A Perfect Defense!

[Anymage]

When all of the rifts were wide open there was no rush by The Gods to destroy the world. Their concern is idiots trying to kill them, not The Snarl snatching random passersby.

The gods have a rough idea when the rifts will fray enough for the world to completely collapse, and have a decent track record for shutting down a world before the snarl breaks out to wreck everything. (My headcanon is that sentients in the world generally find some way to buttress the tears some time between them appearing and total collapse, and one of the biggest variables that keeps the gods from having a perfect calculation is how well the various forms of gates can be maintained before someone or something inevitably mucks it all up.) Idiots trying to weaponize a rift is one of the things weighing the gods' decision now, but even if that weren't a factor the rifts would eventually grow too wide, the world would destabilize, and the best hope for everybody would be the gods taking in all the souls before the snarl could eat everybody.

---

Y'know, though? I'll go through with the idea that you can create "zipper" gates that can be opened and closed without damage, and that you can have an effect that would replace a gate if the existing one happened to be damaged or removed. A sign saying "doom monster here, entry means death" will be seen as a challenge by adventurers because there's always a PC who wants to press a red button or fight some big monster just because it's there. Moreover, there'll be any number of baddies who'll want to subjugate the doom monster just to use it for their own ends. The zipper will be opened and closed repeatedly. On top of that, someone wanting to harness the snarl or the world within the rift for their own ends might well want to open the hole wider. A magical gate replenishing factory can be smashed up by any serious villain with determination. And that's before the idea of something like Team Evil's plan, where having access to the gate itself is handing them what they want on a silver platter.

Remember also that unlikely unforeseeable events are going to happen. Soon's Gate almost stopped Team Evil for good, until the whole thing was blown up by someone with delusions of grandeur. Girard's Gate had high level casters including Girard's own epic level self, until Girard died from old age and the rest of the defenders all became collateral damage to an epic level spell. Every gate was perfectly defended until it finally wasn't, and the idea that your gate wouldn't be threatened by rare fluke events has to contend with how many rare fluke events have happened to the gates so far.

[Errorname]

When all of the rifts were wide open there was no rush by The Gods to destroy the world. Their concern is idiots trying to kill them, not The Snarl snatching random passersby.

Serini says "I forgot they were a going concern" and Heimdall outright says they convened a godsmoot during the Order of the Scribble's day. The timescale was less urgent since there wasn't an active team of bad guys planning to attack the gods, but they were still obviously threatened by the open rifts and I'm guessing that Godsmoot was also pretty close.

[brian 333]

The gods have a rough idea when the rifts will fray enough for the world to completely collapse, and have a decent track record for shutting down a world before the snarl breaks out to wreck everything. (My headcanon is that sentients in the world generally find some way to buttress the tears some time between them appearing and total collapse,

I thought Thor said this was the first world that anyone actually patched a rift?

In any case, they were in no hurry to pull the plug in the Scribble"s day even though rifts had been around long enough for the founding of the Holey Brotherhood.

[Errorname]

In any case, they were in no hurry to pull the plug in the Scribble"s day even though rifts had been around long enough for the founding of the Holey Brotherhood.

This is a dubious claim! We don't have the full story, and what few sources we have for the gods during that period indicate that they did in fact convene a Godsmoot on the matter and the Scribblers were operating with the threat of "if we fail, the gods destroy the world" hanging over their heads. They were almost certainly at least preparing the pull the plug back before the rifts were sealed.

Also the Holey Brotherhood are a one-page joke, and it's hard to make any estimate based on that. For all we know they were a handful of dudes who found a rift in the desert and decided it was sacred and were around for like a month before the Scribblers defeated them.

[Kardwill]

Soon's sapphire was moved around

Was it? Unless I'm mistaken, the sapphire Gate, the throne, the throne room and the entire palace were built around the rift. The gate was not moved, it was built at a specific place in Azure City's sky, held up in position by a dedicated building, and stayed there until Miko blew it up. Just as Dorukan's doorway-shaped-cristal Gate was constructed on top of another rift until Elan blew it up. Or Lirian's Cristal-hanging-between-two-Ents Gate, that blew up when the Ents moved. Or Girard's "big cristal with a pyramid built on top of it" Gate, that blew up when Roy hit it with his pigsticker...

