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This could be a big opportunity for Roy and team. These dungeons are hard enough to give Team Xykon a real challenge, and Redcloak is going to burn that many more spells keeping his unbuffed teammates alive when they're surprised by an unexpected monster. Meanwhile, the two dwarf clerics can now inform the Order about Oona, whose unconventional abilities have posed a major threat despite not being magic-based, so they can account for her in their plans.
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Oct 6, 2020 04:55
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Eifert Posting posted:So we all agree this is 100% going to be the door they need now, right? It's possible, but I feel like it's a bit too early for them to find the gate. Why? Because as the stage is currently set, there's no reason for the Order to follow Xykon through that door. They're not going to charge in blind after the baddies without a compelling reason, and they currently have no reason to think the gate might be behind that door. This is definitely going to be a fake-X door, which will stir discord and distrust in the members of Team Xykon and leave them beat-up and pissed as hell, but I'm guessing it's also going to pull them off-stage long enough for Team Roy to poke around the area looking for clues and accidentally run into our mysterious third group.
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Oct 9, 2020 16:18
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I wonder if the key to the last gate might involve sacrifice, or possibly avoiding it. Kraagor's death seemed to be a big part in the break-up of their group. Serini, who built her gate as a tribute for Kraagor, could have incorporated that into the protections. If so, it'd play very well into the themes that have been established so far. A consistent theme in the Order's growth (except Durkon) has been a growing willingness to put aside their selfish desires and risk their own lives for the greater good. Meanwhile, Xykon and Redcloak's biggest character moments to date all involved making very clear that there's absolutely no way either of them would ever consider dying for the other's sake.
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Nov 19, 2020 02:19
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Gynovore posted:Naaaah. Xykon would never sacrifice himself for a greater ideal; the only thing he cares about is himself and his own amusement. Tsukiko said that Xykon thought he would be able to "use the Snarl to destroy his many enemies". And though Roy and crew haven't run into any other enemies of Xykon, there's plenty to suggest he's got no shortage of them. Let's not forget that the entire reason the Order originally went after Xykon was because he decided to rob and murder a random wizard for a cool piece of nonmagical headgear several decades prior. I can totally believe he's just after the Snarl because he figures he'll be able to make something that powerful useful somehow. Like he says, as far as he's concerned, power is power.
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Nov 19, 2020 23:05
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One of the first things Roy said when he first saw the doors in person was that he didn't understand how there could possibly be a full dungeon level behind each one - there were just too many doors placed too close together to make any physical sense. He put it aside at the time, because he had more pressing concerns to think about, but it seems like he's already primed to realize something's up if he just gets a chance to stop and think for a minute. It's interesting that even though Xykon's power is useful for Redcloak, their poor relationship is doing a lot to interfere with the search process here. Xykon's the one who insisted on picking doors at random, which is why the umbrella monster has been able to get away with fake markings without them noticing. After the dungeon runs, Redcloak has too busy trading barbs with Xykon to bother with the marking, which is why the umbrella monster has been the one marking the doors in the first place. Even now that Redcloak is starting to catch on, Xykon is insisting that he should stop thinking so hard and just enjoy the killing. It's not the first time Team Evil's terrible teamwork has backfired. It's quite possible Xykon doesn't really care to search for traps, because he's a high-level immortal skeleton monster walking into these dungeons with a ton of buffs on him and his own personal healer following right behind him. He really seems like the type to just charge in and bet he can handle whatever the traps do, and when he disagrees with Redcloak about things like "maybe we should figure out what that thing actually does", Xykon usually wins the argument.
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Dec 4, 2020 22:37
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MikeJF posted:I wonder if the Phylactery is still on Redcloak's person, or if he made a handoff or something somewhere. Would it be risky to carry it with him? I imagine he would've kept it with him, because it's incredibly powerful leverage over Xykon, and he'd probably want to keep something like that close in case he needs it quickly.
