I wouldn't have the wherewithal to shot-put a human being. Adrenaline? Yeah, probably. Mental faculties? Probably not.