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  1. - Top - End - #211
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    It could be, but the bottom line is that there don't seem to be leftover ascended deities from previous worlds, so something stops them from surviving (I think it is well past plausibility that this is the only world where there have been ascensions). I find my hypothesis that "they need living believers to continue to exist" a simple Occam-y explanation, but if you want to offer your own, I'm all ears.

    Grey Wolf
    We know that the Dark One is from this World (assuming he didn't lie to Red) but not the others. Dvalin and the elven gods may be from other worlds and it's possible that Thrym or Surtur are ascended mortals, maybe from other worlds. Apotheosis is probably a very rare thing and the first worlds probably weren't there long enough for it to happen. And the more it happens the less likely it is to happen again. The goblins have a messiah figure in the form of the Dark One, they don't need two.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by NRSASD View Post
    Well... um... uh... dang. That's a lot of corpses. The mind boggles trying to comprehend that actually.
    Worse yet, there are no corpses, as they were destroyed by the Snarl, who also ate their souls!! (and possibly the corpses themselves too, but that's a bit unclear)
    "The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull." -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    I wonder if those gravestones wouldn't represent all the campaign worlds that have been abandonned over the years once the GM and players got bored and started playing a different game.
    That was my first thought.

    Nice one Giant, really nice.
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  4. - Top - End - #214
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Worldsong View Post
    I was counting the gods as also being outside of the system technically (since they're not created out of reality threads so far as we know) so it'd just be this world getting pulled apart but yeah that's the threat you face when dealing with something which unravels reality.
    ... And this is now my answer to why ascended gods don't survive to the next iteration: they are NOT outside the world. When the threads of reality are re-spun into a new world, the gods ascended from that world are still made up of those reality threads, and they get unraveled together with everything else.

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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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  5. - Top - End - #215
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    This whole "stop the snarl" slash "Prevent the world from being destroyed" missions suddenly feels... a lot less do-able.


    Suddenly the world being consumed by the Snarl seems to be more like an inevitable part of nature, then some tragedy that needs to be avoided.
    Last edited by Draconi Redfir; 2018-09-05 at 01:33 PM.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Xianthe View Post
    Ho. Ly. #$(*
    My words exactly. I don't normally comment on these threads, but this one is different. Did not see that coming.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    (Checks new strip)

    ...Hoooo ...leee ... CRAP.

    World n3+(x*y), anyone?

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    "You know, Durkon, I built this planet up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was a snarl. All the other gods said we were daft to build a planet over a snarl, but I built it all the same, just to show then. It got eaten by the snarl. So we built a second one. It got eaten by the snarl. So we built a third one. It got eaten by the snarl...

    ...so we built a five millionth, three hundreth, twenty first one. That one burned down, fell over, then got eaten by the snarl, but the five millionth, three hundreth, and twenty second one stayed up! Or at least, it has been until now."
    Everything dissolves into blue.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Minty View Post
    Wow.

    Although, oddly similar to the resting place of the Ace Rimmers in Red Dwarf...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qUmB0sUUSk

    "They all did it. They all became Ace..."
    What a guy!

    Quote Originally Posted by Windscion View Post
    Well, that's one genie never going back in the bottle if he tries it. And ... we can hope not, but who knows? He's kinda pissed off, but if he pushes too far, he must know his people will pay the price before he does. He seems more "lead from the front" than that.
    But!
    If the Dark One is a tool (witting or unwitting) of the Snarl, then the Plan is really the *Snarl's* Plan.
    So, once the ritual gives the Dark One the ability to release the Snarl anywhere he wants, he (or the Snarl) almost certainly *will* try to kill all of the other Gods (assuming that that really is the Snarl's goal).

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    New comic is up.
    That last panel is a really excellent use of the browser's scrolling pane as media. Kudos.

    I hope you can figure out a way to give the eventual book version the same impact.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    I'm guessing the elf and dwarf ascended deities are also unique to this world. Raising the question - what's made this world so different from the past ones?
    This is the first world that used the 3.5 ruleset.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    What are the shapes of the tombstone called ?
    is it statement about something about a transition from a half completed to full world ?
    Is it a famous sculpture or a piercing ?

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Nion View Post
    This is the first world that used the 3.5 ruleset.
    A weird artifact of the conversion-to-3.5 joke is that the gods decided to update the rules partway through a world, rather than in between worlds.

    Also, first page, bottom row, middle panel, Thor's glove is behind his arm.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Nion View Post
    This is the first world that used the 3.5 ruleset.
    The most enduring of D&D rulesets? 0e lasted what, 3 years? 1e lasted 13 years. 2e lasted 11 years. 3/3.5 lasted only 7 years, but with Pathfinder and other OGL material has lived on 18 years and counting!

