The good news is that what you said is unlikely. The Mist Gate Guardian said there really is an Eye to be retrieved in the Egg. It’s not a question without a right answer.
That said, it’s given that figuring it out is not easy. :-/
And yet, this may not be the “real” Egg of Koschei the undying. Thus ALL of it created, (and RUN,) by Veles as a testing ground.
If Veles is running the test he would have changed the legend of Koschei the undying so that the knowledgeable magic / psychic hero would be trapped by that knowledge.
As we have all seen every “test” has been a teaching moment, so Veles could find his most worthy opponent. May be he’d already found his opponent before the testing them and thought some lessons were needed.
No, Baba Yaga gave another clue – “The eye is just THAT, called by NO OTHER NAME” – so anything that has an eye in it, or looks like an eye, but could be called something else, is not “The Eye”, it’s just “an eye” – an eyeball, a lamp made of eyes, Peter Capaldi’s eye, etc.
Once you find something that is not possible to call anything other than “the eye”, you’ve found it.
Or “The I”. The whole journey to the center was set up to teach 84 about who she really is. She’s at the center. She just has to realize that she is “The I”.
Your interpretation is crazy enough that it just might be true.
Michael
it follows the classical ‘hero’s Journey’ model very well. Call to adventure>Refusal>Forced into it>Magical Assistance>Series of tests. She’s at the ‘earning the victory’ stage, soon to be followed by the ‘realization that the person who returns home will not be the same ‘you’ as who left.’.
SomeGuy
The only problem with that, as pointed out on the previous page or two, is that this puzzle has been around for a very VERY long time. It works in english, but what language was it originally conceived in?
DaveM
But THIS instance of the puzzle IS in english, right down to all the inhabitants (including Baba Yaga) not only speaking english, but reasonably modern english at that, so the puzzle relying on english usage does not seem beyond the pale.
It also fits the old (albeit overused) trope of “the power was in you all along”. She is the “I at the centre of the egg” and once she realises it the puzzle will be complete.
Farmer_10
Yeah, that’s what I’m guessing too. It’s called that and nothing else. The Letter “I” fits that criteria.
It’s also something that the creator of the egg did not call an eye.
The fog portal said, “It was clever to call it that, so you could get past the guardians of the first gate.” And if you go back to that panel (2014-12-10), the guardians say there is no “eye” on the list of things they’re supposed to protect.
But that is just the issue, is it not?
Everything that is has at least two names.
According to wikipedia “An eye is an organ of vision.” So it is called an eye. And an organ of vision.
Of course there have been some Films and Episodes called “The Eye”, maybe she is just looking for a DVD/VHS casette?
Nobody
“an organ of vision” is a description, not what it’s called. How often do you go around talking about your orbs of vision? Now how often do you mention your eyes? See the difference?
Hmm, “eye” and “heart” can both refer to the center of something. “Eye of the storm.” “Heart of the matter.” I wonder if it’s at the center of the room, or something the rooms is centered on.
anything and everything can be called something else, there is literally nothing which could have no other name, the answer then is literally nothing the correct answer is to take nothing, something that seems quite likely to occur if only by accident when time runs out.
that does seem like it would be in keeping with the style of the challenge thus far, a trap to outsmart those who over think the challenge because every answer is the wrong one.
I wonder if it will turn out to be a matter of 84 declaring ” – I – am the opponent you seek”. Gives the second speech bubble in the first panel a certain meta-humour if so.
This room being full of eyes makes the perplexity of the first guardians at being told the party was looking for an eye surprising… unless the room has magic to show illusions matching what is in the hero’s mind, but still, it’s a bit weak there.
They aren’t necessarily tasked with guarding everything in the area. For that matter, the eye itself might not be something they care about. It could be that it just happens to be in the same general area as the heart.
Unless the vast majority of that stuff is only there for confusion/misdirection value and isn’t actually on the list of stuff they (the first guardians) are supposed to guard. Maybe there’s only the real “eye” and a handful of treasures; everything else is expendable.
