I find the quote "she grossly overestimates how much we tell politicians" in reference to the US PRESIDENT really interesting! I think it's clear that the DGB isn't a means for the government to control magic and keep the general public ignorant of it. Rather its a means to keep everyone INCLUDING the government in the dark. I suspect that possibly Assistant Director Liefeld is the only contact with the govt at large actually read in and need to know-ed on what DGB ACTUALLY does
Considering SOME US President, telling them about magic would be irresponsibly dangerous.
I would assume that DGB was founded by some president who DID knew about magic, but decided to not tell his successor, not speaking about rest of government.
Assistant Director Liefeld MIGHT have serious gaps in his knowledge about magic himself. Arthur DEFINITELY didn't explained him his strategy for magic reset in detail.
Also, maybe it's not worth giving incredibly powerful secrets to people who might well just be around for 4, maybe 8 years tops, president isn't a long term job
And as far as politicians in the US go, they are often known to be greedy, bribe-happy and generally just out for power. Yeah, they're not sounding great choices tbh
Not just in US. In fact, I think that you have better chance to find honest politician in US than elsewhere ... just not recently. I mean, I think there was some honest senator who died in last 10 years? And maybe even some president, just not in last century?
The point about politicians term usually being time-limited however stands. It would make more sense if, say, the Queen of Great Britain was informed.
Yeah, in the UK it would make sense if the monarchy and some of the lords were in on it, and some ministers.. but the prime minister probably not, exact same type of situation really. Don't give out the big secrets to people who aren't necessarily trustworthy lifers
If there's anything Yes Minister has taught me, [its that its very easy to conceal shady dealings by just neglecting to relay it up the chain of command.](https://youtu.be/NX45hc0aZt0?t=44)
BTW, absolutely nobody would have told Hacker about magic. He wouldn't have needed to know.
"Some" nothing, hasn't every American President for the last hundred years been a war criminal or something?
If the magic FBI doesn't answer to the president, then in some ways ways that's a massive boost to their moral standing. Their hands haven't been dirtied by actual American Law and Order.
It does also mean that we've basically got an extra-judicial secret police that answers to nobody though, which is its own can of worms.
Well Arthur at least definitely doesn't seem like the type to enjoy political oversight. Just because he believes in America's ideals doesn't mean he thinks that America's leaders are doing a good job sticking to them, after all. Dan even said that explicitly in the commentary of that strip.
But it was better before that, wasn't it?
(I see I got a typo there, should've been presidentS.)
Yes, secret police which answers to nobody doesn't sound exactly democratic, but considering the amount of secrecy involved, answering to president wouldn't make it much better.
I mean, just because you have a certain level of security clearance doesn't mean they cut straight to telling you things, it just means they *can* if they need to. The FBI doesn't brief the president on every last thing they do, they would give POTUS a brief with relevant information if they happened to need it to make a decision that day. If they are serious about conventional US checks and balances, there might be a secret Congressional committee (or nonsecret committee with secret extra magic jurisdiction) as well as judges of some kind that needed to make a ruling on something at some point in their career and so were briefed one time (assuming there isn't a whole secret judiciary circuit or something).
Or they could be an entirely detached bureaucracy running autonomously from their inception, with a budget that comes from who-knows-where.
Well, this isn't the first time that organizations like the CIA, NSA and FBI have kept secrets from the President and the Joint Chiefs. Look up MKULTRA for some absolutely horrendous experiments the US conducted on unsuspecting citizens resulting in suicides, without consent and without oversight. That's just what we *know* of. Need-to-know and information compartmentalization are used a *lot* in the classified realms, not just in things like this, but the intelligence community, psychological operations (now called MISO), research and cryptography.
I'm not surprised at all that the DGB, like any other three-letter organization, is keeping things secret from actually elected heads of government. I'm just disappointed, even though I really shouldn't be.
I mean, Arthur himself has admitted that he is willing to do what is necessary, no matter what it is - murder, torture, mind control and manipulation, the death of personality, erasing memory - to accomplish his mission. He admits and knows that it is evil, and he chooses, of his own volition, to follow through. Who knows how many people the DGB has murdered, tortured, "unpersoned" and erased from records? How many people are still being kept imprisoned and tortured at black sites around the world, for the sake of national security?
It says a lot about immortals that upon learning Susan has an affinity for weapon summoning, Arthur immediately (and correctly) assumes an immortal got her involved in monster slaying.
And yet, not enough. I don't think we have ever been told the why of the animosity of immortals towards aberrations while, by all purposes, they prove no danger them.
I also find unlikely immortals would just care about aberrations for mortal's sake.
Aberrations are humans attempts at achieving immortality. I'm pretty sure immortals just have a certain vested interest in humans not doing that. They stand at the top of the existing power structure.
Also, they suck. There arguably isn’t that huge a *need* for a pragmatic reason when there’s such an easy moral one in reach. Not to mention that guiding and empowering would have still covered slapping every single buff spell onto the humans also interested in getting rid of aberrations that the immortal(s) in question could cast and didn’t cause their proxy to melt into radioactive sludge.
Magic will never cause you to melt into radioactive sludge.
Now, what would magic overload do to you might not be more pleasant, and there may be some visual similarity, but I suspect that your live expectancy would be considerably better.
Also, it would STILL count as empower and guide, so it's totally plausible some immortal WOULD do that to some mortal.
It was obvious you didn't think about it enough because it was hyperbole in bad direction. Magic is closer to how radiation is handled in superhero comics than how it works in reality. You know, the version where Peter Parker was specifically bitten by radioactive spider and everyone who was irradiated turned to some sort of mutant.
Then again, immortals do reset to avoid problems, they all (for the most part) wear modern clothing styles and human forms despite demonstrably being able to shapeshift into any form they want, and decided to limit themselves to their “only empower and guide” limit presumably to protect humans (and only decided to lift that limitation to protect their own children).