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Dec 6, 2020 15:46
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I highly doubt Xykon knows that Redcloak still has his phylactery. Xykon generally takes threats to his phylactery quite seriously - more seriously than threats to his own physical body, usually. And he went to the trouble of building a dedicated dungeon for protecting his phylactery precisely because he no longer trusted Redcloak with it.
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Dec 7, 2020 01:51
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blizzardvizard posted:You're misunderstanding their point, they're not arguing whether or not Redcloak is a villain, their problem is the way Redcloak is written as a villain. I think Redcloak's issue is a very simple one - he's committed a lot of fairly awful acts (even by the standards of his own moral compass) in the name of his big plan for goblin liberation, and buried them under a shitton of rationalization and dissonance. Xykon was no friend of goblins, and Redcloak has had to accept a fair number of unnecessarily dead goblins as the price for keeping Xykon happy and mostly cooperative. If it turns out that he's able to accomplish his goal without needing to carry out that plan, then can he still justify all that stuff weighing on his conscience? As it turns out, the answer is no. His plan needs to be the only way, because that way, he needed to do all the things he's done. And honestly, most of the stuff weighing on his conscience comes from his association with Xykon and his fixation on the plan. Most of the stuff he's actually done for goblinkind, he did without Xykon's help. Taking control of the hobgoblins? Xykon didn't lift a finger for that, Redcloak did the actual work. Using that hobgoblin army to conquer Azure City? Xykon basically ignored that and beelined for the gate room, stopping only to buzz the walls a few times for fun. Organizing, ruling, and securing that conquered city while doing the diplomatic legwork to make it able to stand on its own? That was all Redcloak and his hobgoblin proteges, though Tsukiko did occasionally help hunt rebels.
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Jan 3, 2021 07:47
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It'll be interesting to see where things go from here. Even if the Order beats Team Evil to the Gate, that's not really super useful for them - all they can really do at that point is start casting defenses while they wait for Xykon to show up. So it's likely we're finally gonna see the mysterious third group get involved here.
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Jan 24, 2021 05:45
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habeasdorkus posted:People are overestimating how much Xykon knows about the actual Plan. He's suspicious, but his real irritation with Redcloak stems from the loving about in Gobbotopia and nearly getting his phylactery destroyed. I think Xykon doesn't know anything about what Redcloak's really up to, but he does know that he only has Redcloak's word to go by about what the Gate ritual does. And he knows that when he asked someone else to take a look and double-check that for him to make sure the spell really did what Redcloak said it did, Redcloak murdered that person basically the instant he found out about it. He doesn't know for sure that Redcloak is up to something, but he knows that he has nothing else besides Redcloak's word to go on. And Redcloak gave Xykon a pretty clear reminder that his loyalty has limits when he noped the gently caress out after O-chul stole the phylactery.
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Jan 27, 2021 23:42
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Tarquin's team didn't really seem to have a leader. They operated by trading favors and negotiating mutually-beneficial deals. That said, the last time we saw them, they were standing next to the remains of Girard's Gate as Snarl energy blasted out of it and sent them running, so who knows if they're in any position to go hunting for it. They wouldn't know anything about the gates except what Tarquin tells them (based on whatever Vizuyos fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 07:03
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In Shojo's tale, he stated that the purpose of the Gates was to keep the rifts from growing. Interestingly, he also suggestedthat sealing the rifts was separate from that - the Order of the Scribble sealed the rifts first to prevent the Snarl from poking its claws out, and then built the Gates later to reinforce the seals and stop the growth of the rifts. Redcloak, for his part, didn't seem concerned about the Azure City rift posing a long-term threat to Gobbotopia. He noted that it had expanded very quickly after the gate was destroyed, but that the growth was slowing and that he figured it'd probably stop eventually. He also noted that it was weird that the Snarl hadn't been reaching out of the rifts and eating anyone who got too close, and hypothesized that maybe the remaining gates were blocking that somehow. So far, that's the only rift we've seen after the day of its destruction, since all the other rifts are in the middle of empty desolate wastelands.