If the very theme of “inside the egg” last room is eyes, that means someone knows the heroes would be looking for an eye. If that someone built the room, he built the guardians… so why are the guardians perplexed by a quest for an eye since it is obviously (given the room) expected that the heroes would look for it? It is illogical as far as obstacle consistency goes… unless the room’s content only reflects all possible incarnations of what is in the hero’s mind… or if all this is not made by koshei at all but is simply a test by Veles (in which case, there are some other problems with the story)
Mike
It actually might be deliberate – related to “clues increasing the lasting power of magical wards” (as Conjurer stated way back when).
So – assume the target really is the needle’s eye. Allowing a clever response to get past the first guardians enhances the longevity of the magic, so “eye” is left as a “backdoor password” while the more-likely-to-be-stated “needle” will invoke the guardian’s wrath. Thus, those who get through are likely to be looking for an “eye”, hence the use of many distracting “eyes” in the final room.
Nope, that doesn’t fit the clues, not only because they were presented to us as text written “eye” (and not “I” at all), but also because Baba Yaga’s clue doesn’t fit either – she would never call herself “The eye”, but there are lots of names she does call herself, “me”, “myself”, “Julie”, and “84” all come to mind. The eye she’s looking for is not called anything but “the eye”.
That’s the same reason it can’t be “The Eye of Rassilon” as suggested by The Other Mike, since “of Rassilon” is part of that one’s name.
Some people have already pointed out that ‘the eye of the needle’ would be classically appropriate.
No other name for it is really good, it’s a ‘hollow’ or a ‘passage’ one supposes, but those are descriptions in general.
A big gem can be called ‘The Eye Of Carlsbad’ or whatever but it’s also ‘a ruby’.
And the big thing is that the guards out front, when she said she was looking for an eye, wouldn’t have cared because they are really guarding a needle. The eye comes along with it.
So… do we know for sure that it is “Eye” and not “I”? could it be a voyage of self-discovery, a test of identity? Baba’s clue seems ambiguous though, if that’s the case. But some of the other clues/tests seem to resonate with that theme, at least for me…
“Volume 9” covered about 11 months of posts, and was divided into 6 “Issues”, each of which can be reached through the pull-down menu in the link bar.
“Volume 10” has been going on for a year now with no subdivision.
Add to that the fact that each post is named for the date it was posted, and there isn’t a predictable number of days between posts, and … searching for exactly what Veles said about the eye is kinda difficult, because it isn’t particularly close to either the beginning or the present.
Volumes 1-9 were compendiums of the print runs. Hence, they have the individual issues as subdivisions. Aaron remarked somewhere or other that he wished he had gotten rid of that for the print/online compendiums, since the stories were more long arcs by the end.
To be clear, I was not asking for chapter breaks in the story, I was asking for some way to access the archives that does not involve paging through one post at a time.
A page that lists every post by the date it was posted would be excellent. It would probably be kind of hard to implement. But if there could be a few links to waypoints throughout the past year, it would be massively helpful.
I… don’t know how much effort this would entail, but getting a database to cough up the pages in a couple of search functions would be super-useful, and get more useful the longer the story goes. (It’s been a while since I looked through the archives so forgive me if I mention a function you’ve already worked out.)
Kevin and Kell, Selkie, and some others have gotten in the habit of adding tags so you can find all the pages that contain (or reference) a certain character, which is great if you’re looking for an infrequent character like, say, Suzy. And letting the fans submit the tags makes it easier on the webmaster, plus you end up with unusual tags for fan-named phenomena (we might end up creating a term for Tyler and Toby on the same page, or Zodon’s censored swearing, or times when Ambriel’s guardian protects her, or backstory explanations for certain characters whose details get stretched over time).
Erfworld lets you look up thumbnails. Being able to see at a glance how a dozen or so pages look can easily let you know if you’re in the right area, without having to let each page load one at a time (frustrating for the user, and it uses more resources than it needs to).
Put them together, and you could look up all the pages that include “The Eye” and see thumbnails to figure out which one you need to load to find the info you’re after. See? You could also figure out how frequently certain characters or objects show up in the comic, just by searching for them (or seeing a sidebar based on frequency).
Prairie Son
I nominate ‘twinfest’ for Tyler/Toby scenes. Just for the mindfrack.
A few commenters have been suggesting that she should be looking at the exact center of the room, but is this room actually the heart of the egg?
The reason this might be something to question is that if you flip back a few pages, where the Mist Guardian hints that she has to figure out what “the eye” actually is, and we see the words from (what will turn out to be) Baba Yaga, 84/Julie is flying to the door over a cobble or brickwork patio.
