The Order of the Stick: T-Rex, Troll Sex and Will Checks

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ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Maybe Tarquin's allies as well. I don't see them just disappearing, especially after #945.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 04:30

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:16

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Tarquin knows whatever Nale told him between 821 and 822, which he got straight from Shojo. So yeah, they could conceivably know as much as we do.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 04:38

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Heh. Book five started about a week before I started working on my PhD, and I finished first.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 09:04

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Arguments about alignment arguments are pretty bad too.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 04:42

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Huh. Apparently Tolkien's version of Dwarvish actually is based on Semitic languages. I didn't know that.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 04:03

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

My Lovely Horse posted:

I'm actually a little disappointed no one said "THOR'S NUTS" in the comic before.

It's actually in 947. The red-bearded dwarf uses it in panel 12.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 07:08

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

TheAceOfLungs posted:

Huh. I always thought it meant "Cat".

Latin for "cat" is "feles".

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 02:27

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

I can't help but think that the major point of this strip was to show off more of the art upgrade.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2014 03:18

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Dolash posted:

It's funny Roy's joking about dancing on his grave when he knows for a fact Belkar really will be dead in a few weeks.

Which will probably get referenced whenever Belkar finds out about the prophecy.

# ¿ May 5, 2014 17:18

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Neutral evil is on there twice.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 05:05

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

YggiDee posted:

There's also no Chaotic Neutral I think?

Probably the neutral evil connected to chaotic good should be chaotic neutral.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 06:48

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Someone on another forum posted a link to Rich discussing Durkon's vampirization, which I don't think has been discussed here.

quote:

There is absolutely zero difference between Malack and Durkon's vampirizations, with the sole exception that Hel made the spirit sitting in Durkon's head while Nergal made the one that was sitting in Malack's. Hel is able to put that spirit into Durkon's body because of the physical vampirization process that Malack enacts on Durkon's corpse, which opens a door to Negative Energy and traps Durkon's spirit inside it. Which would also be true of any other vampire created from a person who fell under the Northern Pantheon's domain, though she wouldn't take a personal interest in just any person because they wouldn't be a powerful cleric.

Hel does not have rightful dominion over Durkon's soul as part of her normal assignment of dishonored souls, however, because Durkon did in fact die in battle. She got involved because she is also, separately, the Northern deity of undeath, and one of her "duties" is making the evil spirits for all Northern vampires. The vampirization process basically jammed up the normal disposition of Durkon's soul by trapping it inside the undead body. Where Durkon's actual soul ends up will not be determined until/unless it is freed. It's a like a naturally occurring Trap the Soul spell.

Nothing that happens with vampires in this comic can be extrapolated to work similarly with other undead. All types of undead work differently, that's why they are different types in the first place. Xykon is still Xykon.

All of Malack's dialogue regarding who he is/was should be viewed through the lens of me not wanting to spoil the scene from #946. Some of what he says is metaphorical and all of it is deliberately ambiguous, because I was consciously trying to make you think one thing while another thing was actually true. As a rule of thumb, it is not in my interest to lock down the metaphysics of things if I don't have to, so don't expect that I will have characters exposition How Things Work just to clear up your confusion.

Likewise, any assumptions that characters in the comic know or understand the details of how this process occurs on a detailed internal level should be thrown out the window. They don't. Being a vampire is super-rare; being returned to life after being a vampire so you can share the logistics of how it worked from your point of view in such a way that it entered a general body of knowledge that people would have learned about in the course of their education is simply not something that has ever occurred.

I'm sure there are more byzantine arguments going around that I'm missing, but really, this isn't as complicated as most of you are making it. There is only one way that vampirization works, and it overrides the natural order of things, including where souls go. That's why everyone says things like, "That's against the natural order of things!" about it. However, Hel is not breaking the rules of vampirization itself at all.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 07:40

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Mylan posted:

I'm wondering if the Gods are going to start taking more direct action from this point. Here we've seen the results of Thor's storm and it's precision lightning bolts. Nice and all, but Thor has to be aware of Xykon and the rifts by now, through Durkon. I know deus ex machinas are unsatisfying from a narrative point of view, but at what point will the Gods start breaking out the avatars? The mortals are loving with the rifts, and the snarl is getting larger and larger holes in his prison walls. You'd think with their own lives on the line, they'd HAVE to start paying a little more attention to the situation, and step in when necessary.

From what little we've seen of the gods in the strip, they don't seem exceptionally competent.

# ¿ May 26, 2014 23:11

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Angela Christine posted:

Even undead have to draw breath to talk. No way you'd make Belkar into a non-verbal undead. Snarky comments are half his character.

Non-corporeal undead like ghosts and spectres probably don't breathe to talk.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 03:13

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

It's not like the start of book 5 was all that exciting either.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2014 07:54

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Zoe posted:

...thinking about it I'd be surprised if this next book wasn't pretty heavily villain focused. Redcloak's going to have to betray Xykon pretty soon now, and the MitD will have a role to play in that one way or another, and I assume Rich will have to work a lot of the Start of Darkness backstory into the strip at some point as well. And then of course there's whatever the IFCC is up too. There's still a lot of plot that needs to be gotten out of the way before we get to the last gate. Not the least of which is finding out the truth of what's even going on with the gates in the first place.

