>>97486413
Oh shit, people still post webcomics on /tg/? I thought it was just OotS these days.

>>97486413
>oh no these creatures that were mm away from crushing my skull were just regular people
lame

No one cares.

>>97486424
Only these two, as far as I'm aware.

>>97486413

Damn, how old is that one by now?

>>97486551
>lame
Hard disagree, enemies that form civilizations make more interesting enemies than enemies that don't.

For example Bioware made the invading armies in both Mass Effect and Dragon Age mindless cultureless zombie-mutants with no real society, and it was really boring, compared to for example the Empire from Star Wars 4-6 that represented some kind of civilization.

File: 1756600869264171.png (118.2 KB)

118.2 KB PNG

>Outsider
Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time

>>97486413
new headcanon:
>tempo is actually secretly running around killing all the waifus in competition with her for pinke humie cock

>>97487076
no whats lame is the immediate "oh no those poor bugs D:" reaction right after they nearly killed you
so artificial
lame

>>97487328
Jardin comes from an Earth which has been at peace for decades if not centuries.

>>97486413
>loose clay pots on a spaceship
Honestly, this is somehow the least believable thing I've seen so far.

>>97488047
They have artificial gravity on all ships. If that goes out even for a moment, you have far more urgent issues than some clay shards.

Besides, look at the size of those corridors. These ships are not fragile space shuttles where specks of dust can mess with electronics. They are more like contemporary ships that get beat up, have oil spills and are still send out to fill the cargo hold with mackerel.

>>97488117
Why do they have beards? Why is Alexander bald? What is being referenced?

>>97488164
newfag

>>97487328
Yeah, I mean no shit people have cultures, doesn't make you not want to kill them. Still, this is his first actual experience with personal combat with this enemy and he knows nothing about this war someone else hasn't said.

File: 1769072240899399.png (579.3 KB)

579.3 KB PNG

>bug people """culture"""

We have to eat the bugs.

>>97486424
That's our Outsider update for 2026.

File: outsider028.jpg (200.8 KB)

200.8 KB JPG

>>97486551
Agreed, it is lame to show a moment of vulnerability just to say that Fireblade is a regular people even though she was mm away from crushing his skull when they first met. She should be doing more on screen skullcrushing. She LOVES skullcrushing.

File: gurps_tempo.gif (85.8 KB)

85.8 KB GIF

>Since best girl Spiral is confirmed dead (merry Christmas), let's speculate who's next on the hit list.

>- Beryl's the Tutorial Wife and it's obvious she has to die at some point. Alex would not be narrating the story if she were alive.
>- Talon has to join Spiral and the rest of the diral-seii holders soon.
>- Flint is a nonentity, storywise.

>However, my money's on Tempo. She:
>>has 16 levels of Interrogation and 11 levels of Umiak language, skills that will be needed immediately
>>took over an entire ship with her brain powers
>>explained her entire motivation to trust and help Humaniti as a way to preserve the last vestiges of her own naive optimism
>>kept Jardin alive and celibate for 200 pages and 20 years
>>would be able to answer important questions and solve serious problems that are obviously foreshadowed for the immediate future.
>>has 17 levels of Intelligence Analysis and would probably be able and willing to explain too much of the plot
>>has a 10 point debt on her char sheet
>She's toast.
Also, the spoiler redactions on her sheet are mostly revealed. So we are running out of Tempo actions relevant to the plot to spoil.

File: fearsomefoursome14.jpg (79.4 KB)

79.4 KB JPG

>>97488819
This is the core promotional pic of the comic. It is titled: fearsomefoursome14.jpg. We can take it for granted the 4 individuals won't be dying.

>>97488885
That pic is the promotional image from 2003, when he was waffling on whether or not to follow the accursed path of the barely-illustrated web novella after chapter 2. It is at most a splash image relevant to the two decades it took to be captured. Over the course of the next 10 years it will take to reach the next plot point, he will be able to introduce a new index splash image and relegate this one to the Insider section, or use it as a designated "back cover" for any forthcoming print copy of "Volume I: Chapters 1-3" while preparing a new splash image featuring Tempo's dead body mounted atop a traditional elven funeral pyre.

File: ewwgetthisshitoffme.png (37.4 KB)

37.4 KB PNG

>>97488750
>She should be doing more on screen skullcrushing.
I suggest staying alive for at least another two years

File: reedandspiral.jpg (187.1 KB)

187.1 KB JPG

>>97489085
I'm on the patreon but I haven't read the posted pages.

RIP Reed and Spiral, I'm obscurely bummed about their deaths, maybe because I've been reading this comic for almost 25 years now

>>97488948
You are right...
we are in for something rather darker, something shocking...
The Umiak will brutally murder all 3 Alex's alien waifus.
Then they murder Alex also.
They already know where Earth is from the other Bellarmine survivors, whom they also brutally murdered after extracting the info.
Soon Umiak arrive on Earth. It turns out all insects on Earth are a hivemind, and Umiak feel bug solidarity with it, and help the Earth bug hivemind kill all humans on Earth and take over Earth.
Next Umiak kill all Loroi and then they brutally murder the Historians and missionaries and lizardmen, all their organic material is turned into bug food.
Then the Umiak arrive at the Well of Souls.
"There's a lot of souls in this well, Ktktktktktk," says Tktktk to Ktktktktktk.
"Yes, we should murder them all," answers Ktktktktktk.
They do so.

