Still say Sever Business Suit or fully armed in Merc Armor to show she means business. Otherwise Douchie will take the tact I suggested. Of course Callie may be counting on Douchie taking that tact and have a full scale Merc Force, both air and land units set to join her in an all out assault on Nova Roma to force a regime change and rescue Lynn.
I disagree. I mean: Look at his lines in this comic. She could have gone encased behind two metres of lead and he'd still be able to go astray the way you worry just the same. His mind is way too far into cloud-cuckoo-land.
He might get down from there yet. Especially when (not if) the talks don't go exactly as he envisions. But even if he does, it's not sure it will be any better.
Ahh, the villain monologue. He has already crafted within his head how the conversation will go and will not consider any other alternative. I do indeed see the end of this. He will make threats and be forced to carry them out when told to piss off.
She might do that, if Calliope starts mentioning "Drone armies" and "weapons in the vault".
Kali is no stranger to the actual danger presented by Calliope.
And she probably knows more about the horrors of the weapons New Troy posesses than Drekhead ever will.
If Kali hung up the line the prince would probably just shoot her on the spot.. Besides who says she wouldn't mind seeing the prince do a bit of sweating.
Kali is by far the type to watch a person walk off a cliff and then go and say .. "now wasn't that stupid? " while laughing her ass off..
I seriously doubt Kali is capable of experiencing fear, let alone "shitting herself in panic". She seems the epitome of an "iceman" or someone who's always cool under pressure. Anyway, she has a reputation to uphold - namely, if she looks at you the wrong way...
Yeah, I thought about that as well. Then suddenly "heard" in my head Calli replying along the lines of:
"If you so much as twist a hair on Lynn, I'll make sure that nothing will remain on Earth that could remind anyone of New Rome. And if you ever make a threat like that again, I'll make sure you'll get a first taste of it."
My only question is how Callie will throw it down. Will it be direct? Or will it be implied? And does Callie have threats of her own besides military force to use against Roma? Not many understand what we the readers know. It is entirely possible that she believes Roma to be solidly behind the Prince. It is also entirely possible that She and Cent know some things that we the readers do not. This has me anticipating the next couple of pages guys!
Like, "I won't do anything, but the Crians say they have a ship in orbit riiiight over your town, and my parents have made good friends with them. I'm sure we could persuade them to drop in and say 'hi' to you and yours." :)
Even if the Crians won't be aggressive, the whole deal just became an interstellar diplomatic issue, and thus much more complicated to Drekhead. And Calliope would enjoy watching him try to be nice to a bunch of alien fishies, once they observe the pollution from his factories into the sea - I doubt they'd be happy about that.
On top of that, it would be funny to watch Drekhead try to be diplomatic, and it would buy Calliope some extra time.
Uh.. The Crians really couldn't give two shakes what humans do. They have a distinct :hands off" policy on humans except for trade goods..
Are you thinking of the Epiphytes? who are .. um Peaceful? and are Part of Luna Comm .. that does not take sides in dirt side squabbles.. Eather way .. There wont be any Alien interaction in this ..
Aye, the Crians, which Calliopes mother, a veteran diplomat, has probably had more contact with than anyone else around.
Now, most humans might have at least tried to clean up their mess, but Drekhead is probably not even trying to do so - Something that could annoy the alien fishies quite a bit, I suspect.
Now, if the diplomat mother offer them tradegoods for free if they go down and sit on drekheads city for a while, they might do so .. if nothing else, then just to spite Drekhead for polluting so much.
They don't have to care about the humans underneath them, of either side. They wouldn't even have to do anything, just sit there and look ... well, alien. Maybe speak their mind every now and then.
Drekhead would have to worry, if any alien got involved, even if they were doing nothing.That alone, could buy Calliope some time. And the more time that passes without anything happening from Drekhead, the better her chances are.
"Now, most humans might have at least tried to clean up their mess, but Drekhead is probably not even trying to do so..."
Many pages ago when Acantha flew Lynn to meet Aeneas, they flew over a range of military factories pumping out clouds of fumes and rivers of sludge. Lynn asked about their quote, "environmental regs" and Acantha was puzzled, asking what she meant by that.
