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August 22nd, 2008
80 - Symphony
Three days, three comics, three different voices. They all have something new to say, some little tidbits to both add to what is known and to what is not.
Special thanks go once again to mendicantbias00 and his site Breaking Boundaries. I’ve also got a stack of other screenshots you guys have sent me this past week to sort through, and I intend to make use of at least some of them in future comics. If anyone else wants to send me screenshots for possible inclusion in future installments, use the contact form or send them directly to reclaimercomic@gmail.com.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 am
This comic has it’s fair share of side stories doesn’t it. Will we go back to the Reclaimer or somewhere else in the next comic… only God/Jim knows.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:12 am
Great comic. But I’m confused, does the three comics mean the last three or the next three? (Including today’s)
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 am
Whupass. But the hero challenges who?
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 am
Finally, information! :)
Other news, registration failed. I gave my email, username, blah blah. All I get is incorrect password and no messages in my inbox. Furthermore, the page is screwed up. Most of the words are cut off. I want to join the forums, goddamn it!
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:13 am
JimboMonkey1234: Sorry, I’ve no idea of the code Jim used in the construction of the forums.
But, for Jim’s reference, which browser are you using? Do you have any plugins? any extensions? Is your internet connection having problems?
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:17 am
Great Read are you thinking about putting this in paper form (a Book) there must be a market for this!!!!!!!!
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:13 am
re: linx1398 – And does, and we will. This was just a bit of an unusual week for Reclaimer storytelling.
re: TrAvIs 6t6 – Three different comics this week (today’s being the last) with a different voice for each.
re: Shu Sam Chen (HSAR) – The hero challenges everyone, of course! ;-)
re: JimboMonkey1234 – I’ll look into a little later today. What browser are you using? If possible, can you grab a screenshot of what you’re seeing that’s screwed up and send it to me?
re: Great Nov – The best I can do for a print form is a PDF or similar document. Due to Game Content Usage Rules, I cannot, at this time, put together a regular comic book and put a pricetag on it. I do hope to convert Reclaimer into a printable version that people can download and turn into physical copies, if they want, but that’s yet another Reclaimer project I’m going to have on until I have some more time.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:50 am
so theres only seven cavalcades. interesting. I like the frames! but i’m not sure who the narrator is? great work!
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 am
Excellent read again. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
re: Chanchu Mohan – Correction: there is only one Cavalcade, made up of seven powerful artificial constructs. A minor technicality, perhaps, but I like to make that distinction clear.
re: spillits – Me, too! :)
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:40 am
Heh, I though you were just humoring me when you said you would check it out. Jim I am flattered. blush
And I really like all the sidestories you have presented. It can get a bit confusing but it never gets stale…it reminds me of a Tarantino film =D
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
i wonder? are all these stories going to crunch together in some fiery finale sort of thing?
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
This member of the Cavalcade must be one we’ve already seen, or is in contact with one of two that are with RC now. How would he know there is a “hero” working on bringing them back together.
I went back and read through some of the comics a couple weeks ago and one or two really stuck out at me. Ferial had one or two pages of monologue where we get to see inside his head. It seems to me, he’s playing the villian to the Cavalcade members but in his own head he is trying to save the galaxcy/universe. He doesn’t seem evil in his monologues but he immediately changes when he begins talking with a Cavalcade member to a villian-esque type character. Then when he’s finished he goes back to his not evil thinking.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 am
re: mendicantbias00 – Well, you have some truly awesome shots there. I wish I had the time to explore the game to that depth. And I’m glad it never gets stale. :)
re: DUM4S5 – Look at them as individual threads all being slowly rolled into one single ball. Right now, we’re way out on the ends of the threads, jumping from one to another. Eventually, though, they’re all going to be rolled up together and touching – and it will become clear just how they all relate.