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Mar 9, 2021 07:47
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Cup Runneth Over posted:I wonder if Girard's defenses could have stopped Xykon if all his family hadn't gotten wiped out by V. Because if not, there's more irony in the fact that Soon was the only one who could actually have ever properly defended his gate. Not only that, but he trounced Xykon with ease. Honestly, even with the entire Draketooth clan dead and gone, there's a fair chance the defenses would have thwarted Xykon (at least for a while). The very final defense for the gate was a misdirection trick that couldn't be seen through by any form of magical detection, and Team Evil has demonstrated pretty well at Kraagor's Gate that they're weak to that sort of thing.
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Mar 12, 2021 02:12
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karmicknight posted:I feel like of the two missing data points that collapse her argument (Redcloak's The Plan is a little bit more of an existential threat than she seems to believe, and the gods are way more gung ho with re-rolling the planet again.) are going to be really hard to get across to her. Also I wonder how the whole "blood oath" aspect of Roy's knowledge base is going to affect the dosing with amnesia potion. Redcloak's Plan isn't really an existential threat, at least as far as anyone who wasn't at the Godsmoot knows. It just means divine concessions for the goblins - and Serini seems open to the idea that maybe the goblins really have gotten a raw deal after all. Of course, Serini likely doesn't know about Redcloak's big plan. Sure, she's clearly been scrying a lot, but she probably wouldn't have been able to scry on the two times his plans were revealed in the strip - Tsukiko's murder was in Cloistered territory, and she was probably busy when Durkon had his chat with Redcloak. Though I'm guessing she is well aware that the Order blew up Girard's Gate despite reaching it first, solely because the enemy had spellcasters and they didn't. Wouldn't be surprised if she was a little ticked after seeing that. As for Roy's blood oath, that only binds him to kill Xykon - it doesn't set really set a time limit or give special protections. I get the impression Serini would be perfectly fine with Roy waking up in a tavern with no memory of any of this gate stuff, and going on a new quest to defeat Gate-lord Xykon when the big X starts conquering stuff a couple years down the road.
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Mar 17, 2021 17:08
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jng2058 posted:Serini's plan is doomed by all the people outside her reach. Even if she managed to scrub the minds of the Order and both paladins, she can't get to Hinjo and his crew, to Bandana and her crew, to Durkon's whole family, to Red Starshine and his guerilla band, to Hilgya, or to Julia. And even if she could manage all that, she sure as hell can't reach Thor! It seems like she's only trying to delay it until Xykon reaches and claims the Gate for himself, on the theory that he'll do a much better job of defending it from destruction than any of these hero groups that destroy it at the first opportunity. It's not a completely unreasonable assumption, either. Xykon thinks he needs the Gates to attain ultimate power, so he has no reason to destroy them - he needs an intact Gate, and a destroyed one is useless to him. Meanwhile, the heroes are just trying to deny the Gates to villains, and don't really care whether they do so by defending or destroying them. And so far, the heroes have repeatedly failed to defend the Gates, which just leaves "destroy". At Azure City, Xykon effortlessly bypassed the Order and slaughtered nearly the entire Sapphire Guard, so it's reasonable to think those two groups don't have great odds here. And even when the Order found Girard's Gate first, they destroyed it immediately because Roy didn't think they could take on the nearby squad of side villains. And hell, even when the Order did defeat Xykon way back at Dorukan's dungeon, they still blew up the Gate anyway for literally no reason. Given all that, I can kinda see Serini's point here. She's got no reason to think they can take Xykon again, and the only reason the world is in such a precarious position right now is because of the good guys deciding over and over again that "well, I don't think we can take these bad guys in a fight, let's smash the Gate". The fact that each and every one of those Gate-smashings turned out to be completely unnecessary is just icing on the cake.
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Mar 17, 2021 22:21
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Shugojin posted:There are still plenty of questions about that - there are roughly 3 possibilities: Right as he was getting resurrected, Durkon mentioned a planet inside the rift to Thor, who seemed genuinely confused by it. So while we can't completely rule #2 out, it seems unlikely.
