Exterminatus Now

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Exterminatus Now is what happens when you mix Sonic the Hedgehog, Warhammer 40,000, and a truckload of Black Comedy.

Yes, seriously. See for yourself.

This Web Comic is the story of two members of the Mobian Inquisition, a parodical version of the Inquisition of Warhammer 40,000, and their two mercenaries, and together make a group who remain living and employed only by luck, blackmail, and occasional violence, along with their superiors, alternate numbers, associates, and foes.

The comic alternateed between a gag a day style, and full blown Story Arcs. It began on the 29th of September 2003, and continued until some time in 2016. It ended on a cliffhanger: "The boss wants a word."


Exterminatus Now is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Exterminatus Now include:

Tropes A to H

Eastwood: With the things we're facing, armour's only any use if they get close, and if we let them get close, we're dead, armour or no.

Eastwood: So the "Lothar Way" of getting the grass cut was to set next door's dog on fire?
Lothar: What's this about cutting the grass?

Antelope Bastard: The last guy they caught snitching got turned into a chair of screaming undead bone and flayed hide, locked in a perpetual torment and praying for a death that will never come. He's still under a tarp in the attic.

  • Born Lucky: The whole group. This is one of Simmons's reasons for selecting the group for a mission. As he puts it, it's not because their uniqueness makes them effective, but because they seem to have a bottomless supply of luck which he "wishes to capitalise on."
    • Reaches Ciaphas Cain levels in recent comics. The reason they're being selected for a Suicide Mission is their ability to survive no matter how hard their superiors try to kill them how severe the odds ranged against them are.
  • Brick Joke: "Nah, we're not gonna do the Python gag yet. Maybe next time."
  • Briefcase Full of Money: A chameleon hiring mercenaries offers plenty of those around...until he realises he has gone overbudget. Luckily for him, couple bottles of booze and a carton of cigarettes work just as well for his last acquisition.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Eastwood wets himself at the prospect of being flattened by Morth's Collapsing Lair. An example of the Black Comedy of the series, as the circumstances were actually very somber and serious and the joke was most likely used to lighten the mood.

Eastwood: Oh, I assure you I'm pissing myself with fear.
Virus: Well, I wouldn't go that far.
Rogue: I would. Just noticed. Watch your step there.
Virus: Oohh, right, NOT a metaphor.

Janus: You shall be a merciful diety, Master Morth.
Morth: And you my most loyal subject.
Both: [[[Beat Panel]]] AHAHAHAHA!
Morth: But seriously, let's get set up and get started. "Merciful"... You kidder.
Janus: Loyal right up until the second the knife hits your back.

Lothar: Shit...cock...dammi...motherfuck-k-k-k...-unt...
Either Virus or Eastwood: You screwed it up! What do we do now?
Lothar: I just fell off a moving vehicle and bounced down half a mile of tarmac, but I'm FINE, THANKS FOR FUCKING WELL ASKING!

"Helicopters? Try VTOL aircraft, dude."

Virus: Never turn a funny comic into a serious epic drama. We have a murder-suicide pact that says if we ever turn into a drama, we're going to end it all rather than inflict that on the world.
Eastwood: No, I said I was going to murder the rest of you, change my name and spend the rest of my days as a painter in Brazil.

    • Interestingly, the comic's existence is an inversion of Cerebus Syndrome. It's based off a project that took itself extremely seriously, which most of the creators can't believe they were so serious about in the first place. In a funny way, the whole of EN is a parody of its creator's own work. Probably why the comic is unlikely to get dramatic, because in a way it has already been there.
  • Cult: The Inquisition's enemies. And, in Eastwood's opinion, their allies.
  • Crapsack World: It's not overtly shown, given the comedic nature of the comic, but there seems to be a lot of horrible things going on, even without the regular invasions from chaos; for example, Lothar's adopted brother Kyle was apparently orphaned after an "Overlander" attack. See World Building.
    • Plus, you know, the Inquisition are considered to be the good guys.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: At Lothar's birthday party as the group are clowning around.

Schaefer: Well, I think that went rather well.
Simmons: Yes, giving Hex and Nekkitou an actual reason to come to blows, brilliant sir.
Schaefer: Are you being sarcastic, Simmons?
Simmons: Whatever gave you that idea, sir?
Schaefer: So you're not, okay. Sorry, it's just hard to tell sometimes.

