OOTS #642 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up. (Erfworld, too.)

[Szilard]

Wow... just wow.

[The Bookworm]

I'm crying. Literally, I'm crying.

[The Guardian]

Well I figured it had to last a little longer, at least to get the Teleport in.

[Salty]

Wow. I can't help but feel disappointed in V. :smallfrown:

[enarch3t]

Very sad comic. But, V's really gotta get the Order back together now that she's got the power.

[Siosilvar]

Just when I refresh, too.

V's really experiencing moral crisis, although that's to be expected with demons/devils/denizens of the lower planes in you. (Well, equally powerful arcane spellcasters of just as much evil, but still...)

[The Blackbird]

:vaarsuvius: ...I am...sorry. I still have to fix everything.

Damn here cried myself.

[chiasaur11]

Wow.

Someone isn't using their INT to its full potential.

Oh, and bets on "V flays V's family"?

Seems you were off on that one.

[Ridureyu]

Yeha, we were off.

Now, bets on "V only did it to save the family?" Totally off, as well.

[R. Malcovitch]

Understandable. The superpowers were gotten for the purpose of saving her family, but now that V has them it would be foolish for her not to use them to do everything she was trying to do originally.

[Assassin89]

We know that the actual name of V's make is Inkyrius. I wonder if V will later reconcile with her family? The question is where is V going? To back to the fleet or to Greysky city?

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Wooot! Just about to go to bed, decided to check OotS one last time, and I get a double!

And at least one more cliffhanger to this arc. V's next move is??? Revealed in 3-7 days!

[malakim2099]

Very sad comic. But, V's really gotta get the Order back together now that she's got the power.

Assuming that is what V is going to do. :smallconfused:

Not good though. Very not good.

[Teatime]

Nice. First time I've been on the site while there was an update. Also, first time I think I've posted on the first page for a new comic thread.

Same. Good comic, Giant. Too bad Vaarsuvius can't just teleport back and say, "Haha, April Fools!"

[BarGamer]

OotS and Erfworld update on the same day? BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT, EVER.

Were I not running on 3 hours of sleep and willpower, I would be TOTALLY freaking out. V almost hurts his mate, doesn't release the power, and leaves with very few words, also to "save" his friends. I seriously think that Durkon will tearfully but firmly 'Holy Smite' V, in a vain effort to spare V's soul more torment than necessary.

PS: Seriously, it really is my birthday, no fooling. Thank you in advance for any "Happy Bday" wishes.

PPS: Thank you, SO SO MUCH that you didn't post an April Fool's comic. Seriously. The jokes, puns, and other hilarity, not to mention the drama, are more entertaining than any cheesy prank.

Respectfully, your fan, BarGamer.

[Laughing Dragon]

Great comic!

Well, we all really knew that V was doing this more for hirself than for anyone else. S/he will probably try to perform redemptive acts in an attempt to lessen the psychological impact of hir mates' ultamatum.

I hope that V and hir family can reconcile at some point ... but in true adventuring style ... the party comes first.

[The Blackbird]

Wait, what if this is all a dream as part of a... APRIL FOOLS!...

Naw I'm joking:smalltongue:.

[Starknight]

Oh Dear, This is bad.

I don't think that V even knows about Greysky City. Unless I am mistaken, V does not know about Cloister because presumably s/he has not tried to contact Haley recently. Going back to the fleet would be backtracking in V's mind, I don't see hir doing that. My prediction is (since V pretty much admitted s/he is holding on to the Soul Splice out f a desire ofr power), V will try and take out Xykon. Even as powerful as V is now, I don't know if s/he has enough power to do that. V is really racking up the Fiendish Flyer MIles now.

[Axl_Rose]

APRIL FOOLS! *new vesrion of 642 pops up*

lol, nah.

So I wonder who V is going to "fix" next.

*fingers crossed for an assault on Zykon*. Hope he doesn't kill Tsukiko immediately tho, I think she's got some potential, to quote Sabine, "evil potential".

Or perhaps he'll just appear on the boat and resurrect Roy. I guess he's been due for a revival for some time now haha.

[Virgo]

I suspect that the integrity of V's family is the terrible sacrifice that must be made to reunite the Order.

[Raging Gene Ray]

The Soul Splice is something that V can't walk away from without being somehow changed forever. Kyrie might've managed to nudge that change towards something for the better. V is experiencing guilt over something besides not being powerful enough and might be realizing that there are more important things than arcane might.

[Porthos]

I know I've been saying this a lot but...

Oh, V. You idiot. :smallsigh::smallsigh::smallsigh: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown:

[Nevitan]

ooooh, well.. huh I was kind of hoping to see more of kyrie.

Oh and did anyone notice they were speaking common in this?

[Warren Dew]

I know I've been saying this a lot but...

Oh, V. You idiot. :smallsigh::smallsigh::smallsigh: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown:

Vaarsuvius is an idiot for putting the fate of the world ahead of a personal relationship, even with a spouse?

[Yendor]

Bad V. Bad, bad, bad V.

[Tobimaro]

I'm just wondering how Durkon and Elan are going to react when they see V (I believe that is hir destination)? :smalleek:

[Porthos]

Now that I've gotten my sadness over V out of my system, I just noticed something. Neither Ganonron nor Jephton the Unholy know what sex Inkyrius is. :smallbiggrin:

"Burn it"
"No, snap it's neck"

Well, I found it humorous at least. :smalltongue:

[DrivinAllNight]

poor poor V, still guilt ridden over not finding Haley, Roy and not being able to save all those other people. This is gonna come back on him badly.

[The Blackbird]

Vaarsuvius is an idiot for putting the fate of the world ahead of a personal relationship, even with a spouse?

Well, uh, ya.


Exactly. Screw the world, I'd save my loved ones.

I'm not being serious just so you know:smallwink:.

[RMS Oceanic]

And the personal consequences of V's tragic flaw become apparent.

As for the cosmic consequences, we'll have to wait and see.

[Durgle]

Well, I didn't actually expect V to stop the splice after rescuing his family. The question I was asking all along is what's next on his agenda. I wonder if he's powerful enough to reseal the 3 seals that were destroyed or maybe even preempt Xykon and Redcloak and try and control the Snarl himself.

[Kranden]

Wow V is cold blooded.

[RMS Oceanic]

Well, I didn't actually expect V to stop the splice after rescuing his family. The question I was asking all along is what's next on his agenda. I wonder if he's powerful enough to reseal the 3 seals that were destroyed or maybe even preempt Xykon and Redcloak and try and control the Snarl himself.

That's a tall order when such power has shown to be quite temporary. And why would V suddenly desire to control the Snarl?

No, I suspect what (s)he will do now is reunite the Order. Losing h** family this way seems like the dear price that an Order Member had to pay before they were reunited.

[Yellow]

I'd leave it too if it was gonna be such a tool about someone saving its life. :/

[Lunaya]

Nice to see that Kyrie is every bit as wise as V is smart. Hopefully V will get the message soon, but the way things are going, I doubt it.

[DBear]

I see that Rich has answered the question of how the children were apparently standing with broken legs (they weren't, Kyrie has to carry them).

Inkyrius, go talk to Aarindarius about V, fast!

[Mr. Scaly]

And thus, the last hope that V chose eternal damnation for the sole purpose of saving its family wails its last then lies still in the dust.

[Aaron]

Very sad...:smallfrown: In the end V still choses pride, refusing to fail on the task of finding Haley and the others. Now we don't know V's mate's real name, however. I wonder how the rest of the OOTS will take this choice. Belkar will probable think it's awesome.
Very sad comic...:smallfrown:

[Lunar Historian]

Interesting. I don't think I've respected Vaarsuvius any more than I have after reading this strip. I am glad to find out that he acknowledges his duty, both to the Order and to fight against the evil that Xykon represents. It is good to see that he did not choose the easy route of dropping his soul splice to patch his relationship with his mate--he has gone too far to settle for such an easy exit, and he must do more to atone. Let us see which route he takes.

[Mauve Shirt]

*sigh* I was hoping otherwise, but I am not surprised by this. :smallfrown: Poor Kyrie.
So now V's going to "fix everything?" That's not going to work out.

[Code Black]

Sighhhh..... tragic.

This, my friends, is what we would call a point of no return. Or, at least, a point of very strenuous return.

No doubt V's first action will be to teleport directly to Haley, butcher the Thieves Guild, and make things arguably better in the short run but much worse in the long run.

[Durgle]

why would V suddenly desire to control the Snarl?

V has been seeking ultimate arcane power. Controlling a god-killing entity surely trumps splicing with three (now two) epic level spellcasters. Plus that power doesn't leave V indebted to fiends.

[Zevox]

:smallfrown:

Zevox

[SteveMB]

Well, I didn't actually expect V to stop the splice after rescuing his family. The question I was asking all along is what's next on his agenda.

"But I still need to find..."

The next thing on Vaarsuvius' agenda is to find Haley. You know, the project that s/he's been obsessively pursuing for the past few months?

[Particle_Man]

V is definitely on the "Pride before a Fall" path, it seems . . .

But hey, at least V said "I am sorry". Some people in relationships can't even do that.

[spyke_slash]

Oh Dear, This is bad.

I don't think that V even knows about Greysky City. Unless I am mistaken, V does not know about Cloister because presumably s/he has not tried to contact Haley recently. Going back to the fleet would be backtracking in V's mind, I don't see hir doing that. My prediction is (since V pretty much admitted s/he is holding on to the Soul Splice out f a desire ofr power), V will try and take out Xykon. Even as powerful as V is now, I don't know if s/he has enough power to do that. V is really racking up the Fiendish Flyer MIles now.

Maybe V realizes that now with all this arcane might at his/her disposal s/he could probably break through whatever is preventing divination from detecting Haley and could track her down now in order to regroup the party. I mean we saw V cast an epic spell already...who's to say there aren't more where that came from.

[Bandanna Jones]

Well, at least V's wife is a rational being. No wonder he married her, he needs somebody to keep him in check.

Points for not actually murdering the whole brood on the way out, though.

[Zael Zuran]

Sad, really. But not many other rational choices from V's perspective.

Abandon the power to spare the feelings of V's mate? Or squander a chance to reunite the group of adventurers who have the best chance of keeping Xykon from detroying the world?

V's too pragmatic to have expected any different. He'd never be able to spend a single moment of his life without wondering whether he'd condemned his family to destruction by abandoning the power. His swift defeat of the dragons has only reinforced this need to get the most bang for the splice's buck.

Compare to his probable rationale: That he became a monster his family abhored to save the lives of those adored. Sacrifice.

Somehow I don't think V's craving for power was ever motivated by the adoration of his peers or loved ones.

[Kyouhen]

Y'know what makes this whole thing more tragic? The possibility that the Cloister spell has worn off now, and as such V doesn't need all that power to find Haley. (Assuming of course that that's what V's going to do next)

[motub]

Too bad, but to be expected, really. Surprised that Kyrie knew it, though (people like V never expect people like Kyrie [above-average, but not perhaps "genius"; just "ordinary", relatively speaking] to understand them better than they understand themselves). Glad V didn't fry the family-- though the souls tried to tempt hir, and shi did get mad, it didn't look like it was ever even something shi was going to do, except maybe for a split second. Until the kids shrieked. That stopped it cold, thank goodness.

"I (still) need to fix everything." The saddest thing a perfectionist/narcissist can say.

I hope that V at least has the "prescence of mind" to use hir new powers to [i]help hir party "fix everything", rather than trying to do so all by hirself. The former might work; the latter never will.

But I fear that even I know V too well to hope for so much "luck" (or good sense/wisdom) from hir.

[The MunchKING]

I see that Rich has answered the question of how the children were apparently standing with broken legs (they weren't, Kyrie has to carry them).

After being cruicified none-the-less!!

[Raging Gene Ray]

Very sad...:smallfrown: In the end V still choses pride, refusing to fail on the task of finding Haley and the others.

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I'm seeing this as Kyrie reminding V of what's truly important in life. Yes, V is going to keep the splice long enough to do other things, but it will now be more about helping hir friends, the Azurites, and the world in general and not about pride. V may even end up rejected and demonized by those shi's protecting and willingly accept it, just happy to have them safe.

[Morgan Wick]

"I need to fix everything."

We know from "I still need to find..." that finding Haley is still on the agenda, but she didn't use a "finding" spell of any kind (as I speculated on the 641 thread, now would be the time to do that, and going on a wild goose chase is a waste of time), and she left the boat on pretty bad terms, so it seems to me to be a pretty good bet she's jetting off to Azure City to be its liberator.

However, she could also be doing something we're not anticipating, or even looking for something that's not Haley and can't be found with a scrying spell. She could very well even be time travelling. I wonder if the beginning of this strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0623.html)could provide a hint on what V does next.

Alternately, we could just leave this on a cliffhanger and jump to another plot. Could Rich bang out 20+ strips on the reunion of the Order without getting them involved in a battle that ends the book on too much of an emotional high?

[The MunchKING]

Wow... If you're teleporting out, you could have at least teleported your family with you, to a cleric or something. A local elven cleric if you didn't want to uproot your family any more than the dragon already did.

I would have gone to Durkon, but then again I'm thinking "My family is in trouble and I came to you." said in the right tone could go a long way towards saying "I was an idiot earlier, please forgive me." :smalltongue:

[David Argall]

What is this obsession with finding V to have poor motives?

The choice is entirely clear. V has the power to find Roy and take care of him, and V has the power to eliminate Xykon permanently. She may have the power to close the rift. And people want him to abandon such vital tasks?

Now we can argue that V is forgetting Skeeve's advice in making a deal with fiends [more or less... "count your money, count your other possessions, count your fingers and toes, count your vital organs, count your friends. Now you should still not be sure you aren't being cheated."] We are highly sure the fiends have a very good reason for offering him this "great" deal.

But V's actions are highly NG. For those who have this dubious idea that there is virtue in sacrifice, we have V sacrificing her own happiness. He can do a fantastic amount of good for a trivial cost, according to the facts before us. We have very good reason to assume it is not going to work out as well as he thinks [if for no other reason, because there are at least 500 pages to go, and we can't have V solve everything in 5.], but V seems to think she is about to save the world at a small cost.

[motub]

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I'm seeing this as Kyrie reminding V of what's truly important in life. Yes, V is going to keep the splice long enough to do other things, but it will now be more about helping hir friends, the Azurites, and the world in general and not about pride.
V did not even acknowledge the children that shi was so keen to save, much less offer them a single word of comfort and reassurance (which one would think they were in sore need of, but "Kyrie can do that"), much much less heal their wounds or transport them to somewhere where those wounds could be healed ("Kyrie can do that", too).

I wouldn't be so sure that V has been reminded of anything (assuming that V ever knew what you're getting at, which I'm also not convinced of).

[Ampersand]

I am glad to find out that he acknowledges his duty, both to the Order and to fight against the evil that Xykon represents.

I read it less that V was concerned about any sort of "duty" and more that her pride was hurt by Kyrie's observations about the fact that she was burning her soul time for no reason. After all, the entire reason she took the soul splice in the first place was her magic was failing her...she couldn't find Haley, and wasn't able to do anything to Mama Dragon at all. So she sells her soul, commits genocide and what thanks does she get? Her mate all but serves her with divorce papers on the spot. That's being set up only to be knocked down again...honestly, the IFCC couldn't ask for a more perfect set up.

And so, pride wounded once again, V runs away, just like she did on the ship. Heck, she couldn't even be bothered to put out the fire that was destroying her home. Such a simple thing, that would take less time and magical energy than she spent on taunting Mama Dragon, and she won't do it.

So yeah. I have a hard time seeing V's commitment to "duty" in there.

[Porthos]

Vaarsuvius is an idiot for putting the fate of the world ahead of a personal relationship, even with a spouse?

Yes, yes he is. :smallsmile:

I'm not going to get into a long song-and-dance over this one coz I'm getting bored with the whole "repeat the arguments about <INSERT TOPIC HERE> fifty bajillion times" deal. Instead I'll make my point short and sweet (for once) and once only (again for once :smalltongue:).

The reason why V is being a selfish idiot is pretty simple. There will always be another problem for V to solve with his Ultimate Arcane Power. Whether it be to get the Stick back together, kill Xykon, let loose the Snarl (whoops... Don't think V knows he's supposed to do that yet. :smalltongue:), or be it to figure out why hot dogs come in a package of eight, but buns come in packages of ten. So, really, this whole "I gots to save the world" is a big giant excuse.

At least IMO. :smallsmile:

I am of the firm belief that V and the gang have sufficient power, or will get sufficient power, to solve this crisis eventually. V just wants to short-circut the process and be done with it expedinently. And if it means dealing with fiends from the Lower Planes, so be it.

IMO, V can stop the splice, contact his mentor and/or Durkon in the morning and deal with events then (after all, the world isn't going to end tomorrow - and probably won't end anytime soon. For whatever reason, the clock is NOT ticking right now, which means that V can afford to take his time). But, no, Mr. I Have To Do Everything Myself is going to put himself (and by extension the world) in a terrible situation. And all because he hasn't learned a simple lesson: Trying to solve everything yourself is a recipe for disaster.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. :smallsmile:

[Selene]

V made his kids cry. :smallmad: And somehow, I feel like he could have taken like 30 seconds to explain what's going on to Inkyrius. :smallfrown:


Also, happy birthday, BarGamer.


edit to add: Totally agree with what Porthos just said. All of it. Including the pointless argument circles. :smalltongue:

[jmucchiello]

V did not even acknowledge the children that shi was so keen to save, much less offer them a single word of comfort and reassurance.Did you miss it when they screamed and recoiled in fear from V?

And wizards cannot heal. Trying to teleport them to a cleric is probably difficult as V probably registers as extremely evil regardless of V's own alignment.

How can a parent not crumble in the face of his children recoiling in fear? That's cold.

[Alair]

"Besides which, my soul is only forfeit for a duration equal to the time I retain these powers" (there should probably be a 3x modifier in there)

It's kind of sad in a way but is there another member of the OOTS dumb enough to take an archfiend at its word that it has no other angle in mind?

[Bianco]

*sigh* I was hoping otherwise, but I am not surprised by this. :smallfrown: Poor Kyrie.
I second that. :smallfrown: Well, at least V didn't cause any (physical) injury to Kyrie or kids, I can still keep hoping for a happier family reunion later.

It's getting harder and harder to wait for a next strip.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

I'm so glad that there are at least a few of you who understand the pragmatic aspect of V's choices (as "pridefully" motivated as they may be). I mean, think about it people. Sure he could have called on his mentor to save his family and finish the rest of the tasks the cast faces. But would the strip really be Order of the Stick at that point? Or would it suddenly become The Adventures of the Amazing Archmage (guest starring The 6 Stooges)? :smalltongue:

[factotum]

You know, I have a feeling I know what's going to happen next:


V is going to finally find Haley and teleport to her--only to find that Durkon and Elan got there first. That would prove several things:

1) He didn't need to leave the fleet in order to find her.
2) His "ultimate arcane power" would again have not been the solution to the problem.
3) The ABD only had an opportunity to go after his family because he'd left the fleet and was alone on the island.

Thus, V would have final proof that everything he's done for the past week or so has been utterly and completely pointless, and that ultimate arcane power has been of no use whatsoever in the long run. The shock forces him to lose control of the final two splices, leaving everyone reunited but with V having lost pretty much everything that was ever important to him.

[Gamiress]

I guess we know now what the sacrifice is.

Every time something bad happens to a character now, people say that - but I don't know how to top this one without drastically shifting the mood of the story even more than it already is. V just gave up his future with his family. I hope that at the end of the story, V can get his skinny ass back to Ivyleaf and tell Kyrie "I was an idiot. I love you. Please let me try again."

I think Kyrie still loves V, no matter how angry and scared and heartbroken she is. Maybe someday they can work it out.

[aka Argent]

Where did V port to? If s/he's headed to where s/he thinks Haley is, s/he's gone to Azure City. When V finds out she left there some time ago, then s/he's really going to feel like a chump since they're not being covered by the Cloister spell any longer but V got so wrapped up in making a new spell s/he never thought to try and ping Haley again, just in case she and Belkar moved.

All of this really is a Pyrrhic victory for V. I suspect we'll learn more about it.

And V's sacrifice isn't Noble. This isn't some NG thing, this is purely Ego talking, "I've got to fix it! No one else, just me!"

[kusje]

I'm so glad that there are at least a few of you who understand the pragmatic aspect of V's choices (as "pridefully" motivated as they may be). I mean, think about it people. Sure he could have called on his mentor to save his family and finish the rest of the tasks the cast faces. But would the strip really be Order of the Stick at that point? Or would it suddenly become The Adventures of the Amazing Archmage (guest starring The 6 Stooges)? :smalltongue:


It is precisely because V wants the strip to remain as "Order of the Stick" that makes it pride. Someone else can solve his problems but he wants to do it so he can claim the credit. How is that being "pragmatic"?

[RMS Oceanic]

I'm so glad that there are at least a few of you who understand the pragmatic aspect of V's choices (as "pridefully" motivated as they may be). I mean, think about it people. Sure he could have called on his mentor to save his family and finish the rest of the tasks the cast faces. But would the strip really be Order of the Stick at that point? Or would it suddenly become The Adventures of the Amazing Archmage (guest starring The 6 Stooges)? :smalltongue:

You've put some image into my head of a D&D version of Doctor Who with extra companions. I really want to watch it, now. :smallsmile:

Maybe asking Aarindarius to fix the plot is out of the question, but if I wanted to keep the family and still save the world, I'd dismiss the splice, explain to Kyrie that I'm on a quest to stop the world being unmade, and then cast sending to Aarindarius to ask for teleports and perhaps an epic scry spell.

Unfortunately, that would be admitting my personal failure, which Vaarsuvius still doesn't want to do. It's all part of h** tragic flaw.

[kusje]

V is going to finally find Haley and teleport to her--only to find that Durkon and Elan got there first. That would prove several things:

1) He didn't need to leave the fleet in order to find her.
2) His "ultimate arcane power" would again have not been the solution to the problem.
3) The ABD only had an opportunity to go after his family because he'd left the fleet and was alone on the island.

Thus, V would have final proof that everything he's done for the past week or so has been utterly and completely pointless, and that ultimate arcane power has been of no use whatsoever in the long run. The shock forces him to lose control of the final two splices, leaving everyone reunited but with V having lost pretty much everything that was ever important to him.



3) Um no, ABD didn't really need V to leave the fleet to go after his family. Technically, she could have just used a sending scroll to tell V about it and V would have been equally powerless (without fiends).

[JoseB]

You know, now that I think about it, in a way it's good that the necromancer (Haera/Haerta) left V before this confrontation with K. She was the one who, in #635, was saying "Destroy everyone who has ever slighted you". Had she been spliced into V's soul right now, who knows if V would have been able to resist the temptation?