When I think about it, those things tend to blow up a lot, don't they?

I think the main problem with your strategy is that we have no proof this is even possible.

Yeah, the "make an infinite gate factory that safely pulls back damaged gates and teleports a new one, without damaging the seal, and faster than the bad guys can destroy them" sounds like a lot of assumptions about what is actually allowed by the in-universe laws.

Well, we know the basic locations of all five gates and have a rough sense of the geography. Most of them are in the wilderness with the exception of the Azure City rift, and the Redmountain and North Pole rifts both seem to be located underground.

The Crayons of Time show the location of each rift to be above ground, though. So, that means that either
- the Crayons are not an accurate depiction (which is possible, since Shojo might not have a detailed account of the other gates)
or
- the Scribblers did some heavy geoengineering to bury some of the gates, probably to conceal/defend them. That would fit with the geography of Dorukan's dungeon (It looks like there's some rough hill/small mountain under the castle), and maybe of Kraagor's grave (some weird shaped canyon overlooked by rough crag hills).
But note that since the "entrance" of Kraagor's actual dungeon is a teleport spell, the gate could be in another place entirely. Although I doubt Serini would put her HQ too far from the actual, physical location of the gate)

[Tubercular Ox]

Was it? Unless I'm mistaken, the sapphire Gate, the throne, the throne room and the entire palace were built around the rift.

Maybe, maybe not. There is one panel of Soon handing a sapphire to Shojo's father that the forum once had a discussion on. Rich participated.

But a thorough person would read the things people were saying before deciding they knew what Rich was trying to say. He was answering questions, not writing a stikipedia entry.

[Kardwill]

Maybe, maybe not. There is one panel of Soon handing a sapphire to Shojo's father that the forum once had a discussion on. Rich participated.

But a thorough person would read the things people were saying before deciding they knew what Rich was trying to say. He was answering questions, not writing a stikipedia entry.

Oh. I never identified that blue blob in Soon's hand as the sapphire.

So the Sapphire is another layer on top of the Gate on top of the Seal on top of the Rift? Sounds needlessly convoluted, but okay ^^

The point stands, though, that the Gate itself can't be moved. You can just add additional security measures on top of it.

[Tubercular Ox]

So the Sapphire is another layer on top of the Gate on top of the Seal on top of the Rift? Sounds needlessly convoluted, but okay ^^

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

[Doctor West]

Honestly that was my impression as well re: the sapphire.

As for my two cp on the main topic, assuming unlimited resources or the ability to develop an uber-gate with significantly greater capabilities than the Scribbler's spellcasters managed seems to make this a rather pointless thought experiment in my book.

[brian 333]

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

The way I understand it, what we see is the key, not the lock or the door. That is why Xykon and Redcloak could not just do the ritual on the Redmountain gate. It would not move the rift, it would only move the key to the lock that protects the seal on the rift.

What they want to teleport is the seal, but they could not get to it because it was safely locked away. When the key was destroyed, the lock went with it, the seal ripped open, and the sudden release caused the already frayed edges of the rift to unravel even more.

TE needs to unlock the gate to perform their ritual on what it protects. Unlocking it without destroying it would allow performing the ritual on the real target.

[gbaji]

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

Yeah. It's possible. Or also possible that Rich always intended the sapphire itself to be some kind of symbol or object of power related to the gate, but not the gate itself. Kinda like the remote control to your garage door. It would have been one of the things that each person built up as part of their own defense of their respective gates. Durokon placed a sigil on his, and then built an entire tower around that to defend his. Lirian attached two Treants, and had an entire forest of guardians, and her anti-magic virus, to defend hers. Girard encased his in a lead pillar with misleading info on it, then surrounded it with a pyramid, defended that with his family, and hid the whole thing in the middle of a desert covered with illusions. We don't actually know what specific object or power is physically present near/on Serini's gate, but she built a pretty massive layer of dungeons and monsters to defend hers.

