Of course, this raises all sorts of new and unpleasant questions, like… Does the hole still go back the way it came? Will she come out in the temple, back home, or somewhere else entirely?
I heard Digger’s vioce today, using the same tone as an english woman of a certain age and above average standing, expressing the thought “Of course something else has gone wrong. Why ever am I surprised?”
Hey, there’s the ribcage! I wondered where that went.
Hrr. The heart’s situation changed between our first sight of it and the current visit. Digger’s hole changed between when she started digging it and when she emerged in the temple, and it’s been strongly implied that someone deliberately made that happen. Maybe ropes changed to chains and the ribcage was invisible because there was mystic fortification going on, and now that’s vanished and the merely physical is back.
I think He-Is was the one who diverted Digger’s tunnel. And yes, I wonder too if, now that his influence is gone, the tunnel leads back to the temple. Or is there at all.
Because Digger retraced her tunnel only to the dead god’s cave so far, and not back to its origin. If the scavengers are coming, she may not have a choice to find the original tunnel, and may only be able to have time to reach the one she currently knows, back to the temple.
And she’s in no mood or mind to make good decisions.
Well, Digger found the fossil ammonite pretty much right after she first heard the skin-lizards fixing to take her hide, so I’m guessing she’s still in the Rath end of the magicked tunnel. I’d sure be disappointed if she just pops out five miles away from her warren instead of having to travel with the unspeakable Manuel and his bandersnatch, anyway.
I — honestly? I don’t want the Skinner Lizards touching Ed. I don’t trust them with his body.
I’d rather see Digger haul him back herself, to ensure that he gets properly taken care of. (I almost said ‘proper burial’, but the Hyena folk don’t bury their dead, do they?)
How will the Hyena folk treat Ed’s remains, anyways? Will his last sacrifice be enough, in their eyes, to redeem him and grant him the full rites he deserves?
So, where are Jhalm and/or the good hyenas? I’ve been wondering how Boneclaw Mother could stall for so many hours. Now might be a good time for the Veiled to show up, with an explanation about what delayed them. Or we could leave Digger and cut back above. (“Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”)
@reapicheep: We might not cut back to Jhalm yet. I could see Digger making an arduous trek to the surface, only to find the temple unexpectedly deserted (or worse, a few bodies lying around), necessitating yet more endurance on her part as she struggles to maintain her flagging composure and practicality long enough to figure out just what the heck happened.
Just one possibility, of course …
@reapicheep I’m guessing there was the metaphysical of a gun report when that heart dropped. At which point those sensitive to such things could say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the point is moot. Can we put down the swords, please?”
Digger _can’t_ just pop up back at her home warren – we’d never know what happened with Jhalm, and Boneclaw Mother, and Grim Eyes, and Murai, and…
I’m guessing the Statue knew exactly when the heart fell – maybe even Murai felt it – and Murai is now leading an expedition down to find whatever may be left of Digger. And they will carry Ed out.
And I’ll bet _my_ liver that Boneclaw Mother sees Ed gets the sendoff he deserves.
Wow, I just thought of something really odd. I think Ganesh knew Ed was going to die. I guess that’s not a big feat if you’re a god, more or less. On February 23rd 2010 strip; right after Digger makes the statement, “All right. I don’t know if there’s any other gear I need—“The Oracle answers, “ I foresee none, Burrower. But your companion may need this.” Digger says, “My companion? What companion? Ed answers her question, “Ed is coming with Digger- Mousie.”
The Oracle makes a statement about magical swords and then hands Ed the crowbar. I’m thinking that since the oracle knew enough to arm Ed with the crowbar she also had a pretty good idea what he was going to do with the crowbar too. It makes since that they would probably have know what the outcome was going to be before Digger and Ed left them. I wonder if it would have made a difference had the Oracle presented Digger with the crowbar instead of Ed?
@Duckwhisperer
But, the oracle also indicated that those who travel with Digger travel in the “shadow” she casts on the future, and things are hard to see. Further, the oracle indicated that there was no way of knowing if the crowbar was the right thing to send — that it could have just as easily been a live crow — and therefore couldn’t have known what it would be used for. So there’s no safe assumption, in my mind, that the oracle knew anything about Ed’s fate or destiny.
My out-loud reply to “We came to get you” was “Awwww.” No really, I love those guys.