The cobbles or bricks are arranged in a concentric semi-circular pattern, and it sure looks like the center of the pattern is under the threshold of the door itself.
So maybe she was supposed to open the door, and immediately look down?
My post last page (drag the entire room back to Velis and make him sort it out) seems like a better idea all the time. Definitionally, SOMETHING would be included in EVERYTHING, even ten year olds (and possibly even gods) get that part of set theory.
Baba Yaga said the eye is THAT, called by no other name. So Julie needs to find something that makes anyone who sees it say “what is THAT?” and there is no name for it because it’s just too weird. Anything that is identifiable as an eye is therefore wrong….
I’m pondering the scene with Baba Yaga a bit more.
She seems to suddenly know quite a bit about Julie’s background, including specific knowledge about the stories she knows. Now, maybe it’s because she’s the goddamn Baba Yaga and can just do that, but I also wonder if the item being sought has a power, called “the eye”. That is to say, it confers magical insight. And Baba Yaga uses that power to understand Julie. But Baba Yaga can’t claim the item itself, because she is prevented from doing so by the egg.
That might also be why Baba Yaga leaves the scene, rather than stay and point out the exact item to Julie, so that she can leave the trap she’s been in. Julie could then gain magical insight into Baba Yaga, and Baba Yaga would rather not experience that.
And having that power for herself might make Julie a more worthy opponent for Veles than just her FISS powers alone.
If his original plan was to have “eye” be “I”, or have Julie take back the building, then I certainly hope he changes it. Because way too many people are guessing those.
No, I think he’s probably too competent and too confident to throw away a long-planned, well-set-up element that fits both the posted story and his future plans just because some readers (as he would know to expect regardless, and even more so with the extended presentation time of a webcomic, and yet even more with the added technical delays) accurately interpreted the foreshadowing.
101 thoughts on “2015-07-03”
Xel Unknown
84 has got this… Just once she calms down the answer will come to her.
pickle3719
Yeah, just pick up the entire house.
Gr3y3lf
Unless the life lesson is sometimes there is no right answer. Or to put it another way sometimes you just can’t win.
Personally, I think, (really really hope,) that it will be neither of these. But you just never know.
Messenger
The good news is that what you said is unlikely. The Mist Gate Guardian said there really is an Eye to be retrieved in the Egg. It’s not a question without a right answer.
That said, it’s given that figuring it out is not easy. :-/
Opus the Poet
I don’t think this is a Kobayashi Maru situation here. Everyone so far that would know has said this is a solvable puzzle.
Gr3y3lf
And yet, this may not be the “real” Egg of Koschei the undying. Thus ALL of it created, (and RUN,) by Veles as a testing ground.
If Veles is running the test he would have changed the legend of Koschei the undying so that the knowledgeable magic / psychic hero would be trapped by that knowledge.
As we have all seen every “test” has been a teaching moment, so Veles could find his most worthy opponent. May be he’d already found his opponent before the testing them and thought some lessons were needed.
Someguy
I’d be panicking too in her place.
Stephen R. Bierce
I’m wondering if we’ve already seen it. But “eye at the heart” is the only real clue.
HappyHead
No, Baba Yaga gave another clue – “The eye is just THAT, called by NO OTHER NAME” – so anything that has an eye in it, or looks like an eye, but could be called something else, is not “The Eye”, it’s just “an eye” – an eyeball, a lamp made of eyes, Peter Capaldi’s eye, etc.
Once you find something that is not possible to call anything other than “the eye”, you’ve found it.
Michael
Or “The I”. The whole journey to the center was set up to teach 84 about who she really is. She’s at the center. She just has to realize that she is “The I”.
Nate
Your interpretation is crazy enough that it just might be true.
Michael
it follows the classical ‘hero’s Journey’ model very well. Call to adventure>Refusal>Forced into it>Magical Assistance>Series of tests. She’s at the ‘earning the victory’ stage, soon to be followed by the ‘realization that the person who returns home will not be the same ‘you’ as who left.’.
SomeGuy
The only problem with that, as pointed out on the previous page or two, is that this puzzle has been around for a very VERY long time. It works in english, but what language was it originally conceived in?
