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    confused Fifty-five?

    In #732 Durkon says he is fifty-five years old. In my copy of No Cure For The Paladin Blues it syas on the introduction-page that he's thirty-nine. Has it really gone 16 years since NCFTPB took place? I find that reeeally hard to believe.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Ages sometimes get retconned? I think V's age changed at one point as well.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Or he made a mistake when talking to the guard...
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    Quote Originally Posted by The MunchKING View Post
    Or he made a mistake when talking to the guard...
    Or he made a mistake on the introduction in No Cure For the Paladin Blues.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Interesting; I hadn't remembered his age being mentioned in the intro for Paladin Blues. Nice catch there!

    If it is in fact a retcon (or possibly a goof), then personally I would lean towards Durkon being closer to 55 than 39. It seems like in most fantasy worlds (including D&D) that the majority of dwarves are least middle-aged by the time they go adventuring; only a relatively small handful are still young (by dwarven standards) when they begin wandering the world. So if Durkon was only 39 at the time the Order ran into Miko, that would definitely put him on the young side for an adventuring dwarf, whereas 55 would be much closer to the "norm".
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cizak View Post
    In #732 Durkon says he is fifty-five years old. In my copy of No Cure For The Paladin Blues it syas on the introduction-page that he's thirty-nine. Has it really gone 16 years since NCFTPB took place? I find that reeeally hard to believe.
    Imo, that's a mistake Rich was made aware of and fixed it in the future. A Dwarf of 40 years is the same as a 15 year old human (we know it works that way in OotS, see the "20 years in diapers thing" elves). Seems a bit young for Durkon.
    A dwarf of 55 would roughly correspond with a 20 year old human. That makes much more sense (and Durkon gets described as "young" in Origin of PCs, so that makes some sense).

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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    The post may be deleted by now, but Rich said on the forums that he made a mistake on Durkon's age in No Cure For The Paladin Blues.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Agreed. The mistake is in NCftPB, not the current strip--since Durkon got kicked out of his homeland some 20-odd years ago, the age given in the printed book would imply Durkon was only maybe 20 himself when that happened; but a dwarf is still a child at that age, as the Giant realised later.

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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Hm. So maybe, Durkon is intended to be the equivalent to 39 in human years. I've seen various fantasies putting dwarves only slightly longer-lived than humans.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    @Lira & factotum: Thanks for clearing that up! Much appreciated.




    Quote Originally Posted by Dalgrim View Post
    Hm. So maybe, Durkon is intended to be the 0equivalent to 39 in human years.
    That's more or less what I was thinking as well. He has displayed -- both overtly and subtly -- a wisdom & experience beyond what you'd normally expect in a dwarf young enough to still be considered a "minor" among his own race.



    Quote Originally Posted by Dalgrim View Post
    I've seen various fantasies putting dwarves only slightly longer-lived than humans.
    True. However, since the strip is (more or less) based in the D&D 3.5 world, I think we can assume with a reasonable amount of certainty that dwarves in the OOTS-verse likely live for at least a couple centuries, if not longer.
    Last edited by Martok; 2010-07-02 at 05:06 PM.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    IIRC, he was listed as 54 in War & XPs, published 2 years ago. So, yeah, it was Paladin Blues that was retconned.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gift Jeraff View Post
    IIRC, he was listed as 54 in War & XPs, published 2 years ago. So, yeah, it was Paladin Blues that was retconned.
    And, conveniently enough, it’s just a few short days from being a full year since then. Hence, now 55.

    Durkon’s card in the Adventure Game also lists 54. So now, we’re all self-consistent.
    Last edited by Shhalahr Windrider; 2010-07-02 at 05:41 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gift Jeraff View Post
    IIRC, he was listed as 54 in War & XPs, published 2 years ago. So, yeah, it was Paladin Blues that was retconned.
    Confirmed. The cast list at the start of War and XPs does indeed list Durkon's age as 54. And with the approximately one year that passed during Don't Split the Party, we hit his current 55. So NCftPB is to be disregarded as far as this goes.

