What is the planet within the Snarl?

[TheProfessor]

Is it the previous world?

Or is it the real world? Wouldn't surprise me from the no fourth wall jokes.

What do you think the planet is?

[Conuly]

It's definitely not the real world unless Rich's cartography skills are far worse than any of us realized.

[Zevox]

Rich flat-out told us in Don't Split the Party that it is not our Earth. So that option is out.

Best guesses at present are either the first world that the Snarl destroyed, or perhaps a new one it (inadvertently?) created. We really don't have much to go on though, so I wouldn't be placing any bets as to what the correct answer is myself.

Zevox

[ThePhantasm]

There is no planet within the Snarl. The planet is within the rift.

Zing!

[Ceaon]

Best guess is that it's the first world and that either the gods lied or were misled themselves or that the Snarl is SO chaotic it actually rebuild the world.

[Ancalagon]

No, that is not the best guess, I think.

The snarl was made of strains of creation (tangled, as the gods argued). After the initial chaos, the snarl became less chaos and more "creation", the world inside it now became what the gods always wanted it to be: An own world.

----

If it was completely strange, than this world there has beings living on it which again created their own gods as well. We know mortals can become gods, so it might not only a World in there but might also have some own gods.

[blackjack217]

It's earth from team 4 star and the snarl is Mr Popo.

[Ceaon]

No, that is not the best guess, I think.

Sorry, should have said 'My best guess'. :smallwink:

[ThePhantasm]

No, that is not the best guess, I think.

The snarl was made of strains of creation (tangled, as the gods argued). After the initial chaos, the snarl became less chaos and more "creation", the world inside it now became what the gods always wanted it to be: An own world.

----

If it was completely strange, than this world there has beings living on it which again created their own gods as well. We know mortals can become gods, so it might not only a World in there but might also have some own gods.

Technically it was strands of reality, which is different from creation. The reality was pre-existent and formless basically. Creation by definition is either an act or the product of that act. While the Snarl did grow intelligent, it was formed (or rather tangled) out of discord and malice and there has been no indication that it is capable of doing anything other than destruction. I don't think the Snarl has ever technically had a world "inside it."

It is possible that the Snarl somehow was transformed into a world (i.e. it somehow untangled itself). Or that the Snarl doesn't even exist.

[Lemonus]

I think that the Snarl was bored, so it turned itself into a world. :smalltongue:


Seriously, I think it collapsed in on itself due to it's chaotic nature, and the strands of creation it was made of turned into a world.

[ThePhantasm]

I think that the Snarl was bored, so it turned itself into a world. :smalltongue:


Seriously, I think it collapsed in on itself due to it's chaotic nature, and the strands of creation it was made of turned into a world.

According to the comic, the Snarl couldn't even really comprehend reality or understand it. So it is unlikely that it ever formed a reality of its own. I agree it may have collapsed in on itself. Where the world came from I have no idea - and we really won't be able to say more until we have more info.

[Lord Bingo]

It is possible that the Gods lied and that the story we have been told is not the truth or only part of it. History, as we know, is written by the victors and truth is what is established by convention.

[smasher0404]

My opinion is that the world is actually the first world, which erupted into chaos, the Snarl is not a creature but the world which chaos caused insanity among the Eastern(?) pantheon killing them all. The gods shut the planet in to avoid insanity rather than avoiding a creature murdering them. (of course the chaos would be like radon lethal over a long period of time not instant death)

[Dvandemon]

Or that the Snarl doesn't even exist.

The Snarl is a lie?

[Dalek-K]

The Snarl is a lie?

Yes, look where the information comes from... Could have easily been a lie all along... Hell the Snarl may even be the victim here and the OoTS are really the "bad guys" where Xykon is the good guy ... (due to eventually saving the snarl)... lol

Edit:

Yes... Because Snarl = Cake

[Ender Wigin]

Heres my theory:
The people who were sucked into the rift haven't been wiped out of existince-the snarl absorbed their souls and memories over time. In the beginning, it probably couldn't understand the new knowledge and souls that came into it, but it soon learned to process all these things and, eventually, the Snarl decided to investigate all the loose strands of reality that were hanging around inside its prison, and learned to use them like a god, then made its own world to do whatever with.