It would not be off pattern for Soon to have first built a magical sappire to control access to the gate in some way, then build the tower/throneroom around that, then establish his Sappire Guard to defend that as well (including the oaths and ghost martyrs). Each defense did seem to have at least two parts: One that actually made it difficult to approach/find the gate itself, and another to physically/magically defend the gate. Though, to be perfectly fair, the Sapphire didn't seem to actually do much in this regard, other than maybe concealing that there was a gate and rift behind it. Though I suppose the same could be said of Girard's, since the lead sheeting didn't actually prevent physical access either. So yeah. It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.


Oh. As to the actual subject here. Put me down as "I think that creating some sort of system that allows for automatic replacement of gates would open up a risk of someone hijacking the system and gaining control/access to the gates/rifts anyway". The vulnerable point here is the whole "magic that replaces one gate with another" (or allows for opening/closing of said gate) bits. Assuming that magical research is a thing, then one could simply trick someone else into opening a gate and then observing what happens. Could learn how the replacement gates are magically put in place, and then duplicate it somehow. Now you've got your own gate, built by you, and granting you access to the seal behind it. The mere fact of building something in which "being replaced by another thing connected to the gate" is imbedded within it, would make the system vulnerable.

Also, I'm not sure how this would at all defend against something like TDO's ritual. He's not actually opening the gate, he's just moving it and thus moving the rift contained within. He should be able to do that just as easily with one of these replacable gates as a more permanent one. The threat isn't "can I open this gate and gain control of the rift", but merely "can I move this gate to an outer plane, and then threaten to open/destroy it, so that the rirft now opens onto some other god's home plane?". That threat is still present, but in this system you've made the gates far far more easily accessible.

[hamishspence]

It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.

It "further sealed and reinforced" the Gate.

The gem reinforces the Gate; the gem is NOT the Gate, and the Gate is not the seal, and the seal is not the rift. The gem is the deadbolt, not the lock, or the door, or the doorway. The "door" is a complex spell that is not actually visible but is what Dorukan and Lirian are casting in the first panel of the second page of #276. The "lock" is the Gate, a tiny magical object that later had a throne crafted around it; it's about the size of a raisin in the case of Azure City. The "doorway" is the rift itself, and it is not really inside the gemstone, it's just that the gem (and Gate) are translucent and we can see through it (because it's a visual medium and it made it easier to understand). The gemstone is an enchanted object that further seals and reinforces the Gate; thus, the "deadbolt."

When Soon hands over the Sapphire to Shojo's father, he is essentially giving the last piece of the Gate's security system over so that it might be put into place. Think of the Sapphire as an additional seal that Soon and his followers came up with. The Sapphire does not NEED to be in the same place as the Gate in order to seal it, because it's magic, but moving it around is risky. There's a chance that it will just fail and the Gate will swing open. Before the panel shown, Soon likely kept it somewhere else safe, but chose as he was dying to consolidate the protections (because that's where he was going to be hanging out as a ghost-martyr). I guess the magic might have been stronger being in the same spot as the Gate, too.

[gbaji]

It "further sealed and reinforced" the Gate.

Right. I got the words. But, practically speaking, what did it actually do? It didn't seem to prevent anyone from being able to break the gem and the gate in one swing of a sword. There were additional magical defenses around the room to prevent scrying and whatnot. So... what did it actually do?

In what way did it reinforce the gate? Was there some actual concern that, in the absence of some additional magic beyond the seal and the gates, the rifts might open up on their own anyway? Did other gates have this? It just seems odd that, if this was actually needed to allow the gate itself to continue its primary function of keeping the rift sealed, that this was something left to the individual scribblers to do, rather than something built by Lirian and Durokon when they originally built the seals and the gates. And if they built this, then why isn't it a component of the gate itself? Did they seal the rifts, then build the gates, and then sometime later go "oh wait. We need to put some additional item/magic on each gate to further reinforce them"? Did this happen before or after they had their break up?