Still: It sounds like ocean life on Earth is pretty much dead, aside from some very mutated fish - nothing like what it once was. And once something is truly dead, you can't really make it deader.
Where is the Crians' motivation? Humans made their home a shitpile and wiped out native species in the process. Very sad, considering the shining blue and green jewel of unique life it once was - a rarity among an ocean of lifeless stars.
The only ones with the capability or interest in reversing some of the damage is the Epiphytes. And, no doubt, there's a limit to what even they can do.
The Crians may not give a darn if the humans kill each other. But that's not to say they aren't so enlightened as to realize that needlessly involving themselves in political conflicts could bite them in the arse. (They may be barred from trade or traveling in human space, for instance.) Humans are the ones that did this to themselves, while the Crians seem content to explore and trade.
At best, they probably see humans as immature children who quarrel among themselves and, in a tantrum, demolished their home - as if defacing or smashing an irreplaceable and priceless Faberge egg. At best. Why would they contribute to a quarrel or take sides?
Then again, they're aliens. They may not even think the way we do.
The Epiphytes are doing eco friendly recovery and clean up where they can .. ones like Tulip are developing plants and animals capable of absorbing radiation and toxins and breaking them down to harmless by products..
However the Epiphytes do not use hard core terraforming tactics. The Crians motives for helping clean up the oceans is still a unknown..
The oceans aren't dead. The Crians are working alongside the Epiphytes to clean up the place. Where the Epiphytes have a vast store of plant DNA, the Crians are the animal biotech experts. Between the Epiphytes' engineered plants and the Crians' engineered aquatic life, the cleaning process is well in hand.
If Prince Decimus wouldn't listen to either Kali or Maxus about NOT abducting Lynn, why on earth would anyone think he would listen to their council now?
A would-be Machiavelli that would be chewed up and spit out by the real thing. Unfortunately, I don't think Calli is much of a Machiavelli either (which is a good thing).
Kali on the other hand...
And the plot thickens... Who's been stirring the pot?
Question here someone said something about Callies official position in the New Troy hierarchy. Wouldn't she be the equivalent of Douchie making Lynn and Acantha actually equals rather than Princess and commoner?
The Taylors hold a position that is roughly the equivalent of "advisory" to the president.
or Vice president. Centcomm fills the role of Leader and the council is congress ..
If that helps.. BUT New Troy is a ... kinda a democracy with a lot of loopholes. Centcomm does obey the Council but can disregard in some situations -
Same with Calliope she can disregard UNLESS Calli invokes her Codes.. Then Cent has to take directives like any other machine. However .. none of the Taylors have ever had to invoke thier codes .. Lynn does not have a code to invoke. and only one set is active at a time.. right now Calliope is the active code holder.
He would, except he's a decent guy at heart. To be truly Machiavellian, you have to be cold blooded. Kali has programming restrictions in her, otherwise Decimus would already have been assasinated by her, and both Maxus and Acantha would be informed (by implication) that they are still puppets of the realm.
She scares me a lot more than Decimus does in a lot of ways.... and to top it off, she's so gosh-danged beautiful that it's disarming even when she's staring daggers at you.
(Be wary of those daggers she's staring at you, they might very well be real).
I will base my response off of the reading of The Prince that I did over a decade ago when I was in my mid teens, so forgive me if I'm off-base:
I would argue that to be truly Machiavellian it is only necessary to impose your logic upon your emotion, and that strong emotion that you have the strength of will to suppress is in fact a benefit. While being so cold-blooded as to be (almost) emotionless can make the planning easier, it is to emotion that the masses react, and thus, intelligently released emotion is quite necessary to truly bend them to your will.
Calliope, I would say does have the strength to act as necessary, although she may not have the strength to survive taking such action (I suspect she does).
Maximus definitely has the strength (of will, not just body), and in fact it would appear he is playing the Machiavellian Prince to the actual Prince and doing so as successfully as his desire to not set off the fail-safes allows.
