‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 455

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

Congrats to those who had already guessed it.

47 Comments

Wow, the Dude just defused the situation and possibly also made the Mani girl cancel the spell Kat warned Danni from. Panel 3 is my favorite. XD

And thanks for the congrats, I guessed it after getting just a few hints, i.e. it was revealed that
1. she’s not the Demoli
2. there’s only one Demoli
3. there’s no Morto
in the group. I am so good. 🙂

Btw: Not only did you avoid drawing her group, you also avoided drawing feet at all. 😀

Well, since everything she did was trying to manipulate the people in front of her I thought her being a mani was rather obvious, that hint was a sledgehammer I guess?

Fun part is, she seems to be annoyed about dude rather fast, someone who is trying to manipulate others should be more patient. Reactions like this, where the guy you are trying to manipulate shows some kind of resistance should be expected. That’s where you back up your case, not belittle your victim.

Why is dude so upset about her being a mani anyway? What spells do mani have that makes him take cover behind the girls?

Well remember the guy whose island they’re on? The “turn people into trees” one? The one everyone is afraid of even though it’s not a player anymore, just an NPC?

He’s a mani.

And Kleya helped make this island pretty potent for Mani, didn’t she?

Well, not many mani will be that devastating, demoli and morto seem to be the more straightforward threads.

I don’t quite get the good evil separation, Erbana and Kesti are pacifist/helpful, so you could call them good, morto and demoli destroy and kill, so calling that evil makes sense.

Mani manipulates, that doesn’t have to be evil, and the card addict, he could be rather ruthless while getting his fix, äh, cards. So more neutral with the option to be good or evil?

Usually manipulating people is considered ‘bad/evil’, as you’re trying to get them to do what you want. (Ex. Seduction.)

As for cards, the person is just a collector, or something, like a kid playing card games or whatnot. Harmless fun, in a way 😛

Anyways, yeah, I agree though, the last two are pretty neutral, as depending on how it’s use, it could go either way. Would probably have to view their abilities to see why. Like Cards = buffers, Mani = debuffs or something.

If you want to get technical, the mere act of asking someone to do something as innocuous as getting milk is an attempt at manipulating them. Most manipulation isn’t actually evil.

Evil milk?

I totally just visualized a gallon of milk with an angry face.

Yeah, like I said — the last two are pretty neutral, as depending on how it’s use, it could go either way — but usually when you think of people manipulating someone, you’d think it as something bad, no? For example, mind control — Villain or Hero? How would you think most people would use it?

Well, my first impression was that she’s just as cocky as Bandit, so I thought that she threw the attack. Also my first impression of their Demoli was that he’s a monk with a staff that looks very hypnotic, so I thought that he was Mani.

I am just really bad at predicting things in stories. 🙂

You know how Jane has her puppets?

Mani makes *you* the puppets.

Remember the earlier comment about mani being able to control people within a certain radius from them? How far can that control go, and how bad it can get would of course depend on the Mani percentile rating, but at the high end we do have turning people into trees, so there’s plenty of reason to be cautious when a mani user is approaching you.

This is literally seconds after she has done what is literally a monologue though… It’s not like the dude has responded like this after even minutes of seconds – thin is his initial responses.

Hey never noticed the no feet thing….
Well played Alex, well played.

Great colouring Audry! Aneeka keep up the great storyline and artwork!

Thanks! 🙂

Heh – figures that the group the Mani would try to convert consists of a paranoid dude, the person who makes him paranoid, someone who doesn’t even know what’s going on, and a person who’s out of commission because of the person who makes a dude paranoid.

All people who she can’t manipulate for one reason or another. :p

Actually, clueless people are the easiest to manipulate. However, Danni was warned by Kat, so…

It’s really quite hard to manipulate someone who doesn’t even know how to do what you want them to do. Teaching them how to do it is a task in itself, and them they’re looking at each step very carefully, making it necessary to manipulate them into completing every little detail…

Manipulating the clueless takes a LOT more effort then someone who knows what’s going on, at least on the surface level of things. It’s an old saw, that those who know too much, are just as hard to manipulate as those who know nothing. Ever tried to charm a golem? Not gonna happen. Not saying the Dude is a golem, but sometimes…..I do wonder! *ducks and runs! >:D*

Welp, I guess that was less obvious to the characters than the readers.

(Alternatively, Dude is playing dumb, and Danni is either going
along with that or being sarcastic, despite not looking like the latter.)

Is there anywhere an overview of the different classes? I sometimes get confused.

I feel you. Everyone in the comments talks as if this is a fanfic-style comic based on some other game or book series.

Meanwhile everything I know about what’s going on comes from this comic, so not much.

Treating it like a fanfic based on another system may bite them in the *rse some day when the system for this comic ‘disobeys’ what they think should happen. And then they’ll be pissed off*

*Or react in a sensible manner idunno.

http://notavillain.wikia.com/wiki/Alignment

The wiki seems kind of sparse on it, even the ones we know about.

Cardista players collect cards. There isn’t much detail on what these cards are for or what abilities they have.

Demoli is all about destroying everything. It used to be Kat’s favorite route, which she taught to bandit, and uses ranged attacks. Most of which are probably explosive in one way or another. To reach 100% in the tutorial Bandit crashed the two islands into each other.

Erbana is a pacifist route. Erbana players use the environment, their specials, and whatever plants they can gather/buy to varying effects. We know that mani controlled islands have mani-type plants, so it’s safe to assume that plants exist for each alignment allowing Erbana players to use specials based on each. Erbana was the favorite class of Kat’s mom, which is why she associates it with being nice.

