OOTSverse: Color-coded wizards?

[pendell]

Looking at the strips, and the avatars, I note that Arcane users in OOTSverse come in a variety of colors:

1) White wizard (white wizard avatar, usually the white wizard girl)
2) Black wizard (Tsukiko)
3) Red Wizard (Vaarsuvius)
4) Green Wizard (Zzdtri, un-named wizard seen dueling black dragon in Familicide montage)
5) Blue Wizard (just noticed the blue wizard girl avatar, the one with the glasses).

We know from Dungeon Crawlin' Fools that Red is some kind of evoker, direct-damage spells while green is an opposite, some kind of transmuter. Note that V relies on Lightning and fireball while Zzdtri uses flesh to stone. The Giant explicitly points this out in the comments in said book.

Black wizard is probably necromancer chick. I'll wager white robes is probably some healing order ... but how is that different from clerics?

And what's a blue wizard? A reject from middle earth that found it's way here? (That's a joke, not serious speculation).

Would the Giant -- or anyone familiar with the Giant's world (I'm assuming Roland St. Jude is one of those) -- be willing to go on the record describing exactly what those orders are, what their history is, etc. etc. I always liked the detail given to the Three Orders in Dragonlance, although it doesn't seem likely that robe color is related to alignment in OOTSverse.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Bibliomancer]

If you use Magic: the Gathering colors, blue would probably be a diviner (which seems to fit the avatar I've seen). White could be an abjurer, which does prevention instead of cure at a 16 to 1 exchange rate.

[Raging Gene Ray]

If you use Magic: the Gathering colors, blue would probably be a diviner (which seems to fit the avatar I've seen).

Sometimes it's just fashion sense. Sangwaan was a Diviner who wore blue, but that was likely due to being in Azure City. The Nameless Teleport Wizard wore blue, and I doubt he was a Diviner.

[Bibliomancer]

Sometimes it's just fashion sense. Sangwaan was a Diviner who wore blue, but that was likely due to being in Azure City. The Nameless Teleport Wizard wore blue, and I doubt he was a Diviner.

True. Alternatively, the wizard could be a conjurer who focuses on summoning water elementals. All this is pure speculation, though.

[Nimrod's Son]

Would the Giant -- or anyone familiar with the Giant's world (I'm assuming Roland St. Jude is one of those) -- be willing to go on the record describing exactly what those orders are, what their history is, etc. etc.
I very much doubt any of the mods have access to Rich's production notes, and I equally doubt that Rich himself will ever post extra-comic backstory details in the forum. The only way we're likely to find out his take on this is if it comes up in the strip.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

There's also always the Crossover Effect... We haven't seen (as far as my faulty memory recalls) any Blue, non-Azure City wizards. So Rich may well be using Magic: the Gathering type magic for many of the game world's wizards, while using the color Blue in Azure City with no actual meaning.

I do remember Haley and Celia looking for dresses, and complaining that the dresses only came in blue...

[TheBibliophile]

Also, after the Island of Orcs incident, Hinjo said, and I quote: "We're trading them all our red and orange dye, since we don't use it anyway.

[rangermania]

Well V's robe turned to black from red after taking the splice. And there are Purple and Orange robes for the other two wizards...

It is almost universal to have Red for natural and black for evil now so the others should really be fashion accesories..

[Pyron]

Sometimes it's just fashion sense. Sangwaan was a Diviner who wore blue, but that was likely due to being in Azure City. The Nameless Teleport Wizard wore blue, and I doubt he was a Diviner.

Furthermore, We have Eugene who's an illusionist. We also have Fryon (Eugene's teacher) who wears a light-orange robe. We also have Girard (arguably an illusionist) who wears a blue-shirt and a purple cloak. So, not all green robed wizards are transmuters and not all specialists stick to a color scheme.

I doubt the robes reflect anything in terms of order or specialty school.


We haven't seen (as far as my faulty memory recalls) any Blue, non-Azure City wizards. So Rich may well be using Magic: the Gathering type magic for many of the game world's wizards, while using the color Blue in Azure City with no actual meaning.

Here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0253.html), I can see one blue-robed non-Azurite. Incidentally, we also see a black-robed non-necromancer.

Edit: Another non-Azurite Blue Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0388.html). :smallsmile:

[Jayabalard]

Here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0253.html), I can see one blue-robed non-Azurite. Incidentally, we also see a black-robed non-necromancer.

Edit: Another non-Azurite Blue Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0388.html). :smallsmile:Both of those are spoofs, so I doubt that they're really meaningful counterexamples.