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Mar 21, 2021 04:07
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double post????? i need a new mouse apparently
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Mar 21, 2021 04:07
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Bongo Bill posted:This strip is establishing what's at stake: if the amnesia potion is used, all this character development will go away. Would it? When Serini described the effects of the amnesia potion, it sounded more like the memory charm on the Oracle's valley: confusing people's memories about a particular place or person or incident, rather than scrambling weeks or months of their lives. Personally, I think this strip is aiming for something different: it's establishing that, like Belkar, Elan was never really as incompetent as he pretended to be. He just thought normal adventurers were buzzkill jerks, and made a point to defy that stereotype - even if it meant being treated as a useless annoyance that everyone looked down on.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:21
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Phenotype posted:I hope Rich is ok... The point of the amnesia potion wasn't to make them forget about the gates entirely - it was to convince them that they didn't find the gate in that location and therefore must look elsewhere. She said that the effect would be that "you'll forget ever seeing me or this place, and you'll report back to your boss that you looked high and low and couldn't find anything". In other words, it wouldn't entirely wipe their memories of everything to do with the gate, or wipe away months of character progress. It'd just muddle their memories of finding and monitoring the gate, allowing her to misdirect them into searching away from the Gate in basically the same way that the very final defense on Girard's Gate tried to do.
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Apr 10, 2021 19:22
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Cup Runneth Over posted:We ain't got a Nale anymore Come to think of it, this is very relevant here, in that it led to a very pissed-off Sabine. Who's off on mystery business related to a separate evil plot, which will pretty much have to show up soon since there's not much story left. And about the only thing we know about that evil plot so far is that it involves engineering the destruction of the Gates - something that both Redcloak and Serini absolutely oppose at all costs.
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Apr 12, 2021 17:02
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It's basically the same as why Redcloak tried to murder Durkon on sight and had to be talked down before negotiations could even get started: anyone he can identify as definitely working to thwart their goals, he wants to murder on general principle. Even if they're not a huge threat, he sees no reason why he shouldn't take a few extra minutes to exterminate any potential obstacle. He's always giving it his all to kill whoever threatens his personal goals. He knows the Order is trying to keep Team Evil away from the Gates now, and that's all the reason he needs to murder them, whether they're strong enough to be a serious challenge or not. Xykon, on the other hand, has no problem letting someone go if they're not in his immediate way, he doesn't feel like they're a serious threat, and he doesn't feel like it'll be particularly fun or amusing. When he met Roy at Azure City, he straight-up told Roy to come back later when he was high enough level for a proper climatic boss fight.
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Apr 13, 2021 21:47
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Redcloak obviously prefers extensive planning ahead whenever possible, but there's no way he'd have been able to survive this long with Xykon if he wasn't capable of handling the unexpected.
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Apr 18, 2021 19:00
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ikanreed posted:And again, v had been researching powerful tracking magic for months at that point and was only stymied by uber magic V didn't know they were being stymied by epic magic, though. All v knew is that they had spent months trying every tracking spell they could think of and then inventing entirely new ones just to find a couple of non-magical party members, and had still come up with nothing. As a result, V was not very confident in his ability to find a resourceful, magically-empowered dragon who was specifically attempting to hide from the caster. The imp actually did suggest the whole "find the dragon later and free your kids' souls" thing, and V rejected it for exactly that reason. If they'd stopped to think about it, they may have had second thoughts, but they were too exhausted, frantic, and pissed-off to have much patience for calmly working through the options. Rand Brittain posted:It's also kind of set up so that this kind of decision is easy. Apparently dragons have their own social networks and are connected to other dragons, but humans and their ilk never see any of them and tend to assume that every dragon is a solitary, unique monster that can be judged as a monad. Even Miko raised that question when they met her, though it ended up being played as a good species vs evil species joke. The black dragon did attack them at the time, so fighting back was pretty clearly self-defense. But they actually managed to neutralize it without killing it at the time: Vaarsuvius managed to make it completely obedient to him with a successful Suggestion spell. It's just that instead of using the opportunity to take the starmetal and leave peacefully, V spent the entire duration of the spell using the dragon to intimidate his party members in order to work out some resentment he was feeling, and then just killed the helpless dragon right before the spell would've worn off.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:51
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It seems pretty clear that while the gods didn't intentionally go out of their way to screw over the goblins, they also made no attempt to ensure fairness between the different sentient mortal species to begin with. It wasn't even on their radar. Fenris created the goblins all by himself, so as far as they were concerned, setting up their situation was Fenris' problem. When Fenris lost interest in them and moved on to bigger monsters, they were left without a divine patron to advocate for their interests, and the other gods were presumably too busy fighting for their pet species and their own favorite parts of the world to worry about the stuff none of the gods really cared about for whatever reason.
