Order of the Stick: November II

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

Of course, there's always this situation:

D: Okay, V, do your stuff.
V: Me? I thought you were supposed to prepare remove curse.

Or The Giant could be using the old 2nd edition one which can only be negated by a wish 50% of the time.

I smell a sidequest coming along...

[DOOM2099]

Daddy needs his fix... Is there a way to get notified when its up?

[ref]

ouch. What's it this time? Another B&E? Dire Armoire take two? something more obscure? hehe ;)

Just hope you're ok.

[UnHoly_Ram]

The comic is going to be later than normal today. Expect it in the late evening. Heck, you might just want to check first thing tomorrow, actually. Sorry.

Wait, I thought you said it was going to be later than normal, The quoted timeframe seems to be the normal schedule to me.

[idksocrates]

maybe your timezone places the normal placement of the comic. Usually, in my timezone, I see a new comic at 9:00 in the morning, but now, at 4:00 in the afternoon, its still not up.


And I can so see Elan saying Potty. "Go to the Bathroom" just isn't naive enough, and there's no way he's gonna say "go take a (insert slightly offensive word here)."

[The Demented One]

"Go for the eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!"

I dunno. I just thought the "potty" comment was especially childish, even for Elan. He is, I assume, in his early 20's, and has lived atleast 1/10 of that time (i assume) away from home, sleeping on dungeon floors, facing monsters, and generally doing things that risked his life. "Potty" seemed rather out of character for even him. Oh well.

"We must rest soon. Boo is getting squirrely!"

I always liked "Go for the b33r Boo!" better.

[Devils_Advocate]

I'm just saying that Rich has instructed us all (myself included here) to not look into things TOO much. He tries to follow "the rules", but only so far as the story/funny allows.

I think it's not a matter of looking into things too deeply per se. It's when people expect the comic to follow game rules exactly that it's a problem. (For starters, it's not even realistic to expect that of a world that behaves like a D&D game -- how many games of D&D follow the standard rules with complete accuracy all of the time?) But I'm guessing that's probably pretty much what you meant. ;)

How old is Elan? Six?

He seems to act like a (creative and impulsive) 6-year-old most of the time. He's struck me as having the mind of a child in pretty much all respects for a while now. Seeing him talk like a kindergartener is pretty much par for the course. ("Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me! Ooh! Ooh!")

(Oh, and if you're one of the 512 people who emailed me with a decryption of Haley's words as if you were the only one with the skill necessary to understand it? You aren't. Please stop emailing me.)

Sadly, anyone still emailing you now presumably isn't reading this thread. (Seeing how the decryption has been posted multiple times and discussed at length in it. IOW, what Nikolai II said.)

Since it should be late enough for a prediction I will assume that Remove Curse will be enough to cure Haley, and that D and V have memorized one in total between the two of them.. ;)

Doubtful, I think. Isn't a curse by definition a magical effect from some external source? Darned magical semantics!

Of course, there's always this situation:

D: Okay, V, do your stuff.
V: Me? I thought you were supposed to prepare remove curse.

Well, I should certainly hope that they would have discussed ahead of time who should prepare it (and probably decided on Durkon, since it's only a level 3 spell for him, as opposed to level 4 for Vaarsuvius. If V even has it).

Please, people. Not coordinating your spells makes baby Banjo cry.

[Demosthenes]

The comic is going to be later than normal today. Expect it in the late evening. Heck, you might just want to check first thing tomorrow, actually. Sorry.


(Oh, and if you're one of the 512 people who emailed me with a decryption of Haley's words as if you were the only one with the skill necessary to understand it? You aren't. Please stop emailing me.)

Oh good, at least nothing has gone terribly wrong (again) Phew, afraid someone got hurt or something.

{Not at all Sarcastic}

[Nightfall]

The comic is going to be later than normal today. Expect it in the late evening. Heck, you might just want to check first thing tomorrow, actually. Sorry.

Not at all, Rich. Quality is well worth waiting for.

[Duraska]

Couldn't he just take off the belt...?