Honestly, after Ed’s death, I’m just following along now. I don’t even want to speculate what happened to Jhalm and Murai. Not because I’m mad, mind you, I’m just still kinda numb from Ed. I’m still enjoying the hell out of the comic, but I’m not coming up with theories anymore.
@lx – Note: The skins specifically say they came back for Digger. They didn’t say anything about Ed, and they haven’t mentioned Ed (or his skin) yet. Just that they came back for Digger. They probably know how Digger feels about their particular form of funeral rites (She’s expressed disdain in the past, IIRC. Can’t think of a specific instance though) and respect Ed enough (Hey! He taught them about that new way of making purple ink!) to let Digger decide what to do with Ed.
(Speaking of which, I think the skins might help Digger get Ed back towards the hole, which probably still leads to the Temple. Whatever force sent her there I’m sure isn’t done with her just yet. Also, I want to see Manuel and the Incuriosities again.)
Wait….Are those ribs? …Tell me they aren’t standing in the mediastinum.
Also, why aren’t they worried about Ed? I mean, he gave them their purple dye alternative, so…they couldn’t have forgotten about his presence that easily.
If the skins are fluent with the left hand names of gods, and the breath that becomes butterflies (or whatever), they are probably somewhat sensitive to the metaphysical “ebb and flow’ of power.
Anything with even a little sensitivity to such currents, for miles and miles around, probably felt the death of He-Is, and SGV, and the echoes of Ed’s sacrifice.
Thus, the scavengers; and the skins.
As to what may feed upon the flesh of a dead god: where did you think nightmares came from? Eggs?
Maybe this is harping on something completely irrelevant, but I’m still wondering what’s going on at the Warren. If I remember correctly, digger first thought the Skins were part of a hallucination in which the Warren was destroyed. They turned out to not be a hallucination.
…Hopefully she was delirious for the other half of that, though?
Allie — there’s really no telling. Here’s text from the first couple pages of Digger:
“I’ve been digging for a long time.
“I’m not actually sure why I started, except that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have a feeling that there was a better reason when I started out. I think it’s beena couple of days, at least. I’m out of fodd and water. I can’t remember if I brought any with me or not. I ate a worm a few hours ago. I don’t want to talk about it.
“Lest you get the wrong impression, we wombats are not in the habit of tunnelling madly about, without any supplies or even a map. Nor are we in the habit of misplacing our memories of where we’re going or how we got there, either.
“Unfortunately, I hit a patch of bad earth at some point. You get that sometimes, in spots where there’s gasses and old pockets of dead air. It bubbles up through the dirt and sends you loopy, so you don’t know what’s going on. You get giddy and confused and you can even tunnel in circles until you drop dead. It’s nasty stuff.
“Other than the fact that I thought I was a small stone named Edward for some time, I got off lightly. The bad earth got me turned around and confused. I’m not sure how long I wandered around, or how far I went. At some point I broke into a cave system. I was still hallucinating pretty hard, though, so it took me a while to realize that I was walking rather than digging.
“Then the hallucinations went bad. I thought things were after me, that they’d destroyed the Warren back home, and had broken into the tunnels and were chasing me.”
And *that’s* the point at which she’s hearing the skins, and two pages later she finds the ammonite.
So. Digger, a reliable and competent engineer in a community of reliable, safety-minded, competent engineers, is digging a tunnel alone, and by the time she’s aware of her surroundings she has no map and no supplies. Either she was stupid enough to go off of what I’d bet would be a pretty strongly trained-in buddy system *and* unlucky enough that in doing that she actually hit the, what, 1% – 5% hazard that the buddy system is there to protect against, or there was a reason that she took off alone away from the warren, and with either no supplies or inadequate supplies, or supplies that were being carried by hand rather than in a backpack like a reasonable person who might have to run like heck or use both hands for something while underground.
…I’m thinkin’ it’s not looking good back at the Warren. But maybe she was a stray, caught unexpectedly and having to (rationally enough) run for it, while the majority of the Warren had been rallied and pulled together to drive off whatever the hazard was, and they’re all fine there.
Oh — I also suspect either there’s a real or ret-conned connection between the small stone and our friend, or if Ursula has a boy-child his name is gonna be Edward 🙂
Or it could just be that she was doing a little work in a “safe” area, just out of sight of her buddy (or even alone, I’d imagine the buddy system isn’t quite as rigorously held to if you’re in shouting distance of others; or maybe they don’t even have a buddy system for everything, do you take a buddy with you every time you go for a walk?), then hit the bad air and went off all wonky.