(I know, I know... "cheerleaders affecting the outcome of a game". But voices in the head are still voices in the head, three are more than two, and Haer(t)a was the one who apparently was most into the "annihilate the insolent" thing. Not to mention she was the one with the insta-death necromantic spells at her disposal).

[Kaytara]

Now that is really sad. :(

Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here? She seemed so understanding in the last strip but now she doesn't even hear V out and just jumps straight to conclusions. It took Vaarsuvius getting the scary eyes again to make her listen to him. And she even asks WHY he's still holding on to the power, but cuts him off right when he's trying to tell her exactly why.

As for why V didn't bother to try and help them with the repairs or teleport them to a temple or anything - it's part of the ultimatum Kyrie offered. Give the power up and rejoin the family, or keep it and get the hell out.

To everyone saying how prideful and sinful leaving his family was for V: yes, V is still prideful, but his pride does not negate the need to finally find Haley. (And keep in mind that Haley was left in Xykon's domain and there is no limit as to what horrible things may have been happening to her during these past months. To Vaarsuvius, her need is as dire as his family's need was just minutes ago.) Whatever other reasons V has for not letting go of the Splice, that there is a VERY good reason not to do it.

[kusje]

Not to mention she was the one with the insta-death necromantic spells at her disposal).

Meh. If V wanted to kill them, practically any spell would work.

[JoseB]

Now that is really sad. :(

Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here? She seemed so understanding in the last strip but now she doesn't even hear V out and just jumps straight to conclusions. It took Vaarsuvius getting the scary eyes again to make her listen to him. And she even asks WHY he's still holding on to the power, but cuts him off right when he's trying to tell her exactly why.
<...>

Hmmm... As someone mentioned in another forum, reading the strip one feels (and I agree) that the whole "leaving my home in pursuit of arcane knowledge" thing had been a very serious issue between V and K in the past (quoth K, for instance: "Is this why you left me alone <...> for six years?" ... "This is what you always really wanted. More than you ever wanted me.").

When V shows up having been transformed into, well, a monster, is it surprising that his husband recoils from him and essentially puts this ultimatum to him, given the very likely pre-existing tension? Not to mention that after all the "excitement" of the previous 10 minutes nerves are going to be rather on edge.

(I also think that the "You stubborn FOOL!" on the part of V wasn't helping).


Oh and did anyone notice they were speaking common in this?

I think that they are speaking common from now on to avoid having the kids understand exactly what they're saying. I have been witness to husband/wife fights in multilingual couples and they berated each other in a language that the kids wouldn't understand. Not that it helps, of course, because children will pick more on the emotions than the meaning (*sigh*...).

[JoseB]

Meh. If V wanted to kill them, practically any spell would work.

Yes. The "insta-death necromantic spells" thing would just have been an "extra". The important factor (in my mind) was the attitude that the necromancer soul had towards "insolence" (the "destroy everyone who has ever slighted you" thing).

[DoctorJest]

You've put some image into my head of a D&D version of Doctor Who with extra companions. I really want to watch it, now. :smallsmile:

Here you go!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tomb_of_the_Cybermen

[petersohn]

I'm starting to like Kyrie (or Inkyrius).

Whatever happens next, it will be really bad for V.

[joela]

Vaarsuvius' character continues to remind me of Greek tragedies. Is it possibly s/he, like Belkar and Durkon, won't be coming out of this strip alive?

[Killer Angel]

It's very sad...
Now, V. don't have even the family's excuse to hide behind, to justity h**'s choice.
And now, where is going to teleport?
I don't know, maybe the Giant will surprise us, and there will be a change on who's the strip will focus (Xykon? Durkon and Co.?), leaving Vaarsuvius "on the fly"...

[snafu]

And now, where is going to teleport?

I'm unsure.

Option one would be back to the fleet. That would in fact be her best move, since Durkon now knows (courtesy of that Sending that Haley sent) where the rest of the party are. Not going to happen of course. V has no interest in anything any of those happy sailors have to say for themselves.

Option two would be to Haley's last known location, Azure City. Quite likely. There's some debate over whether V could defeat Xykon; I tend towards 'yes, definitely, she'll flatten him'. But then Xykon's been defeated twice already and got out of it. All it takes is that Redcloak be elsewhere at the time and has the phylactery with him, and Xykon makes another comeback, regrowing one bone at a time just like before.

Option three would be direct to the next Gate. But I'm not sure why. Nobody else of interest is there, and any magical booby-traps V might set up will dissolve when the splice ends. Unless V means to seize the Snarl right now, I don't see that one happening.

So, my bet: Azure City. Xykon and Redcloak took the city mostly intact. Its people are enslaved but for the most part they are alive. That's about to change. Epic spellcasting in a densely inhabited area... here come some fun times. Fun times that I'm sure V will be fully capable of rationalising as unavoidable collateral damage.

[Skrim]

So V chose the entire "saving the world" business and reuniting the Order over his/her family.

But s/he doesn't know where Haley is, and hasn't attempted to find out ever since s/he Soul Spliced. So I assume that V is teleporting to Azure City. Of course, Haley & co. are in Greysky, but V doesn't know this. And of course, Xykon, Redcloak and the hobgoblin army are in Azure City.

So I expect some kind of showdown between Xykon and Hyper-V. V is now quite a bit less powerful without Haera, who was supposed to be "the most powerful of the three by a fair bit" according to the fiends.

As for V's family, I don't think we'll be seeing them for a while now. V was rather harsh with them, but I don't think s/he had the time for explaining the entire OOTS saga, the Gates and the entire saving-the-world thing given that the Soul-Splice clock is ticking.
Let's see what happens next.

[Nenec]

I think "This thing that you become? This is what you always really wanted" is the key.
So, I'm not surprised at all, I was really expecting a strip like this, no surprises. I'm also proud of Inkyrius's reaction anyway, and her courage.

[Taekwondodo]

Oh, Vaarsuvius. My heart sunk so low. If Kyries speach can't stop hir then nothing can.

[Titanium Dragon]

I don't think that V even knows about Greysky City. Unless I am mistaken, V does not know about Cloister because presumably s/he has not tried to contact Haley recently. Going back to the fleet would be backtracking in V's mind, I don't see hir doing that. My prediction is (since V pretty much admitted s/he is holding on to the Soul Splice out f a desire ofr power), V will try and take out Xykon. Even as powerful as V is now, I don't know if s/he has enough power to do that. V is really racking up the Fiendish Flyer MIles now.


While a reasonable guess, I don't think it will happen for three reasons:

1) They won't kill off V right now.

2) Xykon is behind a cloister.

3) The party needs to get back together.

V will probably fetch Durkon to raise Roy at this point.

[Kobrag]

Greeat work giant.

I expect a divorce settlement within 400 pages:smallfrown:


Bad v, stay! SIT!

[Rabscuttle]

This feels like the point where we change focus to someone else. gragh! I want to know what is happening to everyone!

<Also, I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but there are no translation brackets in this comic.>*

*translated from Underpedant

[Grunthos]

Well, that has well and truly torn it. V succumbed to the belief that this power has any chance of allowing hir to "fix everything." This was the fiends' greatest trap. No spliced action V takes from this point forward can possibly advance hir goals on aggregate, because the 3-for-1 tradeoff keeps putting hir in vastly deeper debt, rather like Bernie Madoff. But V will pursue the chimera of "fixing everything." V, even if you kill Xykon and close the rifts, the time taken to achieve these goals will allow the fiends to wreak such havoc, you'll wish Xykon was your problem again.

Spitting into the wind. :smallfrown:

[Iranon]

V giving up the soul splice makes little sense - there is a world to save, starting with aiding his former party members.

V is under the misconception that payback will only happen posthumously and might underestimate the overall danger.
Personally I would fear that *any* alone time of my soul with 3 archfiends would be enough to warp me beyond regognition and possibly turn me into their tool for good... but that is another reason to make the most out of the time I have since I might be damned anyway: Play hard or don't play at all.

Entering the deal to save the souls of one's children, then backing out when every mortal's existence (including souls) is still under a very real threat is ludicrous to rational (as opposed to intuitive) people like V. The acceptance of one's family is trivial by comparison, and ending the splice would be way out of character.
The rational reason to let go - if the fiends can call in the payment at any time, an upgraded V might be a liability rather than an asset - does not occur to him.

***

I for one can't say I'm disappointed with Kyrie... he still comes across as wise, kind and perceptive to me (an earlier strip also implied him to be a very loving parent).
Having him show understanding and acceptance of V's current modus operandi would both stretch credibility and reduce the impact of the mini-arc.

On the other hand, I'm rather impressed with V: I half expected him to use magic on his family (not in anger or to assert control, but as a 'replacement for his lousy CHA' as he was willing to do to Elan after upsetting him).

[Tempest Fennac]

I honestly didn't consider the comic to be sad at all. I also think V is making the right choice by trying to sort everything else out now due to how the rest of the world is more important then his/her mate's views on how V is doing it (admittedly, considering V's lack of care for their own children and what happened with the dragon after she was killed, it's not surprising that Kyrie felt that way).

[The Minx]

So, V has made his choice, and makes his debt to the fiends all the greater. Somehow I don't think this is the last such choice he will be forced to make, but apart from that brief outburst, at least he didn't leave his family in anger (much less harm them) and that's worth a lot.

[Belkster11]

Is it just me or did Inkryius seem to be a complete fool here? V calmly was trying to explain everything and I think if I were facing a demon-type creature who just zapped a dragon who was going to kill/soul-bind me, I would listen to every word he said.

And if this thing used to be my MATE, then I would attempt to listen even closer and gather every detail I can, even if it means the mate has to retell everything that had happen.

While yes, V did seem cold leaving hir mate behind with a burning wreckage that was their home and two injured children who can't even walk (of course, never mind the fact that there are still bits of Mama Dragon parts lying around. All V disentegrated was the head), Inkryius listening to V could have made the difference between V possibly recovering and trying again or this.

[kalkyrie]

V had no choice but to keep maintaining the splice.


If events continue along their current path, Xykon will take over the other gates with ease, either setting free the Snarl or controlling it.

If that happens, V's family will be dead (Xykon controls the world) or worse than dead (the Snarl eats them).
No choice, no choice at all.


My guess is V is headed off to deal as much damage as possible to Xykon's army. We've seen the combined forces of Good (paladin nation and the OotS) try to take it on. They got rolled by the combined forces of Evil.

--
As an aside, remember if the Snarl breaks free it will destroy the universe and everything in it (barring some gods, possibly). Since the demons/devils are in the universe, they don't want this to happen. It's possible they gave V the splice to stop Xykon (as well as picking up a nice juicy elven soul along the way).

[RMS Oceanic]

I honestly didn't consider the comic to be sad at all. I also think V is making the right choice by trying to sort everything else out now due to how the rest of the world is more important then his/her mate's views on how V is doing it (admittedly, considering V's lack of care for their own children and what happened with the dragon after she was killed, it's not surprising that Kyrie felt that way).

It's true that from an objective viewpoint, V retaining the splice is the simplest and most pragmatic option. However, given Kyrie's accusations that this is what V really wants, I think (s)he is continuing to keep the splice for the wrong reasons. Note that V says that (s)he has to fix everything. This is still V feeling the need to prove that h** magic can solve all problems it encounters. With the need for immediate urgency removed, it certainly wouldn't hurt to limit the time (s)he owes to the fiends by ending the splice, cast sending (or wait 8 hours to prepare it), and ask Aarindarius for some teleports. Sadly, (s)he still can't admit when (s)he needs help.

[Tempest Fennac]

Actually, Xykon probably won't get to kill V's children. Without spoiling Start of Darkness, things could end up being bad for PC races in general if the plan succeeds, though. The chances are that the Fiends want a gate for themselves rather then intending on stopping Xykon for their own safety. I disagree about time not being an issue due to V not knowing what's been happening with Haley, meaning that trying to find her now would be wise, especially if V could kill Xykon as well. (I know it's mainly about V proving s/he can do things on their own, but I'm looking at it from a "greater good"-standpoint.)

[pjackson]

But V's actions are highly NG.


No they are not. Saving your own friends family is neutral. Killing a large number of creatures with out checking that they ALL deserve it was evil. (It is not good enough that most probabaly did deserve it.)



For those who have this dubious idea that there is virtue in sacrifice, we have V sacrificing her own happiness. He can do a fantastic amount of good for a trivial cost, according to the facts before us.


Where do you get the idea that the cost will be trivial? It has had a non-trivial personal cost to V already and the potential future cost of the deal is vast. Specifically the fiends are likely to use V to try to gain control of the Snarl.



We have very good reason to assume it is not going to work out as well as he thinks [if for no other reason, because there are at least 500 pages to go, and we can't have V solve everything in 5.], but V seems to think she is about to save the world at a small cost.

Yes, but V wasn't and isn't thinking clearly.

[Mad Mask]

I wonder, why didn't Vaarsuvius just cast a few of those disguise spells to look normal ? Surely it should have been far less traumatising for the family.

[Tempest Fennac]

It was probably down to not thinking clearly. Time was a factor here, but the fact that V seemed shocked when his/her mate thought they were possessed suggests that V didn't think his/her apperance would matter.

[factotum]

3) Um no, ABD didn't really need V to leave the fleet to go after his family. Technically, she could have just used a sending scroll to tell V about it and V would have been equally powerless (without fiends).

Then why didn't she do exactly that? She made it quite clear when she attacked V that she didn't want to attack him while he was with the fleet due to the large number of high level people around, and she even waited for him to expend most of his high level spells trying to hit Qarr before she made her appearance--she clearly wanted to let him know IN PERSON what she was going to do, but at little risk to herself. Yes, she COULD have used Sending, but the events we've actually seen show that she didn't want to, so I stick by what I said.

[Adeptus]

Classic.

It's hard for a PC to give up ultimate power, and go back to being just a regular powerful wizard.

[SteveMB]

"Besides which, my soul is only forfeit for a duration equal to the time I retain these powers" (there should probably be a 3x modifier in there)

It's kind of sad in a way but is there another member of the OOTS dumb enough to take an archfiend at its word that it has no other angle in mind?

Well, the "word" that the archfiends had no other angle in mind was more an implication than an explicit statement. :smallwink: I'm sure they wouldn't mind at all if this power causes V to shift to one of the Evil alignments and one of their realm gets h** soul for eternity after h** death.

[cocked_brow]

Might V be thinking of suicide? Destroy the Snarl while being absorbed by it? That way he ceases to exist, and the 3*usage agreement disappears with him. A last spit in the eye against evil, now that the kids are safe...

[SteveMB]

Now that is really sad. :(

Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here? She seemed so understanding in the last strip but now she doesn't even hear V out and just jumps straight to conclusions. It took Vaarsuvius getting the scary eyes again to make her listen to him. And she even asks WHY he's still holding on to the power, but cuts him off right when he's trying to tell her exactly why.

You make a decent case for considering her actions irrational and unfair, but I can't really consider them disappointing. She's doing rather well given the circumstances, I think.

[Bloodrage]

So, now it is only matter of time, when roy'll be resurrect! (I hope he'll be :smalltongue: )

[Milandros]

I don't think this is V being pragmatic or self-sacrificing at all.

This is, in fact, close to the "classic" fall of a paladin. The paladin's fall is rarely due to one sudden "Well, you've treated me so badly, I'm going to start killing children now!" event. A paladin is seduced - slowly encouraged to undertake darker and darker acts "for the greater good". The sequence starts with "I must save these people from the invading army", becomes "those peasant fools don't understand that they'll be killed if they stay here, so compel them to abandon their village", turns into "that peasant leader keeps fighting my attempts to save his people, so kill him to save the rest", ends up as "they need my firm leadership and control for their own good, buwahahahaha!"

V's initial motivations seemed noble - V must save his family! And if V had argued that the alternate plan seemed far too risky, and while this would have great cost it was a sacrifice V was willing to make, then things would quite possibly be different - but V didn't; V argued that "*I* can not fail". It was V's own ego and desperate need to gain ultimate arcane power that motivated V. The soul splices are not making V brusque and abrupt with V's family - now that V has incredible power, V is allowing it to make V arrogant and dismissive of lessers.

Now V has another option - and if V were to have the attitude "I'm sorry, my love - I know that you will not forgive me, but too many other people will suffer if I do not sacrifice myself to do this" then again there would be justification. However, V is driven by ego again - "I must fix this" - plus, I suspect it will become increaingly clear, a desperate need not to give up supreme arcane power now V has it.

A truly heroic approach might be to say farewell, use all remaining power to try to liberate Azure City, destroy Xykon, save the OoTS, etc, etc, and then immediately kill oneself, knowing the fiends will gain your soul, but that they will not be able to force you to act on the material plane to try to control the Snarl. But does anyone honestly think that V has something like that in mind?

[Tempest Fennac]

It's kind of ironic about how V is like Roy in the sense that they both have a personal need to fix things personally due to traumatic events. Admittedly, Roy did at least avoid making deals with evil Outsiders so far. I'm not sure if I'd class this as a fall due to how V is pretty much the same as before, apart from being more arrogant and self-absorbed. I doubt V has any plans like that (s/he wasn't even willing to help the dirt farmers initially so the idea of him/her sacrificing him/herself doesn't seem likely). What's kind of ironic about me saying the comic didn't make me the least bit sad is that a depressing song called Where You Want to Be by Darren Hayes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlab_nPNo6E&feature=PlayList&p=44316DAF9A962BAD&index=0 , fits this comic pretty well (at least from V's family's perspective).

[Grunthos]

The term we are looking for here is tar baby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby).

[HandofShadows]

Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here? She seemed so understanding in the last strip but now she doesn't even hear V out and just jumps straight to conclusions. It took Vaarsuvius getting the scary eyes again to make her listen to him. And she even asks WHY he's still holding on to the power, but cuts him off right when he's trying to tell her exactly why.

Glad someone else noticed this. The mate is acting in the same highly judgemental way that V acts. And many of the same people that are critical of V seem to be cheering the mate on.

[SkredlitheOgre]

My opinion is that Kyrie was totally in the right. V took care of the dragon, which is why she took on the splice. The dragon is 'dealt with' (and then some). The threat is over. Release the splice. Once again, V's ego and pursuit of power overshadows everything else. She may not have Kyrie or the children when she finally loses the splice.

And I think it serves her right.

[Tempest Fennac]

I still think V genuinly cares about finding Haley, and, looking at how well non-Epic attempts to find her went, I think using the Splice to try to sort everything else out first is for the best in the long-run.

[HOLEkevin]

It wasn't me! I couldn't help myself! It was like I was just watching myself do all these horrible things…

But it won't matter because Inky will already have taken refuge in the Shelter for Ambiguously Gendered Spouses, and the marriage will be over.

[Ziriath]

I wonder, why didn't Vaarsuvius just cast a few of those disguise spells to look normal ? Surely it should have been far less traumatising for the family.
Maybe she loves her new appearance so much that she doesn't want to change it back

[Warren Dew]

Wow V is cold blooded.

"I could not love the, deare, so much / lov'd I not honour more"

- Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, going to the warres


And somehow, I feel like he could have taken like 30 seconds to explain what's going on to Inkyrius.

I believe that's what Vaarsuvius was trying to do starting in panel 6, before getting cut off.

[Zanaril]

As to where V's going: her first stop will be back to the island to pick up her spell books. And "Finding Plot Holes for Dummies".

[factotum]

Maybe she loves her new appearance so much that she doesn't want to change it back

Or he doesn't know he looks any different--it's not like he's looked in a mirror since taking on the splice!

[Kaytara]

The reason why V is being a selfish idiot is pretty simple. There will always be another problem for V to solve with his Ultimate Arcane Power. Whether it be to get the Stick back together, kill Xykon, let loose the Snarl (whoops... Don't think V knows he's supposed to do that yet. :smalltongue:), or be it to figure out why hot dogs come in a package of eight, but buns come in packages of ten. So, really, this whole "I gots to save the world" is a big giant excuse.

At least IMO. :smallsmile:

Well, yes, obviously the "I need to fix everything" attitude can be taken to extremes. Holding on to the Splice longer and longer while fixing more problems is one such extreme. However, letting go of the Splice here and now would have meant doing NOTHING AT ALL, which is just the opposite extreme and in every way as bad.




Where do you get the idea that the cost will be trivial? It has had a non-trivial personal cost to V already and the potential future cost of the deal is vast. Specifically the fiends are likely to use V to try to gain control of the Snarl.



A truly heroic approach might be to say farewell, use all remaining power to try to liberate Azure City, destroy Xykon, save the OoTS, etc, etc, and then immediately kill oneself, knowing the fiends will gain your soul, but that they will not be able to force you to act on the material plane to try to control the Snarl. But does anyone honestly think that V has something like that in mind?

Why do you people keep forgetting that Vaarsuvius doesn't know that? He doesn't know the fiends can collect anytime they want. He doesn't know that any time spent Spliced will just mean being a living puppet later. From what he knows, not a single person will be in any way affected by how long he holds on to the Splice, except for him.
Giving up the Splice and the chance to save your friends just because you were afraid to spend a few more minutes in Hell before retiring to your cozy afterlife... THAT would be selfish.

What makes Kyrie in the wrong here, in my opinion, is her hasty judgement. Assuming everything she said about Vaarsuvius was true (and wasn't exaggerated to provoke V into assuring her otherwise), it's beside the point. She knows Vaarsuvius, yes, but knowing V isn't enough. She also needs to know the situation to judge whether V should hold on to the Soul Splice or not. And she has no idea of the situation and brushes off V's attempts to fill her in on it, not once, but twice.
The "Kyrie is still on edge after the fight" argument would have some weight, but Kyrie seems to be thinking quite clearly here, based on all those elaborate complaints about V's deal with the fiends and his pursuit of power.

So I'm somewhat at loss why people keep admiring Kyrie's wisdom and common sense. She's being cruel and disrespectful ("I understand just fine, thanks" is rarely a good response to someone who is calmly trying to explain themselves to you") to the person who she believes has just forfeited his soul to save her and the kids.

The person V loves refuses to listen to him and rejects him. *Sigh* I suppose I'll just file this under my list of "Proof that the OotS-verse hates Vaarsuvius".

[motub]

Is it just me or did Inkryius seem to be a complete fool here? V calmly was trying to explain everything and I think if I were facing a demon-type creature who just zapped a dragon who was going to kill/soul-bind me, I would listen to every word he said.

And if this thing used to be my MATE, then I would attempt to listen even closer and gather every detail I can, even if it means the mate has to retell everything that had happen.
First of all, Kyrie doesn't know anything about the soul binding (which might or might not have made a difference).

