‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 479

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

And another name pops up!

Trees.

If you want to know what poor Herve is thinking, check the vote incentive.

Also, I was invited by TopWebcomics to be a featured artist in their new Artist Alley. You can browse some of my art that is for sale there.

Washington state fans: I'm holding a meet up this Saturday, April 9th, in Seattle at 5pm at Menchie's Frozen Yogurt (507 Broadway E, Seattle, WA 98102). See you there!

45 Comments

I’m guessing the team Demoli is branching out & trying new things…?

Kat’s really getting them to think of turning over a new leaf.

Looks like his bark is worse than his bite!

Yeah, back to the roots and all that.

Enough already. Don’t be a sap.

Awww, but we’re having too much fun to just leaf it like that. This thread’s kinda grown on me… 😛

But That wood be such a wasted opportunity. I think this new team is starting to show some real character growth. You cedar are just too many paths for this to go now to just stop.

Wait, did I actually get 1st comment of something? WOW, I think that’s my 1st ever. Lucky me :). Hope my luck takes root & continues to bloom… 😛

RIP Herve.

…Do the stay trapped in the Game? Because that would _really_ be RIP Herve.

I can’t imagine they would be that cruel. But I assume that’s the end of that character, and the player is probably kicked out of The Game.

Kat’s not allowed to kill (or allow kills), remember? So he can’t be dead. And I Must Scream is entirely possible, though.

You mean the TV Trope And I must Scream? I doubt they would add such a feature to a game at least at 1 point was played by many people for fun…

…That said, it was designed by a rather sadistic group of people – a girl that loves explosions, her Dad who turns people into trees…

Wow. And here I thought that the trees were merely making faces, but I didn’t expect that A.I. to watch them and take vengeance for burning a couple of them. Since we were told that the A.I. is really smart I wonder how much it knows about its creator’s daughter Kat.
Did the A.I. use this opportunity to have a valid excuse to help Kat so she wouldn’t be in as much danger of being suspected to be “her” (or simply because she’s its creator’s daughter)? It must have seen that Bandit was up again to potentially help her save the day, but it probably doesn’t quite trust him for obvious reasons (i.e. going against Kat). While it is understandable that the A.I. takes vengeance on people who burn trees, we were also told that it hadn’t used this Special in quite some time, so it might not always have punished people for destroying trees.
On a side note: I wonder if Jane was punished, too.

So Albert von Heinzelmann is named Herve? Well, going by the theory that characters whose names are known have plot protection (see OOTS) it looks like Vize called out to him a few seconds too late. 😛
But I didn’t really care about him anyway. So yeah, he makes a cute tree. ^^ I’m a lot more curious about Bellatrice de la Fromage’s name.

So, what with all the implications of the A.I. taking a rare action, this is a better outcome than any of those I was wishing for, i.e.
– getting to see the Ha! Special
– getting to see the Dude’s Special (because excessive violence was done by Herve)
– getting to see how Bandit can help nicely
– getting to see Jane hacking away at the enemy group from behind
At the previous update I thought something like “Instead we get to see Danni throwing wood. Again. Oh come ON!!! -_- I know they have to lose, but can’t they go down with some dignity?”

Well, as of today, I am happy again! ^^ Bellatrice’s group is still nothing more than a bunch of comic relief Hero Group villains, but today I was spooked by the landlord’s intervention, so I can’t wait to see how the Villain Group heroes deal with this sign that the potentially omnipresent and nearly omnipotent A.I. is probably interested in them. I wonder if the Dude will look even more terrified than when he saw the Mecha avatar. Because he will immediately suspect the A.I. being on Kat’s side after seeing the new tree.

I think that our lovely Kat was actually the maker of that AI, not her dad. She had a “harumph” at the mention of the rumor that he made it – I took that to mean SHE made the AI, and he just claimed it as his own. That makes sense with other things we’ve gleamed of him.

Well, f***.

Taken out of the fight, but NOT dead.
There are often things that are much worse than being killed.

Especially if you’ve managed to make an actual enemy of, say, the Doctor.

Holy crap. I’m excited. Go kill the AI, Kat! (Eventually. I know there’s a lot to do before she can get around to that, if it’s on her list.)

Well…
That was sudden.

At least this guy can’t kill anymore… I think.