I've just always gotten that, beyond the seals and the gates themselves, each Scribbler was left to their own devices in terms of what they did to defend them. So I could see if the Sapphire was some kind of magic gem that detected anyone intending to open the gate and zapped them, or had some kind of warning system which alerted the legitimate owner of the gem if someone tried to tamper with the gate (that would actually make a lot of sense for its function actually). But it just never set well with me that it was somehow tied into maintaining the integrity of the actual gate itself. To me, all of the stuff the individual Scribblers did to/with their gates should have been about defending them from external threats to the gates, but the phrase "futher sealed and reinforced" suggests it's internally focused.

Then again, the Giant used the term "deadbolt", which is generally something used on something to additionally make it more difficult to open from the outside. Which I suppose makes complete sense, except that the gem itself seems way too easily broken for that to actually function as a deadbolt to the gate at all. It should be nigh indistructable, requiring some kind of artifact level magic weapon to destroy, if its purpose is actually to act as a sort of deadbolt. And if it's somehow tied to or on top of the gate, and acts as an extra layer of protection, one has to wonder how that worked. Did it mean that only the weilder of the sapphire could access the gate (suggested by the Giant's statements that TE would have to find the gem before he'd be able to use the ritual. Er... But then... why in the blazing heck put the darn thing in the same room as the gate? It should be buried deep underground beneath the Sapphire guard headquarters, within a secret vault that only the most highly ranked and trusted Paladins of the Guard even know exists and surrounded by wards that only allow the legitimate commander of the SG to access.


Don't get me wrong. I still rank Soon's gate defense as the best of the bunch, but the sapphire itself actually did absolutely nothing at all to help in its defense.... Er... And I just had this thought. Maybe that's what the Ghost Martyr's were actually tied to? Doesn't quite match the phrasing "futher sealed and reinforced", but would totally match up with it being a (very very strong) defense for the gate (even somewhat "deadbolt" like). I mean, I like that explanation but it doesn't actually match up at all with what Rich said. Then again, I'm not really buying the combination of "an additional seal that Soon and his followers came up with" and "moving it around is risky" because "There's a chance that it will just fail and the Gate will swing open". Um... if that was a real chance, then it was a real chance if they'd never created an "additional seal" in the first place, right? So did all of the other gates have some random chance of swinging open?

I prefer to just leave it as a general "the Sapphire guard made the gem, and it was somehow tied in to their defense of the gate", and leave it at that. The actual statements made by Rich on this subject don't actually seem to make much sense if we examine them further than that. And honestly? I'm fine with just accepting that at the time Rich wrote that, he was still working out the details in terms of what the rifts, seals, and gates were and how they worked, and just not worry about it too much.

[Errorname]

The way I understand it, what we see is the key, not the lock or the door. That is why Xykon and Redcloak could not just do the ritual on the Redmountain gate. It would not move the rift, it would only move the key to the lock that protects the seal on the rift.

The Redmountain gate seems unique in that it was locked behind Dorukan's wards. I don't think Team Evil would have had the same problems with the other gates

[KorvinStarmast]

Re: A Perfect Defense!

There is no such thing.
"If we only defend, we lose the war"
(From The Seven Samurai)

[Peelee]

There is no such thing.

Spoiler: Sure there is

Show

Best defense is a good offense.

[brian 333]

Yeah. It's possible. Or also possible that Rich always intended the sapphire itself to be some kind of symbol or object of power related to the gate, but not the gate itself. Kinda like the remote control to your garage door. It would have been one of the things that each person built up as part of their own defense of their respective gates. Durokon placed a sigil on his, and then built an entire tower around that to defend his. Lirian attached two Treants, and had an entire forest of guardians, and her anti-magic virus, to defend hers. Girard encased his in a lead pillar with misleading info on it, then surrounded it with a pyramid, defended that with his family, and hid the whole thing in the middle of a desert covered with illusions. We don't actually know what specific object or power is physically present near/on Serini's gate, but she built a pretty massive layer of dungeons and monsters to defend hers.