Eastwood: Nice work, you single-handedly wiped the installation off the face of reality.
Wildfire: Thanks! I'm just glad I could make it up to you guys after I screwed up on my first mission.
Eastwood: What? I was being sarcastic, you crazy, purple bint.

Rogue: What are you guys doing anyway?
Eastwood: Nothing much, just attacking Lothar with my mighty cock.
(Virus and Rogue share an extremely uncomfortable look)
Virus: Oh! That clockwork chicken thing!
Rogue: Oh thank gods.

  • Drives Like Crazy: Nobody ever lets Virus control any kind of vehicle. Even the Inquisition's own private army, the Black Guard, go pale at the thought of Virus having a chance of driving anything. They're an entire army of special forces trained to combat the paranormal, and they are terrified of his driving.
  • Dual-Wielding: Yuri, who dual-wields beam swords. Oh, yes, she does.
  • Earthshattering Kaboom: Facility Sixteen (a.k.a. Black Halo) had a open dimensional rift which allowed daemons to enter the EN world freely. Exterminatus on the facility would destroy the world and everyone on it (protagonists and Inquisition included), so the rift has to be closed manually. More than that, it would render the entire region uninhabitable for "slightly less than the life of the universe."
  • Eats Babies:

Janus: Thank you Silias. It's been... a relentless siege of paranoia working for you. No hard feelings about trying to murder you?
Silias: I'd have been genuinely disappointed if you hadn't.

Eastwood: The features you find endearing, most right-thinking people have nightmares about.

Virus: And I don't think he's the kind of bear for personal vendettas.
Eastwood: We'll see.
(later)
Lothar: Hey, someone broke all our chairs!
Virus: Someone's broken our beds!
Eastwood: Someone ate all my porridge!

Kyle: They looked legit, how the fuck was I supposed to know?
Steve: Watch you language, you little cunt!


Tropes I to Z

Virus: You said no one else would get hurt!
Cultist: Patterner cultist, duh. You have met my boss? Morth the Betrayer?

Eastwood: Lothar, do you think your wraith has enough firepower to blast a hole in the dome?
Lothar: Do bears shit in the woods?
Virus: Well, you'd think so, but you never actually hear anybody complaining they stood in bear shit while out hiking do you?
Lothar: Huh, I guess I'd never really thought of it like that...
Rogue: Well if they don't shit in the woods, where do they shit?
Eastwood: Could we FOCUS here people?!
Virus: Also, isn't our boss a bear?

  • It Has Been an Honor: Spoofed.
  • Kill Sat: The eponymous Exterminatus.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Totally subverted with Silas Morth.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Played straight right after some aborted Flashback Effects in this strip.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Yuri. She has no patience for complex planning and does whatever enters her head. Needless to say, this frequently causes headaches for the team. This eventually gets her expelled, which is a boon to the team's performance and its sanity.
  • Let's Get Dangerous: The team does seem to display a certain degree of competence when the chips are down and they stop goofing around. Usually mixed with complete ruthlessness and pragmatic cowardice.
    • Schaefer gets a moment of this in the comic "A++, Would Heroically Struggle To The Death With Again" as, after Eastwood sends him after one "E. Bay" to get him off Kyle's case after it turns out he has been dealing with cultists, as it emerges there really is an Edward Bay, and, judging from the parody of dramatic action movies everywhere, he really is a supervillain. Schaefer doesn't just win, but does so in style.

Eastwood: Schaeffer might be a moronic sexual deviant, but he’s an Inquisitor, and part of that involves being nigh-on impossible to kill and having a punch that can cold-cock a rhino.

Eastwood: bigspiders bigbigspiders bigbigbiiigspiders bigbigbigbig...

Lothar: Ah well, never wanted kids anyway.

    • Turns out it's actually the plasma battery version, but Eastwood dislikes the idea of exploding just as much as dying of radiation poisoning.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • To say that the others misuse Rogue's beam sword is a bit of an understatement.
    • Eastwood uses an ancient artifact which contains thousands of souls as a bookend. Even after it's stolen and he finds out what it really is, his primary motivation for getting it back is because he needs a bookend.

Rogue: Will you stop calling it a bookend! We've established that it's an ancient evil artifact, a vessel of souls, the key to a dark ritual!
Eastwood: That is the best sodding bookend I've ever owned, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out upwards of ten quid for a new one!

Yuri: Success rate... uh, I'm new.