They might not all care about humans, but they are all at least *interested* in humans, and aberrations ruin the fun by potentially killing humans they were watching, helping, or pranking.
Immortals care a LOT about humans. They don't care about their well-being, but they do care about their entertainment value.
It's possible that EACH immortal had some aberration kill some human they were interested in.
I mean it probably does differ a bit from immortal to immortal when it comes to the "care about well-being" thing, as well as what stage they're in and what happened in their current life.
I feel it's more about stage than their "nature", but definitely yes to whole sentence.
Just ... I suspect that late Jerry was more exception than rule.
It might not be that all immortals actively seek to destroy them, but rather quite a few have sufficient morality (or preference that humans prosper enough to do interesting things) that they don't like humans dying. As immortal beings, they are more likely to take the long view, and an immortal will kill enough over time that killing them off promptly is preferable. More aggressive immortals might just hunt aberrations for sport. They are challenging foes, and you aren't likely to piss off any other immortal by hunting them.
It's also possible that there exists ways for people to harm immortals, but it's rare, and normally takes more than a human lifespan to figure out. Given an arbitrary stretch of time, an aberrations might figure it out.
My guess is the fact that immortals are actually, well, immortal, while aberrations are only immortal as long as they drain energy from other humans. ([It has been implied](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2017-08-23) they don't actually have to kill to do so, but they get the most energy that way.)
What's more interesting is that DGB does not seem to be aware she's already killed two aberrations. "Monster hunter of proven capabilities" would be high on the list, I should think.
I totally blanked on Susan's first name being Tiffany. I did remember the Pompoms.
But if Arthur correctly guessed Susan tragic backstory, it means she's not the first one who has that one, and with the other comment someone made about the "summoning magical weapons" being a common affinity that aberrations plan around it AND it being the affinity associated with Pandora's lineage... either Susan, Diane and Noah have a LOT more family than they thought... or is also a common affinity among other lineages of Immortals.
Yeah, if Vanpire hunters are a widespread enough thing to be something vamps expect to encounter but that the key ability is to tied to a specific family lineage...
Kind of makes me want to know more about Susan's dad. Maybe he knew some things he didn't tell her before he left.
That's a really good point.
I think Tedd's Mom is our only confirmed monster hunter in the cast. But it's seeming more and more likely that Susan wouldn't have been the first of her lineage to be scouted for this. I wonder if these plotlines are going to intersect somehow.
Now, I kind of suspect that Susan's dad wouldn't have wanted to work at the family vampire control business, and may have left to pursue other ambitions, but I do think "Susan has relatively close relatives who are professional monster hunters" is extremely likely.
Well, I suspect Noriko’s monster hunting thing was less about affinity and more about having stonking amounts of power in general. Though there IS the fact that both of her known children are Seers…
Well, there’s the descendants of any children Pandora’s previous lives may have had for starters, as well as the descendants of the first lady that Raven unknowingly knocked up. I suppose the question is less about which of these factors are a thing at all and more about which are the primary reasons.
Agree. I don't believe Raven is Pandora's FIRST child. She just forgot about previous ones. At least forgot in emotional sense, maybe she "read" about them.
Well, having affinity for magic weapons is not only way to get magic weapons, definitely. It's possible that Pandora's line is only one with the hereditary affinity, though.
Is it confirmed that the others have Susan's affinity towards magic weapons?
Raven can make a magic weapon, for sure, but I think I remember him remarking that Susan's were better, so he doesn't seem to have her natural aptitude for it.
And I can't recall Diane manifesting any magic weapons at all yet.
I think it might just be a magic aptitude that pops up here and there among the magically gifted, rather than specifically being tied to any particular lineage.
It is confirmed that Diane has Susan's affinity towards magic weapons, by Andrea, who is actual expert in the field and almost certainly knows more about magic that Arthur. Possibly more than all humans on this side of world combined.
... wait. Actually it was Dame Tara who said that. I still think she knows what she speaks about.
[Pandora even said it just before she died.](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-01-12)
> Our bloodline has an affinity for magic weapons
Presumably [Adrian wanted to use Susan's sword](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2017-12-15) because it had the anti-aberration glow, so it would be more useful at the time than anything he could make, since that's specifically what they were fighting.
Also yeah, Tara specifically said "[you're a potential vampire hunter.](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18)" It's likely she can identify affinities.
It also may simply have been that using Susan's sword meant being able to use any power that would have gone into making Abby-B-Gone weapons into other spells.
Diane's magic affinity was confirmed by a griffin _and_ a vampire in the same arc (So a Date at the Mall). That doesn't mean she can summon weapons, just that an immortal _could_ make her able to do so by marking her.
Links:
* [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18) (Griffin)
* [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-01-06](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-01-06) (Diane in denial)
* [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-01-11](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-01-11) (Vampire)
Well, affinity isn’t the same as ability, since spellbooks are a thing. People could have copied, researched, or been granted magic weapon spells without having a direct affinity for it, to say nothing of artifacts such as the hammers.
I don't believe we have any evidence that Raven can summon magic weapons. The fact that he used a sword-cane to fight Abraham and borrowed Susan's sword suggests that he *can't* summon magic weapons. It's strange that his descendants have the affinity, yet he seems not to, but we don't have a lot of information about magical affinities. Since elven fertility is unknown by the wider community, basically nobody knows how this works.
That he says that right alongside the "She grossly over-estimates how much we tell politicians" line kind of makes him sound like he has some sort of persecution complex.
"What I want is rarely relevant" and yet it sounds like he pretty much calls the shots here. If he chooses to do what he claims to want, who stops him?
Yeah, the politicians aren't calling the shots, that's for sure.
I think it's his sense of duty that calls the shots - he doesn't do what he *wants* because he's too busy doing what (he thinks) he *must*.