Also, precisely why would you listen to "every word" and "gather every detail"? What possible use does that have to you as the mate?

Take it like this: Your mate is a police officer. Your mate is sent undercover into a drug gang/mob, where they have to take drugs to fit in. So your mate is now a heroin addict, unfortunately. The gang decides to kidnap your kids (which the gang doesn't know are your kids, of course), and hold them hostage, to.... force you (who happens to work in, oh a bank, the diamond industry, whatever) to do something to allow them to steal the products of your place of employment. Your mate takes some "extra" drugs to get hyped up, so that the whole kidnapping, etc is foiled in the very nick of time, and the gang is "arrested" (or killed, but anyway, taken out of play). So the mate's undercover job is now done-- the objective of dismantling the gang has been accomplished.

You (and your kids) are left staring at the "remains" of your mate, who is all hopped up on smack, and barely resembles the person you knew-- not least because they have just murdered one or more people in front of you (and your kids); no matter that they were a threat, the mate you knew didn't go around shooting people in the head/back/multiple times with a feral grin on their face.

Then they want to explain why they're hopped up at that very moment? OK, if all they have to say is "I had to, for the job." You're not going to like that, but OK. If you then say, "OK, I understand-- I don't like it at all, but I understand-- but you're going to rehab tomorrow," and the mate then says, "No, no, I can't-- since I'm already addicted, now I can infiltrate other drug cartels and take them out as well..!" are you having that?

Kyrie wasn't, in any case, and I don't blame him one bit.


Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here? She seemed so understanding in the last strip but now she doesn't even hear V out and just jumps straight to conclusions. It took Vaarsuvius getting the scary eyes again to make her listen to him. And she even asks WHY he's still holding on to the power, but cuts him off right when he's trying to tell her exactly why.
There are always reasons that "sound good"-- in V's ears, at least. But nobody is willing to concede that maybe Kyrie had a point. Of course, ultimately the disposition of your soul is your own, but if marriage is the binding of souls, then yes, Kyrie did have "some sort of say" in the disposition of V's soul before she just went and sold it for a return that was only useful to her, while the family would have to pay some portion of the price (if only their enduring grief that V's soul was being tortured in the Lower Planes for a very long time/eternally, when to them she had always been the beloved wife and mother who would not seem to deserve such punishment, nothing said about any unknown, more immediate "price" the family might pay).

Even if you grant that Kyrie might have accepted the reasons V did that-- and he did, conditionally, if not with good grace, at least politely-- I don't think there's a reason that sounds or is good enough to justify keeping the splice after the overt reason for enacting it is past.

Sure, you might still have unfinished business elsewhere, and you can't stay-- I can accept that. But not while holding the splice. Not while mounting up enslavement time to fiends. No. NO.

No reason is good enough for that.

Not if you ever want to come home to stay, and pick up the threads of our life again.

But that was never really in the cards, was it :smallfrown: ?

[sabremeister]

V had no choice but to keep maintaining the splice.

I can't find any reference to how to spoiler text something (and I'm not completely sure it is... early morning), so I'll put the rest in small text.
SPOILER?
If events continue along their current path, Xykon will take over the other gates with ease, either setting free the Snarl or controlling it.

If that happens, V's family will be dead (Xykon controls the world) or worse than dead (the Snarl eats them).
No choice, no choice at all.


My guess is V is headed off to deal as much damage as possible to Xykon's army. We've seen the combined forces of Good (paladin nation and the OotS) try to take it on. They got rolled by the combined forces of Evil.

--
As an aside, remember if the Snarl breaks free it will destroy the universe and everything in it (barring some gods, possibly). Since the demons/devils are in the universe, they don't want this to happen. It's possible they gave V the splice to stop Xykon (as well as picking up a nice juicy elven soul along the way).
END SPOILER

Spoilers are done by putting the word SPOILER in [].

Why would V bother dealing damage to Xykon's army? Exactly what threat to existence do they pose?

None at all.

The Hobgoblin army is just there to enable Xykon and Redcloak to get to the Gates long enough to complete the rituals. Remove the army, and Xykon will merely find another. Remove Xykon and Redcloak, OTOH, and all you have is a Hobgoblin army that can be defeated in battle, like any other army. If there's no Xykon and, perhaps more importantly, no Redcloak, the army will have no purpose - they'll just stay in Azure City, not having any effect on the Gates, and so the OotS wouldn't need to deal with them.

As for a choice - V did have a choice. For all we know, she's teleported to Aarindarius, so that she can drop the splice and ask to be teleported to the Azure City fleet again. It's unlikely, but until we're shown V's reappearance, we won't know. Yes, a spliced V is going to be much more capable of finding Haley, getting Roy resurrected, and stopping Xykon before he can get control of a Gate and all the non-Goblinoids are killed. And yes, saving the world is, objectively, much more important than the feelings of a small number of poeple.

But subjectively, V has made a very bad decision. Not only is her time in Hell still accruing, the longer she stays spliced, the greater the likelihood of her committing an act that gets her permanent residence there (although I think Familicide probably did that anyway). Also, the reason she took the soul splice anyway? To save her family from a dragon? They've just mad it pretty clear they no longer want to know V, do not agree with her choice, and are downright scared of her. What has V got to come back to now, if and when Xykon is finally defeated? Ask yourself this: If you had the choice to definitely save the world on your own, but in doing so lose the love and respect of your loved one, or to probably save the world by working with your friends and retaining the love and respect of your loved ones, which would you take? And don't just give the answer that supports your position, actually consider the choice first - and bear in mind that Elves live a lot longer than Humans, and 300+ years is a long time to go hating yourself for a bad decision that cost you happiness.

[Sutremaine]

I believe that's what Vaarsuvius was trying to do starting in panel 6, before getting cut off.
Nah, she had her chance and she blew it. Before Kyrie cut her off, she was all about saying how she did it all for her family and that it was the only option. Only when Kyrie accepted that the danger was over and told V to drop the splice did V bring up the main plot that we all know about. If it were so important to V's motivations, then she should have mentioned it earlier. If the main plot, having nothing to do with the dragon, were utterly unimportant, then she shouldn't have mentioned it at all.

[Kaytara]

Nah, she had her chance and she blew it. Before Kyrie cut her off, she was all about saying how she did it all for her family and that it was the only option. Only when Kyrie accepted that the danger was over and told V to drop the splice did V bring up the main plot that we all know about. If it were so important to V's motivations, then she should have mentioned it earlier. If the main plot, having nothing to do with the dragon, were utterly unimportant, then she shouldn't have mentioned it at all.

Vaarsuvius said nothing about the main plot back then because he was explaining why he had accepted the Splice and yes, the main plot had had nothing to do with that. There's no REASON to bring it up. It only becomes relevant when Kyrie asks why Vaarsuvius is holding on to the Splice, which is when V tries to explain it.
In short, V's reason for accepting it is different from his reason for keeping it, but that doesn't make it a bad reason.


There are always reasons that "sound good"-- in V's ears, at least. But nobody is willing to concede that maybe Kyrie had a point. Of course, ultimately the disposition of your soul is your own, but if marriage is the binding of souls, then yes, Kyrie did have "some sort of say" in the disposition of V's soul before she just went and sold it for a return that was only useful to her, while the family would have to pay some portion of the price (if only their enduring grief that V's soul was being tortured in the Lower Planes for a very long time/eternally, when to them she had always been the beloved wife and mother who would not seem to deserve such punishment, nothing said about any unknown, more immediate "price" the family might pay).
The reason no one has conceded Kyrie's point is that Kyrie made it under false assumptions that invalidate that point. She thought V had sold his soul FOREVER AND EVER, in which case it IS something she should have had a say on. Although...

for a return that was only useful to her
"Only" to her? You must mean to her AND the children. Even if V had sold his soul forever, since the children are in the equation and both parents are presumably equally responsible, the choice still would have been justified.


Even if you grant that Kyrie might have accepted the reasons V did that-- and he did, conditionally, if not with good grace, at least politely-- I don't think there's a reason that sounds or is good enough to justify keeping the splice after the overt reason for enacting it is past.

Sure, you might still have unfinished business elsewhere, and you can't stay-- I can accept that. But not while holding the splice. Not while mounting up enslavement time to fiends. No. NO.

No reason is good enough for that.


And that is where it becomes a matter of opinion. What if the reason is saving the whole damn multiverse? In the worst-case outcome, there won't even BE an Afterlife to get or not get into.
What makes Kyrie unsympathetic to me is that she doesn't even hear Vaarsuvius out. Or rather, she cuts off his explanation one time, is frightened into listening to it after V flips out, admits that she was wrong, and then proceeds to do the exact same thing all over again - worse, really, since she specifically asked Vaarsuvius WHY he is still holding on the power and cut him off right when he was telling her why.

[Porthos]

The person V loves refuses to listen to him and rejects him. *Sigh* I suppose I'll just file this under my list of "Proof that the OotS-verse hates Vaarsuvius".

(this is a different subject, so I can still comment on it :smalltongue:)

Setting aside the obvious pre-existing tensions, here's a point to bring up. In a world where Evil is very real and people know that the devil exists, perhaps Inkyrius views the idea of selling renting one's soul as to be so morally and ethically reprehensible that almost nothing justifies it.

Perhaps we're being a bit too blasé about it, being gamers and all. To most of us, it's just another Game Mechanic. One where we can look at the plusses and minuses and try to make objective observations. And V is doing pretty much the same thing here (though admittedly, he may or may not be missing a HUGE piece of data when it comes to "collection time").

But Inkyrius? He's not looking at this from an objective viewpoint. He's looking at someone who has quite literally sold his soul. And that offends him at some level where it is utterly utterly wrong. Remember, he accuses V of becoming something no better than a monster (and before we judge Inkyrius to harshly, remember he's heard every word of V's lectures over the last few minutes).

Perhaps he even feels a bit of personal betrayal here. After all, the idea of sacrificing everything, including ones soul, is not universally regarded as a Good Thing. It is very easy to see how someone might react with a "How Dare You" type speech in that situation, even though that act saved his and his children's lives. In fact, Inkyrius might view that he's giving V a break by "allowing" him the chance to redeem himself by willingly dropping the splice. He doesn't expect V to take him up on the offer, of course, but at least he makes it.

And this gets back to the pre-existing tension thing I mentioned. I really don't think we can overlook that. How much of Inkyrius' outburst was tied to resentment (perhaps long buried) about V wandering the world looking for Ultimate Arcane Power? If he feels resentment (however minor) at V's obsession with power, then I can see how this would set him off and cause him to act without the amount of compassion that is needed here to get V to step back from the brink.

I wonder if this is what Rich was referring to in oOotPCs when he said, paraphrasing, that he couldn't show a portion of a characters backstory because it would be too spoily, thus he would show a different scene from that characters life.

I dunno. I think that Inkyrius is just really really really really upset at the whole rent/sell soul thing. And we need to look at his reactions to figure out why. And once we figure that out, then we can judge him on whether or not his reactions are justified.

[snafu]

V giving up the soul splice makes little sense - there is a world to save, starting with aiding his former party members.

There was another adventurer I once heard of who thought it was a good idea to take up ultimate power from an evil source and use it to defeat a villain who was threatening world domination.

What was his name again?...

Ah yes.

Boromir.

"We do not desire the power of wizard-lords, only strength to defend ourselves, strength in a just cause. And behold! in our need chance brings to light the Ring of Power. It is a gift, I say; a gift to the foes of Mordor. It is mad not to use it, to use the power of the Enemy against him. The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory. What could not a warrior do in this hour, a great leader? What could not Aragorn do? Or if he refuses, why not Boromir? The Ring would give me power of Command. How I would drive the hosts of Mordor, and all men would flock to my banner!"

It's probably a good thing he never, ever got his hands on the Ring.

[Kaytara]

There was another adventurer I once heard of who thought it was a good idea to take up ultimate power from an evil source and use it to defeat a villain who was threatening world domination.

What was his name again?...

Ah yes.

Boromir.

"We do not desire the power of wizard-lords, only strength to defend ourselves, strength in a just cause. And behold! in our need chance brings to light the Ring of Power. It is a gift, I say; a gift to the foes of Mordor. It is mad not to use it, to use the power of the Enemy against him. The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory. What could not a warrior do in this hour, a great leader? What could not Aragorn do? Or if he refuses, why not Boromir? The Ring would give me power of Command. How I would drive the hosts of Mordor, and all men would flock to my banner!"

It's probably a good thing he never, ever got his hands on the Ring.

Except the Ring relied on draining the willpower of the bearer, and the Fiends have established that the Soul Splice has absolutely no effect on V's alignment and decisions.

[Mannryu]

The soul spice does not drain willpower, at least not literary... But just by being so powerful makes you wonder, why giving up on it at all? Sure, alot of time in damnation, but who cares? You'll be dead by that time. V's mind is currently something like this: "Hey I'm allpowerful and stuff, let's go kick some bottoms and save my friends." But when it'll end and when everything needed to be done will be done, maybe the next thought in V's head will be: "Hey I'm STILL allpowerful and stuff, and it is just awesome! Why end it? I'm so cool being like this!" Well not literary like that, but close.

So it doesn't drain it, it just kinda.. weakens it somehow. Makes you change your mind... in a bad way.
It is possible I suppose.

[Silverraptor]

Awwwwww...Sad comic.:smallfrown: When V left I didn't cry at all, but I said, "Awwww... darn it V.":smallfrown:

[snafu]

Why do you people keep forgetting that Vaarsuvius doesn't know that? He doesn't know the fiends can collect anytime they want.

Are we so certain that they can?

They were pretty quick to correct the other misconceptions V expressed about the nature of the deal. They seem to have felt free to deceive her on other matters - like why they're offering her in particular such a deal - but not on anything that materially concerns the terms and conditions of the transaction.

Indeed, consider the circumstances under which V accepted the deal. V accepted the deal subject to the conditions that

(1) "The brief time my soul will spend being tortured in your collective care after my eventual death will be easily forgotten afterwards, when I proceed to my final rest."

(2) "There is not even one other way available to me to save the lives - nay, the very souls - of my children."

The fiends immediately interjected at this point and contradicted (2) but not (1), which by implication confirms (1).

Similarly when V asked

"And for this, you would have eternal dominion over my immortal soul once I died?" - the fiends corrected her on the 'eternal' part, outlining the rental deal they had in mind, but again said nothing about 'once I died'.

This being a verbal contract subject to negotiation by both sides, a celestial lawyer representing V might very well argue that the fiends' claim on her soul is indeed only post-mortem.

Unfortunately I can only think of one celestial lawyer to whom V might have access any time soon, and I honestly wouldn't want to entrust my eternal fate to her competent hands...

[Warren Dew]

Is anyone else feeling disappointed by Kyrie here?

Yes. Inkyrius just trots out what seem to be old grievances without even bothering to hear the actual story.

Of course, that kind of argument almost always happens soon after a relationship becomes committed. Not all that many couples then take the time to develop a good working relationship before going on to things like raising kids or attaining ultimate arcane power. And once they do go on to those things, they no longer have enough time together to develop a good working relationship if they don't already have one.

So in that sense, I'm disappointed in both of them and how they handled the relationship six or eight years ago, when Vaarsuvius evidently wanted ultimate arcane power and Inkyrius evidently wanted kids, and they evidently decided to go for both immediately instead of working on the relationship first.


Ask yourself this: If you had the choice to definitely save the world on your own, but in doing so lose the love and respect of your loved one, or to probably save the world by working with your friends and retaining the love and respect of your loved ones, which would you take?

I hope I would take the former choice, definitely saving the world.

In actuality, I might take the latter choice, but that would not be because it's the choice I actually should take - it would be because I was not sufficiently selfless to do what's right. That Vaarsuvius is selfless enough to do that is a point against me, not a point against Vaarsuvius.

[Doug Lampert]

I am of the firm belief that V and the gang have sufficient power, or will get sufficient power, to solve this crisis eventually. V just wants to short-circut the process and be done with it expedinently. And if it means dealing with fiends from the Lower Planes, so be it.

IMO, V can stop the splice, contact his mentor and/or Durkon in the morning and deal with events then (after all, the world isn't going to end tomorrow - and probably won't end anytime soon. For whatever reason, the clock is NOT ticking right now, which means that V can afford to take his time). But, no, Mr. I Have To Do Everything Myself is going to put himself (and by extension the world) in a terrible situation. And all because he hasn't learned a simple lesson: Trying to solve everything yourself is a recipe for disaster.

The clock is not ticking for the same reason V and the others can solve the problem without the soul splice.

Because The Order are the PCs. The clock will ALWAYS show 007 when they cut the wire, because they are the PCs and it didn't START till they showed up and counted at a speed such that they could make it in time.

This is something V KNOWS, just as V knows that you only have one random encounter (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html). Sidequests CAN NOT cost the time you need to save the world. Fast or slow Xykon WILL make it to the next gate, and the entire order WILL be there, with (just barely) enough power to beat him unless they do something stupid (like let a fiend take them over for prolonged periods for example).

Claims that V has to be pragmatic and save the world run solidly into the fact that V has pointed out already that things just don't work that way. It isn't random and V can't stop Xykon on hir own.


Why do you people keep forgetting that Vaarsuvius doesn't know that? He doesn't know the fiends can collect anytime they want. He doesn't know that any time spent Spliced will just mean being a living puppet later. From what he knows, not a single person will be in any way affected by how long he holds on to the Splice, except for him.

Because V DOES KNOW BETTER. Hir has every bit of information we had to deduce that, and what's more hir explicitly says that the he'll give up his soul as "a fixed term lease at a time to be named l (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0641.html)ater", NOT, note "after I die", but "at a time to be named later". And that's when attempting self-justification.

[Kaytara]

Are we so certain that they can?

They were pretty quick to correct the other misconceptions V expressed about the nature of the deal. They seem to have felt free to deceive her on other matters - like why they're offering her in particular such a deal - but not on anything that materially concerns the terms and conditions of the transaction.
....

Well, no, we aren't certain, and when bringing up that argument I usually phrase it in some form of "V doesn't know it, and neither do we", actually. ^^; However, that's the ongoing theory at the moment.

It's easy to explain why they failed to correct that one detail despite correcting everything else.
1)By correcting everything else, they drive V into a false sense of security by convincing him that they really are trying to be honest with him.
2) Only one of them is a Lawful Evil devil and their organisation is a highly unorthodox one. We don't really know by what set of rules they operate and if honesty is all that important in their verbal contracts. And in any case, they HAVE been honest in what they said. Even the part about why they were helping V was probably technically true, it just wasn't the ONLY reason.
3) Their "collection time" was a very very important detail. If they had told V that they would collect anytime they wanted, Vaarsuvius would've realized what this meant for the Gates and for his friends, that he'd become a ticking time bomb. He probably would have even rejected the bargain, because letting your family die is still better than handing the keys to the Doomsday Device to the forces of incarnate evil.
So they didn't correct V because their whole deal hinged on Vaarsuvius not realizing that one detail.

EDIT: Also, the Law of Conservation of Detail speaks strongly in favour of this theory. When we first see the fiends, it's implied that Sabine is going to them to report about the Gates. Recently, the fiends imply that they have a great agenda. "Even if you still don't know what exactly 'it' really is." It's obvious it has something to do with the Gates, and in what way could V's bargain with them be significant except a false assumption that they conveniently forgot to correct and a loophole that they intend to exploit?

[Jammeez]

"Pride goeth before the fall." V thinks s/he is the only one who can "fix" things. V put hirself above hes friends in intelligence and capability, discarding them when they were perceived as getting in the way.

This can only end badly. And, of course, it all could have been avoided if V had taken care of hir own physical needs. You can't help your friends put on their oxygen masks if you are unconscious from lack of oxygen.

[Doc Filth]

Am I the only who thinks the first thing on V's agenda will be to catch the soul that escaped in the previous strip?

[Kaytara]

I think it would be interesting if Vaarsuvius

went to Azure City, started tearing Xykon's tower apart in search for Haley, and ran into O-Chul.

It's the only way I see the latter returning to a more active role in the storyline anytime soon.

[derfenrirwolv]

Kyrie has concluded that V has the splice for reasons in addition to saving Her and the kids. Sure, this seems like a snap judgment, but remember two things.

1) She's** married to V. She knows him* better than anyone else. This is apparently NOT the first conversation they've had on what V would be willing to sacrifice or give up for ultimate arcane power.

2) She's RIGHT. V has selfish reasons for wanting to hold onto the power. That doesn't make it evil, but the fact that V is partially keeping the splice for his own ego. She knows V is going to hell for what he's doing , and wants to see someone she loves suffer as little as possible.

[GoC]

Why is everyone saying this isn't good?:smallconfused:
It sounds like she's off to find Haley.

And to people saying V did this for selfish reason:
I think he did it to help Haley and the Order because she cares Haley and the fate of the world. You say he did it for selfishness.
You have no evidence. You can't really judge someone's motivations so that's the end of it. Believe what you want to believe.


V put hirself above hes friends in intelligence and capability, discarding them when they were perceived as getting in the way.

Umm...:smallconfused:
He does have better Int even if he doesn't act like it.

[Volkov]

Inkyrius acts very, very feminine, unlike V who acts every bit as androgynous as s/he looks.

[DoctorJest]

Inkyrius acts very, very feminine, unlike V who acts every bit as androgynous as s/he looks.

I've noticed that as well.

[Skaroq]

Something unexpected will happen. The unexpected always happens. Maybe the gods will intervene. Maybe some celestials or fiends will intervene. Something really cool has to happen. I just know it.

[Alaska Fan]

So V's cries of anguish in #641 were at disappointment/loss at the loss of part of the soul splice and implied loss of power, not pain in having part of the splice ripped out?

And V learned, at some level, that breaking concentration (or having it broken by your spouse) jeopardizes the should splice and his./her "ultimate arcane power"?

Would that explain V's reaction to any extent?

And isn't V's evil really his/her pride? "I must fix everything." No investigation to see if it was still a crisis; not even an attempt to find out where Haley or Durkon might be? And doesn't that imply V is bound for Azure City, if only to try to exorcise the nightmares?

It's pride that is taking V down. Even the quest for ultimate arcane power is ultimately about pride...:smallfrown:

EDIT: We know from Roy's experience with the Deva (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html) that motivation matters. Roy works from good motives; V, not so much.

[kalkyrie]

Edited for brevity.

Why would V bother dealing damage to Xykon's army? Exactly what threat to existence do they pose?

The Hobgoblin army is just there to enable Xykon and Redcloak to get to the Gates long enough to complete the rituals. Remove the army, and Xykon will merely find another. Remove Xykon and Redcloak, OTOH...


Simple- V can break the back of the hobgoblin army in a few rounds at little risk. (Meteor Swarm anyone?)