Or maybe, the souls fought for control of the snarls power somehow within the snarls mind (or something) and then when they found they couldn't find their way out of the prison, made their own world to live in perfect harmony. (Of course, if you have ever watched the matrix, that probably didn't work out so well.)


And just a thought:most people think the snarl will escape and it will have to be defeated outside of the rift, but has anyone thought of going inside to fight the Snarl?

[Dire Moose]

Perhaps the gods weren't the ones who lied. Mabe the story has just become so garbled over the centuries that the original events are no longer recognizable.

Remember, we have only a story from those who sealed the rifts that has itself been transmitted secondhand, and the story the Order of the Scribble based their actions on was itself centuries old at that point.

[Gift Jeraff]

What is it?

A mystery, of course.

[Dvandemon]

Heres my theory:
The people who were sucked into the rift haven't been wiped out of existince-the snarl absorbed their souls and memories over time. In the beginning, it probably couldn't understand the new knowledge and souls that came into it, but it soon learned to process all these things and, eventually, the Snarl decided to investigate all the loose strands of reality that were hanging around inside its prison, and learned to use them like a god, then made its own world to do whatever with.

Or maybe, the souls fought for control of the snarls power somehow within the snarls mind (or something) and then when they found they couldn't find their way out of the prison, made their own world to live in perfect harmony. (Of course, if you have ever watched the matrix, that probably didn't work out so well.)


And just a thought:most people think the snarl will escape and it will have to be defeated outside of the rift, but has anyone thought of going inside to fight the Snarl?

This; I find it more likely that the Snarl doesn't completely destroy but subsume it's victims into itself. I also find it very likely they'll have to go into the rift at some point.

[Ancalagon]

Technically it was strands of reality, which is different from creation.

You do not know that. We know it's reality/creation that got tangled up due to arguments. Given how the gods reacted when they created the world, it's very likely their strains were already "creation".

Apart from that, substitute the phrase I used with your's and nothing, nothing at all, changes about my argument. So it's completely moot to discuss the specific word used.

[ThePhantasm]

You do not know that. We know it's reality/creation that got tangled up due to arguments. Given how the gods reacted when they created the world, it's very likely their strains were already "creation".

Apart from that, substitute the phrase I used with your's and nothing, nothing at all, changes about my argument. So it's completely moot to discuss the specific word used.

Hmm. I see how it could be interpreted as creation, even though I still think the artwork depicts it as "possible realities." In which case there would be a difference, for reasons I already stated. But you are right that I don't know that for sure, and it is useless to get bogged down in technicalities when we know so little.

[skim172]

I'm speculating that there's an aspect of the Snarl that is completely unknown. Maybe the original story is partly a lie. Or the person who told the original story didn't know the whole truth.

This actually brings up a question I've had - where did the story that the Order of the Scribble get about the Snarl come from? Shojo tells us that no mortal was ever told about the Snarl, leading to the unfortunate confusion with the blue guy's wife when a rift was first found. So when the Order of the Scribble forms to close the rifts, where did they get the info about what the Snarl really is?

[Lord Raziere]

screw guessing, I don't know what that is, or why it is there. but I do know that all the plans that everyone is making.....will not work. Xykons, Redcloaks, the cloaked demon guys.....none of it will work.

[Thanatosia]

So when the Order of the Scribble forms to close the rifts, where did they get the info about what the Snarl really is?
This is the most likely source of problems.

So far we've got 2 sources of info

Unknown > Order of the Scribble > Shojo's Father > Shojo
Rat/Tiamat > The Dark One > Redcloak

I am personally confident that Redcloak, Shojo, Shojo's Father, and The Order of the Scribble relayed information as accurately as they knew it.

