Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[thorny]

-- shouldn't Mikkel be right on his heels by now?

[Purple Wyrm]

Next question (well, aside from the one of what's on the other side of that tree, and is it the tree he's got his hand on): how much trouble is he going to have persuading Mikkel and Sigrun to take him seriously?

Sigrun would at least listen to what he says (assuming Mikkel translates it properly). She believes in magic and the gods, and has taken Reynir's advice about spirit stuff before (most recently with the ghost van).

Whether she'd consider his claims about some ghost lady who gave him cake in a dream to be worth derailing the mission is another thing entirely.

[Solokov]

I'm not liking the bit Minna said about Kitty's radar suite being possibly offline or in low power mode.....

[wavewright62]

I'm not liking the bit Minna said about Kitty's radar suite being possibly offline or in low power mode.....

Definitely a worry! 

[Purple Wyrm]

After a long break I've updated the episode index, and in the process decided to write up a timeline (as far as I figure it) summarising the story so far. Days are measured from the departure of the Expedition from the Oresund Base...

-3: Reynir leaves home in the early morning (a guess based on distances and sailing times).
-2: Taru picks up Lalli and Tuuri. Emil arrives at the dock. Reynir arrives in Reykjavik and signs on to the Tunfiskurrin. The Tunfiskurrin leaves Reykjavik (another guess).
-1: Taru, Lalli and Tuuri arrive at the dock. The group take the train to Mora. They board the Dalahasten train in the evening.
1: The group arrives at the Oresund base and meets Sigrun and Mikkel. They board the Cat Tank and cross the Oresund. Camp at the tunnel exit.
2: They proceed into Copenhagen and raid their first building (Emil burns it down). Camp at the Kastrup Fort.
3: Mikkel discovers they have no food. The Tunfiskurrin is diverted. Reynir arrives. Camp at the docks.
4: Sigrun and Emil raid a school. Reynir meets Onni in the dreamworld. Kitty joins the expedition. Emil puts down Cthulhound. Camp at the docks.
5: The support crew leave the Oresund Base. It snows. They drive deeper into the city. Lalli clears the warehouse. They arrive at Amalienborg. Sigrun injured in Troll attack. Reynir has ghost dream. Camp at Amalienborg.
6: Mikkel heads to the Kastellet Fort. Tuuri and Reynir follow. The support crew arrive back in Mora and meet Onni. Murderghost attack. Sigrun fights the Sjodraug. Camp in the wilderness. Reynir dreams of a church.
7: Lalli wakes up. Reynir talks to Onni on the radio. Plans are made to raid the Odense hospital. They set off across country
8-20: Travel montage. Murderghosts follow. They cross the Great Belt bridge. Birth of Sleipnope.
21: Emil blows up a house. They raid an antiques store. Camp outside Odense. Reynir and Onni meet Pastor A.
22: They raid the Odense hospital. Pickup is arranged in 20 Days. Ghost and Troll attack at nightfall. Reynir calls for help. Onni summons Kokko and falls unconscious. Cat Tank broken. Tuuri injured.
23: Battle cleanup. Tuuri attempts to fix the Cat Tank. Reynir and Lalli create the anti-ghost rune. Reynir meets Onni-owl.
24: (Repairs on Cat Tank presumably continue)
25: Emil and Lalli go fishing. Tuuri gets the Cat Tank running.
26: Reynir and Lalli fight. Changeling children poke at Onni.
27: Tuuri and Reynir talk. Flashback to Tuuri's childhood. Reynir dreams of strange tracks in the snow.
28: They cross to Jutland. The Cat Tank finally dies. Emil and Lalli go shopping. Prep is made to start walking. Death of Tuuri.
29: Onni wakes up. Tuuri is buried. Mikkel, Sigrun and Reynir start walking. Emil and Lalli are attacked by giant. Reynir sees ghost van. Emil and Lalli make it to shelter. Reynir tries to talk to Onni. Lalli ends up in Emil's head.
30: Emil sets off, dragging Lalli. Sigrun backtracks and concludes Emil and Lalli are dead. Emil is almost tricked by trolls. Sigrun collapses. Mikkel talks to Sigrun and shoots a fence. Emil and Lalli talk in Emil's dream.
31: Reynir finds the church.
32-41: ???
42: Projected pick up date.

[wavewright62]

Great work, Wyrm! 
Although it's a little jarring to realise that this whole journey is scheduled to be done and dusted before the solstice? 
There is still the question of the canon timeline definitely starting in Y90, but did the expedition set out in Y90 or Y91?
Somehow I got the idea they set out in the late autumn (October-Novemberish our time), but it seems to be heading toward spring now, judging by the artwork in this chapter?  Maybe the leaves Minna's drawn are dead and not yet fallen.  (I realise the flower in Emil & Lalli's shopping trip had special greenhouse conditions.) 
We don't really know how long the travel montage was, like you I assumed 2-4 weeks.
We don't know how fast Tuuri's hair grows, she went from boy-short clipped to reasonably fluffy, which usually takes a couple of months.