Gramina– My point exactly. The thing is, though, even if she -were- stray, and got caught up in all this all on her own, and the Warren drove off whatever was attacking just fine, what the hell was attacking them? Digger’s said herself she doesn’t remember why she’d started out, and I have to wonder if perhaps her departure was planned. Insert something to make the wombats scatter, try to lead a few in the right direction, hit some bad earth…
I dunno, that does seem kinda far-fetched. Let’s watch me speculate.
Thing is, though, she didn’t say she’d hallucinated things attacking the Warren. She’d hallucinated that it was destroyed. So unless there was some serious misconception going on, if that bit were real things don’t look good for the Warren.
Melissa Trible–If she was in a safe area, what’s the chance of her hitting bad air, though? Just out of sight seems kinda likely, or something happened to her buddy…
@Hawk: no, we know where nightmares come from. They come from dustbunnies. 🙂
No, wait, on reflection that’s not quite true. Monsters-under-the-bed come from dustbunnies that touched a nightmare. So the nightmares themselves could still come from eggs.
We’ve seen the hyenas….
Wonder what the jackals look like.
Of course, this raises all sorts of new and unpleasant questions, like… Does the hole still go back the way it came? Will she come out in the temple, back home, or somewhere else entirely?
Wow, Digger looks like 20 miles of bad road (and I can’t say I blame her). Scavengers? As if things weren’t bad enough!
Aw, what happened to the funky “skins speech” font? I miss it.
The food chain of deities possibly merits a series of art things. I’m guessing it’d be at least as interesting as Unusual Saints.
@ Latrone & Terry. Well, now I so want to see a deity food web. Thank you for the imagery. 😉
Of course jackals are going to follow hyenas. And metaphysical dung beetles and spiritual army ants to finish cleaning up.
@Hg: Oh, yes, I hadn’t noticed. What happened to the Distressed Courier Bold?
Is that me, or the cave on the last panel looks awfuly like a giant ribcage O_o
The old god was sitting at a side. So… Is it possible this was an ancient god cementery the hyena god choosed to be chained at?
@Jassius
No, it’s the hyena god’s rib cage.
himmm?
I wonder what the spirtitual implications are of killing the dead god wich ate your name is?
Vote: http://topwebcomics.com/gpages/default.aspx?id=10180
Time to go, Digger.
Go where?
Go on.
I heard Digger’s vioce today, using the same tone as an english woman of a certain age and above average standing, expressing the thought “Of course something else has gone wrong. Why ever am I surprised?”
Go back and help her get Ed, skins! You three can carry him!
Let’s wait and see if Anubis shows up.
Hey, there’s the ribcage! I wondered where that went.
Hrr. The heart’s situation changed between our first sight of it and the current visit. Digger’s hole changed between when she started digging it and when she emerged in the temple, and it’s been strongly implied that someone deliberately made that happen. Maybe ropes changed to chains and the ribcage was invisible because there was mystic fortification going on, and now that’s vanished and the merely physical is back.
And that’s my Marvel No-Prize for the day.
I think He-Is was the one who diverted Digger’s tunnel. And yes, I wonder too if, now that his influence is gone, the tunnel leads back to the temple. Or is there at all.
Because Digger retraced her tunnel only to the dead god’s cave so far, and not back to its origin. If the scavengers are coming, she may not have a choice to find the original tunnel, and may only be able to have time to reach the one she currently knows, back to the temple.
And she’s in no mood or mind to make good decisions.
Oh my.
Man i’d love to know what kinds of things scavenge from the flesh of dead gods.
Call me crazy, but I don’t really think Digger is quite done down here. Wasn’t there a god-liver mentioned, elsewhere in this cave?
After all, we wouldn’t want the cold servants coming back later and extracting god-liver oil …
(sorry … )
Well, Digger found the fossil ammonite pretty much right after she first heard the skin-lizards fixing to take her hide, so I’m guessing she’s still in the Rath end of the magicked tunnel. I’d sure be disappointed if she just pops out five miles away from her warren instead of having to travel with the unspeakable Manuel and his bandersnatch, anyway.
I — honestly? I don’t want the Skinner Lizards touching Ed. I don’t trust them with his body.
I’d rather see Digger haul him back herself, to ensure that he gets properly taken care of. (I almost said ‘proper burial’, but the Hyena folk don’t bury their dead, do they?)