In contrast, I think V may lose against Xykon. Not due to power levels, but because Xykon is manipulative enough to cause V to lose a soul from the splice. At which point Xykon + allies are a fairly even match for V. Admittingly, this may be using knowledge V doesn't have access to.
Removing Xykon is a fine idea though (I would want the rest of the OotS for the battle though, and probably V's mentor if possible (unlikely)).




Ask yourself this: If you had the choice to definitely save the world on your own, but in doing so lose the love and respect of your loved one, or to probably save the world by working with your friends and retaining the love and respect of your loved ones, which would you take? And don't just give the answer that supports your position, actually consider the choice first - and bear in mind that Elves live a lot longer than Humans, and 300+ years is a long time to go hating yourself for a bad decision that cost you happiness.

I'll be blunt. Due to historical reasons in my past, I don't even read that as a question. I would actually suffer more anguish being near my spouse if I risked their life for my happiness, than if I simply played the 'martyr' role and my spouse lived happily ever after. However most people aren't as messed up in the head as me ^^.

I'll rephrase your question a bit, to show something. I don't mean this as rude.

Your question can be summed up as 'What would you choose; your spouse to love you or an notably increased chance of the world (possibly multiverse) being wiped out'.
This is close to 'would you rather die, or have 1000 strangers die?'.

More tellingly your question is a more extreme version of 'Would you risk your spouse's life to make them love you again?'.

...That last line was harsh, but you get my point ^^.

[jafar]

V made his kids cry. :smallmad: And somehow, I feel like he could have taken like 30 seconds to explain what's going on to Inkyrius. :smallfrown:

I think I understand V completely. Every second V spends explaining is one more second being tortured by vile fiends, remember? And V's verbosity gets the better of her sometimes (most times?) so who knows how long that would take. Furthermore, she already lost more than a third of her temporary powers.:smalleek:

No time to waste. Explanations can come later.

[David Argall]

No they are not. Saving your own friends family is neutral.
Saving a life is good. Period. It's a stranger, it's a family member, it's saving a life. It is Good!


Killing a large number of creatures with out checking that they ALL deserve it was evil. (It is not good enough that most probabaly did deserve it.)
A-we are discussing 642, not earlier strips.
B-We kill large numbers of those in opposing armies, some of which we are virtually certain do not deserve it. Assuming the war was justified in the first place [a much more difficult question to answer positively], we do not concern ourselves about minor numbers of innocents that are caught in the way. V had a highly valid argument that the death of these dragons was highly beneficial, and good. [Now the problem is that V made no reference to any such reason and we have no reason to think she was thinking of anything beyond family, and killing 60[600? 6000?] to save 3-4 is not good and we can't give V credit for what was essentially an accidental result of his action.]


Where do you get the idea that the cost will be trivial? It has had a non-trivial personal cost to V already and the potential future cost of the deal is vast. Specifically the fiends are likely to use V to try to gain control of the Snarl.
This is what we strongly suspect. V seems to have a blind spot on the idea, and not unreasonably so. So as far as V sees it, the cost is a few moments of personal annoyance a long time in the future, vs the benefit of saving anywhere from thousands of lives, up to billions of lives, within a year or two. The only reason to even consider rejecting such a deal is to recall what they say about "too good to be true".



s/he wasn't even willing to help the dirt farmers initially so the idea of him/her sacrificing him/herself doesn't seem likely).
V cited as reason that the dirt farmers were just dirt farmers, a loss, but only a small loss. Other things are just more important. Here we are talking about the fate of the world, and that makes V the "dirt farmer", and the small loss that must be accepted. Of course a lot of people are not willing to be that logical, but V has always been a fan of logic.



Inkyrius acts very, very feminine, unlike V who acts every bit as androgynous as s/he looks.
K is simply in the "female" role here. In this motif/cliche, it is the woman who argues for family and the male who argues for some larger good [which may not be good].

[Tharianor]

Ask yourself this: If you had the choice to definitely save the world on your own, but in doing so lose the love and respect of your loved one, or to probably save the world by working with your friends and retaining the love and respect of your loved ones, which would you take? And don't just give the answer that supports your position, actually consider the choice first - and bear in mind that Elves live a lot longer than Humans, and 300+ years is a long time to go hating yourself for a bad decision that cost you happiness.

For me that dasn't matter, because V will end dying before that time in consequence of same action belkar did.

My two eurocents:smallwink:

Edit: Sain this in regard to your point in general I agree, indeed.
Word that cut more deeper than swords, those of Inkyrius!:smallsigh:

[Code Black]

You have no evidence. You can't really judge someone's motivations so that's the end of it.

True, but that doesn't mean we can't judge on V's personality. Personally, I don't think this is a good turn of events based on what we know of V.

What makes the difference between a person who does horrible acts in the name of what they perceive to be Good (Redcloak and Miko, for instance), and people who usually do the right think on good intentions (Roy, for example)?

Usually, it's a black and white way of looking at the world and a complete inability to compromise. Even a person forced to do a horrible act only because it's the only option left can still have a Good soul if they completely understand and feel the implications of what they do.

However, V has rarely ever shown much beyond a black and white way of looking at things (best established by the way (s)he took care of Kubota), and (s)he's never, ever shown the ability to compromise. In addition, V often judges by what is most efficient or has the least possibility of failure, not necessarily by what is right or good. If hir treatment of the dragon, and the completely apathetic attitude towards the effects, is any indication, then I doubt V will end up doing anything that would be beneficial in the long run.

The words "I must succeed" are really what convinced me that this wasn't going to end well, and "I must fix everything" clinched it. These are the words that mark one who will do any kind of horrible act in order to do what they think is right. V will "fix" things according to the way (s)he sees things, which is not necessarily what is right or best, but what is most efficient, complete, and which crushes any opposition most completely. The two may coincide in some situations, but I don't think this is one of them.

[Kaytara]

Ask yourself this: If you had the choice to definitely save the world on your own, but in doing so lose the love and respect of your loved one, or to probably save the world by working with your friends and retaining the love and respect of your loved ones, which would you take?

"Probably save the world"? In the same sense that the Order expected to probably be able to contact Haley after their separation without problems, and probably resurrect Roy within 24 hours of his death?

They haven't heard a word from Haley in many months. For all V knows, Haley could be dead, or rotting in a cell in Xykon's tower. And while there's no word from her and the spells aren't getting through, Durkon and Elan are just sitting tight playing lapdogs with the paladin lord. There is no real reason to expect any of that to change on its own. If Vaarsuvius doesn't act NOW, it might just mean more months of the same thing.

Of course, V doesn't know about the Sending that may have reached Durkon. Perfect timing, indeed, and such a shame Therkla's date couldn't have been scheduled a week later, or Pete's negotiations couldn't have taken less time. One day I'm going to abandon my senses and actually make a thread with proof that the universe is conspiring against Vaarsuvius... XD

[Undead Prince]

AS OF NOW, KYRIE OFFICIALLY SUCKS.

I mean, I had my doubts (who am I kidding, I never doubted it), but this comic just cast it in stone.

K is an insensitive, selfish, pathetic and overbearing self-righteous leech.

Case in point? Here you go, the most glaring one:

V: But I still need to find [Haley, and Roy, and save them along with the entire world from a terrible threat...]

K: No. NO. If you did this thing out of concern for us, then end this right now.

Translation: Screw you, V. Screw your dreams and your life's work. Screw your friends and all people you care about besides Me. Screw the entire world. Only I matter. Only I am worthy of your sacrifices. And you must abandon everything and everyone, make your terrible sacrifice worthless, risk deaths of your friends and the unmaking of the Universe, just because I cannot stand seeing you powerful and independent, making your own decisions and having interests that go beyond the one and only Me. And I won't even deign it worthy to listen to your pleas. Nothing you can say could sway Me, nothing you value has any value to Me. Only I am of value to Me. Throw your life away, and accept My Will. Or be gone. And I'm keeping the kids, too.

______

While Kyrie was just rude and ingrateful, it was at least their personal business with V.

But now, when K took upon itself (yes, I'm calling K *it* from now on) to demand that V abandon friends in time of mortal danger, that's just sick. Twisted, and sick, and I'd even say evil. Yep, Neutral Evil. Selfish to the core, to the extreme. Not just ignorant, but outright hateful of the others' dreams and wishes, even if the other is their own spouse. Eager to break the "beloved" one's heart out of petty spite.

I find K more despicable than any villain of the comic. The villains have a kind of brutal honesty about them. The worst they can do is kill (and maybe Soul Bind). But this? This is the most craven villainy ever. Holding V's love to K and the children hostage while demanding that V discard everything that's dear to him - his friends, and his pursuits.

Even from the standpoint of D&D morality, V abandoning the soul splice at this point would not have been a Good act. It might even be considered an Evil act. He already paid for the splice with his soul, and it's irrevocable. Now that the price has been paid, to have the power to save countless innocents, and choose not to, for no good reason, - at best, it's Neutral. At worst, Evil.

It's like a child is drowning, and you can swim, and could have easily saved him. But chose not to. Just because your spouse said you shouldn't get wet.

Selfish and arrogant, K was tempting V to commit Evil on a grand scale.


What is this obsession with finding V to have poor motives? The choice is entirely clear. V has the power to find Roy and take care of him, and V has the power to eliminate Xykon permanently. She may have the power to close the rift. And people want him to abandon such vital tasks?

I am amazed myself. Moreover, I can't help wondering if these people would actually make such choices in real life. However, that's not a topic for this board.


But V's actions are highly NG. For those who have this dubious idea that there is virtue in sacrifice, we have V sacrificing her own happiness. He can do a fantastic amount of good for a trivial cost, according to the facts before us.

You are completely correct. Of course, the Fates are against him. But he has to try. Otherwise, he'd be a selfish SOB.

There is, of course, one other option. That V is really doing everything out of pure pride. That he really doesn't care for Haley, Roy, the world etc, and only wants to kick @$$.

To this, I say: look at him. If he was evil, through and through, rotten to the core, as this theory suggests, he would always keep the evil eyes. He would be laughing, smiling, joking, enjoying his power - like he did with the dragon. He wouldn't care about a word K says.

Instead, V is clearly smitten. He's chock-full of regret. He's one step away from breaking down in tears. He (Vaarsuvius!!) is at a loss for words.

Maybe he would like to abandon the splice now. But he really can't. The DUTY is too heavy. The duty to atone for his failures.

[KyrtFurey]

Are we so certain that they can?

Yes. No specific time period was detailed in the contract.


They were pretty quick to correct the other misconceptions V expressed about the nature of the deal.

When it suited them.


(1) "The brief time my soul will spend being tortured in your collective care after my eventual death will be easily forgotten afterwards, when I proceed to my final rest."

It isn't their fault if V has misconceptions. They aren't lying or directly misleading V.


The fiends immediately interjected at this point and contradicted (2) but not (1), which by implication confirms (1).

Not really. By pointing out there were other avenues open, the fiends essentially offered V a choice. She was thus not compelled to take their offer. In addition, they know V. Admit magic failed? No...they turned that situation into an element so that what may have been seen as a sacrifice...agreeing to the deal to save her family...became twisted....now Vs motives include a desire not to fail again, to succeed no matter what the cost. In this way, the sacrfice part is twisted and what may be seen as a good act is now tainted.

And we know from Roys arc that intent has some impact.

As for Inkys reactions....


"And for this, you would have eternal dominion over my immortal soul once I died?" - the fiends corrected her on the 'eternal' part, outlining the rental deal they had in mind, but again said nothing about 'once I died'.

And they told her...no, that wasn't the deal. The deal is this....

EJL

[kalkyrie]

From what I can tell, V seems to be running off a version of Utilitarianism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism ).
'Greatest Good for the Greatest Number' in other words.

[hamishspence]

I think Kyrie's reason is closer to "I will not have your time in the fiends grasp on my conscience- if you genuinely did it for us, now that we are safe, you must stop now"

And remember- thats exactly why V claims to have done it in the first place. So Kyrie is feeling responsible- that V placed family welfare as so important that V was willing to be condemned to the grasp of the fiends for a period.

Yes, Kyrie cut V off before V had a chance to explain Greater Good justification- but thats the point isn't it? V did not, in fact, have the Greater Good in mind when the choice to Soul Splice was made, and V bringing it up now comes across as an excuse to hold on to the power.

[Kaytara]

AS OF NOW, KYRIE OFFICIALLY SUCKS.
(snip)

....Wow. Even I didn't have such an intense reaction, and I spent most of the day depressed by this turn of events and can't seem to find anyone to blame but Kyrie, who was completely capable of determining the outcome here, and turned away from V before V turned away from her.

In her defence, though, I'd say that she wasn't aware that she was asking V to sacrifice his friends and the whole world. As I'd already said, however, not letting V explain himself by cutting him off like that WAS cruel for someone who's supposed to care about him.

[notanel02]

Originally Posted by Undead Prince:
AS OF NOW, KYRIE OFFICIALLY SUCKS.

I mean, I had my doubts (who am I kidding, I never doubted it), but this comic just cast it in stone.

K is an insensitive, selfish, pathetic and overbearing self-righteous leech.

Case in point? Here you go, the most glaring one:

V: But I still need to find [Haley, and Roy, and save them along with the entire world from a terrible threat...]

K: No. NO. If you did this thing out of concern for us, then end this right now.

Translation: Screw you, V. Screw your dreams and your life's work. Screw your friends and all people you care about besides Me. Screw the entire world. Only I matter. Only I am worthy of your sacrifices. And you must abandon everything and everyone, make your terrible sacrifice worthless, risk deaths of your friends and the unmaking of the Universe, just because I cannot stand seeing you powerful and independent, making your own decisions and having interests that go beyond the one and only Me. And I won't even deign it worthy to listen to your pleas. Nothing you can say could sway Me, nothing you value has any value to Me. Only I am of value to Me. Throw your life away, and accept My Will. Or be gone. And I'm keeping the kids, too.

Not necessarily, right now, we barely know remotely enough about K to judge him/her like that yet, and for all we know, s/he can just be like this because of momentary fear,shock, and many other possible things/emotions.
I'm not saying "You are WRONG" or anything like that, I'm just saying that it's not IMPOSSIBLE that right now they have completely different points of view.

[civver]

So, V is trying to save the world. In return for his soul being the tool of demons. Hmm. Anyway...have they stopped speaking in Elven?

[notanel02]

have they stopped speaking in Elven?

Y'know, I've been thinking the EXACT same thing ever since i read today's Order of the Stick. :smallconfused:

[Kaytara]

It occurs to me that this may be a complete misunderstanding and not much more. It's possible that Kyrie expected Vaarsuvius to say something like "But I still need to repair the house" or "get you to safety" or something else related to repairing the damage caused by the attack. If that's what Kyrie assumed, her response makes sense, especially the "get through it together, as a family" part, as in "Don't further indebt yourself to these fiends to fix this damage, we can work it out on our own".
But I suppose she still gets selfishness points for assuming that Vaarsuvius can't have any use for ultimate arcane power except mending their broken picket fence.

An alternative interpretation would be that she is exaggerating V's faults in order to provoke him into proving her wrong. Something like this:
"You only care about your career. That's all you ever cared about. You don't care about ME at all."
"That's not true, love, I love you." *puts away the work stuff and comes over for a kiss*
"That's better."

She may have been expecting Vaarsuvius to bow down under such a psychological onslaught and convince her that he still loves her. Too bad the situation wasn't as simple as that.



Yes, Kyrie cut V off before V had a chance to explain Greater Good justification- but thats the point isn't it? V did not, in fact, have the Greater Good in mind when the choice to Soul Splice was made, and V bringing it up now comes across as an excuse to hold on to the power.

A good point, but common courtesy demands that you actually hear the person out until you at least hear what kind of excuse they're making, if it's an excuse at all.
And the love of your life is typically the first person you'd expect understanding and common courtesy from.

This is something like betrayal, really. Kyrie brushed off V's attempts to justify his actions because she was convinced that she knew Vaarsuvius anyway, that she already knew what he was going to say, and why. She used her understanding of V to deliver something akin to a Hannibal Lecture to him. I mean, she's the second person today to bluntly tell V that he only cares about power and nothing else. The first time? It came from three fiendish incarnations of evil from the lower planes, who wanted to manipulate and hurt V. Truly interesting when a probably Chaotic Good loving mate ends up doing the same thing, and after a rescue no less.

Kind of reminds me of V's spat with Durkon at the start of the arc, too. A person he trusts uses their understanding of him to accuse him of something...

[StClair]

A certain proverb that ends with "good intentions" definitely comes to mind here.

[Undead Prince]

The clock is not ticking for the same reason V and the others can solve the problem without the soul splice. Because The Order are the PCs. The clock will ALWAYS show 007 when they cut the wire, because they are the PCs and it didn't START till they showed up and counted at a speed such that they could make it in time. This is something V KNOWS, just as V knows that you only have one random encounter (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html). Sidequests CAN NOT cost the time you need to save the world.

Except THAT'S THE WAY IT WORKS IN MANY REAL TABLETOP GAMES. Racing against the clock to save the world is perhaps D&D's oldest method of keeping the party on their toes. It's even implemented in the official D&D adventures. For instance, let's take an epic-level campaign that involves saving the world from a terrible, world-unmaking Evil - the Atropus campaign from Elder Evils. It has its own timeline, and sometimes it's downright impossible to fulfill all quests - the players have to choose what to do with their time, which villain to stop, what tasks to perform. It's nigh impossible for them to stop both Gorguth and Caera for instance; if they defeat one, the other is victorious. And of course, the players can't devote weeks and months to researching spells, or making magic items, or just XP-harvesting: the threat is imminent, and every day counts.

In a serious game there won't be a Hollywood timer which only starts when the heroes arrive on the scene, and is stopped conveniently at 00:02. In a serious game where time is important, if you dawdle and procrastinate, you lose.

Simplest example? Time Stop. You get 1d4+1 rounds of free time. If you waste them picking flowers or arguing with your spouse - bam, spell ends, you get eaten by dragon.


Fast or slow Xykon WILL make it to the next gate, and the entire order WILL be there, with (just barely) enough power to beat him unless they do something stupid (like let a fiend take them over for prolonged periods for example).

It would be massively stupid NOT to take the chance of destroying Xykon straight away with V's epic powers.

After all, how did the Order fare against Xykon last time they had an epic battle? They blew it hard, and their leader is still dead. Xykon is now epic level, again much higher than any member of OoTS, and he's got plenty of powerful minions to boot, not to mention an entire army of hobgoblins and undead. What does the Order have without V's splice? Roy is dead, Haley and Belkar are lost in Azure City, Durkon and Elan are stuck with the fleet where only a few paladins would probably be willing to join their cause. How are they going to stop Xykon? How, in V's eyes, will they even have a chance of success against such overwhelming odds?

V has to try to stop Xykon with the splice. He already paid the cost, his soul is already forfeit - likely for eternity, due to the evilness that was Familicide. At this point, he doesn't have much to lose - and the world has a lot to gain. Challenging Xykon with the splice is the Good choice; not doing it is either cowardly, or masochistic, and in all cases either Neutral, or Evil, because refusing to try to save innocents when you have the power to do so strongly reeks of Evilness.

[Undead Prince]

In her defence, though, I'd say that she wasn't aware that she was asking V to sacrifice his friends and the whole world. As I'd already said, however, not letting V explain himself by cutting him off like that WAS cruel for someone who's supposed to care about him.

Well, V did explain the part about doing it to save the lives and eternal souls of K and the kids.

And what did he get in return? A "thank you" so insincere it's bordering on insult. K didn't show any real gratitude. Likewise, I don't think it would show any appreciation of what V was about to do in Azure City. It would probably just utter something like: Oh sure, go, save your precious friends with your precious arcane power. We both know you want that, and not our family.

The reasonable explanation may be that K's just bitter with V gone adventuring for so long. But this again paints K as a selfish, and short-sighted, person. What did it expect, marrying a wizard who hungers for arcane power? That he will sit home and mow the lawn?

In any case, K's villainy is not much depreciated. It's like Nale casting Suggestion on Elan to kill Haley after Bluffing him into mistrust for her. But Nale is a straightforward villain, and used a skill and a spell to do his evil. K, on the other hand, exploits V's love, which is worse than any Enchantment or Necromancy.

[GoC]

Simple- V can break the back of the hobgoblin army in a few rounds at little risk. (Meteor Swarm anyone?)

Actually meteor swarm is a very bad way of killing an army.
He can kill about 5 hobgoblins per meteor so 20 per spell. There are thousands of hobgoblins, he's not going to make a dent.
Firebal is actually better and Sunburst or a widened version of that spell that has a 100 ft radius.


What makes the difference between a person who does horrible acts in the name of what they perceive to be Good (Redcloak and Miko, for instance), and people who usually do the right think on good intentions (Roy, for example)?
Roy has also done the wrong thing with good intentions. Remember the attack on Xykon? It was objectively the wrong thing to do. It had only negative consequences.


However, V has rarely ever shown much beyond a black and white way of looking at things (best established by the way (s)he took care of Kubota), and (s)he's never, ever shown the ability to compromise.
I'd actually say that she is neutral and hence doesn't really have a black and white view. She does not object much to Belkar's continued existance does she? Miko would.


The words "I must succeed" are really what convinced me that this wasn't going to end well, and "I must fix everything" clinched it. These are the words that mark one who will do any kind of horrible act in order to do what they think is right. V will "fix" things according to the way (s)he sees things, which is not necessarily what is right or best, but what is most efficient, complete, and which crushes any opposition most completely. The two may coincide in some situations, but I don't think this is one of them.
I consider this bit VERY important for everyone talking about what V says:
///////Actually that's simply the way the language works. There's no way to remove the "I" from that sentence ('"The world shall be fixed" has a different meaning "The world may be fixed" sounds just plain weird) and I think the enphasis is on "fix" not "I".////////
When does what is right or best differ from what is most efficient (assuming you mean the best cost vs. benefits ratio, if not then your statement is without context and meaningless)?

[Kaytara]

What did it expect, marrying a wizard who hungers for arcane power? That he will sit home and mow the lawn?

*SNORT* XD
That is actually a very hilarious mental image. I may someday do a sketch of an unimpressed Vaarsuvius mowing the lawn just for the kicks... XD

But anyway, I agree. For Kyrie to choose NOW to complain about Vaarsuvius' chosen goal in life... It's the main reason why I said Kyrie has disappointed me earlier, because the previous comics had given me the impression that the couple were more in agreement than that.

[Pyron]

Actually meteor swarm is a very bad way of killing an army.
He can kill about 5 hobgoblins per meteor so 20 per spell. There are thousands of hobgoblins, he's not going to make a dent.
Firebal is actually better and Sunburst or a widened version of that spell that has a 100 ft radius.