I’m not sure the AI did this (or is there something I missed?). This could be a secret weapon Kat pulled out of her “knows everything about this sim” bag (it does look like an Erbana attack on excessive violence), or maybe Dude found a card (nope, he’s still running from what the vote incentive indicates– which rather surprises me really– he’s that cowardly in a GAME?)– or maybe Herve stepped on the Erbana equivalent of a land mine? Dunno… not much info to work with. I don’t always catch the minor hints in this strip, but I still enjoy it immensely. : )

Iemis, controller of the island and 90% mani can turn people into trees within his range. Paraphrased from page 395. So, I think Jake, Kat sndDanni need to start running. Now.

It’s the Mani ability of the ruler of the forest/island who turns people into trees, and it was likely via the injury from the tree bark that this was done.

No wonder Danni got the “neutralize and enemy” quest completed.

Um, she hit Vize with the tree bark, not Herve.

I’d wager the A.I. took vengeance on him for burning part of the forest, as implied by the two trees with the evil look on their faces (on of them in the previous vote incentive).

!!!
True! Got a few characters mixed up there.
I wonder if Vize will try to surrender, or if he’ll try to run.

The “turn people into trees” spell was used by Kat’s father to annoy Kat’s mother. Kat’s mother was a pure Erbana player. The Erbana route has fallen into disuse; Kat may be the first pure Erbana to play since Pre-Ending, or, at the very least, on this island. Kat’s father probably had it set up to activate whenever it detected a pure Erbana, since Kat’s mother could disguise herself by changing characters, but always played the same. Kat playing pure Erbana, on this island, triggered the AI to start changing people into trees.

Owwww my brain.

Interesting theory.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Jane is at risk, due to slicing up the trees, if that’s true. But, I think the AI that runs Kat’s father’s character might be D, so D might have been protecting Kat there, under the auspices of striking out at someone who area bombed his forest.

Or perhaps you’re right, and Kat will have bigger problems on her hands soon.

Personally, I have a theory on who Kat’s father is, and why he’s hiding but still active. I also think that taking on her Father’s character will happen, eventually.

Hey. The tree Herve. I believe I saw him in the last vote incentive, but I didn’t realise it was him! I just thought “so, there is one of those trees behind them too.”
Maybe next vote incentive: a repeat of the last one? So we can all squint and look for Herve 🙂 .

Afaik Herve was still normal in that vote incentive. I mean, anything else would have been quite the spoiler.

Maybe your thought referred to that other tree who has the same expression as the one behind Danni?

It appears that Harve has come down with a case of being in the way of a 5000 year old immortal bad*ss :^)

As I recall, the Mani who turns people into trees only takes control of the character avatars.

This IS a game, and taking people out of life to be trees would be bad for publicity.

My guess is that Father is here…although we were told that the AI that controls his character doesn’t really make use of the turning people into trees ability…hmmm.

Correction: it was said that the AI “_rarely_ utilizes that”. Which means it still does from time to time.

10/10 cutest tree! Now I am wondering if daddy AI is helping Kat and her team on purpose o: Guess i’ll just have to wait and find out o.o

You can see the blue glow of transformation in the 1st panel actually started at Herve’s feet back on page 474. In addition Kat herself gave us a clue that he was already taken care of when she says “But I only have one more to go” on page 475 in reference to the card guy. At the time I was a little confused because she seemed to be forgetting Herve but now we know he was already turning into a tree.

Interesting point. That would explain why Kat said that there was only one more to go on page 475. I wonder if he’s looking at the perpetrator on page 474 and maybe the look on his face isn’t actually implying that he’s appreciating the good work of his rod, but maybe he’s terrified of what just started happening to him, but there weren’t enough pixels to show that in his expression?

@Aneeka: Can we have a full-resolution version of that panel, i.e. p474, panel 3?

TREES, THEY ARE US!!!

Gotta hate morning wood. (? ?° ?? ?°)

D***it, that was supposed to be a Lenny Face.

Agh- I tried to make the meetup today, but I ended up missing a connecting bus and the next one wouldn’t have gotten me there until after 6:00. 🙁

Oh, that’s so sad cause we were still there at 6! We finished around 7pm, actually. Next time, though!

*Loots staff

Something tells me that would involve breaking the branch…

Eh… *snaps branch & loots staff* should get a few shineys for this…

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 479