I'm not disagreeing about the strength of will that either Maxus or Calliope have, but "The Prince" was a treatise on how to be effectively Ruthless. Here are a few quotes from it that might help explain the difference...
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
"War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans."
"Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked."
"Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself. "
I could go on and on with this list, but this kind of ruthlessness is not within the nature of either Maxus or Calliope.
Re: Listening to council
Indeed, he's mentally unstable and a fool to boot. Douchebag isn't wise enough to listen to council.
Calli, on the other hand: She does not want to loose Lynn, but she does not want this to come to war, either. So she tries to reason with Lynn's captor. But I suspect there's more to this: The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Calli has never met the Prince. But she may get a bit of an understanding (of how insane he is) by talking with him.
To quote Mr. Kipling, "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." or from the old adventurers guidebook on dealing with family groups of creatures, "Don't piss off the Mommy."
thnink of how animals react when theier young are threatened .. I once had a cat ( she was a little tiny thing.. and Mister Black was over ( hes six foot something ) and he almost stepped on her kitten ( Aslan ) and she went bizerk launching herself at his back and trying to rip his head off.. She didn't care that he was like 100 times her mass she wanted him DEAD..
So yeah .. dont piss off a mommy..
( no cats were harmed .. and it was all accidental on Mister blacks part ... Gwena wanted to commit genocide on the spot.. but then she was always a psycho cat..
Yes. Gwena was definitely a lich cat. I used to worry vaguely that I'd visit Cent at some point and find only a corpse lying on the bed with Gwena nesting in the rib cage, hissing and chanting forbidden knowledge in the vile speech of corruption.
Prince bibildie here reminds me of a certain young, blonde protector of the realms. His foul temperament got him poisoned at his own wedding.
Being a crazy ruler means unpredictably, and if he cant be guided or controlled, the shadow players (the people who hold real power behind the throne) do not abide that trait for long.
Erm.. am I misremembering, or didnt Kali used to be.... darker?
Didnt she have BLACK eyes or something, at least?
(checks cast page)..
interesting.. her original hair was PURPLE. Now it's black, which in theory should be darker. but it's more.. shiny?
As is her skin.
Previously, she seemed to absorb light. Now she seems to reflect it, or almost emit it.
Proably a difference in shaders.. The Old Kali Model / mesh became unusable due to a number of "advances" in Daz studio I did my best to recreate her on every level .. but this Kali has a number of differences The Old kali was using a "3 rd Generation" of the victoria mesh.. this one uses the Genesis one Victoria six version.. I had to redo her from toes to top of head .. I had to custom make her skin texture and eye textures .. and apply shaders .. its sad but technology marches on.. Rose wasn't happy about it eather. Sorry
I knew there had to be a technical reason. Thanks for the explanation.
Actually, DAZ3D offers shape conversions for Genesis. I could have sworn that they have a V3 for Genesis thing, as well as for most DAZ characters. I have "V4 & M4 Shapes for Genesis" myself.
If clothes are the problem: What about the CrossDresser plugin and morphs by EvilInnocence? They offer morphs for nearly all characters, including V3.
i have those.. and did not like the result .. also cross dresser does not work very well it often crushes meshes and strips useful morphs out of the item.. So I just said screw it and updated her .. I was tempted to make her a genesis 2 Victoria 7 as I also have that but at the time she didnt have that many outfits.. also Daz can sometimes do the "auto fit" and its very hit and miss. Im happy with the new Kali hopefully you guys will like her too.. :D
im not sure about the Abyssal Exalted or Ghost-blooded references.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the new model is better on several levels. How beautiful she is is beyond question. but the "unrealness" of it is that she kinda has a goth look that scares other goths!
I think it suits her well. After all, she's supposed to stand out, and not blend in!
One might argue though, that her not instantly giving of a vibe of danger and fear from looks alone together with being easily recognisable actually adds to her overall scaryness. At least to anyone knowing who she is, while anyone else might be careless around her at first.
I like the way she looks slightly "unreal" or artificial. Good choice on glossy and unnaturally smooth skin for Kali. According to me though it ought to be a glossy midshade-ranging-toward-dark gray with no trace of flesh tones. And darker eyes. But she's your character and you make her how you need to.