It would not be off pattern for Soon to have first built a magical sappire to control access to the gate in some way, then build the tower/throneroom around that, then establish his Sappire Guard to defend that as well (including the oaths and ghost martyrs). Each defense did seem to have at least two parts: One that actually made it difficult to approach/find the gate itself, and another to physically/magically defend the gate. Though, to be perfectly fair, the Sapphire didn't seem to actually do much in this regard, other than maybe concealing that there was a gate and rift behind it. Though I suppose the same could be said of Girard's, since the lead sheeting didn't actually prevent physical access either. So yeah. It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.


Oh. As to the actual subject here. Put me down as "I think that creating some sort of system that allows for automatic replacement of gates would open up a risk of someone hijacking the system and gaining control/access to the gates/rifts anyway". The vulnerable point here is the whole "magic that replaces one gate with another" (or allows for opening/closing of said gate) bits. Assuming that magical research is a thing, then one could simply trick someone else into opening a gate and then observing what happens. Could learn how the replacement gates are magically put in place, and then duplicate it somehow. Now you've got your own gate, built by you, and granting you access to the seal behind it. The mere fact of building something in which "being replaced by another thing connected to the gate" is imbedded within it, would make the system vulnerable.

Also, I'm not sure how this would at all defend against something like TDO's ritual. He's not actually opening the gate, he's just moving it and thus moving the rift contained within. He should be able to do that just as easily with one of these replacable gates as a more permanent one. The threat isn't "can I open this gate and gain control of the rift", but merely "can I move this gate to an outer plane, and then threaten to open/destroy it, so that the rirft now opens onto some other god's home plane?". That threat is still present, but in this system you've made the gates far far more easily accessible.

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!

The Redmountain gate seems unique in that it was locked behind Dorukan's wards. I don't think Team Evil would have had the same problems with the other gates

Could it have served the same purpose as Sapphire? The lock that must be unlocked to get to the gate itself?

[Kardwill]

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!

Not if they do it remotely, or have minions or associates doing it for them. Or a god looking over their shoulder and taking notes for the next attempt. A lone, reckless individual might fall in your trap, but an organisation will survive, and gain information about the working and vulnerabilities of your defense.

And the snarl does not appear instantly. There was a span of at least several hours (more likely days) where Laurin could study the open desert rift before the snarl lashed out, and even then, it looked like a short range attack. Miron and most of the guards survived the initial attack (or at least the surprise round).
Azure City's rift has been open for 1 year, without the snarl lashing out, either.

So, all it takes is for some enemy to survive the trap, and then use minions/summons/undeads/prisoners to study the cycle, and ask themselves "Where do these gates come from, and how can I block/hijack that cycle?" I can imagine redcloak having such an experimental/scientific approach (in fact, he DID exactly that, using minions, prisoners and dupes to safely study Dorukan's gate defenses and Soon's rift).

Like most Perfect Plans (tm), it revolves around the enemy doing exactly what you want them to do. Or if you assume you have special unique powers that nobody else can copy/study/dispel.

Doesn't mean your plan of using the Snarl as a guardian is not nasty. It would have a good chance of taking out Xykon if he can't planeshift out of "riftworld", for example (but probably not Redcloak). But the perfect, unbreakable "passive defense" doesn't really exist, because it gives the enemy the opportunity and time to study it and find a weakness to exploit, or a ressource to bring to bear. Especially if the enemy is a god like TDO with centuries to plan out his next move.

But "not so perfect defenses" are good, because they create interesting stories

[Errorname]

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!

Oh, I badly misinterpreted your proposed layout. I didn't realize you were using the actual gate for the trap, I thought the podium and button was like a decoy or something and the infinite gate glitch facility would be somewhere else.

Because it's a reasonable layout for a decoy, it's cheap and it might kill a couple schmucks before they get anywhere near the real deal, but leaving the actual gate completely undefended with nothing but the hope that you can seal whoever tries to use it in with the Snarl is a massive risk. Several Rifts have been open for months and the Snarl is only just starting to reach out. You are staking everything on your ability to predict the Snarl's behaviour and the foolishness of any potential bad guys to march obediently to the slaughter you have devised.