DaveM
But THIS instance of the puzzle IS in english, right down to all the inhabitants (including Baba Yaga) not only speaking english, but reasonably modern english at that, so the puzzle relying on english usage does not seem beyond the pale.
It also fits the old (albeit overused) trope of “the power was in you all along”. She is the “I at the centre of the egg” and once she realises it the puzzle will be complete.
Farmer_10
Yeah, that’s what I’m guessing too. It’s called that and nothing else. The Letter “I” fits that criteria.
Bode
Got a hunch it will be something like “I am the hero you seek” or “I am the one”
Jareth
maybe it’s the center. Like “The Eye” of the storm?
Jareth
Or…. she just needs to center herself, then she becomes the eye in her own storm.
mltsandwich
It’s also something that the creator of the egg did not call an eye.
The fog portal said, “It was clever to call it that, so you could get past the guardians of the first gate.” And if you go back to that panel (2014-12-10), the guardians say there is no “eye” on the list of things they’re supposed to protect.
Christopher
But that is just the issue, is it not?
Everything that is has at least two names.
According to wikipedia “An eye is an organ of vision.” So it is called an eye. And an organ of vision.
Of course there have been some Films and Episodes called “The Eye”, maybe she is just looking for a DVD/VHS casette?
Nobody
“an organ of vision” is a description, not what it’s called. How often do you go around talking about your orbs of vision? Now how often do you mention your eyes? See the difference?
BT
Hmm, “eye” and “heart” can both refer to the center of something. “Eye of the storm.” “Heart of the matter.” I wonder if it’s at the center of the room, or something the rooms is centered on.
Stigger
Or another name, “I”, meaning her heart, herself?
DaveM
Love the fez on the lamp (nothing to do with eyes, but it’s there because fez’s are cool), which makes four who references in the last two pages.
DaveM
Gaa! Autocorrect math error! 2+1 = three, not four (though it may approach four for sufficiently large values of 1 and 2)!
The Other Mike
I’m calling it now. What with all the Who references, she’s looking for the Eye of Rassilon.
SF Kitfox
So she just hefts the whole house full of eyes back and says “its in here somewhere” ? lol
But possibly that Baba Yaga clue
Prairie Son
That would probably count as ‘getting clever’. If Baba Yaga can’t get away with it, I doubt Julie will.
Jackspades
anything and everything can be called something else, there is literally nothing which could have no other name, the answer then is literally nothing the correct answer is to take nothing, something that seems quite likely to occur if only by accident when time runs out.
that does seem like it would be in keeping with the style of the challenge thus far, a trap to outsmart those who over think the challenge because every answer is the wrong one.
Baobhan
I wonder if it will turn out to be a matter of 84 declaring ” – I – am the opponent you seek”. Gives the second speech bubble in the first panel a certain meta-humour if so.
EB0
This room being full of eyes makes the perplexity of the first guardians at being told the party was looking for an eye surprising… unless the room has magic to show illusions matching what is in the hero’s mind, but still, it’s a bit weak there.
Random4darkest4
They aren’t necessarily tasked with guarding everything in the area. For that matter, the eye itself might not be something they care about. It could be that it just happens to be in the same general area as the heart.
Mike
Unless the vast majority of that stuff is only there for confusion/misdirection value and isn’t actually on the list of stuff they (the first guardians) are supposed to guard. Maybe there’s only the real “eye” and a handful of treasures; everything else is expendable.
EB0
If the very theme of “inside the egg” last room is eyes, that means someone knows the heroes would be looking for an eye. If that someone built the room, he built the guardians… so why are the guardians perplexed by a quest for an eye since it is obviously (given the room) expected that the heroes would look for it? It is illogical as far as obstacle consistency goes… unless the room’s content only reflects all possible incarnations of what is in the hero’s mind… or if all this is not made by koshei at all but is simply a test by Veles (in which case, there are some other problems with the story)
Mike
It actually might be deliberate – related to “clues increasing the lasting power of magical wards” (as Conjurer stated way back when).
So – assume the target really is the needle’s eye. Allowing a clever response to get past the first guardians enhances the longevity of the magic, so “eye” is left as a “backdoor password” while the more-likely-to-be-stated “needle” will invoke the guardian’s wrath. Thus, those who get through are likely to be looking for an “eye”, hence the use of many distracting “eyes” in the final room.