It's very hard to imagine Tarquin and his allies completely sitting this one out too. And Sabine needs a chance to get back at him for killing Nale.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 03:24

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

MikeJF posted:

Really? I feel like Tarquin's done with in this story, impotently raging about how this was a terrible ending. And let's not forget that his allies just had this happen and may be distracted.

Tarquin's whole story was ultimately about defying literary convention. And Sabine definitely still has some role to play in this.

Edit: Tarquin himself could be done. But the powers of the western continent now have an interest in the last gate.

ultrafilter fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Oct 23, 2014

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 05:21

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Zoe posted:

Also it sounds like he's looking for something specific, and the return of DUN DUN DUN probably means it's something more ominous than a funny gnome hat souvenir or whatever.

He could be looking for clerics who are high-level enough to resurrect him.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2014 08:51

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Lurking in the shadows isn't really Thog's style.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:11

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Tarquin and his allies know of Ian's connection to the Greysky City thieves' guild. Bozzok and Crystal may not be acting on their own.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 02:48

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

jng2058 posted:

The big question now is whether Crystal's undead or if she's some kind of semi-sentient flesh golem that Grubwiggler put together. Given the stitch marks, I'm guessing the latter, but it could go either way.

Pretty sure that Crystal killed Grubwiggler in the extra strips for book 5, so this probably isn't his work.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 06:40

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

ImpAtom posted:

Haley murdered someone in cold blood.

It looks a little different in light of the bonus story in book 4. During the raid on Grubwiggler's to recover Roy's body, Crystal and Bozzok were pretty clearly trying to take out Haley as collateral damage. Haley killing Crystal becomes a lot more justified once it's made clear that the latter will always be a threat no matter what agreements are in place. I think Rich screwed up in not making that part of the main strip (and he even says as much in the author commentary).

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 18:27

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Zoe posted:

I've just been re-reading all the strips with the new art, and drat Roy, it's pretty cold making jokes about dancing on the grave of a person you know full well is going to die very soon. Not sure how I missed that the first time.

Roy has a lot of heroic qualities and he's a good leader for the team, but there's no denying that he's kind of a dick.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 21:36

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Book 5 shipped recently, so the update pace should pick up a bit.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 23:57

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Redcloak has access to Xykon's phylactery. I don't think that Xykon's going to be around too long after Redcloak makes his move.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 02:04

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Spoilers for the book 5 author commentary:

Part of the purpose of having Redcloak lead the assault on the rebel base was to remind the reader that Redcloak is a high-level cleric, and that he has access to some very powerful spells on his own. Xykon, like Vaarsuvius, isn't too familiar with divine magic, so he's not going to be fully aware of how big a threat it is to his plans.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 02:26

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Calaveron posted:

MitD's entire arc is about him going against what people expect from him and following his heart so I don't think this will be a thing that happens.

He's under a spell that will compel him to do so. What it takes to avert that depends on what that spell is.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 03:12

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Or sidestepped somehow.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 05:53

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Do the gods breathe?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 07:12

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

This one's pure setup for whatever happens next. The pacing will be fine once it's in a book, but for now I'm just waiting.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 08:22

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Yeah, Crystal's probably an anti-Haley golem. That's why Bozzok launched the attack when Haley was separated from the larger group, and why her first action was to take out Elan.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 22:31

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

I smiled a bit.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 00:30

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Now that her dad's free from prison, does she have any more reason to hoard gold?

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 03:38

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

I did not see that coming.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 18:42

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Anatharon posted:

Is there even a myth or something that makes that make sense?

The Golem of Prague. Not all versions of the story have the golem going crazy, but there are some that do, and that's where this is taken from.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2015 07:41

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Zoe posted:

But between her death and this one it seems like there's now a bit of a running theme of people being killed by undead creatures they thought they had control of...

Third time's the charm?

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 20:06

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Thing is, Rich is actually pretty good about not being hamfisted with this stuff. In the author commentary for book 5, he talks about how the fight against Tarquin is an old straight white guy being defeated by a diverse group of heroes, and how he wanted to present that. I think he did a reasonable job of keeping that in the background and letting the reader notice it instead of shoving it in our faces.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 06:54

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Dolash posted:

Too alike. They'll get into an ecumenical dispute concerning Banjo's exact theological status and spend the whole trip glaring at each other from across the ship.

Right up until one of them sees something shiny.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 22:29

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

In Start of Darkness, Redcloak told a crayon story that he knew wasn't true.

(Do the prequel books get spoiler tags, or are they open now?)

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 00:52

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:16

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

It's been a while since I looked at Origins, but we don't actually see anyone making a prophecy, right? So it may not even exist and there could be something else going on.

Admittedly, this theory would be stronger if I had any idea what that something else might be.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2015 00:13

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > The Order of the Stick: T-Rex, Troll Sex and Will Checks

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