Recall Riff was already in possession of the book when the comic started in 1997.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is where Riff's dad originally found the book of e-ville. They found the book, wiggled their fingers mysteriously, and removed the page that in question. With Tombsy results.

Wow you thinking they're going to make Vesuvius blow its top again to stop the gang? That's....extreme.

Or Vesuvius blowing its top the first time was a side effect of some fire temple binding magic going astray. Maybe binding some sort of fire themed demon. But having the volcano go off would be pretty cool and dramatic.

There's a detail in what Marco (from Road to Bjorkea) says: The Book of E-Ville is one of three books of immense power. If that's The Book of E-Ville and The Book of Gud, what might the third be? I know there was mention of 'Book of Bhad' and 'Book of Uhglee', but I always assumed that was a one-panel joke (plus that would be four).

Nice reference. I was just reading the pages with Marco. I wonder if all three books of immense power are on the same level, or if the three of them are just miles ahead of anything after them but with the Book of Eville still being top dog.

They also talk a lot about how there are only two pages missing once the captain botanical page is returned and that adding both back will bring them to the prophesied end of the world (at least as far as the Teutonic knights have been informed). It makes me wonder if Farrahn couldn't stop Gwynn from teleporting to a missing page but is tricking them by having changed the spell so they homed in on the other missing page; then if they add it in without realising they'll have to risk the prophecy to get the page they actually want.

And I wonder if Gwynn's question about what could possibly pull a page from the book will come up again in this chapter.

"tube" is an awfully suspicious word to use for a major "sinkhole"...

Could that word be referencing a 'lava tube'?

That is, could they be standing on the rim of a secondary caldera?

Oasis's 'mom' has a book. Don't remember the name, but if someone can find a ref.....that's my guess on the third

She WROTE a book. Chances are it's not an ANCIENT BOOK OF POWER.

But you never know.

That's still my guess. There's a lot of ancient people.

I don't know if Gwynn actually needs to add the page to use the spell of unbinding.

It seems like she published it when Dr. Steve was alive, just from my memory - although if she is ancient she could have originally written it a long time back. Still, The Book of E-Ville seems to be inherently magical/have things bound within it, while it seems more like she published several copies of an ordinary English book about magic.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that Sin'thea had an ancient book of immense power, so I'm mostly joining on to this spec.


Based on what we saw with Cappy-Bo, not necessarily - although the context in The Book of E-Ville around that spell was informative. Of course such a powerful spell may also require additional components other than the page itself.

Also, random Sin'thea refs:
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2016-12-02
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2017-04-07
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2016-11-21

Most recent strip indicates this spec is wrong, because they were already there before Farahn tried to stop her. The sequence of events is shown. HALT on Gwynn appears before Farahn says "she's trying to resist it." The old flame thing only came after that dialogue.....still possible the volcano will be used....

The spec probably is wrong but I think the current halt, to halt her crawling is a different one from https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?ch ... 2020-11-25 . I think this is a second time he's trying to stop her.

It's not dude. The sequence is the same. Compare the two comics side by side and you'll see it. This isn't supposed to be a mystery for us to spec about. This is Pete telling us how to order the chronology of events occuring in different places.

I missed this too at first, thinking he wrote HALT twice - I think it's slightly confusing as is (since Gwynn and Farahn are interacting I would not in general expect time to 'go back', even if it's in two different places). But comparing them directly it's clear that it's the same HALT followed by the same "she's trying to resist it!" from Farahn - also note that Gwynn hadn't faced any noticeable resistance after the teleport until this point.

In panel 6 here, the bug uses Gwynn's current location to show Farahn that she is not acting in his interests, so he must not have realized what she was doing until after the teleport. This is pretty conclusive for me regarding whether he influenced the result of the teleport, and also further reinforces the timeline.

The upshot of all this is we have not seen the effect of Farahn's "old flame" yet.