They showed the ogre when they were holding the belt.

good point. the "male" ogre turned back to female after the belt was removed. Sounds like all Roy has to do is remove the belt. Wonder why he hasn't done it already?

[Midnight Son]

good point. the "male" ogre turned back to female after the belt was removed. Sounds like all Roy has to do is remove the belt. Wonder why he hasn't done it already?

I read somewhere that the belt comes off if you die. The ogre was dead. I think the only other way is to find some method to magically remove it.

[Variform]

OotS #247 won't load on my computer with my connection. The first three panels load just fine, and the rest of the page is blank, and staying that way. I'm kind of new to this site, so I'm not sure how typical that is. Am I missing something? Is it my computer? My software? My connection? Or should I just be patient?

*added in edit* And I am having a similar problem with #246. The first three rows are loading, and the last 1 1/2 is just black space. Not blank, black. *Really* not sure what that signifies.

[zibeck]

Need...OotS...fix.

[Invariel]

I think that might be a server issue. Something about (tens of?) thousands of readers trying to get their Monday OotS fix.

[DOOM2099]

I ...am growing weak... go on without me.... need.... fix....

[Ronfar]

It's Tuesday. The strip is officially late. :'(

[The Giant]

The new strip is up now.

[HailSpork]

Yay!

This one's a lot harder to decode though... no obvious phrase to start on; yet...

[Matuse]

Jayne err...Belkar: I'll be in my bunk.

[Midnight Son]

I think Q=W. It's the first letter of most question sentences.

[triffid]

Wow, that was fun to decode! ;D A bit tougher to get into than the first, but definitely worth it.

(hee hee hee)

[HailSpork]

Wow, that was fun to decode! ;D A bit tougher to get into than the first, but definitely worth it.

(hee hee hee)

That's pretty fast... I'm still having trouble with it.
I tried http://www.kirby98.fsnet.co.uk/Decoder-Random.htm to do letter substitution, but no luck. I don't think Q==W, since ECGGQV makes no sense that way. I'm thinking it's not direct letter substitution; perhaps backwards or just not direct...

[Douglas]

It appears that Rich made a mistake in this one - two (decoded) letters map to the same (encoded) letter. There are two t's in Haley's coded speech, but they decode to two different letters.

Highlight to read:
Ry dgose du ecggqv rt oii wkssu-emksnrsb.
It means my speech is all funny-sounding.

Qmdg obors?
Come again?

Qos emdghmnu cigoeg bgy zggcu ytoseegfkoi mww dg?
Can somebody please get weepy transsexual off me?

Code - decoded
a
b - g
c - p
d - m
e - s
f - x
g - e
h - b
i - l
j
k - u
l
m - o
n - d
o - a
p
q - c
r - i
s - n
t - s r
u - y
v - h
w - f
x
y - t
z - w

[triffid]

Aw, so much for requests to keep the code out of the monthly thread. I thought that was a good idea. :(

[Douglas]

There, I changed the color to make it hard to read. Is that better?

[zzyss]

... ah, and here I was thinking I was really smart... code was cracked in the intervening period from when I started writing my post, to when I actually posted it :( Crazy, you internet people, crazy.

[Midnight Son]

Cracked it with a few problems, but I was wrong about the Q. Definitely not a W.

[Shatteredtower]

(Oh, and if you're one of the 512 people who emailed me with a decryption of Haley's words as if you were the only one with the skill necessary to understand it? You aren't. Please stop emailing me.)

Maybe they just want to ensure that you'll Never Do It Again. I guess will know if it happens with this next strip as well. ;)

[The Giant]

It appears that Rich made a mistake in this one - two (decoded) letters map to the same (encoded) letter. There are two t's in Haley's coded speech, but they decode to two different letters.

Considering there are no rules given that I am required to abide by, there can be no mistakes.

Not that anything I say is going to stop another 500 people from emailing me about it.

[kit]

It appears that V has, in fact, Noticed. Although I suppose there's still the question of whether said Noticing occured immediately or not.