You have no margin for error here. No fallback for if some enterprising bad guy figures out the mechanics, just one entirely automated line of defense that relies on taunting the god killing abomination. Your 'perfect defense' is a trapped room with a button and a bunch of explosives, it's the simplest booby trap imaginable and probably worse defended than the post-familicide Girard's Pyramid.

Could it have served the same purpose as Sapphire? The lock that must be unlocked to get to the gate itself?

I don't know. I certainly doubt the Sapphire was nearly as robust as Dorukan's wards

But the perfect, unbreakable "passive defense" doesn't really exist, because it gives the enemy the opportunity and time to study it and find a weakness to exploit, or a ressource to bring to bear. Especially if the enemy is a god like TDO with centuries to plan out his next move.

Yeah, this. For any defensive strategy to be viable long term you want active defenders sworn to protect the gate who can adapt to changing circumstances and perform regular upkeep. One of the biggest assets you as an epic level adventurer have to defend your gate is yourself, it's not for nothing that the two gates that came the closest to eliminating Xykon and Redcloak were the ones with active epic level defenders.

[OvisCaedo]

It feels like a lot is hinging on "I would simply build a better gate that works way better than these ones!". It's cheap, automatically mass produced somehow/somewhere, supremely stable so nothing goes wrong with the rift ever from the gate being ripped off and a new one being shunted back into place. They have amazing sensors that will detect anyone trying to mess with one that can't possibly be tricked or shut off. The Snarl will be able to reach through the temporarily opened gate to kill anyone who comes near but can't possibly escape or mess up the mechanism while doing so.

So here's my perfect defense: A better gate that's invincible and immune to all magic!

[Kardwill]

Also the Holey Brotherhood are a one-page joke, and it's hard to make any estimate based on that. For all we know they were a handful of dudes who found a rift in the desert and decided it was sacred and were around for like a month before the Scribblers defeated them.

Yeah, the Holey Brotherhood is clearly an uninspired GM throwing a combat encounter at their players, since he couldn't come up with a proper near-epic level adenture for this week's game ^^

[brian 333]

Oh, I badly misinterpreted your proposed layout. I didn't realize you were using the actual gate for the trap, I thought the podium and button was like a decoy or something and the infinite gate glitch facility would be somewhere else.

Because it's a reasonable layout for a decoy, it's cheap and it might kill a couple schmucks before they get anywhere near the real deal, but leaving the actual gate completely undefended with nothing but the hope that you can seal whoever tries to use it in with the Snarl is a massive risk. Several Rifts have been open for months and the Snarl is only just starting to reach out. You are staking everything on your ability to predict the Snarl's behaviour and the foolishness of any potential bad guys to march obediently to the slaughter you have devised.

You have no margin for error here. No fallback for if some enterprising bad guy figures out the mechanics, just one entirely automated line of defense that relies on taunting the god killing abomination. Your 'perfect defense' is a trapped room with a button and a bunch of explosives, it's the simplest booby trap imaginable and probably worse defended than the post-familicide Girard's Pyramid.



I don't know. I certainly doubt the Sapphire was nearly as robust as Dorukan's wards



Yeah, this. For any defensive strategy to be viable long term you want active defenders sworn to protect the gate who can adapt to changing circumstances and perform regular upkeep. One of the biggest assets you as an epic level adventurer have to defend your gate is yourself, it's not for nothing that the two gates that came the closest to eliminating Xykon and Redcloak were the ones with active epic level defenders.

Say it with me:

"There is no such thing as a perfect defense."

There is always a fail point, and the more complex the defense, the more fail points are available for exploitation. Given time, any setup will eventually allow a persistent enough adversary to beat it.

When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

What I did do in the defense layout I imagined was to make everyone in the world a guardian of my gate. The only 'use' one could make of any rift is to release The Snarl. There is no provision for putting it back inside once it escapes. At that point, all one can hope for is that the gods take them before The Snarl does.

When everyone knows that someone fooling with the gate is gambling everyone's life for no gain to anyone, they might let the idiots get themselves killed, but anyone competent enough to actually succeed? Everyone in the world who wants to see tomorrow will be their enemy.

