‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 459

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

Now we know everyone else's alignment.

79 Comments

(For those who don’t want to squint to read)
Far left: 34% Kesti, 32% Cardista, 21% Morto, 28% damaged
Main girl: 67% Mani, 12% Kesti, 15% damanged
Jacket guy: 71% Kesti, 16% Morto, 67% damaged
Shortie: 74% Demoli, 12% damaged
Far right: 48% Kesti, 45% Morto, 79% damaged

Also, the Dude is great. Love this page!

Sounds like they ARE mercenaries…

That makes a total of 197% good and 202% bad (34+32+12+71+48=197, 21+67+16+74+45=202) my bet is they were actually trying to go for a hero build (specially for all the kesti there is) and thought they’d have less morto. Probably they’re not actually evil. The desperation would explain why that girl is so bad at mani-ing. It’s hard to concentrate on corrupting people when your team’s dying and there’s no g-d d*** medicines around.

Wonder who they were fighting against, and if they finished the fight or retreated.

And if they ran, if their enemy is coming after them.

Thanks, that’s really helpful!

I should have checked the comments before squinting to read it myself. Thanks for writing it out. And, with the exception of the far left guy who I thought would be more Cardista than anything else, I guessed everyone’s primary alignments right.

So…if Morto and Demoli are villain alignments, does that mean they’re a Heroic group led by a Villain (assuming Mani is the third “villainous” alignment)? Only the caster is Demoli; the others are spread out (three primary Kesti, one of them almost tied with Cardista, the other almost tied with Morto). Kinda fits the “classes” of each character – the “mage”, for example, is pretty much pure Demoli (though it can’t be seen so well, and it actually can be confused by the other data showing its damage. I also presume that the % of damage is their actual remaining “HP”, not exactly how damaged they are (otherwise, it wouldn’t fit with Katt/leya”s assessment).

Still – it’s a good start that Katt/leya actually thought about “helping” them (even if only because she cheated on looking at their stats). Also – poor Dude, being so shocked at the whisper…

Actually, it only fits with Kat’s assessment IF damage % is exactly how damaged they are. If it’s their remaining HP, then it’s more than two badly damaged… and it’s more like _extremely_ badly damaged.

looks like most of them are at least part kesti, maybe she should offer them some type of a quest

Knocked off his feet by a simple whisper.

Oh, and everyone else probably thinks he overreacted to the Mani girl again xD

Kat, actually trying to work with someone ?!? ? ? ? ? ^_^

(It rendered my 4 zero-width spaces as question marks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space)

Wow, they actually do have three Kesties.

Bwuhahahahahahahahahha XD laughed out loud by the Dude’s reaction to Kat’s voice

Is dude really so scared of cat, to hear her whispering to him or was it just a bad moment?

He thinks she’s going to kill him (and also I really doubt he expected her to ever whisper to him), so… yes.

the alignment numbers don’t add to 100%. I assume then that alignments below a certain percentage are irrelevant, thus not reported?

also, did the dude just get himself manipulated? o.O

It is entirely posssible to have less than 100% of all combined alignments. The numbers do not have to equal 100, they have to be less-than-or-equal-to 100.

Say I just start out, do very little, but beat up a wolf.

I wind up at 12% Morto or something, but nothing else.

As I play, I can build skill in any alignment. Say I get my head in the game and go pure Cardista. I get up to 88% Cardista, 12% Morto. Now I’m capped, so in order to gain more Cardista, it needs to drop my Morto.

This is effectively what Dani’s doing with Kesti. She’s not losing morto yet (unless it decays, or she does stuff that lowers her Morto %), but she’s planning to raise Kesti in order to change her overall alignment when it outweighs her Morto.

That’s one major advantage they got being health.

Danni and Dude are damaged as well. Also, they’re low-level, Bandit is incapacitated, Kat’s not a fighter, and Jane’s not here.

Jane not being there it probably the only reason that team’s still alive…

Health only matters if your gunna kill them. Kat won’t allow that so it’s irrelevant in a fight, but still relevant to motivation.