Better yet (On the Origin of PCs SPOILER):
Quickened Fire Immunity and
Widened Distant Inferno

[hamishspence]

maybe Kyrie's taking a "no acceptable reason to bargain with fiends" tack. Note the suggestion of working through it, a "whats done is done- but don't keep doing it" attitude.

[jmucchiello]

Y'know, I've been thinking the EXACT same thing ever since i read today's Order of the Stick. :smallconfused:When they argue in front of the children, they always switch to common. No? Yes? Maybe?

[Reverent-One]

But anyway, I agree. For Kyrie to choose NOW to complain about Vaarsuvius' chosen goal in life... It's the main reason why I said Kyrie has disappointed me earlier, because the previous comics had given me the impression that the couple were more in agreement than that.

The fact that Vaarsuvius, who Kyrie loves, has gained that arcane power through a deal with fiends and every second V holds onto it lengthens the control they will hold over his soul probably has something to do with it. It's a rather reasonable reaction.

[hamishspence]

plus the "You left me alone for six years- and come back as this?" bit- Kyrie appears to be connecting the factors "quest for ultimate arcane power" and the result: apparent massive corruption.

in a sense, its like Anakin & Padme, except Kyrie is standing up to V more than Padme did.

Similar reason- "to save them from certain death"
Similar response- "give it up now"

Though it worked out slightly differently.

[GarmStoylen]

If both the Fiendish Consortium and Vaarsuvius' spouse tells him that his reason for selling his soul is selfish lust for power...

... I'd say that's a good indication they are both correct. Note that V hasn't once refuted it. I would say the fact the Kyrie is able to reach out as much as s/he does to a person who sold his or her soul for power and then used it to commit genocide while smiling and gloating about it makes K a candidate for sainthood.

As for whether V should end the soul-splice now? Yes. Absolutely. It is totally understandable to assume he can turn the Fiendish power to good use. He can't of course - all his uses will only lead to greater evil. That is how Fiendish bargains WORK. But it is totally understandable that he would make himself think he could do it.

The V we got to know before his jump off the slippery slope would be logical enough to recognize this - probably. Power-rush V doesn't.

[David Argall]

K: No. NO. If you did this thing out of concern for us, then end this right now.

Translation: Screw you, V. Screw your dreams and your life's work. Screw your friends and all people you care about besides Me. Screw the entire world. Only I matter.
You are being unkind here. For starters, K is talking about us, not I, and with the children involved, we have little grounds to challenge that. Even when we limit it to V & K, we have a relationship based on certain assumptions, which are being called into question. K has a full right to want V to put up or shut up here and and not paper over a gap that has developed. K may be abrupt and unkind in doing it now in an emotional time, but if he doesn't want to be the little woman waiting by the fire for hubby to visit once a year, she needs to tell him and it might as well be sooner than later.



But now, when K took upon itself (yes, I'm calling K *it* from now on) to demand that V abandon friends in time of mortal danger, that's just sick.
K doesn't know that. That may mostly be his own fault since she refused to listen, but it's still something not known. Of course that may not be important. V does not insist on presenting the facts, which suggests they are not really important.


Not just ignorant, but outright hateful of the others' dreams and wishes, even if the other is their own spouse. Eager to break the "beloved" one's heart out of petty spite.
No, there is no sign of eagerness, or even desire. It is simply "irreconcilable differences". They have different ideas of how the relationship should function. That is nobody's fault.



Even from the standpoint of D&D morality, V abandoning the soul splice at this point would not have been a Good act.
This depends. If we are correct in our suspicions on the fiendish plans, abandoning the splice ASAP may be the best possible action. The fiendish plans will take some unknown amount of time to succeed, and their displeasure at the splice losing a soul suggests they at least are not sure they have enough time yet. Of course, V is not even considering this possibility, but we can see that even a small change can make abandoning the soul splice a good act.


It's like a child is drowning, and you can swim, and could have easily saved him. But chose not to. Just because your spouse said you shouldn't get wet.
Or, as far as K can tell, the child could be an excellent swimmer in no trouble at all and spouse is just wanting to have a little fun.

[Kaytara]

As for whether V should end the soul-splice now? Yes. Absolutely. It is totally understandable to assume he can turn the Fiendish power to good use. He can't of course - all his uses will only lead to greater evil. That is how Fiendish bargains WORK.

That doesn't mean Vaarsuvius cannot succeed in what he has set out to do. After all, he has succeeded in rescuing his family, and before either of them had died, too. There's no reason to assume that success in finding Haley now is impossible. Will it lead to a greater evil? Maybe. But it should get the job done, which is all that concerns V at this point.

[dogmac]

AARGH!! V!!!!!!

If you weren't so powerful and scary, I'd throttle you right now.

Your partner was RIGHT! Do you hear, RIGHT!!!!

[Mr. Pin]

Oh, wow. I had really, really hoped that V would put the power away. But it was not to be. No doubt this will end up badly-perhaps even fatally- for V.

But, even if her reasons really are wrong this time, She's doing the right thing. Xykon needs to be stopped, the snarl contained. The Order as it is simply does not have the power to take on an encounter of such overpowering difficulty; they are outclassed in almost every way. This could be the only chance to make things right, and V could be back from adventuring to help the kiddies and her husband before an hour passes, if she plays her cards right.

Sadly, she will not. She'll do something stupid, and when the dust settles, she'll be dead/defeated, bereft of superpower, and possibly with three evil souls running around. She'll lose out on the deal somehow, and we'll be right back where we started.

[Alair]

Why do you people keep forgetting that Vaarsuvius doesn't know that? He doesn't know the fiends can collect anytime they want. He doesn't know that any time spent Spliced will just mean being a living puppet later. From what he knows, not a single person will be in any way affected by how long he holds on to the Splice, except for him.

Is this really a detail that V would be incapable of figuring out under normal circumstances or a case of shall we say not wanting to look gift Fiends in the mouth?

Kyrie's got it right, the reason V's become a fool is that this is what she's always wanted - everything else is just an excuse to go for it.

[Zen_Heart]

I think that I'm both sad for V and proud of hir. S/he had to make the decision--family or world and friends. The mere fact that s/he is trying to do what is right rather than what s/he wants to do (keep hir family) gives me confidence that the splice won't have a lasting negative effect on hir. Things can be patched up with the family (somehow, I doubt it will happen, though), and the party needs to be reunited. S/he loves hir mate and children, obviously, but knows where priorities should lie now. I think that, in this case, pride didn't have a huge impact on the decision. Inkyrius proved that s/he is able to take Vaarsuvius down several pegs if s/he wants to.

[Nymyrra]

I feel that there's a lot of pain in this current comic, on both sides. Inkyrius and Vaarsuvius both are coming from a difficult, emotional time in their life, and they both feel underappreciated.

V, on one hand, just went through the most terrifying experience a parent and a spouse can go through -- a valid, powerful, terrible threat to the very existence of hir children and husband/wife. V also has the burden of guilt -- shi was the one to kill the young dragon, after all -- and the burden of feeling useless, because she/he could not, for all his/her efforts, contact Haley -- his/her only real friend left in the Order. V was offered a terrible decision, and she/he made it beneath great emotional stress. It is my personal belief that V acted in the best interests of his/her children and spouse by choosing the most fool-proof plan available, and that, whatever pride may be involved, love far outweighs it. That is not the point of this post, however.

Inkyrius -- Kyrie -- on the other hand, just went through a similar shock. He/She too experienced the threat to his/her family; but, worse, he/she has learned that Suvie (love this nickname) has done something terrible. There seems to be a lot of bitterness in Inkyrius; bitterness that he/she was left alone, bitterness that Suvie seems to love magic more than he/she loves Kyrie.

It's tough on both ends. Throw in two sobbing children, a burning house, a lost friend, and a good measure of shock, and it's understandable how both Suvie and Kyrie made missteps in their communication. That they love each other is something I won't question. That this will strain their relationship is something that I wish wouldn't happen.

... Now I need the next comic. :smallsigh:

Postscriptum: Does anyone else think the name "Inkyrius" sounds like "Incurious"? As in, "someone who is not curious?"

I'd rather like to know the children's names ...

[Dagren]

OK, now this would be an even better place for a cut.
My interpretation is now that V is justifying holding onto the splice until the day's load of spells are used up. I wonder what she'll do when she's used them all? Although I should point out that for all we know V drops the splice next round; she just want's to get to her next destination first (remember that once she drops the splice she loses the ability to teleport under her own power). Still, I don't think that's likely.

Oh, and as for fireball being better than meteor swarm; how do you figure that? Meteor Swarm has 16x the area of effect, it's obviously much better for killing off massed low-level creatures (like hobgoblin soldiers). Of course, Azure city is still Cloistered, so unless Ganonron has an Epic teleport ready (not impossible, but not necessarily likely either; why bother when you have Greater Teleport) V would have to appear some distance away and fly the rest (No Sneak Attack for V).

[Sammy Jankis]

Well played, Giant, well played. I was always convinced that V was male, based solely on the notion that a name ending with "-ius" is a distinctly male-sounding name. I was even more certain once I saw what V called his mate in the last comic: "Kyrie." At the time, I took this to be her full name, which I pronounced like the Greek word for prayer (Kih-ree-ay), which sounded somewhat effeminate to me (although more flexible than her mate's name; I can imagine a male elf named Kyrie easier than I can a female elf named Vaarsuvius).

Now I come to find out that V's mate's name is actually Inkyrius, casting doubt on my theory. This troubles me.

But then again, their children are adopted, so there's no saying that one of them has to be female.

[Fabuloso]

Heavy sexist flamebait joke ahead:

With an attitude like that, Inkyrius is clearly a woman :smalltongue:

Also, prolly ninja'd on the subject.

Anyway, I stick to the "V's mate is being WAY selfish and over-assumptive", if that's actually a word, but it's late in my part of the world and I don't feel like elaborating. Let's just say that if you love somebody you don't condemn them THAT radically, at least.

I'd also like to point out that Rich is very good at putting himself in very risky writing situations, and getting out of them in some very elegant and catching manners.

English not perfect here, but I'm sleepy so I'll have somebody else speak for me on the matter: :xykon: "meh."

G'night.

[NamonakiRei]

Okay, so, I had this really long, 1000-ish word long annalysis of one half of 642 and I accidentally clicked "close". So I'm gonna resume it all. Because here it's quite late and I haven't got the patience to do all that again. Much less to read all posts in a row again. What can I say, I'm way too sleepy. So:

Point no one has spoken of yet:

Kyrie was not cutting V because he did not want to hear V, but because she wanted to poit out that V hadn't done the deal exclusivley for the family as V has said. V had also done it for pride, for people Kyrie does NOT know about, and in a good measure, too, for love of arcane power.

The rest you have all said.

My point:

Both did wrong things. Inkyrius should've listened to V. V shouldn't have yelled at him. But Kyrie was probably tired of V priorizing Arcane power over family, and didn't want to listen more. V felt like there was nothng left to say. She needed to find Haely, and fix things with the rest of the order. Haely could be dead for all he knows. The order could be in dire need of help. I think V did what she thought was right, and had some measure of pride. Not as much pride as when V took the deal, but still. Kyrie thought V was doing this just for sake of Arcane power. The power V seeked for years, and probably put over the family more than once. Both are tired. Kyrie has lost his patience, and wants V to do a hard choice on little time, the family, or this power that is important to V, because it seems like the only way to fix everything.

I, personally, would've liked for V to stay a little longer, but I see this is impossible, because if V didn't go and let the splice free, V couldnt've teleported to the Order. Now, things may end up allright. They might be able to talk about this at some point in the future. Maybe not. I hope so, though.

V was sorry. Truly sorry. But to V, there was nothing else to do or say. To Kyrie either.

I don't think Inkyrius was selfish. After all, we would all like to think that we, and our famili, are more important than anything else to our couple. Overall if we don't know the fate of the multiverse is involved.

I don't think V was wrong. I'd rather have my loved ones alive and far away, even if they hate me, than soul-deprived.

Just me, maybe.

[Calmness]

Can't see this ending well for Vaarsuvius. She might be able to achieve a couple of her goals by using violence but will always end up shunned or depressed because of the bargain.

Oh, and V can't save the world if she is unable to even take care of her family properly. She could have at least teleported them somewhere, or cast a sending spell for her master or something.

Just my 2 cents. Haven't read the rest of the thread so forgive me if the post is redundant.

[Kalbron]

All I can hope for in later strips is that:

a) V finds someone else to be romantically involved with.

OR

b) V gets the memories of his current family erased.

V is far too decent a person to be weighed down with a horrible spouse like K. It seems there's good reason that V spends years abroad, because the Gods know it's probably a hell on earth of whine and unfounded piercing accusations when he goes home.

V just saved the children from being eaten. Saved them from being eaten. From being eaten. And K's only response is: "Back you fiend!" and "You never really loved me!"

...

Worthless. Just, worthless.

[Hell Puppi]

Really? Really?

You've never had a loved one who seemed to care more about work than they did about their relationship?
You've never tolerated their coldness because you felt it wouldn't be right to bring it up?
K has no right to feel abandoned after V left for years to pursue this goal?
No right to be angry after she saw V's entire self apparently change in pursuit of this goal?
To be angry when 'I did it for you!' was used, then rejected soon afterword?


I mean to me this was perfectly understandable. Most likely K's been dealing with this for some time and this is just the last straw. ...but maybe that's just me.

[Warren Dew]

Kyrie was not cutting V because he did not want to hear V, but because she wanted to poit out that V hadn't done the deal exclusivley for the family as V has said.

Those are the same thing. If it's more important to point something out than to listen, that's the same as not wanting to hear.


V is far too decent a person to be weighed down with a horrible spouse like K.

Inkyrius is not a horrible spouse; a horrible spouse is one who takes advantage of the six years of absence to cheat on you and neglect the kids. They just have a poor relationship - one where they don't communicate properly.

Also, if Vaarsuvius is "V", shouldn't Inkyrius be "I"?

[malakim2099]

Well, V did explain the part about doing it to save the lives and eternal souls of K and the kids.

And what did he get in return? A "thank you" so insincere it's bordering on insult. K didn't show any real gratitude.

You're right.

When someone slaughters 1/4 the black dragon (and half-dragon) population on the planet to save you, sells their soul on a fixed-term lease for you, and then brings back the undead head of the attacking dragon to witness the aforementioned slaughter of all her kin, Kyrie should be brimming over with gratitude. :smallconfused:

Instead of more likely horrified at the changes that would turn the person Kyrie loved into... someone who would do those things.

However, I think V is going to Azure City. It's the site of V's other main "failure" (not that it was, but V thinks so). V probably wouldn't try to Scry (takes too long) Haley, and instead just show up and start leveling the place on the hopes of finding her. And quite possibly using mass conjurations to wreak all sorts of havoc on the hobgoblin occupiers.

And to those saying V is doing a "good" thing... again, motivation matters. Instead of continuing to damn yourself, why not simply release the splice, contact your master, and resolve matters that way... oh, right, because V is too proud to do so. Pride makes his actions what they are, and they ain't good.

[Kaytara]

When someone slaughters 1/4 the black dragon (and half-dragon) population on the planet to save you, sells their soul on a fixed-term lease for you, and then brings back the undead head of the attacking dragon to witness the aforementioned slaughter of all her kin, Kyrie should be brimming over with gratitude. :smallconfused:

Except Kyrie doesn't mention either of those things. She's upset that Vaarsuvius has made a bargain with fiends after leaving her alone for six years, that he's turned into this "thing". If Kyrie were aware that V has just slaughtered a quarter of all black dragons, presumably she would say something about that, too. Instead, her complaint seems to be "You paid too high a price for our safety, but nevermind, we both know that you've always wanted to become an evil abomination with super spellcasting abilities."

[factotum]

Except Kyrie doesn't mention either of those things. She's upset that Vaarsuvius has made a bargain with fiends after leaving her alone for six years, that he's turned into this "thing". If Kyrie were aware that V has just slaughtered a quarter of all black dragons, presumably she would say something about that, too.

Slaughtering the black dragons could well be part of the "thing" that made Kyrie see V as evil incarnate. Don't forget, when he released her from the tree, she was not showing the same level of rage as she was after she'd seen him cast Familicide.

Speaking personally, I think she might well have been thinking, "What if the black dragon had cast Familicide on ME?". I don't think Kyrie has any doubt whatsoever that it was an evil thing to do, no matter what the targets of the spell.

[Selene]

B-We kill large numbers of those in opposing armies, some of which we are virtually certain do not deserve it. Assuming the war was justified in the first place [a much more difficult question to answer positively], we do not concern ourselves about minor numbers of innocents that are caught in the way.

:smalleek: Are you serious with that one? I am most certainly concerned with innocent people caught in the way of a war, justified or not. And killing the members of the opposing army is certainly not "good." Necessary =/= good.


As for V, he sounds like an addict. And Inkyrius sounds like someone who's tired of listening to an addict's excuses.

[LeslieR]

V doesn't need to fix everything, V's Magic needs to fix everything. V's Magic needs to justify V's entire world view that arcane power is not just a tool, but THE Tool, the single most indispensable tool in the universe. Xyklon and the gates are a threat but the world isn't going to end tomorrow if V doesn't use OMG Super-Epic-Awesomesauce-Evul powerz to save the day. If the group had just thought to go looking for a phalactary the OotS could have ended the threat quite handily chapters and chapters ago without recourse to epic-level Anything, with time and guile and a multitude of other Non-Arcane tools and with an entire order of Paladins at their back the Order of the Stick could yet triumph without anybody having to lease their souls to anything.

But no, have we forgotten that these entire side-plot starts and ends with V's pride and his/her need to believe that as a magic-user they are the one sole reason the group is capable of accomplishing Anything of import?


Hmm, I know I'm so far 0/2 in predicting possible outcomes.. but it's just too much fun.


Haley: This is a fine mess you've gotten us into..

Ceyla: Oh no, you're not blaming me for your own larcenous streak coming back to haunt you. Just pony-up the gold and we can...

Haley: I CAN'T! Don't you Get it! I don't HAVE All the Gold I ever stole, not even a fraction of it!

Ceyla: You Don't? What could you possibly have done with it all?

Haley: I.. um.. I...

V: ...er Teleport.

Haley: V! I'm so glad to see y...

V: The gratuitous pleasantries will have to wait, I have lost valuable time already tracking you down since you un-graciously left the first place I would have looked.

Haley: Wha.. there was Epic Level Anti-Scrying magic there.

V: Yes, well that would have explained the tingling behind my back teeth.

Ceyla: Told'ya!

V: But in any event this is just further needless distractions, we must make ready to travel immediatly.

Ceyla: We can't, Haley still owes the Theive's guild back dues from the settlement.

V: Settlement? Haley, have you finally abdicated your position within the Order of the Stick to pursue a full-time career of theivery?

Haley: Wha? No! The Guild attacked us, but me and Belkar had them on the ropes until Ceyla came up with this stupid deal of her's.

V: I see, so the only reason you are indebted and indentured and thus bound to this place is a failure to cause the cessation of life function in the entirity of the theive's guild?

Haley: Umm, now that you mention it.

Theive's Guild Mook: Hey Haley, the boss wants.. hey, who's thi...

V: Disintigrate. That'll do for a start, excuse me. *flies off*

Ceyla: Haley! Did he just.. Did you see..?

Belkar: Hey girls, what's up?

Ceyla: He... He... He...

Haley: Uh, Hi Belkar. V's back, and he.. I mean she.. I mean.. they're looking kinda.. sorta..

Ceyla: Evil!

Belkar: Really? What makes you say that?

*Boom, Zap!, Boom, AIEEEEEE!, Zot! Mommy!, Boom!*

V: There, that should take care of any lingering obligations here that may continue to hinder us. Oh, and I see the halfling has arrived to join us. Pity. Now, where are our erstwhile leader's mortal remains?

Haley: Well, Ceyla carted them here to try and get him raised after I told her it'd be a bad idea, and ended up handing him over to a golem-crafter.

Ceyla: Hey!

V: I see, obviously we will have no further need for her incompetence. Dismissal.

Ceyla: Wha...*Poof*

Haley: Wha.. Hey! V!

V: Now then, his remains are still in the city? That should simplify things greatly. *flies off*

Belkar: Wow, V is kinda..

*Bright Flash off-panel and Building-Shaking KA-BOOM!*

V: *flies back with bag of Roy Bones with a sword sticking out of it.* That proved to be of trivial difficulty, I took the liberty of stopping by the stable to retrieve Sir Greenhilt's blade. Now...

Belkar: *smiles and weeps with joy* I always knew you had it in ya elf-buddy.

V: Greater Tel...

Durkon: I tell ye, I not be likin' that tha elf be gone off on 'is own.

Elan: Me neither, but there was nothing we could've done to sto..

V: ..eport.

Elan: V! And Haley! And Belkar!

Durkon: Aye it be a sight for sore eyes ye be, but Varrsarvius, what be the meanin' of...

Elan: Yeah, what is with the Evil Makeover?

Hinjo: Yeah, I don't need to Detect Evil to see something's wrong here.

V: Ahh, Lord Hinjo, excellant. I have brought forth Roy Greenhilt's remains, now make haste in procuring the diamonds needed for his return to the mortal coil.

Hinjo: A little presumptuous are we? Abandoning us just like that and now making demands, all while looking vaguely threatening and very suspicious?

V: Suggestion.

Hinjo: *draws sword* Hah! In case you've forgotten I'm a Paladin, I could make that saving-throw in my sleep!

V: Indeed. Heightened Crushing Despair, Greater Suggestion. Now I Suggest you turn your treasury upside down until the requisite diamonds are made available to us before I annihilate your pathetic fleet and send all of your precious city's citizens to the appropriately hued sea's depths.

Hinjo: Y-yes'sir.

Durkon: ...!

Haley: ...!

Elan: ...!

V: ....What?

Belkar: That.. Was.. Awesome!

[Alair]

Slaughtering the black dragons could well be part of the "thing" that made Kyrie see V as evil incarnate. Don't forget, when he released her from the tree, she was not showing the same level of rage as she was after she'd seen him cast Familicide.

Speaking personally, I think she might well have been thinking, "What if the black dragon had cast Familicide on ME?". I don't think Kyrie has any doubt whatsoever that it was an evil thing to do, no matter what the targets of the spell.

And also K can presumably hear all the "Burn it" "No, snap it's neck!" "We have so much more destruction to wreak" etc. comments coming from the disembodied souls' gallery - in the face of which any "No, you see these Fiends gave me a *heck* of a bargain"-type arguments are likely to whither a good bit.

[X2]

Eh... good... but not as much as the past few...