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Apr 22, 2021 16:00
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CapnAndy posted:I get that, and that's the part of Thor's story that rings truest: that Fenris just went "and also, goblins!" without anyone else's input. But there's also the part of Redcloak's story that rings truest: that the goblinoids were intentionally dealt the worst possible hand, to keep them downtrodden and easy xp for baby adventurers. And hell, Thor's circle-of-life metaphor kinda confirms that, doesn't it? That the goblins were designed as the adventuring equivalent of a prey species? The goblins are hardly the only victims of divine whim here. A big theme in the last book was that all of dwarven culture was heavily defined by the fact that, unlike the other main sentient mortal species, they're all automatically destined for endless torment in Hel if they die peacefully, regardless of their morality or their alignment or their behavior in life. Their entire species - no matter how strong or weak - are all forced to find ways to die giving their all in battle in order to avoid a eternally-miserable afterlife. They'd be inclined to think that this was intelligent design, that it was all part of the gods' plan for the world. But in reality, it was just a bet Loki set up between Hel and Thor to add some extra conflict to the world. That whole thing, a massive defining factor in the culture and lifestyle of every dwarven society in their world, is all basically just Loki's funny scheme to pit a couple gods against each other for funsies. The entire dwarven race got stuck with that honorable death requirement by just three gods. The goblins unquestionably have it a lot worse, but the underlying theme remains the same: their place in the world has been defined by divine whims rather than divine plans, and both races are put through considerable suffering basically for no particular reason. The major difference here is also the defining one: the dwarves had a god who liked them enough to intercede in their favor during the setup. Thor allowed Loki to pull him into that bet, but he also went out of his way to specifically inform the dwarves about the conditions that had been placed on them. That wasn't part of the bet, nor was it something negotiated by the group of gods responsible for the dwarves' unique situation. Thor decided, all on his own, to help the dwarves avoid being sent to Hel by giving them a warning about it and encouraging them to build their entire society around honorable death. Meanwhile, Loki had baked a loophole for his followers into the deal from the very beginning. Their motives for doing so aren't really important here - we don't necessarily need to assume that it was out of kindness or care for the dwarves, as it could have been out of simple selfish desire to get as many dwarf souls as possible by shutting Hel out. But regardless of their motives, the fact remains that the dwarves had at least one god who wanted to help them avoid the worst outcomes of the poo poo situation that had been divinely imposed on them. The goblins didn't have anyone to stand for them, not even out of simple selfish desire for more worshipper souls, since (apparently) Fenris was off thinking about bigger monsters and none of the other gods really gave a crap about goblins in the first place.
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Apr 22, 2021 18:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:The Plan is flawed though because it doesn't realize that the God's can't give them what they want; if they can't get into an agreement under gun point they risk a 3-quiddidy snarl. Today's comic hinted at an even more important problem with The Plan. Thor didn't say that they locked themselves out of major changes unless the other gods agree, he said that they've locked themselves out of major changes even if the other gods agree to make those changes. In other words, it's not a matter of negotiation - they went ahead and made the world read-only, and they presumably can't undo that without breaking the world. That's why major divine changes are absolutely off-limits, no matter what kind of dangers the Dark One threatens them with...but even if they tell the Dark One that, he doesn't trust them enough to believe it.