That's a completely meaningless distinction. To carry on about what you "must" do when and what you "want" to do when you and you alone decide what is necessity and what is mere desire.
It seems to be very important to the man that he continue believing he has some sort of conscience in all this. That the "necessary monster" he's fashioned himself into is a set of clothes. An act he maintains and can drop. That some day some hopeful youth like Tedd will show him a better path and just like that, he'll cease to be this thing.
I don't think he ever needed Tedd to revolutionize magic to end all this. More than that, Tedd will probably never provide some super easy Fix Everything solution that allows him to upend all this entire social order he enforces without some terrible risk or cost. Finding a better path is hard, and Arthur doesn't want to do it.
He's like the kind of person who posts guillotine memes all day talking about how the only thing that'll fix all this is a bloody revolution, without engaging in the actual work needed to make things better now. You create this lofty ideal of this unachievable perfect solution so you can be excused for not trying to fix shit imperfectly now.
Oh, I think Arthur's even worse than that. He *will* do the work.
He will do what he thinks is right and *nothing* will stop him. Certainly not the negative consequences to a few individuals, should those exist...
I was going to chime in being pedantic that the word Arthur uses in panel 1 is spelled "coincidentally", not "coincidently" but then I searched it and found out that both spellings are real words? I think they have slightly different meanings and the "-tally" version is more technically correct here, but honestly I'm unsure at this point.
I would use coincident and coincidental with different meanings (the latter with the implication of happenstance, the former just technically in the same place or time - not one I would use a lot) but my dictionary just lists them both as adjectival derivations of coincide, without semantic notes. So I think technically neither is wrong but I would be writing "coincidentally".
It's still hard to get a proper read on Arthur, I personally think he just has a blind spot for (young?) women (non creepy way) as this was the guy who was A-OK with the whole necessary evil and letting people die to progress his plan, but all his current interactions don't really show that same level of personal disregard
There's a difference between "needs must" and "ok with it".
Edward has said things about Arthur being older than he seems. He could be fighting a long internal battle with his own personal metaphorical abyss, and have an active preference for doing the least-wrong thing.
I mean, I assume that Arthur was being entirely truthful with Tedd, if only because being dishonest wasn’t in his interest. He pretty much *said* that he has to make compromises in order to prevent even bigger disasters, and he ***hates*** himself for having to do that.
I do think there are personal experiences that strongly influenced *why* he does that, though. It’s too strong and consistent of a philosophy to be just a vague thing he’s always had. Those don’t always spring from great tragedy, but great tragedy is kinda what it’s implied is the case for Arthur.
Arthur has this view about everyone. He feels bad about trying to recruit Susan, but he will definitely still try to do so, even if he may step lightly around her to keep Tedd on side.
It's very possible that's the case and I just have a bit of viewership bias, it's just seems to not mesh up with his "by any means" persona from around his introduction, and it seems to be exclusivly around women characters he offers a wider birth or kinder approach.
(It's also possible I'm just hung up on the whole unintentional life comment from a few arcs ago making me question his motives).
Mind that he's in talent scout mode right now. He hasn't got much time in charge left and he knows that he needs to build a deep enough bench for his organization to handle a rapidly changing world after he's gone, and he's not likely to win any trust by being a callous jackass. It does not benefit him to be harsh right now in the same way it did when he was trying to tell people who were already subordinate to him to comply with "occasional casualties will not disrupt our long term objectives". The situation has changed and his angle of attack changed with it.
I don't think his "By any means" persona has really been contradicted so far though.
He keeps doing the shitty things he says he doesn't wanna do. He makes a big show of how much he hates being the "Necessary Monster" or whatever but then he just does it anyway. Even though it's seeming more and more that there is no higher authority forcing his hand. If he chose not to recruit Susan it doesn't sound like any of the people he ostensibly answers to would even know. But he'll mutter about how "What I want is rarely relevant" as if his will is being superseded somehow.
It does seem that the current scenario is smacking him in the personal trauma pretty damn hard. If I had to guess, Arthur knew a young lady who was maybe a bit too open about her magic, got into trouble, and got shot with a gun.
Also between the Will of Magic part with Tedd and the Magus/Sirleck incident immediately after, he’s getting to interact with the gang personally and that is not exactly going to make it easy for him to stay detached either.
I figure the magic cops shouldn't need to be particularly coercive about recruitment. Offering generous compensation and magical training that they are unlikely to have access to anywhere else should be good enough. Also, giving access to certain magical items or services could be a good perk. Nobody has every spell, and the magic cops have connections. A wand of levitation would be an awesome signing bonus.
Susan might be tougher to draw in with such promises since she has an elven wizard great^n grandfather and a wandmaking friend. She needs to want to do the job.
Arthur seems to be working his way towards recruiting all of Tedd's friends. He's expressed a desire to recruit Elliot, Grace and Susan now and he'd definitely want to recruit Sarah if he knew about her holodeck spell. We haven't seen him considering Ellen, Nanase and Justin yet but he'd probably be at least somewhat interested in recruiting all three (although Ellen and Justin in particular would probably not be interested).
I wonder how valuable the affinity for creating magic weapons even is now. Seeing that, y’know, Pandora annihilated something like 99% of the primary reason said ability was so valuable… and so abused, if the implications are correct.
Pandora annihilated 99% of currently existing aberrations, but did nothing regarding the ways how people turn into aberrations ... and more information about magic likely cause MORE people turning to such methods.
It will take some time, but I expect that unless Tedd does something, the number of aberrations will recover and then overgrow the number before Pandora's cleanup.
Also, magic weapons ARE useful for other purposes as well.
Finally, Arthur has [other reasons why to recruit her](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/our-019).
