Awesome / Pact

Warning, unmarked spoilers below.

Damages

• Blake defeating Letita in Damages 2.4 via figuring out her glamour trick and beating her down with a rusty pipe.

Breach

• Given that he was in the heart of Briar Girl's territory, it took major balls for Blake to negotiate with her successfully. To elaborate, when she wonders what's stopping her from killing him and his family until their lineage dies, he points out:
  • Kathy, the next in line, would sell it to the Lawyers to go back to a normal life or hoard it vindictively because she was stuck with it and wouldn't strike a deal.
  • Ellie, who comes after if they kill Kathy, has no impulse control and would set loose a demon for any damn reason she could think of.
  • Roxanne, who follows next, is a spoiled 12 year old and wouldn't make deals with anyone.
  • Ivy, his two-year old sister, is a 17 year wait at least.
  • Paige, the last of the line, would be the most reasonable but she would be smart enough to see the long line of deaths and pissed that Briar Girl killed him, so she wouldn't deal either.
  • Then, if by some chance they killed all his family off, the Lawyers get it and that means a devil gets the entire area. He's literally the best bet she has to get anything back.

Collateral

• Blake and Rose's interactions with Pauz the Imp-from Rose successfully bluffing him into not killing them and baiting him with the lure of corrupting Conquest, to Blake finishing the negotiation alone and then fighting his way out.
• Evan Matthieu's backstory. Repeatedly escaping the Hyena's clutches, only dying due to the mundane enemy of hypothermia. And then doing it over, again and again, after he came back as a ghost.
  • It's a bit more than that. This 8 year old managed to not only avoid the Hyena, he avoided the Others lurking in the woods, finds a means of protection, and figures out a way home. If he hadn't run out of strength, there was a very good chance he would have made it. He's also responsible for Blake's success.
• Blake outmaneuvering the Hyena in Collateral 4.12, trapping it with a simple trick and a length of chain, and then threatening to leave it, helpless, and let its victims take their cuts, forcing it to submit and be bound.

Conviction

• Blake in Conviction 5.2 managing to actually get one up on Duncan Behaim while being interrogated, only being prevented from walking away a free man because Duncan had a "Groundhog Day" Loop in place as a contingency measure.
• Evan in Conviction 5.3 using Duncan's Escher Staircase rune against him to get behind him and startle him into falling down the stairs, and Rose then breaking a window on top of him.
• Conviction 5.4: Evan, Rose, and Blake collaborating to pull off a win while Duncan has them cornered; Rose using June (that Duncan took from the evidence room) to force him away from his fellow officers, leaving him open to Evan exposing the theft in bird-form, and subsequently the reveal that Evan preemptively foiled Duncan's attempt to rewind time to prevent consequences by stealing his power source-leaving him in the position of having opened fire on Blake in a room full of police officers.

Subordination

• Blake's friends's Awakenings Subordination 6.2, in which they each state their objectives in becoming practitioners before jumping headfirst into the unknown to help Blake fight Conquest.
• Evan in Subordination 6.3 calling out the Shepherd and the Sisters of the Torch for being mad at Blake and treating him as a threat when they did nothing to fight either the Hyena or the Abstract Demon, while Blake did.
• In Subordination 6.12, when the Behaims have trapped Blake with their time magic, Maggie sends a pair of gremlins after them, which proceed to start chaos to the extent that the Behaims are nearly killed repeatedly until Laird arrives. Then Evan shows up with the Hyena, now bound to obey him, which he uses to let one of the gremlins at Laird. The gremlin then proceeds to incapacitate Laird using electrified urine.