Hmmm, now that I look at it closely I think the biggest difference in facial structure is that the new model has fuller lips. It makes it look more sensual and less severe.
I think Morituri said it well. Keeping the "slightly glossy", but changing the skintone back to the original shade of grey, rather than white, would give her back that old Kali feel.
Which is much more... ominous?
So then you would actually have a range:
noctis: bright white, (not shiney? kinda matte, not gloss)
Kali: shiney, grey
malati: not shiney, grey
Right now, Kali is rather similar to noctis, in facial coloring.
In a way, I'm guessing her personality is in-between the two.
Seems like it would be appropriate to have her face be in-between the two as well?
Oh! I didnt notice your(Centcom)'s post,
"Also remember Kali was originally designed to be a guardian and mother figure"
That puts a whole new spin on things.
In that case, the current model seems.. somewhat.. appropriate.
However... seems like that is massive retconning; as such, the cast page needs to be rewritten :-p
Unless her self-determined raison d'etre has changed to what the case page currently shows....
if THAT is right, then this post of mine then becomes irrelevant,and the prior requests for model tweak stand ;-)
the cast page info is pretty old .. written when we were still fleshing things out.. eventually we hope to update all that stuff..
(( Its actually a goal on Patreon :D ))
Ive been redoing the cast images here and there and probably when I get to redoing Kali's first appearance in the comic it will be the "current" model as I phase out the old Generation 3 models totally.
Its all daz's fault for making it imposable to keep working with gen 3 models ... :D
At the end of this conversation, after negotiations have failed, I expect Calli to do what she can to delay things. She knows about Cent's operatives to rescue Lynn and that what they need most is time. To this end, Calli may point out that she only has so much influence and has to talk things over with the Council and Cent. At the least, she could point out that a dead hostage isn't worth anything compared to a live one.
Looks like Prince Douchebag has skipped right over paranoid, neurotic and delusional and gone right for bat-shit crazy. All he needs is a black top hat, an evil grin and a long thin mustache he can twirl in his fingers.
Fidel Castro grew up as a rich boy on a plantation.
That was part of the attraction he had on the rebellious people, that he brought himself "down" in status, to help them out.
Also, I suspect that quite a few girls went "unf unf" after those gentlemen when they were young. No better way to get the guys to follow you, than to have the girls flock around you.
He might get down from there yet. Especially when (not if) the talks don't go exactly as he envisions. But even if he does, it's not sure it will be any better.
I didn't knowe he was into pegging.
I could have lived without knowing that.
Kali is no stranger to the actual danger presented by Calliope.
And she probably knows more about the horrors of the weapons New Troy posesses than Drekhead ever will.
She's definately going to be cautious.
Kali is by far the type to watch a person walk off a cliff and then go and say .. "now wasn't that stupid? " while laughing her ass off..
...so she might look at deci hang himself there...
"If you so much as twist a hair on Lynn, I'll make sure that nothing will remain on Earth that could remind anyone of New Rome. And if you ever make a threat like that again, I'll make sure you'll get a first taste of it."
Like, "I won't do anything, but the Crians say they have a ship in orbit riiiight over your town, and my parents have made good friends with them. I'm sure we could persuade them to drop in and say 'hi' to you and yours." :)
Even if the Crians won't be aggressive, the whole deal just became an interstellar diplomatic issue, and thus much more complicated to Drekhead. And Calliope would enjoy watching him try to be nice to a bunch of alien fishies, once they observe the pollution from his factories into the sea - I doubt they'd be happy about that.
On top of that, it would be funny to watch Drekhead try to be diplomatic, and it would buy Calliope some extra time.
Are you thinking of the Epiphytes? who are .. um Peaceful? and are Part of Luna Comm .. that does not take sides in dirt side squabbles.. Eather way .. There wont be any Alien interaction in this ..
Now, most humans might have at least tried to clean up their mess, but Drekhead is probably not even trying to do so - Something that could annoy the alien fishies quite a bit, I suspect.