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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    I made a mistake during the production of NCFPB because I was rushing to write the character bios the day before the book was due at the printer, trying to get it printed in time for Origins that year. I thought I knew the dwarf age categories from memory, but I did not; I made Durkon way too young. I corrected it in the Adventure Game and WAXP, and I included it here just to make sure that it's clear.

    Development-wise, Durkon is meant to be the dwarf equivalent of the rest of the Order: early to mid-20's. It's just that he's actually experienced twice as much life as that, and has a much higher Wisdom (that often mimics being older and more experienced).
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    How old are Vaarsuvius and Belkar, again?
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    Quote Originally Posted by magic9mushroom View Post
    How old are Vaarsuvius and Belkar, again?
    Neither has been given an official age, but Vaarsuvius was listed as "130?" in War & XPs. Belkar's never had anything but question marks.
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    Default Re: Fifty-five?

    Is NCFTPB going to have the age fixed in a future printing?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son View Post
    Neither has been given an official age, but Vaarsuvius was listed as "130?" in War & XPs. Belkar's never had anything but question marks.
    Order of the Stick Adventure Game character card lists Belkar as 32.

    Vaarsuvius’s card almost certainly contains a transposition error, with a value of 103. This is too young for standard elf age categories.
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    I made a mistake during the production of NCFPB because I was rushing to write the character bios the day before the book was due at the printer, trying to get it printed in time for Origins that year. I thought I knew the dwarf age categories from memory, but I did not; I made Durkon way too young. I corrected it in the Adventure Game and WAXP, and I included it here just to make sure that it's clear.

    Development-wise, Durkon is meant to be the dwarf equivalent of the rest of the Order: early to mid-20's. It's just that he's actually experienced twice as much life as that, and has a much higher Wisdom (that often mimics being older and more experienced).
    Any other mistakes out there? A certain wizard in Cliffport murdered by a certain sorcerer and a certain son to said wizard we've never seen or heard of other than in this strip?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shhalahr Windrider View Post
    Order of the Stick Adventure Game character card lists Belkar as 32.

    Vaarsuvius’s card almost certainly contains a transposition error, with a value of 103. This is too young for standard elf age categories.
    On checking, V's age is given as "130?" in both NCftPB and W&XPs. Belkar just has question marks in both. Odd that Rich would give him an age in the board game and then go back to keeping it a mystery elsewhere.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Epic View Post
    Any other mistakes out there? A certain wizard in Cliffport murdered by a certain sorcerer and a certain son to said wizard we've never seen or heard of other than in this strip?
    This has been discussed several times, most recently here. I refuse to believe it's a mistake though, because if that's the case it's one of the most glaringly boneheaded mistakes possible. Rich has always shown himself to pay much more attention to detail than that.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Epic View Post
    Any other mistakes out there?
    mistakes in a work of fiction as long as OotS?


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    Quote Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son View Post
    This has been discussed several times, most recently here. I refuse to believe it's a mistake though, because if that's the case it's one of the most glaringly boneheaded mistakes possible. Rich has always shown himself to pay much more attention to detail than that.
    It's been mentioned nowhere else. Not even in SoD where we see Xykon kill master Fyron. What's the deal with that?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Epic View Post
    It's been mentioned nowhere else. Not even in SoD where we see Xykon kill master Fyron. What's the deal with that?

    I could think of a number of possible reasons, but...since there's scant data on the subject it's hard to say any way.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Epic View Post
    It's been mentioned nowhere else.
    Oh, really?

    Considering that Rich did have Roy mention Fyron's son over three hundred strips after the one you linked, after Start of Darkness had come out and any retcons he made would have been made, I doubt it's a mistake*, though the fact that said son has never appeared onstage is certainly odd.