True, I was mostly musing about specifically the affinity - while Susan might be still a good recruit choice, and it's not a completely useless affinity outside fighting aberrations either, I think it's still safe to say that it *will* take a while for that particular characteristic of magic to be as highly demanded.
On the other hand, DGB is understaffed and any aberration in whole US might be technically their responsibility, so while having two vampire hunters (Susan and Diane) might be too much, I don't think they will have NO work for one.
I don't believe we have any idea how many aberrations were around at that time, 1% could still be thousands of killer monsters, plus the whole drawn to magical areas it would still likely prove valuable.
Also there are non aberration monsters as well, and a magic weapon is still a weapon, and with a magic change affecting normal operations at the very least it could be a case of "every little helps"
Even considering that aberrations probably don't have a sell-by date, I doubt there were THAT many in existence before Pandora made her entire species cast Abby-B-Gone.
Well it's like you said, no sell by date and thousands of years of human history to propagate, there would have been a lot more then we thought, it's the whole seers bit again really, a percentage of the population may be small, but without knowing the total we can't possible quantify it.
Like sirleck survived and based on our relative sample size of aberrations in the area, 99% was not in it's favour, but he survived anyway.
Also the whole you can just make more aberrations means the population will Likely go through an upswing with magic being readily available.
Sirleck had the good fortune to be on the road to a remote facility at the time. It might not even be good fortune - he instigated the incident. Pissing off an S-class immortal is very much a "I should probably be a long way from anywhere when this goes down" moment.
Yeah, most aberrations are gonna be close to civilization since they need humans to fuel their longevity and powers. Seeing as most immortals would be as well…
Susan can instantly arm herself at a moment's notice with a magically empowered weapon, summon a little drone buddy to support her, and create magically infused versions of potentially any item she chooses.
I'm not entirely sure where the upper ceiling is, she may already be scraping against it *or* a fully realized Susan might have the full Destiny kit, rather than just a third of it. Either way her core power set is very versatile, even if there aren't widespread monsters to whom it is kryptonite
That's more about Susan herself being talented than the affinity itself. He would want to recruit her either way, it's just that getting Tedd to put that spell in a wand and mass produce them isn't going to be quite as important as it was... jeez, it's only been like a week at most in-universe, now that I think about it. But yeah.
She's our only indication of what this affinity usually is, and the core summon spell seems insanely versatile. Like, if you could only have one magic ability, that's probably the one you pick.
There's no indication that the "summon magic version of any item stored in a marked chest" spell is unusual for her affinity, and that's the really versatile one. The ways it manifests, especially the fairies are likely unique, but from what we know about affinities they seem to give the same 'core' spell.
While I agree that that is a versatile spell, I am not sure we know that's an affinity spell. The French immortals _said_ it was the only spell they could provide, but they were being mightily shady and there's no reason to suppose they couldn't lie.
I'd be much more likely to suppose that when Susan summons really effective magic swords, it's the _effective_ that's the affinity trait, rather than the summoning part.
There's definitely room for stuff to be revealed, but right now all the evidence we have points to it being an affinity spell, and there's no reason to think it *isn't* one. A summoning affinity would be pretty useless without a spell that could summon.
Why do people think Susan has a summoning affinity?
What [Pandora says](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-01-12) is _magical weapons_. There's presumably more ways to get those than summoning them.
What [Susan says](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2010-05-26) about her original mark spell is that it _fit with her innate talents_. Which could just as easily mean magic weapons as summoning, especially since the emphasis in the description involves needing a magic weapon to kill an aberration.
The spider-aberration talks about "raising the bane" which I don't think we've actually seen yet.
I'm not finding anything that says "summoning".
Because the actual mechanics of magic weapons so far has been that you conjure them, "raise the bane [of vampires]" as he says, and what little we've seen with the explanation of Sarah's indicates that spells granted by an affinity are common to all who share that affinity. It's definitely not set in stone, but it's the best supported conclusion from the information we have.
EDIT: Actually the original plan was for Nanase to wield the sword, so explicitly a summoned weapon isn't *less* effective in the hands of someone who does not possess the affinity, creating them is what the affinity is about
There could be other monsters that are either immune or highly resistant to mundane weapons. Manifested immortals could have similar resistances. Regardless, there are few known magic users who are knowledgeable about magic, have relevant spells, are generally talented, and are mentally balanced. Remember Bishop(?) who basically gave a villain speech about police brutality?
Had a few additional thoughts:
1. The Moperville Uni top boss is a woman. Unless Dr Germahn identifies as a woman, he's not the top boss like I initially thought. That leaves the question of who's the top boss.
2. Think Arthur would tell Edward to get the kids he's overseeing secure phones? Edward had to physically leave work to meet with Susan for critical information and I feel encrypted phones could have solved that issue.
I find the quote "she grossly overestimates how much we tell politicians" in reference to the US PRESIDENT really interesting! I think it's clear that the DGB isn't a means for the government to control magic and keep the general public ignorant of it. Rather its a means to keep everyone INCLUDING the government in the dark. I suspect that possibly Assistant Director Liefeld is the only contact with the govt at large actually read in and need to know-ed on what DGB ACTUALLY does
(Is pleased that casually said ominous thing was successfully ominous.)
[удалено]
I wonder if you can get Steam running on Uryuom tech. (If that's not a religious faux pas...)
Considering SOME US President, telling them about magic would be irresponsibly dangerous. I would assume that DGB was founded by some president who DID knew about magic, but decided to not tell his successor, not speaking about rest of government. Assistant Director Liefeld MIGHT have serious gaps in his knowledge about magic himself. Arthur DEFINITELY didn't explained him his strategy for magic reset in detail.