re: Taterific – Ferial is a layered character. In his own mind, his actions are perfectly rational and just, so that’s the way his monologues end up reading, since we’re directly in his head. It’s when he interacts with the Cavalcade members, though, that we see that he doesn’t really play well with others, that his methods and goals may not, in fact, be particularly healthy for everyone else.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Ahhh, so we’ve been hearing from the Cavalcade members the past few comics… VERY intriguing…
I am going to theorize that the fourth that had kept in contact was the one Ferial overlaid with the MC hologram. given that Ferial did his dirty work with the computers there, he probably learned of the locations of the other members from that particular construct, and after setting the program in place to delay the Reclaimer, he moved on to set similar traps with the other constructs.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
re: Jim – Yea, the way it sounds now to me is that Ferial is trying to stop the eradication of some volume of space. Now he may be doing this for selfish reasons but it is not solely for him. I remember thinking after we saw how he interacted with the Cavalcade members that he was trying to take over the galaxcy and would do whatever he needed to in order to accomplish that goal. After rereading a few weeks ago, it hit me that even in his monolouge’s he wasn’t thinking about domination, he seemed to be thinking more about salvation.
He definately don’t play well with others. We’ve seen him now with 3 Cavalcade members and the RC, he’s trapped two of the Cavalcade, inserted a virus into a third and tried to kill RC. I would definately say he’s not best friend material.
re: Sangheilioz – I think this is the first Cavalcade member we’ve heard from this week. It sounds like we heard from whom ever is trying to destroy the Cavalcade (I still don’t believe that to be Ferial) on Monday, and Wednesday I believe was a Flood Gravemind type figure. It should be fun to see where we go to now.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
monday-Ferial or Viper
Wednesday- Forerunner
Friday-Cavalcade Member
so 4 cavalcade members have already joined? or are they currently joining?
ok so merging w/ cavalcade members hurts RC, so does that mean he will ahve to risk his life in order to take them all? like: “If you merge with (insert name of cavalcade member number 7) it may permenantly damage you to the point where you will be useless to us, but if you dont do it or do it and do it and die, then the universe is doomed!”
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm
[...] 80 – Symphony Ask a Question [...]
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Spectacular! Love your usage of campaign mode images to fit in with the story. It’s as if they made Halo 3 just so you could make this comic.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
re: Sangheilioz – Not so much. Three different comics, three different voices. Only the last one was that of one of the Cavalcade. I leave the other two for you to speculate upon. :)
re: Taterific – It’s kind of sad, but I almost enjoy writing Ferial more than the Reclaimer himself. I really need to break the Reclaimer out of his mold a bit, flesh him out and make him more dynamic than he currently is. Ferial has the richness and depth that I wanted the Reclaimer to have originally, and both are equally important in this story, so I really need to work at bringing the Reclaimer up to par.
re: PikminGod – I’ll leave you to keep guessing about those first two. ;-) And so far, the Reclaimer has only collected two out of the seven Cavalcade members, but yes, there are four that are networked together.
re: Amer then00b – Hah! No, I love the complexity of the Bungie story for the Halo series. I’ve just been having a heckuvalot of fun taking elements that are commonplace to all of us by now and twisting them to new purposes and changing the way we look at them. :)
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Campaign screenies FTW!So,I like how you are shedding light on all aspects of the Reclaimerverse,from the UNSCs,Forerunners,and your own cavalcade,and giving them a little limelight.Its always a challenge for me in these kinds of stories,which is why I stick to 1st person or 3rd person(with like a small group) stories.
I just notice something.I always seem to post right below you.Im not kissing up!I swear!(scoots away slowly)
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
In response to whether you need XBL Gold to play Matchmaking: Yes, you do.
Jim: Would a 48-hour trial work then?
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I was thinking of an idea of making a pdf of basically this comic so people dont have go through a million pages to read it. instead they can just download and read/watch. Author of this let me know wat u think.
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Can we has cooler comic? j/k
Anyway, this is looking good. Keep up the good work.
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
hmm…
Alright, Jim. I can see the first voice being Viper, though that seems, somehow, too obvious…
the third voice (this one) you say is Cavalcade…
That leaves the second voice… I refuse to accept the idea of it being a gravemind, since it refers to the flood as a “failed experiment”... Could be Forerunner, or more likely Precursor, or it could be something new entirely…
You make my head hurt, Jim… In a good way.
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Did the Cavaclade keep Forerunner Technologies at 100 efficiency or 100% efficiency? Food for thought…. ;)
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
re: Sangheilioz – Well, the third voice starts out by admitting that it’s Cavalcade, so I’m not really giving anything away there. :)
re: Uzi_Master – No, really, it’s 100 efficiency. I meant to write that.