[|Yucca|]

Great job on the updated timeline Wyrm!

We don't really know how long the travel montage was, like you I assumed 2-4 weeks.

The distance between Copenhagen and Odense is only 150 km. You can walk that in just a few days or easily in a week even with heavy load, considering how flat Denmark is and how there was little or no snow. Even if they took great detours on the way it's hard to stretch the distance traveled to more than 200 km. We were only shown Tuuri repairing the cat tank once, but they must've spend days still or else it's really hard to comprehend how they managed to spend even the minimum of two weeks on the way.

[Grade E cat]

A few things I noticed about the timeline:
The Copenhagen to Odense trip canonically lasted two weeks. It's spelled out on this page, and confirmed by Minna's notes
The time separating the pickup from the Odense raid is somewhere north of 20 days. So this isn't as much a definite number as a minimum one. Page mentioning it.
The time between the battle aftermath and the tank getting restarted is explicitly said to be "several days" here.
They have the radio back during the trip to Jutland, so they would know about any extra delay with the boat.
When the tank breaks down for good, they are two weeks away from their extraction day.
The point I'm trying to make is that pickup day isn't necessarily Day 42 on the timeline, but could be a little later. It's possible as long as the "several days" of repairs plus the travel to Jutland last less than two weeks between them. I simplified my personal version of the timelime by assuming that any time "lost" in the "several days" would be "compensated" by an identical delay in the boat's arrival time compared to the "20 days" early estimate. It keeps me from thinking too hard about exactly how many days the repairs took, if anything.

[Purple Wyrm]

Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone!

There's some pretty contradictory info about the seasons. Here Tjorborn says winter's rolling in, but only about a month later Emil says it'll be spring soon. It's very difficult to make that work, unless it took them several weeks to fix the Cat Tank, or Emil is an even bigger idiot than he sometimes seems .

As noted, the travel montage is canonically a couple of weeks. I've assumed this to be exactly 14 days but it could perhaps be trimmed back by a few. It does seem like an awfully long time to cover the distance involved even with breakdowns and side trips to collect books.

My timing on the "several days" after the battle is based on the 20 days to pickup deadline and the fixed point of two weeks to pickup in episode 721 - I assumed that Sigrun is being dramatic . However as Grade E cat pointed out the 20 days is a minimum (good catch there!), so some revision is almost certainly in order. Maybe two extra days of sitting still and the Cat Tank fires up on day 27?

[JacobThomsen]

If it really is Pastor A stuck in a troll body behind that door then that would suggest that cats are not using any form of smell or other normal senses to identify trolls and infected, but instead are able to sense the hostile souls trapped in the infected bodies. Which would mean that there's probably not much difference for Kitty between sensing the Murder ghosts and sensing trolls.

[thorny]

Here's a sideways thought:

I wonder whether what Reynir's looking freaked out about on the Friday page is a large and graphic crucifix -- not just a cross by itself, but one that shows Jesus dying on it.

Anybody living in a primarily Christian country sees those often enough not to notice them much. But Reynir knows nothing about Christianity. Think for a minute how you'd react if you'd never seen a crucifix before.

[Purple Wyrm]

Here's a sideways thought:

I wonder whether what Reynir's looking freaked out about on the Friday page is a large and graphic crucifix -- not just a cross by itself, but one that shows Jesus dying on it.

Anybody living in a primarily Christian country sees those often enough not to notice them much. But Reynir knows nothing about Christianity. Think for a minute how you'd react if you'd never seen a crucifix before.

Good thought! I remember once reading a post apocalyptic story that focused on exactly that point, with some explorers freaking out after discovering a catholic chapel with a particularly gruesome example.

A quick bit of Googling however suggests that the Danish Lutheran church (which we know Pastor A was a member of due to her funky collar) tends to use a plain cross rather than a full crucifix. If the church was built before the reformation it may still have an old style crucifix though.

[wavewright62]

As Wyrm suggests, many denominations use a bare cross, to denote the Risen Christ.  The point, after all, is not the brief suffering in this life, but the ascendancy into Heaven for Jesus and by extension, the rest of us too.

[thorny]

In any case, that doesn't seem to have been it.

Maybe Reynir was just looking generally anxious, not freaked out by anything specific he was seeing.

[urbicande]

Anybody living in a primarily Christian country sees those often enough not to notice them much. But Reynir knows nothing about Christianity. Think for a minute how you'd react if you'd never seen a crucifix before.

I know that when my ex was giving birth to our younger son in a Catholic hospital (Mercy Medical Center here on Long Island) she wasn't particularly comforted by images of crucifixion.  I suppose for Catholics it might be different but less so for Jews.