>>97489097
It’s crazy that so many of these women must have been in like “big… pink… guy…” fugue like all the gooners here for Amazons. Like they are absolutely taking the piss out of Jardin here just gawk at him, touch hands and hear him say nice things. RIP.

>>97489097
Every single one of those dorks and femgooners gave her life for him, specifically.
I wonder if he will sing the Mickey Mouse song for them.
I wonder if he will regret singing the Mickey Mouse song for them afterwards.
I wonder if their ghosts will come to him in his dreams and slap him for it.

>>97488819
To me that I'm crazy or whatever, but didn't Arioch post images of a "sequel" story that he has cooking up in the back of his mind?

>>97489412
In which it is revealed that Alex is telling Beryl's son stories about his mom.
Which means that Beryl is not telling those stories.
The normal reason Beryl would not be relaying those stories is that she is dead.
However, we know that the real reason is that she is on deep assignment to Earth to learn firsthand everything there is to know about humaniti, forever, and has not had time to break away from this duty to tend to her son.
The very last caption box in Outsider after this is revealed will be:
>She's a god damned SEXUAL TYRANNOSAURUS, lad.

File: outsider150.jpg (263.7 KB)

263.7 KB JPG

>>97489097
I honestly love the character quirks and genuine curiosity that these characters have towards Alex

File: the tenoin gambit.jpg (1.5 MB)

1.5 MB JPG

Star Fleet Tactical did a dive into Outsider almost a year ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rV0q1P72Y

He points out the difference between Outsider hyperspace and Albedo hyperspace repeatedly. The metaphor he keeps coming to is that in Outsider, gravity is a hyperspace well, but in Albedo it's a hill or a mountain.

The Loroi boardgame centers around capturing a hill or mountain redoubt, which Arioch also says is considered an evolutionary metaphor for a gravity well, even though a gravity well would act much differently from a hill in both realspace and hyperspace. The insider hyperspace page also keeps mentioning the existence of negative hyperspace, but makes it clear that negative hyperspace is very much unknown to any of the extant empires.

Odds that negative hyperspace is tied to telepathy, and that doing some sort of telepathic negative hyperspace thing turns the Well of Souls gravity anomaly into a capturable mountain?

>>97488819
Waiting for the page where Talon is about to sacrifice herself but gets convinced to "choose life."

File: 1743058494611.jpg (364.1 KB)

364.1 KB JPG

>>97486413
WIP for comparison

>>97490651
Since she is a pilot it will go something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI3oa9tiqXU

>>97490695
>shaking violently
some sort of battle frenzy aftereffects?
combat drugs withdrawal?

File: fireblade.png (82.2 KB)

82.2 KB PNG

>>97492067
It's all there in the character sheet really. Fireblade is a telekine prodigy but she has to go off the chain to fully channel her power. When she does, she gets the shakes afterwards.

>>97489829
This is a pretty solid guess I think even if it doesn't end up being true. We know that Arioch rationalises the force used in telekinesis by saying it comes from 'somewhere else' as does any resultant blowback force that would kill/dislodge the user. So I think it makes sense there is an overlying hyperspace-like dimension which psychic abilities relate to. It's interesting to think about humans would look like in such a space.

>>97492067
She just used mind bullets to kill a load of bugs, might just be exhaustion.

Ah I forgot how interesting the MoO-inspired universe here is. I always expected Arioch to flip something around about the Orion- and Anataran-equivalents in his setting. It's a shame we'll never really see the secrets of it. It seems likely the Historians destroyed the human ship, but are they AI remnants of the Soia? The Soia themselves? A Soia enemy or prescursor? Are they just the holograms of the mermaid people they are supposedly keeping safe (who must themselves be Soia-clones of an evolved mermaid race)?

>>97488175
>>97487367
bruh this isn't academic they killed his (very recent) pals too
this apologia desu senpai
also side note ive been following this shit since moo3 was a thing i dont need the historical lecture
>>97488750
this is a more fair complaint but its hard to construe getting one's head crushed as an abortive interrogation that would later be apologized for
also loroi are hot so of course its okay

File: outsider203.jpg (210 KB)

210 KB JPG

>>97494314
>apologized for
she did not seem apologetic fifteen minutes ago
it is easy to lose track since fifteen minutes ago was five years ago
but, five years ago was just fifteen minutes ago

File: outsider045.jpg (296.6 KB)

296.6 KB JPG

If you look closely, you can see an unfortunate cultural misunderstanding taking shape between Alex and the Loroi.
For some reason Alex is from a space navy where the marine major does not ordinarily physically beat their escortees to show them their place when walking to an appointment.
It is fairly easy for the reader to miss this, since we are used to humans being normal. But it is subtly made apparent.
This is a very important indicator of the decadence and softness of Earth navies at this point in the story.
War readiness took a nosedive when the earthspace navy banned sodomy. Civilization is crumbling.