Now, I have a deed here for a nice split-level home on a fault line. Wanna buy it? ;-)
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I would! lol
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
re: Amer then00b – Right, that’ll be $100. ;-)
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
lol, I wonder if the second voice is a sort of omnipresence AI, something that could have begun with multiple parts and consciousness’ and grew together into some sort of massive AI that could exist in many places, and which, over the huge volume of time, has gone rampant?
August 24th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
re: Jim
Wait a second! I only have $99.99! NOOOOOOOO!
plays halo 3. commits suicide
August 25th, 2008 at 12:43 am
Ok, I’m gone for vacation with no net access (it was painful but strangely quieting) and I come back to Jim laying out more breadcrumbs for us to suck up and choke on with no offer of water to slake our thrist.
My little monkey brain is having trouble keeping up but I will try….........
First Voice – I believe is Archimedes, looking back I think this is a tool that Ferial planted for Viper to find and activate. Use Viper and their technology as his bloodhound to find the other cavalcade memebers.
Second Voice – Could be Precursors but not sure, it’s not the forerunners as someone mentioned earler since this voice mentions the flood as being an experiment. I think this is the voice that we heard awhile back that spoke of the “dank and dark” places of the universe.
Third Voice – Jim told us
I am really curious about that second voice and what RC is up to since we last saw him getting his “infusion”.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I was hesitant to say the forerunners before, Distefant, for the same reason, but you have to keep in mind that this is an alternate haloverse. Jim might have changed it so the flood was a forerunner experiment…
August 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
@ Sangheilioz Hmmm, good point, we really do not have much of a history on this universe to refer to…......historical speculation and current speculaiton makes this a real fun puzzle.
Jim, you are not making this very easy….........not that I think that that was ever your intent.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Dunno wats happening because i just found this, but it looks awsome. i’ve gotta go back and read all 80 of em damnit.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I would have to say that speaker number two is most deffinitely NOT Forerunner. The reason is that it mentions having destroyed other galaxies or something along those lines.
It could be a Precursor…but only because you guys have brought Precursors to Jim’s attention. He has said before that he didn’t even know about Precursors before the topic was brought up in “Before Everything”.
442, over.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Precursors? Possibly. But by then the Precursors have already left, right?
Jim doesn’t depart from the Haloverse too much… I don’t think these theories should get too wild and fantastical.
Personally, I think this is inside the shatterbox, and the two AI are running system checks on their history records to check for corruption.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
@ Shu Sam Chen
It’s a pretty far departure from the Haloverse to have the Covenant and humanity at peace with one another…
August 26th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
re: Distefant – I’m actually considering going back into the historical background of the Reclaimerverse at point and telling some of that story. It might actually be a good machinima project. :)
re: Zach – Well, I hope you enjoy catching up! And welcome!
re: Sangheilioz – I’ll further add to what you’ve said and mention that, while I use the Haloverse as a background for the Reclaimer story, I’m not opposed to drastically altering certain elements for the sake of giving the Reclaimerverse extra richness and depth. This is not to confirm or deny any particular theory over another. It’s just a reminder that you can’t ever rely on what you know about the Haloverse to reach conclusions about that in the Reclaimerverse. Some elements you’ll recognize and be comfortable with; others will, with intent, leave you scratching your collective heads. And that’s the way it should be. For now. :)
August 26th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
So there go all our theories! I like it like this, it means the comic is familiar yet completly unpredictable. Which is an excellent mix if you ask me :)
August 26th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Damn, I need a beer…...........................I guess I will just have to wait until tomorrow for the next installment and see what it brings to our collective rambling.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Skepticism FTW!
August 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
re: Hazat36 – Not really. All it means is that I’m not going to tell you whether or not any of the current theories are correct. ;-)
re: Distefant – Next part in ~65 minutes.
re: Sangheilioz – Heck, yeah! :)
August 31st, 2008 at 5:49 am
I’ve been on holiday, I’m baack now
Love the screenshots, nice one medicantbias
is it just me or do the calcavade sound a bit evil at this point, as in the kind of evil where they think they’re doing the right thing (kinda like 343 guitly spark in the games)
September 1st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
@ lilskii – It’s probably just you. :)