Families/Cемьи 11
Page 11 of a voting incentive storyline Families/Cемьи is now available! And so is a link to all the previous pages.
SPOILERS AHEAD – read the update first before reading what I’ve written below.
Abaddonauts!: Many readers might have been expecting this moment. Well, I aim to please!
This page is a call back to a lot of Magellan lore:
- The Charnel Pit Six – this group was mentioned a couple of times in relation to the Q’Arth demon invasion of Moscow in 1972… very early on in the first chapter in fact. See pages 1.03 and 1.25… the fact that Brian and Nadine both know about the CP6 means that this is presumably common knowledge or mythos about the Q’Arth. They are also mentioned in the History (page 3)…
- The Vrax Darma – was mentioned by Maverick in Bad Karma on page 4.282… it’s half of the Vortice Sol (the other half piece being the Vrax Japh). Maverick mentions that the Vortice Sol opens the gateway to the realm where the Q’Arth exist… clearly the Vrax Darma by itself can do that too, but not in the way intended.
- Reds on Mars – we know there is a Soviet base on Mars… but did we know they had a presence back in 1972? No, we did not, but we do now. Surprisingly, it will get mentioned further on a much later page.
- Abaddonauts – not mentioned anywhere previously. But I thought it was a cool name… a counter to ‘cosmonaut’ – but instead of ‘star sailors’ these are ‘hell sailors’. Or would have been had they not just been vaporised in a puff of green plasma.
- HRUAAIII! – is this how you spell the Wilhelm Scream?
Next update: MONDAY 25 May (late a couple of days)… It was all lies!
Really, if it’s something in the Magellanverse that is called “Vrax”, don’t mess with it.
It’s interesting to me how we’re learning more about the Q’Arth here without learning anything more about them at the same time. This is all the circumstances around them arriving in the Magellanverse, but they themselves are still that horrifying enemy not truly understood.
I also remember the Crossoverlord, when the biggest threat mentioned during it was that the Smiling Man’s efforts to merge realities would also merge the Q’Arth’s reality with everyone else’s. Or at least it felt like the biggest threat.
And how did I forget the Vrax Japh’s connection to the Q’Arth? And considering the time that’s passed since Bad Karma, Drake, has possibly had enough to find the Vrax Darma. Yikes.
“Abaddonauts” really is a fun term.
Not sure how to spell the Wilhelm Scream. I’d probably spell it “YEAGH”, or something, but yours might be better. Thinking of the Crossoverlord again, I know at one time they came across a similar conundrum and instead decided on “Doo hoo hoo hooey”, the Goofy yell, instead. The musing I remember seeing below that page was that the only way to properly put one into a comic would to have the onomatopoeia just literally say *Wilhelm Scream*, which by then loses some of the joke.
this is pure fanservice
Oh. No. Who could have possibly seen that coming a million miles away.
Honestly though, I’m a little dissatisfied with the representation of the Soviet leaders being this boneheaded. I hope we get to see equally incompotent and self-serving western political leaders at some point in the narrative.
Well, both sides were pretty bone headed during the Cold War in our reality, lest we forget the multitude of nuclear bomb tests. The USSR tested Tsar Bomba in 1961, still the largest ever tested weighing in at 50 megatons, fireball radius of 3.5km and blast radius of 35km… and while they tested it in the middle of nowhere that was pretty boneheaded! I suspect paranoia in the real world is bad enough, add super human and supernatural beings and it goes off the scale of being rational. 🙂
And in the US we moved the goalposts until we won the space race…. Not as boneheaded but there’s no denying that’s exactly what we did
Just to add to the “What Could Have Been (and thank God it wasn’t)” pile: the designer of Tsar Bomba got cold feet at what a massive nuke could theoretically do and altered the design to give half the explosive yield.
Yes, the original Tsar Bomba blast was supposed to be bigger.