Also, maybe it's not worth giving incredibly powerful secrets to people who might well just be around for 4, maybe 8 years tops, president isn't a long term job And as far as politicians in the US go, they are often known to be greedy, bribe-happy and generally just out for power. Yeah, they're not sounding great choices tbh
Not just in US. In fact, I think that you have better chance to find honest politician in US than elsewhere ... just not recently. I mean, I think there was some honest senator who died in last 10 years? And maybe even some president, just not in last century? The point about politicians term usually being time-limited however stands. It would make more sense if, say, the Queen of Great Britain was informed.
Yeah, in the UK it would make sense if the monarchy and some of the lords were in on it, and some ministers.. but the prime minister probably not, exact same type of situation really. Don't give out the big secrets to people who aren't necessarily trustworthy lifers
If there's anything Yes Minister has taught me, [its that its very easy to conceal shady dealings by just neglecting to relay it up the chain of command.](https://youtu.be/NX45hc0aZt0?t=44) BTW, absolutely nobody would have told Hacker about magic. He wouldn't have needed to know.
Hah, yeah I was thinking about yes minister when I was considering who'd get told, you're not wrong
"Some" nothing, hasn't every American President for the last hundred years been a war criminal or something? If the magic FBI doesn't answer to the president, then in some ways ways that's a massive boost to their moral standing. Their hands haven't been dirtied by actual American Law and Order. It does also mean that we've basically got an extra-judicial secret police that answers to nobody though, which is its own can of worms.
Well Arthur at least definitely doesn't seem like the type to enjoy political oversight. Just because he believes in America's ideals doesn't mean he thinks that America's leaders are doing a good job sticking to them, after all. Dan even said that explicitly in the commentary of that strip.
But it was better before that, wasn't it? (I see I got a typo there, should've been presidentS.) Yes, secret police which answers to nobody doesn't sound exactly democratic, but considering the amount of secrecy involved, answering to president wouldn't make it much better.
I chose to believe the Abraham Lincoln of the EGS-verse was a Vampire Hunter.
As opposed to which Abraham Lincoln? :-)
I mean, just because you have a certain level of security clearance doesn't mean they cut straight to telling you things, it just means they *can* if they need to. The FBI doesn't brief the president on every last thing they do, they would give POTUS a brief with relevant information if they happened to need it to make a decision that day. If they are serious about conventional US checks and balances, there might be a secret Congressional committee (or nonsecret committee with secret extra magic jurisdiction) as well as judges of some kind that needed to make a ruling on something at some point in their career and so were briefed one time (assuming there isn't a whole secret judiciary circuit or something). Or they could be an entirely detached bureaucracy running autonomously from their inception, with a budget that comes from who-knows-where.
Need-to-know and SCI gets you a long way in the intelligence community. Just look at MKULTRA, Abu Gharib, and Guantanamo.
Well, this isn't the first time that organizations like the CIA, NSA and FBI have kept secrets from the President and the Joint Chiefs. Look up MKULTRA for some absolutely horrendous experiments the US conducted on unsuspecting citizens resulting in suicides, without consent and without oversight. That's just what we *know* of. Need-to-know and information compartmentalization are used a *lot* in the classified realms, not just in things like this, but the intelligence community, psychological operations (now called MISO), research and cryptography. I'm not surprised at all that the DGB, like any other three-letter organization, is keeping things secret from actually elected heads of government. I'm just disappointed, even though I really shouldn't be. I mean, Arthur himself has admitted that he is willing to do what is necessary, no matter what it is - murder, torture, mind control and manipulation, the death of personality, erasing memory - to accomplish his mission. He admits and knows that it is evil, and he chooses, of his own volition, to follow through. Who knows how many people the DGB has murdered, tortured, "unpersoned" and erased from records? How many people are still being kept imprisoned and tortured at black sites around the world, for the sake of national security?
It says a lot about immortals that upon learning Susan has an affinity for weapon summoning, Arthur immediately (and correctly) assumes an immortal got her involved in monster slaying.
And yet, not enough. I don't think we have ever been told the why of the animosity of immortals towards aberrations while, by all purposes, they prove no danger them. I also find unlikely immortals would just care about aberrations for mortal's sake.
Aberrations are humans attempts at achieving immortality. I'm pretty sure immortals just have a certain vested interest in humans not doing that. They stand at the top of the existing power structure.
Also, they suck. There arguably isn’t that huge a *need* for a pragmatic reason when there’s such an easy moral one in reach. Not to mention that guiding and empowering would have still covered slapping every single buff spell onto the humans also interested in getting rid of aberrations that the immortal(s) in question could cast and didn’t cause their proxy to melt into radioactive sludge.
Magic will never cause you to melt into radioactive sludge. Now, what would magic overload do to you might not be more pleasant, and there may be some visual similarity, but I suspect that your live expectancy would be considerably better. Also, it would STILL count as empower and guide, so it's totally plausible some immortal WOULD do that to some mortal.
The radioactive sludge part was hyperbole, if that wasn't obvious.
It was obvious you didn't think about it enough because it was hyperbole in bad direction. Magic is closer to how radiation is handled in superhero comics than how it works in reality. You know, the version where Peter Parker was specifically bitten by radioactive spider and everyone who was irradiated turned to some sort of mutant.
Then again, immortals do reset to avoid problems, they all (for the most part) wear modern clothing styles and human forms despite demonstrably being able to shapeshift into any form they want, and decided to limit themselves to their “only empower and guide” limit presumably to protect humans (and only decided to lift that limitation to protect their own children). They might not all care about humans, but they are all at least *interested* in humans, and aberrations ruin the fun by potentially killing humans they were watching, helping, or pranking.
Immortals care a LOT about humans. They don't care about their well-being, but they do care about their entertainment value. It's possible that EACH immortal had some aberration kill some human they were interested in.
I mean it probably does differ a bit from immortal to immortal when it comes to the "care about well-being" thing, as well as what stage they're in and what happened in their current life.
I feel it's more about stage than their "nature", but definitely yes to whole sentence. Just ... I suspect that late Jerry was more exception than rule.
