OOTS #1013 - The Discussion Thread

[Forikroder]

well that's why i said one of two options... i covered what you just said in my post

pulling V down to hell doesnt link it with the room blackwing is in though, if anything theyd all panic looking after V trying to figure out why hes passed out and remove hom from the ship to find a cleric to look at him

[schmunzel]

First, the prophecy came from Odin via his high priest, and only specifies that Durkon just had to leave 'home', which could be his domicile, the temple, his mother's house, the caves, etc. Unless you're chaining him to the wall in his bedroom or just murdering him, you have a problem.

Second, if Hel was thinking about wrecking the gate, why are we even at the moot? The HPoH could've used Word of Recall to teleport directly to the last gate the evening after he turned. If they were planning on playing the Moot card, well, why bother with that when you can just mistform in, grab the Teleport Orb, bop out to the last gate, mistform past most of the monsters and dominate something to break the big shiny thing into easily transportable pieces. This also has the benefit of removing the OOTS' ability to teleport and requires them to go through Team Evil to get to you.

Whatever Hel's backup plan is, it doesn't involve going to the last gate now instead of yesterday or last week.

On a more meta level, we have to fill two more books, so it won't be that simple.

WHAT IF
Durkula just grabs the last Demigods' High Priest and teleports off with him, so that the Moot stays indecisive and all the other High Priests cant follow until they somehow wrapped the moot up?
Someone said the cathedral is warded against teleportation - is there actual evidence for that ?

sch

[luna the cat]

pulling V down to hell doesnt link it with the room blackwing is in though, if anything theyd all panic looking after V trying to figure out why hes passed out and remove hom from the ship to find a cleric to look at him

The order of the stick KNOWS that V can be pulled to the underworld and if V randomly passes out during such an obviously critical time and it's done in a way that people notice it happening, Haley and others would likely immediately think "obviously something big is going down: seal all exits and put the ship on high alert" or something similar

Conversely if the evil council wanted to do it in a way that does NOT arouse suspicion, since V is not currently investigating the situation down there they could probably do it in a way that does NOT alert the ship

You misunderstood my post which is just getting across that the evil council has the trump card here if they want to play it; whatever plan is going on with Gontor on the mechane, the evil council could either disrupt or aid it using V if they want

[schmunzel]

Good call! Children of the Night is only Vampire Special Ability that hasn't been used yet.

"Vampires command the lesser creatures of the world and once per day can call forth 1d6+1 rat swarms, 1d4+1 bat swarms, or a pack of 3d6 wolves as a standard action. These creatures arrive in 2d6 rounds and serve the vampire for up to 1 hour."

Wolves are an obvious choice to demonstrate superiority to a cat, although rat swarms might seem perversely humorous to him.

Speculation:
1: The arrival delay will be towards the low end, 2-4 rounds.
2: Although Little Whiskers has been placid so far, either rats or wolves might be a trigger that sets him off.

That sounds like fun - I never thought of the wolves!
If that ruckus wont draw V down nothing will

sch

[Jasdoif]

WHAT IF
Durkula just grabs the last Demigods' High Priest and teleports off with him, so that the Moot stays indecisive and all the other High Priests cant follow until they somehow wrapped the moot up?

Wouldn't work; HPoH leaving invalidates his vote, so the original vote becomes "don't destroy the world" instead of a tie, and without a tie the tiebreaker is moot (moot at the 'moot...metamoot!).

[Forikroder]

WHAT IF
Durkula just grabs the last Demigods' High Priest and teleports off with him, so that the Moot stays indecisive and all the other High Priests cant follow until they somehow wrapped the moot up?
Someone said the cathedral is warded against teleportation - is there actual evidence for that ?

sch

even V can dimensionally lock the entire ship, im sure an entire pantheon of high priests, another order of clerics and a dozen gods can manage to seal a single room


unless the magic was being maintained bby gontor the sealing should still work, and since the room the godsmoot is in is still sealed i imagine the gods themselves are the ones powering the barrier preventing anyone from leaving

and if Durkula leaves then the vote becomes in favour of NO so the demigods vote no longer matters, tahts why Roys been trying to kill him

The order of the stick KNOWS that V can be pulled to the underworld and if V randomly passes out during such an obviously critical time and it's done in a way that people notice it happening, Haley and others would likely immediately think "obviously something big is going down: seal all exits and put the ship on high alert" or something similar