Matthew
Perhaps the “I” is 84 herself
Owlmirror
I wonder if Mike Wazowski (or a toy version) is in there somewhere. . .
ThePuck1
She is overthinking it. The Eye at the Heart is probably her…. as in “It’s me! “I” am the Heart”
Georg Felis
Simple. The ‘Eye’ that she is looking for is… herself. It’s a voyage of self-discovery that can only end when she finds ‘I’
HappyHead
Nope, that doesn’t fit the clues, not only because they were presented to us as text written “eye” (and not “I” at all), but also because Baba Yaga’s clue doesn’t fit either – she would never call herself “The eye”, but there are lots of names she does call herself, “me”, “myself”, “Julie”, and “84” all come to mind. The eye she’s looking for is not called anything but “the eye”.
That’s the same reason it can’t be “The Eye of Rassilon” as suggested by The Other Mike, since “of Rassilon” is part of that one’s name.
luagha
Some people have already pointed out that ‘the eye of the needle’ would be classically appropriate.
No other name for it is really good, it’s a ‘hollow’ or a ‘passage’ one supposes, but those are descriptions in general.
A big gem can be called ‘The Eye Of Carlsbad’ or whatever but it’s also ‘a ruby’.
And the big thing is that the guards out front, when she said she was looking for an eye, wouldn’t have cared because they are really guarding a needle. The eye comes along with it.
With Respect
Well.. 84 hasn’t tried to call it yet.
Wonder if it would come to her if she called it by name?
If only she knew what name to call it. Oh. Well, it’s a thought. I’m sure 84’s will be better.
After all, she’s the Champion of Earth.
trlkly
It is only called “eye” and nothing else. So the name is “eye.”
alsolynch10
the answer is “I” maybe?
Kerin Schiesser
So… do we know for sure that it is “Eye” and not “I”? could it be a voyage of self-discovery, a test of identity? Baba’s clue seems ambiguous though, if that’s the case. But some of the other clues/tests seem to resonate with that theme, at least for me…
Aaron Gullison
Maybe it’s one of her own eyes?
Knug
Eye for one would be very disappointed if the answer does turn out to be “I” as in “I am Julie”. That’d be just plain poor storytelling.
SpyOne
Can I joggle the webmaster’s elbow?
“Volume 9” covered about 11 months of posts, and was divided into 6 “Issues”, each of which can be reached through the pull-down menu in the link bar.
“Volume 10” has been going on for a year now with no subdivision.
Add to that the fact that each post is named for the date it was posted, and there isn’t a predictable number of days between posts, and … searching for exactly what Veles said about the eye is kinda difficult, because it isn’t particularly close to either the beginning or the present.
Prairie Son
Volumes 1-9 were compendiums of the print runs. Hence, they have the individual issues as subdivisions. Aaron remarked somewhere or other that he wished he had gotten rid of that for the print/online compendiums, since the stories were more long arcs by the end.
Volume 10 is a stand-alone graphic novel.
Nathanael
Chapterization is a good thing. This is not really chapterized enough.
Look at other comics such as YAFGC for clean chapterization. there should have been a chapter break around the time they enter the egg.
Drew
WebGuy Drew here, I have no control over Aaron. And as Prairie Sun said, Aaron wanted to get rid of the issue chapters and just tell a story.
SpyOne
To be clear, I was not asking for chapter breaks in the story, I was asking for some way to access the archives that does not involve paging through one post at a time.
A page that lists every post by the date it was posted would be excellent. It would probably be kind of hard to implement. But if there could be a few links to waypoints throughout the past year, it would be massively helpful.
arnej
clink on the link below the comic marked “Issue: Chapter 1: 84 and the Ones Before” will take you to http://ps238.nodwick.com/issue/chapter-1-84-and-the-ones-before/ which seems to be what you want.
Freak
Web Guy Drew, any chance of fixing the problems with Nodwick?
1: Images are shown at the wrong size in pages. (Right-click on a comic image, choose “Open image in new tab”. The image in new tab will be larger.)
2: There are missing comics. For example, on http://comic.nodwick.com/?chapters=webcomic-saga&paged=18 there’s a several month long skip in the middle of one storyline to the middle of another.