Which leaves us with The Dark One, Unknown, and Rat/Tiamat as potentially unreliable sources of info. I personally don't really suspect Rat/Tiamat, but I think they are irrelivent as I do have a great deal of suspicion and doubt about the Dark One.

If there was any possibility that the Order of the Scribble could have gotten their information from the Dark One... almost certainly given under false identity... then we could hypothesize a single source that could very well be lying to all parties involved, and thus present us a story that is consistant from 2 sources, without neccisarily being at all accurate.

As I've posted in other threads before, I really don't trust the Dark One, and I dont think he's as noble or as interested in the well being of goblinkind as Redcloak believes he is.

[Dvandemon]

I thought the Dark One came after the Order of the Scribble :smallconfused:

[Thanatosia]

I thought the Dark One came after the Order of the Scribble :smallconfused:
The Dark One is the Goblin Diety. I don't think he's discussed much at all in the online strips, tho he does pop up briefly in the Goblintopia strips. It's hard to say exactly how far in the past the Dark One Lived, died, then became a god (and thats assuming you even believe the origin story presented for him in SoD, which I am highly skeptical of - as the story is passed down from the Dark One himself and paints him in a very flattering light that does not seem consitant to me with overt evil behavior we have seen him and his followers demonstrate) but I think it's pretty safe to say that it's waaaay before the Order of the Scribble formed.

[Alanzeign]

I don't know that it is possible to know, but given the good vs. evil theme of the comic and every imaginable construction of the inbetween, I'd say this is a reflection on law vs. chaos. The Snarl is undoubtedly chaos incarnate, but the gods themselves represent all alignments. Likely, their cooperation is the manifestation of law then. It's a stretch, but at this point I'd say anything is, but I like the idea of the Snarl collapsing in on itself as said previously, or chaos creating it's own law.

Even in seemingly chaos generally a pattern will emerge, even if it is interpreted as chaotic at the time. I like to think that something like this happened, unknown to the Snarl. It is a bit of a stretch though.

[El_Pablo]

Yeah, speculation.

I suspect that the Snarl isn't actually a creature or being per say. It may be able to manifest itself in such a way, but I think we will find it is more of an effect than a thing.

An example, what if the snarl was like the zombie plague from a Day of the Dead type movie. It infects reality, and spreads uncontrollably. Obviously, zombies isn't it, but I think the snarl is more like something that poisons reality than destroys it. The world in the rift is the original world still "infected" by the snarl, but no less real. Just whatever the snarl is, it needed to be contained lest it threaten to spread to all the gods.

Man, what if the "dead" gods weren't dead, but snarl infected, and still trapped on that other world. The gods of the OOTS world simply abandoned it to protect themselves from its effects.

[snikrept]

Everything we know about the Snarl was related to us by a guy who was an admitted highly skilled liar, in order to manipulate the OOTS into doing what he wanted. And if Shojo was telling the truth, he got the story like, third hand through Soon who may not have had the whole story himself. Unless it's in a prequel book, AFAIK it's not explained how the order of the scribble came by their knowledge of cosmology...

So what we assume about the Snarl may be highly distorted.

[Alanzeign]

@Snikrept

I like this idea a lot, but it seems like it would be dramatically ineffective. If we were given no hints up to this point that it was different a sudden twist would wrench the overarching drive of the comic which is much greater than, say, an M. Night Shamalan movie where you'd expect something like this. Saving a drastic world perceiving detail for the end with no foreshadowing creates an unfamiliar and unsympathetic story in something that is as prolonged as the OOTS script. It's highly likely that some things will be saved for the end but an enormous revelation at the climax that isn't well built upon throughout would have a diminishing effect.