Conversely if the evil council wanted to do it in a way that does NOT arouse suspicion, since V is not currently investigating the situation down there they could probably do it in a way that does NOT alert the ship

You misunderstood my post which is just getting across that the evil council has the trump card here if they want to play it; whatever plan is going on with Gontor on the mechane, the evil council could either disrupt or aid it using V if they want

no ROY knows, the Order does not as far as we know

they are incapable of using V for anything, the only thing they can do is have V not do things

[alexandraerin]

unless theres a loophole that can be exploited, maybe the northern pantheon could prevent the dwarves from all going to hel with enough time

if just destroying a gate was enough then the moot was pointless and a large risk, since she can only influence a situation where all 3 pantheons end up in a tie because only the demigods of the northern pantheon are influenced by her

rather then waste all the time before the moot she could have been sieging the gate a week ago

and ordering one of your servants to destroy a gate is a big enough betrayal that the rest of the pantheon would prob lynch her for it, and the other 2 pantheons would probably join in too, even if shje got every dwarf soul theyd get torn from her as punishment for releasing the snarl

We know that destroying the last gate is enough for her plans. Even the gods who were arguing against the destruction of the world were using the argument that they could just wait until the last gate was destroyed to unmake the world without releasing the snarl.

The point of this plan is that it would leave her with more power than "even grandfather Odin". Souls are power, so no god is going to be in a position to confiscate hers.

If it seems iffier for her to openly move to destroy the world through a show of force that could be opposed by the gods and that they might be able to end the bet somehow (or get a bunch of dwarves to die in combat by sending heavenly forces against them)... again, that's why this is Plan B. And also why she's moving to implement Plan B right the freak now, before the vote is finalized and before anyone can figure out what she's doing.

Remember, Plan B was not finalized until after the OotS acquired the teleport orb, which just happened when they were in the gnome city and while Durkula was still leading Roy to find out about the Godsmoot. This implies it's something a lot less slick and intricately planned than the Godsmoot gamble, which still fell apart. It's a last minute plan, thrown together as a Hail Mary fallback plan.

[schmunzel]

While Lil' Whiskers is the biggest animal in the room, there's no reason to believe he's the highest level or has the most HP; he's not the pet, familiar or animal companion of a PC, just one of the (presumably low level) NPCs. (actually I have no idea how sound that presumption is, come to think of it)

Veldrina is the Favoured Soul of a (minor) elevn God.
She has access to some 7th lvl spells.
That doesnt sound to low to me :)

sch

[schmunzel]

I think its a safe assumption that, even if he doesn't scale with her, he is at least of a similar level if he is participating in combat with any degree of effectiveness.

the actual quotes are "..wouldnt hurt a fly"
and I cant quote the 2nd quote but it was in the line of
"hasnt hurt the giant monster fly that was trying to eat us"

Now it could either be a low level tiger that actually couldnt hurt the high lvl monster fly or its just a very pacifist (Vegan even?) tiger that wont hurt flies out of conviction.

Though Im rather convinced that the tiger will be triggered in the next strip

sch

[luna the cat]

even V can dimensionally lock the entire ship, im sure an entire pantheon of high priests, another order of clerics and a dozen gods can manage to seal a single room


unless the magic was being maintained bby gontor the sealing should still work, and since the room the godsmoot is in is still sealed i imagine the gods themselves are the ones powering the barrier preventing anyone from leaving

and if Durkula leaves then the vote becomes in favour of NO so the demigods vote no longer matters, tahts why Roys been trying to kill him


no ROY knows, the Order does not as far as we know

they are incapable of using V for anything, the only thing they can do is have V not do things

i'm at work so i can't check the backlogs

but i was pretty sure that they had informed the main party

if the IFCC knew what they were doing and a PC was around to get the message, a character would have to be holding an idiot ball to not put two and two together and go on high alert in response

[KorvinStarmast]

Miko's prophecy comes back to haunt the Order of the Stick:

You will suffer a great loss for choosing evil over good.

is the great loss their cleric being lost to Hel's service via Malack, or will that great loss be Belkar dead after a long fall?

The irony is that Belkar had the chance to firm up the great loss as Durkon being lost when he suggested "
So I say we get our van helsing on sooner rather than later" before the moot.

Wolves are an obvious choice to demonstrate superiority to a cat, although rat swarms might seem perversely humorous to him.