[Prowl]

Wizards: Color-uncoded for your inconvenience!

[pendell]

I doubt the robes reflect anything in terms of order or specialty school.


Rich specifically said in the book that V and Zzd'tri were a shout-out to his campaign world where Red Wizards and Green Wizards are opposed -- diametric opposites -- and of different schools.

I agree that not every magic-user in the book wears a specific color-coded robe. but Colored Robe orders do seem to exist .. either that or it's simply a one-time joke. Which it could of been, but I'm curious if there actually is some backstory. I'm geeky like that. Hey! I read the LOTR appendices for fun!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Kish]

I very much doubt any of the mods have access to Rich's production notes,
No, but one or two of them have talked about playing D&D with him as a DM in the past, and according to Dungeon Crawling Fools the red and green wizard orders came from one of his games originally.

[Optimystik]

No, but one or two of them have talked about playing D&D with him as a DM in the past, and according to Dungeon Crawling Fools the red and green wizard orders came from one of his games originally.

In addition, Roland is definitely one of these (I recall a post where he was praising Rich's DM skills) and that's who pendell mentioned. Whether any of them will deign to provide insight is another matter. :smallsmile:

As far as the topic, I think we have the standard robe tropes going
(necromancers are more likely to wear black or purple, evokers are more likely to wear red etc.) but fashion tends to override them. (Wizards in Azure City wear blue regardless of specialization; Julia and her clique wouldn't be caught dead in robes; elves seem to prefer robes with embroidery etc.)

[Linkavitch]

Hey! I read the LOTR appendices for fun!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Yeah, I'm not the only one!

*internet high five*

[David Argall]

My bet is that the colors are pretty much meaningless. We may have black for evil or something on that level of refinement, but that is about the limit.

[Silverraptor]

Looking at the strips, and the avatars, I note that Arcane users in OOTSverse come in a variety of colors:

1) White wizard (white wizard avatar, usually the white wizard girl)
2) Black wizard (Tsukiko)
3) Red Wizard (Vaarsuvius)
4) Green Wizard (Zzdtri, un-named wizard seen dueling black dragon in Familicide montage)
5) Blue Wizard (just noticed the blue wizard girl avatar, the one with the glasses).


Huh...

You know, those are the colored wizards in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2.

White= Healer
Black= Damage
Red= Versitile
Green= Status affects
Blue= Monster abilities

[Elfin]

Yeah, I'm not the only one!

*internet high five*

Yeah! Go Tolkien fanatics!

[Nimrod's Son]

No, but one or two of them have talked about playing D&D with him as a DM in the past, and according to Dungeon Crawling Fools the red and green wizard orders came from one of his games originally.
Fair point. I'd be gobsmacked if any of them came out on record to talk about those games and how they relate to as-yet-unseen aspects of OotS, though.

[Orzel]

I think is more like this.

If you aren't from a special organztion/city/group and your robe doesn't resist something, a stereotypical non-evil elven damage-based wizard's robe will mostly likely be red or purple.

White's too passive
Black's too dark, evil, or necromantic.
Green and brown are for druids.
Grey too dull for an elf
Blue suggest defensivness (water, calm, mental, illusion)
V's hair is purple so purple, yellow, and orange are out.

[Grey Watcher]

Waaaaaay back when I first started following this comic, this board was only in the early stages of its transformation from "gathering place for Rich Burlew and his gaming buddies, now with a webcomic!" to "home of the increasingly popular Order of the Stick, with some other gaming content". There was even a subforum specifically for his home campaigns where they discussed questions like "What should we ask that oracle we met last session?" I even remember the Giant's old avatar, which also referenced that homebrew campaign setting (called Illumination, if memory serves): it was a geometric shape with colored circles at each angle (arranged in order like a color wheel, so purple was between red and blue and so forth), bisected by a line with a white and a black circle at either end.

About the only thing I ever knew, rules-wise was that Wizards and Sorcerers were required to specialize in a color (instead of a school), which included a whole bunch of thematically linked spells drawn from the PHB list (as mentioned in DCF, Red spells tended to blow stuff up, Green tended to transform things, etc.), as color/light was apparently an intrinsic part of the nature of arcane magic. Beyond that, and once seeing a rather dizzyingly long list of houserules on individual spells, I don't remember seeing much of the setting.