6.5/10

Oh well... one mediocre one in about 100 isnt so bad though.

[KyrtFurey]

It occurs to me that this may be a complete misunderstanding and not much more. It's possible that Kyrie expected Vaarsuvius to say something like "But I still need to repair the house" or "get you to safety" or something else related to repairing the damage caused by the attack. If that's what Kyrie assumed, her response makes sense, especially the "get through it together, as a family" part, as in "Don't further indebt yourself to these fiends to fix this damage, we can work it out on our own".

NO...that's very doubtful.

They way I see it...Kyrie doesn't care what else V has to do. What's important is what v has already stated.

V sold her soul for power.

A need for it at the time, perhaps....but it seems as if Kyries thinking better than V at the minute. The longer V holds onto the power, the more in debt to the fiends she'll get. And these are fiends. There is a reason why they are evil.

Kyrie is right. Vs pact has solved the problem she needed power for. There is no legitimate reason...if there ever was...to hold onto the splice.

V isn't listening. She is further indebting herself to fiends in an attempt to solve problems that she was willing to solve nortmally only a few minutes earlier.

In that time...she has committed evil by slaying 25% of the black dragon population (lets face it...if Qarr thinks alignment feedback is showing- and he's hardly likely to think the feedback from splicing three evil souls to a neuitral soul will lead to a good person - then the act is Evil. With a capital E given his surprise).

What else will V do in the name of expediency? And Kyrie is right...he knows V is doing it more out of pride. And he's liekly aware no deal with fiends is good.

What's V going to do now? Raise an army to take out the hobgoblins perhaps? Who are in Azure City. A good goal, perhaps....but if it leads to the utter destruction fo the city and all the human survivors therein as well?

So...problem solved. There is no reason for V to maintain the splice. V isn't listening. He has to fix everything.

Marvellous arc though. Pity the ABD had to die.

EJL

[Airenus]

it would be killer if the lost soul of the necromancer united with Zxykon.:smalleek:

[raven-gm]

wizards cannot heal. Trying to teleport them to a cleric is probably difficult as V probably registers as extremely evil regardless of V's own alignment.



No, but they can summon monsters, and there are several creatures that can can cast healing spells or use a form of Lay on Hands. The Leonal, a 9th level summon, can cast cure critical wounds 3 times a day and use Lay on Hands for a total number of hit points equal to their maximum HP (average 118).

So, he COULD heal them. He just... didn't.

[Kaytara]

Look at it this way. You're a starving artist and need new supplies. You've had your eye on a wonderful set of brushes for some time, but they're too expensive. Suddenly you manage to get your hands on some sort of super duper artist club membership card that allows you to buy art supplies at a highly reduced cost. You seize the chance and buy that set of brushes. You're happy. However, now it occurs to you that you have the chance to restock on some other supplies that you're getting low on.
Are you seriously just going to give that card up just because you already bought what you initially obtained it for? Or will you milk that temporary advantage for what it's worth?

It's not a perfect analogy, of course. Bargaining with fiends is a bit more complex than that. But what I'm trying to say is that the argument itself - "You accepted the power to accomplish x, and now that x is done you there is no reason to hold on to that power" - is quite simply completely illogical. That there is no reason to hold on to the power is an unfounded assumption that does not follow from the first statement. Obtaining the power for one particular purpose does not preclude other purposes that power can be used for.
Vaarsuvius needed a reason to accept the Soul Splice. Now he needs a reason to hold on to the Soul Splice. He has that reason. Whether that reason coincides with his initial motivation is completely irrelevant.

I just hope the "fix everything" part is a hidden reference to the strip "Broken Stick".

[Omegonthesane]

Kyrie is right. Vs pact has solved the problem she needed power for. There is no legitimate reason...if there ever was...to hold onto the splice.

No... V has solved one of many problems he needed lots of power for. He currently has the power to retake Azure City, get Roy rezzed, reunite the Order, maybe even reseal the three destroyed gates. He will likely never have that kind of power again. I don't think V would have sold his soul to fiends without ABD threatening his family, but now that he already has, why should he not use his power to do what he absolutely must?


V isn't listening. She is further indebting herself to fiends in an attempt to solve problems that she was willing to solve nortmally only a few minutes earlier.

Er... she tried everything to solve those problems without resorting to fiendish deals. It failed. Miserably. Or was the looking in a book of Finding Plot Holes during "rest" in a quest to arcano-zap her way past Cloister not enough of an indication of how desperate she'd become?

Not to mention, V cannot teleport with just his own power. Period. In the face of what she knows - that Haley was last seen in a frickin' warzone, Elan and Durkon have no helpful suggestions, Roy is dead outright, and Team Evil are threatening the very existence of the universe - V cannot drop the splice. Not until she's at least attempted to use it against Xykon, and to reunite the party.


In that time...she has committed evil by slaying 25% of the black dragon population (lets face it...if Qarr thinks alignment feedback is showing- and he's hardly likely to think the feedback from splicing three evil souls to a neuitral soul will lead to a good person - then the act is Evil. With a capital E given his surprise).

What else will V do in the name of expediency?

Whatever she has to. To have such godlike power, have the ability to save the world with it, and refuse to use it because you value your spouse and family over the entire world, isn't good, or even neutral; it's evil. V dropping the splice and letting Xykon win would be worse than V casting Familicide was.


What's V going to do now? Raise an army to take out the hobgoblins perhaps? Who are in Azure City. A good goal, perhaps....but if it leads to the utter destruction fo the city and all the human survivors therein as well?

It won't. Period. V is too smart for that, and (partly thanks to Kyrie) has a lot more of a grip on himself than he had while killing the ABD.

[Undead Prince]

To have such godlike power, have the ability to save the world with it, and refuse to use it because you value your spouse and family over the entire world, isn't good, or even neutral; it's evil. V dropping the splice and letting Xykon win would be worse than V casting Familicide was.

Not to mention, going off to save the world doesn't mean that V does not value his family. He just saved their pathetic lives. They're safe now. They don't need V to stick around. K is just selfish that way.




What's V going to do now? Raise an army to take out the hobgoblins perhaps? Who are in Azure City. A good goal, perhaps....but if it leads to the utter destruction fo the city and all the human survivors therein as well?

It won't. Period. V is too smart for that, and (partly thanks to Kyrie) has a lot more of a grip on himself than he had while killing the ABD.

As of now, V seems to be set up as a tragic hero. He has loads of bad karma. And defeating Xykon likely won't be easy or without repercussions. One of which might be the destruction of Azure City. Rich has already demonstrated he's got the guts for grand-scale slaughter.

[U2QueenBee]

Ah...now we come to the crux of it. V wants to use this power to 'undo' hir cowardice/failure at Azure City. It's more about self-redemption (or assuaging hir own guilt) than the power itself, even, perhaps. It's odd, because hir action in this comic is simulatenously both self-sacrificing and self-centred: on the one hand (s)he forsakes hir own future with hir family (perhaps) and hir soul to sort out the party and try to save the world; but on the other hand (s)he forgoes leaving the splice and doing things the hard way and the 'proper' way to make hirself feel better.

It never ceases to amaze me how subtle and complex a stick-figure comic can be! Literary brilliance does indeed come in all guises.

[RMS Oceanic]

Look at it this way. You're a starving artist and need new supplies. You've had your eye on a wonderful set of brushes for some time, but they're too expensive. Suddenly you manage to get your hands on some sort of super duper artist club membership card that allows you to buy art supplies at a highly reduced cost. You seize the chance and buy that set of brushes. You're happy. However, now it occurs to you that you have the chance to restock on some other supplies that you're getting low on.
Are you seriously just going to give that card up just because you already bought what you initially obtained it for? Or will you milk that temporary advantage for what it's worth?

It's not a perfect analogy, of course. Bargaining with fiends is a bit more complex than that. But what I'm trying to say is that the argument itself - "You accepted the power to accomplish x, and now that x is done you there is no reason to hold on to that power" - is quite simply completely illogical. That there is no reason to hold on to the power is an unfounded assumption that does not follow from the first statement. Obtaining the power for one particular purpose does not preclude other purposes that power can be used for.
Vaarsuvius needed a reason to accept the Soul Splice. Now he needs a reason to hold on to the Soul Splice. He has that reason. Whether that reason coincides with his initial motivation is completely irrelevant.

I just hope the "fix everything" part is a hidden reference to the strip "Broken Stick".

The fatal flaw with your analogy is there is no negative consequences for continued possession of the membership. The problem is we (and more importantly, V) know there is a downside to the splice, namely a debt to archfiends. V does not know this, but we know the fiends know about the Snarl, so the consequences for V (and the world) could be even greater than a simple exchange of y = 3x.

[GoC]

Oh, and as for fireball being better than meteor swarm; how do you figure that? Meteor Swarm has 16x the area of effect, it's obviously much better for killing off massed low-level creatures (like hobgoblin soldiers).

For some reason the past 10 or so times I've been reading that as fireball radius 30ft and meteor radisu 10ft.:smalleek:
TEN TIMES! How did I misread that many times?!
Has it recently been changed?:smallconfused:

[Dagren]

For some reason the past 10 or so times I've been reading that as fireball radius 30ft and meteor radisu 10ft.:smalleek:
TEN TIMES! How did I misread that many times?!
Has it recently been changed?:smallconfused:
As a matter of fact, yes. I looked it up in the SRD, and got the result I referred to in my last post. But I also noticed that Meteor Swarm seemed very different to how I remembered it, so afterwards I looked it up in my old 3.0e PHB, and it is quite different. However, the Fireball is still only 20', so the 4x15' Meteor Swarm still has a larger area even including the overlap in 3.0e. I would conclude that Meteor Swarm was changed in 3.5e.

[Kaytara]

The fatal flaw with your analogy is there is no negative consequences for continued possession of the membership. The problem is we (and more importantly, V) know there is a downside to the splice, namely a debt to archfiends. V does not know this, but we know the fiends know about the Snarl, so the consequences for V (and the world) could be even greater than a simple exchange of y = 3x.

The latter is something V is unaware of, as you said, so it's irrelevant in a discussion about whether V's decision was justified, given what V knew.

As for the first...
Why is it such a fatal flaw? V's debt to the archfiends constitutes merely a limited time spent in suffering. Since V expects that the Splice may end any minute, the total time indebted may amount to a few hours, not much more. In any case, Vaarsuvius has already spent some time under the Splice. Whether he pops into Azure City for several minutes doesn't make that much of a difference, especially now that the indebted time is accumulating at a slower rate than before (2 to 1 rather than 3 to 1).

Even if we were talking about hours or days, it's still Vaarsuvius, personally, that will be affected by it. I'd say it's entirely within V's right to subject himself to something like that for some higher purpose.

Besides, there's the purely calculus aspect of it.
If V lets go now, he'll be indebted to the fiends for, say, 30 minutes, but he'll only have accomplished a relatively minor good. (Saving his family)
If V doesn't let go now, but a short time later, he'll be indebted to them for, say, 60 minutes, but may have accomplished a GREAT good during that time, such as reuniting the Order or defeating the hobgoblins in Azure City.

So if X is the time indebted and Y is the good accomplished... then the difference between two different x values is very small, but the difference between two different y values is very high. Too high to justify letting go of the Splice now.

[motub]

What I find humorous in this thread is the way some are so danged offended that Kyrie wasn't falling all over himself and grovelling with gratitude that V saved them.

I get how normally one might be offended that the rescued party wasn't throwing their underwear at their blessed rescuer and offering said savior a 50% tithe of all their future worldly earnings in abject gratitude-- if the rescuer was not one of those annoying "virtue is its own reward" types-- but this isn't some random do-gooder, this is:

- The spouse that has left you to go adventuring and search for "ultimate arcane power" for reasons that you consider invalid (since UAP is totally unneeded by said spouse if said spouse was going to come home after having found it; can't imagine there's much call for such things in the village);

- The spouse that has (probably) not written you one bloody word since she left (V hasn't mentioned her family, indicated that she missed her family, and the family scene didn't suggest that V was in regular, or any, communication with them);

- The spouse that just used overwhelming, and quite apparently evil, force on an "ordinary" enemy (don't forget, Kyrie doesn't know about the Soul Bind, or that the attack is revenge for something V did. While I'm sure that a targeted dragon attack is by no means a usual occurrence, like a natural disaster, I'm sure that it might happen every 500 years or so, and like a natural disaster, it doesn't usually call for nuking the affected area from orbit, as it were);

- The spouse that just used overwhelming and apparently quite evil force on an enemy that she apparently knew --and enjoyed it.

Yes, glad to be alive. Don't know that I should be really glad, because I don't know that the attacker was a psychokiller with an axe to grind with the spouse, because the plan of said psychokiller was to subject me and mine to terrible tortures to "punish" the spouse (with whom I have had no contact for some 6 years). Totally horrified by the condition of my spouse, whom I have not had news of in a very long time, and whose condition I could not have predicted (not being a magic user, I could not possibly know what the "occupational hazards" of "ultimate arcane power" might be-- I probably expected that my spouse was only "adventuring" to find ancient lost books or something, with spates of intense tower research. Certainly I wouldn't think that my beloved was going to go off and sell her soul to fiends as part of the quest, of all things).

And because my beloved spouse supposedly did all this "for me", I furthermore have to pay dearheart with grovelling, as if it's all good? First of all, I'm too shocked and horrified to get into my emotional "wallet" for the goods. Sorry. Second, I'm not sure I am grateful, to be honest. Not that Kyrie would ever say this (since it's nuts, but V is nuts, so let's all go there and be with her), but there is something to be said for the viewpoint of:

"I'd rather be dead than to see you like this."

Just saying.

It's also kinda funny about how that camp also seems convinced that "if V keeps the splice, of course V will/can 'save the world'". Or that, because she has "sufficent" power to do so, it is her responsibility to hold onto it long enough to do so.

I know that you can't put the genie back in the bottle, as it were, but "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." But hey, willpower uber alles, right?

[Dagren]

@Kaytara: That's a good point. And remember, if we look back here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0634.html), V seems to be under the impression that the fiends will be torturing her, rather than using her. That casts her accepting of the deal in a new light, IMO. (She doesn't realize she's giving them a powerful tool, basically)

[Belkster11]

I sympathize greatly with Inkyrius. I don't understand the level of seething hate for him (and yes, I think Ink is a guy and V's a girl).

Did we suddenly forget that V had just SHREDDED ABD from the INSIDE?! V reanimating ABD's head and forcing it to witness "Famlicide"?

All this right in front of their children?

V had just tramutized her adopted children in ways we cannot imagine. It's bad enough their home is destroyed and they have broken legs and they were just attacked by said dragon.

Ink obviously cared about the children and from what I see, they've had this conversation before.

Think about what V did for a moment after she killed the dragon. Did she immediatly cast healing spells their way? No. She said something to the effect of: "Sorry, but I must go."

Ink doesn't really know that much except that V wanted Ultimite Arcane Powers, and from what she just witnessed, V accomplished it.

[Warren Dew]

The latter is something V is unaware of, as you said, so it's irrelevant in a discussion about whether V's decision was justified, given what V knew.

While I'm generally in agreement with your overall position here, I think Vaarsuvius does bear some responsibility for not having considered the terms of the agreement carefully enough.

Even after considering that, though, it's far from clear that Vaarsuvius's decision is a bad one; it depends on too many variables. Is it worse for the fiends to get control of the gates, or for Redcloak to get control of them? That seems a wash to me. Can the fiends splice a soul when they get their time with Vaarsuvius, or not? If not, Vaarsuvius may be able to do more per round now than the fiends will be able to later. What problems is Vaarsuvius going to fix now? Might Vaarsuvius realize the mistake about the contract after getting the order back together and leave the order so as not to be in such a critical position? etc, etc.

Not really a spoiler, just being extra careful.

[Rotipher]

Myself, I'm not going to call it one way or another on the "Was Kyrie unfair?" issue. It's clear that there's a lot of uncomfortable marital history between these two, and if V has been in the habit of putting vir family after personal power in the past, then Inkyrius's reaction may well have been building up for a loooooong time. Sometimes, when one spouse has been negligent for long enough, the other is entitled to resent it and respond accordingly.


Oh, and BTW: If Vaarsuvius's pet name is Suvie, and Inkyrius's pet name is Kyrie ... then does that mean that Aarindarius's mate (assuming V's mentor isn't single) calls him/her "Darie", pronounced "dairy"? :smallwink:

[JVWest]

Personally, none of this surprises me one bit. It's a wonderful AWESOME story, and I fully expected V to end up doing something like this. Especially after s/he started spazzing out when the Order got broken up.

Best webcomic, hands down. Bravo.

[Skaroq]

Inkyrius is a male. You can tell by the position of the eyes and his lower body shape. It's pointed, see? Which means that V is gay. That confirms that the two children are adopted. You can tell that V is a male by the position of his eyes.

[hamishspence]

lower body shape can vary depending on the outfit- female soldiers and paladins sometimes have pointy edges.

Eyes- midway between high "male" position and low "female" position for both Inky and V- so Inconclusive- was what most people have tended to say.

[Ziriath]

I think these androgynous elves have thin girlish/boyish bodies, which look almost the same by both genders....:smallbiggrin: So you can't recognise it, if the elf doesnt want to say, what is her/his gender...

[Kaytara]

Inkyrius is a male. You can tell by the position of the eyes and his lower body shape. It's pointed, see? Which means that V is gay. That confirms that the two children are adopted. You can tell that V is a male by the position of his eyes.

Personally, I call Inkyrius a "she" because Kyrie's dialogue sounds very feminine to me and it just sounds weird in my head to refer to Kyrie as "he".

[David Argall]

When someone slaughters 1/4 the black dragon (and half-dragon) population on the planet to save you, sells their soul on a fixed-term lease for you, and then brings back the undead head of the attacking dragon to witness the aforementioned slaughter of all her kin, Kyrie should be brimming over with gratitude.
Yup. That dragon was threatening K and the kids with horrible stuff. Gratitude was definitely in order.


Instead of more likely horrified at the changes that would turn the person Kyrie loved into... someone who would do those things.
It would seem the thing K most objected to was that V valued magic over K.



And to those saying V is doing a "good" thing... again, motivation matters. Instead of continuing to damn yourself, why not simply release the splice, contact your master, and resolve matters that way...
a-The hero of the story does not go running home to Mama and ask her to make it all right. He steps up to the plate.
b-There is a major chance [almost 100% in a story] that V's master is unwilling or unable to help. He will be out of town, busy with something, unconcerned, or just not strong enough to do much. [V's master seems to be several levels below either of V's souls and not necessarily even a match for Xykon.]
c- If V wants Xykon stopped, there is simply nobody whose ability to do that even approaches that of V. That is not pride. That is simple plain fact.



Are you serious with that one? I am most certainly concerned with innocent people caught in the way of a war, justified or not. And killing the members of the opposing army is certainly not "good." Necessary =/= good.

There is a difference between concerned and concerned here. A corporate board meeting may discuss a billion dollar deal and whether they should pay retail for the coffee they are drinking at the same meeting. We are concerned about the deaths a war will cause and try to minimize them, but we can, in some cases at least, go ahead with the war despite the deaths. If we say winning the war is good, these deaths do not change that. If we say the OOTS world is better off without these dragons, the detail that a couple of non-evil dragons got killed does not change that statement.



Also, if Vaarsuvius is "V", shouldn't Inkyrius be "I"?
I would think that "I" would be confused with "I" too easily. K avoids confusion.

[hamishspence]

ah, but long-term results are not always the important factor. The act itself may be evil, even if the net consequences are good.

DS9: "In the Pale Moonlight" Bring the Romulans into the Dominion War, saving billions of lives- by forging, lying, and when that fails, commiting murder. Yes, net consequences for everybody, even the Dominion, are ultimately good- doesn't change the fact that a person was murdered.

[Undead Prince]

I get how normally one might be offended that the rescued party wasn't throwing their underwear at their blessed rescuer and offering said savior a 50% tithe of all their future worldly earnings in abject gratitude

Why the sarcasm? Saving you and your children from certain tortuous death is probably the best thing someone can do for you. Seriously, you can think of anything better than that? And you believe that a proper reaction to such a heroic act is dredging the hero in berating sarcasm?


- The spouse that has left you to go adventuring and search for "ultimate arcane power" for reasons that you consider invalid

1) UAP is V's life dream. You don't smother the life dreams of someone you love. You do your best to help them realise these dreams.

2) If K considered V's life dream invalid and an obstacle to their relationship, why marry?


(since UAP is totally unneeded by said spouse if said spouse was going to come home after having found it; can't imagine there's much call for such things in the village);

Are you serious? Arcane power is not even like money in our world (of which you can never have too much, unless you're an ascetic monk). It's incredibly more valuable than money. It's safety, security, freedom from diseases and death itself. It's the power to work Miracles on a daily basis. If you don't want to be able to protect yourself from any kind of danger, including death from accidents and old age; if you don't want to be able to do great deeds (of Good, or otherwise) - it's your own loss. BUT YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DENY THIS TO OTHERS, especially your own spouse and your own kids.

It's like this: a spouse is working hard to put food on the table, put kids in college, and pay everyone's medical bills. But when he gets home with his salary in hand, out comes the other spouse and tells him to burn the money. Using money goes against her principles. Screw food, medicine and college education. Better live like bums, in filth and ignorance, but never work for The Man.

But hey, there's more. This money could go to save starving/sick children in third world countries. Hundreds of children. Sure, there's a possibility the money will be stolen by corrupt officials en route; but there is still a good chance that it will save lives.

Still want to burn it?



- The spouse that has (probably) not written you one bloody word since she left (V hasn't mentioned her family, indicated that she missed her family, and the family scene didn't suggest that V was in regular, or any, communication with them);

And what precluded K from contacting V? A Sending spell is a common enough service, as we've seen in Haley/Belkar's arc; and K is probably acquainted with Aarindarius, who could easily have contacted V on K's behalf. But neither K nor Aarindarius never sent any sort of message to V.

Besides, elves have a very long lifespan. 6 years for them is much less important than for humans.


- The spouse that just used overwhelming, and quite apparently evil, force on an "ordinary" enemy

An Ancient Black Dragon - with extra Sorcerer levels - is an "ordinary" enemy?? Yeah, for an epic spellcaster maybe. How many epic spellcasters are there on the OoTS planet? One (Xykon)? Two (Aarindarius; not a fact)? Three (someone we don't know)? In 600 strips, we've never seen a single epic character. And for a non-epic high-level wizard the ABD proved unbeatable.

Overwhelming force? Do you remember what happened last time when V used "proportional" force to kill a dragon? His big momma came and kicked V's @$$. Was there any guarantee that after V deals with ABD, some of her many remaining relatives won't come for vengeance?