  15. - Top - End - #225
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    Default Re: About what happened in #1139

    Quote Originally Posted by Silverraptor View Post
    On a different note, I think we now know why there is a planet in the rift of Azure City now...
    Hard disagree. Three mutually contradictory proposed reasons from the #1139 discussion thread:

    - The gods improve the Snarl's prison by building it with extra layers. The internal world is why the rifts took so long to appear in this iteration of the world.
    - The internal world is a part of the mechanism of the gates, and is the reason the Snarl did not notice the unsealed rift(s) until Laurin started poking around.
    - The Snarl, a being formed from a mass of creative disagreements, is itself creating one or more worlds within its prison ("worlds within worlds and yarn winding yarn"), using the power it gained from the souls it devoured in the past (or something to that effect), and/or from the gods it killed.

    I think you're implying that the world within is a partially built replacement world, or a template for the same, which would bring the total number of theories to (at least) four. The third is my personal favorite, and I think the first is probably the weakest, but we don't really have much to go on. All four are at least somewhat plausible, and this particular comic does very little to distinguish them, other than (kind of) raising the idea of the fourth.
    Last edited by unbeliever536; 2018-09-05 at 01:47 PM.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    So... the Snarl is basically Twitter?

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Ninja Dragon View Post
    I think the gods are locked into representing ideas and pursuing their default goals, because that's just what they do. Thor is a hero, he helps the mortals and he fights monsters. Loki schemes against other gods. Hel tries to collect souls and become more powerful than Odin. And so on.

    They can't do differently, because they exist to do those things. And they can't help trying to create new worlds, because they exist to do that too. It's what their being is about. So they never quit.

    It's the mortals who can make changes. The only hope for defeating the Snarl and creating a permanent world lies with the mortals, because only them have the ability to break from patterns. They gods can only keep repeating their patterns over and over.
    If as a God you don't represent an ideal, why would mortals worship you.

    Mortals tend to want simple religious rules - ie trees are evil for example. If you give them nuance they stare at you with wide eyes waiting for something they can mentally relate to.

    However if a mortal figures something out, hmm trees might not be evil, after studying trees, or traveling outside of the mountain to forest regions, it allows the gods to also be a bit more complicated.

    I participate in a watercolor forum where we give advice to new artists. Often we see this pattern, beginners always asking the same questions. We know where they are headed, but they only want the answers to their questions on their terms. They cannot be just told what they need to know, unless they are ready to hear it, anything you say just goes right on past them, instead you have to wait to tell them when they seem ready to understand. It's almost like they cannot learn a given technique until they received enough XP to unlock it ( XP is earned thru practice ), and there seems to be a certain progression in growth.

    This seems similar to understandings of ethics, morals, beliefs, myths, of just wisdom in how they progress, the Gods are not only powered by their followers, they cannot actually go faster than those worshippers, they are stuck with them.

    It's a circular bit of logic that goes both ways. What the Gods are is limited by their worshippers, and the worshippers are shaped by their Gods, its a co-dependency. A mortal does not have the same rules, thus has a freedom that all powerful deities don't.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Talion View Post
    How long are the odds on "The Dark One is actually the Snarl"?
    Whatever they are, I'll put a million quatloos on it.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Ruck View Post
    I guess maybe this both explains why some of the gods are more cavalier about destroying this world, and why others want to keep giving the mortals a chance. (1184 years has to be a record, yeah?)-snip- Could this be the Last World?
    Could be.
    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowere View Post
    I feel a sense of... AGE. A time abyss. those are millions and millions of years of worlds. Of people forgotten, whose lives mattered nothing. It's huge. How old are the gods anyway?
    As old as time itself.
    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowere View Post
    I think gods need a world populated by mortals because they need prayers and souls to sustain themselves. They have to keep making new worlds to survive
    I'd like to see Rich confirm that. Sounds plausible.
    Quote Originally Posted by hroþila View Post
    And similarly, it explains why many of the gods can appear to be uncaring, even those who aren't necessarily Evil.
    Weary, they might be.
    Quote Originally Posted by UrielAwakened View Post
    Avengers: Infinity War has killed the most implied fictional characters of any work of entertainment.
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    Heh, nice one.
    Quote Originally Posted by Windscion View Post
    Theory
    This storyline suggests that the current world might be exceptional. Possibly this world has lasted the longest, or else the existence of goblinoids, etc may have caused the overall success rate of adventuring to skyrocket.
    Fits with the meta explanation of what the Snarl is, per Rich.
    Quote Originally Posted by Calmen1 View Post
    Does anyone remembers that Snarl is not exactly eating the worlds? The wording is devouring and more important: Blackwing saw a planet of its own inside the Rift. I guess the Snarl is carving it´s own world and using the previous worlds as prime material(or prime ideas...) for this world.