I reread. I forgot about Alex getting those dreams from Fireblade and seeing a psychic layout of the whole Umiak ship. So is the likelihood that humans probably aren't psychic "blanks", they're just natural psychics and the Soia uplifted that biology into a functioning full race of psychics in the Loroi?

>>97494840
At least to me, I think humans and loroi are meant to be paired with one another on an individual level with regards to psychic abilities. Which is why we're seeing Fireblade as being such a bright, fiery point of reference whenever Alex is inadvertently blanketed with psychich powers. I think the intent is for specific, individual humans to be a form of biological "psychic conduits/amplifiers/dampeners" to specific, individual Loroi while being blank to others.

>>97494894
I can definitely see that from a narrative angle, but it doesn't make such sense from the perspective of humans being the template species the Soia made an uplifted template species from. Unless you want to argue humans were the Soia.

>>97494910
>but it doesn't make such sense from the perspective of humans being the template species the Soia made an uplifted template species from.
Anon, don't put your theories/words in my mouth. When did I ever say that they were a template species? I said that it's possible that Arioch intends for Alex's and Fireblade's interactions to be hints towards the idea that humans are a form biological conduit for the loroi's psychic abilities.
> Unless you want to argue humans were the Soia.
The Soia are clearly something else. Remember that the region of space that humans are from is "beyond the Empty Quarter" and that Talon said that no one goes there as well as Beryl even stating that the Empty Quarter is basically unexplored space with barely any knowledge about it. If the Soia had anything to do with humanity's design/evolution than there would have been some form of archeological evidence to support your theory. But as far as we know, there has been no evidence to support that within the in-universe explanations. If anything, I think humans naturally evolved and just so happen to be what they are.

>>97495065
>Anon, don't put your theories/words in my mouth. When did I ever say that they were a template species?
You didn't, but this is pretty obvious from the situation with the Barsam and Nibiren and how their biochemical differences mirror the biochemical differences between Loroi and humans. We straight up have an example of the Loroi modelling a created species with their own Soia-custom biochemical model (shared between the Barsam and Loroi) from an evolved species they encountered. That's why the Barsam guy finds Alex so remarkable: it proves the Loroi aren't unique, and aren't the Soia heirs they claim to be.

I also think humans evolved naturally. But the Soia definitely encountered them, because they built the Loroi on the human template.

>>97494500
That gesture can unironically mean "Watch yourself." It doesn't really make sense for Fireblade to tell Alex that she will watch him. The plan was for her to go off on her own. How was she going to keep an eye on Alex?
>>97494812
Loroi are a warrior culture and expect members of the warrior castes to be tough. I don't think Beryl and Shoegirl (PBUH) would have given Fireblade these looks if Alex wasn't a male. Would have been rude to shove a Loroi warrior like that, but probably nothing serious.

Fireblade has good reasons to demonstrate her telekinesis here. Alex needs to know that she can fuck him up, even if unarmed. She is also avoiding physical touch, which is in line with Loroi culture.She isn't a diplomat. Tempo might have caught Alex, if only to try out what she can sense of him in direct contact.

The Loroi look like attractive women, but their culture is really strange to us. Alex, not an experienced diplomat, is escalating things, too.

>>97495281
>That gesture can unironically mean "Watch yourself."
I am pretty sure that in fine military tradition she was signaling her intent to stimulate her own genitals while thinking about him, which gesture pointed to her eyes by sheer coincidence.
Alex reciprocated with the traditional gesture of genitular approval, which is why Fireblade grins at him before departing.
Beryl is acceptative because her caste were made to be cuckqueans. But I imagine Talon will be jealous.

>>97494840
I agree that in the Outsiderverse it seems like humans have some level of psychic ability that's a degree above other aliens who are only able to get messages if they are telepathically "shouted" at. The only thing I wonder about is how Alex was able to detect inanimate objects, because it isn't just that his mind was filling in the gaps in the way he visualized the psychic presence of the minds around him, ie. he had no way of knowing that the shuttle was carrying the bodies of the Bellarmine crew.

>>97497499
>he only thing I wonder about is how Alex was able to detect inanimate objects
I think that's because of Fireblade and my earlier theory about how he's a sort of "psychic conduit" for her. He's unknowingly absorbing Fireblade's "vision" of the ship and its layout. Hopefully this gets explored further in the story whenever they reach the planet they are heading towards

>>97497499
>>97497522
I believe it is very important that Alex only ever gets psionic signals when he is in a state of deep relaxation or close to unconsciousness and that Fireblade is both very strong and incontinent with poor control of the stream of psionics she sends out.