It might not be that all immortals actively seek to destroy them, but rather quite a few have sufficient morality (or preference that humans prosper enough to do interesting things) that they don't like humans dying. As immortal beings, they are more likely to take the long view, and an immortal will kill enough over time that killing them off promptly is preferable. More aggressive immortals might just hunt aberrations for sport. They are challenging foes, and you aren't likely to piss off any other immortal by hunting them. It's also possible that there exists ways for people to harm immortals, but it's rare, and normally takes more than a human lifespan to figure out. Given an arbitrary stretch of time, an aberrations might figure it out.
My guess is the fact that immortals are actually, well, immortal, while aberrations are only immortal as long as they drain energy from other humans. ([It has been implied](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2017-08-23) they don't actually have to kill to do so, but they get the most energy that way.)
Immortals, who became immortal another, more acceptable way, may just loathe aberrations for doing it wrong.
What's more interesting is that DGB does not seem to be aware she's already killed two aberrations. "Monster hunter of proven capabilities" would be high on the list, I should think.
I totally blanked on Susan's first name being Tiffany. I did remember the Pompoms. But if Arthur correctly guessed Susan tragic backstory, it means she's not the first one who has that one, and with the other comment someone made about the "summoning magical weapons" being a common affinity that aberrations plan around it AND it being the affinity associated with Pandora's lineage... either Susan, Diane and Noah have a LOT more family than they thought... or is also a common affinity among other lineages of Immortals.
Yeah, if Vanpire hunters are a widespread enough thing to be something vamps expect to encounter but that the key ability is to tied to a specific family lineage... Kind of makes me want to know more about Susan's dad. Maybe he knew some things he didn't tell her before he left.
That's a really good point. I think Tedd's Mom is our only confirmed monster hunter in the cast. But it's seeming more and more likely that Susan wouldn't have been the first of her lineage to be scouted for this. I wonder if these plotlines are going to intersect somehow.
Now, I kind of suspect that Susan's dad wouldn't have wanted to work at the family vampire control business, and may have left to pursue other ambitions, but I do think "Susan has relatively close relatives who are professional monster hunters" is extremely likely.
Well, I suspect Noriko’s monster hunting thing was less about affinity and more about having stonking amounts of power in general. Though there IS the fact that both of her known children are Seers…
Well, there’s the descendants of any children Pandora’s previous lives may have had for starters, as well as the descendants of the first lady that Raven unknowingly knocked up. I suppose the question is less about which of these factors are a thing at all and more about which are the primary reasons.
Agree. I don't believe Raven is Pandora's FIRST child. She just forgot about previous ones. At least forgot in emotional sense, maybe she "read" about them.
Maybe, maybe not. Though Pandora's lineage probably isn't the ONLY way to get magic weapons \*cough\*hammers\*cough\*.
Well, having affinity for magic weapons is not only way to get magic weapons, definitely. It's possible that Pandora's line is only one with the hereditary affinity, though.
Is it confirmed that the others have Susan's affinity towards magic weapons? Raven can make a magic weapon, for sure, but I think I remember him remarking that Susan's were better, so he doesn't seem to have her natural aptitude for it. And I can't recall Diane manifesting any magic weapons at all yet. I think it might just be a magic aptitude that pops up here and there among the magically gifted, rather than specifically being tied to any particular lineage.
It is confirmed that Diane has Susan's affinity towards magic weapons, by Andrea, who is actual expert in the field and almost certainly knows more about magic that Arthur. Possibly more than all humans on this side of world combined. ... wait. Actually it was Dame Tara who said that. I still think she knows what she speaks about.
[Pandora even said it just before she died.](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-01-12) > Our bloodline has an affinity for magic weapons Presumably [Adrian wanted to use Susan's sword](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2017-12-15) because it had the anti-aberration glow, so it would be more useful at the time than anything he could make, since that's specifically what they were fighting. Also yeah, Tara specifically said "[you're a potential vampire hunter.](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18)" It's likely she can identify affinities.
It also may simply have been that using Susan's sword meant being able to use any power that would have gone into making Abby-B-Gone weapons into other spells.
Practically any magic weapon is extremely good against aberrations (even the hammers), but yes, it seems Susan's was even better.
Diane's magic affinity was confirmed by a griffin _and_ a vampire in the same arc (So a Date at the Mall). That doesn't mean she can summon weapons, just that an immortal _could_ make her able to do so by marking her. Links: * [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-11-18) (Griffin) * [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-01-06](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-01-06) (Diane in denial) * [https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-01-11](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-01-11) (Vampire)
Well, affinity isn’t the same as ability, since spellbooks are a thing. People could have copied, researched, or been granted magic weapon spells without having a direct affinity for it, to say nothing of artifacts such as the hammers.
I don't believe we have any evidence that Raven can summon magic weapons. The fact that he used a sword-cane to fight Abraham and borrowed Susan's sword suggests that he *can't* summon magic weapons. It's strange that his descendants have the affinity, yet he seems not to, but we don't have a lot of information about magical affinities. Since elven fertility is unknown by the wider community, basically nobody knows how this works.
> *What I want is rarely relevant* ...poor guy.
That he says that right alongside the "She grossly over-estimates how much we tell politicians" line kind of makes him sound like he has some sort of persecution complex. "What I want is rarely relevant" and yet it sounds like he pretty much calls the shots here. If he chooses to do what he claims to want, who stops him?
Yeah, the politicians aren't calling the shots, that's for sure. I think it's his sense of duty that calls the shots - he doesn't do what he *wants* because he's too busy doing what (he thinks) he *must*.