Void

• The reveal in Void 7.4 that Rose and Maggie had been fighting against the various Others stirred up by Conquest with little more than smarts and summons singlehandedly for the past three days. Rose also gets points for managing to interfere with the synergy between the Astrologer and the Sisters by having Corvidae convince their main spirit to set up shop in the former's equipment, the Astrologer having too much sentimental feelings towards said equipment to give it up. (Not to mention that it's the source of most of her power.)
• In Void 7.5, Maggie pulls out Fell's gun on Duncan Behaim when he prepares to attack Blake.
• When held in place by Laird and cruelly confronted with a pair of ghosts, echoes of his worst memories, by Conquest in Void 7.6, Blake manages to escape his visions early with Evan's help, before taking advantage of the freedom to ram a splinter into Laird's neck.
• In Void 7.7, Blake and Rose manipulate Conquest's need to completely crush his enemies when he has them cornered by convincing him that he needs to best Rose in order to force Blake's surrender, and then use this to trick him into a battle in Rose's mirror world, letting them trap him in a mirror inside of a binding circle that they had laid out in three parts during the fight.

Signature

• In Signature 8.1 Maggie calling out her practitioner peers for the way they see Blake as a monster due to his family and stating that she thinks that Blake is a far more genuine person than any of them.
• Sandra Duchamp in Signature 8.3 saving the girl in the checkered scarf from the mob of goblins attempting to beat her to death.
• In Signature 8.5 the girl in the checkered scarf besting Buttsack by shooting him with a blasting stick she got from Andy and Eva.
• In Signature 8.6 the girl in the checkered scarf manages to bind Buttsack for a year, and then forces him to give up on curse words or anything else that could be considered rude.
• In Signature 8.7 Mags alters and uses the demesnes ritual to claim a name, her connections, and a new role as the town ambassador. While sitting amidst the remains of six goblins that she blew up with a pipe bomb.
  Mags: If anyone would deny me this, I bid them to come, and to go fuck themselves.

Null

• In Null 9.5:
  • Rose calling out her parents on their terrible parenting.
  • Blake calling upon a long forgotten god of light in the Drains in order to help him fight Ur, and then climbing his way back to the real world, using the Hyena's spikes to hold his maimed hand together.
• In Null 9.6, Blake defeating Ur by taking advantage of its other weakness apart from light and fire, creation, drawing "The story of Blake and Rose" in crude pictures on the floor as a binding, and then breaking his way out of the factory by using the Hyena to reflect light against Ur, boasting all the while about how he's won.
  Blake: I am the Thorburn bogeyman! I am made of stick and bone and birds and spirit and false memories! I beat you! In this I’ve beat you! You can swallow me up, but those scratches will stay! People can learn how to stop you! It’ll be easier! Tear down the roof to hide it and you’ll let the sun in! Tear out the floor and people won’t come inside! I’ve won! I’ve won! I’ve won, Ur!
  Blake breaks out of the window
  Blake: I know how you work now. I’m weak and broken and flawed and fake, and I still beat you, you motherfucking fucker. You’re living on borrowed time. I’m going to finish that diagram, and I’ll squeeze you to pulp between diagrams. And I’m going to tell people exactly how to stop you, just in case something happens to me. There’s nothing you can do about it.
• In Histories 9 we get to see Jeremy Meath's backstory, and how he claimed his demesne. He challenged Isadora the Sphinx, the only power in Toronto who had no fear of Conquest, to single combat. One berserker potion later she surrendered out of fear for her life.

Mala Fide

• In Mala Fide 10.6 & Mala Fide 10.7 Blake held out against a Maenad and Satyr despite being trapped in the mirror world, turning their weapons against them with Evan's help.
• Gathered Pages 10 has Andy giving a rundown of his and Eva's past activities, with the highlights including killing a wendigo with a deadfall trap and sniping a practitioner from 150 meters (Nearly 500 feet) away with a hunting rifle.

