Basphomy and Bun Bun, verbally sparring again! You love to see it, but will it lead to anything? When the previous Holiday War happened, we were living in a simpler, more naïve time. Holiday avatars were just that and nothing more, Bun Bun was just a former-now-not-former Easter Bunny turned rogue with a chip on his shoulder and a mysterious vendetta against the fat man, and the Deus Egg that screwed him was just a thing Zeus made to keep the status quo in check. It was all effectively unrelated to the main story, just a fun epic side quest.

Now we know Bun Bun comes from the previous Spark along with Krig, who he's got some kinda blood feud with (possibly involving assassination/matricide) - both of whom were gods at the start of humanity, but evolved to survive in a post-god world. The Holidays aren't merely avatars of their day, but of the gods themselves, either directly or indirectly. Bun Bun beat the crap out of his past self, inadvertently giving himself the amnesia he's spent the majority of the comic with, but all that old history is starting to come back. And the Egg? Well, "Zeus" might be responsible in the legends but we know Dunuloa is the actual author of egg-based magic. Not that it matters much now, since the Deus Eggs all gone.

And Bun Bun these days has been surprisingly low key about antagonizing the guy in red. Here's the last time Santa mentions him. As far as I can tell, this comic is the only post-Oceans instance of Bun Bun giving Santa a hard time, way back in 2015. And as you can see, he's being a lot more subtle than his old Halcion days of machine gun and bazooka fights. So subtle in fact, we learn 4 years later that, with a bit of help from the now-independent Black Ops Elves, Santa still doesn't know Bun Bun is back. That's quite interesting. Not informing Santa, that's the easy part. What surprises me in hindsight is that Bun Bun has allowed himself to remain undiscovered as well. He's not much for avoiding conflict, and he's also not one to rest on his laurels (actually that's literally not true), however it would be crazy to learn he's not planning something big. Encouraging Bas to come find him if she ever gets back control of Halloween certainly points that direction. Sure, he likes fighting, but it's rarely enough to fight just for the sake of it. Could we be seeing the start of the board being set for a second Holiday War? Bun Bun's got plenty of cause: the Shadow betrayed him. Santa threw him into Timeless Space. etc. All he's missing (it appears) is an incitement to action.

Except things are different now. Holidays - as gods - are intrinsically tied to the gang, through lineage, magic, and other. Torg has deep connections among the Elves. Gwynn just got divinely inspired in a really inconvenient way. There's little chance they'd be sitting out a second war. And there's little chance that war won't be linked to the Bug situation. There's no denying it anymore: the gods storylines, the holiday storylines, and the demon storylines are in essence the same storyline from different perspectives. It's hard to imagine a world where escalating any of these threads doesn't escalate the rest. Which is notable given that the demons are very soon about to escalate one of those threads quite a bit.

So will there be a new Holiday War? Maybe. But it can no longer be understood as a Holiday War. It instead must be what it always secretly was: a war of the gods, waiting to happen.

I don't think it's just a second holly day war coming, because it' not just the holly days but every big and small actors who might get involved, where the holly days avatars are just one of the many factions.

More of an universal war.

World War Sluggy even.

Sorry, just had to do it. Your thoughts are great though, you point to how Pete is pulling all the threads together to what could possibly end all the storylines at once.

Speaking of connections, remember also that a vampire war is currently ongoing, with the Strakoistrat being connected somehow to Y's shenanigans. Also, it seems like Hereti Corp, Oasis, Kusari and all that mess is tied up, but in fact there are a lot of loose ends there with possible connections to the gods storyline through Sinthea Le Mort and her time web magic.

It would actually be easier to go back and track which open storylines have not been connected to the upcoming war for the 7th spark.

The only one I can think of is the Dimension of Pain, which ended with a change of status quo but could very easily just be left alone. Oceans Unmoving is also intimately connected with all the cosmology, so even though that storyline was effectively wrapped up, I can't see how it would not play into the story's finale.