They’re hurting and want to remedy that. Fighting tough battles won’t help and may get some of them killed, but loot a new and wimpy, fractured team, then off to buy some heals. Simple.

Also, afaik this game only permits a small subset of people into it, as its resource intensive. So however bad off these people are, they are probably the elites or such of a city, with many of the same motivations of our current team, but probably not equal skills…

Negotiation may work given their health, but if their health were any better they’d have pressed the attack. ‘New team’ or not, it’s got a couple notable players on it, so knocking them off would earn points.

I love how Kleya is adapting to using strategy instead of hacking. And well done to her for actually thinking about being nice!

I guess without any high level Erbana players, people do not get healed; I can imagine that Erbana players used to be the ones that stayed away from fights, but everyone came to after they had done their fights; sort of fits the way I picture Kleya’s mom.

Stand back, let the team beat down on the enemy, then stroll up & patch them up? Sounds like a decent plan, just as long as noone flanks the team & goes straight for the medic…

That’s why you have someone guard the Healer, like a Mani.

Edit: Oh and they can defend themselves, look at the 2 specials Kat used so far — Tanking specials + incapacitating someone w/ bondage.

Kat used three specials so far – blocking an attack, no random attacks and the bottomless bag.

What she did to Bandit was an item use, not a special.

Where does it say her incapacitating Bandit wasn’t a special?

Haha this is a great page. I’m guessing this if the first time Kat ever whispered the Dude. Poor Dude, the other team must think he’s completely mental..

Wait… what hit dude and why? Or was that thud him being so surprised of hearing Kat that he hit himself? Probably everyone else will have realized what’s going on but I’m feeling like a moron right now…

He wasn’t hit. At least, not literally. “Thud” is just him falling to the ground.

Ok, that’s an interesting twist. Looks like the Game is a lot more difficult to play than your average MMORPG, regarding both the goals of surviving and keeping a high alignment. I mean, killing other players for money should be kind of a last resort and most of their alignments look pretty scrambled.

I assume that the guy with the Cardista points was originally Cardista but had to sacrifice a lot of points, doing quests and killing things, just to scrape by.

So they are a hero group after all. Interesting.

Mani-girl’s last comment cracked me up. XD

Or, you know, he’s actually Kesti and also likes cards. Mixed alignments don’t seem that weird to me – overspecialization can be crippling, too.

That’s why being hyper-specialized in one alignment gives such impressive specials. I think it is an interesting mechanic, but the best strategy is probably to have one alignment all the way at 100% and let your team cover your weaknesses as you help cover theirs.

IF you have a good team, that’ll work. But most teams won’t be so good that you can afford 100% specialists, especially of alignments that don’t mesh up.

I found this one a little hard to follow, but upon 3 rereads, I have come to the conclusion that Kat surprised the dude causing him to follow over stupidly. If this is the case, then I am highly entertained.

Dudes a bit twitchy around Kat, don’t think he’s onboard her “nice” train yet

I think he still suspects she’s the worldbreaker, even if he’s going along with Bandit’s plan.

I’d be jumpy too, especially since Bandit’s deliberately poking her while also trying to keep her from being discovered, and Dude knows at least part of it.

He’s caught between his best friend, his boss who can *strongly* affect his real world situation, and the devil.

And the Devil just whispered him.

I guess “getting past that point” would mean allowing her spell to get hold of them. Them going down is propably a sign of them struggling hard to be not affected.

She’s just annoyed that Dude keeps overreacting to “team up”.

“Let’s team up” seems like it might be a Mani phrase (maybe pending others’ acceptance) similar to offering assistance or accepting a request is for Kesti; so by questioning it, Dude is negating the implied acceptance of letting it pass. He’s no slouch at the Game himself, though he gets overshadowed by being so close to Bandit.

But, yeah, Dude fell over out of surprise that Kat ‘whispered’ to him.

It would be helpful if you had an info section that explained some of the details about the Game that were explained earlier but we might have forgotten (maybe in the About section). For example, I totally forget what classes there are and what they specialize in (like Mani… had no idea it could manipulate)

I see that the other party has: Mani, Kesti, Cardista, Morto, Demoli
and Kat is something else that I can’t remember… some kind of pacifist healing class.

