Black Temple: Deserters

God DAMN it's been a long time. Is anyone even still here? HELLO?

Ah good, I thought you'd all have wandered off by now. Might have laid it on a bit strong with the dissuasion technique from Old Fishtank back there, I only wanted you out of my room not gone altogether!
Can... can any of you remember what was going on? Like, I know technically I'm not supposed to know most of this yet (am I allowed to say yet? Is that a spoiler?) but let's just dispense with the formalities for a moment because I don't want to start reading out the wrong lines here thinking we're in act five when really we're only in act four. Damn, that would be embarassing.

Wait what?
We're only as far as act TWO? What kind of sluggish pace is this?!
Ok hang on, just let me get my crib notes here and we can both get caught up.

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Righty then. Starting out, character standing in a room (god how cliched) and his alarm clock is broken. Apparently he's a fireman called Robert (wait, did he always look like that?), got some kind of robot eye and some weird BDSM manacles or something on too, don't ask me why.

After dicking around in his house for an interminable length of time and thoroughly confusing everyone as to the genre of the following webcomic he establishes that his alarm clock will continue ringing regardless of the fact that it is not receiving power from anywhere and finally resorts to pestering his friend over the internet to fix his clock for him. Oh and in the lamest twist ever it turns out he's also made of sand, a fact that is subsequently utilised for almost nothing at all. Maybe it'll come up later? This script would be much different if I'd been writing it let me tell you.


We get a brief glimpse of his friend who is some kind of midget robot with spider legs and then Robert throws all of his belongings onto the floor and sticks his head out of the window for some reason, thus discovering that actually basically everyone's alarm clocks are going off constantly at the same time. It's as if someone wants to attract their attention! Perhaps someone far more deserving of their attention than anyone else we have seen in the comic so far???
Then perspective changes back to his friend again, who is revealed to be called “Metal Coat”, which frankly isn't even a real name.

He gets frustrated because he fancies himself as some kind of mechanical genius but can't even fix a broken clock and just starts shooting things, which at least does make them stop ringing. Then he puts them back together using the handwaved technology of nanomachines and they start ringing again. Don't worry little guy, you tried. Have a gold star.

After utterly failing at doing anything for several more minutes the clocks just stop on their own and he just sort of pretends it was his doing. Confident in a job well done, he heads out to his shop but notices that all of his customers have vanished. Following them outside he looks up to the sky and sees...!?
Well who knows, the perspective changes back to Robert in an utterly pointless cliffhanger.


Robert's exciting exploits involve riding a lift and then looking at a broken TV for a while. He leaves the building and meets some other worried citizens. That isn't particularly important though, what IS important is that we finally get a glimpse of an actual interesting character!
This stunningly beautiful individual is visible on many floating holographic screens that have suddenly and mysteriously appeared in the city, giving an eloquent speech about how she was regretfully responsible for waking everyone up early but thought it was necessary to do so in order to deliver the good news; as a representative of the “Black Temple” Foreign and Xeno Relationships Task Force I am authorised to inform them that their planet is now officially part of the Great Prophet Ragnar's Holy Empire of Sacred Humanity and the fact that they had previously never heard of this organisation or the fact that they may just need to round up everyone who isn't a pureblooded human and then kill them is really just a small thing and honestly nothing to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

Can you guess who that is yet?

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Now that we've thrown off any pretence of being some kind of investigative drama about people's clocks, things start to move a teensy bit faster! My speech over, I decide there's no point waiting around and release the troops. The public are caught in a state of honestly embarrassing overreaction and begin to panic as railgun-launched drop pods smash into the pavement and their houses and my giant octahedral flying fortress materialises overhead, teleporting a few useless and frankly fairly ugly buildings into the surrounding desert to make room for it to land.


We return to looking at Metal Coat who is angry that one of the pods has broken his expensive roof, and also angry that Robert isn't returning any of his instant messages. This is what we call dramatic irony because when we last left Robert he was about to be crushed by a plummeting metal cylinder (Did I not mention that?).
He attempts to deconstruct one of the things with his nanomachines but it's apparently made of some kind of alloy he has no effect on. How convenient! Then it explodes and some freaky one-eyed bandage guy comes out. This does not surprise you because I already told you that they were my drop pods but at the time it was meant to be a sudden and unexpected development!