The Scribbles were a bunch of paranoids. By keeping the rifts secret they gave the bad guys freedom to repeatedly fail without anyone catching on. If the secret of the rifts had been known, every Epic character in Stickworld would have been after TE the minute the first gate was destroyed. There might have even been an Epic cleric willing to team up with Dorukon to fix Lirian's Gate, or raise Lirian so she could do it.

[Errorname]

There is always a fail point, and the more complex the defense, the more fail points are available for exploitation. Given time, any setup will eventually allow a persistent enough adversary to beat it.

Sure, but a more complex defense also requires attackers to find and exploit more points of failure to break through. Your setup has a single unreliable defensive mechanism that falls apart the second someone figures it out. It's a worse defensive strategy than literally every gate we saw in the actual comic.

When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

That's not wrong, but it's so simplified it might as well be.

[gbaji]

When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

I guess, in a very broad way. But the problem with your approach is that it doesn't buy any time for the defense, but buys effectively unlimited time for those trying to penetrate it.

Here's another way to look at this: Imagine you and I are in a competition in which we each must create a puzzle, and then see how long it takes someone to solve it.

You make a really really really difficult puzzle and set it on the table for folks to try to solve.

I make maybe a relatively basic puzzle, but put it in a safe deposit box in the most secure bank in the world, and then hide all evidence that I ever put it there.

Which puzzle will be solved first?

[brian 333]

I completed my post above.

[Errorname]

The Scribbles were a bunch of paranoids. By keeping the rifts secret they gave the bad guys freedom to repeatedly fail without anyone catching on. If the secret of the rifts had been known, every Epic character in Stickworld would have been after TE the minute the first gate was destroyed. There might have even been an Epic cleric willing to team up with Dorukon to fix Lirian's Gate, or raise Lirian so she could do it.

See, I think the actual problem here is that the Scribblers were too paranoid to trust each other. They weren't communicating and weren't able to co-operate or co-ordinate in response to new threats, so the gates weren't as well defended as they could have been, but this secret was kept for good reasons. Like for example, because the Gods want the snarl kept secret and might destroy the world rather than let mortals and outsiders know their greatest weakness, or because if a bunch of high level baddies got it in their heads that they could harness a god killing abomination they'd probably try and do that.

Even if you do think the benefits of being able to openly co-ordinate around gate defense outweigh the negatives, this still doesn't make the proposed gate layout effective. This plan would work better with the sort of actually built up dungeons the Scribblers used, because those are actually made with a mind to having defenders and ensuring that fights happen on favourable terms for the good guys.

[brian 333]

I disagree. Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it. This is why the defenses have failed four out of five times so far.

Imagine, if you will, that everyone knows that messing with the gates is deadly. Who will mess with them? Crazies, obviously. Most of them would die quickly and be forgotten with my defense.

But let us assume an effective megalomaniac tries to move my version of the gate to target something or other. Okay, great. Now that gate is a pile of junk and the rift is right where it always was.

Let us assume that an effective megalomaniac wants to destroy the gate. Oops, that has already happened. But in the comic, a guy with an unrelated quest happened by and is now pursuing the gate crasher. How much more resistance would have been raised had the gates and their purposes been common knowledge?

Virtually none of the supposed benefits of secrecy ever actually happen, but secrets allow nefarious behavior to go unopposed. If the gates had not been a secret, any three epic characters showing up after Lirian's gate was destroyed could have saved the other four from danger. And that is all the secret of the gates ever achieved.

In your disagreement your strength is imaginary. Puzzles exceedingly hard for Xykon were trivially easy for Nale. So you have to defend against every possibility you can imagine, then fail when faced with a more imaginative foe.

In mine, the danger is apparent, well known, and there is probably a gambling concession over how long it takes idiots to get themselves killed. As soon as someone capable of actually accomplishing anything comes along, everyone knows, and the weeks the effective megalomaniac needs to do whatever it is he wants to do is time enough for all of the epics who want to be alive to stop them. And if a gate key, deadbolt, or whatever gets destroyed, there is time enough to make another.

[Errorname]

I disagree. Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it. This is why the defenses have failed four out of five times so far.