    *At least, a mistake made by Rich. It may have been a mistake made by Roy or by Eugene.
    Last edited by Kish; 2010-07-04 at 09:10 PM.

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    Given the oddity of Roy being the only one to mention Fyron's son (Eugene never did, and the flashback to Fyron's death has no son present), and the seeming pointlessness of making that addition to the story, it's easy to see why people would think of it as a goof. But I would be surprised if Rich made the exact same goof twice.

    Though maybe Fyron's son has some hidden plot significance that will be revealed in a future strip. Hard to imagine what it would be, but Rich is a lot more creative that I am.
    Last edited by Red XIV; 2010-07-04 at 09:15 PM.

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    As said in a previous thread I lost the link to: Durkon: The Baby of the Team?: Durkon's age was misappropriated when the introduction was made, primarily before the 3rd Edition sourcebooks were read.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    *At least, a mistake made by Rich. It may have been a mistake made by Roy or by Eugene.
    It's pretty certain that Eugene never spoke of Fyron's son to Roy, so the mistake would have to be on Roy's part. Which would be perfectly understandable if this were real life, but rather awkward as a story device. I'm perhaps even less inclined to believe that Rich deliberately made Roy get the story wrong than that Rich made the mistake himself. In fiction, characters don't make mistakes like that unless there's a very good reason for it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Red XIV View Post
    Given the oddity of Roy being the only one to mention Fyron's son (Eugene never did, and the flashback to Fyron's death has no son present), and the seeming pointlessness of making that addition to the story,
    There's never any pointlessness to adding depth to a character, as a writer you never know what'll be important or not later on.



    i don't have SOD, but given the fact that Fyron's son doesn't appear in the flashbacks to Fyron's Death and Eugene didn't mention him it leaves a few choices.

    He didn't exist at all(as i said this could be debated to no end with the minimal information we're given)

    He's in some other part of the building alive and encounters Xykon on his way out.

    He's in some other part of the building dead and Fyron doesn't know it yet and Xykon for some reason doesn't rub it in his face(possibly not knowing that it was Fyron's son).

    or; Xykon hunted down Fyron's son to complete the set


    i don't recall the exact reasons why Xykon killed Fyron(its late here dun wanna think) but it's possible that if Fyron was hunted down by Xykon, it's not too much of a stretch that he ran into his son at some point.


    Quote Originally Posted by Red XIV View Post
    Though maybe Fyron's son has some hidden plot significance that will be revealed in a future strip. Hard to imagine what it would be, but Rich is a lot more creative that I am.
    eeh...it's sort of tough for a dead character to have significance; then again in a world with D&D stuff death is somewhat temporary and isn't always an impediment.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leecros View Post
    He's in some other part of the building alive and encounters Xykon on his way out.

    He's in some other part of the building dead and Fyron doesn't know it yet and Xykon for some reason doesn't rub it in his face(possibly not knowing that it was Fyron's son).
    Eugene's set-up for the story makes it unlikely the son was in the building at all. He arrived with a takeaway meal for the two of them (as he apparently often did) to find Fyron and Xykon mid-standoff, and as he entered he was calling his master's name, not any others.

    This just after a montage of scenes throughout Eugene's time with Fyron, too, with narration talking of the father-son relationship they had. If Fyron already HAD a son, that would rather complicate matters, or else they would all be one happy family. I can't believe that Eugene and Fyron could be that close and yet the son's death doesn't warrant a mention.

    Quote Originally Posted by Leecros View Post
    i don't recall the exact reasons why Xykon killed Fyron(its late here dun wanna think) but it's possible that if Fyron was hunted down by Xykon, it's not too much of a stretch that he ran into his son at some point.
    There was no hunting down. Xykon took a tour of Fyron's museum, saw a crown that he thought looked totally badass, and returned that night to steal it. He didn't even necessarily intend to kill its owner; he just wanted the crown.
    Last edited by Nimrod's Son; 2010-07-04 at 11:28 PM.
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