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Apr 22, 2021 19:43
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Strawberry Pyramid posted:Yeah, he mostly just excused Redcloak's gripes, but when Durkon asked for actual advice on how to proceed from here, he just said "I dunno, wing it bro, no pressure! (all the pressure)" I think it's gonna be definitely relevant that Durkon is honestly sympathizing with Redcloak's situation and messaging here. He seems genuinely dejected and even a little bitter about the god-mortal relationship when he complains that the world is just a big old soul farm for the gods. For someone who used to navigate his way through unusual situations by asking himself "What Would Thor Do?", that's an uncharacteristic dose of negativity. He's not unquestioningly buying what Thor is telling him, and I think that shows he's ready to undergo some kind of big change that'll help win Redcloak over.
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Apr 23, 2021 20:13
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Yeah, from just the Tarquin stuff alone I wouldn't think that Tarquin would come back for another appearance. The question is what Sabine is up to. Last time we saw them, the three fiends strongly implied that Sabine was finding a way to mix her own personal goals with the business tasks given to her by the fiends. But she never really got along with anyone besides Nale, and she never really did anything besides help Nale with his schemes. Now that Nale's not around anymore, we don't know of any personal business she might have other than revenge on the person who murdered Nale.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:04
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According to Shojo's story, the strands of reality weren't created by the gods in the first place. They took pre-existing strands of reality and used their power and quiddities to shape those threads together and build a world on top of them. The threads themselves aren't divine creations. The gods used their powers to shape and weave those threads into a world, and there are bits and pieces of three-color divine creations holding it together in that shape to keep it from unraveling, but the threads themselves weren't created by any of the four pantheons and presumably aren't subject to the "more colors = better" rule. I'm guessing that when the Snarl breaks free, the threads of reality themselves are undamaged - but it tears through the seams and gaps between those threads and rips apart the divinely-created three-color world holding those threads together, allowing the threads to unravel and come apart.
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Apr 30, 2021 02:51
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I'm not familiar with the book being discussed, but if somebody saves the life of someone who isn't doing anything wrong at the time, they're not somehow liable for any wrongs the person they saved does in the future. No, not even if those wrongs are really, really bad. It's way too easy to say "X led directly to Y" when you're looking at a comic strip or movie where the only reason X even appears is because the plot needs them to do Y later. Besides, given Redcloak's clearly-expressed resentment toward the Azurites, it's unlikely that whatever O'Chul did was the sole reason for there being a goblinoid invasion of Azure City. In fact, the decisive factor in the invasion wasn't the hobgoblin army itself, but rather the presence of Redcloak. He was the one who breached the city's defenses and busted that big hole in the walls, and the elite undead he brought were the ones who took most of the city's key defenders out of the picture - not just adventurers, but also key figures like Hinjo, the High Priest of the Twelve Gods, and the general who was defending the breach in the wall with Vaarsuvius. The nameless hobgoblin soldiers and the nameless undead in Redcloak's army killed the nameless human soldiers defending the city (at least, the ones who didn't flee or desert), but Redcloak and his skeletal lackeys were the ones taking out the PCs and casters.
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May 21, 2021 02:49
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I think it's probably just to provide a gap between the last four straight pages of exposition and the imminent fight with either Xykon or Serini. It also establishes that, except for Elan, the entire party is entirely focused on either watching the portalfor Xykon's appearance or having their spirited ethical debate, to the point where no one can really spare the attention for idle chatter with Elan. That's useful setup to establish how they would be extremely caught off guard if, say, an invisible halfling rogue kitted out with a bunch of magic items and wands decided to attack them from behind. Y'know, hypothetically. (it also works well as a continuation of the last Elan comic, to establish that not all of his annoying behaviors are just him deliberately being obnoxious for fun)
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May 26, 2021 00:06
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I'm pretty sure there's tons of analyses of vampire stories that point out they're literally just descriptions of aristocracy with a fancy supernatural twist. Corporations are just the modern versions of feudal aristocrats. They're not just comparable to the undead, they're what inspired them. Vampire stories often prominently feature aristocratic or romantic elements, but that doesn't really have anything to do with undead. It's just what kinds of stories appealed to people at the time vampire fiction first became popular. The folk vampires that eventually inspired vampire fiction usually lived in the town graveyard, not grand lonely castles. However, it's a lot harder to make a dramatic adventure story based around a panicked mob digging up the graves of people who've died recently to see if any of the corpses haven't decomposed as much as expected.