I have a question on the Holiday Wars. Santa and Ms. Santa say that the tossing Bun-bun out of time that we saw was the second time this happened. If I'm not wrong we haven't seen the first, right? I imagine it would be connected to the end of the Spark from which Bun Bun and the Krig originate.

I don't think the Spark started with Mokhadun ever ended, it just barely survived. Humanity has been going on ever since and it seems it's within that very spark that Bun-bun was tossed out for the first time, with the help of the second Deus Egg, from what I get from this comic:
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2003-12-14

Interesting catch. Pete probably hadn't linked Bas to Dunuloa at the time - she says there that she originates near the start of the Second Egg "era" so to speak, despite appearing to whatsisface during the exodus from Mohkadun centuries before ancient Greece.

That said, Mrs. Claus says the first one was used - well - right around that exodus. Now I wonder how long after the 2nd Egg it was when Bas appeared to Allie Bookbinder in Etruria. Maybe the Egg causes the Holiday avatars to forget themselves, and the only reason that didn't happen to Bas this time is because she'd been imprisoned in the Obsidian Cage..? God, how hilarious would it be if the pumpkin king doesn't even realize she exists. A total steamroll that she's wildly overpreparing for lol

But yes Ong, we have not explicitly seen Bun Bun's first exile to Timeless Space. We also haven't seen the creation of the Eggs or their first use. tbh, after this chapter, I kiiinda want to see a timeline speedrun for like every immortal character in the story :D

She went by many names (started as Bast) and I assume this is the point when she became Basphomy and I suspect her destitution was due the very grim way she handled the creation of Mr. Sticks, which caused Dunuloa to decide to remove her Halloween Queen status and put the Booh! Ooga Booga! Great Pumpkinheaded King in her stead to establish a more SFW kind of Halloween.

Soon after, the second egg was used by Mr. Claus, which was therefore when Basphomy's time was just beginning.

Uuuh... I think you got that wrong. The first egg was used just after then end of the reign of Zeus and his pantheon, which is way, way after the fall of Mohkadun. The Deus eggs didn't even exist before the Greek Gods.

From what little we have available, I don't think a Deus Egg reset cause memory loss






So, if we have to establish a chronology
-End of Mohkadun
-Lots of Time pass
-Greek gods are established
-Zeus create the 3 Deus eggs.
-Greek/Roman gods fall and go away, but the traditions of holidays persist.
-First egg is used soon after.
-Some time pass
-Bast/Lemuri become Basphomy
-Second Egg is used soon after, very likely at the conclusion of a feud between Bun-Bun and Claus
-Some more time pass
-Bun-bun's Holidays war happens
-Third egg is used at the conclusion of it.

Did I get everything right?

But the "Greek gods" are just the Mohkadun gods by another name (like how the Krig is worshipped as Tinia in Etruria), so by "fall" I took that to mean the Mohkadun gods' actual fall during the chapter of the same name, rather than some later event. At best, it could imply that the eggs weren't created until the time of Ancient Greece, but even then it could easily be as early as the very beginning of that time period, since the only requirement is that the gods have Greek pantheon identities. But keep in mind we're getting this story thousands of years later by someone who wasn't there - Mrs. Claus wasn't alive during the time of Mohkadun. The Krig met and fell in love with her, and made her immortal, some time later. So she only knows about the eggs' creation second-hand.

I don't think so, she named Zeus by name and there was no holidays crisis by the time Mohkadun fell. And the Mohkadun god were either kept out of earth or exiled and stripped down of their title. They really didn't have the divine power to create something as powerful as the deus eggs. For me, it is my understanding that the Greek/Roman gods (and probably other gods before and in parallel of them) emerged after the Mohkadun gods let a vacuum. But unlike the Mohkadun gods, they need mankind's belief to keep existing.

Also, the holidays taking a more prominent role after the end of the Roman god cult kinda make sense, as they basically replaced polytheism.

I kind of think Basphomy has played her role here and any new holiday war or following her actions further will likely appear as a bonus story in a book.