Upshot is, while I don't know much more about the referenced setting than anyone else here, I don't believe that, outside of Vaarsuvius and Zz'dtri, any of the clothing of the various wizards we see actually reflect that homebrew setting. I mean, Samantha, Xykon, and Vaarsuvius all favor the blast-it-until-it-stops-moving-then-blast-it-some-more-to-be-certain style of spellcasting, but they wear purple, blue, and red respectively. (Deliberately avoiding the Azure City casters, as I think the AC heraldry trumps any obscure references.)

[Berserk Monk]

Looking at the strips, and the avatars, I note that Arcane users in OOTSverse come in a variety of colors:

1) White wizard (white wizard avatar, usually the white wizard girl)
2) Black wizard (Tsukiko)
3) Red Wizard (Vaarsuvius)
4) Green Wizard (Zzdtri, un-named wizard seen dueling black dragon in Familicide montage)
5) Blue Wizard (just noticed the blue wizard girl avatar, the one with the glasses).

We know from Dungeon Crawlin' Fools that Red is some kind of evoker, direct-damage spells while green is an opposite, some kind of transmuter. Note that V relies on Lightning and fireball while Zzdtri uses flesh to stone. The Giant explicitly points this out in the comments in said book.

Black wizard is probably necromancer chick. I'll wager white robes is probably some healing order ... but how is that different from clerics?

And what's a blue wizard? A reject from middle earth that found it's way here? (That's a joke, not serious speculation).

Would the Giant -- or anyone familiar with the Giant's world (I'm assuming Roland St. Jude is one of those) -- be willing to go on the record describing exactly what those orders are, what their history is, etc. etc. I always liked the detail given to the Three Orders in Dragonlance, although it doesn't seem likely that robe color is related to alignment in OOTSverse.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Your reference to Magic the Gathering in OotS does not amuse me.

[Optimystik]

Your reference to Magic the Gathering in OotS does not amuse me.

Magic's colors weren't pulled out of a hat, you know. Black is typically associated with necromancy, red with evocation, blue with divination, white with healing and green with nature in a vast number of fantasy settings, not just the Multiverse.

[Bibliomancer]

Huh...

You know, those are the colored wizards in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2.

White= Healer
Black= Damage
Red= Versitile
Green= Status affects
Blue= Monster abilities

There's a huge flaw in this logic, in that it would require V to have versatility. She hasn't cast a single spell from outside of the PHB and the vast majority of her spells blow stuff up.

There's nothing wrong with this approach, which is actually fairly common for players who play arcanists (because they often don't want to do the necessary work to find good spells, so blowing things up repetitively is the best course of action) but is certainly isn't versatile.

[Silverraptor]

There's a huge flaw in this logic, in that it would require V to have versatility. She hasn't cast a single spell from outside of the PHB and the vast majority of her spells blow stuff up.

There's nothing wrong with this approach, which is actually fairly common for players who play arcanists (because they often don't want to do the necessary work to find good spells, so blowing things up repetitively is the best course of action) but is certainly isn't versatile.

I was just noting that those are the wizard colors in the game. I didn't think it had any significance at all.

[Ozymandias9]

I'll wager white robes is probably some healing order ... but how is that different from clerics?

I'd wager Abjurer before healer for a Wizard.

[Kaytara]

I had another theory about this.... That arcane magic corresponds to eye colour. If we assume Elan's finger puppet recap of the first book in Paladin Blues is actually correct in displaying V as having pink eyes and Elan having blue eyes, then it fits V, Elan and Tsukiko very nicely at least. But Nale's yellow magic kind of shoots that to bits.

Nah, I think it's just a matter of favoured colours. The magic matches their favourite colour, so of course they end up wearing it inevitably.

V: Red robes, pale red magic.
Dorukan: Yellow robes, yellow magic.
Eugene: Green robes, green magic.
Pompey: Purple robes, lavender magic.
Elan: Blue cloak/blue outfit, blue magic.
Nale: Erm... Yellow hair, yellow magic? Well, you can't win all of them.

[pendell]

Your reference to Magic the Gathering in OotS does not amuse me.

FYI, I have played 'Magic the Gathering' exactly once, back in 2003. I had forgotten .. if I had ever remembered .. the significance of colors in the card game.

I pointed out the colors because The Giant specified Red and Green as important in his settings. I also noted there are 'white wizard' and 'blue wizard' stock avatars. So I was moved to ask the question.

If there is correspondance, either the Giant is pillaging Magic: The Gathering for his setting, or they are both drawing on a common mythic base for their respective stories. I suspect the second.

Reminds me ... Thank you, Grey_Watcher, for the information! That's exactly what I was looking for.

Respectfully,

Brian P.