The Defenses have failed because the story is not about how the Scribblers did everything right and our heroes don't need to do anything, but they have come close.

More to the point, "tell everyone about the gods' best kept secret and hope everything works out" is a terrible plan. You aren't managing an offensive strategy, you'rer hoping that self-interest means that political power players all band together to do what's best for the world, which is a sucker's bet. I'm sure all the warlords of the western continent will handle having the key to a god killing abomination in their disputed territory perfectly rationally.

I'm also sure that the gods will be delighted that you told literally everyone in the world about the abomination they made that can permanently kill them. I'm sure they're all going to be very comfortable knowing that every mortal and outsider in the world knows about the Snarl and not kill everyone to keep the secret.

But let us assume an effective megalomaniac tries to move my version of the gate to target something or other. Okay, great. Now that gate is a pile of junk and the rift is right where it always was.

I see no reason to accept that your version of the gate would actually be able to prevent someone from moving the rift if they understood the mechanism by which you sealed, or indeed that your alternative gate construction would work at all.

In your disagreement your strength is imaginary. Puzzles exceedingly hard for Xykon were trivially easy for Nale. So you have to defend against every possibility you can imagine, then fail when faced with a more imaginative foe.

Yes. So do you, and I'm not convinced you'd succeed against a less imaginative one.

[JNAProductions]

You’re working under the assumption you can build something that several epic level casters working together could not manage.

It’s like saying any energy crisis is easy to solve-just use fusion power.

[brian 333]

The Defenses have failed because the story is not about how the Scribblers did everything right and our heroes don't need to do anything, but they have come close.

More to the point, "tell everyone about the gods' best kept secret and hope everything works out" is a terrible plan. You aren't managing an offensive strategy, you'rer hoping that self-interest means that political power players all band together to do what's best for the world, which is a sucker's bet. I'm sure all the warlords of the western continent will handle having the key to a god killing abomination in their disputed territory perfectly rationally.

I'm also sure that the gods will be delighted that you told literally everyone in the world about the abomination they made that can permanently kill them. I'm sure they're all going to be very comfortable knowing that every mortal and outsider in the world knows about the Snarl and not kill everyone to keep the secret.

Political power players are primarily self preservationists. When they become megalomaniacal power mongers, the other power players band together against them or join them in the hopes of surviving. But none of them can survive The Snarl, and attempting to use The Snarl against the gods just encourages the gods to pull the slip-knot before they can succeed.

It is anti-self preservation to tolerate any fooling around with the rifts. If you fail you die. If you unleash The Snarl, everyone dies. Even if you succeed and harness The Snarl, the gods pull the cord and everyone dies anyway. Those are the only three options.

The only reason Xykon is even trying is because he does not know this!

The power players who make a play for control of the gate only gain defeat, no matter how it plays out. Why would the ones who want to survive not band together to stop that?

I see no reason to accept that your version of the gate would actually be able to prevent someone from moving the rift if they understood the mechanism by which you sealed, or indeed that your alternative gate construction would work at all.

Granted. I cannot know that it is possible. Nobody has tried. It may not be.

But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.

Yes. So do you, and I'm not convinced you'd succeed against a less imaginative one.

You'd be surprised at how effective I am at wargames. Still, you only have my word for that.

You’re working under the assumption you can build something that several epic level casters working together could not manage.

Since they never tried, there is no evidence one way or the other about what they might otherwise have done. It may be easier in the same way that building tiny working gas turbine engines is easier than building full scale gas turbine engines, or more difficult the way tiny V8 diesel piston engines are much harder to build than full scale V8 diesel piston engines.

It’s like saying any energy crisis is easy to solve-just use fusion power.

Yes, exactly. We do not know if it can be done, or even if it is wise to make the attempt. What happens when a full scale fusion power reactor fails catastrophically? I don't know.

Fortunately, this is a thought exercise, and no real worlds will be harmed by my failure. So, not knowing that it can be done is Schrodenger's fusion reactor. It both solves the energy crisis and rips the atmosphere from the world until a working model is built and made operational.

Obviously, I took the side that such a gate is possible. If you think it is not, build your own perfect defense scenario.