Now, if the diplomat mother offer them tradegoods for free if they go down and sit on drekheads city for a while, they might do so .. if nothing else, then just to spite Drekhead for polluting so much.
They don't have to care about the humans underneath them, of either side. They wouldn't even have to do anything, just sit there and look ... well, alien. Maybe speak their mind every now and then.
Drekhead would have to worry, if any alien got involved, even if they were doing nothing.That alone, could buy Calliope some time. And the more time that passes without anything happening from Drekhead, the better her chances are.
Many pages ago when Acantha flew Lynn to meet Aeneas, they flew over a range of military factories pumping out clouds of fumes and rivers of sludge. Lynn asked about their quote, "environmental regs" and Acantha was puzzled, asking what she meant by that.
Still: It sounds like ocean life on Earth is pretty much dead, aside from some very mutated fish - nothing like what it once was. And once something is truly dead, you can't really make it deader.
Where is the Crians' motivation? Humans made their home a shitpile and wiped out native species in the process. Very sad, considering the shining blue and green jewel of unique life it once was - a rarity among an ocean of lifeless stars.
The only ones with the capability or interest in reversing some of the damage is the Epiphytes. And, no doubt, there's a limit to what even they can do.
The Crians may not give a darn if the humans kill each other. But that's not to say they aren't so enlightened as to realize that needlessly involving themselves in political conflicts could bite them in the arse. (They may be barred from trade or traveling in human space, for instance.) Humans are the ones that did this to themselves, while the Crians seem content to explore and trade.
At best, they probably see humans as immature children who quarrel among themselves and, in a tantrum, demolished their home - as if defacing or smashing an irreplaceable and priceless Faberge egg. At best. Why would they contribute to a quarrel or take sides?
Then again, they're aliens. They may not even think the way we do.
However the Epiphytes do not use hard core terraforming tactics. The Crians motives for helping clean up the oceans is still a unknown..
Heck, she might even be ahead of most others in greentech.
Could even have made friends with the Crians.
Not that it would have any influence on the comic, but it's a curious thought.
A planet without sea life, would be a sad planet.
A would-be Machiavelli that would be chewed up and spit out by the real thing. Unfortunately, I don't think Calli is much of a Machiavelli either (which is a good thing).
Kali on the other hand...
And the plot thickens... Who's been stirring the pot?
or Vice president. Centcomm fills the role of Leader and the council is congress ..
If that helps.. BUT New Troy is a ... kinda a democracy with a lot of loopholes. Centcomm does obey the Council but can disregard in some situations -
Same with Calliope she can disregard UNLESS Calli invokes her Codes.. Then Cent has to take directives like any other machine. However .. none of the Taylors have ever had to invoke thier codes .. Lynn does not have a code to invoke. and only one set is active at a time.. right now Calliope is the active code holder.
She scares me a lot more than Decimus does in a lot of ways.... and to top it off, she's so gosh-danged beautiful that it's disarming even when she's staring daggers at you.
(Be wary of those daggers she's staring at you, they might very well be real).
I would argue that to be truly Machiavellian it is only necessary to impose your logic upon your emotion, and that strong emotion that you have the strength of will to suppress is in fact a benefit. While being so cold-blooded as to be (almost) emotionless can make the planning easier, it is to emotion that the masses react, and thus, intelligently released emotion is quite necessary to truly bend them to your will.
Calliope, I would say does have the strength to act as necessary, although she may not have the strength to survive taking such action (I suspect she does).
Maximus definitely has the strength (of will, not just body), and in fact it would appear he is playing the Machiavellian Prince to the actual Prince and doing so as successfully as his desire to not set off the fail-safes allows.
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
"War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans."
"Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked."
"Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself. "
I could go on and on with this list, but this kind of ruthlessness is not within the nature of either Maxus or Calliope.
Indeed, he's mentally unstable and a fool to boot. Douchebag isn't wise enough to listen to council.
Calli, on the other hand: She does not want to loose Lynn, but she does not want this to come to war, either. So she tries to reason with Lynn's captor. But I suspect there's more to this: The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Calli has never met the Prince. But she may get a bit of an understanding (of how insane he is) by talking with him.