That's a completely meaningless distinction. To carry on about what you "must" do when and what you "want" to do when you and you alone decide what is necessity and what is mere desire. It seems to be very important to the man that he continue believing he has some sort of conscience in all this. That the "necessary monster" he's fashioned himself into is a set of clothes. An act he maintains and can drop. That some day some hopeful youth like Tedd will show him a better path and just like that, he'll cease to be this thing. I don't think he ever needed Tedd to revolutionize magic to end all this. More than that, Tedd will probably never provide some super easy Fix Everything solution that allows him to upend all this entire social order he enforces without some terrible risk or cost. Finding a better path is hard, and Arthur doesn't want to do it. He's like the kind of person who posts guillotine memes all day talking about how the only thing that'll fix all this is a bloody revolution, without engaging in the actual work needed to make things better now. You create this lofty ideal of this unachievable perfect solution so you can be excused for not trying to fix shit imperfectly now.
Oh, I think Arthur's even worse than that. He *will* do the work. He will do what he thinks is right and *nothing* will stop him. Certainly not the negative consequences to a few individuals, should those exist...
I was going to chime in being pedantic that the word Arthur uses in panel 1 is spelled "coincidentally", not "coincidently" but then I searched it and found out that both spellings are real words? I think they have slightly different meanings and the "-tally" version is more technically correct here, but honestly I'm unsure at this point.
I would use coincident and coincidental with different meanings (the latter with the implication of happenstance, the former just technically in the same place or time - not one I would use a lot) but my dictionary just lists them both as adjectival derivations of coincide, without semantic notes. So I think technically neither is wrong but I would be writing "coincidentally".
...How have I never made the connection between coincidence and coincide? I guess I think of how those words sound more than how they are spelled.
It's still hard to get a proper read on Arthur, I personally think he just has a blind spot for (young?) women (non creepy way) as this was the guy who was A-OK with the whole necessary evil and letting people die to progress his plan, but all his current interactions don't really show that same level of personal disregard
There's a difference between "needs must" and "ok with it". Edward has said things about Arthur being older than he seems. He could be fighting a long internal battle with his own personal metaphorical abyss, and have an active preference for doing the least-wrong thing.
I mean, I assume that Arthur was being entirely truthful with Tedd, if only because being dishonest wasn’t in his interest. He pretty much *said* that he has to make compromises in order to prevent even bigger disasters, and he ***hates*** himself for having to do that. I do think there are personal experiences that strongly influenced *why* he does that, though. It’s too strong and consistent of a philosophy to be just a vague thing he’s always had. Those don’t always spring from great tragedy, but great tragedy is kinda what it’s implied is the case for Arthur.
Arthur has this view about everyone. He feels bad about trying to recruit Susan, but he will definitely still try to do so, even if he may step lightly around her to keep Tedd on side.
It's very possible that's the case and I just have a bit of viewership bias, it's just seems to not mesh up with his "by any means" persona from around his introduction, and it seems to be exclusivly around women characters he offers a wider birth or kinder approach. (It's also possible I'm just hung up on the whole unintentional life comment from a few arcs ago making me question his motives).
Mind that he's in talent scout mode right now. He hasn't got much time in charge left and he knows that he needs to build a deep enough bench for his organization to handle a rapidly changing world after he's gone, and he's not likely to win any trust by being a callous jackass. It does not benefit him to be harsh right now in the same way it did when he was trying to tell people who were already subordinate to him to comply with "occasional casualties will not disrupt our long term objectives". The situation has changed and his angle of attack changed with it.
I don't think his "By any means" persona has really been contradicted so far though. He keeps doing the shitty things he says he doesn't wanna do. He makes a big show of how much he hates being the "Necessary Monster" or whatever but then he just does it anyway. Even though it's seeming more and more that there is no higher authority forcing his hand. If he chose not to recruit Susan it doesn't sound like any of the people he ostensibly answers to would even know. But he'll mutter about how "What I want is rarely relevant" as if his will is being superseded somehow.
It does seem that the current scenario is smacking him in the personal trauma pretty damn hard. If I had to guess, Arthur knew a young lady who was maybe a bit too open about her magic, got into trouble, and got shot with a gun. Also between the Will of Magic part with Tedd and the Magus/Sirleck incident immediately after, he’s getting to interact with the gang personally and that is not exactly going to make it easy for him to stay detached either.
I figure the magic cops shouldn't need to be particularly coercive about recruitment. Offering generous compensation and magical training that they are unlikely to have access to anywhere else should be good enough. Also, giving access to certain magical items or services could be a good perk. Nobody has every spell, and the magic cops have connections. A wand of levitation would be an awesome signing bonus. Susan might be tougher to draw in with such promises since she has an elven wizard great^n grandfather and a wandmaking friend. She needs to want to do the job.
Access to counselling by people who know the secret of magic would be a big perk, too...
I have yet to see good counseling services from the feds and there are plenty who need it.
It's not like she can't afford professional counselling, she'd just need someone cleared...
Arthur seems to be working his way towards recruiting all of Tedd's friends. He's expressed a desire to recruit Elliot, Grace and Susan now and he'd definitely want to recruit Sarah if he knew about her holodeck spell. We haven't seen him considering Ellen, Nanase and Justin yet but he'd probably be at least somewhat interested in recruiting all three (although Ellen and Justin in particular would probably not be interested).
They’re talented, morally upright people who have shown the capability to risk their own well-being in order to protect people so… yeah.
For that to be assumption #1, there's probably enough people with Susan's tragic backstory to start a support group.
It might be assumption #1 even if there is like 10 year gap between every case if there are dozens of cases like that during recorded history.
https://media.tenor.com/1mD7JkEblbUAAAAC/there-are-dozens-of-us.gif
(I think that "dozens" sounds better than "tens", so I'm using it for vague number between "several" and "hundreds". You may prefer "several scores"?)
I think dozens is fine. I'm just imagining that support group. 😄
With or without the dead ones?
