Was that... THE SNARL!?!
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Was that... THE SNARL!?!
Someone realized that a Sweaty warrior was pierced by the Snarl-y energy/body/dontknowwhatisthatanymore? Looks like there is already a first victim and he will probably be undone.
I think I have a theory--I'll use spoiler tags:
SpoilerThe "rifts" don't lead to a location like an alternate dimension or something--they just lead to some place or another in the OOTSverse. The purple bits around the edges of the rifts? THEY are infinitessimal pieces of the Snarl, trapped in an ooga-booga-booga limbo place outside of time and space, and the Rifts can allow it to escape because they're tears in the fabric of reality itself. The whole "Gate" thing is nothing more than a MASSIVE misnomer.
Needless to say, I'm extremely happy it looks like the focus is back on the gates.:smallbiggrin:
What if Kraagor's Gate is actually down? As in, Xykon and Redcloak teleported in off-panel, and set off the krakakoom thing...?
I suspect it is just pareidolia on your part. If The Giant really intended to illustrate earth's sky, he would have included the other nearby constellations and stars, particular Sirius, which would have been in-line with Orion's belt (and the stars are not that *dense* in earth's sky around Orion)
Reminds me of the thread about how a good-aligned team might have tried to fix the problems of the western continent. Miron's throwaway line about the "last time" involving a plane of water suggests Laurin's been trying something along these lines for some time now. I find it intriguing that she throws out "desalination magic" as if it were no big thing, but apparently never, along the way, considered simply creating water with magic, which, per those previous discussions, was cantrip-level magic.
Is there any functional distinction in D&D between a level 40-60 mortal and a god?
Laurin stated that she could not sense the mind of even a single fish in that sea. Earth's oceans, notwithstanding the continuing efforts of human overfishing, still has plenty of fish in them. (Unless earth fish are immune to psionic probing...?)
Orion would look like Orion in the sky of a planet that is not earth only if that planet is close to earth. Betelgeuse is 650ly away from earth, Rigel is 860ly away from earth, and the three belt stars are 736, 1340, and 915ly away from earth.Quote:
That is a fun observation! Betelguese is somewhat out of place, but that could either be an art error or a view from a different part of our universe (I don't know what Orion is like in 3-space, off-hand).
Well, Laurin, assuming she's alive and still capable of independent action, at least has got her Gate....
Oh... OH.
This... can't be good.:eek:
In what they are capable of doing? Only the lack of Divine Ranks.
When it comes to pure power potential, there's very little difference, even without getting into CharOps shenanigans.
Yikes.
I have nothing else to say or speculate at this moment.
Holy ****!
Mayday!
Mayday!
Containment Breech!
Abandon Ship!
Abandon Plane!
ABANDON PLANE!
Will Laurin Survive?
Has Miron danked his last shew?
Tune in next week!
The snarl is back, all hail the snarl? :smallwink:
I mentioned up-thread that I don't believe it's Earth, so take it when I say "it could be past Earth or future Earth" very lightly. :smallsmile:
Thanks. "Close to Earth" is still pretty far, though.Quote:
Orion would look like Orion in the sky of a planet that is not earth only if that planet is close to earth. Betelgeuse is 650ly away from earth, Rigel is 860ly away from earth, and the three belt stars are 736, 1340, and 915ly away from earth.
I agree that pareidolia is the simplest explanation, though "three stars in a tight row" is so evocative that it's easy to believe that it was intentional, either as a clue or as continued misdirection.
Luckily, my "different planets" idea doesn't hinge on desert-rift planet being in our universe. I just think it being in our universe would be a clever trick, one way or another, on Mr. Burlew's part.
I called it waaaaay back that Laurin's favor was going to be control of the Gate.
Pardon me while I gloat briefly:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showp...4&postcount=57
Heh, heh, heh. :smallcool:
Something I'm unsure of -- did Laurin & Myron just fall over in surprise, or did the Snarl (or whatever it is) push them somehow? None of the soldiers fell over in surprise, though one looks like he's been run through with a purple tendril. Did Myron grab Laurin and pull her down to protect her?
Unlikely. Rich wouldn't foreshadow going to the north so persistently if he didn't plan to actually send the Order there. Durkon has yet to fulfill his posthumous prophecy.
Not to mention it would be really anticlimactic to have the last Gate destroyed off-panel when each of the other four had a whole book devoted to it.
I'm not sure if it is the Snarl. I'm noting a distinct lack of claws or... any life-esque features, really. It could be any sort of cosmic backlash from tampering with a fraying divide in the fabric of reality.
That it would look somewhat like the Snarl would be no surprise, as the Snarl was made out of tangled threads of the fabric of reality.
For the record, what the Giant actually said about "Riftworld" not being our world was:
So no real room for verbal trickery about Soon's and Girard's Rifts leading to different worlds.Quote:
Until then, the secret of the world-within-the-world (which no, is NOT our Earth) will remain unknown.
Incidentally, I'm now even happier than before that the rift-did-something-to-Blackwing theory was formally shot down.
The Giant might have used a star chart or template. Orion being there does not make it earth.
Awesome strip. And a very scary prospect.
Crazy theory time:
The Snarl is a meta-game creature born of argument between friends, as is also pointed out by The Giant's comments in Round 8 of No Cure for the Paladin Blues. These last events may be foreshadowing towards answering the question laid out by Roy in 695:
:roy:: "What the hell happened between these people to turn them against each other like this?"
Maybe the greatest challenge to the OOTS is about to be revealed: the Snarl destroyed the Order of the Scribble from within by seeding conflict and turning them irreparably against each other. We may be witnessing it starting to do the same with Tarquin's team; perhaps even its methods of doing so. If this is the case (and by the way, nice move making it clear that they are friends at the beginning, so we can see it all falling apart), then the OOTS will have to overcome the internal ruptures that will be spawned by the Snarl in order to defeat it (banish, seal, insert favorite term here).
Maybe that's where all the character growth and group bonding so far is going to make its stand. Will it be enough? (dun-dun-DUNNN)
In any case, what a story.
There is enough detail if you look closely: Miron's hand is on Laurin's collar, and the angle of Laurin's arms and legs suggest she is being pulled.
On a related note, does anyone else notice that it looks like the hole is filling up with water? Hope they don't all get drowned.
Holy Gods that's an awesome looking final panel. And a nice resolution to Laurin's favour, and whether or not Tarkie makes it back to his palace, and whether or not the Order should have gone through the Rift (the answer is no).
New questions now, like will Laurin, Miron and co. die a horrible and soul-destroying death?
You guys give me way too much credit. What I used was a scatter brush.
In Illustrator, you can make custom brushes that let you put down a row of the same image over and over as you draw a line. You can set the preferences for those brushes to have random size, random spacing, and random scatter off the main line. I made a tiny round "star" brush with high spacing and scatter values and just scribbled around a bit until I liked the way it looked. By pure random chance, three of those stars ended up in a relatively coherent line.
So no, it STILL isn't Earth in the Rift. It will never be Earth in the Rift. Earth will never show up.