That such things are impossible in the real world is the ONLY reason someone hasn’t made it happen already. Just think of how many times WWIII almost happened. Now add in someone with access to demon dimensions or teleportation.
Atlantis.
Abaddonauts is now my new favorite word. Also, interesting that the occultists had the Vrax Darma in 1972, but its whereabouts seem to have vanished after that.
Abaddonauts gets me thinking of Dante’s Inferno. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
1. 1. Aw, man 😕 Why do we have to lose those years of their story?
2. I’ll bite… What’s it mean that CP6 seems to be in common parlance, but Hoodoo pointedly leaves them out of her History segment?
3. Vrax Darma – AM and Shade both mention it, so I think a point has been made 😉 It’s easy to guess that it got “lost” in all the hubbub.
4. Already there in ’72? Huh… where ya going?
5. Abaddon has got an interesting etymology, for those who like such things.
6. Maybe *these* politburo members aren’t going to be getting away.
7. I see the problem… They’re using a summoning pentacle, but they’ve got SIX people in the ceremony! What kind of occultists are you guys?! 🙃
8. Lies – … 😒 … Don’t go rewriting everything we thought we already knew.
Kidding! Do as thou wilt, etc. 🙂
CP6 = Charnel Pit Six
And the name is referenced in the History section, just on page 3, not 4
And I completely misunderstood your point 2.
I’ll shut up now.
I was a bit of a dummy and spelled “Abaddon” wrong (and therefore “abaddonauts”…) – I’ve now corrected it in the comic, my notes and in people’s comments! For the record, “ABBAdonauts” are sailors who do sing ABBA karaoke…
I like the ABBAdonauts. Seem like a fun crowd.
Mmm… ‘donauts 😋
So they at least wasn’t SO stupid to open unguarded portal. They just failed the guarding.
I’ll join the crowd and say that “abaddonauts” is a word that really rocks. Abaddon itself is a much underused name. Much better than plain Infernauts.
It’s a group called ‘The Charnel Pit Six’. I would have thought that would be a red flag from the get-go.
The Huggy Wuggy Six just wasn’t working for them.
“The Six Bunny Wunnies and Their Cross-Dimensional Friends”
But… they LIKE red flags!
Ah, I can see where the problem arose.
Hmm.
I see here that the original occultists are called “The Charnel Pit Six”
Page “History 3” calls the originally summoned Q’ARTH by the same name.
Curious about the source of the mixup.
Yikes – the source of the mix-up is my sadly addled brain. :/ I can’t even research my own comic properly! Good thing I have you guys to help…
So, here I am going for whatever Magellan has that passes for a no-prize.
The reason the History page has the wrong information is because it’s being reported by news media. In the early 70s, two things are prominent to make this confusion more than plausible.
First, you have the rather secretive nature of the Soviet government. All the people who knew all the details were in the room or moscow at the time, and likely fell to the Q’ARTH invasion. So accurate information gathering is difficult.
Second, without access to an internet, which what did exist was very niche and not at all the sort of thing occultists and cabals or other pagan groups used, the idea that groups outside the CP6 knowing about them is very slim. Add to this the fact that, at the time, pagan and occult groups were still inherently secretive as well, for fear of prosecution by religious groups, and it’s unlikely anyone outside of the Soviet government ever heard of them. Perhaps the CIA, but those guys don’t share information they might be able to use later.
So all in all, it wasn’t a writing mistake, it was just lack of accurate information available to be presented to the West by the media. Hoodoo couldn’t have been more accurate, as she didn’t have the information we, as readers, now have.
This makes perfect sense. Actually, it’s a small miracle the moniker “Charnel Pit Six” somehow survived the incident. Presumably everyone who knew about this project except the CIA and the very top of the Soviet chain of command was in the room when it went awry. Maybe the occultist groups of the time were aware enough of each other that this name was known in those circles, before they eradicated themselves?
“I assure you it is perfectly sa-”
famous last almost words
Thompson Twins! Lies lies lies yeah!