How will the Hyena folk treat Ed’s remains, anyways? Will his last sacrifice be enough, in their eyes, to redeem him and grant him the full rites he deserves?
So, where are Jhalm and/or the good hyenas? I’ve been wondering how Boneclaw Mother could stall for so many hours. Now might be a good time for the Veiled to show up, with an explanation about what delayed them. Or we could leave Digger and cut back above. (“Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”)
@TekServer
Well, of course, they want the liver. God liver oil is rich in Vitamin Deity! 😀
@Wayne: [groan!] (Good one!)
😉
@reapicheep: We might not cut back to Jhalm yet. I could see Digger making an arduous trek to the surface, only to find the temple unexpectedly deserted (or worse, a few bodies lying around), necessitating yet more endurance on her part as she struggles to maintain her flagging composure and practicality long enough to figure out just what the heck happened.
Just one possibility, of course …
😉
@reapicheep I’m guessing there was the metaphysical of a gun report when that heart dropped. At which point those sensitive to such things could say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the point is moot. Can we put down the swords, please?”
bah, “metaphysical” = “metaphysical equivalent”
Digger _can’t_ just pop up back at her home warren – we’d never know what happened with Jhalm, and Boneclaw Mother, and Grim Eyes, and Murai, and…
I’m guessing the Statue knew exactly when the heart fell – maybe even Murai felt it – and Murai is now leading an expedition down to find whatever may be left of Digger. And they will carry Ed out.
And I’ll bet _my_ liver that Boneclaw Mother sees Ed gets the sendoff he deserves.
Wow, I just thought of something really odd. I think Ganesh knew Ed was going to die. I guess that’s not a big feat if you’re a god, more or less. On February 23rd 2010 strip; right after Digger makes the statement, “All right. I don’t know if there’s any other gear I need—“The Oracle answers, “ I foresee none, Burrower. But your companion may need this.” Digger says, “My companion? What companion? Ed answers her question, “Ed is coming with Digger- Mousie.”
The Oracle makes a statement about magical swords and then hands Ed the crowbar. I’m thinking that since the oracle knew enough to arm Ed with the crowbar she also had a pretty good idea what he was going to do with the crowbar too. It makes since that they would probably have know what the outcome was going to be before Digger and Ed left them. I wonder if it would have made a difference had the Oracle presented Digger with the crowbar instead of Ed?
Remember, DW, that the crowbar was the result of the oracles best guess, rather than specific knowledge. http://www.diggercomic.com/?p=802
@Duckwhisperer
But, the oracle also indicated that those who travel with Digger travel in the “shadow” she casts on the future, and things are hard to see. Further, the oracle indicated that there was no way of knowing if the crowbar was the right thing to send — that it could have just as easily been a live crow — and therefore couldn’t have known what it would be used for. So there’s no safe assumption, in my mind, that the oracle knew anything about Ed’s fate or destiny.
My out-loud reply to “We came to get you” was “Awwww.” No really, I love those guys.
Honestly, after Ed’s death, I’m just following along now. I don’t even want to speculate what happened to Jhalm and Murai. Not because I’m mad, mind you, I’m just still kinda numb from Ed. I’m still enjoying the hell out of the comic, but I’m not coming up with theories anymore.
@lx – Note: The skins specifically say they came back for Digger. They didn’t say anything about Ed, and they haven’t mentioned Ed (or his skin) yet. Just that they came back for Digger. They probably know how Digger feels about their particular form of funeral rites (She’s expressed disdain in the past, IIRC. Can’t think of a specific instance though) and respect Ed enough (Hey! He taught them about that new way of making purple ink!) to let Digger decide what to do with Ed.
(Speaking of which, I think the skins might help Digger get Ed back towards the hole, which probably still leads to the Temple. Whatever force sent her there I’m sure isn’t done with her just yet. Also, I want to see Manuel and the Incuriosities again.)
Wait….Are those ribs? …Tell me they aren’t standing in the mediastinum.
Also, why aren’t they worried about Ed? I mean, he gave them their purple dye alternative, so…they couldn’t have forgotten about his presence that easily.
If the skins are fluent with the left hand names of gods, and the breath that becomes butterflies (or whatever), they are probably somewhat sensitive to the metaphysical “ebb and flow’ of power.
Anything with even a little sensitivity to such currents, for miles and miles around, probably felt the death of He-Is, and SGV, and the echoes of Ed’s sacrifice.
Thus, the scavengers; and the skins.