It is it at this point that I, in a display of my limitless mercy, compassion and modesty, decide to take pity on the poor malformed inhabitants of the city that made the mistake of not being born human and decree that they will simply be rounded up and placed under a dampening field preventing them from having any kids, rather than being shot. Unless they try and run away of course, in which case they were basically asking for someone to shoot them.
For some reason this doesn't suit the little metal guy very well and he decides to engage my poor soldier, still dazed from re-entry, in mortal combat.

It moves fast but apparently not faster than lasers, and is decapitated almost instantly. What a bully!
Fortunately, while Coat is distracted by the other brave warriors that have infiltrated his store and started requisitioning vital weapons hardware for the war effort, its severed head grows a couple of extra limbs and springs to the attack!
...unfortunately it turns out that if you can't beat someone in a fight when you have your whole body then it's a lot harder when you're just a head and it is re-killed, serving only as an expositionary warning that downed enemy soldiers are liable to regenerate themselves into an entirely new threat.


Following this Coat wanders around his house for a bit and beats up a few more of my friends (who are only trying to help him to a facility where he will be fed and looked after for the rest of his life, for free I add!) but it wasn't really all that eventful so we'll skip over that bit and get back to Robert again. He's apparently still frozen in time in the act of “standing directly underneath a large, fast-moving object” but under mysterious circumstances it conveniently moves itself out of the way and crushes an innocent nearby bystander instead. He appears to be entirely unaware of this fact and walks off after allowing a dwarf to steal the poor victim's wallet.
He soon meets up with some of my little pets too, as one of them samples some of the local cuisine.

After rescuing the prospective meal and meets an incredibly polite Black Temple Enforcer, the first of his kind who demonstrates the ability to speak. What he does not demonstrate are limbs or a face, but we all have to make sacrifices sometimes, do we not?
The kindly telepathic individual reassures him that my offer of safety for non-humans was entirely genuine and besides, as Robert is a human he has absolutely nothing to fear anyway.
The dim-witted man apparently listens to none of this and leaps down a manhole as the guy he just rescues is gunned down for fleeing in the opposite direction. After briefly wandering through the sewer he emerges in the middle of a much larger platoon of soldiers and captured in a forcefield.


Metal Coat is worried that someone has broken into his secret underground lab that he illegally built in an abandoned subway system, and vindicated in his worries when the huge door is lying conspicuously open.
After using his time wisely to scrutinise some posters and decry Big Pharma, he discovers that my men have planted some kind of chemical bomb down here, with the intent of using it to flood the sewers and the intricate network of other underground tunnels running under the city with deadly neurotoxins. Sensible really, only criminals live underground right?
Unfortunately he reseals all of the tunnels and leaves through the garage, flooding only his own basement with deadly neurotoxins (which also inconveniently kills anyone who was still trying to loot his shop (inconvenient for me rather than him)).


Leaving through the garage, he picks up his armoured car and drives to Robert's rescue, conveniently flattening his jailor under the armoured treads. After smashing through several roadblocks they escape from the city (minutes before it is enclosed within a powerful forcefield) and into the surrounding desert.


We now reach the indisputably best part of the webcomic to date, the part in which (briefly) you control me! I take a brief look around my throne room (it's largely uninteresting compared to its chief occupant), drop a whole ton of exposition and introduce you to my favourite pet, Precious, who is as adorable as his name implies.


We also met my right hand man and master assassin, Carrion! I borrowed his hat for a while and then sent him on his final mission. Alas, as my superiors disliked his occasionally cavalier attitude towards scripture and his tendency to sometimes forget to be totally polite at all times, which I always though sort of amusing, they ordered me to make sure it was one from which he would never return.
Damn I wish you hadn't reminded me about that, I need to go and find another one now.

And then after that I got tired of listening to your annoying voices and kicked you out to go look at the boring people again.


When we last left them they were hanging around in a desert, visiting a mining station to deliver the wonderful news of humanity's salvation (and beg some extra supplies) before heading off like the cowards they are to hide from me in some convenient ruins.
Obviously I don't actually know that they are there yet but I'm sure I'll find a way.

And in this case I mean I'm literally sure because I'm holding the script right here, I've read the whole thing. Is that a spoiler too? It's probably not one you couldn't have guessed on your own let's be frank here.

So I guess that regretfully it's time for you to leave me and join the peasants again. I'm a busy girl, I can't spend all my time entertaining you.
People to kill and all that.
Try not to get too bored while you're waiting for me to pop up again!