Speculation:
1: The arrival delay will be towards the low end, 2-4 rounds.
2: Although Little Whiskers has been placid so far, either rats or wolves might be a trigger that sets him off.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=143

A trigger that sets off a tigger ....

For Giant: nice comic relief in this strip, am looking forward to more animal follies.

[Forikroder]

The point of this plan is that it would leave her with more power than "even grandfather Odin". Souls are power, so no god is going to be in a position to confiscate hers.

really? you think all 3 pantheons combined couldnt beat her?

and there might be a difference between "we voted and destroyed the world" and "we had to destroy the world" in the honour system, the first one being them choosing and the second one being them forced to the second one could be the dwarves nobly sacrificing themselves

Remember, Plan B was not finalized until after the OotS acquired the teleport orb

presumably, he could be sealing off an escape route, it could be a benefit but not neccesary, it could be a flexible plan

if the IFCC knew what they were doing and a PC was around to get the message, a character would have to be holding an idiot ball to not put two and two together and go on high alert in response

your right, they would go on high repsonse and immediately go report to Roy what happened so he was informed on the situation and could give orders

and the only 2 remaining would be Elan and Haley so its entirely possible Haley would be holding and idiot ball

[Bobbybobby99]

Hah, it's nice to have a humor strip. Good a job as ever (which is very)

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Sooo.......I've forgotten what that orb is.

[Anansiil]

What a wonderful birthday gift! Oh Giant, you shouldn't have :P

[Bobbybobby99]

Sooo.......I've forgotten what that orb is.

A Teleport orb.

[alexandraerin]

really? you think all 3 pantheons combined couldnt beat her?

It doesn't matter what I think, or what would actually happens, when we're discussing what does or doesn't make sense for Hel to try to do. It only matters what she thinks, and she sure thinks that getting every living dwarf soul at once would make her untouchable, or she wouldn't be doing this. Any god that's going to be torked off with her for Plan B would likely not have been any happier about Plan A going off without a hitch.

And some of those who were for destroying the world immediately will be on her side. And some of the more opportunistic and amoral gods are also likely to be on her side. It wouldn't be "the 3 pantheons combined". It would be her existing enemies, and maybe a few new ones.

But even they would likely be limited in what they could do.

Remember how Durkula taunted Durkon that no god would dare violate the domain sharing agreement, because they all rely on it? If it's even possible for gods to poach souls from each other by force, I doubt that every single member of every single pantheon would be united in trying to do so, as it would destroy any illusion of security.

and there might be a difference between "we voted and destroyed the world" and "we had to destroy the world" in the honour system, the first one being them choosing and the second one being them forced to the second one could be the dwarves nobly sacrificing themselves

That doesn't make any sense. In both cases, death comes to the dwarves in the same way and not due to any action the dwarves took. No courage or bravery on their part, and most importantly, no battle, which is the explicit terms of the wager. Nothing has changed for the world's dwarves in scenario B versus scenario A.

presumably, he could be sealing off an escape route, it could be a benefit but not neccesary, it could be a flexible plan

Or, as was explained, it could be that seizing the teleport orb is the first step of Plan B, a plan that is 1) necessary only if the Godsmoot gambit fails, 2) would be more convenient to enact with the leader of the Order of the Stick off the board, and 3) only became possible when Roy gave him the idea for it that very day.

Teleporting north and destroying the gate fulfills those criteria, and brings about Hel's desired outcome: the world is destroyed and millions of dwarves die without a fight.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

A Teleport orb.

Where'd it come from?

[alexandraerin]

Where'd it come from?

V bought it in Tinkertown, narrowly beating Veldrina and Wrecan to it. We did not see the purchase, but we did see V announcing the intention to buy such an item and further saw V negotiating with a gnome artificer who could only offer boots of dimensional door (same artificer rejiggered the ioun stone into a bracelet that would transmit the spell power boost to V for Blackwing), and then we heard about the purchase from Wrecan.

EDIT: On further recollection, we do see the purchase, but in a flashback panel as Roy hears the story from Wrecan. I remembered because it had a callback joke to the magic shop in Sandsedge.

