Copenhagen - Chapters 5-8

[Jitter]

Chapter 7 opens (p 302-304) with some beautiful and healthy cats. And some poetry about how the kittens are being carried to safety. Which in retrospect is very sad.

The sad dog is also seen for the first time, by readers although not by the team. It looks like, and the comments agree, there are worms in its nose, but. If mosquitoes cannot eat from grosslings, surely they won’t get worms or maggots either? So are those just little weird tentacles?

[dreki]

Chapter 7 opens (p 302-304) with some beautiful and healthy cats. And some poetry about how the kittens are being carried to safety. Which in retrospect is very sad.

Yeah knowing what we know at the end this was a very sad start.

The sad dog is also seen for the first time, by readers although not by the team. It looks like, and the comments agree, there are worms in its nose, but. If mosquitoes cannot eat from grosslings, surely they won’t get worms or maggots either? So are those just little weird tentacles?

The kade sent maggots which kitty reacted to in adv 2 so maybe maggots have a connection? 

Mosquitoes aren't decomposers, but maggots are so I can imagine their systems being weaker to infection. Whereas maggots are evolved to eat rotting flesh.

[Jitter]

Oh right, you are spot on! We actually discussed at some point that there definitely are some decomposers that decompose grosslings, because otherwise the carcasses wouldn’t disappear. And also there are bones of dead grosslings (big ones in the illustration pieces which definitely requires for something to have eaten or otherwise utilized the flesh.

[dreki]

I wonder if carrion birds like vultures and crows would be able to handle it as well - or adapt fairly easily.  They aren't effected by the rash illness and tend to be able to eat pretty gross stuff.

We know water with troll guts in it is safe to drink after being boiled, just tastes gross.  I'm curious what happens to a person who thoroughly cooked dead troll meat then ate it - is it just revolting? Would it cause vomiting? Would it have worse effects?

I believe in comic it was referred to as toxic, but it's not clear if cooking effects that. Although I'm sure it'd be the absolute last thing anyone would want to do.

[Jitter]

I don’t think its in the comic itself but we have Word of Minna (from back when she cared) that it is toxic. It wouldn’t be possibly to eat it but if someone managed it would be very bad, I don’t recall exactly but possibly even lethal.

The same idea has occurred to others, several times

[Róisín]

I remember that story by lwise in which Mikkel, in the body of an animal but still trying to protect his team,  is tearing at an exposed bit of Surma’s spine with his fangs and trying to bite through before his animal body dies of the corrosive poison of troll flesh. That was a sad but very well made story.

[JoB]

I don’t think its in the comic itself but we have Word of Minna (from back when she cared) that it is toxic. It wouldn’t be possibly to eat it but if someone managed it would be very bad, I don’t recall exactly but possibly even lethal.

The same idea has occurred to others, several times

I specifically remember that she did not call it "toxic", but generally inedible. The fandom IIRC settled on "caustic", but even that wasn't her own word ...

What we do know for a canon fact is that the blood kills off mosquitoes as they ingest it (which they will, so the chemical cues they act on must still be there). Dead grosslings getting reduced to skeletons might be due to sheer physics/chemistry and the body not being able to repair damages anymore, rather than something living decomposing it; remember that, depending on plot needs , grossling bodies can prove surprisingly frail ...

[dreki]

Toxins can be removed - funnily enough the Icelandic have ridiculous methods to remove toxins from poisonous sharks and make them edible.  It takes months of process but it's also believable they'd try it on dolphin and seal trolls during the famine.

I know there's a certain degree of magic to the illness and beasts, though.

What we do know for a canon fact is that the blood kills off mosquitoes as they ingest it (which they will, so the chemical cues they act on must still be there). Dead grosslings getting reduced to skeletons might be due to sheer physics/chemistry and the body not being able to repair damages anymore, rather than something living decomposing it; remember that, depending on plot needs , grossling bodies can prove surprisingly frail ...

That's not really how physics/chemistry works. When the body stops functioning, without any decomposers, it would dry up but just lie there. Changes wouldn't happen because there's no longer the catalyst of life to make them happen.

It might with the more corrosive kalma - but then some trolls mutate to survive the corrosion.

The reason dead animal flesh doesnt just sit around is because something is eating it.

Rotting is due to bacteria or fungi. And often from bacteria/fungi already present in the creature hence why it starts so fast- although the air is also full of it.  Even without any insects/birds, decomposition happens.

[JoB]

That's not really how physics/chemistry works. When the body stops functioning, without any decomposers, it would dry up but just lie there.

Would it? There's things like erosion, acidic rain, UV irradiation, wildfires, and the very molecules our bodies are made of aren't exactly indestructible even under ideal conditions, either - which is why a living body keeps replacing/reproducing them. I don't think that a grossling corpse's molecules need to be broken down to atoms or beyond to stop being Nasty Untouchable Stuff™ and vanishing for good.

[Jitter]

I was actually thinking quite hard on this yesterday but didn’t come to much of a conclusion. Physical processes wii of course break down everything eventually but it’s my understanding that this is a surprisingly long eventually.

Off the top of my head I know of a study where decomposition of cow poo was studied in such a way that dung beetles were not allowed in but everything else was the same, weather, microbes etc. The results indicated that removal of just the beetles (so not all decomposers) leads to problems. And dung would seem to be in a… format? which would readily lend itself to decomposing even without beetles.

Here’s some info although this is not about the study I was thinking about. I seem to recall 4H clubs participating in the field testing. https://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2013/may/11/1

[Róisín]

Delightful article! And yeah, not only dung beetles, but coprophagous fungi here in Australia have adaptations to marsupial dung, though some of them have adapted to cow dung better than the scarabids.

[JoB]

I was actually thinking quite hard on this yesterday but didn’t come to much of a conclusion. Physical processes wii of course break down everything eventually but it’s my understanding that this is a surprisingly long eventually.

So, they take longer to decompose. They also take a lot longer to die, short of having a helpful cleanser or troll hunter at hand. Coincidence ... ?

[Róisín]

Yeah, there may be reasons other than safety and hygiene for burning troll and beast corpses. It would certainly aid chemical decomposition.

[dreki]

Yeah, there may be reasons other than safety and hygiene for burning troll and beast corpses. It would certainly aid chemical decomposition.

Burning is faster than any other decomposition process.

It also might neutralize the toxins. 

[Jitter]

P 310: another great landscape piece! Even better right now for me for two reasons:
- the weather outside sounds exactly like the weather on the page looks like
- I just read a very very good post-apocalypse novel set in Sweden, mostly around Copenhagen, which is very realistic in the description of what happens when the collapse comes. This page resonates very well with that, although the apocalypse event is different.

The book is Stjärnklart by Lars Wideräng, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in SSSS. Sadly it is mot available in English as far as I can tell, only in Swedish and Finnish (Tähtikirkas) (and possibly in at least one other  Scandinavian language). Anyways if you get the chance, check it out. It’s bleak but great, if one is into apocalypses.