Narklet’s the only one to have ever commissioned a tent with a flap on the top.
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Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
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“Narklet’s the only one to have ever commissioned a tent with a flap on the top.”
Says youu.
You could put a chimney there for a small stove. I lived in a tent like that for a while
As if that wasn’t magic enough in itself.
That sounds like something a seer/diviner/keeper of secrets would say.
Didn’t mean to post that as a reply, no option to delete it.
And yet…
Everyone can hear the sounds of the universe, but very few will listen to what’s being said.
Mostly it’s just screaming: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~!!!”
Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, so I’m going to predict that he’s unintentionally echolocating using reflected baxxid speech.
…assuming, of course, that “listen” doesn’t mean “listen to the spies I sent to follow human scavengers and beat them to the score”, but Narklet strikes me as a True Believer. I could be wrong.
True Believers are the most dangerous of all. Their conviction in the nobility of their cause is so strong, they will go to any length without a scrap of guilt – always filled with confidence that they are doing the right thing, even as they ignore the agonized screams of their victims.
“We’re making a better enclave. All of them – better enclaves…”
there’s somebody on top of the tent telling Narklet stuff
Shush. Don’t ruin the mystery.
The real mystery is how did the guy on top of the tent get a metal detector!?
Did an archive dig: https://www.valsalia.com/comic/prologue/36/ is highly interesting.
This might be related to some mystical connection after all, maybe lunar cycles or constellation-checking.
Oh-oh!
I really missed out on a lot of clues before, reading this piecemeal.
https://www.valsalia.com/comic/out-of-placers/oops-112/
Huh. If Elim is crippled due to his injuries, and Kass can give him a choice between life as a healzhy Yinglet, or as a crippled human, which would he choose? Hmmm..
Hmmm…if Elim becomes stays male as a yinglet, they can maybe take their relationship in a different direction. And if he were to become another female, they’d be like war-forged sisters.
We have one cannon example of Zhat Zhing working on a Humani in Kass. Zhe Art and Extras tab has a example of anozher, much smarter humani being changed into a Feemale. And on Deviant Art, de boss went all de way for how Elim would look as a Yinglet, a male one.
Zo! It is at least feasable zhat zhing comes with polariites for Feemale and Male. I zhink Elim would razher be Male, even as a Yinglet. But I dunno if finding a “Male” polarity zhat zhing would change our Feemale Kass Into a Kassen if used on her, or if Kass would at zhis point, having become comfortable in de current shape.
I suspect Zhat Zhing might not just transform humans into any yinglet: It transforms them into a specific yinglet, based upon a template stored within.
It is possible zhat zhing only exposes each individuals true yinglet self, zhat each of us are unique and special, and zhat means no two Yinglets are de same, even created from Humans.
*plays wizh tri-cordie-box-zhingy… whirrr beep boop chip chirp*
Dangsit Jimmy-ying! I’z a clams-digger… nots a doktor!
O_O
Isn’t Narklet the Patriarch that the rest don’t trust? I thought there was another suspicious yinglet besides the one that attacked Kass.
While nominally the patriarch of scavenging, he was appointed to that position by the Elders. It’s an open secret that his real purpose is to act as a spy and influence events on their behalf, keeping the Elders informed about what is going on and ensuring that their interests are represented and their authority is not undermined. His attempts to curry loyal supporters in the enclave suggest that he is anticipating the cloak-and-dagger games may escalate into an open power struggle, and is preparing accordingly.
It’s a cold war. Narklet and Vizlet have to play their roles and pretend to be cooperating, but they are advocating opposing agendas and neither trusts the other. Tensions run high.
Thought as much. Thanks for confirming. Was too lazy to go through the archives. >.>
Vithlet was just refusing to make a move against Narklet, hoping to resolve everything peacefully, probably bring him into her fold, and eventually bring her reforms to other enclaves.
Narklet is seemingly just as hesitant to take open actions against her. We know that veeeerry few Yinglets are even aware of the schism, I think it’s just Vithlet and three patriarchs who wish to adapt Yinglets to be more compatible with humans; and Narklet is a traditionalist who would be against that for . Possibly good reasons, maybe they are breeding into a vastly different direction down south, and will spread new and ‘superior’ yinglets to Val Salia soon?
I’m not sure that Narklet is fully aware that Vithlet is scheming around. He accepted her ruses about Kassen and Lopin without overly snarky comments, and professed how grateful he is about Kassen being not too progressive.
My, what big ears you have, Narklet! Do you listen for things falling from the sky and washing up on the beach, or does the sky *actually* speak to you?
By the way, is green the color of “Tradition” in Yinglet society? I know the pale blue color, adopted from the “reed of carnal beckoning,” implies virility, fertility, etc., and lots of yinglets like to wear that blue color. But I also know there’s a lot of green in the traditional clothes we’ve seen, including the dress that Vislet put Kass in to meet the patriarchs, Narklet’s and his assistants’ clothes, Vizlet’s head covering, and Poak’s patriarchal shirt. The head-shaped figure we see on their flags is also green, and Chakki used the same green to paint the smiling face on Pekkit’s hat. Am I right?
But Poak is dressed in green too, in OOP 21. And Vislet’s own clothes. Maybe it’s just a nice colour they can make easily from something disgusting dug out of the swamps.
Yeah it probably is something easy for them to make into a dye (maybe also a pigment), which is why it’s so common. Green being easy to make in the yinglet homelands might also make it their color of “tradition.”
I keep thinking that a good way to handle Narklet, in the near future, would be to walk Kass through what he/she would need to know to pass as someone who had been born a yinglet, then have Kass go to him asking questions to ingratiate him/herself to him. IDK what the immediate benefit might be, but at the very least he might start to trust that Vizlet and/or Kass want to preserve Yinglet culture, or if they’re lucky, maybe Kass will explain how science/knowledge is different from culture/engineering and he’ll get it, or he’ll think he can bring one of Vizlet’s friends into his scheme.
He’s good at scheming, but he seems more misguided than threatening so far…
Also, I think Narklet is lying here: that panel where he doesn’t say anything implies to me that he’s thinking of the truth, like that he has some secret information about where their ancestors were at when they left the artifacts he’s looking for.
I get the impression that the Yinglets are actually aliens who, for whatever reason, took the form of the native Lesser-Yinglets with tech like “Zhat Zhing”, then collapsed into nothing. The elders are actually hiding this for whatever reason, but they’ve told Narklet, and that’s why he has disdain for the other, more primitive cultures, and is looking for items from when the yinglet ancestors traveled the stars.