As to what may feed upon the flesh of a dead god: where did you think nightmares came from? Eggs?
Hawk, you’ve been a great part of the journey. Seriously. Another great comment.
Eggs!
I think Hawk might have been merely… egging… us on.
@Hawk: Eggs of dead white birds? 😉
Yay, the Distressed Courier Bold is back!
Maybe this is harping on something completely irrelevant, but I’m still wondering what’s going on at the Warren. If I remember correctly, digger first thought the Skins were part of a hallucination in which the Warren was destroyed. They turned out to not be a hallucination.
…Hopefully she was delirious for the other half of that, though?
Allie — there’s really no telling. Here’s text from the first couple pages of Digger:
“I’ve been digging for a long time.
“I’m not actually sure why I started, except that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have a feeling that there was a better reason when I started out. I think it’s beena couple of days, at least. I’m out of fodd and water. I can’t remember if I brought any with me or not. I ate a worm a few hours ago. I don’t want to talk about it.
“Lest you get the wrong impression, we wombats are not in the habit of tunnelling madly about, without any supplies or even a map. Nor are we in the habit of misplacing our memories of where we’re going or how we got there, either.
“Unfortunately, I hit a patch of bad earth at some point. You get that sometimes, in spots where there’s gasses and old pockets of dead air. It bubbles up through the dirt and sends you loopy, so you don’t know what’s going on. You get giddy and confused and you can even tunnel in circles until you drop dead. It’s nasty stuff.
“Other than the fact that I thought I was a small stone named Edward for some time, I got off lightly. The bad earth got me turned around and confused. I’m not sure how long I wandered around, or how far I went. At some point I broke into a cave system. I was still hallucinating pretty hard, though, so it took me a while to realize that I was walking rather than digging.
“Then the hallucinations went bad. I thought things were after me, that they’d destroyed the Warren back home, and had broken into the tunnels and were chasing me.”
And *that’s* the point at which she’s hearing the skins, and two pages later she finds the ammonite.
So. Digger, a reliable and competent engineer in a community of reliable, safety-minded, competent engineers, is digging a tunnel alone, and by the time she’s aware of her surroundings she has no map and no supplies. Either she was stupid enough to go off of what I’d bet would be a pretty strongly trained-in buddy system *and* unlucky enough that in doing that she actually hit the, what, 1% – 5% hazard that the buddy system is there to protect against, or there was a reason that she took off alone away from the warren, and with either no supplies or inadequate supplies, or supplies that were being carried by hand rather than in a backpack like a reasonable person who might have to run like heck or use both hands for something while underground.
…I’m thinkin’ it’s not looking good back at the Warren. But maybe she was a stray, caught unexpectedly and having to (rationally enough) run for it, while the majority of the Warren had been rallied and pulled together to drive off whatever the hazard was, and they’re all fine there.
Oh — I also suspect either there’s a real or ret-conned connection between the small stone and our friend, or if Ursula has a boy-child his name is gonna be Edward 🙂
Better get out of there – the neoclassicists are coming, and it’s going to get ugly…. 7@=G
Or it could just be that she was doing a little work in a “safe” area, just out of sight of her buddy (or even alone, I’d imagine the buddy system isn’t quite as rigorously held to if you’re in shouting distance of others; or maybe they don’t even have a buddy system for everything, do you take a buddy with you every time you go for a walk?), then hit the bad air and went off all wonky.
Gramina– My point exactly. The thing is, though, even if she -were- stray, and got caught up in all this all on her own, and the Warren drove off whatever was attacking just fine, what the hell was attacking them? Digger’s said herself she doesn’t remember why she’d started out, and I have to wonder if perhaps her departure was planned. Insert something to make the wombats scatter, try to lead a few in the right direction, hit some bad earth…
I dunno, that does seem kinda far-fetched. Let’s watch me speculate.
Thing is, though, she didn’t say she’d hallucinated things attacking the Warren. She’d hallucinated that it was destroyed. So unless there was some serious misconception going on, if that bit were real things don’t look good for the Warren.
Melissa Trible–If she was in a safe area, what’s the chance of her hitting bad air, though? Just out of sight seems kinda likely, or something happened to her buddy…
@Hawk: no, we know where nightmares come from. They come from dustbunnies. 🙂
No, wait, on reflection that’s not quite true. Monsters-under-the-bed come from dustbunnies that touched a nightmare. So the nightmares themselves could still come from eggs.