    The Snarl is made from the anger of the gods but is also made from a creativity desagreement, so It is a creative being of sort.
    Nice take. This goes back to V "Perhaps we do not know everything we ought to regarding the task which we are undertaking. " ... talking to black wing at the end of book 5
    Quote Originally Posted by Skull the Troll View Post
    Or perhaps the ones where the players argued until no one wanted to play anymore? Probably too meta, but its a fun idea.
    That too.

    Or as Belkar put it, "Maybe someone's been yanking everyone's chain."

    Or as Roy put it, "the truth is, we don't know what is really going on anymore"
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2018-09-05 at 01:59 PM.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Did not see THAT coming.

    Wow!

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    When Loki talked in #998 about "there will still be, like, ten to fifteen minutes", i assumed he pulled some numbers out of thin air.

    No, that was based on empirical data.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    Or perhaps, exactly a million to one, so a sure thing?
    Thanks for picking up on my reference.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    And when you have created all those worlds, and waited the thousands of years it took each of them to die, the first second in the life of an immortal will have passed.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Wow. Holy Cheese.

    ...could this explain the 'monstrous humanoids' situation of this world? The Gods creating an attempt to try and power level some clerics high enough to do something about the snarl before it eats the world again? Sure, you're consigning untold billions to meaningless, painful deaths; but if those are the price paid against the untold mega-trillions the snarl gobbles with every world, the gods might have seen it as a price worth paying to delay or rid themselves of snarl-issues.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by EmperorSarda View Post
    Because now that the Dark One is a god, when this world is destroyed and a new one created he is going to be involved in the creation process. No gate ritual needed to get the gods on board to improve goblin people when that will be hammered out at the next planet's iteration.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ninja Dragon View Post
    My point isn't that mortals shouldn't try anything, it's that the specific things they are trying are pointless given the lack of information they have about the bigger picture.

    Xykon is the best example of that. He believes he's in some grand scheme of power grabbing but he's only speeding up his own death.
    I don't get why both of you seem to think this strip says, "This world will inevitably be destroyed soon, no matter what the Order of the Stick or anyone in it does!"

    Nothing has changed for the Dark One, for Xykon, for the Order, or for anyone who's been in the comic thus far. One claim by Lord Shojo has been refuted: the current world is not uniquely flawed and a replacement world would still allow the Snarl a chance to escape. In fact, if anything, mortals have more power to affect the situation than previously thought, if the Order of the Scribble's construction of the gates is the only reason why the world didn't come apart shortly after the rifts appeared.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    That last panel is a really excellent use of the browser's scrolling pane as media. Kudos.

    I hope you can figure out a way to give the eventual book version the same impact.
    It didn't work out with the 'infinite canvas' of Roy's fall during War & XPs. I'm pretty sure the same will happen here. Changing the medium alters the art.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Oh.

    Dear.

    God.

    I. Wow. I don't know what I was expecting but it. Was. Not that. Holy crap.
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    First, I'm impressed that this topic went so far off topic that it ended up back at The Order of the Stick.
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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Excuse me a minute, I need to go find my jaw. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.
    Who're you? ...Don't matter.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    As for "where are the other ascended gods", I suspect that they fade and die when their worshippers fade and die because unlike the Regular Pantheon Gods, they're powered strictly by belief.

    Thor, Odin, Marduk, Tiamat, Rat, Dragon, and the rest of the Three Pantheons each lay claim to power by a fundamental idea... if that makes sense. They are the ones granted actual Portfolios by a Higher Power (the Overgod for a Forgotten Realms example, the writers for a meta DND example).

    The Elven God of Knowledge, as an example, what power do they if there are no more elves? The other Gods represent things set forth in the Rules Of Creation. Knowledge might be a part of one of their Portfolios. Who's to say they might next time say "eh let's try making Elves completely evil this time around!" and all of a sudden that God is completely invalid.

    So the Dark One's belief that he can argue about the fate of the Goblinoids in the (what he believes to be) "Third" World is invalid because he will no longer exist, he is a God of World 631,532,242,125 and once no Goblins are left to believe in him he dies and the souls of his followers go to the Outer Realm that most favors their Alignment (as is standard in The Rules for all other mortals)... or fade into nothing because they're not Player Races.

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    Default Re: OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    One claim by Lord Shojo has been refuted: the current world is not uniquely flawed and a replacement world would still allow the Snarl a chance to escape.
    Yup:

    http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0276.html

    which does make me wonder - how did he come to believe that in the first place?
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