Apparently evil - yeah, sure. But what other way was there to deal with the situation? Kill the dragons one by one as they arrive seeking vengeance? V would have to hold the splice forever.


(don't forget, Kyrie doesn't know about the Soul Bind

And you know why? Because K just told V to shut up when V tried to explain the full ramifications of the situation.


- The spouse that just used overwhelming and apparently quite evil force on an enemy that she apparently knew --and enjoyed it.

Tell me you wouldn't enjoy using force on someone who crucified your wife/husband, broken the legs of your children, and was preparing to brutally murder them.


Yes, glad to be alive. Don't know that I should be really glad, because I don't know that the attacker was a psychokiller with an axe to grind with the spouse

The psychokiller nature of ABD was very evident to K and the kids after all the crucifixion, leg-breaking, and promises to kill them in a very painful manner.


And because my beloved spouse supposedly did all this "for me", I furthermore have to pay dearheart with grovelling, as if it's all good?

Why grovel? Just say "thank you" and abstain from being nasty.


First of all, I'm too shocked and horrified to get into my emotional "wallet" for the goods. Sorry.

This speaks of K as a very immature and weak-minded person. Which I don't think K is. I think K is rather strong-willed - enough to keep V firmly under heel.


Second, I'm not sure I am grateful, to be honest. Not that Kyrie would ever say this (since it's nuts, but V is nuts, so let's all go there and be with her), but there is something to be said for the viewpoint of:

"I'd rather be dead than to see you like this."

That would have been a valid position, if not for the kids. Their lives and well-being are too precious to be sacrificed for one of their parents' lofty ideals.


It's also kinda funny about how that camp also seems convinced that "if V keeps the splice, of course V will/can 'save the world'".

I am not sure where you got that idea from. It would help if you would use actual quotes except giving your own interpretation of what people said.

For instance, I have stated on numerous occasions that not only is V not guaranteed to save the world, but due to his role of tragic hero, he would probably fail. But a chance to save the world is enough - V has to try it.


Or that, because she has "sufficent" power to do so, it is her responsibility to hold onto it long enough to do so.

In many jurisdictions, it is a crime to knowingly leave a person in mortal danger when you have the power to save him. If someone is drowning, you can swim, and can save the person from drowning without any danger to yourself, not to do it is morally evil and legally criminal.


I know that you can't put the genie back in the bottle, as it were, but "just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

A slogan of Neutral and Evil people everywhere. But even Neutral and Evil would defy it in order to save someone they care about. And in V's case, it's not only Haley & Roy, it's the entire world (including his thrice-accursed family).

By any moral compass, V has to attempt to use the splice to save his friends, his family, and the world from catastrophic doom. Forsaking this task would have been an act of selfishness and evil.

[jmucchiello]

Why the sarcasm? Saving you and your children from certain tortuous death is probably the best thing someone can do for you. Seriously, you can think of anything better than that? And you believe that a proper reaction to such a heroic act is dredging the hero in berating sarcasm?
The reason people disagree with you is you do not consider selling one's soul to the devil worse than anything you can do. Your position completely ignores that part of the exchange. Sorry, but the best this my lover can do for me is not sell her soul to the devil in exchange for saving my life. Not even close. K's reaction is entirely based on her reaction to losing V's soul forever.

This is a world where you know there is an afterlife and you know you will spend eternity with your loved ones as long as they, you know, aren't trapped in hell.

And even though V is only leasing her soul, making the deal in the first place is abhorrent to good people. Deals with the devil are by their very nature a slippery slope to damnation. Just because the soul splice deal is only rental doesn't mean V won't find herself high on the kilonazi scale right along side Belkar in the end.

I can't call K selfish because she doesn't want V to spend any time in the clutches of demons. If you can, we must agree to disagree.

[Master Wang]

Very few things are truly black and white. As in most cases, life is a cavas of shades of grey. What V did served the purpose at hand, the consiquences of his acts may come back to haunt him (obviuosly) but having little or no other recourse he did what anyone that has love for their children would do, no matter how evil or degrading it is.

I say, Good on ya V, Save the day! Worry about right and wrong later.

[hamishspence]

Kyrie hasn't had much of a chance to say "its the world or me" as has been claimed- Kyrie cut V off before V could finish "I need to..." with "...save the world."

What Kyrie is showing is concern for V above any of V's goals- assuming that nothing could be worth V's fall into evil- that V must stop immediately, for V's own good.

"I need to use this overwhelmingly evil power to save the world" never a good sign.

[Paseo H]

*reads comic*

Wow...

[hamishspence]

and its not entirely fair to judge Kyrie as being willing to gamble the safety of the universe- after all- as far as we know, Kyrie does not know anything about the whole Snarl issue.

[Xentropy]

The reason people disagree with you is you do not consider selling one's soul to the devil worse than anything you can do. Your position completely ignores that part of the exchange. Sorry, but the best this my lover can do for me is not sell her soul to the devil in exchange for saving my life. Not even close. K's reaction is entirely based on her reaction to losing V's soul forever.

This is a world where you know there is an afterlife and you know you will spend eternity with your loved ones as long as they, you know, aren't trapped in hell.

This is why, however, the fact K wouldn't even let V speak is such a horrible thing. K isn't aware that V is caught up in a quest that involves the safety of the entire world. K isn't aware that had V not acted the children would have never shown up in that afterlife, since they'd be in a handy little carrying case on some other plane with an Ancient Black Dragon. Forever.

You can't defend K's stance as long as K doesn't know the whole story and K won't even let V illuminate her as to the whole story. Being so stubborn as to not even listen to two words out of the person you're arguing with makes you automatically wrong. Too often BOTH parties are automatically wrong due to this fault, but V actually let K speak, and listened. K just didn't want to hear anything in reply. K honestly comes across as not caring one whit about V in this entire comic. Emotional blackmail isn't a great way to show your love.

[Elfich]

V teleports to the fleet
V talks to Durokon
V Teleports the fleet (the whole damn fleet) to greysky city
V blasts the mountain top off at the frankenstein castle along with the paladins
Roy gets raised.
Paladins get a city

Thieves guild gets annoyed all the way around.

[Falgorn]

V teleports to the fleet
V talks to Durokon
V Teleports the fleet (the whole damn fleet) to greysky city
V blasts the mountain top off at the frankenstein castle along with the paladins
Roy gets raised.
Paladins get a city

Thieves guild gets annoyed all the way around.

V doesn't know 'bout Haley just yet. And The Giant himself still needs plot, so that probably won't happen.

[GoC]

ah, but long-term results are not always the important factor. The act itself may be evil, even if the net consequences are good.

DS9: "In the Pale Moonlight" Bring the Romulans into the Dominion War, saving billions of lives- by forging, lying, and when that fails, commiting murder. Yes, net consequences for everybody, even the Dominion, are ultimately good- doesn't change the fact that a person was murdered.

I would say good consequences=good act.
The murder was good because it was for a good cause. Star Trek is horribly black and white (or should that be black and grey given the Marquis and Dr. Bashir?).

[jmucchiello]

You can't defend K's stance as long as K doesn't know the whole story and K won't even let V illuminate her as to the whole story.
Sorry, I can defend her stance. She's emotional. She's hurt. She was recently nailed to a tree. And her lover is bargaining with demons. An emotional outburst where she won't listen to the other side is the least outrageous reaction she could have. She is not an adventurer use to dealing with life and death situations calmly.

All I say to those condemning her is cut her some slack. If they had that same conversation 3 days after the ABD's attack. Then you would be right and K would be a manipulative so-and-so.

At the height of a crisis, levelheaded consideration of the fate of the world versus the fate of your own place in the world is perfectly reasonable.

[Elfich]

V doesn't know 'bout Haley just yet. And The Giant himself still needs plot, so that probably won't happen.

Durokon knows about Haley (From the Priest of Loki's sending spell), so if V talking to Durokon, V knows where Haley is.

[Zevox]

Durokon knows about Haley (From the Priest of Loki's sending spell), so if V talking to Durokon, V knows where Haley is.
Actually, we don't know if Durkon got that message. We never learned if the Priest finished the sending spell, remember?

Zevox

[malakim2099]

Yup. That dragon was threatening K and the kids with horrible stuff. Gratitude was definitely in order.

Okay, so when someone is holding your loved ones hostage... you showing up, knocking their captor unconscious, and then, waking their captor up and torturing the captor to death is fine? And your loved ones would be thankful for this?

(Yeah, V didn't actually torture the dragon... but grossly evil acts performed right in front of them? Similar deal.)


a-The hero of the story does not go running home to Mama and ask her to make it all right. He steps up to the plate.

Yeah, if only V hadn't alienated all his/her teammates earlier. :smallwink:


b-There is a major chance [almost 100% in a story] that V's master is unwilling or unable to help. He will be out of town, busy with something, unconcerned, or just not strong enough to do much. [V's master seems to be several levels below either of V's souls and not necessarily even a match for Xykon.]

That, is speculation. And while it affects the overall metaplot, it does not affect V's choices in-character. Or in other words, QUIT METAGAMING AND PLAY IN CHARACTER. :smalltongue:


c- If V wants Xykon stopped, there is simply nobody whose ability to do that even approaches that of V. That is not pride. That is simple plain fact.

First, we're assuming V is going after Xykon. Second, V could probably take out Xykon, but has to find him (and his phylactery) first (and that's assuming Xykon doesn't just head for the next gate when he sees his hobgoblin minions exploding like cheap party favors). Third, if V hadn't been an idiot and left the group in the first place, this would be a moot point. V is digging him/herself in deeper to the fiends, and doesn't really seem to care.

More to the point, V can't accept the fact that there are others in the world who are perfectly qualified to do things as well. To V, it's all about the magic. V has to find Haley, V has to do everything, etc. That's ego talking, and V can't just use his OWN considerable power (did people forget he's still a 13-14th level wizard even without a soul-splice?) to set things up?

Seriously, he let's the splice go, and drops back to his normal power levels. Then, he contacts his master, who arranges for him to contact Durkon and Elan. And quite possibly sends him off via teleportation to rejoin them. Or V's master might just be powerful enough to break the Cloister effect and scry on Haley, figure out where they are, and zip over to Greysky. Considering that Haley is planning to have a cleric in the city give a sending to Durkon anyway... that scrying might not even be necessary.


There is a difference between concerned and concerned here. A corporate board meeting may discuss a billion dollar deal and whether they should pay retail for the coffee they are drinking at the same meeting. We are concerned about the deaths a war will cause and try to minimize them, but we can, in some cases at least, go ahead with the war despite the deaths. If we say winning the war is good, these deaths do not change that. If we say the OOTS world is better off without these dragons, the detail that a couple of non-evil dragons got killed does not change that statement.

Congratulations on a very nice lawful evil argument. My compliments. Eh, collateral damage, who cares!

The ends do not justify the means. At least, not if you're wanting to avoid that 'E' at the end of your alignment designation. :smallamused:

[Warren Dew]

I would say good consequences=good act.
The murder was good because it was for a good cause. Star Trek is horribly black and white (or should that be black and grey given the Marquis and Dr. Bashir?).

I would say there might be more than one act involved. The side effects could be good, but the murder, if that's what it was, would still be evil.


More to the point, V can't accept the fact that there are others in the world who are perfectly qualified to do things as well.

Good point. Xykon, Redcloak ... I'm having trouble coming up with a third name here.

[LeslieR]

"V needs the Uber-Evul Soul-Splice power to stop Xykon!"

Have we forgotten that Roy Greenhilt was able to stop Xykon with nothing but a broken sword and a bottle of pissed-off whoopass? Or how Roy was able to take it to Xykon surprisingly effectively with his shiney new +5 sword of undead-spankage, untill the unfortunate implications of the chosen fighting venue reared it's severed zombie-dragon-head? Or how an army of Ghost-Paladins almost cooked Xykon's goose untill Miko went and proved herself Lawful Stupid right to the end?

Xykon is powerfull, yes, and a potent Big Bad.. yes.. but he is NOT a threat only god-like epic-level uberness can defeat, that's just V's ego talking.

[Triforceelf]

"V needs the Uber-Evul Soul-Splice power to stop Xykon!"

Have we forgotten that Roy Greenhilt was able to stop Xykon with nothing but a broken sword and a bottle of pissed-off whoopass? Or how Roy was able to take it to Xykon surprisingly effectively with his shiney new +5 sword of undead-spankage, untill the unfortunate implications of the chosen fighting venue reared it's severed zombie-dragon-head? Or how an army of Ghost-Paladins almost cooked Xykon's goose untill Miko went and proved herself Lawful Stupid right to the end?

Xykon is powerfull, yes, and a potent Big Bad.. yes.. but he is NOT a threat only god-like epic-level uberness can defeat, that's just V's ego talking.

And there is the heart of the matter. V has a desperate need to prove itself and will stop at NOTHING to do so. I think V i the type to never rely on anyone if it can help it.

[spargel]

"V needs the Uber-Evul Soul-Splice power to stop Xykon!"

Have we forgotten that Roy Greenhilt was able to stop Xykon with nothing but a broken sword and a bottle of pissed-off whoopass? Or how Roy was able to take it to Xykon surprisingly effectively with his shiney new +5 sword of undead-spankage, untill the unfortunate implications of the chosen fighting venue reared it's severed zombie-dragon-head? Or how an army of Ghost-Paladins almost cooked Xykon's goose untill Miko went and proved herself Lawful Stupid right to the end?


The first time, Roy got lucky because there was a huge special gate he could toss Xykon into for a 1 hit KO. Otherwise, Xykon would have won that battle. The second time, Xykon wasn't even fighting until the end, where he ended the fight with one spell. The third time, Xykon and Redcloak pretty much took out all of the Ghost-Paladins except for the special one.




More to the point, V can't accept the fact that there are others in the world who are perfectly qualified to do things as well. To V, it's all about the magic. V has to find Haley, V has to do everything, etc. That's ego talking, and V can't just use his OWN considerable power (did people forget he's still a 13-14th level wizard even without a soul-splice?) to set things up?


His own power failed hir in Azure City, and it failed hir during the last several months. What makes you think it would work better now?

During the last several months, no one has really made any considerable progress towards stopping Xykon.



Seriously, he let's the splice go, and drops back to his normal power levels. Then, he contacts his master, who arranges for him to contact Durkon and Elan. And quite possibly sends him off via teleportation to rejoin them. Or V's master might just be powerful enough to break the Cloister effect and scry on Haley, figure out where they are, and zip over to Greysky. Considering that Haley is planning to have a cleric in the city give a sending to Durkon anyway... that scrying might not even be necessary.

Put yourself inside the OOTS universe. You don't know whether or not there is going to be a happy ending. You have no idea whether your friends who you left behind are still alive. And the longer you take to fix the problem, the more people die in Azure City. Are you honestly going to toss out one of the few fast solutions you'll ever find?

[Selene]

Even if we were talking about hours or days, it's still Vaarsuvius, personally, that will be affected by it. I'd say it's entirely within V's right to subject himself to something like that for some higher purpose.

Except here's the thing. What does V actually think they're going to *do* with his soul. Whatever it is, since they're fiends, it's obviously nothing good. The idea that they would make a bargain of this magnitude just to get a pet elf to torture for a while speaks to his ego again. "It's all about me. They just want to torture me. They couldn't possibly have any other plans, because it's all about me, me, me."

[X2]

I think the last panel deserves an award...

[lexcorp026]

The ends do not justify the means. At least, not if you're wanting to avoid that 'E' at the end of your alignment designation. :smallamused:

Quite the opposite. The ends dictate Good vs Evil. The means dictate Law versus Chaos. Robin Hood defends the weak and downtrodden (good) by stealing (chaotic). Lex Luthor attempts to oppress and downtrod the weak (evil) by becoming elected President and controlling military spending, taxation, and personal freedoms (lawful). Robin Hood's thefts would be CE if he stole the rich and kept for himself (or stole from the poor alike). Lex Luthor's presidency could have been LG had he used his considerable intellect and resources to enact positive changes with that power instead of strictly seeking personal gain and revenge.

Doing good by unscrupulous means is the definition of Chaotic Good. Lawful characters work well within a group; it's going to be rare that you find a Lawful Evil person as powerful as V (even before the splice) who does not bully, bribe, coerce, or intimidate at least a few others into being some form of lacky.

V's recent actions (refusing to work within the group, unwillingness to compromise, impulsive decision making, action before speaking, etc) are signs of a Chaotic shift in alignment. The results of these decisions will dictate whether he is GNE. The Chaos shift was pretty obvious though just when he bailed from the Order and then similarly dismissed the imp; the guy doesn't want rules and people holding him back, good or evil.

Law vs Chaos is the "means". Good vs Evil is the "ends". Sell your soul to save the world? Chaotic Good. Sell your soul to rule the world? Chaotic Evil.

[David Argall]

"V needs the Uber-Evul Soul-Splice power to stop Xykon!"

Have we forgotten that Roy Greenhilt was able to stop Xykon with nothing but a broken sword and a bottle of pissed-off whoopass?
And an epic level gate that had plot level kill evil that was conveniently located nearby.
Roy won by "a cheap deux ex machina" to quote our writer.


Or how Roy was able to take it to Xykon surprisingly effectively with his shiney new +5 sword of undead-spankage, untill the unfortunate implications of the chosen fighting venue reared it's severed zombie-dragon-head?
Well no. It was until he actually managed to mildly annoy Xykon and the lich got serious about the fight and one-rounded Roy. See the Oracle in 567 about what would have happened in a ground battle.


Or how an army of Ghost-Paladins almost cooked Xykon's goose
Note you say "army", which was led by an apparently epic level Soon.


Xykon is powerfull, yes, and a potent Big Bad.. yes.. but he is NOT a threat only god-like epic-level uberness can defeat, that's just V's ego talking.
The alternatives are all rather questionable. V is the only sure thing to beat Xykon.



Okay, so when someone is holding your loved ones hostage... you showing up, knocking their captor unconscious, and then, waking their captor up and torturing the captor to death is fine? And your loved ones would be thankful for this?
Very likely. This clown had been torturing them after all. Now of course not being sure where they stand with me could make them very nervous.
But the normal attitude is that the jerk deserves every broken bone.



Yeah, if only V hadn't alienated all his/her teammates earlier.
It would be better, but V is still super-V and their help is trivial.



That, is speculation. And while it affects the overall metaplot, it does not affect V's choices in-character. Or in other words, QUIT METAGAMING AND PLAY IN CHARACTER.
That is in character. [For one thing, V metagames at times.]
And in or out of chacter, story, or reality, the fact is the same. There is a major chance that V's master can't or won't deal with Xykon. Dropping the splice is risking failure.



First, we're assuming V is going after Xykon.
It is hard to think he won't, unless he loses the splice first.


Second, V could probably take out Xykon, but has to find him (and his phylactery) first
Like that's a problem for somebody casting epic spells?



Third, if V hadn't been an idiot and left the group in the first place, this would be a moot point.
But he did, and that is the situation we have to deal with. And V seems to have about 75 levels of caster to deal with it with. Should be fairly easy.



Seriously, he let's the splice go, and drops back to his normal power levels. Then, he contacts his master, who


...Explains that he never leaves elven lands, or he is inferior to Xykon, or... Your whole case is depending on an NPC whose abilities are very vaguely described and intent is even less known. That is just not an option.

[quote=malakim2099 622]
The ends do not justify the means.
True. [Note that this also applies to evil ends.]
But the results [or the reasonably predictable ones] do. The doctor slices you open and the result [often enough anyway] is an improvement in your health. The results justify the means. You kill a big bunch of evil dragons, you can reasonably predict a major reduction in evil deeds. It's a good deed, even if you kill a few non-evils in the process.

[Kaytara]

You can't defend K's stance as long as K doesn't know the whole story and K won't even let V illuminate her as to the whole story. Being so stubborn as to not even listen to two words out of the person you're arguing with makes you automatically wrong. Too often BOTH parties are automatically wrong due to this fault, but V actually let K speak, and listened. K just didn't want to hear anything in reply. K honestly comes across as not caring one whit about V in this entire comic. Emotional blackmail isn't a great way to show your love.

Yes, that's exactly it. Kyrie didn't want to hear a word V would say. It doesn't absolve her that she believed she was just cutting off lame excuses - in fact, it makes it worse. Being so certain that she couldn't possibly be wrong puts her on par with Miko, or Vaarsuvius at certain times for that matter. Except Kyrie cut V off, apologized, and then did the same thing again anyway.

The argument about Kyrie being emotionally distressed and not responding compassionately for that reason would hold some weight, except Kyrie doesn't act anything like it. She seems calm and collected as she tells V what her problem with him is.
Besides, if we're going to "cut her some slack", why can't we do the same for Vaarsuvius? Between the dragon's plans for his family, three fiends convincing him that he's selfish and prideful rather than noble and selfless, his separation from the only two companions who understand him, and his existential crisis due to his series of failures, Vaarsuvius has been through some pretty horrible things during the past months. Vaarsuvius has more than ample grounds in order to be acting irrationally and foolishly, yet people are very eager to condemn him and excuse Kyrie.


Except here's the thing. What does V actually think they're going to *do* with his soul. Whatever it is, since they're fiends, it's obviously nothing good. The idea that they would make a bargain of this magnitude just to get a pet elf to torture for a while speaks to his ego again. "It's all about me. They just want to torture me. They couldn't possibly have any other plans, because it's all about me, me, me."

A perfectly valid view to have, but that's pure speculation. The fiends told V what they get out of this and told him that they don't actually care about him, personally. There could be any number of reasons why it didn't make him suspicious or if it did, why he didn't speak up. Maybe he just accepted what they said at face value, since the alternative would be to consider that they're lying, in which case the entire bargain would be moot. Maybe he shrugged it off as an oddity of that particular unorthodox group. Maybe - and I strongly suspect this to be the case - he simply wasn't eager to look the gift horse in the mouth all that deeply.

As for now, Vaarsuvius hasn't exactly had time to stop and think carefully about that bargain, has he? He's gone over its outcome with his mate, sure, but he hasn't had the chance to really think back and review every word that was said.



Or V's master might just be powerful enough to break the Cloister effect and scry on Haley, figure out where they are, and zip over to Greysky.


Might just be powerful enough? Your team has spent over six months twiddling their thumbs while an Epic-level Evil is presumably steadily moving towards taking over the world, your best friend was last seen in that evil's domain and might be dead or imprisoned and facing torture for all you know, and you're wielding the big guns but are going to put them away and gamble all that on what might be the case?

[hamishspence]

And D&D is not?

BoED "Is it ok to do an evil act to avert a major catastrophe How about a world-shaking catastrophe"

"In D&D, the answer is no- an evil act is an evil act. While good ends (results) may or may not justify the means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil."

