He may be the soul and messenger of the gods...

[Guildenstern]

But he's still an armless freak. Wacky.

[Mirober]

One of his Masks, certainly. The other one, The Rag Man, can first be seen
here.

[Quantum Alchemist]

Uh oh.

So.. the apparently harmless 'Nameless Horror' that's been hanging around all this time has actually been Nyarlathotep?

And it knows Jack's name.

This could be bad.

[Guildenstern]

And it mentioned Sirrus. Double plus bad.

[Quantum Alchemist]

I'm still trying to figure out exactly who it was that got 'melded' with Sirrus..

[Guildenstern]

It was the corpse from back on the beach, wasn't it? You know, the one that was sacrificed after it had already died, was left out for a few weeks, was animated by an evil tome, drank the bottle of Sirrus brand beer(destroys livers twice as fast at the next leading brand! because we hate you), got picked up by the... Army of Man? Got reworked into an overpowered cyborg assassin thing that tried to kill Mara, failed, and presumably became the team leader of Squad Dooby Doo when reality reset, possibly after the incident at the Nexus Burger with the mud mage that Thera burst in on.

[Mirober]

I've really got to get this written up as a FAQ or with the character bios. Here, then, is the most convuluted character history in Strange Daze:

(rough version)

1965 - A Cult leader from out of the Florida Keys is betrayed by his disciples. His top student, Frank Avalos, steals one of his most powerful Tomes and begins to set up his own cult with his inner circle of friends (which includes a nebbish named Kevin Graves). The Cult leader summons Sirrus to retrieve the tome and kill his former student. Sirrus attempts to do so, but the body he is possessing is destroyed when the Avalos Cult sets up a trap for him. They take possession of the Soul Chains, and Sirrus cools his heels in Hell for about half a centur.

1999

October 3rd 11pm - Avalos decides its time to bring back the Soul-Chainer, this time for his own use. Kevin Graves is sent out to get a freshly killed corpse to use as the vessel for Sirrus. However, the individual he returns with (whose name was Jack Landers), has not only been dead for almost a week, but has been embalmed and prepared for burial, thus rendering it useless in the ritual. This error, compounded by Avalos' unfamiliarity with the specifics of the binding ritual, causes the chains to seek out the nearest appropriate target.

October 3rd, 11:30pm - Chains bind to Jack Kluggman, who is, in reality, a bio-magical construct whose True Name is Jack Landers. His innate magical warding (along with the mistakes made in the ritual) shields him from possession by Sirrus, who is instead displaced into a beer bottle. The corpse is left on their private beach, for later use.

October 14th - The Avalos Cult finds itself unable to make contact with their traditional Hell-Bound Masters, due to their foul up. Graves is again sent out to find some alternate means of eliciting help from the forces of darkness. While trying to accomplish this, he is slipped a copy of De Vermiis Mysteriis by the Rag Man. Avalos begins using this to make contact with the minions of Azathoth, and begins his quick descent into madness. Graves is ordered to get rid of the original book of Satanic rituals taken from Avalos' old master. Graves puts it with the corpse.

October 28th - Graves, fearing what Avalos has become, deserts the Cult. He is captured by Gladius Dei operatives who were dispatched to the area as requested by Thera, acting on information gathered from Sirrus.

(UGH ... more later, I have to go take a Bio test ... )

[Quantum Alchemist]

No, no.. I meant, whoever was whining 'They made me do it, Sirrus' after the whole war-mecha-vs-akira-blob-thing.

[Mirober]

Well, that test rather sucked. Anyway, heres the quick rundown of The Body That Wouldn't Die!

1. Some guy named Jack Landers dies. His corpse is stolen by Kevin Graves

2. Body is animated by satanic tome.

3. Sirrus infests the body; finds it somewhat lacking in the Unholy Strength of the Undead department.

4. Kevin Graves betrays Sirrus to the Army of Man (also known as the True World Order)

5. Sirrus is removed from the body, and placed in a new robotic shell. The original body is augmented with cybernetics, and Graves has his soul transferred into it by the Hermetech Order.

6. Sirrus gets tossed into the Dreamlands/Planar Void after his fight with Kali. Eventually, he ends up in the Court of Azathoth.

7. Graves is made an operative within the TWO. A defective Flesh Golem named Catharine is assigned to him.

8. Eventually, Graves is given control of a Strike Team that acts as a clearing house for incompetent operatives. Their most recent assignment was tracking down a paranormal entity that calls itself The Unknown Evil (intelligence suggests it is a minor power at best).

9. After a brief battle, Sirrus is brought back into this dimension, then banished from it again. However, he was able to secrete a small portion of himself into the original Jack Landers body currently being occupied by Graves. Both now exist within the same body.

And now I have to go to Programming Languages.

[Quantum Alchemist]

Ah-ha! Many thanks.

For some reason, I kept thinking it looked like the sorcerer guy.

[Guildenstern]

Well, I was close. Didn't know about the Sirrus-seperation and Graves insertion, curses.

God, I love this comic.