[Forikroder]

heres what your not getting

hell voting yes to destroy the world, is pefectly within all the rules, shes simply voting in the godsmoot in the way she thinks is best same as every other god

her purposely releasing the snarl to force the other pantheons to destroy the world, is not it is her personally taking action that puts the lives of the gods at risk in order to FORCE them to take an action because it benefits her specifically

the other gods would not stand for that, they would not allow her to shape the new world and would not allow her to retain power in an extreme they may even just kill her to prevent her from ever doing it again

her releasing the snarl is literally the worst crime she could ever possibly commit and goes against every rule the gods laid out in building there new world (which was basically "some parts may suck and you may disagree with others decisions but just keep your mouth shut and deal")

conflict between gods was banned for a reason, and if Hel releases the snarl thats exactly whats happening and there would be repurcussions from that

there is also a difference between them voting to end the lives of the dwarves (executing them basically) and them killing them by necesity (them getting caught up in a fight between the gods and the snarl)

[Keltest]

heres what your not getting

hell voting yes to destroy the world, is pefectly within all the rules, shes simply voting in the godsmoot in the way she thinks is best same as every other god

her purposely releasing the snarl to force the other pantheons to destroy the world, is not it is her personally taking action that puts the lives of the gods at risk in order to FORCE them to take an action because it benefits her specifically

the other gods would not stand for that, they would not allow her to shape the new world and would not allow her to retain power in an extreme they may even just kill her to prevent her from ever doing it again

her releasing the snarl is literally the worst crime she could ever possibly commit and goes against every rule the gods laid out in building there new world (which was basically "some parts may suck and you may disagree with others decisions but just keep your mouth shut and deal")

conflict between gods was banned for a reason, and if Hel releases the snarl thats exactly whats happening and there would be repurcussions from that

there is also a difference between them voting to end the lives of the dwarves (executing them basically) and them killing them by necesity (them getting caught up in a fight between the gods and the snarl)

The fact that the Dark One is still making an attempt at it without any repercussions whatsoever that we have seen indicates that no, the gods really aren't going to go flip out on her over it.

[ChillerInstinct]

in the immediate sense but what use is an orb of teleportation? i dont get why whatever they want wouldnt be here in the temple and anything important should be dimensionally shielded

unless hes going to teleport and take hostages? but against a god a hostage is pretty useless

Actually, it makes perfect sense for the HPoH to nab the teleportation orb, on two fronts.

1) This way, the Order will be that much later getting to the Gate,
and
2) The HPoH, and possibly a small legion of vamps, would now be able to teleport directly TO the gate.

If the vote fails for whatever reason, Hel's Plan B almost certainly revolves around the final gate being destroyed. The gods would have to destroy the world before the Snarl turned on them, and when they remake it, Hel has all of those dwarven souls. In other words, she gets the outcome that she would have gotten if the vote passed in her favour. If she can get some vampires (like, say, the HPoH and the vamped Creed) in and destroy it, mission accomplished. If she can stop the Order from saving it from Xykon, well, not quite mission accomplished since Xykon wants to rule the world, not nuke it, but it's still better odds than letting them just walk right in.

[Knight13]

"greed at it with their money-eyes" is my new favorite phrase.

[a1chemi]

This was the cutest comic. Bloodfeast the Extreme-inator most of all. I could feel the dopey grin on my face the entire time I was reading it.

It's all warm and fuzzy.

No small feat for a comic with a vampire in it.

[alexandraerin]

heres what your not getting

hell voting yes to destroy the world, is pefectly within all the rules, shes simply voting in the godsmoot in the way she thinks is best same as every other god

her purposely releasing the snarl to force the other pantheons to destroy the world, is not it is her personally taking action that puts the lives of the gods at risk in order to FORCE them to take an action because it benefits her specifically

the other gods would not stand for that, they would not allow her to shape the new world and would not allow her to retain power in an extreme they may even just kill her to prevent her from ever doing it again

her releasing the snarl is literally the worst crime she could ever possibly commit and goes against every rule the gods laid out in building there new world (which was basically "some parts may suck and you may disagree with others decisions but just keep your mouth shut and deal")snarl)

Where's the rule that says you can't destroy the gates articulated, exactly? What evidence do we have that it exists? No god has had a reason to destroy them before. As far as we know, she's still playing within the rules. She's not reaching into the world and destroying the gate (unfair interference), she is sending her cleric on a quest to do so, the same as any god might do.