Kesti are questers. They accept and then have to complete the quest. Saisuke is the best known Kesti and has some kind of dragon-serpent familiar that he uses for his specials. Otherwise they seem to use conventional weapons and look like rpg characters.

Mani have to manipulate everyone they meet. It’s extremely difficult to get a high rating in Mani, but doing so provides some very powerful options. Once a mani gets inside someone’s head they seem to have almost complete control. Kat’s dad was a mani and designed the island they’re on to take down Kat’s mom. Once he had control of a character or NPC he could turn them into trees that act as immortal spies for him.

Morto simply requires killing everything. People watching the game tend to find it boring to watch. Jane/Bloody Mary uses scythe-like curved weapons and a special involving mulitplying puppets that she may have made herself. Otherwise, there’s not much known about it.

Well, it’s a wiki, so feel free to add everything you want to add, but don’t forget to include links to the sources. 🙂

Thank you.

We’ve seen the “Luck” card in action, The Dude tripped up & faceplanted himself, his hand landing on the Stone, so we know there are cards that affect the player directly. There’s probably cards to make you stronger, faster, tougher, invisible, etc. Higher %, better effects?

Maybe Cardista use cards Yu-Gi-Oh style (Did I get that right?) too. Select a certain type of card, summon the creature it represents & control it in battle or maybe even outside of battle – ride a pegasus/giant eagle/dragon, make a cave to shelter in with a giant mole, etc. I’m guessing if you can summon with Cardista, you also have to be a high enough % to control what you summon.

Note I said just control, not summon & control. Since a certain someone helped create the game while she was a destructive little girl, I can see her rigging it so you can summon ANY card monster, but if you’re not a high enough %, guess who’s not gonna listen to you, or even may be their first target. Not good if you’re playing with a dragon card…

You got it right.
While I don’t think there would be summoning with cards, I think that’d be pretty interesting. Even if you can’t control it, summon a dragon near a village just to wreak havoc.

Panel 3 is amazing.

And yeah, there’s no way this is coming without a catch. I mean, to begin with, she’s trying to get them to turn on their own teammate, but there’s prooooobably more than that, too

Okays, my brain just totally backfired. Would someone be very kind and list for me the character types and their traits. The only ones I remember are Erbana (nice nice) and Morto (really not nice). I have no idea what a Mani is. The others are total fog.

Oh… I’d love to see a menu page of “The game thus far” summarizing all we’ve learned about the game itself (for those of us whose 3 remaining brain cells are focused on eating, sleeping and breathing). Until then… would an Erbana-soul please enlighten da poor dwagon? Tyty.

Sure, though I don’t have time to type up a fully detailed summary so here’s quick snippets:

Kesti: Takes and completes quests assigned by NPCs or Players. Hero Alignment.

Cardista: What it sounds like- uses cards with various effects to do everything. Hero Alignment.

Erbana: Pacifist alignment. Kill nothing you encounter. Hero Alignment,

Morto: Murderous alignment. Kill everything you encounter. Villain Alignment.

Demoli: Destructive alignment- the more explosions, the better. Villain Alignment.

Mani: Manipulative alignment. Non-violent but has access to mind-controlling abilities and such. Villain Alignment.

Actually Morto and Demoli are both killers. Morto is close up, and Demoli is at range.

I don’t think that has been established, as far as I remember Demoli gets points by destroying things, people can be a side effect and don’t take points from the player.
Morto specifically has to kill people to keep their rating up.

During the intro battles, didn’t our demoli finish by crashing the islands together, with the happy side effect of sending a bunch of fendi into space? One is destroying people, the other is destroying things.

Stuff might have died from that (our heroes didn’t die when cast into space at the start…) but the main effect I think was to simply remove the fendi.

Erbana – nice ((h)erbana)
Morto – really not nice (mort->french for dead)
Mani – Manipulation
Demoli – Demolition, destruction
Cardista – cards

Alternatively, you can look here:
http://notavillain.wikia.com/wiki/Alignment

Thank you eberone! Now I’m caught up. 😀

I have a question.

How is your 3d book in Chaos god series is going?

It goeth? This is a bad month to ask since I’m currently shredding it (again). Ask next month when most of it has been put back together (and hopefully works at long last).

It was obvious.

“She’s Mani!”
Well, when you play games online, most of the female characters you come across are actually men. Nothing surprising there.

I stumbled accross this comic a while ago and read it all from the start on and it still fascinates me! 🙂
But I have a question whenever I read the comments: Where do you get all that additional informations from? Is there another source for that info? Or do you just speculate? Or is there a rulebook or sth that I missed?

What kind of additional information are you referring to? There is a wiki I linked above, but the contents there are from the comic, too.

I am not aware of any source for additional info, there is a lot of speculation going on and afaik there is no rulebook out there. We learn about the Game bit by bit with every page.

the additional information is scrounged from various places. some of it is found in the authors notes, mouseover text and author replies to comments on the webcomic itself, but some background info was made available in the books, voting incentives and member channel. so if your a latecomer like me you have to learn about the voting incentive and member channel reveals by reading all the comments (kind of painstaking) or check the fan wiki

(apparently at one point there was an ‘interview’ with D that i’m really sad i missed)

D’oh! The Q&As/Interviews! I completely forgot about those. I had them pretty much done, too. Thanks for reminding me. They’re now up.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 455