608 | Speaking of Excelsior

And the pieces start filling in..

hmm, as far as i understand it, the background is as follows:

Humanity was kind of wiped out and spread into all the world (and are since called “the lost ones”) with at least part of them being psychic (maybe the reason earth was destroyed, survivors got super powers??)

Gunner and Zap worked together for a long time and Zap built the crazy space-ships and their A.I.s and somehow realized Gunner has a more than unpleasant wish to kill al humans (or make them follow him). Zap manages to hide one ship with the aquarians and gives another to Efrem to retrieve it later as the Zap we know.

The A.I.s have the ability to scan for all kinds of species but Gunner is left with a bad one (he shows it to Naveed) which can only scan a few meters.

The aquarians ship and Excelsior can scan way further and would be useful for Gunner. (Excelsior could track Zap until he was crowned)

Maybe Excelsior belonged to Gunner before and he lost it somehow to the rebels, but i doubt it. What i think however is that the memory stick holds information about Gunner (previous encounters, also probably the master plan), which is why Excelsior did not recognize Gunner when he was picked up earlier.

Oh and I am pretty sure Efrem is in with Zap but got his mind wiped so Gunner could not access the plan (and Efrem is not that much at risk to get killed in a rage)

please extend/correct/refine as you wish :D

well the Lost Ones have been depicted as having some kind of language that seems to be distinct from what humans use.
There hasn’t been much background info given on them, so I’m wondering why you think the Lost Ones and humans are one in the same?

i had a totally different perception that the Lost Ones were a civilization distinct from humans and that they were somehow wiped out in a disaster that may or may not have been caused by the humans (like an attack or something).

given that Gunner hints or suggests, and also seems to view, himself as distinct from humans, would lead me to think that Gunner, who is a Lost One, is not actually human.

also, i’m wondering what led you believe that humanity was nearly wiped out…i don’t recall anything in the comic suggesting that humanity had been gravely threatened in the past.

if anything, it seems like humans have been a very serious threat to other races in terms of blowing up entire planets or what have you.

there hasn’t been much concrete info on the Lost Ones, so i feel like they’re still kind of an unresolved mystery.

oh, and if Excelsior once belonged to Gunner, why doesn’t he appear to recognize it?

Who was Zap again?

I thought it was like a plant or something?

This all means that having the Excelsior grounded at rebel hq is a bad idea. It needs to be mobile or the GF is going to come storming in and take it by force, then Gunner will simply manipulate the GF to take it for his own twisted ends.

What? Why would the GEF want Excelsior?

Of course she can! That is her primary objective: http://www.zapcomic.com/2011/08/545-excelsiors-mission/

I just don’t get why Psionicost thinks the GEF would care?

*shamefaced.

I think i need to re-read this comic. I’m kindasorta rusty in the continuity. Will be fun, and it’s muchly needed if i’m to keep up.

Pascalle, what were we supposed to get about Gunner and Excelsior? i thought it was obvious that if Gunner was aware that Excelsior was the sister to the ship he sought, he’d be after Excelsior as well. it seemed to me that it would merely be a matter of time before Gunner gained this information.

I’m gonna have to admit I have not put any pieces together yet, and I don’t really want to. I’m just along for the ride and loving it. I don’t usually try to figure things out in stories until it’s spelled out for me. I think that’s half the fun, staying curious and clueless until that “DUN-Dun Duuun” moment. I know how good the story was then depending on how shocking that “DUN-Dun Duuun” moment was. The high-bar on my shock scale was set by the Sixth Sense–Totally did not see that coming. At. All. I’ll have to let you know how you guys measure up when this is all concluded.

oh. yeah. that jumped out at me immediately…but now that i think about i’m not sure what clued me into these connections. i’d have to go back and reread and see where it was that i realized that Excelsior and Daedelus were sister ships and thus while Gunner lost Daedelus he could possible still pursue Excelsior. i didn’t think to say anything about it because it seemed really obvious to me…

Oh, I got it… Was just not spoiling it for others, Pascalle…

I’m on-Board for the kickstarter. Can’t wait to get all three pdf editions so I can look at them on my new Kindle fire HD!*

(*shameless plug)

I thought this was kind of obvious…right? Daedelus and Excelscior are obviously sister ships…what with the incredibly similar looking holograms. I’m speculating that Efreem pulled the plug on Excelscior’s hologram and ordered her to keep her mouth shut about it because Zap asked him too, because Zap knew that he would eventually end up on the ship and Gunner would soon follow. If Excelscior’s hologram was active at the time Gunner would have immediately figured out that she was another ship capable of detecting the Lost Ones and captured the ship then a there. I’m guessing that though Efreem is technically working for Gunner, he’s actually helping out Zap by going around behind Gunner’s back. I don’t think Efreem is half as much a bad guy as he wants us to believe he is, and I think most the stuff that has happened so far was in one way or another set-up by, or predicted by, Zap. Again, a lot of this is my speculation.

Earth was never destroyed. GEF HQ is in New York.

I don’t get it…what is it that we were supposed to get?
We already knew way long back that Zap concealed the uber psychic AI ships he created away from Gunner. And that Efrem disabled Excelsior so that Gunner won’t be able to sense it.
And that Gunner was gunning out for Excelsior.

So…what’s the thing about the website background that we were supposed to yell about?

A refreshing archive binge is well worth it. I’m still working on finishing up my latest trawl.

:)

Can’t really blow things up and then decimate the remains. Decimate is a very specific word that is almost ALWAYS used wrong. It means 1/10th of something was destroyed. No more, no less. Yet people always use it as if it means total destruction. It does not. Is what the prefix ‘deci’ means. 1/10th. If you destroy half of something then you decimated it 5 times over. Everywhere you go from webcomments to news casts, people use the word completely wrong..

I think you maybe need to look up the definition(s) of decimate. Words have more than one meaning and that’s okay!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate

i used decimate because one needs remains to shred and feed into a mass converter if i used exterminate or terminate there wouldn’t be anything left to convert into energy.