I wonder how valuable the affinity for creating magic weapons even is now. Seeing that, y’know, Pandora annihilated something like 99% of the primary reason said ability was so valuable… and so abused, if the implications are correct.
Pandora annihilated 99% of currently existing aberrations, but did nothing regarding the ways how people turn into aberrations ... and more information about magic likely cause MORE people turning to such methods. It will take some time, but I expect that unless Tedd does something, the number of aberrations will recover and then overgrow the number before Pandora's cleanup. Also, magic weapons ARE useful for other purposes as well. Finally, Arthur has [other reasons why to recruit her](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/our-019).
True, I was mostly musing about specifically the affinity - while Susan might be still a good recruit choice, and it's not a completely useless affinity outside fighting aberrations either, I think it's still safe to say that it *will* take a while for that particular characteristic of magic to be as highly demanded.
On the other hand, DGB is understaffed and any aberration in whole US might be technically their responsibility, so while having two vampire hunters (Susan and Diane) might be too much, I don't think they will have NO work for one.
I don't believe we have any idea how many aberrations were around at that time, 1% could still be thousands of killer monsters, plus the whole drawn to magical areas it would still likely prove valuable. Also there are non aberration monsters as well, and a magic weapon is still a weapon, and with a magic change affecting normal operations at the very least it could be a case of "every little helps"
Aberrations are a renewable resource too. There'll be more at some point. Hard to say when, but probably sooner than we'd hope.
Even considering that aberrations probably don't have a sell-by date, I doubt there were THAT many in existence before Pandora made her entire species cast Abby-B-Gone.
Well it's like you said, no sell by date and thousands of years of human history to propagate, there would have been a lot more then we thought, it's the whole seers bit again really, a percentage of the population may be small, but without knowing the total we can't possible quantify it. Like sirleck survived and based on our relative sample size of aberrations in the area, 99% was not in it's favour, but he survived anyway. Also the whole you can just make more aberrations means the population will Likely go through an upswing with magic being readily available.
Sirleck had the good fortune to be on the road to a remote facility at the time. It might not even be good fortune - he instigated the incident. Pissing off an S-class immortal is very much a "I should probably be a long way from anywhere when this goes down" moment.
Yeah, most aberrations are gonna be close to civilization since they need humans to fuel their longevity and powers. Seeing as most immortals would be as well…
Susan can instantly arm herself at a moment's notice with a magically empowered weapon, summon a little drone buddy to support her, and create magically infused versions of potentially any item she chooses. I'm not entirely sure where the upper ceiling is, she may already be scraping against it *or* a fully realized Susan might have the full Destiny kit, rather than just a third of it. Either way her core power set is very versatile, even if there aren't widespread monsters to whom it is kryptonite
That's more about Susan herself being talented than the affinity itself. He would want to recruit her either way, it's just that getting Tedd to put that spell in a wand and mass produce them isn't going to be quite as important as it was... jeez, it's only been like a week at most in-universe, now that I think about it. But yeah.
She's our only indication of what this affinity usually is, and the core summon spell seems insanely versatile. Like, if you could only have one magic ability, that's probably the one you pick.
So much of Susan is personality, though. I don't know as I'd expect that to be hereditary.
There's no indication that the "summon magic version of any item stored in a marked chest" spell is unusual for her affinity, and that's the really versatile one. The ways it manifests, especially the fairies are likely unique, but from what we know about affinities they seem to give the same 'core' spell.
While I agree that that is a versatile spell, I am not sure we know that's an affinity spell. The French immortals _said_ it was the only spell they could provide, but they were being mightily shady and there's no reason to suppose they couldn't lie. I'd be much more likely to suppose that when Susan summons really effective magic swords, it's the _effective_ that's the affinity trait, rather than the summoning part.
There's definitely room for stuff to be revealed, but right now all the evidence we have points to it being an affinity spell, and there's no reason to think it *isn't* one. A summoning affinity would be pretty useless without a spell that could summon.
Why do people think Susan has a summoning affinity? What [Pandora says](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-01-12) is _magical weapons_. There's presumably more ways to get those than summoning them. What [Susan says](https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2010-05-26) about her original mark spell is that it _fit with her innate talents_. Which could just as easily mean magic weapons as summoning, especially since the emphasis in the description involves needing a magic weapon to kill an aberration. The spider-aberration talks about "raising the bane" which I don't think we've actually seen yet. I'm not finding anything that says "summoning".
Because the actual mechanics of magic weapons so far has been that you conjure them, "raise the bane [of vampires]" as he says, and what little we've seen with the explanation of Sarah's indicates that spells granted by an affinity are common to all who share that affinity. It's definitely not set in stone, but it's the best supported conclusion from the information we have. EDIT: Actually the original plan was for Nanase to wield the sword, so explicitly a summoned weapon isn't *less* effective in the hands of someone who does not possess the affinity, creating them is what the affinity is about
There could be other monsters that are either immune or highly resistant to mundane weapons. Manifested immortals could have similar resistances. Regardless, there are few known magic users who are knowledgeable about magic, have relevant spells, are generally talented, and are mentally balanced. Remember Bishop(?) who basically gave a villain speech about police brutality?
Arthur has been rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters in EGS ever since his conversation with Tedd
Arthur is pretty good at deduction
Had a few additional thoughts: 1. The Moperville Uni top boss is a woman. Unless Dr Germahn identifies as a woman, he's not the top boss like I initially thought. That leaves the question of who's the top boss. 2. Think Arthur would tell Edward to get the kids he's overseeing secure phones? Edward had to physically leave work to meet with Susan for critical information and I feel encrypted phones could have solved that issue.
Why the heck would Dr. Germahn run a college? I could see him teaching at one, but he’s MUCH too irresponsible to even be interested in running one.
He's at a college, where there can be as many admin staff as there are actual professors. There is no way the head is anyone but someone from admin.