That said, we still have almost half a comic left to go, perhaps this theory will be more fully explored or revealed before the end, cause I really do like it. :smallsmile:

[Goosefeather]

We will however presumably be having some more interaction with Girard reasonably soon - he may well provide a contradictory version of events to that of Soon, especially given the animosity between them. Of course, it would be up for debate which to believe, but it'd be a way of introducing to the comic the idea that Soon's version wasn't entirely accurate.

[Dr.Epic]

It's Treasure Planet obviously.

[snikrept]

I'm holding out for them all falling into a Rift a reasonable chunk of time before the actual end of the comic, so the nature of what that extra planet is is finally explored first-hand.

"Please insert Disc II" :smallbiggrin:
EDIT: it's also great that, if they get to chat with Girard about an alternate version of the events surrounding the order of the scribble's quest, Girard is yet another guy who makes his business being a highly skilled liar!

[Darth Hunterix]

A world in a world?
http://forum.tibia.org.pl/attachment.php?attachmentid=237386&d=1283191353

[Cybertoy00]

Maybe the answer isn't so simple, while being very simple at the same time.
Let's say the Snarl's origins are exactly as stated- That it came into being from godly bickering. that said, it was less of a actually creature and more of a force of nature that destroys or destabilizes whatever it comes near. After it destroys the first world, the gods tie it up in the second world. When rifts start popping up, the Snarl starts attacking whatever's in arm/claw/limb reach. We have two personal accounts of people getting too close to a rift being impaled by the Snarl's claw. Afterwards, the Order of the Scribble seals up the rifts.
Jump ahead there about...I dunno, a few decades later, when Xykon's gang goes after the rifts, and their fights with whoever's protecting them causes the gates holding the seals to fall apart. Now, Redcloak has stated that, at least on the rift above Azure City, the Snarl isn't making any attempts to break free or attack. When Blackwing takes a good look inside the Azure City rift, he sees a world inside, either a very small one or a very far one.
From this we can only conclude (With a teaspoon of sugar) that the Snarl's nature has changed in the intervening 60+ years since it was sealed up by the Order of the Scribble. Perhaps it's a side effect from the exposure to mortal magic, both arcane and divine. (Blah blah, mortals are special, yadda yadda) Maybe being forced to watch the world without being able to interact with it caused some sort of change within the Snarl's being (...And his heart grew three times that day...), and so on, and so forth. Maybe it wanted a world of it's own and just built one from the bits of reality it's formed from; a piece of the Snarl was formed everytime a god disagreed on how the world should be. I can't really really say WHY it's happening, only that it is. Happening, I mean.
Or maybe some aliens moved in when no one was looking.
:roach: Wah wah waaaaah.

[rekuu]

This box* contains... Our own universe!

*Read as: "rift." You can still use Professor's voice though.

[HandofShadows]

The world the Order lives in now was originally built as a cage for Snarl. The Gods MUST have known that the cake was starting to break in places and may not hold. So they built a new cage inside their old one to contain Snarl and keep the first cage, the world, intact.

[Mordos]

the world within the rift is obviously a parallel universe where everything is inverse, Xykon is LG, Miko has something similar to rationale thought and the order of the stick is evil with Belkar trying to be the moral compass, etc. etc. and the Sapphire Gaurd are actually reverse paladins.

[ThirdEmperor]

I think what happened was this: The Snarl was made of the threads of reality, created when the gods tried to build a world. Trapped in it's prison, it was drawn into the shape it was originally meant to have. The Snarl is the world within the rift.

[Jokasti]

Skaia, methinks.

[JSSheridan]

My theory is that Eastern Pantheon set all this up. They weren't happy with how the world turned out, so they decided to fake their own deaths, destroy it, and make a world of their own.

Does anyone wonder how the Shojo and Sapphire Guard came into the story of how the first world was created, how the Snarl formed and destroyed it, and a new world made?

[IronWilliam]

If the Snarl was woven from the threads of creation, could it be a warped and twisted miror of the OOTS world?

Or, an alternate theory, it could be the world of 4e.