Kilyle
I… don’t know how much effort this would entail, but getting a database to cough up the pages in a couple of search functions would be super-useful, and get more useful the longer the story goes. (It’s been a while since I looked through the archives so forgive me if I mention a function you’ve already worked out.)
Kevin and Kell, Selkie, and some others have gotten in the habit of adding tags so you can find all the pages that contain (or reference) a certain character, which is great if you’re looking for an infrequent character like, say, Suzy. And letting the fans submit the tags makes it easier on the webmaster, plus you end up with unusual tags for fan-named phenomena (we might end up creating a term for Tyler and Toby on the same page, or Zodon’s censored swearing, or times when Ambriel’s guardian protects her, or backstory explanations for certain characters whose details get stretched over time).
Erfworld lets you look up thumbnails. Being able to see at a glance how a dozen or so pages look can easily let you know if you’re in the right area, without having to let each page load one at a time (frustrating for the user, and it uses more resources than it needs to).
Put them together, and you could look up all the pages that include “The Eye” and see thumbnails to figure out which one you need to load to find the info you’re after. See? You could also figure out how frequently certain characters or objects show up in the comic, just by searching for them (or seeing a sidebar based on frequency).
Prairie Son
I nominate ‘twinfest’ for Tyler/Toby scenes. Just for the mindfrack.
Owlmirror
Something else (besides a needle) that has a feature called an eye, but is not itself an eye: a peacock feather.
Prairie Son
That’s…actually pretty good. Better than all the other suppositions over the last page. Still fails the ‘only called an eye’ test.
Owlmirror
One more possible red herring to ponder:
A few commenters have been suggesting that she should be looking at the exact center of the room, but is this room actually the heart of the egg?
The reason this might be something to question is that if you flip back a few pages, where the Mist Guardian hints that she has to figure out what “the eye” actually is, and we see the words from (what will turn out to be) Baba Yaga, 84/Julie is flying to the door over a cobble or brickwork patio.
The cobbles or bricks are arranged in a concentric semi-circular pattern, and it sure looks like the center of the pattern is under the threshold of the door itself.
So maybe she was supposed to open the door, and immediately look down?
=Tamar
Especially since she just emphasized the word “down” while looking downward?
Staredown
My post last page (drag the entire room back to Velis and make him sort it out) seems like a better idea all the time. Definitionally, SOMETHING would be included in EVERYTHING, even ten year olds (and possibly even gods) get that part of set theory.
=Tamar
Baba Yaga said the eye is THAT, called by no other name. So Julie needs to find something that makes anyone who sees it say “what is THAT?” and there is no name for it because it’s just too weird. Anything that is identifiable as an eye is therefore wrong….
Knug
I like the way you think
Owlmirror
I’m pondering the scene with Baba Yaga a bit more.
She seems to suddenly know quite a bit about Julie’s background, including specific knowledge about the stories she knows. Now, maybe it’s because she’s the goddamn Baba Yaga and can just do that, but I also wonder if the item being sought has a power, called “the eye”. That is to say, it confers magical insight. And Baba Yaga uses that power to understand Julie. But Baba Yaga can’t claim the item itself, because she is prevented from doing so by the egg.
That might also be why Baba Yaga leaves the scene, rather than stay and point out the exact item to Julie, so that she can leave the trap she’s been in. Julie could then gain magical insight into Baba Yaga, and Baba Yaga would rather not experience that.
And having that power for herself might make Julie a more worthy opponent for Veles than just her FISS powers alone.
Radecliffe
Personally I think she will realize the answer is “I”
Bode
do you suppose all this critique is slowing down production as Aaron has to change things just to keep it a surprise?
Owlmirror
If his original plan was to have “eye” be “I”, or have Julie take back the building, then I certainly hope he changes it. Because way too many people are guessing those.
Mike
Nah – every now and then he lets somebody get it right.
Opus the Poet
A million monkeys at a million keyboards…
Mike
… would probably still not produce a single intelligible sentence.
They might replicate the U.S. Tax Code, though.
PK
No, I think he’s probably too competent and too confident to throw away a long-planned, well-set-up element that fits both the posted story and his future plans just because some readers (as he would know to expect regardless, and even more so with the extended presentation time of a webcomic, and yet even more with the added technical delays) accurately interpreted the foreshadowing.
Dave III