Malfeasance

• Blake breaking Rose's binding circle from the inside in Malfeasance 11.2
  • Moreso that he does it by ripping himself open and tearing out the power he needs.
• Blake getting the upper hand on Alister Behaim in Malfeasance 11.4, with the battle only ending in a draw due to the intervention of Sandra and Eblis.
• While Roxanne may be a sociopath in the making, it takes a lot of guts to try groin stabbing someone who home invades the place you were staying after their unhinged partner beat down your aunt and cousin, as was the case during Andy and Eva's invasion of Hillsglade House in Malfeasance 11.7.
• In Malfeasance 11.10, Blake pulling a Batman Gambit to get Peter to flood the Hillsglade house, giving him reflective surfaces everywhere.
  • Most credit here should go to Peter here-having rapidly figured out that the supernatural is real, he pumps Blake for information, figures out what he needs, and then comes up with something that'll do the trick-something that Blake didn't think of himself.
• Blake, with the help of Evan and Peter, in Malfeasance 11.11 managing to finally defeat the witch hunters, distracting Andy so that Peter can sneak up on and down him with a ceramic toilet lid, before bringing down Eva himself by disarming her with Evan's help while she beats Peter senseless for hurting her brother, and stealing the incendiary grenade she was using as a trump card. Disposing of it in the mirror world when Eva tries to kill him with it.
  • This culminates in Blake forcing Eva to stay and help defend Hillsglade House from the Others about to show up and kill everyone inside, threatening to detonate the explosives the witch hunters themselves had set up around the exits if Eva tries to leave with an injured Andy.
• Credit where it goes, there's a reason that Eva and Andy are to be feared. This arc shows that.

Duress

• In Duress 12.2
  • Blake slaughtering his way past a horde of homonculi.
  • Eva and Green Eyes killing the mountain man Other by ripping his spine out.
• In 12.3, multiple Thorburns demonstrate why cornering a Thorburn is a bad idea.
  • Callan, poisoned and dying from a cut by the Bane, charges the Behaim's clockwork mannequin, managing to grab onto its foot and holding on even after he died, giving the others the chance to close the door.
  • Ellie injects Andy with a syringe full of poison, and then endures a beating by Eva to force Eva to save Peter.
• In Duress 12.5, Tiff shutting down Ellie by noting that her family was even worse than the Thorburns, but she chose to rise above it.
• Duress 12.6: Blake finally getting a body he can use in the real world by tearing his own heart out and implanting it into a constructed effigy, verbally reaffirming his vow to destroy the monsters and protect his friends all the while.
• In Duress 12.7, Blake infiltrates the house rather than murder his way through to get the supplies to start a fire, resisting his impulses, before getting outed by Midge. After that he manages to not only get away, but start the fire and then slaying two of the Others who pursued him effortlessly and then getting the third to back off.
  • The fact that Midge lasted that long is another. It turns out their time in the Tenements was warped so that a few minutes there was hours outside. She not only lasted well over six hours fighting, but its implied she took down most of the attackers in the time it took to wear her down.

Execution

• In Execution 13.3 Blake and Green Eyes beat a duo of medium tier goblins so badly that they willingly bind themselves rather than die.
• Ellie joining in the Chatroom and calling every practitioner in there out on their hypocritical and relentlessly shitty rules-lawyering behavior in Execution 13.4.
• Blake's solution to his pyromancer problem in Execution 13.5
• Jeremy being unflinching in the face of nearly getting castrated in Execution 13.6 takes brass ones.
• Blake spends the entire arc as a whirling dervish of death and destruction...until he encounters the Goblin King's lieutenant in Execution 13.7, who handily kicks his ass five ways to Sunday by pulling out progressively more lethal weapons.
• Blake using smarts to trick Sandra Duchamp into capitulating in Execution 13.9 without having to kill the full seven people by telling her he'll stand down if she says that the Duchamps won't continue doing things they way they always have been upon Sandra attaining Lordship. She obviously can't answer that, so Blake wins.

Sine Die

• In Sine Die 14.1 Alister Behaim getting Blake to stop his rampage cold simply by pointing out that while Blake is likely to win against both them and Johannes, the Behaim's power is the only thing stopping all of Jacob's Bell from falling into the Abyss due to how screwed up the town is. Blake is forced to concede.
  • Also, the way that he got Blake to stand still long enough to listen. He handed him the Behaim power that's been accumulating for three hundred years and offered to let him destroy it.
• In Sine Die 14.2, Johannes revealing that he's got a giant and dragon duo under his control.
• In Sine Die 14.4, Blake using his newly gained wings in order to successfully injure both Others before doing a tactical retreat in the direction of Crone Mara's house.
• In Sine Die 14.6:
  • Peter having the balls to do Refuge in Audacity to try to convince Crone Mara not to murder the Thorburn family by noting that as generally horrible people, having them alive harms Jacob's Bell. It doesn't work, but points for trying.
  • Rose teaming up with the Knights of the Basement to attack Crone Mara's domain and shooting her with a gun.
• Blake and company managing to trick Crone Mara into making herself forsworn as the rest burn down her home.
• In Histories 14:
  • A young Johannes showing grit as he manages to try escaping Faysal, even if it doesn't work.
  • There's also how he managed to get such a huge demesne, mainly using speakers to project his voice over a large area.