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Jun 8, 2021 21:52
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A.o.D. posted:Mummies are literally undead royals. Mummies as undead seems to have been a concept invented by Europeans in the 19th century, as part of a general fascination with Egyptian culture that arose in the 19th century after European empires started making incursions into Egypt. The point of mummifying, like so many other cultures' burial/post-death rituals, was to send the soul safely off into the afterlife (which, not coincidentally, is also perceived by many cultures as putting an end to the risk of various post-death horrors that might be exacted upon the community).
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Jun 9, 2021 03:17
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Slashrat posted:Someone remember offhand what the other instances of somebody running off are in that 70-30 split? I think Roy just means that this was 70% Elan being charmed and 30% Elan being foolish. Presumably it would've been at least a little harder to charm Elan into running off like that if he didn't heavily anthropomorphize his personal possessions.
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Jun 14, 2021 15:57
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ZearothK posted:Given Serini is a much higher level rogue than Haley and she has her mystery partner, I think this is part 2 of the Order of the Stick being neutralized one by one, though the telepathic communication might foil part of that plan. Given that they're in the personal labyrinth of a high-level rogue, built around using portal/teleport traps undetectable by non-rogues to send parties into dead-ends disguised as high-level monster fights without ever realizing what's really going on, just having the party rogue taken out of commission could leave them at a very heavy disadvantage. Especially if the particular tunnel Elan is trying to lure them down just so happens to connect to the one currently being used by a certain lich sorcerer. The party is talking a lot of poo poo about smart enemies right now, but the main schemer they've ever had to deal with was Nale, who's been portrayed as a second-rate planner for quite a while but has still managed to cause them plenty of trouble. Most times the Order's been faced with somebody who used brains rather than pure brute force and had more power at hand than a halfassed team of evil adventurers, they've fared poorly until either the antagonist lost their composure or some unexpected third-party entered the equation. It's especially rich coming from V, who got completely ambushed by the dragon, then totally manipulated by the fiends, then fought Xykon and barely inconvenienced him at all until he was forced to give up on the head-on approach and set up a few tricks instead.
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Jun 24, 2021 22:37
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CapnAndy posted:And Tarquin, and Kubota, and Qarr, and Nokrud, and Bozzok. From their experiences so far, the expectation that they can out-think any opponent is pretty justified. The one time they would've actually faced a mental challenge they couldn't handle would have been the Draketooths, and well, oops. Tarquin had them very nearly at his mercy until the unexpected third-party showed up to help them escape, and Nokrud nearly wiped the entire party even after the unexpected third-party showed up to give them a fighting chance. Kubota's battle of minds with Elan was going quite well (in spite of his best agent turning traitor) until a peeved elf wizard decided to kick the board over and leave. Qarr's little more than a lackey, and his current bosses' scheme has been extremely effective so far. As for Bozzok, he managed to outsmart Haley's dad, but I'm struggling to think of a scheme he's tried to use against the party that didn't boil down to "show up with someone stronger than Haley and hit her a bunch". The main thing is that very few of the schemers have actually wanted the entire Order dead. More than half that list never clashed with the whole party, and the rest went out of their way to keep the party alive for a while first because they needed to manipulate the heroes into doing something for them (a trick which always worked).