I’m working on an info section! But it’s in my spare time so it may take a while.

Or you could add a link to the Wiki to your site. 🙂

Um, mani-pulate… it’s not that hard to remember.
And Kat is Erbana. As it was deduced earlier, it comes from “herb” (herb-ana).

Erbana having to do with herbs isn’t at all obvious, if you don’t pronounce the “erb” in your head the same way you pronounce “herb”.

Well for the word ‘Herb’ in English, you are not supposed to pronounce the ‘h’. Doing so, means you are pronouncing it wrong. By claiming the wrong pronunciation is correct you are going down the 1984 path where reducing the vocabulary in an effort to control the.Population. That is double plus un-good.

ROLLING ALL THE EYES at Dude panicking at Kat’s whisper. He’s not THAT good an actor, is he?…

She is kind of their worlds anti-christ/devil/etc.
How would you react to someone like that taping you on the sholder…

How does mani control work?

This probably me just being nit-picky/ a perfectionist, but shouldn’t it say “too badly” not “two badly”

No, because she’s saying Two (people are) badly (wounded).

It’s a continuation of the previous statement. They’re all damaged, but two of them are badly damaged.

Are the white blocks Kat thinking to herself? Who do those words belong to, and who can read/hear them?

Pretty sure it’s been established since strip one that the white blocks are a character’s personal thoughts, which are strictly between the character and the reader.The blocks with colored borders,on the other hand are Whispers between players. The color represents the character that spoke,and the context typically spells out the Whisper’s intended recipient.

I have a feeling Jane is going to hurt someone soon.

A purely random nitpick that came to mind, but how can you only get out part of a whisper? in most MMOs it’s sent via text, the entire whisper is written and sent at once.

yep sorry random thought, feel free to ignore me.

In a VR game where you are neurally linked into the game, it is pretty safe to assume that nobody is typing anything. Whispers would then be sent as you think it out (much like speaking) rather than all at once. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that watching someone violently fall down at the sound of your voice would be distracting enough to not finish your thought.

Alternatively, Kat *did* finish her thought – just that The Dude didn’t hear it in full – much like how Danni spoke over The Dude’s quest while responding to The Bandit’s whispering help.

Real smooth, Dude. XD

It would appear Dude’s special is being somewhat slow between the ears, and falling over when someone whispers in his ear. He’s probably so used to being Bandit’s sidekick (as well as cannon fodder) that he’s not used to someone other than Bandit trying to whisper with him… or thinking on his own.

That, or he wasn’t expecting to be contacted by someone who is is thoroughly convinced is trying to kill him.

Don’t forget that he won his spot in this party through a bunch of fights in the tournament.

Oh, and the final frame is hilarious. 😀

Jumpy much?

I can’t be the only one that would keep an equal balance of all the alignments, can I? That should be the most fun way to play this.

A VR game made after this would be amazing.

I found this comic 2 weeks ago and I love it 🙂 I truly believe Kat is not evil, something bad happened. But she is trying Soooooo hard to do good, no evil person could do that
.
COME ON KAT I “know” your a Hero 🙂

She seems like a horrid Mani to me, way too blunt. Likely relies on her Mani powers rather then actually being any good at corrosion.

Coercion, not corrosion >.>

Well, it could be both, I don’t see her relying on corrosion much, either.

Say, do you think a page with links to all the particularly-worldbuilding pages would be good? It might be helpful for readers who keep checking back to try to remember what the alignments are. (I noticed there was a link in the description -after- looking the page up. XD; )

…I’m starting to suspect my memory isn’t as bad as I thought.

It occurred to me as I was rereading the page that The Dude probably said “team up?!” to cover for why he fell over.

Yup.

The Dude is the best actor in this game. Period

I feel like I need to mention this. There’s a typo. It’s Too not Two :/

“Two” is correct. There should be a comma, though, so it reads “Two, badly.” The comma stands in for the implied ‘be’ verb. The full sentence (as Vel replied to Leo above) would read “Two (people are) badly (wounded).”

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 459