Possession

• In Possession 15.2, Blake managing to subdue the Diary Girl in their second encounter by obtaining her diary and forcing her to agree to never harm another soul in exchange for him not destroying it with the Hyena.
• In Possession 15.3:
  • Johannes committing a Heroic Sacrifice so they can seal away the Barber for good.
  • The High Priest managed to get Dionysus to smite Barbatorem for a bit.
  • Blake kicked so much ass the Abyss wants him as a Gatekeeper.
• In Possession 15.4, Rose not only defended the right to Blake's freedom, but she even sacrificed her future in order to allow him to possess her.
• Everyone working together to repel the demons and then summon Faysal, who Rose coerces into summoning the Toronto Council in the last two chapters of the arc.

Judgement

• In Judgement 16.1:
  • Rose managing to get the group to quit being deceived by the demonic illusions by calling them out on how easily they were falling to demons despite throwing her and Blake under the bus on multiple occasions due to their family bad karma.
  • The Astrologer seems to be falling to the demonic doppleganger of her mentor, then suddenly manifests angelic wings of light and blasts it away.
  • At the very end of the chapter, Andy showing up out of nowhere to blast the lawyers with a rocket launcher.
• The next chapter has Green Eyes saving Rose at the last minute from a demonic construct by appearing out of the snow like shark and then munching on it.
• In Judgement 16.4:
  • Rose actually managing to get one over on Ms. Lewis when she tries to convince them to give Rose up in return for safe passage following a Precision F-Strike:
  Rose: "We aren't going to cave, and we aren't going to stand by while you do what you’re doing. We talked about it, and we've already decided. You can consider this our declaration of war. This is our town, one we've fought for, one many of us fought each other for, and one we've bled over. If you think we’re simply going to give it up so you can turn it into some victory for your side or a waypoint for demonkind and diablerie, you’re an imbecile."
  • Evan finally getting the chance to become a firebird by temporarily absorbing the Eye.
• In 16.5: Eva managed to fight a Demon of Madness off long enough for everyone to get back up by the virtue of being insane and fearless, cutting it up with a machete, stabbing it with a wooden cross, and pouring bullets into it.
• The Hyena returning from the Abyss to Blake's hand mid thrust
• In Judgement 16.10:
  • A villainous one, Barbatorem possessing Johannes managing to effortlessly dismantle Blake, Green Eyes, and Paige's arguments through its Hannibal Lecture.
  • Peter managing to do a Shut Up, Hannibal! on Barbatorem when it tries that on him.
  • Blake slaying the dragon that Barbatorem nearly bifurcated, though it manages to slice off its stronger half.
• In Judgement 16.12:
  • Bristles managing to keep the Barber busy for that long after how much of a Juggernaut it was before, as well as being able to resist the pipes.
  • Rose becoming a servant of the Abyss and using that power to drop a roof on two demons and the firm chauffeur.
  • The bogeyman from the Tenements showing up and literally booting Barbatorem into the Abyss.
  • Peter managing to free Faysal from the lawyer's clutches, and beforehand giving the Barber a nice, hearty "Fuck you."
  • Mags smacking Ms. Lewis in the teeth with her pipe-shotgun as she attempts to summon Ornias, after she, Blake, and Paige manage to physically overpower her.

Other/Multiple Chapters

• Despite the fact that the universe is literally conspiring to screw him over, Blake is still able to wrest some victories from the various forces arrayed against him in Jacob's Bell and elsewhere.