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It's the rod of orcus, a rod made of woven together tongues that allows the wielder to customize the physical form of the undead. Xykon could have dozens of functional tongues!
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Aug 9, 2020 00:41
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Mystic Mongol posted:It's the rod of orcus, a rod made of woven together tongues that allows the wielder to customize the physical form of the undead. And that sounds like a really floppy rod, which I guess answers the other lich problem.
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Aug 9, 2020 04:54
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Following this thread for a decade +giantitp safaris and reading grognards.txt twice it's really embarassing that I need clarification here, but what precisely is the deal with Orcus
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Aug 9, 2020 07:01
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Don't tell me to read the source books I've seen where going down that path leads
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Aug 9, 2020 07:02
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Daikloktos posted:Following this thread for a decade +giantitp safaris and reading grognards.txt twice it's really embarassing that I need clarification here, but what precisely is the deal with Orcus Wait, is grogs.txt back?
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Aug 9, 2020 07:08
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Daikloktos posted:Following this thread for a decade +giantitp safaris and reading grognards.txt twice it's really embarassing that I need clarification here, but what precisely is the deal with Orcus He's the Demon Prince of the Undead. At one point he was dead for awhile, came back under a different alias, then discarded that persona and went back to being Orcus again full time.
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Aug 9, 2020 07:11
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Is he an Orc? An undead Orc daemon prince?
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Aug 9, 2020 07:24
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He's just a big muscley demon. He's got goat hooves and wings. He rules the undead and has lots of undead minions. He also has a lot of demon minions, and rules the 333rd level of the abyss. Sometimes people say he's the strongest demon and also a demon god. Sometimes he gives his rod to a mortal so they'll do evil poo poo with it. He frequently participates in the blood war by attacking other demons or devils. He sucks and he's boring and no one cares about Orcus. (I think he's a somewhat notable end game threat in Nethack, but he dies to a cockatrice corpse just like everything else, so.)
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Aug 9, 2020 07:32
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THE BAR posted:Is he an Orc? An undead Orc daemon prince?
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Aug 9, 2020 07:39
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The Book of Vile Darkness (which I read in my shameful teenage edgy phase) describes him as obese, but then the illustration looks like this: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/0/08/Orcus.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20140812221114
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Aug 9, 2020 10:29
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paradoxGentleman posted:The Book of Vile Darkness (which I read in my shameful teenage edgy phase) describes him as obese, but then the illustration looks like this: The wings really gently caress up BMI calculations.
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Aug 9, 2020 11:02
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Ragnar34 posted:And that sounds like a really floppy rod, which I guess answers the other lich problem.
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Aug 9, 2020 11:06
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paradoxGentleman posted:The Book of Vile Darkness (which I read in my shameful teenage edgy phase) describes him as obese, but then the illustration looks like this: He was originally obese until he died. When he came back to life and returned to being Orcus after abandoning the Tenebrous persona, he got fit and swole. Apparently one of the main reasons he died was because he was content to spend time lazing around on his throne, and after his resurrection he resolved not to let his enemies find him such easy prey again and became much more active in the Blood War and the various prime material planes.
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Aug 9, 2020 14:54
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Also he created a d20 splatbook company at some point.
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Aug 9, 2020 15:23
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Even in the "obese" Orcus days, I think he was just loving well hench. Sure, he had a gut, but he also had arms the size of tree trunks. My understanding of Orcus was that he was this huuuuuge threat to everything, and then he never did anything. So he just got kinda boring as gently caress.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:07
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He's also super generic, personality and powers-wise. He's an evil demon guy who summons zombies and has a magic rod. His motivation? Doing evil things, controlling things, maybe summoning some zombies, stealing a soul or two. He's like the plain yoghurt of campaign endbosses.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:16
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He also has a guaranteed wand of death, and there are abandoned shops on his dungeon level.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:18
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The Bee posted:Wait, is grogs.txt back? It was gone?
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Aug 9, 2020 19:24
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Android Blues posted:He's also super generic, personality and powers-wise. He's an evil demon guy who summons zombies and has a magic rod. His motivation? Doing evil things, controlling things, maybe summoning some zombies, stealing a soul or two. He's like the plain yoghurt of campaign endbosses. I kinda liked that despite being the Demon Prince of Undeath, he doesn't actually like the undead. He just used them as tools. That was a neat bit of characterization.
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Aug 9, 2020 20:40
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Gwyneth Palpate posted:He also has a guaranteed wand of death, and there are abandoned shops on his dungeon level. So he's basically a gnome, got it.
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Aug 9, 2020 20:49
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Orcus is the Syndrome that turns an area into a "domain" under the user's absolute control. Lets you make spears out of the earth, summon animals in the area to mess with your opponent, etc.
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Aug 9, 2020 23:12
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Okay, sounds like I didn't miss anything (or rather, there wasn't anything to miss), so - the staff being made of tongues is more a necromancy thing than some sort of specifically Orcus symbolism?
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Aug 9, 2020 23:46
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Daikloktos posted:Okay, sounds like I didn't miss anything (or rather, there wasn't anything to miss), so - the staff being made of tongues is more a necromancy thing than some sort of specifically Orcus symbolism? Funny enough about the whole Orcus on his throne thing, his most recent model actually has him on his throne. 