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Jun 25, 2021 14:23
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fool of sound posted:Yeah the read I ended up with was "Girard hates Soon because Soon rightfully calls him out on his bullshit and makes up a bunch of reasons why everyone else should too" Well, Girard really believed in the paladin lifestyle and Girard kinda seems like he had "Haley's dad" levels of paranoia and distrust toward people in general, so I imagine they got along just swimmingly while traveling together. I agree with the read that the Scribblers really just didn't have character development to move past their flaws like the Order of the Stick did. The argument that led to them splitting up started with several of them insisting that their values and powers were the best for doing something important, and a lot of the OOTS's development has involved moving past that self-centeredness. The best example so far is Dorukan: he insisted that only epic magic could defend the gates, and Soon accused him of caring more about researching new spells than protecting the gates. That holds a lot of resemblance to the arc Vaarsuvius went through after the fall of Azure City. He placed a lot of faith in the power of his magic, and when he was faced with his limits and failed at a few things, he became so obsessive about improving his magic that he neglected and eventually abandoned his party and their quest to save the world - something that Soon seemed to think was the kind of thing Dorukan might very well do. V faced a nasty comeuppance and was able to move past that, placing more faith on being a team player and not just relying on magic for everything, but perhaps Dorukan never did.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:49
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ronya posted:too many parties know about some quest about the gates now though - Evil kingdoms seeking desalination options, Good kingdoms whose agents keep in regular magical contact, dwarven councils of mixed allegiance, whatever - is her plan to hope nobody sends a force too large for a single rogue to take down, no matter how well-prepared? Certainly she seems to have been paying attention to events She only has to attack the people who figure out the trick to the labyrinth. Which, apparently, seems to only be possible for high-level rogues and no one else. And she's not killing them - she's gonna rewrite their short-term memories, so they think that they found no sign of the gate there and it must be somewhere else. It's a misdirection similar to what Girard tried, but a lot more effective because there's a living defender there to fine-tune the deception and make drat sure it sticks.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:28
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Clarste posted:Speaking of which, both Girard and Soon had set up organizations that could continue the work of protecting the Gate after they died, but does Serini have anything like or is she just planning to live forever? Given that Serini didn't even envision sticking around to defend the gate herself (she originally left it and went back to adventuring), I'm thinking she assumed her whole setup here was originally envisioned to be self-sustaining, without any need for active extra help. Probably not a terrible assumption, given that even with all the illusioners dead, Girard's last-ditch backup plan was still good enough to deflect one high-level party with a ton of magic at their disposal. Similarly, Dorukan's final defense for the gate was that magic rune that zapped anyone who wasn't good at heart. Even with Dorukan dead and the dungeon overrun with Xykon's lackeys, that final defense held to the point where Xykon needed to engage in an overcomplicated ruse to attempt to lure a party of heroic-ish adventurers into doing it for him. Raenir Salazar posted:I had a thought but doesn't Roy have a potential work around for the memory wipe? His ghost dad who I assume it watching things, can fill him in that he got memory wiped, his team will believe him and they just go back but now on their guard. It's unlikely that Roy's dad would bother, since last time he appeared, he seemed totally on board with the whole "let the gods destroy the world" thing. He doesn't give a crap about the world, he just needs Xykon dead - and it doesn't really matter who does the actual killing. And since he's got zero faith in Roy's ability to beat Xykon, he figures Xykon finding the gate and getting unmade in a divine panic will solve the "can't get into heaven" problem just as well and just as quickly. As for the gods, they have explicit rules against telling their followers where the Gates are, so telling them that they actually did find the Gate but were brainwashed afterward would probably fall under that umbrella. The party can't count on much direct divine guidance (like telling them things they don't already know) in this quest. Aside from that, as far as we know, they haven't magically corresponded with anyone else since they arrived at the Gate. If they come back thinking "turns out the coordinates Hinjo gave us were fake, the real Gate is somewhere else", who's going to doubt it? They've even got precedent for it, since they've already discovered that Girard gave the Sapphire Guard fake coordinates.
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Jun 29, 2021 01:52
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Any further relevance Sabine has to the story will likely be based in her work for the IFCC as part of their plans for the gate...but last time we heard about what she was up to, the IFCC three remarked that she was quite good at mixing her demon business with her private affairs. We don't know exactly what they've sent her to do, but if she can somehow make "hurting Tarquin or Laurin" part of the task she's been given, she'll certainly take the opportunity.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:53
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