As for what other gods will or won't stand for... some of them are on her side, and if she thought the others had any choice to "stand for" her leveraging the dwarven souls, she wouldn't be gloating now but pleading dire necessity as the reason for her vote, to cover her behind later.

conflict between gods was banned for a reason, and if Hel releases the snarl thats exactly whats happening and there would be repurcussions from that

To be specific, because arguments during the creation of the world while they were manipulating the raw fabric of creation created the snarl. Conflict in any other sense of the word is a fact of godly existence. We have seen Loki and Thor fighting, outright, with weapons. Same with Thor and Surtur. And Hel and Thor have been in conflict this whole time.

there is also a difference between them voting to end the lives of the dwarves (executing them basically) and them killing them by necesity (them getting caught up in a fight between the gods and the snarl)

It's not going to be a fight.

What's going to happen, as has been laid out by the gods voting no, is that if the last gate is destroyed, it would be several minutes before the Snarl is able to perceive the change and attack, giving them "plenty of time" to destroy the world in exactly the way they're discussing now. No battle. No courage. No valor. No sacrifice.

No difference.

[Shining Wrath]

Well, that'd be nice to see, but no. Don't Split the Party had V apologize to Blackwing and promise to be more considerate. Blood Runs in the Family had them as close confidants. This book seems to have undone all that for some reason.

V has undergone character growth. Blackwing remains a drama queen of Tony award caliber. The statement of V, confirmed by B, is that B has emanated EXACTLY the same emotional signals on multiple occasions today. Not similar, but identical. That means that on several occasions today B has reacted to a glance from a crewmember with the same intensity as a lethal menace attempting to steal an essential magical treasure.

It's a joke, and the joke is about what a burden being emphatically linked to someone as over-emotional as Blackwing is to Vaarsuvious. The fault in this situation is 99.999999999999999999% Blackwing's.

[Forikroder]

The fact that the Dark One is still making an attempt at it without any repercussions whatsoever that we have seen indicates that no, the gods really aren't going to go flip out on her over it.

assuming they all know about it and it might be a "well until he actually does it its not worth freaking out over" or maybe they simply know its doomed to fail

Where's the rule that says you can't destroy the gates articulated, exactly? What evidence do we have that it exists? No god has had a reason to destroy them before. As far as we know, she's still playing within the rules. She's not reaching into the world and destroying the gate (unfair interference), she is sending her cleric on a quest to do so, the same as any god might do.

no, no other god is going to simply free a god slaying abomination

As for what other gods will or won't stand for... some of them are on her side, and if she thought the others had any choice to "stand for" her leveraging the dwarven souls, she wouldn't be gloating now but pleading dire necessity as the reason for her vote, to cover her behind later.

she has at most 4 demi gods on her side as long as shes following "THE RULES" the other pantheons are not going to interfere with the northern gods, but if shes putting there lives at risk then they very likely will take action to prevent that from happening again

To be specific, because arguments during the creation of the world while they were manipulating the raw fabric of creation created the snarl. Conflict in any other sense of the word is a fact of godly existence. We have seen Loki and Thor fighting, outright, with weapons. Same with Thor and Surtur. And Hel and Thor have been in conflict this whole time.

not actual conflict though, just them not liking each other and those both happened before the series actually became plotty

It's not going to be a fight.

wrong

right now the snarl is in his prison, safe and sound, and is incapable of effecting the gods

the gods are planning on rebuilding that prison and part of rebuilding it would be destroying it so the dwarves dieing would just be a side effect of building the prison

but if the snarl is free then even if its not attacking the gods its now a fight for survival they need to immediately reseal it before it manages to find a pantheon and kill them, there trap only works while its motionless and not moving so they can weave the new planet around it on all dimensions

as a result of them performing combat with the snarl there forced to first destroy the planet

it would be like if V had to sacrfice someone to cast a spell that sealed Xykon forever

[NihhusHuotAliro]

So, page two, panel one:

Vampire has some sweet dancing moves.

Page two, panel three: Bloodfeast has left the bed.

Page two, panel seven: Use of, "empathicize", which is listed in my copy of Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition as a common mistake for "Empathize".

[Gusion]

Why doesn't V feel Blackwing's pain in panel 3 and 4?

[Mandor]

Why doesn't V feel Blackwing's pain in panel 3 and 4?

It would appear that at least in Stick-verse, the familiar must *choose* to inform their wizard of pain or other emotion. It may be similar in some degrees to the bond between Warder and Aes Sedai in the Wheel of Time series. Death, as a severing of the bond, is immediately felt. But other than that, either party may be able to choose to channel thoughts to the other, or not, to avoid being mentally spammed by casual or idle thought.