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Aug 9, 2020 23:51
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habeasdorkus posted:Even in the "obese" Orcus days, I think he was just loving well hench. Sure, he had a gut, but he also had arms the size of tree trunks. I think overall that's on par for the demons since a major problem they face in the blood war is that despite being literally infinite they're eternally paralyzed by their own petty squabbling
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Aug 10, 2020 00:00
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Shugojin posted:I think overall that's on par for the demons since a major problem they face in the blood war is that despite being literally infinite they're eternally paralyzed by their own petty squabbling https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0668.html
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Aug 10, 2020 01:26
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I know it's not going to happen but PLEASE HAVE A NEW STRIP TOMORROW PLEASE HAVE A NEW STRIP TOMORROW PLEASE HAVE A NEW STRIP TOMORROW PLEASE HAVE A NEW STRIP TOMORROW PLEASE HAVE A NEW STRIP TOMORROW I don't think I've ever been on pins and needles wanting to see what happens next.
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Aug 10, 2020 04:42
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That's not how you do it *clears throat* I hope Rich is ok 
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Aug 10, 2020 05:03
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I was thinking about The Plan, and I was wondering - would there be any possible downside to letting the Snarl go absolutely wild in the Lower Planes?
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Aug 10, 2020 05:24
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oobey posted:I was thinking about The Plan, and I was wondering - would there be any possible downside to letting the Snarl go absolutely wild in the Lower Planes? I don't know, would you murder your children if you were a head God? *Cronus need not apply
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Aug 10, 2020 05:26
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ikanreed posted:I don't know, would you murder your children if you were a head God? Presumably killing bad people indiscriminately is bad even if they are bad. I.e like when V killed a lot of Dragons. Because you have a lot of souls of people down there, and while some are probably Capital E, Evil, most are probably not. For example all of the "dishonourable" Dwarves.
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Aug 10, 2020 05:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:Presumably killing bad people indiscriminately is bad even if they are bad. I.e like when V killed a lot of Dragons. Because you have a lot of souls of people down there, and while some are probably Capital E, Evil, most are probably not. For example all of the "dishonourable" Dwarves. Oh, drat. The dwarves really throw a wrench in that idea, yeah. You would have to exclude Hel’s Domain for that reason alone. I don’t think the other planes have any non-Evil souls, though, I don’t think that kind of mistake is cosmologically possible. Aside from that hiccup, though, I think using a God-killing abomination to destroy Evil once and for all is a pretty solid one. I mean, we’re talking about a meta verse where that concept is literally personified. Imagine the next world, built without the input of any Evil gods whatsoever, aside from Hel and The Dark One. Heck, you might get lucky, and Hel could just starve to death before the next Creation rolled around. Of course, I don’t see any way you’d EVER get TDO to let you use his quiddity. A shame... oobey fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 05:44
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Even assuming that the good gods COULD point the snarl at particular gods to "clean them up", and that none of them had any kind of moral qualms with mass scale deicide, I doubt it would do anything long term. Free willed beings aren't going to suddenly stop committing evil acts just because there isn't an evil god to benefit from it. New evil gods will rise in the vacuum of power from evil followers and belief existing.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:19
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OK Miko
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Aug 10, 2020 10:01
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Fiend posted:We want for them the same thing that has held the fiendish races back for all these Millennia Woah. Reading that again in light of everything going on with Readcloak, is this guy saying that fiends were also screwed over by their creators, being somehow forced into petty endless conflict for the sole purpose of keeping them manageable? Is the whole story of oots going to boil down to all of creation's grievances against the gods?
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Aug 10, 2020 13:46
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I don't think that "Thanks to the gods, we have to fight in endless petty conflicts between each other and can't unite, invade other planes and turn reality into endless orgy of slaughter, suffering and despair, how dare they!" is a very sympathetic grievance. 
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Aug 10, 2020 15:20
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The general D&D differentiation between "usually evil" and "always evil" is that the former are born as clean slates, while the latter are born from the souls of those who did evil in life. An imp may spawn with no recollection of any past, but the petitioner(s) that make it up would be major assholes, and the imp would subsequently also be one, otherwise it wouldn't have been an imp. It's a whole other barrel of metaphysical monkeys than the "usually evil" label which is finally being phased out. Either way, judging by Thor's comments about having to mind-wipe outsiders, it seems like they have power over those, but didn't actually create them. I'm not sure how exactly you'd map OotS onto the greater D&D cosmology, because it seems like the stick world is the only actual material plane, which then does not explain where exactly gods and outsiders came from in the first place.
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Aug 10, 2020 15:46
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The IFCC Directors just want a peaceful life!
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Aug 10, 2020 16:31
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Either way, judging by Thor's comments about having to mind-wipe outsiders, it seems like they have power over those, but didn't actually create them. I'm not sure how exactly you'd map OotS onto the greater D&D cosmology, because it seems like the stick world is the only actual material plane, which then does not explain where exactly gods and outsiders came from in the first place. Yeah, things get sticky when you start thinking too hard along those lines. https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0669.html This strip here, clearly shows stars in the sky. Going by Thor's comments, they only have enough base material to create one world at a time. Also, of interest, is that one populated planet can sustain three pantheons of Gods. You have the Astral Plane, the Lower Planes. the various elemental planes, etc etc, but there is only the one singular planet, IE Material Plane.
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Aug 10, 2020 16:56
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Obviously Roy's sword is The Monado and the Snarl created it, and Roy is a clone of the Snarl and the fiends are going to attack the Snarl using V weilding their own Monado and then the Snarl will have both Monados, and Roy must create his own by force of will and wish for a world free of gods
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Aug 10, 2020 17:06
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Does this involve Elan having to pilot a bio-Robot made from his dead mother
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Aug 10, 2020 17:11
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