So, you commit murder, torture, human sacrifice, etc, to save the world, you are still committing evil deeds, and if a paladin, you fall.

A neutral character my do these sort of things anyway, and it may take a while before their alignment changes to Evil, but the acts themselves count as evil.

A good intended result for committing murder doesn't suddenly turn it into Justifiable Homicide.

[Bendal]

The road V has started down is the one paved with good intentions; once V realizes how much she can do to change events she feels need to be changed, what's to stop her from continuing and never giving up the power? To her it is all for a good cause, but her mate was right; ultimate power was what she had always been searching for, and now she's got it.

[hamishspence]

While Drizzt in the chapter starter bits in the Icewind Dale novels can come off as more the a little pompous, one of the things he points out also mentioned in the chaptor where a minor conjuror summons Errtu, is:

Unearned power always spells trouble.

V has Ultimate Aracne power, but V did not earn it in the old-fashioned way- it was given, by the fiends, without any of the discipline needed to attain it.

its a sudden leap from 14th level to 80th odd level in power. Result- the access to power corrupts.

[Omegonthesane]

And D&D is not?

BoED "Is it ok to do an evil act to avert a major catastrophe How about a world-shaking catastrophe"

"In D&D, the answer is no- an evil act is an evil act. While good ends (results) may or may not justify the means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil."

So, you commit murder, torture, human sacrifice, etc, to save the world, you are still committing evil deeds, and if a paladin, you fall.

A neutral character my do these sort of things anyway, and it may take a while before their alignment changes to Evil, but the acts themselves count as evil.

A good intended result for committing murder doesn't suddenly turn it into Justifiable Homicide.

Well, here is proof that D&D doesn't have morals that are all that robust. By that logic, a Paladin who fails to feed his baby and thus lets it starve to death doesn't lose his powers because he didn't commit a single evil act - he instead committed evil by failing to act, which isn't covered under the falling rules. Somehow, the idea that you can keep your powers after committing criminal negligence but not after, say, just shooting Kefka before he reaches the Floating Continent disturbs me.

I say screw the exact wording of the rules, Paladin should never fall for committing the lesser of two evils when it's "murder the black dragon or let it live to destroy a whole town of people". Or, indeed, under any other "Commit technically evil act or allow far worse consequences" situation.

[jmucchiello]

This was an interesting summary of Law/Chaos vs Good/Evil. Not sure it's supported by the existing rules but if I were writing a new set of alignment descriptions this post would be my jumping off point. Excellent.

Law vs Chaos is the "means". Good vs Evil is the "ends". Sell your soul to save the world? Chaotic Good. Sell your soul to rule the world? Chaotic Evil.Problem: Where do these fall?

Sell your soul to save the world and fail?
Sell your soul to save the world and bring about an even worse world?

Because we don't know that V will save the world. Even if she destroys Xykon, Redcloak and the entire hobgoblin army, she will eventually become thrall to the 3 devils/demons. What evil will they unleash?

The problem with any deal with the devil is the downside is always worse than the upside. The bigger the upside (save the freaking world!!) the scarier the subsequent downside (demons and devils unite, gain control of the snarl, and destroy the Good outer planes plunging the entire multiverse into omnipresent evil).

[Omegonthesane]

The problem with any deal with the devil is the downside is always worse than the upside. The bigger the upside (save the freaking world!!) the scarier the subsequent downside (demons and devils unite, gain control of the snarl, and destroy the Good outer planes plunging the entire multiverse into omnipresent evil).

...unless the Giant wants to subvert that.

I mean, the Brothers Grimm did, with The Three Apprentices. (http://classi****.about.com/library/bl-etexts/grimm/bl-grimm-3apprentices.htm).

In that case...
Upside: Three guys are loaded and free for rest of their lives.
Downside: One evil innkeeper goes to Hell, given he was probably headed there anyways.

[hamishspence]

some forms of killing are justifiable homicide (BoVD cites Man Pouring Poison into Water Supply as a good example) Here, its not Murder but Saving Life from a Crime being Directly Committed.
(And it doesn't matter whether he's good, evil, or Neutral- its OK.)

Crimes of Ommission are much harder to define as Evil or Good than crimes of Commission, but if a serious crime is being committed right in front of you, failure to try and stop it is arguably grounds for a Fall.

Negligence is, in fact, Fall-worthy by BoVD- if the deaths you yourself are causing are clearly foreseeable- a rock-fall wiping out a village is the example here.

One should remember though, that a PC should be careful not to commit evil acts in the process of trying to prevent them.

[bluedolphin359]

Haley: This is a fine mess you've gotten us into..

Ceyla: Oh no, you're not blaming me for your own larcenous streak coming back to haunt you. Just pony-up the gold and we can...

Haley: I CAN'T! Don't you Get it! I don't HAVE All the Gold I ever stole, not even a fraction of it!

Ceyla: You Don't? What could you possibly have done with it all?

Haley: I.. um.. I...

V: ...er Teleport.

Haley: V! I'm so glad to see y...

V: The gratuitous pleasantries will have to wait, I have lost valuable time already tracking you down since you un-graciously left the first place I would have looked.

Haley: Wha.. there was Epic Level Anti-Scrying magic there.

V: Yes, well that would have explained the tingling behind my back teeth.

Ceyla: Told'ya!

V: But in any event this is just further needless distractions, we must make ready to travel immediatly.

Ceyla: We can't, Haley still owes the Theive's guild back dues from the settlement.

V: Settlement? Haley, have you finally abdicated your position within the Order of the Stick to pursue a full-time career of theivery?

Haley: Wha? No! The Guild attacked us, but me and Belkar had them on the ropes until Ceyla came up with this stupid deal of her's.

V: I see, so the only reason you are indebted and indentured and thus bound to this place is a failure to cause the cessation of life function in the entirity of the theive's guild?

Haley: Umm, now that you mention it.

Theive's Guild Mook: Hey Haley, the boss wants.. hey, who's thi...

V: Disintigrate. That'll do for a start, excuse me. *flies off*

Ceyla: Haley! Did he just.. Did you see..?

Belkar: Hey girls, what's up?

Ceyla: He... He... He...

Haley: Uh, Hi Belkar. V's back, and he.. I mean she.. I mean.. they're looking kinda.. sorta..

Ceyla: Evil!

Belkar: Really? What makes you say that?

*Boom, Zap!, Boom, AIEEEEEE!, Zot! Mommy!, Boom!*

V: There, that should take care of any lingering obligations here that may continue to hinder us. Oh, and I see the halfling has arrived to join us. Pity. Now, where are our erstwhile leader's mortal remains?

Haley: Well, Ceyla carted them here to try and get him raised after I told her it'd be a bad idea, and ended up handing him over to a golem-crafter.

Ceyla: Hey!

V: I see, obviously we will have no further need for her incompetence. Dismissal.

Ceyla: Wha...*Poof*

Haley: Wha.. Hey! V!

V: Now then, his remains are still in the city? That should simplify things greatly. *flies off*

Belkar: Wow, V is kinda..

*Bright Flash off-panel and Building-Shaking KA-BOOM!*

V: *flies back with bag of Roy Bones with a sword sticking out of it.* That proved to be of trivial difficulty, I took the liberty of stopping by the stable to retrieve Sir Greenhilt's blade. Now...

Belkar: *smiles and weeps with joy* I always knew you had it in ya elf-buddy.

V: Greater Tel...

Durkon: I tell ye, I not be likin' that tha elf be gone off on 'is own.

Elan: Me neither, but there was nothing we could've done to sto..

V: ..eport.

Elan: V! And Haley! And Belkar!

Durkon: Aye it be a sight for sore eyes ye be, but Varrsarvius, what be the meanin' of...

Elan: Yeah, what is with the Evil Makeover?

Hinjo: Yeah, I don't need to Detect Evil to see something's wrong here.

V: Ahh, Lord Hinjo, excellant. I have brought forth Roy Greenhilt's remains, now make haste in procuring the diamonds needed for his return to the mortal coil.

Hinjo: A little presumptuous are we? Abandoning us just like that and now making demands, all while looking vaguely threatening and very suspicious?

V: Suggestion.

Hinjo: *draws sword* Hah! In case you've forgotten I'm a Paladin, I could make that saving-throw in my sleep!

V: Indeed. Heightened Crushing Despair, Greater Suggestion. Now I Suggest you turn your treasury upside down until the requisite diamonds are made available to us before I annihilate your pathetic fleet and send all of your precious city's citizens to the appropriately hued sea's depths.

Hinjo: Y-yes'sir.

Durkon: ...!

Haley: ...!

Elan: ...!

V: ....What?

Belkar: That.. Was.. Awesome!


Best. Spoiler. Ever.

[Xentropy]

The results justify the means. You kill a big bunch of evil dragons, you can reasonably predict a major reduction in evil deeds. It's a good deed, even if you kill a few non-evils in the process.

You (and others) keep saying this, but where do you draw the line? If 10% of the targets are good and 90% are evil, is that okay? What about 80% evil? 70%? 51%? And on what scale? Let's take a strong majority: If 99% or more evil in a group makes it okay to commit mass murder against said group, can the group be ANY size and this remain true? Is killing a hundred sentient beings okay if only one was good? How about a million sentient beings if only ten-thousand were good? How about a billion if "only" ten million good beings died?

Everyone has to draw that line somewhere. Obviously your line is somewhere the other side of "killing 63 (number of dead black dragons in comic) probably-evil creatures is okay if up to 3 (number of half-dragons) were good," but I'm curious exactly how much further than that it DOES go.

And does the amount of evil matter? If 59 of the 60 definitely evil black dragons killed in the comic were "retired" and wouldn't kill another intelligent life form for the rest of their lives, is it still justified? If just one of them was going to kill a million good-aligned humanoids and the other 62 actually turned out to be good-aligned, themselves (by some freak of random chance--"always chaotic evil" isn't 100%, after all), is that then okay? Is it a good act even if the world as a whole actually tilted more toward evil as a result just because it "should" have been the other way around by the odds? Does intention mean anything, or only the result, or probable result? (V's intention here, it could be argued, wasn't to kill a bunch of evil creatures for the greater good, it was to specifically torment the creature that was threatening his family. But you still call it a good act.)

I'm honestly fascinated to read your (both David's and others who agree Familicide in this instance was a good action) answers to these questions, because I always try to put myself in another person's shoes in an argument, and I'm completely lost as to where your core morality lies. Meta-gaming to some extent in reply is fine, since some of the questions *do* have to do with odds that creatures are good vs evil, something that can't be established realistically outside the context of the game system.

[Undead Prince]

Haley: This is a fine mess you've gotten us into..

Ceyla: Oh no, you're not blaming me for your own larcenous streak coming back to haunt you. Just pony-up the gold and we can...

Haley: I CAN'T! Don't you Get it! I don't HAVE All the Gold I ever stole, not even a fraction of it!

Ceyla: You Don't? What could you possibly have done with it all?

Haley: I.. um.. I...

V: ...er Teleport.

Haley: V! I'm so glad to see y...

V: The gratuitous pleasantries will have to wait, I have lost valuable time already tracking you down since you un-graciously left the first place I would have looked.

Haley: Wha.. there was Epic Level Anti-Scrying magic there.

V: Yes, well that would have explained the tingling behind my back teeth.

Ceyla: Told'ya!

V: But in any event this is just further needless distractions, we must make ready to travel immediatly.

Ceyla: We can't, Haley still owes the Theive's guild back dues from the settlement.

V: Settlement? Haley, have you finally abdicated your position within the Order of the Stick to pursue a full-time career of theivery?

Haley: Wha? No! The Guild attacked us, but me and Belkar had them on the ropes until Ceyla came up with this stupid deal of her's.

V: I see, so the only reason you are indebted and indentured and thus bound to this place is a failure to cause the cessation of life function in the entirity of the theive's guild?

Haley: Umm, now that you mention it.

Theive's Guild Mook: Hey Haley, the boss wants.. hey, who's thi...

V: Disintigrate. That'll do for a start, excuse me. *flies off*

Ceyla: Haley! Did he just.. Did you see..?

Belkar: Hey girls, what's up?

Ceyla: He... He... He...

Haley: Uh, Hi Belkar. V's back, and he.. I mean she.. I mean.. they're looking kinda.. sorta..

Ceyla: Evil!

Belkar: Really? What makes you say that?

*Boom, Zap!, Boom, AIEEEEEE!, Zot! Mommy!, Boom!*

V: There, that should take care of any lingering obligations here that may continue to hinder us. Oh, and I see the halfling has arrived to join us. Pity. Now, where are our erstwhile leader's mortal remains?

Haley: Well, Ceyla carted them here to try and get him raised after I told her it'd be a bad idea, and ended up handing him over to a golem-crafter.

Ceyla: Hey!

V: I see, obviously we will have no further need for her incompetence. Dismissal.

Ceyla: Wha...*Poof*

Haley: Wha.. Hey! V!

V: Now then, his remains are still in the city? That should simplify things greatly. *flies off*

Belkar: Wow, V is kinda..

*Bright Flash off-panel and Building-Shaking KA-BOOM!*

V: *flies back with bag of Roy Bones with a sword sticking out of it.* That proved to be of trivial difficulty, I took the liberty of stopping by the stable to retrieve Sir Greenhilt's blade. Now...

Belkar: *smiles and weeps with joy* I always knew you had it in ya elf-buddy.

V: Greater Tel...

Durkon: I tell ye, I not be likin' that tha elf be gone off on 'is own.

Elan: Me neither, but there was nothing we could've done to sto..

V: ..eport.

Elan: V! And Haley! And Belkar!

Durkon: Aye it be a sight for sore eyes ye be, but Varrsarvius, what be the meanin' of...

Elan: Yeah, what is with the Evil Makeover?

Hinjo: Yeah, I don't need to Detect Evil to see something's wrong here.

V: Ahh, Lord Hinjo, excellant. I have brought forth Roy Greenhilt's remains, now make haste in procuring the diamonds needed for his return to the mortal coil.

Hinjo: A little presumptuous are we? Abandoning us just like that and now making demands, all while looking vaguely threatening and very suspicious?

V: Suggestion.

Hinjo: *draws sword* Hah! In case you've forgotten I'm a Paladin, I could make that saving-throw in my sleep!

V: Indeed. Heightened Crushing Despair, Greater Suggestion. Now I Suggest you turn your treasury upside down until the requisite diamonds are made available to us before I annihilate your pathetic fleet and send all of your precious city's citizens to the appropriately hued sea's depths.

Hinjo: Y-yes'sir.

Durkon: ...!

Haley: ...!

Elan: ...!

V: ....What?

Belkar: That.. Was.. Awesome!

Best. Spoiler. Ever.

Seconded!

Nitpick:


Heightened Crushing Despair, Greater Suggestion

1) Can't cast two standard-action spells in a round just like that; have to use Quicken, or Celerity, or whatever. 2) No need for Crushing Despair anyway, because it requires the target to fail a Will saving throw, and if he's gonna be failing his Will saving throw, it might as well be to the Suggestion. 3) Instead of Suggestion, better use Dominate Person, so as to fully control Hinjo.

And why am I not surprised the discussion has deteriorated into yet another alignment debate.

Bring on the next strip, Rich!

[hamishspence]

the original source of the quote, Machiavelli, in The Discourses, ias usually interpreted as actually meaning "yes, sometimes, for the needs of others, you have to do evil"

rather than "any evil done for the needs of others is not in fact evil"

Bernard Crick said it best in the editiorial at the start of the Penguin edition of the book:
The Discourses
But, he seems to say, for God and man's sake, recognize that what for the moment you are doing is evil, and do not fall into calling it good.


AS OF NOW, KYRIE OFFICIALLY SUCKS.

I mean, I had my doubts (who am I kidding, I never doubted it), but this comic just cast it in stone.

K is an insensitive, selfish, pathetic and overbearing self-righteous leech.

While Kyrie was just rude and ingrateful, it was at least their personal business with V.

But now, when K took upon itself (yes, I'm calling K *it* from now on) to demand that V abandon friends in time of mortal danger, that's just sick. Twisted, and sick, and I'd even say evil. Yep, Neutral Evil. Selfish to the core, to the extreme. Not just ignorant, but outright hateful of the others' dreams and wishes, even if the other is their own spouse. Eager to break the "beloved" one's heart out of petty spite.

I find K more despicable than any villain of the comic. The villains have a kind of brutal honesty about them. The worst they can do is kill (and maybe Soul Bind). But this? This is the most craven villainy ever. Holding V's love to K and the children hostage while demanding that V discard everything that's dear to him - his friends, and his pursuits.

Selfish and arrogant, K was tempting V to commit Evil on a grand scale.

With comments like these, of course there will be an alignment discussion. The claim here seems to be that Kyrie is Evil, or is acting evil now, and by refusing, V is doing a Good act.

[Warren Dew]

I'm using post numbers in preference to arrows to reduce round trips to the server.


Have we forgotten that Roy Greenhilt was able to stop Xykon with nothing but a broken sword and a bottle of pissed-off whoopass?

Have we forgotten that Roy is dead?


The idea that they would make a bargain of this magnitude just to get a pet elf to torture for a while speaks to his ego again.

To the contrary; it merely speaks to Vaarsuvius's gullibility for a logical argument. The fiends are selling the deal based on the story, "you're just some unimportant random whose application came through when we happened to want to test splicing", which actually makes Vaarsuvius seem much less important to the fiends than is the truth.


The ends dictate Good vs Evil. The means dictate Law versus Chaos. Robin Hood defends the weak and downtrodden (good) by stealing (chaotic). Lex Luthor attempts to oppress and downtrod the weak (evil) by becoming elected President and controlling military spending, taxation, and personal freedoms (lawful).

By that logic, looking at Robin Hood from the point of view of the people he steals from, he steals (evil) because of helping the weak (lawful). So Robin Hood is lawful evil, just like Lex Luthor.

I think you'd do better to try to justify Robin Hood on a normal ends-justify-means basis: you can argue his giving does more good than his stealing.

The real justification, of course, is likely even closer to what Vaarsuvius did: "it's okay to steal from those people because they are dragons, er, people who are different from me."


A neutral character my do these sort of things anyway, and it may take a while before their alignment changes to Evil, but the acts themselves count as evil.

It may not change their alignment at all. One maintains a neutral D&D alignment by doing some evil acts and some good acts.If the good of the results sufficiently outweighs the evil of the means, the people could even end up good. It seems only paladins cannot use evil means due to the specialized falling mechanics.


Let's take a strong majority: If 99% or more evil in a group makes it okay to commit mass murder against said group, can the group be ANY size and this remain true? Is killing a hundred sentient beings okay if only one was good? How about a million sentient beings if only ten-thousand were good? How about a billion if "only" ten million good beings died?

Everyone has to draw that line somewhere.

Why do you think they have to draw a line? It strikes me that if it's "good" in the case of a small group, it's even better in the case of a larger group - so they would, indeed, kill, sacrifice 100 million good folks to kill 10 billion evil folks.

I'd note, though, that many defending the familicide don't see it as a good act, but merely as a nonevil neutral act. Me, I see it as 62 separate acts, each with moral value dependent on features we know nothing of.

[hamishspence]

Champions of Ruin said it best right after listing the full BoVD set of evil acts, p 113:

Certainly many of those acts are present in a standard campaign, and even good characters could be driven toward them from time to time. But the repeated, deliberate use of many of these is the hallmark of an evil character. They are often the evil character's first choice rather than his last resort, because committing an evil act can be easier and faster than acting in a moral way.

Also, for the few people who have been claiming V is LG, all through the strip, there is Fiendish Codex 2 comment:

"Any Lawful person who dies with a corruption rating of 9 or higher goes to Baator, regardless of how much good they did in life."

(Special exemptions for those who die repentant- they get resurrected as Hellbred, but still need to do acts of great heroism and good before they die, to escape Baator)

If V is not Lawful, then its alignment that matters- has V been repeatedly, deliberately committing serious Evil?

EDIT:
on Robin Hood, some authors have provided a justification (countering the more modern "aiding the needy is good" one):

He steals from thieves- "legal" thieves, but still thieves- men who impose unjust taxes for the sole purpose of self-enrichment, rather than putting those taxes toward helping the community. And he returns it to those taxed. Robin is a champion of property, not a "reliever of misery"

[jmucchiello]

Seconded!
Thirded exceptV should have showed up at the fleet with the diamonds in hand so as not to waste time with someone having to go fetch them.But that ruins the ending, I know.

[The MunchKING]

I think you'd do better to try to justify Robin Hood on a normal ends-justify-means basis: you can argue his giving does more good than his stealing.

The real justification, of course, is likely even closer to what Vaarsuvius did: "it's okay to steal from those people because they are dragons, er, people who are different from me."

Well traditionally, Robin Hood generally offs the tax collectors and steals from them, because they are stealing at spear point from the poor people of England. So it's more "justice" than "they are different and have money".

[Roderick_BR]

Was noticing V's and Inkyrius's kids rising their hands when Inkyrius was picking them up. Nice attention to detail, showing how they depend on their parents for protection.

[Undead Prince]

With comments like these, of course there will be an alignment discussion.

Yeah, I guess I share some responsibility for the resurfacing of this neverending debate. It's like a disease consuming healthy threads and transforming them into a loop of repeating arguments.

[hamishspence]

it seems that a lot of it is to do with absolute or relative morality, objective or utilitarian, which of these D&D uses, and which it "should" use,

and whether PHB is the Only Valid Source, or whether the multiple other WOTC D&D sources should be used, especially if they all agree on the same point.

What annoys me is when somebody says "BoVD was seen in War & XPs- its a lock that BoED is being used" a few months ago, then starts saying the absolute opposite more recently.

WOTC has written many books that say players should not be Detecting Evil and Smiting everything that detects as Evil- and in the game world they may get jailed for murder. And that some Evil people are fairly harmless, not deserving of death.

Still, not everyone agrees with them.

[Ampersand]

Besides, if we're going to "cut her some slack", why can't we do the same for Vaarsuvius?

As far as we know, Kyrie hasn't sold her soul or committed genocide. You sort of lose your rights to empathy and understanding when you knowingly and willingly damn yourself. And I don't believe in cutting characters breaks just because they're protagonists, either.


...three fiends convincing him that he's selfish and prideful rather than noble and selfless

V is selfish and prideful. In fact, if I had to shortlist the five most conceited characters in the strip, V would be on the the list (along with Roy, Eugene, Nale and Miko, though I'm sure the exact order would be subject of much debate). When has she ever even come close to being "noble and selfless?"


Vaarsuvius has more than ample grounds in order to be acting irrationally and foolishly, yet people are very eager to condemn him and excuse Kyrie.

See my point above re: selling souls and genocide.