He is so full of himself. I fear that will affect the dinner that was supposed to be perfect...
At least Kali is trying to keep him in check...
Poor Acantha and Lynn. I just hope that Maxus will attend, too, and that Kyle, erm, Leo can control himself...
So yeah .. dont piss off a mommy..
( no cats were harmed .. and it was all accidental on Mister blacks part ... Gwena wanted to commit genocide on the spot.. but then she was always a psycho cat..
He may be in for a surprise or two.
1: Prince Douchington Douche the Douche will end up harming Lynn, forcing Calli to start a flat-out war against them.
2: Kali will have enough and murder Decimus.
Or 3: Maxus will happen to come in right as he's bolstering and threatening and finally turn on him.
Being a crazy ruler means unpredictably, and if he cant be guided or controlled, the shadow players (the people who hold real power behind the throne) do not abide that trait for long.
As for the Shadows.. We shall see .. :D
Didnt she have BLACK eyes or something, at least?
(checks cast page)..
interesting.. her original hair was PURPLE. Now it's black, which in theory should be darker. but it's more.. shiny?
As is her skin.
Previously, she seemed to absorb light. Now she seems to reflect it, or almost emit it.
Before, they were all dark n broody.
Now they're... feminine????
sadface.
I miss the old Kali....
Actually, DAZ3D offers shape conversions for Genesis. I could have sworn that they have a V3 for Genesis thing, as well as for most DAZ characters. I have "V4 & M4 Shapes for Genesis" myself.
If clothes are the problem: What about the CrossDresser plugin and morphs by EvilInnocence? They offer morphs for nearly all characters, including V3.
im not sure about the Abyssal Exalted or Ghost-blooded references.
you wouldnt reconsider making her skin shader more malati, less noctis?
I think it suits her well. After all, she's supposed to stand out, and not blend in!
But.. compare the visual in the Cast page, to today's model.
Which do you think is *Scarier*?
To me, more pretty = less scary
Well.. there's "evil pretty", which is scary.. and then Beautifulpretty.. which is not so much.
Seems like she changed from the first, to the second.
Both is actually a win, regarding her job.
Her skin is intended to be slightly glossy. We wanted that "china doll" look; I was really specific about it.
I like the way she looks slightly "unreal" or artificial. Good choice on glossy and unnaturally smooth skin for Kali. According to me though it ought to be a glossy midshade-ranging-toward-dark gray with no trace of flesh tones. And darker eyes. But she's your character and you make her how you need to.
Hmmm, now that I look at it closely I think the biggest difference in facial structure is that the new model has fuller lips. It makes it look more sensual and less severe.
Which is much more... ominous?
So then you would actually have a range:
noctis: bright white, (not shiney? kinda matte, not gloss)
Kali: shiney, grey
malati: not shiney, grey
Right now, Kali is rather similar to noctis, in facial coloring.
In a way, I'm guessing her personality is in-between the two.
Seems like it would be appropriate to have her face be in-between the two as well?
"Also remember Kali was originally designed to be a guardian and mother figure"
That puts a whole new spin on things.
In that case, the current model seems.. somewhat.. appropriate.
However... seems like that is massive retconning; as such, the cast page needs to be rewritten :-p
Unless her self-determined raison d'etre has changed to what the case page currently shows....
if THAT is right, then this post of mine then becomes irrelevant,and the prior requests for model tweak stand ;-)
(( Its actually a goal on Patreon :D ))
Ive been redoing the cast images here and there and probably when I get to redoing Kali's first appearance in the comic it will be the "current" model as I phase out the old Generation 3 models totally.
Its all daz's fault for making it imposable to keep working with gen 3 models ... :D
Dick Dastardly would be sooo jealous. :D
The slicked back hair of old stalin, with the youthful face and scraggy beard of young Stalin!
Like so :
Fidel Castro was a pretty boy too :
That was part of the attraction he had on the rebellious people, that he brought himself "down" in status, to help them out.
Also, I suspect that quite a few girls went "unf unf" after those gentlemen when they were young. No better way to get the guys to follow you, than to have the girls flock around you.