Virus: Professor? You OK?
Lewis: Well my colleagues and friends are all dead, my workplace destroyed, and my career down the toilet.
Virus: Yes, but are you alive?
Lewis: I guess so.
Virus: That's all I asked, didn't need your life story.

Morth: We need but one more sacrifice to bring about the great daemon of our lord, the Patterner. Now we only need to ask ourselves: Who shall this person be. Who shall be the last person to give their life for our cause. Who.... is that bitch with the video camera.
Jamilla: Oh shitbiscuits...

    • ...one by one... in the proper sequence... Yuri, what have you done?!... again?
    • When their boss realizes that not only has he lost billions with the destruction of the facility, but he can't blame it on the team because it was an illegal black ops facility and therefore did not officially exist.
    • When Rogue goes so far as to say he would not only kill Lothar, but his entire adopted family, over what he perceived to be a cover-up of criminal activities; Eastwood and Virus have a very appropriate reaction (namely, staring wide-eyed and slowly shuffling away from the carnage about to unfold).
    • When Eastwood remembers he became connected to the antique dealer Marley, the guy he left the artifact with, through Silas Morth.
  • Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Fused with a (not very) Badass Creed.

Eastwood: It's... uh... a roll of mints!
Jamilla: You must like em, it feels half-empty.

At least he buttoned up his coat before that.

Morth: And now, as promised... your reward.
Janus: Wait! I poisoned your chalice!
Morth: Of course you did. That's why I took the antidote before you arrived.
Janus: The antidote vial was also poison.
Morth: This vial was. You didn't know about this one.
Janus: But you didn't know your handmaiden was loyal to me.
Morth: (Is stabbed by handmaiden, but stands up unharmed as she grins at Janus) Had you going. She's loyal to me - trick blade.
Janus: The IED in your bed?
Morth: Already in your sock drawer.
Janus: Sarin in your shower stall?
Morth: Check your cologne spritzer.
Janus: (draws gun) Replaced with blanks?
Morth: Afraid so.

"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite position on the Citadel."

  • Pet the Dog: Lothar's surprising preparedness to bust his adoptive brother Kyle (a platypus) out of captivity, turning instantly against his employers to do so. Eastwood, of course, doesn't miss an opportunity to have a dig at the echidna for showing a glimmer of empathy.

Eastwood: I know what it's like to be willing to do anything for people you actually... care about.
Lothar: (with angry pointing) You shut your whore mouth!

  • Porn Stash: Eastwood has the biggest known porn stash in the world, to the point where it once crashed the Inquisition's database.
  • Product Placement: Everything from Irn Bru to Intel technology. Look closer at the supposed Intel logo.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The whole team

Simins: I hardly think we'd have two teams made up of an arrogant Taikan, a sociopathic cyborg, a womanizing feral and a just plain stupid rodent.
Eastwood: Oh, I get it. You're saying that it's our team's uniqueness that makes us so effective.
Simins: No, I'm saying that you have a seemingly endless reserve of sheer dumb luck, and I want to capitalise on it

Lothar: Guys, I have a new addition to the list of things I didn't need to know. "How well hung Pikachu is."

Townsend: I told them that [the tag on the spy camera] should say "Not the Property of the Mobian Inquisition".
Morth: Yes, because that would have fooled me completely.

Eastwood: Look, mistakes were made, people were shot--
Virus: Four times.
Eastwood: It's easy to point fingers. Let's just put it behind us and move on shall we? I'm going to bed... And it was three times, the second one only grazed him.

Virus: And remember... we liked him.
Lothar: Mwee hee hee! Lookit 'im burn!

    • After years of fan-clamoring, the comic was temporarily given a female main cast member... who was an obnoxius, idiotic Ted Baxter who was treated like dirt by literally everyone else in the comic from her first to (so far) last scene.
  • Write Who You Know: The strip has four authors, three of whom use Eastwood, Virus, and Lothar as self-inserts. Eventually they had to clarify that Rogue and fourth author Silversword are not the same person.
  • You Do NOT Want to Know: Why does Virus have chloroform?

Eastwood: Why do you-?
Virus: Only finish the question if you really want to know the answer.
Eastwood: (Zipping gesture to his lips)

  1. which is the moment that named this trope, by the way
  2. Eastwood and Virus are not amused.
  3. CABAL is a network of individually non-sentient AIs that are collectively self-aware, does that sound familiar to you?
  4. slang for cigarettes