Keep in mind I'm not necessarily speculating about things that will happen next per se. I don't think Basphomy's story is that high a priority. More to the point, Basphomy is just a bit player here and the real next Holiday War will be far beyond her ability to fight. To me this is more of just set up for events that will happen down the road. However, these events are WAY too important to be a bonus story. My main argument in fact is that this is currently the core plot of the comic. Like GUIGUI said above, it won't just be a "Holiday" War, it'll be a Universal War.


GUIGUI: The problem with assuming the Greek gods - or any gods beside the Mohkadun gods - exist is that in lore, we've only seen evidence that gods can be created during the destruction of a spark. And present-Sluggy is existing in the same exact Spark that Mohkadun existed in. So barring some reveal that it's possible for gods to be created arbitrarily, or that Khronus is sneakin around randomly ascending people he likes every few centuries, I think it's safe to assume that every single pantheon of gods worshipped everywhere, throughout all of human history, has just been a telephone game of stories about the gods of Mohkadun - the only gods to ever walk this Spark.

It's a nice theory, but there is nothing in the comics really stating that. It seems to me the gods already existed before the destruction of the spark, they just united to defeat Kozoaku after getting saved from destruction by Prozoato:
Krohnus himself, if Siphy is to be believed, ascended to godhood through unmatched his knowledge and understanding of time


Also, the greek/romans gods seem to work more along the rule of Holiday avatars rather than the mokhadun God rules, so, if the easter Bunny and the pumpkinheaded king can exist, so can greek/roman god. Let's not forget the Halloween monsters confirm the existence of Zeus as the cretor of the Deus eggs ovum.

I wonder if godhood might use the "right of caste" rule, i.e. if you kill a god you become that god...

[edit] deleted some stuff, found a reference:
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2021-04-09

As far as I can see, there's only been two occasions where Prozoato has ascended people to godhood: when he ascended Krohnus, and when Krohnus convinced him to ascend some people from the 6th Spark as noted in above link, which represents only the gods of Mohkadun.

Of those people: The Krig is clearly still around, as he's Santa. Rana is still around, she's literally the Sun. Dunuloa is still around, she's kickin it on the Moon with - as far as we know - all her powers either intact or given to Bas. Bun Bun is still around, obviously, and he's still untouchable as far as has been demonstrated. Uncle Time is the only one who was exiled but he's still around and still has power, and Symachus was the only one who lost his power but he's still around via his bloodline through Riff. Why do we need to bring in any other gods, when their exploits in Mohkadun and the stories taken from there into Egypt and over the Mediterranean is more than enough to explain every other pantheonic religion? They can all be so easily mapped onto so many mythologies, that complicating things with more people we've never met just feels redundant. (and it'll never be acknowledged in the comic, but Kron also maps to Jesus: son of a god, killed by mankind. It practically writes itself)

And more importantly: if the Krig is literally Santa - which he must be for Bun Bun to have beef with him - then he must also have been Zeus. Why would someone take his role only temporarily, prior to the creation of the Deus Ex Ovums?? What's the thinking here? That Krig takes the role of watching humanity... something something he steps down for Zeus to take his place... Zeus creates Status Quo magic to maintain holiday balance ...The Krig comes back and takes charge as the most powerful holiday in place of Zeus? Why THAT, when the much easier explanation is just that while watching over humanity, something happens that inspires Krig to get Dunuloa's help making some Egg Spells to keep Khronus's mandate in place, and it's as simple as that? It's just so much more likely that the Halloween monsters and Mrs. Claus are wrong due to telephone logic, than that there were all these other gods we've never met who somehow got replaced or killed off...

I mostly base myself on what the Halloween demons say, as they explicitly talk about Zeus having an active role and talking about Santa as a distinctive being. That they mention that the Greek/Romans God went away while Santa remained, to me,indicate they are distinctive beings.

And me, I think it's second-hand interpretation. However, I'm pretty confident - regardless of which of us is right - that the real answer to this question will be revealed to us. Maybe even in the next chapter.

Who the gods might be? Uncertain. That they will be with us very soon? Quite certain. The time of the gods is nigh once again...